Title: Cause and Effect
Disclaimer: I neither own Doctor Who nor Transformers. Both belong to all respective creators, producers, and distributors. I make no money from this work of fiction.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Bumblebee, Optimus, , 11th Doctor, River Song
Summary: Non-linear. Sometimes he wonders if the modern-day UNIT has lost their minds, because they call him to investigate cases like missing people, giant spectral hounds, and missing rabbits. Honestly, this is not an episode of a BBC pilot that won't be aired for another two years!

Chapter 3: Long Night

The Autobots don't entirely understand the changes in Sam after Egypt. The boy had distanced himself further from Bumblebee and one would think dying to revive Optimus would bring them closer than ever. But it doesn't. What DOES happen is that Sam's relationship with NEST changes entirely.

Where once, Sam eagerly made the trip NEST HQ at Diego Garcia as often as the Autobots, Lennox and General Morshower could contrive for his holidays, now he would rather go to a military base on the outskirts of Sacramento, one affiliated with UNIT and not only did UNIT not stop him, they practically slavered over the boy. In the time when Sam was at Princeton, he would go to a base just outside the city. In this particular case, UNIT had seen fit to ask for Sam, and Sam agreed and they'd gotten onto a Military Cargo plane, and were shipped off to the U.K.. As was the case at the UNIT base in Sacramento and Princeton, Bumblebee was allowed onto the Base, but he wasn't allowed iin/i it, and Sam didn't argue.

In fact, he'd shrugged, and patted his hood and said in an amused and entirely unsurprised tone, "UNIT knows exactly what you are, Bumblebee. And knowing what UNIT exists for, it's a miracle they let you onto the base at all, rather than shooting you on sight."

Bumblebee had chirped in alarm, and Sam shrugged again, "They do that sometimes, shoot things even though they know the bullets won't work." He smiled affectionately at the corporal (who kept shooting Bumblebee wary looks) standing beside a military jeep, the door still ajar from when he'd opened it as invitation to Sam, "They're pigheaded that way. But good people. I like UNIT."

Bumblebee noted how every human in hearing range straightened at that, and Sam chuckled. "Don't worry," he patted Bumblebee's roof affectionately, "I brought you in, so you're not in any danger." He paused and glanced over at several soldiers busily painting the outside of a warehouse and amended quickly, "No permanent danger at least. Your pride and paint job may suffer, but it won't be all that bad. So sit tight, buddy, I'll be back before you know it."

Bumblebee watches as Sam climbs into the jeep and Corporal Ryans closed the door. The Corporal moved to climb into the back of the Jeep and murmured quietly, "A Camaro, sir? Parked next to your Bessie and the same shade of yellow? No one has the bollocks to prank you, Sir."

Sam threw his head back and laughed as the driver of the Jeep stepped on the accelerator and drove away, leaving Bumblebee parked behind a warehouse next to an old fashioned yellow roadster.

Sam knows that it was a bad idea using Bumblebee as a conveyance when he was needed at UNIT HQ in Sacramento or Princeton. He knew it and did it anyway, because college was iboring/i and ever since he'd gotten back from Egypt, his mind was a Time Lord mind, and it was at all times whizzing about at a hundred thoughts per chronon, which added up to ten thousand thoughts per nanosecond, and ramped it up to a hundred million thoughts a second. All of this meant that if he didn't find some sort of entertainment that had nothing to do with the ridiculously simple so-called higher education that humans believed was advanced, he would go mad. He'd become like the Master before Gallifrey was Time-Locked the second time, and go on a wild conquering and murdering spree. Never mind the conquering/murdering spree, The Moment was still in his Tardis, and since her last reconfiguration, it had become integrated into her systems, which meant there was a good chance that if he snapped, he might go off and Time-Lock a bunch of innocent worlds just for the hell of it. It was not a pretty prospect, and the thought of it left Sam shivering and feeling dirty.

So he sought out UNIT.

And thank goodness for Captain Thomas Graham, because he'd warned UNIT that the Doctor was aware although he'd chosen to (mostly) retain his cover. As for the leaders of UNIT? The commanders of UNIT had no qualms taking advantage of the thoroughly bored genius Time Lord who was housed nearby.

For Sam, it was a godsend, because for one, he was not quite as bored anymore, especially as it seemed that Earth got invaded practically every other week. The only downside was that the invasions tended to be minor and relatively easy to stop, and seemed mostly centered in London or Cardiff, but hey, a distraction was a distraction, and since he no longer had access to his time ship, the Tardis being across the pond parked in Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's garden and all, he could no longer watch BBC shows that wouldn't be aired just yet. Which was a shame because the Doctor's favorite documentary about Gallifrey (He'd particularly enjoyed poking fun at it and River sometimes joined in the fun by writing scathing letters about the mistakes in the rendition of culture and fashion.) wouldn't be aired by the BBC for another nineteen hundred years.

Of course, boredom was not the only reason why Sam fled the presence of the Autobots of late. It was not widely advertised, but on Gallifrey, having technology that responded to psychic prompts was a way of life. It made life quite simple, and frankly, the Time Lords were often lazy, and so being able to turn on a light with a telepathic nudge was convenient and took little effort. Even the sonic screwdriver had what Rory once very aptly called the "Point and think function" installed.

Unfortunately, it meant that technology based off Time Lord technology would have these inbuilt prompts as well. Which meant that the Autobots (Optimus in particular was vulnerable because of his possession of a Matrix) could, without knowing why they did it, unleash their weapons if Sam was annoyed while touching them and imagining the gory demise of the irritant. Worse, because they were sentient, such an intrusion, unconscious or otherwise would eventually be detected, and how long would it be before it was Sam himself who was the threat? No the less contact Sam had with Autobots, the better. It hardly mattered that Optimus, because of the Matrix, could sense his mental touch, because Optimus thought he knew the function of the Matrix, but he really didn't. No, Optimus Prime thought he could sense Sam because he'd activated the Matrix, which meant the Matrix had formed a Brother-Bond between them, making Sam the first ever Human Prime.

Wrong.

Very Wrong.

Very, very wrong.

Yes, the Matrix had a quantum bond with all its counterparts, which was partially how Optimus could feel Sam's mental footprint, but the quantum bond was formed because at some point in between being launched off Gallifrey before the Final Sanction was activated and the Moment Time-Locking the Time War, and landing in what would eventually be Cybertron, the Matrix had shattered into thirteen pieces before being scattered across Time and Space. As far as getting information out of the Matrix was concerned, Sam would have to collect all thirteen Matrix segments and reassemble them in order to have a complete compendium to draw from, and frankly, he was not in the mood to go on an epic quest across Time and Space to find the missing parts of the Matrix. He'd had enough of Epic Quests since gathering the Key of Time with Romana in his Fourth Incarnation, say nothing of the adventure with the Pandorica or even the fiasco at Demon's Run, thank you very much.

This meant he had only two other options, the first of which was to consult the remnants of the Cube, which he's tried. Unfortunately, the Cube being what it was, a Prototype of the Eye of Harmony, it wasn't exactly sentient. In fact, the Cube hadn't gained sentience until the arrival of the Matrix led to the Dynasty of Primes being sparked. This meant any information contained within the Cube, despite being Gallifreyan in origin, was primarily concerned with the history of Cybertron. Well, there was always the second option, the Tardis Library. The Tardis Library in the Tardis which was parked in Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's garden.

Hence why he was on a UNIT Base in Britain today.

Well, partially.

Just last week, Graham had handed him a dossier, and asked him to read it while on live feed with UNIT and the retired Brigadier. Apparently there had been strange reports up and down the Dartmoor, in the area known as Baskerville. Several people had gone missing, and to top it all off, there was an escaped rabbit. An escaped, glowing rabbit. No, seriously. Sam had raised an eyebrow at this and asked quite bluntly if the current commanders of UNIT had thought they were being funny, because frankly, this was real life and not an episode of a wildly popular BBC pilot that would not be aired for another two years and by the way, hadn't he already dealt with a similar investigation back in the seventies?

The only response he'd gotten from UNIT was confused and embarrassed shifting and the Brigadier responding with an irate, "All the more reason for you to come up and investigate, Doctor! Now get on that blasted plane!"

And so here he was, tromping through the Dartmoor in the middle of the night with six UNIT soldiers armed to the teeth with only torches to light the way. Sam sighed irritably. The more things change, the more things stayed the same. This was going to be a very long night.

TBC