In which Alison has PT, gets a codebook, and hears a story


The next morning, I woke a little before five to the sound of my alarm. I was still tired, even with my reduced need for sleep, and so was very bleary eyed when Mikaela, Miles and I (both similarly bleary-eyed) headed to the PT grounds.

To my surprise, it wasn't Will or Epps or Burke waiting for us, but a woman waiting for us. "Wait, I know you," I said when we got close.

The woman from the previous day smiled at us. Her hair was now in a simple braid, and instead of a suit, she was wearing a dark red tank top over black athletic shorts with white socks and black sneakers.

"Yes, though we didn't get a proper introduction. Agent Asami Stark, formerly of Sector Seven. You can just call me Asami, if you want." She held her hand out for us to shake.

Stark, that name rang a bell, and not just because of the superhero. Her file had been one of the first I had to vet, and I remember it noted her to be a "legacy", meaning her family has been involved for a couple generations like Simmons and myself.

I took her hand and felt her strong grip as she shook it. "Alison Witwicky, though you already knew that."

"I'd better know who my new boss is. And you're Mikaela and you must be Miles." She shook both their hands in turn.

"Where's Lennox, Epps and Burke?" Miles asked as he let go. "I thought they'd be the ones supervising us."

"They were originally, but I happened to be walking by when Ms. Halton was discussing with them about your extra training. I volunteered to handle it, since they've got their hands full enough with my colleagues and I showing up early. So, you get to train with me." She smiled. "Now, let's get started with some stretches."

She seems nice, maybe this won't be so bad.

I was wrong. I was very very wrong.

Asami started us off easy, with stretches to limber ourselves up. Then she had us do push-ups, sit ups and jumping jacks, timing how many we could do in two minutes. Then she had us do our run. On our previous morning exercises, we alternated running and walking each half mile, which was the same pattern Ella followed. Asami instead had us run a quarter mile, then stopped us and told us to do one of our exercises, which we'd have to do the number required to pass the Army Fitness Test, even if we couldn't do it in the time limit (except the jumping jacks, she made us do a flat thirty). She cut Miles some slack, and only made him do five more push ups than Mikaela and I as opposed to the almost double he should have, but even so, by the time we got back to our start point, we were dead on our feet and our arms felt like rubber.

"Alison," Mikaela gasped out as we finally stopped. "If you ever suggest something as crazy as hiding a 'Con in plain sight again, I'm breaking up with you."

I huffed, trying to catch my breath. "Fair enough."

"And hopefully this will discourage that kind of behavior," Asami said, not even remotely out of breath or having even broken a sweat. "You may be Director, and Bearer of the AllSpark, but you're also human. You can't take the same risks the Autobots can, and even they are mortal." She turned and pulled some water bottles from a cooler, tossing them to us. "Here, drink. And don't sit down, you'll hurt worse when I make you get up again in ten minutes."

"Really?" Miles asked, already halfway to the ground before he straightened. "What can we do?"

Asami smiled, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Oh just wait."

And indeed, once our break was over, she kept us moving. The training ground had a rudimentary obstacle course set up, and she ran us through it twice, stopping us in between for another set of push ups, sit ups and jumping jacks. After the second set of exercises, she had us walk around the yard twice, then led us through some stretches for a cool down. Then she sent us to shower before breakfast. Even standing under the hot, relaxing water, I was sore, and Mikaela and Miles had to be in worse shape than me, since I was certain my self-healing was helping handle the muscle aches.

The rest of the morning I spent in my office, grateful for my cushioned chair while working with Ella on paperwork. A lot of it was requisition type stuff, as well as a report to Keller and Moreshower about the mission yesterday. I was just finishing that when Ella checked the time. "It's about lunch time, where are you on the report?"

"Last few lines," I said, not even looking up from the paper. "You can go on ahead, I'll finish it real quick and catch up."

"Alright then." I heard her start gathering some of her things, then opening the office door. "Hello, Agent Simmons."

That made me look up, and sure enough, there was Simmons, standing like he had just been about to knock before Ella opened the door.

"Ms. Halton," he nodded to her. "I wanted to speak to Ms. Witwicky briefly before lunch."

"If you'll wait a few minutes for me to finish this report, I'll be happy to help you," I said, giving Ella a slight wave which sent her off.

"Of course." He took a seat across from me and waited mostly patiently (I could catch the slight tapping of a foot that wasn't mine) as I wrote the last few words, then read it over and sent it to my printer. Once I signed, stamped, and set it aside and I looked up at him. "What's up, Simmons?"

He pulled a little brown notebook and passed it to me. "I wanted to give this to you, away from others."

I took it and looked inside. The first page had a note "For the Director's Eyes Only", with the last word underlined twice. The next page was titled "By the Sixth" and then went on to what almost looked like a word search, except with numbers added in.

"All the paper files I could get my hands on have been secured. There were too many to make copies of quickly, so I separated them out into categories, and each one is in its own location. That book is the key to decoding the coordinates."

"Thank you, Simmons," I said, looking in. "I'm assuming these page headings are a code?"

"Yes, let me show you." He scooted his chair forward and picked up a pen and blank paper. He held his hand out for the book, so I gave it to him, and he held it open with one hand while writing with the other. "'By the Sixth' means every sixth number. So, reading left to right, top to bottom, we start with the sixth number of the block, then go to the twelfth, and so. When you reach the end of the section, you go back to the start and keep counting, until you get the full coordinates. Then from there, you keep going to get a street address and what files are in each site. No state or zip codes, but with what it gives, you shouldn't need it. Each section has a different key, and there's only one other copy, which I'm keeping on me." He worked through the cypher as he spoke, and showed me the result.

"That's incredible. Where'd you learn a cypher like that?" I asked.

"Made it up myself, when I was a kid. Too much work to use for regular messages, and I'd almost forgotten about it, until I was dropping some stuff off at my ma's and found an old notebook with it in it."

I took the paper from him, reading the address and coordinates. "What are these hiding places? Old S7 bases?"

"Sort of. Some agents left their houses to the organization when they died, for use by other agents. Others, well, not every decommissioned missile silo was sold or left abandoned."

I half-considered joking about moving the 'Bots into one of those silos, but restricted myself to a smirk, which shifted to a proper smile. "Thank you, Simmons."

"I feel like I should be thanking you," he said, sitting back and adjusting his tie a little nervously. "If not for your vouching for me, I likely would have gone to stay with Ma for good instead of just dropping things off. The deli's great, but definitely a downgrade from investigating NBEs and defending Earth."

"Well, you might need to adjust that job summary to 'working with NBEs', but I couldn't let you slip away. I wasn't lying when I said you were good."

"I would hope so, it's in my DNA." Simmons smiled. "Really, you're alright, Witwicky. Just don't make us all regret backing you."

"I'll do my best," I said, standing up. "Want to walk with me to lunch?"

"Sure, why not."

I talked with Simmons a little about his experience in S7 on the way to lunch, then we split off, him to join some S7 agents he knew, me to join Mikaela, Miles and Bee.

The others had had busy morning themselves, Mikaela helping Ratchet in the medbay, Miles in communications with Epps and Lindsey. Bee, for his part in hiding Barricade, had been drafted as the "takedown dummy" for Ironhide, Jazz and Coppertone to demonstrate on for the next month. We felt great sympathy for him, and more or less agreed that was the worst punishment.

In the afternoon, I had my lesson with Optimus, talking about diplomacy during the early-Unification period, then after a few last papers, I had the rest of the afternoon off. Mikaela and Miles were still busy, so I decided to take myself over to the Autobot Quarters to visit the hatchlings.

When I got there, Coppertone was with them. "Hi, Alison," she said.

"Hi Copper," I managed to say before getting swarmed by the hatchlings. X-Cat reached me first and chittered as she ran around my legs, tugging on my jeans a little. Dispensor started doing a little dance, but I couldn't see what exactly before Escapade scooped me up into a hug, Rascal chittering at me from his shoulder. "Whoa! Hi guys. Yes, Momma's here." I rubbed at Escapade's face with one hand and reached out to pet Rascal with the other, smiling and sending happy thoughts and feelings through my EM field. "Could you put me down, please?"

Escapade drew me a bit closer and nuzzled his helm against my head, then set me down. Dispensor seemed to learn from his brother, and just gave me a hug on the ground. Then X-Cat kept tugging on my pant leg until I picked her up and petted her. "Hi, beautiful, did you miss me?"

"They all do," Coppertone said, kneeling with a smile. "They could sense you getting closer in their bonds, and were getting antsy to see you."

"They could sense that?" I asked, a little surprised.

"Yeah, it's a natural part of a creator-creation bond. I mean, the AllSpark might be slightly different, but bonds are bonds, and all work about the same." Copper closed her optics a moment. "Mine are very faint, but enough I'm certain they're still alive, and unharmed. Stellar distances prevent me from telling more than that. Once they enter our solar system, I'll be able to feel them and N-Sync a lot more clearly."

"This must be hard, be so far from them," I said, taking a seat on a chair someone had brought in. X-Cat settled down in my lap, her motor running softly like a purr.

Copper shrugged. "Not like I'm the only one missing loved ones. I mean, this is the longest Optimus has been away from Elita, and they've been bonded practically my whole life, and Ironhide and Chromia weren't far behind them. Jazz and Prowl have had lots of missions where they've had to block the bond, so he kinda clings to the faint thread of what he's got now. Ratchet's been bonded the longest, but he's also had separations from Wheeljack before, so it was easier to adjust. Bee's the only one without any close bonds, but we've all basically adopted him, and he made it easier."

"How'd you all end up on the same team anyway?" I asked. "I mean, I get Jazz, Ironhide and Ratchet being with Optimus, but how did you and Bee join them?"

"Oh, that's a bit of a fun story." Copper shifted to sit cross-legged, and the hatchlings seemed to sense a story was coming, settling down nearby to hear. "So, after the AllSpark got launched to space and Megatron went after it, Optimus decided to go after him in the Ark. So he gathered up, like, half the Autobot army, left Ultra Magnus in charge of the forces on Cybertron, and we took off. Since we had limited supplies, we were in stasis most of the time, only waking up for a couple orns in shifts when it was time to send off a new team to search. Well, we had just sent off Elita One's team maybe an orn before, and were doing some maintenance work on the Ark when our systems picked up this sort of 'cosmic scream', which registered as the AllSpark. We were getting ready to go after it, when the ship was suddenly rocked hard. Turned out the 'Cons had a similar idea, and we caught up with one of their patrols. Wouldn't have been a big deal, except they got lucky and took out one of the engines. We ended up crashing onto this planet, pretty comparable to Mars. While our engineers went to work trying to repair the damage and stop it from cascading, Optimus led us who were battle ready to fight off the 'Cons. There was a surprising amount of them for how small their ship was, but even with a good portion of our crew in stasis still, we held them off well. That's when the strangest thing happened."

"What?" we heard, and I looked to see Escapade kinda bouncing in his seat, Rascal excitedly running from one shoulder to the other.

"You said your first word!" I cheered, clapping for him.

He looked at me and smiled, little head panels around his face flaring a bit. I could feel his happiness for making me happy almost like a wave, then he looked back to Coppertone. "What?" he asked again.

Copper smiled. "Well, the 'Cons had started to retreat, when suddenly, this massive shape appeared in the sky over their ship. We all stopped and stared and, I swear, we saw the Ark II, Sentinel Prime's ship which was destroyed by Starscream during its launch. There was this vortex or something around it, but any of us who were there could recognize it. It sucked up the 'Cons' ship and about half of the troops who were next to it, then vanished as quickly as it came. The remaining 'Cons were so shaken, they surrendered without a fight, and we started taking care of the injured.

"Our engineers determined the Ark was too damaged to get flying again, so it was decided to use it was a recon base. A team was picked to man it, and then others were picked to go out and search for the AllSpark. By this time, Bee and I had become pretty good friends, and so when Optimus asked him to join his team, he asked if I could be brought along too. I didn't expect Optimus to say yes, considering I was effectively a skilled grunt, but either Bee had a good argument, or he pulled a puppy dog face, and I launched off with them to Earth."

"And now you're here," I said as the hatchlings cheered the happy ending. "A very good thing, in my opinion." I grimaced and rubbed by chest a bit. The hatchlings' joy was so palpable, it was like treading water almost.

Copper noticed my actions. "A little too much, isn't it? I can teach you how to block it, if you want."

"Isn't blocking a bond not a good thing?"

"A hard block, sure, especially for newly formed ones. But a soft-block is fine, and practically necessary for a creator-creation bond as they get older. It's…" she paused trying to think of how to phrase it. "Close your eyes and focus on your bonds. Tell me what you see regarding them."

I did as she asked, and the AllSpark had to be helping me here, cause about instantly I had the mental image of Her cube appear in my mind's eye. She was floating in a dark void, Her glyphs were glowing soft blue, and there were four tethers of light leading away from her into the darkness. Each was a different color, and I just knew who had what color. Rascal was red, Escapade was blue, Dispensor was green, and X-Cat was gold. I described what I saw.

"Okay, now, those tethers are like thick cables right now, lots of wires inside to transfer emotion and stuff. What you need to do is narrow it down to a just a couple. Think… a surge protector, I suppose. It lessens the bond to the point it doesn't overwhelm you."

"Oh, I think I get it." I imagined a smaller version of the AllSpark cube appearing about halfway along each of the tethers. I then started pushing calm down the bonds, letting the hatchlings feel okay and reminding them I was there. It looked like little plasma balls running down the tethers, which passed through the cubes with ease. The hatchlings responded, I could see almost a rush of returning plasma, but when they reached the cubes, only a few made it through. The rest were caught in the cubes, which started to light up with the hatchlings' colors. I could still feel the curiosity and happiness they sent to me, but it was like surf lapping at my toes on a beach, easily acknowledged and pulled away from.

I opened my eyes and smiled. "Thanks, Copper. That's a big help."

"No problem. This will help them too, getting used to not feeling you so strongly, so when you leave tonight, it won't be so hard on them."

"I hadn't thought of that." I looked down as X-Cat, who seemed to have enough of my lap, jumped down and tried to climb up on her brother. "Now I'm gonna feel bad leaving them."

"They'll be fine. I'll probably spend the night with them, and soon they'll just be excited to see you again, not sad that you're leaving."

"Now I feel like I should be paying you for being my nanny."

"I'll accept cash, energon sweets, or parts for a new gun."

We laughed, and enjoyed a playful, leisurely afternoon with the hatchlings. Mikaela, Miles and Bee joined us eventually, and it was the most amusing thing to see Bee get buried under the hatchlings when they swarmed him for hugs. It was hard to say goodbye to them when we headed out for dinner, but with the assurances that I'd be back on the weekend softened the blow a bit. After dinner, we headed back to Tranquility, with Barricade in our rearview the whole way. Considering the many other ways this weekend could have been memorable, I was glad for what had happened.


AN: Apologies for a late chapter, I went shopping, then on a cleaning spree, then fell asleep and didn't even touch my laptop until a little bit ago. So, now we officially meet Asami. Old timers might remember her from the original version of the fic, she is still here, and will fill the same role as before, this was just a much smoother introduction for her. So what'd you think of Asami? The scene with Simmons? What about Coppertone's story? The hatchlings? Any theories to throw out there? Comment and let me know!

FCs
Asami Stark - Natasha Liu Bordizzo/Asami Sato (Legend of Korra)
Coppertone - Natalya Rudakova (my new FC for her)

Guest Review Replies

Satomi (CH 13): Alternatives names for the hatchlings. Escalade - Tempest, Shadowclaw, Eclipse, Cascade. Steering wheel - Venture, Offbeat, Havoc, Aurora. Xbox - Fuse, Sprocket, Zephyr, Talon. Dew bot - Ripdrive, Whiz, Ripspin, Ricochet
Sorry, but the hatchlings aren't gonna be renamed. They are Escapade, Rascal, X-Cat and Dispensor, from now until the end of the fic. Though I am curious where you got some of these names from.

I'll see you all next week, same 'Bot Time, same 'Bot Channel!