Chapter One: Exposition

Scene 1:

Bee shivered. The loud noises and scary shaking from before had stopped, but neither of his creators had yet returned. A layer of dust covered the sparkling, clogging his vents and hiding his bright yellow protoform plating. Although, maybe that was a good thing. After all, his carrier had told him to keep quiet and hide, just as she was tucking him in the crevice beneath a fallen wall.

His fuel tank rumbled, dangerously empty, and Bee wished someone would come to get him soon.

Scene 2:

"Gotcha!"

Bee shrieked as orange servos scooped up his tiny frame. "Ah! R-Roddy! P-put m-m-me d-down-n!" The sparkling giggled, trying uselessly to squirm out away from the digits tickling him. Hot Rod just grinned at his victim.

"Sorry, Bee, but when you drop a bucket of solvent cleaner over my helm, you have to pay the price."

"'S-s n-not f-f-fair - you're b-bigger-r th-than m-me!"

"Pipsqueak, everyone's bigger than you."

The sparkling panted as the tickling slowed, trying to pull cool air into his overheated vents. "Then, nobot should pick on me."

"Excuse me?!" Exclaimed the older youngling. "With as much trouble as you cause the rest of us? You're lucky Ironhide doesn't lock you in a crate to keep this place safe."

Bumblebee considered that possibility for a moment. "Nah. Op wouldn't let 'im. He likes me too much."

"Hmph."

Scene 3:

"You sure you'll be alright?" Bee asked softly, sitting in a hunched over position on the berth. Hot Rod sent the younger mech a confident smile, tucking the last of his personal possessions into sub-space.

"Sure I will, Bee-bot! You know Kup already does everything he can to keep my thick helm from getting into too much trouble - it'll be easier now that he's my commanding officer."

The yellow youngling snickered, a brief grin flickering across his faceplates. "True. And, I suppose that if you cause half as much destruction in a fight as you do on base, this war will be over in no time."

"Oh, ha ha, hilarious." Hot Rod rolled his optics, then grew abruptly serious. "Hey Bee, I want you to promise me something."

"What?"

"When you come of age in a few vorns, and officially join the Autobot ranks, don't go volunteering for active combat duty."

"What?! Roddy, I can't just-"

"Bumblebee. You're fast, you're a decent shot, but you're also the smallest bot who ever lived. It would only take one half-sized 'Con scoring a lucky hit and you'd be offline before Ratchet or any other medic had a chance of reaching you. How do y'think the bots around here would handle that, huh?"

Sighing, Bee had to admit the truth in his friend's words. In the time since he'd been rescued from the ruins of a bombing attack as a sparkling, the minibot had managed to make friends with just about every Autobot who came to the Iacon base. Death was a natural part of war, as he'd long known - but losing a mech who'd grown up running around their pedes would be devastating to a lot of bots.

Sometimes he really hated being everyone's little brother.

"Fine. But don't think for a second I'll just resign myself to deskwork or monitor duty: I am not about to set myself up to turn into Red Alert."

"Fair enough."

It was that very evening, after the friend he'd had closest to his own age left with the departing troop regiment, that Bee wandered down to the training halls and caught sight of Jazz working through the unique Special Ops obstacle course.

"Can you teach me to do that stuff?"

Scene 4:

The thought that he probably would have been safer on a real battlefield was very prominent in Bee's processor as he tried to dodge Seeker fire.

In hindsight, he should have been more patient in waiting for his backup to arrive in place before infiltrating the Decepticon outpost, but the arrival of a convoy of freshly mined minerals was too good an opportunity to miss! Not one 'Con spotted the yellow minibot as he slipped in the gate behind one of the delivery vehicles.

The rest of the mission had been simple to the extreme: climbing up into the ventilation system, making his way into the secured communications center, and downloading all the information he could hack into hardly took two breems.

It was on the way back out that things had gotten tricky.

Belting out a string of curses as another plasma bolt singed his right side fenders, Bee swerved behind a rusty outcropping and transformed, bringing his single grip blaster out of sub-space. It wasn't a very powerful weapon, but if he could just hit the right spot...

The Seeker who'd been on his aft since escaping the outpost banked overhead, coming around for another pass. Bumblebee lined up his blasted with the approaching target, carefully took aim, and- NOW!

Of the three quick shots he fired off, the first was dodged, the second scorched a tail fin, but the third managed the land right at the exposed joint where wing panel joined fuselage. Shrieking, the Seeker made a failed attempt at transforming, and ended up losing what little control had remained to him.

Taking a brief moment to sigh in relief, Bee's emotions quickly morphed into horror as he realized the spiralling 'Con was dropping right towards his position.

Sprinting as fast as his pedes could go, Bumblebee just barely cleared the impact point before his unfortunate opponent crashed. The resulting explosion, though, not only ripped the small mech away from the ground, but sent him helm first into another outcropping.

After that things got really fuzzy.

Groaning from the pain of the impact, not to mention the shards of shrapnel embedded in his armor, Bee tried to sort out what his damaged sensors were reporting. His optics were hit with waves of static, his audio units fritzed in and out, and everything else was in a similar state or worse. At one point, Bee would have sworn there was a trio of large Decepticons leering down at him. The next, his surroundings seemed to be filled with blaster fire and fighting, yelling mechs. It wasn't until a pair of familiar, red plated servos were reaching down to lift him from the ground that the minibot realized reinforcements must have arrived to retrieve him.

"B*shhk*bl*fzzt*ee, ar*kkksht*amaged?" Unable to articulate a response, even should his frazzled processor have been in a place to come up with one, Bee just curled himself into a tighter ball against Prime's chestplates. Trembling with both pain and relief, the minibot was unaware of the trip back to base or anything afterward - until, that was, he awoke with senses restored in the med bay, listening to the reassuring sounds of Ratchet berating Jazz and Mirage for not supplying proper support to their operatives.

Scene 5:

"And I knew," Ironhide was saying as Bumblebee entered the Ark's rec room, "Th' instant that Prime brought that little stinker inta base, the lot of us were gonna regret it at one point or another-"

"'Hide, please tell me you aren't on another 'curse that sparling for wrapping us all around his digits' rant, because I can honestly say I got tired of hearing those at least thirty vorns before we even left Cybertron." Bee said plaintively as he headed for the energon dispenser.

"Oh come on, dude!" Spike grinned from his place on the table beside where Ironhide sat. "I've lived through my dad recounting every baby story he has of me, I think it's about time I got to hear a few in return."

The old mech chuckled as Bee began to pantomime banging his head against the wall. "Now, ain't it nice t' see that younglings across th' cosmos share a singular horror of their guardians tellin' sparkling stories."

"Horror does not even begin to cover it." Bumblebee grumbled. "And you're just lucky there's nobot here who's ancient enough to tell such tales about you, 'Hide."

"Oy! Is that a crack about my age?"

Bee's expression was the picture of innocence as he replied. "Whatever gave you that idea, Grampy?"

For the next forty minutes, mechs all throughout and around the Ark got to look on with smirks and grins as the cheerfully bellowing Ironhide chased around a wildly laughing Bumblebee.

Scene 6:

Craning his helm around the edge of the canyon wall, Bee ran through his processor every single curse he'd ever picked up from Ratchet, Ironhide, and the Twins. Nearly twenty Autobots were trapped at the end of the rocky canyon, most of them wounded, and all of them at the mercy of the Decepticon weaponry aimed towards their position. Even worse, Soundwave had set up his usual jamming field, the edge of which was far enough away that Bee doubted he could make it there and send out a distress signal before the 'Cons opened fire on his friends.

Optics scanning desperately for some sort of inspiration, Bumblebee's gazed landed on a jumbled heap of boulders perched precariously at the top of the opposite canyon wall. The fact that the pile was directly above the Decepticon position seemed to be an act of Primus.

Hurriedly, Bee climbed a bit higher up on the cliff face, trying to get to an optimal position for the shot he'd have to make. He would, after all, only be getting one chance at it.

The yellow bot's luck ran out, though, just as Bee reached what seemed to be the perfect spot. A chunk of rock broke off underneath his left pede, bouncing down to the canyon floor and making more noise than any piece of stone had a right to. Several things happened in quick succession then:

Bumblebee raised his blaster.

Skywarp appeared in the air beside him.

The minibot fired.

The 'Con's clawed digits closed over his extended servo, crushing it easily.

Bee's shot hit the boulder pile right at the base, triggering a domino effect that brought the whole lot crashing down into the canyon.

Startled, Decepticons yelled in fear and scattered in all directions, while those Autobots that still could cheered as they began to shoot at their enemies.

Recovering from his shock, Skywarp teleported away, taking Bee with him.

Scene 7:

"Don' stowp thewe!" Three year old Daniel cried. "Wha' happened nex', Unca Bee?"

"Well, fortunately for me, Skywarp and I didn't go too far - just a handful of miles further out into the desert - but we were very high up in the air."

"Close 'nuff ta towch clowds?"

"Easily. And then, he dropped me."

The human child gasped, staring at the yellow mech with wide-eyed amazement. "You felled?"

"Fell, yes."

"Did you died?"

"Nah - good old Skyfire had already been on his way, and managed to dive and catch me." What the minibot didn't say was that Skywarp had shot him at point blank range several times before letting go, and that Bee lost so much energon on the way down that he'd been nearly dead when the white shuttle caught him, a mere few hundred feet away from smashing into the ground at terminal velocity.

"Then Watchet fixed evewybody an' they lived happily evew aftew." Daniel declared cheerfully. Bee grinned as the tiny boy yawned, snuggling down into the pile of blankets held in the minibot's lap. "G'night, Unca Bee."

"Goodnight, kiddo." A few minutes later, the child was sound asleep, and Bumblebee silently congratulated himself on another bedtime story well told.

Scene 8:

"Hey Bee, are you in here? It's okay if you're busy, I was just-"

"Come on in Blue, I'm way in the back!" As the Datsun walked into view, Bumblebee was storing away the last of the materials shipment recently donated by the United States and other governments. "Y'know, I'm starting to believe we have enough steel and titanium in here to build a same-size replica of Omega Supreme."

"Really? That is a lot. Unless it's an exaggeration, in which case it would still be a lot." Bluestreak grinned at his friend, prompting an amused roll of the optics. "But anyway, what are you still doing back here? The shuttle's about to arrive with those new guys from Cybertron, and Optimus wants everyone who's available to be outside on the landing pad to say hi and I didn't think you'd want to miss it even if we weren't ordered to-"

"Right, thanks Blue, I just lost track of time." Bee politely cut him off. Nodding in acknowledgement, the Datsun led the way out of the storage bay and in the direction of Autobot City's new airfield. "So, do you know the names of any of these newcomers? I've been too busy the last few days to find out."

"Oh yeah! Prowl was saying just the other night that he looked forward to working with another by-the-book mech like Ultra Magnus, and Ironhide's been eager to swap some new stories with Kup, and Carly's happy that Arcee will be another femme to talk to, and the twins can't wait to pull some pranks on the officers with Blurr and Hot Rod, and Wheeljack wants to get a look at Springer's triple changer abilities-"

"Whoa, whoa, hold up a nanoclick - did you say Hot Rod?"

Scene 9:

The orange and red mech had barely taken three steps away from the end of the shuttle ramp when a familiar yellow frame plowed into him out of nowhere.

"Roddy!"

"What the- Bee?! Where the frag did you come from?"

"Well, about ten seconds ago I was still in the hall by the storage bays." The minibot grinned, hopping back to his pedes to allow his old friend to get up from where he'd been knocked to the ground.

By this point, nearly everybot gathered along the landing pad was watching them with a range of expressions from exasperation to bemusement. "I know ya take bein' friendly pretty seriously, Bee," Jazz was the first to speak up. "But y'think ya can wait until after the intros are passed around ta jump a mech?" His cackles only increased in volume as Prowl whacked him upside the helm.

Kup came a little closer, studying the mech who barely came up to the chestplates of his own semi-former charge. "'Hide?" He called out after a moment. "You fed this kid at all in the vorns since I last saw him?" Snickers filled the air as Ironhide let out his typical harumph sound.

"Says the mech who used to misplace his youngling every couple of joors..."

"Oh-kay, no need to start an argument over who was the better guardian, right?" Bee tried to interject. Optimus ended up doing a better job of getting everyone's attention, though, by stepping forward and reminding the crowd that they had tasks to do inside. First, and perhaps most important, was the introduction of the newcomers to the Autobot's human allies waiting within the monitor room. On the way there, Bumblebee and Hot Rod hung towards the back of the crowd, the former telling the latter about some of his more memorable activities on Earth.

"I swear there's something about this planet that makes the 'Cons even dumber than usual, Roddy. It took them nearly a full decade to figure out that I was sneaking into their submerged base to steal weapons specs and battle plans."

"Figures. Then again, you always were a sneaky little slagger, Bee. By the way, is this hunk of rock really mostly covered with water? I saw all the blue on our way down, but..."

"It sure is, and inhabited by more organic lifeforms than Hound could study in a lifetime-"

"Uncle Bee!"

"Speaking of." The minibot paused to pick up a very muddy six year old leaving footprints and puddles down the corridor behind him. "Hot Rod, I want to introduce you to my godson, Daniel Witwicky."

"Hi there!" The taller mech smiled down at the suddenly shy organic.

"Hi..." Daniel said back, wiping away some of the dark brown sludge that covered him nearly completely from head to toe. "Bee, can you help me clean up in the wash racks before Mommy sees me?"

"I think it might be a little late for that, kiddo..." The boy cringed as he saw Autobots in the hall ahead of them clearing a path for the clearly torqued off Carly.

"DANIEL SAMSON WITWICKY! How many time have I told you not to go swimming in the drainage run-off without supervision?!" The kid's protests that he'd merely been playing on the bank went unheeded as his mother dragged him away.

Hot Rod let out a low whistle of awe. "Wow. I guess the females on this planet can be even feistier than the ones back home, huh?"

"You have no idea."

Scene 10:

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Daniel asked fearfully, hugging tightly to his dad but directing the question up to Bumblebee as well.

"Of course we will be, Danny." Spike said as he pressed a kiss to his son's forehead.

"Don't worry about us, kiddo - eight months from now and we'll be back, picking you up from school, asking questions about what pretty girl you're thinking of asking out-"

"Ew! Uncle Bee, why do you have to say things like that?!"

"As your godfather, one of my primary duties is to assist your parents in all their efforts to embarrass you."

The eleven year old groaned, stomping away to say goodbye to some of his other friends and babysitters. Bumblebee also stepped aside to allow Carly and Spike their own private farewell. When it was nearly time to depart for the Cybertron moon bases, he managed to catch Hot Rod for a few moments.

"Hey, keep an optic on Daniel for me, will ya Roddy?"

"Sure thing, Bee. And you make sure to take care up there too! I'd hate to have to come bail your aft out of trouble after all these years of a clean record."

"Heh, just you watch, it'll end up being the other way around - we're just doing monitoring and spy stuff, remember? Things I happen to be pretty good at." The last call was sounded for the departing Autobots to board the shuttle, forcing Bumblebee to hurry off, waving at his friends as he went.

None of them could have known the hell they'd be going through in half a year's time...