Between Guardians and Protectors.

Chapter 1: The meeting, Three years ago.

Life...can be unexpected. You hear that a lot, right? Life can surprise you. Your best friend could become your worst enemy or your brother at heart. For a young man named Gailen Cruse, he wasn't sure which he should expect.

It all began with a man. Gailen saw him standing outside the school one day. For obvious reasons, I can't say the school's real name. For this story, we'll call them Westroke High. Anyway, things at Westroke were as normal as it got so when Gailen saw the rough looking man his mind instantly screamed 'not normal!' Even though the guy looked fine.

He was a bit tall with dark skin and silver hair. He kinda reminded him of a tan Gibbs from NCIS. He wore a long, black coat and behind him sat...Gailen didn't know what else to call it...a tank. Though what really stood out to Gailen, yes even more than the tank, was the man's burning red eyes and the way they seemed to follow his every move. It had him a bit on edge if he was honest.

Gailen wasn't really a social butterfly so he tended to walk home alone. However...that man...he didn't like how he looked at him. Something about those eyes shook him to his core. As such, he opted to ride the bus the short five blocks to his house.

He told himself it would only be until the guy stopped coming to the school. But he didn't stop. He was there. Every. Single. Day. He'd pull up right ad school let out and wouldn't leave until Gailen was on the bus. Sometimes he even stayed to watch the bus leave. If Gailen was honest with himself he'd admit that he was pretty sure he saw the guy's tank following the bus to his house too.

This kept up for like three weeks. Finally, just went Gailen was sterling himself to confront the man...he stopped showing up. For like a whole year he didn't see hide nor hair of the man. He was relieved, but a bit freaked out as well. He tried to ignore it and go back to his life.

Looking back on it, Gailen had to admit his first mistake was letting his guard drop. Three days after the man stopped coming to the school Gailen noticed other odd things going on around him. Jets and helicopters seeming to hover over his neighborhood before quickly leaving. Small appliances in the house acting oddly. Even his own laptop seemed to be a million times faster and able to connect to the internet from where ever.

However, the strangest thing that ever happened to him since the man left happened when the school was attacked. It all happened so quickly. Gailen had been sitting in class, taking notes like a good little egg head when there was a loud 'BOOM' and everything went dark as the roof came crashing down on everyone.

When Gailen woke it was to hear a voice taunting someone. "Come and get theAutobotsots!" He jeered. Gailen shakily crawled out of the rubble, coughing and trembling in pain. He looked up in shock, awe, and horror to see...a gigantic robot hovering a few feet off the ground with two limp figures in his hands. One he knew from a classmate of his named Jake. The other was a girl he'd never seen before. She had black hair that was pixie cut in the back with long bangs in the front.

Gailen wasn't sure what was going on but two cars suddenly transformed into more giant robots and tried to attack the flying one. Their attacks were missing until the mech's red optics landed on Gailen and widened a bit in panic. Seeing he was distracted the yellow mech opened fire, making him drop the two children in his servos. The bot turned into a jet and flew off like the hounds of hell were on his tailfin. Gailen blacked out again after that and when he woke a second time he was lying in someone's backseat. In the front, he could hear a dark muttering. "Damn idiot. Told him not to attack that school. Gonna pay for this." Gailen looked towards the front seat and saw….no one. No one was driving the car?! He must have been hit harder than he thought.

Gailen must have passed out again after that because the next thing he knew he was waking up in a hospital bed. When he asked the nurse how he got there she sat down with him. "We found you outside lying in the back of a car that's alarm was going off. There was no driver, we thought it might be you, but then wondered who drove you here since your wounds were pretty bad." She explains, clearly hoping he could shed some light on this mystery. "What did the car look like?" he asks, confused. "Like some kind of tank," she says.

After that, Gailen told the police what he'd seen and heard. The police wrote it off as his seeing things from having a concussion, but Gailen didn't buy that. He KNEW what he saw. A few weeks later he was out of the hospital and, as he left the building he saw him. The tanned Gibb guy, standing next to his tank like always. For the first time, they locked eyes firmly. Even with the distance between the two of them, Gailen felt a chill run up and down his spine. This man...It was him. He was the one who saved him...He slowly nodded to the man in thanks, getting a nod in return before the man climbed into his tank and drove off.

Gailen didn't see him again for a very long time…..

(To be continued?)