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Miko hummed as she flipped through a catalogue, laying on her stomach on the base’s raggedy old couch solely for the human children. Her cheek was propped up on the heel of her hand and her legs lazily kicking through the air. Jack was on the ground in front of the couch with Raf, the two of them playing a racing video game while their guardians were off on a scouting mission they weren’t allowed to join.
The only autobot with them there was Ratchet but he was busy working on their computer like normal. The medic had been glad that the kids weren’t bothering him but even he knew that this was unlike them – especially Miko. He kept glancing towards them to see if they were up to no good but all he saw where the boys playing their game and Miko looking through the magazine.
There was a small alert on Ratchet’s screen and he saw it was a hail for the space bridge to open. There was a message from Optimus on there that the mission was a success with a comrade-in-arms joining them unexpectedly. Pressing a button on his console, Ratchet opened up the gateway.
Miko perked up when she heard the sound of the space bridge opening up. Pushing up on her hands, Miko sat to see the return of the autobots. She heard their motors roaring first before she saw them drive through in their alt forms.
Bumblebee drove through first, his recently washed paint job shining in the light. Arcee was shortly behind him and changed to her root mode quickly upon returning to the base. Bulkhead was after Arcee and Miko’s eyes widened when she saw a car that sometimes paid them a visit driving next to him.
“Wheeljack!” Miko cheered, sitting up on her knees to look over the back of the couch. The magazine catalogue she had been looking at fell to the ground in her excitement.
Bulkhead transformed back to his root form and chuckled. “Well, there goes the surprise,” he said.
Wheeljack also transformed back to his root form, shaking out his arms. “There’s my favorite wrecker,” Wheeljack smirked and approached the kids’ area.
Miko grinned brightly and scurried off the couch, running over to the railing. She hopped on her feet and held her hands out to the approaching wrecker. “I didn’t know you were back on Earth!”
Wheeljack held a hand up to Miko’s level and once it was in place, Miko wasted no time ducking in-between the railing’s bars to jump onto his hand. She settled in the middle of his palm and held her arms open in a hug. Wheeljack brought her closer and she hugged his chin as much as she could. “I wasn’t expecting to be back so soon myself,” Wheeljack chuckled.
Raf and Jack paused their game to greet their guardians. Jack trotted down the stairs to meet Arcee at the bottom while Raf stayed at the top so he was eyelevel with Bumblebee. “Did you guys beat up a lot of those dumb decepticons?” Miko asked with a mischievous spark in her eyes.
“No decepticons this time,” Bulkhead answered with a shake of his head.
“But you know we would have if there were any,” Wheeljack added with a wink to the girl.
“Yeah!” Miko cackled, a fist in the air. Ratchet and Optimus – now back in his root form after exiting the now closed space bridge last – shook their heads with an amused huff at her excitement. If the girl was a cybertronian, they knew without a doubt that she would be in the wrecker unit.
Bulkhead exvented at his charge and how battle-ready she always is. He rolled his optics but stopped when he saw something out of place in the childrens’ area. While they weren’t they weren’t clean freaks, they were also not slobs much to Ratchet’s pleasure. It was out of place for a booklet to be dropped on the ground and it made Bulkhead curious.
“What’s this?” Bulkhead asked, optics zooming in on the discarded magazine with a finger pointing at it.
“Oops, I dropped it,” Miko giggled and shuffled off to Wheeljack’s hand to jump to the kids’ area. Bending down, Miko picked up the magazine and held it up to the two wreckers that leaned in closer to see the small pictures. “I’m picking out my dress.”
“Your dress?” Bulkhead echoed with a blink.
Miko lowered the catalogue and nodded her head. “Yeah! I have to pick one out for the dance in two weeks!”
“What dance?” Arcee asked this time, leaning on one leg with a hand on her hip.
“Ugh, the school’s annual formal dance,” Jack answered with his tongue sticking out in distaste. “They hold one every year where all the kids get dressed up like a prom.”
Bumblebee beeped something at Raf and the boy nodded, pushing his glasses back into place on his face. “Yeah, we’re all going.”
“Doesn’t seem like your scene,” Arcee smirked at her charge.
“It’s not,” Jack grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. “My mom volunteered as a chaperone so now I’m being forced to go.”
Bumblebee again and Raf shrugged. “I’m not being forced but my mom was dropping hints that she would love for me to go. Since Jack and Miko are going, I figured it wouldn’t be terrible.” Bumblebee beeped something that ended in a low and long tone. “Yeah, buddy, I wish you could go too.”
Bulkhead looked to Miko again and how her pigtails seemed to be perked up to show her excitement. “You’re going to this too?”
“Duh!” Miko scoffed and stood up on her toes. “It is a classic American experience! If I’m going to do this exchange student thing, then I’m going to do the whole shebang!”
Bulkhead leaned closer to the childrens’ area. “And you wear something like that?” he asked in genuine curiosity. They didn’t have stuff like that on Cybertron. If there was a formal event on their home planet – which Bulkhead never went to as that was not something a wrecker like him was invited to – they got ‘dressed up’ by buffing a new layer of gloss onto their frames to make themselves shine.
“Something like that,” Miko answered as she pulled the catalogue back to flip through some pages to a certain one. This one showed various different styles but the most prominent was a knee-length dress style. “It’s up to the person if they want long or short length, or with sleeves or no sleeves. There are so many styles that it’s hard to pick just one and let’s not get started about the color options.”
Bulkhead tilted his head to the side. Now he was confused. Jack saw Bulkhead’s confusion and laughed. “Bulkhead, don’t worry if you don’t get it,” Jack snickered and leaned back on one heel with his hands in his pockets. “Most human males don’t get it either.”
“You all just don’t know fashion,” Miko huffed dramatically with a playful scowl at Jack, sticking her tongue out.
Wheeljack narrowed his optics at the formal wear Miko was considering. Miko looked at his look and then to the page she was on. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
Wheeljack pondered for a moment longer before sighing and leaning back with his hands on his hips. “There is nowhere to hide weapons in that outfit,” he said, jerking his chin at the knee length dress. “What are you going to do if you need to protect yourself?”
“She is going to a human dance!” Bulkhead scolded his friend and fellow wrecker. “Miko doesn’t need weapons there!”
“There is trouble everywhere!” Wheeljack protested with an ex-vent. “You should never find yourself unprepared! That’s why I made sure to make a weapon strong enough to fend off a ‘con but was still small enough to hide on herself for Miko!”
Bulkhead vented a dramatic gasp. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, but I did,” Wheeljack grinned proudly. “It was pain to get it so small, too. Miko, show Bulkhead my present to you.”
“Okay!” Miko chirped and lifted her foot, poking the back of her left shoe sole. A small cylindrical object popped out and Miko held it up proudly. “Ta da!”
“Nice hiding spot!” Wheeljack praised her.
Bumblebee beeped something and Raf cleared his throat. “Bumblebee says that doesn’t look dangerous.”
Wheeljack cleared his throat and gestured his large hand to Miko. “If you would please, my little wrecker.”
Miko’s grin turned extra mischievous and she pressed a button on the side of it. Half of it extended forward with two prongs revealing themselves on the side. With another push of a hidden button on it, the loudest crackle of electricity buzzed in the air as it drowned out Miko’s cackles.
“By the All Spark, what did you give her?!” Ratchet exclaimed as he marched over with his hand held out to Miko. “Give that to me, child. That is no toy.”
Miko pouted and pressed the button to disengage the shocking portion. She looked to Bulkhead to back her up but he shook his head. With a huff, Miko dropped her cybertronian taser into Ratchet’s hand.
Ratchet nodded his head in approval and then whirled on Wheeljack. “No more tasers,” he warned in a grouchy voice before stomping off to hide the taser out of reach of the humans.
Wheeljack let out a quiet cybertronian curse that had Bulkhead smacking his friend upside the back of his head. “Don’t curse around the children, Jackie,” Bulkhead scolded him.
“They can’t understand anyway,” Wheeljack grumbled.
“I do!” Miko beamed, raising a hand in the air.
Optimus raised a metallic eyebrow, having been listening in but not joining the conversation. “How do you know cybertronian?” he asked.
“Not all of it,” Miko shook her head and placed her hands on her hips. “Only the curse words.”
“How and why?” Arcee asked this time.
“Bumblebee,” Miko answered, jerking a thumb at the autoboot that waved when the attention turned to him.
“You can’t understand Bee, though,” Bulkhead said.
“I can’t but Raf can,” Miko grinned, moving her pointing to Raf. “Let me tell you, it was a game of telephone.”
“I…don’t even know where to start with that,” Ratchet groaned, smacking a hand to his face. He had returned only a moment after leaving and heard the entire conversation as he hadn’t gone far.
“I can thank you for it as you gave Bee plenty of words to translate for us,” Miko said cheekily.
Ratchet shot Bumblebee a heated look and the scout jumped behind Arcee to hide with his door wings tucking close to his body. It was comical considering how much bigger his frame was than her’s. Arcee, to her credit, didn’t push him away and decided to let him be despite Ratchet still seeing him plenty fine.
Jack’s phone rang and he pulled out his pocket lazily. “This is Jack,” he said in a bored voice. Whoever was on the other side said something that Jack hummed to before groaning. “Okay, okay. I’ll see you in a little bit.” Hanging up, Jack stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “That was my mom. She wants me home to take me suit shopping.”
“Oooh, can I go?” Miko asked, hopping on her toes.
Jack raised an eyebrow at Miko. “Why do you want to go suit shopping for me?”
“I just want to tag along to the store to look for my dress,” Miko said, gathering her items back into her bag to get ready to leave. “Maybe it will give me the inspiration that these magazines aren’t.”
Jack shrugged. “Suit yourself. Mom will probably be psyched to have a girl to go dress shopping with.”
“I’ll go, too, then,” Raf said. He hurried over to his abandoned bag to put his laptop away.
“You need a suit too?” Jack asked.
“No, but it’ll be fun to go with friends,” Raf said shyly with a blush to his cheek.
“Hell yeah! Shopping trip!” Miko cheered with an arm hooked around Raf’s shoulder to jostle him around.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Looks like we’re making a thing out of this.”
Optimus cleared his intake valve to get his autobots’ attention. “Looks like the children are ready to go back now. Arcee, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead, please escort the children to Jack’s home.”
Bumblebee beeped an affirmative while Bulkhead and Arcee nodded. Jack trotted down the steps with his bookbag slung over his shoulders and slipping his helmet over his head before climbing onto Arcee’s alt motorcycle form. Bumblebee transformed and Raf climbed in with the Camaro closing the door after him. Miko laughed raucously as she jumped into Bulkhead’s waiting hand at the side of the childrens’ area and transformed around her so she was sitting inside his alt form once he was done.
Once all the kids were in their places, the three autobots took off down the tunnel. Jack was at the front with his hands on the handlebars and Arcee’s light illuminating the ground in front of them. Bumblebee was in the middle while Bulkhead took up the rear.
Wheeljack watched them all go while Ratchet and Optimus went back to working. He was still bummed that his self-defense tool for Miko was taken from her after he put so much work into it. What was worse was now Miko was down a weapon that she could have hidden on her person with some creative problem-solving while at the dance.
What could he do so his favorite little wrecker stayed protected?
Hmm…
With a start, Wheeljack smiled to himself as a thought came to mind.
The night of the dance found the three kids getting ready at the base. They had driven in by their guardians with dressing bags holding their outfits for the night. Miko had a bag slung over her shoulder that supposedly contained her shoes and make-up that her exchange parents bought her. Though, the shape of it didn’t equate to what Miko said was in there but Bulkhead chalked it up to not knowing human formalwear enough to make an accurate judgement. June arrived shortly after them in her own car and the two disappeared somewhere in the base so Jack’s mother could help Miko get ready.
Once it got closer to the time that the kids would have to leave if they wanted to make it in time from the desert to the school, the boys got changed. It was an easy and quick process for them; the only real challenge was smoothing their hair down. They stood in their area that was eye level for the autobots, letting the cybertronians inspect this new human outerwear.
Bumblebee beeped something at Raf, his optics zooming in and out. “Yeah, it’s similar to what Agent Fowler wears but it’s a fancier version,” Raf answered his friend. He smoothed out his tie the same shade of yellow as Bumblebee’s paint job as a homage to the autobot. Raf’s mom had thought it to be an interesting choice but didn’t argue it as it was what he wanted.
Jack grimaced and pulled at his tie to loosen it. “Ugh, I hate dressing up,” Jack complained. Like Raf, Jack had decided to match the color of his tie to the blue of Arcee’s paint job as there wasn’t much customization he could do with a regular suit.
“Strange to see you in clothes like this,” Arcee commented as she looked Jack over. She placed a hand on her hip and leaned forward. “What is the point of wearing this?”
“To look nice – I don’t know?” Jack grumbled, shrugging. “Humans do a lot of strange things.”
“Humans have their own traditions like we do on Cybertron,” Optimus said in his deep baritone voice. He was taking a break from his work to take part in the childrens’ event as it was something he hadn’t seen before and was interested in. Part of himself attributed it to his work as an archivist coming into play to witness this event for himself.
Bulkhead looked around, poking his fingers together. “Why is Miko taking so much longer to get ready than you two? Do you think something happened?”
Jack snorted and shook his head. “Girls always take longer to get ready with having to do their hair and makeup.”
“Makeup?” Bulkhead echoed.
“Human stuff that they put on their face and is supposed to make people prettier,” Raf answered, pushing his glasses up higher. “It’s mainly used by women but some men do too. Honestly, I don’t see the appeal of it.”
There was a squeal of wheels and everyone looked over to the entrance to see Wheeljack’s alt form skidding into the base. On a drop of a dime, he was transforming back to his root form. “Am I too late?”
“We’re still waiting for Miko to finish getting ready,” Jack answered, leaning his forearms on the railing.
“Jack, don’t lean on that,” June tutted at her son as she came out of the back. She was dressed up in a modest dress, a cardigan, and some light natural makeup on her face. A pair of earrings hung from her ears and a small bracelet on her wrist shone in the light.
Arcee narrowed her optics and leaned in closer to June. “Were your eyelids and lips always that color?”
June giggled and winked at Arcee. “That’s makeup,” June answered. “I only added a little bit to accentuate my features.”
“Interesting,” Arcee hummed, thinking to what the equivalent would be on Cybertron.
“Is Miko ready yet?” Wheeljack asked, pushing his way forward to see the human girl that he had dubbed part of their wrecker group.
June smiled and cupped a hand around her mouth, leaning back towards the doorway. “They’re ready for you, sweetheart, when you’re ready.”
Miko came gliding out of her hiding spot with a shy smiled on her face. She was wearing a strapless light purple dress that went down to her feet. A pair of short kitten heels lifted her up enough that the dress’s hem brushed against her toes and showed off her painted pink toenails that matched her nails. Her hair was down in a braid that went over her shoulder with a few gem decorations clipped in the strands. Like June, she bore only light natural makeup to amplify her natural beauty
“How do I look?” Miko asked, mostly to Bulkhead.
“Miko, you’re so beautiful!” Bulkhead beamed as his charge, clapping his hands together.
Miko blushed under the compliment, her smiling cheeks red as she had a fistful of her dress in each hand and turning from side-to-side to show it off in more angles. “You think so?”
“You look very nice, Miko,” Optimus compliment with a nod of his head. Miko beamed under the compliment, knowing that was Optimus’ version of high praise. Arcee nodded along in her approval while Bumblebee held up his thumbs, the gesture something he learned from the children as a human form of approval. Even Ratchet gave a short nod to her in his own form of approval of her outfit.
“Miko, you’re so pretty,” Raf complimented her.
Miko blushed and lightly punched Raf in the arm. “And you look so handsome yourself.” Turning her attention to Jack, she smirked. “I didn’t know you knew how to clean up nicely.”
“I could say the same back to you,” Jack teased. Both of them laughed as they knew the other was joking around.
June waved the three kids together. “I want a picture of all three of you together,” June grinned as she pulled a camera out of her purse.
“Ugh, mom,” Jack groaned with his head falling back.
“Don’t complain,” June tutted at her son. “One nice picture won’t kill you.”
“But then you are going to want more pictures at the actual dance,” Jack complained despite walking over to where Miko and Raf were.
“And you’re going to suck it up and smile for the camera,” June said with a strict smile at her son.
Jack groaned some more but smiled for the camera when his mom told him to. Raf stood in the middle as the shortest and Miko had a hand on his shoulder closet to her. Jack stood relaxed with his hands in his pockets but standing close to his two friends. June had them strike some poses that had all three laughing, loosening up Jack’s grumpy mood.
“Raf, be a dear and take a picture of me and Jack, will you?” June asked as she handed the camera to Raf.
“Okay,” Raf nodded and followed the mother and son to a location a few steps away for a nice picture of the two of them.
Miko stood to the side, watching them. She was unsure in her dress and it was visible with the way her shoulders hunched in. While before she was excited for it, Miko wasn’t sure if she actually looked good in the outfit and now felt silly in it. Bulkhead saw that and he wasn’t going to stand for his girl feeling unconfident in herself.
Bulkhead lightly tapped on the ground near Miko on the landing, catching her attention. She smiled when she saw him and came carefully skipping over in her heels. “Do I actually look alright?” Miko asked. Even her voice held a quiver of uncertainty to it.
“You look beautiful,” Bulkhead assured her in a warm voice. Despite not knowing or understanding human fashion, he knew his girl looked beautiful in her dress and that was a fact. “Give me a twirl?” Bulkhead asked, a dopey and proud smile on his metallic face.
Miko giggled as she stood up taller with confidence and stood on the ball of one foot, spinning through with the other leg bent and her arms held out. The draping fabric picked up to ripple in the air around just above Miko’s knees.
Bulkhead felt his smile freeze on his face, going unnoticed by Miko. It wasn’t the girl herself that make him go frozen. She was as beautiful in her dress as he said and that beauty was exemplified by the joy on her face when she twirled.
No – what made Bulkhead balk was the small version of cybertronian weapons hidden under her skirt where it was holstered to her thighs.
To Bulkhead’s side, Wheeljack cooed and took a picture with his optics to save the image forever of their human wrecker. “Beautiful, Miko! Absolutely beautiful! The most beautiful wrecker to exist!”
Miko laughed at the over-the-top praise and stepped closer to the railing. “Thank you,” she told them.
While he wanted to, Bulkhead didn’t have the heart to call Miko out on the alien tech and decided to just let it be. She was having so much fun and he couldn’t be the one to dampen the mood. He could only hope that the school didn’t have metal detectors or something similar enough to find the alien weapons on the girl.
“Miko, Wheeljack, Bulkhead, look over here!” June called with her camera held up to her eye.
Grinning, Miko turned around and held up a peace sign in both hands with her fellow wreckers throwing up a peace sign on their digits. June snapped a picture of the three together, already having taken a picture of Jack with Arcee and Raf with Bumblebee respectively. After that, she summoned Optimus and a protesting Ratchet over for a group picture. While these pictures would never be put in public and have to be closely guarded to prevent news of giant alien robots from leaking, June had a feeling that the kids would want them for somewhere in the future.
June looked at her watch and cleared her throat. “Alright, kids, it’s time to go. We have to leave now if we want to make it in time.”
Jack started to complain again but a sharp look from his mother had him stopping. They all traveled down the stairs and across the main space to June’s car. Since she was chaperoning, she was going to drive them all to the dance together and then bring the children not belonging to her home afterwards. The following day would have the autobots picking them up to bring back to the base like usual and to pick up their stuff.
Raf climbed into the backseat himself but Jack – with another pointed look from his mother telling him to do so – was a gentleman by opening the other backdoor for Miko since her hands were full with her dress. Mikok smiled at him in thanks and was about to climb in before she realized she forgot to do something.
“Bye Bulkhead! Bye Wheeljack!” Miko grinned and waved at her favorite wreckers. “I’ll tell you all about the dance later!”
“Have lots of fun and kick anyone that bothers you where the sun don’t shine!” Wheeljack snickered.
“I can’t wait,” Bulkhead said, waving his fingers at Miko as he pointedly ignored the fellow bot he somehow decided to call a friend. The girl climbed into the car and Jack closed the door for her before climbing into the front passenger seat. Once all the kids were buckled in, June put the car into drive and left the base. Bulkhead waited all the way until the car was out of sight before bringing his ire back to the surface to aim at the snickering culprit. “What. Did. You. Do?” Bulkhead ground out at his friend.
“I had to make sure our girl was protected,” Wheeljack snickered as he knew what Bulkhead was referring to.
“You gave her more cybertronian tech!” Bulkhead argued in a whisper so no one else heard. It would do no good to rile up Ratchet if he heard Miko got more of their tech when he took away the cybertronian version of a taser from her two weeks ago.
“Well, duh,” Wheeljack rolled his optics. “What if a ‘con runs into them while we aren’t there? They all need some protection and Miko is the one I know can handle it the best. Don’t act like you don’t trust her the most with our tech.”
“Well, yeah, but she doesn’t need it for a human dance,” Bulkhead protested. “What if she discovered with our tech on her and she gets in trouble with the government? What if they jail her for it to get info on us?”
“Eh,” Wheeljack shrugged. “I’ll break her out. Won’t be that hard.”
“Jackie, no,” Bulkhead groaned with a smack of his servo to his face.
“Whatever – it’s going to fine, old friend,” Wheeljack said with a smack to Bulkhead’s back. “Stop worrying so much. Miko is a smart girl and knows how to handle herself. Everything is going to be a-okay.”
Bulkhead glared at Wheeljack for a hot moment. “If anything happens to her tonight, I’m going to blame you.”
Wheeljack shrugged. “Fine by me.”
“How the in the All Spark did she even get that from you?” Bulkhead asked with a sigh. Wheeljack had arrived late so there was no chance he gave it to her right before she changed.
“I asked her what dress she chose when she came back in after shopping and did a rush job to build it to fit her,” Wheeljack said with a grin that showed just how proud of himself he was. “I got so lucky that she chose a long dress or it would have been even harder.”
Bulkhead sighed again but harsher. “I can’t believe you.”
“Well, believe it because I’m going to make sure our girl can take down a ‘con with or without us there,” Wheeljack snickered and then patted his friend on the back again. “Now, I have to head on out to take care of some things. Give Miko my regards and tell her I’ll bring her back a present the next time I’m back.”
“No weapons,” Bulkhead warned.
“Can’t hear you~” Wheeljack sang as he transformed into his alt form and drove away, honking his horn to tell the rest he was leaving.
Bulkhead glared at Wheeljack all the way down the tunnel until he was gone. After he was, Bumblebee sauntered up to Bulkhead and beeped at him. “Of course he’s up to trouble, it’s Wheeljack,” Bulkhead groaned.
Bumblebee laughed with his vocoder and left to do his own work for the night before retiring for the night. Bulkhead knew he had his own work to do and he knew that Miko was indeed a smart girl. He didn’t need to worry about her and if there was trouble, he trusted that she would give him a call for back-up.
So, for now he decided as he turned around to do his own share of the work around the base, Bulkhead would just wait for Miko to return and be regaled about her time at the dance.
(And pray to the All Spark that she didn’t get caught with their alien tech on her or else he was going to have to kill his best friend for his stupidity regarding their little wrecker.)