The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Ground Zero

Sam's brown eyes were misty as he took another bite of his sandwich.

It was just so... weird. Normal kids his age never experienced anything like this - they just went about their daily business. Going to school, getting Saturday jobs, hanging out with friends... the most exciting thing that ever happened to nineteen-year-olds in Tranquillity was probably when Trent threw a drinking party and all those popular enough to be invited got high and had sex with each other, which those who were not popular enough then talked about in the canteen over some soda and Twinkies.

He had been like that. He had never been part of the popular clique - hell, Miles had been his only friend back in those days - but he guessed he had always wanted to be like the muscular, strapping jocks that got all the prettiest girls in school.

Now it all seemed so God damn superficial.

Here he was, sitting outside the Ground Zero café in the courtyard of the Pentagon, munching on a New York sub and awaiting the conclusion of Optimus's meeting with Keller and the military guys so that they could all prepare for the arrival of a planet-sized monster.

Yeah - that was normal.

It was almost midday now, and they were parked in the courtyard waiting for the others to return from the food court. Optimus had come to them upon arriving with the other Autobots and had explained that he was taking Skyfire and Ironhide into the meeting with him; Seraphim had managed to convince him to take her after ten minutes of whining insistently at him until the poor guy had been forced to give up out of annoyance, and eventually Mikaela had persuaded Optimus to take her and Carlos along to represent the Autobot allies on the human side.

Both ex-Decepticons were equally furious to be denied allowance to come to the meeting - Starscream had thrown a complete temper-tantrum in rage before storming off in a huff, with Barricade doing the same. Optimus had patiently explained that he didn't want the humans not to trust them because of their Decepticon allegiance - he had been of the opinion that it would easier to let the leaders cope with the Autobots first.

"But honestly, Starscream, I will make certain that your opinions are represented," the commander had said persuasively.

Starscream had still stormed off in a huff.

Until he had stormed back to the courtyard, still in a huff - probably because he didn't have any other actual friends to hang out with. Everyone here looked daggers at all the newcomers, and Sam was completely empathetic for that reason.

"What are they all staring at?" the hologram groused petulantly at that moment.

Sam sighed, looking over towards where the tall, blonde image of the Cybertronian was standing with his arms folded and giving everyone who looked at him the wrong way a haughty glare. "They're staring at you, man," he informed him dutifully, running his free hand through his hair beneath his cap. "No offence, but you kind of stand out."

"How?" was the heated response. "I look like a human, don't I?"

Grimacing, Sam looked pointedly at Starscream. "Yeah," he agreed slowly, "But not really. You look too pale to be alive, for one thing - you look like you just stepped out of Dawn of the freakin' Dead."

This only added to the utter bizarreness of the situation. It was strange enough that he had been thrown into the first war - the quest for the All Spark - and befriended giant alien robots, as well as scoring the hottest girl in the school and the hottest car on the market. Now, not only was he in the midst of a second massive-scale extraterrestrial confrontation, he was also sitting with the ex-Decepticon Air Commander, eating a sub and making an effort not to inform him that the reason he was being stared at because his muscles were as nearly as big as Schwartznegger's.