Author's Notes: Thanks again to Dexter(The collector) for his tech support and for lots and lots of idears. Hope you like the latest chapter!
RP1
If That's What It Takes: Part 6
Prime had, quite unwillingly, finally succumbed to the injuries he had sustained in while doing every thing in his power to get his human mate back to the Ark and into the hands of the medic that could save her mind. He had succeeded here and the woman had been handed off. Prime himself lay unconscious his own mind doing its best to find the woman that he loved.
He stared into the darkness around him; he could hear his Angel crying for him somewhere. He could hear the girl but couldn't find her no matter how he tried. So he did the only thing that he knew to do. He began to follow the sound deeper into whatever world that he seemed stuck in. The further he followed the sound of her, the louder it became. It was indeed like he was getting closer to some place that the girl's soul had flung itself when she had looked into his eyes on the farm and begged him to take her life.
He had not of course, but he had done what was needed to put her in the hands of the people that could help her. It was not done without regrets, and it had caused him more anguish than anyone would have thought. It was probably that more than anything else that had pulled him down into this place where he was almost as lost as the girl herself.
He had no concept of where he was going or really what he was going to do only that he had to reach the source of the sounds that he was hearing. So it was that he took a few more steps deeper into the darkness and found that he had moved into something completely different. The place seemed to be lighter, as if he were no longer lost but had began to find in some strange way, what he was looking for.
It was just a place really, something that looked in some strange way familiar. Prime wracked his processor trying to remember where he had seen this place before. It was so like somewhere he had been, but it was essentially completely and utterly dead. He could see the place withering literally right before his optics. Fading away more and more the as the moments ticked by. He could hear the sound of his lifemate's tears quite clearly now and he was about to head off in the direction to find her when something caught his attention. It caught his attention and held him fast there. It was THE house, the one from the farm that he had just rescued Angel from. Like everything else around him it seemed to be decaying, falling apart the more and more he looked at it. Prime stepped closer and walked around the side of the house and found yet another surprise.
What it looked like was a huge plant of some kind that had grown and almost looked like a part of the house. Like the land, and the house, and everything else around him it was falling into nothing but dust. He took a closer look and discovered that the thing he was looking at was in fact a huge rose plant. The remains of what looked like Angel's favorite type of flowers clung to the thing in more than a few places and even more seemed too be scattered on the ground. He took a closer look and found what looked like one blossom still intact
"Oh Primus," He shook his head, "What's happening here? What is this place?"
Prime took a closer look and found that in fact there were three of the flowers remaining. One was still tightly closed and the other two still looked like they might last. He reached out his hand to touch one of them just to see if this were real or still some kind of strange dream. The moment he touched the bloom however his relief at finding something alive in this strange dream of his Angel's home turned to complete horror. Somewhere in the vision the sound of the tears he had been hearing turned to a scream and the flower he had been admiring shattered into a million fragments.
The horror suddenly burst and Prime found himself looking up at the ceiling of the medbay in the Ark. For the most part everything around him seemed natural as it could be in a place like this. However he still got the feeling, from the dream he had left behind that the woman he loved was still in grave danger.
Prime levered him self into a sitting position and could literally still feel that he was far from recovered from the attacks, not to mention the stunt with the Matrix. Somehow though he got on to his feet and proceeded to make for the exit intent on finding out just how long he had been unconscious and what had happened to Angel in the mean time.
"Where do you think you are going?" I asked.
He looked up at me and realized that I must have been in the room the entire time.
"Do I really have to tell you Alpha?"
I shook my head, "No. I know exactly where you are going. Thankfully you don't have far to go, she's in the main room."
He must have seen that I was holding something back from him because he instantly demanded to know what I wasn't finishing.
"What aren't you telling me?"
I sighed, "Ratchet can explain it better to you than I can Optimus." I touched the panel on the door, "If you would like to see her though while you wait for him, she's here."
I moved out of his way and headed off deeper into the medbay to find the wayward Ratchet. For his part, Prime moved out and immediately caught sight of what he was looking for.
His Angel lay there, looking like she was doing nothing more than sleeping. However he could see from the lines on her face that she had been through a great ordeal. So for the time being all he did was go over to her and wait until the medic appeared to tell him what had happened.
"What the Pit are you doing up?" Ratchet snarled as I led him over to Prime, "Do you have any idea how much was wrong with you? You're nowhere near…"
That was when Ratchet caught the look in his leader's optics. It was clear that he didn't really care much for his own condition; all he wanted to know at that point was what had happened to his lifemate. What had happened to her, and was she going to recover from it.
"I see you found her," Ratchet told him softly.
"Go on," Prime prompted him.
"We were able to remove the implant with very little trouble," Ratchet looked down at the girl, "However it did not solve the problem the way we might have hoped."
"And what does that mean," Optimus asked.
"When we removed the device, she should have woken up." The medic shook his head, "She didn't. Instead it seems like she slipped into some kind of coma. I ran a scan on her and it looks like some part of her long term memory was damaged by the implant. She may or may not remember everything that happened to her when she wakes up."
He paused and looked at the monitors around the girl and then continued.
"That though, is the problem," He pointed to readout, "She's not waking up."
"Why not?" Prime yet again prodded his medic to continue.
"It seems like whatever programming there was there in the chip, went deeper than that. Something in her mind was triggered somehow, and now she's trying to fight off whatever it is that's trying to take over her mind."
"And what does that mean in plain basic."
"It means that she literally was brainwashed," Ratchet told him, "And now the part of her that was controlled had developed into its own AI. Simply put, she's in there, trapped in her own mind fighting herself." Ratchet looked down at the girl, "And it's slowly but surely tearing her apart."
"So how do we stop it?" Optimus once again demanded.
"I don't think there is a way to stop it," I chimed in, "The young lady's survival depends now on her strength and belief in her self."
"There has to be something that can be done to help her." Optimus said as he tried to get up.
Unfortunately, Ratchet had been correct in his diagnosis of Prime's condition as well. Thusly, the leader managed to get about three steps into the medbay when the world twisted out from under him and he proceeded to collapse.
"There isn't anything that anyone can do Optimus." Ratchet told him gently. "There's no way to get inside of her mind and help her."
Optimus leaned against him and shook his head, "Maybe not for you."
"Now slaggit!" The doctor growled, "Don't you dare go off and try something stupid you hear me? You're nowhere near in any shape to do much of anything except what I tell you to do."
Ratchet proceeded to tug Prime, along with my own help, back in the direction of the room where he had been starting out with.
"And here's what I'm telling you to do," Ratchet continued, "You get in here and you stay put until your systems are recovered. Go out there and try and do something else like what you pulled on the trip back here and there may not be anything left for the woman to wake up to."
Prime sat down on his repair birth and put his head in his hands, for all the world looking like he had lost everything. Despite all of his crass attitude and mean streaks, even this could not but help to cause Ratchet to soften.
He reached out and put his hand on his leader and friend's shoulder, "Listen to me okay? Angel is strong, and as stubborn as you. Don't give up on her, she will find some way to beat it, if only so she can come back to you."
"Thank you Ratchet," Optimus said softly.
"Your welcome," The white mech nodded back, "Now try to get some more rest, before I come magnetize your skidplate to the repair birth."
Prime had to smile over that one. Somehow it stayed in place until Ratchet had left and then I could see the leader almost literally deflate in front of me.
"She is strong Optimus," I put my own hand on his shoulder, "You have to believe that."
"You don't know what I saw in my dreams, Alpha Trion." He told me, "She's dying. She's slipping further and further into the darkness around her and there's nothing I can do to help her."
"There may be nothing you can do from here Optimus," I looked at him, "But maybe here isn't where she needs you to be. She seems to need more help from with in than she does from out here." I turned from him and moved to head out the door, "I suggest you take Ratchet's advice, it may be just what both of you need right now."
He stared at me for a few moments as what I said to him seemed to filter through his mind and then he nodded. I left the room to confer with Ratchet for a few moments and upon returning found Prime yet again seemingly having given in to his condition. I nodded my head and shut the door behind me.
Prime once again found himself in the place from his dreams, this time however he was not confused or lost, this time he knew exactly what to do and where to go. He once more followed the sound and once more found himself standing on what looked like a decayed version of the farm that meant so very much to his chosen life mate.
As before he noticed that it was coming apart right before his eyes, only now it seemed that there was almost nothing left of anything. The house was nearly gone, and the land around it had become little more than a lifeless waste. He took two steps closer to what remained of the house and once more found the rose bush. This time he noticed that the two from before still remained, the one tightly close and the other that seemed on the verge of falling apart. Optimus did not take the time to stare at them as before, he only had one thought and that was to go deeper into this miasma and find out wherever Angel's soul was hiding.
He did not have to search very long. Like in the real world there was a steep rise to one side and to the back of the house. It was a good long walk and when you made it to the top, the cliff broke off into nothing more than a drop straight down into the valley. That was where he found her, Angel. Standing on the drop and looking down into it, on the very verge of choosing whether or not she still had the will to live.
"ANGEL!"
Despite the fact that he screamed the girl's name, it had no effect and she continued to stand there and stare into the darkness below her.
"She can't hear you." A voice called from behind him.
Prime turned and stared in shock as some thing that he would have never ever imagined materialized out of the dream world. For all intents and purposes it looked like his first lost love, Elita-1. She smiled at him unpleasantly and walked closer to him.
"You like?" She grinned. "Oh I'm not really your precious Elita."
"Then what… who are you?" He demanded.
"The programming of course," She grinned more, "The good Doctor wanted to make it as unpleasant as possible for your little human lover. So he gave me a form that he knew would through her for a loop."
The construct turned away from him and looked at where Angel was still perched.
"She really thinks your dead you know?" She shook her head, "It's so very pathetic really. She's up there, ready to fling her self into oblivion just to be with you."
"What makes you think I'm going to stand here and let that happen you… Thing." Prime growled.
"Oh you're free to try and go stop her if you want," The construct turned and looked back at him, "But you sure that's what you want? Just think about it. If she flings herself down there, her mind will be a blank slate. You could make her anything you wanted?" The construct motioned to the form it had taken, "Even me."
"Get out of my way!" Prime grabbed the construct and shoved it out of the way, proceeding to take off, up the hill at as fast of a run as he could possibly manage.
When he reached her, he could see that she was standing there with her eyes shut. She was trying to work up the courage to do it, muster the wherewithal to come to him wherever he was.
"ANGEL!" He screamed her name a second time, "DON'T!"
This time it seemed to reach her. She turned and looked at him once more, just as she had done back in the waking world. She began to deny it.
"No, Oh please no." She shook her head, "Please don't."
Prime at this point didn't care about anything but getting through to her. He could see that in her mind, she was just as she had been the morning she vanished. Her long hair was still in place and she was even wearing the Jeans and T-shirt she had been that morning.
"Don't tell me to stop Angel," He told her, "I am going to do whatever it takes to make you see through this… this nightmare."
She took a step backwards, inching closer to the edge. "I saw you die."
"But did you FEEL it?" He told her, "Angel I KNOW the connection between us is still here. I felt it. Felt you calling out to me even though you thought I was dead."
"Feel it?" She blinked, "I … I didn't think…" She put her hands on her head, "NO! No it's not real! All of this, everything here is just an illusion!"
Angel proceeded to drop down to her knees, her mind still reeling from what she was being told. Optimus bent down and gently lifted her face up out of her hands, holding it in both of his own.
"I know it hurts, I know your confused." He looked at her, "But you have to try. I know you can still stop this."
"It's too hard," She wailed at him pulling away, "Everyone told me how wonderful I was, what I blessing I was. That our love was something that would last." She shut her eyes and tears began to streak her face. "I can't take being cut off from you."
"Then DON'T BE," Prime pleaded, "I'm here, I'm real and alive, and I'm waiting for you to come back to me."
Trapped inbetween worlds, stuck in her own mind Angel looked from the darkness below and then back to the man that she had given her heart to. She closed her eyes for a second and then, she made her choice.
"Oh, ORION!" She cried.
Prime had his own optics shut off; for fear that the girl might choose the other path and walk right into death's embrace. To say that he was shocked when he felt her put her arms around him and hold on would be to understate the point by a million fold. All of his own pain seemed worth it at that point, worth everything that had happened just to be holding this girl in his arms again. The connection that had been cut off from the two of them, the thing that proved they were indeed bound beyond this life and the next went from the small spark he had been carrying into a raging inferno in less time than it took to lift his face from where he had been embracing her.
The girl he had done all of this to save looked up at him and opened her mouth to say something. The look of joy she had been wearing suddenly became one of complete and utter horror as she saw something behind him. Optimus Prime suddenly felt a sharp pain and for a few seconds lost the concentration it was taking to keep his mind focused in this world. He heard Angel scream as he hit the ground trying his best to regain his composure.
"Oh don't be such a baby." he heard the construct from before say. "He'll live just long enough to see me take you out."
Angel slowly stood up from where she had collapsed next to him and stared down the construct.
"I have had enough of you!" Angel growled, "One way or another you bitch, this is going to end now!"
"You think you have the power to defeat me?" The construct scoffed, "You don't even know half of the power that you have, all that glorious PSI given to a girl who doesn't even know how to use it, what a waste."
"I don't care what you say," The real girl growled back, "You aren't part of me, you don't belong here."
Angel looked down at her own hand, wishing that she had one of her guns with her, only to see the thing materialize from no where.
"How…"The construct glared, "that's not possible!"
Angel closed her eyes for a moment and smiled.
"I get it now," She continued to leer at the construct, "This is MY mind, MY world. Anything and everything I want is possible here, isn't it?"
"You still cant beat me." the fake creature taunted.
"Oh really?" Angel narrowed her eyes, "Then why are you shaking?"
By now Optimus had regained enough of his concentration to see what was happening. What was happening was that Angel was in the process of doing her level best to chase this monster out of her mind. It didn't matter what form, or shape the construct now took on, it was plain that the girl was not going to be fooled. The construct however had one last trick up its sleeve. It blindsided the girl and then leapt in the direction where Prime himself was still standing. By the time Angel had gained her bearings it was standing next to him and had taken on his form.
"SHOOT HIM!" It told her, "He's the construct!"
"Don't!" She snarled, "Don't you think I can tell you apart?"
"Angel." The real Optimus told her, "Angel I won't tell you to shoot him or me."
"He's trying to fool you," The construct told her, "Shoot him now."
"No Angel," Optimus told her, "No this is a choice you have to make. You have to choose to do what you think is right, It's YOUR choice and your's alone."
"My choice?" She looked at him and back at the fake Prime.
"NO SHOOT HIM NOW! There is no other choice." The counterfeit demanded.
"There's always a choice," Prime told her, "You have the freedom to choose, and it's your right as a thinking, sentient being."
Angel lowered her gun for a second and then shook her head, "Now I know which one of you is fake." She replied, "Only the REAL Orion would tell me to choose. Tell me that it's my choice to make by right of my freedom."
She turned her gun on the fake Prime, "You loose."
Optimus heard the shot and saw that there was a huge flash of light that followed. When his eyes finally cleared up he could see that it was over. Angel was now standing in front of the rose plant he had now seen twice. He realized for the first time that it must some how represent her, her soul. As she had withered away so had it, now she was standing before it and the lone blossom that had remained was slowly unfolding its self in all its glory.
"You did it," Prime told her.
He could see now that she had changed, in her appearance. She now had the short hair that she was sporting in the waking world and now was dressed in something that looked like one of her night gowns.
"Yes," She turned to smile at him, "I did."
She then turned and looked back at the plant. There were patches of it that had been destroyed for ever and some that would re-grow. Finally there was one place that looked as if a new budding had been torn away.
"It's not over yet," she shook her head, "There's still a lot I have to cope with, and something else."
"Something else?" Optimus looked at her questioningly.
"You will see soon." She touched the plant, "I can't articulate it here, I'm not sure I remember it all yet." She shook her head again. "I'm not even sure it matters."
He put his arms around her and held on tight, "Whatever it is, whatever happens, I swear I will be there to help you through it."
She smiled again, "I know." Then she grinned, "And now you need to get your skidplate back to reality. They need you there."
"Say what?" Prime blinked.
"Megatron is causing trouble," Yet another evil little grin, "Time for you to go and put him in his place again." She hugged him once more, "Don't worry, I'll catch up."
Optimus Prime opened his eyes and came back to a waking world filled with blaring alarms and flashing red lights. He promptly hauled himself off of the repair birth and tore out to the main bay where he could see from the picture on Teletran-1's screen that everything had broken loose. The Decepticons had tried another attack, knowing that he was in no condition to fight. Or so they thought.
Needless to say it came as a great shock to Megatron when someone came out of the bay of the Ark and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Looking for me?" Prime asked.
"What the," Was about all Megatron had a chance to get out before the royal blue fist connected with his faceplate and he went flying a good 500 meters.
"ALRIGHT!" Jazz crowed at the top of his vocals, "The BOSS is back!"
"You have ten seconds to get out of here Megatron," Optimus proceeded to produce his Ion cannon from subspace, "Or I start shooting."
Megatron pulled him self to his feet and wiped the energon off of his face, glaring daggers through Optimus the entire time.
"So be it Prime," Megatron backed up a few steps, "I see you must have managed to save your human mate."
"That is none of your business." Prime snarled.
"Whatever," Megatron shrugged, "So you saved the miserable flesh girl. That's all you can do." Megatron folded his arms and glared at Optimus one final time, "You may have saved your mate Prime. There are however other's I can strike. Let's see just how good you really are when the next life connected to you, when the life of your heir is on the line."
With that final comment, Megatron called a retreat of all his forces. The Decepticons knew that there was no real way for them to fight Prime, as well as a pack of freshly inspired Autobots, so they followed their leader's example and headed off into the empty sky to leave those behind to cheer their Victory.
Slowly it calmed down and the whole group realized that Prime himself was no longer among them. It did not take them long to locate him.
"Alright, ALRIGHT!" Ratchet yelled, "I want all of you OUT! Prime just pulled the stupidest stunt of his life, which considering all that's gone on the last few days is really saying something. Anyhow, both he AND Miss Angel are confined here until I give the all clear." He paused and smiled a moment. "Besides, s'not like they don't need some time alone."
That cleared everyone else out of the hallway and left Ratchet to take one more look in and make sure his charges were safe. One quick nod to my self later and we were both satisfied that it was finally on its way to being over, at least with Angel.
None of us who were there could have ever suspected just how wrong we really were.