2. Blind
Diet book, box cutter, broken coffeemaker—percolator style.
Suggested by: Tyrrlin

A/N: Something of this nature might have taken place in the months before Alina/Flare died.

It wasn't the piercing shaft of light that woke Alina up – rather, it was the annoying rattling coming from outside her bedroom window. Had she not been the victim of several malicious pranks in the past few weeks, she would have rolled over and tried to shut the light out with her pillow. Now the slightest shuffle of feet or the ringing of a bell (which she took for the ball in a can of spray paint) jolted her out of sleep. Needless to say, she had been dragging her feet into work more often than not. Her new co-workers assumed with the awe of those residing in Central City that she had been out on a mission with the Autobots.

Ha!

The mere thought of her, Alina, packing Eskimo gear and hauling her temperate hind end to the furthest reaches of the world was laughable. Not to mention dangerous.

Dragging the covers from her comfortable bed, Alina missed her slippers the first time around, but managed to haul them on with her second attempt. Where's the red phone for the Ark? her sleepy mind wanted to know as she trudged through the living room, dragging her bathrobe on with one uncooperative hand.

Voices, young and male, were whispering outside her front door. With a groan, Alina reached up and dug her knuckles into her eyeballs. Anger was slowly burning the tiredness from her mind, and no doubt her appearance would shock a few into leaving. Mirage, where are you when I need your invisible butt?

As she lay her hand on the doorknob, the voices rose in an exclamation – which was followed by the sound of something being dropped on her cement porch and breaking.

"Dude! You broke it!"

"Nuh-uh … I just wanted to see if it was a present from the Autobots!"

"I told ya, it doesn't have a sym-bol …"

Alina wrenched her door open. Light, pure and uninhibited by clouds, stabbed painfully into her still-sleeping eyes. Biting her lip, Alina threw up her arm, trying to make out who was there by screening through her fingers. Three vague outlines swam before her – young boys, no older than twelve, clustered around a tall brown box. The bottom edge of the package was pushed inwards and one of the boys still had his hands on the sides. As she stepped out onto the porch, the boys took one look at her mussed-up black hair, drawn face and deep circles under her eyes – and bolted.

"Stay offa my – oh, fuck it," she muttered, tottering blindly around the small space as the muted white of their soles scampered around the corner of her street, into safety. Gradually, her tired blue eyes grew accustomed to the light, though it did nothing for the stabbing headache along her sinuses. Her gaze darted into the bushes before she gathered her robe around her and stooped to check out what had been the object of interest. Oh, they did not … Picking up the box, she backed up into her house and walked into the kitchen, placing the box on the top of her table. It took a moment and a stubbed finger before she found her box cutter. Slicing the package open, Alina dug through the company's receipt and bits of white plastic peanuts to the prize below.

I paid eighty-five dollars – plus shipping – for this thing, she thought miserably, lifting the percolating coffee pot into the air. Peanuts spilled onto the table and bounced along the surface, clinging to her robe. Insouciant, she brushed them off, not caring if she later stepped on one and took a fall. It was bad enough that her house had been painted orange and the neighborhood kids were constantly calling on her in hopes of seeing Mirage's pharaonic helm poking out over her ivy-covered fence. But this – this was a present for her parents' anniversary next week.

Anger boiled in her brain; clenching the receipt so that it crumpled into a ball in her hand, Alina flung it the length of her kitchen. The coffee maker sat quietly on her table, non-judgmental. Despite the careful packaging, the pot was cracked; several small shards were missing, no doubt floating among the bottom peanuts. The brown plastic base was broken as well.

Before she could flop to the floor in defeat, the low, throaty purr of an engine flowed from her driveway. Immediately, Alina's head came up, flopping bedraggled hair into her eyes. She clawed herself free and made for the living room window. A red Pontiac sat idling behind her silver Cavalier – driverless.

"Hi!" the Pontiac greeted her as Alina shuffled out of her house; with a grimace, she squinted against the sunlight. Though still in carmode, the Autobot – whose name eluded her at the moment – showed his surprise at her appearance by the flicking of his windshield wipers. "Did I come at a bad time?"

The last thing these guys need is to feel the need to baby-sit me, she thought darkly. Instead, she tried shaking her hair out into a more manageable mane. "Didn't sleep well, that's all," she finally told him, trying to turn into the shadows.

Whether she convinced the Pontiac – Windcharger, she finally recalled – was not completely clear. Without seeing his face, hidden under that hood and various interchanging parts, all she could go by were his headlights, windshield wipers and the way that he hugged her driveway. If there was one thing about Autobot body language that she had been able to learn, they had a tendency to hunker down if considering a course of action, much like a human's shoulders and neck tightening.

With a click, Windcharger's passenger-side door swung open. "Didn't mean to come so early, but I have a bunch of things to do," he said conversationally, his front tires turning slightly right and left, as if he were eager to be gone. "Sparkplug asked me to drop this book off for you – he says 'thank you', by the way."

On the black leather seat of Windcharger's interior lay a thick diet book. Alina had never had much use for such a cookbook, but her grandmother had been insistent, saying that while she didn't need to change her figure, a lady should be able to keep it that way.

"No problem," she murmured, tucking it under her arm. The door shut as soon as her arm cleared and she stepped back to allow the red Autobot room. Windcharger revved his engine and started backing up when he paused and lowered his front end. Alina paused in her retreat, getting the distinct impression that the mech was eying her shrewdly from behind sophisticated sensors.

"I saw a few young males running away when I came through," he began mildly, sounding just like Mirage. "Are they still bothering you?"

Hitching the book firmly under her arm, Alina sighed and shook her head. "I think you guys have better things to do than to keep every hoodlum from defacing my property," she told him. "That's what the police are for." Just don't tell Mirage, she added silently, knowing the spy's penchant for night-time stalking.

"Just wondering," the Pontiac replied calmly.

He's fishing for the truth, Alina realized. And he's not going to leave … dammit. It was bad enough to have people vandalize her home and yard because she had been seen in Autobot company … it was no better when they saw that she also had some sort of protection by them as well. Granted, it kept the more hard-core of vandals away, but that didn't stop kids like those three boys from testing their mettle. "You're not going to leave until I tell you, huh?" she finally said and was rewarded with a flick of the headlights. "Okay, I had a package delivered today and a couple kids played around with it. It was a present for my parents – a coffee pot." God, you need sleep more than you realize! Snapping at fifteen-foot tall robots takes either guts or a large amount of alcohol. … Say, do I have any rum left?

Windcharger gave a small chuckle and it took her a moment to realize that he wasn't laughing at her. "You Earth people have strange recreational activities," he noted with wry amusement. With a flicker of his headlights, the Pontiac backed up and out of her driveway. Alina turned around, peering into her neighbors' windows to see if any other early risers had noticed the exchange. "By the way," Windcharger called out from the road, "give me the thing they broke. I'll see if Hoist can fix it up. I'd give it to Wheeljack, but he might make it shoot lasers."

Faced with the prospect of several hours' negotiating with the company or spending another eighty-five dollars, Alina chose easy street. She jogged inside, retrieved the package and came back, dropping packing peanuts like rose petals at a wedding. Windcharger popped his door and she settled it on his seat, watching with fascination as the seatbelt latched around the box. "Beats all my other errands," Windcharger muttered half to himself as he closed his door and finally started on his way out. Tucking her hands into her robe's pockets, Alina stood on tip-toe, watching him go until his red fender was out of sight. For all the trouble they caused her, it was nice to be on friendly terms with shapeshifting robots.

Giving in to a jaw-popping yawn, Alina tucked an errant strand of hair over her ear and wandered back inside where the shadows were more forgiving.