Chapter Nineteen: Struggles of a Puppet

Miko stood off to the side as she watched Jack cry into Arcee. The normally energetic girl only watched and wiped a stray tear from her eyes. Miko could completely sympathize with Jack as she watched the young Prime struggle with his new reality. In truth, Miko had far more pain in her life than anyone would know. To keep control of herself, Miko made her way to the elevator and rode up to the roof.

As the young Japanese exchange student looked out at the beauty in the canyon beyond the masa, she let old pains surface. A choked sob rattled Miko's body. For almost a year, she had been an emancipated minor in the eyes of the Japanese government. Believe it or not, this all started because of the guitar she now held on her back. As Miko squeezed the strap over her chest with her right hand, memories of that day flowed back to her.

The light of the sun glistened off the steel high-rises around Miko as her mom and dad looked around the shopping district. Her parents talked among themselves, and as was usual for her, Miko paid no mind to the conversation. They paid little mind to her anyway, even after they found her in the woods while on a vacation when she was a toddler. The girl came here for one reason, and her goal lay only about four meters away in a small music shop. With a smile that rivaled a supernova, Miko bobbed and weaved around other people before she came to her destination and spied her prize in the shop window. As she fished out the currency for the guitar, Miko nearly vibrated with anticipation. When the clerk handed the precious instrument over, Miko almost flew away from the shop back to her parents only to see a disapproving look on her father's face.

"(What are you doing, Miko?)" The man growled with a noticeable flare of anger in his voice.

Miko turned and calmly answered her father. "(I used my allowance to buy an instrument after I saved up just as you said.)"

The father's face flared red with anger as he looked with distaste at Miko. "(I had hoped you would be sensible with your choice.)" He glared at her. "(Instead, I find you playing with a harsh noise-maker!)"

"(But Dad…)"

"(Enough!)" He growled. "(I am a renowned composer in Tokyo, and your mother is an accomplished First Chair Violinist. You will embrace proper music or leave!)"

At the time, the threat felt like a joke, but when she came home with a flight arranged and her mother packing for her; Miko had no choice but to face reality. With her mind firm, Miko took the ticket and her bag without a single look back. She sustained herself with a small IT business. It didn't bring home much, but the funds kept her comfortable. In Jasper and in the Autobots, Miko found a new family. She would be damned if she let them fall under the violent destruction of The Poisoner as her birth family had.

Your family, Slave? Unicron asked with a pompous smirk in his tone. What if I were to kill them all to get to the Prime? What if I peeled the plating from your precious Wreckers? What if they learned of your true nature? Would they still consider you family then?

Miko closed her eyes and did her best to control the boiling rage within her. "You touch them, and I'll tear you apart! I'm not a naïve pup anymore, you bastard!"

A dark laugh answered in Miko's mind. You never answered my question. Even as the voice flowed through her mind like pollution in a river, Miko felt her legs and arms start moving under the control of another. Prisoner within her own body, Miko could only watch as she got up and headed for the elevator to go back down to the base proper. Thinking quickly, Miko summoned all the will she could muster in that moment and slammed her own head into the steel back of the elevator. The Asian girl couldn't help a faint smile as she slipped into unconsciousness.

In the storm of Miko's mind, Unicron bellowed his rage as the sky above him thundered and flashed with lightning. Then, The Chaos Bringer noticed the source of his wrath as she stood and looked at the end of her fingers calmly. "Why do you not fear me, Parasite?!" He bellowed, "You're trapped in here with me, and I will use your body to destroy The Primes and all you hold dear!" He growled. "FEAR ME!"

Miko looked up, her face in a state between annoyance, amusement, and rage. Then, Miko began to laugh. It started as a small chuckle and grew after a few seconds into a full roar. "That's cute, Unicorn." She said as she wiped a tear of mirth from her right eye. "You think you can threaten me here."

Unicron couldn't identify the feeling that stirred in him as he listened to the organic speak. A shiver ran down the monster's back strut. "Did you not hear me?" The Dark Spark growled. "You're trapped with me until you wake."

Miko nodded. "I heard, but you're a little confused. I'm not so much trapped in here with you as you are trapped in here with me." Miko corrected as a dark look replaced the look of anger on her face.

Miko waved her hand near Unicron, and the giant avatar of stone that had towered over the angry teen seconds before, now stood optic to eye with her. Next, Miko snapped her fingers, and a giant mecha larger than Optimus grew around the Japanese girl with an appropriately sized guitar on the behemoth's back. Miko shrugged from within the mech-suit. "I would have been happy with the Dark Energon powers, but then, you had to go Kokketsu on me and try to control me." Miko smirked as chains of iron burrowed into Unicron's miniaturized avatar, burning like acid as they went.

"You glitch, I will bring down this pathetic hold of the Prime atop him and crush you with him!"

Miko yawned. "You would, but I've confined your mind here with those chains." Miko then smashed a left fist into The Chaos Bringer. Next, Miko roared with fury on par with a Predicon and slammed both her fists into the avatar. Rage and power with it ran through the young girl's mind as she continued her relentless attack on the Bane of Cybertron.

Unicron stood in stunned horror after what seemed to be eons of assault. What should have been a broken and shattered avatar remained pristine despite the breach in apparent logic. "Wh-What madness is this?!"

Miko smirked. "This is my mind, Dickhead." The girl looked at him. Then, she took the guitar off the mech's back and began wailing away on the instrument mere centimeters from the avatar's face, smirking as he screamed and began to break into chips of stone and metal from the sonic destruction done to his body. When Unicron thought she would stop, Miko picked up the tempo again. After a few dozen repeats of this, Miko reattached the sonic weapon to the mech's back and looked down at the whimpering pile of earth. "There are just two…" She paused for a moment. "…make that three things you need to understand. 1) I will never be controlled. 2) This is my mind, my rules. 3) Don't screw with anyone I care about, or you will suffer severely."

Unicron screamed as blue arcs of energy began to course through the chains. The Chaos Bringer trembled in fear before he yelled in agony again. "What…AHHHGGGHHH!"

"Energon-infused chains, so you don't get any ideas." The girl turned her back to the monster as he cursed her. Miko raised a brow as her ears vanished. Then, the girl turned back to her confined prisoner. "What was that?"

"Unicron felt panic rise in his voice as he stared at her in fright. "What are you?!"

Miko smirked as her body shifted into a biped Kitsune with ears atop her head and no human ones. She walked up to Unicron as a large bank vault materialized around him and flicked her tail in front of his face. "I'm not your puppet." Miko growled dangerously. "You are mine."

Unicron tried to attack her, but all he got for his effort proved to be a stronger jolt. "I'll get you for this, you demon!"

With an annoyed sigh, Miko turned and gripped Unicron's neck, squeezing as she hissed, "I'm your jailer until I die." Miko then released her hold on the Lovecraftian horror and glared at him, her eyes the color of blood. "You shouldn't have fucked with me."

Miko woke up with a yawn and a long stretch as if she just woke up from a restful nap. Then, Miko looked around and saw everyone, even Alexis, looking at her in worry. "What is it, guys?"

Raf walked up with a worried look on his face. He walked over and put a hand on hers and looked at her in surprise as if he expected to get a dangerous shock from the contact. "Miko," he said in worry. "You've been out for almost four days."

Miko looked up at the faces gathered around her to see if she could find traces of amusement in the room's expressions. When they remained serious and concerned, Miko nodded in understanding as she surmised what happened from the details of her mental curbstomp of Unicron and everyone's expressions. Now, she needed to understand the other side of the equation. "What happened to me?"

Elita shook her helm. "Ratchet and I can't make sense of the data we gathered. While taking into account your Humanity does adjust the data somewhat, it doesn't explain how you seem to have an immunity to Dark Energon."

Miko knew the "Mom Tone" when she heard it and fought a laugh. "If Dark Energon makes Cybertronians go crazy, and mundane Energon cooks organic flesh on contact, how the Pit do you believe I've been mainlining the purple slag?"

Elita quirked an optic ridge at the small outburst. The femme medic then knelt to be closer to the distressed girl and vented. "How do you know what Energon does to organic tissues?"

Miko froze. Frag! "I did my own experiments with it when I first met you guys." Miko sighed and removed her left fingerless glove to show the chemical burns on her palm. Then, she replaced the glove. "At the time, I thought Energon was simply an extraterrestrial similitude of oil, refined to usable forms within Cybertronian bodies."

Ratchet vented. "If you were curious, why didn't you ask?!"

Miko rolled her eyes. "Really, Hatchet?" The hidden genius shook her head. "You should know me better by now than to think I would enjoy lectures instead of doing my own research."

Raf looked at Miko in confusion before his face settled into a light frown. He then calmly walked over and put his own findings up on the large screen. The data indicated Miko has an unusual immunity to Dark Energon. He looked between the data and her. "You get gassed by a Dark Energon grenade and are completely fine while Jack and Arcee…" The boy's mind seemed to work overtime as he looked at the data and her.

Miko could not take it anymore. "My dimensional frequency differs from anything in this universe. That's why I'm immune to Dark Energon."

Ratchet stared at her in disbelief. He seemed nonplussed. "What?" He cried in mild distain. "You look and scan like a Human."

Miko shook her head in aggravation. "There are other dimensions." The girl smiled and looked at the medic. "As I understand it, Ancient Cybertronians understood the reality of multiple separate spaces of existance." Miko shook her head with an irritated expression. "You know him as Unicron while my people knew him as The Poisoner."

Miko growled and wiped a stray tear away before she began. The day was new. Birds sang in the trees, and the land enjoyed peace. People did not know war for a few generations. As such, the Yokai native to the city of Erdo knew little more than to play, hunt, and farm. Miko smiled as she ran into a dark cave outside the farm her mother kept. Testing his power as her mother warned her not to without an adult, Miko focused hard and made the illusion of a solid mountainside over the cave. Tired but satisfied with her work, the child smiled with a nod of approval and turned to the unexplored cave before her.

Once inside the cave, Miko became entranced by a purple river that ran toward the back of the cave and followed the glowing fluid to its source. There, she saw him. With the innocence of a pup, Miko walked over and sat by the stranger.

The being looked worn and old, his form crumbling before her eyes. Miko knew this man to be sick. "Come with me." Miko offered. "Mommy can help make it all better." Something about him seemed strange. Miko's mother never told her of anyone with purple eyes and a body of stone. "Who are you?"

"Just a traveler…" His voice made her sleepy. Making an illusion bigger than she was took much from the young pup. "You've had a hard day. Haven't you, young one?" The Poisoner asked in a deceptively kind expression before he dipped his hand in the river and cupped his hands to form a bowl. "Drink this, child. It will help you get strength back."

As the iridescent violet liquid passed her lips, Miko fell asleep.

Miko sniffed as she finished the story, her faint memories of her true mother almost breaking her before she looked up at The Autobots around her. "Unicron let me come to my senses long enough to watch my Mom die by my own hand years later and only truly released me once my universe was a dead waste of rocks and emptiness." She stared at the Autobots around her in fear. "I'm so sorry! I brought him here to this Earth after mine was destroyed! He intended to use me as a herald, but we were both affected by the jump. I was reverted back to the age I was when I met him, and he was put in stasis."

Optimus walked up to the stranded girl. In her fear, Miko latched onto her primal instincts and changed into her Kitsune form, pulled her knees up to her chest as her tail wrapped around the frightened Yokai's ankles, and stared into the Boss Bot's optics.

"Miko, you have no need to fear any of my Autobots or me." Optimus said as gently as he could. "Unicron will be dealt with if and when he awakens, but I will never hold your past in another world as cause to abandon you or any member of my team."

The young Japanese girl couldn't help herself as she leapt from the berth into Optimus's right arm. There, she seemed to find comfort enough to relax with a long yawn before Miko smiled at Optimus. "Thank you."

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