2. Tenure

It was miles of winding rough-landscape-and-tree walled highway through the country to the generator pieces' planetfall site from either obstacle-blocked side. As such, no one saw the dark, metallic red truck roll up to the scene.

Arson came within fifty yards of the destroyed property before he converted to his bipedal form. As the Decepticons had ensured (and of which he was sure as sensors immediately did another sweep of the surrounding area), There was no intelligent life around for miles.

As the alien machine stepped forward, he could clearly pick up readings from the pieces of the generator the others had left behind.

There were three significantly sized, scattered on the wreckage site. The site itself, he assessed, had been an artificial large shelter. A house, built by the primitive organics that apparently dominated the planet. It seemed that the pieces had impacted the structure with some force, causing what had managed to be left standing afterwards to eventually collapse in on itself.

Smoldering planks of wood stuck up from the ground on the outline of the structure that used to be. The mechanoid treaded over the wall, its metal body impervious to the smoldering flames and burning ashes. He reached a chrome hand down and brushed away the rubble as if it were a mere pile of pebbles.

The first piece gleamed up at him, scorched from planet fall and smudged with cinders.

He extracted it from its nest of debris and neatly stored it in a compartment that opened on his arm. As Arson sifted his way to the second piece, he gathered what he could of the now nearly insignificant tiny fragments that had broken away from the whole.

The second piece was more stubborn to come out of its resting place, but he managed to yank it out of the concrete after a bit of prying with an annoyed growl.

It was the third piece that threw him off.

Arson stared down at the human lying in a stasis in the middle of the rubble. His eyes narrowed in disbelief and confusion, optics visibly adjusting and readjusting as they zeroed in on the organic creature. He ran a sweeping scan with sensors again, comparing the energy signal to those of the already recovered pieces in an extra measure. He ran a quick maintenance sweep on his sensors with repair systems. He scanned the immediate area again.

The result was the same.

The signal was coming from the human.(1)

He continued to gaze down at the organic, frozen still holding the plane of the building material he had moved to reveal the creature. There was no mistaking it. The signal was not as strong as the pieces he had just retrieved, but stronger than the almost insignificant sand-sized pieces.

Its tan skin was smudged with cinders and lacerated in a few places, burned some on its back and slightly on its arm. But overall, the lucky organic had managed to be largely unscathed, judging from the practically nonexistent state of the house it had been in.

The android rumbled, the antennae on his head flicking subtly for a moment. Gyros on either side of his head rotated and clicked to a new position.

Well, Thundercracker had said to bring every piece.

Arson unenthusiastically reached down, lifting the human into the air by thumb and index finger wrapped around the torso. The mechanoid made a quick, superficial profile. Female. Young adult, fresh from adolescence. While largely inactive and unconscious presently, she was—in her own squishy, human, carbon-based way—very much alive.

As sour of a mood as the dark-red mech was in, he had to admit that these humans were curious creatures. Interesting at worst. The species was one of the most sophisticated organic classifications he'd ever seen, and yet most of them left themselves so exposed. Especially outside of their vehicles, these organics had no protection at all.

One of the most sophisticated, yet one of the most fragile. Even as he thought these things, intangibly examining the human, he could feel the human's heartbeats, the very thing keeping her alive, via his derma sensors, it was so near. So exposed.

The mechanoid just held the human dangling from his fingers for another minute, gazing as if still contemplating. At the faint sound of distant helicopter rotors, he finally gave another irritated growl from within his chassis, giving the proximity a last sweep with sensors and basic visual before turning to leave.

"What is this?"

Arson simply gestured at the human he had deposited on the floor of the hangar along with the significant shrapnel. He walked away to be in the perimeter of the wide circle of mechs.

Thundercracker rumbled menacingly, walking toward the collection of precious minerals and the human lain on the floor and the leisurely retreating Arson on the other side.

"An organic is not—"

The human suddenly cringed, the soft hiss of air she drew in through her teeth—clearly audible to all the alien machines—causing Thundercracker to pause in his approach.

They all watched as the human continued to strain, shivering.

Thundercracker growled and glanced at Arson. The dark-red mechanoid looked back with a vague, resolutely peeved look.

"Why," the Decepticon started, "is this organic giving off a Cybertronian signal?"

Stockade stepped forward.

"The piece from the Spark capsule seems to have dissolved in its bloodstream. Its internals can't eradicate the mineral completely. Too weak."

His weapon slid into place on his arm. "So all we need to do is split this organic open, then?"

"Not necessarily," supplied Barricade's voice over comm link. "Nothing exactly like this is on known record of having ever occurred before. Who knows what will happen to the energy still residing in the part that 'fused' with this human if we do.

"Lord Starcream would not approve such a risk. I believe there's a better alternative anyway."

A faint humming resonated from Thundercracker's blue chassis. "Do tell."

"This organic could assist us. Obviously, being human, it could access places we in turn could not."

The blue mechanoid nodded. "An excellent point, Barricade."

"That is," interjected Stockade, condescendingly glaring down at the human where she still lay cringed on the hangar floor, "if the creature even still functions."

"It's possible. It is still alive."

Thundercracker's optics locked onto Arson for a moment. His countenance was incapable of molding into a sinister smirk, but the glint in his optics conveyed it well enough.

"Perfect. This couldn't have turned out better in our favor." He turned to Arson again. "And I have the perfect person to take care of the organic, too."

Arson, who had been trying his patience to listen to the exchange between the group as he had indifferently stood to the side, suddenly had to snap his hands into fists and tense to keep from doing something rash.

"What?" he snarled quietly in a hiss.

"Your audio receptors are functioning," stated the Decepticon commander. "Consider yourself charged with a new human pet."

Arson thoughtlessly stomped forward an indignant step. Virtually every mech in the room it seemed—drone and sentry alike—took a step in the dark-red mechanoid's direction in turn, ready. None of the machines paid any mind to the stasis-locked human's terse whimper as she cringed more.

"This was not part of the agreement," Arson growled, not caring at the moment that it was obvious the Decepticon would not uphold a bargain.

"The agreement?" jeered Thundercracker, stalking challengingly towards the infuriated mech a step. "The 'agreement' was that you do as I tell you and be the one to retrieve the pieces we didn't successfully hold onto."

Rumbling revs came from Arson's chest as components worked to hold back an enraged roar that threatened.

"You didn't think"—the Decepticon waved a blue hand at the collection in the middle of the floor—"that was all you had to, and I would simply let you go now? And that you wouldn't have to retrieve all the pieces?" Thundercracker snorted before his voice lowered to a menacing hiss. "Not that it matters. Since the other part of the 'agreement' was you do as I tell you."

The dark-red mech was beyond words, seeing red. He barely managed to have the restraint to keep from suicidally attacking like an enraged bull.

So he growled, a slow, venomous growl.

"Prime."

Optimus Prime turned the smallest amount in order to look over his shoulder, armor gleaming vaguely in the light of dawn. A small gust of wind eddied overhead, the cold breeze playfully tossing the autumn leaves around in the tall grass.

The black truck continued to approach him from the building a short distance away that he had come from. The temporary Autobot base was not much to look at; an old factory, dilapidated and unassuming from the outside. The inside had been renovated for the most part to better accommodate its alien visitors until the more permanent setts could be established.

The main reason the Autobots hadn't been immediately herded off to the nearest military base was due mostly to their insistence to stay fairly near the devastation that was Mission City. Just in case there was a delayed Decepticon incursion lying in wait.

With such a fine and very real point made, the authorities in Washington didn't argue it long. The only stipulation was that Earth's new alien visitors move to the more permanent established base across the country when the time to do so came.

Ironhide transformed, the black mechanoid walking forward to take a place beside his leader.

"There are more of them."

The flame-adorned blue and red mechanoid's chassis rose and fell slightly with an artificial sigh.

"While it seems likely," he nodded, "we have no way of confirming that until Ratchet fixes the long range scanners in the base."

Ironhide looked up at the other. "I've never known the 'Cons to use just a few drones and no more."

Prime hummed in agreement, his hands interlocking behind his back. "But times are trying for all of our kind, regardless of faction. Though Megatron is out of commission, with the All-Spark gone as well, creating efficient drones should be a more difficult task."

"But not impossible," added the weapons specialist, blue optics joining the Autobot leader's in looking across the landscape.

The other nodded in agreement again. "Not impossible. The Decepticons aren't all known for their efficiency."

Ironhide snorted.

"And they wouldn't necessarily need to be with this planet. And that's what concerns me," continued Optimus, Ironhide speaking the last part at the same time.

"The humans do have their own means of defense. We have seen it firsthand. But they can't be everywhere at once." He turned to see his leader nodding. "Most of them are defenseless against what the Decepticons can put out."

"We will not let the people of this planet come to harm in a fight that is not their own. We will continue to do our best to protect them," Optimus alleviated.

Ironhide turned back to gazing again. Somewhere, far off in the distance, small city noise was audible. The pair stood in silence for some time and listened

"...There are more of them."

Optimus laughed quietly at Ironhide's persistence, his head bowing slightly.

"You may well be right, old friend. But let's hope not."

He turned and started back towards the base. Ironhide followed, no doubt to see about Ratchet's progress. Optimus gazed down and ahead of him unseeingly, his mechanical brow tightening.

Let's hope not.

The first thing she felt was a dull, throbbing headache.

She groaned softly as consciousness returned, rubbing her face some with a hand as she recounted the last thing she could remember happening.

An explosion. A really loud, really close, really real explosion. She could still envision the blinding flash. Had she caused it?

The last thing she could remember doing was crawling under the desk to plug in the banal, cheap desktop lighting. She had still been under it when the explosion had happened and something had hit her.

That lamp must've been really messed up, she reminisced.

She rolled to her side to curl in on herself, multiple injuries that had gone unaccounted for making themselves known. As she moved, her hand hit a durable, bumpy textured plastic and then fell on a shelf-like rise—

She froze, her eyes opening less quickly than she'd told them to as her eyebrows pulled down. She stared at the dark gray plastic directly above her head. Her eyes followed it upward to a window, the night sky peeking through the leaves outside.

Why am I in a car...?

She sat up from where she'd been laying across the backseat then, staring alertly out of all of the windows in preparation for every worse case scenario she could think of.

That included taking inventory of the surroundings. It seemed that she was in the middle of nowhere, a small forest out the back window, a few trees around everywhere else in the wide expanse of winding field ahead. And it was definitely night, the moonlight illuminating a lone cloud floating lazily across the sky.

The vehicle around her shuddered.

Tensed, she scanned all of the windows again in a second. There was no one and nothing there. The trees weren't even moving with wind.

"...What the—?"

Suddenly, there was the sound of a door jerking open. This hardly had time to register before the vehicle gave a harsh buck, throwing her through the door.

She hit the ground, too startled to even think to correct her fall. But she immediately rolled over into a sitting position, looking up at the vehicle with wide eyes.

She was again surprised when she found herself looking up higher than expected.

Right in front of her, the truck—Chevy? Avalanche? her subconscious supplied in recall—seemed to expand the paneling from the form before the truck fell apart. As she slid away from it, she realized that it wasn't falling apart, but rearranging itself. The mass of metal rose higher and higher until she found herself staring up at a towering, gleaming robot.

...Okay. Not a scenario I thought of.

The android's dark metallic red colored armor covered a roughly stoic form, an almost stark contrast to the bulky vehicle. Unclenching and flexing out at the mech's sides for a moment were five-fingered metal hands, almost human in anatomy. Plates of armor attached to the back of each finger formed claws at the tips. Where its mouth should be, there was a metal plating for an upper lip, two modest, short downward points that almost appeared to be teeth symmetrically placed on either side from the center.

On either side of its head were what the human presumed to be antennae—because, did robots need ears in the anatomy of a human's?—that reminded her persistently of a bat's ears, in looks and almost positioning. But, while a bat's large ears were its most dominant feature on its head, this beings "ears" were just the right size to not overbalance his countenance.

From the head of the huge being, two purple orbs she presumed to be optics of some sort turned down on her.

The mechanoid seemed to be waiting for something. She continued to stare and ogle up at him, and he...glared back.

Suddenly, the human gave a slight laugh, her facade melting into a more relaxed look.

"Oh. I get it. I'm drugged up in the hospital again." She laid back in the grass, her hands wiping down from her eyes as she continued to laugh. "That explosion, right?"

Arson cocked his head vaguely, taking only a moment to assess what the organic was talking about from the planet's internet; it would appear he might actually have to clutter his processor with its seemingly endless masses of slag after all.

He growled irritably when he identified the sought after information. "I assure you, human, you are in no hospital. Nor are you hallucinating."

She laughed again, sitting up. Not only at the comment, but at the surprisingly non-monotonous electronic intonation it had been carried on.

"Right. And I suppose you're real?"

Arson huffed. "You are not dreaming, human. You need only to look at yourself to see the truth in my words."

Humoring the larger entity, she looked down at herself. Her clothes were ripped in some places, smudged in cinders and ashes almost everywhere else.

"What..." She flexed her palms in front of her, expression confused. Suddenly, she laughed again dismissively, flipping her palms over. Her brown skin was smudged with the same ash and dirt as her clothing. "I've dreamed worse."

The mechanoid growled again, an almost rich, baritone sound. He bent his leg, lowering himself to a knee as he reached out towards the human. Claw-forming armor-plated fingers gripped her.

The instant he made contact, the organic winced and her face contorted in pain.

"How...are you doing that?" she growled through her teeth.

Arson inclined his head slightly, intrigued by the reaction. "I am not doing anything."

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. "Then why does this hurt?" she accused.

"Hmph. Does this happen in your hallucinations?"

She squinted up at him slightly through the increased throbbing headache.

"No..," she admitted cautiously. "No, I guess it usually doesn't."

The robot snorted contemptuously.

"Then you believe me, human. You are not asleep, nor hallucinating. I and more of my kind have made it to this planet, along with an... important object. A piece of the Spark generator has become a part of you." Then his tone turned thoughtful. "It is reacting to my presence, almost trying to reach me..."

She was looking up at him, shuddering slightly.

"A piece of what has what, now?" the human's strained voice repeated in incredulity. "Wait. You said... More of you? So the giant robots in Mission City thing was real..."

Arson watched as the organic creature gazed up at him from his hold, hardly a hint of fear anywhere on her features. Even the invisible features—her heart rate, adrenaline levels, prespiratory glands—hardly supported the notion of fear anymore.

Curiosity. That was it. That, and a vague hint of apprehension.

He inwardly rolled his eyes and growled. Of all the organic creatures to be stuck with, his had to be practically fearless. He hoped that she just still wasn't completely convinced that he wasn't an illusion.

"So," she continued hesitantly when the mechanoid didn't call her prompt, "That explosion, at the house. That was... you? No, you said piece of the... Spark generator was... So, it was the Spark generator? Piece of it?"

The alien robot snorted.

"Very good. Two for two, human," he sneered condescendingly. "So you aren't entirely dumb for a species as a whole."

She glared. "And just what—who are you, inorganic robot? Where do you and I being here come into all of this? And what...crawled up your tailpipe?"

The mechanoid lifted her so she was in front of his face. Hot air blew from between his scowling teeth—the scent it carried making her think of something burned beyond recognition after being treated with gasoline—as a growl came from deep within his chassis again.

Arson was absentmindedly pleased when he detected a jump in her heart rate. However, her countenance was less satisfying.

She glared back into his optics.

"Couldn't have said it better," the human responded to the gesture.

(1) No, this is not a "human has super-Cybertronian powers" or "is part Cybertronian" fic. K-thanks.

A/N: Ah, progress.

(Disclaimer: Chevrolet Avalanche belongs to, well, Chevrolet.)