sakon76

Major spoilers. If you haven't watched all of season 2 of Transformers: Animated, you may not want to read this yet.

And, yes, the title is a direct steal/mockery of all those Mary Sues who keep running around ff.net....

Megatron's Daughter
by K. Stonham
prereleased 16th July 2008

Once, when she was littler, she'd asked her dad why her hair was red when his was black (and going gray in places, but the noise he made when she said that wasn't funny anymore), not really expecting much of an answer. Tutorbot hadn't been able to give her one, after all.

"Ah, my child, that is something you and I will talk about when you are older," Isaac had answered. Funny that she was remembering it now. She'd always loved her dad's voice, its rough imperfect cadence (completely different from Tutorbot's mechanical precision), the way it always sounded like he loved her even when he was yelling at her for spilling soda on open circuits.

"Has this got to do with my mom?" she'd guessed, stabbing in the dark. Other people had moms, after all: the kids who came to her birthday party every year had moms.

Her dad had stilled at that for a moment, then said "In a way, my child. I will tell you when you're older. Come now, it is time for warm milk and then bed." And he'd ushered her off, asking about what she'd learned that day, distracting her from the question.

Now, of course, she knew better. Knew that while other kids had moms, she didn't. Of course, the Autobots didn't have moms either, and that made it a little better, but it still hurt worse than ripping a band-aid off. She'd built up this fantasy in her head of a tall, slender woman with dark eyes and tan skin, red hair like hers. She'd figured her mom would have loved her, but that she'd probably died while Sari was still a baby, and that someday her dad would tell her about her mom.

Instead, she'd been told a longer, uglier story. One about a young man who discovered a disembodied robotic alien head and studied it for years. About how he'd used what he'd learned to build everyday useful robots. How he'd built an empire. And eventually how, having gotten older, he'd wanted someone to love but also someone to test his craft. And so he'd used everything he'd learned and dreamed and built himself a little robot girl. A daughter.

Her.

So while Tutorbot (reclaimed from the slimy mitts of Henry Masterson) droned on in the background about Galatea and Pinocchio, Sari examined her reflection in the mirror. She looked like her dad; there were certain resemblances of shape of face, of of nose, of eye color. But her hair--

She tugged both ponytails outward at the same time, making them look like bicycle handlebars.

Red.

The image of Decepticon eyes--optics--flashed through her mind and she dropped the ponytails like they were on fire.

"Sari?" Bumblebee's voice, and she turned to look at him. Even after her dad had reclaimed the Sumdac empire, she'd refused to go back to the Tower. Who knew that that creep Headmaster had gotten up to in her old room, after all. She'd stayed with the Autobots. Her dad understood, or at least said he did. He visited a lot, and so did she. "What's wrong?" Her best friend (or at least one of them, they were all kind of her best friends) had his head tilted to one side in that is-this-a-normal-thing-or-a-human-thing-I'm-not-gonna-get questioning manner.

"Um." She glanced back at the mirror, at her red hair, and didn't know what to say. So of course it all came out in a rush. "Do you think I'm really a Decepticon because I mean my dad built me from Megatron's technology and I have red hair and they have red eyes and the Decepticons are evil and I don't want to be one of them!"

"Whoa!" Bumblebee held his hands up in a "stop" gesture. "Where'd that come from all of a sudden?"

Sari glared. She loved him dearly but sometimes Bumblebee was as thick as a brick and just assumed that everything was okay until told otherwise. Witness how he'd thought she was handling things after her dad had disappeared. "Maybe I should go talk to Prowl," she muttered, and stalked off to find the ninja-bot.

"Hey, hold on there!" Bumblebee caught her delicately by one arm. They were all like that around her, treating her--okay, all humans--like they were made out of glass or something. One giant metal finger brushed along a ponytail, making it bob. "This is because your hair is red?" He peered at her and she nodded, feeling embarrassed and stupid. It was only hair, after all. She could just cut it off or something. "I always thought your hair was kind of pretty," he offered. "It suits you."

She glared at him for avoiding the question--just like her dad--and he sighed and sat down cross-legged. "Look, Sari, I don't know if you've noticed, but Decepticons don't have a monopoly on the color red," he said, jerking a thumb at his Autobot symbol. She stared at it for a moment, noticing for what felt like the first time that it was red too. "I mean, Ratchet's red. And so's Optimus. So I really don't think your hair being red means you're a Decepticon. And Megatron was a regular Cybertronian before he was a Decepticon, so I don't think you need to worry about that either."

Sari stared at him for just a few seconds longer, then flung herself into a hug around as much of his body as she could reach (which admittedly wasn't very much), smiling widely. "You're the best friend ever!" she declared.

"Yeah, I know," he agreed with no trace of false modesty. "So, we were going to watch some movies. Wanna try an oilshake?"

"You bet!"