A/N: It's been a while. Life has a way of getting in front of the enjoyable things like writing. But here is a new chapter! Thank you for sticking with this one during my long absence. :)
This one has not been beta'd. Any mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything but my OC's. Please do not sue. This is purely for fun.
I did not have to fake the impatience that vibrated through my frame, and, as a consequence, through my holoform. I was to meet with Optimus Prime tonight, and that bit of knowledge had a way of making time simultaneously slow down and speed up. Hours seem to pass before the second hand on the human chronometer would move but a millimeter. And then I would jolt to find an entire class session had passed in what I thought was a blink of my optic as I replayed over and over Hound's transmission to me:
"Meet us tonight. Same place as before. Same time. He'll be there. Don't be late."
The idea to run filtered through my processors more than once. I didn't need to ask who 'he' was, knowing it would be the Autobot leader, himself. The Last Prime. I was going to meet the last prime, and I wasn't going to be doing it with a weapon in hand. No wonder my survival protocols fairly screamed at me to run far, run fast, and above all else, run now.
To add to my anxiety, I would see a flash of yellow or of military green as I walked between buildings on my way to class. Hound and Bumblebee, I knew, watching over me most likely in an attempt to protect. Never realizing that they felt more like jailors than protectors in that moment.
Charlotte sat beside me in our Calculus I class, her lovely face scrunched up in lines of concentration, trying to grasp the principals tossed about by our professor like they were free-floating particles. It bored me near to offlining trying to think in only three dimensions, and so while I copied her facial expressions to better blend in with the rest of the students, I completed all the research papers required for our previous class-Classical Humanities-for the entire semester and stored them under a subroutine to be printed as needed.
Next would be our English class, though I decided to hold off on that one until I had the syllabus in hand. I had learned the hard way that most human teachers changed the course requirements as it suited their moods. Pulling down last semester's Astronomy syllabus, for example, from the college mainframe and completing all the assignments while in Classical Humanities had resulted in a lot of wasted effort. I was not about to complete coursework again that would not be needed.
It was better to wait until our teacher handed out his or her requirements.
Charlotte swore beneath her breath, crossing out an entire page worth of calculations and quickly flipping to a clean sheet in her notebook. I glanced at her page and noted with a bit of quiet pride how she was half a step ahead of what the professor was teaching on this day. A quick scan on the work of those nearest me revealed that she had grasped the concepts with far greater skill than most. Always she complained about the subject being too difficult, when in actuality she was going to excel at it.
Why she was wasting her time with a degree in History was beyond me. My friend did not belong in the halls of the Historians. From what I witnessed of her cognitive abilities, she would be better served in one of the Engineering guilds or whatever passed for such in human society. I made a mental note to ask her about that later. After almost being tossed from our Humanities class yesterday for talking too much, the human custom of silence within a teacher's classroom had been firmly imprinted in my memory banks.
Besides, the very idea of walking out into that hallway alone… to be without distraction so that my processors would turn towards the night to come… it was too much.
And so I chose to remain silent, letting my scanners continue to drift over my classmates. Which, in hindsight, was a huge mistake. Because my scanners touched on the very reason why Bumblebee and Hound were constantly around me.
It wasn't for my benefit.
Samuel James Witwicky and Leo Spintz sat ten rows behind Charlotte and I, near the back of the room, their pencils scratching with horrible clarity to my audio sensors. They were both wounded, I noted with more than a little distress. Sam's left hand and the right side of his neck both sported the cotton-white of bandages. Leo had the lingering traces of healing cuts and scrapes to his face and hands. My spark sank in its casing and my holoform nearly snapped the pencil in my hands into pieces. Samuel James Witwicky and Leo Spintz were in my Calculus class.
They. Were. In. my. Calculus. CLASS! I could all but sense the energy signatures of a dozen or so Autobots saturating them.
Frantically, I searched my memory banks only to feel my spark sink further. I had been so obsessed with the thought of meeting Prime tonight that I had failed to notice Sam and Leo in almost every class I attended that day. No wonder Bee and Hound had been everywhere I was, everywhere I had traveled all day long. They weren't following me.
They were following Sam. A very wounded, tired-looking Sam.
My programming snapped, my self-preservation systems engaging before I knew what I was doing. "I have to go," I said aloud, rising to my feet, my voice so filled with panic that I nearly shrieked the words.
The professor and the rest of the class all stared up at me, their faces displaying a multitude of emotions ranging from amused to angry that I had interrupted their scheduled learning time. My legs wanted to give out, what little I had in the way of weapons systems wanting to power up. Charlotte's hand grasped mine, her features twisted with concern and shock.
"What are you doing?" she whispered hurriedly. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"Miss," my professor called loudly, forcing my eyes back up on his. "If you need to leave my class, please do so quietly and without disruption to the rest of the students. Though I warn you, young lady, I do take attendance and it will impact your grade."
With that, he dismissed me. And with that, I was running through the doors, my books and belongings forgotten. Sunlight hit my sensors as I made my frantic flight out of the building, out of any location that put me in approximation to Sam. My processors pulled up every scrap of intel I had on the boy, playing them in rapid fire succession. Images of his childhood captured from videos posted onto the internet, snippets of conversation relayed from Thundercracker when I served as his drone. It was all aimed at the singular purpose of destroying Sam.
Thundercracker's orders flashed in my memory banks. "You will assume the shape of a human girl as designed by Soundwave. You will implant a probe into the boy's mind. You will download every bit of knowledge in his brain. You will kill him and report to me."
I was running wildly, so much so that I careened off of other students and parked cars, a tiny cry leaving my vocal processor that sounded suspiciously like a human sob. And still my own memories chased me, Thundercracker's old orders so vivid and ingrained in my programming that I nearly doubled back and headed straight to Sam. Why couldn't I have a life of my own? Was it my fate to constantly run into Autobots and their human companions? WHY couldn't I just be left alone? I didn't want to hurt anyone. I wasn't a bad cybertronian now. I just wanted to learn and laugh and… and…
… and not slam into Bumblebee's hood with a force hard enough to rattle my components. Yet another disappointment in a crappy day of them.
"I can't do it," I gritted out between my holoform's clenched teeth, palms slamming down on that shiny yellow hood. "I can't meet him tonight. You have to cancel. I can't do this. I don't want to be part of the war. I don't want any part of this at all. You can't force me. You won't force me. I won't let you!"
By him, I obviously meant Optimus Prime. That was about as much power and truth as that whole babble of statements held. Bumblebee and Hound could most assuredly force me to do anything they wanted. I hadn't a fraction of the power in their frames, nor the experience to know how to get my way out of these kinds of situations. I lost control of those options the moment I climbed into Bumblebee's alt mode.
By Primus, I might as well have painted the Autobot symbol across my form for all the good my "independence" did for me. I was about as independent as a laser cannon on Ironhide's arm. Which was to say, I wasn't. At all.
"Calm down, calm down," Hound's voice echoed in my audio receivers, and his holoform—a very attractive older man with soft grey eyes and dark black hair winged at the temples with silver—placed hands on my shoulders. "What can't you do and why?"
"I can't meet him," I said again, bowing my head in shame. "You know which him I mean. I can't do it. I'm not ready. I… I just want to be left alone."
"He isn't going to hurt you," Hound replied, one finger tipping my chin upwards to look him in the eyes. "I promise you that."
"I wish I could believe you," I muttered, trying to hug myself. Trying not to fly apart at my welding points with fear. "I like my life, Hound. I like being alive. I don't want to lose that."
"Why did you leave your class?" Bumblebee broke in, his holoform sliding out from behind the wheel of his alt mode. Unlike Hound, his eyes were deep blue and serious and seemed to bore right through my spark. "We felt your energy surge. Did something happen?"
I took a deep breath like I had observed other humans doing before relating bad news. "I did not realize that Sam and Leo were in my classes. I… I could feel your energies on them," I said truthfully, if not telling the whole truth. "I freaked out. I'm alone here, you realize. And I'm okay with that for the most part, as long as I don't come into conflict with anyone else. I don't want to end up offlined because I interacted with either of your charges."
What I really wanted to say was because I tried to kill Sam and Leo and failed. But was it really me that tried to kill them? Was I accountable for the sins of a past that I had no control over? Human law said that I was. Having no databank of Cybertronian law in which to search, I had plowed through human law right after my first meeting with the Autobots. Human law did not allow for the excuse of 'I was just following orders' to excuse things like multiple murders or the overthrowing of a government. What did Autobot law say about such things?
Was I willing to find out?
Hound took my hand in his, staring down into my optics with his own. "At least let Optimus speak with you. Let him speak before you decide you want to live the rest of your existence as a neutral or an outcast."
I lowered my head and sighed. It looked like I was going meet with Prime after all. I had no choice.