Hey guys! I decided, since it was the holidays and all, to give you a little extra treat. Now this little piece is out of order from the story. It's supposed to have taken place on Christmas eve, but I have stories that I've written for before the Christmas piece, so try to stay calm, I'm not skipping that far just yet. And of course, for all of you who's ever wondered, I've given Cat an extra twist in the romance department. That should spice things up, don't you think?
I hope you all enjoy this little segment, and I hope that all of your holidays and New Years has, and will be wonderful!
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, but I own Cat outright.
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I was only a young boy when my father first took me to his work. Of course I wasn't supposed to be there, by any means. "Official government secrets" he would tell me. "Information that could cost this country it's very life as we know it" he would remind me. But that one day that he snuck me into the lab, I couldn't help but wander. For Pete's sake, I was six years old, what did he really expect me to do? But that day, I will never forget what happened when I found myself in the midst of that laboratory…
"Daddy?… Daddy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to run off! Could you please come find me?!" A little boy of six was trembling as he walked through a hallway that was barely lit.
It was Christmas Eve, and the scientists and lab technicians were given these two days off for the holidays. Only a skeleton crew remained to keep watch over the Hoover Dam. The doors that were normally heavily guarded were only being watched through camera monitors, and they weren't being watched over very well.
The youngster walked through a set of double doors and then down yet another darkened corridor.
"Daddy?!" the little one yelled, taking tiny footsteps as he looked around each end of the halls, continuing his short journey.
Walking halfway down the hall, he noticed another set of double doors, but these were a thicket of steel. The door handles were icy cold to the touch as the boy reached up to them. He pulled his hand away quickly from the cold but couldn't resist the urge to see if he could open the door. Pulling on the left door handle, it only went halfway down as he ran into the locked mode. It wouldn't budge. The little boy sighed and turned to continue down the hallway, but before he did went past the edge of the left door, he heard someone stirring within the confines of that room. He slowly turned to listen for anymore movement.
"Must have… heard it in my head…" the child consoled himself.
Another sound of rustling from behind the doors. The young boy walked back to the doors and this time reached up for the right door handle. Pulling on it slowly, it reached the halfway mark and to his surprise went even further, as the mechanism in the door clicked, cracking open just a hair. The boy peeked in and looked around as if to make sure that no one was paying attention. To his good luck, the guards were more interested in the company Christmas party that was going on rather than watching the video footages.
Opening the door and sticking his head in, the boy's hazel eyes scanned the room. It was just barely lit, just as the hallways were. Except there were brightened monitor screens at the back of the small room.
"Daddy?" the boy chimed, but of course there was no answer.
The quiet of the room was disturbed by more rustling noises on the rear of the room, where on the left side there was a small, barred room.
"Hello?" the boy called out.
Another rustling noise and he noticed that a small hand grasped at one of the bars.
"Who's there?" a little girl's voice asked.
The boy walked forward until he was nose to nose with the bars of the cell, the hand had removed itself from the bars and was buried in darkness in the back of the cell.
"Are you lost too?" he asked.
The little girl snorted and replied sarcastically, "Lost? I wish… If I were lost I'd at least make sure it wasn't in this place…"
The little boy grasped at the bars himself and said, "Where's your mommy and daddy?"
"… I don't have parents…" the girl's voice went cold.
"You don't have parents? What kind of kid doesn't have a mommy and a daddy?" the boy asked, thinking that the girl was telling a fib.
The sounds of metal clanging silently against the ground came from the back of the cell, and walking into the light, a young girl appeared. Her icy blue eyes glared into the boy's own eyes as he looked at the strange sight in front of him. The little girl's right arm was… metal?
"Wow! What's that?!" the little boy asked, enthralled, "Is that one of those "power glove" things from TV?!"
The girl looked to her right hand and then glowered up back at the boy, "Who are you?…"
"My name's Evan… What's your name?" Evan asked.
"….Seven…" the girl replied.
Evan giggled and said, "No, I asked what your name was, not how old you were!"
"And I told you my name… It's Seven…" the girl snarled.
"How old are you?" Evan asked.
"Six…" Seven replied.
"Me too! That's cool!… So… What are you doing in here by yourself?" Evan asked, looking around.
"I was born here… And I'll die here too…" Seven sighed as she walked up closer to the boy just a little.
"Die? Why would you die?" Evan asked.
"Five says that eventually they're going to kill us… That we'll never get to even see the sun for our entire lifetime… We're experiments… Lab rats, you could even say…" Seven replied.
"Five? Who's that?" Evan was confused. Most kids, his age, talked about their favorite television show, or their newest toys. But this girl could only talk about death.
The girl approached the boy until her face was mere inches away from his. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment as Seven opened her mouth to reply to him. Before another word could be spoken, the sound of the metal doors burst open. This startled Evan as he backed up a little with a slight jump, Seven made no movements whatsoever as she looked to the door.
"Evan! There you are! Do you know what kind of trouble I could get into for having you in here at all?! Not to mention having you back in the restricted areas -" the man pressed forward until he saw the little girl looking at him through the bars of her cell.
"Oh… Hello Seven…" the man said with a frown.
Seven backed up into the shadows once again.
"No, wait! This is my daddy! He can help you!" Evan looked to his father, "Daddy you have to help her! She said that someone's going to kill her and-"
"Don't bother…" Seven growled.
Evan looked to shadows then back to his father, who knelt down in front of the boy, "What's she talking about daddy?"
"Son…" the man looked to his child with a sorrowful expressions, "Remember when I told you that there were a lot of secrets here?"
The small boy nodded in reply.
"You can't tell anyone about this little girl. Can you do that for me?" the man put a hand to his son's shoulder and looked dead into his eyes.
"Not even mommy?" Evan asked, tears welling up in his eyes.
"Well… Your mother knows about her too… But you can't tell anyone other than mommy or me… Okay? We could be in a lot of trouble if anyone outside of this room knew about her," the man encouraged.
Evan looked to the back of the room, where he could just barely make out those icy blue eyes, which turned away from him and back into the dark room.
"I… I guess so…" Evan replied.
"That's my boy. Come on. Let's go," the man led the boy out of the room, but as they walked out of the door, Evan turned back towards the cell and grasped at the bars once more, looking into the shadows.
"You're not going to die here! I don't know why, but I know that you're not going to die here! You're going to see the sun one day… I promise!" And with that, the youngster ran back out of the room, joining his father.
A metal hand gently held onto the bars of the cell as the little girl's trembling voice said, "I hope you're right…" the hand releasing it's hold of the cell and disappeared into the darkness once more, only the sound of the door clicking into place and locking was left.
And since then, I can't help but have dreams, once and a while. I keep dreaming about when I first met her, and for some reason I believed that she escaped. Ever since a few months back, when my parents died in the "accident" at the Hoover Dam, I began to wonder about her again. Something in my heart tells me that she's free… I don't know why, but it's what I want to believe, so that's what I tell myself. Maybe one day… I'll meet her just one more time…
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"Shaw!" A harsh, male voice screeched, causing Evan to jump out of his skin practically as he quickly saved his journal entry and closed the web page that he was on, looking up at his boss.
The older man sighed, his beer belly was barely covered by his button down white and blue striped polo shirt. His shaggy, grey hair shook out of place as he brought an accusing finger up to the younger boy's face.
"You were visiting outside websites again, weren't you Shaw?" the older man growled.
"Uh- Of course not, Mr. Wright. I was just-uh… Getting Wednesday's presentation ready, and you just startled me is all," Evan came up with a story pretty quickly.
"I know that you know better than to believe that I'm that ignorant… I've been monitoring your computer, you've been doing nothing but write in your little diary-"
"Journal.."
"Excuse me?" Mr. Wright raised an eyebrow.
"It's… It's not a diary, it's a journal…" he replied, looking down to his desk like a dog with his tail between his legs.
The older man looked around quickly and leaned towards the boy, "Evan, I know that you just haven't been the same since your parents died, but you've got to get your head out of the clouds! I can't have all of our meetings with incomplete quarterly reports… You make sure to have that report done and ready by Wednesday, got it?"
Evan's shoulders slumped, he knew what was about to be said next.
"I'll put you down for overtime late tonight, but this is the last time! One more mess and…" the man stood back up and shrugged, "And I'll have no other choice but to fire you. Do we have an understanding?" Wright made it perfectly clear what the boy's options were.
"Yes sir…" Evan replied.
"Good. Don't disappoint me Shaw," and the man left Evan in his little cubical, which overlooked the city of Las Vegas.
Evan sighed and buried his head into his hands. Yet another night of overtime.. It's a good thing that he has the nearest Chinese restaurant's number on his cell phone's speed dial…
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It was around nine o'clock at night, and empty cartons of beef and broccoli, rice, and sweet and sour pork were scattered all over the place, the sounds of a computer keyboard typing away. Evan sighed deeply as he leaned back in his chair, running his hands through his short, dark brown hair, his eyes focusing up on the ceiling before looking back down to his desk, catching on a small item. Reaching over to shuffle some papers off of the small thing, Evan was happily surprised to find that fortune cookie he thought that he had misplaced.
Removing the plastic wrapper, he held the small dessert with both hands on either end and closed his eyes.
"Please tell me that I'll finish this report sometime in the next millennia…" he pleaded as he broke the cookie apart, the small slither of paper was in the right half.
He grabbed the paper and looked over it's words carefully.
"You will meet your fated other soon. Lucky Numbers 2,4,5,7,10"
"Fated other, huh? Well maybe that other can finish this damn report for me," he laughed as he shoved the slip of paper in his pocket.
Looking back at the computer screen, Evan munched on the last bit of fortune cookie and slammed his fists down on the desk.
"There's no way that I'm finishing this tonight! It's Christmas Eve for crying out loud! I'll take the chance and try finishing it before the meeting on Wednesday…" Evan grabbed all of the empty cartons of food and threw them in the trash can under his desk, grabbing his coat and saving his work before leaving.
Getting to the parking lot, Evan jumped into his old, shabby early nineties Cutlass Calais. He threw his suit coat in the passenger seat and buckled his seatbelt, starting the car up and pulling away. Of course by this time everyone else had gone home, so the parking lot was completely empty, allowing Evan to speed out of there as fast as he could.
Making his way past highway "95" as he sped east on highway "93", Evan hadn't even been listening to his radio as he was making his way to his small apartment in Boulder City.
"Thinks he can just keep me there forever… They don't own my soul!…" The older boy muttered to himself, not even noticing that he was going nearly one hundred and ten miles per hour. It helped that he was the only motorist on the road at the moment.
Rummaging his hand through his pants pocket absentmindedly, Evan felt the little slip of fortune cookie paper fall out of his pocket. Trying to catch it, he only managed to change it's direction of fall as it landed on the floor closer to the passenger side. He reached down to pick it up and brought it to his face overlooking it once more.
In a split second, something caught his eye as he looked up and saw that just about fifty feet down the road there was a…. A giant leg? Evan slammed on his brakes and swerved to avoid the thing, but only managed to turn his car sideways into the metal ligament, hitting it at a high rate of speed. This caused him to hit is head against the driver's side window, putting a crack in the window, and giving the boy a severe headache. His head hung for a moment as he moaned in discomfort from the blow, but looked up quickly when he felt the ground rumble.
The "legs" walked around to the front of the car and something bent over. The next thing Evan knew red "eyes" were staring at him brightly, and a rumble of laughter startled the boy.
"Humans are such weaklings!" The laughing black metal of a face stood back up, and a hand grabbed the car and flicked it, causing it to roll over.
It was only a good thing that Evan had buckled his seatbelt, because it was the only thing holding him in place, even though his already aching head hit the top(now bottom) of the car. He reached up and unbuckled the seatbelt, which caused him to fall the rest of the way to the roof of the car. He, then, reached up and grabbed the door handle of the door. With all of his strength, he shoved the door open and noticed that he was no longer on the road, but in the middle ditch between the two stretches of asphalt. He crawled into the soft grass and turned, seeing the "creature" walking towards him.
"Still alive, eh? Not for long!" the thing taunted Evan as a large metal hand began to reach towards him.
The hand stopped as the sound of a motorcycle speeding towards them. Evan looked towards the westbound portion of the road and saw a black motorcycle with orange and red flames on the sides pull up, the rider wearing a helmet with a black and white rider's coat. The bike came to a full stop in a hurry as it swerved to the side a little.
Evan waved his hands at the rider yelling, "Run! Get out of here!" But the rider only got off of the bike and stood it up.
"Didn't you hear me?! Get out of here before you get killed!" Evan yelled angrily.
"Stupid human! You should listen to good advice!" The large beast growled.
The rider then reached under their chin and undid the strap for the helmet. Bowing their head, they pulled off the helmet, long flowing brown hair emerged from the space, and a smiling woman's face pulled back up, staring up at the metallic being. Evan stopped waving his hands in shock. Why did that face look so familiar?
"What's the matter, Barricade?! Don't you remember me?!" The girl shouted.
Evan was even more shocked when the giant robot stepped back in it's own shock.
"No… It can't be! Megatron killed you! How is this possible?!" "Barricade" asked in a shaky voice.
"It takes more than a scrap heap of metal to keep me down!" the girl threw her helmet to the ground and walked forward, "And now it's time to show you what happens to bad little Decepticons when they toy with humans!"
The girl began to run forward, the beast running away. It… "transformed" into a mustang police interceptor and sped off towards Boulder City. Evan watched as it's red tail lights disappeared into the foggy night. He looked over to the girl who was standing in the middle of the road… Just standing there…
"H-hey.. W-who are you a-anyway?" Evan's pain caused him to relax on the grassy area as he stared up at the girl, who was unmoving.
Evan was about to yell at the girl to get her attention when he heard her talking.
"Yeah, Optimus it's me… Yeah I activated my emergency alert… Well, I'm afraid that I've had a sighting of Barricade… Calm down! I'm fine! It looks like he's headed to Boulder City. It's a small town so he's probably not going to stay there if he's afraid that I'll come after him… No, it was pretty funny actually. He didn't seem to like the fact that I'm alive and he took off like a bat out of hell!… It's an expression Optimus… Human injuries? I don't know…" The girl looked behind her at Evan.
"Hey! You okay?!" she yelled in an uninterested tone.
"D-Does it look like… I'm… Okay?!" Evan yelled, his anger rising.
The girl turned back around and sighed, "It'd probably be best if you called an emergency vehicle out here. I got a guy out here who's car rolled over… Okay… Why would I wait? I'm going after Barricade, someone will be out here in a-… Why not?!… Oh, come on! I could take him if I wanted to and-… It's not like I'm-… All right all right! Don't blow a gasket, okay?… Okay, bye," she turned around, a cell phone in her hand, and a Bluetooth device in her ear. She put the cell phone away in her pocket and walked over to Evan.
"Sorry you had to see that guy. It's a lot of uh… stuff… to explain," she took off her rider's jacket and put it over the boy. It confused Evan as to why, just a short moment ago, she seemed totally uninterested in his welfare, and now she was showing compassion.
Evan looked up at the girl who was kneeling over him. And the first thing that caught his eye was her metal right arm… Wait… Metal right arm?
"S-Seven? Is that you?" he asked.
The girl looked at him, completely taken off guard. She stood up and looked down at him, her eyes wide… Wait, did she have a yellow eye? That wasn't there when she was young, was it?
"Is it… really you?" he asked again, this time a little more unsure.
"Who the hell are you?!" the girl yelled as she backed up a little.
"You probably don't remember me… We met when… we were six years old… I'm Evan… Do you remember?" he asked, hoping that he was right.
"I… I-uh…" The girl looked around as if she were searching for the answers on the ground.
"Seven, it's me… You don't remember… do you?" Evan heard the sounds of an ambulance arriving, and so did the girl.
She looked down to the boy and backed up. Turning to run, she picked up her helmet, quickly shoved it on and jumped on her bike, burning rubber as she took off, out of sight.
"W-wait… Come… Back…." Evan blacked out, the sounds of paramedics jumping out of the ambulance was the last thing that he heard.
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Sitting up quickly with a gasp, Evan looked around the small hospital room where he had been sleeping for quite sometime.
"Seven?!" he yelled.
A moment of silence was taken in before another boy, about Evan's age ran into the room.
"Dude! You're awake! Man, you had us going there for a while!" he exclaimed with a cheerful smile.
Evan sighed with a sinking feeling… No he didn't dream that, she left him…
"What's seven? And why were you yelling for it?" the boy asked.
Evan looked to his roommate, "I'm sorry, Josh… Guess it was just a dream…"
"Well dream no more! They're cutting you loose here pretty soon, and we can get you home, man! I'll go get the doc in here," Josh left the room.
Evan leaned back onto the propped up head rest and looked across the room into a mirror.
"Maybe… It was all just a dream after all…"
As he stared into the mirror, he saw something across the room. Looking over to a closet, Evan got out of bed slowly and walked over, opening the door all the way, as it was already cracked open just a tiny bit. There, hanging alone in the small closet, was a black and white rider's jacket.
Evan pulled the jacket from it's hanger and turned it around, looking it over all the way. Running his hands in the pockets, he found the little slip of fortune cookie paper.
"They found that in your hand when the paramedics brought you in," Evan jumped at Josh's voice.
"Do they know who the jacket belongs to?!" Evan asked urgently.
"Sorry dude, they said that they caught a glimpse of someone riding away on a motorcycle without this jacket, but no one got the license plate number," his blond friend shrugged.
Evan sighed and looked back to the jacket.
"At least I know…" Evan whispered.
"Know what? Are you sure you're feeling okay dude?" Josh put a hand on his friend's shoulder in concern.
-At least I know that she's really alive… Maybe one day- Evan thought to himself as he gripped the jacket- one day, I'll meet her again…-
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Since this kind of is a Chapter Teaser in itself, it's just going to be a Fun Facts moment.
Fun Fact
I actually got the motorcycle idea from my brother. He has a great passion for motorcycles and cars and such, and he owns a nice crotch rocket. His friend owns a Hyabusa, so I implemented it into Cat's own lifestyle. She seemed like the motorcycle type anyway.