Adventure. Something my life was completely devoid of. I kept thinking about the thing I wanted so badly but could never have. Then, one day, I got more than I could handle.
"Mackenzie!" dad called. I sighed, but dropped what I was doing. I walked through the kitchen, grabbing the tourniquet and syringe as I passed. I walked into mom and dad's room. Dad already had his head under the bed, looking for his acid. While he was rummaging, I looked around the room.
It was as messy as ever. Dad made it messy, and no one ever cleaned. There were broken tourniquets and empty beer cans littering the floor. Mom's bottle of birth control pills was on her bedside table. Her side of the bed was empty and unmade. She wasn't back from "work" yet.
Dad finally pulled out a vial. I took the syringe and filled it with the liquid in the vial. Dad put on the tourniquet. I gently inserted the needle into his fatty forearm. I felt him relax as I pressed the plunger down.
Dad fell back with a stupid grin on his face, happy with his high. I removed the needle and tourniquet and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind me. I went back to the kitchen and cleaned out the syringe. It was a time-consuming process. I had to use bleach and everything to make sure there were no traces of dad's acid left to find. I stowed the needle back in its place under the sink and walked back to my room.
I looked in the mirror at myself. I brushed my shoulder length brown hair away from my bright blue eyes. My bangs had an annoying habit of hanging down into my eyes. I stood back to look at my outfit. I wore a pastel blue dress. It was short sleeved and went down to the top of my knees. I wore black sneakers with white socks poking from the top. I wore my two favorite pieces of jewelry every day. One of those was the quartz crystal around my neck. A shiny gold wire wrapped around it in an artistic spiral and then hooked at the top for the silver chain. Dad had helped me make it on one of the rare occasions he was home. Mom had donated the chain for it. On my wrist was a rainbow friendship bracelet mom had made for me. She wore the one I made for her. I dressed like a girly-girl, but other than that I was pretty much a tomboy. Mostly anyways.
It was the middle of summer vacation. It was boring because all my friends were away on vacation and my parents were never home. Mom was either sleeping or at "working the corner", and dad was always asleep, at the bar, or working at his job on the assembly line.
I lay back on my bed and started at the ceiling. I started to daydream. My life is so boring! When will I actually get to do something besides go to school? I lay back and fantasized. I dozed off with visions of mansions with indoor pools in my head.
I awoke a few hours later. I walked out into the kitchen to check the digital clock. Before I could do that, mom walked in. "Hey honey!" She called with a smile. Her bleached teeth were amplified by her bright red lipstick. She also wore mascara and heavy pink eyeshadow. She wore a short shirt, it showed her belly button and it showed a lot of cleavage. She wore short denim jeans and fishnets. She wore a black jacket as well. That was the only thing she wore that wasn't overly revealing. She removed her high heels and took her hair (dyed blonde with red streaks) out of its messed up ponytail. She had beautiful green eyes. "Hey mom!" I yelled as reply. I ran up to her and hugged her around her waist. Dad walked out of his room and gave her a kiss. "Hello dear." he said. He had mussed black hair. He needed to shave, he had stubble. He had a beer gut. He had dark brown eyes. He wore a loose red T-Shirt and torn jeans. One of his dirty socks had a hole in it. He carried a beer can.
"How was your day?" I asked as we walked into the kitchen to start making lunch.
Mom was in deep sleep. Such deep sleep that an earthquake wouldn't wake her. Literally. Dad was at the bar. I was basically home alone, as usual. I went to my room and started to work on a bracelet I was making. It involved 7 strings and was very complicated, so it was taking a while to complete. I had been working for about 10 minutes when I heard odd noises. I walked out into the street to see what it was.
Standing before me were a bunch of robots, giant ones at that! One purple and yellow one was using a welding torch (I know power-tools thanks to dad) on another robot that had a red torso, white arms and thighs, blue forearms and hands and lower legs, and a black face and head. Red eyes stood out on its dark face. Looking again, they all had red eyes. The yellow and purple one wasn't even holding the torch. It was attached to its wrist where a hand belonged. The yellow and purple one was welding what looked like a plane wing attached to the black-faced robot's back.
I made all these observations from my hiding place within a bush, which I'd jumped into the second I laid eyes on the robots. They spoke in a language consisting of clicks, beeps, and whirrs that I don't think any human voice could ever duplicate. I listened to the mysterious babble with interest. I tried to read their expressions.
There was a gray one across the street that didn't look too happy. It had a black cylinder attached to its arm. It glared at the black-faced one with it's glowing red eyes. They seemed to be arguing. The gray one suddenly made a large step toward the black faced-one and brandished a shiny black fist in the black-faced one's face. The black-faced one instinctively took an equally large step back. His foot was so close I could reach out and touch it. The black-faced one put his other foot next to the one close to me after the yellow and purple one spoke in the babbling language. The yellow and purple stepped back up to the black-faced one. The yellow and purple one quickly finished after that and stepped away. The torch on its arm retracted and was replaced by a hand. Cool! I mouthed.
I decided to myself known, these things were so cool I just had to say hi! I stepped out of the bush and planned to touch the black-faced one's foot. But suddenly it started to twist in ways I didn't think possible and I got my dress snagged on a passing piece of metal. When I stopped I was tangled on some landing gear. I looked up and was met by the colorful bottom of a plane. How awesome do these things get? I thought excitedly.
It took off and flew away. I tried to call to it, to let it know I was there, but the wind shoved my voice back into my throat. I kept my mouth and eyes closed the rest of the way to avoid the pain of the strong wind.
Starscream
5 minutes previous...
We were at a solar power plant making a successful raid. We quickly made 20 energon cubes. I urged the troops on. "Starscream, perhaps if you actually helped instead of nagged we might be out of here by now!" Megatron yelled at me. We were speaking in Cybertronian, naturally. Why downgrade ourselves to the insects' language? "Oh, so you can stand by and just stare off into space, but I can't encourage the troops?" I called back as I turned to face our leader. "I am overseeing. You are being lazy!" Megatron yelled, getting angry. "We'd have already had this mudball planet in the palm of our hands if I was in charge!" I retaliated. Bad idea. Megatron lunged forward and picked me up over his head. I flailed wildly as he sent me flying, straight into the stack of cubes. I rolled off the pile and one detonated as it landed on my wing.
"You doddering fool! Look what you did!" Megatron yelled at me. I rose from the ground and said "Well, maybe you shouldn't have thrown me!" "Alert: Autobots approaching." Soundwave reported as Laserbeak flew back into Soundwave's chest compartment. "Get the cubes out of here and return to base!" Megatron called. Everyone loaded at least five cubes into their arms and took off. We left the area just as the first Autobots appeared. Through a storm of orange energy bullets, Megatron called "Better luck next time, Prime!"
As we flew off, I was having trouble staying up. Ever so slowly, I was sinking back to Earth. "Megatron! My wing is damaged!" I said over comm, forgetting to put it on a private channel. So everyone heard. Oh well. "Then shut up and walk!" he answered. "But I'm carrying energon cubes!" I pointed out. He wouldn't ditch me if I still had the cubes, right? He pondered a moment, and Soundwave knew exactly where he was going, so he said "All Decepticons: loaded to capacity. Starscream: necessary." Megatron growled aloud and called aloud "Decepticons, land." We quickly obeyed and ended up in a random human residential area. "Hook, give Starscream a field patch and make it quick." Megatron ordered. Hook dropped his load of cubes on the ground carefully and I did the same. He started to weld quickly. The heat made me wince.
"Thanks to your blunder, we risk the Autobots engaging us!" Megatron blamed. "You're the one who threw me!" I yelled back. "You provoked me!" he yelled in reply. I groaned and rolled my optics skyward. "The Autobots will never fight in a residential area anyway. And even if they do, aren't we in a war? War involves fighting. Or did you forget that, oh mighty Megatron?" I said as I smirked at his angry expression. He stepped forward and brandished his fist in my face. "Do not test me." he said dangerously as I instinctively stepped back. "I thought I was supposed to be repairing you! Hold still!" Hook complained. I placed my ped that was still extended forward back next to my back ped to show that I'd cooperate. A few cycles later Hook stepped back satisfied. We grabbed our cubes and flew back to base.
Once we were back at the Nemesis and underwater I transformed and stretched, grateful to be home. "Uh, Starscream..." Skywarp said to me. I turned around to look at him, annoyed at him delaying my return to my quarters. He merely pointed at my lower leg. I rolled my optics and looked. There, attached to my leg, was a human female. Judging by size, a young one at that. I bent down and picked her up by her cloth garments. "Looks like you picked up a pest." Megatron said, seeing my parasite. "Launch it out a torpedo tube." Megatron finished dismissively. "I wish to interrogate it first. See if it's of value." I said to his retreating form. "Waste you own time. I don't care what you do with the bug." he said without turing around. The human looked back and forth at whoever was speaking in obvious wonder. She didn't understand Cybertronian one iota.
Still holding her by her cloth garments, I walked down the hall to the interrogation room. I hooked her up to the polygraph (a new addition to deal with humans). She sat on the table and looked up to me in something between confusion and awe. "I'm going to ask you a few questions." I said to her in English. "So you do speak!" she said happily." "What?" "Well before you just made weird noises..." "That was Cybertronian, thank you very much." Weird noises indeed. I thought, insulted. "Moving on. Designation?" I asked, datapad in hand to record. She just stared at me. I let a gust of air out of my vents and pinched my nasal bridge. "Name?" I asked again. She had a look that read "Oh!" and she replied "Mackenzie. Mackenzie Culmann." I quickly used the internet to search her name. Nothing. She was a nobody apparently. To make sure, I hacked the police records to find her. I found her parents were Peter and Susan Culmann. Also nobodies. "How did you get here?" I asked after my 15.39 nanoclik long internet research. "I wanted to say hi, but got caught on your landing gear when you were turning into a plane. You landed in front of my house." she answered. I nodded. "Do you know what an Autobot is?" I asked. "Auto-what-now?" "Apparently not." I checked the polygraph reading, 100% true.
I stood and turned to leave. I guess TC and Warp get to shoot her out the torpedo tubes after all. I thought as I walked away. "Excuse me, mister?" she called. "Hm?" I said as I turned around. "Can I stay?"