I do believe in commas, I do, I do...!
I bring ye FLUFF!
This isn't even a plotbunny. More like brain-lint. You know, that stuff that collects in your sulci and every now and then you have to get in there and vacuum it out... Or not. Okay. ^^;
Title: Borealis 6/71: A Quiet Night
Author: tainry
Rating: G
Summary: Just a bit of silliness involving a girl, a semi, a tree, and Bumblebee's laughing, fer sure fer sure.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
1,227 words.
C&C welcome -- feel free to correct my horrific punctuation! *^_^* Thankee!
A Quiet Night
Mikaela leaned back in the driver’s seat as Optimus obligingly rolled his windows down. She stuck her arm out past the frame, feeling the wind, her fingers splayed like a bird’s wing. Aside from the low, rumbling roar of Optimus’ engine, it was a nice quiet night.
There was often a lot of yelling at home, and sometimes even Sam’s sweetly awkward banter was more than she felt like dealing with. At those times, Optimus was an ideal driving companion. His presence was unmistakable, so she never felt abandoned, but he could also be amazingly non-intrusive. For right now she was just a hot chick in a hot rig, and that felt pretty damn good.
Tonight they actually had a purpose, but it wasn’t anything strenuous. Bumblebee had picked up a very faint signal from space. Unquestionably Cybertronian, but they weren’t sure if it was Autobot or Decepticon. Optimus was heading for the mountains so he and Bee could triangulate, and maybe catch a stronger signal. Mikaela came along for the ride, and the quiet.
The full moon was high overhead when they pulled off the road and onto the ridgeline. Mikaela got out and stretched while Optimus transformed. The moonlight was bright but they were out in the middle of nowhere, and hadn’t seen any other traffic on the road for half an hour. Unfolding the blanket she’d brought, she made herself comfortable, lying back so she could see the moon unobscured by the silhouette of a giant robot.
rrrrmmmbleCrackBOOM!!!
Mikaela found herself airborne, then the mountain slammed upward, knocking the breath out of her. She was used to earthquakes - the jittery window-rattlers were annoying, but the rolling kind were fun. This was neither. She coughed air back into her lungs, and felt the back of her head for the lump she was sure was already rising…
Optimus was gone.
“…Omigod!” Heedless of aftershocks, she sprang to her feet, now aware of metallic booms and splintery crashes. Following the sound, she approached the steep side of the ridge - just in time to see Optimus’ tumbling form take out an electrical tower. The resultant fireworks were accompanied by a short, high-pitched blare; like an air-horn getting goosed, which wasn’t, she reflected, too far off the mark. Still rolling, (and not in the usual way,) he continued to clear a swath of oaks and Manzanita all the way down to a last hundred-foot drop, landing with a resounding crump! in what Mikaela thought was probably a dry creek bed at the very bottom of the ravine. She felt the impact through her hands and knees and winced.
Clambering over the edge, she squinted in the moonlight to see if there was any way she could safely get down to him. What possible help she could be if she did, she’d think about when she got there.
“Mikaela, stay were you are,” Optimus called from the ravine. “I am…more or less undamaged.” Was it her imagination or did he sound a teensy bit embarrassed? She bit her lips in worry, nonetheless. He could be missing an arm and would probably still consider that more or less undamaged…
Shortly, he emerged from the shadows, retracing his path of destruction. Limbs, if not dignity, intact. As he climbed up toward her, she saw that he was covered in dirt, shredded brush, tree branches sticking out at odd angles, and quite a lot of mud. Apparently the creek at the bottom of the ravine wasn’t dry after all. Before getting too close, he stopped and gave an odd shudder. Most of the debris was flung away as a subtle glow coursed across his armor. Mikaela felt a brief pulse of heat.
“My apologies, Mikaela. I noticed the peculiar EM signature and subsonic harmonics several minutes before the quake,” he said, ascending the rest of the way. “But I was so intent on the other signal I didn’t correlate the information in time. Are you all right?”
Mikaela resisted the urge to say, hey I’m not the one who went ass over teakettle down there, and managed a simple, “Yeah, I’m fine,” instead.
“Good. I will respond more appropriately next t-” He scooped her up, holding her protectively against his chest plates, and rode the aftershock with bent knees and a wide surfer-like stance, reacting to the earth’s motion so precisely his upper body hardly moved. When it was over he placed her carefully on her blanket and turned to resume his scan.
“Optimus,” Mikaela said, staring up at him. “You have a tree stuck in your back.” The entire lower half of a tree, complete with clod-ridden roots dangling, jutted from the left side of his back, just below the largest plates of his dorsal armor.
“Ah,” he said, groping for the trunk with one hand. “So that’s what that is.” It was a difficult place to reach, even with shoulders that pivoted farther than a human’s could. With a sharp yank and a blue static discharge he pulled it free. But Mikaela could see there was a strip of wood still wedged in among all the cables and armor.
“There’s another piece…”
“Yes.” But his fingers were too big to gain purchase on what was to him merely a splinter.
“Oh here, hold still.” Mikaela ran forward and began to climb. Optimus froze. It wasn’t unlike one of those fake rock walls, she thought. Sam had taken her to one at an amusement park the summer before. There were plenty of hand- and foot-holds, if she planned her route carefully enough. Once she reached the top of his leg, she focused on the tree-splinter, definitely not thinking at all about the human equivalent of the part of him she was scaling. She especially wasn’t thinking about buns of steel, or anything else of steel. Probably wasn’t steel anyway…some kind of super-advanced Cybertronian alloy… Super-advanced Cybertronian b-splinter, splinter, splinter, splinter. Think of that story about the lion and the mouse. She couldn’t remember much, just something about a thorn.
Up close, it wasn’t so much a splinter as a plank. Mikaela braced herself and hauled at it, but it just sawed up and down, firmly wedged between two major dorsal support cables. She stopped abruptly as small crackles of static rolled across them - she must be hurting him, but he gave no sign. “I’m sorry! Maybe if you…bent, or twisted just a little…?”
After a second of swift calculation, he inclined and rotated his upper torso slightly forward and to the left. Mikaela heaved at the tree-shard as hard as she could, and with a dry creak and screech of metal it came free. She tossed it to the ground and was about to start climbing down when his hand came around, offering a platform.
Instead of lowering her, however, he cradled her against his chest again and braced for another aftershock. This one was so mild, though, she could have managed on her own feet.
“Thank you,” Optimus said simply, as the tremor subsided and he set her down gently on the grass.
“You’re welcome.” She scuffed a toe in the dry weeds, but Optimus had already turned his optics skyward, and she knew he was scanning again.
After a few minutes, he said - aloud for her benefit - “You can stop laughing, now, Bumblebee.”
Table of Contents
.
This isn't even a plotbunny. More like brain-lint. You know, that stuff that collects in your sulci and every now and then you have to get in there and vacuum it out... Or not. Okay. ^^;
Title: Borealis 6/71: A Quiet Night
Author: tainry
Rating: G
Summary: Just a bit of silliness involving a girl, a semi, a tree, and Bumblebee's laughing, fer sure fer sure.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
1,227 words.
C&C welcome -- feel free to correct my horrific punctuation! *^_^* Thankee!
A Quiet Night
Mikaela leaned back in the driver’s seat as Optimus obligingly rolled his windows down. She stuck her arm out past the frame, feeling the wind, her fingers splayed like a bird’s wing. Aside from the low, rumbling roar of Optimus’ engine, it was a nice quiet night.
There was often a lot of yelling at home, and sometimes even Sam’s sweetly awkward banter was more than she felt like dealing with. At those times, Optimus was an ideal driving companion. His presence was unmistakable, so she never felt abandoned, but he could also be amazingly non-intrusive. For right now she was just a hot chick in a hot rig, and that felt pretty damn good.
Tonight they actually had a purpose, but it wasn’t anything strenuous. Bumblebee had picked up a very faint signal from space. Unquestionably Cybertronian, but they weren’t sure if it was Autobot or Decepticon. Optimus was heading for the mountains so he and Bee could triangulate, and maybe catch a stronger signal. Mikaela came along for the ride, and the quiet.
The full moon was high overhead when they pulled off the road and onto the ridgeline. Mikaela got out and stretched while Optimus transformed. The moonlight was bright but they were out in the middle of nowhere, and hadn’t seen any other traffic on the road for half an hour. Unfolding the blanket she’d brought, she made herself comfortable, lying back so she could see the moon unobscured by the silhouette of a giant robot.
rrrrmmmbleCrackBOOM!!!
Mikaela found herself airborne, then the mountain slammed upward, knocking the breath out of her. She was used to earthquakes - the jittery window-rattlers were annoying, but the rolling kind were fun. This was neither. She coughed air back into her lungs, and felt the back of her head for the lump she was sure was already rising…
Optimus was gone.
“…Omigod!” Heedless of aftershocks, she sprang to her feet, now aware of metallic booms and splintery crashes. Following the sound, she approached the steep side of the ridge - just in time to see Optimus’ tumbling form take out an electrical tower. The resultant fireworks were accompanied by a short, high-pitched blare; like an air-horn getting goosed, which wasn’t, she reflected, too far off the mark. Still rolling, (and not in the usual way,) he continued to clear a swath of oaks and Manzanita all the way down to a last hundred-foot drop, landing with a resounding crump! in what Mikaela thought was probably a dry creek bed at the very bottom of the ravine. She felt the impact through her hands and knees and winced.
Clambering over the edge, she squinted in the moonlight to see if there was any way she could safely get down to him. What possible help she could be if she did, she’d think about when she got there.
“Mikaela, stay were you are,” Optimus called from the ravine. “I am…more or less undamaged.” Was it her imagination or did he sound a teensy bit embarrassed? She bit her lips in worry, nonetheless. He could be missing an arm and would probably still consider that more or less undamaged…
Shortly, he emerged from the shadows, retracing his path of destruction. Limbs, if not dignity, intact. As he climbed up toward her, she saw that he was covered in dirt, shredded brush, tree branches sticking out at odd angles, and quite a lot of mud. Apparently the creek at the bottom of the ravine wasn’t dry after all. Before getting too close, he stopped and gave an odd shudder. Most of the debris was flung away as a subtle glow coursed across his armor. Mikaela felt a brief pulse of heat.
“My apologies, Mikaela. I noticed the peculiar EM signature and subsonic harmonics several minutes before the quake,” he said, ascending the rest of the way. “But I was so intent on the other signal I didn’t correlate the information in time. Are you all right?”
Mikaela resisted the urge to say, hey I’m not the one who went ass over teakettle down there, and managed a simple, “Yeah, I’m fine,” instead.
“Good. I will respond more appropriately next t-” He scooped her up, holding her protectively against his chest plates, and rode the aftershock with bent knees and a wide surfer-like stance, reacting to the earth’s motion so precisely his upper body hardly moved. When it was over he placed her carefully on her blanket and turned to resume his scan.
“Optimus,” Mikaela said, staring up at him. “You have a tree stuck in your back.” The entire lower half of a tree, complete with clod-ridden roots dangling, jutted from the left side of his back, just below the largest plates of his dorsal armor.
“Ah,” he said, groping for the trunk with one hand. “So that’s what that is.” It was a difficult place to reach, even with shoulders that pivoted farther than a human’s could. With a sharp yank and a blue static discharge he pulled it free. But Mikaela could see there was a strip of wood still wedged in among all the cables and armor.
“There’s another piece…”
“Yes.” But his fingers were too big to gain purchase on what was to him merely a splinter.
“Oh here, hold still.” Mikaela ran forward and began to climb. Optimus froze. It wasn’t unlike one of those fake rock walls, she thought. Sam had taken her to one at an amusement park the summer before. There were plenty of hand- and foot-holds, if she planned her route carefully enough. Once she reached the top of his leg, she focused on the tree-splinter, definitely not thinking at all about the human equivalent of the part of him she was scaling. She especially wasn’t thinking about buns of steel, or anything else of steel. Probably wasn’t steel anyway…some kind of super-advanced Cybertronian alloy… Super-advanced Cybertronian b-splinter, splinter, splinter, splinter. Think of that story about the lion and the mouse. She couldn’t remember much, just something about a thorn.
Up close, it wasn’t so much a splinter as a plank. Mikaela braced herself and hauled at it, but it just sawed up and down, firmly wedged between two major dorsal support cables. She stopped abruptly as small crackles of static rolled across them - she must be hurting him, but he gave no sign. “I’m sorry! Maybe if you…bent, or twisted just a little…?”
After a second of swift calculation, he inclined and rotated his upper torso slightly forward and to the left. Mikaela heaved at the tree-shard as hard as she could, and with a dry creak and screech of metal it came free. She tossed it to the ground and was about to start climbing down when his hand came around, offering a platform.
Instead of lowering her, however, he cradled her against his chest again and braced for another aftershock. This one was so mild, though, she could have managed on her own feet.
“Thank you,” Optimus said simply, as the tremor subsided and he set her down gently on the grass.
“You’re welcome.” She scuffed a toe in the dry weeds, but Optimus had already turned his optics skyward, and she knew he was scanning again.
After a few minutes, he said - aloud for her benefit - “You can stop laughing, now, Bumblebee.”
Table of Contents
.