New guy was the smallest robot Sam had seen, barring that psychopathic cuisinart he had later learned was called Frenzy. Now that they weren't playing freeway tag he was getting a good square look, and while new guy was still much bigger than him, the blue robot looked tiny next to the other Autobots.
And, lying motionless on the platform in an abandoned warehouse, he also looked kind of pathetic and woebegone, and rather like he'd been run over by a combine. The bright chrome and shimmering blue armor was dotted with scorch marks, deep scratches and dents. The arms looked the worst. The mouth of the cannon on the left arm was warped and fused at an unnatural angle, is if melted by a great heat. The long blade extended from the right was stained entirely black, as were the three fingers of the right hand.
About the only things that hadn't sustained any damage were his legs. During the chase in Denver, new guy had been moving so fast that Sam hadn't seen much beyond a flashing chrome-and-blue blur, and now he could see why: this guy was all leg. Only minimal armor on the thighs, and virtually none on the disproportionately long shin sections, each being composed mostly of three slightly bowed 'bones' that were segmented. Obviously specialized, Sam mused. A runner.
"Is he going to be okay?" Sam asked of Ratchet, who was hovering intently over new guy, bright lines of light sweeping over the still form.
The medic merely grunted and shook his head. "I hardly know where to begin. The electrical surge did the most damage. This," he said, indicating the small chestplate which looked as if it had been gnawed upon by... well, another robot, "is also new injury. But there's older damage too. Some of it very old. Frankly I'm surprised he was functional at all. Oh, I can repair him," he added, seeing the stricken look on Sam's face, "It just may take a bit longer than usual. I can bring him online soon enough. I'll need to get his processor up and running first, and that's the easy part. Rerouting around the blown relays won't take long. It's the rest of him that's an absolute slagging mess. I've found out why he hasn't responded to anyone, though. His communications array is completely inactive. I'm reading evidence of a disruptor blast of some sort. And his primary and secondary sensor nodes are almost entirely fused."
"So..." Sam ventured, hoping he was translating the technobabble correctly. "He's like, blind and deaf?"
"In a manner of speaking," Ratchet replied, sprouting some unidentifiable tool from within a hand. "His optics and audio receivers are fully operational, but beyond that, he would be unable to scan or transmit to anyone, or receive transmissions in turn."
"No wonder he ran from Bee." Sam sat down on the edge of the impromptu medical table and gave a half-laugh. "He was probably seeing Decepticons everywhere."
Ratchet removed the battered chestplate, poking even more tools down into the tangle of machinery within the small robot. "An apt assessment. Oh, splendid. Transformation cog's cracked. What hasn't he broken?"
"His optics and audios?" Sam replied a little too helpfully, and Ratchet pinned him with one of his typically inscrutable glares. The boy promptly hopped to the concrete floor. "Y'know, I'm gonna go check on Mikaela and Bee now."
Bumblebee sat in car form at the other end of the warehouse, gone back into recharge to finish off what was left of the roughing-up Buzzsaw had given him. And Mikaela was curled up in the backseat, trying to put a dent in her sleep deficit. Sam almost wanted to get in and tilt the front seat back for a nap himself, but he was still too wound up. He wanted to be around when new guy woke up, if only to ask for a name so he could quit calling him new guy.
The chugging of an engine outside drew his attention. Ironhide pulled in through an open bay door, his truck bed full of more charred robot. Three soldiers who Sam recognized as men from Captain Lennox's team were perched around the bed, guns no doubt loaded with mini sabot rounds pointed down into the jumble, just in case. Ratchet had made it clear he wanted to examine the remains before it joined its fellows in the Laurentian Abyss, otherwise Sam was sure the thing would have already been on its way to that watery grave.
No sooner had the bay door been pulled down than Ironhide shuddered slightly, nearly tipping one of the soldiers out. Amidst startled exclamations from the soldiers, Lennox got out of the driver's side as Ironhide began to grumble. Ironhide grumbling sounded like every other mood the weapons specialist had. Of all the Autobots, Sam was finding him the hardest to 'read', and the constant fiddling with his beloved cannons wasn't helping. Sam was beginning to suspect Ironhide only had two modes: offline and shoot things now yes?
"Ratchet, get this misbegotten scrap heap off me," Ironhide was saying as the humans quickly gave him about ten feet of space to each side. "I'm getting leaked on."
Ratchet didn't even look up from his busy tinkering in new guy's innards. "I'll look to the dead after I've made sure the living are going to stay that way," the medic snapped. "Put him in a corner somewhere."
"Sam," Lennox greeted, ignoring the robotic bickering that continued in the background, "Good to see you again."
"Captain, sir," Sam replied, feeling oddly at ease as Lennox clapped him on the shoulder as if he were one of his own men. "Hey, where's the biker chick? Wasn't she with new guy?"
"Prime took her and Epps to the hospital. She was a little banged up."
"By Ugly over there...?" Sam motioned vaguely over to where Ironhide had backed up to a corner and was transforming, unceremoniously dumping the dead mechanoid onto the concrete in a great metallic clamor.
Lennox shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know. We kinda got there at the end of the party. Both robots down, and there's this redhead come flying at us." The captain cocked half a grin. "When Epps gets back, be sure to ask him how he got beat up by a little girl."
Sam snorted. "She attacked you?"
"More like trying to get to blue boy and defend him from us. God only knows what those two have been through, but she wasn't going to let anybody touch him."
Sam let his eyes wander to Bumblebee and thought he knew exactly how the biker chick felt.
"And then," Lennox continued in a louder tone with a thin look at Ironhide, "certain robots who will remain nameless have to go show their full monty and the girl justifiably faints dead away."
Ironhide, for his part, rattled indignantly. "Lucky for all of you that I did, or Laserbeak might have taken a notion to gun you and the girl down. I'm just glad he's easy to bully."
"'Laserbeak'?" Sam asked.
"Laserbeak," said Lennox with a face too straight.
"What's going on?" murmured a voice from behind. Turning, Sam spotted Mikaela poking her head out Bumblebee's open passenger-side window, craning her neck to peer at Ironhide.
Sam went over and leaned against Bumblebee. "Ratchet's still working on new guy and Ironhide just brought in dead guy. Noise wake you up?"
"Didn't really sleep," Mikaela shrugged, opening the door and crawling out from the backseat. "Hi, Captain."
Whatever Lennox had to say was cut off by a sudden commotion. Shouting in the oddly musical staccato of Cybertronian echoed through the mostly-empty warehouse. From their position, Sam and Mikaela could see Ratchet's back, the medic's bulk concealing something thrashing wildly on the improvised exam table.
"He's online," Ironhide commented mildly as Bumblebee transformed behind the two teens. Sam exchanged an eager grin with Mikaela, and within moments everyone present was crowding around the platform.
"Back up, all of you," Ratchet ordered as gruffly as possible, the effect ruined somewhat by the three-toed metal foot that had planted itself square in his face. Lennox directed his team away, but no one else moved as new guy grappled somewhat ineffectually at the hand that was holding him down. Ratchet pried the foot off and spoke to the newcomer in Cybertronian.
New guy stopped struggling. Said something.
Ratchet exchanged a three-way glance with Ironhide and Bumblebee, the latter of whom only shrugged and emitted a low warble.
Ratchet pulled his hand away from new guy and spoke again. New guy pushed himself into a half-sitting position, fused cannon scraping clumsily on the table, and replied.
Another curious three-way look between the bigger robots.
Sam levered his elbows up onto the platform and propped his chin on his arms. "What's going on?"
New guy looked right at him, the shutters around his optics working furiously. Sam fought back the urge to grin; he'd never seen any of the robots look quite so flustered before. The smooth curve of new guy's noseless face suddenly lengthened slightly, knob of a chin descending as the nose-area's plates slid apart and briefly exposed vents.
If new guy made one crack about pheromones...
But new guy only paused, looking further behind Sam to where Bumblebee stood. This time Sam didn't bother to hide his grin, glancing back at his guardian as the yellow robot waved cheerily.
"Bumblebee," Ratchet informed new guy. "Autobot Bumblebee, I might add, and that was a fine chase you led us on."
New guy went from flustered to embarrassed, cringing in on himself and speaking more in Cybertronian. This time, though, Ironhide snorted. "I understood that," the black robot said.
"What in the Pit is wrong with your lingual subroutines?" Ratchet muttered, grabbing new guy's head in one hand and popping tools out of the other.
"Medic--" New guy's long legs kicked momentarily as he was tipped off-balance. "--stop-- get pan gate, lie reed who mind Nic--"
Sam blinked. That was English, but... "Huh?"
"Sit still--" Ratchet fumbled with his patient, trying to bring his tools to bear on the back of the newcomer's head.
New guy started to reach up with his fused cannon-arm, a discordant clacking sounding as he apparently tried to retract the weapon and nothing happened.
"Stop that, you're stripping the gears."
The other arm came up, the burnt blade sliding back into his arm with an equally reluctant-sounding grind. "Where is she?" he demanded, pushing Ratchet's tool-hand away and squirming out of the other's grip. "Let me go. Ravage will kill her!"
Mikaela, slipping up beside Sam, muffled a giggle as a weird sort of lopsided wrestling match broke out, with new guy trying unsuccessfully to worm out from underneath Ratchet's larger and stronger hands.
"And where do you think you're going?" Ironhide cut in. "Half shut-down and can't speak straight. What a sight."
"Is she here?" New guy stopped fighting Ratchet's hands long enough to glance around.
"If you mean the biker chick," Sam said, "then no, she's--"
"Then I must find her." An attempt to stand was thwarted, and new guy scowled up at Ratchet. "Ravage is going to--"
"Ravage is going to sit over there and rust like a good little pile of scrap," Ironhide interrupted, pointing to where the dead robot was heaped.
"You... you killed him?" Again new guy paused.
"No," Ironhide grunted. "You did."
New guy was flabbergasted, if Sam was reading the expression right.
"As marvelous as that is," Ratchet growled, "if you don't sit still I will offline you again and we'll just wait for your report until after I've welded you to the wall. As for your friend, she's going to be all right. Her damage was very minor. Yours, on the other hand, is so spectacular I really shouldn't have brought you out of stasis lock so soon."
"Optimus Prime is making sure she's getting help," Sam added, hoping the name-dropping would calm the little robot down.
It did. New guy relaxed, metal settling with a raspy clatter as he shifted on the table. "So Prime is here." His voice, a vaguely androgynous tenor, dropped noticeably, as if he couldn't quite believe it was real.
"Not far from here. He will bring your friend once she's ready. I have him on an open comm," Ratchet said, considerably more gentle in tone. "Make your report while I make your repairs. He'll hear it."
For a moment, all the small robot did was sink where he sat. Sam had the feeling that if it had been at all possible, new guy would be crying with relief.
"I am Autobot Whiplash," he said at last, "Reconnaissance, infiltration, secure dispatch. Exploration vessel Axalon 7, under the command of Rodimus, with Perceptor, Powerglide and Bluestreak." A pause. "I am the only survivor."
The three-way glance between Ratchet, Ironhide and Bumblebee was considerably weightier this time.
"I carry an encrypted copy of the Axalon's logs on Rodimus's final order. I would have transmitted my acknowledgement of Prime's call, but I was attacked almost immediately..."
Groggily Nic growled at whatever jerk thought it was funny to shine a flashlight right into her eyes, trying to bat away the unfamiliar hands that touched her. Blurry impressions filtered into her mind. Fluorescent lights. A soft, flat surface underneath. A thin, sour antiseptic smell.
"There we go. Nicole?"
The face of a woman hovered too near over her, pen light waving in Nic's face like some migraine-inducing lightning bug. Nic squinted, reached up to push the woman out of her personal space. "Stoppit," she murmured irritably.
"Well, that's something." The woman withdrew the pen light and was prodding at Nic's face. "Pupils look normal. Lisa, get ahold of Dr. Patil and schedule an x-ray while I take care of this cut."
"What?" Nic tried to clear her head and started to sit up. "What's going on?"
"Take it easy, honey," the woman replied, gently pushing her back down on the bed. "You don't seem to have a concussion or any broken bones, but let's not press our luck, mm?"
Bed. Woman wearing a white coat with an ID tag dangling from a lanyard. Busy noises all around from beyond a white curtain hanging from a track in the ceiling. Hospital? "Where am I?"
"The emergency room. I'm Dr. Mitchell. This is St. Vincent Hospital." Nic winced as the doctor dabbed something cold and wet and stinging against the cut on the side of her forehead. "Can you tell me what happened, Nicole?"
Memory came back in a rush and Nic sucked in a breath. "Whiplash!" The name was out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she shot into a sitting position.
"So..." Dr. Mitchell regarded her with a raised brow, cotton swab still in hand. "automobile accident? Your neck hurts?"
"What? No, no." The mental image of a lanky blue body clattering lifeless to the ground made her stomach lurch. "I need to-- my bike-- how'd I get here?"
Dr. Mitchell merely resumed cleaning the cut. "Motorcycle? Don't tell me you were riding around without a helmet."
"No," Nic tried not to snap. "Look, I have to get out of here. Can I go? My-- I need to find my friend, he'll be worried--"
"Oh, he's here. He brought you in."
"What?" Nic tried to picture the scenario of a giant robot carting her into an emergency room and couldn't imagine it would end this calmly.
"The soldier gentleman? He's in the waiting room, as far as I know." Dr. Mitchell reached for a paper-wrapped gauze pad on the nearby tray.
"I don't know any..."Oh, shit. Those guys. Who are probably playing Alien Autopsy with Whip right now. "I have to go."
"Whoa, whoa, you just cool your jets, missy," Dr. Mitchell clamped a hand on her shoulder and Nic winced as a bruise made itself known, followed by a chorus of aches and scrapes seemingly all over her body.
"See? You look like you fell off a mountain. Sit still."
Nic was about to protest again-- she would get up and march right out, bruises bedamned-- when the curtain parted and a fatigue-clad man leaned in and, spotting Nic, grinned, though the expression was marred by a slightly swollen and split lip. "Hey, you're up."
Dr. Mitchell looked at Nic. "Your friend, right?"
"I don't know that guy." Nic stabbed a finger at him, giving the doctor her best suspicious glare.
"Sir, you need to leave," Dr. Mitchell told the soldier.
"I just need to tell her--"
The doctor put one hand to her hip. "Sir--"
"It's about your bike, Nicole." The man gave Nic an unmistakable Look, eyebrows raised and all but winking as Dr. Mitchell made as if to physically push him out.
Nic held up a hand to the doctor, narrowed her eyes pointedly at the man. "My bike."
The grin turned rather smug. "Yes, ma'am, the blue one. It was kinda busted up but we got it to a mechanic."
"A mechanic," Nic repeated flatly.
"Best one in the universe," the soldier said, smug tipping into smarmy. "You might say the man's a machine when it comes to fixing them."
Nic stared.
"You, out, now." Dr. Mitchell did shove the soldier this time, and he backed out.
"I'll be out front if you want a lift to the garage," came his voice from beyond the curtain. "So just let the doc check you out, your bike's gonna be good as new--"
"Soldier, your camouflage isn't working," Dr. Mitchell barked, half-out of the curtain. "I can still see you."
Nic drew in an uncertain breath, barely noticing as the doctor continued bandaging her forehead cut. He knows, she thought. He knows about the robots. But can I trust him? Did the good guys find us?
Half of Nic's mind was telling her to get off the bed, storm out of the hospital and start hunting down her friend, because surely he was in pieces or worse, not that she would have any idea how to help him.
But when the doctor asked her to remove her shirt to examine for further injury, she complied, and hoped that the x-ray wouldn't take too long.
It didn't; the hospital apparently wasn't terribly busy at the moment, and while the pictures were developing, Nic took stock. Her jacket, the nice scuffed-but-still-wearable black and white leather, was on a chair near the bed where she'd been parked, but her backpack was missing, as was her helmet. The helmet was easy to place-- it had been left at that abandoned building just before-- was it robot fracas number three she'd thrown herself into? And her backpack, well, she was certain it had been on her back when she'd fainted like a lady out there. Soldier boy probably had it, she reasoned. It had her wallet in it. Otherwise how would he and the doctor have known her name?
At length the x-rays came back, no broken bones to report, though Dr. Mitchell clucked over the myriad bruises that were trying to outnumber her freckles, one odd bruise on her ribs looked rather like a large hand, but that was just silly, right? Nic had to smile a little ruefully; gentle though Whiplash tried to be with her, he didn't exactly have any padding. She could bear a little scuffing if he was okay.
It was an 'if' she was going determine, hell or high water, the very instant Dr. Mitchell turned her loose.
Pausing only to don her jacket, and to eyeball a vending machine and tuck hands briefly into pockets woefully empty of change or paper money, Nic found the emergency room waiting area. Of the dozen worn padded chairs, only two were occupied: one by a slightly dirty backpack, the other a muscular man in camouflage uniform with a cell phone to his ear.
Nic marched right up to him and folded her arms across her chest. "You'd better not be shitting me."
With one brow raised, he merely looked at her with half a grin and spoke into the phone. "Yeah, that was her. We'll be there soon."
Her knee-jerk response, thankfully quashed, was something along the lines of oh, 'we' will, will 'we'? "Let's be sure we're talking about the same thing before I go anywhere with you."
"Fair enough," he said, slipping the phone into a pocket. "I'm getting the story secondhand, but the gist of it is you tooling out from Kansas on a four-wheel drive like I ain't never seen... got some real unusual extras, your bike, don't he?"
Nic threw a look over her shoulder at the reception desk on the other side of the room. The nurse on duty wasn't paying them any attention, but she lowered her voice all the same. "So you know about the space robots-- what else you got?"
"There was something about you throwing rocks at some mofo called Rumble." He shrugged nonchalantly. "But I think my favorite part is you playing tag with the tornado."
"Chicken," Nic corrected. "Not tag. And not my idea, either."
"So whose was it to jump the overpass?"
"That one was mine."
He laughed and stood up. "Damn, girl." He held out a hand. "Robert Epps. Call me Bobby."
She relaxed a bit, and shook his hand perhaps a little too guardedly, but suspicions were hard to kill; this guy was military, and military meant government, and she didn't know what government would mean for Whiplash. "Nic. It's only Nicole if I'm in trouble." She gave him a look. "And what kind of trouble am I in, exactly?"
Bobby looked as if he wanted very badly to roll his eyes as he picked up her backpack and handed it to her. "Only the kind everybody in our little club gets in. Look, I'll take you to where he's being fixed. My captain says he asked for you before he'd let the medic touch him."
Nic slung her backpack over one shoulder, trying not to wince as her patchwork of bruises protested. "'Man's a machine', huh?"
"Best I could think of on short notice." He preceded her out the automatic doors. The parking lot beyond was dimly lit-- vaguely Nic wondered just how long she'd been out if it was completely dark out already. She tried to peer out past the lot, looking down towards the street. There were some buildings that she could make out, but there wasn't a single light to be seen beyond the hospital's lot lamps.
"Power's knocked out," Bobby said, seeing her look. "Seems someone stuck their finger in a power substation not too far from here. Thank god the hospital's got decent generators."
Nic cringed. "I can't believe he did that. Is he going to be okay?"
"I don't know," said the soldier, and the I'm-a-smug-bastard tone was back, "Why don't you ask him?"
Nic followed his pointing finger to where, idling under the yellowed glow of a lot lamp near the road, there was parked a massive blue eighteen-wheeler, painted with red flames washing back from the prow. Ask the trucker? she thought.
And then she remembered just what sort of crazy alternate dimension she currently occupied.
The semi's lights flickered on. The engine's idle keyed up just slightly, as if acknowledging them with a polite nod. Nic stopped cold.
"Easy now." Bobby put a hand on her shoulder. "We've had enough of you running from the good guys."
"Oh my god," she breathed, mouth agog, staring at the truck. No, Truck, with a capital T, a continent on wheels. She was approaching it without really telling her legs to move, boggling at the sheer size. She had seen big trucks before. Rigs like this were ubiquitous just about anywhere. But Bobby had all but come out and said this was a giant robot, and--
Perched on the hood, gleaming, an embossed sigil identical to the one Whiplash bore.
Automatically she tried to imagine it transformed and standing and her brain broke. Holy shit, he must be huge!
The door swung smoothly open of its own accord.
Nic hesitated only a moment-- sitting on Whiplash was one thing, rather like getting a piggyback ride if one looked at it sideways while squinting-- but to actually be inside one of them? It seemed invasive to her, but the door was open, an invitation... Very, very carefully, she pulled herself up, climbing delicately into the passenger seat. Once she was in, the door gently shut.
It looked normal. Extraordinarily clean for a truck's interior, but normal. Nic settled her backpack in her lap, wrapping her arms around it and trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible. Could he feel her, sitting there?
"Um, hi?"
"Greetings, Nicole Darling." It was a voice she could feel in the fillings of her teeth, rich and strong, a clear bass filling the cabin. "I am relieved to see you are not badly injured after your ordeal. My name is Optimus Prime."
An utterly girlish squeak erupted from her before she could stop it. "ohmygod-- we've been looking for you!"
"I know," came the reply, and she could hear the gentle smile in the voice. "I only wish the reunion had been less... eventful. But we are glad nonetheless for the safe return of one of our own."
Nic hugged her backpack, unsure of where to look-- the voice was coming from everywhere-- as Bobby climbed up into the cab and into the driver's seat. "Is... is he okay? I mean, Whiplash, is he going to be okay?"
"He will be, because of you. Whiplash has given a full accounting of your actions since his arrival on this planet. It is due in no small part to your courage that he has made it this far."
Nic felt her face and ears grow hot, and she was glad it was only dimly lit inside the cabin, because she was sure she was turning bright red. "I just-- just did what I had to, I mean..." she trailed off, suddenly fumbling for words, fighting the full-head blush. Bashful and timorous were unfamiliar sensations.
Bobby leaned over, across the gap between the two front seats. "Pay no attention to the robot behind the curtain."
That did it. The blush evaporated and she threw him a narrow look, or tried to, marred by the grin that was crawling across her face. "My ruby slippers have steel toes, pal."
The soldier let out a laugh, retreating back to the driver's side, hands up in mock surrender. "Oh, I think you're going to fit right in."
"Indeed," Optimus's voice sounded again. "I will now take you both back to our temporary shelter, where the rest of my unit is waiting, Nicole Darling, and your friend is most anxious to see you."
No, the lecture was, instead, an angry inventory of his own damage.
"Hairline stress fractures in the upper frame... misaligned struts... slipped gears... and this will take forever to refit," Ratchet groused, disengaging Whiplash's left arm at the shoulder servo. "Almost every component's been flash-welded together and the cyclotron's casing is completely shattered. What possessed you to overcharge like that? You'll be lucky if this weapon isn't a total loss."
"I lack sufficient power to overcome an enemy of Ravage's size on my own," Whiplash replied, doing his utmost not to sound insubordinate, "and the electrical energy was available. I saw few other options."
"I thought it was pretty creative," said a human voice behind him, and Whiplash twisted to look. He hadn't heard the female climb upon the rough repair berth and his sensors were even duller than before, thanks to the surge.
"Primus save me from creative soldiers," Ratchet retorted, cutting laser already at work. "and their creative injuries. And I told everyone to let me work, Mikaela."
"You've got his arm off," the human pointed out. "Why can't he come talk with everybody while you're working on that? He can walk, can't he?"
"I will not leave the facility," Whiplash added, and paused as both the medic and Mikaela stared at him. He cycled his vents. "What did I say?"
"That you weren't going to heave the facility," the human said, mouth quirking upwards.
Whiplash turned back to the medic. "The data I acquired for this language is corrupt. Can someone give me a corrected download? This is embarrassing."
"I'm afraid it's more serious than that." Ratchet looked up from the detached arm, retracting his laser. "You're doing it in Cybertronian too. Only worse. When I brought you online it was nothing but nonsense."
Whiplash's fuel pump valves fluttered in consternation. Very carefully, he employed Cybertronian to ask, ("You cannot understand me?")
("That was mostly coherent,") Ratchet replied in kind, then switched back to English. "I'll know more when I can do a deeper scan of your processor itself. But I'd like to get all your hardware in working order before I go poking around in your cerebral architecture."
"If it's any consolation," said Mikaela, putting a hand on his remaining arm in a startling similarity to Nic, "you speak better English than most native speakers."
He offered a weak smile. "Thank you. Nic has been very patient with my malfunction, but I will be glad to have it gone."
Ratchet returned his attention to the wreck of the arm. "We will see."
Whiplash did not at all like the discouraging undertone in the medic's subvocals.
"Go on," Ratchet added. "Your arm doesn't need to be attached for this and Optimus is on his way with the human female."
Whiplash knew a dismissal when he heard one and levered his legs off the berth to stand on the floor. He turned to assist Mikaela, but another human had materialized at his side, a male reaching up to help the female down. Whiplash was half tempted to ask that Ratchet restore his sensors first-- he was a little tired of being snuck up on.
"You are Samwitwicky, correct?"
"Just Sam, actually." The male grinned up at him, leading the way to where the other two Cybertronians and five humans were gathered. "So did you and the biker chick practice for that overpass jump or what? That was wicked."
Troubled, Whiplash drew back. "Wicked? It was not my intent to be willfully malicious-- I was unaware of who..."
"He means it was cool," Mikaela interrupted, but her clarification only confused him further. How evil was synonymous to low temperature was quite beyond him.
("Both words indicate a positive response in this context,") a new voice, in the welcome sounds of Cybertronian, cut in. ("Human vernacular. Really something, isn't it?")
Whiplash looked up at the gleaming yellow figure of Bumblebee. The joy he felt from at last being in the presence of others of his own kind was tempered with a healthy dose of mortification that, brilliant though his escape had been, it had been from an Autobot, and this Autobot at that, the hero of Tyger Pax. (He was only glad that his language malfunction meant-- hopefully-- that Bumblebee hadn't understood the rather colorful suggestion he had shouted during the chase in Denver.)
"Bumblebee," Ratchet, not even moving from the task of repairing Whiplash's arm, growled. "You've put enough strain on that vocalizer. Not so much as a beep out of you for at least a day."
Bumblebee let out an affirmative beep. A little thrown by the casual insolence, Whiplash cast a glance back at the medic, then to the larger black-armored warrior who stood near the cluster of humans, expecting a reprimand of some sort. Nothing happened, save a smatter of giggling from Sam and Mikaela, and the murmur of human conversation.
"So," said the black-armored one. "This is what became of Rodimus's rookie. No wonder you were so slippery. There are still stories about that incident at Maccadam's..."
Well, the night was shaping into one great leak of embarrassment, Whiplash thought, and spoke up before the warrior could continue-- bad enough he stood here before their human allies stripped of nearly half his parts, he would weld what was left of his dignity to his bare spark chamber if he had to. "I recognize your voice now. Ironhide-- I first met you outside Assembly Complex Vector Sigma, in Kalis."
"Hmm, that was you, wasn't it?" Ironhide shifted, peering closely at him over the heads of the humans. "It certainly took you long enough to pick a designation." He laughed, and gave Whiplash a companionable thump across the helmet, a blow that didn't hurt but nonetheless sent him stumbling into Bumblebee.
"Hey, 'Hide, take it easy," commented one of the uniformly-clad male humans. "Poor guy's been dented enough."
"A shame about Rodimus," Ironhide continued as Bumblebee steadied Whiplash. "What happened out there?"
Whiplash collected himself. Giving a report was something he could do, even given the content of this particular report. He had known for a very long time that, if he survived, eventually he would have to give official notice of the deaths of the four soldiers who had become his closest friends and mentors.
"I was on recon when the attack occurred," he said, easily falling into what Powerglide had half-jokingly called his 'report mode', speaking crisply and calmly. "When I returned--"
A blast of noise from outside mercifully cut the ill-fated tale short.
Optimus pulled up to the closed bay door with a hiss of air brakes and a blare of his horn, startling Nic. Presently the door was rolled up and open by a pair of men in uniform, Bobby's fellow soldiers, she surmised, who stood aside to let the eighteen-wheeler roll inside. She peered through the windshield, catching only a glimpse of great metallic shapes under the glow of incandescent lights high above before the doors opened and Bobby hopped out.
"Might want to give him some space," he told her, and vanished with a grin.
Nic shouldered her pack and clambered out as carefully as she'd gotten in, backing away as soon as she hit the concrete floor. She started walking around the front of the truck, intending to seek Whiplash out, but as she passed the front grille, that sound stopped her in her tracks.
Hissing, rattling, whirring-- the flame-patterned truck erupted right before her eyes, shifting and unfolding, the familiar truck shape boiling over, growing into something more. Feet like pillars braced legs as massive as trees as the radiant robot stood up, metal sliding and ringing in the hollow space of the warehouse. And, as plates slid back revealing a face that was probably taller than she was, Optimus Prime gestured with one arm.
"Nicole Darling, these are our comrades and allies," he said.
Well aware her eyeballs were going to pop out and roll away, Nic let out the breath she'd been holding and turned around. Three robots immediately caught her eye-- the big black hulk, a smaller bright yellow one with car doors splayed like wings from his back, and--
"Whiplash!" Her hands flew up to her mouth at the state he was in, and she ran towards him. Worse, if that was possible, than the last time she'd seen him. An entire arm was gone, as was half his upper chestplate, exposing the tangle of his clockwork guts. His beautiful blue and chrome finish was scratched, dented and scraped bare in places. "Oh my god, your arm!"
"Nic," he greeted her, coming forward to meet her halfway. "The medic has it-- I am being repaired, it's all right."
"It's just-- geez."
"Look." Barely contained amusement plain in his voice, Whiplash knelt and pointed back with his remaining hand towards the yellow robot. "You were right."
"My scout, Bumblebee," Optimus said. "Whom you nearly met in Denver."
The yellow robot held up hands with fingers curled into mocking claws. A tinny sound played as if through a car stereo: "Grr. Arg."
Nic's hands came back up to her face as another blush threatened. "Oh, god," she chuckled. "If we had just pulled over..."
"What's done is done," interjected Optimus gently. "And my weapons specialist, Ironhide, who found you both after your encounter with the Decepticon Ravage."
"Brave enough to throw rocks at Decepticons," the black behemoth rumbled affably, "and the sight of me puts you offline?"
"Couldn't find any rocks," she retorted before she could stop her mouth. Ironhide only laughed appreciatively, over the smattering of chuckles from the knot of humans.
Optimus continued. "My chief medical officer, Ratchet--"
"Who is busy," cut in a chartreuse-hued robot some distance away, his back to the gathering, puttering at something on a platform made of plywood, sheet metal and stacks of concrete blocks.
"Sam Witwicky and Mikaela Banes, and Captain William Lennox and his team, all of whom greatly aided us in the battle against the Decepticon forces." Optimus inclined his head down to Whiplash and Nic. "You have our gratitude, Nicole, for your part in Whiplash's safe return. And welcome, Whiplash, to Earth."
Whiplash stood, drawing himself to his full height with as much aplomb as his current state of disrepair would allow. "Autobot Whiplash reporting for duty, Optimus Prime."