Thanks for reading this, everyone! Sorry if you're wondering why everything is all uploaded differently. I went through and realized that the way I had it was hard to read, so I changed the format to something more, uh, normal? XD Anyway. In atonement for being confusing, here's chapter 6.
Chapter 6.
The house was equipped with electric lights. Not far away the stack of the new coal burning plant merrily belched black smoke into the distance. The whole town was electrified, something that Sam's Grandfather was rather proud of. He had been one of the first to take out the gas lights in his house and put in new electric wiring.
Sam could see that the kitchen light had been left on for him, but he wasn't ready to go inside just yet. First he needed to find cover for his friends. He was fairly certain that Blaster and Perceptor would fit inside the house, but Bumblebee was just too large. On the property were three large auxiliary structures besides the barn, two were for storage and one that held the family workshops. Sam headed over to the workshop where he could get a candle first. The workshop shared the electricity of the house, however the sheds were not so lucky. He was certain that one of the sheds was mostly empty, the contents having been moved to the capitol with his father. The space there would be sufficient enough that the bots could use it as cover until they were ready to return to their ship.
Bumblebee set Sam down by the door to the workshop as gently as he could, watching the boy's ankle. Sam hobbled over to the door and looked over his shoulder, "Okay be really careful in here. There's stuff everywhere and I don't want you to knock something over and wake up my grandpa."
Blaster raised what passed for his eyebrows at Sam, "We're a lot more agile than we look."
Sam looked at him skeptically and produced a set of keys from his pocket. Gently he unlocked and eased the door open, then quickly disarmed the alarm. He breathed a sigh of relief when it remained silent. No matter how many times he had to fiddle with it, he was always afraid that he'd set it off.
Perceptor followed him into the building, looking at the elaborate system of pulleys and levers that made up the alarm system. Sam explained, "See, there's only one lever that will shut off the alarm, and it changes daily. Choose the wrong one and the bells all go off," Sam pointed up. Above them hung ten bells of varying sizes, just waiting to make a cacophony. "They'll keep going until the system is reset, which'll take a body about ten minutes to acomplish. Bee, you might want to watch your head, the room's taller in back, but 14 feet here because of the bells. "
"How do you know which lever to pull for the alarm?" asked Perceptor, confused.
"My grandmother was a silversmith, she made a set of little metal saints that corresponds to the levers in here. Whichever saint is facing backwards at the time, it's that saint's day," Sam pointed to a lever marked with a catapult, "Today it was Saint Barbara."
Blaster shook his head, "What is a saint?"
Sam stared at him a moment, forgetting that the bots wouldn't understand the concept of Saints, "Um, they were people, who lived a long time ago. And are kinda... supposed to help you? It's a human belief, hard to explain. It has a lot to do with religion. My grandmother was catholic, but my grandfather's protestant you know? So it gets a bit confusing around here."
The three bots exchanged a look. Perceptor seemed to want to know more but Bee interrupted him, trilling and pointing at the back of the workshop. There in semi darkness sat Sam's grandfather's steam wagon. The yellow mech approached it carefully, then knelt down to examine it further. It was mostly forged steel with brass fittings and some wooden parts. The wheels were large and stuck at a slightly outward angle; the whole back end was taken up by the heater, boiler and engine that made the contraption move. The mech could see now why the older human had thought Bee's own design was so awkward; the entire surface of the wagon was covered in decorative gilding and designs. Even the fenders above the tires were covered in scroll work and decorations. The doors had little wings designed into them, flowing back over the smooth surface of the chassis. Even the rivets had been considered in the design, making graceful patterns when applicable. No matter if the machine didn't work the way it was supposed to, it was still a beautiful work of art, every inch shined to perfection.
Bumblebee nodded at Sam earnestly, trying to convey his appreciation of the vehicle. Sam puffed with pride, "That's my grandmother's work. She loved to add decoration to the stuff my grandfather and my father made. I mean, she used to make little clockwork music boxes and stuff too, but doing all this scroll work and filigree is what she really loved. She was one of the few women in the country who did things like this, she learned the trade from her father," Sam looked sad, "She died about five years ago. I really miss her sometimes. "
Sam felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Bee nodding to him. The concern on the bot's face made him realize once again that the Autobots were not automatons, but feeling, emotional beings. Blaster nodded, suddenly very serious, "We understand that kind of feeling."
Bee shook his head and rubbed the vents near his neck self-consciously, Okay, enough of this introspective spark-felt stuff. Let's not get so caught up in the past that we forget to go forward.
Perceptor nodded, blinking hard, "Yes, let's figure out some new alt modes that we can scan so that we will better blend with our surroundings."
"Wait a second, do you hear something?" asked Blaster, motioning for silence.
"No..." Sam strained to hear what the bot did, realizing that his sense were probably vastly inferior to someone who could see in the dark and transform his entire body.
Bumblebee stood up abruptly in panic and banged his head against one of the electrical wires in the ceiling, shorting out the whole building. Another step brought him directly into contact with the alarm system, setting all the bells in motion. In the growing catastrophe, Sam fell over some of a collection of empty furnace parts, his ankle giving out. He heard the door burst open and his grandfather entered like a coming storm.
"Alright you idea-stealing sons of bitches, I've got a shotgun that's all ready and raring to go. Who's ready for ventilation first?" He looked around fiercely, peering down his gun sites for the the intruders. Instead, he found his only grandchild stuck between an old desk and a couple of steel tubes, "Sam, what in blazes are you doing here? I thought you went camping!"
Sam slowly sat up, trying not to put too much weight on his foot, "I'm sorry, Grandpa... I was uh, looking for my old crutches, I twisted my foot while I was out."
His grandfather adjusted his glasses and looked down, "I suppose you did. Looks a bit swollen, you should probably come in and put that up. Let me see if I can find those crutches first."
He started to turn and as he did, both of them saw the unexpected at the same time.
In the back of the workshop sat not one, but two steam wagons, and one of them was a bright vibrant yellow.
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Wheeljack sat about half way through the passage, cutting a new path through ruined duct work and wiring with the torch component in his arm. Each of the Autobot had interchangeable useful appendages suited to their particular line of work He cut steadily through the wreckage, his humming making the lights on his ears flash in time to his song. Unlike some of his fellow bots, like Jazz and Blaster, Wheeljack had no gift for music. He greatly enjoyed it, but he was unable to reproduce it in anything resembling a key. As a result, he hummed only when no one else was around, like now. His first clue that someone else was awake was the disgusted sound below him.
"Primus, 'Jack. 4 million years and you still can't carry a tune that isn't downloaded on a data pad for you."
Wheeljack's ears brightened to a startled blue, "Ratchet! You're alive!"
"Yes, thanks to Primus. I just came on-line about a cycle ago. All I had to do to find you was follow that pit-bound noise you're making," the medic said irritably. He flipped his own hand out for a torch and began cutting away at the obstacles, "Mind you don't hit me in the helmet when you drop stuff please. I'm rather happy with being fully functional again."
"So... it's just you?" prompted Wheeljack uncertainly.
"Only me awake."
"Blaster, Bee, and Perceptor are topside checking out the terrain. We, uh, had some problems down here just before we crashed," Wheeljack avoided Ratchet's look and continued noisily cutting through another useless piece of wreckage. Wheeljack filled Ratchet in on the creatures that Bee and the others had discovered in the chasm, forgetting to tell him about Ravage in his excitement. Finally the two met about twenty feet above the bridge opening. The engineer peered down, not sure he was ready to enter after being gone for 4 million years. How many of his kind had died from their wounds, unable to repair themselves even in stasis? The fact that all of them in Auxiliary Engineering had survived had elated him to no end. Now he faced the reality of just how many Autobots were now lost.
The two mechs slid through the opening, carefully dropping to the floor below. The bridge, which was now upside down, had been made to accommodate the average sized Autobot comfortably, which was somewhere around fifty feet. Most of the broken consoles and bots rested where they had slammed against and partially through the far wall on impact with the planet. The six remaining functional mechs had been laid out neatly by Ratchet. Wheeljack shook his head, "Leave it to you to organize a bot when he's down."
"Ha ha," said Ratchet, shaking his head. Wheeljack may have blamed Ratchet's orderly personality for arranging the bots, but the real reason was far more grim. It had taken him a good few hours to drag everyone out like this. The living bots were tangled in the mess of parts and wreckage. He didn't want anyone to wake up with a friend's arms around him, then find that the rest of the friend was missing. When they got a little more mobile and active maybe he'd be able to give the dead a proper burial, for now it was enough to just separate out the living.
Suddenly the ground swayed slightly, giving Wheeljack's equilibrium a shake, "Whoa! What in the pit?!"
"This part of the planet has recently become unstable after that big shake we had earlier. We're going to experience several more tremors before it all quiets down. I did a few seismographs of the area and it looks like large sections of this cave could go at any moment," Ratchet shrugged. "I need you to go topside and get the others back here before that happens."
"Wait a minute here, are you saying you want to be buried alive again?" Wheeljack looked at his friend incredulously. Maybe all that damp had gotten to his circuits after all.
"From what you've told me about these creatures that inhabit this planet they're not ready for us. We're just going to have to wait and come back on-line when they are," Ratchet sighed. "I don't like the idea any more than you do."
The big gray mech folded his arms and frowned at his oldest friend, asking softly. "And what if the decepticons wake up before we do?"
Ratchet squirmed, "The rules of conduct-"
"Oh yeah, they followed 'em real well by blasting our tail off up there," he looked Ratchet straight in the optics angrily, "You can't tell me you seriously believe that we just totally missed a big slagging beacon that would have been there if they'd actually claimed this planet. They're out there, Ratchet, I know it. And I've got a feeling in my spark that just shuttering ourselves down here is the last thing we should do!" He paused and his tone brightened a little, "I mean, we could always get creative with our alt modes and hide out up topside. Just keep an eye out of the 'cons..."
" I know that Bumblebee and the others have already met some of the creatures, but actually going out and trying to hide somehow in their society? Are you sure about this?"
Wheeljack sighed, staring at his hands. He could almost hear Prowl admonishing him to follow the rules of species interaction as laid down by Cybertron law. He knew that was what he was supposed to do, but he couldn't shake the feeling deep in his spark that right now the rules were pretty obsolete. They were planet bound with the decepticons, away from home, somewhere on the far side of the galaxy, the rules seemed pretty far away at the moment. "Yeah, I'm sure."
Ratchet looked off into the darkness and snorted. Wheeljack had a reputation for having his head in the clouds, but when he chose to put his foot down about something he was usually right. "Alright, fine. We need to jump start the others or we may not get everyone out of here in time, I don't think that chasm will hold another day."
