Author's Notes:

Forgot to finish this last week, so here it is now~!


Kara had begun to wonder if the pair were going to last the time they would have to spend together searching for the lost Autobots. Leaving her team from the warehouse had proved to be a process, all of them wanting to inject their own opinion on where to search for the Autobots. Normally, Kara would try to interject in the conversation, but she had spent the entire time arguing with Wheeljack over his choice of vehicle mode.

Rather than allow her team to paint him, the Cybertronian had taken the liberty of going through their collection of cars, only to pick and scan the very car which Kara despised more than any other vehicle the team owned. He scanned the 458 Speciale Ferrari, the one with beautiful curves and shape, the one cloaked in ebony with two perfectly placed, blood red racing stripes down the length of the car from the hood to the back bumper. In Kara's opinion, the car had no match, flawless in every aspect and utterly perfect.

But it had been Archer's car.

She irrationally yelled at him about how he made a stupid choice. He yelled about her being irrational. Eventually, the yelling had taken such a pointless turn that it just sort of died off, no winner found and no conclusion remembered like with many fights between random individuals. And all she could remember was snapping at the others about how instead of arguing over where to go, they should have Renegade hack into the federal database to find a place for them to begin their search.

So now, here they were, driving across the country to the abandoned N.E.S.T. base in some desperate hope to find some sign of the Autobots while Renegade continued to bounce through government servers in her spare time to find them information that might be of some use.

They simply drove along in silence, each still slightly spun up from their previous argument. But both Wheeljack and Kara, though not speaking to each other, were both thinking the same thing about their current situation.

This was awkward.

Kara shifted a bit in the driver's seat, her arms on the steering wheel while her eyes remained locked on the road before her. They were slowly merging into a more populated stretch of road, so she had no choice but to pretend to be driving. Though, she felt pretty useless. Her fingers began to drum lightly on the steering wheel.

A drum of the fingers, a pause. A drum of the fingers, a pause.

Clearing her throat.

Shift in the seat.

A slight hum of boredom.

And then she thunked her head on the steering wheel.

"Do you ever stop moving?"

Kara sighed, turning her head to rest her cheek on the steering wheel. "I'm bored."

Wheeljack responded with a groan of irritation. "It hasn't even been one of your planetary rotations. How can you be bored already?"

Glaring at the voice in the radio, she snapped, "It's been hours. I don't know what you consider a long amount of time on your planet, but here on Earth, that's a prokleta long amount of— HEY."

Out of nowhere, Wheeljack spun the steering wheel, causing Kara to release her grip and have her shoulder slammed into the frame of his door as he swung off the road, and he then proceeded to slam on his brakes, causing her to jerk forward to slam into the steering wheel. "Okay, where in the pitanje did you learn a Cybertronian curse… word…" The quick anger and accusation in his voice melted away to worry and concern. "Hey, hey babe. Are you okay?"

She did not respond, just merely a groan as she lay across the steering wheel, a bluish-black mark forming on her forehead. Wheeljack had not the faintest idea of what was wrong with his newest companion, and he began to worry about her lack of response. He goes even as far to prepare to shift on the side of this open road to check on her, but another groan escapes her as her head slowly turns, and her arms slowly shift to grasp the steering wheel, her easing up into a proper sitting position before gently leaning back in the seat.

"Do I really need to explain to you that squishy humans are a bit more breakable than metal space robots?"

He vented out a sound of relief. "Yeah, yeah, I will make sure to remember that. You okay, babe?"

She slowly lifted her right arm to poke her left shoulder, only to hiss lightly in pain. Slipping her hoodie off of that shoulder, she made a sound of displeasure at the sight of the bruised skin of her shoulder. "I think I will be fine…"

"Why is your skin turning colors?"

"Hmm?" she hummed as she prodded at the area. "Oh, it's a bruise. The color is the blood from busted blood vessels—"

"YOUR LEAKING—"

"Calm down!" she scolded him. "Its not anything major. They'll be healed in like a week or so. Just be glad I didn't get a concussion. We would have an issue then…"

Wheeljack let out a pained hiss. "Yeah, I know what that is at least…" Then, he suddenly remembered why he stopped in the first place. "Where did you learn Cybertronian?"

Her gaze shifts to the rearview mirror as she became seemingly engrossed in examining the slight bruise along her hairline, arranging strands of hair loosely about it. "I don't know what you're talking about—"

A projection of Wheeljack's eyes appeared in the mirror, startling Kara. "I know what I heard, and what I heard was you cussing in Cybertronian. So. Care to explain?"

She shifted in her seat, her muddy brown eyes darting between the mirror and her hands clasped within her lap. Eventually, she blurted out, "You aren't the first Cybertronian I've met!"

With a humph, he retorted, "Well, I figured that. But who exactly have you met?"

She remained silent, her eyes cutting to the left to look out of the driver window. "It was a long time ago." A slight laugh escaped her, one that was hollow and maybe even a bit broken. "I was a whole different person then…" Her eyes dropped to her lap. "Can you please just drive?"

He did so without another word.


Legs stretching forward, lifting up into their familiar position upon Jackie's dashboard, she allowed herself to slide down in the Ferrari's passenger seat, an awkward attempt to pop the vertebrae in her back, each slowly yielding and popping one into the other, making a sound like a strange, macabre xylophone. Kara remained oddly at ease, even considering the situation that occurred only the night before, but when Wheeljack had shifted into his vehicle mode, leaving her in the passenger seat and his holoform at the wheel to drive, she did not protest his silent command for her to sleep.

His holoform, though taller than her, was not too tall for a human. A few inches under six feet, the most intimidating of his features would have to be his broad, muscular frame, most of the muscle sitting in his upper chest and shoulders. A squared off jaw on his face, and black, messy hair that often reminded her of the X-Men's Wolverine style. The intimidating look was completed by the two small scars trailing off his lower lip, a feature Kara had poked and prodded for him to include in his hologram like in his bipedal form.

But, besides the muscular differences, his bulk to her lean, the two easily passed as brother and sister ever since Kara allowed the fake blonde of her hair to grow out, revealing her ebony roots, and the brother/sister bond had become a relationship type the two fell in well together, a sort of rhythm that complemented one another, and eventually down the line, "Claire" had gotten her "brother" an ID from Renegade: Now, to those who wondered, he went by Jackson Wilson Runner, nicknamed Jackie, and the older brother of Claire Jaclyn Runner.

Now, she found herself on a distant, near abandoned road, staring with squinting eyes at the sunset before her and surrounded by nothing but miles upon miles of corn. "Well," she managed to work out, a tail end of a yawn tacked onto her words, blending in with her next sentence as she stretched her arms upwards. "You sure seem to have made quite a bit of distance."

"Seeing as how you were nearly caught," he stated, a bit of anger and frustration leaking into his words, "I felt the need to get you as far away from that place as possible."

Her eyes rolled as she slipped the hood to her zip up hoodie over her eyes. "They weren't the bad guys—"

"If they could find us, so could Cemetery Wind."

"I'm sure that top N.E.S.T. agents could easily cover their tracks—"

"They probably weren't even considering covering their tracks if they had the option of a ground bridge—"

"You're overanalyzing this—"

"Forgive me for actually caring that you could have died last night!" His frame shook in anger, as rage and frustration and worry all swirled together in his words. "What…what were you thinking jumping out of that building like that? You were supposed to take that little bridge we made on the roof over to the next building and wait for me to scale it and retrieve you!"

"They were too close. I didn't have time!" she snapped back. "And you caught me: its not that big of a deal—"

"What if I missed, huh?! What if I didn't catch you!" That's when she laughed. A full, elated laugh, shaking her head slightly as she did so. "This is not a joke, Kara!"

Laughter dying off, though, a joyous smile still appearing on her mouth, she simply said, "Of course it's a joke. You are the last being I would ever expect not to catch me."

The jaw of his hologram clenched, a similar tell that he gave in his bipedal form whenever he begins to begrudgingly give into her reasoning or demands. Though, he never dropped the topic easily. "We still need to talk about what happened."

She groaned, twisting over in her seat to sit backwards on her knees, face buried in the back of the seat. "They tracked the posting signal, simple as that."

"It was too close—"

"Look," she snapped, head twisting to look at him, "Cemetery Wind is not going to break Renegade's code, and they are not going to find us so long as we keep moving." A small smile of encouragement. "Everything is going to be okay."

He sighed, relenting, for now. His holoform gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, then settled on drumming the fingers against it, an unnecessary motion since he could not actually feel his steering wheel, but a habit he saw in Kara while she fake-drove, and he, in turn, had picked it up from her.

Though he would never tell her, for in human eyes, it sounded vastly off-putting, but Wheeljack had discovered within the first few months of traveling with his human companion that he quite enjoyed observing her. She often displayed interesting quirks in her behavior, some of which he later found out to be completely normal for humans, but others were completely unique to the strange little creature he had grown overly fond and protective of.

For starters, she had a particular music taste for an instrument called a violin. Any music without one playing even a minor part in the background, she immediately disregarded, and more often than not, the types of music he preferred irked her to no end. Apparently, she was not too fond of what humans called "heavy metal," though he found it pleasant, reminding him of similar music he and the Wreckers enjoyed. The numerous 'radio wars' as the pair had deemed them used to end with him winning (since he is, in fact, the radio), but the day she decided to show him how a human could turn blue if they withheld breathing in their atmosphere had panicked Wheeljack so much that they determined that they needed a schedule of who could listen to music at what time.

Another quirk was her constant "twitchiness." Wheeljack had observed early on that Kara had not been programmed for long distance drives and confined spaces: her childhood had trained in her need to move, thus, less than an hour into their drives, she would begin the endless shifting in her seat, the unintentional sounds of displeasure, and, worst of all…. The foot tapping.

He nearly left her on the side of the road a week into their travels for that.

Needless to say, she has gotten better about the habit, but he has realized that for every two hours of driving, at least ten minutes of stretching or practice routine work should be allotted to the former dancer.

Dancer.

A word that did not exist in his language, for Cybertronians had nothing of equivalence. Sure, they had music, but no dancing, no need for such a thing. But, as he recalled the numerous times of watching her simply do a few warm up routines, he wished it had existed. Her movements were strange, like someone practicing a fight, but with a certain flair and more grace than what he was used to from the average soldier. The closest he could come to a comparison would be the masterful Gladiator fights of the upper level combatants, were the brute force and blood thirst of the lower fights is replaced with skillful movements and cunning. The realm where evading and moving was key, for once you were caught…

…you were finished.

On occasion, his optics would imagine a familiar gladiator as she danced, comparing her movements to his, her grace and beauty of her dance versus his evading and attack of his fight. Each time, he would think of how they would compliment each other, if they were of proper scale, and each time he would mentally berate himself for ever making the comparison.

She had nothing in common with that monster.

But, that monster had not always been a monster. He had once been an icon, a visionary, one fighting through diplomacy of all things to try and bring equality on Cybertron. Now, she fights here, on Earth, to bring equality for Cybertronians, using the name she made for herself as an unknown vigilante, the Hacker, to help spread to the humans what the government had done to the beings they once called allies. All she would need, just as the gladiator had needed to become the monster he is today, was the right push…

By this point, he would throw away all of these thoughts, and encourage her to leave and head back out on the road. He knew she had begun to notice the pattern, the increases in his daydreaming and sudden endings of her dances, but she never questioned him. Like a true little sister, she idolized him, though she would never admit it, and with this idolization came her undying trust that everything he did must have a purpose, one that is not to be questioned.

His mind fell back into the present with a sharp kick to his dash. "Hey!" he snapped, his holoform sending an irritated glance her way.

"Calm down, Tin Man," she haughtily replied. "You were drifting into the other lane." Her gaze traveled from him to look at the seemingly endless road before us. Her shoulders rolled back, and her back stiffened. "Not that there is anything out here to hit…"

Wheeljack internally sighed. She recognized the area. It was familiar to where her house once stood… actually, they were extremely close to where she once lived. Just over an hour out. But, he had no intentions of heading back there.

That's around Kara eyes locked onto one of Wheeljack's side mirrors. Shock on her face, she screeched, "Jebote!" Her slip of language to his native tongue and sharp tone caused Wheeljack to slam on his brakes. "Ono što se dogodiko u jamki?!"

His holoform vented out a sigh, wondering how long it would take before she noticed the damage. Trying to avoid the topic, he merely replied, "Your language is slipping, babe."

Arms crossing and brows scrunching in displeasure, she snapped, "I will let my language slip into whatever pitanje language I want!" Shoving open the door and striding over to crouch by his back bumper, she ran her hand along the deep gouges in the Ferrari's paint, flecks of unfamiliar silver paint within the wound. "Explain." He grumbled, not responding, till her head popped up, and she demanded, "Sada!"

His holoform dissolved in his seat to reappear next to her kneeling form. "Fine, sheesh. I had a run in with the cars that came with those two N.E.S.T. idiots. Thinking back now, it was probably Prowl and Jazz. Jazz rammed me, and I flipped him." He snickered. "Wish I had access to their comms during that chase. Jazz was probably cussing up a storm. Prowl certainly would not have approved."

She moved to stand, brushing her hands off on the back of her shorts. Her voice held an irritated tone, but she seemed slightly amused by the mention of some of Wheeljack's fellow Autobots. "He doesn't swear?"

"Only when he is pissed."

"I take it you have seen that quite often?"

"Pitanje, I caused most of it."

She smiled, but soon, the smile fell as she sighed, her head dipping low to examine the extent of the damage. The pain, though minimal compared to old war wounds Wheeljack had endured, left him feeling a minor and irritating pulsing in his rear axle due to his outside frame being crushed up against his tire. With a groan, Kara announced, "We're gonna have to have this fixed."

His holoform frowned, standing up straight from his leaning position. "I'm fine, it's only minor."

"Jackie, your taillight is busted…" she announced with her arm gesturing to the damage. "Actually, your taillight is practically gone. You're lucky you weren't pulled over."

"I could have handled it—"

"We can't risk getting caught. Being pulled over would be the number one way for Cemetery Wind to catch us." Moving to return to her seat, she continued. "They are going to find a connection to your paint soon enough. We can't risk you popping up on a police record."

His holoform fizzled out to reappear in the driver's seat. "Well, its not like I can exactly drive into any repair shop. One glance under my hood, and the charade is up!" Sighing, he tries to be as reassuring as he could. "We can lay low for a bit, try and avoid cops till my healing protocols can fix me up."

She remained quiet for a moment, and Wheeljack thought she had finally relented. That is until he began to shift into drive again, and she announced, "Let me drive."

"What—" But before he could finish, she had already climbed from her seat to sit where his holoform sat, his massive size over shadowing her as she passed through the intangible form. He shut the hologram off, rotating his speaking to the radio once more while adjusting the driver's seat for her. "Where do you plan on going?"

She is silent for a moment, taking the wheel and beginning to drive them, but eventually, she said, "I think I have a friend who can help us."


Just as a little side note, for the Cybertronian, I used Google translate, and I eventually settled on English to Bosnian, though I took some liberties and changed a few letters to make the language a bit… stronger? I don't know, just basically more k's and harder sounds to it. Let me know what you think!

Translations:

Prokleta : Damn

Pitanje : Frag

Jebote : Shit

Ono što se dogodiko u jamki? : What in the pit happened?