[Fic] TFs/DW: Faultlines, Ch. 4
So... there are a lot of things that I really hate about this chapter, just as a fair warning. BUT, I have finished it and am putting it out here anyway, lousy chapter or not, in honor of sakon76's birthday. And it's even still technically on time, more or less. :P So happy birthday to sakon76 and I hope it is enjoyable to anyone who decides to read. :)
Title: Faultlines
Series: Transformers/Doctor Who crossover
Genre: Action/Adventure
Warnings: AU
Summary: Oh, you know. Giant robots, universe unraveling, the usual.
Faultlines
A Doctor Who/Transformers crossover
by Hoshikage
--Chapter Four--
"Okay... Quintessons," Jack said, crossing his arms and leaning against the TARDIS. "Explanation for those of us without an alternate-universe history book in our heads, please?"
Optimus heaved a huge sigh, like the sound of an enormous bellows, though Jack wouldn't have thought that a robot would breathe. Maybe it was just an affectation. "This is a tale so old it has retreated into legend, even for us," the Autobot admitted. "Like your human boogeymen, perhaps. The Quintessons were said to have been..." He paused. "Technically, the creators of our race. Autobot and Decepticon alike."
Bumblebee gave a surprisingly incoherent squawk of disbelief. Apparently this was news to him, anyway.
The Doctor, unsurprisingly, chipped in. "The Quintessons were a bit more creative than the Daleks," he said. "They decided they wanted slave labor. Robots to run the planet while they went off and wiped out all other life in the universe. Luckily for the remaining rest of the universe, the slaves decided to rebel."
Optimus nodded heavily. "The Decepticons, so legend claims, were designed to assist the Quintessons in battle. The Autobots were designed for construction and maintenance. The first Great War was not between them, but against the Quintessons, for our freedom. That war, we won."
"And then you all forgot about it?" Sam asked.
Jack could swear he could see the Autobot squirm. "We were nearly wiped out," Optimus said in excuse. "And so much time passed..."
"Well, it's a little more complicated than that," the Doctor said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"How do you mean?" Mikaela asked.
The Doctor took a breath. "In our universe, when the Daleks went to war, an alliance formed to stop them, led by the Time Lords." Sam's eyes widened. "And the war ended with a time-lock that sealed it all away, removed it from Time. Even both Gallifrey and Skaro. Leaving behind nothing but legends and myths, things no one truly believes were ever real."
"So... you're saying the Time War here was between the Time Lords and the Quintessons instead of the Daleks?" Rose asked. "And that's why no one really remembers it?"
The Doctor shrugged, but his grim expression belied the casual movement. "Even the Matrix starts to get fuzzy on events that far back, but it fits. And while we're on the subject of the Matrix..." He cast a look at Optimus. "You knew it didn't actually come from Cybertron in the first place, didn't you?"
Optimus shook his head. "I only... suspected. It is like nothing that has been created by Autobot or Decepticon before or since, beyond our understanding."
"Say what?" Jack asked, trying to follow the cryptic exchange.
The Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "When a Time Lord dies... died... on Gallifrey, their memories, their wisdom, would be stored in the Matrix. Essentially, it was a repository of Time Lord consciousness and history." Sam gasped, and the Doctor asked dryly, "Sound familiar?"
"And that's why the Matrix recognized the TARDIS," Jack said in understanding.
"And vice versa."
"So... the Matrix is originally from this universe's Gallifrey?" Sam asked in amazement. "But then how the heck did the Autobots wind up with it?"
"Couldn't have happened unless someone from Gallifrey arranged it," the Doctor said, then shrugged. "Might have even been me, this universe's me, if there was one. Sounds like something I might do, now that I think about it."
"Could you find out for sure?" Sam blurted.
The Doctor gave him a measuring look. "I'd have to go a lot deeper," he warned, then shrugged. "Not important right now, anyway."
Jack wondered if that was Doctor-code for really not wanting to delve into the doomed history of his home planet all over again. Not that he could exactly blame him. He decided to bail him out. "Not really. I'd say figuring out how to stop these things is the more important part."
Optimus blinked thoughtfully. "We will have to return to NEST headquarters and consult with the military."
The Doctor sighed in distaste. "Oh, must we?"
"You survived working with UNIT for a few years," Jack pointed out cheerfully, and the Doctor glared at him.
"But we can't fly the TARDIS, and we can't just leave it here," Rose protested.
Bumblebee chirped and pointed helpfully at Optimus. Sam grinned. "Transporting stuff is one thing that's really not a problem."
"Why's that?" Rose asked.
Mikaela shared Sam's grin. "Remember the whole robots that turn into vehicles part? Optimus is a semi. Trailer and all."
"Oh," the Doctor said, looking Optimus over. "Well, that's handy. You don't mind?"
"On one notable occasion I have carried three squabbling Autobots across four states," Optimus said wryly. "I assure you, your TARDIS will pose no problem at all."
"Oh yeah, was that a fun road trip," Sam said with a roll of his eyes. Then he frowned. "Hang on though, before we go... there's something I still don't get. If the Quintessons got stuck in some kind of time trap, how are they still running around now?"
Jack grimaced. The Doctor was silent for a moment, then said flatly, "I couldn't tell you. But somehow the Daleks always survive, too." He turned sharply back toward the TARDIS, signaling clearly that that line of discussion was over.
---
The Doctor disappeared inside the TARDIS to do something or other while Optimus and Bumblebee together carried it until they got clear of the trees and they could transform again. When he opened the door and stuck his head out at one point, he seemed to have regained most of his cheer, and didn't look discomfited at all by the door being substantially above the ground. "Jack!" he called, and tossed down some kind of device which Jack neatly caught out of the air.
"What's this for--" he started to ask, then rolled his eyes as he realized that the Doctor had already turned back inside and closed the doors again.
"Better let him tinker," Rose said, nudging him with an elbow and grinning at him. Jack shrugged in rueful agreement. When Sam looked at her with eyebrows raised, she explained, "He likes to do that when he's bothered about something. Never could understand it - he winds up with bits and pieces of the console on the floor, half the time."
"And then swears until he's got it all put back together," Jack agreed.
Sam grinned. "Funny, Ratchet does the same thing."
"Who's Ratchet?" Rose asked.
"Autobot medic. He's pretty cranky sometimes, but don't let him get to you," Mikaela replied.
"Only sometimes?" Sam asked incredulously.
"Only sometimes to me," Mikaela specified with a wicked grin. "Guess he likes girls who know their way around an engine."
"Can't blame him," Jack said, and Sam glared at him right as Rose unsubtly elbowed him in the ribs a lot harder this time.
"Knew you couldn't restrain yourself forever," Rose sighed. "Should've bet money on it."
"Better not mess with my girl or my car's gonna kick your ass," Sam added, grinning at Jack's woebegone expression.
"The girl can take care of that part herself, thanks," Mikaela retorted, jumping down the last lip of the incline back onto the unpaved road. Bumblebee and Optimus were just setting the TARDIS down, and the Doctor hopped out immediately afterwards, shrugging on his now-dry coat. Optimus stepped back to transform, and Sam watched with open amusement as the new arrivals watched the process in varying degrees of fascination. Only the Doctor looked unsurprised, even given what they'd already been told - but then, he basically had the Matrix in his head now, too. And even he was watching with interest, if not awe.
"Neat trick. Useful, too," Jack said approvingly as Optimus opened the back of his trailer and dropped the ramp so Bumblebee could wrestle the TARDIS inside.
"Don't tell me you're jealous," Rose said. "Are you honestly telling me you want to be able to turn into a motorcycle or something?"
"It could have its uses," Jack said in a way that made Sam seriously not want to know any more.
Bumblebee emerged from Optimus' trailer again, making a dusting-his-hands motion. "Let's hit the road!" he announced in a clip that sounded distinctly like some kind of action movie hero.
"I call shotgun," Sam said immediately.
Rose was looking at Optimus' cabin with wide eyes, tongue between her teeth. "Can I... ride with him?" she asked, then almost whispered to Sam, "Does he mind?"
Sam grinned. "Not last I checked."
Rose looked delighted. "Never been in a lorry that big!" She hopped her way across the muddy gravel surface, avoiding puddles on her way to the door. "What about you, Doctor?"
He was climbing up the ramp. "Still making sure the TARDIS is invisible to the Quintessons," he called to her, and Sam saw Jack quirk an eyebrow in a way that made him seem a little dubious of the excuse. "Join you later?"
Rose just grinned. "Suit yourself," she called, and looked up at the window as if trying to read an expression through it. "So, um, can I come in?" she asked diffidently.
Optimus opened his door in response. "Certainly, Rose. Would you like to sit in the driver's seat?"
"Oh." Rose gasped. "Oh no, no, I - I couldn't."
"It's not like you'd actually have to drive," Mikaela said. "Besides, Bee lets Sam and I drive him, sometimes."
Rose's eyes widened in disbelief, but then she admitted, "Pretty sure my license won't cover lorries, yeah?"
"Not that we're planning on getting pulled over I bet, but good point," Jack said.
Optimus closed his trailer up and manifested his chosen holographic driver image in the seat, and the kindly older man in the cowboy hat smiled at Rose under his mustache. "Let's just go with this."
"So by the way," Sam said to Jack as Rose started to clamber up into Optimus' passenger seat, "I know what the Doctor's deal is now, more or less. You never did explain your whole 'mostly human' thing, though."
Jack tensed a little, then shrugged carelessly. "Sure, no problem. But--" He gave Sam a hard look. "Not in front of Rose."
Sam blinked. "Uh, okay..."
"So can I give you a lift, honey?" Bumblebee's radio said in a disturbingly female voice, and he folded down into Camaro shape before waggling his doors open invitingly.
"Oh, baby," Jack said, grinning.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sam said loudly. "Can we stop playing 'Make Sam want to bleach his brain' now, please?"
"Jack," Rose laughed disbelievingly, leaning out Optimus' window. "Really though?"
"What? I can't flirt with the kid--" Sam was about to repeat his growl about Mikaela when Jack went on, further breaking Sam's brain, "I can't flirt with the girl - can I at least flirt with the car?"
Bumblebee, not helping at all, gave a saucy wink of one of his headlights.
"You are not getting in my car," Sam said to Jack.
Jack's grin widened to truly Cheshire proportions. "Thought you wanted an explanation?"
Mikaela did not help the situation when she caught sight of Sam's face and started laughing, and then Bumblebee actually made his radio giggle and Sam threw up his hands in disgust.
This was going to be the worst drive down the 5 in the history of ever.
---
Rose looked around the inside of the cab with amazement. Every detail looked like an ordinary vehicle - the heat seemed to work just like usual, as warm air whooshed gently over her feet and warmed her up after the chill damp of the woods. And she already knew that Bumblebee's radio, at least, worked like a regular one in addition to a substitute voice box. She could see how, if circumstances dictated, no one would ever guess Optimus' true alien nature.
She glanced at the holographic driver, and the image of the man winked at her just as if he was real. "Who is he?" Rose asked. "I mean, is he - somebody real someplace?"
The driver's mouth moved and everything as he answered, though if Rose listened hard she could make out the slightly distant resonance of Optimus' voice coming not from the mouth, but an interior speaker. "I created a composite image based on an amalgam of human characteristics," Optimus said, and then added on, "In less technical terms, no, I did not steal someone's image. As far as I know."
Rose flushed. "I didn't mean--" She bit her lip. Optimus made her feel so tiny, so young and insignificant, in a way the Doctor didn't. Optimus she could really believe was alien - obviously aside from the giant robot thing, he seemed so ancient and wise. And for all that the Doctor occasionally could act his age, most of the time she tended to forget he was nine hundred years old when he apparently had all the impulse control of a hyperactive toddler.
Speaking of the Doctor, she wondered what he was really doing in the TARDIS, since she'd gotten better at picking up on when he was lying. And that hadn't even been a very good one.
But Optimus replied, "It would be a reasonable assumption. I had to talk Jazz out of half a dozen different musicians' faces for his hologram."
Rose grinned again. "Got a thing for music, does he?"
Optimus hesitated. "Had," he said finally, and Rose's smile vanished.
"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry." She remembered what he'd said about a war. "How long - how long have you and the Decepticons been fighting?"
"It would have no meaning to you," Optimus sighed. "It might well be eons, in your years. Cybertron has no sun, now - no orbit by which to mark time. It just... went on, until... there was nothing else. It consumed us all."
Rose bit her lip. "The Doctor doesn't like to talk about the Time War much, but it sort of sounds a little like that. It does sound like - like it's just too big for me, I guess. I mean, Earth's had its wars, but..."
"Perhaps the Decepticons inherited too much from our Quintesson creators," Optimus sighed.
"If that's so, I wonder why you're all still here, though," Rose said, thinking aloud. "I mean, if it was like the Daleks at home, they all got sucked out of time or something. If you were all in the war, how come you didn't all get sucked out too?"
Optimus admitted, "We have nothing even in our legends that would tell us why. Perhaps it had something to do with the Matrix."
"Could it do that?" Rose asked.
"The Matrix has accomplished incredible miracles even in my lifetime," Optimus said. "Once, it cured a plague that had spread across half the galaxy in moments. There is little that I can believe it could not do."
Rose blinked, thinking about the incredible power of such a thing. Time manipulation, she wondered, to spread a cure so fast? But then if it was originally Time Lord technology, why not?
But Optimus' voice was heavy and sad as he talked about war, and Rose didn't want to make him go over all the things that had to be hurting him. So deliberately lightening her tone, she changed the subject. "So what d'you all do when you're not fighting? Everybody's gotta have a hobby, right?"
Optimus seemed to consider. "I read," he said finally. "Your world has produced a quite amazing variety of literature through your history."
"Somehow I can't see you fitting in a library," Rose said.
Optimus chuckled. "Now that humans have discovered the wonder of downloadable books over the Internet, I don't have to."
"Oh my God, giant alien robots with access to the Internet. I don't want to know what you must have thought of us."
Optimus said (very diplomatically, Rose thought), "You just have to have the correct search filters turned on."
Rose blushed furiously. She'd always nagged at her mother to get faster Internet when she was younger, but now she was just as glad it hadn't ever happened. Who knew what she might have been tempted to put out there when she was fourteen and stupid? "I can't even believe I'm having this conversation. Jack must be rubbing off on me."
"Oh, you definitely don't want to let that happen," the Doctor said from behind her, pushing open a small door that led from the huge cab into the back trailer. Rose wasn't sure if that was exactly standard, but she had to admit it was useful as the Doctor nimbly hopped into the seat next to her. "But don't worry, I won't tell him about your new crush."
"Doctor!" Rose protested, shoving his shoulder. He just grinned.
Optimus' voice was as close to tart as Rose imagined it could get. "Seatbelt, Doctor. I doubt you would like us to get pulled over for a ticket."
"Yes, sir," the Doctor said, as close to meek as he ever got for that matter, although Rose thought it was at least half act. He pulled on the other seatbelt promptly enough at any rate, then lounged comfortably against the wide backrest. "So you're a literature fan then? Read any Dickens?"
"All of the books," Optimus said promptly.
The Doctor beamed. "Brilliant fellow, Dickens. We met him, Rose and I, did she tell you?"
Most people of course would have responded to this with some variation on a disbelieving "Get out," but Optimus apparently had no such trouble with the concept of time travel. "Ah! Then is it true that he was working on another manuscript on a supernatural topic before he died? The debate over whether it is truly his handwriting seems to pop up every few years and never get decided for sure."
Rose raised her eyebrows at the Doctor, and he returned the look before launching willingly into an explanation. Rose had worried a bit that the Doctor would go mad with boredom on a long drive that required sitting still, unlike piloting the TARDIS, but apparently with an academically-minded transforming robot to talk to everything was going to be just fine.
At least, on this end. She stifled a grin, wondering if Jack had managed to drive Sam round the bend already.
---
After flattering Bumblebee some more about his interior in addition to his exterior, Jack had finally laid off with the flirting (for which Sam was eternally grateful, not that he'd ever say it). He sat casually in the driver's seat with his hands loosely on the wheel and his eyes on the road, pretending well even though Bumblebee was doing all the driving at the moment. Mikaela had gracefully allowed him the first chance at the front, and leaned forward from the back seat behind Sam to listen.
"So the Doctor mentioned the Daleks," Jack said. "When we first found out they weren't all as trapped as advertised, they were just about ready to invade the Earth in force. The Doctor needed time to build something to stop them, so I volunteered to slow them down."
Sam had to admit he admired the guy's guts. "I thought these things were totally deadly."
"Oh, they are," Jack agreed lightly. "And they killed me pretty easily, too."
"And then you came back?" Mikaela guessed.
Jack shook his head. "Almost. See, the Doctor had sent the TARDIS home with Rose - he figured that no matter what happened to us, he wanted her safe. This whole invasion was happening so far in her future that she'd never see it. Except she had other ideas, and she managed to open the heart of the TARDIS and took in the power of the Time Vortex through it to get back. Or at least, that's about all the explanation the Doctor gave me."
Sam blinked as the terms seemed to resonate in his head. Time Vortex? Oh yeah, the Matrix sure recognized that. With an effort, he persuaded it to leave him alone for now, and silently breathed a sigh of relief when the shivering vibrations of knowledge subsided into whispers in his brain.
"At any rate," Jack went on, apparently not noticing, "She suddenly could alter the flow of Time, at least temporarily. And once she was done wiping the Daleks out of it, she decided she wanted me back. Which would have been great, except she was a human with the power of a goddess, and she didn't know what she was doing. Basically, she brought me back forever. I'm a fixed point in time, the Doctor said."
Sam twitched, and didn't understand why until Jack said without rancor, "Oh, you too huh? Or rather, your Matrix I guess."
"Uh," Sam said sheepishly, trying again to stuff down the Matrix trying to yammer in the back of his mind about how wrong that all was.
"You too?" Mikaela repeated, confused.
"Oh, the Doctor freaked out at first - flat-out called me 'wrong,' said I shouldn't exist. Apparently I mess with his time sense or something. Luckily for me, he's mostly gotten over it by now."
Mikaela complained indignantly, "But that's not fair, it's not like you asked Rose to do that or anything!"
Jack waved it off. "It's okay, really. It took a while, but we worked it out. Water under the bridge. But listen - Rose doesn't know, and I want it to stay that way. She doesn't remember any of it, and she doesn't need to know what I've been through because of what she did. She made a mistake, but she did it for the right reasons and she really didn't understand what she was doing. I don't want her to feel guilty."
Sam couldn't hold back the words. "It won't stay this way. She's going to find out eventually." He didn't know what made him so certain, but he was.
Jack sighed, looking sad for a moment. "Yeah, maybe. But I don't want it to happen yet. One of us should be..." He trailed off, as though not really wanting to finish the sentence.
"I'm sorry," Mikaela said. "Of course we won't say anything, if that's what you want."
"It is," Jack said firmly.
"Okay," Sam said, and for a while they rode on in silence.
---
Rose had fallen asleep to the sounds of the Doctor's and Optimus' conversation as it carried on through the miles of highway, the hypnotic drone of Optimus' engine and the endless sweep of the road ahead proving to be too much for her. They'd gotten all the way out of the mountains and into dry plains that apparently stretched through almost the entirety of California; the highway had stopped curving through trees and cut nearly straight across dull brown dirt and grass to the horizon, and it was boring enough (and Optimus' seats were just comfortable enough) that she'd found herself drifting off and had decided to just not bother to fight it. The voices murmured at the edge of her consciousness, a comforting deep rumble and familiar lighter ramble, until suddenly Optimus slammed on his brakes and for the second time in two days, Rose was flung literally out of sleep.
She came up hard against the seatbelt as it did its job and kept her from flying forward, and gasped in a breath that had been shoved out of her. "Wha--" she started, before she lifted her head and shook her hair from her eyes enough to see through Optimus' windscreen and look at the road ahead for herself.
A car flew almost lazily through the air toward them, flipping over a mass of other cars trapped and jammed against each other on the pavement. Horns screeched frantically as a long, silvery something stretched up into view from behind the obscuring mass of vehicles, something that looked like nothing so much as a robotic spider leg and made Rose's muscles all tense up as her body unconsciously expected the command -
Optimus' doors flung open.
"Run!" The Doctor's nimble fingers undid the seatbelt faster than she could have hoped to, grabbed her hand as Rose slithered off the seat and out the door. She hit the ground running, scrambling to get clear, and as she looked behind her she saw Optimus transforming, one of his tires folding up in a slice through the air inches above the Doctor's head. She wondered if that was luck or if Optimus' judgement of spaces was just that good, but the Doctor didn't even bother to duck, instead backing up with his eyes locked on the falling car as Optimus caught it awkwardly in his hands, the sides crumpling in and windows shattering from the impact. But Rose saw the stunned-looking driver blinking stupidly in the seat - alive - and that was what mattered as the enormous robot gently sat the car down on the road and then turned to look ahead again. Rose saw more spindly silver legs unfolding into the air, and even though she couldn't see where they were coming from, her mouth went dry with fear.
"Doctor?" she asked, knowing her voice was coming out in a squeak but unable to stop it. "There really isn't much we can do to that thing, yeah?"
"Can't be Quintesson, not organic enough," the Doctor was muttering. "Decepticon, then. Don't we have all the luck?" Turning abruptly back to Rose, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver and actually answered her question. "Maybe not, but we can get everyone out of these cars. Come on!"
Right. With a job to do, Rose's thoughts suddenly focused. Get all the innocent bystanders out of the way and the Autobots could take care of the spider-thing. She looked around for help as the Doctor dashed off in one direction, sonicking a car door and helping the driver struggle out of their seatbelt. "Jack?" Rose called hopefully, relieved when she saw him slide across another car's bonnet to run in her direction. In her peripheral vision she saw the yellow blur of Bumblebee moving in a different direction from Optimus, both of them obviously trying to flank the thing sitting on the road ahead of them.
Sam and Mikaela were right behind Jack, Rose saw, and apparently they had the same thought about helping everyone get out as they immediately went for the crumpled car that Optimus had caught. The door was stuck, and Rose went to help them yank it open; the metal finally gave way with a protesting squeal, and the terrified driver didn't wait for their hands to help him, just started running back down the road as fast as he could.
"Oh my God, everyone in NEST is going to have kittens," Mikaela groaned as she yanked at another car door, and Rose went to help her.
"Why?" Wasn't this kind of thing sort of their job, like UNIT at home?
"The giant alien robots are kind of supposed to be all hush-hush," Sam called over to her from another car, voice filled with irony. "Yeah, I don't get how that's supposed to work either."
"Okay, not UNIT, Torchwood then," Rose muttered, scrambling over another car as people fled all around her, climbing over trapped cars and running down the empty freeway lanes behind. Jack gave her a funny look after that, but then he went off in another direction, ducking behind other cars as he ran. Rose hoped he was going to go try to keep the Doctor out of trouble instead of getting into it himself and getting killed again, but she hadn't had any luck the last twenty times she'd tried to get him to be more careful of his own skin. Rose concentrated on the task at hand and ducked to look in window after window, discovering with satisfaction that the cars all seemed to be empty. Of course, there was still the bigger problem to worry about...
She turned to look again, then ducked reflexively as another car sailed overhead. As it passed over, she saw what looked bizarrely like a huge bite mark taken out of the side and popped her head up over another car to try to get a better look at the spider-thing. Next to her Sam appeared and did the same, and then gasped.
"What?" Rose asked, staring at the mishmash of thrashing parts on the side of the road. It didn't really look much like a spider with a clearer view, except for the legs. Actually it had the same huge metal fangs that the Quintesson had, except half of its pieces looked more like they'd come from a car, like the Autobots changed into. So Decepticon, like the doctor had said, except would one really have been a police car? She could see the insignia on what clearly used to be a door...
Sam apparently knew what was going on more than she did, though. "That's... no way," he stammered. "That's Barricade!"
"And what's that when it's at home?" Rose asked, since he still wasn't making any sense as far as she was concerned.
Sam blurted out, "Decepticon, first one I ran into - except seriously, he didn't used to have giant spider-legs, and I thought for sure he had to be dead by now. Although it's not like I ever saw it happen..."
"Sam..." Mikaela bit her lip, staring at the thing and huddling behind the car they'd chosen for cover. "Something's weird about this."
"Yeah, I know." Sam stared at the thing for a moment longer, then abruptly swore and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Not now - oh God."
"What?" Rose asked again, then yelped as the spider ignored a shot from Bumblebee impacting one of the police-car door pieces to surge forward and chomp casually on the nearest car, fangs shearing straight through both shell and engine block like butter. "Is it - eating the cars?"
"Yeah." Sam's face was gray. "And using them for parts. Just like it ate Barricade. Apparently, that's what Quintessons do."
"Are you saying that's - Barricade's dead? And those are just parts of his body?" Mikaela's expression was a mixture of horror and disgust.
"Yeah, basically. Welcome to the zombie apocalypse of the future," Sam said grimly. "Or the past, I guess."
"Zombie alien robots?" Rose couldn't help her incredulous denial, even though she knew that the universe was a completely ridiculous place a lot of the time. "You have got to be joking!"
"Oh, it gets better, but I think we really don't have time for the long version right now--" Sam stopped as the Quintesson turned abruptly away from the car and toward a small stand of oak trees behind it instead, and Rose saw a glimpse of a blue light flashing briefly between the trunks. The Doctor must have finally found a setting on the sonic that would get its attention. Rose bit her lip, trying to think of something useful she could do. Throwing a rock didn't seem to fall into the "useful" category, but...
As the Quintesson turned its back, Bumblebee roared suddenly up in car form before transforming right behind it, surging up with the momentum to tear two of the spidery legs right off. The Quintesson howled just like the one in the woods had, but instead of falling back it exploded into a flailing mass of metal legs and organic tentacles that burst out from under the car pieces that had been shielding them, entangling Bumblebee for just a second - just a second, but at the same time as Bee's guns went off in its face, the fangs sank deep into the yellow-and-silver metal of Bumblebee's chest, shredding their way free as the Quintesson reeled back from the shots, followed horribly by a spray of glowing blue liquid that splattered everywhere just like blood.
Sam's scream drowned out her own. "Bee!"
--To Be Continued--
Title: Faultlines
Series: Transformers/Doctor Who crossover
Genre: Action/Adventure
Warnings: AU
Summary: Oh, you know. Giant robots, universe unraveling, the usual.
Faultlines
A Doctor Who/Transformers crossover
by Hoshikage
--Chapter Four--
"Okay... Quintessons," Jack said, crossing his arms and leaning against the TARDIS. "Explanation for those of us without an alternate-universe history book in our heads, please?"
Optimus heaved a huge sigh, like the sound of an enormous bellows, though Jack wouldn't have thought that a robot would breathe. Maybe it was just an affectation. "This is a tale so old it has retreated into legend, even for us," the Autobot admitted. "Like your human boogeymen, perhaps. The Quintessons were said to have been..." He paused. "Technically, the creators of our race. Autobot and Decepticon alike."
Bumblebee gave a surprisingly incoherent squawk of disbelief. Apparently this was news to him, anyway.
The Doctor, unsurprisingly, chipped in. "The Quintessons were a bit more creative than the Daleks," he said. "They decided they wanted slave labor. Robots to run the planet while they went off and wiped out all other life in the universe. Luckily for the remaining rest of the universe, the slaves decided to rebel."
Optimus nodded heavily. "The Decepticons, so legend claims, were designed to assist the Quintessons in battle. The Autobots were designed for construction and maintenance. The first Great War was not between them, but against the Quintessons, for our freedom. That war, we won."
"And then you all forgot about it?" Sam asked.
Jack could swear he could see the Autobot squirm. "We were nearly wiped out," Optimus said in excuse. "And so much time passed..."
"Well, it's a little more complicated than that," the Doctor said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"How do you mean?" Mikaela asked.
The Doctor took a breath. "In our universe, when the Daleks went to war, an alliance formed to stop them, led by the Time Lords." Sam's eyes widened. "And the war ended with a time-lock that sealed it all away, removed it from Time. Even both Gallifrey and Skaro. Leaving behind nothing but legends and myths, things no one truly believes were ever real."
"So... you're saying the Time War here was between the Time Lords and the Quintessons instead of the Daleks?" Rose asked. "And that's why no one really remembers it?"
The Doctor shrugged, but his grim expression belied the casual movement. "Even the Matrix starts to get fuzzy on events that far back, but it fits. And while we're on the subject of the Matrix..." He cast a look at Optimus. "You knew it didn't actually come from Cybertron in the first place, didn't you?"
Optimus shook his head. "I only... suspected. It is like nothing that has been created by Autobot or Decepticon before or since, beyond our understanding."
"Say what?" Jack asked, trying to follow the cryptic exchange.
The Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "When a Time Lord dies... died... on Gallifrey, their memories, their wisdom, would be stored in the Matrix. Essentially, it was a repository of Time Lord consciousness and history." Sam gasped, and the Doctor asked dryly, "Sound familiar?"
"And that's why the Matrix recognized the TARDIS," Jack said in understanding.
"And vice versa."
"So... the Matrix is originally from this universe's Gallifrey?" Sam asked in amazement. "But then how the heck did the Autobots wind up with it?"
"Couldn't have happened unless someone from Gallifrey arranged it," the Doctor said, then shrugged. "Might have even been me, this universe's me, if there was one. Sounds like something I might do, now that I think about it."
"Could you find out for sure?" Sam blurted.
The Doctor gave him a measuring look. "I'd have to go a lot deeper," he warned, then shrugged. "Not important right now, anyway."
Jack wondered if that was Doctor-code for really not wanting to delve into the doomed history of his home planet all over again. Not that he could exactly blame him. He decided to bail him out. "Not really. I'd say figuring out how to stop these things is the more important part."
Optimus blinked thoughtfully. "We will have to return to NEST headquarters and consult with the military."
The Doctor sighed in distaste. "Oh, must we?"
"You survived working with UNIT for a few years," Jack pointed out cheerfully, and the Doctor glared at him.
"But we can't fly the TARDIS, and we can't just leave it here," Rose protested.
Bumblebee chirped and pointed helpfully at Optimus. Sam grinned. "Transporting stuff is one thing that's really not a problem."
"Why's that?" Rose asked.
Mikaela shared Sam's grin. "Remember the whole robots that turn into vehicles part? Optimus is a semi. Trailer and all."
"Oh," the Doctor said, looking Optimus over. "Well, that's handy. You don't mind?"
"On one notable occasion I have carried three squabbling Autobots across four states," Optimus said wryly. "I assure you, your TARDIS will pose no problem at all."
"Oh yeah, was that a fun road trip," Sam said with a roll of his eyes. Then he frowned. "Hang on though, before we go... there's something I still don't get. If the Quintessons got stuck in some kind of time trap, how are they still running around now?"
Jack grimaced. The Doctor was silent for a moment, then said flatly, "I couldn't tell you. But somehow the Daleks always survive, too." He turned sharply back toward the TARDIS, signaling clearly that that line of discussion was over.
---
The Doctor disappeared inside the TARDIS to do something or other while Optimus and Bumblebee together carried it until they got clear of the trees and they could transform again. When he opened the door and stuck his head out at one point, he seemed to have regained most of his cheer, and didn't look discomfited at all by the door being substantially above the ground. "Jack!" he called, and tossed down some kind of device which Jack neatly caught out of the air.
"What's this for--" he started to ask, then rolled his eyes as he realized that the Doctor had already turned back inside and closed the doors again.
"Better let him tinker," Rose said, nudging him with an elbow and grinning at him. Jack shrugged in rueful agreement. When Sam looked at her with eyebrows raised, she explained, "He likes to do that when he's bothered about something. Never could understand it - he winds up with bits and pieces of the console on the floor, half the time."
"And then swears until he's got it all put back together," Jack agreed.
Sam grinned. "Funny, Ratchet does the same thing."
"Who's Ratchet?" Rose asked.
"Autobot medic. He's pretty cranky sometimes, but don't let him get to you," Mikaela replied.
"Only sometimes?" Sam asked incredulously.
"Only sometimes to me," Mikaela specified with a wicked grin. "Guess he likes girls who know their way around an engine."
"Can't blame him," Jack said, and Sam glared at him right as Rose unsubtly elbowed him in the ribs a lot harder this time.
"Knew you couldn't restrain yourself forever," Rose sighed. "Should've bet money on it."
"Better not mess with my girl or my car's gonna kick your ass," Sam added, grinning at Jack's woebegone expression.
"The girl can take care of that part herself, thanks," Mikaela retorted, jumping down the last lip of the incline back onto the unpaved road. Bumblebee and Optimus were just setting the TARDIS down, and the Doctor hopped out immediately afterwards, shrugging on his now-dry coat. Optimus stepped back to transform, and Sam watched with open amusement as the new arrivals watched the process in varying degrees of fascination. Only the Doctor looked unsurprised, even given what they'd already been told - but then, he basically had the Matrix in his head now, too. And even he was watching with interest, if not awe.
"Neat trick. Useful, too," Jack said approvingly as Optimus opened the back of his trailer and dropped the ramp so Bumblebee could wrestle the TARDIS inside.
"Don't tell me you're jealous," Rose said. "Are you honestly telling me you want to be able to turn into a motorcycle or something?"
"It could have its uses," Jack said in a way that made Sam seriously not want to know any more.
Bumblebee emerged from Optimus' trailer again, making a dusting-his-hands motion. "Let's hit the road!" he announced in a clip that sounded distinctly like some kind of action movie hero.
"I call shotgun," Sam said immediately.
Rose was looking at Optimus' cabin with wide eyes, tongue between her teeth. "Can I... ride with him?" she asked, then almost whispered to Sam, "Does he mind?"
Sam grinned. "Not last I checked."
Rose looked delighted. "Never been in a lorry that big!" She hopped her way across the muddy gravel surface, avoiding puddles on her way to the door. "What about you, Doctor?"
He was climbing up the ramp. "Still making sure the TARDIS is invisible to the Quintessons," he called to her, and Sam saw Jack quirk an eyebrow in a way that made him seem a little dubious of the excuse. "Join you later?"
Rose just grinned. "Suit yourself," she called, and looked up at the window as if trying to read an expression through it. "So, um, can I come in?" she asked diffidently.
Optimus opened his door in response. "Certainly, Rose. Would you like to sit in the driver's seat?"
"Oh." Rose gasped. "Oh no, no, I - I couldn't."
"It's not like you'd actually have to drive," Mikaela said. "Besides, Bee lets Sam and I drive him, sometimes."
Rose's eyes widened in disbelief, but then she admitted, "Pretty sure my license won't cover lorries, yeah?"
"Not that we're planning on getting pulled over I bet, but good point," Jack said.
Optimus closed his trailer up and manifested his chosen holographic driver image in the seat, and the kindly older man in the cowboy hat smiled at Rose under his mustache. "Let's just go with this."
"So by the way," Sam said to Jack as Rose started to clamber up into Optimus' passenger seat, "I know what the Doctor's deal is now, more or less. You never did explain your whole 'mostly human' thing, though."
Jack tensed a little, then shrugged carelessly. "Sure, no problem. But--" He gave Sam a hard look. "Not in front of Rose."
Sam blinked. "Uh, okay..."
"So can I give you a lift, honey?" Bumblebee's radio said in a disturbingly female voice, and he folded down into Camaro shape before waggling his doors open invitingly.
"Oh, baby," Jack said, grinning.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sam said loudly. "Can we stop playing 'Make Sam want to bleach his brain' now, please?"
"Jack," Rose laughed disbelievingly, leaning out Optimus' window. "Really though?"
"What? I can't flirt with the kid--" Sam was about to repeat his growl about Mikaela when Jack went on, further breaking Sam's brain, "I can't flirt with the girl - can I at least flirt with the car?"
Bumblebee, not helping at all, gave a saucy wink of one of his headlights.
"You are not getting in my car," Sam said to Jack.
Jack's grin widened to truly Cheshire proportions. "Thought you wanted an explanation?"
Mikaela did not help the situation when she caught sight of Sam's face and started laughing, and then Bumblebee actually made his radio giggle and Sam threw up his hands in disgust.
This was going to be the worst drive down the 5 in the history of ever.
---
Rose looked around the inside of the cab with amazement. Every detail looked like an ordinary vehicle - the heat seemed to work just like usual, as warm air whooshed gently over her feet and warmed her up after the chill damp of the woods. And she already knew that Bumblebee's radio, at least, worked like a regular one in addition to a substitute voice box. She could see how, if circumstances dictated, no one would ever guess Optimus' true alien nature.
She glanced at the holographic driver, and the image of the man winked at her just as if he was real. "Who is he?" Rose asked. "I mean, is he - somebody real someplace?"
The driver's mouth moved and everything as he answered, though if Rose listened hard she could make out the slightly distant resonance of Optimus' voice coming not from the mouth, but an interior speaker. "I created a composite image based on an amalgam of human characteristics," Optimus said, and then added on, "In less technical terms, no, I did not steal someone's image. As far as I know."
Rose flushed. "I didn't mean--" She bit her lip. Optimus made her feel so tiny, so young and insignificant, in a way the Doctor didn't. Optimus she could really believe was alien - obviously aside from the giant robot thing, he seemed so ancient and wise. And for all that the Doctor occasionally could act his age, most of the time she tended to forget he was nine hundred years old when he apparently had all the impulse control of a hyperactive toddler.
Speaking of the Doctor, she wondered what he was really doing in the TARDIS, since she'd gotten better at picking up on when he was lying. And that hadn't even been a very good one.
But Optimus replied, "It would be a reasonable assumption. I had to talk Jazz out of half a dozen different musicians' faces for his hologram."
Rose grinned again. "Got a thing for music, does he?"
Optimus hesitated. "Had," he said finally, and Rose's smile vanished.
"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry." She remembered what he'd said about a war. "How long - how long have you and the Decepticons been fighting?"
"It would have no meaning to you," Optimus sighed. "It might well be eons, in your years. Cybertron has no sun, now - no orbit by which to mark time. It just... went on, until... there was nothing else. It consumed us all."
Rose bit her lip. "The Doctor doesn't like to talk about the Time War much, but it sort of sounds a little like that. It does sound like - like it's just too big for me, I guess. I mean, Earth's had its wars, but..."
"Perhaps the Decepticons inherited too much from our Quintesson creators," Optimus sighed.
"If that's so, I wonder why you're all still here, though," Rose said, thinking aloud. "I mean, if it was like the Daleks at home, they all got sucked out of time or something. If you were all in the war, how come you didn't all get sucked out too?"
Optimus admitted, "We have nothing even in our legends that would tell us why. Perhaps it had something to do with the Matrix."
"Could it do that?" Rose asked.
"The Matrix has accomplished incredible miracles even in my lifetime," Optimus said. "Once, it cured a plague that had spread across half the galaxy in moments. There is little that I can believe it could not do."
Rose blinked, thinking about the incredible power of such a thing. Time manipulation, she wondered, to spread a cure so fast? But then if it was originally Time Lord technology, why not?
But Optimus' voice was heavy and sad as he talked about war, and Rose didn't want to make him go over all the things that had to be hurting him. So deliberately lightening her tone, she changed the subject. "So what d'you all do when you're not fighting? Everybody's gotta have a hobby, right?"
Optimus seemed to consider. "I read," he said finally. "Your world has produced a quite amazing variety of literature through your history."
"Somehow I can't see you fitting in a library," Rose said.
Optimus chuckled. "Now that humans have discovered the wonder of downloadable books over the Internet, I don't have to."
"Oh my God, giant alien robots with access to the Internet. I don't want to know what you must have thought of us."
Optimus said (very diplomatically, Rose thought), "You just have to have the correct search filters turned on."
Rose blushed furiously. She'd always nagged at her mother to get faster Internet when she was younger, but now she was just as glad it hadn't ever happened. Who knew what she might have been tempted to put out there when she was fourteen and stupid? "I can't even believe I'm having this conversation. Jack must be rubbing off on me."
"Oh, you definitely don't want to let that happen," the Doctor said from behind her, pushing open a small door that led from the huge cab into the back trailer. Rose wasn't sure if that was exactly standard, but she had to admit it was useful as the Doctor nimbly hopped into the seat next to her. "But don't worry, I won't tell him about your new crush."
"Doctor!" Rose protested, shoving his shoulder. He just grinned.
Optimus' voice was as close to tart as Rose imagined it could get. "Seatbelt, Doctor. I doubt you would like us to get pulled over for a ticket."
"Yes, sir," the Doctor said, as close to meek as he ever got for that matter, although Rose thought it was at least half act. He pulled on the other seatbelt promptly enough at any rate, then lounged comfortably against the wide backrest. "So you're a literature fan then? Read any Dickens?"
"All of the books," Optimus said promptly.
The Doctor beamed. "Brilliant fellow, Dickens. We met him, Rose and I, did she tell you?"
Most people of course would have responded to this with some variation on a disbelieving "Get out," but Optimus apparently had no such trouble with the concept of time travel. "Ah! Then is it true that he was working on another manuscript on a supernatural topic before he died? The debate over whether it is truly his handwriting seems to pop up every few years and never get decided for sure."
Rose raised her eyebrows at the Doctor, and he returned the look before launching willingly into an explanation. Rose had worried a bit that the Doctor would go mad with boredom on a long drive that required sitting still, unlike piloting the TARDIS, but apparently with an academically-minded transforming robot to talk to everything was going to be just fine.
At least, on this end. She stifled a grin, wondering if Jack had managed to drive Sam round the bend already.
---
After flattering Bumblebee some more about his interior in addition to his exterior, Jack had finally laid off with the flirting (for which Sam was eternally grateful, not that he'd ever say it). He sat casually in the driver's seat with his hands loosely on the wheel and his eyes on the road, pretending well even though Bumblebee was doing all the driving at the moment. Mikaela had gracefully allowed him the first chance at the front, and leaned forward from the back seat behind Sam to listen.
"So the Doctor mentioned the Daleks," Jack said. "When we first found out they weren't all as trapped as advertised, they were just about ready to invade the Earth in force. The Doctor needed time to build something to stop them, so I volunteered to slow them down."
Sam had to admit he admired the guy's guts. "I thought these things were totally deadly."
"Oh, they are," Jack agreed lightly. "And they killed me pretty easily, too."
"And then you came back?" Mikaela guessed.
Jack shook his head. "Almost. See, the Doctor had sent the TARDIS home with Rose - he figured that no matter what happened to us, he wanted her safe. This whole invasion was happening so far in her future that she'd never see it. Except she had other ideas, and she managed to open the heart of the TARDIS and took in the power of the Time Vortex through it to get back. Or at least, that's about all the explanation the Doctor gave me."
Sam blinked as the terms seemed to resonate in his head. Time Vortex? Oh yeah, the Matrix sure recognized that. With an effort, he persuaded it to leave him alone for now, and silently breathed a sigh of relief when the shivering vibrations of knowledge subsided into whispers in his brain.
"At any rate," Jack went on, apparently not noticing, "She suddenly could alter the flow of Time, at least temporarily. And once she was done wiping the Daleks out of it, she decided she wanted me back. Which would have been great, except she was a human with the power of a goddess, and she didn't know what she was doing. Basically, she brought me back forever. I'm a fixed point in time, the Doctor said."
Sam twitched, and didn't understand why until Jack said without rancor, "Oh, you too huh? Or rather, your Matrix I guess."
"Uh," Sam said sheepishly, trying again to stuff down the Matrix trying to yammer in the back of his mind about how wrong that all was.
"You too?" Mikaela repeated, confused.
"Oh, the Doctor freaked out at first - flat-out called me 'wrong,' said I shouldn't exist. Apparently I mess with his time sense or something. Luckily for me, he's mostly gotten over it by now."
Mikaela complained indignantly, "But that's not fair, it's not like you asked Rose to do that or anything!"
Jack waved it off. "It's okay, really. It took a while, but we worked it out. Water under the bridge. But listen - Rose doesn't know, and I want it to stay that way. She doesn't remember any of it, and she doesn't need to know what I've been through because of what she did. She made a mistake, but she did it for the right reasons and she really didn't understand what she was doing. I don't want her to feel guilty."
Sam couldn't hold back the words. "It won't stay this way. She's going to find out eventually." He didn't know what made him so certain, but he was.
Jack sighed, looking sad for a moment. "Yeah, maybe. But I don't want it to happen yet. One of us should be..." He trailed off, as though not really wanting to finish the sentence.
"I'm sorry," Mikaela said. "Of course we won't say anything, if that's what you want."
"It is," Jack said firmly.
"Okay," Sam said, and for a while they rode on in silence.
---
Rose had fallen asleep to the sounds of the Doctor's and Optimus' conversation as it carried on through the miles of highway, the hypnotic drone of Optimus' engine and the endless sweep of the road ahead proving to be too much for her. They'd gotten all the way out of the mountains and into dry plains that apparently stretched through almost the entirety of California; the highway had stopped curving through trees and cut nearly straight across dull brown dirt and grass to the horizon, and it was boring enough (and Optimus' seats were just comfortable enough) that she'd found herself drifting off and had decided to just not bother to fight it. The voices murmured at the edge of her consciousness, a comforting deep rumble and familiar lighter ramble, until suddenly Optimus slammed on his brakes and for the second time in two days, Rose was flung literally out of sleep.
She came up hard against the seatbelt as it did its job and kept her from flying forward, and gasped in a breath that had been shoved out of her. "Wha--" she started, before she lifted her head and shook her hair from her eyes enough to see through Optimus' windscreen and look at the road ahead for herself.
A car flew almost lazily through the air toward them, flipping over a mass of other cars trapped and jammed against each other on the pavement. Horns screeched frantically as a long, silvery something stretched up into view from behind the obscuring mass of vehicles, something that looked like nothing so much as a robotic spider leg and made Rose's muscles all tense up as her body unconsciously expected the command -
Optimus' doors flung open.
"Run!" The Doctor's nimble fingers undid the seatbelt faster than she could have hoped to, grabbed her hand as Rose slithered off the seat and out the door. She hit the ground running, scrambling to get clear, and as she looked behind her she saw Optimus transforming, one of his tires folding up in a slice through the air inches above the Doctor's head. She wondered if that was luck or if Optimus' judgement of spaces was just that good, but the Doctor didn't even bother to duck, instead backing up with his eyes locked on the falling car as Optimus caught it awkwardly in his hands, the sides crumpling in and windows shattering from the impact. But Rose saw the stunned-looking driver blinking stupidly in the seat - alive - and that was what mattered as the enormous robot gently sat the car down on the road and then turned to look ahead again. Rose saw more spindly silver legs unfolding into the air, and even though she couldn't see where they were coming from, her mouth went dry with fear.
"Doctor?" she asked, knowing her voice was coming out in a squeak but unable to stop it. "There really isn't much we can do to that thing, yeah?"
"Can't be Quintesson, not organic enough," the Doctor was muttering. "Decepticon, then. Don't we have all the luck?" Turning abruptly back to Rose, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver and actually answered her question. "Maybe not, but we can get everyone out of these cars. Come on!"
Right. With a job to do, Rose's thoughts suddenly focused. Get all the innocent bystanders out of the way and the Autobots could take care of the spider-thing. She looked around for help as the Doctor dashed off in one direction, sonicking a car door and helping the driver struggle out of their seatbelt. "Jack?" Rose called hopefully, relieved when she saw him slide across another car's bonnet to run in her direction. In her peripheral vision she saw the yellow blur of Bumblebee moving in a different direction from Optimus, both of them obviously trying to flank the thing sitting on the road ahead of them.
Sam and Mikaela were right behind Jack, Rose saw, and apparently they had the same thought about helping everyone get out as they immediately went for the crumpled car that Optimus had caught. The door was stuck, and Rose went to help them yank it open; the metal finally gave way with a protesting squeal, and the terrified driver didn't wait for their hands to help him, just started running back down the road as fast as he could.
"Oh my God, everyone in NEST is going to have kittens," Mikaela groaned as she yanked at another car door, and Rose went to help her.
"Why?" Wasn't this kind of thing sort of their job, like UNIT at home?
"The giant alien robots are kind of supposed to be all hush-hush," Sam called over to her from another car, voice filled with irony. "Yeah, I don't get how that's supposed to work either."
"Okay, not UNIT, Torchwood then," Rose muttered, scrambling over another car as people fled all around her, climbing over trapped cars and running down the empty freeway lanes behind. Jack gave her a funny look after that, but then he went off in another direction, ducking behind other cars as he ran. Rose hoped he was going to go try to keep the Doctor out of trouble instead of getting into it himself and getting killed again, but she hadn't had any luck the last twenty times she'd tried to get him to be more careful of his own skin. Rose concentrated on the task at hand and ducked to look in window after window, discovering with satisfaction that the cars all seemed to be empty. Of course, there was still the bigger problem to worry about...
She turned to look again, then ducked reflexively as another car sailed overhead. As it passed over, she saw what looked bizarrely like a huge bite mark taken out of the side and popped her head up over another car to try to get a better look at the spider-thing. Next to her Sam appeared and did the same, and then gasped.
"What?" Rose asked, staring at the mishmash of thrashing parts on the side of the road. It didn't really look much like a spider with a clearer view, except for the legs. Actually it had the same huge metal fangs that the Quintesson had, except half of its pieces looked more like they'd come from a car, like the Autobots changed into. So Decepticon, like the doctor had said, except would one really have been a police car? She could see the insignia on what clearly used to be a door...
Sam apparently knew what was going on more than she did, though. "That's... no way," he stammered. "That's Barricade!"
"And what's that when it's at home?" Rose asked, since he still wasn't making any sense as far as she was concerned.
Sam blurted out, "Decepticon, first one I ran into - except seriously, he didn't used to have giant spider-legs, and I thought for sure he had to be dead by now. Although it's not like I ever saw it happen..."
"Sam..." Mikaela bit her lip, staring at the thing and huddling behind the car they'd chosen for cover. "Something's weird about this."
"Yeah, I know." Sam stared at the thing for a moment longer, then abruptly swore and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Not now - oh God."
"What?" Rose asked again, then yelped as the spider ignored a shot from Bumblebee impacting one of the police-car door pieces to surge forward and chomp casually on the nearest car, fangs shearing straight through both shell and engine block like butter. "Is it - eating the cars?"
"Yeah." Sam's face was gray. "And using them for parts. Just like it ate Barricade. Apparently, that's what Quintessons do."
"Are you saying that's - Barricade's dead? And those are just parts of his body?" Mikaela's expression was a mixture of horror and disgust.
"Yeah, basically. Welcome to the zombie apocalypse of the future," Sam said grimly. "Or the past, I guess."
"Zombie alien robots?" Rose couldn't help her incredulous denial, even though she knew that the universe was a completely ridiculous place a lot of the time. "You have got to be joking!"
"Oh, it gets better, but I think we really don't have time for the long version right now--" Sam stopped as the Quintesson turned abruptly away from the car and toward a small stand of oak trees behind it instead, and Rose saw a glimpse of a blue light flashing briefly between the trunks. The Doctor must have finally found a setting on the sonic that would get its attention. Rose bit her lip, trying to think of something useful she could do. Throwing a rock didn't seem to fall into the "useful" category, but...
As the Quintesson turned its back, Bumblebee roared suddenly up in car form before transforming right behind it, surging up with the momentum to tear two of the spidery legs right off. The Quintesson howled just like the one in the woods had, but instead of falling back it exploded into a flailing mass of metal legs and organic tentacles that burst out from under the car pieces that had been shielding them, entangling Bumblebee for just a second - just a second, but at the same time as Bee's guns went off in its face, the fangs sank deep into the yellow-and-silver metal of Bumblebee's chest, shredding their way free as the Quintesson reeled back from the shots, followed horribly by a spray of glowing blue liquid that splattered everywhere just like blood.
Sam's scream drowned out her own. "Bee!"
--To Be Continued--