Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or caroons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only characters I own are the original characters.


Discovery

It had been a year since the battle had taken place between the Autobots and the Decepticons, and Maggie Madsen had been awarded a comfortable job doing work for the government there in a much more small-time gig than her previous outfit at the NSA. She still flew to Washington DC on a near-monthly basis for analysis and often to aid incoming trainees, but for the most part, life was normal. She had been seeing her boyfriend, Ethan, for nearly six months, and the two lived a non-eventful life in a nice two-story home not far from Sam.

It was one such normal morning that started it all. She woke earlier than usual, and opted not to go back to sleep, but got showered and dressed as usual, all before realizing that it was Saturday. She still had work to do at the office, which she could easily accomplish after hours (given the nature of her clearances, a key to the building hadn't been hard to obtain), and figured she'd run a few errands in the process. She kissed Ethan goodbye and left him sleeping at a bright 6:45 AM, and headed down the stairs to her car for work. When she got to her car, she paused, and rifled through her purse, trying to find her cell phone.

Funny, I could have sworn I put it in here a few minutes ago, she thought to herself. The call would have to wait, she supposed. She sighed a little and went back into the house, setting her purse down on the counter. She went straight to where it had been plugged in, but the charger sat alone, and she frowned. After a brief search of the house, she gave up, and decided to head in to work and make the call there. She'd only intended to make sure a few files were in order over in DC, and it wouldn't kill her to wait an hour.

When she got in her car, she dropped her purse in the passenger seat, and her phone slid out. "Well, I'll be damned," she said thoughtfully. She backed out of the driveway and began her usual route to work.

Frenzy, in the meantime, had other plans. He'd been frustrated by this human to no end - first he'd tried to kill her, and now he knew that she was the only one who could help him. That Witwicky boy was all about the Autobots, and from hanging around the house listening to conversations between Maggie and her strange boy-mate, he'd come to the conclusion that she had enough knowledge to help Barricade. When Megatron had been destroyed and the rest of the Decepticons dumped into the ocean, Frenzy and Barricade had been left alone while Starscream fled, though that was nothing new. Now that he and Barricade were all but stranded here while Optimus Prime and his band of merry men ran the show, Frenzy just wanted to get back into space and get somewhere other than Earth, since he didn't really have a place to call home. Cybertron had been wiped out ages ago, so they needed somewhere else to exist away from all this... life.

Maggie payed the phone no attention as she drove, and didn't notice as her little Blackberry Pearl change into a small robotic creature and back. She pulled into the office complex where she worked, and scooped it up, depositing it inside her purse as she made her way inside. While she went to get herself a soda from the vending machine, Frenzy jumped from her bag and ran around her small office, trying to find a good way to communicate with her that wouldn't scare the hell out of her - he'd noticed humans scared rather easily, so he had to play this cool.

He jammed one of his utensils into the tower on her computer, fishing around for what he wanted, and remained hidden under her desk as she came in, sat down, and moved her mouse around to stop her little 'flying toaster' screensaver. Right as she moved the arrow to her document program, her moniter blinked out. When it came back, DOS was open.

"Oh, what now?" she asked, her feminine, distinctly Australian voice breaking the silence. She scanned the screen for error messages.

Frenzy took his chance, and began forcing words onto the screen.

HUMAN, DO NOT BE ALARMED. I HAVE COME IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE.

Maggie was quiet for a second, and then she turned, and looked around. "Is this a joke?" she asked aloud.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE. I AM IN HIDING FROM THOSE THAT YOU CALL THE AUTOBOTS. I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE TO VACATE YOUR PLANET. I DO NOT WISH TO HARM YOU.

Frenzy wanted to harm her when she stood up, though, and forced himself not to make any noise as he waited for her to search the rest of the floor where her office was, trying to find the source of this prank. When she'd come back to her desk, he tried again.

I DO NOT WISH TO HARM YOU. I JUST WANT TO LEAVE YOUR PLANET IN PEACE. THE WAR HAS ENDED BETWEEN THE AUTOBOTS AND THE DECEPTICONS. WE HAVE NOTHING LEFT HERE.

Maggie felt a pit in her stomach as she watched the text on the screen form. This can't be a joke. Nobody else knows what those things are called. Aloud, she said, "Okay... what do I need to do?" She felt her heart start to beat faster, and she sat down in her office chair, pressing her hands together. Her palms had begun to sweat, and it annoyed her. This always happened when she got scared.

I NEED YOU TO TAKE ME TO MY PARTNER. THERE, HE CAN INSTRUCT YOU FURTHER.

"Well, how can I do that if you're in my computer?" she asked, her voice shaking. This can't be happening to me, she told herself mentally. She reached for her Sprite at the exact moment that Frenzy crawled from underneath her desk and revealed himself. Maggie screamed and dropped the soda, and Frenzy screamed, his metallic, tingy voice harsh on her ears as he jumped into a chair to escape the spilled drink.

He made a series of noises at her and shook his little metal fists, and Maggie nearly laughed aloud at the sight, but she felt more like crying at the moment. She focused on the overturned beverage, disposing of it and throwing down some paper towels, trying to blot it up with the toe of her high-heeled shoe.

Frenzy made more noises at her. The human was trying to avoid his request! He was growing impatient, and dropped back down into the shape of her phone. That got her attention. She stopped her cleaning. "Hey!" she shouted angrily. She reached over to snatch her phone, when it made a little ding-dong noise. Maggie had a text message. She opened the phone, and read the screen:

I NEED YOU TO TAKE ME TO MY PARTNER NOW. HE'S IN A WAREHOUSE BEHIND THE TRAIN YARD. DO ME THIS ONE TASK, HUMAN, AND I WILL LEAVE YOU IN PEACE.

Maggie looked around again, and then back down at the screen of her phone. "I'm going to be in so much trouble if anyone finds out about this, do you understand that? Why should I risk my tail for you when you nearly ripped Mission City apart and tried to, well, destroy the Earth?" she challenged. The phone was silent, and then another message appeared:

WE WERE NOT ALONE IN THAT VENTURE, MAY I REMIND YOU.

She opened her mouth, and then closed it again. He had a point. She didn't know whose idea it was to run the Allspark into the middle of a large city, but it hadn't been a good one. In trying to save billions of lives, they had cost hundreds. The damage control had been nearly impossible, but somehow the government had managed. Maggie realized that while the Decepticons had technically been the villains, the Autobots weren't the perfect portrait of heroes, either.

"Okay," she said softly. "Okay, I'll do this one thing for you, but that's it. After that, no more taking over my electronics. You leave me alone, and let me try to live a normal life. Or I'll... I'll smash you," she threatened lamely. She didn't really know what she could do, but she'd do something. She'd contact Sam if she had to, he still had the single Autobot with him, and Bumblebee didn't seem keen on the Decepticons if she remembered correctly.

The phone was silent. She gathered her things quickly and headed out of the building, trying to look as normal as possible. She had a feeling that this would be the worst possible decision that she could have made, but really, what choice did she have?