The house, or what was left of it, was eerily quiet when Illusionna returned home. She could hear sounds beyond the hearing of the others whom she lived with, her make up being specialized for intelligence gathering. But no sounds, other than the whirring of the workings of her world, came to her no matter how she tried to stretch her audio receptors.

She poked her head into the workshop, it was in its usual disarray. 'Organized chaos' would probably be a kinder term. Illusionna smiled to herself at the thought. The half built body, propped up near the wall, with those two cameras that had never gotten covered by faceplating or lenses, looked at with lifeless emptiness. It reminded her slightly of the Autobot she'd seen in the hole with Ji'Shada, and she looked away from her half-formed sibling with a sense of dread. Where is Spanner? She began to feel a sense of desperateness creep up on her.

The workshop, while having no door to the outside, did have a door to the downstairs, as well as to the main living area on the ground floor. It lead straight into Spanner's personal chambers, a quick avenue for the scientist to either retire to his personal space, or work as he pleased. Illusionna had rarely been his chambers, as Spanner seemed to be rarely in them. She walked down the stairs and emerged on the far side of his small suite.

She saw him lying on his berth, laid out flat as if on a repair table. The light in his optics was dim, his face peaceful. She could hear the faint hum of his systems running, even more quiet than normal, a faint sound barely caught and only if one was listening for it. The room itself was gray, a dingy place, like the rest of the house, like the rest of the Dead End, like the rest of his life.

It was disconcerting, seeing him lying there, prone. She could hurt him if she wanted. He had no defenses, no way to counter any kind of attack in the position he was in. She reached out and took one of his hands, examining it. The yellow of it seemed a little dingy up close, she could discern the dark color of the wires and under-metal showing through his knuckles. But his hand units were so skilled, they created people, living beings. A flash of the half constructed body upstairs appeared in her inner optics. That was just a body, it could be an anything. She could make it, make it a droid, make it a maid, make it a garbage can. But he, her Spanner, he made bodies into living things. These skilled yellow hands made magnificent things, things that no other being on Cybertron was capable of making. He would finish his project, he could finish it, she knew it. He could do whatever he put his mind to. A great rush of affection waved over her, starting at her chest and spreading through her arms and torso. As if summoned by her emotion, Spanner's optics slowly regained their light, and he turned his head toward her. He smiled, that beautiful smile that he shared so rarely these days. "Lunae," he sat up. "What are you doing here?"

She laughed, "I live here," she answered.

He returned the laugh, a sound that set Illusionna's audio receptors on edge with joy. "Yes, you do," he said, "and I am glad you are here."

Illusionna stretched her faceplates with her smile.

"I have an errand for you to run," he opened a small compartment in his arm, and took out a communique chip. "I need you to take this to Alpha Trion."

The smile vanished from Illusionna's face. "Alpha Trion? In Iacon?"

He held it out to her, "Yes," he said, "Alpha Trion. In Iacon."

"Oh," her voice rose to a whine, "that's going to take ages!" She snatched the chip from his fingers, and stood up, turning toward the door back up to the workshop.

She began to stride away, but turned back when Spanner called out gently, "Illusionna." She looked at him. "I love you," he said.

The smile returned to her face, "I love you, too."

OoOoOo

Illusionna rang the announcing buzzer at the dwelling her information told her belonged to Alpha Trion. She had met the old Autobot several times before, sometimes at Spanner's house, sometimes in other places, and once she had simply run into him on the street while out loitering in Iacon. He had greeted her warmly each time, surprising her when she'd met him by herself. He seemed very forgetful to her, though he'd never given her any real indication to think that he was. Without Spanner as a reminder, she had simply assumed he would not recognize her. But he had, asked about both Spanner and Wind Rider, stroked her shoulder in a fatherly fashion, and then been on his way. Illusionna had never been to his house, though. In fact, she'd never been this far into the city-state of Iacon, in person anyway, her energy reserves never being at full recharge, she had not wanted to make the journey without a real cause. She could gather information as any input port on the planet. She could get information about Tarn from smack in the middle of Crystal City. If she could get past the security measures and as long as the mainframes were connected in some way. So physical proximity to information at hand was a mute point, in her mind at least.

Iacon was prettier than she'd thought it would be, especially from the messages she'd managed to eavesdrop on in the system. It was still lit, glowing faintly with the energy the planet naturally possessed, a slightly golden glow on the cityscape around her. A pale imitation of Spanner, but a lighthouse compared to the Dead End. It was not as tall as Polyhex, she noted, the towers were not so high, and the skies were not filled with flying things as they were in Decepticon Territory. Everything was concentrated on ground-level, a few levels above it, and she wondered if, like the Dead End, they were active under the ground levels also. Didn't just vagrants and misfits live under the ground level? She'd have to look that information up sometime.

The door slid open, and a femmebot, white with red highlights and a medical symbol on either shoulder, stood before her. Her body armor was flawless, the white not showing a speck of dirt or debris. Illusionna could not detect a single dent on her, her colors were vibrant and bright. "Hello," she smiled down from a gray face, and her blue optics glowed gently.

It took Illusionna a moment to regain her senses. She'd expected a speaker to come on and ask who she was, and why she was here. She even half expected to be sent away. But this femme had simply opened the door, smiled at her, said hello, and waited for a response. "I'm here to see Alpha Trion," she managed to squeak out.

The femmebot laughed, and moved aside for Illusionna to enter. "Come in," she said, "I'll go get him."

Illusionna stepped inside and the door slid closed behind her. The room into which she'd entered was a large receiving room, meant to house many people, made obvious by the numerous chairs that lay in no discernible pattern that Illusionna could make. She'd never seen a receiving room so large in a house. Did Alpha Trion live in a community building? Why had she just imported the directions to his place of residence when she plugged into that port, and not looked into anything else? You're getting slack, she berated herself, you need to sharpen up or you'll be one of those mechs on the streets in stasis lock.

"Alpha Trion," the femmebot called down a hallway that led out of the receiving room. "You have someone to see you." The femmebot turned to Illusionna, and did her quick once over with her optics. "You aren't hurt are you?" she asked in a suddenly worried tone.

Illusionna registered her internal temperature rising at the realization that her body armor was not in as complete shape as the femmebot's. "No," she said, "I was sent here with a message."

The femmebot looked relieved, and smiled her gentle smile again. "Oh good." She turned back down the hallway, "Alpha Trion!" she called again.

"I'm not deaf, Lancette," a deep, gentle voice drifted to Illusionna's audio receptors down from the hallway. "I heard you the first time." Alpha Trion emerged from the hall, his blue optics as bright and merry, Illusionna was sure, as when he first came online untold ages ago. She had heard tales that Alpha Trion had spoken to Vector Sigma, back in the times when Vector Sigma was spoken to, but that would have meant the old Autobot had been around since the beginning of time. And she doubted that. While his chassis was an old model, a very old model, it didn't look prehistoric. She figured that early Transformers must have been drone-like in appearance, and Alpha Trion didn't look anything like a drone. In fact, he wasn't drone-like at all. His chassis was slender, but not too slender as to denote an alt-mode of delicacy or smallness, like her own. He did, however, have an air of knowledge, like he did, in fact, talk to Vector Sigma when Vector Sigma could be talked to. Perhaps that is where the rumor started. A mech can do a lot with how they carry themselves, she knew that from experience. "Ahh," he smiled when he saw her, "Illusionna, what brings you all the way out here?"

Was her nonchalant lack of visits to this part of the planet more obvious than she thought? Did he know that the expenditure of energy to get here was too high for her to come gallivanting over whenever she, or Spanner, felt like it? "Spanner sent me," she said. "He told me to give you this." She opened her storage compartment and took out the chip. She held it out to him.

"Oh yes," Alpha Trion took the chip from her and held it up, as if doing so would cause it to divulge its information, "Spanner is onto something very big, with that device of his. It will change the world." He looked up at Illusionna's faceplate and chuckled, "Have faith in your Creator, child." He reached out and cuffed her on her chin gently with the tips of his knuckles. He looked into her optics and smiled. "He is a master at what he does."

He is a master at what he does, Illusionna kept her thought to herself. He's a master at starving people.

"Oh!" Lancette beamed a huge smile on her pale gray faceplate. "You belong to Spanner? It will almost be a family reunion later on!" She giggled.

"Hardly, Lancette," Alpha Trion turned, and motioned to be followed. Illusionna wasn't sure if it was directed at her or at Lancette or at the both of them, so she dutifully followed the old Autobot down the hallway. Better to be shooed off than to be thought of as rude for not obeying.

"What is happening later on?" Illusionna asked. "And will someone of Spanner's be there?"

Lancette laughed out loud, "Oh, you silly thing, as if you don't know your lineage!"

Illusionna's optics flared slightly, but she didn't look at Lancette to direct it at her. Of course she knew her lineage. She was the creation of Spanner, and Spanner was the creation of...She has no idea who Spanner's creator was, and it niggled her slightly that she had never considered the question before. Spanner had simply...always been there, like the Cybertron itself. And who else belonged to Spanner besides Wind Rider and herself? She knew that he created other Transformers. She'd been told before that he was very lucky, as far as his success rate with Vector Sigma inferring life into his beings. Why hadn't she ever thought to ask who these other people were?

They turned into a small room, with a hologram projector in it. Alpha Trion inserted the chip into the projector, and on the little round port, a schematic appeared. Illusionna instantly recognized it at as Spanner's interdimensional space portal transporter. It rotated slightly, numbers flashing across the schematic and then the entire thing stopped. "Beacon needed to complete transport", it flashed, rotating in three dimensional space. "Container needed to protect cargo."

She'd come across Cybertron for that?! Slag, she could have just told Alpha Trion all that information, instead of being worried about transporting a stupid, old fashioned chip full of information!

Illusionna huffed out, a loud hiss emanating from her cooling ducts as her internal cooling system kicked on. Lancette looked at her compassionately. "It's frustrating isn't it? Seeing him do all that hard work."

Illusionna made her face a blank slate, and squared her thin shoulders. Frustrating seeing him do all that hard work? Who puts energon in our fueling tanks? Me! Who traipsed half way across the world to get this stupid chip here? Me! Who is the one who has to worry about everything while Spanner stays locked up in his laboratory working on a transporter that will take eons to get right? Me! She wanted to scream, she wanted to distort her faceplate to such a degree that the alloy cracked and her chest, where her voice box resided, would burst from the sound.

"You're a good little thing," Lancette reached out and stroked her face, that same, horrible look of compassion on her face. I don't need your pity, Illusionna wanted to spit the words out at her. I can take care of myself better than you ever could.

"She is," Alpha Trion rubbed her shoulder, the one free of the camera. "Come one, then girls," he sounded chipper, as if he'd received information he'd wanted. "We have to rest up before our big meeting."

Rest up? Big meeting? Who rested up for a big meeting? What big meeting?

Lancette led Illusionna out of the room and down another hallway, and stood before a door. She pressed her hand against the lock, and it opened neatly for her, and she motioned for Illusionna to enter. "You'll want to be on full form for the meeting, there will be lot of people you know there," she said. "It must be happy synchronicity that you showed up when you did." She beamed that smile again and Illusionna wanted wipe it off with a fist. "Just in time!" Lancette then turned and left, the door closing behind her.

What in the world is she talking about? Illusionna asked herself, turning to face the interior of the room. She stopped cold.

The room was empty.

Except for a berth to lie on, and a small desk with a port to put a screen to deal with information, the room was empty. Illusionna realized her mouth was hanging open, and shut it with a click, before turning a full 360 degrees. How could Alpha Trion have an empty room? An entire empty room, just for visitors? With nothing in it? Not used as something else in the meantime? Just a visitor room?

Illusionna sat down on the berth, and tried to sort it all out. Did Lancette live with Alpha Trion? Was Alpha Trion so rich, that he could have an entire room with nothing in it? But the house in which they were staying was only a few stories tall, did it go way underground too, is that where the size of it was? In Polyhex, toward the middle sections where the wealthiest citizens lived, the dwellings were so high that a mech had to fly out of them. She had heard from other Decepticons, listening when she shouldn't have been, that in richer provinces, the buildings were even higher than in Polyhex. Yet, this Autobot, he had enough wealth that he had an entire empty room!

She examined the berth, and saw a recharging port on it. Lying down, she connected to it, At least I can make up for what I lost on the way here. Upon making the connection, her own sensors indicated her fuel level at 30%, then her internal monitors flashed, "Energon depleted, disconnecting." A flood of panic waved through her as she tried to figure out how she went from 30% to 0%, when she felt the disconnection, and her own internal monitor stated once again, "Fuel 30%".

She laughed out loud, and sat up. The recharging port was empty, not her!

She glanced at the door, and then at the berth, and slouched. She was stuck in this room, and she certainly wasn't going into rest mode, big meeting or no big meeting.

Her optics fell on the information port on the desk, and she felt a little sting of guilt as she considered it. It was a tiny plug, most mechanoids probably didn't have an interface in which they could physically plug into it. But she wasn't most mechanoids, and she did have an interface which would physically plug into it. Before getting up off of the berth, she scanned the airwaves,

She caught a staticky private transmission between two Autobots, but when she cleared out the fuzz, she discovered they were talking about how to best repair a streetlight. A larger sweep left her with nothing. Alpha Trion and Lancette must have been "resting up for the big meeting", because she picked up nothing from either of them.

Well, I'll just have to take a look around through a physical connection. She got up, and extracted an interface cable from her torso. Plugging it into the interface, she immediately prepared herself for evasive maneuvers against the security system.

But there wasn't one.

That's not right, Illusionna was suddenly uneasy.

There wasn't even a request for a passcode. Nothing. Complete and unobstructed access, as if she was entering a public informational space.

She moved carefully, fully expecting a trip somewhere, but there wasn't any. She had access to files and files and files of information. Personal information about Alpha Trion, Lancette, projects they were working on, communiques they had sent and received, and routes out to other information. This couldn't be possible, she thought.

She followed a route out of the immediate area, and found herself in a large "atrium" with hundreds and hundreds of "alcoves" off of it. Each alcove was stuffed full of information, most of it, at first glance, useless (Who cares how many communications took place in the phi section of Iacon on that day? What did the communications say?) and sure enough, another "alcove" off of that one had the communications themselves.

She glanced in each of the alcoves, very much like walking through an auditorium with rooms off the side. One of them had the information for the weapon caches the Autobots had amassed. Aside for the one that Illusionna already knew of, they had only two more, one on the other side of the planet, and another smaller one closer to Polyhex. All of them were stolen from the Decepticons.

In another of them, she noticed Spanner's name, so she ventured inside the file, and perused it.

At first, she wondered why Spanner's name would be mentioned here, but then her immediate thought was of a communication with Alpha Trion. But this didn't have Alpha Trion's name attached to it. It was a list of items, attributed to a Cybertronian scientist named Spanner. Only it couldn't have been her Spanner. This Spanner had created buildings, beautiful works of functional art, deep within several Autobot provinces. He had designed an immense arena, in the heart of Tarn, a Decepticon city-state He had discovered a new way to detect energy signatures in subspace, a new way retrieve materials from subspace for better fluidity and more consistency. This Spanner had created Autobots, Autobots to whom Vector Sigma had given sentience. The string of names hung before her: Shadow Racer, Signcheck, Septer, Cipher, Tailgate, Wheeljack, Wind Rider, Illusionna. Who were all these mechs? And why hadn't she ever heard of any of them?

On her periphery, she picked up an airwave transmission from Lancette, and retreated back to the port and unplugged. She'd lost track of time, Bad mistake, you're making all kinds of bad mistakes, she chided. Illusionna, Lancette called, you up?

Illusionna went to the door, to be there when Lancette opened it, but to her surprise, is slid open when it sensed her near, and she saw Lancette walking down the hall toward her.

Lancette chuckled, "You must have had a good rest." She had that smile on her face again, only this time it didn't make Illusionna angry, so much as confused. "You were in your room all this time."

Illusionna did not admit she was in the room because she hadn't expected the door to be unlocked.