AN: Exams—I freakin' hate exams. Especially when one gets scheduled before I can get all my books. Anyway I totally meant to get this chapter out earlier because of the cliffhanger from the last one, but life decided to give me a major stress attack before going on it's merry way :(
"Thinking"
:Com Talk:
~Bond Speech~
A New Version of Reality
Chapter Eight
Perspectives
Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him. ― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"What if she's been in an accident?"
"Blue-"
"Or finally got tired of us-"
"Bluestreak."
"-and left to go be with Bumblebee because right now he's probably a lot more preferred than us at the moment." Bluestreak gasped in his overexaggerated hysteria, causing Wheeljack to sigh and shake his head in exasperation. "What if she decides to become Bumblebee's human? She can't do that; she's still my bonded human! And what will the Twins say if I let her run off with 'Bee? Oh, they're gonna kill me..."
"Bluestreak! Calm down and listen-"
"Wheeljack watch what you're doing!"
Wheeljack emitted an unseemly yelp as he unknowingly tipped the container of chemicals he was handling and they spilled out onto the plating covering his left thigh. Without pause, he reached across the table to snatch up a bottle of cloudy solution and squirted it liberally on the area. He groaned at the sight of where the acid had completely eaten away his pristine paint. Great, now he would have an ugly, paintless patch on the side of his truck bed when he transformed because Star had wasted all the white paint.
Bluestreak smiled sheepishly at the glare the engineer turned on him. "You should pay more attention when handling acids?"
"Bluestreak you need to calm down," Wheeljack said with an abnormally strained tone as he placed the container back on the table. "Victoria said she had to do something and then she would be back. She's a grown woman both mentally and physically, and if she wants to stay out until the sun comes up then she can. What she would do during that time is a good question since she isn't of legal age to get into most of the joints that open after the sun falls, but again it's her choice. Maybe she has a 'guy friend' that we don't know about."
Wheeljack noticed Bluestreak's highly displeased look and nodded approvingly. "That's right. Guy friends must be thoroughly approved by us before they can even think of advancing to the level. And then they have to get through her dad and Eric. I actually feel bad for any guy she tries to date."
The younger mech nodded in agreement before looking lost. "But I thought you said she forgave me. If that's true then why's she still blocking me?"
"Hm, maybe she is doing some naughty things."
"'Jack."
"But why would she need a screwdriver for that? Unless…what if she didn't actually mean a screwdriver but some kind of kinky-"
"Wheeljack! That's gross!"
"Sorry, the gutter seems to have a magnet hiding in it and my mind has the opposite pole. It's completely out of my hands that they happen to be attracted to each other."
Bluestreak groaned as the engineer's optics dimmed slightly. "No more perverted stuff Wheeljack. Do you have a problem getting laid or something? Is that why you have these moments?"
"Well, so-rry! It's not my fault Ratchet isn't very forthcoming."
"Ew!" The Praxian shrieked and ran out of the barn, repeating the word over and over again while bringing his servos up to protect his delicate audial receptors. "I don't wanna hear about your interface life! It's…it's like having to listen to Prowl talk about his if he had one!"
Wheeljack's fins flashed a bright blue with immense amusement. "You prude. You're the one that asked." He paused and shuddered for no reason, glancing over his shoulder and cringing instinctively as if something had been thrown at him. "Awe, pit. I didn't even think about what Ratchet would do if he hears I used him to imply something perverted. He was not happy last time. Bluestreak, I take everything I just said back and will give you a year's supply of gummy Energon if you never mention this incident to Ratchet!"
The engineer paused after running after Bluestreak and finding the mech standing right outside the barn, his formally amused air suddenly cold and depressed. Wheeljack found the reason for extreme change standing at the back door with a sniffling sparkling awkwardly held up on his hip.
Star grunted and staggered halfway across the yard until he finally ran out of energy and carefully put Recall down on his own pedes. Recall whined and tried to climb back into the Seekerlet's arms, but Star shook his head and beeped down at the smaller mechling with slight annoyance, pointing towards where the two older mechs stood. Blue optics shuttered and uncontrollable hiccups shook the tiny frame as he plopped down onto his behind and began to cry.
He wasn't left alone for long, and he curled up in Wheeljack's servo after the mech had scooped him up. The fins of the engineer's face lit up the little, whimpering form in his servo as he repeated reassuring nothings. Bluestreak stood beside him with a forlorn expression on his face. "He wants Vicky."
"Duh," Wheeljack managed to get between the comfort noises he made. "Victoria's made herself his number one source of comfort. When she didn't come at the first sound of crying, he must have felt terrible." He sighed when he realized his attempts were useless as the crying increased in volume and vaguely waved Bluestreak towards the mechling still standing before them. "Get Star back to bed while I deal with this. The last thing we need is two crying sparkings."
Bluestreak made a stressed sound when the older mech turned back to the barn without another word and turned to Star. "Hey Star. You wanna…go for a little ride? It'll put you to sleep."
The Seekerlet balefully glared up at the mech and turned away with a huff. Bluestreak's door-wings clung to his lower back as he watched Star trot back into the house, returning with a throw blanket from the couch and a familiar brown bunny, and ran right past the mech to the barn where Recall's cries were steadily growing in intensity.
Bluestreak hung back and stared morosely at the empty yard. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make everyone upset…"
)(
Victoria would admit that her first reaction after being sent into total darkness was to panic. She fell to the cement floor after tripping over her own feet and started groping around in an attempt to find the flashlight that had fallen from her hand in her rush to get to the door. As she searched for it, panic filled her and she was prepared to drop the block she still had up from earlier—to signal to Blue to come and save her from the void that seemed ready to swallow her…
A whimper to her left caught her attention, and Victoria's distressed mind was able to remember that she wasn't alone. She had a very young sparkling to take care of—that was the entire reason she was even here!
The woman sat back and pulled her knees to her chest, hugging them close and balancing her forehead on top as she worked to calm her breathing while keeping Bluestreak none-the-wiser. The last thing she needed (or wanted for that matter) was for the sharpshooter to blindly come for her when he felt her distress because even if James hadn't singlehandedly taken down that dissected mech, he knew how to do it. And she didn't want to see him, Wheeljack, or their sparklings on display like that. Plus she couldn't care for the other occupant trapped with her if she allowed her panic to take over and block the rest of the world out.
So Victoria did the best thing she could think of at the time: she began to shut off her emotions. It was like stepping into an old pair of shoes, albeit a pair of slightly smaller shoes that pinched your toes horribly. She hadn't done something so extreme during her second lease at life, though she had come close to doing so when her mother died again and the only thing that had kept her from doing so was Bluestreak. But she remembered her years as a teenager and young adult from her past life, before she had met any of the Transformers. Concentrating now on shoving all of her extreme emotions—the ones that would lead her to panic while trapped here—to the back of her mind, she now wondered what had possessed her to do that the first time. The fear of being hurt again most likely. God, she was such a coward at times.
By the time Victoria had calmed down enough to think straight, the whimpers had evolved to other soft sounds of distress punctuated by the occasional click and the sound of tiny fans kicking on. She felt her way through the darkness until she bumped up against the bassinet. The whimpers stopped immediately, though the fans continued to drone uncontrollable. Victoria slowly stood up until she stood above the stand; dark yellow optics illuminated a tiny face as he stared up at her with distrust and a fear that almost broke her heart.
"Come here sweetie," she started softly and reached out blindly to pick up him. "We're gonna be okay; we'll get out of here. Until then, let me take care of you. Are you hungry? I bet you are."
The sparkling grunted softly in response to the human's soft voice and eventually curled up to her chest as she continued to feel around the floor with her feet for the flashlight, cursing once when she hit her shin on the corner of the stand. It took a while and some fancy footwork until the light was found, and after that Victoria pointedly placed them in the farthest corner from the door where they were protected on two sides by solid wall.
Maneuvering the sparkling that was slowly falling back to sleep with care, Victoria reached into the messenger bag that had almost been forgotten. The first order of business was to get some Energon in the baby's tank. He had gone over a week longer than Recall and Star, and it honestly amazed her that he was still able to function, no matter how weak that range of function was.
James must have concluded by the mechanics of the sparkling's body that it required a type of fuel and kept it alive by force feeding it crude oil from an average gas pump. She couldn't help but cringe at the thought. Bluestreak had told her once that while he and Wheeljack could use the gasoline without refining it, it had an awful taste and could even cause damage to their tanks if it sat for too long. It was a blessing that Wheeljack had already been working on a way to convert the resources on Earth into Energon, so the period of using the raw material was brief.
Victoria pulled out the lunch bag she had nabbed from the house and pulled a cool bottle of Energon from it. Uncapping it without caring for where the protective top landed, she moved the sparkling around a little more until she was able to gently nudge his lips with the rubber nipple.
At first, he refused to accept the new, strange thing demanding entrance, turning his head from side to side with a whine whenever it touched him. With a few gentle encouragements and manually squeezing out a drop of Energon to slightly saturate his mouth, Victoria was able to get him to accept it and waited for him to continue from there. His amber optics flickered back on for a moment at his first tentative sucks before offlining once more, sucking with a little more gusto now and emitting what she considered to be a happy grunt.
The woman smiled happily and gently hummed and rocked as the sparkling consumed his real first meal since landing on Earth. Unfortunately the joy of getting him to eat didn't last. He was only able to drink about a fourth of the bottle before turning his head away and spitting up a tiny glob of congealed Energon mixed with what looked like remnants of gasoline. Victoria took the spit up in stride and used the worn blanket she had found with the sparkling to clean it up.
"You're okay," she cooed when she saw clear liquid surrounding the yellow optics glint in the little light the flashlight provided. "We'll just have to take it slow and let your little tank adjust to the different fuel. You're probably use to the stuff he feeds you now."
The sparkling curled up close to her with a whimper, little vents emitting a strained sound that made her worry. Victoria pushed the bottle back into the bag and pulled out the thick throw blanket she had had the forethought to grab. At least it had a purpose, unlike that useless screwdriver.
"Unless I can get close enough to that bastard to drive it into his eye socket," Victoria thought vindictively, her gentle movements to wrap the cold child up with the blanket a gross contradictory to her thoughts. "Wheeljack and Bluestreak would probably be disappointed with my actions, but damn, would it make me feel better."
Thoughts of revenge were shoved to the back of her mind like she had done with her earlier panic, and she laid on her side, back to the door of the cage as a final small wall of protection for the sparkling already back in recharge in his new, comfy blanket cocoon. Victoria allowed her fingertips to stroke the back of his helm and stared blankly at the wall as plans for an escape flitted through her head.
None of them proved useful, and most of them ended with James being comically squished by a huge pede.
)(
Victoria didn't even realize that she had fallen into a light sleep until a loud curse woke her. Eyes snapping open and heart pounding at the sudden rush of alarm filled adrenaline, the woman allowed her body to instinctively tense up and stared wide eyed at the grey wall though the chain linked fence. Wait a minute, how could she see…
The brunette slowly glanced over her shoulder with caution and noted the entire basement was now flooded with light, even the space that the cage occupied. Loud clicking seemed to bounce off the walls, and she saw James was leaning over one of the tables, using his elbows for leverage as his fingers flew across the keyboard. He froze before releasing a huge sneeze that made the sparkling in her arms jump and release a sudden cry.
Victoria sat up when James turned at the sound, shielding the sparkling when the man smiled widely. "Good morning! I wasn't sure when you would wake up, but you seemed to be sleeping so well that I didn't want to bother you when I had to change the light bulbs."
It felt like a ball of lead suddenly descended into her stomach as she slowly looked up to see a light fixture that required those long light bulbs centered above the cage. She had been certain that the reason behind the area being dark was because there were no lights in the area. Now she finds out that he had- "What do you mean you changed the light bulbs?"
He nonchalantly pointed up at the fixture she was staring at. "Yeah, I noticed how it wasn't working last night, so I decided to take a look at it, and—surprise, surprise!—it needed to be changed. I'd almost forgotten how hard it was to change those things."
"How-"
"I moved a ladder in there, temporarily popped the top of the cage off, and changed it. Simple as that."
Victoria stared as he turned around in a circle, searching for something, and instinctively hugged the sparkling closer. He had been inside the cage? Changing a freaking light bulb? After taking apart a section of the cage? How the hell did she not notice that?
"I don't have much in the kitchen, but I found some stuff to put together a sandwich. Guess I'll be going into town soon."
James placed a plate right outside the door, and Victoria stared blankly at it. What he expect—for the plate to fit through the tiny spaces in the cage? Apparently so, because he left it there and looked back at her expectantly. She shifted slightly under his stare, accidentally allowing him to catch sight of the sparkling.
"Ah, so that's where it went. I thought it was a little odd when I found the bed tipped over on the floor. It must have been hard to find it in the dark." He paused and looked very surprised at something. "How did you make its eyes look so bright? I've had it for a week now, and its eyes have been duller and duller despite the fuel I've been giving it."
Victoria glared and turned away to keep the sparkling out of his eyesight as the bright yellow-orange optics looked up at her somewhat expectedly. "He is not an it. He is a baby who hasn't been properly taken care of because an ignorant man happened to find him before we could."
James nodded wisely and said, as if they were just having a casual conversation over lunch, "I'm sorry. I never had to actually take care of one like I've had to do for this one. N.B.E 01 didn't really need much maintenance in his froze state and most of the others…well, they didn't actually last long enough to be taken care of."
Her eyes darted over to the display of the unknown mech's head. Yeah, she could see that they didn't last long. "You seem like you've come across a few."
An abrupt laugh was choked out of the man, and he rubbed at his chin with a tinge respect. "Maybe I have, but don't think that means I'll tell you all about them. I'm sure you feel the same way about your finds."
She scowled at him when he turned his back and returned to the computer. He went from an extremely paranoid person, to an overly nice man, to one that simply exuded confidence, and now he's acting almost normal. It could have been because of the circumstances, but Victoria couldn't help but think that he might need to see a doctor about his extreme personality changes. Even if she wasn't as informed as Smokescreen seemed to be, it was easy to tell that not everything was correctly connected in the graying brunet's head.
Victoria glanced at the food he had left behind, a new question forming. "So, what did you spike the sandwich with? Arsenic? Some kind of date rape drug?"
James looked truly offended as he turned back to her. "I wouldn't poison your food. That's just…it's a despicable way to kill a person. It's bad enough that we have people in our world that run around and kill others with things like guns and knives. And the people who have to suffer for it have no means to protect themselves. Take for instance yourself. I already have you contained. Why would I expend the energy to do you harm when you're not a threat?"
"Is that why you have the dissected head on display? He was a threat?"
He gave her a relaxed smile that barely reached his eyes hidden behind his wire glasses. "I haven't encountered one of those things that wasn't. They have no sense of mercy."
James turned back to his computer again, making it obvious that he didn't wish to continue the conversation. Victoria stared at his back before doing as he did, turning her back and focusing on the sparkling in her arms. He was looking around, a little more aware of his surroundings than last night but still sluggish with his responses. She delicately traced his stubby nose ridge with a fingertip, and it took him a minute to reach out and grab the finger, missing a few times before finally dragging it back to his mouth to gum on the tip.
She should probably attempt to feed him again and see how much he would be able to keep down. Maybe now that she could see him clearly, she'd be able to get a better understanding of what condition he was in. It was hard to tell when a Cybertronian was suffering from "dehydration" just by examining their outward appearance. Telltale signs could be dimmed optics and fluid lines that were thinner than they should be, but sometimes those were caused by other factors. "Starvation" was somewhat easier to pick up on as the Cybertronian in question will often look as if they had "lost weight" from their systems cannibalizing the protoform in an attempt to regain the nutrients needed to keep those systems going, but picking that up without performing a proper medical scan required knowing the mech or femme's original mass and being able to see past their armor.
The only thing that appeared wrong with the sparkling at first glance was that he was way smaller than Star or Recall (that required an explanation form Wheeljack), the lines that she could examine without causing discomfort were a little thin (but that could have been because of his before mentioned size), his fans sometimes emitted an odd sound that she'd never heard from a Cybertronian, and his optics sometimes flickered between brightness settings or completely off for no apparent reason. Other than those few oddities she was highly impressed by the condition he was in.
"How were you able to take care of him so well?"
James glanced over his shoulder before returning to scribbling on a piece of paper. "After the first few days it came to my attention that if I didn't do something it wouldn't last long enough to even be of use. I started giving it gasoline because former research found that some of the mechanics of these things are similar to cars. Or I should probably say the cars are similar to the things.
"There was really nothing else wrong with it. I noticed it couldn't really move on its own, and it stayed in one position on the floor most of the time. The metal composing its body is more malleable and appears to bend when settled in one position for too long. So I found an old bassinet to put it in. That was why you saw all those boxes moved around when you came in. You did see the boxes right?"
He waited for her hesitant nod before continuing. "Yes, so after discovering that and assuring myself that it had no weapons-"
"How did you do that?"
James blinked at the interruption. "Well, I did it the only way I could. I attempted to take the armor off-"
"That isn't armor," Victoria said with horror. She abruptly grabbed the sparkling's arm and turned it around every which way to find any anomalies on his arm where common weapons could be found on any Cybertronian. The sparkling blinked and made it difficult for her by deciding he suddenly wanted to be active, waving his arm around and reaching up to try and grab her short strands of hair that fluttered above him. "He's not big enough to have armor yet. This is like, like skin!"
"Uh yeah! I kinda figured that out when he started screaming bloody murder. Took half the night to calm him down and the other half for the headache to go away. Proved to be fairly informational though. Even after the years of observing N.B.E. 01, I never knew that the layer beneath the armor was so sensitive." The man noticed that the horrified expression hadn't left her face. "You look at me like I'm monster."
"What did you do to him?"
"I simply tried to pry apart what I thought was armor, and he started screaming in pain. After that I never tried again."
Victoria looked down at the sparkling playing with her fingers and then over at the bassinet that was perfectly placed in the middle. "Why a bassinet? It seems kind of ironic with the surroundings."
James gave a half shrug. "He's too small for anything else, and I happened to know it was lying around not being used…"
Victoria didn't miss his slip of words. He'd gone the whole conversation making a point to refer to any Cybertronian as "it," "thing," or the specifically named "N.B.E 01." Words that put distance between him and them—made them appear more like objects than actual sentient beings. But you don't put an object in a bassinet or even cared when it started screaming.
So Victoria decided to take another approach than the one she had planned. Instead of hiding the sparkling from him, she made a point to get up, walk across the cage, and place the child into the bassinet. A small cry of displeasure came from him until she pulled out another object from her bag. It was a small white bear that neither Recall nor Star had ever shown interest in. She figured it would have come in handy to keep the sparkling calm if he got upset over his sudden change of environment.
James watched as the sparkling stared at the object she held out to him and gingerly accepted it after Victoria cooed and wiggled the teddy bear above him. He clicked and poked curiously at the black beads of the bear's eyes before pulling at the simple bow tied around its neck with jerky motions. The woman allowed the sparkling to play alone as she turned around to casually saunter to the front of the cage and lean against it. "So…what makes this one special enough to be referred to as 'he?'"
The man's eyes snapped to her and he clamped shut, making his stance as neutral as possible. "If you would excuse me, I had a pot of tea on the stove and it's most likely done now."
Victoria watched him leave, noticing that he left the door open and lights on. Apparently the sparkling was a touchy subject for her jailer, challenging his previous beliefs.
And that could be their key out of here.
)(
Star glared up at the dark grey mech with the fake wings and bold splash of red on his stupid forehead. He had never liked this mech as much as Wheeljack. He'd been tricked at their first meeting and had actually been excited to see someone else with wings. His wings may not have been fully grown, but he knew instinctively that one day he'd be able to fly through the air, and that sent an excited thrill through him. He had wanted to be ready when that time came and had thought that the older mech could teach him.
But he had been tricked. Those weren't real wings; they were horrible fakes that folded down to form doors when the mech transformed. At least Wheeljack didn't try to trick him with his wing…thingies. What were those? They didn't even vaguely move like wings—they barely moved at all! Maybe they were some kind of sensors…but why would Wheeljack have sensors in such a vulnerable position, especially when Vivi joked half the time about him blowing up?
Whatever, the engineer wasn't supposed to be the focus of his thoughts right now anyway. The fake winged mech was his current annoyance.
Star never liked Bluestreak, even before he had run off Vivi. There was the matter of the fake wings of course, but he was also as much of an attention hog as Recall was. The mech was always taking the woman's attention away when Star wanted it. He didn't really mind when Recall did it because Recall was a stupid baby who still needed to be taken care of. But Bluestreak was just stupid; he didn't have an excuse in Star's optics.
"Please Star," Bluestreak begged now and carefully held out Star's favorite sippy cup, the one with the cool (but obviously fake) jets on it. "Just take the sippy cup. Victoria will be upset if she finds out you haven't eaten the whole time she was gone."
Star arrogantly turned his helm away and caught sight of Recall on the other side of the yard. The sparkling was sprawled out on a blanket underneath the shade of a tree, taking his normal afternoon recharge after his lunch. Stupid sparkling acted like nothing had happened. Like their human caretaker was just stepping out for a while and would show up later.
Where was Wheeljack? He wanted to go inside but Bluestreak wouldn't let him. So how was he going to make another masterpiece for his squishy caretaker? He couldn't draw with a stick!
Star growled and darted away when Bluestreak reached down to pick him up. "Star hold still! If I have to feed you like the sparkling you are, then I will. Don't you—don't you dare go into that house! I can't get to you if you get hurt in there."
The Seekerlet darted this way and that, dashing up the back porch. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned to stick his glossa out at the not so happy mech, who was blocked by the roof of the porch. He was going to do what he wanted to do and Bluestreak didn't have any authority over him because he didn't like the mech.
And Bluestreak was never going to get one his masterpieces.
Star ignored the angry voice of the mech-who-was-never-allowed-a-masterpiece and casually strolled through the house to the living room, stopping to pick up the clear container that usually stored his drawing materials. He ignored the face that glared at him through the window as he slowly collected his markers, pencils, crayons, and paper, and then specifically arranged them within the container.
The Seekerlet looked up once—once—and clicked at the angry Bluestreak. "You mad afthead?" would have been a close translation to what he said, and Bluestreak picked up on the tone and deepened his scowl. "I am not playing with you Star. Get back out here now."
Star stuck his glossa back out and blew a raspberry at the mech. "You're not my sire!" he clicked, not questioning where the term had come from since it had never been used around him. "Vivi's not here either."
"Just –just wait until Wheeljack and Victoria get back! I'm going to tell them how bad you were compared to Recall."
So? More attention for him…afthead. Star giggled—the first happy noise he had emitted since coming online. There was just something about that word that made him giggle. Afthead…ah, it sent him into a giggling fit.
"Stop trying to be cute," Bluestreak huffed as he watched Star bend over his container with uncontrollable giggling. "I'm seriously mad at you. Get your crayons and get back out here."
Star stuck his glossa out again but the fun at making the mech angry was dimmed by the fact that Bluestreak suddenly stood up and vanished from sight. The mechling beeped with curiosity and moved to the front window. He ran to the front door when he saw a cloud of dust coming towards the house.
Vivi! Vivi was back, and that meant he could tell her how bad Bluestreak was—not letting him color, or come in the house when he wanted to, and keeping his sippy cup hostage. Bluestreak was a bad, bad mech, and he needed a timeout. A timeout for the bad, fake winged, not allowed to have a masterpiece afthe-
Star's shoulders slumped when a familiar white truck, now coated with a thin layer of dust, came to a halt in front of him. Wheeljack transformed and crouched down to pat the mechling on the helm. "Not exactly the person you wanted to see, huh? Looks like our dear Vicky has made quite the impression on you, which is weird. Seekers are notorious for sticking with others of their build, but I guess that's kind of impossible for you at the moment."
Star huffed and turned away from the engineer, letting Bluestreak take over the conversation. "Did you find anything? Has she been to town? Did anyone see her?" The sharpshooter's door-wings fell when Wheeljack shook his head. "I'm starting to get worried. She isn't picking up her phone, and of course, the one and only thing she seems capable of mastering with the bond is blocking everyone else out. When she isn't under a lot of stress that is."
"Don't be like that," Wheeljack said, picking Star up when the Seekerlet allowed him to. "Something tells me that you're not as good with the bond as you make yourself out to be. Blocking is just the easiest thing to learn. Now being able to differentiate between whose emotions are whose, that's more difficult, which was why you were so influenced by Victoria. Where's Recall?"
"Under the tree taking his afternoon recharge. Can't we track her down through her phone or something? You had to have put something in the station wagon when you guys were fixing it."
"As a matter of fact, I did not." Wheeljack walked over to the tree and placed Star down beside Recall. He held his servo out for the sippy cup that Bluestreak was still carrying around, and the Praxian scowled when Star accepted the cup from the older mech without a fuss. "You see, Victoria isn't an Autobot soldier. We put in those trackers in case of the event of an Autobot being left behind on the battlefield…or as an identifier when there's no other way to do so. Victoria's a full grown woman who has used that car a total of ten times because she prefers to stick with us. I didn't see a reason at the time to chip that pile of junk metal."
Bluestreak vented a sigh and watched as Wheeljack pulled some materials from his subspace and placed them in front of Star. The Seekerlet took interest in them immediately, absently sucking down his Energon while using his free hand to shift through the stuff. "I don't get it. Why does he like you more than me? I've been nice to him since Victoria brought him home, but he's always sticking his nose up at me like I'm not worthy to be around him. I haven't even raised my voice to him before ten minutes ago, and that was because he refused to listen to me!"
"One problem you're facing is that sparklings don't listen to anyone. There are certain people that they behave around, but they do their own thing and all you can do is try to steer them in a direction that will cause least harm. That's why it's obvious that you're not ready to be a parent. He also might dislike you because you have fake wings."
Bluestreak frowned and looked over his shoulders at his wiggling door-wings. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Eh, that's right. You lived your whole life before the war in Praxus, surrounded by others who were mostly your same build. If you had ventured into Vos, they would have eaten you alive. Seekers and some other fliers just seemed to find it offensive to sport kibble like door-wings. No one really knows why, and if you were to ask a Seeker, they'd just shrug and say it was. I know because I've tried. I guess it's finally been proven that it's a sparked prejudice."
"How are you sparked to hate someone?"
"I don't know; I'm just theorizing. It's what we scientists do. Then we leave it for some other scientist to support or disprove. I call it 'The Cycle of Science'."
Bluestreak shook his helm at how far off topic they had gone. "Whatever. Are you sure no one in town's seen her?"
"They all know what the station wagon looks like, sounds like, smells like; all of them said it never even came through town yesterday. Maybe she wandered off to one of the bigger cities a few hours away. It would explain why she hasn't gotten back yet, and if she wanted to avoid being found then the city's a good place to get lost in."
"But you said-"
"I know what I said," Wheeljack interrupted with impatience. "But she said she needed to do something, so maybe that something is taking a little longer than she thought. I'm still trying to figure out why she needed a screwdriver and a blanket. She could be camping for all we know! Going out to be alone so that she can sort through her emotions and avoid another argument with you."
Bluestreak frowned and watched Wheeljack grumble all the way to the barn. "What do we do if she doesn't show up by tomorrow?"
"I don't know! I'm inclined to give her a piece of my mind for wandering off like that and ignoring our calls!"
Wheeljack wandered into the barn, shutting himself in to avoid any more conversation. Bluestreak made a move to follow but stopped when something bounced off his lower leg armor. He turned and glared down at the Seekerlet who was sitting on the blanket far too innocently and trying to screw two pieces of plastic together…except he was minus one jet covered sippy cup. "Why did you throw your sippy cup at me? You better put that glossa back in your mouth before I take it!"
Star could have cackled with pleasure as he threw what he had in his hands at the mech and took off across the yard as his victim yelled at him. Unfortunately, all he managed to get out were amused giggles, a far too innocent sound for a disruptive little Seekerlet like himself.
)(
It took James most of the day to return to the basement. Not that she had been anticipating his return. In fact, she was fine with sitting in the basement with only the sparkling as company. It gave her space to take care of him without the strange male staring them down.
For one, Victoria didn't want James to question what was in the bottle she fed the sparkling with throughout the day. Giving him ideas of replicating the substance was the last thing she wanted to do. She also didn't want him to watch as she gently prodded the sparkling's body, checking to see if there was anything in his joints that would make him lock up or any other abnormalities that she remembered being taught about by Wheeljack.
The health of the sparkling was fairly well, as she had noted earlier. There were only a few scratches, one of his elbow joints didn't bend as smoothly as the other, and his vents were still making a funny, almost wheezing-like sound every once in a while. His optics had brightened and flickered less often, and he became more interactive as she talked to him or encouraged him to move around. He still spat up some of the Energon she fed him, but she found that feeding him a small amount spread throughout the day reduced the chance of that happening. Now she had only half a bottle Energon left.
When James returned it was to find both the woman and sparkling lying on the blanket that Victoria had laid on the floor earlier. Victoria lay on her stomach, using her elbows to hold up the upper part of her body and making the teddy bear "dance" above the sparkling, who would make little grunting sounds and occasionally reach up to grab the toy.
They were so enthralled with their play that it took them a moment to realize the extra presence in the room, and Victoria screamed in surprise when she turned around and saw him standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring at them with an unreadable expression.
"Jesus Christ!" she gasped after her little outburst. "Do you make it a habit to scare the hell out of people?"
His blank expression broke and a genuine laugh came from him. "I like to keep people on their toes. You didn't eat your lunch?"
Victoria glanced at the sandwich still sitting in the same place he had put it earlier. "I'm allergic to cheese."
James looked disappointed by that fact and moved to pick up the plate. "I'll make sure to keep the cheese off next time. But I guess that means you won't want what I made for supper. Mac n' cheese is my usual Friday night meal. I do however have this." He put the plate on the edge of the table and grabbed a bottle that had been sitting beside a bowl. "It's never been opened before so you don't have to be paranoid about me poisoning it."
Victoria stared at the plastic bottle of water he managed to squeeze through the cage. "You know if I drink that I'll have to use the bathroom."
"Do you need to do that now? I should have thought about that before."
She tilted her head suspiciously. "In exchange for what?"
"Hmm?"
"You'll let me use the bathroom if I do what? Give you information?"
"…I'll let you use the bathroom for nothing. It'd be cruel not to allow you that privilege if you really needed it."
Now she looked at him with confusion. "Why are you being so nice to me when I'm supposed to by your prisoner?"
James shuffled and took the water back when he realized she wasn't interested. "Why wouldn't I be? After all, now that I have you contained it's not like you can do anything. Did you expect me to torture you or something?" The little smile that went along with his forced joke fell when he noticed her blank look. "You really did, huh? I guess I should expect that with our first encounter, but I don't go out of my way to hurt people unless they mean to cause me harm. I may think about doing—I'll admit to doing that a lot—but something you'll learn during your stay is that I can't bring myself to hurt another human being."
A look of disgust was directed towards the display, and Victoria jumped on it with curiosity. "You really don't like them."
"Why would I?" the man immediately answered, clenching his hands around the bottle as if to strangle it. "Every one that I've encountered has tried to kill me and has actually killed the innocent people around them. You would think with N.B.E 01 being inactive that it wouldn't be any danger. I found more of my colleagues dead because of that thing than the ones running around out there, having the nerve to disguise themselves as law enforcement."
"Well, how did they die?"
"Some of them would suddenly fall from the scaffolds we had to use; others would get electrocuted while examining an area on it that they examined every day with no problem. The worst incidents happened when someone would decide to do a little overtime. You'd think they would have learned after the first time, but most of them had the mentality of 'Oh, that won't happen to me!' It didn't help that agents like Simmons looked down his nose at the people who actually did the work. He just ran around acting like he was bigger than all of us. The unofficial poster boy for S7. So what if a scientist vanished overnight? No skin off his back."
There were so many directions she could subtly push the conversation into. She could get him to talk about this Simmons guy, N.B.E 01, S7, or even past experiences that he hadn't brought up yet. But she was honestly curious about the deaths seemingly centered around this N.B.E 01 thing. "What happened to the people who worked overtime?"
James blinked as he realized he had gotten off topic. "Never saw them again; no one ever did. But I doubt it was mere coincidence to come in the next day and find an area around N.B.E 01 sectioned off and then we're told that that particular person just doesn't work there anymore...and I hacked the restricted files once and saw some gruesome pictures of bodies burnt beyond recognition, missing limbs, or perforated with holes like something had reached through their chests and pulled out their organs. I guess I wasn't as surprised to find those as I should have been though. You don't leave Sector 7. You're either KIA or you go rogue, but only the good ones stay rogue for longer than a month before they're tracked down and made to 'disappear'."
"So you're a 'good one,' huh? Guess your paranoia has a good reason behind it after all. I have a friend who's probably worse than you are, but his paranoia has saved a number of lives."
James nodded, puffing up a bit with pride at the insinuation just as Victoria had imagined he would. She wondered if that pride would still be there later when she "casually" mentioned that friend was one of the very things he despised. That was for later though. "I understand when you say the ones with red eyes are dangerous. But I've also-"
She was cut off as the sound of a ringing telephone came from upstairs. James glared in the direction of the open door, and Victoria gestured towards it when he returned his attention to her. "Are you going to answer that?"
"I'm entertaining a guest at the moment. Besides, I already know who it is and have absolutely no desire to answer it. You know that one old high school buddy you never really wanna get involved with afterwards because he's gone on to do some shady stuff? Yeah, I'm not getting entangled in that again. So what were you saying?"
Victoria waited until the phone quieted before continuing. "Where was I? Oh yeah. I've also come across ones with blue eyes. Have you?"
The man shook his head in confusion. "They all have red eyes…"
"Not the ones I saw. In fact, they actually saved me from the ones with red eyes. I've even seen ones with yellow eyes like the baby's, and they don't seem to even like to fight. So, maybe only the red eyed ones like to kill people without regard."
James rubbed his cheek as he mulled over this new information. "I've never seen ones with blue eyes, so how am I supposed to trust what you say?"
Victoria gestured at the sparkling still playing, trying to keep the triumph off her face. Alright, now she had gained enough of his attention to listen to her. "He doesn't have red eyes, and he's been completely harmless."
"But he's just a baby…" James trailed off, keeping his gaze on the sparkling. "He can't really do anything right now."
"Exactly. Listen, I've talked to the ones with blue eyes. They're actually very close friends of mine, and the Decepticons—the red eyed ones—are the bad guys here. All of them have been at war for a really long time, and-"
"Wait a minute, you're friends with them?" James asked incredulously, taking a step back. Victoria mentally cursed as the suspicious glint that had left his eyes returned full force. "You're friends with these, these metal, inhuman abominations that have come to our planet to kill us?"
"No! Just let me explain-"
"Explain what? That you're their little brainwashed lapdog?" He pointed with barely contained anger at the sparkling now chewing on one of the teddy bear's ear. "You're not a freelancer like I am. Let me guess, you're 'friends' told you that thing was landing didn't they? And you were sent out to pick it up and take it back to them to avoid being seen. It's just pretending to be an innocent baby when in fact it's plotting ways to kill me and escape. Well, I can assure you that I can kill these things, and unlike other humans, I have no qualms with doing it. They're nothing but empty shells wired to kill everything in sight."
Now that statement made her blood boil and Victoria angrily grasped the metal of the cage and glared at him. "Do not threaten my family, you crazy, unstable lunatic. They are as living as any other creature on this planet, and if you weren't so single-minded you would have realized that by now!"
They glared at each other before the anger suddenly faded from James' face and he looked at her with pity, making Victoria take a precautionary step back. She would have preferred anger over the look he was giving her now. "What have they done to you? Were you part of an experiment and brainwashed? Did you develop Stockholm syndrome while they held you against your will? Were you threatened? Whatever it was, I promise I'll find you help and show you what they really are, starting with that thing in there."
Victoria watched with uneasiness as James turned around and left the basement, stopping to turn on a lamp he must have brought from upstairs and flipping off the main lights. When the door closed behind him, the woman took a deep breath and used the little light given off from the lamp to walk back over and lie on the blanket beside the sparkling.
The sparkling looked over at her as he gnawed on the teddy bear and released a small squeak of pleasure when Victoria gently rubbed the horn nubs on his helm. "I think I just royally screwed the only chance of us getting out of here on own little guy."
)(
The next morning Wheeljack was already out of the road, searching for Victoria once more after leaving Bluestreak in charge of Star and Recall. He was honestly beginning to worry about the woman's disappearance, despite his continuous attempts to wave off Bluestreak's worries. Victoria would have called by now if only to tell them that she would be gone for however long she planned to stay away or give some explanation for not calling earlier.
The last thing he wanted was for one of Bluestreak's outrageous and vaguely morbid theories to be true. He'd made a promise to Terrence that he would look after the man's only daughter. What was he going to tell his human friend if his daughter had been kidnapped? Or turned up dead a week from now? Or worse, what if a Decepticon had slipped into the area undetected and taken her as leverage for a later confrontation with him and Bluestreak?
"How the heck am I supposed to find her?" Wheeljack wondered, all sensors on high as he traveled down the empty road. "The reason we moved out here was because everything was so spaced out, which made it easier to keep from being found unless someone specifically knew our location. What a way for that 'advantage' to come back and bite us in the aft."
Wheeljack reeved his engine, taking a moment to wistfully remember the sleek alt-form he had given up after landing on Earth. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, what with all the stuff he knew he would eventually be hauling around. Some of the things he fiddled with were highly volatile, and for all his explosions (accidental or purposely) he wasn't dumb enough to carry those things within his subspace. Trucks had a bed with more room and are a lot easier to load/unload than a car. So what if he had to forfeit speed? Or greater mobility? And sexy, sleek form…
…great, now he was just making himself depressed! Didn't he already have enough on his plate to deal with? A missing woman, two upset sparklings, and a Bluestreak who seemed like he was about to have a mental breakdown either from overwhelming (somewhat unfound) guilt or from Star driving him insane. That little Seekerlet—without Victoria there to impress, he was making the Praxian's life hell. The engineer would have found it funny under different circumstances.
What was he going to do? He had already asked around town and traveled along the numerous roads in search of signs where that stupid station wagon might have broken down. Maybe he should have pulled a Red Alert and put a tracker in the vehicle when he had the chance…
It was a good thing that the road had been empty because anyone on Wheeljack's tail would have had their front end smashed in. It also would have been pretty hard to explain why the crash didn't leave a mark on him, but he was too busy leaving tread marks on the pavement as he reversed to inspect what his optical sensors had picked up to really care about that.
After parking on the side of the road, Wheeljack activated his holoform and jumped out of his cab. He noticed the slight indent of tire marks leading to the tree line and groaned. What he thought he saw better not be what he thinks it is. He had specifically told her not to go anywhere near that man alone.
He threw his hands into the air once he was finally close enough to see past the tree limbs that kept the station wagon strategically hidden from the road. "Oh come on! Why? Just why is this the one time she doesn't feel listening to me? I mean, I'm not vain enough to believe that she listens to everything I say, but she usually listens to the important stuff." He huffed and headed back to his alt-mode but not before turning back to glare once more at the inanimate object. "You are so scrap metal mister. And that's only if I get the urge to even come back for you. You are dead to me!"
Wheeljack allowed the holoform to fall apart once it stood outside his door and reeved up his engine. Well, at least he knew now where his next destination would be.
)(
Victoria paced around the small area she was contained in. She had thought the days she was stuck in the cabin with a house full of mini-Transformers running around her feet had been bad—now she wished to go back to those times. She'd take the annoyances and the little forms running around her feet over being trapped in a cage in a dimly lit basement that was cold, almost nauseous from hunger at this point because she hadn't eaten in two days, with a sparkling in need of a proper checkup and a certifiable lunatic stomping around above her head, and she really needed to pee.
Slag her for being suspicious and not taking advantage of the opportunity to go to the bathroom.
The brunette snarled at the device she held in her hand as she paced, almost giving in to the temptation of throwing it at the closest wall. On top of all of her before mentioned problems, by the time she had even thought about using her cellphone to contact Wheeljack and plan a proper rescue, the stupid battery had died! Not that it probably would have proven useless anyway. If Wheeljack and Bluestreak had been unable to pick up a signal from the sparkling during their stakeouts, what were the odds of her cellphone being able to pick up a signal from in here?
And she still didn't want to draw Bluestreak here through the bond without being able to properly warn him; James' threat still bounced around in her head and simply solidified the block that kept the mech out. It was times like these that she wished they understood the bonds more. Maybe they'd be able to figure out what allowed bonded people to communicate with actual words across the bonds instead of sometimes misleading emotions, or if that anomaly was just because she was human.
"Stupid phone!" she finally cursed, giving into the temptation and throwing the phone onto the concrete floor. It landed with a clatter, the back of it popping off on impact and sending the battery skittering a few inches away. "One of the few times I actually bother to use you and you're no help at all."
Victoria drew in a deep breath in an attempt to cool her anxious filled anger and walked over to check on the sparkling that was in deep recharge in the bassinet. His fans made a tiny, almost indecipherable rattling noise with each breath he took, and he nuzzled the white bear he had in a strangle hold. A tiny shine of blue breached the space between his chest and the toy, and the small spark flickered as she laid a comforting hand on his helm.
They were going to get out of there; she'd make sure of that.
Victoria went back to pacing. Her attempt to drag James into conversation and get around to showing him that Cybertronian life was similar to humans had been a total fail. She was pretty sure that even if she had been able to keep their conversation going, James' previous experiences had him thoroughly convinced that all Cybertronians were exactly alike—lifeless robots programmed to kill anything they encounter.
She stopped to pull at the chains that kept the door firmly shut. While he viewed the alien life forms with disgust, there was obviously something in him that kept him from just being a coldhearted killer. He didn't seem very comfortable with keeping her locked up, no matter how hard he tried to conceal it. He brought her food even though she refused it; looked willing to let her out if she needed to use the bathroom; and had even snuck down to the basement last night when he thought she was asleep to slip some bedding into the cage. He had also looked genuinely concerned at the thought of her being used by the Autobots.
Was it possible that she might have misjudged him? Of course he was crazy, but what if it was paranoia that made him be that way? Red Alert had been a little out there at times—not to the point of violence, but there had been times that she was convinced that Ratchet would shoot him up with sedatives. And if he was mentally ill, maybe his outrageous actions made sense to him.
Of course, that didn't automatically rule him out as a threat. Whatever his association with this Sector 7 place had been, it had ultimately given him a "trigger finger." His first assumption for anything was that it was caused by that organization and the people who worked for it. If it were ever proven that someone might be associated with Sector 7, Victoria didn't think for moment that he wouldn't hesitate getting rid of that threat.
Victoria released the chain and stepped back when the door opened and watched as James struggled down the steps with a huge cardboard box. It must have been heavy because he grunted from exertion when he was finally able to put it down. Emitting an over exaggerated sigh of relief, James turned around to face her with a grim expression. The woman crossed her arms and lifted her chin defiantly.
"Well at least you've got spirit," he commented while turning back to the box. In one sudden swoop of his arms, he cleared the table containing the tools and loudly pulled the table from the wall to position closer to the cage and near the middle of the room. He turned back to the box and removed a sheet to drape it across the now empty table. "Please stand aside while I relocate that thing."
Victoria shuffled backwards, not because she was intimidated by the clamps, syringes, and the little laboratory he began setting up but so that she was closer to the sparkling. "What are you about to do?"
"I'm going to prove that that thing is nothing but a machine. Not a sentient being or a baby like it's trying to trick us into believing."
"And how do you plan on doing that?"
"The same way I proved it with the others: by dissecting it."
Victoria swallowed the acrid taste that filled her mouth and completely shielded the bassinet from view. "Look. I've been trapped down here for two days, and I see now that you're not as bad as I had originally assumed. You've got a conscience—something that you don't find in a coldblooded killer. You stopped when he started crying before; you acknowledged that it wasn't just a machine-"
"And that's how they get you!" James shouted with conviction, pointing a pair of shaky forceps at her. "You cannot trust these things! We struck a deal with one once; he worked with us to keep those other things out of the public sector. The moment we let him loose, he massacred a whole town. I won't let what happened to my wife and son, happen to more innocent people!"
Whatever convincing argument that had been on the tip of the woman's tongue vanished the second after his outburst and she stared at him, wide-eyed and slack jawed. James turned back to his work, his movements much tenser before as he realized what he had just said. "So that's the real reason behind your hate. I'm so sorry; it must have been horrible to-"
"Don't," James said, stopping her with a raised hand. "Don't spout your generic sympathies to me. I got plenty of those when Sector 7 swept the incident under the rug, blaming a gas explosion or some shit like that. That event opened my eyes to a lot all the things that secret organization was doing. They don't care for public safety, so now it's my duty to keep whoever I can safe from these creatures. I'm this close to developing a device that will allow us to pick out those things as they hide in plain sight. There won't be incidents like mine where someone is run off the road because an alien took on the likeness of his car. That thing you're trying to protect is the only live specimen I've ever had, and I'm not wasting any more time when it might have the exact answers I need."
"That's too bad then because you're not getting him," Victoria said confidently, taking an unconscious step back as he moved around the table with a key in hand. Her eyes darted to her messenger bag sitting in the corner with her taser. She needed that taser but moving would leave the sparkling unprotected, and James was already pulling the chains off and opening the door. "I'm not going to allow you to hurt him!"
"You don't have a choice," James insisted, a fervent look in his eyes as his glasses glinted ominously in the light. "I told you, I don't harm people unless they're an imminent threat. Don't make yourself a threat to me."
Victoria foolishly ignored the advice and charged at him, painfully connecting with his stomach and sending them both crashing to the floor. It was a stupid move, she would later admit, but at the moment it seemed like the only thing she could do to keep him from getting the sparkling. A hundred-something pound woman tackling an older man that probably weighed closer to two hundred? Yeah, not exactly the brightest move she could have made.
James pushed her off roughly and got to his feet a lot faster than she did but made the mistake of turning his back to her as he moved forward for the sparkling, who had woken up and began to produce tiny sounds of distress. Victoria staggered to her feet and took a running leap onto the man's back, wrapping her arms around his neck and squeezing as tightly as possible. He choked and lurched forward under her weight, stumbling into the bassinet and sending it falling to the floor. Thankfully the sparkling rolled harmlessly from the bed unhurt but now crying in fear and surprise.
James fell to his knees as Victoria continued to stubbornly squeeze him, and in a last ditch effort to get rid of her, he twisted around and heavily fell onto her. The woman gasped in pain as the full weight of the man fell onto her, and her head connected with the floor with a sickening crack.
She must have blacked out for a moment because the next thing she knew, James had already collected the sparkling, locked her back in the cage, and was securing the sparkling to the table to keep him from wiggling. Cries reverberated through the room as the sparkling worked himself into a crying fit, and Victoria winced as she rolled over and attempted to stand up. "James, please stop!"
James didn't even glance at the woman as he picked up a syringe. The sparkling quieted as he caught sight of the glass glinting in the light and stared at it with bright optics. With precise precision, the needle punctured one of the fluid lines that traveled up the sparkling's arm, and the plunger was pulled back to extract diluted blue Energon that run through it.
The sparkling remained terrifyingly silent as James withdrew the needle, capped it, and stuck it into the pocket of his shirt for safe keeping. "Now, I'll have time to analyze that later. Moving on from that, none of the creatures I've seen before this one had the blue flickering in their chest."
Victoria's blood ran cold as she watched the crazy man rooted through the box he had placed on the floor for a tool he hadn't had room for on the table. It almost looked like a pair of small gardening shears but obviously they were meant for something other than pruning stubborn bushes. The sparkling must have picked that up as well because he let a pathetic whimper and offlined his optics. "James you don't understand what you're about to do. If you damage his spark then he'll die!"
"You can't kill something that's not living in the first place."
The shears were only inches away from the rabidly pulsating spark when a loud banging came from the floor above. Victoria breathed a sigh of relief when James stopped to look back at the door he had left. "Who the- ugh. I swear if Leland pitched a fit and sent one of his mindless goons to force me to answer the phone…"
He trailed off as he tossed the shears back into the box and stomped up the stairs without a second thought. Victoria waited until he vanished into the room above before aggressively shaking the cage. The sparkling onlined his optics and watched as she desperately attempted to get the door open.
)(
Meanwhile, James was traversing through the house, anger steadily rising with each bang against his front door. Patience much? He'd answer the damn door when he got there and constantly knocking on it wouldn't make him walk any faster! Leland could definitely expect an answer to his phone call tonight, and it wouldn't be because he was suddenly onboard with helping his old "friend."
James reached the door in his own time, and nimble fingers flew across the various locks he had installed. Even he would admit that he had a slight obsession with locks. Every door in the house had at least three: one on the doorknob, a deadbolt, and a latch commonly found in most hotel/motel rooms; the front door was just unlucky enough to have about twice as many. Then he had a couple of dozen different designed locks stashed in his junk drawer or some box lying around the house. He had absolutely no idea when the habit of having multiple locks on hand started, but he did know that it started way before his paranoia really kicked in.
Anyway by the time he had the door swinging open, James was not in a particularly happy mood. The constant banging was like a nail being steadily driven into his head and he had more important things to do than chat up some mindless goon. Where was the rifle he used to run people off?
"Yes?" he asked through gritted teeth as he eyed the man standing in front of him. And people thought he was weird; at least he didn't run around in a stained lab coat, ratty boots, a bird's nest disguised as hair, and a pair of goggles swinging from his neck. "May I help you?"
Dark blue eyes flashed to an area behind him, and James couldn't help but think that those eyes didn't really go with the dark tanned skin of the man. "Ah, yes. You see my…daughter disappeared two nights ago and hasn't called or anything. I've been going around to our nearest neighbors and asking if they've seen her."
"Neighbors, huh? My nearest 'neighbor' is nearly an hour away."
"Yeah," the mysterious man said a little embarrassingly. "I guess I expanded past neighbors after the first two houses. But listen, I'm very worried about her. She isn't' the type to just run off and 48 Hours will give a father some gruesome ideas. The local police department wasn't much help because she's above the legal age and they figured she just got tired of living at home."
"Sorry but I don't see very many people out here," James said as he moved to close the door. The man's arm shot out to prevent it from closing and James grunted with the effort of trying to get it closed. It was like pushing against a wall. "Look man, I can't help you-"
"Just take a look at her picture," the lab assistant wannabe insisted, reaching into his lab coat with the hand that didn't hold the door open and pulling out a wallet sized photo. "It's a little dated, but she hasn't changed that much since her senior year."
The picture was shoved into his face, and James stared at the school picture. He had seen that forced smile once, right after he had held a gun to the woman's head. He tried to snatch the picture away but yelped when a strong shock greeted his fingertips. He pulled back and stared at the man, who had also pulled back and replaced the photo.
Something didn't feel right…
James leaned around the figure in his door and looked out into the yard. Sitting on the very edge of it was a pristine white Toyota truck with custom red and green accents running down the sides of it. The vehicle was too flashy for him and past experience had taught him to be weary of flashy cars. Those things might have had the technology to blend seamlessly into society, but at the same time they liked to stick out.
"I haven't seen your 'daughter' and if you don't get off my property now then I'll be forced to make you," James threatened while retreating back inside. If this was one of those things that had brainwashed Victoria then he wasn't letting it anywhere near her.
A deep frown spread across the (fake) man's face and he stepped back. "A little extreme don't you think?"
"Like you said, the cops aren't much help." James slammed the door shut and meticulously redid every lock and latch. Afterwards he peeked out of the peephole and saw the man just standing on the porch with a concentrated expression. He blinked and reeled back at the sight of an empty porch.
He knew it! Those things—they had learned how to mimic real people! This was bad, horrible in fact. Disguising themselves as cars was one thing; people were a completely different matter. They were beginning to integrate into the population; next thing you know, one of them will get elected president and initiate another world war, and when the humans had almost completely annihilated themselves, those robots and whoever created them would reveal themselves and enslave the surviving human race.
…yes, it was an out there theory, but it wasn't the worse theory running through his head at the moment. That one actually made the most sense.
James raced back to the basement, ignored the thing clicking desperately towards the cage, and focused in on the wall behind the staircase. His eyes flickered across the stone blocks that composed the wall and dug his fingers into the ridges surrounding one block. "This probably doesn't help my case of sanity, but I sometimes hide important stuff in the wall. A safe is too obvious and easily broken into and everyone would look for a creaky floorboard. But no one thinks about examining the wall."
James pulled the fake block out and reached into the cavity to pull out what looked like a flamethrower. "Come to find out one of the strongest weapons we have against them is liquid nitrogen. They seem to be especially vulnerable to extreme cold and-"
The weapon fell from his hands as he turned around and found the woman lying on the floor of the cage, her back towards him and the back of her head matted with what looked like blood. A terrible keen escaped him as he raced across the room to unlock the cage. "No, no, no, no! H-hold on! You were never actually meant to get hurt. You were just–you kept getting in the way…"
His voice trailed off as he hesitantly reached out to turn her over when she suddenly came to life and jerked her hidden arm up to connect with his stomach. A pain filled scream was torn from him and his body felt as if it was on fire before all went black.
)(
Victoria grunted as James' eyes rolled up into his head and he fell forward to land heavily on her. She groaned and pushed the dead weight off to sit up and look watched the body flop onto floor beside her, convulsing occasionally as the remnant electricity dispersed through his body before becoming completely still. A numbing feeling washed over her as she blankly stared at the man. She looked at the taser in her hand, set to the lowest setting possible. Wheeljack had told her it was specifically meant to be used if a Decepticon attacked her, that there was a high potential of it killing a human if used on one…
A cry caught her attention, and Victoria staggered to her feet, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the concrete. She grabbed her bag from where she had thrown it out of the way, not bothering to retrieve the screwdriver she had used to pierce the palm of her hand and fake the dire looking head injury, and gingerly placed the weapon in a side pocket. She ignored the trembling of her hands and hurried over to where the sparkling was still pinned to the table.
The sparkling beeped in pain as the clamps were released, and Victoria cooed in an attempt to comfort him as she massaged his tiny wrists. His little servo clenched around her thumb in a death grip and he began to tremble and hiccup with oncoming tears.
"It's alright now," she reassured him, gathering him up in her arms and holding him close. "He's not…he's not going to be able to hurt you ever again."
Victoria jumped at the sound of a crash form above and tensed when it sounded like half the house was knocked down. She stared up at the door of the basement as sunlight poured through it and continued to just stand there, listening to the familiar, but faint, sounds of a Transformer moving around until a figure suddenly blocked the light.
"Victoria!" Wheeljack called out in relief when he noticed the stunned woman looking up at him. He ran down the stairs and dragged her into a smothering hold. "Primus, don't you ever to do that again! Do you know how worried we were? I was starting to fear that a Decepticon had grabbed you!" He pushed her back and noticed the sparkling that clung to her shirt and stared up at him with frightened amber optics. "By the AllSpark…but how? There weren't any indicators that he was here. I wouldn't have looked here at all if I hadn't found your car a mile away from here. We need to talk about that too."
"James." She stopped to wince at the name. "James knew about you guys. Maybe he figured out how to properly hide a Cybertronian."
"Wait, he knows about us. How?"
"He knew. He said he worked for this place called Sector 7 and that they had one of you that they called N.B.E 01."
Wheeljack looked behind Victoria and finally noticed the body sprawled out on the floor. "Oh. You two go wait outside. I'll take care of things down here."
Victoria nodded and carried the trembling sparkling out of the basement. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light from the sun. She examined the front wall of the house that had been destroyed, covering the majority of the room in splintered wood and burying everything. She methodically stepped through the debris to find Wheeljack's real form sitting right outside the house's new opening.
The engineer's door flew open, and she didn't think twice to climb in and huddle up on his seat. Comforted by the soft rumbling of his engine and the sparkling curled up against her, she finally allowed herself to process what had happened in the past two days.
But all of her thoughts kept coming back to the image of James sprawled unmoving on the floor of the basement.
AN: There we go! I think it came out way more dramatic than I intended, but oh well. I've learned over the past two years that not everything I write comes out as planned :) Now I have to go write a speech, an annotated bibliography, and a two page essay over The Epic of Gilgamesh. Yay college...
Until next, uh...whenever I get the time to update ;D