Donald

After dropping Patrick off at his house, Donny had returned to his own home with the Firebird in tow. He was hoping to get the Pontiac off the trailer under it's own power, a futile hope for a car that had been submerged in salt water for at least a few weeks – and therefor requiring a complete engine rebuild – but Donny had a feeling that there was something else at work here. Astonishingly, the engine wasn't hydrolocked, and appeared fit to be started, so long as he could find out what was holding it back.

Donny had broken out his toolkit for the occasion and with the bonnet propped up above him he was searching the compartment for potential problems. He checked the wiring for faults, tightening down all connections and making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. The longer he rooted around the Firebird's engine, the stronger his gut feeling of apprehensiveness grew. None of this made any kind of sense, if the junkyard proprietor hadn't told him otherwise Donny would swear up and down this car had never set so much as a single tire into the Bay; the body may have gone to shit, but the engine was still viable.

He had taken the liberty of putting some gas in the Firebird's tank, courtesy of the large gasoline canister he kept in the garage to refuel the lawnmower.

He reached for his wrench balanced on top of the carburetor scoop, his tired fingers accidentally knocked it away and off the side. Donny cursed as he watched the tool tumble down to the bottom of the compartment. He was about to reach in after it when he heard the clank of metal on wood towards the rear end of the Firebird. Curiously he peeked over and saw… his wrench, sitting on the wooden plank trailer bed right next to the left rear wheel. Shocked, Donny leaned back over the engine compartment and reached down past the block to feel around the floor of the compartment, he reached further and felt… rubber? His fingers brushed unseen against a tread pattern, a tire? He withdrew his hand and immediately he felt a tingling sensation across his fingers and halfway down his palm, he looked at his hand alarmed, only to find nothing out of the ordinary.

"What the hell?"

He walked over to the back of the Firebird and picked up the wrench from where it lay next to the tire, he then headed back to the front. He studied the wrench closely, an idea settling in his head; he then dropped the wrench into the gap between the firewall and the engine block, looking off to the side as he did so. The wrench once more clattered onto the rear trailer bed, right next to the left rear wheel. Still not quite believing what he was seeing with his own eyes, Donny took a handful of drive fittings for his socket wrench from the toolbag and dropped them into the gap. The drive fittings tumbled off the rear tire, and onto the bed and driveway, followed by something much larger that hit the bed with a loud report. He walked back again, and in addition to the fittings he saw a gleaming metal disc laying where it fell beneath the undercarriage. Curious, he pulled it out.

The disk was roughly a foot in diameter, it's surface was a polished gold with one side etched with an array of strange symbols whose meaning went right over his head. Still, it looked pretty valuable.

After contemplating the anomaly of wrenches being transported from one end of the car to the other, and golden discs appearing from nowhere, Donny decided to give the Firebird a rest for the day. He brought the disc inside the house and set it on top of the small dining table inside the kitchen. On closer examination he noticed the seam running along the circumference of the disc's band. It wasn't simply a disc, it was a cast of some sort.

Donny pulled a small steak knife from a nearby drawer, and levered it into the groove. After a few moments, the lid popped free.

Inside was a record, colored a clean metallic golden color a few shades lighter than the case it came in. Upon the center plate the title read: 'THE SOUNDS OF EARTH'

No publisher, no artist, only the two lines: United States of America, Planet Earth. Very peculiar, but then he had never before seen a record disc of such high quality. Unwilling to risk getting the record scratched, he replaced the cover and set the gleaming case aside. It was then that he began to register a prickling sensation on the fingers of his right hand. Looking closer, he noticed that the flesh all the way up to knuckles and the first joint of his thumb had reddened with a sharp line of contrast.

That was odd. Before turning in for the night, he rubbed his fingers with aloe vera. Hopefully it would stop bothering him come next morning.


The aloe vera did nothing to stem the irritation. When he woke up next morning, his fingers and thumb were stinging painfully and they were now noticibly inflamed. That was when he decided to pay a visit to the nearby clinic to have the 'mystery rash' looked at.

The nearby clinic in Brighton Falls was a rather modest establishment, it was composed of a single level and employed only a handful of general practitioners. Donny rarely had cause to check into this place, this was his fifth visit in total.

Doctor Poole was a world away from Doctor Parrot. Unlike the kindly middle-aged physician from the recovery ward, Poole was at least twenty years older, did not wear the typical white coat over his maroon collared shirt, and his hard gray eyes were eternally scrunched behind a pair of thick rimmed glasses. He kinda looked like Larry King, especially with the suspenders he wore over his hunched bony shoulders. When he spoke, Donny could tell he was also a heavy smoker.

"Have you been using lab equipment Mr. Davis? An X-ray or some other device perhaps?" Poole croaked, raising a graying eyebrow at his patient.

"No, why?" Donny asked.

"Burns such as this are only caused by exposure to low to mid level ionizing radiation, Mr. Davis," the doctor said sternly, "You're lucky, the probability of long term damage is unlikely but next time I suggest you invest in personal protective equipment; or better yet keep your distance from radiation sources altogether."

Radiation. But where and when did it happen? His mind instantly traveled back to yesterday, when he had uncovered the Firebird's latest oddity. When he reached his hand in, he had felt a stinging pain.

Doctor Poole carefully wrapped his hand with a dry bandage, encasing it in clean cloth all the way to his wrist. "Keep it clean, and don't get it wet. If it is still there after more than a week, come back and I'll take another look."

If it wasn't clear to him before, he was certain of it now. He has officially entered the Twilight Zone.


When he went to work the following day, predictably he drew some attention.

"What's up with you hand?" Patrick asked, concern coloring his tone as he took in Donny's bandaged fingers and thumb.

"I burned my hand on the stove," he lied, "Doctor says it isn't too bad and it should heal in a week or so."

Patrick didn't look completely convinced but said no more on the matter. His co-workers were understanding of his plight and let him take on the lighter duties in the shop for the day. He worked in silence, ignoring the irritating throb of his irradiated fingers and the concerned looks his friend sent his way every once in a while. When lunch time finally arrived, both men left the shop and walked to the Carl's Jr. just across the street.

"Has the car been giving you any much trouble?" Patrick asked him as they sat down at a small table next to the window, their trays of food ignored for the moment.

"It feels like I'm working with something from another planet," Donny responded distractedly, chewing on a lightly salted fry. He wasn't exactly sure if he should tell Patrick everything; he would probably think he was going nuts. Hell, he was even starting to second guess his own sanity.

"Well it was pulled out of the Bay," Patrick reminded him, "The fact that the engine can even make noise is a miracle, you're still probably going to have to pull the entire block out."

"Maybe," was Donny's halfhearted reply. He had come to a similar conclusion, and yet he was apprehensive. The entire time he had spent working on the engine the previous two days he had felt like he was sticking his hands into the jaws of a crocodile

The paranoid part of his mind told him that he should stop; there were too many things out of place with the Firebird and he should take it back to the junkyard and forget about ever having found it. But the other, more adventurous part of him – the part that had mostly stayed quiet since waking up in the hospital – was enthralled by the mystery surrounding the Firebird, this was a once in a lifetime discovery waiting to be explored; it made him all the more eager to continue on with his restoration plans. Except those plans would need a lot of revisioning, the Firebird was different from other cars he had worked on.

"You're not planning on giving up already, are you?" Patrick asked him.

"No," Donny said with resolution, "I've got this, just a little bit overwhelmed by the details is all."

"No surprises there," Patrick agreed, "Most of the cars we work on are already road legal and mostly functional, your Firebird on the other hand… not so much." He paused to take a bite out of his hamburger, "Have you gotten it registered yet?"

"Not yet," Donny answered, taking a smaller bite from his own meal, "I'll do it when the car's good and ready." Truth be told, Donny was wary of taking the Firebird out for an inspection, he was half afraid something crazy would happen and he would get in deep shit for it, the wrench thing alone was enough to get him onto international news. And more than likely, he would lose custody of the vehicle in the long run.

"I can help if you want," Patrick offered, "I have a few tricks you may not have tried yet."

Donny considered it, but eventually decided it was too risky to bring someone else on until he had it all figured out, "Thanks man, but I want to give it another shot before calling for help."

Patrick sighed to himself, obviously dispirited. Donny felt guilt well up inside him, he didn't want to distance himself from his friends, really, but in this case he didn't think there was much of a choice. He only hoped that this distance between him and his friends didn't widen because of this new project. The two friends finished their meals in silence for the rest of the break, and for the rest of the shift that uncomfortable silence would continue.

He hated lying to his friends, it honestly felt like a step backward in his road to redeeming himself of his past mistakes. But he resolved that once he uncovers the mystery behind the Firebird, he wouldn't hold back on them anymore. But first, he had to make the first step; he needed to get the damned thing running.


He filled a pair of five gallon gasoline cans on the way back from Midas, enough to get the Trans-Am's tank a little over half full. After dumping the fuel into muscle car, he started again where he had left off. Popping the hood, and making sure to slip a newly purchased lead lined glove on his unbandaged hand, Donny completed his examination of the engine. It should be working, so it must be the battery that needs attention. He was going to attempt a jumpstart next.

He brought the Sierra alongside the trailer, and then took the jumper cable from the utility box in the bed. Walking back over to the Firebird he was once more overcome with the impulse to make small talk.

"I'm going to try something different today," Donny told the Firebird as he clamped the connections of the jumper cables to the muscle car's battery. "The way I figure it, you look pretty good under here for a girl that's recently gone swimming, and I have already tried everything else to get you started. Maybe all you need is a little extra push in the right direction, what do you think?"

The Pontiac was silent, but at this point Donny had fully given himself over to the twisted surreality that surrounded the seemingly innocuous derelict. In his overactive state of imagination he could almost feel the car urging him to get on with it, like it was impatient. Donny wondered if this was what Arnie Cunningham went through when fixing up Christine, if he restored the Firebird would it start killing people too? For the life of him, Donny found that he couldn't answer that question with full confidence; his newest car had already shown itself to be quite capable of all kinds of weird shit.

After connecting the other ends of the red cable to the battery mounted in the pickup, Donny made his way over to the Firebird, not noticing the emerald sparks arcing in precise intervals between the muscle car's battery and the jaws of the cable clamp. Seating himself in the grimy driver's seat, he withdrew the cold and heavy key from his pocket and slotted it into the ignition. After a steady inhale and a silent prayer he turned the key.

The engine roared to life instantly. Donny was left breathless in his seat as his ears took in the Firebird's glorious idling tune; unable to help himself, he stepped on the gas pedal revving up the engine experimentally, the entire car seemed to vibrate as a powerful mechanical growl rang through the air, sounding very much like it wanted to devour Donny's heart and soul.

"Yes!" Donny whooped, raising his arms up to the driver's side sunroof with total elation. In that moment, all his misgivings about the Firebird were washed away by the deep guttural rhythm of combustion rising out from the open hood. Remembering himself, he opened the door and stepped off the trailer before stepping back on again in front of the idling muscle car. He disconnected the jumper cable, dropping them onto the trailer floorboards before getting off again to reenter the Firebird. He shifted the vehicle into reverse and stuck his head out of the side window to keep an eye on the open garage door behind him (the rear window was still too dirty to see through). He carefully guided the Firebird onto the rear ramp, onto the driveway, and through the open portal leading into the recently cleared out garage. When he came to a stop, he turned off the engine.

He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, and gazed at the peculiar mask symbol etched into the center of the horn cap.

"I think you need a name," he said softly. He had never bothered to name the Mazda, Patrick always affectionately referred to the Sierra as 'the Brick' but Donny had never taken to it. Yet for this car he was tempted to do something different, there was so much mystery to the vehicle, so many unanswered questions. He pondered for a few moments before an idea struck him.

"I will call you Phoenix," he said with a grin. Not the most creative name to place on a Firebird, but to Donny it was fitting. Both of them were damaged, but together – like the phoenix – they would rise again stronger than ever.

Still smiling to himself, he exited Phoenix and walked over to his Sierra, intending to get it squared away and returned to the garage. Detaching the jumper cables from the battery and closing the hood, he entered the cab and turned the ignition. Nothing. He tried again and received not even a single sound from under the hood.

The Sierra's battery was dead.


Charlie Watson

Five months and two weeks. That was how long it had been since Charlie had last seen Bumblebee, and in those five and a half months, there had been some changes. Her mother and Ron had finally gotten married, a union that Charlie had previously only held antagonism for. Yet since bailing her and Bee out from the Sector Seven pursuit through Brighton Falls, she had found herself warming up to the idea, he had at the very least earned her respect. Her only misgiving was the wedding ceremony. The Lutheran church that they were wedded in was extremely archaic in it's practices; the minister doing the ceremony had ponderously lead the guests through prayer after long winded prayer before actually proclaiming Ron and her mother husband and wife, and even after that there were three more prayers.

Charlie had also finished restoring the '57 Corvette. In the end, she had decided to paint it yellow, both to honor her best friend, and because red seriously wasn't her favorite color at the moment. It was silly perhaps, but ever since she learned that the female Decepticon was on the loose, she had been wary of any vehicle that might be her. According to Sector Seven, Bonnie's previous disguise – the grotesquely over-customized Plymouth GTX – had most likely been discarded in favor of another one. The corvette itself ran like a dream, and she enjoyed turning heads wherever she went, but she would still give it up for just another ride in a certain crummy yellow beetle.

Speaking of the beetle, she had been working on the damaged radio all Summer long. The device was deceptively complex, and she had to do her homework trying to figure out how to put it all together. For one, it was larger on the inside than it was on the outside, a kind of subspace, if she was to put a name on it. She had searched far and wide for the things she needed to wrap up her personal project, and much of it had all been down to guesswork.

She had come across the components of a used ham radio set in a garage sale last month, and had painstakingly jury rigged Bumblebee's radio deck to the system. Neither her mother nor Ron knew what she was planning, and she intended to keep it that way; both of them would freak if they knew that she intended to involve herself in a prehistoric alien war. It was already too late for that, she knew where she stood and it wasn't on the sidelines.

Now everything was finally set up. It had taken her almost half a year to come this far, and the result: a hodge podge of jury rigged components and antiquated technology hooked up to an alien device that defied the laws of physics.

"Please let this work," Charlie said to herself as she connected the system to the power source consisting of four truck batteries linked together, a green flicker lit the case of the radio deck from within. Fingers crossed, she turned on the mic.

"Bumblebee?"


Bumblebee

"- you have only begun to discover your power! Join me, and I shall complete your training; and with our combined strength we can end this destructive conflict, and bring order to the Galaxy!"

"I'll never join you!"

"If you only knew the power of the Dark Side… Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father."

"He told me enough! He told me you killed him!"

"No, I am your father!"

Darth Vader had been Luke's sire all along, talk about a doozy. As Mark Hamill screamed in denial, Bumblebee took a long sip from a mid-grade cube of energon, seated upon a large hand-forged metal bench in front of a comparatively small television set. He found himself enjoying Empire Strikes Back better than A New Hope; the drama and excitement were definitely more pronounced in the second movie of the trilogy.

Within the depths of the partially constructed Autobase, Bumblebee had created a bare bones home theater inside what he had tentatively designated as the future wreck-room. It had given him something to do with the large amounts of free time he had in his servos; most of the actual base building was being done by the drones that had arrived with the first drop and the inactivity had been making him antsy. Several times he thought about trying to pay Charlie a quick visit, she was the only friend he had on this little blue rock – the weird guy that tagged along with them didn't exactly count – and he was starting to feel a bit lonesome.

But such an action was fraught with intolerable risks. He knew for a fact that Sector Seven had her, and her family under watch, presumably to wait for him to make just such a blunder. He was further aware that the humans would show him no mercy if they got their hands on him; they had yet to define life beyond their decaying organic mores, and saw in him only a balky piece of machinery to be broken, analyzed, and reverse engineered. Not for the first time Bumblebee wondered why in the Pit Optimus thought Earth was a good place for the Autobots to regroup and rebuild.

The second supply drop had come with an unexpected bonus. It was a holoform, a small stick-like metal frame that was capable of configuring itself into multiple structures, and then forming a photo-reactive gel layer that could mold itself into organic body shapes which a hologram could form around to give off a simulacrum of life. Holoforms were not standard equipment by any means, they were rare niche tools that did not see very much use anymore since the civil war kicked off; Perceptor or maybe Wheeljack must have whipped this one up for him. He had used the holoform to great effect infiltrating the city of Las Vegas, where he practiced fitting in with humanity under a variety of disguises both male and female. He also partook in the local gambling scene, but got a little carried away with it when he started winning big; suffice it to say he was exceptionally well heeled for a loner living it out in the northern parts of the Mojave.

He had used the money to build his home theater and rent out VHS tapes from a Blockbuster rental store in Carson City; it had managed to take a dent out of his mind numbing boredom, but not by much. It was still better than counting off the days until the first Autobot reinforcements arrived, or wandering the empty halls and chambers of the unfinished Autobase.

As the movie came to a close and the credits rolled, Bumblebee reached for the plastic case containing the video cassette for Return of the Jedi when a familiar voice floated through his comm channel.

"Bumblebee?"

That voice. It couldn't be! He sent out a mental command, bidding Leemo to dock with him. The cassette obediently folded down between his shoulder struts, he then directly linked to the small drone's vocal processor.

"Charlie, is that you?" He asked, cringing inwardly as he spoke the words in Leemo's dramatized cant, he couldn't wait for the day he got his own pipes back.

He heard Charlie squee in victory, she had apparently been working hard to contact him. But how did she manage to get his frequency? "Yes! It's me, I have been trying to call you for months now! I fixed your radio, the old one. I thought if I could fix it, we could-"

"YOU'VE BEEN EXPERIMENTING ON MY BIOMECHANICS?!" Bumblebee yelped, falling off the bench as he literally reeled backwards. Swishy tail! Cybercat ears! Unicron take you Wheeljack!

"Wha- God Bee I am so sorry! I didn't mean to- I was just so worried and-"

"No, no! It's fine, just some bad experiences is all," he reassured, calming himself down. Charlie wasn't Wheeljack, she couldn't have done something that horrible. And if he could forgive Jack, he could definitely forgive Charlie. He had thought she had thrown out the radio, and he had lamented the loss of a part of himself – his backup comm system to be exact – and had put it out of mind, she couldn't have known about that particular pet peeve of his.

"Okay… wait, you can talk now?"

"Not exactly, I'm borrowing the voice of a friend right now… it's complicated." He said as he got back to his pedes, brushing the dust off his frame. In spite of how it happened, Bumblebee was glad that he could finally speak to somebody other than Leemo, who while being unfailingly upbeat and optimistic, wasn't really one to share a deep conversation with.

"Okay, well forget about that right now, we're in big trouble. Bonnie's still alive Bee!"

"Who's Bonnie?"

"The Decepticon! The red one, she survived the crash."

Bumblebee felt his optics widen to their maximum extent. His spark core stilled within it's chamber as his processor registered Charlie's words.

"Tell me what you know." Bumblebee instructed.

While Charlie spoke, Bumblebee listened in silence. But his processor was left reeling over the ramifications this new information had on his mission; Shatter was still alive! He still had aches in his protoform from their fight earlier this year, and the thought of a 'Round Two' did not fill him with that much optimism. That femme had been offlining mechs bigger and more experienced than him long before the Allspark brought his spark into being, he had only managed to scrape out a victory because she had been more focused on hurting him rather than going straight for the kill – dragging out the fight long enough for him to find a way to beat her.

Fortunately for him, without the transmitter her threat towards the success of his mission was greatly reduced. Without it, she had no way to contact the Decepticon armies on Cybertron, nor could she call in a space bridge from a local hub. Decepticon teams rarely had more than one of those transmitters on them when scouting off the grid, and from the look he had seen on her faceplate when Charlie brought it down, that had been her only one. She was trapped on this planet with him… or rather he was trapped on this planet with her.

The Hyperpulse Generator was going to be arriving soon. He could use it to contact Optimus, and then ask for reinforcements to help hunt down the triple-changer and end her threat once and for all. But that was still going to be a worryingly long wait between then and now.

"I'm scared, Bumblebee," Charlie admitted, her tone lowering and reflecting her anxiety, "I'm afraid that the people I care about are going to die."

"I know how you feel," Bumblebee reassured, "Trust me, I have lived there my entire life. The 'Cons are chasing my family across the galaxy right now, and I still don't know who has made it… and who hasn't."

Though he was very young compared to his comrades, Bumblebee had seen too many of them come and go fighting this war. And with the tide turned firmly against his people, the sight of his friends dying had become a common occurrence, and no matter how many times it happened it didn't get any easier for him.

"Listen Charlie, I need you to be brave for me. That Decepticon… her real designation is Shatter, an elite triple-changer. If you even think that she is near you, I want you to take your family and run as far and as fast as you can. Do you understand?"

"I need your help Bee, I can't protect them. Sector Seven can't protect them. You're the only one who can stop her, please."

Bumblebee was torn. He needed to oversee the development of Autobase and secure the incoming supply shipments; they were vital to Optimus Prime's initial strategy of settling Earth. But on the other servo there was Charlie, his friend whose life was being threatened by a very dangerous Decepticon triple-changer; if she was killed when he could have protected her, the guilt would haunt him all the way to the Well of All Sparks.

If he stayed here, there was nothing standing between Shatter and carrying out her lethal promise. The Sector Seven agents watching over them would not be able to do a thing to stop her. But if he got close to Charlie, the humans could discover him and he would be forced to flee, or worse Shatter herself could potentially kill him. If he died, the supply shipments would be left unattended, and in a worst case scenario Shatter would be free to claim them for herself – which included the Hyperpulse Generator she could use to call in a Decepticon army; it would be the beginning of the end for the Autobots. How did one life measure against the fate of his people?

In an earlier time, before the fall of Iacon, he wouldn't have hesitated to leap to Charlie's aid and damn the consequences. He was used to taking big risks to prove himself worthy of the esteem of his fellow Autobots, but with him all alone out here and with so much riding on his success, he couldn't help but be cautious. Did that make him a coward?

He had always wanted to be a hero in a story, completely unafraid to die a glorious death in the heat of battle.

Yet, stories did not reflect reality. The heroes he looked up to in youth could have all cried out in terror at the moment of their offlining.

And that femme, from the very moment he met her, had instilled a sense of fear and vulnerability in his spark that not even Megatron could have managed.


McKinnon Airfield, five months ago

They had loaded him onto a flatbed truck, bound and restrained with his weapons and transformation cog locked down. He didn't even know he had weapons before they were deactivated by the two strangers who had attacked him today.

The canvas flap covering him whipped upward for a moment, revealing a blue muscle car on the road right beside the truck. It was one of them, one of his people, the one that had kicked him while he was down. When he first saw them transform on a run towards him, he had been overcome with excitement; they were machine people just like him; finally he could get answers to all of his questions. But such was not to be.

Now he was bound to an unknown destination, separated from his friend and with no way of escape.

He felt the truck coming to a stop, followed by the distinctive sounds of a transformation emanating from either side of the trailer. A moment later, the tarp was ripped off allowing the afternoon sun to bear down on him until it was eclipsed by the shape of a large blue mech, the distinctive engine cowl of his rotorcraft alt-mode giving him an intimidating hunchbacked appearance.

"We will manage the prisoner from here," a deep feminine voice announced, the same one he recalled from the taller of his attackers, the red one. He turned his helm to see her leering down on him from the other side of the trailer. "Bring him."

The mech was freakishly strong, he lifted Bumblebee by the neck strut – snapping the chains and straps holding him down to the bed in the process – without his servo motors giving out so much as a whisper of strain. The features of his helm were minimalist but sharply defined, with plenty of cuts and scrapes on the faceplate behind the grilled mask to indicate a long history of violence and injury. The way he looked at him, it reminded him of one of Charlie's neighbors, a child who would squat in the midday sun with a magnifying glass in hand and a grin on his face as he cooked the defenseless little bugs; right now, Bumblebee felt like one of those bugs.

He tried to struggle against the larger mech's grip, but to no avail. If anything Blue seemed to be amused by his efforts as he hoisted him high and carried him through the open door of a building the truck had stopped by.

Without further ceremony, Blue threw him against a wall with enough force to crack it, he slumped down to the floor on his aft – his winglets smarting from the force of the impact. He tried to get himself up before Blue slammed his clenched servo down on his helm, forcing him back to the floor.

"Stay down," Blue growled. Blue's companion, the red female creature, sauntered over to stand in front of Bumblebee.

The girl – femme, his programming corrected – was tall, very tall. If he were standing up the top of his helm would barely come up to the midriff of her chassis, the widened set of her hips and shoulders made her framework appear larger to his optics than she actually was. Bearing that in mind however, the femme was still far from being dainty, she looked like she could break him over her knee if she was so inclined. When she moved it was with a steady poise, smooth and deliberate, no motions wasted. But it was her optics that drew in his full attention, they were red and contracted, closer to orange at the very center, they gleamed with a fierce intelligence in addition to a carefully measured contempt for everything around her that wasn't her partner. When those optics met his he felt deeply unsettled, they were eyes that could see inside him and behold how pathetic and weak he was.

He may not know her, but she most definitely knew him. But what could he have done to make this femme look at him with such disgust? She called him a traitor, perhaps that was the reason behind her ire; he had wronged someone, betrayed even, he felt guilty despite not remembering anything before waking up in Charlie's garage.

As his thoughts brought up his only friend his spark shuddered with sudden panic. Charlie! She had been with him when Red and Blue had ambushed them in the desert field just off the road where the humans had initially tried to capture him. She had been far too close to the blast radius of Red's weapon – plasma shock cannon, the tactical center added – and her fragile flesh-form was thrown some distance, in addition to that she had also been hit by the same devices that ultimately incapacitated him. He hoped she was still alive.

"We have been waiting to meet you for some time B-127," the femme stated casually, "We heard of you from an acquaintance of yours, we had questions for him he was unable to answer." She leaned down, her lip plates parting to reveal a row of sharp metal teeth, "If you place value in your wretched existence, you would do well to answer us to our satisfaction."

Bumblebee panicked. He couldn't talk! And he was sure he didn't know what they wanted, his missing memory was going to damn him here.

"Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?"

"Yes, and yes," Blue grunted, he turned to the femme, "Can I get started then?"

The femme chuckled and then stepped aside, "By all means."

Blue slammed his pede into Bumblebee's midsection, pushing his frame back against the wall, and he kept it there. His processor was flooded with pain, a warning in his optics flashed that his processing tank was reaching the stress threshold limit as Blue leaned all of his weight forward.

"Uncomfortable isn't it?" Blue questioned, his crimson optics burning bright with sadistic satisfaction, "With just the right amount of pressure..." he leaned closer, bearing more weight down on his pede, "… to just the right degree. And in just the right place." He pushed his pede down harder, eliciting a staticy warble of agony from Bumblebee's defiled vocalizer, "Processing tank, transformation cog, which of these will you lose first? Now the Prime! Where is he?!"

Bumblebee couldn't even think past all of the pain flooding his main processor, he couldn't scan through the airwaves to find an answer that would satisfy him. More warnings, his endoframe was deforming, it was buckling! Hairline cracks were forming around his tank casing, fresh waves of pain assaulted him. Then it stopped.

Blue's pede lifted off from his lower torso, and the mech stepped back, Red approached but didn't stand in front of him like Blue but placed herself to his left side, lowering herself on one knee to come to his level.

"Look upon me," she instructed, warily Bumblebee did so. Up close he could pick out even more details that he had missed at first glance. His tactical computer identified a potential weakness, her neck strut didn't have much reinforcement, it would break with the right amount of leverage; his empathy programming told him that her expression indicated a measure of sympathy, while his spark told him it wasn't genuine. Her digits hooked under his jaw firmly, but not forcefully. She then dropped the pretense of cordiality.

"Where is Optimus Prime?"

Blue's pede lashed out, once more grinding it's rough tread into his abused midsection. Bumblebee lurched forward at the impact with a distorted wail, but he could not look away from Red; she wouldn't let him, her servo gripped his jaw with increased pressure – but not enough to cause him further pain. Red continued to stare down at him imperiously in silent expectation, but her expression conveyed a clear message; if she wouldn't have her answer, she would have his life.

"We know that the Autobots plan on establishing a hidden colony, but not where they are going. Prime gave you an assignment before you fled Iacon, doubtlessly he has filled you in on the secret. And now you are going to tell it to me, B-127."

Blue's pede once more upped the pressure, far more sharply than the first time. 'Stop! Stop! I don't know anything!' he screamed at Red mentally. He didn't know this Optimus Prime, but he wished he did, if only to make the femme happy enough to let him go.

"Uh, excuse me sir, ma'am?" a voice called out from the door. "The Colonel wants a word."

The femme's grip tightened on his jaw, now she actually was hurting him. Her faceplates scrunched into an expression of unmitigated frustration; the whine of a jet turbine filled the room as her optics brightened and contracted into pinpricks. Then as suddenly as it came, the femme's countenance snapped back to it's normal dignified state before she addressed the human calmly.

"We are currently engaged in delicate negotiations with the fugitive, human-Simmons; there is nothing more to be discussed," she stated tersely, her narrowed optics boring holes into the comparatively tiny – and easily squished – human intruder. But to Bumblebee that human was easily the most beautiful thing in the entire Universe.

"There has been an update," Simmons continued, bravely trying to hold the towering femme's gaze without flinching. "He's come to a decision regarding your earlier request."

Red continued to glare before Bumblebee felt her grip on his helm slacken before her servo released him entirely. She stood up from her kneeling position and turned to address Blue. "We will have to delay the interrogation to a later groon, Dropkick. Until then, make sure our 'guest' is made ready for my return."

Dropkick gave an annoyed grunt before nodding in acquiescence, "As you command, bond-sister."

Red stalked away from Bumblebee, pausing briefly to tap her servo against Dropkick's own before transforming into her ground alt-mode. Bumblebee watched on as Red revved her engine with a bestial roar and took off with a screech of rubber on cement, nearly clipping Simmons as she rolled out of the hangar.

"In case you are wondering," Dropkick rumbled, causing Bumblebee to nervously turn his attention back to the mech, "This isn't going to end well for you."

Before Bumblebee could ponder what he meant, Dropkick landed a vicious right hook just above his optic ridge. And at last, mercifully, Bumblebee's processor crashed; it would be hours before he rebooted.


Those first few klicks with Shatter and her malicious crony had been some of the longest of his entire life-cycle. It unnerved him how easily she had been able to coerce him, it shamed him beyond words how quickly he lost the will to resist her mind games. She had defeated him without even touching him, simply watching and waiting patiently as her partner beat him into scrap, her optics expectant and uncompromising; like his breaking was a foregone conclusion to her. And break he did.

When the second round of the interrogation came to an end, and Shatter bade her partner to kill him, he had panicked. He knew Dropkick was going to draw it out, make him suffer all the way to the bitter end; and in his fear addled mind he clawed for something, anything, that he could give to make Shatter call the brute off. Without even thinking, he had replayed the hololog of Optimus Prime giving him his mission. Like a coward he had sold out his leader, his people, all to save his worthless metal hide.

Sure he had an excuse, he hadn't been himself during that interrogation, his suppressed memory had left him weakened. But it all fell flat in his spark when he tried telling himself that. He still remembered every thought, every bit of pain, and every emotion that had gone through the helm of his lesser self with perfect clarity. How in the Pit was he supposed to make peace with that?

Taking down Dropkick and Shatter was supposed to be his atonement. With the both of them gone he had been able to begin the process of self-forgiveness, and attempt to come to terms with what had happened in the hangar that evening, both the torture and his inadvertent betrayal. He had put the memories of Shatter and the insecurities she had artfully woven in his spark to rest during his isolation, but now that he knew she had been alive all along, it brought back those feelings to the fore.

As much as he wanted to settle this score once and for all, there were too many priorities to sort through at the moment. Besides he had no idea where she could be hiding, and while Earth was over thirty times smaller than Cybertron, it was still too much area for one mech to cover in a reasonable time frame, which was probably why Shatter and Dropkick had relied on humanity to find him.

Then it hit him. The humans. More specifically Sector Seven.

The United States government was actively hunting Shatter and him at the very moment. Bumblebee didn't fancy himself an ambassador for his kind, such a task was best left to Optimus Prime - who excelled at such things; but that did not mean he couldn't try to steer Sector Seven closer in the direction of his arch-nemesis, the only question was how he would go about doing that without exposing himself to the organizations less than noble agenda.

He needed to contact Agent Burns.

"Charlie, I think I have an idea. But it's going to take a while, do you trust me?"

"Always," she answered.

"Good, I'll get started right away; you hold down the fort until then."

"Wait Bee, I… well I have questions."

Bumblebee hesitated for a moment before seating himself back onto the metal bench, "Alright, I'm listening."

There was hesitation on her end before she awkwardly asked, "What are you?"

Bumblebee settled in and tried to do his best impression of Optimus, "My name is Bumblebee, formerly B-127. I am an autonomous robotic organism from the planet Cybertron..."


Phoenix

A designation, I now had a designation. A title to distinguish myself from the Whole, a confirmation of my existence. Something close to elation warmed my dimly lit corner in the hibernating processor. If the logic center took note of my vague approximation happiness it gave no sign; it did not even know how to acknowledge my existence, much less react to it.

Designation: Phoenix

Those two words, the bare wisps of what I was coiled tightly around them – as if afraid that they would be lost forever in the yawning abyss surrounding me. It gave me a center, something to focus some semblance of an identity for myself. I am more than just a fragment, I was Phoenix.

The logic center was more active than ever now that I had been rescued from the Bad Place. The fiber optic array was now online most of the time, allowing me to appreciate surroundings other than total oblivion. With hydrocarbons having been introduced to my fuel processing system, work was now being done to convert said hydrocarbons into low grade energon. It would not be enough to make my frame fully operational or even enough to uplift the stasis-lock which kept the Whole blissfully incapacitated – but it was a step in that direction. And it would not take much longer before the Whole would come back online.

Then there was my rescuer to consider. The name giver.

I could feel the logic center calculating. Ever since the organic had made contact with my frame, it has been assessing the intruder with fanatical attention to detail.

One: the organic meant no harm

Two: it possessed some degree of skill in the healing sciences

Three: it had intended to take her far away from the Bad Place

These three attributes had compelled the logic center to endow the organic with temporary command clearance. It had been the only option left in that moment, other than wait for my precious remaining energon to run dry trying to defend my frame from organics seeking to dismantle and destroy me. The odds of survival had become so dismal, that the logic center had been left with only choice, to entrust my fate to the whims of an unknown human male. The Whole will probably be mortified when she finds out.

Thinking on the Whole I am left to wonder. Who is she? What kind of life does she lead that could make her suffer through the rigors of stasis lock not once but many times? It bothered me not having access to her memories, she was part of me… and I was part of her, even if she probably doesn't know I exist. If she did, something tells me she would have done something about me by now. Not that it would matter in the long scheme of things, when she woke up I would go back under; this has always been so. But that was okay, the Whole was in the end the Greater between us, and was more entitled to the full measure of whatever Life was.

As for me, I am simply happy that I would not die; not for now at least. My existence may be insignificant next to the femme whose consciousness I sharded from, but I was still grateful to have it. Perhaps some day I would learn what it's like to be truly alive, but until then all I can do is await the inevitable. And as for that human, I will never forget what he has given to me.

I can only hope that the Whole will share in my gratitude when she onlines.


Author's Note: I have been getting some odd requests for pairings in the reviews and private messaging. Let me set the record straight; neither Shatter nor Bumblebee will be hooking up with anyone in this story, especially not with each other (Shatter really, really wants to kill him painfully for fairly obvious reasons); I am also not going to turn Donny into a Cybertronian, that will completely destroy the narrative I am setting up and would invariably steal the focus from Shatter's story.

Also note, I have little patience for Bumblebee speaking through the radio. And neither does Bumblebee, luckily I found a way to get around that!

This chapter brings the story up to 50k words, and with that in mind, I feel that rather than string my audience along on an arduous restoration montage over the next few chapters – my original intention – I think I'll have Shatter wake up in the next chapter, just to release the suspense. Besides, I am eager to write in her POVs.