Hey all! Now this will be my Christmas or "Holiday" special. It's one of those out-of-sequence event things that doesn't have an exact date. HA! Had you all fooled, didn't I? Thought I wasn't going to do this did ya? Bwahahaha! Evil Author Strikes again!
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, I own Cat.
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"Thanks for helping me with this guys," Cat started, "I'd never get through even the beginning of it if you hadn't offered to help."
The three friends, along with the large and fully grown Rotten, made their way down a long staircase into a dark storage area.
"It's no problem, Cat. We'd love to help you! But I have to ask, what made you decide to relearn Alchemy?" Mikaela asked.
"After everything that's happened, I feel like I need to... I think that if I were to come into contact with Sector Eleven, or a Decepticon, I'll need all the ammunition that I can to protect everyone from them," Cat replied.
"You talk about it as if you're planning on having a reunion with them," Sam spoke.
"I don't ever plan on anything, Sam. But I can't pretend that they don't exist, and that they're not trying to come after me... I've finally been able to get the others to agree that what happens, happens. So if I do travel alone and come into contact with them, I'll need everything I can," Cat explained.
"I still don't understand why you lost the abilities in the first place. I thought it was something learned, not something that was a part of you physically," Mikaela pondered.
"It's sort of hard to explain but... Just believe me when I say that after the fusion it messed with my ability to perform any part of it. I don't know why. It just happened that way," Cat replied. Cat didn't understand it either. The first time she had ever tried to perform Alchemy after the fusion between her and Five, she couldn't even draw a proper transmutation circle. It was as if the ability that she had practiced for so many years had just suddenly been forgotten. Even more strange about it was that Five had also used Alchemy when she was retrained as Eight. So after fusing two Alchemists together, why couldn't she perform even the smallest task? She needed answers. And the only way to find the answers was to look through the training books that she had used long ago.
They stopped as they finally entered the training room.
"Whoa..." Sam stared at the large area, "This is even bigger than the room you use to fight!"
The room was nearly five hundred feet in both length and width, and the walls were one hundred feet tall. The room was nearly entirely full with old supplies and things that Sector Eleven used to train the children that grew up in their facilities. It had all been shoved into the old training room when the Dam was redeveloped. Cat knew where it all had been taken to, but had decided never to set foot there again... until now that is...
"There's a lot of stuff here, Cat..." Sam looked around at all the boxes and crates that were packed one on top of the other.
"This is everything that was used to teach me and the others. Right down to the last book that I ever touched... This is everything..." Cat stared at everything as well. Every part of the last twenty years of her life was here.
Rotten licked Cat's hand, breaking her from her thoughts. She smiled down at the Rottweiler and scratched his ears lovingly, "It's all right, boy. Come on, guys. Let's get started."
They reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped, looking at the surrounding crates. They were stacked, three and four crates high. It was a lot of things to go through, but the two teens were more than willing to help Cat.
"Where do we start?" Mikaela asked.
"Hmm.." Cat walked down the nearest aisle of crates and drug her left hand against them as she passed by each one. She stopped at a crate, which was the only one that was just shoved in it's place behind everything else. She walked over to it and wiped her hand across the top, brushing the dust away, "This one will do for a start."
--
It had been about two hours of searching. They had gone through an entire aisle of crates already. So far they had only found boxes of paper with printed test results, more video tapes of training sessions, and piles of scrap metal. Why anyone would bother saving any of this was beyond Cat's understanding.
"Maybe we should take a break..." Mikaela sighed as she continued digging through a box of junk.
Cat had heard Mikaela's frustrated sigh and stopped digging herself, "Agreed... Let's grab some lunch, I'm starving..."
Mikaela looked around, feeling surrounded by all of the crates. She could see Cat atop a tall mountain of the wooden boxes, along with Rotten who laid, exhausted next to his owner.
"Where's Sam?" Mikaela asked.
"Got something!" Sam yelled, Cat, Rotten and Mikaela came running from their own searches.
"Where are you?" Mikaela yelled.
"Over here!" Sam yelled, waving a hand from amidst a mountain of crates.
Rotten jumped to where the boy was, Cat and Mikaela following.
"What'd you find?" Mikaela asked.
"Something besides paper and junk!" Sam smiled, handing a book to Cat, "It's in a different language, but there's a few of them in here."
"Do you recognize it?" Mikaela asked, scratching Rotten's ears as the dog panted happily.
"Yeah, it's one of the books we had to study. We were taught different languages just in case we were suppose to go on "away missions". This one's Arabic," Cat replied.
"You know Arabic?!" Sam asked.
"And Korean, and Russian, and Chinese, and French, as well as a few others. Not that I'll ever need them now," Cat threw the book behind her, "What else?"
Sam rifled through the bin of books once more, "They all look like foreign language books to me so far... Wait a second... Something looks different," he moved some of the hardbound covers and felt something soft and plush.
"What is it?" Cat asked, looking down in the crate as well.
Sam grabbed the item and pulled it out. He held up, what looked to be, an old teddy bear, "I thought they didn't give you guys any toys?" he asked.
Cat looked at it with a confused expression, "That's odd. They didn't! We weren't allowed to have anything that normal kids had."
"So you don't know who it belonged to?" Mikaela asked.
Cat shrugged, "It's not familiar to me but..."
"What is it?" Sam asked.
"My left eye is acting weird," Cat stated, looking up towards one of the old hanging lights to readjust the lens.
"What's the matter with it?" the boy asked, lowering the teddy bear.
Cat looked down to the sewn animal, her eye suddenly beeping wildly as it did a scan on the object on it's own, "What the hell?!"
The woman reached forward and grabbed the bear, her body suddenly stiffening. She took a deep inhale of breath, falling backwards onto the ground, still holding the bear in a tightened grip.
"Cat?!" Sam and Mikaela yelled as they ran to her side, Rotten's nose sniffing over her face as if trying to make sense of what was happening.
Cat's hearing and vision began to fade. She could barely make out the faces of her two friends, or even hear their pleas for that matter.
"-AT!- Can yo- -ar us?!"
"Sam, go - Ratchet - Optimus!" was the last thing she heard before blacking out.
--
"What happened?" A gruff, male voice was heard first.
"I'm not sure, sir. She just blacked out during the training... Maybe we should stop for the day?" a younger man was heard.
"Nonsense! These children were bred to be the ultimate fighters! We can't settle for one of them just fainting on us! Get her up!" the gruff voice replied.
The girl could feel a hand reach under her upper back and prop her up, her head slumped backwards as she slowly awoke. Her eyes batted open and she suddenly felt overwhelmingly hot, sweat pouring down her face.
"You awake?" the soft male voice asked quietly.
"R..Ratchet?" The girl asked. Her eyes burst open as she realized that she had just asked that in a child's voice.
Three men in lab coats were standing around her, they all looked confused.
"What did she say?"
"She... She asked for a ratchet, sir," the young man that was holding the girl replied, a twistedly confused look turned toward his superior.
The gruff figure sighed and said, "All right... Maybe we should allow her to rest for the day... Get her back to her cell and have the medical officers take a look at her."
"Yes sir," the young man picked the child up in his arms and carried her out of the large training room that was all too familiar.
The girl began to twist and turn in the grip of the man, she felt his arms and hands grip her to keep from letting her go, but she fought that much harder until the man dropped her to the ground. She got up and ran down the hallway, looking behind her to see the man scrambling to run after her.
"Come back!" he yelled after her. The girl never understood why people would insist on yelling something like that when it was obvious that the person trying to make a getaway wasn't planning on just stopping and giving up.
She ran around the hallways corner and smirked. She knew this place like the back of her hand, now, and she wasn't about to not take advantage of it. She hung a quick right and crashed into a lab table. She muttered, lamenting herself and stumbled to gain a footing back on the floor... That table wasn't there before... She took to running again and dodged a few more lab tables as she made her way to the nearest air vent duct. She pulled the vent's cover right from it's bolts with her bare hands and jumped in, pulling the cover back over the hole behind her.
She sat behind the vent and quietly waited for a reaction amongst the technicians. For a moment she couldn't remember what had happened, which made her more and more confused.
-Okay, so this morning I was scheduled for some tests, then I was supposed to go for a training excersize... I guess I blacked out during the training... But why?!- The girl thought just before she heard some yelling in the next room.
"Have you seen a child come through here?!" the young man's voice was worried and shaken.
"David! I didn't know you had children!" One of the women giggled.
"I don't! It's one of the projects! She ran through this way and I'm trying to find her before Doctor Johnston finds out that I've lost her!" he explained in rush.
"Oh! Well, I didn't see her, maybe she ran in here!" the woman offered help as they walked into the room where the girl was sitting quietly in the air duct.
Her heart raced as she watched the two check around, looking behind desks and lab tables. She decided that if she were to be discovered, she would go on the offensive and kill them quick, so no one would hear them find her. She couldn't just take off down the duct, because it was assured that they would hear her, and alert the staff of the Dam that she was there. So she sat and waited.
"I don't see her here, David. Maybe she ran to the emergency exit and took the stairs!" The woman thought aloud.
"Dammit! I guess I have no choice... I have to alert Johnston about what's going on..." David sighed as he exited the room along with the woman, closing the door behind them.
"Alerting the staff means less time I have to escape! I have to go, and now!" the girl started her climb up through the duct system, feeling an odd sense of familiararity. She brushed this sense off and continued the long task of climbing up through the duct work.
Reaching the end, the girl looked through one of the vent covers and saw a desk and... Doors! Doors that led to the outside! If she could get to the outside it would probably be a quick escape to being far from here! That familiar sense came over her again... It was strange because she knew that she'd never been here before. But it was as if... as if she had done this once before...
An alarm sounded an awful buzzing noise, red lights flashing over the desk.
"Oh great! I'm sitting here wasting time," she growled as she pushed against the vent and removed the cover, "When I could be out there, making a getaway!" She pushed the cover away and crawled from the duct work, passing the empty desk and towards the doors.
The girl's eyes were wide and sparkling with joy as she trekked towards the door. She was really making an escape! She was truly going to be free from this life of torture!
She made her way to the door and her small hands hit the push bar quickly and hard as she took a single step out and stopped. The sun was so bright! She had never seen it before. She held her arm out and felt the sudden increase of natural warmth against her skin. It felt so good... She stepped outside all the way and looked up towards the bright circle in the sky, closing her eyes and allowing that same warmth to be absorbed into her face. She brought her head down and opened her eyes, peering around the open land that was just before her.
Freedom.
The girl was about to run towards the open area when she felt a sudden, sharp pain in her lower back. She stopped running, turning to see what had caused the pain, when she noticed a tranquilizer dart. She looked up and saw two security officers holding guns towards her, technicians and lab workers standing behind them. The girl fell to the ground, all she could think of was trying to get her arms and legs to move to her will, but nothing happened. She felt a wave of sleep wash over her like a tide.
She blacked out.
--
The beeping noises were horrendous... Horrendous and loud... And the nausea was even worse...
The girls' eyes slowly opened, her vision seemed only to be blurry haze. She still couldn't seem to move her ligaments as she fought against the heaviness that was over her whole body. She couldn't even lift her head. It took several minutes before she could even make out the shape of a cup of water that was sitting on a wheeled stand next to the bed she was laying in. Water... the girl realized that her mouth was incredibly dry, like sand paper. Her jaw moved slightly, the gritty feeling in her mouth begging to be appeased by a sip of water.
"You're awake!" a woman's voice would have startled the girl, if she weren't already as sedated as she could get, "You must be dying of thirst!"
The middle-aged woman sat at the girl's bedside and picked up the cup of water, inserting a straw so that it could be sipped without spilling it all over. She pulled the girl's head over to the side and allowed her lips to grip the straw. The small girl sipped the water slowly, feeling the ice cold water comforting her dry mouth. She let go of the straw, the older woman pulling the cup away and placing it on the stand.
"You had the whole Dam looking for you, you know," the woman frowned slightly.
"I don't care..." the girl whispered.
"I know... And I think you have every right to feel that way," the woman agreed, which started the child.
The woman, then, laughed at the child's expression, "You must think I'm crazy to agree with you. Because no one ever has, right?"
The girl nodded.
"When I'd heard that you made an escape, I think me, along with one other here, were the only ones praying that you'd make it out of here alive and escape for good. It's just not right that you're being kept here the way you are... You and the others... This whole project should have been shut down the minute someone thought of it..." she looked down to the girl with a softened glance, but her sorrowful look suddenly turned into a look of realization.
"Oh!" she yelled and got up quickly. She walked out of the room and a moment later returned, her arms behind her back. She reapproached the bedside and sat down, looking down to the child with a bright smile.
"Do you know what today is?" she asked.
The child looked around the room, her mind trying to think of what could be so important that the woman was looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. She shook her head 'no'.
"Today is a day where people give each other gifts. It's a holiday that most people in this country celebrate called Christmas. Have you heard of that?" she asked.
"In my studies, I've heard of it... It's when people celebrate the birth of Christ, right?" she asked, not reading up on the subject completely. But she did know that it was the day that people claim the son of "god" was born. She wasn't sure why people celebrated something like that, but she knew some of the details.
"Right! You really do know your stuff, don't you? Well, on that day, everyone usually gives each other gifts to show their appreciation and caring natures. I know that you really haven't seen that side of the people here, but I wanted you to have something," she pulled an arm from behind her back and showed a small teddy bear.
The girl only looked at the plush toy in confusion.
"It used to be my daughters. She loved it when she was young, but she's outgrown it. I found it in an old bag of stuffed toys that she hasn't played with in years, so I thought I'd give it to you," she explained, setting the bear down next to the girl.
"You know, even back in the old days, an abused child would have a stuffed animal or something to run and cry to, or to hold. It's only fair that you get something too. But you might want to make sure to hide it. I doubt that they'll let you keep it," the woman smiled.
The girl grabbed the teddy bear and turned it so that it faced her. She looked it over and gave it a slight squeeze, feeling how soft and comforting it was. It was as nice to feel as her first experience outside of the compound. She looked to the woman.
"Thank you..." she whispered.
The woman rubbed the child's cheek and replied, "You're welcome."
It was a happy moment in a dreary world for the girl. Something that never usually happened to her.
She suddenly felt something tugging at her, but saw nothing.
"-at! Listen - us?!"
"-ake up!"
She wasn't sure what was going on, but she looked to the woman and saw that her image was blurry and fading. There was, yet another, blackness that seemed to take her away.
--
"Cat? Can you hear me?" the familiar voice of a certain medic could be heard.
Cat's eyes opened suddenly, her eyes straying around her.
She looked up to see the worried faces of her friends staring down at her, Ratchet's hologram flashing a small penlight in her eyes. Bumblebee's hologram was holding Cat up into a sitting position, holding her shoulders tightly.
"Can you speak?" Ratchet asked.
"What's going on?" Cat asked, realizing that she was still holding onto the old teddy bear.
"Sam told us that your left optic was causing you trouble, and that you had passed out. I can't find a reason as to why this has happened," Ratchet replied, his hologram looking over Cat with concern.
"Do you remember anything?" Bumblebee asked.
Cat looked to the toy that she was holding and replied, "No... I don't remember anything... I just remember the eye acting up and the next thing I know..." the bear seemed to stare at her as the others were, "I'm talking to you guys..."
"You can't find anything at all?" Optimus' hologram asked.
"I'd have to get her back to the medical bay and run some tests just to be sure," the medic replied.
"Why are you guys in your hologram forms?" Cat asked.
"There's no sizable entrance for our normal modes in this basement. The only way that we could get down here, to you, is by using our holograms," Bumblebee replied.
"Which is why we need to get you to the medical bay. My sensors are too far away to get an accurate reading on anything from here. There could be something seriously wrong with you and I would never know if we stayed here," Ratchet added.
Bumblebee reached under Cats' legs and picked her up, walking towards the staircase.
"I can walk, Bee," Cat fidgeted.
"If you happen to pass out, you could fall down the stairs. Just hold still until we get you to the med bay," Bumblebee replied.
Cat scowled.
"Maybe that's what we should have done," Sam thought aloud as they started up the old, concrete steps," Carried her up to you guys, I mean."
Jazz was standing halfway up the stairs and he crossed his arms and smirked, "Ain't no way you coulda done that Sam."
"Why not?" Mikaela asked.
"Cat weighs more than ya kids put together. Ya woulda never even been able to roll 'er over," he replied, walking with them.
"More than us put together?" Mikaela asked, "She's twenty one, I wouldn't say she weighs more than a hundred and fifty at most."
"Cat weighs, approximately four hundred and twelve pounds," Ratchet added, "But just like the two of you, her exact weight varies depending on what she eats an how much in one sitting. That as well as horomones and-"
"Oh sure, just tell them why don't you?" Cat crossed her arms and pursed her lips, "No one wants to hear that!"
Sam and Mikaela were stopped on the stairs, stunned.
"No way!" Sam's expression looked floored beyond belief, "There's no way she weighs that much!"
"Uh, hello!" Cat tapped her knuckles against her forehead, "My skull is made of metal, remember? So is half of the other bone structures in my body," she crossed her arms and pursed her lips once again, "Which is another reason as to why I'm stable enough to walk..."
Bumblebee only smirked.
--
A few days later, Cat was finally released from the med bay. Apparently, there was nothing that even Ratchet could find as a cause to what had happened. But somehow, Cat knew.
Walking into her apartment, Cat set her keys and the teddy bear down on her kitchen table as she knelt down to scratch Rotten's back. He had approached her with an extra wag in his tail and extra slobber on the floor.
"Did you miss me? Huh?" Cat gave her friend a proper back scratching and then stood back up, looking to the bear, which was laying on the counter on it's side.
Cat sighed and picked the toy up, walking over to the couch in the living area and laid down on the couch. Her one hundred and twenty pound friend snuggled in on the couch next to her and continued to pant happily as he looked out over the edge, seemingly daring anything to come near the two while they laid comfortably on the soft couch. Cat smiled and scratched Rotten's ears absent-mindedly as she stared into the glass eyes of the stuffed animal.
Five's memories.
It was most assured that the memory she had experienced while passed out was one of Five's memories. She, herself, had never seen the bear in her entire life. She'd never even remembered Five mentioning it. But it made sense. Five had told her about the pleasant feeling of being outdoors. She'd told her about the sun hitting her skin, and in the dream she could feel it so well... And it was so real... It also made sense because Five had insisted that they take the air ducts in the first place when they tried to make the escape when Cat was fourteen. She had insisted because she had the experience to know that they would have a better chance of escaping. There was also a time, when Cat was young, that she had mentioned that she felt like the human race was just a bunch of unpleasant people who felt no compassion, but Five had come to their defense, for once. Five had told her that when she least expected it, a human would do the most caring thing that anyone would ever have done for her... Cat had wondered, if for that moment in time, Five had been under some sort of medicinal uses. She had never said anything to that effect before... If anything, the younger girl had always expected Five to agree and back her up when she had felt the need to dispurse her hatred for humans to her.
Cat looked over to the coffee table where she had photos of herself with Sam and Mikaela smiling and laughing their cares away. She couldn't help but smile at the pictures, reminding her of the first humans, besides Five, that she ever cared about and could trust. She felt warm and safe, knowing that she had Sam, Mikaela and the Autobots around to confide in. And it would never had happened, had Lillian not aided her in leaving the facility and dropping her off in the one spot where she first met the group. Five may had not made sense back on the day that she told Cat to believe... Cat smiled even more as she hugged the teddy bear close to her chest, feeling the warmth of Rotten laying next to her.
But she was right...
--
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays