Chapter 10

Two Points:

My two cents on the matter of Starscream's loyalties;

I want to see Starscream totally turn over a new leaf and join the Autobots. Really. After seeing how Megatron would always rag on Starscream in Armada, I rilly do. Will that happen in the story? Maybe.

An Ironhide/Starscream relationship involving Slash;

NOT unless they were human. No robot slashing for me, thank you. I can't write Slash anyway. O.o; Which is odd, since I seem to role play it just fine.

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Things had been... Well, not hectic. But not calm either. Perhaps that eerie kind of calm where you are patrolling the battlefield with a rumor of an enemy ambush floating about. If said ambush were to be defined as some kind of yell/weapons fire from either Starscream or Ironhide that signaled something ELSE had gone horribly wrong. Not that things went wrong all the time, but Optimus Prime felt like he was expecting something to go wrong any nanosecond now.

"Do not RUN with those lights, Autobot! This ancient technology is easily breakable." Starscream's irritated voice floated down the hall, Optimus's audio receptors (listening stuffs) had picked it up and locked onto it. Perhaps it was just some slightly expectant paranoia that had begun to set in...

"Oh relax Starscream, Bumblebee has been stuck in his car form for weeks. The kid gets stir crazy." Ironhide chuckled, obviously amused, probably by Bumblebee's usual enthusiasm.

"That is no excuse."

Busy. That had been the word for it. Things around here had be busy.

"Watch it!"

"Bumblebee!"

CRASH! SHATTER! There was the faint audible tinkle of fragile glass. Optimus paused his scans of news reports the world over to sigh. They were closer to the door now, so he could hear Starscream growl irritably.

"What did I tell you?" There was a soft whine of audio clips from Bumblebee in apology.

"Y'all right Bee?" Another audio clip let him know he was fine. Starscream was grumbling about the broken light bulbs. It was the sound of a human's voice that made Optimus turn around however.

"Is your base of operations always this... unprofessional?" There were the sounds of Bumblebee getting up and the rest of them getting organized to proceed into the room Optimus was in. The door swooshed open via Starscream, with Ironhide providing the usual (slightly) rough welcome.

"Hey, without some fun, we'd all turn into stiffs." He didn't add the 'like you' bit he had on his processor. Starscream glanced back at them before proceeding into the room with the new lights for the less-traveled areas of the base that needed working on.

"Of course, if we cut the fun down, we wouldn't be ordering new lights." This time it was Bumblebee who quipped in a response to Starscream's usual grumbling comments. It said something about 'lightening up', which in turn made Ironhide chuckle at the cheap (none the less bad) pun. The Decepticon let an evicted growl escape before walking toward another doorway to get further into the base, areas that needed new lights. Ironhide quieted his chuckling, glancing at Bumblebee.

"Kid, go clean up." He nodded down the hall, recieving another animated salute from Bumblebee before he ran off to get some sort of oversized cleaning tool, probably a broom and dustpan. All of that had been courtesy of Optimus, who had thought ahead. Ironhide then glanced down at the human who was taking care to keep a good ammount of distance from all of them since Bumblebee's slight clumsy-ness had already been demonstrated. "Oh yeah; Optimus, this is Colonel Maybourne of the U.S. Military. He's here about Barricade."

Optimus lowered himself down to kneel infront of the man, "Greetings, Colonel Maybourne. Welcome to the Earth Autobot Base." The man tipped his uniform hat slightly and nodded, looking oddly high-strung and preoccupied as he looked around.

"I heard you have the means of contacting one of the rogue robots." He said, coughing a bit to buck up his voice. Optimus was starting to sense an air about the man like that of the Section 7 man that had taken Sam and Mikaela. He was hoping he was wrong.

"We do, but he refuses to give us any information." Ironhide commented before walking after Starscream, needing to keep the Decepticon in his sights. Optimus stood back up, walking to the large Transformer sized computer terminal. There were several human sized ones about the whole base as well.

"Barricade has given specific instruction that he does not wish to be contacted again. We still wish for an alliance between us, so cornering him seems unwise." This seemed to aggitate Maybourne. He was fidgeting a little, seeming agitated.

"Maybe this isn't quite the concern for you since all of your operatives are relatively safe within your base, but this... thing is very dangerous to all of us out there." He waved an arm in emphasis. Optimus frowned.

"His name is 'Barricade'. I do not know of a way to find and bring him in without involving humans. Most likely, he will resort to dangerous measures to escape." Maybourne seemed to be thinking about something else, still fidgeting and then walking toward the human sized terminal.

"We know you have been monitoring news reports and keeping an eye out, like we have. And more equipped factions have been dispatched to France to deal with the rogue robot." He'd begun to access the terminal.

"It's an 'energon drone'," Optimus corrected, "and don't you have to discuss your entering foreign territory with the French Government? If my understanding of your cultures is correct, your juresdiction will not cover-"

"Do not worry about it, we will sort it out and take care of it. However, I wish to direct your attention to a news report in Florida." The Autobot leader frowned, but walked to his own terminal to pull up a search for recent news reports in Florida. Maybourne appeared to be busy himself on the terminal.

"Search for an unsolved murder in Miami." He searched. Normally he could access the internet wirelessly, but to look at things in greater detail, it was easier to pull the information up on a screen. Starscream had made all of their computers impervious to any sort of Earthly computer virus, trojan, or spyware. He'd grumbled the whole time about the primitive equipment he had to work with, but that wasn't anything unusual.

"... 'Unidentified, crushed body found in dead-end alley. Speculators believe it to have been crushed by a large foot. Blood and flesh has been found scraped off by said foot on the surrounding concrete'." Optimus lapsed into silence, frowning at the picture-less article. The local police department should have crime scene photos, but it already sounded like this could have been done by Barricade. It had taken minutes for him to access the Miami police database, searching for photos of the crushed body. He'd just opened the file containing open cases, and then decided that it would be faster to search off of the computer, his own processor quickly going through the information in the police database. A few moments later, he pulled away and frowned, "... It would seem that is a footprint from Barricade." So he had already killed someone...

There was a sudden crackle of a communications relay coming online, making Optimus look around in confusion. Maybourne seemed ontop of things though.

"Hello? Is this the robot terrorist known as 'Barricade'?" Oh yes, he had a way with words. Barricade's harsh mechanical voice answered.

"Who is this?" It held his usual angry, interrogating tone. Optimus turned a harsh optic on the human.

"What are you doing?" He asked. Barricade's irritated voice sounded again.

"Prime! I have not changed my position since you last contacted me." This was definetly not okay, not with Optimus.

"You were contacted without my authorization."

"This is Colonel Maybourne of the U.S. Military, I am ordering you to reveal your location, and give yourself up." Barricade's response was less than favorable, and carried a very angry and insulted undertone.

"You must be malfunctioning to believe I would even think to negotiate with a human when I turned down a fellow Decepticon" He hissed.

"We don't negotiate with terrorists, and we don't tolerate them, unlike your friends here." There was an angry rumble from the other side of the communications.

"Do not even go so far as to presume I am anywhere close to friends with any Autobot. I would gladly rip the spark out of Prime with my own two hands." Colonel Maybourne was about to continue his severely unauthorized conversation with someone he was not even remotely ready to deal with (no matter what he thought) when the Autobot leader had decided he'd had enough. Optimus stomped a foot in order to silence him, sending a slight tremour through the floor. He was quite angry.

"Barricade, I appologize for harboring this incident." His voice was tense and the communications relay was cut quickly, remembering that he was still dealing with a representative of a government they were in alliance with. "There is no excuse for not informing me of your attempt to contact Barricade." Maybourne seemed to bristle and become aggressive at being caught, feeling deffensive all the more since he was caught by a giant, transforming robot.

"He is a larger concern to the safety of the people of this nation than whatever you are trying to accomplish by leaving him out there." Optimus actually scowled at him.

"You avoided my wishes in my base of command. Please leave."

"You can't just decide what you can and can't tell us!"

"You never asked. I will have Starscream escort you out if you do not leave now." At this, Maybourne grumbled, but definetly did not want to be escorted out and removed himself. Optimus sighed heavily when the man left, feeling irritated and slightly betrayed when his trust of the humans was thrown back in this fashion. But they needed time to evolve, and lots of it. He would talk with that man's superiors to find out the full extent of this prejudice and feelings toward Cybertronians.

------------------------------------------------ omfg Stargate ripoff

At the surprisingly less tense side of the base, Ironhide and Starscream were installing and replacing lights. Bumblebee had kind of crept into the room with more torches, letting out a few sound clips to inform the two that Optimus was in a bad mood. Such a thing seemed uncharacteristic, so Ironhide asked why. The response was that it was the human's fault, since he wasn't exactly sure how to get into detail. Starscream however had let out an unsurprised 'hmph'.

"What? You sayin' you were expecting this?" Ironhide growled, feeling deffensive to know that humans had once again inflicted some sort of damage to them. Optimus didn't get angry easily after all.

"You shouldn't trust such inferior life forms. If they aren't stupid enough to trust you entirely, they will only cause trouble in your progress." He said it in a way that suggested he lived by such an ideal.

Now, Ironhide had decided his role as babysitter over Starscream had moved to re-educator a while ago. Of course, Starscream didn't know this, and constant pestering by Ironhide was only annoying him.

"If you don't try to trust someone, you may miss out on oportunities."

"And if you do misplace your trust, you can be blown into oblivion." Starscream countered in his usual quick fashion, walking to another light fixture and engaging his thrusters to lift himself up to the lights in order to replace them. Unfortunately, Ironhide couldn't find any reasonable counter, so let this one go. They worked on in silence, Starscream replacing lights, and Ironhide putting together new light fixtures. After a while, the room was finished, lights fully functional. So they went to the next room. Aaand the next room... s...

------------------------------------------------ In France...

There was a great rumor of a monster, or alien, or some kind of giant robot (yeah, right) lurking around France. There had been no casualties, and victums were found soaked in Mountain Dew. With crushed cans of the stuff around them (along with blunt impacts against usually the person's skull) most have deduced that a soda can weilding maniac was loose. This was blamed on the Americans for inventing the stuff. So it would seem like poetic justice that two American tourists were walking down an ominously empty alley.

"Hey, I didn't know the French had Mountain Dew soda machines!" Our savvy, camera wearing American had pointed out with excitement, having been missing the taste of home a little. His wife had followed after him as he began to search his pockets for change in order to get some of the soda.

"Odd. For all the French we've met so far, I thought they hated Americans..." She mumbled, looking at the machine, which seemed to take American money. Made sense. She watched as her husband produced a dollar in quarters and inserted them into the machine. It registered the ammount given. But nothing happened when he pressed one of the many buttons that all yeilded Mountain Dew. After a moment he pressed it again. Then he kicked it.

"What the heck is wrong with this thing?!" His wife just sighed.

"Probably too good to be true. The French made it to torture American Tourists..." She mumbled. There was suddenly a gargled cranking sound from the machine, making them step back uneasily. Their unease was verified when the Soda Machine suddenly transformed, folding into a large humanoid body. It pointed its arm at them and fired cans of Mountain Dew at them. Their screams filled the alley as they attempted to flee, but were taken down.

As for the U.S. Military, they had been stopped by the French police and government in general, and were having a heated argument. Since one was yelling in English about national security (if they could capture the robot, they could still research it with further help from the Autobots), and the other was yelling in French (or a heavy french accent, they couldn't tell) about stupid Americans and boarder crossing.

(For those of you who love the Mountain Dew bot, please look for a story called 'The Little Soda Machine That Could')

----------------------------------------------- Far far away...

"Skywarp! I am aware that nothing has been happening lately, but that is no reason for you to slack off! Those damn twins are still around here somewhere..." Thundercracker had been looking for his wingmate for the past half hour when he wasn't found at his post. He found him in a crator, chucking rocks out of the moon's gravity field.

"Oh please, we haven't seen them in days and we never get anywhere when we do." Skywarp frowned when a rock fell short, drifting slightly before falling back to the moon somewhere else.

"That is not the point."

It was at this point that they both recieved a transmission from their commanding officer. It took a while for messages to cross space afterall.

Skywarp, Thundercracker; Megatron has been destroyed. The All Spark is lost. I want both of you to come to this Spark forsaken rock immediatly. The only decepticons remaining are myself, Barricade, and Scorpinok. I'm going to need backup. Prime is here, along with three other Autobots.

The transmission ended.

"... Looks like we'd better get moving then." Thundercracker looked out into the dark space, which looked about the same no matter where you looked. Skywarp stood and dusted himself off slightly, feeling relieved that he actually had something to do now. And things tended to be boring without Starscream, even if they were charged with hunting down the Lamborgini twins, which had practically been made into a game by said twins. They had a long flight ahead of them...

As for Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, they had recieved the broadcasted message from Optimus Prime on the main Autobot frequency a few days ago, and had left since messing with the two Seekers was getting old.

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Donut recieved!

New arrivals in progress.

Anyone else watch Burn Notice?