Paranormal Encounters Chapter 11.
With their changes mounting, the group decides to leave town.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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The past few days had been intense. More intense than Blaster would ever be comfortable with. He didn’t even know how this had become his life. His two friends were changing in ways that should be impossible. They were being stalked by strange creatures.
Blaster didn’t feel safe. He was too afraid to leave to apartment alone, and he doubted Jazz or Prowl would even let him leave. With every moment he spent in their apartment, he felt like he was invading their space. He knew he wouldn’t be able to return to his place alone for a while, but that didn’t stop him from feeling bad.
The three of them had turned on some random movie in an attempt to get their minds off of whatever was happening to them. Blaster wasn’t even sure what genre it was. It had been on for over an hour, and his brain just couldn’t focus on it.
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He growled in frustration. He ignored it. His phone had been going off nonstop ever since he ran into Rewind and Eject. The messages were either unreadable text messages or voicemails filled with static that hurt to listen to.
He had cried the first time he listened to one of the voicemails.
He didn’t know why.
Prowl looked over at him from his end of the couch. He had a brow raised, and he shot a pointed look at Blaster. He did his best to ignore Prowl’s now icy blue stare. He averted his eyes and pretended to watch whatever movie this was.
He hadn’t exactly told his friends this had been happening. They had their own things to worry about, and this seemed small in comparison. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flicked it over to do not disturb. He went back to overthinking this whole situation. He felt his phone go off again. A second later, his ringtone started to blare. Someone was calling him. The phone flashed with an unknown caller message on the screen.
“Sorry! Thought I set it to silent,” He pulled his phone out and prepared to just turn the damn thing off completely. He’d pull the battery out of it if he had to. He fumbled with it for a second, and he accidentally hit the accept call button.
He had no words to describe the sound that came out of his phone. It was sharp and high. He could hear voices through the noise, begging him to come home. He dropped it, and the sound only seemed to get louder. He covered his ears, and it didn’t help.
The sound hit its highest point, and Blaster heard a popping noise. It had sounded like a speaker or an electrical part had blown. He collapsed to the floor in a heap. Everything went fuzzy for a moment. The world had lost definition around him, and he couldn’t focus. His eyes burned. It felt like his whole body went numb.
He could barely feel someone shaking him. Jazz and Prowl were saying something to him. He couldn’t make it out. They sounded quiet overhead. Blaster winced as one of them looped their arms under his shoulders. They lifted him off the ground and laid him down on the couch.
He felt a breath on his ear, “Blaster!” Jazz shouted next to his head. He winced. He felt a stab of pain in his ears as Jazz yelled.
He could feel noise come out of his own mouth, but he couldn’t hear it. He groaned and tried to reach for his ears. He felt a pair of hands holding his own down. He frowned. He blinked his eyes. The world around him was still a blur of color, lacking definition. He squinted his eyes in an attempt to make the world around him make sense.
He shook his head. His vision sharpened, but his eyes still burned. His ears started to ring. Sound had come back to him.
Blaster frowned.
It had come back wrong. He could hear too well. He heard thundering footsteps from across the room, but from what he was seeing from Prowl, he was doing anything but that. It looked like he was just walking gently across the floor. Each footstep rang out in his head painfully.
“Blaster?” He turned his head towards Jazz. His voice echoed in his ears uncomfortably. “You feeling alright man?” Blaster frowned at the tone of Jazz’s voice. He sounded worried, but he also sounded scared.
“Too loud,” He moaned.
“Sorry,” Jazz said overhead. Everything he heard was painful. It grinded against his ears. Everything from the shuffling of fabric was excruciatingly loud.
Jazz let go of Blaster’s hands. Prowl came into view with a blanket and roughly threw it over him.
“What was that?” Blaster asked.
“The TV and your phone just started both going crazy. Prowl had to unplug the TV to get it to shut up. I think the speaker on your phone blew out.”
He sighed. He didn’t care if his phone was busted; he was just happy to be free from that sound. Blaster tried to drag his hands out from under the blanket. Jazz grabbed them and pinned them down before he could. “What are you doing?” He asked. His arms still felt numb. They rubbed in an uncomfortable way against the texture of the blanket.
Jazz’s blue and black eyes shifted nervously towards Prowl. Prowl looked distinctly uncomfortable. Blaster felt the start of worry enter his brain. He looked between his two friends, searching for an answer as to why they had him pinned down.
“Guys?” He asked. He didn’t like this.
Prowl broke the silence, “Jazz, let him see.”
The worry took full hold. It felt like something was squeezing his heart, “See what?” He asked quietly. Or he thought he had. It was hard to tell what volume anything was. His own voice sounded painfully loud in his ears.
Jazz slowly released Blaster from his hold. He wiggled his arms out of the thick blanket and frowned when he caught his finger on something. He tugged it free and sat up. He pulled his arms out and froze.
His skin had turned a deep shade of blue. His fingers had elongated; they had tapered off into sharp points. He flexed them in front of his face. He moved just like he would have expected his hands to. He did the only thing he really could have done.
He screamed.
He flailed and almost fell off the couch again. Prowl stepped in and kept him steady. He felt his nostrils flare, and his heart pounded in his chest.
“No. No. No,” He muttered, “This isn’t happening.” He tried to reassure himself. He was doing a bad job at it. This felt too real. He pulled up the hem of his sleeve and looked up his shirt. He panicked when the dark color continued up his arm.
He wrapped his arms around himself and winced as his now sharp fingers dug into his upper arms. He forced himself to relax his grip, and he collapsed back down on the couch. He curled up and grabbed the blanket that was still on his lap and pulled it over his head. He avoided looking at his hands.
He barely felt soft touches through the blanket. “Blaster, it’s gonna be okay.” Jazz said.
Blaster laughed. He sat up again and felt a tear run down his cheek. “How is this going to be okay?” He kept his hands out of view. “We’re turning into freaks, man,” He admitted aloud. He felt bad as soon as the words left his mouth. Jazz and Prowl both seemed hurt by the statement. Even if it was true, he knew he shouldn’t have let the words escape from his mouth. He looked away from his friends with shame.
“If we’re going to be freaks, we’ll be freaks together at least,” Jazz said gently. He reached under the blanket and grabbed Blaster's hand. He could barely feel it. He knew something was touching his limb. But he only felt a bit of pressure and a biting cold emanating from Jazz. The touch felt distant. Almost like he was wearing a pair of gloves.
“Yeah, freaks together,” Blaster said.
Blaster closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He still wasn’t calm. He probably wouldn’t be calm for a long time. He could at least put on a strong face for now.
“Where’s my phone?” He asked. He needed something to distract himself. The only thing he could think of was checking to see if his phone's speaker had really broken. Prowl held it out, and Blaster grabbed it and felt an eye twitch as he saw his hands grab the phone. His hand felt the same, but he could tell the proportions were off. His fingers were longer and thinner, and the points of his fingers tapered off almost like claws.
It looked like he was wearing the gloves of a Halloween costume.
He forced himself to ignore his hands.
He pressed the side button on his phone to power it on and frowned when he heard a loose part on the inside move. He opened a random song on his phone and frowned when only a quiet static noise came out of the speaker. “Damn. Can’t exactly replace that right now,” He said jokingly.
He felt something shift in his hands, and he let out a startled breath. He watched as they contorted down into a more normal shape. The sensation felt alien, but it wasn’t painful. They stopped shifting around and settled at a size that seemed close to what his hands normally were.
He frowned as the changes stopped. He still had what almost looked like claws at the tips of his fingers, and his skin was still the same deep blue shade.
“How did you do that?” Jazz asked.
Blaster shook his head, “I don’t know, they just started to do that.” He said breathlessly. He flared his hands out experimentally. The tingling sensation had receded a bit, but it was still present.
“Maybe if you can figure out how you did, you could change your eyes back.”
Blaster froze and turned his head slowly to look at his friend. Prowl face-palmed beside him, and Jazz winced.
Blaster looked back down at his phone and turned the screen off. In the glass, he could see his reflection staring back at him. His eyes looked almost exactly like Jazz’s did. He couldn’t see any hint of his original eye color.
He leaned in close and pulled back an eyelid, and tried to look for any sign of the whites of his eyes. All he could see was a glossy pitch-black color with pupils that glowed the same blue color as Jazz’s and Prowl’s eyes. They looked more like glass than anything.
He swore.
“It’s not that bad,” Jazz said. He sat down on the couch. Jazz crushed Blaster's leg. He scooted his legs away in response. Blaster leveled what he hoped was an unimpressed stare at his friend.
“Okay, so it’s a little bad.”
Prowl was still standing next to the couch. He was deep in thought. A flash seemed to go through his eyes, and he leaned down and got close to Blaster’s face. “We all have the same color eyes.”
He looked down at Blaster's hands in his lap and pursed his lips.
“Prowl? What’s going through your head?”
“I don’t think this is going to stop at our eyes,” He said.
Blaster froze. He looked down at his hands reluctantly. “You don’t think the hand thing is going to happen to both of you, too?” He asked.
As bad as it sounded, it made sense as soon as the question left Blaster’s mouth. Jazz’s eyes had changed, then Prowl's did, and now his had. Did Jazz have something contagious? Had they all caught something that was changing them? Even those thoughts didn’t sound extremely possible, but Blaster was struggling to come up with any reasonable explanation.
“It is, I’m almost sure,” Prowl said.
Jazz collapsed against the couch. Blaster winced as he crushed his legs against the back cushion. Jazz sat back up quickly, realizing his mistake.
“Where is this even going to end?” Jazz said. He placed a hand on his head, “Will we even be recognizable?”
Blaster really hoped not. That was one thought he hadn’t had yet. They could keep changing and distorting until they no longer looked even remotely human.
Prowl stayed still and silent above the two of them. It seemed like this was something that had already crossed his mind. For as paranoid as Prowl could be at times, he always seemed to have a good contingency plan for everything that went wrong. He was a planner. Blaster wondered what plan was running through his friend's head.
“We can’t go to a doctor. I don’t want to think about what could happen to us if we showed up to an ER like this.”
Blaster could, and it went two ways, the doctors being convinced they were playing a prank. Or the doctors believe them and call the government, and the three of them would end up on a lab table. Neither sounded desirable.
“We need to leave. If the changes get worse, maybe we should think about taking one of the cars and camping out somewhere in the woods until we can figure something out. Maybe we can find an abandoned cabin?” Prowl rested a hand on his chin as he started to go deeper into his thoughts.
They hadn’t spoken once about even contemplating leaving the area. Fleeing the area just seemed incomprehensible. They couldn’t leave the town. They just couldn’t leave. But the woods that surrounded the town went on for miles in all directions. There were abandoned campgrounds all over. Some of them did have cabins. It wouldn’t be easy, but if they kept changing, Blaster didn’t know what else they could do besides hide out somewhere.
Silence took over the room. All of them were thinking about what their futures held. At the moment, it seemed pretty damn dark.
Blaster looked over to Jazz. He seemed so lost. He had been putting on his normal, strong act this whole time. Blaster knew Jazz enough to know it was an act. Prowl did too. Jazz was scared; they all were. All of them were too damn stubborn to say it out loud.
Jazz let out an exaggerated sigh. “We can worry about our lives as forest people if more changes happen.”
Blaster didn’t have the strength in him to tell Jazz that it was more of an inevitability. If Jazz wanted to pretend for a little bit longer, Blaster was not going to be the one to stop him.
Blaster kicked his legs out from behind Jazz. His friend let out a startled gasp. Blaster adjusted himself back to a sitting position. Prowl collapsed onto the couch. Prowl pulled out his phone and started browsing it immediately. Blaster could catch him downloading a delivery app onto his phone.
Jazz didn’t look over at Prowl. But he did look over to Blaster.
“What do your hands feel like?” He asked. Jazz looked nervous.
Blaster frowned, “Numb, it feels like I fell asleep on them.” He raised his hands back up from his side. They already looked longer than they had the last time he looked. Blaster swallowed. It looked like they were already trying to return to their narrow and sharp form. He swore he could feel them shift around. He forced them back down and curled his hands into fists.
Blaster didn’t want to believe this was happening.
Blaster saw Prowl staring. His eyes were locked onto his hands. Blaster sighed, and he realized he wasn’t just imagining his hands deforming in front of his eyes.
Jazz pushed himself off the couch and warily plugged the TV back in. It looked like a different movie was on. Jazz settled down on the couch and locked his eyes onto the screen with laser focus.
Prowl reached around and held out his phone for Blaster. He mouthed to him to add anything he could think of. Blaster looked down and saw a delivery with a high tip for a local camping goods store. It was a few towns over, and the delivery fee alone made Blaster wince.
Prowl was planning on moving out quickly. He wondered just how fast Prowl was expecting these changes to happen if he already was getting ready to take off for the middle of nowhere.
Blaster was impressed with the order Prowl had started, and a little terrified that this was quickly becoming a reality. He winced at the number, but if they really were running off, that probably wouldn’t matter. Everything from a large canvas tent to a wood-burning stove was on the order. He saw a lack of food supplies and a lack of first aid gear. He added anything he could think of. He passed the phone back to Prowl silently.
Prowl’s face looked dire. He was taking this seriously. Blaster was sure Jazz would, too, in time. He couldn’t blame either of them for reacting like this. He was barely holding it together. If he were alone, he would probably be curled up in a ball, screaming and crying his eyes out. All things considered, the two of them were taking this well.
He felt something pop and snap in his hands. Blaster couldn’t just sit down while he knew his hands were warping just out of sight. He forced himself to look down. As subtly as he could, he examined his hands.
His hands trembled as they thinned out and took on a sharper shape. They felt the same. They still felt like they should have been the same size. He struggled as he subtly moved the fingers and felt pins and needles crawl along them.
The sounds around him became too much again. He felt Jazz touch his shoulder, but it sounded like he was hearing his friend through a loud horn.
He stood up from the couch and stumbled. He walked away from the living room and ignored the calls for him. Even the sounds of his clothes rubbing against his skin were bothering him.
He didn’t want to be alone. He yearned for company. But he needed to be somewhere quiet. Blaster walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He felt something shift in his hands. Each finger had returned completely to their distorted shape.
He gulped. He closed his eyes, and the sound from the world around him seemed to dampen. He felt his head hit the wall of the tiny bathroom. He felt tears run down his face. He leaned down and felt like crying harder when the tears glowed against the fabric of his shirt.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door before opening it. Blaster didn’t move his head to see who it was. Jazz leaned down in front of his face. Jazz kneeled on the floor in front of Blaster and grabbed him tight. Blaster responded in kind.
Blaster let out a broken laugh, “Hope you’re ready to start living in the woods, man.”
Jazz sighed. “Not really, but I don’t know what else to do,” He sounded as defeated as Blaster felt.
They broke off in their death grip hug. Prowl was standing at the door. “Supplies will be here in less than an hour. As soon as they’re dropped off, we’re leaving for the nearest abandoned campground that has a cabin.”
Prowl probably already had a place in mind. It was almost scary how well he could plan things out.
“Can’t believe we’re just leaving,” Jazz said. “Part of me just wants to stay here and wait what whatever this is to finish. But, I don’t think that would be a great idea,” Jazz looked down at Blaster's hands for a second before looking away.
“We’re not leaving the area. The place I’m thinking about is twenty miles out of town. We’ll still be in county lines.”
That was a bigger comfort than Blaster thought it would be. He frowned. He couldn’t figure out why that was comforting. He knew none of them had ever left the region before. Maybe he was just nervous about going somewhere new?
He could practically feel something push the worries out of his mind. He had other things to focus on. At least that’s what he told himself. “I already grabbed what I needed from my place.”
There were other things he would have wanted to bring. Who knew if they could ever come back here? But, he knew that with everything else Prowl had planned on bringing that they would only have room for the essentials.
Prowl rubbed his eyes and exhaled. He turned to face Jazz. “Grab anything you don’t want to lose.”
The small apartment became a flurry of activity. Jazz grabbed a backpack and placed keepsakes and documentation in it. Prowl was shifting through items in their closet and shoving things into a small suitcase. Blaster was given the task of packing any shelf-stable food he could into a plastic tote that had held holiday items in it before they were unceremoniously dumped on the floor.
Jazz and Prowl weren’t big on canned food. Even then, they still had more items then he could fit into the tote. He sat down on the floor, fumbling with boxes and cans. His grip was off, and he was having trouble not poking holes into some of the flimsier packaging.
He heard a knock at the front door and saw Prowl walk by the kitchen. He expected to hear the door open. He waited in anticipation for it, but didn’t hear anything.
“It’s here,” Prowl said.
Blaster stood up and dusted his shorts off. He sighed as he put the lid on the tote. He didn’t want to believe this was happening. He lifted the tote off the ground and was surprised by the weight. With everything he shoved in the box, it should have been almost too heavy for him to carry. It almost felt light.
Jazz walked into the kitchen with a stuffed backpack thrown over his shoulder. He had a somber look on his face. He gestured with his head toward the front door. Blaster nodded. He wasn’t sure of his ability not to cry if he spoke.
The two of them walked slowly toward the front door of the apartment. Prowl looked through the window and held up a hand. His shoulders relaxed, “Okay, they’re gone. I told them to leave it by my car.”
Blasters' shoulders sagged. It saved them work, but it also meant this could be the last time he saw this place. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. He didn’t want to go, but looking at the claws that had replaced his hands, he knew he couldn’t stay. How could he even attempt to live a normal life, especially if this wasn’t the end of the changes?
Prowl pushed the door open. He left the apartment without a second glance. Jazz slowly crossed through the door and had a sad expression cross his face as he looked backward one last time. Blaster took a deep breath and followed the two of them.
It was dark outside. He could hear crickets chirping and tree frogs croaking.
Prowl locked the apartment door. He adjusted his grip on the small suitcase and quickly started walking to the complex's parking lot.
Blaster kept his eyes fixed on the ground as they walked. He stepped carefully, mindful of what should have been a heavy package. The three of them walked silently. The sounds of nature fell away, and soon the only thing he could hear was the sound of their feet hitting the gravel. Blaster paused; he strained his ears.
He couldn’t help but feel like something wasn’t right. He could see Prowl’s car in the distance. He sped up in his walk. He told himself he just needed to make it a few more steps. There was a painful tug in his chest. He stumbled and dropped the crate.
Blaster heard rapid footsteps come up from behind him. He caught a quick glimmer of two familiar figures coming after him. He didn’t make it one step before they reached for him. He let out a muffled scream. He was lifted off the ground.
He heard Jazz and Prowl scream after him.
He struggled in Eject's grip. His fingers dug into Blaster’s skin. He struggled as hard as he could, but he couldn’t find a way out. The world quickly became a blur of trees as he was carried farther away. Blaster kicked his legs out as hard as he could.
“Careful!” Rewind shouted.
It didn’t seem to do much besides hurt his foot. He let out a quiet hiss of pain. Eject jerked at the sound.
“I’m trying! He won’t stop.” Eject was stopped by Blaster, trying to push his way out of his grip. He felt Eject’s fingers loosen slightly, and Blaster slid over his shoulder. With a flare of pain, he hit the ground face-first. He felt himself roll onto the ground.
He heard the two of them argue over him. It was hard to make them out. His head was pounding. The details of the world seemed to fall away from him. Darkness engulfed him, and he passed out.
He inhaled sharply. He was lying on his back. He opened his eyes and saw trees stretch out overhead. It was still night. The moon was peeking through the trees overhead. Blaster shivered as he felt a cold burst of wind.
He could still hear Eject and Rewind arguing. There were new voices that joined in with theirs. They were all around him.
“I can’t believe you two let this happen,” One of the new voices hissed out. He didn’t sound particularly happy.
“Dad’s fine! We brought him here, didn’t we?” Eject said casually.
“You dropped him. He’s unconscious,” Another new voice said.
Blaster shut his eyes. He slowed his breathing down and strained his ears to keep listening to the conversation.
“You try keeping a grip on him! He wouldn’t stop wiggling. The smaller frame is too small to get a good grip on,” Eject said.
“And it’s fragile, you know what happened with Mirage.”
Blaster felt his breathing hitch. He felt scared as he heard the familiar name. He didn’t know what Mirage had to do with this.
Rewind huffed, “Mirage was crushed under several thousand pounds of metal in an accident. Eject just dropped him a little.”
“Not like the smaller frame matters anyway.”
Three of the four voices groaned.
“After Blaster goes back into his real frame, it’s not like this one isn't gonna matter that much. As long as the spark chamber is fine, I don’t see the issue, Steeljaw.”
“Ramhorn, he can feel pain. Do you really want him to be in pain?” Steeljaw said.
This conversation was a mix of confusing and terrifying. Blaster was struggling to keep his sleep act up. Keeping his breathing steady was an uphill battle; he was struggling to maintain the facade.
“Did Ratchet ever tell you guys how this works exactly?” Rewind asked. “Do we just hand him off to his frame?”
Blaster really did not like the direction of this conversation. He didn’t know where he was beyond being somewhere in the woods. He had no idea where he could even run to.
The four voices went silent.
“His frame is nearby. We could try,” Ramhorm said.
“I think we should comm Ratchet,” Rewind said.
“We can just call him if it doesn’t work. If it does, think about how happy he’ll be to have another pair of hands to work on things,” Steeljaw said.
The other three seemed to agree.
Blaster was seriously contemplating running. The four of them were right next to him. He probably wouldn’t get far, but he hoped it wouldn’t hurt to try. Before he could make his escape, he felt another pair of hands gently lift him off the ground. He was thrown over a shoulder like a sack of flour. He sagged limply; he wasn’t sure what he should do.
He opened his eyes and saw the ground move as he was carried off. He lost track of time. The four of them had stopped talking for the most part. The walk to wherever they were going was broken up occasionally by small talk. Blaster felt comforted by the almost familiar chatter.
His chest felt heavy. He was cold, but something inside of him felt warm and content.
The ground stopped moving below him. Their journey had halted.
“His frame was wandering around here earlier.”
He heard a loud thud. It sounded like something heavy had hit the dirt. His ears started to ring. He heard the thudding again; it was rhythmic and steady. It was getting louder. The louder it got, the louder the ringing in his ears got. He wanted to struggle again, to try to wiggle out of Rewind's grip.
Something was telling him to be calm. A silent whisper in his mind. He needed to be still. This was right. His eyelids got heavy. Struggling seemed pointless.
He was only shaken out of his state when he felt himself being pulled down from Rewind’s shoulder. He felt another set of hands take him. His feet dangled off the ground, and he looked up slowly.
He blinked.
A large figure loomed overhead. Blaster wondered if this was what Jazz and Prowl had seen. It was a large human-shaped creature. Its body was made of the same metal that Rewind and Eject’s were. But it was several times larger.
Blaster felt like it looked familiar.
It was kneeling, staring at Blaster in the eye. It tilted its head slowly. Its face had a neutral expression. Its blue eyes were blown wide, staring at him without blinking.
His brain clashed with itself. He should be calm, but he should run.
It felt like he was being torn in two. His chest felt like it was burning. He only screamed when the creature started to reach out for him. His common sense overrode whatever fog had been trying to take him over. Panic dug into him as its large hands plucked him out of Rewind’s grip. Its hands wrapped around him tightly, pinning his arms to his sides.
Metal strained as the creature stood up to full height. He struggled in its grip, but he couldn’t find any way to get loose. The creature didn’t react to any of his attempts. It just stared at him. The longer he was in its grip, the more his chest burned. He could feel the fog forcing itself back into his mind.
Whispers, assuring him that it would be alright. Gentle prodding, telling him to let this happen. That it would be alright. His head lulled to the side. It came to rest on one of the massive fingers. It felt like everything around him stopped.
“Is something supposed to happen?”
“Maybe it takes a while?” Eject said hesitantly.
“I’m going to comm Ratchet.”
His eyes locked onto the creatures. They stared at each other, unmoving. The feeling of dissociation was almost like being drunk. The creature looked up. Blaster forced his head to turn to face the same direction.
Rewind and Eject were waving to a rapidly approaching figure.
To add on to the pile of strange his life had become, he saw what he assumed was Steeljaw and Ramhorn. The two of them stood on all fours and looked like robotic animals.
It was another one of the giants. Blasters' eyes widened slightly. This one was even taller than the one that was holding him. It had a tarp wrapped around it as some sort of makeshift covering. Its face was obscured by shadow, and he could only make out its narrowing, glowing blue eyes.
Blaster tried to struggle weakly again. He still couldn’t get away.
“You weren’t kidding.”
“Why would we joke about something like this, Ratchet?”
Ratchet walked forward. His steps were more sure, more aware than the creature that was holding him. Ratchet came to a stop and leaned down to examine Blaster. Ratchet's eyes were wide, and a smile was on his face.
Ratchet muttered assurances to Blaster that he could only barely make out.
This did nothing to reassure him.
Blaster tried to shake his head, but the best he could manage was lifting his head off the finger it was resting on slightly. Ratchet gently pried the hand holding Blaster open, and he fell into Ratchet’s hand. Ratchet kneeled, and Blaster was lowered onto the ground. It was easier to move, and Blaster managed to roll himself over onto his back. He curled into himself and shut his eyes. The small motion left him exhausted.
A light flashed through his eyelids. He winced and felt static run through his body in a wave.
Ratchet hummed. Blaster opened his eyes and saw a curious expression on Ratchet’s face. “He’s not quite ready for a spark transfer yet. I’ll bring Blaster’s frame back to the ship. I don’t think I need to remind you to be careful with the smaller body.”
Ratchet stood up and placed a hand on the large creature. Frame?
“Come on, Blaster,” Ratchet said. He gently guided the large frame out of Blaster's sight. Steeljaw and Ramhorn hesitantly looked back at Blaster before following Ratchet.
Blaster wondered to himself why they were calling that thing by his name. He felt a shiver run down his spine. Did they somehow think they were the same? He needed to get away. He saw Rewind step into view again.
“Eject, grab his legs, I’ll get his arms, might be easier that way,” Rewind said.
Blaster scrambled to his feet. He started to run. He looked down at his feet and frowned when he noticed his sandals where gone. He doubted he would be able to get away, but he had to try. The forest floor dug painfully into his feet as they slammed against the ground.
Each step he took away gave him new complicated emotions. He felt tears run down his face. He felt like sobbing. Not out of fear. Blaster stumbled as he realized he felt guilty.
He heard Rewind and Eject shout out after him. They sounded sad and distraught.
A part of him screamed louder and louder to stop. He was angry with himself.
Something shifted in his legs. He heard and snap and a pop. His balance was thrown off, and he tumbled to the forest floor. He let out a startled yell as he collapsed. He tried to stand back up, only to immediately fall back over.
He barely managed to roll himself over. He looked down. He couldn’t see well in the dark. But he could tell something was wrong with his legs. They looked longer.
He heard Rewind and Eject get closer. He weakly attempted to push himself away, but he wasn’t able to make much progress. Any fight he had left in him faded away as the two of them got closer. He collapsed back onto the ground.
He let the world around him fade into a blur as the two of them talked over him in quiet tones. He couldn’t really focus on what they were saying. It didn’t matter to him. They were bickering quietly with each other. It was so painfully familiar. It was comforting just listening to the two of them talk.
He felt guilty again. He felt guilty because, for the first time in his life, he felt complete.
Even with Jazz, he still felt like something was missing.
Not here. Not at that moment. For the first time in his life, he felt whole. He knew he should have been terrified. He couldn’t find it in himself to be. The whispers of assurance hit his ears, and he couldn’t find the energy to try to escape again.
The two of them gently lifted him off the ground and carried him off into the night. He didn’t struggle.
