Ugh...uber uber late update. I really apologize. Got a bit stuck and then wrote a one shot...that I haven't posted yet...and started working on another (same idea, different events.) :P Anyways, here this is now. A bit longer than typical. Enjoy.

Chapter 21: The Past, Presently

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Optimus woke slowly, several voices soft in the background. He onlined his optics and blinked at the ceiling for a moment. The voices silenced after a moment.

"Optimus?" Sari asked quietly, popping into his field of vision.

"Hi Sari." Optimus greeted, smiling.

"Are you feeling better now?" she asked.

"Much better." Optimus answered.

"Good." She said, smiling before her face fell and optical lubricants filled her organic optics. "Don't do that again. When Ratchet called…" She sniffed rubbing her arm across her optics.

"I'm sorry." Optimus apologized softly.

Sari shook her head, still sniffing and wiping her optics. "No, it's not your fault. I'm just…"

Optimus reached up and pet one finger down her back as comfortingly as he could until she stopped leaking.

"You're moving apartments, today, and you're getting a bodyguard, maybe two or three, and…" Sari told him, voice still wavering slightly.

"Sari!" Optimus interrupted. "I don't…"

"This time you don't have a choice in the matter." Ultra Magnus' voice interrupted him from the side and Optimus turned to look at him, simultaneously surprised to see him there and embarrassed he hadn't noticed him before. Now that he was paying attention he also saw Ratchet seated not too far from Ultra. "Your apartment is compromised and you are becoming an increasingly sought after target. Until appropriate housing is arranged and secured you will be staying on base in the housing sector. You will be allowed, with guards, to return to your apartment and pack your things."

"Yes sir." Optimus conceded. Although he wasn't overly fond of the idea, he could see the point. He only hoped this wouldn't get too out of hand. He only hoped they didn't attempt to give him an estate like he knew the Magnus had. Or insist he always have a bodyguard. Ultra didn't even have one. Not since the Great War. Sure, he lived with heavy security at his home and at Autobot Command, but he wasn't required to have security going to and from each location, or even when he went out for energon and supplies.

"It really is for your own protection, Prime." Ratchet chimed in.

"I know," Optimus told him, "but I can't help but think it's a bit…too much."

Ultra abruptly leaned forward, servo gripping Optimus' shoulder. "You are my Second in Command, you defeated Megatron, and are held in high regard now. An attack on you, whether or not it leads to your offlining, is a blow, not only to Autobot forces, but the morale and confidence of all our citizens. I should have ordered protection even when you turned it down before." Ultra told him with a level of conviction Optimus hadn't heard from the bot in some time.

"But you don't have a personal bodyguard!" Optimus blurted before he could properly censor himself.

"It would seem that way, but I have caught many an Elite Guard tailing me wherever I go." Ultra smirked at Optimus then. "I have even caught a few cadets doing the same."

Optimus looked away, embarrassed, remembering those times while in the Academy when he had tailed Ultra Magnus out of concern for his safety. "I…I see your point." Optimus half-mumbled. He had actually forgotten about those incidents, now realizing he had been lucky he had not been reprimanded for leaving the Academy grounds without proper leave and quite possibly appearing like a stalkerbot when following Ultra Magnus.

"Wait…you followed Ultra Magnus around when you were a cadet?" Sari asked, giving him a bemused smile.

"I was…concerned. He never had security." Optimus protested, trying not to sound like some creeperbot. "Lots of cadets did it."

"Actually, not as many cadets as you might think." Ultra rebutted smoothly.

Optimus' systems were almost overheated with embarrassment as Sari smirked at him again and Ratchet laughed into his servo. He had honestly thought that lots of cadets followed the Magnus around when they could. With a soft groan Optimus covered his faceplates with a servo.

"Can we discuss something different, please?" He pleaded softly, not sure how much more embarrassment he could handle right now.

Ratchet stood and approached him, medical datapad out and ready. "Well, you still need a full scan and then you will be released to go, with guard, to your apartment to clean it out."

Optimus obediently opened a dataport for Ratchet to connect to before turning to Ultra.

"Sir," Ultra gave him a look. "Ultra, why are you here?" Optimus immediately cringed a bit at his own question, hastening to make it more appropriate. "Not that I don't want you here, but I know you have other work you could be doing instead of sitting..."

Ultra raised a servo to cut him off. "I came to check on you and ended up in a discussion with Sari."

Optimus opened his mouth to say something but caught the serious and hesitant look on Sari's face. She chewed restlessly on her lower lip component and Optimus became worried.

"Sari?" He asked softly. "What's wrong?"

"Well…um…we were talking about, you know, the visions I get from the AllSpark, and, well, Ultra Magnus agreed on the whole tribunal thing, and because he was around before the AllSpark left Cybertron he knew what the placement of each bot meant and…" Sari trailed off.

"And what Sari?" Optimus asked.

"Well, we identified the bot because Ratchet had some idea why and Ultra Magnus looked up the records." Sari told him confusingly.

"So Ratchet was able to identify the bot?" Optimus asked, not entirely sure why she was so worried.

"No, it was because," Sari trailed off for a moment before taking a deep breath and continuing in a rush, "the bot in the witness position was you and Ratchet said he'd made you tell him about some of the locked memory files he'd stumbled across because of the damage and…we…we put all of the information together."

Optimus froze, frame tense. "You told?" Optimus asked Ratchet, vocalizer glitching slightly at the effort it took to use it. "You weren't supposed to…"

"I made him!" Sari interjected. "The images, the AllSpark was getting so much more insistent about it, and when we started putting the pieces together Ultra Magnus told us that Bolter's due to be released from the stockades in a decacycle!"

"He's…been arrested?" Optimus asked.

"The bot, Bolter, was arrested on charges of harassment for pursuing a bot here on Cybertron beyond acceptable bounds." Ultra told him. "But we need to know what he's done before we can but a case before the courts and the council to present him before the AllSpark for punishment."

Optimus' venting hitched. He did not want to have to actually relate the tale. Ratchet had seen a few snippets of those memories while doing repairs and deep scanning. Optimus had been forced to explain vaguely to Ratchet the circumstances of some of those memories and his fear of that bot, but he hadn't related the whole story. Nor did he want to.

"Optimus please." Sari encouraged quietly. Optimus sat up, drawing his knees to his chest.

Taking a deep in-vent he began to speak. "You know that bots still live on the moons of Moriturus. One of those moons, Sepika, is largely controlled by Bolter, even though a council exists. He…runs all of the brothels and prostibot services there. All of the 'pretty bots' are…convinced into his service. The council and policebots either willingly ignore his practices or are…otherwise influenced to stay out of his business. My creators kept me inside almost all the time until I had to go to the Learning Center. Even there, the pretty bots grouped together. Older sparklings warned us off making friends with others because they could be convinced to lead us to Bolter for…favors later." Optimus shuddered, remembering those days, before he was Optimus and before he was Orion, back when he was named Pax.

Pax walked with his group, slowly heading away from the Learning Center and towards the pick-up point. No pretty bot ever walked alone, and because they couldn't even walk in pairs as young as they were, they headed to a neutral location to stay until their creators would arrive to take them home. This solar cycle was no different. Until they reached the building. As soon as they entered they could almost feel the wrongness of the situation, but before they could turn and run they were surrounded.

Bolter approached, smirking as they kicked, screamed, and tried vainly to escape the grasps of his minions. None of them were big enough or strong enough to escape him.

"Well, I really must thank you, all grouping together like this. You make recruitment go so much faster." Bolter laughed, eyeing their frames hungrily.

"Get away from us!" One sparkling, Ramside, shouted only to yelp when one of Bolters many minions yanked his arm, snarling at him to shut it.

"Oh, don't worry." Bolder said, his voice chilling and dangerous. "You're all my property now, and I take good care of my property. When it serves me well." He signaled to his men who then picked up the sparklings, one for each, and shoved them into their subspace.

Pax screamed as he was forced into the cold, dark space, fighting to escape, but he was no match for the stronger bot who held him, and astrokliks later he was fully inside and the servo that put him there withdrew. He panicked, venting ragged, kicking and fighting still, trying to do anything to escape the suffocating darkness. There were no hard boundaries, but he could feel the flexible bounds of the space. Over and over he tried scratching, grabbing, and pushing at them to no avail, his screams and cries absorbed into the silence.

He didn't know how long he was in there, but it seemed like forever to his small processor. Finally he was pulled out. The lights blinded him and the heat was now stifling. Belatedly he started fighting but it was no use. Pax was pinned to a table of some sort by two bots while another approached him with a syringe. Even as he screamed at them to stop he was stabbed and injected with something sickly blue-green colored.

Within nanokliks the world became blurred, colors swirling around, voices whispering in his audios, his frame heated. Pax barely felt it when he was thrown onto the floor. Blearily he managed to notice other sparklings in there with him. It took several cycles before he recognized the other sparklings he had been botnapped with. Some of them, like him, were lying in crumpled heaps on the floor while others sat up, staring at the walls and chasing nothing.

Then things got beyond his comprehension. One moment he was flying through a sea of orange and chartreuse space, then he was falling through a kaleidoscope, chasing purple petrorabbits, and then talking with the pink walls.

The only moment of coherency he had in a long time of hallucinations, colors, and sickness was when he was picked up and shaken, somebot screaming in his audios far too loudly for him to understand. He was dropped again, whimpering when his over-sensitized plating hit the cold floor. Words floated through his processor but none of them held any true meaning to him. Until that one.

Overdosed.

Pax knew what that meant. They had been going through higher level vocabulary the previous decacycle. He remembered that as one of the words that had somehow, he didn't remember now, been related to oversaturated. Maybe it was a synonym? But he kinda remembered that some other sparkling had brought it up. Now it was hard to remember. The green and gold narliphants were talking to him again.

It might have been megacycles or solar cycles later that Pax finally regained some semblance of control over his processor, his systems finally beginning to filter the drug. Yet he almost wished he was still hallucinating because the screams and cries of the other sparklings were infinitely. His attention was drawn to the sparkling whose chestplates were being forced open. Pax froze in horror, thinking he was about to see his friend and classmate sparkraped, but the bot merely seemed to be examining his spark, running scanning equipment over it several times. The bot didn't even bother to close the sparklings plates as he moved on to the next, and the previous sparkling, one he recognized now as Dugbolt, was too drugged and distressed to close them properly.

One by one he moved through the sparklings until he came to Pax, forcing his plates to open and scanning his spark, chamber, and wiring. He tried to snap his plates closed several times, until the bot merely shoved a servo in and held them open, slapping him across the face. Stunned, he slumped back. Finally the bot released him and moved on to the last sparkling. Pax found himself sobbing as he tried to close his plates, only to discover that the gears were now broken from the repeated forcing open.

For several cycles he tried to close them, even managing to raise his arms and try to push them closed with no success. He didn't even notice the other sparkling until his servos were removed from his plates and the other sparklings were put in their place, forcing his plates to close. Looking up, Pax met the optics of one of the older sparklings, Blazer. Slowly Blazer drew him into a hug, the older sparklings plating cool and comforting on his which was still overheated.

The hallucinations and colors faded to pain, sensitivity, heat followed by cold, and horribly upset tanks. None of the sparklings were unaffected, and slowly they managed to crawl to each other, forming one large group in the center of the plain room. Weakly they clung to each other. Even though they had been given energon some time ago, none had drank any of it, too sick and wary to even attempt.

Several adult bots came and went, each either picking a sparkling up and forcibly scanning them, or trying to force them to fuel. They stayed together and fought back as much as their tormented frames allowed. Watching them come and go they realized that, while the door wasn't locked, none of them had the strength to get to it, much less open it an escape. Slowly, whatever hope they bore began to fade, the door taunting them each nanoklik.

Surprisingly, after a long time alone, the door opened to a bot who was neither one of Bolter's minions or his medics. Instead, a bot wearing the colors and markings of the Sepika Policebots entered quickly with the air of one who was not supposed to be there. The sparklings started to speak to him only to have him shush them.

"I'm here to get you out but you have to be quiet." The bot whispered. "You have to trust me. Please."

He picked as many of them up as he could, transforming and placing them in his cargo area. He was a small tankbot model but there was still enough room for them to squeeze in. Hastily the sparklings in the back reached out to help the few still on the floor clamber into the back of the bot. As soon as their limbs were barely inside the bot closed his doors and took off.

Inside the sparklings offered prayers to Primus. They could only hope that the bot would actually take them out of this place. Each also knew it might be a trap, but given their situation, none of them had anything to lose. It was either take a risk and possibly get out, or just get further in.

They could feel the changes in the terrain as the bot drove and the longer he drove the more hope they had that he truly was taking them away. Finally, after perhaps a megacycle's drive, he stopped, opening his doors. Inside, the sparklings were blinded by the sudden bright light. They were outside. Somewhere. Crawling out hesitantly, the first sparkling barely got his peds on the ground when he was scooped up. The other sparklings froze.

"Shadewing!" An excited voice cried and they could hear the excited and familiar trill of Shadewing as he greeted his creators.

Scrambling, they all poured out the doors as fast as they could, each immediately scooped up by their creators and held close. Pax held on to his creators armor as tight as possible, unable to form any words, only cry as much as he possibly could as weak and worn out as he was.

"You'll all need to keep them hidden or leave." The policebot said, transforming. "Bolter won't leave them be if he sees them again."

There was murmuring among the creators and slowly they broke up, each holding their sparklings tightly as they departed. Pax still clung to Divedown, refusing to loosen his grip. His creators swiftly made their way to a space dock nearby.

"Pax, sparkling, you have to let go now." Iceblaze told him quietly, but after just so recently having been reunited he didn't want to.

Carefully Divedown peeled Pax's servos off his armor.

"I'm sorry about this, sparkling, but we have to get you off the planet without being seen." Divedown apologized before carefully wrapping Pax in a woven metal blanket before carefully placing him in his subspace.

"We took several ships to different planets to keep from leaving a trail. My creators changed their designations for each trip. On Nintenduu LXIV they visited an AllSpark shrine and claimed I'd been onlined there. My designation was changed to Orion. We stayed a few decacycles on that planet before moving into Autobot space, to Daffodil II." Optimus finished his story quietly. "I still don't know who that bot was. I never got to thank him."

Sari was now seated on his knee, patting it softly. Ratchet and Ultra Magnus had moved to either side of him and were offering comfort, Ratchet's being a gentle servo on his shoulder, Ultra rubbing his backplates.

"They put you in their subspace after you'd been kidnapped that way?" Sari asked, horrified.

"We had to leave, immediately, and they didn't know until later." Optimus defended them while still cringing at the memory. Even wrapped in a blanket, an energon cube in there for him, it had been terrifying and lonely.

"I will present a case to the council based on what you have told us." Ultra said softly. "Given your account, his crimes on Cybertron , and the Speaker's insistence the council should be able to be convinced to authorize a tribunal."

"You're going to tell them?" Optimus asked, optics wide.

"Your designation will be kept out of any documentation and the council will not be informed until the tribunal itself." Ultra assured him.

Ratchet huffed angrily. "The council shouldn't be needed to slagging authorize a tribunal if the AllSpark demands one."

"I agree, but given the length of time without the AllSpark or a Speaker the council needs to be reminded of this. Unfortunately they are often difficult to convince." Ultra reminded them, standing. "The council meets in twenty cycles. I shall take my leave." With a nod to each of them Ultra strode out of the room.

"There are so many others who would be better witnesses." Optimus murmured softly.

"But you're here." Sari said. "And the AllSpark wants him punished. As much as it likes bots to…y'know, enjoy their sparks, it doesn't like bots being forced into brothels."

Optimus shuddered slightly and Ratchet squeezed his shoulder slightly.

"Is there anything you still had questions about?" Optimus asked Sari, trying to change the subject.

"No, that was all the AllSpark has been showing me the last few days." Sari answered. "Why don't you get some sleep, or recharge as you bots call it."

"Because I just woke up, remember?" Optimus reminded her, raising an optic ridge.

"Oh, yeah, right." Sari looked a bit sheepish. "Well, then, um…wanna play Ninja Gladiator? I have my console at my place…"

"I'm really not any good at those games." Optimus admitted. "Would you like to come and help me clean out my apartment?"

"Sure!" Sari perked up at that. "But we have to wait for your guards."

"I know." Optimus sighed.

"They should be here soon." Ratchet assured them. A few cycles later there was a knock on the door.

Gungrey and Chargeup saluted as they stepped through the door, smirking slightly at Optimus' surprised expression. He wasn't sure who he had been expecting, but certainly not these two.

"We're ready to go whenever you are, sir." Chargeup told him.

Optimus smiled as he slid off the medical berth, holding out a servo for Sari. "Now is good."

Wolf Prime: Well, mystery not solved...yet. It will eventually. :) Sorry this took so long. Have some background. ^.^ Glad you're enjoying this still.

Optimus'girl: You'll find out who later. :) Circuit and programming damage caused the surges. :) Better keep the dcons away from you. :P Glad you like the story still. Hope you enjoyed this chapter.

SavvyEnigma: ...'cause I love to torture Optimus? :P See? He's okay...just not so happy at the moment... thanks for the review. :D

scrin99: Well...sort of :P FLUFF! XD Fluff and bots is fun. Thanks for another review.

Sounddrive: It is a drone meant to surprise and hack bots so it has to be able to pin them down for a while. Think many many limbs and no pain receptors. o_o Nasty drone. It wanted... well, you'll find out later.