Sparks

Official Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, they belong to someone else...someone with a better knowledge of cars than I've ever had.

Author's Note: Well, apparently I did something right...that you everyone for the feedback. I apologize sincerely for the spelling and grammar mistakes - I'm usually pretty good about that, but I'm suffering from a bit of lack of sleep due to hotter than normal weather. I went back and fixed things in the first chapter, and double-checked this chapter, promise! Though I won't deny, I tend to make up my own grammar and punctuation rules sometimes...comes from the poet side of me, which writes free verse.

- Chapter Two: GoogleWhacking and Gas Money -

Optimus Prime was enjoying himself immensely. It wasn't just the fact that the only Decepticon left on earth, Barricade, was laying low, meaning that he and the other Autobots could finally relax a little. Nor was it due entirely to the fact that he was currently being expertly driven through a stretch of landscape that reminded him of Cybertron, while rather pleasant music played through his stereo. No, on top of all that was the blissful silence from ignoring the Autobots communications channel. He hadn't had this much silence in over a month - ever since Bumblebee's vocal processes had been restored and the twins had arrived.

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had landed on Earth a mere two days after Optimus had sent his message out to all the other Autobots in the galaxy - which led him to the somewhat paranoid belief that they'd been following the Ark, waiting for Optimus and the others to land before making their appearance and starting their insanity all over again. This time they'd dragged Bumblebee into it - the smaller Autobot was only too happy to help, if only because it let him use his voice again. They'd been constantly talking over the Autobots communications channel, about anything and everything, including the things they were currently reading about on the human's World Wide Web. Frankly, Optimus really didn't want to know most of what they were talking about, but had held out hope that maybe they'd come up with something useful, or shut up. Ironhide had given in before Optimus, starting to ignore the channel some weeks ago. As far as Optimus knew, though, Ratchet was still enduring the chatter. He wished the medic luck.

Feeling his engine shift down, Optimus returned his attention to the human driving him, and saw that she was digging in her bag in the passenger seat with one hand, probably searching for whatever was currently playing a different, and somewhat poor quality, song than the stereo. She pulled out a cell phone a few moments later, and glanced at it briefly before putting it back on the seat and shifting down some more, pulling off to the side of the road and braking. On the seat, the phone continued its tune, clashing with the stereo until the woman turned it off. She picked up the phone again and this time flipped it open, answering.

"Hey George, what's the news?" she asked cheerily. The voice on the other end was muffled by her ear, so Optimus couldn't hear it without hacking into the signal. That was really too much of a bother for him to do right now, since there wasn't any particular reason for him to hack into her private phone call. "What? No. You're kidding." Optimus reconsidered hacking into the signal as the woman's face went white, her mood and tone instantly dropping, but inevitably decided against it again.

"There's got to be something they can do!...Dammit George, that's my dad's truck, you know that! I don't care what it costs!...And?...Who owns the truck, you or me?...George..." The woman's voice had become threatening. "Fine, I'll sleep on it, but the answer will be the same tomorrow!...Don't think that'll change my mind, George. This thing may be in good condition, but it has a god-awful paint job" Optimus grumbled to himself - he rather liked the paint job. "Yes, I can and I will!...Don't 'women' me you old married man...Fine, fine! Sheesh. I'll call you tomorrow when I stop, alright?...Right, bye." The woman violently hung up the phone and hurled it in the general direction of her bag. She scowled at it a few moments before slamming a fist down on Optimus' steering wheel.

"Great, just great." she growled to herself, glaring out the windshield. She sat there, scowling, for a few more minutes, before slamming Optimus back into gear and heading out. She didn't turn the stereo back on, and Optimus found it hard to recapture his former enjoyment of the day without the music and with his scowling driver, who was being a lot rougher with the controls now.

Optimus wondered what had happened - since he'd decided to stay at the depot, he'd seen only the manager, George, and the occasional driver who'd been brought back to see him in the first couple of weeks. He had been somewhat surprised, therefore, when George brought this woman back and handed her the keys. Actually, he'd been half asleep at the time, so he hadn't caught the woman's name, and had yet to see a piece of her identification, hear her introduce herself, or be referred to by name by someone else. It was a little disconcerting not knowing the name of the human driving him, but he had figured he would find out in good time.

Now, though, he decided to speed up the process by doing a bit of a search on the web, to see if he could discover anything about her and what about her father's truck might cause her such distress. The search kept him thoroughly distracted, as it turned out to be rather difficult to find information on a person when you hardly knew anything about them. Without thinking, he turned on the Autobots communications channel to ask Bumblebee if he could find anything, and was immediately reminded why it had been off.

"...osedly is a very entertaining pursuit, though too many people doing it can ruin it." Sunstreaker was saying.

"Really? Why would humans find that entertaining? Don't they have other, better things to do?" Bumblebee asked.

"Of course they do." Sunstreaker replied. "But apparently GoogleWhacking is one of those things they do to relieve boredom when they sadly have no one around to play pranks on."

"Yes, speaking of that, you should stop almost hitting Trent, Sides..." Bumblebee's voice cut out as Optimus turned off the channel. If he'd been in his humanoid form, he would have shaken his head. He had no idea what this 'GoogleWhacking' was, nor did he want to know.

Sideswipe almost hitting that irritating boy Trent's vehicle was a bit of a concern, but Optimus knew the other Autobot would never actually hit the boy. He didn't need to, not after Trent's run-in with Bumblebee after he had tried to get violent with first Sam, and then Mikaela - all Sideswipe had to do was make sure Trent saw there was no driver in the Lamborghini that had just about hit him, and the boy would be more scared than if Megatron himself was standing over him. Optimus himself had given the boy a good scare by just about running him off the road in truck mode - he had seen the black eye Sam had come back from school with thanks to Trent.

Sighing, Optimus returned his attention to his web search, ignoring a little flick of annoyance as the woman driving him was once again a little rough with his controls. He contemplated blaring his stereo at her, if only to give her something less upsetting and violence-causing to think about than whatever was bothering her. He decided not to bother, though, focusing on his fruitless search for her across the web.

---

Alex slammed the door of the truck cab with more force than necessary, already yelling for George to get his ass out there. The mentioned man emerged from his office with a scowl, which deepened as he saw that her truck had no trailer on it.

"Alex! You didn't call!" he said sternly as he approached.

"I was a little busy getting piss-ass drunk." Alex replied flatly. George frowned disapprovingly at her. "Yeah yeah, I'll feel guilty as soon as you tell me the mechanics were mistaken and the truck can be fixed after all without it costing the same as getting a new truck altogether."

"Well you'll have to feel guilty without that. The mechanics towed your father's truck off to the junk yard two days ago." George snapped.

"What?! Why -" Alex ended in a wordless snarl, and George arched an eyebrow.

"You weren't answering your phone, you weren't calling, I couldn't even get a message to you via CB - and I know you're not stupid enough to turn that off - and the mechanics were grumbling about how long it was sitting in their lot. So they went with the only option they had." he said flatly. Alex scowled.

"Great. There's not even any truck dealerships here in Tranquility." she said after a moment. Truthfully, she'd known what was going to happen to her dad's truck from the moment George told her that it couldn't be fixed - she'd just been in denial for most of the trip, and when the denial wore off, she'd drunk. Only at the end of the day, and never enough to impair her driving the next day, but still far more than she usually drank. Two days ago, though, Alex had finally had to face facts, so George's announcement wasn't as much of a shock as it could have been. She was rather annoyed he'd done it without her permission, but she couldn't really justify getting mad at him for that, considering how unreachable she'd made herself. Despite George's vote of confidence, she had, in fact, turned off her CB - though it seemed to have a glitch, turning itself back on a few random times, twice when there was another trucker nearby in need of aide.

"Well, if you can stomach the paint job, you can hand over $300 for the gas I filled that truck's tank with originally and I'll sign it over to you." George said, leaning forward and giving her a hard look. Alex looked up in surprise.

"But -" she stopped, frowning, as she remembered George's story of how he'd acquired the truck in the first place, knowing she couldn't protest because of the price. "I do have enough saved up to buy another truck entirely, you know. I wasn't totally blind to the fact that my dad's truck would give out eventually."

"Well then use that money to give it a new paint job." George stated. "I really have no use for the truck, unless this incident, god forbid, happens again. The only reason I hadn't sold it was that I was still trying to figure out what to do with it - and now I know." Alex glanced back at the truck. It did handle well, and she hadn't had a single problem with it on the entire trip. It had even handled her slight speeding on the way back without complaint.

"I don't know, George..." Alex trailed off as George glared at her.

"Alexandra Tabitha Morgan, you will take that truck." he ordered sternly. Alex arched an eyebrow, lips twitching in a smile.

"Oh really now." she said with amusement, and George continued to look at her sternly for a moment before grinning.

"Come on darlin', you can't deny the fact that you're enjoying having a Peterbilt 379. And as you said, there's no truck dealerships in town. It's a sweet deal." he said.

"$300 for the gas, you say?" Alex said, turning back to the truck.

"More or less." George replied.

"I think I can rustle that up." Alex replied with a grin.