Author's Note: Well, this first story arc is coming to an end. This chapter and an epilogue to go, then we're done for the pilot. Will the series be produced? Well, it largely depends on the feedback I'm getting, but as of now it looks pretty good. To answer some of it:

Thsutton : I think the Buffy series proved that, after a certain point, a Slayer doesn't really need a Watcher anymore. That would be the point where, if you put in my interpretation of the lore, they get so much in touch with the power that drives them that they can handle pretty much anything by instinct. But that's just my take on it.

Gregdoreza : There is never anything wrong with naked Faith. Besides, I did provide a good reason for her to be naked, didn't I? There was just no way to avoid having her naked, just no way. Had to be done. ;-)

Den Scurman : Glad you liked the fight scene, though I'm wondering: How many Autobot vs. demonic horde battles have you read? Anyway, don't be too sad, it's only going to be the ending of the first story arc. I do plan to continue this. Maybe. We'll see how many reviewers demand a continuation.

Mountain King : I have thought about the whole thing with demons having no soul/spark, so the Autobots shouldn't feel bad about killing them, but haven't brought it in for several reasons. First, I doubt Faith is so philosophically inclined as to debate the whole soul/spark thing with the bots. Second, I'm not even sure she knows about the whole demons-have-no-soul thing, maybe her Watcher hasn't told her? You can be sure it will come up eventually, though, at the latest when and if they encounter a certain souled vampire. And third, I don't want the Autobots to turn into demon-killing-machines, so some conflict has to remain there.

Lennox RH : Glad you liked my explanation of the Slayer abilities. As for Buffy, I think she ignored her instincts so often because she didn't like being the Slayer and did everything she could to be a normal girl. Faith is just the other way around, she loves being the Slayer despite everything that happened to her, and so I think she is more liable to listen to her instincts.

StoneCold : I'm not a big fan of the RID cartoon, either, but I felt its premise was best suited to my purposes and the toys were way cool. As you can see in this very chapter, though, I'm introducing quite a bit from other Transformers lines, including G1. I won't be duplicating the (very childish) story from the RID cartoon, don't worry.

Allen Pitt : Glad you liked my Slayer explanation. I also figured that the Slayers needed to have something extra on top of their strength and speed, otherwise they wouldn't be as effective as they are. And Faith riding into the ‘Dale on Arcee? Will probably happen, but not just yet.

David Knight : You are right, this isn't the end of the story as such, just of this one story arc. It might take a bit longer than one or two days until I begin the next one, but the odds are pretty good that it will happen.

Darklight : Should Faith go to Sunnydale, the Mayor will probably play a part in her future. As for Faith's now partially-Cybertronian body, it might play a role in her future as well, but the point of her surgery at the hands of the Autobots was not to power her up, but to link her with Arcee. So while the Cybertronian body parts might have some consequences yet, don't wait for Faith to shout "Faith! Transform!" and change into a robot head or anything.

And now, on with the show:


Chapter 7: Questions on Magic, Gods, and Sparks

They were back in the same conference room as before, sitting in the same spots, but the mood was very different from before. It wasn't just the fact that both robots present still showed visible signs of battle damage. Neither was it the human girl's new white overall, provided by the holographic woman standing next to her on the table. No, lots of things had changed since they had last sat here barely half an hour ago. Most of them not visible to the naked eye, but very significant nevertheless.

Optimus Prime sat at the head of the table, the Autobot leader in a sullen mood. It was well known among the ranks of the Autobots that Optimus Prime was always in such a mood on those rare occasions when a situation demanded him to kill. Killing was not something that came naturally to Autobots, it went against their base programming. They had originally been designed as builders and protectors, never destroyers. The ongoing war against the Decepticons had forced them to change, to adapt, but they hadn't done so willingly. Least of all their commander.

Arcee's mood was rather similar to that of her leader. She, too, had killed today and didn't like it any better than he did. On top of that, though, she had to deal with that strange connection that had become active between her and the human girl during the battle. Until this morning Arcee had never considered humans anything but a mission, and a boring one at that. All that had changed in a matter of hours and now the female Autobot found herself wondering how much of that change in outlook had come naturally and how much of it was forced by the spark alignment between Faith and she.

Faith was in a funky mood as well, but it had little to do with killing. Killing was something she had done almost every night for the past few months. It was part of what she was, what she had become. She was the Slayer and killing demons was as natural for her as breathing. No, what had her in a mood was pretty much everything but the killing. She was still a child and on top of everything else that had happened to her in the last few weeks she had now become involved in a very strange and dangerous clash between two very different worlds. To say that she had trouble wrapping her mind around it all was an understatement.

"So what is that thing in your chest?" Faith asked, finally breaking the gloomy silence.

She could still see it through Optimus' torn-open chest plate. It looked a bit like an egg with handles on the side and was about as big as she, if not bigger. The egg was comprised of two halves, between which a glowing... something was contained. Some kind of crystal that seemed to pulse with an inner light. The light was dim right now, but it hadn't been during the battle when it had spilled out of Optimus' chest.

Optimus seemed to consider whether or not to answer the question, which made Faith angry.

"Look, fire truck guy! I saved your metal ass! Twice! I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but those demons were obviously after that thing in your chest, so what the fuck is it?"

"It's not that we're not grateful for your help, Faith," Optimus said. "We are. I am. I owe you a lot. But it isn't that simple. That... thing, as you call it, is our most prized possession, our most sacred artefact. Its protection has been entrusted to me. It's... hard to trust another with this and I have known you less than a day."

"I'm not asking you to hand it over, big guy," Faith said, somewhat regretting her outburst. "It's just that... those guys were pretty determined. And I've learned that, when demons are that determined to get something, it usually spells danger to lots of innocent people, maybe the whole world. And protecting this world from demons has been entrusted to me, good idea or not. So I need answers."

Optimus nodded.

"You are right. It just never occurred to me that anything on this world might pose a danger to us or the Matrix. That was an arrogant oversight on my part, it seems. One I need to correct. So to answer your question, it is called the Matrix. It has been in our possession since before recorded time, always passed down from one Autobot leader to the next. It is said to carry the wisdom and knowledge of all who have carried it in the past and many miraculous powers are attributed to it, most of them probably myths."

"What happened during the battle wasn't a myth, Optimus," Arcee spoke up for the first time. "That light... did that ever happen before? I have never felt anything like it. It was like, like..."

"Like God smiling down on you?" Faith asked, looking at her robot friend. After a moment Arcee nodded. It was as good a description of what she had felt as any she might have come up with.

"One of our religions," Optimus explained, "proposes that the Matrix is actually a portion of the universal life force. A splinter of God, if you will. There is actually some evidence that might be used to support this claim, as the Matrix is known to heal damages and create life. There is no concrete proof either way, though. It remains the greatest mystery of our kind."

Faith was trying to wrap her mind around this, at the same time trying not to weird out about the idea of robots having religion. A part of the universal life force, he had said. A splinter of God. Man, Clarice would have loved this. Faith wasn't a Watcher, though. She hadn't dedicated her life to learning all she could about the supernatural. She was just a young girl and the only thing she could rely on was her instincts.

"Could I... could I touch it?" she asked.

Optimus hesitated a long time, but finally nodded. He opened his damaged chest casing and took the Matrix out, reverently placing it on the table in front of him. One of his giant hands remained on the handles, she noticed, while the other had inched closer to the rifle he carried on his hip. He obviously took protecting it extremely seriously. Hesitantly moving forwards, she reached out to touch it.

The metal casing of the Matrix was solid, but surprisingly warm. There was a feeling like... she didn't find words to describe it. Something was in there, something wonderful and terrifying. She could feel it at the very edge of perception. It wasn't evil, definitely not. Something told her it was way above such mortal concepts as good and evil. It felt... comforting, yet awe inspiring. One thing was for sure, though. It felt decidedly supernatural to her.

"I think it's magic," she said, letting go of the Matrix with some effort. It felt so good to touch it. "Or maybe something much greater than magic, like... I don't know. Maybe your God theory isn't that far off."

Optimus carefully placed the Matrix back into his chest, even as both Arcee and he were giving her sceptical looks.

"Hey, I'm just saying what it feels like to me. It's not like I can print out a fully-detailed computer analysis or something."

"Whatever the true nature of the Matrix might be," Ty said, the hologram involving herself in the conversation, "it has obviously attracted the attention of some of this world's denizens. It's something we will have to deal with if we want to stay here for any length of time."

Faith nodded vigorously. "Demons dig powerful magics. It's a safe bet you will have quite a few of them after your assplate as long as you carry that thing inside your chest, fire truck guy."

Optimus leaned back, folding his massive hands in front of his chest. "I am well aware of that. And it leads me to something I wanted to discuss with you, Faith. With you and Arcee, actually," he added with a glance toward the female Autobot.

"That wouldn't have anything to do with that weird spark thing you were telling us about?"

"Your spark alignment, yes."

He motioned toward Ty, who took over the part of explaining.

"It goes back some thousands of your years, Faith. We were in the middle of the Great War with the Decepticons and there was an escalating arms race going on, both sides looking for ways to create better, more powerful warriors. There is a limit to how much performance a single spark can wring out of even the most powerful body, so the Decepticons performed experiments in fusing sparks together into a stronger, more powerful one.

"The first results of these experiments were horrible failures, but they finally developed the interlink protocol that allowed a temporary fusion of two or more distinct sparks into a greater whole. This gestalt spark would be much more powerful than the sum of its parts and able to animate and fully utilize bodies of much greater power. Both sides developed such gestalt warriors then - Transformers who could combine their bodies and sparks into a greater whole - and sent them to the battle field.

"It soon became apparent that not every spark fusion was as successful as others. The interlink protocol could force a fusion between any two or more sparks, but the results would vary greatly. Only very few cases actually produced fully harmonious fusions and most of these cases were accompanied by a phenomenon called a spark alignment. Meaning that even when separated again the sparks would retain a connection of sorts. This connection would never be the same in any two cases, but usually entailed shared awareness of a sort along with other, less predictable side effects."

"And that is what happened between Arcee and me?" Faith asked.

"As far as we can tell. As I said earlier, to our knowledge you are the first successful spark fusion between a Cybertronian and an organic being. We certainly didn't expect a spark alignment to happen and... well, we can't really be sure how much similarity it will have to a purely Cybertronian spark alignment."

"Something happened between you two during the battle," Optimus interjected.

"Yes," Arcee said. "For a moment it was like... like we were looking through the same pair of optics. As if our senses had joined together in order to work better."

"And I felt it when you got clawed," Faith added. "Those demons sunk their claws into you and I felt the pain in the exact same spot."

This was news to Arcee, who looked at her human friend with a certain amount of shock. "Faith, I'm so sorry. If I hadn't hesitated..."

"You didn't know, Arcee, I'm not blaming ya! Just saying, it was pretty weird."

The two looked at each other and both could feel... something. Neither could consciously grasp it nor define it, but it was there, hanging between them like a living thing.

"I have a proposition for you both," Optimus said, breaking the silence between them. "And it is a proposition, Arcee, not an order. I want to be clear about this."

"Propose away," Faith said, squatting down on the table and giving her best impression of an attentive school girl.

"It is obvious we need to learn more about magic and demons if we want to operate effectively on this planet," Optimus began. "We also need to find out about this link between you, how it could happen and what it means. I am thinking we might be able to combine these two."

"How?" Arcee asked.

"I would like to send you on an extended field mission, Arcee. Your assignment would be to gather as much information about magic and demons in general and," he motioned towards his shredded chest plate, "about our uninvited visitors in particular."

He looked at Faith. "And I think it would be a good start to your mission to accompany Faith on her travels for a while. If she agrees, that is."

Faith's thoughts were going off in several different directions at once. Arcee was to accompany her? That was a wicked idea. Having a giant alien robot for company wouldn't just be fun, it would also put her a good step ahead of Kakistos.

A moment later she reprimanded herself. No way, she couldn't drag anyone else into this. The last person who had been by her side had been Clarice and it had ended in blood and tears. And while Arcee had neither, she could still be hurt and killed. The last thing Faith wanted was another death on her hands because she wasn't good enough to do her job properly.

"I'm not sure that is a good idea," she said, even though a part of her cried out in protest. "Not that it wouldn't be wicked cool going on the road with you, Arcee, but... people who hang around me tend to die."

"Cybertronians don't die easily," Arcee told her. "Besides, from what you said earlier it seems we are stuck together either way. So if something is going to hurt either of us, wouldn't it be better if the other one was close by instead of writhing in shared pain a thousand miles away?"

Faith gave her a dirty look. "I hate it when they use logic on me." Inside, though, she was torn. There was that voice that always told her she was nothing but trash and would bring only grief to anyone who got close to her. Another voice told her that she was meant to be alone, that she had to be strong and independent in order to fulfil her destiny.

She was tired of being alone, though. Three weeks on the run from Kakistos had been more than enough alone time. Always on the run, scared of every shadow, expecting every sunset to be her last. She'd headed toward that strange town called Sunnydale in the hope that the local Watcher there might be able to help her, but it had been a fleeting hope at best.

This might be a far better hope to cling to.

"Okay," she finally said. "But I'm gonna need some things."

"Such as?" Ty asked.

"All my clothes and what little money I had left got burned in that fire I rescued your boss out of, so I'm gonna need replacements. Also, I don't have a driver's license, so if I'm gonna ride around on Ms. Bullet Bike here I'll need some papers or every cop from here to California is gonna bust us."

"No problem," the holographic woman said. "Anything else?"

"Well, now that you mention it," she motioned at her overalls, "do these things have to be white?"

End Chapter 7 (Epilogue coming soon)