A/N: So a few short chapters first, to properly introduce the storyline. More will come in a week :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, only Mattie.

The first think she noticed was the mild tremor. The table was vibrating slightly under her hand. At first she thought it was an earthquake, but then she heard the noises. There was a high-pitched screeching, almost too high to hear, and several booms. She walked over to the window.

The building she lived in was not one of the tallest, but she still had a view down towards the university and the oceanfront. When the weather was nice, she did her reading on her little balcony. If it was cold outside she would bring a quilt and some hot chocolate. The balcony was the only reason she'd gone for this flat.

Now it gave her a panoramic view of impending disaster.

A thick layer of smoke hid downtown. There were flashes of light coming out of it every now and then – it looked like a low-hanging thunderstorm, except no thunderstorm ever hugged the ground like that. And up in the air, something was coming down fast. Something big.

It's those robot aliens.

She'd seen them in the news, of course. The robot aliens that suddenly appeared everywhere over the last years. The spikes coming out of the ground only recently. But the last couple of days she'd mostly spent in the pool, practicing for the swimming competition coming up in a couple of weeks, or doing schoolwork. She hadn't heard anything about something huge falling from the sky.

It was enormous. Pieces and bits were falling off it, and crashing to the ground. She saw a building get hit by a shard that was bigger than the building was – it was levelled instantly. All the while, the noises were increasing and the smoke spread. There were loud booms, something that sounded like gunfire, and all the time that keening.

Oh, fuck.

Down on the street, people had started running. She looked up – there was no end to the thing in the sky that she could see, it seemed to be as wide as the city itself. But suddenly, running seemed like a good idea. Staying put in the building certainly wasn't.

Have to get out of town.

She turned, and hurriedly grabbed her purse and cellphone. Then she got a couple of water bottles from the fridge, along with whatever food was readily available, threw in a change of clothes, slung her guitar case on her back, and ran out of the apartment without bothering to lock the door. She took the stairs two at the time, exited the front door at a dead run and swung immediately to the right, making for the quickest route out of town.

She didn't get very far.

A large shard of the thing in the sky crashed into the building in front of her. It was a combined gym/mini-mall with a few apartments on top – she could hear screaming from inside. And the wall of the building started falling out towards her.

She looked around. There was nowhere to go. Quickly, she darted to the left, making for the alley between two of the houses. That was a dead end. But if she made it in there, the building in front wouldn't fall on her.

She almost made it.

A shower of falling concrete and rebar hit her as she reached the corner.

Her name was Mattie Eden. She was twenty years old. And now she was going to die.