A Captured Beast Within a Human Skin

By Uniasus

Chapter 7 – Neutral Smtural

(Starts before the events of Ch 6)

His ninja rescuer had spewed out a name that resulted in Sam just staring at her and not even thinking about trying to pronounce it. So he settled for Chie. She had given him an undecipherable look, but then let it slide. What ever she had told him was most likely not her real name anyway.

There had been a lot of starting and stopping, being pushed into rooms to hide from soldiers, and a lot of forceful arm grabbing Sam was the recipient of. And then there was the exposure to the elements once they had managed to sneak out of the military buildings; Chie seemed warm enough, but dressed in just a spare t-shirt meant to be simply an under layer for the work uniform meant he was cold. It was too large for him as well, slipping off his shoulder. He had not minded it in the room with Spidey and Lilith, it had been warm, but now outside Sam could not stop shivering.

Chie had them alternating between a fox trot and brisk walk. She kept harassing him to go faster, but he really couldn't with his ankle sprained. He kept stumbling and it was throbbing painfully. Sam already suspected that he wouldn't be able to simply take off his shoe; it would have to be cut off.

Eventually they arrived at a tiny airport. There were three hangers, a single runway surrounded by unchecked native vegetation, and a tiny air control tower not even half a story taller than the hangers. The place was lacking in lights, most likely only used by locals during the day, but there was a quite roar of engines coming from the start of the runway. Sam did not need to see cockpit lights to know the plane Chie was leading him to was small and most likely built to be fast and sneaky.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked, slowing down.

"You'll see."

"No," he stopped and then started to back up. "I want to go home or no where at all."

Sam could not see Chie's glare in the dark, but he felt it. "You're coming with me."

No! his mind shouted, he wanted to go home to Bumblebee and spend a night on his parents' couch. Getting on a stealth jet heading off to who knows where with who knows who was not on the agenda.

He turned and ran, heading towards the airport's gates. Three limping strides after his start Sam was forcibly reminded that Chie was a ninja and thus impossible to escape from. She tackled him from behind, bringing him to the ground with a thumpf and causing his nose to start bleeding again.

Chie grabbed his hands and pulled them behind his back, shifting positions to sit on them instead of his calves. God, she was heavier than she looked! She yanked on the hair on the back of his head, bring his face a few inches closer to her own.

"I told you I'd drag your unconscious body if I had to," she whispered gleefully. She let go, and Sam turn his head to make sure his nose did not suffer any more injury when his face hit the ground. And then the bitch dug her fingers into the pressure point on the side of his neck. Sam cried out in pain, trying to stay awake but he only lasted a few seconds before going limp.

Sam woke up to the feeling of disorientation he usually attributed to flying, his least favorite mode of transportation. Riding in Bee was a whole lot more pleasant. He swallowed a couple of times and opened his eyes, only to be met with a grinning Chie. A scowl found it's way onto his features.

Chie did not give him any time to make conversation, instead forcing his head slightly back and pressing a small towel over his nose. He winced at the pain. "Hold that there until the bleeding stops. It might take awhile, altitude."

He wanted to glare at her, but the towel was in his way and he was trying to concentrate on not pinching his nose more than necessary while simultaneously trying to get his ears to pop.

A couple minutes later Sam once again felt Chie's hand on his face, prying the towel away. She stared at his nose for awhile and before he could make any protest, grabbed and twisted. There was a dull crack and a blinding flash of pain that caused him to suck in air. Once the pain faded, Sam opened his mouth to cuss her out but he paused when he realized the throb that had been in the center of his face since she had slammed against the wall in the base was no longer there. He gave her a questioning look.

"While I was not told to not hurt you, things would be better if you are as healthy as possible. Here, put your foot up," Chie got up and indicated her seat before walking out of his sight.

Sam stared at the chair for a moment before putting his left leg up on it. He executed a couple of forced yawns and was rewarded by his ears finally popping. The window a seat away from him was covered and Sam debated about opening it. It was night, so who knew if he would be able to see things, but it was worth a try. He was leaning over the seat next to him to reach it when Chie came back with a first aid kit.

There was not much she was able to do for the bruises on his upper arms and left side aside from giving him some pain killers which he popped back before she could even offer to get him a glass of water. She taped together his split lip and then none-to-gently cleaned and wrapped his wrists, mementos from being tied to the chair. Finished, she threw him some wipes to clean up the crusted blood on his face and disappeared.

He gingerly did so, taking extra care around his still aching nose. Despite all of his adventures with the Autobots, he had never broken a bone before. Bruised them, cracked them, sure, but broken? Figured it would be a short woman and not a towering Decepticon that would finally do it.

Chie came back with an ice pack and a silver container he eyed warily. She dropped the ice on his ankle and deposited the container into his lap. Surprisingly, it was warm. Oh dear merciful Lord it was food! Now that his body was aware of what was sitting in his lap his stomach gave a loud growl and he was too hungry to be embarrassed about it. When had he last ate? Sometime yesterday and Sam did not want to think about how long it had been since he had real food. Honestly, college students ate better then what he had been feed the last couple of days.

Quickly he tore off the lid to see small pieces of chicken over a bed of rice. Sam was so hungry he had already started to pick up the meat with his fingers when Chie stuck a plastic knife and fork in his face.

"Most civilized people use these."

"Well, so~rry. I'm starving!"

Chie narrowed her eyes at him and then softened her gaze. "I know. But that doesn't mean you have permission to turn into an ape."

Sam grunted and then ignored her in favor of dinner. It might be airplane food, but he really did not care. Conscious of Chie watching him, he made a point of not taking big forkfuls and overly stuffing his face, taking his time to at least somewhat taste the food before he swallowed it. When he was done Chie silently took his trash away and returned with a pillow and blanket that she threw at him. Her aim was fabulous, the pillow got him full in the face and his nose gave a painful throb. He quickly pulled it down into his lap.

"What gives?"

"Get some sleep, we have a nine hour flight ahead of us."

"Wait, what? That's halfway around the world!"

Chi gave him a 'yeah, so what?' look.

Sam steeled his voice, "Where are we going?" he demanded.

"Home," she said, walking past him to the cockpit.

He twisted around in the chair to watch her disappear in past the door and then slumped in defeat into the chair. Sam crossed his arms, staring at his foot, and then leaned over to push up the blind on the window. For a few minutes he stared at the city lights below him, but they soon gave way to blackness and he suspected they were currently beginning a journey across Atlantic Ocean. One thing was for certain; Chie lived pretty far away.

The first thing Sam noticed when he stepped off the plane was the mountains. Tons and tons of high peaked, snow capped towers of rocks. It made him feel really small, the way they pressed in around him. The plane had landed on a base of some sort, situated in a tiny offshoot valley and downstream of a small lake.

Sam guessed it was a military base because everyone was in uniform and carrying a weapon of some sort, but was rather taken aback by the small size of the facility. There were only two good-sized hangers, and the aircraft he saw all looked ill equipped for combat. So did the few land terrain vehicles. There were a lot of towers though, housing a lot of date receiving, collecting, and broadcast equipment. The idea that this base was not concerned with national defense and rather focused on research instead made him uneasy.

He turned around to look at the other side of the small base and noticed a flag, the cloth just barely flapping in the weak wind of the night. It was mostly red, with a splash of white he caught occasionally but was unable to tell what the shape was.

Chie grabbed him by the shoulder so he faced forward again and prodded his back to make him walk forward; a reminder that he was not a gawking tourist here on vacation but rather someone who was here against his will. A prisoner. Suddenly, he wished he was still in US clutches. At least then he sorta knew where he was and what to expect. There were too many unknowns here and it made him on edge.

So did that beady-eyed guy standing in the center of the group of people Chie was directing him too. His face was still rather young, but already his hair was gray. Which, by the way, was styled liked the original Superman's. Complete with curled lock on the forehead.

To the right of him looked like two subordinates, judging by the way they positioned themselves in relation to Superman. Both were younger, but by no more than ten years. The woman kept staring at him, making him fidget. The male also watched him, but his gaze was hidden behind sunglasses.

On Superman's other side were the people that Sam kept the closest eye on. They were tall and had the physique of a lightweight WWF contender. Sam couldn't help but see himself as prey in their eyes. Both seemed to be watching him to spot a weakness and were ready to leap at him any second. If they were there to make sure he behaved, they were doing a pretty good job at it.

Chie stopped him about five feet from the group and started talking with boss Superman. The guy seemed to question her; he circled around the pair of them, asking questions all the while. Chie followed his path with burning eyes and a quick tongue; Sam simply lowered his gaze to his shoes and watched Superman circle him out of the corners of his eyes.

After a few circles he seemed satisfied and paused in front of Sam. Chie poked him in the side, the not bruised one thankfully and he lifted his head to look at the man. He was leaning towards Sam, but his feet were firmly planted that said beside his fascination in the American he was not planning on getting any closer.

Sam squirmed under his look, feeling rather like he was being studied. He did not like the feeling; there was nothing different between him and Superman. Aside from that whole making robots come alive thing. Oh shit, he was not just a prisoner here; he was going to be a human lab rat!

He took a step backwards, stepping on Chie's toe. She retaliated by pushing him forward, causing Sam to stumble forward a couple of steps. Superman took a couple of steps backwards as Sam got closer. Sam felt his anger rise, the guy was acting like he was diseased! He did not want to deal with this, there was no way he was going to run in a wheel and allow them to monitor his brain waves. He needed to get off this base; it would most likely be easy to lose trackers in the mountains. Very easy to get lost himself and die of starvation.

Superman leaned backward so he stood completely upright and clasped his hands behind his back. "Welcome HCH 01, Samuel Witwicky, to Switzerland. "

Before Sam had a chance spew out questions, ('WTF? Switzerland?' and 'HCH whats-it?') he found the two beefed up soldiers on either side of him and a gun butt to the back had him stumbling forward towards a set of doors built into a near by mountain face.

They led him down corridor after corridor. The Air Force base had been overly done in gray; this one was overdone with a tarnished copper green. While Sam preferred the green, the beeps and electronic noises he could hear emanating from some of the closed doors did not put him at ease. By the time Buff and Buffer had him turn down a dead end hallway he was jumping at almost every pipe shadow.

The room they led him too however did not have a single piece of electronic equipment in it. He took that back, there was a camera hiding in the far corner, but Sam was used to those by now. But there was no glass wall for observation, no bio-rhythm monitors set up, nothing. It made Sam immensely pleased; Europeans were always said to have had great hospitability, and pushed up into one corner of the tiny room was a bed. After spending several nights on a metal desk and then sleeping upright in an airplane chair a cloth cot would have been heaven. The Swiss though had actually given him a real bed, as in a mattress.

As soon as he crossed the threshold towards it the door slammed shut behind him. Sam whirled around, but did not see much point in doing anything else. There was no way he had the strength to force the lock open. Plus looking at the door just nailed in the idea of being trapped, something he did not want to think about. So he settled for pacing the room instead.

Sam was sure they were trying to be considerate, nine pm local time really was a bit late to start things (unless you were a university student) and the flight had been long. But nine at night was only noon in California, and who knew when at the Air Force base he had been held at. Either way, he was pretty sure that the sun was still up in the States and so right now he was not tired.

His ankle did not let him pace for very long; eventually he was forced to collapse into the bed (a bed!) and stare at the ceiling.

Switzerland.

He had been kidnapped…by Switzerland! It was the country that was supposed to be neutral, to have very little to do with the politics and actions of others, to have criminal bank accounts and good skiing. Not labs hidden in mountain valleys and ninja spies!

And yet here he was, Sam Enig, originally Samuel James Witwicky, waiting to become lab specimen. He even already had his own acronym! Vaguely he wondered if Simons and other ex-Sector Seven agents would call him by it. He did not know what to think of that; on hand it was funny because of its ridiculous nature and on the other he wanted to punch who ever came up with it. Next thing you know, he would be in a cryogenic chamber and there would be a whole section of the Swiss government studying his DNA and making clones.

A shudder ran through him at the thought and he did his best to clear his mind and not think of anything. Having had lived through quite a few harrowing scenarios he usually thought up variations of the worst possible solution. But he had learned that many times the imagination was worse than reality, trying not to think about what could happen tomorrow would insure he did not drive himself into a frenzied bundle of nerves.

But there was no way he could turn his brain off, no matter how much he wished it. His body was thinking there was still a good part of the day left and the All Spark had lots of energy and force because there had been little of interest to it for about a day. Sam had found it acted like a child sometimes; it needed to constantly be entertained. Usually his work was enough to placate it, aside from those moments when it became obsessive, and when weekends came around he settled for reading articles.

His time with Lilith and Spidey had kept it thoroughly amused, but now that they were gone Sam was hoping thinking of some of the challenges he had yet to tackle for the satellite would conciliate the All Spark. Instead he found his mind drifting to Ed, Spidey, and Lilith. Not about how they were, though Sam certainly wondered, but about how Sam had felt toward them. How there had been some sort of connection between each one of them and Sam and/or the All Spark in his brain. Sam could not tell if it was his personal thought, or one manipulated by the Cube, but he wanted to feel that again.

Sam shot up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and braced his elbows on his knees, his face finding a resting place in his palms. The All Spark wanted to create life. It wanted to feel the connection between it and other sparks, hold on to it and watch how it grows.

Motherhood.

Prime had explained to him at some point that the All Spark was simply a partially aware conscious whose purpose was to bring sparks from the Matrix into the newly built protoforms of sparklings. But the Semi never said anything about the character of the All Spark, he did not believe it had one. Sam never quite agreed, knowing that it had some semblance of desires and basic emotions towards things. But now, staring at him in the face was the irrefutable knowledge that the All Spark was female. And it wanted to be a mom. The worse part was, since they shared a brain Sam too had at least some desire to be a parent.

But he was logical. In the past the All Spark had not had to care for the child, but here on Earth Sam would have to. Sure, the Autobots would most likely help, would genially want to, instead of just simply doing it to help him. But already Sam had brought into the world three sparks and had lost them. If he could not even take care of one, obviously he was not ready to create more.

Plus what would he do with the children? How would he take care of them? Sam had no clue, nor did the All Spark. It never had to raise one. But it had liked having Spidey and Lilith around. In fact the All Spark seemed to have no idea of responsibility. It just wanted to have kids, tons and tons of sparklings to surround it with love and warm and life. Sam knew that such a want was impractical, irresponsible, and tired to let the All Spark know but it was being stubborn and refused to listen.

So not only did he share his mind with a girl, Sam shared it with a young one who dreamed of playing house. God, he felt like a baby-sitter. Only this was worse because a baby-sitter would eventually relinquish care of the child to the parents while Sam was stuck with this child for the rest of his life. Was in fact, as much as a part of the child as it was of him.

Sam had a strong desire to pace again, but settled for tapping his right foot in a rapid manner on the ground. He needed to come up with something to distract the All Spark with. If he did not pacify it – her – Sam knew she would take over and direct his own actions and thoughts. At the lab it was somewhat allowed, it helped him with his projects after all, but here in foreign and threatening territory it was not. Instead it was dangerous.

He kept forcing himself to think of challenges for her to latch on to. How many different ways could he disrupt the camera feed from the room with a variety of tools at his disposal? What type of legs would Ed want? Was Ratchet really able to turn Ironhide's cannon into a toaster? It took awhile, but eventually the All Spark abandoned the thought of sparklings and attacked the problems until Sam fell asleep hours later. He hoped this would not become a nightly ritual because he doubted he had enough questions to last a week.

A/N: Chie name is a tribute to the first female to complete the first stage of Ninja Warrior, in case you're interested. It's a great program to watch when a certain alien artifact won't let you sleep ^_~

So yea...surprise! Double update! Kinda. I rarely update to chapters of a story so quickly, but I've been sitting on this representation of the All Spark for a while and having me know and you guys not know kinda confused me. So yeah, here you go!

Questions, comments, and esquires about the future will all be answered if you review. Also any one of you guys know of a cheap, good, single serving meal that isn't pasta/ramen noodles? I could use some variety -_-