Chapter 35

Bumblebee nodded and emitted a brief electronic squeak. As they stepped back and looked on, it shrank, shifted, transformed. Moments later, sitting before them once more was a by-now-familiar yellow Camaro. The doors swung wide and the horn beeped insistently.

He slipped in behind the wheel. Carefully, he took it in both hands. It remained steady and unmoving beneath his fingers. Mikaela considered. It was still very empty in the abandoned industrial park. Looking around, she reached down and picked up her purse, then climbed in on the passenger side. The re-formed Camaro roared to life and headed out of the empty lot. As it left it sprayed gravel all over the motionless police cruiser where it lay smashed and unmoving beneath the heavy wrecking ball. Once back on a busy city street, the Camaro slowed to comply with the prevailing speed limit. Tentatively leaning forward, Mikaela let one hand slide back and forth over the dash in front of her. Stained and sunbleached, it felt exactly like dried-out old car upholstery.

While speeding away, Alex explained everything to Mikaela who was slowly taking in everything.

Mikaela watched the car drive automatically, as Mikaela hesitates to sit in the driver's seat while Bumblebee is driving,"This car's a pretty good driver."

Alex nodded and replied," I know. Why don't you go sit in that seat, there?"

Mikaela answers," I'm not going to sit in that seat. He's driving."

Alex hummed and said,"Yeah. You're right. Well you should sit in my lap."

As Mikaela's gaze meets Alex's, a playful smile dances across her lips, illuminated by the flickering light of the dashboard. With a tantalizing slowness, she shifts her weight and gracefully settles onto Alex's lap. The air crackles with anticipation as their eyes lock, conveying a silent agreement amidst the chaos surrounding them. With a soft exhale, Alex reclines, enveloping Mikaela in his embrace.

While Mikaela being curious questioned,"You know what I don't understand?"

Alex hummed, while Mikaela continues,"Why, if he's supposed to be, like, this super-advanced robot, does he transform back into this piece of crap Camaro?"

Brakes squealing, the car skidded to an abrupt halt. Both doors swung open, the car tilted sharply from side to side, and its occupants found themselves unceremoniously, though gently, dumped onto the pavement. Sam rose, started to brush at his clothes, and stopped when he realized the futileness of the gesture. Plutonium couldn't get his torn jeans clean. "Great. You hurt its feelings."

She stepped back, away from the car. "What's it doing now?"

Alexander sighed and said,"Don't worry he will be back?"

As they looked on, the car's windshield morphed into a screen. Imaging beams scanned the street, bouncing from car to car, traveling farther than either of the occupants could see. They settled on a brand-new, fully customized Camaro GTO. Simple scanning beams were replaced by more complex transcanner waves. A moment later and the Camaro was transforming again, reshaping itself before them, Alex was not suprised, while Mikaela's eyes widened with shock. As the Metal contorted, flowed, folded in upon itself. But not into the shape of a robot this time. When the process finally concluded, it was a different vehicle that stood before them. An exact duplicate of the distant GTO, except for one difference. It was the same bright yellow as before and sported identical black racing stripes.

Mikaela's expression did a little transforming of its own, changing from one of awe to outright admiration. She took a step toward the freshly morphed vehicle, admiring it openly."Now this is a car."

Walking back to the driver's side, admiring every glimmer of light bouncing off the blemishand ding-free bright yellow paint job, Alexanded slid in behind a shining custom steering wheel. "Bee, lets find your companions." Metal of a different kind blasted from multiple speakers as the transformed car sped off. On the front seat Mikaela slid a little closer toward Alex. Her purse lay between them. Picking it up, she tossed it casually into the backseat.

In the industrial park, Seymore Simmons surveyed the aftermath of destruction, his agents combing through the debris with scanning equipment. The readings were off the charts. One agent approached Simmons, reporting, "Sir, it looks like there was a battle involving N.B.E's here."

Simmons nodded grimly. "Scan every inch of this place. I want thorough documentation, including footage from any nearby CCTV cameras."

The Agent nodded and went back, while they failed to notice the lights that sprang to life within what for the past several moments had been a dark, inert skull. Sprouting tiny centipede-like legs, the decapitated head rose up slightly to take stock of its surroundings. Its attention fixed on one of agents cars, Skittering over to it, Frenzy climbed in and his head began to transcan the contents. spray, useless. Glasses, no good. Pen, insufficiently complex.

Burner phone. Limited storage capability, small and decidedly primitive, but sufficiently adaptable. As soon as it completed the transcan, Frenzy kicked the actual device into a pile of rubble and out of sight. Transformation ensued. The result was that it became an exact duplicate of the now-banished device. Unseen, it worked its way to the previous phones postion like a tarantula backing into its lair, withdrew its legs, and went dormant. Like the rest of its fellow Decepticons it had waited for the forthcoming Resolution for thousands of years. It could wait a little longer.

While elsewhere Bumblebee transforms itself back into the robotic humanoid shape.

Its sleek exterior glistening under the moonlight. Suddenly, with a low hum, the Camaro begins to tremble, its metal frame quivering as if charged with electricity.

The silence is shattered by the sound of metal tearing as the Camaro's body splits apart, unfolding like a metallic flower in bloom. The roof and rear section gracefully fold back, revealing the intricate machinery hidden beneath the surface.

With a mechanical whir, the doors swing upwards, their panels twisting and contorting as they transform into powerful arms. Each joint clicks into place with precision, the metallic limbs gleaming in the moonlight.

As if guided by an unseen force, the front fenders and windshield begin to compress and shift, forming the unmistakable shape of a chest. Every curve and contour aligns perfectly, creating a seamless transition from vehicle to humanoid form.

With a final surge of energy, the wheels detach from the chassis, their rubbery tread giving way to sturdy leg components. Each segment extends and elongates, revealing a framework of steel and circuitry beneath the surface.

Mikaela watched the transformation with awe and muttered,"Still cannot get around how amazing this is."

With the mechanoid leading the way, they followed a trail of flaming brush and vitreous scree down the hill until they came to a ditch where one of the falling stars had landed. When they finally reached the site, nothing concealed the still-smoking object from their view. Mikaela came up close to Alexander. "So that's them."

Alexander nodded and replied,"Without them the fight with Decepticons will have more deaths and destruction than anyone can possibly think off."

Alexander knew Earth was hotspot for alien activity in many worlds, so with or without Autobots, the earth will still have war on their hands.

They saw silhouette began to rise, higher and higher against the still-flaming, crackling scrub, until it was nearly thirty feet tall. It is a metallic, robotic form with angular features and intricate detailing, with thick armor plating covering his body. His head is adorned with a distinctive helmet-like structure, often featuring sharp edges and ridges, and his optics glow with a piercing blue.

Unmoved by the sight, their own mechanical companion stood nearby, as if waiting for something more. Despite what he had told Mikaela earlier was still wary of them. Just in case they had to take shelter behind something other than his transformed car. The immense shape that had emerged from the silvery egg started to turn toward them. Its attention was drawn away from the two teens by a blast from an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the road above the ravine.

Turning in the direction of the sound, the newly arrived alien mechanoid instantly and efficiently transcanned the big truck as it slowed to take a sharp curve. The process did not affect or alert either the truck or its oblivious driver. By the time the night-running transport had sped on past, a second, identical truck was facing from the depths of the ravine, it drives towards there direction.

The second one crashed through a baseball stadium, the downtown street being vacant, there was no one to admire the exotic sports car as it rotated slowly on the turntable in the showroom window. Lumbering up to the glass, the alien exoskeleton was clearly not a potential customer. Not to purchase, perhaps, but in this case to copy. Transcan beams swept over every inch of the low-slung vehicle, recording it down to the last molecule of overpriced paint. He transformed into Customized 2006 Pontiac Solstice.

A café in town two teens were clowning around with each other and with their food as a third friend filmed them with a compact video camera. The background changed radically when the windows imploded as something massive and glowing slammed into the street. While his friends screamed and panicked, the youth with the camera rushed toward the confusion to try to get it all recorded. Instead of flames and fear, his thoughts were filled with visions of network exposure and large royalty checks.

Having their curiosity having overcome their fright, the teens in the café had joined their cameraman-wannabe companion in rushing toward the place where the flaming object had touched down. It would have been hard to miss the huge fiery hole that had been blasted into the side of an old electronics shop. They arrived at the same time as fire trucks and ambulances. Ever thinking, the youth with the camera was pan-ning across the scene, taking in the confusion, the busy emergency teams, the badly damaged building. "Hey, maybe it's a meteor!" he blurted suddenly.

"Pieces of meteor are worth a lot of money." He would have put his camera aside and gone in search of potentially valuable fragments except that the heat emanating from the building prevented anyone from going inside. Around him and his friends, firefighters were unsnaking hoses and readying protective gear preparatory to searching the interior. Gonna get all the good stuff for themselves, the budding cameraman found himself thinking sourly. One of his friends was pointing. "Something's moving inside. There, look."

The shape he indicated was massive and unidentifiable. They caught only a glimpse of it before dark smoke boiling up from the flaming interior of the structure blotted out their view.

"What is it?" the youth with the camera wondered aloud. More movement—something coming toward them. He and his friends started to back up. "Oh God," he muttered, "what is that?"

It was—an emergency vehicle. Bursting out of the smoke, it hung a hard right and took off up the street. Given the angle at which it heeled over, careening crazily for an instant on only two wheels, all three gaping kids found themselves praying that there were no patients inside. They needn't have worried.

Within that particular ambulance a Hummer H2 Research, which was an exact duplicate of another emergency vehicle that had arrived just a few moments earlier, there was no inside inside.

On another, lower hillside in an exclusive subdivision a peculiar thunderclap roused a fiveyear-old girl from her bed. Walking to the window of her bedroom, she was just in time to see something splash into the family pool, sending chlorinated water and a couple of inflatable water toys flying in all directions. Eyes widening, she whirled and raced back to her bed. From beneath the pil-low she pulled out a single baby tooth, held it up, and smiled broadly as she inspected the wayward dentition. Her grin unequivocally revealed the tooth's recent previous location.

Warm mist rose from the expensive swimming pool behind the expensive house in the expensive suburb. Oblivious to all the expense around her, a little girl presently short one tooth but full of excitement pushed open a rear door and hurried out onto the concrete patio. That it was presently soaking wet with displaced pool water only added to her anticipation. Swathed in steam, a dark shape loomed before her, rising slowly and compellingly from the depths of the pool. Straightening its legs, it towered above her. Utterly un-afraid, the girl approached with one arm extended to offer up her recently departed tooth. "Are you the tooth fairy" Ignoring her, the robot's head swiveled to the right.

Ignoring her, the robot's head swiveled to the right. The first mobile mechanism its detectors locked onto was a big black dually pickup truck parked in a nearby driveway. Stepping out of the pool, it pushed aside a pair of mature fruit trees and smashed through the fence separating the girl's property from that of the neighbors. By the time the girl's parents finally stumbled out the back door, the massive apparition was no longer visible. Still half asleep, they could only eye their sodden, ruined backyard in shock. Bending, the mother picked up an inflatable inner tube that boasted a bright green horse head and child-sized handles.

"Holy God," the girl's father exclaimed, "what happened to the pool?" His daughter turned to him. There was no alarm in her voice, only confusion—and obvious disappointment. But she would later receive a huge gift from Alexander and Mikaela after Ironhide tells them about her.

"The tooth fairy drank it!" A sudden throaty roar caused her parents to look up and toward the street—where the back end of an oversized black GMC pickup was visible screeching toward the first intersection. Even in the darkness they could see that it looked exactly like the one that belonged to the Camberwells next door.