And Violet heads back to Ratchet but it's not all roses.

Chapter 19

The road back to the junkyard was empty allowing for a quiet drive back to where Violetwind had left the old medic. Driving through the entrance she did not notice the human walking by who gave the car a strange glance. He had gotten a glimpse through the window and could have sworn there was no driver. This curious young man decided to follow unbeknownst to the Bot.

Slowly the femme rolled through the wrecked vehicles, searching for the familiar ambulance. "Ratchet?" she called out in a whisper, "Ratchet, where are you? I'm back and you don't have to worry any more."

That is if he even was worried, Windy commented dryly.

"I'm sure he was at least somewhat concerned," she muttered quietly.

A scoff came from nearby, "Hrmph, concerned for your mental health." The orange and white medic rolled forward, transforming in front of her. He did not look happy.

See. What'd I tell ya. Not a warm welcome in sight.

The femme quietly shushed her inner counterpart.

Hey, it's not like he can hear me.

Well I can and you're awfully distracting. You think you can say so much more just cause I know what you are now?

Basically. Yep. she replied smugly.

Violetwind let out a soft sigh in defeat.

"Are you just going to sit there?" questioned Ratchet sharply, his optics narrowed.

"Hi, Ratchet," she squeaked under his scrutinising glare, not feeling up to transforming and having to actually look into his optics.

"What do you think you were doing running off like that?" he scolded. "What if the Deceptions had tracked you down. Then where would you be?"

"Please don't be mad at me. I needed some time to sort myself out," she stared to explain.

"Listen here-" a small sound cut him off, one not caused by either of the Bots.

That human who had followed Violetwind into the junkyard out of curiosity had heard the voices and come looking but tripped over a piece of scrap metal.

Ratchet looked down at him in shock, the young man staring up at him with much the same expression. After a few moments the frozen state broke. Shattering the moment, the medic made a noisy run for it, while the human quickly pulled out his phone.

"Nobody will ever believe this," he muttered as he snapped a blurry photo of the fleeing mech. Picture taken, the man dashed off.

Violetwind was never more thankful to have remained in vehicle mode than she was at that moment. They did not need the human to see two giant robots. She was also thankful for her darker colour too, making her harder to notice. It also meant the man had not realised just who or what Ratchet was talking to.

After the human had left and was well out of earshot, the femme trailed after the the medic. The orange and white bot had returned to his ambulance mode hiding among the wrecked cars.

"Ratchet! Now look what you've done. We didn't need that," she whined.

"Hmph," he grumbled in return. "Maybe if you hadn't wandered off it wouldn't have happened."

"But my time proved to be invaluable."

This earned some interest from him. "How so?"

Violetwind quickly explained about the events regarding the original Violetwind's crash to Earth and the mind transfer. She did her best to tell him about how he must have been able to detect Windy in her brain scans and their split consciousness.

When she was done she sat quietly, afraid of how he had taken it. The mech showed no signs of responding.

"Ratchet? Please don't just sit there... Say something..."

"Ok fine... I think you've been on the high grade! I know you've been complaining about a voice in your head but this is crazy! Human and Cybertronian minds cannot mix! It's impossible!"

Taken back by his harshness, the femme rolled away a little. "But, it's true..."

"You've really gone off the deep end," he muttered. "Maybe I should have seen this coming with the damage to your neural network. I should have done something to prevent it..."

"But I'm not crazy!" she protested. "Tell me how to prove it and I will!"

The mech spluttered, "Ugh, if you wish to peruse this wild endeavour, fine."

"Good, what will you have me do?"

He thought for a while before replying. "Answer some questions for me then."

"Ok, ask away."

Knowing that the femme had said she had no memory of the crash he went with the obvious. "The ship you arrived to earth in, was it an Autobot one?"

I arrived in a stolen Deceptions ship.

"No. It was stolen from the 'Cons."

"Hmm," he had not really been expecting her to answer that. It still did not prove much, she could have just regained her memories. Speaking again he posed another question. "What was in the ship's data files?"

Nothing, I deleted them soon after impact. With a wrecked ship the 'Cons could track I knew they would be coming sooner or later and I could not let them get them. I didn't want to risk the 'Cons tracking where I'd come from. I didn't want to compromise Elita One and the rest of the squad's safety. They're safe where they are now, on another plant in a distant galaxy where I left them. And the plans Megatron was looking for on there never existed in the ship's data banks, her inner counterpart replied.

"There wasn't anything in them. Not after Windy landed anyway. She deleted the files."

"Why?"

"Because she didn't want the Decepticons to find out where she'd come from. She left Elita One and her group back on another planet and didn't want them to find out where they were. I believe Megatron had suspected the ship might have carried files of the weapon plans and when he couldn't find them came after me but apparently they were never there."

That's because, although I may have stolen them when I left the 'Cons, I destroyed them soon after.

The femme inwardly grinned in amusement.

Ratchet was not pleased though, grunting in annoyance, coming up with something else to ask her. "Humph. How do you explain you transformation troubles after you scanned an Earth vehicle?"

Windy gave her answer which the purple femme parroted for the mech, "Our neural network was still adjusting to the two separate consciousnesses and I did not have a good enough mental connection with my body at the time, neural pathways were still forming then. It was most likely just a bit too soon to try something that physically taxing, but it worked out in the end so I guess it's ok."

The old medic did not like this. She had explained everything he asked of her and yet to him it still did not compute. He still could not believe this was possible. From what little he knew of humans, he understood that their minds were complex, perhaps more so than a Cybertronian's one. The information in their brains is surly not easy to transfer if it were even remotely possible.

Violetwind started to grow nervous as the mech sat there without a response. Eventually she broke the silence, "Well?"

"Well what?" he snapped back.

"Um, well, do you believe me?"

Ratchet pondered this for a moment before he replied. "I still don't see how this is possible. I don't believe it could be done."

"But I'm giving you the explanation to your scan anomaly! You're supposed to be a scientist! They're supposed to be open minded about new things!"

Slag, what's it take for him to get this through his fragging mind!

"But I don't believe the science of this even exists!"

Well guess what, it does, Ratchet! What he really wouldn't believe is some of the horrors that occurred in the Deception laboratories! Now that stuff would give even the Wreckers nightmares!

"Fine then. I guess there's no need to continue this conversation any longer. We obviously can't see things on the same page..." reversing her wheels span briefly on the dirt before she gained traction and left the mech, a heavy feeling in her spark. Driving away she found her own spot on the junkyard to be alone.

Turning off her lights she sighed in defeat, "That went well..."

What'd ya expect from 'Mr sunshine' over there?

"I donno. Guess I thought things would go better than they did... What if no one else believes me either? Where does that leave us?"

Hopefully at least with a team because it means they're alive and we're back together.

"Yeah... I hope everyone's ok..."

~oOo~

Sunrise came and went, bringing out the humans from their houses and off to work, including those who worked at the junkyard. Violetwind kept herself to the back of the yard, away from the humans. She also stayed away from Ratchet as well, not desiring to see him. It was not like they could talk while people were around anyway. The night's run in with the man was enough and they hoped nobody else would come investigating.

The day went by quickly, night soon arriving again. Even so, Violetwind still did not move from her place. If Ratchet wanted to talk, he could come to her not the other way around. After all she already had company; Windy was keeping her occupied with stories of both their pasts between short naps, telling her all about her own family (which she could no longer remember herself) and Windy's past friends. In particular her inner companion spoke a lot about her own past with Elita One's squad. She took her time telling Violetwind about each of them and explaining the dreams she had with them.

Elita One was the femme in pink. She was a great leader. Wise but caring, like Optimus. The blue one was Chromia. She was our second in command. The one with light green colouring was Moonracer. She is the youngest of the group with a bubbly personality. Then there's Greenlight. I bet you can guess what colour she was. And there was Firestar. She was the red and orange one. And finally, our flier, the silver and blue femme, Coriolis. We were rather lucky to have her. Being a jet she came in handy for scouting as well as having aerial support.

That dream you had, it was back when we were amidst the war. It was a tough time. We were fighting our afts off to protect the energon carrier. Con's didn't like that we'd taken what might have been the last largest deposit of energon left on the planet. We desperately needed it for the Ark, a ship to carry most of the Bots off world. We needed to live somewhere else until Cybertron could support life once again. Megatron... Violetwind felt anger roll off her companion, like a volcano coming to a boil. Megatron killed our planet.

After a moment Windy managed to contain her fury and kept going with the story, The energon carrier was under heavy fire and at that time we were doing our best to stop the Decepticons from taking it. The part you saw in the dream was when we were being beaten back and had to regroup. After that we set off again to try, fighting them off for a little while but then- she stopped mid-sentence as a small shout cut through the night.

Amidst the usual quietness of night, the femme thought a small shout had called, yelling out the Autobot medic's name. This puzzled her. Who would do that?

Driving toward the sound out of curiosity, she indeed heard someone talking. "...it's me, Raf. Uh, Ratchet?"

It was Bumblebee and Rafael, the former sporting a new paint job where his colours had been reversed so that he was now more black than yellow.

"Go away," the old mech grumbled.

Bumblebee knelt down, beeping at him. 'Why would we do that?'

"You're interrupting my power down, that's why," he returned sharply.

The boy and car shared a look between them, the latter whirring, 'What's gotten up his tailpipe?'

Rafael tried again to talk with the medic, "Come on, Ratchet. We need your help to find the others."

"Well, you don't need to come look for me," Violetwind called out, driving up and transforming to stand beside the scout. Lifting her arms, she stretched out the kinks that came with remaining in vehicle mode for so long.

'Violet! It's good to see that your ok,' trilled Bumblebee happily.

"It's good to see you too, Bee," she gave him a strained smile. Looking down at her pedes her gaze softened as her optics fell on the boy. Leaning over she extended a hand for him to climb onto, which he did. Bringing him to her chest for a hug she murmured, "I'm glad to see that your here and safe."

"Me too." Rafael grinned and the femme put him down.

"How did you find us?" she asked curiously, wondering how they were able to track them down without the base's scanners.

The young human adjusted his glasses as he replied, "I found a photo of Ratchet online."

"Well, at least that was good for something," she muttered, knowing it must have been that man that had caught them the previous night.

The ambulance merely grunted.

'And you don't have to worry about it being around any more either. Raf made sure to scrub it after we'd found it,' Bumblebee added.

"So what are we doing now then?" the femme asked.

'We've got to get back together to stop Megatron.' The scout made a show of raising his fist in defiance.

"We can't stop Megatron! Not any more. The war is over. And we, lost..."

Rafael turned to yell in disbelief at the white and orange mech. "You're giving up?! We can't just give up!"

Transforming, Ratchet glared down at the boy, waving his arms in frustration. "Then tell me what we can do! Without communications, without a ground bridge, without a base of operations or resources of any kind!"

'Starscream survived out here on his own.' Bumblebee countered.

"Bee's right! We know Starscream had access to a ground bridge while he was operating solo," the young human's eyes rolled around as he laid out his thoughts, not happy with the way Ratchet was responding.

"That's right, that ship," Violetwind agreed, remembering her brief visit there a short while ago.

"Yes, yes," he grumbled, nodding his head and looking about with disinterest, "He'd clearly been using the derelict Decepticon ship the Harbinger. What does that have to do with anything?"

The young human appeared to be loosing patience with the stubborn mech, his tone uncharacteristically snappy. "It could be full of Cybertronian tech and it's probably abandoned again now that Starscream's back with the Cons."

The Bot responded with an annoyed splutter. "Well resources won't be of much use, not without someone to... lead us..." His shoulders sagged in defeat, optics closed.

"It's a start!"

"Then you'll have to start without me!" Ratchet growled, not wanting any part of it. Things were bad enough as it was an he had no desire to get further involved in anything. "This is someone else's fight now."

"There is no one else, Ratchet! Just us! Just the team!" he indicated to himself, Violetwind and Bumblebee.

The mech only shook his head. "Please..." He turned his back to them, returning to vehicle mode, "Just let me... Rust in peace."

Violetwind glanced between Ratchet and the boy, who's shoulders were drooped in defeat. She did not understand why Ratchet was being so stubborn. Did he not see that they needed him?

He needs a good kick in the aft.

She let out a short vent of air in amusement. The thought of someone giving Ratchet a kick in the rear bumper helped lift her spirits, even if it was by the smallest amount.

"Come on, Bee, Vi," the boy muttered walking away from the old medic.

Letting out a whir of comfort, Bumblebee transformed into his vehicle mode and let Rafael climb in.

The femme started to follow when she paused to rest her optics on Ratchet. "I really wish we could have persuaded you to see the truth. I may not have been through this war like you have but I'm not about to let this be the end. We do have the ability to do something and I'm not about to give up on my home."

Turning she left the mech, transforming into her alternate mode. "Come on guys, let's get out of here and get a start on things."

Bumblebee honked his horn in agreement and together they left for the Harbinger.

The drive to the Decepticon ship was a long one, during which, Violetwind took the time to explain about who she was and how she came to be within Windy's body. Unlike Ratchet, who was quick to dismiss her as crazy, they were much more welcoming to the idea.

"Woah, that's... That's incredible! A mind transfer, it's like something straight out of a science fiction film," the boy uttered in awe.

"Yeah, that's what I first thought. But it certainly explains a lot. Like the voice in my head and the help she gave me during fights."

Hey, I certainly didn't want to die too you know.

'So what do we call you now? Shall we use your old name?'

"No, no," she chuckled, "Violet or Violetwind is fine. Windy and I already agreed on that. I'm not exactly used to my old name anyway."

"So do you think Starscream knows what happened?" asked Rafael.

"We don't know for sure. I'm told Starscream knows about some of her old experiments and we believe he may have put it together..."

'If he has worked it out, what if her tells Megatron?' Bumblebee whirred with concern.

"What's he going to do with the knowledge anyway? What purpose would it serve? Megatron doesn't exactly like people anyway, why would he want to put them in Cybertronian bodies?"

To grow his army. Making bodies is much simpler than creating life. And I'm sure kidnapping humans already well versed in combat, would greatly aid him.

"Oh gosh..." The femme understood how devastating such knowledge could be, to not only the humans but also the Autobots, if Megatron could of pull off such a thing. "Windy says he could use it to add to his ranks using combat trained humans."

"We can't let him do that!"

Tell Raf that he won't have to worry. I'm the only one who knows how to perform it and I'm never going to tell a soul. Not even a cortical psychic patch could get it because it patches into your half of the neural network not mine.

"That's good news," she muttered, letting out a vent of relief. Speaking up she told the other's, "You don't have to worry about it happening. Megatron's not going to find out how it's done. Ever. Full stop. Windy is the only one who knows how to do it and she's not telling."

'What about if they use a patch?'

"Not even then. She says that it only goes into my half of our brain and if I don't know, no one else can find out."

And I'll never tell you because such a thing should never be performed again. This I vow. The repercussions are too great and not something that should be done. I realise that now, it's not at all ethical.

~oOo~

The rest of the drive to the Harbinger was spent discussing what they were going to do. Mostly it involved figuring out what on the ship they could use and what they would do with it to get Team Prime – minus Ratchet – back together.

Arriving at their destination, Bumblebee let out his passenger before both Bots transformed. Violetwind and Rafael were viewing the crashed Decepticon ship for the first time, both just looking over it with curiosity. The wreck lay half in the cliff side at an angle, the ships design of spikes adding to its ominous appearance.

"So this is going to help us out?" The femme looked unconvinced.

'We won't know until we find out.'

"C'mon, guys. I'm sure we'll find something. We can't give up hope. Earth's counting on us." Raf encouraged, looking up at the pair.

"You're right, let's check it out."

Entering the wreck they warily explored, being careful just in case the Decepticons had decided to return. Going through each room, dark from the lack of power to light it, they found no enemies but neither did they find anything of much value; just a small amount of energon.

Something they did stumble across was the ship's processor.

"If we can get this up and running, perhaps we can use its ground bridge," suggested the pre-teen.

Violetwind shrugged, "It's worth a try."

Together they worked to get the place up and running, mostly under Rafael and Windy's direction. Bumblebee was just plugging in what they hoped would be the final cord before they could have some power. Meanwhile Violetwind installed the last energon container into the same device. Three containers of energon lined its top surface, each only half full.

The mech whirred, giving Rafael a thumbs up that they were ready.

"Hold it right there, Bee," the boy replied from atop the monitor's keyboard. He jumped around pressing the keys and touched the screen as he did his best to get it running.

For a moment the lights came on, flickering brightly before the power shut off, leaving them in the dark once again.

Letting out a long sad tone, the scout dropped the cord he was still holding. In his disappointment, his shoulders slumped and door wings dropped.

Much like the mech, Violetwind's door wings sagged, showing how let down she felt by the failure. Leaning against the power source she muttered, "Well that didn't go to plan..."

"Keep trying. We'll figure it out," the young human encouraged. He started to reach for the screen again when he was stopped by a voice.

"Ep ep ep!"

Turning towards the doorway, the trio caught sight of their intruder. Smiles of joy and hope brightened eyes and optics, door wings perking with excitement and disbelief.

'You came!' Bumblebee started forward to greet Ratchet.

"You're miss calibrating the energon transducer," the mech replied not acknowledging him.

"Ratchet!" cried out the young human happily, raising his hands briefly in a cheer.

"We're glad to have you here," the femme added warmly.

"Yes, yes," he muttered pushing the predominantly black mech out of his path, "Now step out of my way so I can work."

Raf complied, jumping back and off the controls. However, he could not stop himself from smiling up at the medic.

Even the old bot himself was unable to stop a slight smile lighting up his optics.

Walking over, the purple femme asked tentatively, "So does this mean you believe me?"

Glancing her way before turning his attention to the screens, he replied gruffly, "I believe it warrants further investigation. But..." he paused, not taking his focus from his work, "I might be willing to give your explanation a chance..."

Ugh, Ratchet whyyy! Ok, well, I suppose if someone came to me with a story like that I would be doubtful too.
Had to re-write a lot of Vi and Ratch's conversation as she tries to convince him. I think I came out better though, but still not completely happy with it...