Oh wow, here we go!
Finally the answer is here and the plot line will be revealed!
Sorry it's so later everyone, I swear I didn't lose interest in this story.
I was on vacation in California, not far from where this story is taking place actually.
Now I'm back and I have the chapter finished!
I also would like to mention that since school is starting one week from today, I won't be updated once every two days like I did for the first 4 chapters.
Hopefully I'll be able to get one out every week, but who knows.
I'd also like to quickly thank my friend Etna for beta-reading these for me and my friend Pell for helping fuel this project!
Transformers doesn't belong to me, it belongs to Hasbro and its other respective companies.
Enjoy!
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"Guard the Matrix with your life and I'll tell you everything you want to know."
That's what Jetfire had told him several days ago. He had kept up his end of the bargain of course. He'd filled in every missing piece and even let him pry deeper into some unrelated story-lines. At this point it seemed to Jetfire that since Gabriel was already a part of this, he might as well answer his questions.
Gabriel released a heavy sigh and dropped his pen down on his desk. Ever since the night he met Jetfire, he'd been having trouble concentrating with studying and paying attention in class. It was unsurprising though and he was accepting it for the time being. Whenever it got bad enough, he just had to stop what he was doing.
Standing up from the desk that he and his roommate shared, he walked over to his bed. It was simple, just a small cot with a too large confronter on it. For him, this finally had come in handy. As he kneelt down by his bed, he lifted the side of the comforter, glad that his roommate had afternoon classes. Underneath was a blanket wrapped bundle that had been wedged between two plastic bins holding his miscellaneous items. He knew it wasn't the best way to treat the item, considering it's importance, but his roommate had been known to search through his stuff when he wasn't there. Previously, anything that had peeked his curiosity had caused the nosy teen to dig until he found it, despite Gabriel telling him no.
Now, Gabriel slid the bundle out and laid it at the side of the bed, pulling back the folds of the blanket. Soon, the Matrix showed itself from inside of the blanket. The item still glowed softly and pulsed an aura of power, but now it could only be felt when it was uncovered. It was almost as if it had a mind of it's own, knowing when it needed to hide itself and when it didn't.
Now as he sat there and watched the Matrix, he let himself recount that night's events.
Gabriel sat awkwardly in the pilot's seat inside Jetfire's cockpit. After some struggling on both of their parts, they'd managed to load up and take off from the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, they'd both remained silent since leaving Mt. Lassen. Jetfire was obviously uncomfortable with having the Matrix inside of him and Gabriel sat just waiting for an explanation.
After several minutes, Gabriel took it upon himself to strike up the conversation. "So... Because the Matrix is here, what does that mean?"
Jetfire let out a soft sigh, but seemed to come to life a bit more. "It's better to start from the beginning." The jet started. A small screen on the control panel in front of Gabriel lit up then. "As I've said, we Transformer's came from the planet Cybertron." The screen changed, showing images of a city, something that looked far too advanced to be from Earth. The image swiveled, showing many other Transformers. Gabriel suspected this was a sort of memory of Jetfire's. A few of the Autobots in the video silently greeted the earlier Jetfire.
"But the Great War has torn the planet apart to the point that it is likely beyond any repair." The image changed again, this time to the same city in ruins. "But this has only been the case since fairly recently." Jetfire sighed.
"How recently?" Gabriel pushed, suspecting that it wasn't his "recently."
"A little over 200 of your Earth years." The bot replied, freeing the image on the screen. "But the reason that I am here is due to an event that occurred nearly 500 years ago."
Gabriel watched as the screen flickered slightly. Jetfire seemed to be trying to find a way to explain. This time, two images popped up side by side. On the right, a silver robot stood, a purple Decepticon symbol riding probably on a chest plate. Somehow, his entire appearance radiated a terrible, malicious feeling.
On the left was an Autobot, the red symbol displayed on his chest plate. This Autobot was covered in red and blue. The bot's optics, though unmoving at this point, seemed to bear down on him. Both of these Transformer's were of huge importance.
"Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons." Jetfire began, pulling Gabriel's eyes away from the images. "He's the cruelest of any being and rules over his kind with an iron fist." His voice was tight as he spoke, an obvious hate for the robot.
When he spoke again, his tone seemed mournful. "The leader of the Autobots was Optimus Prime."
Gabriel put a hand on the end of the control panel. "Was?" he asked.
"Hopefully he still is. That's why I'm here." Jetfire sighed.
"I still don't understand."
"Be patient and let me finish then." Jetfire grumbled slightly. He paused again as the screen flickered to a new image. What came on looked like a giant metal ring, some kind of machine from a Sci-Fi movie.
"This is what my people call a Space Bridge. It is how my kind travels across the universe. It is what you might call a transporter." Gabriel was staring at the picture, stunned. "Do not ask me how they work, I don't know." Jetfire added.
The image flickered out again before the screen went black. Jetfire fell silent again, but this time for several minutes. Gabriel waited patiently, suspecting that this story wasn't one he particularly enjoyed.
Finally, Jetfire began again, his voice low. "Nearly 500 years ago, the last great battle in our war was fought. There were great casualties on both sides."
Gabriel listened silently. He suspected that Jetfire had lost good many of good friends in that battle, but he wasn't going to pry into that.
"I was injured heavily in that battle, but that is irrelevant. What is important is that the battle took place near one of our own Space Bridges. The bridge was being booted up to try to transport some of the injured away from the battle. Unfortunately, a Decepticon damaged it in the process." He paused again, but only shortly this time. "Somehow in the confusion of the battle Optimus and Megatron got too near the space bridge. No one's completely sure how it happened, but as they were locked in battle they were pulled into the malfunctioning space bridge."
Gabriel peered down at the Matrix that was rested across his legs. The story was incredible, but it still only drew more questions. He kept them silent. Jetfire was obviously not done.
"After that, the battle dispersed, no one was organized without our leader. We retreated back to our base in hopes of locating Optimus. We found no sign of him though. We knew that meant he was either too far away, offline, or very close to being offline." Jetfire heaved another sigh, the metal inside the cockpit groaning as it flexed slightly. "Scouts were sent in every direction to search for him. The Decepticons did the same as well. I became a scout shortly after I was repaired."
Gabriel looked up to watch the horizon out the window. "So you're here looking for Optimus?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
"What does the Matrix have to do with that?"
"The Matrix belongs to Optimus. It is something that each Autobot leader have held in the past. If it is here on this planet, Optimus can't be far from it." Jetfire said, an absolute certainty in his voice.
Gabriel nodded shortly and leaned back in the chair. It was hard to imagine that his planet had been housing one, if not two, alien leaders for the last five centuries, but if what Jetfire was telling him was correct, then that was the case.
Gabriel draped the cloth back over the Matrix and pushed it back under his bed, tucking it safely between the plastic bins.
After they had parted ways back at the crater, Jetfire had decided to hide himself in the hills near by. For now, he would wait for Gabriel to help him search the planet. Of course, Gabriel had suggested that he try to search some areas by himself, but Jetfire had refused. Wherever he went to search, the Matrix would go with him, but Jetfire wouldn't take the Matrix without Gabriel. After waiting five centuries, Gabriel supposed it wasn't exactly a sacrifice.
Standing up, dropping the comforter down again as he did, Gabriel stood up and walked back over to his desk. He'd gotten his short break and he needed to get back to studying, even if it was currently impossible.
For several minutes he kept his minimal concentration of the words inside of his textbook, observing at least some of the information. What was even worse was that this was the Astronomy textbook, his favorite subject. It was of course still extremely interesting, but he was scatterbrained for obvious reasons.
After about ten minutes, something else began to distract him. Slowly, a crowd of voices had begun to rise beneath his window. He'd managed to ignore it, thinking it was some fight between frat boys. By now it had gotten loud enough to make him curious. It also seemed that the tone of the voices weren't anger or excitement over a fight, but curious voices.
Slightly annoyed, he stood up from his chair and turned to look down from his 4th floor window. Sitting in the parking lot, stretched out in a way that made him wonder how he had possibly managed to get into the lot without hitting something, was Jetfire. The huge B-1 Lancer, which he'd managed to identify after a night of research, was parked in a college dorm parking lot, wings flexed backward over rows of rows. He noted that several of the taller cars had small, but visible scratches of their roofs. The Autobot wasn't moving either, just waiting silently. The noise was coming from an enlarging crowd of students surrounding the plane. They obviously wanted to know how it had gotten there and of course why. Several were groaning over their cars, but most seemed to not care.
Gabriel felt his jaw begin to go slack as he stared down at the plane. Slowly, his eyebrows lowered in slight worry. They'd agreed to meet up on Friday night back near the crater to search again, but here he was. What was so important that he needed to meet him here at his dorm and he couldn't even wait to seek him out on his nightly star gazing trip?
Turning quickly away from the window, Gabriel grabbed his car keys and his backpack, shoving the blanket-wrapped Matrix inside, before hurrying out the door. He ignored the elevator, sure it would be full of people hoping to get a closer look at the B-1 jet, and ran straight for the stairs. He spirited down them, skipping three steps at times. By the time he reached the first floor, his hair was tousled across his forehead and he was panting hard. As he ran outside towards the parking lot, part of him wondered vaguely how he was going to talk to Jetfire without every other student thinking he was a nut job.
When he got close enough, he realize it wouldn't be as big of a problem as he thought. Most of the students seemed to be staying in a big circle around Jetfire, seeming to be afraid of getting in some kind of trouble for touching it.
"Excuse me.... Pardon me...Need to get through." Gabriel muttered quickly as he slid through the crowd. Many gave him startled glances as he wasn't one to shove through a crowd, but was more likely to observe from a distance.
Once he'd gotten through to the front, he realized quite a bit of the crowd was watching him curiously. He tried his best to ignore them as he walked up toward where Jetfire's front landing gear was. As he stopped by it, he rested a hand on one of the large wheels, trying to hide his face behind the landing gear.
"What are you doing here?" he hissed softly, hoping that Jetfire could hear him.
"Took you long enough to get out here. They're swarming." Jetfire grumbled back, obviously not happy with the attention he was receiving. Unfortunately, it was loud enough the several of the students heard it and gasped, whispering amongst themselves. Several had understood it, but others had just heard his voice.
"I was studying." Gabriel hissed back, glancing at a few of the whispering students. A few seemed to be inching forward now. "What are you doing here? What happened?"
"Something's coming. I can't explain here." Jetfire grunted quietly. "Meet me at the usual spot and bring it with you, hidden of course."
Gabriel knew that by "it", he meant the Matrix. He shifted the bag on his back slightly and nodded slightly. "Fine, but good luck getting out of here." Gabriel said slightly, patting the wheel once before stepping back. The students were confident enough that several were sitting on the wheels of the rear landing gear.
Gabriel quickly moved toward his car, thankful it was in the back of the parking lot, ignoring several questions that students shouted at him.
Suddenly, a loud, piercing wail broke out from the jet. It sounded like an emergency alarm going off and made everyone in the area, including Gabriel, jump. It also sent the students that had ventured closer to Jetfire take off running. Everyone pushed back into a wider circle around him. Almost immediately, the B-1 started forward on its wheels, moving expertly through the tiny parking lot. Students that had been standing in front of it scattered in seconds. Somehow, Jetfire made it out of the lot without any problems. Of course, the oncoming traffic all squealed to a halt as the plane wheeled out on the main road. He took up both oncoming lanes and the center lane as he turned onto it. Then, without a second of hesitation, the back jets of the plane fired on and it shot off, probably faster that a normal jet would, down the residential street. To everyone's amazement, the wheels of the jet pulled up from the pavement just in time to miss the slower cars in front of it.
If it had been an ordinary plane, Gabriel suspected he would have been just as dumbfounded as everyone else was, but since he knew what was beneath that plane's exterior, it felt almost normal to him.
Now, Gabriel quickly ran to his little Honda Civic, turned it on, and sped off out of the parking lot before any of the students had taken there eyes off of the dot in the sky that was Jetfire speeding away.
He still wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but he knew for certain that it wasn't good. Whatever was coming, was coming fast. It was a threat to Jetfire and his mission. Somehow Gabriel knew now, whatever happened today, was going to make Jetfire's mission more complicated than what either of them had suspected.
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I hope that flashback scene made sense, I feel a bit out of practice since I've been gone.
Also, at some point I intend to add several other Transformers to this mix.
If anyone has any ideas or suggestions for which ones to add, Autobot or Decepticon, then send them please!
Also, another reason I might be adding slow is because I'm currently watching the Transformers G1 series for the first time!
I swear, I had no idea that Skyfire (Jetfire), was friends with Starscream.
It was just some weird coincidence that I can actually explain.
After watching the Armada series with Pell, she fell in love with Starscream's character and I fell in love with Jetfire's.
When I planned this story, I wanted both of these characters, but I didn't want them to have a complete bloody rage towards the other.
So anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!