Vanguard

I watched Tessa was the weird alien in the cage that she was currently hiding on in order to avoid being detected wrapped its long tongue around her leg. At least it wasn’t down her throat, like Sammy. I was a tad bit pissed at Tessa. On one hand I understood the need to save one’s own life. On the other hand leaving me to probably die in the back of a car that was being eaten by a garbage disposal from hell was a bit shitty.

She fell and the thing began to pull her towards its mouth.

I kind of wanted to let it eat her. I’m not going to lie, but I didn’t, instead, dropping from my hiding spot, and blasting the dumb thing.

“Brent!”

“Thanks for the assist back there with the fucking garbage disposal,” I said, pulling her up off the ground. “Give me your jacket.

“What happened to your shirt?” she asked.

After jumping out of the car I realized the neck of my shirt was covered in blood. Needless to say the shirt had to go, and admittedly, I threw up once right after getting it off. Now I was my sports bra, which I was not exactly pleased with, but at least I wasn’t naked and it wasn’t bloody.

“Don’t ask,” I said, shaking my head. “How about instead of questioning my lack of clothing, you thank me for saving your pathetic ass, despite the fact that you left me to be turned into baby food.”

“How are you alive?”

I rolled my eyes, and lifted my head exposing my throat. There was a band of chrome colored metal, where I had been struck, the nano bots in my system coming together to repair the damage and create a seal. The metal would stay there was long as needed. Once everything was fix the nanobots would re enter my bloodstream until they were needed next.

“Half robot, now come on. I can hear your father and your boyfriend lurking around here.”

“Tessa!”

“Tess!”

“See? Right on que.”

We ran towards their voices. Tessa ran straight into Shane’s arms, leaving her old man hanging.

I rolled my eyes, and jerked my thumb towards Shane. “He bitch out?”

“Oh he bitched out alright.”

“I figured.”

“How are you upright?”

“Robo healing my friend. I will explain it more in depth, when we are not on the bad guy’s ship. My scans are telling me that we’re near an anchor port. If we can get out, we can crawl to whatever the fuck this hell ship is anchored to.”

“You sure?”

“How many times I gotta say this? This is not my first rodeo. Plus, Bee’s been training me. Now let’s move it people, before this thing flies out of here or the government decides to bring the rain.”

I was right, and soon enough, we were outside, staring at the anchors. Tessa of course was bitching out, talking about how she couldn’t do it and blah blah blah. She was like Leo, but worse. Leo was at least somewhat useful.

“Either you go or I throw you off of this fucking ship and you go splat on the pavement,” I threatened.

“Whoa, Brent-“

“NO!” I barked. “No more fucking Mr. Nice Guy. I’ve had it up to here with your bullshit. I get that being thrown into this is fucking crazy, and it’s scary as hell. I know. I was in your position once. But being scared is a hell of a lot better than being dead, so get your ass in gear and fucking go!”

“Shane, Tess, go first. Cade you and I can shoot, so we’re taking up the rear. Jazzy, watch my six, and give me the heads up.”

The little bot climbed out of my pocket and transformed, wedging himself between my back and my bra,

It was a good thing that I was angry. The angrier I got, the less I could focus on other things, like the being hundreds of feet above the ground on thin wires. Tessa and Shane’s fear and Cade’s constant encouragement. It kept me from being as afraid as I should’ve been in that moment.

It was enough however to make me flip off the jets that kept flying past nearly knocking us off of the cables. Tessa nearly fell and threw a tantrum. Apparently Cade was in a similar state as me, because rather than continue his gentle encouragement, it tried to pull parental authority on her. I would’ve gone for the you’re going to die strategy, but to each their own.

“Ma!” Jazzy cried.

I looked over my shoulder. My optic focusing on the hyena type bots at the anchor port.

Cade saw them too.

“We need to go this way? Not back.

“Come on talk to her Romeo, now,” Cade barked.

“Come on for God’s sake.”

“Do not start with me,” she snapped at him.

If the hyenas hadn’t just hopped on the cables, I would’ve found some enjoyment in their squabbling.

“Oh my God! What is that?”

“Alright Tessa, don’t look back.”

“Well don’t say that to me. Now I wanna turn around.”

“It’s nothing major sweetie.”

“Nothing at all,” I agreed, readying my blaster.

“Well that means it’s totally major!”

“I’m gonna have to point this gun in your direction-“

“Cade, just shoot,” I said, firing off my own shot at one of the creatures. It dodged, jumping on to another cable.

“I had to bust my ass to get up on that space ship get down now.” Tessa ducked, and Cade shot. He hit the one and I hit the other, causing them to stumble. Repeatedly firing at them they eventually lost their balance, and fell. The others that were still at the port began to chew the cables.

I wasn’t good enough of a shot to hit them from the distance we were at. The cables began to droop as they were frayed and split.

Luckily the Calvary arrived, sparing us. Ravage pounced on one from behind, while Bee took out two. However, one managed to finish the job and separate our lines.

“HOLD ON!” I screeched, grabbing on for dear life. Bee hopped on, grabbing the end of the cable. We slammed into the building hard. Tessa, Shane and Cade lost their grips, but Bee caught them. Jazzy managed to maneuver himself so that he could shoot the glass out of the building where I was heading. I made an effort to move, so that a majority of the impact was on the parts of my body hat were entirely inorganic. Jazzy and I rolled across the office floor. He was dinged up and I got a few more bruises and some rug burn to add to my collection of injuries.

We got up and ran to the window. Bee was hanging there with the others.

“Bumblebee! Bumblebee! Friendly! Enemy ships are coming in hot.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I muttered, looking at Crosshairs.

“Get on! Get on!”

Bee set the others on the small craft and then gestured for me to come down. I grabbed Jazzy and dropped down on to Bee, who then set me onboard with the others.

I could see Lockdown’s goons coming at us. Bee hopped on and we took off, with Crosshairs ‘punching it.’

Tessa had calmed down considerably, which was a plus. I felt terrible for the people of Chicago. No doubt we were bringing back memories that they would’ve much rather forgotten. Plus we were doing what we did best and unintentionally destroying half of a city.

“How many do we got?”

“Three,” Cade answered.

“I’m giving it the juice.”

Crosshairs flew us low right over the river. “Come on Bee! Take them out!”

“Bug, now would be the time to get creative,” I added.

Bee fired a cable out of his forearm hooking a boat with it, swinging it up into Lockdown’s cronies.

“Good move, Bee.”

“That was different,” I commended.

“This one’s for you a-holes.” Crosshairs fired the rockets into the bridge causing it to collapse on our pursuers.

We went up and tried to shake them with some hair pin turns around skyscrapers, but it wasn’t cutting it.

“If, you’re gonna do something you better do it.”

“I’m sick of this crap. You fly. I’ll shoot.” Crosshairs threw Bee towards the cockpit.

My eyes widened. “This is a bad idea!” I exclaimed.

“What? How?”

“Bee’s a shit pilot.”

“Sit down and shut up,” Bee played.

“Fuck you. If you crash like you did last time I’m fucked. I don’t think I can take anymore heavy damage without actually needing a hospital.” My nanobots were currently stretched to their limit based on my self scans.

“You better let me fire this big ass gun, so that we can go faster.

“Listen up crash course. Chaser guns punch forward to fire slide back to reload.

“What?”

“Punch hold slide repeat. Punch hold slide repeat.”

“Wait, what’re you talking about?”

“I don’t really know what he means?”

“Good luck.”

“Don’t let Bee fly this thing!”

“Where are you going?”

“To lay some heat,” Crosshairs answered.

“God damn it!” I swore. “Bee, I swear-“

“No one likes a… back seat driver…”

“No one likes crashing either, fuck head.”

Cade and Shane worked on taking out the idiots behind getting excited, when they began to have success. I was starting to feel the pain of my injuries and was evaluating them.

Bee flew us into the lower level of a double decker highway into oncoming traffic.
Cade and Shane managed to shoot down the bots behind us, but the debris from the wreckage came flying us, and Bee only had one way to go, up through the fucking road.

“Uh oh.”

“You idiot!” I yelled, holding on until we finally came to a stop.

“That was insane.”

“Don’t sound excited,” I snipped. “That was stupid, insanely stupid.” I rubbed at my sore neck, while I crawled out of the wreckage. “This is why you should never ever fly.”

Bee rolled his optic at me. “It was fine…”

“Fine? This was not fine. This was somehow worse than last time. Last time was bad.”

Over head we saw Lockdown’s ship. A section of it broke off, before the rest of it took off into space.

“:.Optimus and the other’s escaped.”

Bee transformed down.

“That was Prime and the others,” I told the other three. “Now we have to get the fuck out of here.”