Rust in Peace
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers
Outside Woodland Park, CO
"Where is it?"
Clad in the officer's uniform, a middle-aged woman was stumbling about in an old junkyard. She growled as she passed by the same abandoned ambulance she'd seen a mere three minutes ago. Cursing her luck, she pressed on the buttons of her phone once more.
Why she offered to look for the little delinquents in the first place was beyond her at this moment.
Turning away to look elsewhere, she thought to herself, I'm blaming the guy the in the tinfoil hat.
Carmen stepped into the main room of the police station, ready to clock out for the day. It'd been a long one, what with the whole traffic light fiasco at the intersection on Dundas. And then, she'd just barely made it for Jeremy's game, only catching the last inning. God, Joseph wasn't gonna be happy about that. Ugh, and then she still had to cook dinner at home. Maybe she would just order take-out.
At least that was her plan. Until she saw the guy in the tinfoil hat.
"You should be out there, looking for it! It could be a danger to society!" the obviously lucid man exclaimed, waving his arms around in a frantic manner.
Behind the main desk, a fellow officer attempted to speak in a patient way to the deranged man.
Though, Carmen could tell that underneath that calm façade, Alan was getting frustrated. "Sir, please, you need to calm down."
"Calm down? Are you insane!?" the man shrieked.
Alan replied, "Sir, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"But they're out there." The man's eye twitched. "Watching us, always watching. This is a test, you know. Trying to see how unaware we are. But don't be fooled! We—"
"Still need you to leave," Carmen interrupted calmly, "We'll handle things from here."
The man turned to look at the female officer. "Will you?"
"Of course," Carmen assured him.
At first the man was reluctant, but seemed to accept Carmen's answer and made his way out of the station.
Carmen gave the man a strange look before turning to the seated officer. "What was that about?"
"This." Alan tapped on the computer screen in front of him.
Carmen walked around the desk to see over the older officer's shoulder. The screen featured a poor quality image of a strangely humanoid figure with glowing blue eyes. It seemed reminiscent of other 'supernatural sightings' she'd seen over the years. The photo, the caption read, was taken in a junkyard just outside Woodland Park which wasn't too far from the station. "A conspiracy theorist?"
He sighed, "Seems like it. Though, the image was probably taken by some kids who thought it was funny to send folks like him to the 'yard looking for a giant metallic Bigfoot or something."
"Want me to take a look into it? Kids might still be around," Carmen offered.
Alan shrugged. "Maybe. See what you can find."
I shouldn't have said anything, she thought. After arriving at the junkyard, Carmen searched for nearly twenty minutes before deciding to have a look at the photo to see where the little delinquents would have been standing. Now, she was stumbling through a scrapyard full of old cars trying to find the same photo with her Blackberry. And, for the fifth time, she tried the same conspiracy website but only came up with an annoying tap dancing monkey.
She muttered, "Why'd Joseph have to go and get me this phone? He knows I liked it better when a phone was just that; a phone."
She pressed another button, trying to go back to the main screen but instead found herself in phone settings. Beyond irritated, she mashed the buttons in hopes of miraculously getting back to the main screen.
"Opa Gangnam Style~!"
"Agh!" Carmen dropped the phone as the loud pop music began blaring over the speakers.
She glared at the offending device as she swiped the phone up from the dirt. She was about to growl out a string of curses before she heard the sound of an approaching engine.
Finally, some good news, she thought, relieved. She'd found the ones she was here for at last.
Walking as quietly as possible, she snuck closer to the origin of the sound. As she drew closer, she heard voices arguing.
"...o away."
Be-be-beerr?
"You're interrupting my powerdown," a male voice said irritably. It seemed to belong to an older man.
But what is that beeping noise? Carmen frowned.
"C'mon Ratchet, we need your help to find the others!" Another male voice, but younger. Definitely younger.
Carmen carefully peered through the windows of a semi-crushed car, observing the scene. The only person she could pick out was a young boy, probably eleven or twelve in age, talking to the same ambulance she'd seen before. Strange as that was, there was another factor that seemed even stranger than that.
Whirr-be-be-beep-whirrr-dee-eerr. Yes, the giant, black and yellow robot crouching behind the young male was definitely one for the books.
"We can't stop Megatron. Not anymore. The war is over! And we—lost."
Carmen frowned in confusion. Where was that voice coming from? And what was this about a war?
"You're giving up? We can't just give up!" the wild haired boy said to the ambulance.
Carmen's heart almost seized when the seemingly innocent, abandoned ambulance began shifting in the most unnatural ways for a vehicle. By the end of it, there stood the same humanoid shape from the photo. Perhaps there was another one for the books.
As the middle-aged officer's jaw dropped, the strange gathering continued.
"Then tell me what we can do! Without communications, without a ground bridge, without a base of operations, or resources of any kind!"
Carmen didn't know what a 'ground bridge' was but it seemed pretty important if it was right up there with 'communications' and 'base of operations'.
Bwo-be-bweop, the yellow highlighted robot sounded.
"Beep's right!" How did he understand that? And what kind of a name is 'beep'? "We know Star scream had access to a ground bridge while he was operating solo."
"Yes, yes. He'd clearly been using the derelict Decepticon ship, the Harbinger. What does that have to do with anything?" the ambulance turned robot (or was it robot turned ambulance?) said, turning its head away.
"It could be full of Cybertronian tech! And it's probably abandoned again now that Star-scream's back with the cons!" Who the heck is this 'Star-scream'? Is it some kind of code-name?
"Phff! Well, resources won't be of much use. Not without someone to—lead us," the white robot ended ruefully. Did that mean something? The way he said that?
"It's a start!" the wild-haired boy argued.
"Then you'll have to start without me," the ambulance spat before finishing bitterly, "This is someone else's fight now."
"There is no one else, Ratchet!" the boy pleaded, "Just us. Just the team."
"Ratchet" shook his head in disgust. Somehow, even that small motion seemed to put a stake through Carmen's heart.
Then Ratchet turned, suddenly shifting back into that same ambulance. "Please. Just let me...rust in peace," he said resignedly.
The boy hung his head in defeat before turning back to the black and yellow 'bot. "C'mon, B."
It didn't surprise Carmen too much when 'Beep' turned into a sports car. She didn't even take notice when the boy climbed into the drivers' seat and simply drove away. She only stared at the ambulance, wondering and pondering what in the world she just saw. And what she was going to do about it.
From what she could gather, there was some kind of secret war going on if what the boy said about them being the only ones that could fight was anything to go by. This "Star-scream", who seemed to be a part of the "Decepticons", was against "Ratchet", "Beep", that boy and...whoever else was on their "team".
Which seemed ridiculous when one thought about it; after all, how can mindless machines have wars? And yet...
Carmen had always been sensitive to others' emotions. But she never thought a machine, the bane of her existence, could have...feelings.
A robot that could give up hope? How could he (it?) have hope in the first place? A machine that could be bitter, angry, rueful, resigned, all these were things that only a person—a human could do.
It seemed to defy all the logic that the experienced officer had compiled in her life. What she did next also seemed to defy that same logic.
"What do you think you're doing?" Carmen had stridden briskly around the scrapped car and stopped just next to Ratchet.
"I thought I told you—"
"I know what you told that boy and his friend." She glared at the emergency vehicle. "What I'm wondering is why you're still here, sitting on your tires just—rusting away!"
He said nothing as though pretending he were once again an inanimate vehicle.
"Oh, don't play dumb with me. I heard everything already. So why aren't you out there, fighting? Even if you did lose your leader—"
"Do not presume that you know anything about us!" Ratchet finally spat, "You have no idea the things we've lost for the sake of your kind; our friends and comrades, our homes, our very planet!"
Carmen was taken aback by the last part. Did that mean...? "You're aliens."
The robot alien scoffed. "Of course, or did you think we were built by humans?"
Carmen pinched the bridge of her nose. "And after all these years of telling my kids that Roswell didn't happen," she sighed before dropping her hand and glaring at the alien. "Then what are you doing here on Earth? Fighting your war here, are you?"
The ambulance didn't answer.
"Look, if your quarrel isn't with human-kind, you should probably skedaddle on home to your own planet and fight your war there. Humanity's got enough problems—"
"Please, don't give yourself so much credit," the alien snorted. "We would leave if our planet wasn't torn up by centuries of war."
The officer crossed her arms. "Then that's your own fault. You're saying that your planet is essentially incapable of sustaining life; dead. Yet, here you are, still fighting a God-damned war and dragging humans, children, into this."
"Do you honestly believe we wanted to?" the ambulance spat. "This war—any war-—is an absolute horror. But it's not like you've ever known anything about war. You've likely only known this small suburban area all your life; what would you know of war?"
Carmen stayed silent for a few moments before answering, breathing out, "My father." The officer closed her eyes, remembering. "I lost my father to war when I was sixteen." She shifted uncomfortably on her feet. She hadn't talked about this with anyone other than Joseph. "He was a captain in the Persian Gulf War."
The ambulance didn't say anything. She continued anyway. "Before he died, I hated him for leaving. He was always...a daredevil. 'Brave', you could say. I thought he was a coward for running away. From me and mother." Carmen looked away, distantly, with sadness. "Then he died. And I still felt so angry with him. It went unresolved for over ten years..."
"And?"
Her head snapped back to the immobile vehicle in surprise. She hadn't thought he was listening. "I...I met Joseph. My husband. Then I had my first child. It was only then, nearly 13 years after he had died, I finally understood. I don't know if he was a coward or not...but he loved us. He fought, he died because he loved both me and my mom. He...was a good man.
"I joined the police force not too long after that. I love my kids, both of 'em, and I know that there are risks that come with the job...but even if the odds were stacked against me...I would rather give it my all, even my life, because I love them."
The ambulance said nothing. It didn't even give any indication that it had been listening. It was as though it had turned back into the same abandoned ambulance from before.
Carmen stared at it for a few moments before finally sighing. "I guess the magic carriage turned back into a pumpkin." She shook her head, turning away. "I knew that meeting a machine with emotions was too good to be true."
She walked back the way she came, carefully maneuvering around the crushed cars, as she made her way out from the junkyard. Before she made it even halfway, she heard an engine turning over. She looked back, seeing a pair of headlights making their way out of the yard. For the first time all day, she smiled, savouring the little triumph. It seemed she'd finally won a battle with a machi-
"Opa Gangnam Style~!"
"Agh!" At the sudden, loud pop music, she lost her balance and promptly tumbled down the rather tall junkpile she'd been standing on. By the time she reached the bottom, the increasingly annoying song had started again. Groaning, lying flat on her back, she reached into her pocket and brought the phone up to her ear.
"What?" she barked into the mic. She jerked the phone away from her ear, as feedback screeched over the Blackberry. "Ah!"
"Hon?" Her husband's voice drifted over the line. "You probably shouldn't shout when the phone's on speaker."
She buried a face into her palm, muttering, "This is why I hate machines."
"What?"
She stood, groaning softly. "I just hope our kids don't inherit my lack of skills when it comes to machines. Their sanity depends on it."
As she made her way to the entrance, she silently grumbled to herself, 'And God help any future Fanzones if they ever meet other transforming robots.'
Thanks for reading! If you would drop a review-good or bad-that would so much appreciated. Work is un-beta'd so all mistakes are mine.