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The Human Stain	By : Subtext Category: S through Z > Transformers (Movie Only) > Transformers (Movie Only) Views: 2378 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers movie, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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The Human Stain:
Chapter 1

A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he
can from his own body. ~Andr�
Maurois

1997 - Santa Cruz, CA

�Catch it, Claire!�

Streaked blonde hair blew over the shoulder of a tan
teenager, just before she leapt up and caught the whirling red disc as it came
whizzing over her head.

�Got it!� the girl crowed triumphantly, sinking back into
the sand upon landing. She held the
frisbee above her head like a trophy before pumping her arm up and down. A salty breeze stirred wisps of lighter hair
against her darker forehead, creating an even greater contrast. The girl was, in essence, the perfect vision
of a Californian girl. She was taller
than most, standing at 5�8� with the build of an athlete. She wore a white tank top and frayed denim
shorts that had once been jeans before the owner severed the pant legs with
scissors. A pink peace symbol had been
haphazardly sewn into the back left pocket, and the right was adorned with a
small fabric rainbow held together with two small safety pins.

The initial voice belonged to a shorter brunette, who was facing
Claire but ten feet away. She wore
shorts as well, but these were made of a canvas material. Her top consisted of nothing but a yellow
bikini top. Both girls wore two-pieces
beneath their clothes, but the brunette had opted to take her shirt off in the
Land Rover they had arrived in. Like
Claire, she was a sun-worshipper but tanned much darker. Claire�s friend knitted her brow, crouching
lower to the beach to prepare for the return of the frisbee. �Throw it back!� she cried, cupping one hand
to the side of her face to make herself louder.

�Jeez, Jen!� Claire scowled, put off from her victory dance
momentarily. �Give me a sec here. I rarely catch this thing.�

�That�s why we�re here.�

Claire stuck a tongue out at the other teenager before
angling her arm back and letting the frisbee take flight once more. She aimed a bit higher than Jen could catch,
sending the flat pan sailing high over the girl�s head.

�Oh, c�mon! What was
that!?� cursed the dark-haired girl, throwing her hands up in
exasperation. �You did that on purpose!�

Claire watched bemusedly as her friend trotted off after the
piece of rotating plastic, and dusted off the palms of hands against the sides
of her shorts. A few granules of
encrusted sand broke off on contact, falling below to rejoin the rest of their
kin. The ocean was a constant, dull din
off to her left and the chimes and cries of the boardwalk were to her
right. Jen�s cries of indignation drew
her attention forward again, and she grinned.

Squinting against the bright daylight, Claire laughed as a
spotted dog drove past her, kicking up beach in his wake. Jen soon followed, shooting Claire a daggered
glare as she ran past. �Help me! That mutt got it!�

Giggling despite herself, the sixteen-year-old took third
place in the race after the animal. The
trio zigzagged between sunbathers, families with small children, and others
enjoying the bright afternoon by the beach.

Claire was so caught up in the chase that she nearly ran
right into a boy with hazel hair and brown eyes. He had appeared to come from the boardwalk,
and held a chocolate ice cream cone in one hand. His wavy hair slung over one eye, and he was
dressed casually in jeans, sneakers and a brown shirt with frayed sleeves. The front was emblazoned with the Nike logo
in white. �Claire!�

�Wha�? Huh�?� Momentarily taken aback, Claire threw a
harried glance over her shoulder. Her
body temporarily followed the direction of her head once she recognized the
other teenager. �Hey, Simon!�

�Having trouble?� He
motioned after Jen and the departing dog.

�Just a bit,� she conceded, smiling so that the corners of
her eyes crinkled with the effect. Her
heart began to speed up, and it had nothing to do with her short sprint.

�Need help?� Simon
leaned closer, and Claire momentarily lost concentration on what she had been
doing.

�He�s heading for the water!� shrieked Jen.

That was enough to tear her focus away from the boy, of whom
she had developed a crush for the past summer.
�Uh, no, we got this one!
Thanks!� She started to turn
away.

�Sure?� she heard behind her, his voice slightly softer than
before.

She hesitated, and then forced a grin back across her features
as she gave him a quick wave over her shoulder.
�I swear.� Simon Walters was a
good-natured (not to mention handsome) guy, well known and liked at Santa Cruz High School,
and nearly every girl within two grades of him had a horrible appreciation for
him. It was too bad that the only thing
she could appreciate now was her own bad luck when she realized how close she
could have been to striking up a conversation with him had she not a more
pending issue to tend to.

�See you around�� he trailed uncertainly.

�See ya!� One last, apologetic look was thrown Simon�s way,
begging him to understand. Driven
forward by more than her need to get her frisbee back, Claire ran on with the
urge to separate herself from her own embarrassment. The more distance she put between herself and
him, the less she felt.

It didn�t take long to catch up with Jen, and soon Claire
pulled up so they were running neck and neck.
Claire matched her best friend stride for stride but kept pulling
further ahead by virtue of her longer legs.

�I�ll get him!� she shouted back over the wind whistling
past her ears.

The dog remained teasingly ahead of the two, scampering at
full speed only to veer sideways before coming to a halt and wagging his tail
spastically back and forth. As soon as
they gained ground, the animal would take off like a shot again. The frisbee was tucked firmly between his
front eye teeth, and it was obvious it was all a game to the creature. Eyes bright and panting, the dog reached an
area where a large outcropping of rocks signaled the end of the beach. Without anywhere to go, it had indeed bolted
for the water.

�Is that thing suicidal!?� yelled Jen, her voice coming from
somewhere behind Claire. They were both
gasping for breath, and this haggard quality was imparted upon Jen�s voice.

Her own sides heaving from the sprint, Claire skidded to a
stop just where the surf slicked her toes before receding back into the
ocean. The waves were not high that day
� it was still very early in the afternoon.
The dog had since leapt into the water, paddling for all his life
against each roll of the surf. The
frisbee only proved to make the dog work harder to keep his prize, and there
were several times when the poor creature was rolled under by the loll of the
waves.

�Fuck. Now
what?� By then Jen had also ceased all
forward movements, and was standing by her friend. She bent over, bracing her hands against her
upper thighs as she took several ragged breaths. Her next words came unevenly as she tried to
regain her composure. �Damn dog. If you hadn�t thrown the frisbee over my head
this wouldn�t of happened. He caught it
before I did. Where is this little
shit�s owner?� Jen glanced questioningly
over at Claire, but then gasped, �What are you doing!?�

Claire was undressing.
Not completely, of course � she merely shirked off her tank top and was
shimmying out of her makeshift shorts.
�Going to get our frisbee,� she responded, as if it were a stupid
question. When the shorts hit the sand
she stood up again, wearing nothing but her red bikini. She flashed a smarmy smile at Jen. �It�s not coming back by itself, is it?�

�You�re nuts. You�re
absolutely friggin� nuts.� Jen said, whipping an accusing finger at the rocky
earth to their left. �There are rocks
under that water. All it will take is a
little bit of undertow and you�re done.�

Claire waved Jen off with a dismissive gesture of her right
hand. She pointed out to the dog, which
was becoming a more distant dot where the ocean met the sky. �He�s still alive and kickin�.�

Jen placed a hand on her forehead, creating a visor against
the sun as she squinted out at the dog.
�Uh� Claire... I think he�s having trouble.�

�He is?� Claire
imitated Jen�s gesture, and both stared out as they watched the canine paddle
furiously against the ocean. He was past
the waves breaking against the shore, and he was now barking whenever it was
possible to get his head completely above water. The frisbee was no longer in his mouth, but
by then it was no longer a concern to either the animal or the humans.

�Ohmygod,� Jen gushed, her voice holding an edge of
distress, �I think he�s going to drown.�

Before she even thought about her actions, Claire was racing
into the surf. Jen made a last minute
dodge to grab the girl by her elbow, but it was to no avail. Jen missed, faltered, and lost her balance
before falling to the wet sand.
�CLAIRE!� she screamed, �NO!�

Barely registering Jen�s cries, Claire hit the ocean like an
offensive lineman. The waves drove into
her chest, nearly knocking the air from her, but she struggled past them. She wasn�t thinking about the consequences;
indeed she never really did. The only
thing she could see was the dog ahead of her, his white-and-black head bobbing
up and down on the ocean like a frantic bobber.
She was perhaps twenty feet from him, but the distance seemed much
greater. A wave rose over her head,
dipping her under, and she came up a second later coughing and sputtering. The bottom was indeed littered with rocky
protrusions, and it pained her enough that she angled her body to swim rather
then stand.

She was already fatigued from the run down the beach, which
caused her to falter while swimming. The
blood pounded in her ears as she started taking long strokes, and dimly she
heard Jen screaming for her back on the beach.
Grimly, she smiled inwardly. A
stalwart friend, Jennifer Kingston still held her own survival paramount to
anything else. Claire knew she would not
follow.

The dog was by then yelping and paddling in circles, struggling
to simply keep himself surfaced. He was
completely soaked through, and his floppy ears seemed weighed down even further
by the water. She closed the distance
between them, her sights kept on her goal.
�Hangon...!� she gurgled as a rush of water hit her forehead and drowned
out the rest of her sentence. More
seconds passed, and she could no longer hear Jen calling for her on land. Water bubbled in her eardrums, but she kept
her front crawl moving at a determined pace.

She reached the dog, and in doing so she was nearly
submerged. The dog was a medium-sized
animal with short fur. He had no
distinct breeding, which led Claire to believe he was really what Jen had called
him � a mutt. There was a faded fabric
collar around his neck, indicating he belonged to someone. Her first mistake was grabbing this upon
reaching him � in one quick second fueled by his instinct to stay alive, the
dog attempted to clamber upon her shoulders.
This effectively submerged her while the dog�s claws cut up her shoulders
as he tried in vain to find footing from above.
Forcing herself to surface sideways of the dog, she began to sputter up
what felt like a gallon of water from her lungs.

Oh, god, she could barely breathe!

The dog took another lunge at her, yelping in panic. He was like any drowning creature that had
lost their wits � he saw a small bit of salvation and tried to cling to
it.

�Calm down, calm down!�
Claire tried to grab him by his collar again, but once again he put his
front paws on her shoulders. This time
she was more prepared to receive him and stayed afloat. His back legs kicked and scraped welts into
her bare stomach below the waterline, and she yelped herself in pain. By that time she had begun to notice just how
close they both were to the needle-like rocks framing the sandy beach. �Shit,� she swore, attempting to manhandle
the dog while directing them away from a gory end.

The dog was whimpering, still kicking furiously and
attempting to climb onto her shoulders to keep himself further above the
water. How the dog ever had the bravery
to enter the water with the frisbee in the first place was beyond her, for all
the cowardice he showed now. Both of
their legs were working in overtime, and Claire�s pulse was speeding throughout
her body as her urge to survive overcame any other thought. An unexpected wave rolled them under, and she
surfaced, gasping, with her bangs in her face.
Briefly removing her hand from the dog�s wet pelt, she whipped the hair
out of her eyes and struggled to see through a line of blurry vision. Closer to the rocks, damn.

The next thing happened so swiftly it took her three seconds
after the fact to register it actually had
happened.

The dog chose then to take his hind leg and drive the claws
on that paw deep into her stomach, which opened up a rather large welt above
the smaller welts he had already inflicted upon her. Blood filled the space between them, and so
did another wave � this one larger than the others. The burst of pain and water caused her to
release the dog as she let out an anguished cry, and she barely heard the dog
give out a sound somewhere between a groan and a high-pitched mewl.

Unsure about the dog�s fate and no longer fixated to it,
Claire doubled over in agony. The ocean
rolled over her body, causing her to somersault underwater. She was tumbling towards the rocks, only feet
away, when something caught her by a flailing leg and pressed down.

For one fleeting, foolish moment she thought of rescue.

She felt something crunch, twist, and then she was being
shook violently underwater.

Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the salt laced
bright lines of pain through her body.

Claire�s left leg was on fire � she was certain of it. The conflagration spread up her limb and into
her head, flooding her dark vision with red and bright motes of light. Vaguely, she realized she was losing
consciousness underwater. The thing on
her leg was dragging her deeper, down and further away from the rocks.

Then, just as soon as it had grabbed her, it let go.

The last thing she recalled was the sensation of floating
upwards, towards a bright light. It
filled her vision, pushing away the crimson clouds and pulsating stars, causing
them instead to burst out into a pure whiteness. Sound was beginning to fill her ears, but it
was like listening down a long, thin tube.
Someone was calling her name.

�Claaaiiiiirrrrreee�.�

She lost consciousness.

2007 - Boulder City, Nevada

MEEP.

MEEP.

MEEP.

�SHUT UP!� Claire rolled over and whacked the �snooze�
button with the hand closest to the alarm.
There was a resounding �thwack� that knocked the digital clock off the
nightstand, before it hit the floor upside-down.

Sighing, the woman shifted and lifted herself upright. She settled herself on the edge of her bed,
bending down long enough to pick up the alarm and set it upon the nightstand
again, just a bit further back from the edge than it had been. It was always good to preempt tomorrow
morning, after all. Noting the time read
6:00 a.m. in large digital numerals, she mused over the fact that she hadn�t
had to hit �snooze� four or five times in a row � she had woken up at the first
alarm for once.

Yawning, the 26-year-old pushed some tousled blonde hair out
her face and pushed herself upright for another day. It was Monday, the weekend was over, and it
was time for work. She scanned her tidy
bedroom, willing the last eddies of sleep from her mind before finding what she
sought.

Finally, her eyes rested upon it � of course, it was in the
place she had left it last night.
Reaching over to the other side of the nightstand, Claire encircled one
hand around the item and grasped it before picking it up.

That morning, and every morning since the shark attack of
1997, she had put on the prosthesis that attached itself just below the knee
where her left leg would have otherwise been.

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. All
recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All original characters are
mine.

A/N: That�s
chapter one! Please read and
review! Want more? Let me know!
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The Human Stain