Instability

by Steelfeathers

Post-ROTF. On board the air craft carrier headed back to Diego Garcia, Sam has a slight mental breakdown.

8. Revelations

WARNING: This chapter contains scenes involving vigorous kissing, though no explicit content. If making out bothers you, don't read the next to last portion between the lines of 'N's.

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Mikaela was, in Sam's less-than-expert opinion, the ideal girl friend; hot face and body (both requirements), funny, intelligent, kind enough to take pity on a hopeless geek, and generally laid back.

Unlike some of the eye candy he had craved in his earlier years, Mikaela turned out to be the perfect combination of someone who neither treated him like a disposable dish rag nor clung to him with obsessive neediness. They frequently hung out together, sure. But on those times when they both craved their space or simply wanted to do different things, they parted with a friendly 'See you later', never once falling into the trap of texting the other person every three seconds to check up on them. So the fact that Mikaela had called him fourteen times in the last ten minutes meant that something had gone wrong, something serious enough that she had broken the unspoken rule of never calling more than once an hour when separated.

Clouded over with the ominous feeling of impending doom, Sam pushed the button to play the recorded messages and brought the blackberry to his ear. Mikaela's voice emerged from the speaker tinged with equal parts exasperation and urgency.

"Sam, I know you must be busy with Optimus, but I really need you to call me back. Rachet's thinking about doing something very stupid."

*Beep*

"Like, now, would be good. He's still not listening to me."

*Beep*

"--no, wait! Urgh!" Her voice came through muffled; her head must have been turned away from the phone. "--Sam, you need to call me back. Rachet says that he contacted Optimus and that you're not with him any more. Why aren't you answering your phone?"

*Beep*

"Seriously, this isn't funny, Sam. Rachet wanted to examine your arm himself, but when he couldn't find you in the infirmary he-- Ugh! Look, just pick up the stupid phone and call!"

*Beep*

"Alright. You want to play it this way? Fine." Her voice changed from weirdly calm to sugary sweet. "Rachet called your parents to try to find you, but obviously you weren't with them. So now they're on the war path against the Autobots to find out where you are and how you broke your arm---"

Not bothering to listen to the rest of the messages, Sam ended the recording, stuffed the blackberry back into his pocket and took off at a stumbling sprint down the hallway. With any luck he would hopefully be able to reach the cargo bay before his parents could start laying into the Autobots and discover more than he was ready for them to know. But the way his luck seemed to be going, coupled with the fact that it was difficult to get up any speed when practically dead from exhaustion and trying to hold a blanket around his shoulders with one hand (Bumblebee in fabric form-- a soft, enveloping shield), there was no way he could make it.

The hallways lengthened to spite him; the stairwells all spontaneously switched direction to point only up instead of down. In his urgency, he skidded around several wrong turns before stumbling onto the correct route leading to his destination in the bowels of the ship. The trip grew longer every time he made it-- when he at last descended the final stairwell, he was certain he should have run out of ship ages ago at his hurried pace.

Turning onto the long, empty corridor leading to the human-sized entrance to the cargo bay, Sam noticed with some amount of shock that the two gun-toting guards were conspiciously absent. Without their continued presence, any random person could wander in and harass the Autobots. His teeth clenched together at the breach of security-- the Autobots had saved all of humanity, so the least the small slice of humanity aboard the ship could do was protect their privacy. Had the situation not been so desperate, and had Sam not been too tired to really care, he might have turned around at once and marched off to find someone in charge he could bitch at. As it was, he slowed to a lilting, shuffling gait, pulled the yellow blanket higher up around his shoulders (an unorthodox superman, strong enough to take on the world and his parents combined), and marched down the hallway.

Super-Sam would have burst without hesitation through the door, as prideful as someone wearing a yellow fuzzy blanket could be. But Super-Sam's alter ego, Sam, was not so bold or brave, and paused to look through the tiny rectangle of glass in the door rather than immediately announce his presence. All he could see from his less-than-steller vantage point were the backs of Ironhide's legs. The discussion/heated argument/epic battle must have been located around the corner. Suddenly he was glad he couldn't see what was occuring at the moment; the fact that the weapon's specialist felt the need to transform conveyed multitudes, most of which radiated bad vibes to the tune of 'they are Not Happy and showing it'.

Straightening his spine for his coming transformation into the Rumpled Wonder (insert trademark), Sam eased open the door and crept into the cavernous space beyond.

"--you guys really shouldn't let your piping get all clogged up like that! It's irresponsible!"

"Judy..."

"I'm very serious! If every time you fart you blow away half the ceiling you need to be more careful about what you eat!"

"Honey, they're robots. I really don't think they eat."

"What else could have caused a hole like that?"

Oh God-- Mom.

Not quite sure whether to giggle like a six year old or crawl into a hole in shame, Sam paced in a wide circle around behind Ironhide, taking stock of which Autobots, exactly, he would no longer be able to show his face around. Though on some level he had expected it, Optimus' absence took him by surprise. While of course it was brainless to assume that the alien leader had rushed inside right on his heels and darted back down into the cargo bay with his compatriots, it was unnerving to see the other Autobots arrayed around his parents without the steadying presence of their leader. Rachet seemed more likely to make embarassing declarations of bodily functions, Ironhide seemed more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, and the Twins...well, the Twins would have acted just the same as always even if God were in the room breathing down their necks.

Bumblebee was missing too. Without him, Super-sam didn't feel quite so super anymore.

To his surprise, he found the displaced guards standing a respectful distance away from the loose circle of Autobots, accompanied by a thoroughly disgruntled Thatcher. The General's presence in the room bewildered him-- why did he feel the need to stand witness to his parents raging about his broken arm to the Autobots? Since they were only grumbling and not shouting, he assumed that they could not yet know about his abrupt shift in nationality (no more Tranquility, no more California, no more America--).

Shaking his head and deciding that he might as well just bite the bullet and get it all over with, Sam rasied his voice and called out, "Just a fart wouldn't have nearly enough power. At least a few flying projectiles must have been invovled, if you know what I mean."

Nine pairs of eyes turned in his direction. But only his parents jumped in surprise. Naturally, the aliens had sensed his arrival even before he had stepped through the door. And he assumed Thatcher and his thugs were born stoic.

"Sam! Where've you been, young man?"

"There you are, Sam! What happened to your arm, sweety? Are you okay?"

"He's fine, Judy. At least until I get through with him."

His mother smacked the back of one hand into her husband's chest.

"Ron! Cut the boy some slack, will you? He's obviously working through some tough issues here."

"Working through them by breaking his arm. How productive."

'Tough issues'. Heh. Sam almost smiled at how completely inadequate those two words were.

"You haven't even given him the chance to explain--"

"As stimulating as this conversation is," Rachet interjected suddenly, "Now that Sam is present I would like the chance to examine his injured appendage for myself. If you will excuse me--"

And the neon Autobot stepped right over the top of his gaping parents, closing the gap to his quarry in two fluid strides.

Being rapidly approached by a twenty foot tall war machine, no matter how friendly and well meaning the war machine, had an intimidation factor that could put a snarling tiger to shame. Especially when said war machine was far from the traditional definition of 'friendly'. Rachet, despite his profession (designation? programming?) as a medic, lacked even the most basic people skills, making him arguably the most 'alien' of the bunch. And stripped as he was of all sense of personal boundaries and social appropriateness, he had no qualms about examining whoever he wanted wherever he wanted, regardless of their wishes.

Knowing that he would be fighting a losing battle if he tried to resist, Sam passively surrendered control of his coccooned limb to the spidery fingers that ginerly plucked it away from his body. Rachet squatted down on his haunches beside the human, bringing his large head close to the captured body part, studying it with intense blue optics. So close to the robot, Sam noticed that his optics were dissimilar from those of the other Autobots in every manner except color. The lens-like rings framing the camera pupil numbered litterally into the thousands, with some so slim they might have been the width of a hair. Unconciously, Sam found himself leaning closer to study the intricate arrangement of parts beneath the glass hemisphere-- the continual clicking and rotating of every delicate piece created a ripple effect in the quiet blue glow, as if viewing the reflection of a pool of water.

Several quiet, furious chirps came from the medic, causing Sam to jerk his head back-- he had been leaning so far forward their noses were only an inch away from touching. He looked around at the assembled Autobots, wondering which one Rachet was snarling at in Cybertronian; when none reacted to the static blips, he realized that robots could, in fact, mumble to themselves.

"Hey, you!" His mother shouted, stalking angrily towards Rachet and pointing a threatening finger, "What are you doing to my son?"

Without pausing to look up at her, the medic replied, "Assesing the condition of his injury."

"No offence, Snatch-it (honestly, what strange names you all have!), but you're an alien AND a robot! You don't know the first thing about us humans! --and I'll bet the rest of my vacation in Paris that you've never gone to medical school, either!" she accused in her shrill, mom-on-a-protective-rampage voice. Though neither his face nor posture suggested that he had been insulted, Rachet halted his scans for long enough to turn his piercing gaze on the advancing woman.

With the air of a man trying to diffuse a bomb, his father came forward and carefully drew her away. "I don't think he's had time to take night classes, Judy. Besides, Sam's a big boy-- if something hurts he's got enough brains to say 'no'." Though his words were soothing and edged with humor, he threw a black glare of his own at Rachet, one that went completely unnoticed as the medic bent once more over Sam's arm.

As if to extend a peace offering to the glowering pair of humans, the Cybertronian rumbles switched abruptly to english. Rachet's manner of speech, however, gave the impression that he was merely continuing an internal thought rather than addressing his unwilling patient (or any watching parents) directly. "Stable fractures in both the radius and ulna-- fortunately no stray bone splinters." He rotated the captured arm a precise 45 degrees. "A significant amount of swelling around the affected area. Non-malignant bacteria present in the tissue. White blood cell count elevated but not beyond acceptable parameters. Heart rate and blood pressure above normal, unusually high levels of adrenaline, vasopressin and cortisol present in the blood stream."

Gingerly returning the arm to Sam's side as though replacing a Ming vase on a shelf, Rachet leaned in even closer. "I judge that you are stressed. May I inquire as to the reason?"

"Ain't it obvious, Hachet?" Cackled the unmistakable voice of Skids from somewhere above them. Sam gave himself whiplash as he followed the words to their source, finding the lime green Autobot perched atop the stack of packing crates towering over them like a wannabe sky scraper. He must have moved during the impromptu check-up. "Yo ugly mug would scare a decepticon inta becomin a toasta!"

"So back da hell up!" Mudflap added helpfully, poking his head around Ironhide to wave his hand at Rachet in a shooing motion.

As though suddenly reminded of the twin's presence, Ironhide flung himself around in the direction of the candy-apple Autobot and swung his heavily plated arm into the other's back, knocking him out into the open. The smaller robot's efforts to scamper away were hindered as Ironhide pinned him to the floor with one foot, the violent motion causing his parents to scramble back from the epicenter.

"You two should be entirely absorbed with repairing the damage to the cargo bay, not sneaking around and making pit-damned nuisances of yourselves," Ironhide growled.

"Come on! Have a heart, Bruce Willis!" Mudflap whined, struggling without noticable effect against the much larger robot, "We didn't put that big ass hole in da ceiling! Stumblebee should be in here fixin it!"

"And if you had not been involved in ineffectual information-gathering tactics, there wouldn't be anything to fix in the first place." The black Autobot leaned in close to his trapped prey, voice dipping into a gravely barritone. "Prime may not be a believer in having the punishment fit the crime, but Prime also isn't here right now. And I have no problem using you for target practice."

Then, feeling that he had made his point, Ironhide lifted his foot, gave Mudflap a prefunctory kick in the side, and stepped away. Faster than a bullet loosed form the barrel of a gun, the red Autobot shot across the room to rejoin his twin, all the while muttering a surly stream of, "I'm goin! I'm goin!" Once he felt himself sufficiently out of range, however, he lifted a defiant middle finger at the weapon's specialist. "Slagger!" he added, just before ducking out of sight.

His parents, momentarily stunned by the exchange, slowly came out of their stupor as Ironhide retreated back to his regular position. But their eyes continued to drift to his tank-like cannons, which hummed and clicked ominously as he folded his arms across his wide chest.

His mother, to Sam's growing anxiety, began to mouth the word 'Stumblebee' as though wondering where she had heard it before. His father, luckily, only turned to spear Thatcher with a hard look. "Are they normally like this, or does the insanity escalate on wednesdays?"

Firming her lips, his mom smacked him on the arm. "Ron! Don't be rude."

"What?! Am I the only one here to think the fact that a hole appeared in the ceiling-- a hole which is still smoking, by the way-- is just a little strange? And, I don't know, insane?"

Thatcher's mouth thinned into something resembling a watered down grimace, and he cleared his throat in preparation to speak. Sam' level of adrenaline (already high, according to Rachet) spiked off the chart. This was it. Thatcher would calmy explain to his parents that Bumblebee had shot him out of an overhead vent, his mother would gibber, his father would explode in outrage, and both would immediately demand that the Autobots stay far away from their son and never attempt to contact him again-- which would lead to the inevitable revelation that Autobots had claimed Sam as their own and thus would not stay far away from him...which would lead to the fact that he would not be getting on a plane with his family in two days' time to return home (cry and wave goodbye, see you only in my dreams).

Sam couldn't deal with all that. Not right then. Not ever.

He jumped to cut off the General, striding quickly forward to insert himself into the center of attention. "Insane, yes. Definitly, postively insane. Just plain wonky. But that's okay, cause they're new here and I'm sure if some of us went to a different planet they'd all think we were insane. But hey! At least no one was hurt, right? No harm, no foul, and all that?" He swung his good arm around his mother's shoulders and grinned at his father (don't look too close, you'll see all the cracks, see the endless dark beyond). "So! Now that you've found me-- or, I guess I found you, but whatever-- we can go and all get some sleep, because sleep is majorly awesome and good for healing bones and all that."

Thatcher shot him a decidedly cool look, then turned to address his father. "In answer to your question, Mr. Witwiky--" (no, stop!) "--today has been an unusual day in more ways than one. Unforseen events occured which lead to the accidental defacement of some parts of the cargo bay, though I assure you steps are being taken to rectify the situation." Though he didn't glance towards Mudflap and Skids, the implication of who, exactly, had been pegged for clean-up duty was clear. But knowing something of the twins' personalities, Sam seriously doubted and true 'rectifying' would get done.

"Sooo....how's that going?" Sam leapt to fill up the empty air with words, fill it up with nonsense to suffocate the truth. "Did the-- whatever made that hole wreck anything on the upper floors?" Then, something he had not considered before occured to him, something truly awful, "No one was hurt, right? Please tell me no one was hurt."

He sensed Rachet's head whipping in his direction to stare at him intently, but he ignored the revealing gaze, concentrating instead on the lump of lead that had spontaneous formed in his gut. His arm dropped from around his mother's shoulders.

"No. Fortunately, the blast was contained to the crawl space between the cargo bay and the level above it, resulting only in damage to inanimate objects--" steel-gray eyes darted to the conspicous cast as though it were a neon sign in Vegas, gracing Sam with a queer look. His chest tightened-- Thatcher knew. But the General merely returned his attention to his parents. "--which is why, when you insisted on being granted an audience with the Autobots, I found it necessary to have two of my men escort you to assure your safety, given the extent of the reconstruction taking place and the subsequent increase in health hazards."

Sideswiped by how thickly Thatcher was laying on the bullshit with his parents, Sam momentarily succumbed to a chortle which he quickly morphed into a believable imitation of a cough. If reconstruction posed too much of threat to any oblivious humans wandering around in the cargo bay (unlikely given that the Twins had returned to watch the exchange from between two packing crates across the room, well away from Ironhide's keen optics), his parents would have simply been refused entry. And even if they had raged, shouted, pleaded and threatened, the guards who had been standing sentry carried guns-- guns that looked as though they possesed ka-BOOM factors in the quadruple digits. No matter how they blustered, his parents would have been no match for guns.

But then his momentary amusement faded into bewilderment and a dark sense of foreboding-- why had Thatcher found it necessary to come in person, and to bring along his G.I Joe sidekicks? Surely he didn't think that spilling the beans to his parents-- even spilling the wheelbarrow-sized load that had nothing to do with breaking his arm-- would cause them to go violent enough that they would try to attack the General? And even if he was that majorly paranoid, one armed guard should have been more than enough. Now that Sam looked, really looked, he realized that not only were the jar-head goons packing sci fi worthy weapons, they were wearing sleak, amost invisble body armor beneath their black fatigues.

What was going on?

But his mother, usually endowed with all the gifts of observation God gave a block of wood, picked up on something he had not.

"Wait just a darn minute here! What do you mean, 'blast'? Was a bomb set off or something? Shouldn't the rest of the ship be warned that we're under attack?!"

"Please calm yourself, Mrs. Witwiky. There was no bomb and we are NOT under attack."

"Yeah, come on, Mom," Sam reasoned, catching the suspicious gleam in his mother's eye that meant she was preparing to rage about more government lies and cover ups. If only she realized that the true lies were the things she took for granted (four flying out, only three flying back-- where's your return ticket, Sam?). "I mean, if we were-- which we're NOT, okay?-- why would any self-respecting bad guy set off a bomb in the cargo bay where there's no one around to get hurt? ...Well, unless the bad guy knew that there were aliens down here, but the only ones who would know that are the Decepticons, and it really isn't their style to plant a bomb-- they like to get things done by hand, you know?"

"Well," she huffed, clearly befuddled by his 'this is your brain on speed' logic, though for the moment subdued, "At least no one was hurt. That's what counts."

"Yep! Absolutely. No one was hurt." Sam agreed enthusiastically, wincing as his father started examing the present Autobots with a suspicous set to his jaw. Uh-oh.

"That's all good and fine, but now we need to have a long talk with our son about how he broke his arm and where, exactly, he's been for the past three hours." Haggard, cross, and worried (though he tried to hide it) his father stepped forward and clamped a hand around his son's shoulder through his Super-sam cape and began to steer him toward the door. "So if you will excuse us, we'll be going now."

As silent as a leaf falling on snow, Rachet moved to intercept them. Sam started at his sudden appearance-- two azure optics locked onto his forehead as though attempting to read his mind, never shifting away to acknowledge is parents with a glance as the Autobot medic fluidly oozed up into Sam's personal space.

"One moment, if you would."

And his willowy, many-jointed fingers gingerly grasped Sam's head, entraping it in a metal cage.

In addition to his regular profession as a savior of the world, Sam moonlighted as a class A geek who frequented arcades the way an alcoholic frequented bars. Although the classic arcade-style games-- car/motorcycle/jet ski racing-- tended to be his favorites, every once in a while he would indulge himself in those games whose sole purpose was to win a prize. The mother of them all was the claw game, the staple of arcades and Walmarts everywhere from which hundreds of kids tried and failed every hour to extract a stuffed animal.

At the moment, Sam felt as though he had traded places with one of the unfortunate stuffed creatures and was suddenly in the grip of the infamous metal claw. There were a few differences, however. First a foremost, the fingers around him were not smooth chrome, but segmented metal fingers resembling spider legs. Second, his parents were not shouting encouragements, but yelling in fear and outrage.

"What are you doing?! Get off him, you metal freak!"

"Let go of my son!"

And most importantly, the metal claw which had descended and plucked him from the pile did not seem apt to let him slip through its grip. Quite the contrary-- the pin-pricks of pressure around his skull prevented him from moving his head a milimeter in any direction.

He thought he saw Thing 1 and Thing 2 start to raise their guns before Thatcher urgently hissed for them to stand down, but he couldn't be sure. No more than he could be sure he felt something tickling the skin of his scalp through those fingers, something which may have been infinitesimally small wires wiggling down through flesh and bone....

But as swiftly as the feeling came over him it ceased. The fingers released their hold, retreating away from his head as Rachet took a minute step back and briefly shuttered his optics in a gesture of confusion.

Superheroes of the ordinary world, his parents surged towards him and took up point around him, inserting themselves between their son and the alien medic (all their efforts a waste-- flesh and bone no match for alien strength, love no shield against indifferent life--).

"That's right! Keep backing up--"

"I must admit to some confusion, Sam," Rachet announced calmly, as if the two people standing guard in front of his human paient were simply part of the background. "Three times now you have uttered statements which indicate an impairment of memory function, yet I can detect no damage to brain tissue or any imbalance of those hormones involved in memory creation and retention."

Still trembling from the unexpected contact and release, Sam could only blink up at the neon Autobot stupidly, feeling slightly high. "Uh....what? What statements?"

Rachet straightened to his full height (how could something so graceful be so large?) and glanced between the three humans at his feet.

"Your declarations that no being, human or otherwise, had been injured in the destruction of the ceiling. Have you repressed the knowledge that you yourself sustained a blow sufficient to break your arm?"

Way to let the cat out of the bag, Rachet. Suddenly discovering a new target for their ire, his parents rounded on him. (Here we go. Now they're really going to let it fly-- but maybe that's okay, even being yelled at means hearing their voices...)

But to Sam's utter shock, he found himself bombarded not with outrage but with gasps of sympathetic pain-- and suddenly his mother's arms came around him, crushing him to her thin body with his head buried in her bosom the way all mom-hugs world wide seemed to do. A strong, calloused hand belonging to his father found the back of his neck and squeezed (oh my son, when did you become a man?), conveying the unwavering support of a parent.

"You gotta stop this being careless thing, Sam," his father harrumphed grumpily, rubbing the pad of his thumb in soothing circles against his skin.

For a moment Sam felt as though he were riding edge of a moving sidewalk thrown abruptly into reverse-- off-kilter and struggling for balance. Why the sudden love fest when normally he'd be going deaf from all the shouting? It was only a broken arm; it wasn't as if he had almost died--

When the answer hit him, he felt thicker than a stump for missing the obvious. His parents had gone on the war path in the first place because they were worried about him, as twisted at it sounded. Once more he'd been harmed without his parents having the power to stop it; once more he'd been caught up with something involving the alien visitors that could have killed him. Easily. Even if they didn't know the exact circumstances of what had occured, it didn't take a genius to do the math: Sam + Autobots + explosion violent enough to blow a smoking hole in three inch metal = flag-draped casket bearing their son.

And for the first time, smooshed against his mom, wrapping his broken arm (ow! ow! ow!) awkwardly around her back, it dawned on him that he had effectively dodged a speeding bullet. --No, scratch that. Dodged a runaway train billowing flames from the engine compartment (--tortured for three weeks--) and conducted by a demon from hell (--mask became reality, Bee succumbed to the Hornet-- caring blue optics hardened to ice, ice colder than space--).

He had to swallow thickly several times before he could speak, but at last his dignity as a teenager demanded that he struggle out of the suffocating hug-- though not before tightening his own grip in return, trying to put every ounce of manly love he could into the gesture (Goodbye, mom...).

"Who said I was being careless? You need to stop jumping to random conclusions, dad. I thought you learned your lesson from the time you got us into that blood fued with the next door neighbors."

And just like that, the moment ended. His parents pulled back, returning to their previously annoyed state as though embarassed to have been caught in a family moment so sentimental that fluff practically oozed onto the floor. Well, his father at least seemed embarassed. His mother continued to look at him with red rimmed eyes, each sniff the possible prologue to another bone-crushing embrace. Sam took a deliberate step back and resettled his yellow Bumblebee blanket around his shoulders (--become someone more than human, a super hero so strong that he can't be broken by pain--), briefly wondering if the scout were lurking right outside the door.

In response to his light-hearted jab about an incident he hardly remembered, his father crossed his arms and grimaced. "That was different. I KNEW they were the ones who let their dog poop in my yard."

Sam almost laughed at the look Rachet gave his father. But the next words from the robot's vocalizer brought all pre-chuckle intentions to a screeching halt.

"While Sam's actions could hardly be termed noble, they were not, in fact, careless. Mudflap and Skids should have known that their presence, if discovered, would prompt such a reaction from Bumblebee, given his history with lurking Decepticons."

Sam could have strangled the obstuse robot. If only his hands could have fit around his neck. And if only he'd needed to breathe.

"Bumblebee," His father said flatly.

"'Stumblebee'!" His mother cried with understanding, "That red one meant Bumblebee, didn't he? The yellow robot that's been living in our garage and destroyed half our house?" Then, she gasped, "Bumblebee did that to the ceiling?....Well, I guess I'm not too surprised, considering what he did to the upstairs and our y-- Bumblebee almost killed my baby boy?!!"

It was Thatcher, to Sam's astonishment, who stepped forward. "Now you understand why we first inquired if you knew of Bumblebee's location, Mr. and Mrs. Witwiky," he turned his penetrating stare to Sam. "Sam, I know that your friend acted with the best intentions, I truly do--"

"No." And that was that. Whatever he wanted, no.

"Listen! I do not doubt your word or the word of Optimus Prime and the other Autobots who served as witnesses-- stop shaking your head, son, and listen to me! We only want to talk to your friend. Just talk, that's all. He will still leave the ship with you, safe and sound, in two days. I promise."

Sam only stared at him as though he'd sprouted carrots from his nose. "You're delusional if you think I believe you after-- if you think I believe you." He glanced back to his parents, but fortunately they didn't seem to pick up on his slip. "Two things, okay? First, I haven't seen Bumblebee and I don't know where he is--" (Don't swallow, don't blink-- Bee, run!) "--And second, I'm going to be there when you talk to him. And I really don't give a damn if you say no, because I'm going to do it anyway." The implication hit home, judging by the General's slight wince. As a ward of the Autobots, Thatcher had no true authority over him and he knew it. The older man did hold the trump card of being able to bash his parents over the head with the truth at a moment's notice, but he was at least intelligent enough to realize that he himself would suffer enough damage in the backlash to counteract any leverage over Sam.

Rather than argue with (and thereby lose caste to) a teenager, Thatcher turned regally to Ironhide. "My friend, would you happen to know of Bumblebee's whereabouts?"

Much to everyone's shock and Sam's silent feeling of triumph, Ironhide gave the equilvalent of a disbelieving snort and rebuffed, "Even if I did, Bumblebee is more a friend of mine than you could ever be. I believe you humans have a phrase for it-- 'Sempre Fi'."

Remembering the term from an old WWII movie, Sam whispered the translation in floored awe, "'Always faithful,'" And just to prove his latent ability to ignore the seriousness of a situation, he added helpfully, "You've mixed up your slogans, Ironhide. Sempre Fi is used by the Marines."

"Which, as I understand it, is a subdivision of the United States Navy. It's use on board this vessel in entirely appropriate," Rachet lifted a finger in a manner reminiscent of a grade school teacher lecturing the class as he spoke, but lowered it again as he turned to Thatcher (And hissed something that sounded distinctly like 'You Idiot' to Ironhide, but once again Sam was convinced he was probably imagining things). "Unfortunately for you, General, Ironhide speaks the truth. Bumblebee has the ability, as a scout, to shield the radiation signature of his own spark from even my powerful scanners. We do not know where he is."

Thatcher frowned. "Can you raise him on your internal radio, or otherwise get into contact with him?"

"That will not be necessary, General Thatcher," Bumblebee called softly, emerging from behind a stack of tarp-draped containers, "I'm here."

Bee.

Sam twisted the fingers of his good hand into the folds of his yellow blanket, childishly wishing he could give the yellow Autobot a hug. Holding tight to the gift from his guardian would have to suffice-- especially when his father pushed him behind his broad shouldered back, planting himself between the two.

"Ah, good! Thank you for coming, Bumblebee. Now that you are here, there are several things we need to discuss--"

"Starting with what the hell you thought you were doing shooting off that gun of yours around my son." His father interjected forcefully.

Sam knew, knew, that he couldn't be the only one to see the yellow scout flinch as though struck. But if any other the other Autobots or humans caught the motion, they didn't react to it. Had he really taken to watching his guardian so closely that he picked up movement not even Rachet noticed?

At first irritated by the interruption, Thatcher settled into a patient tolerance, once more clasping his hands behind his back as he did whenever involved with something very serious. Sam wondered idly if he did so to prevent anyone from seeing his hands twist and bead with nervous sweat. Apparently, his father's question had been something along the lines of what the General himself wanted to know.

Bumblebee paused before answering, looking from Rachet to Ironhide for support and seemingly finding none. At last he lowered himself into a sinuous crouch, backing away from the assembled group until a stark shadow obscured half his form, transforming the parts left in darkness into vague blobs of golden luminescence. It took Sam a minute to realize that the posture was submissive-- and he refused to think of what it meant that his alien friend had been adopting that same stance with greater frequency around him, as though expecting attack (or unconsciously barring himself from....something. Not attacking-- never was there the intent to hurt. Something else, something he was terrified he might do if his control slipped for even a moment around his human charge....).

"It was not my intention to shoot with Sam in the room, or to shoot at all," he began to explain in the same quiet voice, though his tone was unhesitant, filled with a stony determination (so much like Optimus) that bordered on grim. "As I understand it, Mudflap and Skids contacted Sam and presuaded him to join them on an adventure of sorts. They lead him to a mantinence hallway from which they were able to access the air duct which runs-- ran-- through the ceiling above the cargo bay. Just there." he pointed to the gaping wound of twisted metal from which Sam had fallen.

"So you started getting all trigger happy and decided to play target practice, nearly hitting my Sammy in the process." His mother quipped.

If it were possible, Bumblebee sank even farther into himself, backing completely into the day-time shadows (a faint golden glow, a flickering candle flame guttering in the dark).

"No." A pause, several alien clicks and whirrs, fingers brushing the floor (claws that longed gouge furrows into the sheet metal in agony). "I was not engaged in target practice; I did not simply 'get all trigger happy' and aim at the wrong place-- I came after Sam with the intent to kill him."

For an instant the world ceased to spin on its axis.

Then his mother stumbled back a step in shock, all the blood fleeing her face and leaving it a pasty white (So innocent, so naive-- you never expected the truth, did you?). His father, swiftly recovering from the stiffness of shock, flushed a deep purple, the color of directionless fury.

Thatcher frowned, seeming stymied rather than disturbed or even frightened.

"That's not the whole story, according to Optimus Prime. Is it, Bumblebee?"

And finally, something inside his father snapped. He twisted briefly to spear Thatcher with one meaty finger. "I don't give a shit what some robot says! You stay out of this, you pompous son of a bitch!"

He shook off his wife as, wide eyed, she tried to grasp his arm. "Get off, Judy! I have a hunk of scrap to melt!" His rage focused itself on Bumblebee, who shrunk away from the human only a sixteenth of his mass the way he never shrank from Megatron (--human hands hurting him, human hands holding him down--). "And you--"

A fist colliding with his shoulder in an indignant punch halted him in his tracks. "Don't you tell ME to get off, Ron! And don't you dare try to do something stupid like attack it-- I don't want to have to drag your remains home in an envelope!"

"I'll do whatever the hell I want--"

"No!" Sam pushed his father back away from Bumblebee (my friend, my guardian, my--), wincing as he used his broken arm without thinking. His father stumbled, taken off guard, and for a moment Sam froze in bewilderment-- he didn't think his push had carried so much force (--'Stay away from him!', 'Look! He's not fighting back!'--). Without concious thought, without even truly realizing what he was doing or why he was doing it, he stepped right up into his father's face, pushing him again with both hands. "Stay away from him!" He said, though is voice came out a scream, "You stay away from him! I won't let you hurt him! I'll fight you! I'll fight you! I won't let you hurt him!"

For a moment his father simply stared at him open-mouthed. "Sam! You heard it right from the horse's mouth-- That monster tried to kill you!"

"You don't know ANYTHING!" he cried, pushing his father again, "You weren't THERE! He thought I was a Decepticon! He thought I was a spy! He was doing his job trying to protect me from them!"

Suddenly furious in return, though still bearing an expression of helpless fear and desperation, his father pushed back and grabbed him by his shoulders.

"Son, you're obsessed! It's a robot! Who knows what's going on in its head?! What happens the next time he mistakes you for a Decepticon?!" He started shaking Sam by the shoulders, hard, causing his teeth to rattle in his skull and his arm to flare in agony. He gave a short little cry, but his father didn't appear to notice. "What happens when the next shot doesn't miss?!"

Proving that his reputation as a scout was well deserved, Bumblebee crossed the room to them in a movement so swift, so utterly alien in its absolute lack of noise, that he seemed to simply appear behind them. Deft fingers pulled one of his father's arms up and away from Sam's shoulder, immediately releaving the bone crushing pressure of his vice-like grip. Holding him by the arm, Bee plucked him from the floor, transferring him laterally through the air as easily as moving a cup from one table to another. And with characteristic care, Bee set his father back on his feet fifteen feet away from Sam. Safe. Rumpled, too stunned to be frightened, but unharmed.

But as soon as the yellow Autobot had darted towards them, the two armed and armored guards dropped back into combat stances, clicked off the safeties on their weapons, and framed Bumblebee's head in their cross hairs.

Sam had nearly forgotten the almost tracelike state he had entered when threatening Galloway at breakfast. But at the sight of the two black muzzels leveled at Bumblebee, the roaring white static descended once more, blocking out everything else in the world except the threat to his friend, and with a strangled battle cry-- regardless of the screeches of outrage from the other Autobots (including the Twins, who abandoned their hiding place), regardless of Thatcher shouting at the guards to stand down, regardless of the fact that he was probably making the stupidest mistake of his short life-- Sam lunged for the nearest guard.

The barrel of the gun swung to face him at his approach, but the soldier wielding it was too surprised to pull the trigger in time. Sam's arms came up (his broken bones no longer hurt-- he felt nothing, saw nothing, save for the gun), hands curling around the wide muzzel of the weapon, and thrust it up and away from its intended target, pointing the cross hairs at a point above all their heads.

But though the guard was only a fraction of a second too late to put a slug through Sam's heart, he still squeezed the trigger in reflex-- the gun roared beside his ear, impossibly loud, and one of the packing crates exploded into a hail storm of flying wood splinters as long as Sam was tall. Though still trapped in the pounding white rage, every fiber of his being roaring out a chant to obliterate anything that tried to hurt his friend (--saved me, captured because he saved me--- maimed and leg-less, still he fought back, fought back to protect him-- a desparate cry for help, and the yellow angel was there, breaking the chain-wielder's neck, ripping the spine from the feral monster--), enough of his human mind remained active to realize that any slug that had enough power to do that to the metal and wood box as big as a couch was not meant to stop humans. He had been wrong from the start; the guards weren't stationed at the door to halt intruders, weren't accompanying Thatcher on his quest to find Bee in order to protect his parents from construction debris or even to act as make-shift body guards-- they were packing heat powerful enough to hurt a transformer not to protect the Autobots from the humans, but to blow the Autobots to pieces if they put one toe out of line. They thought Bumblebee had gone rogue, and they came bringing the necessary fire power to destroy him.

The guard struggled with him for the gun, and Sam struggled back. The Super-sam cape fell from his shoulders (how infantile to play at make believe-- all the fuzzy warmth in the world couldn't stop a bullet, couldn't do a damn thing to protect his friends--). Fueled by a passion beyond words, beyond even anger or fear or anything that he could describe as other than the overwhelming need to protect the precious spark of goodness in his life, he was somehow able to hold his own. Exhausted, bruised, sporting a broken arm-- five inches shorter, fifty pounds lighter, lacking a soldier's muscle-- he nonetheless forced the gun away from his parents, away from Bee, feet scrabbling for purchase against the floor, plaster straining enough to crack.

"Stand down! That's an order, soldier! STAND DOWN!"

But the guard couldn't let go because Sam wouldn't let go, and Sam wouldn't let go because if he let go of this he let go of everything-- failed to protect everything that meant something to him. He had already failed Bumblebee once; he would go to Hell and back before it happened again.

"ENOUGH!"

Out of nowhere, the searing beam of a lazer only the width of a pencil slipped with robotic aim between their hands and blasted the gun from both their grips. It skittered across the floor, coming to rest almost twenty feet away. A gaping hole through its center steamed, bubbled and oozed.

Dimly recognizing the voice that had shaken the very walls with its sheer power and authority, Sam looked to his side and up, way up, at a very pissed Optimus Prime. The tiny arm-mounted blaster that had fired the shot folded in on itself and clicked back into place in his arm. A moment later, the disconcerting view into Optimus' inner workings visible through the gap disappeared as a plate of red-and-blue flame armor slithered back into its place, covering the transformed weapon.

Everyone started shouting all at once-- his parents at him, Bumblebee, the guard, and Thatcher; Thatcher at his parents, Bee, and the guard; Rachet and Ironhide at each other, the twins, Optimus, and Thatcher. Optimus simply stared down at him.

"Are you alright?" He asked softly, still angry but obviously not at him.

Sam couldn't nod. He couldn't shake his head. He couldn't whip out a snappy, 'Do you have a gun for every occasion?'. The white fog was fading, dissipating as though it had never existed, and without its artificial strength Sam felt like three-week-old left-over casserole. His head pounded. His arm blazed with pain. In summary, he felt so terrible that for once he almost came out and said 'no.'

But then Bee was there, drawing him gently away. Sam went willingly, for once content to be guided. A little distance away from the epicenter of the argument-flinging fire fight, Bee crouched down and led Sam to sit before him, angling his metallic body to shield the human with his limbs.

"Sam," his guardian angel murmured. Sam almost expected him to launch into a carefully delivered yet nonetheless stern lecture, but Bumblebee simply settled himself behind him without a word. Caught up watching Optimus sadly turn from them and move to join the fray, Sam almost didn't hear the sharp-- and swiftly muffled-- crack from behind him. He was so dazed, in fact, that his instincts forgot to instuct him to cringe as a giant finger touched the base of his skull, brushing his hair out of the way. The contact tingled against his skin, strangely warming. Ever so slowly, the finger moved down his back, tracing the curve of his spine, spreading a curious lightness in its wake. Muscles clenched tighter than stone quivered and relaxed. He slumped even farther forward, studying his hands as they sat limply in his lap.

The finger returned to the base of his spine, stroking down once more, but this time it was joined by other fingers-- the metal digits ran gently over his ribs, smoothed across his shoulders. And with each touch, a little of the pain lessened. Again and again the fingers ran over his spine, his back, the up and down motion falling into a steady pattern. After stroking him like a cat for what seemed an eternity, the fingers returned to his neck and rubbed there gently, feathering along the column of his throat, working deep into the muscles of his shoulders. It was the best neck massage he'd ever had, hands down. Better even than the ones Mikaela gave. By the time Bee had begun to use his thumb to work a circle into the muscle below his shoulder blade, Sam was limper than a wet dishrag, leaning back into the pressure, utterly unable to support himself. The pain in his arm had receded to a periphery annoyance like a post-it note stuck to the refridgerator.

The soothing/stroking/massaging/petting must have gone on for quite a while, because when at last Rachert turned away from the melee, the screams of outrage had calmed to mere shouts. His brilliant gaze searched out Sam. When he spotted the human with Bee, his optics honed in on the hand touching his back. Something he saw upset him to no end. He stalked in their direction, drawing the attention of his parents, and whispered to Bee with a kind of furious indulgence, "You idiot."

Sam made a weak noise of protest as Rachet scooped him out of Bumblebee's hands, but the medic paid him no mind.

Suddenly reminded of why they were all fighting, his parents rushed toward him, crying, "Sam! Oh, sweet cakes! Are you alright?" "Sam! Did he shoot you? Are you bleeding?"

Rachet ignored them all. He set the staggering human in his grasp back on his feet, transformed two fingers of one hand into a very sharp, clear needle which instantly filled with an amber fluid, and injected the needle into the side of Sam's neck.

"Ouch!" he cried, instantly revived from his Bumblebee-induced stupor. He clapped a hand to the throbbing point of impact, encountering a single drop of moisture on the skin-- when he examined his fingers, he found them smeared with red. With a kind of slow, creeping horror, he realized he could feel whatever it was flowing through his veins-- a strange, though not unpleasant, coolness spread in its wake.

"What was that?!" his mother shrieked as this father paled with horror, "What kind of motor oil did you pump into my son?!"

Rachet graced them with a decidely snide look. "Unless you are in danger of poisoning yourself and everyone you encounter, you should realize that 'motor oil' is extremely toxic to the human body."

Starting to feel woozy, Sam stumbled, lifting a hand to his temple and shaking his head. Rachet's hand came from behind him and nudged into the backs of his knees-- the slight pressure was all that was needed to crumple his legs beneath him, causing him to collapse back into Rachet's palm. He tried to breathe evenly, fighting the wooziness, wondering if he could make it to the infirmary before he died of poisoning.

Yet to his mingled relief and fear, Rachet continued; "To answer your implied question, I administered a pain reliever combined with a mild sedative. --Your vigorous shaking almost knocked the fractured bones out of alignment, Mr. Witwicky," he elaborted, a distinctly dangerous edge to his tone, "As did Sam's struggle to divert the soldier's weapon from its target. And if you did not know, the sensation of the two broken edges of a fractured bone rubbing against one another is exceedingly painful."

He thought that both his parents looked even paler and sicker, if that were possible, but he couldn't quite tell-- everything shimmered with haloed light, as if he were viewing the world through frosted glass. The sedative thing did take away the pain, but it didn't cause him to feel so elementally good as Bumblebee's ministrations had-- he only felt somewhat sleepy.

"We're his parents!" His father finally burst out, after passing a shaking hand over his eyes, "You can't just do things like give our kid sedatives without asking us first!"

"There are two flaws with your reasoning," Rachet pointed out, lifting the weak human into his clinical embrace despite his feeble protests. Sam's arms were just to heavy to move as quickly or as forcefully as he wanted them too. "One, Sam is 18 solar cycles of age and therefore, by your reasoning, an adult and free to make decisions with or without your approval."

"But you didn't ask him! He has rights--- he could slap a lawsuit on your ass!"

"And two," the medic cut across his mother (...no...don't), "Sam is now technically our ward and under our care-- and as the Chief Medical Science Officer for all Autobots that makes Sam my patient. I am at liberty to treat my patients however I see fit."

"Your....ward?" (Stop....please....)

"Yes. As of approximately two hours, twenty five minute, thirty seven seconds ago, Sam is officially under our jurisdiction."

"But he's an American citizen! You can't just....do that!"

"Go look up the word jurisdiction, cross referenced with country nationality. Sam is no longer a citizen of the United States of America."

(....shit.....)

Sam's eyes had fallen closed-- he pried them back open, blearily searching out the vaguely human-shaped blobs of his parents turning on Thatcher. There was another blob beside Thatcher, one that must have come in while they'd all been fighting. It took a few slow blinks to clear his vision enough to see the blob's face, but when he did the shock of it lifted his head above the warm waves of chemcially-induced slumber. The first thing he noticed upon surfacing was that he'd somehow become wrapped in his yellow blanket. When had that happened?

Though on some level he'd expected it, he was still shocked when he languidly rolled his head to the side and looked down at the humans below to see Galloway standing beside General Thatcher.

His father, rapidly approaching the pair, ignored the politician in favor of sticking his finger into Thatcher's chest. Sam supposed that made sense. Galloway-- minus his suit coat, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his hair sticking out at strange angles-- cut a much less dramatic and authoritative figure than the immaculate General.

"And just who the hell approved this?! Who said that taking my son away and giving him to a bunch of aliens would be okay?!"

"Sir," Thatcher began patiently, "I am sorry for your loss, but in the interests of national security and your son's security this change was necessary. If need be, compensation can be provided--"

But his father didn't give Thatcher the chance to finish his sentence. He reared back and swung his fist with all his might into the General's jaw.

"I'M NOT GOING TO SELL MY SON!!"

Other frantic motions took place after that, but the pull of Rachet's sedative became too strong to fight. Just before the warm darkness overcame him, he could could have sworn he saw Galloway pull out his cell phone, dial in a number, and hand it to his father, saying; "Mr. Witwicky? The President of the United States."

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A green glow in the darkness, the size of a stick of gum.

Blink.

The glow sharpened into green scribbles which fizzed like sparklers.

...What?

Breathe in slowly through the nose. Blink.

Green scribbles became numbers. 3, 5, and 4. He couldn't make heads or tails of them. Were they important?

Blink.

The dark lightened into something not-so-dark, something with familiar shapes and scents.

....Was that a steering wheel?

Blink.

Reclining in a leather seat, head nodding at the dash board. Green numbers from the digital clock glowed back at him: 3:55.

--And with a jolt, the meaning behind the three nonsensical shapes came flooding back into his mind, informing him cheerfully that the indicated time was most likely on the 'am' scale rather than the 'pm' scale. 3:55am; the middle of the night.

Sam came surging back to full awareness in Bumblebee's driver seat, lunging forward into an upright position. Not a smart choice, in retrospect. Pain sparked in his chest, in his arm (ow, ow, ow!), in his head, reminding him that abrupt motion probably was not an advisable course when his body resembled one giant bruise.

"Ow," he announced definitively to the air, a blanket statement to cover all the various hurts marshalling against him.

His yellow super-sam cape must have lain draped across him as he slept; it slid from his chest and pooled in his lap when he jerked upright. Deciding that he'd much rather be warm and horizontal again, Sam slumped back into the seat (which graciously moved forward to meet him half way and slowly lowered him back down), and tugged the blanket up over his stomach.

Eye sliding closed, he licked his chapped lips and called, "Bee?" Or at least, he tried to call. His sleep-numb throat mangled the attempt, warping the single syllable into a murmured sigh of formless air.

But somehow, the Autobot still heard him. It must have been another of his super powers in addition to general awesomeness-- the ability to decipher Sam-speak into something approaching actual words. Either that, or he took the chance that his human passenger was merely calling his name and not telling him to shove his own cannon up his tail pipe.

"'I'll. be. there. for yoooou!'....'That's my name, don't wear it out!"

Sam groaned.

"Please, anything but cheesy 90's sitcoms, Bee." At least he could understand himself that time. He peeled back his eye lids, trying to glance through the windows to see who, if anyone, might have been silently giggling at him as he slept. But the sun-filtering tint to the windows had darkened to black, rendering them completely opaque. No one could seee in....and he couldn't see out.

"Are my parents still out there, waiting to rip me to shreds?" But as soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how nonsensical such an assumption was. It had been almost seven hours since his parents had learned his terrible secret; any sane individual would have long since gone to bed, especially if the subject of their dismay were asleep and therefore unavailable for brow-beating.

"No, Sam," Bumblebee informed him, thankfully not commenting on his post-drugging lack of coherency. "All the other humans left some hours ago. They thought it would be best to simply let you sleep rather than attempt to move you."

Had his parents really thought that, or had Rachet run circles around them with condescending logic until they submitted just to shut him up?

"Well, that's good--" He let loose a jaw-cracking yawn, ruffling a hand through his hair and sighing deeply. "--I won't have to deal with a small-scale Second Coming for at least three hours, then. Fire and brimstone really cramp my style, you know?"

"Fire, brimstone, AND flying monkeys." Bee pointed out. Sam laughed as the Autobot twiddled his steering wheel playfully.

"That too." Then, giggles fading, he slowly curled up into a relatively upright position once more, reaching for the door handle. "Well, goodnight, then. I guess I better go back to my own bed."

The handle reacted easily enough to his tough, but the door itself seemed reluctant to swing open.

"You could sleep here, if you wish," the scout offered hesitantly.

"Bee...look, I appreciate it, I really do," he soothed his friend, hesitating for only a moment before reaching out and petting the dash (--not true friendship, only convenience--), "But it's been a really wierd day, and I want to have the little slice of normalcy of getting to sleep in a real bed. Not that you aren't comfy, because you are--" he flushed deeply as he realized how his comment could be taken, and abruptly cut himself off, "--well, nevermind. Look, I think we both need some space right now. It can't be much fun for you to have to babysit a human all the time (--don't swallow, don't look hurt if he agrees--), so it would be better if I just-- wait. That slimeball said something to you, didn't he?" The last wisps of sleep vanished, replaced by a simmering of cool anger in the pit of his stomach. "Thatcher did that 'talk' thing he was raving about, and either he or Galloway told you something nasty..." He longed for Bee to deny it, but the continued silence only fueled his dread. "Or my dad. --Oh god, they talked to you about me, didn't you? They said that I'd be scared, that I'd stay away from you."

He latched onto the doorframe, using it as a hand hold to manoeuver his protesting body from Bee's deep seats, pulling his yellow blanket out with him. "Well, no matter what, that's not going to happen. So don't you dare believe them--"

"The subject of our relationship did come up, yes," Bee suddenly cut him off, "But they didn't say what you seem to think. And asking you to stay has nothing to do with being afraid of Thatcher."

"What, then?" Sam turned to speak to the darkened interior, arm braced on Bumblebee's roof. God, he was tired.

But the yellow scout seemed nervous, and almost embarassed. He went through several false starts before replying, "Rachet." As if that explained everything.

Sam only blinked, uncomprehending. "...Rachet." He repeated.

Even in silence and perfect stillness, Bumblebee gave off an impression of nervous fidgeting. "Rachet wants to see me. If you hadn't noticed, he isn't the most pleasant of us to be around--"

"Nevertheless," The neon medic interjected from above Sam's head, nearly causing him to jump out of his skin, "For the sake of your own welfare I should think that you would cease your attempts at stalling and, as the humans say, 'get it over with'."

Without a word Bumblebee shut his door and began to transform; Sam staggered away to give him room, and was met with the steading presence of a large, spidery hand behind his back. When the last of the yellow scout's parts clicked into place, Sam met his blue optics in confusion and slight fear.

"You're hurt?"

But it was Rachet who answered, "Not precisely. He is, however, in trouble." And he carelessly stepped over top of the small human and approached the yellow scout, hissing to himself (and Bumblebee) angrily.

Sam looked at Bee with growing horror. "Is it about me? About how you...does it have to do with me?" he warbled, voice humiliatingly small.

"In a way," Bee avoided, turning to follow Rachet deeper into the cargo bay. "Go get some rest, Sam. I will see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, you better!" He yelled after the pair (--not worthy, doesn't need me, my- my--), "Or I'll come hunt you down! I could do it, too-- you're yellow!"

The scout turned his head and made a show of rolling his optics at the human, then waved a humoring hand in a sort of 'get lost, dork' motion. It saddened him to know Bee probably felt none of the light-hearted emotion he displayed for Sam's benefit.

But just before he turned to leave, Sam caught a glimpse of something odd. The moment came and went so suddenly he could never really be sure of what he'd seen, but for an instant it looked as though one of Bee's fingers were bent at an angle that, on a human, would have ripped it from the socket. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the metal digit were broken.

But then Bee turned away, and the view of his hand vanished behind his bulk. Vanished as though it had never existed.

And soon, even the memory of the disquieting sight slipped from Sam's mind like water through a sieve.

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He'd meant to head straight to bed. He even started out going in the correct direction to do just that. But several turns later he found himself passing by his own door without easing it open and continuing down the hall to Mikaela's room.

Despite her intimidating Amazonian impression over the phone, she had not shown up in the cargo bay-- sheathed in tight jeans and heart-puncturing heels-- to throw herself into the middle of the confrontation, either to lend her considerable support or to knock him down a few pegs. Which was new. Mikaela could do a lot of things, but working the passive-agressive angle was not one of them; she preferred to get everything out in the open, pick up a proverbial elephant rifle, and shoot the problem in the head. So the fact that she had taken a rain check on a particularly juicy mud-flinging/Sam-tormenting session set off a little blinking red light in his head. Something was up.

But regardless of his unusual nocturnal alertness, it was the middle of the night (well, early morning, but the concept still applied); every other overhead light had been extinguished in those hallways which boasted of private sleeping quarters. No light shone through the tiny crack beneath his girlfriend's door.

And yet he could not convince himself to turn around and head back to his own room. The way the television psychics could predict their viewers picking up the phone to order their products (only more clearly), he saw himself walking back to his closet-sized quarters, changing his clothes, shutting off the light and crawling into bed...and lying there two, three, four hours later, still staring blankly at the ceiling, at times breaking out in a cold sweat, at times sobbing quietly where no one could hear him. When Bee had asked him to stay the night (giggle...stupid innuendo), he had been sorely tempted to give in and let the gentle alien soothe away the crushing fear with his solid presence. As childish as it sounded inside his head, he couldn't bear the thought of being alone with his thoughts. They had developed multiple personality disorders and started carrying around bloody axes.

But neither could he bring himself to be enough of a jerk to wake Mikaela up because of his problems. Caught between the gentlemanly Super-sam and the merely human Sam, he settled for bracing his hands on the door frame and resting his forehead against the slick surface of the door, trying to project his thoughts into the room beyond. Did she sleep on her stomach? Curled up in a ball? Naked? (take a deep breath, bash the libido over the head). Did her lashes flutter like dark-winged butterflies against her tanned skin? Did she snore? Did she mumble his name?

Hoping that she would miraculously hear him calling, he whispered, "Mikaela?" His voice barely tickled his own ears, fainter than a little kid's reluctant to disturb his parents after a nightmare. "Mikaela?"

He knew-- knew-- that she must have been an angel in disguise. And the sleepy voice that wafted out into the hallway in response to his plea proved it.

"....Sam?....Stop loitering in the hallway...."

Needing no other invitation, he slowly pushed open the door, ducking his head around the lip into the darkened expanse beyond. His eyes had not entirely adjusted to the gloom, but he caught sight of rustling movement on the bed.

"Can I....Can I turn on the light?" He whispered.

"Mm-hmm." An affirmative grunt.

His hand fumbled out along the wall for a light switch, found it, and winced sympathetically as harsh flourescent light bathed the room.

"Sorry, that's bright," He glanced around, spying a desk lamp. "Here."

He sprinted across the room, stumbling in his haste to make as little noise as possible, and switch on the goose-necked lamp. It soft orange glow relieved him-- some of the newer models glowed brighter than the sun-- and he swiftly moved to turn off the overhead lights. Near dark descended once more, but this time the little lamp, shining out like a cheap knock-off of a romatic fire crackling in a brick hearth, shed enough light to make everything in the room visible, albiet robed in shadows.

He turned to face Mikaela, finding her sitting up in bed. Despite his fevered imaginings of finding her dressed in a lacey night gown, she wore a set of men's pj's three sizes to big, leaving the top two buttons undone. Very sexy, in a demure girl-next-door sort of way. Hair mussed, face pale from sleep, she appeared in that moment to be the most beautiful thing in the world. Sure, he told her sappy things like that all the time, and he meant them (mostly). But now, the sight of her caused his mouth to dry, his heart to race, popping all the thoughts in his mind like ephemeral bubbles. She wasn't just hot, or sexy, or gorgeous, or all the many other things men called out at her as she passed. Not that she wasn't those too, but some indefinable quality-- like a ray of light breaking softly through a canopy of trees, like the sound of the ocean at night, like the laughter of little kids at the playground, like all the things that held him momentarily spellbound (though he would never admit to it, for fearing of looking like a pussy)-- lifted her above ordinary attractiveness. She didn't merely appear beautiful, she was beautiful.

Because after fighting with him at the battle at Mission city, after putting up with his randomness for months as they dated, after following him to egypt under the threat of imminent death, she surprised him once again. He would have understood, even expected it, if she had screeched at him to get out for interrupting her rest as he had interrupted her life. But she didn't. She didn't yell. She didn't throw things at his head. She didn't even scowl in a way that clearly conveyed 'it's 4am, what the hell do you want?'.

Instead, she did something so simple, yet so profoundly beautiful that it humbled him the way only Bee's loyalty had.

She smiled.

"It's late, I know," he stuttered awkwardly (--only one more day, then she's gone--), "Like, unforgivably late-- a-and I'd totally understand if you decide to just kick me out for waking you up, cause I probably would have done the same if someone came and woke me up-- well, maybe not to you, you can come wake me up any time of the night you want." He mentally kicked himself into shutting up before he said something irrevocably stupid.

"What are you doing here, Sam?" she yawned, swinging her feet out from under the covers and pushing her hair back with both hands.

"Me? Here? As in, inside your room at 4am? Um..." (What was that reason, again?) "...Oh! I came to see if you were okay, you know? I mean, not that you shouldn't be, but you sounded ready to open up a can of wup-ass in your messages and I'd thought you'd want to be present for the train-wreck conversation....but you weren't there."

Scooting over on the bed, Mikaela patted the space next to her. "I did want to go with you, at first."

He sat in the proferred space, smiling ruefully, and dropped the yellow blanket on the end of the bed. "...And then you got mad at me for not answering your calls."

"I was mad. But that's not why I didn't come with you, Sam." She leaned against him, tucking her head under his chin. "I realized that you should probably have a chance to talk to your parents on your own without your over-protective girlfriend breathing down your neck."

The words 'over-protective' and 'girlfriend' used in conjunction like that made his heart thud a little more quickly in his chest.

"I could have used a crazy-ass girlfriend breathing down my neck." (Stupid stupid STUPID!)

But Mikaela only snorted with laughter. "You're a big boy. You can handle your own parents without me."

Just talking to her, hearing her voice, lifted a boulder from his chest. Even in the dimly lit room, the world seemed brighter when she leaned on him wearing XXL men's pj's.

"You have waaay too much confidence in me. It's really sexy."

Then, feeling unexpectedly playful, he swept her hair aside and brushed his lips against the ticklish part of her neck. She squirmed, holding in a squeal, and hit him lightly in the chest. He shifted to the left to ward off further attack, and sat on a small, hard, cylindrical something that was distinctly un-sheet-like. Rooting around beneath the covers, he fished it out and held it up for inspection. His mystification only increased. It was a marker. A black Sharpie, to be more exact.

Mikaela snatched it out of his hand.

"You weren't supposed to see that yet." And unexpectedly, she blushed.

Bitch-slapping, alien-butt-kicking Mikaela never blushed, not even the time he had accidentally walked in on her naked. Even then, she had only shouted until his ears were ringing and slammed the door in his face. But never blushed. He didn't know that she could.

His devious grin stretched for ear to ear, and he wrestled the Sharpie away from her, holding it out of reach. "Now why would little miss 'Kaela be sleeping with a Sharpie?"

Face stained cherry red to the tips of her ears, she struggled against him for a minute in the dark, then sat back in a huff, crossing her arms. The sleeves of her shirt covered all but her finger tips. The sight was so cute that for a moment he wanted to drop the marker and jump her with the most toe-curlingly awesome bout of snuggling of her life. But he restrained himself (--behold Super-Sam's amazing powers of self control!--), only tapping the incriminating evidence thoughtfully against his palm.

"You could be making a sign, but I don't see any poster board, so that's out. Or you could be planning on sneaking into the cargo bay while Optimus is sleeping and drawing all over his face, but I guess the fact that he normally looks like a truck would throw a monkey wrench in that plan--"

"I wanted to sign your cast." She blurted, cutting off his wild musings. His grin of amusement softened into a loving smile.

"That works too," he held out the Sharpie, wiggling it a little when she refused to uncross her arms, "You could always do it now, if you want." But then, something occured to him. "Wait; how did this end up in your bed."

Finally she ended her sulk and offered him a smile of her own. "You have a real problem, Sam-- you always assume that the people around you can't love you as much as you love them." She snatched the Sharpie out of his suddenly lax fist, gripping it triumphantly. "I fell asleep waiting for you to come back."

As stupid as it was, the sentiment rendered him breathless. "You...waited up for me? You held that thing, waiting for me to come back so you could sign my cast, until you fell asleep?"

She pulled the cap off with a tiny pop, quipping, "Don't you dare get all mushy on me, Sam. --Now close your eyes. I've been wanting to do this for hours."

Confused, he pulled his casted arm back from the approaching black tip.

"Close my eyes?" he repeated, incredulous, "Why? I've always wanted to have someone sign my cast!"

"Well, I want what I write to be a surprise," she answered coyly, leaning forward to kiss the bridge of his nose. His eyes closed in reflex. "Now close your eyes-- there's a good boy. This will only take a minute."

He couldn't obviously feel her fingers through the plaster, but he felt his arm being raised and heard the dry squeak of the marker moving across the uneven surface. Just a peek. It wouldn't hurt anything--

"Keep your eyes closed, you cheater." (Damn. She had to have mind-reading powers).

The Sharpie continued to squeak of a long time. Far longer than he'd expected.

"Are you writing a monologue or something?" he whispered conspiratorially, "Cause you'd have to grow a mustache to twirl and practice your evil laugh to go along with it."

She shushed him, smothering laughter. Mission accomplished. Girls always went for the guys that could make them laugh.

"There, all done!" He moved to open his eyes, and she pressed her hand over them. "No! Don't look yet. Keep them closed for a minute."

The bed dipped, and with a rustling of starched fabric he felt her rise from the bed and move across the room.

"One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand--"

"You're really annoying, Sam. You know that?"

"Four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand--"

And the desk lamp switched off, plunging the room into darkness. Regardless of his girl friend's instructions, his eyes snapped open, searching the darkened room. He saw Mikaela's silhouette moving back across the room, and a moment later her warm body rejoined him on the bed. He scowled at her, twisting his cast this way and that in the dark. He couldn't see anything.

"Hey!" he whined, "That's not fair!"

"I want it to be a surprise. You'll just have to wait until to tomorrow to look at it."

"Oooor I could go out in the hall and look at it there--"

A hand found the back of his head and pulled him down into a kiss, cutting off the rest of his sentence. After too short a time, Mikaela pulled back, releasing all of him but one hand.

"No," She told him firmly, "Signing your cast isn't the only thing I've been waiting hours for. Tell me what happened."

Cautiously optimistic that her memory would prove flawed (though his luck never ran that way), he asked slowly, "You mean with my parents, right?"

"Right." (breathe out slowly in relief, there is a God after all--). "AND what you talked about with Optimus."

"Optimus?" He squeaked, "What's there to tell?"

She sighed in exasperation. "I don't know. That's why I asked. You've been acting strangely ever since you two split up. First you wouldn't answer your phone--"

"Hey! That was Bee's fault! Blame him, not me. Innocent victim, here."

"--then you stood out in the hallway for forever without even knocking, and now you're acting all strange. Like your dog just died, or something." (--or like my heart just died, plucked straight from my chest--).

Sam knew he could have lied. One of the few talents he possesed was the ability to talk his way into, or out of, almost anything. But judging by how his infrequent attempts to smooth-talk Mikaela into sleeping with him had been going, his girlfriend had at least partial immunity. (stuck permanently at second base-- every teenaged boy's nightmare. But that was okay, because kissing Mikaela was comparable to wild monkey sex with anyone else....or so he assumed). There was also the uber slimey, dirty feeling that came from lying to someone who only had his best interests at heart. He could lie his ass off to Megatron without losing a wink of sleep, but lying to Mikaela was something else entirely.

And he also knew, no matter how he screamed internally in denial-- digging his fingernails into the fabric of his old life and refusing to let go-- that the truth would come out anyway in a little over a day when he didn't get on that plane with them back to America. Better to break it to her now, while she could break up with him in relative privacy, than two days from now and have everyone see the unbridgable rift form between them. The rift part may have been inevitable (--never go home, never see her again--), but at the very least he didn't want everyone and their uncle looking at him in pity for the rest of his quickly shortening life at NEST.

There was also the matter of the slim, warm hand holding his. It squeezed gently in encouragement, in support, hardening his determination.

And with an internal sob of despair, he told her everything. She listened in silence as he poured everything out into the air between them, vomiting an endless stream of words (of pain) into her lap. Strangely enough, the darkness helped. It allowed him to bask in her warmth without revealing the sorrowfully resigned expression he knew must have covered her face.

When he finished, they sat in silence together, listening the echoes and re-echoes of his solemn pronouncement whispered at them from the metal walls. Never go back. Never go back. Never go back.

At last she drew in a deep breath, tightening her hand around his until he could feel the bones creak. This is it. The 'I'm sorry it had to be like this, Sam. Nice knowing you. Hope you get lucky and find another girl in your new life' speech. He wanted to close his eyes, but what was the point-- it was too dark to see anything but the faintest outline of her features.

But then she shifted, leaning closer to him, and the wan light slipping in from under the door momentarily lit up her face with a moonbeam glow. Her face wasn't sad, or even resigned. It was closed, hard with a furious emotion he could not name. Oh shit. She thought he was making it up, and now she was pissed at him for such a crappy excuse for breaking up with her!

He waved his casted arm in panic, though in the dark she probably couldn't see the defensive motion. "Please, Mikaela, you gotta believe me! I'm not making this up!" He sucked in a trembling breath, trying not to show how much it hurt that the cross expression on her face did not change (did you expect her to forget the sight of you kissing the tongue robot?). "It sucks that it has to be this way. Believe me, I hate it more than you can imagine. But even though I don't like it, Optimus is right-- I need to be at NEST, away from you, away from my family, so that the Decepticons don't hurt you when they come looking for me." He flexed his hand in hers-- she had not released it. "I can't go back with you, Mikaela. I'm really, really sorry--"

A hand lashed out in the dark and caught him full across the face in a ringing slap. He froze, stunned, and started to lift a hand to touch his stinging cheek-- but with a small, desperate noise, Mikaela slapped him again before he had the chance-- and with a tearless sob she threw herself into his arms, hugging him fiercely, hands fisted against his back.

"I can't believe you'd think I'd just go back without you!" She clutched him even tighter, burrowing her head against his chest, "I'm not a coward! I'm not afraid of those decepticreeps! So don't you dare try to tell me not to come with you!" She started to cry in earnest. Not the dainty, soundless tears of silent films, but the red-faced, snot-nosed, agonized globs of moisture that rolled thickly down the cheeks, past lips pulled up in a grimace of pain. "Samuel Witwicky-- I l-love you, and there's nothing you can do about it!" His ribs ached as she tried to hug him to pieces, tried to fuse their physical bodies together. "So don't you dare go where I can't follow!"

Too stunned to speak, his arms came up and lightly folded themselves around her back. --But then her words sank in, and he pulled her as close as his broken arm would allow, then pulled her closer, his own hands fisting themselves in the back of her shirt.

"It's not up to me, Mikaela," his tongue said without his permission, voice emerging utterly flat. Dead. "No matter what, I'm not going to do something stupid like risk your life just to be around you, so I have to go along with them and live at the base. And I don't have the power to bring you with me, even if I was able to live with myself for taking you away from your life."

"W-what life?" She sniffed, pulling back just enough to look up into his face. "No money, no chance to go to college, a crappy job at a motorcycle repair shop?"

"America," he whispered in return, "Calilfornia. Gorcery shoping. Barbeques. Road trips. Friends....your father."

He gently wiped away the fat tear rolling slowly down her cheek with his thumb, and continued even more quietly, "Living. Being a normal person. That's what you'd be leaving behind. If you could come with me, which you can't. The whole 'but I can't do long-distance relationships' thing doesn't work with them. I have to go with the Autobots--" he swallowed thickly, "--and you have to go back and live a normal life for me. If not for yourself, do it for me, Mikaela." He ducked his head to whisper against her ear. "I love you too much not to let you go."

Abruptly she pushed herself away from him. It wasn't unexpected, but that didn't change how much the loss of that desperate contact hurt. But rather than turn away from him, tell him to get out, Mikaela seemed to gain a furious purpose. She sniffed, but not with more tears-- more like she was bracing herself up, stopping the flow, getting ready to plunge into the fray and do battle. She tossed her hair back behind her shoulders, rolled up to her knees on the bed, and began hurriedly fumbling at the neck of her shirt, making small, determined noises. Her hands shook so much that at first she merely pawed uselessly at the material, but then she latched onto the first button and slipped it free, pulling the neck of her shirt away to expose the milky expanse of her collar bone. Without pause, her hands moved to the next button, working that one free as well-- the fabric peeled away, revealing the twins curves of her breasts.

"Mikaela?" Sam squeaked in confusion. As though suddenly reminded of his presence, she lunged for him, hands tangling almost painfully into his hair, and pulled him into a harsh, passionate kiss, sighing into his mouth and running her tongue over his teeth, over the roof of his mouth, with a kind of feverous intensity. One hand freed itself and slipped up the hem of his shirt, clutching at the muscle beneath, but then almost as soon as she touched him she pulled her hands back again, returning them to the buttons of her shirt.

"Mikaela, what are you doing?"

Ignoring him completely, she thurst herself forward into his lap, wrapping her legs around his waist, and resumed the vigorous kissing, pulling open the next button of her shirt, uncovering the smooth, sensuous dip between her breasts.

All at once, his mind caught up with his body and the cause of her actions clicked into place.

"Mikaela!" He hissed, ignoring the way his own body responded to her eagerness, "We can't do this now!"

"Sure we can," she panted, silencing any further protests by locking her mouth onto his. She reached up and hooked her hands around the back of his neck, collapsing back onto the bed and bringing him down on top of her.

His heart felt ready to explode out of his chest. He needed her to stop kissing him, needed to stop himself from kissing her back, but he couldn't find the will to do either, especially when she hooked one foot around his calf and sensuously caressed the curve of his knee with her heel, the motion slow and devilishly enticing. At last, needing to come up for air, he broke away from the lip lock.

"You seem like--*pant*--you know--*pant*--what you're doing!"

"I don't," she punctuated the words by rolling her hips under his in a way that made him go wild with animal lust, "But this is the last chance we may get, so shut up and make love to me before I lose my nerve!"

She darted in for another kiss before he could reply, reaching for the next button on her shirt, the one which would finally free her breasts when pulled open.

Sam had never face a struggle quite as difficult before-- not only did both of them want what was happening (his libido danced with glee), but the only enemy to fight against was not a towering metal alien, but himself. It took every ounce of will power he possesed (stupid stupid stupid), but he managed-- barely-- to pull himself away before his mind simply said 'oh well!' and took a vacation for the next hour. Or two....or three. (shut UP!)

Rolling onto his side next to Mikaela to free his arms, he reached out and grabbed her hands with his, preventing them from continuing the disrobing process.

"No," he said, as seriously as he could muster, "No, as in not yes, okay? You DID go to that seminar in junior year on sexual harassment, didn't you?"

Mikaela groaned, but not in ecstasy. She threw her head back into the pillow the way she would bang her head into a wall, and shot him a nasty look.

"I'm not kidding around, Sam. I want to do this."

Swallow. "Well, I don't." And he didn't. Though physically his hormones were crying in outrage, mentally and emotionally he knew he had to put a stop to this. He waited until she saw that he was serious, the violent heaving of her chest slowing, and gingerly rolled back on top of her, propping himself up with his elbows. His hands found the first open button on her shirt.

"See, one of the things they talked about was 'in the moment' decisions like this," he murmured, leaning down and pressing his lips slowly, lovingly, into that little dip between her breasts. He felt her heart stutter in response, but he only pulled away and rebuttoned her shirt over the spot he had feathered with a kiss.

"I don't know how yet, but I will figure something out. I promise you that."

His lips trailed a line up her skin, planting another soft kiss on her chest and redoing the next button over the intangible seal.

"This isn't goodbye--" Yet another kiss, even more lingering, higher up that the first. Slip the errant button back through its hole, watch her skin vanish beneath cloth. "So I'm not going to let you make it a goodbye."

Lips pressed beneath her collar bone, nose skimming silken softness. Redo the button, reset the clock on the countdown to seperation.

"'Sides--" he mumbled into the hollow of her throat (don't lick! don't lick!), "It would seriously suck if we ended up jynxing ourselves."

And he fastened the last button. Mikaela was only Mikaela once more, no longer a lashing well of need and lust. Her eyes, which had slipped closed sometime during his tender ministrations, opened once more, staring deep into his soul. In response, Sam folded his hands over her stomach and rested his chin on top of them, watching her watch him with a raised eyebrow. She snorted, face trembling with a dazzling variety of emotions.

Then, she simply laughed.

The last vestiges of tension in the room vanished. Grinning impishly, Sam rolled onto the bed beside her, shoved her out of the way, and wiggled beneath the covers. Still laughing breathlessly, she slid in beside him, allowing him to spoon against her back and cocoon the blankets more securely about them both.

"You really are a mood killer, Sam."

"Nuh-uh. Insulting me is totally not going to work. I'm sleeping here tonight and that's final." He lightly kissed her ear. "So if you don't like it, you can leave."

"I'm staying," she affirmated quietly, words holding layers of meaning.

Suddenly, Sam leaned up. "Oh! Almost forgot!" He reached for the yellow blanket still waded mournfully on the end of the bed and dragged it over them. "There. Now we're good."

And just because he owed her for pulling so many dirty tricks on him to get him hot, he slyly curled his leg around hers and languidly stroked the senstive inner edge of her calf.

"EEP! Sam!"

He only laughed, curling more tightly around her and pinning her arms to her side to keep her from pinching him the way he knew she intended to do. He caressed her even more slowly, drawing out the motion, lingering over the most ticklish spots. Mikaela writhed with helpless giggles.

Finally, after many more childish taunts and pay-backs had utterly exhausted their youthful energy, they both fell into the arms of slumber.

Neither dreamed.

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Jupiter. The god of thunder. The planet of storms.

At first glance, nothing but frozen ammonia and dust swirled through the tumultuous clouds, thrown into roaring storms thousands of miles wide by hydrogen winds whipping across the planet at unimaginable speeds. No creatures made their home here-- even if there was a spec of solid ground in which to take root, the vicious force of the endless storms would tear them into tiny, frozen shards in an instant.

But though there was no native life, there was a visitor sailing the howling winds. A creature composed of solid-state metals so alien to the gaseous giant that it appeared as a splinter in the raging flesh of the sky, an anomoly unnoticed and unseen by the mindless elements.

Stronger than any earthen jet, able to withstand the 130-G pressure of sling-shotting around the eye of one of Jupiter's storms, Starscream basked in the directionless fury around him. Here was prefection of the universe, the ultimate outcome of the inivisble pattern guiding everything in existence. Not the will of some god; not the design of Cybertronian hands. Only the furthest point to which entrophy-- disorder-- could proceed.

As a scientist of his caliber, Starscream could admire the beauty of the planet around him and all that it embodied. Prefection through destruction; harmony in chaos.

Neither sentiment was understood by Megatron. The raging, self-deluded fool had been in power for far too long, become too comfortable with his own abilities to the point that he believed himself infallible. If only he could see the truth as Starscream did-- every structure eventually crumbled, every leader eventually fell. The meaningless pillars of authority, religion, control that sentient beings built up would all in time become like the beings themselves-- as alike to dust, crumbling, falling.

--Because not one of them embraced that change was inevitable, that the breaking and reforming of all things was inevitable. The only pillar that could survive the ravages of eternity must not be a pillar at all, but rather an amorphous gathering guided by one head who directed and mastered the changeless change.

Megatron did not understand this.

Prime did not understand this.

None of the great leaders of Cybertron had ever admitted to the truth they themselves had witnessed over the countless eons, shaping laws and social structures instead, never realizing that they were setting themselves up for the fall. The only way to be the master of change and to thereby assume uncontested rule was to control something so precious to the people being ruled that they would consent to any necessary change in order to get it.

Cybertron, and by extension all Cybertronians, were slowly dying. They had run out of energon. Without it, they could not search out a suitable star to implode and thus feed their dying race. A constant spiral, never ending, like the storms of Jupiter; they needed more energon to keep them from dying, and in order to get it they had to destroy a star. But in order to reach to a star to destroy it they needed energon-- which they could only harvest once they destroyed that star.

The Autobots knew this. The Decepticons knew this. Both also knew that the sole remaining machine in existence resided on earth, and that it was the key to saving every Cybertronian across the galaxy. The survival of the master race versus the termination of a disgusting species of warring bug-- to Starscream, it was really no choice at all. And if he could control the energon, he could replace Megatron as the unquestioned leader and expand his rule to their entire species. Everyone wanted to exist, after all.

Starscream had told Megatron of Soundwave's proposed plan. But the vile mech could not see the brilliance, the simplicity of it. His processor had become clouded by his hate of the Autobots, and he refused to take any course that did not involve destroying them in one-on-one combat.

Backwards fool.

Once more, Starscream played the primitive video clip forwarded to him from Soundwave. A crude drawing of a flesh bag engaging in a courting ritual with the photographic image of a human female, the same female he had seen in the company of the organic male who had destroyed the Allspark; a short video of said organic male attacking another of his species with a rectangular object that made a pitiful excuse for a weapon; the male and female together in a revolting the snippet of data did not provide any concrete clues to the male organic's whereabouts, it did reveal a possibly useful fact-- the male was emotionally attached to the female, possibly her mate. She could be used to draw him out.

Although Soundwave could not find any mention of the boy on any database or website-- save for the one from which the video had been culled-- the communications specialist had uncovered a poorly hidden reference to the female. A reservation, under a disguised name and hidden deep within a military computer, for a plane flight from India to the United States. It was dated for approximately 32 hours from that exact moment in planetary rotation.

A tiny burst of sub-space data, and Starscream sent out a secret message to the Decepticon repairing the symbiote Ravage, giving the mech a program package to upload into Infiltrator's mind when the repairs had been completed. Very soon, his plan could be put into place.

Banking sharply through the clouds, Starscream rocketed closer to the eye wall of the storm, sending out a flurry of encoded messages to those within the ranks of the Decepticons that would be willing to betray Megatron. Slowly, responses started pinging from his reciever, each one the single glyph equilvalent of 'I accept'.

Five. Then nine. Then thirteen. And still Starscream's ranks swelled.

Apparently, they all valued survival much more than honor. Too bad Megatron didn't realize that.

Twenty. Twenty six.

His memory banks idly clicked through the information he had raided from the computer banks of dozens of human-termed 'world super powers': America, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. All possesed nuclear weapons to one extent or another. But not just a handful, or even a few thousand. Between them, the five countries held more than 200,000 nuclear missiles, most of which had been secreted away in bunkers deep underground, never to be used.

Well, that would change. Starscream would not set off the weapons directly, oh no-- that would unite the humans and the Autobots. Instead, his purpose was to tear them apart, setting the two races at each others throats. When the time came, it would be by a human hand that their world-- and the Autobots-- would be destroyed with their own weapons. And then nothing would stop him from putting the long dormant energon harvester to its original purpose.

Megatron would fall. Starscream would assume his rightful place as supreme leader, a leader intimately familiar with the very forces that would passively conspire to lift him on high.

Using the uncalculable force created by riding the storm, Starscream turned upwards and rocketed into space, racing easily beyond Jupiter's reaching field of gravity.

Prefection through destruction.

Harmony in chaos.

Let the games begin.

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Author's Note: Another exceedingly long chapter. I have GOT to stop doing this to myself. Sorry about the long wait-- once again, life got in the way. We had to install a french drain to de-swamp out backyard this weekend. The bad news-- it wrecked all of friday, saturday and part of sunday, thus the length of time it took to get this chapter up. The good news-- I GOT TO DRIVE A BACK HOE!!! *Squee* It was really awesome--like a giant toy. So cool.

In any case, on to more serious matters. First, in response to a few questions, this story will continue past Sam's move to NEST, though so much will be going on in the meantime that he never really has the chance to 'settle in'....

Secondly, Mikaela will not be killed off, though there will be much angst revolving around her in future chapters-- and she WILL eventually be together with Sam. I think you'll like the plan he comes up with to get them together. Thirdly, this story will not involve sex in any way, shape, or form, either by directly writing it out or by referring to it. I don't do pornography, people. Hench the rating on this story.

And lastly, Bumblebee has been up to some very sneaky things recently.....