A/N: Be it noted that this chapter contains racist and homophobic epithets.
Chapter 3: Dispersion
By the time they made it back to Esther's apartment building, it was getting dark, Esther had thrown up twice again, and they'd somehow not been arrested, which, considering Masterson's approach to driving-as-contact-sport, was nothing short of miraculous. If Esther had been a Catholic, she would have ripped off a few dozen Hail Marys on stumbling out of her crazily-parked little junker onto the pavement: as it was, she just threw up again.
"You really don't have a very efficient digestive system, do you?" Endo remarked as he clambered out of the car, narrowly avoiding being kicked in the face by Tripp, who somehow harboured the idea that anyone else getting out of the car before he did would bring about Armageddon. The five men somehow managed to untangle themselves and reconvene on the sidewalk, where they either looked around with interest, as was the case with Ryder, Tripp, and Downey, looked at nothing in particular, as with Endo, or looked at Esther with barely-disguised contempt, which was, predictably, Masterson. Four hours in a car with the guy had given her a particular dislike for him; if the other four were insane and apparently violent, at least they had the decency not to treat her like something one would scrape off the bottom of one's shoe, which Masterson seemed to think she warranted.
Endo stopped staring at the pavement and started looking at Esther again, as if expecting a reply. Having just regurgitated most of her stomach, cranky, nervous, suffering the beginnings of a hangover, and no longer very interested in getting back at Stevenson if it meant putting up with these guys much longer, she was just suicidal enough to snap back, "Look, there's three things that make me sick to my stomach: booze, crazy driving, and assholes, and lucky me, I've gotten all three today, thanks a damn bunch."
Through her ill haze, she watched Masterson's sneer turn to a puzzled frown; the big redneck glanced over at Downey and rumbled, "Assholes?"
"Exhaust pipes," Downey said, his own dark face creasing in a frown. "What do you mean, 'crazy driving'?"
That pretty much put Esther over the edge. "Just...just go away, would you? Go...somewhere else. Anywhere else where you're not around me." She growled at the puzzled looks she got. "Downtown starts about a thirty-minute walk from here. There's lots of hostels and motels and that. You can find yourself a place, just..." She waved a vague hand in that direction, feeling like she should throw up again, aware that there was nothing left to throw up. This whole getting drunk thing wasn't worth it, not at all.
Masterson glanced the way she was waving, looked back at her, and sneered again. "I guess we will. Who needs a wimp who can't keep her fuel down, anyway? C'mon," he said to the other four, and they started to walk.
"You're welcome," Esther muttered to their retreating backs. She made her feet take her unsteadily towards the building's foyer, where she discovered that her exchange with the five strange men had had an audience, in the form of Andrew and Jonathan Ng, the superintendent's grade-school-aged grandsons. The two of them were sitting on the floor by the glass doors, apparently engrossed in watching Jonathan beat up God-knew-what on his Gameboy Advanced, but when she leaned against the wall and glowered at them, Andrew looked up and grinned.
"New friends?"
"Like hell," Esther grumbled. "Tell your grandpa I'm sorry about the mess on the sidewalk, but my car looks a lot worse."
"He won't mind," Jonathan dismissed without looking up from his game. "You're his favourite tenant anyway. Those guys gave you trouble, he'd have come out and set them straight."
"That's nice of him," Esther said weakly, realizing that her audience for the Esther's Whacky Day show must be up to three by now, if not more.
"The big guy was ugly," Andrew opined cheerfully. "Really ugly. Face on him like a truck grille."
"Uh-huh." Esther fumbled for the key to her tiny mailbox, realizing that between Stevenson and various other things, she hadn't checked her mail in three days. "Listen, guys, it's been a really long day, and--"
"See, first time you pulled up and those guys got out of the car, me and Jon figured you'd found out you were straight and were trying to make up for lost time," Andrew went on, not bothering to hide his evil glee when Esther turned a beady-eyed glower on him. "But then we saw the big guy and figured, nah, all your girlfriends were pretty cute, no way you'd go for somebody that ugly even if you were desperate."
"Does he have a chainsaw?" Jonathan chimed in.
Esther extracted the clump of bills from her box with a growl and started up the stairs. The boys' laughter followed her up all three flights. She made a mental note to super-glue the next available scientific journal article on homosexuality and genetics to the little creeps' foreheads. Why had every male she'd run across today given her trouble?
Maybe she would call Kaitlin. They were in the "off-again" stage right now, sure, but it would be nice to talk to a sane person before the day was out.
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Hostels were easy for Motormaster and company to deal with. Cybertron had a similar system, and they weren't totally ignorant of human social customs. You exchanged money with the consul, you were provided with accomodations, you didn't wreck said accomodations. Or so Motormaster reminded Wildrider with a crushing grip on the smaller man's wrist when he caught him looking at the fake-porcelain table lamp with a gleam in his eye.
No, the trouble for them started when they wandered into the dirty, cramped bar across the street. Or more specifically, when Breakdown bumped a pale-skinned human male's elbow on the way to get a table, and the human male called him a word that started with N and ended with R.
There was some brief consultation among the Stunticons, because human slang was not exaclty their strong point, before Breakdown turned back to the human, puzzled.
"Hey, could you repeat that?"
The human sneered up at him. Even seated, he was big and beefy, and if he stood, presumably he would be almost as tall as Motormaster. "Wassa matter, ya deaf too, fucking ni--"
Breakdown froze as Drag Strip suddenly elbowed Wildrider. "Oh yeah, that word! Rumble and Frenzy and their stupid human TV again, I hear humans call each other that all the time! It means...uh..."
"If you don't know don't talk about it," Wildrider sneered, elbowing back. Dead End pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
"This is ridiculous. Let's just find a seat and re-fuel, Motormaster, Breakdow--er, Breakdown?"
The paranoid ex-Stunticon's eyes were darting around the agressive human's table, encountering gaze after gaze, all riveted on him, all hostile, all whispering we know what you are, you are the other, not one of us and we identify and despise you for it...
"Stop staring at me." The words were barely a whisper, because that was all he could manage. The way they were looking at him, he'd never felt so exposed, to animosity, to cold identification and extraction...not when he was a machine. "Why are you staring at me? I'm--I'm just another human, like you..."
"There's plenty who'd debate that," another one of the humans at the aggressive one's table muttered, to muffled snickers from the others.
Another one of them spat. It landed on the floor by Motormaster's boot. This apparently settled something in the huge ex-Stunticon's mind, because he promptly manhandled Breakdown aside and planted himself in front of the human who had made the initial comment. His voice carried over the hubbub of the bar, a rumble of pure menace.
"You. I don't care who you are, and I don't care what your issues are. But this?" Here Motormaster gave Breakdown's caught arm a hard shake, causing the other Stunticon to yelp and kick him in the shins, to no real effect. "Mine. A weakling, but mine anyways. Meaning you put your optics elsewhere. Got it?"
The human sneered and got to his feet, eye-to-eye with Motormaster; most of his tablemates followed. "Oh, this gets even better. I hate fags even more than I hate n--"
The immediate uppercut that connected with the human's chin was barely a twentieth of what Motormaster was capable of. It was the sort of hit he usually dealt out to the rowdy Cassette twins or an uppity Insecticon, a sort of derisive swat reserved for a lesser opponent. Nonetheless, the 'crunch' of jawbone breaking was audible through the suddenly-quiet bar. The ill-fated man positively floated backwards over his own table, knocking one of his drinking companions over as he went.
Motormaster was still smirking when the man who had idly questioned Breakdown's humanity pulled a gun from his waistband and levelled it at the big ex-Stunticon's temple. Unfortunately, he did it while Breakdown was still standing less than three feet away.
The noise the gun made as it jammed and practically exploded in his hands sent the bar into a state of total uproar. And in the middle of it all, the Stunticons, no longer unsure and lost, for a short, glorious period of about ten minutes, were back in their element, back in the fight.
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Esther looked into the bars of the smallest holding cell of the 27th Precinct and winced. "Yes, I know them. They're my, uh, my cousins. They're brothers, you see."
"Is that right?" The young woman standing next to her asked curiously. Her badge identified her not as LAPD but as a member of the Canadian RCMP; the special tag below it indicated some sort of cross-national police friendship program involved in training rookies. Her was close-cropped and dark, and she wore a half-bemused smile and a wedding band that was already showing bruising around the edges, along with her knuckles. "Huh, well, far be it from me to judge. My condolences, though; my people're Irish and I know what it's like to have rowdy relatives. They called on you first, though, so you must be a good cousin to 'em; the big fella just kept asking after you, so we hadda look up your number."
Moe Masterson peered out through the bars of the holding cell, his entire demeanour speaking of bleak threat. Esther sighed and massaged her temples. "I guess he would." Since I'm the only person they know in this town. Hell's breakfast. "Uh, what are they charged with?"
"Couple things, mostly related to D&Ds, although they've done breathalyzer and none of 'em showed. But between you and me, my partner spoke to the bartender and apparently the only guy who took real damage off the big fella ain't likely to be pressing charges seeing as how he called the other fella in there a nasty word which I will not relate to you. The general agreement seems to be provocation, so if they're lucky they'll get off with a fine and a slap on the wrist. Apparently it's a first offence."
And that's Canadians for you. "How much for bail?"
"Two thousand each, thank you, your family was very prompt in paying it. Tanned gent in a suit came down earlier this evening and identified himself as the Goldberg family's attorney, said to carry through the call, gave us your address even."
"Uh-huh," Esther said, wondering exactly when her librarian father and shopkeeper mother would have hired a slick L.A. lawyer. Obviously never. This got weirder by the minute. Masterson and his crew were all staring at the RCMP lady like they'd been kicked. She smiled cheerfully at them and waved over a couple of large LAPD sergeants to help her let them out.
"Now you be sure to keep these boys out of trouble," the young woman told Esther as the larger of the sergeants walked Masterson through signing the proper papers with a series of humourless grunts.
"Uh-huh," Esther said, feeling like an idiot and wishing she had something else to say. But it was three a.m., she still had a pounding headache, and she was feeling like her life was spiralling further out of control by the second. Endo, the last of the five to do his paperwork, scribbled a signature, and the five of them turned and looked at Esther. She found the looks peculiar. There was no hostility, not even from Masterson, just...confusion. They looked mildly defiant, yeah, but they also looked lost.
She shrugged and pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders, her gaze moving to the floor. "Um...there's a cab waiting outside. You can stay the night at my place as long as you don't trash anything. I've got sleeping bags." She startled to shuffle towards the precinct door. There was a moment of hesitation, and then the sounds of heavy boots and sneakers followed after her.
TBC...