I am Broken (TFP) *Rewrite*

Chapter 20

When Optimus returned to the lobby with Dahlia, the other autobots were present in the room as they had been informed of the lab's location. They were happy it was found, and understood that Dahlia wanted to wait until the following day before they would proceed ahead with investigating it. Dahlia was still very tense at the moment too. While she has accepted that going to the lab the following day was going to happen, Dahlia still didn't feel comfortable. She was just glad that the autobots were patient with her. Beast was still going on about whether or not they should go and that was bothering Dahlia a bit, but Dahlia was definitely leaning towards going to the lab with the autobots to face it one last time.

Ratchet was glad that Dahlia was able to control herself and Beast enough that she did not unsheathe her claws. But most importantly, he was just glad that Optimus was able to calm the girl down. The concern that the autobots even had for Dahlia was still something she was getting used to. She genuinely was not used to this at all. And while Dahlia was getting used to having parental figures keeping a watchful eye of her, she still found herself being surprised and not used to it. It was nice though, and Dahlia did enjoy spending her time with both Ratchet and Optimus.

Arcee, Bumblebee and Bulkhead did leave the base to retrieve the kids from school, and Dahlia could not help but groan at that. She enjoyed the quietness without the humans, even though she understood that the autobots only brought them here for protection. But Dahlia was not sure if that mattered much, considering the decepticons probably would not care about ripping up an entire building and town just to capture the children for a blackmail situation. It seemed to work for now, even though Dahlia doubted it would matter too much.

Dahlia was sketching another picture in her sketchbook at this time while Optimus was standing to the side. He was off in his own thoughts, and Dahlia knew it was about Megatron. Knowing that the two of them had a long history was intriguing to her. She did not know everything about their history yet, but knowing Optimus wanted to save Megatron, rather than destroy him was certainly something she had not expected. She's never been in that position, so she does not know the feeling, but she did try to understand Optimus's point of view.

She was not sure what she would do when the humans were brought to the base, but as she tended to ignore Jack and hardly interact with the other two, she doubted she would do much. After all, she expected Miko to be stuck in detention, and Jack might go to his job today, so it would only leave Raf. She liked Raf, since he was sensible. He kept his distance from her, and rightfully so. She didn't interact with him, but she still liked him. He did help the autobots with some technical stuff, so he certainly was smart for his age.

But Dahlia was surprised when all three autobots returned, but the kids seemed to have stuff with them. Dahlia stopped sketching when she saw Miko telling Bulkhead where to move some paint cans and she was telling him she would require help with a model of the solar system, and Jack had a bunch of stuff to make a motorbike. While Raf had stuff to build a volcano. This was not something Dahlia had expected. Ratchet had left to his lab at that time, though Optimus had seen this, and while he had been surprised at first, he kept his distance and remained in his own thoughts.

Dahlia walked down the stairs curiously as she looked at the autobots and kids. "What is all this stuff you got?" Miko flinched in surprise and looked at Dahlia while Jack smiled and Raf just glanced at her. "This is...not the usual homework. What is it? Is this a school thing? I never knew that they did that."

Jack chuckled a little. "I guess you think everything we only have written assignments. These are our science projects." Dahlia was surprised as this was not the science she was used to. Especially since she was at the wrong end of science. "And you don't need to worry, science is part of our subject. But it isn't evil like what you have experienced. After all, science is used for many things, like how it was used to create medicines, figure out the world was not flat and so on."