Soldiers surrounded me, working on their computers or talking with another. My presences quieting their conversation as their eyes watched me stroll into the main hangar. A few were either too scared or had some respect to not stare, unlike the others.
The human I was searching for stood on the catwalk, in the middle of a discussion with Prowl. Surprisingly, Optimus was nowhere in sight. Usually if Prowl was here, the massive mech would be here as well. Their chat must not be important enough to include the iron giant.
Instead of taking the stairs, I leaped up to grab onto the bottom of the catwalk and simply climbed up. Nearby humans sat shocked at my sudden appearance. A couple decided to scoot back, fear or shock evident in their body posture. I ignored them and leaned against the railing, eyes finding the ground more interesting.
William noticed the silence in the hangar compared to its normal chatter and peered behind him. Our eyes meet. He excused himself from Prowl and came over to me with a raised eyebrow.
His presences sent the staring soldiers back to work without saying a word. "You sure know how to quiet a room, or in this case, a hangar," he jested and motioned for me to follow him. He led me to an empty table with a tablet on it.
The device was already open and showed a map with three red dots and one black. William gave me the go ahead to take a look. I zoomed on one that seemed familiar and stood rigid, cold energy zipping through me. My talons dug slightly into the table top and created four indents.
"Azar? What's wrong?" William questioned, his voice sounding somewhat far away. I shook my head to get me out that dark hole before it was too late.
It was a bit surprisingly they already found Jasper's old main base this soon. But I guess having the ability to use satellites is handy. "Nothing. Ahem, I recognize this base. It's Jasper's old main base… I was held there," I added on quietly and slid the tablet over to him.
Said man gave an expression full of pity and looked like he wanted to comfort me but thought against it. Smart. He tapped on the device and typed in something before handing it back. "I thought this was their main base, but I guess not. What about the others? And would it be hard to take it down?"
A chuckled escaped me at his latter question. I multitasked by going over to the other base and answering his question. "Oh yes. When my f-" I paused for a second before correcting myself- "Zayden came to rescue me, he lost half of his soldiers in that battle. Either they died or had serious injuries."
"And how many did he lose?" William asked slowly, being careful not to trigger me.
I peered over to him with a blank face, void of emotion. "Eight thousand." No matter how many times Zayden told me, it was my fault those people died. Their blood is on my hands as well. Their numbers should be added to the count I already have.
The human dropped his mouth completely in shock and stared wide-eyed at me. "Ei-eight thousand!" I avoid my gaze back to the tablet and also recognized one of the other bases functions. Tears wanted to appear from the horrible reminder but I closed my eyes instead with my head turned.
"Yes. He original had sixteen thousand soldiers. After the battle, another four thousand left, all of them had understandable reasons. Now he's left with a measly four thousand soldiers. And he still isn't strong enough to defeat Jasper," I stated and tightened my grasp on the table. Heat and cold battled in my chest, both wanting freedom and dominance.
If he could, his mouth would be connected with the ground. "Sixteen thousand! How did he have that many people?" I shrugged my shoulders, unsure on what Zayden did to acquire so many humans. Then he went and wasted half of their lives on me, a life that wasn't worth saving. "Well, Jesus, he still has double our numbers."
Well, William has a group of sentient alien robots that he works with. So he had some extra fire power than he thinks. "But look where it got him, to the bottom of the food chain. Sometimes large numbers aren't your friend. Anyway, the base in North Carolina is a research base. The one in Texas is a holding facility. If we're in time, we could save a few innocent kids lives."
This caught his attention big time. "Like Jasper hasn't done any of their… testing." I passed the device back with a nod to confirm.
"Jasper also has facilities to hold their superhuman but this isn't one. That doesn't mean there won't be any since they use them as their soldiers." William tapped on the tablet some more before turning the screen off and holding it close to his chest.
"Awesome, thank you. I'll let you know when we'll be heading out, but be expecting it to be in a couple of day at the most." I gave him a simple dip of my head then turned around and took off out of the hangar.
Cold, winter air bit at my scales, wanting nothing more than to consume my warmth as its own. The roads for the humans and vehicles/Cybertronians were half plowed through the snow. Said humans were having to trudge through the snow covered grounds to get to their designation. I chuckled lowly at their misfortune and felt pride for having my wings.
Speaking of the appendages, they carried me over to the nearest light pole. The scales on the bottom of my feet stung from the frosty metal. That didn't deter me from furling my wings and melting any nearby snow.
My breath could easily be seen floating away at each exhale before disappearing. In the back of my mind, I felt the tall tell sign of the twins being nearby.
All they had to give was ease and comfort as if they knew of the brewing storm inside of me. After the reminder of 'The Last Stand' battle as Aztec soldiers started to call it, a flooding emotion of overwhelming guilt hit me, hard. There were trickles of anger within the mixture, mostly at Zayden but at me as well.
Truth be told, it was my fault for those deaths. Maybe not on both sides but might as well blame it on me, Rue always did. God damnit!
Burning heat swelled in the back of my throat at the thought. Instead of causing a scene and giving any fearful soldier an excuse to shoot me, I swallowed my rage and latched onto the connection.
Since my mind was now focused on it, their auras wrapped around me like a blanket. It gave me the chance to go back to properly breathing. I opened my eyes, not knowing they closed, and scanned over the vast grounds of the base to find Jazz facing me. With his visor in place, there was no physical way to find out if his eyes were on me.
Yet, with my heightened senses, I could feel his gaze on me and subconsciously narrowed my eyes at him. Without much thought, I straightened my back in a challenging way and stared him down like a hawk. I was not in the mood to deal with any who wanted to snoop in my business.
Luckily for the both of us, mostly him, he declined the challenge and turned to walk towards the training grounds. My eyes watched his form until it disappeared behind a hangar. I released a breath that I didn't know I was holding and looked down at my hands.
The limbs were shaking. Energy was flowing between my fingers. What energy? I had no idea as my mind was on more important thoughts. Which included Zayden.
Thankfully, the blasted connection snapped me back to reality, harshly. An overwhelming dizzy spell nearly knocked me off the pole. My talons scraped against the metal and left marks in their wake. That was the least of my worries as I hung upside down; wings unfurled, ready to catch. It would've been a futile attempt.
This morning's breakfast lurch into the back of my throat, threatening to spill. A weird sudden loss of motor function left me falling head first in the snow. During the short fall, the weight of my wings were able to semi-level out my body.
My back slammed into the snow covered concrete below. Pain rang out like an empty room. The air was knocked out of me as I lied there stunned and confused on what just happened.
A few long moments later, my body finally responded to my orders. I weakly raised a hand to stare at and saw double, possibly triple. What in the hell just happened? A dark idea sprung up in the back of my head the second after. Was this the beginning of my downfall? Had my body finally start to reject and/or give up on the foreign DNA?
I squashed down the random thought and struggled to my hands and knees. Nothing felt or seemed out of place and my wings were only sore from me landing on them. Note to self: never do that again.
Then embarrassment rushed through me like a tidal wave as the thought of some soldier seeing me fall. My gaze scanned over the area and found it deserted of any human life. Human was the main word.
Jazz stood against the hangar next to the training ground, gaze staring me down. Instinctively, my wings unfurled to make myself look larger, in another challenging way. This time though, the small bot didn't take the warning and stayed in his spot. He better not have seen that, if he did, he better not tell a single soul or the gods help me.
I take back my challenge when he didn't move and returned to the lamp post. All evidence of my fall was erased with a simple flick of my wrist beside the one witness. I wanted to stay pissed off but from the lack of sleep and my mentality on the verge of collapsed, I reserved back to my mind.
Even with the slight disturbance, the storm raged on with no end in sight.
Until the tall tell sign of a pair of brothers approaching. Electricity buzzed to life, dragging me back to the world around me. My eyes immediately found the blue orbs of the twins. They carried a calming aura around them, as if they sensed the trouble swirling inside of me.
Without a chance to stop myself or let them greet me, I spoke. "I really miss him. I also really wish for this damn to be over but we soldiers don't get what we want, do we?" I don't know what compelled me to say those words but they slipped out.
The two stopped in their tracks, bewildered. The moment after, heat swelled in my cheeks as red cover the skin there. "Azar…" Sides trailed off with a worrying tone. The two glanced at each other.
But I wasn't done. "I'm tired, exhausted. This war I've been fighting has consumed most of my years and there's no end in sight. I want it to be over. I want to rest peacefully without having to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life. It doesn't help this connection is driving me insane. It's making me want a happy ending. It's making me feel like I deserve to be loved." I silenced myself there before I spoke too much and broke down in front of them.
Their only answer was the cycling of their breathing. Now, I felt even more stupid and wanted the earth to spilt open and swallow me whole.
Sunstreaker was the first to move out of the three of us. Even though he didn't favor touching humans, the mech rested a semi-cold hand on my thigh, sending a shiver down my spine. His brother came after with words as the yellow bot wasn't the greatest with them. "Azar, you do deserve a happy ending and love. Anyone who has said that will meet our fists."
Unlike him, the end of sentence ended with a slight growl, surprising both Sunstreaker and I. I scoffed in return and made the smallest movement to into Sunstreaker's touch. "Well, I guess you'll be taking a swing at me." I also knew of another person who had grounded into my mind that I was just monster meant to kill but I didn't want to bring that up, just yet.
The tension in the air slightly eased as the mech grinned. What did he have up his sleeve? "Alright, get ready," his tone was light. Sides half-hearted/playfully swung at me and gave me more than plenty of time to dodge.
My wings protested quietly against the sudden use of them. I couldn't help the laugh that escape at me from the simple dodge. Sides shook his fist above his head like an old man yelling at kids on his property would do. "Get back here so I can knock some sense into you."
The mood had shifted mostly to a light, ease playfully aura the swallowed us. How the mech was able to remove the tension so quickly was unknown to me.
Except Sunstreaker wasn't so fooled. "But seriously, Azar, you deserve happiness. We may not be the most stable sparkmates out there but we'll give this," he motioned between the three of us, "our best. For all of our sake."
I knew better than to argue with the stubborn twin and ruin the lightened mood. "We can agree to disagree." I ended it with that and landed on the light pole once more, wings a lot sorer than I gave them credit.
"Now," Sides grinned wildly and scooped me off of the light pole. His hands were the same temperature as his brothers but I didn't mind it. The mech set me down on one of Sunstreaker's wide shoulders. Said bot looked a little surprised at his actions but allowed me to stay there. "Let's go see what the Rec. room has for us."
The three us started our trek through the snow towards our new designation.