Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers. I only own Shannon, Kristopher, Lyra, and Noah.

Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews! I love you guys! Here's the next update. I'm introducing Lyra's dad. Yay! Anyway, let's start!

Edit: 9/21/12 Fixed some spelling/grammar errors. Fixed the flow.

Chapter 2

Gators With Rice and Electric Ponds

Kristopher Montez was on a plane with his team. He had been reassigned to Qatar after eight months in Afghanistan, and he couldn't be happier. With this new assignment, he would be home with his children within five months. He hadn't been happy when he had received a call from his son's school, asking about the phony number he had given them as contact information. Now they were probably off being mentally scarred by his ex-wife.

A scowl marred the man's sharp features, and, thanks to an ongoing conversation between the other men on his team, it went unnoticed.

"I can't wait to get a little taste of home," the only other Hispanic person on the plane, Fig, said, a dreamy smile on his lips. "A plate of mama's alligators étouffée."

"You've been talking about barbequed 'gators and crickets for the last two weeks," a dark skinned man known as Epps said. "I'm never going to your mama's house, Fig. I promise."

"But Bobby, Bobby, 'gators are known to have the most succulent meat," he argued.

"I understand." Fig started rambling off about how good it went with rice in spanish, ignoring Epps' mocking. "English, please. English."

Before Fig could protest, another man spoke up, his name was Will Lennox. "I mean, how many times have we…we don't speak Spanish. I told you that," he said, looking around at everyone on the plane.

"Why you got to ruin it for me, man? That's my heritage," Fig complained before switching to Spanish again.

A laugh escaped Kris, drawing everyone's attention. "What's so funny, new guy?" Epps asked, eyebrows creasing together in confusion.

"Nothin'. I jus' think that what he's saying is amusing."

"Wait, you speak Spanish?" someone asked.

"Yeah," was the only reply they got.

Before the conversation could get awkward, the same person who spoke earlier switched them to a different topic. "Hey, you guys remember weekends? Huh? The Sox at Fenway. Cold hotdog and a flat beer."

"Perfect day," Fig agreed. "What about you, Captain? You got a perfect day?"

"I just can't wait to hold my baby girl for the first time," Lennox said, sounding tired. The soldiers started teasing him with comments about how adorable he was and things of the like, but not Kris. No, he found himself wishing he could be with his kids too.

"What about you, new guy?" Fig asked.

"Perfect day," Kris mumbled, thinking it over. Each thought involved his kids, it was hard to just pick one. "A warm, sunny day at the beach, playing catch with my son while my daughter reads a book in the shade."

"Sounds nice," Lennox said, giving him the kind of sympathetic smile that only a father who's been away from their child for a long time can give.

Yeah, Kris thought, leaning his head back against the plane's inner wall. Sounds perfect.

Dear Lyra and Noah,

I'm sorry that you have to stay with your mother. I don't know what happened. I had asked a friend of mine to let me use their phone line as your contact information. Guess they cut it off.

I'm sorry, guys. I know you don't like staying with Shannon. If it helps, it'll only be 5 months before I'm home. Now that I'm in Qatar I'll be able to do what needs to be done.

Lyra, stop worrying. It's gonna give you wrinkles. I'll be fine, and I'm sure No' will be fine too. You need to lay off with the coddling a bit.

Noah, listen to your sister. And happy belated birthday! Make sure your sister takes you shopping to buy a toy from that fandom you're in love with. Pokemon, right? You never do stop talking about it.

I love you both and—

A commotion from outside caught Kris' attention. He put the letter he was writing down, grabbed the M-4 combat assault rifle and gear that was next to his bunk, and made his way outside. What he saw was like something out of a comic book.

Robots. Giant armed robots.

As much as Kris would've preferred to just stand and gape, he knew that that would just get him killed. And, if that were to happen, then his kids would have to be stuck with their she-devil of a mom.

Springing into action, he ran towards the closest robot, aiming his gun and firing at it. The bullets seemed to do nothing to it as it just continued attacking the building it was focused on.

"Crazy…" he said, taking a few steps backwards in shock. There was an explosion, knocking Kris off of his feet. He scrambled away from the robot and jumped up, trying to regain his balance as quickly as possible.

Lennox, Epps and the rest of the team were running by at that moment, and one of them grabbed him and started tugging him along. He ran with them, hoping to every deity he could think of that he would get out of this alive. If not for him, then for his children.

It was silent. Nothing moved. Not the trees, nor the clouds, not even the wind. It was like the world was dead to Lyra. Or Lyra was dead to the world. There was no pain here, no emotions. Just silence and cold.

Lyra's breath came in short, shallow pants, as if she had just run a mile in a time span of two minutes. Each inhale burned her throat; each exhale caused a small puff a smoke to crystalize as it escaped her chapped lips.

Where was she?

The brunette opened her mouth to call out, but found that she couldn't. No noise would come out. At all.

Panic swelled within her. Lyra turned around and around and around frantically, trying to find something, anything that could explain why no noise could come out. Her hazel eyes landed on trees, trillions and trillions of trees. Ongoing, never ending…

"Help!" she tried to yell. "Please! Help!"

But the words never left her half frozen lips, not being able to create the noise required for communication. The anxiety in her tripled, suffocating her, leaving her gasping for air that she already had.

Lyra felt lightheaded, her stomach churning as the trees danced in her vision, swimming in her dazed gaze. Her knees shook violently, and she felt like she was forgetting something. Something important. Something more important than her, but she couldn't remember.

Why couldn't she remember?

The teenage girl tried to remember what had happened prior to coming here, she really did, but there was a haze that wouldn't let her remember. Why wouldn't it let her remember? Lyra fought with all her strength, with every fiber of her very essence, but she couldn't fight back that fog, couldn't make it go away long enough for her to grasp the wisps of her broken memories.

"Barricade…"

Lyra jumped to her feet. She twirled around faster, trying with all her might to locate where the sound came from. It didn't matter that the trees now danced around, on the ground, on each other, on the sky. That didn't matter. There was a desire, a yearning, deep within her soul that demanded she locate the origin of the familiar voice.

"Ly…wake up. Please, Ly, I need you…"

"Who are you? Why do you need me?" Lyra tried to say, growing restless as the voice started to turn hysterical.

She kept looking, moving quicker and quicker. She even approached the forest line, looking into it uneasily. Could the voice be coming from in there?

Lyra preferred staying out in the little clearing she was in, but the voice was distant, faint; it couldn't be coming from there.

The first step into the woods was the hardest thing she had ever endured. She knew it was. It wasn't painful, there wasn't any pain in this place, but it was just so…excruciating. The temperature, which was already at about freezing rate, seemed to drop below zero, leaving every piece of exposed skin blue.

"Lyra, wake up! Wake up, now!"

Wake up? Wasn't she already awake? She was pretty sure she was.

Ignoring it, Lyra continued further into the forest. It felt like hours, maybe days, before she reached a break in the trees. A pond so small, yet so large at the same time, was what greeted her. With the current temperature, she would've expected that the water had frozen over, but it hadn't. No, it was still very much a liquid. Though, she had to admit, it wasn't like any liquid she had ever seen. It was blue, and it looked like little electric currents were running through it.

It mesmerized her. The electricity danced, shining off every surface it could grab on to. Including something around her neck. Confused, Lyra broke eye contact with the electric water and focused on the strange surface.

A necklace?

Lyra glanced back at the pond, examining it closer. At the bottom was something that churned the gears in her head. It was distorted, but it looked familiar. She leaned toward the pool of electric liquid. If she could only just get a closer look, she was sure that she could remember.

It looked like…like a metallic face.

Gasping as the memories flooded into her mind in nanoseconds, Lyra was rocked off balance and landed headfirst into the pond.

A scream tried to rip its way through her throat, but there was no noise here, no noise but Noah's familiar voice.

Noah was scared. He was all alone inside Barricade, and he didn't know how. Lyra was next to him, unconscious, bloodied, screaming in her sleep.

The Decepticon wasn't too happy that his sister was bleeding all over his interior, nor did he like having to listen to her shrieks of pain and fright.

Once again, Noah tried to wake his sister. He knew it was wrong, after all, you were supposed to let people rest when they've been injured, but he was terrified. He needed his big sis to take care of him, to tend to the gash on his right arm and pull out the glass in his calf.

"Lyra, wake up! Wake up, now!" Noah hissed, poking at an unharmed area on Lyra's abdomen.

"Give it up, fleshy," came a deep voice from the police cruiser's speakers. Frenzy, a mini Decepticon sat in the front passenger seat, doing Primus knew what. "She's not going to wake."

A whimper escaped him, and he curled up closer to Lyra, seeking comfort in her. He tried to ignore the blood, but he couldn't. He may have only been eight, but he knew that losing that much blood was bad.

'Lyra, please wake up. I'm scared,' he thought, gripping her hand tightly.

As if she had heard him, a screech ripped its way out of her body, forcing him to cover his ears. Barricade swerved, caught off guard slightly by Lyra's antics. How was he supposed to concentrate on finding Ladiesman217 with that sound destroying his audio sensors?

"Quiet, femme!" the Decepticon snarled as he tracked Ladiesman's cellphone. The fleshy was about half a mile away.

"Ly! Quiet," the human youngling said, trying to calm his banshee of a sister down. "It's okay. We're safe."

The way the young mech said it made it sound as if he knew that he was lying. Barricade found himself feeling smug. Starscream had ordered him to find the glasses, and, along with that, he was also bringing back a pair of humans that seemed to know about them. They seemed to know more than they should.

"No', it hurts," the femme, Lyra, the 'con had gathered, moaned out. Noah leaned down to his sister's ear and started whispering to her to keep Barricade from hearing. But, it seemed, he had forgotten that Cybertronians had much better hearing than humans.

"Ly, we're in Transformers," the child hissed. "We're in Barricade, in a Decepticon!"

"What're ya talkin' 'bout?" she mumbled, burying her face in his leather upholstery. The 'Con revved his engine in protest, but said nothing. He was half focusing on what was going on in his cabin, and half on tracking Ladiesman.

He was about a hundred meters away from him when he picked up on a Cybertronian signal. Slag it to Pit, Barricade thought, picking up speed while trying to avoid the traffic.

"Ly, I just saw Mikaela!" Noah exclaimed, pressing his face against his window.

"What are you talking about?" Lyra asked again. Her voice was laced with pain, but it at least sounded stronger. She tried to sit up, wincing and groaning as each move pulled at one of her numerous injuries.

'Cade growled, pulling into an alley of sorts. There were parked cars everywhere, making maneuvering around harder but still possible. He spotted Ladiesman and played his police siren. That seemed to have caught his attention.

The Autobot scout drove off, making the Decepticon suspicious.

"Hey, it's Sam!" the human boy said, pointing at the human who was approaching him.

"I don't believe it," Lyra murmured, recoiling into his seats.

"Quiet, humans," Barricade barked, turning on his holoform.

Lyra's jaw dropped. The pain was forgotten completely now, her full attention on the man that just appeared in the driver's seat.

"Okay, maybe I believe it now," she said.

Her gaze went from the mustached man to the door that swung open, hitting a boy on a pink bike. Sam.

"That's gotta hurt," Noah cringed, leaning closer to get a better look. Lyra grabbed onto his arm, yanking him back.

"Stop it," she hissed at him, keeping a firm grip on him.

"Listen to me!" Sam said, getting up as if nothing had happened. "Thank God you're here! I've had the worst day ever!"

"Get out of here," Lyra muttered, glancing between the boy who was practically having a mental break down and Barricade's holoform.

"I've been…I've been followed here on my mother's bike! Right? And my cars right there and its been following me here! So get out of the car!" Sam explained hitting the hood of the car.

That only seemed to piss the car off since, in the next moment, he was threatening to run the boy over. Edging closer and closer, ignoring Sam's words of sorry. Even though she's watched the movie with Noah dozens of times before, never really paying attention, Lyra still found herself wondering if the 'Con would actually run him over.

"Stop! You'll kill him," she cried, straightening up slightly. The skin of her back stretched, causing the glass embedded in it to dig itself deeper into her flesh. Her nailed clawed into the leather beneath her hands as she gritted her teeth.

"Okay! I'm sorry! I'm…I didn't mean to hit your car! Look! Okay, look, look, look! Stop, stop!" Sam yelled, scrambling back to keep from getting killed.

"Get your slagging nails out of my leather, femme!" Barricade snapped, turning his holoform around long enough to send her a scathing glare.

Shocked, Lyra pulled her hands away, not having realized that she had dug her nails deep into her seat.

"Ly, look!" Noah said, pulling against his sister's other hand, trying to get a better view of what the 'Con was doing to Sam.

Before she could pull him back, Barricade threw them out and onto the ground outside before transforming. The mechanical whirrs and clangs forced her brain back to the last seconds before she was knocked unconscious. It took her breath away more than the hard landing did.

"Oh, God! Oh, God, no!" Sam yelled as the car transformed and started to chase him.

Lyra ignored him.

"Noah. Noah, get up," she said, forcing herself up onto her hands and knees. Her brother was sitting up a few feet ahead of her, looking onto what was happening in awe. He was 'ooh'ing and 'ah'ing as he watched Sam get flipped into the air.

Lyra grabbed onto a van's bumper, using it to pull herself up. "No', snap out of it," she growled, taking unsteady steps towards him. The brunette glanced towards Barricade to see that he was busy. It pained her to leave Sam in the psychotic robot's clutches, but her brother came first.

Noah was watching Lyra as she gripped his upper arm tightly, nearly painfully, pulling him up. He didn't protest despite how much he wanted to, though. He never really did get involved with his sister's decisions; she always had a good reason for everything she did anyway.

"C'mon, No'," she told him, pulling him away from the robot. He could tell she was trying to run, but it wasn't really working out that way. The movements caused her too much pain, and he knew she was trying to hide it, trying to rough through it.

They were nearly out of there now, nearly on the street, when Lyra tripped. She landed on her arm painfully, her head barely avoiding the ground. Noah tried to help her up, but she pushed him away. "Don't be stupid, Noah. Get the hell out of here."

Noah didn't know what to do. He wanted to help his sister, who wasn't even close to being back on her feet, but she would be angry with him if he didn't listen.

He nodded hesitantly, feeling guilty as he ran away, towards the street. He spotted Mikeala driving in, and hid behind a pillar. His eyes followed her as Sam ran towards her and knocked her over. Noah glanced at Lyra to see her on her knees, searching around for something. Her hazel eyes met his brown ones, and they widened before her eyebrows scrunched up angrily.

"Run!" Lyra yelled, momentarily drawing Sam and Mikeala's attention. Noah nodded before he took off. He didn't want to though.