Fireblast crept after the Autobots, as quietly as she could. She was beginning to feel tired—it had been a long time since she'd gotten any recharge. She would have to reveal herself to Ultra Magnus sometime, she knew, but she didn't quite know how she was going to do that yet, so for the time being she just tried to remain as hidden as possible.

Arcee and Blurr walked along the corridor of the Elite Guard ship, until they reached a room at the end of the hallway—so now Fireblast was alone. She found a small space where she could hide without being found, and waited there, watching. She knew better than to allow herself to drift into stasis, because she knew that if she did, the Autobots would definitely catch her and then who knows what they would do to her?

Fireblast listened to the low sounds of grown-up Autobots talking and the humming of machines. So this was what the Elite Guard ship was like. It was very different than the cave lair Megatron and the rest of the Decepticons called home, with different colors, different sounds…even different smells.

With every cycle Fireblast spent looking, listening, and smelling, she became even more tired, until finally her optics shut and she curled up right on the floor in a fitful stasis.

…

"Who is this?" Fireblast heard someone's vocal processor asking. "Who is she?"

Groggily, she opened her optics and looked around. She had two pairs of stasis cuffs on her wrists, one pair on her ankles, and a mouth cover on her mouth. Ultra Magnus, Sentinel Prime, and Jazz the Cyber Ninja were standing above her, staring.

"I don't know, Ultra Magnus," Sentinel Prime replied. "I found her in stasis near the control room. It appears to me we have a Decepticon stowaway…no doubt she's a spy trying to steal the AllSpark. It looks like she's a Seeker, too. That's why I froze her wings and disabled her foot thrusters."

That was the first time Fireblast noticed she had two of the Elite Guard's "Wing-Freezer 5000" devices stuck onto her wingflaps, one for each wing. She remembered how her father had once described these wing-freezers as "inhumane", but they didn't have much of an impact on her, seeing as she wouldn't be doing that much flying, anyway.

And…the rocket thrusters on her feet were disabled, too? Just out of curiosity, Fireblast tried to turn one on. Just as she expected, it didn't work.

"Sentinel Prime, take the ankle stasis cuffs and the mouth cover off," Ultra Magnus ordered. "We need to take her to the control room for questioning."

Fireblast watched as Sentinel Prime unlatched the stasis cuffs on her ankles and ripped the mouth cover off her face. Then he picked her up by her wing, hard enough to hurt (now she was glad for the wing-freezers, because they numbed her wingflaps' sensor nodes), and dragged her off to the control room.

Once they got there, Fireblast was seated in a hard chair and the stasis cuffs were snapped onto her ankles again. Ultra Magnus said, "State your purpose, Seeker."

"Well, first of all, I'm not a Seeker, even though yes, I may look like one," Fireblast told him. "I will never be a Seeker."

"We don't care!" Sentinel hollered, jabbing her in the wingflap—apparently he'd forgotten that the wing-freezing devices prevented her from feeling it at all. "Just tell us why you're here!"

Time for the story—please let it work!

Fireblast put on her best "sad face" and replied, "Well…I was so tired of living under Megatron's awful tyranny, so I ran away from home. I wanted to join you kind, gentle Autobots instead. I wanted to be one of the 'bots who fights to protect life, not destroy it."

"And just what makes you think we'll believe you?" asked Sentinel haughtily, crossing his arms.

Oh, what in Primus have I gotten myself into NOW? wondered Fireblast. Her spark was beating so fast. She had never been so terrified in her lifecycle—not even when she attempted flying.

"I thought you might not believe me," Fireblast said sadly. "Please, listen. I mean you no harm. I wish to join you. At least give me a chance?"

"Then we will test you," Ultra Magnus replied. He left the room for a few moments, then came back with a small glowing crystal.

"What is this?" asked Fireblast.

"If you can be in this room alone for ten full cycles without stealing this AllSpark fragment," the Elite Guard leader explained, unlatching Fireblast's stasis cuffs, "we will give you your chance. Sound fair?"

"Ultra Magnus, are you insane?" Sentinel hissed. "What are you doing?"

"Shut it down, Sentinel," Ultra Magnus replied, and took the wing-freezers off Fireblast. "If you pass the test, 'Con, we will also enable your foot thrusters."

"It doesn't matter," she replied. "I've never been able to fly, anyway. It's some kind of massive glitch in my programming, I suppose."

"You're a Decepticon who can't fly?" asked Ultra Magnus, looking shocked. "Then why do you have rocket thrusters and wingflaps?"

"Because my father is commander of the Decepticon aerial forces," Fireblast informed him sullenly. She hated how the first thing anyone noticed about her was her Seeker design. "So I guess I inherited the Seeker frame, but none of the ability."

"Hold on, you're Skydive?" If Ultra Magnus had looked shocked before, it was nothing compared to the way he looked now. "What in Primus are you talking about, then? You're one of the best of the Seekers."

"And you look…different!" Sentinel seemed confused. "So much that I didn't even recognize you!"

"Fools!" Fireblast couldn't help shouting. "I'm not Skydive! I'm Starscream's second daughter, Fireblast. Skydive is my older sister—and she's fine with being a Decepticon. She would never run away from home to become an Autobot like I did."

"Fireblast…" Ultra Magnus was squinting, then his optics widened. "Wait! You mean the sparkling from the wedding?"

"If that's true, then I can't remember," Fireblast snapped. Now this was getting annoying, particularly because she got confused with Skydive.

"Yes, the last time we saw you was your parents' wedding," Ultra Magnus explained, looking amazed. "That was so many stellar cycles ago! You…you look a lot older now."

"Can we please just do the test?" asked Fireblast.

Ultra Magnus nodded, set the AllSpark fragment down on the floor next to the chair where the prisoner was seated, and he and the other two Elite Guard members left the room.

Meanwhile, Fireblast was thinking. She wasn't in stasis lock any more—she was completely free. She most certainly could steal this AllSpark fragment—but that wouldn't be wise at all. The most important thing was to pass this test and stay on the Elite Guard ship, at least for now, so…

The ten cycles passed without Fireblast laying a servo on the AllSpark.

Ultra Magnus, Sentinel, and Jazz rushed back in. Ultra Magnus helped Fireblast out of the chair and shook her servo slowly. "I can't believe it, Decepticon, but you actually passed the test. And I am a 'bot of my word, so…you can stay with us Autobots for the time being, if you really have nowhere else to go."

"I don't," Fireblast replied quietly. "Thank you."

…

"Now, come to the science lab," Sentinel was saying, as he pulled Fireblast by her wingflap. "If you're gonna stay you're gonna work. So clean up any messes you see. Oh and…you'll be needing some of these."

Without hesitation he slapped four red Autobot insignias on both sides of both her wings, right on top of the Decepticon insignias.

"I already have the Decepticon insignia though," Fireblast told him nervously.

"Well, there are no Decepticons on the Elite Guard ship, so you wear those stickers or you will be back at the cave lair," Sentinel replied. "Now get busy."

Feeling apprehensive, Fireblast clutched her cleaning rag in one servo, the disinfectant spray in the other. I ran away from home just to become a maintenance-bot? she was thinking as she stepped into the science lab of the Elite Guard ship.

The lab was enormous, with test tubes, microscopes (not counting Perceptor…obviously), and all kinds of other scientific devices she couldn't even name, all throughout the room. And she was alone in here? She shrugged and saw a minor oil spill on one of the lab tables and went to clean it up.

"Oh, that's my mess, I'll clean it up." Fireblast heard a young male voice say. She looked down to see a white game console quickly turn itself into a mech who looked to be about her age; he also seemed very nervous. In robot mode he was rather small, about as tall as she was, and mostly white, with a few blue stripes. He had shiny square glasses and a tentative, almost shy smile on his faceplates. Everything about him looked nerdy.

"It's okay, I'm just the maintenance-bot," said Fireblast, holding up her cleaning rag.

"Wha—oh, you know, I haven't seen you around here before," he said, looking even more nervous. "A-Are you new or something?"

"I guess you could say that," Fireblast told him, shrugging.

The mech looked at Fireblast's Autobot stickers confusedly. "So…so you're an Autobot? I mean…no offense…but you don't really look like one. You kind of look like a Seeker, actually."

"How dare you say that!" Fireblast shrieked, before she could stop herself. That proved it! Even this nerdy game console noticed her Seeker frame before anything else! She dropped the cleaning rag and the disinfectant spray on a lab table and ran over to a corner of the room. Tentatively, the nerd-bot touched her shoulder, and she looked up, tears shimmering in her optics.

"Hey, I-I'm sorry," he told her, sounding confused—and genuinely remorseful. "You're right. Even if you look like a Decepticon that doesn't mean you are one. I mean, the Jettwins are Autobots, and they can fly, right?"

Not even bothering to ask who in Primus the Jettwins were, Fireblast simply shrugged the nerd-bot's servo off her shoulder. In a quavering voice (right now, she was trying so hard not to cry), she told him, "I never said I wasn't a Decepticon. I said I wasn't a Seeker. There's a difference."

"But…but…you're wearing Autobot stickers!" The young mech was looking increasingly nervous, especially since he'd just found out that the maintenance-bot was, in fact, a Decepticon.

"Yes, which that huge-chinned Autobot pasted on top of my Decepticon insignias," replied Fireblast. "They're right underneath."

"If you're a Decepticon, what are you doing here?" the nerd-bot asked, looking terrified.

"I want to be an Autobot," replied Fireblast. Why not tell this nerd-bot the story too?

"Really? You do?"

The nerd-bot was staring at her with such wide optics. Fireblast felt guilt tearing at her spark—and upset, hurt, loneliness, and so many other emotions she couldn't name. Before she could stop herself, she said, "No, not really. That's just what I told the others."

"But then…why are you really here?" asked the nerd-bot.

"It's just…" Fireblast sighed. She decided she needed someone to tell her true story to, and this Autobot had never wronged her. "Promise you won't tell?"

"Promise!"

"I ran away from home because my father is the commander of the Decepticon aerial forces," Fireblast told him, "and even though he never said it, I knew he was disappointed that I didn't want to be a Seeker, too."

"Oh." The nerd-bot sounded sad now as he sat down next to his companion. "That's terrible."

Fireblast shrugged. "They wouldn't want me anyway. I can't do anything right. I was surprised Megatron even agreed to give me the Branding Ceremony—guess I was getting a little old to go without it."

"Branding sounds like it hurts," said the young mech. "Also, you do know it damages the wires in your wings for good…right?"

"It does hurt, and yes, I know that a scalding-hot branding iron can harm one of the most sensitive parts of my body if pressed long enough to leave a stamp," Fireblast told him. "But it's both ceremonial and cultural and the tradition has been around for centuries, too."

"Wow." Now the nerd-bot's mouth was open in shock.

"Not that my Ceremony went so well." Fireblast sighed. "I don't have any discernable skills. I can't even fly because I always get so nervous. And keep in mind, flying is instinctive, which means it doesn't need to be taught—and yet I still can't manage to do it right."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," said the nerd-bot. "But you are not alone. I ran away from home because my true calling is science, and yet if I had stayed at home I would have had to become an energon farmer, not a scientist, like I want to be. My parents always used to say, 'Get out of the science lab! Go to a party and get drunk, interface with someone you don't know, commit a crime, we don't care, just do something!' They were always telling me to leave the science lab at my school, but the science lab was really the only thing I liked about Autobot School.

"I was still in school when I left," he continued, "and all school was for me was being shoved into lockers, tied to flagpoles, beaten up by the mechs who turn into muscle cars and trucks, et cetera. Horrible! Someday, I will get my revenge and they will rue the solar cycles they put me through all that abuse. Those idiotic jerks always do."

"Wow." Fireblast couldn't help but be a little impressed. "Is this your lab, then?"

"No, it's Percy's," the nerd-bot told her. "He just lets me use it because I'm his intern."

"Who's Percy?"

"Perceptor," he explained. "You know, the lead scientist of the Autobots. He took me under his wing, so to speak, when I ran away from home and had nowhere to go. He hates that nickname—you know, Percy—but I call him that anyway."

"I see," said Fireblast, standing up. "Anyway, speaking of, I didn't catch your name. What is it?"

"Microdigit," he replied, and he stood up too. "It's the name I gave myself once I started training in the sciences. I thought it sounded cool."

"My name's Fireblast," she told him, and reached out one servo in greeting. Microdigit looked even more nervous but shook anyway.

Microdigit looked innocent and terrified, but Fireblast was now feeling unusually flirtatious.

"What's the matter, nerd-bot?" she asked, running one finger down his chestplate. "Scared of a sexy Decepticon femme?"

"Well…this is the longest conversation I've ever had with one," Microdigit told her. He was almost visibly trembling now, and blushing, too. Fireblast had never seen such blatant nerdiness in her lifecycle, but the nerd-bot seemed nice, at least, not to mention smart. The Decepticon femme looked around the lab and noticed some test tubes lying out, along with some notes and mysterious-looking potions.

"What were you working on?" asked Fireblast.

"Right now, Percy and I are working on coming up with the cure for a robo-virus that's spreading like wildfire all over Cybertron and taking thousands of millions of innocent denizens offline," Microdigit informed her. "It can be spread just by talking or touching or—well, basically any kind of contact with someone who has it. During my experiments I have found out what causes the virus, but I can't get rid of it; it's…it's multiplying, almost. It's almost as contagious and deadly as that blasted Cybertronian plague."

"You found out what's causing the virus?" Fireblast smiled. "I'm…I'm impressed. You seem like a really smart young nerd-bot."

The game console smiled and blushed even more. "Well, thank you, but femmes where I come from aren't interested in nerds like me. They like the kind who turn into things like muscle cars or trucks and are basically huge jerks with scrap metal where their CPUs should be, not nerdy scientist wannabes who turn into game consoles. As long as a femme has a boyfriend who's handsome and popular, she's good. Many times a femme back at school would help her boyfriend shove me into his locker, so I was unable to escape."

Fireblast sighed. "Some 'bots are just so cruel. I mean…look at you! You're so accomplished and nice and smart. They shouldn't abuse you like that."

"I guess they didn't care," said Microdigit matter-of-factly.

"Well, I care," whispered Fireblast, in her "seductive" voice. She enjoyed flirting with him in this way, especially because it seemed to terrify him. Obviously, he wasn't quite as smooth with the femmes as he was with the sciences.

"You—you do?" he asked shyly.

Fireblast quickly changed back to normal and told him sincerely, "Yeah, I think your science is fascinating! It's great that you're trying to find the cure for something that is now a death sentence. I hate that you get to be a cool intern for a scientist and I just have to be the maintenance-bot."

"Well, you can always help me, if you want," Microdigit told her, picking up a test tube. "I mean…often I pull all-nighters and I don't notice I've drifted off into stasis until I awaken the next solar cycle with a test tube stuck to my faceplates, but, well…"

"That would be great," Fireblast replied. "I would love to help you experiment. That sounds really interesting, actually."

"Then—then you can any time!" Now the nerdy game console looked very excited.

"Why?"

"Because!" Microdigit carefully (yet enthusiastically) handed the test tube to her. "You are a rare species of femmes that must be protected. Now let's get started, shall we?"