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The older you got, she reflected, the more intelligent the insults became.
Back in the day care centre, when she was a little girl, she’d endured water pistols and poked-out tongues. At primary school it was Carly, Carly, she smells gnarly and the oh-so-clever accusations of cooties. Junior high rallied to the clarion cry of “brace face” and senior high…
… well, senior high had been different again. By the time she’d turned 16, “Gnarly Carly” had blossomed into a tall, shapely blonde. Suddenly every girl that had snubbed her wanted to be seen with her. And every boy that had turned up his nose, or freaked out at her approach, had trouble keeping their hands of her ass. Carly, of course, had no time for either set of leeches, and so the insults began again. She was “the Frigidaire”, she was the “Queen Cow”, she was the plain-old bitch.
She could have cared less. By that time he had come into her life.
Carly still wasn’t sure what the dreamy boy, waiting for her across the parking lot, saw in her. Okay, she was gorgeous by most people’s definition but she muffled her frame with pull-overs, vests and unflattering pants. Even her hair was clamped down with a thick, black headband. She wanted to ensure no one was mistaken: any surface beauty was second to the power of her mind, and her passion for electronics and engineering.
He got that. Understood it, instinctively. Even though he wasn’t going to college; even though he worked with his father on an oil rig for weeks at a time; even though he always wore the same dull work shirt and insulated boots, he understood Carly like no one before. It was her mind he loved, of that she was sure, and not her body.
She was sure of that because Spike hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet. Not once, in four months of dating. It was heaven.
Spike was leaning on the hood of his car, arms folded casually. His bright grin was in stark contrast to the drab, 1970s brown of his car. With its orange-tinted windows and loud, screeching tyres, it wasn’t the best ride around. Carly longed to reach under its hood and root around; to fix it for her man. Spike declined. He liked the car, he said, just the way it was. “If it’s working,” he’d laugh, “why tinker? That’s my Dad’s problem, you know. He can never leave well enough alone.”
Carly wrapped her man up in a bear hug, which he gleefully returned. “Hey there, gorgeous brain,” he whispered into her hair. “Ready to go?”
“Definitely,” she sighed, running her hands down his thick workman’s back. “Spent half the day missing you and the other half buried in quadratics. So I’m looking forward to reuniting my cerebellum in your lovely presence.”
He laughed, a slight look of puzzlement on his features. Spike had little concept of maths and science, Carly knew, but still he loved to hear her talk about it. About anything, really. Spike’s gaze, as she spoke, was so intense it was as if it pierced her very core. She shivered at the thought… shivered indecently.
They slid into the car and took off. Spike had promised her dinner; judging by his ever-present attire, it was going to be at the local steak house again. Carly had no problem with that – the place was rustic but lovely and, best of all, private. The waitresses would ogle Spike for a moment, then be blown away by Carly’s own looks and give the couple a wide berth. Just the way she liked it.
“How long before you have to go back?” she asked. Spike’s work took him away from the city and out to the rig for weeks at a time.
“A while,” he replied, turning the corner. “You might call it ‘extended leave’. There were a couple of explosions on the rig, a few days back. Lots of smoke and fire and noise – no one hurt, fortunately.”
“Still, that’s terrible. I’m glad you weren’t there.”
He threw her an appreciative smile. “Dad was, and he said it was pretty awful. Something about ‘beasties’ attacking – I didn’t get all the details.”
“Why?”
Spike’s nose wrinkled. “The company’s got all the men in quarantine until the cause is isolated – I guess they don’t want the media snooping around, like they always do.”
They pulled up at an intersection and waited for the light to change. Carly let her hand wander over the upholstery and onto Spike’s leg. He turned to her, lips slightly parted, and moved closer. Flushing with heat, Carly realised the moment had arrived… and, better still, she wanted it so badly. She shifted toward him, breath catching in her chest, and met his lips with her own. It was electric.
Lost in bliss, Carly barely registered the traffic lights’ change. But someone did – the car lurched and, with a horrendous sound, the back seat crumpled toward them.
Spike swore into her mouth and broke contact, looking back in shock and clutching his head. “No way,” he moaned, sounding almost pained. “Oh, no way!”
Carly stared out the back window. All she could see was the slotted chrome grille of a massive semi-trailer cab. Its headlights burned searing yellow beams down either side of Spike’s car, obscuring her view out the side windows. The truck pulled back just a little – not enough to reveal its colour or its driver – and rammed into Spike’s car again, jolting both occupants toward the dashboard.
Still swearing, Spike turned in his seat and stomped on the accelerator. The car leapt off the lights at a rate that surprised Carly – she knew what this sort of machine was capable of, in its standard configuration. Maybe Spike had modified it? Maybe that was why he didn’t want to let Carly play around with the engine?
Crash. Maybe this wasn’t the time to think about it because the truck was following – and still ramming them!
Spike’s face was grim, almost inhuman, as he took a series of blind corners faster and faster. Carly resisted the urge to shriek and reached up, wrapping one hand around the above-door handle. Her other fist bunched tightly around her seatbelt, willing it to be extra-strong as the young couple tried to avoid the hellish truck behind them.
Through the piercing lights of the semi, she saw the scenery change. They’d already left the suburbs behind and were pointed toward the freeway. Carly panicked; the freeway was the last place they wanted to go! With no obstructions and just straight road ahead, the truck would have ample opportunity to run them down… squash them flat… or do whatever it wanted to the hapless teens.
“Do you trust me?” Spike yelled.
Carly stared at him. His eyes were focused on the road; his jaw set furiously. The muscles in his arms bulged as if he were fighting with the steering wheel, urging the little car to put on an even more impossible display of speed.
“Do you trust me?” he yelled again, his voice raw with desperation.
“Yes,” she gasped. “I do.”
“Then hold on!”
Spike turned the wheel suddenly to the left; the car’s steering locked and it skidded around a corner. The front end caught a brick wall and crumpled – not enough to slow them, but enough to make Spike wince in sympathy. With a thunderous roar, the truck continued on past them and onto the freeway’s cloverleaf. As Carly watched, the dark shape failed to make the turned and caromed through the protective railing, slamming down onto the freeway metres below.
“That won’t slow it for long,” Spike growled. “Come on… we’ve got to hide out.”
The car groaned and protested, but Spike wouldn’t be denied. He shifted it out of neutral and began limping it back toward the city. He started talking; Carly strained to hear it through the blood pumping in her ears.
“I lied to you,” he said, sullenly, “about what happened on the rig. I was there… so was Dad. We saw the whole thing. These… these giant robots just descended on us, firing laser guns and shooting off missiles. They kept… changing… turning into cars and stuff, racing around and ripping everything apart.”
Carly’s eyes widened in disbelief. Was he crazed? But no… something in his eyes, in the set of his face, convinced her this was the truth – however unbelievable it sounded.
“No one died, but Dad made contact with these… things. He and I went back with them, to their base, and it was just horrible. Dad wanted to stay – he just has to tinker with stuff – but I made a break for it. I thought I’d lost them. Guess I was wrong.”
He looked mournfully at her. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’ve dragged you into this.”
Carly undid her seatbelt and slid over, close. She rested her head on his shoulder, nuzzling into his neck and breathing in his scent. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” she whispered. “I’m a part of this… I was always going to be a part of this. I… I love you, Spike, giant robots or no. We can deal with this together.”
“You… want to be a part of this? Of me?” he said, surprise in his eyes.
“Oh baby,” she sighed, “more than anything.”
The car jerked to a sudden halt. She looked up at her boy… his eyes were pinched and tight, his smile twisted into more of a leer. “You’ve no idea,” he rasped, his voice cold and unfamiliar, “how happy you’ve made me, Carly.”
An electric jolt ran the length of her body. She didn’t even have time to scream.
-----
Ultra Magnus resisted the urge to swear. “None whatsoever,” he growled into the inter-Autobot radio. “The little scraplet had my number.”
The enormous Autobot was lying, on his front, behind a freeway embankment. The noise of sirens and construction vehicles echoed all around. There were humans atop the freeway, surveying the remains of the guard rail. More milled about, five hundred feet away, looking at the indent in the bitumen and the tyre tracks on the ground.
He lost his fight with the curse word and let it slip from his synthesiser. The situation was growing more ridiculous by the second. Normally, Magnus would have driven on from such a crash at top speed, eluding any human detection. His transformation cog, however, had been damaged upon landing. Thanks to its default setting, he’d been thrown back into robot mode and left to duck for cover.
“Don’t worry about it, Big Bot,” Smokescreen said, trying to cheer him up. “I’m two minutes away, tops. Those police officers are about to get a speeding ‘hoon driver’ to chase, and any humans left on the scene will be choking on smart-smoke for an hour.”
“Understood,” Magnus said. “Make the smoke as thick as you can. My internal diagnostics want another two and a half minutes to effect repairs, and then I need the time to transform and drive away without catching attention.”
“This’ll be my gloopiest soup yet,” Smokescreen said cheerily. Magnus could almost hear the chemical reactions slopping and bubbling in the Bugatti’s rear compartments. “I’ll shake the cops toward the end of the freeway and loop around. Can you give me a lift back to base?”
Magnus’ alternate form was a giant, blue-and-white car carrier. “Not a problem,” he said stiffly. “Unlike our lost target.”
Smokescreen coughed. “Knowing how to find ‘em isn’t the same as actually locating them, is it?”
“That’s the truth, sad to say. I really didn’t think he, of all mechs, was going to present such a problem. Not after the last time we tangled, anyway.”
“You’re just sore because you’ve been out-improvised,” Smokescreen retorted.
Magnus fumed inwardly. There were few mechs in this universe from whom he’d accept such criticism. Smokescreen, unfortunately, was one of them. He’d asked the diversionary tactician to help keep the Autobot RID team honest and open about their feelings, good or bad, to bolster their flagging teamwork. That meant even Magnus, the RID commander, had to take it on the chin, when the call was sound.
“I’m sore,” he snapped, “because I still have no idea why he wanted the girl, or any of the other women he’s kidnapped over the past six months.”
-----
Specimen one compatible for procedure, it droned. Specimen two incompatible for procedure. Transmetal process aborted.
“Damn it to the pit,” Skid-Z fumed. “Damn it all to Unicron and back!”
The Mini-con kicked open the chamber and stormed back out into the lab. The scientific area, resplendent in burnished orange, was an exact replica of Predacon’s facilities back on Animatros. It centrepiece was a large apparatus that fairly pulsed with Energon. It looked something like a plant – even a larger mech could stand in the “trunk” chamber while… subject matter… was locked into pod-like chambers, suspended from the stalks.
Specimen two incompatible for procedure. The mocking, monotone voice echoed in his head. All he wanted to do was become a real member of the True Path – was that too much to ask? Predacon had told him, time and again, that his frame wasn’t suited for technorganic melding – that he couldn’t have precious flesh grafted to his body.
Skid-Z, as much as he respected his leader, had refused to accept that. It wasn’t him, he’d reasoned, it was the choice of donor organism. Of course, not every form of organic life was suitable for every Transformer. Bludgeon was the only Terrorcon who could graft bone onto himself; feathers seemed to work for Divebomb and no one else. Lizard skin was a good fit for pretty much everyone – except Skid-Z, of course – and Battle Ravage had made good with the hides of the canis family.
No one had tried humans. No one but Skid-Z.
Humans, he’d read on the Internet, were not a truly homogenous species. Each had slight genetic differences to the other, making them an inexhaustible source of potential genetic matches. All Skid-Z had to do was keep searching, one human at a time, until he found his mate… the one who could give him new life.
And with women, it was easy. Give human females a bit of romance, time to babble – while you listened, internally, to the radio – and a handsome holo-matter projection to drool over, and they ran to you in droves.
Carly, with her intelligence and aptitude for all things mechanical, had been his best hope yet. It had made sense, in Skid-Z mind, that a human obsessed with technology would be the best candidate for melding with a machine obsessed with organic life.
Oh well.
The Mini-con turned and walked out of the room, slapping the “eject” button as he slouched past the centre console. A pile of stripped, shiny bones tipped from the stalk-pod and clattered onto the floor. An automated system scooped them up and deposited them with the assorted skulls, ulnas and rib cages of Skid-Z’s other lady friends.
Sooner or later, he’d find his chosen one.