Chapter IX
February twelfth, two more days until Valentine's Day. Another holiday Foster would never understand, but for the heck of it, he participated. He helped Mary decorate some of her valentines and kept teasing Andrew after he found a picture of some girl in his math class hidden in his backpack. The boy's face had turned blood-red and Foster swore he could see grey steam coming from his ears. Andrew chased him around the house a few times but lost him once Foster had blended into the living room. He threatened to trample over him with Quincy-Adams one day and stomped back up to his room.
At some point before Valentine's, Foster found a small bag of Tootsie Rolls and inspected a piece. He unwrapped it and bit off a small portion. After a short while, the chocolate started to stick to the inside of his mouth. He kept chewing and smacking to try and get it inside his mouth, but that candy would not go down. He grabbed a toothpick from the cabinet and started scraping the chocolate out of his insides. He climbed up to the mirror next to the television to check and see if he missed any.
Henry walked down the stairs and grabbed his coat off the back of the chair near the dining room table and noticed the green robot picking the candy out of his teeth.
"Ow! Dang it!" the robot groaned. Henry walked closer to the sparkling, watching him scrape the chocolate mush out.
"Everything okay?" he spoke up.
"WHOA!" Foster fell off the chair he was standing on and landed into Henry's arms. "Nice catch."
"Thanks. What are you doing?"
"Trying to get this junk out of my mouth. So sticky!" He put the toothpick in his mouth again to try it another time. Henry laughed and set him on the ground. "You're gonna have to brush your teeth," he advised. Foster stomped his foot on the ground and pouted in Henry's direction.
"I don't wanna!" he whined.
"If you want that stuff out of your mouth, you'll have to brush them good. Hey, if you don't wanna get it out, fine. It'll be stuck there for a while until you brush."
Foster stood there, staring at Henry with a toothpick in his mouth. The man could hear a bit of whirrs inside the young robot's head as he tried to make out another way besides brushing to get the Tootsie Roll out.
"You win," he grumbled. Henry smirked as he walked back to the dining room table and picked up a small box. Foster stared at it for a while. "What's that?"
"Nothing!" Henry said, almost in a surprise. He hid the box from Foster's sight as the green robot started pointing and laughing.
"Henry's got a girlfriend! Henry's got a girlfriend!" he sang. Henry shushed him down to try and explain things.
"She's not a girlfriend…yet. I've sort of got a crush on her and I was planning on telling her Valentine's Day."
"What's her name?"
"You'll laugh."
"Please?" Foster got down on his little knees and clasped his hands together. "I won't tell anybody! I promise! Just tell me who she is. It'll be a long-kept secret, okay?"
Henry looked around to see if anyone else was nearby. Once he saw that the coast was clear, he knelt down to Foster and whispered the name into his ear. The green sparkling's optics grew huge and looked at Henry.
"You're in love with Andrea?!" he shouted. Henry shushed him again.
"You can't tell anybody!"
Foster motioned two fingers across his mouth to zip them up and mumbled. Henry smiled and said thanks as he walked out the door. Foster jumped around and squealed.
"Henry's loves Andrea! Henry loves Andrea," he sang softly to himself. He skipped up the steps to the bathroom to try and brush out the Tootsie Roll.
* * *
The next day, Daniel had to go work and Henry was busy going to the hospital since he heard that Gwen had been in a drunk driving accident. Though she was a pain, she was still his sister. Andrea had to come over and baby-sit again. Andrew showed her his new horse and Mary convinced her to play with the dolls. Foster felt a little left out and spent some time with the dogs in the barn. He spent the whole day hidden inside the barn and was called back inside when dinner was ready.
In the morning, Andrea took the kids back to school, since Daniel was still at work and Henry was making a long trip back from New York. Foster laid in the barn, petting the dogs and eventually fell asleep. The dogs kept him warm by nuzzling next to him and standing guard in front of him.
On the bus, Andrew started talking to his friend and picking through some of the valentines. None of them were ones actually meant for anybody, but Andrew kept looking for a perfect one to give his crush. While he and George were searching, they found the walkie-talkie.
"What the heck is this doing in here?" George asked as he picked it up.
"A walkie-talkie me and Mary got. Something freaky happened with it last time we turned it on."
"Like what?"
"Just some funky noises. It sounded like two robots talking to each other, but it was sonic-like. You know, a bunch of high-pitched sounds?"
"Really? Turn it on! Let's see if there's another!"
Andrew turned on the walkie-talkie and listened. For a while there was no sound, and when George finally agreed to turn it off, a small trilling sound came in. The voice started making other sounds and even sounded like it was laughing every now and then.
"I don't like that," Andrew gasped.
"Why not?"
"The last one didn't sound anything like this."
* * *
Foster was still asleep in the barn when Daniel and Henry made it back home. They put him under a small blanket and walked back inside to get something to eat.
"How long do you think he might be here?" Henry asked. "Few minutes? A month, year, forever?"
"I know for a fact that it won't be forever," Daniel corrected. "Crystal said that they would come back for him, and I believe her. Our job right now is to take care of him until that happens."
"You know, sometimes I even feel like he really is a family member."
"Because that's what he became."
Henry didn't have any time to reply to that when the television flickered a bit, erasing the news from the box and a static screen came to replace it.
"Man, the TV's fried!" Henry complained. Daniel knew it wasn't what Henry believed when he heard the sound hidden in the screen. He told his brother to listen closely and they both heard the electronic voice. It stopped short and the news was back on, continuing its report on a jail break.
Inside the barn, Foster's shell changed color to grey and his eyes deepened into a red as he snapped them open and looked around. He growled for a bit and stood up. Ben and Ken whimpered at seeing the sparkling's face change as it was from confused to angry.
"Imbecilic organics!" the sparkling snarled. His voice was deep and didn't belong to him. He shot a small ball of black energy towards one of the huskies. Ben was sent back towards the wall with a broken leg, and his friend trotted up to comfort him. Both the dogs flinched as Foster blew down the door with that same energy and walked outside. He groaned as he saw the sun stand out against the snow-grey sky and gave out a few words in a different language.
A car drove up to the property. It was some salesman trying to market some rifles he believed most farmers had used. He spotted the little grey robot and gasped as he got out of the car and rubbed his eyes to see if it was true.
"Hey, what are you!" he shouted. Foster looked over in his direction and glared. The man took a step back and grabbed one of his selling rifles from the back seat and pointed it at Foster. "I'll shoot!"
A smirk molded onto Foster's face and he held out a hand to shoot another dark ball of power at the man. The salesman jumped to the left, making the ball hit the car instead.
Back inside the house, Daniel and Henry ran out to see a car on fire and a man laying down on the dirt ground. None of them spotted Foster running into the snow-covered field of corn. Henry helped the man up while Daniel ran back in to get his rifle.
"Hey, you okay?" Henry asked him. "What happened?"
"Some grey…thing just shot at me! It was a silver robot!"
"How big was it?" Daniel asked as he came out and loaded his rifle.
"A--About two feet, maybe three?"
Henry looked back up at his brother. "Ain't Foster green?"
"This can't be good," Daniel groaned. He walked into the barn to get one of the dogs, but saw that not one of them was up for the job. Instead, he ran into the fields himself with just his rifle in hand.
"Foster!" he called out. He found his trail of small, round footprints and followed them. Daniel followed them for about half of a minute until he saw a burst of black energy shoot into the sky. The man memorized the spot and ran towards it. His destination turned out to be a newly created crop circle and a small purple robot standing in the middle of it. He held up his gun and watched Foster turn around to look at him.
Henry entered the scene and saw the maniacal robot smiling at them both.
"Get the orb," Daniel instructed. Henry didn't hesitate and ran back towards the house. "Foster! What are you doing?!"
"Is that the name you gave this Autobot?" the sparkling smirked. Daniel automatically knew this wasn't the fast-learning kid he knew, but something that was controlling him. "Humans… So simple-minded."
"Are you his dad?"
"His male caretaker? No, not at all. Just the one who wants to offline him. Who are you?"
"His temporary parent. Now let him go or I'll shoot!"
The dark voice inside Foster roared with laughter and smiled back at him wickedly.
"You really think Earth gunmetal can penetrate Cybertronian armor?" he chuckled. "This sparkling eats it, for Primus' sake!"
"Let go of my son!"
"Your son!" he laughed some more. "Tell me, human, what is your name?"
"Tell me yours first!"
"My name…is Megatron."
"I'm Daniel J. Dawson."
Henry came back at the edge of the crop circle and held the orb to Daniel. The man with the gun ordered his brother to give it to Foster. At first, Henry was terrified to even try, but he had to it for the small robot. He ran at full speed, attempting to dodge the attacks given to him. One charred his arm a bit, but he was able to escape everything else. Foster yelled out as Henry shoved the ball into his hands. The orb glowed blue, then pink, then violet as it absorbed the dark energy given to Foster and transferred it into itself. The young sparkling fell to the ground as his color changed back and passed out. Daniel lowered his gun and looked at the child carefully as Henry lifted him up gently into his arms.
"What happened to him?" Henry gasped.
"Possession, like those ghost movies" Daniel answered. "Someone else other than his parents wants him. We've got to make sure we don't give them the satisfaction of thinking of us as weak. Now, come on. There's a man I gotta talk to about a good rifle."
xXx
Author's Note: And that's where the plot begins... If some of you think you've figured out Foster's power, keep thinking! Oh, and Daniel's middle name is Jason.
