Chapter Text
Another streak of brilliant light crossed the starlit sky, passing overhead as the ninja plugged in the set of cables into the thick of her inner machinery. Another spacecraft, she assumed, which would make it the third one of the night. She flicked the human-sized switch and braced herself for the jolt of energy that was about to fill her frame.
Some miles away, a sector of Japanese residencies was struck by the sudden loss of lights in their third strange power outage in the past year, the lights flickering and failing entirely for a full minute before they suddenly came back again.
Nightbird shuddered through the aftershocks of the charge, the full force of the power grid recharging her body in an instant, a refreshing but utterly circuit-scrambling endeavor. One day, she wouldn’t be surprised if this method of energy transfer fried her circuits completely, really. After 20 years of running and refueling and hiding, she was almost expecting it.
Life as she had known it had changed very little from the day she had escaped her human captors and fled to the forests, but she knew that the world around her was constantly moving. Particularly, she noted, because of her loathed captors- the robotic ones- Autobots, they called themselves. They had come around these parts a few times, mostly now to bring their otherworldly technology with them to help advance their beloved humans. Nightbird had avoided them greatly at first, but now she actually watched for their return to the area.
Because if there was one thing those over-righteous robots were good for, it was for their ability to leave the planet. It had meant nothing to her at first, but she understood now that it might be her only method of survival.
Because like it or not, her frame was starting to feel the strain of the years, on the run like the night ran from day, her joints loosening and varnish peeling, giving way to the onset of rust. And her dark, mountainous paradise in the wilderness was starting to shrink as the cities crept forth, beginning to feel more and more like the restraints that had caged her back at the lab she had been locked away in. She felt more like some kind of feral little creature than a dignified assassin. One of these days, she knew she would be caught.
But solace lay in the cradles of space, in the infinity of the night sky where she could run forever and never be caught. She had learned that the Autobots did not come from Earth- no robot but herself did. Which meant that they must’ve been manufactured on a different planet, wherever that was, and wherever such a planet existed lay the technology to fix her failing frame. There were parts of her that were already alien- her former slavers had managed that sort of augment- so she knew it must be possible. She had seen the Autobots descend from space in their shuttles. If she could find one, she could hitch a ride back to where they came from and save herself. She simply needed to wait for the next time they arrived to meddle, and sneak herself onboard. Then, it was a matter of repairing herself and then disappearing into the night for good, never to be hunted again.
The last vestiges of the spacecraft disappeared over the cityscape as she squirreled the power grid’s cables back into their designated places and staggered to her feet. If she didn’t move from this location soon, she would be found by guards, and she was in no mood to be caught today. Besides, she wanted to track that spacecraft. It had followed the trajectory of the other two she had seen earlier that night, and even if it wasn’t anywhere near, it was an almost-certain indication that something was happening. Perhaps even something big.
A loud BOOM rang out in the distance- the near distance- barely a minute after she had started to walk. Oh, it was definitely something big. But it was also something close enough for her to reach. Her pace quickened briskly, and in a matter of moments, she had started to run.
–
The sounds of gunfire rang out in the cityscape far in the distance as Nightbird cleared the treeline, keeping out of the light of the roadways as she crept closer. There was a rush of air as a convoy of jets screamed right overhead, their bright red-and-white paint sparkling in the moonlight. Autobots, Nightbird thought- and almost certainly headed to the scene of the crime. Wherever they were going, she should be going- as long as she didn’t get caught.
If there was fighting in the city, it probably meant that her former slavers were fighting the Autobots again. And given that neither of the two factions had residence in Japan and that one of the factions had a significant amount of non-flying members, she might have a chance to escape this place. In the chaos of the war zone, nobody would notice if she crept into the arena and poked around for casualties or shuttles. And even if somebody did, she had no doubt that she could handle them- even without most of her weapons and a rusting body. She was an assassin by trade- no amount of time could take that away from her.
She flanked the city outskirts, running until the sounds of carnage grew ever-closer, until she could see the barricade in the distance- and the group of Autobots huddled behind it. Further into the city, she could see the outline of another group, perhaps on the offensive, firing wildly into the rubble with little inhibition. Deciding that being on the receiving end of this gunfire was not ideal, she stopped short of the no-man’s land between the two groups and opted to flank it instead. If she could climb a building, she could gain a vantage to look for a shuttle or for other helpful things- or, she could look for an easy target and get some payback, even.
The idea of revenge was not such a bad one, now that she thought about it…
She watched the battlefield closely as she chose a stable building and started to climb, scoping out the players of the fight. She hardly recognized anyone on the battlefield, but as far as she was concerned, they could still all jump in an incinerator for all she cared. The fight had taken itself to the skies by the time she had made it halfway up the building and had begun to descend yet further into the city as mech after mech ran amok in the streets. There were humans fleeing and scurrying about in almost every direction. How very pathetic and yet so amusing…
Upon reaching the top of the building, she had a pretty good idea of what she was facing. There were Autobots in the east and their opposition all about in the midst of the city, clearly dominating the scene. They must’ve come in from right over the city and barricaded the Autobots out, seeing as there were several fronts near the edge where the two sides were clashing in complete stalemate. And if they were landing right on top of the city, they were going to have to land any possible shuttles in areas big enough to host a robot-sized spacecraft. Her optics turned from the landscape to the wide, open roads running the length of the district- if there was any place big enough to park a shuttle, it would have to be…
There! Out of the corner of her optic, the gilded fin of a spacecraft caught her eye. She’d found her ticket out, and the only thing left to do was to get to it before someone else did. But who else would be trying the same stunt as she at a time like this? She took a running start from the top of the building and launched herself to the adjacent one across the street, and then the next, her optics never leaving that golden ticket for longer than a few seconds. She missed a jump, crashing right into the side of the building instead of onto its rooftop, but it didn’t matter- as the windows shattered from her impact, she hastily climbed down, burning the position of that shuttle into her mind. And then she sprinted, down that boulevard, like her life depended on it- no, her life did depend on it.
Her hands touched down on cool, smooth metal as she reached her target, and a wave of emotion washed over her, the first genuine feeling of relief since her great escape 20 years ago. Whoever had been piloting this shuttle had neglected to lock the doors, she noted, as she pulled the hatch open and carefully clambered inside, taking it all in. How long had it been since she’d been inside a structure like this?
“Hey! Who’s this in my shuttle?”
Nightbird whipped around to see a ground unit with a purple badge, only a short distance away, staring right at her with his weapons drawn. “You aren’t getting away, you Auto-scum! I’ll rip you apart!”
Nightbird managed to slam the shuttle hatch closed right as the gunfire bore down upon her and her prize, and instantly sprang into action. She tumbled into the pilot’s seat and greeted the arrays upon arrays of incomprehensible controls and decided that it would be best to press the biggest buttons until something moved- there was not enough time for her to sit down and learn. Her attacker had now reached the shuttle, metallic fists banging on the hatch, as she pressed the big blue button right next to the steering apparatus. And suddenly the shuttle lurched to life, dragging itself across the road as she grabbed hold of the steering that was now wiggling freely in front of her. She could hear the mech outside yell something muffled and inaudible as she pulled the controls straight and towards her, and suddenly her shuttle was ascending, clearing the buildings and headed straight for the stars, which really didn’t feel so far away now.
The windshield of the shuttle was starting to heat up. As she ascended, she could see the licks of blinding heat against the thick glass, and almost feel it even sitting several feet away from the shield- the console was flashing something that she couldn’t understand, and suddenly, she was starting to actually worry. Would her spacecraft burn up in the atmosphere with her in it? She had no way of knowing if or when she would clear this heat, and worse yet, she wasn’t actually sure if she was still ascending.
With nobody in the way of her craft, she had to figure things out now- or risk frying to a crisp in her haste to escape. But the glyphs on her screen were completely unintelligible to her, and so were the dozens of random buttons and interfaces set out before her- she was going to have to find a way to decipher all of this in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, she might have one more trick up her sleeve to play before she went gently into that good night.
With one hand on the steering apparatus, she fumbled with her seldom-used panels and flipped open a latch on the side of her head. It was the one port in which the humans who had made her had intended to upload all manners of databases and information, the one port that gave her direct access to her processor and memory.
When the humans had taken her back from the hands of the Autobots, they had neglected to remove the microchips that her robotic masters had implanted into her- the same microchips that had let them beam her commands from their alien computers. Those microchips would prove crucial in the interpretation of the far-advanced languages and programming of this shuttle if everything went as planned.
The interior of the shuttle was now starting to warm. She turned to the nearest interface, one which looked like it contained shuttle information, and started looking for any ports or plugs that she could link up to. Once she had located one, she flicked the fingertip of her right hand open. Her slavers had once equipped her with a download cable, presumably to steal enemy information, which she had never gotten the chance to use- but today, she would be applying it against their own technology. She pressed a few buttons in the side of her processor, routing data transfer from her right arm to her memory banks, plugged in the cable, and set her systems to Force-Download.
The rush of information was almost instantaneous and it was almost like a fog had been lifted away from her optics as the entire shuttle’s specs, flight manuals, and language were inputted into her memory banks. It was almost disorienting how quickly she could suddenly understand everything around her- but she didn’t have the time to be disoriented. She had neglected to switch on the heat shields in her ascent- something she quickly corrected, and she had been running the shuttle off of the wrong set of thrusters, something that would kill her fuel supply if used for ascent. All of that was trivial now as her hands flew towards the controls and re-adjusted her desperate flee attempt to more normal parameters of flying. Flying. She was really flying! The idea of it had not occurred to her until now, but she was actually escaping!
The fireball around her dissipated as she broke through the atmosphere and she was treated to the view of a lifetime as her optics adjusted. Space, in every direction, draped in veils of stars- somehow, more than she had ever seen on Earth. Was the atmosphere really hiding all of this away from her? How many more stars in the sky could there be?
She supposed she had all the time in the world to go find them, once she fixed her body up. Chasing the stars. It wasn’t such a bad idea either. Now that she thought about it, there were so many things she could do, free of the burdens of human and robot captors alike- she wasn’t sure of what yet, but she could start making a list. Chasing the stars, revenge against the Autobots, more revenge…
Her train of thought was broken as the radar on her left started to buzz. But she didn’t need the radar to tell her something big was in her way. Through the viewport, she could see it drifting into view, a big dark splotch obstructing the stars almost menacingly. She tapped on the radar, and was greeted with a contact on the central console. DECEPTICON WARSHIP- REVENGE.
So that must’ve been where the attackers had come from. She routed her shuttle around the warship, but was still close enough to see its full glory as she cruised past it. So this was the ship that her slavers- the Decepticons- carried themselves around in. Perhaps it was worth it to take their technology for her own gain? After all, they had given her the gift of sentience- at least partially, and they owed her for leaving her to die. And the ship was so nicely unattended to with their battle on the earth below…
She had made up her mind before she could even object to it, her hands already on the console to turn the shuttle around. It would be a quick heist, and she would be in and then gone within the hour, exactly what she did best. The side of the Revenge filled the viewport as she flew closer and closer, engaging the tractor beams on her puny shuttle to anchor her craft to the side of the ship.
From there, it was child’s play to magnetize her feet and then jump to the surface of the warship. She walked, tracing the sleek panels of the Revenge, until she found a poorly-secured airlock and pried it open, slipping inside. She was in, just like that, standing in the ship of her slavers but on her own terms, with her own agenda.
The dim, high-ceilinged chambers of what seemed to be the warship’s shuttle bay loomed down over her as she crept across the deck, silent as a mouse. Let the games begin, she thought- she was finally awake and ready to play.