I patted my face dry after a shower at the end of my gymnastics class and slung the towel over my shoulder. My shoulder-length brown hair, still damp, plastered against my face as I got dressed. Truly, I hated my gymnastics class, I mean come on. Skinny, desperate girls stuffed into leotards and doing back flips for an audience? I don't think so. My mom signed me up for the class because she thought my agility could be put to good use.
Slipping my uniform into my old duffel, I shouldered my bag and left the gym searching for Mom's car in the parking lot.
"Hayli! Over here!" my mother's voice shouted and I spotted her car. I ducked into the passenger seat and buckled up; downtown Detroit at rush hour was not a pretty place to be. We swung by the park to pick up my sister Tess and were back home relatively quickly.
"Hey mom, I'm going for a walk." I called as I threw my bag through the door and started tugging on a hoodie.
"Uh uh." She said, pointing to my bag on the floor. "Take care of that first, then ask me again." I rolled my head back in a 'why are you doing this now' gesture and started to say something sarcastic. "Without attitude, or you can forget about going out." I grumbled, took my bag upstairs to my room, and came back down.
"Bye mom!" I called over my shoulder. She told me to be back by dark and I waved without looking behind me. I half noticed a camera bot fly over me in the direction of the forest, but I just ignored it. I jogged down the sidewalk, heading to the edge of town, and slid down the slope by the highway to get into the woods.
Ah, the woods, my favorite place to be. It was here I could relax and be myself with no one to make fun of me. It was also a training ground to practice my skills. I leapt onto a large rock, then swung up into a tree. Climbing up a ways, I jumped from my branch onto an adjacent tree. I was stopped when I nearly plummeted twenty feet because of an earth-shattering boom coming from not too far away from me.
A bit more cautiously, I picked my way through the trees and dropped to the ground at the edge of a clearing. What I saw shocked me.
There was an Autobot lying unconscious in a crater and a much larger, triumphant looking robot was standing at the far side of the clearing.
I suddenly had a flashback of a newscast a few weeks ago. The unconscious Autobot's name was Optimus Prime, and at the moment he didn't look too good.
On impulse, I left the cover of the trees and dashed to Optimus' side. The enemy bot spotted me and sneered, striding across the clearing.
"Hey! Wake the hell up! You gotta move or we're both gonna get fried!" I shouted at him, trying my best to shake his shoulder, though it was kind of hard when he was a giant robot and I was a 5'3", 110 lb girl.
I looked up to see that the evil bot was approaching, and I identified him as a Decepticon. He drew closer and had now raised his weapon. I shook Optimus again.
"Get up already!" I yelled. His optics remained dark, and I looked up in time to see the Decepticon aim at Optimus, the weapon attached to his forearm starting to give off a purplish glow as it charged.
We're fucked... I thought right as he fired. Before I knew it, I was thirty feet in the air and moving fast away from the clearing.
"HOLY CRAP!" I was bug-eyed as Optimus ran from the battle, me clutched in his hand.
"Are you alright?" he asked from behind his battle mask.
"GEEZ! A little warning next time will ya? Yeah, I'm fine, but you're an Autobot, Optimus, right?" I sensed him smile behind his mask.
"Yes, and you a-? "He was cut off as a ball of plasma energy exploded against his back and he fell, dropping me. I landed hard, not on my feet, and felt something snap. I hoped to God it wasn't my spine...
The Decepticon crashed through the trees, weapon trained on Optimus.
"Hand over the All Spark fragment, Prime." the bot said.
Optimus shakily rose and seemed to be searching for something. Looking back at the Decepticon, he glared and spoke.
"You won't even get it from my cold, offline servo, Megatron!" I got to my feet with a groan. It seemed it wasn't my spine that had broken, it had been my ribs. I scrambled/stumbled away, tripped over a tree root and fell on my face.
"Oww..." I looked up, and inches in front of me was what appeared to be a blue crystal. I picked it up; it was longer than my hand, and faintly started glowing when I touched it. I held it in my hand and started to sprint for the highway.
Megatron noticed me running and spotted the glowing blue shard in my hand. Stepping easily around Optimus, he snagged me in his not-so-gentle grip and raised me far above the ground.
If my ribs weren't broken before, they certainly were now. I struggled and thrashed to get out of his hold.
"It's no use, pathetic organic. Relinquish the fragment or lose your life." I stared, adrenaline pumping through me, and without a thought I plunged the diamond-sharp crystal into his hand.
Megatron roared as a jolt of electricity passed from the key out into both of us. I shit you not; I felt the shock go directly to my heart. Megatron dropped me, holding his injured hand, and once again I thumped on the forest floor. I noticed my hand, palm up on the ground, had a slice in it from the edge of the fragment.
"OW! God! Would you guys quit dropping me! Geez!" I couldn't really run anymore, but I hobbled as fast as I could to the highway when Optimus tackled Megatron again.
Struggling up the embankment, I made it onto the road, only to be nearly pancaked by a speeding yellow car as it whipped past me fast enough to make me lose my balance.
I hit the ground on one knee, a hand to my chest, which was starting to feel weird...
"Hey! Watch where you're going you-..." I shut up as the car transformed and dumped a little girl onto the pavement. She looked about eight.
"Bumblebee! Wha'digya do that for?!" she complained. She turned and saw me, a quizzical look on her face as she took in my obviously injured appearance.
"Whoa! Who are you? How did you get hurt?" Bumblebee asked incredulously.
"My name is Hayli..." I said and explained what had happened. At the sound of sirens I looked to see a green army truck, a black and gold motorcycle, and an ambulance come barreling around a turn, heading towards us. They stopped near us and transformed.
"Prime is fighting Megatron..." Bumblebee said quickly.
"Prime?! By himself?! I thought we told that glitchhead to wait for us!" the ambulance bot spoke up. He sounded old and kind of grouchy. Spotting me, he looked surprised. "What is this organic doing here?"
"What is she doing here?" I retaliated, pointing at the little girl.
"That's Sari, she's with us!" the big green Autobot said.
"Wait, Sari Sumdac? Isaac Sumdac's daughter?" I asked her. She nodded yes. I started to say something, but a huge BOOM! Made us all turn to the forest.
I had about half a second to process Optimus' body come flying out of the trees, blown backward by one of Megatron's shots, before he crashed into the small group of Autobots.
And me.