Just giving you all a heads up, the Decepticon Soundwave will make his appearance in this chapter, but he doesn't have that classic robotic voice...yet. I won't say more.
NOTE: There will probably be grammar mistakes that I will fix yet.
Somewhere In The Galaxy...
"Megatron is going to have my Spark for this," Thundercracker lamented as he and Barricade walked down the corridor that led to the ship's main deck. "And yours too."
"You were charged with guarding him," Barricade argued. "You let him slip through your fingers."
"Oh, and what were you doing? Recharging?" Thundercracker snapped.
Barricade got defensive and raised his fist. "As a matter of fact, I...!" He paused before he cooled down. "I...was," he confessed meekly.
"See? You're just as guilty as I am. He'll demolish us both."
"Maybe he'll show leniency this time."
Thundercracker shook his head. "No. This is Megatron we're talking about. If it were Optimus Prime-"
"Optimus?" Barricade looked at his comrade. "You're saying you want to join the Autobots now?"
"No! Don't be ridiculous! You and I both know that we're on the winning team. Optimus Prime is weak, and that's why he and his Autobots lost the war."
"Well, to be fair, nobody won that war, because we lost Cybertron."
"My point is, while Megatron is stronger than Optimus, he's not exactly the merciful type."
Barricade grunted and nodded. "And that's probably why he's so strong. He shows mercy to no one." He paused before he mumbled, "Which really sucks for us."
The two Decepticons finally reached the end of the corridor and the door lifted to reveal a large deck. Several lower-class Decepticons worked at the control panels while their leader, Megatron, sat on a high platform with Starscream at his side.
The former gladiator heard Thundercracker and Barricade walk in and looked down at them with his terrifying red eyes. "So the scout has finally talked?" he asked in a deep, intimidating voice.
Thundercracker glanced nervously at Barricade before he answered, "Well...no, Lord Megatron. He...well..."
Starscream glared down at them. "He's dead? He'd not be."
"No," Barricade shook his head. "No, he still lives, but he's...he's..." He dreaded to say the next word and braced himself for the wrath that surely awaited him. "...escaped."
Megatron said nothing, but his glowing red eyes burned with fury.
"WHAT?!" Starscream bellowed and jumped off the balcony. "What do you mean, he's escaped?!" he demanded as he stomped toward them. "You let him get away?!"
Thundercracker ignored him and looked up at Megatron. "Lord Megatron, we will get him back! He couldn't have gone far in his current condition!"
"He's right!" Barricade nodded. "Besides, he can't contact Optimus, not without his voice box."
"Yeah, didn't Soundwave remove it during the interrogation?" Thundercracker asked as he motioned to said Decepticon, who stood in a corner with his arms crossed.
"I did," Soundwave said in a cold voice. "His cries of agony irritated me."
"Even so, just how do you plan on finding him?" Starscream growled. "And why should we trust you to do it when you can't even guard him?"
Megatron rubbed his metal chin in deep thought. "You say he's weak from the interrogation?"
"Yes, Lord Megatron," Barricade answered. "He's too badly damaged to travel far. He'll just go hide on the nearest planet in this galaxy, so it shouldn't be hard to find him."
The leader of the Decepticons nodded and stood up from his seat. "Very well. Thundercracker, you will go retrieve the scout. But fail me again, and I will have you melted down. Soundwave will go with you."
Thundercracker looked up at him surprised, then glanced at the Cybertronian who was to go with him. "Soundwave, sir? Why him?"
"Soundwave is one of my best soldiers. I am confident that he will complete the mission in case you can't. Have you any objections, Thundercracker?"
"No, Lord Megatron," Thundercracker bowed his head. "No objections." Then he muttered to himself. "Except that he gives me the creeps."
Megatron nodded. "Good." Then he pointed in the direction of the docks where the starships were. "Now go."
...
Meanwhile, On Planet Earth...
"Hey, do that car thing again."
Marcy and her new friend Goldbug were now standing in her backyard out in the open, and the little redhead watched in amazement as the robot transformed into a yellow Beetle car once again.
"Oh, that is so cool!" she giggled.
Goldbug opened the driver's door and let Marcy look inside. She peeked in and just beamed with excitement, but then she noticed the tear in the driver's seat that she made with the chainsaw that one night.
She gently touched it with a remorseful expression. "I'm really sorry about that. I didn't mean to hurt you." Then she grinned. "Hey, can you play the radio?"
The radio suddenly turned on by itself and the song "Space Age Love Song" by A Flock Of Seagulls played loudly. In fact, it was too loud. Practically the whole neighborhood could hear it. Even the ground seemed to shake under Marcy's feet.
I SAW YOUR EYES
AND YOU MADE ME SMILE
FOR A LITTLE WHILE
I WAS FALLING IN LOVE
She immediately covered her ears. "Turn it down!" she screamed over the blaring music. "Turn it down!"
Goldbug immediately turned the volume down, but then they heard someone slam their door open and a woman's voice shouting angrily.
"What is going on out there?! I'm calling the police!"
"Oh, crud," Marcy mumbled. "It's Ms. Miller. Just stay right here, okay? I'll be right back." She rushed to the gate and pushed it open, running into the front yard, and sure enough, her elderly neighbor was standing on her front porch.
The old woman saw her and scowled. "Marcy, I should've known."
Marcy forced a polite grin. "Sorry, Ms. Miller. I turned on the radio and it was, you know, too loud."
"I'll say," Miller grumbled. "It made me jump and spill my coffee all over the table."
"I'm really sorry. It won't happen again." Marcy turned to leave when Miller stopped her.
"You know, I still think your father should put you in an all-girls school, so that you'd learn how to behave properly. After all, a young lady such as yourself shouldn't be playing with cars and tools like a grease monkey."
Marcy wanted to blow her a raspberry so bad, but she instead forced herself to smile again. "Yes, Ms. Miller."
"But I suppose it's not your fault," Miller sighed. "All little girls need a mother to bring them up properly, but yours walked out on you, and your father can only do so much."
Marcy was now bitting her lower lip, struggling not to lash out at her neighbor. Whenever someone brought up her absent mother, it always struck a nerve, but she was doing just fine without a Mom and she didn't need their pity.
"Anyway, you'd better stop misbehaving or I'll call your father," Miller warned as she went back into her house.
"Yes, Ms. Miller," Marcy said through gritted teeth. As soon as her neighbor shut the door behind her, she let out a big wet raspberry. "Old witch," she grumbled.
She then ran back to the gate, but Goldbug wasn't in the backyard anymore. "Goldbug?" she called, but he didn't answer her. Maybe he was hiding in the barn again? She hurried to the barn and looked inside, but it was empty.
Then she heard their garage door lifting. Was her father back from the store already? She ran to the front of the house and was shocked to see Goldbug raising the garage door with his hands.
"Goldbug! What-"
The robot walked inside and looked around, fascinated by all of the equipment.
"Goldbug, be careful," Marcy said as she followed him inside. "All this stuff belongs to my Dad."
At the last word, Goldbug looked down at her puzzled.
"My Dad. He's uh..." She scratched her head as she thought about how to explain this to a machine. "He's kinda like...my creator. See, humans aren't made like robots. It takes a male human and a female human to, uh...make more humans. It's called sex. You understand?"
Goldbug shook his head. Of course he wouldn't understand. Then he noticed the small television that was on the tool shelf.
"That's called a T.V," Marcy said. "Here, watch."
She flipped the power button on the television and Goldbug about jumped when he saw the local news anchor woman, who smiled at the viewers with her pearly whites. He curiously tapped at the screen which made Marcy laugh.
"No, she's not actually inside the T.V," she said. "It's called a broadcast. There are other channels, see?" She pressed the button under the screen to change the channel and Prince Adam from He-Man appeared on the screen. He pulled out the Sword of Power and said his famous catchphrase:
"By the power of Grayskull!"
Goldbug inched closer to the screen amazed as Prince Adam transformed into He-Man.
"I have the power!"
"This is called a cartoon," Marcy explained. "It's kinda like a comic book except the pictures move. And that's He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe."
She changed the channel again and there was a commercial for the Pac-Man cereal. Goldbug seemed to like the colorful animated ghosts that sang as they circled above the cereal bowl, and he imitated the children who used their spoons to eat the marshmallows and corn cereal that was inside.
"That's cereal," Marcy said. "Food. Humans eat it for breakfast. I prefer Cap'n Crunch, though."
She was about to change the channel again but Goldbug beat her to it, already getting the hang of it. The Robot from the black-and-white show Lost In Space appeared on the screen and frantically spoke his catchphrase, "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!"
Goldbug looked at Marcy as he pointed at the screen then to his chest.
She nodded with a smile. "Yep. That's a robot just like you. Except you're, like, ten times cooler than that one."
He grinned and changed the channel again, this time to a campy 70's Godzilla movie and the king of the monsters was battling his arch-nemesis Mechagodzilla. Godzilla grabbed a hold of the robot's head and used all his strength to pull it right off its shoulders. Goldbug was greatly disturbed by this and even grabbed his neck with a fearful expression.
Marcy saw how her friend reacted to that gruesome scene and quickly turned off the T.V. "I think that's enough T.V for today. I'm not even supposed to watch it anyway 'cause I'm kinda grounded."
She then noticed her Dad's pile of magazines next to the television and grabbed them. "Let's read something instead. What do we have here? Uh...Muscle & Fitness, Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated, Playboy-ew." She tossed that particular magazine aside in disgust. "Forget that one. Anyway, this is what my Dad reads. It's mostly guy stuff."
Just then she heard a car coming down the street and gasped in horror when she saw her Dad's van pulling up to their driveway. "Stay here!" she yelled to Goldbug as she quickly pulled the garage door down and sprinted into the kitchen.
She met her Dad on the driveway and gave him a big smile. "Hi, Dad! Did you have fun at the hardware store?"
Eric smiled back at her as he stepped out of the van with plastic bags in his hand. "I didn't want to leave, but then I remembered I had a little girl to take care of back home. You stay out of trouble while I was away?"
"Affirmative!" She followed him to the front door and prayed that he wouldn't have to go into the garage. She had to stall him somehow until she got Goldbug out of there. "So, Dad, now that you're home, can you make me grilled cheese?"
"Yeah, in a minute, hon," Eric said as he put the bags down on the counter. "I have to take some of this stuff to the garage."
Marcy's eyes bugged out. "No, wait!" she immediately yelled. Then she said more calmly, "Um, I'm, like, really hungry here. I can't wait another minute." She then pretended to be starving and fake groaned as she hugged her stomach. "Ohhhh, it hurts."
Eric raised an eyebrow and gave his daughter a lopsided grin. "I'm sure you'll survive. It won't take but a minute." He started to walk to the fire door with one of the bags.
Thinking quickly, she knocked one of the glasses off the kitchen counter and it shattered when it hit the floor. Eric stopped and turned around at the sound of it breaking.
"Oops!" Marcy feigned shock and remorse. "Sorry, Dad! I'll go get the broom!" She ran past her father and flung the fire door open.
Eric looked at her confused. "But, Marcy, the broom's in the-"
Slam!
"-closet."
In the garage, Marcy quickly lifted the door and grabbed Goldbug's hand. "Come on, go!" she urgently whispered as she tried to drag him out. "Go! Get out of here!"
Unsure what to do, Goldbug just followed her outside and stood on the driveway.
"Go!" Marcy pointed to the backyard. "Go back in the shed! I'll come out later tonight! Bye!"
She pulled the garage door down and ran back into the kitchen. Her father was sweeping up the broken glass with the broom. "Oh!" She did a facepalm. "Of course! Broom was in the closet! Totally forgot!"
"Uh-huh," Eric said with a skeptical expression. Her daughter was acting rather strangely today.
...
At the table, Marcy and Eric ate simple T.V dinners but neither one of them said a word to each other and it was awkwardly quite. Marcy was also eating her food slower than usual because she was worried about Goldbug and hoped that nobody saw him out there, wherever he was.
Clearing his throat, Eric finally decided to break the silence. "So Marcy, I've been meaning to talk to you about something."
Marcy looked up from her tray. "Yeah?"
"Well, I've been...seeing someone lately. And I'm pretty sure you know what that means."
She stared at him for a moment before she resumed eating. "Okay," she simply replied.
Eric wasn't sure how to take that response. "'Okay'?"
She shrugged without looking up. "I don't care."
He suspected that she wasn't being completely honest. "Well, I think you do care, Marcy. At least a little." He then smiled and said, "I think you'll like her. Her name is Anna, and she's a high school teacher."
"A teacher, huh?" Marcy asked quietly as she poked at her meatloaf.
"She's coming over tomorrow night for dinner, so I want you to be on your best behavior. Who knows? You might become best friends sooner than you realize."
"Sure."
Eric frowned. "Marcy, are you upset about this? I understand if you're not ready for-"
"Dad," Marcy finally glanced up at him. "It's fine. Go ahead and marry this lady for all I care. It's not like I miss Mom or anything, 'cause I don't."
He was surprised by that last remark, but he decided not to discuss it further and went back to eating his dinner. "Okay," he said softly, "as long as you're okay with it."
She didn't say anything and continued eating.
...
Around midnight, Marcy snuck out of bed when she was sure that her father was asleep and tiptoed her way to the back door. Very quietly she walked across the backyard and to the barn.
"Goldbug?" she whispered as she opened the door.
The robot's glowing blue eyes looked at her in the darkness, and when she turned on the light he was smiling at her.
She smiled back but then she noticed what he was holding in his hands: her Dad's Playboy issue. "Oh, gross," she muttered as she snatched it from him. "I told you not to read this. Anyway, I was thinking, since you can turn into a car and all, maybe we could go for a ride into town."
Goldbug tilted his head with a puzzled expression.
"It's simple. You could do all the driving, and I could do all the navigating. That way you wouldn't get lost, and technically I wouldn't be breaking the law." She grinned up at him. "Besides, I've always wanted a car of my own."