Hey guys! You know, I really had to laugh when I noticed the last couple of comments about "Elfen Lied". Truthfully, I've never heard of it, so when it was made mention in the comments I had to check it out. It really sounds like a show that I ought to watch lol. Thank you for the encouraging comments, it's always good to hear what everyone thinks about my writings! Here's the last update for the weekend! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, never have claimed to, but I DO own Project Seven!

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Sam and Mikaela were huddled nice and warm in Bumblebee's cab. Sam slowly awoke and looked over to his companion, the girl, apparently, had cuddled against him. He smiled and put an arm around her back. Before slipping back into sleep, his eyes shifted around to each Autobot before noticing that something was amiss. His eyes darted a second glance at Ratchet's Hummer form and noticed that a backseat door had been opened, but not closed. Sam shot up from the seat, which immediately shook Mikaela from her sleep as well.

"Sam? What is it?" she asked in a tired, strained voice.

Sam wasn't sure what to do at first, he just pointed towards the sleeping form of Ratchet. Mikaela looked over to where he was pointing and noticed that the medic's door was wide open. She shot up into sitting as well and the two humans bolted out of Bumblebee, apparently not waking him, and ran over to Ratchet.

"Damn it! She's gone!" Mikaela shouted.

Sam gave Ratchet's hood a good pounding until his engine revved in annoyance.

"Wake up! She's gone!" he yelled.

"What are you talking about?" Ratchet grumbled.

"Seve- Cat's gone!" Sam yelled in order to bring Ratchet completely out of recharge mode.

The medic realized what Sam was going on about and realized that his door was open, and the weight of Cat's body was gone.

"Optimus! Wake up!" Sam shouted, causing the semi truck's engine to start.

The other Autobots were shaken awake from all of the noise.

"Did either of you two see where she went?!" Optimus asked, realizing what was going on quickly.

"No! We just woke up and saw that she was gone!" Sam answered back, looking around the scrap yard.

"Autobots! Spread out!" Optimus shouted.

The group did as their commander had ordered and quickly started making dusty trails behind them as they spun their tires going off in five different directions, Bumblebee stopping to pick up Sam and Mikeala first.

Before they separated too far from each other, Ratchet used his communicator and informed the others, "I've pick the girl up on my bio-scanners! This way!" he instructed.

The group followed the medic until they came to a small business location. They pulled up behind a fenced in area and followed the fencing for a moment before coming upon Cat. Her body was lying on the ground, surrounded by a few random green apples which were strewn around her. Her eyes were facing outside the fence, her pupils dilated, her body shaking violently.

"She's seizing!" Ratchet yelled as he transformed and reached over the fence, grabbing the girl quickly.

Sam and Mikaela jumped out of Bumblebee has he and others transformed into their humanoid forms, all crowding around the girl, who was still shaking in the palm in Ratchet.

"...F..Five.. No!... Five... PLEASE... I d-didn't... I s-swear!..." Cat mumbled through her obvious nightmare.

"Five?" Ironhide asked.

"Whoever it is, she seems quite afraid of them..." Optimus replied.

"She's said that name before..." Mikaela suddenly remembered.

The group looked to her as Sam proceeded to ask, "When did she ever say that?"

"When she was sleeping just before we were attacked by the Decepticons. When I tried to wake her up..." Mikaela remembered.

Mikaela and Sam were shaken away from the loud attacks. The Autobots transformed into their humanoid forms and surrounded the three humans, keeping them out of range for attack. Mikaela turned around and saw that Seven (at that point) was still seemingly asleep. Her eyes were clamped shut and her hands were digging both flesh and metal fingers into the ground, her arms and legs shivering.

Mikaela dropped to the ground to wake the other girl.

"Seven! Wake up!" the voice of a scared girl suddenly came into perspective.

"Five?" Seven asked in a small voice.

"What? No! Come on! Get up!" Mikaela shoved the girl into reality.

"I don't think that she thought I was Five, I think she was dreaming about something. It was weird, though. When she asked if I were this "Five" person, she sounded like a child. Like in a scared child's voice. Her eyes seemed different too. I thought it was weird, but of course I didn't have time to ask," Mikaela replied.

The group looked to the girl as she began to stir awake.

"Cat? Can you understand me?" Optimus asked.

Cat's eyes batted open and she sat up quickly, realizing that she was in some major trouble.

"W-What's going on?!" she asked, looking around and seeing the last place where she had thought she last was.

"We thought you'd tried taking off on us, "Sam replied, Cat looking down to him and Mikaela from Ratchet's hand.

"I-I didn't leave... I was... Attacked!" Cat looked to the Autobots and asked, "Where is she?!"

"Where is who?" Ratchet asked.

"Y-You didn't see her? W-Was I just dreaming?!" Cat asked as she looked back to the orchard and jumped from Ratchet's hand back into the area where she had been munching on the apple.

"Hey! Now wait just a-" Ratchet began to scold the girl before she interrupted.

"-I couldn't have been dreaming... I swear it... She was right here..." Cat said as she looked around carefully, then picked up the apple that she had taken a bite out of.

"My scanners do not indicate any other life form in the vicinity," Ratchet advised.

"So I was dreaming?" Cat asked herself quietly.

"Perhaps you should explain to us what has happened. We might be able to figure this out," Optimus suggested.

Cat sighed and thought

Returning to the hidden spot behind the scrap yard, Cat began to tell her story.

"You see, I wasn't the only project. As I've told you, there were six, failing projects before me. The first and second projects were destroyed before I was even created, and the other four were being used as guinea pigs even more so than I was," Cat began.

"Hold on a minute.. Now when you say "destroyed"..." Sam began.

"The first two projects were tossed into a fire pit and cremated... alive..." Cat looked to the ground somberly.

"That's... That's just... How could they do this to other humans?!" Mikaela was obviously shocked, along with the rest of who listened.

"It's like I said before... I've never thought of myself as a human, because we weren't supposed to be treated like humans... Just test subjects..." Cat corrected her.

"Anyway... One of the projects, who was about six years older than me, Project Five, sort of became an adult figure for me. She had taken me under her wing ever since I was just a toddler, mainly right after my arm and legs were removed. It was comforting to have someone older than me around to teach me kindness, and the other things that the lab technicians weren't allowed to teach me..."

For a brief moment, both Sam and Mikaela tried to see a picture of a small child, being fitted in the same type of armored ligaments that Cat had. Neither of them could even begin to imagine why their own government would do this to their own kind.

"She basically became to me, what you would think of as an older sister. We were both cloned from the same genes so we were, essentially, twins. So if you were to imagine what she looks like, she looks exactly like me, except she was lucky enough not to have any of these false appendages..." Cat continued.

"Cloned? I thought that the government didn't permit that?" Sam asked.

"Well yes and no. They didn't permit anyone outside of their grasp, privately run companies and such, to clone. But of course there was no stopping themselves from trying it. We were born from surrogate mothers, and our lives basically went from there... Anyway, about six years ago, Five and the other projects managed to break out. Of course, Five wouldn't leave without me, so they managed to break me out as well. At that point, I was still pretty young in my abilities, and hadn't even really begun to use Alchemy. But they managed to get me out as well... We were doing pretty well until we had decided to take an elevator to the top floor of the facility. There were only supposed to be a few guards on staff, it was a weekend, so most of the lab technicians and guards weren't there. However, I believe that by trying to find me, it took the others longer than they had realized and we were ambushed on the way out..."

The elevator doors opened and suddenly, gunfire sounded off. The other three projects jumped straight into the gunfire, as Five blocked Seven from being harmed. The sounds of gunfire started to slow as the noises of people being torn apart limb from limb could be heard, along with blood-curdling screams. Seven tugged on the back of Five's shirt in fear of what was happening just feet from them.

Five could feel the younger girl tugging on the back of her shirt and looked back to her, "It's okay, it'll be all right," she comforted.

The doors of the elevator closed, but it was only to be that way for a moment before Five turned to her younger sibling and said, "Listen, I'm going to go out there and check things out.."

"Okay..." the younger girl replied as Five opened the door and slowly walked out, looking to either side.

There were bodies all over the place. The ones that stood out the most were the ones of their dying friends. Five looked away in horror. There were random arms and legs thrown about, their friends had fought hard in such a short time. Five turned to go back to the elevator when one, single gunshot sounded. The woman lurched forward and fell to the ground, just feet away from the elevator doors. Seven looked out and saw her friend reaching for her from the ground.

"S..Se...Seven... Help me..." she said pleadingly.

"Usually a gunshot wound wouldn't be considered much of a wound to us, but that shot had managed to hit her spinal chord, paralyzing her from the waist down... She couldn't move... And neither could I..." Cat explained as her story went on.

"F-Five! Five I... I can't!..." Seven cowered against the back of the elevator wall, fear building up through her body.

"Plea...Please... Seven... Help...help...me..." Five reached towards the girl as far as he could reach.

"Wha-?!" Seven's eyes grew wide as the guard pulled the trigger, grazing her left arm. She jumped back just before the elevator doors closed, hearing one final gunshot.

"I blacked out after that, but later learned that Five had been killed by that last shot. The others were killed, of course. They were also non-equipted with the ligaments that I have. And I was considered too young to have been officially involved, so I was given a second chance at life... From that moment on, I decided it was either death or glory... I either made it out of there alive one day, or I would die trying... But I never gave into fear again. And it made me a better fighter. I became much stronger in every ability that I was taught... Because I could never forget what fear had done..." she finished.

The group was dangerously silent.

"Wait a minute," Sam spoke up, the group looking to him.

"If she was killed, then why is it that you think she was attacking you?" he asked.

The Autobots looked to Cat as she looked up to Sam and said, "I-I don't know why... She looked different. But it was definitely her..."

"Well then it's obvious what this is," Ratchet began, everyone wondering what he was thinking.

"It's obvious that this past traumatic event is starting to come back to you in your mind, and you're letting it control you into believing something that's not real," he explained in a very scientific sort of tone.

"She was there!" Cat replied defensively.

"Catherine, perhaps you passed out and only thought that you saw her. When we came upon you, your body was seizing and you were mumbling to the woman that you spoke of. Does it not make sense that you had somehow dreamt the woman to be alive?" Optimus asked.

"I... No! It was too real!" she replied.

"A lot of people believe that their nightmares are realistic, Cat. Give it some time, you'll understand when you mull it over a little," Mikeala replied.

"No!" Cat stood up, "You just don't understand!" She turned her back to them and walked to the edge of the scrap yard fence, leaning up against it.

No one knew what to say to the girl to make her understand the idea of a dream. But as they all pondered, they heard a great rumble. No, two great rumbles. Looking down to Sam and Mikaela, the two of them had red faces.

"I guess this would be a bad time to talk about food, huh?" Sam asked.

Cat turned her head to look at them in a side glance. She scoffed just before dashing off in the direction that she had disappeared to earlier.

"Hey, Wait!" Sam yelled, him and Mikaela about to get up and run after her when they were stopped by Optimus.

"Let her go. I'm sure she needs to think about this for a while," he motioned for them to remain still.

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Chapter Teaser!

"Seven..."

"No... I'm just being stupid... Ratchet was right, it was all in my head..." She gave herself a good scolding and shrugged the noise off as soft chatter from the back of her own mind.