*crawls out of CampNaNoWriMo* I have returned with a finished work! And now I can start posting this wondrous little thing.
Events went by faster in this than I'd been expecting them to, just so you know. Maria...well, she's not about to relax and let things happen anymore. So, let's see what happens when she goes home after the events of my previous story, World Collision!
Prologue – Return
The shockwave of energy that went off in the Nevada desert didn't go unnoticed.
But it was where the shockwave originated that made some people worry.
"Did you just say the 'Energon Badlands'?!" The man in the labcoat looked at his superior in shock. "We can't send people in there, you know that! That's neutral ground that even the Cybertronians label as off-limits!"
"I know, but that doesn't mean we can't investigate where the explosion came from," the other replied. He sighed tiredly and ran a hand through his graying hair. "So far, all that's being done is making sure that there wasn't anyone in the area when the explosion went off. The plan after that is to wait and see if anything else happens."
The younger of the two fidgeted worriedly. "And then?"
"And then we'll have to see if the Cybertronians decide to do anything about it…or tell us if they're experimenting with possible weapons on our planet's soil."
Space Break
The world was colored gunmetal gray, made of metal that seemed to have been something once, but was now slowly falling apart into piles of unidentifiable parts as the oxygen of the air ate away at the alien metal. It was quiet, but there was also something at work in the air here that drove away most who would come to this place.
A single figure stumbled over what used to be someone's head, tennis shoes scuffing against the faded metal before leaping off and landing on the desert sand below.
A face with a guarded expression looked around slowly, taking in the landscape and the decaying metals.
"This place…."
Tears threatened to leak out of bright, almost glowing blue eyes, but they were blinked away.
"What happened here?"
The figure – a teenage girl in appearance – brushed her brown hair out of her eyes and looked around again, slowly turning. With each step, she saw another metal face, with optics cold and dark, and knew that there was something horribly wrong with what she was seeing.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, pushing down the waterworks that attempted to flood her system and bring her to her knees. "I need to know what happened here. Then I can allow myself to grieve." She opened her eyes again, a grimness settling on her face as her eyes sparked. "Time to find the Autobots."