Chapter Five
Bird of Prey
Alexis slammed her fists down onto the windowsill angrily, her cheeks crimson with embarrassment and anger. Her jade eyes were narrowed and her breath came in sharp bursts that shook badly as they left her mouth, mingling with the tears of humiliation that were threatening to spill.
Grounded at the age of nineteen? How could her mother have agreed to such a degrading punishment – let alone been the one to actually give the command? How could she have done that – agree with Robert, who was not even her father? The two of them were supposed to stick together, and they had always sworn to put each other first after her father had been killed… by the lover she doesn’t know about, a voice in her head reminded her softly, and she clenched her balled hands.
Now she thought about it, she guessed that she had… neglected her mother over the last three years. She was so in love with Starscream and so caught up in life with the other Autobots and their allies that she had become distracted by it all, and let everything else go. Starscream was her world; he encompassed everything she loved, and all that she wanted.
But she had let her mother suffer in her absence.
Her lip trembling slightly, she sunk onto her window seat and put her face into her bony hands, her shoulders beginning to shake. It was all beginning to become clear to her now… what she had done, and what she was doing with every passing moment.
Before she had fallen down a hillside and gained herself an open fracture, she had been an ordinary person. Perhaps a little too ordinary, in fact: her lack of friends had caused her to be almost invisible at school, known vaguely by face but never by name or personality. And her mother had liked that about her – although she was distressed by Alexis’s clear lack of friends, she had been glad that she was not always out partying and drinking like other teenaged girls, and concentrating on her studies instead.
The idea of her having a boyfriend would have worried Jasmine then, and it would worry her now. Especially if she discovered the rather disturbing and often frightening facts about him.
If she discovered that Alexis had a boyfriend, horrible images would appear in the woman’s mind. Images of her only daughter finally leaving the nest to spread her own wings and fly away… away from her. True, she had Robert now, but Rose was nearly twenty and would soon be leaving herself – and there was always the undeniable threat that one day, he might leave too.
Nothing lasted forever.
If Alexis having a normal, human boyfriend was troubling to Jasmine, then discovering that he was, in reality, an extraterrestrial robot that stood thirty-one feet high, weighed around five tonnes and could crush her quite easily with a simple mistimed step. Then on top of all that, she would surely never speak to her daughter again if she found out that he had once been a murderer – indeed, the murderer of her beloved Adam, and now the lover of his only legacy – Alexis.
Shuddering at the open window, Alexis choked out a muffled sob and shook her head, her face crumpling.
Around her neck, the necklace was a dark, heavy presence; it weighed her down badly despite the size of the emerald, and was making the base of her neck throb and prickle uncomfortably. She wrapped a hand around it tightly, as if to quell the demonic entity that she knew lurked within it, and a chill shiver ran down her spine.
Despite all that had happened, she could not help but long for Starscream.
Insane as the rational side of her mind warned her that it was, she could not help but adore her lord of the sky. He had shown her a whole new world… taken her to places that she had never dreamed of, both physically and spiritually.
Because of her mother’s stifling protectiveness over her, Alexis had always been somewhat uneasy around men, and awkward when she spoke to them. She had always known that because of her painful thinness and generally dull appearance, she was unlikely to get a boyfriend during her high school years… but then Starscream had fallen from the heavens like a dark angel and snatched her up, claiming her as his own at once. Certainly there had been problems – hundreds of them – but they had been overcome in the end.
Yet she sensed that this was not the end. Not for anyone.
The sound of an engine roared overhead and she flinched, scrambling onto her knees to look out of the window at the afternoon sky. Her sharp eyes spotted the jet, and she watched as it dropped into the forest at the back of her house. Waiting for her.
It was ridiculous and irrational to try it again. Climbing down to the ground and disappearing for so much time would drive her mother over the edge, and Robert and Rose would give her hell for it. She hated the way they acted as if they were already a part of their family and knew her mother better than she did… she no longer cared about giving them a run for their money. Robert had humiliated her, and so had her mother. They had hurt her, and she hated being hurt.
Starscream had hurt her, too. Initially, he had been obnoxious and abrupt, and had constantly insulted and mocked her – it was only when Sideways had landed that he had become oddly possessive over her. Then there had been the betrayal – that first, crippling example of the infamous treachery of the Decepticon Air Commander. Then there had been the second time – the discovery of what he had done to her father.
But she had learnt forgiveness. Because she had seen something in Starscream; a tortured being screaming for aid, and whose cries went unnoticed. He had tried to hide himself away behind veils of blood and barricades made of the ashes of his enemies, but she had let him touch her somehow. And he had… he had marked her forever. If a thousand years passed by and she somehow lived through them, she knew that she could never forget someone like Starscream.
She loved him.
She was in love with him.
And one day – perhaps very soon – she would express that love for him. She did not quite know how, although she had some ideas, but she knew that she would. A kiss could never be enough to convey her passion and love for him.
Nodding stiffly to herself, she dropped her cell phone from her pocket and let it hit the ground: she did not want to be disturbed. Then she stepped up onto the window seat and slid her slender leg out of the window, easing herself out onto the garage roof and moving swiftly and silently, praying that nobody was in the garage below her.
As she was lowering herself down to grasp the drainpipe, she blinked when she saw a slight movement from the window of Rose’s room.
Panic seized her – had she seen her trying to flout the grounding rule only ten minutes after it had been set?
Her fingers shook around the smooth surface, and her eyes widened when her booted foot slipped down the wall with a loud crunching noise. She fought to keep her grip on the piping, but her hands suddenly slipped – with a short gasp of shock, she fell from the roof and ten feet down, hitting the grassy ground in the back yard with a sickening whack.
She groaned, blinking back the white stars that burst in front of her eyes. Her head was already beginning to ache, and she knew that she had to get to Starscream before she passed out; the knock had been pretty hard, and she was amazed that she was still conscious.
Using the grass to pull herself upright – and subsequently ripping out several handfuls of the lush vegetation in the garden – she staggered to her feet and glanced behind her worriedly. When no-one emerged from the residence, she clutched the sore, tender wrist that she had fallen on so heavily and made a break for the trees.
Rose watched Alexis carefully as she glanced at the house and broke into a limping run, holding her wrist and staggering badly. No wonder – she had fallen a long way from the roof of the garage, and it had been downright stupid of her to try escaping like that. Then again, it was to be expected from a reckless, headstrong girl like Alexis, and she saw the determination of her thirteen-year-old self in her new stepsister. She would have climbed onto a roof any day to get away from the pressure of the divorce.
She was not about to report the breach of the rules to her father or to Jasmine. Much as she disliked Alexis, she was aware that doing that was beyond contemptible, and she was not, despite Alexis’s opinions, a spiteful person by nature. Not at all. Alexis had come over as very rude and abrupt to her, too, but she knew that the two of them were under enormous pressure.
Snatching up her house keys, she swung her long black coat over her shoulders and lifted her reddish hair free of where it had caught in the collar, letting it fall loosely a little way down her back.
She may not have been reporting to the parents, but she was going to find out what Alexis Paxton was up to if it was the last thing she did.
She made her way swiftly down the stairs and headed for the front door. “I’m just going out to the library for a bit,” she called to Robert with a winning smile when he gave her an inquiring look from the kitchen. “I’ll be back before dark, Dad… don’t worry yourself.”
Rose had a part-time job at the library in Tranquillity’s town centre, and was frequently visiting to pick up paperwork and running errands for the head librarian, who was stern but very kind to the eager, book-loving girl. Aside from this she did occasional paper rounds and sometimes worked at the local car wash rinsing people’s vehicles for a few dollars – any work she could pick up to pay for her college fees, and perhaps even buy herself a car of her own at some point.
“I’ll be watching the clock,” he warned with raised eyebrows, only half-jestingly.
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly in his direction. “Alexis is asleep,” she added in a low voice when Jasmine appeared at Robert’s shoulder – more like elbow, she thought amusedly, seeing their height difference. She definitely got her height from her father’s side. “Don’t disturb her, okay? Just let her have some time by herself.”
It almost disturbed her how good a liar she was when the need arose.
Jasmine chewed her lip for a moment. “No… we won’t,” she murmured. “Have a nice time, Rose.”
Nodding to both of them, Rose turned and pocketed her keys with a soft clinking sound before she exited the house.
The late afternoon air was reasonably warm, but she was still glad of her coat; there was a light, biting breeze in the air that ruffled her hair and chilled her neck slightly beneath it. God, I’m such a Brit, she sighed to herself mentally, always thinking about the weather.
Her eyes moved to where she had seen Alexis disappearing to – the thicket behind their house that lay at the edge of the land owned by a guy a couple of doors down. She unlatched the gate, hoping that Robert and Jasmine had not seen her – why should she be going through the back gate when the library was in the opposite direction, after all? – and slipped through the gap, closing it quietly behind her. Then she broke into a jog towards the trees, wondering to herself why Alexis had felt such a strong need to go there.
Perhaps hiding among the trees was Alexis’s way of escaping. Nature did hold a certain beauty that relaxed people, and the trees would hide any tears that she might be crying. The girl was probably deeply embarrassed and upset by her father’s reprimanding, and Rose did feel sorry for her. She had never lost a parent, but she knew how it must hurt, having another man stepping into her father’s shoes.
Robert had told her briefly about Alexis’s father, Adam. Apparently he had been a pilot in the US Air Force, and had been involved in some sort of terrorist attack on Mission City – he had been killed when his plane had crashed. It had happened when Alexis had been sixteen years old: a year before Rose had come to America from London.
Sixteen. She did not want to imagine losing her father… especially at such a young age.
When she came to the thick trunks of the evergreens, she reluctantly abandoned her coat under a bush when she spotted the branches – it was a nice coat, and she would be damned if it got torn apart in there. Then, gingerly, she eased herself between some shrubs and into the gloom that was not penetrated by the orange sunshine.
It was not a forest that she was in; the trees were like a barrier between their street and Tranquillity’s main route to the town centre, so there were only so many places that the girl could be. She had expected to look for a little while nonetheless – she had assumed that Alexis would be huddled up somewhere and she would be in here for at least half an hour looking under bushes and in the hollows of trees, or wherever an angst-ridden girl hid when she was upset.
But she heard the voices almost immediately.
She stopped dead and dropped down instinctively, holding her breath. She could hear Alexis’s distressed voice, but there was another voice, too. A deep, scratchy voice that seemed far too loud to be human, although it was clearly hushed despite its volume. It was a powerful voice, and it sent an odd sort of shudder throughout Rose’s body when she registered the last thing about it.
It was a distinctly male voice.
All sorts of horrific possibilities laced like wildfire through Rose’s mind and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from gasping aloud. Alexis was with a man?
It was certainly not a young voice; it was actually quite an odd one, if she was frank with herself. It was extremely masculine and carried a definite note of sex appeal – she had not even seen its owner, but she sensed that they would be attractive. But it was also frightening… it was a voice that she could imagine telling her that she was about to die by its owner’s hand.
“I hate him!” Alexis was choking out through what sounded like a great deal of tears. “He – he just steps in and acts – like he’s D-Dad!”
Who the bloody hell is she talking to? Rose fretted from behind a shrub, wondering whether to come out and look.
She was fine with Alexis having a boyfriend – she probably should do, at nineteen – but this guy sounded at least thirty, and the idea was disturbing to Rose. A relative, perhaps? Some creepy uncle that Jasmine never knew about? Or – God forbid that this is true, she thought frantically – someone that was grooming her like a stalker, wanting nothing but self-satisfaction?
There was a deep growl from the other person and Rose flinched, wrapping her arms around herself in her crouch position. The voice was so resonating and loud that it send a slight tremor through Rose’s chest, and the man spoke with clear anger in his tone. “It is appalling that your mother agreed to such a degrading punishment,” he muttered. “I will not be apart from you for a fortnight, Alexis.”
“I know,” her stepsister wept. “What do I do, Starscream?”
Star-what?
Was that a name, or had she misheard?
Deciding that the latter was probably the most logical solution, Rose nodded bravely to herself. She would have to confront this person in order to find out who he was and, preferably, get Alexis away from him so she could give her a good talking-to. If Jasmine found out about this, she would be absolutely livid with her daughter.
“Wait.”
Rose froze when the man uttered the single word.
From her befuddled silence, it was obvious that Alexis was confused what he had said, too. “What’s wrong?” she asked, and Rose’s eyes widened when there was a thud on the ground that caused the earth to tremble beneath her. “Starscream, what’s the matter? Don’t be all mysterious with me now, I’m not in the –”
“I sense another human nearby,” he whispered.
There were two separate trains of thought running through Rose’s mind when she heard the words of both Alexis and her… friend. Firstly, that Alexis had definitely referred to the person as ‘Starscream’ – she had not misheard twice – which sounded distinctly like an Internet username of some sort. This was only backing up her theory that he was a sleazy pervert that Alexis had met on a chat room and had stupidly agreed to meeting up with, and her heart was thumping at the mere thought.
However, there was also the somewhat disturbing realisation that ‘Starscream’ had said something about ‘another human’ being nearby. Not only was this completely bizarre – why would he say something like that when he was a human himself? – but it meant that he somehow knew that she was here, and was likely to expose her within the next few minutes.
Should she come out, or wait to be found?
Another vibration went through the ground and she fell heavily to her knees from her crouching position. Her jeans hit the soil and she steadied herself with the palm of her hand, swallowing.
“Where?” Alexis asked worriedly, sounding much closer than she had been. “Starscream, you’d better get out of here… what’ll you do if someone sees you? Let’s just go to the base and we can talk to Ratchet about the neckl –”
A grim chuckle suddenly came from above Rose and she looked up in horror when a pair of ruby eyes bored into hers.
“It’s alright,” the demonic creature above her said softly. “I found them first.”
It took Rose’s brain around five seconds to fully register what her eyes were telling her was there. Five seconds to realise what she was looking at, and what had happened. Five seconds of utter silence as she locked eyes with this monster above her, and watched as the crimson eyes narrowed darkly, pure evil in its look.
Then she screamed for the first time.
She scrambled to her feet, still screaming hysterically, but was immediately stopped by a gargantuan hand – long, dextrous fingers snatched her entire body up, pressing her harshly against a metallic palm and lifting her twenty feet into the air with a vicious sweep of the creature’s arm. “Oh my GOD!” she screeched, struggling madly against the iron grip.
Looking around frenetically, she cried out as the breath was squeezed from her lungs. She dimly registered Alexis crying out from somewhere below, but she was more concerned with the fact that she was about to be strangulated by something that looked hideously like a beast out of her worst nightmares. Something large and metallic that had stepped from a science-fiction horror novel and almost straight into her back yard – something that currently seemed intent on murdering her.
She was jerked around abruptly as the fist twisted, bringing her face-to-face with her captor – thrust into shadowy, rat-like features, in the centre of which were a pair of slanted, blood red eyes that were burning with a furious hellfire that scorched her from the inside out.
“Rose Connelly,” the creature hissed from some sort of mouthpiece. “We finally meet.”
Mouthing wordlessly and emitting tiny squeaking sounds, Rose made a weak attempt at moving her arms and received another crushing tightening of the fist for it, and she managed a pained croak when the fingers began to bruise her arms. “Oh my God,” she gasped out between hyperventilating, raw panic moving through her body. “P-please…”
“Starscream, no!” Alexis shouted hoarsely from the monster’s feet. “Don’t kill her, for God’s sake!”
The robot – for that was what it appeared to be, from what Rose could see through the hot tears of terror filling her eyes – decided to ignored her, although the crimson eyes did flick briefly to where the girl was standing. “I have wanted to speak with you for a while now, Miss Connelly,” it oozed with sarcastic courtesy and she felt her stomach twist in her abdomen at the quietly murderous tone. “It has come to my attention that you have mistreated my charge.”
Rose stared at the monster, shaking her head and whimpering softly. “M-mistreated what?” she managed to stammer out through her quivering lips, her brain and body screaming at her to escape from this death grasp that it had about her torso. “I d-don’t – what are you –?”
“Someone that you have angered,” it said silkily. “Intensely.”
Alexis slammed her fist into the robot’s huge foot to get its attention; it hit with a resounding clang, and it looked down at her as if it had forgotten she was there. “Starscream, put her down,” she ordered firmly, although her voice was trembling. “You’re going to suffocate her – she’s going blue, for the love of God. Just drop her and we’ll have to explain ourselves before she goes running back to my mother!”
There was a long, tense silence before the fiendish creature shrugged almost casually and dropped Rose from ten or so feet above ground level. She hit the forest floor with a thump against the dry, cracked soil, and what little breath she had was knocked from her lungs by the impact. Gasping and spluttering, she scrambled painfully away from Alexis’s outstretched hand.
“K-keep away!” she half-screamed, her blue-grey eyes round as coins as she looked up at Starscream’s intimidating form. “Oh m-my God –!”
At over thirty feet high, Starscream towered above Rose, and the expression of pure, unrefined hate on his face was not improving her reaction to him. The wings of the Raptor were spread out threateningly like those of a bird of prey, casting everything below him into shadow.
Alexis put her hands up in a gesture of surrender, showing that she had no intention of harming her stepsister. “Rose, it’s okay,” she wheedled persuasively, moving a hand back to shoo Starscream away from the petrified young woman. “He’s not going to hurt you, I promise. Just try and calm yourself down –”
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Rose –”
“Don’t you ‘Rose’ me!” she shrieked, screaming again when Starscream raised a giant fist. “Oh God, oh God – call it off! It’s going to kill me!”
Starscream slammed the fist down on the ground half a metre away from Rose, causing her to break into another round of frenzied screaming. “I will take great pleasure in it,” he threatened boomingly, glaring at her as she cringed away from him, “If you do not stop that audio-receptor-destroying screaming immediately!”
She swallowed hard, still gasping raggedly for air and trembling alarmingly.
Alexis gave Starscream an annoyed look and crouched down in front of the slightly older teenager, emerald eyes meeting ocean blue with determination. “Rose, I need you to listen to me,” she said firmly and Rose nodded stiffly, glancing up at Starscream several times. “This is a long story, but I swear that he won’t hurt you. His bark is a hell of a lot worse than his bite – yes, Starscream,” she added to the him when he looked almost insulted. “You’re soft at heart.”
“Spark,” he corrected. “And no, I am not,” he added in an undertone, and Rose had to swallow back another cry at the vile look he gave her. “I am altogether rather hard at spark when it comes to people hurting you, Alexis…”
She gave him a reproachful look, but Rose could see the gratitude in her large, bottle green eyes. “Stop being so harsh, you horrible Decepticon,” she scolded almost affectionately, indicating the terrified Rose. “She’s scared stiff as it is.”
“Good,” Starscream muttered darkly.
Black began to creep to the edges of Rose’s vision and she suddenly felt quite light-headed. A wave of nausea surged through her stomach and up to her throat, leaving her with the nasty sensation of being an inch from fainting. She wrapped an arm around her abdomen and swallowed hard, feeling as if she might vomit. “Think… I’m going to…” she husked, her stomach churning.
She felt Alexis’s slender arm come around her shoulders and push her down slightly, and she put her head between her knees obediently, colours swimming in front of her eyes.
Alexis ran her free hand through her light brown hair and felt Rose’s trembling as the young woman fought to remain conscious. She looked up at Starscream anxiously with wide eyes, and her guardian returned her gaze. “Well, we’re in a mess now,” she sighed, glancing down at her shuddering stepsister. “What do we do?”
“We will have to take her to the Autobot base,” Starscream admitted grudgingly, folding his arms. “She cannot return to your abode.”
“No,” she agreed, eyeing Rose and wondering whether Ratchet could calm her down any better than she could. Then again, introducing her to the others probably was not the best course of action when she had reacted like this after seeing Starscream by himself – seeing seven more of them probably would not help matters. “Fine. I’ll call someone to pick us up – you can’ t fit two into your cockpit.”
He looked at her long and hard before he nodded stiffly. “I will wait with you,” he told her firmly, taking a step back and leaning slightly against the trunk of a tree, causing it to bow slightly with a groan.
Alexis nodded and then let out a frustrated growl when she remembered. “I left my phone at the house,” she explained at his look. “Rose…? Rose!”
“W-what?” Rose choked from her position on the ground, putting her elbows on her knees and holding her head up with her hands. Her face was white as a sheet and visibly clammy, her eyes wide and feverish, and she seemed quite unable to relax with Starscream’s terrifying form looming above her. Not that Alexis blamed her – she had been on the verge of collapse when she first came into contact with the Autobots, too.
“D’you have your cell?” she asked in a slightly softer manner.
Rose’s clouded mind took a moment to translate ‘cell’ into the British equivalent of ‘mobile phone’ before she bit her lip and nodded, reaching a shaky hand into the pocket of her jeans and throwing the device in Alexis’s general direction before she dropped her head back between her knees, moaning quietly to herself when her stomach twisted sickeningly and threatened to release its contents through her mouth.
Turning away from her lover and near-unconscious stepsister, Alexis tapped in the numerical code that would allow her to access Ironhide's radio link.
”Aw, come on!”
Mikaela grinned at Sam, who looked quite scandalised as he glared her hand over his on the tabletop. “You are such a sore loser, Sam Witwicky,” she taunted, shifting her hand from beneath his and snatching the winning card triumphantly. “Take it like a man, will you? What kind of self-respecting male would cry over a little game of Snap?”
Sam rolled his brown eyes and pursed his lips, though a smile tweaked at the corners of his mouth. “Guess I asked for that one…”
Miles’s hair, which was had been bleached bright blonde by the Californian sun over the last few weeks, was free of his hat for once as he pulled a face. “C’mon, Sam, we can’t lose to a team of girls!” he complained, giving his friend a light thump on the arm. “We’ll go grab some pizza from the fridge once we’ve won this, okay, man?”
“Huh?” Carlos exclaimed from the opposite goalpost, looking quite insulted. “I’m not a girl, rubio!”
Since their friendship had begun three years beforehand, Carlos had taken to constantly calling Miles rubio, the Spanish term for ‘blonde’. Miles still had no idea what it meant, but he was quite convinced that it meant something insulting – consequently, the two of them frequently engaged in friendly banter, and this game meant that competitive feelings were running high.
“Really?” he grinned wickedly, his eyes sparkling. “I’d never have guessed.”
“That a challenge, enano?” his opponent asked, raising his eyebrows over his large, chocolate-brown eyes. “You Americans are too slow for Snap.”
Jade laughed, her cheeks a little flushed with exhilaration from the game, and she nodded her agreement. “You guys are like kindergarteners!” she snorted, looking from the skinny blonde to the taller, muscular Spaniard. “You’re outnumbered by Americans here, Carlos, so watch your back…”
“And you are outnumbered by Cybertronians,” Bumblebee’s voice came from behind them and the five humans turned to face the yellow Autobot.
While the humans whiled their time away with cards on a set of beaten-up couches that one of the Autobots had placed there considerately, Bumblebee and Skyfire were monitoring a large computer screen. Two large blue blurs were visible on the black background of the screen, covering several rings of lime green that spread out like ripples across the monitor. These, Optimus had informed them, were two more Autobots – two more Autobots that Ratchet had not been overly amused to see.
Sam raised his eyebrows at Bumblebee, tilting his head to one side. “Oh yeah? Well there’s five of us and – and –” He took a moment to count the number of Autobots on one hand. “And there’s – oh. Yeah… yeah, you do.”
Carlos snorted. “Tonto.”
“Where’s Rad?” Miles suddenly asked, shuffling the cards randomly for something to do with his hands.
“Yeah,” Mikaela piped up, her eyebrows knitted together in a frown. “Didn’t he want to come?”
Jade reached for her carton of juice and sucked from the straw before she replied. “He’s gone to check out Harvard with his parents before he accepts the application,” she told them. “He’ll be away for a couple of weeks – they want to stick around the coast over there for a while, too. You were with Mikaela and Arcee at the base when he said goodbye.”
Miles frowned. “Aw, man. I’ll miss that guy.”
Mikaela smiled at the two Autobots. “How’re Sunstreaker and Sideswipe doing, guys?” she asked curiously, moving Sam’s head to one side so she could look at the screen and drawing an affronted sound from her boyfriend. “Where’re they gonna land? You must be so excited… we haven’t had any newcomers since Arcee, after all.”
Ratchet made a sound that could have been akin to a grunt of pain at the mention of the names from where he was repairing one of Optimus’s removable weapons – the sword that had killed Bonecrusher, Bumblebee had once confided to Sam and Mikaela – and he received several inquiring looks for it.
“Excited?” he repeated incredulously. “Oh, Mikaela, my dear… if only you knew what chaos those two will bring to the base, you would be absolutely terrified.”
“According to my calculations, based on the co-ordinates we have, they are likely to land in the state of Colorado in two or three days,” Skyfire informed her, tearing his navy optics from the monitor to address her and giving Ratchet a brief, sympathetic smile. “Ratchet does not really hate the twins so much, but they do delight in infuriating him, I admit.”
A mischievous grin spread across Sam’s face. “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to absolutely love these guys?”
The medic muttered something incoherent before returning to his work.
Miles sighed and threw down his cards. “I’m starving,” he yawned, stretching his arms. “Sam, come and grab some pizza with me, man. We’ll bring some back for you guys,” he added to the other three, before the two boys got up and headed towards the small refrigerator that had been installed for the humans in the corner of the central command room.
“Ah, cold pizza and flat soda,” Carlos smiled, sliding down in his seat and winking at Jade when she looked at him. “Perfect day.”
Jade smiled back at him innocently.
Skyfire had not missed Carlos’s action, and his dark silver features contorted momentarily into a look of pain before he relaxed it when Jade turned to face him on the couch. “Who won your game, Jade?” he asked as casually as he could, and she grinned widely at him and gave him a thumbs-up while Sam and Miles shouted arguments from the fridge.
“We did,” she said loudly over their claims to have won. “It was best of twenty, guys – we just won it!”
“I am sure that Sam and Miles will accept defeat once they have satisfied their hunger,” he chuckled good-naturedly as Sam slumped back onto the couch, cramming a cold, congealed slice of margherita into his mouth and emitting a muffled sigh of content. “And if you are not too tired tonight, Jade, would you care to go for a ride later?”
He had to admit to himself that it was mainly out of jealousy that he had asked her in front of the others. Usually he would have snatched her up later on, but Carlos’s bold wink at his charge had shaken him a little, and he wanted to make the point very clear to the boy that Jade was his charge – his lover. He was more than aware of how pathetic it was, but he could not help himself. Besides, the two of them had not flown for several days, and he wanted nothing more than to return to the sky with her.
Sam wolf-whistled, earning himself a slap from Mikaela.
Jade’s brown eyes lit up excitedly and his spark warmed to see her so happy. “Sure,” she agreed eagerly. “That’d be great.”
Skyfire smiled at her, dealing Carlos a look that had just the slightest hint of a challenge behind it. Carlos leant back on the couch, returning the hard look for a moment before turning his head away to reach for the slice of Hawaiian pizza that Miles was offering to him.
Ironhide suddenly barrelled into the room, closely pursued by Optimus Prime. The old warrior’s face was dark and anxious, and Optimus’s face was a mirror image. “Is something wrong?” Bumblebee asked them concernedly, his blue optics round and appealing.
Optimus turned to the humans and the three other Autobots in the room, his expression grave. “I’m afraid there has been a complication.”
Mikaela glanced at Ratchet worriedly before her aqua eyes flicked between Ironhide and Optimus. “Complications…?” she asked slowly, and she felt Sam tense beside her on the couch, half-eaten pizza lying forgotten in one hand. “What kind of complications?”
They all turned to Ironhide, who clenched his jaw before replying. “It’s Alexis’s stepsister,” he muttered. “She knows.”