Author's Note : There have been some speculations and guesses as to the identity of the two mysterious Matrix-coveters. Unfortunately (for all of you, that is) their identities will remain a mystery for some time to come. Think of it as the running plot for this season' of Slayer Transformed, if you will. With two big events looming - the coming of the Predacons and the revelation of who exactly seeks the Matrix - I think I will take my time to bring things about slowly. Hope you can all live with that.
And now, on with the show:
Part 3: Autobot in the City
"I still don't quite see the point of this," Arcee said.
Faith sighed, hefting her backpack as she turned to look at the parked bike again.
"This is the third night in a row we're having this discussion, biker girl. What part of I want a real bed to bunk in' don't you get?"
"Ty could build you a human-sized bed back in Autobase. We could be back there in an eyeblink, it wouldn't cost any money, and..."
"Look, Arcee! My life is strange enough as it is, okay? You have the fantasy stuff with the demons and vampires, now you have the sci-fi stuff with the robots from outer space. At least for those few hours of the day that I get to just lie down and sleep I want things to be normal, okay?"
"And normal is a low-class motel room in this seedy part of town?"
"Yeah, and you know why? No one asks questions here, no one pays attention to where or when I'm going, and there are no bell boys or anything to get hurt if some vamps should decide to pay me a visit. It's perfect. And it's got cable, too."
Arcee finally relented. She still didn't quite see why Faith insisted on staying in this kind of place. Ty had given her a credit card, after all, one that wouldn't run out of credit anytime soon. Faith seemed curiously disinclined to spend money on anything, though. Well, except some new clothes and the occasional drink at a club where the bartenders didn't check IDs.
"Nothing's stopping you from going home to the steel corridor labyrinth, biker girl," Faith called back to her as she approached the door of her room. "I'll see you back out here in the afternoon, okay?"
Faith slammed the door behind her, leaving Arcee alone outside in the parking lot. These past few days had been... strange, to say the least. She was not just thinking of the whole demon stuff, either. When Faith and she had started on this little road trip Arcee had gotten the impression that the two of them would become friends. Oh, not overnight, of course, but they seemed similar enough to build an amiable relationship.
Now she wasn't so sure. Faith was growing more distant, it seemed, and it wasn't just their different opinions when it came to killing, though that was a large topic. No, it seemed more like Faith was deliberately trying to distance herself. Arcee suspected that it might have something to do with what she had said when Optimus had first proposed this joint road trip.
People who hang around me tend to die.
Arcee knew but the barest outline of what had befallen Faith's former companion, her Watcher Clarice Chapel. She had died somehow and Faith obviously felt responsible. Was this the answer, then? Was Faith trying not to get closer to her because she feared that Arcee would die on her as well?
She wasn't a psi-tech, but Arcee had seen this kind of behaviour pattern many times before on the battle field, especially among veterans. They had lost so many friends and comrades that they refused to get close to anyone, certain that they would only lose them, too. Unfortunately she had no idea how to handle a situation like this.
Well, she probably wouldn't have to handle anything until later in the day. The sun was only just coming up and Faith would probably be sound asleep until at least the early afternoon. Arcee didn't need to sleep, at least not today. Cybertronians did occasionally enter a state close to human sleep, but far less frequently than organic beings. Arcee had had more than ample time to rest, relax, and recharge during the past few weeks, seeing as she'd had little else to do, so rest was not on her mind right now. Neither was a return to Autobase, no matter what she had said earlier.
Deciding to do some exploring of her own, Arcee activated her holographic driver (she selected George Clooney this time) and sped out of the parking lot and onto the street.
She had never been in an American city before, so she quickly began to map out the differences to Tokyo . The people looked different, obviously, though there were lots of Asian humans as well around here. There weren't quite as many skyscrapers, the city itself was more widespread. Interestingly enough this city, just like Tokyo , was built on unstable terrain. In the first thirty minutes of her drive Arcee picked up no less than eight Earth tremors, though only one of them was strong enough to even register on human instruments.
Why did humans persist in building their cities were it was obviously impractical? A short data projection showed that there was a reasonable chance this entire region of the North American continent would fall into the ocean within the next 300 years. It was mostly desert around here, too, the effort of watering all the trees and plants she saw had to be enormous.
Humans, she mused. So far she hadn't managed to really get them. They were such a contrasting species. As individuals, many of them seemed capable of great things. Faith was the perfect example, having risked her life to save Optimus despite never having seen a Cybertronian before. Yet the moment the humans grouped together it seemed they became both destructive and self-destructive.
The city of LA itself was a good example, too, for one of the main problems humans seemed to have: Short sightedness. They seemed unwilling or unable to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Maybe it was because of their short life spans? Arcee was still considered young in terms of her race despite being thousands of Earth years old. Cybertronians could live forever, at least in theory.
Well, she was not on this road trip to solve the human enigma, she resolved. She was here to learn more about magic and demons. And now, with Faith sound asleep and Arcee out on her own, it was as good a time as any to perform a little experiment.
Faith had said that most demons rested during the day, even those that didn't burn in sunlight like the vampires. That was actually something Arcee had yet to figure out, why they combusted like that. Anyway, in a city as supernaturally active as LA seemed to be, there should be some demonic activity to be found even during the day.
Her sensors had so far proven to be quite limited when it came to recognizing demons. There were some signs she could pick up with them, such as a vampire's body temperature always corresponding exactly to the surrounding temperature. Mostly, though, these creatures operated somewhere outside the range of her sensors.
Thanks to the link with Faith, though, she was somehow able to expand that range. Faith had senses that were specifically attuned to these creatures. Faith couldn't explain how they worked or why, but they did. During the attack on Autobase and, to a lesser degree, during Faith's earlier vampire hunt, Arcee had received sensor data through Faith's senses.
Could she do the same if Faith wasn't present?
Arcee stopped in a side alley - and how come there were so many dark side alleys in a sunny city like LA - and switched off her hologram, now looking to all the world like a parked motorcycle, nothing to worry about. Directly in front of her was the back entrance of a pretty seedy looking club that was still (or already) open despite the early morning hours.
Her sensors had no trouble sweeping the interior of the building. Infrared showed 63 humans inside. Or at least human-shaped heat blobs. Echo probes picked up multiple conversations going on, but the walls were too thick to make out exact words. Magnetic anomaly detectors managed to spot what might be quite a few guns carried by the people inside. Then again, they might just be carrying harmless slabs of metal under their jackets. Yeah, right.
Still, for all she was picking up with her usual sensor wizardry, those might just be perfectly normal human beings inside. Criminals possibly, but still human. There was no way for her sensors to tell otherwise. Not without a little outside assistance.
Arcee concentrated on the spark alignment with Faith. The first time it had happened she'd been surprised, but Cybertronians were built to adapt. Her mainframe had reconfigured itself and now she could identify and focus on the specific wavelength where her spark oscillated in symmetry with that of her human partner. Internal sensors focused on this specific frequency and pumped energy into her signal emitters, locking on to it.
Slowly but steadily she felt her awareness shifting once again. It didn't happen as fast or as completely as during that first, unwanted link-up between them. She didn't know if that was because of the distance, because of Faith probably being asleep, or because of other factors she hadn't yet identified. Still, the range of her sensors expanded as she had expected.
Arcee shifted her attention back towards the building in front of her. Data was streaming in, still telling pretty much the same story as before, but now there was just a little bit more. Not much, but a little bit. Fascinated, she studied the new data.
In one of the building's back rooms she picked up strange energy emissions. Only one figure was present in the room and she could now see the shape of the heat blob fluctuate. It seemed to grow and... develop a second set of arms? Fascinating. A shape shifter? Or something that used magic - whatever that really was - to appear human even though it wasn't?
There was another anomaly and she shifted her attention towards it. Oh, she knew that one. Very little body heat, some kind of fuzzy energy signature that animated a body that should by all accounts be dead. A vampire. A vampire was walking along one corridor and towards what appeared to be some kind of underground exit. A sewer entrance? Well, for someone who combusted in sunlight, a sewer would be the perfect place to use for daylight walks.
Arcee kept a fairly large amount of her processing power and energy supply focused on the alignment with Faith. The rest was focused on the vampire. She had very little trouble following it as it did enter the sewer and traversed the tunnels. Reactivating her hologram she started driving. She wasn't sure what was going to happen, but figured that following this creature was a good exercise for her ongoing exploration of the spark alignment.Besides, if this vampire tried to kill someone, she'd have to stop him.
A ripple went through the alignment as she thought that. Almost like a voice-activated program, the Slayer-side of Faith seemed to have become aware as she thought the words vampire' and kill'. Arcee could feel it expand, almost like a foreign program accessing her mainframe.
The terminology wasn't perfect, but the Slayer tried to enter what was effectively an override command into her mainframe. One that would force her to kill this creature. Arcee immediately tried to block the access route, tried to shut down the interlink the alignment had created. At the same time she wondered why nothing like this had happened during Faith's earlier vampire hunt. Maybe it was simply because at that time Faith had been there to carry out the kill. With Faith not present, the Slayer tried to make use of the next-best thing.
Arcee managed to prevent the creation of an override protocol, but the compulsion was still very strong. She continued following the vampire, not certain whether or not she'd be able to stop had she wanted to. It dawned on her that undertaking an experiment like this might have been a mistake.
The vampire kept travelling the length of the sewer until it reached one of LA's warehouse districts. Arcee's sensors showed how it ascended back to the surface inside one of the warehouses. The vampire's home, maybe? The compulsion tried to make her investigate further, to enter and kill, but Arcee decided that enough was enough. She logged the location of the warehouse in order to tell Faith later on, but she wouldn't go any further alone. She didn't quite trust herself right now.
Turning on her wheel, she sped away from the warehouse and onto the nearest express way. Zigzagging through the early morning traffic, she attempted to shut down the alignment, hoping it would get easier with distance from the potential prey. The experiment had gone far enough for one day.Slowly her internal data routines managed to purge the compulsion from her mainframe. The enhancements to her sensor range began to fade. Still, the alignment refused to just die down quietly. Arcee concluded that it had been a definite mistake to try this while Faith was sleeping. With no conscious mind on the other side of the alignment, it was hard to shut it down.
Next time she'd try this with Faith awake.
Maybe she could transmit a part of her consciousness along the alignment and shut it down from the other side? It should be just like accessing a different computer connected to a network. A network of sparks, in this case, but still a network. Well, worth a try. Arcee sent what amounted to a portion of her mind along the alignment.
Moments later she realized she'd made another mistake. Faith's mind was in turmoil, thoughts and memories caught in a whirlwind of images and fears. A nightmare, that was what humans called it. An escalating chain of disharmonious associations. And Arcee was now caught up in it.
The white, black, and pink bullet bike suddenly careened into its side, skidding along the highway in a shower of sparks. The driver image faded, leaving only the vehicle. Other vehicles swerved to avoid it and only a fairly large amount of luck prevented a pile-up. When the motorcycle finally came to a stop and some cars stopped to provide assistance, they all wondered where the driver had gone. They didn't know, of course, that they were looking at an alien life form right at this moment.
One whose mind was now elsewhere.
End Chapter 3
