"Incoming bridge," he said into the link, pulling the lever-thing. Not far from the console, what had looked like a half-finished high-tech tunnel came to life in a swirl of transparent greens, yellows, and blues. "Find anything, Arcee?" he asked the slender blue-armored femme.
"Nothing," she snapped. It wasn't directed at Ratchet, though. Most likely it was whatever had stopped her from reaching her goal.
Desi darted silently behind a steel support and stayed there until Arcee's footsteps could no longer be heard. After she stomped off, the red one called Ratchet somehing Desi couldn't hear very well...then there was a ear-splitting thunk as something hit the wall and a loud, sing-songed, "Ha! You missed!"
He ran off cackling, while Ratchet was left hurling some rather...creative insults.
Desi could...um...work with this.
Right? she asked herself. Right?!
She interpreted her silence as a no.
Desi slowly backed away, but not before the Ratchet-esque one turned around, presumably because he needed that.
She hadn't watched a whole bunch of the show, but she had seen many of the Transformer pictures.
For instance, she knew Ratchet had taken drugs. What they were, she didnt know, nor was she inclined to find out. (Again, the animation was just so dislikable to her.)
One of the few things Desi had learned firsthand about the show were the dispositions of most of the characters. She needed no help figuring out who was who.
Her heart rate skyrocketed, and she felt her palms get sweaty as the she felt the light indigo optics catch sight of her.
The human girl who was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to be there froze, whether in horror or awe is debatable.
He stopped in his tracks, whatever tool he needed forgotten.
Desi turned and ran.
Never had she been so thankful she had taken cross country.
She heard an "Optimus, we've got a problem" before she turned the corner and faced the labyrinth that was the Autobot base.
. . .
The only thing to do while hiding in the Desi-sized hole in a large silver tube was think.
Light streamed through, but Desi stood straight up in the shadows. The only thing she could hear was her quiet, rapid breathing. Unneeded adrenaline pulsed through her, making her more frenzied than she felt she needed to be.
She was presumably in the back end of the Autobot base, somewhere it would take longer to find.
It was too quiet. The silence was deafening with the questions whirling around in her mind.
What...what would they do? What would happen to her? Would she be shipped off to some secret army base? Kept as a prisoner?
The only thing Desi could be certain of was that they would find her eventually. When they did, it would be a full interrogation: who she was, how she got in, and why she was there, mostly.
What would she answer?
Desi had a feeling nothing good would come from, "Who, me? I'm a Transformer Fangirl. I have no idea why I'm here. I just woke up on some Army cot in a back room. What are you doing here? You're supposed to be a fictional character in a TV show my ten year old cousin watches."
Right. Real believable.
And it wasn't like she could lie. "I'm under orders from Commander to remain silent." Maybe it was just her, but giant alien robots with giant alien-techno weapons and swords and stuff sitting in plain sight were pretty much like truth serum.
Unless you had nerves of titanium alloy mixed in with Cybertonian metal, like her crotchety old sixth grade history teacher.
But Desi? She broke down under a stern glare unless she made a promise, unspoken or otherwise.
"Did you steal cookies before dinner?" her mother asked. She got a full confession.
"Do you know who stacked up the teachers' desks to the band hall?" the principal asked. Desi didn't tell him how she had rolled her eyes when Mark needed her to hold the door open so he and Julio could move Mr. Burns's wide dark polished oak desk into the narrow doorway after practice.
The prank went on to be a thing of mysterious legend. Even Desi didn't know how they'd stacked the desks in a pyramid. The culprits were never caught.
Why? Because when it was going to get her in trouble, deep down, she knew she could handle it. But if it was for someone else, Desi knew she would extremely guilty, especially if the punishment was blowing the crime up to a comical degree. Like a week's worth of suspension. The desks hadn't even been scratched and the supplies had been neatly put into drawers. But that's what Principal Earnest muttered under his breath as she left the office.
Which all leads back to her point: I can't lie to them. But she couldn't tell them the truth, either.
What a freakin' terrible time to experience a paradox.
Paradox. That would be a pretty name for a Cybertronian OC in a story.
If this was a story, one, it'd be a story with a pretty terribly overused plot, two, she'd be the OC.
The thought of which sent waves of paranoia down her spine. She poked her head out and looked around, trying in vain to see if anyone was writing out her story onto Microsoft word.
If this was a story, she really hoped she wasn't a Mary Sue.
Then again...most really-Mary Sue stories were written in first person...whoever was writing her story, she hoped it wasn't in first person.
She was so caught up in her thinking she didn't notice the soft whistling and concrete-on-metal steps coming her way until they were almost right in front of her.
. . .
As Cliffjumper searched high and low for the human intruder, his thoughts drifted from topic to topic. You know, while Fowler was a complete aft, not all the humans he'd seen were all that bad.
Granted, those boys had broken his windshield when he parked near the baseball field and then scattered, but mostly, they weren't-
"Ah-!" Snort.
No, Desi didn't shriek. (She was actually kind of angry with herself.) She had cut herself off mid-sneeze.
She immediately froze, hearing the abrupt stop of the whistling. Steps got louder and nearer to her hiding place.
Desi's mind went into overdrive. Where do I go? Where do I go? Can't go out, I'll be seen...oh.
Well, duh. Up.
She hooked her fingers onto the metal bands going around the inside circumference of the tube and hefted herself up. There was a good inch and a half sticking out that she could use for leverage.
Desi was so thankful she had picked this one. Its diameter was shorter than her, so she was able to push on either side and stay out of sight from the entry- if they didn't look up.
Desi almost did shriek when a pair of optics appeared in the makeshift door.
She held her breath.
Then he uttered what Desi had been dreading.
"The frag are you doing?"
Well, she hadn't been dreading being asked what she was doing; it was the asker that concerned her.
Is he...
Oddly enough, she considered the question for moment before answering. "Just, you know...hanging around."
...upside down?
It was totally cliché and stupid, but...eh. She was way too frazzled to come up with anything funny.
He is. Oh, I feel so special.
The ice was broken. Any apprehension Desi had around the red one dissapated. She let her toes catch on the wall, slide down, and she dropped the last half foot to the floor. At the same time, the red one finished the cartwheel he had been halfway into.
The awkward silence took over right before Desi nervously asked, "So...what next?"
"I dunno. Optimus never got to that," he told her with a shrug. "The name's Cliffjumper."
"Cliffjumper...right. I forgot," Desi mumbled.
"What?"
"What? Oh. Nothing," she amended hurriedly. "I'm Desi."
The awkward silence struck again.
. . .
::Cliff, have you found the human?::Arcee boredly sent over the communications link. They'd been searching for over two hours, and, so far, nothing. Sure, a human inside the base was an emergency, but it got old quick. Especially when it interrupted a training session.
::Yep. Been sitting right here talking to her for about the last hour and a half:: came his nonchalant response.
::What?!::
::I've. Been. Sitting-::
Arcee didn't let him finish. ::I heard that. Why didn't you tell anyone?::
::Well...no one told me to::
Arcee was left standing in the hallway, wondering how in the galaxy Cliffjumper had become an Autobot.
::Also, Desi says hi::
::'Desi?' Who's 'Desi?'::
The eye roll in his tone was apparent. ::The human I'm talking to, smart one::
Arcee fought the urge to facepalm. ::Where are you?::
. . .
"You knew where the human was for almost two hours and didn't bother telling anyone?" Arcee came as close as she had ever been to smacking the mech.
"Well, yeah. It's not like she was a ticking time bomb." Cliffjumper was used to these tirades by now.
Said human shuffled her feet, hands clasped in front of her. The concrete beneath her was suddenly very interesting.
Arcee ignored his defense. "You know what? Just...never mind. Come on." The frustrated femme turned her back to the pair and walked away.
Cliffjumper crouched down and held out his hand. "Your carriage, madam," he tried with a crooked smile.
Desi stepped on. "Onward, faithful steed. Our journey awaits," she answered with a fake air of superiority.
The walk down the halls to the central control room was...tense. It wasn't that Desi was worried about the Autobots actually going to hurt her. I mean, come on. Like they'd just kill one for being inside base aftter fighting (and maybe dying) for human rights.
Besides, now that Desi knew (for sure) she wasnt in any (immediate) danger (other than accidentally going underfoot), she was considerably calmer.
No, it wasn't the Autobots she was worried about. It was the human liaison.
In fanfiction lore (which was pretty varied and interesting), there was one thing that was near constant in most Transformer universes. The annoying human liaison and the accompanying government workers were almost always classified as the bad guys.
Other than the Decepticons, of course.
The thought of whom sent chills down her spine. The Autobots were real...so were they.
Desi found herself wishing she had watched more than the first half of the first episode.
She looked up at the bright red mech that towered above her. "Please promise you'll save me if any of them decide I need to be a pancake before they day's out."
. . .
My Commentary:
1. I feel like smacking Desi for nearly breaking the fourth wall. Hmm.
2. I had no idea how to write Cliffjumper...so he wrote himself. I hope he isn't butchered.
3. I guess weekly updates are out of the question. Very sorry for the late update.