[Location: Nemesis]
The following day since the destruction of Darkmount and the Damoclies, Megatron had his forces back to how they usually spent the time between runs for Energon and relics. Busy work, true, but they were so accustomed to their tasks that their minds could wander while they went through their practiced motions. Unfortunately for Megatron, a good handful of his troops' thoughts were on the Autobots' most recent victory. Or, more specifically, the tiny Autobot leader that stood up to Megatron and gave him, and those watching the broadcast thanks to Soundwave and Laserbeak, and audio sensor full. What she had said to him and how she took them out by attacking their own system, also her warning for those in the path of destruction that she wanted them to escape, bounced around in their processors almost constantly since.
It was a train of thought that Knockout found his own mind wandering down as he worked at tidying up his area since all the repairs to the others had been completed. He knew first hand about how Megatron had let his best friend, the only one he really ever trusted, stay in the hands of M.E.C.H.. When they had captured Breakdown and Megatron refused to rescue him, Knockout was furious at their leader over the decision. It had been the Autobots that found and rescued Breakdown and allowed him to return to the Decepticon side of the war. Knockout would forever recall what Breakdown shared with him as he worked to repair his friend to the best of his abilities.
Then Breakdown mysteriously vanished on a mission only to be returned a horrific shell for the human parasite known as C.Y.L.A.S.. Just what they alone did to his friend, claiming that they had found Breakdown already broken down and ceasing to function, was enough for him to enjoy returning the favor. Not to mention all the nifty information that he had gained from the task, and not all of it given to Megatron.
She's right, he thought to himself as he closed up the storage compartment where he kept his tools. Megatron not only allowed those filthy meat-bags to get their hands on one of our own and refused to rescue him because he saw Breakdown as weak, but he did nothing as they further tormented and desecrated his form. They're still running out there, freely doing what they will, and are still a threat to any Cybertronian that crosses their path.
Knockout moved over to his workstation and pulled up the profile he had been working on since the puzzle of Elita-One crossed their path. In her message to the Decepticons before she blew up the tower told him exactly the type of personality she had. "Megatron might sacrifice you willingly, but I'd rather not."
She's as much of a victim of their schemes as Breakdown was. The only difference was that the Autobots are not afraid to rescue their own, human or Cybertronian. The Autobots aren't afraid of fighting M.E.C.H.. She's not afraid of fighting them. And she liked my design. That last thought made a smile cross his face. Someone, enemy though she might be, appreciated something that he did.
The door opening behind him quickly brought him out of his thoughts as he twisted around. The Decepticon Medic expected to find Megatron standing in his doorway, but found a little more than a handful of the drone class Vehicons there instead. A frown crossed his face as they walked in and looking them over did not reveal any of them that might be injured as to why they might be there.
When the door shut behind the last one the one standing in the very front, the one known as Steve, pointed to the image of the Autobot on the screen behind Knockout and bluntly stated, "She's right. M.E.C.H. needs to be stopped."
[Location: Dauntless]
Slash had come through the Ground Bridge portal with Agent Fowler to check on his patient. The pair simply drove through the massive ship in one of the spare jeeps that the base kept on hand. They found Ellan in one of the smaller side rooms sitting on the bench of her bike form starring at her laptop in her lap, naturally playing music while some writing program open on the screen and in the middle of some sort of project. The colorful bruising on her human form was slowly fading. Her left arm being heavily bandaged and resting in its sling and no doubt all bandaging around her torso under her over sized T-shirt made it difficult for her to do much on her own. Add to all of that her hair being tossed into an extremely messy bun-esque heap on the top of her head and she looked to be in pretty poor shape.
"What are you doing?" Fowler asked as they approached the woman.
She turned to look at them, wincing at the pain that shot through her but smiled the best she could as she paused the music. John couldn't help but laugh some at how her face lit up when Fowler hand her a large to-go cup of coffee that they had picked up on their way out of the base. Apparently her love for the caffeinated drink never left.
After a long sip, she set the cup on the back of the seat beside her and re-situated herself under the blanket and computer on her lap. "Since Ratchet and Slash have both sentience me to bed-rest, I'm trying to write my report on what all happened. Don't need Bryce trying to phyc-eval you again after the whole Unicron/Unicorn incident."
"Unicorn?" John asked, looking between the two.
"Long story," Elita said with a smile as he came around to her feet so that she didn't have to twist to look at him. "Best told over several pots of coffee."
"Those are always the best stories to hear," he admitted with a warm smile. "We have a lot of catching up to do apparently."
Nodding sadly, Elita let her exhaustion show. Then she wiggled her left hand over the keyboard, since it stuck out of the end of the sling. "Though it's more like a T-rex trying to type with one hand here. Came to check on your handy work?"
"Always," he nodded. "You know me."
"Yeah, never could leave a scratch alone. How's the family?"
Agent Fowler chuckled at the pair. "Well, since you'll want your privacy for this, given the placement of a few of your wounds from your fight with Megatron, I'll go catch up with Two-Ton and the rest."
Elita waved with her right hand at him. "Bye, Will. Thanks for the coffee."
Agent Fowler waved in return as he headed out of the room. The pair heard the jeep start up and pull away shortly there after. John was quick to set his bag down near her coffee cup and began to move the blanket and laptop away from her so that she was able to get up. "Family's doing great. Kids are getting bigger by the day."
With her situated on the gurney again, the human medic began his examination of the wounds he had sewn up the day before. First was her arm. Really he started with her fingers to check not only their color, but to his surprise she was able to actually move them. Her grip test on his own hands proved that there was not much strength to the limb yet, but it was more than he was expecting.
"You know, I thought you were either joking or not in your right mind due to blood loss when you told me to just make sure to sew it on straight," he admitted to her as he pulled the sling free and began to cut away the wrappings that kept her from moving the limb. "It was as I was cleaning out the dirt and rock fragments from your lung and watching that slowly mend before my eyes that I realized exactly why you said that." He slowly pressed around the line that circled her arm, the stitches giving it almost a Frankenstein's monster feel to the whole situation. The two halves he stitched together now seemed to be whole. The muscles moved properly as she moved her arm and hand as he directed, which honestly was months ahead of any normal human healing. "Amazing."
"You sound like Ratchet," she admitted sourly.
"Ratchet?" John asked as he looked back up at her, then realization lit his face. "Ah, the robotic medic that was working on the mech-suit you were in."
"Autobot Medic, and yeah he was fixing my mech-suit." Elita gave an airy chuckle. "Oh, word-play. Don't you love it? Especially since kids these days don't even recall the old game MechWarrior. They give them different names now."
"So I've seen," he replied as he lifted the side of her shirt, having her hold it as he cut away the bandage. "If you weren't as tone I would have had to have done some cosmetic repair to your... um..." He cleared his throat, "Anyway. Take it easy. I don't know exactly how much internally your body is still working on. You have some scarring, which is to be expected. I had removed the stitches from your face while you were out, since it looked like they had been there for several months at this point."
Letting her shirt go, she reached up to feel the rough patches of skin on her face where she had sewn herself up three days prior. "It's only been a few days. Back right before the base was destroyed."
John sighed quietly as he finished packing away his tools. "I don't have a mirror on me, so I can't show you. Just give yourself a good once over when you get a chance to."
"Well, once I have the okay from Ratchet I need to head back to Alden and have another talk with Joel." At John's scoffing laugh and roll of his eyes Ellan smirked. "No, not taking him back. You have no idea how right you were when you told me to stay away from him. Trust me, it's a lot worse than you possibly could have thought. A lot more dangerous."
"Well, let me go find your Auto Medic and get you cleared so we can go have that coffee."
Elita packed away her laptop and blanket in the side compartment of her larger form and then moved over on the bench seat, patting the other side for him to sit on. John laughed with a shake of his head, but sat down on the far side like she was. He jerked at the sudden shifting, grasping for a hold on anything he could as she transformed. "It'll be faster this way," she admitted as her larger body began to walk through the base.
"I don't know if I'll ever get use to this."
Later that night, Elita was sitting on the shoulder of her larger form in her room waiting for the report to finish encrypting and sending to Agent Fowler's base computer. With Ratchet's reluctant dismissal, she and John had left through the Ground Bridge portal and spent the rest of the day chatting over coffee. She had filled her dear friend in on all of what had happened. It was a surprising to the human medic, to say the least, but he was glad to have some insight into what had happened. He admitted that it had been hard for them all to attend her funeral, but he knew, deep down, that Joel had something to do with her death. Now, with what she had shared with him, it was worse than he or Spike had ever thought of when they had gotten together after the funeral.
She had returned to the Autobot Base to find her old bath tub and the items that were packed in it waiting for her in her room. Smokescreen had sheepishly admitted that he had originally fished it out of the wreckage in hopes that she would have something to help Optimus out after the loss of their base. The pictures, hard drives, and other oddities that it contained was of no real use to the Autobots in danger, but she had told him that she was glad that he had thought to look through her stuff to see if it would have helped.
Packed in the mass was a hand mirror that had been her mother's. It had a crack that cut through the reflective surface since before Ellan was born. Now she was looking at her own image, her fingers gently brushing across gentle wrinkles and the scars on her face. They were a soft pink in color, looking as if they were years old instead of days. Her fingertips also ran across the roots of her hair where two inches of copper color strands faded into the vibrant red. She looked like her mother, save the changes Vector Signma had made to her, with the same tired look to her worn features.
Taking the pointer finger of her right hand Elita gently traced the crack that divided her image, watching as the reflection healed from the soft glow. She caught the image of Optimus standing in her doorway when she had finished, and turned to look at him as she set the mirror beside her.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"No," Prime answered softly. "May I come in?"
His tone concerned her, but she nodded with both forms and turned to face him completely as he walked closer. When he stopped before her hand held out his hand at her shoulder level, Elita stood up and stepped off of her larger form and into his hand, letting him place her on his own shoulder. "Is something wrong, Optimus? I know I did poorly with my fight with Megatron and almost lost two of our own in the process. I'm sorry."
"We almost lost you as well," he reminded her gently. "No, Elita, that is not the reason I had sought you out. You had done a commendable job in all aspects of the mission. I have not had a chance to properly thank you for saving my life," he said after a moment's thought. "We had all noticed the toll that using the Forge had taken on both of your forms. All the tests that Ratchet has performed on it have indicated that the energy that it once contained has been drained."
Elita nodded slowly. "I know. I absorbed its functional coding while using it. Just like Alpha Trion said I was going to. I had used it both in melting through Megatron's armor and using the Ground Bridge component to open the gateway. It was all on instinct, but I use my own energy to do so. I guess that's why Vector Sigma made my smaller form like it did, why I can create Energon with it." With a sigh she leaned forward. "Now I know why everything's happened. What the real reason I'm still here is. Just promise me something, Optimus. Please?"
Prime curved his hand back up to where it gently rested it against her form, watching as she wrapped one arm around the digit and lay her head against it as she closed her eyes."What is it, Elita?"
"Promise me that when I make Cybertron whole again that this war, this reason why your planet was destroyed in the first place, is over," she requested weakly. "And promise me that you'll make sure Ratchet's okay when I'm gone."
Feeling the weight of her words settle into his own core, Optimus nodded towards her. "I promise."
~End
Author's Note: I don't own the show. Thank you for reading!
Oh, boy! How many years and two more kiddos added to the mix to boot? Thank you all, those who have stuck with me through this long and drawn out story and those of you who are new reading my work. Now to move on to the next story!