Foreign soil.
A/N: As potentially part of a convention that was subsequently cancelled (horrible virus reasons) I made up a Transformers fan fiction writing prompts box, with different colours of paper. There was several continuities involved, so the possibility of crossing continuities is there.
The different colours of paper were:
Yellow - Characters
Green - locations.
Pink - subjects or items that needed to be used or mentioned.
Orange - situations (to happen or be discussed.)
The formula was to write a story featuring 1 or 2 characters (your choice), 1 location, 1 subject/ item, and 1 or 2 of the emotions/feelings/ situations. I've had Writer's block for some time and decided to try my box upon unexpectedly finding it recently. I got:
Characters: Sam Witwicky and Starscream. (So this is Bay Movieverse.)
Location: Ontario, Canada.
Item: Spacebridge
Situations: Peace, Betrayal.
So without further ado, the story.
Foreign soil.
Sam leaned carefully out on the viewing platform, with his phone held firmly in his grasp as he snapped a few photos, then put his phone away.
"Not too far, Sam," Mikaela breathed in his ear, and he turned briefly to smile at her before turning back to drink in the view.
The Niagara Falls was certainly beautiful, and he and Mikaela has decided to come to Canada for a week to get away from it all. They had planned to do a few touristy things, starting with the Falls, and moving on to other Canadian landmarks. Sure, Sam had visited the Falls from the American side a couple of times, but that was as close to Canada as he'd come, this time he wanted to see some more of the landscape North of the USA-Canada border. The Canadian side of the Falls, he had read, was in a Canadian province named Ontario. They'd passed through a checkpoint on the way, and been given a list of items prohibited to be brought into Canada, including guns and drugs. Sam had no prohibited items, having done his research, but planned to purchase some cannabis edibles over in Canada, as there, at least in most provinces, at 19, he was old enough. Of course, as Canada was almost as vast as America, they were limited by distance where they could get to in a week, but at least they had 'Bee with them to drive between places and see most of the sights with them.
He and Mikaeka had decided on their week's visit on a whim, at short notice, and at first he'd fretted about getting a visa in time, until a quick check had informed him that US citizens didn't need a visa unless they planned on being in Canada for more than six months, so that wasn't an issue, at least for the two of them. Bumblebee, however, being a citizen of Cybertron, was likely to be considered an illegal alien (in more ways than one) so was safely incognito in car form in the car park, waiting for them to come back. Sam felt a pang that 'Bee was missing out on this, and guiltily took a few more photos, even though the amount of humidity in the air wasn't good for technology. Phones could be replaced, and at least this way he could show 'Bee the photos, although he hoped one day 'Bee might be permitted to openly come with them to see them. Sam would buy his yellow friend the visa if Cybertronians became known about and permitted to visit the countries of Earth.
He was brought back to his surroundings as he heard someone shout "What's that?" He looked up to see what looked like a bright turquoise and white light side-on vortex spiral out into the sky from a central point. He saw people grabbing for their phones and beginning to take photos and videos, seemingly not concerned that it could, for all they knew, be dangerous.
His mouth dropped open as he watched the swirling, and he stared in confusion, then pulled out his own phone as it pinged urgently at him. It was from Bumblebee.
'Sam, I've just registered a Cybertronian energy signature.' The phone pinged with another message from 'Bee.
'Sam that's a Spacebridge and I doubt it's coincidence it's opening here while you're here. Get out of there, we have to go!'
Sam nudged Mikaela, and waved his phone at her, then reached out as he noticed she was looking at her phone too. Then she reached out to grab his hand, and it was obvious from the look on her face that Bumblebee had texted the same message to her.
"Come on, Sam!" she said, just as someone nearby shouted "Something's coming out!"
He turned his head in time to see a dark shape emerge from the centre of the maelstrom in the sky, and begin increasing in size. He saw several hands clutching their phones rise to catch the dark shape on their screen. As Mikaela grabbed his hand and yanked it, he realised the dark form wasn't getting bigger, but getting closer. It was headed straight for them!
He wasn't the only one to notice: all it took was one scream and the cry of "It's on a collision course!" to cause a panic. Some people still tried to keep filming, but most people shoved their phones in their pocket or bag as they began to run.
More screams rose, and Sam and Mikaela's hold on each other's hands were lost as the crowd surged for the exits. Sam stopped, trying to see Mikaela even as he himself was carried along through the crowd. For one moment he tripped, dropping his phone as he tried to catch his balance, and feared he'd be trampled to death before regaining his footing. His vision swerved crazily between his frantic search for Mikaela and the movement of the crowd that buffeted him. He saw her for a brief moment, in a different group of people, waving at him, and thrust his arms up and out as he tried to wade through the throng enclosing him, as if he was swimming. His foot kicked something he thought was his phone and he hoped it would survive the panicking crowd.
A shadow fell over them, the people all around him fled in all directions, and Sam almost fell again, but managed to stay upright. For a brief moment he had space around him, but then he felt a metal hand grab him and snatch him up from the ground. Screaming started again but it was swiftly getting less loud, and it took Sam a moment to realise that this was because he was being rapidly carried upwards by the person holding him.
"Got you!" Starscream cried in triumph. Sam squirmed in the tight grip of the metal fist that held him.
"Let me go!" he shouted, before realising that at this height, that request was the last thing he actually wanted.
"Don't tempt me, human. Maybe I should, but first, you need to see what your actions have doomed our world to." Starscream raised the hand holding Sam to his chest, where his cockpit canopy opened, and he dropped Sam inside.
"Put on the mask and strap in, you'll need it," he shouted, sounding muffled, as he transformed. Sam was nervous but not so nervous to be glad that the cockpit and its canopy seemed to remain much the same no matter what mode Starscream was in as he landed in an ungracious sprawl in the seat. He corrected his orientation till he was sat correctly and fastened the harness, which finished the process itself, then grabbed the pilot's oxygen supply mask and put it on as instructed.
Sam had heard enough from his friend Miles, an aircraft fan whose favourite plane was the F-22, to understand that the cockpit he sat in was pressurised, but not to the same degree as passenger planes, so the pilot's oxygen supply was supplied by the mask and pipe he now wore. It was an uncomfortable feeling to realise he was completely dependant on Starscream for what he needed to stay alive. Depressurisation, suffocation, sudden acceleration his body couldn't cope with…there were so many ways Starscream could kill him, even in vehicle form.
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Mikaela tried to keep a hold on Sam, but their hands were torn from each other's grasp as the crowd moved and panicked, different groups splitting off, and she was carried along by one group, and Sam swept away by another. She called his name, but it was lost in the general screaming from the people all around. She saw him struggling to get to her, but he was unable to break free from the group of people he was amongst. As she watched she spotted the approaching silhouette suddenly change form, saw the crowd separate for a moment, leaving Sam briefly free and exposed, and she recognised Starscream as the Seeker swiped down into the crowd with his hand, and then withdrew, the hand holding Sam loosely at first, but then tightening to restrain him. She screamed his name again as she saw the Decepticon suddenly soar up, still holding Sam. For a moment she thought he planned to drop the human boy into the Falls, but then she saw Starscream tuck Sam under his canopy, before switching back to jet form and aiming for the turquoise and white swirl in the sky. She could only watch as the Decepticon disappeared from view the same way he came, and the whirling formation winked out behind him.
The clump of people around her began to break up, and she struggled out and ran to where Sam had been. She ran forwards, shouting his name, her foot hitting something which skidded along the ground. She stopped to pick it up, and found what was only recognisable as Sam's phone by the colours, as both front and back were crazed with cracks and gouged with scratches as it had obviously slid along the ground more than once. Pocketing it, she pulled out her phone to call Bumblebee.
"Bee, can you contact the Autobots and Major Lennox? Starscream's just kidnapped Sam." She ended the call and started walking back towards the visitor's centre, wondering if she would ever see Sam, alive or dead, again.
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Sam raised his eyes to the canopy glass once he was fastened in and had oxygen, and only then realised they were heading back to what had to be the Spacebridge Bumblebee had mentioned. He felt his body pressed back into the seat as Starscream accelerated. They were headed directly for the centre of the vortex, and Sam raised his hands against the turquoise-white light, squeezing his eyes shut as the light became intolerably bright, yet even then he could still almost feel the brightness. Starscream levelled out his flight angle, and Sam could only hear the sound of Starscream's engines and a strange unearthly howling that sounded almost but not quite like a high wind, and then the howling cut out and the light was gone, Starscream's engine sounds the only thing he could hear.
He could hear Starscream speaking from by his feet but not clearly enough to understand the content, and looked down to see a helmet with headphones. This was where the voice was coming from. He managed to manoeuvre it to his lap using his feet, picked it up, and put it on.
"Finally you worked it out, you humans are meant to be at least somewhat intelligent!" Starscream said through the headphones.
"Well we don't always think logically when kidnapped and taken through whatever that was. Is that what Bumblebee referred to as a Spacebridge?" he asked.
'Yes, it was," Starscream replied.
"So where have we Spacebridged to?" Sam asked.
"Our world, human, Cybertron, which you doomed by destroying the AllSpark! I want you to think on the destruction you've wrought in our world by by your actions. Because of that this world will lie in ruins forever."
"Can't you, you know, rebuild? Sam asked. He gasped as the cockpit suddenly changed its orientation, suddenly he was dangling from the harness straps. Starscream had transformed into his robot mode. The harness released of its own accord and Sam managed to catch the seat edges and lower himself to standing,
He could see out of the cockpit window, the landscape was a dark sky boiling with cloud, obviously damaged buildings, and debris and parts of mechanical bodies everywhere he looked.
"How is this my fault?" he asked. "Isn't this the result of your war? Optimus said the AllSpark was launched off your world to keep it away from Megatron, who was going to use it to destroy."
"Impudent human! You destroyed the one thing that could have brought life back to our world, after both Optimus and Megatron betrayed it."
"Hey, I didn't know it was that big a deal, and it was all I had to defend myself. But tell me, how did Optimus and Megatron both betray your world? Wasn't Megatron supposed to be your leader?"
"Some leader!" Starscream said bitterly. "He gathered his army under the premise of civil rights, equality for the Deceptions, but he took it too far and turned it into a war of eradication. He went from wanting equality to wanting Autobot and non Cybertronian extinction. Optimus betrayed this world by launching the AllSpark off world."
"Optimus said that there's suspicions the AllSpark may have originated off-world, although there are other theories about it's origin. If it did originate off world, your world must have lived without it before, I mean our world operates without a fancy cube or mystical artefact needed, so why couldn't yours?"
"The suspicions are based on ancient stories that may be no more than myth, as long as anyone can remember, the AllSpark gave form to new sparks."
"Someone on Earth said that most myths are based on some grain of truth. Is that not possibly true of yours?"
"Our myths suggest that mechanical and organic life forms both existed on Cybertron before the AllSpark, and that eventually the mechanical life forms outcompeted the organic. They suggest the AllSpark's arrival may have had something to do with that, cyberforming the planet to make it more habitable to our kind, thus less hospitable for organic life."
"That suggests that mechanical life existed pre AllSpark, so how did they get created?"
"That knowledge was lost, but the oldest Cybertronians are thought to have been given life by the Well of All Sparks. We weren't sure if the AllSpark was just a conduit to the Well, or whether it had its own power, but after the legends, with a few exceptions in stories, almost all came from the AllSpark."
"Exceptions?" Sam asked.
"Some stories suggest that some Cybertronians emerged from the ground, fully formed, others that suggested spark generation between existing Sparks, although that seemed looked down upon."
"What does that even mean?" Sam said, a bit flummoxed. Starscream paused.
"Well Sam, as humans might have put it, when two Cybertronians love each other very much-"
"Wait, what, sex?" Sam asked, beginning to blush. Starscream chuckled.
"Not as messy or complicated as you humans, but essentially, yes. The stories suggest early Cybertronians united their Sparks and that this somehow created an extra Spark, but that these sparklings were disapproved of. AllSpark created sparklings were the way to go, and as I said, it's either myth, or what you humans call "urban legends," that never happened to the storyteller, but that they heard from a friend's batchmate, or told in whispers on street corners."
"Nobody has ever, you know, experimented to see if it's true?" Sam asked.
"No, it's seen as somewhat offensive, plus we're all fitted with Spark limiters to avoid our Sparks getting to too much of a state of excitation."
"Lends credence to the concept if that's true," Sam said. "If it's that taboo, they'd want to avoid accidents, and if limiting the energy level a Spark can reach is the way to stop Spark generation, it would be a method to stop accidents. Or is the limiter there for another purpose?"
"We don't know if it's a safety measure or what would happen if it wasn't there, admittedly," Starscream said. But this isn't a theoretical cytology class it's making you face what you're responsible for!"
"I can see why you're angry about the AllSpark, but I still wasn't responsible for this," Sam said, gesturing at the landscape. "On Earth, we try to rebuild after wars, couldn't you do the same here? Start with a small area and work outwards? If you and the Autobots achieved peace you could pool your knowledge and share the weight of the labour, and maybe you could look into those limiters, get Ratchet's opinion and Optimus' doesn't he possess the collected knowledge of Cybertron's Primes?"
"As if he'll share it with us!" Starscream said bitterly. "The Autobots always kept the best of everything for themselves, including all the knowledge. It's one of the reasons I joined Megatron's forces, and then it turned out he was no better, ordering people around and disposing of those who tried to object to how he was running things and corrupting the Decepticon cause. I managed to make myself too useful to dispose of immediately, as many of the Seekers in our ranks are or were personal friends of mine, and would leave if I were killed, but he never trusted me. I had to bide my time later than I hoped, but I got my opportunity finally in Mission City."
Sam had a moment of clarity, recalling the Air Force attack on Megatron in Mission City.
"You blew that hole in his chest? Then you attacked the planes to make it look like it was one of them, and you were still on his side!"
"I had to attack the planes, my own strike didn't kill him, and I had to make it look as if I were taking revenge on the humans who had done it," he admitted."
"But he's dead now, you could agree to negotiate peace with both humans and the Autobots. Optimus Prime himself told me he wasn't in charge when the war began, and hoped that when he succeeded Sentinel, he could deal with some of the injustices you mentioned. I really believe if you can reach peace with the Autobots, you could try and restore your world, make sure your society is fairer, maybe look into those myths you mentioned about the Well of All Sparks, perhaps try to find it?"
"We know where it is, but it's just a hole in the ground we avoid, as it's meant to be a direct path to Primus, our deity, and nobody who has ever dared to venture in has returned."
"I see the problem," Sam remarked. "I assume probes haven't helped?"
"They only get so far," Starscream told him. "However, maybe we should try again somehow, surely Primus wouldn't want the world and the people he created to die?" He continued in a low but still audible voice as if he were talking to himself and had forgotten Sam was there. "Maybe someone could venture in with a message, it would be a suicide mission, of course, but if the message gets through…"
He straightened.
"You have given me hope, human, and ideas for the future, and for that, I owe you. What do you want?"
"I do have a name you know, but as to your question, I just want to live, and get back to my life and the people I love on my own world. When I wanted to visit foreign soil, I didn't think it would be this foreign," Sam said. Starscream laughed.
"That would be two things, but I will comply, and return you to your own world alive and well, with a condition."
"What is that?" Sam asked.
"That you keep in mind that in doing this, you owe me. When I come to collect on that debt, you need to be ready to pay."
"I agree, as long as it doesn't involve harming my family or friends, the Autobots, my country, or my planet."
"Agreed, Sam, and I will return you alive and well to your own world, and even return you to where I took you, as a sign of good faith."
"Will you consider making peace, Starscream?" he asked, knowing he was pushing his luck, but feeling it was worth the risk.
"I will consider peace, Sam, with both the humans of your country, and with the Autobots, but I promise nothing," he replied, and Sam guessed that's as as good as it was going to get.
Starscream moved in a strange hopping motion to a metallic ring with an obvious walkway leading to it, it looked rather like a Stargate from the film and series of the same name. He pulled a lever, and although there was no motion of the ring or outside of it, the middle filled with the swirling turquoise and white light he recalled from the formation he'd first seen at the Falls. Then, to Sam's surprise, the Seeker walked away from the Spacebridge. After a short distance, he turned around to face it again.
Starscream, with no warning, flipped back into plane mode, and Sam once again had to get himself oriented in the chair. He didn't need to be told to strap in this time, he pulled on the harness, made sure the helmet was on, and gripped the seat firmly.
"Trust me, Sam, as I am trusting you," Starscream said.
"Okay," Sam said, but did not loosen his hold on the seat. Starscream took off, and wasted no time in flying through into the Spacebridge.
Sam heard the roaring of the vortex again, but Starscream exited it suddenly, and Sam noticed they were back above Niagara where they'd exited, and as Starscream lost altitude, Sam could see that the Seeker was aiming for the middle of the walkway on the Canadian side, in a space where there was less people, which he supposed made sense. As they dropped, Starscream spoke.
"Take off the oxygen mask, you don't need it any more, and be ready to take off the helmet and harness, I won't be hanging around, they may have called your Military, so you need to get out fast." Sam nodded, taking the helmet off to remove the mask and then replacing the helmet.
Starscream dropped abruptly, and stopped just a few feet above the walkway.
"Now, Sam," Starscream said, as the harness undid itself and the canopy lifted. "I suggest you slide down backwards on your belly on my left hand side." Sam took the helmet off.
"Will I land safe?" Sam asked as he stood, suddenly aware that when he was getting out, all Starscream had to do was tip or side-slip to his right to send him plummeting to his death."
"Remember, Sam, trust me as I'm trusting you, you still owe me and can't repay me if you're dead," the Seeker said, as if he'd read the human boy's mind. Now they were in normal atmosphere, Sam didn't need the helmet speakers to hear him.
Sam swung his left leg out, followed by his right, before he could change his mind, sliding down Starscream's fuselage, and he dangled for a second by his hands from the cockpit edge. He was trying to convince himself to let go when Starscream tipped, but not to the right, as he'd feared, but to the left, bringing his feet closer to the surface of the walkway, and the few people below - who he could now see were the employees of the Falls visitor experience - who reached out their arms to him. This gave him the courage to let go, and as he dropped into the arms of the people below, and his feet touched the ground, Starscream's canopy descended and the Seeker shot off at a steep angle and at high speed, heading straight for the Spacebridge. Within seconds, he was gone, and as three human-flown jets arrived in the sky, the Spacebridge swirled shut, with no sign it had ever existed. He straightened and shook off the arms holding him, thanking the owners as he steadied himself on the ground. He was tempted to fall to the ground and kiss it, but guessed that would be melodramatic, and bound to be filmed and come back to haunt him, so he fought the compulsion and won the fight.
He was being assailed by questions from all sides but the people around him parted as Major Lennox walked over, his bearing professional and confident.
"Okay, the Military have charge of this situation, and this boy had already signed a non disclosure order that covers this situation, so please don't ask him any more questions, we will take him to be debriefed," Lennox told them. He put an arm over Sam's shoulders, drawing him with him away from the questioning people.
"Don't worry, Sam, Mikaela and Bee are meeting you over there, and you can continue on your way after the debrief," Lennox said. He handed Sam his phone, which had not survived the stampede without cracks to both the case and screen. "Mikaela found this, it looks like you'll need a replacement. I'll see if I can authorise Military funds towards it, seeing as it is a method of communication with one of our allies."
"I may have some good news for you," Sam said as he accompanied the Major, thinking that if he were to trust Starscream, he may as well do so wholeheartedly. "Starscream is the Decepticon leader in Megatron's stead, and my conversation with him suggests he may be interested in peace."
