Haunted
“I remember a lot of about that day. Actually, I remember everything. It’s not something that’s really easy to forget. I’ve tried imagine that it never happened or that I wasn’t the one that survived or that, since I was the only one that survived, everybody else was dead.
“I usually don’t like to forget things.
(“Bluestreak,” Windjammer said, with a laugh, “you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bluestreak responded with feigned hurt, “forget your blaster once and nobody will ever let you down. Not like the Deceptibums are going to attack today. Just meet me out front; I’m right behind you.” Bluestreak fired his friend a wide smile and hurried back to his quarters.)
“One time I forgot to pick up some energon for Prowl. I was going to this dispensary that he really likes and he gave some credits and asked to get something for him too. On the way I got distracted by this street race between Cliffjumper and Fastlane. Dust was flying everywhere. You never realize how much dust can be on a planet made of metal. I remember hearing somewhere that most of the dust on Earth was actually pieces of dead human skin. That’s really kind of gross when you think about it. It makes me wonder what the dust on Cybertron is. It might just be dirt from some other planet or maybe just the interior of ours. Maybe it’s flaked off Transformers skin. That’s almost as gross as human skin. Maybe I should ask Perceptor about it.
“Anyway Fastlane and Cliffjumper were flying down this road. They were neck and neck nearly the entire way. They were coming up on this tower that the road curved around when Fastlane starts to get all cute and puts is right back wheel on the guard rail, thinking he can flip up and over the tower. Well, needless to say, it didn’t quite end the way he planned. He did manage to get airborne, but after he cleared the tower, he landed on the diverter and skidded into a comm tower, knocking it into the road. I’m not one to leave comm towers just strewn across roads, so naturally I stayed and helped. Had a blast too. I’ll tell you that Fastlane is a regular riot. He tells the nastiest jokes. He told this one while we were cleaning up about a Decepticon, a Skukkzoid, and a blender that just left me in stitches. You heard that one?
“Anyway, I get to the dispensary and get my energon and start driving back to base. I had to stop every now and then when a fit of laughter from that joke hit me. Finally, I made it back and didn’t realize that I forgot Prowl’s energon until I saw him. I tried to sneak away, but that guy doesn’t miss anything. On Earth one time he caught me trying to watch “As the Kitchen Sinks.” He went on and on about how it’s important to keep abreast of Earth news for a possible Decepticon attack. Two days later, Prowl was hooked on that show too. I wonder why people like those shows? They’re aren’t good, the acting stinks, there’s no continuity at all, and yet I’m rivoted to the screen every weekday at 2PM. Maybe there’s subliminal messages or something. But anyway, I couldn’t sneak past Prowl and he just gave me this sort of disappointed look, so gave him my energon.
“Now Prowl’s gone too. I miss him.
(“Over here, Inferno,” Bluestreak called to the rest of the search and rescue team. “I think I found… oh Primus… no…”)
“But I was talking about my old town. I remember it was cold that day. Well, not cold cold. Just regular cold.
(Bluestreak slowly stepped toward the gate. The silhouette looked like that of Ripcord, but he could not tell for certain. As he moved closer to the still figure, a shiver rushed down Bluestreak’s spine and a stiff, cold breeze whistled past his face. He slowly reached his hand out to touch the figure before him.)
“Not that it every really gets warm. People have told me that Cybertron used to have a sun. I wonder what happened to it. There’s nothing really documented about that. From what I’ve seen, Charr doesn’t have a star either. I’ll bet it’s colder there than it is here. At least Cybertron emits it’s own energy from down near the core. Charr just sits there like some frigid old asteroid. It’s really funny that the Autobots and Decepticons both ended up on planets without stars like that. Well, I guess there’s Earth. Earth has a star and it has Transformers so I guess that what I said isn’t exactly true. Then again, that star was kind of a nuisance. We almost crashed into it once and we had to stop the Decepticons from blowing it up who knows how many times. I wonder why the Decepticons would ever purposefully blow it up. I’d think they could get lots of energy from it with hardly lifting a finger. Never did understand the Decepticons. Nor have I ever really like them. Even when we weren’t fighting, they always struck me as kind of off somehow.
“I really don’t like talking about the Decepticons so much, but I suppose I have to. It’s not as though my city destroyed itself.
(“Decepticons attack!” the lead figure, whom Bluestreak recognized as Megatron, bellowed. The sheer intensity with which the words were spoken froze some of the fighters in their tracks. Bluestreak continued racing towards his friends.)
“One city on the north side of Cybertron did collapse in on itself. It was a mining town and the residents were digging up some Cybertonium and they must have dug too far. The foundation for the city just gave way and the whole city just fell into a hole. I wonder how something like that can happen. Just look at the Great Chasm. You can see that thing even when your millions of miles from the planet. It just swipes right through the middle of the planet. It was all done by mining for energon deposits and metal for materials or something. Wouldn’t you think, at some point, someone would look at this giant canyon they made and say, ‘You know, maybe we’re digging too deep here.’ I know I would’ve stopped sooner, but I’m no engineer. I’m a fighter.
(Bluestreak rushed to Moonshot’s side and looked over his tattered body. He didn’t even know where to start with the repairs. He reached down to adjust some of the wiring poking through the gaping hole in Moonshot’s torso, when the warrior grabbed Bluestreak’s arm.
“No,” he gasped, fighting to stay conscious. “They need you out there. You’re the best we’ve got, Bluestreak.”)
“Never really liked it so much either. I’m good at it, at least that’s what the other Autobots tell me. It’s just not me. But really I don’t know what else I’d like to do. I think, if I were a human, I’d be one of those guys who never really leaves college. I’d just stay there the whole time and just keep on changing my major. I’ve tried to do other things, but nothing really strikes my interest. It makes me wonder what I’d do if the war just suddenly stopped. I suppose I’d go exploring or something. Sky Lynx has said that’s what he’d do. Maybe I’d just hop aboard and see the galaxy. Sky Lynx talks an awful lot, but I can live with that. The galaxy’s pretty big but I bet I wouldn’t run out of new things to see.
“I wonder what this galaxy really looks like on the outside. Perceptor once told me that it looks a lot like other galaxies that are nearby. I don’t consider them nearby. Anything that it would take millions of years just to get to is too far for me. Anyway, he pointed out one and showed it too me and said that the humans called it Andromeda. Strange name. Stranger story. Some girl tied to a rock and gets saved by some guy holding a head that’s got snakes for hair? Sounds like someone had too much energon before grabbing that pen.
“Kup tells pretty good stories. I don’t believe half of them, but they can still be entertaining to listen too. I remember one time me and Hot Rod just started going back and forth making up some fake war story. Right in front of the old codger too. Man, did we laugh it up. We talked about the pirate ship and the space plank we had to walk down and the planet with the living trees that would try to saw anybody in half just to get back at local loggers and how every single world we were on that day, and I think it ended up being about 45 planets, we ended up working in a spice mine. Oh, and every planet had a number in the name. Kup looked pissed and mumbled something about respecting his stories, but then me and Hot Rod caught him chuckling at us in the hallway.
“I wonder why we laugh. It’s kind of funny that Transformers and humans and every other species we’ve come across laughs in some form or another. Hound always tells me that Transformers aren’t that different from other species where it counts. I guess he’s right. I remember the first time I saw a life form that wasn’t a Transformer. I was on a training mission to Madracor with a couple of other Autobots. We landed and just started looking around while the mission leaders got the equipment set up. I walked up to this pond of orange liquid and stuck my foot in it. Suddenly, a voice shouted, ‘Excuse me, do you mind?’ I just froze there for a second with my foot in the liquid and asked who ssaid that. The voice said, ‘Down here. Your foot’s in me.’ The liquid was alive! We chatted for a couple of minutes and then I went back to camp. After talking to soup, meeting other aliens was small potatoes. They have orange lakes on Titan, but they don’t talk. At least I’ve never heard them talk.
“I wonder if Cybertron has ever had lakes. I know there’s water because we use it as a coolant in our systems. I’ve heard there are a few underground lakes, but I’ve never actually seen them. Me and Sureshot have gone looking for them, but still haven’t found them. I guess I’m not too surprised. Cybertron is on the small side in diameter but there is a lot of square footage with all the tunnels and stuff under the surface.
“I’ve noticed that I use Earth units of measure a lot when I talk. I suppose that spending 20 years… er, cycles on the planet will do that to you. I wonder what time it is there now. I always liked sunrise. It always make me smile to see the sun coming up through the mountains like that. Maybe it’s sunrise there. That would be nice.
“What was I talking about?”
“Bluestreak,” Smokescreen said with a smile.
Bluestreak smiled back, but there was sadness in his eyes. A lot of times Smokescreen had seen this sadness. It just seemed to follow the Autobot around.
“I guess I just can’t get what happened to my home city out,” Bluestreak said with a shrug. “Thanks for listening though. Maybe I’ll try to tell it later when I’m ready to talk.
“You know, about that.”
The End.
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