Amelia rose before her alarm clock screamed that morning, a not unusual characteristic of herself for she believed sleep a waste of time. Though the clock told her it was four in the morning and she had only just gone to bed three hours before, she felt awake and ready to begin a day once more.

Knowing the base would be quiet and empty, but unwilling to return to bed, Amelia dressed quickly in her running gear, shorts with a thin black t-shirt, and set off on her run around the base. This had become a morning routine for her while she stayed at the military head-quarters, developing into a time she mentally prepared herself for the day, and also serving as a sort of physical therapy; the condition of her two metal appendages depended on constant exercise.

Not to mention it gave her something to do.

"You'll be getting your own key card within the next day or so," he told her. She nodded absently mindly, unable to pay close attention to him because the latest door his trusty key card had unlocked opened a huge hangar.

They stood upon a tall metal balcony that stretched the perimeter of the hangar, with an adjacent connecting balcony separating the two halves of the large room. Several bays had been set up in the garage, and dozens of individuals moved along its concrete floor. Some were typing on computers, others held charts and chatted idly. The room was impressively large, with a one hundred foot tall ceiling. Lights hung, illuminating the large room. On the far side of the hangar was an enormous lift, much like a door on a domestic garage. Outside, she could hear the roar of the desert sand storm.

It was incredibly mundane, however. Because besides those few definitely human individuals below, the hangar was empty.

Amelia's brows furrowed (she refused to acknowledge the sand that fell in the movement from her eyebrows), and turned to face Lennox. However, she was only given the chance to open her mouth before the major beat her to words.

"They aren't here right now, and I can't say for sure when they will be back. Search and destroy mission." Lennox folded his hands behind him. He nodded to the hangar floor below. "This however, is where you'll be working."

That had been almost a week ago.

Though in a way she should be happy the Autobots were out of the hangar when she arrived. It gave her ample time to prepare her bay for her work. The week alone without distraction allowed her to set up the readers and tools she had brought from her facility, align her charts and calenders, and be debriefed on the continuous war. The events that took place in Mission City less than a month ago left Amelia feeling quiet.

"Where is this Sam Witwicky now?" she had asked, her fingers digging into one of the many boxes of files. It was day three and she had just started to sort and separate her mounds of research notes and binders filled with her work on Megatron during the research at the Hoover Dam to use as references while she worked on the Autobots. Lennox had taken this time to tell her what the media, and her army contacts, had not told her about the Autobots and Decepticons.

"Safe, home. We keep tabs on him. A particularly good tab," Lennox smiled, as if enjoying his own private joke. She quirked an eyebrow at him, but otherwise ignored it.

Amelia's fingers slipped over a particularly favorited thick notebook. She flipped the first few pages idly, sighing quietly. This had been her personal journal recounting her time with Megatron in his frozen state. The internal workings of his structure, her hypothesis of how exactly Energon worked, even a complete detailed documentation of the Spark. Of course, the terms she now knew and the terms in the journal were very different. Only recently did she learn of the correct names, a discovery that still left her feeling giddy. Soon, she would have answers to so many questions she had for the anatomy and mechanical workings of the Transformers. Though she had boxes and boxes of manual notes on the Decepticon leader, the longing for more information led to her sigh.

"It is a shame N.B.E. 1 is crumbled at the bottom of the ocean," she murmured softly to herself, still turning the pages. She still had many more experiments she had wished to attempt, but her year internship at the Dam had come and gone too quickly.

"If you had met him other than as a popsicle, you wouldn't be saying that," Lennox said darkly, more than he had intended. Amelia closed the notebook with a snap.

"I'm so sorry, how crass of me to say," she apologized, shoving the notebook onto the shelf with the rest of the notes. "I only meant on a scientific level. Please forgive my insensitivity."

"Eh, it's fine," he shrugged, but got up from his perch on an empty desk. "I'm just glad he's rotting with the fishies and not up here." Lennox left after that, leaving her to her thoughts and the rest of the file unpacking.

Amelia's run took her outside the base as well; she enjoyed watching the sunrise in the desert. The air outside was chilly, still cool from the night before. Still too early for the sun to rise, Amelia turned to begin another lap when a flickering light caught her attention. She paused in her jog, her eyes leading her to the line of Plexiglas windows above the hangar door. Again, a light flickered, this time remaining on. Wondering if perhaps maybe she was not the only early bird on base after all, Amelia turned to jog back into the base.

She followed the necessary corridors that led to the hangar, moving gracefully in her running clothes. After she slid the keycard that she kept with her (at all times, Lennox told her) into the keyswipe and quietly moved through the open doors onto the balcony of the hangar, her eyes scanned the floor and her feet led her to the stairs.

But she paused at the top, her emerald eyes narrowing a fraction.

There was no one in the hangar.

Moving into a crouch on the top step, she silently made her way to the concrete floor, all the while her olive hues scanning the hangar suspiciously. Her brow furrowed, her eyes having confirmed that indeed, there was no one in the large garage.

Straightening from her crouch, yet still unable to shake the feeling of being watched, she instead moved across the hangar to her own work area to maybe straighten the last of the files before Lennox appeared in the hangar with breakfast, knowing she would already be up. She looked forward to these small human moments they shared, even though it was just as simple as him bringing a muffin from the dining hall on base. Amelia considered Lennox a friend, something of which she had few, and she enjoyed his company while she rummaged through the battlefield known as paperwork.

Amelia had just put her hands on the laptop when an unfamiliar sound startled her. She shot up from her chair, and in one fluid motion had pressed her back into one of the bay walls, her ears straining to hear any other movement. She gritted her teeth when she was met with silence.

Ace wasn't usually this jumpy, this paranoid. But the flickering lights, the unshakeable feeling of being watched, and the eerie, unfamiliar sound she had just heard left her with the instinctual feeling of danger. Once again lowering herself to the floor, she quietly moved forward and pressed a hand under her desk, her fingers feeling around momentarily before wrapping around her designated object. She pulled the Browning Hi-Power from its holster bolted to the bottom of her desk and clicked off the safety while she crouched against the bay's wall. She was ex-military, after all.

With a silent inhale, Amelia shifted to look beyond the threshold of the bay's opening. She quickly scanned the area the sound had come from, but again was left with her eyebrows knitted together in a puzzled look. The area was empty.

Well, empty save for a few very shiny cars that had definitely not been there when she left her bay only a few hours ago.

Amelia stood from her crouch again, and stepped out from her bay. She shook her head, tucking the Browning in the back of her shorts with a sigh. She was definitely getting too edgy for her own good. One of these days she was going to shoot her own foot off, and she was sure she didn't need any more metal parts.

With a quiet sigh, she tilted her head at the cars, wondering where exactly they had come from. They looked too nice to be military issue vehicles, one of them being even a silver Corvette. She quirked an eyebrow at them while she moved past the vehicles, making a mental note to ask Lennox what they were doing here when he arrived. She glanced at the clock on one of the hangar beams.

Which should be soon, she thought to herself.

At the back of the group of the very atypical cars was an even more extrinsic Peterbilt semi-trailer truck. But it wasn't so much the fact that it was a truck that perplexed her, but because it adorned a very unusual paint job for a military hangar. Not the usual camouflage, as Amelia moved closer she realized that they were red and blue flames painted across the front and doors. The outlandish taste of whoever painted the truck made a small smile tug at the engineer's mouth. But she had to give credit to the painter, for the flames almost appeared to jump out of her, and before she gave a second thought, she reached out with a flesh hand to touch one, gentle not to scratch the paint.

Not a breath after her fingers had brushed the cool metal and sent a shock through her frame, behind her a deafening hydraulic whirling erupted. Amelia, started by such a harsh sound so suddenly, spun in time to see the huge black GMC truck shift, seeming to sit back on its haunches and stand, its frame change leaving Amelia wide-eyed in awe, quickly grasping the situation.

These are the Autobots, she screamed at herself, wondering how she could have been so stupid. The tension in her body eased slightly, realizing that they were indeed, just the Autobots.

However, it appeared she had relaxed too soon, for the GMC truck Transformer had a very big, very hot cannon pointed at her, ready to send her to the next life.

When half of Amelia's appendages had been wasted, she knew that she may never fight again. The military would never allow a "cripple" to hold arms. But Amelia had always craved the fight, always wanted to return to the frontline where she belonged. So when she had lost two of her best weapons, she built new, stronger ones out of metal for herself. She made the frames ten times stronger than regular bone, and the joints able lift six times as much as her flesh knee could. Though it had taken much rehabilitation to get use to the imbalance of strength between her two legs, it was well worth the wait. Because today, Amelia was fast.

And she would have to be, because the heat of the burning cannon told her she had to move. Now.

She dove, out of line of the cannon that had set off, leaving a small burnt crater in the place she had just been staring doe-eyed a second before. The gun slid across the hangar floor, having fallen from its nesting place in her shorts. Not like she could use it against a four ton robot anyway, she thought, gritting her teeth. Amelia rolled on the concrete of the hangar before gracefully using the momentum to stand. This time though, she wasn't a deer caught in headlights. Instead, she opted to run.

A table with two computers exploded in front of her, having been hit by Ironhide's cannon. The force of the explosion sent her back in the air, her fall broken by the folding table adjacent to the computer table though her head hit the concrete of the hangar floor too hard. The crash of her fall left her breathless, a bruising pain forming in her lower back from hitting the table, and her shoulder bled, cut by shrapnel from the blast. Amelia groaned quietly. She knew that battle would always be a part of her, but definitely didn't like when she was losing. And from the way the world spun, she was losing badly.

"Decepticon," someone hissed near her. Amelia was faintly aware of the heat of the cannon once more, but it all was happening too fast for her to pick herself back up in time. She barely even noticed when Lennox and several others came crashing through the door of the hangar, his hands upraised. She believed he was shouting, but the words were lost to her. All she knew was the heat on her face, knowing that even if he was shouting for it to stop, it was too late. She knew how cannons worked.

Suddenly though, the heat was gone and a cool breath of air washed over her. It was almost enough to clear the blur of her headache. She moved to sit up only to realize that she could not, and her vision was speckled with black dots, the darkness playing at the edges of her sight, slowing closing over.

The last thing Amelia Edson noticed before she passed out was a blue light lighting up what little vision she retained, and a deep voice.

"This is no Decepticon."

And she remembered blue and red flames.


AN: Woah, I wonder who that is!

Anyway, some of you may be confused how in the hell Ironhide could confuse Amelia for a Decepticon. For those of you too impatient to wait for Chapter 3: You know Amelia did tons of research and work on Megatron, who was the basis for the computer chip, telephones, cars, etc. He was ALSO the basis for, you guessed it, her arm and leg! And because of the design and type of metal, the Autobots are thoroughly confused at what exactly our Amelia is.

Also! There are such things known as, "Pretender" Decepticons. They're decepticons who take on human forms. (Yeah, that blonde chick Alice from Revenge of the Fallen is a Pretender Decepticon. She's the chick who pretends to be a student and tries to get all freaky on Sam in college.)

But otherwise, thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think.

- Amethyst