Hey All! All right then, this chapter is a bit... longer, than I said it would be. But I'm hoping that you'll all still find it to your liking anyway. So I've discovered a reason why I can't stand staring at my computer screen for very long anymore. My left eye is farsighted, and my right eye is nearsighted, which I think has been causing my nasty migranes, keeping me away from the computer more often than I'd like. So, I've got a way to hopefully fix this little problem, but it's slowed me down quite a bit. But I shall promise to prevail! Also, be sure to read the A/N at the bottom of this post! Anyway, onto the reviewers!
Oh! And Happy Labor Day weekend! I hope everyone enjoys themselves! I know I'll enjoy a day off of both jobs!
FORD B: Wish granted!
Nola1: No, if there's a couple of things that I won't have in my story, it's slash and romance between bad guys and good guys. I simply mean that there will be romance for Cat, and Decepticon activity. Promise!
GrimlockX4: Well, they're not exactly the same, but they're the lower classes of the group. We'll get to see the big Fat Cats of Sector Eleven eventually, but later on. Wheeljack definitely shouldn't see the lab, so he won't... At least for now... no promises lol.
Anyway, Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers or any other copyrighted and trademarked thing in this story! However I do own Cat, Five, and Rotten.
--
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...
"It's nothing like what I had when I worked at the Dam, but it's my own little personal space," Brett's face was expressionless.
Cat walked around the giant room, looking through some of the shells of the projectors on a nearby table, blue, green, red, and yellow wires strung all around, along with computer chips and soldering tools strewn about. The rooms walls had to have been about thirty feet tall, there were no windows, of course, being that they were below the ground in the depths of a basement. There had to have been about twelve computers, in the back of the room, all running diagnostics on different systems.
"I had this place built a few months before the attacks at the Dam. I had enough finances to retire from that place, and had planned to but they laid me off first. This place was already built, so I wanted to come here and do some web stuff to keep myself afloat," the tone of his voice hinted with anger and remorse.
"You mean you built the land to have all of this protection before you knew of the attacks?" Cat asked, wondering why someone would go so far to seclude themselves from the outside if they had no reason to.
"No. I installed the projectors and had the fences built after I moved here... It seemed prudent at the time to keep everyone out after the first attempted kidnapping..." he trailed off.
Cat turned and looked at him, noticing that his eyes went to the floor.
"It happens..." Brett looked up to Cat when he heard her voice.
"W..What does?" he asked.
"When someone knows that you're worth while, you become a target. You're not the first..." it was Cat's way of trying to console someone.
Brett frowned, "So then what would your itentions be?"
Cat raised an eyebrow, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you're here demanding me to help you. I can only assume that you would've forced me to give you the information, had I not been as helpful to you..."
Cat growled and asked, "Well then, I can do one of two things for you... I can call up my friends and have them send about a hundred guys in uniform to make you, or I can untie our friends upstairs so they can make you..."
Brett's eyes widened, "You wouldn't..."
"There's a few things that I've been known for, and a few things that I haven't been known for... I've been known to pull a few crazy stunts, but haven't really been known to feel remorse about them... Just ask my friends..." Cat crossed her arms.
"Blackmail..." Brett mumbled as he went to his massive computer units and sat down.
Cat smirked and said, "I do what I can."
--
Upstairs, the two sector eleven operatives were far less than cooperative, and the younger man that wasn't quite in as much pain as the other was already looking for a way out of his situation.
"Just move to the right! That's all I need you to do!" he ordered in a loud whisper.
"You ain't got yur arm twisted around and broken! Shut up!" the older one complained, tears actually pouring down his dirty face.
"This is going to take a while…" the younger one hung his head and sighed.
--
Cat sat down at one of the computer monitors and looked over the systems. She was actually impressed! This place seemed to have just as much ability as the computers at the Dam! She was overlooking everything when she felt something hot on the left side of her face. The kind of searing hot feeling that you get when you feel as if someone is looking at you from afar. She looked over to see Brett staring at her with that "look". Oh yeah, she knew that look.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" she asked angrily. She hated that look.
"I can't do this…" he replied.
"What?! Why not?!"
"…You're bleeding…" he pointed out.
Cat absent-mindedly reached up to the gash that was over her right eyebrow and felt at the dried, crusty blood.
"Yeah, so? I bleed all the time," she joked. For some reason, Brett didn't seem to find it quite as funny, giving her that raised eyebrow look that a certain medic normally would.
Brett got up from the computers and went over to a set of cabinets, using one of the smaller keys on his large set. He opened the cabinet and pulled out a large, white box, bringing it over to Cat, sitting down directly next to her and opening it. It was a first aid kit of the industrial sized. Bandages, isopropyl sprays, cotton balls, rags, cold compresses, tape and tools used to stitch were organized in the box.
"…You expect a lot of accidents working on computers there, doc?" Cat asked, staring at the lot of tools.
Brett stopped to glare at Cat momentarily before digging around, pulling out a rag and the isopropyl sprays.
"As a parent, I keep these kinds of things around. There's always an accident or two and you never know when something like this comes in handy," he said sternly, "and as a parent, I can't stand looking at something like this."
Cat grabbed Brett's wrist before he could reach up to clean her cut.
"The last person who touched me with that stuff had to have a twenty-five foot tall robot hold me down to do it…" she growled.
"I have to clean it… I can't sit here and work, staring at that cut," he tried to reason.
"…You work, I'll clean it…" Cat decided that she was going to have to do the job, because she certainly wasn't going to let a perfect stranger touch her.
Cat suddenly noticed that Brett's eyes had strayed from her forehead to her right arm, which was holding his left wrist. He was staring at it with such a forlorn expression. Cat pulled her arm back as soon as she noticed this and grabbed the rag and spray from him, turning away.
"…You were just a baby…" he was down to a whisper.
Cat didn't even turn back to him in acknowledgement. It was hard enough that she was trying to fight some of the violent urges that she was feeling now, and she really didn't want to have to make anymore extra special effort than what she was already doing.
"I do remember you… I remember you were the first one to test the projectors for it's first use… I remember watching you, almost unable to believe that anyone could have that much strength… Especially someone who was so young… Looking back at it, I wish that I had never created these damn things… I couldn't imagine my own children going through what you-"
"LOOK!" Cat slammed her fists down on the wooden desk, "I didn't come here to relive my pathetic existence back in that place… I made my escape from that hell a long time ago, and even though I prefer to act as though it never happened, I get to think about it every day, and relive it in my nightmares!" she looked at him with a glare full of malice, "You think you've got it bad just because someone's tried to kidnap you?! Or because people want the information you have?! You don't know anything! Up to this point, no matter what happens to you, it won't be anywhere NEAR what my life has been!"
Brett was still as stone. Afraid to move, almost in the way that you would stay still because you would fear that a nearby wild animal would attack if you so much as wiggled a toe.
"And to top it all off, my friends are turning into something they're not, and if that happens it'll only prove that everything I touch turns to shit!… So please don't dwell on my past… I don't think I can take it at this point…" Cat tried to calm herself by looking away from the scientist and dabbing the isopropyl at her cut ever so gently.
"I-… I'm sorry… I didn't mean to-"
"No one ever does… But now you know…" she whispered, "Please work on the converter Doctor Craft… I don't have much time…"
Brett nodded slowly, turning back to the computer that he was at earlier.
"How long until you can get a converter that can process the kind of energy that I've told you?" Cat asked after a long silence.
"I don't know… A day, two days probably," he shrugged.
Cat's head spun around on her shoulders towards the scientist, "We don't have two days! We don't even have a day!"
Brett stopped working and looked at Cat with a 'you're kidding' look on his face, "How the hell do you expect me to build something that powerful in a short amount of time?! It's impossible!"
Cat smirked and replied, "Now that's one of the things that my existence has taught me. If there's one thing I know, it's that nothing's impossible. Between my lost Alchemy skills, and giant alien mechanical beings, there's nothing that can't be accomplished."
"Having hope doesn't mean it'll get done…" Brett crossed his arms.
Cat raised a finger in the air as she proclaimed, "Ah, but I'm here to help! Let's get started on this!"
--
"Any answer?" Mikaela asked.
Sam shook his head and said, "No, it just keeps going straight to voicemail… Wherever she is, she's out of range for her cell to work…" he hung up his cell phone and sighed.
"Well, Bumblebee did say that she was going somewhere that was miles from any town," Mikaela reasoned as she cuddled up against Sam in the living room of the Witwicky's house.
"You think that the Autobots will be okay? I mean, it'd be weird having them has humans, you know?" Mikaela asked.
"I'm sure they'll make it out of this. They've been through tougher scrapes than this," Sam said confidently, even though he didn't feel very confident.
"Yeah… But what about Cat? She went off to some strangers house to get answers… I mean, he used to work for sector eleven right? How are we to know that he's not some evil, maniacal scientist that won't try and-"
"This is Cat you're talking about right? I know for a fact that she's been through worse things than this. Besides, she was specially trained by a section of the government that even the president didn't know about!" Sam reasoned.
Mikaela yawned, "Let's hope that it's enough…"
--
"Are you crazy?! You can't do that!" Brett scolded Cat as she was doing some soldering work to the shell of the new converter box.
"What's wrong with it?" Cat asked.
"You can't just hotwire those together! It could cause a short out and melt the main circuit box!" he showed the girl the schematics, pointing to some handwritten notes over specific circuitry.
At this point, it was nearly two in the morning, and Cat and Brett had managed to design and draw out the schematics for the massive converter. Having rushed the scientist made him burn himself on the soldering tools, so Cat took over. This only seemed to cause grief as to who was right about what should go where.
"Not if I rewire these two together," Cat replied calmly, pointing to the schematics as well.
"It's never been done! You could create a potential fire hazard!" Brett griped.
"Hmm… All right, have it your way," Cat shrugged and began her work once more.
"No, not there, here."
"Stop it…"
"You missed a spot!"
"I did that on purpose."
"Those wires are still loose!"
"Don't you have anything better to do than to bug me?!"
"Apparently you need someone to watch over you! Otherwise you'll screw this all up!"
"You're about to join our little friends upstairs with tape over your mouth!"
"Look, will you just listen to me?! I've been putting these things together since you were in diapers!"
"Yes, and now I'm going to upstage you, so stop pestering me!"
"Here, just let me do it!"
"Getting a little testy aren't we?"
"Look, you came here looking for my help, so let me help!"
"I'm very capable of reading and following blueprints, so stop yelling at me and hand me that soldering wire over there!"
Brett threw his hands up in frustration and groaned, "This'll never get done in time…"
Cat smirked and went back to work. It had gotten quiet for a few moments as she saw Brett's eyes completely trained on what she was doing. She was tired of being under scrutiny so she decided to start a new conversation.
"So what happened?" she asked.
Brett looked up to her for just a second, then looked back down to the feeble wiring job, "What happened with what?"
Cat shrugged, "What happened to make your family leave you here by yourself?"
Brett stopped watching what Cat was doing and looked to her, then looked away, walking over to the coffee pot, which was currently warming their second full pot of coffee.
"I don't know… I guess I was too much of a workaholic and after I was laid off at the Dam, I sort of just… Well if you'd ask my ex-wife she'd tell you that I was too zoned out all the time. She said I made too big of a deal about what I did for a living," he shrugged.
Cat stopped her soldering and looked around the ballroom sized lab and said, "You think maybe she was onto something?"
"I was trying to create a better life for my family!" he insisted.
"Yeah but, you can only work so hard before you take the rest of your life away, right? You're supposed to enjoy your family, not put your work before them," she went back to her work.
"I don't know… I guess a lot of things started to get to me after so long a time… Everyone at the Dam just became too much for me. Everything was a competition to get things done, and if you weren't first, you were fired. I couldn't afford to be fired and lose all the data that I had worked so hard for… If they had fired me in the middle of a project, then someone else would have taken over, and I wouldn't have gotten any credit for the work I've done…"
"And?" Cat asked with a raised eyebrow, her eyes steady on what she was doing.
"… And I guess I didn't think that my wife was very understanding of what I was trying to do… When I had a bad day at work, I couldn't tell her much about it, otherwise she would've known too much, and someone might have come for her and the kids instead of me. So I would have to keep everything bottled up, and life became more of a hassle than it did become enjoyable."
Brett gripped his coffee cup as though it were a force of life that he had to hang onto for dear life.
"Next thing I know, there's some sort of terrorist attacks on the Dam, they laid me off, making me promise never to reveal anything I knew to anyone. Then my wife took the kids and went to her parents house. I thought it would blow over but…" his voice trailed off into oblivion.
Cat stopped her work and looked to the scientist, who was staring at the floor as if he could see right through it. All too often, Cat thought, people were too involved in their work. She'd seen it a million times growing up. Some of the lab technicians that actually took decent care of her when it was their turn to would tell her all about their problems. Mostly because she wouldn't speak a word back to anyone at that point, but still. She could always see the bags under their eyes, indicating that they were spending too much time trying to be the best at their job. Such was the life of someone who spent more time devising ways of destroying her life, over spending time with their families and enjoying their own lives. Cat thought of all kinds of things that they could have been doing with their lives instead of trying to build the best human biological weapon.
Cat sighed and put the soldering tools down, taking her work gloves off and throwing them down on the table.
"You take over… I've just realized that I have some questions for our little buddies upstairs," she ordered, walking out of the lab and into the decrepit basement of the "normal" looking house.
She took the stairs that led back up into the kitchen, then turned left to head into the living room, where she had left the two to stew in their own minds. When she walked down the hallway and took a peek into the room, she saw that they were gone.
"I knew I should have just killed them when I had the chance…" Cat growled, her anger rising.
Before she even attempted to run a scan with her left eye to try and find their bio-signatures, Cat heard something knock over in another room.
"Just hold still! I've almost got it!" she could hear the voice of the younger man, and the sound of something sawing away at the layers of tape.
The two were in one of the bedrooms, having found a dulled butter knife to prop up in between a nightstand and a bedpost. The last bit of the tape snapped apart and the man's voice sounded cheery as he spoke, "I got it!"
The sound of a revolver's hammer clicking into place made the two men spin their heads around, only to see the barrel of a gun pointing directly at them once more.
"And now you're back to square one!" Cat gave a sarcastic grin.
--
Having re-taped and roped the men up this time, Cat sat down on the couch, putting her elbows on her knees, staring down at the two men in front of her.
"I have some questions for you, and I expect an answer… If I don't get an answer, then I break your fingers one by one. And if we get through all of your fingers, then we'll start working on your toes. And if we get through your toes, then we play the game of breaking whatever I feel like… Any questions?" Cat asked, an evil grin on her face.
No answer.
"Good… As you can imagine, the government would like nothing more than these two little problems of sectors seven and sector eleven to be nothing more than a memory. And it can't be, if we have some old members trying new tricks… Who are you, first of all?"
"We were sent here by some higher-ups in the new sector eleven… They wanted the information on the projectors…" it was obvious that the younger man knew more, so he explained, not wanting to have anything else broken.
"Why do they need the projectors?" Cat asked, worried about what it was that they were going to use them for.
"I'm not sure, exactly. I know it has something to do with them wanting to restart their research on…" he looked straight into Cat's eyes, "new projects…"
Cat's eyes widened… No… Just the idea of more children suffering the way she did was unbearable. However, she pressed on with her questioning.
"What's the point of creating new projects? They're obviously not going to be used by the government. The president won't have any of that," she asked.
"They don't want the government to use them… They want to use them against the government…" he coughed.
"I see… So why did you want me to come with you? I'd sooner die than work for sector eleven!" she growled.
"I don't think they want you for fighting…"
Cat was confused, "So they want something to do with my Alchemy? Because I'm no longer capable of performing that kind of thing."
He shook his head.
"Then what do they want with me?" Cat clenched her jaw. She was already growing weary of such vague answers.
"I believe that I've overheard them talking about different experimentations. But I'm not sure exactly what it is that they want to do…"
Cat scoffed, "No surprise there… Where are they?"
"I don't know…"
"You're lying! And lying is a personal foul, punishable by the breaking of joints!" Cat seethed, reaching down and grabbing one of the fingers on the younger man's bound hands.
"No! Please!" he begged, "I don't know where they're at because they constantly move!"
Cat stopped what she was about to do, but gripped on the finger tightly, giving him a reason to stay honest with her.
"What do you mean that they keep moving?!" she asked.
"They don't stay in an office, or a lab, they just move all the time! Renting properties for a month or so, and then leaving to rent another in a different state! They do it so they don't get caught!"
"What are their names?!" Cat seethed.
"I don't know! We only know them by alias!" he started to get choked up, feeling impending doom grip at his index finger.
"Makes sense, I suppose… I guess they do that so that if you guys get caught," she eyed them with a grin, "You're not entrusted with information that you'll most likely tell someone who's torturing you…"
The younger man's eyes strayed from all different places in the room to keep from having eye contact with Cat. However she took hold of his chin and made sure to look him straight in the eyes.
"And you're sure that you're telling me the truth? Nothing left out?" she asked.
The young man shook his head slow and steady.
Cat let go of the man's finger, hearing him sigh in relief as she did so.
"Make anymore attempts to escape and you won't have an unbroken bone in your body. Got it?" Cat growled.
The two men nodded, and Cat headed back down the stairs to the lab. She entered the large room once more when she saw that Brett had taken over the work on the shell, keeping steady hands on his tools.
"Well, that seemed to go well," Cat said with a large yawn.
This was not lost on Brett, as he stopped what he was doing and looked to the young woman.
"Why don't you get some sleep? I'll finish the work on this," he suggested.
"I need to be around to help you," she griped.
"There's nothing you can do. Right now it's all a matter of getting it built, and it's a one person job. You can't have two hands in here trying to finish it, it'll slow things down. How far do you need to drive?"
"Where do you think? The Dam, of course!" Cat said in agitation.
"You've got a long drive ahead of you. It'll just take me a couple of hours to finish this, and then you can be on your way," he said calmly.
"All right dad… I'll be upstairs if you need me then," Cat yawned again and headed up the stairs.
Taking it upon herself to go by the living room once more to make sure that the operatives were keeping quiet, she grinned slightly as they looked to her fearfully.
"Change of plans, boys. I'm staying up here to take a little nap. But don't worry, I usually wake up at the sound of a feather dropping to the floor, so any wrong move and I'll be sure to be there right on you," she informed them as she passed through and headed towards a guest bedroom.
--
It was about four o'clock in the morning, and the Dam was quiet and peaceful for such a-
"SIDES GET BACK HERE!" a loud growl echoed through the hallways.
So much for peaceful…
A muscular red headed human ran wildly down a bunker corridor, a mischievous grin plastered on his face as he ran for dear life. Not far behind him was an enraged blond… Or at least he was blond… It looked as though someone had doused him in a gallon or two of red paint. The angry Sunstreaker was obviously not amused with his brother's antics.
"That's what you get for trying to prank me earlier!" Sideswipe shouted with glee behind him as he ran.
The seething Sunstreaker could only think in terms of "Murder Death Kill" as he replied, "It didn't get you, it got Hide!"
"Yeah, but I got in trouble for it too!" the giggly human swiftly flew around yet another corner, hoping to throw off the trail of his brother so he could hide for a few… days…
As he rounded the corning he ran into something hard, knocking both himself and the other over. After landing face first on the ground, he looked up to see that he had actually knocked over, what looked to be, one of the women technicians. Paperwork and clipboards of information were now scattered all over the floor. The woman looked to Sideswipe with her own look of "Murder Death Kill" as she pushed her thin wire-framed glasses back up on the bridge of her nose and glared at the Autobot turned human. Her bright green eyes caught his own emerald ones as she brushed her brunette hair out of her face.
"I- uh… I… running… Sunny…" Sideswipe suddenly realized that his verbal skills had been reduced to nothing more than broken English.
"SIDESWIPE!" The growls of Sunny echoed the halls once more as he rounded the corner and laid eyes on his human brother.
"Yip…" Sideswipe deftly scooted over to the woman technician and hid behind her even as she was still sitting on her behind on the ground.
She looked back to the cowering human and asked, "You must be the twins?"
"Uh… yeah…" Sideswipe replied, never taking his eyes off of the filthy Sunstreaker.
She looked back to the paint-soaked Sunny and asked, "And that must be your work?"
Sideswipe moved to the other side of wherever Sunny wasn't behind the woman, trying to stay a safe distance from his enraged sibling.
"You do realize that it'll just wash off don't you?" she asked with a sarcastic frown.
Sunny stopped his chasing after his brother and looked to the human, his sapphire eyes burning with disdain.
"Who're you?!" he asked.
"My name is Doctor Murray… I work in the medical bay at night, and for the last month, I've been warned that I might see you two in my bay every once and a while," she replied as she began shuffling papers around.
"Warned?" Sideswipe asked.
"Yes. Ratchet has told me stories about you two," she replied once more.
Sunstreaker pointed a finger at his guilty sibling and said, "He got paint all over me!"
Gina sighed and stood up, pulling a rag out of her pocket and walking over to a nearby water fountain, soaking it and then twisting it to release the excess water from it so that it didn't drip. She walked back over to Sunstreaker and took a hold of his left arm, rubbing the wet rag against his skin, clearing a spot for him.
"There. You see? Just shower and it'll come off…" she ordered as she went back over to collecting her belongings.
Sideswipe helped her as Sunstreaker stared at the clean spot.
"We keep forgetting that we're not in our armor anymore. Usually when we get covered in paint it takes Ratchet a couple of hours to fix it," Sideswipe smiled.
"I suppose that's understandable… But no more running in the halls. You could hurt yourself and someone else if you're not careful," she replied.
"Thank you Doctor-" Sideswipe began as he handed the last clipboard back to the woman.
"Please, just call me Gina. And don't let me catch you two horsing around while I'm on shift, okay?" she said as she began walking towards her original destination.
Sunstreaker looked to Sideswipe to gripe at him when he stopped to notice that his brother seemed to be staring at the thin woman in her white lab coat and heels. He roughly shoved Sideswipe and growled.
"What the slag is wrong with you?!" the paint covered twin asked.
Sideswipe quickly recovered from his stare and stammered, "I-well-uh-you see- she- uh… N-nothing…"
Sunny grinned evilly, "It sure didn't look like nothing. What's the matter Sides?" he teased, "A human femme caught your attention?"
"Sideswipe turned and glared at his brother, "N-NO!"
"Oh really? Now who's red in the face?" Sunny teased again.
Sideswipe suddenly realized that he could feel his human cheeks burning with embarrassment, "Am not!"
"Now I know where you're going to be spending all of your nights at!" he yelled so that even though the good Doctor was now down the hall, she could hear what he was saying.
"Knock it off, Sunny!" Sideswipe growled, pummeling his brother to the ground, the two rolling around, one laughing hysterically the other still yelling "shut up!"
Gina got to the other end of the hallway, of course hearing everything that was being said, and turned and sighed.
Having these two around were certainly going to keep her from ever being bored, that was for sure…
--
Cat was in a dark place. She couldn't see anything other than the pitch black color that surrounded her.
"Cat…" a soft and gentle voice whispered from all around.
Cat turned back and forth, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from.
"Hello?! Five, is that you?!" she called out.
Cat could hear whispers of all kinds all around her. Some were familiar voices, the others were stray and unrecognizable. She was getting nervous and paranoid.
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!" she yelled into the blankness void.
The voices turned from whispers to laughter. Some of them were repeating something that was incoherent to her.
Cat's anger began to rise. She suddenly felt a wave of betrayal wash over her, as well as many other emotions that seemed to attack her innards.
"Let it go Seven," Five's voice was suddenly booming over all the others.
"Five?!" Cat yelled back.
"Release the energy that you feel! Release it!" the woman ordered.
Cat suddenly felt the familiar wave of energy begin to build up inside of her. The same energy that caused the surges in Mission City and at the Dam. Cat could feel a force within her that seemed to be of it's own accord, begging for her to release all of what she was bottling up inside of her. She began shaking badly, falling to the ground and curling up in a fetal position, clamping her right hand over her left fist tightly.
"N-n-no! F-Five! I c-c-can't do that! Someone might get h-hurt!" She stammered, holding what little strength she had left against the power working within her body.
"They must pay!" a new voice demanded, "They must pay for what they have done to us! ALL of us!"
Cat looked up to see silhouetted figures walking towards her. There were five of them in all, walking together towards the girl.
"Who?! Who has to pay?!" Cat could feel her heart pounding the blood through her veins. Her eyes widened in a near death shock as she saw the faces of the ones who now stood before her.
They were her brothers and sisters. Five of the projects stood over her, surrounding her with hard stares.
"You have them nearby, and they must pay!" one of her brothers spoke.
"Who? W-who's nearby?!" Cat asked.
"Two of the members of Sector Eleven… They are near… Make them pay dearly for what they have done to us!" one of her sisters spoke.
"Wha-?!" Cat suddenly remembered the two men who were tied up in Doctor Crafts' living room.
"Even after you have threatened them they are, as we speak, plotting to kill or capture you! Make them pay!"
"N-Not like this! There's a civilian near and it could-" she tried to reason.
"He was once a member of their organization! He must be eliminated!" one of the women spoke.
Five leaned down to Cat and put a hand to her shoulder in reassurance, "For us, Seven… For revenge…"
Cat looked around to those who stood near her. She suddenly realized that there were, in fact, only five of them. Adding herself, there were only six in the group… Where was the seventh?
Cat shrugged off Five's warm hand and yelled, "NO! I'm not a tool to be used as you please!"
The black void swirled around her, the voices disappearing.
--
"Closer! Come on! Just a little closer!" one of the sector eleven operatives said in a loud whisper.
They had maneuvered themselves to Cat's location in one of the guest rooms and were getting close to finding a way out of their binds, the ties coming undone, giving them the momentum to strike soon after.
The older man stopped suddenly.
"What the hell's the matter with you?!" the younger man protested.
"Something's wrong…" the old man said aloud.
"What?!" the younger man shouted just before he noticed a blue spark twirl past his face. His back had been turned to Cat as they were working on the ropes but he craned his neck so that he could see her better.
A blue light, followed by several sparks and pops were suddenly emanating from Cat's body. Her body began to shake violently.
"What's happening?!" The younger man asked.
"Somethin' bad…" The older man realized.
The blue light flashed and screams could be heard from everyone in the room, including Cat.
--
Down in the lab, Brett had just put the finishing touches on the new converter and he wiped his sweating forehead with an old shop rag and sighed in relief.
"There! Done and done!" he smiled happily.
There was a sudden jolt as the room shook for several seconds, knocking Brett off of his feet and onto the floor. The shaking didn't last long but the man suddenly heard loud screams just before it stopped. He rushed back onto his feet and ran up the stairs as fast as he could, running through the kitchen and living areas of the house he stopped and looked around. A blue light that was fading had caught his eye, and he headed for the bedroom from where it was coming from.
Stopping at the bedroom's door, Brett saw Cat sitting up in the bed rubbing her tired eyes, and the two sector eleven members with the backs flat against the other wall, their eyes wide, their mouths agape, as well as their breathing being harsh and shallow.
"What's going on?" Brett asked.
The men pointed their good hands at Cat, their pointed fingers shaking back and forth in Cat's direction.
Brett looked to the girl who had sat up in the bed and began rubbing at her temples. He went to her and sat down on the bed overlooking her with mild curiosity.
"What happened?" Cat asked in a raspy voice.
"We had an earthquake. I could feel it from downstairs even," Brett replied, noticing that the two men were shaking their heads as if to protest that it was an earthquake at all and pointed their fingers at Cat even more profusely, not saying a word.
"Are you all right?" Brett asked Cat.
"Yeah… I think so…" she looked up to him with a confused look.
"Well, you don't look any worse for the ware," he suddenly remembered important information, "Oh, by the way, I just finished the converter. It's ready to go when you are."
Cat rubbed at her eyes again and looked back towards the two men who were still in an obvious amount of shock and despair.
"How the hell did you two get out of your ties again?!" Cat waved a "no no" finger at them.
They both just shook their heads quickly, Cat noticing how badly they were shaking. They truly looked… fearful of her.
"Well whatever. I'll tie you up one more time and then have the real authorities take you away. And I'll be off on my way home," she stood up and walked over to the two, grabbing them by the scruffs of their shirts and throwing them together, retying the ropes that held them before and dragging them out into the living room.
"Now, let's get that box ready to go. I don't have any time to waste," Cat said as she grabbed her rider's jacket.
--
After tying down the converter box with a small tarp and several bungee cables to the second seat of her Busa, Cat felt assured that it would make the trip home. She zipped up her jacket and made sure that her cell phone and map were still in her pocket before throwing on her rider's gloves.
"I've contacted the CIA, and they're coming to pick those two up here shortly. I wouldn't think they it would be anymore than ten minutes or so," Cat informed Brett as she suited up to leave.
Brett just stood, looking as though he had something on his mind. Cat noticed the expression and stopped what she was doing.
"What?" she asked.
"… So once again, I'm used and abused, and then left out of the action…" he sighed.
Cat smirked and replied, "I'm sure I could think of a way to repay you for your service. You're saving a different species, so don't look so down on your luck."
Brett only nodded curtly in response.
"And I'll have some people out here to repair the damage that I did to your property," Cat added.
Brett smiled a half smile and said, "Thanks… That would save me a lot of time and effort."
Cat smirked and threw on her helmet, "No problem. You're doing me a favor of proportions that I don't even think you know, so it's only good of me to return the favor."
Cat jumped on the bike and turned the engine on. The early morning light of the crack of dawn made a gleam off of Cat's bike as she kicked the kickstand up and made her way down the driveway and out of sight.
"Good luck then," Brett said quietly as he waved.
Two small honks of the bike were made in response.
--
It was nearly two in the afternoon at the Dam, and Bumblebee was becoming more and more worried for his friends and commanders when they were having difficulties standing or walking for long periods of time. The situation was becoming dire, and if something weren't done soon, he was sure that they weren't going to survive as humans for very long after their sparks were fully converted to their human states.
The yellow mech was attending to Wheeljack's need for a sip of water when he noticed that Optimus was limping through the door of the med bay. He saw his leader trip over his own foot and begin to fall to the ground and rushed from where he was, knowing he wouldn't make it in time to catch him before he hit the concrete floor.
Optimus almost made a close encounter with the floor before he suddenly stopped his descent, feeling two, unfaltering arms catch around him. He slowly lifted his head to thank Bumblebee when he saw the worried face of Cat looking down at him.
"Cat.. You're… back…" he stated simply.
Cat picked up her friend and set him on his feet, not letting go for a moment.
"Bumblebee! What's happening to them?!" Cat asked, looking to the others as she escorted Optimus over to the cot near where his Cybertronian shell sat in stillness.
"Something's wrong with the converters! I don't think that their sparks are able to control their human bodies, and they're practically falling apart!" Bumblebee explained.
Cat set Optimus down on the cot gingerly and then looked up to Bumblebee with a smile, "Well then, let's get these boys fixed up fast, shall we?"
She went over to the doors of the med bay and grabbed a large desktop computer looking box and held it up to the yellow mech.
--
Cat decided to try the converter on all of them at once, and wired them all to the box, having it set in the middle of the room, wires going to each shell.
"I think that's it. Now it's all a matter of luck…" Cat said in a quiet tone.
Bumblebee gently placed a finger on Cat's shoulder, making her look to him.
"Whatever happens, I know that you would have gone to the ends of the universe to fix them if you could have Cat. And they know it too," he assured her.
Cat frowned and said, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet, okay?"
Bumblebee nodded and looked to the converter box. She placed a hand over the big red button on the side and placed her left hand on Bumblebee's finger for extra reassurance. Closing her eyes Cat said, "Let's hope it works!" and pressed the button.
The wires suddenly lit up as the matter from the shells went into the converter. Bumblebee pulled Cat back, fearing that there might have been some sort of explosion with that much power being sucked into it. Cat put her hand up in front of her eyes to block the blinding light in front of them.
"It should be any moment now!" Cat shouted.
As if on cue, the light in the wires suddenly stopped and reversed their course, turning back towards the shells at a quickened pace.
"All right! It's working!" Cat yelled happily, Bumblebee beginning to feel a bit of relief at her words.
The light was strong and steady for only a moment, before it began to flicker, the converter beginning to fail.
"No!" Cat cried out as she ran to the converter and began banging at it, "Work you piece of crap, WORK!"
The light began to fade more and more as the converter slowed down nearly to the point of shutting down. Cat rushed to crack the casing open and began tugging at wires and knocking the processor chips with her metal fingers, slightly shocking herself in the process.
"Come ON! WORK!" she pleaded just before the light grew stronger and overtook her.
--
Sub routines activated.
Power initiated: Status Online.
Running Diagnostic programs One and Two.
Diagnostics confirmed: Systems operational within One Hundred percent.
Optimus' optics flew open as his internal systems reboot. Looking around the medical bay, he saw several of the other Autobots waking, some of them getting up and walking about, checking over themselves, seemingly unable to believe that they were back to their normal selves. The leader smiled as he realized that him and his men were back to normal.
"Sir?" Bumblebee asked, noticing that Optimus was awake.
"It's good to be back," Optimus chuckled as he stood proudly.
Bumblebee nodded, "It's good to have all of you back, sir!"
"Where's Cat? Isn't she responsible for this?" Bluestreak asked.
"She's back in her quarters. She grew very tired while we were waiting for you guys to wake so I suggested that she go back and sleep," Bumblebee explained.
The Autobots smiled. Everything was back to normal once again.
"Now, I can finally begin work on a new projector!" Wheeljack proclaimed.
The Autobot's all stopped their smiling and suddenly looked very sullen indeed.
Oh yeah…. Things were back to normal all right…
--
Chapter Teaser!
Cat grumbled and mumbled to herself as she drove down the highway.
"(Grumble)...Let me oversleep... (grumbles)... Should have said something... (grumbles)... Now I'm going to be late..." She growled to herself.
While throwing a fit, Cat almost didn't catch a sight that she wouldn't have seen with just her human eye. Through the fog she could see something strange... Something that had it's own energy signature. An energy signature that was similar to what she normally saw with the Autobots, except it was a bit different...
A memory of Five's suddenly poked through her mind. It was during Mission City. She saw the Autobots and their energy signatures, and then she saw the vision of Megatron just before he stomped on Five, sending her close to death.
"... It's a Decepticon!" Cat sped faster towards the energy, activating the emergency call button in the small panel on her right limb.
--
A/N
Yes, I know there's a reference to the movie "Demolition Man". LOVE that movie! Anyway, Let me know what you think!
BTW: I have a new poll in my profile. I've put it there to cleverly to have my readers inspire me as to what they think there should be a bit more of. Now, I've basically already thought out everything that I want to happen in this story, but I can always add things or take things away as I go along. So put in your vote! Tell me what you think!