See Prologue for Disclaimer!

Chapter 9: Gearing up

*****

Iacon, Planet Cybertron
Earth Date November 19, 2005 (approx.)

Almost a full week had passed (as best as she could tell) since Marissa's talk with Optimus Prime and while little had changed yet, she rose from her bed every morning with renewed purpose. Optimus had agreed - in theory at least - to let her help. So in order to do that, she first needed to get back into shape.

Every day she exercised both her three new and one original limb. Wheeljack's learning interface routines were getting better all the time and she almost had her full range of motion back by now. She still had trouble with fine motor control, mostly due to the near complete lack of sensation in her new fingers and feet, but she was getting better.

When her body needed a break from exercising, she soaked up every bit of information about Cybertron and the ongoing war that the Autobots were providing her with. It was mostly historical data, nothing on current operations, but she had expected as much. She was still too much of an unknown quantity for the Autobots to trust with military secrets. Still, she was learning fast, feeling that every little bit helped improve her chances of maybe, possibly one day seeing home again.

Optimus had assigned two Autobots to her as her... well, companions, guides, friends, keepers, all of these things combined. One was a rather small Autobot called Bumblebee, barely more than twice her own height, and quite young for his race (just over 200,000 Earth years, she had calculated). He served as a scout in the Autobot forces and among other things he was teaching her Cybertronix (she didn't want to be dependent on Wheeljack's translator all the time) and about the local geography.

Her other companion was Rewind, who was even smaller than Bumblebee, being just about a head taller than her. He was working in Blaster's communications department and seemed to be historian, data management expert, and master of pointless trivia all in one package. Whatever questions Marissa had, he had answers for her. Plus lots of things she didn't ask for, as it was almost impossible to get him to stop dishing out facts.

There were two ways Marissa saw herself contributing to the Autobots' war effort. One was the fact that, as an outsider, she might be able to uncover blind spots in the Autobots' strategy. Considering that they'd been fighting the same war against the same people for such a long time, there was a distinct possibility that both sides had become rather set in their ways, so maybe she could see something that they couldn't.

The other was, of course, physically. And for that she once again needed the Autobots' resident mad genius to come through for her. A challenge Wheeljack had simply laughed at (somewhat manically at that) before immediately going to work.

Entering Wheeljack's work shop with Rewind and Bumblebee by her side, Marissa was surprised at how welcome the sight before her was. Thrymir - or Skywarp, as he was really called – stood before her, looking gleaming and new, sporting a new paintjob with bright red Autobot symbols on his wings... and no head.

"Ah, there you are," Wheeljack greeted them as he came around from behind Thrymir's body, which still towered over him quite a bit even without a head. "I'm almost done."

"Eh, I hate to break this to you, Wheeljack," Bumblebee said, "but it seems to me you forgot something there."

Wheeljack seemed honestly confused until Bumblebee pointed to the empty place where Thrymir had once had a head. Then he laughed.

"Yes, I can see how you might think that, but no, I didn't forget. I just put some more thought into it."

Motioning for his three visitors to follow, Wheeljack led them further into his workshop until they arrived before something that appeared to be an exo-suit of some kind. Back on Earth Marissa had seen schematic designs for powered battle armour for infantry soldiers, but so far no one had actually put such things in the field. The technological hurdles were still too great to make it feasible. Wheeljack, apparently, had solved it in less than a week. The suit was about three meters tall, very bulky, and she spotted what appeared to be weapon barrels on the arms, too.

"I was thinking of what you told me, Captain Fairborn," Wheeljack told her, "about how you needed support from several other humans to strap yourself into the control harness your people constructed. That would be a severe liability in the field, I think, so I came up with an alternate solution. Allow me to introduce: the Headmaster unit."

Rewind scratched his head, a kind of nervous tick the small Autobot seemed to have.

"I am uncertain how to interpret the designation, Wheeljack."

"Easy," Wheeljack explained, taking great relish apparently. "Marissa, would you mind standing in front of the unit?"

Feeling a little uneasy, Marissa stepped forward. "Shouldn't Ratchet be here for this?" she asked.

"Don't worry, he did a full check-up and deemed it safe. Besides, I've installed numerous safety features. Nothing will go wrong. Now, I know your scientists wired certain functions of Skywarp that do not translate easily onto a human body to finger and toe movements. Considering the... situation, I thought it easier to use voice commands. It's keyed to your vocal signature, so it won't go off when someone else talks. Now, stand with your back to it and say 'Suit on'. Go ahead, give it a try!"

Marissa still looked at him nervously. "I hope you installed a safety word of some kind, too?"

She was sure Wheeljack would have rolled his eyes had he been capable of it. "No worries, Captain. If anything goes wrong – and it won't – you just say 'Shut-Down' and everything will stop."

Taking a deep breath, Marissa turned her back on the suit, mumbled a brief prayer, and then said "Suit on!"

The by-now familiar sound of Cybertronian technology transforming sounded behind her and moments later the suit began to wrap itself around her body by itself. She was lifted off the floor and encased in armour. The suit was a good deal taller then her, so her entire body was situated in its torso, the arms and legs being fully mechanical. A helmet encased her head, leaving her face free. The whole process took but a few seconds, but now she towered over Rewind and was only about two heads shorter than Bumblebee.

"Impressive, Wheeljack," Rewind commented. "Does the suit use the same binary bonding interface you adapted for Captain Fairborn's cybernetic limbs?"

"Pretty much," Wheeljack answered. "Captain Fairborn, the suit is connected to your nervous system via your new limbs. As long as you are in it, all nerve impulses will translate to the suit instead of your normal limbs. Go ahead, try it!"

Marissa nodded and moved. Amazingly the suit moved just as smoothly as her cybernetic limbs did by now. She briefly hesitated with the left arm, considering that it was still flesh and blood on her, but the suit apparently translated those nerve impulses easily as well. There was no noticeable difference to moving her normal, smaller body. It was almost as if she was really 3 meters tall and just wearing armour over her actual limbs.

"That's really cool, Wheeljack", Marissa said, getting a feel for moving in the much larger suit. "I don't understand what it has to do with Thrymir, though."

"That's step two of my genius design," he preened. "Let's visit your old friend Skywarp, shall we?"

They trooped back to the front of the workshop, where Thrymir's headless body was still waiting patiently.

"As I said, I considered it a great liability that you would need help – and a lot of time, too – to get in and out of your cockpit. So I thought, why not make the cockpit itself mobile."

He looked down at her, obviously waiting for her to get it. Headmaster unit, she mused. Of course. Everything on this planet seemed to transform in and out of at least two different forms, so why not...

"What's the voice command?" she simply asked. It was probably reckless of her, but suspecting what was going to happen made her very, very eager to try it out.

"Just say 'Head on', Captain."

"Here goes! Head on!"

The armoured suit around her contorted and folded, her actual body being shifted into a sitting position as best as she could tell. Thrymir's headless body bent over and reached down, huge metallic hands gently lifting the transformed suit up and onto his shoulders. A plate slid into place before Marissa's face and for a moment she was completely blind and immobile. Then something clicked into place and her senses returned.

She found herself standing nearly 10 meters tall, looking down on the three Autobots before her. This constant perspective shifting would take some getting used to.

"You outdid yourself, Wheeljack," Marissa said, carefully putting Thrymir's body through some moves. There was no comparison to the crude Earth-constructed interface harness she had worn the last time she'd been plugged into this body. Thrymir moved like the two of them were one person. There was no gap, no minimal lack in response time, nothing. She thought, he did. It was awesome.

"The potential of this new process you have developed is enormous, Wheeljack," Rewind said, sounding rather excited. "It opens up lots of possibilities. Autobots could downsize their actual bodies to preserve energy and simply link up with bigger shells for combat only. It might even be feasible to utilize the gestalt protocols this way and..."

"One step at a time, Rewind," Wheeljack interrupted him. "Everything working, Captain Fairborn?"

As stupid as it sounded, being back in this huge metal shell she had actually spent less than two days in almost felt like coming home. And whereas everything had been haphazard and awkward before, now it moved as smoothly and elegantly as no machine she had ever seen before.

"It works beautifully, Wheeljack," she told the engineer. "You really are a genius."

Wheeljack was obviously pleased and Rewind kept chattering excitedly. Only Bumblebee seemed somewhat reserved as he looked at her.

"Is something wrong, Bumblebee?" she asked, stopping her 'stretching'.

The yellow Autobot shook his head. "No, it's... sorry, it's just strange for me. I met Skywarp on the battle field quite a few times and now..."

Marissa scolded herself. She really should have thought of how strange this had to be for the Cybertronians as well. To her Thrymir had never been more than an amazing machine that she got to test drive. These robots here had known the sentient being it had once been, though. And despite the fact that it had been an enemy, it had to be weird to see 'Skywarp' now being used to ferry around a strange visitor from another planet.

"I hope this isn't going to be an issue," Marissa said after some consideration. "I mean, I know I would find it strange if the dead body of a human were to be used as a host body for some alien being back on Earth."

Wheeljack patted her – or Thrymir, rather – on the arm. "You should be fine after the initial weirdness with most of the Autobots, Captain Fairborn."

"Cybertronians do not have a particular attachment to the lifeless remains of their fellows, Captain Fairborn," Rewind explained to her. "We know that after the spark has left, all that remains is but dead weight. Fallen soldiers are usually recycled so that even in death their parts can still serve a worthwhile purpose. However, there are certain elements among Cybertronian society that are quite organophobic, you might say. They even refuse to visit the non-cyberformed planets in the Space Bridge grid. These robots might react... negatively to your presence."

"Well, considering that my presence here is supposed to be top secret, I hope that won't be a problem."

Optimus Prime had apparently decided that the fewer people knew about Marissa the better. The Decepticons knew, of course, and would probably be looking for her to get their hands on the location of her home world. So the fewer Autobots knew about her, the better the chance of them never learning her location. At current count there were just 10 Autobots that knew of her and ideally that should be it.

"Ready to try out one more thing, Captain?" Wheeljack asked.

"One more... oh, right." She had almost forgotten, but of course Thrymir / Skywarp was not just a big robot that she would now form the head of. He was a transforming robot and she had already seen two other robots of very similar design transform into a kind of fighter jet when she had first arrived here on this world. Naturally Thrymir had a second form as well.

"Another voice command, to keep it simple. Just say 'Transform'!"

Marissa smiled, a hungry look in her eyes.

"TRANSFORM!"

End Chapter 9

NOTE: Posting has now caught up with my writing, so further updates might take a bit longer than they have so far. The final chapter of this story (or at least the first part of a roughly sketched-out trilogy) is already written, though, so it's just a matter of filling in the gaps.