PART 32 – Trouble
Rachel
Cheetor, at that point, seemed more like my sort of robot. He understood that action had to be taken. It was not a time to sit around and talk. We found a quiet corner to work out a plan. While the others were wasting time, we would creep out and do some recon. It seemed that Cheetor was something of an expert on sneaking out of the base; he had done it a few times before.
"So how are we going to do this?" Cheetor asked me. I could tell he was getting excited about this covert mission of ours.
"I'll morph something small and hide out on you until we get outside," I replied. "Then I'll morph something larger."
It should have been a simple mission, right? Sneak out, do some spying and then report back triumphant with information about how far along they were. Though, you would think I'd know that things never go the way they're planned.
"Keep an eye out," I instructed Cheetor, "I'm going to go small."
I decided then that a fly would be the best route to go. Small enough to be undetected and bit enough so at least Cheetor could tell where I was.
At that moment I felt myself starting to shrink. My eyes went compound and extra arms began to sprout from my ribs. At the same time my skeleton became non-existent as an exoskeleton began to harden on the outside. Wings popped out of my shoulders as I finally shrank down to fly size.
Ok, I told Cheetor. I'm on. Let's do this!
Cheetor didn't respond, but I knew he heard me because suddenly we were moving. I couldn't tell what was going on, so I just had to trust that Cheetor really knew what he was doing. And that he could get us out undetected by the others. If Optimus and Jake found out they would certainly flip out, at least I knew Jake would.
I'm going to assume things are going smoothly, I said after a few minutes. You're going to have to give me some sort of sign when we're all clear.
Once again, I got no response and it was starting to bug me. Sitting on Cheetor's back I couldn't tell where we were or what was going on. It was really frustrating. Pretty soon the others would notice I was missing and it wouldn't take them long to figure out what had happened.
"Ok, we're clear!" I heard. At least, I think that's what it was. Fly hearing isn't exactly high quality. I certainly hoped that Cheetor wasn't really telling me there was trouble. There was only one way to find out.
I flew off Cheetor's back and flew what I assumed was a few feet away. I didn't want to demorph on top of him. I felt all the fly features that didn't belong being sucked back into nothing. My normal human features slowly replaced certain fly ones. When I finished, I took a moment to look around at where we were.
Cheetor was right, we were indeed some distance away from the base. That was good. Before I re-morphed, I glanced around to make sure that no one else was around. I wasn't too concerned about Controllers. Well, I was concerned about the Visser since he was still out and about. No thanks to Optimus.
I decided that, once again, bear morph was the way to go. It had worked out well enough in the past. And just in case we ran into trouble on the way I wouldn't have to change from something small. The plan was that once we got up to the Predicon Base, but weren't in sight range, I would go small again for infiltration purposes.
My mind was focused on my powerful grizzly morph once again. I had been using that morph a lot the past couple of days. But it was my favorite and the best for any fights that might come up.
Fur began to sprout on my body as my limbs changed size, location and shape. My face molded into the snout of the grizzly bear as I dropped to all fours. Soon the change was complete and I was all grizzly bear.
All right, I said, let's do this! You have to let me know before we're too close to the other base. I need to be able to morph without being noticed.
Cheetor and myself hadn't gotten very far when trouble appeared. Two of the Predicons that I had seen earlier were coming towards us fast. Suddenly, my bear morph wasn't looking like such a good idea because both of those robots could fly. There was a red pterodactyl and a really large wasp. We were in trouble.
"Cheetor, Maximize!"
In response I roared loudly and began charging towards one of the robots. I just hoped it stayed low and waited to transform.