Chapter Text
Monday, August 27th, 2012
Most girls meet cute guys on summer vacation. Most girls spend their two months in Florida lounging on the beach by day and hitting the clubs by night. Diana Phoebe Mill wasn’t most girls. Currently, she was sitting on a blanket in her grandparents’ backyard, notebook in hand, trying to write by the light of the moon and the lanterns hanging by the porch. Wisps of frizzy, dark red hair fell in her brown eyes and tickled her freckled cheeks, only to be pushed back yet again with another frustrated sigh.
Diana had promised herself on her twelfth birthday that by the time she turned seventeen, five years later, she’d have completed her first fantasy novel. At fifteen and a half, she wasn’t even halfway done. Times when she could actually sit down and work on it were rare, and half the times she got the chance, she got stuck. She could stare at the page all day and nothing would come to her.
She huffed, pushing her hair back again and readjusting her glasses. Setting her pen and stuffed binder aside, Diana flopped down on the blanket, staring up at the night sky. Here eyes easily found Orion the Hunter, who had seven different tales describing his death, Perseus and Andromeda, the one hero with a happy ending and his bride, and Ursa Major, the maiden turned into a bear because she’d broken her vow of chastity, with her son Ursa Minor. Diana loved looking at the constellations, for she knew every story behind each one of them.
One star winked at her, and she frowned, not recognizing it. How odd.
It became odder still as the pinprick of light in the sky grew bigger and brighter, and Diana realized it wasn’t a star at all, but sort of meteorite, crashing down to Earth.
Cool!
As it grew nearer, she sat up and gasped, seeing that it was going to land a lot closer than she’d thought. The fiery ball streaked across the sky with an eerily quiet whooshing. Diana stood up just as it crashed loudly less than a mile away from her grandparents’ house, touching down somewhere in the nearby forest. In the house, she could hear Grandpa complaining about his neighbours and their habit of playing with fireworks at ungodly hours.
Diana hesitated only a little bit before slipping on her flip-flops across the damp grass, then up the dirt road she knew led to the forest. Dad would probably be ticked, but how often did she get to see a meteor crash site?
“What’ve we got?” Lt. Col. William Lennox’s voice echoed through the large command centre as he strode across the walkway to where one of his more… unusual colleagues stood in front of a large screen.
“One large incoming object, set to crash on the East Coast. Best estimate of the landing site: Florida.”
“Another one?” Lennox glanced over his shoulder to see a blonde woman in a smart business suit marching over. Director Charlotte Mearing wore a disapproving frown, with maybe a hint of nervousness as she stopped a little further away from his colleague. “We get too many more of your kind, and the Pentagon will have to consider moving your base again, which as you know will completely demolish our budget.”
Lennox resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Yes, because the budget was so much more important than saving the planet from giant, evil alien robots! Speaking of giant robots, Ratchet was openly glaring at Mearing, probably thinking along the same lines. The woman was an improvement compared to that pain-in-the-aft Galloway, but she was a stickler for rules and procedures. She didn’t quite grasp that sideways thinking and occasional rule-breaking were sometimes not only necessary, but vital to the war effort.
Lennox cleared his throat, interrupting the staring contest between the bureaucrat and the two-story-tall mech that could easily squish her under his foot (if it wasn’t forbidden, and if he wasn’t a medic and healer by nature). “Estimated time of touch down?” he prompted.
Ratchet turned back to the monitor. “Ten minutes,” he stated, “And it will take us hours to reach the landing site. If your primitive satellites had detected this earlier, we could have-”
“Okay, okay.” They didn’t have time for another one of Ratchet’s rants on the inferiority of Earth technology. “Let’s just gather a team and move out. Autobot or Decepticon?”
The medic narrowed his optics at the screen. “Undetermined.” That was strange. They could usually tell which faction the incoming Cybertronian belonged to.
“Then we’ll assume it’s hostile until we have a reason to think otherwise. Ironhide and Sideswipe are a must.” Optimus would always be going to greet the new arrivals, and he was without a doubt the best fighter of them all. But if the new guy turned out to be a Decepticon, Lennox wanted the two next best warriors to back him up.
It was a long-standing contest of which one would win if they ever went up against each other in a real fight. Ironhide had much more experience, bigger cannons, and far better aim, but when it came to close-quarters combat, Lennox had yet to see anyone outmanoeuvre the lighter, faster Sideswipe.
“No problem.” Speak of the devil. The silver frontliner was leaning against the sixty-foot-tall doorway. “I haven’t sliced up a ‘Con in months. I’ll let ol’ Iron-Aft know.”
He turned to walk out, but Ratchet called back to him. “Hold it!” the medic barked, “Come over here for a moment.” Sideswipe groaned and slowly turned back around Lennox noticed that he was moving somewhat stiffly as he walked. Ratchet quickly scanned him and folded his arms across his chassis. “You’re not going anywhere but the Medbay. I’ll have Jolt meet you there and give you the usual.” Sides looked like he was about to argue. “Don’t even think about it! You know how serious this is!” The doctor’s voice took on a much softer tone. “He wouldn’t want you getting yourself offlined by going into a battle in your condition.”
All the fight seemed to go out of Sideswipe, his optics filled with a pain Lennox had never seen before in the usually cheerful mech. He slumped over and winced, hand clutching his chestplate over his Spark Chamber as if it were hurting him. “I know,” he whispered, and walked out the door.
Lennox raised an eyebrow, and even Mearing looked a little curious. Not exactly worried, mind you, but curious. “What condition?” he questioned.
Ratchet sighed. “Cybertronian twins have what you humans would compare to a telepathic link. They can feel what the other is feeling and speak to each other over limited distances. But if one twin dies, the other suffers physically as well as mentally and emotionally from the loss. This includes periodic pains of their Spark, which will eventually cause him or her to deactivate as well.”
Lennox shuddered. “So it’s like some kind of terminal illness,” he realized, “Sides is dying?” As a soldier, he was used to the idea of death. He’d taken lives and he’d had men die in his arms on the battlefield. But the idea of such a skilled warrior succumbing to some internal condition instead of combat made his blood run cold.
Ratchet gave him a serious look. “Yes. Fortunately, the times when the pains are felt are rare. I like to believe that it is his own willpower that has kept him online. There has been very little study on the matter since twins themselves are rare, but from what I do know, Sideswipe has held on longer than any other documented case. Most give up because they cannot bear to live without their other half, but he insists that he has unfinished business. He will not surrender until the Decepticon who deactivated Sunstreaker 50 years ago is no more.”
Diana now had to wonder what on God’s green Earth had possessed her to hike out to the woods, chasing a meteor. Her legs were caked in mud up to her knees, she’d spent five minutes searching for her flip-flop after it’d gotten lost in the muck, and her flashlight had died, causing her to stumble around in the dark. Twice she’d gotten tangled up in bushes, and very nearly ran face-first into a tree.
She was about to turn around and head back when a strange noise caught her attention. It sounded like pieces of metal creaking and scraping together – a lot of metal. Her curiosity level back up, Diana scrambled over the nearby incline, only to stop in her tracks before dropping into a crouch.
She’d expected the huge object in the middle of a smouldering crater. She hadn’t, however, expected it to be moving. Sitting at the end of a large trench caused by the impact was what looked at first like a large pile of metal. Then it shifted around, and Diana realized she was staring at a giant robot, easily two stories tall. It was covered with dented armour painted a dull yellow, and had glowing blue eyes.
“Wow,” she whispered. The robot sharply turned its head in her direction. “Crap!” Diana hadn’t even considered that it might hear her! She stood up and tried to run, but her foot slipped in the mud. “Ah!” She screeched as she rolled and slid down the muddy hill, before crashing into something solid with a loud CLANG! noise.
‘Ow…’ Diana thought, trying to sit up. ‘Did someone get the number of that freight train?’ She felt something pick her up and set her on her feet. “Thanks,” she muttered, rubbing her head. ‘Wait, who just helped me?’ Slowly, Diana looked up at the giant robot towering over her while she stood by its large wheel of a foot.
“AHHH!” She screamed again, stumbling back and falling on her butt back in the mud. The robot bent down, seemingly glaring at her. Diana closed her eyes, deciding she didn’t want to see its hand or foot coming down and squishing her like a bug. When nothing happened, she cautiously opened one eye. The robot was still staring at her. What was wierd was that she could actually see human-like emotions on its face. It looked a cross between frustrated, confused, and rather annoyed.
Still shaking, Diana licked her lips nervously and raised a quivering hand. “Uh… hello?” Still nothing. “Can you understand me?”
It blinked at her, then opened its mouth and spoke in a decidedly male voice. “Yes, I understand your words.”
“It talks,” she murmured to herself.
The robot looked insulted by this. “Of course I can talk! It should come as more od a surprise that a squishy, primitive organic like you can speak.”
Diana was a little offended by this, but she didn’t want to anger the giant robot by talking back. “Oh. Okay… so… w-what’s your name?”
It glared at her. “Why should I tell you?” It backed up a little, crossing its arms in a very human-like fashion.
“W-well, I can’t keep calling you ‘the robot’ all the time.”
The robot paused for a second, seemingly considering this.
“My designation is Sunstreaker.”