The Forgotten Scout

Author's Rant: A Decepticon's Story. Ever wondered exactly what happened to 'bad cop' Barricade in between Michael Bay's first and second Transformers movies? Why was he no where to be seen in RotF? Well I just hate watching memorable characters get cut out of second movies after having key roles in the first. So consider this a little pay back to Mr. Bay for ruining TF ROTF for me. No one ditches my favorite character and replaces his potential screen time with promotional footage on: 'How great the American Army is at pwning Decepticons.' I swear to god, why the hell must all of this guy's movies promote America's armed forces? Okay. We get it. People in England aren't as stupid as you think Michael Bay. We know how 'amazing' the US army is without public reminders in live action movies of my childhood television shows. Honestly, I came to the Cinema that day to enjoy "TRANSFORMERS" not "AMERICA YOU RULE." But I digress. Sorry folks. Anyway, given that Barricade was so unceremoniously dropped from the movie, I decided about a year ago to write his own adventures between the first and second movies. It's only now i've actually started writing it. Well without any further time wasting, here's the start.

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers.

'Blah' Cybertronian

'Blah' Thinking

' Blah' General talking and narration

Chapter 1: Meetings in a Storm

The city was unusually quite for a friday evening. Perhaps it was because it had only being a few months since the events of the 'so-called doomsday' and the rebuilding was still in progress. Or maybe it was because heavy rain was lashing down like whips on the darken streets; cutting up anyone foolish enough to be walking the pavement at nightfall. The black roads remained undisturbed until the powerful beam of a police car's headlights lit up each avenue as it travelled almost cautiously around the newly refurbished city.

It is a well-known fact that the public citizens of any town or city dislike the police. But fortunately for them, they've never had the pleasure of being interrogated by this particular law enforcer. If the threatening logo: "to Punish and Enslave" wasn't enough to drive an uneasy chill to the core of any human, then surely the transformation from car to giant homicidal robot would cause the individual to tremble in fear at every police car they ever saw on the street again. (Providing they had survived of course.)

As it turns out though, the Decepticon known as Barricade was more concerned about his current situation than terrorizing the human population. The mech thought carefully and weighed his options whilst cruising along the roads. Ever since the first and only battle on Earth between Decepticons and Autobots, not only had Barricade being unable to arrive on time at Mission City; (as a result of avoiding the Autobot Leader, Optimus Prime's attempt to turn him into scrap-metal just like his fellow decepticon, Bonecrusher); he had also being unable to activate his navigation system, which had been malfunctioning ever since his fight with that yellow autobrat, Bumblebee. Consequently, Barricade finally showed up when the city was in ruins; his allies and leader dead; the Autoscum victorious, and that traitorous second-in-commander Starscream, fleeing into space and leaving him completely alone. Stranded on an insect infested rock with a battalion of Autobots and the threat of their reinforcements approaching. Fan- Fragging Tastic.

Right now, Barricade had three options: 1) Attempt to make contact with Decepticons still out in space. 2) Run towards the accursed human-loving transformers, guns a'blazing and attack until he too was deactivated in the process; or 3) To hide his signal from all radar and satellite transmissions and try to remain undetectable until receiving further instruction or aid from fellow Cons Starscream may be sending towards Earth. For two solid months, Barricade had stuck with the more desirable plan (3), but after so much time alone on an alien planet, option (2) was beginning to look very tempting. Regardless, Barricade felt that a suicidal attempt to destroy the Autobots and their human pets was probably a better alternative than rusting from sheer boredom. It might not have been so bad if he had at least one ally here, but unfortunately, Scorponok was still in a desert on the other side of the world and Frenzy had been killed by the humans. Despite however annoying that little Glitch might have been, even his incessant chattering would have come as both comfort and relief.

All of a sudden, Barricade's thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sound of a violent struggle outside. Normally, the decepticon wouldn't concern himself with such primitive human fighting, but on this particular night, he had no choice but to brake harshly when one of those disgusting fleshbags was thrown across his bonnet. The human slid down his metal finish and flopped onto the concrete with a dull thud and a painful groan. Torn between outrage and curiosity, Barricade swerved around and carefully approached the shadowy alleyway that the human had been tossed from, turning off his headlights as he did so. (But not before briefly considering running over the filthy insect still lying in the road.)

Observing the darken street through infrared lenses, the Saleen was able to see that there were at least ten humans. Four of which were unconscious, and the ones still standing consisted of three men and three women. From a quick analysis of the situation based on each human's postures, expressions, and adrenaline levels, Barricade came to the conclusion that this was a "gang fight" between two human factors and one of the groups had already triumphed over the all of the others. All except one. A lone female seemed to be holding her own against the two other women while the three males watched in amusement. None of them had even noticed his presence at the mouth of the alley. No longer interested in the antics of these humans, Barricade began to retreat back on to the road but stopped abruptly upon seeing what happened next. One of the males; clearly fed up with how long it was taking his female companions to defeat their opponent; walked around behind the girl they were fighting, and with a fist raised high, the man brought it down with a solid punch to her unprotected face. Almost comically, the young fleshy femme went flying into the nearest wall and connected with a hard smack. Barricade watched in sick fascination as the girl started to crawl back to her feet, trembling from the cold rain whipping her skin, and spitting out blood from her freshly bleeding mouth. Just before she was standing completely upright, one of the men delivered a swift high kick to her ribs bringing her back down to her knees. The group surrounded her quickly; laughing at her attempts to get back up. Finally one of the males bent down and spoke with a vicious sneer:

"Give it up Krauss. You're outnumbered with no more of your 'Spic friends to help you. It's over you stupid Bitch." The girl looked up at the one who was talking and spat in his face with a murderous glare.

"Fouck Yoou!" she slurred her words but they still retained their venomous edge. This defiant act earned her a few more painful kicks to her ribs and stomach until another male halted the attack with a dismissive wave to offer a suggestion.

"Let's string the little tramp up near the Cuban district and have them find her."

"Good idea. But first-" The third man stopped and pulled out a small handgun from inside his coat pocket and pressed the barrel against the girl's forehead. "We should finish her. It'll be kinder to put the bitch out of her misery." The safety was flicked off with a click and the battered girl; upon realizing how hopeless her situation was; closed her eyes and whispered so quietly that Barricade had to increase his audio magnification to hear it:

"I'm not afraid of dying."

At this, something jolted in the decepticon's programming. Something he had not thought about in many stellar cycles when he was still a youngling himself. His memory circuits flashed momentarily into overdrive mode and lasted long enough to show himself watching from the shadows as a group of Autobots encircled a wounded Decepticon mech. After praising themselves profusely for their capture, the leader stepped forward and deactivated the 'con's spark then and there. Afterwards, Barricade had spent a lot of time thinking over what he had witnessed. Regardless of the obvious fact that the autobots and the decepticons were at war, and that death was not only inevitable, but essential. It had never felt right to see such an appalling way to die. There had been no honor or dignity in that mech's death. Nothing fair or kind about toying with an already dying spark followed by a point blank execution when he couldn't get back up anymore. He was outnumbered, unarmed, badly damaged, and it seemed that the only difference between that day and now is that these creatures are human. Why should he have to endure this display twice, and at the hands of humans no less? 'I refuse to watch it happen again. I won't standby and witness a bunch of worthless fleshlings mirror that moment of my past in front of me,' Barricade internally roared. Without a moment's hesitation, he revved his engine, illuminated the alley with his headlights, and surged forwards aggressively towards the gang, sirens flashing.

"Shit! Cops!" One of them screamed, causing the group to sprint off in different directions. The male with the gun paused in his action and looked up bewildered at the holographic decepticon now exiting the car and marching down the narrow alleyway towards him with a face that promised a world of pain. To Barricade's surprise, his presence was all the distraction needed for the girl to retaliate against her would-be-murderer, by rapidly delivering an uppercut punch to the man's chin, snapping his head backwards before collapsing into a heap on the floor.

An eternity of silence settled with only the sound of thunderous rain in the background. Now that there was some light in this dark corridor from his headlamps, Barricade could finally see the human femme whose life he'd just saved without the use of infrared. She was not like the other fleshy females the 'con had observed on this planet so far. She was not what her 'society' had deemed to be 'beautiful' or even 'pretty' for that matter. She was small in stature, standing at barely 5ft in height, and appeared to be a little undernourished given how taunt her paper-white skin was over the bones of her bare arms. The clothing she wore seemed very inappropriate for this kind of weather, consisting mainly of sports shorts and an extra-large, sleeveless hoodie, all completely soaked. She had next to no feminine curves that, until now, Barricade had assumed came as a requirement to all human women. Unsure that he had made a mistake when he identified her as female, the 'con performed a followup scan for confirmation of her sex. With her wet black hair falling just short of her shoulders and her body resembling that of a young boy, Barricade found himself double checking his scans that all came up as female.

Whether she was aware of the scrutinizing way she was being examined, the girl chose to ignore it in favor of checking over both her unconscious allies and enemies. Her expression remain one of cold indifference as she did so. Finally, she stopped at the one who had held the gun to her forehead to briefly consider his knocked-out form before kicking him square in the face and breaking his nose. He groaned softly, no doubt feeling a twinge of pain in his comatose state which would turn to sheer agony the moment he came to. Satisfied, she cast a fleeting glance at Barricade, and addressed his presence with a simple question: "Vill yoou be arresting us?" The Decepticon raised a holographic eyebrow, not fully understanding the girl's pronunciation of English. If still sounded like she was slurring her words like as though intoxication. So instead of answering her, he opted to remain silent until she spoke again, louder. "I said, Are yoou arresting us?" Her voice, he now realized, was heavily accented with Russian that went unnoticed earlier and practically oozed animosity.

"I have no such intention of condemning your behaviour with imprisonment. Your pathetic warfare is not my concern," he replied as he turned towards his alt-form to leave. His intervention was done and the girl was no longer his problem.

"I coould of handled it!" Her furious shriek made him stop and look at her again. Her face was flushed bright pink as her fists shook with fury. "If yoou do not like getting involved, then maybe yoou should have keep driving instead of barging in vhere your not wanted. I do not need your help! I had everything under control!" Her whole body trembled as she spoke through grit teeth.

Barricade's own anger spiked considerably at her words, but he fought to subdue it. "Yes I agree. Your attempt at suicide was going impressively well until I interrupted. Next time though, I suggest an alternative method of self-induced demise. Perhaps one that includes heights," he retorted spitefully. How dare this ungrateful little fleshling show him such open disrespect! He was wearing the guise of her Kind's law enforcers! (*Barricade has yet to learn exactly how 'respected' the police are in any country*). This insect should be thanking him on bent knees, not shouting abuse at him because she was so weak and incapable of defeating a handful of foes.

"I do not expect a Militsiya to understand." Ignoring Barricade once more, the girl slipped a hand into her shorts' pocket and pulled out a rather battered mobile phone to dial 911. "Allo? Ambulance please. There's being a fight in an alley on 15th Avenue. Hurry, they are hurt bad." She hung up on the operator in mid-conversation; flipped her drenched hood over her head, and bolted past the decepticon hologram like a wounded cheetah, muttering something in garbled Russian that was either 'Thank You' or 'Fuck you.'

It took a few good minutes of cooling his whirling system before Barricade was able to return to his Saleen form and continue driving around aimlessly. 'What an irritatingly arrogant fleshbag that femme was!'he growled in Cybertronian. She clearly had no idea who she was messing with. 'Maybe I should have let her die. Nah. The image would have left a bad aftertaste in my CPU. I haven't been this infuriated since Frenzy was my-' Barricade slammed the brakes on in surprise and skidded to a stop. The thought had not occurred to him until now, but that girl and his deceased overactive hacker companion seemed to have the same annoying effect of instigating and encouraging his fits of infallible rage.

The decepticon scout deleted the realization from his thought processor and resumed his patrol. With any luck, he would probably never see or even recognize the female again. Besides, he had important business to consider. Like whether or not it was physically possible to defeat the autobot nuisance single-handedly. After another hour of circling the city, Barricade found a suitable garage to spend the rest of the night recharging without fear of detection.

He quickly descended into dreams he would not remember.

**** TBC ****

Meanings of Russian words used:

Militsiya - Policeman/cop.

Allo - Hey.

Note: Not bad for an intro I think, but not my best. If I've made mistake I'm sorry. Unlike real authors I lack the money to employee an editor to check over my work. Bu then again I'm only 18 so who the hell cares. I certainty don't. Hope you like so far, I just had to have an OC somewhere in this didn't I? Don't worry though, I'm not planning on making her some typical mary sue to ship with 'officer Barricade' to satisfy my own needs. Surprisingly enough, I have a life and see no point in trying to put my own personality into a character of utter perfection and completely fuck up a decent storyline.

For those of you who have bothered to even read this and want a few spoilers for this story then you're in luck: First of all, THIS IS NOT A ROMANCE FIC. Second, the next chapter will contain the whole reason behind my little Russian OC's point to this story. Third, By chapter 4, a better description of her facial features (such as hair, eye colour, etc) will be taken into consideration as well as a new holo-form for barricade. So far, this one is my favorite by http:/ skatanic. deviantart. com /art/TF-Humans-II-Decepticons-64328755 I think it captures him rather well. And Fourth, the other decepticons will start making an appearance as the story progresses.

Well that's if for now. I'll try to have another chapter by the time July comes around. Ciao.