Sparks

Official Disclaimer: The Transformers ain't mine.

Author's Note: Tabby really is a horrible name...eh, anyways, thanks to everyone for not killing me. I think there were only a few threats of killing and/or mangling, too...anyways, thanks for all your reviews of the last chapter, hope this one pleases better. Even if I think Red Alert is horribly OOC. He reminds me more of Prowl the way I've written him...greh.

- Chapter Seventeen: Tabby the Mechanic and Red Alert -

Tabby walked down the street, frowning at her shoes. Her life was so confusing right now - some days she wasn't even sure who she was anymore. It seemed like everything she knew had been pulled out from under her. Her home, her job, her family, her friends - all gone. She was left with nothing more to do than wander the streets of Phoenix, Arizona and try and make sense of it all. She couldn't even remember when it had all started - so many different things had happened all at once, it had all sort of started to blur together.

With a sigh, Tabby looked up as she stopped at a light, waiting for it to change. Her eyes wandering about, they landed eventually on a garage on the other side of the street. It wasn't the best looking place, but it wasn't too shabby, either. The doors were open, showing a couple of mechanics inside arguing over a car with its hood up. Three more vehicles, two cars and a truck, waited outside to be fixed, their owners leaving them there to wait to be fixed. As Tabby watched, the two mechanics disappeared through a door in the side of the garage, probably leading to the office, still arguing.

The light changed, and Tabby crossed the street, then approached the building slowly. She wasn't quite sure why - she'd never been into cars, or fixing them, despite the fact that she could take apart practically any vehicle and put it back together again, but she came to a stop in front of the building proudly proclaiming itself as 'Rob's Garage'. She waited for a moment, and heard three male voices arguing in the office, their words unintelligible. Shaking her head, Tabby wandered over to the car the mechanics had been arguing over when she'd seen them from across the street.

A quick glance told her what was wrong with the car, and, only half aware of what she was doing, she picked up a tool one of the mechanics had forgotten and leaned in a started fixing it. Ten minutes later, just as she was finishing, she was startled by a yell, causing her to drop the tool.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" another man had emerged from the office with the two mechanics, and was glaring at her angrily.

"I'm sorry, I was just - " Tabby tried to explain.

"Get away from there and get out, or I'll call the police!" the man snapped, and Tabby fled. Behind her, she heard the man yelling at the two mechanics for not keeping an eye on the garage, and she felt bad for a moment, then sighed and decided it was time to head back to her hotel. From the way things had already gone today, she was probably better off just going back to bed and forgetting she'd even got up.

The next morning, however, Tabby couldn't take her mind off the garage, and how natural it had felt to be fixing the car. She'd never enjoyed fixing them before - she'd learned only because she'd had to - but somehow, now, with everything else lost to her...it felt right. Lost in her thoughts about fixing cars, she didn't even notice she was passing the garage again until someone called out to her. Well, she assumed they meant her when they yelled 'Hey you!', since they were looking at her when she looked up. As soon as he'd been noticed, the man who'd yelled - the man who had threatened to call the police the day before - trotted over and stopped in front of her, giving her an appraising look.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Tabby." she replied simply - no other name really mattered anymore.

"I'm Rob Harris. I own the garage." he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the building before holding out his hand. Tabby hesitantly shook it.

"I'm sorry about yesterday -" she started, but Rob once again cut her off.

"Don't be. Jeff and Alek had been trying to fix that car all day, and couldn't find out what was wrong with it." he said. "I don't know what you did, but it left in perfect working order, without either of them having done anything besides stare at it and scratch their collective heads like trained monkies."

"Oh." Tabby said, biting her tongue on saying that the problem had been obvious.

"What'ya do? For a living, I mean?" Rob asked, and Tabby frowned.

"Nothing, really." she said, and Rob suddenly grinned.

"Hey, that's great. How would you like a job at the garage?" he said. "That is, if you're not just visiting."

"No, I'm here to stay." Tabby said. "I think. My life's kinda...been turned upside down lately."

"Ah. Well, if you want a bit of stability..." Rob trailed off. Tabby paused, then smiled and nodded. "Great, come on in to the office and we'll set everything up!" He grinned widely as he set off, and Tabby followed with a smile of her own as the chaos of her life receded just a bit.

---

Six months later, Tabby whistled to herself as she let herself into the back of the garage, knowing she was the first to arrive. It was something she'd established early on - she'd be the first to arrive, the last to leave, and never ask for overtime pay. Rob had found it odd at first, and a bit suspicious, but had gradually come to accept the eccentricities of this quirky female mechanic. Though he, Jeff, and Alek would still occasionally decide she'd had enough and drag her out of the garage to go do something. Last time it had been a drive-in movie - the time before that, mini-golf, and before that, a pub with a live Celtic band. They always found a new thing to do, which was why Tabby kept letting them do it, even though she felt more relaxed when she was in the garage, then out 'having fun'.

The garage had become the anchor in Tabby's life as she settled in again. She didn't spend much time away from it because it was the one place she could go and find peace. In the garage, everything was fine, everything was good, and nothing upset her. She could focus on fixing the cars while her mind churned through the events of the past few years, sorting everything out. She walked out every day with a new understanding of how and why things had happened to her, and she could accept them. The garage was probably the only reason Tabby was still sane, in fact.

Though this car that had come in the other day may just undo all that. Jeff and Alek hadn't even bothered to try and figure out what was wrong with it - they just heard the engine making a noise they'd never even thought it could and handed it off to Tabby, who had spent all day yesterday working on it. She'd come in especially early today because she'd woken from the middle of a dream with an idea about what was wrong with it, so now here she was. Turning off the alarm system and flipping on lights as she went, Tabby passed through the office and into the garage. The car was perched up on the lifts, and Tabby walked under it, peering upwards to where she thought the problem might be. Sure enough, she'd been correct. She went to get her tools to fix it, then paused. It might take awhile, and she'd only gotten five hours sleep. Probably best to put on some coffee.

She returned to the office and set up the coffee pot, then filched a stale donut from the day before. Sitting down at the desk, she went over the schedule for the day as she waited for the coffee to be ready. There were six cars lined up to come in today, and a few more would probably be driving up without appointments. Most of the appointments were from return customers for regular maintenance, and Tabby smiled as she saw that three of them had requested her specifically to be the mechanic to work on their vehicles. She may have only been there six months, but she'd become well known as the best mechanic in the garage.

The coffee finally brewed, and Tabby poured herself a cup and headed out into the garage to begin work on the stubborn car's engine. Jeff and Alek arrived several hours later, within minutes of each other, and they opened the doors of the garage to allow the first customer of the day inside. It was a middle-aged man with his family van whose starter had suddenly decided to take awhile to catch, and the other two mechanics handled it easily. They had it fixed in quick order, but not before the second customer of the day, a drive-up with no appointment, showed up. Jeff left Alek to work on the van, and the day went on from there, vehicles coming and going as the mechanics repaired them, and the men that inevitably brought the vehicles tried not to stare at the woman in the overalls, up to her elbows in grease, who obviously worked there. Tabby fixed the car by mid-morning and moved on to one of the vehicles with an appointment that had requested her, did its regular maintenance, then continued on to other vehicles.

The day was proceeding much as usual, in fact, right up until the late afternoon, when Rob showed up. This was unusual since Rob had the day off, and he usually stayed clear of the garage when he did, stating that he spent too much time there already. But even more unusual was what Rob showed up in.

"The'fuck did you get that?" Jeff asked, eyes wide, as all three mechanics of Rob's Garage stared wide-eyed at the fire-engine red and white Lamborghini their boss had just stepped out of. Rob snorted.

"I didn't get it, it got me." he said. "Good thing, too, since I happen to have the most brilliant mechanic in the city." Rob gave Tabby a blinding smile, and she looked at him suspiciously.

"No, I won't help you remove all police-trackable markings from it." she said, only half joking, since she knew there was no way Rob could afford the car, but knew him well enough that she doubted he'd ever resort to stealing cars.

"I didn't steal it!" Rob said with annoyance. "As I said, it found me, not the other way around. But it needs a couple of repairs, and since you're so good with cars, I figured you could take a crack at it." To the three mechanic's surprise, the Lamborghini then proceeded to snort. And then their boss glared down at the car and started talking to it. "Hey, you agreed to let her have a look, so don't you go snorting at me. From what you said, you haven't exactly got a lot of options, anyways."

"Uh, boss, you feeling alright?" Alek asked warily.

"Yes, I'm fine, Alek." Rob said with a sigh, then glanced around and got back in the car before driving it into the garage. Tabby, the closest, was the only one able to see that Rob's hands didn't even touch the wheel until he used it as leverage to get out. "We got any more appointments today?" he asked when he got out, and Tabby shook her head. The last appointment had come and gone, and the shop was empty - save for the red and white Lamborghini, now - so the mechanics had been standing around chatting, waiting for a customer, when Rob had arrived. "Good, close the doors. We're closed for the day."

"What?" Alek asked blankly. They still had an hour before they closed, technically, and Rob had never told them to close early before.

"Close the doors." Rob repeated patiently, then added a glare when Alek and Jeff still didn't move. "Now." he said, and the two mechanics scurried to obey.

"What's going on, Rob?" Tabby asked with a frown. "You're acting really strange."

"I know, I'll explain in a minute, but not until the garage is closed." Rob said distractedly, watching as the doors closed. When Jeff and Alek returned, Rob turned to the car. "Alright, you're up." he said. What sounded like a grumble came from the car's engine.

"Hello." it then said, startling the three mechanics.

"Um, hello...car." Alek said with wide eyes after a moment.

"My name is not 'car'." it snapped in reply. "It's Red Alert."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Tabby, this is Jeff, and the idiot who called you 'car' is Alek." Tabby stepped in smoothly, foreseeing things going badly if she left the talking to the other two. They were only polite and suave after they'd had a few beers in them. The car mumbled something that might have been polite in response, and Tabby turned to Rob. "Now would you care to explain where and how you found an apparently sentient Lamborghini, and preferably where it came from, as well?" She ignored the car's insistences that there was no 'presumably' about it, it was sentient, thankyouverymuch.

"You guys remember that whole mess in Mission City years back, where people were babbling about giant robots tearing up half the city?" Rob asked, and the mechanics nodded. "Well, believe it or not, they weren't nuts or hallucinating from a gas leak like the government said. There really were giant robots battling it out in the city - giant alien robots that can turn into cars and other vehicles, no less. Anyways, apparently there's two sides of robots, one side trying to destroy us, the other - this guy's side - trying to protect us. The good guys won in Mission City, but the bad guys didn't go away, and they've apparently been having a fair number of a lower-profile fights around the country since then.

"Red Alert here had one such scuffle this morning, and took some damage. He changed back into his vehicle form to escape, but now he can't change back, which is a problem, since the bad guy's still chasing him - saw him myself, nasty, ugly bugger - and Red Alert's mechanic -"

"Medic." the car correctly crankily.

"Sorry, medic, is in Nevada. So I offered him our services." Rob finished. There was silence.

"I'm sorry, you expect us to fix an alien robot that currently looks like a car with no prior experience or knowledge of how to do so?" Tabby asked finally, her disbelief clear in her voice.

"I had a look myself before offering. It doesn't look too different from the standard configuration of a Lamborghini - or at least what I've seen in their schematics, never actually seen one before today, actually guess I still haven't, technically - so since you're such a brilliant mechanic, I figured you might, just might, be able to do something." Rob rambled, and then shrugged, giving Tabby a brilliant grin. She sighed.

"Where's the problem?" she asked the car, resigning herself to fixing it.

"Rear. Something's jammed back there." the car said, sounding irritated, but Tabby ignored the tone of voice.

"Right, we'll have to lift you up, then." she said. It took a good fifteen minutes for her and Rob together to convince Red Alert that he had to be lifted for her to see the problem, and even then, he made his reservations very clear as he was raised up - he was even more helpless up on the lift, after all. Tabby ignored him as she stood underneath, inspecting the alien machinery critically. Jeff and Alek, curious, dared to take a peak, but quickly scampered off when the car snapped at them. He would only tolerate Tabby and Rob messing with his insides, apparently.

It only took a glance to tell that the Lamborghini was not a normal model, but Tabby poked around nonetheless, until she finally found what was causing the problem - a few cables were tangled due to damage piece of metal sticking between them. She also found a problem she doubted Red Alert had even noticed - there was a jagged piece of metal, sharp enough to cut, pressing against a rather important piece of tubing. She frowned when she saw that - the Lamborghini was damn lucky those cables farther down had gotten tangled, otherwise he would only be so much scrap right now.

"There's a couple problems down there, but they're nothing I can't fix. Just give me an hour or so and you'll be back to changing forms and beating the crap out of whoever is after you." she said as she headed for the nearest work bench.

"Really?" Red Alert sounded surprised, and Tabby chuckled - he obviously hadn't thought she'd be able to do anything for him.

"Really. Just some tangled cables and a sharp piece of metal." she said as she got the tools she'd need to fix the major problem - the metal against the tubing - before heading back under the car. She figured it would be in Red Alert's best interest if she fixed the potentially lethal problem that he wasn't aware of before she fixed the thing that was stopping him from transforming.

"Anything I can do to help?" Rob asked.

"Get more coffee. I had five hours of sleep last night." Tabby replied as she began working. Rob scampered off to do as asked, and Tabby immersed herself in fixing the alien Lamborghini. Alek and Jeff left after a bit, since there was nothing for them to do, but Rob stayed, catching up on paperwork and supplying Tabby with food and coffee, saying that he felt somewhat responsible for seeing that Red Alert got fixed. The Lamborghini was, oddly, somewhat insulted by that comment, and grumbled for sometime after Rob made it.

"There, done." Tabby finally said, standing back and replacing her tools. "I'll just let you down, and then you can try and change and tell me how I did." The alien car waited impatiently as she lowered him off the lift, and as soon as the machinery stopped, he began to transform, parts shifting, until he was fully in his mechanoid form. His hand whirled into a canon, then back again, and he grunted in satisfaction.

"Good job." he said.

"Why thank you. Us lowly human mechanics do our best." Tabby said with mild sarcasm, and the mech frowned down at her. "Now, didn't you have some big nasty on your tail?" Red Alert nodded, then transformed back to a car and waited as Tabby opened the garage door enough for him to slip out. He left without a good-bye or a thank-you, and Tabby shook her head with amusement. She closed the door and went in search of Rob, finding him snoozing in the office. She poked him until he awoke, then fled out the door and headed for home before he could notice the greasy finger-prints she'd left on his cheek and arms when poking him.

---

"Who did you say fixed you?" Ratchet asked suspiciously as he ran a closer scan on the Autobot's newest arrival, Red Alert.

"Some human mechanic named Tabby." Red Alert replied with a shrug, then gained a suspicious look. "Why? What did she mess up?"

"Nothing." Ratchet said, sounding puzzled. "From the look of it, she even got a piece of metal that would have severed your main energon line had you transformed."

"What?" Red Alert's voice came out a little strangled at that.

"And evidently you weren't even aware of it." Ratchet said, his puzzlement growing into surprise. "Do you remember where this garage is? I need to meet this mechanic."

"Well, I was kind of in a rush -"

"She shouldn't have been able to fix you, Red Alert. Even if she had caught the tangled cables that were stopping you from transforming, she shouldn't have noticed the energon line." Ratchet interrupted, glaring at the younger bot to emphasize his point. "By my reckoning, you should be dead right now, either by Scavenger's cannons or the severing of that main line. Now I would like you to think very carefully - where was this garage?"

"Uh. I'll take you there." Red Alert said meekly, and Ratchet nodded, then sent a message to Jazz to meet him and Red Alert on top of the dam. Even with the neutral valley for all Cybertronians, each side kept their own bases, and did most of their repairs on them. It was just easier. Jazz met them up top, already in vehicle mode, and the three of them set off while Ratchet filled Jazz in on the reason for their little excursion.

"Do you think we might have another human Allspark on our hands?" Jazz asked worriedly on an encoded channel after Ratchet explained.

"I hope not - not after what happened to Alexandra." Ratchet said with a sigh. Jazz murmured an agreement, then cut the transmission. They drove in silence for several hours, until they finally entered the city where Red Alert had encountered Scavenger. They entered on the opposite side from where Red Alert was initially attacked, so they saw no evidence of it, but they saw a few scorch marks from where Scavenger had finally managed to catch up with Red Alert once he'd left the garage. Finally, around noon, they approached the garage, and Red Alert pulled in, leaving Ratchet and Jazz out on the street. The two mechanics working - both male, Ratchet noted with an inward frown - looked up in surprise, and then a bit of nervousness as Red Alert approached.

"Hey boss, that Lamborghini's back!" one of them yelled, and from within the office of the garage, cursing and banging could be heard, and then another man emerged, looking startled even yet.

"Uh, what can I do for you?" he said awkwardly to Red Alert. The Autobot sighed to himself before speaking.

"The mechanic who fixed me, Tabby. Where is she? A friend of mine wants to talk to her." Red Alert said, and the man swallowed heavily.

"Tabby? She's, uh - she's on her lunch break. Just left. She should be back in an hour if you want to wait." he said. Red Alert sent a questioning message to Ratchet.

"We will wait." the medic told him, and Red Alert passed on the message to the man, who seemed even more nervous at that announcement. Red Alert ignored the man's nervousness, pulling into the garage lot and turning off his engine to wait. The man he'd been speaking with seemed unsure what to do, and stood there, looking at the Lamborghini for a few minutes before finally shaking his head and returning to the office, muttering to himself. The other two mechanics continued to work on the cars in the shop, nervously glancing over at Red Alert occasionally. Ratchet turned his mind to wondering how this female mechanic could know how to fix Red Alert, but every scenario he came up with was worrying.

None of the scenarios even came close to the truth.