Chapter Three - Nightmares

Anyone ever hear about a chicken that lived for two years without a head? Extremely sad, since the beheading happened when the poor thing was only five and a half months old, but true.

Thank you, 1940's.

My arms and legs ached fiercely as I gripped onto the girder for all I was worth. Freezing cold wind gusted around me, pulling and pushing at me. Below me, far, far below me, was some deserted street in downtown Chicago.

Up above me, the sun beamed down hotly, sending trickles of sweat down my face, down my back, and along the palms of my hands. It was disgusting and dangerous. My hands burned with the effort of keeping my hold.

Behind me, where the rest of the building was, I could hear Carly calling to me, offering words of encouragement, but doing nothing more. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to not be here, anywhere but here, but nothing happened.

My thighs hurt from grabbing the beam and my shoes were starting to feel loose. A drop of sweat rolled down my temple and into my left ear.

This was all so familiar. A part of me said I was living this, while a larger part said I was dreaming, but it didn't really matter all that freaking much to me, because I was dangling hundreds of stories above ground.

"Sam, you can make it, Sam!" Carly again. "Just come on back to me!"

"I can't!" I bit out. "If I move, I'm gonna to fall!"

Fall and no one would catch me. No Cybertronians, save for Optimus sometimes, knew how to fly. I killed Starscream, not like he would save me, but still, I didn't know of any flying mechs. Even if this was a dream, could you die in a dream and wake up in the morning? Every 80's horror movie I knew of said no.

So I really didn't want to die, but at the same time, I couldn't remember how I safely got out of this mess.

When a hand grabbed my wrist, I almost shrieked.

"Sam!"

Okay, so I did shriek.

"Sam, look at me!"

It was awkward, because the sun was in my eyes, but I did look. I almost lost my grip when I saw Mikaela staring down at me.

"Mikaela?"

"C'mon, Sam! We have to go help Optimus!" She was crouched on the beam, gripping my left wrist with one hand. "We can do this. You can do this!"

"I...I can't! I'll fall!"

"No, you won't," she said with a shake of her head, sending dark tendrils of hair ghosting across her face. "I won't let you fall."

Somehow, she grabbed onto my hand and steadied me, helped me to swing around so I was sitting on the girder with her, facing her and the building. She smiled, even as a gust of wind blew her hair back away from her face. "See? That wasn't so bad."

The city was so far below us. When I looked down, I could see Driller, still wrapping himself around the base of the building.

"We have to go," I said it needlessly. I mean, it was plainly obvious.

She nodded. "Let's go."

"Don't go yet," a new, very familiar voice came from behind me. "Stay and play!"

With wide eyes, I looked behind me to see Starscream, headless Starscream, hovering behind and beside me. "This has got to be a dream," I muttered, then looked back to Mikaela, only to see her edging back towards the building. "Hey! Don't leave me!"

"I won't leave you!" Starscream giggled. "Say, have you ever wanted to try to fly?"

My stomach rose to my throat when he grabbed me with one hand, which had an ear splitting grinding sound coming from the elbow joint. Sparks flickered from Starscream's neck. How was he even talking?

"You're so tiny," the headless Seeker mused, lifting me up to what would've been eye level. "Like a little toy." With that, he glided backwards, away from the girder just a little.

I couldn't see Mikaela, because Starscream had me facing away. I could see the lake, see the sunlight sparkling on its surface. Then my surroundings blurred and spun as Starscream made me swoop and dive and then go back up, much like a little boy playing with a toy airplane.

My stomach spun and whirled, but I didn't throw up. Then he stopped and I leaned my forehead on the top of the nearest digit grabbing me. "Oh my G..." I groaned. "Don't do that again!"

"I'll make a Seeker out of you, yet!" He giggled, then lifted me closer to the gaping wound of his neck. A growling sound came from that sparking void. "After all, you owe the Seeker world for what you did to me." He huffed out with amusement. "Time to fly, little Seekerlet."

And with that, he dropped me.

The scream that tore itself from my throat vanished in a second. Mikaela, the beam, and Starscream became pinpricks in the sky as I plummeted. Somehow I turned around in midair, facing the street, and feeling tears rip from my eyes at the speed I was going.

Only I didn't have to worry about going splat on the ground. I'd forgotten about Driller, but he hadn't forgotten about me.

The whirling bits that made up his mouth were spinning fiercely as the giant worm thing rose up to greet me.

My eyes snapped open in the darkness of my room, but I couldn't move a muscle for a few seconds. My breathing was harsh and fast, the only sound in the room. As the dream, no, nightmare, began to fade from my mind, I forced myself to sit up.

Cold air ghosted around me, a reminder of the cold winds in my dream, but this was from the a/c I'd somehow managed to set too cold before I'd gone to bed. It was a hot and muggy Diego Garcia night.

I'd never had this dream before. It made zero sense, because when we were trying to escape Driller, the building had already fallen on its side. There were no girders that any of us dangled from. It'd been internal support columns, and only Carly had really dangled. Not to mention, Driller was nearly on us. Even so, I'd had Chicago nightmares before, but this was the first time Starscream and Mikaela had been in any of my dreams. It was also the first time that Driller had, for lack of a better term, eaten me.

Come to think of it, I'd had nightmares after Mission City and Egypt, too. Nothing in my life had prepared me for anything like Mission City. Still and all, after a third incident, one would think that one would be somewhat ready for the aftermath. Not that I'd wanted there to be a second, or third, time around.

Eaten by Driller. That was a new one. I far preferred dreaming of a conga line of Primes.

And Mikaela. That was the first time I'd dreamed about her in...in a long while. Seeing her in the flesh hadn't been easy, but having nightmares with her in it sucked.

Even though I wanted to lay down, even though my body was screaming for sleep, I couldn't. After having had nightmares like this before, I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep. Oh, there were more than a few remedies for nightmares like this. Taking a Benadryl (which would knock me out in about five minutes) or Dramamine (ditto). Or even reading a boring book (hence the five that were on my desk). Those were the easiest methods for getting back to bed. But in the times when I didn't want to fall asleep, for fear of going right back into the same dream, I'd try to stay awake.

And staying awake meant doing something active, like working out, taking a walk, or (if it was close enough time-wise) just getting ready for the day.

In this instance, I didn't want to fall asleep. I had no desire to go back into a dream where I'd be eaten by something that could go through concrete and steel like Glenn could go through a twelve pack of doughnuts. So I got up, dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, slipped on a beaten up pair of sneakers, and left my quarters. I wandered out of the hangar (which was split up into four apartments, basically) and paused when the humidity hit me. It was the one thing about Diego Garcia that was hit or miss to me. At times I didn't mind it, and other times it laid me flat on my back. After being in my cool quarters, facing this humidity sucked.

I began to walk the base, knowing that the pass dangling from its clipped location on my hip pocket would open just about any door on any hangar, except the really top secret ones. It would also keep me from any awkward security eyes, as the pass had some kind of a microchip embedded in it that sent out a friendly signal indicating who I was. Bee told me that even the 'bots could pick up the signal.

There was a crunch of tires meeting gravel behind me.

Speak of the devil.

When I paused, Bee drove up beside me. "Can't sleep?"

"Nightmare."

My bud was a bot of few words. "Primes?"

I shook my head. "Chicago."

He paused and gently opened the driver's side door. "C'mon."

Wearily, I slipped inside, closing the door behind me. I sighed gratefully when the seat reclined, far flatter than any normal Camaro interior would allow. The headrest shifted into a pillow.

I hesitated. My anxiety spiked a little when I clearly saw Driller in my mind. "I don't know, Bee. It was a pretty messed up nightmare. I don't know if I want to go back to sleep." I laughed softly. "It was kind of the reason why I was walking around."

"You need your sleep."

"I need to not have another round of nightmares."

He coasted forward. "I know the pills from Ratchet didn't work that well..."

I snorted softly but relented a little and dropped against the reclined seat. "That's an understatement."

"You should see if he has anything else for you."

The plaintive tone of his voice got to me. "I just need time to work through it. There were a lot of things that went down in Chicago that I haven't dealt with."

"It's been two years, Sam, which I know is kind of long to humans, but..." He trailed off, clearly a bit frustrated over something.

"My procrastination comes from my dad," I said softly, tossing in a little laugh. "Oddly enough."

"Get some sleep, Sam. I'll wake you when it's time, okay?"

Turning onto my right side, I nodded. "Thanks, Bee."

"Anytime," he said in a fond tone of voice.

It was four weeks before anything else happened. Four weeks of meetings, downtime, sending the 'Bots off to small skirmishes with remaining 'cons (no one killed, though energon had been spilled and dents were accumulated), and me being generally successful at avoiding Mikaela. There'd been a couple of close calls where I'd caught a glimpse of her walking from one hangar to another, or seeing her helping Ratchet (as in with the aforementioned skirmishes), but luckily Optimus had prevented us being close. That included meetings. I hadn't been in one with her since sometime last month.

Um...I hadn't been late to any other meetings either.

So, anyway. The pills from Ratchet that Bee had alluded to had been a nightmare in and of itself. Themselves? I had taken up on Ratchet's offer of a slight sedative, and promptly stopped taking the pills when a couple of side effects popped up. First off, I slept like I was in a coma for nearly a full day (this after taking one of the pills at nine the night before), and secondly, I had a zombie-like grogginess throughout the following day. I was just lucky no one teased me about it. At least, no one did it to my face.

But that was about four weeks ago. It wasn't until earlier today that a bottle of melatonin was delivered to me via Wheelie Express. The snarky minibot refused to tell me who sent it, but I had a sneaking suspicion who, and it rhymed with Schmikaela. The only other person who might have sent it to me would've been my mom, but since the bottle was delivered without it being sent in a gift bag with a brand new pair of undies, I was sticking with my Mikaela theory.

I was a little wary after the "Ratchet's trying to kill me" pills, but I ended up taking one of the melatonin pills at nine-thirty that night. It was crazy how I had a better sleeping schedule living on my own here (albeit at a military base on a tropical island that had alien robots on it) than I did anywhere else.

It was around ten when I began to feel the effects. I'd been sitting at my desk, skimming a report on my laptop, when I realized that my eyes were shutting on their own. I felt so very relaxed. Then I shook my head and felt a little more awake, enough to save the changes I'd made to the document and shut down the laptop.

After a quick jaunt to the bathroom, I stared in the general direction of my kitchen and shook my head. I'd do the dishes stacked in the sink tomorrow. Yawning, I shut off the lights and stumbled into bed. I barely had time to pull the lightweight top sheet over me before literally every bone in my body felt like it'd turned to mush. That old saying of falling asleep before my head hit the pillow so applied here.

At first it was a really nice dream. I was lounging on a white sandy beach, with Bumblebee behind me playing a nice soft song rumbling through his speakers. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds lazily drifting along, a warm breeze gently blew around us, and the sound of the surf gently lapping at the sand mixed in with the song.

:This is really nice,: a feminine voice said from beside me.

"Yup," I had my eyes closed, but wondered why Arcee was here. "You bet it is."

:As much as I hate to interrupt this really nice dream, I have something to say, Samuel.:

Dread filled me. Something very deep inside was screaming at me to not look over at the voice. Do not look over at Arcee. You won't like what you see.

But I looked anyway.

"What the fuck!"

:Potty mouth, Sam,: Femme Prime chided me. :You shouldn't swear around a lady.:

"You're a Prime!" I gawked at her. "And you're...you're...Is that a mai tai?"

:It is an energon mai tai.: Femme Prime, who was on the world's largest beach blanket, elegantly rolled to lean on her right side to stare at me. She sipped her beverage, which was in a glass that looked like it could easily be a see-through tanker barrel of some sort. :It's very good. Would you like to try it?:

"Would I like to...Are you kidding me? Me drinking energon is like a dog lapping an entire bowl of melted chocolate."

:So that's a no?:

"Yes." I stared at her in disbelief. "I'm dreaming. I'm so dreaming this."

:Then the mai tai won't hurt you.:

I made a face. "I'm not trying your mai tai."

Her ruby optics flickered with what I assumed to be amusement. :You're funny, Samuel.:

"Thanks?"

She made a rumbling sound. :Primus has a message for you.:

"Of course he does."

:We did warn you.:

"I know you did. It's just that it's been four weeks already. I thought maybe you guys forgot."

:Is four weeks a long length of time?:

"For us it is."

:Curious,: was all she said as she took a sip through the world's largest straw. It looked like a hollowed out sequoia. :At any rate, Primus wishes for you to know that your search for Ironhide shall soon commence.:

"So he was serious about that?"

:You betcha.:

"You betcha?" I blinked twice. "Uh, you guys need to work on your catchphrases."

:I like it,: she said and took another sip before repeating herself. :You betcha.:

"Okay, well, what's the message?" I had to keep her on track. Sooner she got the message delivered, sooner (hopefully) she'd leave me to my peace and quiet.

Too quiet.

I looked back and saw that Bumblebee was gone. "Where'd he go?"

:This is a dream, Samuel. Once the message is delivered, you can get back to it.:

"He's okay?"

:You are concerned with him. How cute. However, you are merely worried about the dream representation of your friend. In reality, he is currently recharging in the hangar he shares with Sideswipe.:

"Huh," I frowned. "I thought he had his own hangar."

She shrugged. :They'll be bunking for only a little while.:

"Yeah. Wait, what?"

:The message, Samuel, is delivered thusly.: The mai tai vanished as she stood up. :Very soon you will be given assistance in your search for Ironhide. He is somewhere on this island, though it will not be easy for you to find him. When you do, the search will more fully commence.:

I sat up on my own beach blanket. "What do you mean, more fully commence? Won't I have found him once I find him?" I stared up at her. "What if I just ask Optimus or Ratchet where they're storing Ironhide?"

:It is not going to be as simple as that.:

"Of course not," I sighed. "Wasn't that easy when I found the Matrix in the tomb of the Primes."

Femme Prime made a noncommittal noise that sounded like a fax machine grinding and I realized my faux pas.

"Oh, uh, I mean..." I wanted a desk or wall to bang my head off of. I settled for wincing up at her. "Sorry. My bad."

She shrugged again. :You helped to bring Optimus back, Samuel. That is the important thing. However, you are right. You found the Matrix and then lost it only to find it once again.:

"I really hate riddles. Did you guys know that? Because I do. I really do."

:You will discover the reason why you must do this.:

I really wanted to glare at her, but she could smoosh me. "You're all very ambiguous about this."

:Trust in the assistance Primus gives you, Samuel.: She smiled and it was kind of scary. :When you get your help, do not be afraid of it. Let it guide you.:

"Guide me? Like what? OnStar? PrimeStar? Some kind of gps? Are you guys gonna text me?"

:So endearing! You're like that chatty little sparkling, Bluestreak.:

"Who?"

:Fare thee well, Samuel,: The mai tai reappeared in her hand as Femme Prime cocked her head to the side. :However, I do not think you require luck on this task.:

"You're wrong! I need luck! Tanker trucks full of it!"

:Goodbye, Samuel,: And with that, she vanished, mai tai, beach blanket, and all.

Suddenly, Bumblebee was back, with the gentle music spilling from his speakers. The breeze resumed, and I'd not noticed until then that there hadn't been a breeze or any sound at all.

The Primes were kind of creepy.

And then when I leaned back and shut my eyes, darkness fell across me. My eyes snapped open to utter pitch dark and I sat up to find that I was in my room. A slanted beam of dim light came from the window to my left. I groggily remembered Epps mentioning something about a full moon and crazy shit. His words, not mine. However, I think he's right. Perfect timing on Primus' part to send me a crazy dream during a full moon, right?

Looking over at the clock on the nightstand, I saw that it read 2:22 am. I fell back onto the bed with a sigh, flopped over onto my side, and struggled to fall back asleep.

A couple of days later, I was walking along a central location of hangars, getting in a bit of exercise. I had to work on my endurance (a self-imposed goal) and figured walking would help out. That walking was the least strenuous of exercises (as opposed to the oh hell no boot camp that Lennox ran) was of little importance. Diego Garcia is a sprawling base and a lot bigger to walk around than the Google Maps visual of it makes it look like.

The hangars at Diego Garcia were arranged in what looked like a completely random way. I couldn't figure it out, even when I was given a map. If I didn't have Bumblebee with me (though he wasn't here now), I'd be utterly lost. There were some on the western point, some a little further down, and more closer to the runway. I'd been exploring towards the center area.

The sun was beating down on me, sweat was making its own little river down the center of my back (among other places), and I decided to take a little break in the shade of a nearby hangar. As I rounded it, aiming for the shade, I felt a little buzz along the hairs on my arm. I brushed at my arms, thinking that somehow I might have walked through a stray bit of spider webbing or something, but nothing was there.

And then the fun hit.

The feeling that gripped me was something I'd never felt before. I felt like I was being pulled, tugged by some invisible rope. I was scared, yet the Primes had told me to not be scared. But I had no control of my body or where I was, it was, walking to.

When you get your help, do not be afraid of it. Let it guide you.

Nothing like a really vague line of wisdom, right?

The pull led me to the hangar next to the one I was going to sit in the shade of. There was a symbol spray painted on it (Or maybe it was etched. Who knew?) that I recognized as Ratchet's medic symbol. It was one of the glyphs that had floated through my head years ago, and I remembered it. That and Ratchet had sent out a memo saying to not go into any hangars that had certain glyphs on them. This was one of them.

If I remembered the memo correctly, this was a secondary medical hangar that Ratchet had, which was located about a twenty minute walk (human length of time, not Cybertronian) from his main medbay. There was a human sized door near the main hangar door, and when my hand reached out to it, I heard a click coming from the door's lock. The handle, which looked like an awkward L, moved under my hand and the door swung open without a sound.

When I stepped inside, the hangar was dim, but I was still clearly able to see everything in it. The hangar was taller on the inside than it looked from outside, and it seemed to be full of spare parts, even some medical tools that had a slight layer of what I hoped was dust (and not sea salt) coating the metallic sheen. For all I knew, it was some sort of sand dust.

Off to the right side of the hangar was a huge table with wheels on the ends of the legs. There was a form on the table, draped with a white tarp. I couldn't see what was on there, but the form was large, long, yet small compared to the Cybertronians I knew. As I walked closer, I felt the buzzing along my arms increase and then subside and I knew without a doubt that it was Jazz's body.

When I stood next to the table, I lifted my hand and touched the leg of the table. Instantly, images flew through my mind. I could see Ratchet, working long hours in this very hangar, expertly piecing the body back together. Welding Jazz back together with such care that only the faintest of scars would ever remain. Metal shone, freshly waxed, as clean as could be. Saw Ratchet respectfully draping the body with the white tarp.

Saw that the body was whole, waiting to be filled with a spark.

:Not yet, Samuel. This one will have to wait.:

The hairs on the back of my neck lifted at the genderless voice in my head. Apparently, Jazz would have to wait. And really, what could I do for him, anyway? It was then that I saw what...who...I was looking for.

In a table off to the side opposite of Jazz was a table that I could just barely see had a black box resting on it. The closer I got, the more the buzzing increased along my arms. The table was Cybertronian sized, matching the one Jazz was resting on, but this table was stationary, no wheels on it. However it did have a human set of stairs attached to it. I raced up what felt like two flights of stairs and stepped onto the surface of the table. The box was resting before me and, for who it contained, it looked ridiculously small on the stainless steel surface of the table. To be honest, it was about the size of a Fiat.

This was what held Ironhide's remains.

It wasn't that his name was written on the box. The box was devoid of any characters or glyphs. I didn't even need to open the box to know what was inside. My link to the Primes told me that. The awareness sang along my nerves in a brief, white hot burst of knowledge.

:Found.:

"Well, great," I muttered as I stood near the box, staring down at it. "Ironhide has been found, so now Primus can do his little thing and bring him back. Right?"

There was an electronic burbling in my mind and even though it wasn't loud, it was uncomfortable. A humming sound echoed around me, very softly, almost like a car with a badass subwoofer or something. I took a careful step away from the box when I saw a faint glow begin to spill over the box.

"What the hell," I frowned as the glow engulfed the box and shielded my eyes with my arm, while still trying to see what was going on.

The glow vanished with a sudden popping sound and the hangar was really dark for a second, then it was back to its dim state.

It was then that I noticed that the box was gone. I heard a creeping sound directly behind me, a shifting of metal that I associated with a Cybertronian walking around. I turned around slowly, fully expecting to see Ironhide behind me. Dread and fear filled me because I knew that the last thing he'd known was the beginning of a skirmish. Would he be expecting that now?

There was a snorting sound, a venting of hot air that gusted over my head as I looked up at the mech.

"Shit!" It wasn't Ironhide that I saw. What I saw was almost worse.

Standing behind me, looming over me, was one of the Primes.

:Found, found, now find again.:

Aww, hell. They sent this guy? It was 'seems to not be all there in the processor' Prime. He was obviously a Prime of few words. "Where did he go?"

:Coordinates sent to you. Fiiiiiind.:

What was with this guy? Frankenstein Prime? Zombie Prime? "Coordinates? Why coordinates?" Then my brain latched onto the second word that he said. Sent. "How are you sending them? Email? Text? Facebook message?"

:Soon, very soon. Be aware.:

It was then that a headache began pounding, ever so slightly, between my eyes. I instantly got flashbacks of the glyphs that danced in my head after I got zapped by the shard. "No, no, c'mon, really? Can't you just pm me on Facebook? My user name is SamDaMan2..."

But the Prime vanished with a slight snarl and a weird gleam in his red optics. I swear he looked almost amused and annoyed all at once.

"...17." A growing sense of something began to gain weight, almost, in my head. The pounding increased slightly. I knew I had to get out of here. Channeling my inner jogger, I bolted for the stairs. At the top of the stairs, I had to stop and grip the railing because my vision swam for a second before settling.

With a determined grunt, I cautiously ran down the stairs as fast as I could. Even though it felt like it took forever, I knew it didn't. Before long, I was running back through and out of the hangar. If I had looked back, I might have seen the slight sea breeze rustling the silken tarp that covered Jazz. Or how the edges of the tarp continued to swirl in the breeze, long after the door had shut behind me.

Instead, I was leaning against the hangar itself, shielded from the bright sunlight by a slight overhang of the hangar's roof. Digging my phone out of my pocket, I quickly sent a text to Bee. I knew he could find me by pinpointing my cell's signal. I didn't wait much longer than a few minutes before he was coming around the corner of a nearby hangar.

Could I have tapped out the message I was about to receive into my phone's note app? No chance. My phone didn't have the Cybertronian glyph keyboard installed. I knew that this would be easier with old fashioned pen and paper.

Bee slowed down in front of me, swinging open the driver's door as he did.

Gratefully, I slid away from the hangar, wincing as the sun hit me in the eyes. I all but collapsed into the driver's seat, keeping my hands and legs away from the door as Bee shut it.

"You okay, Sam?"

"Darken the tint, please?"

He did so, bringing a little relief. "Do you need to go to Ratchet?"

Knowing he probably was a second away from comming the CMO, I just barely stopped myself from shaking my head. "No, this'll pass. I just need a pen and paper asap."

He was in motion even as he was asking me why.

"Primes," I grimaced, pressing my palms against my temples. "Apparently they haven't gotten on Facebook yet."

That Bee didn't crack a joke back showed me how worried he was.

In probably the same amount of time it took for me to get down the stairs and out of the hangar, less actually, Bee had me back at the hangar that held my...

"This isn't my place, Bee."

"Ratchet wants to see you."

"Bee! I thought you had my back." I bit back a hiss of pain as the headache felt like it doubled in intensity.

The driver's door opened and I felt metal reach in and cautiously pluck me from Bee's cab. I was shaded from the sun by what I knew to be a hand, while the other hand held me. "Message from the Primes, huh?"

Ratchet's gruff voice was not exactly welcomed at the moment. It dawned on me that Bee must've told Ratchet why my head was hurting.

Wordlessly, I nodded, then regretted it. "Pen, paper, something. I don't care if you have me write this out with energon."

My eyes were shut from the pain, and though Ratchet was walking as smoothly as he could, and handling me as gently as possible, it was still a bit jarring when he placed me on the top of one of the metal berths. I cracked open one eye to see that Ratchet was turning back towards me with a ridiculously large piece of paper and a small, nay, tiny in his hands pen.

The area rug sized piece of paper was placed in front of me and Ratchet delicately handed off the pen to me. I crawled to the center of the paper and the second that I placed the pen to the surface, that weird feeling grabbed me again. I felt my body moving on its own, scribbling at an almost frantic pace.

For the pain that I experienced, the phantom writing session didn't last very long. I was glad of it, but it seemed a bit anticlimactic. Less than five minutes later, I was done. Much like when I had carved the glyphs in the dirt for Jetfire, I'd written down the glyphs in a couple of arcs around me.

"Good thing you gave me the big sheet of paper," I joked up at Ratchet. When I didn't get a reply, I stared at both of them. "Guys? Hello?"

"Optimus is on his way," Ratchet said in an almost automatic reply. Then doc bot blinked in that odd, camera lens shutter flickering sort of way that they all did, and turned away from me. "I'll get you a mild pain reliever for your headache, Samuel."

As I watched him stride towards the rear of the hangar, I looked over at Bee. "Uh, what's with him?"

My bff walked closer, looking from Ratchet's direction and back to me. "That message is what caused your headache?"

"Uh huh," I avoided nodding. Even though the pressure had vanished the moment I started writing, there was still a bit of pain. I wanted to not throw up all over Ratchet or Bee. "Only this time I used a pen and paper, as opposed to smearing cake icing on a table or painting on the walls." I frowned. "Or using the chalkboard of the most annoying professor in the world." I almost chuckled when I thought of that guy. If he hadn't been such an arrogant self-absorbed ass, he might have realized what I'd been saying, and done something brilliant with my knowledge.

"I thought you weren't seeing the glyphs anymore."

"I wasn't," I managed to squeak out in answer as Ratchet stalked back over.

"Yes, Samuel. Have you been hiding something from us?" Ratchet loomed over me, much as Spacey Prime had. He thunked down the glass of water (again, ridiculously small in his hands, normal when it was near me) and held his hand near my shoulder.

"No?" Guessing he had aspirin or something in that hand, I reached out. Luckily, he dropped two white pills into my hand and, as they were regular sized pills, I figured they were indeed aspirin.

He stared at me and I felt a slight tingle over my skin. "Judging by this scan compared with the last one I did yesterday, I don't think you are keeping anything from us."

And by us, he meant himself. People might think I'm dumb, but I'm not an idiot. No way would I keep any tiny thing from Ratchet. He's not allowed to whack us humans in the head with a wrench like he does to the bots on base, but he knows ways to make a human's life a living hell. Not that Optimus will let him go too far, but still, it's Ratchet.

Even though a bit of me was perturbed that he was scanning me, a larger part of me said to let it go. It was just how Ratchet was.

"No, I haven't been hiding anything," I blurted out, somehow managing somehow to not sound as annoyed as I felt. "The whole seeing glyphs thing subsided, I guess is the best way to explain it. I can't read things written in Cybertronian, but sometimes I see a flicker of a glyph from the corner of my eye. It vanishes before I can focus on it."

In a way, the glyphs I saw were almost ghost-like, but I knew I couldn't tell Ratchet or Optimus that, because I doubted their culture had ghosts. They died, were extinguished, and the went to the Well or the Pit. Their versions of Heaven and Hell. When we died, based on what one believed, it was Heaven, Hell, or roaming the world as a ghost.

And honestly, the glyphs I saw, which weren't many, didn't impede on my life. They weren't barging in and saying, "Oh hey, check this out!"

"What is the frequency that you see these ghostly glyphs?"

"Uh, maybe once or twice every other month?"

Ratchet looked thoughtful and carefully plucked me up from the table to place me onto the floor. "That doesn't seem frequent enough to be concerned with, however, you had best tell me when they do become more frequent."

Relief stole through me. "Of course, Ratchet!" Don't lay it on too thick, Sammie... "I promise I'll, uh, I'll keep a journal of every glyph I see, okay?"

He gave me a narrowed glance, but seemed satisfied. Shifting his gaze to Bee, he gave my guardian plenty of orders to keep an eye on me for the rest of the day. "If he so much as sneezes, I want to know."

Bumblebee gave an affirmative chirp and transformed back into his alt, popping open the driver's side door as he did.

I resisted a yawn, successfully thank you, and gratefully slid into his cab.

When he peeled out of the hangar, I was incredibly grateful that I was nausea free. Puking in your best bud was a little lame.

Yeah, so Mike the Headless Chicken was real.

Mimosa Prime or Not All There Prime. Anyone have a favorite? :D