Glove Compartment - Stepping Out - Glen's Story
Well, this took a while, too, mainly because I wanted to be careful about writing Glen. I didn't want to make him too crazy and erratic, and wanted to give him a little depth to his character at the same time. I think it came out okay in the end. Am happy with this.
Glen Whitmann stared hard at the piece of white card in his hand as he held it up in front of him, focusing all his strength and inner energies on it. Perhaps if he focused hard enough, he could pull a Johnny Blaze and make it burst into flames. Inner fire within man, and all that. Maybe if he could master the controlling spirit he could burn that demonic little card into ashes.
Five minutes later, he gave up and tossed the card onto his table. No flaming skulls and snazzy leather jackets for him. Not that it would have done him much good where he was going anyway, he thought. Probably bring him even more ridicule and humiliation.
"Reunion Dance, my ass," he muttered.
The invitation had come in the mail that morning, and whereas he would have liked nothing more than to rip the cursed thing in half and toss it in the recycling bin, his cousin had snatched it first and had then insisted on going. Glen had declined at first until the extortionist reminded him that he owed him for the heads-up about the FBI raid.
Glen had tried to argue that since they had been arrested anyway, the favor was moot, but then the little traitor had threatened to never play Warcraft with him again, and to tell his grandma a few things that Glen would rather she not know about - like the fact that he was a hacker now working in secret for the government.
Honestly, this guy was as bad as Simmons.
It didn't help to solve his little problem though. Sure his cousin could say he wanted to go. He wasn't the one who spent his high school years being laughed at and called names. Why? All because he'd been on the amateur wrestling team while Glen relegated himself to the computer club. He didn't see what the appeal had been. His cousin wasn't even a cool wrestler like The Rock or Triple H, but he still got less grief from his peers than Glen.
And now he had to go back and face those same peers, and he couldn't even tell them he had helped save the world.
He needed major help on this front, and there was only one guy that could help him. Rolling to his computer, he logged in and with the tap of a few keys, hijacked a communication line.
"Help me!!!" he screamed into the microphone as soon as the connection was made...
------------
Jazz all but jumped out of his plating as an organic screech assailed his audio sensors, clapping his hands to his helm as he tried to block out the sound.
“Frag it all! Glen! Shut up!” he roared.
Ironhide stared over at him in alarm. “Are you malfunctioning?”
“No. Glen hacked into my comm-link,” Jazz tried to explain while at the same time trying to get the young man to calm down. “Glen! Get off this frequency now! No, I’m not gonna listen to ya till you do. No! Shut it! Use the phone like a normal human.”
The Solstice shook his head to clear the static in his audio sensors, the result of Glen’s initial scream.
“I don’t think a phone will be of much use to us even if he does use it,” Ironhide told him. “Not like we can answer one.”
Jazz shot him a dirty look. “Next time I’ll tell him to hack into you, and you see how you like some crazy organic violating your sensors.” He placed a hand back to his head as another call came in. “Glen, I swear if you hack into me one more time, I’m gonna come over there and stomp your squishy ass into the ground.”
“Better make sure Optimus didn’t hear that,” Ironhide muttered.
“Hear what?” the Autobot Commander asked, coming into the room.
Jazz cursed and gave Ironhide a look that just dared him to repeat what he’d heard, and face certain retribution if he did.
“He threatened to step on a human,” the black mech replied with a smirk. He knew he’d probably get hell for it later from both Jazz and Bumblebee, but he was bored and up for a challenge.
“You are so dead!”
“Bring it on.”
“Oh, I’ll bring it alright. Rusting sonova…”
“Jazz!”
Optimus leveled him with a patented glare that promised certain lecture if the smaller mech couldn’t come up with a creative way to escape, and fast.
“Would you care to explain why you want to harm the native life forms. Considering this is their planet and the fact that-.”
“Glen and I have privacy issues to deal with, gotta go!” Jazz jumped into alt-mode and sped out of the room before either of the two could stop him. The human had better have a good explanation for this.
---------------
Glen looked up at the white Autobot towering above him in his back yard, and gulped. Jazz may have been the smallest of the Autobot crew, but he was intimidating, what with those Batman-styled horns and the Wolverine claws and the Cyclops-styled visor. He briefly wondered if Jazz could shoot lasers from his eyes, too.
“Hey! Back to the here-and-now, Glenny-boy. Last person I need to be oogled by is you.” Jazz clicked two clawed fingers in front of the man’s face. “So you wanna tell me why you hacked my radio, nearly got my aft fragged by Optimus and then dragged me all the way down here?”
“I need your help in a big way, man. See, I got this Reunion thingy I have to go to, and well, guy like me? I was never the popular dude in high school, and going back to this thing is just askin’ for people to laugh at me again.”
“Why would they laugh?” Jazz asked. “You’re obviously intelligent, and fun to hang out with on occasion, and despite your tendency to annoy the slag out of me, you’ve got some pretty good taste in music.”
“I wear glasses, play games in front of my computer all day, and I’m fat.”
The Autobot gave a shrug. “So? Doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“Well no, but try telling that to a bunch of shallow, upper class, suburban kids. To them, cool means looking anorexic or beefed up, and being an air-head. Why do you think Sam had a hard time with Trent?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Jazz was confused now. “I can't possibly squish you into the size you want to be - Optimus’ll have my hide. I’m not going to shine regenerative lasers into your visual sensors either - that’ll have Ratchet after my mech fluid.”
Glen looked as if he’d be physically sick. “Whoa, bad mental images, and with those Krueger-claws….” He gave himself a shake. “Remind me to never watch slasher flicks with you.”
“Your point, Glen.”
“Could you teach me to dance?”
Jazz opened his mouth to say something smart, then shut it again as he ran the unusual request through his processor. “Why would you want me to teach you how to dance.”
“C’mon man, I’ve seen the way you move. That’s style right there, and if a big guy like you can move like that and make it look cool, then there’s still hope for me.”
The First Lieutenant looked squarely at the human, optic to eye. “Glen, all the style in the world ain’t gonna help ya if y’ain’t comfortable in yer own skin. Not being of a certain stereotype doesn’t make you inferior.”
The hacker tried not to look a little dejected. “Easy for you to say.”
“It is. Looked at me lately? I’m the shortest and smallest of the entire bunch, and I’m second-in-command. Y’think I got to that position feelin’ sorry for m’self ‘cause I was a runt? This is who I am, I dealt with it and I’m better for it. You don’t like who you are, why should the rest of us?”
Glen looked back up at him, and Jazz saw something that looked like a flicker of hope in the young man’s eyes. He shifted. “Well, I guess none of ‘em can say they cracked the code of an alien species, or hacked into a Transformer’s radio link.”
“Which, if you do so again, means I will break your fingers.”
“So, dancing. Will you show me a few moves?”
Jazz sighed. “Alright, what do you know?”
“Not much. Just a shuffle here, and a step there.” Glen demonstrated.
Jazz pointed clawed finger straight at him. “Never do that again.” He tossed his hands into the air. “This is gonna take a while. Now, are you at least familiar with this little human game called DDR?”
The human all but bounced in glee. “Do I know DDR?! Sure do!”
“Then imagine a patch of dancefloor as the mat and bust a move, like so…”
-------------
The white Solstice pulled up in front of the hotel where the reunion dance was being held. Glen looked out of the window a little nervously and tugged at the collar of his shirt. Jazz turned up the air conditioning. He did not want sweat on his leather seats.
“I don’t think I can do this, Jazz,” Glen said.
“You’re not gonna wimp out on me now, not after all the work it took me to whip you into something of a decent dancer,” Jazz replied. “So get your little hacker butt in there and make me proud.”
“What if I screw up?”
“Wont be the end of the world.” Jazz opened his door. “Out.”
“Oh, one thing.” Glen reached into a pocket and withdrew a small memory card, dropping it into the glove compartment. “Just my way of saying thanks. It’s got the newest releases on it, courtesy your friendly neighborhood hacker.”
“That was a lame line, but thanks. Now beat it.”
“Okay!” Glen got out, muttering to himself. “I can do this.”
“Yeah, you can. Just remember the DDR.”
----------------------------
Also be sure to check out "Free Time" just one entry down on the main page for some Jazz, Bee and Mikaela crack.