Intermission 3

100 Suns

"I believe in nothing, not in peace and not in war, I believe in nothing, but the truth in who we are"

The stars could actually be quite interesting if one had the knowledge and time to watch them, things that Lightningstrike had an overabundance of. After who knew how many vorns of having nothing to do other than watch them, she was getting more than a little bored, however.

She had been drifting aimlessly in space for a very long time. She wasn't sure how long; her chronometer was busted. A lot of her systems were not functional, actually. Her panicked flight through the ruins of the Decepticon base in Polyhex and the chaos of the battle of Tyger Pax had done more damage than she had originally thought. Then again, she had not been truly thinking, simply running on instinct and battle protocols and carrying out her last order from Soundwave: run.

She sort of wished she hadn't now.

Most of her time had been spent drifting and though she knew it could have been spent far worse, she hated it because she had drifted farther from her twin in that time. And ever since she woke up after Primus-knew-how-long, that drifting had hurt.

That pain kept her over crowded processor somewhat in line, keeping her focused enough to steer her cometary form in the direction she could feel her sister in. Her sister was the one thing she could think of that wasn't likely to desert her. Not after all the things she'd seen since she woke up.

Primus, she had seen a lot. Too much. The firewalls around her memories the Soundwave had told her not to tamper with had come tumbling down. She wished that she hadn't let him give her that antiviral code because she knew it wasn't antiviral the second he uploaded it. But, she had trusted him. Was she a lousy Decepticon, or what? But, then again, was she really a Con now? Her memories begged to differ.

Lightningstrike- should she still call herself that? She remembered her name now, but this one was known and comfortable for her. She needed something to hang onto while she was stuck floating in this nothingness, both literally and figuratively. Her designation was a wisp of smoke but it was a wisp she could focus on.

What good could it possibly do to focus on anything, though? Everything she remembered contradicted everything she thought she knew. With her world crumbling around her, she found that she couldn't really believe in anything. She couldn't believe in the War or her cause (was it really hers or had it always been Soundwave's?) when all the memories she had grounded her conviction in were shams. She couldn't believe in Soundwave because he had spent her entire functioning lying to her. She couldn't even believe in her own designation anymore for Primus' sake! She didn't know what to call herself, didn't know what (or did she mean who?) to answer to because she didn't know which one was really her anymore. She would believe in her sister, her twin, her half-spark because she couldn't not believe the femme who had been apart of her since she could remember. She couldn't distrust her own spark. That didn't mean she forgave Strikezone (because she was pretty sure that her carefree sister was gone. Cybertronians don't choose the color black for their finish lightly) in the least, just that she would give her the chance no one else would get.

Cybertron was dead, the All Spark lost and she would be slagged if she blindly trusted again, even if it was divinity like Primus. Divinity didn't exist and neither did Primus. Not in her world. Not here where war doesn't stop and families are ripped apart and races destroy themselves.

Her pained half-spark still pulsed and so did her sister's. For now, that was enough.

Soundwave would be disappointed if he saw her now, she supposed. But then again, why should she care what he thought? He was a traitor; he had turned her into an accomplice! But she knew she was doing nothing more than making excuses for her unfounded anger. It was just so much easier to be angry than really look at her feelings. There was nothing but dark things in the cage she built for her emotions, nothing but sorrow and pain and loneliness, betrayal and deceit and shame. Maybe it wasn't her fault, but so much could have happened differently. She could have actually tried to do something back then other than scream and shout (would she have been able to? It had been so long she was defenseless like she had been then, she wasn't sure if she could have done anything) when they came for her and her family.

Maybe then her Creators would have lived.

But now wasn't the time for what ifs. She wasn't sure that there would ever be a time for that particular what if. It hurt too much and right now, when all she had were faded memories of happiness and sharp recollections of pain, she couldn't take more than absolutely necessary. She turned her attention quickly to something that would hopefully require all her focus.

Like a full systems check.

The state of her inner workings were cringe-worthy and she almost couldn't believe the amount of damage she had sustained without noticing. Her comms were down, EM field dampeners nonfunctional, some of her neural and sensory nets were glitching out or not sending information at all, even her energon converter was only working at half capacity. If she hadn't have gone into stasis when she did, she might have offlined. As it was, she was already dangerously close. She needed repairs and fast, preferably before she fell apart.

There were messages floating around in space, some old, others new and still others completely unintentional. It was out of habit that she scanned the codes of the passing streams of data in the void. It was completely by accident that she found the slightly modified Autobot signal. It hadn't changed much, just as much as any mech's would over a long period of time. She went to work hacking it to get at the coded message and, corrupted and static filled as it was, she was almost excited when she found a set of coordinates along with a message.

"Before time began, there was the Cube… it has the power to create worlds… some wanted it for good, others for evil. And so began the war. A… the Cube was lost… We scattered across the galaxy… Searching every star… Earth… With the All Spark gone… We live among its people now, hiding in plain sight… more to them than meets the eye. I am Optimus Prime and I send this message to… taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We… are waiting."

While she still detested Autobots, she knew that finding that planet was her best bet for survival. And finding her sister. So she set course for planet Earth and prepared herself to deal with the Hatchet that the Autobots called their Chief Medical officer.