Disclaimer: ‘Transformers’ and all related media, merchandise and trademarks do not belong to me and I am not making any money from using them in this fictional work. They belong to their respective companies and I am not affiliated with them in any way whatsoever. Any original characters or concepts in this story that are from other fictions are used with direct permission from the authors in question.

"How We Seared the Sky"
Transformers: Deux Claret
Part One

Chapter One
Night Ride

Samuel James Witwicky let his head crash against the desk with a sickening thump.

Math was not his subject, he’d decided, and today’s batch of algebra homework had been mocking him all day from deep within the shadowy folds of his schoolbag. If he didn’t get it done, Mr. Speller would have him slaughtered – either by the axe, or by drowning him in the proverbial axe of more algebra homework. Either way, he had long since been past caring about such trivial matters as his academic education.

Who, after all, could be expected to pack their bag and return to school like a good little boy after they had just . . . saved the world?

Okay, so maybe if the Autobots did all have to leave Earth and he had to get some form of occupation, he would need the grades. Maybe. But it was unlikely. Optimus Prime had decreed that the four remaining Cybertronians - Ratchet, Ironhide, Bumblebee and himself - would stay on Earth, hiding in plain sight, watching and guarding the human race. They had nowhere else to go, after all. Besides, even if they did go anywhere, Sam had already decided that he would be going with them. No way was he going to be separated from Bumblebee again.

His cell phone rang and he snatched it up eagerly, welcoming the distraction. Mojo let out a small, worried yap.

“’S okay, Mojo,” he soothed the Chihuahua. “It’s just a phone, see?”

Mojo eyed him distrustfully.

Sam checked the caller identification on his cell hopefully, willing Mikaela’s glorious name to flash up on the tiny screen. He groaned openly when he saw that it was Miles.

“Yeah - what's up, man?” he asked.

Miles had swallowed his lie about ‘going on vacation’ when he had questioned him intensively about his long, suspicious absence from school. He was now more eager than ever to hang out with Sam, especially because Sam now had Trent’s ex-girlfriend on his arm: he had driven Sam to the point of insanity with Mikaela, always eyeing her up and making sad attempts to flirt with her, usually by telling her all about the latest Resident Evil game he had completed in twenty minutes. If climbing a tree and hanging upside down before falling face-first into the lake could be considered ‘flirting’, he had done quite a lot of that, too.

“Dude, chill,” came Miles’s voice. “What’s up - the algebra?”

“Yeah,” Sam groused, picking up his pen with renewed determination. With a flourish, he scribbled a completely random notation to do with the square root of nine on his paper. “But seriously, what’s up? I’m kinda busy . . . I need to get this done for Monday . . .”

Miles clicked his tongue. “I swear, since you’ve been going out with Mikaela you’ve paid no attention to me.”

Sam gritted his teeth.

It wasn’t just Mikaela: it was the presence of certain twenty-foot alien beings in his back yard.

“. . . so shallow, and she’s turned you the same. You can’t see it, man, but it’s true . . .”

Sam took a deep, soothing breath to calm himself before pressing onward. “Miles, you know Finals are coming up,” he reminded his friend with, in his opinion, the patience of a saint. “I’m studying.”

“Yeah, okay - whatever - but what about band practise?” Miles continued. Sam pulled a face. “How’re The Headbangers ever gonna get to Number One if all you’re worried about is what dipshit grades you get on your algebra? I thought that was like, your dream for the band to go somewhere. What happened to that?”

The band that Sam and Miles had formed in their tender freshman year had indeed been the central point of both the boys’ lives for a while. Sam was a decent drummer and Miles was passably talented with a guitar, but they did have yet to find a vocalist, or a bassist. Or a record deal. Or the inspiration to write more than one song. Sam physically cringed when he remembered the first, sloppy attempt at a meaningful song that Miles had come up with, involving a boy’s love for his dog – based on Sam’s obsessive care for Mojo, of course. Any band with Sam as a member was automatically designed to mock Sam.

“The Headbangers are history, Miles - you have to get over it,” Sam pointed out. “Unless you can find a bassist and a singer, we’re kinda screwed. Stop bein’ so damn . . .” he gesticulated as he searched for the correct word, “clingy.”

Okay, that so wasn’t the right word.

“You cut me deep, bro," Miles muttered after a moment of silence. "Cut me real deep just now."

Sam mentally kicked himself for being such a born idiot, but it was too late to take the incriminating word back again.

“Miles - look, I’m sorry, man, I -”

But the line was dead.

Sam sighed and threw his head into his arms in frustration and misery before letting out a strangled moan. Mojo, understandably upset by the idea of his master being in distress, came bounding up onto the desk and licked Sam’s exposed ear in what was probably supposed to be a comforting - if damp - manner. “Oh, Mojo, Mojo, Mojo . . .” the boy groaned, sitting up straight and running his hands through his hair. “If not for you, I would surely die, bud' . . .”

Mojo yapped.

Sam’s nose suddenly wrinkled in absolute disgust when he noticed the colour of his dog’s collar and he stood up, thinking that today really couldn’t get much worse – algebra homework, Miles hanging up on him, and now his mother thinking that his dog was a girl, yet again . . .

“Mom?” he shouted down the stairs. “Mom!”

With a clatter, a flustered Judy Witwicky appeared at the foot of the staircase, wiping her hands on her apron and bringing the smell of freshly baked cookies with her.

“Yeah, honey?” she smiled, adjusting her auburn hair in its loose bun. “Everything okay?”

He didn’t really have the heart to be angry with her now that she had baked cookies, so he tried to exercise some control over his raging, post-hormonal temper tantrum. “Mom, I’ve told you time and time again that Mojo is a guy,” he said patiently. “Dressing him in a pink diamanté collar is not helping his masculine image, and I would really appreciate it if you’d stop tormenting the poor guy. You know he already has major self-esteem issues as a Chihuahua . . .”

“Okay, sweetie,” she agreed distractedly. “Want some cookies?”

Cookies did, admittedly, sound like the only way out right now.

"Cool,” he mumbled before slouching down the stairs and pursuing her into the kitchen, where the smell of home bakery was so strong that he stopped dead just to breathe it in. “Chocolate chip?”

"Your favourite!” she carolled, opening the oven and bringing out a tray of hot, crisp cookes, beautifully sticky with melted chocolate. She transferred three of them swiftly onto a floral plate before placing them in front of her son. He practically burnt his tongue right off eating the first one, but once the initial pain had passed, he was putty in these cookies’ non-existent hands. “Okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” Sam managed thickly.

Despite the fact that John Keller - the Secretary of Defence himself - had duly informed both Judy and her husband that Sam had single-handedly (well, with a little help from Ratchet and Ironhide) saved the world, from buying an alien car to defeating the leader of the alien bad guys, Judy still babied her son enormously, even more so now that she realised how close she had come to losing him. Sam did not try to stop it, purely because he did love his mother and had no wish to hurt her feelings, but he wished she would ease up a little sometimes. He was seventeen going on forty, not seven.

Upon being introduced to the four remaining Autobots, Judy had virtually fitted, especially when she saw the height of Optimus Prime and the size of Ironhide's plasma cannon. Not quite knowing what to make of the situation, she had simply clung to her husband’s shirt as Optimus and the others gently introduced themselves. Ron Witwicky himself had merely started spluttering incredulously when he was informed that the ancient Chevy Camaro that he had bought his son was actually a giant robot named Bumblebee, then asked Ironhide if he would kindly move his huge-ass feet the hell off of his lawn.

Needless to say that Ironhide hadn't exactly been a very happy robot about that.

“Oh, honey?” Judy called over her shoulder as she dished out several more rounds of cookies. “Ratchet called. I said you’d call back.” She smiled and tittered girlishly. “Oh, I do like Ratchet. Such a sweet guy . . .”

Sam rolled his eyes. His mother had practically fainted when Ratchet had introduced himself and informed her that she was in excellent health, and now she was constantly talking about him. It grated on his nerves a little bit, but he tried very hard not to say anything about it.

“Sure, Mom,” he nodded, ignoring her rosy cheeks, “I’ll, uh, call him now.”

In honour of his great deeds, Ironhide had presented him with something that looked like a cell phone but was actually a Cybertronian Communications Device. The design had been stolen from the Decepticon communications officer, Soundwave, and developed by an Autobot scientist named Wheeljack for use by small Cybertronian allies - in this case, human beings. He had only to select a name and it would put him in touch at once with any one of the Autobots, or anyone else who owned one.

He left the table to have some privacy – his mother would turn into a quivering pile of jelly at the sound of Ratchet’s voice – and ducked into the living room, relieved to find that his father was not present. He extracted it from his back pocket and flipped it open, rolling down the short list of available contacts before selecting Ratchet and jamming it to his Mojo-dampened ear.

There was some static and some bleeping sounds before Ratchet’s deep, erudite voice greeted him.

“Mm, Ratchet here.”

“Hey, Ratchet. It’s, uh, Sam,” he greeted nervously. He had only used this device a few times and still found it beyond weird to hear the Autobots down the phone. He had only communicated with Bumblebee in this way before. “You, uh, called my house earlier.”

“Yes,” Ratchet said, sounding a bit pained. “Your mother informed me that you were not at home.”

For an instant, Sam felt sorry for the Autobot. His mother must have been in near-hysterics speaking to him by herself on the phone, and he imagined that it would have taken Ratchet hours of careful questioning to extract the information he wanted from her. “That would be because I was at school, Ratch',” Sam reminded the medical officer carefully. “I told you the times. Five out of seven days a week; Monday to Friday, okay? But don't worry . . . uh, ‘sup?”

There was a pause as Ratchet attempted to figure out what the last word meant before he continued. “I have a small dilemma,” he informed the boy, who raised his eyebrows. “Mikaela was due to accompany me on my scouting tonight, but she has been forced to cancel due to . . . certain . . . unforeseen circumstances.”

“What unforeseen circumstances?” Sam asked suspiciously.

“Apparently her menstrual pains have been at a level that –”

“Argh - no more!” Sam yelled out in a panic. He took a few deep breaths, thanking God that he had stopped the medic before he had found out something mentally scarring. “Never mention Mikaela’s period to me again,” he ordered, still feeling a bit winded. "My God, Ratchet, that's just - that's just not . . . Don't do that to me again."

He could almost hear Ratchet’s confused look.

“Do you not find it absolutely fascinating?” he asked bemusedly, and Sam’s mouth dropped open. “The female body really is a remarkable thing, Sam. You should learn to appreciate the wonders of human reproduction.”

“I do, Ratchet, I really do,” he assured the robot, “but it’s – hold up, man, why the hell am I discussing periods with you?”

“You asked what circumstances had prevented Mikaela –”

Sam now felt like murdering himself, and he briefly scanned the room for a weapon with which he might do so. However, unless beating himself to death with the television remote was an option, he was screwed on that matter. “Okay, okay, God – so she can’t go, what’s your point?” he asked in exasperation, the algebra suddenly seeming much more welcoming.

Ratchet finally got to the point, much to Sam’s relief. “I am need of someone to replace her for this evening,” he informed the boy. “Would you be available to accompany me?”

Sam blinked. “Whoa, whoa, hold your horses. What is it that we’d be doing?”

“I am not in possession of any members of the Equus caballus species, Sam –”

“Expression, expression!” Sam wailed. “Doesn’t matter! What – would – we – be – doing – Ratchet?” He realised he was close to shouting again and lowered his voice significantly when he said the Autobot’s name.

“The Autobots, as you are aware, are sworn to protect and defend your kind,” Ratchet explained, and Sam listened carefully. “Because I am the medical officer of the team, Optimus has requested that I embark on regular rounds in your town and the surrounding area to see whether any humans need help. I do, however, require a human assistant to investigate some of the less spacious areas of interest.”

Sam really wished that the Autobots would just speak plain English. “So you’re gonna drive around looking for injured people.”

“Essentially.”

Another sigh escaped Sam’s lips. “Ratchet - I would, but seriously, I am having the worst day ever,” he groaned. “First my mother dresses my male dog in pink yet again, then she starts going all giggly because you ring up and I can’t be mad at her because she baked cookies, and then there’s the fact that my friend isn’t talking to me and on top of all that I’ve come three pieces of impossible algebra homework. I want to be vaguely normal for five minutes.”

There was a short silence before there was the shady “hmm” that the medic had used before announcing to the Autobots that Sam wanted to mate with Mikaela.

Sam did not like that ‘hmm’. It meant Ratchet was up to something.

“What’s ‘hmm’?” he asked defensively.

“May I propose a bargain of sorts?” Ratchet asked smoothly. “If you accompany me on this expedition, I will personally assist you with your mathematical homework.”

Now that sounded like Sam’s sort of bargain.

“Okay,” he agreed readily. “I’d better get a freakin’ A-plus, though, man, or you’re toast – expression . . .”

‘Expression’ was Sam and Mikaela’s most frequently used word during the times that they spent with the Autobots, especially after a small incident involving Mikaela a month or so beforehand. It had been a very hot day in California, and she had commented (and oh, how naive she had been to do so), ‘Man, it’s hot! I’m dying here!’ She had then been forced to spend ten minutes explaining the over exaggeration to Optimus, who had been all set to rush her off to get Ratchet to save her life.

Ratchet paused. “I assure you that I will do my best. I will be outside your house at nine o’clock sharp.”

With that, the connection was broken.

Sam stuffed the gadget back into his pocket and briefly wondered what in God's name he had gotten himself into.

At ten to nine that night, Sam was sitting in his room with his backpack, anxiously awaiting Ratchet’s arrival. He had just called Bumblebee to say where he was going so that the robot wouldn't panic when he returned to find Sam gone, and was now sifting through the few items that he had stuffed into the bag, assessing whether or not he actually needed them.

He didn’t strictly need the five warm cookies wrapped up in foil, but he figured that there was room, so he might as well take them along. A Thermos of strong coffee also sat neatly inside, having just been prepared by Judy, who was frantic that Ratchet and Sam might get separated and he might end up wandering around without a beverage for hours and hours on end. Alongside these items were both of his phones – regular cell and Cybertronian – a stack of CDs to play (if Ratchet would let him, which was about as likely as Ratchet flying him to the Moon), and a newly charged flashlight.

The wail of a siren came from outside. Sam jumped up to see a Search and Rescue Hummer H2 SUV parked outside, red lights flashing brightly in the darkness of the street. He jammed his baseball cap on his head, grabbed his Misfits hooded sweatshirt and headed downstairs speedily, hoping to waylay his mother before she could get to Ratchet.

“Ratchet!” an enthusiastic voice sung.

Damn it.

His father appeared from the kitchen with his newspaper in front of his eyes and plaid slippers planted firmly on his feet at precisely the wrong moment. Sam went careering into him at high speed, causing both newspaper and backpack to go flying.

“Watch it, son - what’s the hurry?” Ron Witwicky exclaimed, stooping to pick up the fallen pages. “How come the good doctor’s here?”

“We’re going out,” Sam explained hastily, picking up the scattered black-and-white pieces and shoving them haphazardly back into his father’s arms. “I’ll be back in a few hours, but I’ve gotta run - bye now -”

He jammed his All Stars on before barrelling out of the door and across the grass, ignoring his father’s carefully repaired pathway. The frigid night air hit him like a tonne of bricks, but he did not slow his pace one iota. He leapt over the wall like a pro and almost fell over his own feet as he came to a sudden halt in front of the Hummer, which his mother was leaning against in quite a provocative manner. He slammed his hands down on the hood with a shattering crash of metal on bone.

“Ratchet!” Sam grinned, sounding as pleased as if he had just bumped into Jesus Christ. “How are you?”

His mother pursed her lips as the medic’s attention was directed towards her son. “I am . . . well, thank you, Sam . . .” Ratchet’s deep voice came from somewhere within the vehicle. “Come, we must get going. In you get.” The passenger door swung open and Sam ran around to swing himself inside, snapping the seatbelt on. “Goodnight, Mrs Witwicky,” Ratchet added to Judy, who went almost fluorescently pink.

“Bye, sweetie,” she waved, although whether she directed the sweetie at Ratchet or Sam was debatable.

Breathing a sigh of relief as the Hummer pulled away from the sidewalk, Sam reached into his backpack for his extra sweater.

“You got heating in here, Ratchet?” There was a rumble of agreement before Sam felt warm air come blasting out of the vents on the dashboard. “So, uh, what’s been happening? Anything new?”

“Not as such,” Ratchet replied, and Sam watched the steering wheel move by itself with silent interest. “Your government have been surprisingly sympathetic towards us, Sam. They have offered us continued asylum here, without submitting to the tests and trials that we expected. They have asked us to share our knowledge of the Decepticons, but agree that we will not be sharing our weaponry with them, and they claim that there will be no repeats of what happened to Bumblebee at Hoover Dam.”

“Good,” Sam muttered, still bitter about what the scientists had done to his guardian.

Ratchet made a hmm of concurrence before continuing. “I suspect that they would not be too happy if more of us were to arrive,” he mused, and Sam raised his eyebrows. “We would, after all, be bringing our war to this planet again - at least in their eyes. But for the time being, we must be thankful for their acceptance of the four of us that remain. They did not ask us to submit Jazz’s body for testing, either, which Optimus in particular appreciated.”

“Also good. But there are more of you? How many?”

“Many of our comrades were lost during the war on Cybertron,” Ratchet told him heavily, “but many escaped to other planets; other galaxies. I myself fled with Ironhide through several star systems to escape the Decepticons that were pursuing us. Eventually, we were reunited with Optimus, Jazz and Bumblebee, though not before I had to intervene in a war on a different planet and become the de facto warlord of a race called the Thraal. We were greatly challenged in our attempt to regroup.”

“Wow. A warlord . . . that's cool.” He paused. “Are there, uh . . . lady alien robots?”

“Yes, there are femmes of our species, though few would have survived,” he added sombrely. “Most were weaker in battle and were easy prey for the Decepticons. I do not doubt, however, that there were some who escaped the massacres.”

Femmes.

The word confirmed to Sam that the Autobots were, much as he liked them all, completely wacko.

After a few seconds of silence, Sam pleaded with Ratchet to let him play a CD. Although this request was followed by a good deal of grumbling about being a medical officer, not a disk jockey, the Autobot had finally obliged him, and Sam was quite content to listen to the band and sing along to himself for a while. Ratchet, for one, was almost unable to tolerate the noises coming from his own speakers and Sam’s voice box, but decided that it would be wiser not to say anything.

After about twenty minutes of infernal racket, Ratchet began to head towards the very edges of Tranquillity, were the terrain became extremely hilly.

“This was the area that Optimus was particularly concerned about,” he informed Sam, who leant forward to study the area. “Residents of your neighbourhood often go hiking here, but the terrain is highly unstable.”

“I guess,” Sam nodded, observing the rocks and steep slopes around him.

Ratchet suddenly came to a grinding halt, and the door swung open.

Sam blinked. “What?”

“I am about to transform,” Ratchet said tensely, “so unless you have a particular wish to be crushed, Sam, then I would strongly advise you to get out.”

Sam quickly grabbed his backpack and jumped from the hefty Hummer before backing off so that Ratchet had enough room to transform. He watched with fascination as the gears and parts moved and slid across each other, turning the ordinary human vehicle into the colossal autonomous medical officer, who immediately stared down at him with burning, cobalt-blue optical sensors. “I would think you were used to the transformation procedure,” he commented, sounding vaguely amused. “You spend enough time with us.”

Sam shrugged. “Doesn’t stop it being neat,” he said, extracting a cookie from its foil prison before returning the backpack to its rightful place. “Anyway, you’d think with the Internet you would be over the neatness of periods,” he pointed out, shuddering involuntarily at the thought of the detail that health sites must go into about the matter. ”

Ratchet chose to ignore the last comment and switched on his dazzlingly bright searchlight. Sam narrowed his eyes against the glare, and Ratchet angled it away from him, towards the dark hills.

“Stay close to me, Sam,” he ordered the boy, “and tell me if you see anything.”

“Fine,” Sam agreed, stuffing his free hand into his pocket for warmth before shoving as much cookie as possible into his mouth with the other.

They made their way up the hiker’s path steadily, with Sam struggling to keep up with Ratchet’s huge strides and breathing great clouds of water vapour in the cold.

“Are you sufficiently insulated?” Ratchet asked after half an hour. “Your temperature is dropping to a little below normal levels.”

“That’d be ‘cause it’s freezing,” was the boy’s dry response.

“Have you anything with you to boost your temperature levels?”

Sam considered for a moment before delving back into his backpack and discovering the flask stowed beneath the cookies. “Aha!” he grinned, unscrewing the gap to be greeted by a cloud of coffee-scented steam. “Thank you, Mom,” he added, raising the cap to the heavens in a toast before downing it. This was followed by a choking sound and a spray of coffee from Sam’s nose and mouth onto the ground.

“Are you . . . all right?” Ratchet asked in alarm as Sam coughed and spluttered.

“No sugar,” he choked in response. “I’ve told her a million times, I swear – I can’t stand coffee without sugar.”

The next hour of trekking was fairly uneventful, and Sam glanced at his watch.

“Hey, I should really be getting home,” he told Ratchet. “I said to my dad I’d only be a few hours, and y’know that my mom’s got a real temper sometimes.”

“I agree,” Ratchet nodded, extending a hand for the teenager to climb into. “Hop on, boy. You are too tired to walk all the way back.” Sam flopped into his hand with not so much as a word of disagreement. “Now –” Stopping mid-sentence, Ratchet suddenly looked up, and his small optics darted around as if he were searching for something in the darkness.

“’Now’ what?” Sam asked sleepily from his perch.

“Shh,” the medic shushed him irritably, his nose twitching as if he could smell something. “I heard something.”

Sam sat up with effort, his head feeling cloudy with tiredness. “What sorta something?”

Ratchet remained absolutely still. He was quite certain that he had heard a sound in the darkness, a scuffling noise as if an animal were injured out there. Having a central processing unit rather than a brain, he was certain that he could not have ‘imagined’ such a sound, and he was quite determined to find out what had made it. Then suddenly there was a desperate call that shattered the stillness of the night.

“Help!” a female voice shouted. “Please - help! Is anyone there?”

In all of two seconds, Sam found himself deposited on the ground before he heard Ratchet transform back into the Hummer behind him. “Quickly, Sam, get in,” he urged and the boy swiftly climbed back into the vehicle. The door slammed shut behind him and Ratchet activated his thermal scanners, seeking out the human in the darkness.

The engine started and Sam almost hit the dashboard as the Search and Rescue vehicle jolted forward and began to head towards the heat spot that Ratchet had picked up. “That was a girl!” Sam exclaimed, looking quite scared. “What would a girl be doing out here this late at night?”

“She may not have come out here in the night,” Ratchet pointed out anxiously as he drove forward. “She would be a fool if she had. But she may have been stranded during the daytime and been unable to move elsewhere.” He braked suddenly. “Sam, quickly, take the First Aid kit in the back and head for the sounds.”

Sam swallowed and nodded before dropping nimbly from the seat and dashing around to the back of the Hummer, tearing the doors open and fumbling around in the darkness for the medical kit. He knocked several tools over in desperation before he found the small case bearing the red cross and jumped out of the vehicle again, looking around.

“Where are you?” he shouted. “Yell again!”

There was a short silence before he heard, “Here! I’m here!” before an outbreak of sobs.

As he went sprinting off in the direction of the cries, he tripped several times and twisted his own wrist. “Great,” he hissed through gritted teeth before getting right back up again. He finally followed the cries to a dark figure, crumpled atop several huge rocks at the bottom of a steep, rocky hill. He blanched when he spotted the young woman’s horrific injury and backed off, feeling the bile rise up in the back of his throat.

“Shit.”

Author's Note: Welcome to the first story in the Deux Claret series, everyone. I hope that anyone who reads it will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please feel free to leave a review to ask any questions, make suggestions or just tell me what you thought! Best wishes, Blackwing.