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Ten years.
It had been ten years since Bumblebee had spoken to another bot.
Ten years since he had spoken to his Sire.
And now, after a decade, the first and only message from Optimus he receives is a mission report? As a caretaker of all things??
Suffice it to say, Bee was not happy.
When Optimus had stopped responding to his communications nine years ago, Bee didn’t think anything of it. His Sire was a busy bot, running the entire Autobot faction after all. He probably just didn’t have the time to respond.
But then weeks of radio silence had turned into months, months into a year, and Bee had stopped hoping.
What did he do? Was it the races? Was Prime mad at him?
Bee huffed. He’d spent nine years thinking about this, and that mission comm was the last straw. He wasn’t going to dedicate anymore of his processing power to this. If… if Prime wanted to treat Bumblebee like any other soldier, to not acknowledge that Bee wasn’t just any other soldier — they were family for frags sake — then Bee wouldn’t fight it anymore.
He… it’s not like he cared anyway. He was practically a grown bot now! So what if he hadn’t reached the age of maturity, he was plenty mature to be on his own!
‘Yeah’ Bee thought to himself as he rolled up to the residence of these ‘Maltos’ people, ‘I’m fine, I’ll… I’ll be fine!’
—————
Bee sighed to himself as he lounged against the bales of hay he’d claimed as his chair.
The Terrans ran through the field around him, laughing without a care in the world.
Bumblebee chuckled to himself, flicking to the next page of his novel. The datapad flickered slightly, and Bee frowned, flicking the side of it. It smoothed back out and he relaxed, reading through the page.
A minute later, the screen glitched, the pad let out a final, ear splitting shriek, and went black, smoke pouring from an invisible crack in the casing.
“Scrap!” Bumblebee cursed, chucking the heap of metal a couple feet away. The kids were too engrossed in their game to notice their teachers' actions.
The former scout sighed, running a servo down his faceplate and groaning.
He slowly stood and made his way towards the house, grumbling to himself, “Those things are supposed to last a century, its only been a couple decades! Come on!”
Twitch halted her sprint after Thrash, growing at their retreating teachers back before jogging after him, curious. The other Maltos followed behind upon noticing what caught their sister’s attention.
Bee trudged over to the house and carefully knocked on the kitchen window, waiting patiently as Dot made her way out of the house.
Dot smiled, “Heya Bee, what can I do for ya?”
Bee smiled thinly.
“My datapad broke, and I was wondering if you had an extra I could borrow? I was right in the middle of the climax of this new series when it died.”
Dot furrowed her eyebrows, humming.
“Well,” she began, “I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any datapads. And I don’t think the kids’ tablet would be big enough for you to use.”
Bee shrugged, “Oh, size shouldn’t be an issue.” Before backing up and transforming.
The kids and Dot stared, confused, before a flash of light erupted from the driver’s seat and the driver’s door slowly opened.
To their shock, a boy stepped out, grinning. He was wearing black jeans with a yellow hoodie, the Autobot symbol stamped proudly above his heart on the material. His hair was a platinum blonde, and his eyes the most striking blue any of them had ever seen on a human.
Most shocking of all, however, was he didn’t look older than sixteen.
“Uhh,” Robby stuttered, “Who are you?”
The man snorted, “Oh, this is my holoform.”
At their blank stares, his smile dimmed and he rubbed the back of his neck, “Have I uh, not explained holoforms before?”
“Bumblebee??” The Terrans yelled in unison.
Said scout laughed sheepishly.
“Um, whoops. Sorry about that. I could’ve sworn I went over these at some point”
Thrash gawked, exclaiming, “What the heck is this?!”
“This,” Bee said, wiggling his new appendages in front of him, “Is my holoform. They’re something the Autobots created in order to interact with smaller lifeforms more easily. They’re a direct interpretation of what a bot would likely look like if they were human, although unfortunately the only thing we have even a smidge of control over is the clothes.”
Dot, who’d been standing off to the side silently frowning until that moment, suddenly spoke up, “Bumblebee?”
Said bot looked at her, surprised at the use of his full name.
“Can I speak to you in private real quick?”
Confused, Bee glanced at the kids for a moment before slowly following the veteran into the Malto home, legs slightly unsteady as he tried to get used to the smaller form.
Upon entering, Bee glanced around, silently noting the interior. Considering he’d never used his holoform around the Maltos before, he’d never actually seen the interior of the home. Being too big to fit and all.
“Alex? Can you come here for a minute?” Dot requested, sitting on the couch and motioning for Bee to sit in the armchair opposite.
Bee stood for a moment longer, giving Alex time to enter the room.
He froze for a moment, staring in shock at the ‘stranger’ in his living room.
“Um-” before he could continue Dot cut him off, “Alex dear, this is Bee’s holoform.”
The older Malto’s eyes widened in understanding before an emotion Bee couldn’t read crossed his face. Alex made eye contact with his wife, his expression fearful, and a whole conversation seemed to pass between them in the span of seconds.
Alex visibly stiffened, moving to sit next to his wife.
The atmosphere seemed to shift, tension in the air as Bee slowly trudged to the armchair. He sat down slowly, shifting around to try to get used to the material, having never sat in anything so soft before.
Dot cleared her throat when he finally settled.
“So, Bee, does… you said that holoforms directly represent a Cybertronian as if they were human, correct?”
Bee furrowed his brow, “I, yeah? They’re created to resemble a bots personality and processor as closely as possible.”
Dot and Alex’s matching frowns seem to deepen impossibly further.
Alex took a deep breath before quietly asking, “Bee, why does your holoform look sixteen?”
The scout froze, not expecting anything like that.
“I… it- uh.” he stuttered, not making eye contact with either of them, “I mean, I guess I am technically still underage by normal terms but… it’s different!”
Looking up to see their expressions, he regretted the action immediately. THeir expressions were a mix of horror, sadness, and pity fighting for dominance.
He hunched forward, threading his fingers together anxiously. “I- it’s not even really important. I’m fine. I’m practically an adult at this point—”
“Bumblebee.”
Bee shut his mouth, looking up once again.
Dot made eye contact with him, “How old?”
The bot squinted at her, confused.
“How… how old what?” he asked quietly.
“How old were you when you started fighting?”
Bee’s eyes widened, and he sat up a bit straighter in shock.
“I was- uhh…” he muttered quietly to himself, trying to calculate the Cybertronian age into human terms.
He went silent, hesitating.
“Bumblebee?” Alex spoke, his tone allowing for no argument.
Bee slumped back in the chair and whispered, “I would’ve been about twelve in human terms.”
Dot gasped quietly, her hand going to her mouth. Alex sat back and just stared at the scout- no, the child in front of him.
Suddenly Dot stood, walking into the kitchen and out of view.
A minute later, her voice could be heard shouting.
“Megatron get Prime’s ass over here right now! I don’t care if he’s in a meeting, if you two aren’t here in ten minutes I will come to GHOST headquarters and yell at you both in front of everyone!”
It was silent for another minute before she re-entered the living room, pocketing her phone.
Bee stared at her, slightly horrified.
“Dot- why did you- they’re busy!” he stumbled, visibly distressed about bothering his leader.
“Bee,” Alex spoke softly but firmly, as if talking down a wild animal, “this is something that can’t wait.”
Bumblebee stared, uncomprehending.
What in the world had gotten such a reaction from them?
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while, waiting for the bots to arrive.
Finally, when the silence seemed to become unbearable, the familiar rumbling of Prime’s engine and the thump of Megatron’s landing signalled their arrival.
Bee and the adult Maltos stepped out of the house, the Terrans watching them confused.
“Kids,” Alex said, “go inside the dugout. We’ll talk later.”
The Malto children hesitantly moved towards the barn, slowly filtering down through the trapdoor.
Optimus and Megatron, now both transformed, look down at the humans, confused and a bit annoyed.
“Lieutenant Malto,” Optimus began, “what was so important tha—”
“I’ll tell you what Prime,” Dot growled, stepping towards the large bot, “I would like you to explain why, exactly, you’ve had Bumblebee fighting in your stupid war since he was younger than Robby!”
Prime’s optical ridges rose slightly before his face went stone cold. He glanced over at Bumblebee as if to say ‘Why do they know this information and why are they making it my problem?’
Megatron, on the other hand, went stiff.
“What.” he growled through clenched denta.
“Oh wonderful!” Dot drawled, “At least we weren’t the only ones in the dark! Megs, this is Bumblebee’s holoform. Notice anything off?”
Megatron’s eyes landed on Bee’s still form, and after a second his eyes widened and he stepped back in shock.
“You- Optimus your scout isn’t even of age! What is the meaning of this?!”
Optimus stiffened slightly, before he huffed, “He insisted on joining the fight. I made sure he got all the proper training before allowing him into the field, he was fine!”
All the other adults gawked at him.
“And what did his caregivers think of this?!” Megatron scoffed, appalled.
Optimus crossed his arms in front of his chest and Bee seemed to shrink in on himself slightly.
“I am his sire, Megatron. And I see no issue with this.”
Megatron and Dot gasped, and Alex stared for a second before disappearing into the house. He couldn’t deal with this anymore.
“Even I, leader of the Decepticon army, never even CONSIDERED letting sparklings fight in this war.” Megatron muttered, pacing.
Dot took a deep breath, “Optimus. Your son can’t be older than sixteen. You faked his death, sent him into hiding for a decade, and then had the gall to put a child in charge of MY kids?!?”
Bee snapped at that, “I’m not a sparkling! Stop talking about me like I’m not right here and acting like I can’t do anything for myself! It was my choice to join the Autobot cause in the first place, and I’ve done fine. And you act like a decade is such a long time, we live for millions of years, nine years in isolation is nothing compared to that.”
Dot snarled, “I don’t care how long you live, going nine years without talking to anyone is basically a form of torture! And coming straight from that into a loud, chaotic environment where you're expected to take care of a bunch of young children is so- I can’t even begin to explain how damaging that can be!!”
Bee slumped forward, backing away from the angry woman a few steps. Getting yelled at by Dot while towering above her was bad. Getting yelled at her while you were a good few inches shorter than her was horrible.
Dot’s expression softened slightly when she saw his reaction, and she took a deep breath.
“Prime,” she turned towards the leader of the Autobots, “I don’t want to see you anywhere near my family again until you’re able to realize just how horrifying this entire situation is. That includes Bumblebee. Megs, get him off my property.”
Megatron, still processing the realization that he had been fighting — injuring, beating — a youngling for centuries without even realizing, grabbed the Prime by the shoulder pad and hauled him away form the Malto home, glancing back in silent apology.
Dot and Bee watched them go until they were out of sight.
Dot turned to Bee, the anger from before replaced with care as she moved towards him and, before he could realize what was happening, pulled him into a hug.
It was only then he realized he was shaking.
“I- why did you- it’s not his fault! It… it was my choice.” The scoutling choked, tears coming to his eyes no matter how hard he fought against them.
“Oh baby,” Dot whispered softly in his ear, “you were just a kid. That shouldn’t have even been a choice for you to make.”
And with that, Bee crumbled.
Later, they’d talk about it. They’d figure out what happened and how to handle it.
But for now, Bee was safe in the arms of Mama Malto.