Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews and please continue to leave them. I put up a poll in my profile about dealing with Mikeala and the next several chapters of the story arc based on the results. Moreover, as an EMT, I about had a heart stoppage myself in ROTF when the medics shocked Sam WHILE LYING ON A METAL PLATE! Realistically the medics shocked themselves and there would have been two crisped medics and one limp body. Oh well, movie boo boos. Thanks to Phoenix13 for her Ironhide quote to Sunstreaker about insolence.
This series is more than simple humor. It is about telling stories, the why behind the personalities as no one simply is grouchy, or a wrench thrower or fighter. Onward to discovering how our past affects our future, in ways we cannot see.
TF TF TF TF TF TF TF TF TF TRANSFORMERS
263. Do not become caught in the trap of emotional responses. We do not exist solely in the current time. Our long-term existence provides a hope no human could imagine even as it contains pains built one upon another.
The explosion rattled the purple metal walls and shook the floor plates, nearly throwing Arcee onto its heaving surface. Engaging compensators kept her upright and moving, if uncontrollably. She hit the wall harder than intended with her shoulder plating, medical sensors pinging as metal on metal crunched. The small warrior femme's grip remained tight around her blaster as her other hand curled inward and bent as gears failed, cables breaking. "This mission is going sunward. Join the team, attack a 'Con outpost. Instead it's an armory with troops and our recon becomes a full out assault."
Floor debris skittered past her, pulling towards the nearest metal vent as air whistled by. "Slag, hull breach. This is going from bad to pit. All we need now is the chaos bringer to appear," she muttered. Her optical display fizzed as energy pulses built from below. A distinct Autobot signal flared dangerously close. Arcee remained hugging the wall as Sideswipe ran around the corner from the opposite direction, his feet pads splayed wide as another explosion rocked them. Stumbling, he practically fell over her.
"Move it femme! This moon base is coming apart! Cost me a sword already," Sideswipe's hand grabbed her functional arm plate, his strength lifting her pink and white armored form closer. His head swiveled, looking back the way he came then ahead as his sword remained raised.
::Prowl to all forces, you have nine point zero one four breems to reach an escape access:: Prowl's transmission flowed across their heavily encrypted Autobot frequency.
::Status of the reactor?:: Prime demanded, his vocal calm and steady as ever. No sounds of blaster fire, no cries of pain echoed across the transmission as the battle raged around his team. Drones, even on remote coding, still fought as their Decepticon designer wanted. Deadly, fast and shooting at anything moving.
::Unstable and decaying rapidly. Unable to monitor long distance. Rescue team is onboard Shuttle Two and outbound with wounded:: Perceptor answered.
::Long distance is where we slagging had better be soon. Closing on your position now Optimus:: Ironhide added.
::If you had not shot the reactor directly 'Hide, we would not be rolling for our sparks now. Saboteur Team upper ramp by Shuttle One and holding the door open for you slow bots.:: Jazz reminded, his tone teasing and cheerful even as the black and white bot waited in the upper hangar.
::Mission was to destroy this base, even if his way lacked style. Hey! That shot ricocheted::Sunstreaker chimed in.
::Then keep your head down junior. Cross fire don't mean perfect aim. Take these drones down and let's roll. Tired of all this purple coloring:: Ironhide grunted, closing the line.
"Sounds like our cue to go," Arcee vented, pulling free of Sideswipe's grip but staying close. Her foot wheel spun at full speed to keep pace with Sideswipe as his longer strides carried him down the hallway.
"Two more turns and we can access the upper route through the main silo," Sideswipe encouraged, beginning to outdistance her. A quick consult of the downloaded stolen files indicated a third of the moon hollow with criss crossing access ways ahead in the main silo. Arcee hesitated, the ghost of a signal across her targeting mainframe.
"Sides, wait!" Her optics widened, her lip plates parting to yell a warning when it happened. The resounding cracking sound, the ramp way collapsing with the far supports shattering. He missed the laser blast from above, she hadn't. His yellow armored arms wind milling, Sideswipe reached for the platform rail, crunching the metal in his armored fingers as the entire ramp began falling. A thrust of his feet jets sent him upwards clear of the falling purple walkway. Flying towards the next level , he almost reached it as the sniper shot exploded into his side, the pain and shock disabling his thrusters. Arcee watched helpless as he fell, his frame slamming into the crossway below hers.
Arcee winced but kept moving, focusing everything on following the shot backwards. The energy flash sped out from her muzzle, the charge racing upwards until it punched the Decepticon's spark. A fleeting moment of satisfaction flashed across her processor as his chassis slumped, lifeless. ::Sideswipe, answer me!::
::Nice shooting but stupid. Roll for that shuttle now!:: Sideswipe's mental call reached her. She balanced on the ramp edge, gauging the distance between them. Closing her optics she leapt, landing more or less on her wheel slide.
"Not without you," Arcee argued, her hand laser slowly cutting his twisted metal. "Next time you try and land on your feet pads, land on them. Your leg is halfway into this ramp."
"Hah! Admit it, you like me. I knew my good looks would out do Springer and Hot Rim," Sideswipe vented out roughly.
"It's Hot Rod and your looks are not what I want haunting my recharge images for leaving you behind," she countered, lasering the tangled metal apart.
"You need to go. You can't stay," Sideswipe pushed at her, too weak as his systems reset to move her.
"We both leave, together. Either for the shuttle or for the Well of Sparks in the Matrix," the femme said, pulling and tugging his leg out. One look and he closed his optics, knowing he would never walk on it nor lean on her fast enough to make it. A deep pain in his protoform leg core caused his optics to snap open.
"What are you doing? That slagging hurt!"
"Battlefield transform. Realign your feet pads to match mine. I have medical training, should be enough," she explained, holding him down.
"Yours? A wheel?" He stuttered, then arched, screaming.
Exactly one breem later her pink and white armored form rolled down the last hallway, Sideswipe rolling behind, both legs transformed around a wheel slide. His upset voice nearly drowned out the rumbling of the collapsing base. "Side effect? I'm slagging silver!" He yelled, finally catching up to her .
"I said I had medical training, not a chief medical officer! You can upload the paint codes from Sunstreaker! And you're welcome for saving your aft!" Arcee snapped back, sliding to a stop inside the abandoned hanger. "Nothing but a Decepticon shuttle. Figures. The sub light engines will get us clear but it's a slow way back. If one of our own teams don't shoot us down first."
Five breems later, aboard the last fleeing Autobot shuttle, Optimus acknowledged Perceptor's report. "Understood, Sideswipe and Arcee are missing and unaccounted for. Proceed to the rendezvous point and wait for them there. Both are resourceful. Prime out."
"You're leaving them?" Sunstreaker screeched then recoiled as the expanding nova outside the ship blinded them all.
"Reactor blew. All long range sensors are out as are communications until manual reset," a male vocal stated from the back of the bridge.
"This is your fault! Those cannons blow everything! What next? Huh? Cybertron itself? How long until you offline one of us old mech!" Sunstreaker raged a cable's space from the ancient weapon's specialist.
"When you have the experience, CPU, and strength to back up your words, then you can insult me," Ironhide growled, "I won't stand for such insolence from a sparkling with a gun and an over-rated opinion of himself."
"And Sideswipe is alive or you would know," Optimus regal baritone reached the distraught twin. "I have no doubt you and he will be reunited."
"He's my twin! I need him. And I am the best looking, with him around. I am not over rated!" Sunstreaker protested, stomping back a pace to glare at them both. His injured arm reamined hanging but his side, the wires exposed as his other hand actively twitched with his anger.
"Ironhide, you just got promoted to next in line under Optimus," Jazz realized. "Primus help us all. We need to get those wounded bots up and transforming quick."
"Jazz, you are now third in command too," Optimus countered. "Ratchet, transfer the patients and prepare us for a comet landing, yourself including. Bumblebee believes he has found the Allspark world."
"Comet forms? Why?" The medic challenged, his protocols warring to stay with the most critical patients and join the team that could ensure the survival of his entire race.
"It's a technologically primitive world, biological not mechanical based. Only way to reach it is through the Sangster black hole," Optimus admitted.
"Pit! Black hole not space bridge. And why biological? Ain't we seen enough of those," Ironhide grumbled.
"The same black hole that opens regularly but not all the time?"Ratchet grumbled. "A one way trip?"
"Only if we fail. I believe we will succeed and again be reunited with our friends and those closest to our sparks. In the future Sunstreaker, Prowl will be locking you in the brig with your twin following a prank, I have no doubt of it. At that moment be thankful for both their presences and remember my words."
The mech vented deeply then sagged as Ratchet engaged his medical overrides. "I'm shipping him and the other two wounded with Red Alert to the outskirts of the Gillman's asteroid belt. Ultra Magnus' base is there. Prowl too. His spark chamber needs time to stabilize after that blast. I resealed his spires but he needs time to heal fully. And Primus willing, we will all be there to watch Prowl lock this stubborn aft in the brig."
On earth, years later Sunstreaker grinned at Prowl. He walked into the brig, the smile still on his lip plates. His twin rolled past before disengaging his wheel and snapping down his red armored feet pads.
"What?" Prowl asked, unable to imagine what the yellow twin was grinning at.
"Glad you are there and I am in here with Sideswipe. Remind me later to thank Prime for being right," Sunstreaker answered without explaining.
Story Arc
Time for a Change (Part 1)
"Ready for today's lesson?" the sound of Ratchet's vocal greeted Mikeala the moment she entered the Autobot med bay. She glanced around quickly, her long dark hair swaying with the movement. He leaned out of a nearby doorway, his blue optics bright as he smiled at her. "Start by examining the energon samples on the main console please." He disappeared back inside the controlled lab area, the door sliding shut.
Twenty glass jars of blue to brown fluids rested in rows across the table surface. Each lid bore a Cybertronian symbol glyph, many unfamiliar to her. She paused after climbing the ladder, noting the cleanness and exact order of medbay undisturbed around her. "No distractions, time to make my brain work. Labels will not tell me, so deductive reasoning it is." Her hand pulled the datapad from her lab coat pocket, opening it to begin note taking. Halfway through the samples, Ratchet snuck up behind her, moving almost noiselessly.
"Leaving dental imprints on the end of the stylus is not conductive to processing and may result in harm to your enamel layering," he stated, one armored finger pointing at the writing tool in her left hand. Sheepishly, Mikeala wiped the end against her lab coat.
"I know, bad habit. Use to be pencils and now it is a writing stylus. I admit it," she sighed. "I can't figure these out. Let alone the back row."
"Then start with what we know," his armored finger tapped the first container. "Pure energon, suitable for?"
"Main intake lines and processing the main fuel capacitors," she responded almost immediately.
"Lighter blue and thinner consistency?" Tapping the next jar lid, the Autobot medic waited.
"Suitable for lay lines, mild pulsar internal units and optional attachments."
"Mostly correct," he smiled. "At one time our race wore adornments and attachments similar to your use of clothing and jewelry but no more. Our attachments are for survival and therefore not optional. Weapons, sub space pullers are made of war not convenience. The other samples in the row are variations. Suitable for a sparkling, an energon starved system slowly recovering, and related. The next four behind them in the back row I will identify. This one," he reached, his armored fingers closing around it precisely before holding it before her face. "The energon is unused but see the sparkles?" He tilted it side to side, the light reflecting off tiny points of light throughout.
"Like glitter," she answered, half smiling.
"Apt comparison with one flaw. The glitter Annabelle decorates with makes things cuter. This glitter is fractional shards of metal. The mech carrying this was a Decepticon offlined in battle. The shrapnel damage to his pump contaminated his supply. Unusable by us and him, even had his spark remained intact."
"Is that why you flushed Optimus' system after Egypt? Remove contaminations?"
"Partially," he hesitated, unsure how much to tell the young human girl. "There were complications from his combining. Energy fluxes included, from both the Matrix restart and the charged parts. Jetfire had been energon starved and the working engines operated with ancient Seeker energy and the Allspark shard overlay before adding to Optimus systems."
"The Allspark shard Sam and I revived Jetfire with, you mean," she said.
"Yes. And these are past problems also. The two samples are poisoned. This one," he tapped the first lid. "Contains nannites that attach to the nearest charged metal surface and begin replicating. Block all tubes and thereby block energy flow. This sample contains a hidden mixture that solidifies the energon when they both mixtures warm inside a mech's system. Jam up every workable part. Only solution is total replacement of anything affected."
"I can't tell the difference. Not on the outside," she admitted.
"I can, even as they rest there. Then I know what to look for on nineteen different visual levels, how it registers against my finger sensors and the faintest chemical difference in its odor to my intake channels," Ratchet said, his tone flat and without emotion even as his medical systems actively scanned her at multiple levels.
"I can't touch it, smell it or be exposed to it for long as energon is too acidy," she stated, her mind jumping ahead. "This isn't going to work is it? Me being a Autobot medic?"
"I've taught you all I can," he said, sinking down on his knee pads to place his face plates closer to her.
"As a human you mean," she breathed out, her shoulders sagging.
"You are one of my finest students, better than several med interns I dealt with on Cybertron."
She smiled, feeling the compliment for what it was, but not enough. "It seemed easy, learn what you taught me. After Mission City, anything around you seemed easy. I hot-wired the tow truck, 'I drive, you shoot,' I told Bumblebee. It was familiar in a sense. Metal all around me, the truck under my control as I drove us. The explosions never registered until later," her long hair twirled around her fingers as she unconsciously played with the unraveling end of her ponytail. Ratchet listened, fascinated by her memories contrasting with the deep emotional distress of her body readings.
"And the cover up began. No alien war, no damage except for an out of control technology program. Even that forgotten as life continued. They paroled my dad; Sam pursued his college dreams by applying everywhere and I ran the repair garage. Any fighting occurred elsewhere as a brief news clip here on the television, an internet mention there. My family remained within reach, a phone call here, quick jaunt on my motorcycle and I snuggled in loving arms. Sam, my dad, even all of you visiting me in your alt modes to say hi and continue our friendship. I pretended I did not know what was happening elsewhere, concentrating on bills and parts deliveries."
"Egypt changed that," Ratchet said. His optics narrowed as her heart rate jumped, perspiration showed across her forehead and she licked her lips.
"After we found the Matrix, Sam and I split from the others. His confidence overrode my fear and I needed him there with me," she admitted her eyes downcast.
"What happened?" His armored hand cradled behind her, providing security as she rested against it.
"The Decepticons cornered us in a house. We hid inside as they searched through the village. Wheeljack speculated the ancient power of the matrix kept us from their scanners or the residual Allspark energy covering Sam cloaked our human energy reading," she looked at Ratchet without seeing him. Her hands rose to cross and rest against her chest. Their slightest tremble registered to him as the dilated size of her pupils.
"For the first time I knew. In Mission City I had not seen a blast wound, knew what Cybertronian weapons could inflict until I studied with you. That is why I left to return to my garage. If I stayed away, did not see the war, I could pretend it was not real. The life I had always known was there. Quit, plain human life without aliens or danger. Cornered in that house I couldn't pretend. "
"How did you escape? Sam never mentioned that," Ratchet frowned, digitally accessing the stored reports.
"We ran and they chased us from rooftop. I had nowhere to drive, no vehicle to steal or control. No transformer to rescue us until Bumblebee appeared, attacking the transformer carrying Sam's parents. As they fought, we barely escaped getting hurt. All I wanted to do was curl into a ball and hide."
"But you didn't," Ratchet reassured.
"No but I didn't help either. Sam crouched, 'Kill him 'Bee, kill him' watching as they fought and I remained quiet. I stayed with Sam because I was afraid. I thought he had this special protection, heck he survived the encounter alone in Mission City, destroying Megatron with the Allspark. Whenever he's in danger you rescue him."
"And Megatron attacked," Ratchet stated, giving her time to continue.
Her eyes filled with tears. "In my dreams I can hear Megatron's voice, 'Die!' as he fired I see Sam's body flinging through the air, landing on that metal plate."
Ratchet frowned, replaying the scene as the details registered. 'The boy's body lying on metal, the human medics kneeling alongside. The electric shock paddles charging and his body arching. 'Impossible. They knelt by him on metal and the shock would have translated though the metal. That is why their own rules forbid touching the body or to administer shocks in water or on conductive surfaces. Their backboards are wood or plastic with padding on their gurneys. I concentrated on Arcee's blue and purple damaged forms, letting the human medics try to revive Sam. Slag it medic! You know better than to miss the obvious.'
Mikeala began speaking again, drawing him away from the recorded memory packets. "I realized how vulnerable we were. For the first time, I felt small and powerless. Human. I pleaded with Sam to come back to me. To make everything right if he opened his eyes and the war, the pain and the fear would go away."
"He did return," Ratchet comforted. Her crying bothered him even as medical protocols reassured him it was natural and healthy for her eyes to leak fluids.
"Not for me. He returned to save Optimus and fulfill his destiny," Her hands dropped, as though lifeless to rest in her lap.
"And now you and he?" the mech prodded verbally.
"It's complicated."
He snorted, a disagreement sound following from his vocalizer. "Complicated is a setting on an internet social media page not for real life," the medic said. "Not for Sam, he came back to you in Egypt."
"He returned for Optimus."
"He returned for you and his parents and all the earth. The Matrix powered Optimus to defeat the Fallen, thereby saving all of you. His first words were "I love you," not "I love the big red and blue spark mech with the processing sense of a sparkling shoot me now stubborn aft throw myself into danger leader."
She giggled, amused and aghast at his undignified description of the Autobot Prime. "I loved him as Sam the dorky college student. Now he is the human interplanetary ambassador and I am still Mikeala. I tried being your lab assistant, tried learning all I could."
"What do you want?" He leaned in very close to her, intent on her answer.
"I don't know."
"You know what you want, I read the signs in your body language around the boy, and the way you move and smell. Even now I read the answer. You are afraid to commit."
"What? You just said..." Mikeala sputtered, sliding off of his hand to stand.
"You are afraid to commit to your wish to leave. Turn and walk away from all this for a normal human existence. You know Sam will stay as battles continue, the humans discover our existence and all things change. The stress is affecting you, Sam and indirectly us."
She smiled, the faintest trace of bitterness to it. "When this all began, Sam challenged me. Don't you want to say you had the courage to get into the car? Meaning Bumblebee. I chose to get in the car and had adventures for years. I have the scars to prove it."
"We, the Autobots chose long ago as war raged across our world. This world is not Cybertron but Earth. You can do what I could not. Leave into a life of peace and live as you want to, without reservation or regret. Find a mate, bear your children and look up, seeing only the stars above and not dead planets and conquered moon bases. Make your choice Mikeala Banes."
To be continued...