AN: Drone has finally returned! I have no idea how many people out there may have been anticipating the return of the series, but I couldn't resist jumping back into the story of Jeffrey the Vehicon and his human sidekick Riley XD I'm hoping to be writing this story alongside the other story I'm working on-Rise-in the same way my other stories have worked (i.e. when I got stuck on one story, I could use the other to help me), so I have no idea how frequently this will be updated. Hopefully, every other week, but I've been have a wonky update schedule for a while now.

So, this is the "official" sequel to Drone. There's gonna be major amounts of humor, some drama, and even a little bit of romance ;P The timeline might be a little wonky, but it takes place a little after the first season finale. Fair warning though, this will not be a story that faithfully follows the exact plot of Transformers: Prime. I never had any intention of doing word for word each episode, but there will likely be references to certain events as we go along. But this is an officially AU story because Jeffrey don't care how canon is supposed to work ;P

Drone 2.0: Drone Harder

Prologue

Welcome to Jasper, Nevada

Humans are terrible drivers.

I've been obeying the traffic laws for little less than one human year, and no one can convince me otherwise. The past seven human hours has only solidified that belief, and I jerked to the far side of my lane when the human beside me drifted a little too close for comfort. It was like it was impossible for a human to understand the simple basics of the road: this is my lane, and that is their lane.

Stay out of my lane, bad human driver.

"Would you stop swerving, Jeff? My dad's never gonna let me drive again if you run us off the side of the road."

My engine growled, and I pushed myself past the incompetent human beside us. Take that—maybe my perfect driving abilities will rub off on all the other human drivers around us. "But it's not my fault! The humans keep getting too close."

Riley lowered her phone and glanced out the window. Furball growled from the passenger's seat, but Riley just patted it on the head. "What are you talking about? I haven't seen anyone get anywhere near you."

"That's because you've been playing on your communications doohickey. You're a terrible example of a human driver."

"Or the perfect example of a teenage driver."

I sent a burst of cold air through my vent. Riley squealed, and Furball growled again and jumped into the backseat to escape my assault. Riley smacked the vent away from her, but I angled it back towards her just as easily. "You're not a driver at all. I'm the one that's been chauffeuring you around this whole time."

"Nu uh! There was that…one time."

I laughed and swerved between two cars to pass them. I swiveled my side mirror and spotted Riley's dad far behind us in the moving truck. I was glad the only thing that got packed into my trunk was Riley's small things. "You mean when we had to take your dad to work because he had to fix his truck? Yeah, I drove then too—you just put your hands on the wheel and pretended you were driving."

"I'm good pretend driver." Riley dropped her phone in the seat beside her and put both of her hands on the steering wheel. I turned it to pass an old truck chugging along beside us. "See? It's all in the—holy crap!"

Had I not been paying attention, I probably would have swerved right into the red sports car that attempted to keep up with us in the next lane. As it was, it was easy to keep my wheels straight when Riley suddenly jerked it to the side and stomped her foot on the floorboard next to my brake pedal. I tightened the seatbelt around her when she stomped again. "Hey! My insides aren't nearly as sensitive as the rest of me, but they're still my insides. So no stomping!"

"Jeffrey, you need to slow down right now."

I did an impressive snake pattern across the three lane of traffics. It was almost funny how the sports car tried to keep up. "Why? I'm not even going that fast."

"You're going a hundred and twenty miles per hour!"

"So?"

Furball hissed from the backseat when Riley pushed back her seat to kick me without hitting one of the pedals. "You're going to be a metal pretzel if you crash into someone, and humans don't recover from that!"

"If—I'd never crash into someone."

"You know what my dad would say to that? 'It's always the other guy's fault'."

"You're dad's smart."

Riley opened her mouth to retort before slamming it back shut. I let my engine hum at the odd behavior, but never got a chance to ask when Riley said, "Pull over."

I slowed down a little. "What's the matter? Why do you sound so…pitiful?"

"Just pull over, Jeffrey."

"But—"

"Pull over!"

I would've shrugged had I been able to, but I slowed down and turned into the left lane to pull off the side of the road. When I stopped, the black and white car with blue and red lights twirling on top of it followed, and the obnoxious whining sound it had been making cut off with a funny "whoop whoop!" I was wondering when that thing would shut up.

Riley slouched down into the seat, and Furball ducked down into the floorboard of the backseat, crawling under the blanket Riley had put back there with a low growl. I rolled back and forth on my wheels and barely paid attention to the human that rolled out of the car behind us. "Riley? Are you sick? You're not going to spew nasty stuff inside me, are you? I saw someone do that on TV, and it didn't look pretty."

"Just shut up and pretend you're a car."

"But—"

"I said shut up!"

I huffed and settled down on my wheels as the other human stopped outside my window and knocked. I ignored Riley rolling down the window and stared ahead of us at the sign standing not far away from us. "Welcome to Jasper, Nevada!"—at least the signs seemed friendlier than the human welcoming committee.

I'm not going to lie—car washes terrify me. I'm firmly against them; I think they're the spawns of the Unmaker and should be treated as such. These death traps have taught me that there is more to fear than just Megatron, and I'm not just saying that because I officially defected from the Decepticons. It's just…being stuck in such a confined space, with jets of cheap cleaner shooting at you from every angles, and being assaulted by these huge, rolling tendrils of abusive cloth—it's some kind of scene from a horror movie!

A horn blared behind me, but I wouldn't budge. Nope, not gonna roll into the dripping death trap. The humans behind me can just kiss my—

My entire frame jerked forward from the opposing forces of my gas and brake pedals. I forced my engine to growl, but the pinching fingers grasping my steering wheel punishingly twisted. I flipped the sun visor down and happily rumbled at the yelp that came from Riley when it connected with the top of her head.

"Jeffrey!" My visor came down again, and I nearly forgot about my impending doom. Then Riley slammed her foot on the pedal, and it became a new struggle to stay out of the growling death trap. "Stop being a big baby and get in the car wash!"

"No!"

"The only way you're getting washed is by going through there."

"I'll suffer through the dirt…until you can get all the cleaning supplies unpacked."

"I will paint you pink!"

"Colors mean nothing to me at this point! Except hot pink—just don't pick that pink."

"Fine." I completely froze when Riley leaned back in the seat, arms crossed over her chest. "I guess I'll just accidentally delete all those episodes of Love in Seattle."

I gasped. "You wouldn't dare."

"We do need more space on the DVR. And you know, my fingers do sometimes slip on the remote. One wrong click and it's bye-bye—"

"Okay!" The horn behind us finally faded as I reluctantly inched forwards. I took my precious time, letting the LED sign berate me to pull forward and back up until I was perfectly centered. "You owe me."

"Oh, yeah. I so owe you for paying to clean you after you spent the last seven hours collecting bugs on your window."

I grumbled and hunched down as far as I could on my wheels. The first streams of ice cold water suddenly attacked from all sides, and I had to control myself from lurching forward and out of the car wash. "It's cold!"

"Cold showers aren't that bad. They help your hair and pores."

"That would be so comforting if I had hair and skin!" Riley went quiet after that, playing with her fingers. I hunkered down as much as I could and mentally prepared myself for the longest four minutes of my life because of course Riley would choose the option to let this monster do everything it could to me.

Note to self: avoid what the humans called "cops" at all costs. Especially when Riley's dad was following us.

I sped down the empty highway, resisting the urge to push past sixty. All the windows of my alt-mode were rolled down, and Riley's hand was sticking out of her window while she sang along with the radio. Normally (and after the first three months of her pestering), I would sing along with the more popular songs, but I was a little preoccupied at the moment.

Car washes always lied—their "spot free" rinses weren't really spot free!

"Jeffrey, you're gonna miss our turn." Riley grabbed the handle above her head with both hands and leaned into the sharp, tire squealing turn I performed. "Speed limit's twenty-three now."

"I know, I know!" I straightened back out and reluctantly dialed back on my speed as we entered the residential area of our trip. "But come on—you've said it yourself that the speed limit is just a suggestion. When did you suddenly start being all 'law abiding citizen' on me?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe when we had that cop glaring at us earlier?" Riley rapped her knuckles against the top of my steering wheel. "We're lucky that was our first warning. Next time, dad will ground us and make me pay the speeding ticket. Do you wanna be stuck in the garage for the rest of the month?"

"Wouldn't be much different from now." I couldn't say that out loud though. After a year or so of living in a human community, I had grown used to being cooped up in a garage. Heck, life in a garage was better than it had been on the Nemesis, and that's saying something.

It got boring all the same. Especially when Riley got lazy and didn't feel like going anywhere. Apparently, her dad didn't believe her car could get possessed and drive off by itself to have a good time. That was just silly.

But I digress. "That all depends; could I get some cable while I'm stuck out there?"

Riley snorted out a laugh. "You and TV. Is that seriously what's important to you now, Jeffrey?"

"You're one to talk. Who's the one getting all upset when she's not allowed to binge watch a sappy movie marathon?"

I drastically slowed down when we turned onto our new street. The new house sat practically in the middle of the street, flanked by similar houses on both sides. The only reason I didn't mistake it for another was the orange and white moving truck sitting in the driveway with a path of boxes and pieces of furniture leading up to the silver truck parked inside the garage. Riley's dad stood out by the road, but he was too busy talking to another human to acknowledge my fancy backwards parking in the driveway.

Because all the cool cars parked backwards.

After a minute or so of "payback" for the car wash, Riley yanked off her seatbelt and rolled out of the car. I had to contain my snickers because her dad and his new friend finally turned towards us when Riley hit the ground with a yelp. Her dad laughed for me though. "Is that how you get outta cars now?"

Riley stood up and, after a fierce glare, slammed my door shut. "Yeah, dad. All the cool kids do it that way."

More laughter ensued, and her dad's new friend added her polite laugh. "As long as you're not doing anything worse. Come over here and meet our new neighbor. She even made some welcome-to-the-neighborhood cookies."

"More like bought." Neighbor lady laughed and gestured the plastic container she held in one hand. She swiped at a strand of black hair that had fallen in her face and held out the same hand to complete the common human greeting ritual with Riley. "And you must be Riley. Your father was just telling me about you. I believe you and my son are the same age…"

And that's when I stopped listening. I focused more on Furball crawling out from beneath the bush beside the garage and jumping on my hood with an annoyed growl. Yeah, I know Furball—I couldn't wait for the garage to be cleared too. My little gamepad and direct cable called to me.

Plus, I needed to start looking into where to find Energon around here. From the maps I still had from my Decepticon life, there was a very severe lack of mines in this area, which wasn't very surprising. The Autobots had been more determined to keep us out of this area in this country. I had been lucky there had been mines around where we had previously lived because it was practically on the edge of the "Autobot Perimeter" as we Vehicons had called it.

A little suspicious if you asked me, but Starscream had never questioned it. So now I was mentally calculating how much longer my stash would last before I had to travel six hours from home to find another mine. Even then, there wasn't any promise of there being an overlooked Energon crystal.

Thanks Starscream—really, you were such a great leader.

Furball hissed, and its claws scratched against my hood when a high-powered engine revved in the distance. None of the humans appeared too concerned by the noise, but I automatically focused on the direction it sounded like it was coming from. With how low my Energon reserves currently were, I couldn't activate any sensors that reached beyond the street of houses we now lived on. I had to rely on good old audials and optics, and that put me at a slight disadvantage for any surprise attack.

The engine got closer, its changing pitch signaling it changing speed. For the first time since I started living with the humans, I felt a tenseness wash over my frame. There was something off about the sound of that engine—something that I couldn't specifically put my finger on. I wanted to rumble my engine and drift closer to Riley, but she was still stuck between the two adults making small talk. Instead, I settled for a soft hum that would go unnoticed by any of the humans, and Furball calmed back down enough to curl up in a tight ball on my hood.

A two-wheeler swerved around the corner and gunned down the street. My humming stuttered—making Furball uncurl enough to glare at me—the closer the two-wheeler got. The sleek blue form shone in the waning light of the day, and the engine purred when it slowed down to coast into the driveway across from me. Backwards—to face me.

Oh, there was also a human, but who would pay attention to him when he standing next to that perfect specimen of a two-wheeler? At least some humans have taste.

"Jack!" I shuddered and then forced myself to sit still when Furball stood up on my hood to glare back at me. The human standing beside the two-wheeler smiled and waved before he jogged across the street to stand next to neighbor lady and my human family. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders and gestured between him and Riley. "This is my son, Jack. Jack, these are our new neighbors. It sounds like you and Riley might be in the same class."

The kid scratched the back of his head with one hand and held out the other towards Riley, which she took after a moment. The parents picked the conversation back up, but of course, I wasn't listening. I was too busy staring at the two-wheeler next door.

Jasper, Nevada didn't seem so bad anymore.

AN: And there we have it! Short and sweet, but nearly as short as the other stories XD With Drone 2.0 not being prompt based or word limited, I'm hoping to put together a more detailed and connected story than the previous story. We'll see how that goes in the future, but for now, the chapters will probably be around the 2000-3000 word length ;P

I also wanna start asking questions at the end of every chapter to get some exact feedback. I'm starting to learn that's the best way to figure out certain aspects of my writing and what I can do to improve it. So, the first question is about character: After two stories and one prologue, how are you guys liking Jeffrey and Riley? Do they have certain traits you like? Dislike? Let me know what you guys think about them, whether it's good or bad :D

I'll be seeing you guys in the next update! :D