~Episode 2~

Chapter 1

We did get back to base in one piece. Barely. I learnt my lesson: never let Arcee drive. We almost died several times, and we did in fact crash into one of the unoccupied buildings at the edge of the village. I’d never been so happy to have my feet on the ground in my life. Thankfully Arcee hadn’t harmed the ship too badly. Just a couple of scratches, since the shields had been up (by accident) when we crashed, and neither of us were hurt. True, my dad had been a little bit upset when Arcee had accidentally set a building on fire when she tried to take off, but that could be easily fixed. We tried to go straight to the main building, but were accosted by an angry Ratchet who had wanted to use the building as an extension to the hospital. By then everybody else had got there. Ironhide stared at the ship open mouthed.
“Arcee, you can’t drive.” He said.
“Why do you think we crashed?” I grumbled, giving Optimus a hug. He was surprised, but he didn’t shove me away or anything, which I took as a good sign.
“What’s it got?” Roxy asked, coming over and looking at the ship.
Of course Arcee and I had looked around the ship. We had to before it got destroyed by Arcee’s so called ‘driving’.
“The bottom floor is all the main control room,” Arcee replied, “and an area for the navigation room. Second floor has enough rooms for everyone, and all of them are huge. The top floor has a full proper teleport, and underneath the control room is the engine room.”
Everyone stared at her.
“There’s more than one floor?” Jazz asked uncomprehendingly. “How’d you get that?”
“My dad decided we needed a luxury fighter.” I said embarrassedly, shaking my head in despair.
“When are we leaving?” Ironhide asked excitedly. It seemed that he would quite happily go on such a dangerous mission so long as he got to go on the ship.
“Who’s driving?” I asked after a moment of silence. There was no way I was gonna go through even three seconds more of Arcee’s ‘driving’.
“Normally Ratchet.” Optimus replied, “But he’s not coming.”
“I'll drive.” Jazz volunteered.
Everyone was looking at Optimus expectantly. He shifted uncomfortably.
“What?” he asked finally.
“You’re first lieutenant.” Ironhide replied, “You’re leader.”
Optimus stared at him.
“We haven’t left yet. Sentinel’s leader until then.”
Sentinel was watching the goings-on with an amused expression on his face from where he was sitting on a chunk of rubble from the old building.
“You’ll leave as soon as everybody is ready to do so.” He said, standing up and coming forward. “I take it everybody is prepared?”
We all nodded. True, Arcee and I hadn’t actually been there to prepare, but I didn’t have any way to prepare myself. I didn’t own anything.
We were told to get to sleep and leave in the morning. Optimus went off to talk to Sentinel about something, and it took me about ten minutes to get to sleep. Next thing I knew I was bolt upright in the bed, panting. It was late, but Optimus wasn’t back yet. I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d gone to sleep. I lay down and sobbed for a minute. It hadn’t happened in so long, I’d thought it was finally over.
I was still awake when Optimus came in, terrified of going back to sleep. I felt him lay down behind me, and twisted round so I could snuggle up to him, surprising both of us.
“What’s got into you?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing.”
“You’re not normally this affectionate.”
I rested my head on his chest and didn’t say anything. I felt his head tilt, and then he rested his cheek against the top of my head and ran his hand through my hair. It was comforting, having him there, and I started to feel better.
I was woken by a sharp grating sound, like nails on a chalk board. I sat bolt upright in bed, which woke Optimus up with a start.
“What is that?!”
Optimus sat up, yawning, and listened for a moment.
“Relax, Clara.” He put his arm round my shoulders, pulling me against his chest. “It’s just Sideswipe.”
I almost died of relief. I snuggled back up to Optimus, putting my arms around him. We were both wide awake now, so we got out of that room. Nearly everyone was waiting for us by the ship. We were just waiting on Arcee, who had gone to say goodbye to Sideswipe. Eventually she got back and we all got on. Bumblebee, the Autobot who’d come with Jazz, made a whining sound as he looked around the control room. He’d damaged his throat in his battle with the Decepticons on the way to the village, and lost his voice as a result of that. If Jazz's driving was anything like Arcee’s, they could just drop me off on the nearest planet. Bumblebee went through to the navigation room while Jazz got the Main Control Panel up and running. He started pressing things on the touch screen that appeared as Bumblebee came back out. He gave Jazz some co-ordinates by holding up his fingers for each digit, and I felt the ship take off. I should mention. I’m not good with flying, and my little experience with Arcee had done nothing to ease my discomfort. Jazz was gentle though. I hadn’t spoken to him or Bumblebee at all yet, so I knew nothing about either of them. Optimus had disappeared from where he’d been standing at my side for the last few minutes. He’d gone over to talk to Ironhide. Arcee came over to me.
“What’s going on between you and Optimus?” she asked curiously.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you seem to be….depending on him….more and more recently. You keep looking for him. Like just now, when he went to talk to Ironhide. It’s like you don’t know what to do when he’s not with you.”
“I don’t.” I admitted. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”
Arcee glanced at Optimus.
“Well, be careful with him.” She warned me. “Nobody will tell me exactly what’s going on, but I’ve heard he’s had a pretty rough past.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What happened to you? After they died.”
I lowered my head.
“I don’t know.” I said quietly. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Sorry.” Arcee wandered off to talk to Jazz, just as Optimus came over.
“How are you doing?” he asked me, laying a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m all right.” I replied. “I don’t like flying though.”
Optimus smiled.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
We looked up as Roxy got into a play fight with Ironhide. She was always getting into real fights with Ratchet, but since he wasn’t here she was starting on Ironhide.
“What do we do when we get there?” I asked Optimus.
“Well….we have to make sure the ship’s safe before we do anything else, and then I guess we just….look?”
I stared at him.
“You don’t have a clue what we should do, do you?”
“Nope.”
I smiled and hugged him. Thankfully that made me feel less hopeless about this mission. He rested his chin against the top of my head gently, rubbing my arm absently.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
It took about thirty minutes for us to be lounging around the control room, bored. Jazz had found a wormhole that could get us to Earth within a couple of hours of reaching it, rather than the weeks it would take getting there normally, but that in itself was about a day’s journey away.
“I have a really bad feeling about this mission.” I muttered. I was sitting next to Optimus, at the foot of the Main Control Panel.
“Keep thinking like that and you’ll be taken for a Dreamer.” Jazz called from across the room. I stiffened slightly and glared at him.
“What’s a Dreamer?” Arcee asked, frowning.
“None of you guys know what a Dreamer is?” Jazz asked, clearly shocked.
He looked around the room, but nobody said anything. Sure, I knew, but that didn’t mean I had to tell anyone.
“Spill it, Jazz.” Roxy yawned.
“Fine. A Dreamer is someone with….well, it’s kind of like a sixth sense. Each one has the ability to see something different, and they have visions while they’re asleep, which is obviously why they’re called Dreamers. I’ve never actually met one. They’re supposed to be really rare, like, one or two for every generation. I’ve heard a rumour that the Decepticons have one. A woman who sees snatches of key events in the future, then afterwards she can only remember one or two things about it. If someone figures out what those one or two things mean, they can easily have the power to control that event. But most Dreamers see things how they’re going to be, and there’s no way of changing them even if you know it’s going to happen.”
“Sometimes trying to stop it is what causes it to happen in the first place.” I provided quietly. Jazz nodded.
“So you actually knew what a Dreamer is?” Ironhide asked me. I nodded. “Have you ever met one?”
I shrugged.
“Sort of.”
They stared at me.
“How can you ‘sort of’ meet someone?” Jazz demanded.
“Actually you can do it all the time.” Roxy spoke up. “Bumping into someone on the street, being introduced to someone but not really paying attention to anything. I’ve ‘sort of’ met a lot of people.”
Optimus was smiling slightly. He pulled me closer to him.

Chapter 2

We did, eventually, get through the wormhole. It was late the next day when we finally reached Earth, and things finally started to get interesting. I was glad that the planet’s gravitational pull gave everything something to do, since none of us wanted to crash and burn. A couple of the other Autobots had been giving me funny looks, like they were trying to figure out if I could be a Dreamer or not. We were doing pretty well with keeping the ship steady, but then Ironhide slipped and kicked Roxy by accident, and all hell broke loose. They started fighting, dropping their duties to do so. They ended up slamming into Arcee, so she couldn’t do anything. Optimus had to drop what he was doing to try and break them up before they killed everyone, and gravity managed to catch hold of us, increasing our speed as it flung us towards the Earth thousands of miles below. Jazz, Bumblebee and I tried to get the ship into reverse to get us out of it, or at least slow us down, but with so much pressure on it, the engine cut out completely.
There was a moment of silence.
“That can’t be good.” Jazz said slowly, looking at me with wide eyes.
“What can’t be good?” Optimus asked, appearing back at my side.
“We just lost the engines.” I answered.
That was enough to stop the others in their tracks. They had about three seconds to let that piece of information sink in, then we were all thrown to the floor, hard, as the ship plummeted to the Earth far below.
“Ow.” I cringed as I got to my feet. “Let’s not do that again.”
“What kind of state is the engine in?” Optimus asked, not even bothering to move from where he’d fallen.
I went to see.
I opened the door to the engine room, and slammed it shut immediately as a huge amount of steam billowed out, and temperatures started rising.
“Not good.”
Optimus groaned and got to his feet.
“Is anyone hurt?” he asked
“Yes!” everyone complained.
“Is anyone fatally wounded?” Optimus rephrased
There was a lot of grumbling, but nobody spoke up. Jazz went over and opened the main door.
“What’s it like out there?” Arcee asked him.
“Cold. Dark. Wet.” Jazz replied.
“Remind you of anywhere?” I asked innocently.
“Hey!” Ironhide protested. “Autobot turf isn’t that bad!”
“I was actually talking about Decepticon territory, but interpret it how you want.” I replied, laughing.
Ironhide shuddered.
“You’ve turned into an Optimus Prime clone….except you’re female….and you laugh.”
Optimus rolled his eyes.
“All right you two.” He joined Jazz at the door. “We should start searching for those crystals.”
Jazz was right about where we’d crashed. It was cold. It was dark. It was wet. I found it quite it quite depressing. I got depressed a lot anyway, but still….
We headed down the way that the ship seemed to have come.
It was dark, and we could hardly even see where we were going. I stuck close to Optimus, my eyes flickering from wall to wall, expecting a Decepticon to jump out from round every corner. Wait a minute. Corner? The ship had crashed, how did it have time to randomly change what direction it was going in?
“What’s with all the twists and turns?” I asked finally, because I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“We might not be following the path that the ship took.” Optimus replied, but he sounded doubtful.
After a while, we heard voices up ahead. Optimus held his arm out, stopping us.
There were two Decepticons up ahead, arguing about something. I flinched as I recognised Starscream’s voice. Unfortunately Optimus hadn’t killed him the night I met him. On the bright side, Starscream was getting chewed up.
I would’ve been happy to just listen to Starscream getting it, but at that moment a beeping sound started suddenly around my waist. The Decepticons’ voices faltered.
“Shit.” I hissed, grabbing the small device from my waist.
“What is that?” Optimus whispered.
“Relax,” I hissed back, finally shutting off the device, “It just means the ship’s being broken into.”
“It might be a threat.” Ironhide said quietly.
“Clara, go and check it out.” Optimus whispered to me, “We’ll hold up here.”
I nodded and hurried back the way we’d come. I heard the ship before I saw it. All the alarms were blaring. The door was wide open, but I knew for a fact that we’d locked it behind us. Some top class security systems.
I went inside. I didn’t even have to sneak, since the alarms were so loud. I could hear voices from the control room, yelling to make themselves heard over the alarms. They weren’t Decepticon voices. They were sparkings’ voices, scared and trying to remember the way out. I went in and shut off the alarms. They had their backs to me, so none of them had noticed me yet.
“What just happened?” one of them was asking.
“I don’t know.” The other answered, “I think we came in this way.”
She was heading straight for the door to the engine room.
“I don’t think we did….” The third said slowly.
The girl opened the door anyway.
All three of them would’ve been burned to a crisp by the flames that came tearing out if I hadn’t shoved my shield down between the three of them and the door.
“Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to go in other peoples’ houses without permission?” I asked them as I shut the engine room door.
“They told us not to go in strangers houses.” One of them corrected.
“Well, I come from a small village. Everyone knew each other, so there were no strangers there.”
“What about strangers passing through?” the girl asked
“They didn’t have houses.” I pulled my shield out of the ground and strapped it to my back, the three sparklings watching my every move. “What are you doing here?”
“We come here a lot.” The other girl replied, “But your spaceship has never been here before.”
I sighed.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Gracee.” she said nervously.
“I’m Andi!” the first girl said happily, “and this is my twin brother, Alex.”
“All right. Gracee, Andi and Alex. Get out of here.”
Andi stared at me in horror.
“Why? We were here first!”
“I didn’t say you had to get out of whatever these caves are, just out of the ship.”
“Why?”
“Well, unless you want to get thrown into space….” I tailed off, trying to sound threatening.
“You can’t do that.” Alex said quietly. He seemed smarter than his twin. “Your whole engine room is on fire, this ship isn’t going anywhere until you get that sorted out, for a start.”
I glared at him.
“Yeah, sure. This is just great. I get sent back here to deal with a Decepticon breaking into the ship, which would be bad enough, and I get stuck with a couple of stupid sparklings.”
I went over to the Main Control Panel and something pale caught my eye. Gracee was holding a bluish coloured object about half a metre long.
“Where did you get that?” I asked her quietly.
“I found it outside.” She replied, looking at it. “Why?”
“Don’t let anyone else touch it.” I told her.
“Why not?”
At that moment Arcee came running in.
“Optimus wants to know what’s taking you so long.” She relayed.
“Tell him it’s none of his business.”
“You tell him! He’d kill me if I told him that!”
“Is there a problem up there?”
“No. He was just wondering, since you’ve been gone a while now. Is there a problem?”
I tilted my head to the three sparklings. She looked.
“I take it they’re not threats.”
“No. I just can’t get rid of them.”
“If you hurt them, Optimus will kill you. If they’re here when the others get back, Optimus will kill you. If Optimus even knows they’ve been here, Optimus will kill you. And then he’d kill them. That’s some problem you’ve got.”
“I take it Optimus is in a bad mood then.”
“Yeah. But he doesn’t exactly like natives on the ship, or anywhere near him, anyway. He finds them annoying.”
“Well, it’s your problem too, since you know they’re here.”
“Good point.”
“What’s a good point?” Roxy asked as she came in.
I shifted nervously as the other Autobots followed.
“Nothing.” Arcee said, way too innocently, shifting herself so she was hiding the sparklings.
Optimus tilted his head.
“Arcee, what’s going on?” he asked her.
Arcee didn’t say anything. Optimus sighed and turned to me.
“Clara?”
I looked at him, and I somehow knew I wouldn’t be able to lie to him.
“It’s just a couple of sparklings, Optimus.” I said quietly, looking down at the floor.
Arcee glanced at me, and then moved away from the sparklings guiltily. After hearing Arcee’s speech about Optimus, I don’t think they were really interested in meeting him. Alex and Gracee were shivering a little, not daring to look up at the Autobots. Andi looked fine though, she was staring at them open-mouthed. Optimus frowned and came over to me.
“Well this should be fun.” He said dryly, his head tilted as he surveyed the sparklings. “I just know it.”