A/N: My first time writing Maggie Madsen. It occurred to me that she was nowhere to be seen in Revenge of the Fallen. Her or Glen, for that matter. We might be seeing more of him.

I'm sure you've all noticed by now that every title has been alliteration. Why alliteration? Well, I'm challenging myself. I want to see how creative I can get.

Disclaimer: Transformers is property of HasTak and some other companies whose names elude me.

Aftermath

Daisies and Decisions

Never before in her life had Maggie Madsen hated sunlight so much.

She didn't make it a habit of going out to a pub for a few drinks with some friends. She wasn't someone who could drink their weight in their alcohol and be fresh as a daisy the next morning. No, she was the sort of person who ended up puking on the curb by glass number five. She couldn't hold her liquor at all.

Since three drinks was enough to get her completely soused, she limited herself to that amount, drank slowly, and ate the munchies provided to offset some of the effects of the hangover. Even so, there was a still a sour, rotten feeling in her stomach and a headache with the weight of a brick resting on the base of her skull when she woke up the next morning.

The sunlight was merciless in its attempts to strip her of her eyesight; shining right through her window. She hadn't closed the blinds. She hadn't even thought about it. Her memories of last night were fuzzy. She remembered being convinced by her work-mates that the only right way to celebrate the birthday of the United States was to get plastered. She remembered accepting the offer, because she hadn't had a proper night out in weeks. She had been busy assisting in cleaning up the mess that had been left behind by the alien robots; getting world communications back online and such. She had been working hard. She had deserved a little time to unwind.

So out she had gone. It had been a good night. Everyone had been in a celebratory mood; there had been fireworks exploding all over the capital and Maggie herself had been feeling rather festive. She had lowered her defenses a little more than usual, needing a sense of normalcy in her life, which had been upset several different ways since the alien attack.

Everything had gotten a bit warped around the edges by the time she had finished her first glass. Memory really fizzled out around glass number four.

If she had done anything to embarrass herself in front of all her work-mates...

At least, she reflected, she was alone in her bed. She hadn't done anything stupid like -- bring home one of her work-mates.

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and groped blindly for the string to lower the shades. It should have been right above her head -- right-- there it was. With a sharp *razz* that sounded like a chainsaw to her ears, the shades fell down, casting a blessed dimness across the room.

Ah, that was better.

Now if she could do something about that noise...

Mobile...

That was her mobile phone making that noise.

Feeling that about ten extra pounds had been stuck to her head overnight, Maggie squinted her eyes open and looked around her apartment as if she was seeing it for the first time.

It was a small studio apartment that she had been renting for a while. When she had first moved to the States, this apartment had been the only thing that wouldn't violently murder her bank account. When she had finally gotten the job she had come looking for, she had told herself that she was going to get a new, better, larger apartment. As a matter of fact, she told herself this at least once a week. It just -- didn't happen.

She suspected, deep down, that she didn't feel any sort of motivation to move house. This apartment was in a good neighborhood and she felt safe to go outside at night; there was a convenience store within reasonable walking distance and it wasn't far from the bus stop either. The rent wasn't atrocious and all the utilities were in good repair. The other people who lived in the building were courteous of each other and there had been no complaints about noise.

So... No, there hadn't been much motivation to find a new apartment.

Maggie threw the blankets aside and staggered out of bed, her feet dragging on the clothes she had thrown to the floor last night. Looking down at herself, she discovered that she had still had the presence of mind the night before to properly dress herself for bed; a worn tank-top and a pair of pajama pants.

Eyes half shut, she felt her way along the bed and then towards the section of the apartment that passed as the dining room; the table in particular where she dimly remembered dropping her purse. The mobile continued to ring like a police siren right inside her head, guiding her in the right direction. Whoever her caller was, they were either very patient or the really needed to talk to her and therefore would not hang up until they were certain she was not going to answer.

She fumbled with the zippers, looking for the evil device and wondering why it was not where she left it when she recalled that she was the one who was looking in the wrong spot. The mobile was exactly where she had left it. Feeling a bit dumb, she yanked it out and peered at the "Unknown caller" that wrote itself across the LED screen.

"Bloody..." Maggie hissed and finally answered the call. "H'llo?..."

"Miss Madsen, I presume." came a professional voice that was entirely too upbeat for her liking. It was too early-- Wait, it was almost noon. Bah! Still too early for complicated comprehension.

"Yes..."

"You might remember me from a few weeks ago; Agent Simmons of Sector Seven. Am I -- interrupting anything?"

"What? No, not at all." Maggie said, distractedly running her free hand through her hair. "Can I do something...?"

"You remember the N.B.E.s, don't you Miss Madsen?" Simmons asked.

The words sent a series of images through Maggie's still half-inebriated mind, most of them consisting of some walking salad-shooter that shot bladed CDs. Did she remember? How could she forget?

"What about them?" she asked.

"Just last week, a new government department was formed. NET."

"What?" Maggie still wasn't comprehending at full capacity.

"Networked Elements: Transformers. Try to keep up with acronyms." Simmons said. "The point is, NET is so newly formed that there are only four people on staff, myself included. We have a real need for code-breakers and analysts such as yourself, Miss Madsen. Perhaps you'd be interested?"

Maggie just blinked in response.

"I feel it's only fair to warn you that you might be working closely with the N.B.E.s and should you accept, you will have to move to Tranquility, Nevada. We'll need you on-site."

"Um..."

"You don't need to decide right away. You've got until the end of the month to make your choice. Just call Tom Banachek at the Pentagon by the end of the month. Say 'Yes' and you'll get the details. Say 'No' and we never had this conversation. Got that?"

"Uh..."

Good.

*click*

It was a full minute before Maggie had the presence of mind to turn off the phone and put it back in her purse. She ran her fingers through her disheveled hair again, absently noting that she still smelled faintly cigarette smoke and wondering if a shower was going to be too much trouble.

The N.B.E.s? Other than the walking salad-shooter, she hadn't had contact with the rest of the alien robots -- not counting that frozen behemoth and the smaller yellow one. A little shaken up by the whole experience, she had taken refuge further in the Hoover Dam until the good robots had gone on their way. She remembered Simmons too, but he was another one of those things that was hard to forget. Images of a grown man going after that little bastard with a flame-thrower while shouting: "Burn you little sucker!" was something that stuck with you.

The idea of getting anywhere near those things again...

There went the cold shiver right down her spine.

Mission City had seen better days. She had seen the pictures on the news of the aftermath. Only about ten square blocks of the city had been wrecked in the fighting, but the sheer amount of destruction on those poor ten blocks...

They were robots.

They were giant robots.

They were giant, alien robots.

With guns.

Big guns.

Really big guns.

It took a special kind of person not to run screaming away from that. Maggie didn't feel that that she was the sort of person wouldn't run away screaming at the top of her lungs. Meeting giant alien robots wasn't exactly something that was on her To-Do list.

Additionally, she wasn't really looking for a new job. There was plenty for her to do right here. There was still a lot of clean-up left for her to help take care of--

And what was that she had said about finding a new apartment?

Take the new job and work alongside giant alien robots in an environment that was more than likely going to be hazardous to her health or stay here in D.C. where she knew for certain that the only real danger came from overstressed work-mates and idiot drivers would couldn't figure out what the brake pedal was for.

Maggie shook her head as sharply as the hangover would allow. She had a month to think about it. No reason to make a decision just yet.