This is an idea that's been bugging me forever. Here is the first chapter, tell me if you love it, or hate it. Rated for language and some other themes.

I don't own Transformers.

Dead: having passed from the living state to being no longer alive

Mikaela Banes was dead.

Dead. Lifeless. Deceased. No longer able to smell, or move.

But she was able to think. And Mikaela Banes was pretty sure that dead people don't think.

The doctors voice sounded wrong. Tiny. Muffled. But at the same time, too clear, and too precise.

Dead. That was what she was and what she didn't want to be. But really, the last thing she wanted to be was a zombie. Well, she already was a zombie, right. A zombie that wasn't sure whether she had arms or legs or a mouth or ears. She couldn't tell, but her sluggish mind told her that it didn't matter. Whatever she was, was far from normal.

"Don't panic."

She thought she knew the voice. It slipped from her mind as quickly as it had come, just as something pried her eyes open. The world was a kaleidoscope, colors and shapes spinning and blurring together. Without warning, her eyes closed again.

There had been a car. She remembered that much. And screaming and blood and more screaming, like an animal being tortured. Metal against metal, and fire. Always fire. Burning. Something burning.

She remembered that. She didn't want to remember that. She didn't want to remember anything.

They didn't know that she was a awake, she realized. They still thought that she was here, trapped, in a foreign body, unable to feel the pounding of her own heart and taste the salt of her own tears.

It was a maddening. She could imagine time slipping by, the familiar voice rising over the sobs of whoever had come to visit her while she was on her deathbed.

Sam. His parents. Her own father. Bumblebee. The rest of the Autobots.

Then, it hit her.

Barricade. He had been the one.

If she had been….if she had been….

Alive. Right. If she had been alive, she would have been screaming and cursing and hitting. But she couldn't because she was half-dead, half-alive and couldn't move a muscle. The realization was clear as day.

She opened her eyes again, longer this time, and the colors swam together to form one, single object. A tall, red and blue object that seemed a whole lot smaller than normal.

"Mikaela, everything will be alright," his tone was steady, but Mikaela could hear the worry. "Try to be patient."

And then, her eyes closed again.

Mikaela's last day had sucked.

The last day she would have chosen – the last day she had deserved – would have been filled with her favorite things. Chocolate. Candy. Pizza. Cake. Ice cream. The Autobots, too, would be there, eating it all with her, even thought they couldn't technically eat. But who cared. It was her fantasy.

Sam, of course. She would have invited him over. Would have said, screw the world, just be here with me, today. Always.

But that was a fantasy. Her fantasy. There was a reason why fantasies weren't real, just conjured up by the human mind. Her last real day had been much less delightful, and a whole lot more depressing.

She and Sam were both seething as they sat in the back of Bumblebee's alt mode. Another day, another fight. Bumblebee was trying to cheer them up – Mikaela, particularly – by playing some music.

Mikaela had snapped at Bumblebee then, telling him to shut up. That she wasn't in the mood.

She deeply regretted it now. But how was she supposed to know that as soon as the words had left her mouth, the world had erupted around her in an explosion so loud that it had caused her ears to pop and ring. An explosion so powerful that it had blown Bumblebee forward, causing him to flip and transform in midair.

Then, that terrifying sensation of flying.

Everything had slowed. She had seen Sam in the air beside her, mouth open, screaming like a lunatic. The fire had singed her hair and clothes. Chunks of rock had flown up at impossibly speeds, some large and some small. The small ones had scraped across her legs and cheek and arms.

One of Bumblebee's arms had shot out to grab Sam. His huge fingers had curled around the boy's waist, saving him.

He had reached for Mikaela next, with his other hand.

And then, in one, shocking moment, he had missed. Missed by inches. And the world had sped up and Mikaela had found herself hurtling towards the ground like a comet, her body engulfed in fire.

Inches from being saved. She would be asleep in her own bed right now, Sam next to her, safe. Unharmed.

How quickly ones life could change.

The doctors came again, later, prying her eyes open. The whole time her mind was screaming. Saying, I'm alive, hear me, help me. Save me. Please.

Their response had been to close her eyes and engulf her world in darkness once more. And then, from that moment on, her non-beating heart had been filled with hatred for them. Them and their instruments that probed her eyes and ears and mouth and any other part of her lifeless body.

Lifeless corpse. That was what she was.

Days passed. She could hear the murmur of the doctors, the racketing sobs of someone. A friend, she presumed. She couldn't tell who. All sobs sounded the same to her.

"Mikaela…" a deep voice said. "Be strong."

There was no mistaking, it was Optimus Prime speaking.

She latched onto whatever consciousness she had left, and held on for dear life.

She remembered parts of her life. When she was thirteen, and had been chosen for class president. An irrelevant memory, but for some strange, cosmic reason, it had popped up first. Maybe it was because it had been the first time she had been recognized as something more than just an attractive girl who got all the boys. She remembered three years later, when she had first started to drive. She had been scared, off course. It took a lot of concentration.

Who would have thought that only a year later, she would be riding in a car that drove itself.

She remembered Mission City, hooking Bumblebee up to the back of a truck and driving, screaming at him to shoot. She remembered Sam, and Optimus, and Ironhide, and Ratchet, and Jazz….poor, poor Jazz who had gone out fighting.

She remembered Egypt. Remembered seeing Optimus dead and Sam dead and hearing the sound of her own screams and sobs.

All of that seemed like such a distant memory now. Like it had all been a figment of her imagination. Like she wasn't here now, in some random hospital, paralyzed.

She drifted. Stopped thinking, stopped trying to do anything.

Then, it happened. She hadn't even known what she was doing. It had just happened.

Eyes open.

Light. An incredible blast of heat that, for some reason, she knew was coming from the bright bulb directly above her head.

A shout. Maybe Optimus, maybe Ratchet, maybe Sam. She didn't know.

She moved an arm. Her arm. Heard something, like the clanking of metal, but didn't care because at that moment she could feel nothing but the crystalline joy of being in control again.

Thump. Thump. Screech. Her arms moved up and down, up and down, along with her legs. Her neck arched backwards and the ceiling became a blur of color, the light seeming impossibly bright.

"Mikaela, stop!"

That deep voice was enough to make her hold still. How, she didn't know.

Her eyes focused. She looked down.

Sam. Standing there, trying to grin, but looking dumb because his eyes were wide and his lip was curled upward in shock.

Why? I'm alive, she thought.

She moved her hands. More screeching. She held it up to her face and saw the dark brown metal.

Those weren't her hands. Where were her hands. And why was Sam so small. And why was Optimus, who was standing before her, in plain view, not the towering creature he used to be.

She blinked, hearing the sound of metal against metal again, not being able to stand the sound.

A suddenly, as she looked down again at the brown hands, not human hands, no, but hands that obviously belonged to a Cybertronian, she felt her contented little universe tilt and slide away.

She screamed.