Hey guys! As always, thank you for your comments, they are greatly appreciated! This one is kind of a big post, so it'll be a couple of days before I post again! Ack! I'm posting faster than I can type! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own transformers, nor any other trademarked name used in this story
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It was early morning and Lillian had managed to make it to the outskirts of the city of Los Angeles. She drove to the park where she had left Seven and cautiously got out of her car, looking around.
"Seven! Are you here?!" Lillian asked in a loud whisper. It was too early for there to be anyone in the park, however if there was someone nearby that could possibly hear what she was saying, she wanted to minimize what they heard.
Lillian looked around for several minutes before coming to the conclusion that the girl was no longer in the area, which was good that she was out of the way of the feds, but she was worried about how long it might take to actually find her. She sighed and went to sit back inside her car. As she shut and locked the door, she decided that it was best that she relaxed for a minute to think about where she was going to next. She turned the key halfway in the ignition, listening to the early morning news on the radio and leaned her seat back to rest for a moment.
"I should have known better than to park at a rest stop where no one was at, but I needed a short rest. The next thing I know a hand just... Well I guess the only way to describe it is that a hand just punched through my window and I was pulled out. She had incredible strength! I don't think that she would have even needed to point that gun to my head and demand for my car, she threw me aside like I was a rag-doll... It's the scariest thing that I've ever been through..."
"It... It couldn't be her... I told her not to hurt anyone unless she absolutely had to... Plus that woman had yellow contact lenses... unless... she changed her appearance just slightly to throw off any suspicion... But... No, it's not her, they said that she was most likely heading for here and she wouldn't leave and come back like that..." Lillian tried to reason with herself.
As the woman talked to herself, a car pulled up down the street and she suddenly looked up to see that it was an early morning paper delivery to one of the electronic news boxes. As the man finished putting the stack of papers inside of the box and drove away, Lillian drove up closer to it and shifted her hands around her pockets searching for a quarter. Finally finding one, she put the coin in the machine and grabbed a paper. Looking at the front page, she saw an enlarged photo of what looked to be an underpass, several police vehicles and helicopters surrounding it.
Walking back to her car, she sat down in the driver's seat and looked carefully at the picture. It seemed to be a far away view from behind the overpass, a yellow camaro driving towards it from the other side. Looking at the revealed side of the overpass, she saw something strange... She saw a figure in a long, black overcoat, looking under the concrete structure.
The passage under the photo simply stated, "Photo courtesy of a amateur photographer, just before he was removed from the area by nearby police."
"So she was spotted! But what happened I wonder?... Oh Seven, I should have stayed with you..." Lillian brooded over the morning news.
As she paid no mind to her surroundings, another vehicle, a black SUV, pulled up behind her slowly...
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As Ratchet worked on Seven's legs, with the girl protesting the entire time of course, Sam realized that Mikaela was no longer with the group.
She had gone to a part of the small rocky area that gave her an overlooking view of the interstate, watching cars roll through on their daily treks.
"Mikaela?" Sam asked, nearly startling the girl.
She turned and looked to him with a small smile and then turned back to watching the nearby road.
"Hey, what are you doing up here by yourself?" he asked quietly.
Mikaela was quiet for a moment until she spoke up saying, "You... You weren't supposed to hear any of that..."
Sam was a little confused, "Hear what?"
Mikaela looked back to him with a slight glare just before her look softened.
"About... About the stuff with my dad... And my juvenile record..." she started.
"Hey, you don't... have to say anything. It's okay, really..." Sam stopped her.
There was an awkward pause before they heard some nearby shouting.
"OW! HEY!" a girl's voice yelled.
"Hold still!" a male voice scolded.
"What are you doing with that?! Don't even think about it!... Ratchet, I mean it!" the girl's voice stated in a warning tone.
"It would make this go so much easier!" Ratchet's voice pleaded.
"No! No, no!... Hey... why are you guys looking at me like that?..."
"Just hold still now, will ya?" Jazz's voice could be heard.
"I'm warning you!" the girl said in a dangerous voice.
There were several loud "clanging" noises for a moment.
"There! Got it!" Ratchet announced happily.
Sam and Mikaela chuckled for a moment before they both stared down at the road.
"So... You okay? I-I mean that whole ordeal this morning was pretty rough..." Sam asked.
"It was pretty scary wasn't it?" Mikaela shrugged it off.
"Yeah... I thought that we were done for," Sam agreed.
"I thought Seven was done for... And Bee!..." Mikaela replied, her voice trailing off.
Sam decided to change the subject up a little and said, "You know what I was thinking? I think we need to give Seven a new name?"
Mikaela looked to him with a questioning look and asked, "What brought this up?"
"Well I mean... You heard her down there... She thinks that she's someone's science experiment... Maybe if she had a more normal name, she'd start feeling like a regular human," Sam explained looking into Mikaela's confused face, "But... Maybe it's a dumb idea anyway..."
Mikaela looked away for a moment and then looked back to the boy, "No... I think it's a good idea."
Sam looked to the girl once again and smiled a little, "Really? You think so?"
"Yeah, I mean, she's lived her entire life as just a number. Maybe it's time she knows that she's more than that," Mikaela agreed.
"So... What should we call her then?" Sam asked. He thought it was a good idea, but when it came to thinking of names, he was at a loss for words.
Mikaela looked back towards the interstate for a moment, her mind thinking carefully. Her eyes grew wide for a second and she looked back to Sam with a happier look.
"How about Catherine?" she asked.
Sam chuckled and asked, "Where'd you come up with that?"
"Well, Cat, for short. She sort of reminded of a cat, the way she moved around when she fought. What do you think?" she looked to Sam for understanding.
Sam smiled softly at the girl and said, "Yeah, she kind of does remind me of a cat, now that I think about it. Okay then, Cat it is!"
"Give that back! I'm serious!" The girl's voice piped up again.
"We'd better go and see what's going on," Sam said as he and Mikaela walked back to where the others were.
They walked to the group, only to see Ratchet, holding one of the girl's robotic legs, while looking it over for repairs, and Jazz and Ironhide holding the girl back.
"Jus' calm down!" Jazz pleaded.
"We're just gonna repair things up for ya, that's all!" Ironhide added.
Seven sighed and laid back down on the ground, obviously worn out from exhausting herself arguing.
"Fine..." she huffed.
Optimus walked up to Sam and Mikaela and said, "Perhaps you should try and talk to her. She seems rather upset at the moment," he said in an almost "pleasepleaseplease" voice.
"Sure, Optimus," Sam laughed as he and Mikaela approached the girl, who was still catching her breath.
"Hey there, how's it going?" Sam asked.
The girl narrowed her eyes at Sam and said sarcastically, "Just peachy..."
"Well uh... We had something we wanted to ask you," Sam started, Mikaela looking at him with a "Maybe-now-is-not-the-time" kind of face.
Sam ignored Mikaela and continued, "We know that you feel more like a "project" rather than the human that you really are, "saying this made the girl and the Autobots all look at him.
"But... We thought that maybe, you'd like a new name?" he finished.
There was a long pause of silence. The Autobots looked to each other as if they were trying to figure out what would change about the girl if she had a new name.
Seven looked from Sam to Mikaela with a "Is he serious?!" sort of look about her.
"We thought that maybe you'd like to start anew. To stop living as someone's experiment, and more like a human. What do you think?" Mikaela gave a weak smile, worried that maybe it wasn't such a good idea in the first place.
Seven looked, silently, towards the blue-ish sky with a solemn look.
"I never thought about that... that I was human, I mean... It's like I never was a human in the first place..." She said quietly as she looked to her mangled right arm.
"But you are human! You've just been taught differently for so long... It's time to make a fresh start, don't you think?" Mikaela reasoned.
"I wouldn't even know what to call myself, though..." the girl sounded a little less sure of herself as her voiced toned down quite a bit.
"We thought of that too!" Sam said happily.
The tired girl looked over at Sam and asked, "You have?"
Sam nodded towards Mikaela and said, "You should say it. You thought of it anyway."
Seven and the Autobots looked to Mikaela, all wondering what she had in mind.
"Well, Sam and I agreed that you sort of remind us of a cat when you fight. You move so quickly, and you react to things quickly too. So we thought maybe we'd call you "Catherine", but "Cat" for short," she explained.
Everyone looked to the exhausted fighter as she stared back up towards the sky, almost with a blank expression on her face. Mikaela and Sam both thinking that she didn't like the idea.
"If...If you don't like that name, we could always think of something else..." Mikaela said in a soft voice.
Before anyone knew it, the girl had a wide smile across her face and she laughed. It was the first time that they had seen a genuine smile on the girl's face, or heard a genuine laugh from her. So, of course, they were all suddenly very worried.
"Are... Are you okay?" Sam asked, the Autobots approaching closer with curiosity.
The girl's laugh continued for only a short moment before she said, "I'm fine, I just... I think it's going to take some time getting used to being called that," she said in a cheerful tone.
Sam and Mikaela looked at each other with cheerful looks themselves, feeling like they had just taken a step into integrating the girl into feeling more human.
"Cat" laughed again but suddenly stopped as her eyes shut and her head rolled to the left.
"C-Cat?" Sam asked, not getting a response.
"Hey, are you all right?!" Mikaela took the girl by the chin, swinging her face back up.
"Ratchet!" Sam yelled frantically.
The medic looked to the girl and scanned her with his optics.
"She'll be fine. She just over-exhausted herself from all the fighting…. and arguing," he replied.
Before anyone could feel relieved, Ironhide spoke up.
"Optimus, sir. We need to get on the move again. This place is too close to human contact and we need to stay out of sight," he announced.
Optimus looked to Ratchet and asked, "Is it safe to move "Cat" around?"
"I don't see why not. She has no internal bleeding or any fractures to her spinal chord or neck. As long as she's asleep she won't feel the pain of moving her two broken ribs around," Ratchet replied, sure of himself.
"Good. Let's roll out Autobots!" Optimus ordered.
The five transformed into their alternate, car forms. Mikaela and Sam picked Cat up and gently set her in the backseat of Ratchet's Hummer form. They then, jumped into BumbleBee and they all sped off.
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Chapter Teaser!
Cat turned around and around, but did not see anything nearby. That was until she turned towards one end of the corridor. She saw, bright, yellow eyes, staring back at her.
"Who... Who are you?" Cat asked, wondering why she couldn't pick up any sound or smells from the area.
"I know who I'm not... And I know who you are... Come now, Seven, surely you remember my voice?" the woman asked in a low growl.
"I-I don't know who you are! Why don't you just reveal yourself to me?!" Cat asked, giving the woman her own dangerous growl to return the threat.
The eyes began to glow brighter as footsteps could be heard echoing the hallways.