I'm so sorry this took so long to update! I was hit with my busy life and a small case of writer's block. And maybe even some laziness too. But I'm back, because I'm in the mood to write some more TFP Mirage.

11 - Numb and Bound - 11

Once he was sure that he had made Vince cry, he left the teenager alone and circled back to the school to make sure the children had been picked up by their guardians. He sat outside of the school for ten minutes to make sure, and once he was, he relaxed and he pulled away from the school.

His thoughts drifted back to the dilemma he was experiencing. He couldn't drive around forever, because he would eventually run out of Energon again. And if he turned back into a human, his credits would eventually run out and he would not be able to feed himself or have a place to stay. His human form was a lot weaker than his Cybertronian one, and it frustrated him. There was the same amount of benefits and problems with both forms, and he was having difficulty choosing which one.

He could hide from the Decepticons better in his human form, and hiding from Decepticons was one of his main worries. After cruising around and allowing himself to think over what he should do, he pulled into an alleyway and transformed into his robot form. He had to crouch low in order to keep most of his bulk from peeking up over the buildings, but that didn't keep his doorwings from sticking up over the rooftops like a pair of sore thumbs.

A grunt left his voicebox as he sent the command to the Chameleon Patch, and let out a sigh of relief once he was standing in his human form, and was no longer squeezing to fit between two buildings. He straightened his clothing, which he had swapped out for jeans, a blue t-shirt, and a black leather jacket, and walked to the end of the alley. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to do now that he had given up his Cybertronian abilities for the time being.

He reached the end of the alley, and jumped back when a green and black Urbana screeched to a stop in front of him. He was only able to tense before the closest door popped open and a masked man peeked out. The man pointed a large gun at him, and the last thing Mirage saw was a large bolt of electricity shooting towards him before his world went dark.

"According to Jack, Raf saw Raj at school today, says he stopped a bully by the name of Vince from hurting him and taking his laptop," Arcee reported as soon as she transformed up into her bipedal form. Jack had a lot of homework to complete, and didn't wish to have the goings-on at the base distract him, so Arcee drove him home and came back to base. At around ten, she would head back to guard her charge and his mother for the night.

Optimus and Ratchet merely looked over at her as Bulkhead asked, "What does he think he's doing? He's out there, unprotected from the 'Cons. He's going to get himself either hurt, captured, or worse."

Arcee shrugged. "I don't know, the kids don't know. They haven't seen him since he dropped off the radar either."

Optimus fully turned away from the screen he had been analysing with Ratchet in order to address the current conversation. "Though I cautioned him on the risks of leaving Autobot protection after he learned about our existence on Earth, I believe he is perfectly capable of handling himself," he rumbled.

The response he got from voicing his opinion on the matter was a bunch of blank stares from his soldiers.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself lying down. He felt quite disoriented and maybe a little on the queasy side. Where am I? he asked himself hazily, blinking owlishly. He looked slowly from left to right, before he jolted in realization. And with that jolt, he realized that his arms and legs were strapped down. Panic surged through him, and he tried to pull himself free from the bonds, but it was no use. They were too strong.

"Ah, good, you're awake," an all-too-familiar voice said from above him.

Mirage tipped his organic helm back in order to look up at the familiar build of the man he had accidentally bumped into on that street before he lost his job. Anger replaced the panic, and he glared up at the man. "Why did you take me?" he demanded. "What have I ever done to you?!"

"You have done nothing to us, Mr. Raj, except for being a suitable candidate for Project: Chimera," Silas explained with a smug smirk on his scarred face. The sight of it sent shivers down Mirage's spine.

"Project…Chimera?" The former-noble echoed back.

"Indeed!" Silas said. "For the longest time MECH has been trying to figure out how to make our own autonomous robots, but have failed time and time again. Now, we have come to the conclusion that our giant robots cannot go unmanned. Do you know how you fit in with all this?"

Mirage stared at him wide-eyed for a few seconds before he nodded, showing that he understood what the man was saying. "You…want me to…man a robot…" he said. Inside, he was panicking, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation alive. He was already an autonomous robot, just one in a human disguise. The last thing he needed was to be plugged into a fake, human-built one.

But after going through all of the possible scenarios, he knew he had only two ways out of this. It was either man a robot (which would probably be used to fight against the Autobots), or reveal his true identity so that he could make it out of this situation. He didn't want to show MECH who he really was, because if he did, they would stalk his aft until either they were taken out or he fell offline. But he couldn't fight them in this form—it was his weakest one.

"Sit back and relax, you are our guest," Silas said smoothly, though Mirage knew he meant the exact opposite.

Inwardly, Mirage cringed, his processing switching over to overdrive. He had to get out of there, now.

An idea popped into his head as Silas moved away from the table he was laying on. The sounds of rubber gloves being put on spurred his spark to beat faster. If he was going to get out of this in 'one piece' so to speak, he was going to have to do it now.

Chameleon Patch, I need you to transform me now, he thought, and something that felt like it was glued to his hip heated up.

And then things began to shrink, the table quickly gave out under him as he quickly became too big and too heavy for it to hold him. He kept the image of what he wanted to look like once he finished the transformation at the forefront of his processor.

Flesh became metal, muscles became wires, cords, cables, and pistons, and thick black armor appeared over various areas of his protoform. Shakily, he sat up in time for two large, ebony black jet wings burst forth from his back. He stood to his pedes as thrusters formed on his heels and his optics flickered on crimson red. He glared down at the little men before swinging a pede at a few of them, who were launched, screaming across the large room. He went to fire up his new thrusters in order to get away, but he felt something zap at the side of his calf-plating.

His cables suddenly began to spasm and jerk about before his knee joints gave out and he was sent crashing to the ground. He was a lot bigger than his original Cybertronian mode at that moment, so when he hit the ground, he flattened a few pieces of equipment, and nearly crushed a few more MECH soldiers.

Rendered immobile, Mirage could do nothing as he felt someone climb up onto him. He felt that person walk up the cockpit stretched from the base of his neck down to his waist until that person walked into his field of vision. It was Silas, and he was holding up one of the many guns he had seen the human's lackey's lug around. He was pointing it at his faceplates with a smug smirk on his fleshy lips.

"What do we have here? A Decepticon who can take on human form? How interesting." And with that, Silas shot him in the face with another bolt of electricity, and he was forced into stasis. Again.

When the stasis lock disengaged, the first thing he thought was, I have dug myself a deeper cave than I realized. Slowly, he blinked open his optics, and found himself standing up on his pedes with some sort of Cybertronian-sized apparatus keeping him from falling over on his face. His arms had been stretched out to the sides so he was positioned like the humans' letter 'T'. He blinked his optics a few more times before his sight sharpened and he could see his surroundings clearly once again.

Which allowed him to discover that he was still in the hands of MECH. Why am I not surprised? he wondered. He had brought this down on himself, and he wasn't expecting any kind of rescue. The Autobots didn't know he was here because he had been avoiding them like the plague, and he looked like a Decepticon, so MECH wouldn't contact them for a ransom or anything like that. He made his appearance completely original, so Megatron would not recognise him if Silas sent a ransom note or a message to taunt him, so he wouldn't even get freed by the Decepticons either. Not like they sent anyone to rescue one of their own anyway.

Running a systems check on himself, he realized that all his systems except for his voicebox, optics, and processor had been inhibited somehow. Glancing around with his optics, he saw he was standing in a hanger, and that many catwalks lined the walls. He focused on a group of humans that stood on the catwalk that traveled along the far wall. They all seemed to be looking at something, and Mirage had no clue what it was until one of them abruptly exclaimed, "That is otherworldly!"

Ah, so his transformation must have been caught on camera. Those humans must have been watching it over again.

"Are you impressed?" he queried, his accent ringing across the hanger and over to the humans on the catwalk. A few of the humans jumped in surprise at the sudden intrusion of his voice, while the rest just stiffened.

"He's awake," one of them said flatly. "Call Silas."

"Calling Silas," another replied.

The hanger was plunged into somewhat of a silence, and Mirage stood there, slightly amused that they didn't reply to his question. It was several minutes before the head of the human terrorist group appeared on the catwalk. "Welcome back to the land of the living," he drawled with a smirk on his face.

Now that things were back to being serious, Mirage felt dread grip his spark. "What are you going to do to me now that you know what I truly am?" he asked gravely.

Silas only smirked wider.

Tired huffs were the first sign that the Autobots had a human visitor. Miko came biking into view on a ten-speed she had borrowed from her host parents, and she nearly fell off of it after she stopped it and dismounted. She leaned the bike up against the wall before she stumbled over to the stairs that lead up to the loft. Optimus and Ratchet had stayed up late in hopes of locating Mirage/M. Raj, so they were the only ones there to see that Miko had returned to the base so late, and on her own.

"Optimus!" she exclaimed.

The Last Prime walked up to the loft and looked down at the young human girl, giving her his whole attention. "Why did you not call for a bridge?" he inquired.

"I wasn't sure if anyone was still awake," Miko quipped. "Anyway, I've got news!"

"What kind of news?" Ratchet scoffed from behind Optimus. "Can't you see we're busy?"

Miko just gave him a look and shrugged off the gruffness of his tone. She looked up at the tallest Autobot in the old missile silo. "A friend of mine just texted me this video. He works at the bank across town as a security guard, and he recorded this!" she pressed play on the video and turned it so Optimus could lean down and watch it.

The video was black and white, and slightly grainy, but it showed a familiar man come up to the entrance of the alleyway that must have sat across from the bank. He was sauntering comfortably, as if he wasn't scared. Suddenly, a sports car screeched up in front of the alley, blocking the camera's view of the man. A bright light lit up the entranceway of the alley before the car drove off. The man that had been standing the alley was now gone.

Optimus straightened abruptly.

"I think we found out what happened to Mr. Raj," Miko stated.

Optimus nodded and turned his helm to look at Ratchet. "Ratchet, contact Agent Fowler. We need to find out the locations of any one of MECH's secret bases."

Topkicker26: Yep. And because he's so arrogant, it's fun to mess with him, though I don't like to make him emotionly distraught.

SunnySides: No idea at all, until what happened in this chapter happened.

Girl Supersonicboy: Well, Mirage has to survive MECH before he can be chewed out by Optimus, unfortunately lol

KeepingThemAtBay: Hmm... I dunno... Raf can be pretty tight-lipped when he wants to be.

Yesssss winning: Thanks! A lot of people like Mirage, but not very many write about him, and that makes me upset because I want to see him in action more.

San child of the wolves: Thanks! It's hard not to love the humans they put in TFP. I'm looking forward to the sexual series coming out next spring to see if they put Jack, Miko, and Raf back in or allow them to come visit.

Nightbird1001: I hoped you like it! Next update should be coming up soon. I'm going to make myself focus on this fic until it's finished.

ultrasmokescreen: Aw, you make me blush :D More is on the way!