Lover's Meet

Chapter 4

I wake up to Ratchet grumbling to himself. "The base elements of this goo are like nothing I've ever encountered. It must be extremely concentrated to have affected Arcee so rapidly. Unfortunately, complete results are slow coming without the use of proper diagnostic tools, thank you very much, Bulkhead." As he turned a drop of the goo fell off. I got off the couch and looked over the edge of the railing to find the broken tool alive. I freaked out and went over to Ratchet.

"Hey, Ratchet. What are you doing?", I ask.

"Taking a break from finding out what that goo is. I've been looking at it all night", Ratchet says as he rubs his face.

"You should get some sleep then", I say.

"Not until I figure out what it is", he says as he makes his way back over to look at the goo some more. "Thank goodness for peace and quiet. House guests can be such a bother."

Some metal clatters and I'm instantly alert. "What?", Ratchet looks up when he says that. There is no noise so he goes back to what he was doing. Then there is some metallic tapping. I tense up as Ratchet looks up again.

"Optimus?", Ratchet says cautiously as he turns around. Then he gasps and I see the broken tool from before. I freak out as Ratchet exclaims. "By the Allspark!!" It jumped up towards Ratchet. He dodges and it jumps toward him again, he quickly pushed it away, helping each time it jumped at him. Now it was above him on the railing of a catwalk. It jumped down on the platform next to him and he grabbed a pipe and tried to whack it. It dodges several times before finally cutting the thing he was using.

"I NEEDED THAT!!", Ratchet exclaims. He had dropped his pipe and the broken tool had cornered him against a shelf. It leaps toward him and I was about to transform when it was shot. I breathe a sigh of relief. I didn't have to reveal my secret. I tense up when it starts to power up again but Optimus steps on it.

"And stay broken", Ratchet says, "Now, what could have caused that?"

Optimus speaks. "I have a grave suspicion, Ratchet. Dark Energon."

"If the residue Arcee found on Cliffjumper brought your broken equipment to life, it would stand to reason that the very same substance brought Cliffjumper back from the dead", Optimus says as he gets rid of the broken equipment.

Ratchet hums thoughtfully. "That would account for his life signal inexplicably coming back online, but Dark Energon? It's so scarce as to be virtually non-existent. What would it be doing on Earth?"

"Megatron", I pipe up, knowing he is the only one to be evil enough to do it. "That's probably what he spent the three years he was gone doing."

They both look at me and Optimus nods. "Jaymen is correct. It was transported by Megatron."

"For what purpose?", Ratchet asks, confused why Megatron would want that dark stuff.

"To conquer this planet by raising an army of the undead", Optimus says gravely. I stumble back and realize that I need to sit down or I'm going to pass out...

"He must have used Cliffjumper as a test subject...", I mutter. "Arcee is not going to be happy when she hears this..."

They both look at me before continuing their conversation. "Well, Megatron will need to break quite a few toaster ovens. I mean, where on this world would he find that many Cybertronian dead?" Ratchet asks.

Optimus didn't get a chance to answer as the three remaining bots came into the base with the humans. I'm guessing Optimus assigned one bot to each human. I don't have a guardian but it usually tends to be either Optimus or Ratchet that take me into town when I need stuff.