[i]"Sir, I'm reading life signs in this stasis pod. They're weak, but stable."

"Thank Primus, one made it out intact. Quickly, open up the pod, we might not have much time."[/i]

The soft, muffled voices continued to speak frantically back and forth as each of Optica's systems came back online, and her awareness of her surroundings slowly increased. Her first realization was that she was confined within a darkened, suffocatingly-tight space with no memory of how she ended up there. In fact, she found that she could not recollect anything at all, except for one word that softly echoed in her mind... "Optica."

A word? No, there was no meaning attached to the word. A name? Perhaps, there was some distinctive importance to it. Was it her name?

Concluding that "Optica" was indeed her name, Optica refocused her mind on her present situation. Was she a captive, trapped within a tiny cell of some sort? Did those voices outside belong to her captors? With feelings of uneasiness threatening to overtake her thoughts, Optica's survival instincts immediately took over. Reflexively, her hands reached to her sides to retrieve a pair of plasma pistols as her "captors" began prying open the cover that confined her to this tiny space. As soon her optics sensed light, Optica sprang into action to defend herself.

"Woah, what the - "

"Who are you and where the hell am I?! You have five seconds to give me a fully satisfactory answer, or I will pull these triggers!" Optica angrily demanded as the barrels of her pistols pointed unwavering at the two unknown robots standing before her.

"Easy, easy there! Friendlies! Put those weapons down." One of the robots exclaimed in shock, with one hand raised in surrender, while the other simply stood rigidly still in fear.

"Three seconds. Speak quickly." Optica calmly spoke, although her patience was wearing thin. Not that she had much of it to begin with.

"Ratchet, Chief Medical Officer. You're on board the Ark. You sustained heavy injuries on Cybertron and were placed in emergency stasis to save your life. Now please, put those weapons down before someone ends up as a slag heap."

"Medical officer? What's a medic doing with a gun?" Optica retorted as she eyed the robot's right hand tentatively hovering above the weapon at his hip. Although she showed no hint of hesitation at Ratchet's hurried explanation and her weapons remained raised, Optica struggled to sift through the haze in her mind that clouded her memories.

"A necessary evil in times of war... and a precaution." Ratchet replied, slowly moving his right hand away from his weapon while keeping his other hand raised.

"Sir! What are you doing? What if she's a Decepticon?" The other robot next to Ratchet exclaimed, caught off-guard by his superior's actions.

"Calm down, can't you see the insignia on her shoulder? She's an Autobot, one of us. Her systems didn't take too kindly to extended stasis, it seems."

Her optics quickly darted to her right shoulder, and sure enough as Ratchet explained, there was a distinctive red insigna printed on her upper arm. The same symbol was imprinted on the other two robots' chassis.

"Autobots? Decepticons? Cybertron...? Damn it all... looks like I'm out of the loop on a few things." Optica replied with a sigh of relief as she finally put down her plasma pistols. The absence of her memories remained unsettling, but with the earlier confusion solved, she was finally able to somewhat relax. The other robot took this opportunity to scamper away into a nearby corridor, leaving behind his superior.

Ratchet chuckled at Optica's understatement of the century. "Kid, you picked one hell of a day to wake up from stasis."