Chapter 19 – general confusion

Second To None

By Styles Of Beyond featuring Mike Shinoda

Back for more,
Startin' the war to end it,
Raw,
Rippin' like I'm working a chainsaw.

Acheron's POV

I have never been so confused, freaked out, or lonely in my entire life. And boy, had I been confused, freaked out, and very lonely in my short time on this Earth, and I only remembered 14 years out of 64. I knew five things for sure:

First: I was still 14.

Second: I was the very monster that had haunted my recent coma.

Third: everyone I had once known (actually known, not the people I had just been introduced to) was either dead, on the other side of the world, or thought I was dead. That last thing was just logic.

Fourth: there was no way I could ever go back to my once, mental-because-I-am-insane-till-the-day-I-die, normal life, and it would never be normal in the slightest again.

Fifth: I was dead.

Before I died, I was in my normal-ish life, in 2007. I was meeting people, starting high school, and dealing with my slowly growing insanity, the next stage of extreme randomness.

I had a coma, I guess, filled with terrors and a giant metal black monster. When I woke up, apparently 51 years later, on the other side of the world and after I had just eaten over 500 humans alive, I was that same monster. Then I meet more people, robots actually: a tall, pissed off, then concerned, then disturbed, then disturbING, then very kinky red and blue guy, a short, scared and mentally scarred for the rest of his life black and yellow guy, and a red and white sexy guy. When I say sexy, I mean sexy.

Then I get knocked out, unconsciously download info on robots of this species, get brain (CPU) surgery, get open heart/pump/whatever surgery, get informed I can either die or keep on going on murderous rampages thanks to a wondrous thing called a Black Chip II, get laid by the hottie, come close to doing something called 'bonding', but kill myself accidentally by tearing my spark (life source/soul/heart, sorta) when he passed out on top of me and jerked in his sleep.

Now that I think about it, this was actually just a normal day in the life of Acheron Pitman.

Now here's where it gets weird. So I'm dead, right? Just floating through darkness. And boy, did it HURT! Then I saw a couple of complete strangers, but I knew their names. There was a door into the Land of the Living, and I shoved the one, called Grim but didn't really look like her, through the door and it disappeared. I get directions to hell and go through a blazing red door.

And here I am now.

Here's the really confusing thing: it's not hell. It's this strange place, fully white. So white that there are no shadows and you don't even know where the walls meet the floor, or the ceiling meets the walls, if there are any.

Standing before me was a figure. I couldn't describe him/her, I can't even find the words to say why I can't, all I could say was that he/she was powerful, maybe a god or immortal. You could just feel the power radiating off him/her... whoever or whatever they were.

Then he/she spoke, in a deep baritone, and I knew it was a male god. I think I knew that voice from somewhere. He filled in all the gaps, told me everything I needed to know. I was a TF guru, and he told me everything I had once known about them, down to the last detail, even everything I had forgotten, which wasn't much. My alias was Armageddon. I was 14. I loved Samedi. I had gotten drunk on several occasions.

My friends were alive, even though they were supposedly killed, and were being held prisoner by the Decepticons, save Fluffy. Jumpy was doing alright, Blitzwing was like a big brother to her. Skullzy and Fyromaniac were protected by Blitzwing because they were friends of Jumpy, and were able to annoy Lugnut to their spark's content. By the way, yes, they were TFs too.

Recently, I had been mistaken for a Decepticon by the Air Force and was so badly damaged that I needed to change my alt form, as my armour was damaged beyond repair but my spark could only just make it. Thus I went from a black SC/8T Ultimate to a black F-117 Nighthawk.

We talked, discussing random stuff and new stuff I remembered on my own. He didn't tell me anything about himself, not even his name or what the hell he was. As he told me new stuff, it didn't feel fake at all, as I could actually see the memories unfurling in my mind's eye. I knew he was telling the truth and I trusted him.

He told me about a new kind of technology, something that could help us blend in better. He told me all the details, drawing the designs in the air, and I absorbed every bit of information like a sponge. This could prove extremely useful.

As we talked, he mentioned my mission. I remembered it.

I couldn't wait to get going.

But I couldn't help feeling that he had left something out... something very important...

oOo

My optics on-lined. I grinned. I was in Med Bay.

I was tired too. I yawned and stretched, getting off the healing berth and walking out of the Bay, towards voices drifting through the base. When I got to the room everyone was gathered in, I rubbed my optics and groaned tiredly.

Bumblebee was the first to turn around. He was the first to start screaming his lungs out. The others followed suit.

Was I really that bad looking in the morning? Or were they just freaked cuz they thought they were seeing a ghost or zombie or something? I looked down at my body, looked normal to me.

"What are you screaming about?" I asked, "I come bearing gifts."

They stopped screaming and Prowl asked, "What do you mean 'gifts'?"

"I know a way for you to blend in," I said, "It's a new technology called Cyborg Droids. It can allow you to walk among humans, in crowded streets, almost anywhere attracting little or no attention. Imagine what good you could do with that. You could learn more about Earth than you ever could before. You could get used to this completely different world and understand it better, it would be much easier to protect if you knew how it worked better." Then in a lowered voice I added, "You could help Sari, get her life back on track."

"Where did you learn this?" Optimus asked.

I replied, "A colleague sorted out all the confusing stuff and told me about this tech. He showed me everything about it, and now I can build it by memory, but it would help if I could write it down. You want this stuff or what?"

There was a pause, but then one-by-one they nodded slowly. I smiled, "Come on Ratchet, we have a lot of work ahead of us."

oOo

The droids were complete. When we had finished the first one, Ratchet had gotten the idea and we worked faster and faster. They were done much sooner than I had thought they would be. They all looked like identical guys with no features, and two identical girls also with no features. When I say they had no features, I'm saying you can't tell if they're little kids, adults or old people. All of them were dressed in jeans and white t-shirt.

I volunteered to make the switch first. Ratchet got everything ready, and when he was ready I nodded. He hesitated, neither of us knowing if this would work or if I would die. I smiled to him and he returned it, before pressing the button and I fell into unconsciousness.

oOo

Echo's POV

I was the last one to get a cyborg droid.

When I came to, I didn't open my eyes yet. It felt really weird. I knew I was smaller, and I felt more vulnerable. For one, the cold attacked my body almost instantly and I shivered. It was made out of such soft material. I could squish myself if I wasn't careful!

It was freaky but not freaky at the same time. Acheron had told us that if we got squished or blown up or torn to shreds or got a shower of bullets or whatever, our consciousness would just go back to our robot forms. Easy. Simple. Nothing to worry about, right? Then how come I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes?

A gentle hand traced my jaw line and an equally gentle voice said, "It's all good, Echo. Everything reads green. The whole thing is fine. Wake up."

My eyes opened and met blood red eyes. A pale face, as pale as the hand caressing my cheek, was framed by shoulder length black hair. If her eyes were odd and silver, I would've mistaken her for Acheron. Grim Reaper smiled down at me. And I returned it.

"You feeling ok?" Acheron asked, her face appearing in my field of vision. Seriously, those two were practically twins.

"I'm fine," I said, "like Grim said, it's all good."

oOo

It took a bit of getting used to, the new body. I just chilled around the base, hanging out with the other teens. We were deciding human names for us. Sari had gone to bed a while ago, as it was past 11 at night.

We had decided on our names: Bulkhead was Bob Goldman, Ratchet was Ryan Van De Rhee, Optimus was Oliver Acidiocono, Bumblebee was Billy Basso, Prowl was Peter O'Connor, and I was Edward Cullen. Armageddon and Grim kept their real names.

I had seen myself in the mirror. At first I would have classified myself as albino, but the almost glowing blue eyes didn't fit. My skin and hair were white, my skin not so white, the hair naturally in spikes. Damn, I looked like a ghost. I was tall too, with what Acheron said was the 'body of a dancer' and that she had constructed it especially like that, with a confusingly knowing look in her eyes. That was cool. I always liked dancing. She also said that I was good looking, very good looking. I had just brushed this off, feeling heat on my cheeks.

The others looked pretty cool too. Bee was a blonde, with a single black streak and crystal blue eyes. He was kinda short, with an athlete's form, but everyone was short compared to Bulkhead, and he was a head shorter than me. He had bright green hair arranged always in a 'Mohawk' and dark green eyes, with more muscles than everyone in the base put together.

Acheron was looking out the window. It was raining heavily outside, a massive storm. A mischievous smirk spread across her face.

"Acheron," I said cautiously, knowing that something crazy must be going through her mind, "what are you thinking?" the conversation stopped and everyone looked at Ash, my same worry reflected in their eyes.

She turned to me, her smirk broadening, and sang one line, "she make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain."

It took a moment for it to click, being so random and all, and Grim's eyes were the first to widen and twitch, "You want us to take off all our clothes and start walking like Egyptians in the middle of a storm in the middle of Detroit?!"

She shook her head, "Not all of them, just down to your underwear. It's just too hard to move with soaking, heavy jeans. Come on, it'll be fun!" she stood up, waiting for us to follow.

Slowly, one by one, we got to our feet and followed her as she went into Ratchet's, Prowl's and Optimus' rooms and convinced them to come along too. As a group we walked outside and stood there for a moment, no-one wanting to be the first to strip.

She took off her top and pants, throwing them aside, without a trace of embarrassment, even though all she was wearing now was a black bra, underpants and an encouraging smile. I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks, but she didn't seem to notice it.

The rest of us followed suit, Bumblebee being the first to start strutting his stuff. I joined in, showing off some of my own moves, the water spraying off my limbs in streams of diamonds with every spin, every kick, every flip.

Optimus was getting the drift, although he had to loosen up more. His blood red and dark blue hair a mess, sea blue eyes bright with enjoyment.

Ratchet was reluctant, not understanding. His dark blue eyes watched us and didn't understand, his snow white hair with the red tips plastered to his face and neck. Prowl didn't get it either, golden eyes watching us in the same way, shaggy black hair also plastered to his head, with almost black strips which used to be gold. Heh, and a gold goatee to boot.

The almost-twins had to come over and convince them to join in, which took a bit of effort from all of us, but then they were having fun.

Everything came to a standstill when a shout rang in our ears, "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!"

We all turned and saw a small group of teenaged humans and young men gathered just a few metres away, three girls and four guys. The guys had weird hair, except for one which had monocle. The girls almost looked familiar...

One was standing still, staring at me. An exact reflection of me.

There was a long silence, before Ash spoke up, "Holy slag, it's the long lost twin."

The mirrored me looked at her for a moment, studying her face before asking slowly, "Acheron? Ash? Holy shit, is that really you? How'd you end up on the other side of the world, half a century later and look like you haven aged a day?"

"I could ask you the same question, even though I know half the answer. Now give me a hug, I haven't seen you forever." She opened her arms and enveloped him, a gesture he returned.

When they let go, I said, "This is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. Who are you?"

"Argent Amer," he answered, "and you?"

"Edward Cullen," I replied, holding out my hand, "nice to meet you, brother."

All three girls in his group started giggling and sighing. One of them collapsed, but was still conscious. Ok...

He shook my hand and smiled, "cool to meet you too, bro. So... what are you doing dancing half naked in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm?"

Bee cut in, "an optimist would say we're half dressed." He jerked a thumb at Ash, "it was her idea."

"Ah, that sounds just like her."

"And what are you doing walking around in the middle of the night in the middle of a storm?" Optimus asked.

One of the guys, the one with the monocle, replied, "Ve vere... chilling, zen zeh storm hit. Ve've had to valk halfway across Detroit so far, und ve still have a long vay to go."

"How about we drive you?" Bulkhead offered.

They smiled and nodded. Ratchet and Ash went back inside, hiding their glowing eyes from the new people. There were the roars of powerful cars' engines, and a black Audi R8 came roaring around the corner, skidding to a halt with skill, while a white and red Nissan GT-R came around the corner and stopped much more subtly.

Ratchet got out of the Nissan and Ash got out of the Audi. They can change their alt forms now?

"Whoa, sweet wheels," the dark skinned girl complimented, "old though. Cool... retro rides."

Ash grinned and gestured for them to hop in. The girls got in the Audi, and the guys got in the Nissan. Both cars took off in a spray of water.

"How'd they do that?" Prowl asked.

"No idea," the rest of us answered in sync.

Acheron's POV

I swear I knew these girls.

"So," I started, "you three got names?"

"Yeah," the dark skinned, black haired, purple eyed one said, "I'm Renushka."

"I'm Jess," the red haired, crystal blue eyed one introduced herself.

"And my name is Madeline," the tall, brown eyed, and black haired one responded.

Fyromanic! Jumpy! Skullzy!