In the bleak whiteness of the Northern Canadian wilderness, a lone girl trudged across the barren landscape. The teenager was bundled from head to foot in warm clothes, her bright green eyes only peeking out through tinted glasses. The girl had been travelling on foot for two days after reaching the point where no one bothered to plow the roads and she could get no farther hitchhiking. She had managed to keep herself from freezing by generating a small electrical aura around herself, but she was unused to such exertion and had grown quite weary. She had worried at first that the pair of deceptively plain gold bracelets that gave her her electrical powers wouldn't be able to maintain her shield of warmth for long, but she had realized during her trek that the power didn't seem to grow any weaker over time. Her own physical powers, however, weren't quite so reliable, and her legs had started to ache from the weight of her snowshoes. But as much as she wanted to rest she pushed on, knowing it was only a little farther to her destination.

The sun was already finishing its own short trip across the far edge of the sky as she came over a rise and saw a valley spread out before her. In the valley, breaking the monotonous white of the landscape, was a clearing dominated by a cluster of metal buildings. The scale of the structures was impossible to estimate from her distance, but if what she had found out was true, they were massive, built for an alien race much larger than humans. For the unremovable bracelets that gave her her powers were plain but for one decoration, and that one decoration was the old symbol of a faction of an alien race that had begun a battle on Earth when she was just an infant. And if this complex was, as she had been told, a top-secret Transformer outpost, then maybe she'd be able to find out why the source of her powers bore a Decepticon symbol.

The girl looked down on the base and sighed with relief, her breath a visible cloud in the cold air. "Finally."

* * *

From Jazz's vantage point in the otherwise empty observation tower of the recently excavated Earthforce base the snow-covered landscape of the surrounding Northern Canadian wilderness spread out in all directions. Though it was only late afternoon the uncannily long winter night had already fallen some hours before, leaving only stars and moonlight for illumination. The bleak, cold whiteness lent a sense of peaceful solitude to the place, set off as it was now from the main battle against the Cybertronians. It had been dug out of the all-enveloping snow a few months prior for use as an out-of-the-way hospital base, a sanctuary for those who needed time to recouperate from the wounds of battle. Once a major military installation, it was now staffed mostly by medics and scientists, with a handful of construction engineers on hand while a new wing was added. Most of the permanent staff was Autobot, but a large number of the construction crew was Decepticon, a constant reminder that, while there was still war being waged against the Cybertronians, their age-old civil war had come to a peaceful standstill that was cemented more and more each day.

As Jazz leaned against a window watching the work crew on the ground three floors below, the lift door on the far wall opened and a young Autobot stepped out. Jazz turned and smiled. "I was startin' to wonder when you were gonna get here, Trixie."

She returned his smile weakly as she walked over to him and stood beside him at the window. "Well, there's some good news, at least."

"Your friend Fury doing better, then?"

The pale blue Autobot sighed. Jazz put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. "He's...a little better. First Aid said his actual physical injuries are pretty much taken care of. But his mind's still a mess. At least he's stopped having violent episodes..."

"Believe it or not, Trixie, Strafe's turned out to be a really good psych therapist since we brought the Technobots here as our defense unit. Fury's in good hands."

"I can imagine, I was teamed with him once. I'm just afraid there won't be anything anyone can do for him. It's been a week and he still can't remember anything that happened during those months his ship was missing." She looked up at him. "Oh, Jazz, this whole assignment to Earth was supposed to be fun. I see you so rarely, and now when I get to spend a couple weeks here I have an insane friend to worry about. I wish just once we could have a chance to be together under better circumstances."

"C'mon, now, don't worry yourself so much. Even with Fury, these are some of the best circumstances we've ever had. We're on Earth, there's not the slightest chance of anyone bothering to attack us..." He was cut off by a tone from his communicator. "Uh oh. I hope I didn't speak too soon," he said, grinning. At a mental command a small microphone extended from the side of his helmet by his mouth. "Jazz here." He stared blankly into space as he listened to the communicator hooked into his audio receptor. Trixter looked up at him with concern as he frowned. "Okay, I'll be right down." He retracted his microphone with a sigh. "Looks like I'm needed down in the control room, Trixie. Metalhawk says the security grid's acting up. I know some of your team's down in the lounge watching TV, why don't you go join them for a bit while I take care of this?"

Trixter gave him a half-smile as she wrapped her arms around him. "Ahh, the trials of dating a high-ranking official..."

* * *

Meanwhile, at an altogether different window elsewhere in the complex, the Aerialbot named Air Raid stood watching the Technobots going through training maneuvers in the snow outside. He stood lost in thought, a mug of warm hi-grade half-forgotten in his hand as he leaned with his arms crossed on the broad windowsill. He heard footsteps coming towards him down the corridor and looked up to see a fellow Aerialbot approaching. A grin bloomed across his face. "Skydive!" he exclaimed.

"Hey! I heard you were around here somewhere," Skydive said, joining him at the window. "Whatcha up to?"

Air Raid gestured out the window. "Just watching these guys make fools of themselves out there in the snow. And I had just been thinking of you, actually. I heard that your team was in that battle out near Polaris the other day, and I hafta admit I was kinda worried..."

"Massacre out near Polaris is more like it," Skydive said grimly. "I can't believe the Cybertronians ambushed us like that... But our team managed to escape intact, plus or minus a few limbs." He grinned bitterly. "Which is a lot of why we're here now. Skram got it the worst of us. The medics are saying he might be here for a while. Lots of internal damage. One of those green mechrats got him with some kind of overload weapon."

Air Raid cringed. "Been there, done that. Poor kid." He watched with mild interest for a moment as outside Afterburner got into a visable shouting match with Scattershot. He shook his head. "Those guys don't know how lucky they are."

"What do you mean?"

"Just...look at them. All of them together like that. They've even still got their combined mode, their Computron mode. The Constructicons apparently lost theirs some years back. And still they can't get along worth slag." Air Raid sighed. "Y'know, when he was alive I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I miss Slingshot. I mean, sure he was an obnoxious bastard most of the time, but he was one of us. He was an Aerialbot. And that made up for it, in a way. That's...kinda what I had been thinking about before you showed up, actually, watching them and thinking how much I missed our team being together."

"I know what you mean. There've been times when I've been out just with my own Firestormer team and wished it was you guys watching my back." Skydive sighed wistfully. "And I have to admit being back at the Earthforce base again isn't helping it any. I just can't help but think back to the 'good old days'."

Suddenly the lights in the corridor shut off, then came back on. They began to dim and brighten erratically. The two Aerialbots looked around, more curious than alarmed. After a moment the lights stabilized again. They looked at each other and Air Raid shrugged. "Guess they haven't worked all the bugs out yet."

* * *

"There: 'Miami Vice, seven o'clock, channel 436'," Upstart read from the elaborate scrolling schedule on the television as Trixter walked into the lounge. "Is that what you're looking for? Oh, hi, Trix."

"Yeah! That's the one!" Slapdash nodded triumphantly, leaning forward in his chair.

Upstart looked at the profusion of buttons on the oversized remote control. "Okay, now how do we get to channel 436? Bloody digital satellite..."

Trixter, standing behind his chair, reached for the remote. "Here, let me see..."

"No! I can figure it out." Trixter shrugged as he scanned all the buttons on the keypad. Tentatively, he pushed a few, and the screen changed to a face shot of Don Johnson. Slapdash cheered.

"Hmm, yeah, I remember this show," said Lube, Slapdash's Nebulan Powermaster partner. He sat on the arm of the chair next to Slapdash, used to being dwarfed by the Transformer-scaled furniture.

"Mmm, Florida..." Trixter sighed. "What I wouldn't give for them to have built this place somewhere I could actually use my car mode."

Upstart mock-shivered. "Tell me about it. Whatever posessed them to build the Earthforce base in this Primus-forsaken snow-covered bloody wasteland I'll never know. Northern bloody Canada indeed. And then they have to go dig the whole thing up again when they want another permanent Earthbase. If they had any sense they'd just find some nice warm desert or something..."

"C'mon, guys, I'm tryin' to watch this!" Slapdash whined. As he turned back to the TV the picture flickered and changed to static. Hey! What...?" Then the screen died altogether and a split-second later the lights in the room went out, leaving them in pitch darkness.

There was a surprised silence for a moment. "Erm, I get the feeling they're not coming right back on," Trixter whispered.

"Maybe you need to call your boyfriend and tell him what's going on," Upstart suggested, half-mockingly.

Trixter made a face at him which went completely unseen, then turned on her inter-Autobot radio and sent a message on Jazz's frequency. After a moment he responded. "Jazz here."

"Hiya, it's Trix. I'm down here in the lounge and, well, we seem to have lost power. You might wanna mention that to Metalhawk if all you officers are still at your meeting..."

"Okay, wait a sec..." She half-heard Jazz say something to someone else. "How about you guys try to find your way down here to the control room?"

* * *

As the Firestormers stepped into the control room it was immediately obvious that whatever was wrong went a little deeper than some faulty wiring. Several of the base's highest-ranking officers, both Autobot and Decepticon, were standing around tensely as Metalhawk toyed with the computer.

"Look," Ultra Magnus explained desperately to Scrapper, the head of the construction team, "we're not accusing you of anything! We just need to know if you saw anything around the time the security network went down!"

Trixter slid over towards Jazz. "What's going on?" she whispered.

"Turns out these power outages started up right after that problem with the security grid. 'Hawk's thinkin' maybe something got into the base while the grid was down. He's trying to pinpoint it. And in the meantime," he grinned, nodding towards where a frustrated Ultra Magnus was still trying to get information from some less-than-cooperative Constructicons, "Magnus is tryin' to squeeze oil out of rocks. But nobody who was outside at the time saw a thing."

An oddly buzzing voice came over the security computer. "Metalhawk, it's Dracona. I think I've found our problem."

"What is it?"

"I'll bring her in and you can see. Dracona out."

"Her?" Metalhawk said, but the connection had been closed.

A few minutes later the door opened and the diminutive Dracona stepped in, towing after her a human girl only a few inches shorter than she was. She seemed to be in her teenage years and her features were a mix of Caucasian and Asian, with black and green hair and bright almond-shaped green eyes. Her clothes were bulky, shapeless, and more than a bit dingy. The girl's jaw dropped as she stared up at the robots towering over her and her eyes widened in fear. "This is what's been causing all these power outages?" Ultra Magnus asked in disbelief.

"Humans are known to occasionally have unusual powers," Metalhawk pointed out. "Remember the Neo-Knights."

"Yes, yes, I know." Magnus bent down slowly, trying not to startle the girl. He was reminded of the human female he had made the acquaintance of after first arriving on Earth, and it quickly tempered the frustration he had been overwhelmed with for the last hour. "Look, we're not going to hurt you. I'm Ultra Magnus, the commander here. If you promise not to run, I'll have Dracona there let you go, okay?" She nodded her head, relaxing a little, and the tiny grey and green Autobot released her, stepping back and crossing her arms haughtily. The insectile wings on her back vibrated.

"Tinkerbell there has one hell of an attitude problem," Upstart whispered to Trixter, grinning, as they watched the exchange.

"Now you've got a lot of questions to answer," Magnus continued, "but to begin with, how about telling us your name?"

"My...my name's Jaye Rogers," she said, regaining her poise a bit as she became increasingly convinced she wasn't about to be vaporized. "I...I'm sorry. He's right," she said, gesturing to Metalhawk, "I do have...unusual powers. I didn't mean to mess up your lights and stuff. I was just really scared and nervous and..."

Magnus cut her off with a wave of his hand. "There wasn't any permanent damage done. But why are you here? And why did you just break into our base? And how did you even find it, for that matter?" Jaye started to look nervous again. "I'm sorry, one at a time: why are you here?"

"I have...here, look." She pulled the sleeves of her coat up to show the gold bracelets on her wrists. "I can control the flow of electricity, to an extent. My powers started when I got these. I just found them at the table of this guy selling junk outside a subway station. I don't know where they came from before that. But look." She turned them so the tiny Decepticon symbol adorning each one was visible. "I have this friend who's a bit of a conspiracy theorist. They're just these people who have all these weird, paranoid ideas about things our governments are hiding from us," she explained, not sure how familiar a bunch of alien robots would be with such odd human concerns.

"Y'mean like the X-Files?" Trixter piped up. "The Lone Gunmen and all that?"

Jaye stared at her in amazement. "Well, at least I know I don't have to talk down to you guys about human stuff," she smiled.

"We did get one of those digital satellite doohickeys put in when we rebuilt the base," Jazz said.

"Neat!" Jaye exclaimed before going on with her story. "Anyway, I have this friend who's like that, and giant robots living in Northern Canada have, like, completely overtaken those big-eyed greys at Area 51 these days, so when I showed him the symbols on my bracelets he sent me right up here with all the latest ideas about where you were located. And after a bit of asking the locals and hitchhiking and trudging through the snow I found you. But once I got here, the first ones I saw were like you. Autobots. And he had warned me that the Autobots were, like, the mortal enemies of the Decepticons, and I didn't know what you'd do to me if you found me. But I guess that information at least was wrong," she added, nodding towards Scrapper.

"No, he was somewhat right," Scrapper spoke up. "We used to be enemies, but in the past several years we've found need to put aside our differences. But I don't think you're going to find out anything about the source of your powers here. I've never heard of anything like power bracelets for humans. You could check with some of the Decepticons downstairs in the lab, but I don't think there's ever been anything of the sort made, not by us at any rate. My best guess is that they were made by a human with some interest in Transformers."

Jaye sighed. "I was afraid that might be the case. But even so...I had another reason for coming. I don't really have a home, or a family, or really much of anything back in Toronto, so...can I stay here with you?"

* * *

"All her tests are coming up normal," Perceptor reported to Ultra Magnus as Jaye looked on, looking smaller than usual sitting on the edge of a worktable in the laborotory. She had rid herself of most of her bulky mass of clothes, leaving only a T-shirt and jeans. Her legs dangled off the table and she kicked at the air with bare feet as she awaited her verdict. "She seems to have picked up a bit of a cold during her walk here, but other than that she's quite healthy. I ran tests involving her electrotelekenisis and it doesn't appear to be anything that will cause a problem here. Normally she has it well under control. It also doesn't seem to be having any adverse effect on her body, with one exception. I'm not sure if you realized this, but the green color of the right side of her hair does not occur naturally in humans, nor any other mammal, or for that matter even in Nebulans. I asked her about this and she stated that it only started growing that color when she started using her powers. This may be due to a subtle shift in her body chemistry that otherwise has no ill effects."

"But other than that she's perfectly normal?" Magnus asked. Perceptor nodded. "Well, that's promising." He walked over to the table where Jaye was waiting and knelt down so he could be at eye level with her. "Well, kid, Perceptor seems to think you're not going to accidentally kill us all with those powers of yours, so that's good news, at least." Jaye cracked a bit of a smile. "Now you said you don't have a family or a home back where you come from?"

"Well, technically I do," she said. "My parents died when I was pretty young, so I've grown up being shifted from foster home to foster home. But I haven't had a real home for as long as I can remember." The girl's voice cracked a little and she paused, trying to control the tears welling up in her eyes. "The last foster parents I lived with started freaking out when we got in a fight and their lights started glitching out. I was about to get sent somewhere else when I ran away. And it didn't help that I've been labeled as a mutant..."

"I know a bit about mutants," Magnus said. "There's a group of superhumans associated with the US government called the Neo-Knights that helped us out years ago who were mostly mutants. Now they're kind of ambassadors to the Cybertronians. But I know it's something not very well accepted by other people."

"Exactly. So I thought I'd try to find this mythical Transformer base. I didn't really have anything to lose."

"Now you do understand that, even though it's left Earth, we're still in a war, right?" The girl nodded. "But this base is a hospital and research base, out of the way of attack. And you'd be far from the first human to be involved with us. So I've decided to let you stay."

* * *

There was a clear, cloudless, star-filled sky over the Earthbase as Trixter lay up on the roof enjoying the view. It was the first night in the week since she had arrived on Earth that the night sky wasn't clouded over. She had been hoping for Jazz to join her, but he was busy with other things so she had resolved to just come up alone. She had already identified all the constellations she remembered (there were only a handful) and was well lost in thought when she was startled out of her reverie by the sound of the trapdoor opening behind her. She tilted her head back to see Upstart pulling himself up onto the roof. "Hi!" she greeted.

"So this is where you've gotten yourself off to," he said with a grin as he got to his feet, standing over her with his arms crossed.

"Here, lay down," she said, patting the roof beside her. "The sky looks so nice tonight. Isn't it neat how the atmosphere here makes the stars twinkle?"

"Yes, it's all very nice," he said dismissively, sitting down next to her. "I have a couple bits of news you might be interested to hear."

"Hmm?"

"Well, to begin with I thought you might like to know that Magnus has decided to let that human girl stay here. She's just going to take one of the Nebulan quarters. Skram's giving her a tour of the base as we speak."

"That's pretty cool."

"The other thing- and the reason I've been busy the last hour or so, actually- is that we've got an assignment."

Trixter's face fell. "So soon? We have to leave already?" She sighed bitterly. "Where are they sending us off to this time?"

"They aren't sending us anywhere," he grinned. "Our assignment for the time being is to serve as the moble unit for the Earthbase. Basically, we just run errands for the guys here."

Trixter sat up and threw her arms around him. "Oh, Ups, that's wonderful!"

"Yeah, I figured you'd enjoy that." Upstart looked up at the star-filled sky. A full moon hung there, its rocky, cratered landscape a wholly alien thing to one who had spent so many centuries gazing up at the metal moons of Cybertron. "It is rather a nice night, isn't it? Maybe I will stay up here for a bit."

"Good!" Trixter lay back down, folding her arms behind her head. "I had been hoping for some company."

He followed her lead and lay down next to her. "You really like it here, don't you?"

"What's not to like? This planet is filled with so much life, and the humans are so inventive! And...it's peaceful here. They've had us on the front lines so long we're gonna get shell-shocked if we don't get a break. It's not every day we get such a great chance for some R&R." She turned to him and smiled. "But yeah, this would definitely have been my first choice if I had one."

"Glad to hear it, Trix. Very glad to hear it."