IT'S A MIRACLE!
A new chapter! Turns out 'varsity isn't as bad this year. This is what I have been up to now.
I'm not saying that I'm fully back, but there are a few updates somewhere in the future. :)
I will be doing comments and notes at the bottom of chapters now. I find these annoying.
I do not own Transformers or the band Prime Circle.
Enjoy!
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The dull thudding sound travelled through the cave walls, resonating softly to a point where it was almost un-heard. It was as constant as a slow metronome and could easily have been mistaken for the sound of a ticking clock, though there was no ticking involved. If one were to find the source of the thudding sound, one would have to travel through some of the darkest tunnels to reach it. Ducking under spider webs and dodging the falling water droplets, one would have eventually have reached a small cavern.
Lit by several small lanterns, one could see an old woollen rug on the floor with what seemed to be an old brown couch sitting in the middle of the floor. On the walls where old paintings that had been carefully preserved and placed on the walls of the room that was an inner sanctum to one Arabella Micheals, who could be found facing one of the dark walls.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Arabella was banging her forehead against the wall.
To say she was frustrated was to put it lightly and politely. The four young men were giving her the hardest time of her life. They were worse than a bunch of spoiled 5 year olds with their constant complaining.
My bed is too hard.
My food is too cold.
The lessons are boring.
My feet hurt.
I don't want to do this.
You're not the boss of me!
Why should I?
She had tried everything she knew. She once withheld their meals to get them to co-operate, but they nearly destroyed the pantry when she had not been looking. She had tried being nice, being strict, everything, but nothing seemed to work.
A month and a half. That's how long they had been terrorising her. To be completely honest, she was surprised she had even lasted that long.
I wonder if I actually do have a taser. She mused quietly. There was a lovely bump starting to form on her forehead from her constant banging. They were nearly out of food, she was out of patience and they were about to be put out. Maybe she shoul…
The banging paused abruptly. Her eyes widened as the gears started to turn and an evil grin started to stretch on her lips.
I know EXACTLY what I need to do. Her brain started throwing up lists of what she needed to get done before she could execute her plan.
xxxxxPCxxxxx
The past two weeks had been a blast. The four young men could not believe how Arabella had changed. She had come to them the one day with a beautiful apology about how she had been treating them and promised to make it up to them. They could do whatever they wanted as long as they let her do her own thing for at least 5 hours every day.
So they did exactly that. They slept late, did no exercise and left everything a mess that Arabella had to clean up later.
Timothy, however, was starting to get suspicious. Whenever he asked her what she was planning, she would simply reply,
"Nothing whatsoever."
If only they knew she spiked the food that night…
xxxxxPCxxxxx
Timothy woke up with a groan. His head felt clouded and he felt slow. His arms felt like lead weights and he couldn't muster the energy to open his eyes. He tried to shift again but could not move. He groaned again, ro…
He couldn't move.
His awareness jolted, his brain kicking into gear. He could not move his arms in the slightest. His feet and legs were fine, but he realised his fore-arms had been tied behind his back. He opened his eyes and could see nothing. He started to hear the other men moaning as well.
A loud banging not unlike the banging of pots rattled his brain.
"Morning, ladies! Rise and shine! Let's get up and going! It's time for your test!" Arabella's overly cheery voice was dripping with disguised poison and she woke them. Tim froze.
Test? THEY WERE GOING TO WRITE A TEST?!
"Now you should have realised by now that you can't move your arms or see! Now that's good. There is, however, nothing wrong with your legs, so we are going to go for a little night hike? How does that sound, ladies?" Tim felt the icy hand of fear grip his spine. This was Arabella's payback for everything that they had done to her since they came two months ago.
This was going to be bad.
Tim felt hands grab his collar.
"Let's get you up" she pulled him upright "and on your feet, ma'am. We have a lot of walking ahead of us." She dragged each and every one of them upright, tying them together so that they can only walk single file.
"This isn't fair!" James called out. "You can't do this to us…" His complaints were interrupted by a solid punch to his mouth. Almost the entire line fell when he did.
"Sorry, I couldn't hear you. I don't have the right to do what?" She asked threateningly. James whimpered again, but did not have the wisdom to keep his mouth shut.
"We are U.S. Military soldie… OOF!" He received a punch to the stomach and a boot to where the sun don't shine.
"YOU AREN'T JACK S***, YOU HEAR ME!" The rest of the line was silently quacking in fear. "HERE YOU DON'T HAVE RANK!" She kicked the fallen man again. "YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A SOFT," kick "SPOILED," kick "BRAT THAT CAN'T TAKE SOMEONE SAYING NO!" She kicked him one last time for measure before grabbing him by the collar and pulling him up to his feet again.
"Now," she whispered with a dark tone in her voice "you will show respect and you will listen to everything I say, you got that, maggot?" She seethed. He nodded hastily with a squeaky whimper. "Good. Now lucky for you guys, you have a real life situation where one of your comrades is hurt. Lucky you!"
James had an uncharacteristic suicidal streak in him.
"But… I'm not hurt tha… AAAAH!" His shoulder made a loud popping sound as his shoulder was dislocated.
"You are now." She ignored James' loud gasps of pain. She walked to the front, grabbing the leading rope and pulled. "Start walking! We've got to get moving fast! You don't want to lose any time on your test, now, do ya?" The line was quiet. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" She shouted brutally.
"No ma'am!"
"Good. Now MARCH!"
xxxxxPCxxxxx
She led them into the night. The evening was warm but had that slight chilly bite in the wind. All that the group would have was the rope they were tied with and only one knife. In the time that she had had off, she had blocked every possible entrance into the caves that they could know about. She had also hunted twice that had given her enough food to last two weeks if she blocked herself in.
She was leading them out of the caves, making sure to add unnecessary twists and turns to disorientate them. James, who was in back of the line, was complaining loudly as they walked. Another quick punch to the mouth shut him up. Progress was slow with the blind-folded people that would trip regularly.
12 hours of trekking through the thick and disorientating forest later, she stopped, tying the guiding rope to the branch of one of the trees. She paused the hike long enough to give everyone a drink of water before continuing the walk again. It was close to sunset again when she stopped the line again.
"Alright ladies, we're here. Feel free to sit down." They all remained standing. "No? Suit yourselves then." She leaned against the skeleton of a fallen tree. "Alright, ladies. This exercise is a test to see how much any of you have actually learnt over the past two months that you've been with me. It's quite simple really. You guys have to find your way back to the caves in the morning." She paused, before continuing in a whiny voice.
"But ma'am, that sounds so simple!" She laughed coldly. "Sure, it is. I have left you maggots small intermittent clues to guide you back, oh, and one of you guys is carrying a knife, because I'm nice, but that's not really true now, is it?" She leaned forward, talking in a deadly whisper. "I've blocked all possible entrances except for one. This is a test to see how long it takes you back to the caves. Here's the catch: I'm your enemy here." The group shuddered through their shivers.
"I'm going back to my caves, and get some of my supplies. From there I'm coming back to this exact spot and I'm tracking you. If you get caught, I will make you walk all the way back to Smithers, got it?" The group nodded, terrified. "Good. Now let's see: It's sunset now. I will be back in 20 hours. I'd better not catch you here." She started a brisk jog back to the caves.
'I wonder if I haven't just sent them to their graves.'
xxxxxPCxxxxx
"S***, s***, s***!" Andrew started complaining. "Dude, we are s-so totally screwed! Ah, man! I'm never g-g-gonna see my m-mom again…"
"WILL YOU SHUT UP!" Kyle shouted, frustrated. "Before I kick your whiny ass. Yo', Timmy boy, you gots any ideas?"
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" He snapped. "We need to get rid of these blind-folds, man." He started rubbing his head on his shoulder, trying to rub the slip of fabric off. "Darn it! No luck. Andy, you're in front of me, right?"
"Uh, I thu-think s-so!" The teen stuttered.
"I'm going to lean against you. I'm going to try and get your blindfold off."
"Uh, ok?" He remained silent as Timothy leaned forward. "DUDE! S-STOP TRYING TO M-MAKE OUT WU-WITH THE BA-BACK OF MY HEAD!"
Kyle burst out into giggles.
"Well, my hands are tied and I can't see jack all! So bear with it and direct me to the stupid blind-fold."
"Timmy and Andy, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I…"
"Shut up, Kyle!" All three shouted at the same time. They finally got the blind-fold off and after a lot of squirming, everyone could see again.
"Darn, she really pulled a number on these ropes. I can barely move." Timothy complained.
"Those rocks look pretty sharp." James pointed out. There was an outcropping of rocks close to them. They had jutting point like sharp spires and did indeed look very sharp.
"Alright everyone, shuffle together over to those rocks. Let's see if we can cut the ropes."
xxxxxPCxxxxx
After a lot of shuffling, shouting and grinding later, they were loose. They had managed to pop James' arm back into its socket, found the knife and managed to salvage most of the rope. The exhausted crew made themselves comfortable and passed out.
They woke early the next morning, trying to find something to eat to no avail.
"Guys? You mi-might want to chu-check this out!" Andrew had found a small scroll wrapped with a bright red string. It was no bigger than his pinkie. He unravelled the tiny scroll and squinted to read it.
Find out where East is.
Don't go that way.
"Yo', stop hoggin' the paper man!" Kyle grabbed it out his hands. Just as he finished reading it, Timothy yanked it out of his. "Hey, what gives, man?"
"If the paper says we shouldn't go East, it would mean she had led us East during the hike. We will need to travel back West to find her."
"Well, duh, but is it just West that we have to go?" They all looked at James. "I mean, are we going North-West, West, or South West. Hell, she could have just been walking South with us the entire time." They all nodded in agreement.
"We can't know for sure which way we went."
"Yo, man, can't we jus' track ou' footsteps back da' same way we came?"
"What do you think I've been trying the whole morning?!" Timothy snapped. "The pine needles are too thick to allow us to leave tracks and I don't recognise any of our landmarks!"
"Ah, man. We a-are totally s-screwed."
xxxxxPCxxxxx
Arabella was smiling. She got home three hours after leaving them out there and had had simply passed out on her bed. They really weren't that far from the caves, quite the opposite, in fact. She had led them once around the outside of all the caves before she had taken them off into the one special direction.
She tried to do the math: It was about 9 o'clock when she had woken them up. They had travelled for 12 hours, which would have made it 9 in the morning when they had taken the break. She had walked them for another 10 hours, making it about 7 o'clock when she had dropped them off. The trip around the area where all here caves were had taken them 15 hours, so they had only walked away from the caves for seven hours.
Taking into account that they were tired, hungry, couldn't see properly and tripped a lot, she reduced the amount of time they needed to get back by half.
They were less than four hours of walking away from the caves, not the full day journey they had in mind.
If they weren't back by sunset the next day, then she would go looking for them.
But until they returned, she had some serious work to get done. After a few hours of much deserved sleep, she got up with a strong light of determination in her eyes.
xxxxxPCxxxxx
It was late afternoon when she heard the footsteps. There were several distinguishable death threats murmured from mouths with sour ideals. Arabella had allowed herself the small luxury of delving into a romantic novel while they had been away.
As she lay on her bed, back against the wall with her legs crossed, she was the picture of rest and relaxation. If one were to take a moment, one would have made the realisation that the crafting table had been cleaned and the weapons wall was bare. All blunt objects were out of sight and the sharp ones were out of the question too.
The bedraggled group of soldiers stumbled into the main cavern, their faces dark with fury. They did not utter a single word as they stopped shortly after walking through the doorway. Arabella did not look up from her book.
"I see you've made it back in one piece," nonchalance dripping from her tone, "and before I was about to leave. Well done." She picked up a dry-pressed leaf and slid it in-between the ages of the worn book, placing it beside her. As she shifted, the group took notice of the shotgun on her lap.
It was, no doubt, loaded.
"Now I hope I have your attention. I invited you into my home, offered to teach you valuable skills and you threw it back in my face." She spat the last words as her anger built slowly and steadily.
"I've provided you with food you did not work for, shelter you did not work for, BEDS you did NOT work for, for what? FOR WHAT?!" Her face had turned into a fierce scowl, her cheeks scarlet and her nostrils flared.
"You DESTROYED my provisions, insulted my hospitality and worst of all? WORST of all you insulted my intelligence!" She jumped off the bed, shoulders hunched with the pump action shotgun held firmly in her hands. She walked over until she was nearly right in front of them, her voice a dark and deadly whisper.
"Now, no more mister Nice Guy. You will listen to and obey every single word I say or else I will personally escort you to the Decepticon bases and don't think for a moment I don't know where they are. Understood?"
Andrew was nearly wetting his pants in fear in the back of the group. Kyle and Timothy's anger had been steadily replaced by fear and they quickly and briefly nodded in understanding. Andrew was suddenly a bobble-head.
And James? He stared at Arabella with such hate you could bottle the air to sell as pesticide and Arabella noticed. She swung the business end of the shotgun to point at his face.
"Does Megatron miss his favourite Pretender yet, Decepticon?" The rest of the group took several steps away from James, who showed a brief flurry of emotion, but hid it again under a near flawless mask of indifference. "Didn't think I would realise, did ya'? Your shoulder was way to sharp and bony for it to be human, you dumb ass."
James' head was no more before the Pretender could even hiss. The robotic body started to separate as it fell to try and transform but stopped midway. The headless body fell to its knees before collapsing further. She shot it once more in the midsection, blowing it into two pieces.
"Guys, we are blowing this joint. Grab what's left of James. I don't want my favourite caves blown up just yet. Let's see if you ladies can keep up!"
They ran through the Western tunnels, stopping briefly at the opening of the waterfall to toss the body out. Grabbing the pre-packed backpacks that Arabella had prepared, she lit four torches.
"Careful, they can get a little hot."
They ran down one of the side tunnels with little other than Arabella's instinct and the flickering torches. Soon they came to a cave that had a thick veil of vines over the opening. Waiting there, were two heavy duty ATVs, both carrying a small trailer with some essential items. Notching the burning torches onto hooks in the walls, Andrew and Kyle took the backpack and secured them unto the smaller front baskets of the ATVs. Timothy and Arabella grabbed two Jerri cans of fuel and quickly filled the tanks, securing the extra tanks onto the sides.
"Do any of you boys know how to drive one of these?" Andrew nodded in the affirmative. "Alright. I'll take the lead. Kyle, you can ride with me. Andrew, I'll need you to stay close. I'm gonna be driving as fast as I can push these. We will be driving without the headlights to avoid attracting attention. Thank God for the full moon. Understood?" The men nodded. "Good. Grab a helmet and let's get moving!"
The engines roared to life as the passengers secured themselves to the vehicles. Arabella briefly looked over her shoulder to Andrew, who gave her a quick thumbs up. She nodded and floored the gas, nearly losing Kyle in the process. They flew through the milky darkness, the woods swallowing the noise as they fled.
IronEclipse - Thanks for saying my scribbles are nice to read :3 It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :3
Sunstreaker's Squishy - ... Should I be questioning your loyalty? (Mock accusing glare) I will turn you in, you know! Nothing will stop me from brainwashin... converting you fully to the Autobot cause!
Sweettea1 - I originally considered saying 'cattleprod', but those would probably electrocute you. And this is the Second time Opti is resurrected. I was referring to the happenings of the third film when I mentioned 'Chicago' and that whole scene with the reporter in the first chapter. :)
Teddy - Thank you! :3