Alias

Seaspray

It took three days for Wheeljack, Ratchet, Perceptor, and Skyfire to make the necessary modifications to the new Autobot. Cade contributed what he could to the process, but even when he was clearly in over his head, wild horses couldn’t have torn him out of the bay. Watching an Autobot being created had to be one of the coolest things he’d ever seen.

Anna was also a constant presence. At first he felt unsure how to react to her, but it was impossible to be around her for long without relaxing. She asked even more questions than he did, and teased poor Skyfire endlessly because of his clear shyness around her. It didn’t seem to ease his tension at all. Privately, Cade thought Hound had hit the nail on the head back when they’d been waiting for Prime’s decision–this Autobot had no experience whatsoever with females.

Perceptor and Wheeljack didn’t hesitate to discuss their work with both Anna and Cade, and Cade was immediately impressed by her engineering brilliance. Even he couldn’t follow all of it and he’d been working with, and on, the Autobots for two years. And whenever the work wasn’t going well, she sang. Enthusiastically. And badly. Even Skyfire joined in when they begged her to stop, and that only made her laugh and sing louder. If Bumblebee was around, he played loud accompaniments, and it was obvious to Cade that the two of them were old friends. It was impossible to stay frustrated during the chaos.

On the final day, Optimus presented himself for his upgrades. For once Anna didn’t join Cade in the bay as he watched them work, fascinated as they spent an afternoon implanting several small devices in Optimus Prime’s head–as many times as he’d worked on Optimus after battles, he’d never gotten a chance to see the workings in there. Wheeljack, used to the constant stream of questions that had been the accompaniment of their work for the last several days, merely tuned Cade out, but Optimus soon had enough and kicked him out. “The last thing I need is to have my brains scrambled because you distracted these two,” Optimus growled. 

He ran into Anna just outside the repair bay. “How’s he doing? I can’t stand to watch… well, metaphorically speaking.” 

“The procedure seems to be going smoothly, although it’s a little creepy to have see the patient talking away during brain surgery,” he replied, wondering how Optimus would’ve reacted to her singing. “He’s grilling them on your Autobot’s safety features. No matter what they tell him, he keeps grumbling about it not being safe enough.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Of course he is. It could be proven to be 99.9% safe and he’d still grumble. If he thought he could get away with it, he’d wrap me in cotton and lock me away, especially now.”

“But it hasn’t been proven safe. Wheeljack told me that a malfunction could leave you a vegetable, an empty shell, and there would be no way to reverse it. Are you sure it’s worth the risk?” Cade asked before he could stop himself.

Anna hesitated a moment before answering, and it was all he could do not to squirm under her blank stare. Despite knowing she couldn’t really see him as anything but a vague dark shape, it was impossible to shake the feeling that she was examining him and sizing him up before deciding how to answer. 

Finally she gave a little shrug. “Yes, I am,” she said simply. “I’ve told Optimus a lot of things about wanting to be helpful and to regain my vision, and that’s true enough as far as it goes, but the real truth is I would give anything just for the chance to be like him.”

Cade didn’t know how to reply to that, but she seemed to realize what he was thinking despite his silence.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

He felt his ears heat. In all the time they’d spent together over the last few days, they’d never broached this subject. “No, of course not!” he lied quickly.