Hi, guys! I'm posting early this week - just like I promised last Saturday! I'm going to be disappearing because of my band tour by this weekend, and I don't know whether or not I'm going to be able to get a jump on the wi-fi.

Thanks to animebella09 for the Fav and Follow!

Shadescribe - You have to wait until April? Yeesh, that's tough. And Maria and Myra being counterparts is highly likely - especially considering what Myra's powers entail.

SabaraOne - Yeah, Myra really is messed up, but Joshua will set around to fixing that pretty quickly! As for the Auto-cons...they're going to get what's coming to them. In fact, you could say that they're getting it while they're off-screen!

And now...onto the chapter!

Chapter 34 - Myra

Maria's POV

As soon as Joshua and I went back to our respective cores, we were pulled out of that particular realm with Myra, causing me to come up gasping for air as I felt the Protocol's hold tighten on me again.

"Protocol: Alpha-Beta: Deactivate," Joshua muttered next to me, and the Protocol went slack and disappeared back into the darkest part of my mind. I relaxed, breathing in deeply.

"Thanks," I muttered to him.

"No problem." Joshua picked up a hammer - since when was he carrying that around? - and he slammed it down on top of the helmet that I had seen Dark Flare - Myra - wearing some time ago. Purple sparks rose up from the metal as he pulled his hand back. "And that takes care of the Cerebro Shell."

I grinned, then gained a serious expression. "We'd better be careful handling that. I would hate to see what would happen if anyone came in contact with what makes this work."

"I know. I'm planning on taking it apart and seeing how it works - with protection, obviously." Joshua used the hammer to push the crushed helmet off to one side.

"What is going on with you three?"

A chill ran down my spine, and I turned in order to see who had spoken.

"Oh. Uh...Hi, Wildfire." I gained a sheepish expression. "The fighting's done?"

"Not quite." Wildfire folded her arms across her chest, frowning. "You two were as still as statues. What were you doing?"

"Talking to Myra," I replied as casually as I could. "We just went, ah...a bit deep, that's all."

Wildfire raised an optic ridge. "Myra? What kind of name is that?"

"It's hers." I jabbed a thumb back at the purple Reploid behind me. "Her real name."

Joshua started to go through his devices and tools, carefully lifting up what looked like a laptop with a MegaMan helmet sticker over where the logo probably was supposed to be. "And we are going to be working with her in order to fix what we can." He paused, one hand ghosting his left ear. "If the fighting is still going on, what are you doing here instead of fighting the Wreckers?"

"The Dinobots beat a retreat; Shape-Change said he said something about the Autobots not being of much use to him if their scientist's secret weapon wasn't with them anymore. Her group merged with mine and she suggested I come back here in order to keep an eye on you in case you did anything reckless." Wildfire's optics narrowed. "I'd say that what you were doing counts."

Myra shifted behind me, and she let out a startled gasp. "Wh-wh-"

I turned quickly and fixed my gaze on Myra's purple eyes. "Hey. Welcome back to the land of the living."

Myra looked at me with a panicked expression, but she calmed down some. "M-Maria?"

"Ja."

Myra flinched when I spoke in German.

"Try to calm down, okay? If you can feel the thing in your neck, that's just Joshua looking over your data right now."

Myra's brow furrowed, and she nodded, but didn't move other than that.

"Keep talking in German," Joshua said. He started typing on the laptop. "Parts of her code lights up in certain areas every time she does."

"And what does that mean?" Wildfire responded.

"I don't know yet. Maria will have to keep talking in order for me to figure it out."

I gave a nod in response. "Okay, Gotcha." I looked down at Myra. "Are you feeling all right? Can you do a diagnostic?"

Myra frowned. "A what?"

I paused. "I'm wondering if you can check over your systems and make sure that everything's working properly."

"Oh!" Myra's eyebrows shot up. "Uh...I think I can...let me see if I can try." She closed her eyes as her eyebrows scrunched together.

Joshua whistled. "That was a good idea. I'm getting a copy of that data over here, too - it looks like there are some conflicts in some of the data." He gave me a nod. "Nice work."

"But what does it mean, though?" I responded.

"I have data running that's a copy of the basic programs that I have - they won't be a complete match, but I can gain some idea of what was added by comparing the two."

I frowned. "That's not going to be perfect."

"I know." Joshua looked over at Wildfire. "Can you get Sir Soundwave in here? He might be able to help me decipher some of this code."

Wildfire shrugged, then turned and disappeared out of the medbay.

Myra opened her eyes. "Everything came back green...except for my head, which was a sickly yellow."

"Which probably means that something's wrong with your mind somewhere," I replied. "We're going to fix that, but it's going to take a little while for us to be able to figure out what exactly is wrong."

Myra nodded. "So...what?"

"You're just going to need to lie still for a bit. We'll let you know when we're done."

Myra nodded again.

"So, 'Fire said something about you needing my expertise?" Sir Soundwave came in, rubbing his servos together. "A little coding shouldn't be too hard."

"Come over and have a look." Joshua motioned to his laptop. "Her coding lights up every time someone speaks in German - luckily, Maria can, so we've been working with that. The problem is that I don't know what we can do in order to allow Myra to be able to have free will without worrying about it being taken away by a few words in a different language."

Sir Soundwave bent over; I'm sure he was squinting behind his visor as he looked at the laptop. "Whoo! That's some messed-up coding. And you want to get rid of the whole other-language thing?"

"Or at least disable it. I know there are some parts that don't match up completely and don't work together," Joshua replied. "That might be the part that I need to get rid of, but I can't be entirely sure. Making machines that are programmed to do something is one thing, but a Reploid is something else entirely."

"Ah, gotcha." Sir Soundwave looked at the monitor for a moment. "Hmm...oh, wow, that baddie really whipped up a doozy. That guy may be a maniac, but he's smart. Except for this little bit." He pointed to a part of the screen with one of his smaller fingers. "It looked like he was rushed at this end bit...oh."

"What is it?" I looked over, frowning. Myra's eyes flicked up to look at me with a curious glint in her eyes.

"Looks like someone was a little rushed and didn't do something right." Sir Soundwave's visor lit up. "We're lucky this time. Looks like he was rushed adding the mind-control code bit. It's supposed to mesh up with a Cerebro Shell - looks like you've already taken care of that problem."

I looked over at the crushed mess and smirked; Myra followed my gaze and her eyes widened.

"Okay. Let's hook her up to a bigger monitor and see if getting rid of that bundle of letters and numbers fixes her up." Sir Soundwave picked up Myra carefully with one servo, while Joshua stepped onto his other servo with the laptop and other equipment he had attached to Myra's neck.

I stepped onto my hoverboard and followed them over to a small computer terminal that was in the medbay, staying in Myra's line of sight at all times.

"Sir Soundwave has a good idea of what's up with your head," I explained. "He's going to get around to fixing it, but he's going to need a bigger computer for his big fingers."

Myra gave a shaky smile as Sir Soundwave and Joshua found an open port on the terminal and plugged her in. "What's going to happen?"

"You're going to feel some tickling in your head and you're probably going to have to reboot," Joshua called over as Sir Soundwave started typing.

"Reboot?"

"It means fall asleep and wake up again, basically," I explained. "You're going to feel all right, but it might make you feel a little woozy or get a headache - one of the two."

"Oh." Myra tried to keep her eyes open, but I could tell that she was starting to have a hard time. "I...I think I'm feeling...woozy..."

Her eyes slid shut, and I couldn't help but feel relaxed. I landed on the computer terminal and watched as Sir Soundwave put Myra down next to me. I stepped off the hoverboard and sat down next to her as the Decepticon went ahead and started using both hands.

"Whoo, this is kid is a real bundle of wires," Sir Soundwave commented. "Sheesh, Ratchet is a real piece of work. It's like I'm walking in Crystal City - I'm gonna have to be careful what I poke at, or else."

I looked up at that. "How careful?"

"Like I'm trying to sneak into Falsey's room to make off with one of his trophies without making him go all trigger-happy on me."

I flinched at the picture. Joshua looked a little uneasy.

"Yeah. This is going to take a while to sort through." Sir Soundwave let out a grumbling sigh. "Man, why did you throw this at me, kid?"

"This needs to be taken care of, and I don't have enough knowledge about Reploid and Cybertronian coding together," Joshua replied.

"Reploid? I thought that she was some Mini-Con!"

"Ratchet doesn't know the existence of the word," Joshua replied.

"It's from another world; of course he doesn't know about it," I replied.

Myra shifted, her eyebrows furrowing together. She gritted her teeth a bit. "Uhhhnn..."

"Careful," I warned, instantly feeling on edge. "We don't want to give her any mental damage."

"Right." Sir Soundwave grumbled something under his breath as he kept going through the data. "Sheesh, this is something unusual. He's really messed with her memories...I'll see if I can fix things up, but I don't think I'll be able to get to everything."

I couldn't help but notice that Sir Soundwave was being a lot more serious about this than he had been when I had first met. I figured it was probably because of Myra and how important she was.

I don't know how much longer they were sitting there for, watching Sir Soundwave work on Myra's head while listening to the communication bursts that came through into the base.

::I see him! Optronix and Metroplex are on the move!:: Seer warned. ::Tronus, beware!::

::i appreciate the warning:: Tronus replied. ::Optronix is mine. Everyone else, see what you can do about Metroplex. I have to settle the score with the False Prime alone::

::Boss, I wouldn't recommend it:: Sideswipe warned. ::Optronix is probably on Dark Energon. You don't want to be infected by the stuff - look at what happened to Wildfire!::

::I tend to agree:: Wildfire spoke up. She was probably over in the next room, but I could hear her more clearly over the communication system. ::Dark Energon is dangerous. Be careful if you cut him open::

::I appreciate your concern, but this is something that I have to take care of on my own. Optronix is my problem::

I couldn't help but feel something roil around in my gut at Tronus' words.

"You want to go out there and help." Joshua clearly wasn't asking.

"I'm getting a bad feeling about what's going on, but I don't think I'll be able to do anything against Optronix," I replied. "I mean, Optimus is big. I don't know how much damage I might be able to do against a Cybertronian like that."

"You'd be surprised."

I turned in surprise as I saw Myra starting to rise to her feet, grinning.

"When I first got here, I made sure that those morons knew what they were dealing with, before..." Myra trailed off and looked away for a moment before she looked back at me. "I think he still has scorch marks where we wouldn't care to admit."

I didn't want to picture what Myra was getting at, but I knew what she was talking about. "But you don't even know if I can do something like that."

"My memories of you out here are fuzzy, but I remember that you threw something that looked distinctly like fire at him." Myra held up a hand, and it became covered in purple flames that I remembered could burn me. "If they're anything like my Mental Flares, then you should be able to do some damage."

"Mental Flare?" I repeated. "No wonder I couldn't absorb your attack using my Flash Fire!" I held up my right hand, allowing my fire to appear. "Your attacks are mental constructs like Psystrike! That's awesome!"

"Psystrike?" Myra repeated, frowning.

"It's the name of another attack I know about - don't worry about it." I let the fire on my hand dissipate as I waved off Myra's look.

"I find it interesting that your powers show up as fire, like Maria's does," Joshua commented, coming over. He disconnected the cable from Myra's neck - causing her to flinch a bit - and started coiling it up. "That might mean that the two of you are counterparts in some way."

"You think so?" Myra gave Joshua a curious look.

"Maybe." Joshua paused. "I don't know if we managed to take care of everything that Ratchet did to you, but if you're able to interact with us like this, then you're probably going to be all right for now. The next chance you get, find someone you can trust with robotics and see if they can find anything that might be damaging to you."

Myra frowned. "But...hmm. Well, there's one person, but I don't know if they're going to be able to do much. Besides, I can't go home yet."

I blinked at that. "You can't? Why not?"

Myra shrugged. "A friend of mine blocked me out. She said I had to go on a long journey or something like that, and that I won't be able to go home until I'm done."

"Wait - blocked you you? What do you mean?"

Myra shuffled from one foot to the other. "I...I'm not sure if you'll be able to believe me. It's...pretty out there."

"Well, we've seen some pretty 'out there' stuff. I mean, I'm calling you my counterpart for a reason." I shrugged, then paused. "Wait. Are you saying that you don't belong in this universe's Earth or on Cybertron?"

"Earth?" Myra frowned, then shook her head. "No. My world's called Gaia, but most people just call it The Planet."

Joshua gave Myra a sharp look at that. I frowned.

"The Planet? You guys mustn't have a very big space exploration thing going on right now." I shook my head.

Myra shrugged.

"While this chat is all fine and dandy, Boss is getting himself into a big mess out there, and he's going to get himself blown straight to the AllSpark because he doesn't have Dark Energon guzzling through him like the False Prime does," Sir Soundwave spoke up. "If you want to give him a hand, you'd better do it now - and get your buddies together, too, because if we can keep Optronix back, now's a good time as any to get you all out of here before he gets any ideas about you. And then there's that stupid walking titan to knock into next week!"

Joshua and I exchanged looks while Myra stared at us.

"You mean you're not from around here, either?" Myra asked in surprise.

"Nope." I shot Myra a grin. "It's my job to make sure things are all right for the good guys in each dimension, so when I heard how things were going in this dimension, I thought it'd be a good idea if my friends and I stepped in and helped out. If you've got a journey that you have to go through, maybe we can help. I've already got to get somebody else home, anyway-"

"No." Myra shook her head. "Thank you for the offer, but I have to do this on my own. If it's your job to make sure things are all right in other places, maybe we'll be able to run into each other again."

I blinked at that, a little surprised that Myra had just turned down my offer to help her out, but then I gave a nod in response. "Well, if you're so sure about it, then I won't try to persuade you otherwise. But...how are you going to get to other places, if you don't know where you're going next?"

"I get premonitions." Myra rubbed the back of her head. "It took me a while to get used to them back home, because of...Let's just say that nobody else really knew anything about my powers or how I could use them because I was the only one who had them. I'm starting to get used to them, but-"

"It's hard, when you don't have someone with abilities similar to yours." I nodded. "I get what you're saying. I'm the only one besides my Cybertronian friend Wildfire who has abilities like this. Only my siblings, Joshua, and his cousin really have abilities that could be considered superhuman back home, and Joshua and I aren't human anymore - not that very many people know about that." I clapped a hand on Myra's shoulder. "Still, if what the Hatchet did to you starts causing trouble, try to get into contact with someone from a world called Neo-Earth. Depending on where you end up, you should try to talk to the head robotocist there who isn't trying to take over the world - usually, that's Dr. Light."

"Or Dr. Cossack," Joshua spoke up. "And if you can't get into contact with either one of them because they're trying to take over the world, Dr. Wily should be able to give you a hand. We know him as a villain, however, so I would suggest you be cautious. If you end up in a time where they don't exist, find a Reploid known as MegaMan X, or Sigma if X is the villain. They should be able to find the help that you need."

Myra gave a nod. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

"Hello? Are we gonna get moving or not?" Sir Soundwave asked. Already, he was inching towards the door of the medbay. "Because I'm not going to leave Boss out there without backup."

I turned and looked at the mostly-white mech and gave a nod. "Right. And we need to get everybody together so that we can get back to our own world, too." I jumped up and landed on my hoverboard, causing Myra's jaw to drop in surprise. "Do you think you can carry these two, Sounders? I'm going to fly ahead and see about getting Wildfire and the others together."

::Way ahead of you, kiddo:: Wildfire responded over the comm. ::We've got a good view of Tronus and Optronix right now::

"And Metroplex?"

::He's been taken care of::

I frowned. "The giant Auto-con's been taken care of? I thought that he was-

::We may have had some...unusual help::

::Tronus seems to be losing strength:: Seer added worriedly. ::Hurry, Maria::

I gave a nod. "Right. Let's go, guys."

Oh, boy. Sounds like Myra's fixed up thanks to some handy help, and everyone's clearing out to the battleground in order to find out what's going to happen between Optronix and Tronus!

As for Metroplex, well...unusual help indeed. Unfortunately, Maria's only going to see the aftermath from that; she's not going to figure out what really happened until much later.

Anyway, I'll see you next time I update! It probably won't be on a Saturday this week or next week, but I will definitely be posting in two weeks! See you then!