The bots were bringing in roller coaster tracks that Denny had purchased and were quickly assembling them. Denny was standing there staring at them in awe as they easily assembled them. "Ah, the Autobots make it look so easy," said Denny looking up at them. "Moving tons of metal like that."
"It is easy if you're three stories tall and can crush train cars with your bare hands," said Russel.
"We must seem like insignificant bugs to them," said Denny frowning.
"How do you think I feel," added Paige as she walked by toward the trailer.
"We give them a safe place to stay and hide," stressed Russel. "That's important."
"We've got a few more bars to bring in Denny," said Bumblebee walking up. "But we're almost done."
An alarm suddenly sounded and Fix-it called, "Lieutenant Bumblebee, there is a Decepticon signal far east of here." The bots immediately left to investigate.
It wasn't much later when Paige heard the startled cries from Fix-it, Denny and Russel. She was in the trailer so she climbed up to peer out the window. Steeljaw and his group of Decepticons had infiltrated the scrapyard's defenses. They would end up using some sort of subsonic noise barrier to keep the Autobots out. She sat by the window and waited while Fix-it tried to delay the opening of the stasis pods. Steeljaw obviously wanted to expand his army. She smirked. Too bad that wasn't going to work out for him. She watched as Denny and Russel snuck away from their captors and Steeljaw sent two of his goons after them. She certainly could have stayed safely in the trailer as they obviously didn't know about her, but she was curious about Steeljaw. At the very least she could act as a distraction and buy Fix-it some more time.
Paige left the trailer and walked into the command center without attracting too much attention. Steeljaw had his back turned at the time as he was looking at the slowly opening stasis pods. Fix-it saw her, but he didn't say anything other than to look at her in astonishment. Fracture's mini-cons eventually noticed her, but by that time she had already climbed on top of the console next to the one that Fix-it was working on. As the mini-cons came her way, she called out to Steeljaw bringing his attention to her.
"So you're Steeljaw," she said conversationally. "I've heard a lot about you." He really did look a lot like a wolf she mused.
Steeljaw's attention snapped to her, he blinked in confusion and immediately narrowed his eyes. He didn't know how he'd missed her before. He hadn't seen her earlier when they were doing reconnaissance, but she was smaller than most humans. He leaned toward her in an intimidating manner, but she didn't flinch or move away. For some reason this human wasn't afraid of him.
"So you think you can take this world when even Megatron failed," said Paige looking him up and down. "I don't get it though." She tilted her head to the side curiously as she observed him. "You're plenty brilliant." Steeljaw straightened slightly at the compliment. The movement was slight, but Paige still saw it. "It's a pity that Megatron didn't have your mind. With your mind he would have won the war and everything would be different. All he had going for him was intimidation and ruthlessness. If someone didn't agree with him, he simply terminated them. You haven't killed any of your fellow Cons yet so your leadership style must be different."
"What are you?" asked Steeljaw placing a clawed hand next to her.
"Complicated," replied Paige. Since she had his full attention now, Fix-it had managed to lock down the stasis pods again. "I met him more than once before the end of the war. Megatron, I mean. He was more of a puppet than he knew back then and he finally realized that at the end."
Steeljaw turned away momentarily his attention drawn to the noise the locked out Autobots were making around the scrapyard perimeter. "Are the subsonics down?" he asked the Mini-cons. One of them shook their head in the negative and he sent the other Cons out to investigate. "Fan out."
"So what do you use to convince your followers," continued Paige pulling his attention back to her. "You might be a convincing speaker and even I like the sound of your voice, but words and flimsy promises will only get you so far. Does it have something to do with subsonics. I'm not exactly sure how that works, but if you can hurt bots with it perhaps you can use it to convince them, ensnare them even. You definitely have control over them somehow."
Steeljaw just looked at her out of the corner of his eye as he turned to an approaching Con. Denny had been caught and returned. Steeljaw picked him up and turned to face the command center. "Open the pods," he suddenly demanded of Fix-it. "Or the human dies." Fix-it quickly moved to comply.
"You'll fail just like Megatron did," said Paige sliding off the panel to the floor. She purposely hit the closure button on the stasis pods as she did so. "The humans live on this planet, but they don't rule it. This planet already belongs to another and even you can't defeat him."
Steeljaw obviously agitated went to reply to her when something flying made him flinch and duck. He dropped Denny to the ground and Paige hunkered down as one of Drift's mini-cons landed in the command center and went up against the other mini-cons. Paige jumped up to the console and closed the pods once again. She ducked back down just as Drift's second mini-con landed right on the terminal damaging it. Denny had used the second distraction to run off again.
The Autobots gained entry to the scrapyard as the subsonic barrier went down and it wasn't long before Bumblebee appeared and tackled Steeljaw. As they were fighting, Paige left the command center to make sure the pods were still closed. She sighed in relief. Luckily she had hit the button in time and the closure signal had been successfully sent before the monitor was damaged. If Vertebreak had escaped, she would have been more than slightly upset. As the rest of the Autobots arrived and Steeljaw was forced to flee, she stood there smiling and gave a small wave at his retreating back.
Paige was headed back to the trailer when she was stopped by Denny. She looked up at him curiously.
"What did you mean when you said that Earth doesn't belong to us," said Denny as he glanced over in concern to where his son was standing.
"I was only referring to an old Cybertronian myth," said Paige reassuringly. "Steeljaw might have known about it if he knew his history. I was trying to scare him and distract him at the same time. I just made it up."
"That's a relief," said Denny walking off.
"Mostly," she added under her breath. She flexed the hand that had been damaged by dark energon and then curled it into a fist. It wasn't something that would impact them in their lifetimes anyway. If Unicron ever woke up again, it was likely he could be stopped. There'd always be someone there waiting to continue the story.
Suddenly she found herself lifted as a black hand closed around her. Startled she looked up to see Drift as he brought her closer to his face. His mini-cons weren't with him and he started to walk further into the scrapyard. "We need to talk," was the only thing he said. They finally stopped in one of the rows in the back and Drift put her on a shelf so that she was more eye level with him.
"Why did you not warn us about Steeljaw," he demanded.
"I'll admit I knew he was coming, but I didn't know when," said Paige sitting down and scooting back. While she had climbed the shelves before, she was still not a big fan of heights. "By the time I realized it was going to be today, he and his group were already here. Sure, I could have warned you he'd attempt to free the prisoners, but isn't that something you should have already known. In order to take over a planet, building an army is step one."
"That is true," said Drift reluctantly.
"If I told you everything I know, you be so busy looking out for it that you might miss something else," said Paige. "Knowing the future is hard and I don't know everything. There is only so much I can remember. It was so much easier during the war." She released a long sigh. "I only try and change things I think will help you. I have no choice to let the others occur as they should."
Bumblebee and Sideswipe came around the corner. Bumblebee was eyeing them in concern.
"We're simply talking," said Paige looking at him. "Did you need something from me?"
"What were you doing in the command center?" asked Bumblebee. "Fix-it said you were talking to Steeljaw."
"Distracting him," said Paige. "I also wanted to be close to the control panel for the stasis pods. I knew the mini-cons were likely to damage it as they landed so I wanted to close the pods before it was inoperative."
"You shouldn't have put yourself at risk like that," said Bumblebee.
"Now you're starting to sound like Optimus," said Paige mockingly. "I couldn't help it. I was curious about Steeljaw, but I was mostly concerned that Vertebreak would get free from his stasis pod. I guess you can say I was there for a self-serving reasons."
"You could have been seriously hurt," said Bumblebee reprovingly.
"I'm fine," said Paige dismissively. "I was fairly confident I'd be fine. You give me too little credit."
"If I give you too much, your ego might be too big to handle," said Bumblebee jokingly.
"What can I say," said Paige. "I've been hanging around Sideswipe too much."
"Hey," protested Sideswipe from behind Bumblebee.
Paige turned back to Drift. "Ask me what you like anytime, but even in the past Optimus Prime himself ignored my advice and the war was still won."
"Understood," said Drift as he walked off.
Bumblebee carefully collected Paige and headed back toward the command center.
