A/N: I'm posting on a rush since I missed both Sunday and Monday, so my super quick explanation is that I graduated from American Heritage Girls, which I have been with for 7 years, and that took my Sunday, and Monday I had to SCHOOL and schedule a meeting with my college advisor, which I am going to in 15 minutes, so wish me luck and enjoy what I hope does everyone's favorite 120-decibel Seeker justice!

To say the week was hell for the overwhelmed girl wouldn't have touched on the terribleness of the situation.

It sounded like a simple thing: Get the Strike Team – and their three new potential members – to the World Security Meeting that happened once a year at the Autobots' island base of Diego Garcia. It really should have been simple. They were professionals, weren't they? Anyone who could stop the Unmaker from 'reclaiming his right' – which it, technically speaking, was; it was his body they were all walking around on – could surely handle organizing for a week-long debate about security and secrecy and whatever other rot the fleshlings yelled at each other about during these things.

But to look at Skylar now, one would think the Unmaker had a twin, and that he and said twin were bearing down on Avengers Tower, intent on leveling the building. To put it shortly, she was a wreck.

To elaborate on said wrecked state, she was dressed in her SHIELD catsuit, but she was missing her utility belt, and the sleeves looked as if she'd tried to roll them up. Obviously, she'd failed, so the right one was an inch higher than the left, and the perfectionist wasn't paying it any mind at all. Her hair was pulled back with a clip that was an appalling shade of neon orange. Really, it was hideous. And so unlike the self-proclaimed commander that Starscream just assumed she'd borrowed it form the Tower's resident 'fashionista,' Van Dyne. She was hunched over the computer while standing, which was unusual for her and indicated intense concentration. She kept rocking from one foot to the other, something he had come to learn was a nervous tic.

All in all, she looked as miserable as she sounded, acted, and must've felt.

Good thing Starscream didn't care. He might've been worried about her otherwise.

"Come on, work with me here!" she pled desperately. The computer at which she shouted didn't do as she wished. She ran a hand down her face, growling in such a manner that the Seeker wondered if she'd learnt it from Lord Megatron, who preferred holos to frames these days and had taken an inexplicable shining to the human.

But there was a frustrated edge to it that Megatron never touched, not even on his worst days. The warlord had learned early on – far before Starscream had ever heard his name – to keep any emotions that might be perceived as 'weak' bottled deep inside where only he would ever know about them.

"You do understand that it can't actually hear or respond to you, right?" Starscream asked, the acerbic tone in his voice that had become a staple for his personality shining through spectacularly. She whirled on her heel, turning her frustrated gaze on him. Most would probably flee or slink away. He'd seen worse from Megatron on some of the warlord's better days. He wasn't cowed.

She looked tired. Even beneath the makeup he was mildly surprised to see her wearing, she looked tired.

"Why don't you do something useful for once?" the girl snapped, failing to keep her tone even. He smirked. She'd never say anything as biting or hurtful like that on usual days. He always did take pleasure in seeing people's breaking points. She looked close to hers. He imagined it would be entertaining when she finally did snap. If he was lucky, she might do it at the meeting. If he was unusually lucky, she might even turn her sharp tongue on the Prime. He'd pay good shanix to see this 5'4" nothing screaming out a 32' tall being who could crush her beneath his heel and not know he'd done it.

Not that the 'pacifist' ever would. Not that Skylar would snap at him. T'was but a fantasy.

"Like?" was all he said, leaning against the table he currently had his back to and crossing his arms. His red eyes blazed a challenge. She remained unmoved, standing stiff as a pillar, but he could see her start crumbling inside. She was usually a good actress – one of the few things he admitted to admiring about her – but today she was off her game. Her eyes told all, and he took every advantage he could get to turn her emotions back on her, like daggers.

"Go find your brothers, please," she bit out, "and then perhaps you'd be so kind as to find the twins."

"Hmm," he hummed, as if thinking. Though technically a part of her 'Strike Team', he was yet to associate himself with their label. In his processor, this was simply a very good shield and Skywarp's current ridiculous hobby. They did owe her, but that was a fact he often conveniently 'forgot.' Nevertheless, he was curious as to where his brothers were and so complied with that part of the request.

He reached out through the Trine bond – in fleshy holoform they might be, but the bond remained strong – and located the two. Skywarp was dashing around the floor beneath them, with Thundercracker 'hot on his heels,' as the humans said. "Skywarp is being pursued by Thundercracker – for a good reason, I suspect – and I do believe that my attempting to locate Soundwave's unholy terrors from the Pit wouldn't end favorably for anyone involved. That wouldn't help you, would it?"

The way she stiffened – so methodically, so robotically, so smoothly – made him think he'd actually done it. She might have just snapped.

But she only deflated, and despite being only 5'4" to his 5'8", she seemed so much smaller. Vulnerable. Weak.

He wondered how one so powerful could emit such an aura.

"Fine," she said, and her tone was neither furious nor faltering. It was only empty. "Fine. You go do…whatever, I guess." She turned back to the computer, which was still showing the same screen – a frozen one, he guessed – and let out a long sigh. His own lungs hurt from just hearing it.

But he'd won. She'd excused him from doing any more work for this insipid trip, and he was free to ignore it till she came and dragged him to her ship like she always did. He uncoiled – was that the right word for the movement? Never mind; it hardly mattered – and strode past her. "Good luck," he said, not meaning a single syllable of it.

He did have the decency to close the door behind him, and he wished he hadn't looked back at her. She was so small, so beaten, so…sad. She'd never looked that hopeless, not even when the entire Decepticon army cut off their only escape in that Dark Energon mine a few months back. No, he was quite certain that not even death itself could defeat her, and had a simple meeting thousands of miles away that they hadn't even gotten to yet finished the tenacious warrior?

A flicker of sadness blossomed in his own chest. He dismissed it quickly, shutting the doors and striding down the hallway. He had just managed to secure his own escape. For the next few hours, he would be as unhelpful as he wanted to be, hiding himself away in either Stark's lab – he was still a scientist, beneath all his snake-like guile – or the humongous library the Tower housed. He would insult the fleshlings 11 times out of 10, every day of the week – "And twice on Sundays," he heard Skylar's voice whisper in his mind, his own processor turning traitor on him – but they had good literature, and anything Cybertronian was either destroyed or inaccessible at this point.

He did eventually choose the library, settling down in one particularly pretentious-looking armchair. He plucked one of Charles Dickens' books from the shelf nearest to him and opened to the page he'd been on last time he'd opened this book.

But it bothered him. Five pages he read, and at the end of the fifth, he realized he remembered nothing at all of the story, only thinking of how sad Skylar had looked. He'd gone back and reread the whole thing, and was left with the same result. Along the third try, somewhere on the fourth page, he was hit with a frightening conclusion. One so horrifying that he'd have slapped himself in the face if he could make his arm move.

He cared.

Skylar being so defeated, so sad and overwhelmed and alone bothered him, in a way that was reserved for his brothers alone. He wanted to go fix it, and he couldn't explain why.

"She just…makes you like her."

Ravage's voice echoed in his helm.

The memory was as clear as it had been moments after he'd experienced it.

"And you can't explain why, but you want to help her, want to stay, want to fight alongside her. Primus knows I'm the last mech who'd get sentimental over any human, but…she made me want to stay, and she never even asked me to. She just offered a place until I could decide what I wanted to do, and I never left." Then Ravage had looked at him, looked through him. And then at his brothers, bantering with Skylar and Knock Out, as if they had always been there and always would be. "You'll get to that place too, eventually. It's gonna feel like Megatron punched you upside the helm, or like Nikki hit you in the faceplates with a frying pan, but…you'll get there. And you'll want to be there. That's why she's special."

Damn the cat.

He closed his book and put it in the shelf once more before heading back to the kitchen/dining room/living room to see how he could assist her. When he opened the door, he didn't see her anywhere. The laptop was still where it'd been, with the exception that the one side was turned out over the edge of the counter. Should he slam the door now, it'd probably topple off the edge.

He assumed she must've moved on, and shrugged, beginning to close the door and leave…

…and he heard a small sound.

He wasn't sure what it even was, only that he had come from where she'd been earlier. Cautiously, he walked around to that side of the counter, and found her in a heap on the floor. Had she not been upright and her eyes open but cast downward, he'd have been more than a little concerned that someone poisoned her. Not that anyone in the Tower would; he'd determined long before that every single person here cared about and for her. Slipping something into her drink to make her sick enough not to do any work, potentially – but only under extenuating circumstances. Not fatally poisoning her. No.

She was crying.

She'd only had concealer on – he guessed that she'd been halfway through getting 'dolled up' by Van Dyne before she'd been called away to do something else – but it was smeared, and all but missing from beneath her eyes. It was clear she hadn't slept in at least a day. She didn't even look up at him as he crouched down, only blinking once. Another tear slipped from her eye.

Primus, how was he supposed to even do this?

"Nikki?" Her first name felt strange in his mind, and felt even stranger coming off his lips. She turned her gaze to him, and it looked so dull and bleak that he was stopped in his tracks.

"I can't," she whispered. She looked down. "I just can't do it."

"Not alone," he said. Well, where had that come from? She looked back up at him, blinking. "I have come to the gravest of realizations." She straightened just a little. Good. "At some point over the last few months, I have come to…care…about you."

Her expression changed. It wasn't a smile, wasn't a frown, wasn't hopeful or hopeless. It was that curious mix of emotions that played out across her face at the same time and made her look like she both knew what you were doing and expected it. "Horrifying, I know," he added wryly. That got a small smile, and a huff of amusement, to top it off. "So I have come to assist you in gathering your collection of lunatics."

She laughed. Actually, properly laughed. It was a sound of relief and amusement and hope, and it sounded good. "Where shall I start?"

She sniffled, then looked at her knees. She nodded, gathering herself, then looked back up at him. "Can you get Warp and TC, please?" He nodded and headed off to corral his brothers. He glanced back at her as he was leaving the room. She'd gotten to her feet, and wiped away her tears. She caught his gaze and smiled gratefully. He found himself offering her a small smile in return.

Special, indeed.