Faster than Light, not Faster than Time.

Part One: Con Job

*Equinox 3rd Person POV mixed*

I was just lying awake in the main room, the kids had been brought in fairly recently and were hanging out with their respective Guardians. Ratchet was at the monitors, as I now know is his regular place.

Another thing I realized is that the bots and I... how did they put it? Refueled? That sounds weird, I'm just going to use what I'm more comfortable with. 

Anyways, apparently I need to drink this 'Artificial Energon', or 'Arc Energon', as Miko named it, and Ratchet now makes regularly. They drink normal energon, the stuff that poisoned me. 

Yeah, they can have it. I'm not going anywhere near that stuff again.

Eventually, I heard heavy foot steps coming from down the hall. I picked my head up to see who was coming. 

As Bulkhead came around the corner with Miko on his shoulder, I put my head down again and draped my tail over my eyes. Ever since the pests infestation ended, she had been wanting to see everything I could do. Most of which a Speed stinger couldn't do.

Some of these things included:

Breathing Fire
Flying
Breathing Ice (They tried every element after I refused to try and breath fire and/or Ice)
Shooting Lasers out of my Eyes (I don't even know what a Laser is)

And uh... yeah that's about all I remembered, but I think there were others. She also wanted to take a lot of 'Pictures', which involved me standing in certain poses for awhile. At first it was pretty ok, but it got boring fast.

"Alright, chores are done." I heard Miko say. "Now can we do some dune-bashing?"

I lifted my tail slightly to watch them, I now kind of wondered what it would be like to have my own human... or maybe a partner? Nah. If I wanted to have a partner, they'd have to be able to keep up.

"I don't know, Miko." I paused my train of thought to listen to their conversation. "Last time, I spent a week picking sand out of my articulators." Bulkhead said.

Bulkhead looked over to see Miko looking down a bit, a little sad expression on her face. "Uh, but, there's a Monster-Truck rally in town." He tried to make his charge happy again. 

Success, Miko smiled as she looked at him directly again.

However, this little sweet moment just had to be ruined.

"Optimus..." Ratchet said, getting pretty much everyone's attention, including mine. "I'm receiving a signal on a restricted band."

I watched as Arcee and Bumblebee walk up behind Ratchet with Optimus, Bulkhead staying back for now. I sat up and watched them curiously, however I didn't try to approach.

"It appears to be coming from a starship inside the solar system." Ratchet continued. I tilted my head at that, a ship that sailed in the stars? Maybe I'm wrong on that, but I'm guessing from what he said it was fairly close.

Ratchet tapped something on the keyboard, then the middle screen changed. I didn't even try to make sense of what I was seeing, but I might try to ask them later.

"It's an Autobot Identification beacon." Ratchet said. My fins raised slightly in surprise, I didn't understand exactly what he said, but I got the gist. Thankfully someone else asked one of the questions I had.

"So there are other bots out there?" Jack asked. 

"The masses scattered to the galaxies when Cybertron finally went dark," Arcee answered his question, but added onto that with her own statement. "But cons have been known to bait traps with false beacons."