0o0o0o0o_Chapter 1: Ignition_o0o0o0o0

The sound of her alarm blaring pulled Samantha Jane Witwicky out of her vague dreams, which quickly slipped from memory. She groaned and rolled over in her bed, slapping the off button on the offending machine. Blearily she opened her eyes, confirming that it was, in fact, time to get up. She slouched to her feet, stumbling over to the bathroom to relieve herself. As she did, she considered her reflection and how best to arrange herself for the day. She could wear her boots, but it was too hot out. She washed her hands and then returned to her room. She selected a pair of jeans, a faded, long sleeve tee, and her sneakers, then returned to her reflection.

She considered comfort trinkets for the day, her eyes roving over her special shelf. She passed over the cool rock from a few years ago that had slowly worn smooth on one side and the strange metal medallion her parents had told her belonged to her grandfather, settling on the reliable multicolor pen whose casing was cracked and held together with tape. It was one of her favorites.

As she gathered her things for school, she reviewed her mental notes on her presentation. She'd picked an ancestor relatively close in time, a Witwicky who had been an explorer before succumbing to mental illness; though, she had suspicions there was more to the story than she was seeing. When she had started doing research, she'd run into a lot of Page Not Found errors and government shutdowns. She would introduce him, then show some of the tools he'd left the family, then explain her lack of findings. Hopefully she'd get at least a few people to sign the petition she was bringing to get the government to honor the Freedom of Information Act and release the records.

As she turned and strode out of her room to head down to breakfast, Sam felt a quiet thrill. Tomorrow was her birthday! She'd made enough money from her various scrap sales to the local junkyard, things she found randomly when she was out walking or biking. And she'd earned two A's in the last week. She only needed to nail this presentation, and she'd rehearsed it fifty times.

Sam smiled to herself as she greeted her mother at the bottom of the stairs. Today was going to be a good day.

0o0o0o0o0

Parallax may have joined the Decepticons out of a desire to improve the broken systems of cybertronian politics, but she considered herself a realist. The universe was often a cold and uncaring place, and the sapient beings within it could be colder still. Her own people's war had raged for megavorns, the result of cruelty on a societal scale. Prime had launched the soul and future of their species into deep space, just to keep it out of Megatron's hands. And the universe was massive; the odds of finding the Allspark were astronomically small. It had been hundreds of vorns since anyone had seen it.

But she was finding, despite herself, that anticipation was creeping into her circuits. She didn't know where Megatron was getting his information, but this lead seemed promising. The planet was rich with energon, the system was within the span of projected potential flight paths for the Allspark, and the local species had technology on a level that, while primitive, was surprising. The possibility of the Allspark's influence seemed high. And so a member of her scouting party had been dispatched to infiltrate the encrypted database the organics had set up. It would have been easier with a specialist like Soundwave, but they were the first Decepticons here, and Blackout's brute force approach had its uses.

She would have been aiding him, but her orders were to continue to survey for energon deposits. So instead of distracting the diminutive primates while he hacked into their systems, she was flying a couple thousand feet over the northern expanse of the continent. It was her duty as a seeker, she supposed, but sometimes it became so tedious that she would rather be doing anything else. Her alt mode was scanned from one of the aircraft they'd detected upon atmospheric entry, something primitive and alien but sleek in design.

Parallax felt her spark surge involuntarily with hope as Blackout pinged the private scouting network with an update. Though her distaste for the scientist was overwhelming, she found herself grudgingly appreciating the modification she had allowed Shockwave to make to her commlink alongside the other members of the scouting party. Her frame shuddered as she remembered the feeling of his claws in her audials, the unnerving, pleased purr to his vocals as he explained what he was doing. She hoped she never had to deal with that glitched creep again.

She opened the data packet, and her steering flaps twitched in surprise as she reviewed the report: the humans had not only managed to prevent Blackout from accessing the files they needed, they had managed to escape with some kind of scan of him. He had dispatched his symbiont, Scorponok, to hunt them down in the desert, and eliminated the rest of the organics and their technology on-site before leaving.

This was not the worst news. The base had merely been the easiest target; there were other ways to find what they were looking for. She pinged Barricade to confirm initiation of the first backup plan and swerved to head west. If that little glitch Frenzy actually managed to pull off the infiltration and get the data, she might be needed to make an extraction.

Her processors thrummed with excitement. They were getting close.

0o0o0o0o0

"Okay, miss Witwicky, you're up."

The sound of her history professor's voice snapped Sam out of her jumbled thoughts. She stopped clicking the multi-pen and pocketed it, then quickly gathered her notes and her bag of presentation materials and headed to the front of the classroom. She mumbled an apology as she took a few moments to dump everything out on the wide desk Mr. Hosney had placed near the board. She slipped her thumbs into the worn holes at the ends of her sleeves, the slight tug on the rest of the sleeve settling her. After arranging the notes and materials, she placed her bag on the ground and began to speak as she rose and turned to her classmates.

"For my family gene-"

She stopped speaking as something small and hard hit her in the throat, causing her to gag for a moment. Her left hand shot across her body to the side of her neck, rubbing the stinging patch of skin as her teacher turned to the class to ask angrily who'd launched the projectile. Her right hand went to her pocket to thumb over the color selectors of her pen.

"People,' he said sternly while pointing a finger at the class, "responsibility." The laughter slowly died down, and he gestured for her to continue her presentation.

"Um.. okay," she said, to another quiet round of laughter as she withdrew her hands from her neck and her pocket. "So for my family genealogy report I decided to do it on my great-great-grandfather, who was a famous man, Captain Archibald Witwicky." She paused to take a steadying breath and reach for the folded-up parchment on the table in front of her. "Very famous explorer, in fact he was one of the first to explore," and at this, she pulled open the map she had brought, "the Arctic Circle. Which is a big deal. In 1897 he took 41 brave sailors straight into the arctic shelf." As she spoke, Sam traced their route along the map she was holding up. She put the map down and picked up a couple of the other pieces she had brought with her. "And here we have some of the basic instruments and tools used by nineteenth-century seamen-" at her words, a few of the students broke out into giggles. Sam could almost feel Mr. Hosney holding up his miniature stop sign behind her as the sounds of mirth died out immediately. Her arm twitched as she forced herself not to reach into her pocket. Instead she picked up the objects she had been reaching for. "This is the quadrant, and this is a sextant-" this time the entire class began laughing before resuming their quiet, likely again at their teacher's silent reminder.

As Sam spoke, she cast her gaze around the room, studiously avoiding meeting Mikaela's eyes. She could feel the faint burn in her cheeks as the other girl's gaze lingered on her. It was definitely because of Sam's presentation, and not because Mikaela was actually interested in her enough to stare at her. She replaced the items she was holding and picked up the next object of interest. Some of her earlier discomfort dissipated as she explained one of her favorite possessions. "These are my great-great-grandfather's glasses, these are actually pretty cool. They have this weird pattern engraved on them, I haven't been able to figure out what it is yet, but if I can get a proper microscope I might be able to."

Mikaela had tilted her head and was twirling a strand of her hair around her index finger. Sam gulped; she hoped nobody noticed the red creeping into her face, but she was sure that everyone had. "Unfortunately, on that expedition, my ancestor fell into a cave in the ice. He found something down there that he called a 'giant ice man', and was committed to a mental ward where he drew these strange, repeating symbols on the walls. I've studied the pictures and there are repeating patterns, almost like a language. I'm hoping one day I can learn how to decipher them, and maybe find out what drove my ancestor insane." She carefully placed the glasses on the desk.

"My great-great-grandfather wasn't the only one affected by the expedition; several other families never saw their loved ones again, and some people survived but with injuries that affected them the rest of their lives. Not much is known about what happened to the expedition members who disappeared, and the government has made it strangely difficult to access their files despite the Freedom of Information Act. Whatever my ancestor saw in that cave, and whatever these symbols mean, I hope to discover someday. If you'll sign this petition,"and at this she reached for the clipboard she had brought, "perhaps I can send the government a message that they'll actually listen to. N-not like terrorism, or anything," she added hastily, "just a-"

The bell drowned out her words, andand she raised her voice to be heard. "If you don't have time now we can talk on monday!" She held out the clipboard and a pen. "If anyone could sign, I'd appreciate it!"

The history teacher nearly shouted to be heard over the clamor. "Okay! Might be a pop quiz tomorrow, might not." his voice dropped slightly in volume, somewhat lost in the shuffle to leave. "Sleep in fear tonight." A couple of students signed the petition, but most simply turned to leave.

As the class filed out of the room, Sam gathered her things from the desk and then
turned hopefully to Mr. Hosney. "Okay! Pretty good, right?" She knew she was grinning. She'd worked hard on this, and felt like she'd given the best performance she could. She could almost taste the pending automobile purchase.

Mr. Hosney leaned back in his chair, his tone thoughtful. "I'd say a solid B+."

Sam felt her smile fall away at his words. "A B+?" No! She was so close! She couldn't let this go. "Why?"

Her teacher leaned forward. "You did a solid job, but you also had your hand in your pocket half the time." She frowned. She was pretty sure it was less than half. "Sam, we've talked about this. They only give you crap because you give them ammunition." The light reprimand in his tone only furthered her building discomfort and anxiety.

Sams's heart thundered in her chest. She had to convince this man she deserved an A. "Look can you do me a favor? Can you look out the window for a second?" She pointed towards where she could see her dad parked out on the street. "You see my father? He's the guy in the green car?"

The history teacher grudgingly turned and looked out the window.

Sam leaned forward, gripping the edge of the desk. Her words began to spill out of her faster. "Okay, I want to tell you about a dream. A girl's dream. And a man's promise to that girl. He looked me in the eye, he said 'Sam, I'm gonna buy you a car. But I want you to bring me two thousand dollars and three A's. Okay?"

She could tell he was rapidly losing interest, pushing his glasses to his forehead so he could pinch the bridge of his nose.

"I got the two grand, and I got two A's. Okay?" she brought her hands together, as though she was cupping a flower. "Here's the dream. Your B+? Poof! Dream gone. Kaput." she let her hands fall apart as though propelled by a small explosion, almost frantic. "Sir, just ask yourself." She couldn't believe she was about to say this, but she was desperate. "What would Jesus do?"

0o0o0o0o0

Bumblebee, disguised as an old Camaro-brand vehicle parked on the street, waited with eagerness as Samantha Witwicky ran out to meet her progenitor, waving a piece of paper. He had been watching the girl for a couple of orns now, and he was becoming very impatient to meet her. She was anxious and introspective, kind and curious, and he had a feeling that she would take to the confirmation of extraterrestrial life with gusto. She'd even sent a signal out into space with a modified radio, trying to make contact; If the girl he's been observing and guarding ran away from him, then he'd mount his helm on his aft.

Yes! There! The triumphant cry that signaled they would be going to a car lot to make a purchase. As Ronald Witwicky pulled his green Austin-Healey away from the curb and drove down the street, Bumblebee followed at a distance.

When the elder Witwicky pulled into the Porsche dealership, Bumblebee's spark sank. There were too many people around for him to change alts discreetly, and there was no way his current disguise would pass muster next to those gleaming bodies. Though the human's vehicle designs were surely alien, they were also on occasion strangely beautiful. As his audials picked up the progenitor's laughter, relief flooded his circuits. It was a harmless joke; his mission wasn't in danger. He focused longingly on the sleek cars for a few moments. Bumblebee wished he could adopt a classier alt, but in order to fulfill his oath, he had to remain… affordable.

As they pulled back out of the dealership and onto the road, Bumblebee considered the species he'd come to be fascinated by. They were relatively physically fragile; if he wasn't careful, a simple gesture could break one of them. And yet they were also highly resilient; they made their homes in even the more extreme environments of their planet, and they could recover remarkably well from many things that didn't outright kill them. They had more languages and culture variance than any other species logged in his memory banks. Their size allowed them to explore places only minicons could reach. And their relationships were as complicated as his own peoples'.

As he pulled into the dealership they had chosen, he surveyed the situation. There were plenty of other cars in similar or slightly better condition than him externally, but his alt was definitely the most appealing of the shapes on display. At least, in his own estimation. The Witwickys were talking to the salesman, a stocky, dark-skinned man wearing a black and gold leaf-patterned shirt and a pale, brimmed hat. He was saying something about 'the car picks the driver,' at which Bumblebee twittered internally. The man had no idea how right he was in this case.

As they approached, he noticed a strange, pleasant sensation spreading through his circuits. It was calming, almost like a welcome ping from a friend. Then Sam was running her hand along his roof, and his sensors went insane at the contact, every iota of processing power focused on whatever the girl's EM field was doing to him; direct touch ramped up the strange feeling to an intensity that was nearly painful, but when she pulled her hand away and said something about racing stripes, his systems ached with the loss of contact. The hands and field of the salesman on his trunk felt irritating and unwelcome, and he silently begged Sam to touch him again.

Then Sam leaned on his door, and their fields mingled more closely again. He could feel the ache of taxed joints and battered chassis slowly melting away, and he decided right then and there that if anything happened to this young human, he would annihilate whoever was responsible. And then she was opening his door and climbing into his cab.

Bumblebee's processors felt filled with comfortable static. As Sam explored his interior, he did his best to ignore the aggravating sensation of the salesman leaning against him. They were discussing pricing, he registered vaguely.

"Five grand," he heard the salesman say.

"No, I'm not paying over four," came the elder Witwicky's reply.

As Sam immediately began to argue, Bumblebee's processors hummed, trying to come up with some way to keep the girl sitting just a little while longer. She eventually acquiesced leaving his cab, and as she closed the door a bolt of wordless fury shot through his systems. He slammed his opposing door into the car next to him that the salesman was pitching to the pair. When even that seemed not to deter the man, he turned up his speakers and began emitting a rising pitch that shattered the windshields of every other car in the lot with a satisfying crash. The salesman stumbled, clearly aghast, before turning and offering to drop to the Witwickys' price range.

As he slowly calmed down, Bumblebee felt embarrassment spread through his circuits. He probably didn't have to go that far. As the pair of lighter skinned humans drove away with him, he resolved to contact Optimus tonight and handle his first real meeting with the girl better than he had this situation.

0o0o0o0o0

Sam woke in the night to sounds from outside. She blearily turned to check the clock; 1:27 AM. she groaned sleepily, but her eyes snapped open as she recognized the sound: the engine of her recently-purchased Camaro. She quickly sat upright and glanced at the backyard. The patio lights were off; neither of her parents ever left the lights off if they were going out in the dark.

Someone was stealing her car!

Sam hastily threw on her clothes from the day before and bolted out of her room, grabbing her keys off the edge of her desk. They must have hotwired the car because she had the Camaro's key on the same ring as her house key. She practically flew down the stairs, only slowing down to make sure the door didn't slam. She saw the tail end of her car pulling around the corner onto the street, and she made a beeline for her bike, lying on its side next to the fence. She hauled it upright and threw her leg over, and began pedaling.

As she pulled out of the driveway, she fumbled in her pocket for her phone, pulling it out to call the police. But as she clicked the power button repeatedly, the screen stubbornly refusing to light up, her heart sank.

Of course her battery was dead.

She shoved her phone back in her pocket, angry with herself for forgetting to charge it again. She would have to deal with this thief alone, it seemed

Whoever they were, they didn't seem aware of her yet. She couldn't see their head over the seat's low headrest, so either they were short, young, or ducking down for some reason while under the assumption nobody was watching.

Or maybe the car was driving itself.

She gave her head a quick, hard shake to dismiss the echoes of her dreams. She couldn't let her scant rest get to her; someone had stolen her car, and if she fell asleep on her bike she'd never get it back from them. She refocused and realized that she'd drifted a bit behind. They hadn't pulled too far ahead; she pushed her legs harder to start catching back up. She felt a moment of brief panic when the Camaro took a right, but when she rounded the corner, they were still on the same street.

As she continued to follow the thief at a distance, she recognized the street they were headed down from the couple times she had come this way on her bike before. It led along the train tracks for a short while, before pulling away and eventually ending at…

The junkyard.

They were gonna scrap her new(ish) car!

She shifted her bike into a higher gear and leaned forward, pumping her legs as hard as she could against the increased resistance. As the driver slammed her car through the yard's fence, confirming her fears, she cursed vehemently and at length under her breath. She had to catch up to this asshole and stop them from whatever they were planning to do with her enchilada of freedom.

The junkyard was quiet; she couldn't even hear the car's engine anymore. The piles of broken and abandoned machines loomed forebodingly, and she pulled up short when she caught sight of the yellow body of the Camaro among the heaps, slowing down along a lane between the towering mounds of parts. She stepped off her bike hastily and placed it quietly on the ground before creeping up to a small junk pile to hide behind.

The driver stopped, and the lights turned off. She waited, thinking that maybe if the driver left, and by some miracle didn't take the keys, she could just… drive her car back home. No need for confrontation. But her hopes slowly withered as the moments passed, and nobody got out of the car. She was losing patience and beginning to consider investigating.

And then her car… just… stood up.

It was more complicated than that, of course. Seams appeared along the body where none were supposed to have existed, sections of the car unfolded and refolded on themselves to form legs and arms and a body, and as the most-definitely-not-a-car reached its full height, she realized that though the proportions were off, its shape was…

Humanoid.

Holy fuck. She was watching a car she had bought not twenty-four hours ago, a car she had been sitting in, transform into a humanoid robot. She pinched herself hard to make sure she wasn't dreaming, and no, this was apparently very real. As the last pieces slotted into place, the not-a-car's doors suspended on its back like a diminutive set of wings, and it looked around, as though searching for something. Whatever it saw seemed to satisfy it, as it made a metallic, almost satisfied-sounding chirrup before turning towards the sky, and releasing a narrow beam of light that played across the clouds for a few moments.

Sam found herself was more than its appearance, a towering body of dirty yellow car sections arranged over a frame of complex silvered machinery. The way it moved, the way it sounded, not to mention the whole shape-shifting thing. As far as she knew, there wasn't anyone on earth doing things like this with robotics.

And if that was true...

It hadn't come from Earth.

She barely registered that she was leaving the cover of the junk pile, her thoughts racing. This was probably an alien. She might be about to make first contact. Aliens were real and they were huge and she was walking up to one. She didn't know what to say! Were they friendly? Would they bother trying to communicate with her? Should she even ask why this one had practically insisted that she and her father purchase it? As she drew closer the massive extraterrestrial turned to look at her. She stopped in her tracks, all her thoughts scattered, cohesion lost in the face of her wonder at the intelligence she saw in its mechanical eyes.

Floundering, she said the first thing she could think of.

"What are your pronouns?"

The yellow-armored mechanoid's head drew back slightly, before its face plates shifted in a fascinating way. Was it even possible that, with all the space and time that was probably between their planets, she could take that expression as surprise, followed by amusement? And then her silent question was answered by a canned round of studio crowd laughter, emitting from the alien's speakers. It crouched down, and she still had to crane her neck upward to meet its eyes. Its gaze panned meaning fully down and to the side, and gestured towards her.

Frowning, she dropped her eyes to follow its pointing finger, at her… pocket?

Her phone?

She pulled it out, and hesitated. She had no idea what this thing was. It could be a secret government program, designed to… hack into their satellite network!

But as she contemplated the mechanical entity in front of her, something about its posture or its lack of movement towards her put her at ease. It wasn't hurting her. She slowly held out the small handheld device, saying "It's out of battery. Sorry."

With a precision belied by its size, the mechanoid gently lifted her phone out of her hand between two massive digits. It turned it about, examining it for a moment, before extending a very small metal tool of some kind from a finger on its off-hand. It then inserted the miniature metal extension into the charging port on her phone, and not half a second later the power-on tones were playing. It promptly presented her device, and she grasped it carefully, almost afraid it might explode. When nothing happened for a few seconds besides the alien withdrawing its arm, she flipped it open to see she had a new text from an unknown number. Amused and a bit exasperated, she opened the thread.

[My pronouns are he/him.]

She stared agog at the words on her screen, and slowly cast her eyes upward to meet the glowing optics of the metal being in front of her.

"Are you an advanced, like, robot? Or are you an alien person, who is also a transforming metal giant?" She saw its- his- face plates pull upward in what looked vaguely like a smile, if the person smiling didn't have a mouth. Her eyes fell to the screen again, where the earlier sentence had been replaced with two words.

[The latter.]

She eyed him warily. "Don't you laugh at me, mister. This is a lot, and I'm just trying to be polite."

He made a pacifying gesture, and then pointed at the phone again.

[Alright. My name is Bumblebee, and I'm a member of the Autobots, a faction of freedom fighters from the planet Cybertron. I was sent here to guard you, because you're important; your ancestor had something very valuable to us, and we think you have it. I just signalled my allies to rendezvous near here when they can. I'm not sure exactly how long they'll be.]

She looked up from her phone as a strange electronic noise and the clanking of metal drew her attention. She watched as the last pieces snapped into place, and the Camaro was sitting in front of her again. Bumblebee's door popped open, and his speakers burbled, some man from a movie or show she'd never seen saying wryly, "Any more questions you wanna ask?"

She sighed, and stared out into the night sky for a moment. She was exhausted, after the hard ride and then the revelation. "Only about a million. But I suppose we've got time." She climbed into the passenger seat, and they accelerated out of the junkyard.

0o0o0o0o_Author's Notes_o0o0o0o0

I'm going to try to update once a week. I have the general timeline almost completely mapped out, and the specific outlines of the first two stories finished. This work will probably span at least four installments. Let me know what you think!