Take out Training

EDIT: Originally, this was a sequel, but recently I decided to add it as a chapter with the possibility of continueing it, depending on how many people still remember this exists.

Between where they were and where they were now couldn't be more different. That had traded the cold for heat, the mud for sand and the pine tree's for small shrubby things that rolled around.

They were now somewhere in Arizona.

With their Oregon scouting mission complete, they were driving to their new base of operations. They had yet to see the base, as it had been Starscream who found it, but the ground bound Decepticon's hated it already. To them, it seemed as if every grain of sand had a mission to seek out a joint and stick there.

However, Starscream flat out refused to set up a base in Oregon, on the grounds that it was environmentally unsafe. 'And until one of you can build an anti-electrical storm machine to stop the sky from shooting us, Oregon is temporarily off-limits.' Starscream's words.

Barricade was only half sure Starscream wouldn't put them in a time-out next.

They drove across the desert on a single paved road. Said road looked out of place on the long stretch of sand and Tumbleweeds. It seemed almost pointless, out here in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in sight at either end.

Barricade lead the way in Alt-mode with Scalpel sitting on his roof. The small doctor had bluntly refused to ride inside and no one could get him to change his mind, they only conceded when it proved pointless to hide him on a desolate road anyway. Bonecrusher and Brawl trailed behind, with Brawl asking a stupid question here and there and Bonecrusher trying to ignore him. He hated it when people ask questions.

"What's a 'toaster'?" Brawl asked, as they passed a billboard offering 20% off your next purchase if you bought a 299.99$ toaster.

"A blatant rip-off."

Meanwhile, Scalpel was researching humans with the laptop.

"Interesting." The small Con said as 'Never gonna give you up!' suddenly blared through the speaker. "I clicked on a video for human biology and instead got a video of a man dancing around with a microphone."

"R-r-rick Roll'd!" Frenzy shouted out of the open front seat window.

"What?"

"N-never mind."

Typing 'Rick rolled' into a search bar, Scalpel's search turned up an almost endless list of video's, all of the same man singing.

"I fail to see the point of this-" A loud crunch interrupted him mid-sentence. He scrambled over to the trunk, knocking the laptop sideways onto the roof and scanned the road behind them. "What was that? What did you hit?"

"Calm down, it was a plastic cup. The humans throw them out everywhere." Barricade said.

"So why did you run over it?" The small robot crossed his arms and tapped one spider-like leg, glaring down on the Mustang.

" 'Cause it was there? It's not sentient! You can't look at me like that!"

"How do you know it wasn't living?"

"Because it was a cup… They don't 'live'. This isn't Cybertron, everything you touch isn't always someone."

"Go back and get it."

"What? No! Wait, why?"

"I wish to… Study it." Scalpel clacked his arms together and giggled disturbingly.

"No. I'm not going back all that way just for some plastic cup, you can pick up one later."

"Hmmph."

"H-hey! L-look!" Frenzy pointed to a billboard sign as they passed it and read: "'McBell's! the t-tastiest food this side of this god f-forsaken hell h-hole. 30 m-miles.' Those human n-nutrition e-establishments always have lots of c-cups!"

"I can't tell, did they plagiarize Taco Bell or McDonalds?" Barricade asked.

"W-we'll know w-when we g-get there."

"McBellz? Taco Bell? McDonaldz?" Scalpel repeated the unfamiliar words in a thick accent. "What language are you speaking?"

"It's English. It's the language most humans in this area use. You haven't learned it yet?"

"I have just recently arrived, I've had no time to… Study this." He clacked his tiny hands together again, only slightly less creepy then the last time he did it.

"Well you better- Hey wait a minute! You were reading it just fine off the laptop!"

"Reading is not the same as speaking. Besides, I had Frenzy translate most of it into Cybertronian."

Barricade dropped the conversation and rolled down his back seat window.

"Get in."

"What? Never!"

"I can't pull into a restaurant with you on my roof, Human's don't take that well!"

"Humph." He was clearly not happy, but he scampered inside the Mustang anyway, just as McBell's came into view.

There were two bright flickers of light in the front seat as two holograms popped up. In the driver seat was a generic looking highway cop with sunglasses, next to him was a young female cop.

The Female cop gave Scalpel a remarkably evil grin. "T-t-transform."

Scalpel folded down into a Coffee Machine just as they parked. Frenzy excited Barricade still disguised as a female human and opened the backdoor to retrieve him.

"What are we doing?" Scalpel commed Frenzy.

"We c-can't go inside without d-disguises." Frenzy answered out loud, earning a few looks from the humans standing nearby. "L-let me do the t-talking."

Frenzy walked in and went straight to the counter. He tried to make the hologram smile, but it looked more like a wolf baring it's teeth. Despite having been on the planet longer then the doctor, Frenzy still did not have all the information required to blend in with humans, as a result, the eyes on the hologram followed the same high speed as his optics. Coupled with the smile and random coffee machine, it gave him an insane appearance.

"May I help you… Ma'am?" The girl at the counter looked terrified.

"Y-yes. I w-would like the happy W-wappy McMeal and a small c-coke."

It was probably the fastest service anyone had ever received from the small out-of-the-way restaurant. It had taken less then a minute for the service girl to place a Happy Wappy McMeal and a small coke on the counter.

"That'll be 8.95$."

"8.95 of w-what?"

"Uh.. Oh.." The girl stared at them wide-eyed. "Oh, I'm sorry, that was for my other… customer. Please just take this and go."

Grabbing the bag and the drink, Frenzy placed them on top of Scalpel. He gave the service girl another terrifying smile, before exiting the restaurant.

After a tense moment of silence, one of the customers finally spoke.

"What was the coffee machine for?"

Brawl wasn't sure how to take this. As soon as Frenzy and Scalpel returned, Scalpel had refused to ride with Barricade and had latched himself on to Brawl.

Brawl wouldn't have minded so much if the tiny mech didn't creep him out. Something about the large bug eyes, antennae and spider legs made Brawl want to squish him. Just as he as about to consider doing so, while the little buggy mech was distracted with the Happy Wappy McMeal, they had finally reached their destination.

In front of them were two large buildings, built like someone had sawn a giant barrel in half and split the two pieces apart, and a square silver shack only big enough for a human.

"Home sweet Pit." Growled Bonecrusher.

Transforming, the Decepticons entered their new base. Bonecrusher, the tallest of the group, felt a few of the jagged metal pieces of his helmet just skim the roof.

It was completely bare and covered in a fine layer of dust with no windows and no backdoor. Barricade considered the possibility of blasting out their own backdoor in case they ever needed one.

Frenzy, seeing nothing of interest, decided to check out the silver shack.

"B-back in a m-minute!"

"Seriously, this is the place Starscream chose? … This is why Megatron used to kick him all the time, isn't it."

"Hey! Barri-barri!" Frenzy trotted up to the group, having finished his exploration of the shack.

"What Frenzy?"

"Somewhere o-out there, there is a human stupider then the r-rest! I went into that tiny shack, a-and the only thing in there w-was a chair! And n-not only that, but the idiots d-decided to cut a big hole in the m-middle and fill it with water!"

Barricade stared at him for a second. "Why?"

Frezy just shrugged, trotting back outside to explore the area some more.

"Um." Brawl fidgeted with his claws. "Are we recharging here?"

"Nope. We just drove several hundred miles to turn around and go right back!" Bonecrusher said. "I hate you."

"Uh… okay."

Barricade chose to ignore the two of them, seated himself onto the floor of the hanger for recharge. Pathetic as it was, it had been unnerving to wander around without a base of operations. Even if he was half hoping the Autobots would find them and blow it to smithereens just so they could find something else.

Barricade's optics flickered off into recharge, the last image they captured was of Scalpel running around the base wearing the plastic cup as a hat.