REVISED
Hey guys! Here's my newest post! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, I DO own Project Seven. However, I'd like to note that any trademarked name used in these next couple of chapters are also NOT owned by myself.
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A few minutes into the ride back towards the city, Ironhide decided to ask something that he was curious about.
"So this "Alchemy" thing..." he started.
"Hmm?" Seven looked towards the radio where the voice was coming from, "Yeah? What about it?"
"Could you make more weapons with something like that?" Ironhide finished his question.
"Well, yeah. I suppose if I had the right materials I could build a very sophisticated weapon of mass destruction... But why would I want to do that?" Seven asked.
"Do you think that you could, maybe, transform -"
"Transmute..." Seven corrected.
"Right, right. Transmute, already powerful weapons into even more powerful ones?" he asked.
"Uh... Like I said, I'd need the right materials to transmute something. I can't make anything worth more than it already is without destroying it first. I need an equal amount of one matter, to turn it into an equal amount of another matter. I can't break the laws of Alchemy," Seven replied, crossing her arms.
"I see... So if you had the "materials" , you could make a weapon even better?!" Ironhide wasn't trying very hard to cover up his real question.
Seven gave a half smile and said, "This weapon that you speak of... It wouldn't have anything to do with you guys would it?"
"...Maybe..." he answered.
"Okay, well, if I had the right materials, I suppose I could put something together," she replied.
Ironhide's engine roared with excitement as they sped off even faster towards the great city.
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It was the middle of the day, and Lillian was in for questioning at the base. Walking with a guard into the same room where Seven had been the day before, she sat in the cold, hard chair in front of the same people, as well as a few new faces. She felt a twinge of guilt in her stomach as she sat in the chair. She was, now, in the same position as the younger woman had been in for so many years. The chair felt unrelentingly cold and sterile. It was a chair that you wouldn't have wanted to sit in for long because of the sore back you would receive from it. The panel of questioning technicians felt just as cold and sterile.
"Lillian Andrews?" One of the new faces asked, looking down at a piece of paper in front of him.
"Y-Yes. That's me..." she replied quietly.
"As you know, we have some questions concerning your involvement with the escape of project Seven yesterday. Do you think that you could answer a few for us?" the man looked up as he asked this time.
Lillian noticed the others on the council that she had recognized were narrowing their eyes at her in a long, hard glare.
"Well, I'll do my best sir..." she replied.
"Good. Now, you say that you were on your way out of the facility, when the girl stopped you and demanded that you take her away from here?" he asked.
"Y-Yes, that's right... She told me to open the trunk so she could get in and hide..."
"I see... We have the surveillance footage from the guard shack, could you take us through it step by step?" he said as he picked up a remote and pointed it at a television sitting on a table to the side of the room.
"...Yeah..." Lillian replied. She knew what she had done, and knew that they were going to really grill her about it.
The man started the footage and it showed her small car pull up next to the shack, and the guard walking over to her driver's side window. It looked as though the woman was upset when the guard had asked for the key to the trunk. She was constantly looking in her rearview mirror, with her hands on the wheel.
"Can you tell us what just transpired here?" the man asked as he paused the footage.
"I was leaving, and the guard wanted the key to my trunk to inspect. I tried to talk him out of it because I wasn't sure if he would be harmed by the girl once he had opened the lid... But he insisted on looking anyway..." Lillian answered.
"That's interesting..." one of the other council members began, "That's interesting because, the girl was in the trunk, and you had a moment where you could have at least, mouthed, what was going on to the man so he could alert the proper security..."
"I was afraid that if the meeting took too long that the girl would get out and harm both of us anyway..." Lillian answered quickly.
"Miss Andrews... We inspected the trunk of your vehicle... Unless the girl had punched through the metal of the trunk, there was no other way to get out. You see your trunk does not have an emergency latch on the inside. You would have had plenty of time to take the proper security measures, instead you did not do so..." he finished.
"The woman has exemplary skills in battles, and not to mention her skills in Alchemy, along with her false appendages. She had the means, and the tools to do as she would have pleased. There was no security measure that I could have taken to prevent this..." Lillian explained, it was a good thing that she had thought of all of this before agreeing to being questioned.
"Miss Andrews, do you know how many people Seven attempted to murder, yesterday?" the man asked.
"I'd... I'd heard that she shot a few laboratory technicians..." Lillian slumped in her chair.
"More than five of our employees have been shot. Two were in such horrendous shape that even our own medical facility wasn't enough to handle their injuries and had to be airlifted to hospitals in Las Vegas! One of those being the guard, who was only doing his job at his post!"
Lillian let out a disheartening sigh, "Yes, I'm aware of that... However, I don't believe that Seven was trying to kill them."
"And why is that?" one of the female panel members asked.
Lillian glared at the woman indignantly and replied, "She is the highest trained killing machine that this country has ever even conceived of. If she wanted those people dead, then I have a feeling that we would be having a much different conversation. Check her records, if you don't believe me."
"I see... Let's continue with the video then," the first man replied, starting the footage back up.
The guard used the key and opened the lock, only to quickly back up with a shocked expression on his face. As soon as he did this, his body shook with the shock of his shoulder being tore through by a bullet. Lillian, then got out of the car and ran to see the man on the ground, only to close the lid of the trunk and hit the button to release her car out of the gate. She then got in her car and sped off. The man stopped the footage once again.
"Could you explain, why, instead of hitting the emergency call button, you closed the trunk and still did nothing but make a getaway?" the council member asked.
"I was fearing for my own life... I was afraid that if I did not proceed, the girl would surely try and kill me as well..." Lillian answered.
"But you just said that she wasn't trying to kill anyone... Why were you so afraid for your own life?" the woman asked.
"I had a gun pointed at me! What was I supposed to do?!" Lillian snapped back.
"I see... Oliver, bring it here..." A council member ordered.
A lab technician brought over a chart to the man and then took a few steps back to where he had been standing, previously.
"This chart is an inventory list. In the event of such an emergency of one of our projects going wrong, we are to take immediate inventory of all supplies and weapons. Can you tell me why you had signed off on the release of a box of food rations?" the man asked.
"I keep some around my office, just in case it's needed, and I was throwing out the old rations that I had, and put the new box there..." Lillian answered.
"Then why was it that we found the same box of empty rations in the trunk of your vehicle?" the man asked.
"I guess I... forgot and took them with me..." Lillian answered. She had forgotten that she never threw the box into a fire to burn the evidence.
"I see... You also have, in your possession, a switchblade, which was issued to you as they are all issued to our employees in case of emergencies."
"Yes, I have that..."
"Would you, please, hand it to Oliver here. We just need to test it for fingerprints."
"O-Of course..." Lillian reached in her pocket and grabbed the knife, handing it to the lab technician.
"And, I know you put it in your report, but could you tell us how the girl managed to get away from you?" the man asked.
"Y-Yes... She t-told me to drop her off in the middle of a city, so I took her to Sunrise Manor, just north of Las Vegas... I knew that she would be a danger to the people there, but I feared for my own life as well..." Lillian finished.
"I see... Thank you, Miss Andrews. That will be all for now," the council member said as he had a guard escort the woman out of the room.
As soon as she was out of the room, the head board member announced, "Have her followed for right now. Make sure that all calls she makes on her cellular phone and home phone are recorded and tracked to their location. We're going to make sure that she's left nothing out of her story..."
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Seven stared up at the long row of food chains on a street. She looked from one to the other.
"McDonalds... Subway... Burger King... What are these places?! Why didn't I remember ask them what they wanted to eat?!" she could have hit herself for not remembering to ask.
The girl walked to a side street where Ironhide was parked. She walked over to him and the driver's side door opened, Seven quickly got in and slammed the door.
"Where's the fuel?" he asked.
"You wouldn't happen to know what it is that they wanted to eat do you?" Seven asked in a low growl.
"You're human aren't you? Don't you know what they would like?" he asked, unsure why the girl was having so much trouble figuring out what to get. Fuel was fuel wasn't it?!
"If you remember correctly, I was locked up my entire life. I've never eaten any of these kinds of foods before!" she said angrily.
"Well... I suppose I could use my long range communications and ask.. Hold on..." Ironhide replied, making a lot of "whirring" noises in his motor.
Waiting for the information to come back, Seven noticed something strange. She saw, what appeared to be, several men in black suits walking up the sidewalk from behind her, seemingly not paying any attention to her.
"Whoa!" Seven said as she jumped down below the view of the windows.
The men in the suits walked by and Ironhide had just finished his conversation when he noticed what the girl was doing.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Shh!" the girl motioned for him to stay quiet as she lifted her head up to see the men continue on their journey past them.
"T-They're here... They're looking for me... Damn!" Seven pointed out.
"We should leave then... We'll find another place to get fuel," Ironhide said as he locked the doors.
"Wait!" Seven stopped him before he started his engine to leave.
"What is it?" he asked.
"There's a lot of places here to eat... Frankly I doubt that we'll meet up at the same place. Plus, I'm surrounded by hundreds of other people, it should be hard to identify me from everyone here, let alone try and chase me down... I should at least try it, don't you think?" Seven was almost sure of herself.
"I'm under orders to keep you out of danger. If I let you go and you're captured, Prime will have my cranial unit on a silver platter!" Ironhide rumbled.
"So how many other places are you willing to drive to today?" Seven asked him sarcastically.
"..."
"There you go. Besides, there are probably a lot of other places that these guys are at, and we'll be driving around all year if we try to keep away from all of them..." She made a point.
"...Fine... But any funny business from them, you are to come straight back here. Understand?!" he ordered.
"Yeah, sure... I don't see them anymore, maybe they took off... By the way, what did they say that they wanted?" Seven asked.
"Something called a "Big Mac"..." Ironhide wasn't sure if he had said it right, but that's what he had remembered being told.
"...I guess I'll just try anyway..." Seven replied confused as she waited for the doors to unlock so she could leave.
Walking back down to the corner, the girl looked carefully around each direction. She saw nothing but regular people.
"Civilians... Is this the part of the world that I've been missing?" The girl thought to herself as she rounded the corner.
She walked down the street, looking into the windows of the places to see if she could find what it was that she was supposed to be on the lookout for. Near the end of the street, about the second to last place, she saw someone walk out with a bag that had "Big Mac" written on the side of it.
"Aha!" she thought, triumphantly as she entered through the door.
As soon as she had entered the place, her senses were overwhelmed with smells and sounds. Her nose wrinkled and her stomach churned at the smell of the fried foods. She hadn't counted on feeling this way about the common human foods but she was on a mission, and that was to fill the stomachs of two other humans. Approaching the counter, she walked up to the cashier.
"Hi, can I help you?" the woman asked sourly?
"Big Mac..." Seven ordered.
The woman looked to Seven with a question mark for a facial expression and asked, "Okay... What kind would you like?"
Seven looked up and saw several different kinds of those things numbered. Some had double patties, some were triple patties, and some with other things...
"Uh... I... What do you recommend?" Seven asked confused.
The cashier rolled her eyes and talked into a speaker, "One number two... Large combo...Regular Coke..."
"Uh... Two of those, actually... thanks..." Seven replied, the cashier again rolled her eyes and corrected herself.
The cashier told her the cost, and Seven paid. She stood and waited for a moment before the cashier said, "You can wait just over there ma'am... There are other people in line..."
"Oh... uh... sorry..." Seven moved down the counter and stood to wait for the food.
Being this close to where the foods were being cooked and fried, it didn't make Seven's stomach churn any less. She looked around for a moment and watched as others bit into the greasy sandwiches.
"How can they just scarf that down?! It smells unnatural... Certainly people couldn't eat all of this every day?!" she thought to herself in disgust.
Just before the bags were filled with the food, Seven felt a hand grab her shoulder. Slowly turning her head, she saw a side view of a man in a black suit, wearing black sunglasses.
"Hello there, Number Seven... There are some people who have been waiting to see you..." he said quietly.
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Chapter Teaser for the Next Chapter!
Lillian was walking out of the base for the day, when she heard someone yell for her.
"Miss Andrews! Miss Andrews!" the voice yelled.
She turned around and saw a council member walked towards her quickly. When he arrived, he seized her by her upper arm and pulled her around the corner of another corridor.
"What is this?!" she shouted angrily.
"I'm going to give you one more chance to tell the truth... Where did you take the girl?!" he asked forcefully.
"I told you, Sunrise Manor!" Lillian stood firm on her lie.
"Oh really? Then why is it that there was a sighting of her in Los Angelas reported just a few minutes ago?!" he asked.
"What?! I-I don't know what you're talking about!"