I am so sorry to be posting this now. I was hoping to have it up earlier in the summer and that just didn't happen. I realized that I am not very consistant on the color of TOri's vehicles, so I am going to say it now. Tori's car is an Aston Martin Vanquish that is Black with Purple stripes along the side. Her motorcycle is a black Kawasaki Ninja with a pink stripe down the side.

ONe person asked me about her hair. I DO have an explanation for why it is white, and I'm trying to figure out where in the story I can put that explanation. Just message me if you want the explanation before that. I have the major plot of the story laid out but not minor things like that.

Anyway, without further adieu...


Chapter 3: ...and Your Definition of Normal

3rd Person POV

Tori rode away from Vince as fast as she could. She still had a race tonight, and she knew that as soon as he got his car fixed up, he would be there. As she got on the street near her house, she realized how paranoid she was being. 'Why am I so scared? I can take him on with no trouble! The Princess is probably just on her period. Wait, guys don't have periods...' Tori's thoughts trailed off as she pulled into the garage.

Tori's house wasn't all that large, considering it had been bought using taxpayer money. It was a two-story house, but only because occasionally an agent like Fowler or one of his coworkers would have to stay for a short period of time. The bricks used to build it were a dull brown, and the four windows you could see from the front (two on the bottom, two on the top) were usually shut and the drapes closed to keep out the blinding Nevada light. The garage was in the back.

When entering through the garage, the first thing you noticed was the small kitchen. More specifically, the sink with the window directly above. Directly to the left of the kitchen were the stairs that disappeared into the upper floor. Inside this kitchen was a refrigerator, stove, microwave, sink, and a small pantry. To your left as you exited the garage, there was a laundry room. To your right was a living room with a television and couch. If you sat on the couch, 90 degrees to your left was the front door, and to your right was a hallway with a bathroom and an office that Tori used for work.

Inside the office, there was a white computer desk with a Mac on top. The keyboard slid out from under the desktop along with the mouse. Just outside the door to the office and to your left lay an exit into a backyard in great need of a good mowing.

All the walls were a tan color, and the floors were grey carpet.

Going up the stairs, the first thing you saw was the entrance to the master bedroom, where Tori slept. Across from that and down the hall a little bit was the door into the guest room where the agents occasionally slept. This used to happen all the time when Tori was still getting used to her powers. Now it only happened when something happened outside of Tori's control. Usually, she wasn't even told why the agent was staying over, or for how long. Tori didn't like these times, because she couldn't sneak out to make the races in which she participated.

Tori's room consisted of a queen-sized bed with black and purple covers, a large dresser which held most of her clothes, and a huge pile of beanbags in the corner. Somewhere inside these beanbags lay a laptop. This was the laptop that Tori used when she needed to find a race or hack into something….less legal.

Her walls were painted an electric blue, and she had a very large purple carpet on top of the dull grey carpet that matched downstairs. She had a small balcony that allowed Tori to see parts of her backyard. There was an entrance to a bathroom that was decorated similarly, as well as a walk-in closet that held more delicate things, like shoes and the occasional dress.

If you passed the guest room (which consisted of a plain, twin sized bed and a dresser), you made it into a large opening which Tori had converted into a game room, with a television and a leather couch. There was a balcony which faced the street to the left of the couch. Past this area was a smaller bathroom and an office for the agents that had to stay over longer than a few days.

Knowing that there was a race tonight, Tori walked into her bedroom and plopped onto her stack of beanbags. she dug around for her laptop and finally found it beneath the white polka-dot bag. Her dog, a big German Shepard jumped onto the beanbags next to her.

"Hey Ace." He started to nudge up against her.

"What is it? Is that nasty cat annoying you again?" She was referring to the black cat next door.

Licking.

"Attention hog."

Tori smiled, all she had to do now was get into Archie's account and see which people he had been talking to the most. If it was people who blocked off the roads for the Circuit, then she didn't have to leave Jasper city limits, but if it was anyone else, then she would have to leave town and go out into the plateaus. This would be easier if she had friends that raced. They could tell her where the meeting spots were.

Sadly, she wasn't really friends with anyone else in the circuit, and Vince would die before telling her where the races were being held. So she did the next-best (and even more accurate) thing. She looked at the copy of Archie, the main race manager's, email history. She then narrowed down the list to only include the last two days. Then she narrowed it down to a person count. There were only three people whom he had emailed in the past three days:

Danielle: 3 recent messages (she must have been a new girlfriend, Tori had never seen this name before)

Jonnie boy: 13 recent messages

Ash: 5 recent messages

Jonathan was the person in charge of plateau racing. Archie had emailed him thirteen times in the last two days, eight times more than he had emailed Ashton, the blocker for the Circuit. The race was going to be in the plateaus.

Tori logged out of her account. She then went into her closet and grabbed a leather jacket. It had a cropped top, so you could see the lavender tank top underneath. She also traded in her shorts for a pair of dark skinny jeans. Tori pulled her hair into a ponytail and walked downstairs.

The race itself wasn't until 11:27 (they had to synchronize the start with the police patrols so they weren't caught before they even started), and that meant she had about six hours to kill before she had to be anywhere, so she went back into her office.

Logging on to her work computer, username; TSingers, password; ace, Tori looked in her email to see if there were any new jobs. There was nothing new, only a followup on a previous client.

After Tori had finished most of her homework (there was still a report due in three weeks), about two hours had passed. It was now 7:00ish, right about sunset. Tori decided to hop in her car and practice her racing out in the plateaus for later. The added obstacles would give her a slight advantage when Vincent tried to run her off the road like he'd been doing recently.

She walked into her garage, keys in hand, and pressed the button to open the door. She got into her car and backed out. Tori drove out towards the desert plateaus.


In the Plateaus

"You know me Arcee. You mess with Cliffjumper-"

'-And ya get the horns. Not sure how that complies with Autobot rule number one: Keep a low profile.'

"What can I say? Patrolling for energon out here in Dullsville gets lonesome," Cliffjumper said. "Almost makes me miss the Decepticons."

'Like Jasper, Nevada's a party?' Arcee asked. 'We're alone wherever we travel on this rock, Cliff.' Just as she finished saying this, a purple car drove up next to Cliffjumper. It had a driver, so Cliff had to turn on his holoform.

"Not so alone," he said into the comm. "There's some human in a black car following me. I think she wants to race"

'Cliff. Don't even think about it,' Arcee said, but she was too late. Cliff had sped off, with black and purple car following.

Suddenly, the purple car stopped, and a white-haired teen got out. Cliff immediately slammed on the breaks and started to back up. His holoform rolled down the window and she walked up.

"You're not some sort of undercover cop, are you?" she asked. He smiled.

"I raced you, didn't I?"

"I'm gonna take that as a no. So you wanna make it more official? Here to the next mile-marker?"

'Cliff!' Arcee's voiced sounded through the radio. 'I thought the number one rule was to keep a low profile! Not race!'

Cliffjumper's holoform paused and made a face. Then he smirked. "Sorry, Arcee. I'm deciding whether or not to ticket her-"

"You ARE a cop!" Tori yelled as she ran back into her car and drove away. Cliffjumper started driving again, but not really following her.

"See? I got rid of her. Thanks for making me scare her," he teased. A beeping noise filled the passenger compartment.

"I'm getting a signal," he said.

'Need backup?' Acree asked through the comlink.

"Do I ever need backup?"

Clif swerved off the road and over to an opening in the ground. Within this cavern there were hundreds of large, blue crystals.

"I just found a whole lotta energon!"

Just then, a dark shadow passed over his head. Cliffjumper transformed and looked up to see the Decepticon warship, the Nemesis.

"Decepticons." The ship started to shoot at him. The shot missed, but the explosion it caused sent him plummeting into the cavern. Nine vehicons dropped out of the warship and onto the surface from which Cliffjumper had just fallen.

"Arcee, about that backup." Cliff didn't realize that a certain racer had watched the entire scene unravel. Tori had been concealed behind a boulder, making sure the faux police officer was long gone before she started driving again, when she saw said police officer drive right by her hiding spot. She saw that he wasn't a police officer at all, and that he, or it, was actually some sort of giant, japanese robot...thing.

'That's freaky,' she thought. 'And there's more of them coming out of the...ship? I don't know what to call that big thing.'

"Fair warning boys," she heard it...him...say in the same voice as the man earlier. "I'll put a few dings in you" Then he changed again and started to drive toward the big, purple robots.

They started shooting at him. Tori was starting to panic. 'Those things have guns. No, not guns, flippin' cannons! Okay, okay. Calm down. You can survive Vincent pushing you down a cliff, you can survive whatever the hell this is. The red one looks like the good guy, otherwise he probably would have killed me the moment I stopped him earlier. That means the purple ones are the bad guys. And they are outnumbering him nine to one. Those aren't fair odds. I can't exactly help without anyone seeing me, though. But they're all big robots-robots! Duh! Technology! Okay, Tori. We don't know what's gonna happen but he needs help."

She finished her extremely long train of thought right as Cliffjumper was about to be shot in the back. Tori ran out from behind her hiding place and yelled,

"Red! Look out!"

The whole battle stopped. Everyone turned to look at her. Six of the vehicons aimed their cannons at her.

"Ooh," she mumbled. "Not wise, Tori, not wise at all."

The vehicons started shooting at her and she ran behind the boulder again. Her breathing sped up. The battle started again, but she could hear something walking towards her. Suddenly, she was picked up by one of the vehicons and held out toward Cliffjumper. Obviously, she was being used as some sort of trade.

"Let me go you stupid hunk of metal!" She shouted. This only made the 'con tighten his hold on her. Cliff put his hands in the air.

"Leave the girl outta this. She's human. I don't know her," he said.

"Hey, Red! You guys electric?" The vehicons tightened his grip again, making her gasp.

He looked at her like she was crazy. "Is this really a time for that sort of question?"

"If you want me to get outta this, absolutely!"

"Yeah."

"Great!" she sighed sarcastically. "Always open to new experiences." With this, she pried her left arm out of the vehicon's grip and slammed it down on his pointer finger. Green, vein-like lines flowed up his arm and to the rest of his body. The veins started to glow brighter until the bot started smoking. A few seconds later, the robot's spark chamber burst, toppling it to the ground. Tori fell with it.

She looked over at the dead robot.

"It's never been green before," she mumbled.

The battle continued, only this time, half of the eight remaining vehicons started shooting at Tori. She screamed, and in a final attempt, waved her hands toward the 'cons and three of the four flying backwards and into the cavern. Cliffjumper saw an opportunity and shot his four into the cavern as well, then aimed at the energon. The blast was close enough to all seven inside to finish them off. The remaining vehicon saw that the battle was over and fled back up to the Nemesis.

Cliffjumper turned around and saw that the girl had fled the scene, her car kicking up dirt at least a mile down the road already. He wouldn't catch up to her before she got back to the city.

A groundbridge opened beside him and the first bot out was, surprisingly, Ratchet. Then Bulk, Arcee, Bee, and finally, Optimus.

"Cliff! You're alive!" The little blue femme ran and hugged him.

"What has occurred here?" The bossbot asked, glancing between the destroyed energon and Cliffjumper.

"Decepticon ambush as I was scouting. I had found all of what used to be here, but in the fight it combusted. Nine vehicons in total, one got away, seven perished in the blast."

"What of the last one?"

"Optimus! You might want to see this!" Ratchet had found the last vehicon, as it had been blown further away in the explosion. It was obvious it had not off-lined because of the combustion, though.

"Cliffjumper, was this your doing?"

"No, that was the human's."

"What human?" Bumblebee beeped.

"I didn't get to finish, Bee," Cliff said. "There was a human here, a girl. But, she wasn't normal. I didn't see her when I pulled up, I thought she was long gone by the time I got here-"

"Cliff, was that the girl that tried to race you?" Arcee interrupted.

"Yes. I had gotten her to drive away but she must've hidden herself because the next thing I know she's screaming at me to duck. Saved my hide."

"What do you mean when you say she 'wasn't normal'?" Ratchet asked.

"Oh yeah. Her hair was white, but she seemed to be a youth. When she touched the vehicon, his circuitulatory system lit up, then his spark burst."

All the bots' optics widened. They were all thinking the same thing: 'We must find this girl before the decepticons.'


Aboard the Nemesis

The Decepticon SIC, Commander Starscream, was watching the battle from the monitors at the helm of the Nemesis. He watched as the little pest helped the Autobot take out five of his vehicons. He took note of the car that drove toward the little town of Jasper, Nevada.

The remaining vehicon was dragged into the room by two of his clones. Something had fragged up his electrical systems while he was fighting, only giving him enough time to get away.

"So the coward returns."

"Please, Commander Starscream. The autobot wasn't alone. He had-"

"Human help. I know. What I don't understand is how one autobot and a little pest were able to offline eight of my soldiers!" Starscream shouted. The vehicon flinched back.

"Please Commander Starscream, the human was not typical," the soldier whimpered. "A single touch short circuited their circuitulatory systems. Their sparks burst! We fought to the last bot!"

"Apparently not," Starscream growled as he thrust his sharpened claws into the fuel tank of the vehicon. Energon flowed from the wound and the soldier fell into a puddle of the liquid.

Starscream looked at the other two soldiers in the room.

"Clean that up," he said before turning to Soundwave.

"We need eyes on that human. A close watch. Send a pair of twins to collect it and bring it here. I don't care if it comes here online or not, but I don't want it in the way."

Soundwave just nodded.


Three hours after Tori ran off

The black Aston Martin pulled into the second row of cars. Victoria had already paid the entrance fee, now she just had to make sure that Fred Flintstone wasn't showing up. Unfortunately, Vince pulled up at 11:26, exactly one minute before the race was supposed to start.

The narcissistic redhead rolled down his window and motioned for Tori to do the same. She begrudgingly rolled it down also.

"Sup Princess? Get your Flintstones mobile working again?" Tori taunted.

Vince sneered, "Obviously. I don't know how you did it, but I know it was you who jacked up my electrical systems."

"Oh, but Vinny, how could I have done that? It's not like I ever opened the hood!"

"I don't know. You have some sort of mini EMP pulse in your back pocket?"

"Vinnie, you're a moron. A: EMP stands for Electro-Magnetic PULSE, so saying EMP pulse is redundant, and B: It would have turned my motorcycle off had I used an EMP. As you saw, I drove away with no problems. Maybe your car just runs as its paint job looks."

"Oh, you're gonna regret that you little white-headed witch!"

"Make me you little hot head!" right as she yelled it, the Sierra lit up her flashlight, signaling for the race to start. Tori sped off before Vince even realized what ad happened. There were six other cars in this particular contest, not including Vince or Tori. Three of them were friends of Vinnie's from the next town over and had already been paid off. They knew that if vince pulled up near them to move over o he could pass them. They also were aware of Vince's current employer and knew they shouldn't be in his way. If Vince was anywhere near the black and purple Aston Martin, they were to stay away.

Vice slammed on the gas, the car lurching forward as it sped off after Tori. He didn't care about winning the race. All he needed to do was slow her down so Mr. Lisech's boys could get to her.

He didn't know much about Sam Lisech, only his name and that he paid well. In fact, his car had even been a present from Mr. Lisech when he heard that Vince raced with Tori often enough to keep tabs on her. So now, every time Vince saw Tori at a race, his job was to slow her down. If it cost him first place, Lisech would even pay the difference in cash.

Vince was closing up on Tori now, everyone else was far behind them. He pressed on the gas a little harder, and came up on her right. They were turning around a corner on top of one of the plateaus when he suddenly veered to the left, pushing Tori and her car off the cliff.

'She'd live. Somehow she always does,' He thought.


Meanwhile, insiode the purple and black muscle car which was currently tumbling down a non-stop slide of rock and dirt, the white-haired technopath was not thinking of how not to get crushed, she'd already enforced the car's roof and base so they wouldn't squish her like a pancake. No, Tori was furious at herself and Vince.

'You let him do it AGAIN you stupid, stupid, stupid girl!' She thought. This wasn't the first time Vince had pushed her off this very cliff, in fact, if you looked, you could still see the point of impact from last week.

'Why does he keep pushing me off? I mean I know he doesn't like me but attempted murder seems a bit much, even for him. What's even worse is I can't report him without giving myself away either! I can't even rant about it to Jack or Miko! Jack'll tell his mom, and Miko would tell, well, EVERYONE!'

While these thoughts occurred, the car finally stopped rotating. Tori didn't need to open the door, as it had popped off during her descent. Tori sighed.

"I'm going to have to start racing further out in the plateaus. I'm wasting more money on gas than I'm winning," she mumbled to herself. Walking toward what used to be the cabin of her car, she placed her hand on the engine (the hood was also missing) and it lit up, this time the normal blue instead of the odd green that had appeared on the robot. The pieces of the car that had popped off early in the tumble started flying toward their correct places, almost as it Tori had activated a giant magnet within the car. After a few moments, the car was back to normal, with no evidence of the fall except for a couple of scratches that Tori didn't have the strength to fix.

Tori sat back down in the driver's seat and drove off, slowly, toward the Jasper city line. She never noticed the two identical solid black cars behind her, neither of which had a driver, but that both sped off in a different direction after she was out of sight. They would catch her tomorrow while the other set went after the motorbike.