Hey everyone! Thank you for the reviews! And I'm sorry to say, that there is but one chapter left in this story, however, you might find a little surprise as you read -wink-. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, however I claim soul ownership over the characters Project Seven (Cat) and Project Five... (Five)...
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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.
"What are you apologizing for?" Optimus asked.
"It's my fault... I should have seen this coming a mile away but I chose to ignore the warning signs and now Five's joined forces with Megatron..." Cat mentally scolded herself for being so ignorant.
There was a brief silence before Optimus asked, "Catherine, do you think that you would have been able to control Five?"
"Well I... Probably not, no... Why?" Cat asked.
"My men and I had agreed earlier that you and Five have some strange commonalities with our own race. Five wishes to take revenge upon your entire race in order to turn the tables on what her life once was. You, however. No matter how badly you were treated by other humans, you don't wish to harm them," he commented.
"...I'm not going to say that I don't want them all dead for what they've done to us... But they really had no idea what they were doing... The ones that did this to me should be punished severely, but it's not my place to decide their fate..." Cat gritted through her teeth.
"Which brings me to my point. Five holds close resemblance to the Decepticons. That being said, they are most deceitful. I was also betrayed by Megatron long ago. It wasn't something too surprising, but it was unexpected, nonetheless. It's understandable that you were caught off guard by what Five has done," Optimus finished.
"...I suppose..." Cat grumbled.
They approached the city limits and slowed down a little, both of them looking for where the action was.
"I'm going to try and find Sam and Mikaela," Cat decided as she drove off in a different direction.
"Yes, and I'll hunt down Megatron," Optimus replied as they both went their separate ways.
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As Cat got further into the City, she noticed more and more people leaving their cars in the middle of the road and running for their lives. At that point she decided that it was useless to try and continue driving, the thing was running out of fuel anyway. She opened the driver's side door and firstly swung her left leg over the seat so she could make some adjustments. She shoved the knee-joint into place and hoped that it would hold.
"That'll have to work for now," Cat gave her knee a quick jostle as she jumped out of the truck and looked around. People were all frantic and scattering like a bunch of scared deer. Just running and screaming. Cat watched as they all mostly ran in a northern direction down the street she was on, and decided to go where they were running from. She ran as fast as she could without accidentally running into any civilians. She zigzagged from street to street, trying to find her friends. As she was about to give up on the idea of trying to find them, she saw a sudden glimpse of what appeared to be yellow armor, out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and saw Bumblebee, and what appeared to be Mikaela loading him onto the back of a tow truck.
Cat smiled in relief and began running towards them before she saw several small transformer looking creatures running up to her two friends from behind, ready for attack.
"Where the hell did those come from?!" Cat asked herself as she rushed over and jumped into one of the little robots, rolling them both over onto the ground just in time before it could bring any harm onto Bumblebee or Mikaela.
"Cat?!" Mikaela jumped in shock.
Cat got up quickly and jumped onto the back of the mini-transformer and clapped her hands together, running her left arm over her right, transmuting it into it's long blade form. She plunged it into the back of the thing's neck, severing it's neural pathways, killing it.
"Oh my god!" Mikaela yelled, Cat turned and saw another smaller form running towards them, Bumblebee not being able to do anything with his back turned to the scene.
Cat jumped in front of Mikaela, transmuting her arm into a shield as it shot off small rounds of ammunition. She ran to it and knocked it over with a quick backhanding, sending the small thing into a nearby building, destroying it. She turned back around and limped slowly back to the other two.
"You're alive!" Mikaela said with a surprised smile on her face.
Cat approached the two and looked over Bumblebee.
"What happened here?!" she asked.
"Bumblebee can't walk, he lost his legs in an attack!" Mikaela went back to trying to load the transformer on the back of the truck. Cat walked to the back of the truck and Bumblebee gave her an enthusiastic whirring noise.
"Where's Sam?" Cat suddenly remembered and looked around.
Mikaela's determined face turned into one of sorrow as she looked to Bumblebee, then back to Cat.
"Him, Ratchet and Ironhide ran to a building with the Allspark to try and get it away from here a minute ago... We don't know if they made it yet..." She quietly went back to shifting the gears on the back of the truck to bring the flatbed up to being parallel to the ground.
Cat watched as Mikaela jumped to the driver's side of the truck and turned back to her.
"Come on!" Mikaela yelled.
Cat decided that it was probably best to stick with these two for right now until something happened, so she hobbled over to the passenger side of the truck and got in, Mikaela slammed on the gas and drove off.
"So what is it that we're doing right now anyway?" Cat asked.
"I have to get Bumblebee out of here so he doesn't get hurt anymore than he already is... I don't know what else I should do," the girl was practically on the verge of shivering and bursting into tears she was so frightened.
After a second of driving through the mess of cars and people Mikaela suddenly wondered, "What happened with you two and Megatron?"
Cat looked away and sighed, "It's a bit of a story..."
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"Drop me off there, on that building..." Five ordered.
"Are you planning on destroying the Autobots from there?" Starscream asked, wondering why it was that the human would want to be perched on one of the highest standing buildings in the city.
"No, I plan to just watch the scene from high above... You can take care of the Autobots yourself, I'm just waiting for the Allspark to become mine," Five replied as the cockpit opened for her allowing her to jump down to the top of the building from several feet above it.
"Don't disappoint me," Five gave an evil smirk as she looked back up to the jet.
Starscream growled and shot off towards, what looked to be like, a military air strike force. Five went to the edge of the roof of the building and looked down onto the streets.
"They look like tiny ants, just running around at my feet," Five gloated to herself as she watched the humans scatter in fear.
-Come in Megatron.- Starscream called for on his intercommunications link.
-What is it?!- Megatron snapped back as he was busy locating the Allspark.
-Unlike my previous beliefs, I do not think that we should trust that human. She believes that she will gain the Allspark through us after we defeat those Autobot scum...- Starscream didn't want to admit that he was going back on what he had said earlier about the human as if he lied, but he knew that she could have killed him easily then if she had wanted to.
-Should I even bother asking as to why it is that you would bring a disgusting creature like that onto our side of the battle in the first place?!- his commander seethed.
-That human has abilities that not even I possess... It was able to... behead me sir... And later re-energize my spark and repair me... I had no choice in the matter...- Starscream replied as he ripped through some of the American's military jets easily.
Megatron stopped his search for the Allspark at the moment and turned his attention to the human who was currently standing with her back to him on the building that Starscream had left her on. How could a mere human destroy a Cybertronian?! His thoughts ravaged through his cranium wildly as his anger flared with his memories from just moments ago.
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-Flashback-
Under her breath, but loud enough for a being with super-advanced hearing to hear, she barely mouthed a whisper saying, "What a joke you are. You can't even break the hold that these humans have on you. There are others coming for you, and some are here to kill you even. However your systems are frozen into stasis, making you as much as a threat as a harmless newborn kitten... Pathetic..."
Just as she said this she noticed how much brighter the red optics became. She could also see some of the ice around those red optics begin to drip wet as it barely began to melt. Five snickered. She enjoyed making this creature angry. It brought her great joy to see the mechanical being transmit how furious it was.
Five walked up some of the staircases that led to the front of the creature's face. The humans used these to examine him, so Five decided to make use of them as well. She was only a few feet away from Megatron's face. At this point she could tell that he was seething with fury. However Five wasn't one to be taken back by this. She knew, very well, that if he could have, he would have destroyed her where she stood.
"You might actually be the only one on this planet to have any sort of upper hand over me. Which I would like to test. Until then, you will obey me..." She laughed quietly, lowering her sunglasses just enough for Megatron to have his own look into her yellow orbs.
-End Flashback-
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-I will show you what little effort it takes to destroy such a puny creature!- Megatron boasted as he jumped off towards Five.
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Five was overlooking the situation below her. She was merely glancing from street to street until her eyes rested on something strange... And familiar. She saw a tow truck far down the road, which seemed to be towing a certain yellow Autobot.
-Still alive eh? Who's towing you, I wonder?- Five thought to herself as she manipulated the special optics in her eyes, telescoping in on the tow truck.
She couldn't see into the front cab of the truck, that was until it rounded a car that was parked in the middle of the road. She held her breath in complete shock.
-No... No I left her at the lab! She's dead! How could she not have died?!- Five thought.
Cat stuck her head and arms out of the window of the cab and seemed to be yelling and motioning with her arms at the humans running in front of them. It looked as though she were motioning for them to move out of the way or something similar. She watched as the truck pulled into an alley and disappeared from her sight.
Five was about to jump from her spot on the building when her eyes refocused on her current spot and noticed that a shadow had enveloped her. She looked up too late as she saw the metallic hand of Megatron come down upon her. She only managed to move a few inches as she felt the hand crush her below the waist, severing nerves and crushing her leg structures. She turned her torso over to look Megatron straight in the eyes as he looked down upon her.
"I. Obey. No one..." Megatron growled as he brought another hand down upon Five's body.
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"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WATCH OUT FOR THAT- Wow that was a pretty good -CAR! CAR! CAR!- Hey nice miss, that was- LOOK OUT FOR THAT PERSON OVER- Nice job! WHAT IS THAT?! WHAT IS THAT?! WHAT IS -"
"Be quiet Cat!" Mikaela scolded as she quickly backed the tow truck up, Bumblebee taking shots at Blackout. A final shot was taken which disrupted Blackouts own pathways, destroying him.
Mikaela stopped the truck and looked around, seeing that they had destroyed the Decepticon.
"Nice driving..." Cat commented.
Mikaela looked back to the girl and said, "You wouldn't have known it the way you were screaming," she laughed.
Cat smile sheepishly and chuckled a little herself before they both jumped out of the truck.
"Nice shooting," Mikaela commented.
Cat was walking around the back of the truck as well until she stopped dead in her tracks. Images began flooding her mind, attacking her with force. They were images that she was meant to see from someone else's mind.
"F-Five?" Cat fell to her knees sitting up on the ground, her eyes darting back and forth with her head bowed.
An image of Five laying on the roof of a building, bleeding, suffering, nearly unmoving went through her mind.
-Seven... Come to me Seven...- Five's voice whispered gently. It wasn't the tone of someone who was angry, or someone who was trying to lure someone to their death. It was the voice of someone who was sad, and heartbroken.
-Where are you?- Cat asked.
More images flooded her mind, images of looking down at the city from a tall, dark gray building. One that overlooked most of the others around it. Cat looked around until she laid eyes on the same building from the images in her mind. Without looking back, she got to her feet and ran for the building as quickly as possible.
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A few minutes after Cat's disappearance, Mikaela looked around for her.
"Cat? Cat! Where the hell did she go off to?" Mikaela put her hands on her hips in frustration and turned to Bumblebee.
"Did you see where she went?"
The yellow Autobot made some whirring noises and shrugged, then in cuts of different songs on the radio replied, "Something about Five..."
"Five? You don't think... You don't think that she went looking for her do you? Why would she do that? Didn't she say that she betrayed her?! I wish she would have said something before leaving!" Mikaela was confused, to say the least.
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Cat approached the building and craned her neck to look all the way up to the top. The building at to be at least thirty stories high. She looked back inside and walked to the doors, pulling on them to reveal that they had been locked.
-Either they locked themselves in, or they all got out and locked up to prevent looting of any sorts... Either way the power is probably out, and any elevators will be blocked off... Great... I guess this means one thing...- Cat thought sourly as she went to the side of the building, where there was a very narrow alley. It was so narrow that not even a Smart Car from overseas could possibly fit through it. She looked to the other building next to the taller one and saw that it barely reached a third of the way to the neighboring one.
"This will have to work..." Cat looked down at her loose knee-joint on her left leg and said, "Ratchet made these pretty strong, so I hope it'll hold out just a bit longer..."
Cat looked up from between the two buildings and jumped to the taller building, landing on a small window ledge. She jumped over to the next building a few more stories up and then back to the taller building. She repeated this process until she got to the roof of the smaller building. Standing on the roof, she decided to make one huge jump to get as far up as she could.
Crouching her legs like an animal, Cat gave the biggest push-off that she possibly could. Her body flew high into the air, going up another twelve stories before getting to a window, landing just a few inches shy of her feet catching the ledge of the window. Slipping down a story, Cat managed to catch a different ledge with her metal arm. She breathed a sigh of relief before jerking her head up to see that someone had opened the window and was soon looking into the face of a gentleman who was probably in his mid thirties. He was wearing a work-suit, so obviously he worked there himself.
"Uh... So... Hey, how's it hangin'?" he asked in a rather quiet and surprised sort of tone.
Cat only saw the humor in this irony for a brief second before she realized that she was on a mission. She pulled herself into the window, and inside the building, with the aid of the young red-headed man.
Putting her feet on the floor, Cat immediately looked around the room and saw that there were several people there, wearing dull work clothing. Before anything could be said, there was a scream from down the hall and the sounds of something crashing.
The others in the room jumped and turned their backs to the window side of the room, backing up in fear. Cat hobbled into the hallway quickly and didn't see anything except for an elevator at one end of the hallway, and a darkened room with cubicles on the other end. Another scream had Cat's attention towards the darkened room as she then saw a woman running down the hallway towards her. Taking the initiative, Cat ran past the woman and into the room where she saw half of the room looking as if it were just run through by a passing tornado.
"What the hell was that noise?" Cat wondered.
As if on cue, she saw bright yellow optics shining back at her and a cubical wall fly towards her. She moved out of the way quickly and ran towards the pint-sized mech, dodging the ammunitions shots that it was taking at her. One shot managed to graze her left shoulder just before she punched the head off of the human sized transformer, bringing it's body to it's knees and then to the ground completely.
"Dammit..." Cat growled covering her left shoulder with her right arm.
Walking back towards the other end of the hallway, Cat was met with the faces of the strange humans as they looked her over.
"That was... That was awesome!" The man who had helped her into the building gave her an impressed tone, the others giving her sighs of relief.
Cat only looked to this man and said, "I need to get to the roof of this building, pronto." She gave him a very serious look. A look that would send him and the others there the message that she wasn't about to stay and chat.
"Uh, yeah sure... The elevator goes to the top floor, and there's a fire exit up there that leads to the roof..." he replied.
Cat scowled at herself as she walked out of the room, "So the power's on... I should have known..."
Walking to the elevator, Cat pressed the call button and waited. As she waited impatiently, she heard several footsteps behind her. She whipped around to see that she was surrounded by the humans from the other room.
"Are you all right? You're bleeding," one woman asked.
"...I'm fine..." Cat replied in a low, quiet tone. She looked at the people surrounding her and asked, "You... aren't afraid of me?"
"Why would we be afraid of the one who saved us? You rock!" one of the men replied with a wide grin on his face.
Cat smiled just a little and looked around, "Thanks... I guess..." The elevator "dinged" alerting Cat to it's arrival.
She got onto the elevator and turned to look at the button panel. She reached down and pressed the "32" button and looked back at the humans in front of her, they gave a smile and a nod before the doors closed, and she felt the elevator's initial lift as it went upwards.
For some reason, those strangers gave Cat a sense of calm and confidence. For a fleeting moment, Cat felt as if she may have had a chance to blend in with normal society... If only she was sure that she would survive this whole ordeal... Between her body giving up on her and the Decepticons battling for the object of interest against the Autobots, she was too far into this to worry about how to blend in with society... No, she had to concentrate on the matter at hand...
Arriving on the thirty-second floor, the doors opened and Cat quickly looked down the hallways, immediately spotting a short upwards staircase with an "Exit" sign hanging in front of it. She walked hastily to the stair case and grabbed the railing, using it as a crutch to help her up. The door had a long bar across the middle which indicated that it needed to be pushed to opened. She hit the bar with a hard shove and it flew open.
"Five?! Five! Where are you?!" Cat looked around and saw a small storage room just about twenty feet away and saw a hand laying motionlessly just beyond it.
"Five!" Cat screeched in a raspy, worn out voice as she made her way over to her friend.
As she rounded the corner of he storage shed, Cat could only look for a split second before stopping and turning her head, closing her eyes. There was a pool of blood surrounding Five's body, her legs curved and misshapen from the broken structures within them, her torso was bleeding from any and every spot that had gashes. Cat usually had a strong stomach, but she couldn't bare to look at this scene.
"It would serve you right... You betrayed me, only to be betrayed by the ones who you saved in order to get what you wanted..."
Five didn't, couldn't say anything. She could only lie there and take the verbal assault.
Before Cat could say anything more, she suddenly felt dizzy, and fell to her knees, leaning against the corner of the storage shed, still looking around the corner at her dying friend.
"We're both as good as dead, you and me... Maybe it's all for the best... That we don't exist here..." she took hold of Five's hand and held it tightly, "It's time for us to leave this world..."
Cat looked inside of the opened door of the storage shed and saw several gallon cans of paint. Letting go of Five's hand, Cat used the wall to help her stand as she grabbed a can of paint and popped it open with her right hand. She figured that they must have been new, fresh cans because the paint was already well mixed. It was a dark shade of blue, Cat's favorite color, actually.
She, unsteadily, walked onto a more open area of the roof and carefully began pouring it into a large circle. That being done, she went back to the shed to grab the other two cans and as she was walking back she heard several "boom" noises from down the street. She looked over the top of the building and saw the image of Optimus lying on the ground after, what seemed to be, a rather large fall. Cat was about to worry when she saw a hand that was curled up to his chest move, revealing a shaken Sam. Cat sighed in relief at the sight of them being okay. She would have liked to help them, but now she was neither in any shape or had any strength to do so.
Cat, regretfully, turned back to what she was doing, going back to the circled of paint that she had made on the rocky top of the roof. She carefully walked within the circle, pouring the paint into different, odd shapes. Triangular shapes and swirls, mainly. Finishing up on the last can of paint and throwing it aside, Cat walked over to the bloody image of Five and bent over, scooping her up. Five's blood-ridden eyes looked up to Cat in a questioning look.
Cat laid her friend out in the middle of the circle of paint carefully and knelt down in the circle as well.
"At least this way... There will be nothing... left of us... to pick up after..." she looked into the eyes of Five with tears stinging her own and continued, "I can't heal us Five... And neither can you now... you're too weak and you're dying... just the same as me..."
Five's eyes widened and she made to try and shake her head, but could only manage a slight twitch in her neck. Her harsh breathing in her chest increased as she reached to put a hand on Cat's cheek. Cat closed her eyes, warm tears falling from her eyes onto Five's soft hand. Before Cat had realized it, Five had taken her hand back and brought her other one up as well, slightly clapping them together, then dropping them to the ground. Cat's own eyes went wide in surprise as she saw the transmutation circle that she had made begin to change forms and twist into a different shape. When the blue light that had formed from Five's change had gone away, Cat looked at the circle and looked at Five with a questioning face.
"But... That would never work... You know that it... can't work!" Cat tried to make sense of what Five was doing.
"NO!" Cat's head twisted back to where she had heard Optimus yell, and felt a strange rumble of power beneath her.
Just then, Five coughed and blood splattered from her mouth, Cat turned back to Five and watched as her older sibling took one last, long, deep inhale. Her chest then settled and her eyes went into the back of her head.
Five was dead.
Cat's eyes lowered to Five's facial features as she reached a hand up to move some of the blood-soaked hair out of Five's face.
"I don't know... if I can do it... I don't think I even... have the strength..." Cat wondered aloud.
Just as she had said this, Cat heard a noise as if something had dropped right next to her, just outside of the transmutation circle. Looking over to it, she saw that it looked to be a piece of a strange, black metal, which was still smoking and blue sparks making it twitch. It was only about the size of a marble.
Picking the metal piece up in her left hand, Cat brought it up to her face to get a better look at it. However, as she did this, she felt a powerful sting from the object, like a burn. She flipped her wrist in reaction to this pain, but it didn't go away. She looked back to her hand and saw that the piece of metal was fusing into her palm, disappearing into her skin. She turned her hand over back and forth, looking to her palm and the back of her hand to see where the metal had gone. Before she knew what was happening, blue sparks formed all around her arm and pain shot up from her arm into her torso, shooting up and down her spine and into her legs, as well as her head. Cat's face looked up to the sky as she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Images began to assault her mind. It was as they say it was. Her life was flashing before her eyes. Memories from her first surgery, to seeing Five's smile for the first time ever, to her training. And then it went to the more recent. Saving Bumblebee as well as Sam and Mikaela from Sector Seven that dark night in Tranquility, as well as the moment in the desert, when she had first laid eyes on all five of the Autobots. She also saw her first battle with the Decepticons, and the laughter that Sam and Mikaela had shared at seeing Cat taking her first taste of chocolate. The memory of holding Lillian/her mother, after watching her pass sunk into her mind as well. All of these images came back to her as she began to feel her soul slip away.
-Good...bye...- Cat's last thoughts tugged at her mind as she finally let go.
The transmutation circle began to activate, a bright gold light shot up into the air, the building shook with the power that all of this was causing.
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Chapter Teaser!
After Optimus finished giving a short mourning over the destruction of the Allspark, as well as feeling relief over Megatron's death, he and Sam felt the ground shake and looked down the street, seeing a gold light rushing over Mikaela and the other Autobots.
"Mikaela! Bumblebee!!" Sam shouted, making a run for them.
Optimus was right behind the boy, trying to scan the area for his men, but his scans were inconclusive. The light was just too overpowering for his optics to make sense of anything.
Last Chapter Title: A Wish from the Grave
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This has GOT to be the most HORRIBLE cliff hanger that I've ever written huh?? I know I know, it makes me mad when others leave a cliff hanger, so believe me, I understand the need to scratch the itch of finding out the resolve. Just hang in there for me! I've got to make sure that it's perfect!
Yeah, so as you may have noticed I took the original ending from the movie and put a couple of twists on it with my own story-line. I figured that since most, if not all, of you have seen the movie so I didn't need to go into the details of what happened with the Autobots, and just sort of put my own ending to it.
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Extra Teaser! Coming Soon! Project Seven: Soul Reconnaissance
-Squeals in excitement!-