Not much to say now. Still stuck on chapter 9, and we're almost there. Hopefully I'll figure it out by then.
Hope you enjoy the chapter, I don't own Transformers.
It seemed like hours before anyone returned. During this time, Mikaela had even attempted to break the door down. I was sitting on the table, wondering if I could even take the Allspark if I tried. Sure, I know how Bee did it. They all thought I obsessed over details that no longer mattered- since the Allspark didn't even exist anymore -but I still wanted to learn the insignificant things. Like how exactly one coaxes such an ancient and powerful object into its more manageable and transportable form. And by all means, I'm going to try. But no matter how much I know about these sorts of things, it doesn't change the fact I'm organic and might not be able to coax it into anything at all.
It was Simmons. He closed the door behind him, walking over to take the empty chair as if we were old buddies. I didn't move from where I was in the middle of the table.
"What brings you back here?" Mikaela asked, sitting in the other chair with her legs propped up to my right. She had to lean around me to see Simmons, now sitting at the opposite corner from her.
"Not that either of you two care, but I just about lost my badge over this whole incident. Some civilian kid comes boasting about top secret information, asking to see me like I had anything to do with it, I almost didn't have a chance to convince them I don't even know you." He crossed his arms. "Now Tom's back-" I think this 'Tom' character is the director of Sector Seven. I can't say for sure, but it sounds vaguelly familiar. I probably knew him for a little bit. I want to say his last name is something weird. Starts with a 'K' or a 'B'. Maybe starts with something else and has a 'K' and a 'B' in it. I don't know. "-and he's about to give me one more shot before shipping me out. Now I realize that neither of you two want to cooperate, but I want to know what it will take for you to admit you have no idea who I am, and tell the truth on how you got ahold of all these words and names. Alright? What's it going to take?"
"What's it going to take for you to realize Sam's telling the truth?" Mikaela asked, tipping her chair back. "We both are."
"It's going to take some hard evidence. Undeniable proof." Simmons gave me an irritated look as he leaned around to speak to Mikaela. "Son, can you get down from there?"
"I like high places." I stated, not moving.
He gave an annoyed huff and dragged the chair behind me, to sit across from Mikaela. I turned where I was, not caring to otherwise move.
"Alright, here's the deal." Simmons got back down to business. "I don't know if you're still trying to pull one over on me, or you actually believe time travel is possible. Maybe you got hit on the head. Maybe not. Who am I to say, right? All I'm saying is, if you are pretending, you're pretty good at it. So why don't you change your story, and say you hacked some email some idiot in tech sent? Or maybe you know someone that used to work here, and got laid off. Maybe that person is a little upset with us for laying him off, and maybe he's more willing than he should have been to release this information to you. I don't know."
"You're asking us to lie?" Mikaela raised an eyebrow.
"For all I know, it's the truth as much as that bullshit about timetravel is." Simmons shrugged. "I'm just trying to strike a bargain."
I leaned forward, intrigued by this turn of events. This 'Tom' character that clearly has authority over Simmons has just returned, and now, all of the sudden, Simmons is fearful that he's going to lose his job. His future rests in my hands, and there are a couple things I want.
The situation is strangely familiar.
"First I'm going to want my car, my parents, and her juvie records." I stated with an entirely straight face, dead serious, and trying not to grin.
"What? We don't have your car. Or your parents." He gave me a weird look.
I laughed and smirked. "Nevermind that. But no, seriously. Her juvie record needs to be gone."
"Sam?" Mikaela stared at me in surprise.
Simmons nodded, agreeing instantly. "Done. Now do we have a deal?"
"You've got to be kidding me." I scoffed, swinging my legs around to sit differently, ready to stand up. "I've got a lot more terms than that. And you know exactly what they are."
He shook his head, leaning back. "I'm sorry, son. I'm not going to release the alien robot."
"Fine. I'll do that. Don't worry about Bumblebee, he's fine where he is for right now. Freezing like that can't be good for his systems, but I'll worry about that later. I still want to see the Cube, though."
He narrowed his eyes. "You aren't going to try something stupid like you did with the alien, are you?"
I smirked and tilted my head. "Depends on what you call 'stupid'. I want to touch it, if that's what you mean."
"I may care about my job, son, but I certainly care about this facility a whole lot more." He lied to himself. "I'm not going to do anything that jeopardizes the American people. What do you plan on doing with it?"
"How long would you say the Allspark's been where it is now, Simmons? A hundred years, two hundred?"
"Our estimates put it about a thousand years." He mused, as if I didn't already know. Of course I know. The Autobots put it about two thousand years, though it certainly isn't the same amount of time since they launched it. The Allspark traveling through space has been compared to a sort of 'natural spacebridge'. Given no one was watching it travel, Wheeljack has a theory that it treats space-time differently than a regular object floating around out there.
"Right. So it's been there over a thousand years, which means that if I were to be able to do anything with it, on purpose, while already knowing what the result would be, what would that mean? That somehow I've learned how to do that in the seventeen years I've been alive, while it's been so closely guarded by a bunch of idiots that don't even know what it is? Or that I'm over a thousand years old, and I've touched it before it became embedded into the Earth? Or maybe, I'm just proposing an idea here, maybe I'm from the future, where the aliens have taken it out of the rock and let me hold it?"
"What are you getting at? Are you still playing that future card?" He moaned.
"I am. And if I can prove it, that gets you off the hook." I stood up, towering over both of them from on the table. "That also gets me right where I want to be, and we're both happy. Right?"
He seemed to be thinking this over, making a face that told me he didn't like this.
"What are you doing to it?"
"Making it smaller." I shrugged.
"Right. You can control the size of it?" He scoffed, not believing me. "Does that affect its output?"
Output. As in, the life energy it radiates that they use to create and kill lifeforms at will. The reminder made me sick, and I tried my hardest not to express how much I hated what they were doing with it. "No."
"Are there any... side effects?" He asked, giving a nod to my whole time-travel speech earlier.
"No. It's sort of a 'transportation' form for it. You know how the aliens transform." I jumped down off the table. "I'll make it smaller, prove to you all I know what I'm talking about, and they'll realize that the only way you're involved with me is in an alternate reality in the future." I spread my arms. "Obviously, right?"
"I don't know about that, but if you can do anything with that Cube, it would help my case. Are you sure you can do it?"
"Yes." I lied.
He thought it over for another minute, and I stuck out my hand to finalize our agreement. Like when I first shook hands with Mikaela, negotiating the terms on which she would fix my- now her -car.
"Alright. If you fail me, I'm going to be out of the job and I'm going to kick your-"
"Hold on." I cut him off, retracting my hand before he could shake it. This time, it will be me adding on another term. "One more thing. I want to know where Tom went." Surely at a time like this, with aliens popping up everywhere, the director of Sector Seven was away doing something alien related. Right?
He laughed, taking a step away and letting it all out. "That? You call that a term? Who cares where he went? To go talk to some soldiers, that doesn't even qualify as top secret information! Out of all the last-minute ideas you could ask for, that's it?"
"Yeah. Now a deal's a deal. I want access to the Allspark." I shook his hand. He was grinning, still chuckling and shook vigorously.
"Son. You have no idea what you've just done. Once my job is secure again, I will end you." He took his hand back.
"I really wouldn't take that route. This was our agreement, but some friendly advice is to be nice to me. A lot of stuff is about to happen, and Sector Seven isn't going to last. If you want to stay in contact with the aliens, you better be ready to change." I started towards the door.
"You know, I'm getting awful tired of following you around." Mikaela mused, the last to exit the room.
"Don't tell me this isn't exciting?" I turned to her as we walked down another familiar route. "You'd rather be back at home right now?"
"I'd rather have my future secured, if that's what you mean." She mused. "But this is interesting. How many girls get to meet aliens?"
"You haven't met one yet." Simmons reminded. "I haven't, you haven't." He muttered afterwards.
"Actually, the aliens adopted Sam. He's practically alien himself." Mikaela laughed. "He's certainly weird enough."
"Somehow, I don't doubt it." He groaned.
"Don't worry. As long as you're still interested, you can work with the Autobots too. Ratchet, our medic, says you make a great apprentice." I shrugged.
"Of course. Why not?"
We entered the Allspark's room, and we were all stricken silent by it. I forget how large it is, and I live with massive beings! Even by their standards, it's an object of breathtaking proportion. The energy it gave off could even be sensed by organics; my skin was tingling and I felt as if I were in the best health of my life. However, these feelings are only temporary and conditioned upon proximity to the Allspark for us. But were we Cybertronian, it would literally be healing our worn systems and revitalizing us.
"Wow." Mikaela breathed. "Radiation on this thing isn't going to hurt us, is it?" She eyed a man in a hazmat suit working on equipment that was pushed up by the Cube.
"We haven't had any specific incidents that readily identify this thing as the cause of any radiation injuries that may or may not have occurred in this location." Simmons answered smoothly.
"No. It wouldn't hurt anyone." I completely ignored him and smiled, walking closer to it.
"Though, I wouldn't recommend getting too close." Simmons grabbed the back of my shirt.
I shrugged him off. "The Allspark isn't a weapon of any kind."
"I've seen its energy make people sick, and kill."
"Kill?" Mikaela squeaked.
"No. No, don't worry about that." I insisted. "They manipulate its energy into killing sparklings that they created with the very same energy. They misuse it and abuse it." I insisted. Turning back to the Allspark, I couldn't help the smile that crept back onto my face. "The Allspark is an ancient object of life. The opposite goes against its very nature."
They were quiet, letting me walk straight up to the lowest point I could touch on it. Even still, I had to reach over my head to get to it. But my fingers grazed over its surprisingly warm surface. I'm not sure it was even metal, but it might be some sort of other rock. And yet, I have no idea what material it might be made of.
"Can we move one of these lifts?" I asked, looking to the lifts built around the surface of the Cube.
"Excuse me?"
"I want to touch that corner." I pointed to the one sticking out, the very same one Bumblebee had reached up to touch oh-so long ago. It's got to be a corner. When it shrinks down, it recedes into a single corner, manipulating subspace, and I have to be there to catch it when it's done.
"Are you kidding me? You want to touch that corner?" He objected. "Choose somewhere else on the thing, we're not moving the lifts."
"Then I can't do it. All the other corners are either in the rock, or even higher." I pointed out. "I want that corner."
"Right. Alright. Fine. The kid wants that corner, he get's the freaking corner. Whatever. You!" Simmons pointed to the same man in the hazmat suit. "Take these kids to the observation deck while we move these things. Lock them inside, and get back out here to help."
The man mumbled something that none of us heard, and started back the way we came. I went willingly, leaving the Allspark only because I knew I'd return soon. Soon enough, I'll get to hold it in my arms, and when the Decepticons/Autobots come knocking, I'll already have the thing.
The lock clicked, and once again, we were confined to a single room, alone. This time, however, we got to watch what was happening. It took half an hour to push and pull the most ideal lift towards the corner, decide it wasn't going to work, and had a better shaped one- not made to be pressed up against a wall -to be brought in. I didn't take my eyes off their work, even as Mikaela went to investigate the other things in the room. Simmons was pulled to the side of the room at one point and was talking with someone else in a suit, probably Tom. Then, when they finally had it right, Simmons took the liberty of walking up the steps and making sure it was in the right position. He took his time coming back down, and I let my eyes wander back towards the group of men standing on the far edge of the room under us. I almost can't see them from here, for they were clustered around the door we had used to enter and leave. They had appeared there the same time Tom came in, and judging from their faded camouflage, they were the soldiers Simmons said Tom had gone to speak with. He didn't say they came back with him.
Not that I didn't already know they had. Now what are they doing here when their base in the Middle East was safe and sound?
Simmons, Tom, and the soldiers all disappeared from the Allspark's room, and I no longer had interest in looking through the window. Once again I can taste success. But it came with a bitter feeling in my stomach, being as the last time I had felt this anxious and ready for the next step, everything came crashing down with one frozen, stasis locked, Autobot.
It felt like years before the lock on the door clicked and the door handle started to turn.
Alright, I've got one for you. I've got a little oneshot I wrote a while back, and all it's missing is an ending. I'm getting back into the movie (and music) of this extremely underrated fandom, and I'm thinking about uploading it just for kicks. Has anyone seen the movie "Monster in Paris"? A EuropaCorp production of 2011, rather musical, and loosely based off from the Phantom of the Opera. You should watch it, I believe it's still on Netflix.
Or maybe giant fleas aren't your thing. Whatever. Just a bit of advertising for one of the greatest movies I know.