Optimus Prime's unusual Charge

Breakthrough

Ratchet, who was tinkering away on some gadgets, heard the commotion. He dropped everything and ran to the Medbay. When he got there, he found Optimus with a shocked look on his faceplate, as Zucky was trying to fight off an invisible force.

Whatever the Prime saw or heard must have been very bad! He's never seen Optimus so helpless before. He ran to his friend's side to snap him out of whatever trance has taken hold of him.

"Optimus, Talk to me; what happened?!" Ratchet urgently asked.

["How in the name of Cybertron..?"] Prime could not believe it.

"OPTIMUS! Snap out of it, Prime!" The medic slapped his friend across the faceplate to knock him out of his trance. Luckily the Prime came back to reality.

"Sorry about that, but what happened here? I heard her scream!" Ratchet asked as he tried keeping Zucky from hurting herself as he checked her over again for good measure.

"She suddenly started talking. At first, I thought she had forgotten everything; my identity, where she is, what happened? But it seems she was dreaming...or so I thought..." Optimus explained."

"Don't do this to me Prime..."Ratchet hated that ominous tone Optimus' voice trailed off to.

"She appears to be stuck in her mind..." Prime said.

"Oh, no." Ratchet felt as if they just drenched him in Ice-cold coolant.

"And Knockout is with her." The Autobot leader concluded.

"By the Allspark..." The medic was afraid of this. "We had a feeling he'd try this again."

~~~

Nurse Darby, after finishing up on her errands, went directly to the Autobot base to check in with Ratchet on Zucky's progress. As she drove down the tunnel she could hear the medic tinkering away on one of his countless projects by his worktable. When she was just about to make it to the entrance of the common room, she heard a very audible scream coming from deeper within the base as she arrived! "

*Gasp!* Zucky?" Nurse Darby stopped the car and quickly got out.

But before she could say anything, she saw Ratchet just toss his tools on the table and thundered down the hall without a word. This is serious. The nurse hurried after the Medic as fast as she could run.

"Ratchet, I need a lift." The nurse said once she made it to the Medbay.

The bots only now noticed the human nurse coming through the doorway and stood close to the medic, so he could pick her up. He immediately did as she asked and placed her next to the patient on the berth.

"What's going on?" June asked.

"Knockout has infiltrated her mind...again. Last time she told me of a Spark Terror she had, but she was quickly able to turn the tables around on him, and managed to kick him out. Before that, the con was able manually override her system and control her movements." Ratchet confessed. "I fear that was only a learning curve."

Zucky had stopped throwing punches and kicking, but started frantically flailing as if she was running from something. ["Manually overtaking people's movements? Attacking people in their dreams? Where do they get all of this?!"] The Nurse was struggling to understand, but now she had to focus on the task at hand.

"Maybe she came last night but stayed asleep? If this is really a dream, we have to wake her up somehow...That should break the connection, at least temporarily." June explained and started nudging Zucky to get her to wake up.

"Zucky? Zucky, you gotta wake up, Sweety; You're dreaming!" The nurse tried waking the dragon up.

The dragon stopped running and whined in fear.