Hey guys! Thank you all so much for your encouraging reviews! It does me spark good to know that my writings are well liked sniffle. Well here's the next update! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own TF, or any other trademarked item mentioned in this fic. But I DO own Project Seven, so back off! Mine!!!
P.S. By the way, I may not update over the weekend, or I may only update once because of a busy schedule.
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Down the street just a ways, Ratchet looked back to Mikaela, unsure of what to tell her.
"What!? What is it?!" she asked, knowing that kind of look on a giant alien robot's face couldn't be a good sign.
"I'm afraid the news isn't good..." the medic replied, his facial expressions looking grim.
Mikaela didn't need an answer, her mind already knew what he was trying to say.
"Cat..." she said softly.
"Wait... What was that?!" Ratchet asked, looking back to the fighting just down the road from them.
The fighting stopped briefly, and there, in the middle of the road, stood a figure that seemed familiar.
Ratchet looked down to the girl with wide optics and an astonished face.
"It couldn't be her..." he said strangely.
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Optimus and StarScream had managed to land several good hits on each other, causing minimal damage, until StarScream was knocked away and skidded against the ground. As he came to a stop, he saw an image of the ground, and human feet just inches away from his optics.
"It can't be..." Jazz stood quiet as the Autobots and the Decepticons all stopped their fighting, once again, looking to what was in front of StarScream.
A girl... A girl that looked nearly exactly like her... She stood with flesh arms and legs, wearing denim shorts and a white t-shirt. Her brunette hair tied back, and her yellow eyes stared up at everyone around her. Her hand went to her hip as she gave a half smile.
"What's wrong?" she finally asked.
No answer.
"Are any of you disturbed by my being here?" she asked as she looked down to StarScream, who was wondering how it was possible that the girl was standing in front of him, and not dead.
"And what about you, Tin Man?" she asked as she gave a slight kick under the Decepticon's chin.
StarScream stood up quickly and shouted, "If you can't stay dead by Blackout, then I'll just have to take care of you myself!" he brought a hand down upon the girl, about to smash her like an insect.
The girl just smiled as the giant fist smashed the ground.
"NO!" The Autobots yelled in unison.
StarScream didn't know why, but he knew that something had gone wrong... very wrong... he lifted his fist up slowly, only to reveal that the girl was standing the same way she had been before.
"But... But that's impossible! No human can move that fast!" StarScream shouted, suddenly feeling nervous.
The girl suddenly looked up to the Decepticon and her face went from the half smile to a frown, and a lowering of her eyebrows.
"Well that would be the problem wouldn't it?" she asked, confusing everyone around her.
"Because I don't consider myself HUMAN!" the girl shouted as she shot off the ground.
Before anyone had known that it happened, the girl had landed a hard punch to the face on StarScream, knocking his cranial unit clean off his shoulders. The unit skidded several hundred feet, hitting Ratchet's feet lightly as it came to a stop.
Ratchet and Mikaela stared at the head as it's jaw moved slightly, just before the light in the Decepticon's optics faded and shorted out.
"Wha-What is that?! Mikaela shouted as she took a few steps back, her hands over her nose and mouth in a gasping shock.
Ratchet wasn't sure he could answer, he just looked up in surprised back at what was happening in front of them.
The woman was grinning wildly from atop the shoulders of the remaining heap, which was formerly known as Starscream.
"Now... For the rest of you..." she turned to the other Decepticons as she jumped from the body, causing it to fall back the other direction from her.
The other Decepticons frantically scrambled around, picking up StarScreams' remains. The girl stood silently still as she watched them transform and go to StarScreams' head, Bonecrusher growling at Ratchet as the medic moved out of the way quickly, watching the head being picked up, and the newly online Barricade transforming as well, screeching out of the vicinity as quickly as possible. Ratchet turned back to the other end of the street, watching to see what else was happening.
Optimus and the others stared down at the "new" Cat. They couldn't help but ask.
"Have you been... fixed?" Optimus asked.
The yellow-eyed girl stared up at him with her smile, still lingering on her face. She walked forward towards them and stopped at Optimus' feet.
"Good lord... There are more of them?!" another woman's voice chimed in from behind a nearby building as she stepped out. She looked of a woman close to her early forties, her own messy, long brunette hair sticking to the sides of her face from sweating.
"I see you have escaped!" the Cat look-a-like stated in a cheerful tone.
"I've... only ever seen the one that we held in our facilities... I didn't know that there would be more..." Lillian replied, astonished.
The four Autobots standing before the two humans looked to one another, confused and unsure of what to think about what was going on.
"That ain't her!" Jazz stated.
"I'm having some disbeliefs as well..." Optimus replied.
"Wait o' minute! Did that other human just say something about seeing the "other" one?" Ironhide asked.
The other's came to realization as well as they focused on the other woman.
"Who are you?" Optimus demanded.
"She's no one, at the moment!" The yellow-eyed girl growled as she frowned and walked forward.
"First and foremost, where's Seven?!" she asked, now seemingly getting angry.
"But... aren't you... aren't you her?!" Bumblebee strained, as much in shock as anyone else.
The girl looked down to the ground with her eyes closed.
"I'll ask you one more time, and then I'm going to start tearing off your ligaments!" she snarled.
"She was taken!" Ratchet yelled, approaching the group, Mikaela in one hand, and a waking Sam in the other.
Bumblebee rushed to see Sam looking up at him tiredly.
"He's fine, Bee..." Ratchet looked to the panicking Autobot.
"What was it that you just said?!" the yellow-eyed woman stared up at Ratchet with an intense glare.
Ratchet looked to the girl and quickly scanned her with his optics, knowing he had very little time to reply.
"Indeed, you look like her... But you two are nothing alike," he said with a fascinated voice.
"I'm running out of patience!" the girl shouted.
"Yes, of course. Blackout has taken Catherine a few miles due West of here... But I doubt that you have any time to save her..." he replied grimly.
The woman scoffed and said, "I'm not here to save anyone!"
She jumped up from where she was and began to run in the direction that Ratchet had directed her in.
"Who is that?!" Mikaela yelled from the palm of Ratchet.
"I'm afraid that I have to explain..." Lillian began.
The Autobots and the two humans looked to her as she continued, "You see... Even though I was apart of the "projects"... Even I didn't know anything about this particular girl..."
"Wait!" Mikaela yelled in frustration, "Shouldn't we be going to find Cat too?!"
"Let's go!" Optimus snapped to attention and they all transformed, Sam being helped by Mikaela into Bumblebee's car cabin, then she jumped in herself.
Optimus opened the passenger side door to Lillian and said, "
"Might I ask who you are?" Optimus asked, the others listening in.
"Oh, yes. I'm sorry. My name is Lillian..." she replied.
"Lillian, did you mention that you worked at the lab where Catherine was held?" Optimus asked.
"Catherine?" Lillian was confused.
"She once went by the designation of "Seven"," he explained.
"She renamed herself?" Lillian asked.
"Sam and I renamed her, actually," Mikaela spat.
"I'm sorry, but who are all of you?" Lillian was just as confused as the Autobots were about who, what, where and when.
"We can have introductions at a later time, right now we have some questions for you about Catherine, and the location of your lab," Optimus replied.
"Okay... sure," Lillian replied.
"What is it that you-" he was interrupted.
"What the hell gave you right to lock her up and treat her like an animal?!" Mikaela asked, obviously angered.
The rest of them would have tried to calm the girl, but they were wondering the same thing. There was silence all around, and Optimus suddenly noticed that this question bothered the woman as much as it did the rest of them.
"Perhaps this is not the time to-" the poor Autobot leader was once again interrupted.
"No... I'm... I'm sorry for what has happened to her... But there's a lot that you couldn't possibly understand about why-"
"Why she had to feel like she wasn't even human?!" Sam cut the woman off, slowly coming to realization of what was going on around him, just with a major headache.
Silence.
"Look," Lillian began, the others listening intensely," If you want to know what I was thinking when I first started that job, then I'll give you what you want to hear... But right now, I'm more worried about what's happening to her right now..."
"Agreed," Optimus finally got a word in as they sped off to where Cat was being held.
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Thrown against the ground for, what seemed to be, the tenth time, Cat could barely move her upper body. Her breathing was sharp and rapid, and she refused to say a word. She may have had a chance to get away at one point, but her main focus was not to lead this giant back to where he could harm anyone else. She knew that her body could survive a harsh beating, so she wasn't worried.
"I'm only going to ask once more, and then I'm going to get serious..." The low toned voice of the Decepticon was growing more and more agitated with the girl's unwillingness to cooperate.
"Where is the Allspark, and where is Megatron?!" he asked fiercely.
Cat remained silent. She wasn't about to talk to a captor.
"If I had my other arm, this guy would be a toaster by now..." Cat thought amusingly to herself.
Hearing a soft giggle from the girl, Blackout's temper rose as he thrashed his hands on the ground, causing a small rumble.
"What are you laughing about?! I don't see how someone in your position could possibly see anything humorous here! You're going to learn, quickly, that-" and then he stopped and snapped to attention.
"Blackout here! I've got the girl, sir!" he suddenly spoke aloud
"No sir! She refuses to say anything at all with the location of the Allspark!" he said frustrated.
"He's talking to his commander... That must be that "StarScream" that the Autobots kept speaking of... I'll be sure to turn him into a coffeemaker to go along with that nice toaster..." Cat continued to giggle to herself.
"Yes sir, I have! I've practically broken every bone in the portions of her body that are human, and she still won't say anything! She hasn't even made a scream from the pain of my attacks!"
Suddenly, Blackout's cranial unit turned towards Cat ever so slowly, a grim smile upon his face.
"Uh oh... That can't be good..." Cat's giggling stopped, and she suddenly realized that things had gone from bad, to worse.
"So, you don't know the location after all?" Blackout strode towards the girl and leaned down to her.
"If you don't know the locations of the Allspark and Megatron, then you are of no use to us!" he taunted.
Cat stopped amusing herself with the ideas of turning these guys into kitchen-ware, and suddenly realized that she was going to have to move. It was going to take everything she had.
"Now that you have nothing we want, I've got nothing else to do with you except dispose of you!" he said as he reached down to grab her.
"Now!" Cat told herself as she pushed up off of the ground with all of her willpower. Her legs were somewhat damaged but she managed to jump out of the way of the Decepticons grasp.
"Are you unwilling, even to die?!" Blackout asked as he stood and quickly batted at the girl, missing her by mere centimeters.
Cat jumped to Blackout, landing on the top of his head, then jumping off quickly, looking back to see that he had fallen for her little trick and smacked himself like a human swatting a fly. She laughed, followed by a strong coughing fit as she landed on the ground. The fit gave Blackout just enough time to grab her, tightening his grip on her enough so that she couldn't breath at all.
"Make a fool out of me will you?!" he seethed as his red optics narrowed at her.
Cat wanted so bad to make a snide remark to his question, but she didn't have the lung capacity to even breathe at the moment. She could feel blood rushing to her head, and her bones begin to crack within her torso. Her lungs felt as though they weren't even there anymore as she tried to gasp for air, bringing nothing in. Her world was about to turn into blackness when she felt a release and dropped to the ground like a rag-doll.
"Blackout here!...What?!" he had turned his back to the girl for a moment but turned back to her as he spoke over his communications network.
"But I... Fine! I'm on my way!" he sighed as he leaned over Cat, who was gasping and coughing.
"You'd be better hope that you die right now... Because if we meet later, I won't be so nice..." he said as he transformed and rode off, leaving a large amount of dust in his wake.
Cat coughed more and more, her stomach lurching beyond her control.
"The next time we meet, " Cat thought darkly to herself, "You're toast..."
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"If I was here to take her, I'd have brought more than just myself now wouldn't I?!" Lillian yelled over the communications network that the Autobots were chatting on while searching for Catherine.
"Maybe you have more people waiting for you not too far behind! How are we supposed to believe you?!" Mikaela spat back, the two having been arguing ever since the beginning of the search.
"If you don't believe me, that's fine! But when we find Seven, why don't you ask her who helped her escape?!" Lillian was tired of the circles that they were going in.
"You... You're the one who helped her escape?" Sam asked.
Lillian sighed and in a quiet voice she replied, "Well she did most of the work, I just managed to get her away from the facility. I dropped her off in Los Angeles... knowing that even though I was setting her free, she wasn't going to live for very long anyway..."
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Chapter Teaser!
"Someone on a very high level created her... This may or may not be a good thing, depending on if what she said was true..." Lillian replied, thinking deeply.
"What did she say?" Sam asked.
"Well she claimed that she didn't come here to save Seven, yet she went to her aid... Perhaps her intentions aren't as pure as I originally thought they were," Lillian replied.
"Okay, what's that supposed to mean?" Mikaela asked.
"It means she very well could have come here with the intentions to kill Seven herself..." Lillian replied with a cringe.