Chapter 10 - Present

Anna came back to herself just as they were entering Mission City.

"ANNA! Answer me!" Anna heard Epps yell into her ear as he shook her slightly. She batted his hands away from her.

"I am perfectly fine, Epps. Don't worry about me." Anna huffed, jumping out of the vehicle and onto the road, ignoring the looks being shot at her by them. She saw a pawn shop nearby and went in there to see if there would be any old radios that they could use to contact the Air Force.

Lennox had joined her and they both saw the shortwave radios at the same time. Anna grabbed them and ran out, motioning for Epps to join her and Lennox.

"Lennox and I got shortwave radios."

"Wait. What am I supposed to do with these?"

"Well, use them! It's all we got!" Lennox said.

"This is like RadioShack dinosaur radios or something, man. I'm only gonna get 20 or 30 miles out of these things."

Anna rolled her eyes and grabbed the radios out of his hands. She started to carefully take them apart and crossed some wires quickly. "I can get you a guaranteed 50 miles, and a mayb on 55 miles. You're lucky you guys have a Stark with you going into this." Anna grumbled, putting the radios back together and then handing them to Epps. Epps nodded his thanks and raised the radio to speak through.

"Are there any aircraft orbiting the city?" At Epps words, they heard the sound of a F-22 flying over them through the city.

"F-22 at 12:00." Lennox said. Anna couldn't help but to roll her eyes. Did everyone have to state the bloody obvious all of the time?! "All right, I want planes for air cover and get Black Hawks on station to extract that Cube. You got it?" Epps nodded. "Air Force has arrived! Pop smoke!"

"Raptor, Raptor, do you copy? We have you visual. Green smoke is the mark. Provide air cover and vector Black Hawks for extraction." As the F-22 began to fly around again around the tall skyscrapers, the black Autobot that had been a truck began to transform.

'Ironhide' popped into Anna's name. She didn't know how she knew this Autobot's name but she didn't have time to worry about it right now.

"It's Starscream!"

"Please tell me you copy." Epps said desperately.

"Back up! Take cover!" ordered Ironhide waving the soldiers near him to a further distance. "Bumblebee!" he called motioning to the scout who transformed and joined him at the truck he was standing by.

Lennox paled seeing that the jet wasn't slowing down. "No, no, no! Move!"

"Back up! Back up!" shouted Ironhide as he and Bee lifted the truck at an angle.

"Retreat! Fall back!" echoed the soldiers trying to move the civilians out of the way and encouraging them to run as they themselves searched for cover.

"Incoming!" bellowed Ironhide as Starscream fired several missiles. The missiles impacted with the truck sending the two Autobots flying backwards from the force of the collision and the explosion from the explosives. The shockwaves from the collisions and the Autobots also being blown back knocked all the humans off their feet in a wave of heat and debris.

Anna was thrown onto her back and hit her head hard. Anna hit her head hard enough for black spots to cloud her vision for a minute as well as ringing in her ears. Lennox reached down and she grabbed his hand and allowed him to raise her to her feet. She saw his lips moving but couldn't hear what he was saying or any of the activity going on around them.

"I can't hear you," Anna said.

Lennox paused and looked at her for a moment before turning to Epps to probably berate him for whatever the hell had attacked them. Anna wished that she could hear them. Their conversations never failed to bring her entertainment in serious situations.

"What the hell was that?!"

"What are you talking about?" asked Epps as he motioned for the other soldiers to keep on helping to evauate any civillians that were still nearby.

"What do you mean, what am I talking about?" Lennox yelled, hitting his shoulder. "They shot at us!"

"F-22 pilots would never fly below buildings," he told him. "That's alien. That ain't friendly!"

Anna was finally able to hear Epps's last words and couldn't hold back a smile. She loved those two.

"Okay, boys. Enough arguing. Captain, what's the plan?"

The two soldiers looked slightly chastised at her reprimind but Lennox started to come up with a plan.

They heard a male voice come over the radio in Epps' hand just then. "Army Black Hawk inbound to your location. Over."

Epps brought the radio up to his mouth. "Alpha two seven three degrees, ten miles. November Victor, one point two clicks north."

They all jumped slightly as a shot was jired from down the street and turned to see a tank rolling towards them, crushing anything in its path completely uncaring about the vehicles and humans in the way.

"Of course one of them had to be a tank!" Anna exclaimed before listening to Lennox's order to move out.

They found cover just in time because the pontiac solstice Autobot and the yellow rescue vehicle Autobot barrelled out of a side street and straight towards the tank, dodging any obstacles in their path with expert ease.

Sam, Anna noticed with horror as she hadn't noticed the state Bee was in, had ran back over to him. Sam was not going to willingly leave his Guardian behind, it seemed.

Anna peeked around the corner of the building where she and two other soldiers were taking cover. What she saw, made her fill with awe and wonder.

Ironhide had transformed back into his alt-mode and was dodging debris and people with great skill and in order to avoid a missile that came right down the middle of the street had to do an impressive somersault. The yellow rescue vehicle - Ratchet - had disappeared, probably blown away from the battle, and the pontiac solstice - Jazz - had sped up and transformed in a spin slip to get up on top of the tank's turret and yanked it.

"Come on, Decepticon punk!" he growled.

The Con responded to the attack by transforming but Jazz managed to kick off one of his shoulder canons before he was grabbed and thrown into a nearby building. Ironhide had by now rolled to a stop in front of the Con - Devastator - and began firing off his chest plates being careful not to hit Jazz who was now slightly in front of him and had joined in targeting the Con's chassis. Ratchet came shooting out of a side street and transformed mid flip while activating his saws and taking off one of Devastator's arms before landing neatly on his feet.

Lennox then began to order all of them into action. "Concentrate your fire!" Their combined fire sent the Con falling backwards into a shop and going still. Hopefully he would stay still. Anna moved over to stand by Lennox, the other two soldiers following.

But then, a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned and knew what, or who it was, instantly. "Oh f***! Move! It's Megatron!"

Jazz seconded her. "It's Megatron! Retreat! Fall back!" And began firing at the Decepticon leader to try and distract him from the humans.

"Fall back!" echoed Lennox. "Get our guys out of the way! Get out of here! Go! Get them out of the buggy! Move out!"

"We need air cover down here, now!" screamed Epps into the radio frantically as they fell back to their original position. They really needed air support if they wanted to survive this.

Anna was about to follow Lennox's orders when she noticed that Jazz was the only one that was not retreating from Megatron. Acting on some unknown instinct, Anna grabbed a high powered rocket launcher that had been in one of the vehicles that they had used to drive her and was about to line up her shot when she saw Megatron grab hold of Jazz and launch into the sky and onto a building down the road. She knew that she was going to have to get closer because too many things could happen to the rocket at this distance. She sprinted as fast as she could towards Megatron and Jazz, not hearing the worried voices of her team and the orders of her Captain to get back there. When she was close enough, she propped the launcher on a cab that was on it's side and aimed the rocket launcher at Megatron.

She could hear Jazz speaking and silently thanked him for giving her a second to line up her shot. Even if he didn't know that she was there.

"That all you got, Megatron?"

"Come here, little cretin," growled Megatron, squeezing his clawed hand around the Autobot.

"You want a piece of me? You want a piece?" Jazz asked, shooting at Megatron.

"No!" Megatron began to hiss but was distracted when his alert system began to go off. He turned his head right as something hit his eye, causing him to cry out in pain and drop the pathetic Autobot in his servos.

After the pain went, Megatron now with one optic looked down on the ground and saw a human female holding some type of weapon that was still smoking slightly from whatever she had used against him. Megatron growled and launched a missile at the yellow vehicle that she standing behind, causing it to explode and for the human to be blown back.

Satisfied that it would now be dead, Megatron turned towards the Autobot that had fallen into the street only to see the Autobot gently lift the human into his servos and transform around it before driving away as fast as possible. Megatron was all ready to go after and finish the human when he caught sight of his rival.

"Megatron!"

"Optimus!"

The fight was on.