You might have thought the whole crystal thing was pointless but it's actually going to be important later on.

CHAP 8

Zurg freaked and spun around to run away. "Ah, stay away from me, you insane machine!" he shouted, shoving Warp out of the way and dashing back toward his throne.

Warp, who had already been bitten by the femme once and didn't want a repeat of the incident, ran to catch up with him. "Hey," he shouted. "Wait for me!"

Behind him he heard the female energy vampire laughing wickedly as she activated the thrusters in her feet and shot into the air. She flew after them, her processor already coming up with ways to punish them. "This is payback for shooting me in the back and calling me useless, you wannabes!"

Warp looked up and saw her flying toward him. He screamed like a little girl and ran to catch up with his boss. Both reached the throne chair at the same time and, after much climbing over each other to get there first, hid behind it.

Zurg chanced a peek. The femme seemed to be occupied at the moment by two Grubs that had come into the room. She roared at them and swooped down. The poor Grubs freaked out and dashed out of the room, the door slamming shut behind them.

"Why did you bring that thing in here?" Zurg demanded, turning around and glaring down at Warp.

"Hey, I thought you might want to get a look at her," Darkmatter replied sheepishly. "You told me to come back with a vampire or don't come back at all, so I got you a vampire."

"I didn't mean just grab any old robot vampire!" the evil emperor shouted. "I wanted Nos-4-A2 so I could punish him for trying to overthrow me, you dimwit!" he gestured toward the fembot vampire. "What am I supposed to do with her?"

"Well why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"I don't know," spoke up the vampire femme's voice before Zurg could reply. "Maybe it just slipped his weak little mind." The men looked up. Shadowstar hovered over the throne, her hands on her hips. "But now that you have me, what do you intend to do with me?"

"This was all a big misunderstanding," Zurg told her, nervously. "You see; I sent Warp Darkmatter here to capture another energy vampire. I never asked him to bring you in."

"Oh I already knew that," she told him, looking highly annoyed. "But he did and now you're going to have to face the consequences." her grin widened. "I hope you like pain, you freaks." she changed position in the air and dived down at them. "Because I love to dish it out!"

Zurg's fight or flight mechanism went into flight. He shoved Warp aside. "Out of my way!" he commanded. When Warp didn't move fast enough Zurg jumped over him and landed on the floor then took off across the room. Shadowstar went right after him, laughing like a lunatic. She hadn't had this much fun in vorns.

The recharge sure was taking a long time to complete, Sari thought to herself. She was beginning to worry. What was taking it so long? She was about to say something when the light encircling Prowl faded and went out. The LGMs at the computer turned to her and Buzz and his team. "Recharge complete," he said.

Instantly Sari was over by the bed. She leaned over it. "Prowl?"

His optics flickered then lit up. He looked at her and smiled. "I told you you didn't have anything to worry about."

Relief filled her and she hugged him. "I'm so glad they didn't fry your brain," she said. "Or any other part of you for that matter."

"Hey," the one LGM said, sounding offended.

"I'm kidding," she told him, looking up at the little alien.

"So, how are you feeling?" Buzz asked, walking over to the bed.

"I feel normal," Prowl replied, rubbing his head as he looked up at the human space ranger. "Maybe your crystals are similar to energon after all."

"Can I ask you something?" Lightyear questioned, when Prowl nodded he said. "Why were you built so only certain types of energy work on you? I mean; that seems a little inconvenient."

"I don't know," Prowl told him. He actually never really thought about it before. "Maybe it's because I wasn't built by humans and was given a spark and for the spark to work it needs to run on certain kinds of power."

"Wait, what's a spark?" Booster wanted to know.

"I'll tell you about it later," Prowl said, sitting up and draping his legs over the side of the bed. "Right now I think we should be heading back to Trade World."

Much as Sari wanted to find the fembot vampire and get back home she was more worried about Prowl. "But, Prowl, shouldn't you be taking it easy?" she asked. "I mean you just recharged yourself using some weird kind of energy. Maybe we should wait a bit until you're sure you're all right. Besides; what if there is some kind of weird side effect or something?"

"He's fine," XR spoke up before Prowl could reply. He wheeled over to her and grabbed the cable out of Prowl's chest. "It's just a simple recharge. It's not going to hurt him. Here, let me show you." Then, before anyone could stop him, he shoved the cable into his own chest compartment. "See?"

Instantly his frame lit up like a Christmas light. Sparks shot out of his hands, arms, and legs. Then he blew up. Everyone shielded their heads to deflect flying debris. XR's head landed at Sari's feet. "Okay, so maybe that was a bad idea," he said, more annoyed with the fact that he'd blow up again then his point being unproven.

Sari, freaked out by the explosion of the smaller robot, looked at Prowl, her eyes as big a saucers. "That's it!" she stated. "We're going to wait!"

"Now there's no need to lose our heads about this," Buzz spoke up. "XR does stuff like that all the time. The only reason he blew up from the energy is because he was already at full power."

"And now all he is is a head!" Sari shot back, turning to face him. "Maybe exploding robot body parts is normal for you guys but I don't want one of my best friends ending up the same way because he decided to be all macho and go vampire hunting before he should."

"Sari," Prowl said, putting a hand on her arm. "It's all right. I'm fine. If the energy was going to blow me up it would have done so already."

"But what if it's only taking longer because your power levels were low?" Sari asked him. "What if you don't explode now but it happens later!" she looked at the LGMS. "If he blows up I'm blaming you guys and Lighthead here for it." she pointed in their faces. "If you guys sabotaged this just so you can take Prowl apart to see how he works you're going to be in big trouble! Prowl's not going to become an experiment for creepy little, three eyed freaks!"

"Now hold on right there!" Buzz cut her off.

"As for you!" the girl said, rounding on him. "This whole thing was your idea! You should have known better than to suggest such a thing if it was so dangerous."

"Hey," Buzz tried to protest. "You heard the man, he says he's fine."

Sari gestured to XR. "Well your little friend isn't!" she rounded on Prowl. "I want to to scan your systems and make sure nothing weird is going on with you."

The cyber ninja didn't protest. He just nodded. It would be best if he just did what she wanted. There was no use upsetting the girl further. She was stressed out enough so as it was.

While he did that Sari glared at each of Lightyear's team in turn. She seemed to be blaming all of them for something that did not happen. Meanwhile the LGMs scurried around to get all of XR's parts so they could put him back together... again.

"Look," Buzz said, giving her a hard look. "If your friend had gotten something back from the crystals he would have felt it by now. Crystalic overload does not take long to affect a machine and, as you can see, the Autobot is in fine working order so there is no reason for your little temper tantrum."

"How would you know that?" she shot back, putting her hands on her hips. "If it had never been done before."

"You will just have to trust me."

Sari laughed. "Trust you?" she asked. She looked disgusted at the very idea. "When the very thing I did trust you with just blew that robot up?!"

"I'm fine, thank you," XR said as the LGMs reassembled him. "No harm done."

She looked back at him, seemingly surprised that he looked so happy. "What are you smiling about?"

"As I said," Buzz told her, folding his arms. "XR blows up on a regular basis. He might not like it but it hasn't caused any harmful effects on him. He's even been put under control by an energy vampire and he's still normal. Even if Prowl did explode, which I doubt," he added when she looked back at him. "I don't think it will cause any affects that will ruin his processor."

"That's where you're wrong," she told him. "Transformers aren't like normal robots." tears started budding in her eyes. "They're living machines. They have feelings and a soul. If he overloaded and blew up-" she could not finish her sentence. "I'm sorry," she said, turning away. "I can't deal with this right now. I have to be alone."

Then she dashed toward the door and ran into the hall before anyone could say or do anything to stop her.

"I'll go talk to her," Mira said, starting toward the door.

"I don't think that would be a good idea right now," Buzz said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Let's give her a few minutes. She can't go far anyway."

Like Buzz predicted, Sari didn't go far. She ran down the hall a bit until she found a bench then sat down on it. She felt bad for running out like that but she needed to think some things through and something was bothering her. Her attitude.

She thought about the incident in the repair bay. Things were just starting to go okay, she thought. I was beginning to feel better about those guys and then this happens and proves me wrong. They don't care what happens to us. They don't even care if we get back home alive. She shook her head and sighed. "Of course not. We had a rough start and made a bad first impression. I can't seem to get along with Mr. Lightyear or that XR robot. But can they blame me? I fall through a portal and right into a different world, then get accused of working for somebody I don't know a thing about, and get blamed for releasing an energy vampire I also didn't know existed." she slammed her fist on the seat. "That would make anyone testy. Maybe if we had met on different circumstances I wouldn't feel this way about them." she sighed and closed her eyes. "But now I think they will just be happy to get rid of us, especially me. I can't say I blame them, with the way I've been acting. But they won't be getting rid of us if they kill Prowl, even if its accidental. Maybe that Lightyear guy is right. Maybe the energy won't hurt Prowl. He is built differently than XR is. Just because it hurt the shrimp doesn't mean it will hurt an awesome transformer like himself."

She lifted her head and looked back toward the room. "Maybe I just overreacted." she stood. "I don't want to make things worse than they already are. I should go back and apologize." she started walking. "After all. If Prowl can hold no ill feelings toward them I shouldn't either. If he was in my place I know he would say he's sorry." she sighed again. "I should start taking manners lessons from him. It might do me some good."

"Where are you going, freak? I haven't even started yet!"

Zurg looked over his shoulder. Shadowstar was gliding just over his head, her hands on her hips and her face lit up with wicked glee. "Get away from me!" he shouted.

The Decepticon energy vampire had no intention of doing so. "Better do something," she told him. "Otherwise I'm going to get bored and believe me you don't want to see me when I'm bored."

Meanwhile Warp had climbed down from the throne and was running to catch up with her. Even if he did not like Zurg very much he was still his boss and signed his paycheck. If he did not help him he'd be out of work for good. So he let his arm transform into a gun and he aimed it at her.

The fembot must have sensed him because she turned around. "Now now, none of that," she said.

Then something funny happened to his right arm. It returned to its normal state and started moving against his will. He stared at it in confusion. "What in the-Ow!" the hand closed into a fist and began to punch him in the face. "Ow! Stop it!"

She laughed. That should keep blue face there busy. she turned back to Zurg who, by then, had managed to put a good amount of distance between them.

"Oh no, you don't."

She added more power to her thrusters and began to gain on him. He reached one of the shelves on the wall and seemed to be grabbing at something. Desperately. Which told her he was looking for a weapon.

"Looking for something?"

"Ah!" he spun around but kept one hand behind his back. She noticed. "What have you got there?" she asked him.

"Oh nothing," he said, waving a hand in front of himself. "Nothing at all. Just a little-" and now he moved his hand out from behind his back and toward her. In it he held a giant gun. "Firepower!" he fired.

She saw it coming and quickly dodged out of the way. The blast went past her and hit the wall, breaking one of the screens. He ignored this because it wasn't a big deal and ran after her, firing shot after shot as she swerved to avoid being hit.

"Hahaha!" he cackled, shooting in a rapid fire motion, "That's right, you freak, run! Run from the power of Evil Emperor Zurg!"

Sparks! She growled, circling over his head as he fired. His aim was always hitting the spot where she had been only seconds before so she knew he was most likely a dead shot. How am I going to get close to him? she wondered then noticed Warp Darkmatter still having a fight with his own arm.

That gave her an idea.

Banking, she transformed into vehicle mode and shot straight toward him. Warp, alerted by the screams of her engines, looked up just as she transformed back into standard mode and reached down, grabbing his arm and shooting back into the air. She twisted around and flew toward Zurg who was still trying to send her crashing to the floor.

While Darkmatter struggled to free himself, Shadowstar shot toward the evil emperor, her optics dimmed and her face determined. She stayed in a rather straight flight path, though she did have to do some dodging to avoid being hit by plasma. She continued on this course until she was barely twenty feet away. She then turned, dived down at the purple clad being, and then shot into the air, letting go of her cargo as she did so. She went up and Darkmatter went down, straight toward his trigger happy boss.

Zurg's eyes widened as Warp came flying toward him. "Oh no!" he exclaimed seconds before the man slammed into him, knocking him to the floor.

Unfortunately he did not lose his gun like she'd wanted him to but right now he was too distracted in getting Warp off of him that he couldn't shoot at the femme who took advantage of this to fly over to the shelf where he had been standing and examine his personal arsenal. All I have to do is find one that I can hold that won't cause a lot of recoil. she picked up one, a gun bigger than Zurg's blaster. "Okay maybe not that one."

"Get off of me!" Zurg shouted, thumping Warp over the head with his gun. The man happily obliged. Zurg stood up and whirled around, spotting Shadowstar reaching for something on the shelf. "I wouldn't do that if I was you."

She jumped and spun around. Zurg had his gun aimed at her face. "Step away from the weapons," he ordered. "Or I will be forced to shoot you. Not that I wouldn't mind shooting you but I wouldn't want to ruin my precious arsenal. Plasma rifles don't come cheap, you know."

"You mean one of these?" she asked, grabbing up one of his guns and aiming it at him.

Startled, he put up his hands, instantly forgetting that he had a gun of his own. "Now don't do anything stupid!" he said, nervously. "We wouldn't want to cause extensive damage. Besides that one tends to get stuck if you don't pull the trigger properly and I don't think you'd want it to jam up on you.."

"Oh you don't have anything to worry about," she told him, her face lit up by a wicked grin. "The only thing I intend on damaging is you!" then she fired.

Zurg shrieked and jumped out of the way. The energy bolt hit the floor, blasting a huge hole in it. The evil emperor took one look at the hole and once again took off running.

When Prowl was finished doing his internal scan he came out of stand by and immediately noticed that Sari was no longer in the room. "Where is Sari?" he asked, looking over at Lightyear.

"She ran out," Buzz replied.

That told the cyber ninja right away that something bad went down after he'd blinked out. "What happened?" he demanded.

"Now don't get upset, Prowl," Buzz said, putting up his hand. "Your girlfriend just went to be by herself for a bit. She'll be back."

Prowl was so worried about Sari that he didn't bother correcting the space ranger. "By herself? Here?" he looked horrified. "But she doesn't even know her way around this place!"

"She didn't go far," Mira said, pulling her head out of the door which she'd ghosted through. "She just sat down on a bench in the hall. She's on her way back now."

"How do you do that?" Prowl asked, staring at her with interest.

"What? Going through walls?" she asked. When he nodded she laughed quietly. "That's called ghosting. It's one of the abilities us Tangeans are born with."

He cocked his head. "One of them?"

"Well there is the mind reading thing you saw me do to your friend," she explained, moving her hands around. "I can reach inside people's heads and read the thoughts in their brains and stuff. Don't worry it doesn't hurt or anything, at least I don't think it hurts." now she looked unsure. "I mean it can hurt if I chose to make it but it's not like I would do that on purpose-"

The door opened, cutting off the rest of her rambling. Mira looked over her shoulder and saw Sari behind her with a strange look on her face. "Oh well hi," the Tangean said, smiling. "How are you feeling now?"

"Okay, I guess," the girl said, looking away and rubbing her arm. "Can I say something to you guys?"

"Oh sure," Mira said, nodding. "You can say whatever you want. Well, maybe not whatever you want. Some of the stuff you've been saying was kind of mean and it would have been better if you hadn't said it so..."

"What is it?" Buzz asked stepping forward before Mira got off topic.

"Well," she looked like she was having a hard time saying it. "I uh.."

"Come on, let it all out."

"I'm sorry," she said.

Team Lightyear looked at her, startled. She looked from one ranger to another. "I'm sorry for being so rude," she told them. "I know you're all just trying to help us but well you see.. we kind of got off on the wrong foot. You guys thought we were bad guys and so I thought you guys were a bunch of jerks and, uh, I couldn't exactly forgive you as easily as Prowl could and well." she looked away. "I over reacted a little. I'm just a little stressed."

"A little," XR snorted.

Sari ignored him. "So anyway I really shouldn't have acted the way I did since you weren't trying to hurt Prowl or anything or me for that matter, you were just doing your job and so umm." she put her hands behind her back and closed her eyes. "I am very sorry and I hope you can forgive me."

"Of course we can," Booster said, walking over to her. He pulled her into a big hug. "I knew you didn't mean it."

"Too tight," Sari gasped, her eyes bugging out. "Can't breath!"

"Oh," he said, realizing he was crushing her. He set her down. "Sorry about that."

Buzz came over to her. She looked up at him. "So, are you finally convinced that we aren't trying to kill your robot friend or make you life miserable?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, not exactly meeting his eyes. "I should have figured that out sooner."

Lightyear smiled. "Then you are forgiven," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

Her face softened in relief. "Yeah and sorry for calling you Lighthead," she added.

His smile faltered for a moment then went back to normal. "Just don't do that again," he said, patting her shoulder. Before she could make another comment Buzz turned to the others. "Okay team," he said. "Let's get moving."

"Yes sir," the other said, giving him a salute.

"Move!"

The other three space rangers rushed out of the room.

Prowl got up, his optics focused on Buzz. "Where are they going?" he asked.

Buzz turned to him. "They're going to prep 42," he told them. "You know. Get it ready for when we leave for Trade World."

"Now?" he asked.

Buzz nodded. "Now."

Shadowstar was getting bored. While chasing this Zurg character was fun it was also repetitive. He wasn't doing anything different. All he did was run and that Dark Matter character wasn't any better. He couldn't stay conscious long enough for her to enjoy it. She almost wished something else would happen just to make things more interesting.

Well whether she wished for it or not something different did happen. One way or another the evil emperor tripped and went sprawling on the floor. While he tried to get up she came down and loomed over him. "Looks like the game is over," she said.

He looked up at her with buggy eyes. Her face as hidden by shadow so all he could see were her glowing red optics "Now wait a minute," he said, putting up his hands. "Can't we talk about this?"

"No," she said. "If I wanted to talk I would have a phone." she lifted the gun and aimed it at his face. "What I want is for you to shut your big toothed mouth and take your medicine." she shoved the gun right into his face. "You are boring me. Boring creatures annoy me and make me angry. They don't deserve to live." her finger rested on the trigger. "Good bye."

She fired.

A/N

Yes it does seem a bit rushed but I don't want to drag things out.