Chapter 4
Stunticons in Wal-Mart
Wildrider considered the current predicament he and Drag Strip were facing for a couple of seconds before finally giving his verdict.
"No, these won't do."
"Why the slag not?" Drag Strip said with very little patience.
Wildrider pointed toward the trailer of the knocked over semi, which was already beginning to burn.
"Doritos, it says there," Wildrider insisted. "The girl asked specifically for Cheetos."
Drag Strip punched one side of the trailer, piercing it with extreme easiness, and grasped a bunch of the small plastic bags. "So? I searched for an image file of that Cheetos fuel on the Internet and this looks pretty much the same to me."
Wildrider continued shaking his head. "Doritos are not Cheetos."
Drag Strip contemplated the possibility of punching his teammate, but that would unleash a fight and Motormaster had been very clear concerning unnecessary wasting of time.
He put both hands on the hole he had just opened and tore the entire side of the trailer off. "What are those?" he said impatiently. "Shelves! Didn't you say that the slagging human fuel was stashed on shelves?"
Wildrider bent down and took an attentive look inside, not even flinching when a small explosion sent a wheel toward his face. "Mm… still, this is not a supermarket. So nope, this won't work."
Drag Strip sighed. "Ookay… where to now, genius?"
"Isn't it obvious? To the closest supermarket, of course!" Wildrider said as he transformed into his vehicle mode.
Drag Strip was about to do the same when Wildrider's voice stopped him. "Hey! Don't forget to pay for what we took."
"We didn't take anything."
"Take, burn… whatever. Just pay the human and let's go."
Drag Strip snorted but approached the cabin of the marred semi. Normally neither he nor Wildrider would have cared about taking whatever they liked from the human nest, but that was a trailer they were talking about, and they both had something resembling respect toward such kind of vehicles. He looked in his subpockets and finally extracted a mildly used washing cloth he used for cleaning his tires. It wasn't among his favorites, otherwise he would have never considered getting rid of it.
He finished breaking the already shattered window of the semi with one of his fingers and threw the cloth inside, right on the offlined driver's head.
"You keep the change," he said before transforming and dedicating all his efforts to reaching and passing Wildrider.
Less than five minutes later, Wildrider and Drag Strip arrived at the nearest Wal-Mart.
"I won!" Drag Strip said, transforming into his bipedal mode.
Wildrider transformed as well. "The race, okay, but I crashed seventeen cars on the way. You only crashed sixteen."
"That's not true!"
"It is! Carriages with horses don't count as cars."
"They have wheels!"
"Yeah, but they don't have engines. They don't count."
Drag Strip narrowed his optic visor before assuming a relaxed, although seemingly forced, stance. "That may be true, but we actually said that the winner would be the one who crashed less cars."
Wildrider hesitated, his memory banks doubling their speed in an effort to have a clear image of what his teammate was saying. "We did…? I don't remember that."
"Well, we did," Drag Strip said convincingly as he proceeded to the store, opening the doors with a strong kick that brought down the shiny 'Open 24 hours' sign.
"Shopping time!" Wildrider said giggling, already forgetting about whatever he was trying to remember and not paying any attention to the dozens of screaming humans who ran away as soon as he and Drag Strip entered.
"Where do we start?" Drag Strip asked, taking a look around him once he walked over the cash registers' zone. "There are tons of things displayed on shelves."
"Remember, go for the crunchy and shiny things," Wildrider said, seizing a shopping kart and finding it too small to be pushed. He ended up grabbing as many karts as his arms could hold. "I'll go this way and you go that way. Meet me in five, 'kay?"
Drag Strip frowned. "No, I'll go that way. And you meet me in five!"
With that, they both separated.
The first big decision Drag Strip had to make as he began to walk through – and over – the aisles of the store concerned his stance. The building had enough height to allow a Transformer of his size to walk with relative easiness, but still the upper part of his helm grazed the ceiling and it represented a menace to his paintjob. He wasn't as snobby as Dead End concerning his appearance, but scratches would never be welcome by his standards. For a moment he considered blowing the entire ceiling away with his gravito-gun, but he thought that such action would call too much attention and would leave pieces of floating concrete that would fall eventually, threatening his paintjob even more. With the sigh of a martyr, he continued advancing slightly hunched, a position not worthy of a robot of his rank and skills. If he'd been the one who called the shots, he would have sent Breakdown to that kind of job. There was no doubt that Motormaster's random decisions were led by envy toward Drag Strip's superiority and whatever his dumb processor could compute.
A beautiful sight caught his attention and rotated his mood. Displayed on the screens of dozens of television sets, his own image welcomed him, beautifully multiplied. He immediately located the small cameras placed on a table before him, another sight that made him smile. Perhaps the humans knew he was coming and had installed those cameras for him, there was no other explanation. And slag, did his yellow paintjob look really good on those screens or what…
Drag Strip straightened himself as much as the ceiling allowed him to and started to pose, admiring his polished frame, his attractive facial features and his perfectly shaped servos. He was a handsome mech, definitely a very handsome mech. Fortunately he was not an arrogant freak like Dead End and could admire his own looks without losing contact with reality. Dead End would have certainly spent hours there, just looking at himself. Drag Strip shook his head in disapproval, being careful not to do it so brusquely as to break visual contact with all those screens displaying his image.
But he did, if only for a second, and in that fleeting moment he could perceive the small, shivering figure hiding behind one television set. One second later, the human in question had two metallic fingers closed around his blue vest.
"Please don't kill me, please!" the fleshling cried, struggling in Drag Strip's grip.
That reaction satisfied Drag Strip. It was okay for humans to fear him, that was their place. That particular specimen was a male, and his pinkish face was covered by small brownish dots. Drag Strip lifted the human to his face and took a more careful look. The creature seemed about the same age as the Autobots' male pet and had small metal pieces all over his dental plates.
"Please don't kill me!" the creature insisted, seeming close to lubricating on itself. "Please! I… I'm just in charge of the credit cards… I don't get paid enough for this!"
"What's a credit card?" Drag Strip asked, not really interested but he didn't want some simple human vermin knowing something he didn't.
The human's shivering decreased slightly. "Eh… you can buy things from the store with it… You can take them now and pay for them later."
Drag Strip zoomed in his optical sensors at the small plastic rectangle the human was showing him. That didn't have any logic. "I can take things from this store now or whenever I want. Why would I want to pay for them later?"
The human seemed to understand his point. "Right… right sir… you don't have to pay for anything, i-indeed…"
Drag Strip was already tired of the shivering human. He was about to squish it when he remembered something. "I'm looking for Cheetos. Where can I find them?"
"C-Cheetos…?" the human stammered, his expression more confused than ever. "Two aisles to the right… There is a special offer right now, sir, three for the price of two."
Drag Strip placed the human on the floor, a little too roughly perhaps because the creature staggered and fell. "Take me to them, but first show me what you have for car polishing."
The flesh bag got up immediately. "Oh, right this way, sir! We just got a new detailing machine that will blow your mind!"
"It better not, or I'll blow yours."
It took Wildrider only a quick look to realize that the human fuel shelves were located on Drag Strip's side. It was a shame nobody else was there to notice his realization, otherwise maybe they would think twice before calling him insane.
But, come to think of it, he had been lucky to have ended up on the non-fuel side of the store. Drag Strip knew nothing about humans and wouldn't have had the initiative to get more than the Cheetos, but Wildrider knew better, and he was sure that the girl was going to need something more than just crunchy fuel. Like clothes, for example. He knew that humans changed them on a regular basis, unless they were superheroes or cartoon characters, who always used the same ones.
So he grasped the first thing that resembled clothing to him. Shower curtains, stated the small plastic envelope. Perhaps they were garments to be used when humans hit the wash racks, they would definitely come in handy. He seized five more, just to be sure, making sure to pick the best colours, namely grey and red.
That made him remember something, not because it actually had any relation to shower curtains or colours, but because his memory banks worked that way, jumping and sending torrents of data toward his processor and forcing him to deal with situations partially, or even completely, forgotten.
A unicorn, the human girl wanted a unicorn. Or was it a Unicron…? No, that's what Breakdown said but Dead End corrected him, and Deadster's never mistaken.
So he did a quick search through the Internet and found what a unicorn was, although that didn't make things any clearer for him.
"… a mythical animal generally depicted with the body and head of a horse, the hind legs of a stag, the tail of a lion, and a single horn in the middle of the forehead…" Now just what the slag was that?
He knew about horns, though. Rumble and Frenzy used to tell him that he had horns, referring to his spikes, so what he needed was to find a little version of himself that the human girl could use as a toy. Unfortunately, there was no such a thing resembling him in the area he was currently thrashing. He found something useful, though, small curved containers that he could use for drinking energon instead of cubes. Toilets, they were named, if the information written above them was correct. That certainly didn't ring any bells for Wildrider, but he liked the colours, so he wasted no time in stashing half a dozen of them in his subpockets.
His radio caught a signal of a police frequency, and also one that featured a familiar voice that mentioned his current location. Was that Prowl? Wildrider kept grabbing whatever he found on the shelves and decided to do what he always did when those frequencies annoyed him: turn his radio off.
But first…
"How are you doing? You got the human fuel already?" he said through his comm link.
"In a minute," Drag Strip's voice answered. "What about you? Did you find something useful?"
"You bet I did. The Autobots may be coming, did you hear?"
"Yeah, but we still have time. Hurry up, though, and meet me at the entrance."
Drag Strip ended the communication. Wildrider only shook his head. Drag Strip was very amusing when he tried to get bossy. Curiously he never did it when Motormaster was around.
Wildrider kept collecting everything he could reach for the next couple of minutes. His search through the Internet turned out to be very confusing, and in the end he decided that anything displayed in that place would be useful to any human. It was a human supermarket after all; the fleshies wouldn't sell products they couldn't use themselves.
A dumb wall got in his way and ended up smashed. Wildrider looked around surprised. Somehow he had managed to exit the store. He was back in the parking lot, although a smaller, dirtier one.
"Woah man! Way to go!"
Wildrider glanced downwards and found a very thin human dressed in black leather.
Like my interiors, he though as he picked the creature up, half a dozen shopping karts falling to the floor and scattering many small boxes and plastic envelopes on the black pavement. He scrutinized the human carefully, noticing some differences from the usual humans he was used to seeing. This one had no fiber above the head and its skin plates were covered with a large number of black insignias and small metallic rings.
The human didn't seem impressed by leaving the ground so brusquely. It laughed hilariously as it focused on all the products that Wildrider was carrying.
"Did you knock up your lady, man?" the human said, pointing at one small, purple box with a shiny 'Pregnancy Test' logo all over it. "You know, I've always wondered with you robots… How do you guys do it, you know, put a bun in the oven?"
Wildrider had no idea what the human was talking about, but it sounded funny, so he laughed. The human laughed too, even more hysterically than him, and only then Wildrider realized that it was a female.
"Hey man, do you want to buy some crack?"
"What's crack?"
"Helloo? It's like the best thing ever. I bet you'd like it, ya look pretty much like a geeker to me."
Now that was a word that Wildrider knew. Thundercracker used it a lot – or was it geeky? "Yeah, I guess I may be."
"So how much do ya want? For only a hundred bucks I'll give you a half gram rock, but since I really like you, you can have it for eighty."
"Mm, not sure… Is this crack thing crunchy?"
"Oooh ya bet it can be!"
Wildrider smirked maliciously. "Then I'll have your entire stash, and for free."
The human's protests were interrupted by three sets of dazzling lights focused on Wildrider. Unfortunately Drag Strip was still inside the store, otherwise he would have enjoyed the sudden attention.
"Put that human on the ground, Decepticon. And do it slowly."
Wildrider adjusted his optics and recognized Prowl. At his sides, Sideswipe and Wheeljack had their guns ready to shoot.
Why did the Autobots always call him Decepticon? He had a name, and besides he was a Stunticon.
"What… but I was just buying crack!"
That must have been a wrong choice of words because the Autobots shot him angry glances in response. Even Prowl addressed him with a stare that challenged his usual stiffness.
"I told you to put that human on the ground, Wildrider, and I won't repeat it."
Well, that was better. Being addressed by his name was always a welcome change. Usually Wildrider wouldn't have been interested in harming some anonymous human, but Motormaster always said that humans were very useful against the Autobots. It seemed that Optimus Prime had some sort of glitched directive in his head and had ordered his troops to never attack when humans were held hostages.
"Uh, no, I think I'll keep her."
"Do you think this is a joke?" Sideswipe spat, taking a threatening step toward Wildrider.
"No, this is a joke," Wildrider said. "How many Autobots does it take to change a light bulb?"
"You have three seconds to let that flesh bag go or I'll blow your slaggin' head off! Last warning, Deceptiscum!" Sideswipe cried, his gun aiming directly at Wildrider's helm. "One, two—!"
Many things were said about the Autobots in the Decepticon ranks, but Wildrider knew one for sure: they had a lousy, like really lousy, sense of humour.
A familiar light and an equally familiar feeling of disorientation announced that Drag Strip had shot his gravito-gun. Wildrider's memory banks were not to be trusted, as Wildrider himself admitted, but he never forget anything related to his teammates – or their weapons.
Among the flying debris and street lamps, he could see the Autobots backing off in order to avoid being crushed by the altered force of gravity.
"What are you waiting for?" Drag Strip told him, standing beside him and stashing as he could an unidentified amount of human objects in his subpockets, most of them waxes and car shampoos. "Scram!"
"Oh yeah," Wildrider said, giggling and preparing his curve ball. As for his objective, he didn't hesitate in targeting Prowl. It was much more fun to mess with the serious guys. "Hey Prowler! Catch!"
Wildrider didn't wait to see if Prowl had managed to catch the human. Knowing him, he probably had. But Wildrider quickly forgot about Prowl and the human dressed in black leather. With a hysterical cry of "Touchdown!" he transformed into his vehicle mode after salvaging whatever he could from his peculiar shopping experience and followed Drag Strip, his force field giving a slag for the shots already impacting him as Wheeljack and Sideswipe transformed and drove after them.
Behind, Prowl frowned at the human kicking his hands frantically, complaining about the loss of whatever the white dust decorating his face plates was.
To be continued.
If somebody has a genie in a bottle, please borrow it to me. I want to ask for Stunticons in Wal-Mart! Needless to say that I don't own Wal-Mart, Cheetos or Doritos. If I would, I'd have a hundred monkeys typing my fanfics instead of me.
The scene of Drag Strip watching himself in the television screens was inspired by one scene of 'Despicable Me', in which one of the minions does the same and sings in a karaoke, but I thought it would be too much mixing Drag Strip and mambo.
I don't do drugs, so I had to check the prices of crack in the web. If I got them all wrong, please excuse my ignorance. Also, since English is not my primary language, I don't know how familiar you guys are with the word "geeker", but in case you don't know it, it means crack user. Good thing that Prowl can't sniff or he would be a very happy Prowl. Good change, but Autobot nightmare.
If somebody knows how many Autobots it takes to change a light bulb please let me know. Wildrider left before sharing the answer.
For such a focused person as I am (yeah, right), I'm babbling too much. It happens every time I write the Stunticons, sorry. Thanks a lot for your reviews and I hope you enjoyed this update. Thanks bunches to my beta reader iratepirate, who revised this chapter in the blink of an eye.
Next chapter: how many minutes – seconds? – does it take for a human child to destroy Motormaster's patience? Considering he has patience, of course.
