Riven-del:Thank you to all of you who reviewed this story thus far! It makes me very happy to know people are reading and enjoying this story! Enjoy this new chapter!
"What in the pit happened?" demanded Jetfire after Terra was sedated.
"I wished I knew," said Red Alert. The rest of the Autobots and the humans were in the Med Bay now wondering what happened to cause Terra to scream. "The bracelet she has has Cybertronian glyphs with her real name and the name of her parents. When we told her her name she began to scream."
"Her name? Wait, do you mean—" Alexis began but was cut off by Optimus.
"Terra is originally a Cybertronian, and is possibly a descendant of a line of High Priests which would explain a certain glyph on the bracelet."
"I think this would make more sense if you started from the beginning," said Scavenger. Everyone looked equally confused and remained silent as the medic and leader explained what happened. The group remained silent, digesting the new information about their friend, until Alexis began asking questions.
"If she is really a Cybertronian, then why does she look and act like a human down to the normal body functions?" was her first question, however it brought up some valid points that needed to be addressed.
"She isn't a Techno-Organic, which could have explained it, but since she isn't we can only form conjectures at this point," said Red Alert. "For all we know her creators—or parents in human terms—might have turned her into human and sent her here for whatever reason they had to do so."
"Is that even possible?" asked Rad.
"I do not believe so, at least with our current technology," said Optimus Prime. "However, since the dialect was of the High Priests dialect, I have a suspicion that something else is at play, or more specifically: Primus sent Terra here for a reason."
The Autobots looked shocked while the kids appeared lost.
"Who is Primus?" asked Carlos.
"Is he your version of God?" asked Billy.
"In a manner of speaking; Primus is the Ultimate Good that created us and Cybertron. His Spark, the Allspark, resides in the core of our world, and the High Priests of the Allspark guard it and relay messages from Primus himself to the rest of us. If he sent Terra here on a mission, then we need to help her regain her memories and find out what that mission is."
"Now hold on a second," said Hot Shot. "Terra's been here since she was only a few Earth days old, how is she supposed to remember anything if she was sent here as a newly created sparkling?"
"She reacted to her real name, didn't she?" said Fred, showing a rare moment of intelligence beyond thoughts of food. "She's gotta remember something if she screamed after hearing her own name."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean she'll remember her mission, Fred," said Billy. "What if her parents were only instructed to send her here and she never knew about her mission?"
"I don't know, this does seem a little too fishy to be coincidence," mussed Carlos who crossed his arms in thought. "I mean, Rad and I woke up the Minicons and brought you guys and the Decepticons to Earth, and Terra just so happens to have been living in the area for the past fourteen years?"
"Honestly, I'm more worried about Terra," said Alexis. "If remembering caused her enough pain to scream like that, then I don't know if it would be a good idea to help her remember anything from her Cybertronian life." That made everyone shut up.
Optimus looked as though he were about to say something when they heard Terra moan. They all looked towards her just as she sat up.
"Oh, dear Lord," she groaned, palm on her forehead. "Tone it down, guys. My head feels like it got split open." She looked even paler than usual, making Red Alert scan her on instinct.
"Hot Shot, can you take Alexis and Terra home," said the medic. "She needs to rest."
The drive had been quiet and Terra had fallen back to sleep on the way home. Unfortunately, once she fell asleep she slept hard.
"She must be sicker than we thought," said Hot Shot in his holoform as he and Alexis dragged her into the latter's house and into the guest room. His holoform had sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and was wearing black pants with a black and yellow hoodie. Overall, he looked cute to Alexis's mom. Ms. Smith made sure Terra was tucked into bed before ushering them into the living room.
"At least it's the weekend, meaning she'll have plenty of time to recover," said the woman of the house. "Hopefully she'll be better in the morning; I want to take her shopping tomorrow."
"Shopping? For what?" Alexis inquired.
"Why, to update your new sister's wardrobe of course!" Ms. Smith said this with so much enthusiasm that Alexis and Hot Shot suddenly feared for their sanity. "It's not every day that we get to do something fun, and since the three of us have tomorrow off I thought we could spend the day together while getting proper attire for Terra!"
"Mom, did you suddenly turn into a teenager?" asked an extremely surprised Alexis.
"Or are you an imposter disguised as her?" asked Hot Shot. He had met the woman on several occasions and he had never seen the woman act like this.
"Now, Hot Shot," the woman in question said, shocking the hell out of him, "would you be our chauffer tomorrow?" Something in her tone made it sound more like a command than a request. Hot Shot's holoform gulped, suddenly feeling very intimidated by the woman.
Optimus Prime noticed how fast Hot Shot drove back into the base nearly an hour after the yellow Autobot dropped Terra and Alexis off at their home. The Autobot in question transformed back into his bi-pede form once he reached the base, looking very frightened by something.
"Did something happen, Hot Shot?" he inquired, curious as to what spooked the brash warrior.
"I know now where Alexis gets her intimidating side," the young warrior said. Optimus couldn't help but smile as Hot Shot explained what happened between him, Alexis, and the older Smith. He had a suspicion that Ms. Smith knew of their existence with how much supplies Alexis kept bringing to the base every weekend, but to have coerced Hot Shot into being their chauffer for tomorrow's activities without using threats was downright amusing to the Prime.
Starscream was about to log into his personal computer when he received a vision…
Optimus Prime was talking to one of the humans—Rad, he believed was this human's name—and from their body language he had a feeling it was an important topic they were covering.
"Don't you think Terra should remember on her own?" said Rad, clearly concerned for this Terra person. "I mean, pushing her might cause more problems in the long run."
"I know, Rad, but my main concern is getting that point across with certain members of the team," said Optimus. "I don't think I need to tell you whom I'm referring to since they don't listen more than half of the time an order has been given."
"That's true, but they could get punished if they did something to trigger a memory painfully," the young human suggested. "Like washing all the floors of the base, or clean the medical tools."
"I'll have to confer with Red Alert on that last one," Optimus said with humor, "but other than that cleaning all the floors would be punishment enough to leave Terra alone until she remembers her life as Stardancer on her own."
Starscream decided then and there to send them a message. He typed away, encrypted it in the old High Priest dialect—just because he didn't follow his ancestors' path doesn't mean he didn't learn something from them—and sent the message. Hopefully the idiots wouldn't cause any more harm to the girl than they already had done. Suppressed memories were a delicate case, and remembering too much at once did more harm than good to the person with said memories.
"So her name is Terra," he mused to himself. "At least we have something to go on now."
Back at the Smith home, Terra laid wide awake in bed after dinner. Ms. Smith told her what they were doing tomorrow and the teen worried for her remaining sanity.
Alexis's mother had been itching to take them both shopping for some time, and now that the perfect excuse to blow money came up, Terra knew she and Alexis were going to have a hard time keeping her out of certain stores they wouldn't want to drag any of the Autobots through. It would be good punishment for the boys if they did something to annoy them, but to show the Autobots a certain section of human clothing like that was embarrassing on so many levels and they didn't want to traumatize poor Hot Shot.
So long as we stay clear of Victoria's Secret, we'll be A-Okay, she told herself until she fell asleep.
Scavenger was on monitor duty when he received a message addressed to the Autobot team.
"Red Alert," he commed the medic, "we got an encrypted message from an unknown source."
"I'll be right up," came the response not a second later. Red Alert came in several moments later and got to work decrypting the message. "Hmm…Interesting. This message is in the High Priest dialect found on Terra's bracelet."
"So someone knows who and what she is," it was more of a statement than a question. "Question is: who sent it?"
"Unknown. For all we know, her parents might have detected a change in her spark bond." He displayed the translated message on the screen.
Do not push her. Let her figure out the puzzle on her own.