You were all so nice and enthusiastic about this that I decided to go ahead and post the second chapter–why the hell not, right? Thanks to those who reviewed–Muirgen79, who is still not sorry, HeartsGuardianSol, AlchemistPrime (still love your name and I'm glad this made your day better!), SunnySides (yay! I was going for exactly that kind of confusion as to what the hell was standing on the edge of his crater), Answerthecall (I love intensity, can't lie), twdgirls (I've been reading the IDW More Than Meets The Eye series and OMG grumpy Ratchet is the BESTEST), WolfAssassin369, Teddy Bear 007, MaddySan5926, TomateBastard, and Tatterrag Blue! Get comfy on that mushroom because here goes nothing…

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reboot protocol start

systems check

Optimus came back online slowly, optics flickering in stark surprise that he'd come back online at all. He was still in his partially-transformed state, but the pain was gone. A quick internal check took him from surprised to astonished.

LOW COOLANT LEVELS 54% OF NORMAL STABLE

REDUNDANT COOLANT SYSTEMS 73% FUNCTIONALITY

SYSTEM TEMPERATURE NORMAL

LOW ENERGON LEVEL 33% OF NORMAL STABLE

LOW POWER ADVISORY 26% RISING SHUTDOWN RECOMMENDED

EXTERNAL RECHARGE IN PROGRESS

BACKUP POWER SYSTEMS OFFLINE

INTERNAL SELF-REPAIR SYSTEMS 25% FUNCTIONALITY RISING

T-COG 83% FUNCTIONALITY

CENTRAL PROCESSOR 60% FUNCTIONALITY

WEAPONS SYSTEMS 79% FUNCTIONALITY

OPTICS 100% FUNCTIONAL

AUDITORY SYSTEMS 100% FUNCTIONAL

VOCAL PROCESSOR 100% FUNCTIONAL

EMERGENCY DISTRESS SIGNAL OFFLINE

COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS OFFLINE

NAVIGATION SYSTEMS OFFLINE

GALACTIC POSITIONING SYSTEM OFFLINE

NO FURTHER ALARMS

"Ratchet," he groaned, relief flooding him. That had been closer than he ever wanted to come to permanently offlining.

"Oh! You're awake!"

That… was definitely not Ratchet's voice.

Optimus powered up his optics–no static this time–and saw that he was no longer in a burning crater under the stars. A ceiling of some kind of organic material arched over him, not high enough for him to stand beneath it, but tall enough that he could sit comfortably. The space was wide, open, with large doors open at each end. Just outside one set of doors sat a tractor with a heavy chainfall attached. The other set opened into darkness.

And when he turned his head, he saw a small life form standing nervously beside him. He stared at it for a moment. It wasn't the same strangely ill-proportioned creature he remembered from before. This one was slightly shorter and far more slender, fully organic, no metallic parts visible on it at all. It stared at him with bright, intelligent eyes in a surprisingly delicate face as it clutched tiny versions of familiar tools in long-fingered, clever-looking hands.

Human organic, his database supplied, accessible once more. Homo sapiens sapiens, resident species of planet Earth, moderately technologically advanced, aggressive, territorial, warlike, superstitious, xenophobic, caution strongly advised.

Optimus was just thinking that the little thing didn't look particularly dangerous when he belatedly realized that he'd understood what the human had said. Staring at it and finally able to access his memory banks, the last milliseconds before his crash now came back in a rush and he remembered seeing the brightly-lit little building and firing damaged boosters to avoid it. Was that this creature's home? "Did I hurt you?"

"Hurt me?" it echoed, surprised, and unless he was mistaken, this wasn't an it, it was a she. For a warlike species, she sounded more worried about him than he would've expected. "That's your first question?"

"The… fall. Crash," Optimus said with some difficulty–his vocalizer might be reading as fully functional, but his low power level still had him feeling very weak, and even with his translation systems back online finding the right words in an unfamiliar language wasn't easy. "Your… dwelling. The fire. Did I hurt you? Or the other one?"

She blinked at him, then shook her head. "No, it's all fine. You missed my house and I only got a few little burns." Then she stopped. "What other one?"

Optimus let his head fall back, too exhausted to hold it up any longer. "Small like you," he said, searching for the words. "Different shape. Dark head. Big… big hands."

"Oh," she said, and then she smiled. For an organic, it was a very nice smile. "No, big guy, that was me, too. Look." She pointed and he saw the leathery covering–a long apron, he now saw, which explained why her legs had seemed so short–the blocky helmet, silvery shirt, and thick gloves and boots hanging on some kind of rack on the wall with the oversized dark boots beneath it. "Heat-resistant protective gear. Sometimes I use it if I'm welding, or working with molten metal." Another smile. "Or going to investigate meteors in my front yard."

One of the systems that wasn't back online yet was his internal chronometer. "How long since I crashed?" he asked.

"About a day," she replied. "I–"

His gaze snapped to her again. That long? "My Autobots," he said urgently, starting to struggle upright. "Where are my Autobots?"

"Easy, easy, calm down. I don't know what Autobots is but if you tell me, I can try to find out for you," she said, holding up her hands and stepping back a little. She'd been cautious until now, but this was the first trace of fear he'd seen in those eyes, and Optimus forced himself to go still again. He didn't want to frighten the little thing away.

"Not what, who," he said, fighting a sinking feeling in his spark because if Ratchet had been the one to repair him, this human would know what Autobots were. And Ratchet and the others should've found him by now, nonfunctional emergency beacon or not. The medic would've seen him go off course and started looking for him immediately if he possibly could have. "Others… others like me."

She shook her head but didn't retreat any further. "I've never seen anything like you. There aren't any others, at least not here."

He stared at her. His internal systems showed an improvement that his self-repair systems absolutely hadn't been capable of making and Ratchet wasn't here, so that could only mean– "Did… did you repair me?"

She bit her lip, a surprisingly disarming gesture, and nodded. "I tried, anyway. I hope I did more good than harm. You're not, um, not leaking any more, at least."

No, he wasn't, but that was the least of the improvements she'd made. Apart from his low power level, he was almost completely functional. "How did you know how?" he asked as his internal HUD showed him that his self-repair system had now reached 35% functionality–per protocols, it would concentrate on repairing itself first, and then it would go to work on the rest of him.

"I didn't, not for sure. I guessed," she admitted. She was close now but didn't get any nearer. It was as if she sensed that this distance, not too close and not too far, was easiest for his optics to focus on her. "But it was an educated guess, at least. I'm an engineer with NASA–do you even know what that is?–and honestly, I thought you were a crashed military satellite until you spoke. Now I don't know what you are."

First contact. This was her species' first contact. He bit back a groan as more data on humanity downloaded from his repaired memory banks. Humans were a warlike species, destructive, violent, barely capable of the shortest feats of space travel, and the Galactic Council had emphatically disapproved them for inclusion in the interstellar community–their official position was one race of Decepticons is enough.

Damn it, this was not in the plan!

But then again, it was hard to believe that humanity was truly a savage, aggressive, xenophobic species when confronted with one this surprisingly… kind. She had no reason to help him at all, much less repair him to this degree–79% functionality of his weapons systems gave him more than enough firepower to subdue someone far stronger than this single organic. If he'd been found by a creature like the ones the Council described, it would have finished dismantling him to find out how he worked rather than stopping his bleeding and putting him back together.

And she was alone. His proximity detectors pinged no one but her within a mile, the furthest his still-damaged systems could read. She hadn't even made the slightest attempt to restrain him.

It was as though she… trusted that he wouldn't repay her kindness with violence.

Almost as though reading his thoughts, she said, "You're a machine, but you felt pain and spoke and you think, and it's not a program. You're alive. I have never even imagined anything like you and I don't know if you came to Earth by accident or by design, but I couldn't let you die before I could find out who you are, what you are. Please tell me I haven't made a mistake."

Optimus looked at her, trying to decide which was wrong, the Galactic Council's analysis or his own impressions of this human. The Council had been adamant about humanity's unworthiness, but every action this one had taken ran counter to their findings. In his spark Optimus couldn't quite believe she'd pulled him from the edge of death only to betray him now.

The Matrix sent a barely-perceptible thread of energy through him, far too weak to be considered a true prompting, but Optimus decided to take it as one anyway and just trusted his instincts.

He slowly spun his t-cog, finally fully unfolding from his transitional form and sitting up in his protoform. The human watched with absolute wonder and no fear at all, and that fascinated him as he towered over her. She should've been terrified–in her place, faced with an unknown, much larger, and infinitely stronger being, he would've been terrified, but while she was clearly awed by the sight of him in his robot form, she wasn't afraid. "My name is Optimus Prime," he said. "I am an autonomous robotic organism from the planet Cybertron, and I am the leader of the Autobots."

"Whoa," she whispered, staring at him with wide eyes. Then she seemed to get a grip on herself. "My name is Anna Elias. And I'm… just a human. I'm just a human, not a leader of anything."

"You are not just a human," Optimus told her, meaning it. "You are the human who has saved my life, and as such, I and all of the Autobots are in your debt. This is not something we take lightly. Thank you, Anna Elias."

She bit her lip again, but her eyes were bright with wonder and suddenly she smiled. It lit up her entire face. It was clear that she was trying to push the smile away and look serious, but Optimus found himself rather glad that she was failing. Such an innocent little thing, so curious, he thought, almost as captivated by her as she clearly was by him. "Just Anna," she said, finally giving up on suppressing the smile and letting it go. "And you're welcome."

But it only lasted a moment before her expression changed again, this time to concern. "You asked about others. Others like you," she said, serious now. "Why are you here, Optimus Prime?"

"For no nefarious purpose. We have not come to harm you or your planet," he reassured her without hesitation. When she relaxed minutely, he explained, "We have been searching for a Cybertronian artifact for millions of years and we believe we have located it on Earth. We are here to reclaim it. Once we do, we will leave your world in peace." Then he smiled ruefully. "Honestly, humanity was not supposed to know that we were here at all, but… well, as you have seen, I had some trouble. I do normally land better," he added, feeling the need to say it.

She looked him up and down and he could practically read her thoughts–he was thirty solid feet of metal robot warrior, so exactly how had he planned to go unnoticed? "Humans may be impressively blind about a lot of things, but I'm pretty sure most of us would notice you, big guy," she said dryly.

Optimus chuckled at the nickname, and that surprised him–when was the last time he'd allowed someone to call him anything besides his name or Prime? For that matter, when was the last time he'd laughed? "We have ways of hiding in plain sight," he said, wondering if the unfamiliar power source was affecting him strangely. He looked down at his chest and saw the cables leading from beneath his reattached chestplate across the large room and out the open door. He leaned over and looked out to see several large grey machines rumbling outside–he'd been aware of the sound but hadn't paid it any mind until now. They were all individually wired to the nearest machine, which was directly linked to him and looked fairly heavily modified. He touched the cables and gave her a questioning look.

"Oh, yes, that," she said, suddenly all business. "I analyzed your power core so I could try to charge you, but you're such a powerhouse that our commonly supplied household wattage wouldn't even begin to help you. Your core cycles at a vastly higher hertz–I blew out three meters just trying to analyze it. I couldn't hit your optimum power level exactly, I don't have access to that kind of power generation here, but I've got two high-output generators and a standard one. I was able to link them in a cascade and modify the digital signal processor control on that frequency converter–" she pointed out the window, "and came fairly close to generating something that I thought should do the trick–it should be a bit over 200 KVA, pulse width modulated to 400 hertz. I directly wired it into your power core. Not pretty, but it works. At least, you're upright and talking so I assume it's working–I know what it's putting out, but that's the apparent power, you know, and of course real power is a different thing entirely. I don't have the kind of cables I here that I really need to minimize wattage loss in transmission. I'd need a superconductive pathway to really charge you. I guess it boils down to, I think it should be working but I don't know for sure. You'll have to tell me."

Optimus blinked at her. The last time he'd heard something that incomprehensible, it had come from Perceptor, and he'd stared at the Autobot scientist with exactly the same blank, bemused expression he turned on the human now. He wasn't stupid by any measure, but part of knowing his strengths was knowing his limitations, and he could recognize when he encountered intelligence beyond his. "It's working," he finally said, realizing that she was still staring expectantly at him. Then, unable to hold the question back, he said, "Do all humans know how to do that?"

She laughed, shaking her head. "If they did, I'd be out of a job. Remember when I said I worked for NASA? My official job description is lead researcher in charge of theoretical and alternative power sources for unmanned interplanetary probes." She spread her hands in a little bow, grinning. "To put it simply, my team designs and builds robots to send into space, and I figure out how to power them. Mine are nothing as advanced as you, obviously, but if you had to crash and knock out all your electronics, you really did pick the right place to do it."

And Optimus suddenly had a flash of restored memory–a meteor slamming violently into him just before he'd entered Earth's atmosphere, throwing him off course, damaging his heat shield, but that wasn't all. A second impact from an unseen, much lighter object, not enough to cause more damage but just enough to nudge his trajectory and send him tumbling in a slightly new direction. The Matrix pulsed beneath his spark and that definitely was a prompting, no doubt about it.

That second impact might as well have been Primus' hand sending him right to help.

Optimus looked at her with new respect–he'd already been impressed by her bravery and generosity, but he was slowly beginning to realize that she was something even more than he'd thought. "I am in your debt," he told her again, unable to think of any other words.

Well, besides things like I wonder what Perceptor and Ratchet would make of you, but that was something that couldn't happen. For one thing, Perceptor hadn't even come on this mission, and for another, he had no idea where Ratchet even was. For all he knew, the meteor shower that had damaged him had done the same thing to Ratchet, Ironhide, and Jazz, too.

And that brought a new surge of anxiety. He had to find them. "My Autobots–I need to contact them. I need to be sure that they are all right."

Anna bit her lip again. "I fixed the systems I thought I recognized," she told him. "But you're pretty much made of things that are unfamiliar to me. If your communications aren't working, I don't know how to repair them, but I'm willing to try if you think you can talk me through it."

Optimus groaned. "I am no medic," he admitted. Then he looked around the building, seeing equipment both familiar and completely mysterious, but he saw nothing that looked like the kind of communications equipment he recognized. Finally he sighed. "My internal repair systems will bring my communications back online, given time. I suppose I will have to wait."

"Sorry," she said, and she sounded sincere. "I have team members who know communications systems better than I ever will, but I'm getting the impression that you don't want anyone else to know you're here. Don't worry, I haven't called anyone," she added when he looked sharply at her.

"Are you going to?" he asked. He dreaded the answer but he had to ask. His luck so far had been far better than he had any right to expect–there was clearly a reason Primus had sent him to this Anna Elias–but she was human. Her loyalty would obviously be to her species and her world. Many planets offered a bounty for the capture of an alien species, and while there was no data indicating that Earth did so, Optimus wouldn't be surprised if it did, and he couldn't really blame her if she decided to collect.

After all, she didn't know him, and she'd already done more for him than he could repay.

To her credit, she didn't instantly reply with a reassuring lie. After a moment's consideration, thought, she finally shook her head. "Not unless I have to," she said, spreading her hands. "Are you going to make me wish I had?"

Optimus smiled at the bluntness of the question. "I have no plans to do so," he assured her. Then, feeling somehow that the formality was necessary, he said, "Upon my word as Prime of the Autobots, I offer you a bond of peace, Anna Elias. You will come to no harm at our hands. Do you accept?"

The words were clearly unfamiliar, but she looked relieved. "I accept," she replied, and then she added, "I thought Prime was your name. No?"

"Optimus is my name, and Prime is my title," he explained. "I am called Prime in the same way that you would call your leader President."

That made her smile again. "Do you know that in an ancient language called Latin, Optimus Prime would be roughly translated as the best is first? What a comforting name for the first alien to visit my planet."

He raised an eyebrow, uncharacteristically flattered that she'd said something like that, but he was beginning to realize that this human was surprising in many ways. This conversation had failed to go as expected several times. "That is… an interesting translation of my name," he replied thoughtfully, but fatigue was beginning to wear on him. "Something to aspire to, I suppose."

She laughed at that but she clearly noticed his tone. Gesturing at the cables, she said, "You're safe here, Optimus Prime. If you need to, I don't know what you call it, shut down or recharge or sleep in order to repair yourself faster, you can. If I'm not here in the barn with you, I'll be close enough to hear a shout if you need me."

He nodded. "Shutting down would help," he admitted. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," she said lightly. Then she snapped her fingers as though remembering something. "Oh, and I need to go cover your tracks–no one's come looking for a meteorite yet, but they will. You're going to hear an explosion. Don't freak out."

He frowned. "Explosion?" he echoed.

"Well, explosion might be the wrong word, but yeah." Seeing his expression, she walked toward the door and lifted something from a sturdy box from beside it. "I just bought this, too," she murmured, her back to him, but she shrugged to herself and turned to show him what was in her hands.

"A meteorite," he said, staring at the blackened, pitted lump in her arms. It was tiny to him but obviously heavy to her because she held it close to her body, muscles standing out beneath her skin as she supported it. Such a little thing, he thought, surprised that he'd forgotten that even for a moment, but her personality was so big that her actual size had slipped his mind.

"I collect them," she explained, carrying it over to a worktable near him and dropping it with a thud. Then she gave him a hesitant kind of look. "I've always wanted to go into space and I won't ever get to, so I work for the space program and I collect these. It's not direct, but something of me goes out to the stars, and they send something back that I can touch…" Her voice trailed off and she shrugged, looking down at the rock as if embarrassed. "And considering where you came from, that probably sounded really stupid."

He reached out and touched the meteorite. "It doesn't sound stupid at all," he said quietly.

She glanced at him, clearly wondering if he was making fun of her, but whatever she saw in his face reassured her enough that her shoulders visibly relaxed. "Well, anyway, that's why I have it. This is the biggest one I have, but I can't just bury it in the crater–too obvious. There's too much evidence of fire and I had to dig quite a bit to gather up all the, um, well, all the pieces of you. So I planned to put this in liquid nitrogen long enough to freeze it solid, then throw it at that granite outcrop that wrecked you. It's still very hot and it should shatter this with significant force to mimic a hard impact." She patted the iron. "And everyone knows I collect these. If this really had been a meteor, I would definitely be out there digging up the bits."

It was a clever plan and, Optimus was startled to realize, something he hadn't even thought of. After his catastrophic entry, the chances of human authorities coming to investigate were high. It spoke highly of Anna that she'd considered this. He looked at the meteorite again, thinking of a way to express his appreciation, and had a sudden idea. "You have many of these?" he asked, thinking of her admission that she collected them. When she nodded shyly, he smiled. "When my systems are fully functional again, I could analyze them for you and identify where they came from."

Her eyes lit with startled wonder. "You can do that? You could really tell?"

He nodded, still smiling. "It would give me very great pleasure to do that for you. I would be glad to tell you what parts of the universe you have touched."

Anna looked up at him, happiness filling her so strongly that he almost felt it radiating from her. Then she reached out and he instinctively touched her hand. The Matrix sent another flutter through him at the instant of contact. "Cybertron," she murmured, her soft hand warm against his cool metal, and the image of her smile followed him down into recharge.

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… that paragraph of Anna talking about recharging Optimus is the result of an ungodly amount of highly confusing research. If there are any electrical engineers reading this, be kind to me. I tried. (or, dammit, Jim, I'm a fanfic writer, not an electrical engineer!)