3. The Confrontation

Work could not have moved any slower that day, hampered by the fact that Allison's mind was elsewhere. She slid through the work hours in a dissociative haze, manning the front counter and checking in customer products with muscle memory alone. She hid her disinterest well, and no one caught on to the fact that she was thoroughly distracted. Her palms were sweaty, hands itchy to pull out her phone again, if only to give that stupid screenshot another look. She wasn't sure what she was trying to decipher anymore by looking at it for the 100th time. Maybe she was trying to prove to herself that it wasn't what she already knew it was.

It wasn't possible, right? There was no way that… Wheeljack had been real, was there?

At some point in the day Allison used the desk computer to pull up the same video. Maybe a bigger version of the same low definition, grainy screenshot would shed more light on the situation. But it only confirmed her suspicions, that she was indeed looking at a white car.

The very same white car that had mysteriously replaced a certain fairy that spent time with her on the night she ran away from home.

A whole host of memories and questions Allison had tried to squirrel away to the back of her mind were being dredged up by this unsavory intrusion into her blissful ignorance. She'd spent a lot of time as a child wondering if the car and her "new friend" had been one and the same. After all, the car had been there where he had been standing not seconds before, so surely they were connected. It had never really occurred to her over the years that he had become the car, but considering the fact that on that evening she'd been talking to a giant, sparkling, fairy alien, realism and physics were irrelevant. The truth of the matter was, he shouldn't have even existed. He didn't, for a long time.

But now, with just one chance encounter with a stupid conspiracy theory video on the Internet, it seems that Wheeljack had been real after all. And by the looks of it, he was responsible for the power issues that had been plaguing the region and had finally gotten caught; sort of, considering Allison was probably the only person that knew what was in the picture. Considering her initial encounter with him had actually been in a similar facility, she was surprised that she hadn't made the connection sooner.

At some point Allison had decided to do the unthinkable, and that was wade into the comment section of the video. She wanted to see if anyone knew where this security footage had come from. The date was obvious as there was a timestamp on the video: it had been the night before. Maybe the location would be a clue… but to what, Allison wasn't entirely sure. She didn't really know what she was thinking, but she had a deep, burning need to find him.

She had to confirm he had been real, and to do that, she needed to see him with her own eyes.

Luckily, it only took a little bit of scrolling to wade through the painfully stupid comments to find the one she was looking for: a specific facility. Surprisingly, it wasn't too far outside of the city limits in the suburbs. If she was a betting woman (which she wasn't), she would assume that he probably wouldn't end up in the same place twice. When she was a kid, she'd snuck back out to that spot they originally met, and she never saw him again. All that remained was rubble (that's right… he'd fallen when he finally noticed her…) and caution tape. Of course that time, there hadn't really been anything to go back to, but that seemed to fit his pattern. Surely it would have raised suspicions going to the same location more than once.

That left the obvious question of where the next target would be, and it was a short list. It was a huge guess, but seeing as this was the first morning that Allison had lost power, it would stand to reason that he was getting closer to the city. That narrowed down things even further.

The last piece of the puzzle was timing. The outages seemed to happen on a bi-weekly timetable. Roughly. She was working with a lot of risk, but she could maybe estimate when she would possibly find him.

That meant, Allison would need to stew in this possibility for two whole weeks, wondering if she was actually going to make the impulsive decision to actually hunt him down . She was probably making a terrible mistake, but the need to know for sure was gnawing at her. The proof was all that she needed, if only to know that she hadn't been crazy at all. It wasn't like she was going to approach him. She wasn't quite the same gutsy child anymore, completely ignorant of the world's dangers. He hadn't seemed interested in harming her, but a lot of time had passed.

For two weeks, she debated with herself internally if she was really going to break into a restricted area, after dark, on the off-chance that she happened to run into a giant, potentially dangerous sentient robot. She could change her mind at any time, but with every day that went by, she found that her conviction only grew. She was definitely doing this.

Allison had a potential location, and a potential day. The worst that was going to happen was that she was wasting her time. The next power facility wasn't in the friendliest area, just on the outskirts of the city limits. It was in a more industrialized zone before the boundaries of urban sprawl edged its way into a state park. It was somewhat secluded from heavier traffic, so she reasoned this was probably a more attractive target than some of the other possibilities. It was also closer to where the surveillance photo had been taken than her other options. She would need to take a bus and walk, which she wasn't entirely looking forward to, but she would have to manage.

On the day Allison had committed to doing it, she was probably more short with her co-workers than usual. There were only so many times you could remind someone to unplug the damn soldering iron before it started to feel like willful negligence, but she was tired of mentioning it. She'd simply added it into her closing routine to check. Once she was alone to lock up, all she had to do was take out the trash and then catch the bus. Easier said than done considering the back door into the alleyway where the dumpsters were kept was still not fixed, and she nearly broke her shoulder trying to push it open.

Mildly annoyed, and nursing a sore arm, Allison was finally sitting on the bus. She didn't feel like listening to music. She was too focused on what she was potentially walking into. To say she was nervous would be an understatement. If the pulse pounding in her ears and heart threatening to burst its way out of her sternum was any indication, she'd say she was terrified. Tapping her shoe incessantly on the floor of the bus did nothing to take the edge off. The squirming anxiety and nerves in her gut threatened to explode upward and outward more than a few times, but she could spare no further thought to it, because she'd reached her destination.

Allison almost didn't get off the bus, her hand pausing on the guide rail to steady her as she froze, before steeling her nerve and forcing herself to walk off. She'd come this far, she was going to do it. It was so close.

It was so unnervingly quiet in the area that it felt almost uncanny. There were some distant noises of traffic, but it was sparse. Not even the insects that would usually be chirping away at this time of the evening were stirring. The dome of silence that hovered over the general surroundings almost felt intentional, as if the fauna knew something she didn't. The sun had long since set, and the only thing to accompany her was the crunch of gravel under her feet. The pathway she'd mapped out was fairly short and hidden in brush, which did make her wary. Admittedly she was more afraid of the possibility of a fellow human deciding to show themselves then what she was seeking out. A sobering thought indeed.

There were no humans, and so far no sign of anything else as she saw the building she was looking for at the bottom of a small slope. It was surprisingly darker than Allison would have expected it to be, though she did see some kind of source of light hidden amongst the buildings, casting deep shadows in the angular sprawl. Taking a deep breath, she picked her way down the hill.

There was a short brick wall just at the bottom where the hill met the ground, and her shoes slipped when she used her weight to make the small jump down. Some of the bricks gave way into a crumbling mess, and it was louder than she would have liked. Allison froze for a moment, straining her ears for any sound, just now realizing there was the strong possibility she was going to get caught on camera as well.

Too late now.

With a newfound sense of cautious urgency, she moved. The light source was so bright that it was actually making it hard to navigate, so Allison took the risk of turning on her phone's flashlight. She realized it drew attention to her location, but she couldn't see, and found the possibility of walking straight into danger blind to be less appealing. She had to climb a wire fence to get into the actual boundaries of the power facility, but that part was fairly easy and also required better lighting. What wasn't easy was realizing that she was moving towards a light that she was slowly starting to realize wasn't natural.

Yes, that's definitely not natural… she thought as she slowly turned the corner with cautious steps and finally saw the source of light she'd first noted at the top of the hill. It was a cube of some sort, affixed with a number of cables like vines to one of the facility's power conduits near the top. Allison couldn't help but approach, slightly mesmerized by the churning light from within. It was almost fluid, pulsing with energy in swirling waves—was this what was causing the blackouts?

Stopping, she switched off her flashlight and placed her phone into her back pocket. She'd scanned the immediate area before turning the corner, and noted that it was completely devoid of life. No one—or no car —was here. Allison was almost a little bit disappointed, her heart falling in an odd mixture of fear and betrayal. She wasn't entirely sure where that emotion came from, but it was unmistakable.

Her eyes still scanned the darkness, trying to make sense of the shadows between the cluster of buildings, but the glowing cube above her was deepening the gaps to near impenetrable blackness. If her memory was accurate, there would have been no way her quarry would have been able to hide in the confines of this space. Allison wasn't sure why she was so crushed by that thought, but perhaps she'd chosen the wrong day.

If that cube above her, humming with incomprehensible energy, was his handiwork, maybe he intended to come back for it. Either way, Allison didn't want to leave empty handed. In case she came back tomorrow and it was gone… one little picture wasn't going to hurt.

Pulling her phone back out, she fiddled with it briefly before a noise caught her attention and she froze: a whisper of air, followed by the crunching of the ground under the weight of something massive. A flurry of motion came next, and there was a sudden chorus of electronic whirring, like complex machinery unfolding and taking shape. Allison realized all at once what she was hearing as the sudden impulse to flee came over her, even before she heard the voice hanging several feet in the air above her.

" Don't. " The voice was loud; commanding and urgent, and unfortunately all too familiar.

Even from that one word, Allison's blood flared in her veins. She felt hot, and angry, and scared . She almost didn't dare to look, but the spoken word somewhere way above her forced her head to snap in the direction of the source at least twenty feet above her. At first she didn't realize what exactly had drawn her attention other than voice alone, thinking for one fleeting moment of sheer terror that she had made a massive mistake and this wasn't who, or what, she thought. That was until the remnant of a flash made its burning presence known across her vision that full clarity came to her. Two glowing orbs of blue materialized from the dark as the white form took shape, stepping out into view from behind the luminous cube as it revealed the source of her years of questions and trauma.

Wheeljack had been real this whole time, because he was standing right in front of her— over her to be more precise. Allison didn't remember him being quite so tall , suddenly realizing that she was not the small, overly excited child anymore with a foggy memory of a large metal friend; a large metal friend who was looking down at her with a very different expression than he had so many years ago. How she could even understand the expression of a large robot was still completely dumbfounding, but it was unmistakable.

Allison couldn't move. She was almost too stunned to speak. His eyes, two hotly glowing orbs of blue, were less friendly than what had lived in her memory for so long. The panicked thought occurred to her that she had no idea how he would perceive her now. She had been a child the first time they met, harmless and very much not a threat. She had been enamored by the fantasy of the short time in his presence, and he had humored her much like a very large, infinitely smarter being would humor an insect. Maybe he wouldn't hurt a child. Maybe now it would be different.

It felt like forever had passed by, and in that time Allison had forgotten to breath. She barely even realized she'd finally taken a step backwards, as if the extra distance would save her. Wheeljack had not moved, though the shade of his eyes had softened somewhat to a more deeper blue. She didn't know how, but she thought that maybe it was some sort of emotional expression. They were less oppressive, for lack of a better word, no longer glaring down at her like an affronted golem.

Finally, somehow Allison found her voice, trying to make sense of the moment and only then comprehending what he had said to her. She couldn't mentally process what he meant, so the first utterance out of her mouth was about as intelligent sounding as primordial sludge.

"...What?"

The silence seemed to stretch on for ages. Allison knew objectively the smart thing to do would be to run. The smarter thing to do would have been to not even come in the first place, but hindsight was useless. She was afraid that if she turned her back on him now, he would pursue her. She was a witness after all. He had told her once that no one could know she had seen him, so naturally she'd told everyone who would listen. She'd been a kid for fucks sake what did he expect would happen? It wasn't like anyone believed her anyway, but maybe that didn't matter to him.

A flicker of resentment was starting to burn, like an igniting ember deep in her gut.

Wheeljack, for all his height, seemed to somehow ease his posture as he no longer appeared to be standing as stiff and alert as a telephone pole. Maybe he hadn't expected her to actually speak; expected her to run instead. Or maybe he was so enamored by her clear display of intelligence that it disarmed him. Regardless, she wasn't dead yet, so that must have counted for something.

"Don't do that ." Now it was Allison's turn to be surprised, because she hadn't expected him to respond. She was blinded by the flash of the plates on the side of his face, punctuating each word he spoke. That was a particular detail to the memory that she'd initially convinced herself she'd made up, but now she realized that had been what initially got her attention when he first spoke. An adrenaline-fueled shock pulsed through her as the memory of being a mesmerized child reconnected with reality.

Allison stared back, furrowing her brow as she tried to piece together what he meant. Had he understood what she was doing with her phone, and that he didn't want her to take a picture? A picture of the glowing, pulsing cube that clearly belonged to him? Realistically that made sense, because why would he want her walking away with evidence of his presence. The phone suddenly felt very heavy in her grip.

Something nagged at her, and Allison realized it was the way he spoke that was plucking at her nerves in a way that was making her start to sweat with an emotion she couldn't quite place. So many details about that night that had mostly faded away into obscure impressions were coming back to her in perfect clarity. She remembered having an entire conversation with him about his godamned voice .

Somehow she was starting to feel less fearful, and a little more stunned that this was even happening, and more surprisingly, that she still wasn't dead yet.

"Don't do whatever it is you're thinkin' of doing," Wheeljack repeated, as if to clarify for her what he actually meant, taking her silence as stupidity. He still spoke with the same, oddly placed east coast accent that she remembered, and that was such a distinct feature that had humanized the encounter in her child brain.

And then it occurred to Allison, that this was a very weird, overly… familiar conversation they were having. It hadn't even crossed her mind that she should even question whether he would remember her or not. She obviously had decades of change on her child counterpart that he would possibly remember seeing. Did Wheeljack know how to account for age, and recognize her? She had no frame of reference to know how his brain or memory worked, so she had no idea if this was just how he would talk to any human that would blunder into him. Why wasn't he being more… cautious?

Wheeljack had said they were in danger, and he was trying to protect his friends. So why had he so easily revealed himself to her, and was now talking to her so abruptly without any real trace of wariness? The question was so urgent in her mind, with all the pent up baggage and emotion from her childhood and adolescent years pressing down on her. It was like a weight so consuming, she couldn't squeeze herself out from under it.

Swallowing with hesitation, Allison inhaled, managing to meet Wheeljack's very alert, pointed gaze with some of the same confidence she'd had as a child.

"Do you… even remember me?" She was surprised her voice sounded as strong and even as it did, even if her stomach was doing backflips. It seemingly had the right effect, because Allison saw Wheeljack wince, the flare of his eyes widening to suggest that it wasn't a question he was expecting to hear.

The massive robot shifted, his body whirring and chirping in a consort of electronic noise as it was his turn to take a step, this time sideways as if to give the large, thrumming cube a wide berth. Allison could feel the vibration under the ground when he moved, and the longer it took for him to respond, the more vulnerable and exposed she felt. The blinking didn't help every time he spoke, even if it wasn't bright enough to blind her. She wasn't sure how she knew, but it felt like he was studying her. Finally,

"Of course I remember you, my memory outperforms any excuse for a computer you got on this rock," he said, rather flippantly, and the whiplash Allison felt from fear to sudden and immediate disbelief was excruciating.

Then she remembered, he had been kind of snarky with her when she was a kid. Granted, she'd asked equally stupid questions—like, are you a fairy—so it checked out. It was good to see he hadn't lost his sense of humor all these years later.

Now that he stepped further away from the fluorescent glare of the cube, which had started to hum even louder, she could see him more clearly in the light. He looked the same as she remembered, but now details were obviously filling back in that she'd forgotten. She'd been right about the stripes. They were on his chest, framing a peculiar symbol that sat right in the center, matching the ones that ran down his legs. Clearly, Allison's instincts had been correct, and somehow he was the car from the photo. He was made up of a series of white metal plates that covered his body in wide panels, almost like armor. The deeper inner sections between the seams were all black, presumably all the complex machinery that made him alive. A few gray panels were scattered around his frame, and she almost thought she saw the tiny, dim impression of lights peeking out from beneath his outer structure–like biomechanical luminescence. There were a number of pieces that clearly resembled components of a car, now that she was actually studying him rather than being distracted by very obvious details; details like the long portions that stuck out from his back, framing him like wings. It was why she had asked him if he had been a fairy when she met him so long ago…

Allison still wasn't really sure why she'd asked him that, or what it had made him think. He'd seemed comically exasperated at the time, explaining to her what they actually were. Something about rotary fins, and sensory net. He'd also explained what the large panels on the side of his face were, a means of tracking humans . She wasn't stupid enough to know he hadn't been joking at the time, but it had stuck with her.

"Clearly outperforming those ears of yours, seeing as I found you—" Allison blurted, the silence becoming far too stifling with the way he was scrutinizing her beneath glowing eyes that had narrowed between metal lids. She was almost dumbfounded enough to slap her hand over her mouth—graceful—but she opted to freeze instead like an animal caught in headlights. Literally . "— again ." Her voice sounded a lot less confident.

This time, Wheeljack stepped backwards, one massive hand went to his chest as if he was wounded, and his expression went through a creative procession of shock, maybe amused, then to what was clearly meant to resemble offended as his eyes turned into mere slits of hot white. Even more shocking that he was that expressive considering most of his face was covered by what resembled some sort of mask.

Allison wagered she was dead now for sure, managing to piss him off so thoroughly that any second now he was going to reach out and crush her. If his size was any sort of tell, his armor plates seemed to have expanded somewhat, flaring out from his body giving him the appearance similar to a fluffed out cat that was trying to make itself look bigger. It would have almost been funny, if not for the fact that she was the one who had insulted him.

Wheeljack appeared to inhale, the sign that he was finally about to say something when the peculiar cube hanging aloft next to him made a sudden, loud pop before it hissed with a burst of sparks. Allison watched as it disconnected from the conduit, the strange cables snapping back into it and disappearing as it started to drop. Wheeljack made a sudden noise, his eyes flashing suddenly as he reached out to catch it. He missed, the brilliant cube dancing out of his reach as it bounced against his fingers and made its final descent towards the ground. Towards her .

Allison didn't react in time. She wasn't entirely sure how she was supposed to react as the cube—quite a bit larger than it appeared when it was hanging above her—hit the ground in a shower of sparks before bouncing directly towards her with a reverberating metallic boom . The only thing she really had time to do was to raise her hands to protect her face, hearing as well as feeling a loud, thundering "NO" as the large form of Wheeljack lunged towards her. She had the barest impression of small, electrified tendrils reaching out, like tiny little pieces of lightning, before there was an impossibly blinding flash followed by searing pain in her hands.

Then there was nothing.


"NO!"

Useless as it was, it was all Wheeljack could do as he tried, and failed, to catch the energon cube when it hit the ground. He watched in helpless slow motion as it bounced, a burst of energized sparks blossoming from the concrete where it connected, only to fling itself directly towards where Allison stood. He lunged forward, suddenly every instinct in every circuit screaming at him to stop it. Why, why,of all the directions it could hurl itself.

Wheeljack was too late. The whole thing happened so fast where one second he saw Allison raise her arms to protect herself, then the next her whole body was thrown backwards as several threads of errant energon shot from the cube in a brilliant burst. Seemingly with intent, they reached out towards the human's body and the reaction was immediate and immense. She was propelled through the air as the connection ignited the entire vicinity in a plume of wild energy and phosphorescence. Wheeljack felt, almost tasted , the violent surge of energon like a swell of kinetic force from a bomb; neurocircuits clamping down in pain from the sudden transference of pure, energized feed. The sequence of events was alarmingly silent as she hit the ground, followed immediately by the loud crack as her skull connected with the concrete. That was what made Wheeljack finally snap out of his shocked inaction once he saw it happen. He had tried to catch the energon cube before it hit the ground, but it had pinged uselessly against his fingertips and out of his reach. He had failed.

Pit , how could he have been so slagging careless . He should have been paying attention to the energy rate, not letting the energon cube overload and detach itself from the power source. It was a known possibility that the energon cube would behave this way, so he should have known better. Instead, he had completely let his guard down, again , because of this same, fragging, human.

Allison had just finished insulting him in a rather poignant, and frankly upsetting way. She had mocked him, by repeating something back to him that he had said to her in jest the first time they'd met. At first he had been impressed by her cleverness, until it dawned on him that the joke was being used at his expense. Wheeljack found that upsetting, not because he actually thought she was serious; he could tell even as a child she didn't believe him. It had upset him, because it was a brutal reminder of what had been a more treasured encounter. Now, this was not at all going how he would have expected. It had been… tense and uncertain. His spark was still aching, hampered by the sudden presence of fresh energon in his circulatory channels causing his readings to flare. It was sending pulses of discomfort through his system and it was incredibly difficult to ignore.

To be honest, Wheeljack had no way of knowing what to expect. What he did know was that it would have never occurred to him that he would possibly be faced with a crisis so unprecedented that he was plagued with inaction. Wheeljack was never plagued with inaction. A human had never come into contact with an energon cube before, and the results had been… unexpected.

Once the sound of Allison's body hitting the ground knocked Wheeljack back into present reality, he realized that something incredibly disastrous had occurred. She had come to rest several of his own long strides in length away, and she was alarmingly still. He closed the distance between them immediately, scooping up the offending energon cube and subspacing it on the way. He crouched next to her prone form to take stock of the situation, and it was clear that she was not okay. She was breathing at least, but the rate at which she was doing so appeared unnaturally fast. Allison was hurt, and it was his fault.

What was even more alarming, was the fact that he could sense an active energon signature on her. It was subtle, but it wavered around her body like a forcefield. It was almost as if the energon was coming directly from her.

Wheeljack didn't have a lot of time to think things through, because he remembered hearing the sound of her head hitting the ground. Thinking quickly, his hands hovered in the air above her for a tick before he urged himself to carefully scoop up her limp body. Immediately he noticed the red substance that was her blood where her head had made contact. She was deathly still and limp, save for the rapid rise and fall of her chest. She was still breathing. He couldn't panic, but she's really hurt… where do hurt humans go ?

They go to a hospital, he quickly told himself. They were not unlike Cybertronian infirmaries, except for maybe a lot more fluids. He shuddered at the thought, but it wasn't Allison's fault. She needed immediate medical attention, but the pressing thought that he wasn't really sure how to get her to a hospital stopped him. He was hesitating again, feeling worry and fear cloud his judgment as he looked down at his hands. Still breathing , but he had enough sense to know that head injuries could be fatal, very quickly.

Something indecipherable panged in Wheeljack's spark as he held her, so fragile and vulnerable in his hands. It was a vicious shock to all his core processes like he had been dunked in acid, the ripple effect emanating out through his secondary circuits, looping back around to the squeezing discomfort buried deep within him. She's...still so small… he thought to himself soberly. Had she really been even smaller when they had first met? Wheeljack couldn't imagine it—they had certainly come across small in the eons of their existence, but he felt something different now, something disjointed and upsetting as this tiny, broken little creature laid limp in his hands.

Right now, logic dictated Wheeljack needed to force down whatever emotion was causing him to panic, and ignore the foreign subroutines that were causing a feedback loop in his spark. It was probably only nanoseconds, but eventually Wheeljack moved quickly, cradling her body against his chasis and taking several steps in the vague direction he'd pinpointed the human hospital to be before stopping in his tracks. He couldn't very well just walk her up to a hospital… he would be seen… and that would create too much of a chaotic panic that he risked Allison not getting the help she needed. They would inevitably think he had done this to her. Technically he had, but not in the way they would be thinking. That wasn't an option.

He'd have to use his alternate mode and transport her there. That way it would just look like Allison had brought herself to the hospital. To do that, he would need to somehow figure out a way to transform around her without hurting her—

—But the energon. Allison had just been dosed with several thousand volts of low-grade synthesized energon, and what would a human doctor know to do in those circumstances? They wouldn't know what they were working with and how to treat her. Head injury aside, he didn't know what sort of sustained, long-term damage the energon presented. It would be unprecedented, and would very likely lead to them getting exposed eventually. Allison would also be in danger from her own people, or worse.

Internally Wheeljack admitted defeat. Regardless of how he felt about the very obvious solution to this current predicament, she could very well be dead sooner than he realized. They would probably both be dead at this rate, but he didn't think he had a choice. There was only one well of expertise and talent that would be able to treat both ailments, himself not included. He could probably figure out the energon problem, but he'd need time , which was a luxury neither of them had.

Wheeljack looked down at her again, willing himself to focus on himself in a way that felt unnatural, but necessary. He grimaced beneath his battle mask, forcing his transformation sequence through a cycle that was unpracticed and out of order. Joints, pivots, seams, internal components and wires moved in ways they had never been asked to move before, and it was such a wholly unpleasant process that he had to resist the urge to spring back to his feet. This was too important, so he forced himself to move around Allison so that she was deposited in what a human would recognize as a back seat . He spared only the seconds needed to make sure she was stable, shaking off the last traces of pain from such an unnatural transformation, before he shot through the buildings and back onto the road. He knew what he had to do, but he wasn't looking forward to it. He was in big trouble.

He had to take Allison to Ratchet.