Disclaimer: I own nothing but the overall plot and my own OCs.

Chapter 2

Questions and Leadership

"What was that?" Sam demanded. They were in his bedroom. Something that looked like a portal—hued green and swirling, much like a Groundbridge only without the tinges of blue—had whisked them away from imminent danger and deposited here. Sam had landed roughly on the floor, toppling over the edge of the bed while the girl landed neatly atop his covers.

"I'm not entirely sure," she mused, looking at the spot before the window from which they'd been sprung.

"What do you mean, you're not sure?" Sam asked, growing increasingly frustrated. "You grabbed me. You obviously knew what was going to happen."

"Yes," she said hesitantly, but in a manner that suggested that Sam was not entirely correct. "But only a moment before. It's like…the beings told me, an instant before they created that portal and sent us here."

"Wait, they did that?"

She nodded.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," said Sam, clutching his hair.

"Sorry," said Cheyenne.

He looked at her. "What are you apologizing for? You didn't create that portal, did you?"

"No."

"And you're not the one who decided to come into my world and turn my life upside down, right?"

"Right, but—"

"Then there's nothing to apologize about." He threw his hands up into the air. "It looks like these guys—these beings or whatever—need you for something, and they sent you here for that specific purpose. And they won't let you mention certain things."

"It's weird," she said. "It's like having an invisible hand being shoved against my mouth."

"Go on, try again," Sam said, leaning forward.

"What?"

"Try telling me what you wanted to say before."

She frowned, then screwed up her concentration and tried, but again, her mouth opened and no sound was emitted.

"I don't like this," she said.

"I'd be concerned if you did," Sam said, trying to lighten the mood. It was helpful to make witty comments in situations such as this to keep from going insane. That was how he dealt with the rest of his life, Autobots and Decepticons included.

"They told me they don't want you or anyone else to know. Not until they deem it time."

Sam frowned. "You can hear them?" he asked.

She nodded. "I can see them, too. It's like they're here, but in the void at the same time. They're right there, floating cross-legged." She pointed towards his window. She could see them, just before it, in the position she described, but all Sam could see was empty air.

"I don't see them," he told her.

"They must only want me to hear and see them for now," she deduced.

"Seems like it. Oh, shoot!" He startled Cheyenne by leaping up from his bed, causing the mattress to bounce slightly.

"What is it?" she asked.

"My parents are going to be furious that I'm home late! Especially in this weather." The sheets of rain outside were as strong as ever and showed no signs of letting up.

"If you explained what happened…" Cheyenne began. Sam shook his head.

"Maybe, but they'll still be mad. And how am I going to explain you, or ending up in my bedroom without sneaking past them? Although I'd have failed at that—they would be listening for me to come home."

"We can just tell them the truth."

He stared at her, wide-eyed.

"Are you kidding me?" he hissed. "They already have difficulty accepting an autonomous car as part of the family. When I tell them about a dimension-jumper…"

She shrugged. "How bad could it possibly be?'

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth, not looking at her.

"All right," he said. "All right. I'll go downstairs, tell them everything, and then when they and you are ready, you can come downstairs and meet them. All right?"

She nodded, though she looked nervous about it in spite of it being her idea.

"Right," he said, as if to reassure himself. "Just stay here and don't touch anything."

"I won't," she promised, watching him leave the room hurriedly.

She let out a sigh, extremely worried, more so than she had let on. She glanced at the beings.

"What are you up to?" she asked, no conviction or venom in her voice, just exhaustion. "Why am I here? Who are you?"

"Those are questions to be answered at another time," Blue said, and she had to be satisfied with that.

At first the Witwicky's freaked out when Sam explained what had happened. They bombarded him with questions (well, mostly his mother did, red in the face from yelling; his dad wasn't laidback about it, but at least he was behaving more reasonably), many of them he could not answer.

"She's up there, then?" Judy asked, pointing at the ceiling.

"Yeah, mom, but there's no reason to be so worried. She seems nice. A little awkward, maybe even a bit shy."

"I don't know how I feel about her being in the house," Judy replied, crossing her arms and a steely glint in her eyes.

"At least give a chance to meet her," Sam pleaded.

Ron shrugged. "Might as well. I'm curious about this girl. And you know Sam's judgement is well-rounded, Judes."

"Don't call me that," Judy snapped abruptly.

"Fine," Ron said, with what Sam thought was a barely suppressed eye roll. "Let's just talk to her first, though. Get to know her."

She bit her lip for a moment, then relented. "Oh, fine. I'll give her a chance. But I'm keeping a close eye on her, you hear?" She looked pointedly at Sam.

He hurried upstairs to retrieve Cheyenne, and she came down slowly, shyly, behind him, doing her best not to stray her gaze from his parents' eyes.

"Hello," she said in a soft voice, smiling embarrassedly. "My name's Cheyenne. It's nice to meet you both."

Judy's demeanor completely changed when she saw the girl with her own eyes. The suspicion in her eyes faded somewhat, and the muscles in her arms relaxed.

"What were you expecting, Judes?" Ron whispered into her ear, pretending to forget that she did not like being called that. "An alien robot?"

"Ron," she said in warning, and he shut up, but allowed a flitting smile to bridge his lips.

"You must be Cheyenne," Judy said, extending a hand in greeting, as if she would be speaking to anybody else. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Cheyenne accepted the hand and smiled broadly, and Judy began to think that perhaps she had judged the girl too quickly. She certainly didn't seem like any trouble.

Ron shook hands with her, too, and they invited her into the living room to talk. Mostly they asked about her previous life—her home, her family and friends, and Cheyenne talked animatedly, often expressing her emotions by waving her arms, almost subconsciously. As she spoke, a question occurred to Sam, but he decided it would not be right to voice it.

His mother, however, did not consider this and went ahead with, "So, Cheyenne, when do you think you will be getting home?"

Cheyenne's smile disappeared and a look of melancholy fell over her. "I don't know if I'll ever be going back there," she said, not looking at any of them and instead focusing her gaze intently on the coffee table. "I don't know these beings' intent, but I doubt they'll just let me go."

Judy immediately apologized for bringing it up, but the girl smiled and said it was no problem. Sam admired the way that she covered up her fear and sadness so easily, to keep the others unconcerned about her. Just at that moment, his phone rang, vibrating in his pocket.

He jumped, and stared at it, wondering who would be calling him. His parents and Cheyenne watched as he fumbled with the phone, nearly dropping it in his haste to pull it out. He flipped it open and his eyes widened when he saw who was calling him.

"It's 'Bee!" he exclaimed.

"Oh?" Judy said. "How is…?"

She was cut off by a silencing finger from Sam, and they listened as he said, "Hey 'Bee! What's…no, I'm fine….Yeah, he was, but it's okay, I'm fine now, I'm at home and he's nowhere in sight….Yes," he said with a bit of a sigh, "I'm sure. You know, you may be my guardian, but you're a little over-protective sometimes, 'Bee….Not that I'm complaining…! Right, right, okay. Great. See you then."

He put his phone away and noticed their staring faces.

"He knows about Barricade. You know N.E.S.T., that new organization where human military and Autobots team up to fight Decepticons who are still on Earth? Well, they detected an Energon signal in this area, and told Bumblebee about it. He would have just come here through a Groundbridge, but then the signal disappeared, so he called me to check that I'm all right. I didn't get a chance to tell him about you, though," he said, looking at Cheyenne, "but he's coming over, so he'll learn soon enough."

"All right," she said, trying not to squirm. She felt nervous and very excited about meeting an Autobot for the first time. Then she thought of Barricade, and wondered what he had thought when she and Sam had disappeared quite literally from under his grasp. Perhaps that was what prompted him to leave; he believed that this would make his search more difficult, although undoubtedly he was very much confused.

It wasn't a few seconds later when they heard a loud honk from the driveway, and Sam broke into a grin. He looked like his older brother was coming home after a long absence; for that was his relationship with Bumblebee, they viewed each other as siblings. Bumblebee, of course, was the older one, being thousands upon thousands of years older than Sam. But he might as well have only been a few years older, as he wasn't the most mature of 'Bots.

"Come on," Sam said to Cheyenne, "let's go meet him."

"Nuh-uh, not in the rain," Judy interjected.

"He'll be in the garage, mom," Sam protested. "Cheyenne and I can just run real quick to it and we can bring an umbrella if that makes you feel any better. We'll only be out in it for a few seconds."

Judy only relented after an argument with Ron and her son for about few minutes. Cheyenne waited quietly out of the way until they came to a consensus, and Sam grabbed an umbrella and led her outside to the garage.

The throne was carved from Cybertronian metal, the back elegantly shaped into a sharp-edged oval, the arms slightly rotund. It sat in the command center of one of the Decepticons' temporary Earth bases, and in its biggest one, which used to be a large warehouse of sorts until it had been…liberated from human use.

The throne, thought Barricade as he came in from the front entrance, was rather boastful for such an otherwise humble abode, but the Decepticon leader demanded nothing less. For perhaps the billionth time, the Decepticon scout had to keep an irritated exclamation from escaping his vents. How the slag did Starscream qualify to be the leader of their esteemed race? Oh, yes, because he had been Megatron's second-in-command before their beloved former leader had perished in Mission City; how he had become Megatron's second-in-command, Barricade thought he would never understand.

The Seeker was always complaining about something, although (Barricade admitted begrudgingly) he was not a bad leader. Not nearly the equivalent of Megatron, but still. He had kept their troops from being sighted by the Autobots or their human members at N.E.S.T. He had ordered and at some times led excavations for energy to be converted into Energon, and so far they had yet to be detected (although the Autobots must surely be suspicious of some of the more obvious incidents, they would not have gathered enough evidence to pinpoint the crime definitely against the Decepticons).

Starscream had also kept secret the arrival of new Decepticons onto the planet Earth. Their numbers were few, but they made far better progress with the newer arrivals. Barricade recognized some back in the old days of Cybertron, before the war had left their home world and traversed the stars. Only to end up here on this pathetic, dirty mud ball of a planet, he grumbled to himself.

"Back so soon?" sneered a high, whiny sort of voice. The only thing that kept Barricade from snapping back a snarky reply was the constant mental reminder he delivered to himself that Starscream was leader now, no matter how much he despised it, and that he must, at least for the time being, deliver the Seeker respect in his presence. Although that didn't stop him from insulting the Decepticon leader behind his back.

"Yes, my Lord," Barricade replied, keeping the sarcasm from his voice with great difficulty. Starscream could sense the hatred in his optics, however, but he made no comment about it.

"I thought you would be more successful in your mission," the Seeker continued, his tone derisive as he spoke. "How hard, after all, is it to capture one measly little human? And without his guardian?"

Barricade barely suppressed a growl. It had been Starscream who ordered the capture of Ladiesman217. He claimed he wanted to make the insufferable insect pay for destroying their Master and the Allspark, the source of all life on Cybertron, in one fell swoop. Everyone knew, though, that he was only angry because he wanted to get rid of Megatron himself.

"The human was not alone," Barricade said, meeting the Seeker's optics evenly. He refused to appear meek before him, even if he did feel rather abashed. "There was another with him."

"Oh?" Starscream raised an optic ridge. "And having two insects to deal with made the task all the harder to complete?"

"No," Barricade said through gritted denta. "She…there was something different about that organic."

Starscream scoffed. "All humans are the same. Small, noisy, selfish and annoying. Merely pests to be squashed."

"I don't disagree. However," and Barricade paused, only briefly, before continuing, "this girl…she made them disappear in a flash of light. Much like a mini Groundbridge."

Starscream froze and stared at the scout for a long time. He had half a mind to slam him into the nearest wall for braying such nonsense. But another consideration gave him pause: Barricade may, in the lightest terms possible, severely dislike the Seeker, but he would never outright lie to him, and he would never tell such a ridiculous façade. Unless it were truth. As difficult as it was to accept it as such, based upon the facts he had just reviewed, there was no alternative.

"How could a human do this?" he mused to himself. "It must have had some advanced device. Cybertronian, obviously, seeing as no human technology could possess such a quality as teleportation." He looked sharply at Barricade. "What did it look like?"

"Young. Perhaps a few years younger than the boy. She wore a jacket and jeans and gloves, and the left side of her face was covered with brown hair."

"Did you see anything on her?"

"No, but that doesn't mean this device was concealed."

"So you agree then," Starscream realized.

"What else could it have been?" Barricade replied. "No human could do something like that on their own. It's impossible."

Starscream thought for a moment more before saying, "We will have to keep an eye on this human. If she has Cybertronian technology, she could pose a problem for us, no matter how young she appears. Unfortunately, she is with the Witwicky boy, who will undoubtedly be guarded by that pesky Autobot scout now that they've detected your Energon signal in the relative area." He glared at Barricade, who wanted to say something, but decided against it.

Starscream looked about to continue, but someone came rushing up. Crusher, a Decepticon only slightly smaller than Barricade, rushed up to them. "My Lord!" he said, snapping to attention and bowing to the Seeker.

"What is it?" Starscream snapped, annoyed.

"There is an incoming projectile heading straight for our location."

Slag! "What is it?"

"A jet, my Lord."

"Human?"

"No, Cybertronian."

Again, he swore. But then again, he thought, it was rare for an Autobot to fly. And for it to be on its own, heading so foolishly to an army of Decepticons….How would it have known about this base, anyway?

"It must be a Decepticon," Starscream said. "Did you scan?"

"Yes. And…" Crusher fidgeted, not meeting the Seeker's optics, as though he feared bringing the news he must deliver.

"Well?" Starscream said, practically yelling and causing the smaller Decepticon to flinch.

Crusher steeled himself to reply, but just then there was an uproar from the opposite end of the base. All three of them swung in that direction. The uproar…even from here, they could make out what it was exactly. But it couldn't be cheering.

"Why are they causing such a ruckus?" Starscream snarled.

"It's Megatron, sir," Crusher squeaked, refusing to look at him.

The Seeker turned to him, shock plastered across his faceplates. Even in his surprise, he clearly noted that the Decepticon hadn't referred to him as his Lord.

"What?" Starscream said, in a hushed voice, not believing what he had just heard.

"It's Megatron," Crusher repeated, finally turning to him. "He has returned."

An icy silence fell over the trio.

Barricade, unable to conceal his shocked glee leaned towards Starscream with a smirk.

"Well, looks like someone is screwed."