Hey all! Here's the next chapter! Thank you all for being so patient, I know I've taken some time getting into what Soul Recon really is about, but I've needed to build up towards the bang ending! Everything will come into light soon enough, I promise!

FORD B: Yeah, well, you should know me and cliffhangers, I looooooove to keep everyone wondering! teehee!

GrimlockX4: Thank you for the support and keeping up with my story!

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, or any other copyrighted item mentioned in this story. However, I DO own Cat and Rotten... And Five..... Yeah okay, so anyone you don't normally associate with Transformers in this fic, I own.

Enjoy!

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The early morning hours on New Years Day made it difficult to traverse some of the back roads. The paths were long and steep. There was a thick haze of fog that surrounded the park. The ground was wet with the morning dew and moisture was beginning to form on the outside of the rider's plastic cover on the front of their helmet. The rider wiped it clean with their gloves and continued down the long pathway. Trees surrounded the rocky roads and swayed with the cold winds. The motorcycle gently navigated the park roads with a low hum of it's quiet engine. That was, until it stopped just in front of a set of tall, metal gates. The rider noticed that there was also a single car parked off to the side of the gates in the grassy knolls. One of the gate doors were just slightly opened to about a foot of squeezing room. The rider parked the motorcycle and shut off the engine, getting off of the bike and setting it on it's stand carefully. There was a large, black plastic bag that had been strapped down to the secondary seat of the bike. The rider unstrapped the bag and took to the gates, squeezing through and into the park where the rider stopped and looked around.

A graveyard. To the left and to the right of the rider there were gravestones. Some were fairly new, others were old and leaning because the ground had softened and slumped beneath them. There were gravestones that had chipped and there were some that had the lettering worn away, barely able to be read. The rider began their trek through a long, winding pathway, until after about ten minutes of walking, they finally came to a newer gravestone.

The rider removed the helmet, revealing the long, brunette hair of Cat. Her eyes softened with sadness and remorse as she kneeled in front of the grave. The area was quiet, the early morning light was darkly disbursted through the thick haze around her. She set her helmet down to the side of her and sighed as she stared at the gravestone. She had felt good and alone at first, until she heard footsteps from behind her and quickly turned to see a man standing just a few feet away, frowning as he looked down to her.

"What are you doing here?" he growled.

--

It was early in the morning back in Tranquility as well, with the exception that the sun was actually shining, even though the morning was a bit chilly. Ron had just pulled his porsche out of the garage so that he could get to some of the tools in the back. When he closed the door (gently of course) he looked over to into the yard to see the gleaming Camaro sitting in the early morning rays of sunlight. Usually, he would just go on with his normal morning routine without bothering the Autobot, but he noticed that Bumblebee's hologram was sitting on the hood, elbows propped on his knees and his head slumped his in hands. Ron believed this to be a bit odd of the alien's normal behavior, so he decided to see what was on his mind... er, computer... oh whatever. He decided to check it out.

Ron walked over to the hologram and asked, "Aren't you normally alseep about this time? You know, Sam was up well past midnight last night for New Years, so he's probably going to sleep in a few hours longer today."

The hologram's eyes strayed slightly over in Ron's direction and replied, "Yes, Sam told me yesterday that he would probably be sleeping in late today. Cat has already left, if you were looking for her."

"Oh that's right," Ron remembered, "she went somewhere today. I'm surprised she didn't ask you and the kids to go with her. You guys do almost everything together when she's here."

"She wanted to do this alone. She told me what it was that she was planning on doing, and I agreed that she could go, however," Bumblebee trailed off.

"However?" Ron asked.

"I am... finding myself overly concerned. I have been second guessing myself as to whether or not I should have gone with her," he replied.

"Oh," Ron nodded, "I wouldn't worry about that one. She's pretty tough. Cat and Mikaela are the two toughest girls I think I've ever met!"

"Yes, they are two very unique individuals. But after the recent Decepticon sighting, I suppose I've realized just how important they are. Especially Cat."

Ron laughed, "Yeah, she's special. I mean, to think, that a little girl like that was abused and neglected for so long and to come out the way she has," he shook his head, "Yeah, she's a true fighter. I think all of us, Sam especially, feels lucky to have met her. Well, her and all of you, of course. But I think he sees her as the older sibling he never had. Judy and I both think that she's a great kid."

Bumblebee only nodded slightly in reply.

Ron cleared his throat and approached the hologram, "You know," he sat down on the hood of the Camaro next to the young, blond human imposter, "When I was young, and had known Judy only for a short time, I always found myself feeling thrown off whenever she had to go and take care of something."

The young-looking hologram turned and looked to Ron, "Oh?"

"Oh yeah! When we were in college, she'd take trips back and forth to her parents house all the time. Even in bad weather, she'd drive over four-hundred miles every other weekend to visit them. I'd always worry that something would happen, but she always came back to me," he smiled, his eyes twinkling reminiscing about the past. Bumblebee thought quietly as he listened.

Ron turned and patted the mech's hologram on the back, "She'll come back. Don't worry yourself so much!" he got up and walked away, back into the garage to look for the tools that he was searching for just moments ago.

-Perhaps he's right... I should just trust that Cat will come back...-

--

"I said, what are you doing?!" the man asked again.

Cat turned her back to the stranger, "None of your business," she replied softly.

"You're at the wrong grave," he grouched.

"Who says I am?" Cat asked.

"Me! That's who!" he spat.

"Well as far as I'm concerned, you're no one... So leave me alone..." Cat gave a low growl in return.

"No one, huh?" the man walked to within about a foot of Cat, "Well this no one happens to be related to the one in that grave!"

Cat's eyes widened as she stood up and faced the man, backing away from him a few steps, "Re... Related how?"

The man's azure eyes were red with a sleepless hangover, and his medium length black hair was in a tangled mess. He took the last few gulps from a whiskey bottle and threw it down on the grave, breaking it into hundreds of small shards of glass. He was thin and looked malnourished. He nearly fell to the ground as he sat on the opposite side from the grave as Cat. He wiped the remaining amount of alcohol from his chin that had dribbled from the bottle.

"We were close, as kids... Our parents weren't always around for us, but we looked out for each other... Then, later on, when she graduated from high school she moved on and hardly ever spoke to me," he explained, "That was until I was called, a few months ago, and told that I needed to make funeral arrangements... I can't even get anyone to tell me how she died..."

Cat couldn't believe what she was hearing... Was any of this real?

"She..." Cat started, the man looking to her as she knelt down on the other side of the grave from him, "She died protecting someone..."

The man scoffed, "Like she'd ever know anything about protecting someone!"

"What would you know?!" Cat spat back, "You weren't there!"

"I know from experience!" the man yelled, "Even after I got my life together and started a family of my own, she'd never reply to the invitations to come and visit! She'd never even send birthday cards to my son, or my daughters! After they were born, it was like she acted like she never had a family anymore! And for just a little over twenty years, she never even called on the holidays... What kind of person does that?!"

Cat was taken off guard.

"Lil..." she started, "I never knew that she had a family..."

"So who the hell are you, anyway? And why are you mourning over my sister's grave?" he asked, sounding as though he were losing his voice.

"I'm... I'm the one that she died to protect..." Cat admitted.

The man's eyes stopped straying around in a drunken fashion and glared, intently at Cat.

"What?" his voice was low and baritone.

"You wanted to know," she replied in a matter-of-factly, "She died protecting me from being killed in an... accident..." Cat didn't want to divulge the details, of course. She'd promised the Autobots that she'd never tell their secret unless she was in dire need to. Besides, the government worked so hard to cover up everything that happened in Mission City. And, although he was related to her surrogate mother, she wasn't about to out the details to just anyone.

"What kind of accident?" he asked.

Cat sighed. Yeah, she figured he'd ask that.

"She worked in a laboratory at the Hoover Dam. Which is why she couldn't tell you what she was doing. She was under government observation, and wasn't allowed to make contact with anyone. Of course you should know that it was because they refused to let anyone know what they were doing. A few months ago, there was a terrible... accident... at the Dam, and to protect me from the debris, she put her body over mine..." Cat looked up to the man with a look of total remorse, "She did a great thing. She died an honorable death. Not many people who work for the government can say that. Believe me, I know from experience..."

There was a moment of pure silence.

"So what about you?" he asked suddenly.

Cat gave the man a confused expression, "What do you mean?"

"What made you worth my sister deciding to take her own life to save yours?" he asked.

Cat couldn't exactly say that she was taken back by this question. She'd wondered the same thing. At the time that Lillian had sacrificed herself to save Cat, the woman was under the impression that the girl was going to die within hours anyway. That, and Cat's body was built to withstand taking those kinds of hits, and Lil's wasn't. The woman had made the split second decision to take the highest probability that she would be ending her life in order to protect someone who was going to die anyway... To this day, she didn't understand why...

"Did, Lil ever mention... That she had a child of her own?" Cat asked, already sure that she knew the answer.

The man looked shocked. Completely and utterly shocked. His eyes were wide, and his mouth agape. Cat was pretty sure that this was the answer she was expecting.

"No... She never said anything about having a child..." he replied.

"Well... She had a daughter..." Cat looked away. She didn't want the secret to be out, but she knew that Lil had left too many answers in the dark for her family, and it was time to shed some light for them.

"Are you..." he started, Cat looked up to him with a cringe on her face, "Are you sure?"

Cat breathed a sigh of relief for a moment, "Yes, I'm fairly certain..."

"You don't happen to know where this child is, do you?" he asked, a hopeful look on his face.

"You know," Cat started, she had butterflies in her stomach. She didn't want to tell him that it was her. She didn't want to tell him that he had a niece. She didn't want to tell him that she was, possibly, his family that he had never met, "I don't know... I haven't seen her in years..."

The mans' hopeful look turned sour as he lowered his head.

"I suppose I should have expected that..." his voice was trembling.

"I'm... I'm sorry..." Cat just couldn't do it... She couldn't tell this pathetic soul that he still had family to connect to... Her instincts told her to tell him the truth, but her mind told her that there was too much at risk. She wasn't sure which to follow, but she knew that she was too scared to admit the truth. She wasn't surprised that he didn't recognize her has having the same color right eye. Her left eye stood out too much to show any kind of likeness to Lil, and the fact of the matter was, that the man was suffering from a rather horrible hangover which probably made his powers of deduction non existent.

Cat reached around to the spot where she had been kneeling before and grabbed the black bag that she had been carrying with her. She pulled the plastic, carefully, from around the item inside to reveal a handful of flowers. In front of the gravestone was a metal, circular looking thing that Cat reached down and turned, pulling up on the tab in the center. A bronze vase was pulled up, Cat placing it right side up back in the circular base and twisting in place so that it stayed standing. She placed the flowers in the vase, then grabbed her helmet and stood.

"I should probably be going... There are some people expecting me and I can't disappoint them..." she lowered a softened glance to the man, who looked even more lost than before, "Can you, uh... Can you get home?"

"I was drunk hours ago... I'll be fine..." he growled.

Cat nodded and turned away, leaving the man to his thoughts.

--

Several minutes had gone by since the strange girl with a yellow eye had left him there alone to his sister's grave. Adam Andrews looked to the stone once more, as he had done all night.

Lillian Abbigail Andrews

1966-2007

The flowers that the girl had place in front of her grave were quite beautiful. Red and White roses. They looked fresh enough to last for days in front of the stone. He turned his head to look away, but before he did, something caught his eye. He leaned forward and reached towards the flowers, moving them out of the way.

A card.

Why in the world would anyone put a card in flowers in front of a grave? No one would read it, of course! He grabbed the card and yanked it from the plastic holder. Getting his eyes to refocus from the haze of his hangover was a bit difficult, but the writing on the card eventually came into clear view.

"I wish you were here to guide me through some of the most confusing parts of my new life... Even though we've never really gotten to know one another, I feel like I could have trusted you to show what's yet in store for me... Happy New Years... Mom..."

"Mom?" Adam's eyes widened. His head whirled around on his shoulders in the direction that the girl had gone... It couldn't have been...

Adam rose to his wobbly feet and began to run as fast as he could. His legs were numb from sitting the way he had been for so long, but he ignored the pins and needles rolling up the backs of his legs and continued for the gate of the cemetery. It took him some time before he finally found the gate, but he slipped out, looking around in a hurry.

"HEY!" he yelled, trying to see if he could attract the attention of the girl if she were still close by.

He looked to the ground and saw fresh tracks of a two-wheeled vehicle...

She was gone...

--

"Hey you!" Cat's head swung around after pulling off her helmet, having heard the voice of Mikaela. The two teens were in the backyard sitting in the back porch's sun room, waving to Cat.

She smiled and waved back, dismounting from her bike and setting her helmet in the lock under the secondary seat. She pulled off her new rider's jacket and laid it over the handlebars of the bike and walked over to the sun porch, sitting down on a chair across from her friends.

"So how'd everything go?" Mikaela asked.

Cat sighed and let her head lay back so that she was staring up at the ceiling, "Nothing ever goes the way I expect it to..."

The smiles on the kids' faces disappeared, "What happened?" Sam asked.

Cat closed her eyes, "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to say what I've done, now. I went up to Meadow Vista, California to visit someone..."

"Visit who? You hate people!" Mikaela was confused.

"Well I wasn't expecting anyone to talk back... I went to visit Lil's grave," she finally admitted.

Sam and Mikaela were quiet as church mice.

Cat smirked, "Yes, the same Lil who you met before Mission City. The one who died at the Dam."

"The one that wouldn't tell us where the Allspark was, even after you told her to?" Sam asked.

Cat's smirk faded, "Yeah, that's the one..."

"The one who let you live like a lab rat?" Mikaela spat.

Cat groaned and rolled her head to the side, "That's the one..."

"The one who-" Sam was about to go on when Cat stopped him.

"The one who helped me escape from the Dam? The one who gave me a chance to start over?! The one gave her life to save mine?! That one?!" She seethed as she stood back up, "You think there's a reason why I didn't tell you I was going to visit "that one" in the first place?!" she stormed out of the sun room and jumped back onto her bike, throwing on her jacket but ignoring the helmet and burning rubber out of the driveway.

Ron and Judy had heard the disturbance and ran to the back door.

"What's going on?" Judy asked.

"I think... I think we just really upset Cat..." Sam replied.

Everyone was focused on the garage when the sound of the door opened, and the sight of the bright yellow Camaro strolled out of the garage and out of the driveway, obviously out to follow Cat.

Mikaela locked arms with Sam and leaned into him, "Bee will help calm her down..."

--

Cat had decided to go where there were less people, but involved a short drive, since she had been driving all day, and she was fairly worn out. She stopped the bike in the gravel portions of the lookout and dismounted it quickly, stomping off towards the lone tree that sat at the edge of the tall cliff. She, roughly, sat herself down in front of the tree, watching the sun as it made it's way down to set. She leaned her head back against the tree, closing her eyes halfway, trying not to think about how upset she was. It was quiet for only a moment, when Cat suddenly heard the purring motor of a familiar Autobot pull up. She rolled her eyes.

"What?" Cat asked.

The sounds of a transformation, and a few "booming" footsteps later, The bipedal form of Bumblebee sat down beside Cat, next to the tree.

"So you decided to tell Sam and Mikaela?" he asked, looking out over the cliff as well.

"I thought it'd be a good idea... Guess that was a bad assumption, huh?" she asked.

"You should give them a better chance to understand. The only things they've seen of Lillian was her stern nature. They weren't there when she gave her life for you, so they're somewhat reluctant to see her in a different light," Bumblebee tried to reason.

"You'd think that they'd be okay with her since she she saved me..." Cat muttered.

"I'm sure there's no question about that. However, their personal experience with her was... Less than perfect," he replied.

Cat sighed, "I know..."

Bumblebee looked down to the young woman. He could tell that she wasn't really angry, so much as she was hurt.

"Did you find her?" he asked.

Cat looked to the ground, "Yeah... I found her..."

"I know that it must have been hard for you to-"

"I found more, Bee," Cat interrupted.

"More? More of what?" The Autobot cocked his head in confusion.

"More than I bargained for... She has family," Cat admitted.

"There are more buried with her?" he asked.

"No... When I got there, my time alone was cut short by someone who was there to visit her as well..." Cat looked up to her friend, "Her brother..."

"I had no idea that she had any living relatives," Bumblebee remarked.

"Yeah... Neither did I... Apparently they contacted him to tell him that he was to take care of the burial plans. And, of course, the government refused to tell him how she died, so I told him..." Cat explained.

Bumblebee looked to Cat, a bewildered expression in his optics, "You didn't-"

"I didn't tell him about you guys, no... I told him that she died in an accident," Cat continued, "And that she died an honerable death."

"That was very noble of you, Cat, "Bumblebee realized, "You could have dismissed him and given him the same grief that you normally give to random humans, but you didn't."

"Don't remind me," Cat smirked.

Another hit of realization, "Cat," the girl looked up to him, "This means you have family! Living blood relatives!"

Cat shook her head, "No, Bee. My genes were cloned from a different bloodline. I'm not even, really, Lil's kid," she looked back towards the sunset, the light hitting her eyes, lightening the colors of them, "I don't even know where my bloodline is from..."

"Or what family I really belong to..." She and Bumblebee looked out over the cliff, both quiet in thought.

--

Chapter Teaser!

Cat was lying down, watching the sunset with her arms proping her head up. It was late in January on one of the coldest nights that Nevada had weathered in a while. The wind was chilly by the side of Lake Meade, and it was getting late. Cat sat up and yawned.

"Better get back to the Dam before I get a call..." she walked over to her bike and unlocked the secondary seat, taking the helmet from it's hook and setting it down on the main seat while she locked the secondary back into place. That's when she heard it.

"HELP!" A child's voice could be heard. There were splashing sounds, as well as the sounds of a child coughing up water, "HELP!" the small voice screamed in a high pitched urgency.

Cat turned towards the voice and ran as fast as she could. She quickly came upon a scene of several children, probably no older than eight or nine, standing by the lakeside. They looked like a small pack of scared rabbits as they huddled together and watched out towards the lake, where Cat looked out to see a little girl struggling to stay above the ice cold water. She was out at least twenty feet or so, where the water was too high for her to even keep her feet touching the bottom. Cat started to run towards the group as she saw the child's eyes widen, being taken under the water's surface. She stopped at the water's edge and threw off her rider's jacket and steel toed shoes as she jumped in, the water was painfully cold, but she swam out to where her left eye was telling her that the fading bio-signal was. Her time was already beginning to run out as she ducked under the water.

--

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