Disclaimer: ‘Transformers’ and all related media, merchandise and trademarks do not belong to me and I am not making any money from using them in this fictional work. They belong to their respective companies and I am not affiliated with them in any way whatsoever. Any original characters or concepts in this story that are from other fictions are used with direct permission from the authors in question.

“The Day We Hailed the Heavens”
Transformers: Deux Claret
Part Two

Chapter One
Days of Summer

Mikaela Banes pursed her lips and a small frown creased her bronzed face as she watched her boyfriend and his best friend compare their acceptances to the various colleges that they had applied to.

Sam and Miles had both been in states of absolute ecstasy for the last hour and a half since the three of them had gathered at Mikaela’s small, ranch-style house in Tranquillity, and she was beginning to become very slightly weary of their enthusiasm that they had all been accepted into some of the same colleges. Okay, so they had a chance to be together when they were studying for their next qualifications… but why couldn’t they see that there was more to it than that?

“It’s gonna be awesome,” Miles predicted, with absolute conviction, for the seventh time in as many minutes. “Absolutely awesome.”

Sam nodded, running his hand through his short brown hair. “I know, I know,” he agreed, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth and his eyes shining as he scanned one of his acceptance letters. “I mean, we got accepted into like, all of the ones we applied for. That’s pretty overwhelming.” Mikaela saw him glance in her direction, tilting his head slightly, and swiftly lowered her eyes. “Hey, Mikaela? Are you okay?”

Miles shifted in his position – he was seated cross-legged on Mikaela’s beat-up futon, looking slightly awkward as usual in a woollen hat that was pulled over his lank, medium length hair. “Yeah,” he agreed, looking overly concerned for her. “You’ve been really quiet. Aren’t you happy ‘bout getting these?”

She shook her head in return, her chin cupped in the palm of her right hand. “Not really…” she muttered dully, passing her eyes briefly over the pile of envelopes that had been dumped on one corner of her desk.

The gangly young man shifted towards the edge of the futon, towards where she was perched on a chair beside her old, bulky computer. Mikaela bit back a scowl of irritation at the move; she liked Miles a lot, and spent a lot of time with him both in and out of school, but the guy had been hung up on her since Sam had reinstated their friendship, and she knew it. She wasn’t trying to be vain by accepting it – that would just be shallow – but it was so blindingly obvious that she was shocked that Sam himself had never picked up on it.

“But you did get accepted into two of ‘em,” he reminded her, pointing at the two pieces of ‘acceptance’ of paperwork. “That’s more than Carlos got accepted into, y’know. He only got into TL, given the fact that he managed to flunk every single exam for the ones he applied to.” He grimaced. “The guy’s gotta stop buffing that bike of his and get studyin’.”

“She’s not just a bike, Miles,” Sam pointed out, rolling his dark eyes. “She’s an Autobot. I can’t believe, after three years of knowing them, that you still manage to think of them as freaking vehicles… you know they turn into giant alien robots, and you still think she’s a Vespa.”

Miles folded his arms. “She is a Vespa.”

“Guys, for God’s sake!” Mikaela finally snapped, slamming her acceptance to Allan Hancock College down onto her desk and glaring back at the shocked looks that both boys gave her. “You don’t get it, do you? When we all go to college, we won’t all be going to the same one – we’re going to have to split up.” She paused, and her lip trembled slightly. “All of us.”

There was a short silence.

Mikaela clenched her fists, resting her forehead against them and leaning back on the desk. She hated harping on at them like this; being the sensible woman of the situation, when they’d been so psyched about finally going to college a few minutes beforehand. But… she couldn’t stand the thought of anybody leaving Tranquillity. And she knew for a fact that the subjects and career paths that each of the teenagers chose would take them very different ways across the country.

Sam whistled through his teeth after a moment. “Jeez, you’re right,” he said softly, glancing up at Miles. “I… didn’t think of that.” He put a hand to the back of his head and scratched it – a sure sign that he was uncomfortable. “I mean, I thought of us all going to college together… I guess I was too excited to think of how we’d all go to different places.”

“Of course we will!” she continued impatiently, her tight expression betraying how upset she truly was on the inside. “Rad’s a genius – he will have been accepted by the Ivy League schools, and his parents will want him to go to those. He wants to go to those, and I don’t blame him – I sure would, if I was smart enough!”

Miles nodded his reluctant agreement. “Alexis is pretty smart too,” he reminded them. “Though… maybe not Ivy League smart.”

Mikaela returned her gaze to Sam, her thoughts blackening by the second. He pulled a face at her, looking disheartened, before he slumped back on the worn, carpeted floor, folding his hands behind his head. She felt bad for killing the cheerful mood, but she needed them to understand… so that someone else would know what it was like to feel as shitty as she did right now.

“Wow,” he sighed. “Good thing that at least four of us have all been accepted into at least one of ‘em together. I wonder where Jade’s been accepted?” he added, sitting up again and reaching painfully for his weird, Cybertronian cell phone. “I’ll call her.”

As Sam greeted and questioned their friend on the other end of the line about exactly where she had been invited to study, Mikaela clenched her jaw to fight the tears that were prickling at her eyes. The thought of splitting up really bothered her, and it had been bothering her ever since she had first sent off her application forms for possible colleges. She had considered not going to college at all – she had been planning, instead, to open up a car repair shop of her own – but her father, now out of jail, had been adamant that she at least tried.

Going in different directions would mean the end of everything that they had come to know. Not only would she be torn away from her human friends – perhaps not all of them, but certainly some – she would be forced to leave behind the majority of her robotic friends that she had known now for three long years. She had no doubt that her guardian, Ratchet, would follow her wherever she chose to go, but as every one of them had their own protector, each would go with their human charges.

She fiddled idly with her cell phone, wondering whether to call Alexis, but she remembered that the girl was being forced to go out with her mother and their new… family. A tiny smile played on her lips as she thought of the girl’s non-stop exasperation with her mother’s new husband and their daughter, who, according to Alexis, was the most annoying person on the planet.

Sam had finished his brief conversation with Jade before she had even processed the fact that she had answered his call. “Jade’s been accepted to Allen Hancock, too,” he nodded to Mikaela, smiling encouragingly. “She’s not sure if she’s going to go there, but she says it’s a possibility.”

“Where else?” Mikaela asked wearily, attempting to instigate some form of enthusiasm at the inevitable. Jade was an artist, not a mechanic.

“She said she got into Deep Springs, too, but she really wants to go to the Art Institute in San Francisco,” Sam explained, looking dispirited again. “She thinks that’d be the best choice for her, as she’s so into her arty stuff.” He sighed and glanced down at his three acceptance letters. “So… who’s for just plain old Tranquillity Lake College, then?”

“Me,” Miles said swiftly. “What’s the point in goin’ somewhere far away? Anyway, Arcee will want to stay with Bumblebee.”

Mikaela sifted through her pile of rejection letters almost wistfully before she looked at her two acceptances – Allen Hancock and Tranquillity Lake. “Yeah,” she agreed finally, and the two of them looked exceptionally relieved. “I’ll have to talk to Ratchet about it, though. If nobody else is staying here, it’ll be kind of sad for him to just hang out with those two lovebirds.”

Miles looked quite solemn. “That is true,” he smirked. “Poor Doctor Hatchet wouldn’t want that… he’d only have two people to torture!”

Mikaela threw a book at him.

It was a sunny day and the temperature outside was comfortably warm – as was the norm during Californian summers – so the three of them deemed that they should meet up with what friends they could and spend a lazy Saturday together, as they often did on the weekends. Upon a quick call round all of the group’s members, it was decided that they would meet up with Carlos, Ratchet, Rad and Ironhide at the Autobot base, which was one of the only places in which their friends could transform without fear of being spotted.

They took one of the many rusty old cars that Mikaela had in her backyard – an old model that she tinkered with in her spare time. She knew that Miles, for one, had never trusted the ancient Pontiac Firebird, and she suspected that Sam privately shared his opinion, but they had been loath to call Ratchet or Ironhide all the way over from the western suburbs.

Mikaela hit the brakes and the car skidded to a halt on the dust path that led to the base: an old warehouse to the naked eye, but the centre of technological advancement inside. She was an insanely fast driver, a fan of the adrenaline rush that came with speed, and she grinned when she spotted Miles’s slightly green face in the rear-view mirror.

“I hate this car,” he muttered, tearing off his hat to allow the fresh air to cool his head down.

The three young adults disembarked the vehicle and Mikaela smiled warmly when she saw the others, taking Sam’s hand in hers. Miles waved madly when he saw Carlos, whom he had become close friends with during the past three years, and the two of them punched each other friendlily on the arm. “’Sup, dude?” Miles asked cheerfully.

“Hola, everybody,” the spirited Mexican grinned, exposing his slightly crooked teeth that made little difference to his handsome face. “Como estas?”

“English, Carlos!” Sam pleaded, and Mikaela smirked when she saw that he was practically pouting. “Man, I wish I’d listened to Mrs. Lopez now…” He looked rather pained at the unpleasant memories of their language classes, and she couldn’t really blame him.

Carlos laughed. “If you had, you’d know the way of the Spanish by now, amigo. What’s not to listen to, anyway? My abuela is a pretty wise lady… not to mention funny as hell, if you wind her up.” He paused, grinning to himself, before he jerked a thumb behind him to indicate something. “Hey, has Rad told you the good news, guys?”

The tall, fair-haired young man behind him was leaning against the grille of a heavily built Hummer H2; its neon-yellow-and-red Search and Rescue design made it look like a strange sort of ambulance, but it was a vehicle that Mikaela was incredibly used to seeing in the general vicinity. Rad White had an easy smile on his face, as usual, and he raised his hands in protest when he heard Carlos’s words. “Aw, Carlos… c’mon. I’ll sound so conceited,” he declined good-naturedly, shaking his head.

“Hey, you’ve got a right to, from what we’ve heard!” Mikaela laughed, coming over to pat the Hummer lovingly on the hood. “Hey, Ratch’ – and you, Ironhide,” she added to the titanic GMC Topkick pickup truck that was parked at its side, gleaming darkly in the sunlight. “How are you guys?”

The metal vibrated under her hand and she heard the familiar, baritone voice of her protector, coupled with the slightly gruffer voice of Ironhide. “Good afternoon, Mikaela.”

Rad took a few steps back, away from the trucks, and Mikaela followed suite without hesitation so that they could transform without crushing anyone. The two of them stood high above them, Ratchet with his hands on his hips and Ironhide with his arms folded across his wide chest. Both of them had smiles on their faces, which was somewhat surprising, considering the disposition of the latter – and, on occasion, the former. Oh, the memories she had of making Ratchet mad… they were priceless.

Ironhide immediately started eyeing Rad as if he was a target that ought to be shot at immediately, one optic ridge cocked in apparent suspicion. “Kid, I helped you get those grades three years back,” he pointed out almost threateningly, although the slight smile did not slip from his dark face. “You should be showing off about the results of my efforts.”

“Hah!” Carlos snorted incredulously, though he shut up pretty quickly at Ironhide’s look.

Rad sighed and finally gave in, holding up two envelopes between his finger and thumb. “Okay, okay,” he confessed, rolling his blue eyes, and Mikaela gasped, snatching one of them as if it was made of solid gold. “I got accepted into the two Ivy League law courses that I applied for – Harvard and Dartmouth. Happy?”

“Harvard?” Mikaela gasped, awestruck. God, if only Rad had been her father’s son… “To do law? – You’ve gotta be kidding me. And Dartmouth… hell, that’s really something, Rad.”

“Aw, he knows it,” Miles teased jokingly, elbowing Rad, who put his hands into his pockets and shrugged as if it was nothing. “Jeez, you smartass… freaking Harvard… that really is something. My mom would actually have died of shock if I had managed to get accepted into an Ivy League, but I didn’t even bother applying… given my grades in English, I was screwed from the beginning. I thought Macbeth was a fast food corporation… then I realised that it was… well, you get the idea.”

“You should always try,” Rad said astutely, pointing a finger at Miles in jest. “Otherwise you’re guaranteed to fail, bud.”

It was at moments like these that it was extremely plain as to why Rad’s guardian was the Autobot commander, Optimus Prime. The two of them seemed to think on the same wavelength, and were always coming out with insightful lines such as these at the right moments. It was a good example of how well suited all of them were to each of their large, mechanical partners, and Mikaela felt it as soon as the words had left Rad’s mouth. Rad himself barely seemed to notice the wisdom in his own words, carrying on exchanging witty comebacks over Miles’s assessment gaffes.

Ratchet extended a hand to her as the others began to talk among themselves, and she climbed up without hesitation, allowing him to hold her up to eye level. His small blue optics were analysing her perceptively, taking in her artificially cheery expression with unbridled concern, and she knew that she’d been caught out.

“Mikaela… you are troubled,” he stated. She lowered her eyes, her smile sliding off her face. “Whatever is the matter?”

Ironhide, too, was leaning in and looking at the young woman with a grim expression. “You know Ratchet can always tell when you’re not doin’ so great, little lady,” he reminded her, and she drew her knees up to her chin and looked up at them gloomily. “As you humans would say… ‘spill the beans’.” Then he paused. “Ah, don’t tell me. It’s that… thing on your back.”

The humans had got together a few weeks beforehand and decided that they wanted to mark themselves as belonging to the Autobot force alone – something that they had been thinking about for a long time. Some of the things they had done were not permanent, but Mikaela and Sam had made a spontaneous decision to get themselves tattooed. Mikaela now had Ratchet’s name written across her lower back in Cybertronian, marking herself as his charge, and Sam had the Chinese symbol for bee on his wrist.

It had hurt – really hurt, to the point where she’d been inches from begging the tattooist to quit – but it had been worth it.

“No; it’s pretty much healed up now, Ironhide. Scab’s all gone and everything.” The old warrior shuddered, looking disgusted, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile again. And now there were tears coming up, dammit… “I… oh God, sorry…”

“What the slag are you leaking lubricant from the optics for?” Ironhide frowned, and she brushed them away on the back of her hand, embarrassed. “Has that obnoxious little son-of-a-glitch ex-mate of yours decided to make a comeback and fondle my wheels again?” He scowled, his blue optics narrowing. “I swear to Primus, I will crush that boy if he has said anything further –”

“It’s not Trent, Ironhide. He’s out of town… he’s going to college in Florida.” He grunted. “It’s just… when we all go to college, things are really going to change. We’re not all going to be together any more, and that really bothers me. I’ve decided to go to Tranquillity Lake, and Sam and Miles are going there too… but the others might not stay.” She looked up. “You might not stay.”

Ratchet shook his head immediately, quieting her major fear. “I will go wherever you choose to go, Mikaela,” he assured her gently. “And if you choose to stay, then I will stay.”

“And I haven’t got anybody to go with,” Ironhide huffed, glaring at his general surroundings. “So I may as well stay, too.”

She sighed. “… Okay. But yeah… that’s why I was upset. Nobody needs to be beaten up – don’t worry.” She laughed at the disappointed look on Ironhide’s face, noticing for the first time that his cannon had been active for the entire conversation.

Sam, who was demanding to know whether or not Ironhide thought that Jade should go to the college in San Francisco or stay and go to TL, soon dragged the great black mech away from them, leaving Mikaela alone with her guardian. She hadn’t missed the slightly despondent expression on his face, either, so she decided to question him on the matter. No way was Ratchet going to sit around and listen to her troubles when it was so blindingly obvious that he had a couple of his own.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him simply, and he frowned slightly, as if he was puzzled by her enquiry. “Don’t play dumb with me, Ratch’. You don’t exactly look in high spirits, either.”

Ratchet smiled demurely, shaking his head. “It is nothing, my dear.”

Jeez, why did he always do this? She knew the guy like the back of her hand – they spent pretty much every day together, and he had taught her all she would ever need to know about automotive engineering and mechanics. His guidance had made her evolve from grease monkey to grease gorilla in the three years since he had been her guardian, and they talked about pretty much everything – any time she had a problem, she knew that Ratchet would listen to and understand her.

“Ratchet,” she said shortly, using his full name to get the point across as to how serious she was being, “C’mon. Tell me.”

Undoubtedly realising that she wasn’t going to budge in her decision to draw forth his darkest secrets, he surrendered reluctantly after a moment. “It is just…” he began, looking unsure of how to phrase his thoughts, “For three years now, Mikaela, my spark has been calling for a partner. A partner that still, after many millennia of existence, has not come to me.”

She stared at him.

“You want a girlfriend?” she blurted out before she could stop herself, lifting her hands to her mouth. Bombshell! “Aw, Ratch… you’re… That’s so… Oh my friggin’ God, that’s so depressing!”

He managed a small smile. “Indeed.”

Jeez, why was she so shocked? Ratchet was a guy… but he was… Ratchet, for Christ’s sake! He was the moody medical officer that stalked around the base with a wrench, daring anyone to touch his tools, or enter his medical wing; pretty much the oldest Autobot there, apart from Ironhide – maybe – and more in love with his work than he could ever be with a girl. But hell… she must be a pretty poor excuse for a charge if she hadn’t seen that little bit of information coming…

She shook her head, her heart aching for her friend. “I… don’t know what to say,” she admitted, glancing involuntarily down at the circular lights on his chest, beneath which she knew that his spark was. “I mean… um… why the sudden need for a… mate?” She said the last word hesitantly, remembering how he had once revealed that Sam wanted to ‘mate’ with her.

… why the hell did they say ‘mate’, anyway? They weren’t lions…

“I believe it began when the battle was over,” he told her gravely, snapping her out of it. “When I saw all the happiness that the couples around me shared with each other. Yourself and Sam, for example. And of course, the passion that Starscream and Alexis share is enough to make anyone… ‘green with envy’… as you say.”

That was certainly true. Alexis and Starscream were a pair that you could practically feel the heat of infatuation radiating off whenever you were in the same room as them. Three long years hadn’t quelled Starscream’s peculiar obsession with the pale, skinny girl, and the same went for her – her love for the ex-Decepticon was one that die seriously hard. Mikaela knew that Alexis would be throttling herself by the end of the meal with her new family members – mainly because Starscream wasn’t going to be with her.

“Huh,” Mikaela agreed with a shrug, patting his thumb gently. “Hey… you’ll find someone, Ratch’. You’re such an awesome guy – and a great guardian,” she added honestly, making a shadow of joy return to his wizened face. “Cheer up. There’s a girl out there, right now, that’s just waiting for you to find her. And some day… maybe someday soon… you will.”

Ratchet inclined his head graciously to her. “As Ironhide told me once,” he remembered with a sigh that sounded a little too sorrowful for her liking. “And I hope very much that you are right, little one.”

“I am,” she assured him confidently. “In fact, I bet my bottom dollar that by the end of this year, you’ll be happily settled with some gorgeous girl.”

“I’ll take that bet,” he chuckled, and she laughed.

Skyfire narrowed his large, navy blue optics slightly as he watched Jade move her paintbrush over Starscream’s armour.

His old friend – and Jade’s unwilling new canvas – was sitting impatiently in Skyfire’s largest room at the improved base, which he now proudly referred to as his ‘laboratory’, being a self-confessed and utterly obsessive scientist by nature. He kept glancing down edgily at the young woman as she painted over the silver Decepticon mask on his right wing, slowly coating it with a layer of carefully mixed, dusty brown paint, and hiding it from the eye of the beholder as Starscream fidgeted and grumbled.

“Dear Primus, you humans are slow…”

Jade rolled her brown eyes and continued nonetheless, ignoring his moaning – she had been forced to put up with it for an hour and a half, since she had started this job, and Skyfire knew that she was probably used to it after three years. It was a good thing that she loved painting so much, however, or even his good-natured mate might have lost her mind.

He folded his arms and cocked an optic ridge at his friend disapprovingly. “Really, Starscream… you ought to be thanking Jade for doing this,” he reminded him sternly, and Starscream raised his optics to the ceiling, heaving an enormous sigh. “She has taken time out of her day to do this for you, and it is not particularly kind of you to be complaining about it in such a discourteous manner.”

“Who said I was kind?” Starscream retorted, making a sudden movement with his arm that threw Jade off-balance from where she was sitting precariously on his shoulder in order to reach his wing. She made a grab for a component and caught herself, but it still made Skyfire’s spark stop for an instant.

“Starscream!” she complained, exasperated. “Can you just stay still? This is the last one. I promise you’ll be done in a minute.”

Starscream turned his head to look at the girl on his shoulder and gave her an extremely hard look. “I’ll hold you to that, human.”

Three years had done little for Starscream’s manners or his hot temper, although he was certainly more inclined towards the planet’s natives that he had been in his Decepticon days. He was still frequently angered and had alarming mood swings – one moment he could be content, and even happy, but the smallest trigger could send him flying into a rage that he would not be torn from for hours. The only ones who had shown any ability to calm him were Alexis and, sometimes, Skyfire.

Jade clenched her jaw proudly and pointed the tip of her brush at him. “Don’t call me ‘human’, flyboy!” she ordered him sharply. Jade had never been intimidated by Starscream’s ever-changing demeanour, and had always made it clear that she was someone to be reckoned with, organic or not. “You need an attitude adjustment.”

“Sometimes I agree with her, Starscream,” Skyfire admitted, smiling slightly at his friend’s offended look. “I understand your impatience, but please. You are fortunate that Jade did not want to complete the job today and paint on the new insignia.”

“Yep,” Jade concurred cheerily. “But I want you back here tomorrow at eight o’clock sharp, mister. I need to get it done before I go out.”

Starscream sighed again, his entire body reverberating with impatience. Skyfire checked his internal chronometer when he saw that the sun was beginning to sink outside, and he knew that Alexis would be on her way home from her meal with her new family members by now. He spied a tiny smirk appearing on the other flyer’s face as Jade painstakingly covered the top of the Decepticon mask, and knew that they must be thinking on the same wavelength on the matter.

Jade, seeing the amusement of the two of them, wiped her brow with her lilac, patterned kerchief, which she had taken off for a moment, and raised her eyebrows enquiringly at each of them in turn. “Something funny?” she asked pleasantly. “Oh, wait… didn’t Alexis have that dinner with her mom’s new guy today, and their daughter?”

“Yes,” Starscream nodded, looking pained. “Her maternal unit wanted them all to have some ‘family time’, or some such nonsense.”

“As indeed Ms. Paxton would,” Skyfire pointed out sensibly, causing Starscream to looked rather bored – attempting to cut the impending lecture off prematurely, no doubt. “However is young Alexis to become acquainted with her stepfather-and-stepsister-to-be if she is always out flying with you? Primus knows where her mother thinks she is every night, given the fact that after three years of being part of her life, you still have not made yourself known to her –”

“Oh, that would be a good plan!” the other retorted sarcastically. “I’m sure she would be overjoyed at meeting her husband’s murderer.”

There was a short, uncomfortable silence; Jade glanced at Skyfire uneasily before she dabbed one last lick of paint over the symbol on Starscream’s wing. “All done,” she said quietly, and Skyfire came to scoop her up from Starscream’s shoulder.

Starscream jumped up then, glancing down at himself and finding no signs of his Decepticon heritage. Jade looked vaguely impressed, and Skyfire didn’t blame her: his friend was an enormously powerful-looking creature, and he had seen enough of his combat in battle to know that he was an extremely able warrior, just as Skyfire himself was. “Thank you,” he managed stiffly. He still found it difficult to show gratitude, even after so many years of life with the Autobots, but Skyfire understood, as did Jade.

“No problem,” she smiled kindly. “See you tomorrow, Starscream.”

Clearly unable to wait any longer, Starscream briefly inclined his head to Skyfire before he was out of the door in a blur of wings and gears – he leapt into the air with the grace of a hunting predator, transforming spectacularly into an Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor stealth jet before he was gone, blasting off into the reddening sky with a great roar of his jets.

Skyfire shook his head, smiling. “He really is besotted with the youngling, isn’t he?”

“Hey, you can hardly talk!” Jade teased from his palm, glancing down at her paint-splattered jeans and stained hands – how she had managed to get the brown paint all up her arms and in her hair was quite beyond him, but it did make her look very endearing. “It’s a good thing I moved out or my parents would wonder where I was all the time… I guess Alexis’s mom is too caught up in her new man to notice her much, though. They’re an English family, apparently.”

“Indeed?” he asked, gently placing her onto the workbench, and she nodded. “I must say that I feel sorry for Alexis… it cannot be easy for her to have to accept a new male parental figure into her life after the death of her own father. Have you met this stepsister of hers, Jade?”

Jade nodded again, teasing apart two strands of her that had become matted together with the viscous brown liquid. “Her name’s Rose – I’ve seen her around town. I thought she was quite nice, but I don’t live with her… Sam said she was kind of arrogant, though. She’s quite pretty – she has the most amazing long legs – but she knows it as well. And she’s clearly not taking to Alexis any more than Alexis is to her.”

Skyfire shook his head regretfully. “It is a great shame. Then again, if she has come from England, I suppose she must be very uncomfortable in her new surroundings, too.”

Shrugging, Jade pulled a face. “It’s none of our business, I guess. I just hope Starscream doesn’t do anything stupid… I can picture him ambushing the poor girl and strangling her to death with his holomatter form, or something. He may be getting the Autobot insignia on his wings, but he’ll always be a Decepticon by nature.”

She fiddled with the bracelet that she had chosen as her mark of allegiance to the Autobots – Sam had been trying to convince her to get a tattoo done with himself and Mikaela, but she had been too frightened of needles to do so. Instead, Skyfire had crafted her a beautiful charm bracelet, upon which hung the Cybertronian signs for sky, fire and jewel, the latter being his nickname for her – now she never took if off, wanting it to be as permanent as possible without actually getting something inked onto her skin.

“I agree. Three years is very little to us,” he responded to her comment, turning back to the great metallic structure behind him that was taking up half of the laboratory. “Humans may think that Starscream has had plenty of time to change, but remember that he lived for many millennia… we have not even been here for half a decade.”

“I can hardly remember life without you guys, though,” she told him, giving him an affectionate smile.

Her cell phone suddenly rung shrilly from the pocket of her jeans, playing out a song called Anything But Ordinary that Skyfire knew she liked very much. She reached in and plucked it out, wincing when she smeared the little device with brown paint from her fingers.

The scientist watched her as she responded to the person on the other end; it turned out to be Carlos Lopez, who wanted to talk about colleges. He felt that ugly, cold feeling in his spark that he always felt whenever he saw the young boy and tried to ignore it, picking up a mammoth wrench and raising it to a loose bolt on the mechanism half-heartedly.

He had been romantically involved with Jade Rivers for three years, and he had cherished every moment of it. He had always been far too concerned with his work on Cybertron to worry about femmes, but he thanked Primus every day that Jade had returned his affections for him when he had confessed them to her. True, it had been hard for her to deal with having a forty-foot bi-pedal alien robot as her lover, but his holoform made things slightly easier between them, although Ratchet still had miniature paroxysms every time he was caught using it.

Ah… he’ll know what it’s like to be in love one day, Skyfire thought confidently, thinking of his old friend with warmth.

Jade had never once shown any romantic feelings towards Carlos – not since she had admitted that she had been attracted to him when she was younger. She had sworn that she would never love anyone but Skyfire, and he believed her with no qualms whatsoever. What he worried about was the young man in question… Jade may have put her heart into his hands, but he was still somewhat suspicious of the handsome young man.

“Carlos flunked all of his college exams except for TL,” Jade snorted amusedly when she put her phone back in her pocket. “My God… I mean, it was bad enough when he got kept back a year back when we were sophomores, but seriously… he doesn’t care, though.”

“Mm,” Skyfire hummed, wishing he could be more tolerant of the young man in question.

It was not as if he could get away from the fact that Carlos was there, and always would be. He and Rad had been Jade’s best friends since kindergarten, and they were her advisors and confidantes – along with Carlos’s guardian, Seraphim, whom Jade had developed an almost sisterly friendship with. This was all the more disturbing, as if Seraphim and Jade were together, Carlos was highly likely to be with them. And if Carlos was with them… it made his suspicions deepen.

Her voice tore him from his covetous thoughts with a jolt, as did the light touch of her hand against his armour. “Sky’, you’re daydreaming again,” she teased him, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head affectionately. “This is how I know that you’re a plane in another form – you’ve always got your head in the clouds!”

“My apologies, Jade,” he smiled, unable to remain in such a dismal mood when faced with that lovely smile. “It is in my nature.”

She rolled her eyes, smiling. “Wouldn’t be in your nature to help me clean up all this paint, would it?”

Author’s Note: Hello everybody, and welcome to the second part of Transformers: Deux Claret. "The Day We Hailed the Heavens" is the sequel to “How We Seared the Sky”, and I hope that everyone will enjoy it as much as they enjoyed its predecessor. Reviews are highly appreciated - please feel free to make suggestions, ask questions or just tell me what you think of the story. Thanks so much, and enjoy! :)