Human Interactions
The Wrong Place
By Paperkat
08/03/07
Disclaimer: The Transformers movie and all related material belong to Hasbro, Dreamworks and Paramount, concept originally created and licensed through Takara Co. LTD.
The Disclaimer's Disclaimer: I stole the above disclaimer from Straya. Please forgive me
Author's notes have been moved to the end of part V 'Angels in the Making'
"Bumblebee… Sam… Wait, hold on a minute," Mikaela yelled into the cell phone as if talking louder and plugging her free ear with her finger were going to give her a better signal.
"Mikaela, you have not attached your sensors," Ratchet called out from somewhere behind the stack of whatever it was he was attempting to organize.
Mikaela held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and yelled sarcastically back, "Just a little louder, Ratchet. I don't think they heard you in Florida!"
She could hear Ratchet rumbling his discontent of having the tests interrupted, but it wasn't her fault that Sam and Bee had chosen now to call. Besides, it had been almost a week since they left for their trip and all that they had exchanged so far were emails and text messages. Once standing in the entranceway to the Autobot's slowly evolving complex, Mikaela's phone was able to establish a clear signal.
"I'm warning you Bee. Give it back or it's chemical warfare, I promise you."
"I'm not scared of your emissions human, do your worse."
"For the record," Mikaela cut in, trying not to smile so much that they could hear it, "I don't ever want to know what that was about."
"Mikaela!!" the two right of passage goers cried simultaneously over the line.
"Well, at least you remembered my name. So, what are the two of you up to?"
"You would not believe how many cool cars are here!" Mikaela suppressed the urge to say 'well, duh', it was a car exposition after all.
"They're alright," Bumblebee chimed in, not sounding nearly as impressed.
"Don't get all pouty. I saw you eyeing that Caddy with lifts. Bet you wished you could do that."
"I could do that if I had a malfunctioning hydraulics regulator. And before you even ask, no we're not breaking it on purpose."
"But Bee, it would be so cool!"
"Did you guys call me for a reason?" Mikaela broke in again. The two of them were adorable, and she loved them to death, but the desert was getting cold now that the sun had set. Her shoes and jacket were still inside, and goose bumps were already starting to form across her bare arms.
The line grew quiet and the air seemed to electrify with unspoken tension.
"Just wanted to see what you were up to and to see if maybe you missed us… me… or Bee, you know just wondering," Sam muttered quietly, his voice getting smaller and more hesitant as he talked.
Mikaela's heart constricted with sympathy for Sam. Even after four months of dating he was still so insecure about their relationship, and part of the blame was hers. She wasn't as open as she knew she could be. It was just a product of living on the run so long with her father that made her hold her cards to the chest. You just didn't get close to people, because anyone could betray you. Sam wasn't like that, he just didn't have it in him to think that way, but old habits died hard and Mikaela struggled everyday to find a balance between opening up to Sam and protecting herself.
"I always miss you when you're gone," Mikaela assured him immediately. "Believe me, it's just not the same without you guys around. All work and no fun."
"Has Ratchet been bothering you?" Bee asked, sounding a little concerned but mostly amused.
"It hasn't been too bad. Just getting everything ready for when his Special Helper comes back from vacation," Mikaela teased pointedly, bringing up the name Bumblebee had used to describe himself while assisting Ratchet with reconfiguring the Ark into a permanent complex.
"You're so helpful," Bee muttered sarcastically.
"Don't worry I'll pitch in," Sam offered.
"No you won't," Mikaela cut in swiftly. "I have plans for you."
"Plans?" her boyfriend squeaked in surprise.
"Oh yes, plans," Mikaela reiterated, letting her voice drop an octave and slide over the phone line like a caress. It never failed to get her very specific results.
"Sam?" Bumblebee asked in mock concern. "Sam, you need to breathe, your face is turning blue."
"It is not," the teen male denied hotly.
"My malfunction. You are correct. It's turning red."
"Shut it, Bee."
During Sam's and Bumblebee's debate Mikaela's phone gave the first of three warning tones that the battery was low and going to shut down. She pulled it away from her ear to confirm visually that her time was very limited and then glared back into the cavernous entryway. This always happened when she came to visit and Ratchet had yet to look into why.
"Hey Sam, I got to go, my battery's almost dead."
"Oh, ok."
The same awkward silence that followed all of their phone conversations ensued. If they had have been saying goodbye in person they would have kissed until one of them needed to breathe and the other would have said goodbye, but that kind of intimacy was lost on the phone, especially with Sam's hands-free set-up plugged into Bumblebee. Mikaela heard another more insistent tone from her phone and made an impulsive decision.
"Well, you two have fun and come back in one piece, don't talk to any strange cars," Mikaela paused to gather her courage. Her final warning from her cell pushed her forward. "Love you Sam. See you when you get back."
There was no need for her to end the call as the power drained out exactly on queue. It was cheep of her to do that, knowing that Sam wouldn't have an opportunity to respond, but Mikaela wouldn't have been able to stand it if Sam hadn't been able to answer back in kind. This way if he didn't feel the same way at least the two of them could pretend that nothing was said or that the phone had died before she had said the words she had only spoken to her father before now.
Of course now Mikaela was plagued by the 'whats'. What had Sam thought of her confession? What did he feel? What was he thinking now? What was Bumblebee thinking now? But Mikaela knew the answer to that one. She knew that the smallest Autobot thought it was silly that verbal confessions of affection were necessary. Well, maybe not silly, but definitely inefficient.
To Bumblebee's way of thinking there was no such thing as a passing fancy or temporary infatuation or any of the short-term conditions that linked humans together. Apparently once affection was given for his kind it was permanent and binding, but Transformers didn't have to deal with things like hormones, so for Bumblebee it was probably true. She had certainly never questioned the depth of Bee's seemingly instant and sincere affection.
It seemed like the more she found that made their species similar the more she found that set them apart. So engrossed in her internal analysis of all things human and Cybertronian, Mikaela never saw the 20+ foot robot standing right in front of her when she returned to the main room.
"Do…"
Mikaela let out with a piercing scream, as Ratchet seemed to appear out of nowhere.
"Don't jump out at me like that!" But the Autobot medic wasn't listening to her, in fact he seemed to have forgotten she was there at all, that is until he spoke.
"Do that again," Ratchet commanded, his scanners brushing over Mikaela with a soft powder blue light.
"Do what? Piss my pants or have a heart attack? Sorry, not happening," she informed the giant robot that seemed to thrive on making random requests lately.
Ratchet gave her a visual once over, probably checking to see if she had actually 'lubricated' on herself, before sighing. He had really gotten good at making it sound more human.
"Please attach your sensors, I am losing data. Your personal monitor is insufficient for detailed analysis."
"Ratchet is this still necessary?" Mikaela asked even as she complied. The nest of wires and electrodes were exactly where she had left them yesterday, in a sticky pile under Ratchet's workbench on the folding table she had bought for Bumblebee's birthday cake last week.
"You've already determined that Sam and I and the entire human race for that matter were safe," she reminded him as she started to untangle the sensors. "What more can there possibly be?"
Instead of answering immediately, something that Mikaela had gotten used to as just the way Ratchet operated, the medic went to the almost fully functional computer from the Ark. Mikaela had to smile at the name. It never ceased to amaze her how things translated from Cybertronian to English. Of course she had been informed that Optimus and Teletran were designations that had to be extrapolated from the human language. Prime apparently was a rank of some sort, or at least that's the conclusion Mikaela had come to while spending her designated time with the Autobot leader.
And a very pleasant time it had been. At first they had just sat in each other's company. She would read and he would do whatever a 30-foot robot did in complete silence. At some point she had started to read aloud, a habit she had developed when trying to memorize a book for a report. Then when she hadn't been able to continue, Optimus picked up where she had stopped. It had been quiet, peaceful and the exact opposite of her time with Ironhide.
Her time with Ironhide had been a bit more like boot camp. Intense, how to completely or otherwise screw with you enemy, boot camp. It was pretty much the same as her and Bumblebee discussing Cybertronian physiology, except Ironhide taught her how to rip them apart, not how to patch them back together. It was informative and lively to say the least, but she hoped she would never have to use it.
Right now was her time with Ratchet, filled with tests, samples and endless questions.
At the moment, Ratchet was using the massive keypad situated just under Teletran's wall sized screen. She had been told that once the Autobot's computer was fully functional, it would be verbally interfaced, but for now the keypad had to be used. Mikaela remembered how small Bumblebee had looked next to it. The keypad hit him at just under his shoulders and Ratchet mid-chest, Optimus seemed to be the only one that could use the keypad comfortably.
"This configuration," Ratchet finally said, as he pressed a few more key stokes to display an image, "should enable me to isolate the anomalous reading."
Mikaela just stood there and stared, the spaghetti of wires left hanging forgotten in her hands. There in 3 story, larger than life, perfect detail was an exact, down to the mole on her hip, image of her naked body. Ratchet had been apparently aware enough of human taboo and sensibilities to not accurately display the important bits, but it was still a little unnerving to know that even though she had never taken he clothes off in front of the medic he had somewhere in his brain, and apparently in Teletran One, an image of her body.
"You do have a password for that thing, right?" Mikaela asked, trying not to sound as freaked out as she felt. That would only frustrate Ratchet to have her 'illogical' human hang-ups disrupting his tests.
"No one would access my personal files," Ratchet defended mildly, as if mentioning it would make it happen.
"You do have a password for that thing, right?" Mikaela said again, making it clear that the question was rhetorical and not for debate, again Ratchet gave a human sigh.
"I will encrypt all files pertaining to your physical form and body specifics," the medic relented, turning back to the console to type in his commands.
"Thank you," Mikaela told him gratefully as she went back to untangling the wires and attaching them to her body in the way displayed on the screen. The wires were actually little antennae designed to gather data all along their length and were faintly sticky to make them stay in place.
Ratchet knew more about her insides, outside and just about everything else she had than anyone had a right to, but in the name of science and peaceful relations between them, Mikaela endured it silently. After all he had come through with his side of the bargain, providing food and drink, which she came to find out, was pretty much the same thing for the Autobots, and he had convinced Ironhide to go along with the Party Cannon.
"Ok, I'm ready," Mikaela informed the medic.
Ratchet was still imputing data into the giant computer.
Wait for it, Mikaela told herself, knowing what would happen next.
Ratchet turned around and came towards the workbench, a device she had never seen before in his hand. The medic offered his hand to Mikaela and she quickly climbed into his palm.
Wait for it.
With deliberate care, Ratchet placed her on the table and came to stand in front of her position. He scanned her with this new piece of equipment.
Wait for it.
"Do what you did in the hallway again," Ratchet requested nonchalantly.
Whoop, there it is!
Mikaela could have laughed, cried and swore all at the same time.
"I wasn't doing anything Ratchet," Mikaela insisted for the millionth time. When was he going to realize that whatever the anomalous reading was, it was just that, anomalous. She wasn't doing anything to make it happen, it just happened.
"What were you thinking of at the time?" Ratchet asked.
Mikaela blinked in surprise. This is new.
"I was…" Mikaela tried to remember her exact thoughts. "Well, when you scared the crap out of me I was thinking how nice it would be to put a bell on you so that you couldn't to that again."
Ratchet just smiled, probably amused at being considered the least bit stealthy.
"No before you were actually frightened," Ratchet clarified.
Mikaela took a moment then answered. "I was comparing Autobots to Humans."
"Alright then I want you to lay down," Ratchet said as he scooted the lounge chair Sam had liberated from the side of the road towards her. It looked like doll furniture next to his hand. "Think about the exact same thing as when you were in the hall."
"Ok, but I better not get billed for this."
Mikaela did as she was instructed. She remembered thinking about Sparks and Souls and how similar and different they were. Both a measure of life, yet one was physical and the other metaphysical. She tried to imagine what it could be like to hold something so fragile and weighty. Was a Spark scooped like water from a lake or harvested from the Allspark like fruit. Could her soul be plucked from her body if she could gather and twist it into…
"BING," said the device in Ratchet's hand.
"I need a more sensitive detector," he mumbled to himself as he left the room. "There should be something in storage, if I can link the…"
The rest of his externally spoken internal monologue was lost as Ratchet rounded the corner.
"Never mind me," Mikaela called out sarcastically. "I'll find something else to do for awhile."
Having had stuff like this happen before, Mikaela had tucked away a book to read when Ratchet got all Rainman on her. With boredom safety chased away, Mikaela settled in for a long wait. The last time Ratchet went to the storage room, he'd had been gone for an hour.
A resounding crash in the hallway instantly pulled Mikaela's attention from her novel. She waited for a Cybertronian curse to accompany the noise, figuring Ratchet had dropped something, but none came. She only had enough time to replace her bookmark when she heard weapon's fire, or at least she thought it was weapon's fire. It had a similar 'wawhoop' sound to Ratchet's wielding laser but on a much, much, much bigger scale. And to top it off, it didn't sound like anything she had heard the Autobots use thus far.
Mikaela's first instinct had been to call out to Ratchet to see if he was all right, but the thought died as quickly as it formed when she heard Ratchet begin to yell. It had the deadened hollow sound of someone on the other side of a heavy door and her suspicions were confirmed when the banging started. Someone had trapped Ratchet in the storage room.
Not even slowing to think about it, Mikaela ran to the fireman's pole attached to Ratchet's workbench. It had been Bumblebee's idea, as a way for her and Sam to quickly get down from the table in case none of the Autobots where around and there was an emergency, and Mikaela had a feeling that this qualified.
She grabbed the metal and gritted her teeth, Sam was much better at this than she was, and he preferred it to being lifted down. Mikaela's skin just seemed to stick to the highly polished metal like a tongue on a frozen flagpole. It never failed to leave hickie like marks on the exposed portions of her arms and legs, but the discomfort was preferable to being out in the open.
On the way down to the floor, Ratchet had stopped banging and had switched from English to Cybertronian. By the time her feet touched the ground Mikaela could hear the muffled high pitched, hollow sound of Ratchet's saw blade against metal. The safety bunker Ironhide had constructed in the corner of the room was a good hundred yards away. Mikaela's gym teacher would have been amazed to see her brake the girls' track record considering she hadn't done much more than dress-out all last year, but Mrs. Hammond never used the motivation of thundering enemy footsteps either.
From her hiding place Mikaela watched the intruder enter the room. It was tall, maybe as tall as Optimus, but not nearly as bulky. The slim form was more minimalist than sleek and had the same silver-gray brushed metal look as she remembered Megatron having. There was enough of a resemblance there to shock her into thinking that maybe Megatron had returned from the dead, but she quickly realized that the joint configurations were all wrong. Unless Megatron had gone on a massive diet and had changed his alternate form completely this couldn't be the same robot. Of course they had dumped his body in the ocean to crush it…
The intruder did a visual sweep of the room; protective blast shielding similar to Bumblebee's covered its eyes. It did not pause in her direction, which meant that either it wasn't scanning anything beyond the human visible wavelengths or Ironhide's senor shielding armor used to make the safety bunker was doing its job. Now the intruder's focus was on Teletran One.
All Mikaela could do was helplessly watch as the unknown robot accessed Teletran's files. She couldn't even use her phone to call Sam to relay a message to Optimus through Bumblebee because it was dead.
In a blur, what seemed to be hundreds of thousands of images flashed on the screen. How did it get in? Mikaela wondered. The external security had been online from the moment the first of the Ark's canons had been off loaded almost two months ago. They should have blown the unauthorized intruder to kingdom come long before it had a chance to enter the complex. But there it stood acting like it owned the place.
Ratchet didn't sound like he was getting any closer to freeing himself and Mikaela was at a loss for what to do. All of the tools she could have used to sever any exposed or near surface energon lines were up on the workbench and now out of her reach. Ironhide had taken the few modified human weapons capable of disabling a Cybertronian with him when he had been asked to participate in training Special Ops forces commissioned to deal with the Decepticon threat. There simply wasn't anything she could do.
But maybe there's something Teletran could do to help itself, Mikaela thought. Mounted high in the corners of the room where Null Canons designed to stop the enemy cold without completely obliterating the room. The only problem was the internal security had been disabled.
Teletran had gone into a fit every time Ratchet reorganized the rooms of the complex. The internal security had to be disabled so that the medic could work in peace without having to make Teletran stand down with every imagined security breach. But there was an emergency manual override. Actually there were two emergency overrides; one for the Autobots located about 15 feet up from her current position and another newer, human sized addition that Optimus had instructed Ratchet to install, which happened to be against the wall, right in front of were the intruder was standing.
Mikaela wanted to scream but didn't want to take the chance that she could be heard. She could try and make a brake for the emergency override, but with the way the intruder kept looking back over its shoulder she was bound to her caught.
Suddenly the screen stopped flipping. Mikaela determined that the intruder must not have done it itself, not only because it jumped back when a new image was displayed but because of who it was.
"And who the hell are you?!" Glen Whitmann demanded from what looked like his bedroom, if the movie posters in the background were any indication.
The intruder let out what sounded to be a Cybertronian curse as it started to work at the keypad more aggressively.
"Oh, no, I don't think so Tin Man," Glen countered, his large fingers moving lightening fast on his own keyboard.
"Maggie!" Glen screamed over his shoulder in a wonderful Whitney Houston imitation. "Oh, you think you're cute, huh..." he growled at the screen before throwing his head back a second time.
"Maggie!" the hacker yelled again, his eyes shifting frantically from seemingly the eyes of his opponent to another screen to his right.
"Glen, what on Earth are you..." Maggie started to ask from somewhere off camera, but Glen cut her off.
"Get the Big Guy!" he commanded pounding furiously on his keyboard, sweat started to appear on his brow.
"The President? Glen I told you, not even the President can get HBO to re-write the Soprano's ending," Maggie tried to reason with him, her voice getting louder until her face joined Glen's on Teletran's screen.
"No the other... Aw, hell nah..." Glen muttered, his face going from hyperactive Internet gamer intense to unnervingly focused, his eyes would not stray from his secondary monitor.
"My, God Glen, that's a...," the highly intelligent woman gasped, obviously assessing the situation quickly and accurately.
"Yes..." Glen agreed, his determination and focus not swaying.
"He's in..."
"I know..." the hacker confirmed her unfinished statement.
"I need to contact Optimus," Maggie blurted out quickly before disappearing from view.
"Ya, think!" Glen yelled, losing his focus for the first time to glare in the direction Maggie had gone.
Seizing the unexpected opportunity, Mikaela scurried across the floor. Her bare feet made no sound on the unforgiving metal but her racing heart sounded like a bass drum in her head. She felt like a rat in a maze as she maneuvered her way around the randomly placed Autobot storage boxes that Ratchet had yet to put away. If Glen could keep the intruder occupied long enough, she may have a chance to get to the manual controls for the internal defense system. That is of course if Ratchet had finished connecting the human sized emergency lever at the base of Teletran One.
Who's idea was it to put it there anyway, Mikaela thought to herself. But there would be plenty of time later to bitch about that after the immediate threat was taken care of. Glen continued to battle the intruder for what must have been control of Teletran One. The hacker was apparently keeping pace with the steel grey robot if the ever-increasing movement of the Tin Man's fingers was an indication. Mikaela slipped into the shadow of the overhanging keypad, mindful of the shifting feet of the intruder. Suddenly Glen's ranting stopped and Mikaela was left to assume that the Tin Man had gained control and had locked the human hacker out.
It's now or never, Mikaela told herself as she opened the emergency panel and threw the lever. For an instant, nothing seemed to happen, then a voice she had never heard before filled the room.
"Initiating intruder detection sequence," it informed the room. There was another curse in Cybertronian from the Tin Man, this one she did recognize from her time spent with Ironhide. Smiling and very pleased with herself, Mikaela made a dash for the safety of Ironhide's bunker. She didn't get ten yards before she was stepped on.
Mikaela supposed that the only reason she wasn't killed instantly was because Tin Man must have felt her under his foot before stepping completely down. As it was, her neck must have been broken because she felt no pain as she lay there and watched her blood pool out from her head and mix with the remnants of glitter that had stubbornly refused to be swept up. The only thing she could feel now was fear, the fear that she would die before she found out if Sam knew that she had loved him with all of her heart. But that fear melted away with her consciousness knowing that Bumblebee would always be there to take care of Sam.