The Ugly Truth
By: Miss Special
They were talking about her again. Optimus, Rhinox, Dinobot, and Rattrap, all gathered in the control room- Cheetor and Silverbolt were elsewhere- talking about Angel. They never actually mentioned her name, or specifically what they were talking about, but she could tell. They never noticed her listening in the shadows.
"What about that incident with the alien structure?" Optimus said.
Angel understood the significance of that. It happened a couple of weeks ago.
She, Airazor, and Rattrap were supposed to investigate an alien thingie. That was during the truce.
As soon as Angel set foot near the thing, she froze. Completely. Rattrap said she seemed to be staring at nothing. She didn't know how long she sat there, but one instant she was frozen, and then she was running. She HAD to get away from that thing. She'd told Optimus all this after the fact, but there was more.
What she didn't tell Optimus was what she heard, or rather sensed, while she was frozen. Something was trying to communicate with her. She didn't understand what it was trying to say, but she didn't like it.
She'd kept running for a while, and then stopped. No one had come after her, which was good, because she wanted to be alone. She stopped because of what the moon was doing. She hadn't noticed it before, since she was too busy running, but it looked like it was a big beam weapon, trying to destroy everything on the planet's surface.
How did she know that just by looking at it?
Then the moon blew up. And the hail came. It wasn't really hail, more like energy rain. She'd taken refuge behind a piece of shrapnel, but that didn't stop it.
Angel looked at her newly transmetalized self.
Pure white from nosetip to tailtip, excepting her claws, and the ends of her feathers, which were gold. Her optics were now blue- like the color of the sky on a clear day.
Her robot mode wasn't so bad, either. White and misty gray, same blue optics as in beast mode.
And her weaponry- now THAT was cool! Her fingers, which were now fused into very long, sharp claws, fired laser beams. Laser beams!!!!! She also had a spear staff, which was also pretty neat. She didn't mind transforming nearly so much anymore.
They were still talking.
"What about the nightmares?"
Angel KNEW she shouldn't have told Optimus about those. She'd been having the same nightmare every night since she saw that stupid alien thing. It wasn't much, anyways. Just looking at a weird circular stone formation from above, seeing herself sitting in the middle. She could sense voices trying to tell her something, but she couldn't understand them. There wasn't really anything scary about it, but it left her feeling very unsettled.
"And we still don't tell her?"
"No. Her knowing about it wouldn't change anything for the better."
We'll just have to see about that, Optimus.
The meeting continued, but Angel had heard enough. She turned, went to her quarters, and lay on her bed, head resting on paws.
How to go about finding the truth? She was tempted to go right to Optimus, but she doubted he'd tell her. He'd probably deny everything. Same with Rhinox, Dinobot, and Rattrap. But Silverbolt and Cheetor didn't seem to know.
Cats were supposed to be great manipulators. Could she get Silverbolt to get Optimus to tell him, and then he'd tell her? Probably not. She didn't want to use anyone, anyways.
Maybe if she came forward during one of the meetings? Catch them in the act! They couldn't deny it then! That might actually work!
She rushed out towards the control room, but stopped. There was no talk coming from there. She'd missed it! Who knew when the next meeting would be?
"Hey, Angel." She jumped. Rattrap. He didn't ask why she was so jumpy, probably because she'd been jumpy ever since that alien thing.
"What?" Rattrap was manning the commlinks, or he was supposed to be. Playing poker with the ship's computer wasn't exactly watching the comm.
"It's your turn ta do perimeter sweep."
"Oh." She summoned up some spunkiness. "Okay!"
Full moon tonight, she observed outside the ship. Creepy moon. The white panther shuddered.
A flyover of Maximal territory showed everything was quiet. And not "too quiet," either. Maybe peaceful was a better word.
"A little late to be out, isn't it?"
"Huh? Oh, hi, Silverbolt!" Why was he out here? There were rumors of him "fraternizing with the enemy", whatever the heck that meant.
"I'm on watch!" she said proudly. "Or, at least, I was, but I think it's over now."
"I suggest you return to base. I shall come in shortly." Silverbolt always spoke funny. Why was that?
"Yeah, okay." She adjusted her course and headed home.
As she entered the lift, she heard voices emanating from the control room. The lift reached the top, and Optimus, Rhinox, Rattrap, and Dinobot stopped in mid-conversation. Angel grinned at them and made her way to her quarters.
Hold on. She knew she had to go on watch since this morning. They knew, too. Of course! They had to break up the meeting so Angel wouldn't catch them when she left for watch! She was missing her chance!
After mentally kicking herself, she turned around and went back towards the control room. Wait, there was a new voice. Silverbolt had just gotten back. This might make things harder... or easier.
“Angel must not know what we are about to tell you.”
“Why not?” Silverbolt seemed wary. He didn’t like keeping secrets.
“You’ll understand once we tell you.” Angel had a sinking feeling. The panther sat down, not sure she wanted to know anymore.
“Agreed.”
“You remember the aliens?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, Angel... We think Angel was partially created by them.”
Angel squeaked.
“What was dat?”
“I believe we have an eavesdropper.”
“Oh, no.”
She heard footsteps coming her way. She made no move to hide. She felt sick.
“How long have you been there?” Optimus asked. He looked unhappy.
Angel squeaked again.
After a moment she found her voice.
“I- I’ve been listening... for awhile.” This wasn’t what she had planned.
Optimus covered his optics with a hand, but didn’t say anything. Angel didn’t know this, but he didn’t know what to do.
Angel looked at him, blue cat eyes wide.
“I want you to tell me everything.”
Optimus paused what seemed like forever.
“Fine. We’ll tell you.” Angel followed him into full view. He gestured to an open chair, so Angel transformed and sat down. Silverbolt sat down, too.
“I’ll tell you what we know so far,” Optimus began. “You had massive memory loss when your stasis pod crashed. You froze when confronted by that alien device. You’ve been having dreams of yourself in the standing stones, even though you’ve never seen them. They were an alien beacon. And, lastly, you’ve shown amazing aptitude in battle for someone without any experience.”
“And you think this means...”
“We’ve formed some hypotheses,” Rhinox said. “The most plausible one is you were sent by the aliens to end the Beast Wars by obliterating all Transformers on the planet.”
Angel didn‘t believe her ears- her auditory receptors- whatever.
“How would they do something like that?”
“Reprogramming a protoform while in stasis isn’t uncommon. They probably used a procedure similar to the ones the Predacons use.”
“...But if I’m what you say I am, why haven’t I...”
“Simple. Da aliens didn’t expect ya ta crash as hard as ya did. Dey probably didn’t know all da factas incolved in a stasis pod landing.”
Rhinox jumped back in.
“Of course, we have no concrete proof. This could all be one big coincidence.”
“Or we could have a ticking time bomb waiting to destroy us all!” Dinobot stood up. “I have been in favor of terminating her since the beginning, but you weak Maximals have become too attached to her!”
Angel squeaked for a third time.
“Is it just me, or did ol’ Choppuhface just say ‘We’re all gonna die’?”
“SHUT UP, RATTRAP!”
Angel recovered more quickly this time.
“Wh- what do you need as proof?”
“If your stasis pod were tampered with, it would show evidence of it. Problem is, we couldn’t find your pod after the battle. As far as we know, the Preds have it.”
“But if we had the pod, you could tell for sure?”
“No, Angel, you are not going to attempt to recover that pod.”
Angel stood up and faced Optimus, hoping she looked braver than she felt.
“I’m going to, and you can’t stop me.” She didn’t wait for him to answer. She was outside the Axalon in a flash. She flew as fast as she could, and then hid in a forest to make sure no one could find her.
Angel sincerely wished she’d never found out.