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In Miko’s defense, she’d kind of gotten used to big cars pulling up and opening the door for her to get in without a word.
And, sue her, she’d just failed a test earlier that day, and gotten a call from her parents back in Japan, and snapped one of her favorite hair-ties, so she was feeling a little on edge. Music usually helped, so she’d had her earbuds shoved in her head and turned to as high a volume as she could make them without giving herself a headache. Which subsequently meant that she hadn’t heard the difference in the way the car’s engine ran. Nor had she been paying attention amidst her jamming out to realize that not only was the truck a different shape, but it was an entirely different color.
The lack of a driver in the front seat wasn’t a good indicator, because the truck she normally got in didn’t ever have a driver either. In fact it probably would’ve been more concerning if there had been someone in the driver’s seat.
No, the thing that eventually ticked her off was the simple fact that the car turned left instead of right as it drove away from the school.
“Bulk?” she asked, pulling out one earbud. “Where are we going?”
“So are all humans as unobservant as you,” said a totally-wrong voice from the vague direction of the car’s radio, “or are you just particularly special?”
Oh. Oh that wasn’t good. Fumbling to turn her music off and looking around furiously, she finally picked up on the variances in the car she was in. A slightly lighter colored interior, blockier shapes, with the lights glowing on the dash yellow instead of blue. A quick glance out the windshield revealed a dusty blue hood instead of the army green one she should’ve seen.
Hey, wait, she knew this mech.
And hey he’d totally just insulted her!!
“Breakdown!” She immediately tried for the door handle, but as was probably a given, it was locked. When that failed she tried scooting forward in her seat and kicking at the windshield. Which only resulted in making her toes hurt. “Lemme outta here!!”
“Just calm down, human, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Like scrap I’m gonna calm down!!” Oh, hey, look at that, she must’ve been spending too much time around the ‘bots if she’d even started picking up their swears. “You kidnapped me! This is kidnapping! I’m gonna call the ‘bots on your ass and then you’re really gonna be in for it. Don’t think I don’t remember Bulk totally beating you and your flashy friend back when we were doing that thing with the sphere!”
“Just--” A huff, and the car swerved off to the side of the road. “Seriously, I don’t wanna fight, I just need your help.”
That was actually enough to make Miko pause where she was reaching for her phone to ring Bulkhead. “...What kind of help?” she asked, suspiciously. “Do you need to hide a body? Because I know so many ways to hide a body.”
“What? No, I don’t need to hide a body,” he said, sounding vaguely scandalized. “What in the Pits do those Autobots teach you??”
“Damn.” She still kind of wanted a chance to show off her skills. But she supposed that meant someone had to die first, which probably would not be very good. So the body-hiding thing could wait. “It wasn’t the Autobots, anyway, it was the internet. I’ve learned so much messed up stuff on there. What did you need help with?”
Silence for a moment. “...Okay,” Breakdown said, “you have to promise not to laugh.”
“I’m totally going to laugh,” Miko replied. “What happened?”
“So, apparently, the laws about how fast you’re allowed to drive on this planet are a lot more strict than on Cybertron. And, also apparently, when you’re in a city and not out in the middle of nowhere, people actually care about those laws.” He sighed. “So Knock Out was racing and they got caught and the humans did something and now he’s stuck in his alt-mode. And also trapped in some kind of fenced-in lot with constant surveillance so I can’t break in to get him out and stop laughing at me I know it’s ridiculous.”
Miko was, in fact, laughing her ass off. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A giant killer robot from another planet, with all sorts of gadgets and gizmos literally at his fingertips. And he’d been defeated by traffic laws and a boot on his wheel.
“So, what,” Miko said once she’d finally recovered her composure. “You want me to break in there and bust him out?”
“I’d kinda hoped we could do this without any busting,” Breakdown said as he shifted gears and started them on the road again. “Not that I’m not totally willing to use that as a fallback option. I was a Wrecker for a reason. But we’ve been drawing a little too much attention lately, and Screamer isn’t exactly happy about it, nor is he happy about Knock Out racing in the first place. So I’m thinking we go the more subtle route with this.”
“If you wanted subtle you should’ve snatched up Raf instead,” Miko said, leaning back in the passenger seat. “I much prefer the Wrecker style of doing things.” She was probably a little too at ease considering she was trapped in a Decepticon’s chassis, with him driving to God knew where, and no one knew where she was. But. Well.
If she had to be honest, it was kinda hard to be nervous. Not when riding in Breakdown’s interior felt so much like riding in Bulkhead’s. Tough and strong like nothing could reach her in there.
They really were a lot more similar than they liked to pretend.
“But I guess I’ll do my best,” she said. “So, did you have a plan, or are we winging it?”
As it turned out, “winging it” was the plan. So, no, they did not have one. Breakdown only knew a little bit about how the “impounding” process worked, and most of his knowledge came from movies and what Knock Out had overheard and relayed to him while trapped in the lot, so it wasn’t spectacularly realistic or comprehensive. Miko was fifteen so she technically couldn’t drive (another law she had to explain to Breakdown) and also only really understood what having your car towed meant because of movies and stuff. But she’d played Grand Theft Auto Five at least three times at one of her cousin’s houses before coming to America, so she totally knew what she was doing.
“How are you gonna know once we’ve gotten out?”
“Well, I explained the situation to Knock Out, so ideally he’ll be willing to let you ride in his interior for the few minutes it takes to get out of the yard and out of sight, but in case something goes wrong along the way…” He hummed. “Hold up your phone for a second.”
“You better not break this thing,” she said, taking her phone out of her pocket and flipping it open. There were a handful of texts from her host parents, which she had no qualms about ignoring, and a few missed calls from Bulkhead, which she felt a little bad about ignoring, but otherwise nothing of note. She held it up to the car’s radio. “My whole life is on here.”
“Relax, I’m not gonna break it. Just hold it still for a second.” A moment of nothing. Then the sound of an incoming text.
“What did you do?”
“Connected to it wirelessly and sent you a message from my commlink. You have my code now, so if something goes wrong, just send a message or give me a call.” He pulled up to the sidewalk, and a little ways down the street Miko could see the tall chain-link fence that indicated the impound lot. “I’ll be keeping an optic on things from a distance, so no funny business.”
“Yeah, yeah, cool your pistons. I’ll get your buddy back.”
He opened the door to let her go, and while she had the brief thought of running as fast as she could in the opposite direction and calling Bulkhead for backup ASAP, it kind of seemed like a waste of effort. Like, they’d already gotten this far. The lot was right there.
So instead she just shut Breakdown’s door behind her and trotted off towards the building attached to the lot.
She walked up to the counter, and after the attendant sitting there didn’t look up from his newspaper, Miko rang the little bell sitting there. That got his attention, and he peered down over the edge of the counter at her. “You lost, kid?”
“Nope!” She looked up and gave him her most ‘mischief? what mischief?’-y grin. “Here to pick up my vehicle, sir.”
He snorted. “Right. Sure. Go on home, kid, I haven’t got time to go along with your pranks.”
What are you doing besides sitting here and reading your paper? she didn’t ask. She didn’t want to make him any more mad, she did kind of want him to do what she wanted, after all. “No, really, sir. It’s um,” shit, what had Knock Out’s vehicle mode looked like? “It’s red,” she said, “and it’s got designs on the side. Oh, and gold rims on the wheels.”
The attendant frowned. “The sports car? Yeah, right. Look, kid, I don’t know what kinda joke this is supposed to be, but it’s not a very good one. No way in hell I’m just gonna give you a car with no proof it’s yours. You even got a license to drive it?”
Miko huffed. This clearly wasn’t working. “Okay, fine, it’s not my car. It’s… my dad’s,” she said, thinking on the fly. “He works real late nights, which means he couldn’t come pick it up. He didn’t even know where it was when it got picked up, it was my older brother behind the wheel. He’s kind of a wild child, you know, always trying to rebel and stuff. Doing those street races. I thought I’d try and be helpful and surprise my dad by bringing the car home early.”
It got her a skeptical look, but it wasn’t an outright threat to call the cops on her, so maybe she was headed in the right direction?
“Look, here, I’ll call him. Give me a second.” She pulled out her phone and, pulling up the number Breakdown had texted her from (why was his area code, like, a million digits??), she hit the call button and raised the phone up to her ear.
“Miko?” Breakdown said. “It’s been a hot minute, what’s taking so long?”
“Hi, dad,” she said, emphasizing the word and hoping he understood and played along without her having to get specific. “You know how your car got impounded a little while ago and you couldn’t find the time off work to come by when the office was open and pick it up?”
A moment of silence from the other end. Then a heavy sigh. “Why yes, Miko, I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
Yes! “Well, I thought I’d do something nice and helpful and stuff-- you know, like you’re always telling me to-- and come and get it for you while you were working. But the guy at the counter won’t let me have it, ‘cause I didn’t know where you kept the papers and stuff and I didn’t wanna go snooping, but he won’t believe me when I tell him it’s yours!”
“Put me on speakerphone, will you?”
Hoping to both the Earth and Cybertronian Gods that he didn’t say anything ridiculously incriminating, she turned the phone onto speaker and held it up towards the attendant.
“Look, sir,” Breakdown said, “the girl’s my daughter, and I don’t know where you get off picking on little kids, but you’d damn well better believe that car is mine too. Red paint-job, white trim, flames on the door, gold detailing? It’s a custom Aston Martin, and if there’s a single scratch on that frame, you had better believe I’m gonna come down with the full force of a lawsuit on your ass.” Damn, he was actually really good at this. All those movies he watched must have done him some good. “So you’d better f-- damn well do what the kid’s asking and hand over the car, got it?”
“S-sir,” the attendant stuttered. “We can’t just-- there’s protocol to this, you know, we need-- proof of ownership, and a valid Driver’s ID, and insurance papers, and the vehicle’s registration, and-- and there’s an impound fee that needs to be paid! I can’t just--”
“Look, jackass. I didn’t pay for that car out of my own damn pocket to have some son-of-a-bitch tell me I’m not allowed to have it. I work my ass off all the damn time, doing all this stuff I don’t wanna do, and I’m not about to have my p-- personal vehicle kept away from me by some bastard who can’t tell a spark plug from an oil cap. So give the kid the damn car, and you had better not be behind that desk when I finally get the chance to come down there and fill out your damn paperwork, or I’ll give you a punch upside the head along with my signature.”
“Okay!” The guy jumped to his feet, hands held up in front of him. “Jesus, man, I’m just the desk jockey! I’ll get you your car. Christ, I don’t get paid enough for this.” He shook his head to himself, grabbing some kind of tool as he walked out the side door and into the lot.
Miko turned the speaker off and held the phone up to her ear, almost giddy with the prospect of getting away with it. “Holy shit, Breakdown, that was really good.” She shook her hands out a bit to get rid of some of the excess excitement she’d had to conceal during the actual phone call. “Where’d you pull that from?”
“Eh, it was a solid mix of movies I’ve seen and using it as an excuse to get some scrap off my chassis. Think we convinced him?”
She trotted over to the window that pointed into the yard to see the guy kneeling beside what was definitely the most stand-out car in the lot, messing with something on the wheel. “Yep. He’s taking off the yellow metal thing as we speak.”
“Great.” A pause. “I let Knock Out know what’s going on. He’s kinda itching to get out of there, though, so if you could hurry it up…?”
“On it. Oh-- the guy’s coming back, I’ll talk to you later!” She snapped the phone shut and pocketed it right as the guy came back inside. “So? Do I gotta get my dad back on the line, or are you just gonna hand him over with no more problems?” While she didn’t really want this to take any longer, given that the ‘bots were probably getting kinda worried, she almost wanted to call Breakdown and have him go off again. It was kinda fun hearing it the first time around. Like one of those angry buff guys with the leather jackets in the movies.
The guy went a little pale. “No, no, don’t call him back. It’s fine. We, uh, didn’t find any keys in it, though, and the door was locked. Not sure how you’re planning on getting it out. But, uh, I opened the gate, so you can just… go.”
“Really?” She blinked. “I can?”
“Please just go,” he leaned on the counter, setting his head in his hands. “I think that car’s just a bad luck omen, I’ve had nothing but things going wrong since the towing guys brought it in.”
“Oh.” How… simple. “Okay! Thanks, sir!”
She gave him a cheery wave, leaving him to his misery as she trotted out through the same side door he’d used before and going up to the red sports car. She knocked on the window a couple times, and the door opened with a click, letting her climb into the driver’s seat before slamming shut behind her.
“Don’t touch anything, squishy,” came a mildly disgusted sounding voice from the stereo. The interior was a lot different than Bulkhead’s or Breakdown’s, more comparable to Bumblebee’s based on the few times she’d been in his interior. Though it was definitely a lot more… well, “emo” was the best word she could come up with. All dark leather and sharp lines and lit by softly glowing red lights around the edges of the dashboard. “If you get your disgusting skin grease on my seats, I’ll make you regret being born.”
“Aw, c’mon,” she said, pouting, as he pulled out of the lot and onto the main road. “Not even a thank you? After I helped get you out of what was basically jail? C’mon, mech, you gotta at least realize we humans aren’t all bad at this point.”
Knock Out scoffed. “In case you forgot, it was humans who locked me up in the first place.” He paused, silent for a moment. “But I suppose you were rather helpful, and you could have chosen to ignore Breakdown’s request for aid and called your Autobot friends, so… fine. Thank you. Drink it in, because that is the only gratitude you will ever get from me.”
Miko grinned, reaching up to pat his steering wheel despite his offended protests. “Cool. You’re welcome. We’re totally friends now, by the way.”
“What? No we’re not.”
“Are you kidding? An epic prison bust like this, with daring espionage and stuff, we’re like partners in crime!” She gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God, I just committed a felony.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re about to get all--”
“Hell yes!!”
“...What?”
“Dude, I’ve always wanted to break the law!” She bounced up and down in her seat, hardly able to physically contain her excitement. “I mean there was that breaking and entering thing a little while back, when we first met, but the Autobots told me to do that so it doesn’t really count. There’s no fun in breaking the rules if some other authority figure is telling you to break them. But since Breakdown technically isn’t in charge of me he doesn’t really count as authority so I totally broke the law of my own volition!” She pumped her fist. “Yes!”
Silence from Knock Out as they continued down the street. Then, after a few minutes, he spoke up; “You’re a weird little human, you know that?”
Miko puffed up her chest. “Thank you.”
They drove for a little while longer, and Miko glanced out the window to see that they were heading out of the city and out into the desert. Tall-ish buildings turned into shorter buildings turned into dirt and cacti and stuff, and Knock Out just kept driving.
“Hey, you’re not planning on, like, bringing me out into the middle of nowhere and killing me or something, are you?” Nah, sister, you’re not getting me to no secondary location.
A scoff. “Do you really think so little of me? Of course I’m not. I have no reason to, especially not after your assistance today. No, we’re just getting out of sight of humans so we can meet up with Breakdown, I can finally transform after being trapped in my alt for days, and we can call a groundbridge back to the ship and pretend we didn’t just spend our time doing what we were doing.”
“Oh, right. Breakdown mentioned Screamer hadn’t been too happy with you guys.”
Knock Out sighed. “No, he has not. He’s made his distaste for my racing habits clear, as has he made clear how pertinent it is that we stay as, what’s the phrase, ‘robots in disguise’?” Knock Out’s side mirror did a little wiggle, and there was something almost cute(????) about the gesture. “Personally I think it’s a crime to try and disguise any of this, but while we are on board that ship, whatever Herr Kommandant says, goes.”
“He sounds like a real piece of work,” Miko said, with genuine sympathy in her tone. “Sorry you gotta deal with him.”
“It is our own fault, I suppose. We could have ignored his summons. But, well, it was getting a little tiresome to have to keep scrounging for fuel and spending our days hiding and being wary of going out at night. Not that those last two things have really changed, but at least now we have fuel and a warm berth to share.”
Miko paused. “To… share?”
“Why, squishy,” Knock Out said, voice full of mock offense and indignation, “it’s awfully rude of you to ask after a mech’s interfacing habits like that! Didn’t your Autobot guardians teach you any manners?”
For a second she was confused, but then she realized the tone with which he was speaking, and realized a moment later that “interfacing” must have been…
She made a terribly disgusted noise, slapping his dashboard as he burst out laughing at her. “Ew!! That’s so not what I was asking!!!” She huffed, crossing her arms and flopping back into the driver’s seat with a pout. “I was just… wanting to know if you guys were… close. I called you Breakdown’s ‘friend’ earlier, and he didn’t really deny it, but…”
“Well… I suppose there’s no harm. So long as you don’t go blabbing about it to everyone.” Knock Out switched lanes to pass a car that was going the slightest bit too slow for his taste. Miko got the urge to remind him that going fast was what had gotten him locked up in the first place, but she refrained from interrupting. “Yes, Breakdown and I are what you humans would call, ‘dating.’ Or, perhaps ‘married’ would be a more precise word. We are romantically involved, and have been for several centuries.”
Miko gasped. “Dude. Gay robots.”
“What?”
“You and Breakdown are both guys, right? Gay. Robots. Oh my God.”
“You humans and your infatuation with the binary gender,” he said, and she could hear the rolling of his eyes in his tone. “Though, technically we are of the same spark-type, so even in our terms, it would fall under that definition. I’m not sure I understand why this is so exciting to you, though.”
“Well, first of all, it’s not really a binary. We’ve got all sorts of genders. Also words for not having a gender at all. I’ve got a friend back in Japan, they’re not a girl or a boy, so they use neutral pronouns and are referred to as ‘nonbinary.’ Cause they’re not in the binary, you know?” She didn’t really get it, she’d always felt comfortable as a girl, but her friend had explained that they just didn’t. And even if she didn’t get it, she could respect it. “And second of all, I guess I’m just excited ‘cause it’s cool seeing other folks who are like me in public. As public as this is, anyways. And as much as you aren’t like me. At least we’ve got this in common.”
“...I see.”
“Anyways.” Her expression turned somber. “I… guess I also didn’t realize Decepticons really had… friends. Or, um, husbands. Close relationships at all, really.” She’d kind of thought they just spent all their free time fighting with or yelling at each other. The fact that they had lives, loved ones, made her feel a little unsettled.
Knock Out scoffed, but it was a little more sad than offended this time. “What exactly do you think Decepticons are?”
“...Bad guys?”
A heavy sigh. “Those Autobots really have told you nothing about Cybertron, have they?”
Miko shrugged. “The Autobots are good people. Robots. But I don’t think they really like us getting involved in the war thing. Like, we know there was a war, and we know it was between the Autobots and the Decepticons, but they all seem to get really sad whenever we ask about Cybertron or any of that, so we don’t tend to ask.”
“Well, in the simplest of terms, it’s a lot more complicated than that,” he said. “Fundamentally, there is very little difference between Autobots and Decepticons besides their ideals and the badge they choose to wear. We are all ‘cut from the same cloth,’ or built from the same metal, if you will. We all have sparks, and we all need energon to survive. While Autobots and Decepticons follow very different paths, in the end, we all come from the Well of All Sparks, and in the end it is where we will return,” he finished.
Miko was silent for several moments. Taking it all in. When she finally spoke, it was quiet, and kind of awestruck. “...Wow.”
Knock Out sighed. “Wow indeed.”
“But… that still doesn’t tell me anything about the war. Or why you guys are even fighting. You mentioned that Autobots and Decepticons have different ideals, but I don’t know what those ideals are, besides the fact that Autobots usually don’t wanna kill people and Decepticons don’t really seem to care if they do.”
“It’s a long story,” he said. “You’ll have to save the questions for your Autobot friends when they finally stop clamming up and come clean with you.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve arrived.”
Miko sat up straight and looked out the window to see a big blue off-roader idling a little ways away. As Knock Out approached, the off-roader transformed into a big blue bot, and Miko very suddenly found herself being jostled around as the interior of the car around her pulled in on itself and started moving.
For a moment she was afraid she’d get crushed-- there was a lot less space in here than there’d been when Bulkhead had transformed around her-- but before that could happen she felt cold metal fingers close around her and pull her free, setting her down in the dirt a lot gentler than she’d been expecting. When she looked up where the car had been previously was Knock Out, back in his robot mode, stretching and letting his plating move as he shook himself out. It was… kinda fascinating, watching the way the outer plating moved separately from the inner stuff, and watching how the separate pieces moved individually of each other. She never really paid that much attention when the ‘bots transformed, but now she kind of wanted to.
Knock Out glanced over and, upon spotting her staring at him, gave her a wink. She stuck her tongue out at him.
With clunking footsteps, Breakdown walked over and knelt down in front of her. “Thanks, kid,” he said, holding out a hand. “I know you don’t really like me, even if it’s only on Bulk’s behalf, but I really appreciate you doing this. Would’a been a lot harder without your help.”
She reached up, clasping both her hands around one of his fingers and shaking it. “No problem! This was a lot more fun than I’d been expecting to be. Plus I got to be gay, do crime, and that totally makes up for the fact that I literally just helped the guys we fight all the time get their doctor back so they’ll be able to fight us better.”
Breakdown looked at her for a moment, a bewildered grin on his face, and shook his head. “You’re one weird human, you know that?”
“Thank you!” Being weird was always a compliment, in Miko’s book. It meant that you weren’t part of the status quo, that you stood out as your own individual. In her opinion, being considered normal was the worst possible insult.
Breakdown returned to Knock Out’s side, where his… husband…? Had seemingly finished getting readjusted to having legs and stuff and was watching him with his hands on his hips. There was something like fondness on his face, but once he realized Miko was looking, it was replaced with firm annoyance. (Too late. She’d totally seen it. He was a giant goober. ) “Did you call Starscream yet, or shall I?”
“I waited. Wanted to make sure I got a chance to thank the kid before we got dragged back, since I knew you weren’t gonna.” He tilted his head, closed his eyes, and a moment later a swirling green groundbridge opened a few paces away.
“Hey! I absolutely thanked her, I’m not that rude!”
“He did! Oh, and Knock Out, for the record,” Miko piped up, prompting Knock Out to glance back at her with a curious look, “not killing me because I did something nice for you technically counts as a show of gratitude.”
He frowned, confused. Then recognition crossed his expression as he remembered his earlier remark following the “thank you” he’d given her, as well as his justification for why there was no chance of killing her when she asked where they were going, and the frown returned in full force. “...Drat,” he said with a sigh. “Seems you might have wormed your way into my spark after all. Slippery organic.”
Miko grinned wide, and Knock Out shook his head, but she was pretty sure he was smiling too.
“Try not to get yourself into any more trouble, squishy.” He waggled his digits in a wave. “Ciao.” And then he turned and disappeared through the portal.
Breakdown moved to follow him, but paused, instead facing Miko again. “I really can’t thank you enough,” he said quietly. “Knock Out means… a lot to me. It was kinda excruciating seeing him trapped in there and knowing there wasn’t much of anything I could do about it.” Before, she might’ve just read his tone as simple gratitude. But now, knowing what she knew… she kinda Got It, capital G capital I.
“You’re welcome! It wasn’t that big of a problem, really. I’d hate to see two soulmates divided by the unforgiving law like that.” She sighed, putting a hand over her chest. “It’s only a good trope when it’s used in fanfiction.”
He blinked at her. “You know?”
“Yeah, Knock Out and I had a little heart-to-heart, er, heart-to-spark on the drive over here. Talked about some stuff. Humans and gender. Cybertron. It was all pretty enlightening, gotta be honest.” She raised one hand. “Your secret’s safe with me, though, I promise! Won’t tell a soul. Human or robot.”
He stared for a moment, then a grin split his face. “Yeah, okay, starting to see why Bulk likes you so much.”
“Hey!” She stomped her foot. “I’m very likeable!”
“Oh, definitely.” He knelt down again so he could ever-so-carefully reach forward and ruffle her hair. “Learned that one from a movie, too. Ain’t that what dads do to their kids?” He said, a cheesy grin on his face, referencing their earlier ruse.
Miko laughed, futilely shoving at his hand. “Whatever, dad.”
Breakdown laughed as well, but it was interrupted by a wince as there was the quiet whine of static. “Ugh. Right. Forgot. I gotta get back before Screamer decides I’m taking too long and either abandons me out here or comes through to see what’s taking so long himself.” He stood up straight again, heading over to the portal. “You stay safe, got that, kiddo? And don’t stay out here too long, it’s getting dark, and the desert gets cold at night. Call your Autobot buddies and have them come pick you up. And--”
“Geez, it’s like you’re actually trying to be my dad.” She waved a hand. “I’ll be just fine. Go be gay on your cool space ship with your cool robot husband.”
“I’m telling him you said he was cool.”
“What-- hey! Breakdown!” She jerked in surprise as he laughed again, ducking through the portal before she had a chance to start shouting. It winked out a second later. “Man, Knock Out’s never gonna let me live that down,” she muttered to herself as she pulled out her phone to finally respond to one of the many missed calls from Bulkhead she now had piling up in her notifications. It wasn’t like it was a lie, Knock Out was pretty cool. At least in terms of how he looked if nothing else (red and black and gold was a great color combination.) But you couldn’t say that to a guy like him, he’d let it go to his head and never shut up about it.
Bulkhead picked up after the first ring, and Miko felt a little bad when she heard the panic in his voice. “I’m fine, Bulk,” she said, “don’t worry. Just had something to do with, uh,” a friend of hers? No, that wasn’t quite right. But she couldn’t just say what she’d actually been doing all afternoon. “My… dad.”
She barely refrained from facepalming. At least Bulkhead seemed to buy it. “No, it’s just a human thing, don’t worry about it. Look, can you come pick me up? I got a little lost.”
There was an affirmative from the other end, and a moment later another groundbridge opened up, out of which drove Bulkhead. He opened his door for her without preamble and she climbed into the passenger seat.
“You really shouldn’t just go running off like that, Miko,” he said as they drove back through the bridge and out onto the street where her host parents’ house was. Seems the ‘bots decided to just cut out the middleman. “We were all really worried when you didn’t answer your phone. I was about ready to just ask Ratchet to track it and come find you myself.”
“...You guys can track my phone?”
“Well, I don’t know, actually. Probably? We can track just about everything else.”
“Ugh. Not sure I like the idea of that.” There was the buzz of an incoming text, and she flipped open her phone to see an unfamiliar number had messaged her. Unfamiliar, except like with Breakdown and the ‘bots numbers, it was made up of too many digits to count. She frowned, opening the messaging app.
So, the text read, you think I’m cool, do you? ;)
Ugh. Miko rolled her eyes. See, this was what she was talking about earlier. It was all the same with guys like him, whether they were robots or people. Give them an inch and they’d take a mile.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, grinning as she got to work crafting a snarky reply. “Just talking to a friend.”