I'm sitting here... trying to decide between 9 and 11... and decide to leave it to you. It's too early to think. :D
Hehe I love my son who i twisted incredibly away from any canon gave severe PTSD and Depression. I gave him an emotional support human
Snippet: Barricade didnt fight in Mission City bc he didn’t want to (transformers)
Barricade's cables tensed as Malakai wrenched open his driver-side door and slammed it shut behind her. He was still and silent when she threw herself into the leather seat and curled inward, shaking so hard he could feel it. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly with white knuckles, and she leaned forward to rest her forehead on the upper rim of it.
He didn’t move a single plate as they both sat there, him listening to her sob and her muttering insults at herself, asking herself why she was always so stupid.
It didn’t take a brain quicker than a quantum computer for him to realize she was blaming herself for this, and something about that made his spark contract sharply, and he was sitting in holoform in the passenger's seat beside her before either of them could blink.
Tellingly, she didn’t even notice him for about two good, long minutes. He counted.
Even then, it took him resetting his vocal output loudly before she jerked upright and stared at him with wide eyes.
“Shit,” was the first thing out of her mouth. “D-Did I just get in the wrong car?”
“No,” he told her, bewildered, watching as she whipped her head around to look at the interior of himself. Or, her car, technically.
He could see her confusion grow into alarm as she spotted all the telling signs that it wasn’t, in fact, the wrong car- the peach air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, the sheaf of papers in that battered blue folder scattered on the dashboard, the worn, pine-fresh washed throw blanket spread over the backseat. Finally, she turned back to him with fear in her eyes, and he withheld a wince despite being in holoform.
“O-Ok, why are you in my car?”
“Technically, I’m not in your car,” he told her before he could stop himself, spreading his empty light based human-looking hands to show how empty they were, out of habit.
Barricade bit his lip. “Um, I am your car?”
Malakai blinked, eyebrows coming together to meet in a furrowed look, and she didn’t move from where she’d plastered herself to the door. Away from him.
Barricade resisted the urge to pout. He didn’t want her to be scared of him. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go- though, he wondered sardonically to himself, how was this supposed to go? He, basically a pure stranger, magically appearing in her car with her and telling her he’s was the car?
Primus, but Barricade was an moron.
“I’m- ” he tried again, and then sighed, stretching his hands forward instead. Action spoke louder than words, after all. She shrank back even more, impossibly, but he didn’t reach for her, instead focusing on his holoform and making his hands light up softly, and appear see-through like the light it actually was, instead of the synthetic hard light it had been.
Malakai’s eyes bugged out as she switched her stare down to his hands, and Barricade sighed.
“I know I’m basically a stranger and you have no reason to trust me,” he admitted, and her eyes darted up to search his face, “but I’m asking this anyway. Pass your hand through mine.”
“Wait,” she started, aghast. “You want me to hold your hand? Wh-“
“No?” Barricade cast her a befuddled look. “No, I don’t- Listen, just try it, ok? It’s not what you think, I promise.”
They both sat there for a moment, within his cabin, just staring at one another. Malakai’s gaze kept flitting from his lit-up hands up to his face and back again, caution in their depths. Barricade liked the expressions of humanity so much more than he’d ever cared for the emotions expressed through the electromagnetic fields that cybertronians had. Humans and their eyes and expressions and body language… it was all so much more. So much warmer. So much more present.
Neither of them said a word, and for a good few minutes, there wasn’t movement either. Barricade held his breath the whole time, even though he had no need to breath anyway.
Suddenly Malakai shifted, ever so slowly, sitting up straighter to lean in an inch, and then another. Hesitantly, she stared up at his face, into his own holoformic eyes, searching for something. When she seemed to find what she was looking for, her hand darted forward, only to stop a good distance away from his own, still outstretched palms. He gazed calmly back at her.
When nothing happened, she hesitantly reached out further and made to grasp one of his hands in hers- well, tried, at least. She gaped openly as her own limb passed harmlessly through the light particles that made up his own.
“You’re a ghost!” She shouted, and Barricade did wince at the pain the sudden high decibels sent though his audio processors. He hastily turned down their level of perception.
“I’m not!” He told her earnestly, because, what? He gestured at himself- or rather, his holoform. “I’m… well, this isn’t actually me. It’s a projection of light particles. Kind of like a hologram? I’m not actually sitting here with you right now- even though I kind of am…”
Barricade was terrible at this whole explanation thing. He should just stop.
Malakai inched forward, settling more into the leather seat and less glued to the door frame. Her face still held a trace amount of alarm, but she seemed to be less afraid at the knowledge he’s just given her, for whatever reason.
“I-If you’re not here, then where…?” She made to ask, before freezing where she sat. Her eyes grew even wider as she slowly, sloth-like, swiveled her gaze around to take in the interior of her car with new vision.
“The car…” she whispered, and then cast him an almost accusing gaze. “You said you were the car.”
Barricade took in a breath, relieved that she seemed to be getting it at last. “Yeah, that’s me.”
Malakai stared at him. “How?”
“Uh,” he blinked at her. “Well… I’m an alien species… a mech? Is that what you call us? In your fantasy stories anyway. But I’m not fantasy, I’m real.”
“You’re an alien robot?” Malakai asked him, the answer spreading across her face, as well as terror. She shrank in on herself, curling up in the seat and trying not to touch the rest of the interior as she made the realization that she was literally inside of him. “A giant alien robot?”
This time, Barricade did pout. The light vanished from his hands, re-solidifying into it’s hard state, and he crossed his arms almost petulantly. “I’m not a robot.”
The sudden absence of light made Malakai flinch slightly. The human girl glanced over at him from the corner of her eye, from where she’d been regarding the steering wheel with a strange intensity. “But you are an alien.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“Ok, but- then why are you here?”
Barricade looked at her, unable to articulate an answer.
She huffed, “I mean, why are… why are you my car?”
“I don’t know,” Barricade said, bemused. “You’re the one who bought me, you tell me.”
Malakai stared at him for a long minute, just long enough for Barricade to begin to feel uncomfortable - or, more uncomfortable than this conversation already was - before groaning and burying her face into her hands.
“Don’t say that,” she complained. “It makes it sounds like you’re my slave or something. Buying you… god…” the last part came out in a mutter beneath her breath, but Barricade’s audial input still picked it up.
He shifted in the faux leather seat, giving her a moment to collect herself. If it had been him Primus knows he’d have prefered he just leave him alone to think. But, well… that was a bit difficult to do, seeing as where they were sitting was, in fact, Barricade. And he wasn’t about to just shove her out and drive away. She’d been through enough tonight.
Malakai gave a long sniffle, swiping her sleeve across her eyes and leaning back in her seat with a gusty, explosive sigh. She stared sightlessly at the dashboard, and it was a good few minutes of silence before she turned her head slowly to look at his holoform.
“Since you’re, uh, my - the car,” she began quietly, expression saying that a part of her was still finding it difficult to wrap her head around that fact, “then you… you were there for… all of that. And… and pretty much everything else,” she finished, sitting back in her seat with wide eyes. “I mean… I basically take you everywhere. So… you probably saw all of that, didn’t you.”
“Yeah,” Barricade gave a delicate cough, feeling a bit sheepish as he watched a mortified blush steal across her face. “I, um…”
He paused, glancing out through the tinted windows at the building she’d rushed out of. His sensor pinged in a distant fashion, telling him that Bradford and his friends were still within the front room. He couldn’t help but glare at the entrance.
“Wanna run them over?” He asked, without intending to actually verbalize it.
Barricade winced, trying again, though he realized it was just digging a deeper hole, so to speak. “Crash into the storefront? They’re still there.”
“Oh my god,” she whispered.
“You just told me you’re an alien, that you’re my car, and now you say you wanna murder my boyfriend?”
Barricade bristled. “He’s not your boyfriend anymore. Or are you gonna just let him get away with how he just treated you - how he’s been treating you this whole time? And it wouldn’t be actual murder,” he complained, “just, a little… nudge.”
“Nudge,” she deadpanned. “By crashing my, you, uh - urgh!”
Barricade smothers a grin.
Malakai throws her hands up. “I’m not gonna be that chick who goes ballistic after being dumped and drives a vehicle into the front of the restaurant her suddenly-ex boyfriend is in that they talked about in tomorrow’s news story!”
For some reason, Barricade notes, she isn’t as tense as she was a minute ago when he’d revealed himself to her. Odd.
