Through The Rift

Chapter One: The Question

In an instant, Kai found herself thousands of feet in the air above a beautiful blue ocean and a little island that she once called home.

"Alo-ha, O'ahu." She smiled to herself as Starscream began a gradual decline. Though, she could barely feel the drop in altitude. The girl could hardly take her eyes off of her beloved island and its beautiful cities and sunny beaches and lush forests and- was someone calling her?

"Artemis Kailani Penderwick, are you listening to me?" Starscream's Decepticon insignia glowed on the little screen above the controls with every word.

She tugged at her dark brown hair to snap out of it, "Yeah! Yeah, now I am."

Kai could hear him sigh, "You're probably wondering why we're over your old home.-Oh, apologies for that."

He said that bit in Vosian! "Oh, no, no, it's fine! Please! Continue." The sudden change of language had surprised her, but she begged him to stick to it. Starscream usually just spoke in English around humans -though he called the language primitive and simplistic- so she only heard it whenever he was teaching her to understand it, but never in a normal conversation.

The seatbelts tightened around her protectively, which she took as a form of a hug. "Alright, little seeker. I will oblige to your request." Kai was glad to hear his pleased tone. He didn't smile nearly as much as she would like him to and she tried her hardest to make her guardian happy.

"I've had a bad feeling all day," And the mood dropped, much to Kai's disappointment, "-and it felt right to bring you here to ask something that I feel should not fall onto unwanted audio receptors."

The brown girl shrugged, "Go ahead." No biggie.

"What happened to your creator?"

Creator? In Cybertronian terminology, that meant...

Her dad.

Ok, big  biggie.

By instinct, she played dumb, "What do you mean?"

Starscream vented deeply, regretting his decision already, "You know what I mean, Artemis." He could see that the smile on her dark face was fake, hiding something that her eyes showed:

Grief.

He went on in English, "You don't talk about him at all like Rafael, Jackson, and Miko do, and they have never seen him either in picture or with you. You live with your carrier's sister and her mate, but your carrier perished a year after your sister was born.

"What happened to your creator? I worry about you sometimes." The Seeker confessed, "You always tend to leave whenever the subject of your parental units is brought up. What happened, Artemis?"

Kai didn't move or respond, lost to a past memory

Black waves roared like hungry beasts.

There was a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, lost to the raging storm.

Damn it, it's been four years already. Kai grimaced. She had to move on.

"Artemis?" Starscream's voice thrummed over the speakers.

The girl almost forgot that she was sitting in an alien jet, hundreds of feet above the earth.

She looked away from the glowing, red insignia, "A hurricane hit home. Dad's boat never made it back."

"I- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"