Vanguard

“I’m just saying you look like an idiot,” I said to Crosshairs.

“I really do not like you.”

“Really? I never would have guessed. Listen lots of people don’t like me. My own parents never liked me. I don’t care if you like me.”

“Whatever. Just get out.”

“Thanks for the ride, Sam,” I said getting out in front of KSI. I swiped my id and headed into the building.

“:.Ready, bud?” I asked Jazzy.

“:.Yep.”

Immediately, he got to work on hacking into their server.

'Now if I was a super high tech company, where would I hide my outdated files?’ I wondered.

I saw a guy with an empty mail cart and followed him figuring that it was a good a start as any. He got on an elevator. We went down to the second sub-basement. There was the mail room and a sign that read archives.

I smirked. “Bingo.”

Of course it was locked. I scanned my badge, but was denied apparently Karen Shelley didn’t have the permissions to get in there.

“:. I need you to make me disappear bud.”

“:.Cameras are down.”

I picked the lock with my blades and entered, quickly shutting the door behind me. My moment of smugness was disrupted by annoyance.

“:.Wanna tell me why you’re pissed off?” I commed.

“:.Stinger, like Bumblebee, but better in every way,” he sneered. “:.Slag! Fragging slag!”

“:.Still not making sense, Bug.”

“:. They’re trying to make us,” he explained.

“:.Like their own versions?”

“:. Like their own fragging, ridiculous, stupid, bull shit, slag versions of us.”

“:.Did you cause a scene?”

“:.No.”

I rolled my eyes. “:.Yeah. I’m gonna call bullshit on that one. Just be careful. Lucky Charms was shaking like leaf this morning. You draw attention to him and we’re fucked.”

I continued digging. I pulled out a set of records from one of the cabinets. It had the most security, so I figured that it was probably the most important. I filed through it.

“:.Guys,” I commed everyone. “:.KSI is partnered with Cemetery Wind. They took the NEST funding and transferred it over to them after we were disbanded. They’re the ones hunting us. I flipped through it. In exchange for help strengthening the nation’s defense against any future alien attacks, KSI was granted all of the remains of any defeated decepticons including those from the attack on Chicago.”

“:.Then why are they hunting us?”

“:.Maybe they’ve gone rogue,” I pondered.

The door opened and I immediately spun around.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in there?” a guy asked.

“I’m Karen,” I said. “Um… do you work in the archives? I’m so lost here. I’m from accounting. My computer’s down for maintenance and I can’t seem to find the numbers from our acquisition of Beats by Dre.”

“While it’s certainly not in there,” the guy said, snatching the file out of my hand and moving to shove it back in the cabinet.

“Sorry dude,” I muttered, slamming his face into the metal, knocking him out cold. I took the file and shoved it under my shirt, before letting out scream and running to the door.

The guy from the mail room came running, stopping, when he saw man on the ground.

“He fell and hit his head,” I lied, trying to act panicked.

“Go call first aid,” he said, kneeling next to the guy.

Once I was in the elevator, I was hit hard with Bee’s anger and sadness.

“:.Bug?”

“:.They’re melting, Jazz.”

“:.Brent, get Cade,” Optimus barked.

The elevator door opened and a team of security guards walked in. “Don’t try to resist,” one said.

“We’ve got your friend,” the other snapped.

I slumped defeated.

They each grabbed an arm and hit the button, taking us up to one of the conference rooms, where I saw Cade sitting with none other the owner of KSI and some old guy that I had never seen before.

They tossed me in the chair next to him. Cade was pleading for some type of representation. “-protect my family. Not from your company, from the government.”

“Mr. Yeager, who do you think I work for?” the older man asked.

“So, you’re the one in charge of Cemetery Wind?” I asked.

“Ms. Shelley,” he said. “Or should I call you Ms. DeMarco? Rather impressive disguise you got there,” he said.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I replied, deactivating my holo projector, so that I looked like myself again.”

“I get it. You’re trying to protect your family, and you are trying to avenge those things, who you seem to think are your family. That’s admirable. I’m trying to defend the nation from the alien war. We’ve had a taste of what that looks like and we are not going to tolerate another.”

“By getting rid of your strongest asset? Because that makes a ton of sense.”

He ignored me. “There is a version of this conversation, where you get to go back to your barn, your daughter gets to graduate with honors and life as you know it will go on, and you” he turned to me. “Get to live, even if it’s in a correctional facility for the rest of your life. Neither of you have any idea of what you’re involved with here.”

I didn’t know what I was involved with? Me? I, who had been there through everything that had happened on Earth since Optimus and the others showed up, was clueless? That was fucking rich.

“What’s the other version of this conversation, the one where you send in your hired help to murder my little girl? Or are you gonna man up and do it yourself?”

“What’s your preference? I’m gonna ask you this once. Where is Optimus Prime?”

There was a large crashing noise, gun fire and alarms started going off.

“He’s right fucking here,” I said, shoving the table back into the guy, pinning him between it and the wall. I transformed my arm and fired into the glass behind us. Drift was bringing Bee up. “And so is our ride.”

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

I transformed it back into my servo and shoved Cade into Bee’s outstretched arm, before jumping on to him and clinging to his plating.

“What the hell?” Cade screamed.

“I’ll explain later.”

Once we were outside, Bee dropped down transforming with both Cade and I inside. He picked up Shane and Tessa and we fled.

“What the hell is this?” Shane yelled freaking out.

“You’re a robot?” Tessa asked.

“Short version. I tried to help save Optimus. I died. Primus, their goddess, revived me as a techno-organic.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means she’s half human, Tess,” Cade explained, staring at me.

I shoved his face. “Still the same bitch that I was before, quit fucking staring.”

“Bug, where’s OP?”

“Enroute.”

I nodded, taking a deep breath to bring me down. The others caught up to us and I felt a lot better.

That was until I noticed explosions up ahead. I groaned.

“Dad?!” Tessa yelled, worried.

“Why the fuck can’t we get away clean just once?” I asked no one in particular.

“That’s it! That’s- Those are their prototypes, Stinger and Galvatron.”

“Really, Cade? I never would’ve guessed,” I snipped. “Jazzy, do not leave my pocket,” I warned him.

Their knockoff stood and aimed at us, before firing missiles.

“Hold on to your butts,” Bee played.

If I wasn’t so caught up in thinking about how I hadn’t missed this part of the gig, I would’ve rolled my eyes. Every one spun around and started high tailing it the other way. Naturally, we were pursued. Stinger was right behind us. I could feel Bee’s anger rising.

“We gotta haul ass, Bee! Come on!”

“Listen, this is not the first time we’ve been through this shit. Have some faith dude. They’re probably feeding it commands. Jazzy, can you intercept or block their signal.”

“I can try.”

“That’s all I ask, Baby Bot.”

I looked back over my shoulder and saw them prepared to fire more missiles. “I lied. I gotta ask that you do it faster.”

“I’m in from earlier, but I can’t interfere. I can only here.”

“Well patch it through. If we know their game plan, we know how to counter.”

The knockoffs fired another round of rockets. Jazzy played the audio.

“Misfire! Misfire! Misfire! Misfire!”

“System failure, Galvatron just fired four rockets.”

“Whoa! They’re shooting at us!”

‘They’re not in control of that fucking thing,’ I realized. This was bad. If they weren’t in control of Galvatron then who the hell was?

All the bots avoided the rockets. The rockets did not avoid he lumber truck ahead of us. It spun, blocking the road, keeping the bots from simply driving through. I buttoned the pocket that Jazzy was in, while Cade and Shane just repeatedly screamed ‘whoa’ as if that was really going to change the outcome of anything.

Optimus transformed and jumped over it. Bee used the wreckage as a spring board during his transformation, throwing Cade, Tessa, Shane and me to Optimus.

Now I had been through this before yes. That being said it was still terrifying, and I would’ve been happy to never ever have repeated the experience it again. So yes, I screamed like a bitch.

Optimus transformed down with us inside.

“I fucking hate that.”

Shane stuck his head out the window to look behind us.

“If you want to keep that head on your shoulders, then you better get it the fuck inside,” I barked.

Optimus transformed throwing us out again. While Cade, Shane and I landed to the side of the road in the grass. Tessa rolled behind Optimus, who engage Galvatron.

Through Jazzy, Joyce was demanding that they make Galvatron fight. Shane was helping people out of the Jeep that had just gotten fucked up, and Cade was focused on Tessa. She managed to move, however as soon as she hit the grass, Optimus was thrown her way.

I shook my head feeling really bad for everyone if I was ever this useless. I ran over to her. Optimus had the advantage, at least for a moment. He ran his sword through the human made mech’s chest. Galvatron managed to use that closeness to his benefit, getting a hold of prime and slamming him to the ground.

When Optimus hit the ground debris flew everywhere including at Tessa and myself. I shoved her into the open car door so that she wouldn’t get hit the debris coming at us. Unfortunately for me that motion put me right in the cross fire. It lodged itself in my neck, which sucked. It totally sucked. It hurt like hell and caused me to yell in agony. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the red that was dripping from my neck onto Tessa’s leg. The world began to spin and I was from hunching over to falling on top of the panicked girl.

“Brent? Brent!” she screamed.

I wanted to say something. That I would be fine, that she needed to shut the hell up and not draw attention to us, but I couldn’t do anything other than groan at the wave of vertigo and the pain of the shrapnel rubbing against the metal vertebrae in my neck. I wanted to pull it out, but it’s very hard to do, when you’ve fainted.