Modified and updated this chapter; nothing too much. Clarified some instances in which the identity of the speaker was uncertain, and changed the dates mentioned by Miko and Raf to; present day: October 26th date-stamp of photo: November 1st
Chapter Five: The Faces of Tomorrow—Part Two
Optimus stared at the image being presented to him on the tiny screen Rafael held in his hand, and, though his shift in expression was only very slight, anyone who'd spent long periods of time in the Prime's company would see that shift as a near blatant frown.
"Miko," he began, slowly, careful not to sound accusatory, as he finished digesting exactly what the sight before him meant, "You are certain that no one has had access to the images on your cellular device?"
"I'm positive!" the girl protested from below him, leaning over the rail as she did so; his optics swivelled from the screen to the exchange student's face, finding no indications of guilt, and she seemed just as disturbed and confused by the image's contents as the rest of them. If someone had managed to get a hold of her phone at any point, it had not been with her knowledge.
The Prime turned his attention back to the image of Bulkhead and Smokescreen standing side by side, Smokescreen giving a cocky grin and a "thumbs-up" gesture that he could remember Miko teaching to him moments before demanding that the two reconciled Autobots pose together for a picture. Beside the rookie, Bulkhead, with laughter in his optics, grinned knowingly at the camera as he held two digits up behind Smokescreen's helm in a human gesture Optimus did not recognize.
This photo had been taken only a mere two days ago, and the implication that someone else had somehow managed to copy the image in that time, without arousing any suspicion, did not bode well for the Autobots' security. Again, MECH was the first suspect to pop into mind. They had proven themselves to be an efficient force on numerous occasions, and, despite the death of Cylas, Optimus was not quite convinced the organization was completely gone.
If there was one thing Optimus knew for certain due to the many eons of war, it was that a second head was always eager to replace the first. Starscream was a prime example of that. Still, it all led back to questions he'd already asked himself and received no answer to. The pieces of this puzzle simply weren't fitting together to form any recognizable picture.
Optimus resisted the urge to sigh or rub at his helm; their mysterious new arrival was becoming something of a processor-ache.
Suddenly, the base's proximity alarm was set off once more, bathing their world in green light.
Bumblebee beeped a startled question, turning to look at the Prime with his wide blue optics. Again, Optimus resisted the urge to sigh as he remembered the one event of the day that had actually been planned beforehand.
"Yes, it would seem Agent Fowler has arrived."
Sure enough, when the proximity alarm fell silent, the elevator shaft doors split open, and a dark-skinned man in a blue suit, the jacket undone to provide room for his slightly over-sized stomach, strode into the silo.
"Prime!" Fowler's traditional greeting was always a quick way to determine the agent's mood; in the beginning, Optimus' title had only ever been used as something of a curse, and often continued to be used as such whenever Fowler was charged with cleaning up the messes the Autobots and Decepticons often left behind. However, over the course of time since the Decepticons' return, Optimus had noticed a subtle change in attitude in their liaison. No longer did he seem to see them as metal nuisances that had brought hell upon his planet, and no longer did he seem so eager to profess that the Autobots were not doing all they could, and that mankind could do better. Perhaps the agent had finally stopped seeing them as mere machines, and actually viewed them, for lack of a better term, as human.
Since then, Optimus had noticed during the man's now weekly visits, "Prime" was not spouted as a curse, but rather as a greeting between comrades. So when Fowler said his name that way upon entering the silo, Optimus was genuinely sorry that he was about to ruin the man's good mood.
"Mommy, where did the stars go?"
The night sky reflects in a cracked lense, the stars a million beautiful specks of light that mock her from within the glass.
"We'll change it together."
She chokes on a breath; the air, the fresh, clean, air, is like poison. The silence hammers smugly in her ears until it is so quiet that she thinks she can hear a whisper across time. A whisper from two different futures that somehow seem the same, united in their final breath.
"Why couldn't you save us?"
And the tears trail down her face like liquid fire, burning her failures into her skin like a brand; and she looks up to see the one who holds the metal there to mar her flesh: hazel eyes colder than the warm eyes she remembers should ever be. They demand answers, explanations, and promises she cannot make because she has already broken every last one. And suddenly, those hazel eyes are the grey-blue that she misses, staring down with concern from a face that is not her father's, but was a woman, with black hair tied back and a kind smile on her face as she spoke:
"Hi there, I'm June Darby. Nice to see you're finally awake; how are you feeling?"
Titania stared up at her blankly for a moment, unable to reconcile the fuzzy images of a few moments ago with the suddenly crisp, clear, unshifting presence of the painfully familiar woman who hovered over her.
I was dreaming, the sixteen year-old realized suddenly, her mind sharply clicking into full awareness. The second thought to occur to her was; Oh, right, I'm in the past, followed promptly by Holy slag, did she say June!?
Titania bolted upright, only to cry out in pain as her body protested the sudden movement, and it took all of her willpower not to simply curl into a pathetic ball and moan miserably.
"Hey! Take it easy!" June—her living, breathing, grandmother—admonished sharply; "Your body's still fighting off the Energon. And I wouldn't try to use your left hand for a while if I were you."
Left hand? The time traveller looked down at said appendage, raising an eyebrow at the heavily banadaged hand.
"You have a third degree burn," Nurse Darby began to explain, "We had to surgically remove the damaged tissue, and there's going to be nerve damage, though Ratchet and I are optimistic that the loss of feeling will be minimal…"
Titania stopped listening as soon as she said Ratchet's name, and the sixteen year-old's gaze darted around the room, eagerly searching for him—he's alive!—and quickly finding him standing on the other side of the room, hovering in the gigantic doorway behind June.
Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him, causing June to trail off from her explanation and glance hesitantly between the two. Ratchet was different—so different—from how she remembered him, how she had always known him. His paint was crisp and clean, the white and red dully reflecting the lights overhead; so many scars, dings and scratches were gone, and, looking in his optics, she saw a perpetual irritation, a reluctant curiosity, and at least a smidgeon of that irrepressible concern every medic, nurse, or doctor had for the lives placed into their hands. But there was no festering guilt or agony, no indications of an ever-present inner torment that was tearing him apart, no tired resignation to onlining every day and having yet another dead world to greet him with the knowledge that it was over.
For a moment, she had to question whether or not this really was Ratchet standing before her. So familiar, yet so different…she felt her throat closing up with emotion as she, unbidden, remembered him screaming at her to go, crossed scalpels cracking and red optics boring into her—
"I'll inform Optimus that she's awake," the medic said, breaking the silence, and vanished from her sight with one last glance in her direction. As soon as he was gone, Titania closed her eyes and inhaled a shaky breath. A hand fell upon her shoulder and she looked up into Nurse Darby's reassuring expression.
"Hey, don't worry, you're safe here; I understand their size makes them intimidating, but they're not going to hurt you. They just want to ask you some questions," June told her earnestly, and Titania could only assume that her sudden loss of breath had been mistaken for fear of the looming titan that had been in the room with them.
In a way, she supposed it was because of fear; fear that she would fail, have to watch him fall again. Fear that, for everything she knew, all that had been sacrificed to get her here, she wouldn't be able to change anything anyway.
Titania opened her mouth to speak, only to have her dry throat burst into flames as she bent over and coughed violently.
Water…water…her inner voices pleaded desperately, and, as though summoned by her desperation for something to drink, Titania felt a bottle of water being pressed into her good hand.
"Here; drink up," the nurse told her, and she needed no more prompting as she brought the lukewarm beverage to her lips and greedily guzzled it. She had never tasted water as wonderful as this; it was so…so clean. By the time she came up for air, the bottle waspractically empty.
She cleared her throat as she handed it back to June with a hoarse "Thank you."
"You're welcome," June smiled as she spoke, and Titania found herself marvelling once more at the fact that this woman was her own grandmother. It caused a stab of pain in her heart, and a longing far more profound than any she had felt when the woman had still been just a vague, distant figure conjured in the back of her mind. She was overwhelmed with the temptation to throw herself into the woman's arms and sob out all her troubles, telling her everything, and to ask for something as mundane as a story of her father's own childhood, because she had been deprived of something so simple all her life.
"What's wrong?" Nurse Darby suddenly asked, scrutinizing her face with concerned eyes. Titania chuckled bitterly, a voice in her mind distantly telling her she was likely on the verge of hysterics.
"That's a loaded question;" she stated bluntly in response, and watched as June frowned at her, brow creasing in thought.
Before her grandmother could push for a real answer, the thundering of large, metal feet heralded Ratchet's return, and, this time, he had company.
Titania couldn't stop the widening of her eyes or the slight gaping of her mouth as she craned her neck to look up into the face of a mech she had only ever heard stories about: stories of bravery and self-sacrifice, of humble beginnings and impossible odds, of a broken brotherhood, and burdens that would've brought lesser beings to their knees and kept them there long ago.
"Greetings," his deep voice rumbled out, and she could picture him, giving a speech to a cheering crowd of Autobots whom his voice alone had given the strength to move not mountains, but entire worlds. "I am Optimus Prime; and this…" with an enormous servo, the Prime of her childhood stories gestured to a man who had just entered the room; a man, whom, even though his hair was no longer grey, and there were no longer quite as many lines in his face, and, yes, there was the excess weight Ratchet had always mentioned, was still a man she'd recognize anywhere.
"Bill!" His name burst from her lips with a strangled cry, and her hands flew up to cover her mouth, her own fingers digging into her cheeks, setting the bandaged left side of her face on fire as though the burning tears of her dream had not been a dream at all.
Her eyes watered, her breath shortened, and, for a moment, she held him in her arms again and watched the life flow out of him in a river of red. She heard his croaking gasps as he struggled to speak and she knew, she knew—
Why?Why?Why?WHY?
The Prime's concerned voice sounded distant and distorted; "Nurse Darby, what is happening?"
"She's hyperventilating!"
Hands, small, slender, and strong despite their deceptive size, seized Titania's wrists with a gentle, but pressing, force, and pulled them away from her mouth. June's form suddenly cut into her line of sight, blocking Agent Fowler from her view.
"Listen to me, kid, you need to breathe. I need you to focus only on me, copy what I'm doing, okay?" June inhaled deeply, "Breathe in," and then she let out a long exhale, "Breathe out…good…"
Titania let the voice of this stranger—someone whom she could not remember the death of—wash over her. She let the hands holding her wrists tether her and remind her: it has not happened. Not yet.
Somehow though, such a reminder made this second chance feel like a cruel joke, because it had still happened to her.
Titania took another deep breath to steady herself further, even after the panic attack passed, and did not speak until she was certain she could do so without having her voice crack with grief in the middle of a sentence. "I'm fine now, Nurse Darby, thank you."
The woman scrutinized her for a minute, obviously not believing her, before turning to face the others; "Optimus, Agent Fowler, I think it would be best if we gave her a few days to adjust before—"
"No!" the word burst from Titania's mouth before she could think about it, startling her grandmother into silence as the nurse whipped back around to face her with a raised eyebrow that was clearly meant to remind her that she was not the one with medical training here. "This is too important."
June folded her arms across her chest and frowned down at the girl before her; "Look here young lady, I'm the nurse, you're the patient. If I say you need rest, then you need rest. I'm sure that whatever it is can wait at least a few days."
Titania began viciously shaking her head before June had even finished speaking. Now that she stopped to think about it, she wasn't even sure what day it was; Ratchet had tried to send her back at least a week before the location of the Star Saber was decrypted, but since there was no way to be that precise with the Ground-bridge, she had no idea when she actually was. She wasn't even sure how long she had been unconscious either; hours? Days? How close to the end of the world was she really?
"Nurse Darby;" Titania began in the strongest voice she could muster, straightening her posture and tossing her loose brown hair out of her face as she steeled her nerves and shut titanium doors over her grief; "Thank you for your concern, but the information I have is vital not only to the Autobot-Decepticon war, but to the survival of the entire human race. It cannot wait."
For a moment, there was silence following her pronouncement, but it was broken by the sound of footsteps as they approached the bed in which the time-traveler was still ensconced.
"June…" a painfully familiar voice said, and Titania felt her heart clenching in agony, and, as Fowler's face came into view, and his hand landed on the Nurse's shoulder, she felt her titanium doors slowly swinging ajar.
Stop it; she snapped at herself vehemently, disgusted that, after a lifetime of fighting and hardening herself against such pain, she was becoming an emotional wreck at the moment when she needed to be strongest, you have no time for this.
"We really need to talk to her;" Fowler went on saying, "We'll call you if anything else happens, all right?"
The Nurse cast a torn glance between them, lips pursing tightly, and it was only after Titania gave June a sharp nod—while wearing the most professional expression she could manage—that the woman finally relented with a tired sigh.
"All right;" she then whipped around and firmly poked Fowler in the chest, a fierce look of warning upon her face; "But you will keep it brief and to the point; I want all of you out of here in no more than an hour, am I clear?"
The dark-skinned man took a step back with wide-eyes, hands up in the universal gesture of surrender; "Yes ma'am."
June gave him one last warning glare before turning on her heels, black ponytail whipping out in a vicious arc of discontent, and headed for the door. She paused halfway there to crane her neck and look up into Optimus' faceplates and he, seeming to read a question in her eyes that Titania could not see from her vantage point, rumbled out gently; "Thank you Nurse Darby; I will ensure that she is provided ample time to rest and recover."
Finally seeming satisfied and fully reassured now that she had the Prime's word above all others, the Nurse left the room with a quiet; "Thank you, Optimus."
In the wake of her receding footsteps, an awkward silence fell upon the remaining occupants of the room. It was suddenly broken by the scrape of a chair as Fowler pulled one up to her bedside and sat down, staring suspiciously at her.
"Okay, kid. Spill. How do you know about the Autobots and Decepticons? Where have you been getting your information?" A frown creased the man's brow, "And how, in the name of Lady Liberty, did you know my name?"
Slowly, Titania glanced from face-to-face; Ratchet was leaning on the wall by the door, and Optimus stood a respectful distance away, unmoving, and his optics never straying from her. Suddenly, she felt completely out of her depth, and couldn't help but think that if only the Uncle Bill she knew was here—
He's not; her inner voices reminded her, cutting off that train of thought, you made a promise to him as he died; remember? You better damn well keep it.
"I guess I'd better start at the beginning…" Titania took a calming breath, and folded her hands in her lap as best she could—considering the bandages—before forcing herself to look into Fowler's deep brown eyes, which offered none of the comfort and encouragement she was used to.
"My name is Titania Darby, and I'm from the future."
Silence followed her statement. Not the kind of stunned silence that chased on the heels of an earth-shattering revelation, or the grim, tense silence in which the heroes of a story stood at a loss of how to save one of their own and the world at the same time…
No; it was the kind of silence in which you half-expected a cricket to start chirping.
And, as Fowler raised an eyebrow as though to ask; "Seriously? That's the best you could come up with?" Ratchet broke the silence with an odd sound that seemed to be the strangled offspring of a scoff and a chuckle.
"Right, the future…" the medic folded his arms across his chestplate, flicking a digit in the humans' direction; "And Agent Fowler there is a reincarnated Autobot warrior."
Said agent leaned back in his chair and crossed his own arms, his eyes clearly communicating how unimpressed he was with her answer. "Kid, I don't think you realize how much trouble you're in; you can make this easy on yourself by just telling us the truth."
"I am," she snapped, a part of her screaming that no, she couldn't come this far just to have them not believe her; "My name is Titania Darby; my parents are Miko Nakadai and Jackson Darby," she felt her voice rising as surely as Fowler's eyebrow, "I was born on November thirteenth in the year twenty-eighteen; six years after the death of Optimus Prime and the destruction of this. Very. Base!"
"The death of Opti…" Ratchet's baffled expression following her outburst quickly became indignant as his servos dropped to his side and clenched tightly; "How dare you even—"
"Enough, Ratchet," Even though he didn't shout, Optimus' voice still managed to cut the medic off as effectively as though he had; the Prime's optics focused intently upon the self-proclaimed time-traveller with careful consideration; "I will confess your claim is a rather difficult one to believe;" he ignored Ratchet's angry grumble—Difficult? More like damn impossible; Miko and Jack can't stand each other—and went on, "is there any evidence you can offer to support it?"
"Evidence?" Titania repeated, enunciating each syllable slowly, as her heart grew cold and sunk; the gears in her brain turned viciously as she tried to think of any proof she could possibly provide. She rubbed tiredly at her eyes, and took another, deep, calming breath before turning to the government officer sitting at her bedside. "Is there anything I can write with?"
"Uh…" Fowler stood up, patting down his pockets as he glanced around the room. His eyes landed on a notepad set inconspicuously off to the side—June's, most likely—and he quickly tore a blank piece of paper out before producing a pen from his coat pocket and handing both to her.
Titania promptly scribbled out four series of numbers before thrusting her materials back into Agent Fowler's face; "There."
"And these would be…?" Ratchet began questioningly, optics shuttering rapidly as he zoomed in to read the tiny numbers over Fowler's shoulder.
"The decrypted co-ordinates of four of the last five Iacon relics in the database, which, I may add, Ratchet made me memorize," she shot the medic a glare as she folded her arms; she knew his skepticism shouldn't hurt, but it did. After a moment in which she took in Ratchet's highly skeptical and suspicious expression, Agent Fowler's disbelieving eyes, and Optimus' ever stoic gaze, she added; "Oh, and the last relic is actually inside Smokescreen, just so you know."
That garnered a startled reaction; "Inside Smokescreen?" Ratchet repeated in disbelief. Titania gave a sharp nod of affirmation as she tightened her arms around her chest, as though that would keep the pieces of her repeatedly broken heart from being jolted violently out of place by every blow that reminded her she was alone, and no one in this time period was on her side. Everyone here was a stranger wearing the form of one who had been stolen from her.
Titania forced herself to shove such thoughts aside and focus.
"Take a look inside his chassis, scan it, whatever," she went on once she oriented herself, waving a dismissive hand as she did so, "inside you'll find an old, key-like object; if it's not there, then I'm obviously a liar, but if it is, you can be assured that I'm telling the complete and absolute truth." At Fowler's unconvinced frown, she, with an exasperated sigh, pinched the bridge of her nose and added with a vehement undertone; "And if that still doesn't statisfy you, there's also a pink phone inside my backpack—I hope you have my backpack—it used to belong to my mother, Miko; it has all of the photos of the Autobots and Decepticons that she's ever taken, including more than several dozen that she hasn't taken yet. That's all the proof you should ever need."
Fowler's brow knitted together, and he glanced over at Optimus, "That's the phone Miko and Raf are looking at, right?"
"I believe so, Agent Fowler."
Titania froze in horror, heart fluttering more violently than a caged bird, and eyes widening as she stared up at Optimus, expression aghast; "Miko's looking at it? My mother, is looking at it, at this very moment?"
"Yes," The Prime responded.
"You have to get it away from her!" she shouted urgently—you are a soldier, stop panicking!— "There are pictures on there of her and Jack, together; not to mention the three of us back when I was baby! If she or Jack sees those…"
Her hands flew up to press against the side of her head as the full implications sunk in and silenced the chiding voices that frowned upon her hysterics with disapproval. Her next words came out as a desperate whisper.
"I might never even be born."
Miko frowned at the phone in her hand; while Raf had gone back to sorting the contents of the bag according to his own categorizing system, she had scrolled back to the earliest dated picture, which, to her consternation, was actually taken at the Tokyo airport back in early September, and showed her in all her rebellious glory standing between her suited up, unsmiling father and boringly dressed mother whose smile looked like something more of a grimace. She scowled at the photo, viciously scrolling past even as she wondered at its presence.
Was somebody stalking her?
Her frown deepened with every photo she saw, as each date-stamp coincided with the ones on her own phone. Eventually, she came back to the one of Smokescreen and Bulkhead, which was the last photo she had taken recently, and, noticing that the number of photos listed on this phone was far greater than her own, clicked past it.
Her jaw dropped…this, this was…
"Dude, Optimus has a freaking lightsaber!"
Raf, startled by the outburst, dropped the rations he was currently sorting through, and whipped around to stare at her in confusion; "What?"
Miko promptly hopped off the couch and shoved the small device into his face, causing the twelve year-old to go cross-eyed and take a step back in order to actually see the photo on the screen.
"Optimus has a lightsaber! How come nobody told us, huh, huh?"
It did look a bit like a lightsaber, Raf thought as he frowned at the image of Optimus holding an enormous, glowing blue sword upright; it seemed to be almost as long as the Prime was tall. But that didn't make any sense; if the Autobots had a weapon like this, then why hadn't they been using it?
Raf received his answer as he looked at the date-stamp, and his mouth fell slightly agape at the implications; "Uh, Miko, what day is today?"
"October twenty-sixth, duh."
The resident computer genius pushed his glasses further up on his nose, as though to make sure he was reading it right; "Well, according to the date-stamp, this picture was taken on November first, the year twenty-twelve."
"Uh, Raf," Miko began, raising an eyebrow that was clearly meant to question his sanity; "November first hasn't happened yet."
"No, it most certainly has not!" the pink phone was suddenly snatched from Miko's grasp, and, with an indignant 'hey!' on the exchange student's part, both of the children looked up to find Agent Fowler standing there, the old cell phone dangling from his grip as he eyed the image on the screen with a grim expression.
Miko angrily folded her arms and pouted; "I was looking at that, y'know."
"Yeah, well, everything on this phone just became highly classified material," The man stated, and gestured to them with a shooing motion as he turned to leave; clearly heading over to where Optimus and Ratchet were standing by the med-berth, reassuring Nurse Darby that her patient was resting when they left.
"Prime!" he shouted, lifting the phone above his head and waving it wildly, "You and I have some footage to review!"
"So it would seem;" the Prime rumbled, and offered a servo to the man, who hesitantly clamoured aboard with careful, uncertain footsteps, "I believe my office would be better suited to the coming discussion; Ratchet," the medic glanced in Optimus' direction to show he was listening, "Call Smokescreen and Arcee back to base, and run a scan to determine if our guest's claim is true; inform me of the results as soon as you are finished."
"Optimus," Ratchet began, peering at his leader searchingly, "you don't seriously believe…"
"If anything she has said is true," the Prime began, turning to leave the room, "then we are not at liberty to dismiss her claims."
The medic frowned at the mech's retreating back, automatically tuning out Miko's shouting in the background,—hey, you still have my battery!—but offered no further protests as he raised a servo to his comlink; "Arcee and Smokescreen, return to base as soon as you are able."
Their responses crackled over the com after brief moments of silence.
"You got it Doc!"
He gritted his denta at the rookie's cheery reply, but Arcee's voice cut in before he could even say a word about that infernal nickname.
"We'll head back as soon as I pick Jack up from work."
"See that you do, Ratchet out," the Medic dropped his servo back to his side with a tired sigh as he began setting up his scanning equipment.
"I'm going to go check on our patient," June told the room at large as she began making her way down the steps and to the back rooms, "she doesn't strike me as the type to listen to the doctor's orders." Ratchet merely let out an annoyed huff from his vents by way of acknowledgement, and the woman shook her head at his back in exasperation before vanishing down the hallway; sometimes she just didn't understand that mech.
"Hey Doc," Bulkhead suddenly called, derailing Ratchet's concentration on his task before it could pick up speed.
"My name is Ratchet," said "doc" snapped, shooting the Wrecker a glare. The green giant went on as though he hadn't been interrupted.
"So what's the situation with our mystery girl? Is it MECH or what?"
The medic scoffed, "She says she's from the future."
The green mech blinked; "Seriously?"
"No way! That's sooo cool!"
"Is she really?"
Brrr—wheep-eee—bzzzt.
Ratchet turned to find the four other occupants of the room staring at him expectantly now, and he glared at them as though hoping they would all disappear from existence and stop plaguing his own. "Go away and let me work," he snapped when he realized his first approach clearly wasn't working.
As one might predict, Miko immediately began to whine; "Aw, c'mon Doc—"
"It's Ratchet!"
"—Spill! You can't just leave us hanging!" Bumblebee eagerly buzzed his agreement with the young Asian, and that was all it took for the rest of them to join in.
"ENOUGH!" he snarled after mere seconds, and they all immediately fell silent. "I have work to do to, and I am quite certain the rest of you have better things to do than badger me! If this girl turns out to be telling the truth—which is highly unlikely—then Optimus will be the one you hear it from. Are we clear?"
A moment of stunned silence followed his outburst before Miko, ever the cheeky one, rolled her eyes, folded her arms, and promptly stated in a sing-song voice; "Somebody'sbeen in the Synth-En again."
The glare the incensed medic levelled on the fifteen year-old had Bulkhead fearing for his charge's life, and he promptly scooped her up, one servo protectively shielding her from the medic's gaze as he slowly stepped away, clearly ready to bolt as Ratchet's optics followed him.
"Uh…" the Wrecker began nervously, still shuffling slowly towards the hallway, "We're just gonna…uh…go see if Nurse Darby needs a hand! See ya, Ratchet!" And with that, the resident green giant swiftly disappeared down the corridor, but that didn't stop them all from hearing the echo of Miko's cry:
"Geez, what crawled up his tailpipe and died?"
Ratchet, with a furious sigh, drew a hand over his face and promptly lifted an optic ridge at the two remaining occupants, whom, seeing the lingering rage and irritation in the depths of his optics, looked at each other briefly.
"Drive?" Raf suggested nervously, and Bumblebee buzzed an eager acceptance as he picked up the twelve year-old and transformed around him, not even beeping a farewell to the medic as he drove out of the base like a bat out of hell.
The last thing Rafael had wanted to do at that point was tell the medic he didn't think the girl was lying.
Ah, Miko. Chapters like this just make me love her character even more ^.^
Now it's annonymous review time! (Thought I`d include these in the update just because)
Guest: I'm glad you're enjoying it. Throwing Miko's old phone into the story was something I just couldn't resist. I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations.
Cool: Why thank you, I will certainly try to!
Guste: No cliffhanger this time! Hope you're still enjoying it.
FFV: Yes, in the show, MECH was disbanded because Silas-er, Cylas-killed all of the members who were present upon his awakening. However, I like to think that there were more people involved with MECH than just those we were shown, mainly because, though I did enjoy Human Factor, I thought while watching "Dudes! Seriously? Why did you portray Cylas as such a devious jerk if he's gonna do something so stupid? Come on! I thought he was smarter than that!" as such, if they never expand on what MECH started in future seasons, I will be severely disappointed that they destroyed such a good plot point for the sake of one episode. (I'm still disappointed they killed Breakdown before we learned the story between him and Bulkhead; hopefully they make up for that later somehow too). On another note, yes, there is the possibility Arcee and Titania will commiserate on their many losses together; however, much like Arcee, Titania isn't very quick to open up. There may be a chapter where they come to establish camaraderie, but it probably won't be for a while. Hope you enjoyed! Oh! One more thing, as for Titania's cannon making you think of ROTF, I was actually thinking of it myself when I wrote it! You know, the whole, "humans are too destructive to be trusted with our weaponry" thing.
