They met up with Sideswipe and Arcee in Newark; thankfully they hadn't torn each other limb from limb. Optimus decided that everyone needed to rest before they moved on so they found an old parking lot outside of town. Sortie didn't feel comfortable sleeping in Optimus, so she climbed in Sideswipe's back seat. None of the bots said anything as they began to power down which just added to Sortie's feeling of loneliness. She missed Allie and wished she could be back at Yale studying. It wasn't that she didn't like the Autobots or anything, she just felt very out of place with them.
It took her a good hour to get settled down and another hour to fall asleep.
Suddenly a loud alarm filled her ears. She shot up, fumbling to start up her cannon.
Are the Decepticons attacking?
"Rise and shine, rookies. You've got some early morning training to do." Ratchet said in a voice that was almost mocking.
"Oh no." Bumblebee groaned, still in car form.
"Get up Bee. There is no avoiding it." Arcee said.
"Alright, alright." He said, slowly transforming.
"You too, Sortie." Sideswipe said.
"What?" She asked, shocked.
"We cant just let you fight the cons without any training. You can train with Bumblebee." She replied.
"Oh boy." She said, climbing out of Sideswipe.
"Oh boy is right." Bumblebee said, "Early morning training sucks."
The sun was just starting to come over the horizon and the air was still cold. Sortie bounced on her toes, trying to stay warm.
"Bumblebee, you drive ten miles out that way with Arcee." Optimus said. "Sortie, Sideswipe is going to help you with your wheels."
"Wait, what are you and Ratchet going to be doing?" Bumblebee asked.
"We are going to try and pinpoint the Decepticons on the scanners." Optimus replied.
"Now stop stalling and go!" Ratchet pointed at the road.
Arcee sped out of the lot, prompting Bumblebee to start driving.
"Get your wheels out, we are going to race." Sideswipe said.
Sortie just stared at him. Race a Lamborghini? Was that his idea of a joke?
"You're serious?" She asked.
"Yes."
"You are insane."
"Just get your wheels out. I won't go that fast."
Sortie focused on her feet, trying to get the wheels out. Her feet started to transform into arches and wheels popped out. Then a pair of rockets shot out of her ankles and propelled her forward. She fought to stay standing but the rockets clearly wanted to keep going. She heard Sideswipe's tires screech behind her and he quickly passed her. He maneuvered in front of her and started to slow down.
"Grab my bumper." He said.
She shot forward and planted her hands on Sideswipe's trunk. She focused as hard as she could on the rockets and eventually they retracted. Sideswipe continued to drive, dragging Sortie along with him. He gradually started to speed up until they were going about seventy five miles an hour.
"Can we slow down?" She shouted over the comm. Link.
"No, you need practice moving fast." He replied.
"Do we have to start this fast?" She asked.
"Are you kidding me, this isn't fast. Hopefully I can get you up to 150 miles per hour in a few weeks."
"Are you kidding me? 150 miles an hour? That's insanity!" She cried.
"Not for someone your size. I've seen bots that are as small as you clear 300 after a lot of training."
"You are crazy!" She shouted as loud as she could into the comm. Link.
Sideswipe shot forward and started speeding down the road at around 140 miles an hour.
"Cut it out!" Sortie yelled.
"Then let go." He replied.
Sortie let go of his spoiler and continued to glide down the road.
"I knew you wouldn't be able to handle it." He sighed.
She knew that he was baiting her, but there was no way that she would look weak. She didn't want to try the rockets again, so she started pushing herself forward like she was roller-skating. She had never been particularly athletic so she was worried that she would tire out too quickly to get moving fast. But her new mechanical parts helped her to maintain a decent speed.
"There we go. I knew the girl who picked fights with guys wouldn't give up that easily." Sideswipe said.
It was terrifying to be moving so fast without anything around her. She thought that since she rode a motorcycle, the wind whipping against her skin wouldn't bother her, but it did. She felt like she was going to trip and tear up the other side of her face. She looked through Sideswipe's window and saw the odometer. It read 25 miles an hour.
Only 275 more to go
Eventually she started to get tired. She was slowing down. Once Sideswipe passed her she grabbed his spoiler.
"Nice job that was about seven miles." He said.
"Seven?" She wheezed. "I've never even run that far."
"Well now you've got wheels. And running wont help you escape decepticons anyway." He said.
"Are we going back?" She asked.
"Yeah, Arcee still has to train you with your cannons."
"Ugh." Sortie groaned.
"Oh you'll be fine."
Sideswipe dragged her all the way back to the parking lot while she tried to catch her breath.
Why didn't I ever do any sports? Oh yeah, those two PhDs are kind of time consuming.
Now she was thinking about it again. She was so close to graduating. She rested her head on his spoiler; why couldn't this happen after she graduated? Because life wasn't fair.
Suck it up, Sortie. You'll be fine.
She stood up straight. Then, Sideswipe suddenly veered off the road and into the woods. She went flying into the air when he drove over a bump.
"What the hell was that?" She demanded, standing up.
"Shhh! I picked up a Decepticon on my long range scanner. It's going to land right in the middle of the road." He said.
Sortie ducked behind a tree.
"What is it doing here? Did Megatron call it?" She asked.
"I don't know, but we have to kill it." He stated.
"Oh joy." She muttered.
"What? It'll be good practice for you. Besides, it's not that big." He replied.
They watched as a flaming heap of metal crashed onto the road and skidded into the woods on the other side. The Decepticon slowly stood up and started to make the weird warbles and clicks that she had heard other cybertronians make. It must have been their native language. She focused as hard as she could until she started to pick up a few words.
"Come…landed…assist…" Was all she could hear it say.
"Slag it, its Dead End. He's trying to contact the other cons. We need to take him out now." Sideswipe said.
"How exactly are we going to do that?" She asked.
"You go that way," he pointed in the opposite direction of Dead End. "Then when you are about 60 yards away, jump out and shoot him. Then I'll jump out from behind him and put him offline." He explained.
"Ok." Sortie nodded.
She started running through the trees, keeping the road in sight. She glanced back to check her distance and saw that Sideswipe was gone. Then she smacked into something metal. Her first thought was that it was another decepticon and she was about to get squished. She looked up and found Bumblebee standing in front of her.
"Good grief, it's just you." She sighed a huge breath of relief.
"What's going on? Did you loose Sideswipe too?" He asked.
"What? No. Wait, I thought you were driving with Arcee."
"Yeah, I was. Until she led me down some weird road then abandoned me."
"Hang on a second." She replied, suddenly remembering Dead End.
She started to charge her cannon as she ran to the road. By the time she had aimed at the Decepticon that was still trying to contact Megatron, she had a blast that would make it all the way to him. She fired her cannon, which knocked her over. Dead End whipped around, yelling and swearing in cybertronian. He started charging at her. Sideswipe jumped out behind him, but Dead End whipped around and shot him with a green blast then transformed into what Sortie guessed was a cybertronian car. Sideswipe was frozen stiff on the ground. She kicked the air with both of her feet, making the wheels pop out.
"Get back here, human!" Dead End shouted.
Damn, he found the internet.
Sortie took off skating as fast as she could without tripping. There was the screeching sound of rubber on asphalt as Bumblebee sped onto the road. He slammed into Dead End, knocking him into the grass. He recovered quickly and kept chasing them. A blast of blue energy flew right in between Sortie and Bumblebee and the next one narrowly missed Bumblebee's side view mirror. Sortie swerved across the road and grabbed Bumblebee's spoiler, turned around, and shot at Dead End. Her aim was far from perfect and she missed half of time. She shot the ground in front of Dead End and asphalt and blue energy flew straight up. Dead End charged right through it and transformed and jumped on Bumblebee. He swerved off the road and transformed, dragging Sortie with him. She went flying into a tree and the wind was knocked out of her. She struggled to get up and saw Bumblebee pinned to the ground by Dead End. He was punching him repeatedly so Sortie shot the decepticon in the shoulder.
Dead End lunged for her; Sideswipe tackled him and stabbed him straight through the blue glowing circle on his chest. Dead End sputtered for a minute before collapsing, dead. Or offline, as Sideswipe had put it. A blue fluid was leaking out of the body.
"What is that stuff?" She asked. She had a hunch that it was probably Cybertronian blood, but wanted to make sure.
"It's called Energon. It's like human blood." Sideswipe said.
"That's what I thought."
"What are we going to do with him? We can't just leave it here for a human to discover." Bumblebee said.
"I guess we'll have to drag it back to Ratchet and Optimus and see if they know."
"Gross."
Sideswipe grabbed his arms and Bumblebee grabbed his legs and they carried him off into the woods. Sortie followed close behind, kicking the air as she tried to get the wheels to retract. She had to jog to keep up with their enormous strides, which she counted as more exercise.
It was about noon when they got back to the parking lot. They had been gone for five hours. Ratchet looked like he was ready to lecture them on following orders, but stopped once he saw the dead con.
Bumblebee dropped his legs immediately upon stepping onto the pavement.
"I never want to do that again." He stated.
Sortie sat down, panting. Now that she finally got to stop running, she noticed that her left leg was scraped up pretty badly and that the hip and knee joints hurt. Red blood was oozing out of her human skin and the blue Energon was leaking out of her cybertronian parts. Apparently she had both running in her veins and whatever the autobot version of veins was.
Wait, that's not good.
"Well Bee, you are going to have to get over it." Sideswipe said.
"I never wanted to do this stuff in the first place." He mumbled.
"What, save Cybertron from the Decepticons. You'd rather go exploring or adventuring or whatever you call it while they destroy the planet." Sideswipe shot.
"It's not like I asked the allspark to implant its coordinates in my head." Bumblebee fired back.
"That doesn't mean you can't stop complaining about everything!"
Bumblebee went silent.
"Was that really necessary, Sideswipe?" Ratchet asked. "He is still a youngling."
"Will you guys stop treating me like I'm completely hopeless?" Bumblebee shouted then transformed and drove off.
"Thank you, Sideswipe." Ratchet said.
"I didn't sign up to guard younglings." Sideswipe muttered.
To Sortie it looked like Sideswipe was mad because he got hit with that paralyzing blast, because of which, Bumblebee almost got beaten to a pulp. Then he just lashed out at Bumblebee when he complained. And there was probably some previous deal about the other bots being super protective of Bumblebee and he just got tired of it. For being robots, they sure had a lot of human emotions.
"We need to go after Bumblebee. It's not safe for any of us to be alone with the Decepticons still around." Optimus said.
"No, we should let him blow off some steam. Besides, we can watch him on the scanners." Ratchet said.
Optimus nodded in agreement then turned to Sideswipe.
"Sideswipe, I know this is frustrating for you. But you at least need to try to get along with Bumblebee."
"Sortie, come here. I need to fix your wounds before they rust." Ratchet said.
Sortie hobbled over to the medic, and out of earshot of Optimus, who was still talking to Sideswipe.
"As you can tell, this isn't Sideswipe's best field." He said, waving some kind of scanner over her.
"Yeah, I noticed." She replied.
"He was kind of a lone wolf back on Cybertron, a lot like Arcee." He explained and pulled out a blocky key shaped object.
"That would explain why they don't get along." She suddenly understood why the two bots were always ready to tear each limb from limb.
"Let me see your wrist." He said.
She held up her arm and he held the key over it for a second. The tip of it shifted into a small key shaped nub. He stuck it into her arm and turned it 90 degrees to the right, like he was starting a car. The wounds on the robotic part of her leg closed up.
"Woah, that's amazing. How does it work?" Sortie asked.
"It was charged by the allspark, which gives life to all cybertronians. This small amount of power from it is able to heal wounds. At least, cybertronian ones." Ratchet explained.
"That's alright, I can handle the other wounds."
Sortie's human skin was still scraped up, and she had no way of healing it. She tore off the shredded remains of the bottom of her sweatpants; she could use it to wrap the wound. Now if she could just find some herbs of some kind.
Half an hour later, Sortie had wrapped up her leg after putting a poultice of medicinal plants that she had found on the wound. Bumblebee was still gone, but apparently Optimus was tracking him on his scanner. They heard a car driving up the road to the abandoned parking lot and everyone sprang up. The autobots transformed into their alternate modes and Sortie dove behind Ratchet. They all relaxed when they saw that it was Arcee.
"I just saw the Stunticons." She blurted as soon as she transformed.
"The other ones are here too?" Ratchet asked.
"What do you mean the other ones?" Sortie asked.
"Well, we don't have to worry about them combining into Menasor at least." Sideswipe said.
"What do you mean?" Arcee asked.
"We just killed Dead End a few hours ago." He replied.
"The universe is better off without that depressing little glitch." Acree commented.
"What are you all talking about?" Sortie asked in a louder voice.
"Dead End was one of the Stunticons who could combine into Menasor, who is a pain in the aft to fight." Sideswipe explained.
"And now that he is dead, they can't become Menasor." Arcee added.
"Wait, why didn't we pick them up on the scanners?" Sortie asked.
All of the autobots stopped and exchanged a worried glance.
"That's a good question, why didn't we?" Ratchet asked, looking at his scanner.
"I think they have figured out how to disguise their energon signals." Optimus said.
"How is that possible?" Arcee asked.
"I'm not sure, but we need to find them before they can tell the other decepticons how to do it." Optimus said. "Arcee, where are they?"
"They should be in a straight line east." She said.
"Isn't that the way Bumblebee went?"