"Arcee, wake up!"

Arcee opens her optics to see her sire shaking her, "Sire? What's wrong?"

"The Decepticons are here, we need to go."

Her sire tugs her out of her berth and she stands up. Since she's still a young bot she hasn't had any experience in battle just yet. She's been trained by her sire since she was able to walk but she's never seen a battlefield. But she knows all about the Decepticons and the chaos they've been causing all across Cybertron. She's now becoming of age where she can join the battle and she's very anxious to get onto a battlefield and destroy some Decepticons.

Her sire grabs her servo and pulls her as he begins running, "Let's go, your mother is waiting for us." He tells her as they run out of her room and down a hallway. They run down the flight of stairs and head to where her mother is waiting for them.

When they get close to their destination they're blown back as a bomb hits their house and blows up that portion, "NOOOOOO!"

Arcee can hear her sire shouting but she's too disoriented from the blast to register what is happening. She gets up off the floor and goes over to her sire but he rushes off towards the section that was just blown up. Arcee follows as her processor starts clearing up and she soon realizes what got her sire so upset, "MOTHER NO!" She runs over to her body which is half sticking out from under some debris. Her spark drops when she realizes that it's too late to save her, she's already gone.

Arcee feels her sire pulling her from her mother's body and trying to get her to run but she feels numb, like none of her limbs wants to function. Her sire drags her out of the house and into the streets where they see hundreds of 'Bots running and trying to get out of the city as Decepticons fly overhead releasing bombs and blowing up one building after another. Some Decepticons landed and started attacking the 'Bots that were trying to flee.

Loud booms could be heard all around as buildings blew up and crumbled, pillars of smoke coming out of them and filling the sky as fire licked at the metal. Ambers could be seen coming from the fires and going into the sky with the smoke and floating overhead of all the 'Bots scurrying around. Arcee saw a group of Autobot soldiers running in to take on the Decepticons. The two sides clashed as the rest tried desperately to get out of harm's way.

Arcee's sire took her to one of the Autobots headquarters - he's a soldier just like she wants to be - and he goes to the nearest general he finds, "Take her and turn her into a warrior."

Arcee looks at him in shock, "What?"

He looks at her, "You're of age now, Arcee. Remember what I taught you, you'll do great. Make me proud."

"Where are you going?"

"I have to fight and defend the city. You're in good hands. I'll find you after we've won. I love you."

A drop of black liquid escaped from Arcee's optic. First, she lost her mother and now her sire is leaving, "I love you too father."

He smiles at her then runs off to join the fight. Arcee stands there watching him leave as her spark starts to crumble.

Arcee opens her optics and blinks back the black liquid that is threatening to come out. Why did it have to be a dream of that memory? She sits up and stretches then looks over to Soundwave who is still examining his visor. Good thing she blinked back the black liquid because the last thing she needs is this 'Con seeing her cry. But she runs a digit over her optics just to make sure.

"Are you ok?"

Arcee looks at Soundwave again and sees him looking at her with concern. Wait. That can't be right. Why would he be concerned? She just brushes it off, "Yeah, just had a bad dream. Can you fix your visor?" She asks trying to change the subject.

Soundwave took the hint and dropped it, he looked at his visor once more than set it down, "I'll have to get Knockout to help me fix it."

"You can't even make a groundbridge to get us out of here?"

Soundwave shakes his helm. He really wishes he could because he hates being in a tight spot like this where he can't transform and fly or do anything. But they're stuck there until either the Decepticons or the Autobots dig them out. He knows the Autobots will be digging through and looking for them because he's sure they got a glimpse of her signal before the cave-in happened. He hopes it's his team and not the enemy.

Soundwave releases Laserbeak from his chassis so he can examine him. He looks him over and sees some dents and scratches. There was a deep dent on his wing which caused some slight damage, which means he's not gonna be able to fly for a little while. He places Laserbeak in his lap and he holds him down with one of his tentacles as he sees how he can get the dent out of his wing. He looks over at Arcee who is sitting there watching him.

"Do you have something in your medkit that can get dents out?"

"I should." She brings her medkit out of her subspace again and opens it to look. She finds a hammer that is just right to get out dents, "Here we go."

"Can you help me get the dent out of his wing?"

"Sure."

Since she's on Soundwave's left side and the dent is on Laserbeak's right-wing she moves to get to his right side. But instead of going all the way over to the right side she just swings her leg over his lap and sits there in front of Laserbeak. She leans over to take a look at his wing and she puts the hammer underneath the wing where the dent is and starts hitting the hammer against it.

Soundwave's spark starts pulsing very fast like it had when she was in his lap earlier, but he shakes it off because it's just to help Laserbeak. He feels Laserbeak start to struggle to get away but he puts a tendril on his little helm and he soothed him and calmed him down. Arcee watched him and was surprised at how gentle he is, she never thought a Decepticon could be gentle with anyone or anything. But Soundwave is very gentle with his pet, and he's been quite gentle with her too. He has never harmed her or spoken ill towards her.

Of course, he did kick her aft not long ago in their fight, but she could tell he didn't really want to. He had orders to bring her back and she was refusing to go back. She wanted to be free, she wants to be free. So he had no choice but to fight her and beat her so he could take her back. Then he saved her life by putting himself in harm's way.

"What made you join the Decepticons?" The question fell out of her mouth before she could even process it. Once she realized what she just asked she didn't give any reaction or retract the question since a part of her really does want to know.

Soundwave turns his attention from Laserbeak back to Arcee. He's not sure if he should tell her about his past, but maybe it'll help her trust him and open up to him, "I was a Gladiator like Megatron. It's where I met him, I even fought in the same arenas as him. I got to know him and found him to be a pretty good mech. So when he decided to rise up against the council after they chose Orion to be Prime instead of him I followed him..."

Arcee kept listening as she got back to work on Laserbeak's wing. It didn't really surprise her that Soundwave had been a Gladiator before the war, as good of a fighter he is he had to have some sort of fighting background especially since Megatron himself made him his right-hand mech.

"I believed in what Megatron said, I believed he would make a better world for us. I still do. Seeing what the council was like got me following him even more."

Arcee paused, "What do you mean what the council was like? They were good bots. The only thing they did that you would consider wrong was choosing Orion Pax to be Prime instead of Megatron."

"You think that because you didn't know the council, you don't know what they did in secret."

"And you do?" At this point, she's starting to feel aggravated with him.

"Yes. I had been on the council."

Arcee looks surprised, she didn't know he used to be on the council, "What happened?"

"I was put on the council by Megatron to keep watch over them. I witnessed first hand just how unfair and unjust they were. Everything had to be to their standards none was allowed to have an opinion outside their own. They wouldn't even acknowledge your opinion if it didn't fit their standards. They cut down any who would show any kind of support to the Decepticons, even those who only associated with ones who supported Decepticons were cut down. They put dozens of bots out of their homes and onto the streets..." Soundwave had to take a moment to calm himself, the memory of it all really angers him.

Arcee doesn't want to believe him, she wouldn't believe him if it wasn't for the sincerity she sensed in his voice as he spoke and the way he's acting right now. She can tell talking about it really upset him, which means there is truth behind his words, "I was just a young bot when it all happened. I didn't know much about the council except what I heard from my sire. But he didn't even tell me much, I just knew that they had chosen a new Prime and later Megatron rose up and the war started. The next thing I heard the council had been taken down by you guys. I was just a couple of years away from the age where I could join the battle when it all started."

She gets back to work on Laserbeak's wing and Soundwave looks at her. It never occurred to him how much younger than him she is. But that doesn't really matter, she's old enough to be in the battle then she's old enough to take as a mate. She's plenty old enough since the start of the war was a millennia ago, "Of course you didn't know what was going on with the council. Not many did, they fooled a lot of Cybertronians. I didn't know you were that young when it all started. You must have been in a good safe place to survive until you came of age to join the battle."

"I was, my sire kept me and my mother in a safe place. It was a city that you guys didn't know about for a while, until..." She paused again and looked up at Soundwave, "You guys somehow found it and attacked it one night. Putting us out of our homes."

Soundwave remembers there was an Autobot city they had been searching for for a long time. They knew the city was hiding a good portion of Autobots including Autobot soldiers that would just vanish off their radar. Neither him or any of the other Decepticons knew how they managed to conceal the city from them or even themselves while they were in the city. But they did and it baffled them.

He sent Laserbeak to follow one of the Autobot soldiers one day to see where they vanish to and find the city and sure enough, Laserbeak was lead right to the location of the city they were looking for. Once Soundwave retrieved the information from Laserbeak he told Megatron and Megatron sent an army of Decepticons to attack the city. If he had known the future love of his life was in that city he would have kept the information to himself. But he didn't know, he didn't even know Arcee had existed. At the time she was just another Autobot in the city that needed to be destroyed. He's thankful that she survived and is here with him now. She has gone from the nameless Autobot he was trying to kill to the love of his life that he wants to mate with.

He notices that she had gotten back to fixing Laserbeak's wing and after a couple more hits she was done, "That should do for now. You can do what you need to when you get back to the ship." Arcee says as she puts the hammer back into the medkit.

He pays no attention to her words and just watches her put the hammer back into her medkit and put it back into her subspace. He can't help but wonder...

"How did you survive the attack and make it out of the city?"

I'm gonna have to leave it off there as this chapter is already pretty long. I honestly didn't intend for it to get this long, especially not before I had put in everything I wanted to put in, but it happened. I wanted to have them kiss but since the chapter ended up going a bit longer than I intended I had to leave it out, so the kiss will be in the next chapter. ;D