Hello. As many of you know, this story has been rewrote once before; it was my sad attempt to save it, only to finally notice that I was making one huge mistake. So, I finally gave up, and decided to split the fic in two, starting all over. I'm so sorry for all those who were following the previous version, I truly am because I know what it feels like when a story that you liked gets cancelled. But I wasn't happy with it anymore, neither felt happy writing it… In fact, it kind of became a burden, because I didn't want to leave it in hiatus.

I'm, though, saving some chapters from that story into this one. The chapters from Out in the Open that took place on Earth will now be part of a completely different fic titled Pedestals. These two stories will interconnect from time to time ―mostly in the form of a visit from Optimus Prime, who's on Earth―, however it isn't a need to read both at the same time, since their plots are completely different. If I'm lucky, someday I may united them in a third story. If not… Uh… At least I hope to give you two stories you may enjoy.

Again, so sorry about this.

Warning: English isn't my mother language, so there might be some grammar mistakes here.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Transformers franchise, nor its characters. It is a registered trademark of Hasbro.

PROLOGUE

It was a fragging disaster…

The Autobot ship came out of nowhere, right when they were suffering a malfunction of their weapons systems, leaving them without any other choice but to fall back. Of course, the Prime's men chased after them, so, making his mind, he ordered the others to bridge themselves at the enemy ship, and take their opponents face to face. Nobody said anything against that plan, and some even laughed it off saying that it was going to be a much simpler battle this way…

What they didn't considered was that there was a cosmic storm brewing not too far from their coordinates. A big one to make it worse… Only when the alarms went off did everyone on board the cruiser acknowledge that their chase took them deep within Theta Scorpii; and too late did anyone considered to activate the energy shield. The storm hit them with everything it had, crushing the vessels, and scattering their occupants to the stars; only so the residual radiation could finish the job… Cybertronian armor wasn't designed to resist this kind of conditions. Sure, they could take one plasma shot ―the war proved that plenty times―; but not a cosmic plasma bath, that was expelled from a system filled with supernovas and electromagnetic anomalies, such as this one.

Yet, one of the figures remained, and its homing beacon went active, sending an SOS to the nearest ship.

Unfortunately, another Decepticon answered the call…

That was pretty much how this started.

Hope you liked it. Let me know.

See ya.