Welcome to Chapter Two in the Silver Sun saga. Enjoy :-) .

Chapter Two: The Empathy Link

When morning came, I dreaded the very thought of leaving my berth room and heading down to the command centre. Opening my optics, I heard the blaring alarm that I had set the night before beeping away. I sat upright and stretched my arms in the air, glancing around the room and switched off the noise.

I got out of the berth and breathed in deeply, trying to tell myself everything would be fine. Based on what I had seen, Bumblebee wasn't the type to judge. Walking out of the door, I closed my optics in an attempt to focus.

Unfortunately, as I walked down the hall, I suddenly crashed into something while my optics were closed. I stumbled back clumsily, expecting to fall to the ground. Instead I felt a strong arm quickly catch my waist, preventing an embarrassing moment. Or so I thought. Opening my optics, I saw a familiar yellow and black mech looking at me intently.

"Oh, sorry, Bumblebee!" I gushed, turning slightly red. Like lightning, I regained my balance and stepped away from him, trying to avoid our optics meeting like they did last night. "Um, I, uh-"

"Let me stop you there," He said in his alternate form of voice. I tried to avert his gaze, but he looked me dead in the optic. "This is gonna sound crazy but...were you somehow...in my dream last night?"

I sighed, my eyes darting up and down the hallway. "Not here."

Grabbing his hand, I pulled him into a small spare room, shutting to door behind him and leaning my back against it.

I looked up. "I guess I have some explaining to do..."

"So you were there," He realised, "How? Why?"

"Bumblebee, have you ever heard of Shockwave?" I asked. The scout nodded, listening carefully. "Well...he captured my parents. Tortured them with experiments, all to get one positive result. Arcee had managed to get away and take me with her. What Shockwave didn't know was...my mother had just had me at the time. His experiments didn't work on her, but the toxins got to me somehow, through the bond new-borns share with their parents."

A shiver went down my back as I said those words. "They changed me. They gave me the ability to see into the minds of bots and cons alike and to see the immediate future. I didn't ask for these powers. This curse. It was given to me."

Subconsciously, I slumped down in one of the chairs. Bumblebee almost immediately rushed to my side. Never had I opened up to anyone about this before. Arcee and I just didn't talk about it and I didn't have any friends to console in.

But I had seen something in Bee's mind that made me trust him. A sense of empathy. Of all the bots I had met, I had never seen someone as kind and selfless.

"Are you ok Silver?" He asked, gently putting his hand on my shoulder.

I nodded, rubbing my optics and turning my head away, not wanting him to see me cry. "I...I've never told this to anyone. I-I'm fine. Honestly." Clearing my throat, I forced myself to stand up. "And I'm sorry for looking into your head. It just sort of happens whenever I make eye contact."

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it," There was a long pause before one of us dared to speak again. "Silver Sun, please don't tell the others about last night."

"Bumblebee, it isn't a crime to be scared. As a person who is afraid of a lot, trust me it's natural," I comforted.

Bee sighed. "You don't get it. That was a dark time for me. I used to wake up, blasts fired around my room-"

"-because the nightmare seemed so real," I finished. "Like they were alive in your head and could get out."

"Please don't read my mind," He asked.

I shook my head. "I wasn't."

He glanced up at me. I knew what it was like. But I didn't just have my own nightmares, I saw others' as well. It was why I had decided to leave the team I was first part of. It was all too much for me to hear their memories, their fears, their nightmares.

There was a long silence between us. I was waiting for him to talk but he never did. We just stood there, staring at each other.

If it weren't for Ratchet's voice sounding on the radio system, we would have probably stayed in silence for a little while longer.

"Silver Sun! You're late. Get to the control room, NOW!" Ratchet roared through the comlink.

I turned to the door, unsure of what to say. "I-I have to go."

Just as I was about to leave, I heard Bumblebee say one last thing. "Thank you," I turned back to him, a confused expression on my face. "You know, for helping me wake up."

Thinking on what he said, I nodded and continued to walk out of the door. As I walked down the hallway, staring at the floor, I tried to figure out what was going on with Bee.

A long time ago, I had found books in the Iacon hall of records that explained a lot about the mind, but none said anything that might account for why a figment of Megatron was in Bumblebee's head. Of course, there were cortical psychic patches gone wrong, but that extraction technique had been outlawed for centuries.

Anyway, I carried on down the hall, heading for what I remembered to be the main control room. As I walked through the door, an ear-shattering sound raged through my ears like how a river carves a canyon. I quickly put my hands over my ears and, yelling, waited for the sound to pass.

Finally, I could breathe again. When I opened my eyes I saw Ratchet, Bulkhead and Arcee, all servos over the ears. They were standing around what appeared to be three small beings, that were like us but with flesh instead of metal.

"Miko! What in Cybertron was that infernal racket?!" Ratchet yelled, hitting one of his ears to shake the sound out.

A small pink-haired girl wearing black, purple, grey and pink clothes put down what I understood to be a human guitar. "Uh, it's called music Doc-bot!"

I stifled a laugh. 'Doc-Bot', that wasn't going away any time soon. Standing next to her, obviously as fond of the noise as we were, were two boys. One was smaller, had glasses and wore orange, white and yellow clothes. The other was the tallest out of them, wearing grey, black and white clothes.

"Whoa, cool! Arcee, is that your sister?" Before Arcee could answer, the girl ran up to me, she was barely taller than my pedes. "What's your name? How many Cons have you taken out? I bet you're a super cool fighter, like Arcee! Ever use a building crane for a baseball bat?"

I paused, unsure of what to say in reply.

Full disclosure, I was NOT a people person.

I suffered from what is known as social anxiety and didn't like big crowds or especially one-on-one conversations unless it was with bots I knew. Yet never had I ever come across a personality that could ask so many questions in under ten seconds.

As I tried to remember her first question, Arcee stood next to me and put her hand on my shoulder.

"Miko, she...isn't exactly a fighter," Arcee explained.

The girl, evidently known as Miko, raised an eyebrow. "But, she's a Bot, right? Don't all Autobots know how to fight?"

'Cee shook her helm. "Not necessarily, I mean it is an option, but she never wanted it. Not even when she really needs to. The time she got caught in the battle at Sigma Seven springs to mind."

I shot Arcee a glare. She shrugged back at me, I was guessing, to let me know that it was just a joke.

Miko appeared a little disappointed but shrugged. "Okay. Hey, you never told me your name!"

I looked at Arcee, who replied with 'She isn't gonna bite'. Inhaling, I turned back to Miko. "S-Silver S-Sun..." I whispered.

The girl tilted her head and exchanged a confused glance with Arcee. "What was that?"

"Believe it or not, personal growth," my sister replied.

I had so caught up in the conversation, I didn't even realise when the other two kids came up to where we were standing. The youngest one, with glasses, was the first to speak.

"Hi, Silver Sun," He said. I wondered how he was able to listen so well, especially considering he was standing further away from where Miko was. "I'm Raf."

I could easily picture Raf and Bumblebee being friends. They had the same good-natured, innocent personality. They both shared the look in their eyes. The look only some bots (and apparently humans) have. The one that you know means that there's more to them than meets the eye.

"I'm Jack," The oldest boy interrupted my thoughts. "Nice to meet you, Silver. Arcee's been talking about you all morning."

Jack had that look of sensibility and calmness about him that implied his mature attitude. I nodded to them before looking up to see Bulkhead, who held out his hand.

"Don't think we've been properly introduced," he said. "The name's Bulkhead."

I shook his hand, pretendig that I didn't know hus name until that very moment. "Nice to meet you, Bulkhead." I replied, this time slightly louder.

"Yes, yes, everyone's met everyone. Now can we please find you a vehicle form?" Ratchet nagged from the other side of the room. "The last thing we need is for humans to spot a fifteen-foot-tall robot and blow our cover."

Arcee smirked. "Sure thing, Ratchet. Bulkhead, mind taking Jack home if we aren't back in time?" She began walking towards the door, gesturing for me to follow. "C'mon, let's go find you a motorbike mode."

Exchanging one last friendly smile with the humans, I rushed after Arcee, who was halfway out of the base. We walked through the tunnel and out into the world. Earth. The desert was so vast. In every direction was a desolate landscape.

After what seemed like hours of traipsing through the desert, making conversation about how we had both been, we finally came across a gas station.

Parked outside was a white motorcycle with yellow streaks running across it, almost as if it was put there on purpose, for me to find it.

"Whoa," I gasped as I looked over the motorcycle from behind a boulder. "Awesome..."

Arcee smiled. "Guess we've found you a bike. Know how to scan it?"

Nodding, I made sure no humans were around before walking over to the motorbike. I scanned it, not long after feeling like their was a while other part of me that I had only just unlocked.

I concentrated for a few minutes before my entire body began to change shape, morphing into a whole other appearance: A Yamaha YFR-R6. I was silver with sharp yellow streaks running across my frame. My wheels were black but the inside was saffron yellow.

"Yep," I said to myself. "This is definitely my bike mode."