Disclaimer: All Transformers characters, settings, etc. are the property of Hasbro and any other respective owners. Any original characters AND THE PLOT are the intellectual property of Litahatchee/ Letohatchee. No part of the story, ideas, or OC's (Sunshadow and the Decepticon Nightfire belong to Litahatchee/ Letohatchee) are to be used without the express permission of Litahatchee/ Letohatchee. Litahatchee/ Letohatchee is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Thanks to the wonderful and amazing REVIEWERS of chapter 51: Faecat, flamingmarsh, LadyJet2, plenoptic, Sergeant Duck, renegadewriter8, CuteKittten, xCubicZirconia, JadedFalcon, greenleafprince, theshadowcat, TheInuyashaKaidanWriter, Lecidre, ice around the moon, Shizuka Taiyou, Bluebird Soaring, Lady Katana4544, Xerios, Flameshield, and 1bloodtempest.
Responses to reviews for ch. 51 have been moved to 'RESPONSES TO REVIEWS' on my biopage.
Thanks to Shizuka Taiyou for reviewing every chapter over the last month or so. That was quite a reviewing marathon that had me smiling the whole time. Thank you so much! I'm glad you are loving the story.
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Eternal thanks goes to Karategal, lady tecuma, Hearts of Eternity, grlwdgrntrk, Violetlight, Phoenix13, and i-love-me-some-leggypoo for letting me use their ideas and/or terminology. The name, Nightfire, belongs to lady tecuma. The Decepticon femme character with that name, however, is mine.
IMPORTANT NOTES: This chapter is in the past, with some present moments in between. Italics print is a flashback. Normal print is the present. Bold print is transmissions. The present parts of this chapter follow ch. 52. The flashback in this chapter occurs during the AllSpark search mission, well after Elita's abduction from Floatilla. The flashbacks in the story are not in chronological order. There are some hints as to how Elita got out of that situation, but it will be explained further in future chapters, as the reason Elita is not recognized will be explained later. I completely made up the name of Mirage's ship in this chapter. I also took a lot of artistic license with space bridges and other numerous points in this chapter, though the use of space bridges here is because I saw them used in the movieverse comic, 'Reign of Starscream.' I hope it's agreeable to everyone and is to your liking.
Enjoy!
Night Fire
Chapter 52
Lost
by Litahatchee
Chromia felt a hand at her shoulder as she rested. Then she heard a voice. The voice was soft, soothing.
"How are you feeling?" the voice asked her.
Chromia knew exactly who it was without unshuttering her optics. She kept them closed, answering more bitterly than she intended.
"I feel like I just got my weld replaced and my sparkmate is far far away," Chromia said, wincing as her spark gave a jolt of pained protest.
The hand squeezed her shoulder sympathetically and then the voice continued, "There's something I want to show you, something that Hound found. It may get us nearer to our sparkmates."
Chromia almost snorted derisively. That sounded too good to be true. Their sparkmates had been gone for so long that they would have been assumed dead by every Autobot if Chromia and her companion weren't still alive. But, Chromia and her companion were so guarded and kept so hidden that many Autobots weren't even sure of that much. And then there was that voice. It was so full of hope. It was always hopeful, always positive, even when their world fell apart around them. Sometimes it annoyed Chromia, but she stuck with the other as if her life depended on it...Maybe it did...
Chromia opened her optics, ready to either roll them at her friend's bottomless positive disposition, or look at her as if she was crazy for mentioning such nonsense as actually finding their mates. Instead, she started when she saw the clawed hand upon her shoulder. It was black, with claws long enough to gauge out her optics in one easy swipe.
She jerked her head away from the hand purely on instinct, without first thinking who it belonged to. She immediately started mentally kicking herself for her reaction.
"I'm sorry," she started to say.
"Don't worry about it," her companion said as she drew those clawed fingers up to her face to stare at them with her own optics. "Sometimes they scare me too."
Chromia's spark sank. Chromia knew what it was like to be pushed to talk about something, so she'd never push her friend to talk about anything. It had been eons since her friend's abduction. If her companion was ever going to talk about it, she'd talk about it when she was ready. Whether she was ready to talk about it or not, those were the first words her friend had spoken about what happened to her. Those few words and the tone of her voice spoke volumes of what she'd been though and what she was still going through.
Chromia sat up and placed a sympathetic hand of her own on the other femme's dark purple shoulder.
"You're still the same spark, Elita," she said softly.
Elita looked down at her chassis. "But I don't recognize the chassis it resides in," she stated, though there was not even a hint of bitterness to her tone. She just seemed...lost.
Chromia, on the other hand, felt bitterness. A loss of a sense of self was what happened when someone wasn't prepared to be reformatted. Chromia was upset that that had happened to her friend. If she had claws like Elita's, she'd rip out the optics of everyone involved in Elita's torment.
However, it was the perfect defense for Elita, as none of the Decepticons recognized her and very few Autobots knew who she was when they first saw her. That, of course, had been the point at the time that it was done. It had been the only way. Elita, herself, just didn't know that was a part of the plan. Therefore, she suffered the side-effects.
"Everyone that matters knows who you are," Chromia stated reassuringly, ready to listen, as Elita finally seemed ready to talk.
Elita's optics brightened and she stated cheerfully before standing up, "Then let's go find them, shall we?"
Chromia let her frame fall back to the berth, her head thumping against the headrest. That was not at all what she thought Elita would have to say. Even so, how could someone find something positive about every situation they found themselves in? Elita lost her sense of identity, yet she never sat around moping about it. She never even acknowledged it, other than the few words spoken just then. There was one being in the mulitverse that would always know who she was and she never lost hope in being reunited with him, even if it meant she had to be the one to go to him, where ever he was.
"Are you up to it?" Elita asked, interrupting Chromia's thoughts, having never left Chromia's side. "There's something you need to see."
Elita extended her clawed hand towards Chromia. Chromia gave her a small smile and took it, letting Elita help her off the berth.
"Okay, okay," Chromia said before saying half to herself, "Can't even get an orn's rest after surgery around here."
---
"We kinda fell into a routine," Chromia was saying to Optimus and the others in the underground human facility on Earth. "We moved around from base to base, helping out where we could, hiding out when we had to. Then, when it came time for a new weld, First Aid would seek out a place where we could be secluded without being discovered while I recovered. Then, we'd do it all over again... Well, at least until it was decided that the Autobots needed to leave Cybertron. After that, we went on Mirage's ship from outpost to outpost until it came time to replace a weld."
Chromia looked at each of them in turn before saying, "None of us ever thought the AllSpark search team would be gone for so long."
Optimus's optics widened marginally, shocked by the news that the Autobots had to leave their homeworld, yet needing firmer confirmation that it was true.
"The Autobots left Cybertron?" Optimus couldn't hide the shock from his voice. The war desimated their planet, but there were, at least, always small groups still living on it.
"We had to," Chromia answered. "The Decepticons overran us at every turn. It was the only way we could assure our survival. The fighting became worse and worse. They were no longer taking prisoners. They were sparing no one. They were fighting to wipe the Autobots out completely, just like they did the femmes."
"Primus," Ratchet whispered from his place against the wall.
Optimus's spark sank, riddled with guilt. It was his fault. He didn't get to the AllSpark in time to save them, and now it was gone, reduced to nothing but a small sliver of what it once was. To make matters worse, he was unsure of his sparkmate's fate. His hope was faltering, and there was little he could do about the downward spiral. He dared a glance at Bumblebee, who didn't miss the gesture, but he didn't open his spark to the little bot.
"Elita wanted to stay," Chromia continued. "We stayed for as long as we could. We were even one of the last teams to leave. But we had two strikes against us: we were Autobots and we were femmes, and we were running out of places to hide."
Chromia looked at Optimus, "The femmes are all but extinct, but we figured the Autobots still have a fighting chance as long as you live. We couldn't risk you and Ironhide with the importance of your mission. If we had died, then you as well, and the Autobots would never have stood a chance of surviving anywhere. So, when we could no longer hide on the planet, we had to find new hiding places off of it."
Chromia shook her head in sadness, telling them how it didn't matter that they left the planet. The Decepticons came after them, attacking Autobot outposts whenever they ran across one. The war was never going to end no matter what they did, unless they wiped out the Decepticons first.
Optimus did not like that option. There had to be a better way. Otherwise, the war really was never going to end. They'd all wipe each other out until there was one Cybertronian left. Then that mech or femme would probably kill himself/herself because of sorrow.
"When it came time to replace another weld," Chromia continued, "we found this deserted planet. It was an unnamed planet in the Rigel System. There was evidence of a lost civilization there, so Hound wanted to check it out. We thought it would be a good distraction and a good place to hide out while I recovered from a new weld replacement, so we landed. The planet appeared to be abandoned...It wasn't..."
---
"Primus, is that what I think it is?" Chromia transmitted to Elita via their link.
They found a hiding spot on the cliff above the object of interest. Chromia set her optics on magnification so that she could get a better look.
There was a large ramp leading up to a circular structure. A tall spire rose above the structure, seemingly reaching into space. Chromia knew what it was immediately. There would be a portal at the top of that spire.
"Yes," Elita sighed happily, whispering outloud before transmitting, "Hound found a space bridge, a warp gate..."
It was a rare find. There weren't many of them. The problem with them was that sometimes the Cybertronians didn't know what lay on the other side. They didn't always know where the space bridge would take them. There were very few Cybertronians left that even knew how to build them and, unfortunately, those few were on the Decepticon side. They were called 'seekers.' Therefore, all known space bridges were controlled by the Decepticons. As Chromia magnified even more for an even closer look, she saw that this gate was no exception to that unfortunate rule.
"There are only three guards as far as we can tell," Elita transmitted from beside her. "They must be relying on the fact that we didn't know it was here."
That seemed to be the case with most space bridges anyway. The Decepticons seemed to be lax on their defenses of them because the Autobots didn't know where they were to begin with, so they were relatively safe from attack in that regard.
Chromia easily figured out what Elita was thinking. Between the two of them, Mirage, First Aid, and Hound, they could take over possession of the portal. Then they could fly their ship through it and hopefully be that much closer to finding the AllSpark search team. The key word there was that it was 'hopefully.'
Chromia looked at her friend in skepticism. Surely Elita had already seen the problem with that plan.
"We don't know where this leads. It could take us farther away from Optimus and Ironhide rather than closer to them," Chromia transmitted doubtfully.
"I know, Chromia," Elita whispered. "But it's worth a try. What other choice do we have?"
Both Elita and Chromia were desperate to find their mates. The fact that Elita, who was known for thinking things through and not taking insane risks, was willing to do this proved how desperate she was becoming.
Their orders had been to wait and survive, but they had waited long enough. Even Optimus didn't think the AllSpark search team would be gone as long as they had been. Both Elita and Chromia were fading too fast for First Aid's liking. It was time to take the initiative and go look for the AllSpark team themselves. Part of the orders was to survive. Survival at this point meant finding their sparkmates.
Chromia looked back out over the space bridge and then Elita again. "Okay," she said. "What's the plan so far?"
Elita, Mirage, Hound, and First Aid had to have been making plans while Chromia recovered. Elita wasn't asking her what she thought after all. It was best that Chromia just agree, because she was going along anyway, whether she liked it or not.
"Well well, what have we here?" a sneering voice suddenly said from behind them.
Both Chromia and Elita whipped around to face the owner of the voice, a jolt of alarm coursing through their sparks.
"A couple of Autobot spies?" another voice said, just as mocking as the first.
As the two Autobots faced two Decepticons, it was becoming clear that their small group made a slight error. They thought the planet was abandoned. Even when it became clear that it wasn't, they thought that there were only three Decepticon guards present. The three guards were still down at the warp gate. They had no idea that these two were anywhere around at all.
Elita began to worry how many more Decepticons were on this planet. They needed to get back to Mirage and the others. Abandoning the new space bridge plan was fast becoming the best option.
"They're femmes!" one of the Cons exclaimed in surprise. "I didn't know there were any left, let alone two."
"Well, that leaves one for each of us," the other Decepticon sneered.
"I don't know whether to shoot mine or interface with her," his companion retorted.
The other Decepticon's optics lit up in recognition of the blue femme. "Holy frag!" he exclaimed. "This is Ironhide's sparkmate! We hit the jackpot here!" He then looked at the purple femme. "You look a little familiar, but I can't place you..."
Right at that moment, Elita sprang into action. She jumped forward, surprising the two Cons with her sudden movement. Then, a wicked-looking knife came out of subspace from her toe plating.
"Place this!" Elita yelled before kicking the Con closest to her, thrusting the knife right between his legs and into his abdomen. If the squeal of pain as he went down was any indication, she hit her mark.
Chromia didn't wait to see the results of Elita's vicious knife-kick. The other Con began his attack and Chromia sprang to action herself, her cannons appearing from subspace already blazing with firepower. They were too close for her to take a shot, however, so she swung her arm around at the same time as he swung at her.
The cannon on her arm made contact with his facial plates, sending him backwards, his punch completely missing her. Before Elita's opponent even hit the ground, Chromia was taking advantage of her own opponent's loss of balance. She shot him clear through the neck with her shoulder cannon, a sickening gurgling emitting from him as his own energon chocked off his cooling vents. He went down hard and Chromia wasted no time. She jumped on his chest and shot him in the head. Then, for good measure, she shot him through the spark.
She then jumped on Elita's victim, who was writhing around on the ground in pain.
"Wait!" Elita grabbed her arm to stop her from shooting the mech. "Don't kill him. There's been enough death already."
Unfazed by Elita's desire not to kill her opponent, Chromia was impressed by Elita's fast action to simply neutralize the Cons with force rather than through negotiation. She looked at Elita's feet, nodding at the wicked looking knife that was still protruding from her toe-plating. "Does that come standard?"
Elita shrugged her shoulders, subspacing the weapon with a sharp 'schwick.' "Maybe," she said. "It came with the frame."
Chromia gave a chuckling smile, which Elita couldn't help but return.
Elita looked down at the writhing mech, "I'm tired of these creeps thinking with their interface cables. He can live without it for awhile."
Chromia underestimated Elita's reasoning for not wanting to kill the mech. Elita had always been compassionate and, like her sparkmate, she didn't like to kill needlessly. In this case, however, the reasoning for keeping this enemy alive was decidedly more sinister. Death would have probably been the best thing for him.
"I must be rubbing off on you," Chromia said to Elita, sneering at the mech.
"Let's get back to Mirage and the others," Elita said, making no comment on Chromia's statement. "These idiots probably called their friends."
---
"When we got back to the others, they were already being attacked," Chromia continued her accounting to Optimus and the others. "There were Decepticons everywhere. They weren't there when we arrived. As far as we could tell, they showed up as a mobilization force preparing to go through the portal. We didn't know where they were going and they didn't know we were there until they showed up. We were just at the wrong place at the wrong time..."
---
When Elita said that she was taking Chromia to go see the space bridge, Mirage, Hound, and First Aid didn't think anything of it. That was before, when they thought there were only three Decepticon guards on the planet. When all the other Cons started showing up, everything changed.
Mirage, Hound, and First Aid tried to reach Elita and Chromia via their comms, but there was some sort of interference preventing them from communicating. So, they decided to go and get the femmes on foot. They could have taken the 'Illusion,' Mirage's ship, but they needed stealth. An Autobot ship taking off would have definitely been noticed.
They relied on Mirage's ability to disappear and Hound's ability to track to stay hidden as they went for the femmes. Mirage didn't want to leave First Aid alone, as he wouldn't have stood a chance against the Cons if they discovered him on his own, so he went with them.
In retrospect, Mirage wished he'd left Hound with First Aid and gone on his own.
As soon as the arriving Decepticons saw the little band of Autobots, they attacked. The only thought on Mirage, Hound, and First Aid's minds was that they had failed Prime in the protection of his and Ironhide's sparkmates. Elita and Chromia were a formidable force, but there was no mistaking strength in numbers. Being off by themselves with the sheer numbers of Cons showing up did not bode well for the pair.
Elita didn't miss the look of relief on Mirage's faceplates as she and Chromia charged towards them through the battle.
"Oh thank Primus," First Aid exhaled through his vents while he and Hound provided cover fire for the approaching femmes.
As the Decepticons closed in on them, they somehow became separated into two groups. Mirage and Chromia were together and Elita was with the others. Elita and the others couldn't break free, but Mirage and Chromia were quickly making an opening of escape for themselves.
"Mirage! Chromia!" Elita yelled through the melee. "Go get the ship! We're getting off this planet!"
Chromia was reluctant to leave her friend, but she and Mirage didn't try to wait around, lest they lose their chance. They took off towards the location of the ship, several Decepticons pursuing them as they went.
Chromia suddenly went down from beside Mirage, a Decepticon leaping and pulling her down by her ankles. He landed a stunning blow to her face before Mirage could double back to her.
Chromia was momentarily dazed, pain lancing around her head. The Decepticon brought his gun to bear on her and she was able to grab his wrists, pushing the weapon away as he took the shot. The bullet lodged harmlessly in the ground next to her head. In the next instant, Mirage was upon him, pulling him off of her as she scrambled to her feet.
"Run!" he yelled. "Get to the ship!"
---
"I ran as fast as I could," Chromia said quietly.
Chromia's spark began to pulse erratically at the memory of her fear that the next plasma round that went past her head would be the one to take it off. Ironhide reached out to her, doing what he could to keep her spark calm. Bumblebee picked up on her distress as well. He didn't know if he could offer comfort, but he tried.
"I got to the ship and launched, but when I got back to where they were before, they were gone..."
---
"Elita? I have the ship. Where are you?" Chromia transmitted through their link.
"We're at the space bridge," Elita quickly transmitted back.
"Frag," Chromia murmured to herself. Why and how they got back to the gate was beyond her at that moment and getting the ship to it was going to be nearly impossible. A couple of Con ships already spotted her.
"I lost Mirage," Chromia said.
"He's okay," Elita responded. "He's with us. We're located at zero zero point two nine. The Cons have activated the portal! If you hurry, we might be able to go through it!"
The plans kept changing. Everything was in motion, but nothing was guaranteed.
"You want to leave through it right now?" Chromia asked. She had assumed that they would first get off the planet and then come back to the space bridge at another time, when the Decepticons weren't there in force.
"Good a time as any," Elita replied.
A Decepticon ship fast approached the 'Illusion,' sparing no missiles as it closed in.
"Frag!" Chromia cursed, banking hard to the right and then going into a nose-dive followed by a tank churning ascent, dodging the missiles, but just barely as one grazed her aft engines.
As if it couldn't get any worse, two seekers joined the fight.
"Fragging frag!" Chromia pitched forward as one of the seekers buzzed by her view-screen. She could practically feel his victorious smirk.
She continued to try to reach Elita's coordinates anyway, though the seekers and the Con ship thwarted her every effort.
"Elita, I can't get to you!" Chromia sounded frustrated and desperate through the link.
Elita and her fellow Autobots watched their ship juke and dodge the airborne Decepticons from their spot on the ground. She flew over them a couple of times, but it was clear that she was never going to be able to land.
Elita glanced at Mirage, who already knew the only choice they were faced with at that moment. The 'Illusion' was his ship and Elita had always remembered that. He nodded in her direction, though he always knew that he never had to give her permission to do anything; he was on Elita's team.
"Fly into it," Elita transmitted to Chromia.
"What?!" Chromia exclaimed in shock.
"Fly into the portal," Elita transmitted clearly.
"No way!" Chromia yelled at the same time as she transmitted the same words.
Elita and her companions watched from the ground as Chromia flew Mirage's ship over the portal but not into it.
"Fly into it now before they close it!" Elita transmitted harshly.
"No!" Chromia yelled. "I'm not leaving you!"
"Do it! That's an order!"
Chromia's spark sank as another seeker joined the chase. She was very close to the portal. The first two seekers were closing in on her ship from the starboard and port sides. The Decepticon ship that didn't seem to run out of missiles was closing in on her aft and the new seeker was coming right at her from the front. She had a clear shot through the portal if she banked hard to the left while pitching the ship into another nose-dive.
Her only option was becoming painfully clear... It was either fly through the portal or get blown out of the sky.
"We'll find a Con ship," Elita said, trying to appease her friend. "We'll rendezvous on the other side."
Chromia knew Elita was just trying to make her feel better, but it sounded as hopeful as Elita always was.
"I'll never stop trying," Chromia's voice whispered through the link, her quiet promise nearly breaking Elita's spark.
Right at that moment, Chromia dove the 'Illusion' right through the space bridge portal. The three seekers broke away to keep from colliding into each other as the ship disappeared. The Con ship on her aft went right in after her, however.
---
"I got away from the ship by flying back through the portal once we came out the other side," Chromia explained. "It didn't fly back through with me. I didn't understand why until I got to the other side again. I thought the bridge was going to transport me to the same place that I had just left, but it didn't. Apparently the bridge was only programmed for one jump. So, the next one was blind. The Cons on that ship knew that, so they must not have thought that I was worth the risk."
"I had no idea where I was," Chromia continued. "None of the stars were familiar and I couldn't figure out how to get back to anywhere that I recognized. The space bridge was simply suspended in space. There were no planets anywhere. I made sure I always knew where that bridge was and I came back to it often, but I couldn't fly through it again. I tried several times, but nothing ever happened. I always stayed in the same place. I guess it shut down and I couldn't figure out how to activate it again. Not even any Decepticons ever came through it.
I was lost and time kept passing. I don't know how long I was out there, but my chronometer broke after seven vorns. I was trapped in a universe that I didn't know. There was nothing I could do. And I never saw Elita One or any other Autobot again. I was alone, completely alone."
Ironhide put his arm around her when her frame started shaking. She didn't push him away and she let him nurture her vulnerability through the strength of his spark. He let her rest against him and didn't give a frag who saw them at that moment. He couldn't imagine drifting for vorns with no contact with anyone. He was angry with himself for not pushing her to tell them this earlier.
Things were starting to make more sense to him, though. She had a lot of time to be lost in her own thoughts and personal hell with what they'd lost at Floatilla, among every other horror of war she'd suffered before and since then. It was probably sometime during her seclusion in space that she was forced to continue to delete more memories, thus losing the name of their sparkling, Nightfire's name and memories, and who knows what else. With no one to help her and no one to talk to, she had no other choice.
"It got to where I didn't have enough energy to stay online for very long. I continued to try to find a way back until I depleted the energon stores on the 'Illusion.' Then I had no choice but to power down for extended periods of time in order to conserve energy."
Chromia felt Bumblebee's spark reaching for her, his warmth combined with Ironhide's making her feel better. She smiled at him. A youngling such as him was enough to give anyone hope. She briefly wondered if that was why he was created. He truly was a blessing from Primus.
"The last time I powered up from an extended shut-down, I returned to the space bridge. I couldn't believe what I saw. It was active! I flew right through it without even hesitating. It didn't matter if it took me to another universe I didn't know. Anything was better than where I was, even if all it turned out to be was someplace new that I didn't know.
This time, the other side was on a red planet. I was so excited to finally be near a planet, but it was the transmission I received that captured my spark in pure joy. It was a transmission from you, Optimus. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I came straight to the coordinates with the map that you sent in that transmission."
Unsure of the Decepticon presence she figured would also be at those coordinates, Chromia left the 'Illusion' orbiting around Earth's moon. She approached in her protoform without broadcasting any signals at all. Until she felt Ironhide himself in her spark, she wasn't going to announce who she was to anybody.
When Chromia was done talking, everyone in the room fell eerily silent. Even the humans, who had no clue what just transpired between the aliens, grew quiet. It was as if they could sense the somber mood.
Optimus just sat there, his processor working through several mysteries they didn't understand since arriving in this galaxy. He always wondered how the Decepticons beat them to Earth. It seemed one of the seekers built a space bridge on Mars. Optimus's concern for every Autobot kicked in as he thought of something else.
"You didn't mention Smokescreen. What happened to him?" Optimus asked.
"Smokescreen switched teams a couple vorns before that. Arcee and Cliffjumper's team needed someone. The Autobot numbers were so low. He had to go with them to even things out a little."
Bumblebee perked up in recognition of the name 'Arcee,' but he didn't say anything, feeling now wasn't the time for personal queries.
Several human voices cut through the silence, but Optimus wasn't listening. He was thinking of Elita and what could be happening. He didn't reveal to the others what he felt several Earth days ago in his spark. However, he wanted nothing more than to find her, whether she was dead or alive. There were no leads except for what Chromia just told them and that sounded more dismal than he would have liked to have known.
Even if they could figure out how to get back to the abandoned planet where Chromia was separated from her team, that was vorns ago. It was more than seven vorns ago. Chromia wasn't even sure. It could have been fifty vorns ago as far as Optimus knew. The chances of Elita and the others still being there were less than none. Elita could be anywhere. Searching for her was going to be like searching for the AllSpark all over again. Optimus didn't think he had that much time.
Optimus didn't know what he was going to do.
8888
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The space bridge on Mars was built by Thundercracker and can be seen in the movieverse IDW comic Reign of Starscream #2.
Also, I want to note that this story uses the events of the 2007 Transformers movie and the comic series 'Reign of Starscream' is more than likely coming into play (though you do not have to have read that comic series to understand what is going on in this story, as I'm going to change things around a bit if I go that route). However, I must say again, this story does not recognize the events of the 2009 ROTF Transformers movie, as it was started well before we knew what the plot of that storyline was. Even my Jetfire character is different from the Jetfire in the 2009 movie. So...2007 Transformers and ROS, yes...2009 ROTF, no.
