(Episode 2)

Chapter 6

We did get back to base in one piece. Barely. I learned my lesson: never let Arcee drive. We almost died several times, and we did in fact crash into one of the unoccupied buildings at the edge of the village. I'd never been so happy to have my feet on the ground in my life. Thankfully Arcee hadn't harmed the ship too badly. Just a couple of scratches, since the shields had been up (by accident) when we crashed, and neither of us were hurt. True, my dad had been a little bit upset when Arcee had accidentally set a building on fire when she tried to take off, but that could be easily fixed. We tried to go straight to the main building, but were accosted by an angry Ratchet who had wanted to use the building as an extension to the hospital. By then everybody else had got there. Ironhide stared at the ship open mouthed.
"Arcee, you can't drive." He said.
"Why do you think we crashed?" I grumbled, giving Optimus a hug. He was surprised, but he didn't shove me away or anything, which I took as a good sign.
"What's it got?" Roxy asked, coming over and looking at the ship.
Of course Arcee and I had looked around the ship. We had to before it got destroyed by Arcee's so called 'driving'.
"The bottom floor is all the main control room," Arcee replied, "and an area for the navigation room. Second floor has enough rooms for everyone, and all of them are huge. The top floor has a full proper teleport, and underneath the control room is the engine room."
Everyone stared at her.
"There's more than one floor?" Jazz asked uncomprehendingly. "How'd you get that?"
"My dad decided we needed a luxury fighter." I said embarrassedly, shaking my head in despair.
"When are we leaving?" Ironhide asked excitedly. It seemed that he would quite happily go on such a dangerous mission so long as he got to go on the ship.
"Who's driving?" I asked after a moment of silence. There was no way I was gonna go through even three seconds more of Arcee's 'driving'.
"Normally Ratchet." Optimus replied, "But he's not coming."
"I can drive." Jazz volunteered.
Everyone was looking at Optimus expectantly. He shifted uncomfortably.
"What?" he asked finally.
"You're first lieutenant." Ironhide replied, "You're leader."
Optimus stared at him.
"We haven't left yet. Sentinel's leader until then."
Sentinel was watching the goings-on with an amused expression on his face from where he was sitting on a chunk of rubble from the old building.
"You'll leave as soon as everybody is ready to do so." He said, standing up and coming forward. "I take it everybody is prepared?"
We all nodded. True, Arcee and I hadn't actually been there to prepare, but I didn't have any way to prepare myself. I didn't own anything.
We were told to recharge for the night, and leave in the morning. Optimus went off to talk to Sentinel about something, and it took me about ten minutes to start recharging. Next thing I knew I was bolt upright in the bed, panting. It was late, but Optimus wasn't back yet. I didn't know how long it had been since I'd started recharging. I lay down and sobbed for a minute. It hadn't happened in so long, I'd thought it was finally over.
I was still awake when Optimus came in, terrified of trying to recharge again. I felt him lay down behind me, and twisted round so I could snuggle up to him, surprising both of us.
"What's got into you?" he asked quietly.
"Nothing."
"You're not normally this affectionate."
I rested my head on his chest and didn't say anything. I felt his head tilt, and then he rested his cheek against the top of my head and ran his hand through my hair, wrapping his other arm around me tightly. It was comforting, having him there, and I started to feel better.

I was woken by a sharp grating sound, like nails on a chalk board. I sat bolt upright in bed, which woke Optimus up with a start.
"What is that?"
Optimus sat up, yawning, and listened for a moment.
"Relax, Clara." He put his arm round my shoulders, pulling me against his chest. "It's just Sideswipe."
I almost died of relief. I snuggled back up to Optimus, putting my arms around him. We were both wide awake now, but we stayed like that for a few minutes before we got out of that room. Nearly everyone was waiting for us by the ship. We were just waiting on Arcee, who had gone to say goodbye to Sideswipe. Eventually she got back and we all got on. Bumblebee, the Autobot who'd come with Jazz, made a whining sound as he looked around the control room. He'd damaged his throat in his battle with the Decepticons on the way to the village, and lost his voice as a result of that. He went through to the navigation room while Jazz got the Main Control Panel up and running. He started pressing things on the touch screen that appeared as Bumblebee came back out. He gave Jazz some co-ordinates by holding up his fingers for each digit, and I felt the ship take off. If Jazz's driving was anything like Arcee's, they could just drop me off on the nearest planet. I should mention. I'm not good with flying, and my little experience with Arcee had done nothing to ease my discomfort. Jazz was gentle though. I hadn't spoken to him or Bumblebee at all yet, so I knew nothing about either of them. Optimus had disappeared from where he'd been standing at my side for the last few minutes. He'd gone over to talk to Ironhide. Arcee came over to me.
"What's going on between you and Optimus?" she asked curiously.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you seem to be….depending on him….more and more recently. You keep looking for him. Like just now, when he went to talk to Ironhide. It's like you don't know what to do when he's not with you."
"I don't." I admitted. "I don't have a clue what I'm doing."
Arcee glanced at Optimus.
"Well, be careful with him." She warned me. "Nobody will tell me exactly what's going on, but I've heard he's had a pretty rough past."
"That makes two of us."
"What happened to you? After they died."
I lowered my head.
"I don't know." I said quietly. "I don't really want to talk about it."
"Sorry." Arcee wandered off to talk to Jazz, just as Optimus came over.
"How are you doing?" he asked me, laying a hand on my shoulder.
"I'm all right." I replied. "I don't like flying though."
Optimus smiled.
"Don't worry. You'll be fine."
We looked up as Roxy got into a play fight with Ironhide. She was always getting into real fights with Ratchet, but since he wasn't here she was starting on Ironhide.
"What do we do when we get there?" I asked Optimus.
"Well….we have to make sure the ship's safe before we do anything else, and then I guess we just….look?"
I stared at him.
"You don't have a clue what we should do, do you?"
"Nope."

It took about thirty minutes for us to be lounging around the control room, bored. Bumblebee had found a wormhole that could get us to Earth within a couple of hours of reaching it, rather than the weeks it would take getting there normally, but that in itself was about a day's journey away.
"I have a really bad feeling about this mission." I muttered. I was sitting next to Optimus, at the foot of the Main Control Panel.
"Keep thinking like that and you'll be taken for a Dreamer." Jazz called from across the room. I stiffened slightly and glared at him.
"What's a Dreamer?" Arcee asked, frowning.
"None of you guys know what a Dreamer is?" Jazz asked, clearly shocked.
He looked around the room, but nobody said anything. Sure, I knew, but that didn't mean I had to tell anyone.
"Spill it, Jazz." Roxy yawned.
"Fine. A Dreamer is someone with….well, it's kind of like a sixth sense. Each one has the ability to see something different, and they have visions while they're recharging, which is obviously why they're called Dreamers. I've never actually met one. They're supposed to be really rare, like, one or two for every generation. I've heard a rumour that the Decepticons have one. A woman who sees snatches of key events in the future, then afterwards she can only remember one or two things about it. If someone figures out what those one or two things mean, they can easily have the power to control that event. But most Dreamers see things how they're going to be, and there's no way of changing them even if you know it's going to happen."
"Sometimes trying to stop it is what causes it to happen in the first place." I provided quietly. Jazz nodded.
"So you actually knew what a Dreamer is?" Ironhide asked me. I nodded. "Have you ever met one?"
I shrugged.
"Sort of."
They stared at me.
"How can you 'sort of' meet someone?" Jazz demanded.
"Actually you can do it all the time." Roxy spoke up. "Bumping into someone on the street, being introduced to someone but not really paying attention to anything. I've 'sort of' met a lot of people."
Optimus was smiling slightly. He pulled me closer to him.