~Earlier that evening… (last time; I swear)~
“I’m going out for a drive; see you later, Dad!” Flash Sentry said over his shoulder as he slipped out the front screen door of his home.
“Try not to fall in love with every cute girl you come across,” his father’s offhand response followed him down the steps and off the porch, causing Flash to roll his eyes.
“If I’d known telling you about Twilight was going to lead to months of heckling I never would’ve done it!” Flash shouted back, hearing only a laugh and what sounded like ‘drive safe’ as he rounded the corner of the house. The grin faded from his face as he approached the small separated two-car garage at the back of the driveway. Good natured if somewhat snarky parenting aside, there were actually a few girls preoccupying his thoughts at the moment… just not necessarily the ones his dad thought, or for the reasons he had implied.
Flash stopped in front of the garage’s side door, his hand hovering near the handle as he briefly considered putting this all off until morning. He shook his head and steeled himself with a deep breath as he pushed open the door and stepped inside, letting it close gently behind him before flipping the light switch.
Fluorescent bulbs flickered on with a soft buzz, bathing the garage with a sterile light. Immediately in front of Flash sat what might as well be the sibling he never had: his father’s well-maintained yet seemingly never road-ready 1971 Plymouth Barnacuda. Despite its age, the vibrant lime green paintjob showed nary a scratch; a testament to how rarely it left the protection of the garage.
The vehicle really did feel like part of the family. Flash had known this car his entire life, having grown up watching his old man tinker and toy with her engine, and when he was old enough, helping out himself. He had learned practically everything he knew about classic cars under this very hood. He loved this car just as much as his dad did, and he was pretty sure if it could talk it would say it loved them right back.
The machine occupying the other half of the garage, however, was very unlikely to express the same sentiment… and unfortunately, it could talk.
Flash stepped around the front of the Barnacuda, his gaze settling on the sleek, mirror-sheen polish of a jet-black muscle car that, if one didn’t look too closely, resembled a fifth generation model Chevy Camareo. It was a far cry from the aged, worse-for-wear Camareo he’d been given for his sixteenth birthday, and to be honest Flash was pretty sure his dad didn’t really believe that it was the very same car with a custom body overhaul and a new paintjob. His dad had never pushed the issue though, and for that he was thankful. The mere thought of lying to his father any more than he already had twisted his stomach into almost as many knots as the notion of telling him the truth did.
He stopped in front of the Camareo, hands automatically stuffing themselves into the pockets of his windbreaker jacket as he awkwardly shifted his weight from foot to foot. The gleam of the blue shield and yellow lightning bolt that adorned the car’s hood had not that long ago been one of his favorite sights, but looking down on it now Flash felt only the cold brick of guilt sitting in his gut.
“Um,” he managed somewhere between a mumble and a squeak with a voice made of sandpaper, “H-hey.”
Mental facepalm. An auspicious start, to be sure. He coughed and cleared his throat.
“You, uh… I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now. Not that you actually see me; I know you said that when you’re like this it’s more like your sensor things pick up my heartbeat and brain activity and stuff... although, haha, after the last time we talked I bet you’re surprised that I have any brain activity at all, right?”
Flash’s half-hearted chuckle at his own expense was met with deafening silence, accentuated by a single flicker from one of the overhead lights. He sighed.
“Okay, look. I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’s the truth. I’m not gonna try and blame all of what I said on being messed up by the Dazzlings’ powers, because I think we both know that… that on some level the stuff I said was still me. I do resent getting dragged into this whole mess. I feel like for the past couple of years I have had zero control of anything in my life, and I hate it; I just get so frustrated sometimes and I…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you and the other Autobots. It’s not your fault, and I was wrong and a… a jerk for saying that it was.”
Flash’s gaze fell to the cracked concrete floor, remaining there for a long, unanswered moment. With a sigh he turned to leave, only to freeze in his tracks when a soft, muffled click echoed through the garage. He glanced over his shoulder just as the Camareo’s driver-side door swung open of its own volition.
With a grin, Flash strode over to the car and stepped inside, shutting the door as gently as possible behind him.
“Does, uh, does this mean I’m forgiven?”
“It’s a start,” a deep and robust, yet distinctly feminine voice issued forth from the car’s speakers as the radio flicked on. “I still have half a mind to leave you transportationless for a while to teach you a lesson… but it’s good to see you’re back to your usual self.”
Flash let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as some of the tension left his shoulders. “Thanks, Blackbolt.”
“Subwoofer transmitted a rundown of what happened at the concert,” she explained. “His version of events seemed a little… embellished. Even for him. Mind filling me in?”
Flash nodded. “I don’t remember all the details clearly, but I’ll do my best. Can we do it on the road, though?” he asked with a sheepish grin. “I kinda told my Dad I was going for a drive.”
“I suppose it’s better than having him come out here wondering if there’s something wrong under my hood again,” the car answered with a short sigh as the engine turned over and revved once. “Any place in particular?”
Flash grinned and reached for the steering wheel and gearshift. “Actually, yes. I was thinking we could head up to-YEOWCH!” He jerked his hands back from the sharp shock he’d received upon touching the wheel. “What was that for?”
“Nice try, kid, but when have I ever let you drive?” Blackbolt chuckled as she remotely triggered the overhead garage door. “Just tell me where we’re headed and put your belt on.”
Flash complied with a low grumble. “Y’know, this is exactly the kinda thing that I’m talking about. Can’t even drive my own car. Just once I’d like to-WHUP!!” The air was forced from his lungs as Blackbolt shot forward--roof narrowly missing the still-rising garage door--and reached the end of the driveway in an instant. She slid into a tire-squealing turn, engine gunning even harder as she sped away down the open road.
Canterlot City was not overly large by most standards, but on a warm, clear spring night like this one it was still a sight to behold. The persistent lights of the city’s suburbs sprawled out across the floor of the shallow valley below, giving gentle way to the less densely populated countryside. In contrast, the taller, glass-surfaced office buildings centered at the heart of the city shimmered brightly even at night, standing as a beacon to hold the darkness at bay.
But even in that darkness, there was yet another kind of light. High above the city, sparkling across a flawless canvas, the stars kept their ever-present vigil; a constant, gentle reminder that even a city like Canterlot--which occasionally played host to magical beings from another dimension, or served as an erstwhile home for a few refugee alien robots--was but one small corner of a much grander universe.
From the top of a large hill just outside the city limits, Flash Sentry took in the entire vista with a sigh.
“What’s wrong?” Blackbolt asked. Her voice, backed by the soft and steady underlying tones of a soulful rock ballad, wafted through the open windows to reach Flash’s ears as he reclined on her hood with his hands folded behind his head. “You’re not doing that ‘wistful angsty teenager’ thing again, are you?”
“Nah,” Flash chuckled. “I was just thinking about how when you’re a little kid people always ask you what you want to be when you grow up, and kids always answer with crazy stuff or whatever they think is cool at the time. I’m pretty sure at least once I said I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go into space and explore, and go on adventures, and meet aliens…” he trailed off, with a frown. “Now the adventures and the aliens all keep landing in my lap, and half the time I wish they hadn’t.”
“Ah,” Blackbolt said, “so this is an angsty teenager thing.”
Flash rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just… if I went back in time and told five-year-old me that one day he’d meet a magic pony princess from another dimension and have a transforming robot car, five-year-old me would blow gasket thinking about how cool that all sounded.” He sighed again. “What the hell happened?”
“It sounds like you grew up,” Blackbolt said, her voice low. “Reality is rarely as simple as our minds make it out to be when we’re young.”
“Do Cybertronians have young?” Flash asked. “I mean, being robots and everything I just figured you didn’t really grow.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s mostly true--in a physical sense, at least. Our bodies typically don’t change in size over time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t develop mentally or emotionally. Like you, there was a time that I never would’ve imagined that I’d find myself here; hiding on an underdeveloped, unimportant world…”
“Gee, thanks,” Flash deadpanned.
“You’re welcome,” Blackbolt returned with just a touch too much politeness to be taken seriously. “And if you had told the old me that I’d be hiding here in the company of Autobots, I probably would’ve blown a gasket as well. An actual gasket, in my case.”
“That’s not really the same thing, though, is it?” Flash shook his head. “You changed your mind and switched sides, but I don’t get how that relates to me growing up.”
The song playing from her speakers cut out, and Blackbolt sighed.
“Hop off.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Just do it before I catapult you down the hill,” Blackbolt growled, and the vibration of the hood latch releasing beneath him emphasized her point.
He threw his legs out to the side and slid to the ground, turning and backing a few steps away as Blackbolt’s frame began to shift.
A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the normally smooth contours of the Camareo, individual pieces sliding back and forth, some disappearing into the car’s interior and leaving gaps through which the internal servos and motors could be seen and heard as they they began to spin up. Metal squealed and hydraulics hissed; the side doors seemed to fold in on themselves even as they opened, each forming a mechanical arm that immediately pushed the vehicle up on its rear wheels. The wheels in turn folded up into the undercarriage as two feet replaced them on the ground, the trunk splitting into a pair of boxy segments that compressed down to form legs as Blackbolt stood.
The grill, bumper, and hood split and opened; a black-plated mechanical head swinging up and into place before the front of the car twisted about, re-aligning to form an armored chestplate that covered the space where the head had emerged. Jet-black plating, as smooth and reflective as the surface of the car she had once been, formed from innumerable smaller sections over the arms, legs and body, locking into place with something between a hiss and ratcheting click. Blackbolt rolled her shoulders, at first together and then one after the other, flexing the streamlined armor covering most of her form before the last of the segments fused together.
Flash watched the entire process with a grin, only to snap to attention and begin looking about nervously.
“Relax,” Blackbolt’s voice sounded fuller without the intermediary of a speaker system, “there’s no one but us around for miles.” She gave one last creaking stretch before she walked to the edge of the hill with heavy, earth-shaking steps and sat with one leg out straight and the other bent at the knee, resting one arm atop it while using the other to prop herself up.
“This hill isn’t exactly concealing, and you kinda stand out,” Flash settled himself onto the grass next to her. “People could be miles away and still see you.”
“I haven’t stretched my legs for almost a week; a couple of minutes will be fine.” She turned slightly to look down at him. “Besides, it’s easier to talk to you like this.”
Flash furrowed his brow as Blackbolt continued.
“When I first activated--that is to say, when I was born--I already knew that I was a soldier. No one told me, and it wasn’t something that I consciously decided to do… I just felt it, deep in my spark. The problem was that I was so focused on fighting a war that I didn’t care about why I was fighting.”
“That was when you were a Decepticon?” Flash asked, drawing a nod from Blackbolt. “And you never questioned… any of it?”
“I was too busy basking in my own ego. I did whatever I was ordered to, and I did it well. I treated every assignment as if it were the most important task I’d ever undertaken, and my superiors recognized that. They held me up as an example for others to follow, and it… honestly, it felt good.” Blackbolt’s shoulders heaved as she sighed. “The notion that what I was doing was wrong never even crossed my mind.”
“What changed?” Flash asked.
Blackbolt let out a clipped laugh. “I got my afterburner handed to me on a platinum platter, that’s what.” She leaned back, now bracing herself with both arms as she turned her gaze to the starry sky. “I was given an assignment of great importance--supposedly by order of Megatron himself, though I never actually met him. I was instructed to hunt down and destroy the Autobots’ leader, and to bring his broken body back to Cybertron. It took me some time to actually find him, but when I did…” she trailed off with a shake of her head. “Honestly, I didn’t understand what it meant to be a Prime until that day.”
“He was really strong, huh?”
“Overwhelmingly so,” Blackbolt nodded solemnly, “but not just in combat. There was a sort of… nobility about him that I’d never experienced before. The way he carried himself, the weight behind his words… the supreme confidence and trust he inspired in his followers… I’d never met anyone like him before, and I don’t expect that I ever will again. He proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I was, but before he finished me off he hesitated.
“Maybe he was simply showing compassion, or maybe being a Prime meant he was able to see something in me that I myself was blind to, but instead of blasting me to scrap, he asked me one question. ‘Why do you serve Megatron?’”
Flash leaned forward intently, folding his arms over his knees. “What’d you say?”
“Nothing,” Blackbolt admitted. “I just… didn’t have an answer. I just sat there, staring up at him like some newborn protoform. After a moment he lowered his weapon and… well, he just left. Turned his back on me without hesitation. At first I thought that was incredibly careless of him, but since then I’ve realized that in that moment... he already knew. He knew that I wouldn’t attack him; that I’d accepted my defeat.” She made a noise somewhere between a laugh and snort. “All it took was one little question that I’d never had the forethought or courage to ask myself.”
“I’m guessing that the Decepticons weren’t happy,” Flash stated.
“No,” Blackbolt shook her head. “After I returned to Cybertron I was yesterday’s scrap… in the Decepticon ranks, you’re only as good as your last mission. It was one of many things I started to notice--little things, at first--that really began to bother me. The lack of genuine respect for one another; the every ‘Con for themselves attitude and the overwhelming tendency to take advantage of anyone else at the first opportunity,” she paused for an almost imperceptible moment, “the casual cruelty displayed toward every other species we encountered... things that I had always accepted as the way things were. I don’t know exactly why, but I started to feel like it was all... wrong. Like there was a better way.
“Needless to say, once I started thinking like that I lost pretty much all motivation to perform my usual duties. I fell even further out of favor with the Decepticon leadership, and I was eventually assigned to the security detail of a very remote research station.”
“Ah,” Flash nodded, “that was the lab where Maestro was working, and when he decided to escape to save Sweetie Bot, you helped,” the young teen furrowed his brow, “but how’d you know he was an undercover Autobot?”
“I didn’t,” Blackbolt shrugged. “I only found that out after. He’d sabotaged the sensor net, leaving false readings over half the base, and in the confusion Subwoofer managed to sneak through with a small shuttle to extract them. I intercepted and subdued them in the airlock, but then I just sort of… well, I just stopped to think, I guess.”
Blackbolt tilted her head back down, regarding the glowing spread of Canterlot City before her.
“I realized that the situation was now reversed… I was the one holding the weapon over a defeated foe, and I found myself curious, so I asked Maestro why he was doing this. He looked down at Sweetie Bot hiding behind him, and then he looked up at me, completely unafraid, and said: ‘Because it is the right thing to do.’”
“Wow,” Flash breathed. “That’s… incredibly lame and I’m straight-up shocked that it worked on you.”
“Shut up,” Blackbolt groused, flicking his shoulder gently with one finger, which was still enough to topple the laughing teenager over on his side.
“Sorry, but it is!”
“See if I ever tell you a story again, kid.”
“Okay, okay,” Flash relented as he sat back up. “Honestly, it might be cheesy but you know what? If I was in that situation, I… I’d like to think that I’d have the guts to say something like that.” Blackbolt responded with an appreciative nod. “So what happened next?”
“Slag if I know. The next thing I remember was providing covering fire while they ran for the shuttle… and then I remember helping pilot it as we escaped the base. The ship took a lot of damage, and while we gave our pursuers the slip, we ended up limping through space for about a week before we picked up a faint Energon signature coming from a nearby system. We knew we wouldn’t make it much farther without repairs and refueling, so we set course for the source of the signal. And now...”
“Here you are,” Flash finished for her.
“Here we are,” Blackbolt nodded solemnly, “not a single mote of actual Energon to be found. Stuck on a rock, hiding right smack in the midst of a bunch of squishy biologics that cause us no end of grief.”
“At your service,” Flash offered his best impression of a flourishing bow while still seated on the grass. “I’d say the feeling’s mutual, but even without you guys here us ‘squishy biologics’ would still have to deal with weirdo magical invasions from another dimension, so, y’know… six of one; half dozen of the other.”
“Heh, fair enough,” Blackbolt laughed as she leaned back and looked up at the sky again. “Anyway, the point of telling you all this was that while my kind might not grow like you do, we can still grow. I was naive for most of my life; I never looked beyond the end of my weapon and I thought I had it all figured out. Then one day I woke up and realized that what I thought I wanted was nothing like I expected it to be.” She glanced down at him. “That kinda sound like you and your dream of going on adventures turning out the way it did?”
“Yeah,” a pensive Flash nodded shallowly. “In a really roundabout, convoluted kind of way, but… yeah, I guess it does.”
Blackbolt returned her gaze to the sky. A long moment passed before Flash once again broke the silence, gesturing to the stars.
“Which one is Cybertron?”
“Hm? Oh,” Blackbolt said, “you can’t see it from here. Wrong hemisphere of the planet.”
Flash nodded slowly. “Do you miss it?”
“A little bit, sometimes,” Blackbolt answered almost immediately, “but I’m not really sure there’s anything worth going back for… not that I’d even be welcome. For better or for worse, I’ve thrown my lot in with the Autobots now.”
“I wonder if that’s how she feels,” Flash mumbled with a frown.
“She who?” Blackbolt perked up. “One of your girlfriends?”
Flash blushed. “She’s not--I mean, she was, but--and I don’t have… ugh, you’re worse than my Dad!”
“You make it too easy!” Blackbolt laughed. “Anyway, who did you mean? The one with the red and yellow hair?”
“Sunset Shimmer,” Flash nodded, tearing up a bit of grass and idly rolling it between his fingers. “Listening to you tell your story, I couldn’t help but think of how it sounded a lot like hers, at least the parts of it that I know. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but she was just so… so full of herself. And manipulative. Everything was ‘her way or the highway’, but half the time she’d fool you into thinking that whatever she wanted you to do was your idea in the first place. It took me a long time to figure out just how awful she really was, and by then she had the whole school under her thumb.”
Blackbolt frowned. “I wasn’t trying to force my will on anyone or anything; I was… well, I was satisfied with my position. Happy, even.” She shook her head. “I’m not seeing the connection.”
“I was getting to that; keep your pants on.”
“Not wearing any.”
“... Can I finish the story?”
Blackbolt chuckled and bade him continue with an exaggerated wave of her hand.
Flash cleared his throat. “Twilight showed up out of nowhere and beat Sunset at the Fall Formal--in more ways than one--but then she and the other girls turned around and offered to be Sunset’s friends. They wanted to help her be a better person, and she really did change. It was almost scary how quickly she went from being a raging bitch to the quietest wallflower in the whole school… well, aside from Fluttershy, anyway.
“At first I thought it had to be an act; that she was just playing along and biding her time… just like she did with me… then this whole thing with the Dazzlings came along and I...” Flash shook his head and tossed the strands of grass, letting the gentle breeze carry them away. “Anyway, I’m really glad I was wrong.”
Blackbolt hummed. “So she and I were both blinded by our pride, and then after getting kicked to the curb, we realized that we’d been idiots all along?”
“Kinda?” Flash shrugged. “Not just that, though. She’s from the same place as Twilight; on the other side of that portal thing in the Wondercolt statue. For whatever reason, she hasn’t gone home, and it seems like she’s still trying to make a place for herself at CHS. Twilight’s friends are the only ones that have her back, and I just thought that sounded kinda like what you were saying about not going home to Cybertron and being stuck in a strange world with the rest of the Autobots.”
Blackbolt nodded, her downcast optics glancing about pensively.
“I guess it’s a good thing that she stayed,” Flash continued, “who knows what would’ve happened at the concert if she hadn’t been there. I still don’t really know what the Dazzlings were planning, but Sunset probably saved a lot of lives tonight… including mine.” A wisp of a smile crossed his face. “Guess that’s another thing you two have in common.”
Blackbolt was quiet for a long moment until she let out a light ‘hmph’ and turned to gaze out at the city again.
“That’s it? Just ‘hmph?’”
“I’m thinking.”
This time it was Flash’s turn to ‘hmph’ as he too turned his eyes to Canterlot, though he was hardly paying attention to the view. A thick silence draped over the hilltop, one that Flash knew was his to break. He took a deep, slow breath and released it just as gently.
“I’m sorry for saying that you’re useless and that we… that I’d be better off without you,” he said in as level a tone as he could manage. “My life’s gotten a lot more complicated since you showed up, but it’s not like you or the other Autobots had much choice. You did what you had to do.”
“Did we?” Blackbolt surprised him with the soft tone of her voice. “We landed here out of necessity, sure, but it was my decision that got you involved.” She shook her head. “If I had just waited for Maestro to finish his analysis we would’ve known that you weren’t the source of the Energon readings, and I never would have-”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Flash cut her off. “Okay? I know I crack jokes about it sometimes, but that was a freak accident; if anything it’s my fault for not taking better care of my own car.” He sighed. “Blackbolt, if you hadn’t been following me that night, I’d be dead. Gone; done; game over. As much as I complain about how hard it is to keep you guys hidden, or having to keep tabs on Sunset and Twilight and the girls to try and find out more about this weird power they have, I’d way rather be doing that then pushing up daisies.”
Flash abruptly stood, brushing some dirt and loose grass from his jeans as he turned to face Blackbolt and placed a hand on the cool outer shell of her arm.
“You know what? Even if I didn’t owe you, I’d still help you.”
“Why?” Blackbolt asked.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Flash answered with a smirk that quickly broadened into a full on smile. “Plus, deep down inside, little five-year-old Flash won’t let me forget how awesome it is to be best friends with a giant transforming robot.”
“We’re best friends now, are we?” Blackbolt laughed, a loud guffaw that made Flash glad they were still far out of earshot of anyone else. “I’m not sure how I should feel about that.”
“Well, it’s the truth,” Flash said with a shrug and a warm smile as he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets.
Blackbolt settled down from her outburst and nodded, her voice turning somber once more. “Thanks, Flash.”
“You’re welcome.” Flash responded as another mischievous grin crept into his features. “So… you think maybe your ‘best friend’ could take the wheel for the drive home?”
“Keep dreaming, kid.”
“Aw, c’mon!” Flash laughed even as he threw his hands into the air in protest. “You’ve got me following around the hottest girls in school like I’m some kind of creepy stalker! If I’m not gonna have any control over my rep at CHS, couldn’t you at least let me steer once in awhile?”
“Oh, so you do think the girls are attractive,” Blackbolt sat up and give him a playful nudge that nearly knocked him off his feet. “Which one are you planning on hooking up with next?”
Flash scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, first of all, I haven’t even-” he cut himself off when Blackbolt’s head whipped around toward Canterlot, her mechanical body visibly tensing up. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard something.”
Flash shook his head, glancing at their surroundings. “I didn’t-”
“No, not like that,” Blackbolt waved him off as she stood, her full attention now on the city below. “It was just for a microsecond, but I thought I picked up part of a transmission. It almost sounded like…” She put a hand to her ear. “Maestro, come in… Blackbolt calling Maestro; do you copy?” She waited for a moment. “Subwoofer, do you read me, over? Sweetie Bot? Anyone on this frequency at all?” Another brief moment passed before Blackbolt lowered her hand.
“Blackbolt, what’s going on?” Flash asked as he moved to stand beside her.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t reach anyone and I’m not even picking up their transponder signals. It’s almost like there’s a...” She trailed off as her optics widened. “Slag.”
Flash huffed. “Really confused and very concerned here; can I at least get a hint?”
“I’ll explain on the way. We need to get back to the city.”
“Okay, fine,” Flash nodded in agreement, “do your thing and I’ll hop in.”
“No time,” Blackbolt said, reaching down. “C’mon, we’re taking a shortcut.”
“Huh?” Flash blanked as Blackbolt’s massive hands closed around his midsection, lifting him bodily into the air as she took a step toward the edge of the steep hill. “Oh, no! No! Blackbolt don’t you daaaaAAAAHHHH!!”
Flash’s protests devolved into a terrified shout as Blackbolt took a running leap off the hilltop, her human cargo cradled against her chest as she plummeted down the grassy slope. She landed hard, tearing up the earth beneath her feet for only a moment before springing away again to soar even farther. She bounded twice more in similar fashion, the last jump bringing a long stretch of highway into view.
“When I say, try to put your body into a sitting position!” Blackbolt shouted over the wind whipping past.
“What?!” Flash asked in a panic, his eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching pavement.
“NOW!”
Flash yelled wordlessly again and tried to do as he was told just as Blackbolt tucked into a roll, her knees and one arm slamming into the road with enough force to crack the surface. Forward she tumbled, into a somersault, and only then did Flash hear the telltale clanking and whirring of her transformation circuits kicking into overdrive. The world twisted and reshaped into the familiar setting of the inside of a car, the grating scrape of metal on asphalt replaced by the deep growl of a plasma-injected V8 engine as Flash found himself sitting in the driver’s seat.
“You alright?” Blackbolt’s voice spoke urgently from the radio.
“Uh,” Flash gave a nod even as he continued to gasp for breath. “I… I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“Buckle up and hang on,” Blackbolt said, “we’re gonna go for broke!”
Flash scrambled to do as instructed despite still-trembling hands, and no sooner had his belt clicked into place than he was slammed back into the seat. The scenery blurred by in a haze, Blackbolt’s rapid acceleration more befitting a fighter jet than any terrestrial vehicle.
As Canterlot city came back into view, looming in the distance but growing closer by the second, Flash could only wonder what might have elicited such a strong reaction from his Autobot companion.
Every idea he came up with forced his stomach into tighter knots than the last.