The song of the predacon

Survival

When I awoke, I found myself lying in a pile of ashes. All around me, the familiar skyscrapers, the houses with cheery yards overgrown with weeds, the park fountain and energon lake, everything was burned or had caught fire. That's when I realised, I wasn't dead even though I fell in the Chasm. So why am I alive? I stood up, shook the ash and soot off, then turned to walk towards Sajner street when I tripped over something and fell flat on my face plating. So graceful. I rolled over to see what I had tripped on, and saw a backpack with a message on the top of it, written in an older fashioned spidery cursive. It read:

Dear Magnolia,

Take this backpack, and run towards the sea of rust, a safehouse is there, the Chasm is growing and you will be in great danger if you do not make haste. If you find any survivors bring them with you.

Sincerely,

A friend.  

At first, being the rebel I am, I was tempted to keep the backpack and run in the opposite direction, but a snapping and whining of the ground breaking apart made up my mind. I bent down threw the pack around my shoulders and began to sprint through my old neighborhood. Burning beams of building fell in my path so I had to watch the skies as well as the ground. There were lots of deep holes in the middle of the remnants of the street so I focused on the ground in case I fell in. But when I did look up it was a nightmare. Cars overturned and on fire, houses partially sunk in the ground, ashes flying through the air and corpses lined the streets. An earthquake must have passed through as well as the ground breaking open. Shattered glass cracked under my peddes. I got the feeling I was being watched, but I saw and heard nothing I was about to shrug it off when someone called,

        "Hey! You, help!" I whirled around and saw a bright pink and black femme with blue optics about 12 earth years old, she was on her back on the ground, and a huge piece of concrete was on top of her legs."I can't lift this on my own, please help me!" She wailed. 

"Okay, hold on," I replied and I ran over to her and set my backpack down. I placed both of my servos bottom of the slab and she did the same. "Okay," I said, "1...2...3...Now!" We both strained to push it off. It lifted about an inch but, we weren't strong enough even combined to lift it enough for her to crawl out. We tried a lot tactics, using a rod to pry it off, lifting instead of pushing,using rope and a pulley, it was all hopeless. Eventually I just gave up,  it was dark out and I didn't want to know what dangers would creep out at night, so I opened the backpack and found some energon, my datapad from home, a compass, and what looked like a bracelet. And under all of these things, was a gun fully loaded and two loaded extra magazines*. Then someone coughed behind me.

"You aren't very fast at walking are you?" I snapped my head around and saw a black and white predacon perched on a narrow window ledge. He had mismatched optics that drew my attention most, one was Blue, the other amber. This I found rather odd but I said nothing about it.

"How do you know how fast I walk?" I challenged. Unfortunately he didn't seem fazed by this.

"He put that message on your backpack an hour ago, and then you woke up, and only made it across the street. I could do that in one second." He calmly replied as though I was a child that had said something foolish and needed correcting. 

"You put that there?" I tried to get him again.

"No, he did." He answered again, unwavering.

"So you didn't put this there." 

"No I didn't, I saved you and he put the backpack down." He was still as cool as an ice cube.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"He is me and I am him, yet we are the same yet we are different." He said. Now he had finally lost me.

" But you are you and he is he you can't be two people that's not possible!" I yell.

"Isn't it though?" He says. But this time I pull out my gun, my father has always told me not to trust predacons, and he has just pulled the last straw. I expect him to flinch, run away, or at least looked shocked. But he doesn't. He just looks kind of sad and says,

"Go ahead, but you'll just be wasting your time and your ammo." Okay, that was unexpected, but I do. I fire five rounds into his head. But he doesn't die, all the bullets fall out and the holes heal themselves almost instantly. "See?" He explains, "I can't physically be killed anymore. And I might help you, but you have to stop asking pointless questions you don't like the answers to, and please don't shoot people because they're confusing."

"Okay, but will you help me get this slab of concrete off of this kid please?" I reply. He dips his head and disappears from his perch in a plume of smoke. That's when I realise his head is right behind my shoulder so close I can feel warm air from his mouth on my shoulder. "What are you doing?" I ask a little uncomfortable. 

"Reloading. Your. Gun." He says, pausing at each word. And I look down to see him pushing the bullets into the empty magazine slots. Then he slides the magazine back into the gun."You don't trust me do you?" He says look at me, I realize just how brilliant blue and amber both of his eyes are. Wait, weren't they two different colors earlier? And wasn't his paint black and white not blue and black? Probably just wasn't paying attention. 

"No, I don't, my father told me not too, and he hasn't given me a reason why I shouldn't trust him, unlike the many you have given me!" I retort in his face. 

"Wise choice," is all he says and he takes his place on one side of the concrete and I take mine. 

"Ready, one....two....three...Now!" I yell and we both strain as hard as we can, but this time, we manage to tip the block of concrete backwards and it falls down away from the little femme who fell asleep a long time ago. The predacon picked her up and began walking down the street.

"Are you coming?" He shouts back and I grab my bag and run to catch up. 

"You know, I need to have your name." I tell him.

"Braven, my name is Braven." He replies without looking at me. His tail curling around his legs as he is walking. Wait, tail? How did I not notice that before? Sure enough, it was a black tail, not unlike a tree branch or a vine that keeps on twisting and untwisting. This predacon keeps getting weirder and weirder.

We keep on walking until the first dawn breaks through the night. The second sun will come up in a few hours. I have been walking non-stop for at least nine hours. And my peddes hurt! A lot. But Braven doesn't even look remotely tired. And he had to carry a twelve year old the whole way. I look up, we have reached what used to be the Border, but the yellow force field has been torn and a huge gaping hole remains. 

"We're getting close to the safe house, it's in the sea of rust. Only an hour or so and we'll be there." Brazen states. An hour? Oh I hope my peddes last that long. A hiss sounds behind us. I turn around to see what I would say is a predacon's worst nightmare. 

*for those of you who may not know this and are confused, a magazine in a gun is what holds the ammo in place. Not a booklet about home cooking and celebrities.