New story coming down the pike. I've been working on this epic thing since I first watched DOTM in the theatre and I think it's about time I started posting it. Obviously, that means that it has DOTM spoilers. It also contains several OCs. That being said, please give it a chance and I appreciate any constructive criticism. :)
Chapter 1: Every Time I Try to Go It Alone
"Are you sure you don't want to come with me?"
The security checkpoint at the Washington Dulles International Airport is loud and crowded with holiday travelers, everyone shuffling and mutinous, trying to get their luggage checked and make it to their gates on time. Sam Witwicky and Carly Spencer are standing back from the lines, trying to get in some last-minute time together before Carly has to depart.
Sam wraps his arms around Carly's waist, dragging her in close to plant a grinning kiss to her lips. "You know I want to, babe," he says once he pulls away. "I love your family and England is beautiful this time of year, y'know, despite the sub-zero temperatures and—"
"I can't believe you're going to miss Christmas with me," Carly interrupts what is sure to turn into a mini-diatribe, "just to hang out here with the Autobots."
"It's not just hanging out. Not just hanging out—if it were hanging out, I'd tell 'em, 'Look guys, you're gonna have to put up your own robo-tree this year. I'm going to England with my gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful girlfriend and spending time romancing her.' And they'd just have to deal."
"Robo-tree?"
Sam smirks. "Yeah, you should see what 'Bee can do with corrugated pipe, some copper tubing, and an old chain-link fence. Pretty amazing stuff." He huffs a short laugh at the memory of the last Christmas he'd spent with the yellow Camaro before growing more solemn. "But you know it isn't just me being social. I am—" He puffs out his chest with satisfaction. "—Public Relations Liaison to the Autobots. It's a very important job."
"It is important and I'm very proud of you, but is it so important that you can't spend Christmas with your girlfriend, let alone your own family?" Carly's question is soft and serious. "Does your mother know that you're going to be using the Christmas holidays to hang out—"
"It's not hanging out."
"—with your alien robot friends instead of going home to spend time with her and your dad?"
"I may have neglected to mention that."
Carly sighs explosively and leans back. "Sam Witwicky, you are—"
"It's just that we have some very big things coming down the pike right now; things that I want everyone prepared for and for that I really don't get holidays. But I promise, I promise," he says, pulling her back in close and speaking softly into the curve of her throat, "once all of this is over, I am going to take a leave of absence for, like, a month and I'm going to spend the whole time with you on a beach somewhere where the sun never sets. You won't be able to peel me away from you. Sound good?"
Carly makes an exasperated sound but wraps her arms around his neck. Sam takes a moment to enjoy the warmth of her breasts and belly pressed up against him, the scent of her floral perfume, and the soft weight of her hair against his face. It creates a bubble of peace around the two of them in the middle of the rushing travelers.
Eventually she pulls back just far enough to look Sam in the eye, reaching up and framing his face with her hands. "Two month leave of absence," she whispers. She waits for Sam to smile and nod before he gets pulled in for another lingering kiss. When someone nearby wolf-whistles at them Carly neatly steps back and stoops to pick up her carry-on luggage, finally stepping into line. "I love you, even if you are an idiot."
"I love you, too." He moves up next to her, reaching out to grasp her hand and pull it up to kiss her warm palm. "Tell your family I said hello and Merry Christmas and that I'm sorry I missed seeing them this time."
"I will."
They remain silent as they make their way up towards the officers who are barking orders and scanning over people's belongings. Sam holds her steady as she reaches down to preemptively remove her shoes. "Be careful," he says gently. "And call me when you land, no matter what time it is over here."
"I will." She gives his hand a squeeze before withdrawing her own and leans in for one last kiss just as one of the officers ushers her forward. "Goodbye Sam. You have a Merry Christmas, yeah?"
"You, too. I'll have your present waiting for you whenever you get back."
Carly lets loose a tinkling laugh as she straightens and turns away. "It had better be very impressive to make up for spending your Christmas locked up at a government facility with your car over spending it with me."
"Oh, you don't even know!" Sam calls to her as she dumps her bag, shoes, and assortment of jewelry into the plastic tub waiting on the conveyor belt.
Sam watches from the sidelines as she steps through the metal/energon detector and collects her belongings on the other side. Once she's slid back into her heels, she straightens up and calls, "Bye, Sam! Love you!"
"Love you, too! I'll see you in a couple of weeks!"
She waves one last time and then she is gone.
Sam stands there, watching the place where she disappeared for a short amount of time before he glances down at his watch and decides that it's best he get going. He has a meeting with Mearing at 4:30 (one that's sure to be horrendous if the others he's been to so far this month are anything to judge by); Ratchet has been trying to get him down to the MedBay for a week now, so he may as well do that while he's at headquarters; and he's cleared out his evening schedule to spend time with Bumblebee, who's waiting out in the hourly parking lot right now.
Sam sighs and begins making his way towards the exit. Best get started, otherwise the day is never gonna end.
He rolls his neck back and forth to ease some of the tension. Stressful as it is, he'll never complain to anyone about this job because it's what he's wanted since he got out of college: he's doing something where he matters and makes a difference, and he's doing it with and for the Autobots. He has human friends and he loves Carly more than anything, but even amongst them he's never felt as though he truly belongs. It's only when he slides in behind Bumblebee's steering wheel or stands staring up thirty-plus feet and speaking with Optimus that everything clicks into place. It's a taxing job and it puts strain on his and Carly's relationship, but Sam has never felt as satisfied doing anything else.
Pulling his jacket tighter around him, he makes his way down through the main terminal and out into the freezing parking lot where he'd left Bumblebee. His thoughts keep circling around each other and he's so caught up between already acutely missing his girlfriend and the bone-deep aggravation he will no doubt be feeling by the time Mearing is done with him this afternoon, that Sam almost doesn't realize that Bumblebee is not where he parked him whenever they'd arrived.
"'Bee?" he calls out, hoping against hope that the Camaro hasn't run off and left him stranded at the airport. "Bumblebee!"
The only thing it gets him is a couple of odd looks from passersby.
"Dammit, 'Bee," he mutters to himself and pulls out his phone which has been off since he walked into the airport. It's only upon booting it back up that he realizes that his car's unscheduled disappearance might mean something more than just a joyride: there are two missed calls from Mearing and three from Lennox, a voicemail each, and an emergency text from Bumblebee himself which simply reads: DECEPTICONS AT HQ. AUTOBOTS NEED ME.
Swearing to himself, Sam pulls up his contacts and calls Mearing without listening to either of the voicemails. He can well imagine what they will say. She answers on the second ring, sounding breathless but ultimately no worse for wear despite the supposed battle going on around her. "Witwicky?"
Concern making him irritable, Sam blurts out, "Who else would be calling you from this number?" He makes his way out of the parking lot and onto the snowy sidewalk at a swift pace, looking for a cab. He's unsure of what he can do at headquarters but he knows that he wants to help.
"Where the hell are you?" Mearing asks, choosing to ignore his sarcasm. "Why didn't you answer your phone?"
"I was at the airport—now I'm on my way there. What the hell's going on? I got calls from you and Lennox and Bumblebee's run off on me; he says you guys are under attack or something?"
In the distant background of the call, Sam can hear men shouting and the screech of metal grinding against metal. This ominous sound is countered by the shrill cry of sirens that he can hear coming from the southeast. He quickens his pace.
Mearing, when she finally does answer him, manages to sound both worried and monumentally pissed off. "Five rogue Decepticons came up on the Arland D. Williams Memorial Bridge; Optimus, Dino, and Sideswipe went to intercept them and, at their last transmission, they had entered the East Potomac Park. In other news, whenever they rolled out, two more Decepticons attacked here. Ratchet and Colonel Lennox's team managed to hold them off until Bumblebee showed up and we've—"
But exactly what Mearing and Lennox have done is suddenly lost in a horn blast from directly behind Sam, startling him so badly that his phone goes clattering to the concrete and he loses the call. As he stoops with a curse to pick it up out of the thin crusting of snow, he sees in his peripheral vision that a black car has pulled up next to him. Sam is halfway through standing back up and is already screaming at the asshole, when he realizes that there's no one behind the wheel.
There's a brief moment where he simply stares at the car—an old, beat up Challenger—before the passenger door swings open and a deep, warm voice sounds over the radio: "Please get in, Samuel Witwicky."
Heedless of the line of cars sitting behind the Challenger, Sam approaches him warily. He curls his numb fingers over the top of the door and leans down to look inside. "Who are you?" he asks the empty interior.
"I am not a Decepticon, if that is your worry, Samuel Witwicky."
"So, you're an Autobot?"
The powerful engine hums consideringly, before the car responds, "No, not really."
In all of his time working with the Autobots, Sam's never heard of a Cybertronian being a neutral party in the civil war between them and the Decepticons. "I wasn't aware that you could simply sit out. I thought you were either an Autobot or a Decepticon."
"Not everything is so black and white, Samuel Witwicky," the Challenger replies smoothly. There's a moment of quiet punctuated by the sounds of horns and expletives from the line of vehicles piled up behind him, before he asks, "Are you going to get in? You did want to get to your friends, did you not?"
Sam considers his options. Optimus, Sideswipe, and Dino are out at East Potomac Park fighting with a small force of rogue Decepticons and Ratchet and Bumblebee are being held down at the base with Lennox's team by two more. He breathes out through his nose and nods to himself—with Lennox there, 'Bee and Ratchet can handle two Decepticons easily. In fact, they've probably already taken them out if Sam knows his Guardian as well as he thinks. "Will you fight?" he asks the strangely neutral transformer.
In response the black car lets his engine roar.
Sam nods and slides into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind him. "All right then, let's go and help out Optimus Prime. He and two others are fighting five Decepticons in East Potomac Park. You know the way?"
"Fasten your seatbelt," the Challenger says in reply and peels away from the curb.
Sam does as he's bid and presses himself back into the seat as the car rockets down a small side street and merges onto 267. Holiday traffic is thick but they weave deftly through it at break-neck speed, the Challenger finding openings that a human driver never could; where there are no openings, the car swerves into the breakdown lane or shifts up to drive with two wheels settled on the cement barricade. Not wanting to break the car's concentration, Sam stays silent through most of the ride other than a few startled squeaks and one particularly memorable cry of alarm when the Challenger had shifted down into Stealth Mode to drive straight under the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler. When they reach a fairly deserted stretch of road, Sam broaches a question. "What's your name, anyway?"
"Name?"
"Yeah, you know. Like my name is Sam Witwicky. I guess you guys call it your designation or something like that?"
The radio, alarmingly, screeches static for a moment before going silent. Sam glances over at it before reaching out and touching the dash as he would if Bumblebee were upset about something.
"Hey, you okay?"
The Challenger remains silent aside from the thrum of his engine, seemingly focused on navigating the ice-slick road without killing the two of them. Sam settles back into his cold seat once again. Well, I guess that's the end of that conversation.
The rest of the drive is done in silence. Sam is so anxious about getting to Optimus and the others that, when the car simply jumps the toll booth, he doesn't even berate it as he would have with Bumblebee or Sideswipe. Eventually they get off of 267 and merge onto I-66, traveling east until they reach the icy Potomac, at which point they turn south on George Washington Memorial. The stretch of ice-black water slides by the driver's side window, broken sporadically by chunks of white and grey as the river tries to freeze. Without the radio on to offer background noise, Sam can now hear the familiar, thunderous sounds of a mech battle taking place not far away.
When the black car goes to circumnavigate the loop off of George Washington Memorial and onto the bridge, Sam finds a line of cars and, farther ahead, several police cruisers blocking their way.
"We gotta get past this roadblock," he says as he digs out his badge that Mearing had given him for situations just like this. "We gotta get over there and talk to those cops so they can let us through."
"Talk?" the Challenger asks, his voice startling to Sam after such a long time without hearing it. "We have no time for talk, Samuel Witwicky. Please brace yourself."
And with that ominous message the car begins to shift around him, growing taller and dropping the roof down so that Sam nearly gets a concussion. He yells and throws his arms out as the interior rolls sharply forward; it's only his seatbelt and the hasty incision of his knees against the glove compartment that keep him from going straight down through the windshield.
By the time he's oriented himself enough to look around Sam can only watch in dismay as the half-transformed mech forgoes the ramp up to the bridge and simply hops up onto the parapet above them, crawling along past the other motorists and the stunned police officers. Once past the barricade, the world shifts drastically once again and Sam is battered against the top of the car before the mech finally transforms back into the speeding Challenger.
As they begin to cross the bridge, Sam slumps down in his seat, one hand over his eyes and the other over his mouth. The car gives a little shudder and suddenly there is blisteringly cold wind buffeting Sam's face from the open passenger window. "If you are feeling emetic," the radio states tersely, "please be sure to you purge outside of my interior."
Sam just groans and cranks the window back up, deciding that the wisest course of action is to say nothing until they get to the park. Instead he lets the Challenger do the driving and stares out of his window toward where he can see plumes of black smoke and flashes of red and silver moving through the skeleton trees.
With no cars to slow him down, the black car makes it across the bridge and onto Southwest in record time, taking the first off-ramp he finds and plowing straight through into the deserted park. Even if Sam couldn't hear the teeth-rattling crashes of mechs fighting in the distance, the smoking craters from energon cannons and wide swaths of newly-exposed dirt cut into the frosted grass would tell him that they are in the right place. "Head towards the golf course. Sounds like that's where they moved the fight to."
The car silently obliges, driving through a copse of naked trees and across a field towards what would have been a rather impressive golf ball fence had it not been recently leveled. Twisted metal rattles beneath the mech's tires as he rolls over the downed barrier and enters the desolate golf course. Sam leans forward in his seat, squinting to see out the clouded windshield.
"Look, look! There's Dino!" he says with alarm, hitting the dash several times for emphasis. It's easy to spot the violently red Autobot against the grey sky and the Challenger pulls to a stop some distance away, leaving Sam to stare out in apprehension. Dino appears to be fairing well against the large black-and-rust colored Decepticon that he's fighting, however, using his grappling blades to attack its legs and vulnerable face from a distance.
Satisfied that the Autobot is safe for now, Sam scans the horizon in search of Sideswipe and Optimus. He's just about to tell the black car to drive further into the fray when a plume of dirt and fire erupts from behind a small hillock nearly halfway across the course. Sideswipe comes spinning out of it, his tires skidding on the grass and two Decepticons hot on his tail. He throws himself down onto his belly midway through the spin and throws out both arms—Sam can only assume that he has his guns drawn because one of the Decepticon's faces explodes in a shower of sparks. While it falls back, gripping at its head, the second one surges forward; it catches Sideswipe by one of his legs, seemingly trying to rip it off as the silver Autobot lashes out with the blades he keeps attached to his forearms.
There's suddenly a loud bellow and Sam catches sight of a blue and red blur as Optimus comes charging in with gusto. He has a small grey Decepticon clawing at his back, trying to blow fiery chunks out of his armor with some sort of cannon. Despite his long reach Optimus can't seem to get at the thing and with an aggravated roar he transforms down into his alt form. The change is enough to shift the scrabbling Decepticon and it slips off as the Peterbuilt takes a sharp right turn.
Once the other mech has been dislodged, Optimus makes to transform back but the 'Con seeks retribution by firing his cannon on Prime's back tires in rapid succession. The force blows out what is essentially a thigh and Optimus stumbles out of his transformation and straight into a sand pit with enough force for Sam to feel it even at this distance.
"Optimus!" he shouts, clawing at the door handle and his seatbelt simultaneously. Neither gives. "Let me out! What the hell are you doing? Let me out now! Optimus!"
The Challenger remains stubbornly locked and stationary as the battle wages. Sam can only watch in horror as the smaller Decepticon approaches the pit where the Autobot leader went down, his cannon drawn and pointed at the fallen mech. Still locked in their own battles, Sideswipe and Dino are yelling out for Prime to get up but are ultimately unable to help him.
Sam feels white hot rage billowing up inside of him. He slams his fists against the dashboard over and over again, screaming, "What are you doing? You need to help him! You said you were gonna fight—get out there and fight, you sonofabitch!"
"Please calm yourself, Samuel Witwicky," comes the calm voice from the radio.
"Calm myself? They're about to kill my friend! What are you gonna do about that?"
There's a pause just long enough for Sam to twist within the confines of his seatbelt and get his feet up to kick at the passenger window before the Challenger responds, "I am going to kill them all."
And that's the only warning Sam gets before the roar of the engine deafens him and the car begins to transform around him once again. The dashboard folds down against his thighs painfully, the roof caves in, and Sam only catches one last glimpse of grey sky before the world goes dark.