Stung
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Chapter 1: Saying Goodbye
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Bumblebee woke to the feeling of fingers on his faceplate and found Smokescreen half atop him staring into his optics, blue meeting blue. "Good morning, bright one," Smokescreen crooned and leaned forward to place a kiss onto the minibot's forehead. "Did I allow you enough recharge time?"
Bumblebee cracked a smile. "You did, but then he showed up."
"I didn't invite him. Did you?" queried Smokescreen, reapplying the kiss as if the mention of him would dull it..
"Not I."
"Not that I minded," the larger bot purred. Jealousy was not a common trait in Cybertronian personalities, and those who suffered from it tended to keep to like-minded sorts. "It seems everything I've heard about him is true. I just don't know how you could keep up with him though." Smokescreen ran his hand down Bumblebee's yellow plating and teased the seam between his windshield and chest panel, but on getting little reaction, he slipped his hand down further. He'd only begun taking the little yellow mech to his berth at the beginning of the summer, and being only August he was still learning where best to touch him and how best to please him.
"Minibot efficiency. We can go twice as far on a full tank."
"So I see." Smokescreen's stroking continued down to where the bot's chest met his waist articulation. This definitely got a reaction. And when he pushed his hand beneath the chest panel's underplating, his digits shoving into the cables that connected Bumblebee's alt-mode dashboard to the rest of him, it received a strong one. Bumblebee cried out in pleasure as his back arched, flinging his arms out to the sides.
One of those arms hit Cliffjumper, lying in recharge next to them. Cliffjumper shrieked at the sudden strike and rolled off of the berth, his pistol flashing out ready to defend himself against a Decepticon attack.
For a few astroseconds the two others blinked at him, and then broke into fits of giggles. "Note to self. Do not wake C.J. suddenly," Smokescreen grinned.
Cliffjumper, on-lining fully and coming to realize what must have happened, re-holstered his weapon. "You know, you can wake me with a kiss instead of a slap," he grouched, hopping back up onto the padded berth in Smokescreen's quarters. He settled again with a harrumph, lying on his side with his head turned toward the other two. His optics blinked off, and then on again. "So I hear you're off to Cybertron for a while," he said with his optics on the yellow bot.
"I am. Team of seven. Going to get more Cybertonium to keep on hand. Carly and Spike are leading since they went before."
"That's why I invited Bumblebee over...to say a proper goodbye," Smokescreen explained.
"Since when have you ever said a proper goodbye?" Cliffjumper teased. "And hey, is Huffer on the mission? I noticed Wheeljack fitting him with a trailer...what, two days ago?"
"Yep. He and Skids will be our primary transports once we've found what we need."
"Excellent. And when do you leave?"
"We're reporting to the space bridge at ten. Departure at ten-fifteen."
Cliffjumper checked his chronometer. "Well then...still plenty of time for me to say a proper goodbye," he said, wriggling across the berth toward Bumblebee, but giving Smokescreen a saucy look at the appropriation of his words.
"Didn't you last night?" Smokescreen started to settle himself possessively atop the minibot. While he didn't mind sharing, he wasn't about to let Cliffjumper and his boundless enthusiasm upstage him again.
"That was a proper hello," he grinned and started to wedge himself between the two others, actually managing to lever Smokescreen off-balance, where he fumbled and ended up on the floor. Cliffjumper immediately took his place atop the yellow mech. From the deck panels Smokescreen cursed and made threats should one of his doorwings be bent or a hinge strained.
Bumblebee kissed him good morning, enjoying the enthusiastic attentions of his fellow minibot. They'd been hooking up off and on for quite some time, both on Earth and back on Cybertron, and so he knew Cliffjumper quite well, both on the battlefield and in the berthroom. Those rising surges in the red mech's energy field told him that it wouldn't be long before the three of them were back at it again, a tangle of need and passion.
It was a wonderful way to start a mission.
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We ready to roll?" asked Jazz of the others on the team as they did a quick check outside of the ring of the space bridge. The two jets that had opposed their borrowing the space bridge had been quickly dealt with.
"Ready!" came back six other voices. Brawn gave the off-lined Dirge a kick for spite before transforming. Carly hopped into Bumblebee and Spike into Huffer, who was in closest proximity to him after the brief tangle.
Jazz dove into his transformation and rolled for the open door of the space bridge, the other five Autobots following. The door of the teleport ring closed behind them.
"Ready here," came Wheeljack's voice over the comlink from headquarters.
"Hit it!" was the response.
Wheeljack nodded to Chip Chase, who pulled the activator switch and the whirling light of the space bridge rose, engulfing the seven passengers. Quickly they were dissolved into energy signatures and flung across the nothingness toward Cybertron.
The engineer's sensor wings twitched. "Did you see that?" Wheeljack asked Chip on seeing that the passengers had departed successfully.
"See what?"
"That flicker on the controls. Just as you activated the bridge." He tapped the board in front of Chip with a finger.
"I was watching the viewscreen," he said.
"I don't think it was much, but there was something," he said, checking his memory recording.
"Probably just a power surge or stutter as the bridge control pulled more current. Nothing to worry about, I'm sure," Chip decided. All of the readings indicated that the bridge's operation was normal.
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As the light of the rematerialization process faded, Carly immediately suspected something was wrong. And seeing only Bumblebee beside her, she knew that something had gone horribly wrong. Jazz, Spike, Skids, Brawn, and Huffer were nowhere to be seen. And normally there would be a space bridge structure there to receive them. But there was only a flat expanse of nearly barren land.
"What the..." Bumblebee gasped and transformed back to his root form.
"This doesn't look right," was Carly's appraisal of the situation.
Instead just she and Bumblebee stood on a dusty desert plain, the ground a litter of gravel broken by shallow washes and occasional out of place boulders. The horizon was a bumpy line dividing pale beige mesas from a cloudless sky of an uncomfortable blue-green color. Plant life was sparse, just dry-looking grass and a few scraggly shrubs, and one bushy thing that appeared to be a mass of dead vines sprouting tiny linear leaves.
"This isn't Cybertron," said Bumblebee, beating her to voicing the thought by only a second.
"No...not at least anywhere I've been on Cybertron."
"It isn't. There's nowhere like this on Cybertron. We're somewhere else. Somewhere else entirely."
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Stung continues in Chapter 2: Hax Horobis
Skids finds himself separated from the others, and Bumblebee and Carly are attacked in the desert. A promise made to Spike comes to light.
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Transformers and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of Hasbro and Takara Tomy. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.