((A/N and Disclaimer: As I am struggling to pay for my college tuition, I'm going to go ahead and say that I do not own any rights to the Transformers franchise. I am just borrowing them for my own pleasure.
I'm not sure whether this is just a one shot or going to be continued. I have an idea of where to take this, it just depends on whether I am motivated to write it. I am a little scared that my characterization of Optimus Prime might be a little off, so if anyone could give me some tips, how his personality would really be, you know, then please, by all means, send me a message or review telling me and giving advise.
Flames will be sent to Wesleyan College of West Virginia and hopefully used as a substitute for money in the tuition race. Happy reviews will be sent to the same school, but instead just to show off how awesome I am, and how glad they should be to have me as a student.
So here goes, please enjoy and as always, read and review.))
The rain was coming down harder now. Before, it had just been a sprinkle, then a drizzle, and now…. Yuk. The girl marched through the rain, head down, glasses fogged up almost to beyond being see through. She shifted the heavy backpack that was on her shoulders onto just one and opened the zipper just enough to shove a grimy hand into. She stepped under a tree that was big enough to have it be dry underneath and pulled out a map. Shoving her glasses up on her nose, she pulled the map close to her face. After glaring at the map for a minute or two, she grunted, smacked her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose, and placed the map back into the backpack. If she had read the map right, there would be a town coming up in the next ten or so miles. She just had to stay near the high way and follow it till about morning and then she might be able to find a park or a shelter or something.
The girl sighed, resifted the backpack into a better position that went better with the parka that she was wearing, and started walking again. She hoped that she might find some shelter before the actual town, since ten miles was awful far to walk in the rain. She walked for another ten minutes or so, head down, staring at the ground, trying to ignore the way that the rain was slowly creeping into her parka, and soaking into her clothes.
Fucking, worthless, piece o' shit parka.
But it was better then nothing. When you have next to nothing in life, and what little you got you got on account of you working your fucking balls off, anything is better then nothing. And besides, the only reason the parka wasn't working that well was because it wasn't really a rain parka. There are many kinds of precipitation, as the girl by now knew very well, and this parka was more of the spitting to drizzle category, and not the fucking downpour that had started not long after sunset.
She trudged through the mud that was forming. She had been sticking to the highways, walking along side the semis and automobiles with a sense of danger that was most fulfilling, and had made it from Las Vegas almost to Barstow, California, but then had been picked up. Turns out that walking on highways is illegal or some shit like that. The girl wasn't really listening when the officer that picked her up was talking to her, just nodded and smiled politely, and when she had been taken back to the station, she was booked, finger prints taken, and mug shot taken as well, the shitters.
Dumb fuck piece o' shit nut munchers.
But oh well. The next day she had been let go, and the lady at the front desk had smiled nicely at her and given her this nice map and told her that there was a lot of secondary roads just off the highway, as long as she didn't mind walking through a bunch of nothing. She smiled politely at the front desk lady, whose name was given as Mrs. McMillan by the nametag, and said thank you and Mrs. McMillan paused for a moment and the girl froze, thinking 'Ah Shit here it goes', but then Mrs. McMillan had started talking again, shaking her head a little and the girl sighed inwardly a breath of relief.
By the end of that day her prints would have shifted into a totally different pattern, so she had nothing to worry about from the police, and her eye color was already the polar opposite of the deep brown they had been at the time and even if that McMillan lady had noticed something wrong -maybe she had smiled too widely, maybe the lady noticed that her eyes wear different, maybe a ton of little details that no one ever really noticed- she would have been out of there before she could have told anybody.
So now here she was, trudging through the Angeles National forest, trying to make it anywhere, when she stopped dead in her tracks. She stood, feet apart, in a position that would remind a person watching of the at ease position of a soldier, and stared ahead. Carefully, she raised a hand to her face and roughly wiped at the condensation that had formed on her glasses and glared into the clearing ahead of her. For all purposes necessary, it appeared that there was a big rig parked in the middle of it.
Running a sticky hand through the hair that was hidden under the parka hood, she stood with her head cocked, trying to decide whether the vision in front of her was real or a delusion from not sleeping and instead walking for 3 days straight. After pausing a minute, she stepped forward, closer toward the strange vision in front of her. With her hands out stretched, in mild anticipation to find her hands go through the vision, she was surprised when instead of thin air her hands found smooth metal. Running her hands through her hair again, pushing the parka hood down in thought, she went around the big rig, looking for a door.
Welp, she thought as she found it, if its open then looks like I found my shelter for the rest of the night.
As the door opened smoothly under her hand, she smiled.
The inside of the cabin was warmer then she had expected, and it was dry, which was expected. The girl smiled widely to herself, and sighed happily. Throwing the backpack into the bucket seat beside her, and pulling the parka over her head, she laughed out loud. Finally, something was going right. She sighed into the seat, which was soft leather under her fingertips, and after a moment reached down between the seat and the door and searched for the seat adjuster. She found it and reclined the seat to its full potential. Ripping the glasses off her face and placing them atop her head, she closed her eyes. She was acting stupid she knew this, but it was so nice to be out of the elements and in a comfy seat and who cares if someone finds her it's the person who owns this rig's fault for leaving it unlocked and you know what maybe it's time to stop thinking. She was almost asleep, when a soft clicking noise caused her to open her eyes.
Eyes narrowed, she placed her glasses onto her face again, careful of the split almost in two right arm of them, and stared into the darkness of the cabin. She was used to being thrown out of comfy spots but would rather exit the vehicle on her own accord, then by someone else's. However, the soft click, click, click, sound wasn't coming from outside the cabin, as at first she had thought it was, thinking perhaps that the owner of the rig was out for a piss and was slowly walking his way back. She had had enough cowboy boots in the ribs while being thrown out of a vehicle more then enough times thank you and didn't feel like repeating the bruises, even if they did only last an hour tops. The sound was instead coming from the inside cabin, and after a moment of sitting still and listening, she turned her head sharply to the right and stared at the heat vent. Slowly she inched closer to it, and as she did a warm breeze flowed against her cheek.
The heat was on.
Leaning against the reclined seat she paused, trying to make light of the situation. Perhaps the owner of the rig had indeed stepped out and in leaving forgot to turn the vehicle off? She raised her eyes to the ignition but there was no key there. Her fingers traced the ignition switch. It was turned to start but there was no key.
"What the fuck…" Her voice was raspy, having not been used for about a week, not since that brush with the police in that dirt fuck of a town. She sighed in annoyance. It wasn't fair. The first time in a week that she has decent shelter, and shelter in the dreary November rain of Southern California at that, and it has to make her think. Why the hell was the heat on if there was no key? What, did they make trucks with the push button start shit that was going into the fancy ass Bentleys and Cadillac's and all the other luxury autos you know that there was no way in hell was going to be on of those in an eighteen wheeler. No way. So what the fuck indeed.
She clenched her teeth together at an angle and stuck out her lower lip in a pout, thinking, not realizing she was doing it. Subconsciously her right hand was making its way to the backpack and out of it she grabbed a can of Beanie-Weenies. Opening the tin can one handedly, the left one on the armrest, finger nails making a rapping noise as she thought, she lifted the can to her mouth and swallowed. She grimaced. Disgusting. But, better then nothing.
She returned to her thoughts, while swallowing the barely able to be called subsidence, food. Perhaps, it is not a touch activated ignition, but a voice recognition. She snorted. That made no sense. She had not, upon entering the cabin, said "Heat turn on." But something had started it, and she would like to know what. Did she utter something as she entered the cabin? She supposed that it wouldn't be unlike her to talk to herself without knowing. Deciding to test the theory of voice recognition, the girl placed one hand over the heat vent next to her, where there was no denying that heated air was indeed coming out of it, and said, in her raspy, unused voice, "Heat off."
It took a minute, but slowly the clicking sound died off, and the warm air that was blowing into the cabin slowly cooled and then shut off as well. She blinked. She hadn't actually expected that to work.
Keeping her hand over the vent she tentatively voiced the command, "Heat on." A second later warm air was indeed coming into the cabin and she sat back in the bucket seat, dumb founded.
"Radio on."
Click.
"-way down around Vicksburg, Around Mississippi way, lived a Cajun lady," Mountain filled the cabin and her eyes opened wide. Holy fuck-shit. It worked. She hadn't expected that.
"Radio off."
Click.
Silence filled the cabin.
She took a deep breath, a removed her hand from the vent. Well. This was new. Wondering whether the rig was also equipped with an AI, she almost opened her mouth to voice her question when she shut it again. It was best to not bother the AI if there was one, she figured, as she knew what happened when AI's where bothered. She didn't want to end up splattered on the windshield, since that was happened in all the movies. Sitting back against the seat she resigned herself to the fact that, either way, she was out of the rain and in the warmth of a vehicle, and for once not expected to pay back for the comfort, as she was mostly propositioned.
But still, the idea that someone might come back and not like her being in the rig gnawed at her mind. Biting at her lower lip, she lifted the backpack and rested it a moment in her lap, debating whether or not to leave. Heaving a sigh she did a curt nod to herself, making up her mind. She reached for the door handle, pulled at it, and was surprised when the door did not open. She stared a moment, head cocked, staring at her hand, then rolled her eyes. She had forgotten to unlock the door! Of course she didn't remember locking it…. Either way it was locked. Lifting her hand she pulled at the lock and it pulled up. Reaching once again to the door jam, it puzzled her when it did not open. Lifting her eyes, she cocked her head. The lock was down again. Repeating the action of unlocking, she kept her eyes on the lock this time as she attempted of open the door. Her eyes widened as she witnessed the lock going down on its own accord, just as she moved the jam.
Slowly lifting her hand from the door she sat up, ramrod straight, hands gently placed on the backpack. She could feel her heartbeat in her throat. Holy shit-fuck cockmunch goddamn it to the hell on earth she was going to die. She was inside a big rig in the middle of the woods and she was being held hostage by a sentient AI that was going to kill her because that's what happened to all the girls in the movies that she had seen on the base. She was going to be killed she was going to be killed she was going to be- What was that?
Her head whipped to the radio, her eyes wide and her mouth turned down in slight fear. The dial whipped around the radio, and music stations went wild.
"Please." Her voice a harsh whisper. "Oh god please…."
"Please calm down." A deep, soothing voice came through the radio, and her heartbeat and breathing instead got harsher.
"No. No, no, no, no I've gone crazy."
"Please stay calm. Your heartbeat is elevated to a dangerous level. I do not want you go into cardiac arrest."
"Let me go. I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me, I'm sorry, I'll leave you. Just let me go, please."
Her hand pulled repeatedly at the door jam as she pleaded.
"I'm sorry, but the adverse weather conditions, mixed with your body readings, has made it clear that for the best, you should stay inside, at least until the weather lets up."
The male voice was final as it said that, and she froze. She was stuck here. At least until the rain let up. Alright, she could do that. She could feel her heart beat start to slow down and she relaxed. Alright. Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing right? In the movies the sentient AI always had the persons best interest at heart. Maybe she could trust it. And besides, it was only a machine. What harm could it do? And besides, at the heart of it all, all this was probably just a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep anyways.
"Alright." She voiced after a minute. "I'll. I'll stay."
She placed her bag into the passenger seat. Now what?
"I recommend that you get some sleep. I have fully functional sleeping quarters in the rear of my cabin."
She stared at the radio. "No thanks. I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep after tonight. But uh, thanks anyways.
"I insist that you sleep, for the good of your health you need at least 8 hours of sleep per 24 hours."
She sighed. "I suppose some sleep might be good for me, then when I wakeup I'll be able to get rid of this hallucination."
She climbed into the back of the cabin and was surprised to find a bed all made up, like it was ready just for her. That just further strengthened her theory of this being a hallucination. Slipping off her shirt and pants, she crawled into the sheets, and sighed. It was nice to be in a bed again. She hadn't been in a bed since the jail cell in Barstow. Maybe when she got to the city she would be able to find a shelter and she'd be able to have a real bed again.
As she drifted off to sleep, the radio spoke up.
"What is your name?" It asked in it's soothing voice.
"Seraphim."
"It is a lovely name."
"Thank you." She yawned and snuggled deeper into the pillow. "The boy on the base would call me Sera."
"Then that is what I shall call you. You may call me Optimus Prime."
"Uh huh."
She fell asleep.