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Will of Fire and Hearts of Steel

Chapter 4

The present conversation was probably one of the most bizarre and interesting ones Ratchet had had in a long time. After Optimus had told Hatake Kakashi about their history, the masked man had started an explanation of his own and claimed to be a ninja (which Ratchet and nobody else had trouble believing after he'd shown them what he could do with a throwing star. The medic still had to glance every now and then at the weapon now impeded in the stone wall). Then the man had started to tell them about his home.

Ratchet had noticed how the grey-haired ninja told nothing too exact about the "Hidden Village" he lived in, reinforcing his impression that the man truly was a soldier. The medic was certainly curious about Hatake's words and hoped the man would some day tell them more about the place he came from as it had really sounded fascinating.

The discussion about the arrival of the two ninjas (Ratchet had been rather surprised when he had heard that the kid was a ninja too. Wasn't he close to Miko's and Jack's ages?) had soon followed. The theory about the dimensions felt plausible to the medic. If the kids had once gotten into another dimension close to theirs – well, into a space between dimensions, to be precise - why wouldn't it be possible to travel into dimensions further away? Dimension with whole other worlds?

And then there was of course the question how the two ninjas had managed to find a portal so powerful it could transport them all the way here. Ratchet had made quick calculations in his head and come to the conclusion it would have taken about 10 times as much Energon to open such a portal as currently was available to the Autobots.

That was also the question Hatake Kakashi seemed to be quite reluctant to answer.

When the masked man had first arrived at the base, he'd been cautious and tense and seemingly ready to fight if necessary. Now he had been much more relaxed. The man's pose had been almost laid-back, with his hands in his pockets but still a sharp look in that one visible dark-grey eye, indicating that despite the relaxed stance the man didn't let his attention slip, not even for a moment.

When Arcee had voiced the medic's thoughts by pointing out the problem, the ninja had tensed ever-so-slightly. Ratchet could now see the contemplating look in Hatake Kakashi's eye as the one-eyed man remained silent, watching them all warily. The white-red 'Bot quickly glanced at Optimus, but he wasn't sure what his friend and leader was going to do. He returned his gaze back to the ninja, narrowing his optics slightly.

Was Hatake going to answer the question? Or would he remain silent? Or perhaps refuse to answer? The medic found himself to be awfully curious about whatever the ninja was hiding. He must have known something about the dimensional portal, Ratchet was sure. But what was it and why was he so adamant not to reveal it?

But he never found out if Hatake Kakashi was going to give them an answer or not as suddenly there was someone (he had a pretty good guess who) coming to the base, elevator doors opening as the person stepped in.

Special Agent William Fowler had a bad day.

Well, a bad morning anyway. He hadn't even had a chance to drink his morning coffee when he'd already gotten a phone call and an order to check the situation in Nevada, as there had been a strange energy spike detected in the forlorn deserts. And now his superiors wanted him to pay a visit for a certain seemingly abandoned missile silo in the area and make sure everything was as supposed.

Nevada, he grumbled under his breath. Of course it had to be Nevada. For some people a mention of some desolate deserts of the state probably didn't mean anything but to Agent Fowler it equaled Trouble, with a capital T. Because a certain team of alien robots had camped there, usually all the weird happenings in the area had something to do with Team Prime. Scratch that, it felt more like all the strange occurrences around the whole globe had something to do with Team Prime (thanks to that darned ground bridge that could reach all the corners of Earth) and/or their sworn enemies, Megatron and his lot.

And that was why Special Agent Fowler was now on his way to one missile silo situated in the otherwise empty deserts. He was ready to bet his small salary that the Autobots had something to do with that weird energy. Perhaps it was a ground bridge gone wrong or one of that medic's experiments had gone berserk, he thought, probably nothing too serious. And after the visit he could assure his bosses that the famous National Security was not under a threat and then finally have his cup of heavenly morning coffee. With lots and lots of sugar.

He stepped into the elevator and descended to the Autobot base, hoping Optimus Prime would be present for once.

The doors hissed open.

"PRIME!" Fowler yelled, stepping out. However, the words he was about to say died a silent death as he realized the sight in front of him.

Agent Fowler really thought he had been quite patient with the Autobots and their antics. When working with Team Prime, strange things just tended to happen. Like evil aliens constantly copying his vehicles (that was utterly annoying!) and huge fights between gigantic robots and he was the one whose work was to try and cover it all up so the civilians could sleep their nights in peace.

Speaking of civilians, then there were also the civilian kids. Kids, for goodness' sake! That one day he had just walked to the base and found the three teenagers (well, at least two and half) hiding behind Bulkhead. Fowler still cringed at the thought of his superiors knowing there were three ordinary children very much aware of one of the most confidential military secrets in the country. Apparently the Autobots were real trouble magnets as another civilian had also encountered the team of alien robots. Fowler still couldn't believe that the dark-haired boy's mother knew about Team Prime. Although that fact did have its perks, he had to admit.

So Special Agent Fowler thought he had been not just a little but overly generous to both the civilians and the Autobots as he had not reported any of these incidents. But he had still prayed that no one else would come across the Autobots and that everything would just for once go as it should.

Seemed like that had been too much to ask as now, he was staring at a tall, grey-haired masked man in a headband and a green military vest. The stranger stood right in front of him and was looking at him with a slightly widened lone grey eye.

For a moment Agent Fowler was totally baffled. He stared at the bizarre character, heavy silence descending to the room. Then –

"PRIME!" Special Agent Fowler shouted again on the top of his lungs. "Who the hell is this?!"

The blue-red Autobot leader slightly bowed his head, answering:

"Good morning, Agent Fowler."

Fowler's patience was running thin. "Prime, how come whenever I come here to just check the situation or so I found even more people loitering around here?" Fowler's voice was more than a little annoyed. "This base is supposed to be a military secret! You are supposed to be a military secret!"

"I am sorry, Agent Fowler, but this was not something we could have stopped from happening." Prime stated calmly. Fowler huffed in annoyance and tried to calm down a little. This can't be happening. The silver-haired stranger just seemed to observe him with a sharp look.

"Prime," Fowler said, little more collected, "who is this man?"

"Agent Fowler, this is Kakashi Hatake, unfortunately he doesn't speak any English," Optimus Prime introduced. The Autobot leader then switched language to what sounded like Japanese and apparently introduced him to the masked man. The grey-haired man said something and bowed.

Agent Fowler blinked, a little surprised, and nodded curtly in return. He scanned the man in front of him, noting he was wearing sandals and had a leaf-like symbol carved to the metal part of his headband.

Fowler felt the headache of the year coming.

"Why on Earth is this Kakashi Hatake here?" Fowler narrowed his eyes at the man who also looked alarmingly like a soldier if the vest, mask, and the holster strapped to his leg were anything to go by.

"He and his companion were attacked by the Decepticons," Prime explained.

"There is another one?!" The headache of the year swiftly turned into a headache of the decade.

"That is correct," Prime admitted. "There is also a young man named Naruto Uzumaki. He is currently with Bumblebee."

Agent Fowler closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Could somebody please explain why there are to foreigners in the secret American military base in the middle of Nevada, USA?"

Optimus Prime exchanged some words with this Kakashi Hatake person (how old was that guy? And why on Earth would someone dress like that?). In the end of the discussion the masked man seemed to be a tad cautious but nodded nonetheless, agreeing o whatever Prime was saying.

"Agent Fowler," Optimus turned back to him. "I'm afraid I had to ask you not to forward the information we are about to tell you."

Fowler narrowed his eyes.

"Right now I'm hiding quite a lot of things from my bosses already, and I really hoped I wouldn't have to add anything to that list anymore."

"I am sorry, Agent Fowler, but it would be the best if as few people as possible knew about this matter." Prime's tone was apologetic.

Fowler rubbed his temples. Then he sighed.

"Fine."

After some fifteen minutes of explaining, incredulous exclamations and unbelievable stories, Special Agent William Fowler was leaving the base, ascending with the elevator to the top of the base. He was sure his headache had just turned into the worst headache of the century. How was it that nothing, nothing was simple when the Autobots were involved? Wandering civilian kids and their mothers were something he could deal with. Hell, even greedy alien warlords and their crazy attempts to conquer Earth were something he could handle. But strangers calling themselves ninjas from another freaking dimension were just too much.

That was it. He was going to drown all the coffee he had when he got home, scratch office duty.

Naruto was sure of one thing: everyone back home was going to be so jealous.

He had lost all the sense of time while sitting there, listening to the teenagers tell him about this weird place he had woken into.

After hearing some information about the place he currently was in, Naruto had tried to describe the Five Great Countries to the others and see if they recognized them. However, it had turned out that none of them had heard about countries or geography like that before. They had made the decision to ask the Autobots about that later, and then Miko had continued her enthusiastic rant about the weird place he and Kakashi-sensei had gotten into.

First the girl had done all the talking, while the other two boys had remained quiet, once in a while demanding for translation when Miko had forgotten to do so. But after a while Jack and Rafael had begun to interrupt their friend more often, evidently insisting her to translate whatever they wanted to say to him. So now Naruto had heard what felt like everything about many countries and places (like this "USA", a country he apparently was currently in, and that "Japan" and many other places of which names he had already forgotten), weird-sounding customs and matters and of course, the Autobots.

Miko had told about how she and the boys had first got acquainted with the robots, translating Jack's and Rafael's parts of the story. That had sounded so cool, Naruto had to admit. It still felt unbelievable to him that the other children were so close to the robots, and Naruto noticed that he was just a little jealous.

When Miko had finished her story about the Autobots and their enemies Naruto had frowned a little, contemplating the new information.

"So those Dec… Dec…"

"Decepticons."

"Right, that was the word! Uh, so they were the ones that tried to beat us up?"

"Yeah, the Decepticon who attacked you was Knock Out, that's what 'Bee said," Rafael had said, translated once again by Miko. "He isn't the leader, though, that's Megatron. And he's much more evil."

"Megatron, huh?" So that was the guy behind the attack! When Naruto would get his chakra reserves back to normal, he was so going to flatten that jerk! With a little help from Kakashi-sensei, naturally.

Then the three teenagers had started to throw all sorts of questions at him, like "Do you have, like, ninja schools then?" and "Have you any other cool weapons with you?" and "Do you ninjas have movies too?"

All that had resulted in a cheerful chatter as Naruto answered the question flood as best as he could and made some inquiries of his own. When the excited (and rather loud) conversation had finally come to its end Naruto had learned, among other things, that he really had to try those "ham-bur-gers" (whatever they were) and "Coca-cola", which apparently was some kind of a popular drink.

Now they were walking down the corridors with Bumblebee who, according to Rafael, had asked them to follow him to meet the others. Naruto wondered what Kakashi-sensei had been doing all this time. Maybe he and the other Autobots had managed to figure out a way home! Not that Naruto wanted to leave just yet, no, first he had to see more about this place (he really hadn't seen much yet, only desert and the base, though the latter was quite interesting), but he also wanted to know if Sakura-chan was alright. Kakashi-sensei had assured so but he still had to be sure…

What was happening in Konoha right now? Had Sakura and Sai made it back to the village and informed the Hokage? Were they trying to find them now? Did they think he and Kakashi-sensei were dead?

That thought crossed his mind every now and then. He knew he would have been really anxious if one of his teammates and his teacher had suddenly disappeared without a trace. Naruto frowned. He didn't want his friends to think he was dead. He wanted them to know he was alive and safe, although quite far from home.

"You okay, Naruto?"

Miko's voice woke him up from his musings.

"Oh, I'm fine," the blond boy replied, turning his azure gaze at the girl. "Just thinking about my friends back home."

"Oh. Are your friends ninjas too?" Miko's voice always seemed to catch that enthusiastic tone when the word "ninja" was mentioned.

"Yup! I have great friends and two teammates! Sakura-chan's very nice; I was in the same class with her in the Academy! And then there's also Sai, but he's a little creepy and weird. We are a three-man team and Kakashi-sensei's our instructor. " He deliberately left out all the mentions of Sasuke. The Uchiha was someone he didn't want to talk about yet.

Miko translated quickly his words for the boys, and the teenagers seemed to be really interested.

"So you got a team?"Miko forwarded Jack's question.

"Well, when you graduate you are sorted into teams and you got an elite shinobi as a teacher," Naruto chattered. "Then you gotta do very boring missions first, like catching cats and doing gardening and stupid things like that, before you can have real missions! Like once when we had to protect this bridge builder and…"

Naruto suddenly realized he was probably talking way too much. Kakashi-sensei was going to be so mad at him if he blabbered about something he was supposed to keep quiet about. But the others seemed more than curious and he was sure Miko was going to hurry him to go on. Fortunately they arrived to the room with the portal thing just before Miko could demand him to continue and the attention shifted from him to Kakashi-sensei and the Autobots.

Naruto almost sighed in relief. He would have to be more careful in the future, no matter how much he wanted to tell Jack, Rafael and Miko everything about Konoha.

As the morning drifted by, Kakashi found himself cursing his sensitive hearing to the lowest hell possible.

If he had thought that Naruto or Miko alone could be loud, it was nothing, nothing compared to the ruckus the two kids could make when together in the same room.

While cheering for a game played with a huge ball of scrap metal.

By two giant robots.

He was sure his ears were going to ring for weeks afterwards.

Beside him, in front of the green displays, Ratchet let out a resigned sigh.

"They are making even more noise than before! Is that even possible?" The medic muttered under his breath. "How am I supposed to get any work done here?"

Kakashi chuckled, watching his blond student practically bounce up and down from excitement, cheering for Bumblebee as the yellow Autobot did a quite impressive move when trying to get past Bulkhead.

"Naruto can be loud when he wants to… which is all the time."

"I don't pretend I'm an expert in human behavior but aren't ninjas supposed to be silent?"

Kakashi actually laughed aloud, slightly shaking his head.

"You have no idea how many times I've wondered the same thing…"

Ratchet huffed in indignation, turning back to whatever work he was doing. Kakashi was leaning on the railing beside the displays, watching the game and the kids cheering for the two robots from afar. The teenagers had emerged from the tunnels with Bumblebee shortly after Agent Fowler had left and after a quick exchange of words (they hadn't talked the kids about their dimension-theory yet, he had decided to tell Naruto in the evening) Miko and Bulkhead had been in no time explaining the currently played game to Naruto. The blond boy had obviously been more than excited about it, and now the children were all following the game. Prime and Arcee had disappeared to the corridors while Smokescreen had gone scouting outside.

Kakashi mentally sighed. His headache had been reduced from pounding pain to a dull ache in the back of his head. As a shinobi he was well accustomed to pain and something as trivial as a headache was something he could easy handle. He was still relieved when it didn't anymore feel like something was hammering his head from the inside. Naruto on the other hand looked like he was doing just fine and the jounin was glad his student was recovering well.

Agent Fowler's interruption had been quite unexpected but fortunate. Kakashi wasn't yet sure what he thought about the man he had just met. This William Fowler had had a quite commanding aura and something in him had reminded Kakashi of a soldier, though the man hadn't really looked like an active warrior. An ex-soldier maybe? And he had not looked happy at all to see him in the base. First Kakashi had been a little doubtful about letting the man know about them, but Optimus Prime had assured it was for the best.

After the discussion with the "special agent" (Kakashi wasn't sure what the title exactly meant, though he had his suspicions) the Autobots hadn't pried anymore about their arrival here. The Hatake had been truly surprised. If something similar had happened in Konoha, the stranger would be interrogated in the Torture and Interrogation Force until the Village would know all about the powers that could do such a thing as move through dimensions.

But there had not been more questions about their abilities, at least not yet. Kakashi was sure the matter hadn't been left completely alone. He could deal with that. He didn't actually want to keep the robots in the dark about this, but first of all he was a shinobi of the Leaf and could not deal information about his skills to just anyone. He would have to observe the Autobots a little more before that.

But now, it was time for some information gathering.

"So…" Kakashi began. Ratchet glanced at him. "You were talking about some incident with similar traits as ours," the Copy Nin stated, referring to the earlier conversation.

"Yes," Ratchet confirmed. "Some time ago two ground bridges, ours and the Decepticons', appeared too close to each other, creating sort of a 'shadow zone', a dimension close to ours but still different. The kids and one enemy got inside, and due to the difference in dimensions we could not see or hear them."

"So, what happened to me and Naruto was similar, only the dimensions are further away," the silver-haired man concluded.

"I strongly think so, and you were able to make it all the way through" the medic agreed.

Kakashi slowly nodded. He stared at the four kids following the game. Naruto whooped as the ball hit the basket again.

From the corner of his eye he saw Ratchet giving him a glance. Then the medic spoke again.

"You're thinking about whether you could somehow get home via ground bridges, am I right?"

The jounin just smiled his signature smile, visible eye curving.

"Well, if I were thinking about that, would it be possible or too far-fetched?"

Ratchet snorted, but seemed to smile just a little.

"I really can't say. It's not something we have really researched. But I'll look into it," the medic answered. The white-red Autobot then seemed to frown and Kakashi sensed there was going to be questions coming for him.

"I must say you took the idea quite well, Hatake-san," Ratchet started.

Kakashi raised one silver eyebrow, deciding not to say anything and let the medic speak his mind.

Ratchet gave him a steady gaze.

"You accepted the explanation of this being another dimension pretty well. Seems almost like the idea of dimensional travelling isn't that new to you."

"Really, you think so?" Kakashi drawled, returning the gaze with his own indifferent one. "That's quite an assumption, don't you think?" Mentally he cursed his own curiosity that had led to these questions.

Ratchet shook his head slightly.

"You saw Agent Fowler's reaction, and he isn't an ignorant man," the medic said. "The majority of the humans inhabiting this planet would react the same way. Dimensional bridges or ground bridges don't exist to them, probably even if they are shoved to their faces or that they are pushed through one."

Kakashi stared blankly as Bulkhead tossed the ball of scrap towards the basket and the ball hit its goal with a clunk.

"Maybe I'm just open-minded," the Copy Nin replied amusedly.

Ratchet huffed, but not like he had failed his mission to interrogate him and more like he was exasperated that his curiosity was left unsatisfied. Kakashi smiled inwardly.

The white Autobot had gone quiet, concentrating once again on his work. It seemed the medic had given up questioning him further, at least for now. Kakashi still thought he should probably start planning what he was going to tell the Autobots. Their patience wouldn't be infinite, though they had been quite trustful.

But as Kakashi watched Arcee emerge from the tunnels, blue eyes narrowing suspiciously when glancing at him, he was more than certain that all the members of the team wouldn't be so trusting.

Thank you for reading! Feedback is more than appreciated!

AN: And here's Chapter Four! I know, nothing really happens here as I'm just finishing the introductions, but I hope you liked it! I probably won't have time to update next week because I'll be very busy and I also need to think about the following chapters a little before writing more. So sorry for the possible wait ;)

If there are any mistakes, don't hesitate to let me know.