A/N: Hello everyone and welcome to my new story. It's complete and expecting regular Monday updates. It also has quite a few OCs in it, so if you don't like then kindly turn around and head the other way.

Disclaimer: Transformers and any recognizable characters belong to people who are not me. Sadly.

Now, without further ado, the prologue.

When Stars Collide

Prologue

Safe and Sound

"Hold on to this lullaby, even when music's gone"

I remember the day the music stopped.

Perhaps the lack of music would not have been so jarring in someone else's housing unit, but in ours it was completely unheard of. My creators were famous painters and enjoyed playing music when they worked which was nearly all the time. As a result, the music played non-stopped. That artistic line of code was one of the more dominate ones passed down to me and my twin. We were a dynamic duo; she composed music and I sung to it, even danced sometimes and we were on the fast track to being as famous as our parents. I used to tell her that, though we had the same basic build, her slightly smaller and far more agile frame was better suited for dancing than my more armored, taller one. She always ignored me. Ours was the music that always played and ours was the music that was missing that orn when I got home from the markets farther in town. With Praxus being one of the last neutral city-states left and it being on the way to Decepticon occupied Kaon, supplies were getting scarce here.

I will never forget the sight that greeted me upon entering my family's housing unit. It looked as though a massacre had occurred right there in the entryway. Energon was splattered across the walls, obscuring paintings and holo-pics of our family. The security pad for my creators' room was broken, as if someone had gotten frustrated and just smashed their way in.

And smash they did. Their room was in shambles. That was nothing compared to their frames, though, lying on the berth in a grotesque parody of peaceful recharge, the little armor they had ripped and energon still leaking from their shredded spark chambers. I couldn't, didn't want to process what I was seeing. I backed out of the room and turned towards the room I had shared with my sister and stopped once again to stare.

There was a second trail of energon that led to our room. The room, I was surprised to see, was as clean as I had left it, the only difference being the piece of something blue lying on her berth. Was that armor? I rushed over and picked up the piece of deep blue, familiar, armor, armor that I knew as well as I knew my own. It was the piece of my sister's forearm guard where I had carved her name.

It was a clear message. She was alive, though that didn't help any of my questions. Why kill my parents and keep her? Why my family at all? Who were they?

I sat on the berth and traced the glyph etched into the armor with my fingers as I came to a decision. I was going to find my sister.

0o0

A half cycle later found me heading toward Kaon, the home of thieves, Decepticon capital, and coincidentally (you know it's not) the place my twin was being held.

I had disappeared from my housing unit as quickly as possible and left Praxus. The news was everywhere and the whole family was pronounced dead, prompting me to get a new paintjob to better hide, all the while thankful our creators had taught us how to and that I had the paint for it. Hating even more that I had to cover up the supernova my creators had so painstakingly painted onto my armor. I was a show-femme, they said, and I had to look like it. But it was okay for a while. I knew the right people to talk to and how to go about it. I got a name from one of my more unorthodox resources a few orns later.

Soundwave. (Who's this, Creator? Well, this is the mech who's going to keep you safe, no matter what happens to us. His designation is Soundwave.)

Of course, I headed straight for Kaon after I got that bit of information with a determination only the young and naive had. Soundwave was infamous, the Decepticon Third in Command, and I figured that their capital had to be where to find him.

Soundwave was a promise-breaker too, it seemed and I was determined to get my justice. Young and naive.

Find him, I did. I was so very foolish to think I could just get my sister and go and I paid for that foolishness in pain and energon.

0o0

Five vorns and I still wasn't quite used to the sound of a roaring, bloodthirsty crowd and the stench of death that clung to the gladiator pits. We didn't really fight here often and I didn't really want to with the horror stories I had heard back home. The compound Soundwave kept us in was close enough that you could hear the crowds when the fights started in the middle of the orn and since the compound was underground where there was no sunlight to tell the time, it was our cue to start sparring. He claimed to be training us, though for what, he never said.

When I snuck into the city-state of Kaon and found his hideout, I had expected to see my sister being tortured or in stasis, or anything other than what I found. Because I found my twin perfectly calm and painted a bright blue to hide the meteor shower that had been painted on her with a feared Decepticon general nearly pleading with me to join him and my sister. I remember thinking that he might not have actually been a promise-breaker. Maybe he was going to take care of us. Then I thought of my Creators lying dead and killed that idea because, until I knew the truth, I wasn't believing anything. I still agreed because my sister was there, so he began training us, teaching us how to fight, how to hack, Pit, he even taught us how to stand and intake. He made us into warriors and today he was sending us back into the gladiator pits to test how much we had learned and how hard could fight.

I didn't know it, but that was the last time I would ever take an order from Soundwave.

0o0

She went first, matched up against some slow-moving behemoth of a mech, whose designation I never bothered to catch. She was fast and agile, so neither of us were all that worried. Soundwave had taught us well. Still, I told her, "Good luck. Try not to make him suffer too much."

The visor she had taken to wearing flickered as she smiled and said, "Promises, promises."

"That you'll never make," I finished as she vanished up into the pits.

Those were the last words we said to each other before my world literally came crashing down.

0o0

Ratchet looked up from the spark monitor he was adjusting at the sound of movement. He glanced down at the femme youngling they had pulled from the wreckage of Kaon two orns ago. She had been in stasis-lock since they found her, badly damaged, in a half-dug hole, looking as if she had tried to dig herself out and passed out before she could finish.

"Ah, you're awake," he said as her optics onlined. He leaned over her, unplugging the cords that led to various vital-monitoring machines. "What is your designation?" he asked. He would need it to finish filling out the patient report on this.

Her optics flickered, dimming and brightening again as she looked up at him. "I don't… I don't know."

0o0

Kaon was in ruins. His old home was in ruins.

Beneath his facemask, Soundwave smiled.

His plan would work. The femmes had been split up, one to each faction. He had trained them as best he could as an ex-gladiator, making sure it would stick through the memory wipe he had put them both through.

He would keep his word.

Soundwave would watch over them both, an old friend helping him out on the Autobot side. The other mech wouldn't sell secrets, he'd made that clear, but he would make sure the femme stayed safe and kept up her training.

He turned from the window at the sound of a groan behind him. The visor onlined and turned toward him, turning from blue to red as it did. She was awake.

"Query: designation," he said. He needed to know it the firewalls and modified memories were holding.

The newly red visor flickered as she accessed her memories and, without hesitation, she said, "Decepticon saboteur Lightningstrike."

0o0

She was one of their best tacticians when she bothered to access the programming.

Missing.

She was a fierce frontliner, trained by Ironhide himself.

Something was missing.

Something vital was missing.

She was straightforward, wore her spark on her forearm armor, the perfect Autobot.

It hurt.

Primus, it hurt.

She was Strikezone and something was missing.

0o0

She was one of their best spies, when she bothered to access the programming.

Dead.

She was a warrior and hacker, trained by Soundwave himself.

That bond was dead.

That bond had shriveled up and died.

She was evasive, her spark locked behind something thicker than armor, the perfect Decepticon.

She knew she was lying and the bond was as alive as she was.

She was Lightningstrike and she didn't belong.