1. The Scientist

Like clockwork, the earth's moon rose high into the atmosphere, a burning white disk of reflected solar energy that bathed the terran landscape in cool white light. The tidally locked piece of rock, perpetually circling the organic planet in the solar system designated 876B, was itself a consistent reminder of the passage of time. It was predictable, and observable with all the reliability of a Cybertronian energon flux. The earth's entropy relied solely on its inhabitants and its ever-changing climate, but never its predictable partner in the black. Order, and its close approximate chaos, were two parts of the same spectrum, just as the order of the cosmos inhabited the same plane of reality as the chaos of the living, changing planet.

Chaos was the friend of the large, robotic mass now currently trying to navigate through the relative quiet and darkness of what was usually a place thrumming with life. Chaos was what he thrived on; it breathed creativity and ingenuity and change, and that was something that heralded some of the greatest scientific discoveries of order and truth. The order of the cosmos, sometimes got very dull.

Now, however, the particular bit of chaos that Wheeljack found himself in was nothing if not unsettling.

Wheeljack's joints groaned with a subtle whir as he moved, the transformium paneling on his legs shifting and one shoulder wheel spinning slowly as he crept forward through the darkness. The Autobot scientist was suddenly very self-conscious that he was out in the open, vulnerable and undisguised in his much more conspicuous bipedal form. A collection of small buildings surrounded him, but none of them even came close to his own height, so he had to duck slightly as he crept his way through to his target: the human power station.

The surrounding landscape was only inhabited by a scattering of human agricultural settlements, so the night hours afforded Wheeljack some privacy without having to worry about being seen. It still made him uncomfortable however, as every movement he made seemed uncharacteristically loud even to his own audio receptors. Every scan he omitted could potentially be picked up by human equipment, including their own military base some miles away, but the Autobot took care to be brief. His audible presence, and to some extent his invisible presence could be easily explained away, but his visual presence was not something that the dominant organic life forms knew existed. Quite simply, if a human saw him, the probability that they would react poorly was quite high.

With this in mind, the large Autobot moved carefully in the black, mindful of the way the moon highlighted his white armor panels. His glowing blue optics were soft and searching in the dark, but were obvious markers of his presence as he awkwardly tried to retain a quiet, steady pace to his destination. He dimmed their brightness, but didn't expect it would make much difference. He wasn't exactly outfitted for camouflage; he wasn't a soldier per say, but necessity never particularly cared for those details. The open night sky above him was filled with more stars than what he remembered seeing on Cybertron, but he couldn't take the desired time to admire their scientific wonderment. Wheeljack was practically a glow stick against the inky black, illuminated with the night's natural ambiance.

A nearby sound startled the large form, and he froze, ducking his head as the soft thrum of machinery reacted to his sudden movements. He wasn't entirely sure what he would do if he got caught sneaking around. Current positioning was too tight to transform, unless he wanted some sort of catastrophic misalignment on his way down; wouldn't that be fun. His only option was to duck harder, maybe make himself less obvious and a visual illusion in the darkness—human eyes weren't always reliable unaided at night—but at roughly two dozen feet in height and made out of metal, that wouldn't really do much. He waited a few minutes longer, systems and venting cycles stilled until he was satisfied with the lack of movement in his immediate vicinity. His destination was so close, and a sudden urgency overcame him as he vented the air he'd been holding inside his chasis.

The central power grid for the immediate human population center sat before him, relatively small, but about the right size one might expect for a settlement of this size. It would do for what he needed: that being the desperately sought out energy reserves him and his fellow Autobots required to keep their shielding running. So far from home, on an alien planet, stranded and functioning at not even half capacity with a skeleton crew, they could not synthesize energon themselves. Wheeljack had developed a process—unbeknownst to a certain Prime that would highly disapprove—that could convert the electrical currents from human power grids into a slightly lower grade energon. It would do to keep them functioning and protected, but it would require more in terms of sheer volume to do the job that a fraction of naturally occurring energon could. This was a stop-gap that wouldn't last for long, and eventually he'd have to come clean to Prime and the rest of the Ark crew that he was using human resources.

Wheeljack was one of the most brilliant Autobot scientists to ever live, possibly the only one left, and this organic planet had him scrambling for scraps and drastically understocked of supplies needed to carry out any idea he might have. He was trapped and didn't know what else to do, but the other Autobots were looking to him for an answer. He could deal with the truth later, and Primus willing, would have enough time to come up with a means of synthesizing what they needed without stealing it from the native life forms. Until then, it was his secret, and the most they had to know was that he figured out a purely practical way to produce a lower-quality brew that could at least tie them over.

The main power conduit was just on the other side of a chain link fence. Wheeljack stopped just short of it and crouched. He didn't even have to climb over the tiny barricade. He could just reach in and take what he needed.

This gave the Autobot pause. It felt wrong, but Wheeljack was disconcerted with how this was becoming easier to justify in the name of survival. Theft, and deception was not something the Autobots did. It was one of the many things they had fought against when trying to save their planet; when they had failed. What he was about to do was something that was typically more associated with the Decepticons, the other side of the war that had proved to be too relentless. Even the more morally reprehensible acts the Autobots had engaged in—out of necessity and against their very nature—could not even compare to the atrocities committed by the opposing faction. Driving them off their planet was not enough. Now, the lingering impact of being alone and crippled was a continuing punishment, but even then, to the Decepticons it was not enough. They followed their evacuation, now lurked in the organic planet's shadows, waiting for one misstep of the Autobots that would give away their location.

Survival however, was a drive that was strong not just amongst organics, and the Autobots would not survive without energon. That much was simple. They would either go offline from malnourishment, suffer catastrophic injuries that were beyond repair without the life-giving blood of their species, or be blown apart by the Decepticons once their shielding failed and they were finally found. Energon was used for just about every component of Cybertronian life; it was little wonder that its availability and the fight to appropriate the dwindling resource would bring about their ultimate downfall. The Autobot scientist had no other choice.

Wheeljack carefully reached an arm towards the main conduit but paused. Doubt and fear nagged at him. As soon as he started syphoning power there would be no going back. Their presence would be detected, and even if the humans didn't immediately determine what was happening, it would still open up many questions.

Their existence was probably going to be detected soon enough anyway, Wheeljack reasoned. Either the Decepticons would make themselves known, or force the Autobots to make themselves known preemptively. It was a matter of when.

Reaching back over the fence, Wheeljack sub-spaced the minute form of an energon cube. As he edged it closer to the power source, its programming cycled through the myriad of commands Wheeljack had dictated to it. It expanded as a series of bicortex nanotubes took root into the human machinery. The cube started to glow, pulsing as it grew with the energon that began to trickle into it, filtering through the anchored piping that had now weaved its way into the cracks and entry ports of the central power conduit.

There was a brief hiss, which turned into a low hum that seemed to emanate around Wheeljack, growing in intensity as the energon cube increased in mass and brightness. It was working, and as the few lights around him started to power down without the sufficient energy flow to feed them, Wheeljack felt a sense of guilt.

"Well, not like I can put it all back now..." He muttered to himself, looking at his prize. Like the ancient human story of Prometheus stealing fibre… I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble—

A sudden ping on his internal com system alerted him to an additional presence attempting to make contact. It was like a prickling into his awareness, a sudden sense of no longer being alone in his own head and it made him jump with a start. Nobody was supposed to know what he was up to, much less where he was, and if they were contacting him on his com link rather than searching him out that meant they knew he wasn't in the Ark.

"Wheeljack." The voice pressed. It was abrupt, and sounded very, very annoyed.

"Ratchet!" It was the Ark's chief medical officer, which also meant Wheeljack was about to get an audio full of whatever had Ratchet's temper up this time. It was usually him anyway, so he was used to it. Whenever Wheeljack wasn't in Ratchet's med-bay partially blown apart, melted, electrocuted or otherwise incapacitated in some way of his own doing, Ratchet usually found other things to get angry about.

"What are you doing?" Ratchet sighed with the typical tone of resignation, as if he was expecting Wheeljack to attempt to lie his way through this. Sadly, that had been exactly what he was about to do.

"I was uh-—"

"Save it. I know what you're doing, I'm not stupid. I'm on Teletraan-1 right now watching you syphon off that power." Ratchet of course meant he was detecting the energy fluctuations resulting from Wheeljack's theft on the Ark's central monitoring system. Wheeljack hadn't even thought of that...

"We need this more than they do. They can just build a fire or something." Wheeljack knew the absurdity of his statement was reason enough for Ratchet's impending incredulity but he was out of excuses. He hadn't even thought of one to begin with.

"Primus help me, you can't be serious." There was an exasperated ripple that pulsed through their psychic com link. "That isn't the point, Wheeljack. For one thing, stealing from the humans was expressly forbidden by Prime."

"Don't tell Optimus." Wheeljack faltered. Not out of fear, as Optimus Prime was not the type to heavily punish his subordinates. It was shame, because then he would know that Wheeljack had let him down… No one wanted to let Optimus Prime down.

"Just get back here before someone else sees you." Ratchet said tersely, as Wheeljack quickly retracted the now-full energon cube. It detached from the human power structure with a crackle of energy, a few errant drops of white-hot energon showering the ground as he subspaced the cube for travel.

"Alright, I'm comin', nobody's around for miles—" Wheeljack turned quickly, internals thrumming as he prepared to make a hasty retreat, but he froze mid-crouch. He was not alone.

Ratchet's voice continued in his audio receptors. "Right, they may not be there now, but you know they have their own scanners and sensors, weak and understandably inferior as they may be, but they're certainly enough to figure out that someone is stealing something—and Wheeljack are you even listening to me?"

He was listening, but Wheeljack had a far more immediate concern, offsetting Ratchet's yammering to ambient noise. His entire body tingled with the intense need to flee, but he remained rooted to the spot.

"Wheeljack, are you still there? What are you doing? You need to get out of there." There was a pause. "Primus, Wheeljack. Please, tell me nobody has seen you."

"Somebody sees me." Wheeljack responded slowly, his optics locked on the new development in front of him.

It was a small, tiny human being. It stood there, quiet and still, its eyes locked on Wheeljack's. There was an immediate hiss from within his processor as their joined com link was overcome with an exponential amount of creative expletives.

"How do you know?!"

"It's lookin' right at me…"

"Is it a threat?"

"I...don't think so. No."

"Then deal with it, and extract yourself immediately." Ratchet immediately severed the link, not so much out of anger, but sheer panic and necessity; self-preservation dictated that it was better to not take the chance in assuming humans couldn't sense their link and track it to the source, but Wheeljack highly doubted that was true, at least with what he currently faced.

Ratchet's more immediate demand of dealing with the threat was upsetting, the implied action behind it vague enough that it made Wheeljack feel queasy. The humans weren't a threat, at least he didn't think so, and the one that was looking at him now didn't seem to be dangerous at all. Ratchet had megacycles more field experience than Wheeljack, however. The decisions the medic would have had to make on the battlefield were beyond Wheeljack's desire to contemplate.

This wasn't a battlefield however, and this did not appear to be a soldier.

It made a noise, much like a soft venting of air, but it was small-sounding and very much unthreatening if the way the small human's optics were casually locked onto him was any indication. This didn't stop Wheeljack from recoiling back in alarm, the noise startling him out of his frozen state and right back through the small fence and into the very power conduit he had just been stealing from.

As if things couldn't get any worse for him, the entire structure came crashing down under his sheer weight. Whatever light or electrical device was still working with what power he'd left behind was now out, and would be for miles. The noise was staggeringly loud from cables, wires and metal panels piling on top of him as he scrambled to get upright. Eons spent on the battlefields of Cybertron had conditioned Wheeljack against his very nature to always be prepared to fight for his survival, so he'd gotten rather good at picking himself back up. Nearly offlining himself in his own lab on a daily basis certainly kept him well-practiced.

This wasn't a Cybertron battlefield, and this wasn't his lab, so as soon as Wheeljack was upright he quickly processed every nano-inch of his surroundings. His urgency was only matched by his concern for the human. Firstly, he feared that it had gotten hurt in such a display of uncoordinated prowess, and secondly being on his back and vulnerable meant that he was open season for anyone, human or otherwise, to drop a bomb on him.

The human thankfully had been smart enough to have scuttled out of danger, and was now peering at him from behind a nearby pillar with what Wheeljack thought he recognized as the human expression of amusement. A quick check from his memory banks told him that this human was female, rather small and underdeveloped for the species, and quite possibly not very—

—It was a child.

Wheeljack's processor stuttered to a halt, the sudden revelation that he was standing in front of a human child fascinating, yet also very terrifying. By his estimation the female couldn't be more than four feet tall, looking pale and somewhat disheveled in the moonlight. Human children were smaller, weaker, and mentally underdeveloped relative to their fully grown counterparts, which wasn't saying much to begin with. That said, the sheer novelty of observing such a small human up-close was nothing compared to the trouble he was going to be in if he didn't somehow coax the human into not seeing what she was currently seeing… and forget all about him.

The Autobot was so internally focused on figuring out how to get out of the situation that he didn't immediately process the soft noise the human was making. It was laughter. The human was laughing at him.

This went completely counter to his expectations.

The noise was small, and quiet, but it was so non-threatening that Wheeljack instinctively lowered his guard. The small human was covering her mouth with a hand, her small dark optics just barely glimmering in the moon's light but they revealed enough of her state-of-mind to tell Wheeljack that for whatever reason, this human child was not afraid of him.

It was then that Wheeljack realized maybe his full height was a little too much, and it also made him vulnerable to other prying eyes. He carefully picked his way out of the rubble he had created, mindful of the way he moved and how heavily he stepped. The little human didn't seem to react, other than to remove her hand from her face, presumably the humor in the moment now gone. Wheeljack spared a glance at the flattened mess he'd made, ruminating that if he'd been able to get away with his little stunt undetected before, he certainly wasn't going to be able to now.

"Are you a fairy?"

The soft noise made Wheeljack jerk back around, the immediate source unmistakable as the human child still standing in front of him. Her expression was one of naive wonder, and it made Wheeljack uncomfortable. Human expressions were not so different from Cybertronian, and that wasn't an expression he often saw coming from his own crew mates when they were looking at him. It was usually terror. That was usually followed by something blowing up.

Wheeljack switched his speech codex to English, rapidly filing through data banks searching for an appropriate dialect; the North American continent, United States of America, New York City—large population center and common stereotype in human popular culture. Their current coordinates were on the opposite end of the continent, but it would do because he probably needed to say something. Communicating with her in Cybertronian would not have been productive as she wouldn't understand it.

"A fairy?" He checked the local knowledge bank—the Internet—for the definition of the word. Once he was able to ascertain the visual representation of a typical mythological creature that went by that designation, he found himself perplexed.

"Duh. You have wings." The child's reply pulled Wheeljack out of his internal research and brought his focus back onto her. She was pointing at something behind him, and the frankness of her voice gave the Autobot the impression that she thought this was something that should have been obvious. It dawned on him that this human child was actually giving him attitude.

Wheeljack made a show of looking where she was pointing, at first not getting her meaning until it occurred to him what she was so focused on. She was talking about his rotary fins, purely sensory-net but freely rotating from his body. They most certainly were not wings…

"Oh these?" Wheeljack replied, the soft blue illumination from the venting panels on the sides of his face blinking with each syllable of English he spoke. "They're not wings, but highly-sensitive neuro-net transmitters that—" Wheeljack was about two-thirds of the way through his highly detailed explanation before he realized that the human was definitely not listening, and more likely that she didn't even know what he was talking about. She now seemed more distracted by his blinking then anything else.

"Alright, they're wings. You got me. I'm not a fairy though."

He took care to keep his voice low and unthreatening, not wanting to scare the small human away. It was probably better to humor the child rather than outright run away and leave her with questions… that she would later go to the much more mentally capable adults to answer…

"Oh." The little human pursed her lips, then proceeded to point at one of the venting panels on the side of his head. "Why are your ears so big? And why do they do that when you talk?" She looked genuinely interested in him, and that made him even more uncomfortable. That was on top of the mild annoyance he was beginning to feel at having to explain his anatomy to her.

A microsecond scan revealed she was referring to audio receptors. She had actually mistaken a very important component used to consistently filter heat from his advanced processor for audio receptors. He hadn't modified audio receptors to indicate his speech after the accident that left his face catastrophically damaged. That was simply ABSURD. "These ain't ears." Wheeljack jabbed a thumb in the general direction of one of his panels, optics narrowed slightly until he saw the somewhat incredulous look on the human's small face. He softened somewhat, reminding himself that he was not trying to match wits with a juvenile human. She was clearly harmless and probably lonely; what else would a single human out all by herself be feeling? Primus, he was lonely, and he was surrounded by Autobots most of the time. Perhaps now was an opportunity to gather field intel on the indigenous life forms. It was kind of nice talking to someone that wasn't afraid of him for a change.

What harm would there be in talking to her, for just a little while?

Wheeljack lowered his height, crouching down as low as his armor plates would allow in front of the female child. "You want to know a secret?" She didn't even flinch, but even so Wheeljack kept his distance for safety's sake. Who knew what sort of biological pathogens she carried. Biomechanical beings weren't completely immune from purely biological ailments, although he doubted anything she carried would pose a threat to him. The girl nodded, eagerly.

"They're actually motion trackers," Wheeljack lied. "And they're so big so I can track humans like you for miles." Alright, I'll play along.

"Well, I found you, so they must be broken. You should get them fixed."

"Maybe I wanted you to find me." That obviously wasn't true—quite the opposite in fact—but he'd kind of walked right into that one. After all, this human child had managed to catch him completely unawares, and the mess around him was the proof of that.

"Lying is bad." Clearly, she was sharper than he was giving her credit for too. Maybe human children weren't as stupid as he initially thought.

Wheeljack allowed himself a sly smile with what was left of his mouth behind his battle mask. It was something she couldn't see, unless she understood the shifting of his optical lids. "You're clever. I like you. But what are you doing out here all by yourself little...female?" He hazarded gently, unsure of what exactly he should call her. He only realized he'd made an error in judgment when her face scrunched up into something close to indignation.

"I'm a girl," she corrected pointedly, but then for the first time her small dark optics shifted around carefully and she began to appear uncomfortable. She began to sway, as if unsure of what to do with her own body, and actually looked sad. "I ran away…"

Wheeljack struggled internally with how to process this information. Part of him didn't want to become any more involved in her life when he shouldn't even be talking to her. But the other part, the deeply fascinated scientist that had to know, had to know. "Okay… why did you run away?" That's… generally a bad thing, right? The irony in the fact that it was exactly something he had done when he needed to get away from the Ark and just think was not exactly lost on him...

She didn't say anything at first, staring awkwardly at the ground. Wheeljack tilted his head, the illumination produced from his panels when he posed the inquiry highlighting the red, blotched hue on her skin and the moisture beneath her optics. He wasn't sure what that meant, the biological and psychological links escaping him. He thought better than to ask her, and she probably wouldn't know how to respond anyhow. It was reasonable enough to assume that she had been distressed before blundering into him—or probably still was but he was enough of a distraction for her to temporarily forget about it.

"It's okay, you can trust me." For a moment the girl was entranced in the light that rapidly flashed in-time with his words when he finally spoke. She raised one hand, holding it out in front of her and watched as the blue light illuminated her skin.

"My mommy is sick, and daddy got angry with me because I broke the radio. But he's just upset because mommy is upset…" The little girl was looking around again, clearly unsure of herself in this situation. "It was already broken, I was just trying to fix it…" She mumbled, the sound so quiet. Wheeljack had absolutely no idea what to say, and thought about offering a personal anecdote until something she said caught his interest.

"Tryin' to fix a radio, huh? That's quite a big job for something your size." Wheeljack was actually mildly impressed. Imagine a human small as this one was, actually trying to fix primitive, illogical human machinery without proper training…

"No," she finally replied, almost indifferently."I fixed daddy's Internet when he didn't know what to do, and that was way easier." She spoke as if this was just daily routine for her, and fascinating as this was, Wheeljack had to keep the conversation moving. He was on a time-table, and needed to wrap this up.

"Well, then maybe you shouldn't have run away little girl… he might need you to help him with that radio thing. Besides, it's dangerous out here." Wheeljack did his best to sound soft, but authoritative, internally wincing at how awkward it sounded coming out of his mouth. "How did you even get in here anyway?"

"I heard something and wanted to see what it was, so I came in through that hole in the fence… same way you did," she said, motioning towards the way she'd presumably come.

"Ah, I'm a little big for a hole in the fence little one. This is no place for a human like you to be all alone."

"You're all by yourself," the little girl retorted, looking snarky again. "Did you run away as well?" She looked shocked. "Did you kill somebody?"

"What…? No!"

"Are you doing crime?"

"Do I look like a Decepticon to you?" Wheeljack put his head in his hands, growing exasperated, and starting to feel mildly guilty because technically...

"What's a...De-cep-ti-con?" It didn't take a moment to spot the look of confusion on her face and he realized what he'd blurted out. She cocked her head as she spelled the word out slowly, ensuring she got the pronunciation right. "Are they bad? They sound bad."

"Look, human girl, I—yes. They are bad. If you see one, and I hope to Primus you never do, I—"

"Primus? What's that?"

Wheeljack found himself staring blankly at her, struggling to think of a way to describe to her what Cybertronians considered a God of sorts; not quite a god or a creator, but something more transcendent, yet tangible at the same time—why was he even contemplating telling her about such things that she surely wouldn't understand? He'd committed a crime, gotten found out by Ratchet, and was now accidentally revealing top secret and deeply personal information to a tiny human girl. This was not a good night for Wheeljack.

"My name is Allison, by the way." The human girl was looking up at him expectantly, and Wheeljack suddenly realized he had just dug himself into a very deep hole. Primus… don't tell me your name… don't make this harder than it already is…

"Look, little g—Allison." Wheeljack vented air, underestimating the strength of it as it kicked up the loose strands of organic fiber on her head in a gust of heated wind. She seemed thoroughly overjoyed by this oddity. "I'm out here all by myself cause my friends can't know I'm here. It's a surprise… so this is our little secret, got it? You never saw me here." Wheeljack saw an opportunity and ran with it, and the little girl named Allison nodded enthusiastically. Although, she still had a look of expectation in her eyes, and Wheeljack realized he better get it over with.

"Okay, fine. I've already revealed all my other secrets. My name is Wheeljack," he said, pointing at the broadside of his chest where his Autobot insignia was. "I'm an Autobot."

"Oh! I know what a wheeljack is. It's that thing that fixes wheels on cars. What's an Auto-bot? Is that like a Decepticon?" Allison looked perplexed, but genuinely interested, and he realized she would have no idea what an Autobot was. That was obvious when she seemed to stumble over the word, sounding it out in two chunks, much like she had done with Decepticon.

"No!" Wheeljack answered that one a lot faster and more indignant than he probably should have. "Autobot means I'm a good guy. Decepticons are nothing like we are." Well that sounded ludicrous, but he didn't know what else to say.

Allison seemed to think about it for a moment. "Okay. I trust you because you sound funny." Wheeljack didn't know what to make of what she'd said and whether or not it was a compliment, but he couldn't respond before Allison followed up with another question. "What do you do, Wheelack?"

"What do I...do?"

"Yeah. Like...what's your job?"

"I'm a scientist. An engineer, specifically, and it's not just a job, it's more important than that. I help my friends stay safe by inventing useful equipment." Wheeljack knew he was being a little loose with the word "safe." Not all of them fit that description. "Though, I have been known to occasionally dabble in biomechanics. I recently finished writing a technical spec on the Tersial III replication and induction plate—"

"That's neat," Allison interjected, changing the subject. "Can I ask you something else?"

Wheeljack shrugged, sad to hear the young human wasn't as excited about his proposed model for improving the wingspan of Tersial III quadrupeds. "Okay, sure. What is it?"

"Why do you talk funny?" This was the second time Allison had raised the issue of his voice. The question was nothing if not direct, and it then occurred to Wheeljack that he had likely made an error in judgment when picking the dialect that he did. He should have paid more attention to how she spoke.

"What's wrong with it?" He cocked his head, now curious as to what about his choice was apparently so offensive. Instead, Allison laughed, betraying the idea that it was not so much offensive, but different.

"You sound like you're from one of the shows my daddy likes to watch, dummy."

Wheeljack didn't know what a dummy was, but he assumed it wasn't a good thing. "Doesn't everybody talk like that around here?"

"No!" She was laughing at him again, and Wheeljack was getting frustrated. This shouldn't have

been that complicated—how many stupid dialects were there on this rock?!

"Look, I underestimated the linguistic diversity amongst your species. I didn't realize accent was divided up by zone on this planet. It makes no sense—" He saw her expression start to go wide and realized he was losing her again. "Anyway, that was more than a question, that was two. Now it's my turn to ask you one."

"Okay fine." The girl huffed, looking mildly startled and confused by his abrupt rant. Instead of the question he'd been intending to ask—that being what is the purpose of all that organic fiber on her head—Wheeljack opted for something a little more friendly. He was talking to a child, a fact of which he kept forgetting.

"Can you guess where I'm from?"

Allison looked blank for a moment, presumably trying to come up with an answer to his question. He had to stop himself from being abrupt with her. Perhaps if her experience with him was a pleasant one she was more inclined to trust him and do what he asked—that being: don't breathe a word of this to anyone.

After a moment she shook her head, unable to even hazard a guess as to where he was from. So he pointed skyward, thinking she would get the point. But she didn't.

"You're from up?" In a shocking turn of events, she'd directed her optics in the vague direction of where he was pointing, looking at nothing and everything as if there was something very specific she was going to see. He probably should have felt guilty teasing a human child like this, but Wheeljack admitted to himself that this was actually a rather fun little exercise.

"Further."

"The moon?"

"Even further!"

She thought for a while. "The sun? Pluto? A satellite?"

"No; that's not a planet; and now you're just guessing. The correct answer is I am from Cybertron."

"Cybertron." She repeated the word slowly like she did all the other ones. If anything she seemed very careful about learning new words. Primitive, but respectful. "I don't think we have any place called Cybertron in our solar system. That must mean it's pretty far."

"Your deductive reasoning is correct. It is very far. Farther than you can travel in your lifetime, little one. Think of your solar system. Now think of another solar system, one that just looks like a tiny star in your sky, but it's actually two stars! Closer than you might think, eh? Cybertron is a lonely planet that sits in the middle of Alpha Centauri, undetectable by your human technology." He didn't even realize that he started gesturing passionately until it was too late. "That's where I'm from."

Something dawned on her then, and her eyes widened. Something close to absolute joy spread across her face as something clearly now had her excited, making Wheeljack wonder if he should have just kept that detail to himself; he'd been trying to make conversation.

"You're an alien!" Allison declared happily, clapping her small hands together in a show of positive acceptance as she put the pieces together. She was definitely smarter than he was giving her credit for, and was now practically lit up with such a revelation.

Something broke loose from within the Autobot and for a moment his perception dulled. There was an internal distraction at the edge of his awareness and he couldn't place what it was. He lost focus and several barriers in his coding fell down all at once, unlocking a cache of programming that had been put away a very long time ago. There was a stirring of something in his spark that he hadn't felt in eons: something warm and nurturing; he was actually starting to enjoy talking to the little human named Allison. He was afraid he was starting to care.

Whatever was happening, it was because of this girl, actually enamored and happy to be in his presence. She wanted to be around him. Autobots tended to avoid him when they could, not out of hate, but a general unease in his presence. Decepticons wanted to capture him and use him. Primus, he was lonely.

But he had to go. He couldn't linger. If anything, his presence in her life was a danger not only to her, but to himself and the other Autobots that despite everything he still cared for. Needing to care for a human life was a liability he couldn't risk, and there was no way he was going to let a human, much less a human child, get caught in Decepticon crosshairs. It wasn't even his place. She needed to be back with her own parental units.

"Heh, okay, but remember, this is our secret okay?" Wheeljack leaned forward, trying to emphasis the point as gently as he could while cutting into her excitement. She nodded her understanding, but he had to make sure. "You promise?"

"Yeah, yeah!" Allison said, and she did something that Wheeljack was not expecting. She reached up and touched his face. It was such a soft, barely perceptible touch, right on the planes of his battle mask but it was enough to nearly make him rear back. It was a reaction that for sure didn't match the level of threat she presented so it made no sense, but neither did what he actually did. He froze. He stopped moving as if the small hand on his face was going to cut him should he so much as shift in place. It was the first time he really looked the young human in her optics, and she didn't so much as flinch as she returned his direct stare. His optics were neither unsettling or threatening to her. It was just a purely natural connection, her dark organic eyes unyielding without learned bias or mistrust.

He hadn't even realized he'd been in arms reach, small as she was, which meant he'd really let his guard down. That frightened the large Autobot more than anything. His first time interacting with a human and he'd completely opened himself up to any number of attacks.

An attack—

Suddenly Wheeljack reared up, head snapping in the direction beyond Allison to something in the distance. He heard something approach—a vehicle, not one of his own, and he suddenly knew he had to go. Their time together was over. He looked down at Allison with a sad sense of finality that she wouldn't be able to understand. She looked distraught, hand still hovering precariously above her head where his face had just been moments before. It was obvious she didn't hear what he had.

"I'm sorry Allison. I have to go."

"Why?" She sounded sad.

"Someone's coming. Nobody else can see me, so I have to go." He started to retreat, forcing himself to crouch back from her faster than she could catch up to him. Something tugged at his spark as the little human called after him, something Wheeljack wasn't willing to spare another nanosecond thinking about in that moment. He had to transform, and for that he needed room.

What if it's someone that means to do Allison harm… do humans hurt the offspring of other humans? Sadly Wheeljack knew the answer to that question. They had access to global news, and had been monitoring it for some time. I can't be seen… but I can't just leave her here. Maybe I can just hang back until this person passes… Pit, why did he care?

Wheeljack was thinking through how we was going to appear nonchalant as a white drag car just hanging around this ruined power station with a human child standing there, when the approaching human vehicle slowed. He heard an adult male's voice calling Allison's name, and thankfully Wheeljack reasoned this laid all his concerns to rest. He could leave content in knowing that her father had come to retrieve her. She finally heard it too, and she looked back in a manner which implied recognition. This gave Wheeljack the needed opportunity to leap back from her and transform into his vehicular form, the sound of which drew the girl's attention back to him for enough time to see what he had become. It wouldn't matter, because he'd be gone by the time her father arrived.

He couldn't linger, a pang of guilt settling on his spark long enough to make him hesitate as he retreated but he knew he had to move on. It would be better for Allison to move on as well, so the sooner he disappeared, the better.

How wrong he was.

Author's Note: It has been years since I have posted on this website. Quite a while ago, I decided I wasn't happy at all with the direction my story was going, so I did what any sane person would do: I completely threw it all out and decided I would completely start over. This chapter was originally written several years ago, and I mostly sat on it thinking I would never come back to it. I ended up actually poking at it here and there over the years, and only recently decided maybe I had a new story I wanted to tell, using some of the same concepts I'd already written about. So ultimately I don't know how much of this I'm actually going to write, or how often. I guess time will tell.