Empathy or Apathy
High wire was throwing a small fit when he and Rad got home after school, But was able to wait until he was in Rad's room to start talking.
-That girl had a minicon!-
"Huh?" Rad looked up from his dumb math homework, summer was two months away. He couldn't wait. "You mean the girl with the color streaks in her hair?"
-Yes! She must have the mini-minicon, he can be like a signal jammer- Highwire stopped as the front door downstairs opened. He quickly hid on the far side of the bed. -Must be why no one alerted us, they don't know he's online.-
"But wouldn't Teletran 1 be able to find him?" The front door opened and closed again, Rad's dad probably had to get something. "I mean, when he first came online-"
-Some earth materials can hide radiation, from what I heard of your science class.- Highwire stood up. -You're doing that wrong.- Highwire corrected the math problem.
"Well . . ." Rad glanced at his nightstand, Lazerbeak was with Alexis this week. "There's not much I can do, Highwire, especially right now . . . And wouldn't that mean the decepticons couldn't find it?"
-Hope so . . .-
"You're late, Spitfire." The guy she met up with was thin, greasey, and had a tattoo of a spider on his neck. He twtiched a little, and had a face that Spitfire just hated. He wasn't bad looking or disfigured, but something about him made her hate him. That, and he'd been trying to get her spot for a long time. If he ever tried to kill her, she wouldn't be surprised.
"Shut up Spider, I had to go to school." She snapped at him. "And running away isn't an option."
"Oh, okay, You've considered all your options, I see." He spoke in a condescending tone.
"Spider," She gripped his neck, digging her nails into it. "I will maim you without a second thought, now let's get moving, I've got other things I have to do for Omega."
"Spitfire, whassup?" Pyro greeted her as she entered the building, a couple hours later. "Nice shiner." He backed off the instant she glared at him. He stopped when he was out of hitting range.
"Any intersteresitng people?" Omega came out from a supply closet. Pyro proceeded to make himself scarce. "What happened to your eye?"
You did, bastard, why don't you go to hell? Was what she thought, out loud she just said, "My old man, has a problem with how I've been acting. As for recruits, got four more, and met up with a gang leader who's getting ready to give up his gang, 'Rent's are yanking him out of this town, I persuaded him to have his join ours . . . He doesn't have a problem, but they're pretty much cattle." Spider must be blind if he can't find people on a daily basis. "But there's ten of them."
"Good work . . . Need you to deliver this to Hacker, by the way, and get an answer about the request I gave him." He brushed her cheek with his hand as he headed outside.
I want to kill you. "Fine."
Hacker was the name Omega had given to a computer (and pretty much everything else too) genius. He was the only one Omega permitted to miss meetings and fights. Hacker's home life was a little choatic, and ironic at the same time. Both his mother and his father were cheating on each other, and neither figured it out. So while they may have loved Hacker, they confused him to the point he just decided to avoid them. If they lied to each other saying they loved them, but were cheating on the other, then why should he believe them when they said they loved him? Then there were nights when neither had come home, leaving him alone.
Needless to say, whenever someone came to visit him, he was thrilled.
"Sue! How are you?" He smiled at her, noting the black eye, as well as a thin scar on her neck.
"Fine, Hacker. You?" He blinked then gave a smaller smile.
"I'm fine, what's in the box?" She passed it to him.
"Stuff from Omega . . . where are your parents?"
"Out, Finally was able to bug their phones . . . you would not believe how mushy they are with James and Alice." Hacker headed up stairs. "How's your dad?"
" . . . probably on his way to needing a liver transplant. The way he's been drinking. Somedays I just want to kill him." Her arms crossed. "I almost wish he wasn't my father."
"Almost?" Hacker opened up the door to his room.
"I wouldn't be here if he wasn't."
"Sue . . . What does Omega need?" Hacker was the only one who could get away with calling Spitfire by her real name. They'd been friends before the gang. "And he does realize that people tend to associate Omega as 'last' right?"
"Yeah, but he thinks of it as the end of the line, you can't get second chances after fighting him." Hacker's room was filled with old cell phones he'd found in the trash, which had been taken apart, some computers, also taken apart, and other various electronic things, either in pieces or about to be. He had one computer that was still whole, but had somehow been able to hook other computers to it, making a crude super computer. He put down the box on the table. "He wants the answer to a request he gave you."
"That's it?"
"Huh?"
"I thought you'd be here for something else, not just to run errands." He sat in his chair and looked at her. "He gave you that black eye, didn't he." It wasn't a question so much as a confirmation.
"Hacker-"
"Why on earth do you stay with them? Omega swore he wouldn't treat you like your father did, and you father is practically non existent. You-!" He put his hand to his mouth, Spitfire had just punched him. "What the . . . what's wrong with you? You're even acting like him now." Spitfire froze at that. She'd been about to hit him again. "What's wrong? You can tell me." She absently lowered her fist.
I didn't mean to hit him! I was just mad . . .I'm nothing like my father, or Omega! "Nothing. I need to get going-" He grabbed her arm.
"Hold on a sec, I want you to do something for me . . ." He handed her a rubics cube that was already messed up. She stared at it, then him.
"You know I can never do these things, Hacker."
"Humor me, try to use that psychic ability to figure it out. I'll get what Omega needs, you just focus on that. 'kay?" He cleared off a spot on his bed. Spitfire sighed, and reluctantly began focusing on the cube. Ignoring Hacker tapping at his keyboard, she started twisting the sides.
Midnight, bored, decided to go into stasis for a bit. Though he really wanted to know what the cube thing she was playing with was.
Twist here, and then here . . . "Hacker . . . " He glanced at her, and then grinned as he realized she got all the colors back to being on one side each.
"You did that in fifeteen minutes, Sue. Now try this one." He passed her another, just as messed up as the first. "I'm almost done, okay?" He turned back to the computer, and she glanced back at the new cube.
"I really despise you right now." She heard him give a soft snort. Then glanced at the Rubrics cube. She silently began to work on it again, this time, she was able to tell what to turn, like someone was whispering in her ear.
Hacker watched her turn the last row/column (depending on how you looked at it) Then at the clock. "You got that down to five minutes."
"Why are you timing me?" She looked seriously annoyed.
"Well . . . I wanted to test out a theory I had, from when you were able to tell which way a ball was going to go when we were little . . . you'd just watch a guy playing basketball, throwing a threepoint shot, and you'd know if it was going in or not. You see, I doubted that it was actually telling the future as more that you could subconciously calculate velocity and all that."
"I was five-" He stopped her from waving him off.
"And I think you're actually a girl with genius qualities." Hacker noted that he had her actual attention. "Sue, you were able to remember tiny details of information that not even I remembered, and you could figure out things that no one else could. While you were always in one scrape or another, you would watch how people moved, and acted . . . Sorry, but, I honestly think you're just subconciously putting information together, eliminating what isn't possible, and it comes to you, all in a flash."
" . . ." Spitfire gave a slight nod, absorbing the information. "I'm not going to completely buy all of that, just yet, but . . . I guess it's possible."
"I'm 99 sure I'm right, I just need more information to make it to 100." Hacker leaned back. "Anyway, I'm working on a new project, Can you get Omega to stop by?"
"Why?"
"I want to talk to him." Hacker sighed then glanced at a side monitor, where a alert was flashing. "Mom's talking to James. I seriously just want to mess with them and have it so all of them meet somewhere at the same time."
"Well . . . you talk to both that James guy and your dad right?"
"Yeah, do you have an idea?"
"Other than suggest they make dinner reservations at the same resturant, same day, same time, not much."
"Heh, that would be interesting." Hacker stood up. "Anyway, to Omega, tell him not yet, I've got to get two more parts before I can do it. But it may be possible by the end of the month."
"Sure thing." Spitfire got up. "See you around Ha-"
"Hey, Sue, do me a favor, call me by my real name this time."
"O . . . kay . . ., See you later, Rick." He smiled at her, then watched her ride away.
"I wonder if you're aware of how much you've changed . . ." He glanced at the computer. He'd been able to stay away from the gang more than she had, and he'd managed to escape the more destructive aspects. My home life may be out of whack, but at least my parents didn't hurt me with their fists. I wonder if she realizes that she's probably not going to last long if she keeps trying to keep up with the gang . . . but there's nothing I can do without making her angry at me. It didn't matter who you were, or how old, if you saw one of your friends in trouble, and you knew they weren't doing anything to escape it, you wanted to help, but if they didn't want it, you just felt helpless.
"Whoa!" Spitfire ducked at the shout, just in time to see Spider pass overhead. He landed in a bush. A thorn bush, to Spitfire's amusement.
"Learning how to fly, Spider?" She glanced down at him. He glared at her.
"Shut up, Spitfire!" The comment was followed by cussing and swearing up a blue streak. None of the words were very compliementary to her. She just arched an eyebrow and then impishly dropped the box she'd been moving on him. Somehow, listening to him yelp in pain was fun. She didn't feel any large amount of guilt for doing that.
"My mistake, I was going to help you." She turned away. "Put the box over there when you get up." Ignoring him, she headed to where his take off had occured.
"Nice, Brusier." Omega was talking to an older kid, who had already lost most of his mind to drugs. He was fairly muscular too, which was probably due to taking steroids. The big guy just nodded. "Spitfire, did you see where Spider landed?"
"Tangled in a thorn bush, and then cursing at me. So I left him there." Omega laughed at that. Spitfire glanced at the other three in small clearing, just outside the warehouse. "So, why was he flying to begin with?"
"Wanted to see how strong Brusier here really was. He threw Spider about-"
"Ten feet, or less." Spitfire glanced at the boy next to bruiser, he was shorter than her. "I'm Mercury, Ms.Spitfire."
"Drop the Miss." She spoke automatically. Before glancing at the third.
"You're a girl, and you're second in command?" The boy spat on the ground, unimpressed. "How pathetic is that?"
"Pathetic is if I wasn't second in command, Smart mouth." She absently put her hand on her hip. "And the fact you carry a pocket knife, can't you use somthing better?" He blinked at that. "Omega, I need to get going, tomorrow's Friday. I'll see you in the afternoon."
"Why? Your mommy needs you home?" Smart mouth, even if that wasn't the guy's name, it would be what she called him, gave an attempt at a sneer. He was very quickly slammed into the wall by an irate Spitfire. Two quick punches and a swift knee between the legs had him on the ground.
"My mother's dead, Smart mouth. And I'm choosing to go home early, I need to grab somethings for the weekend." He couldn't actually focus on her voice past the 'My mother's dead' part.
"Spitfire . . . I'd appreciate if you didn't do that." Omega glanced down at the guy on the ground. "At least, not in front of me, and his name is Knife."
"Still has a mouth on him that speaks too much." Spitfire crossed her arms. He can also go to hell, so can Spider. "So, Is it alright to go?"
"Just be here after school lets out, we're going to plan an attack."
"Right." She turned and walked away as Spider came back, cut by thorns and looking rather pitiful.
"Spider, get cleaned up and help Knife get to his feet. You two come with me."
"Who's on first? I don't know -third base." Spitfire slipped past the dark living room, her dad was watching a Abott and Costello, and judging from the beer bottles, had already been drinking. A loud snore cut through the dialouge, and she gave a soft sigh of relief. She was in her room soon after.
"Midnight, it's okay to transform now." The tiny minicon transformed on her desk, then tipped his head to one side.
-Does 'dead' mean offline?- Spitfire blinked at him, then gave a slight nod.
"Yes." She sat on her bed.
-What happened to Spitfire's mother?-
"Midnight, I don't want to talk about this right now." She snapped at the minicon, then glanced away. "Sorry, it's-"
-Okay, Midnight didn't mean to hurt you.- The minicon came down off her desk, opening drawers to be more like steps.
That explains why he was in my underwear drawer, he was trying to get down from my desk. Midnight walked over to her, then realised he couldn't get on top of the bed.
-Spitfire, help.- He held up his tiny arms and she lifted him to be on the bed next to her. -Thanks.- Midnight curled next to her. -Spitfire, what was that boy talking about? With you figuring things out very quickly to predict the future?-
"His name's Hacker, as for what he was talking about, I have what some people call E.S.P. or a sixth sense. I can tell pretty much instantly what's metal, like I can tell a solid gold ring from a ring that's just gold plated, but I can't read minds or see ghosts . . . or at least, I think I can't."
-What's a ghost?- Midnight was trying to recall if he saw the word before.
"A ghost, depending on what you read, is either someone who refuses to move on to the afterlife, because there's something they have to do, or is here serving out somesort of punshiment for something they did or did not do. Ghosts can't actually be seen by the normal human eye, though some people can feel them. Some people with really strong sixth senses can actually see them moving around, and people have supposedly caught them on film too." Spitfire fell back on her bed. Midnight moved so he could look at her face. "Hacker thinks I was able to see them when I was little, though I still think he just ignored his surroundings."
-Could Spitfire see one?- Midnight's optics blinked at her.
"According to Hacker, I probably do. Supposedly, Ghosts have somesort of detectable electro magnetic field, which would give some of the same charateristics of iron, but I doubt it."
-Spitfire can sense metal, explain more, please.-
"I don't know how to explain it, Midnight, If I touch something, I can tell what sort of metal it's made up of, if I've encountered it before. But all metal gives off a similar signature. I knew there was metal inside that marble statue, but it felt weird, it gave me more of headache, and I can tell you're metal because you have the same basic signature of earth metal, but it's really small. You give off a different vibe, but since I can't sense other humans, I have to guess you're actually completely metal." Spitfire glanced at him.
-Could Spitfire find others like Midnight?- Midnight's blue optics stared at her inquisitively.
"To an extent, probably, I think there was one at school. I think it was a bike."
-Midnight would like to see brothers and sisters again . . . even if they're with the Decepticons-
"What's a decepticon? You've mentioned them before." She watched as Midnight focused his eyes on the ceiling, and projected the image of the Deception symbol. Spitfire was slightly glad she had painted the ceiling black as well.
-Decepticons . . . they want to take over the planet, won't settle for compromise . . . they are constantly at war with the Autobots - he projected the image of the Autobot symbol. -Who want to protect and keep the planet safe . . . Midnight liked the autobots the best, they tried to get the minicons out of the war.- He stopped projecting. -Decepticons and Autobots are like giant versions of the minicons, could turn into larger things, still hide in plain sight.- Spitfire nodded, silent. -What's Spitfire thinking?-
"Just that I'm curious . . . What could you minicons do?"
-Well . . . Some of us formed into weapons so the Autobots or Decepticons were stronger, otherwise it would be a stalemeat.-
"Stalemate." Spitfire corrected under her breath.
-But, Midnight doesn't remember what he could do!-
"Would you want to?" Spitfire looked down at him. "You have enough power to stay hidden, and that's all you need."
-Midnight would still like to remember.- Midnight gave a soft little noise that that hinted he was sad.
"Yeah . . . I would want to be able to remeber things that I've forgotten, too . . . Like what happened to my mom."
-Midnight thought she was dead.-
"I think she's dead, but she could have easily just left. She and my dad got married only because she was going to have me, they both dropped out of school . . ." Spitfire stared at the ceiling. "Midnight . . . can you project a star field?"
-Midnight'll try.- Midnight moved to have his head next to hers, before he projected stars. The result was that if you didn't look at the furniture, it really did look like you were floating in space.
"That's beautiful, Midnight, thank you." Midnight gave a small churr, she gussed it meant 'your welcome' or he was embarrassed. Probably the second. "Any way, what Hacker was guessing was that I could subconsciously, do really complex math by just watching a person do an action . . . like throwing something, and be able to know what was going to happen just by watching how they moved. So it wasn't really foresight, it was just my mind working really fast. Faster than I could conciously comprehend." She stared at the ceiling. "Which makes sense, it means I was thinking ahead, . . . the only problem is I'm actually awful at math, or strategy games."
-Oh, Midnight meant to ask, what was the cube thing?-
"It's called a rubrics cube . . . there are some people who can supposedly get it fixed in under a minute." Spitfire stretched out. "Which I find impossible, that means they'd have to move really fast, and think at the same time."
-Can't Spitfire do that?-
" . . ." Spitfire glanced at the ceiling.
-Spitfire?-
"I don't know Midnight, I just don't know . . . Any way, it's time for bed, Midnight." Spitfire kicked off her shoes and grabbed what worked as pajamas for her. A pair of stretch pants and a tanktop (black and navy, respectively). Midnight shut down the star field. He moved to sit on her nightstand.
It's nice to have someone to talk to. Instead of lying in bed thinking. Spitfire sighed. Summer was coming up, but she honestly couldn't say she cared. Life was the same no matter how she looked at it. She came home, no, she went back to her houuse, it was about the same type of Shelter the gang was, which equalled not much. Spitfire glanced at an old picture frame on the desk, currently faced down. I must be a fool, hanging onto this life. That thought disapeared just as fast as it came, and Spitfire ignored the desire to pack a bag, grab Midnight, and run. But as usual, the thought didn't stay, and she went to sleep. Midnight curled next to her.
Spitfire's only problem was that she knew exactly what was wrong in her life, and how to get out of it. She just never acted, because she didn't have a reason to get out, her life would be empty, if she ever did get away from the gang. She didn't have a reason to live, a person, a dream or a goal. She just had the will to survive, and keep moving.
Well folks, I have a slight problem. I have two possibilities for the story, #1 being if Spitfire joined the decepticons #2 if she joined the Autobots. This is where you guys come in, all you have to do is review and tell me which one you want, but be forewarned that if she goes w/ the decepticons, it might get a bit dark. I won't post the next chapter of the story till I get at least ten votes for one of the choices. (Hopefully by then I'll be able to write the next part) Anonymous reviews are accepted. On that note, please Read & Review!
