Hey guys! Thank you for all of your support! I appreciate every bit of it! On a different note, I also love this new Reader Traffic thing, I had no idea that there were readers from all over the world! That's so cool! Anyway, to the reviewers:
Nola1: I'm definitely going to keep writing! I read a quote somewhere, I think it was on facebook: Fanfiction; because it's cheaper than therapy. I loved it so I put it on my facebook page!
GrimlockX4: I suppose we'll have to wait and see what happens, huh? (wink) Thank you so much for the support!
FORDB: Thank you for the tremendous support! Yeah, I'm sure that the guys definitely have a better understanding of human qualities. Though I'm sure there will always be an embarassing question or two that will come up once and a while! I know, I need to kick things up a notch, and hopefully the next update will be full of akward moments!
So anyway, this one hasn't been wrung through the old spell checker either, so please be kind (heart)
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers or any other copyrighted person place or thing... or apparently any copyrighted noun... However I do own Cat, Five, Rotten, and any other made-up person not in the theatres. I think that about covers it.
--
Cat was thrown outside of the line of reflectors once again, hitting the round rolling and coming to a stop laying on her back. She took a moment to catch her breath, her face was covered in sweat and dirt, as well as a large gash above her left eyebrow. Two shadows loomed over Cat as she looked up to see the two officers standing over her.
"You don't seem to be getting anywhere..." the older one snorted with amusement.
Cat growled and stood back up, she stomped off towards the area where the shadows seemed to stand in waiting. Before Cat stepped over the line she suddenly stopped, looking along the ground where the reflectors were. The two officers walked up behind her, wondering what she was looking for.
"Something wrong?" the younger one asked.
"I'm doing this all wrong..." she began, "He's using them to protect his property, to ensure that no one steps foot in his house. But the projectors won't be inside the battleground..."
The officers looked to each other in confusion, then back to Cat.
"How would you know so much about this place?" the old man asked.
Cat didn't look back to them when she replied, "Also none of your business."
He pulled up on his belt again, giving a strange grunt and walking up to Cat putting a hand on her shoulder tightly and turning her towards him, pointing a finger in her face.
"I don't care if ya can pull apart unbreakable chains, or fight... whatever those are! When you're in my territory, you're under myauthority, and you'll answer ta me the same way every un else does!" His unshaven stubbly face was intense with fury.
Cat shook the man's grip from her shoulder and grabbed the finger that he held in front of her, squeezing tight, threatening to break it right off of his hand.
"Listen up, because I'm only going to say this once... I despisehumans, and I'm not afraid to do with one as I please. Not only that, but I'm under special authority that you'll never even know about. Now, you stand back and let me handle the big bad shadows, or the only thing that you'll be head cop of is the intensive care unit..." letting go of the old man's finger, the man grabbed at his phalangal and cradled it, the younger one approached.
The young officer knew that as far as he was concerned, this woman could tear him apart if he provoked her long enough. So he focused on what was at hand.
"So these 'projectors' that you're talking about, where are they?" he asked.
Cat was already scanning the area, looking for the boundaries, "They're hidden outside the confines of these reflectors," she turned to him and asked, "Do you have a flashlight?" he nodded, "Go that direction and make sure to follow the reflectors carefully. Keep an eye out for a large black box object. It could be up in some trees, in large bushes or in tall grass."
Cat started walking the opposite direction, watching where the line of reflectors were leading. The older man stood all the way up and turned towards the girl. He pulled out his small calibur revolver and was about to pull back the hammer and shoot when the younger one grabbed his arm and stopped him.
"What are you doing?!" he asked, struggling to hold the old man's arm back.
"No one man-handles me and gets away with it!" the old grouch replied, trying to shake off his friend.
"Are you out of your mind?! We need her!" he took the weapon from the old man and said in a loud whisper, "There's no way that we can take these things out by ourselves, and this woman seems to have an idea of what to do!"
"I don't care! No one who has ever stood up to me has lived ta tell about it!" the old man spat as he spoke he was so enraged.
The younger man handed back the gun and said softly, "We'll kill her after we get in the house... For now, we have a job to do..."
The old man smiled and took back his gun, and the two set off the opposite direction from Cat, following the reflectors as well.
--
"I don't know what to tell you, exactly," Doctor Peterson was about to leave the facility for home when he was caught by a worry stricken Bumblebee, who showed him the minor cut on Ironhide's arm, "I can fix the cut easy, no problem. But as for your question regarding whether or not the converters are speeding up the process, I wouldn't have a clue. That's a question better left for Ratchet or Wheeljack, and they're asleep," he explained as he put a bandaid over Ironhide's cut.
"Have they checked the converters recently?" Bumblebee asked.
"I imagine that they have. They've been working non-stop on this from the moment they wake until they're too exhausted to continue anymore," Peterson replied, "which didn't seem to take long. I've noticed that some of them wake up looking refreshed as any other human would, but it only takes a few hours for them to wear down to the point of looking as if they've been up for days at a time."
Even though he had looked over the schematics, unless he had been kept up to date on where the progress was made on, he would have no way of knowing what was really happening with the converters. Surely, there must have been a way to slow this down...
"Bumblebee," Ironhide's voice broke him out of his thoughts, "Our best bet is still out there, and she hasn't called."
The yellow mech put aside his worries for the converter crisis as he nodded at the muscular form of Ironhide, who looked as though he was in need of rest.
"I'll check her status, and you go and recharge," he ordered.
Oddly enough, Ironhide smirked and nodded in agreement, heading for the part of the med bay where the others were also sleeping on their individual cots.
Peterson watched as Ironhide left and then looked up to Bumblebee and asked, "Who hasn't called?"
"Cat promised that if nothing had gone awry, that she would call before ten this evening," checking his internal chronometer, he realized that he was thirty minutes behind, "so I need to activate the global position sensor that she has on her to see where she is, and try to contact her myself."
"I had no idea that she was searching for a solution. Where did she go?" Peterson asked as he followed Bumblebee to Ratchet's mainframe computer.
"New Mexico. Apparently there is a scientist there who had a hand in building the projection systems, and Cat believes that he might know the answer to some of our questions," Bumblebee answered.
Peterson watched as the mech brought the gps's system up and began punching in the access codes in, "What happens if you can't contact her?"
"Then I wake Optimus and have him authorize sending some of the military groups in after her," he said flatly.
--
Cat knew that the land that this house was on was quite large, but she didn't think it was thatlarge. She looked to her watch and saw that it was already a quarter past ten. She grimaced and reached over to her right arm and opened one of the several small panels on her forearm. The GPS light was dark, which meant that no one had activated it yet.
"That's a bit surprising..." Cat said to herself as she closed the panel and began following the reflectors again.
After traveling for such a long time upon the sandy dirt hills, Cat found a suspicious area. She bent down and surveyed the ground, looking from the pathway onto the more rugged and somewhat grassy portions of the ground, which laid right just a foot away from the relfectors. As she leaned down further to lightly wisk her hand over a small crack in the ground, the ground rose beneath her which knocked her off balance and sent her over a platform that had risen from where she stood. She landed on the ground with a hard thud, but quickly recovered, standing in a defensive position.
The platform rose to about twelve foot. A light shot out from the bulky top to it as dirt and sand still trickled off of the platform like droplets of water. Cat watched where the light was sent to and saw several shadows now standing just a few feet inside the battleground.
And then she smirked.
"Well, well. Look what I've found," Cat walked over to the pole that the platform had been lifted up on, and looked back down to the ground. A Metal plate was at the base of the pole, covering the empty space left by the platform. Cat got a closer look at it and saw a small hole in the plate. She used her left eye to try and see how deep the lift went down, but surmised that there was no passageway beneath it that could take her to the dwelling.
"I suppose that means that this can just be destroyed," Cat decided as she brought back her right fist and shot it towards the pole, landing a crushing blow to it, knocking it completely over, the projector hitting the ground and smashing into a thousand little pieces.
"Now to find the rest."
--
Several computer monitors were the only thing lighting a small basement room. On all of the screens were security monitors, covering every square inch of a large amount of property. One such monitor had the silhoette of a human sitting in front of it, the human's attention focused completely on it's contents.
"Could it be possible?..."
The monitor closed in on it's subject which was the determined and smirking face of Cat as she watched the projector fall to it's doom.
"It's... It's one of them! But how?!"
--
In all Cat had destroyed three projectors and had nearly made a full round of the reflectors. Oddly enough, she hadn't seen hide nor hair of those officers as she made her way towards the entrance once more.
"Hmmm... Well I'm not waiting on them. Maybe they've decided to chicken out. I don't see their car anymore..." Cat shrugged and looked around for a moment, focusing back on whether or not she had destroyed all of the projectors.
"I suppose there's only one way to find out," she stepped up to the line of reflectors and looked around. She didn't see one single sign of a shadow in sight. Neither her human vision, or her specialized lenses could see them.
Stepping onto the battlegrounds, Cat slowly made her way in, taking slow and quiet steps. This way she could hear anything approaching her better and react faster. She approached the house closer and closer. The only thing that Cat could make out in the distance was a few branches swaying in a light breeze. As she was now only a foot away from the front door of the house, Cat's instincts couldn't help but over take her. Something was there. As Cat finally reached out to touch the doorknob, her eyes strayed and caught something. In the reflection of the glass in the storm door, Cat could see a shadow just directly behind her. Her eyes widened, as she knew that she didn't have any time to turn and deflect it's attack. As she did her best to turn, she could almost feel the warmth of the shadow prick at her skin before there was a single gunshot.
And the shadow disappeared right in front of her face.
Cat looked around frantically, trying to see if it had moved to another blindspot, but she quickly spotted the police cruiser approaching, the younger officer hanging out of the passenger side window, his shotgun lowering. The two got out of the cruiser almost as soon as it came to a stop.
"You should always watch your back," the younger man smirked.
Cat scoffed, bordering on wanting to lecture him about how much more she knew about how to watch her back, but decided that she was busy with something else. She turned back towards the front door and laid her hands on the doorhandle of the storm door, and practically threw it off of it's hinges as she swung it open. However, before she could even lay a single finger on the wooden door's rusty handle, the door swung open from the inside.
Cat was face to face with a male figure. He had messy brown hair down to the level of his dark brown eyes. He was perhaps a half a foot taller than Cat herself. He was wearing a tight red t-shirt which had holes and grease stains on them; as well as a torn denim jeans. His face was thin and pale, as if he had barely eaten anything in weeks.
There was a long silence before Cat finally spoke first, "Brett Craft?"
The man nodded, his eyes studying her, making her feel somewhat like she was being scanned over and over again.
"What do you want?" he asked, suddenly noticing the two police officers behind Cat.
Cat smirked and replied, "We have some things to discuss..."
Brett had no choice but to let the three in. He stepped back into the house, turning his back to the three while they entered.
"I don't know what you would need to discuss with me... I'm just out here on this piece of property by myself, not hurting anyone," he growled.
"Oh, I think you know exactly why I'm here..." Cat replied back with a snarl.
Brett turned back to Cat and the officers but was stunned to see the two in uniform suddenly pointing their revolvers at Cat's head.
Cat looked back to the old man out of the side of her eye and then looked back to Brett.
"Friends of yours?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
"...I was just about to ask you the same thing..." he shrugged.
Cat didn't move an inch. Fast, though she was, the guns weren't even an inch from her skull.
"Now you listen to us... We're not as we appear to be. We're here for one thing, and one thing only," the young man's voice was stern and sure.
"Well then? What do you want?" Brett asked, his hands up in the 'I give up' fashion.
"We're here under the orders of a very special group. A group that's been watching you... One that was believed to have been disbanded just a few months ago," the young man explained.
Cat's heart jumped into her throat. It couldn't be... could it?
"There's only one group that I could imagine would be watching me closely... And that's sector eleven..." Brett narrowed his eyes.
Cat's eyes widened in shock. She could hear the chuckles and grunts behind her from the "officers".
"Very good. You haven't lost your touch, I see," the sector eleven operative replied.
"So then we're all here..." Cat growled, her anger building up more and more. She could feel it rushing through her body in a way that made her heart pound.
Brett and the other two looked to Cat with questioning looks.
"What'r ya talkin' about?" the old man asked.
"My name is Catherine Andrews... But the identity given to me while I was growing up was..." she gritted her teeth, "Project Seven!"
Brett's eyes widened in sudden realization, as well as the other two.
"So it's true then... One of you has survived," Brett said aloud in an astonished tone, "But how?"
"None of your business!" she spat.
The younger operative behind her laughed obnoxiously and said, "Guess that means we've got two things coming with us tonight! I should have known what you were! Oh yes, our bosses will be quite pleased with the bounty that we'll return with."
"What makes you think that I'd ever go anywhere with you!" Cat demanded.
She heard the hammer of a revolver click into place.
"I think we all know who has the upperhand here..." the younger man said in a loud whisper.
--
Bumblebee had just finished imputing the final codes into the mainframe for Cat's sensor unit, when he stopped. Peterson looked up to him to see the mech standing completely still for a moment.
"Something the matter?" the physician asked.
"I'm making one last attempt to contact Cat through her cellular device. If I can't get through, then I wake Optimus..."
It only took a few moments and several failed attempts to reach Cat's cell phone through Bumblebee's communication circuits before he ended the attempts, and activated the Global Positioning Sensor. The computer screen "beeped" as it positioned it's satellites to find the right frequency. It took just a few seconds before the sensor was found.
"Watch this to see if there are any changes while I get Optimus," the yellow mech quickly made his way to the room where the others slept.
--
Cat could have screamed with fury, but before she could respond her right arm suddenly made several "beeps". Everyone in the room focused on her once more.
"What's that?!" the older man asked.
Cat smirked dangerously as she replied, "My lifeline..."
The two sector eleven operatives looked to each other with confused looks before looking back to Cat.
"It shouldn't be too long before the U.S. military is on the front lawn," Cat chuckled.
"Then I guess that doesn't leave us much time..." the younger man spoke as he stepped around Cat and walking over to Brett.
"I need everything you have from specs to blueprints, as well as any kind of disks or jump drives that have data on all of the projects that you've ever worked on while employed with sector eleven," he waved the gun towards the direction of the next room, giving silent gestures to lead him where he needed to go.
"Don't do it..." Cat growled.
Brett and the young operative looked at Cat. She felt the old man grab the back of her shirt and ball it up in his fist.
"You're in no position to be barkin' orders girl..."
"Yes, stay quiet Seven. We'll have you taken care of just as soon as we collect what we were originally coming here for," the younger one grinned.
That was it.
Cat's anger suddenly rose within her again. Her left eye dialated until it was completely black. The younger man stood in front of Brett as they both watched Cat's behavior suddenly turn from docile to dangerous.
"Let me kill her now!" the old man yelled just before Cat suddenly turned on him, her shirt tearing, leaving only what was in his hand left.
She grabbed the gun at lightning quick speeds and ripped it out of his hands, throwing to the ground. She gripped his wrist with her left hand and his elbow with her right hand, turning his arm around his back and using him as a shield from the possible shots from the other man. While staring down Brett and the other, she easily broke both the old man's wrist and elbow, twisting his arm around twice with a growing strength, never taking her glaring eyes off of the sector eleven operative.
The old man screeched in agony, and the younger one quickly walked forward, preparing to take action against Cat. However, before he could confront her, the pained figure of the old man was suddenly thrown at him, causing him to drop his weapon as well as they both careened into the wall, breaking a large hanging mirror as well as knocking over a tall stand in which a planter sat upon it. After which, they hit the ground, both knocked unconscious.
Cat stood still, her eyes on the two on the floor, obviously not feeling as though Brett Craft was a threat to her. He walked slowly and carefully over to the two men and stared down at them, shaking his head.
"You broke my mirror..." he smirked and looked up to her, "That can't be very good luck..."
Cat scoffed and replied, "It couldn't be any worse than what I've had so far..." her left eye's lens closed, and it's normal yellow hue returned.
"Amazing..." Brett thought aloud as he stared at the girl.
"That's not the word that I would use to describe a lifetime of pain..." Cat huffed.
"No... I suppose it wouldn't..." Brett replied softly.
Cat looked back to the men before her mind shifted gears and went back to the sensor in her arm. She looked up to Brett and asked, "Do you have a land line here?"
Brett nodded.
"I need to make a quick call before the government really is on your front lawn," she demanded.
"U-uh yeah... Yeah it's j-just in the other room," he pointed her in the right direction.
--
Bumblebee's communication circuitry picked up an incoming call.
-Bumblebee?- Cat asked, unsure if the connection was made.
-Cat! I see that you've made it to the location, but you never contacted me- he felt relief wash over him.
-Yeah, sorry buddy. I don't have any signal on my cell phone where I am, and I just now got in- she explained.
-Did something happen to slow your progress?- Bumblebee asked.
-... Let's just say I have a lot of stuff to talk about and a lot of stuff to repress with everything else...-
"Bumblebee?" the yellow mech was shaken from his communications and looked down to the sleepy-eyed form of Optimus.
"Right... Optimus, I am receiving a call from Cat as we speak. She says she's all right, so there's no need to call in reinforcements," Bumblebee explained.
"Why was she so late in informing us of this?" Optimus grouched, Jazz joining them, rubbing his tired eyes as well.
"Wuz goin' on?" he asked, his soft, human feet patting against the floor.
-Bee?- Cat thought that she had lost the transmission.
-Cat, get back as soon as you can... The converters are speeding up, and I fear that we may not have much time- Cat noticed the waivering effect in Bumblebee's audio speakers.
-I will Bee. I promise. Just call off the dogs and I'll get to work on this- Cat tried to sound as calming and possible in her current frame of mind.
"Bumblebee?!" Optimus started to get annoyed with being ignored.
-Just hurry Cat...- Bumblebee ended the transmission.
"She didn't have any signal in the area where she is, and just now arrived on location. She says that she's working on the situation as we speak," Bumblebee explained.
"Took her a while to get there, she okay?" Jazz asked.
"She says she's all right, but from the sound of her voice... I believe that she's just finished battling," he was sure that he had recognized the variation of anger in her voice. Of course he's heard it before, so he was sure of himself.
"Battling? Battling what? Optimus, maybe we should send someone in afta her anyway just to-"
"It's all right Jazz. If she says that she's got it under control, then we should trust her. Let's wait it out and finish recharging for now," the leader put a hand to Jazz's shoulder.
--
Cat hung up the phone and sat down on the couch. She sighed and lowered her head, running her hands through her hair. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry out, but most of all she wanted to be near her friends. She felt lost. What was making her most upset was that just the mention of her project name seem to call to the darker side of her. She looked to her hands and saw that they were shaking quite badly. She could still feel the anger pulsing through her. The spite, the malice, the inner carnage; it was all eating her alive. She wasn't sure if she could even continue doing this right now, as she feared she may be overtaken.
"Uh," Cat looked up quickly, only to see the face of Brett Craft, who looked a bit unsettled.
"What?" Cat seethed.
"Those two guys look like they're coming to, and being that you seem to -uh- be able to-"
"Yeah, okay... I'll take care of it," she looked into his eyes, "And then you and I need to have a chat..."
--
Cat had tied and taped up the sector eleven operatives and sat Brett down in the kitchen.
"I need information..." she began.
"Which information?"
"Your projectors... You left some behind after sectors seven and eleven disbanded. We've been using them for training but... Well long story short, we've made a little mistake and instead of there being holograms, we have matter being transfered into the projected images..." she explained.
"Wait... What do you mean that the matter is being transfered into the images... You mean like... they're coming to life?" Cat gave a solemn nod.
"Uh... okay... That shouldn't be too hard. Have you tried to reverse the converters?" he asked.
"No... the amount of matter that's being transfered is too large for these small converters to handle. If we tried to reverse it, it could cause the matter to combust, and we can't afford that risk," Cat explained.
"Wait, wait wait... How much matter are we talking about here?" he raised an eyebrow.
Cat's eyes strayed around the room and she mumbled, looking as if she were doing calculations in her head.
"About... ten times the power of the sun?" she almost sounded as if she didn't want to say it, but she did anyway.
Brett's jaw practically dropped to the table, "T-there's... There's no such thing! You're trying to tell me that you have something that's ten times the power of the sun that's currently on this planet?!"
"Uh, no actually... Try about ten something's..." Cat replied.
Brett shot up from sitting down and said, "No... No, no, no, no... I'm sorry, but this is a little unbelievable even for me!" he left the room, Cat following.
"Oh please! You worked for an over-funded government lab! You've seen a lot of weird things pass through there!" she griped.
"Look!" Brett turned on her and yelled, "The last year of my life has been hell, all right?! I was the government's bitch! Always doing what I was told, never stopping to ask questions because I wasn't supposed to. And then when some sort of attacks happened at the Dam, I was laid off, my wife took my kids and left me, and ever since I've been shot at, bullied, and nearly kidnapped for all of the stuff that I know! I moved out here to get away from this kind of crap, and I refuse to be a part of it again!"
Cat gave him a few seconds to catch his breath before asking, "You done?"
"Am I... Am I done?! No! How about let's finish off with I don't know who the hell you are, or who you work for, or why the hell sector eleven is after me?!"
Cat crossed her arms, "I've told you who I am... I was Project-" she couldn't bring herself to say it, "I was one of the reasons why you were brought in to create those wretched things... My name is Catherine Lillian Andrews, and as for who I'm working for, I'm not working for anyone. But my friends are in trouble, and if I don't get answers soon, they're going to be in even bigger trouble!"
"Are your friends the ones working for the government?" Brett scoffed.
"They don't work for anyone but themselves... They're very unique individuals, and I'm..." she stopped and looked away, a stray expression of fear passed across her face, "I'm scared for them... They're the only ones I've got and I won't let them come to harm..."
Brett looked at her with a disbelieving look upon his face, "How are they in danger of being harmed? I thought that you said that the power was from something that's ten times that of the sun? Humans don't store that kind of power in their bodies!"
Cat looked him dead in the eyes and said, "I never said they were human..."
Brett's facial expression went from serious to "Are you serious?!"
He walked out of the room and quickly tried to get as far away from Cat as possible.
"No, I'm sorry but this is way out my league!" he said.
Cat pummeled him to the ground and said, "Don't give me that crap! You know all about Sector Seven and the "Ice Man" Project! Where'd you think NBE One came from?! It wasn't New Jersey, I can tell you that!"
Brett stopped struggling and turned his head to look at Cat from a side glance, "The... The Ice Man? So he's... he's from outerspace?"
"Yeah, and so are my friends... I need your help, and you're the only one who knows the projection system well enough to know what would happen in a case like this, and how to reverse it safely!" she demanded.
Brett stopped struggling altogether and let his forehead hit the kitchen tiles and let out a sigh, "My work room is in the basement..."
--
Chapter Teaser!
Cat followed the scientist to his workroom, and watched him closely. He stopped and turned slightly to Cat and said, "Step back..."
Cat frowned but did so, waiting to see what was about to happen. She looked around the old room and saw that it was in decrepit state.
"I think your workroom needs some... work..." Cat commented.
Brett smirked and said, "This is just the tip of the iceberg."
Cat watched as he opened a small panel of lights on the wall by an old door, which looked to be the entrance to a closet. After he punched a code in the panel, he reached down and opened the door just with a turn of the knob.
"Look, if you don't have the tools for a job like this, we could always just-" Cat began.
Brett opened the door the rest of the way and flipped the switch, causing a ballroom sized room filled to the brim with schematics, computers, and projector boxes that were cracked open, looking as if they were halfway through repair.
"Go back... to my... lab..." Cat's eyes widened in surprise.
And then she realized something... She could never let Wheeljack see this place...
--
Actually, I was going to make this the last bit of the Hologram problem, but this is way too long as it is. So the next chapter is going to be shorter than this one, but I couldn't imagine taking this one any farther than what it is. So hopefully I'll be updating soon and then we can get started on the next portion of Soul Recon. After the next chapter is when the heat starts turning up. Decepticons and Romance all in one chap!