This is dedicated to Alex Yu, the guy who runs TheRaginNation YouTube channel. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have known as much as I did about the fourth Transformers film, Age of Extinction, before I saw the film. He's one of my favorite YouTubers, and he's really cool guy.

This is my perspective of what happened immediately following the attack on Chicago (written before I saw the film).

This is written in Bumblebee's perspective. I do not own Transformers.

I guess we were never that lucky a species. We lost our entire planet to a war among each other. But we gained a new place to call home, even with our enemies here. We fought long and hard, just as we had so many years before, to protect what was ours. We also fiercely protected those who could hardly do so for themselves. Several times, we prevented the destruction of this place, and lost much in the process to the Decepticons.

Now I wish that we were still dealing with the Decepticons. We could hurt them.

We can't hurt the humans.

"The humans have decided that we are no longer welcome on this planet. After the destruction that he along with the Decepticons caused, they have become angry towards all of our kind and wish death upon us," Optimus quietly said as we all stood in a circle, listening to our leader. Our leader was holding this meeting in the middle of the night, in a heavily wooded area far west of Chicago.

After what happened in the city and Ratchet had time to attend to our leader's severed arm, Optimus gave the order to keep a low profile and make our way out of the city ASAP. I didn't know why then, but I guess now Optimus had a good idea of what was going to happen to us if we stayed behind. He was right.

The humans blamed all of our kind because of what he did. He sided with the Decepticons and tried to enslave all of mankind to rebuild Cybertron. No real Autobot would commit such a terrible act, but because of his actions, humanity believes that we all have evil intent and that we want to harm them. So they want to get us before we get them.

And they proved that they were deadly serious, no pun intended. We all met up back here and saw that Topspin was the only one that didn't show up at the designated meeting location. Roadbuster was very upset when he told us that soon after Optimus gave the order to leave the city, the humans got his best friend.

"Well, what're we gonna do?" Leadfoot asked, folding his arms across his red chest, slightly impatient. The Wrecker had the habit of leading the other two, and was always the one who had a suggestion on how to get out of a bad situation, even if the suggestion itself was risky. Back on Cybertron, the Wreckers were known for being able to survive situations that literally no one else could, thanks to him. But now, Leadfoot feels backed into a corner and sees no way out.

Optimus stayed silent for a moment, the soft light from his optics glinting off his furrowed brow ridges. We have so few choices here. We could leave... but it would mean that we all would have to find our own Decepticon fighter ship, and one that functions properly. And that means that we'd have to go back into the city, putting all of our safety at risk. Even if we did manage to do that, where would we go? For all we know, Cybertron is destroyed. We have no home planet to go back to.

There is also the concern of energon. We can only go so long without that precious fuel source. It doesn't make it any better that the stuff is hard to find here on Earth.

Sideswipe glared in the dark, making his optics blaze. "I'm ready to leave this place for good. If they don't want our help, why are we even trying?"

Dino nodded his head in agreement, his signature Italian accent thickening slightly. "It would be too much trouble trying to help them anymore."

I looked down slightly, shifting dirt around with the tip of my pede. I'd like to think differently, but recently, a part of me agrees with Dino and Sideswipe. It seems like the more we try to help them the more we lose. If we keep going like this, there will be none of us left. Right now, losing any of our bots is a very steep price for assisting the humans.

Optimus looked at Sideswipe and gave him a deadly serious look. "We will not forsake this planet's people."

His words certainly are not surprising. Optimus made a commitment back in 2007 to defend the humans no matter what happened. And 'what' included them turning on us. Optimus proved that early on when I got captured by Sector 7. Optimus didn't come after me because he didn't want to harm the humans. The move was understandable, and it's what I wanted. But I'm not so sure that I would want something like that now.

The humans had no idea what they were really doing back in '07 in regards to catching us, but now if they catch us, they know exactly what to do, and they are going to kill us. They've been around us enough to know precisely what it takes to take us out. I'd want one of my own to come to my defense if the humans cornered me again.

He looked at all of us, making sure that he had all of our attention. "We must part ways and reassume our roles as guardians of these people."

"You mean for us to patrol this planet for Decepticons?" Ratchet asked. Optimus looked down at him, but he did not verbally respond at first. My doorwings twitched slightly. I personally found that delay to be a bit odd.

"Even with him and Megatron deceased, there are still enough Decepticons remaining on this world to be of concern."

"I doubt they will be, since the strongest ones are all dead." Dino's accent grew darker as he rotated a wrist blade in slight annoyance. He was never the sort of guy to stand around for a long period of time and talk about what we were going to do next.

But he was right; Megatron, Shockwave and his thoroughbred Driller, Starscream, Soundwave and countless other Decepticons were all killed back in Chicago. Someone from off world would have to come to match Shockwave and Megatron's strength and face Optimus.

I sincerely hope that day never comes. We'd all be in serious trouble if someone comes to Earth with that level of power.

At that moment, Optimus decided that it would be best for us to split off into pairs, in case we do need to protect ourselves. Hopefully not from the humans.

Optimus left by himself while he told Ratchet to go with Sideswipe, Leadfoot to pair up with Topspin, and me to go with Dino. Nobody was happy with the fact that we had to split up, as we all felt that we'd somehow be safer if we stayed in a group. It was a primitive thought - safety in numbers. But of course no one argued with Optimus. We all knew that it was also for our own good to spread out. It'd be too easy to find us if we all stayed close.

And so, we were off in our separate directions with our designated partners. All I can do is hope for better days. At this rate, those better times won't be coming soon for us.

...

Optimus wants us to make sure that everyone maintains contact via the comm. link system, just in case something changes. We certainly did that, but for the most part we don't speak like we are giving mission updates, We've mostly been chatting with each other. The topics of conversation usually contain minor, noteworthy things, like odd sights while we drive across the country. But we do find ourselves talking about the companions we've lost and our memories of them. I talked about Jazz and the time I first met met him to DIno and Roadbuster. They had asked me about him since they didn't know him personally and that they heard Ironhide talking about him frequently. I personally think Roadbuster and Jazz would have become good friends.

For a while we all listened to Ratchet talk about Que and the work that they did together. The inventor was very odd, but he was a very kind bot. Even Sideswipe liked the quirky bot and his creative tendencies, as well as the tendency for his inventions to fail in humorous and spectacular ways.

I even found myself talking about Jetfire at one point. That old bot may have been a Decepticon, but even from being around him a short period of time, I could tell that he had a good heart. Leadfoot seemed to like hearing about our just wonderful first meeting and trip to Egypt with the old bot. He said that Jetfire sounded like he didn't age very well. He's more right than he realizes. Jetfire seemed to ramble more than make sense.

Sideswipe finally pitched in on the conversation after a few days of mostly listening to the rest of us talk. He talked about the sisters, Arcee, Elita-One, and Chromia. Despite Dino's light teasing, I know for sure that Sideswipe wasn't really romantically attracted to them. Since the four of them traveled through space together, they were very close. I'd say they were most like siblings. He'd never admit it, but they helped him deal with being away from his brother Sunstreaker for so long.

While Sideswipe talked to us about Elita-One, Optimus became very quiet.

Ratchet and I spoke with Optimus frequently. We knew that he wasn't bothered by the lack of a partner, but we knew that he felt alone in other ways.

...It seems to me like we are just keeping each other company, staying close and becoming closer like these were our last words with each other.

...

We've been patrolling for a very long time now; so long I've lost count of the passing days. Like everyone else, I've lost contact with Optimus a while ago. His signal just disappeared, and no one knows what happened to him. With all these humans out hunting us, I really hope he's alright.

...

Dino and I drove into the wrong town and ended up getting chased by those vicious human hunters. We were forced to split up in an attempt to lose the trucks. We did lose them, thank Primus, but I have yet to meet up with Dino. I also haven't heard from the others.

Right now I'm just driving on a long, seemingly endless country road. I haven't seen a living thing that wasn't corn in hours, and I noticed that it started to rain a bit.

It's getting lonely out here.

...

I don't know what led me to do this but something made me think it was a good idea to take shelter in this research lab. Of course, I have the permission of the lead scientist, a man named Joshua Joyce. From what I can tell, he's a little too interested in how we Transformers work.

I keep getting the sneaking suspicion that this Joshua doesn't work merely to understand what makes up us Cybertronians. I only hope that this is better than worrying about the humans hunting me. At least here, I'm somewhat safe.

I think.

...- - -...

After seeing that we have three opponents coming in on all sides, I honestly don't know how what's left of us is going to make it out. But one thing I can tell is that Optimus has finally reached a breaking point.

...- - -...

Please remember that I wrote this before I went to see the film, so I already know that some of speculations are wrong. I saw TF4 on premiere day in IMAX 3D, and I have to say, I really love this film. I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't seen it, but Optimus was not joking when he said that the rules have changed.

It si totally worth you going out of your way to see.

...- - -... means SOS in Morse code.

Till next time. :)

P.S. I have to say, it is just like us humans to blame every Transformer for something that only one bot was really responsible for.

Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Leadfoot, Sideswipe, Dino, Roadbuster