Ch 4

[Location: Southern Wyoming]

Bumblebee kept his overall worry to himself, not wishing to upset Rafael any more than his young passenger already was. The Autobot scout knew that the computer prodigy was not only worried about their companions but for his own family. It was thanks to M.E.C.H. and the Decepticons that they had to quickly move into a new house, Raf not even getting a chance to finish unpacking everything before this fell down around them. It also upset Bumblebee that he had not relayed his underlying uneasiness about how close the Decepticons had been getting to the base. They could have relocated their base of operations before they had been discovered, but that would have put them further away from Jasper and Bumblebee knew that he couldn't be that far away from his best friend. No, the custom muscle car knew that he would most likely have been discovered in Jasper even if the others had moved away.

Despite his worry, Rafael helped keep his spirits high as the young man searched through the usual conspiracy websites for any sign of their friends or news about what had happened back home.

"The news is saying that a massive meteor shower hit the area and that everyone was successfully evacuated," Raf relaxed a bit back into the front passenger seat, busy working on his laptop, "they're not letting anyone into the area until it's been deemed safe from possible radiation."

[Smart thinking on Agent Fowler's part], Bumblebee clicked and beeped through the icon on his steering wheel, [but that won't hold off all of the curious.]

"I'm sure he put military guard around the area to keep that from happening, Bee." The clicking of keys filled the air for a moment at they both sat silently. "I haven't found anything yet on the usual sites."

[Your food is getting cold, Raf,] his guardian reminded him of the drive through they had purchased in the town they had recently left, [You really need to eat.]

The two had made small stop, sitting amongst the trees until Bumblebee found a passing car he could mimic the paint job of. They had to travel through quite a bit of open territory before getting anywhere near the military base that Special Agent Fowler worked at and with all of the missions alone he ran on Cyberton Bumblebee knew that keeping a good cover was the best way to survive until they reached their destination. Chances were that Elita would be there and he wanted to get the Virus Vault out of his trunk as soon as possible. Granted it was harmless while it was powered down but just caring the thing around was enough to creep the scout out.

Pulling out the cheeseburger and fries that he had ordered, Raf munched on the food as his eyes stayed focused on the screen only for him to slowly pause as he focused on the burger in his hands.

[What's wrong?] Bee beeped, worried that the food might have been bad.

Setting the burger in its wrapper on the driver's seat Rafael began to type furiously on his computer. "I used the debit card my parents gave me to get the food. Chances are if they're really alright…" he trailed off, smiling at the screen. He had accessed his parents' checking account and let the knowledge that it was being used for a hotel in a town far from Jasper that they had most likely been evacuated to that they were fine. "They're safe."

[That's great to hear,] the Autobot beeped as he smiled to himself.

"Thanks, Bee. Hopefully they'll see my card being used and know that I'm alright, though very, very far away. I just don't know how I'm going to explain it."

[Just tell them that you had a different military transport than they did. Jack and Miko would back you up on that.]

"That's if we find Jack and Miko," Raf sounded sad again before he started working on the computer again. "I helped E set up her online account and she gave us all cards linked to it. If Jack and Miko have used the cards then we can track them, too." Accessing the account Rafael couldn't suppress his joy, or his relief. "It looks like Jack and Miko have both used their cards and are heading back towards the base."

[Four down,] Bumblebee beeped joyfully, [five to go.]

Grabbing his burger again, Raf pushed his glasses back up on his nose as he chewed the bite. The base was compromised, leaving them really without a place to gather for a counter attack on the Decepticons. The military probably didn't have many abandoned missile silos around the country that the Autobots could just move into at the drop of a hat, and being out in the open was outright dangerous.

But Starscream didn't stay in the open when he was alone, did he? Rafael thought to himself as he took a drink of his soda. He must have used the Harbinger while he was rogue.

[What's on your mind?] Bumblebee broke through his thoughts using soft clicks and beeps.

"I think I know of a place that, if not at least stay at, gather the others to. Starscream must have been using the Harbinger and if he's back with the Decepticons then we can at least use what's left."

[It's a start at least. Great thinking, Raf!]

Rafael chuckled bashfully, but smiled. "Thanks, Bee."

[Location: Beneath the ruins of the Autobot base]

Smokescreen surged at the slightest call from Optimus Prime. The Autobot leader was trying to move but the severe amount of damaged made even the slightest twinge excruciating. The Elite Guardsman had just returned from the surface with Elita's bathtub of things that he had managed to scrounge up. Most of the Autobots' things in the main room of the base were scrap, including Ratchet's work area, but it seemed that some of the things that Elita packed away in her room, which was a good distance from ground zero, managed to survive. Setting the tub down beside their leader, he was just hoping that there was something that he could use to help Optimus in the bunch.

Kneeling down beside Prime, Smokescreen quietly tried to calm him. "It's ok, Optimus. I'm right here." He began to dig around in the tub and managed to find a toolbox that he seen Elita pull out when working on the computers, "Maybe she has something that will help in here."

"Elita…" Optimus groaned.

"Yeah, it's Elita's toolbox," Smokescreen replied as he opened it only to have his shoulders and hopes drop. The tools were way too small for him to be able to use. With a groan Prime rolled his head to the side, closing his eyes. "Hang on," the young Autobot said as he closed the toolbox, "I'm going to see what else I can use to help you out." Adjusting the Phase Shifter Smokescreen headed back up to the surface to attempt to scavenge more supplies.

[Location: The Dauntless]

The overall mood was dark and quiet as repairs began on the two wounded Autobots. As Jazz began the repairs on Wheeljack, Kup began to bring out containers of prepared Energon that they all would need. Setting them down on a nearby table the Wrecker leader prepped the first of many into an injector and moved over to Elita's side.

Wheeljack scoffed a bit, humor thick in his voice, "I was closer."

"Ladies first, Wheelgrinder," the scarred bot smirked back at his subordinate before injecting the contents into her arm.

Elita smiled up at him a bit, her frame relaxing as the fresh wash of energy flowed through it. A couple more and she would be able to separate herself and find out exactly what all had been damaged on her human form. A look at a reflective surface showed no damage done to her robotic facial structure so she was sure that when her helmet shattered from hitting the Vehicon jet that was what was causing the pain. As if reading her mind Kup had pumped four more of the containers into her before he moved on.

"Sorry I don't seem to have the blend that you're bleeding out," the old Wrecker told her, "but I'm hoping this will help."

Blinking at him, she risked the pain to lean forward to examine herself. From the panels that hid her human form there seemed to be a bright magenta colored energon leaking through. Jazz looked over as well raising an optic ridge at the sight before he went back to his repairs. Wheeljack groaned as he rolled his head over at her.

"They're good bots, E," he told her with a slight wince as Jazz moved the arc wielder over a particular tender spot, "your secret is safe."

"What secret?" the current medic asked as Kup harshly grabbed Wheeljack's other arm to inject Energon into him.

With a grunt Elita sat up on the table she had been set on and moved her hands under her opening plates to let her human body step out onto. More of the bright magenta energon dripped free, pooling onto the floor below. Elita couldn't even stand up as her larger form set her on the table beside it. Sitting a bit more on her right hip with her legs curled up to her left side she tilted her head forward and slowly began to remove shards of jagged tinted plastic that was once the visor to her helmet. Counting herself lucky that none of them ended up in her eyes, the fresh wash of warm fluid running down her face as she pulled the ones that had embedded themselves into her skin did not bode well.

The mechs frowned as her already odd colored Energon stained clothing began to receive a fresh wash from under the helmet as she proceeded to cause herself pain. Frowning, Kup moved over to the medical kit he kept on hand to retrieve a pair of clippers. She was going to do more damage to herself if she tried to pull off the helm. Reaching her as her hands had moved to either side he gently placed one hand on top of her helm to stop her. Carefully he snipped away from the bottom up to the visor opening, cutting the front of the helmet off of her before letting her pull it free. Smiling hurt, but she was grateful for his assistance and the private smile he returned reminded her so much of her father.

"Thanks."

"No problem, kiddo."

"What is a human doing inside of a Cybertronian?" Jazz asked after a long moment of silence, having paused in the repairs of his friend after Elita pulled her helmet free.

"She ain't no normal human," Wheeljack answered.

Setting her helmet beside all the broken pieces, Elita's larger form pulled out a few of the bags from the shoulder compartments. The first thing she grabbed from one of the bags was a large bath towel, pressing it to her face. "We all have stories to share and repairs to make," she began, "how about we start with," she pointed to the white and blue Autobot that had gone back to repairing Wheeljack, "Jazz is it?" When he nodded to her she smiled, "and work our way around."

As Jazz began his story Elita pulled out her sewing and medical kits. Selecting a sewing needle from the sewing kit she soaked it in the bottle of alcohol from the medical kit along with a few strands of hair she pulled from her head. Her next move was to wipe down the cuts and the area around them with iodine swabs. She was going to do her own stitches on her face to sew up the cuts, having learned how to do so with both working with the emergency officials for so long added to what little bit of training she had gotten in the military when she had first started her run as a field medic, before Bishop found out about her computer skills and had her transferred.

"In a nutshell, " Jazz began after a long pause, "I'm the head of a Special Operations Team; we were infiltrating the big, bad Decep, Shockwave's, base on intel that he was developing some massive, crazy new weapon. Our ship was blown to scrap on landing so we figured he was protecting something wicked. We split into teams and entered Shockwave's base from four different points. As the teams were reconnoitering their zones Beta team was apparently overwhelmed and we lost contact with them. Blaster hacked the base's computer network and discovered an intercepted message burst package from Optimus Prime, stating that he needed all the assistance that he could get, along with spatial coordinates and other important information.

"We and the remaining teams ran into seriously stiff resistance converging on Shockwave's control room until it all went bad really fast. Red Alert from Beta was the first to reach the rendezvous point outside what we all thought was the control room. He was the only one of the group to make it to us. The other teams met up with us after trashing the cons in running firefights. All in all the resistance, while heavy was not as much as we anticipated. Perceptor picked up an energy build-up growing exponentially, apparently something in the base heading for critical overload; and probably was where most of Shock's troops were. Fortunately for us what we thought was the control room was actually the hangar; complete with Shockwave's command ship.

"Giving the impending boom, we decided to take the ship and split. After a battle with the ships guard we managed to steal his ship and get off Cybertron just in time to see Shockwave's base explode then cave in on itself. Blaster entered the coordinates into the Logikrator's nav computers and we were on our way."

Kup interrupted, "Shockwave's ship was called the Logikrator? That one-eyed piston polisher always was a narcissistic little scraplet wasn't he?" Kup ended his interjection with a smirk.

Jazz just chuckled and shook his head before continuing, "Anyway, we found out from Red Alert that Beta team had been ambushed at their entry point. Inferno was apparently jumped by several cons and dragged off. Red was shot and knocked off-line when he and the team tried to recover Inferno; left for dead apparently. When he came to he made his way to us. Beachcomber and Swerve were dead, and no idea what happened to Inferno and Cliffjumper.

"The trip took over five years Earth-time to make. We used time to decode Shockwave's files, and learn all about Earth from Optimus's data package. Shock's data had a lot of seriously deranged weapons and even genetic mutation and hybridization projects. All stuff I was hoping would prove useful for Optimus to know once I hooked back up with him. Then trouble struck again. As we were approaching, just inside the orbit of the moon, our ship got hit by a whacked out huge energy blast from something in the planet's orbit, sending our ship into a freefall. After our rather colorful landing we got swarmed by humans head to toe in black armor.

"From what I learned, they called themselves M.E.C.H. and they were following some project that had been stolen from one of their bases and ended up finding us instead. My guess is that we were all taken to different bases. I know I ended up separated from the others. Kup raided the one I was in and busted me out. We were heading towards Jasper to link up with Prime and hopefully get his help to find the others. Unfortunately the initial blast to the Logikrator knocked me into stasis lock. I have no idea how many of us actually survived the crash."

As he trailed off, Elita looked over at him, the cut going over her left eyebrow stitched up. Chances were that M.E.C.H. had already taken apart the other Autobots that they had kidnapped. Looking back at the reflective surface on her larger body she focused on the cut that ran from the left side of her nose, across her cheek to her ear. "I'm sorry for your losses. For what it's worth I know of the raid you were on. I don't know anything about Inferno, but Arcee told me how Cliffjumper actually made it to Earth along with her; she was in Shockwave's base that day. The overload was Shockwave's space bridge; Starscream had captured Cliffjumper and Arcee. They escaped and set it to overload to keep Shockwave and Starcream's invasion force from reaching Earth. They went through before it went critical, apparently taking out Shockwave while in the bridge and ending up here. Cliffjumper was actually the first to run into the Decepticons once they returned to Earth. Starscream killed him; Arcee said he died fighting. At this point it's probably best to talk to Arcee for anything more specific once we all reunite. Hopefully we can reunite with your unit as well," she said.

Jazz was silent for a moment, studying Elita's two forms and debating on which to address. Only the human had spoke but both had been watching him and motioning at times during her comments. Deciding since the human told the story he would address her he finally spoke, "Thank you. Cliffjumper was my friend. I'm glad to at least know what happened. Funny how that all works. When I was Optimus' second-in-command in the early days of the war I kept trying to recruit Cliffjumper to fight with our unit. He said he was having too much fun where he was. Optimus eventually created a special ops team and promoted me to lead it. It incorporated the unit Cliffjumper was with so we ended up fighting together after all. Then he ends up with Optimus here. As many props as I gave Cliff to Optimus, wish I could have seen it," Jazz just smiled to himself and went quiet.

Elita spoke again, looking at Kup, "What about you, Handsome?"

Kup glanced over at her from where he was running his scans, making sure that the Decepticons had not tracked their signal. Focusing back at his screen he went back to work. "Alpha Trion had contacted me, telling me that he had to get the relics and confiscated weapons off the planet and that he needed somebody trustworthy to keep an eye on them and out of the wrong hands."

"So you've been here the whole time, Rusty?" Wheeljack asked his old mentor with a tone of disbelief, sitting up since Jazz had finished his repairs.

"Pretty much," the old, scarred bot replied.

"We needed you."

"Couldn't blow my cover till Optimus retrieved all of the relics."

As the younger Wrecker grumbled about being ditched by the one he thought actually cared about the group, Kup started packed up her things. With a final wash of her face and neck to remove the blood and energon mix she focused back at Kup. "You found Jazz?"

"Yup, tracked his signal and busted him out since he was the closest, strongest signal."

"Can you track other Autobots?" she asked.

"Yes," Kup began, "but only if they're on-line and not shielded but wherever they are."

"I need you to search under the ruins of the old base. There's at least one Autobot alive down there and I'm praying that there are two."

"Give me a few minutes and we'll see," Kup mumbled as he walked over to one of the computer stations in the room. "Just an odd signal," the Wrecker founder stated as he turned to face the others, "but it is an Autobot one."

"Better than nothing," Elita replied as she merged with her larger form.

"Who died and make you Prime?" Wheeljack asked her, with a twinge of humor.

Elita looked over at him, focusing intently on the injured Wrecker. "Optimus, but I'm hoping it's not by death." As she got off of the table she pointed at him, "Wheeljack, I want you to man the ground bridge."

"Hey now!" he surged to his feet, towering over her, "I can still fight."

"I need you to save your strength for a mission you're going to run after we return," she stated bluntly, not backing down.

Wheeljack relaxed back with a smirk, crossing his arms. These Earth women were rather impressive, at least Elita and Miko, and with how stubborn this one in front of him was she could give Kup a run for his money. "Fine by me."

"Good," she turned to face Kup and Jazz, "You two are with me. I don't think Smokescreen and I can carry Optimus and provide fire cover if it's needed. In and out as quickly as possible. Let's go."

Kup followed without a word, but Jazz pulled Wheeljack aside. "What's her story?" he asked his friend.

Wheeljack watched Elita and Kup walk out of the infirmary door. "She was also kidnapped by M.E.C.H. and ended up trapped in one of their twisted experiments. A dose of whatever Vector Sigma did to her and now she's a mix of Cybertonian and Human."

"Freaky," was all that Jazz could think to say.

Author's Note: I don't own the show.