Disclaimer: I do not own any variant of Transformers, but I did quite enjoy Prime, so thought I'd try my hand at a fic. I do not own anything here you recognize.

Prologue: Before it All

The ride from Autobot Outpost Omega One to Jasper, Nevada was quieter than normal for all involved. This was due to neither of those along for the ride being with their normal partners. Miko Nakadai sat astride the back of a blue racing bike, her slim arms wrapped around the midriff of a woman in leathers. The setting sun cast the flat, desert landscape in a brilliant crimson.

"Miko, you need to adjust your arms a bit, they're inside Sadie." A clear, feminine voice issued from the bike radio." Miko craned her neck, looking around the taller female in front of her to see that her arms were indeed inside her skin. She grimaced and adjusted their position.

"Not my fault, I can't see around her and there's nothing to feel, so I'm doing the best I can back here. Couldn't you make her solid or something, Arcee?"

"Did you seriously suggest that I have a hard light component to my holographic rider? That would take up too much space in my chassis, involve invasive surgery, and would be an unnecessary drain on my energon."

"It would help with your disguise."

"In what way? Since I'm always with Jack, I seldom need Sadie and when I do use her, noone tries to touch her."

"Whatever, can we at least listen to some tunes for this long ass ride?"

"Not a chance, you are not using my radio to listen to that screaming you call music. And the ride from base to your host parents house is only 20 minutes if the traffic is decent."

"Bulkhead lets me listen to my music."

"Bulkhead isn't here. I am."

"Did Ratchet really need him? Couldn't you have helped out instead?"

"Me? Hold up the ground bridge rings? I'm too short and Bulkhead has considerably more brawn than I do."

"Heh, darn right you're short. Even Bee is bigger than you are and he's a scout."

"Femmes generally aren't as big as mechs, and I'm a two wheeler besides."

"Still short."

"Compared to another Cybertronian, yes. Compared to you, I'm enormous."

"Must be cool to be an Autobot. You're big, and metal and you've got, like, built in weapons and junk and you wreck shit up on a regular basis." The sudden turn in the conversation threw Arcee for a bit, but she retained her cool.

"Miko, we've been at war against our own race for as long as humans have had civilization. Those built in weapons have been stained in the energon of many others like myself. That 'wrecking shit up' we do is life or death struggles against those who would be our allies if not for Megatron. I have known nothing but war for so long, you can hardly imagine, so be quiet and think next time you want to say something!" The generally stoic Autobot Second in Command was actually losing her cool, not something that happened very often. Unless Airachnid was involved, of course.

"You don't have to yell, I'm not stupid! I know war sucks."

"No, you're not stupid, you just don't know when to shut up sometimes. You're talking about things you can't even begin to understand. You're always making noise, whether it's from talking non-stop, playing your guitar or some other act born of some idea from your random brain. For once in your life, just stop talking!"
"Better than you! You've got three settings; Smug when something goes your way, pissed off when you're talking about 'Cons and mopey whenever someone brings up Cliffjumper or what's his name." Arcee's response to this was a hard right off the road, with Miko actually tipping forward a little and falling through the Sadie hologram. Arcee pulled in behind a rocky outcropping and stopped, the kick stand flipping down.

"Get. Off." Her voice was as cold as deep space and Miko scrambled off. The moment the teen's weight was off her saddle, Arcee shifted forms, assuming her natural shape and turning her back to the young woman. She placed her right servo against the rocks, leaning on it, her left clenching and releasing as she fought down her temper. When she spoke again, it was through clenched denta. "His name was Tailgate He was my friend and he died in front of my optics. When you say his name, you say it with respect." She whirled around, getting down to one knee to look the much smaller girl right in the face, her blue optics blazing. "Do you understand?!" Miko knew she was in the wrong, but her stubborn pride wouldn't let her openly admit it. She stared back for several seconds before giving a small, curt nod. Arcee hung her head for a moment before turning into a motorcycle again. "Get on. It's another 5 minutes to your host parents house. I won't talk. You won't talk." Miko climbed back on, and the rest of the ride was awkwardly silent. When she got off, neither turned to look at the other, Miko simply entering the house while Arcee pulled away, headed for the KO Burger to pick up her normal partner after his shift.

The following days were awkward between them as neither really wanted to talk to the other. They would very pointedly not address the other, making the guys wonder exactly what was going on. Optimus could have gotten the exact problem out of them, but he felt it better to let them work out their own issues. It was a week later that everything changed. Bulkhead accidentally broke Ratchet's nano-spanner, something that couldn't be replaced with the technology at hand. They were all stumped as to where to get a piece of Cybertronian hardware on Earth when Bumblebee had an idea. An excited series of clicks, whirrs and beeps ensued. Ratchet, ever the Fallen's advocate, shot it down.

"The Harbinger? That crashed Decepticon ship in the mountains? They would have picked it clean." Optimus, the voice of wisdom, put forth his thoughts.

"Not necessarily, old friend. They would have taken anything of real value, but bringing simple tools may not have occurred to them. There may be something else there that could prove useful to us. We have to investigate. The ship is abandoned, so we should be safe from attack. We will bridge there and split up, we will each look and see if there is anything useful to be found, with special care taken for any tools for Ratchet." Ratchet had already set the ground bridge coordinates and the familiar swirling vortex appeared, with 4 titans stepping through, followed closely by two much smaller forms, one of them following the other to try and make sure she didn't get herself killed. Upon appearing on the other side of the bridge, Miko ducked behind some rocks, preparing to sneak aboard the derelict ship to meet up with Bulkhead or just to see what there was to see. So intent was she on watching the progress of the Autobots toward the crashed hulk, that she didn't see Jack come up behind her and grab her by the shoulder.

"Miko, do yo really have to do this every time? One of these days you're going to get yourself, or one of us, killed." She scoffed.

"If you're so scared, you don't have to follow me."

"Yes, I do, one of us needs to be responsible and try and keep you from getting stepped on or blasted."

"Alright, if you're so intent on following, at least try and keep up." She turned on her heel and dashed off toward the ship, her taller friend close behind. Seeing as the ship was in Africa, their cell phones were way outside of reception range, so their only way back to base was to get one of the Autobots to call Ratchet to open the bridge.

Inside the ship, the 'Bots had split up, each heading for a different wing of the ship to try and track down anything they could re-appropriate and bring back to base. They were unaware that the ship's singular denizen had seen them entering. Being unable to reach the ground bridge controls, and missing his T-Cog, Starscream did the only thing he could really do; he hid. Arcee opened a door to find a room with a number of protoforms. She quirked an optic ridge; this certainly qualified as useful. If one of them was very badly injured, they could make a copy of themselves via a protoform, and with their low numbers, that was an invaluable asset. She lowered her blaster arm, reverting the appendage to her servo, completely unaware that Starscream had hidden himself in a storage locker not far from her. He knew if he could grab her, her allies would prioritize her safety over his capture and would allow him to get to the groundbridge. He sat in his hiding hole and waited. He was nothing if not patient, after all.

Miko ran through the hallways, her canvas sneakers not creating enough noise to warrant her sneaking. If the 15+ foot tall robots could sneak up on one another, no way they'd hear her. Jack kept up, trying to grab the girl without having to tackle her to the metal ground. Miko couldn't hear any of them, so she picked a random direction and went that way.

"Arcee to Ratchet, I've found five unprinted protoforms. They're on a rack, so we should be able to move it." A pause as he responded. "I know. UnderstAH!" She was cut off as Starscream tackled her from behind, wrapping her in his long arms and trying to use his superior size to get her under control. What he didn't account for was that Arcee had trained specifically for something like this, and began using leverage to move her smaller frame around in the grapple, managing to push him off her, sending him stumbling in the direction of the rack, one of his sharp wings piercing the second protoform from the right through the spark chamber, ruining it. He ducked low and came back in, trying to take her pedes from under her. His clenched servo impacted her face as her leg impacted his midsection, sending them apart, this time with her in the direction of the rack. Still bent over from the kick, he raised his arm, the omnipresent rocket there firing off, only to be dodged as the femme swayed her body to the left. It instead impacted the second protoform from the left, the explosion destroying it and the one on either side of it. Realizing her blaster was unsuited for these close quarters, Arcee extended her arm blades. She closed the gap, swinging her right forearm at his head plate, then her left at his chest plate. He ducked his head, the right blade slicing the top off his head spike, then knocked the left wide with his own forearm, which is when everything went to hell. With her left arm on a wild swing, Arcee kicked out with her right leg, taking her lanky foe off his feet. She felt some resistance before her arm came to rest and heard a scream that made her energon run cold. For the barest of moments, time seemed to stand still before everything happened at once. Jack darted forward from the open doorway while Bulkhead burst through the opposite one with Bumblebee immediately behind. Arcee whipped her head around to the left to see her left arm blade covered in dark red, the same dark red that spattered the chest of the last remaining protoform, coming from a long, deep gash on Miko's chest as she lay sprawled across its shoulder, gasping for breath with half of each of her lungs destroyed. Arcee froze in place as what had happened seemed to take eternity to come to her, shock setting in. Starscream made to get up and head for the door, but found himself staring down the barrels of Bumblebee's stingers, a no-nonsense expression in the young scout's optics. Bulkhead looked from Miko's mostly dead form to her blood soaking Arcee's blade, an expression somewhere between rage and grief on his face.

"Arcee! What did you do?!" Without thinking, the wrecker barreled past, his heavy fist slamming into the still shocked femme's face. He gently pulled Miko from the unmoving protoform and dropped to his knees, cradling her in his massive servos with Jack reaching his side heartbeats later. This is the scene Optimus Prime entered to; his scout holding a slightly battered prisoner at blaster point, his second in command flat on her backside, staring at her blood covered arm, and his largest warrior holding one of their human friends as the light quickly faded from her eyes, another looking on with his face shadowed and unreadable. The last of the primes adopted a look of deepest sorrow as he stepped in to the room, making his way past Bumblebee and Starscream to where Bulkhead was. He knelt down, looking over the green wreckers shoulder at the pale girl, fighting for breath. Arcee recovered and stood looking over his other shoulder an emotion dark beyond black on her horrified face. Miko looked up into all of their faces, Jack peering over the edge of the servos. She opened her mouth to try and speak, but all that escaped was a gurgle of blood and her last breath. Hazel eyes slowly shut and Miko Nakadai passed from this world.

A/N: I know it sucks, I know they're out of character. If you have any suggestions, I'm wide open. I just wanted to use this chapter to lead in to the story itself. I've seen a bunch of 'Jack becomes a Cybertronian' stories and I figured it was time Miko got some love too. Some of you have already guessed how the rebirth is going to come about, so I'll leave it at that. Remember, if you can think of a better reason to have Arcee and Miko pissed at each other or any way to fix any part of the chapter, just let me know, I'm not too proud to take suggestions.