Unexpected Confrontations (Jessica Ross/Open)

[whiplash]

December 14, 2027, A Closed Car Wash

Whiplash had discovered yet another thing that ticked him off: traffic.

It hadn’t been a particularly unpleasant day. He’d been sent out alone (thank Primus) to this city to do a little low-key investigating. Most of Whiplash’s comrades assumed that he carved conflict, that he went looking for fights. They were wrong. When left to his own devices, Whiplash was not particularly destructive; it was only when his fellow Cybertronians insisted on ruining his day by being around him that he got irritable. So, while he was alone, enjoying the feel of the California sun on his chassis, he was feeling about as calm as he was ever going to get.

Until he got broadsided by a semi.

The damn vehicle had taken the Decepticon entirely by surprise (and he wasn’t the only one--there was quite the pile-up on I-5) and had nearly run him over. As it were, he’d been flung into the guard rail by the impact. Whiplash himself had suffered minor damage (other than that done to his pride), but the same could not be said for his holoform. This was unfortunate, not only because the flash of sympathetic pain that arced through him when his holoform hit the asphalt, but because he immediately sensed that his “rider” had taken some heavy damage.

The presence of Cybertronians on Earth was well-known by now, but Whiplash was not keen on broadcasting it any more than his Decepticon emblem did, especially since he’d been out there investigating rumors of POE activity. He hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t nearby. He wasn’t about to let anyone catch him off-guard, paranoid delusion or no.

...except, perhaps, semi trucks.

He had directed his holoform to dust itself off and, waving away the concerned queries of his fellow motorists, had driven off. Every now and then his holoform flickered, and its pain hummed in Whiplash’s circuitry as well. It was going to give out on him soon, and if it did, he’d be exposed, a sitting duck for whatever foe happened his way. He had to find some shelter to hunker down in.

He redirected himself towards the suburbs, doing his best to keep his holoform together. He eventually stumbled upon a defunct open-air carwash, and he steered himself under the shelter of the awning. Making sure that nobody was watching, he deactivated his holoform and settled in for a nice wait. It was relatively quiet where he had settled down; the car wash sat near the street, as part of an expansive parking lot that also included a closed-down auto parts store. Whiplash was leaning on his kickstand, facing the sidewalk and the street beyond, watching the restless movements of the leaves of the few trees planted here and there.

He idly flicked through radio stations, occasionally listening to music, or to a broadcast about some human sport. He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but human sports interested him. He hadn’t made the time to learn the rules yet, so it was all very exotic and mysterious to him. There was nothing to do but wait, and Whiplash found himself slowly beginning to relax again as the rage and anxiety from his collision drained from him.

[Jessica Ross]

No relationship is perfect.

Most would take this as a fact, but sometimes Jessica forgot that, as much as she loved her brother, and as rarely as she saw him, that didn't stop them from having arguments. And if anyone thought the fights between her Army Ranger brother and her Marine father were epic, they had never seen a fight between Jessica and Elliot.

Ironically, they had become an 'epicness to defy the stars' after Jessica ended up in a wheelchair. In the rage of this fight, however, with miles separating them and anger at herself, as well as her 'I'm not promising anything, but maybe this Christmas' brother, filling her, she had snapped. Especially since, today, he should have been here but instead was God knows where, in some classified place, that he couldn't tell her about.

And that was also after he had a freak-out about her meeting two boys and trusting them, because who knew what sick freaks were out there?

They had a shouting match to end all shouting matches before Jessica had wheeled herself out of the house. She barely had time to get dressed for outside, yanking a hat on that did nothing to hide the scars on the right side of her face, only enhancing them, and from there wheeled out into the unnaturally cold California weather.

From her home, she just wheeled as quickly as she could. She was going down the street, through her home, past an old playground, before she began to find herself near an old auto parts store. She knew she had to have been wheeling around for awhile and....she was also alone.

However, she was still mad; mad at her brother, mad at herself, and filled with self-loathing because her body had betrayed her, again, in the fact she had pulled a muscle in physical therapy, meaning they had to take two steps back on her therapy.

It also meant no braces for the next week, just in case. Not doctor's orders, but her father's.

Jessica probably would have continued on this thought track and continued until she was tired, or found, or even just gone back home if something...strange hadn't happened.

Well, strange for her anyway.

Normally very careful, she wasn't fully paying attention and she wasn't expecting her wheelchair to slip suddenly. She let out a yelp of surprise as she hit the ground, her jacket preventing her from getting skinned and she had fallen, sideways, with her wheelchair. While still, sort-of, in it, she was also stuck.

And had bruises growing on her hip where it had hit the arm rest.

She groaned and reached into her pocket for her cell phone only to freeze. She then swore and resisted the urge to smack her forehead against the sidewalk before she turned to see what happened.

"A broken piece of sidewalk...of course," she growled before she looked around, finding herself collapsed near an autowash.

With nothing better to do, she took a deep breath, and called out, "Is there anyone there? I need help."

Even if Jessica was faced with silence, however, she would keep calling for help. She had no choice in the matter.

And oh, how doing so made her want to scream, but what could she do?

She left her cell phone in the house. Oh, her mother was not going to be letting Jessica out of her sight for a month after this.

[whiplash]

At first, the appearance of the human had baffled and even interested Whiplash. What in the Pit was it doing in that chair? Was it some kind of game? He decided that he probably wouldn’t figure it out on his own, and chalked it up to just more human weirdness.

Then, quite unexpectedly, the human took a spill. He managed to stifle a laugh at that. What ridiculous, bumbling creatures humans were! They couldn’t even handle a pair of wheels. He watched the human as it struggled and rifled for its cell phone, finally raising its--wait, her, the timbre of the voice indicated this one was female--voice to call for help. Whiplash didn’t understand. Why didn’t she just get up?

As she continued to call, it occurred to Whiplash that she must somehow be defective. She couldn't get up on her own. Tough break. At first he figured it had nothing to do with him, but she just kept calling, and dammit the repetitive shriek of her watery human voice was getting on his nerves (not that it took much of anything to get on Whiplash’s nerves).

It soon became obvious that nobody was coming by anytime soon. Whiplash vented an exasperated sigh and, waiting for a moment when the human wasn’t looking dead-on at him, activated his still-weak holoform. Hopefully she hadn’t just seen it materialize out of thin air.

Whiplash’s holoform was a young man, probably around Jessica’s age if the size and physique were anything to judge by. Like Whiplash, he was neither bulky nor especially slim. The young man was only unusual in that not an inch of skin was showing. His face was obscured by a matte black motorcycle helmet with a tinted visor. He wore a copper-colored t-shirt, black jeans, and had a black leather jacket half-zipped up over it. Black motorcycle boots, black gloves, and a copper bandana finished off the ensemble.

The holoform flickered once, and Whiplash paused, but afterwards it seemed stable. The young man approached Jessica without saying a word. He crouched by her, gesturing for her to calm down, and genuinely being as reassuring as a faceless, silent stranger could. Across the tarmac, Whiplash was wincing. Each tiny movement was sending shocks of faint pain through him. His holoform wasn’t going to last long.

[Jessica Ross]

When faceless, silent, strangers appear out of nowhere, one would normally take notice of such an event. Unless, of course, that someone was terrified they would lying there, unable to get anywhere until they risked getting run over by a car to, literally, drag themselves somewhere with a phone, getting scraped up and bruised along the way.

Which was the state Jessica was in. She was panicked because she knew the likelihood of someone finding her quickly, especially when no one came the first two times she called, was nonexistent at this time.

Of course, she didn't know the motorcycle was an actual living being.

Instead, she just kept calling, until, mid-cry, she let out a strangled shriek of fear and surprise when a covered, faceless, silent stranger suddenly appeared before her. She struggled half-way up, trying to push herself away from him without snapping her spine, before she stopped, the scaring on the right side of her face, from right before her right ear down, a bit across her lips to stop at her chin, was in full view of the stranger. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she stared at him, legs twitching in the wish to work, but...

Well, apparently getting into a car accident that completely smashed her legs and possibly ripped apart all of her muscles was just not conductive in being properly used again. "Sorry for shrieking," she apologized, eying the silent stranger warily, who seemed to be trying to calm her down.

Words would have worked so much better, but she wasn't going to say that. Maybe he would help her up, or maybe he was just going to leave her. She hadn't calmed, since something, beyond the whole being silent thing was unnerving her about this guy.

"Can you help me up?" she asked quietly, a bit scared that he wouldn't, or couldn't, help her up. Up off the ground and into the wheelchair.

That was all she needed, really.

Well, that and her cell phone, but she'd take the aid in getting back into her wheelchair.

[whiplash]

The young man tilted his head slightly, taking in the scarring on the girl’s face. Whiplash knew that wasn’t normal. What was with this human? Had she been injured? That would probably explain the whole “unable to move properly” thing. While he was mulling this over, his holoform stayed mostly silent and still--unnaturally so. The young man didn’t exhibit any of the small motions that humans made without thinking about them. He didn’t shift his weight, though he was crouched in a somewhat awkward position, didn’t move his fingers where they gripped his knees, and didn’t even seem to breathe.

He did nod, though, at Jessica’s question. He looked over her wheelchair once, and though it was an unfamiliar device, it was a simple one, and he was relatively certain that he could pull it upright without accidentally dumping the girl on the way. With eerie smoothness, he reached out, gripping the wheelchair with one hand and steadying Jess with another--

--and then, with a sudden jolt of pain, the abused holoform gave out. It flickered and vanished in a puff of what looked like glittery smoke (but what was, in fact, a host of nanocells) which immediately began to waft back towards the parked motorcycle.

“Slaggit!” Whiplash snapped. His voice had a definite metallic twang to it, but was not as deep as many other Cybertronian’s. It was lighter and younger-sounding, clearly the voice of an adolescent. “That fraggin’ hurt!”

It must have all seemed horribly surreal to poor Jessica.

[Jessica Ross]

Okay, this guy was freaky.

He didn't move, he didn't talk and...he didn't breathe. Her eyes were searching all over, from abdomen to shoulders, considering the fact that she breathed through her diaphram, she knew that one didn't need to 'breathe with their shoulders' as one voice instructor put it. She stared, seeing more then feeling him stabalize her and the chair. She was about to ask why didn't he just flip the wheelchair over before he just moved her into the chair when he suddenly evaporated.

She let out a shout of shock and watched the 'cloud of smoke' float back to a motorcycle that...talked. Her jaw dropped and she let out a strangled sound. Her fingers twitched against the ground and she groaned, allowing herself to slump forward a bit before she looked back over at the motorcycle. "Do you need help?" she asked, unable to really ask anything else.

She wasn't going to ask if he was fine. He had just exclaimed something about being hurt, so she doubted he would be fine and actually wished, for once, that she was some bitchy girl who only cared about herself.

However, Jessica could never bring herself to do that.

She was a bit of a weakling, wasn't she?

[whiplash]

There were a lot of ways that Jessica could have responded to her situation. Almost all of them involved her screaming in some fashion, and that is what Whiplash prepared himself for. Instead, he saw the girl twist to try and see him, and quietly ask if he needed help.
He stared at her for a moment in baffled silence.

There was a small snck as he retracted his kickstand and rolled over. He didn’t directly approach the girl, but rather half-circled her warily. “Naw,” he finally replied gruffly, “I ain’t real hurt. It just… y’know. Hurts.” The fact that his statement didn’t seem to make much sense didn’t bother Whiplash in the least. She looked so pathetic, lying on the ground like that. Whiplash found himself relaxing ever-so-slightly.

It wasn’t her kindness that calmed him, but rather her helplessness. Whiplash didn’t really feel threatened by her. “So, what’s your problem, anyway? Are you defective?” he asked, still not quite approaching her, but coming to a halt in front of her, facing her at an angle that would make it easy for him to flee if she did pull something.

[Jessica Ross]

Jessica actually had some understanding of what that meant. It hurt, but not really. It was something that didn't really happen, it was just there, in the back of her head. Like when she had her flashbacks and it hurt all over again, only it really didn't. "Okay," she answered.

She pulled away slightly as he wheeled over, a motorcycle driving itself. She knew about the Transformers, considering the cluster-bad word that happened awhile back, she was pretty sure that only someone who was in an institution didn't know about the Transformers, and even then she was pretty sure they knew about it.

She just had no clue if this guy was a bad guy or a good guy, as cliche as that was. She knew some of the good guys were black (and each time, upon seeing a black car race across the screen, she would always tense and wait, expecting the crash all over again), so this wasn't an old Western, where the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black.

Of course, his questions irritated her already bad mood. "I am not defective!" she snapped, unable to stop herself.

She took a deep breath and let out a sigh. "Sorry. No, I'm just...damaged. I wasn't born like this, so I'm not defective. It's just...taking a long time for me to be fixed. An annoyingly, painfully long time," she answered, her foul temper coming up in her final words before she took another calming breath.

With a sigh, she began to situate herself so she was sitting normally instead of sprawled across the sidewalk. It was slow going since...

She let out a slew of cuss words.

One of her legs had gotten trapped in the leg struts for her to rest her feet on.

[whiplash]

“Hmm,” Whiplash offered noncommittally. So she had been damaged. He wasn’t surprised. Humans were laughably frail creatures. The motorcycle sat still in front of her, watching her struggle for a bit, and listening with interest to the words streaming out of her mouth. Huh. Those were new.

Whiplash didn't move as she tried to untangle her leg. He wasn’t getting any amusement out of the spectacle; he just didn’t feel any need to do anything but watch. After a moment it occurred to him that a human girl flailing in the street was probably not the best thing for him if he wanted to keep from attracting attention, so he abruptly growled, “Quit movin’. Here.”

The young Cybertronian extended his tentacles. They were dormant, but the slightly-curved prongs at the end were not retracted, so the sight of them was probably not a reassuring one. He rolled closer and, without warning her or explaining, in any way, what he was doing, slipped one of them underneath her back and wrapped out of them around one of the wheels of her wheelchair.

[Jessica Ross]

Jessica really hadn't expected him to give any comment on the damage, though she had expected him to ask. The fact he hadn't actually worked on getting her to trust him. As in 'I trust you not to throw me in front of a semi should one come roaring past' sort of trust. And probably not even that, not that she could actually do anything to stop him should he decide to throw her in front of an oncoming semi.

Not that there was a semi around, but still.

So, when he growled at her to stop moving, it was fear that locked up her muscles. That didn't really help the strains her muscles were feeling now from her topple and the tentacles really weren't that comforting. If possible, she tensed more and a very, tiny, involuntary, whimper escaped from her as they rested on her.

She was trying very hard not to scream and, really, that was why she wasn't asking...yet. That and she really didn't want to insult him since she was human and fragile, being...handled might be the best word, by a being that could easily crush every bone in her body.

Of course, two cars nearly did that five years ago, so really, that wasn't a shock to her.

"An explanation would be nice," she finally managed to force out.

Her voice was pitched high and her eyes were wide. She knew her heart rate had slammed up and adrenaline was flooding her veins.

This had the potential to go VERY badly.

[whiplash]

“Well, what does it look like I’m doin’, slag-for-brains?” He snapped. Then he demonstrated an alarming lack of foresight by adding, “I’m helpin' you. And it wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t. It’s not like you could do anythin’ about it if I was gonna hurt you, anyway.”

He could sense that some internal change was happening to the girl, but he didn’t know enough about humans to figure out what it was. He carefully looped Jessica’s waist with one tentacle, mindful of the claw-like prong at the end, while he secured his grip on the wheel with the other. He then pulled in two different directions, trying to separate the girl from her seat. “Your chemical levels are screwed up. Are you going to throw up?” That was one thing he had knew humans could do. He’d actually seen it once. Disgusting. “If you do, don’t throw up on me.”

His tugging didn’t work, and probably wasn’t terribly comfortable for Jessica. “How the Pit did you even do this?” he demanded angrily. He rolled backwards slightly, dragging Jessica and her chair a few inches, which did absolutely nothing to help the situation.

[Jessica Ross]

Jessica wisely didn't respond the way she wished, which was to snap at him. And, surprisingly, it had nothing to do with her self-preservation instinct. It had to do with the fact that she was too terrified, even after he explained that he was helping her.

Especially with that added reminder.

Her heart rate spiked at that reminder and she closed her eyes against the pull. She actually bit down on her lip to keep from shouting in pain. Not agony, but that happened to be her left leg and the least damaged. Meaning that it got the most damage now of course. She resisted the urge to snap at him and she opened her eyes to give the motorcycle a look.

"I'm not going to throw up. What you are sensing is probably a fear reaction. When humans are faced with a situation that scares them, or startles them, the get an adrenaline rush. It allows them to do things like lift a car off a child. Or run away incredibly fast," she explained as calmly as she could considering she was still a little panicked.

It didn't help that he dragged her a bit and she resisted the urge to smack one of his tentacles off of her.

One, because she was starting to think that he was probably one of the bad guys.

Two, because she highly doubted he would appreciate it.

And three, she was pretty sure that it wouldn't help matters.

"Stop yanking! And I don't know how I did it, but this isn't just something where if you pull hard enough it is going to be fixed. Well, fixed in a way that won't leave me bleeding out on the sidewalk with only one leg.

"You are going to have to use patience. And it would help to just figure out how to get my foot unstuck first, by following the way the muscles are, meaning don't twist it in ways that it resists. But, that's just a suggestion. But yanking on me is obviously not working," she answered in a slightly strained voice, considering her leg now hurt and her fear was sort-of mixed with her anger.

If she could, she was pretty sure she would have already tried to smack him multiple times for his stupid idea.

And her cheerful nature was also practically gone, though that was probably a good thing.

She might already have been knocked out for annoying him if that were the case.

[whiplash]

Her story prompted a scoff from Whiplash. A human? Lift a car? Yeah, right, he’d see it when he believed it. She was probably just telling him this to intimidate him. She was probably scared right about now, really scared. The thought gave Whiplash a surge of comfort. He was top dog in this situation, and that was how he liked it. Whiplash’s entire life had more or less been him against the world. It was nice to be in a position of power, for once.

With his anger soothed and his dominance assured, somewhat paradoxically, he was willing to listen to her advice on their current predicament. He froze, still gripping her and her wheelchair as she chided him on his clumsy technique. Okay, he had to admit, she was right. Ripping off one of her legs wouldn’t do either of them any good. The motorcycle’s headlight angled attentively towards her as she spoke.

It did make sense to learn something about the way her legs worked instead of just dragging her all over the parking lot. He didn’t say anything to indicate that he agreed, but he didn’t make a sarcastic comeback, either. His tentacle loosened and unfurled from her waist, and he turned to regard her leg with new scrutiny. After a few moments, he declared, “Your legs are weird.”

He carefully tapped her knee with the flat of his blade-like prong. “They don’t bend right.” He didn’t say anything else on the subject, so apparently he had just felt the need to let her know his opinion of her anatomy. He began to pull his tentacles back. “Okay, I think I got--” The wheelchair jerked.

The tentacle that he had wrapped around the wheel was stuck. He had jammed it into the mechanism at an awkward angle, and it was too thick for him to pull it back without some major repositioning, which didn't apparently occur to Whiplash.

“The fraggin--” He pulled again, harder, but it was wedged firmly in place. The wheelchair slid forward. Irritated and angry, he yanked again, once more dragging poor Jessica with him. “Sorry,” he snarled, not really sounding particularly sorry. “This is slaggin’ ridiculous.” He gave a few more half-hearted tugs.

[Jessica Ross]

Jessica resisted the urge to roll her eyes. With him grumbling, complaining, and make dispiriting comments about her legs, it was hard to remain frightened of him. It also helped that he was being 'nice' and she huffed a tiny bit as she worked to help support herself as he moved down to investigate how to get her foot out of the wheelchair.

Well, that's what it looked like to her anyway.

She couldn't stop the hiss of pain that came with the jerking of the wheelchair. She winced as she felt him yanking at his tentacle and resisted the urge to glare at Whiplash. He did apologize, however, even if he sounded like he would rather rip the wheelchair to shreds then actually apologize. "You know, if we learned anything from trying to free my leg, we should have learned that yanking doesn't work! If it didn't work on my leg, I highly doubt it will work on your tentacle!" she commented, resisting the urge to smack the motorcycle.

She then sighed and groaned. She was in a worse position then before and let out a very strong four lettered f-word.

"Okay...I have an idea. And before you complain about me not doing this earlier, while you may or may not care about the pain I am in, I do. And popping out my knee hurts like hell, okay? Now, I can twist myself up and try and help you, or you could continue on this vein where you just yank at the wheelchair until my leg either breaks or your tentacle suffers some damage. I think that first option is more likely to happen. Which means I'll scream in agony. And it will be piercing.

"Those are the only two ideas I have that don't directly involve destroying my wheelchair, since I need that to get home," she explained and waited for his choice.

[whiplash]

Whiplash’s engine gave a rumbling growl, but that was his only response to her rather roundabout insult to his intelligence. He had flung himself in the face of other bots for less, but the urge to cause her harm simply wasn’t there. She was too pathetic, too weak to hurt. “Well, it ain’t like your leg,” was his only defense for his decision.

As she went on, very reasonably giving him options, he ignored her and instead concentrated on freeing himself. He twisted his tentacle, wriggling and trying to reposition it as she went on about--something or other, her knee or whatever. He turned his headlight towards the wheel, clearly only half-paying attention to her. “Be quiet,” he snapped abruptly, “I’ve almost got it.” There was a little give.. aha! All he needed was one good tug and he’d have it free.

He swiveled his headlight back towards her and added as he pulled, “And I’m not going to break your--” He tugged once, twice, and then a third time, hard--with a metallic screech he finally pulled his tentacle up and away from her wheelchair.

The wheel, however, was still attached to it.

For a moment Whiplash just sat there. It was hard to gauge any kind of expression on a motorcycle, but he seemed a little sheepish. “Uh, whoops,” he added in an uncharacteristically subdued tone.