Strange neighbours

Chapter Four: Discovery

"How?" Samantha was still sitting on the bathroom floor but now held an icepack that Sarah had given her to her thumping head. Sarah was standing over her with an angry expression. Samantha was thinking quickly, as much as she wanted Sam to pay for the accident, deep down she knew it wasn't completely his fault. The speed she was skating at was very fast and even if she hadn't lost her balance she would not have been able to stop herself in time to avoid running into the car anyway. Samantha also didn't want to ruin the new friendship her parents had made with the Ron and Judy.

Sarah interrupted her thoughts, "Yes Samantha, how did this happen to you?" her arms crossed over her chest and she looked straight into Samantha's unusual eyes.

"I just went a bit to fast around a sharp corner while I was roller-skating and stacked it, really badly. But I'm okay, just a little bruised." Sarah's eyes widened at her last words,

"A little bruised?! Look at yourself you are not a little bruised!"

"Okay, so I'm more than a little bruised but at least I didn't break any bones!"

"Well you're not going out skating again until I see it fit Samantha, you could have seriously hurt yourself and I wouldn't have even known!"

"You're completely overreacting about this but fine!" Samantha was starting to get a headache from all the yelling so she finished off the conversation with that.

Sarah turned and left the bathroom calling out over her shoulder,

"Don't forget you need to find a school to go to or I'll be doing it for you!" Samantha huffed and began to clean up the cotton balls and the bowl of bloody water that was on the floor ignoring the headache she'd gotten from all the yelling.

Once the bathroom was back to its original state she retreated to her bedroom and carefully lay down on her back. Every single second of that crash was clear in her mind. The jolt through her leg when she lost balance, the pain that ran up her shins, the flash of yellow as she flipped across the car and hitting the ground in a crumbled heap.

But what she also remembered as clear as glass was hearing Sam talk to someone when she was limping back to her house. The memory spun around in her head.

"Samantha wait!" He called. Stopping and leaning against the fence out of sight to breathe

I could hear Sam talking,

"Bee what the hell are you doing driving off without telling me?!" Silence.

"You're going to see Optimus Prime? About what?" Silence.

"Why didn't you tell me you were going?" Silence.

"OK, let me clean you up before you leave first…I really hope she doesn't tell mom about this, she will strip your paint and ground me for months."

Too much pain, must get inside…

Questions were forming as she replayed the memory. Who was Optimus Prime? Who was he talking to? She didn't see anyone else with Sam when she got up and he was definitely talking to someone. What really bugged Samantha was how nervous Sam had become. It wasn't a 'oh no I've hit someone with my car' nervous it was more of a 'please go away quickly, you're about to discover my stash of drugs' nervous.

Samantha knew she had to talk to Sam about the whole thing soon. But she wanted to find out about what he was clearly hiding. She would have to be discrete.

…

Rachel sat down with a sigh on the old couch that was sitting outside under a large, dead tree.

She looked up from inspecting her bandaged arm as Timsy joined her. He slung a well-muscled arm around her shoulders and lifted his leg to rest it on a plastic milk crate that lay in front of him.

Rachel rested her head on Timsy's shoulder and stared at their new project and the work they had done so far. It didn't look like much progress if you looked at how much work that needed to go into it, but if you looked at what they had done in the space of a few days and how well they had done that work, it actually was a lot.

"Hey. You want a drink?" Rachel looked at Timsy and blinked,

"Is that some kind of dirty joke or are you serious?" She felt Timsy shaking as he chuckled.

"I'm serious today. Lemonade?" Rachel stretched her legs out in front of her then let them fall limply back down to the ground,

"Yeah, with ice." Timsy got up and walked from the old couch into his house. He'd been living on his grandparent's farm for three years now but they had since moved on a year ago and had left Timsy the entire property. Over that year the property had turned into a dump filled with scrap metal and junk piles. But the interior of the house he kept neat and tidy, it was out of respect to his grandparents that he kept the house clean. It was an old house but it was home. To both of them. Rachel had been with Timsy since they'd first met and she'd been basically living with him for the last two months.

The small country town they lived near was a quiet settlement with mainly tourists stopping on their way through to their holiday houses. The town was surrounded by farmlands and on the north side there was a dam which had long ago been turned into a dumping ground for the locals.

Rachel looked over their work once more. She couldn't believe what she had stumbled across. A giant robot. It would take months, maybe even years to fix it up but she knew it would be worth it. Her eyes traced over the casing, it was rusting and covered in all sorts of crap from being in the dam. They had to hose down each separate part they needed to work on to get the clay out of the inner workings. So far they had stripped down the outer layer of metal and had begun basic repair work on what looked like the left foot.

They had moved it as much as they could so it lay on its back with its head tilted to the side and facing where she sat on the couch.

Her eyes traced back up to its face.

Rachel muffled a shocked scream with her hand. It was looking at her. The robot was looking at her. She held her breath as it stared straight into her eyes.
It was breathing. It was alive.

Rachel slowly stood up and took a few timid steps towards it. It did nothing so she took another step, then another and another until she was close enough to see the red glow of its eyes. Rachel reached out and slowly moved her hand towards it. Tiny gears moving and whirring inside its eyes were visible and Rachel gently touched the robot face with the tips of her fingers.

A moan rumbled through its frame, a soft pleading moan. Her fingers began to slowly stroke the metal, and she spoke to it,

"Are you alive?" it made another moan but there was less of a plea in it this time. Rachel was in complete shock.

"Oh my god…can you talk?" she whispered. It coughed in answer.

"Oh. You're injured." She found herself drawn closer to it and she was stroking its metal face. A shudder ran through its whole frame. Rachel suddenly took off and ran towards the house.

"TIMSY!" She sprinted straight towards the door completely taking out the figure that had opened the door to see what was going on. He caught her and stumbled back into the house a few steps.

"What is it?" Rachel had already begun tugging him towards the door by his arms frantically. He grabbed her arms in roughly the same spot that she was holding his

"Rachel what is it?" he asked firmly, shaking her a little so she'd pay attention to him. She stopped tugging on him and looked straight into his eyes.

"It's alive."

…

Megatron had been chained up, dragged for miles and dumped on the ground in a matter of hours after the human female had spotted him. Within the next few days the human and her companion had pulled off his armour, hosed out most of his inner workings and begun repair on his frame. It was diminutive and inexperienced repair work by Cybertroninan standards but he was being repaired.

This little human female and her companion were his way to freedom and he was willing to let them crawl all over his frame and pull off layers of armour in order to repair him.

He watched the couple interact over the past few days, they were a strong pair who worked well together. The male was protective over his mate and cared for her deeply. The care she returned to him was just a strong and deep.

Megatron lay, still unable to move or speak, with his head tilted towards where the female sat. The repair work they had done to his foot plating was mainly frame work; they hadn't pulled off enough layers of plating and deep body armour to reach his electrical or mechanical systems. Assuming they could repair his vocal systems he would teach them the anatomy a transformer's frame and talk them through repairing him to a basic functional level.

The female looked up and scanned his frame until her optics landed on his own. She muffled the scream that came from her vocalizer. He vented air through his systems, dust leaving his vents in a cloud. The female stood up and began to slowly walk towards Megatron. Soon enough she had her hand out stretched and fingertips were touching a smooth panel that made up one of his face plates. Megatron tried to activate his vocal processor. A moan rippled through his frame and the pain that tore at his vocalizer caused the moan to cut out. The female began to stroke his face plate.

"Are you alive?" He knew had to be careful. He needed the female to trust him, he needed to be repaired. He let another quiet moan out enduring the pain that it caused his vocalizer.

"Oh my god…can you talk?" He couldn't bear to activate his vocal systems again so he forced his venting system to falter and reactivate forcing the air in his systems out with a cough. The female had moved closer to his frame. She was almost leaning upon him.

"Oh. You're injured." A shudder caused from reactivating his venting systems ran though his frame. Without warning the girl took off running towards the house yelling for the male.

Megatron listened to the conversation,

"It's alive."

"What? What do you mean it's alive?"

"Timsy the robot is alive! I'm serious, come and look!" The female was running back outside pulling the male by his arm. She let go of him and walked straight up to the robot and placed both hands on one of his face plates.

"Show him. Show him you're alive." She whispered to Megatron. The mech activated his pained vocal systems for the third time and let a low moan out, optics shifting to look at the now very pale and shocked male.

"Holy shit." The female laughed at his response.

"We have to fix it. Timsy we have to fix him!"

"...where do we start?" Megatron took his response as a cue to activate the specialised fans designed to cool his vocal system from overuse heat exhaustion. He made them as loud as possible.

The pair heard the start-up of fans and looked at each other.

"Guess he's trying to tell us" Timsy said grabbing Rachel's hand.

A/N: The italics of Samantha's memory is meant to be from her perspective, that's why it's read a bit weird.

I know the editing is bad, if there's anything really horrible. Let me know.