Whim has struck again. Praise the Lord, Hallelujah.
Don't expect more for a while, kids. This high schooler is taking all honors and AP's, and it's kicking her butt. Severely. Please Review!
Don't be afraid, I told Bumblebee. I'll be fine. I'm twenty one- can't I be allowed to drive on my own once and a while?
I'm pretty sure I'm never going to be allowed anywhere on my own again. Ever.
It's not like I didn't want to drive him. How could I not? Having an alien robot warrior for a car is something you never really get used to, like a Ferrari or Escalade. But he had gotten hurt in our last D-con encounter, so I wasn't about to let him to risk his butt just so I wouldn't get lost at least once on my way, even if he was my best friend.
All the same, I wouldn't have wanted Bee there, anyway, even if it did mean the precious end to sweet freedom. Because if Bumblebee had been there, we would all be standing by the ocean, watching his silver casket sink into the choppy waves to rest beside Jazz at sea.
Yeah. He was that big.
Luckily, the Primes seem to have too much fun messing with our lives to allow that to happen. Yet.
Ratchet, he thought wearily, is going to kill me when he get's the chance.
Bumblebee banged up was bad enough, but Bumblebee on edge and anxious about him driving by himself, in an inconspicuous, non-Cybertronian silver Honda with about 73 Decepticons still on the loose is enough to put the medic to the verge of massacre, who also happens to agree along the same lines as the scout.
In Sam's personal opinion, he is taking baby steps.
He is driving to his parent's new house in Charleston, the first normal thing he's done in weeks. He hitched a ride on a NEST C-17 while Optimus played some classical tunes as a semi and he, Will, and Epps played poker in the corner, making for a perfect movie scene.
According to his GPS, he is on Highway 17 and nearing a very small bridge that runs across and over the road, like a plus sign- something that would cause backups for hours in D.C.
"Then turn left," says the little machine in a very annoying, accented, cool voice.
Sam hates that GPS.
Maybe he should have accepted a ride from Optimus, despite the fright it might give the neighbors. He wonders if his parents are freaking out already about where he is- and the mental image and ringing voices that come to mind are enough to make him reach for his phone.
As he nears the bridge, which was only about two lanes wide, maybe thirty feet high, and rushing with only a little traffic, Sam picks his cell phone out of the cup holder, keeping one hand on the wheel. He gives the screen a fleeting flicker of his eyes, catching sight of a white box- a text message- behind the blue box that always said "PRESS OK TO UNLOCK" in obnoxious yellow letters before he looks back out the windshield.
That's when he sees the truck.
It's a large brown semi with a gleaming silver grill, not a Peterbuilt, but close, with no trailer and no company logos. And it's parked on top of the bridge, in the dead center, blocking off the traffic of the lane on the side closest to him.
Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe he is just overreacting, or maybe it's because there isn't anyone sitting inside the thing. Maybe Sam is developing his own scout's sixth sense, after being involved in this for so long- and maybe that was bad. But either way, panic and awareness and the feeling that he shouldn't be anywhere near this bridge- and that maybe that text message isn't from his mom- fills his blood like adrenaline.
The phone falls to the floorboards and Sam grabs the steering wheel in both hands, jerking it as hard as he can to the left without a thought of traffic or legality.
Being legal doesn't mean shit if you're dead.
Too bad he didn't think to hit the brakes first.
He's pinned against the seat by gravity as the car swings violently to the side, and his foot hits he brake pedal. The car locks and stars sliding forward sideways, and before the tires can do more than scream as faint white smoke rises up and black skid lines mark his path, he hits the short concrete wall dividing the median, and feels the car jerk under itself, starting with the front.
The bumper is crushed with a crunch before it even takes to the air. He flips and flips and flips, the sky and street blurring into one through the cracked windshield. He slams his eyes shut.
He is lost in the air, having no equilibrium or direction, simply tumbling. Both ends of the car smash down at separate times, twice. Every muscle in his body is clenched tight as he tries not to move, his head smashing forward, before it is finally over. The strange whistling in his ears turns to grated scrapping, and the high sound of something shattering breaks around him. The flipping turns to bone-jarring rolling, then to sliding, and then the car balances precariously on its side before finally falling with defeat, upside down, rocking back and forth and creaking.
The first thing he is aware of, once he realizes that he's alive, is how sick he feels- like he has just ridden the Tornado at the fair with Miles again. And that his head is pounding like crazy.
Probably because he is upside down.
Slowly, half-registering what he is doing, Sam's fingers fiddle with the release on the seat belt, and there is a sharp click. He braces and arm hurriedly against the roof of the car as he falls, collapsing across the thick, dusty padding.
The world is tilting and spinning and he cant seem to stop the feeling that he's still rolling. His head hits the roof and he simply lays there, panting, trying not to loose himself in the waves that seem to be washing him out to sea.
But he's been like this too many times before to stay unaware. He blinks his eyes blearily, as everything slowly starts to swim pack into place- including the pain.
He winces as something over his left eye gives a nasty throb, stinging. His lungs feel scratched and empty- has he been screaming? The windshield has broken everywhere- there's glass all over him that tinkles as he shifts, and as he moves, his hand suddenly brushes something- his phone, obviously removed from the floorboards in the car's certain…position.
He blindly unlocks the screen, hoping to at least call for help. And when he can finally read the text message, the letters falling into place…well, at least it was all worth it.
GET OFF 17. DECEPTICON EN ROUTE TO YOUR COORDINATES. DO NOT REACH THE BRIDGE. WE ARE COMING.
-Optimus.
Don't take 17. Don't reach the bridge.
He has to get out of this car.
He swallows dryly and twists around, and tries to kick the broken and deformed door open. The door rattles, the car creaks, and then he kicks again.
The door pops open with a bad sound, and he grabs the doorframe in both hands, pulling himself half out the car. His arms are trembling so bad he stops for a second, his back hitting the asphalt, his legs still in the car, and still panting. He lets his head fall to the right, and his still slightly-disoriented eyes look to the bridge.
The truck is gone.
His heart stutters, then skips a beat, and everything becomes a bit clearer- especially the necessity to get over himself and get out the damn car. He pushes himself out the rest of the way, and grabbing onto the top- bottom?- of the car for support, pulls himself up, making it wobble. The tires are still spinning.
The noise finally hits him then- the cars honking and people shouting and horns blaring. Luckily, he had been at the front of the last red light, so all the traffic is behind him in a slight pileup-barricade instead of crushed in front of him in his tumble of chaos.
His own car is unrecognizable. But he barely has time to glance and the dented, crushed, crumpled frame, the completely smashed in engine and missing bumpers, and the jagged hole where the windshield should be, when he hears it.
That sound that always spells salvation or disaster, depending on who it's coming from.
The attack comes from the side.
Something massive moves in the corner of his vision; he turns, his head seeming to move in slow motion, in time to see the brown semi speeding down the ramp from the bridge, curving around, engine roaring. It's going to hit him straight on.
Then that sound reverberates into the air again- and the metal plates are sliding back, the center of the engine is buckling and folding, and in just a second a massive robot thirty feet high is hurtling through the air towards him.
Sam's knees seem to bend on their own accord, and gravity pulls him down to the earth, behind his car, before he even realizes what he's doing.
The Decepticon streaks overhead with a sound like a jet plane before sharply veering and slamming down into the earth, shattering the asphalt and sending chunks and shards flying in every direction. Sam rolls and crawls away from the explosion around his car, trying to put it between him and the Decepticon- but all he's got between him and a two-ton alien from hell is a destroyed Honda.
Shit.
He twists his head up and looks over his shoulder, across the bottom of his car (now hardly in that kind of shape). He sees it- a towering, dusty structure of weapons with glowing, hatred-colored optics. It has turned to snarl at the people screaming under the bridge.
It won't be occupied for long.
His phone. Where is his phone? He looks around and then under the upturned engine of the car- there. It's lying where he left it, just next to the broken hole that he climbed out of, on the opposite side of the crumpled vehicle. The side that, were he standing in front of, would block him from any escape from the massive robot. There's no way he can possibly reach it without getting blasted to plasma dust. Unless, based on that text, Optimus knows where he is. If not…
Breathing heavily, he closes his eyes tight and hits his head lightly on the back of the car. He can't think. He's dizzy. He's probably going to pass out- or die- any second now. He's just been in the worst car wreck of his life (the highway chase with the three Decepticon triplets didn't exactly count as one of those) and his forehead is burning, bad.
He can't do this. Not now.
A blast explodes out from behind him; bright light blooms in the corner of his vision seconds before the next bang.
The Decepticon has fired at one of the cars.
The whole thing is up in flames and everyone is running and screaming as thick black smoke rolls beneath the bridge. He can't see anyone hurt. He doesn't see anyone dead.
He really hopes it stays that way, because if not, it's all his fault. Again.
Something rumbles out of the robot's chest and through grating jaws- a Cybertronian curse, probably. He had been around Ironhide too long to not know the meaning.
Like lightning, red optics snap over to fix on him.
Sam jerks sluggishly away from sight.
"Come out, boy." hisses a voice. It sounds disturbingly like Starscream- only with a more ancient tone to it, like the con's vocalizers haven't been oiled in a while.
He doesn't move.
He feels those red optics narrowing and that jaw slowly baring into a snarl at his silence.
Something's going to happen. They can't stay like this forever.
"Very well."
The finality in that tone is alarming. And then one thick arm lashes out, and the cannon transforms again from seemingly nowhere, a red spark gleaming in its depths, trained perfectly on the retreating people.
"Wait!" screams Sam, and staggers out from behind the car.
The Decepticon's head snaps back to him. Sam watches as his face curls into a sneer, maybe at the blood on his face, or his unsteady balance, or his surrendered hands.
This one is different. This one doesn't shoot everything organic and moving in sight; this one doesn't try to unleash inferno all in one go and take him down with style.
Sam always survived those kind of attacks. Hell always passes over him. Maybe it's because he's too small to be a part of something so big, so powerful, like in Mission City; connected yet disconnected at the same time. The fire and battle moved with him like gravity; he was holding the epicenter of it all. Yet every blast and bullet went over his head, every Decepticon just managed to miss him, or moved just too slow. And though Giza definitely changed his ideas of mortality, that much was still true. If someone was going to kill Sam, it wouldn't be the same huge way it had happened to Jazz or Graham or Ironhide, or even Optimus.
It would be like this.
Because Sam had learned the hard way that the people on the streets, the people on the sidelines, the people that just happened to be at the very wrong place at the worst time didn't have that strange kind of disconnection that he did. They were always the ones who got hurt.
Always.
In Mission City they called it unpreventable. In Chicago they called it asked for. One they could have done absolutely nothing about; the other had been chosen, and regretted.
But the U.S.S Roosevelt? What did they call that?
Sam christened it his own glorious, selfish, and undoubtedly the worst mistake of his life. And maybe the people on those aircraft carriers weren't exactly civilians, but the ocean wasn't the only landing sight for Fallen's servants. Too many people payed for Sam's mistake.
And maybe even if he had followed Optimus, the result would be the same. The only difference is that one little word, "if", and the regret that lasts a lifetime.
He wasn't about to unleash another Judgment Day. Not even on a single lane of traffic.
You'll never stop at one.
And this Decepticon knows that.
To his shock, the robot pauses, almost looking surprised- as if this is a trick, as if he's only coming out because something even bigger than the Decepticon is standing right behind him.
Then he laughs.
High, cruel, and merciless, that sound scathes the air. Sam tries not to wince, and suddenly thinks of his parents, and Carly, and, with a great surge of guilt, Bumblebee.
"Foolish boy." says the Decepticon. He takes a half-step back, swinging his cannon directly at Sam's face.
That speck of red deep within his cannon suddenly looks as big as the sun.
A blazing ball of blue light, moving almost too fast for Sam to see, slams into the side of the Decepticon's head, causing his whole frame to jerk, and sending half his faceplate flying. The shot from his cannon fires, off target, and Sam falls back to the ground, mouth open in a scream lost in the sound of the bridge exploding as the shock wave slams him off his feet and into the ground, throwing him against the side of his car.
He blearily opens his eyes as the sound of metal clashing and machinery whirring and the ground trembling reach his deafened ears. He turns his head best he can and sees a second towering figure- this time in red and blue, pounding the living scrap out of the brown Decepticon.
Optimus.
He doesn't remember how it ended. Sam's whole world seems to tilt and darken as his vision flares violently black, before subsiding back into color.
He isn't going to pass out. Not yet.
But the next thing he knows, it is very, very quiet.
The ruined ground trembles beneath him, gently, and he forces his eyes open, meeting a pair of brilliant blue ones.
Optimus kneels, forming a fist with one massive hand as he retracts his gleaming, humming energon sword, and the world get's even quieter.
"Are you injured?"
As always, his voice brings to life things like peace and security again. Sam swallows and nods, rolling onto his stomach, and managing somehow to shakily push himself into a sitting position, back against the uncomfortable surface of his contorted car.
"Not life-threatening…I think." he whispers, blinking blood out of his eyes. He looks up at Prime and blinks. "Where's Will?"
"At the base." replies the Autobot. "I wouldn't wait for him." his optics are dark on the body of the Decepticon, now just a pile of brown and silver parts beneath he bridge.
"Oh." Sam's voice cracks and dies. He can't think of anything better to say. Can't think of the words, really. And then his forehead gives a particularly nasty throb and his arm jerks with the reflex to touch it; the movement brings Optimus' eyes back to him again.
"Could you, um…take me to the hospital?" he asks, unsure how to phrase himself, and feeling slightly sheepish.
"I take it you are willing to accept a ride from me now?" is his reply, jerking his chin at the crashed Honda.
Sam just smirks, too tired to smile. "You bet." All the adrenaline is gone now. He's actually surprised he was able to move this whole time.
Optimus stands and hurriedly transforms, the process seeming to take a shorter time than usual. Obviously, he doesn't want to wait around for the camera crews.
Sam looks at the long passage from the ground to the cab of the semi. He just shakes his head. But even as he tries to get to his feet- and fails- a strong hand catches his arm and hauls him to his feet, supporting him as he sways.
Optimus' tall holoform- handsome, shocking blue eyes, cowboy hat, about forty, helps him all the way to the cab, and then up into it, before vanishing.
The door slams shut.
Sam rests his pounding head against the cool leather, thankful for the sudden silence that engulfs him in the cab.
The engine roars to life and idles.
"I am afraid," says the Autobot comander, voice seeming to come from everywhere at once, "that there was a man with a camera."
Sam looks to his right, out the window, through the glass that is already darkening protectively, hiding the inside of the cab from view. Sure enough, he's right- there is a guy with a camera and a bright red hat, standing on top of one of the cars, fixed on the semi.
Sam's throat goes dry. "They know."
"I am sorry." says the semi earnestly.
Sam just sighs and shakes his head, as the engine roars again and the truck pulls off. "Had to happen sometime." he murmurs.
They were able to deny his involvement after Giza. A battle in the desert; no one knew. The little broadcast that nearly ruined his life? Oh, just a movie trailer prank from some losers in his dorm. And no one was there to see what happened in Chicago besides every Cybertronian on Earth and NEST.
Now, his face is going to be on every news network and website, again. Because he knows they won't be able to fool the world twice.
This is the turning point. This is where the world finally knows; Sam Witwicky was involved with the Autobots from day one. Maybe this wasn't as dramatic as Chicago or anything- but once his face shows up and everyone make the connection, he knows it will be just as big.
They leave the ruin of Highway 17 behind them, the future before them, and with all the uncertainty and hope they can have. Sam closes his eyes.
IMPROTANT NOTE;;; THIS TIES IN WITH CHAPTER 4 OF MESSENGER. AVALABLE SOON!