Disclaimer: Me no own, you no sue.

A/N: I am DEAD tired, due to many factors, including accidentally locking myself out of the house where I'm pet-sitting... in a thunder storm. Yikes. And five hours' sleep last night. Yeah, that might have something to do with it. So this is going to be short and sweet: I'll get back to the majority of reviews tomorrow. In the meantime: ENCOURAGE ME AND RESTART MY MUSE WITH MORE REVIEWS! You guys are really good at that. Especially since sixty of you have this on your alert list and over fifty have it as a favorite. Lastly: this is a LONG one.

Chapter Fifteen: Of Battles and Refugees

Astrid panted, feeling the cold air burn her lungs. No one had been given the opportunity to get ready for a long night outside in the dead of winter, but Astrid knew that she'd been luckier than some. She'd managed to get shoes and a coat on, although she had passed the coat on earlier to a girl caught out in a spaghetti-strap sleeping gown. By that time, though, her body was creating enough heat that the only way she even knew it was cold was because her lungs were screaming bloody murder every time she tried to take a deep breath. Had she tried to do all this in slippers like some of her classmates, though, it might have been a different story.

She'd managed to herd most of the survivors together by then, and had sent them off to hide under the protection of one of the Autobots she was less familiar with. Wasn't his name Jolt? She couldn't remember. Now Jazz was trying very hard to get her to leave and get out of the danger zone, but there had been one face missing from the crowd Astrid had gathered, and she wasn't leaving until she was sure that face was still attached to the rest of its body.

Her search came to an end when she heard a high pitched shrieking that was screeching up to notes Astrid only wished she could hit.

She tracked down the noise quickly and found Jenna pinned under the twisted hulk of some student's car. It was impossible to tell what make or model it had once been, but thankfully it wasn't on fire, and Jenna didn't appear to be very badly hurt. She was just stuck like a kid in the stair railing.

"GETMEOUTGETMEOUTGETMEOUT!"

"Jenna? Jenna! Hold on, it's gonna be fine, just give me your hand, I can..."

"Astrid, get me outa here!" Jenna screamed. "It's crushing me! It just came out of the sky and..."

"Yeah, that's what you always say when you get stuck like this," said Astrid. "Now give me your hand."

Whimpering, Jenna obeyed. However, despite her compliance, she remained firmly wedged between part of the roof and the rear bumper. She was beginning to get frustrated, though, now that help was there and she was left in a little less danger but looking oh-so-stupid, and she wriggled like a possessed eel in her efforts to squeeze free.

"Guess you shouldn't have had that extra cookie at dinner, Jen," Astrid said, giggling in spite of herself. "Looks like the dreaded Freshman Fifteen have become a reality for you."

"Shuddup, ya smooth talking goody two-shoes," Jenna growled, "and get me out of this junk heap." She looked up, determined to berate her friend further if there was even a hint of a smirk left on her face, but the very ominous, red-eyed shadow looming behind her wiped all other thoughts out of her mind. "Astrid, behind you!"

Her friend whirled, gasped, worked her jaw silently, and then screamed "JAZZ!" louder than even Jenna had thought possible. A large black foot materialized out of the darkness and hovered over the two girls for an awful moment... before slowly coming to rest on the twisted heap of scrap metal imprisoning Jenna. As it started to press downward, Jenna and Astrid both started screaming again, one in pain, the other for help.

The sharp, warped metal was pushing down on her from above, and the frozen, unyielding ground seemed to be rising from below. Jenna's arm, which had been caught at an odd angle beneath her when she hit the dirt, snapped as the pressure increased, and she very nearly bawled like a baby as the bone gave way. As it was, she settled for keeping just a little bit of her dignity and screaming a lot louder. Through the ringing growing in her ears she could hear Astrid continuing her verbal SOS.

"Jazz! Jazz, help! Knock it off, you big bully! You're killing her!"

"That would be the idea," a strange, metallic voice grated from somewhere high above.

Astrid shrieked in fury, and called out in her rage, "Guess you don't have the nerve to fight off the big bad Autobots with the rest of your buddies, you flashy garbage disposal!" A very angry electronic rumble shook its way down through the car keeping Jenna in the snow, but Astrid was too angry to care at that moment. Besides, it was distracting the 'con from Jenna, wasn't it? "Bring it on! Your mamma was a snowblower!"

The rumble ascended a few octaves, and the foot was removed from the car. It smashed down a moment later only inches away from Astrid's hand, and she scrambled backwards in the snow with what Jenna strongly suspected was a muttered curse. In any other situation she would have scolded her friend soundly and possibly even suggested washing her mouth out with soap, but as things stood, it would probably be more than a little hypocritical.

"What was that, maggot?" the big, bad, car-squishing machine asked.

"Ah, shoot," Astrid muttered. "Hey, Jazz! Now would be a good time!" The Decepticon raised a fist over her. "Now would be a really good time!" The fist started to swing in a downwards arch. "Jazz!"

Seconds before it came in contact with Astrid's easily-squashable person, another robotic hand intercepted it, jerking it back to an angle that caused the 'con to howl in pain.

"Nobody hurts the little lady," the new 'bot growled, literally tossing aside the Decepticon... which was now missing an arm.

Jazz hurled the torn limb after the retreating bad guy before he turned to where Astrid was practically hopping up and down with anxiety.

"The car, Jazz, the car!" she shouted. "Jenna's under the car!"

"Hold on, just a minute now," the Autobot said, crouching down next to her. "Let me take a look."

When his bright blue eyes came within two yards of Jenna she screamed again, and Jazz recoiled quickly, shaking his head in a effort to dispel the ringing. Astrid leapt to get the situation under control, grabbing Jenna's hand and muttering a very hurried explanation of how this giant robot was different from the bad attacking giant robots.

"It's ok, it's ok," she said. "Blue optics mean he's a good guy, alright? Alright. Red is bad. Those guys blowing everything up? Red eyes. Bad robots. But Jazz is a good guy, alright? Ok. Jazz? I think she's going into shock. We have to hurry."

"Alright, get ready to pull her out," said Jazz. He braced his hands under the mashed machine and hefted it up off of the college student as carefully as he could, giving her plenty of time to scream if a limb was somehow caught up inside.

Astrid heaved with all her might on the unbroken arm and Jenna kicked herself forward until they were clear of the wreckage.

"Ohmigosh, ohmigosh..."

"Yeah, Jazz, she is definitely in shock," Astrid said. "We need to get her somewhere she can be treated..."

"I'll give you both a ride to where the others are being set up."

"Ratchet!" Astrid had never been so glad to see the search and rescue hummer in her life. "Thank you so much."

The medic snorted. "If I'd had my way you would have been with the others from the moment we arrived. Now get in." He popped his passenger side door open, and, after helping Jenna clamber numbly up, she obeyed.

The battle was left behind quickly, and the dark woods and corn fields were the only scenery for several minutes. Then Ratchet pulled off onto a winding dirt road that led back to an old campsite, left long ago to be reclaimed by weeds and saplings by its former owners. Apparently central Ohio was not an ideal getaway for nature enthusiasts. Thankfully, several of the old cabins had survived and were now packed with terrified young men and women. A small battalion of tents had also been set up for the new refugees, and Astrid spotted several military personnel going around, demonstrating how to use the equipment. She strained to see Jeremy in the crowd, but it was impossible to tell with so little light.

Ratchet let the two girls out and quickly transformed on the spot. Jenna and several others backed away instinctively, but Astrid took her friend firmly by the arm and stepped forward with her, trying to forcibly break the ice.

"Jenna, this is Ratchet, he's a medic, and I think he should have a look at that arm," she said.

Jenna glanced down at her broken limb and then back to the towering machine before her. For a second she seemed to debate, but, like many before her, she seemed to decide that Ratchet would just make her do what he said if she didn't go along with it willingly. She nodded hesitantly, and the medic crouched down before her in as unthreatening a position as he could manage.

"I assure you, no harm will come to any of you, little one," he soothed. "Now, let's see what we can do about setting that bone."

.O.O.O.

Once Jenna had been taken care of, Astrid stepped outside the extremely large tent that Ratchet had designated as his impromptu med bay. It was cold out and she felt a great deal of sympathy for those still running barefoot through the woods. Would they even accept help, though, from beings that looked so similar the ones that had raided the university? She frumped and folded her arms across her chest. Bad luck seemed to follow her no matter where she went.

How many of her classmates, the people she ate, slept and partied with, were dead? She didn't want to think about it, but some morbid facet of her mind forced her to.

A mechanical groaning and a set of heavy footsteps alerted her to the presence of one of the Autobots and distracted her from her thoughts. She craned her head up to see who her visitor was.

"Hello, Jazz."

"Hello, little lady."

Astrid walked over and leaned against the chrome leg. It was ridiculously comforting, all things considered. "Where's my brother? Did you leave him back at the base?"

"Naw, ya know him better than that," said Jazz. "Besides, do ya really think I'd leave him by himself? That'd be stupid."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." She paused. "Jazz? Is Mirage...?"

"Mirage'll be fine. Give him a few days and he'll be back on the front lines. He's already as ornery as usual."

"Well, that's good."

"He's been doing nothin' but whining for you, I hear," said Jazz. "Keeps sayin' somethin' about an idiot human..."

"Sounds like me, alright."

"Sure does," said a third voice.

Astrid whirled just in time to get a face-full of combat vest as she was clamped into a fierce hug. "Don't you ever, ever scare me like that again."

When her brother finally let her go, she looked to his side and found Captain Lennox standing there. "How did you guys get here so fast?" she asked.

"There'd been some suspicious fragments of Decepticon communications that some of the Autobot techies were able to catch by tracing back the hack they made earlier," said Lennox, "but we didn't know for sure that anything was going down until Jeremy tried to call you a few hours back and got nothing but a dead line. We figured we were better off safe than sorry and geared up. When the Autobots realized that Mirage hadn't checked in we were already on our way. Your SOS got through, so we think your phone might have been rigged to reject incoming calls but allow outgoing."

"Why would my phone be rigged like that?" said Astrid.

"We still don't know for sure, but it seems most likely that it was a way to cut you off without arousing too much suspicion on your side."

"So this was planned in advance, huh? Not a spur of the moment invasion?"

"Definitely planned in advance, not too well, but still planned."

While Jeremy had released her from the death-hug, he still had one arm curled around her shoulders. At the mention of Astrid's sabotaged phone the grip grew tighter.

"We though that the 'cons might have already gotten to you," said Jeremy.

"They probably would have, if it hadn't been for Mirage," Astrid said.

"Remind me to give him a really good Christmas present next year," said Jeremy.

"Can I see him now?" Astrid asked.

"I think you'd better wait," said Lennox. "Ratchet is with him now, and you know how he gets when you mess with his patients."

"Right." Astrid rubbed at a developing bruise on her arm. "I think I've been roughed up enough for one night."

"Sorry we couldn't get here any sooner," said Jazz. All of the men suddenly looked deflated.

Astrid caught on in an instant. "No. Oh, no you don't. You three are not allowed to guilt trip yourselves because of anything the friggin' 'cons did."

"It's our manly nature, sis," Jeremy said, giving her a squeeze. "Get used to it."

.O.O.O.

Having given Jenna enough time to acclimate - sorta - to her new situation, the fact that her arm was broken, and the idea that not only were there aliens in the universe, but they were very large, made of metal, and not all nice, Astrid dared to approach the wounded roommate again.

Her roommate was resting on a cot, her arm wrapped in a cast and draped across her chest. The look she leveled at her nearly made Astrid's hair curl. How long had it been since she'd gotten a glare like that from Jenna? Not since - well - a while. Astrid eased into the chair beside the bed very, very carefully.

"So," said Jenna. "First, you put blue streaks in your hair because of some stupid bet you made over Christmas. Then, you start associating with the Victorian snowball. Now, you're friends with giant. Alien. Robots. And I'm betting Snowball is one of them. Anything else you wanna get off your chest while you're on a roll, 'Rid?"

"Umm... I was the one who glued your locker shut in fifth grade?"

"Already knew that one."

"Oh. Well, there's nothing then."

Jenna groaned and bounced her head back against the flat pillow. "Usually, I find discovering new races really interesting and all, but this really stinks."

"Yeah." Astrid shifted in her chair. "Sorry about your arm. Maybe you'll duck next time a car comes flying at you?"

"I did duck."

"Oh."

For minute they sat in silence, nervous and uncomfortable on Astrid's part and sulky on Jenna's.

"My brother will probably stop by at some point to check on you, if he as time," Astrid said. "Old acquaintances and all..."

"Wait a second!" Jenna said, sitting up. "Your brother's involved in this?"

"Yeah. He works with the big guys. It's his fault I'm involved."

Jenna chucked the flat pillow at Astrid's head and scored a direct hit.

"Hey! What was that..."

"YOU SAID THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE!"

.O.O.O.

Despite the Autobot's best efforts to be friendly, the frighted and traumatized young humans were still terrified of them. So, in order to retain control of the situation, the Autobots pulled back and set up their own base of operations a mile away. They were far enough away to be out of mind, sight and hearing, but close enough to come quickly if needed. And so it was that Astrid had a rather long walk to the Autobot base, where Mirage was being treated.

Her brother had wanted to super glue himself to her side but he had other duties to attend to, and Lennox was there to remind him of them. Once the boys had trouped off with Jazz to patrol the area and seek out survivors, Astrid had turned her attentions first to Jenna - which had gone oh-so-well - and secondly to her wounded protector. When everything else had been seen to, she found herself battling the urge to defy the testy medic and risk a visit to Mirage.

Her sane side said no, but the other (and larger) portion of her reason ordered her to go. He'd almost given his life for her after all, couldn't she at least risk Ratchet's wrath by a short visit?

The walk was long, and her feet hurt by the end of it. Her heavy breaths came out in huffs that wafted up in white clouds, and her exposed skin turned lobster red. With every step she took she combated her own uncertainty. Over the months they'd spent together she and Mirage had never exactly seen eye to eye - either literally or figuratively - and now she began to wish she'd thought twice before heading out at such a late hour to check in on him.

She hovered for a while outside the entrance to the mechs' med bay, once she'd finally reached it, and deliberated on whether it might actually be wiser to wait until the morning. She knew she was being stupid, but she couldn't help it. After all she'd been through that evening she figured that she deserved a little indecision. Her mind, however, was made up for her.

"I can pick you up on my sensors, you know. You might as well come it."

The voice was not happy, and it was not especially friendly, but Astrid carefully slipped inside anyway and peered nervously at her incapacitated guardian. He was laid out on a long slab - or a berth - with his optics somewhat dimmer than usual and some obvious patching across his chasis and right arm. Astrid winced involuntarily.

"Mirage, I -"

"Whatever you have to say, human, it had better wait until another time," said Mirage. "I am alive if not well, as you can so clearly see, and I will be able to return to my duties in another week or so. In the meantime I have been informed that you will be under the guardianship of Jazz along with your brother. Hopefully you'll listen to his instructions better than you have mine."

"What?"

"You do not listen well to orders."

"I'm not a soldier, Mirage, and since when have you ever had to give me orders?"

"Since tonight," Mirage snapped, "since the Decepticons attacked and you threw stones at them when I was doing everything in my power to distract them from you. How long did you wait before you even got out of that building? Did you knock on every door before you obeyed me?"

"I had to help the others! I couldn't just let them be blown up in their beds!"

"This is your life we are discussing, human!"

"It was their lives, too!"

"I do not CARE!" Mirage's gears whirred and clicked like he'd transformed himself into a bomb, and it took him a few minutes to regain control of himself. At last he said, "You are the one I am assigned to protect, Astrid, not them."

Astrid had never been the best person alive. She forgot to donate to at least one major charity when she got her tax returns, she enjoyed tormenting her friends and family, and she occasionally forgot to recycle. These things, however, did not make her heartless, as she now suspected Mirage of being. "I beg your pardon?"

Mirage seemed to sense that he'd said something wrong, but he was too impassioned by his own frustrations to care, and he plowed on with his criticism of Astrid's actions. "I said to grab as many as you could, but I didn't think that meant you would have to stop at every door and chase even the most inebriated of the students from their beds. You could have died, Astrid. You very nearly did. And then I hear you went back once reinforcements arrived..."

"I did," said Astrid.

"That was foolish."

"It was human."

"My point exactly."

She was sure that if she stuck around Mirage would only make her angrier, so she'd left while she was ahead, giving him a curt "Good night" and walking off long before the conversation ought to have ended. So much for good intentions.

Then Ratchet found her.

As she stormed through the black woods a bright yellow rescue hummer pulled up beside her and popped open a door. "Get in," he said.

Being too angry and too afraid of Ratchet to refuse, she'd climbed aboard and resisted closing the door on her own for fear of slamming it. Jazz had yelped the last time she'd slammed his door after a temper tantrum, and she still felt guilty months and months later. She also suspected that Ratchet would do more than yelp.

As they drove through the dark trees, it became clear that Ratchet intended to give her more than just a ride back to the camp.

"Mirage can be... difficult," he said.

Astrid snorted. "You're telling me."

"Please at least try to see things as he does, Astrid. He only just started opening up to you, and he very nearly lost you tonight. That scares him more than he would ever admit and this is the only way he can react. He has to place the blame somewhere, and I'm afraid you were simply the closest target. The only other being he has seen since the battle were other mechs and myself. When Ironhide and Wheeljack brought him in he was cursing up a storm, insisting that this could all have been avoided if we'd gotten here sooner..."

"There still would have been a battle."

"I know. So does he. As the night wears on, however, he is turning to less and less likely excuses for what he views as a failure in his guardianship."

Astrid was so startled that she looked away from the window and gawked at the dashboard. "He didn't fail in his guardianship!"

"I know that, you know that and probably every other mech alive knows that, but Mirage holds himself to an extremely high standard, and is sometimes very hard on himself."

"Sometimes?"

The seatbelt gave Astrid a quick squeeze and then relaxed. "Do you think you can forgive him? He's beginning to need you, and judging by your reaction I think you're beginning to need him."

Unwilling to come off of her anger-induced high horse, Astrid started chewing her lip. She honestly wasn't sure whether or not she was willing to give a definite answer yet to that question. "Maybe," she said.

"That is all I ask," Ratchet said.

A button she didn't know lit up on Ratchet's dashboard and the Hummer came to an abrupt stop. Astrid was pressed up against her seatbelt, and even after they'd stopped she could feel it growing tighter.

"Ratchet," she said. "Ratchet, I love getting hugs, but I like breathing more." There was no reply, and the seatbelt did not ease up. "Ratchet?"

"Decepticons," said the medic. "They are between us and the main camp. No doubt they are looking for strays."

"Like us."

"Yes."

"Have you called for backup?"

"I cannot. The slaggers are jamming everything. Their communications officer must be with them. His skill in such areas is astonishing."

Astrid leaned back and tried to slow her breathing, ridiculously afraid that the 'cons would hear her through Ratchet's thick metal frame. "Can we go back the way we came?"

"I believe so, just so long as we are quiet."

The vehicle began to creep back in reverse. Astrid wondered if it was even possible for a hummer to move quietly through the woods.

She didn't have long to wonder.

A harsh light tore through the night, illuminating the scene and catching Ratchet as he tried to sneak through the woods. A bright yellow Hummer wasn't the best equipped vehicle for stealth missions in a dark forest as it was, the light, however, made him painfully obvious to anyone who cared to look. The sounds of other motors were all around them and Ratchet shot backwards so fast that Astrid thought her head was going to go through the windshield. Suddenly she was very happy that Ratchet had tightened the seatbelt. They flew over the bumpy forest floor. Inside, Astrid was bounced around terribly, each branch or hole they found jarring her. As they crashed through the underbrush, Astrid caught glimpses through the trees of other vehicles racing alongside them, and she did not believe that they were Autobots. The spotlight stayed with them through it all, not to be thrown off by Ratchet's evasive maneuvers.

Then they burst into a clear space. While their pursuers were still caught in the trees, Ratchet spun and jettisoned his passenger. He transformed to stand in a defensive position between girl and Decepticons even as Astrid backpedaled rapidly towards the nearest trees.

"Astrid, get moving!" said Ratchet. "Alert the others! Get help!"

Astrid did not need to be told twice. Before the first clang came from the fight behind her, she was out of sight.

Sadly, out of sight did not necessarily mean out of mind for the Decepticons.

"Ravage," a voice behind her said, "mission: retrieve."

An unholy - and definitely inorganic - yowl came from behind her, and Ratchet let out an incoherent roar of rage, the likes of which Astrid had never heard before. She put on as much speed as she could muster, but she could still hear the yowling thing gaining rapidly on her. With a flying leap, the mech landed in front of her, and Astrid skidded to a stop and the vaguely feline Decepticon twitched its armored tail. By that point the sounds of battle were faint behind her, and Astrid could see and hear the first signs of rescue up ahead. Ratchet's fight has apparently drawn the needed attention. If it weren't for the 'Con blocking her way, Astrid knew that she might have already been safe at that moment.

Astrid tried shifting towards the right, but the mech mirrored her actions and growled. It took one step forward, then another, and Astrid decided she wasn't going to wait for it to take a third. By that time the fight or flight instinct innately possessed by all organics had taken hold, and she lunged blindly to the left. She only made it a few meters, however, before a hard, heavy weight crashed into her back and sent her sprawling. Before she had the chance to recover her lost breath, a pair of metal claws dug into her shoulders. The leafy ground muffled her screams, but when the 'Con's teeth sank through the back of her shirt and got a bit of skin in the bargain her face was pulled up and her shout became audible.

It dragged her back to the clearing like that - with its teeth in the back of her neck like a cub, and it did not immediately release her once they'd reached the other mechs. A large mech - one Astrid recognized from the campus - turned to acknowledge the panther-like 'Con. Then it - and Astrid - looked to where Ratchet was still fighting, even though by now he was pinned to the ground with three Decepticons holding him down.

"Autobot: desist, or the human will be terminated," the leader mech said.

Ratchet struggled to get his face up to see Astrid. Once it was sure Ratchet was watching, the panther mech finally dropped Astrid, but instead of letting her wiggle away to freedom it sank its claws into her back again. When Astrid yelped, so did Ratchet, but he stilled obediently.

"Please stop," he said. "I will stop."

The monotone-voiced-leader nodded and the claws - slowly - retracted. Astrid sighed and let her face fall back to earth. It didn't stay there long. The leader plucked her from the ground and held her steadily in front of him as Ratchet was secured. The medic twitched irritably as his surgical saws were offlined and the leader gave Astrid a brief squeeze.

"Warning repeated," he said, "desist or the human will be terminated."

Something deep in Astrid's gut clenched, and for a moment she was sure that she was going to be sick. Then a strange pulse came through the hand holding her and a humming filled her ears, soothing her into instant limpness. In another moment she was out cold.

A/N: The firing range has now been opened, send something my way, folks!

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