Disclaimer: I only own my OCs. Vox belongs to a friend.

Rumble: *glances at title* Welp, somebot is dying.

Lizzie: *confused and not looking at title* Why do you say that?

Frenzy: *points to title* That.

Lizzie: *looks* Oh no. *glares at Authoress* If you kill any of the Decepticons that I am close to...or just any who don't hate me, then I will hunt you down and make you regret starting to type this.

Authoress: *neutral* We will see what happens when it happens. *walks away*

Skywarp: *nervous* Why does that scare me more than anything she has done before?

Chapter 23: Spark Fall

Lizzie's 1st P.O.V.

"Why can't we drop this already?" I grumbled over the comm as I explored the cliff I stood on.

One week. That was how long it had been since the incident at the club. Ever since, I couldn't move out of the sight of the others without being bombarded with their concern or worry. Don't get me wrong, I was glad that they cared, but a week of almost an entire ship of mother hens could get really old really fast. I was lucky that I was able to get out here as it was.

This cliff I was on was supposed to have one of the relics from the Praxian database. With everybot being such worry-bots, I had asked Lord Megatron, the only bot who was not in my house of enemies that was not smothering me, if I could go and start uncovering the relic at this location. He, thankfully, agreed that I could go alone and I had been searching this area for the better part of a cycle now. If it wasn't for my armor and helmet, I would be roasting in the sun.

"Because you could have been hurt, Lizzie. We should have been keeping an optic on you in the club and we didn't." Rumble argued.

"Yeah, we went to clubs on Cybertron, even during the war, and we know the dangers. But, we slacked off because...it was a human club." Frenzy added, a shameful sound in his voice as he said the last part.

Well, there was a nice blow to my ego. But, admitting that they slacked off before screwing up helped a little, even though I didn't blame anyone but the men who drugged me and myself, for allowing that to happen.

"Enough! I've already explained to all of you that I'm the one who messed up. You all were there to interact with humans and learn to blend in while I simply was supposed to observe. My older friends, ones who could legally drink, always warned me to never let my drink out of my sight in public. If I did, I wasn't supposed to drink it. I did both things against what I was told."

The twins, who I were talking to right now, were reacting the worse followed closely by Starscream. Seriously. Those three were going to be the death of me...and that was impressive since Airachnid and Astrotrain probably wanted that same thing.

"But Lizzie," Frenzy started to argue.

I was not having any of that though. "Seriously mechs, Michael saved me and involved you all. So, I'm alright and, from the article Shockwave showed me, the men who tried that were taken care of." An involuntary blush appeared on my face when I mentioned Michael. He...he kissed me. I know he did it to trick the men who drugged me but, I couldn't forget it. That was my first kiss. And his eyes. They looked so familiar to me as I thought back on them. But, I wasn't sure where I could have seen them before. Honestly, the only thing that I knew about Michael was that I owed him, and I owed him big time.

"Fine." I heard a strained response come from Rumble. "But did you have to go and leave the base? Boss bot won't even let us come and see you. Said something about 'steam' and you letting it off."

I sighed as I continued to look around. I really did need to let off some steam but I could hear that they sounded hurt. Better make them feel better. They did share a bed with me and all. "I just needed to get away from base for a while mechs. While humans are social beings, we do need times to ourselves and, honestly, I don't get a lot of that on the Nemesis. So, I figured I could get that done and look for this relic as well." Plus, I didn't say this out loud, but I seriously needed to get away from the mother hens. Outside of the twins and Starscream, the others had been worrying about little things that, before the club incident, they didn't worry about.

The final straw had been this morning when Ian Amsel, Blitzwing's Icy personality, walked into the shower because the twins and all of his personalities had been worried when I had taken longer in the shower than normal at the beginning of this solar. That definitely got my heart rate up and Soundwave had been in the wash rack faster than I could blink and Blitzwing, after Ian had returned to his chassis, had bolted away from the angry TIC.

Whenever my heart rate got up over the past week, Soundwave didn't hesitate to intervene, which was his mother hen action. Nightmare, jump scare, and anything else that got it up, he was there. Frag, he even interrupted training the fourth solar after the incident. After this morning, I was hoping that Soundwave realized he was getting too into my business and backed off a little. That would be one down, and almost a whole ship to go.

"Okay…" Rumble started. After a minute, he continued. "Fine, we won't worry about that." He had a knowing tone in his voice. What was that about? It almost sounded like he had a smirk on his face. The tone of his voice was just saying that I was going to like this change of conversation even less. "Answer us this then; what's with how you've been acting when Lord Megatron is mentioned?"

I felt panicked, though I kept my body under control so Soundwave wouldn't freak out, as I heard that question. How was I acting around our leader? Was it bad? I needed to know! "What do you mean?" I asked as the scanner in my hand showed that the relic was under this cliff, and just under the edge of the cliff.

Once I put the scanner away and started to walk toward the edge, Frenzy picked up with the same tone in his voice that Rumble had in his. "What does he mean? Ever since that training session you had with his soliform, your face turns red and you can't look at anybot in the optics when he is brought up...especially when they talk about you and him training again eventually."

Once I got to the edge, I paused as a burning heat passed through my cheeks. Damn, I was hoping that wouldn't be brought up. The way we had landed at the end of the training session…it had been way too close. I had felt his breath against me, and it had felt so real. I wasn't used to being so close to people period...and especially guys. Plus, it didn't help that Lord Megatron had made his soliform so close in age to my own age and he did look…Shaking my head out of diving down that one-way ticket to death, I grabbed a hold of the ledge and climbed down so I was next to where the relic was supposed to be. I saw what seemed to be the corner of one of the canisters that were seen in season two that held relics. This had to be it.

Since I still had to answer the twins, I decided to give one of the reasons for the blushing...though definitely not the major factor of it. "It was just, I thought I was doing good on my training in fighting." I then paused and took out the dagger that I carried on my armor before I started to dig. "It was a bit of a blow to my pride that Lord Megatron was able to take me down so quickly. I figured I could at least last a click in that fight. But, I was pinned down before I could really get going. It was a hard blow to my thoughts that I still had so far to go. So, it caused me to be embarrassed. I'll get over it eventually." By this time, I had the relic pretty much loose so I searched my frequencies and added Soundwave and Lord Megatron in on the call. "Soundwave, I almost have the relic unearthed. Has its GPS tracker popped up yet?"

"Negative. Readying for bridge to open beneath you. Leap of faith." Soundwave responded. So, that meant that the signal was still covered by the rock and that he was going to open the bridge under me in a click or two. Once I heard that bridge open, I would wretch this canister out of the ground and fall through the bridge. Should be a rush compared to everything that the others were letting me do lately.

As I reached up toward the canister, I heard a bridge open, but it sounded like it was behind me and not beneath me. "A little off their Soundwave. That opened behind me...not below me." This wasn't like Soundwave but, as I grabbed the canister and started to pull, I felt a cold chill run up my back as a second bridge sounded to open beneath me. Almost in tandem, I heard the sound that I heard all the time on videos during my strategist training and during live feeds of the battles.

Instinctively, I yanked at the canister and, almost instantly as I started to fall as a blue light enveloped both me and the now disintegrating ledge. As I felt myself turned and thrown against the side of the cliff from the force of the blaster that just hit me, I saw a blurry figure. It wasn't Decepticon. It wasn't…

As I fell through the bridge and my back hit something hard, my vision went dark.

Skywarp's 1st P.O.V.

I was freaking out right now and I didn't do freak out well. That was especially since, when I walked in just now, the twins had started to freak out before Soundwave opened his bridge. Something was wrong and it had to be something with Lizzie. Frag it! My brother was right. She was the sole incarnation of bad luck! She was pushing us all away after the club incident and, while Blitzwing might have gone a little too far, we were all a little more cautious around our human Decepticon. Well, everybot except for Airachnid and Astrotrain of course.

And, surprisingly, Lord Megatron. I figured that, since she was the frailest of his current Decepticons on the ship, that he would at least want to keep an optic on her to avoid losing one of us that he trained himself. But, he let her have her space. If it wasn't for the panic right now, I would say that was a good call. Of course, I wasn't going to be sharing these thoughts with Lord Megatron.

I flinched as Lizzie suddenly fell through the bridge at a fast speed and her back slammed into the ground. That was going to hurt her later, that I knew. But, the suit would have stopped anything from breaking. That was one positive. But, if Lizzie thought we were bad before, then she had no idea what we were about to do now.

Lord Megatron walked up to where Lizzie was laying, the bridge above her already closed before he reached down and took the relic canister away from her. It was weird how her arms fell next to her but I figured she might be tired from the fall. I knew I wouldn't be ready to hop up after falling that length for my height.

I focused back on Lord Megatron as he opened the canister's top before taking it off. When Lord Megatron hesitated, I was nervous. Just what was the relic in that canister that would make our leader hesitate? We had found everything from data-cylinders to swords to cannons. Something had to be different from…

No way.

My spark stopped when Lord Megatron carefully took the relic out of the canister. That...that was… "The spark extractor." Our leader stated as he held the relic for all of us to see. I wasn't sure if Lizzie knew why this was so important but she should be able to guess from the name that it was dangerous and would give us a huge edge in the battle for Earth.

Wait...why hadn't Lizzie said anything yet? I doubted she knew anything about the extractor and she would normally be asking a ton of questions about something like this. But, as I glanced back at her, she was still just laying there. She wasn't making a sound and her breathing seemed quiet and, if it wasn't for the fact that her body was moving as she took a breath, then I would question that she was.

"This...I thought this was destroyed?" Starscream asked in shock.

Our leader nodded and handed the device to Soundwave before turning to Lizzie. "Lizzie, this is good work. After you debrief with Shockwave, you are to take the rest of the solar to recover." That worry I was feeling multiplied as no answer came from Lizzie. Just that continual small breathing. This definitely wasn't right. Even after an intensive servo-to-servo training session with all three of Blitzwing's soliforms against her, she would answer Lord Megatron almost immediately. "Ms. Val." Our leader spoke a little louder. Still no reaction. "Val!" We all flinched as he yelled that. Well, everyone except for Lizzie. Like she had since she fell through the bridge, she continued to take those small breaths. "Knockout, examine Lizzie."

"Yes, my Lord." Knockout responded before transforming and using his soliform to walk up to Lizzie. I could see Kalan's, Knockout's soliform's, reaction as he pressed his fingers against her neck. From what little I knew about making sure a human was alive, that was where you checked for a pulse. Kalan's looked hardened before he reached under Lizzie's helmet and undid the latches before taking it off.

I knew as soon as he did that something was wrong. Lizzie's skin looked sickly and there were dark circles under her eyes. Knockout seemed to react to this immediately by deactivating his soliform and transforming before moving to Lizzie and scanning her body. "Knockout, report." Lord Megatron asked.

You could cut the tension in the room as the scanner beeped. "Energon poisoning. Must have been from whoever came out of that first bridge Lizzie mentioned." He then picked her up, gently, before turning to Lord Megatron, "My Lord,"

"Permission granted. Go, and take who you need." Lord Megatron responded to Knockout. It was obvious what Knockout was going to ask our leader. He needed to get to work on Lizzie, and quickly.

Since my warping ability might help, I didn't even wait for Knockout to ask as I followed him to med bay. Plus, I could help keep tabs on Lizzie's condition for T.C. and 'Scream. It was almost hard to focus on keeping up with Knockout as I felt their worry. This wasn't good at all. All Knockout had said was that Lizzie had been overly exposed to energon. But, she had never been exposed to energon before. We didn't know how to work with Lizzie with energon in her body.

When we reached med bay, I wasn't surprised that Joe was already here. Both he and Knockout had been working extensively in studying human medicine. They were both the most qualified to work on Lizzie. Hook had said that, since we only had Lizzie as a human to worry about, that both of them studying at the same time would detract from time that they needed to work on us all. He was going to learn after Knockout studied all he thought he needed to. Given Knockout's perfectionist tendencies, then we all knew that was going to be a while.

As Knockout set Lizzie down on the berth, which seemed too big to be holding her, he motioned to Joe. "We can't waste any time. The energon is already spreading into her systems and we have to try and stop it without opening Lizzie up. Since the energon probably came in through blaster contact, given the bruising starting to form on her body, then it would be pointless to open her up. We have to find a way to stop this, and quickly.

While I wanted to stay and keep an optic on Lizzie, I had a feeling I wouldn't be able to. "All Decepticons hearing this message, report to the ground bridge immediately. The Autobots are attacking mine CC-3436." While I didn't want to leave Lizzie, I knew that I had to follow orders. So, I took one last look at Lizzie before I ran out of the med bay and to the ground bridge.

Knockout's 1st P.O.V.

Frag it all to the Pits. Once I got my servos on whatever bot shot at Lizzie, I was going to make sure that their offlining was slow and excruciating. Even with her armor on, Lizzie didn't look different from any other human that would be seen on Earth, and they were eccentric enough that thinking she was anything but another human was impossible. But, none of the Decepticons were located anywhere near Lizzie to have done this. No, this had to be the work of the Autobots. I wanted to say that I was surprised, but I really wasn't. With the Autobots currently on Earth, I could think of a servo-full that might do this to a human.

"Joe, keep that line in. We need to keep her as stable as we can." I growled at my assistant for this. While Breakdown was my assistant for normal situations, this was anything but normal. Since Lizzie was human, and the only organic on the Nemesis, then there was a limited amount of knowledge that we knew about caring for them. While Breakdown did know a little about human health, for when he trained with Lizzie, Joe was more informed on the subject and that was what I needed right now.

"Knockout, her blood-pressure is dropping!" Joe yelled out, causing me to look up from the scans that I was doing.

Rushing to his side, I took in the situation before saying, "Get her on oxygen and get fluids going into her. We need to get her blood pressure back to normal." Joe nodded and, as he went and grabbed the fluids, I got the oxygen mask over her face before I continued my scan. Her body seemed to be reacting to the energon in her body like it was an infection.

So, while Joe hooked up the fluids, I grabbed another line, making sure that the antibiotics were in there, before hooking Lizzie up to it. Scrap this is not good! I didn't know how to treat a human that had been infected with energon! We knew that energon was dangerous to humans, but Lizzie was always so cautious around the substance that we never had to worry about it...well, until now that is.

"Knockout!" I had a feeling that was going to be hearing that tone a lot during this issue. Turning, I felt my optics widen when I noticed Lizzie's body convulsing. Slag! Slag! Slag!

Running up to Lizzie, I continued to focus on how my scans were updating as we treated these reactions that Lizzie's body was having to the energon. As useless as I felt in just treating the symptoms, that was all that we could do as we learned more about what was going on in her body.

As I treated our human Decepticon, however, my thoughts drifted to her circumstances. Was it the fate of Lizzie to always have to fight for her life? In broad senses, this was the second time that Lizzie had fought for her life. The first time was when she worked to earn her place in the Decepticon fold. If she would have failed her test, then she would have been killed. We had all seen examples of how smart she was, given that she was able to prank the twins who were legendary for pranking without being pranked. But, her loyalty had been in slight question, given her mysterious appearance onto the Nemesis before my own arrival. But, that fight for her life had ended with her victory.

Now, as I looked at the human, I found myself hoping to anything that would listen that Lizzie could pull out of this again. She needed to. I knew that, technically, this was out of her hands. Her mind, from my scans, was struggling just to keep her body functioning, let alone fight against the energon that was attacking her systems.

While she wasn't stable, Lizzie seemed to be doing alright enough for me to look into the medical notes that I had for her. Thousands upon thousands of articles that humans posted on human problems, one of these had to give me answers. It had to! There were human's whose sole purpose in their short lives was to study the makeup of their species and determine how best to treat it in many situations. There were many articles but, so far, there was nothing that was going to help me treat Lizzie. Dog bites, snake poisoning, fish poisoning, bacterial infections, fungal growths, blood poisoning...none of these were getting me anywhere! What use was human medicine when it couldn't help me when I needed it?!

I let out a growl as I switched my focus from human medical articles to medical books. There seemed to be just as many of those as there were the articles. Plus, I didn't hold back. Not only did I look at their most recent medical books, but I allowed myself to delve further into their past to see what 'ancient' humans would do in different medical emergencies. The soul cleansing seemed like a good idea, but the time the process would take would take too long. Lizzie, while it seemed she was fighting to stay alive, would not have the energy to keep up the fight for another week. It would be a miracle of Primus if she lasted that long.

So, while that seemed promising, I moved away from that and focused back on physical remedies. The medicine we were pumping into her now was not stopping the energon...only fighting back as it was pushed further into uselessness.

I jumped when I felt a servo tap on my shoulder. "What is it?" I asked Joe. I was stressed about this entire thing and I wasn't sure if my processor could take something else going wrong right now.

"Could we possibly try and draw out the energon like humans do when they donate their plasma?" His question seemed so strange but, as I thought about it, I realized that it might just work out.

"Quickly. We don't have a lot of time. This could work for us." I told him as I moved to make the preparations. While this seemed like a hopeful tactic, I knew that a lot of what we were doing was guesswork. Everything that we were doing could, in reality, just be making Lizzie's condition worse. But, with the presence of energon, then we couldn't take her to a human facility and I was sure that Lord Megatron would have all of our helms if we involved another human with the Decepticons.

Lizzie was still our test run. While she was done with her own tests, we as Decepticons were still using her to test interactions with humans and how to deal with humans. Something told me that this situation would be critical for future human interactions that we made. If we….no, if I couldn't get Lizzie stable and on the road to recovery, well...it would change everything.

Starscream's 1st P.O.V.

Slag this femme was annoying. The two-wheeler in front of me, Chromia, knew how to fight and it was making it hard for me to think about anything but the fight. While that was normally something I should do, I was worried about Lizzie and her condition. These fragging Autobots, claiming to be the champions of the humans and fighting for them, I wonder how they would react to know that one of their own had injured the human that they were wanting to save? I bet they would have second thoughts on their whole philosophy. Hypocrites. That was what it was to be an Autobot it seemed.

I flinched as the femme lashed out at me with her wrist blade and I had to dodge backward to avoid it. My wings scraped against the wall of the cave and I couldn't stop a grimace from coming on my faceplate. It was too tight in here. I wasn't normally in the mines, but this was a major stronghold of energon for our troops. While we didn't need the energon as much anymore, since the soliform program had been tested and the food they ate could be converted to energon for our chassis, it would still be a major loss if we allowed this mine to fall to the Autobots. With their possession of the energon harvester, then they could take the resources from this mine faster and, with the amount of energon in this mine, we were looking at them being set for quite some time.

With how the Autobots seemed to be fighting, I had a feeling that we were going to be in this battle for quite some time. This, for them, was a gift from Primus if they could get it. We wouldn't let them take it, though. There were contingency plans that could be put into immediate action to make sure that they were not able to get this energon.

I had heard the Autobots say that they were outnumbered by us. It was almost enough to make me laugh. True, we did have the drones. But, their fighting ability on the battlefield was just above Lizzie's, in all honesty. While we were working on remedying that, right now they were barely useful for us. They weren't proficient at fighting. The Autobots could send just one of their scouts against a platoon of drones and the Autobot had the higher chance of coming out of that confrontation alive. In all terms, we were on equal terms in numbers, and our side had more tanks to keep filled with energon. Logistically, we were at a greater disadvantage than the Autobots were. But, they wanted to show us as the pure villains and, what kind of 'hero' had the advantage over their enemy? Slag one of Lizzie's reports had even focused on this disadvantage in our troops and how the enemy might misconstrue it.

With that thought, my processor returned to Lizzie and her current fight of survival. She was the purest form of bad luck that I had ever met. Her most recent scrape of bad luck, before this, suddenly hit my processor as I dodged a swipe from the Autobot I was fighting.

Flashback

I shook my helm as I looked down at Lizzie. She was resting on the med berth that she had been placed on the nano that Vox had brought her here. Drugged. The team on the soliform testing run had forgotten to keep tabs on Lizzie and she had been poisoned by those human scum. They had attacked us. The only thing stopping me from joining Breakdown and Vox on their return trip to deal with these scum was orders from Lord Megatron that only they would take care of it. Slag I had wanted to go against his orders right then. But, the Decepticons were acting as a more unified unit as of late and it would not do me any good to ruin that then.

As I watched the human Decepticon recover, I felt anger towards my brother and the others on that mission. Clubs were nothing new to us. They had them on Cybertron and most of us were regular visitors of clubs on Cybertron. We knew the dangers there...especially for femmes, but they put all the cautions you were supposed to take and shoved them to the side because they were in human forms. That almost cost Lizzie.

If it wasn't for the other human that Vox reported on, Michael, then Lizzie's situation could be far worse. Using the information that Vox had reported to Lord Megatron, Soundwave was currently looking into whatever information we could about the human. We owed him, and I knew that Lord Megatron was not happy about that. He did not appreciate being in debt to anyone, much less a human male that we knew almost nothing about.

"You're hovering."

I turned and glanced at Knockout as he walked up. "How is she?" Frag it Lizzie was partially my responsibility still, ever since I allowed her to remain on the ship those many solars ago, and I needed to hear something positive about her situation. I was sure that Soundwave was listening in to this conversation as well and, since he was her guardian in all rights, then I knew that this answer would help him too.

"Stable." Knockout motioned to Lizzie. "The drug that those maggots used on her has almost worked its way out of her system and her functions are reading as stable. Physically, she is going to be fine by tomorrow."

There was a hesitation in his vocals that I didn't like when he stressed the word 'physically'. "And what about her mental state?" I pushed the medic.

If I expected an easy answer, I would have been upset. "It's not something that I can prepare for. I just don't know enough about human medical studies to know how her brain will react to the situation that happened. In all purposes, the drug had rendered her helpless. She was completely dependant on whoever came to her. The last time Lizzie was helpless...well…"

My processor flashed to the incident with Astrotrain and I felt worried. She had not reacted well to that at all and, if that happened again, Lord Megatron might not be so forgiving at the time she might waste in trying to put herself back on track. "I'll keep an optic on her when she wakes up," I spoke, both to Knockout and to Soundwave since I was sure that he was listening.

End of Flashback.

It seemed, though, that with all of us on her side keeping an optic on her, that Lizzie felt the need to get away from us all. While that did lead to us getting a crucial relic that would definitely tip the favor of the fight for Earth into our servos, Lizzie had been shot with an energon blast. While the suit had protected Lizzie from external damage, the armor had not been able to stop the actual energon from infecting her systems.

And instead of being up there with her, making sure that Knockout had everything he needed, I was trapped in this fragging mine fighting this slagging femme! "Why don't you focus on our fight Decepticon?" Chromia growled at me. "You sparkless monsters can't do anything but destroy. I shudder to think about what you are doing to that poor human right now."

A snarl escaped my vocals at that as I lunged at her. That glitch, she had no idea what was happening right now. I would make sure she learned to not mess with the Decepticons. Lizzie was safer with us then I felt she would ever be with their backstabbing and hypocritical kind.

While I wanted this fight to be quick, the logical part of me knew that this battle had only just begun.

Starscream: *growls protectively* Where is that little glitch? Where is the Authoress?

Skywarp: *growls* We'll tear her to pieces for this. Attacking Lizzie, the weakest of the Decepticons.

Authoress: *hiding away from angry Decepticons* This is what I get when I listen to Lizzie. 'Don't hurt any of the other Decepticons' she says. Yeah, look what I get when I leave the bots alone. Hunted down in my own area.

AN: And here is the next chapter! The end of season one has begun and Lizzie is fighting for her life. This fight for the energon, and Lizzie's life, has only just begun. Since this fight for the mine will be central for a while, we will be cutting this note short.

So, that leads us to the titles of the next chapters!

Chapter 24: Enemy Within

Chapter 25: All Fall Down

Chapter 26: ... (Start of season 2 is here so you won't find this out for a while!)

That's all for now. Please leave a review, even to say hi! I like seeing that you all are aware of what is going down. So, that's all for now. TTYL! *thinking about future of the chapters*