Dorothy didn’t think she would be finding herself at a junkyard in the middle of Scottsdale, Arizona so that she could receive her birthday present from Chief Mars.
When the woman had gotten off of her day shift, she had found a letter with an address and the chief’s signature inside of it. The envelope was under her patrol car’s windshield wiper and just that this was the man’s way of saying, ‘Come meet me here’. The officer didn’t really know what to think at first, but decided she should at least follow the address in case this was something more important than receiving her gift that evening. So, the woman had grabbed her stuff from her locker, clocked out of her shift, waved a quick goodbye to the boys and sped back out onto the road to meet Chief Mars at the mystery location.
When Dorothy got to the junkyard, she didn’t know what to expect from the chief of police at this point. She stepped out of the cruiser and leaned against the side of the car as she watched Mars walk up to her with a devious smile on his face. Warnings started flashing in her head that this probably was not going to end well for her.
“So is this my gag gift before my actual present?” the woman asked, holding out her envelope and waving it a bit. The chief let out a laugh, which confused the woman even more. What was going on? Did she miss something?
“No, Haven.” he answered as he stopped laughing. “Your gift is inside the junkyard.”
“Oh boy. What did I ever do to receive such a wonderful gift?” she asked, drowning her voice in sarcasm and unenthusiasm.
“It’s better than you think.” the chief explained before walking towards the junkyard waving a hand to follow.
“You know, I thought this was going to be great.” Dorothy began to rant as she walked inside the open yard of scrap metal and old cars. “But the picture is starting to seem like a better gift than this. After less the guys put some actual thought into my present before giving it to me. If were here before you got your car towed again, I am not paying for it.”
“Would you calm down, Haven?” the chief complained, silencing the other person as they walked further into the yard and past more piles of rusting metal. The yard seemed to be a maze of old car parts and old cars just laying around and making a small path thee twisted through the lot. The place smelled like an old mill and some of the dusty ground beneath their feet would be a black puddle of mud that was oil that seeped out from a crushed car.
Must be a horrible way to die. Dorothy thought to herself as she continued to follow the older man through to the next path. I wouldn’t want to die here if I was a car.
As the pair turned around the last corner, Dorothy could already see the black and white paint from out of the corner of her eye. She stopped walking and turned towards the car, seeing it sit there and seem to weep in sorrow. Chief Mars walked over to the cruiser and patted its hood, leaning against the vehicle with the most smug look on his face.
“Ta da!” he exclaimed as he held his hands out to showcase the car he was in front of. “This is your birthday present. I bought it for you and I hope you appreciate it since you need to get a new car anyways.”
Dorothy just stared at him. A new car would of been a great present, if the car that Mars had bought was new. The police cruiser was dented in several places, mostly on its side doors and hood. Speaking of the hood, Dorothy shuddered as she noticed how far dented in the cover was. She hoped the engine wasn’t that damaged. Besides the dents and obvious broken sirens on the top of the car, the car was scorched and had several tears in the framework. By taking an overall look at the car, the woman would have thought this car had crashed into a telephone poll and was put through a blender.
“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-
The sound of soft footsteps broke his train of thought as he silenced his thinking. The footsteps echoed against the wall, rebounding the noise and making it sound larger than it really was. The cybertronian listened as the footsteps got closer and closer to his being, until he could hear laughter and voices coming from in front of him.
“I don’t know why the chief would want to give you a damaged police car for your birthday, but it was his idea, not yours.” one voice spoke up, sounding cocky and male distinctively. The first thing Barricade thought was Bumblebee. But the fact of the scout not having a working voice box made Barricade think otherwise. The mech was stuck on how caught have found him in the middle of a junkyard when he realized that there was one other explanation. Ladiesman217.
“I’m not sure Mars thinks most of the time before he does something, but at least this gives me something to do after work.” another voice spoke up as a reply to the first one, sounding feminine and somewhat honest.
Barricade shrunk down onto his wheels. He thought of all the possibilities of how the human boy and his female partner got him to wherever he was, but he was sure the Autobots had something to do with it. Starscream had said that Skywarp was to warp him to California and something about the Autobots finding him. He contradicted that thought after realizing that the scout or anyone else in the Autobots would off allowed the boy to be with the bot who tried to kill him.
Suddenly, a small hand was pressed down on his dented hood and a surge of pain washed over his frame again, causing him to jerk. He tried his best to hold as still as possible, but not being able to find a more comfortable position to be in made the pain worse. The hand lifted a bit, as if whoever had touched his hood felt the jerk. He silently hoped not.
“What?” the male voice sounded again. “Did the hood burn you or something?”
“Yeah, or something.” the female repeated. The small hand was lightly pressed back down onto his hood and held it there for a second. Barricade referenced from growling at the human for touching his hood, being that his voice box seemed to be slightly dented in at the moment and it would only cause him more pain. The yellow scout could have been around anywhere and the police car wasn’t taking any chances.
When the mech finally decided to open his optics, he found himself in his alt-mode and stuck in an auto repair shop. His wheels were clamped down to a lift of some sort and he could feel the heat radiating off of the human’s hand. Unfortunately, these humans were not the ones he first originally though they were.
The male was tall, had brunette hair, just like Ladiesman217, but had a thinner face and a wider upper body. His brown eyes seemed to be watching the female with a face of concern. His hands were shoved in his pocket and he swided back and forth on his feet as she waited for the other to do something.
The female, on the other hand, looked odd and had man off features about her. Her hair was the same brunette color as the males, but her eyes were a brownish-green and looked down at his hood with a questioning look. Her hair was cut in a short style, one he thought only the males of this species did, and was mostly pushed to one side of her head.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you at home then.” the male said, turning around to walk out back the way he supposedly came, which was out a small door to the side of the three large garage doors with windows. He stopped before he left, took a pair of keys out of his pocket and through them to the female. She caught them in one hand and waved them at him. “Make sure you lock up the shop, ok Dorothy?”
“Yeah, yeah.” the female that went by the name of “Dorothy” said in reply. “I got it. Don’t wreck the house when I’m not there.”
“No promises.” the male said before leaving. The mech wondered if their relationship was more of family or romantic. They looked similar in appearance, but maybe that was just a coincidence.
The police car watched “Dorothy move away from his frame and pull her arms up in a stretch, which released a loud cracking noise. The police car tensed at the sound, wondering what in the human’s body could have made that noise. Was it their internal structure? He knew, from the Internet, that humans had a similar internal holding systems to a protoform. But if his protoform made a sound like that, he’d probably instantly go to a medic.
“Alright then.” the female said out loud. She turned around to look at him and had a smile on her face. “It’s my birthday and I’m going to do whatever I want, which means starting to fix you.”
If Barricade could give a questioning look, he would. Was the human talking to him directly? Did the human even know he wasn’t a Earth vehicle? And what was a “birthday”? Was is similar to a spark creator day? The term, if put by definition, mean the day that the human was born. Was this the way she was celebrating? All this questions ran through his processor as he began to worry what the human was going to do to him. He was damaged severely, was about to fall into stasis lock, and was now strapped down to a platform that could allow the human access to his spark chamber, which laid in his undercarriage.
“Let’s start with your hood.” “Dorothy” stated, moving to a large box with many drawers and pulling out a device with two wires and a electronic device. The human placed it on the table next to the car and walked back over in front of the Decepticon. She slipped her fingers under a lifted spot in his hood, which made him shudder. The flesh appendages made messages shoot across his HUD that they should not be there.
“Dorothy” gave a small countdown from three and then pull upwards on the hood. Barricade quickly grounded himself as wave after wave of pain rushed through him from his dented hood. Something was caught, or damaged under there that was pulling on his sensory wires. The human stopped and then tried again, not making any progress on the hood at all. She sighed and crossed her arms. “Well that didn’t work.”
You think?! Barricade mentally screamed at her in his helm, trying to the whimper or yelp externally. The mech suddenly felt naeusa take over his systems and his vision grew blurry. He wearily watched at the human walked back over to the toolbox and pulled out two more items. It was a crowbar and a mallet on some kind. He winced, thinking off all the damage that could do to him. She walked over and slipped the end of the crowbar under the space in his hood. What is she doing?! he thought, now panicking.
The human backed away from the object and toss the mallet upwards a little in her hand as she looked directly at him. Barricade now instantly realized what she was going to do, and how much it was going to hurt when it happened. Before the human could bring down the mallet on the other end of the crowbar, Barricade revved his engine and growled loudly at the female.
“Don’t you dare force my hood open, you bag of flesh!!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hiya! So second chapter is done! And also, this is what Dorothy looks like:
And this is what Chief Mars looks like:
Hope you all enjoyed!