I.

– Several months after NEST is destroyed.

Samuel J. Whitwicky stood outside the repaired building of his comrades' new home. The design was impeccable – even by Autobot standards. Enormous cubes of energon glowed in the sky-high building. To some it would appear to be a purple block castle, some people would even go so far as to say it was a monument to superiority; but Sam knew different.

"Impressive, eh?" Simmons asked as he powered his electric chair towards him. "A grand total of three shitless months of gathering energy-something or others and no man power."

"It's impressive," Sam commented with his hands in his pockets, reclining against a bent-in chain length fence. "With the Decepticons wrangled up and all Black Ops compromised now, it's not like they've got much of an option anymore." he said this wistfully. "It's all done."

"And over." The man offered his long-fingered hand to Sam.

"Sure, why not?" the twenty-one-year-old smiled slightly, accepting his friendship.

"Better believe it sucks from this day out, buddy boy."

Sam pushed himself off of the broken fence. "Excuse me?"

"Face it, pal. No more evil robots, no more super secret spy missions. What else do you have to do? Think about it. What have you lost and gained in the last four years kiddo?"

"Okay, first off, and you have to really consider this, I'm not your pal or your kiddo. And second, why would you even bring up my past history? You said it yourself, I'm a magnet for alien robots." He shrugged his arms. "Something roboty will happen to me someday."

"How many times has your family been endanger since this thing began, Sam?"

"Uh… a lot."

"How many breakups?"

Sam took a breath and exhaled as he flopped back against the chain length. "Two."

Simmons looked at him with more fixation. "And how many times have you almost lost your alien friend Bumblebee? How many times have you been disappointed? Left out? Ditched?"

The young man looked out to see Ratchet and the yellow robot exiting the new Autobot fortress from some distance away. Carly would be by later for him, as Bumblebee was the one to drive him out. Sam pondered over Simmons's words and slipped his hands inside of his pockets. Bumblebee spotted him sulking and waved at him, surprised Sam had left him.

"Ya can't keep leavin' kid." Simmons warned him and wheeled himself to his jet plane.

"But-,"

"Sam!" Bumblebee called out in his static voice, trotting over on his springy feet.

"I can't keep leaving," Sam muttered.

"Sam?"

"Uh, Bee…" He looked up at his friend. "I'm glad your new home is finished… um, I think I need to get home early tonight, I've got some things I've got to take care of with Carly."

Bumblebee didn't ask and Sam didn't answer.

II.

"Sam?" Carly looked up from her laptop as her boyfriend walked in.

"Hey," He greeted her listlessly, flopping down onto their queen-sized bed. The stuffed rabbit with it's foot stitched back on made his lips twitch but otherwise left him unhappy.

"What's wrong?" She flounced over in a white night slip, her blonde curls danced around as she placed her hands on his brought in knees and kissed one. "No vacancies out there?"

Her kinky behavior and British accent got him to smiling.

"There." Carly slid through his legs and rested herself on top of him. "Mm," she kissed.

"That's nice." Sam laid his hand on top of her head as she relaxed comfortably.

"Leadfoot was going to bring me along to see the finished Autobot home, considering the fact that you and I watched him and the other Wreckers build it." She tried talking to him.

"What? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. I missed you."

"Is Bumblebee here?"

"No, he's going to try to see if he can hook up Wifi. I guess there's interference."

Sentinel's devastation on NEST rested terribly in Sam's memory for some reason.

Why should an alien robot's destruction bum him out more then it usually did?

"Sam," Carly spoke seriously for a moment and rose up off of him. "You really need to come see this." When he resisted her pull she tore him from his depressed slump. "Now get your lazy ass up and come see this!" Sam allowed Carly to halfway push him to the laptop computer they shared. "No matter how many times I try, it won't let me through."

"It won't?" Sam tried pressing down on the little wireless mouse. It did nothing. "Weird."

"Do you think you can locate the problem?"

Try as he might, no matter how long Sam stared into the dark blue screen, he couldn't summon himself to do the menial task of getting a possibly virus-inflicted computer to work. He closed the computer's top and went to flop back onto the bed in exhaustion.

"I've got a lot on my mind," the man explained as Carly perched herself on the bedside.

"Just rest." She stroked his short brown hair. "We can always apply to actual places in person if technology's stressing you out." Her words spiked his anxiety level. "Okay?"

What neither of them saw, however, was the flicker of light inside the laptop's closed crease. "Viralvox…" a soft voice muttered from underneath the screen. "Sound virus."

Sam and Carly fell asleep while white daylight splayed through the curtained windows.

"Downloading… to connections everywhere."

To be continued…

~ Lavenderpaw ~