It's been a few weeks, I know. I have plot bunnies piling up around me, but I'm battling with new characters and they've proven to be highly uncooperative. Writer's block is too mild a word for it. I'm staring at something I have no clue how to continue.

Something broke through this weekend, though... Something different. The fic below. *shrugs* And for now 'Off the Beaten Track' since it's still only unofficially part of my 'verse. The idea of including it officially is growing on me, though.

Have fun reading!

TITLE: Out of the Bag
Based on Confidential
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation – Off the Beaten Track
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved

He didn't know when shit had hit the fan, but it had and he was off and running for his life. Legs pumping, heart racing, his mind scanning for enemy approach, Sam Witwicky cursed the moment he had had the stupid idea to come along on this recon mission. He should have stayed home, in his lab, with his project, instead of traipsing around unknown landscapes and hot deserts. Sure, it was Earth. Sure, it was a continent he had read and heard about in classes, on the news, in the papers. Sure, it was nothing but sand and trees and wildlife – and deadly robots out to kill him.

And his guardian was nowhere within reach.

His partner was stuck somewhere, hopefully still functional, and he, Sam, was on his own.

His day could really have been better.

Something exploded to his right and he dove for cover, sand scraping his skin raw, getting in his clothes, his eyes, and probably into places he really had no time pondering right now.

The ground moved and he caught the eddies of a simplistic mind, a drone, one who followed orders without second thought. A lot less than a symbiote, a whole lot less than the very advanced Cybertronian minds he had so often touched before, but still a damn lot more complicated and advanced than the run-of-the-mill Cray computer.

Still, it was so primitive that Sam didn't get the right connection to open the subspace link and call his armor.

Yeah, hell of a day.

He got up again and was running once more.

He didn't get very far.

Sliding to a halt wide eyes took in the abyss before him, a huge canyon that looked like a raw open wound within the desert. It was really deep. Grand Canyon deep, for all Sam cared.

He wiped sweat out of his eyes.

End of the road.

::Bumblebee!:: he screamed across the empty planes of his mind.

There was no reply.

He was on his own.

At the end of his road.

Dead in the water… desert… whatever.

For once Sam wished he had Tony Stark's Extremis inside him. At least it would let him uplink to satellites. His mind was too limited for that; he wouldn't reach anything out here.

The ground shook and the drone burst through, the optics glittering almost maliciously. Sam knew it would take too long to deactivate the mech, that his terrified mind, his exhausted body, didn't allow him the luxury of time.

There was a scream overheard, of engines reversing thrust and breaking. The drone was momentarily distracted and Sam started to run once more, along the rim of the canyon, away… just away.

A huge shadow passed over him and he briefly glanced into the sky, cold fear settling in. The ground was shaking again and he knew he was trapped when the drone tunneled under him.

He moved aside.

His foot caught… nothing.

The world tilted.

Sam screamed in terror as he slid off the rim.

Above him something exploded, followed by screeches of anger and disbelief. Sand and rock and debris showered over him and he slid more, hitting a ledge… which broke.

He was in free fall.

Sam didn't have moments of his life flash before his eyes. He didn't feel anything but the sheer horror of the moment.

Something grabbed him hard, winding him, driving all the air out of his lungs. Stunned, gasping, trying to catch a thought, he could only lay there. His mind caught chitters, unknown, alien, but Cybertronian. No one he had ever met before.

Fingers curled around his battered body, raising him. He caught glimpses of gray and silver and black and washed-out browns.

The world shifted greatly and he was dumped into what seemed to be a cockpit, then acceleration pushed him into a hard seat and through a transparent canopy he saw the sky, clouds racing toward and then past him as the flyer broke through the flimsy white. Higher and higher, toward the outer limits of the atmosphere, then suddenly diving.

Sam felt his stomach lurch, but he had no energy left to be sick. He braced himself weakly and was barely surprised that he had been restrained to the seat, though it was a normal harness and not a trapping net.

The flyer moved erratically and Sam caught something following him … shooting at them!

He gasped as the flyer did an outrageous move and the missile flew past, then was destroyed by a well-placed shot. The flyer turned sharply, the force pushing Sam into the side of the cockpit, then met the enemy head-on. It was a Cybertronian jet.

For the whole ten seconds Sam saw it.

Then it went down in flames and exploding parts as the one Sam was currently in shot it to pieces.

Without a second's hesitation, the flyer shot off again, leaving the damaged mech, the Decepticon, to crash and burn.

The sky raced past at an impossible speed and they were skimming along the atmosphere, Sam feeling dizzy and tired and exhausted, and still so very scared. His mind tried to catch anything from his rescuer, but he couldn't hold a thought together. Finally he pushed himself past that, collected his frazzled nerves, and tried for contact.

It had him recoil in terror.

And he struck at the other mind.

The jet dipped hard, like hitting an airhole, and Sam felt his stomach meet his mouth. His flight banked hard to the right, rolling, and he gasped, feeling the fear rise. He struck again and again the plane sank like a stone in water, only to catch itself once more.

"Stop it!" a hard, cold voice sliced through the cockpit.

"Let me go!" he blurted.

There was a moment of silence, then a nasty chuckle. "Do you know where you are, Prime? Do you? Really? Because if you do and still make the demand to be free, you are suicidal."

The jet rolled again, staying on its back, and Sam saw nothing but clouds below.

He swallowed hard.

"Land," he whispered.

"Not yet."

::Land!::

The command was the most powerful he could manage and it was a weak whimper compared to his normal mind-strength.

The jet shuddered a little and rolled back onto its belly, but it didn't land.

Sam closed his eyes, breathing hard, hands pressed against the cockpit walls.

"What do you want?" he asked after a few minutes of silence.

The silence continued.

"What. Do. You. Want?!"

Still no answer. The jet started to descend, though. They broke through clouds and suddenly there was land underneath.

Harsh, red desert land.

Sam desperately tried to grab a hold of the steel ball of a mind that resided within the mech's body, but he was way too weak by now. In pain, exhausted, frightened, and weak.

For all he had trained, he had lost it this time and failed. Epic fail.

"Hold on."

The human gave a cry of surprise as the jet shifted around him and the harness gave way, flinging him out of the cockpit, only to be handled by sharp-edged claws and kept from falling to the ground that was about fifty feet below him. There was a plume of dust and sand, then he felt the soft tremor of the mech touching down.

The fifty feet had declined to maybe twenty-three. The hands were still holding him, but not crushing him or pinning him down.

He looked up and met red optics in an alien face. Nothing about this mech was familiar; he didn't look at all like the last time he had seen him. Aside from the red optics, there was nothing that told Sam about who he was. No sigil.

But he knew. He had briefly touched the mind.

The flyer lowered him to the ground and he stumbled, fell, tried to get up, and finally his body just stayed down. Sitting in the sand, trembling, feeling bruised and achy and so very much at the end of his rope, he could only stare at the mech.

The flyer knelt down, gazing at him with a smirk.

"Speechless, Prime?"

"W-why?" Sam didn't even want to ponder why this one knew that he was a Prime.

"Because you're of no use dead."

"Of no use to you?"

"To your world, human!" he growled.

"But you're…"

The unknown face tilted and the smile was downright nasty.

"You're the enemy! You're Starscream!"

"Oh, you're so wrong, human. And so right." Starscream looked around, apparently scanning. "We lost him, but he'll be back. Sometimes your kind is even more stupid than the Autobots. You never considered it was a trap."

"We did!" he snarled, anger giving him strength.

They had taken all precaution necessary, but in the end they had still been surprised.

Starscream sneered.

Sam wet his lips, aware that he was currently in no position to antagonize his 'rescuer', but he wouldn't just sit here and wait for whatever Starscream had planned. He collected what power he had left and launched a spike at the mind he had already briefly brushed over once.

Starscream rocked back, catching himself with one hand on the ground, and his red optics flared. Sam scrambled back, kicking up sand, aware that even if he could run, he wouldn't get far – unless he could incapacitate the Decepticon flyer.

He launched another lance into the enemy mind, but instead of felling the former second-in-command of Megatron, he only had him bend over, hissing. Sam was directly underneath the new face, the less scary face part of him pointed out, then everything simply went black in a flash of pain.

tbc...