CotS - 16
Title: Conceptions of the Self - Home - Mei's Fanfic Master List
FIC Summary: [2007, AU] Sore throats, nightmares, and the differences between organics and Cybertronians - something is terribly wrong with Sam. To live is to evolve, and shape alone is not enough; think of it as a mutual learning experience. (Bot!Sam, Mech/mech)
1, 2, 2.b, 3, 4, 4.b, 5, 6, 7, 7.b, 8, 8.b, 9, 9.b, 10, 10.b 10.c
Chapter Sixteen : Witwicky Lives
Although I know I suck cos I left you guys hanging for a long time ... I wrote this chapter through the flu. So if it makes any sense at all, you are probably as hyped up on cold medication as me.
On that note, I still managed to do some research, and discovered that Rotf!Sideswipe is the same height as Sambot. Who knew? However, when I tried to scale the Corvette Stingray into my homebrewed size conversions, it actually just places him just inches behind Jolt. Which, from what I can roughly see, he's actually like a foot behind. WHATEVER. Inaccuracies abound. Business as usual.
Also, I might have lied about that whole thing with the 'ROTF not included'. Because with each viewing of RotF, I like it more. But still. No sunharvester for you.
Chapter Sixteen: Witwicky Lives
"Prowl," he said sharply, "you and I are going to have a conversation about asking questions you don't really want to know the answer to. Soon."
-+-
Will tried really hard not to stagger as he made his way through the doorway into the hanger where the Autobots were gathered. There was just enough noise that he was having a hard time hearing himself think, which really didn't mean anything since he was pretty sure he wasn't thinking anything other than 'oh God'. Two dozen of his own men were all carrying on excited conversations, and three of the attendant giant alien robots were conversing loudly enough. The rest of them at least had the decency to keep it to their silence channels.
"Alright," he shouted over the general murmur, cutting through it with ease. "Let's get this briefing over with."
Although, if you asked him and any of his men, it was entirely too fucking early to be dealing with this shit ... even if it was about ten after four this time, and not three. Will had this wacky idea that the alien robots were probably all night owls after all of these months of living together, because even if he saw them around during the day they only seemed to get really active during the night. Also, it never seemed to fail that they entered the fucking atmosphere at night. Which, considering the few entries he'd witnessed, made sense at least a little. It wasn't exactly a subtle affair, even if they were pretty fast at it.
It didn't hurt that the government had kind of bribed the astronomers with extended funds to say that yeah, there were a lot of meteors recently. The news reported that scientists said it was debris from a planet that had been ripped apart. Which -- god -- while accurate, was somehow horribly embarrassing.
("It's true," Ironhide said blankly, as if he'd been caught off guard by Will's awkward mention of the subject.
"Yes," Optimus agreed guilelessly, the quiet churning of gears and machinery whispering through his frame as he lifted his head briefly to look up toward the sky and the stars. "I believe this is what you humans would call a coincidence. We could be considered debris from our fallen world." He'd looked down, the glaring blue lights glancing at Will and Epps and the men who'd followed them out to the leader of the Autobots. "Has something come up, William Lennox?")
He found himself glancing at the unfolding figure of Optimus Prime, and tried to shake off that almost feeling that had been creeping up on him ever since news of that report had reached him (and a part of him wondered: was this what being Sam Witwicky had felt like?). Looking around, he finally spotted the burnt orange mustang with the tricked out sound system. "Blaster," he called, "you go the intel, right? Let's see it."
The mustang jerked a little, then unfolded in a swift and choppy manner. Blaster's transformation was a little different from the average Autobot, although Will couldn't remember who it was that had explained why, or that why for that matter. "Here we go," Blaster said, straightening, and the image was suddenly projected into the air in front of them. "So, everything was as quiet as normal, you know? Then at about 3:16:42 this morning, my feed from one of the satellites suddenly got cut off. I mean, I don't really pay attention to surveillance satellites, you guys have way too many up there for one mech, even one like me, to keep track of, you know? But when I checked for that one, it wasn't there. This was the last image it had, which really isn't much of anything. Now, at the time, it was about here," he said as the image warped to display a globe with the satellite in question a bright red against the sea of blue satellites over the green globe. The image warped again, shifting to indicate that it was around the upper US, about where the Lakes were.
"Then," he continued, the image shifting to what Will recognized as satellite feed, which suddenly went staticy and disappeared, "at 3:17:01, my feed from all of the surveillance satellites just kablooyed."
"Wait," Will interjected, "they were all destroyed?"
"No," Optimus said, studying the projected electrical 'snow' before he looked at Will. "They were disabled by one of our weapons."
"Right in one," Blaster said, pointing to Optimus as if to say that he was on the ball. Which of course he was, he was the leader of the Autobots. "At 4:04:12, I got feed back from them, except for that first one that went offline. But that's not the interesting part, the interesting part is that at 25:21 after three, there were reports of strange disturbances and property damage in the urban areas of this city the humans call Detroit." The satellite image of North America suddenly sharpened and zoomed in, again and again, until they were seeing a bird's eye view of the city and the destruction. "By 31:05, it was in the 'downtown', and then at 38:56, the first report of the Cobo Center behind destroyed came in." The image adjusted to display it, and while it was impossible to see the damage from the roof, Blaster had resources. The image he was projecting morphed to show image and video of the inside of the Center.
"Aw, no," Epps said. "Hell no."
Will kind of thought that Epps had summed it up perfectly, right there.
" ... is the Cobo Center a dealership?" one of the guys asked blankly.
"No, man," Epps said, "no. NAIAS. North American International Autoshow, man. Aw man, hell no. We talkin' Ferraris, Corvettes, probably some hybrid shit, man, man, what the fuck?"
"This is just great," Will said, "I don't -- I don't even know what we're going to tell people this time. Oh God. I am in such shit."
"Yeah, well, it's not just you," Blaster said, "reports suggest we're dealing with a whole squad of Cybertronians. Five or six at least. But check this out." He shifted the image again. "This occurred at around 2:28:59." The image was imperfect, but even the humans could tell that there had been something of a firefight. Blaster adjusted the image, revealing blurry shots of what seemed to be the fallen shapes of more robots, and two brightly colored smudges, one darker shade, and one shadowy one that barely registered.
"What the hell is that?" Epps asked, "man, this is like trying to watch one of those documentaries of Sasquatch or something. Blurry pictures and shit."
"Excuse me," the black humvee said politely, "Blaster, could you --? Thank you."
"Not a problem, bigbot."
Hound processed for a second, then projected the image in much sharper detail, revealing the odd image of four robots from above, projected side-by-side with an image of four vehicles driving away from the scene of the 'carnage'. "There. That any better, Epps?"
"Man," he said, "is there anything you can't do?"
Apparently taking the question seriously, Hound blinked down at Epps and said, "science, for one."
That kind of boggled the mind, but the humans just kind of had to accept that for whatever reason, not every robot had the same software.
"Okay, okay, anyway," Will stressed, trying to get them back on track before this whole very important briefing devolved into another 'shiny robots' discussion the way most of them did, "so we have four robots kicking can and taking names, and -- and reenacting Godzilla or whatever --"
"Actually," Blaster said, "I don't think those were the same Cybertronians."
Will stared. "What? How many transforming robots do we have over there?"
"Reports suggest at least seven."
" ... we have seven fucking robots loose, goin' around and blowing shit up?"
The Autobots all kind of shuffled around, looking at each other and clicking. "Yes?" Hound said tentatively.
"The good news is that they're probably Autobots," Arcee said brightly. "After we get in contact with them, the property damage will go down significantly!"
Will felt a huge headache building right behind his eyes. It was entirely too early for this. He thought about Mission City, and the kind of destruction that only five Autobots caused, and it developed into a splitting migraine. This bunch didn't even seem to have the excuse of trying to protect some ancient alien artifact of unbelievable power.
Hell, there wasn't even a Decepticon in sight. What a bunch of crazy bastards.
-+-
Because things rarely worked out the way they were planned, even if the one doing the planning supposedly had 'superior tactical genius' and way up-to-date data analyzers, it took them a lot longer to navigate the city than it should have. That and, well, Sam kinda got lost.
Like. A lot.
"You're freakin' brilliant, Sideswipe," he told the mech darkly. Did he mention that he wasn't the only one who'd gotten lost? Oh, sure, Sideswipe claimed that he had come looking for Sam, but he didn't believe that for a second, for one knowing Sideswipe -- and no, that right there was a good enough reason not to believe it.
"Hey," Sideswipe said defensively, "at least I found us a spot to get a look around at."
They'd been lost for the last fifteen minutes or so, but all together, Sam had been lost since shortly after they tried to leave. It wasn't anything faulty with Prowl's program, but rather faulty with Sam, who had figured out this whole 'driving without eyes' thing, but hadn't been prepared to function with seeing in only one dimension. The others had apparently not thought of this, because although sonar kind of immediately made sense in a 'not going further that direction' sort of way, it didn't make much sense in the 'this shape is this thing' kind of way.
How Sideswipe even found him was a little bit of a miracle or something.
"I dunno," Sam said, "unless you thought they'd be somewhere close enough to see, I don't really know what the point was. Since. You know. Eyesight. It only goes so far."
"You know," Sideswipe said, turning to peer at him, "you may have learned a few things from us, Boxy."
"What?" he said blankly.
Sideswipe ignored him for a moment, holding remarkably still while he checked out the whole entire situation. At least that was one good thing about this situation -- separated from Sunstreaker, Sideswipe actually seemed to have some sort of subroutines that allowed him to comply with the general 'hidehidehide' thing that was always bugging Sam. Being seventeen feet of giant robot alien on a world of five-nine organics would probably do that to a robot, though. Deciding that the coast was clear enough, he waved Sam on and they creeped out of the dubious cover provided by the overpass.
"At least we're almost out of Detroit," Sam muttered, "and what? Homeless people? Crazy anyway, right? No one will believe them."
Neither of them were too enamored with the idea of 'rolling blind', so to speak, which a crazy person could say was why they had ended up in their own two-man group, searching for the others. Supposedly, that stupid 'EMP' thing didn't affect Sideswipe's eerie ability to track his counterpart, but Sam was discovering that this ability pulled in a straight line, and they had to detour to get around highly populated spots. So far, despite the weather, there hadn't been any flaming trash cans with hobos collected around them, but Sam was still holding out hope.
Not ... that he particularly wanted to see hobos around a trash can, but ... it would kind of complete the whole 'stupid horror movie' atmosphere of the entire thing. Seriously? Turning into a giant robot and then the whole 'let's use the small one for parts' and then the whole firefight in the NAIAS ... well, okay: Sam had kind of gotten over that whole becoming a giant robot thing, since he'd been one for months now, but it was still surreal when he realized that he had gotten used to being a giant robot.
"You know," Sideswipe said as they took cover behind a cement pillar that wouldn't have even provided Sam with adequate cover, "I think Prowl was onto something here with this program."
Sam glanced up at him. Somehow, when Sideswipe had been talking mostly to Sunstreaker, Sam had managed to totally ignore the fact that Sideswipe was perhaps even more of a chatterbox than he himself was. Which was amazing, if anything anyone had ever told him since forever was true. "What do you mean?" he asked. If he didn't direct Sideswipe, the mech would go off on some weird tangent and Sam would probably be very, very sorry.
"This sonar thing," Sideswipe said, judging that it was safe for them to move on and stepping out into the open. "In this galaxy, it seems that most of your elements are pretty primitive. And unstable. Mostly primitive, though. Anyway, if you know what you're doing, our alloy looks different in it. Which means that Prowl's accidentally created hide-n-seek hunting tech. Which, so you know, is awesome."
"What? Like you couldn't tell before?" Sam asked skeptically.
"Boxy," Sideswipe said with some exasperation, "if someone's tech'd you up to do it, then it exists. No. Mostly, hunting Decepticons depends on the fact that Decepticons hate to sit around anywhere very long, so they don't really ever lose the heat energy. Sometimes they manage it, but with this tech ... it's gonna be fun." He was making that white noise again.
Christ. Sam wondered if Bumblebee had ever done that and he just hadn't noticed. Bumblebee had vibrated often enough. Rumbled a bit. Maybe it was like that thing he'd read about in history class, that thing where it meant one thing when Americans threw up 'the horns', and another in Europe or Spain or whatever.
"Ever stop to think that if you can do it, the 'Cons can do it?" he asked.
"Duh."
He thrust his claws up, waving them in an absentmindedly defensive manner while he made another paranoid sweep of the area and saw no one. "I'm just saying," he said. "Seriously, though. If you just discovered a program that lets you spy out ... hibernating 'Cons or whatever, then they can find Autobots that are hiding, too."
"I am never taking you Con hunting. Ever."
Good, because Sam never wanted to go Decepticon hunting. Ever.
Before long, they were forced to revert back to car form in the spirit of not being seen, which neither of them were thrilled about. For Sam, it was a little more complicated than just the fact that neither of them were too good at using the sonar program for eyes and absolutely nothing else -- it was also because he was a different car now, which mean he drove different. It made sense, but Sam hadn't really expected it, somehow.
"Almost there, Boxy," Sideswipe said as they maneuvered onto the road in a way humans would have been pressed to imitate. Even the most skill driver wouldn't have been able to drive so close to another vehicle, just so that they could hear one another talk. Sam didn't really know what Sideswipe was talking about, since if the program didn't tell him that all together, that sound made a Lamborghini shape, he wouldn't know Sideswipe from a brick wall. Hopefully, when they got their collective act together, they could just wait for one freakin' moment until all of his scanners came back online.
"Not nearly there enough," he muttered.
That was about the time that two freakin' blocks of sound-reflecting blobs came out of nowhere and he nearly took a nosedive into the nearest wall. He over corrected and almost ran straight into the larger of the blobs, which swerved gently out of the way as everyone came to a squealing halt.
"You were saying?" Sideswipe called cheerfully.
"Oh, maybe that I should just get some fucking warning next time?" Sam snarled, a little shaken. Just 'a little' since suddenly having two cars appear out of figurative nowhere was hardly as harrowing as Sideswipe trying to drown them all forever or that whole deal with the cop cars in England. Or some of his dreams previous to this whole escapade, for example.
"Sure," Sunstreaker said acerbically, "next time, I'll honk."
"We are trying to remain unnoticed," Sideswipe added helpfully, the betraying traitor that he was.
"A hard thing to do when you insist on drawing attention," Prowl informed him darkly.
"I get it already, with the orange and the shape!" Sam snapped, perhaps a little more irritated by the exchange simply because Prowl was the vehicle he only missed because Prowl got the hell out of the way. Losing control of his own body wasn't something he was going to enjoy any time soon.
There was an audible pause, and then Prowl broke it, saying: "Actually, I was referring to the noise you made when you attempted to run into me."
Ah. Well, Sam supposed there was that, too. Humans did tend to go investigate 'car crash' noises. "Great," he said briefly, unwillingly acknowledging that fact. "So, now, the others? Right?"
"Yes," Prowl said, shifting his wheels. "They should be gathered at a rendezvous point. Of course, it took a while to locate the two of you, so I can only hope they haven't decided to head out on their own." He eased past Sam's bumper (such as it was) and took point.
"Oh, wait, you mean you have a map, at least?" Sam said with relief. "Oh good. I'm glad somebody has something like foresight around here."
"Oh come on," Sideswipe said with an offended click. "Give a mech a break."
"I do not regret to inform you that there will be no breaks given," Prowl rumbled. "I will be reporting this to Ironhide."
Prowl really was starting to remind Sam of that one kid in second grade who was always saying 'I'm gonna tell teacher on you!' complete with that singsong thing. Actually, now that he thought about it, that kid had been Sam. Well, he could hardly be blamed when his classmates gave him too much material.
"Frag," Sideswipe said unhappily. "Com'n, Prowl, like I could really predict being hit by that pulse! The humans' network was supposed to stay there, you know."
"You were trained better, Sideswipe," Prowl said, completely unsympathetically.
Prowl clearly didn't understand the whole trauma of being stuck on a small ship with nowhere to go for six freakin' weeks. The fact that Sideswipe was still even slightly interested in doing something other than blowing shit up (granted, not often, but come on) was something like a miracle. Even Sam had been a little excited about shooting things. So really, Prowl needed to relax.
"It could be worse," he said helpfully. "Sideswipe could be, like ... yunno." He searched his memories, and came up with: "breaking buses in half. Or, you know. Yeah."
"Given the difficulty a mech of Sideswipe's stature and model would have in breaking a bus in half," Prowl said, "I doubt it. Please define how it could be worse, realistically."
At first, Sam wasn't really sure what happened when he spontaneously read damage all over his freaking shell, and he attempted to kill everyone by swerving suddenly. It took a split second of furious computations, but he swiftly realized that his stupid glitched programing was completely retarded in ways he hadn't realized before. In that he had gotten a sudden sensory overload, which his human parts remembered tended to be painful; his Cybertronian programming responded to that by saying that he'd been damaged because it was about as intelligent as a quantum physicist and as smart as a stoner -- it learned fast, but it didn't always make the right connections.
The connection being that a sheet of water from the sky had fallen on them. It was raining. Of freaking course. It wasn't like Sam was unaccustomed to rain and gloomy weather after the whole misery of the goddamned British Isle or whatever, but Christ. He could probably tolerate never seeing any moisture come out of the sky for ... ever. Ever again.
"Prowl," he said sharply, "you and I are going to have a conversation about asking questions you don't really want to know the answer to. Soon."
"I fail to see what it is you mean."
Sideswipe was over there making that noise again, the bastard.
"Don't talk to me," he said, bristling. "No, seriously. Don't talk to me ever again, okay?"
So, it was raining and Sam both irritated and miserable. On the other hand, all the rain drops seemed to have the unintended side effect of making the whole world a lot more clearer than it had been before, at least in the short term. It muffled a lot of the noise pollution -- well, what noise pollution had been present at four in the morning. But clearer view or not, it didn't really change that now the road was slippery.
About the second time that Sideswipe hydroplaned a short distance, Sam got the feeling that the antics would have been a lot more wild if Prowl wasn't here. The stupid jerk really wasn't fooling anyone into thinking that it was all by accident. Proved when Prowl said, testily, "Sideswipe." And more obviously when a second later, Sunstreaker slammed into Sideswipe's side.
"Knock it off," Sam added irritably. "Christ." Not that Thing One and Thing Two really listened to him, but he had to throw his two cents in there, somewhere.
"I suppose I should become accustomed to this," Prowl said unhappily. "If alterative modes are any indication of subtly ..."
"No," Sideswipe gasped with humor, humming as he dropped back to cruise beside Prowl, "what did that fragger imitate?"
"Which fragger?" Sunstreaker asked dryly.
"It doesn't matter," Prowl said dismally. "I am not entirely certain what either of them scanned, but I am no longer so concerned with how much attention your alternative modes seem to draw."
" ... oh my God," Sam said weakly, "you mean there is something more gaudy than red and yellow Lamborghinis?"
"If any mech could find a mode like that, those two could," he confirmed unhappily.
Sunstreaker seemed less than impressed by their despair over his alternative mode, although some of his bad attitude might have been caused by the thought that someone actually managed to find something flashier than him.
"I need to see this for myself," Sam said.
"You probably will, pretty soon," Sideswipe said cheerfully. "That's where we're headed, right?"
Prowl made an affirmative noise, retaking point. They traveled in relative silence through the heavy rain for another fifteen minutes or so before Prowl led the way off the road and behind a building. Behind the building was what could have been an employee parking lot, although there was only one vehicle parked there. Why became obvious, since as soon as they drew near, it began to click and crackle at them. Although he was able to immediately identify it as the Cybertronian language since Sideswipe tended to use it at his counterpart, he wasn't thrilled with the reminder that these guys were still from the far reaches of space.
A part of him was kind of amused and alarmed at the thought he had that they weren't 'tamed robots'. What the hell.
Prowl then launched into another lecture, though this one thankfully only lasted a few moments; the scolding tone was unmistakable to Sam, whether he could understand what was being said or not. The car made a few comments that churned with sheepish tones, as he presumably accepted the rebuke before launching into a short and concise set of clicks and staticy noises.
The general consensus seemed to be to transform, so Sam followed suit, and gave a massive shudder when he finally had all of his pieces in their final position. Although he was far from unfamiliar with the sensation of water dripping and sliding around inside him, it still kind of creeped him out. That, and as he looked around, it seemed that they were all beginning to steam. The rain was much cooler than their internal workings, and despite efforts to keep their temperature regulated, the difference was enough.
He could also now see that they were standing behind some kind of lonely bar in the middle of nowhere, and also that the robot that had met them was the same blue car that he'd run into earlier. Also, his face was nothing short of startling for baring some abstract resemblance to Sam's imprecise memories of Barricade, and the fact that his hands weren't hands at all. Hell, Sam thought that he had claws, but his were at least arranged more like hands. This guy had ... prongs or something.
Apparently, he wasn't the only one that recognized someone else, either, since the blue bot glanced at him and clicked twice. All this really did was firm the idea that his face was bug like.
He gestured them forward, and since Prowl and the counterparts tramped off into the muck after him, Sam reluctantly followed suit. They really hadn't gone that far into the wilderness when the sound of an argument reached Sam's sensors. And, well, 'homicidal copier machines' didn't really even begin to cover what that sounded like. The rain was coming down so hard by this time that they were practically in the middle of the mess before Sam actually saw the others.
There were four Autobots in attendance, including their guide, who was even at the moment moving to try to interject himself between the two noisiest mechs there. Sam was a little impressed on both sides that these two seemed inches away from having one of those infamous giant robot death matches, since one had rather horrifically powerful looking guns, and the other was shorter by a few feet and apparently those feet had gone into the giant fucking blades that were sprouting out of his arms and nearly doubled their length. Christ.
Also, the sword wielding suicidal manic? Sam's oh-so-intelligent computer of a brain informed him that it was the same Cybertronian that had nearly mowed him down back at the auto show. Of course.
No one paid their arrival any mind at all, since apparently the looming battle between these two was much more important than even trying to hide at this point. Everyone was saying something very excitedly, which could have been 'fight fight fight!' for all Sam could understand. This excited chatter didn't exclude their guide, either, because he'd immediately hurried forward to insert himself in the middle of this mess.
Talking what could have been a mile a minute, Blue shove his way between the two silver mechs. He was taller than both Sam and the mech with the swords, but not nearly as much as the gunner was taller than them. Of course, even if his interference was rather obvious in that he completely obscured the smaller mech, this didn't really impact the confrontation ... at all. All sizes aside, he might as well have been a Chihuahua yapping at two German Shepards, and the two silver mechs' agitation was reaching a high paced staccato beat, like ... combat drums or that stupid opera music, and as one, they lunged toward one another --
And Blue stuck his claw prong things out, and there was a brilliant flash of white light with a loud popping sound followed by the stench of burnt circuits. It was roughly like a transformer blowing, and the two larger bots jerked back, nursing their scorched chest bits. Chest plates? Kinda like plates. The mech with the blades began snarling venomously at Blue while the mech with guns ... well, 'reverted them to hands' wasn't the right description, really, because whatever the fuck those were, they weren't really hands. 'Disabled his guns' might make a better description of what happened, and he began to whine.
'Aw man, I really liked this shirt', Sam imagined that he was saying, as if the mech had spilled ketchup on it. Hey, judging by the way he was rubbing at the scorch marks with his only-roughly-digit-shaped appendages, he might have been saying something like that. Not that he was very successful at anything. Sam barely saw how those things really functioned as digits, since they were more like a bizarrely clustered set of jointed ... weird ... things.
Sam was still boggling over the new mechs with unusual body parts when Prowl stalked forward and gave a few sharp barks of static noise. This effectively let everyone know that they had arrived, and immediately, the entire group of Autobots snapped to attention. Not really the kind of attention that a human would come to, but the kind a robot alien might, becoming immediately still and silent, the cold blue of their optics training on Prowl's shape and following his movements faithfully.
It was kind of like a game of 'red light, green light', because some of them had frozen in comical positions.
Also, Sam was kind of impressed by this display. What was it about Prowl that allowed him to step in and take complete control of a situation? Not only had the Lamborghini jerks pulled a complete one-eighty and bowed to his commands, but even in the middle of a tension filled confrontation, he was able to command respect. Of course, there was the unnaturally intriguing question as to if there were exceptions to this rule. Say ... if someone replicated the color nanite glitch that Sunstreaker implied that Sideswipe had displayed once. Could a yellow and pink polka dotted Prowl still manage to command respect?
Prowl wound down pretty quickly this time, then turned to the mech whose guns only minimally made it back to being not-guns, and offered a claw tip. Then it was a bit like watching those biology videos where they showed one cell splitting into two, which split to four, and eight -- although not as extensive. There were only four robots, after all, but each mech passed the download to another. Sam made a wild guess that it was possible these downloads were taking significantly longer than being poked in the arm by Sideswipe. Then they all grew still again, whirling away and occasionally clicking to one another but mostly processing for a handful of seconds. Then the whole download process started all over again, only this time in reverse and ending with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, the latter of which turned back and prodded Sam again.
Since he was kind of expecting it, he didn't jump, and instead accepted the tiny package of data that his process immediately transformed into a form he could understand. It was the information that would normally be pinged to him, free floating and unattached since it had been passed around unconventionally.
Then the silver gunner said, "okay, great. Now that we know we actually landed on the right planet this time, no thanks to --" a spit crackle broke in here. "As soon as we nail this nuet, we can be back with the others in no time!"
"Down, boy," the other silver mech said dryly.
He jerked around to click angrily at the other, but Prowl vented a lot of air into a huge huff of steam and said, "stand down, both of you. Silverbolt, refrain from needling your commander."
"Commander my aft," the sword-wielding mech said, apparently Silverbolt, and Sam pinned the information down to the appropriate information file. "Glitch doesn't have half of the experience I do."
The mech in question gave an insulted chirp, but subsided when Prowl waved him down. "You will stand down," Prowl said darkly. "Your Prime placed him in a position of command, therefore you will obey."
"You might kinda wanna listen," Sideswipe said helpfully, "Prowl's kinda wound up, you know. Imprinter and all."
"Yeah," a red mech said, "about that -- no. No way. Imprinters don't belong on the front lines. Get rid of him."
What the hell were they talking about?
"No," Silverbolt said slowly, thoughtfully, "let him stay. It couldn't hurt."
"Couldn't hurt?" the blue mech asked, "How couldn't it?"
"Seriously, Silverbolt," the red one agreed, "we don't really need another bunch like those two."
"Hey," Sideswipe objected, unusually serious for once and sounding a little angry.
"Can't really make much difference," Silverbolt said, idly cycling out hot air. "It's not like it happened naturally."
"Enough," Prowl said sharply, and the group immediately went back to attention. He glowered at the bunch for a moment before he focused on the gunner. "Would someone care to inform me of the reason why the plan was deviated from?"
"Oh sure," the chrome mech said with a jerk of his head, spreading his arms wide in that human 'why me?' manner. "One of those glitched neutrals decided that it was time to make a move. He stole the project that --" and he whirl clicked a name --"was working on, then took a mad dash headlong into Earth."
"He waited until we were out of communication with you," the red mech said angrily. "Took us by surprise."
"I doubt the humans will be pleased with the damage to their city," Prowl sighed, "not to mention the damage done to their 'auto show'. You should hope you have not placed Optimus Prime in an unfortunate position."
"Hey," the chrome mech said defensively, "how were we supposed to know that Optimus allied himself with the fauna?"
Sam reflexively got offended by the term up until he was distracted by the noise the blue mech suddenly made, sounding fairly alarmed.
"Hey, you guys," he said, "what do you think --" that same whirl-click of a name "-- is up to? We've never run into intelligent life before, and if this technology is any indication ..."
"Oh slag," the commander said, making a weak noise like a vehicle whose engine refused to turn over. It was a level of dismay previously unknown to Sam.
"Don't be so pessimistic," Sideswipe said in what could almost be considered a soothing manner. Almost. Except for the undercurrent of hilarity. "According to the humans themselves, they actually want to be abducted by aliens."
"You're not helpful, Sideswipe," the commander said despairingly.
"I am not entirely sure that he will understand that one can not simply put them back together after he has investigated," Prowl said pensively. "And our systems will not reboot for another nine breems." He whirled absently for a second, processing, then said, "what is the likelihood that he was not in range of the pulses?"
Between themselves, the mechs clicked away, transferring a lot of data much quicker than speaking English could. Finally, the commander shrugged (where in the hell had he seen spinners?!). "Pretty good. Nerd was saying something about how we shouldn't all land in the same place, but he changed his mind when he realized he'd be landing alone. Fragger's suicidal, not stupid."
Was it just Sam, or did that sentence make no sense whatsoever? He looked around, but apparently it was only him, since no one seemed to think it was anything unusual.
Prowl considered this for another moment, then said, "perhaps he will simply settle for studying their network in lieu of engaging in first hand data gathering."
"And perhaps Megatron will call this whole thing off as the biggest joke in history," Sideswipe said brightly.
"And maybe he's dead," the commander of the Fourth said, "or at least your informant seems to think so."
Some kind of click-chirp snapped out of Sam's chassis. He had every right to be insulted -- killing Megatron was not only something he personally did, but it was how he ended up like -- like this to begin with. "Listen, you shiny gun-wielding maniac," he snapped, pointing at the mech with one long, sharp claw. "Megatron is dead; Prime thought so, the human scientist thought so, they dumped him into the ocean, because it's so. 'Course, I guess if you don't believe it, we could always go out in a boat and you could take a dip to see his crustacean encrusted carcass. Yes? No? Sound like a plan to you?"
"Whoa, whoa," the gunner said tolerantly, "I was just saying. Anyway, it wouldn't be necessary. If Megatron's dead, we'll never see his ugly face again. He likes being on the front of battle entirely too much for it to be any other way."
"That is entirely accurate," Prowl agreed. "But rather irrelevant at this point. Our primary concerns at this time are to retrieve our missing, retrieve the project that the neutral has stolen, and not least of all, reporting back to Optimus Prime."
"And how do you propose to do any of that?" the smallest red mech inquired skeptically. "Every minute the nerd's out there alone, some squishie is one step closer to a messy if unintentional end, that fragger who is like some kind of dark shard in a slagging meteor field is putting distance between us as we speak, and Optimus Prime's last known location was a compromised base lunar cycles ago!"
"I am well aware of these setbacks, Cliffjumper," Prowl said testily.
"Great," Sam said, "are you aware of the setbacks of recharging?"
Sideswipe groaned like a steel beam just trying to snap. "Again?" he asked unhappily. Then: "No, no, I should be surprise it's just now. Slag. Two fights and a new altmode. Alright."
"Thanks for giving me permission," he said darkly. "It's not like my systems will automatically shut down at all."
Prowl stared at Sam, giving him the rather uncomfortable idea that he had just made himself something of a huge inconvenience for the dark mech.
"What?" he said. It wasn't like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker hadn't realized that Sam didn't have a choice in the matter.
"Hey," the gunner said suddenly, turning to the blue mech, "do you think you can give him a jump-start?"
The blue mech shot him a startled and reproachful look, shifting away from him sidewise.
Sam was not so mild. "No," he said. "No. No, I don't even want to hear anything about jump-starting. No, no no."
Prowl shifted. "That changes the plan somewhat."
"I really, really suggest you don't leave him alone while he does that," Sideswipe said helpfully. "The only time we did that, we lost track of him for a while."
"I couldn't freakin' communicate at the time!" Sam snapped. "I can do that now! It changes things!" He really resented this whole 'whose gonna baby sit Sam' thing that the robots seemed to be having.
"It should be safe to allow the child to recharge while we do what needs to be done," Prowl decided. "In the meantime, we should disperse, collect information. That way, we might have a better chance of locating --" the crackle spit that must be a name, "-- when our communication network came back on."
"Sounds good to me," the gunner agreed.
"Yeah," Sideswipe said, "but so, how are any of you one-of-a-kind cars going to go incognito in the same city that's been showing them for a while now?"
A silence descended on the group and they all looked at each other, at a loss.
"Great," Sam said. "Get back to me when you figure that out."
-+-
Tracking nine Autobots (there were nine, after all, not just the seven they'd initially managed to identify) was harder than a mech would have predicted.
There were a few factors contributing to this. First of all, none of their previous battlefields had ever been this complex. Humanity was the first alien race that they'd come across that had been advanced enough to have something approaching a civilized community. Then there was the whole thing where they had reverse engineered Cybertronian biology. Then came the fact that no one could get in touch with the newcomers. Plus, they were apparently tracking someone or something.
The brownout that covered the entire eastern seaboard hadn't exactly helped much either. It clearly originated in some Cybertronian intelligence, because the entire human network had lit up with spark energy for a few hours.
So what that all came out to was that it was three days later that they finally managed to catch up them in Tennessee. "(Looks like Hound was right,)" Jazz sent as he rolled his low laying alt mode behind a cement wall. He finally tracked down some of them to what appeared to be some kind of abandoned site. 'Tracked' being kind of a deceptive word, since really, he'd been sideblinded by what might as well have been a beacon saying 'come check this out'. "(It was the counterparts that took down those Decepticons upstate.)"
"(You have a visual?)" Optimus queried.
"(Yeah,)", he returned, "(but I ain't stickin' my sensors out there. It's the counterparts and a pair of mechs, one of which is probably Cliffjumper.)"
"( ... one of which?)"
"(Yeah. One of which. You read me. There's two chasebots out there with sensor arrays I don't even wanna think about.)"
"(I would be willing to help,)" Hound said. "(Cliffjumper's weapons aren't strong enough to do much damage to me.)"
"( ... don't even let Ratchet hear you talking like that,)" Jazz sent dryly.
"(What are they doing, standing around like idiots?)"
Jazz looked again, carefully scanning below the normal sensor range that would have alerted most Cybertronians. "( ... hiding, I think.)"
"( ... hiding?)" Bumblebee queried. "(What from? Not humans, obviously.)"
"(No,)" Jazz said, "(it's not that kind of hi --)"
There was a sudden concussive blast that rattled his communication transceivers, swiftly followed by an electromagnetic pulse that was typical of such blasts and shocked him for a moment. It wasn't nearly powerful enough to knock his finer instruments offline the way their normal pulseblasts did, but it was still disorienting enough. Jazz froze there for a startled moment, then scanned the other Autobots. Both chase class mechs were swooning, and the counterparts seemed amused, as usual. One of them were attempting to help the smaller chasebot up. The other appeared to be peering over the wall they'd been hiding behind being irritable in general. It seemed that Sunstreaker had decided to be yellow this time around.
"(Seems like it's Wheeljack type of hiding,)" he sent to the others dryly.
"(Oh Primus.)"
"(What is this? Did all the worse mechs in the entire Autobot allied forces decide to band into one nightmarish, glitched group?)"
Radio silence prevailed for a moment before Bumblebee said: "(Blaster, butt out.)"
"(Hey,)" the comm hub sent, hurt, "(I was just keepin' an eye out for everyone else back here at the base. You know I'm the only one that can signal this far. Besides, Ratchet wanted to keep an eye out just in case of an emergency --)"
"(Blaster,)" they all sent, minus Optimus who wasn't quiet so informal, "(butt. Out.)"
When there wasn't a reply, Jazz figured that at least if Blaster was still spying on their signals, he wasn't going to drop comments here and there. Frag, they all knew that having the counterparts around would at least make things 'interesting', but that adding Cliffjumper and Wheeljack to the mix would hardly make things better, so they didn't really need commentary to that effect.
"Hey, Wheeljack," one of the chasebots called, "its no good. We definitely felt that."
"Frag," came a voice from the other side of the wall, and a small mech began to climb over it, Wheeljack's signature light array strobing as he said: "okay, okay, so let me make a few adjustments --"
"No," the chasebot being tentatively held up by Sideswipe said. "No, Wheeljack, no. No, you will not be making 'a few' adjustments, you said that about a hundred adjustments ago -- I'm gonna purge my tank. I'm gonna -- I'm gonna -- ooh. I don't feel so good anymore." He waved the others off with a null, bent over, but didn't actually make any noises that would have forewarned a purge. Cliffjumper still took a few good steps and got clear, though, shooting the other mech a wary look.
Sideswipe's amusement was enough to reach even Jazz, but he turned to Wheeljack, towering over the small mech. "It really isn't any good," he said, "even 'Streaker and I feel it, Wheeljack."
"(Hey guys,)" Jazz sent, having been stunned into silence before now. "(These guys, you know, the ones that landed all of three days ago?)"
"(What?)" Bumblebee sent back, familiar enough with Jazz's sense of delivery.
"( ... they're speaking English.)"
No one responded to this announcement for a moment or two, and then Optimus decided to take one for the team.
"(Let us hope that this is not due to any interactions with humans,)" he sent, although he couldn't completely stop himself from sounding doubtful. "(Jazz, it's imperative to make contact.)"
"(Right, right,)" he sighed. "(Sure, I'll stick my neck out here. Take one for the team. And all that jazz.)"
"( ... you were kind of rattled by that blast that cut you off, weren't you?)" Bumblebee asked.
"( ... just a little,)" he acknowledged. It was a common side effect of Wheeljack's experiments. Especially for Jazz, since he had that issue with his sensor array as it was.
So, his own minor program malfunctions in mind, he double checked to make sure that none of the Autobots were actually doing anything more than getting into what seemed to be a wild kind of argument about Wheeljack's newest attempt at doing ... whatever it was he was attempting to do at this time, and he sent out a ping to identify himself.
He was immediately hit with confirmation of the identities of three of the four. It was the fourth set of data that really caught his attention, though.
Jazz was an old, old model. Most mechs didn't know that, but his function was a far, far cry from the saboteur he spent his time being these vorns. And that was probably the only reason he was able to piece together what little bit he understood from that forth data set. Through the confusing tangle of information stored in a way that his processor hadn't been programmed to understand, he managed to take what he did understand and come up with one startling answer.
And as the chasebot swung upright, saying: "Jazz?!" Jazz immediately and completely unintentionally opened communications to the original landing group, those who would know the significance of the knowledge, and sent "(Sam's alive.)"
-+-
"(Sam's alive.)"
- Because I was kind of beating myself up, and there's a giant time gap in the last third of this chapter, you can expect that explained next chapter. Yes. I said NEXT CHAPTER. Oh God. No, really. I'm working on it.
- In case anyone wanted to know what an Intermission from Prowl's Pov would sound like, let me spoil it here. It would basically be an awkward, long winded multi-paragraphed thing that basically would say: "WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY SUCH FAILURES?! FML!"
- Here's a thought for you. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Sounding like Fez from That 70s Show. Does this not make your brain go FML?
- Also, it occurred to me that the classic 'BEEP BEEP DOP BEEP' noise transformers make during their transformations might actually be them shouting things like 'OPTIMUS: TRANSFORM' in their own language. See? Sam was right. Japanese robots. Super advanced Japanese robots.
- I told you. I wrote this chapter on cold medication. The Q. It talks to me.
SHOUT OUT: Thank the following people for being the true drive behind sick!mei to write this damned chapter. Deserthermit, for acknowledging the petpeeves of some authors. Karaq, for being quietly supportive and not nagging, even though the urge must have been there. Caelum, for just generally being awesome about this whole mess. Synaltern, for reminding me while I was in a funk that I don't need a REASON. Bloody_american for encouraging me to write WTFever. And drharper, cos LOL.
And for anyone I didn't mention by name, all the awesome people I chat with through the PM thing on FF and on Livejournal. You should know who you are. 3
-- To Be Continued --
FIC Summary: [2007, AU] Sore throats, nightmares, and the differences between organics and Cybertronians - something is terribly wrong with Sam. To live is to evolve, and shape alone is not enough; think of it as a mutual learning experience. (Bot!Sam, Mech/mech)
1, 2, 2.b, 3, 4, 4.b, 5, 6, 7, 7.b, 8, 8.b, 9, 9.b, 10, 10.b 10.c
Chapter Sixteen : Witwicky Lives
Although I know I suck cos I left you guys hanging for a long time ... I wrote this chapter through the flu. So if it makes any sense at all, you are probably as hyped up on cold medication as me.
On that note, I still managed to do some research, and discovered that Rotf!Sideswipe is the same height as Sambot. Who knew? However, when I tried to scale the Corvette Stingray into my homebrewed size conversions, it actually just places him just inches behind Jolt. Which, from what I can roughly see, he's actually like a foot behind. WHATEVER. Inaccuracies abound. Business as usual.
Also, I might have lied about that whole thing with the 'ROTF not included'. Because with each viewing of RotF, I like it more. But still. No sunharvester for you.
Chapter Sixteen: Witwicky Lives
"Prowl," he said sharply, "you and I are going to have a conversation about asking questions you don't really want to know the answer to. Soon."
-+-
Will tried really hard not to stagger as he made his way through the doorway into the hanger where the Autobots were gathered. There was just enough noise that he was having a hard time hearing himself think, which really didn't mean anything since he was pretty sure he wasn't thinking anything other than 'oh God'. Two dozen of his own men were all carrying on excited conversations, and three of the attendant giant alien robots were conversing loudly enough. The rest of them at least had the decency to keep it to their silence channels.
"Alright," he shouted over the general murmur, cutting through it with ease. "Let's get this briefing over with."
Although, if you asked him and any of his men, it was entirely too fucking early to be dealing with this shit ... even if it was about ten after four this time, and not three. Will had this wacky idea that the alien robots were probably all night owls after all of these months of living together, because even if he saw them around during the day they only seemed to get really active during the night. Also, it never seemed to fail that they entered the fucking atmosphere at night. Which, considering the few entries he'd witnessed, made sense at least a little. It wasn't exactly a subtle affair, even if they were pretty fast at it.
It didn't hurt that the government had kind of bribed the astronomers with extended funds to say that yeah, there were a lot of meteors recently. The news reported that scientists said it was debris from a planet that had been ripped apart. Which -- god -- while accurate, was somehow horribly embarrassing.
("It's true," Ironhide said blankly, as if he'd been caught off guard by Will's awkward mention of the subject.
"Yes," Optimus agreed guilelessly, the quiet churning of gears and machinery whispering through his frame as he lifted his head briefly to look up toward the sky and the stars. "I believe this is what you humans would call a coincidence. We could be considered debris from our fallen world." He'd looked down, the glaring blue lights glancing at Will and Epps and the men who'd followed them out to the leader of the Autobots. "Has something come up, William Lennox?")
He found himself glancing at the unfolding figure of Optimus Prime, and tried to shake off that almost feeling that had been creeping up on him ever since news of that report had reached him (and a part of him wondered: was this what being Sam Witwicky had felt like?). Looking around, he finally spotted the burnt orange mustang with the tricked out sound system. "Blaster," he called, "you go the intel, right? Let's see it."
The mustang jerked a little, then unfolded in a swift and choppy manner. Blaster's transformation was a little different from the average Autobot, although Will couldn't remember who it was that had explained why, or that why for that matter. "Here we go," Blaster said, straightening, and the image was suddenly projected into the air in front of them. "So, everything was as quiet as normal, you know? Then at about 3:16:42 this morning, my feed from one of the satellites suddenly got cut off. I mean, I don't really pay attention to surveillance satellites, you guys have way too many up there for one mech, even one like me, to keep track of, you know? But when I checked for that one, it wasn't there. This was the last image it had, which really isn't much of anything. Now, at the time, it was about here," he said as the image warped to display a globe with the satellite in question a bright red against the sea of blue satellites over the green globe. The image warped again, shifting to indicate that it was around the upper US, about where the Lakes were.
"Then," he continued, the image shifting to what Will recognized as satellite feed, which suddenly went staticy and disappeared, "at 3:17:01, my feed from all of the surveillance satellites just kablooyed."
"Wait," Will interjected, "they were all destroyed?"
"No," Optimus said, studying the projected electrical 'snow' before he looked at Will. "They were disabled by one of our weapons."
"Right in one," Blaster said, pointing to Optimus as if to say that he was on the ball. Which of course he was, he was the leader of the Autobots. "At 4:04:12, I got feed back from them, except for that first one that went offline. But that's not the interesting part, the interesting part is that at 25:21 after three, there were reports of strange disturbances and property damage in the urban areas of this city the humans call Detroit." The satellite image of North America suddenly sharpened and zoomed in, again and again, until they were seeing a bird's eye view of the city and the destruction. "By 31:05, it was in the 'downtown', and then at 38:56, the first report of the Cobo Center behind destroyed came in." The image adjusted to display it, and while it was impossible to see the damage from the roof, Blaster had resources. The image he was projecting morphed to show image and video of the inside of the Center.
"Aw, no," Epps said. "Hell no."
Will kind of thought that Epps had summed it up perfectly, right there.
" ... is the Cobo Center a dealership?" one of the guys asked blankly.
"No, man," Epps said, "no. NAIAS. North American International Autoshow, man. Aw man, hell no. We talkin' Ferraris, Corvettes, probably some hybrid shit, man, man, what the fuck?"
"This is just great," Will said, "I don't -- I don't even know what we're going to tell people this time. Oh God. I am in such shit."
"Yeah, well, it's not just you," Blaster said, "reports suggest we're dealing with a whole squad of Cybertronians. Five or six at least. But check this out." He shifted the image again. "This occurred at around 2:28:59." The image was imperfect, but even the humans could tell that there had been something of a firefight. Blaster adjusted the image, revealing blurry shots of what seemed to be the fallen shapes of more robots, and two brightly colored smudges, one darker shade, and one shadowy one that barely registered.
"What the hell is that?" Epps asked, "man, this is like trying to watch one of those documentaries of Sasquatch or something. Blurry pictures and shit."
"Excuse me," the black humvee said politely, "Blaster, could you --? Thank you."
"Not a problem, bigbot."
Hound processed for a second, then projected the image in much sharper detail, revealing the odd image of four robots from above, projected side-by-side with an image of four vehicles driving away from the scene of the 'carnage'. "There. That any better, Epps?"
"Man," he said, "is there anything you can't do?"
Apparently taking the question seriously, Hound blinked down at Epps and said, "science, for one."
That kind of boggled the mind, but the humans just kind of had to accept that for whatever reason, not every robot had the same software.
"Okay, okay, anyway," Will stressed, trying to get them back on track before this whole very important briefing devolved into another 'shiny robots' discussion the way most of them did, "so we have four robots kicking can and taking names, and -- and reenacting Godzilla or whatever --"
"Actually," Blaster said, "I don't think those were the same Cybertronians."
Will stared. "What? How many transforming robots do we have over there?"
"Reports suggest at least seven."
" ... we have seven fucking robots loose, goin' around and blowing shit up?"
The Autobots all kind of shuffled around, looking at each other and clicking. "Yes?" Hound said tentatively.
"The good news is that they're probably Autobots," Arcee said brightly. "After we get in contact with them, the property damage will go down significantly!"
Will felt a huge headache building right behind his eyes. It was entirely too early for this. He thought about Mission City, and the kind of destruction that only five Autobots caused, and it developed into a splitting migraine. This bunch didn't even seem to have the excuse of trying to protect some ancient alien artifact of unbelievable power.
Hell, there wasn't even a Decepticon in sight. What a bunch of crazy bastards.
-+-
Because things rarely worked out the way they were planned, even if the one doing the planning supposedly had 'superior tactical genius' and way up-to-date data analyzers, it took them a lot longer to navigate the city than it should have. That and, well, Sam kinda got lost.
Like. A lot.
"You're freakin' brilliant, Sideswipe," he told the mech darkly. Did he mention that he wasn't the only one who'd gotten lost? Oh, sure, Sideswipe claimed that he had come looking for Sam, but he didn't believe that for a second, for one knowing Sideswipe -- and no, that right there was a good enough reason not to believe it.
"Hey," Sideswipe said defensively, "at least I found us a spot to get a look around at."
They'd been lost for the last fifteen minutes or so, but all together, Sam had been lost since shortly after they tried to leave. It wasn't anything faulty with Prowl's program, but rather faulty with Sam, who had figured out this whole 'driving without eyes' thing, but hadn't been prepared to function with seeing in only one dimension. The others had apparently not thought of this, because although sonar kind of immediately made sense in a 'not going further that direction' sort of way, it didn't make much sense in the 'this shape is this thing' kind of way.
How Sideswipe even found him was a little bit of a miracle or something.
"I dunno," Sam said, "unless you thought they'd be somewhere close enough to see, I don't really know what the point was. Since. You know. Eyesight. It only goes so far."
"You know," Sideswipe said, turning to peer at him, "you may have learned a few things from us, Boxy."
"What?" he said blankly.
Sideswipe ignored him for a moment, holding remarkably still while he checked out the whole entire situation. At least that was one good thing about this situation -- separated from Sunstreaker, Sideswipe actually seemed to have some sort of subroutines that allowed him to comply with the general 'hidehidehide' thing that was always bugging Sam. Being seventeen feet of giant robot alien on a world of five-nine organics would probably do that to a robot, though. Deciding that the coast was clear enough, he waved Sam on and they creeped out of the dubious cover provided by the overpass.
"At least we're almost out of Detroit," Sam muttered, "and what? Homeless people? Crazy anyway, right? No one will believe them."
Neither of them were too enamored with the idea of 'rolling blind', so to speak, which a crazy person could say was why they had ended up in their own two-man group, searching for the others. Supposedly, that stupid 'EMP' thing didn't affect Sideswipe's eerie ability to track his counterpart, but Sam was discovering that this ability pulled in a straight line, and they had to detour to get around highly populated spots. So far, despite the weather, there hadn't been any flaming trash cans with hobos collected around them, but Sam was still holding out hope.
Not ... that he particularly wanted to see hobos around a trash can, but ... it would kind of complete the whole 'stupid horror movie' atmosphere of the entire thing. Seriously? Turning into a giant robot and then the whole 'let's use the small one for parts' and then the whole firefight in the NAIAS ... well, okay: Sam had kind of gotten over that whole becoming a giant robot thing, since he'd been one for months now, but it was still surreal when he realized that he had gotten used to being a giant robot.
"You know," Sideswipe said as they took cover behind a cement pillar that wouldn't have even provided Sam with adequate cover, "I think Prowl was onto something here with this program."
Sam glanced up at him. Somehow, when Sideswipe had been talking mostly to Sunstreaker, Sam had managed to totally ignore the fact that Sideswipe was perhaps even more of a chatterbox than he himself was. Which was amazing, if anything anyone had ever told him since forever was true. "What do you mean?" he asked. If he didn't direct Sideswipe, the mech would go off on some weird tangent and Sam would probably be very, very sorry.
"This sonar thing," Sideswipe said, judging that it was safe for them to move on and stepping out into the open. "In this galaxy, it seems that most of your elements are pretty primitive. And unstable. Mostly primitive, though. Anyway, if you know what you're doing, our alloy looks different in it. Which means that Prowl's accidentally created hide-n-seek hunting tech. Which, so you know, is awesome."
"What? Like you couldn't tell before?" Sam asked skeptically.
"Boxy," Sideswipe said with some exasperation, "if someone's tech'd you up to do it, then it exists. No. Mostly, hunting Decepticons depends on the fact that Decepticons hate to sit around anywhere very long, so they don't really ever lose the heat energy. Sometimes they manage it, but with this tech ... it's gonna be fun." He was making that white noise again.
Christ. Sam wondered if Bumblebee had ever done that and he just hadn't noticed. Bumblebee had vibrated often enough. Rumbled a bit. Maybe it was like that thing he'd read about in history class, that thing where it meant one thing when Americans threw up 'the horns', and another in Europe or Spain or whatever.
"Ever stop to think that if you can do it, the 'Cons can do it?" he asked.
"Duh."
He thrust his claws up, waving them in an absentmindedly defensive manner while he made another paranoid sweep of the area and saw no one. "I'm just saying," he said. "Seriously, though. If you just discovered a program that lets you spy out ... hibernating 'Cons or whatever, then they can find Autobots that are hiding, too."
"I am never taking you Con hunting. Ever."
Good, because Sam never wanted to go Decepticon hunting. Ever.
Before long, they were forced to revert back to car form in the spirit of not being seen, which neither of them were thrilled about. For Sam, it was a little more complicated than just the fact that neither of them were too good at using the sonar program for eyes and absolutely nothing else -- it was also because he was a different car now, which mean he drove different. It made sense, but Sam hadn't really expected it, somehow.
"Almost there, Boxy," Sideswipe said as they maneuvered onto the road in a way humans would have been pressed to imitate. Even the most skill driver wouldn't have been able to drive so close to another vehicle, just so that they could hear one another talk. Sam didn't really know what Sideswipe was talking about, since if the program didn't tell him that all together, that sound made a Lamborghini shape, he wouldn't know Sideswipe from a brick wall. Hopefully, when they got their collective act together, they could just wait for one freakin' moment until all of his scanners came back online.
"Not nearly there enough," he muttered.
That was about the time that two freakin' blocks of sound-reflecting blobs came out of nowhere and he nearly took a nosedive into the nearest wall. He over corrected and almost ran straight into the larger of the blobs, which swerved gently out of the way as everyone came to a squealing halt.
"You were saying?" Sideswipe called cheerfully.
"Oh, maybe that I should just get some fucking warning next time?" Sam snarled, a little shaken. Just 'a little' since suddenly having two cars appear out of figurative nowhere was hardly as harrowing as Sideswipe trying to drown them all forever or that whole deal with the cop cars in England. Or some of his dreams previous to this whole escapade, for example.
"Sure," Sunstreaker said acerbically, "next time, I'll honk."
"We are trying to remain unnoticed," Sideswipe added helpfully, the betraying traitor that he was.
"A hard thing to do when you insist on drawing attention," Prowl informed him darkly.
"I get it already, with the orange and the shape!" Sam snapped, perhaps a little more irritated by the exchange simply because Prowl was the vehicle he only missed because Prowl got the hell out of the way. Losing control of his own body wasn't something he was going to enjoy any time soon.
There was an audible pause, and then Prowl broke it, saying: "Actually, I was referring to the noise you made when you attempted to run into me."
Ah. Well, Sam supposed there was that, too. Humans did tend to go investigate 'car crash' noises. "Great," he said briefly, unwillingly acknowledging that fact. "So, now, the others? Right?"
"Yes," Prowl said, shifting his wheels. "They should be gathered at a rendezvous point. Of course, it took a while to locate the two of you, so I can only hope they haven't decided to head out on their own." He eased past Sam's bumper (such as it was) and took point.
"Oh, wait, you mean you have a map, at least?" Sam said with relief. "Oh good. I'm glad somebody has something like foresight around here."
"Oh come on," Sideswipe said with an offended click. "Give a mech a break."
"I do not regret to inform you that there will be no breaks given," Prowl rumbled. "I will be reporting this to Ironhide."
Prowl really was starting to remind Sam of that one kid in second grade who was always saying 'I'm gonna tell teacher on you!' complete with that singsong thing. Actually, now that he thought about it, that kid had been Sam. Well, he could hardly be blamed when his classmates gave him too much material.
"Frag," Sideswipe said unhappily. "Com'n, Prowl, like I could really predict being hit by that pulse! The humans' network was supposed to stay there, you know."
"You were trained better, Sideswipe," Prowl said, completely unsympathetically.
Prowl clearly didn't understand the whole trauma of being stuck on a small ship with nowhere to go for six freakin' weeks. The fact that Sideswipe was still even slightly interested in doing something other than blowing shit up (granted, not often, but come on) was something like a miracle. Even Sam had been a little excited about shooting things. So really, Prowl needed to relax.
"It could be worse," he said helpfully. "Sideswipe could be, like ... yunno." He searched his memories, and came up with: "breaking buses in half. Or, you know. Yeah."
"Given the difficulty a mech of Sideswipe's stature and model would have in breaking a bus in half," Prowl said, "I doubt it. Please define how it could be worse, realistically."
At first, Sam wasn't really sure what happened when he spontaneously read damage all over his freaking shell, and he attempted to kill everyone by swerving suddenly. It took a split second of furious computations, but he swiftly realized that his stupid glitched programing was completely retarded in ways he hadn't realized before. In that he had gotten a sudden sensory overload, which his human parts remembered tended to be painful; his Cybertronian programming responded to that by saying that he'd been damaged because it was about as intelligent as a quantum physicist and as smart as a stoner -- it learned fast, but it didn't always make the right connections.
The connection being that a sheet of water from the sky had fallen on them. It was raining. Of freaking course. It wasn't like Sam was unaccustomed to rain and gloomy weather after the whole misery of the goddamned British Isle or whatever, but Christ. He could probably tolerate never seeing any moisture come out of the sky for ... ever. Ever again.
"Prowl," he said sharply, "you and I are going to have a conversation about asking questions you don't really want to know the answer to. Soon."
"I fail to see what it is you mean."
Sideswipe was over there making that noise again, the bastard.
"Don't talk to me," he said, bristling. "No, seriously. Don't talk to me ever again, okay?"
So, it was raining and Sam both irritated and miserable. On the other hand, all the rain drops seemed to have the unintended side effect of making the whole world a lot more clearer than it had been before, at least in the short term. It muffled a lot of the noise pollution -- well, what noise pollution had been present at four in the morning. But clearer view or not, it didn't really change that now the road was slippery.
About the second time that Sideswipe hydroplaned a short distance, Sam got the feeling that the antics would have been a lot more wild if Prowl wasn't here. The stupid jerk really wasn't fooling anyone into thinking that it was all by accident. Proved when Prowl said, testily, "Sideswipe." And more obviously when a second later, Sunstreaker slammed into Sideswipe's side.
"Knock it off," Sam added irritably. "Christ." Not that Thing One and Thing Two really listened to him, but he had to throw his two cents in there, somewhere.
"I suppose I should become accustomed to this," Prowl said unhappily. "If alterative modes are any indication of subtly ..."
"No," Sideswipe gasped with humor, humming as he dropped back to cruise beside Prowl, "what did that fragger imitate?"
"Which fragger?" Sunstreaker asked dryly.
"It doesn't matter," Prowl said dismally. "I am not entirely certain what either of them scanned, but I am no longer so concerned with how much attention your alternative modes seem to draw."
" ... oh my God," Sam said weakly, "you mean there is something more gaudy than red and yellow Lamborghinis?"
"If any mech could find a mode like that, those two could," he confirmed unhappily.
Sunstreaker seemed less than impressed by their despair over his alternative mode, although some of his bad attitude might have been caused by the thought that someone actually managed to find something flashier than him.
"I need to see this for myself," Sam said.
"You probably will, pretty soon," Sideswipe said cheerfully. "That's where we're headed, right?"
Prowl made an affirmative noise, retaking point. They traveled in relative silence through the heavy rain for another fifteen minutes or so before Prowl led the way off the road and behind a building. Behind the building was what could have been an employee parking lot, although there was only one vehicle parked there. Why became obvious, since as soon as they drew near, it began to click and crackle at them. Although he was able to immediately identify it as the Cybertronian language since Sideswipe tended to use it at his counterpart, he wasn't thrilled with the reminder that these guys were still from the far reaches of space.
A part of him was kind of amused and alarmed at the thought he had that they weren't 'tamed robots'. What the hell.
Prowl then launched into another lecture, though this one thankfully only lasted a few moments; the scolding tone was unmistakable to Sam, whether he could understand what was being said or not. The car made a few comments that churned with sheepish tones, as he presumably accepted the rebuke before launching into a short and concise set of clicks and staticy noises.
The general consensus seemed to be to transform, so Sam followed suit, and gave a massive shudder when he finally had all of his pieces in their final position. Although he was far from unfamiliar with the sensation of water dripping and sliding around inside him, it still kind of creeped him out. That, and as he looked around, it seemed that they were all beginning to steam. The rain was much cooler than their internal workings, and despite efforts to keep their temperature regulated, the difference was enough.
He could also now see that they were standing behind some kind of lonely bar in the middle of nowhere, and also that the robot that had met them was the same blue car that he'd run into earlier. Also, his face was nothing short of startling for baring some abstract resemblance to Sam's imprecise memories of Barricade, and the fact that his hands weren't hands at all. Hell, Sam thought that he had claws, but his were at least arranged more like hands. This guy had ... prongs or something.
Apparently, he wasn't the only one that recognized someone else, either, since the blue bot glanced at him and clicked twice. All this really did was firm the idea that his face was bug like.
He gestured them forward, and since Prowl and the counterparts tramped off into the muck after him, Sam reluctantly followed suit. They really hadn't gone that far into the wilderness when the sound of an argument reached Sam's sensors. And, well, 'homicidal copier machines' didn't really even begin to cover what that sounded like. The rain was coming down so hard by this time that they were practically in the middle of the mess before Sam actually saw the others.
There were four Autobots in attendance, including their guide, who was even at the moment moving to try to interject himself between the two noisiest mechs there. Sam was a little impressed on both sides that these two seemed inches away from having one of those infamous giant robot death matches, since one had rather horrifically powerful looking guns, and the other was shorter by a few feet and apparently those feet had gone into the giant fucking blades that were sprouting out of his arms and nearly doubled their length. Christ.
Also, the sword wielding suicidal manic? Sam's oh-so-intelligent computer of a brain informed him that it was the same Cybertronian that had nearly mowed him down back at the auto show. Of course.
No one paid their arrival any mind at all, since apparently the looming battle between these two was much more important than even trying to hide at this point. Everyone was saying something very excitedly, which could have been 'fight fight fight!' for all Sam could understand. This excited chatter didn't exclude their guide, either, because he'd immediately hurried forward to insert himself in the middle of this mess.
Talking what could have been a mile a minute, Blue shove his way between the two silver mechs. He was taller than both Sam and the mech with the swords, but not nearly as much as the gunner was taller than them. Of course, even if his interference was rather obvious in that he completely obscured the smaller mech, this didn't really impact the confrontation ... at all. All sizes aside, he might as well have been a Chihuahua yapping at two German Shepards, and the two silver mechs' agitation was reaching a high paced staccato beat, like ... combat drums or that stupid opera music, and as one, they lunged toward one another --
And Blue stuck his claw prong things out, and there was a brilliant flash of white light with a loud popping sound followed by the stench of burnt circuits. It was roughly like a transformer blowing, and the two larger bots jerked back, nursing their scorched chest bits. Chest plates? Kinda like plates. The mech with the blades began snarling venomously at Blue while the mech with guns ... well, 'reverted them to hands' wasn't the right description, really, because whatever the fuck those were, they weren't really hands. 'Disabled his guns' might make a better description of what happened, and he began to whine.
'Aw man, I really liked this shirt', Sam imagined that he was saying, as if the mech had spilled ketchup on it. Hey, judging by the way he was rubbing at the scorch marks with his only-roughly-digit-shaped appendages, he might have been saying something like that. Not that he was very successful at anything. Sam barely saw how those things really functioned as digits, since they were more like a bizarrely clustered set of jointed ... weird ... things.
Sam was still boggling over the new mechs with unusual body parts when Prowl stalked forward and gave a few sharp barks of static noise. This effectively let everyone know that they had arrived, and immediately, the entire group of Autobots snapped to attention. Not really the kind of attention that a human would come to, but the kind a robot alien might, becoming immediately still and silent, the cold blue of their optics training on Prowl's shape and following his movements faithfully.
It was kind of like a game of 'red light, green light', because some of them had frozen in comical positions.
Also, Sam was kind of impressed by this display. What was it about Prowl that allowed him to step in and take complete control of a situation? Not only had the Lamborghini jerks pulled a complete one-eighty and bowed to his commands, but even in the middle of a tension filled confrontation, he was able to command respect. Of course, there was the unnaturally intriguing question as to if there were exceptions to this rule. Say ... if someone replicated the color nanite glitch that Sunstreaker implied that Sideswipe had displayed once. Could a yellow and pink polka dotted Prowl still manage to command respect?
Prowl wound down pretty quickly this time, then turned to the mech whose guns only minimally made it back to being not-guns, and offered a claw tip. Then it was a bit like watching those biology videos where they showed one cell splitting into two, which split to four, and eight -- although not as extensive. There were only four robots, after all, but each mech passed the download to another. Sam made a wild guess that it was possible these downloads were taking significantly longer than being poked in the arm by Sideswipe. Then they all grew still again, whirling away and occasionally clicking to one another but mostly processing for a handful of seconds. Then the whole download process started all over again, only this time in reverse and ending with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, the latter of which turned back and prodded Sam again.
Since he was kind of expecting it, he didn't jump, and instead accepted the tiny package of data that his process immediately transformed into a form he could understand. It was the information that would normally be pinged to him, free floating and unattached since it had been passed around unconventionally.
Then the silver gunner said, "okay, great. Now that we know we actually landed on the right planet this time, no thanks to --" a spit crackle broke in here. "As soon as we nail this nuet, we can be back with the others in no time!"
"Down, boy," the other silver mech said dryly.
He jerked around to click angrily at the other, but Prowl vented a lot of air into a huge huff of steam and said, "stand down, both of you. Silverbolt, refrain from needling your commander."
"Commander my aft," the sword-wielding mech said, apparently Silverbolt, and Sam pinned the information down to the appropriate information file. "Glitch doesn't have half of the experience I do."
The mech in question gave an insulted chirp, but subsided when Prowl waved him down. "You will stand down," Prowl said darkly. "Your Prime placed him in a position of command, therefore you will obey."
"You might kinda wanna listen," Sideswipe said helpfully, "Prowl's kinda wound up, you know. Imprinter and all."
"Yeah," a red mech said, "about that -- no. No way. Imprinters don't belong on the front lines. Get rid of him."
What the hell were they talking about?
"No," Silverbolt said slowly, thoughtfully, "let him stay. It couldn't hurt."
"Couldn't hurt?" the blue mech asked, "How couldn't it?"
"Seriously, Silverbolt," the red one agreed, "we don't really need another bunch like those two."
"Hey," Sideswipe objected, unusually serious for once and sounding a little angry.
"Can't really make much difference," Silverbolt said, idly cycling out hot air. "It's not like it happened naturally."
"Enough," Prowl said sharply, and the group immediately went back to attention. He glowered at the bunch for a moment before he focused on the gunner. "Would someone care to inform me of the reason why the plan was deviated from?"
"Oh sure," the chrome mech said with a jerk of his head, spreading his arms wide in that human 'why me?' manner. "One of those glitched neutrals decided that it was time to make a move. He stole the project that --" and he whirl clicked a name --"was working on, then took a mad dash headlong into Earth."
"He waited until we were out of communication with you," the red mech said angrily. "Took us by surprise."
"I doubt the humans will be pleased with the damage to their city," Prowl sighed, "not to mention the damage done to their 'auto show'. You should hope you have not placed Optimus Prime in an unfortunate position."
"Hey," the chrome mech said defensively, "how were we supposed to know that Optimus allied himself with the fauna?"
Sam reflexively got offended by the term up until he was distracted by the noise the blue mech suddenly made, sounding fairly alarmed.
"Hey, you guys," he said, "what do you think --" that same whirl-click of a name "-- is up to? We've never run into intelligent life before, and if this technology is any indication ..."
"Oh slag," the commander said, making a weak noise like a vehicle whose engine refused to turn over. It was a level of dismay previously unknown to Sam.
"Don't be so pessimistic," Sideswipe said in what could almost be considered a soothing manner. Almost. Except for the undercurrent of hilarity. "According to the humans themselves, they actually want to be abducted by aliens."
"You're not helpful, Sideswipe," the commander said despairingly.
"I am not entirely sure that he will understand that one can not simply put them back together after he has investigated," Prowl said pensively. "And our systems will not reboot for another nine breems." He whirled absently for a second, processing, then said, "what is the likelihood that he was not in range of the pulses?"
Between themselves, the mechs clicked away, transferring a lot of data much quicker than speaking English could. Finally, the commander shrugged (where in the hell had he seen spinners?!). "Pretty good. Nerd was saying something about how we shouldn't all land in the same place, but he changed his mind when he realized he'd be landing alone. Fragger's suicidal, not stupid."
Was it just Sam, or did that sentence make no sense whatsoever? He looked around, but apparently it was only him, since no one seemed to think it was anything unusual.
Prowl considered this for another moment, then said, "perhaps he will simply settle for studying their network in lieu of engaging in first hand data gathering."
"And perhaps Megatron will call this whole thing off as the biggest joke in history," Sideswipe said brightly.
"And maybe he's dead," the commander of the Fourth said, "or at least your informant seems to think so."
Some kind of click-chirp snapped out of Sam's chassis. He had every right to be insulted -- killing Megatron was not only something he personally did, but it was how he ended up like -- like this to begin with. "Listen, you shiny gun-wielding maniac," he snapped, pointing at the mech with one long, sharp claw. "Megatron is dead; Prime thought so, the human scientist thought so, they dumped him into the ocean, because it's so. 'Course, I guess if you don't believe it, we could always go out in a boat and you could take a dip to see his crustacean encrusted carcass. Yes? No? Sound like a plan to you?"
"Whoa, whoa," the gunner said tolerantly, "I was just saying. Anyway, it wouldn't be necessary. If Megatron's dead, we'll never see his ugly face again. He likes being on the front of battle entirely too much for it to be any other way."
"That is entirely accurate," Prowl agreed. "But rather irrelevant at this point. Our primary concerns at this time are to retrieve our missing, retrieve the project that the neutral has stolen, and not least of all, reporting back to Optimus Prime."
"And how do you propose to do any of that?" the smallest red mech inquired skeptically. "Every minute the nerd's out there alone, some squishie is one step closer to a messy if unintentional end, that fragger who is like some kind of dark shard in a slagging meteor field is putting distance between us as we speak, and Optimus Prime's last known location was a compromised base lunar cycles ago!"
"I am well aware of these setbacks, Cliffjumper," Prowl said testily.
"Great," Sam said, "are you aware of the setbacks of recharging?"
Sideswipe groaned like a steel beam just trying to snap. "Again?" he asked unhappily. Then: "No, no, I should be surprise it's just now. Slag. Two fights and a new altmode. Alright."
"Thanks for giving me permission," he said darkly. "It's not like my systems will automatically shut down at all."
Prowl stared at Sam, giving him the rather uncomfortable idea that he had just made himself something of a huge inconvenience for the dark mech.
"What?" he said. It wasn't like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker hadn't realized that Sam didn't have a choice in the matter.
"Hey," the gunner said suddenly, turning to the blue mech, "do you think you can give him a jump-start?"
The blue mech shot him a startled and reproachful look, shifting away from him sidewise.
Sam was not so mild. "No," he said. "No. No, I don't even want to hear anything about jump-starting. No, no no."
Prowl shifted. "That changes the plan somewhat."
"I really, really suggest you don't leave him alone while he does that," Sideswipe said helpfully. "The only time we did that, we lost track of him for a while."
"I couldn't freakin' communicate at the time!" Sam snapped. "I can do that now! It changes things!" He really resented this whole 'whose gonna baby sit Sam' thing that the robots seemed to be having.
"It should be safe to allow the child to recharge while we do what needs to be done," Prowl decided. "In the meantime, we should disperse, collect information. That way, we might have a better chance of locating --" the crackle spit that must be a name, "-- when our communication network came back on."
"Sounds good to me," the gunner agreed.
"Yeah," Sideswipe said, "but so, how are any of you one-of-a-kind cars going to go incognito in the same city that's been showing them for a while now?"
A silence descended on the group and they all looked at each other, at a loss.
"Great," Sam said. "Get back to me when you figure that out."
-+-
Tracking nine Autobots (there were nine, after all, not just the seven they'd initially managed to identify) was harder than a mech would have predicted.
There were a few factors contributing to this. First of all, none of their previous battlefields had ever been this complex. Humanity was the first alien race that they'd come across that had been advanced enough to have something approaching a civilized community. Then there was the whole thing where they had reverse engineered Cybertronian biology. Then came the fact that no one could get in touch with the newcomers. Plus, they were apparently tracking someone or something.
The brownout that covered the entire eastern seaboard hadn't exactly helped much either. It clearly originated in some Cybertronian intelligence, because the entire human network had lit up with spark energy for a few hours.
So what that all came out to was that it was three days later that they finally managed to catch up them in Tennessee. "(Looks like Hound was right,)" Jazz sent as he rolled his low laying alt mode behind a cement wall. He finally tracked down some of them to what appeared to be some kind of abandoned site. 'Tracked' being kind of a deceptive word, since really, he'd been sideblinded by what might as well have been a beacon saying 'come check this out'. "(It was the counterparts that took down those Decepticons upstate.)"
"(You have a visual?)" Optimus queried.
"(Yeah,)", he returned, "(but I ain't stickin' my sensors out there. It's the counterparts and a pair of mechs, one of which is probably Cliffjumper.)"
"( ... one of which?)"
"(Yeah. One of which. You read me. There's two chasebots out there with sensor arrays I don't even wanna think about.)"
"(I would be willing to help,)" Hound said. "(Cliffjumper's weapons aren't strong enough to do much damage to me.)"
"( ... don't even let Ratchet hear you talking like that,)" Jazz sent dryly.
"(What are they doing, standing around like idiots?)"
Jazz looked again, carefully scanning below the normal sensor range that would have alerted most Cybertronians. "( ... hiding, I think.)"
"( ... hiding?)" Bumblebee queried. "(What from? Not humans, obviously.)"
"(No,)" Jazz said, "(it's not that kind of hi --)"
There was a sudden concussive blast that rattled his communication transceivers, swiftly followed by an electromagnetic pulse that was typical of such blasts and shocked him for a moment. It wasn't nearly powerful enough to knock his finer instruments offline the way their normal pulseblasts did, but it was still disorienting enough. Jazz froze there for a startled moment, then scanned the other Autobots. Both chase class mechs were swooning, and the counterparts seemed amused, as usual. One of them were attempting to help the smaller chasebot up. The other appeared to be peering over the wall they'd been hiding behind being irritable in general. It seemed that Sunstreaker had decided to be yellow this time around.
"(Seems like it's Wheeljack type of hiding,)" he sent to the others dryly.
"(Oh Primus.)"
"(What is this? Did all the worse mechs in the entire Autobot allied forces decide to band into one nightmarish, glitched group?)"
Radio silence prevailed for a moment before Bumblebee said: "(Blaster, butt out.)"
"(Hey,)" the comm hub sent, hurt, "(I was just keepin' an eye out for everyone else back here at the base. You know I'm the only one that can signal this far. Besides, Ratchet wanted to keep an eye out just in case of an emergency --)"
"(Blaster,)" they all sent, minus Optimus who wasn't quiet so informal, "(butt. Out.)"
When there wasn't a reply, Jazz figured that at least if Blaster was still spying on their signals, he wasn't going to drop comments here and there. Frag, they all knew that having the counterparts around would at least make things 'interesting', but that adding Cliffjumper and Wheeljack to the mix would hardly make things better, so they didn't really need commentary to that effect.
"Hey, Wheeljack," one of the chasebots called, "its no good. We definitely felt that."
"Frag," came a voice from the other side of the wall, and a small mech began to climb over it, Wheeljack's signature light array strobing as he said: "okay, okay, so let me make a few adjustments --"
"No," the chasebot being tentatively held up by Sideswipe said. "No, Wheeljack, no. No, you will not be making 'a few' adjustments, you said that about a hundred adjustments ago -- I'm gonna purge my tank. I'm gonna -- I'm gonna -- ooh. I don't feel so good anymore." He waved the others off with a null, bent over, but didn't actually make any noises that would have forewarned a purge. Cliffjumper still took a few good steps and got clear, though, shooting the other mech a wary look.
Sideswipe's amusement was enough to reach even Jazz, but he turned to Wheeljack, towering over the small mech. "It really isn't any good," he said, "even 'Streaker and I feel it, Wheeljack."
"(Hey guys,)" Jazz sent, having been stunned into silence before now. "(These guys, you know, the ones that landed all of three days ago?)"
"(What?)" Bumblebee sent back, familiar enough with Jazz's sense of delivery.
"( ... they're speaking English.)"
No one responded to this announcement for a moment or two, and then Optimus decided to take one for the team.
"(Let us hope that this is not due to any interactions with humans,)" he sent, although he couldn't completely stop himself from sounding doubtful. "(Jazz, it's imperative to make contact.)"
"(Right, right,)" he sighed. "(Sure, I'll stick my neck out here. Take one for the team. And all that jazz.)"
"( ... you were kind of rattled by that blast that cut you off, weren't you?)" Bumblebee asked.
"( ... just a little,)" he acknowledged. It was a common side effect of Wheeljack's experiments. Especially for Jazz, since he had that issue with his sensor array as it was.
So, his own minor program malfunctions in mind, he double checked to make sure that none of the Autobots were actually doing anything more than getting into what seemed to be a wild kind of argument about Wheeljack's newest attempt at doing ... whatever it was he was attempting to do at this time, and he sent out a ping to identify himself.
He was immediately hit with confirmation of the identities of three of the four. It was the fourth set of data that really caught his attention, though.
Jazz was an old, old model. Most mechs didn't know that, but his function was a far, far cry from the saboteur he spent his time being these vorns. And that was probably the only reason he was able to piece together what little bit he understood from that forth data set. Through the confusing tangle of information stored in a way that his processor hadn't been programmed to understand, he managed to take what he did understand and come up with one startling answer.
And as the chasebot swung upright, saying: "Jazz?!" Jazz immediately and completely unintentionally opened communications to the original landing group, those who would know the significance of the knowledge, and sent "(Sam's alive.)"
-+-
"(Sam's alive.)"
- Because I was kind of beating myself up, and there's a giant time gap in the last third of this chapter, you can expect that explained next chapter. Yes. I said NEXT CHAPTER. Oh God. No, really. I'm working on it.
- In case anyone wanted to know what an Intermission from Prowl's Pov would sound like, let me spoil it here. It would basically be an awkward, long winded multi-paragraphed thing that basically would say: "WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY SUCH FAILURES?! FML!"
- Here's a thought for you. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Sounding like Fez from That 70s Show. Does this not make your brain go FML?
- Also, it occurred to me that the classic 'BEEP BEEP DOP BEEP' noise transformers make during their transformations might actually be them shouting things like 'OPTIMUS: TRANSFORM' in their own language. See? Sam was right. Japanese robots. Super advanced Japanese robots.
- I told you. I wrote this chapter on cold medication. The Q. It talks to me.
SHOUT OUT: Thank the following people for being the true drive behind sick!mei to write this damned chapter. Deserthermit, for acknowledging the petpeeves of some authors. Karaq, for being quietly supportive and not nagging, even though the urge must have been there. Caelum, for just generally being awesome about this whole mess. Synaltern, for reminding me while I was in a funk that I don't need a REASON. Bloody_american for encouraging me to write WTFever. And drharper, cos LOL.
And for anyone I didn't mention by name, all the awesome people I chat with through the PM thing on FF and on Livejournal. You should know who you are. 3
-- To Be Continued --