-Personal Log: Entry #016-
I have returned. My chrono-tracker tells me that I have returned to a period in time only three solar cycles after I left. I don't know, somehow that almost makes it seem like I imagined the whole thing.
Oh, well. I got what I came for, and more. Time to give my report.
There was a knock at the door.
"Yes?" Rodimus Prime said, looking up from his desk.
"It's Nightshade, sir. I'm back from my mission."
Rodimus keyed in the access code for the door, and it opened. Nightshade flew quickly up to the front of the desk.
"That was fast," Rodimus said. "You haven't been gone long."
"On your end, maybe," Nightshade replied. "With time travel, it's easy to return quickly. Not counting the time it took to find the place, I was there for five solar megacycles."
"You look different."
"My physical form is still regulation."
"Well, there's that, but..." Rodimus activated the zoom function in his optics. "There's something different about the way you carry yourself."
"Perhaps it's because I can finally talk to you face-to-face, without the aid of a hover platform," Nightshade pointed out.
"Perhaps," Rodimus said, still feeling like something was different. "Maybe it's just me, but it also seems strange that you would look different physically, considering the fact that I forgot to have your scouter equipped with an environmental scanner."
"What can I say? Time does strange things to people."
"Well, it looks good on you, in any case." Rodimus returned his optics to 20/20. "You have the report?"
"Got it right here." Nightshade pulled out his mission log and dropped it into the Autobot commander's large hand. "There's something else in there that you'll want to know about."
Rodimus slipped the book into a socket in his head, and his optics flickered as he downloaded its contents into his memory. Nightshade watched as Rodimus raised first one iron eyebrow, then both. Then, to the small spy's confusion, his commander smiled.
"I was wondering when you were going to find that," Rodimus said.
"Excuse me. What?"
"Even though I had that investigation report removed from public records, I suppose I always knew it was only a matter of time before you did find it," the Autobot leader continued. "But I never suspected you would go through time to discover it."
"What are you saying?"
"There's no end to the irony, is there? You were looking for aliens from the past. The people you found instead helped you learn of your own past, and open the door to your future--speaking metaphorically, that is."
"All this time?" Nightshade asked angrily. "You knew all this time and you never trusted me enough to tell me?"
"It wasn't about trust," Rodimus said, ejecting and returning the book.
"Then what was it about?"
Rodimus smiled again, waiting until the book was safely back in its socket before he responded. "It was about earning your answers."
"Why you..."
"Dismissed."
"YOU BIG..."
"You... have something else to say?"
Nightshade calmed down just enough to find his voice box. "A word has yet to be invented to describe how... whatever it is you are. But you are one, and a total one at that." He turned to leave, but stopped at Rodimus Prime's next words.
"Are you implying that while speaking to our descendants, you found such a word?"
Nightshade considered the thought, and realized he did have one. "You're a complete and total motorhead."
Leaving behind a chuckling Rodimus Prime, Nightshade flew back to his quarters.
-The End-