Pretender Chronicles

A War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron/Transformers Prime Fan Fiction

By daywalker03

Chapter 4: Beds are Burning, Part 2

(Takes place during Chapters 14 and 15 Foxbear's Blood and Energon)

Mae paused before she responded; she had honestly not expected the question, as Salcha had expressed a dislike for anything that was not of Earth long ago, and she assumed that he would still hold that opinion of the Voidwalkers now. "I believe he would," she finally said. "He is a very patient individual, and would likely accept that you are part of my family even though you look nothing like Butch or myself."

Salcha loosened his grip on Mae and asked softly, "Is there a Voidwalker here close by? I think I sense one on the property, but it hasn't made any hostile movements that I can sense, so I can't be sure of it."

Mae thought to herself, /* You can't sense that I'm one, little brother? */ as she responded aloud. "Yes, there is one close by, but she would never harm anyone on this property; she's known Red Warrior for far longer than our kind can remember without the histories we pass on and he would not be pleased by such an act on her part."

Salcha said softly, "Could I meet this Voidwalker, please? I have to know if they really don't care what I am."

Mae said, "Of course, dear brother. Please wait a few moments while I speak to her and open the garage door so she can come inside." As he slowly let her go, she stepped away from his chassis and went to the main garage door and opened it. She walked over to where she had parked Teal and sat down on Teal's seat. "Would you be interested in introducing yourself to Salcha formally?" she asked her other self wryly.

Teal said softly, "Of course I would, and I'll try not to give him too much of a scare when I transform beside him." Mae giggled softly as Teal slowly rolled into the garage and parked next to Salcha.

Mae got off and said, "Sal, this is Teal, the Voidwalker you sensed. Teal, this is my brother Salcha. I will leave the two of you to talk, but I will be close by in case either of you want me for something." As she walked out and lowered the door, she felt rather than saw Amarok join her. She reached down and stroked his fur and murmured softly, "So much like Tikaani," and she felt him nuzzle her leg playfully.

"I should hope so," he replied with mock indignation, as she continued to stroke his fur. "I heard the stories about you and your brother from him from the time I was a pup, but every time I asked to meet you, he told me it was not yet time for that. How he knew your kind would once again make their way here I do not know, but he waited to allow me to meet you until you had resumed the ability to change your shape once more."

Inside the garage, Teal turned her front end toward Salcha and looked over the mangled metal until she saw the tentacles waving from around the engine. "Ah, there you are. I imagine you're nervous and possibly uncomfortable about being this close to a Voidwalker, aren't you," she said softly.

Salcha noticed that she had remained in the form she had been in and her voice seemed to drift from near the cowling above the headlight of the three-wheeler sitting next to him. "Yes, to both things you said. I have seen Red Warrior, but his form is closer to my own than yours is," he replied slowly. "Please understand that I have not heard good things about your kind and until today I have not seen anything to make me change my thinking about them."

"Mae explained this to me when we first became acquainted, which is why I have refrained from revealing myself in this area in the past few years," Teal said, while trying to determine how best to transform without becoming fully erect, as doing so might leave dents in the roof. "Red Warrior is a kind mech, which to our kind would be much like your brothers Butch and Zechariah. That is why he helped you; he cares about all intelligent beings, no matter what they look like. Now, I'm going to change my form so that you can see what I look like in it."

She rolled back slowly and triggered her transformation sequence; as he watched, Salcha saw the three-wheeler slowly alter her shape until she was kneeling where she had stopped. The front wheels were folded almost out of sight behind her shoulders and the back wheel could not be seen from the angle he was looking at her, but he assumed it was now integrated somewhere in her back. "You almost look like one of them, except much larger," he finally said. The fact that she looked much like his human siblings both calmed him and piqued his curiosity. "Do all of your kind look like that? " he asked after some minutes contemplation of her form.

"Like what," Teal asked, sensing that her new acquaintance was struggling with something he couldn't quite put into words.

Sal grumbled, "I don't have the right words for it, Teal," he finally admitted.

"Sal, while it is true that we now look quite similar to humans, our world's history tells of other beings that share our origins, and it is those that differed from what we consider the normal appearance, which is that of a nominally bipedal race. However, they died out in a great cataclysm long before I crawled from the Well," Teal said gently.

Outside, Amarok looked meaningfully at the garage and asked, "Is it wise for him to know as much as he is being told?"

Mae said in response, "Uncertain. You know how unpredictable he can be, but I suspect Teal is telling him things that are important to her impressions of what he needs to know about us so that if he ever does meet up with any Autobots, he knows to treat them with respect, since they will defend this world in spite of what the lesser known Others might think would be the actions of our kind."

"A point well taken," Amarok said as he sat on his haunches next to her. "The Decepticons are the ones that are the truest threat to this world; this was impressed upon me by Tikaani repeatedly, though until I saw the damage done in British Columbia, and how they acted toward Red Warrior, I truly did not understand the sort of beings that they are and how little they care for anything not like themselves."

Mae nodded absently, thinking back to her first day on Earth and the questions she was asked by the village elders during the evening. "Yes, they have little regard for life forms they consider inferior, even those of their own kind. They have even less regard for those of their own kind that either refuse to join them and attempt to continue living as they had been doing or those that stand in opposition to their goal of total domination of any world their leader sets his optics on conquering. Of course, we both know that they would need to discover a weapon of some sort that could outclass the one that exists to defend this world to conquer it."