Written 02/05/2010

Disclaimer: Transformers toys, comics, and characters were created and are owned by Hasbro. Michael Bay is responsible for the Movieverse.

Author's Notes: Metallica soundtrack while writing this ficlet consisted of "Enter Sandman" for the title, "Broken, Beat & Scarred" for the cut tag and general theme, and "Fade to Black" for mood music. Uploaded on MU for easy convenience.

Summary: Dean and Sam investigate strange sightings at a car show.

Never Never Land
by Moonbeam

The lady at the ticket booth barely gave them a glance as she took their admission and directed them to the visitor’s parking lot to the left of the main show building.

Dean shook his head as he drove through the gate. “Dude, she didn’t even look at us! You’d think someone working at a car show would have more appreciation for true beauty when she sees it.”

“She’s probably seen a hundred cars come through here in the last few hours alone, Dean. The Impala isn’t anything special.”

“Shut your mouth!” Dean scowled at his brother even as he pet the steering wheel in comfort. “Don’t listen to him, baby, he didn’t mean it.” The dark look he gave his brother reinforced that Sam had better not have meant it, or Big Brother Dean would be dishing out some much deserved punishment. Sam merely rolled his eyes.

Satisfied he’d gotten his point across, Dean continued, “Anyway, that’s no call to be rude! Maybe a hundred awesome cars have come through, but how many of ‘em had drivers as gorgeous as me?”

Sam cracked a smile despite himself. “Yeah, whatever you gotta tell yourself, Dean. Look, there’s a spot between the blue and red ones.”

As Dean pulled into the open parking space, he whapped Sam hard on the shoulder. “Dude, that ‘blue one’ as you so crassly called it, is an effin’ Plymouth Barracuda. A-body, so probably a ’64 or ‘65 model. Shame what’s happened to it though.”

Sam stared at him. “It’s a rust bucket, Dean. And I noticed you didn’t object to ‘red one’ for the other car.”

“That?” Dean shrugged disdainfully. “S’just a Toyota Supra, man. No big deal. Now, c’mon... I don’t wanna miss the showcase models.”

“Fine. Just remember we’re on a job here, and not just sight-seeing hot cars and hot girls. Those reports about all the meteors landing near here the past few nights could be a really bad omen.”

“Right, right. Haunted cars, seen driving around by themselves... I got it, Hasselhoff. Hey, do you think I have time to grab a dog before the show starts?”

They stayed for the rest of the day and well into the night, snooping around and asking questions between events as they tried to gather what information they could.

There were certainly a lot of sightings of the driverless cars, but the accounts were confusing because they seemed to vary immensely. Everything from brand new concept Camaros and brightly coloured motorcycles to a dozen different models of sports cars had supposedly been spotted tooling around on their own. One old guy in a cowboy hat had even sworn, in his thick Texas drawl, that he’d seen a huge red and blue Peterbilt eighteen wheeler’s trailer appear ‘like magic’.

“I was goin’ ta tha bathroom, ya know? An’ I passed this huge truck on the way – musta belonged to some dang kid, cause it had these stupid flames painted on it. Anyways, when I come out a few minutes later, there’s this big box trailer attached to the truck. Swear I never heard nothing neither, and them walls is thin enough I shoulda. Dunno where it coulda come from. Wondered if were part of the show, like one of dem fancy Vegas magic acts? ‘Cept there weren’t nobody but me an’ a couple kids a-watchin’.”

Sam had nodded his understanding, making a mental note to find those kids and verify the tale. He managed to get a bare description of a gangly teenaged boy and his ‘purty as a peach’ girlfriend before thanking the old guy for his time.

He thought he might really have something concrete to go on finally, because those same teenagers had been spotted in at least three of the other strange occurrences as well. He was just starting to walk away in search of Dean when the old guy called after him.

“Weren’t even the weirdest thing about it though, boy. There was a gawdawful green Search & Rescue Hummer pushin’ a beat-up black and white Dodge Charger up the ramp into the trailer. The Hummer rolled back out, and once the ramp closed up, both it and the transport truck drove away. Only... I never saw nobody get behind the wheel of either vehicle.”

Scratching at his beard, the old man finally wandered off. Sam watched him disappear into the thinning crowd, then pulled out his cell phone to call his brother.

The ringing of the phone was echoed in stereo as Dean walked up to him stuffing the last bite a burrito into his mouth.

“Hey, ‘am,” Dean mumbled around his mouthful, “whayya got?”

Sam made a face as he hit the end button, but didn’t say anything about how gross Dean was being. It had never worked in the past and probably wouldn’t now. “A few leads and a lot of conflicting stories. Got a possible angle on a couple of teenagers who’ve been seen around a few of the sightings though. You?”

“Not much more than you,” Dean thumped his chest after swallowing the huge mouthful in one gulp. “’Bout a dozen kinds of sports cars that haven’t been seen since. Oh, and one guy said a blue motorbike told him off for trying to sit on her but considering he smelled like he’d been smoking the good stuff, I’m not taking him too seriously.”

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to get much more tonight. We’ve got enough to go on that we can start researching what’s happening. Besides, the meteor strikes and most of the sightings tend to happen in the early morning hours, so we can come back then.”

Dean nodded. “Sounds good. The trade booths open up at seven tomorrow and I wanna see if I can get some parts for the Impala. She’s been thumping whenever we hit a bump in the past few days, so I think her shocks might need changing. That last case was rough on her. Damn faeries.”

Their last case had involved chasing some child-stealing faeries back to their forest lair, and the Impala had had to drive over some pretty rough terrain to do so. Dean had spent more time complaining about the rough treatment his car had taken than about the dislocated shoulder the faeries had given him when they threw a tree at him.

They left the car show grounds and made their way back to the parking lot. Late as it was, most of the other visitors had already left and only a few die hard fans were still there. That’s why it was a bit of surprise to Sam and Dean to find the Impala not alone in her parking spot.

Sitting beside her in the spot once occupied by the Barracuda was a bright yellow Camaro with black racing stripes. Two kids, both teenagers -- a skinny boy and a too-pretty girl, Sam couldn’t help but notice -- and man who looked to be a bit young to be either one’s father were circling the Impala, tapping on the hood and peering into the windows.

“Hey, watch the paintwork!” Dean called out as he neared, moving to stand between them and his car protectively.

The man straightened, giving them such a piercing once-over that for a moment Sam worried he was a cop. Dean, predictably, just smirked and returned the look with his usual attitude. Although Sam couldn’t help but notice that though he definitely noticed how attractive the girl was in her miniskirt and tank top, his gaze didn’t linger for more than a second or two. Jailbait, after all, was not Dean’s style no matter how much of a horndog he’d been accused of being – usually by Sam.

The man narrowed his eyes at them consideringly. “This your car, boys?”

“Yeah,” Dean crossed his arms, leaning back against the Impala’s door and projecting a crystal clear image of nonchalance. “It’s mine.”

“Nice.” The man nodded, equally casual as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. His eyes never wavered from Dean and Sam though. “A ’68?”

“’67.”

“Ah.”

A moment of awkward silence encompassed them as each side waited for the other to move first. The teenaged boy shifted nervously.

“Ah, Major Lennox?” The boy finally broke the tense scene, his voice squeaking slightly. “Maybe we should keep looking? It’s getting dark and this is obviously not the right car.”

The now-identified Major Lennox glanced back at the kids, then cast an assessing gaze at their surroundings. Dean straightened instinctively as he always did in the presence of military, ingrained habits taught by their ex-Marine father coming to the fore.

“’Hide’s not back from checking the area yet. We’ll wait until he gets back.”

Sam took the opportunity to get in some questions of his own. “You guys wouldn’t happen to be looking for a fancy sports car that might be driving by itself, would you? ‘Cause we’ve heard that tends to happen a lot around here.” He shifted his gaze from the Major to the two kids, seeing them jerk suspiciously as they couldn’t help looking at their own fancy Camaro.

Though the man didn’t move, Sam suddenly sensed the soldier in him as he met the Major’s hard stare. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dean’s muscles tense, ready for whatever might happen next.

The large black GMC Topkick thundering through the trees toward them was unexpected though.

Major Lennox finally stepped back. Still watching Sam and Dean, he waited for the massive pick-up to pull to a stop right at his heels. “Anything?” he asked.

The truck shook and rumbled. Its windows were all darkened so they couldn’t see the driver inside, but a rough masculine voice seemed to boom out of the truck itself.

“No. I’m picking up a signal, but I can’t trace it. It’s definitely still in this area, I just don’t know where.”

“That’s because you never look behind you, Ironhide.” A gruff old voice rebuked from directly behind the Toptick. “Thought I taught you better than that.”

With those admonishing words, another car slid out from behind the truck and rolled up beside it. Sam and Dean stared in shock as it came to a gentle stop in front of their Impala.

Because it was, down to the last detail of even having the most-recently acquired bump on the front fender where Dean had run over an escaping faerie, an identical replica of their own much cherished home on wheels: a perfect, beautiful, slightly-scarred classic black 1967 Chevrolet Impala.

“Kup?!” The Topkick rumbled. “Dang it, I shoulda known it was you when Hot Rod here wouldn’t leave.”

The red Toyota Supra that had been parked all day beside their Impala suddenly shook as if it was laughing. “I was waiting for Kup to pick an alt-mode, I had no idea he’d take a whole solar cycle to make up his mind. I had mine within breems, there were lots of nice cars to chose from. That’s why we made landfall near this Auto Show after all.”

Dean’s head swivelled to look at the orange-red Supra, the Topkick, stared suspiciously at the silent Camaro for a moment, then wound up right back on the second Impala. He fell back against his own car as, inside, he freaked out just a little bit.

He held up a hand in plea for an explanation. “What the hell is going on? That,” he pointed to the duplicate Impala, “looks just like my baby, and it and these other cars are all talking.” His desperate gaze went from the stern countenance of the Major to the shifty-looking teens and finally fell on his brother.

Sam, he was glad to see, had his geek-face on. The one that meant his little brother was putting all the little clues and encyclopedic trivia in his gigantic brain together and coming up with an answer. Sammy could be better than Google some days.

“Oh my god,” Sam whispered, right on cue as Dean saw the lightbulb moment light up his geek-face. “The meteors! That was you!” He looked at all the cars in amazement. “All those ghost cars people have been seeing, they’ve coincided with the meteor strikes. But it wasn’t haunted cars, it was you and others like you. You’re coming to Earth and disguising yourselves like cars!”

“What? Like aliens?” Dean scoffed.

“They’re not aliens!” The boy suddenly shouted, twitching even more nervously than before. The denial was so obviously false nobody paid it any real attention.

Major Lennox drew closer to the Winchester brothers, his hands leaving his pockets to hang freely at his sides. “What they are is irrelevant. It’s classified. You boys would do best to just go on home and forget everything you saw here tonight and everything you think,” this last was directed firmly at Sam, “you know.”

Dean arched an eyebrow at him. “Seriously? You’re pulling the ‘it’s classified’ card on us? Oh man, that’s lame.”

Sam put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “It’s fine, dude. Let’s just go. These guys haven’t been hurting anybody, and this job is a bust. Let’s let the nice military handle the alien cars, okay? We’ve got enough trouble of our own to deal with.”

Dean resisted for a moment then gave in. “Yeah, alright. Let’s get the hell out of here. This place is too weird even for me.”

As they climbed into their car and drove away, they faintly heard the Supra ask the impostor Impala why he’d chosen that as his disguise.

“I’m not some young hot shot like you or a big gun like ‘Hide, kid. I need a real machine to copy, something robust and powerful that can take a beating and dish it right back. Only this Impala of theirs seemed to have any real metal in its struts compared to all the pampered show pieces around here.”

Sharing a look with Sam as they caught the explanation as they pulled out of the auto show’s lot back onto the open road, Dean smirked and gunned it. Engine roaring, the (original) Impala rode off into the sunset, the strains of Metallica trailing in her wake.

~*~*~*~

Now with bonus comment-inspired crackfic sequel, Science-Fiction Takes On a Very Different Meaning When You Are a Giant Alien Robot!