tampered | Log; Complete

Log; Complete

When; August 13, early morning
Rating; PG
Characters; Open
Summary; Bumblebee arrives in the City with a bang. Intro post.
Log;

The City looked like it might still be sleeping, a little - or at least thinking about dozing off. The morning had just made up its mind to get going, and the air was still very quiet, light just barely illuminating the endless circling of the carousel. Within another moment, though, the carousel was lit by the fiery ball that plunged to the earth next to it, throwing up chunks of pavement and splinters of the rock beneath. The crater was surprisingly small when you considered that the metallic ball inside it must have dropped from orbit. It was a perfect shell for its unlikely meteorite, which furtively unrolled itself and looked around frantically. Making that much noise was never a good thing, it was aware - attracting attention was the last thing it wanted to do.

A moment later, hopefully before anyone would have thought to look out or investigate, a sleek and suspiciously unblemished car that some would know to call a Camaro sat next to the wreckage of the street. It was trying to radiate innocence as it got its bearings. It was failing.

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Lloyd had been paying attention, though -- he'd never seen a machine like this before, and he wasn't about to get blindsided by another curse, not after walking around with no face for an entire weekend.

So, ever so stealthily, he followed the yellow thing, careful to keep his distance without loosing sight of it.

Once Arion had left the alleyway in which they'd turned up, Bumblebee did a quick check for other human life signs likely to turn up at inopportune moments and then shook himself free of the car shape with a million tiny clicks and clanks as his body slotted into its natural form. He shook himself slightly, then shrank back against the far wall and kneeled, careful to keep below the roofline. He couldn't utilize all his sensors properly as a Camaro, and he needed to find this "network."

Lloyd peered around the corner, and what he saw wasn't exactly something he could explain, or understand. He gaped at the spectacle of the giant robot for a second or two, barely managing to keep the what the hell?! completely internal.

He shrank back a little, not willing to let the thing out of his sight.

Bumblebee wasn't paying attention. He was busy checking his equivalent of Network Connections, finding the city network, and making sure his link was secure. It'd be much easier if he could log into it while in his car shape. And start trying to hack it, at least enough to get the information he needed.

His mood quite improved, he started to stand up again, saw Lloyd, and froze.

With the robot facing him, Lloyd could see that the thing had a face. He jumped back, and yelled, "Wait, what--"

And then he tried to relax. After all, he didn't know the thing was evil or anything -- it hadn't done anything threatening. "Um... are you a .... person?" he tried, glancing left and right, wondering if anyone else could see this.

Bumblebee put his face in one hand. It wasn't like this had been exactly what he was trying to avoid or anything.

"My designation is Bumblebee. What is yours?" he asked tiredly.

"Lloyd. It's... nice to meet you." He looked around again, and then he took a step forward. "You're trapped here like everyone else, huh?"

"I suspect so, but do not intend to remain that way for long," said Bumblebee definitely. "I have a role - a mission to fulfill. I dare not linger here long, whatever it was about this place that caused my navigation system to glitch."

He hesitated, then said what he was thinking out loud. "You say you are trapped here. How long...?"

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too, at first, but..." Lloyd sighed, talking about this made him feel depressed. "I don't know if there's a way out at all."

He shrugged. "I've only been here for a month, I think."

"Far longer than the time in which I hope to make my escape." Bumblebee was a little shaken but recovered after a moment's reflection; he had more resources than this human Lloyd, after all.

"May I ask you for directions, at least?"

Lloyd didn't want to completely depress his new acquaintance -- the robot had just gotten here, after all. But he felt bad about not filling him in, so... "You can try, but... Everyone says there's no way to get out on purpose. I've been looking around here a lot, too."

Which meant he knew his way around. "Where do you want to go?"

"There may be ways open to me that you cannot exploit." There was a hint of uncertainty underneath the confidence, but Bumblebee did his level best not to let his voice processor betray it. His leader would surely trust him to get himself out of this mess.

"If you know of any places with parking under some sort of shelter...apparently there are not many cars, so there would be no garages. But I need a place to stay for the moment."

Lloyd looked doubtful. "Yeah, maybe," he said, knowing he didn't sound all that convincing.

And as for the directions... "Parking? Cars? I don't know what those mean, but... There's a big empty building not too far from here. They call it the warehouse." He hesitated. "I don't know if you'd want to stay there."

With any luck, Lloyd was wrong. Bumblebee had to believe that.

"I only want a place under shelter to stay for a day or two. If the building is empty, it will do well, I think. Hop inside and direct me, please?"

Without bothering to explain that comment, he snapped back into car form with astonishing speed, swinging his passenger side door open for Lloyd as his last movement before looking quite, quite exanimate once more. The unlit headlights watched unblinkingly.

"It's empty, I think, it's just--" Scary looking probably wasn't going to make any kind of difference, here. He opened his mouth to add to that, but that's when Bumblebee transformed.

He'd already seen the process in reverse, so it wasn't as startling. He looked at the open door for a second, before saying, "Okay, if that's what you want."

He hopped in.

Whatever that "just" was about, thought Bumblebee, as long as the place wasn't ringed by Smelting Pits he thought he'd be all right.

♪Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy theyre bringing-♪ There were a lot of nice people at this city thing, anyway. Humans really were all right.

Lloyd looked around warily; he had no idea what any of the dials or buttons did. He perched a little awkwardly on the seat and leaned forward. "Hey, you play music, too?" he asked. "Where's it coming from?"

The radio hissed at him a bit, making it clear. The dials and buttons wouldn't do anything if Lloyd pressed them, anyway.

♪A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio~♪

Lloyd wasn't really paying attention to the words of the song, not at first, he was still looking for the source of the music. "Hey," he said. "Can't you talk anymo--Oh." It clicked. "That's how you're talking, now?"

♪Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps~♪ responded Bumblebee, and idled to a stop at an intersection.

♪A million times I ask you, and then - I ask you again~♪

Pleased he figured it out, Lloyd sat back. "You should turn up here," he said, pointing.

"So, what kind of place did you come from?" he asked.

A pause. Then Bumblebee turned and continued smoothly up the road.

♪When the house was standing
You'd never have believed it-
When the house was standing
You'd never have believed
That gaping hole was once a foundation
Where you stand now were tools in the basement...♪

"... Oh, I get it," Lloyd said, even though he didn't. Something about his house being... gone? He went back to looking out the window, watching the City go by. "Did you like it there?" he asked, hoping he'd get a response he understood.

♪...home~
The place where I belong~♪

He couldn't figure out quite how to frame a question about Lloyd's home, so he just stopped at another intersection.

Lloyd sighed, that he understood. "You miss it already, huh? I feel the same way..."

At the intersection, he looked around -- this was one of the areas he didn't know as well. "You should go..." Lloyd thought. "Left from here, I think. It's pretty soon after that."

Re: *Post Cruising With Arion

Re: *Post Cruising With Arion

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