Author's NB: Whoops, with all the excitement of horrid shift work, education days and sorting out my damn portfolio and CV I've hardly had a moment to write more of this.
My original intention with this story was to be one of humour and a good belly LOL, sort of ghost buster's type humour, but it ended up taking a more serious and darker note, though I've decided I want to attempt to combine the two styles and hopefully put a few more chuckles through the scariness. OoooooOOOOooooooOOOOOOOOOOooooh.
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Chapter 9
18th December
The scratchy trees brushed against the dilapidated port building. Maybe it once housed freighters during maintenance or construction, perhaps it held stocks and other merchandise, it could even have been an offline marine organism reverse engineering processing facility – what was it Spike had called it, oh yeah, a fish finger factory. Odd, given from his understanding of marine biological functions, those things didn't have fingers.
The ostentatious twin sat parked there, his very presence a direct antithesis to the, well, shitty building. It amazed him that these organics would build these places, run them into the ground or until they ran out of currency to continue their function, and instead of trying to sell the land or building, these places just stood there, rotting. A dark and structurally dangerous testament to the wastefulness of the earthen flesh creatures.
His internal chronometer told him it was 2142 hours, by human description. He'd spent a good number of hours just parked there. He managed a peaceful recharge for the first five hours of his arrival, but after his dreams became interspersed with horrors from the battles he'd fought, and more recently, the great battle of Autobot City. Was he really just defective in the CPU? Was something mechanically wrong with his systems? Was that why was so edge? Why his optics were telling him things were there that weren't? It couldn't be, could it? Sunstreaker had always been in tune with his form, every nook and cranny, every strut, every rivet, ever spec of oil used to lubricate joints – everything was perfect, nothing was ever given over to chance when it came to his maintenance and his grooming. He'd know if something was wrong with his CPU, he'd know if his optics really were tricking him into believing what stood before him. But if he was perfect, if what he saw and how he processed it was not at fault, the only conclusion that led to was that he was seeing "ghosts" and that those "ghosts" were real.
But that was slag. There had to be another more rational and less frightening explanation, he just hadn't stumbled upon it yet.
He again contemplated starting his engine and returning to base, to receive both an audio lashing and a full going over by First Aid and his pack of nerd bots. Perceptor was worse. Primus, he couldn't stand that mech. He was so full of himself. He liked to push out this image of him being awkward socially, thanks to his high IQ and knowledge. But really, he was just a lowly coward who had a decent thesaurus and liked to make himself feel better about how he had no social life by giving others this impression of his intellectual superiority – which always unsettled most. Perceptor would speak in words most would have never heard of not because he was manufactured like that, but because, deep down, he knew it made others feel small.
Sunstreaker gruffed to himself and again contemplated returning or at the very least finding some other place to hid… no… he wasn't hiding, he was… slag it, he didn't have to justify himself to anyone, and certainly not that punk arse Rodimus or any of his oversized proto-sitters. He had shed more energon and oil for the Autobot cause then almost anyone. He'd done the jobs no one wanted, the horrible things that war churned out, he and his brother had shouldered the burden of aborted morality, they were shunned by their peers, albeit not so publically. The distain of their peers was more passive aggressive, things such as not inviting them to recreational events, having only the most minimal of conversations, fleeting and shrugged aside, and always the aft of most jokes in circulation.
Slag them all.
If it wasn't for his brother and him, there'd be a lot of battles that would go to the Cons. Assassinations of Decepticon officers, planting of bombs, theft of intelligence and then the general and complete utter energon shed upon the battlefield. These horrible shenanigans were needed to win the war, the Brass knew that, they'd never acknowledge it, nor publically condone it, but behind closed doors it was uttered in hushed vocal processors.
So yeah, to the Pit with all of them, he'd sit here until he was good and ready to return.
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His sensors alerted him to the approach of organic life forms. Humans. Four of them. One was carrying a crow bar and two others were hauling another, obviously against his will towards the old offline marin… fish finger factory. They stopped in front of the back loading doors, not having noticed the yellow lambo sitting in the darkness. The two threw the other down to the ground and one proceeded to give him a good solid kick to the guts. The crow bar wielding one began to speak, Sunstreaker, not one to eavesdrop, had nothing else to do and so listened in. It wasn't like he could just start his engine, excuse himself and then drive off without so much as a friendly wave goodbye. Plus, nothing worse then watching a silent movie.
The men said nothing for a few moments, just watching the man at crow bar man's feet beg for his life. It was pathetic, but Sunstreaker couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for the poor bastard. Probably owed them currency or something, flesh creatures and their pieces of paper. Then crowbar man smacked ground guy across the back with the metal tool. The other two got to kicking ground guy.
Ground guy was screaming about how he was sorry, how he was drunk, how he didn't mean to, how he'd do anything to change how things went. Sunstreaker's pity for this bugger ended when crow bar man yelled that ground guy had raped crow bar man's sister. And that ended any hope Sunstreaker believed ground guy had of getting out of their with functionally lower appendages.
The three then proceeded to beat ground guy within an inch of his life before departing in a bloodied hurry. Sunstreaker turned on his lights and drove over to the pummelled blob. They were so easy to damage, he thought, and they sure as hell didn't look good when they were.
The guy had probably suffered enough and it'd be cruel to leave him here to die, even human criminals were dispatched with what they perceived as a painless exit – if only the humans new their "humane" lethal injection actually caused the criminal a great deal of silent suffering – of course some would like that. So, internally, the Autobot twin contacted the human emergency services, gave them the low down and then drove away, leaving the man's fate to his biological processes. If he died before assistance arrived, well, it wasn't the Autobot's fault, he wasn't a medic and he sure as the pit was hot didn't know how to maintenance those little blobs of muck.
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The golden twin was speeding down the motorway towards Autobot City, he was a good hour away and spent the time concentrating more on the driving conditions and the irritating inability of flesh creatures to be unable to control their vehicles correctly, having passed several accidents. The light of the highest tower of Autobot came into view. It was clearly visible for at least a hundred kilometres, well for those little chunks of jelly humans called eyes.
He decreased his speed to enable a smooth transition onto the off ramp when he noticed a white van with red lines and markings driving behind him. At first he thought it was First Aide as the Autobot insignia was too much of a coincidence to be a human ambulance or other modified vehicle. But there was something familiar about the vehicle. The multiple dents and scruffy paint job, the fracture in the left window and the small cracks running through the lights atop. First Aide was young, he was a medic, he wasn't vain, but he sure as slag wasn't a slob and he didn't get too deep into battle to end up with such kinks. There was no mistaking it.
It was Ratchet.
Sunstreaker, unsure what was happening, decided the best bet was to out run the eerie object and get back to the City. What horrified him more then the fact he was probably seeing a ghost, was that Ratchet seemed to be matching his speed. That was impossible. Ratchet was a clapped out hunk of junk who spent more time on the battle field or in the repair bay throwing wrenches and swearing profusely to worry about 'suping up his engine to increase speed. What also creeped the twin out was that his sensors were not registering any Autobot, or even any other vehicle following him at speed so closely.
Ratchet ghost revved and came very close up behind the twin and bumped into his back bumper. There was an incredibly forceful jut forward and Sunstreaker veered slightly, somewhat horrified that his stabilises could be so easily interfered with while he was in motion. The very physically real apparition came in for round two and this time gave the twin such a large and forceful whack that the twin lost all control and started careening from the road towards the bushes on the verge. He accessed all his emergency protocols in an attempt to slow himself, in an attempt to stabilise and break, but those systems were now mysteriously offline, his last attempt to free himself from what was going to be a heck of a prang with nature was to transform, but found his circuits to initiate such had shorted.
He bounced off the road and began an uncontrolled tumble on his wheels through the heavy undergrowth, the sharp branches scratching into paint job and destroying his clean, well chromed finish. The mud flicked up and splattered upon his underside and along finish. He then slammed into the large tree that didn't yield to the force of the Autobot striking. Sunstreaker groaned and the last image he had etched in his CPU before he entered statis was the van sitting at the top of the path he'd ventured down before striking one of nature's forces.
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