Warning: Lots of gore and blood. Not for the faint of heart, I guess.
Hot Rod sensed it before Armonie saw it and slammed hard on the brakes, ignoring the indignant honks of the other motorists behind him. Armonie yelped as her forehead connected hard with Hot Rod's steering wheel, swaying dizzily for a few seconds before glaring at him.
"What the hell was that for?" she demanded, rubbing her forehead.
When he answered, he sounded as haunted as she had ever heard him. "You…you don't want to go home."
Armonie growled. "Damn it Roddy, Romhild and Antonio's sick, and Amalia has to go to work! I need to get back to them."
Slowly, Hot Rod edged off the main road to the long path that led to her house. There, he seemed to droop down on his tires as if reluctant to go on. "No, Armonie, you don't."
Any retort Armonie was about to make was interrupted as the bone-jarring thok-thok-thok of a helicopter. She tilted her head and looked up and out the window to find a dark gray-purple helicopter flew overhead, circling once before leaving. Armonie was about to look away and disregard it when a sudden chill shook her body.
There, emblazoned boldly beneath the chopper as well as on the tail near the rotor was a small symbol, but even from this distance, Armonie could tell that it wasn't red like Hot Rod's.
That meant that it was a Decepticon.
Before Hot Rod could react, mothering instincts kicked in and she shoved him into gear, flooring the gas pedal and sending them speeding down the dirt road. By the time Hot Rod wrestled control back, they were halfway to her house. With a sigh, Hot Rod continued on.
Eyes large and limbs shaking, Armonie stepped out of Hot Rod as he pulled up in front of her house. Which was hardly there anymore.
The former two-story house was now little more than rubble covering the cellar. Pipes and great planks of wood lay in haphazard piles, jutting out here and there in burnt, splintery knives.
Her heart beat normally; it wasn't too fast, not too slow, but it seemed to send waves of ice through her veins, chilling her to the bone. The ice seemed to gather at her heart which felt as if it were about to shatter into a million pieces at the slightest movement.
The roof appeared to have been torn from the top of the original structure, broken into a dozen pieces and scattered across the meadow. Armonie assumed whoever did this had been Decepticons and that they had thrown the pieces of roof around.
Step by shuffling, numb step, Armonie approached her house. It had belonged to Amoux, her father and his family for generations along with the land. The structure was sound and still original, but now it was no more.
Her pulse pounded in her ears as her icy heart seemed to shudder (or was it just her?) as she stepped forward. With each step a piece of splinter or glass crunched beneath her boots, and with each crunch, a tiny piece of her heart shattered into the black void of oblivion.
Numbly and in the back of her mind she was aware that Hot Rod was saying something, but she couldn't hear it through the beat of her shattering heart. Slowly, carefully, she stepped up the half-intact steps of the veranda, through the gaping hole of a doorway, and into the house itself.
As she walked through the rooms, a knot in her gut twisted, and with each twist a larger portion of her heart shattered.
Just that morning she had been in the kitchen – where she now stood – thinking about her day and what she'd do while she made a warm broth for Antonio and Romhild. Here, she had eaten breakfast with Amalia before kissing him good-bye and going with Hot Rod to get some supplies and medicine at the town nearby.
The stairs were half intact with large chunks missing, and other bits inaccessible as the walls on either side had collapsed partially on it. Here, she had climbed the stairs to say good-bye to her children before leaving.
A sound caught her ear, and hope caused her to sway dizzily. Shaking and stumbling, she ran into the living room. At the sight that greeted her, she nearly fainted, but reminded herself that she needed to be strong, if only for Amalia.
Her husband lay in the middle of the room amongst shattered and destroyed furniture, lying uncomfortably on shards of wood the size of Armonie's forearm. He was gasping and pale with a large red stain beneath him, coloring the splinters a grotesque red. Five splinters as long as the ones on the ground around him impaled him and pinned him to the ground, all concentrated on his abdomen.
With a choked sob, Armonie ran over and knelt beside him, grabbing his hand and ignoring the uncomfortable pricks of the splinters in her knees, and the eerie feeling of her husband's blood staining her skirt.
Amalia's hand was cold and clammy, his skin an unnaturally pale due to blood loss. His beautiful blue-green eyes blazed against his paper-white skin and his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. "A-a-arm-y-y."
"Amalia." Now she began to cry, long, silent tears that streaked down her face like a waterfall to drip into the blood on the floor.
Amalia's mouth twitched into a slight smile despite convulsing, eyes wide in pain. Armonie clung to his hand, pressing it against her cheek as if willing him to live.
"B-e-e s-s sa-f-f-e." he stuttered out. "L-lov-ve you."
"I love you too, Amalia." Armonie whispered, her throat closing on the last word, the name of her soon-to-be-dead husband. Neither of them saw the sense in pretending that he was going to die; they knew it as well as they knew their own names.
Blue-green eyes met dark brown for a moment before the first pair went dim. Still crying, Armonie leaned over her dead husband's face, gently kissing his forehead. "Sleep well, Amalia." She whispered, closing his gaping eyes with a shaking hand. "I'll see you again sometime."
Sniffing, she knelt there for a little while longer before standing to look for her children. The ground shook slightly as if Hot Rod had jumped or fell, and Armonie looked out and saw him talking with a few others of his kind, all of them with bright red symbols emblazoned on their chests and shoulders.
Wiping her face and not noticing the streak of blood she left, she slowly climbed the stairs and found gaping holes and missing walls in Romhild and Antonio's rooms, and the rest was gone or in a splintered mess.
"Mama?" slowly, she turned and found Romhild propped up against the wall, pinned as Amalia had by long splinters. One had gone through her torso, and little Antonio's head lay in her lap, a hand-sized splinter protruding from one eye. "They're gone." She whispered, a tear streaming down her face. "The-they wanted to know 'bo-bout some-me-one ca-ca-lled Ho-ho-"
"Hot Rod." Armonie whispered and whimpering, Romhild nodded.
"D-de-cepticons."
"They called each other that?" honey-colored eyes welling up with tears, Romhild nodded.
"Am I gonna die?" she whispered.
"I don't want to lie to you." Armonie told her quietly, crouching in front of her and resting a hand on her cheek. "You will. Go to sleep love and say hi to your father and brother for me."
Romhild shook her head. "I don' wan-n-na go."
Armonie kissed her forehead lightly. "I know, sweet. I don't want you to go either, but we can't always get what we want."
"Stay with me, mommy?" her eyes were becoming brighter as if feverish, and Armonie knew her time was near.
"As long as I can, sweetie." Her voice cracked, and Romhild lifted a shaky hand and brushed away a tear.
"Hot Rod is good. Stay with him, and you will find happiness and completeness." She told her mother in an eerie answer to the questions she was asking herself. "Please, Mommy. I'm scared. Sing to me?"
"Of course, sweetie." It took a few tries to get her throat to work, and when it did, she sang the first song that came to mind, even though it was in English.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are gray.
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away."
Romhild smiled shakily. "Thanks, Mommy."
"You're welcome, sweet." Shaking, Armonie kissed her daughter for the last time. "Sleep, sweetie. I'll see you again one day."
"Promise?"
Her smile wavered. "I promise, sweetie. Cross my heart and hope to die."
Romhild's eyes drooped. "Thanks, Mommy. I love you."
"I love you too." Before she was half-way through the second syllable, Romhild was gone.
-
"I feel bad, Hot Spot. I should've told her the dangers." Hot Rod rubbed his forehead, and the blue fire truck placed a soothing hand on his shoulder.
"We all make mistakes, Hot Rod. Don't worry about it; she'll forgive you eventually. When she comes out, explain it all to her."
Hot Rod sighed, sitting down with a resounding thump. "She'll be angry at me."
First Aid crouched beside him. "What would make her not mad at you?"
Hot Rod gave a bark of derisive laughter. "Her family still alive." He hung his head. "She does like to travel. I may be able to get her with that, but I doubt it. She likes to have a purpose."
"What about hunting?" Streetwise asked, and immediately, Hot Rod's head jerked to look up at him.
"She'll want revenge." He whispered as Armonie came stomping out. Looking over at her, he saw the hard edge to her eyes, and the blood covering her skirt and shirt. "Get ready and we'll go hunting after them." Cold triumph glittered in her suddenly onyx-like eyes.
"What did you tell her?" Groove asked, having not understood the words in Gaelic.
"We're going after them." Hot Rod said as Armonie came back a little while later, dressed in jeans with a small bag of clothes slung over her shoulder. Over another shoulder was a slightly larger bag that clinked with every step. In her arms, she carried two long, narrow black plastic cases. "Are you coming with us?" He asked, standing and looking at the other Protectobots.
At last, Hot Spot nodded. "You'll need all the help you can get," he said at last. "No offense."
Hot Rod smiled, baring sharp "teeth". "None taken." He nodded at Armonie and transformed, allowing her to pack her stuff in his trunk and back seat. "Let's go." He called and in a single-file line, all of them left the smoking ruins of the house and the remains of its occupants behind, driving after its destroyers for vengeance.
And they planned on getting it.
The song Armonie sang to her daughter was a song my mother used to sing to me whenever I had a nightmare or when I was sick. :)
((yawns)) well, off to bed with me. :)