Dents and Bruises

Rated T for language and anything else I might have missed.

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"Cybertronian"

'Thoughts'

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

"Recordings or telephone conversations"

**(Bumblebee talking)**

Flashback or change of time or place

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show, if you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

Meanwhile

Arcee drove behind Heatwave, close enough to keep up with him but far enough behind to not make it obvious she was following him.

As they drove, Arcee opened a comm. line with Heatwave. :So, that was Huxley Prescott.:

Since Kade was also privy to their conversation because it was on Heatwave's console, both firefighters responded. "Yep,"

Arcee hummed in thought and said. :Now I know who to thank for that "alien invasion" scare a while back.:

Heatwave was surprised the Autobot knew about that. "Oh, you heard about that?"

:Took us a month to clean up the mess it left on the mainland.:

When they got back into town Arcee suddenly asked. : Where did the others get to?:

Heatwave answered "Blades and Dani took Huxley to the hospital to be checked over, Boulder and Graham took the stuff he and Milo used to pull that stunt at the river back where it belongs and Chase and the Chief are making sure everyone clears out of that area…"

They drove up to the police barricade Chase had put up before and Heatwave transformed into robot mode to walk around it. "…and hopefully they'll get this out of the way as soon as they're done,"

Arcee simply flipped onto her side and used her momentum to slide under one of the saw horses and used her holoform to set her alt. mode right side up again. :If you two are just going to head back to your base I'd better go find Boulder and his human. I still need to evaluate them and hopefully finish yours.:

Then Cody's voice came on the comm.s :Why don't you come back to the firehouse? That way you can see what everyone's doing at once from the command center."

:Alright:

They kept driving until they got back to the firehouse, none of them saying a word because Kade didn't know what to say to the two Cybertronians, Heatwave was waiting for Arcee to say something and the only noise coming from the Autobot femme was the sounds of her engine as she drove.

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Back at the firehouse

Frankie looked at Cody "You think letting her see all the bots at once is going to help?"

Cody turned around in his chair and shrugged. "I hope so,"

A few minutes later they heard the sounds of the Bots' lift coming down from the garage and into the bunker. "They're here,"

Cody and Frankie pretended to be watching the screens intently as Heatwave told Arcee where the command center was—in plain sight of them—before going to the training area.

The kids looked up and greeted them as Arcee walked up to them. Heatwave just grunted in acknowledgement while Arcee returned the greeting as she crouched down to look over Cody's shoulder.

Cody nervously looked out the corner of his eye at her; if what the others told him was true Arcee was a brutal stealth fighter in the field, and sitting next to her now he didn't doubt that in the slightest.

He could see all kinds of dents and scratches—which most would assume were just every day wear and tear—that he knew were battle scars gained from a lifelong struggle and he could feel a tenseness rolling off of her in waves.

Cody's attention was most drawn to three ragged grooves in her side. "What are those from?"

Arcee glanced at her side and covered the scars with her servo before returning her attention to the screens. "I got into a fight with a Decepticon named Starscream,"

Frankie looked up at the femme. "What happened?"

Heatwave paused mid-punch in beating up his practice dummy, wanting to hear what would most likely be a war story from an experienced soldier.

But instead Arcee kept her focus on the screen to watch what the others were doing until everyone got back.

When Blades and Dani came down the lift they could hear the mech say. "I'm serious, Dani, we should really call the T.V. station and ask them to stop having Huxley do this kind of thing all the time,"

Dani climbed out of the Copterbot's cockpit so he could transform and the two stepped off the lift. "Blades, as tempting as it sounds, you guys can't call them because you'll blow your cover if they recognize your voices next time to speak in public after that and they'll definitely recognize our voices if we call,"

She looked at the ground and grumbled as she took off her helmet. "And he'll probably do a story saying we don't want to do our jobs anymore just to get back at us,"

Blades slumped. "I know, but it's still an option, right?"

Without warning Arcee pressed on her comm. link a couple of times and after a moment spoke aloud into it. "Hello, may I speak to the editor in chief, please?"

Everyone stared at her as Arcee waited for a moment and crossed her arm-servos so that her free servo supported the arm-servo that was pressing on her comm. link. "Is this the person in charge? Good, because I have a few questions about this 'I dare me' segment that anchorman Huxley Prescott has been doing,"

She paused while the person she was speaking with spoke; presumably asking what sort of questions she had because she promptly started griping them out. "Well, for starters, who chooses the stunts he does? I mean seriously, solo mountain climbing? Skydiving over a populated area? Is that man crazy?"

Arcee was quiet again and Heatwave and the humans all tried to stifle their laughter while the person on the other end of the line raised his voice and she did the same. "Oh, this is Huxley Prescott? Well, let me tell you something, mister. A few of the kids I look after have been watching your show and today they tried to imitate one of your stunts,"

They could hear Prescott say something along the lines of "Well, maybe if you actually watched the little…"

Arcee bluntly cut him off. "I went into the next room to answer the phone and when I look up two of my kids are hanging out the window trying to tie a rope to the side of the house to make a zip line that goes across the yard because 'Huxley Prescott did it on TV' and they wanted to try it,"

They could hear Prescott stammering over the phone and Arcee narrowed her optics. "Nice try but no, I'm not going to hold while you 'go get your supervisor', I know you have no way to do that because if I'm not mistaken this is your cell phone number that you had people call when you thought Griffin Rock was under 'alien attack', isn't it?"

Huxley, the weasel he was, tried to placate the "woman" on the phone with him and talk her out of reporting him but she said sternly "I don't think there is anything you can do to change my mind,"

Cody struck genius and tapped on Arcee's shin guard. "What if instead of him daring himself he has his viewers dare him to do stuff? There's no way he'd go through all the suggestions himself so someone else can go through and get rid of the more dangerous stuff and more people will watch to see if there dares get on the show so he won't get desperate for viewers,"

Arcee smiled and mouthed the words "Good idea," before she relayed Cody's idea to Prescott. "Actually, have you ever considered of letting your viewers pick the dares? That way more people will watch your show to see if their dares make the cut and you're not risking your life, and those of your viewers that don't see the 'Do not try this at home' warning, by trying to rip off that show called 'Jackass',"

Arcee waited for a moment while Prescott said something and then hung up. "Hello? Hello?" She removed her digit from her comm. link with a click. "He hung up,"

Cody looked up at her. "What did he say?"

Arcee shrugged. "First he tried to dodge the bullet and say whatever he could to get me to leave him alone but when I told him your idea he said 'Huh, great idea. I'm glad I thought of it' and hung up,"

Chase frowned; he had come downstairs in time to hear Cody's suggestion a moment ago. "First, the mayor tries to take the credit for Cody's idea to use Doc Greene's weather machine to make it snow during the hottest day of the year to give the townspeople some relief and now this?"

Arcee crossed her arm-servos and scowled. "I would have given him credit, had the slagger not hung up on me!" Then she remembered something. "Speaking of calls, alright if I use your guys' long range communications system to call the base?"

"Of course, right this way please," Chase led Arcee into the side room where the Rescue Bots kept all of their Cybertronian equipment and started up the monitor they used to call Optimus for their reports.

"Thanks" Arcee looked up at the monitor as Bumblebee appeared on the screen and the two exchanged a greeting before the black-and-yellow scout saw Chase and waved. **(Hi, Chase, how's it going on your end?)**

Chase now noticed that Bumblebee looked different than when he had last seen the scout, the younger mech had reversed his color scheme so he was black with yellow stripes instead of yellow with black stripes. "All is well, here, sir, and yourself?"

Bumblebee looked bashful and waved him off. **(Ah, come on, Chase. I told you guys you don't have to do that 'sir' stuff with me. I'm not Ultra Magnus.)**

Chase said nothing as the two Autobots struck up a conversation, Bumblebee speaking in beeps while Arcee spoke in Cybertronian, and quietly slipped out into the main part of the bunker to give them some privacy.

He found the rest of the team clustered in front of the door and shooed them away. "Hasn't anyone ever told you all that eavesdropping is rude?"

Blades and Frankie both pouted and said. "But we want to know if the evaluation was good or not,"

Chief Burns came up to them and backed up his partner. "We'll all now what the results were in due time. For now, let's give Arcee some privacy while she makes her call,"

Everyone dispersed and Frankie said. "Speaking of calls, I wish I could have seen Huxley's face when Arcee called him a minute ago and got after him for what happened today,"

Chief Burns looked at her. "What do you mean, Frankie?"

Cody smiled. "Arcee made an anonymous phone call to a phone number Huxley had posted so people could report 'alien activity' when he was convinced that Griffin Rock was being invaded by aliens. Turns out it was his personal cell phone, and boy did she chew him out,"

Meanwhile

Arcee finished talking to Bumblebee just as their team's medic, Ratchet, stepped into view. "Arcee, we are ready to receive you as soon as you return to your arrival coordinates,"

Arcee nodded in understanding. "See you guys at the base,"

Bumblebee waved and buzzed a quick goodbye as Ratchet ended the call.

Arcee turned off the monitor and turned around to see Heatwave, rather than Chase, standing there with his arm-servos crossed. "So… did we pass or fail?"

Arcee shrugged and walked past him. "Hard to say, Optimus is the one that get the final word on it, I was just supposed to scope everything out for him,"

Heatwave pressed again "But if you did have the final say what would you say?"

Arcee turned around to look up at him and say "That you guys are living proof of both what the Rescue Bots stand for and why they were wiped out like scraplets in liquid nitrogen when the war hit,"

The femme narrowed her optics at him. "Bumblebee told me that you wanted to join the war effort. Do yourself and everyone else a favor and don't," She turned on her heel and marched out of the side room they were in and into the main part of the bunker.

Heatwave, persistent in his argument and agitated that she just walked away like that, followed her. "What makes you think I…"

Arcee turned sharply to face him and looked him square in the optics with her own cold and hardened glare. "Did you or anyone on your team see the image captures of what was left of Cybertron after it went dark?"

Heatwave hesitated and looked ashamed, like a kid that just got caught cheating on an exam. "No…"

Arcee rolled her optics and glared at him again. "If you can't handle seeing pictures of the aftermath of war what makes you think you would be able to handle it, live and in person, as it happens?"

She snorted and waved over to his training area and added "Sure you can beat up practice dummies with the best of them but how can we trust you to keep your cool in the heat of an actual battle?"

Heatwave stood there glaring back at her.

All the while this was going on, everyone else had stood off to the side until Cody stepped between them. "Guys, please don't fight…"

They all looked down at the boy and felt guilty that a little kid had to play referee every time any of them got into a squabble or argument.

Arcee looked away and sighed. "You wanted to know how this happened, right?" she tapped on the scars on her side. No one argued so she continued.

"We were after a Decepticon, named Airachid…" the way she spat the designation it was obvious she hated this "Airachnid". "…and we found Starscream at the scene she fled from, tied up in her webbing…"

"Webbing?"

Arcee nodded. "Yeah, she had a spider motif. Anyway, the little weasel said he wanted to switch sides and Optimus believed him but since Starscream was notorious for treachery we cuffed him and put a clamp on his wings and brought him with us in Optimus' trailer when we went to see if the info he gave us was correct,"

She laughed humorlessly "Turned out the glitch was right where Starscream said she was; stripping old Cybertronian weapons from a wrecked Decepticon ship that crashed landed on Earth eons ago. I wanted to go after her to avenge my partner, Tailgate, who she killed but Optimus thought my judgment was clouded and made me stay to guard Starscream,"

Kade crossed his arms. "And he slashed you and got away?"

Arcee shook her helm. "No, first he wanted to know why I hated Airachnid so much and I told him she killed my partner. He got upset that she had taken credit for something he did and I realized he thought I was talking about my other partner, Cliffjumper and that he was the one that killed him,"

Everyone went quiet when she revealed she had lost two partners and were suddenly grateful they hadn't lost theirs… yet.

Heatwave was the one to break the moment of silence. "Then what?"

Arcee snarled at the memory and said "I challenged him to a fight. I wanted to kill him right there but I knew Cliff would want him to have a fighting chance so I gave him to keys to his cuffs and told him to free his servos,"

Chase nodded "An honorable notion,"

Arcee snorted and rolled her optics. "The little worm started sniveling and pleading for mercy and saying that it was a mercy kill because Cliff was so badly injured that he begged him to do it,"

Arcee shrugged "I had a hard time believing him because Cliff would never do that and the 'Con had been bragging about it a few moments ago. I called him pathetic and bent over to grab the key and unlock him myself but when I did he slashed open my side with his claws and grabbed the key while I was down,"

"We fought for a bit but in the end I got the upper hand and had him at my mercy. But I realize now at that point I had no mercy, I wanted to kill him so badly that it hurt," she clenched her fist for emphasis.

Cody looked up at the femme that was glaring at her clenched fist and saw she was trying not to cry but was pretending to be angry at everything to cover it up. "Did you?"

Arcee was quiet for a moment and they all feared the worst but she shook her helm. "No,"

Heatwave scoffed "Why not?"

Arcee smiled sadly. "I saw Bumblebee coming over the ridge, the others were in trouble and he was coming to get me but he stopped when he saw me. He didn't know the whole story so as far as he knew I was attacking an ally that had just joined our ranks. I saw him looking at me like I was some kind of monster and realized in a way he was right,"

She looked up at Heatwave harshly "And so was Optimus, he thought I wasn't thinking clearly and that I would jeopardize the mission and that's what happened. He thinks you bots are not ready for battle and guess what, hot shot? You're not,"

She stood at attention with her servos clasped behind her back and said professionally. "So you have two options, you can continue here in Griffin Rock or Prime can relocate you to a different backwater town and have you start over there as their rescue robot team,"

Cody perked up. "But that's what the whole evaluation was in the first place, wasn't it?"

Arcee nodded "Glad someone got it. Apparently 'Geronimo' over here…" she jerked her thumb towards Heatwave. "…thought that if he got a perfect score he'd be put on Team Prime and into the fight,"

Just then Kade came downstairs and, without looking around, called out "So, did her royal bitchiness leave yet or is she still out following the bots around?" He finally looked up and saw everyone else on the team, plus the Autobot femme, looking at him. "Uh…"

Arcee just shifted the light in her optics to mimic an eye roll and shifted her stance. "Oh, don't worry, 'her bitchiness' was just leaving,"

Kade stood with a deer in the headlights look for about a second before he shrugged off the stares he was getting and walked over to the monitors for his shift at monitor duty. "Whatever,"

The bots all looked at Arcee and Blades asked nervously. "Uh, you're not going to take points off for that, are you?"

Arcee waved him off. "If I was here to evaluate the humans I wouldn't have been given just one day to do it,"

Then she remembered something. "Speaking of humans, I'd better go, I need to pick up my human partner from school before one of the more reckless bots on our team gets him first,"

Boulder looked at the femme. "You have a human partner too?"

Arcee smiled "Yeah, almost everyone on the team does. Who do you think I was talking about when I told Prescott some of the kids I look after were trying to imitate his stunts?"

Blades gasped. "I thought you made that up,"

Kade looked around. "Whoa, wait, you lost me there,"

Heatwave crossed his arm-servos. "No surprise there,"

Arcee shook her helm at the two bickering partners and said "Well, I did throw in the 'house' and 'yard' part because it's not like I could tell him they were building a zip line that ran across the command center of a top secret military base,"

Kade looked impressed but still confused so Chase quickly explained "Arcee called Huxley Prescott pretending to be a distraught child care giver whose charges were imitating his misadventures and scolded him accordingly,"

Kade laughed "Nice,"

Arcee waved over her shoulder as she walked towards the garage door. "See you around,"

Everyone waved and said their own quick farewells as the femme transformed and drove out of the garage, activating her holoform as she passed under the door, and drove away from the firehouse.

Cody was the first one to speak once she was gone. "So, that's Arcee?"

Blades sat down heavily on the stack of crates in front of the TV. "I can't believe it,"

Chase looked in the general direction the Autobot had gone like he wanted to chase after her. "I find it hard to believe she was driving within the speed limit,"

Chief Burns looked at everyone present. "Now that that bit of excitement is over, I would like to call a family meeting. Is everyone here?"

Everyone looked around to make sure everyone was there and made themselves comfortable in case this meeting turned out to be a long one.

"What's going on, dad?" Dani asked.

Chief Burns looked at his family, and his extended family to include the Rescue Bots. "When we were at the hospital questioning Sasha, I also talked with her doctor. As it turns out they really don't keep people with broken arms or ribs in the hospital while they recover and have to release her,"

He ran his fingers through his hair "Unfortunately, they don't have anyone to release her to and she doesn't have anywhere to go once they do,"

Cody perked up "Can she stay with us? At least until she's better,"

Chief Burns smiled at him "I was just about to suggest that, but I wanted to hear everyone else's input first,"

Frankie looked at Heatwave and the others and spoke up "What about the bots? Aren't they supposed to be a secret?"

Heatwave crossed his arm-servos. "She has a point, if this girl is going to live with us she might do some snooping around and find out the truth,"

Kade also crossed his arms "And it's not like she's our problem anyway. Let someone else worry about her,"

Chase looked at the ground, torn between two decisions, then at Chief Burns "I wish to help Sasha as well but I also agree that Francine is correct,"

Chief Burns looked at all of them "We are talking about a little girl with broken ribs and her arm in a cast. I highly doubt she will be able to slide down the fire pole in her condition and the only other way down into the bunker is the elevator,"

Graham saw where he was going with this. "With as much noise as that thing makes I'm sure you guys would be able to hear her coming if she does decide to come down here. If worst comes to worst we can always tell her the bunker is off limits if she does stay with us,"

Chief Burns looked at everyone. "Either way, this is a decision that will affect all of us so we'll put it to a vote. All in favor thumbs up…" he held up his thumb for emphasis and to explain to the bots what a "thumbs up" was. "… all opposed thumbs down," he turned his hand so his thumb was pointing down.

"Ready? Go,"

A.N: I am so sorry I took so long, everyone. I will try to be less absent with my stories in the future.

Quick shout out to the people that reviewed and/or added; Invader Kathy Starsky, Transformers' BABY, VectorSigma101, Maplejay, Rockscientist, My Soul is Spartan, TheNightshade43, CyberAngelAlexis, keacdragon, Ack215, ANIMELOVER69, susandm , roseofmyheart, animebella09, ChaseIsMyRescueBot and two unnamed Guest reviews.

Rockscientist: If you really do ever do fanart for this fic, let me know. I would love to see it.