Detained

Chapter 2

“You bought me a damaged car?” Dorothy asked, putting a hand on her hip and cocking it out. The man’s smile faded a bit, but it was still there. “You bought me a damaged car? Why?”

“Well…” the police chief explained, turning back to look at the clearly upset woman in front of him. “You always kept complaining you never had anything to do after work, and I thought, because you liked fixing cars so much, that this would be a good present.”

Dorothy sighed, knowing the old man did have a point. The female officer didn’t have any friends in Arizona, having moved all the way from Pennsylvania to train at a police academy. Most of her family, expected for her brother who lived with her, living back in their hometown and there was no one she could call “friend” on this side of the country. Except for the F1 team, but that didn’t count. With no friends to go out with and her brother always working at the local car garage most of the time, she was bored and would just refix her own car a lot.

“And what makes you think that I can fix this?” Dorothy asked, walking closer to the patrol car and could now see all the tinier dents and scratches in the paint and metal. The wheels were perfectly intact, which was weird if this thing supposedly crashed. Lucky person to whoever crashed it, she guessed. She looked at the custom paint on the side of the car and noticed the patrol was all the way from California.

“I’ve seen you fix worse.” Chief Mars mused, patting the hood and a gut-wrenching clang came afterwards. Dorothy cringed, wondering if that was the engine. “Also, the thing could be your new car if you fix it. A Ford Mustang for a Dodge Charger is a go switch, right?”

“Well,” the woman said, looking over the car’s frame. “I would have to un-dent the doors and the hood, not to mention all the other dents in the frame. Also, the tears in the metal would have to be welded shut and sanded over to make them smooth. Then, I would have to replace several fuel lines and maybe reattach the entire engine. The undercarriage is practically falling off and I can already see where multiple bolts are barely hanging on. The siren lights would have to be replaced and covered again, along with checking if the siren actually works. The car would have to be repainted as well and probably buffed a few times.”

The chief stared at her for a few seconds before asking, “How long do you think you’ll have it fixed by?”

“Maybe three-four weeks.” Dorothy compromised, bending down to look at the tears in the car’s side. She looked at the fluids leaking out of the hole and narrowed her vision when she noticed the odd color. She pressed her finger into the fluid and scooped some up so she could take a better look at it.

The fuel-like substance seemed to be an odd transparent pink and had the texture of grease and oil. Also, the headlights seemed to be dripping some type of engine coolant and wondered if the coolant tank cracked to cause that. She wouldn’t be surprised. But why would this car be filled with this pink fuel? What kind of car was this? And what exactly did the chief buy?

✢✢✢✢✢✢

::Stasis lock iminate in 1 hour and 15 minutes. Please seek medical assistance immediately.::

Barricade groaned as the message flashing across his HUD woke him from his deep recharge. His entire body was numb with pain and his couldn’t feel his wheels. He growled internally, cursing out Starscream to the universe as his memories came back to him. He then realized that the message said an hour and fifteen minutes and started to panic.

I was in recharge for three days?! the mech screamed internally as he could still feel all of the energon sticking to the outside of his frame. He grunted as a wave of pain hit his frame from his spark chamber, the dents creaking onto the wires and lines that connected his spark to the rest on his being. He looked around to see he was surrounded by a bunch of black, not focused enough to not that this optics weren’t powered up yet. I swear to Primus, if I die because of that pit-spawned jet, I’m going to-