Hey all! Thank you for all of your great reviews! It really keeps me going when faced with writer's block! Here's my next weekend installment! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, I DO own Project Seven (Cat) and Project Five(Five)
---------------------------------------------------------------
-Flashback-
"What do you mean a human did this?!" Blackout asked angrily, looking over the parts of their once, temporary leader of the Decepticons.
"It's just as we said! The human you were supposed to be interrogating somehow managed to do this!" Bonecrusher stated angrily.
"And I'm telling you, I had that human! I brought her near to death during my little investigation. She should have died! So I'm having trouble believing what you're telling me!" The black mech seethed.
"Whoever it was, there was no way that we were going to face it... If a mere human can do this to a Decepticon like Starscream, imagine what it could have done to us!" Devastator commented.
"Do we at least still have a lock on the other humans and the Autobots?" Blackout turned to Barricade.
"Yes... Frenzy has been able to keep the others unaware of his presence..." Barricade replied dryly.
"Good... For now let's just hope that we don't run into that strange woman again..." Blackout hoped aloud.
"Hello boys..." A woman's voice made the Decepticon crew turn to see the yellow-eyed familiar.
"That's the woman!" Devastator backed up away from the remains of Starscream.
Blackout growled and walked towards the woman, scanning her in the process as she merely stood still, her arms crossed and a crooked smile on her face.
"You look the same as the one who I had left to die... But you are not her... Who are you?!" he growled.
"I get that a lot, actually... But you are correct, I am not the other woman... Unlike her, I know the exact location of the thing that you're looking for," she taunted.
Blackout unleashed his weapons and warmed up his canons, pointing them at the woman, who didn't at all flinch.
"Then perhaps you should be talking quickly! Otherwise I'll-"
"You'll what? Are you sure that you want to put that to the test? Was that one over there supposed to be stronger than you?" Five asked with a light chuckle.
Blackout turned to see the beheaded commander lying motionless on the desert grounds. He then turned back to the human woman, his red optics glaring at her immensely.
"I can bring him back you know... I can make it so that you can find out where your precious Allspark is. All that I ask in return is your loyalty... You will obey me before anyone else..." she said in a serious tone.
Blackout turned to the other two, checking to see if they would give him the go-ahead to follow this woman's orders. Before he could answer, he noticed that the woman had already hopped over to Starscream's remains, causing Devastator and Barricade to back up quickly, in fear of their own lives.
"What are you doing?!" Blackout asked angrily.
"Obviously I need to prove my worth to you. So back up," Five ordered.
She walked over to the dismembered body of their commander and knelt down. She clapped her hands together and then placed them on the mech's left arm and closed her eyes. Blue sparks began to form in a circular pattern around the silver mech. A bright blue light shot out from the chest compartment, causing the other three Decepticons to cover their optics with their visors. As they did that, they all suddenly noticed that the mechanoid's head was reattached to the shoulders, as well as a large, round spark appeared over the body, and absorbed back into the body. The light quickly disappeared and the woman stood back up, backing up enough to allow movement from Starscream.
Blackout was about the scoff with the comment that nothing had happened, other than she had reattached Starscreams head, but suddenly there was movement. Starscream's red optics flashed back to life, as his systems began short diagnostics, his arms and legs moving slowly to test movement functions. Coming back online completely, Starscream shot up from where he had been lying, and looked over to see the smiling face of Five.
"What is this?!" he asked, looking to see the other three standing around him with astonished looks on their faces.
"Starscream, welcome back..." Blackout gave a nod of acknowledgement.
Five turned to Blackout and gave him a smirk with a raised eyebrow, "Do you understand now? My powers are practically limitless. You all either obey me, or I destroy you into oblivion, to which not even I can revive you..."
The Decepticons were rather frazzled by the woman's request, but they knew that they really didn't have much choice. If they were to retrieve the Allspark and Megatron, they would have to obey the girl's demands. But to what extent her demands went to, they may never have known...
-End Flashback-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Starscream! Did you understand me?!" Megatron growled angrily.
Starscream poked his head up from the memories, his face suddenly went to looking down at the woman who stood in front of him, facing Megatron.
"I... I believe she would be of help to us in our retrieval of the Allspark Lord Megatron..." he grumbled.
"...Fine... Then you will be in charge of it... I will have nothing to do with a human!" Megatron rumbled as he transformed and took off.
Starscream looked back down to the smirking human as she said, "Let's go then.. I have a feeling that we're farther behind those Autobots than we thought we were."
Starscream transformed and allowed the woman to climb into his cockpit, then took off towards Mission City.
-I do not know what it is that you are planning for us human... But I will not obey you for long...- Starscream thought as they headed off towards the city.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Flashback Fifteen years ago-
A small Five year old girl shivered in agony as she laid out on her thin mattress. The stumps that had been left over from the amputations were newly connected to fabricated limbs. The connections were so painful that the tiny girl couldn't move. Sweat was practically pouring down the girl's facial features, her hair was soaked in the sweat as well. Every now and then she would make a small effort to move her new limbs, but they felt so heavy. Every time she would twitch them just a little she would flinch in pain just that much more. It had been rather quiet up until the girl could hear voices in the distance. She did her best to steady and quiet her harsh breathing so that she could listen better.
"We'll give Seven three days to recover, and then put her to the test..." a male's sour voice said in a matter-of-factly tone.
-T-three days?!- Little Seven thought to herself. Her body shook as her lungs heaved with a sob, tears forming in the child's eyes. Even as such a young girl, Seven did not know child-like happiness. She knew only battle simulations and consequences to bad behavior. Oh, how she longed for someone to take hold of her and hug her, telling her that everything would be okay. That thought was quickly pushed out of her mind as another voiced shot back at the other one.
"Three days is not enough time to allow the fresh wounds to heal. She's barely had enough time to heal from the original surgeries!" A woman's voice argued.
"We put it in her genes to heal faster, Lillian. She'll be fine. Besides, we need to test how little down time she'll need after battles that she's taken a huge hit from," another voice replied.
"For god sakes! She's just a child! Are we really planning on making children fight our battles for us?!" The woman cried out.
"Your emotional attachment is becoming too great of a risk, Miss Andrews, for us to continue having your presence here. Are you sure this is truly the job that you want?" The first voice asked, a hint of amusement could be heard.
"...Yes of course... My... apologies for my outburst..." Lillian replied through gritted teeth.
"Good. Three days it is then... The girl should have full capacity over those new limbs by then," the man replied, setting his foot down on the matter.
Seven could hear the group walking out of the lab. Her mind went over their conversation over and over as more tears streamed out of her eyes.
-No- she thought suddenly as she wiped the tears away with her only flesh left arm.
-I've got to get control of these now. If I wait to see if the pain will go away, I'll probably be worse off in three days when I try to really move for the first time... I've got to get through this now...- The small girl began lifting her new limbs, her body screaming with pain in protest.
Seven managed to prop herself up on her left elbow and lean over to the left with her right side, leveraging the heavily weighted metal arm over so that it swung over her right side and dropped to the mattress. However, instead of the arm resting on the pad, it rolled off of the side, the little girl's eyes widened rather quickly as she felt the weight pull her off of the bed. She hit the floor face first, her metal legs landing with a loud 'clunk', which tugged at her already sore hips. Seven buried her face into the cold, hard floor and closed her eyes, waiting for the wave of pain to pass.
As Seven laid, unmoving, on the concrete floor, she heard a lab door burst open, several footsteps pounding against the ground with quick steps.
"Put her in here for now! We'll let her stay here to calm down for a few hours!" Seven saw a lab technician open a cell door just across from hers hurriedly, waving for the others to go inside.
A few other technicians appeared, holding another child who appeared to be just a few years older than Seven. Three of the technicians were carrying the girl carefully, but firmly into the cell. They set her down on a mattress and made a dash back out of the cell, the first technician closing the door behind them quickly, locking it. They were all breathing rather rapidly, as if they had been running for a while or as if they had just finished a very long, drawn out scuffle. A single pair of footsteps could be heard walking closer to Seven's cell.
"What the-?! What happened to you?!" he turned and motioned for the one with the keys to the cells to come over.
"No... We were told not to interfere with this one's progress for now... Let her be..." The others walked out of the lab, the other soon after.
The lab was quiet once more. Well for only a moment at least. Seven suddenly heard shuffling around in the cell that the lab technicians had locked up.
"So what's your story?" a girl's voice was heard clearly.
Seven looked up to see a strange sight indeed. A girl who looked to be a child as well, was standing at the front of the cell, her arms crossed, and her light brown eyes shimmering down at Seven. She had probably shoulder length silky brown hair, which was tied up in the back, her bangs hanging to the very tops of her eyes. She also had several bleeding cuts on her cheeks, and one over her left eye.
The smaller girl did not answer as she rolled her face back down towards the ground, groaning in pain.
"...I didn't know that there was another one of us... Geez, how the hell many more could they have created?!" the older girl scowled.
Seven looked back up at the other girl and rasped out, "O-Others?"
The girl looked back down to Seven with a gloomy look indeed.
"Haven't you been informed of everything that's happening?" the girl asked with a scoff.
No answer.
The older girl narrowed her eyes and bent down to the floor level to get a better look at the smaller girl.
"What's your designation?" the older one asked.
"S-Seven..." the younger girl replied, shivering.
"You look terrible... What'd they do to you anyway?" the older girl asked.
Seven looked up a little at the older child and replied, "You don't look too good either..."
The other girl smiled and laughed a little, rubbing absently at the cuts and scrapes on her face.
"Yeah, I guess today's training went a little more extreme than I expected it to," she looked back to Seven, "For some reason I doubt that my own injuries are anywhere near as bad as yours. Can you move?"
Seven tested trying to move the false limbs and winced, letting a sob slip from her lips. The other girl shook her head and sat down on the floor Indian-style and crossed her arms.
"It seems as though they're trying something new... The others will be wanting to know about all of this..." she sighed.
"W-What others are you... talking about?" Seven said in a rather loud whisper.
"Hmm? You mean you don't know of any others?" the older girl asked somewhat surprised.
No answer from Seven once again, her eyes shifted back and forth, trying to think of who it was that this strange girl was speaking of.
"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I didn't know anything about you, so I shouldn't have expected you to know anything about us... Look at me..." she suddenly ordered.
Seven looked up and saw that the older girl was looking straight into her eyes, reading her like a book. The older girl's brown eyes studied Seven's bright blue ones.
"As I feared, you are another clone... You look so much like me, except you're a bit different... Dammit!" the girl punched a wall, causing some of the concrete to chip away.
There was a brief silence before the older girl turned back to Seven and ordered, "Get up..."
Seven snorted and replied, "Did you not just see me try a moment ago?"
"I don't care... You managed it a few moments ago, I can see that much. You have to keep trying, or they'll force you themselves... Get up..." she ordered softly this time, her eyes looking into Seven's with great remorse.
Seven contemplated giving the other a sarcastic remark but she knew that she was right. She had to get up. Once again she managed to prop herself up on her left arm, her right arm dangling from it's socket. She willed herself to make the painful nerves react to their new host body parts. Her right arm twitched a little, as did her legs. She was a bit surprised as to how much control she actually had over them. She set her right hand on the ground to balance herself as she put her weight upon it. She then managed to slowly bring her legs up underneath of her. She slowly sat herself up on her legs and looked up to the bed, which was just low enough for her to reach up and pull herself up to. She gave a hard shove with her legs and managed to roll onto the bed, exhausting herself. While trying to catch her breath, Seven gave the other girl a hard, defiant stare.
The older girl smiled and said, "You're definitely one of us, Seven."
Seven closed her eyes and laughed a little, but in the middle of her laugh she heard the sound of metal bending. She quickly turned her head and saw the older girl slowly bending the metal bars to her cell. Seven was astonished to say the least. She was strong, but she wasn't nearly that strong.
The girl stepped through the bent-out-of-shape bars and walked over to Seven's cell, doing the same with the bars and walking into the small living space. She sat down on the bed next to her younger look-a-like, looking down at her.
"If you can do that... Why not just... Break out of here?" Seven asked.
"The lab doors are a bit more complex, I'm afraid..." The older girl looked over Seven's false appendages and picked up the arm, causing Seven to wince once again.
"Sorry, I'm just a bit curious as to what it is that they're doing now... You're pretty strong already. I bet when you get more used to these you'll be even stronger than me," she said in an impressed tone.
"I don't care about being strong... I just want all of this testing to stop..." Seven replied, her voice trembling with an oncoming sob.
The older girl sighed and gently picked Seven up by her shoulders, then sat back against the wall, setting Seven with her back against her. She pulled her into a sisterly hug with an arm around her shoulders and said, "I know... I wished that when I was young too... The only problem is that it doesn't stop, and the pain never goes away... It's something that we've all had to learn to live with I'm afraid."
Seven's sobs hushed slowly and she asked, "Can you tell me about the others?"
The older girl smiled and replied, "Sure... My name's Five, by the way.."
-End Flashback-
---------------------------------------- --------------------------
Cat couldn't help but rifle through her memories a little as she closed in on Mission City, which even from so far away looked like a war zone.
"You gave me the strength and the encouragement to be a strong fighter, Five... But this time I have to find the strength myself... It's time to end this big sis..."
------------------------------------
Chapter Teaser!
Driving down the highway a familiar sight appeared right next to her, streaming past her like a missile.
"Optimus? What the...??" she slammed on the gas the rest of the way and caught up to the semi truck.
Rolling down the passenger window with the control pad on the driver's side, Cat yelled out the window, "Hey! What's going on?! Where's everyone else?!"
A voice came over the radio in a surprised tone, startling Cat into swerving a little when she heard it, "Catherine? I thought the others told me that you would be staying behind to-"
"Plans changed... I was... unable to stop Megatron..." Cat regained control over the SUV and interrupted the Autobot leader.
"Five couldn't stop him either, I assume?" Optimus asked.
"...Optimus, I'm not going to lie to you... Five betrayed us... Betrayed me... She's going to use the Decepticons to get the Allspark so she can use it for herself... I'm sorry..." she coughed and gripped the steering wheel that much harder.