Vanguard

I was in the back with Tessa. The further away that we had gotten from Chicago, the more I started to settle down. With my new sense of calm, the adrenaline and whatever the fuck else that had been pumping through my system lessened, everything balancing out to normal, and with that came the pain.

I was black and blue all over and covered in tiny cuts that I hadn’t noticed before. Now, I felt everyone. I felt the pain in my neck from having my head whipped all over the place and the familiar burning sensation of the nanobots trying to take care of the wound on my neck as well as my internal organs from the feel of it. My joints were sore, having taking a ridiculous amount of force upon impact after impact. Worst was the pain of my body adapting. The metal and flesh moving in a complicated dance in order for whatever it determined I needed to come too.

It felt as if I was on fire from the inside out. I don’t know where the hell we were heading. Obviously it was going to be in the middle of nowhere, where Prime and the others could land a fucking space ship without being too conspicuous.

When we finally met up with the others, Bee practically threw the others out, before, activating his holoform.

He went to pick me up, but I managed to get out on my own, and remain standing, though, Bee gave me the assist, holding most of my weight.

“Let’s give Bee the news. We got a ship now. We’re leaving,” Crosshairs said.

That didn’t bode well for me, and based on the way Bee stiffened and Jazzy’z chirp them either. I had already thought I lost them once, and now I was gonna have to go through it all again. It was bullshit. I couldn’t even argue. I just buried my face and Bee’s neck. He just wrapped his arms around me, holding me as tightly as he could without hurting me.

“You humans. After all we have done. You don’t know what you’ve brought upon yourselves.”

I had never heard Optimus sound so disappointed, not even in Megatron, when he told us the story of his fall from grace.

“What? What is it now? What are you talking about? I mean I’m doing stuff that’s out of my league here.”

I had to give Cade credit. He was handling everything extremely well.

“You don’t see who’s controlling who. Within that manmade prototype I fought I sensed the presence of Megatron.”

“What?” I croaked.

“The decepticon that started the Chicago war?” Cade asked.

“How? He’s dead. “How? He’s dead.”

“How do you think KSI built those bots in the first place?”

“Brains?” I asked, eyeing the small bot.

“Hm? They had a whole mess of dead decepticon heads, and they were downloading their minds. And I was in charge of autopsy duty. No union, no benefits, no nothing. They hooked me up to Megatron and that mind wasn’t as dead as they thought. He fed them the science and specs all so they could build him a brand new body. Then he infected it with his evil nasty chromosomes. They had red beady eyes, got all up in my lovely locks. I can smell it right now. Total inside custom job. KSI might’ve named the body a snappy name like Galvatron, but that’s just Megatron reincarnated.”

I turned from Bee to face Brains, “And you let them? After everything, you fucking let them rebuild Megatron? Who the fuck’s side are you on?” I yelled, getting more worked up by the second. “You were the only one, who had the power to stop this, to sabotage it from the fucking inside and you just let them go. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Little Girl, you can go to a pretty dark place, when you’re on death row.”

I started hacking. I could’ve fallen to my knees if Bee hadn’t caught me.

“Megatron played KSI, and now he’s going after the seed.”

“The seed?” Shane questioned.

“Those nasty soldiers that were chasing us. I saw them board the ship and they took something that they called the seed.”

“Listen, sixty million years ago give or take an eon-“

“Thousands of planets were cyberformed with seeds. They turned your organic life and turned them into our elemental metals. Our creators destroyed your world to make us,” Optimus explained.

“And that’s what Galvatron wants to happen again. He wants to detonate that seed in the biggest city and kill millions. He’s gonna show the world baby I’m back.”

“The blast range will incarnate that city into molten metal. He’ll have enough to build a massive army and annihilate your species forever.”

“You dumb greedy bastards, you just bought yourselves extinction for yourself. Not my problem though. I’m free at last. The whole thing worked out for me.”

“Brains, I hope that you understand that I am going to kick the-“ The hacking intensified.

Everyone just stared, which was a very weird thing to go through.

“We’ve got to get the Seed before Galvatron does,” Cade said.

One glance at my hand revealed a mix of silver, blue and red.

“Brent,” Optimus said sadly.

“No,” I snapped, but couldn’t stop hacking long enough to continue.

“She’s bleeding internally… Give her… One last shot…”

“Do it,” Ravage agreed.

Before I could really register what was going on, something was jammed into my side and the searing got worse. It was almost immediately followed by an intense grogginess. My systems began to switch into sleep mode.

I was knocked out. When I woke up, I was in a train. It wasn’t moving, but it was definitely a change from anywhere else we’d been.

My head was on Bee’s lap. He was running his fingers through my hair. He must’ve been at it for a while, because my hair had been a mess and he was getting through pretty smoothly.

I looked up at his optics. I felt a lot better than before. Still felt like shit though.

“You are going to be the fragging death of me,” he croaked out.

“You shouldn’t be talking,” I told him.

“You shouldn’t be nearly dying in a war that we brought here.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t bring anything here. Your ancestors did.”

He went to argue, but I raised a hand put it over his mouth. “I don’t want to pick a fight over your stupid self-imposed guilt.”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

I sat up and looked myself over surveying the damage. I was still covered in cuts and bruises, which was whatever. I could make them out, which was weird. I was clean. We didn’t exactly have showers and I had been covered in all kinds of dirt. I had new clothes too, which I was thankful for.

“Ravage went shopping,” Bee explained.

I smelled my arm. “Baby wipes?”

He nodded.

“She thinks of everything,” I said with a smile.

“That she does,” he agreed.

He was quiet for a moment. “If Optimus still decides to leave, I’m not going with him. I’m not leaving you.”

There was a part of me that wanted to argue, to tell him to go and have a life doing whatever the fuck they would be doing in space, but that part of being overshadowed by the part that wanted him with me forever, as long as forever would be, the part that was relieved to hear him say it.

I leaned in and pressed my lips to his. He kissed back softly, slowly, savoring the moment. Who knew how many moments like this we were gonna have?

“I love you,” I whispered.

“You have my spark. Now go back to sleep, you’re nowhere near recovered, even with that extrashot of nanobots.”

“Where the fuck did you get those?” I asked.

“Ratchet gave them to me.”

“You’ve been holding on to them for that long?”

“Never needed them. Sleep. No matter what they choose to do, you and I are gonna have our work cut out for us.”