Two Brothers - Chapter 7
Title: Two Brothers
Rating: PG-13/T
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. tomorrow4eva on FF.net beta for me.
Summary: For eons, Barricade thought that his family was gone and slowly became the killer, a hunter for the Decepticons. But when someone from his past comes back to Earth for peace, he is will to go to great lenght to get him back.
“Samus wins.”
A collective moan sounded as the game called out the winner. Ironhide had this smug look on his face as Bluestreak, Bumblebee and Sam tasted the defeat he had fed them, “Ha! That will teach you younglings to face an expert.”
“But you cheated!” complained Sam as he motioned to the large TV set while waving his remote, “You didn’t use a remote! You just hacked your way in using the wireless connection! No button pushing!”
“When you build remotes that will not break in our hands, we will stop that,” said Ironhide, “Besides, do you really believe I would lose to the likes of an electric rodent, a human plumber and a giant ape?”
The three sighed in defeat as Ironhide made his point. Stretching out his servos, Bluestreak had to wonder how many times he had played this game since he was finally released from Ratchet’s care. That had been three weeks ago and since then Prowl hadn’t let him leave the ARC. It was not fair. Not even a simple patrol. Bluestreak couldn’t understand why Prowl was acting like this. He was all better now. No need to worry at all.
“Hello, everyone, did I miss anything?” asked Hound as he came inside the rec room, all covered in mud, leaves, and branches.
“Just Ironhide beating our as-What happen to you?!” explained Sam as he turned away from the screen and stared towards Hound.
“Ah…Sunday afternoon drive…” sighed Hound, in an innocent tone of voice, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“A drive my aft,” mumbled Ironhide, “Better not let Ratchet see ya.”
“I know. He nearly took my head off last time when I had tree branches stuck in my aft,” mumbled Hound, as he joined the three mechs on their Cybertorian size couch.
That was enough to send the Bee, Sam, and Blue into a fit of laugher. It became much louder when they watched Ironhide pushed Hound off, not wanting to get dirty himself, sending the tracker crashing to the ground.
“Well, this has been fun, but I must be getting Sam home, and start on my patrol,” said Bumblebee as he rose on to his feet.
“Awwww, no...” moaned Sam reluctantly.
“Sorry Sam, but you have your curfew and you have been late the last two days. Your father will not be pleased if this behaviour continues. You could get grounded...” said Bee leaving the threat hover in the air. Rubbing his face into his hands, Sam knew what that met. No hanging around at the ARC, no seeing Mikaela, no fun, period.
Blue watched as Sam resigned himself to his fate, getting back up on to his feet and following after his guardian. Leaning back, the young gunner thought that Bee was the lucky one. He didn’t have the likes of Prowl on his aft, watching all his moves. Lately it seemed that he was treating Bluestreak like a sparkling again. Bumblebee was younger than him, had his vocal processor torn out and lost his legs in the final battle, yet was able to come and go as he pleased. Bluestreak had a small run in with a few small-time Decepticons and stuck inside for three Earth weeks. What was with the base restriction anyway? He hadn’t done anything wrong. Sighing, Bluestreak wished that Prowl was around right now. All hyped on video games and watching the others move around, he finally had the courage to actually stand up to the tactician. But no...currently Prowl was away overnight with Optimus talking with some humans.
Wait...
Looking over to Ironhide and Hound, the gunner noticed that the two were engrossed with the Wii as they started another match. It was quite interesting to watch the two of them sitting there, shouting at the screen, waving their hands around as the two characters fought on screen. As Ratchet and Perceptor were busy in the labs, they wouldn’t notice anything. Not thinking twice about it, Blue dashed after Bumblebee and Sam.
“Guys! Wait up!”
He was breaking out of here tonight.
Sitting there under the by-pass, Barricade was wishing he could be anywhere else but here.
But no, he couldn’t until he finished making the drop that manifold-mouth Swindle had set up. Due to their arrangement, he was the one forced to drive around, meeting the most disgusting fleshies in existence. Most of them looked like they hadn’t even wash themselves for cycles. Gross...
With his hologram in plain view, no one would give him any trouble. Most humans would treat him with respect and keep their distance due to his alt mode. The only altercation he had was some female with torn clothing, who had been running away from a drunk male. All he had done to keep up his act was to hit the male and contact the local enforcers. Of course, it would not have happened at all if he hadn’t had to wait for Swindle’s human.
How he wanted to drop all of this. It was all a waste of his time and the limited resources that they had. It wasn’t like Swindle would use the money he gained in this for the cause. No, it would be for Swindle’s own personal use. But only Primus knew what. He couldn’t get close enough as Garboil was watching the con artist’s quarters and Havoc had his partner’s back. Slag, all he wanted was some dirt on Swindle so he could leave all of this behind.
“Man, ya paying attention?”
Growling, Barricade’s hologram turned his head and glared towards the slumbag fleshie that was knocking on his side door. The tall human with clumpy, oily hair took a few steps at the sound of the growling engine. Cade could sense his fear as his heart sped up. At least that made him feel better. Striking fear in those weaker than him always gave Barricade a rush. The sense of being an all-powerful someone that was unstoppable, Barricade never got tried of that. He, after all ,was one of Lord Megatron’s elite enforcers, and the hunt was everything.
But now, he was reduced to being nothing but some kind of mule, driving around for Swindle to make drops all over the city.
How that con artist was going to pay.
“It is in the backseat,” said Barricade, “Get in and take it. Leave your payment behind.”
The human nodded his head quickly as he open the door to what he thought was a normal police car that just belonged to some dirty cop. He grabbed a hold of the silver metal case inside and opened it. Spying the many packages of purple pills, a smile spread across his face as he dug into his pocket and replaced the case with a wad of the human currency that was only good on this side of the planet. Such a waste. Why couldn’t all these fleshbags use the same type of currency like back on Cybertron?
Once the human was out of sight, with his package in hand, Barricade turned and started to leave. Now, he could finally move on to his patrol for the night. Maybe he could be a bit fortunate and find Bluestreak tonight. He hadn’t seen his brother for weeks and his spark was calling out for the smaller part of it. These weeks without seeing him had Barricade worried
He was so focussed on his own thoughts, Barricade almost didn’t notice the two signals appearing on his radar.
Watching Bluestreak drive through the streets in front of him, Bumblebee realized he had never seen Bluestreak truly joyful. Sure, Blue was always happy, but busting out of the base, and actually being outside again seemed to make him almost estatic. Bumblebee couldn’t understand why Prowl wasn’t allowing Bluestreak outside on patrol and such, and that High Command seem to be ok with it. It didn’t make sense at all.
“This is totally great, huh?” asked Bluestreak as he slowed down and rolled nearer to Bee.
“If you say so...but we are going to get into trouble once we get back,” warned Bumblebee.
“I know, so I’ll just say I busted out on my own and met up with you after you dropped Sam home and started your patrol,” said Bluestreak, “Don’t worry. I’ll try to get the punishment and see that you don’t get anything. I mean, it was my idea and I would just hate to see you get into trouble because of me. I just couldn’t help myself. It was so perfect. Prowl was away, same with Optimus, no one was watching . I just couldn’t pass it up! I was getting, what do the humans call it? Cabin fever! An-“
“Blue, I get the idea,’ said Bee as Bluestreak started to ramble. He was about to stop the second assault when a familiar signature came to his attention.
Seeing how his friend was slowing down, Bluestreak stopped and did a three-point turn to face the yellow Autobot, “Bee, what’s wrong?” he asked. Why did he have a strange feeling that something was going to happen? It was hard to tell if it was a bad thing or not. It was just a feeling, something within his spark, that something was about to happen.
“We have company...there he is!”
Not really having a chance to respond to that, Bluestreak sat there and watched as Bumblebee zipped right past him and headed down the street. He was heading straight to a human police car? Yeah, that thought only lasted a moment as he too picked up the Decepticon signature. And then he picked up something that rocked Bluestreak to the center of his core processor.
His spark...
It was reacting...
No...
It couldn’t be...Barricade...
“Bee! What’s going on? Who is it?!” shouted Bluestreak over his comm. link as he started up again. Sitting there too long, he had lost sight of Bumblebee and the Decepticon cruiser. He had to make sure. There was no way that was Barricade. He was dead! He couldn’t be a Con. There was no way.
“It’s the Decepticon, Barricade! He was suppose to have been destroyed in the Mission battle, but he must have survived. We have to stop him before he calls for reinforcements,” cried Bumblebee.
Bluestreak didn’t respond. No, it couldn’t be true! This was not happening. Prowl told him that Cade was dead, he was sure of it. If there was any chance that his older co-creation, his brother, was actually alive, Prowl, Optimus...any of High Command would have told him. It was his right after all. This was his family unit they were talking about.
“Bluestreak! Where are you? I’m losing him!” said Bumblebee.
“Coming, I’m coming,” responded Bluestreak as he started up again and drove down the street. Turning up his radar as high as it could go, he knew he had cut this Decepticon off and get him away from Bumblebee. He had to make sure.
He had to make sure that this wasn’t a lie.
It had to be some miracle of Primus. Skidding to a stop on the outskirts of the town, Barricade quickly checked the area out. Slag , but that little yellow Autobot runt sure could keep up with him. Snarling, he wished he could have just transformed and killed the youngling right there. Couldn’t do that, though, not after the chewing out he received from Thunderwing. They had to stay under the radar as much as possible.
At least he caused a nice amount of destruction along the way. Crashing into a few cars and sending them towards the Autobot. It was enough to cause panic with the humans, sending them screaming and out of the way. Ah, he could always count on the Autobot’s softness towards the fleshie creatures on this planet. The Autobot had to slow down to make sure the humans were ok before returning to the chase. By keeping up this pattern, Barricade was finally able to lose the Autobot.
Transforming and standing up, he sighed as his systems started to stabilized themselves. He was getting soft and slower in his reaction timing. Slag it, it was Swindle’s fault. Having him running around, doing his errands, it was enough to frag up his processor. He would have to head to the holo room after he got back to base and spend some time bashing Autobots’ head in.
During his plotting, he gave no indication that he had picked up the Autobot signature coming up behind him. So, that foolish scout thought he could get the better of him, did he?
Pulling out his weapon, he spun around to slash at his would-be attacker. Only, he stopped mid-attack as he recongnized the smaller silver form staring in wonder at him. A similar expression came across Barricade’s own harsh features.
“Bluestreak...” he finally said, dropping his weapon to the ground.
Bluestreak didn’t say anything as he stood there and stared at the transformer in front of him. No, this wasn’t a dream. No, it wasn’t a near death experience nor the Well of the AllSpark. It was real, it was all real.
“...Cade...it that you...?” said Bluestreak, softly.
“Yeah, it’s me, Blue,” said Barricade, a smile creeping awkwardly over his face. He was finally talking to Bluestreak. He had hoped for this moment since he first found out his younger co-creation had survived. A chance to talk to him, see that he was ok even if he was with the Autobots. As Barricade moved a bit closer to Bluestreak, the feeling of his spark clouded his thoughts. Decepticons and Autobots became, for a moment, irrelevant. What he wanted right now was to be a unit again.
Then Bluestreak came running at him, arms wide open, in what Barricade thought must be an attack.