Pretender Chronicles

A War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron/Transformers Prime Fan Fiction

By daywalker03

Prologue, Part 1: Smoke on the Water

Mae Franklin frowned as the cell phone in her pocket began chirping at her insistently. She reluctantly took it out and looked at the number on the display. /* Wonderful; I thought I told him not to call unless it was truly important, */ she thought to herself as she answered the call. "Mae speaking; what is so important that you couldn't wait til we were done with our vacation, Agent Johnson?"

"Sorry to intrude on your travels, Mae, but there has been a strange blast in the general area that you will be traveling through and my superiors thought it would be prudent if you investigated it since you were so close," Agent Johnson said over the phone. Mae sighed softly and looked over at Butch, her traveling companion then asked pointedly, "What sort of strange are we talking about, Johnson?"

"Strange as in we had no idea there was anything even remotely explosive in the area where it happened, though there have been rumors of "mysterious metal titans" surfacing in the usual online locations that lead me to believe it is related to the Voidwalkers," Agent Johnson responded. His voice sounded tired, and Mae suspected that he'd been making calls all day to find out if his usual sources knew anything; that his "superiors" had insisted that she be notified about this did not bode well for the vacation that she and Butch were on.

/* There goes the vacation, Guardian? */ The soft voice in her head made her look over at Butch; he was suited up in his riding gear and hefting his helmet in his right hand, but the look in his eyes did not match the cheerless tone of his words. She knew that he suspected that their long isolation from their own kind was coming to an end, and that it would mean an end to their neutrality in an ancient matter. /* Sort of; something has caught the attention of the Others, and we've been "asked" to investigate, */ she said to him while speaking to Agent Johnson. "Tell your superiors that we will do it, but we may be out of touch for a time before we submit our report."

"Fair enough, Mae; I also understand that you have your reasons for doing this, you know. I can't officially sanction any activities beyond investigation of the blast, but do be careful and keep me informed of your actions, so I can keep those individuals that need to know properly informed."

"Of course, Agent Johnson," Mae said, winking at Butch. "You have a good day, Sir."

"I will; tell Butch I'll make it up to him somehow," Agent Johnson said as he hung up the phone.

/* Yeah, I'll bet you will, Johnson */ Mae thought to herself as she put the cell phone back in her pocket. "Butch, Agent Johnson seems to think he needs to apologize to you for this interruption in our plans," Mae said aloud, looking in the direction of the young man.

A soft chuckle escaped the lips of the young man then he said, "I don't think he's really forgotten what he's been told about us, so I suspect that was mostly for show at the other end. Now, what exactly have we been asked to investigate and why are the Others so interested in finding out?"

Mae smiled and said, "Straight to the point as always, sweetspark; not that I expect anything less from you, of course. Agent Johnson said that there has been a "strange blast" in the general area we will be traveling through; apparently it's got the Others spooked or he wouldn't have called us. Perhaps we should get a move on and see what we can find."

Butch grinned as he replied, "Agreed, and I think we should hurry; no telling what innocent bystander might get hurt if they get curious about the blast."

Mae and Butch walked out of the motel room they had rented the day before. Mae went to return the keys to the motel clerk and Butch went over to check on their transportation; a nearly matched pair of Can-Am Spyder F3 three wheeled motorcycles. These were not stock models either; both had been highly modified from stock to suit the riders needs, and performed much better than they had when they first came off of the assembly line. As Butch approached his Turquoise Blue model, he put on his helmet and dropped the face shield; the cycle responded to this by displaying its status on a heads up display inside the helmet and it queried him as to whether he would need a direct data feed, to which he responded in the negative. Mae's Teal Green model also greeted him and directed a question at him that he wasn't certain how to answer, so he indicated that it should ask Mae directly. It politely thanked him for his honesty and playfully revved its engine at him as Mae approached.

Mae put on her helmet and Teal asked, /* Interrogative: Destination changed? New coordinates needed? */ Mae frowned at the question, but replied, /* Not as yet; we will follow the previously planned course until we detect whatever caused the situation we have been informed of. */ Teal replied /* Understood. */ Mae got on Teal as Butch sat astride his cycle and they slowly pulled onto the highway heading roughly toward a little town called Jasper Nevada.

About fifty miles down the road, Mae began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach as she noticed a faint bluish smoke rising off to the left of the road. Butch saw it too and said /* That is odd; no apparent reason for a fire of any sort that I can see. I'll bet that's where the blast we're to investigate occurred. */ /* Concur with primary: not natural fire */ Turq chimed in over the common channel. /* Yeah, I can feel the tugging of something familiar in the area, but I've not got a feel for what it is yet, */ Mae responded as she threw the handlebars to the left and pulled off the road. Butch followed her, but stopped short. /* Guardian, there are tire tracks here, heading off toward where the smoke is; helmet scanner is chirping madly too. But I'm having trouble making sense of the readings I'm getting. */

Mae had kept going as Butch and Turq made their discoveries and reported them to her, but she stopped in shock at the sight she saw; a vaguely round pit approximately 200 feet across with bluish crystal fragments scattered around inside it. Much of the crystal was blackened by the explosion, but the small fragments glittered in a way that was quite unnatural compared to most crystals she was familiar with. She got off Teal and, with careful steps, approached the largest fragments that she saw. She knelt down and carefully broke off a small chunk of the crystal and took a close look at it with the sensor array in her helmet. /* Butch, get over here; I just found some raw Energon, */ she said quickly, standing up and scanning the area for any signs of trouble. /* And there was a fight; don't know who set the stuff off, but someone had to have gotten hurt in the process. */

Butch pulled up next to Teal and got off Turq; looking around he noticed the massive footprints that had been left, and how the ground had been disturbed by impacts. "Multiple individuals involved; seems to have been rather one-sided if the count of footprints is accurate," he said finally as Mae joined him.

"Whoever it was, he or she did some damage to the attackers; look at the stains on the ground there and there," she said, pointing out a couple of places where the dirt was darkened more than it should have been from the exposure to the sun. "Yes, but it didn't help, as nobody is here now. The bad guys must not care about the environmental impact of the leakage, or they would have done something to clean it up," he replied. "This definitely is what we were sent to investigate, and I can see why the Others were spooked; they couldn't see the cause because there was no human around to perceive the actions as they happened."

Teal carefully rolled up to where Mae and Butch were standing and said, /* Statement: It appears that the attackers left before others arrived; I've detected several individual residual energy signatures that seem vaguely familiar, but yet they are not the same as originally recorded. Query: If they are here, why have they not sought us out? */ Mae looked at Teal and a small smile crossed her face as she answered, "They have not sought us out because their sensors cannot detect us for what we really are any more than the Others can see them without a human's senses. But, since we can sense them, changed as they may be from what we remember, we can now track where they are based and offer our assistance."

Butch looked at Mae as Turq rolled over to join them and asked, "But what about the Others? Would they accept that we are still on their side if we get involved in the War?" "Agent Johnson seems to expect us to, so I think at least some of that group of allies will," Mae said, recalling the conversation she had had with him earlier in the day. "And I know Ma and Pa would expect it; the rest of the family I'm not sure about. Our one brother can be fickle about things like that, don't forget."

"Yeah, Sal does act a little funny around us sometimes, but I don't let it bother me. Let's get going; I feel something big is going to happen," Butch said as he got back on Turq and turned back toward the road they had been on. Mae followed suit and they pulled out onto the road, heading toward Jasper. Butch led the way for a bit, then pulled back alongside her. /* Guardian, I sense a massive presence in the area, but even though it seems quite powerful, it also doesn't seem aware of its own potential. How is that possible? */ he asked. /* I sense him too; the reason he isn't aware of his own potential is that he displeased "Lord Megatron" in some way and was trapped in his current form as punishment. We don't currently have to worry about him, */ Mae replied, realizing that she knew the presence that Butch had spoken of from her life on Cybertron. /* Don't ask; I'll explain when the time is right, youngling, as I always have. */

Author's Note: Teal and Turq, as Mae and Butch, are Pretenders, which are a form of Cybertronian that has the ability to assume the form of an organic life form; where they differ from previously known examples, such as the Cyberton and Destron Pretenders in Super God Masterforce (the Japanese cartoon) or the Autobot and Decepticon Pretenders of the Marvel G1 Transformers comic, is that the humanoid form is in some ways akin to the Maximal and Predacon races of the Beast Wars 2 era. This means that they can consume and process human foods to produce the amounts of Energon needed to power their Cybertronian systems, though at the size of humans, they don't require nearly the same amount of it as is normal. This has also enable them to survive on Earth for millennia without having access to a full sized form, as Teal shed much of hers due to massive system damage on impact and Turq never had one until recent times (why this is the case for him will be explained in later chapters). Because they are both Cybertronians, they can communicate via radio in the Iacon Dialect of Cybertronian favored by the Autobots, as well as understanding the Kaonese Dialect favored by the Decepticons. They also speak several Earth native languages, such as various Native American tribal languages and US English.

As for the mention of "Voidwalkers and Others" and the presence of FBI Special Agent Johnson, this particular fiction is set in the same corner of the Transformers Prime multi-verse that fellow fan fiction author Foxbear writes in and I am using the characters and concepts with her permission.

The chapter title is inspired by the song of the same name by Deep Purple, and sort of fits, though the smoke from the Energon deposit really can't be said to be over water, strictly speaking.