hey everyone :). so here's chapter five... i wasn't gonna do this right now but i was listening to New Divide by Linkin Park and it put me in, like, the freakin mood lol.

thoughts

"cellphone"

'song lyrics'

autobot comm line

so here goes.

I look around the battlefield. It's a endless field of mud, bodies, and blood, marching off into the horizon. I lean over a faceless corpse, tears of desperation and frustration pouring down my throat. Another one, gone, in the bloody path of a senseless war.

I stand, pushing my dirt-covered, bloody hair out of my face. My hands are stained red. I wipe a tear from my eye, and the back of my hand comes away smeared with soot.

Even from such a distance, the ground is shaking. The enemy is doing a last sweep of the field. There is an attack planned. My allies will be meeting them.

I kneel to pick up my emergency kit. I turn to head back to the base. Something whirrs just by my neck. I look up, startled, as the rotary blade moves closer to me.

"Any last words?"

Just as my mouth opened, Ratchet's saw found it's target.

I sat bolt upright. I stretched to remove the chills that were moving down my spine.

I looked around the med bay. I wonder what I had been going to say?

Jolt stood next to me. "Finally! I thought you were going to sleep all day!"

I chuckled slightly. "Yeah, I was really out... Where's Ratchet?"

Jolt looked a little confused. "What are you talking about?" His tone softened. "He's been dead for years. You know that." Blackness took over my vision.

"Mikaela? Mikaela, what happened?"

I looked around the room, trying to make sense of it. There were bruises all over me. Will's dead body was at my feet. His knuckles were bleeding and nearly black from bruising. He was covered in blood, with a stab wound in his neck. I looked at my hands and found that I was gripping a knife.

I looked up at Epps and found I couldn't find an answer.

He seemed to put two and two together. "You...you bitch!" A punch landed on my face, and the force knocked me out cold.

"Mikaela! Mikaela!"

My eyes opened.

"Wake up! Please, 'Kaela!"

Staring Death in the face.

"MIKAELA!"

I think he's saying my name.

"'Kaela! Wake up, damn it!"

I took his outstretched hand, and it all went black.

My eyes opened. "W-what?"

Ratchet's holoform was standing over me, eyes wide with worry. His hands were on my shoulders, he'd been shaking me.

I was lying on an air mattress in the darker side of the med bay. The med bay doors were just falling shut as I looked and a flash of blue indicated that Jolt was leaving.

"Primus, Mikaela, I don't even want to know what you were dreaming about!"

"I wish I didn't."

Ratchet nodded slightly. "You okay?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah. I think so."

Ratchet gave me that look of his that made so many brave soldiers go weak in the knees. I had a feeling that he could tell something was bothering me.

I held his gaze with extreme difficulty. He eventually looked away, shaking his head slightly. I was now certain that he knew something was on my mind.

"Alright, then. You hit your face against this while you were asleep." He gestured to the wall next to me. "I think that it's just bruising, but let's see..."

He carefully turned my face to a certain angle, and pressed each thumb against a spot on my right cheekbone. A dull ache ran threw the area. I jerked my face away from him.

"Damn, Ratch, that friggin' hurt."

"It's just a bruise, don't be a...", he paused, searching for the word,"...baby."

"Wow. After all this time, you still can't remember these things."

"It's only been a few years, and I knew that, I just was about to say sparkling."

"Mm-hmm."

"I was!"

"Riiight, I'll take your word for it that you weren't just searching the web for that..."

He huffed."And this is what I get for letting you sleep in my med bay..." A twinkle in his eyes gave away that he was only joking.

I snorted. "No, you get me having done a shitload of work on Sunny's shoulder. How is he, by the way?"

"Oh, he's fine. I got enough of it done for the two components to sense the presence of the other and commence automatic rebuild."

"Well, that's good, at least." I stood and started to fold up the blanket. Ratchet started to deflate the air mattress.

He raised his eyebrows. "Something wrong?"

I pursed my lips. "I'm fine."

He raised an eyebrow. "You sure about that?"

I sighed. "Pretty much."

Ratchet shot me a slightly concerned look. I brushed it off and handed him the blanket as he picked up the now folded air mattress. "Here. I can't reach that for the friggin' life of me."

Ratchet chuckled. "Right now, neither can I." He put down the blanket and the air mattress. "I'll be back in a minute." The holoform disappeared.

Several hours later found me alone in the med bay, standing on the counter and texting to the Autobot comm line about whether it was morphine or tetracaine that we were out of. By the way, it was morphine.

The med bay door opened. I turned around after closing the top cabinet to see Ironhide standing by the door.

"Sup.", I greeted him sarcastically.

Ironhide gave the robotic equivalent of a snort. "Ratchet around?"

"No, he's picking something up, off base."

"Damn."

"Is something wrong?"

"It's not that important, my rocket launcher won't fire, I've got no idea why."

I raise an eyebrow. "And you found this out by...?"

"Well, I tried to fire it and it didn't go off.", he said as if it were obvious, which it was.

"Mm-hmm, and you were trying to fire it why?"

"Well, it was an accident, I wasn't trying to. It just was going to go off, but it didn't, so I wondered why, tried it again, and it didn't work."

I nodded, rolling my eyes. "Well, I know the basic layouts of your cannons, I might be able to help, and if not, Ratchet will be back in a few hours."

"Well, fine, but don't do anything you're not sure about."

I nodded. I vaguely knew how Ironhide's weaponry put together, but it was Ironhide who mapped them out, and Ratchet who built them.

"Gotcha." I climbed up the ladder to the examination table, walking over to where Ironhide stood. "Okay..." I carefully examined the launcher. There was something dark towards the back of it.

As far as I remember, that wasn't supposed to be there. "Okay, I think I've found a problem, and I'm going to try to fix it, but if it doesn't come out straight away, I'll leave it for Ratchet...unless you want Wheeljack to have a go at it?"

Ironhide's facial plates shifted into a distasteful expression. "Wheeljack?"

I laughed. "Yeah, that's what I'd have said."

I gave a slight tug at the corner that stuck out. "You know, I'm surprised you didn't notice this..."

"Notice wha-ow!"

"Sorry! Sorry! I'll leave it for Ratchet. God, that looks sharp."

Ironhide examined the launcher. "What the slag is that?"

I shrugged. "Well, seeing as it shouldn't be there, I have no idea."

Ironhide considered this. "It was a rhetorical question."

"I had a feeling."

He rolled his optics. "Yet you answered."

"Go figure."

"Well, now that that's over with... Mikaela, I've been noticing that Will's social, eating, and recharge patterns have all been differing from their normal state, and I wondered if perhaps you had any idea why something like that would happen?"

"Well, from stress, most likely."

"I meant what would cause such stress."

"Well, I don't know, why would you think I had something to do with it?"

"Well, two reasons. Firstly, your heart rate is skyrocketing. Secondly, Ratchet tells me that you have been exercising similar symptoms."

"It's a little complicated."

"Do you know why, or did you have something to do with it?"

"Well, both. I mean, we both kind of partook in it." I took on a thoughtful expression. "I wonder how awkward it'd be if only one person partook in it, but two people were there..."

Ironhide appeared to be confused. "And what exactly did you partake in?"

"Well, it's something that can either be totally sick or totally awkward and shitty, but is usually alright."

"And what is this activity?"

"Do you know anything about human reproduction?"

"No."

"Good."

His optics suddenly dimmed, and I swore quietly. A lot of the time, 'Hide would pass off something like that as a simple question. He really didn't know much about the human race. We'd had several long conversations that mainly consisted of him asking random question after random question about human culture.

His optics came back to their original state, and waited for him to speak. After a few moments, he asked me,"Did you and Will engage in such activities?"

"I'll tell you if you say you won't say anything about this to anyone."

'Hide didn't speak for a moment. Then, he nodded."I swear, on my honor."

"It was an accident. We didn't mean to, we came back from dinner and we just... Ugh, I don't know what to do! I don't know what it's like with you guys, but with humans, if you have sex, and then you aren't in a relationship of any kind, do you know how freakin' awkward everything is! I don't know if we can even really just be friends again."

"Mikaela, I don't know if this is making things better or worse for you, but for the record, you were the one that said to me that friendships between mechs and femmes never work out anyway..."

I laughed, wiping at my slightly teary eyes. "Yeah, that doesn't help much, but whatever."

"Sorry. You know I'm not the best at this sort of thing..."

"Yeah, it's okay. I'll, uh, see ya 'round, Ironhide."

He nodded. "Yeah...and when Ratchet gets back, would you ask him to contact me?"

"Yeah."

I turned around and slid down the ladder. I sat on the ground under the table, the top of which curved out from the foot, pulled my knees up to my chest, and rested my head on my arms.

Ironhide walked out of the med bay, the first ebbings of a premature guilt attacking his conscience. He had a sliver of a conscience, he'd be the first to admit that, but it was relatively strong for a sliver.

He only said he wouldn't say anything. Nobody mentioned anything about comm lines.

Ironhide to Ratchet.

i'm sorry, this is kind of short :(. I don't know how much I like where this is going...but yeah, if you don't like it, I want to know, because i'm already considering deleting this and the last chapter, to redo them, so if you don't want me to do that, I recommend that you say something about it!