Standard Disclaimer: The characters, setting, and basic premise of the series Transformers Animated is not my intellectual property, but belong to Hasbro and any affiliated media producers.

Author Note: First posted story! Woo! I've been working on this for a while, so it's the first thing I've uploaded, and I intend to keep writing it for a while. Updates should be be pretty regular at first as I work through my backlog; however, I have a lot of things to juggle, so expect updates to slow down eventually. Anyway, I hope people like this, and post plenty of reviews.

Chapter 1

Professor Issac Sumdac wiped off his gloves nervously, and ran his hands through his shock of black hair, trying to tame the wild mane sticking straight up from his head. His lab coat was freshly cleaned and pressed, and his pants entirely without the common stains of his work; those who did not know him better, might have assumed he was leaving for a date. Instead, he was pacing impatiently before the view screen installed in his office, waiting for his daughter to call.

Others might have found it odd to dress up so well for a simple call from a close family member, but Sari had always worried about leaving him alone, afraid that her absent-minded father might forget the essentials (like food, sleep, or clothing) while under the thrall of his muse. So he was determined to show her that he was perfectly capable of caring for himself, so that she could enjoy herself without worrying about him (and never mind that his secretary bot had to keep reminding him that motor oil was not edible).

[Beep Beep Beep] The view screen rang with the incoming call, and Issac jammed down the acceptance button with a cry of, "SARI! It's so good to-Oh My Goodness! Sari!" he cried a second time as he averted his gaze. "Young lady!" he scolded as he covered his eyes.

"Oh! Hi daddy!" answered Sari Sumdacc, looking between her legs at her father's face. "What's w…" In a flash of insight, she realized why her father was refusing to look at her, and straightened with an "EEP!", hurriedly brushing down her skirt as she spun around to face the screen. She knew better than to bend over with a dress this short! "Sorry! Sorry Daddy. I dropped something just as i was calling, and…oh sparks I'm so embarrassed." The adopted daughter of Issac Sumdac felt her cheeks flush as she looked away.

"No harm done, no harm done," consoled Issac, opening his eyes after a quick check to make sure the coast was clear. He rejoiced at this chance to see his daughter again, drinking in the sight of her caramel skin, so like his own, and her apple red hair, done up into two tufts. She was still wearing her favorite yellow-orange dress, with the stabilizers of her jetpack curving up over her shoulders. And her eyes…even now, Issac had trouble tearing his own eyes from Sari's electric blue orbs, so very different from the rusty brown gaze she had been born with. "Now, how's my little girl doing?" he crooned. "Are the Autobots feeding you right?"

"I'm doing great Daddy!" cheered Sari. "They don't have human food here, but i can eat Cybertronain style just fine. Still, Energon has nothing on a Bott Burger."

"Energon?" Issac felt his interest spike. "I've always wondered, what does it taste like?"

Sari's face fell as she groaned, "Diet. Soda."

"Oof," sighed Issac, wincing in sympathy. His daughter had long professed a deep disdain for diet drinks, claiming them to be abominations that missed the entire point of drinking the stuff in the first place. "Do you know how long you're going to be staying?" he asked, careful to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

"Well, Ratchet's got this other Doc Bot he wants me to see, some expert on Cybertronian mutations; and then the Cybertron Council wants to see me. And after that…well, i don't know."

"You know i miss you, right?" Issac felt his voice wobble slightly, and forced it to calm. "And i love you very, very much."

"I love you too, Daddy, and i miss you just as much. Don't worry, i'll come home soon!"

"Good," nodded Issac. "And when you do, i'll take you out for some real food."

"That'd be wonderful," replied Sari with a bright smile. "Bye Daddy. I'll see you soon. Oh, and tell Captain Falzone hi from me!"

The view screen blinked off, and Issac slumped slightly as the animation seeped out of his body.

"So she's not coming back, eh?" grunted Police Captain Falzone, as he leaned against a tesla coil, ignorant of its instability. "Too bad. I kinda miss the little squir-ir-irt!" he cried as the off balance scrap collapsed on top of him. "This is why i hate machines," he grumbled from underneath the heap.

"Captain, i have no doubt that Sari will be back when she is ready. Until then…" he bent over to help the Captain up. "All we can do is be patient."

"Sari? Sari!"

"I'm in here, Ratchet!" she replied as the view screen stopped humming.

The Medical Autobot clomped into the (relatively) small storage space she had claimed as her bedroom, optics wandering across the room until he spotted her. Even now, after weeks on Cybertron with the doc bot, she had to fight not to look twice when seeing him. The restoration of Arcee and Omega Supreme, as well as the return to familiar surroundings, had left the Medic in a much happier place than he had been before, and Sari sometimes had trouble seeing the grumpy old bot in the newer, happier model; especially when he smiled.

"Time to go!" he declared, kneeling to put his face closer to hers. It's already four cycles past midday, and Epidata is not a very patient bot!"

"Really? Then I can see why you're still friends with him then," snorted Sari as she activated her jetpack, rising up to Ratchet's face on a stream of superheated air, letting her built in helmet fasten itself around her face. "Well come on slowpoke", she cried as she opened the throttle, "Time to GOOooooooo!"

"Are you sure this guy's really an expert?" murmured Sari as she looked around at the cluttered expanse. Everything in Cybertron was dramatically oversized to her, built for gigantic robots who out massed her a hundred thousand times over, but the sheer bulk of junk that filled the 'Waiting Room' was enough to leave her feeling claustrophobic.

"Yes i'm sure," snapped Ratchet. "I've known the bot for nearly 900 stellar cycles, so i should be able to identify his expertise."

"Yeah, well, you're friend's office looks more like a junkyard than a doctors office."

"Well, what do you expect? He can't study new and unique Cyberforms without samples, can he?"

"Samples? Ratchet, you told me your friend was just going to scan me!"

"He is, he is!" replied Ratchet as the door to the inner office was buzzed open. "The samples are from strictly non sentient subjects! Epi would no more harm you than i…!"

"IS THIS IT?!" roared a mechanical monstrosity that burst from behind a stack of data discs. Ruby red optics gleamed with hunger as the monster's mandibled jaws opened wide. "IS THIS THE TEST SUBJECT, THE TECHNO-ORGANIC?! IT IS, ISN'T IT! HOW GLORIOUS! HURRY, HURRY, WE MUST GET IT TO THE TESTING SLAB SO I CAN DISSECT IT!"

"Aiiieeee!" shrieked Sari as she threw out a hand. Immediately her hand unfolded and spread, revealing a glowing energy projector buried in her palm; the blaster glowed for a millisecond, then launched a blue white orb of destructive energy directly at the gruesome visage. The subsequent explosion missed most of the creatures face, simply blowing off one of its eyebrow horns as the majority of the destructive energies atomized a pile of stasis containers.

"Die Decepticon scum!" she shouted as she charged another shot, only to halt as Ratchet got in her way.

"Slag it, Epidata, you scoundrel! That! Wasn't! Funny!"

"Yes it was, yes it was," retorted the newly identified Autobot doctor. "That was hilarious! And it's nice to know you weren't exaggerating! She really is a delightfully destructive little thing, isn't she?" he said as he examined his scorched horn.

"Wait a minute," interrupted Sari. "Are you telling me that this is the famous doctor you were taking me to see?"

"That's right! Professor Epidata of the School of Cybertronian Archeological and Mutagenic studies! And let me just say what an honor it is…"

"But he looks like a CON!"

"Oh! Come now," chuckled the bot as he cheerfully reached up and pulled off his face. "Surely you don't think you organic's are the only ones to make use of masks, do you?" The features underneath Epidata's disguise were much less frightful, with big blue optics resembling spectacles perched above a bulbous nose (or some Autobot equivalent), and an array of antenna covering his head like a shock of pointy hair. His shell, now that she could see it, was covered in an eye watering mixture of luminescent yellow and surgical pink, and his servo's were long and delicately tapered; oddly enough, the scientist reminded her of her dad (despite the dramatic physical differences), with the same air of friendliness and absent-minded cheer.

"Still, that wasn't a very nice thing to do to your guest," berated Ratchet as the other bot began ambling away, tossing his mask on a nearby pile of miscellaneous.

"Nonsense! It was a perfect way to make her feel at home, and welcome her to our great, big, Cybertronian family! I probably managed to work several years of diplomatic effort in under thirty seconds!" cried the bot as he threw himself onto a chair that was only half covered in paperwork.

Ratchet rubbed his processor dome and sighed, "i'm sorry about him, Sari. He's an absolute genius in his field, but outside it he's never managed to grow up."

"No problem," retorted Sari cheerfullly. "I used to live with Bumblebee, remember? I can handle dealing with this guy…i mean bot!"

"Hey! Bumblebee? I'm not as bad as all that…am i?" A dry look from each of them was all the answer he needed. "Well slag; I might need to tone it down a bit after all." He shook himself, and refocused. "But that's neither here nor there. Now, how can i help you?"

"Uhuh. Uhuh. Uhuh." Sari suppressed the urge to call out, wriggle, argue, or do something destructive as she listened to Epidata's mutterings. She had never appreciated sitting still, and she had never liked visiting the doctors office. Being stuck with both at once? If she had not previously promised Ratchet to be on her very best behavior, she would have broken something already, or perhaps several somethings; in any case, she certainly wouldn't have been lying here on this cold, hard, scanner bed. As it was, she took small comfort in Ratchet's own posture of boredom, slumped up against a cylinder labeled Cyrogenics.

"Uhuh. Uh….Huh. Hm? Hmph. Uhuh. Uh- BY THE ALL SPARK!" Sari and Ratchet jumped up in unison as the Mutations Expert managed to simultaneously shout, drop his data pad, leap into the air, and knock over half a dozen piles of junk in one motion.

"What, what?" complained Ratchet as he scooped up the fallen pad. "Is there something wrong?"

"Yeah, what the slag?" called Sar as she clambered to her knees.

"YOU!" Epidata thrust an authoritive finger in Sari's direction. "Stay on the table! And you!" An accusatory digit brandished itself in Ratchets face, and Epidata opened his mouth to keep shouting, before a thought occurred to him. "What sort of Diagnostic Equipment did you have on that organic world; Dirt, or whatever it's called."

"It's called Earth, and the equipment i had consisted of whatever i could salvage from Omega Supreme, and some adapted technology so primitive they're still using electricity to power it."

"Oh. Well then, i suppose i can't really blame you for missing this."

"Missing what?" Ratchet peered down at the data pad, mouth twisting into a frown.

"This." Epidata's manipulator appendage stabbed at a very specific line of data, and Sari watched as the normally imperturbable Doc Bot let his jaw drop.

"This can't be right," muttered Ratchet incredulously.

"What, so you're accusing me of not knowing my job?"

"No, never, but…this is impossible."

"What's impossible? What are you looking at?" demanded Sari as she stalked towards the table edge.

"Stay on the table!" ordered both Bots in unison without looking up.

"Either you tell me what it is that's got you so worked up, or i come over there to look myself!"

"It's just…this is impossible," stammered Ratchet.

"Well, obviously not," retorted Epidata as he clomped over to a nearby computer, and brought up a set of statistics on the gigantic screen. "Okay, this is you. Sort of."

Sari blinked at the scree full of gibberish. "Uh, Epi? I'm nine, even if i don't look it. You might need to explain a bit more than that."

"Oh? Ratchet informed me that you have…what did he call it? 'An unnatural ability to bypass years of schooling an experience to orchestrate miracles despite being a titchy little protoform child."

"Yeah, when i'm trying to solve their problems," replied Sari, ignoring the insult, save for a raised eyebrow. "I can learn what's wrong, because the machines know what's wrong, and what needs to happen, and they tell me. That doesn't mean i suddenly understand quantum physics, or stuff like that."

"Then let me put this into perspective for you," began Epidata. "If i had found this data anywhere else, or if someone other than Ratchet had brought you, or if i had not seen you sitting on the scan table this entire time, i would automatically have assumed that everything on this screen is complete and utter nonsense."

"But i'm right here…?"

"You don't understand, i know you're there. You're existence is not what's in question, its what my science has to say about you; if this information had not been brought to my attention by sources that i trusted utterly, i would immediately have assumed that they were wrong, or lying, because the data i've accumulated here is completely impossible according to the commonly accepted laws of Cybertronian biology and technology. As it is, i know this is real, because i trust Ratchet, and i trust my equipment, and the subject is standing right in front of my optics; though i'll probably scan my optics later, to make sure i can trust them too."

"I don't understand. I'm…i'm not that weird. Am i?"

"Weird? My dear you're probably unique in the history of all Techno-organics everywhere, assuming we can even call you that."

"What?!"

"Oh, you're not technically a techno-organic creature."

"What? But-but…Ratchet said! And Dad! And i look human, and i'm part robot…"

"Or rather," corrected Epidata as he rushed to reassure his guest, "it'd be more accurate to say that if you're a techno-organic, then all the other so called Techno-Organics are actually rather poorly made fakes."

"All the other…I thought Blackarachnia was…"

"The only one?" Epidata chuckled as he pulled up a registry of what were recognizably Autobots, despite the various claws, fangs, tails, and in one case, fur. "A common, if laughable, misconception. Cybertronians are, as a race and individuals, extremely mutable. We have to be; we switch forms regularly, we altar our appearance to match the nature of nearby machines, and we posses a diversity in body types and capabilities that outpaces most ecosystems. We're practically built for the purpose of encouraging mutation and divergence, and if mutations towards a more organic nature are less common, it is mostly because of our aversion towards inhabiting the same planet as organic creatures. So no, it is not a very rare condition. You, however, are something else entirely. You see, most Techno-Organ mixtures just fuse the two together to create a creature that's half of one, and then half of the other. You, however, have actually hybridized your two natures into one, resulting in…"

"O-Kay! That's great. Now repeat that in English!"

Epidata slumped mid word, and shot Sari a look of exasperation. "Okay, simplifying that to Monkey Speak…"

"Hey!"

"Hush you." Epidata fiddled with his hand held console, and a new set of pictures popped on the screen. "In the simplest terms i've got, this is a representation of a normal Cybertronian, Autobot or Decepticon," he said as he pointed at picture of something that looked a length of rope, made up of hundreds of red cords wrapped up around each other. "And this is your typical Cybertronian-Organic Mix." A second picture came up; another length of rope, except that this time each of the cords was striped with segments of blue across the red. "And this is you, a true Techno-Organic." Another rope, this time made of pure purple cord.

"So what does it mean?"

Epidata's jaw dropped. "Whuh! I jus-i-by the All Spark, i can't simplify it any more than that!"

"Hey! I understand it, i just don't know what it means! It's like…the striped one is where you mix screws made of copper and steel, and my string is like if you just melted them together into one type of metal, and recast them. I get that! I just don't know what the difference means in regards to me!"

"And before you start commenting," interjected Ratchet with a warning glare, "Epi, I'd like to say that i could use a little refresher on the subject myself."

"…Really, Ratchet?"

"Yes, really! I was trained to work on BOTS, not Techno-Organic something or others. Not everyone is a science geek."

Epidata grumbled to himself for a bit, then said, "So, Sari? What do you know about Autobots?"

"That they're robots?"

"Essentially inaccurate," snorted the Science bot, "but close enough for our purposes. Now, what do you remember about Blackarachnia? What did she look like?"

Sari shared a puzzled look with Ratchet, wondering where the Science Bot was going with this. "She was purple? She turned into a spider?"

"No, no. What did she make you think of when you saw her? What did she resemble?"

"She looked…mechanical?"

"Exactly! She was still a bot, but she had some extra organic goo mixed in with her gears! You on the other hand…" he brought up yet another image, this time of a cluster of cells….except that they weren't, really. Not cells she recognized, anyway. They were shaped wrong, and they were missing bits like the…what was it called…that important bit in the middle where it kept DNA; they were also a metallic grey, with lines of blue running through the edges. "This is a picture of the tissue I scanned. As you can see, your body's structure is still very much in the style of an organic. But your….What do you call these things?"

"They're called cells," Sari explained, brow furrowed, "and they look like they're made of metal."

"Because they are…sort of. Your body's built like an Organic, but it's made of Cybertronian materials. So you're both Organic and mechanical at the same time, unlike those other Hybrids, who are only half of each. Heck, with the right technology we could split you in two, and you'd make two perfectly normal organisms who just happen to be different species."

"That's…kinda gross to think about. But it's cool to think i'm so awesome!" She struck a heroic pose with arms stretched out as she called out, "All Cybertron! All Human! And all ready to kick Tailplate!."

"Yes that's…" Epidata paused as he realized what Sari had just said. "Um, about that?" he muttered slowly. "What you said about being Cybertronian? Wellll, it turns out i might have mislead you a bit," admitted Epidata sheepishly. "Oh, make no mistake, you are definitely Techno-Organic. But you are not Cybertronian."

"What?" shouted Sari. "But…the protoform! That had to be Cybertronian"

"I'm with Sari here," rasped Ratchet "I'll admit your readings are a bit strange, but there's no need to leap to such a ridiculous conclusion. Besides, i scanned her myself, and poor equipment or not, i know Cybertron tech when i see it!"

"Sari, a Cybertronian Protoform could never have managed what you did. The best it could do, would be something like what Blackarachnia has achieved, and even that would be chancy at best. And Ratchet, the reason your results looked Cybertronian was because you were looking at them the wrong way. You see, it doesn't look Cybertronian, Cybertronian tech looks like it."

"You don't mean…"

"Exactly."

"HELLO?" shouted Sari, annoyed at being ignored. "Non bot here! Please translate!"

"It's not widely known," explained Ratchet, his habitual contrariness all but absent from his voice, "but a lot of our most impressive tech wasn't actually created by the Cybertronians. We found it, used it, and adapted it for our own use, but the original design came from someone else. Someone who existed before we did, and left behind things like the Space Bridges, or the Protoform Forge…or the Allspark."

"Or you, Sari," concurred Epidata. "Or your key, for that matter. Whoever, or whatever, it was that made your protoform, and sent it to Earth, it was the same something that made our most valuable treasures."

"Wow," said Sari dryly. "Way to make a girl feel special."