Chapter Four

Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 330.

A polite buzz woke Solarflare. Mirage grunted and lifted his hand from where it curled over the front of her torso and slapped the switch on the nightstand. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, Mirage. Did I wake you?”

“What can we do for you, Carly?”

“Spike and I heard that Prime wants everyone to go out and get in contact with their human friends to help with security. I was wondering if Flare’d like to go with me?”

Solarflare lifted her head and rubbed her optics. Well, at least this time, sleep had been peaceful. “I don’t have a cockpit,” she replied, a little perturbed at being woken up on her off-day. It was her day off, wasn’t it?

She should have known better than to object to Carly; it only made the blonde human more determined. “We have flight gear, I can strap myself to your back. Oh, c’mon Flare, it’ll be fun. You and me, girl’s day out.”

“Flare would much rather get laid,” the grey avian femme muttered under her vocalizer. Mirage bit back a spluttering laugh and sat up, pulling the thick white connection wire from her lower torso. He snapped the other end from his own side and began rolling it up.

“Later,” he whispered in her topmost aural tract. “Carly, come in.”

“I hate you,” Flare mock-snarled, turning over and letting her legs dangle over the edge of the dual recharging bed.

“I’m sure you do,” he returned. “But I’ll be here when you get back.” Slipping around her wings, Mirage flicked the button that opened their suite’s door. Carly stood in the center of the doorframe, her bright blonde hair pulled into a neat ponytail. Almost as if she’d known Mirage would have railroaded Solarflare into accepting, the human woman was dressed in a smart grey flight suit, helmet tucked under her arm. She eyed the cable Mirage was putting away and a slight blush flashed across her cheeks.

“I didn’t disturb you, did I?”

Time brought awareness and a more pleasing disposition. “Of course not,” Flare answered, a genuinely warm smile lighting her white features. “I see you’re ready to go. Just let me get a quick shot of Energon and we’ll be on our way.” Reaching down, she scooped up a rag that had been casually tossed under the bunk and polished the middle spike on her left knee joint. Finished, she tossed it to Mirage who dumped it in the waste receptacle to be burned and the ashes recycled. Getting up, she walked to Carly and offered her hand to the human woman; gratefully accepting, Carly allowed herself to be lifted and placed once more on Solarflare’s shoulder. With a wave to Mirage, the two ladies left.

“So, where to?”

Carly shrugged. “I don’t know; do you have any contacts?”

Solarflare’s charcoal lips pursed thoughtfully. “No, not really. There’s the schools I visit with Bluestreak from time to time, but kids don’t have what we need.”

“We could ask their parents.”

Flare paused at the elevator door. “I don’t think they’d appreciate a fourteen-foot robot at their door. And most of these kids are from working class backgrounds. The private schools always want Perceptor, or Ratchet. They feel they’re more ‘educational’.”

Carly sat back and there was silence as they rode down to the hanger bay. Flare grabbed her quick shot from the small Energon dispenser set into a niche in the forward bay and jogged out into the open. In front of them, in perfect majesty, was the sun, rising over the horizon and throwing lances of red-purple-gold into the sky. The holiness of the sight was enough to make Carly gasp in awe and Flare to stop dead in her tracks. Unbidden, her wings rose high above her shoulders and fanned out, stretching up and up to catch the first rays of the new day. Rosy hues lit up the grey avian femme’s dull plumage, lit her face and brightened her optics for the first time since her accident. From her black lips, there came a high-pitched cry of pure, unadulterated joy.

“Do you believe in God?” Carly whispered in her left aural tract.

“Which god?” the femme replied softly. “Primus? Yahweh? Or the others humans have dreamed up?”

“Any god.”

Reaching out, Flare gestured grandly with both arms. “There are things greater than us out there; as to Whom and What They are, we can only scrape at guessing.” Her crest twitched, and so did her wings. There was energy in the atmosphere and she wanted to be a part of it. “Okay, Carly, time to hop down for a minute.” Deftly and gently, Flare plucked Carly from her shoulder and set her on the ground in order to transform. It would have been very bad, and terribly messy, for her to do so with Carly sitting where she was. Pulling flesh from metal was a messy endeavor – so Flare knew, after seeing a pigeon get caught in Skyfire’s intake.

So Carly stepped back and watched as Flare’s torso twisted around and her waist compressed. Her arms folded up and rose into place in her struts, which then curved down to snap into place on her sides; at the same time, her head lowered into her chest cavity as the raptor’s head came down. Simultaneously, the stylized plate that sat folded up under the avian head, tight against her spine, extended to wrap protectively around her chest. With a distinctive snick, Solarflare’s tailfeathers came together from where they sat on either side of her thighs.

All of this in less than fifteen seconds.

Staring out at the world from behind avian optics, Flare rustled her metallic wings. There was always that part of her, that hidden, undefined part that came forward when she transformed. Call it primitive, call it nature, she loved it all the same.

“Thought you might need a harness.”

Flare and Carly’s heads turned around to see Wheeljack strolling from the hanger bay. The inventor stooped by Flare and pulled what seemed to be a simple leather harness from subspace. Actually, it really was a simple harness!

Facial bulbs flashing as he spoke, Wheeljack’s brow wrinkled in good humor as he wrapped the harness around Solarflare’s neck. “I know you’ve a daredevil mind, Carly, but I don’t think Flare’d know if you fell off until you stopped talking.”

Carly had the good grace to blush; even Solarflare’s beak creased in an embarrassed grin. “True,” the avian femme agreed. “Thank you so much, Jack. I truly didn’t even think of it.”

“Well, it’s my job to create things other folk can’t think of themselves,” Wheeljack replied, lifting Carly up and using his thick but dexterous fingers to hook her in. “Anyway, where are you two ladies off to?”

Solarflare carefully shrugged. “No where in particular. That’s the problem – we don’t know where we should go.”

Wheeljack tapped a forefinger on his facemask. “Well, let’s see; Prowl went out to the state police headquarters, Perceptor headed down to Florida with Skyfire, the Twins are trying to get clearance to the Ford manufacturing plant … uhm, that’s about all I know. I’ve seen the others go out, but I don’t know where.”

“Why don’t we just fly around the state?” Carly suggested. “I’m sure you can spot a potential lab or something.”

“It’ll take all day, though,” Flare argued. “I can’t go at top speed with you unprotected on my back.”

Carly thumped the avian femme on her neck. “Girl’s day out, remember?”

Wheeljack chuckled at Flare’s expression. “Oh, go on. It’ll be fun,” he encouraged.

Flare’s beak twitched as she thought about it. Sure, she was up for going places with Carly, but did her newly-repaired system need the stress of a cross-country flight? Of course, the only way to get better was through exercise. There were some parts of her that didn’t get a workout last night … She coughed and scrubbed at her optics, using the excuse that some dust had gotten kicked up by the small breeze. “All right,” she relented. “Stand back, Jack; Carly, put that helmet on.” Obediently, they did as they were instructed. Flare flexed wings that hadn’t seen action since three days before; hinges, joints, balls-and-sockets, they all seemed good to go. Just to be safe, she called up a diagnostic to be displayed in the lower right-hand corner of her field of vision. Once it was up, she thought …

There was a low-pitched whine of twin turbines, which quickly rose to an ear-piercing crescendo. Flare dug her talons deep into the rock, holding her wings up as the pressure built in her boosters. Ignition! flashed before her optics. And they were off!

There was freedom, such freedom, being airborne; though removed from the sky for only a few days, flight was like a drug for Solarflare. She circled slowly, trying to keep her enthusiasm in check for Carly’s sake. It was a little hard, after all these years, to remember what it was like to possess a human body – and a human’s limits. So she kept them below cloud level, streaking along at a comfortable pace so that the wind did not snatch Carly’s breath away. The ground was a patchwork of steel, wood, brick, grass and water, all different sizes, shapes and colors. Some spots were less savory than others, but for the most part, it was a pleasant journey.

As the day cycled forward, Solarflare and Carly stopped at a dozen high-tech places, all but three refusing to have anything to do with the Autobots. (Perhaps they should have checked Prowl’s logs of which laboratories had been decimated by Decepticon attacks in the past.) Throughout the trip, Carly noticed that Flare seemed distracted, distanced almost. While talking with officials, the blonde human would watch the avian femme out of the corner of her eye; Flare’s gaze would fix on something, be it a crack in the wall or the one lone hair left on a bald man’s head … and stare. Only when prompted would she respond, usually with monosyllabic answers, then turn her attention to something shiny on the horizon.

“Flare,” Carly said hesitantly when they had been turned away again, “are you okay? You didn’t say much.”

“No?” There was genuine confusion in the femme’s voice. “I thought I did.”

Solarflare’s distraction rattled at Carly’s brain. It wasn’t like her – at all – to be this way. “Flare, are you sure? I’m worried about you.”

An angry rumble bubbled up from the femme’s chest at Carly’s persistence. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she replied in a clipped fashion. “I’m fine.” Why did everyone think it was all right to coddle her? She wasn’t made of glass, for Primus’ sake! Not human anymore!

“Flare …”

“Carly, enough,” she snapped. “No more. I got hit, I recovered, okay? That’s it.”

But Carly could not let it go. She turned the events over and over in her mind, knowing in her heart that she’d have to report this behavior sooner or later. For Flare’s sake, if not for the Autobots; they couldn’t afford a warrior to be distracted on the battlefield.

The moment Solarflare got clearance to land, she dropped Carly off and hopped onto her customary perch on the Ark’s boosters. Determined to find answers to her questions, Carly sought out Mirage; after asking around, she found the spy down in the valley behind Mt. St. Hillary on his stomach shooting at paperclips set up on some posts a few hundred yards away. She waited until he was reloading before calling out his name.

“Carly, what’s up? Where’s Flare?”

Jerking a thumb over her shoulder, she replied, “Up on the boosters.”

Mirage’s mouth twisted. “She didn’t tell me that you returned.”

“I think she’s upset at me.”

The spy rose up and sat on his skidplate in the grass; he looked into the chamber of his rifle before replying. “What happened?”

Carly rubbed the back of her neck; it was a little harder in practice than in theory to bring up the possibility that there might be something wrong with Solarflare. “Well … everything was going fine, until we started talking to people at the labs. Flare didn’t say much – she just stared off into space most of the time.” She looked up at the spy; Mirage’s frown only grew more pronounced. “And … well, she chirped.”

“Chirped?”

“At a hawk sitting in a tree.” Carly could tell Mirage was getting agitated; whether it was at her or himself, she didn’t know. “Mirage …”

The spy waved her off. “I’ll speak with her, Carly. Did you get anyone to sign up?”

“A few,” she shrugged. “Most of them would have nothing to do with us.”

“That seems to be the consensus, from what I’ve heard.” The spy glanced off into the setting sun, up at the first star of the evening. His lips parted but quickly closed; Carly wondered what he had censored himself from saying. “Let’s go.” He shouldered his rifle and stood, his long legs carrying him quickly across the valley. Carly struggled to match his easy pace, resorting to a light jog in order to keep him in sight. In the end, it didn’t matter – Mirage crested the rise and disappeared from view.

Well, thanks, she thought wryly, clambering up the rocky face, throwing up dust and getting granules of sands under her manicured nails. Somehow, she got up and started walking towards the boosters when she heard Mirage’s voice call out softly: “Alina?”

Alina – Solarflare’s human name; the one she’d given up when she had died and been resurrected as a Transformer. Skirting the mountain, Carly set her fingertips into the rock and peered around and up. There was Mirage, balancing on the edge of the nearest orange booster closest to where Carly stood. How he’d gotten up there so fast, and without moving so much as a single shale, she could only imagine.

“Alina, are you all right?”

A low hydraulic whine told Carly that Solarflare had moved; she could not see the avian femme for Mirage was blocking her view.

“Yes. Why?” Again, the genuine puzzlement.

“Carly said that you seemed distracted today.”

“She told me. I don’t know; I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps Ratchet should look into it.”

There was a long pause. “No. I told her, I’m fine. Please, Mirage, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” There was an edge in Flare’s voice that Carly hadn’t ever heard before; an annoyance at the one person whom she would never lift a finger to harm, ever. Who she would fight tooth, nail and to the last of the Energon in her body to defend. As Carly watched, Mirage shifted so that she could see that Solarflare still remained in avian form, her wings lifted slightly and the pinions curved towards her chest. She didn’t know that much about birds of prey, but she’d watched enough of the Discovery channel to realize that Flare was mantling. Mirage’s shoulders lifted and dropped back down in defeat. As he turned, he began to fade into nothingness, until all that was left was Solarflare and the massive curve of the Ark’s dead boosters. Solarflare shuffled her taloned feet and turned her back on the invisible form of her bondmate.

Laserbeak and Buzzsaw could not claim Solarflare’s grace; they were loud, raucous and very obvious in their flight. Still, they were very much able to land within a few hundred feet of the Ark’s preliminary warning system and focus their augmented vision on what was going on.

“So,” a silk-on-wet-stone voice proclaimed lazily, “the little one has spurned her mate.” Ravage dangled a steel-tipped paw from the branch he was reclining on, never lifting his wedge-shaped head from where it rested on his forearms. “However, the mate does not seem to be showing the same signs. Perhaps it is too soon, but did Starscream not promise Lord Megatron that the formel would infect the nest?”

Laserbeak cawed quietly, perturbed at being disturbed by Ravage’s soliloquy.

“Yes, too soon, however Lord Megatron should be made aware, as always.” Ravage lifted his head, iron jaws gaping wide in a yawn. “But what path will you walk on with this virus, Autobot? Convoluting mists surround your existence, but no one else has figured out the truth. Of course, no one asks the Cat.”

Buzzsaw turned his head and tilted it questioningly; in reply Laserbeak jabbed at his brother, admonishing him for turning from their mission. Ravage laughed silently. Of all Soundwave’s minions, they were the most loyal – not the most stupid; no, that prize went to Frenzy and Rumble. This Cat walked alone and only pretended to be bonded to the great monosyllabic soldier.

“So,” Ravage continued, “what shall we see when this virus has run its course? Your true colors? Starscream is not the most astute of individuals, but even I must admit his tenacity is second to none. But, little one, I do wonder why you, of all the Autobots. Prime, assuredly; Prowl, most definitely … so many of your comrades. Is it due to your psychological gender? Or perhaps you have slighted him? Those accursed twins have done far worse damage. Perhaps, perhaps … your gender is a strong contender. Amusing thought, that. Decepticons are taught from sparkhood to disregard such paltry notions. Indeed, all that matters is how well you can follow instructions and do your part. Male-minded, female-minded, it matters not.”

“Will you shut up?” Laserbeak demanded from the other tree. “I can’t get a proper fix with you jabbering like that!”

The great black Jaguar refused to favor the metallic condor a glance. “It is your job to be able to filter out inconsequential noises, Bird. If I am troubling you, perhaps I shall let Lord Megatron know that you cannot perform without total silence.”

Laserbeak’s head tilted back; his flat gold eyes flashed with inner conflict. Flexing his limited-motion wings, he hopped closer to Buzzsaw. Too easy, Ravage thought, too easily scared. But he refrained from out-loud ruminations, instead focusing on the large mountain in the distance. A month is a long time, little one, but soon we shall see what you are truly made of. Shall you succumb quietly, or will you go in a blaze of glory?

With proper obeisance, Buzzsaw relayed that they’d completed their survey. “Excellent. We shall return immediately.” Ravage rose smoothly, with the barest whine of hydraulics. The bough shifted, shook, but could not release the black Cat. With little effort, Ravage dropped to the ground and began the long sprint back to base, slipping into the falling darkness.

“She can’t stay out there all night,” Red Alert complained, pacing back and forth on the bridge.

“She seems to be content where she is, Red,” Prowl murmured, leaning back in his chair.

“Can’t you do anything? She’s a target just waiting to be blown to bits again.”

Jazz chuckled. “Sympathy? Concern?”

Red snorted. “Hardly. Where’s Mirage? Call him up and get his bedmate back in here.”

“He’s tried.”

Heads turned slightly to see Hound walking up to them. The tracker shrugged at the queries in their optics. “He went out there twice, but she’s only hopped up further.”

“She’s gone berserk,” Red complained. “She’s a security risk.”

“Do you spark-off to thoughts like that?” Sunstreaker snarled from the doorway. Beyond, as always, hovered Sideswipe, who was wearing an equally annoyed expression. “I swear, you’re only happy when you’re bashing someone.”

“Likewise,” the security director snarled.

“Enough.” Prowl rose statuesque from his chair. “You two, out. You too, Red.” For once, the twins obeyed, but not without making rude gestures, both human and Cybertronian, at Red Alert. Prowl punched the bridge door shut before Sunstreaker could complete his parody of Red sitting alone at night. “So. Suggestions are welcome.”

“I don’t have any, man,” Jazz replied, eying the dirt on his feet. “I just say let her be; she’ll come in when she’s ready.”

“Agreed,” the tracker chorused. “If Mirage can’t get her back in, who can? Maybe she’s just moody. We all get like that after major repairs.”

Prowl glanced at the monitor to refrain from saying I don’t get moody. Whatever their differences might be – he’d calculated a few hundred over the years – Solarflare’s against-the-grain behavior was worrying the tactician. As he watched, another camera caught Optimus Prime looming vast into the picture. Jazz reached to turn on the external microphones, but Prowl waved him back. “Not our conversation to hear, Jazz.” Behind him, Hound sidled up to watch as well.

Long moments passed before there was any reaction from the lone femme of the Ark. Then, slowly, almost painfully, she transformed, wobbling on the boosters before catching her balance. Prime made a motion with one hand and she hopped down; Jazz switched to the lower camera and that image filled Teletraan’s main screen. Flare rubbed her arms and hung her head, clearly ashamed; Prime put one massive hand behind her shoulders and led her inside.

“Well, I’ll be,” Jazz murmured. Prowl could only agree.