Author Note:
Okay, first, thank you for your patience; the next chapter is up! But, bad news, life has become busy and work has slowed down, so I doubt the pace will increase. Nevertheless, let me take a moment to thank faithful followers and new readers for their patronage; your kindness and attention make this worth doing! Thank you very much!
Anyway, this is going to be a drama piece; seriously, there's a lot of angst here, so don't read if you think emotions are embarrassing. Not a lot of story here, though I like how the characters are working. I'm also reinventing a Cybertronian calendar for use in the story; my original reference appears to have disappeared, and I haven't found a good replacement, so I'm making a new one. I'll probably put up a reference page or something once I finish working on it.
Disclaimer: Transformers Animated, and the characters thereof, are no property of mine, nor are the concepts originating with the series. The plot, original characters, and concepts introduced by this story are; please ask permission before using them.
"Where is she!" demanded Issac Sumdac as he stormed into the Autobot medical facility, escorted by a luckless Bumblebee; the scientist's normal hapless waddle was transformed by rage into a tyrant's march, leaving the poor bot jogging to keep up. "Where is my daughter?!"
"She's farther inside," replied Optimus, barely able to drag his head up. "With Epidata and some other medics."
"I want to see her." Issac's glare was hard enough to strip paint from Optimus's chasis, and everyone present winced at the rage in his tone.
"You can't." Everyone except Ratchet, slumped against the wall, who met Issac's wrathful eyes with his own exauhsted optics. "None of us can. Epi didn't want to risk cross species contamination or infection."
"And why aren't you in there with her?" shouted the dimunitive scientist as he shook his fist at the Medic Bot. "You're the doctor, you're the one who was…is, responsible for taking care of her!"
"I'm an Autobot doctor!" snapped the bot, "not a techno-organic doctor! I know less about Sari's anatomy than I do about yours!"
"And this other Bot does?!"
"No one understands Techno-Organic hybrids better than Epidata, even if Sari is like nothing else we've ever seen; he'll be able to do more for her than anyone else. Sari is in the best possible hands."
"Fine. Fine! If he's best, then I can…accept that. But…!" Issac whirled on Optimus, pointing an accusing finger at the Bot's faceplate. "But that doesn't explain why this happened in the first place! You were supposed to take care of her!"
Optimus's face crumpled, and his voice cracked as he shouted, "I know! I…I know. It was just…the battle was too large, too confusing, and then there was Lugnut, and Ratchet was in danger…and, and…" He took a deep breath to compose himself, wringing his hands. "Sari, she…she got in the way…"
"Don't you dare blame my Sari for your own shortcomings!"
"What? No, NO! That's not…that's not what I meant. Your daughter, she…her courage led her to making up for my own…failures. I…failed her, failed everyone…and she was brave enough to step up and fix my mistakes…and because of that…."
"Listen you incompetent, oversized can-ope…!" Optimus turned to face Issac for the first time, and the scientist felt words fail him. Many expressions translated poorly between human and Autobot, but the scientist could not help but recognize the one Optimus was wearing; it was one he had worn himself, when he had discovered that the creature he had spent months repairing was no friend of the Autobots, or humanity. It was an expression of horror and shame, feelings which devoured the spark and darkened the soul.
Sari's father sighed, and closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing as he breathed out, then in, then out again, until his rage had cooled into grief. He forced himself to remember his own misdeeds, his own mistakes, the harm he and no one else had brought to Sari; and he remembered the heroric autobots who had rescued him and his daughter time and time again, irrespective of the risk or cost to themselves. Then he started again.
"This isn't about blame, or fault, or even failure," he admitted, rubbing his face with a gloved hand. "I know you, Optimus; you would never, ever, willingly allow Sari to come to harm, and I have no doubt at all that you did everything within your power to keep her safe. Nevertheless," here his tone became strident, thought it was without anger, "my child has been injured in my absence! I need you to tell me what happened! What happened to my daughter…and to you," he finished quietly, gesturing to Optimus's wounds.
"What happened was a crazy ambush that no saw comin," declared Jazz as he limped into the waiting room, his white body scorched and scored, and his arm bolted into a sling at his side. "Somehow, some Con dudes managed to find out when we was transferring jailbirds, including Megatron's right hand fellas. They managed to hit all four convoys at the same time, and sprang almost everyone clear. A lot of the Cons just fled off planet, but the rest stuck around and went chargin off to the shindig."
"Lugnut was there first," explained Prime as he threw Jazz a grateful look. "How he managed to fly across the entire city without being spotted is beyond me, but by the time the alarm went out the plaza was still half filled with civilians. So, I…"
"Did what you always do, and went to the rescue," sighed Issac. "I take it Sari was with you?"
"Yes. I thought about sending her away, but no place is safe during a Decepticon raid, and I thought that at least this way I could keep an eye on her. And then Lugnut arrived…" Optimus told Professor Sumdac of his difficult confrontation with the towering Decepticon, the Con's theft of the All Spark from Optimus's possession, and then Lugnuts attempt to destroy all he could with the All Sparks energy. "I doubt anyone except Lugnut would have left the plaza alive, if Sari hadn't been there, to absorb the blast."
"I'm sorry?" interrupted the professor, eyes wide. "She absorbed a full power blast? From the All Spark! The penultimate power source?!"
"Yeah! Lugnut was all, 'Imma destroy you all!'," interjected Bumblebee, proceeding to act out the scene, complete with sound effects and demonstrative gesture. "Then Sari is like 'Oh no you won't!' and then Lugnut was all 'Fwoosh, Waaoawwoaawwaaoooow!' and Sari's all 'BLOCK!' and then she goes and blasts Lugnut back! It was…" the youngest bot noticed the dirty looks everyone was giving. "Oh come on! Sari's tough, she'll be fine, and that was just too cool! Sari was a…[mph! Mph mnph mmm!]" Bumblebee's tone was manic, almost desperate, fighting not to accept painful contradictions, and Optimus did his best to hold onto his frayed patience as he wrestled a hand over the younglings mouth.
"In any case," continued Optimus, ignoring Bumblebee's struggles, "yes, Sari managed to absorb Lugnut's attack, and she countered with one of her own, knocking the All Spark from his grasp. She managed to get it away from the Cons…and then I made the mistake of ordering her to take it to safety."
"Hey now," argued Jazz, "stop beating yourself over this. It was solid thinking, Prime. Get the All Spark away from the Cons, get the girl away from the Cons; it was classic two planes, one missile. Only reason it didn't work out is cause we didn't know how many Cons there were. We were thinking two, maybe four Decepticons, and then we could catch up with Sari and take the All Spark off her servos; we weren't expecting three dozen Cons, and by the time we knew our mistake, Lugnut was already after your girl, and none of us could get away after him. It was crazy, man."
Optimus picked up the story again, looking blankly at nothing as he said, "When she managed to come back, she had somehow activated her power skates, and she was…injured. Very injured. Her arm was…mangled. And her body was throwing off huge amounts of energy, just like when…"
"She overloaded herself back at Detroit," sighed Issac. "But why did this happen a second time? I thought Ratchet fixed the issue."
"It was probably because of the blast she absorbed," grunted the medic, shifting in place. He looked to be the least injured of the Autobots, with only a few scrapes and dents, but he still moved sorely. "Her body was trying to work off all this new, excess energy, on top of all the power she already had, which was reactivated by the blast. But this time, she wasn't in the middle of a fragile human city; instead, she was surrounded by big moving targets, where she could expend as much energy as she needed, without trying to hold it in. She probably would have reached an equilibrium, and been fine, if it hadn't been for me."
"Ratchet…"
"No, no Prime, no need to reassure me. I know exactly what I did and didn't do, and while I will not claim to be at fault for Sari's injury, neither am I free of responsibility." Ratchet heaved out a great sigh of his own, and continued, "I came across Lugnut while he was trying to outfly Jetfire and Jetstorm, not that I could recognize him at that distance. He dropped the All Spark in the conflict, and I picked it up and ran off, quick as I could. Unfortunately, the Deceptislime managed to fight off the twins before I could get out of sight, and I led Lugnut right back to the battle. I…tried to fight him off, but he managed to take me by surprise, and then Sari…got between us. Somehow, she managed to create some barrier between herself and Lugnut, but that punch of his blasted right through it and, wel..."
"That punch?" Issac looked torn between astonishment and rage. " You let a… a punch do this to her?!"
The Autobots shared a glance, before Optimus said, "You've never seen Lugnut fight, have you?"
"No, I haven't." Professor Sumdacc frowned. "What am I missing?"
"Well…" Ratchet tried to find the words to describe the Cons ultimate weapon. "Lugnut, he…"
"He has an explosion in his fist," interjected Bulkhead flatly, speaking for the first time in hours. He had kept silent vigilance for Sari since the end of the battle, and the harshness of his voice was startling. "He has a button in his arms, and when he's enraged the button comes out, he hits something with it, and then everything around him dies."
"And he was going to attack you with it," said Issac as he turned back to Ratchet. "Tell me, what would have happened if Sari hadn't been there?"
"She wouldn't be lying in there, injured and possibly…!"
"No, no, no," the scientist interrupted. "To you? What would have happened to you, if Sari had let you be?"
"I…" Ratchet's optics locked with Sumdacc's eyes, and all urge to argue faded away. "I doubt I would be speaking to you now," he finally admitted.
"I see." Issac fell silent, his round face furrowed in thought as he looked at each Autobot in turn. "I know…I know how she feels about you all," he finally began, his voice strong, if sorrowful. "She had always…no, has always considered you to be a family, and she built you all into the home I alone could not give her. I do not…I do not know if she meant to sacrifice her life for you…but I do know, that…" he sighed again, aging a thousand years in the span of a breath. "When…when we…won against the Decepticons, and we discovered that Prowl had…had sacrificed his life, his spark, for our sakes…when she finally came home, she cried herself to sleep. Every day between then, and the day when you left, she cried herself to sleep in my bed next to me. I…she cared, cares, about you all, and I am not surprised that she would risk so much to keep you safe. So…" he swallowed hard, the next words coming with some difficulty. "I will not insult her memory by resenting the people she gave so much to save. This was not your fault….", another swallow, "this was not my fault. This was not her fault. This…simply is what it is. And we deal with it the way she would have wanted…with honor, and family."
"Well said!" exclaimed Epidata as he burst out of the operating room, the science-bot coated in the monomolecular bicarbonate alloy that kept him sterile for surgery. "Inspirational, reasonable, and surprisingly wise. Ratchet," the bot said accusingly, "you said the man was a fool."
"Epidata, this is not the time!"
"What? Why not? I mean, it's not like anyone's dying around here…"
"What?" gasped Optimus. "You mean…?
"How is she?" demanded Professor Issac.
"How is who?"
"My daughter!" raged Sumdacc. "How is my daughter, Sari!"
"Oh, her! She's fine, she's great. Never better," chattered the scientist. "Don't think I've ever had somebody respond so poorly to treatment, but she should be back on her stabilizers inside of a mega-cycle!*"
"What!" exclaimed Ratchet as he struggled up from his seat. "Epi, I saw her! I'm a doctor too, so cut the smokescreen!"
"No, really, a Mega-Cycle, maybe less," replied the Autobot. "She's…well, it's astonishing, I've never seen anything like it. In fact…I think you should come take a look at her, it's the only way you're going to believe me."
"But you said we couldn't go in the clean room," Bulkhead rumbled, looming up over the doctor.
"Oh, that's fine now, she's in a stasis tube, and frankly I doubt any of you bots have anything she could catch. You know," the scientist continued as he peered at Bulkhead in puzzlement, "I would have thought you'd be chomping at the bit to see your friend again."
"Yeah, I wanna see her, but I want her better more." The engineer's expression was pointed, and Epidata found himself extremely grateful that he had not exaggerated Sari's condition in any way.
Of course, his wariness did not last long, and he cheerfully stated, "Well she's better now, so why don't you all come inside, and take a look." He gestured at the open door, then led the gathering in a solemn procession into the dark laboratory.
*the equivalent of a day on Cybertron: equal to about 3 days, 4 hours, 6 minutes on Earth.
Ending Commentary
Well, that was fun. Don't blame me if your drama allergies are acting up, I did warn you. I'm actually rather pleased with how this piece worked out; I hit a lot of rough patches, but I think I got the essence of the characters and the situation through, and I really like the Professor's speech at the end.
Next chapter, we start getting into the suspense… actually, I'm beginning to wonder if I might have mislabeled the story's genre, because there's hardly any mystery in here…hmmm.
