Author's Note: So I haven't written anything publishing worthy in the past year. I'm always telling my brother and sister awesome stories, which they love, but as soon as I sit down to write out the stories everything starts to spiral out of control. I was going through my flash drive looking for something to tweak or work on and I remembered this one. It's just part of a chapter in a very long fic and I don't have the rest of it done at all. Think of this as a preview to an up-coming story and if I get enough interested followers/favorites/reviews it might just be able to kick start my writing mojo.
I realize that anyone who reads this is going to have a lot of questions and hopefully those will all be answered when I actually write the story. From the beginning. But for now feel free to review and share your theories. I promise, no matter what you write, I won't plagiarize your comments. I know what I'm going to write about and if something you say turns out to be close, good for you!
I do not own Transformers Prime but I do own the record of Corona Pax and her adventures.
Normal Speech
"**Com-link**"
New Horizons: Preview
(This preview is translated from Cybertronian by Corona Pax for the comfort of human readers)
Corona and Orion were walking from the Iacon Hall of Records. Orion was finishing off an energon cube which he them promptly threw in the nearest incinerator at the highway entrance. Meanwhile, Corona was struggling to hold all the datapads that she couldn't fit in her subspace.
"Alpha Trion is pushing you hard," Orion said observantly. It wasn't a question.
"Hmm," Corona buzzed. A smaller yellow and green bot rudely pushed pass them to get into the line for the highway terminal. They both ignored him. Corona thought about how a vorn ago she would have shouted at the mech. Orion and Arial were seriously rubbing off on her.
The mech had jostled the young femme's stack of datapads and she just barely managed to catch one before it hit the ground.
"I tried to give him back the one's he gave me for homework last orn," Corona said, "He just checked them and handed them back. He said that I shouldn't throw away information when I'm done with it, instead I should save it for the future. When we get home I have to download it all into my computer." Corona shook her helm in annoyance.
Orion chuckled at her plight.
The highway tunnel was a blur of colors as rush hour Iacon hit. Corona couldn't help but smile. Yet another cool thing about having streets that moved- no one could get stuck in traffic no matter how many Grounders were driving. If a lane started slowing down then the overpass would just split and move so that there was enough room.
Corona was brought out of her thought as the terminal light above them turn green and the force field gate opened to let the bot in front of them join the lightning fast stream of cybertronians. The light turned red before Orion could transform a ped.
Orion turned and looked down at his fumbling charge over his shoulder. He contemplated helping her but decided against it. Corona could be very possessive of her things sometimes, no matter how much she denies it and he knew how much she liked to handle her own problems. She was surprisingly like Arial in that regard.
He noticed the line that was accumulating behind them as other data-caste bots that worked at the Hall of Records got off work at the same time. It sometimes surprised him when Corona would spend three breems walking with him down to the terminal when she could simply transform and fly away from the steps outside the immense building where they worked. Where he worked and she studied with Alpha Trion. She said it was because she liked to slow down once and a while even when everyone else is busy speeding away at their lives. She also said that she just liked walking with him.
The femme almost dropped another datapad and he smiled at his charge. Why was it so difficult to ask for help? Deciding to risk it, his black servo swiftly took all of the datapads out of his charge's servos.
"Wait don't!" Corona said surprised. She tried to take them back but Orion smiled and held them teasingly out of her reach. "Give them back!"
"Relax," Orion said in a fatherly way, "I'll take them home for you and put them in your room. Now hurry and go already. Your friends are probably waiting for you. Be home before next solar cycle." He knew she wouldn't stay out that long but he was determined to give her a much freedom as possible so that she could exercise her responsibility. Not that she wasn't already responsible enough already.
Before Corona could reply, the light turned green again and Opt—Orion transformed and sped off…with her datapads.
The person in line behind them stifled a laugh at the show they had gotten.
"**Just be sure you don't stay out to long. Arial said there was a storm moving in.**" said the blue and red mech.
Corona shuddered. Acid rain. "**Y-yes caretaker.**" She HATED acid rain.
Corona sighed and moved out of the way so that the people in line could get to the terminal. She walked away until there was enough space for a take-off. As she jumped up, transformed and shot into the sky, a whoop of excitement left her vocal processor at the feeling of her wings cutting the air.
The sky has no traffic, unless you're in Vos, regardless of the fact that there are just as many seekers as grounders. Seekers have a special kind of programming that allow them to sense when other flyers are nearby so crashes almost never happen. All seekers are very proud of that. While grounders constantly bustle around and argue for a place on the road, a seeker would just fly higher and out of the way of even the hover lanes that sometimes went as high as the buildings.
The blue and silver femme seeker that went by the name of Corona screeched as she narrowly avoided getting shanked by the bow of a small hovercraft that had changed course on her without warning.
The pilot leaned out away and did a rude gesture at her.
"Wawth where you's goin wingnuth," he slurred.
Oh Primus. He's overcharged. Either that or he's got a broken vocal and crooked dentas. Corona turned to follow him, close enough to be heard but not so close that he could hit her if he swerved again. "Sir!?" she called, "Sir, I need to ask you to land please. I don't think you should be driving right now."
"Frag off!" the mech sneered, "You ain't tha enfurthers! Back off air 'ed."
So she did. But she still followed. Corona squashed the feeling that she was being a busybody and sent a ping to her friend, telling her that she was going to be a little late before comming someone who would love to take care of an overcharged mech for her.
"**Miss Pax," Prowl's voice came through inside Corona's head, "**Must I remind you that at this moment I am currently in the middle of my shift.**"
"**That's why I called you, Prowl sir.**" Corona suddenly barrel rolled as her right wing accidently got caught in the hovercraft's wake. She righted herself and corrected her position without missing a beat. "**I'm following a hovercraft that's not in the lanes and has an overcharged mech at the controls.**
"**How do you know he's overcharged?**"
"**He's swerving a lot and I can see a small cube of white energon in one hand,**" Corona said dryly.
"**It would be logical to trust the optical acuity of a seeker. Searching your position…**"
Nearly half a breem of silence later, Corona almost fell out of the sky as an enforcer surveillance drone appeared beside her before speeding up to catch the craft.
"**Your concern for public safety is appreciated, Corona Pax. We see him. You may leave now,**" Prowl said shortly.
"**Alright. You're welcome, Prowl,**" the femme laughed at the Praxian's curt way of saying "Thank You".
She veered left and continued back on the way to her original destination. As she flew above the highway, Corona kept an optic on the numbers painted on the side of every seeker roost she passed. The roosts were the tall, simple structures that stood overlooking the highway. They were huge poles that were two to four hundred feet tall and each had three circular platforms at different heights. Built as resting places for tired flyers, the roosts were often used as meeting places as well. When Corona first saw them she thought that they were super tall street lights like those back on- back home…
"…13…14…15. Ha! #2215 middle platform," Corona angled upward toward where her friend said to meet.
Speak of the Unicron spawn…
"Took you long enough," Slipstream teased.
"Sorry..," Corona quickly explained what happened.
Slipstream raised an optical ridge and crossed her servos. "Seriously? While I waited on this platform and yelled at the people below us, you got to see an enforcer chase?"
"No I didn't. I just reported an overcharged mech that was piloting."
"That sounds a lot more boring when you're saying it."
It's was Corona's turn to cross her servos. She frowned at her friend in mock offence. "Excuse me? Boring?"
Slipstream just laughed and Corona couldn't help but wish if there was a way to stretch out the moment.
She wondered if their friendship would last much longer. Recently, Corona had been seeing more and more signs of the war that was looming just on the horizon. That was mostly due to the fact that she was apprenticing under Alpha Trion and was Orion Pax's charge. She saw things on the screens of the Iacon Hall of Records and in the streets of Kaon that would never be allowed to be seen by the general public.
Riots had broken out in Kaon, Kalis, and even Vos and the enforcers were being driven ragged. Corona had sensed how tired Prowl had sounded in the earlier conversation. Many of the bots at the Hall of Records were being ordered to "filter" material for the public and send reports directly to the High Council, including Orion and Corona, even though the femme was still technically in training. Orion had been doing that job when he found Megatronus's first broadcast. It was actually the reason he went to meet the mech in the first place. Corona had been the first one to see the vid of Megatron declaring that he did "not condone the actions of the riot instigators". Corona forwarded it to Alpha Trion.
Sentinel Prime and the Council were growing more angry and concerned every time Soundwave uploaded another video of Megatronus's speeches, which was happening almost all the time now. There wasn't a single person on the entire planet who hadn't watched at least one of the gladiator's speeches about how all Cybertronians deserved equal rights and about how the caste system had corrupted all but few.
The last time she had gone to the Pits with Orion, much to Arial's unfettered chagrin, Corona had overheard Megatronus asking her adopted father about which hoops he would have to jump through to get an audience with Sentinel Prime. That was when it would truly start.
It was truly horrifying to know things about the future and wish wholesparkedly that you could do something to change it only to remember that one could implode the universe if they changed the wrong event in the time line. Stopping a galaxy changing war would definitely get someone imploded.
It was depressing too! Looking over at Slipstream, who was sitting on the edge of the platform talking about the revolutionary Megatronus, the younger femme cringed at the thought of her friend becoming a Decepticon. True, Corona didn't know if Streamers really was going to side with Megatron or not. She knew that a Slipstream in another universe did, but that didn't mean this Slipstream will.
Corona chuckled as she realized that in her entire thought process, she didn't stop to think about what she was going to do. What could she possibly do when her caretaker was named Prime and Megatron creates the Decepticons?
"Hel-lllloooo! Cybertron to Cora. Did your CPU crash or something?" Slipstream said, waving a servo.
Corona slapped her friend's hand out of her face. "I was listening! So you heard at school…"
"I heard that Megatron has requested a meeting with the council. They turned him down of course, but everyone knows they're going to have to see him sooner or later."
"What do you think is going to happen?"
"Not sure, to be honest."
Corona sat next to her friend and dangled her peds over the edge.
They sat there for a minute just staring at the blur of colors below and listening to the sounds of everyday cybertronian life. A trine of seekers flew up to the platform above them and they could hear them laughing about something.
"Are we going to sit her for the rest of the cycle or did you want to go do something?" Corona said.
Slipstream grinned and said, "I'm kinda out of ideas at the moment."
"Primus forbid. Well, here's one: It's going to rain soon…"
"What?!"
"Let me finish. Anyway it's going to rain so let's do something inside. We can go over to my place and watch some holo-vids. My caretakers will be home but they won't mind. And I think we have some rust sticks and energon sweet crystals."
"Primus. You had me at 'rain'! Lead the way," immediately, the purple and blue seeker leaped off the platform and transformed.
Corona looked over her shoulder to the east where a big acid rain storm cloud was forming. The report she checked earlier said it wouldn't hit the north side of Iacon for another joor. They had time but Corona was going to respect Slipstream's intense fear of the optic melting "death liquid." Unfortunately, Slipstream's fear was completely rational. If a bot got caught outside, they would have time to find shelter but not after they had some of their armor plating melted. And not everyone even wore armor! If they stayed out too long in the rain then it was very possible to melt to death. Slowly.
On that cheery thought, Corona jumped off to join her friend in the sky and sped up to get in the lead.
That was interesting. I think. Here's an explanation of the Cybertronian terms. I did what I could from Transformers Wiki, did my own calculations on the rest.
Breem- 8.3 earth minutes (8.33333333333333333…)
Joor- 15 breems or 124.5 earth minutes, same weight as 1 hour on Cybertron
Solar Cycle- (this is a term used for however long a day last on whatever planet you're on but in this case, it's a Cybertronian Solar Cycle) 49.8 earth hours or 25 Joor
Orn- 13 Cybertronian solar cycles, same weight a 1 week, close to one month on earth
Stellar cycles- 1 cybertronian year, 12 earth years, 156 orns
Vorn- 83 stellar cycles but since cybertronians have such long life-cycles, they count a "year" as a vorn instead of a stellar cycle. One vorn equals 996 earth years.
So review and tell me what you think. It took my friend Kindle a very long time before she could convince me to publish my personal records. Orion (everyone calls him Optimus now) used to say I never had to do anything unless I truly wanted to. He was very serious about the "freedom is the right of all sentient beings" thing. Anyway, Kindle thought it would be good if a few humans saw what Cybertron was like from a view of view they could understand. This was just an experiment to see if I felt comfortable doing it.
Till all are one,
Corona Pax
PS. It's okay if you don't believe any of this. I honestly don't expect you to. And an explanation as to why I'm even in this universe and how I knew about the Great War before it happened will be explained. Eventually.