Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Quiet. Still yet changing. Accepting to the bend of universe’s ebb and flow. A place both separate from action yet accepting of time’s momentum.

Prowl’s room is probably the most tranquil place in Detroit. There were no running children, no sudden shocks or maintenance bots roaming through it. Nothing rushed or forced itself to be seen. All was still and breathed a silent, echoing sigh of relief… There was a tree growing tall and proud that shed its leaves in autumn and flowered in spring. Years before the Autobots came it had grown from a shrub and then burst through the wall and part of the ceiling; so when it rained it got wet and when it snowed it got cold.

But Prowl didn’t mind it one bit. It suited him just fine.

He liked being a part of the entire world, not being separated from it. Yes it meant he had to move his few, vital belongings out of the way of the hole in the wall but it still didn’t bother him.

It didn’t bother him when it rained and he needed to prevent rust. It didn’t bother him when it snowed and his joints locked up. He didn’t mind the birds that swooped in and made nests in the tree branches or the raccoons that occasionally wandered in and out of his room. It all felt natural.

Prowl wanted to be closer to nature, to Earth’s rhythms and unique frequency.

“Hmmmm.”

That’s why he was sitting in the middle of the room face a medium sized ginger cat. The cat had climbed over the fence and had been stuck in the tree for about two hours before Prowl had noticed it. He had been stilling his processor and meditating when he found he couldn’t concentrate clearly due to some strange frequency interference.

‘What’s the matter with me today?’ He had thought, trying hard not to let his focus get broken. But he was already sliding, the thin string holding his mind in perfect balance with the universal vacuum was fraying in the middle threatening to snap. ‘Where is this strange frequency interference coming from? It’s as if something’s trying to talk to me on a higher frequency field. Like some kind of-‘

“Meow!”

He looked up and found the cat laying down on one of the top branches and looking down at Prowl in mild annoyance. It wasn’t hard for Prowl to jump up and snatch the cat out of the tree. Once he placed the cat back down on the ground, he watched in wonder how it simply laid down on a sunny spot near him and began licking its front paw.

“Fascinating.” Prowl said, crouching down and examining the cat with interest. “I remember seeing a program describing how creatures like this communicate through unheard frequencies amongst themselves. Almost like remote processor telepathy. I never knew it could be strong enough to disturb my practice…”

It wasn’t only cats. Prowl noted that birds seemed to fly according to magnetic frequencies. Whales and dolphins communicated via frequencies underwater. Plants grew when temperatures changed and when the frequencies in the Earth woke them up.

‘It’s almost as if the most silent creatures are in harmony with the world around them.’

The cat looked up at Prowl with large blue eyes, blinked once and then sat up and just studied Prowl himself. Mimicking the posture, Prowl sat down and crossed his legs and simply returned the stare. Only now he was more focused, listening and trying to attune to this natural frequency change.

‘I can’t really process it but I can feel the frequency signals coming from this small creature.’ Prowl continued to look directly at the cat, whose tail was flicking from side to side. ‘Is it trying to communicate to me? What a strange creature. Seeking outwardly to communicate with another species through silent frequencies! As if it itself were attuned to some high force, trying to bring us in to its own perception…’

The cat speaks in frequencies. Frequencies make up the perception of the universe. The universe itself moves along lines that simulate frequencies. Perhaps if he can master this frequency communication with such a simple creature, maybe he could grasp the complex rhythm of universal perception and-

“Where’d you get the cat???” Bumble Bee nearly shouted next to Prowls’ audio processor.

With that, the cat scampered back about five feet away and glared up behind Prowl. The line had snapped, his focus free fell through the void and landed back in the room with Bumble Bee hovering right over him. And Prowl was rudely knocked out of his concentration.

Annoyed, Prowl turned around and saw Bumble Bee leaning over his, eyes now trained on the cat in unwavering interest. Prowl gritted his teeth and groaned.

There was one thing that bothered him: THIS bothered him. How Bumble Bee would routinely barge into his room, unannounced, looking for - well Prowl never really knew WHAT Bumble Bee did or why he did it. He suspected Bumble Bee didn’t even know why he did whatever he wanted. Except that whatever it was, he always did it suddenly and loudly without permission.

“Would you please give me the respect of knocking before you barge into my room, Bumble Bee.” Prowl bickered, looking up at Bumble Bee in irritation. This had to be the fifth time this week Bumble Bees just waltzed into his room without permission! “I was in the middle of something in need of absolute focus and you broke it!”

“Uh hu. Focus…” Bumble Bee rolled his optics, finding Prowl’s little ‘focus quest’ boring. Moving on to a more interesting topic, he pointed a digit back at the cat. “So where’d you get the cat?”

Prowl let out a low sigh and stood up. Whenever Bumble Bee got like this he was impossible to talk to. Unfortunately, Bumble Bee was almost always like this. Prowl was about to tell Bumble Bee to leave when he ran up and picked the cat up off the floor.

“Woah! You’re a funny looking one!” Bumble Bee said, smiling up at the cat who was hissing at him. “Hey! That’s a funny sound! What do you think it means? Think it likes me?”

“I think it’s trying to tell you to put it down…” Prowl warned, looking at Bumble Bee with a downcast glare. “Bumble Bee, that creature is not a toy! You shouldn’t be forcing it to be near you.”

“Relax, Prowl! I’m being totally gentle! See?”

Bumble Bee turned to show Prowl the cat, which was now gnawing on his hand.

“Ow!” Bumble Bee nearly dropped the cat then grabbed it with his other hand. “Hmm, maybe you should be telling it to be gentle with me.”

“Bumble Bee! Put it down.” Prowl commanded.

“Re-Lax! It’s fine!” Bumble Bee wave his hand and carefully stroked the top of the cats forehead, enamored by the strange feeling of all the soft fur against his digit. “I’m not doing anything! ‘Sides, it’s just a cat. Not like it’s gonna blow up or anything… this thing won’t blow up, will it?”

“Grrr….”

Prowl rarely let his irritation show, or at least he tried to rarely let it show. It was a security risk to show your emotions, to give tells about what you’re really thinking. But with Bumble Bee? He couldn’t help it! There was no way he could control what he felt or how he thought when this bot was around.

And he generally only felt one thing with Bumble Bee: Annoyed.

“Will you knock it off!” Prowl barked, crossing his servos against his chest plate. He tried to regain his composure but felt himself slipping the more he looked at this yellow idiot. “This feline creature exemplifies the best in nature! It is quiet, careful, tactful and observant. It can hold it’s place and monitor a narrow area in absolute stillness, yet silently strike with deadly precision.”

Bumble Bee, who had little patience for most of Prowl’s metaphysical lectures, rolled his optics and stopped trying to pretend to understand what he was saying. Instead, he just adjusted the cat in his servos so he could hold it in front of him like a rag doll.

To him, the cat was cute. It’s small like Sari, fluffy like Earth blankets and smelled like grass mixed with late autumn plums. That’s all he knew, all he needed to know and all he wanted to know.

“Right right right. Like this cat knows that.” Bumble Bee let out a chuckle then waved the cat his servos, hiking his voice up a pitch in mock-play mode. “I’m just a fuzzy-wuzzy organic creature and I’m gonna fall out of a tree to teach Prowl the meaning of the universe~”

“…” Prowl found himself so irritated beyond annoyance that he actually felt calm. Calm and disgusted. “Please never say ‘fuzzy-wuzzy’ ever again.”

“Heheh!” Bumble Bee cracked a grin then held the cat up over his head, blue eyes looking back into blue eyes. “I didn’t say that~ The cat did~”

“Ugh…”

Prowl watched for a moment as Bumble Bee continued to dangle and play with the cat, which seemed to have reverted to silently glaring at him. (Prowl wanted to tell the cat it wouldn’t work because Bumble Bee doesn’t understand basic facial recognition, but Prowl also couldn’t speak cat so that didn’t matter.) Prowl had accidentally found another creature on this world as annoyed by Bumble Bee as he is. A part of him felt sorry for the cat, but he was mostly relieved Bumble Bee’s attention was focused on annoying something else other than him for a few seconds. It gave him enough time to think.

“Just WHY are you here?” Prowl asked in a harsh, hard tone. “What reason do you have NOW to barge into my room without permission?”

“Huh…?” Bee snapped out of his cat-focused trance and looked at Prowl surprised. He tried remembering what he was so determined to do a minute ago. “Oh yeah. I wanted to borrow something but… now I can’t remember what it was…”

Bumble Bee was one of the few bots Prowl knew that you could easily read and see exactly what was going on inside his processor. Prowl watched and waited as Bumble Bee searched his memory drive for the reason why he came here. It always followed a certain pattern of steps that he went through and showed clearly on his face:

First, Bumble Bee has to look up at the ceiling as if the answer was written up there.

Then he squints as if he’s trying to read that metaphorical answer in really small script really far away.

Next, acknowledging the answer isn’t there, he looks in front of himself with this far away blank look for a few seconds.

His mouth will start to pucker for a few seconds, checking if he left the answer in the back of his jaw.

Then his optics will roll back a bit as he starts actually searching his head.

He’ll toss his head from side to side a few times, trying to dislodge the answer and knock it back into place.

Then he’ll stop and glare at nothing in particular, having found nothing in his head.

He’ll bring a servo up to one of his audio sensors and scratch behind it, trying very hard to remember where in his messy head he left the answer…

And inevitably, he’ll forget just what he was trying to remember and then change the subject again.

“Hey, where’d you get this cat from anyway?” Bee asked, pointing at the cat in his hands.

“Would you PLEASE stop asking me about the cat already!?” Prowl yelled at him, smacking his own face with his servo. This bot can do nothing but THINK and it still exhausts him… “If you have nothing to do, will you please GO? I’m currently in the middle of something.”

“But you were just staring at a cat when I came in!” Bumble Bee complained, holding out the cat for proof.

“I was NOT staring at the cat!” Prowl tried to explain. “I was in the middle of meditating and trying to focus my frequencies in order to try and-“

“Why do you need a cat to meditate?” Bumble Bee asked, genuinely curious while holding the cat out in front of him. Thoughtless questions coming out in quick succession. “Isn’t it just sitting still and not doing anything? What do you need the cat for?”

“It’s not about the cat, Bumble Bee!” Prowl was now officially on his last nerve. “And it’s not about doing nothing! It’s about clearing your mind! Something you could stand to learn how to do. Maybe then you’d realize how completely idiotic this-“

“Oh!” Bumble Bee’s expression changed to joyful as he looked away, a light bulb suddenly going off in his head and clearly showing him the thing he was looking for a minute ago. “Now I remember!”

In less than a second, Bee dropped the cat on the floor and dashed for the other side of the room. There, he jumped up and grabbed the Hyper Saber Prowl kept hanging on the wall above his berth. The same Hyper Saber Prowl was 100% sure he told Bumble Bee that he was, quote: “never ever ever under any circumstances, even life or death, threat of injury, possible imprisonment or even if Optimus says so, are you ever allowed to touch this”.

“Can I borrow this Hyper Saber real quick?” Bee asked, holding out the Hyper Saber that was definitely three feet taller than him, in both servos. To emphasize just how much he wanted to use it, he then hugged it close and tried his best impersonation of Sari’s ‘innocent’ face. “Please! I’ll be super careful!”

“No.” Prowl said firmly, loudly, and definitely finally without even a hint of chance. “The last time I let you ‘borrow’ something it came back in two pieces.”

“That was like one time.” Bee said with an optics roll. “And I said I was sorry!”

“Well that’s why I’m saying ‘no’.” Prowl said in a gentler, more controlled tone to show how serious he was. “Now put it back and go back to what you were doing.”

“Hmmmm.” Bee growled lightly to himself before repeating the thinking pattern of looking up towards the ceiling as a smile crept up to his face. “I could do that! Or~ I could…”

With just the slightest roll on his ankle ball, Bumble Bee was zooming past Prowl and around the other side of the room. He had such a precise mental layout of Prowl’s room from all of the times he’d snuck in, hidden out and ran around it that he could zoom through it without even needing to look where he was going.

Prowl honestly should not have expected anything other than this to happen.

“BETCHA CAN’T CATCH ME!” Bumble Bee teased, zooming on his heel wheels past Prowl again and rounding behind the tree.

“BUMBLE BEE!!” Prowl shocked by Bumble Bee’s sudden zooming, glared as he tried to keep his eyes on Bee speeding past “Put that down right now! You’re going to break something!”

“Only if you catch me first!” Bumble Bee continued to tease, turn, zoom and play around while holding the saber behind him. “Bet I can make it out the door before you!”

Prowl gritted his teeth and tried to jump forward to snatch at Bee’s neck, but he mixed him and just grazed the top of his armor by the tips of his digits. He gritted his teeth. Bee just swerved around him on his heels, going around backwards and leaving behind a faint yellow blur wherever he went.

“Quit messing around, Bumble Bee!” Prowl barked out trying to keep track of Bee with his optics but feeling just seconds behind. “This is not a game!”

“A game! Hmm, guess we could make it one!” Bee said in his playful, hype pitched tone with a giggle underneath. “What should we play? Tag? Hide and seek? Catch?”

“QUIT MESSING AROUND!!” Prowl yelled, throughly irritated and ready to take out his hub cap knives and gut this yellow buzzing idiot! “Give me back my Hyper Saber now or else!”

“Keep away it is!” Bee said joyfully.

Bee turned on his heel and activated the extra roller blade function to zoom past. It was a bit difficult to maneuver around the tighter corners of Prowl’s room while holding the saber under his arm, but he could manage it. In fact, he felt like he needed the handicap since Prowl was having such a difficult time catching him!

“You can’t catch me!” Bee sang out, easily swinging past the tree and rolling towards Prowl’s corner - headed straight for the door. “I’m the fastest bot alive! And I’m definitely faster than you Mr. Stand-Still-And-Feel-The-Earth-All-Day!”

Prowl realized chasing Bumble Bee definitely wasn’t the answer to this. What’s the solution to the universe’s most obnoxious idiot running around the room where he doesn’t belong? Simple: Stand still.

“What? You turning into a tree now?” Bee teased as he curved round the edge to pass Prowl again. A smirk came over as he turned. “Or you turnin’ into stone on me now? Ha! Come on, Prowl! Have a little fun! This is almost too eas-“

Stand still and hold your foot out when you know you’ve timed it just right.

“WAH!!!”

Bee felt himself fly for a minute before falling face flat on the ground in front of him. He’d done this so many times before that he knew exactly what to expect: soft wood ground with the smell of grass smashing into his faceplate. He was thankful at least that the floors in Prowl’s room were a lot softer to land on, it made the humiliation easier to deal with.

Of course, feeling the cat suddenly jump onto his lower back didn’t help. For some reason the soft fluffy animal jumped out onto Bee, curiously pawing at his lower back made Bumble Bee feel slightly more defeated than before.

“You’re not helping…” Bee complained to the cat, only receiving a few scratches followed by nuzzling.

Hearing the soft sound of Prowl’s foot steps approach, Bee looked up and saw Prowl looking down at him. Bee glared up, his blue eyes seeing through Prowl’s typical poker-face blank expression to what he was really feeling: smug.

“Fast…” Prowl carefully reached down and took back his Saber from Bumble Bee, who was now stuck to the floor as the cat laid curled up on his back. “But not alert.”

With that, Prowl let a grin slip. Bumble Bee continued to glare, an embarrassed blush tinging the corners of his optics which Prowl knew meant he was throughly humiliated.

“What’s the matter?” Prowl, suddenly in a much better and more playful mood, pointed down towards Bee’s lower back. “Cat got your tongue?”

THAT made Bee’s blush spread out till it touched from corner to corner of his face plate. He screwed up his mouth tight like he was holding in a scream and sat up higher. The cat, annoyed by this petty squabble, jumped off and laid down next to Bumble Bee. Who, in turn, sat up and sat back on his aft to look up at Prowl in annoyance.

The tables turned and Prowl enjoyed getting to silently grin and look down at Bumble Bee, who could only glare up and pout in silence. They both just sat there, holding their glares as the world around them seemed to hold still. Neither one moved or even thought of this as particularly unusual - they’d done this before. It almost always ended up like some variation of this; a game or a challenge followed by a humiliating defeat and some slightly charged staring contest. Neither one of them knew why they were just staring, only that they wouldn’t back down or look away.

It was like both of them were holding their breath so the moment wouldn’t slip away.

“PBBBBBBBTTTTTT!!!!!!”

That was until Bee stuck out his glossia and, in the words of Sari, “blew a raspberry”.  Prowl hated that look and sound - and Bee knew it. The silence of the spell was broken and flung them back into their original dynamic.

“Ugh!” Prowl backed away, caught out of his daze of victory and looked down at Bee fully irritated again. “You are such a…! A…!”

“A what?” Bee pulled his glossia back in his mouth and smirked, leaning back and posing with one leg up and resting his head in his hand for added effect. “Amazing Bot~?”

“Glitch head…” Prowl growled, glaring at Bee.

Before Bumble Bee could say anything else, they were altered to someone coming in by a knock followed by the door sliding open. Ratchet stepped inside, looking unenthusiastic at Prowl standing over Bumble Bee. Whatever these kids were doing made no sense to him and he wasn’t even going to try and understand it.

“There you two are. Why aren’t you checking your comm links?” Ratchet complained before throwing his thumb-digit back behind him, gesturing for them to follow his lead. “I need your help in the med bay.”

“What seems to be the problem?” Prowl asked while standing up, thankful Rachet wasn’t going to ask about what they were doing.

“The Charge Station is on the fritz again.” Ratchet said with a head shake. This was the third time this month! He looked down at Bumble Bee who was laying on the floor like some kind of idiot with a cat next to him. “Bumble Bee! Come and help keep the charge stable. Prowl and I will work on the stabilizers while you keep the feedback loop from crashing or overheating.”

“Why do I gotta go?” Bee whined, still on the ground and looking up at Rachet confused.

“‘Cause you’re the only one who can help maintain its charge!” Ratchet barked at the obvious idiot. “I’m gonna have my hands full keeping its magnetic equilibrium in place while Prowl helps me stabilize it. So I need you to hold its charge before it’s all set.”

“UGH….” Bee groaned, already tired before the actual chewing out could begin. “Fine, I’ll go…”

Bee picked himself up and, without missing a beat, reached down and picked up the cat. He then turned and walked out of the room, cradling the cat in his arms as he walked towards the med bay.

Ratchet watched Bee pass him, a quizzical look on his face as he turned to Prowl for an explanation.

“Where’d that cat come from?” Rachet asked.

“Don’t ask…” Prowl groaned, already exhausted on this running topic.

They met up with Bee in the med bay, who had placed the cat on a low rise table and was letting it swat at some loose hanging drapery. Ratchet pulled Bee away and Prowl followed them up to the Charge Station in the middle of the room.

The Charge Station was about a big as two mini refrigerators stacked on top of each other, tall and oblong with multiple ports. It was an alternative power unit meant to help bots with limited Energon charge up after battle or after waking up from stasis. This one was an older model made during the war, one that was helpful when they were all just maintenance bots who would only have to recharge one at a time after a long mega cycle of repairing space bridges. But now that they were on Earth, far away from Energon stations and frequently involved in some kind of fight, it was critically overused.

The team frequently had to use it and it was getting worn out. Ratchet only had to keep its maintance up every other Solar Cycle before, but now it was like every other week.

“Now let’s get this Charge Station back to normal.” Ratchet announced, typing on the station’s key pad and opening up its anterior power source system. “I noticed it’s feedback loop is frizting again, we’re gonna need to replace the energy crystal with one of our recycled ones and let the original charge in a stasis tube for a few cycles.”

“Why don’t we just put an All Spark piece into it?” Bumble Bee suggested, looking down at the large crystal that was giving off a faint pulse. “Looks like it’ll fit. Plus wouldn’t it just fix everything for us?”

“You can’t rely on the All Spark for everything, Bumble Bee.” Prowl chastised, looking down at the crystal. “These Energy Crystals are living minerals with frequencies attuned to the Charge Station. You can’t just expect it to run with any other substance.”

“Then why don’t we just get a new one?” Bumble Bee complained, tapping on the top of the Charge Station with the side of his servo in annoyance. “Don’t they make newer models of this thing? Lighter ones? Ones that are less old and clunky?”

“You can’t just get rid of something when a new model comes out!” Ratchet chastised Bumble Bee, swatting his servo off of the top. “This old Charge Station has been serving us well all these mega cycles! You better learn how to take care of it before you start complaining that you want a new one.”

“Fiiiine!” Bee groaned out aggrivatedly, crossing his servos over his chest plate. “Sorry I asked~”

Bumble Bee hardly used the Charge Station. Unlike the others, he rarely needed a charge regulation or spark up. So to him, it was just an old relic that was too big, too loud and just ugly. He stuck his glossia out at it in annoyance.

Prowl sighed at Bee’s childishness. Ratchet, an expert at ignoring Bumble Bee, walked over and carefully removed the fragile and dim crystal out of its container with a oversized pair of pliers. He transferred it into an open stasis pod and replaced it with a similar crystal. Then he pulled out a charge pad attached by four wires to the Charge Station and give it to Bumble Bee.

“Now just hold this with one servo while you maintain the charge with your stinger.” Rachet explained as he handed the charge pad to Bumble Bee. He then pressed a few buttons on the side of the Charge Station and a small, capsule sized port hole opened up. “That charge pad acts a bit like a filter, so it’ll attune to your natural charge point and act as a filter until we fix the equalizer. Just point your stinger here at the auxiliary charge port and it’ll deliver your charge directly to the new system. And make sure you don’t go over 450 volts!”

“Ugh! Fine…” Bee said, taking the charge pad and switching his other servo to stinger mode, looking up at Rachet sarcastically. “When did I get downgraded to being a set of jumper cables?”

“Kid, you don’t even know what you COULD do and yet you’re complaining about doing the simplest charge mods!” Rachet bickered before walking away.

Bumble Bee just huffed at that and did as he was told. He’d been everything for this team from a soldering gun, laser pointer, electrical unit to even a shock pulse detector. This? This was nothing to him. Which meant it was pretty annoying.

Ratchet walked Prowl over to the other side of the room to grab the stabilizers they’d need for their end of the repair job. Prowl looked back at Bee, who was maintaining a steady charge flow, and checked in with Ratchet.

“What he ‘could’ do?” Prowl asked curiously in a slightly lower voice so Bumble Bee wouldn’t hear them. “You think Bumble Bee is actually useful for something?”

“The kid has a pretty useful charge feedback loop system.” Rachet explained off hand-idly, digging in a drawer for the wires they’d need. “No matter how much charge he puts out, he always replenishes it. He also seems to be able to absorb other charges and regenerates his own quickly. It’s actually a very useful skill for charge bots, and a rare one at that.”

“Seems like a side effect from his overly hyper personality…” Prowl complained, looking up at the ceiling worn out from the memories of all of Bumble Bees hyperactive shenanigans. “Maybe draining some of that excess energy would make him more tolerable to be around.”

“Heh, maybe.” Ratchet quipped with a smile. “But, that’s who he is. Wouldn’t want him any other way, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Prowl answered with a shrug. “Just imagine if he was worse.”

Bumble Bee noticed that the two of them were taking longer than they needed to grab some simple stabilizer tools. So when he looked up and saw them talking he felt immediately left out.

“Are you guys talking about me over there??” Bumble Bee asked loudly.

“Focus on your own job, kid!” Ratchet called back, walking back over with their tools. “That crystal needs to be attuned to the exact charge and frequency as the old one for that Charge Station to work again. So don’t let that charge dip!”

“Ugh! But it’s too easy.” Bumble Bee said with a roll of his eyes. “How’s a bot supposed to focus on doing something they can do in their sleep?”

“Might I suggest you try doing it silently for a change?” Prowl said sarcastically. “THAT might be a tough challenge for you.”

“Oh. Ha. Ha. Ha.” Bumble Bee emphasized the mock laugh by knocking his head from side to side. “Yeah! Make fun of the guy doing the actually REAL WORK here!”

“Will you two cut it already!” Ratchet bickered, looking between between both of them before setting his gaze on Bee. “Now just hold that charge steady for awhile while we work at this!”

“FINE…” Bee moaned out.

Ratchet gave Prowl the tools and wires needed to fix the equalizer while he used his own magnetic pulse to stabilize the system. No accidental shocks or static could effect him this way, and it was a pretty simple routine fix. Something all of them could do on their own.

“How long is this gonna take?” Bumble Bee complained, watching Prowl work.

“Longer if you don’t shut up.” Prowl quipped.

“It’s just a question!” Bumble Bee complained.

“A dumb one.” Ratchet commented, too focused on maintaining a stable pulse to get angry. “It’ll take as long as it needs, kid. You could stand to practice maintaining a steady charge for once instead of blowing it all in bursts.”

“Hey! I can totally maintain my charge as long as want to!” Bee bit back, grinning a bit to himself. “I’m a master of flow~”

“You’re a master at running the motor in your mouth.” Prowl corrected, reaching in deeper to replace an old, worn wire with the new one. “Why don’t you try to take this as a chance to practice maintaining focus? Quietly…”

“Ugh!!” Bee moaned and rolled his optics. Prowl was ALWAYS like this to him, when all he was doing was trying to be friendly! “But it’s so BORING! Why the heck would anyone wanna stand still doing nothing all day long?”

“Maybe because the most difficult thing is not doing anything.” Prowl explained without thinking about it, too focused on adjusting wires to stop his thoughts from coming out.

“Uh, I think you got that backwards, Prowlie.” Bee said with a smirk.

“For YOU it might be backwards, but for the universe it’s only natural to let nothing be nothing until it changes.” Prowl backed out and then glared at Bee. “And DON’T call me ‘Prowlie’…”

Bee simply stuck his glossia out at Prowl, who gritted his teeth and glared back. He really wished he could get over Bee’s childish thoughts and behaviors without reacting to it. But somehow it always got under his plates. Probably because how Prowl thought was the exact opposite of how Bumble Bee thinks. Prowl could hold still and maintain his focus so intently that sometimes he felt like HE was the one holding stillness in place, holding all of the balance and flow together by just his intent of breath.

Bumble Bee couldn’t even stand still for two seconds before moving on to the next thought. It was as if even Bumble Bee’s mind couldn’t keep still. He kept actively jumping from one thought to the next, focused on action and movement. His mind wandered and never stuck around long enough to think anything through.

“Can’t this thing go any faster??” Bumble Bee asked after ten minutes of holding his charge still. It was agonizingly boring to have nothing to do but charge, zap and repeat. “Why do ALL old charge units take FOREVER to fix…”

“Just wait a nanoclick, kid!” Ratchet bickered as Prowl pulled away from the Charge Station. He then turned to Prowl to check the diagnostics. “How’s it in there? Everything set?”

“Everything’s set up but I don’t think this crystal can hold the same charge as the old one.” Prowl explained tapping on top of the unit. “It hasn’t completely set yet and the power isn’t reaching the core functions, the charge loop probably isn’t functioning.”

“That’s probably because it’s a recycled crystal.” Ratchet said with a sigh. Even he was tired of having to make do with what they had, and they had so little of what they needed. “We haven’t been able to get a new one or properly replenish the recycled ones in over four solar cycles.”

Ratchet shook his head then turned off the magnetic charge. He shut the door the the auxiliary charge station and looked up at Bumble Bee.

“Just keep maintaining that charge for a couple of hours until the feedback loop’s been established. We’ll see if the charge loop is back in place and go from there.”

“What!? A couple of hours???” Bee looked at Ratchet in shocked outrage. “But that’s like forever!!”

“No, it’s a couple of hours.” Prowl corrected, shaking his head. “You could stand to practice standing still and focusing for a change. Maybe do it quietly while you’re at it.”

“Ugh!! There you go again with that stupid focus stuff!” Bee quipped, looking at the charge port interestedly. “Maybe this would go faster is we just added a little more juice to it…”

“Bumble Bee!” Ratchet warned. “Don’t even think about-“

But Ratchet’s voice fell on deaf ears since Bumble Bee jumped to increase his charge to 2000 volts! It produced a deafening sound of static buzzing all around, even magnetizing the small three feet area around Bumble Bee so screws and sockets were pulled towards him. Cat had picked up on the sudden change and jumped off of his table to hide under a chair while Prowl and Ratchet were thrown back four feet by the sudden pulse.

“WOAH!” Bee shouted, his optics going wide as an exciting amount of energy was circling between him and the Charge Station crystal. “THIS is exciting!!!”

“KID! CUT THE POWER!” Ratchet sat up and shouted, his optics wide in worry. “You’re gonna overload yourself with that kind of charge flow!!”

“WHAT???” Bee tried to shout over the sound of the static and charge but couldn’t hear anything else. “YOU SAY SOMETHING, RATCHET??”

“He said turn it OFF!!!” Prowl tried to shout out.

“TURN IT UP??” Bee looked curiously before breaking into a wide grin. “WELL! IF YOU SAY SO!”

Feeling a sudden giddy rush of energy, Bumble Bee decided to push himself again and went for 5000 volts! It was a spinning head rush to feel the feedback loop rush through his system. The electric vibrations tingling with the crystal’s unique frequency sounded a lot like twinkling lights and reminded him of firework embers fizzling up and out. It was a musical light show glittering between him, his processor and the energy flow.

But what was fun and exciting for Bumble Bee was anxiety inducing to everyone else in the room. Primarily Ratchet and Prowl!

“That Charge Station is gonna overload!” Ratchet shouted over to Prowl. “We’ve got to break that energy flow!!”

“How??” Prowl asked, looking over at Ratchet confused. “Bumble Bee can’t hear us!”

“If we can break his concentration, maybe it’ll make him stop!” Ratchet shouted while looking at Prowl for ideas. “What’s something that easily distracts him?”

“Everything?” Prowl guessed.

“Now’s not the time for jokes!” Ratchet chastised. “We need something and we need it fast!”

Prowl usually worked well under pressure, but only when he could remain calm. And again, because it was Bumble Bee all he could feel was a charged sort of irritation! It felt ironic that the one time Bumble Bee maintains focus is when it could blow something up!

Prowl looked around and tried to find something that could work, but the only thing that caught his eyes was the cat hiding under the chair nearby.

“Not really my first choice…” Prowl moaned under his breath, already regretting this idea. “But it’ll have to do!”

Prowl reached over and scooped up the cat from under the chair. Then, hoping this would work, he held it up over his head.

“BUMBLE BEE!” Prowl shouted out before throwing the cat up over his head and in the air. “CATCH!!!”

“MEOW!!!”

“Huh?”

Bumble Bee’s processor clicked out of the swirling sounds and lights of flowing charge at the sound of something ‘meow’-ing. When he looked up, he snapped out of it as soon as he saw the ginger cat flying through the air behind him. In less than a second, he dropped the charge pad and returned his stinger to a normal servo, cutting the charge and nullifying his own output back to normal.

“I got it!!” Bee said, eyes on the cat with his hands in the air. “I got it! I got it!”

Bee took several steps backwards but, since he wasn’t looking where he was going and ended up tangling his feet up in the loose, criss crossed wires attached to the Charge Station. He didn’t even need to look down to know why he was falling backwards.

“I don’t got it…” Bee said while tripping back.

Bee fell with a large THUD followed by a CRASH two tables stuck in the wires and a few BRRRRRZT from loose magnetized screws and tools scraping underneath. This was not like Prowl’s soft wood floors so the landing HURT! And he got more and more tangled up in the wires from the landing.

“Owwww….” Bee complained, hands still held out in front of him as his sore aft and battered legs got crisscrossed between the wires. “How did that happen…?”

But with luck, he was in the perfect position to catch the cat that landed perfectly in his hands. He looked up and saw the cat, now extra fluffy from the flight and static around him, and smiled up at it with his big blue optics.

“I got it!” Bee said proudly, smiling joyfully up at the cat. “I saved the cat!”

“Meow!” The cat looked down and complained at Bee.

“Hey, you look different.” Bee looked at the cat curiously, not sure why but the cat seemed fluffier than before. “Did you do something with your hair?”

“Meow…..”

During this all, Ratchet and Prowl just looked on in bewildered fascination. Now that Bee had cut the charge and was safely restrained far away from the Charge Station, they picked themselves up and went over to inspect the damage.

“That’s not really what I meant…” Ratchet said, looking at Prowl in that same dry, dismissive tone.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Prowl said, servos out and open to show ‘so what?’.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one that talks about not disturbing organic life?” Ratchet criticized, tapping on the screen pad while looking at Prowl. “What would have happened if Bumble Bee didn’t cut his charge and zapped that cat into smitherines!”

“I had a feeling he wouldn’t do that.” Prowl said, looking over and glaring tiredly at Bumble Bee who was fully enamored by the ginger covered puff ball hissing at him. “Bumble Bee’s an uncontrollable idiot. But, when he likes something, he knows how to keep it safe.”

“Yeah…” Ratchet rolled his optics and looked down at the screen. “Well, let’s see what the damage on this thing is to- WHAT!??”

“What??” Prowl looked over at the screen as well. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s going on?” Bumble Bee asked from his spot, still holding the cat.

Before he could get up, the cat bit Bumble Bee’s finger hard enough to make him drop it.

“OW!” Bee dropped the cat and watched it scamper past the loose wires. Bee followed with his eyes and saw at least a third of the wires had been unplugged from the Charge Station, which was now glowing and showing it was in full power. “Hey! It works now!”

Prowl and Ratchet checked the pad and the auxiliary power units and saw that Bee was right: It does work! Even better than before!

“Those wires must have been mixing up the charge signals and kept it from successfully completing the feedback loop.” Ratchet summarized, shutting the door to the power connector and looking at the station. “Looks like this crystal isn’t as sensitive as the other one, probably because it’s newer and needs less charge filter.”

“So when Bumble Bee fell backwards and pulled out the wires, he accidentally made it work again?” Prowl asked, more confused by the pure luck and chance of it all.

“Well, it probably helped that he also zapped it with enough energy to make it force adjust to its new feedback system.” Ratchet offered, looking down at the mess of wires that Bumble Bee was tangled in. “Guess the kid’s impulsive power surge was actually useful for once.”

Bumble Bee smiled at Ratchet admitting he kind of helped. When he looked over next to him, he saw the cat was sitting there licking his paws to get rid of the extra static. Still feeling giddy from the whole thing, Bumble Bee reached over and picked the cat up again, holding up and playfully smiling at it.

“Good job, cat!” Bee announced, feeling like someone here deserved praise. And since it wasn’t gonna be him, he might as well have fun with it. “Who’s a good cat? Who’s a smart cat? Who’s a cutie, fuzzy organic creature?”

Ratchet and Prowl watched for a moment as Bumble Bee continued to playfully harass the cat. All of this was mind blowing: Bumble Bee accidentally did something right? Bumble Bee hadn’t blown his own charge system by holding 5000 volts for so long? He said words like ‘cutie’ and ‘fuzzy’?

Prowl regretted entertaining any of Bumble Bee’s ideas and he especially regretted letting him continue to play with this innocent organic creature. Which, if his memory processor was still functional, was half of the reason why Bumble Bee began annoying him in the first place!

“Please, whatever you do, do not tell me you think Bumble Bee actually had any idea about what he was doing.” Prowl droned out, completely exhausted and honestly ready to hit something.

“I don’t think that bot can hold an idea for longer than five nanoclicks…” Ratchet admitted. “Now do you mind explaining to me why Bumble Bee is being so affectionate to that creature?”

“I don’t know…” Prowl groaned out, pressing the bridge between his optics with two digits as he shook his head. “I didn’t even know he COULD be affectionate…”

“He’s a mini bot. They’re built for that.” Ratchet said with an exhausted sigh. “Though, they’re only supposed to be affectionate to their teammates or assigned partners. Then again, Bumble Bee’s pretty affectionate with Sari. Little bit with Bulkhead.”

“Well I’m just glad he isn’t annoying me anymore…”

After a minute of playing with the cat, Bumble Bee stopped and looked up over at the other two who were standing there waiting for him to stop being such a child. He flustered a bit and gently put the cat back down away from the wires. He tried to laugh it off and pick himself up, but found that all of the wires around his legs were so mixed up that there was no way he could stand up without tightening them.

“… Uh, who’s gonna help me out of these wires?” Bee asked, trying to cover up how embarrassing that was.

Ratchet sighed and was about to help when Prowl just walked over. Prowl bent down and carefully separated the more dense tangles until only a few loose wires were left around Bumble Bee’s legs. He reached out, offering Bumble Bee his hand.

Unusually bashful, Bee flustered for a bit but gently reached up and let Prowl pull up back up to his feet. He smiled and was about to chirp out a ‘thanks’-

SMACK!!!

Prowl smacked up right between his audio receptors with the side of his servo.

“OW!!!” Bee backed up a bit and covered his head with both servos. The pain was sharp, sudden and part! He looked up at Prowl with an enraged and bewildered look. “What was THAT for!?”

“Why don’t you ever THINK before you do something!!” Prowl yelled at Bumble Bee, optics sharp enough to cut him with a look. “You could have broken it!”

“It worked, didn’t it!” Bee shot back.

“Until you broke it!”

“Well it’s working now!”

“Because WE fixed it!”

“NO! Because I shocked it back to life!”

“You nearly blew it up!”

“I did not!” Bumble Bee stomped a foot and then crossed his arms across his chest plate in a pouting pose. “Those stupid wires did!”

“Those wires were working just fine until YOU overloaded them!”

“Well maybe they  shouldn’t have been so easy to overload!!”

“You-!!”

Prowl had run out of words. He had so much built up anger and irritation, yet no words to effectively get it out or across! This always happened with Bumble Bee, he always said and did something so implausibly stupid that it sent Prowl into a processor spiral he couldn’t control.

It was like Bumble Bee knew how to press all of his buttons in the exact right order in order to bring out the worst in him. Whenever Bumble Bee was involved he couldn’t stay calm and collected. He always ended up spiraling into an argument, caught up in the heat of the moment, unable to focus on anything except him!

It is maddening!! Far beyond simple irritation or frustration since you could at least manage to put those out of your mind! Bumble Bee knew how to exhaust every last one of Prowls’ patience nerves until he was 100% past the point of reason and only involved in this moment.

“You are such a…” Prowl, running out of things to say, just did exactly what Bumble Bee would do and said the first thing that came to him. “Glitch head!”

“You’re a Glitch Head, Glitch Head!” Bumble Bee shot back, not even thinking about it first.

“Nutt Tosser!”

“Dull Spark!”

“Bolt Head!”

“Rusty Socket!”

“Malware Runner!”

“Fixed-Gear Shift!”

“Motor Mouth!”

“Will you two cut it out NOW!!” Ratchet yelled at the top of his blasters.

They stopped and turned their faceplates to see Ratchet. Suddenly they both realized they had been overheating as they both felt unnaturally warm and out of breath. Strange for robots who were basically just standing still and talking.

Ratchet didn’t have any patience for this sort of impulsive name calling. It was completely beneath him and a waste of time. It was especially bad since these two were supposed to have been trained soldiers and were put on this team to get along and work together. So how was it they always seemed to manage to do the exact opposite of that?

“You two are teammates and whether you like it or not you will act like it!” Ratchet said while stepped up and looking in between the two of them. “Now what Bumble Bee did WAS incredibly stupid.”

“Hey!” Bumble Bee balked, pointing over at the Charge Station. “It WORKED didn’t it!?”

“But he’s the one who got the Charge Station up and running again.” Ratchet explained and nodding. “We would have been here all day getting nowhere without it.”

“Pure luck!” Prowl huffed, crossing his servos over his chest. “He had no idea what he was doing! He could have blown us all up if he wasn’t careful!”

“But I didn’t~!” Bee half teased. “I fixed it better than you did~”

“You only did that because you were bored!” Prowl barked at Bee. “If you had listened to me and focused long enough to actually correct the power flow, we would have found the problem and fixed it together!”

“Aw~ You’re just upset that I’M the one who fixed it and you didn’t.” Bee continued to tease. “Sorry Mr. Fixed-Shift, but if I hadn’t have done something then we’d be here forever.”

“Ugh!” Prowl had to hold back from stomping his foot down it was taking a lot of strength to hold himself back. “It’s this impatient, unpredictable, short sightedness that creates problems in the first place!”

“Yeah Yeah!” Bee gave an optics roll and copied Prowl’s pose. “Well it’s better than standing around and doing nothing all day, just WAITING for things to fix themselves! Oh wait, you did wait and then I fixed them! So I guess we’re both right!”

“NO. THAT’S NOT THE POINT…” Prowl hissed out.

Ratchet stopped, he had nothing to comment on this and stood back to watch them fight. All the while he shook his head and sighed. These two go through basically the same variation of the same fight every other day now. They were either always fighting or intentionally avoiding one another, as if they inhabited different worlds and knew an explosion would happen whenever they collided. He wondered how the two of them never got bored of it.

Ratchet was so focused on watching them argue on repeat that he didn’t notice the Med Bay door slide open and Optimus walk in. Optimus had been alerted to an energy overload in the Med Bay and came to check it out, only to discover Bumble Bee and Prowl going through one of their routine fights again.

“The two of you might actually be a great team if you knew how to work together.” Ratchet said under his breath, closing his optics and letting out a sigh. “But neither of you can accept how the other thinks. You’re basically polar opposites!”

“Don’t polar opposites attract though, Ratchet?” Optimu said, walking into the room with a smile. “Maybe that’s why whenever you need to find Prowl, Bumble Bee is always somewhere in the room.”

“Sure,” Ratchet opened his optics and rolled him as Optimus approached. “They mix as well as oil and water together.”

“Maybe that’s not the best description…”

Prowl and Bumble Bee stopped arguing long enough to see Optimus come in. Optimus was one of the few bots they tried not to fight in front of, mostly out of a kind of forced politeness.

“Hey, are you talking about us?” Bumble Bee asked, optic quirked in confusion. “I don’t get it.”

“Do you ever?” Prowl quipped.

“I oughta zap you…” Bumble Bee threatened under his breath.

“I take it the power surge alert came from Bumble Bee.” Optimus asked, looking between Bee and the Charge Station. “Did it have something to do with the Charge Station?”

“Essentially, yes.” Rachet shook his head, too tired to explain everything. “We fixed it. End of story.”

“I fixed it!” Bee said, holding his hand up in the air and demanding attention. “Me!”

“Not this again…” Prowl groaned.

Optimus was used to Bee’s demanding need for attention. And unlike Prowl, he had a bit more patience in his processor to deal with Bee when he gets like this.

“Good job, Bumble Bee.” Optimus said with a grin and a thumbs up. “But maybe next time, try not to cause a power surge in the base. We don’t want the humans or the Decepticons to notice a sudden power spike, do we?”

“You got it, Boss Bot!” Bee said, happy to have his skills acknowledged.

Just then, Bulkhead walked in to the Med Bay, carefully maneuvering through the door that was just a little bit too small to fit him all the way. They really needed to fix that.

“Hey!” Bulkhead waved his large servo in the air as he walked over to Bumble Bee. “I was looking for Bumble Bee, figured if Prowl was in here he was probably nearby.”

“You see?” Optimus smiled at Ratchet while gesturing to Bulkhead. “I told you.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re gonna work together.” Ratchet said with an eye roll. “As much as I enjoy seeing the two of them act like malfunctioning pulley systems, they’re a walking wreck just waiting to happen!”

“No, that’s still Bulkehead.” Bee corrected, pointing a digit up at his giant friend.

“Hey!” Bulkhead glared down at Bee. “I was about to tell you Sari just left! She left her new game mod here and said we could play with it. But I guess you don’t wanna play it anymore…”

“Game!” Bee looked up at Bulkhead excitedly. “I wanna play!”

“Hold on! Wait just a minute.” Ratchet said, walking over to the charge station to let it down. “You might have fixed the Charge Station but you also made a mess in here! So clean it up!”

“Aw…” Bee moaned out.

“You help, Prowl.” Ratchet quipped.

“Me?” Prowl pointed at himself and looked at Ratchet annoyed. “Why do I have to help clean? It’s Bumble Bee’s mess.”

“You’re the one who threw the cat, didn’t you?” Ratchet quipped. “So you’re at least partially responsible for this. Besides, if I leave Bumble Bee to do it all then who knows how long it’ll take him before it’s finished.”

“Ugh…” Prowl moaned out as well. “Fine…”

“You threw a cat?” Bulkhead asked, looking at Prowl confused.

“Ha!” Bee laughed, pointing at Prowl his a digit on each servo. “You’re~ In~ Trouble~”

“Yeah?” Prowl turned his head to glare at Bee. “And who’s FAULT is that?”

Sensing an incoming fight, Bulkhead backed away and stood next to Optimus and Ratchet as Prowl and Bee started resetting the tables and picking up separated wires.

“I see your point, Ratchet.” Optimus said with a nod. “Those two fight like a couple of, uh. What’re the names of those domesticated life forms humans like to keep inside their homes again?”

“Uh…” Bulkhead thought about that, trying to remember the pictures of things Sari would show them. “Cats and dogs?”

“Right.” Optimus nodded his head. “Maybe they’d work better as a team if they could learn to get along.”

Just as the two of them were cleaning up on opposite sides of the room, they looked up at each other. True, Bumble Bee and Prowl knew they were very different. But was that a bad thing?

“Well if that’s true, then I’m the dog!” Bee said, proudly pointing at his chest plate with a thumb digit.

“A mangy, annoying and obnoxious dog.” Prowl stated, picking up more wires and throwing them over his arm. “Couldn’t put it better myself.”

“Oh yeah!” Bee glared over at Prowl. “Well it’s better than being some kind of stuck up, boring, stupid cat!”

“Weren’t you just ‘coo-ing’ over a cat a minute ago?” Prowl answered with a smirk. “Besides, cat’s are smart, tactful and patient creatures that know how to master their environment. And they’re much cleaner than dogs are.”

“Oh yeah?” Bee looked over to the side and smiled, pointing across the room. “I guess you’re all about proper reflection and being clean, huh Prowlie?”

Prowl followed Bee’s direction and saw the same ginger cat on top of a cabinet, leg up in the air and licking its extremities. Prowl seethed as Bee smirked.

“I told you not to call me that…” Prowl said in a low tone.

“… Where’d that cat come from?” Optimus asked.

Before this bit could go any further, Teletraan sent an alert out over the speakers.

*INCOMING UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT APPROACHING EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. SCANS SHOW FAINT SPACE BRIDGE RESIDUAL ENERGY NOTES. GENERAL LANDING AREA: LAKE ERIE. APPROXIMATE LANDING TIME: 1 HOUR*

“A ship heading for Lake Erie?” Optimus looked up at the others and gestured for them to follow. “Come on! Let’s check the news monitors and see if it’s true.”

“Does that mean we can stop cleaning now?” Bumble Bee asked.

“Just move it, kid!” Ratchet bickered.

The five of them all filed into the main room and turned on the main monitor. They switched to the news and watched a news cast from Detroit Metro News about an incoming UFO.

“As you can see behind me, a UFO is heading towards Lake Eerie. We’ve been told by Sumdac System’s head Professor Sumdac himself not to worry though. He has stated that the UFO is too small to be of any danger to the surrounding city area and that it is most likely some kind of loose asteroid within the acceptable range of non-dangerous impact. However, authorities are advising all civilians to evacuate the lakeside area and stay away from Lake Erie for the present time. Until the UFO has landed and had a proper amount of time to be studied, the Lake area will be off limits to all civilians and guarded by the DPD with Sumdac System security bots.”

Just then, Teletraan alerted them to a signal from the small circling Autobot satelight.

*IMAGES FROM THE SATELIGHT SYSTEM SHOW THIS UFO IS MOST LIKELY A CYBERTRONIAN TRANSIT AND CARGO VEHICLE. SPECS ARE UNKNOWN. NO POWER SIGNATURES RELATED TO EITHER AUTOBOTS OR DECEPTICONS HAVE BEEN FOUND. HOWEVER, IT IS ADVISED TO TREAT IT AS A POSSIBLE SECURITY RISK AS THERE ARE HIGH LEVELS OF UNRECOGNIZED ENERGON SIGNALS EMANATING FROM ITS TRAILS.*

“Sounds like that cargo ship’s carrying something big and heavy…” Bumble Bee guessed. “Where’d it come from?”

“We didn’t order anything?” Bulkhead looked confused, trying to remember if they ever even had a delivery address sent to Cybertron. “Wouldn’t the Space Bridge alert system have rung us up if someone was gonna pass through here?”

“Unless that Cargo ship can somehow mask its signature and bypass security alert protocols, it’s supposed to send us a five click notice.” Ratchet said, glaring at the screen where the UFO was falling. “How can a Cybertronian ship enter Earth’s atmosphere that quickly without getting caught in our system?”

“We don’t have time to think about that now.” Optimus said. “The humans won’t know what they’re doing. I’ll patch in to Sergeant Falzone and tell them that they need to cut off all roads leading up to the lake and evacuate civilians from the area! Autobots! Transform and roll out to Lake Erie!“

With that, they transformed into vehicle mode and all rolled out to the Lake Side. They were all glad that the traffic wasn’t as bad as it could have been, so their blazing sirens were pretty much unneeded. They easily cruised the highway while guessing what the UFO could be.

“Couldn’t it just be some broken parts that got lost in a Space Bridge?” Bumble Bee guessed, driving near the front next to Optimus and Prowl. “Then they wouldn’t have any power signature!”

“Loose trash and scrap can’t really log in coordinates.” Prowl said, focused on driving forward.

“Then how else would a cargo ship get here?” Bumble Bee asked confused. “Hey, have we EVER gotten anything from Cybertron before? Except for smack.”

“Not that I recall.” Optimus was also curious about how a cargo ship got here. “We’ve only ever sent our coordinates to the central Prime system to give our updates about the All Spark. And we’ve never ordered delivery service before.”

“Unless you count the pizza guy.” Bulkhead chimed in.

“What!?” Ratchet barked from behind. “You bolt heads ordered human delivery service!!”

“Uh! It was Bumble Bee’s idea!”

“HEY!” Bumble Bee shouted back. “That was supposed to be a secret!”

“WHY would you order delivery service to our SECRET base?” Prowl tagged in. “And human food no less! You can’t actually eat it!”

“I wanted to know what it was like!” Bumble Bee admitted. “Plus their jingle is catchy! ‘Pick up a Pizza Pop Up at Pepper’s Pizza Pop-Up Shop~! Now we have delivery~!’ ”

“FOCUS TEAM!” Optimus shouted over all of them. “We need to go and check what this cargo ship is and what it’s doing entering Earth’s atmosphere! If we’re lucky, it’ll still be mostly intact so we can trace its origins and crew log.”

They drove the hour outside the city limits and up to the Lake Erie border. They got off at the secure forest route exit used by state service and troopers. It was a mostly un-paved and unkempt road with loose stones, branches and undergrowth everywhere. Not the smoothest ride.

“Great! Now I get to have dirt all up in my bumpers!” Bumble Bee complained has he was jittered from side to side. “Have I ever said how much I HATE these stupid roads…”

“About a hundred times a month.” Prowl stated, unaffected by the road conditions and Bumble Bee’s complaining.

It only took them about twenty minutes to reach the security perimeter, a half mile wide block of police cars, security bots and flashing orange-white bars to keep people back. There, they saw Sumdac Systems and the DPD had already set up a wide security perimeter to keep out any potential civilians from coming in.

“Alright everybody! LISTEN UP!” Sergeant Falzone bellowed through the megaphone while standing next to his bright yellow car. “Professor Sumdac said that asteroid will be hitting us any minute now! So keep your distance and watch for any sudden-GAH!!!”

Again, the megaphone backfired and started screeching and popping. Freaked out and angry, Falzone threw the megaphone down in to the soft ground and groaned.

“This is why I hate machines…” Falzone grumbled.

“Now that’s just bad manners,” Bumble Bee said, driving up behind him. “You could at least say ‘hello’!”

He was unfazed by the sound of some talking imbecile. He was familiar enough with talking cars to know which one was speaking and where they are. And from how close this one sounded, he guessed they were right behind him.

Falzone groaned again and turned around. Just as he did, all five of them transformed back into robot mode in order to easily walk up the dirt road path. Falzone missed the time it freaked him out when they did this. Now? Now it just annoyed him because he knew it meant he was gonna have a lot more paperwork to file later.

“And just what are you guys here for?” Falzone asked, looking up at Optimus in particular. He knew he had to address this one first - or else he’d never get anywhere. “Didn’t you hear the news? No civilians OR private investigations allowed up here! This is a dangerous, security zone until we know what that asteroid contains. Just ‘cause you all happen to be from space does not mean you’re police officers.”

“We heard the news, and it’s not an asteroid.”  Optimus explained, pointing up to the sky at the falling UFO. “It’s been identified as a Cybertronian cargo ship, another vehicle from our planet. We don’t know what’s on it yet but it’s definitely too dangerous for you humans to be around.”

“We’ll take care of this investigation for now.” Ratchet continued, leaning back a bit while looking up at the sky. “It shouldn’t take long, we just need to know where it came from and why it’s leaking Energon.”

“Another spaceship? Leaking? Energon?” Falzone looked at them cautiously. “You’re telling me that thing is leaking space chemicals!?”

“Not to worry.” Prowl said calmly while holding a hand up. “It’s only giving off trace amounts of it that’s burning in the atmosphere. There’s no need to worry about contamination either, the levels detected aren’t high enough to cause any harm to the air, water or plant life on Earth.”

“Plus, it’s not like it’s dangerous.” Bulkhead explained with his friendliest smile. “We drink it all the time! It’s totally safe!”

“Yeah,” Bumble Bee agreed with a smile and a nod. “That stuff’s harmless! Long as it doesn’t explode.”

“EXPLODE!??” Falzone looked at them all in shock. “That stuff can EXPLODE??”

“What we meant to say is-!” Optimus turned and threw a glare at Bumble Bee for a second before turning to calm Falzone down. “We’re far more familiar with this ship and how to deal with it. We’ll be able to check what is, what’s on it and how to remove it safely without causing any harm to the environment. So please, let us through. And we’ll get this all cleaned up right away.”

At Optimus’s mention of cleaning Bumble Bee groaned and leaned over to whisper to Bulkhead.

“Why do we always end up becoming custodian bots…” Bumble Bee complained, holding a servo up to his mouth to hide it.

“‘Cause it’s in our programming?” Bulkhead guessed with a giant shrug.

“Cosmic joke.” Prowl stated unfazed.

“Well I’m not laughing!” Bumble Bee complained, pouting and crossing his arms over his chestplate.

Falzone looked up at Optimus, then the falling UFO in the sky, and sighed. This wasn’t supposed to be his job. His job was supposed to make sense. It was supposed to be desk work, managing investigations and keeping people safe. Not dealing with robot aliens and letting them pick up possibly dangerous space trash.

“Agh… of course it had to be more aliens.” Falzone complained, shaking his head at the ground before glaring up at the five robots who cause more trouble for him than any other machine on this planet. “WHY is it that whenever something falls from the sky, it has ta do with yous bots?”

“Would you rather it be some kind of human problem?” Ratchet asked aggravated, crossing his servos.

“Yeah!” Bee chimed in while nodding his head. “You guys throw stuff at each other through the sky all the time.”

“Agh! I don’t wanna hear about it.” Falzone waved his large head and turned around, already done with this part. “Just get rid of it!”

“Yes~ Sergeant Falzone~” Bee teased false joyfully as he walked past then leaned over to Bulkhead. “Jeez, what a bolt head.”

The five of them had to walk the rest of the way to the lake front. As the did, the UFO approached closer and closer. The sky was still a bright late afternoon blue and the UFO ship seemed to be cruising down now. From a closer look, the atmospheric drop had faded around it and the fire that it picked up began to decrease.

“It’s slowing down…” Prowl said, holding up his arm to scan with his sensors. “Someone must be on-board to switch on cruise control and prepare for landing.”

“I’m not picking up on any vitals or power signatures.” Ratchet said, copying the same action. “It could be on autopilot and the auto-land system finally kicked in.”

“Earth’s atmosphere is a lot different from most outer galactic planet’s, so the autopilot might not have been able to configure its landing cycle properly.” Optimus said, looking at the ship carefully. “It’s coming in too hot. Ratchet! Help me cool it down before it makes a heavy landing! We’ll try to slow it down and contain any possible implosion.”

“That ship is a lot bigger than anything we’ve had to slow down before, Prime.” Ratchet said, holding his arm down while switching to his magnetic charge set. “I don’t think we’ll be able to give a soft landing.”

“Then we can at least contain the damage to the ship.” Optimus said, switching on his coolants. “Alright! Bulkhead, Bumble Bee and Prowl! You three spread out and make sure nothing surprising pops out! Ratchet and I will handle the ship!”

“Got it!” Bumble Bee said.

“Okay!” Bulkhead backed up.

With that, Ratchet and Optimus tried to cool off and slow the ship down as much as they could as it approached the lakeside area. It might have been a small ship - but it was still heavy! The pressure of its descent pushed them both back at least five feet and wore on their concentration.

“Prime… This ship is still coming in hot…” Ratchet warned, now pulling up his other magnetic ray to try and hold back the ship’s force. “We’re not gonna be able to keep the landing stable…”

“Then try and contain it to the lake!” Optimus called out, increasing the water pressure to try and push the ship back more. “Ugh! If this ship… Lands too hard too soon… It could cause serious damage to the area and its interior… Not to mention we promised Falzone there wouldn’t be any disasters…”

“Maybe next time… Don’t make promises you can’t keep…”

“Call it wishful thinking?”

It was hard and tiring, but they did manage to slow the ship down enough to the point it didn’t cause a heavy impact. It landed right on the lake shore, digging in only five feet with bare heat residuals from the atmosphere descent.

“PHEW!” Bumble Bee called out, smiling as he walked over to Ratchet and Optimus. “Nice call, Boss Bot! You guys kept the ship from exploding on impact!”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like we kept it together well…” Optimus huffed and sighed, drained from that cool down and push back. “Ha…. It looks like parts of its thrusters… Ha were broken off in the decent… Along with the Ha the anterior propellers… Ha… And we definitely didn’t help… Ha… keep the current shifters in good shape…”

“All in all, you did manage to keep any damage or impact contained.” Prowl said as he walked up to Optimus. “And we might have been able to keep the interior safely contained.”

“Let’s stop talking about it and move then…” Ratchet complained, picking himself up and dragging his feet over. “I wanna get this over with asap…”

They carefully walked over and approached the ship. It was half in the water and half on land with what looked like the port door on the dry side and the thrusters half soaking in the water. It was a smaller cargo ship, no bigger than a drive-threw burger place with wings half the size of a standard ship and barely any windows. It was a deep green color with grey drags crossing around it, odd hexagon shape plating and only one fuel port.

It was the strangest ship they had seen in awhile, and the damage was obvious. The atmospheric burn had burnt out some of the propeller lining. The lake water was flooding the turbines. There were scorch marks along the upper desk and plating had been pulled from both wings. This ship was definitely not going to fly again unless it got serious repairs.

“That was not a soft landing…” Bumble Bee said with a head shake.

“Looks like someone put on auto-pilot but failed to configure the proper atmosphere drop coordinations.” Ratchet summarized. “Like they knew they wouldn’t be able to manually land it themselves.”

“Then do you think they knew where they were flying to?” Optimus asked, looking curiously at the details and layout of the ship. “Most of this damage came from the improper drop and sudden landing. From the looks of this ship, I’d say it’s fairly well maintained and managed. Definitely not a lost ship from a major fleet.”

“Maybe it was manned by a small, inexperienced crew that offlined before they passed through the Space Bridge?” Prowl guessed, looking up at Optimus carefully. “I’m still not sensing any energy signatures inside yet.”

“So what? It’s a ghost ship?” Bumble Bee meant to say that sarcastically but then he felt a sudden shiver run up his nervous system. “Um, it-it’s not a ghost ship, right?”

“You watch too many human horror films…” Prowl said, shaking his head in Bumble Bee’s direction.

“Let’s get in closer.” Optimus said carefully. “Approach with caution! We don’t know what’s on that ship yet! Let’s just approach with the intent of making sure it’s all in one piece for now.”

They stepped up closer to the lake side and carefully checked the ship. The lake water gently lapped at the shore and splashed along the ship. If they hadn’t seen it burning in the atmosphere five minutes ago, they could have assumed this ship had always been here.

“Well.” Bumble Bee looked up at the others with a shrug. He didn’t know what he was looking at or what he was supposed to look for, so he just said what he knew. “Look’s like it’s in one piece.”

“You sure?” Bulkhead asked, pointing at the ship with one large digit. “That’s the smallest cargo ship I’ve ever seen before!”

“It’s less than half the size of a standard cargo ship.” Prowl stated, looking up logs of general cargo ship standards on his arm computer. “It’s also too big for your standard small delivery service ship. And those thrusters don’t fit any system built for regular commerce.”

“The readings around this ship don’t make sense either.” Optimus said, scanning the ship’s front and reading the data. “It shows it’s a pretty fast ship and made for tactical maneuvering, but there’s no weapons attached? Just debris clean up and mineral capturing.”

“Maybe it’s actually a giant garbage ship?” Bumble Bee guessed. “It’d fit right in with our former mission…”

Ratchet stepped up closer and squinted at it. He seemed to recognize something about the design of this ship. Scratching his rusty chin, he searched his memory for any clues about this particular vehicle.

“If I’m not mistaken, this is an old Cargo ship from back in the war.” Ratchet said, taking another hard look at it.

“A cargo ship from the war?” Optimus looked at Ratchet confused.

“We even HAD cargo ships this small?” Bulkhead went wide optics in shock. “But it’s so little!”

“Hey…” Bumble Bee glared up at Bulkhead.

“How can such an old ship still be functional?” Prowl asked, pointing at the ship. “Sure it looks a bit out of date but it seems perfectly functional.”

“Some old cargo ships were designed for stealth missions and secure cargo lines.” Ratchet explained while taking a few steps around to check the sides carefully. “What I’m surprised with is that this ship doesn’t have any insignia on it. Most Autobot ships had out insignia right on the side. This one might have been a high security cargo ship…”

“That would explain why it could get through the Space Bridge without alerting us. But it doesn’t tell us what it could have been doing here…” Optimus thought for a second then looked at Bumble Bee. “Bumble Bee, you mind drive around the perimeter to check out the ship specs?”

“You got it, Boss Bot!” Bee said with a quick salute before speeding off in one direction.

The four of them stepped into the murky lake water that reached up to their ankles and began examining the damage to the wings and turbine. Bulkhead held the wing carefully as Ratchet used his magnetic ray to carefully move any loose or torn parts, which were mostly minor faults and repairs. They kept checking around the propellers, finding no signs of any insignia and thankfully no space barnacles, when they got a call on their comm link.

“I found the ship number!” Bee said over the comm link. “It’s 312-88003-X7MRB32! Kind of long for a war ship.”

“It’s not a ‘war ship’ it’s a cargo ship FROM the war!” Ratchet corrected, one hand to his comm link as he kept looking. “Take another look around for any insignia and try to give us a damage assessment.”

“That should keep him busy for awhile.” Prowl said while examining a flooded turbine. “Any ideas about whose been using this ship yet?”

“No, but this ship has been well taken care of.” Optimus said while stepping up to the siding. “It’s old alright, but every bump and scratch has been carefully buffed out. It’s using all the original lining from the war years and the turbines all are outdated mods. But they’ve been keeping it up to date and standard for probably cycles now.”

“What kind of bot would wanna keep working on such an old ship model though?” Bulkhead asked, gently putting down his load when Ratchet waved his hand to lower. “Don’t they make better models now?”

“Certain war ships were updated with very specific functions.” Ratchet explained as he stared at this ship, trying to see if he could uncover anything special about it. “Maybe the crew had a job that needed this specific model. ‘Course we won’t know anything about that until we get a look inside.”

“Let’s check out the port then.” Optimus said.

Walking out of the water, they shook out their wet hub caps and walked over to the port side door. They had planned to try and open it to explore as a team but immediately stopped when they saw their biggest problem:

The entrance was tiny.

Just as the ship itself was barely big enough to fit a standard crew, this door would barely fit a single standard bot! It was maybe the size of a storage garage container entrance, rounded out at the top with narrow sides. There was no way Bulkhead would ever fit into this, and Optimus and Prowl would have to squeeze themselves down just to be able to look inside - even if they could figure out how to open it!

“I’ve never seen a cargo ship with such small port-doors before,” Optimus balked with wide optics, turning to Ratchet for clarification. “You sure it’s an old war ship?”

“I already told you: it’s an old ship from the war, not a war ship.” Ratchet corrected. He looked at the port and again scratched his chin, digging up a memory of a conversation from long ago. “I remember someone saying once that they began making smaller cargo and transistor ships in the more heavily asteroid littered zones. It made it easier to transport supplies and data away from the Decepticons since they were faster and easier to maneuver, that way they could escape into the more dangerous regions during persuit.”

“Well what kind of bot could drive this thing?” Bulkhead asked, stepping up and looking at it before gesturing to it angrily. “It could barely fit anything in there!”

“What’re you talking about?”

Bee came back after driving around in circles before stopping and smiling up at it. The ship was smaller than theirs, true, but it seemed cool! It was the first time he’d seen a ship like this up close that hadn’t tried to shoot at him once, so he liked it.

“Looks great to me! All the port doors are just my size!” Bee said, giving it a thumbs up. Then he looked at Optimus and pointed his thumb back behind him, suddenly remembering what he was supposed to tell them. “Oh, and uh, the engine’s busted. Must have gotten torn up in the atmosphere decent.”

“They probably only staffed it with smaller teams of more compact sized bot types,” Prowl hypothesized and looked at Ratchet. “Could this have been specially built for specific bots as well?”

“It could have.” Ratchet said with a shrug. “I wasn’t aware of much of the cargo units dealings, just that apparently they were getting very creative since they needed to protect their sensitive resources. The fact that this ship is still around and flying is shocking enough to me.”

“Looks like we’ll only be able to get some answers if we can go in and look inside,” Optimus said while staring at the port door.

“Well how are we gonna get in there?” Bulkhead asked. “Not like we can fit through the door!”

“Well,” Prowl carefully looked over next to him for the answer. “One of us can.”

Optimus, Ratchet and Bulkhead followed Prowls line of sight and found themselves staring at Bumble Bee. Who, as of this moment, had sort of been spacing out since he wasn’t listening before and didn’t really understand what they were talking about. When he finally realized everyone was looking at him, he looked around confused. Suddenly he felt like he was getting picked to be the sacrificial lamb in the beginning of a horror movie.

“…” Bumble Bee knew that whenever everyone got quiet and looked at him that meant trouble. Specifically that HE was in trouble. “Why’s everybody looking at me?”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Prowl meant. Unfortunately, Bumble Bee is the furthest thing from being a genius possible. So they had to spell it out for him.

“Bumble Bee, why don’t you go on to the ship and inspect on your own?” Optimus said as gently and friendly as he could - before he had to put on his commander voice.

“WHAT!?” Bumble Bee backed up and balked. “Why me??”

“You ARE the only one here who can fit inside.” Bulkhead offered, demonstrating with his one big servo the size difference.

“But-But that’s not fair!” Bumble Bee really did not want to be on the ship that has not been 100% confirmed not-haunted. “Why’s it always gotta be me who has to go and inspect the super freaky space ships!?”

“JUST DO IT NOW!” Ratchet yelled, tired of having to wait for anything to happen here. “We ain’t got all day!”

“The faster you do this then the faster we can figure out what to do with this ship.” Optimus explained diplomatically.

“And aren’t you the fastest bot alive?” Prowl quipped sarcastically, taking Bee’s earlier gesture and turning it into a tease.

“Alright! Alright already!” Bumble Bee groaned, already sick of being lectured and bossed around about this. “Let me be the one that’s always gotta go get attacked by monsters from outer space! I just LOVE being bait all the time!”

“Quit you’re whinin’ and MOVE!” Ratchet commanded.

They waited at the port door Ratchet and Bumble Bee to open the door. Bumble Bee gave the pass code a light shock and Ratchet cracked the code and opened it with his magnetic ray. The door slid open just like the ones at their base, no rusty sounds or delays. It was like the ship was still fully functional, except the power was off.

“Scanners indicate no signs of anything inside yet.” Optimus said, giving it a quick glance before looking at Bumble Bee. “Just go inside and report if you see anything strange. Be on the lookout for any insignia or stasis pods.”

“Fine…” Bee said dully, walking up to the port door and turning on his light. “How long do I have to do this for?”

“Just until we get a sense of what this ship was doing flying in our neck of the woods.” Optimus laughed a bit at the irony of that. “Heh. And uh, keep your comm link on. Just tell us if you find anything out of the ordinary.”

“Okay…”

They watched as Bumble Bee walked in and waited back outside in front of the ship. It had been about ten minutes since he left and all four of them were checking their scanners for any movement or dormant rays. But they found nothing. No signs of life. No electrical signals. No records from the ship log or even records of it existing yet.

‘Could it really be a ghost ship?’ Prowl wondered while looking up at this ship. He then balked at his own suggestion and shook his head. ‘I’ve been listening to Bumble Bee too much. Now his nonsense is getting stuck in my head.’

“That’s strange,” Optimus said, optics still glued to his arm band scanner. “I’m still not picking up any energy signals. Even Bumble Bee’s signal isn’t clear.”

“Maybe check if the comm links have been effected.” Prowl suggested, looking up from his own band at Optimus.

“Good pointed.” Optimus nodded and pressed two digits to his audio signal. “Bumble Bee, come in. Can you hear me?”

Optimus stood and waited, but nothing came back. Puzzled, he tried again.

“Bumble Bee.” Optimus said more firmly. “Come in. Can you read me?”

“What’s going on?” Bulkhead asked, stepping up.

“I can’t seem to reach Bumble Bee.” Optimus said, turning to look at the others. “There must be some sort of frequency jammer blocking our signals. Can you all try to page in to his comm link?”

“Let’s try.” Prowl raised two digits to his comm. “Bumble Bee, this is Prowl. Can you read me?”

“Hey, Bumble Bee! Can you hear this?” Bulkhead tapped his comm link. “It’s Bulkhead, Prime said he can’t reach you.”

“Come in, Bumble Bee.” Ratchet said, focusing on his comm link. “Send a signal if you can hear this.”

The four of them pressed this pagers again and again. Most of them heard nothing with only bits of static glossing over.

“Did you get anything?” Bulkhead asked Prowl.

“Nothing.” Prowl said, looking up at Bulkhead then Optimus. “Just static.”

“It’s not like Bumble Bee to ignore a page.” Optimus looked at the ship and carefully studied it. “Could that ship actually be blocking our signals?”

“It could, if it has high security clearance to have a signal disrupter installed.” Ratchet looked at Optimus carefully. “It’s dangerous to lose contact with the kid like this. We gotta try and reach him or else pull him out.”

“Got it.” Optimus looked at everyone seriously. “Alright everyone, let’s all page  in to Bumble Bee one more time. This time, let’s do it all together and focus on getting a response.”

“Alright,” Prowl said with a nod.

“Just say when!” Bulkhead responded.

Optimus held up three digits and slowly put them down one by one. As the last one fell, they all brought two digits to their comm links at the same time to page in to Bumble Bee.

“Bumble Bee!” Optimus said firmly. “If you can hear this, send a response!”

“Let us know you’re safe, kid!” Ratchet said loudly.

“Come in, Bumble Bee!” Prowl repeated. “Try and send back a signal!”

“Hey!” Bulkhead chimed in. “Come on, little buddy! Send back a message!”

This time static flooded their audio waves. They held still and looked at one another concerned until they started hearing a crackly response over their comms.

“ I go… the sh…. Is in… s…. OSS… ”

“Bumble Bee! Are you there?” Optimus focused and tried to remain calm but kept looking at the open port door worried. “Can you read me?”

“ I… n… ut… the…. Is a… not use… me coul-… it’s all…. -lay…”

“What’s that, kid?” Ratchet looked at the ship confused. “Your intercom signal link is being jammed! Can you try to speak more clearly?”

“ I’m… try but… I don’t…. How can… be so… place?… how you… we shouldn’t… try and see… ”

“What’s he saying?” Bulkhead asked.

“There’s too much signal interference…” Prowl tried to press harder on the intercom and focus his own signal. “Bumble Bee! You need to focus your frequency to clearly communicate through the signal blocks coming off of the ship!”

“ I’m tryin… But there’s… You can’t feel… It’s a lot like… And it’s really…OSS! ”

“You’re coming in with too much static.” Optimus looked concerned, wondering if he had made the right call. “Can you see anything? What are you seeing there?”

They all stood and focused, trying to hear past the static. But suddenly, as if a light bulb went off, they heard a click and Bumble Bee’s voice came through clear.

“ I said this place is GROSS! ” Bumble Bee complained loudly over the intercom. “ The floors are all old! The walls are old! The stuff hanging from the walls are old! This place reminds me of Rachet on a good day. ”

“He’s fine.” Rachet said in a dry voice, aggravated that he had been worried about this stupid bot.

“Is it that bad inside?” Optimus asked carefully.

“ Uh, kind of? I can’t really tell. ” Bumble Bee admitted. “ I mean, it looks like your standard old, dumpy cargo ship. Emphasis on the old. But I don’t see how anyone could have been using this place for long .”

Inside the ship, Bumble Bee wandered along the main path. It really was old inside. Bumble Bee had never been inside such an old model cargo ship before! It was almost retro.

The litho floors had a weird reflection when his small light bounced off, the walls were all the same dull color but all seemed textured with some kind of plaster. All of the lights were off, signaling the main power had been cut before the decent. The hangings were mostly old safety signs and a few commemorative plaques.

Bumble Bee’s steps echoed along the path, the only light shinning coming from his shoulder unit. The shadows were blank and lifeless, the hallways dull with the sound of Bee’s feet reaching farther along that he actually was. The ship seemed empty but not abandoned. More like a house left alone while the family went on vacation. All in all, it was an uninteresting ship.

‘This place kind of reminds me of the old clinics back on Cybertron.’ Bee kept wandering the hallway looking for signs of life. He saw wires and cables and some shelves, but nothing showing anyone used them recently. ‘It all seems so sanitized? There’s no dust, weird for an old dumpy cargo ship. And there’s nothing missing or torn up, maybe worn down but not like in disrepair. So why does this place feel so… creepy?’

Bumble Bee had gotten an unsettling feeling since he walked in to this place. It didn’t feel abandoned, but it also didn’t feel lived in. It felt strangely medical. Like everything was placed and structured with surgical precision.

‘I feel like I’m not supposed to be here…’ Bumble Bee rubbed his elbows nervously for a second before laughing to himself. ‘No-DUH, Bumble Bee! I’m definitely trespassing in here. Just… how come it feels like there’s supposed to be a lot going on in here?’

This whole place reeked of something strange. Literally. Bumble Bee had been trying to ignore the smell but it just kept getting to him. It smelt like something was bleeding out exhaust fumes mixed with rotting fruit. It was sickeningly sweet and sticky. That and the strange scent of sanitized floors and sterile tools mixed together was an off putting combination that made his gears churn.

‘Whatever somebody was doing in here, I think they were doing it wrong…’

He was almost glad he couldn’t see much.

When his comm link buzzed again, Bee nearly jumped out of his yellow coated armor.

“YA-HA!!” Bumble Bee jumped a bit, jitters running through his shell, then realized it was just the buzz from his audio comm. He let out a long sigh of relief, glad nobody had seen that. “Good grief. This place is gonna send me into stasis shock…”

He had to concentrate hard to try and send out his own charge frequency out to the others. Thankfully they were all online and sending a strong enough signal that he could meet them halfway even as he went deeper and deeper into the ship.

“ What do you see? ” Optimus asked over the comm link.

“Nothing interesting.” Bumble Bee said, already underwhelmed by the place yet really hoping to turn back soon. “I think somebody cut the power off before the descent or went through the Space Bridge? Nothing seems lost or broken, it looks like this place was fully functional before the power went off. But I don’t see anything here! And this place smells weird.”

“ Weird? ” Prowl chimed in. “ How? Elaborate .”

“On the SMELL???” Bumble Bee balked and looked at the comm link funny. But then he shrugged and tried to describe it, hard to do since he also had to focus on maintaining the frequency link through layers of blockers. “Uh, I don’t know. You know how like, when you spill something and you don’t want to clean it up so you just let it sit there for awhile? Then you forget about it and you just get used to not walking over that one spot until everything in the room starts to smell funny? Kind of like that.”

“ Bumble Bee, this is not the time to excuse your sloppiness with science. ” Prowl groaned over the link. “ But, yes. I know what you mean… ”

“You asked!” Bumble Bee complained back.

“ Remind me to get you a mop when we get back to the base, Bumble Bee. ” Optimus stated.

“I cleaned it already!!!” Bumble Bee complained. “For Sparks sake! It was only one time!”

“ Once a month .” Prowl corrected.

“ That we know of… ” Rachet chimed in.

Bumble Bee rolled his optics. Of course they were lecturing him even NOW. Hadn’t he already been forced to go in here and survey by himself? And now they were taking the time to chew him out about stuff he’s already fixed?

‘Sometimes being on this team is so annoying…’ Bumble Bee wanted to grumble but didn’t want to start a fight over the comm links. ‘Sure, tell me to go do the dangerous job and then make fun of me behind my back while I do it. Just another day in the life of being me…’

Just then, he passed what looked like a large work desk and monitor screen. When he looked across from it, he saw a giant blue Autobot insignia drawn on the wall. Strange since most official insignias were red now.

“Hey! There’s an Autobot insignia in here!” Bee said over the comm system. “It’s one of ours!”

“ That’s good to know. ” Optimus replied. “ Weird, why would the insignia be on the inside and not the out? ”

“I dunno but it’s not a new one.” Bee clarified and looked even closer at it. He noted certain parts of the insignia were more rounded than others. “It’s blue.”

“ Blue? ” Ratchet called in. “ That color denotes a civic service ship. Why would a cargo ship have that on it? ”

“Why’re you asking me?” Bumble Bee shrugged his shoulders. “This whole place is weird. It’s not really empty but… it feels like it’s missing things.”

“ You see any doors in there? ” Bulkhead asked.

“Yeah but it’s not like I’ve tried them yet.” Bumble Bee said, peering over at the different door and focusing his light on them. “They don’t have key card scanners or door knobs. What kind of ship doesn’t have those?”

“ Not an ordinary ship .” Optimus stated.

‘You can say that again…’ Bee walked up to the main monitor and saw a control panel bellow. It’s large layout was full of colorful buttons and adjusters, things he definitely knew weren’t supposed to be installed here. ‘This is like a communications command network board. What’s it doing on such a tiny ship?’

The more Bee found out the less he understood. And the more questions he had the more unsettled he felt. There was something about this place that made him feel like he had to be on high alert. A sneaking suspicion that something wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

‘This place is giving me the creeps…’

“Can I go back now?” Bumble Bee asked over the intercom. “There’s nothing in here!”

“If there’s nothing in there then why do you want to leave so soon?” Prowl asked confused.

“Because it’s giving me the creeps!” Bumble Bee admitted. He then bit his lip embarrassed and made up another reason. “And it’s BORING!!”

True. It was also boring in here.

“That’s not a reason to abandon the mission, kid.” Ratchet replied.

“Just stay and look around a little bit longer, Bumble Bee.” Optimus said reassuringly. “Once we know more about the ship then we can turn back and figure out what to do with it.”

“HOW am I supposed to figure out anything in here if there’s nothing to see?” Bee asked before spotting the same kind of auxiliary charge port that the Charge Station back at the base has. “Maybe if we had some light…”

“Bumble Bee!” Optimus warned. “I know what you’re thinking! Do not attempt to restart that-“

Ignoring Optimus’s insistent drama, Bee switched his servo to a stinger and carefully delivered a 500 volt charge to the ship center. He noticed nothing was happening so he increased the voltage to 1000. Still, he saw nothing.

‘Is this place completely out of juice?’ Bee wondered and furrowed his optics. He felt like his charge wasn’t getting lost or sucked through, more like it was being ciphered somewhere else. He felt like only one part of the ship was getting any power and it was not the battery. ‘Maybe if I increased it just a little more…’

Focusing his charge, he managed to zap up to 2500 volts. He felt the strange pull and reroute of the energy split and the main power begin to refuel. He heard a low whirl of a generator beginning to come back to life and several holo screens reboot to a low, dull blue glow. The main power was still cut but the auxiliary power seemed to be kicking back in.

The floor lights began to glow, a soft dark purple light that lit up Bee’s feet and the bottoms of the walls. The stationary buttons started to glow again, and he saw some of the signs above the doors give faint amber glows too. The whole place was lit up by faint lights, like glow sticks in a dark house. It was still too dark to see anything clearly, but it was something. The ship could be fully functional if its main generator was fixed.

“There!” Bumble Bee smiled and cut the charge, returning his stinger to servo mode and stood back to admire his work. “Now I can see a little… kind of?”

“Bumble Bee!” Optimus chastised. “I just told you not to do anything! It’s dangerous to charge a ship that we’ve have no contact from! Who knows where it’s been or what could be in there!”

“Relax, Boss Bot! I got it covered!” Bee said confidently with a grin as he started fooling around with the control panel. Apparently the communications were still cut, along with everything else. “I’m just trying to see if there’s anything here telling me WHERE this ship could have come from.”

“Well, do you see anything?” Bulkhead asked.

“Nope.” Bumble Bee shook his head and turned around. He gave the whole place another one over and came back with the same conclusion: creepy. “But it’s definitely creepier now. Think I might have made it worse?”

“Ugh…” Prowl groaned over the intercom. “I regret us letting him in there on his own.”

“YOU wanna go after him?” Rachet tagged.

“… I regret saying anything at all.”

‘I can HEAR you you know…’ Bumble Bee managed to keep THAT thought to himself but still stewed in anger. ‘Some ‘thank you’ for coming in here and checking everything. What’s a bot gotta do to get a little gratitude here? Actually FIND something?’

He looked around again, the glowing hallways and silent wires filling him with dread. The fact that he could see nothing did not make him feel better. It made the place seem even emptier than it should be.

‘On second thought, I definitely don’t wanna find anything in here…’

This place was unnerving. Bee got a bad feeling that the longer he stayed the harder it would be to leave. He couldn’t explain it and he didn’t want to. He just wanted to get out of this ship as soon as possible.

“Can I go out NOW?” Bumble Bee complained over the intercom, trying to keep his nerves down and come across as more whiny than creeped. “There’s nothing to do in here! I’m BORED!”

“Fine…” Optimus sighed. “Since there’re still no clear readings coming from within, you might as well leave now.”

“Got it!” Bee said cheerfully. “I’ll keep a look out in the hallways on my way out. Still no major charges so, all the rooms are still shut and locked.”

“That’s alright.” Optimus said. “We’ll pull the ship out of the lake later and go over the schematics tomorrow then. Just call back if you noticed anything different.”

‘Hopefully I won’t have to.’

Bee walked carefully back down the hallway, maintaining a steady pace so he wouldn’t suddenly feel like breaking out into a run. The whole hallway was lit in a dark, eerie purple glow that didn’t properly cast any shadows and only reconfirmed what he felt before: This place is missing bots.

‘Why do I get the feeling like this place should have a lot of moving parts?’ Bee kept looking around and noticing small, insignificant details that made him take second glances.

The floors were perfect for skating routes, large enough to push through carts and easy for small bots to run down but not bigger models. It was almost like these hallways weren’t built for bots beyond Bumble Bee’s model. There was this strange feeling that this place should be very busy, like things should be rushing through the halls and like each room should have some sort of job happening. Like everything was just waiting to be turned on again, for wires to be reconnected and signals to get back to work to be sent.

‘That smell is still here… But it smells like it’s supposed to be?’ Bee covered his olfactory sensory and tried process that smell more. It was such a strange thing, he hadn’t smelt it ever in his life and it just made him notice how everything in here wasn’t standard. ‘Like there must be a lot of it somewhere else and I’m only getting a small whiff of it. And there’re not a lot of monitors or comm systems, just that one comm station. So how does the commander talk to the bots here? It’s like a lot of vital stuff is missing but… it still all works?’

Bumble Bee was focused on the strange coiling wires running along the sides of the room. Those were the strangest part of this whole ship. They were just wires running room to room but not connected to anything. Why would there be wires sending signals but nothing to power to?

Just as he was halfway down, Bumble Bee picked up a strange frequency. Like an echo-y static sound that tickled behind his audio receptors. It was faint but the signal was so sudden that it stopped him in his tracks.

“Huh?” Bumble Bee checked his comm link while looking around himself, trying to see if that static sound was coming back. Nothing. “What was that?”

“Bumble Bee?” Optimus checked in, his voice stronger now that his signal was closer. “What’s going on?”

“Did you say something earlier?” Bumble Bee asked, carefully looking at his hand on the intercom then over at the crossing wires on the walls.

“No.”

“Huh… Weird.”

Just as Bee was about to write it off as signal static, it came back. This time it was stronger, moving in a wave like motion. Off the walls, through the floors. It’s current washed over his back and moved to the tips of his digits.

The feeling wasn’t menacing or terrible, more like sensory signals tapping up and down. It was like some kind of static tingling up along his main frame, trying to seep down underneath his armor and hit his nerve endings. A signal trying to be heard. A wireless connection waiting to be established.

Bumble Bee wanted to tell himself that it was nothing but it was just a little too strong to be dismissed. And even stranger, he didn’t dislike it. It was like he was feeling a charge that matched an old memory, something he should be familiar with but wasn’t.

“This place really gives me the creeps…” Bumble Bee said under his breath.

“What’s going on?” Bulkhead checked in, sounding worried.

“It feels like there’s something like… monitoring me in here.” Bumble Bee said, taking slower steps forward as he checked all the walls again and confirmed, to his horror, there was still nothing there. “Like there’s some kind of camera that can see under my armor? I don’t know, I just kind of feel like I’m being studied or measured or something…”

“You’ve been watching too many of those human ‘horror movies’,” Prowl said in his usual calm yet dismissive tone. He didn’t mean to sound so negative, he was honestly trying to be helpful. “It’s just as you said, there’s nothing in there. You’re probably just imagining it all in your processor.”

“I am not making this up in my processor!” Bee countered a bit harder than he meant to. The unnerving feeling along his spine with the tingling static charge beginning to make him feel like something really SHOULD be there. “There’s something weird going on in here, I can feel it in my frequency reader! And I don’t wanna be in here alone!”

“Ugh…” Prowl sighed. “You are such a sparkling…”

“I heard that!!”

Bee heard a ‘hush’ from Optimus and listened in on the convo.

“Could there still be cameras working aboard that ship?” Optimus asked Rachet.

“It COULD be a possibility.” Rachet said. Bee could hear in his tone that Ratchet was thinking about that and searching his memory drive. “But, most of them would have been shut down and put in data lock if the ship crashed.”

“Maybe he’s just… imagining it.” Optimus said while patching into the comm link. “Just ignore it for now, Bumble Bee. You probably just on-lined a camera by accident when you booted up the ship.”

“Okay…” Bumble Bee pretended that he hadn’t heard all of that. He was too worked up from this static thing to get into another fight. “Just… something’s not right about this place. I’d bet my left valve stopper that nothing good was up in here.”

“Why only you’re left one?” Bulkhead asked.

“I don’t like it that much.” Bee admitted.

“Will you both PLEASE take this seriously?” Optimus asked in an exhausted tone.

Bee took the walk out slower than before and felt that strange static grow into a low pulse. He measured his steps in time to it, feeling the waves grow and recede. It wasn’t static, it was a charge signal - that much he knew.

‘The power is probably turning back on…’ Bee tried to explain this strange pulsing to himself, trying to find any logic that would keep this ship just an abandoned pile of old junk and not actually haunted. ‘That’s it! I just… shouldn’t have powered up the auxiliary system. My fault again. Stupid me! Agh! I should have listened to Optimus. I bet Prowl is gonna have so much fun saying ‘I told you so’ again… Stupid Prowl.’

Again, in the midst of all his thoughts and explanations that pulse, that charge, that signal just kept washing over him. The farther he walked away from it the farther it stretched to reach him. And while Bumble Bee didn’t want to admit it, he couldn’t help but feel an impulse to slow down and let it keep washing over him.

Not washing over him anymore but surrounding him him. Like he was walking through a lake made of flowing frequencies. It was calm, humming and vibrating around him. And he knew the glow of the room was about as high as it would go - right now he was wading through a thick frequency up to his knee sockets that pulled and vibrated with his own. If Bumble Bee cleared his mind he could put more sensory signals to it:

Color - dark purple.

Feel - low bass vibrations.

Sound - Minor B, mid treble.

Smell - that strange smell mixed with something sweet.

Taste - almost like sugar except with a more dark and earthy note - like honey poured over charcoal.

This was weird. Bumble Bee had never thought he could pick up on so many unsettling sensory cues just from a frequency. But he didn’t feel scared about it. It was almost natural, like something his body was expecting him to be able to do.

No, what made him nervous about this was how easy it was to recognize. How his sensors and frequency readers picked up on it and instinctually processed it. How it all felt familiar and how his readers wanted to pull him back and accept all of the readings as normal. To just accept it and let it in, let it all flow.

But it was not normal. He’s never done this before. He’s not even sure if he should be able to do this. And he had no idea how he was going to explain this to the others.

‘Just go, Bumble Bee!’ He nerves were coming back, fighting the strange impulse to relax into the frequencies that were rising up and trying to pull him back into some far part of his processor. He felt like he’d lose himself to the current of the frequency if he didn’t keep his head above water. ‘Get out of here! You can think about this later. Just go and leave and don’t come back without back up…’

He walked farther and the charge pooling at him receded. Like walking out of the ocean, it went from his knee sockets down to mid-hub cap and now lapped at his ankles. The farther away he went the quieter the frequency became. It was faint now but changing, sending light lavender cues to his head that smelt even sweeter and sounded like a high pitch D minor.

By the time he made it back to the port door he was stepping on top of the frequency current, its shallow, tasteless waves lapping at floor with a faint pitch in E major. The signal was finally too faint for him to feel the same currents and waves of sensory cues.

When he looked out he saw his team standing out at the beach in the fading afternoon light, shinning bright and intense. They were real, no strange chords or smells or colors emanating from them. Just the same four bots he’s known since he began repairing space bridges and got stuck on Earth with. Bee sighed a breath in relief. The hallucination was over.

But as soon as he took a single step out of the port door, about to wave his hand and signal he was ok, he felt a rush of something. Something sharp and white hot and direct. Like lightening hitting the back of his neck.

‘Don’t go!’

The strangest message and feeling hit Bee and he instantly turned around. Stingers up and pressed together, his brows furrowed in focus. Bee was sure of it - he was not alone in here anymore.

“Who’s there!” Bumble Bee shouted out into the ship. “Show yourself!!”

Bumble Bee stood and waited, hearing his voice command echo inside the chambers. It wasn’t empty anymore. Bee knew it. The frequency that filled that ship was the missing thing, the activity he felt was supposed to be happening was turning on. And stranger - he felt like something had woken up.

Suddenly though, that same piercing frequency changed. It wasn’t white hot and stabbing, it was soft. Like music wafting through his head. No audio cues were playing but Bee had the strangest feeling, like he was listening to something. The colors weren’t present but the faint notes made him feel like he was seeing the spectrum flashes of rainbows that glimpsed off of raindrops.

It was a frequency that hummed. A frequency he knew.

‘That feels so… familiar.’ Bumble Bee dropped his stingers and returned to servos.

It was HIS OWN frequency. Playing back to him. The exact pitch, the exact hum, the exact feel but in a variant tone. Like an oboe and clarinet playing alongside each other in the same key. The vibrations just matched.

“Hello?” Bumble Bee asked in a softer, more casual tone. Peering down into the darkness to try and make out something new. “Uh… Anyone in there? Are you… Are you okay? Did you… Do you need some help?”

He listened and waited. In the darkness he heard soft foot steps far away. The echoed like beats to a drum. The wave like frequency he had walked out of was still faint and fading away, but this new similar vibration was coming closer. Getting louder and clearer to understand.

He listened and listened as the steps began to pick up speed. Bee wasn’t listening for the steps or an answer, he was paying attention to the frequency. His own mimicking and growing and calling back to him:

‘Wait! Don’t leave! Wait for me! Please don’t go! I’m here! Can you hear me?’

Bee just stood there, felt the rushing frequency calling to him and waited. It blocked out all other signals, including the sounds of Optimus and Bulkhead calling for him. They were just faint noise notes right now, not a part of his main processing feed.

As he looked in the ship a shape came into focus. A figure: Almost his exact model, a little bit taller than him by about 3 inches with the same shoulder caps he used to have. Details flooded in the more he looked: the lines around his armor were glowing a soft amber color, they passed up the legs and arms.

Just as Bumble Bee’s optics began to light up in recognition - He suddenly pounced on!

“WOAH!” Bumble Bee shouted as the figure running towards him jumped up and sent him flying back. “HEY!!!”

They didn’t stop or think, Bumble Bee didn’t even really look up. He just felt them fall back out of the ship together and land on the lake shore. Bumble Bee tumbled down and felt the sand from the lake crunch under him. He’d usually be upset by this, knowing he’d have to wipe out sand from in between his gears later.

“Ahh… sand…” Bumble Bee muttered, wincing a bit from the sudden crash. The bot on top of him wasn’t heavy or anything, but it was still really annoying. “Hey what do you think you’re doing you-“

Bumble Bee stopped as soon as he fully opened his optics and got a look at the bot sitting on top of him. It was like… he was looking at himself from two years ago. But - different.

“Woah…” Bee said, optic to optic with this strange new bot.

The bot on top was a red mini bot with straight, ember glowing alert lines running up his armor. He was an older model, designed somewhat like Bee’s old Space Bridge armor design except with less padding around the legs. He was also a bit leaner than Bumble Bee but just a bit taller, hovering over him an intensely curious expression that reminded Bee of the wild cats on one of Prowl’s safari programs.

Since the bot was still sitting on top of him and locked on optic to optic, Bee got a good look at the faceplate of this bot: It was almost his mirror image except for very specific details. Instead of two tip audio receptors on top of his helm, this bot had smooth wing like receptors on either side of his helm. Bee’s faceplate had smoothed out while this one’s dipped forward. Bee’s lower chin plate was a block while this one’s was more tipped. It was the faceplate and helm model of a bot built to withstand high climates and more intense atmospheric conditions, the kind that would have to send signals from high above or far bellow.

Their shapes were similar but different. The only other big difference was that this bot had bright yellow optics, hungry yellow optics, yellow optics that were consuming Bee’s blue ones like they could actually eat their color.

But suddenly the bot above him blinked and within an instant - Blue! His optics  changed to match the exact same shade of blue as Bee’s! They were still hungry and possessive, but now they matched.

‘What just happened!?’

Bee wanted to ask, wanted to question and interrogate this bot. But he couldn’t think, couldn’t move a muscle. It was almost like his attention was locked in to focusing on the frequency moving in between them.  This strange vibration humming. It was all he could hear, all he could feel, all he could think about. It wasn’t even weird to him now, it had suddenly become the most fascinating and all consuming feeling in the world. Nothing was more important than this right now.

“You have the same wavelength as me.” The bot spoke in a soft clear pitch. Similar to Bee’s but in a higher tone. He was so quiet that Bee almost couldn’t hear him, even as the words began rushing out. “I never knew that - I, I, I always thought… I didn’t know I’d ever find someone else who could understand… Finally. Finally I met another bot like me. It’s been so long…”

It almost felt pointless for them to even be talking. Their signals were just connected. Their frequencies matched perfectly. It was like they didn’t need words to understand what the other thought or felt. They had multiple feelings but one was clear: They were instantly fascinated by one another.

Just as Bee felt like he was locked in a staring contest that would hopefully never end, the bot on top of him smiled. A smile that lit up his whole face, shined in his sudden blue optics and made Bee honestly believe this was probably the happiest moment in this bots life. And by extension, thanks to this shared frequency, Bee felt the same way.

“HI!” He leaned in a bit more, eager to consumer more of Bee’s attention and fully be a part of his thought process. “I’m Vetro! I’m the head of Moral and Cooperation with the Diplomatic Unit 887-385! And I just know you and I are gonna be GREAT together!”

Bumble Bee felt suddenly like that karma-thing Prowl was always talking about was happening. Only he didn’t expect karma to look so much like himself.

“Uh… what?”