I don't own anything except for my OC's and some of the plot.
Two weeks had passed since that shared lunch, both Astrid and Raf had gotten to be very close friends in that short amount of time, with Astrid becoming Raf's sort of secret guardian angel whenever he got into trouble with the bullies in the school. Which happens almost on a daily basis, especially with that red haired guy, who now she knows as Vince.
Vince was basically the biggest bully to worry about in Jasper High, and the only one to stand up to him besides Astrid herself was Jack Darby. Jack was a really cool guy, although a bit of a loner at school.
Astrid couldn't help but get this weird feeling each time she saw him, like they had met once before somewhere, but she just couldn't put her finger on it. Which that in itself was weird, considering the fact that she almost never forgets a face, a very useful skill that both Eric and she had taken advantage of in the past.
Raf had become like the little brother that she never had, he would help her out with some of her not so great subjects in school like math and science, while she helped him with history and P. E. and Astrid had to admit that Raf was a genius when it came to computers and technology in general, and apparently the little guy was a master hacker as well.
She had found out by making a bet with him that if he could hack into N.A.S.A. then she would make his favorite dessert (which just so happens to be the cookies that she shared with him on her first day of school.) every day for the rest of the year, and if he couldn't do it, then he would have to do a prank call on all the teachers and students of Jasper High with her.
The poor little guy looked so scared and mortified by the mere idea of it, that his fingers immediately started furiously typing at the keyboard on his laptop.
Needless to say, she lost the bet.
But for the most part they usually just hanged out and played video games and stuff.
The day started out just like any normal day in Jasper, Astrid got up, got dressed while giving Eric her secret wake up juice for his hangover so that he could get to work in a somewhat agreeable mood. Eric worked at an old music store in town, the owner was a nice old man who doesn't get out very much anymore because of the arthritis in his legs, but whenever he could manage it, he would always come by and visit the store to see how it was doing.
So after that she went to school, survived the teacher's lessons and assignments while dealing with Vince and his gang, have lunch with Raf and as soon as the bell rang both she and Raf hit the town. Since Astrid was still new, Raf was the one to show her around the little town of Jasper Nevada, today Raf decided to take them under the overpass of the main highway.
It was completely empty of people, unless you count the cars driving on the overpass, but for the most part it was empty.
"Alright Raf, what's this super secret surprise of yours already?" Astrid asked a little exasperated, but still curious as to what it was considering he had been hinting at it all throughout the day.
Raf had compared her to a cat once because of her curiosity to about almost everything.
On the last day of school in their first week, Raf had invited her to come to his house for dinner... Well, more like his mom invited her through him on his phone, but it was basically the same thing.
She made sure to call Eric to tell him that she would be late on getting home, but all she got was a pre-recording of his groggy voice saying to leave a message at the beep, she had tried her best to not feel hurt by him not answering, but it did nevertheless. And so, like always she made sure that her voice sounded nonchalant before leaving him a voice message saying that she would be late and to not worry.
Astrid had enjoyed her time with Raf's family, his mother was a great cook, especially when it came to her Mexican dishes, she had made chicken enchiladas, refried beans with the cheese on top with rice on the side, and apple pie taquitos with cinnamon and honey sprinkled on top.
The last one wasn't really a traditional Mexican dish, but was still extremely delicious nevertheless.
His siblings were nice, at least the ones that she met were, and his dad was off on a business trip in California at the time.
And you're probably still wondering why Raf called her a cat? Well… It was mostly because of her habit of asking lots of questions, like what it was like to be their family and what this object was and that is, but it also probably helped that whenever she yawned it sounded like a cat's meow.
"Alright, just close your eyes and hold out your hands. And NO peaking!" He instructed while rummaging through his backpack.
Astrid barely manage to not roll her eyes at him before closing her eyes and holding her hands out in front of her as instructed. She waited a few seconds before she felt something being put into her hands. It had four rubber wheels, it weighed about three pounds if she had to guess and it was plastic on top while the underside had some sort of mental plating.
"Ok… You can open your eyes now." He said sounding excited with only a little bit of nervousness in his voice.
Opening her eyes, Astrid immediately looked down at the object in her hands and felt them widen slightly in wonder.
It was one of those remote control cars, but there was so much more detail than what you get at a store, and it looked like it was modeled after her dream car, a white ford mustang with gold racing stripes.
Astrid could feel her eyes starting to sting with suppressed tears, she had been given very few gifts in her life, she now only had Eric as the closest thing to family that she's ever had in her hole life, and while he was great in his own way they both were not the best at expressing their own affections towards one another, especially after Jacqueline's death.
"I remembered that every time we played a racing game, you would always pick a mustang with a similar color scheme. I hope you like it." Raf said while looking down at his shoes as he shuffled them nervously.
Astrid looked at him, her hazel eyes shining with suppressed emotions "Like it. I love it! Raf how long did it take you to make this?" She asked, sounding touched.
Raf, still looking down at his feet and hearing that she not only just liked it, but loved it, started to blush lightly around the ears. "Only about a week." He mumbled.
"Only a week?! Raf that's amazing!" She exclaimed in amazement while taking a closer examination of the toy car.
Raf's ears grew a little redder at hearing her complement before he put his hand back into his backpack and pulling out another toy car, only this one was yellow with black stripes and also it looked like it was modeled after a camaro.
"I thought we could have a race with these." He gestured with the yellow and black toy car in his hand and the one in her's.
Astrid could feel the smirk forming on her face. "You're on."
Hours later Raf and Astrid were neck to neck, it was ten to nine as Raf was in the lead with Astrid on his tail.
"I'm going to win this time." Astrid announced triumphantly as her car got into the lead.
"I don't think so." Raf argued back as he pushed his car to go even faster, going just past her own car and went through the finishing line first. They had made their backpacks as a makeshift finish line, both were about three feet apart form each other.
"Yes!" He crowed happily throwing his arms up in the air in victory.
Astrid groaned loudly in defeat while letting herself lean her back against the concrete wall, only just now noticing the soreness in her back and neck, and especially in her aching fingers as well, but in her mind it was all worth it in the end, if it made Raf smile like he was on top of the world then it was most definitely worth some achiness, besides it was a smile she didn't see very often on the little guy.
This was usually how most of their gaming went, ether he would win or she would depending on the game, and sometimes they would find themselves evenly tied.
Suddenly Raf's phone started ringing, grabbing his phone from one of his jeans pockets and answered it. "Hi Mama. Racing with Astrid. Right at the street. K just five more minutes. Love you too." He hanged up his phone and put it back into his pants pocket.
He looked up at her as she straighten up her back off the wall. "My Mom what's me back home." He said with a shrug of his shoulders.
Astrid looked down at her broken wrist watch, it was made of simple gold medal with the square glass face that was cracked, the littlest hand rested on the seven and the biggest hand almost on the three, making it forever stuck in the position of seven thirteen.
She didn't really need to look at a clock to know what time it was, it was mostly just for show, so that she wouldn't freakout anybody who asked her the time or something like that, she always knew what time it was thanks to her time senses has she liked to call it. And because of the internal clock inside of her own head she know that they had been racing for about two hours, eight minutes and thirty three seconds. "Yeah, we should probably get back to our own homes." She said while getting up to stretch a little.
They then suddenly heard a scream from up above from them, they both looked up with wide eyes as they watch just in time to see a blue motorcycle come flying through the air above their heads and landed just several feet away from them.
"Wow." Astrid vaguely heard Raf say as the toy car controller slipped out of his hand and falls down onto the ground with a clatter.
On the motorcycle was… 'Jack!?' He sounded almost out of breath as he looked towards them and said. "You have no idea."
Just as suddenly as Jack had appeared, a pair of dark purple cars came down towards them and did something that neither of the currently present humans expected them to do. They transformed into giant robots while mid jump, landed on their metal feet and pointed to what Astrid thought was giant laser guns straight towards them.
And that wasn't the last of the surprises that this day seemed to hold for them, the blue motorcycle that Jack had been riding on suddenly transformed as well, but this one was completely different from the other two, this one was shorter in height and the most glaring difference was that it looked a lot more female than the other two giant robots.
"This ends here Cons." The female robot said as she gave the other two giant robots a murderous look with her shining blue eyes that were filled with hatred on her frowning metal face.
Astrid couldn't help but be surprised at the raw emotions that she could see and feel coming off of the blue female like robot. 'Is it possible for giant robots to have the same emotions as a human's? And if so, then what did they do to make her look at them like that?' but before she could analyze this thought any further her mind was snapped back into the present by Jack, who had quickly grabbed her arm and pulled her with him and Raf as they moved out of the way so that they wouldn't get ran over by the blue robot that was now charging straight toward the other two giant robots with a surprising amount of speed as they started shooting at her.
The blue robot was able to easily dodge the laser guns as she raced towards them and once she was close enough, she started punching them like they were her own personal punching bags.
"What are they?" Raf asked.
"Talking cars that turn into robots, or the other way around." Jack answered uncertainly.
"I think it's the other way around." Astrid put in her own two cents to the question.
"This. Is. For. Cliff!" She yelled as her metal fisted hands and feet pounded into one or the other of the two with each word that she said, but when she threw in her last punch to the face of one the other robots, it paused and gave the female robot to what Astrid guessed was a malicious glare of some kind considering she couldn't see its face at all.
The blue female robot suddenly backed up and started doing backflips to avoid being shot, but luck didn't seem to be on her side as one of the red bolts of light caught her in the chest and she was sent flying backwards and landing harshly on the concrete floor with her back, making an ear splitting screeching sound.
And then suddenly another giant robot transforms through mid air just after jumping off the highway bridge and lands perfectly on top of one of the two purple robots head while also punching his metal fist into the other one's face.
'Sheesh, it's like raining giant metal robots out here.' Astrid thought sarcastically.
This robot was different from the others, it's paint job was mostly yellow with some black in there, it's eyes were blue like the female robot's own, and he did kinda reminded her of a bumblebee for some reason. It was probably the paint and also the car doors on his back that made it look like he had wings.
After he was done with stepping on one of the purple robot's head that Astrid noticed that he was about to step on Raf's toy car. "Wait-!" She tried to call out, but it was already too late as the yellow robot crushed the little toy car with its big metal foot.
The yellow bot looked down in surprise as he lifted his foot to see that he stepped on a toy car… or at least whatever remained of it.
The yellow bot turned towards Raf and started making R2-D2 like sounds.
"No problem, really." Raf answered back.
Before Astrid could wrap her mind around the fact that Raf seemed to be able to understand what the robot was saying, the same robot was suddenly shot in the chest by one of the bad robots and was now laying face first onto the ground.
Just as the yellow bot was trying to get up one of the purple robots deliberately stepped hard onto his head has retaliation for stepping on its own head. Then the two bad robots started charging up the weapons on their arms as the yellow bot turned around to face them.
"Leave him alone!" Raf suddenly yelled bravely at them.
Astrid didn't know if she wanted to congratulate him for his bravery, or wanted to smack him on the back of his head for his stupidity as the two purple robots looked down towards them and pointed they're now charged up weapons at them instead of the yellow bot.
"Please." He added weakly.
Astrid immediately put herself in front of both Raf and Jack, knowing that she would have a better shot at surviving one of those blasts than them. Jack leaned down towards Raf, looking ready to run.
"Bad call." He said to him.
The purple robot on the right started walking maliciously towards them.
"Run! Run now!" Astrid yelled out as she turned around towards the boys while wildly gesturing with her hands to get them moving. And run they did, but while running for their lives, Astrid remembered that both her's and Raf's backpacks and the toy car that Raf made for her were still out there in the middle of the giant robot smackdown.
With a low moan of frustrated despair, Astrid made sure that both boys were in front of her before she used her abilities. No need for them to see how she jumped from one place to another within a blink of an eye to them.
She twirled around on her heels facing the big giant robot that was behind them and raised her hand in a stopping motion like a crossing guard and whispered calmly.
"Stop."
And just like what happened on her first day of school in history class and like every other time before and after that, the time around her suddenly stopped.
Taking in a deep breath to calm her somewhat frazzled nerves and then letting it out slowly, she put her hand down to her side and walked around the now frozen giant robot in front of her and towards the two backpacks and toy car, once there, she quickly grabbed the toy car and shoved it into her pack then swiped Raf's off the ground and pulled both over her shoulder.
While her main powers were her ability to slow down time it self around herself to the slowest possible point, she had never actually stopped time completely before. The reason for this was because she was actually scared of trying it, it's like that feeling you get whenever you're walking into an unknown place that looks perfectly normal, but something inside of you is telling you to run, getaway and never look back, like you're not supposed to be there. And it also didn't help that her fear of it only grew tenfold with the theory talk about how the universe might end if she ever tried to do it, at least that's one of the theories that she and Doctor Bishop had before everything derailed.
One of her other powers were to be able to see other people's timelines, but she usually didn't like to look at it unless she had the permission of that person or as a last resort, because looking into someone's timeline was like watching someone else's home videos of their entire life, their past, their present, and their future.
Only it was so much more intimate than that, to put it simply, she sees, feels, hears and smells everything that they do, she subconsciously becomes one with them within her own mind and lives within the lines of memories of past and potential futures that have yet come to pass. The first time she tried to use this power, she accidentally put herself into a coma for a few weeks, if it hadn't have been for Eric she would probably still be in that coma for all she knew.
Astrid's hazel eyes analyzed her surroundings, trying to see if there was an easy way out here for her and the boys to escape, then she spotted a large drainage pipe in the direction that the boys motionless forms were running towards.
'Clever boys.' She thought almost fondly as she walked back over to them, but paused thoughtfully as she stood beside the robot that was chasing after them.
Astrid's eyes looked up and down it's body, seeing if there was any weaknesses that she could use to their advantage of not getting caught, and then she saw it as a little devious grin slowly formed upon her face.
"Oh, this looks like it could be important." She said innocently as her hand went for the exposed wires on the back of it's knee joint and roughly pulled on the wires until they broke apart, small sparks started flying until her hand let go of the live wire and it froze like everything else around her.
That was another thing about her powers, so long as she was touching it, it would work normally no matter how much she slowed time, this also works with people if she wanted it to as well.
Nodding to herself in satisfaction Astrid jogged her way back towards the boys as she released the time around the area. Everything started slowly moving back to normal again just as Astrid got herself back behind the boys as they all raced to get to the large pipe.
Once there, they all heard the sound of metal crashing onto concrete, whipping their heads at the sound to see what happen, only to find that the robot chasing them was down on the ground, looking at it's leg in what was mostly likely in confusion before turning its sharp gaze onto Astrid.
Astrid felt a small shiver of fear going up her spine, making her shoulders and back tense up with anticipation as to what it might do next. 'Uh-oh, I'm in trouble now.' She thought worryingly.
Jack was the first one to take action as he jumped straight into the pipe and then easily grabbed Raf to pulled him up into the pipe as well. "Astrid!" Jack shouted her name to get her out of whatever staring contest that she and the robot where having.
"Right. Sorry." She said quickly as she jumped into the pipe with them, Jack in the front, leading further down into the pipe tunnel with Astrid at the end of the rear of the small group, and then with Raf in between them. Suddenly, Astrid felt something sharp and metal grab at one of her ankles.
Yelping in frighten surprise, Astrid looked down towards her ankle only to see a big metal hand gripping it tightly, so tight, that she was starting to lose all blood circulation with her foot.
"Astrid!" Raf cried in horror as he grabbed her hands as strongly as a 12 year old could, while Astrid was dragged back out of the pipe tunnel. Jack had heard Raf's horrified cry and turned around to ask what? But then he saw what was happening and immediately grabbed Raf around the middle and started pulling the both of them back in as best as he could, but was slowly being dragged out as well.
There was a sudden sound of metal hitting metal, making a loud clanging sound from outside of the drainage pipe. The metal hand's grip on her suddenly slackened, making her fall down with an oomph as the breath was knocked out of her.
All three looked towards the entrance to see that instead of the evil robot, it was the yellow one that Ref had helped earlier as it looked at them through the entrance making more R2-D2 like noises.
"Thank you." Raf said gratefully.
"Yeah, thank you." Astrid added sincerely, as she got back onto her feet, looking at the yellow bot with gratitude in her eyes.
The yellow bot said something in his own way that sounded like 'Your welcome' and then went back into the chaos.
Jack grabbed the both of them "Come on, don't look back." He ordered as he firmly pulled the both of them further into the tunnel.
"What did we just see?" Raf asked.
"No idea and I'm not sure I want to find out." Answered Jack as his grip tighten on both Raf's shoulder and her left hand in reassurance that the both of them were still there to himself.
Astrid stayed silent as the three of them walked down into the tunnel, but gave to what she hoped was a comforting squeeze through Jack and her's linked hands. A moment later, he squeezed back.
A/N: Hey, hope you all enjoyed reading this, I just finished it today.
Also thank you for all of you who followed and favorited this story, and a special thank you to clashingHeartsofChocolate, Skyress98 and AllSpark Princess for reviewing and for your encouragement for me to continue this story.