Fay exhaled heavily, breathing back in sharply as she ran. Her arm still ached from the other day. It had only been a day since that night. When her shoulder had been dislocated. Yet she couldn’t quite put a finger on what had happened. All she could remember was the field. The grass. The pain. And being carried back to her room.

        She let herself rest for a day, writing in her poetry book. Charlie had brought it for her, thank-. ‘Thank . . . Thank . . . Whoever it is I’m supposed to believe in, I suppose . . .’ She concluded, shaking her head slightly as she made it into lap eight of her run around the track. It was getting to be a bit late out. The sun was setting, but she had to keep going. She was going to run and run and run.

        At least until she no longer felt like she was being chased. The shadows would never catch her.

        Of course, her pace picked up slightly as those thoughts began to edge their way into the mental doors she’d thrown up in front of them. The thoughts began to creep and slip through her defenses, and her feet began to hit the track harder. ‘Keep going, Fay, keep going!’ She began to round the next corner, her lungs heaving as she went. She was going to go harder. Faster. Until she ached and didn’t want to move for days. But she would. She’d go harder and faster every day until she shattered every record she’d made.

        She groaned as she began to hit the final 100 meters of her run. She had no competitors today. No one to help her push herself. She had to keep going, though. ‘Finish strong,’ she’d always been told. Track. Track and Cross Country, really. They’d been a ray of light in her world when she felt like falling apart, letting the tiny shards of her everything hit the ground.

        ‘Finish strong, even in practice,’. Fay sucked in a breath so deeply her lungs stung, and immediately forced herself into a sprint, despite the fact that she’d already run two miles.

        ‘Go, go, go!’ She could still hear their voices urging her on in the echoes of her mind.

        And she went, pushing herself so hard she thought she’d topple over any second. Her head felt light, but she knew that, to an extent, that was perfectly normal. She would be fine. She could do this.

        Her legs ached endlessly as she pushed herself harder, trying to imagine her last regionals meet, when she’d battled it out for second place, the girl she’d been playing back and forth with trying to make one more pass. ‘Not today,’ she told herself, finding one last surge in her energy as she crossed the finish line.

        Her first instinct was to stop the timer on her watch. The second was to fall over in the grass.

        She ignored the second and kept walking. She’d been conditioned over and over to keep walking, hands on her head or on her hips. So she walked, continuing on the track, taking another lap as the air cooled further. Someone would likely be coming out here soon, checking for any strays. She didn’t care. She’d done it. She’d kept a competitive pace for 3200 meters, a little over two miles.

        And she was definitely paying for it. She was still sucking air, hurting absolutely everywhere. Her muscles were a tangled mess of aches. She felt a bit dizzy, knowing full well she needed water, but she needed to cool down and calm down first. She couldn’t exactly drink water when she was hardly able to breathe. So she took a walking lap around the track. And a second before she was able to calm herself down enough for water. It was getting fairly dark at this point, the sun settling down over the treeline of the neighboring forest.

        It took a few minutes to pinpoint her water bottle since she’d carelessly tossed it aside when she’d started her warm ups and stretches. Once she had it, she went through the fluid quickly, draining the bottle of what remained inside, over 75% of the water she’d had when she’d filled it to the brim.

        She sighed as she finished it, her heart, spark she corrected herself, was still pulsing at an accelerated rate, but was much closer to lower, normal, levels now. With a deep breath, she glanced down at her watch.

        11:56.

        Eleven minutes and fifty-six seconds.

        She’d broken twelve minutes. Fay was running less than six minute miles for two miles in a row.

        She shrieked in joy, chucking her water bottle as far as far she could just because she felt like it. She’d been an avid runner for years, and hadn’t actually timed herself at a competitive pace for months. Since October of last year. And she was at an incredible pace. Fay laughed, falling back into the grass. It was fine now, since she’d calmed herself and her body.

        She’d worked for this. She’d earned it. And she’d be damned if anyone was going to take it away from her. ‘Next I’ll break eleven,’ she told herself. ‘We’ll see if they can catch me then . . .’ Her smile wavered slightly when she thought too much. When the thought of the possibility, that perhaps her achievement was more so her Cybertronian anatomy than her hard work, brushed across her mind.

        ‘No. You worked for it. Don’t buy into that crap. You’re too good to doubt yourself. You’ve put your time and energy into this, Fay . . . Don’t buy into nonsense . . .’

        ~~~

        The dagger let out a metallic note as it struck it’s mark, an Autobot target made from shreds of scrap metal. The insignia it bore caused FarLust to bare her denta every time she looked at it. She’d end this thing. She would end all of them again and again. They would be at her mercy as she was dispatched to offline their sparks. The way the scientist had offlined so many of her siblings.

        She hissed at the thought,  drawing another dagger, sending it straight into the area she knew held the spark chamber. It pierced ever so carefully between the two armored chest plates, sliding between to hit the spark chamber beneath, just barely nicking the ‘spark’ itself. She groaned, crossing her arms for a moment before opening fire on the dummy with her cannons, blasting it until it was burned and broken and nearly unrecognizable as ever having been anything at all.

        She vented slowly, tense, watching the smoke rise from the heap of broken metal. She knew she was being watched. By CatClaw and her two conscious, currently unnamed, brothers. They normally practiced together. Today she couldn’t care less. She hated that the scientist treated them with such little regard.

        ‘What a terrible mech,’ she thought, scowling as he crossed her processor again. He was around, but he hardly paid them attention anymore. He was careful to keep his distance.

        Most of the time, anyway. Some days he wasn’t bright enough for that.

        She frowned, hearing the small sounds as his peds struck the floor, as he walked towards one of the occupied chambers, as he stood close to one of her siblings. One of the femmes. She bristled, striding over, not bothering to make her presence any secret. If anything, she attempted to project it, hoping he would get the message.

        But halfway across the lab and he had yet to so much as acknowledge that she was closing the gap between them. ‘Don’t underestimate me,’ she growled, keeping the words inside her processor as she drew another dagger, sending it flying across half the lab, wedging it just beneath one of his armored chest plates. The blow was harmless, really. All it did was slide the weapon between the armor plating and the more vulnerable are underneath.

        It was meant to catch his attention, to send a warning.

        And it most certainly did.

        ShockWave whipped his helm to look at the femme stalking towards him brashly, refusing to be intimidated by him, even if he had given her spark. He quickly removed the dagger and pointed it to her. “For the love of Primus, FarLust, you will obey-.”

        “I will obey nothing,” she interrupted. “Not from you. Now step away from her before I send a blast through your spark.”

        “She’s not even awake yet, FarLust,” he replied assertively, attempting to keep himself calm, but she was working on his nerves. He supposed he should’ve taken more care in the programming of their personalities. They were catalytics, after all.

        “She’s still online and I do not trust you with her health.” FarLust stepped between him and the glass chamber that held her sibling protectively, refusing to let him closer. She certainly wouldn’t allow him to open the door so he could access her.

        ShockWave vented slowly. “FarLust, I realize you suffered when the others reacted poorly to the alterations. I realize you do not trust me as I was the one to inject them. I could not do anything to aid their acceptance of the CNA. Their energon is spilled but not upon my servos. I could do nothing else for them.”

        “You could’ve let me say goodbye,” she said bitterly. She knew it wasn’t exactly possible, so she continued. “You could have let me be there for them. You could’ve stopped Lord Megatron from offlining my brother. He would’ve healed,” she lied through her denta. She knew that while her brother, the one Megatron had decapitated, had been a prime specimen and wonderfully built, the way he’d struck his elbow servo had been irreparable.

        He would’ve had a useless arm for the rest of his life cycle and there was nothing to be done about except extensive healing processes that may or may not have worked. And that was a terribly painful truth that FarLust didn’t want to confront. She was just terribly bitter about losing so many siblings. Especially when these two higher-ups didn’t seem to care.

        “We couldn’t fix him, FarLust-.”

        “You could have tried!” Her spark was burning, feeling like it was alight with a flame as she glared at ShockWave. “Was he not worth the effort and the resources? Was I? How do you decide to play Primus and choose who’s worth it or not? Isn’t everyone worth it?”

        ShockWave paused, looking down at her. “FarLust . . .” He began, his optic locking with hers. “How do you know of Primus . . . ?”

        “I . . . You mention him all the time!” She stammered, frowning, refusing to let her optics drift anywhere else in the room. She couldn’t even hint that CatEyes, CatClaw, had told her of anything of the sort. While the femme had successfully been converted from Autobot to Decepticon creation, she still retained memories of her time as a free soldier working for the other side, as well as ones from before the war. She retained basic information and things of that sort.

        The difference was she no longer had any real emotion tied to it. She stated the things she remember as plain and simple facts. Her spark had no reaction to them anymore. And upon her questioning, CatClaw had told FarLust the stories of Primus that she knew, of the war and how it had begun with Orion Pax and Megatronus. They’d only gotten so far in these ‘history lessons’.

        And now she was risking blowing it all to ShockWave.

        “I do not mention Primus in such a light,” ShockWave concluded. “Where did you attain such information?”

        “I . . . Nowhere. You’re imagining things. You’re hearing things and seeing things that aren’t true. You need to see someone. Something. Outside of the lab. You must leave for a while. The stress is going to kill you,” she concluded, calming herself, at least on the outside for the sake of appearance.

        On the inside, she was still panicking. Her spark pulsed ridiculously fast and she knew her siblings could feel it.

        ShockWave’s helm turned towards her siblings. The suggestion she’d planted hadn’t worked at all like she’d hoped it would. She tensed as he looked the other three over, where they stood, staring back at him, void of any light in their optics.

        They would develop that. FarLust knew they would eventually. But they had to make it long enough to develop the fire their sister held.

        She slapped ShockWave quickly to grab his attention.

        “Slagging femme,” he growled, turning his helm and optic back to her. “What is-?” He paused as her optics met his single one. As her optics and spark burned, staring at him with her passion burning so deep in her veins she felt like she would overheat.

        And then the scientist toppled over, his metal form seizing before it crashed against the floor with a loud ‘clang’. FarLust tensed as he lay there unmoving. She took a deep vent, her spark pounding faster as she looked away from him.

        His spark had stopped. She could feel it. She wasn’t sure how, but it had. And she would have a  hell of a lot of explaining to do when Lord Megatron returned. She silently cursed herself, but took a deep vent in an attempt to calm down.

        “You did what had to be done. You protected them. It’ll be okay. You’ll all be okay. It’s just fine. We’ll-.”

        Her ramblings were cut off as a large hand constricted around her throat and she was lifted off the ground, her intake valves being crushed in his grip. In ShockWave’s grip. She choked as she attempted to form words, but it was pointless.Useless.

        ‘How are you online?’ She wanted to ask. ‘I just offlined you! You can’t possibly be online still!’

        But he obviously was. If the appearance of him wasn’t enough, the way he seemed Pit-bent on crushing her throat was. He obviously wasn’t happy with her. And she could understand why completely. She had just kind of almost killed the mech who’d given her life and a reason to live, even if that reason was only to offline Autobots one by one.

        She quickly calmed her systems on instinct. She kept her spark from pounding too much. Kept herself from tensing further and giving him a reason to keep tightening his grip on her throat.

        “You . . .” He growled. “What the slag did you do?” His words were calmer than his actions, she noted bitterly. This certainly wasn’t her idea of a fun time. It hurt like Pit and it definitely wasn’t going to be getting much easier.

        She opened her mouth to speak, to attempt an answer, but her vocal modulator was being crushed along with her intake valves. ‘I don’t know,’ she thought, slightly bewildered, but the only emotion registering on her faceplate was pain and that slight bit of indifference that was always present.

        It didn’t take long before a dagger was lodged in ShockWave’s leg. Another quickly joined it inside his knee servo. The mech nearly toppled over and FarLust felt enough reprieve in his grip to pull at his large hand and digits, loosening them enough that she could form a vent.

        CatClaw was striding towards them, another dagger already in her hand. Their brothers were just behind her, cannons blazing. ShockWave spotted them and immediately tightened his grip on FarLust again.

        “Obey my commands,” he warned, “or FarLust here will have her neck cables crushed before you can react.”

        “Let go,” CatClaw returned. “Or you’ll have a dagger wedged in your ugly optic before you can react. Already trained, remember? And I’ve got a deadly sort of aim.”

        The scientist groaned. “So help me, Primus, if you things don’t start reigning yourselves in, I will end every one of you.”

        “I dare you to try, purple boy. Now let her go.”

        ShockWave released his grip, and FarLust fell to the floor. She landed limply from the waist down, but righted herself so she sat, glaring at the scientist who’d nearly ended her life cycle on a whim. She would remember that. She swore she would. He would pay for thinking he could just offline her.

        She would train harder until she could return the favor.

        Just as soon as she found out what on Cybertron she’d done to him that had caused him to temporarily offline. If that had been her at all.

        ~~~

        “Good job, Filly.” She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her voice, but quickly calmed herself enough to keep from showing too visible of a reaction, even in the dark as the crickets began to play their nightly tune.

        “Thanks, Creep,” she replied, calling on the nickname from what felt like forever ago now. The days were slipping into August. She’d met him in mid to late May. She couldn’t quite remember exactly when anymore. She knew the moon phase, though. It was in her necklace. The one she had shoved in her nightstand inside her room. The one she refused to look at anymore because it made her think of him and the way he’d abandoned her after all they’d been through. After all the long days they’d spent together he’d just up and left.

        She remember it well enough. She promised herself she wouldn’t forget it. Ever. But she couldn’t just stay angry at him. It hurt her as much as it hurt him, actually. Or so she assumed. She loved to be around him, but she hated herself for loving it. She hated everything about him and the way he seemed to always find a way around her anger.

        She could hear his footsteps soft in the grass as he walked towards her. He sat down next to where she lay, not two feet away. Enough to give her some distance, but close enough, well, to tell her that he was there. It was a bittersweet notion. She kind of hated him for it. Both because he was so close and because he was so far away. She knew it was terribly stupid, but she was still hurt by him, and her spark and mind, processor, were still trying to work out some sort of truce. Or something.

        “What did you get for time?” He asked, turning his eyes up towards the sky, the stars that were beginning to show themselves.

        She shrugged slightly, turning her head away from him, gazing at the horizon the blades of grass created at this angle. It was wonderful the way it all just kind of faded away into a dark oblivion. “I did okay,” she replied.

        “I’d say better than ‘okay’ the way you cheered, Filly,” he said. She felt a weight on her abdomen, and for a moment she was confused. She felt the coolness of it a split second before she turned her head to look. Her water bottle. Full and cold.

        She gave a slight smile and took it from where he’d placed it on her body, moving the mouth piece to practically inhale the water, bit by bit. She stopped after nearly half of it was gone, closing it back up with her teeth and placing it on the ground. “Thank you,” she said simply, not sure if, or what, title to add at the end of that statement.

        He smiled gently at her. “You’re welcome. Now may I know what your time was? You seemed rather excited.”

        Her smile grew just slightly. “Eleven minutes and fifty-six seconds. That’s my new personal best and I plan to beat it.”

        He gave a small chuckle. “I wish you luck in your mission, Filly. Is there anything I can do to aid you in this quest?”

        She shrugged gently, thinking it over. “Um . . . You can pretend to be a weirdo and come work out with me when I’m running so I have something to run away from. But of course, you don’t really need to pretend, do you?”

        He shook his head gently, a slight smile on his face. “I suppose I don’t, Filly . . . Though I hope to change your perception of me sometime in the future.”

        Fay sighed, shrugging, staring at the blanket of stars. “Just . . . Don’t abandon me again and we’ll see where this goes . . .”

        Optimus vented softly, nodding. “I . . . I understand, Filly . . .” He turned his gaze back to the moon and stars. “What do you think of astrology?” He asked gently.

        She paused, thinking it over for a moment before deciding to settle for a familiar quote. “Whatever isn’t here is out there . . .”