I am so fucked.

The scream of the alarm in his ears was the last thing Reese had ever hoped to experience in his military life. The world was spiraling out of orbit despite gripping the controls with all of his strength and attempting to get the sensitive F-22 Raptor back into proper alignment. His stomach lodged itself deep in his ribcage and the suffocating weight of the G-forces made it nearly impossible to move.

One thing was for certain: he was going to die.

The Decepticon had come out of nowhere, spiraling with inhuman grace as it passed by fellow combatants and made a beeline for the B-1B Lancer that had been tasked with carrying a payload to the Decepticon fortress: Darkmount. Following orders, Reese and the rest of his squadron had snapped into action, beginning defensive maneuvers and protecting the missile weaponry which lay inside the bomber.

Just like Agent Fowler had said, the purple foot soldiers - Vehicons - were flimsy and easy to deal with; just a few shots into their armor and they fell like rocks out of the air. But this one was different, with a model strikingly similar to what the US military manufactured, save for the red accents and slight discoloration, as well as the Decepticon symbols on its frame. That had to have been one of the bigger baddies his superiors had warned would be on the field. 

It shot deadly missles, and Reese supposed he should have count his blessings; Jetter had died on impact, whilst he managed to snap his jet to the left just in time to only have his right wing decimated.

And now he was spiraling out of control.

"Spotter, we see you got spiked by a bandit. Do you read?"

"Kind of busy doin' the funky chicken!" He snarled, "Whole right wing is bent, didn't think I'd be a goddamn grape!"

"The Raptor is a loss. You've got about a delta before you hit the ground. Count to thirty and punch out!" 

"Why didn't I think of that?" Under other circumstances he would have thought twice before snapping at a superior officer, but Daisy was telling him information he had already figured given his experience. He was already smashing buttons and attempting to minimize the G's as the fighter jet spun out of control. Tired of hearing more commands being shouted into his ear he tore off the headset before quickly checking the securements on his seat, pausing and taking a deep breath.

"Here goes nothing. Praise be to God." 

Then he slammed on the eject button, briefly blacking out as the air left his lungs and his jet dropped out from below him.

||| ||| |||

"Our government has been well aware of the presence of these aliens, but relations with them have not been strained - until now." 

General Bryce paced back and forth in front of the line of airmen, a special agent - William Fowler - standing off to the side and ensuring the accuracy of what the General was telling them. From what Reese had gathered, they had been a part of a secret government sector responsible for the maintance of these "aliens," and his mind still struggled to wrap around the fact that this secret had been kept quiet for so long; surely, he thought, someone would have spilled by now.

"From what we know there are two factions: Autobot, and Decepticon," the general flashed two symbols on the screen. "The Autobots are our allies, here to protect humanity and keep the Decepticons from enslaving us all. But something happened; we're not entirely sure what, but the Autobot leader Optimus Prime has gone AWOL - "

"Missing," Agent Fowler interrupted with an annoyed quip. "He is just missing."

" - regardless, he is gone, and Megatron - the leader of the Decepticons - has built a fortress here on Earth. It was been two weeks and he has already successfully taken over the surrounding coutnies with his army; and if we let him advance any further we will have a full-blown invasion of the United States of America on our hands." General Bryce paused. "The Autobots are still MIA, and we cannot contact them for fear of the Decepticons learning their locations and picking them off one by one. So, there is only one other option. We take them head on."

"Here is what we know," Agent Fowler took the stage now, the expert on these alien lifeforms. "The Decepticon fortress - Darkmount - is located exactly on the Jasper, Nevada city limit at these coordinates." He flashed the respective numbers on the screen. "They are equipped with massive fusion cannons capable of reaching our nation's capitol, and perhaps even beyond."

An airman whistled behind Reese, doing exactly what they were all thinking.

"Megatron thinks he has our hands tied, but I am trusting that our president and the citizens of D.C. have already started evacuation protocols. That is why we have been given the O.K. for this assault - a direct attack on Darkmount. Your mission: escort the B-1B Lancers to Darkmount so they can drop their payloads of cruise missiles onto those cannons and take them out before Megatron can use them. The easiest part will be avoiding the fusion weaponry; my intel says they are not only slow moving, but take time to charge. Our fighter jets will be more than capable of staying out of the way. It is the 'cons we'll have to worry about.

"These guys are living metal capable of transforming into human-made automobiles and aircraft. They have weaponry that is hundreds of years more advanced than our own, and they have had thousands of years to hone their combat skills - yes, they are that old. It is important to understand that there is no combatant once a plane - they call themselves Seekers, or Vehicons - go down. They are the plane. The purple Vehicons will be easy to take out, but I know of at least three Decepticon baddies that are capable of flight, and they are much, much harder targets to kill. Megatron, Starscream, and Soundwave. While I would advise to not engage, those bombers are your priority, and their perogative. Protect them, or we will all be paying for this mess."

"Sir," an airmen raised his hand. "If they look like us, how are we going to keep from shooting down our own men?"

"I already have guys on the job," Agent Fowler nodded. "Your wings are being painted with a thin coat of bright yellow stripes. From what I've learned with the 'bots, they aren't exactly colorblind, perse, but their perception of color is much more muted than our own. That means we can paint you boys and girls up without having to risk making you easier targets for the Decepticons."

Reese took a deep breath. These creatures were becoming weirder and weirder by the minute, and he was still trying to comprehend how they could exist.

"What kind of advanced weaponry are we talking about?" Another asked.

"They fire bolts of pure energy, tears through our metal alloys like paper," Fowler explained, "But doing so costs energy that they have to replenish if they use too much of it. However, don't count on running your enemy dry; they are sturdy guys capable of outlasting even the best of us. Their armor is inhumanely strong, but only for the Decepticons themselves, not the Vehicon drones. Because of their mass production on their home planet, their frames are a bit more flimsy and can't take as many hits. I've seen a few go down with my own weaponry.

"I will also add," he continued, "do not send sensitive information over our radios. Soundwave can hack into even our government's database, and I suspect once he learns we're chattin' over our radios he will be listening in. Don't even pray if you think you're gonna give something away that could hurt us or someone you love."

The air became a little more intense. What the hell are these guys?

"If that is all, we will dismiss and be ready in exactly 0800 hours," Agent Fowler paused, then nodded toward General Bryce, who nodded his head. The airmen were dismissed, and quickly ran to gather their gear.

||| ||| |||

"I don't like this. You suddenly being thrown into a combat excursion that I don't know about?"

"I know, babe," Reese smiled, gently touching the screen. "But I gotta do what I gotta do. I promise I'll take that leave as soon as I possibly can, but right now it's all hands on deck."

"Be quick. I'm getting lonely." The pout made him laugh.

"I will," he promised. "I love you, Sam."

"And I love you, Reese."

||| ||| |||

The moment he woke up an unholy scream tore from his throat, the ear-shattering noise of combat threatening to blow out his eardrums. He still felt like he was spiraling, the distorted air currents ripping his parachute through the air and jerking him around like a leaf. Jets flew by almost at the speed of sound, lurching him upwards and then back down, the ground spinning below him. He wished he had passed out again.

"Oh f - "

He squealed in pain as the silver metal structure seemed to appear out of nowhere and slam into his body, his hands automatically scrabbling for purchase whilst his body peeled away from the side of the structure. Somewhere in the back of his head he realized he had somehow floated toward Darkmount, slapped right onto the fortress and now falling down its side. His parachute kept him from free-falling, but it was still undesireably fast toward the hot Nevada sand.

Despite everything that was going on around him a specific jet caught his eye, the wicked silver design boasting inhuman origins that made his skin crawl. It sped by him with a supersonic boom, thrusting him back against Darkmount and collapsing his 'chute.

The airman screamed again, but it was cut off when his shoulders were almost jerked out of socket, the parachute tangling up on a spire and dangling him hundreds - if not tens - of feet in the air. He grimaced in pain, kicking his legs and looking up to assess the damaged. A fall from this height would kill him, and he doubted the Decepticons would notice him dangling from their base of operations - and if they did, they would kill him.

He nearly stopped breathing altogether as the jet from before coasted toward him, the symbols on its wings glinting menacingly in the sunlight. Shit.

Instead of opening fire, like he had expected, it transformed, using its momentum to grip the sides of Darkmount with velociraptor talons, its feet sticking to the sides effortlessly. The slim figure was intimidating regardless, wings settling on its back as it finished its transformation, a face molding into place and bright red lights flashing online, seeming to gaze straight into his soul. 

"Well, well, well," The machine rasped, contorting its face into a shockingly human expression - a sneer. "Such a pity, isn't it, that you humans are incapable of unassisted flight."

"No, no!!" Reese screamed and thrashed as long talons gripped the strings of his parachute, shredding them effortlessly as he was hoisted into the air. He kicked out, feeling all of the blood rush from his face with dizzying speed.

"But, you should have thought of that before attempting an assault on the Decepticon fortress, incompetent worms!"

He watched with horror as a B-1B was blown out of the sky, the explosion causing several jets to teeter and lose their balance for seconds, firey debris raining down from the sky. He thought he saw a human form amongst them rocketing towards the ground.

"Anything to say before you fall to your death?" The Decepticon sneered again, its red eyes glittering. The human in its grasp felt his heart stop, ice freezing his veins. This was it, he was going to die. "No? Pity."

Like a toddler with an unwanted toy the Seeker threw the human into the stretch of the air battle, grinning maliciously as he watched him fall. Reese only heard the wind in his ears and the scream in his head, watching as the uncaring sky above him grew more and more expansive.

|||  ||| |||

 Alrighty, so that's my one-shot.

I was considering turning it into a book, and still am, but for right now I just wanted to get this out there. If it did turn into an actual work, then I would definitely change this bit's ending, because can't have a main character if they're dead, but I did kill off Reese because I wanted this to have a fairly unambiguous ending. Well, it seems that I've killed him off; definitely doing a non-survivable fall to his death.

Anyways.

I just wanted to get this idea out there because it had been bugging me for a while. I definitely have never truly dappled with a male human character before (Jack and Raf don't really count because their characters were all laid out for me to begin with) so I thought why not? Just take an idea I had for a female, change a few things, and make them male. So, that's what I did.

As for the military lingo: 

 Spiked - to be targeted by a missile

Bandit - enemy pilot

Funky Chicken - out of control maneuvers

Bent - damaged, destroyed

Grape - easily lost in a dogfight (a dogfight being a battle between two pilots in the air)

Delta - unit of time, minutes or hours depend on context

Punch Out - eject (from the aircraft)

G-Forces - gravitational force an object feels when it is falling or spinning; essentially the effects of gravity on an object.

F-22 Raptor - a fighter jet that is capable of reaching super speeds and is a single-seater.

B-1B Lancer - a larger aircraft with several mission capabilities and a significant payload (bomb capacity) of 24 cruise missiles.

Lemme know what you think! While I am considering turning this into a work, do understand if I don't; I've been quite busy (and just mentally under the weather, but I am checking out psychiatrists and discussing things with my parents) and I'm not sure if I would have the time to do this. Thank you all for understanding, and have a great summer!