Riella is complaining and Tai is enjoying New York. I have a feeling all of Riella's friendships start out this way. Again, Riella's thoughts do not reflect mine…Tai's just trying to be friendly….

And yes, Riella's line about not being a taxi is stolen from Echo over in "To Protect and Heal". It fits her too.

Riella Meets The Cousin

Chapter Six

This was officially, completely, and utterly the worst mission ever.

Riella stared up at the gray clouds, hoping the inevitable rain would hold off until the end of the day, and tried to come up with a logical explanation for leaving young Tatyana in New York "accidentally". Unfortunately, she couldn't find one. "She was talking my ears off" would probably not go over well.

"If you have a motorcycle mode, why are we walking?"

Walking was an understatement. The girl was practically skipping. Riella tried not to grind her teeth. "What do I look like? A taxi?"

"Well, we'd get around faster." Tatyana sighed and looked up and down the street. "What are we looking for again, exactly? Decepticon signals?"

"Yes." Riella's scanner beeped a negative on the surrounding area, and she picked up the pace. To her annoyance, the human kept up easily.

"Anything yet?"

Cue optic roll. Again. At this rate, she was going to end up stuck in that expression. "No."

The girl seemed to take the hint for a minute, because she finally stopped talking. Riella enjoyed the lack of conversation as they turned onto a cross street, letting her shoulders relax a bit and running another scan. Even if she had to keep most of her attention focused inward to avoid sensory overload from the constant street noise, this wouldn't be so bad. As long as Tatyana didn't start talking again…

"You knew my mom pretty well, right?"

Not. Discussing. That. "Yes," Riella snapped with as little inflection as possible. Sometimes an absolute monotone could convey more than an angry shout.

"Did you two work together much?"

No such luck. "Yes." Tone still as flat as she knew how to make it.

Tatyana's voice remained annoyingly cheerful. "What did you guys do?"

What did she expect Riella to say? Even if she'd been willing to talk, there was no way to explain thousands of years of battle and emotion and pain and victory and loss to a human in a few minutes! "Things."

"What kind of things?" the girl persisted. "Fighting 'Cons? Exploring Cybertron? Rescuing people? Saving the universe?"

Rescuing my love. Saving my children. Holding back the attack on Iacon. Ending Megatron's hold on Trypticon and Nexus. "Yes."

"All that?" The human picked up the pace a little bit, trying to look at Riella. "Must've been awesome!"

No. Heartbreaking and terrible and glorious. But what would you know about it? "Yes."

"Can you tell me about it?" Was the girl even capable of taking a hint? Riella had used every possible method she knew of to communicate that she was not interested in talking. "Please? Even just one story?"

Elita's hand closed on Riella's, pulling her back upright. "On your feet, soldier – it's not over yet!" An explosion ripped through the air behind the pink femme, coloring the sky black and orange and red. "They're making another push for the east gate. Optimus and Jazz are still on the front wall. If we don't reinforce Trailbreaker now, the 'Cons will cut their way through."

Riella could feel every scrape and gash on her frame. Her joints and limbs were burning, her left optic blurry with energon from a forehead cut, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept. Elita looked just as battered, if not more so; but the defenders on the east gate would be in even worse shape. "Over my gunmetal gray frame."

"No." She didn't want to remember. She wanted to forget for a few hours.

The girl's bright blue eyes dimmed – she really needed to get a handle on that hologram thing so it didn't show up so much – at Riella's cold reply. "Why not?" Her voice changed from cheerful to almost sympathetic. "What happened?"

That was too much. Without changing from her monotone, Riella said coolly, "Battle mode. Incoming Decepticon."

"What?!" Tatyana spun around, already dropping into a stance that Riella recognized as an Earth martial art (which one, she wasn't quite sure.) "Who? Where?"

"Never mind," Riella responded after a few seconds, keeping the monotone just because she could and not looking back at the human. "It was just a car. My mistake."

Tatyana went quiet for a moment before hurrying to catch up with Riella. "You did that on purpose!" she accused.

No, I always mistake inanimate objects for Decepticons. "Yes." The older femme hid her smirk at the girl's indignant expression. You make it so easy. Her scanner clicked slightly against her leg, and she paused and frowned down at it. The signal coming up on the screen was one she recognized as a glitch. Had Wheeljack forgotten to check the new equipment for bugs?

Tatyana was commenting again, something about "false alarms" and Riella's mother, but Riella had stopped listening. The scanner screen kept flashing the glitched message, two, three, four times, indicating that it couldn't tell the difference between moving and stationary cars…

An image from a few weeks earlier flashed across her mind. One of the Decepticons she and Prowl had taken down had led them on a half-hour chase, even though he was bleeding out from a stab wound. He'd offlined quickly, moments after they caught up to him, but he'd snarled at them in Cybertronian before dying. "Soon you won't be able to see us, 'bot. Not even when you look. You won't know what hit you!"

Sudden concern twisted Riella's stomach into a knot. It might be nothing, but then again it was always possible the 'Cons had come up with something new. She glanced sideways at Tatyana, who was still muttering about the distracting comment. Like it or not, it was her job to watch the kid, and the thought of Elita's daughter dying because Riella took a stupid risk (or let her take a stupid risk)…

Turning a corner quickly, Riella bit her lower lip and interrupted Tatyana's quiet rant. "Alright, okay, listen. I'll tell you about one mission I had with Elita, and only one."

At Riella's abrupt change of heart, Tatyana went completely silent for a moment and her eyes widened in surprise. "Really?"

"Don't think this means I'm going to explain my entire past," Riella muttered. The scanner flicked up two more glitched messages. If she was right, that meant six Decepticons. "This is a one-time event." If the girl was distracted by Riella's story, she would be less likely to notice the Decepticons, which would give Riella time to come up with a way to get them both out.