Chapter Seven: Non-Descript
Bumblebee was a Ford Taurus.
Samantha Jane Witwicky never thought she would see the day.
After Megatron and the Fallen had so ingeniously enlisted the witless human populace into finding her, a nineteen-year-old college student from Tranquility, Nevada, it stood to reason that the local governments not tampered with by N.E.S.T. would have pulled her license number and car registration. Bumblebee's alt, his oh-so-familiar Chevrolet Camaro with signature racing stripes, was the proverbial neon sign signaling "here's the girl everyone's looking for". She'd seen a total of three Camaro's pulled over at what seemed to be every emergency check-point thrown up across the state since that damnable communications relay. They hadn't even been yellow and black.
She'd taken to crawling through the back seat to hide in the trunk whenever they came to a check-point.
Now that they were in the city, the heavy throng of traffic as chaotic and dangerous as it had been weeks before the transmission, the check-points littering the countryside were a thing of the past. NYPD couldn't manage to pull everyone over and check for her face without risking a NYC denizen, most likely several, starting a riot for their hold-up. They didn't even try.
Sam stared down at the only familiar thing left of her Guardian. The Autobot insignia still sat proudly on his steering wheel, which her hands only hung loosely from since it was he driving and not her. Mike sat in the passenger seat with Leo in the back. Whenever she'd taken to crawling into the truck via the backseat Bumblebee would activate his holoform to give the pretense of a human driving.
The Ford Taurus was non-descript. Despite Skids and Mudflap, Chevy's Beat and Trax respectively, having alt-modes that were concept designs gifted to N.E.S.T. for use by General Motors, they hadn't had any trouble at the check-points. Three boys in a silver Taurus and a boy in each of the mini-Chevrolets didn't bring much to question, especially with such perfectly fraudulent identifications at their disposal. The human species was looking for a young college girl most likely driving around in a sporty Camaro.
"You okay?" Wheelie asked her in a softer voice than he was prone to speaking in. He was stationed on her lap, his wheeled-peds not hurting her legs at all. His servos lightly gripped her top. She wore the same cheap t-shirt she had donned days before back in her dorm room, the fabric now greasy feeling against her skin since she hadn't changed or had a shower in several days. Four. Four days was a long time for a human to subside on only a couple of bites of Little Debbies and chugs of water.
If she didn't have the nanites running through her bloodstream and 'correcting' parts of her body that were subpar, she had a feeling that she would have passed out. Possibly even died. She was running on such little energy as it was. With almost no nutritional intake her body was shutting down.
She couldn't eat, though. It hurt to even think about eating. She was exhausted enough to know that she didn't have the energy or the willpower to manage more than the meager amounts she had forced herself to snack on. She'd make herself sicker.
I just have to save Optimus, she thought to herself. I just have to wake Optimus back up and then he can take care of everything. He'd know what needs to be done more than I do. He could help. Unlike me.
"I'm fine, Wheelie." It was a lie. She knew it and he knew it. He could feel it through the bond they now shared, but he did not question her further.
Sam listened with half an ear to Leo talking, or rather ranting, about RoboWarrior. The other techie was apparently notorious for ripping off any new bits of media that made its way to the Real-Deal and posting it before they even got the chance to. A real troller.
"I'm guessing we're circling this deli for a reason." Mike gestured with a wave of his hand toward the building they had been orbiting around. Leo looked put-off to have been interrupted, but didn't speak further on it.
She nodded her head for the Autobots. She'd noticed the repeating signs and buildings, too. She eyeballed the deli as Skids and Mudflap found parking spots, Bumblebee having to take a longer route around due to his slightly bigger size. The compact alts had no problem on these busy streets. It was by pure luck alone that 'Bee managed to slide in behind where a delivery van had just pulled out, pissing off a hipster – goatee and all – driving a Gremlin that had seen better days.
"And I thought Ironhide's curses were creative," Michael laughed as he shrugged off the Adidas hoodie he'd been wearing since as long as she'd been wearing her clothes. His face was sheepish as he handed it to her. "Here. Wear this and pull the hood up. I know it can't smell the best right now, but you need to keep your face hidden."
"Thanks Mike." She glanced over her shoulder at Leo. "You wanna scope it out alone? Let us know if it's him?"
"Ponce deLeon Spitz at your service, ma'am." He saluted her, a poor imitation compared to the real gesture practiced by the hundreds of military personnel she had come into contact with over the years. Maybe the cheesy quips were his way of coping with what was happening?
Leo hurried out of the back and through the throng of people. Sam watched him go silently and pulled the hood up over her head. The hoodie was at least two times too large for her frame, but it did the job of concealing her. It was also warm. She was feeling cold down to the bone. She wouldn't let Bumblebee crank up the thermostat because she knew without a doubt that the cold wasn't physical. Not really.
The seatbelt tightened around her in a hug as she moved to climb out of the relative safety of Bumblebee's interior. Wheelie dropped down and folded into his alt form – a blue RC Pickup. Her fingers curled around the cage and smoke-stacks to pick him up and carry him along with her. Mike joined her on the sidewalk, his hands buried in his jean pockets. The t-shirt he wore underneath his hoodie was still white.
That would change.
"Jesus Christ," he mumbled as a third pedestrian elbowed into him. Sam hung back close to the brick façade of the building so that she wouldn't be so easily jolted by the crowd. Mike glared at the people hurrying around him, unfazed by his ire. "What the Hell is wrong with everyone? I know the city is supposed to be crazy, but this is a little much. I've seen pictures at Christmas with less hustle-and-bustle."
"It's because everyone is running scared." Out of the corner of her eye she saw a seedy looking man fingering a gun he had tucked into the waistband of his pants as he passed. He was walking towards the next intersection. Was he going to stand a place up? Kill someone? Or was he just trying to protect himself in the midst of the chaos left in the wake of Megatron's little transmission?
She shook her head. "Without N.E.S.T and the people trained to help buffer situations like this everyone is scared to death. The human race is still young. We're closed-minded. We're not ready to know that we're not the only sentient race out in the universe, let alone an inferior one on our own planet."
Theodore Galloway had done the single most idiotic thing he could have done as the N.E.S.T. Liaison and Director by disbanding it. Surely the President was no smarter because there was no way the weasel could have shut it down without clearance from the United States higher authority.
A sigh escaped her as she set her chin to her chest.
"This is all so messed up. This is worse than Mission City, I think. At least in Mission City we knew what the 'Cons wanted. Megatron wants me, that's as much as I know. What's new with that, though? The Allspark is always going to be something that the Cybertronians want. I just need to know what for."
Her head hurt as she looked at one of the electronic billboards displaying, once again, the transmission broadcasted all over the world. The Fallen was there. Right there, but not. He frightened her even worse than Megatron ever had. For all of his hatred and darkness, the Fallen was like a black hole of despair and sinister mayhem. Megatron was the gun while the Fallen was the Desperado wielding it.
She snickered to herself at that thought. Megatron's pride wouldn't stand for her thinking, accurately or not, that he was being used.
As the door to the deli opened, she and Mike froze. The voice that came through the portal was just as pompous and self-serving as ever. She'd know the slight accent anywhere. Her wide eyes met Mike's a moment before they both marched headlong into the deli.
Leo stood in front of the register counter, his lips moving as he argued with the man standing behind it. She didn't hear the words her roommate spoke she was so shocked by the sudden reappearance of one Seymour Simmons.
"Some big 'ole cosmic joke right here." The words were spoken flatly and not at all loudly, but just like she could recognize his voice out of hundreds, so could he hear hers. Simmons' head pivoted to fast she thought she might have heard the tendons whine for the abuse.
"Oh, first the second-grade blogger rollin' up in my house and now you. No. Way." He slammed his butcher's knife forcefully down, wedging it into the wooden block countertop. He scowled at her, but addressed the store patrons. "Market's closed. Get'cher shit and get out!"
"I've been waiting over half an hour for my lox," an elderly woman began to complain only for Simmons to wave her off. He stormed around the counter, soiled butcher's apron and all, and began to physically shove people out of the store.
"Looks like you'll be waiting another day. Now get out!"
"Seymour!" Simmons back stiffened in the process of shooing his customers at the shrill voice of a short, rotund woman that waddled out from one of the back rooms. Sam watched avidly as the tall man cowered in front of the older woman. She wielded a wooden spoon and shook it violently at him. "You are not closing down my store again for more of your alien mumbo-jumbo!"
"Mother," Simmons gritted out between tightly clenched teeth as he continued to push protesting people out. "It is not mumbo-jumbo. Would you kindly stick your Jewish nose out of my personal business?!"
Simmons shrunk even more into himself as his mother continued to harshly berate him in a language she couldn't understand. Yiddish? His mother went so far as to hit him a couple time across the back with her spoon before storming away, more gibberish spewing from her lips than Sam knew to make sense of.
"Live with your mother, hmm?" Leo was snickering. "Isn't that just precious."
"My mother lives with me. Get it straight." Simmons slammed the door shut, the bell jingling merrily over the entryway as he did so. He slid the several locks closed with solid clicks before facing them once more. He smirked as he looked at her. "Didn't do the job right the first time with NBE-1, did you? He pulled a Houdini and poof; he's out of the cesspool again."
She sneered at him. "He has a name and it's Megatron. Don't act so smug, Seymour. Sector Seven couldn't handle him back at the Hoover Dam. Without the Autobots you all would have been nothing but a smear on the wall."
"Wait wait wait!" Leo held his hands up dramatically. His eyes ping-ponged between them comically. "You two know each other?"
"Oh yeah." Simmons set his feet apart and glared with hands crossed over his chest. "This little girl gave my whole operation the kibosh. No more retirement plan. No more benefits. No more security clearance. All gone thanks to her and her little NBE friends."
"NBE?" Leo puzzled, his brows drawn down together.
"Non-Biological Extraterrestrials." Simmons informed him blandly. "Try to keep up with the acronyms, kid."
Deja-vu.
"Sector Seven wasn't doing anything except syphoning off of the Cube and trying to reverse engineer Megatron. What you all did was make more of a mess for the rest of the world to clean up."
"I'll have you know that there wouldn't even be cellphones if it wasn't for all of the research Sector Seven did with NBE-1. All of that reverse engineering has jolted our technological evolution through the roof."
"I'm not getting into this," she snapped to herself and to the others. She set Wheelie down on the ground and he amicably transformed. Simmons backpedaled quickly, his eyes like saucers as he looked down at the tiny Decepticon.
"You keep 'em as pets now?"
"I ain't no pet, fleshbag!" Wheelie cried out indignantly, a clawed finger pointed at the man much as Simmons' mother's spoon had been trained earlier. "I'm a Data-Retrieval 'Con, highest of my class. Show respect for your superiors."
"Be polite, Wheelie." Sam scolded the blue 'Con gently. He glanced up at her with disbelief coloring his blood-red optics. She released a gusty breath. "I don't want to burn bridges. Do your best, please, to keep civil. As hard as that is." Her nose sniffed derisively in the ex-agent's direction.
"Oh-ho! Is that it? You need my help?" The tall man chortled. "My, how the mighty have fallen. You all come running to me for information. One of you a fugitive, I might add. You're in some trouble the way I see it. Funny how the kids have to come running to the adults when trouble's afoot."
"I'd rather take my chances on the streets," Mike mumbled under his breath, turning his back to the man so that Simmons wouldn't see him clenching his jaw hard enough to grind a layer off of his teeth.
"Polite, Mike," she reminded her friend. Her attention turned back to the ex-agent and his arrogant face. "Please, Simmons. Leo said he scoped out some of your site. Said he saw some of this." She held out her forearm which she had drawn on with a pen. The Prime symbols seemed to suck the wind right out of the elder man's sails.
"Follow me."
Simmons stomped past them, his shoe narrowly connecting with Wheelie as the 'Con attempted to reverse out of the human's way. She felt his disgruntlement along with a twinge of real dislike. He looked at her imploringly.
"You can't kill him." Sam turned his desire down, her own tone colored with pity.
They followed after Simmons slowly. For all of his bluster Leo hung to the back of the pack. He was timid now that he knew that he was still the proverbial odd man out.
The meat locker was colder than she was. Barely.
"I've been researching NBEs since I was a kid, before I even knew what an NBE was. S-Seven scouted me out. The clearance being an agent gave me was a tremendous help. You can't even begin to imagine how much our government had kept from us." No, he had no idea. "When you had it disbanded I still looked. Harvested the data. There's traces of NBE activity going way back."
He ex-agent kicked aside several boxes of boxed whitefish and salmon. Underneath sat a hatch that was surprisingly clean in the less-than-pristine looking room. The handle was well used. He shared a stern look with every person in the room.
"This is private, strictly need-to-know stuff. No touchy. No telly. And no one, under any circumstances, tells my mother."
It was with that semi-anticlimactic statement that Simmons pulled the hatch open. There was a fair amount of weight there and she saw his muscles working. It fell back to the ground with a thunderous clang once he had it opened all the way, revealing an inclined ladder shooting down. Lights flickered on beneath.
"Come on. I assume we don't have all day." The ex-agent began his descent with gusto.
"Wheelie can kill him." Mike snorted, grimacing as Leo started down after Simmons. "We won't tattle on him."
"If only it were that easy."
Samantha fell back into one of the lone wingback chairs in the room as gently as she could.
Her gaze flitted around the room. The walls were littered with images. Symbols like the ones she had drawn onto her arm and onto so many other surfaces before that sat pictured in these images. Expeditions through South America and Egypt revealed characters etched into the stone of the Cybertronian language. Some of it was newer, the commonly known Cybertronian, but most was not. Most of it was old. The language of the Primes.
There were hundreds of books. Old tomes from a time gone by. Most were personal journals. Leafing through the one on the desk before her she could see a study written by someone named Daniel McFanning. The name meant nothing to her, but the characters were by now visibly familiar. He was explaining his theory on them. Their lack of relation to any other known language in the known world.
"The NBEs have been here longer than your pal Megatron. Some of these glyphs go back thousands of years. Back to when we were playing Hide and Go Seek with the mammoths and sabretooths; when our idea of a good time was rubbing two sticks together and making fire." Simmons grabbed a file and tossed it down in front of her. Pictures scattered across the wooden surface. "Your friends have been in hiding for a long, long time."
She fingered the pictures carefully, noting the original model-T next to Ford himself. There were old carriages. The first printing press. Knowing now how well Alice had been able to blend in she wondered if the horses that they used to ride before cars may have been Cybertronians in disguise, subspacing some of their extra bulk to better hide amongst the human population. She doubted Simmons had even thought of that. She wouldn't have. Holoforms were one thing, but to so completely disguising one's self to look like an organic? It was beyond what she had thought she'd known.
Why didn't they tell me they could do that? She was pensive. Why didn't I think to ask? I guess it's true what they say about assuming. 'Makes an ass of you-and-me'.
Wheelie petted her leg when she grew more tense. The 'Bots outside sent calming waves through their bonds with her. They reassured her that everything was going to be okay despite not knowing if everything really would be okay.
Farther away, she distantly felt all of the others. As tired as she was, as close to collapse as she had come, she could feel them all. Without the comm, which had fallen out of her ear days before during the Alice-Out-of-Nightmareland experience, she couldn't communicate with them directly. All except Optimus, who was beyond awareness or caring in his present state, tried their best to mellow out the maelstrom that was her emotions.
"'Da Hell is this thing?" Leo went to reach for the hunk of metal in the vague shape of a mechanical, demonic head that was mounted on a pedestal in one corner of the room before Simmons intercepted him.
"What'd I just say about 'no touchy'?" Simmons released Leo's wrist with scorn. "It's still leaking radioactive waves. Unless you're thinking about growing an extra appendage or perhaps losing one, I'd keep your filthy little hands off of that one, kid."
"That was Frenzy." She sounded tired to her own ears. "Barricade's partner in crime. Funny to call him that since Barricade took on the alt of a police cruiser."
"Oh, I remember him all right." Mike snorted a laugh. His big hands came to rest on the back of her chair, his lips twisted up in a crooked grin. "'To Punish and Enslave' was the slogan on his paneling. He was kind of a harsh introduction to the Cybertronian War."
"Huh?" Leo appeared to be lost again.
"Nevermind, Leo." Sam tapped a finger, using the pad of it instead of the tip due to the savagely torn cuticles, and glanced beseechingly down up at Simmons. "Do you know where any of these original vehicles are? Do you have any idea if any of them have been picked up where the glyphs were found and are still in one piece today?"
"Why would that be important?"
"Because," she began slowly as though she were talking to a dimwitted Neanderthal, "one of them could be a Seeker. An older Cybertronian that's been lying in dormant all these years that can tell us what these symbols mean. Megatron and that other one with the huge headdress? They're after something here on Earth and those symbols showed them what they wanted to know. They want me, too, but that information is key."
"You mean to tell me that walking Gameboy can't read?" Simmons gestured abruptly and disrespectfully at Wheelie. "What about your autopilot-chauffeur outside? I'm sure you brought that blasted pet car with you."
"They have names, you asshole!" Samantha stood to her feet in a flash, her eyes flashing lavender with anger. The men in the room backed away from her and the charge of electricity that seemed to suddenly radiate off of her. Her hands fisted and pounded once against the tabletop. "Use. Their. Names!"
Her voice echoed in the room. It was laced with thunder and tremendous power. It wasn't entirely her voice. Simmons and Leo both cowered, but Mike stepped slowly forward with his hands raised, palms outwards. He was placating her. Showing submission. He was trying to calm her down.
Logically she knew that and after several minutes of deep breathing, in through her nose and slowly out of her mouth, she managed to get herself back under control.
The energy, the spike of Allspark power she hadn't consciously wielded, fled her like the first wave of a great swell. In its wake came an even greater wave comprised entirely of fatigue and great pain. Her legs gave out and she fell back into the chair, the front legs rocking entirely off of the ground before setting back down again. Her eyes rolled several times, but she maintained awareness.
Barely.
"Sam. Sam, oh God. Speak to us. Are you okay?" That was Mike.
"What the Hell was that?" Leo.
"I'll be damned. So that's where all of that energy went after the Cube was destroyed." Simmons.
"Come on Sammy. Wake up." Wheelie. In the end it was Wheelie that she focused on. He had climbed up onto her lap and was methodically patting a rhythm over her chest. Every three-quarters of a second he would pat her chest. One beat. Two beat. Three beat. He was thumping out the pattern in which her heart should be beating.
She made herself focus on that rhythm. She made herself steady her ragged breathing. She blocked out the worry funneling to her from the mechs and femme she bonded with in favor of just getting back under control.
Deep breath in. "I'm okay." Slow exhale out. "I'm okay."
"We keep your secret, Simmons, and you keep hers." Mike's words were venom-laced. There was steel there as well. He wasn't going to back down off of this one.
"Sure thing, kid." The air shifted in front of her. She smelled cheap cologne. "Come on, princess. I've got an untampered with bottle of water here with your name on it. Have a drink."
She shook as she fumbled for the proffered bottle. Someone had opened the cap. She managed to spill at least a quarter of its contents onto herself before Wheelie stretched himself out and steadied the bottle with his servos as she drank small sips.
"T-thank you." She stuttered, tears dotting along her lashes.
"You're welcome." The little 'Con's optics were bright with caring. His devotion was untouched by any sort of malicious intent. He was helping her simply because that was what he wanted to do.
A few tears fell.
"I'm okay." She may have spoken in a whisper, but everyone heard her and backed away from where they had been crowding her. Wanting to get back on track, as well as block out the renewed pain in her skull from using the Allspark's power, she gestured to the pictures. "Please, Simmons. Do you know if any of these vehicles are stashed anywhere?"
"Give me a minute."
The tall man hurried through sifting files. He brought down several books, skimmed them, and then tossed most aside. He stopped at an old roll-down map they used to use in school before every child in America was presented with tablets for all schoolwork. He started checking off spots at seemingly random on the map, looking back and forth between his accumulated data. Several points he ended up scribbling out, mumbling as much Yiddish-gibberish as his mother had upstairs.
"There. I don't know if all of them or any of them are actually NBEs, but our meters rang out in Sector Seven before the various collectors and museums 'acquired' the artifacts before we could." He wore a self-depreciating smile. "Turns out there are things money and clearance can't buy you – like a decommissioned tanker meant for educational purposes in a Maritime Museum in Arkansas."
"Looks like the closest one is in Washington D.C." Mike assessed the map, shaking his head at the scant amount of options they had.
"Not another road trip," Leo grumbled loudly.
Samantha smiled a little in her chair, her fingers toying with the miniscule ridges on Wheelie's 'spinal' column. The 'Con was purring. His wheels even thumped against her thighs in contentment.
"You wanted in, Leo. Well now you're in. You just didn't bother to read the fine print." She beamed at him. "All expenses-paid road trips. Isn't it fun?"
Leo groaned.
Notes: Hello everyone. Been a while since I've left any notes. Life has not been kind in the last few years, but I may be making a comeback now. *crosses finger for self* Anyway, I just wanted to know if y'all were liking this version of the story? This story has received the lowest number of comments of any of my Transformers Stories and I just wanted to know if everyone was enjoying it?