Joseph paced his mother's hospital room anxious, rubbing his temples in a futile effort to get rid of his headache. He could hear the doctors and nurses yelling at each other out in the halls. Sighing, he sat down in one of the plushy chairs by the wide window. The night before, his mother had fallen into a danger zone and had been moved to the critical care unit of the hospital. His dad had gone and gotten drunk was usual. When Joseph had returned home, he had found the guest room door barely hanging onto its hinges, daddy-dearest passed out on the floor, and Raven nowhere in sight. Sighing, he placed his forehead on the cold glass window pane and looked out at the moon, which was high in the sky.
"Raven, wherever you are, please be safe."
Raven, wherever you are, please be safe.
I clawed my way towards Joseph, tears streaming down my cheeks. I was screaming at him, fighting through the darkness as he left. Something grabbed my leg and began to pull me back. I continued to scream his name as something was jabbed repeatedly into my side.
"Wake up squishy!" Someone shouted, right in my ear.
"AGH!" I screamed and jumped to my feet, whaling around, trying to find who had attacked me. A hand knocked me back to the desk and pinned me down. Large, steel fingers pressed against me, from my knees to the bottom of my mouth. I fought against the hand, kicking my feet wildly and wiggling, trying desperately to get free. There was a click, and a blurry silver circle appeared inches from my face. My eyes focused, and I found myself staring down the barrel of a gun, and, beyond it, Cyclonus's angry face.
"I said be quiet, human!" He hissed. I cringed and whimpered, fearing for my life. 'Where's Scavenger? Megatron said he was supposed to keep me alive!'
"Cyclonus, you have three nano-clicks to explain what is going on in here!" The gun instantly disappeared.
"Scavenger! Uh, uh, what are you doing here?"
"This just so happens to be my room. Now what are you doing to the girl?"
"Nothing!" Cyclonus panicked, though I didn't know why. Had Scavenger pulled out his own gun? "I swear! I just came in here to check on her!"
"Give me one reason why I should believe you."
"Uh, well, um..."
BLAM!
I flinched as the gun went off. Had Scavenger fired on Cyclonus? I looked at the copter-bot, expecting to see him fall to the ground, back or chest smoking, like in the old westerns I had once loved to watch with Joseph and Jake. There was a loud crash, and Cyclonus moved slightly to the side as Scavenger fell forward into the room, blue lightening leaping over his body. He glared up at Cyclonus venomously, his eye-panel twitching.
"An undiluted energon charger? You know those things are illegal, on both sides!" He hissed and Cyclonus gave an insane cackle.
"Oh yes, I do, but when has a law ever stopped me?"
While Scavenger distracted Cyclonus, I struggled to my feet and started to back away towards the computer wires I had used during my previous escape attempt.
"Uh, uh, uh!" Cyclonus said in a taunting voice while watching me, waving his finger back and forth. I froze; he wasn't as dumb as he looked. Slowly-tortuously slowly, as though he was trying to kill me right then and there-he reached out to take me in his hand. Like heck I was gonna stand there and wait while he snagged me!
I launched myself backwards, straight over the edge of the desk. I grabbed onto a wire and slid down towards the ground. Unfortunately, I only got halfway down. Cyclonus hit the desk in a poor attempt to move it, and I fell, right into a large nest of wires. Oh slag, oh slag, oh slag, oh SLAG! I cursed, struggling against the thick wires that wrapped themselves around me. Just as one looped around my neck, preparing to strangle me, they all fell loose, leaving me stranded in thin air.
"Gotcha!" Cyclonus cried in triumph, snatching me out of the air as I fell. "Hehe, I always get my prize!"
"Prize?" I asked, anger growing inside of me. "I am no prize!"
"Watch that tone with me, girl!" He hissed, tightening his grip so it stood on the very edge of pain. "Understand?" I nodded weakly. "Good!" He grinned again. "Cone on squishy! You're my pet now!" He turned away from the desk, stepped over Scavenger's twitching form and ran down the hallway.
"Scavenger, what the slag happened to you?" Megatron asked as the mercenary limped into the room, lightening still crawling across his armor.
"Cyclonus...stole the...girl!" He growled, leaning on the doorframe.
"Well why didn't you stop him?" Demolisher asked. He and Starscream were leaning against the wall near the back of the room.
"He got a flaming undiluted energon charger." He hung his head. "He shot me before I could get it away from him."
Megatron snarled angrily, slamming his fist down on the arm rest of his throne. "Demolisher, scan the lower levels for any sign of Cyclonus or the girl! Starscream, check the warp gate records, then the area surrounding this base! Scavenger, go get yourself into the CR chamber, then get the Minicons to help you search! I want both of them found!" He roared.
"Uh, sir, shouldn't one of us check his room?" Demolisher asked. Starscream snorted.
"Yes, that is most probably where he took her."
Megatron glared at both of them. "You imbeciles! Cyclonus may be an idiot, but he is smarter than that! Now go find them!"
"Yes sir!" The three saluted and took off to their designated areas.
"What's the matter squishy? Aren't you having fun?"
No, my problem is you keep calling me 'squishy'. My name is RAVEN! Say it with me, Ra-ven! I glared coldly up at Cyclonus as this thought ran through my head. He had run down a maze of hallways to his room, of all places. After he had locked the door, he had thrown me into a cage, believe it or not. It was round, just big enough for me to lay down in. The bars were metal and pulsing with some sort of energy. Now I glared through them up at his face, anger welling up inside of me. He was treating me as though I was his pet! Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, a triumphant smile lighting up his face. "I know! You must be hungry!" I watched warily as he snagged something from his desk and dropped it through the open top of the cage. It was a brown lump that landed with a dull 'thud'. It fell over, onto my leg, and I gasped. It was my backpack! "I knew you were hungry!" Cyclonus crowed as I pulled it into my lap. Ignoring him, I opened it up and found that everything was in place. Yanking out a water bottle and an apple that were lying on top of everything else, I started to consider my position. Yes, I was apparently the new pet to a psycho robot from another planet that could transform into a helicopter and destroy me at any second, but hey, at least he fed me. That was a step up from my dad and uncle.
Breaking open the top of the water bottle, I took a nice long drink. The slightly warm water sloshed down my throat into my stomach, reliving me of several days of thirst. Sighing in relief, I took a bite out of the apple. Somehow, it had remained colder than the water, and was just as tasty as though it had been sitting in the fridge. Juice ran down my chin as I devoured it, not caring whether I had an audience or not. I heard a creak of joints as Cyclonus crouched down beside the desk and set his chin on his arms, which were lying on the table, watching me curiously. I took another drink and then finished off the apple, glad to have something to silence my stomach at last. Cyclonus chuckled as I looked down at the apple, licking my lips and chin in satisfaction. I shivered slightly; I was still only in my tank top, and then glanced at Cyclonus, whose face was only a few feet away from the bars of the cage. He was smiling at me again. I turned back to the apple core and took one last bite, making him chuckle. Suddenly, I felt as though I was an animal in a zoo, and Cyclonus was the paying customer that had bought a ticket and come in to watch and throw popcorn at me. For the second time that day, I snapped.
"SHUT UP!" I screamed, hurling the core at him with all of my might. It bounced off his forehead and fell down to the floor somewhere. He stared at me, wide-eyed, stunned. Slowly, however, his eye-panels narrowed and he stood back up, towering over me once again. "Oh slag..." I whispered, pressing myself up against the bars of my cage.
"Why you ungrateful little human! I went through a lot of trouble to get your bag back for you and that is how you thank me?" He screeched.
"Hehe...oops?" I squeaked as he reached down into the cage and snagged me tightly in his hand.
"You will learn to be grateful!" He snarled.
Scavenger stretched as he finally exited the CR chamber, thankful to be free of the energon overdose. Rubbing the back of his neck, he ran a scan on the bases computer system. The human was still missing, as was Cyclonus, and it had nearly been half a cycle. Scowling, he headed for the Minicon quarters, as Megatron had ordered him to. Just as the passed the long corridor that housed his comrades rooms (he preferred to be alone on the other side of the base), he heard it.
"SHUT UP!"
"Why you ungrateful little human! I went through a lot of trouble to get you your bag back and that is how you thank me? You will learn to be grateful!"
"Only Cyclonus could say something that makes so much sense." Scavenger muttered sarcastically before he heard the scream. It was long and shrill, riddled with pain and other emotions that even a seasoned mercenary couldn't detect. It was obviously, however, a human scream.
"Cyclonus, you idiot." Scavenger muttered, starting down the hallway. "You made the biggest mistake of your life. You left me alive, and pissed."
"Not so tough now, are you?" Cyclonus laughed in my face. I cringed, my body wracked in pain, tears staining the edges of my eyes.
"I'm sorry." I managed to say in a voice barely above a whisper. The tears I had been holding back for days now splashed down my cheeks as a sign of submission.
"I know you are." He smiled. "I just want to make sure that you remember that you are." Slowly, he began to crush me once more.
The door slammed open and a purple-green blur slammed Cyclonus up against the wall. Scavenger held one arm against Cyclonus's throat, pushing it upwards. His free hand was curled around the hand that was holding me, which was also pinned against the door.
"Let her go." He whispered in a deadly calm voice. "Now."
"No!" Cyclonus growled. "She's mine now!"
Scavenger shoved him harder up against the wall, nearly shoving him straight through the weak metal. I trembled as his grip tightened.
"Let her go." He said again.
"NO!" Cyclonus screeched as he rammed his knee straight into Scavenger's stomach, sending him reeling back. The copter-bot lunged to the left, groping for the gun that was lying on his desk. It was the same one from before, the one that had sent Scavenger to the ground. Before he could grab it, however, a foot slammed into his hand. He glanced down and saw me kicking and hitting his hand in a futile attempt to let me go. I had considered biting him, but after a moment I had also considered that I didn't want to eat pudding and applesauce for the rest of my life. "Don't like what I'm doing, human?" He snarled, before roughly shoving me into the cage. I hit the bottom of it face first and flopped over onto my stomach with a groan of pain. Shaking it off, I pushed myself to my knees and glanced over at Cyclonus. He was reaching down to grab the gun. Before he could touch it, however, and hand grabbed his wrist and in one quick movement had it twisted around behind his back, along with the other.
"Good boy." Scavenger hissed into the copter-bots hearing receptor. "Now lets see if you can sit." With a whirlwind of movement he turned away from the desk and slammed Cyclonus into the ground. I swallowed; my mouth was suddenly very dry. I thanked whatever gods might have been listening that Scavenger hadn't done that to punish me the night before. "Now here's a tricky one." Scavenger hissed, standing up and kicking the groaning Cyclonus onto his back. "Play dead." He reached over and grabbed the gun from the desk. By this time I had made it to my feet and was leaning against the bars of the cage. As the shiny silver surface of the gun passed, I saw my reflection in the barrel. My face was pale and my eyes were rimmed with dark lines from my recent lack of sleep. Faint tear trails fell down my cheeks, curling under my chain and ending as dots on my tank top. The gun slid past me as Scavenger finished lifting it off the desk. Slowly, he turned and pointed it down at Cyclonus, who was still lying on the ground, panting. A smile momentarily graced Scavengers lips, a small twitch that only I caught, and he pulled the trigger.
Megatron heard Cyclonus's scream all the way in the throne room. He opened his com link to the others with barely a second's hesitation. "Everyone report to the sleeping quarters now!" He ordered. There was a chorus of 'yes, sirs'. Standing up, he stormed down the hallway towards Cyclonus's room.
"Damn Demolisher." He muttered, seeing the door to Cyclonus's room bent nearly in half. Starscream and Demolisher both ran up, but stopped in their tracks when they saw the door. Carefully all three peeked into the room and were met with an interesting sight. Scavenger was standing in between the desk and Cyclonus, who was lying on his back, covered in a fabric of blue lightening, twitching now and again. On the desk was an energon-cage they often used to hold rebellious Minicons. I was slumped into a sitting position beside the bars, my fingers curled tightly around the slender, glowing steel.
"Scavenger." Megatron snapped, catching the bots attention. "An explanation, if you please."
Scavenger dropped the gun in surprise. It clattered loudly to the ground beside the twitching Cyclonus. "I was heading for the minicon quarters, sir. I heard a scream and went to investigate it and found Cyclonus torturing the human." He motioned towards me, not breaking his stride in the least. "I attacked him but was forced back. Cyclonus threw the human into the cage and made a grab for the gun. I beat him to it and shot him before he could shoot me."
Megatron gave him a half-smile. "Good work Scavenger." He then frowned. "But Cyclonus shouldn't have gotten her in the first place!" Stepping over Cyclonus's mostly prone form, he leered down at me. "He did, however, come up with an excellent idea. He wrapped his fingers around the top rim of the cage and effortlessly pulled it off of the table. My grip around the bars tightened as my stomach was left on the desk below. The Decepticon leader glared at me through the bars. After a moment, he glanced at Scavenger. "You are not longer in charge of the human. She will remain in the throne room." He turned to face all three of them. "Demolisher, you get Cyclonus to a CR chamber immediately. Scavenger, take apart that weapon," He waved at the undiluted energon charger, "Starscream, select a....protective minicon to guard her." He shook my cage lightly to emphasize his words.
"Yes sir!" All three saluted and split up. Megatron smirked and stepped over Cyclonus, passed the two in the doors, and headed down the hall. He made several turns, each of which threw me against the opposite side of the cage I was currently on, and pressed on until he reached a large arch. It led to a huge room that had several dents in the walls. Most of them were shaped like Cyclonus. At the far end of the room was a throne fit for a king. Behind it, the wall had been ripped away, revealing the surface of the moon. Above the throne, high in the sky, was the earth.
"We're on the MOON?" I asked, nearly panicking. Megatron gave me an unamused look.
"You're not a very observant human." He said mockingly as he crossed the room to his throne. He sat down wearily and put the cage on his lap, looking down at me absentmindedly. My arms and chest were aching and every breath I took hurt. We stared at each other in silence for a few moments.
"What...what are you going to do to me?" I finally asked. To my immense surprise, he frowned. I thought that he would of at least given me an evil grin. If I was lucky, and evil laugh.
"You will find out soon enough, human." He sighed. "It's a pity we're going to have to get rid of you. Scavenger looked as though he was getting....attached."
I shifted uneasily. Get rid of me? What does he mean by that?
"Ah well." Megatron sighed, and stood up, setting me on the armrest of his throne, so the cage was balanced on the inside edge of it. "I trust that Starscream shall be here soon with your new...friend." He grinned, and for a moment it felt as though the devil himself stood before me, lacking only a tail. "Until tomorrow, human." He said, before walking out of the room. I slumped down against the bars.
"Great, from a mental prison to a physical one." I muttered, pulling my backpack closer to me. I yanked out my blue afghan and wrapped it around my aching body. Settling back against the bars, I prepared to wait out the night.
Okay! Autobots in the next chapter! I swear it! I'm sorry it took me so long to update; only reason it happened today is because I have a stomach bug. ;;; ugh....anyway, I'll get to work on the next chapter right away! And thank you for all the great reviews! No, this is NOT Raven from Teen Titans, this is my own person. And as to why she can breath on the moon? That gets explained in a later conversation between her and Scavenger. So no worries!
Please give me a review! They're the only things keeping me going!
Thank you again!
Sally E. Stauffer
AKA: Ashana