Bluestreak came back on line as something clambered across his hand. He howled, lashed out instinctively, and the possum went rolling across the room, letting out an eerie, high pitched scream that almost sounded human as it scrambled to get away, clambering over Dart’s chestplate to frantically find its place in the wall.

Instantly, the silver mech reacted and lunged, barely missing the animal by fractions, his hands coming down on either side of the femme’s still form. He went stock still, whining, the smell of coagulating fluids being pulled into his intakes, and then he recoiled, scrambling back, shaking his head in disgust at the wafting odor of mechanical decay that fluctuated with the air currents. The possum managed to make the safety of the wall and poised, bald ears cupping back and forth, nearsighted eyes blinking down at him.

Bluestreak snarled at it, reached down and picked a rock off the cavern floor. The possum, understanding this reaction, chittered and disappeared into the wall, and Bluestreak shifted the rock uneasily between his fingers and finally let it roll onto the dirt floor. He really didn’t feel like striking the small beast...Dart’s body was a convenient ladder, and that’s all the vermin’s little brain could understand.

"Fine," he said out loud. "You keep off of her, and I won’t stomp on you, you oily marsupial," he threatened.

Lord Prime’s nose appeared from the wall crack, and the possum’s tongue flicked out as it licked off a bead of mucus that slicked the pale pink nostrils.

"Gah. You are...disgusting," Bluestreak informed him. "Utterly disgusting, standing up there on your dias of stone and lording it all above us. What’s next, little possum goblets of the skulls of your little possum enemies? Shall you bring down a civilization with your possum army of doom?"

The thought made him actually laugh out loud, and the possum craned his head so just one eye was peeking out from the wall.

"So what should I do," the renegade asked, looking up at the animal. "I know she’s here, isn’t she? I can...sort of feel it, I guess. I mean, you reek worse than usual. That would mean I smell it, not that I feel it, but you stink so bad who couldn’t smell it. I can, I’m living in it. No, I’m existing in it. I wouldn’t call this living. I’m sitting in a hole with a rat that smells like human vomit, with the body of a dead femme in the corner. It’s very cozy. Hey, it’s just like home. Dead mechs, rats...all we need is to have them blow up a city on top of me, and then it will be perfect, and then I’ll be dead, and well, that will solve everything, right? Solve it all, well, then we’ll both be really dead. Both...huh, I hadn’t thought of that, you know."

He tapped his chest, then let his fingers run down the silver metal curve of his chest, and suddenly, his fingers felt the rough burr where he’d stood and burned off...no, shot off, his sigil. Slowly, his optics were drawn to Dart’s own silver metal, where her own symbol had been scalped from her by the edge of Hound’s blade.

"The Decepticons...you know, they might be able to fix this..."

The possum flinched, then yawned.

"Then again...that wasn’t what Sideswipe said," he argued, watching the whiskers twitch at each syllable. "He said that he didn’t think the Decepticons had the ability to fix it."

A faint sense of distaste rolled up and lingered in his chest, and he nodded.

"Yeah, well, I know you don’t think he knows what he’s talking about..." he mumbled. "But what am I supposed to do? Walk up to their front door, stand there, and yell at them until they open the gates? I don’t think they like me much. I don’t like them much. It’s mutual, you know...yeah, you know, don’t you. Even you know," he said, looking up at the possum again. "What am I supposed to do, drive four hundred miles and throw myself at the door and say, hey, your ex-courier is stuck in my backups? I mean, it sounds utterly ridiculous, doesn’t it?" Then a faint, wry chuckle escaped him. "Is chocolate in peanut butter, think."

"Um...right," he finally continued, his doors lifting in a faint shrug. "Whatever, right. So, what do...we do now?"

The possum turned and presented his rump with a slither of naked tail.

"Right. What else can I do?"

He looked down at the shadowed form of the courier.

With a frown, his fingers encircled her wrist and he pulled her to him, suddenly lifting the light body into his arms. Where her metal touched his, the chill seemed to suck the warmth from his own plating, and he shuddered, half wanting to drop the body, to shove it away from his own. Instead, he gritted his mouth plates and moved backwards out of the cave. The sense of revulsion grew, and her arm brushed against his, the scent of coagulating fuel nearly overwhelming him. Stiffly, Bluestreak started to hold her out from him, his arms locking outstretched, and she dangled there, limply. Some sluggish bit of fuel finally dripped its way out of her chest and trickled down his wrist....

A memory, a flicker in his mind, of a corpse above him in a shattered city, the smell of fuel as it dripped, drop by drop on his upturned face...

A strange, odd keen caught his attention, and he shook himself, hard, his doors rattling as the whine bubbled up from his chest again. He realized he was inches from flinging her corpse away from him, his revulsion sticking like a knife through his main pump. Slowly, he drew her back against him, and then with a sigh, he lifted her and draped her body across his shoulders, settling her there. Her body rested across the hinges of his doors, her solid ponytail like sweep of helmet brushing against the inside hollow of his shoulder.

"Right. Well, four hundred miles, through fricking downtown Portland. You know what that is, right? The depths of Autobot territory, and it’s the only series of standing bridges in the area so we can get into...what is it? Washington State? Walking, mind you, not even driving. So we get to walk, four hundred miles, through a place where everyone’s out to kill us..." He trailed off, then chuckled. Yeah, he had to agree with the feeling that hey, it was just like always. Bluestreak let out a little snort as he headed down the hill, towards the forest. "You know, the least you could have done for me while you’re in there was let me run like you. This would have been a lot faster."

Now it stood like a de-fleshed backbone over the ruins of the city, smoke from the still burning fires trickling through the girders like restless ghosts. It had been years, now...years; and still the pyres burned in the rubble, fires trapped by the crushing weight of concrete and lives lost. Somehow, it was as if they were still waiting for something to shift so they could flare up like a desperate distress call on a deserted island. But no one ever came but the rain, softly hissing down from the sky. Here and there, a figure moved in the rubble; a starving dog nosing at an empty tin can, a rat or two chittering at each other in the darkness, a bit of white fabric caught by the warmth of an underground updraft and sent fluttering like a dirty surrender flag across a broken street. It came to rest against the smoothness of a weathered curve of bone, wreathing the small skull for a moment before being whipped onto a bigger one, lying only a few feet away. Delicate finger bones rested there, half buried in the soot as well...the larger hand gripping the smaller one even in death. A few more years of wind and rain would someday grind was left of these lives into the dirt and they would be lost, one more silent testimony to the power of the Autobots.

The whole city was evidence in that regard, twisted metal lying in heaps, what was once a gorgeous convertible Jaguar now twisted and bent, the rain filling it to just under the left passenger window. There was a faint slick across the water pooling in the destroyed car, a muted rainbow of colors that reformed and broke under the drops of rain. Another car was tipped over nearby, what was left of a torso still clutched by the webbing of a seatbelt, and then up the road, leading to the bridge, more cars, strewn across the roadway as if scattered by the cruel hand of a large child abusing his toys. One final vehicle rested against a blast-streaked shattered building with all four tires off the ground, bowed in the middle as if stepped on by a large foot, the once pale grey interior streaked with rusty red. All of them pointed to the north, showing the path of human fear and terror as clearly as a roadmap.

They’d tried to escape the invasion. At first, they had thought that if they were to flee, the massive machines would have let them go. Most of them had never even considered that the military would lose the battle. Humans had always been safe in their egocentric world...they were the dominant species, they had the opposable thumbs combined with huge brains that allowed them the creation of the military hardware to destroy and conquer.

It had been painfully clear to those in the city in those final moments that there was no dominance that would save them. Thousands of cars had cluttered the bridge, thousands of humans screamed and clutched families to each other as the machines tore apart the city, finally free to do what they did best...destruction. The white-hot streaks of plasma, the constant booming fire of artillery shells that echoed down the length of the Columbia River, the shrieks rising in the wind and being drowned out under the sound of the city’s death. One by one, the overpasses had crumbled, tumbling the cars and bodies downward, tugged from their foundations by massive hands. Still trapped under one of the slabs of falling concrete lay a huge form, smashed into deactivation. The tattered purple sigil on the wing made it one of the only recognizable pieces of what had been most likely a seeker. Peeking out from the edge on the left hand side was a large metallic wrist, then fingers, cupped protectively over an object huddled there...the remains of a human. One fleshless arm was still reaching out from between those fingers where it had been trapped...a last, terrible plea of hope for rescue that had never come for him after the battles had ceased.

The rag fluttering against the skull trembled again in the wind and shuddered, pulling loose from the anchoring bone. It danced silently across the soot and concrete until it wrapped around something metallic.

Bluestreak glanced down at it, and then before he could stop himself, he recoiled, whining sharply. Dart’s body shifted across his shoulders and door panels with a rasping noise, her metal grinding against his, faint bits of black paint shaving off and mingling with the soot and grime layering his silver form.

He didn’t know why the rag bothered him...perhaps it wasn’t him at all that was cringing in horror at the torn up fabric, streaked with rusty stains. The wind rustled it again, puffing out the scrap of cloth’s small sleeve and making it abruptly resemble the article of human clothing it had once been, a tiny shirt with a small cartoon kitten embroidered on the front

Dart’s fright had been welling up in him and threatening to send him screaming from this hellish place ever since they crossed into the city limits. Every sound had made them stop, Bluestreak’s pump hammering, the smells so foul here he could barely pull the air past his olfactory sensors. The renegade lifted his foot, afraid to shake it, afraid to make a noise, but more fearing that Dart would slide past his own thoughts and force him to make a mistake he couldn’t afford right now.

"Easy," he murmured to himself. "Easy." The body across his shoulders shifted and slipped, and he brought a hand up to steady the lean form resting across his doors like a gunshot doe. His voice comforted him somehow in the darkness, as if he could follow it like a safe path across the mangled city; lead him to the security he could smell across the depths of the Columbia river. "Almost there. Cross the bridge and we’re out of here. I don’t think they’ve posted guards anywhere in the city...the Autobots aren’t the type to hang around one of their masterpieces after the fact....and it’s not like there’s anything left here to guard but the bridge."

A cold feeling gripped him, and he whined again, the sound forced up through his chest as he danced a nervous sidestep, sending up puffs of gritty ash.

Bluestreak frowned, sharply, shaking his head from side to side as if to clear it, and the dread iced every line and cable in him. He felt like he wanted to throw back his head and just turn and bolt, to retrace every agonizing step back to the cave like a wounded beast and lay there, shivering in misery. There was desperation to leave this place, these smells, the horrors that surrounded them both. This place scared her terribly. Not that he was going to argue...it scared him terribly too. He stopped for a moment, ankle deep in rubble, and tried to hold himself still for a moment...to try and keep control of himself, to ground himself. The wind eddied through an empty rib cage that was most likely human, and he could hear the rain bouncing off the bones with the oddest sound. He finally likened it to the sound of chimes.

Her fear licked at him. Stretched to her limit, she turned to flee the city of the dead, and he braced himself as his body shifted and moved, his doors twitching. A grunt escaped him. "Listen. We just need to get over that bridge. If you can’t settle down, the guard that might be there will kill me, and by extension, you."

His voice, barely a whisper in the darkness, held no hint of anger, just firmness. He wanted to get his point across without yelling at her. It wouldn’t help him keep control, and he knew he was already on edge...and she wasn’t helping. The whine rattled up from his vocalizer once more, the sound of a terrified dog crawling under a dining room table, and then he was silent once more as she attempted to obey him as quickly as she ever did. The horrors of this place brought memories he thought long buried to the front of his mind; the stink of burning sweetness rising with the flames, the rush of jet engines roaring by so low they made the remaining buildings tremble and the windows shatter like crystal dropped to a tile floor. He was on the bridge again, looking down at the river’s burden as it struggled to cleanse death from the depths. The cries of the humans rose in his audio once more, at first overwhelmed by sounds of the battle, then the only thing he could register. A pair of gold optics watched him sardonically, bright within their mask of black metal...

He just struggled to shove that aside and move on with a will he usually couldn’t manage, driven on by a thousand things to leave this place. Each step brought back a memory, a sound, a upturned human face white with terror. Inside, these recollections overwhelmed and battered the other personality within. It silenced, leaving him with just the sound of his own feet stumbling through the rubble. He turned a corner, sliding around the remains of a once beautiful granite facade and came to a halt as the tips of his foot clanged on something hollow and metallic. He froze, his body shaking as the sound rolled over the ground and then was slowly absorbed by the shattered concrete. Slowly, his gaze lowered so that he could see what he knew was there, but he was mildly surprised to only find half of a Decepticon corpse, body so coated in ash it was the same flat grey as the rubble. Oddly enough, he found himself wondering in a morbid sort of way where the other half had ended up.

Reflexively, he found himself looking over the body for a moment just to see if it had anything that might be useful, then realized that anything it had carried was long gone by now. Fastidiously, he stepped over the torso, feeling Dart’s light weight settle a little more against his doors. Closer to him now, the bridge loomed in the darkness, the rain coming down in heavy, thick spatters. The ash and dirt was so sodden it couldn’t hold any more moisture in places, and the water just pooled sluggishly in the lower areas, sitting stagnant with no where to drain to.

Thousands of cars were scattered along the cracked and uplifted roadway, decaying slowly as he huddled and picked his way between them, using them as what cover he could now. The doors seemed to be open in random patterns, a front door here, two front doors and a side door there, all four doors wide, then back to just one. Something whispered that this was not as random as he had thought, and then he understood. The doors were the number of humans in the car leaping out and attempting to run when they were trapped, caught in a traffic jam that had stretched for miles during the mass exodus of Portland.

A troubled sigh escaped the renegade as he forced his gaze back up to the bridge. A light still gleamed there on the girded towers, a subdued red dot that barely hazed the darkness. He knew its purpose, to ward off approaching planes. He wondered what planes dared approach this place at all, and wondered why they hadn’t shut it off when they pulled power to the city. A warning, perhaps, one small drop of blood forever suspended in mid-air and waiting to fall. He whined, moving on, crouching, his silver paint now covered with filth, the shadow across his shoulders scraping with each hesitant step. The edge of his foot came down on a car window and it shattered and popped under his weight like a pistol shot. He leapt back, rearing up like a terrified colt, dancing and snorting and barely able to keep from crashing into a rusting delivery truck. The back door of the truck flung wide, clanging hard against the box of the vehicle, and a swarm of rats, nesting in the newspapers within came scattering out, beady eyes wide with terror.

Bluestreak dropped into a crouch, the rain dripping off the edges of his chevron and leaving tracks in the grey ash on his faceplate. His pump hammered so loud he was sure that the Autobots in the Ark would hear it and come swarming out, grins on their faces as he was drawn, quartered and scattered across the city for someone else to stumble over in a few years and wonder where the rest of him lay.

A whimper rose up from his chest, and he knew the apology and concern. Silently, he nodded a little, trying to focus on anything and everything around him, and finally whispered, "It’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting the mammals...huh...did I ever tell you about the time I was attacked by a bunch of coati-mundi?"

A sense of concern rolled up, and he smiled slightly, still mumbling. "No, I haven’t finally lost it. Take more than this, promise. Not much more, though. Um, I was in the desert. Wasn’t too long after we first woke up. Arizona, Texas, I think...I forget which. Earth geography has always confused me. You look at all those human maps, and you expect there to be lines in real life...give me a holographic dimensional map over that flat junk. So...oh, there’s just this big huge stretch of rock and scrub, no lines. Anyway. We were on a scouting run, me and um...Sideswipe, and Cliffjumper, I think. Maybe Windcharger. Another red guy."

Distaste bubbled inside of him at the mention of Sideswipe. No, loathing. Distrust. He gave a little noise of admonishment at the feeling and continued. "But anyway, we had the area pretty secure. It’s funny, when you think of deserts, you don’t think of trees. But there are forests, near the mountains, where there’s shade and underground water. So, we split up for the final recon, and I went in in car mode, because I had a bad actuator in my knee that was slowing me down when I transformed and I hadn’t gotten it fixed yet. I mean, I wasn’t going to go to Ratchet for a bum knee. He’d just replace it with a bomb or something.

"I was driving down this trail and I stopped for a moment, just to think. And I sort of got distracted, and then the next thing I know, this...raccoon looking thing comes out of the brush and starts sniffing around my tires. Then it barks, and like, five or six more come happily tromping out, and the first one shoves his snout up in my back wheel well, and I say ‘Hey!’ or something equally impressive. They just all stop, stiff legged and their tails go straight up and they start barking at me."

A tiny bark-laugh escaped him.

"Yeah, sort of like that, but they weren’t laughing. Instead, the first one is halfway up my wheel well, and if I transformed or even started driving it would have been messy. Yeah, probably would have damaged up my knee even more. So, I’m just stuck, forced to put up with this indignity while the rest of them are yipping at me. Then the first one finally pulls his head out of my wheel well, and there’s something in his mouth. Some sort of lizard. It must have crawled up while I was distracted. So, the big one walks over to the rest with this lizard, all strutting and proud, and then they’re all barking like idiots. So I honk my horn and scare them off. I don’t know," he finished, thinking of the possum. "I guess I have some ‘pick on me’ sign that only the stinkiest organic wildlife can see. That black and white thing we ran into that one day didn’t like me much either."

This time, he knew she was laughing, even if he had to deal with the memory of that humiliating stench. Even Chip and Sparkplug had attempted to keep him downwind for a while. But she was following his words as she always followed him, letting his speech ground and calm them both.

He’d been walking all this time, and something crunched under his foot. He didn’t look, not wanting to see bones shatter under his weight, so he just kept moving.

"But, that’s my attacked by coatis story."

A faint snort pushed past his intakes in gentle reproof.

"No, I checked. Coatis, not coyotes. Like big racoons."

Disagreement.

"Don’t you think I know a dog from a racoon? I’m telling you, they were coatis."

Again, contention.

"Well, I know that I couldn’t tell the female humans from the male ones as kids," he admitted, but didn’t relent. For once, he knew he was right about the fauna, which was rare. "Yeah, but male humans don’t have a big ringed tail to differentiate them from the female human’s bushy tail. No, I know they don’t seem to have a problem telling us apart, and yes, no bushy tails on us....but that’s beside the fact. Coatis. Not Coyotes. Not to mention, how can the humans not know the difference? To them, femmes are huge and curvy."

Another exasperated huff escaped him. She was neither huge, or curvy, thank you very much. He had more curve than she did. All he had to do was look at his chest plate compared to hers.

"To a human? Oh come on, keep in mind that all they see from the ground is legs and the bottom of your hood. Listen, I know I’m right, though. Coatis. I looked it up when we got back." He shrugged slightly. "Yeah, well, I bothered to look it up because I was curious. Wanted to have it right when I told the story later."

A small, thoughtful whine. Fine. She’d grant him the vicious racoon thing attack.

Triumphant, he grinned, and heard himself chuckle softly. As always, he got the feeling she didn’t mind him having this small victory. He stepped over a collapsed infant stroller with the wheels half melted into the tar of the road and continued on. "Well, that and humans are a lot smaller than we are. So we have to look closely to see the differences, and frankly, that just comes off as...rather...well, I think the word I would use is...creepy, right?"

The bridge loomed, sleek and open, the trellises of metal still sliding gracefully over the cold, dark river beneath. He could hear the rush of the water now, the constant, roaring flow that threatened to drown out everything else in his sensors, and he shook his head, flattening himself against the ruins of a hotel. The piers still stood, sagging over the water, half burnt through where a lovely terrace had stood for diners, paying more to watch the river during a meal. One lone table still rested there, the tattered remnants of a shade umbrella in the center snaking up through the middle, broken and bare spars twisted like fingers clawing at the clouds above.

"Okay...well..."

We’re here. Now what. Can’t swim it. I knew that. Too deep, and the current is still too strong. Pretty stupid of the Autobots to blow that dam, no matter how much terror it created when the farmlands flooded. If I lose grip on her, I’ll lose her, and then I’ll lose what’s left of my mind. So. All that I’ve got left is that bridge, and we need to get across it. Where’s the sentry? Silently, his azure optics scanned the area, flicking over shadows and rises, looking for the places he’d hide if he was up there in the darkness, holding the rifle steady, the stock against the curve of his cheek. He couldn’t see any place, couldn’t find the high point in this city from which to guard the bridge. Of course not. There’s no high point left in this city. He nearly cast out his hand in the familiar gesture they both understood...she would move to the side of him, sniff at the wind currents, take a step, and sniff again, both of them using skills the other didn’t have to keep on guard, to keep alive...

He dropped his hand abruptly, and heard himself whine. Silently, he pulled air past his sensors, tried to separate the threats from the real dangers. The smell of the city threatened only to overwhelm him, and instantly, he jittered, her weight bouncing off of his doors. Something inside of her rattled around in her chest panel with a metallic click. He snorted, let the smells go, blowing out to clear his intakes. A fine mist of ash came also. This place was going to be murder on his filtration system.

Better than murder of us, I suppose. Well, Bluestreak, no better time then now.

He slipped out, going as slow as possible, edging towards the bridge with even, careful steps, moving low between the abandoned cars pushed to the sides of the span. The Autobots had never bothered to clear the refuse off the bridge, just tossed it to the sides where it sat in a wordless threat to anyone who might dare to cross. He respected that threat...had he put some of it there when it happened? He couldn’t remember that. He could remember leaning over the bridge, staring off into the darkness, and hearing the collective bursts of laughter from his fellows, the sound drifting to him like the cawing of carrion birds picking over the carcass. Perhaps it was Trailbreaker who picked up the human and began tossing him from hand to hand before throwing him hard at Gears. He recollected hearing a one final, high pitched scream that ended with a wet, heavy thump...and then the city had abruptly been silent. Not even the wind sliding through the girders moaned in protest, and he had felt his hands had clench on the span, his doors flicking back and forth, back and forth, mirroring the bobbing remains of a car sinking slowly down in the water, air bubbles leaking from the edge of the windows.

Caught in thought, he hadn’t been paying attention to his steps as carefully as he should have, and his knee struck a car door, wrenching it free from the burned shell of the vehicle with a long, drawn out shriek that echoed and bounced over the span, dancing along the steel like a final, desperate call for help. He was frozen, now, torn between running forward at full speed and throwing himself flat, trying to present the lowest target. Instead, he did neither, stuck there in the open, trembling...

They have us...they can’t miss us now, where are you, where are you....

Where would the blast come from that would send him into the waters, and finally send him down into death? He reared back, jittered, nearly losing Dart’s body off of his shoulders over the side of the bridge. Instinct made him grab her wrist and hold on so tightly her metal dented under the pressure. His audios heard a click, far off in the darkness, echoing like someone was standing inches from his head. Abruptly, he thought he could smell the rifle...the hot tang of cordite and electrons...and Bluestreak knew now the scent of his death. The wind lifted, blew the air past him and he heard....

Silence.

Nothing but that terrible, lingering silence.

He waited, braced for the hit, trembling, Dart’s weight rattling across his shoulders, and the seconds ticked by like hours...and nothing came.

Bluestreak nearly found himself laughing then, laughing out loud, in relief. He fought back the urge, and alternatively, he whirled on his heel and slipped through the cars, his footfalls barely audible over the sound of the river below. Almost too soon, he found himself gripping the railing with one hand, vaulting over the end of the bridge. He landed with a splash, the cold water seeping into his ankle joints as he scrambled for the riverbank, the stones beneath him slippery and unstable. The silver mech didn’t stop to look back...he just wanted to leave the city as far behind as quickly as possible. Instead, he struggled up the muddy embankment, Dart weighing him down...then managed to get to his feet, bounding clumsily off into the darkness and vanishing into a copse of burned forest.

In the darkness of a destroyed building on the edge of the bridge, a pair of cold blue optics observed Bluestreak gain the far side of the span. Inclining slightly, the gaze focused on the silver mech as he struggled over the edge with his burden, and then a thick, deep chuckle escaped from under the drape of sodden fabric around the mech’s head. Slowly, one ebon hand reached out and hoisted the dead body of the bridge guard up halfway into a standing position.

"Idiot. How many of you must I explain this to?" the cloaked figure chided, leaning close. "Bluestreak is mine. Not anyone else’s. Mine."

Fastidiously, a blade was cleaned with the remains of a piece of fabric...and then, the only noise was the low sucking gurgle of an Autobot guard’s fuel slowly being consumed.

Portland had claimed one more life.

Under the large pines, in the middle of what had once been a parking area, a soft groan echoed. There was the rattle of something lifting a weight off of its shoulders; then the sound of crunching pebbles as it settled its burden down like a hiker relieved to be rid of a sixty pound pack. Slowly, doors spread wide on his back, and swung back and forth as he rolled his shoulders.

A snippet of a poem ran though his mind, about an albatross.

Needless to say, Bluestreak had no idea where he remembered the tale from. He vaguely remembered Chip pulling out a tattered textbook as the humans sat around a campfire, but he honestly didn’t care. All he truly cared about right now was that after slogging this amount of milage on foot, (wearing Dart like a ratty fur stole, mind you,) through terrain that seemed to take great pleasure in his struggles - he missed being able to use his car mode. When he’d seen the rusting curve of what looked like the roof of a boxlike vehicle half in the overgrown ditch on the side of Interstate Five, he’d veered out of the trees and cautiously approached it.

Something told him that it was a horse trailer.

Which struck him as odd, in a way. The horses he’d seen had been perfectly capable of carrying a human, and did so on a regular basis. Why haul them around? Oh. Right. Because horses, before the Autobots and Decepticons arrived had been merely relics of the past. Cars had easily replaced them, far better at both qualities of distance and convenience. Besides, it wasn’t often that a car spooked and kicked you in the head, but that was neither here nor there. Now, good solid horses were in demand to the humans, and bartered carefully - you could travel farther on a horse than by foot; and unlike mechanical things, they didn’t attract undue attention when they moved through the landscape. No engine noise.

He shrugged, eying the trailer. It had once been an expensive piece of machinery - the back doors were full ones instead of the cheaper quarter drop doors, and they were still secured, an outer bar and chain wedged across them. The sides curved upward, and thin, vented windows were set within. Red streaks of rust trickled down from the frames and fanned across the oxidizing white paint in lacy scallops. However, even though the sides were crushed slightly and dented - from where he stood, it appeared incredibly intact.

The plan formulated quickly - he’d rip off the top and toss her body into it, and then find a way to tow it behind himself.

Thrilled that he’d be back on all four tires and driving at a good rate of speed, he’d actually danced a light little sidestep, unable to contain his delight as he trotted toward the edge of the road to pull it out of the ditch. The thick arcing canes of the Himalayan blackberries tugged back, the plants not willing to give up their prize. He tugged, bracing Dart’s body with his doors so she didn’t slide off as he had to switch to using both hands to try and get the trailer loose. Half inch thorns stabbed and slashed at his plating - they would have viciously drawn blood had he been human, but did nothing but irritate him. He set his feet, wrapped his hands around the tow-bar, and hauled the metal hand over hand until the ground itself gave way, the root systems dragging black, wet soil behind them and scattering in thick clods over the embankment.

Hope settled into a heavy, defeated ball in his chest as he now saw the full extent of the damage to the conveyance. A quick survey pieced it all together for him. The trailer’s axle was nearly bent in half, twisting back off the ground as if it was a curl of old wire - the left tire had been long slashed off the rim. A blowout, perhaps, as the humans were fleeing. In their fear to get away from Portland, they’d misjudged the corner and their speed, and the thing had rolled over. Then again, possibly not - it could have been an everyday, normal occurrence that happened at a very poor time; a jagged shard of broken bottle, or the lance-like thrust of a rusty nail punching up into rubber at the right angle. It was all it would have taken to cause the tire to peel back from the rim and send the trailer weaving from left to right, as if it were Bumblebee after a long night of huffing power packs.

It was useless. Even if he did tear the top off, the exposed tire rim wouldn’t touch the ground, and dragging it like a sled wasn’t an option. The sound of something metal rasping on the roadway would draw any patrolling mech for miles around as if they were coyotes drawn to the pain-shriek of a fatally wounded rabbit.

With a half-snorted growl of frustration, Bluestreak kicked out and shoved it hard; only to be met by the thump of something sliding back and forth within. It bounced from wall to wall before falling with a hollow thud back onto the floor of the trailer. Instantly, he backed off, clamping his hand warily over his olfactory sensors. One cautious sniff had only brought the faintest whiff of decay, but it was more than enough to make him decide he really didn’t want to open it after all. Primly, he extended the tip of his foot and nudged it back over the embankment. The trailer slid, picking up momentum to roll heavily into the eager thorny grasp of the rest of the blackberry brambles.

Bereft of that idea, he’d once again slunk through the back-country, one foot at a time; forced to clamber and slide through mud and slop and small drainage culverts where the pipes spit dribbles of fetid water at him as if they were heckling him to move along. The once silver mech was a filthy, exhausted mess. From the waist down, he was caked in black, and the green slime off the surface of the pond he’d slipped into earlier - in his defense, it had started off shallow and dropped off abruptly. Half rotted cattails festooned his calf, dangling down from where they’d caught in his knee joint. Splashed up on his hips, adhering to his metal skin, water lily blooms were crushed and matted. Thin petals of pink and white folded across each other like strange, pale kanji.

Now he looked down at the ground where his burden lay, limp and awkward in her stillness. Her legs crossed over each other at the ankles, as if she was nothing more than a chunk of old metal scraping against the tip of his foot. Bluestreak couldn’t hold back the shudder that ran up his relays as he slid himself aside; he drew his heel through the gravel as if he could scour the feeling away that he was still touching the body in front of him.

At least now Dart’s vacant optics were staring somewhere else, off into the weeds and the sagging fences. He could turn his head from side to side and not accidently find his gaze drawn into empty, flat glass; slanted windows of blue that reflected his own face, but had no recognition of it. Slowly, he rolled his shoulders one final time, letting a long hiss of air pass through his sensors as he took a few steps forward, glancing around. The little gravel lot had that same sad sense that every small town had that this mech had passed; fear, understanding, a desperate haste to throw everything precious to them into their car and bolt for perceived safety. A soda can sat miraculously on the edge of a picnic table underneath a tall pine, still upright and unopened after years of sitting patiently on the corner of the picnic bench. The huge trunk had shielded it from the wind, the massive, feathery limbs of the firs protected it from the rain. He brought a hand up, rubbed his chin, feeling a bit of strange amazement that it was still there... and that the Pepsi-Cola logo was legible even though it had oxidized into pink and watery green.

Abruptly, he found himself laughing out loud with a strange, chortling wheeze-yelp, and he immediately snapped his jaws shut and threw an irritated look back over his shoulder. He didn’t see anything incredibly funny about the can, nor amazing, but he stepped forward, doors swinging back and forth as he reached a cautious finger to turn the can around and peer at the back. He lifted a browplate, tilted his head from side to side, and then the answer came to him.

Oh, right, the Jackson’s World Tour. How could he forget that; the terrible shrieking wail of the guitars, their long necks being strangled like geese as the humans pranced across the stage, accompanied by flashing lights and a howling audience throwing themselves at each other in a frenzy of studded leather and chains? Yeah, and there had been that flaming paper-mache devil head, too, downright strange. Human music was not the renegade’s forte. The only thing he’d considered bearable was what Sparkplug listened to - the gentle, poetic ballads of someone the old mechanic called Ozzy. But, that was only because they were so unassuming in both rhythm and tone that they meandered quietly through, often overwhelmed by the noise his own tires made against the road surface.

He drew back slightly, and nearly upset the can with the tip of his finger. His other hand was there before he realized it, palm gently steadying the can, wondering if it was still drinkable. If it was, he’d just snag it, tuck it into his carrier and take it back to...

The chains on the sign rattled again as the wind ruffled through, and he spun in place. The can was completely forgotten as he gulped in a sharp breath of air past his intakes, then let it slowly out. Smells burned in his throat, unfamiliar ones. Taking a few steps until he stood in front of the sign, he squatted down, resting on his haunches and extended his neck out, sniffing warily. His fingertips brushed the dirt, anchored him gently, his weight rested on them as he sniffed at the board in front of him again. Each odor had a picture that went with it, not words to describe what he smelled.

Cedar. The sign had been carved out of a slab of wood, and the undertones brought with it the thought of a chest, Chip holding it across his lap as he peered into what was inside. Books, maybe, their pages sticky with mildew, but still readable and clear. Yes, they were children’s books once he pulled them out and opened them up, his hands thumbing through the pages. One by one, he pulled out the items within, and the whiff of mold and mildew grew stronger, mingled with the cedar as he spread them out on the blanket across his knees. More books. A handful of yellow resin pieces that belonged to the board game Perfection, stars and odd shapes scattered, but no board. Another handful, this one of all those Lite-Brite pegs, sharp red, green, blue, and even pink. Two plastic horses; one a proud bay stallion, the other a running glossy dapple grey mare, her front leg broken but patched carefully back together with a grimy Band-Aid covered in cute animals with colorful symbols on their tummies.

The last item in the box, buried underneath everything was a stuffed bear. It was flattened and loose-jointed from years of love, button eyes and nose long gone, digested by the family dog. Someone had attempted to give the toy new ones made out of embroidery floss, as well as a mouth that edged up in a maroon, lopsided grin.

Strangely enough, tiny white teeth were stitched over the slash of his mouth in uneven triangles. Did the person who had given this old bear his new face have a sense of humor, perhaps? Or maybe there was a child waiting impatiently by her grandmother’s knee as she stitched, insisting that Mister Bear be endowed with them - because all bears had teeth, right? It didn’t make him look scary, though - only a little punch drunk, as if he was smiling up at Chip in a satisfied sort of way, glad to be out of the dark box he’d been held captive in.

Bluestreak snorted and drew back, flinching. His doors flicked and rattled against his back, then swung forward like the ears of a spooked mare. Then he shook his head and they flung themselves straight and stiff, not daring to move again. Slowly, he tipped his chin forward, inhaled again. This time, other scents rolled across his olfactories, faint and light.

Oil on the chain, old oil. One whiff reminded him of how hungry he was. His processing systems gnawed at his internals in complaint. He lifted his hand from the ground, reached out his forefinger and slid it down against the metal loops, but only came up with the barest smear. Rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, he hesitated, then passed it under his nose a few times; breathing in the odor like it was black coffee. He felt like a college student who had been lost in the books all night, only to wake up with Hamlet wetly pressed to his cheek. Huh. There was that book reference again. Lost in his thoughts, he brought his finger up to his lips and sucked on it for a moment, inclining his head back and forth as he studied the sign once again.

Ew. Wait a minute.

He withdrew his fingers from his mouth, the sour burn of rust and grit lodging within. Instantly, he attempted to spit the taste out, shaking his head from side to side, then brought up the back of his hand to scrub across his lips.

A bark of laugher escaped him, and he glared at nothing again, twisted his head to stare off into the trees lining the parking lot.

"Well, it smelled okay," he growled out loud.

There was a pause, and then it was cheerfully pointed out to him that even if it smelled pretty good, it didn’t mean it was safe to lick it. Honest. Think about cat food.

"I don’t want to think about cat food," he replied. "You know what? I don’t want to think about a single animal that lives anywhere on Earth right this moment. Know why?"

Um. Well no, but there was a feeling he was going to tell them why...

Bluestreak clambered awkwardly to his feet, paced in a stiff circle, throwing his hands into the air as he spoke, talking with gesture as much as with the rise and fall of his voice. "I’ll tell you why. Because every animal on this planet has it out for me. Those black and white things stink and seem to take huge amounts of delight in scampering right across the roadway just as I’m turning a corner. Our little cave companion reeks to high heaven, and leaks on every tarp I scrounge up. Every time I have to park at a human hidehole, the dogs seem to think it’s great fun to splash on my tires - even that stupid cat at Rogue Camp did the same thing - oh, and let’s not even talk about birds. Is there not a single animal on this planet who doesn’t see me as a place to ... what’s the phrase..?"

Hesitation, then it came to him.

"Leave a piss, right?"

Sure, that was close enough.

Besides, the deer didn’t see him as somewhere to scent mark, did that help?

"No, it doesn’t help," he snapped, stopping in mid-stride. He crossed his arms, and spread his legs slightly to anchor him firmly to the gravel below. A toss of his head; then a blast of air snorted from his intakes. Shifting his weight to his left hip, his right foot pawed up a trough of packed gravel and dirt. It felt good to release the tension knotting in his legs and back, creeping silently into servo and line. “They just leap out of the brush and fling themselves at my headlights in an attempt to run me off the road.”

Right. Deer were plotting the downfall of Datsuns everywhere. Conspiracy theory. Got it.

"Is that a Red Alert joke?"

Another hesitation. This one was followed by the strangest feeling that he didn’t know what a Red Alert joke was in the first place, so no... it wasn’t. Honest.

"Fine," he muttered, shuffling a bit. A rock pinged off his foot and flung itself across the parking lot, rolling towards the entrance road.

A long, patient sigh escaped him, and he turned his head back to sniff at the sign again. With a jerk of his chin, he yanked his gaze back to the trees, then smartly pivoted on his heel, turning his back on the board and chain. Frustration filled him, and his shoulder dipped and twisted, his left door creaking on the hinge until he drew himself stiffly upright again. He wanted to sniff it again. No, he didn’t, because this time his optic sensors had gotten a close up view of some yellow stains trailing from a point halfway down the right anchor post and speckling the clump of dried grass below. No mistaking what that was.

"Too bad," he muttered. "I don’t want to go shoving my nose over there any more. Who knows what else would end up in my mouth. Yuck. Hey, you better not... now, cut that out. Don’t you dare roll an optic at me, I know you’re doing that. I can see it."

...

"You know what I mean," he replied.

This time the long-suffering sigh rattled up in his chest and spilled over his lips, nearly lost in the soft sounds of the sign chains creaking and the wind ruffling the branches of the Douglas Firs.

"Hmmph. Well, might as well see what else is here," he said, turning to glance at the hexagonal shaped building nestling into the small dip in the landscape. The windows on the side facing him were thick with dirt, and he started to walk towards them. A shadow passed over the ground, and he flinched and whirled, staring upwards, his hand reaching for the gun in the clips across his shoulders.

Over the clearing cawed movement; blue black wings that manifested not into the sleek jet forms of jets, but into a pair of huge ravens. They shrieked back and forth; long sable feathers cupped the air and swept it behind them as they winged across the lot and ponderously settled into the pines next to each other. Like two old men straining to see the actors from a theater balcony, they leaned over as one to peer sharply at Bluestreak. One shifted his weight towards the other, croaked, and the other responded with by ruffling his feathers in an avian shrug, then brought up his foot to scratch at his beak, claws rattling along the long, sharp bill. They muttered back and forth for a few seconds, sounding like they were chuckling over the whole giant robot in the parking lot idea.

The mech flashed them an evil glare, and drew his hand back from his gun, letting it fall to his side.

The birds bounced up and down on the branch, chortled and cackled mockingly, and then settled back to watch him with the look of ‘we’ve seen it all, we’ve seen better, go on, do something interesting.’

He was sorely tempted to show them half a million volts of interesting.

Wow. No wonder the native wildlife had it out for him.