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Description
Chapter 18

*zztt!*

-Optimus to Prowl! Prowl, report!-

-...-

-Prowl! Where are ya, man??-

-Prowl here, Jazz… Optimus.-

-Good to hear from you, Autobot.-

-Yo, man, don't scare me like that! Ya got any word on Sideswipe?-

-He has been located.-

-Great, 'cuz now Sunstreaker's missing.-

-As is Jetfire.-

-I know where they are, Optimus sir.-

-Where? We're done here and now we need to regroup – neither Jazz nor I can seem to reach their commlink signatures.-

-They are occupied at the moment – Jetfire had disclosed some vital information to me and Sunstreaker had also mentioned something else critical, so it was necessary for the three of us to depart… after I calculated the probability of the rest of the group's success of course.-

-And how much was that, Prowler?-

-Surprisingly low…-

-Heh! Just to show we're too bada** for odds!-

-Prowl… Jetfire and Sunstreaker?-

-I still can't believe Jet, 'Hide, and Arcee disobeyed yer orders, Prime; an' bringin' Wingblast in too!-

-Later, Jazz… Prowl?-

-Jetfire and Sunstreaker are protecting Sideswipe. Starscream went after him when he left the scene with an important package.-

= Package?=

-Prowl, an explanation?-

-Yes sir. As far as I am able to deduce, Sideswipe had fled from the battle carrying the package only to be followed by Starscream.-

-It can't be Mrs. Witwicky… she… she's still here…*ahem* Anyway, what's the package Prowl-man?-

-Sunstreaker had approached me, informing me that Sideswipe had left and then Jetfire approached and told me of the package's presence. Naturally, I deemed it of importance and went along to assist them.-

-Prowl…-

-The three of us left, after I took the time to compute the calculations I had just disclosed to you not a klick ago, and then purposely encountered Starscream. I was able to secure the package and fled as Jetfire and Sunstreaker held him off for me as well as protect Sideswipe, who is currently wounded and immobilized. Now…-

= Prowl!=

-What is the package?-

-My apologies, Optimus… it is the Witwicky girl, Ellie.-

***

*beep*……*beep*……*beep*……*beep*

Is that the alarm already? Sounds funny…

*beep*

Ughn… But I don't want to get up. Not yet.

*beep*

Man… any minute now Mom's gonna come in telling me to get up and get ready.

*beep*

But for what; school? I don't have to go there anymore; we live in the Autobot base now.

*beep*

Hold on a second… Autobot… Decepticon… Oh, holy crap!

*beep*

I snapped my eyes open as fast as was humanly possible. I was planning on jumping outta bed and marching straight to Optimus' office – I wanted to know if he had a plan for saving Mom yet, and if not boy was I gonna give him one! I would just have to figure it out first.

However, the light in my room hurt my eyes when I opened them and I was forced to shut them again. I waited for a bit for the pain to go away, rubbing my eyelids with my fingers to try and make it go faster. Man – I hated that! Whose bright idea was it to leave the light on anyway? – er, no pun intended.

After a few seconds, I squinted my eyes to keep from being blinded while reaching down to throw the covers off. Did someone steal my blanket in the night and give me a new one? This one was white instead of green.

Meh. I don't care about that right now.

I swung my legs over the side of my bed – they were stiff, which was expected, but they also ached a lot – and was about to stand up when…

Yank!

"OW!!"
*Brzzt!* *Brzzt!* *Brzzt!*
I quickly sat back down and grabbed my left arm at my elbow pit with a hiss. Some sort of alarm continued to go off instead of the steady beat from earlier. But I didn't pay any attention to it. Cautiously I looked at my arm, trying to see how I had hurt it.

I stared at what I saw.

In the pit of my elbow a long clear tube had been taped there and it looked like there was a needle casually attaching the tube to the inside of my vein.

I suddenly shivered and looked away from it; needles had always made me feel weird. It was pretty obvious that my pain had come from pulling at the tape keeping the needle in place. Ew… the sudden thought of the needle moving in my vein when I pulled on it made me squeamish all over again.

I nervously looked back at my arm – avoiding having to look at the needle – because I thought I had seen something else on my upper arm.

Hey, there was.

Tightly wrapped around my bicep was some clean white-colored cloth; well, clean except for a reddish brown stain that seemed to be seeping through from the other side. Experimentally I reached with my right hand and gripped the upper edge of the wrapping. I pulled it back to try and look under it, but I stopped when I felt a painful tugging at my arm from somewhere in the wrap. I let go of the cloth and held it back against my skin, wincing slightly in pain. Ow… why did that hurt so much?

*Brzzt!* *Brzzt!* *Brzzt!*
The alarm was still going off, and I quickly realized that it was coming from one of many machines that I just noticed were at my bedside; I couldn't help but think that they looked like the ones in Ratchet's Medbay, but smaller. There were screens on two or three of them and each had a line that peaked and dipped with a number beside it – most of those numbers were around 100, I realized.

One screen though, the one on the machine where the alarm was coming from, had a flat line and instead of numbers were three dashes. I began to worry; what did that mean? I was asleep before, but why was it going off now? I would have woken up if it went off before.

A thought suddenly came to me. The Decepticons! They had somehow captured me! The alarm was for exactly when I woke up so that they would know and would come to torture me or something!

I quickly checked myself and became aware that more than just the needle (ugh) was attached to me. On my chest under my shirt it felt like I had stickers right on my skin. They looked like those suction-cup things I always saw used in hospitals; that's exactly what I used to think they were, but they're just stickers and wires.

That only seemed to add to my suspicion. The Decepticons didn't want me for interrogation; they were experimenting on me! Holy crap, what am I gonna do now??

Well… for an experimentation chamber it looked really clean, I mused distractedly; no rusted metal or random sharp objects lying around like I would think of whenever I thought of the Decepticons' base. This was a room that was great for humans, though obviously really tight for a giant robot – maybe Frenzy was the one experimenting on me.

I bit my lip at that thought… If he came in again I was going to hop up and try to beat the slag outta him; then I'll escape. I'm small enough, I think. I could probably get out of the Decepticon base on my own. If only I had my cell phone – I would call Ironhide to come and get me when I was out. So that was a problem; how would I contact the Autobots?

Even though the "she's awake" alarm kept going off my ears picked up footsteps from beyond the wide wooden door in the room. They were quickly growing louder, and I thought they were heading for me. There was no time to run away and I suddenly became unsure if I would have been able to even walk; I just didn't feel too well.

Dangit, if only I had listened to Ironhide! Not listening to somebody is what got me in this whole mess in the first place!

I leaned forward and grabbed the covers with one hand. I then fell back on my pillow and covered my head, hiding as much of the rest of my body as I could. I felt dizzy and sick because of all the movement I was making… dangit, that sucked. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe as quietly as I could; maybe Frenzy would think I'm still asleep. Maybe he would leave me alone.

I heard the door handle turn and open and the footsteps softly clacked across the room. They grew closer and closer. Surprisingly though I didn't hear the clanking and scraping that was usually heard when a robot walked. I wondered what that meant.

They stopped nearby, so I clutched the blanket in my fist as tight as I could. I tried to will myself invisible, hoping he wouldn't bother me.

"Miss Witwicky?"

My eyes opened. That didn't sound like a robot's voice at all. It was more like a man's voice. And the Decepticons didn't have holoforms… did they? I was almost sure they didn't. Almost.

I felt the blanket getting tugged from my grasp near my head and I couldn't hold onto it any longer. It came off from my face and I shut my eyes again tightly, scared that I might come face-to-face to a tiny Decepticon.

A moment passed. Two.

I carefully slit one eye open and looked at whoever was there. I quickly opened both eyes when I saw that it was clearly not a Decepticon.

Looking down at me with a smile was a pale man with cloudy blue eyes and sandy spiked hair.

"Welcome back, kiddo."

I began to sit up again and the man helped me, surprising me a bit. I couldn't help but think that he was so gentle. Decepticons weren't like that. He stepped back so I took the time to look at him. The man was in pale blue scrubs under a long white coat and I could see a red Autobot insignia on the right side of his chest. Yeah, definitely not a Decepticon.

My eyebrows moved and squished toward the center of my head when I remembered what he had said. "B-Back?" I asked; I was surprised to find that my voice was hoarse and hurt a little. I tried to clear my throat to fix it, but nothing really happened.

"Yeah," the man said. "Hold your index finger out for me please…" By now he had gone around until he was on the left side of my bed and had picked up a small black device with a wire on it that was dangling from a mass of tangled wires attached to the machines. I did as he asked me and held up my left pointer finger. He clipped the black thing onto my finger and I flinched, half-expecting there to be a small poke or something; I was relieved when there wasn't.

Immediately the alarm stopped and the machine then produced the same rhythmic beeping that I woke up to before. I looked up at the man again – wow, he was tall – and gave him a really confused look, like the one I had a moment ago.

"Where am I?" I asked quietly, my voice scratching a little painfully. The man handed me a small jug of water, so I took it and began to drink. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was and how dry my mouth felt because I just couldn't stop drinking. The whole thing was gone too quickly so the last bit from the jug I sloshed in my mouth with my tongue before swallowing. Oh man, I couldn't believe how good water tasted… even better than root beer. I never thought that possible, but now I knew better.

"Miss Witwicky – here, I'll take that," the man took the jug from me, earning a slight pout from me even though it was empty, and set it on a nearby side table. "I'm your nurse, Bradley White; but you can call me Rad if you'd like that better."

I nodded slightly. "Rad," I repeated, my voice sounding much better. Still felt dry though. "Where am I?"

Rad smiled. "Welcome to the N.E.S.T. Global Defense base," he said proudly. "It's made up of the Secondary United Nations Military and the Autobot Earth-Stationed Units as a defense force against the Decepticons on our planet."

"Wait, wait," I began, stopping his explanation, "humans know about the Autobots? How come nobody ever said anything??"

Rad just shrugged. "Maybe Optimus didn't think you should know about it just yet."

I grumbled quietly. "Great, so there's more stuff I'm not allowed to know about. Where is this place in the world anyway?"

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Rad shifting a little, not looking at me. "Uh… that's classified," he responded quietly. "I'm, uh… not authorized to tell you."

I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the bed, folding my right arm over my stomach. "Exactly what I mean," I pointed out. "I'm not allowed to know anything."

The man chuckled, ruffling my bangs carefully with his hand. "It's okay, Miss Witwicky –"

"Ellie," I told him as I fixed my hair, or at least tried to; I don't think it looked too good from being stuck in bed anyway. "My last name's too weird to hear aloud outside of school."

Rad laughed again. "Anyway, now that you're awake," he began as he went and retrieved a chair and a clipboard from nearby, pulling them close and sitting in the chair facing toward me, "I would like to ask you a couple questions; make sure you're all here and all." He folded over a page on the clipboard to a yellow pad and clicked a pen that he pulled from his pocket.

I shrugged, but winced when my left arm shot out a brief pang of hurt. "Sure, shoot," I said. I suddenly grinned, another comment coming to mind. "Oh wait, don't. Someone already beat you to the punch."

It seemed like humor was the best thing that Rad was capable of understanding because he laughed yet again.

Description
Chapter 18

*zztt!*

-Optimus to Prowl! Prowl, report!-

-...-

-Prowl! Where are ya, man??-

-Prowl here, Jazz… Optimus.-

-Good to hear from you, Autobot.-

-Yo, man, don't scare me like that! Ya got any word on Sideswipe?-

-He has been located.-

-Great, 'cuz now Sunstreaker's missing.-

-As is Jetfire.-

-I know where they are, Optimus sir.-

-Where? We're done here and now we need to regroup – neither Jazz nor I can seem to reach their commlink signatures.-

-They are occupied at the moment – Jetfire had disclosed some vital information to me and Sunstreaker had also mentioned something else critical, so it was necessary for the three of us to depart… after I calculated the probability of the rest of the group's success of course.-

-And how much was that, Prowler?-

-Surprisingly low…-

-Heh! Just to show we're too bada** for odds!-

-Prowl… Jetfire and Sunstreaker?-

-I still can't believe Jet, 'Hide, and Arcee disobeyed yer orders, Prime; an' bringin' Wingblast in too!-

-Later, Jazz… Prowl?-

-Jetfire and Sunstreaker are protecting Sideswipe. Starscream went after him when he left the scene with an important package.-

= Package?=

-Prowl, an explanation?-

-Yes sir. As far as I am able to deduce, Sideswipe had fled from the battle carrying the package only to be followed by Starscream.-

-It can't be Mrs. Witwicky… she… she's still here…*ahem* Anyway, what's the package Prowl-man?-

-Sunstreaker had approached me, informing me that Sideswipe had left and then Jetfire approached and told me of the package's presence. Naturally, I deemed it of importance and went along to assist them.-

-Prowl…-

-The three of us left, after I took the time to compute the calculations I had just disclosed to you not a klick ago, and then purposely encountered Starscream. I was able to secure the package and fled as Jetfire and Sunstreaker held him off for me as well as protect Sideswipe, who is currently wounded and immobilized. Now…-

= Prowl!=

-What is the package?-

-My apologies, Optimus… it is the Witwicky girl, Ellie.-

***

*beep*……*beep*……*beep*……*beep*

Is that the alarm already? Sounds funny…

*beep*

Ughn… But I don't want to get up. Not yet.

*beep*

Man… any minute now Mom's gonna come in telling me to get up and get ready.

*beep*

But for what; school? I don't have to go there anymore; we live in the Autobot base now.

*beep*

Hold on a second… Autobot… Decepticon… Oh, holy crap!

*beep*

I snapped my eyes open as fast as was humanly possible. I was planning on jumping outta bed and marching straight to Optimus' office – I wanted to know if he had a plan for saving Mom yet, and if not boy was I gonna give him one! I would just have to figure it out first.

However, the light in my room hurt my eyes when I opened them and I was forced to shut them again. I waited for a bit for the pain to go away, rubbing my eyelids with my fingers to try and make it go faster. Man – I hated that! Whose bright idea was it to leave the light on anyway? – er, no pun intended.

After a few seconds, I squinted my eyes to keep from being blinded while reaching down to throw the covers off. Did someone steal my blanket in the night and give me a new one? This one was white instead of green.

Meh. I don't care about that right now.

I swung my legs over the side of my bed – they were stiff, which was expected, but they also ached a lot – and was about to stand up when…

Yank!

"OW!!"
*Brzzt!* *Brzzt!* *Brzzt!*
I quickly sat back down and grabbed my left arm at my elbow pit with a hiss. Some sort of alarm continued to go off instead of the steady beat from earlier. But I didn't pay any attention to it. Cautiously I looked at my arm, trying to see how I had hurt it.

I stared at what I saw.

In the pit of my elbow a long clear tube had been taped there and it looked like there was a needle casually attaching the tube to the inside of my vein.

I suddenly shivered and looked away from it; needles had always made me feel weird. It was pretty obvious that my pain had come from pulling at the tape keeping the needle in place. Ew… the sudden thought of the needle moving in my vein when I pulled on it made me squeamish all over again.

I nervously looked back at my arm – avoiding having to look at the needle – because I thought I had seen something else on my upper arm.

Hey, there was.

Tightly wrapped around my bicep was some clean white-colored cloth; well, clean except for a reddish brown stain that seemed to be seeping through from the other side. Experimentally I reached with my right hand and gripped the upper edge of the wrapping. I pulled it back to try and look under it, but I stopped when I felt a painful tugging at my arm from somewhere in the wrap. I let go of the cloth and held it back against my skin, wincing slightly in pain. Ow… why did that hurt so much?

*Brzzt!* *Brzzt!* *Brzzt!*
The alarm was still going off, and I quickly realized that it was coming from one of many machines that I just noticed were at my bedside; I couldn't help but think that they looked like the ones in Ratchet's Medbay, but smaller. There were screens on two or three of them and each had a line that peaked and dipped with a number beside it – most of those numbers were around 100, I realized.

One screen though, the one on the machine where the alarm was coming from, had a flat line and instead of numbers were three dashes. I began to worry; what did that mean? I was asleep before, but why was it going off now? I would have woken up if it went off before.

A thought suddenly came to me. The Decepticons! They had somehow captured me! The alarm was for exactly when I woke up so that they would know and would come to torture me or something!

I quickly checked myself and became aware that more than just the needle (ugh) was attached to me. On my chest under my shirt it felt like I had stickers right on my skin. They looked like those suction-cup things I always saw used in hospitals; that's exactly what I used to think they were, but they're just stickers and wires.

That only seemed to add to my suspicion. The Decepticons didn't want me for interrogation; they were experimenting on me! Holy crap, what am I gonna do now??

Well… for an experimentation chamber it looked really clean, I mused distractedly; no rusted metal or random sharp objects lying around like I would think of whenever I thought of the Decepticons' base. This was a room that was great for humans, though obviously really tight for a giant robot – maybe Frenzy was the one experimenting on me.

I bit my lip at that thought… If he came in again I was going to hop up and try to beat the slag outta him; then I'll escape. I'm small enough, I think. I could probably get out of the Decepticon base on my own. If only I had my cell phone – I would call Ironhide to come and get me when I was out. So that was a problem; how would I contact the Autobots?

Even though the "she's awake" alarm kept going off my ears picked up footsteps from beyond the wide wooden door in the room. They were quickly growing louder, and I thought they were heading for me. There was no time to run away and I suddenly became unsure if I would have been able to even walk; I just didn't feel too well.

Dangit, if only I had listened to Ironhide! Not listening to somebody is what got me in this whole mess in the first place!

I leaned forward and grabbed the covers with one hand. I then fell back on my pillow and covered my head, hiding as much of the rest of my body as I could. I felt dizzy and sick because of all the movement I was making… dangit, that sucked. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe as quietly as I could; maybe Frenzy would think I'm still asleep. Maybe he would leave me alone.

I heard the door handle turn and open and the footsteps softly clacked across the room. They grew closer and closer. Surprisingly though I didn't hear the clanking and scraping that was usually heard when a robot walked. I wondered what that meant.

They stopped nearby, so I clutched the blanket in my fist as tight as I could. I tried to will myself invisible, hoping he wouldn't bother me.

"Miss Witwicky?"

My eyes opened. That didn't sound like a robot's voice at all. It was more like a man's voice. And the Decepticons didn't have holoforms… did they? I was almost sure they didn't. Almost.

I felt the blanket getting tugged from my grasp near my head and I couldn't hold onto it any longer. It came off from my face and I shut my eyes again tightly, scared that I might come face-to-face to a tiny Decepticon.

A moment passed. Two.

I carefully slit one eye open and looked at whoever was there. I quickly opened both eyes when I saw that it was clearly not a Decepticon.

Looking down at me with a smile was a pale man with cloudy blue eyes and sandy spiked hair.

"Welcome back, kiddo."

I began to sit up again and the man helped me, surprising me a bit. I couldn't help but think that he was so gentle. Decepticons weren't like that. He stepped back so I took the time to look at him. The man was in pale blue scrubs under a long white coat and I could see a red Autobot insignia on the right side of his chest. Yeah, definitely not a Decepticon.

My eyebrows moved and squished toward the center of my head when I remembered what he had said. "B-Back?" I asked; I was surprised to find that my voice was hoarse and hurt a little. I tried to clear my throat to fix it, but nothing really happened.

"Yeah," the man said. "Hold your index finger out for me please…" By now he had gone around until he was on the left side of my bed and had picked up a small black device with a wire on it that was dangling from a mass of tangled wires attached to the machines. I did as he asked me and held up my left pointer finger. He clipped the black thing onto my finger and I flinched, half-expecting there to be a small poke or something; I was relieved when there wasn't.

Immediately the alarm stopped and the machine then produced the same rhythmic beeping that I woke up to before. I looked up at the man again – wow, he was tall – and gave him a really confused look, like the one I had a moment ago.

"Where am I?" I asked quietly, my voice scratching a little painfully. The man handed me a small jug of water, so I took it and began to drink. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was and how dry my mouth felt because I just couldn't stop drinking. The whole thing was gone too quickly so the last bit from the jug I sloshed in my mouth with my tongue before swallowing. Oh man, I couldn't believe how good water tasted… even better than root beer. I never thought that possible, but now I knew better.

"Miss Witwicky – here, I'll take that," the man took the jug from me, earning a slight pout from me even though it was empty, and set it on a nearby side table. "I'm your nurse, Bradley White; but you can call me Rad if you'd like that better."

I nodded slightly. "Rad," I repeated, my voice sounding much better. Still felt dry though. "Where am I?"

Rad smiled. "Welcome to the N.E.S.T. Global Defense base," he said proudly. "It's made up of the Secondary United Nations Military and the Autobot Earth-Stationed Units as a defense force against the Decepticons on our planet."

"Wait, wait," I began, stopping his explanation, "humans know about the Autobots? How come nobody ever said anything??"

Rad just shrugged. "Maybe Optimus didn't think you should know about it just yet."

I grumbled quietly. "Great, so there's more stuff I'm not allowed to know about. Where is this place in the world anyway?"

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Rad shifting a little, not looking at me. "Uh… that's classified," he responded quietly. "I'm, uh… not authorized to tell you."

I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the bed, folding my right arm over my stomach. "Exactly what I mean," I pointed out. "I'm not allowed to know anything."

The man chuckled, ruffling my bangs carefully with his hand. "It's okay, Miss Witwicky –"

"Ellie," I told him as I fixed my hair, or at least tried to; I don't think it looked too good from being stuck in bed anyway. "My last name's too weird to hear aloud outside of school."

Rad laughed again. "Anyway, now that you're awake," he began as he went and retrieved a chair and a clipboard from nearby, pulling them close and sitting in the chair facing toward me, "I would like to ask you a couple questions; make sure you're all here and all." He folded over a page on the clipboard to a yellow pad and clicked a pen that he pulled from his pocket.

I shrugged, but winced when my left arm shot out a brief pang of hurt. "Sure, shoot," I said. I suddenly grinned, another comment coming to mind. "Oh wait, don't. Someone already beat you to the punch."

It seemed like humor was the best thing that Rad was capable of understanding because he laughed yet again.