Chapter One: In Which Friendships are Formed and Discoveries Made

My name, you see, has always been a funny thing. My sisters were all flowers; Rose, Dahlia, and then the twins, Petunia and Primrose. I came last, and was given the name Elizabeth. It's as if I was condemned to be different from the start.

My middle name, at least, was for a flowering shrub, which was close enough to their own namesakes for my sisters to decide I was Azalea, or Azzy from the time I was very small.

To Grandmother I was Elizabeth Azalea, at least until Prim and Petunia reached nineteen and I became the Miss Ransbury. I believe she took great joy out of dragging out all eight syllables when she could have easily done any number of things to shorten it into one.

To my friends, I was always something different; Eliza, Liza, Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Bethy, well, you get the idea. I didn't mind at all, for I had decided at a young age that the name Elizabeth really was too much of a mouthful for people to go around saying all the time, especially in a fast paced world like our own. Who had breath to waste on extra syllables?

Each of the Autobots quickly found their favorite way to condense it. Hound called me Lizzy, Drift preferred Beth, Crosshairs decided I was Liz, and to Bee I was Az.

Only Optimus Prime called me Elizabeth.

Today was a very important day. My heels clicked lightly over the dark tiled floor as I paced impatiently.

"You must remain calm, Beth." Drift reminded me in his gentle Japanese accent.

I glanced at him bemusedly. Early in my time with the Autobots I had once informed him that having an Asian demeanor, but the alt mode of a Bugatti simply didn't work, seeing as the vehicle was Italian. I smirked now, in a self-deprecating way. I had been so eager to share my vast store of human knowledge with the poor, naïve aliens. I knew better now.

Drift had laughed at the time and explained that he enjoyed both the sound of the accent, and the look of the car. It made little difference to him if it wasn't quite right to a human.

That was the first time I really thought about the Transformers being their own race, with their own cultures and values. Somewhere, subconsciously, I had decided that if Drift was an Italian car, he should have an Italian accent. But what I hadn't truly comprehended was that Drift wasn't a car. Nor was he actually Japanese. He was a Cybertronian, with his own language, and his own form. The Autobots had adopted personality traits and accents familiar to us only out of necessity for understanding between the two species.

"Has anyone ever offered to learn Cybertronian?" I blurted out. I was suddenly feeling rather ashamed of my own race for not making more of an effort to understand the foreign culture.

By then Crosshairs had joined us, and he chuckled at my question.

"Not once, Liz. However, even if someone wanted to, you do not have the vocal processors required to form the sounds of our language. It is much easier for us to download yours."

"Still," I muttered, "Someone could at least ask."

"You honor us, Beth," Drift replied, "but we are the strangers here. We will adjust accordingly."

I nodded, biting back my retort. I had only known them a short time, but I had grown fond of the Autobots already, and protective as well. I often found myself biting my tongue, for I had always had a quick temper. The whole situation didn't seem fair to me, but they all seemed content, or at least reconciled, with their current way of living so I vowed to hold my peace, at least for the time being.

Bringing myself back to the present, I gave Drift a teasing smile.

"Of course, I must remain calm. Admit it, Blue, underneath all that meditation junk you're just as anxious as I am."

The mech chose not to be swayed by my baiting. "Go find Hound," he said with a huff, "and leave me in peace."

He shuttered his optics, and I share with little regret that I wasn't above sticking my tongue out childishly before click-clacking noisily down the hall to where I knew Hound would be.

I could hardly believe it had been almost a year since I had started this job. The Autobots were like family to me now, and I had bonded closely with each of them. In the relatively peaceful period since their battle in Hong Kong, and without their leader to command them, they had all finally had an opportunity for some down time. Between the flurries of meetings, press interviews, and public appearances that I guided them through, there were stretches of time where I had the opportunity to just get to know them.

Hound, who seemed so unrefined that he would make my Grandmother's hair curl, had a deep love of literature. He had made a token effort of hiding it when I first arrived, but when I began to drop suggestions of classics for him to read, he was soon coming to me for long chats about Shakespeare and Chaucer.

Bee was the most cheerful and outgoing of his companions, but at night he suffered from nightmares- or stasis projections, that would have him up and wandering the complex. It wasn't exactly hard to miss his heavy footsteps, and we soon had a routine of going for late night drives to help him clear his head. It also helped, I found, for him to listen to earth music. He didn't have any particular genre that he liked best, but he was always grateful when I brought a new CD for him to scan.

Crosshairs often lamented and complained about the absence of their Prime. He would provoke and irritate the other 'bots by challenging them for the role of leadership. After a while though, it became apparent that he didn't really mean what he said, he was simply bored. He spent a lot of time working with Cade now, learning about earth engineering and assisting him with his random projects.

Drift, who tried to act so calm and collected, was as quick with his temper as I was. Meditation did little for him in reality, but the specially built training arena, where he could hack and slash to his spark's content, did wonders for his psyche. He could go many days without a round of sparring, but if he was headed to the 'gym' I knew better than to ever follow. The excitement of watching paled in comparison to the fear of getting beheaded.

One of the most interesting activities, for everyone involved in our little group, was the Holoform Conditioning Program.

It had started one day when I had idly remarked that some of the public appearances required by the Transformers would be much easier if they were human. I had slapped my hand over my mouth when I said it, instantly ashamed that I would imply they should be anything but what they were. Joshua, who had been present at the time, had thought otherwise.

"You know," he said slowly, "That's not a bad idea."

"What? What do you mean? It's not possible in any case." I retorted.

"Actually," Crosshairs cut in, "it is possible, in a way. Since coming to Earth we have learned to use Holoforms- a human projection- to help conceal our identity. Your vehicles hardly drive themselves, so we learned to project a 'person' into the driver's seat. It is a fairly new technology, though. We had no use for such a thing before we came to this planet."

Both Cade and Joshua lit up at the phrase 'new technology.' I excused myself then, eager to escape before the engineering discussion began.

Over the next few weeks plans were laid out and experiments put into action. Within the next month each Autobot had a completely detailed human projection. Each Holoform was flawless in appearance, but it was soon apparent that looking human was only half the battle.

The Autobots controlled the Holoforms virtually, which must have been harder than they thought, for the first time I saw their trial forms I was scared half out of my mind thinking I was under attack by zombies. I had shrieked and wailed for anyone to save me, at which the zombies all started laughing heartily in a way very similar to my beloved Autobots.

I had been disgruntled, but calmed considerably once they explained that they were my Autobots.

We had all had to work together then, because although the Transformers had nailed human appearances, they moved like robots. Movements that looked graceful and smooth in their metal forms were made to look considerably more awkward and jerky at human size. Long years of my Grandmother's scathing remarks about posture and walking properly became suddenly relevant as I shared my knowledge with my nonhuman friends. They were quick learners, although Hound, admittedly, would never be graceful.

The other problem we encountered was that the Holoforms weren't solid. There was nothing substantial to them. They could have still appeared in public, but it would be disconcerting for any humans who might brush through them. Cade and Joshua worked at the issue constantly, but had yet to find any results for their lack of solidity.

"If Ratchet were here," Hound had stated, "he'd have this little glitch sorted in a nano."

Ratchet.

I was giddy now. Ratchet was the reason today was so important.

After the battle in Hong Kong, Joshua had rethought the decision to bestow the world with Cybertronian technology. Instead, he had broken down all of his remaining prototype projects, few as they were after the destruction of his original lab, into their original Transformium matter.

It was Cade who had The Idea. While assisting with sorting through the wreckage of KSI, he had stumbled across the still fairly intact head of the recently destroyed mech. It didn't take long before he was barging in on Joshua's weekly progress meeting with yours truly, head in tow.

"We could bring him back!" He had exclaimed. "We really could- well maybe. Think about it. You made Galvatron out of Transformium, intending him to be modelled after Optimus, but because of Megatron's presence he was reincarnated into the prototype. We have just enough Transformium now that if we were to build a prototype of Ratchet, and there was anything, anything at all left in here," at this he had hoisted the head onto Joshua's desk, scattering paper and pens everywhere, "maybe it would become Ratchet!"

Far-fetched, I know. But the Transformium wasn't being used for anything else, and Joshua was nothing if not a dreamer. There wasn't a better man to go to with the request that he drop a couple million dollars on a dented, metal head and a 'maybe.'

And now, months later, here we were. If all went according to plan, today would be the day that they brought Ratchet back.

Maybe.