Setting: Movieverse, Characters: Bumblebee, Prime, Ratchet, Sam, Alexia (invented character), Barricade.
Notes: It has been brought to my attention (a review) that the chapters appear to be written in bold AND underlined. For whatever reason, it does not look that way to me. A quick poke around the HTML editor showed me the bold and underline tags. I believe I've corrected the problem, but it's hard to say for sure; it looks the same as it did earlier (to me, anyway). If the formatting still looks jacked up, please let me know, so I can try again to fix it. Ghost Guy is a douche, but he has a point: Excessive formatting is tacky.
Collateral Damage
Chapter 1
It was supposed to be a fun, casual day while Sam was in school. A nice drive around the city to kill some time, a bit of people watching, and then back by three o'clock in the afternoon to be ready for Sam. A very simple plan, but sadly, it seemed those were always the plans that were the least likely to work out properly. Hind sight was always 20-20.
Having no idea that his plan would fail miserably that day, Bumblebee turned off the school parking lot, and headed for the new strip mall that had just been built on the outer edge of town. It was a busy place, and it was ideal for human watching. As much as Bee adored Sam (he had to, obviously, to request to stay with the boy as his friend and means of transportation) sitting in the school parking lot 5 days a week got boring after a short period of time. A REALLY short period of time.
His sleek yellow alt-form flowed easily down the road, straight through the middle of town, the most direct way to the mall. His Camaro body turned heads, but that was ok, as for once, he'd actually remembered to activate his hologram driver. He'd turn the hologram off at the strip mall. He'd learned that while human watching it was best to appear to be an EMPTY parked car.
He'd been watching youngsters playing touch football at the local park once, and made the mistake of leaving his hologram turned on. At first the parents of the children in the park had assumed he was waiting to pick someone up, his son or daughter, perhaps. After a few hours though, Bee began to hear whispered phrases of "sex pervert" and "possible kidnapper" all followed with looks in his general direction.
Definitely best to look like an empty parked car.
He meant no harm, and certainly hadn't meant to frighten anyone. He just found all the joyful playing and horsing around amusing.
He was lost in these thoughts, and therefore didn't notice he was being followed right away. The sleek black and white police vehicle pulled behind Bumblebee without fanfare- he was TRYING to be quiet. Only a few months had passed since Bumblebee had left him wounded and in pain. Unfortunately for Bumblebee, the Autobot hadn't found it necessary to kill him.
That was HIS mistake.
Barricade slowly passed the Mercedes between himself and the Autobot. The woman in the Benz glanced to her right as she saw the officer start to pass, before automatically checking her speedometer to make sure she wasn't speeding between the red lights. She immediately did a double-take, and stared back at the police car. Was it just her, or did that car have "To Enslave and Punish…" written on it instead of "To Serve and Protect…" ? She couldn't quite check without pulling up beside the cop car again to reread it, and she was NOT about to do that. Besides, it was probably her imagination. Still, she slowed down a bit just to be safe.
Luck was on Barricades side. The little yellow bastard didn't notice him until he was smack in the middle of the busiest part of the city. That was what he'd been hoping for. The only thing better than causing grievous damage to Bumblebee was the thought of possibly getting in some human collateral damage while he was at it. Then he'd fade back, and disappear. Let their army clean up the mess, while he laughed from the sidelines, perhaps in an all new, freshly scanned, alt-form.
When Bumblebee came back from woolgathering, he snapped to attention to find Barricade less than a car length away from him, and coming on fast. Bee floored it. His sleek car body jumped forward, goosed by the power suddenly flooding the engine. Barricade was taken somewhat by surprise, but he had no intention of letting the Autobot escape. He speeded up with him, the high powered engine underneath his hood doing his bidding. He rammed Bumblebee's back fender. There was pain, a bright flash of it, but the shriek of metal kissing off metal seemed louder on Bumblebee's end, and sure enough, when he backed off about six inches, he could see way more damage to Bee's alt-form than to his own. Anyone looking at the patrol car's grille at that time would have sworn the vehicle seemed to be grinning.
Sickening pain rolled through Bumblebee as Barricade crashed into him, but he ignored it, moved faster. So far, he'd been lucky, his timing perfect as he roared through intersections at breakneck speeds, dodging between vehicles as though he was playing high-stakes Frogger. Somewhere in his deeper processors, he realized that Barricade was being completely silent- no sirens. No alarms. No WARNING. He didn't want the humans to realize something was wrong until maybe they'd gotten run over. THEN it would be ok if they noticed.
Bee warned them himself. He didn't use a police siren. His alt-body wasn't equipped with one, so producing it would have been more difficult. Instead he produced his own sound, a sound, that while not completely the sound of an emergency vehicle, was close enough to resonate with the humans to stay out of the way.
Bee raced to get outside traffic, afraid that Barricade would grow impatient with a hit here and a scrape there, and just start blasting in the middle of a busy street. He made a fast succession of lefts and rights, and thought that he was home free. In front of him was a nearly deserted residential area that ran into open highway that led out of town. Bee turned off his wailing call and let his attention go briefly to Barricade, trying to keep tabs on the Decepticon.
It was a mistake.
He had a dim impression of a round red child's ball rolling into his path, followed immediately by a small child with blonde hair so pale it was nearly white. The boy saw the yellow camaro bearing down on him, and his face drained of color instantly, giving him the look of an albino child. The boy FROZE.
The Autobot slammed on his breaks. He wasn't going to stop in time, there was no way. He didn't even have time to transform. He felt his brakes lock. His tires lost traction. He felt himself start to slide, rear wheels slipping to the front. He howled in horror; in misery. Anything, anything but a child!
Suddenly, there was someone there, between him and the child. He got the impression of flowing dark red hair, and had enough time to think, "It's a female." At the same time this thought left his processors, the woman was heaving, shoving the terrified boy away, and to the side. He flew, almost, sliding to a stop on his hands and knees. The skin was scrubbed off of them, and off of his chin too, when his momentum caused him to face plant on the sidewalk, but he was alive, blessfully alive, and before Bumblebee had the chance to even consider being grateful for THAT, he felt his rear bumper slam into the back of the woman's legs with a sickening crack. She flew up, straight in the air, and landed half on Bee's trunk and half on his rear window. He felt his window crack, but didn't really care, could really not give a shit less about it because in the next instant, he heard the sound of her, the woman that was an angel to one small boy, hit the ground with a meaty thud.