Optimus didn't see hide nor hair of Mercy for nearly three days after that. Which was a tad bit concerning all things considered since he didn't know what she'd been up to recently. And he somewhat worried about her hiring more humans without any input from him.

He had been a bit busy the past few days dealing with an abrupt and unprovoked Decepticon attack and aftermath. So he and some of the others hadn't really been present at the base that much recently.

And the few times that he did catch any sort of a glimpse of her- was when she was dragged out of her room by Sam, Mikeala, and Bumblebee.

Apparently the kids had decided that Mercy was spending far too much time indoors at the moment and they kept randomly showing up to drag her outside for some fresh air and sun since everyone else was gone or busy for the moment.

Which was nice of them, Optimus supposed.

And the fem usually went along with their humorous antics without much complaint. However after this going on for weeks, Optimus and the others began to notice the subtle signs of stress in her.

Well, perhaps stress was the wrong word for it because while she did seem rather stressed about something. She was also getting very jumpy and twitchy. She startled easily. And though he wouldn't exactly say that the fem was growing skittish...

Even he could tell that something was definitely up.

It had been a week since Mercy had begun to display the signs of stress and skittishness, and Optimus was still cautiously observing her odd behavior when something finally happened.

To be perfectly honest, it was something that he nor the other Autobot's had thought would actually happen. Certainly not anytime soon anyways. And yet when it did- they wound up scrambling to do something about it.

It was nearing eleven p.m. that Tuesday when there was a loud and abrupt sounding Boom, like that of an explosion going off from somewhere deep inside of their base. Which was followed by violent shaking and the nearly deafening blare of their alarms going off.

Optimus had been in a state of recharge in his room when it had happened. And the second that he heard the loud boom, he was instantly up and on his feet, and throwing himself towards his door with his gun drawn.

Outside of his room, it was pure chaos. His men were running all over the place trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. And to be frank, they were all fearing that they had just come under attack by the Decepticon's.

Running into the control room of the old ship, he was greeted by the others already trying to pin point the exact cause of the explosion that they had heard.

"What's going on?" Optimus asked as he peered over one of Jazz's shoulders to see what he was looking at.

"I'm not sure, sir." Jazz replied as he pulled up a section of surveillance video and saw nothing but flames. "Alright, that's definitely part of the damaged area. Ironhide, pull up video on area xxx-C13."

"I'm on it." Ironhide said grimly as he did what Jazz had just told him and pulled up the footage for that exact area and then froze for a moment before swearing. "Shit!"

Everyone turned their heads to look at him.

"What have you found?" Optimus asked/demanded.

"First of all," Ironhide started as he quickly slapped his hands onto the screen to block everyone's view of what he'd found. "Has...anyone seen Mercy?" He asked awkwardly looking more than a tad bit...wary.

Everyone took a moment to pause and look around as if expecting the fem to be there just like they were. And maybe they did. After all, they couldn't imagine the fem managing to stay in her room through that explosion or the shaking that had been caused by it and not wonder what the hell was going on.

"I would imagine that she's still in her room since we haven't seen her yet." Jazz said as he pulled up the same footage that Ironhide had pulled up and was also attempting to hide so that he could see what was going on for himself and made a funny sputtering sound as his jaw dropped open.

Optimus peeked over his shoulder again to see what had him looking so...flabbergasted and felt his own processors sputter to a stop too. It was only long enough for him to see Mercy surrounded by fire.

Her long dark hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail, she was in her sleep shirt and nothing else. Her feet were bare, and she had a long steel pipe clutched in one of her hands. She had various bruises and cuts on her face, arms, hands and legs. Her feet were bleeding too from the look of it- though he could only hazard a guess as to why.

He was about to turn around and go and get her. After all, the fem seemed to have done something that she shouldn't have. And frankly it looked a lot like she had sabotaged the area that she was in.

So he was understandably upset with her at the moment.

However before he could take his eyes off of the screen, he saw something...odd. Very odd.

The fire was moving like it had a will of it's own. He narrowed his optics at the screen for a moment as the flames gathered in one spot and then surged towards the fem as she got into what looked like a fighting stance, the steel pipe in her hand was handled a lot like a sword would be unless he was mistaken.

And she was attempting to fend the flames off and dodge anything that got too close to burning her. Optimus's optics narrowed in on the suspicious movements of the flames as Mercy did a one handed back flip away from being hit by them.

It was as if something was directing the fire at her. Flinging or throwing it in an effort to hit her and score a critical blow.

"Something isn't right," He vaguely heard Jazz say aloud. "Fire doesn't move like that."

Optimus silently agreed with his friend. Especially since he wasn't such a fool as to not realize that there was something terribly suspicious about how the flames moved. It also wasn't lost on him that they seemed to be under an attack of some kind and Mercy was the only one fighting whoever or whatever it was that had attacked their base.

"Ironhide, see if you can figure out what's attacking Mercy. Use infrared and anything else that you can think of. But I want to know what we're up against."

"Right away, Optimus."

"Ratchet, contact the human doctors. Mercy will need medical treatment."

"I'm on it."

"Jazz come with me." Optimus said as he turned and started for the door. Jazz didn't bother to argue any. He fell into step behind him the same way that Bee did.

All three mechs raced down the halls with their guns in hand, determined to reach their fem before something horrible happened to her.

Ichigo danced out of reach of another attack and landed in a crouching position against the wall a little ways off and glared at the hollow. She'd known that it was heading towards the base within minutes of it's actual arrival. And that was only because her senses had finally managed to adjust to the EM fields that her...new robot buddies kept throwing off.

And she had naturally run off to see if she could manage to get rid of it before it caused any sort of ruckus that would bring the uncomfortable attention of her new buddies down on her.

After all, they still hadn't figured out just how non-human she was just yet. And to be perfectly honest, she would really like to keep it that way for a bit longer.

If only because of the shock value of the information.

Still, she hadn't expected the hollow to literally bust through she had no idea how many feet of earth and rock and steel just to get to her. Nor had she expected it to sound/shake things up so badly that it seemed as if an explosion had gone off.

To say that she'd been startled by the loudness of the sound along with the violent shaking would be a gross understatement. She had almost literally thrown herself out of the way screaming when some of the ceiling had nearly fallen on her head.

And then she'd spent a good ten minutes screaming all sort of obscenities at the Hollow. Which had seemed to give it pause...if only for a second or so before it decided to go ahead and try to kill her.

Using her position against the wall to launch herself at it- she knew that there would be no real avoiding the flames it was using to try and cook her this time. And that was fine. She was ready to end this thing and go back to her room and collapse for a bit.

However, what she didn't expect was three of the mechs to suddenly come clanging up like a small herd of metal buffalo. Which distracted her in mid attack, giving the Hollow the opening it needed to manage to smack her out of the air with it's tail.

She didn't even have enough time to react before the blow sent her flying into a piece of sharp, jagged, semi melted steel sticking out of the ruins from the ceiling. She gasped when she felt the metal pierce her flesh- ripping through bone and muscle to one of her lungs.

Blood welled up in her mouth and began to run down her chin as she tried to catch her breath as she gritted her teeth and thought. For fuck's sake Ichigo, you've done things like this a hundred times before. Push the pain back, catch your breath, get on your feet and fight!

"Mercy!" She heard Optimus shout. Oh man he sounds pissed, she thought vaguely as a bemused smile curved her lips while he and Jazz both opened fire on the Hollow. They missed the first few times.

But that was okay since the Hollow was starting to scramble to keep itself in one piece while trying to avoid being shot. Which left Bumblebee free to come and help her while it was distracted.

Bee knelt down in front of her, his blue optics zeroing in on the steel piece protruding out of her torso and he made a slightly panicked sound. It was a lot like clicking to her ears, and the sound drew both Optimus and Jazzes attention away from their current task.

Trying to annihilate the Hollow with extreme prejudice and avenge her 'death'.

"Bee! Status! Is she still alive?!" Optimus shouted. Bee made a few more clicking sounds and then seemed to snap himself out of his funk and called back.

"She's alive! But she's injured!"

"How bad?" Jazz called out this time since Optimus was smacked away from the Hollow by it's tail. He slid back along the metal floor, his feet kicking up sparks until he came to a stop several feet away.

Bee looked her over and then called back a 'critical'. But it sounded more like a question since he didn't know exactly know what was considered critical to an tiny organic.

Finally managing to catch her breath, she grit her teeth again and dragged herself forward slowly. Bee started floundering in a panic and resorted to clicking sounds again while he waved his hands around in an effort to tell her to stop fucking moving. After all, the more she moved, the more likely she was to bleed out faster.

She didn't care though. She was so done with the Hollow and everything else that she just wanted to kill the damned thing and then lock herself in her room and wait until her regeneration kicked in and she healed.

The second that she managed to get herself off of the steel, she staggered forward a little bit and felt Bee's hands quickly come up to keep her from falling. She half lay in his palms for a moment or two- because fucking hell that hurt!

Having her heart torn out of her chest repeatedly hadn't hurt that goddamned much. Still, she was determined. The second that she was able to move without blacking out or something, she pushed herself upright and then shouted.

"Optimus, Jazz, hit the floor!"

Both mechs hit the floor as she surged forward to keep from accidentally having to go through Bee and pointed her index finger and screamed, "Take this you bastard- Cero!"

Black and red energy blended together as it shot forward with such force that it nearly knocked her on her ass. Though to be fair, it had been a while since she'd used a Cero attack for anything. And usually she was at least half dead when she did- so she didn't really care if she was knocked over or not.

But she cared this time since Bee was the one who had to catch her.

Still...nailing the Hollow in the head with the blast was all kinds of satisfying. So was hearing it scream before it disappeared entirely.

Seeing the damage that her attack left in it's wake- coupled with having three astonished sets of eyes on her...not so much.