Chapter 8: In which Wildrider gets a shock

Wildrider came back online and deeply regretted doing so. Broken glass jabbed into his broken headlights and he barely registered metal components - his grille and the station wagon's trunk, twisted together from the force of the collison - squeal and grate against each other as they came apart.

Wait a minute, they're moving but my tires aren't. The thought came as though it had to wade through sludge to reach him. That means we've stopped.

He activated his optics just as the station wagon was pulled free and footsteps came closer. "I told you that one wasn't on the manifest," a human said. "Must've come off another carrier."

"Yeah, right," someone else said. "Who's going to move wheels like these without locking 'em down?"

Some of the fog was clearing away from Wildrider's mind - being surrounded by humans could do that to any Decepticon. He ignored the hands trying his locked doors as he did a quick self-diagnostic. Not good. His engine wasn't as busted up as his radiator, but it had started a leak and didn't look as though it could get him very far under his own power.

He turned his optical sensors up as far as they would go and saw where the humans had him - just outside what looked like a large warehouse. The other cars on the carrier had already been unloaded. One human was checking them over, shining flashlights on to their dashboards to read the VINs, while others pushed the damaged station wagon around the corner of the building. Closer to him, the driver was being chewed out for not noticing him sooner.

Better not transform here, Wildrider thought. All the humans'll see it and call the 'bots. What he needed was a secluded location where he could be safely repaired… like wherever they had taken the station wagon, maybe?

The human who had been berating the driver told the others to hurry up and get him out of the way, then came to do it himself. Wildrider popped a lock and let him open the door. Someone else muttered a little suspiciously that that had been locked a second ago, but Wildrider had yet to meet anyone who didn't seize the chance to get into the glossy leather driver's seat of an attractive, abandoned Ferrari. He slammed the door shut as soon as the human was inside.

"Hey, what--"

Wildrider spoke as quietly as he could from the internal speakers. "Got a garage on site?"

"Who the…" The human's voice trailed off as he saw the array of Decepticon technology before him. Outside, someone shouted at him to put the car into neutral, so Wildrider obligingly put himself into neutral, then rolled out of the carrier and down the ramp.

"I said, d'you have a garage on site?" he said. The human managed a jerky little nod. "Cool! Put your hands on the wheel and pretend you're driving me there. Vroom vroom."

Sweat gleamed on the human's face. "Y-you're a Decepticon."

"What gave it away, the Autobot heads on the back seat?"

The human actually turned to look and Wildrider giggled, though he quickly lost the amusement. Driving even a short distance hurt more than he had expected, and the human seemed a little braver by the time they were inside the garage.

"You'd better let me out," he said in a voice that was angry and tentative at the same time, like a very tiny animal baring its teeth. "The guys'll know something's up if I just keep sitting here."

"You know, you're right," Wildrider said, just to see the human start to relax. "So make your friends repair me and then come up with a really good reason why you'll just keep sitting there while they do the job. Or else I'll shoot 'em all and then make you repair me." He remembered how Geri had reacted when she had heard about her father. "And after that I'll find your family and shoot them too."

The human looked at him with more hate than Wildrider had seen from anyone in his life, but the threat worked. After shouting instructions when one red-tinted window rolled down a few inches, the human pretended to fix something that had come loose from the dashboard. Wildrider watched both the work outside and his internal diagnostics intently, ready to start firing at the first sign of sabotage, but nothing happened. The other humans – grumbling under their breaths – replaced his radiator and headlights, repaired his grille and soldered his engine before topping up all the fluids.

The work took hours, and since Wildrider had never been good at either patience or dissimulation, by the end of it he felt sure that the humans had all guessed what he really was. But while he had a hostage, they might think twice about starting a battle. Might.

"I want a can of gas," he said when all the repairs had been completed, unlocking a door as he did so. "And don't put any sugar in it or you'll be the one who drinks it." The more creative the threat, the more responsive the human seemed to be, so Wildrider was sorry to lose his captive audience; he felt sure he could imagine even worse things to try.

The human scrambled out so fast that he tripped over his own feet, making Wildrider laugh again, but he was back in moments with the gas can. He set it on the oil-smeared floor ten feet away before he turned and ran, the rest of the humans following just as fast.

"Aw, that's not nice," Wildrider called after them. "You could've at least put the can inside, and then I wouldn't have to do this." He activated his forcefield and transformed, smashing through the garage roof that was suddenly too low for him.

"Hey, instant skylight!" He giggled and reached for the gas can. It was for emergencies only; he was nowhere near as paranoid as Breakdown, but he didn't trust the humans not to sneak something into the fuel anyway. And there were plenty of gas stations along the way, so he would tap those first.

He stowed the gas can and flicked his thrusters, flying up out of the ruins of the garage; flames set the place alight in the next moment and he sent a few shots into the nearby warehouse for good measure as well. Sort of a "Wildrider was here" signature; plus, the Autobots would soon be galloping to the scene and it wasn't fair to leave them with nothing to do.

His good mood restored by repairs and ruin alike, he touched ground again, transformed and drove off with Metallica's "Fuel" pounding from his speakers. Now that's taken care of, time to find Geri and run over whoever flew that fragging plane.

He checked the signal from his emergency beacon. It was still active, though to his surprise it was nearly at the edge of its thousand-mile radius. Wildrider hadn't realized he had traveled so far; he was now in New Mexico. What was worse, his internal chronometer confirmed what he could already tell from the sunrise behind him; he had been offline for hours, and the repairs had taken more time than he had expected. It was already the start of the fourth day he had been away from the base. Better get this show on the road fast.

Not stopping for anything except gas, a trip through a car wash, a smash-and-grab at a Virgin Megastore to pick up some DVDs, more gas, a brief high-speed pursuit of a Corvette that looked like one of the Autobots, and a bit of highway sign enhancement (writing "Decepticons Rule!" with his lasers and signing it "Streetwise") he was back in California late into the afternoon. The sky was so overcast it looked more like evening, though, and sheet lightning flashed in the west.

Storm on the way, Wildrider though, hoping he wouldn't get too muddy. He still looked good after the car wash, his paintjob the same color as the thunderheads with flashes of red like the last of the sunset burning through the clouds. Too bad Geri can't see me.

The beacon was less than three hundred miles away now, and for the first time, Wildrider looked at the speed limit signs on the highway. That wasn't to say he obeyed them, but he tried not to go more than thirty miles over the limit. He wouldn't have cared about attracting attention if he had been alone – actually, he would have enjoyed that – but he didn't need any more distractions when he dealt with whoever had taken Geri away.

The last light of the day faded and was gone. Clouds rolled overhead as Wildrider covered the last hundred miles, cutting his speed even further as he saw the facility in the distance.

He spotted the water tower first, since that stood well over a hundred feet tall and was a large sphere with the letters SLS painted on its side. Wildrider slowed down a little more and circled the huge compound so that he could monitor his emergency beacon's signal from different angles. Yup, she's in there all right. It was always possible that the humans had found the beacon and separated it from Geri, but he would worry about that if and when it happened.

He completed his circuit of the place, which seemed like a storage area for humans and machines alike. At least the machines were recognizable – cranes and dozers and wrecking balls, though most were yellow with touches of blue, rather than the green-and-purple he was familiar with. Just machines, then.

Wildrider parked on the side of the road a hundred yards from the main entrance and tried to think. He could simply bash through the high wire fence, or fly over it, and start shooting until the humans gave Geri back, but what if they deactivated her first? He'd pushed his advantage to the maximum when he had a prisoner, so the humans might do the same thing.

What other choice do I have, though? he thought. Soundwave's midgets might've snuck into the place but I can't do that. Gotta take the risk. Besides, if it was me in there instead, I'd want Geri to smash in and shoot the fragging place up instead of sitting around and wasting time.

With that settled, he felt better already. Thunder roared overhead, but it didn't seem any louder than the blare of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy" from Wildrider's speakers or the snarl of his engine. He slewed over on to the road that led up to the facility's entrance and sped up.

The humans inside the compound either saw or heard him coming. Most of them fled, but one of them ran up to the wire fence and drew a gun. Wildrider was close enough by then to see that, and a moment later the bullets struck his forcefield. They couldn't hurt him, but he still felt little punches of kinetic energy and that annoyed him.

He floored his accelerator and fired back. His lasers melted a gap in the fence just large enough for him and sent the human screaming to the ground. Serves the idiot right, Wildrider thought, trying to fight a Stunticon with nothing more than a peashooter and a peabrain. Only thirty yards away, twenty…

In the darkness, sparks flickered from the thick criss-cross wires of the fence – those wires that had broken cleanly rather than melting. That's weird, Wildrider thought, it's almost as if--

He looked away from the human, switching to his optical sensors' wide-field function. That was enough for him to see, in his peripheral vision, a yellow sign mounted high on the criss-cross wire and far to his right.

Warning: Electric Fence.

Wildrider slammed the brakes instinctively, which was a mistake. Since he was traveling far too fast, the sudden clampdown of brakes sent him into a skid as he tried to turn. It lasted for only an instant, which was all any Stunticon took to recover, but that instant took him the last few yards to the fence, tires flinging up sprays of gravel. His hood just missed the fence, but his trunk smashed solidly into the mesh of high-tensile wire.

Twenty thousand volts hit him like a sledgehammer. Wildrider jolted uncontrollably, trying to scream. The surge of electricity paralyzed every motor function and the fence held him in place like a fly in a web. Sparks leaped and hissed from broken wires.

Wildrider tried to reverse or drive forward, but nothing happened. He couldn't transform either; when he tried, his components twitched randomly, scrambled by the electricity still driving into him like waves of needles. Red warnings flickered in his diagnostic queue, only to break up as his vision turned to swimming static. The human who had baited him into the trap was broken as well, lying flat on the other side, but that was the last thing he saw before a grey mist covered everything.

From a long way away he heard someone shout an order to shut off the fence. Too late now, he thought but the electricity was cut off a few moments later. The pain faded to a raw pulse in his circuits. The music had stopped too – are my speakers damaged? he wondered through a daze – so the loudest sound in his audials was the frantic whir of vents trying to cool down systems on the brink of overheating.

Then the humans closed in. Wildrider stayed motionless, not that he was capable of doing much else. If they thought he was still a danger to them, they might shoot out his tires or something, so he had to play deactivated until his systems recovered. Let's see how soon that'll be, he thought and looked at his diagnostic queue.

Transformation sequence: offline. Repair time: 1.4 breem. Like all the Stunticons, Wildrider thought in terms of Earth units – he supposed that was one result of being made out of human vehicles and being far more familiar with Earth than with Cybertron – so he did a rapid recalculation. Just over seven minutes, that's not too bad.

Weapons systems: offline. Repair time: 2.5 breem. Thirteen minutes. Lucky thirteen. Or is it unlucky? Slag, I can never remember.

Thrusters and anti-gravity: offline. Repair time: 4.2 joor. A whole day. And I have a funny feeling that the next one's going to take even longer to fix…

Forcefield: offline. Repair time: n/a. Oh great, now I'll get flak from the Constructicons for busting that. He could see why no other Decepticons had forcefields; they were so finicky to repair. Still, at least he could transform in a little while, and he could defeat any number of humans in either mode. All he had to do was buy time until--

A heavy trundling sound vibrated through the ground; metal clanked and a pulley whirled. Wildrider activated his optics just as a human, hands encased in rubber gloves to protect against residual shocks, approached with a huge hook.

A cable ran from the hook to a crane just beyond. All right, they want to pull me away from the fence. I'm fine with that. He was less fine with the sharp new jab as the hook drove into his undercarriage just beneath the bumper, but he managed to keep still while imagining what he would do to the humans as soon as he was functional.

The crane's operator moved a lever. The machine – taller by far than Wildrider in his alt-mode – lurched back and reeled in its line at the same time. Wildrider was hauled free of the fence, broken wires scraping him every inch of the way with thin squeals that would have made him cringe if he hadn't been in alt-mode. When he was ten feet away from the fence, the crane stopped and another human came to remove the hook.

Wildrider sighed inwardly with relief. Good, now all he had to do was wait until he could transform again, just a few more minutes.

Another machine lumbered up from his left. It was a forklift, Wildrider realized a moment before its two long metal tines slid under him. He felt them touch his undercarriage just behind the front wheels and before the rear ones, and then the forklift's powerful hydraulics went into effect.

Wildrider weighed just over a ton, but the forklift had been designed to raise four times that weight. He was off the ground in the next moment, suspended on the tines. At least it's not painful, he thought, though it made him think of the way humans sometimes refueled, lifting solids on to much tinier forks.

The forklift trundled away, taking Wildrider with it. Maybe they're just going to throw me out, he thought hopefully, but more machines seemed to be working just ahead. He heard a slow, grating metallic crunch and turned his optics in that direction.

Lightning flashed. The burst of whiteness reflected off the other car just yards away. Its paintjob was a darker shade of grey than Wildrider's, though he thought that could be the shadows of the jaws…

…the jaws of the compactor it was in.

Wildrider didn't even have time to recognize the car's make and model before the jaws closed. From above and below they came together inexorably, thousands of pounds of pressure even before the compactor rocked to bring its full force to bear. Metal screamed and buckled as the car's doors folded like paper.

When the thunder rolled overhead, it was so loud that the crack of the car's windshield sounded like a pop. By then the roof was at engine level, and in another second there was no more engine. Headlights splintered, glass fragments spilling like a handful of rain.

Wildrider watched, frozen. The compactor tilted. A foot-thick slab of crushed grey metal slid out and thudded to the ground. The jaws gaped open again, waiting, and the forklift rolled forward with him.


Taipan Kiryu: Hope this was exciting enough. :) The other Stunticons (two of them, anyway) will not exactly be appearing in the story, but you'll hear from them five chapters from now.

Good to hear that you liked the parts from Geri's POV! I knew a blind student when I was in college, and she participated in activities like the rest of us – in fact, she was the treasurer for the residence hall council. She's probably been the inspiration for my tough female characters who are also blind. Geri's the third of those; the others were in medieval fantasies, where things were a bit rougher for them.

By the way, I read the first two chapters of "Till All Are None" last night and am going to finish the rest today. It's rare to see the non-Starscream, non-Skywarp, non-Thundercracker Deceptijets given real screentime in a story. Ramjet and Starscream make a cute pair, too.

Fire From Above: That fire alarm didn't set itself off. :) Glad you're enjoying the read.

tomorrow4eva: Thanks for the review! I think Astoriawas someone's idea of an assertive female character. You know – head of a corporation, extremely strong, gives Megatron plenty of backtalk, etc. Maybe because she was so bizarrely strong, she didn't get hurt when Powerglide threw her around, not that that makes it right.

That reminds me – in Kidu's fic "Adapt", where the Autobots and Decepticons are turned into humans, Powerglide marries Astoria. I can't help wondering how that relationship turned out, though fortunately the story focused on other characters.

Cybernetic Mango: No, the kidnapping is the only thing that actually went according to plan. Every protagonist in this story makes some wrong assumption or the other (which eventually bites them in the aft).

dixiegurl13: As you noticed, Geri was intended to be a foil to Wildrider, yin and yang. They won't always get along peacefully, but at least they'll have fun (until the end, anyway).

And thank you for the story recommendation!