Arcee just stared at the human before her, in shock. Blue, ringed with magenta optics locked with the forest green eyes. This human was aiming a fire arm at her and it was to protect Starscream of all bots! Was she insane or just idiotically brave? Arcee didn't know whether to be concerned or impressed; she was just silenced. However, Bulkhead had an easier time finding his voice.
The green giant titan bellowed out into amused laughs, "And why should we do that?"
Nya's years of being an intimidating, military pilot flooded back into her face, forming a cold hard stare. Aiming the expression at Bulkhead; the large green mech was surprised by how much that stare unnerved him. It was clear; this was not laughing matter.
Arcee looked at Bulkhead. She was surprised how much this small human was affecting the former Wreaker. She looked at Starscream. He seemed equally surprised; he must have never seen her like this either. She glanced at bumblebee. The little yellow scout that stood behind the gun-wielding human female, looked nothing but confused. Finally, she looked back to the human; green eyes still cold and fixated on her.
"Don't you known what he's done?" Arcee finally spoke.
"Yes, I do," Nya answered as she looked over to Starscream, flashing him a small reassuring smile, "He's told me everything," she faced Arcee again, "Now, I won't ask nicely again. Let him go."
"Then you know he's a killer. He's doesn't deserve to be let go," Arcee shot a stare, overflowing with burning hatred and rage, at Starscream.
"As far as I know, You're at war. Death is going to happen; there's nothing you can do about that. And no. I'm not saying you wanting revenge for someone you cared about is wrong. I was a soldier too; I know that kind of loss and what it can do to someone," her stare broke for a moment and she glanced at the ground for a moment, before her eyes flipped back up at Arcee, "But you can't let that desire make you do something you're gonna regret. Besides I doubt your hands, or servos are free of blood or whatever you guys have."
Nya was clearly getting on Arcee's nerves, or what ever cybertronians have. Power wires maybe? The blue femme was ticked that this human was right. She wasn't innocent. Arcee pointed her other blaster at Nya; she didn't even flinch. Arcee didn't really know what to say next, the only other human who she could think of that would stand up to a bot if necessary was Agent Fowler and she thought that even he wouldn't do something like this.
Starscream just stared at Nya in awe. He had never seen this side of her. She had always been so kind, warm, and loving. Either when she was a pilot, she was in the thick of it, or she was just down right insane. To say he was concerned about her safety now was somewhat of an understatement. While the autobots weren't prone to harm humans, Starscream, also knew, from experience, that Arcee could be pushed to violence if antagonized enough.
He should have stayed quiet, but once there was blaster pointed at Nya's head, he couldn't keep silent, "Nya, put the gun down."
"Hey Shut it!" Bulked shouted, pushing Starscream down with his blaster.
"Don't make me come over there!" Nya threatened.
"And just what are you going to do? Shoot us?" Arcee quired.
"I know for a fact that not every part of you is bullet proof, and I got a pretty good shot."
"Nya, stop!" Starscream begged her.
Nya turned to Starscream, "Don't worry about me Screamer. She won't do it. If they're truly who they say they are, her boss would never allow her to hurt me," she turned back to Arcee, "Now let him go."
"No, Nya please just listen! I turned myself in for their assistance, in rescuing you!" Starscream quickly said before Bulkhead hit him again.
The cold determined stare that was etched into Nya's face suddenly broke, and look of utter shock washed over her, "You what?"
"YES! I DID! NOW PLEASE PUT THE GUN DOWN!" he pleaded.
Nya's wide eyes continued to stare at the grey seeker. Sensing the sincerity in his voice, she slowly lowered her hand gun and stowed it away in the holder on her belt. She'd been captured before, and instinctively raised her hands over her head.
Taking this as a sign of surrender, Arcee lowered her blaster, "Get them through the ground bridge."
Nya respectfully obeyed, but she wasn't smiling, as they lead her through the large vortex of swirling green light.
Raf's fingers clicked the thin keys of the laptop. The bright screen, reflected in his glasses. Something about this Nya the was nagging at him, and he had to know more. Looking at her file there wasn't that much he could go on; most of it was redacted for some reason. Only her name, callsign, rank, reason of early termination, and a few of the many missions she had been on were visible. Why was all this information on her missing?
Jack looked over to his younger friend, seeing his face screwed into a determined and frustrated hard stare. He stopped trying to cheer up Miko, (she was still salty about not being allowed on the mission, like always) for a second and went over to the miniature genius.
"Hey, Raf what you working on?"
"Huh? Oh, nothing much, just mostly trying to find out more about this Nya person."
Over hearing their conversation Miko decided that talking would be much better than waiting in silence, and joining in, "Why? We can just ask her or Starscream when they get back."
"Well, I'm curious. There's a lot of information in her files that's missing. Like what exact reason why she was fired. Sure, it says insubordination but that could mean a lot of things. Did she break a rule, did she mess up on a mission, or just not follow orders? Not mention all the other stuff that's redacted. It's odd. Besides we don't know what condition she'll be in when she gets here and I doubt the bots will let us talking to Starscream. So might as well look."
"Ooh! Sounds like a mystery!" Miko said now greatly interested.
"Well, what did you find on her?" Jack, asked.
"Nothing much to be honest. I was going to investigate the files on some of the mission she was supposed to be on but…" Raf said.
"But what?" Jack asked.
"When I checked the mission files, she wasn't mention in any of them." Raf explained.
"What?" Miko said.
"In these files there always a list of all the soldiers or people who were involved. I can't find her name in any of them," Raf explained.
"Maybe they just forgot to write her name down?" Jack suggested.
"On over seven different mission files? I doubt it," Raf said.
"Raf is right, the Airforce ain't that sloppy. Seven files you said?" Fowler joined in; he was curious about this girl too.
The bespectacled boy nodded, "Those are the only ones I've check though, there are a lot more here."
"That's not right. Why would they keep so much of her information in the dark?" Fowl sat next to the children.
Miko's mind and mouth began to ramble with excitement and possible theories, "OOH! MAYBE SHE WAS CAPTURE BY AN EMENY AND BRAIN WASHED! OR MAYBE SHE SAW SOMETHING! YEAH! SHE SAW SOMETHING SHE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO SEE! OOH! OR *gasp* MAYBE SHE'S AN DECEPTICON HERSELF!"
"Whoa Miko calm down. First off, she is clearly a real person, and couldn't be an alien robot. Second, she was an air force pilot, not a spy," Jack said.
"Aww…" Miko said.
"While Miko's theories maybe a bit out there. Someone is defiantly trying to cover something up here. None of this info on her wouldn't be scratched out if it wasn't." Fowler said, "Did you find anything else on her?"
"Not really, but I did find some of her old training videos." Raf turned back to the laptop, clacking the keys again.
A video file quickly popped up onto the screen. The four of them watched in awe as a state-of-the-art military jet twisted and turned through drills while firing at targets; never missing one of them.
"Wow," Raf whispered.
"Man! She is good! Do you think she could teach me?" Miko asked.
"Miko she was terminated. I don't think she has a license to fly right now, much less teach." Jack said.
"Aww."
The ground bridge activated behind them, and Bulkhead, Arcee, Optimus, and smokescreen all ran inside, narrowly missing an explosion.
"Is everyone alright? What was that explosion?" Ratchet quickly asked, concerned for his team.
"We are fine old friend. Starscream gave us enough time to make our exit before he blew the mine." Optimus explained.
"Speaking of the seeker where is he?" ratchet looked at the group noticing that some one was missing, "Or bumblebee?"
"Bumblebee is currently with the girl, waiting for a ground bridge. I suspect that Starscream managed to escape the blast through an upward tunnel, that or…" Optimus cut himself off, as he walked towards the monitor to contact bumblebee.
Smokescreen looked towards the four humans who were still staring at Raf's Lap top. Hearing that Optimus hadn't assigned him to help retrieve the girl, he decided to check out what they were so interested in.
"Hey guys."
"Hi'ya smoke!" Miko said.
"What are you looking at?"
"Just doing a little research on the human the Starscream mention," Raf answered, and turned the laptop to show Smokescreen, "Look."
Smokescreen's optics widened at the screen, clearly impressed, "Whoa! Are you sure that's human piloting that thing?"
"Positive Kiddo," Fowler confirmed.
"Wow, she could put any seeker to shame," Smokescreen marveled.
"Seeker? Is that like a cybertronian fighter pilot?" Fowler asked.
"Yeah, kind of, the best flyers held the title of Seeker, but not all of them were strictly trained for combat," Smokescreen explained, "But she could easily make high rank combat seeker."
"Do you think that Optimus will give her a job after this?" Miko asked.
"What do you mean by that Miko?" Jack asked.
"I mean, that she's good at flying, probably needs a job, and with her as the bots' air support we could take the decepticons down twice as fast! You saw the video! Optimus should totally ask her to join," Miko said.
"Not that I don't agree with you Miko, but I think that if she was terminated, there had to be a reason. Maybe, she shouldn't be on a military team," Said Raf.
Miko grumbled clearly disappointed with this. "I still want to talk to her though."
"I'm with you on that Miko. I've got quite a few questions for her," Fowler said.
"Looks like you won't have to wait long for that," Smokescreen said.
The attention of everyone in the base was suddenly on the ground bridge portal. Arcee was first to come through, followed but a very tied up Starscream, then the woman of the hour walked thought shortly followed by bulkhead.
Nya gently shook off the unearthly tingling feeling that the ground bridge gave her, before glanced around her new surroundings. The autobot base was, not what she had expected, granted she didn't know what she expected. Maybe she thought that it wouldn't have been similar to the decepticons'? She didn't know. The walls appeared to be stone, rather than metal making her think that they were somewhere underground. She was thankful that it was at least well lighten, unlike the cold steely halls of what the decepticons called home.
The autobot ranks, seemed to be much smaller and laced with more variety. She didn't see any of the look like clone things like back at the mine. The tallest of them all, a red and blue bot, he was the one in charge; she could tell that with a passing glance.
After a few seconds her gaze shifted to the silver seeker. He wasn't looking back at her. Something was off. Why didn't he turn around? She, only got a few moments, before he was rushed away. She would have run after them, if middle-aged dark-skinned man, hadn't walked up to her.
"Major Nya Lee?" The man spoke.
"It's been a long time since anyone called me that," she answered.
"Good to know we got the right person."
The sound of heavy footsteps put the conversation on hold. Nya looked up to see the tall red and blue Autobot. After close interaction with Megatron she wasn't impressed or frightened.
"Major Nya Lee. I am Optimus Prime, Leader of the Autobots. I trust you are unharmed."
"Nothing more than a couple bumps and bruises, and… just call me Nya. I was stripped of my title years ago."
Optimus nodded and flashed her a small warm smile. This action made Nya feel, slightly more comfortable, but she was still on edge.
"Well than Nya. I'm special Agent William Fowler, of the United States government. I'm the autobots' liaison to the outer world," Fowler extended his hand.
Nya excepted the handshake, "So, you're the babysitter?" She asked only to get a very unamused stare at her, "Okay, so not much for jokes. Got it."
"I am sure you have many questions," Opitmus spoke.
"You got that right. Starting with, where the heck am I, and who are you guys?"
"The location of our base I'm afraid must remain classified. We are autonomous robotic organisms from the planet Cybertron," Optimus spoke.
"I know that. I meant who are you guys on a more specific level. As in what do you do or want and what are you going to do to us?"
"Us?" Agent Fowler queried.
"Am I not allowed to worry for a friend of mine?" Nya snapped at fowler, before turning her attention back to Optimus.
"You will remained unharmed and any injuries you have sustained, physically or otherwise, will be treated," Opitmus reassured.
"So, you're not going to use a neuralyzer to rewrite my memories?" Nya asked.
"We're not the Men in Black, Soldier," Fowler said.
Opitmus was confused about who these men wearing black were and what a neuralyzer was. However, he put the thought aside, and returned his attention to the situation at hand, "While I do not know of 'Men in Black', I can assure you that your memory will remain as is. We protect your kind from the tyranny from our Darker Brothers who would wish you harm."
"I think I've met them," Nya said.
Optimus nodded, "I do hope you understand that we must remain a secret to the rest of the world."
"Yeah, don't worry about me I can keep a secret, besides who would believe me," she looked towards the hall that Starscream was taken, "Can I see him?"
"Excuse me?' Agent Fowler said.
Nya quickly turned back to them, "You heard me. Something was wrong. I need to talk to him."
"I'm sorry Soldier, but he's too dangerous for anyone who's not a bot to be around," Fowler said.
"He's not dangerous! I practically shared a house with him for two weeks and I'm still here."
"He was just using you," the feminine Blue Autobot said.
"What was that Blue bell?" Nya asked, turning to her.
"My name is Arcee. According to Starscream he was injured, and you knew how to repair him. As soon as you served your purpose, he'd would have turned you into a spot on the pavement."
"No, he wouldn't have." So, this is the bot that was the partner of the bot Starscream killed. Dang it Starscream! Why did you have to kill the partner of the kickbutt, warrior chick, that is not good at letting go of a grudge?
"Oh, Really? After hearing about your career, it's sad to see you fall for a deception ploy."
Every muscle in Nya's body grew tense with Anger. Clearly the past that Arcee and Starscream had shared was not something the femme could let go of. There were quite a few people from Nya's past that she never wanted to see again, either, but that didn't mean she was going to trash-talk them in front of other people. Especially to those who cared about them. She was fighting very hard not the shoot at Arcee and save her only shot for when she would actually need, but she was very tempted. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Agent fowler saw the very intense staring match the two girls we in, and decide to step in so no own got hurt. "Nya, why don't you come with me. We can discuss your situation more thoroughly, while Prime gets his people's reports."
Nya slowly nodded, her body relaxing as she followed Fowler up some stairs. They entered an area with a couch, some basic human entertainment devices, and too her shock, three human children.
One of them, a girl that looked to be in her early teens, with hair styled in a way even Nya wasn't brave enough to rock, came running up to Nya, bursting with excitement, "HI! I'M MIKO! WERE YOU REALLY A PILOT?! DID YOU REALLY SAVE STARSCREAM'S LIFE?! WHAT'S THE MOST DANGEROUS MISSION YOU'VE EVER GONE ON?! DID YOU REALLY REFORM STARSCREM?! DO YOU THINK YOU COULD TEACH MY TO FLY LIKE YOU?!"
Nya watched the very energetic girl that was jumping up and down in front of her, a bit flustered. She liked rough, energetic, kids. She was just too tired to understand her right now.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Kiddo. I need you to slow down. I don't mind answering questions; it's just been a very long day and you're talking way too fast. Ok?" Nya said calmly with a warm smile on her face.
Miko nodded very enthusiastically.
"Okay. Now I can get I get your name again, little miss?" Nya asked.
"I'm Miko!" Miko Yelped, before turning around to point at the other two children both boys, "Black hair, is Jack and Mister hacker, is Raf!" she whipped back around to Nya, a bright smile on her face.
Nya turned to Fowler, "So it's too dangerous, of me to be around one cybertronian, yet it's perfectly fine for three underaged kids to hang around multiple?"
Fowler sighed, "The Autobots have agreed to work with the human government willingly and believed that, 'Freedom is the right of all sentient beings' to quote Prime. We can trust them with the children."
"If they believe that everyone deserves to be free, then why are they locking Starscream up?"
The room went silent. Even the Medic, who Nya didn't even know was eavesdropping, froze. Fowler wasn't sure how to respond. Sure, Nya was probably being a smart-alecky, but she made a good point. Optimus might have to change his slogan. The silent continued until it grew awkward.
Raf decided to break the silence, "Were you really fighter pilot?" he asked.
"How did you know that?" Nya asked, turning to the young boy.
"Uhm, I look up your name in the data base," Raf said.
Nya picked up on the boy's shyness, and made her voice soft to put him at ease. "You read my file?"
"Yeah, we did," Fowler answered, "You have a very interesting one."
"So, you were really a pilot?" Miko asked.
"Yeah, I was kiddo but that was a long time ago. I haven't been at the helm of a f-181 Black Wasp, in a long time," Nya answered.
"What happened?", the oldest boy, jack asked.
"I was wondering that too. Why were you terminated?" Fowler asked.
Nya sighed and walked over to the guardrail. She grabbed the rail, leaning her weigh onto her hands. She hung her head, "You read my file shouldn't you know?"
"I did, but something was off. I saw your training videos, you're good. Too good for them to get ride of you for being a wildcard."
"Do you want me to tell you the order or the reality?" Nya asked, standing up strait and looking back at Fowler.
"Which one's true?"
"Well, what happened was…" Nya gave a quick, pained gasp and reached out for the guardrail.
All the stress of the day had finally caught up to her. There was a sharp pain in her chest, like a burning hot silver blade had suddenly been forced into her. The world around her began to distort once more, but this time it was more violent. She lost touch with reality, everything was nothing but a swirling view of unknown colors and sounds she couldn't make out. A vice grip suddenly seized her chest. She couldn't breathe. The shrapnel in her chest was on fire. Her legs buckled and she began to fall down into a dark pit. Down, down, down. The black swallowed her alive.
Fowler had to blink, and rush forward the catch the seemingly healthy young woman, that had suddenly collapsed. He had to hold Nya's body down, as it jerked back and forth up and down. Her mouth began to foam. What was going on?
Miko screamed, causing every single Autobot in the base to rush over. Optics stared on in shock; they had never a seizer before. Suddenly, Nya when limp. Fowler pressed his fingers against her neck, praying that she wasn't gone.
"Jack! Call your mom!"
A/N
Well, I completed another chapter! And yes, this story is not dead! I did so many revisions of this chapter!
I hope people enjoy what this one holds! My birthday has just pasted and this my gift to all of you! With the state that the world is currently in, I hope that I can bring smiles to some people's faces! Stay tuned for the next chapter!