Chapter Text
In the aftermath of the conflict, there wasn't a soul among them, bot or human, who wasn't tired, dirty, and damaged. Optimus looked over his mechs, battered and worn; from Jazz leaning heavily against Prowl, optics shuttered, to the way Ironhide was holding his cannons gingerly, the near-dislocation of his arm clearly paining him. Ratchet was busy fixing up a for-once silent Sunstreaker, his twin hovering anxiously nearby. Even Arcee, who had taken lookout duty, hadn't come through unscathed.
Lennox and the others of NEST weren't any better. The commander of their human allies was in quiet conference with his 2IC, knee elevated carefully with a compression bandage and blood drying at his temple. Sam was sprawled in the dirt against Bumblebee's front tire, inspecting scraped-raw palms; the youngest mech of their group was in alt-mode out of sheer exhaustion, no energy to bother transforming to his root form.
"We need a place to regroup," Optimus decided aloud. "Somewhere safe."
"Somewhere close," Ratchet amended him. "We can't move some of our injured far. I wish Red Alert were here, I could use a second pair of hands."
Bumblebee's shocks rocked his front end upward and the young scout gave a considering chatter-trill of basic Cybertronian. (Sam always laughed at it, saying with his color scheme he was almost like BB-8. It took a movie marathon of science fiction before the Autobots realized correcting the human's knowledge of B-127's designation wasn't necessary.) Then, for the human's benefit, the scout's radio cycled through a bevy of programs, piecing together an English repeat of the message.
"Don't worry, be happy // 'Take Cover!' // 'You think we need one more. All right, we'll get one more'."
"You have an idea, Bumblebee?" Sam, their resident expert in social media slang, translated it first.
Bee bounced on his shocks and his radio blatted a perfect "Beep-boo-bree-oo," of BB-8's agreement-noise, then a song-snippet from an old Disney film. "Talkin' about, Charlie, good-time Charlie, everybody's friend!"
"Who's Charlie?" Lennox, ever the wary soldier. "Civilian?"
Bee whirred at him in the way they had come to translate as admonishment, and his radio cycled again. "Charlie, everybody's friend || If you're lost you can look and you will find me || I'm a love mechanic, yeah, I've got just what you need."
"A mechanic?" Ratchet perked up, and looked to Optimus. "As good as we can get right now, especially if they know Bumblebee already."
"I agree," Optimus nodded. "Bumblebee, this is the human you mentioned in your transmission 30 stellar cycles ago? Are you certain they will be open to assisting us?"
"You've got a friend in me || you can count on me like one two three," the scout confirmed, with an added, "Every step you take, I'll be watching you."
"That's kinda creepy, Bee," Sam teased.
Optimus wasn't surprised the scout had kept track of the first human he'd ever met. "Do you have a current location?"
Bee gave a confirming whistle that sounded like R2-D2, pinging their phones and comms with GPS coordinates. It wasn't far to go at all.
"All right. Autobots, roll out. Bumblebee, you take point."
"'Roger roger'," agreed the monotone-voice of a Phantom Menace droid as Bee's door opened for Sam, making the human contingent chuckle as they hauled their weary selves to their feet and loaded up. Optimus took to alt-form, allowing Ratchet to load Sunstreaker into the trailer.
Like a strange convoy, the group set off, following on a suddenly-energized yellow scout's tailpipe.
"So who is Charlie," Sam asked, in the privacy of Bumblebee's cabin as they glided over California's wind-pitted pavement.
Bee warbled a moment, and his radio pieced together a proper, lilting sentence. "'She gave me || back || MY || voice || a long time ago'."