{A/N This is post ROTF timeline wise, and I am stealing something from the original cartoon series in putting the decepticon vessel nemesis under the ocean cause I can! Might have to figure out what brought it there from out in the outer planets or wherever they had parked it. If anyone knows exactly where it is supposed to be in the movie or just recalls tell me! Warnings: Xeno eventually and since almost all the bots seem MALE their might be m/m and some Trine M/M/M and some Trine on Xeno which I suppose would be M/M/F/M Right now its Jet/Xeno(human) interaction. Also please note this is a Beta what Beta? fic, as in I don't even have a working spell checker so yeah...working on reinstalling word to fix that in my microseconds of free time in between writing, Grandma, and Server 70 Alliance Blades on evony.(OMG FOUND that they GIVES US ONE *HUGS WEBPAGE*) This chapter will be Xeno sided. Next Chapter is Decepticon POV. Last thing to say then comes the fic...I have never written for this fandom before EVER though I have obsessively been reading it here and at AFF(dot)NET. Good Stuff BDQ AND MUSASHI and all the peeps I reviewed over there and here! So please forgive my ineptitude in writing the most reviled and beloved of CON's and send me hugs cause I am unemployed and need a job!}
(Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing other then the computer and accessories that were used to write this and any handy OC's and plot devices used to move this beast forward...TY Hasboro! I promise to wash them and put them back in the toy box when I am done! }
{Adjustment as of 02/03/10--Technique Disclaimer: /start credits...Musashi/Antepathy and that person's partner in crime GabrielC invented the botatomy(bot+anatomy) and it's sexual usages as I use it in this story. Having seen it around I did not know it was not simply common usage until late last night when I was able to get back to my computer. My apologies to those two. also thusly this is updated and will be placed on all chapters! /end credits}
{also I apologies to any of the five people who might get all excited cause I posted these changes and not my chapter which should be up by friday at the latest in all its sucking glory cause my joy kinda went out of me}
The impact startled her out of sleep and sent her staggering out of bed, pants half pulled on and gun in her hand. She lived alone and to far out from civilized city limits to feel safe without the rifle or at least one of her pistols in her hand. So she dived out the door and into her old flatbed and spun the wheel as the engine kicked over. It had been out in the old decrepit orchard, but if whatever had caused the impact was able to start fires then the good orchards nearby could be severely damaged.
Peach blossoms scattered all over the place. Three or four rows of trees left standing on each side of the orchard, the reast plowed up and in flames from the impact. It was a jet crash. Concern for the pilot filled her and she forgot all about the volitility of jet fuel as she rushed forward to be of assitance if the man in question was even alive…
Not a concern. Markings on the jet showed the same symbols she had seen in Mission City and from the battle in the pyramid area of Quattar. The Jets were the bad guys as she recalled from whom her fellow humans had sided with in both battles.
This one would not have need of nore would waste weight and thus fuel expenditures on a pilot. If he had crashed this far from civilization then her next concern was how much damage the others hunting this one would cause to her mother's farm if it was found here and battle insued. Something in her sense of over all world right ness tilted and she knew this one could not be found in this state or the world would further tilt off balance.
The tow cable allowed her to get about eightysix percent of the jet towed onto the flat bed or at least off the ground. She ran back and with a wheelbarrow began gathering any stray bits of robot fancy jet she could find. Not a single spark plug was left behind. She would come out and plow down the whole orchard as soon as she got this beastly hunk of metal into her barn and came back with the metal detector to get any stray parts out of her range of sight.
"Covering up this event will not keep you safe human. My kind will come to liberate me and…"
"Idiot. I neither wish your imprisonment nor your death. I am going to help you and thus keep world wide destruction from further harming my ancestral land. Get over yourself and realize that despite the jet you imitate you have little value to a farmer like me!"
" Farmer…what is…ah a grower of the human sustenance that your kind uses instead of energon. Tell me farmer human, why would helping me aide you in keeping the destruction my kind brings out of this corner of your little blue planet?"
"You are repaired, you go away before your enemies or your friends find you. No one else comes here and the lands left to me by mother are kept safe. However that is not the point really, just my useless wish."
"Why is that not the main point? What logic makes it useless to attempt your main goal?"
"I have always had a sense of impending doom that warns me when I need to do something to set off those little action and reaction ripples that will eventually effect something in a positive or desirable fashion. It went off the chart when I found you in my orchard and tried to contemplate just extinguishing the flames and leaving you there. Now let me drive so I can get you under cover. With the trips it will take to the hardware place to get parts this is goingo be a long fix and I want you out of sight for it!"
She parked carefully in the barn and drew the door closed again. The big drapes that separated her work areas whens he had several farm implements under repair got hung and draped all around the flat bed that still contained the mechanical being. Tools, an arc welder and welding suit, a helmet with face pate that was blackened to protect her from the bright blinding sparks that could give a human being sand in the eyes at a glance or two. All these she laid out then she started looking over her new patient.
Patient not repair job. It was obvious that anything that could hold a conversation and accept automatically that she meant no threat was a sentient person regardless of what his God had made him or his ancestors of in the first place. She was afraid however of all the things she could tell about this scary person. Guns had never bothered her. She had learned to respect them and their ability to cause havoc or cure it depending on the situation. However she had never seen a chain gun up close. It was beautiful to her engineer's mind. But she kept her hands clear of it after making sure that it and the feed belts had not been damaged.
"Do you have to manually reload or is their a system for that that generates ammo?"
"Manual reloading is sometimes required farmer human. However that is only in the absence of advanced self generating munitions systems. I have several redundacies in these systems and all are functional at the present time."
"that was what I was checking on. You know you better then I know you specs wise jet robot, so tell me what is broken and needs seeing to first. I don't want vital systems to fail while I am tinkering with something unrelated to your survival."
"My 'crash,' as you would most likely refer to my relatively uncontrolled landing, damaged my fuel lines, and ruptured some coolant lines as well as bending my chases all out of shape which has resulted in an undesirable blockage of my air intakes near my engines."
"Fuel line, coolant lines, unbending metal near air intakes of the engine. Would that be the preferred order for my fixit's of your person?"
"With those and some minor repairs else-wise I can leave your company before the Auto bots find me and the fight you find so undesirable becomes inevitable."
"Inevitable before you pitched and yawed over my orchard this morning Jet Robot. But I can still fight as hard as I can against fate. Let's give the fuel line a try here."
"Pardon the interruption but is the garment you are wearing not suited for anything other then your recharge period?"
"Yeah it's a nightgown. Get over it. Your little uncontrolled landing called me out of bed before even a farm bred kid gets up in the morning time around here."
"I apologize for my interruption of your routine recharge."
"My guess is that would not be entirely your fault and that you will be a gentleman bot about it and take a few chunks out of the other responsible parties at the next opportunity on my behalf?"
The laughter clinched it. Definitely a sentient being, and one with a sense of humor.
~*~
Her senses flared, and she avoided dropping the tools she was using to clamp off hoses that carried fuel and coolant. She would need to make that trip to the hardware place and maybe even the car place. What parts she had on hand were for tractors and not going to be up to specs for a antiquated crop duster, let alone a robot who could take the shape of an advanced fighter craft of absolute aeronautic perfection that was the F-22 raptor. Hoses mostly. The damage was worse then he had implied. The hoses would need to be entirely replaced.
When she requested specs as to how the hoses bent when he transformed and what amount of pressure they would be required to handle he responded swiftly. Listing the things on her notepad she tore off the sheet and prepared to go back into the house to prepared for going out in public.
"I require a status update prior to your departure Farmer-Human."
"Your fuel and coolant lines are shredded goop, the bent metal I can fix but I need parts for affixing the tubing and tubes that can handle the liquid pressures required. I have to go into the main population center in this area, which we call a town, to acquire these things since I don't have the ability or the materials to make my own."
"I will be here when you return, but most likely in a state of forced recharge. I can begin some self repair on the minor systems during your absence. I will require more fuel to replace the fuel that I lost. My systems can filter out the impurities and make the substances I burn to generate lift and speed. However I will require twenty gallons of the fuel suitable for a high grade automobile to do so. Fortunately the systems deactivated before I lost very much of my fuel, as my full capacity would require far more then your limited funds of this nation's currency would enable you to spend."
"Do I seem broke to you? A jet your size can carry quite a lot of fuel but I would probably be able to at least get your tanks to half without bankrupting the emergency fund I have saved up. Just because I don't waste time on appearances around here does not mean I am under funded or poor. Not any more at any rate and I… "
"Offense was not meant. Please proceed to prepare yourself and make the journey into this 'town' for parts and fuel that I require."
The red optical sensor that had been glaring at her out of the transformed jet was suddenly a lot dimmer. The forced recharge she supposed. After getting into the house and out of her worst set of work boots, She jumped in the shower and washed off the sweat of fear that had coated her along with grit and oil and other mechanical fluids.
Her sense of what needed doing had never led her down the wrong path, but it never took into consideration her health or well being, just that it was needful she do these things for whatever force decided the greater good of fate in this world (and others apparently if it had brought these aliens to her world.) Yet she had been terrified that her death by this being's hands had been her fate, needed to make the ripple that would draw in the desired effect.
Upon his transformation out of his jet form she had noted the deadliness had not been muted, only magnified. Sharp barbs adorned his hands and she could tell that in his natural state his weaponry would fire from where he pointed his upper limbs. His eyes were not the benign blue of the one whom had struggled against the others in Qatar, but a hellish red that glowed with anything but benign intent.
Wickedness was needed to balance niceness. Her mother had been driven as she was and had taught her that first of all. Wickedness and Niceness could be one inside a single being as well. Honor this one had. He also had strength, and an amount of courage yet to be determined, for she had no concept of how long this war had been fought, or how many times her current guest had faced death or whatever passed for it among machine people.
Finally clean and smelling sweetly she was in her room in a towel and decided on the lower cut jeans and a tight top of an ordinary plaid with eyelet lace trim to make the country boy style look feminine. She looked good enough to be seen in public. Soft socks and some better maintained footwear and she was out the door and intot he cab of her town capable and licensed and insured truck. This was going to be horrid but she managed. She was almost painfully shy when not around her fellow intellectual persons like she had been at university. Spatial relations, tensile strength, ability to absorb impact and how to form an aerodynamic shape had been the language she had learned, not the tongue of babies and animal offspring, of socializing and farm community culture.
Harold understood her best of all the people yet alive on the face of the world. He ran the hardware store and farm supply on the northernmost street in the town. He was a loner by choice as well as aptitude just as she had been and he had taken her under his wing as a twelve year old to show her the wonders held by machine guts. He gave her what she asked for and didn't ask any questions on what her latest project might be or when she might be done with it. None of his business after all unless she decided to let him know 'what in the hell' she was up to now.
That was more of a nature of Harold's brother Sheriff Martin Donaldson's patented snark, then anything Harold would ask of her. Her sense tingled then was silent once more. Warning level low but persistent. If she did not keep her head down the authority for their little town would be a problem. Acknowledgement of her sense's warnings allowed the tingle to fade away to nothing. Once she had taken it seriously this sense faded as the circumstances allowed. If she had not it would have continued to grow until it was punishing her with pain as well as trying to guide her instinctual level perception of it's informative and insistent nature.
She carried the two new gas cans to the back of the 'off the farm' truck, then stowed all the cables wires, and tubing she had bought in the back behind the tattered bench seat. The gas station would be her last stop. There she could get something to eat she did not have to cook for herself, a healthy dose of high octane caffeine for her sluggish mind and High Octane Gasoline for the Robot that was sometimes a jet.
Those things were purchased and set in the appropriate compartments when she got a twinge in her sense and went back in for oil and antifreeze as well as a few extra funnels and some de-greasing agent she had seen on the shelf in the back. The old lady who manned the counter shrugged and rang her up without a further gesture of her bemused state.
"Sometimes honey it seems like your shopping for someone else and they are always uploading something else to the list halfway through your trip."
"Closer then you would guess Pearl."
"Don't want to know or guess either."
"Never thought that for a minute."
Pearl was not understanding towards her nor was she hateful or harsh as some of the other citizens were. Pearl did not give her the sudden urge to run sometimes that other persons did. She also did not get the urge to break out in hives around Pearl just from nerves. That made Pearla rare ' good enough for me' person. She waved farewell to Pearl, a thing she never spared the time for with other people, and departed the station with all her new goodies in tow.
The Robot sometimes Jet and sometimes an alien, was as of yet in his low power state. She began working on him without heistation, thinking that maybe this sort of thing would be hugely painful to the being in her barn. Better fast like ripping off a bandaid stuck in your arm or leg hair then slow like diggin purposefully int oc ause pain. She was finished with the coolant line when she looked up and into alert Optical sensors.
"That was efficient for a human. However I recommend auditory sensor protection for the following proceedure as I will be inable to contain any expresions of discomfort during the replacement of my ruptured fuel line."
"In other words it will be more painful then you can stand without screaming out in horrendous pain?"
"That is precisely what I just said."
"Sorry I have been desperately trying to learn to speak people as well as I speak machine, metal, and chemistry, but sometimes I think I am failing at that too."
"Sometimes Farmer-Human the effort to associate with one's fellow beings is not worth the cost or the risk. But only sometimes."
She cold not even begin to contemplate what the huge machine person was trying to convey under his words. It was amazing to her that he offered enough of a semi recognisable facial expresion for her to begin to try and figure it out, or to tell her he was saying more with his words then their regular meanings conveyed. For the first time in a long time she cursed her fate sense for dragging her into something. This was definitely 'something' for which she was ill equipped at her best, and she had not been at her best for a long time now.
{A.P.S.: Music for inspiring:
All The Right Moves by One Republic
Gotta be Somebody By Nickleback
Suicide on My Mind by Angtoria
Short Flight to Mexico By Winger
Next Contestant By Nickleback
Raise Up By Saliva
Headstrong By Trapt
R.. By KMFDM
Please Read and Review for author boosting purposes if nothing else. Hopefully tomorrow will Bring fresh chapter of my small fic over in the AVP box. Wish me luck and feed my muse chocolate and Dr. Pepper!}