Author's Note: Hey, guys! Welcome to the first of what will eventually become a part of my all new TransHuman stories! :D This is the first in the series, Raw Power. Enjoy! Please leave me a review to let me know how I did! Reviews are much appreciated!

For those of you that read my other human Transformers stories, I'm still going to follow that example to write this story, though there won't be hyperactive five year olds, there will be a bit of crude humor and odd situations in later chapters. This is my first serious Transformers story and the characters may be a little OOC when they appear, so if you could give me advice on how to keep them in character I would appreciate that. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers. That right belongs to Hasbro. The only things I own here are my OCs and the plot to this story.

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Prologue

"Where do you think you're going?"

I ran. Not knowing where I am or where I'm going, simply running blindly down a back alleyway and turned yet another corner before stopping altogether. Pressing my back to the wall, I clutched at my chest in pain, gasping for breath and dared a glance around the corner and, seeing as I outran my pursuer for the moment, I slid down the wall to sit on the ground. My legs felt weak and sore, as did the rest of me, muscles constricting painfully beneath my skin, making me grimace in pain. Gashes and other cuts adorned my body, the worst of them being twin gashes on my left cheek just beneath my eye and a rather nasty cut on my waist occupied by a piece of debris from a destroyed car, several other small bits of debris and metal stuck out of me in other places and a bullet in my leg.

"You're in pain. Stop running and come out to face me. There's no way you're going to be able to keep this up much longer," the voice called out, the irritation in his voice clearly evident of his tiring from me resisting and not giving in.

He's right.

I'm not sure how much longer I can last before I collapse from blood loss and a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach made me suspect that he was close to finding me and taking me regardless if I put up a fight. Not that it would make a difference given my severely weakened and exhausted state. Biting back a groan of pain, I forced myself to stand and looked around the corner, pressing a hand to my mouth to suppress any sound when a figure came into view.

The figure was clearly a man, but I couldn't be sure if he's the one that kept speaking to me. The only thing I could clearly see was the outline of a tall and burly build and some sort of armor protruding off his body in sharp angles and a helmet that seemed to be swept back to the crown of his head in a sort of conical shape and sharp facial features though I couldn't make them out. A broadsword was drawn and held tightly in his hand, ready to attack should anything prompt such a reaction while his other carried some kind of gun. I watched the man with bated breath, waiting— hoping— for him to continue on his way, but no such luck. As if he could hear my mental pleas for him to leave, he turned to look in my direction, hate filled eyes that seemed to glow red.

"I found you."

XxXxX

I screamed, jolting in place, my body drenched in cold sweat and tangled in sheets. It had taken me a moment to realize I'm in my bedroom perfectly safe and unharmed. Pulling myself free of the blankets that trapped me, I crawled out of bed and sat on the edge, sparing a glance at the clock that told me it's a little past midnight.

"Riley! What's wrong?!" my mother's concerned voice cried out, the door to my room flying open to allow my parents and brother inside.

For a few moments, I didn't answer, watching them from the darkened corner of my room from where the light flooded in through the doorway before responding. "It's nothing. I'm fine," I mumbled, watching as my family visibly relaxed at the fact I'm not hurt. But that didn't stop them from coming to my bedside and turning on the lamp on the nightstand.

"You woke me up earlier. Were you talking to someone in your dream?" my brother, Isaiah, asked.

"Probably. I don't really remember what I was dreaming about," I replied honestly. Mental images of the red eyed man flashed through my mind, making me wince at the increasingly realistic feeling to the dream. "All I remember from it was that I was injured and running for my life from someone in the middle of a warzone."

"You wanna talk about it? Talking always helps you," Mom asked quietly, bringing me into a hug.

"Riley," Dad murmured, breaking the silence that fell over the room. "Were you dreaming about Mission City?" I didn't know how to answer the question, but it seemed like the most logical explanation. I nodded.

"It's been years. Are you still sure you don't want to talk about it?" Mom asked.

I nodded again, letting out a loud yawn before my family finally wrote it off as a bad dream and left me be, Isaiah lingering at my side a while longer even as I feigned sleep to try and deter him.

It didn't.

"Riley, I know you're not really asleep," he said quietly, taking a seat on the bed beside me. "The parents are gone. You still sure you don't wanna talk?"

"Can't you see I'm trying to pretend to sleep so you'll go away and leave me alone? I said I don't wanna talk about it!" I snapped tiredly, twisting around under the covers to look at him from over my shoulder.

"Sit up."

"Isa," I whined, using my childhood pet name for him, "I'm fine. Go back to bed."

The blonde wouldn't be swayed. "Was it the dream again?" he asked, green eyes scanning my face for any signs that he was right. His eyes searched my blue ones and his head tilted backwards, making a small 'aha' noise as though he found what he was looking for. "I can see the fear in your eyes, Riley. You may have Mom and Dad fooled that you're not having those dreams anymore, but that's a lie; you and I know damn well you're still having that dream. I know you better than anybody, so don't think you can hide anything from me," he said, a hard tone coming to his voice to prove his point.

I sat up, my patience wearing exceedingly thin. "So what if I'm still having those dreams?! Nobody will be able to take away those dreams, Isa, and you know it! Do I still have those dreams? Hell, yes! Every night! I just stopped talking about it," I nearly shouted, drawing our parents back into the room to break up the impending fight.

"That's enough, you two," Dad said sternly, "Isaiah, leave your sister alone so she can get some sleep." With that, Dad took hold of my brother's shoulder and guided him out of the room, not before bidding me goodnight again and turning the light out, the door closing softly behind them.

Lying there looking up at the ceiling, I groaned softly at the dull thrumming pain against the inside of my chest and rubbed my hand over the spot just beneath my collarbone. Kicking the covers off, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and began my slow, unsteady trek for the door and started upstairs to the kitchen to find something for the pain.

Rifling through the cabinets, I froze, sensing unseen eyes on me and squeezed my eyes shut upon hearing footsteps walk up behind me.

"I found you," a deep voice whispered menacingly.

I paled, recognizing the voice, but I dared not turn around to see the man standing not two inches away from me, feeling hate filled eyes burning into the back of my head.

XxXxX

"Get away from me!"

Jolting out of his musings, Isaiah clambered out of bed and ran for the kitchen but paused before entering, listening. The shout that drew him had dropped to a whisper, but Isaiah couldn't help but wonder at what he heard. The voice he heard was clearly Riley's, talking to someone. When she would pause in her whispering, Isaiah's ears were met with silence before a gasping sob jerked him into action and around the corner to face Riley.

XxXxX

"Riley? Are you alright?"

I jumped and let out a squeak of fear, flinching away from the voice but relaxed when I realized it was Isaiah. "I'm scared, Isa. So, so scared," I whimpered, leaning into my brother's chest as he pulled me into a hug.

Not two seconds later, Mom and Dad rounded the corner, pausing a moment to take in the scene before them before Mom finally spoke. "We thought we heard something. Is everything alright?" she asked quietly, kneeling down to take me into a hug.

"Oh, my God, I thought he was here," I whispered, fighting back tears as I realized the voice I thought I heard wasn't real.

"Who are you talking about, Riley?" Dad inquired, also joining the group hug on the floor.

"The man from my dreams! He was in the house!" I murmured, terror finding its way into my voice and my face, showing just how shaken I am over the dreams I've suffered with since 2007. "Every time I dream, he's there to tell me he's coming to get me!" I sobbed, giving in to the tears that threatened to spill, exposing the sheer terror I felt in experiencing the dream every night and all other emotions I've hidden from the world, unwilling to share them, now exposed to my family, scared and helpless against something I can't stop.

"It's okay now," Isaiah whispered reassuringly, breaking the silence that seemed to stretch on forever. "It was just a dream. There's no man after you."

"How do you know, Isaiah?" I asked him. "The dream felt so real! It's scary!"

The next few hours were spent calming me down enough to sleep again, but it would've been for nothing. Instead, I pretended to have calmed down, but the throbbing in my chest, though dull earlier before my seeming encounter with the man from my dreams, had increased to an excruciating level. Opening the cabinets again, I took out a bottle and read over the instructions a moment before taking out a couple pills and walked down the hallway to the bathroom and shut the door, locking it behind me.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn't help noticing the fear I saw in my own eyes, dark bruise like rings under my eyes showing just how long I've gone without sleep for and just how little I've had when lucky to have a dreamless sleep. Bright blue eyes that normally hold a happy shine to them is gone, replaced by a haunted look behind them, partially covered by long bangs the color of snow. Most of my hair had been pulled back into a loose bun at the nape of my neck with a few stray strands tumbling down my shoulders. My gaze drifted over my reflection from my hair to my eyes before my eyes wandered to my chest. Tugging at the collar of my tank top down to reveal more of my skin, more specifically, the deformed piece of flesh in the center of my ribcage, I moaned to myself in pain, gently rubbing the deformed section of flesh in an attempt to soothe it.

From time to time, I would feel a small throb from the point of the old injury that's long since healed. I also think the doctors missed pulling something out from it at times when it seems something is stabbing me from the inside. I sighed and popped the pills in my mouth, my eyes never leaving the scar in the center on my chest.

"What's wrong with me?" I moaned out, gripping at my chest when another painful throb hit me again.

XxXxX

"The heck is that?"

"Huh? What is it?"

"There's that burst of energy again."

That got the second man's attention as he got out of his seat to lean over his companion's shoulder to see what's on the monitor. "Are you tracking it, James?"

James nodded, typing furiously on the keyboard, the images on the monitor shifting and zooming in and out of an image of the United States before settling on the southern states and continued until it locked on the coordinates of a small town settled near the Alabama-Florida borderline. "I got it. A small town called Ocean Heights," he said, a triumphant look finding its way onto his face. "I've never seen that burst remain for so long before, Nolan. Normally, it appears for a few seconds and disappears before I can locate it."

"Today's your lucky break, then," Nolan replied, scribbling the coordinates down on a piece of paper before turning to leave.

Craning his neck to watch his partner go, James called him back, asking, "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to give this to General Morshower, naturally. Perhaps even our friends would like to take a look at this, too," he answered shortly, before continuing on his way out the door.

XxXxX

"Optimus, Lennox just got word from General Morshower. It seems the energy signal remained strong enough to get a location," Prowl stated, moving to the larger mech's side.

"Where is it?" Optimus inquired, craning his neck to see the police cruiser and more importantly, the data pad in his companion's hand.

"A small town called Ocean Heights. It's along the southern coast on the Alabama-Florida borderline. And according to intel, the burst of energy would appear from time to time and disappear before anybody can track it," Prowl answered curtly. "What are your orders, sir?"

"Send a team out to investigate. If the energy beacon remained long enough for us to find its location, it would also mean the Decepticons can find it as well. We must keep it out of Decepticon hands."


Author's Note: How did I do, guys? I think the prologue was getting a little lengthy and I have to have something to write about for chapter one. I must say I find writing for Optimus is daunting 'cause I don't know if I have him in character or not. :P Constructive criticism is welcome!