Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Summary: Oneshot, post-movie. Who are you, if your body is no longer yours? Who are you, if your memories are taken away? These are the questions that haunt "humans" and Autobots alike as they try to reclaim a companion.
Acknowledgements: A big thanks to Elariel, who gave me a lot of ideas on how to deal with this bunny!
WARNING: Fervent nods to MGS4's Beauty and the Beast unit, in particular Screaming Mantis. So…potential spoilers.
Becoming
Bumblebee knew that Mikaela, Epps, and Lennox, like so many others, were not like them. There were subtle differences, like the way they changed alt-forms as casually as humans changed clothing whereas the Cybertronians tended to remain faithful to one form, just updating it every so often. Bumblebee himself had yet to alter his Camaro form, though he had upgraded it to the current year's model.
However, despite all the differences, Bumblebee still thought of them as Autobots rather than human-turned-Autobots.
He wondered if these new younglings—for even though they might have been adult in their old world, they were younglings in their new world—knew what the Autobots thought of them, and of what they meant to them...of the second chance that they sorely needed after eons and eons of endless fighting and death.
He wondered if Ironhide would ever tell Lennox about the youngling that he had tried so hard to save back on Cybertron.
He wondered if Blaster would ever tell Epps about the Cassette that he lost so many eons ago.
He wondered if Ratchet would ever tell Mikaela a certain femme whose spark was poorly attached, and who had fluttered in and out of life so quickly, even by human standards.
He wondered if he himself would ever tell them about how good it was to not be the last youngling anymore, to not be alone anymore.
Bumblebee thought of them as Autobots rather than humans-turned-Autobots. He wondered if it was good or bad that their human origins were so easily forgotten.
X x X
Bumblebee leaned against the door frame of the weapons room, watching as his partner carefully took out personally-made weaponry and stowed them in subspace. The Ducati femme was slightly taller than an adult human male, and the Autobot insignia on her right shoulder stood grey and silver against the white patina.
She had come a long way…they had all come a long way. The Allspark's destruction had left both a gift and a curse for the Autobots' future. The blast of the Allspark's destruction radiated, effecting humans in a certain radius. The closer the human was, the faster the effects were.
Sparks had embedded in their bodies, burning the humans from the inside out. The Autobots had to perform a drastic spark transplant in order to save their lives...at least, that was what the Autobots liked to think.
All in all, twenty-six human-turned-Autobots were added to their ranks. Twenty-six lives changed, twenty-six humans-no-longer-humans. Twenty-six, not including the one human who they had been sure would have changed first; not including the one human who Bumblebee missed so badly that his energon ran cold in his wires.
"So tell me again why Sam wasn't changed? He was under the Allspark at the time, wasn't he? Wouldn't he have gotten a full blast of it?"
"Yes, he was closest to the Allspark at the time. However, being in physical contact with the Allspark must have granted him some form of immunity."
She didn't seem to notice his presence, though he had been standing there for a few minutes already. She took out a blaster as long as her arm, looking through the cross wires. He noticed that the weapon shook slightly.
"Are you ready?" he asked softly, trying not to surprise her.
"Huh?" she asked, sounding startled. She turned to look at him, her blue optics alternately glowing and dimming in distress. It was the New-bots' equivalent of blinking back tears, though the Cybertronian Autobots had no such expression. "Sorry, 'Bee, what did you say?"
"I asked if you were ready," he said kindly.
"Yeah, of course I'm ready 'Bee," she said, looking once again through the scope of her weapon. It was steady this time, though Bumblebee wasn't fooled.
"You don't have to do this, you know," Bumblebee said, as he had said at least five times in that day alone. "Arcee offered—"
"Arcee doesn't know him," she said shortly. "They all don't know him. I do. I'll be able to find him, and we'll get out before anyone notices a thing."
"Mikaela—"
"Bumblebee, I'm ready. Stop treating me like a kid," she snapped, her optics glowing fiercely. "Nothing's gonna happen."
Things happen, though, Bumblebee thought sadly. And you are a kid, you are a youngling—in many ways, all of you guys are.
If Bumblebee had the physiology to heave a sigh, he would have. "Well, you know the plan, right?"
"Yeah," she said, storing weapons in her subspace almost compulsively. He walked calmly over to where she was, and stopped her. She looked up at him, and gave a small nod. "Starscream and the other Seekers are, right now, busy raiding a nuclear plant. Optimus and company are going over to stop him. While the 'cons are busy trying to fend them off, we'll go in and grab him right under Soundwave's…er…nose, or whatever it is he has."
Bumblebee looked at her. "You make it sound so easy," he remarked wryly.
"That's 'cuz it is," she answered cheekily. She looked him up and down, and said, "Gear up, partner. I don't want to have to wait for you."
Shaking his head, Bumblebee did as he was bid. Their positions were switched now—he was gearing up, and she was waiting at the doorframe.
"I hope Sunny gets a scratch," she remarked, seemingly out of the blue. "Sideswipe too, for good measure."
Bumblebee's optics widened. "So bitter, Mikaela?" he asked lightly. "What if I told you that Sides has a good-sized crush on you?"
She scrutinized him for a moment, and then threw her head back for a quick laugh. "Good try, Bumblebee. I happen to know that Sides loves only two things—his reflection, and just maybe his brother. And even if he did, I still hope he gets a scratch."
"They didn't know Sam before," Bumblebee told her, sobering suddenly. "To them, he's just another enemy. That's why they talk like that."
Mikaela gave a careless shrug, and Bumblebee knew that she wasn't moved. Though he wasn't going to admit it, Bumblebee wasn't, either, though he did know the rationale behind the twins' feelings, as well those of many other Autobots. The things that they threatened to do to the technopath, the puppeteer, Soundwave's little protégé…sometimes Bumblebee just wanted to smash their heads into the table of the rec room, or at least switch their car wax with some sort of adhesive.
The twins knew him as another Decepticon. Red Alert knew him as the traitorous squishy that let Ravage escape. Prowl knew him as a strategic hindrance, as well as a potential threat.
They didn't know Sam; they only knew Sonar.
But despite all the hostility, despite all the questions and confusion and misunderstanding, Bumblebee was determined to bring Sam back to the Autobots.
"Ready, 'Bee?" Mikaela asked, pulling Bumblebee from his musings.
Bumblebee put on his battle mask. "Ready."
X x X
No one really knew nor cared where Soundwave got the raw materials for his projects. Megatron might have asked once, and would surely have gotten an answer, but generally, no one was curious enough or indeed crazy enough to ask, "Where in the Pit did you get that ugly thing?"
So it was when Soundwave appeared with a new little glitch. His initial landing on the mud ball planet had happened three orns before, and he certainly did not have that barnacle with him at that time. Still, no one enquired where the thing came from. Starscream was no exception, but that was only because he knew where Soundwave got his new bundle of metal.
The new Decepticon leader knew that it wasn't a coincidence that Soundwave's initial landing and subsequent disappearance for three orns just happened to occur about the same time a certain squishy disappeared from the very heart of the Autobot base.
And, three orns later, out came Soundwave with a new project.
Starscream let things be, however. Because really, what greater reward to give the one who had essentially handed him the throne of Decepticon leader but to take the little glitch under his wing?
And who knew? Maybe the fragger would one day become a great 'Bot assassin or hacker or general doom-bringer like the Cassettes before him. Maybe one day he'd kill the little insect who once served as his guardian. Maybe one day his guardian would kill him. The possibilities were endless, and each and every one as delicious as the last.
Starscream decided, long ago, that the universe was a stage, with a cast of fools in a play designed only for his amusement. And, really, Starscream was a fan of dramatic irony.
X x X
Ravage was roaming through the corridors of the Decepticon base, and passed by the cantina, when something interesting made her double back. There was a cluster of New-con younglings on the cantina floor—not an unusual occurrence, as they would often form a circle around two fighting mechs in order to egg them on and root for one side or another—but a free show was not what they were looking at.
Ravage gave a careless glance around the room. Sonar's ten Raven drones seemed to have spectacularly crashed out of the air. They lay scattered around the room, puppets whose strings had been suddenly cut.
"Is he okay?"
"What happened?"
"I dunno. He just collapsed and went into stand-by just like that."
"Stand-by? I thought he was in stasis."
"No, you scrapheap! If he were in stasis, he wouldn't be moving, now would he?"
"Did you see the Ravens? They all just crashed."
"Guys, mute it! He's onlining."
Ravage pushed past them, and the New-con younglings scattered as she growled. Sonar was lying on the ground, crumpled on his side, one of his arms coming up weakly. Ravage walked over, and stood over him, looking down at his black helmet with her four crimson optics.
His hand stretched out to the side, palm facing upward. Sonar mumbled some human language, a remnant of some of his previous programming. Ravage made a mental note to tell their creator about the residue later. Soundwave hated glitches in any of his creations. Then Sonar's head turned to face her, and he shifted so that he was lying on his back, and he immediately switched to Cybertronian.
"Do you hear the screams?" he asked faintly, the Cybertonian words coming out with a butchered quality because of the human vocal processors. His split-voice, at once female and male, emanated clearly from the mask. "They cry for battle." Around the room, his fallen drones quivered.
"Cut it out, little glitch," she told him flatly, and the drones stilled as his arm fell down feebly beside him. She bent down to nudge him to an upright sitting position. He still seemed disoriented, so she took an armoured shoulder with her jaws and dragged him a distance so that he could lean against the leg of a table.
A shadow loomed over the cluster of muttering New-cons, Ravage, and the still confused Sonar, and all but the latter looked up, their red optics meeting Soundwave's visors. He looked at them, and the other New-cons, satisfied that Sonar was online, drifted away.
Soundwave bent down to retrieve his limp creation before sitting down at a nearby table. Sonar, unresisting, settled in the crook of the mech's arm. Ravage leaped upon the table, watching with optics half-shuttered as Soundwave gave him an energon cube.
Sonar lifted his mask slightly, revealing the lower half of his implant-lined organic face. He sipped at the energon, coughed harshly as the life-sustaining liquid burned his lips and throat, and sipped again.
"All of it," Soundwave ordered, when it looked like Sonar was not going to drink anymore.
He did as he was bid, nearly chocking as he finished. Ravage rose a little on her haunches, but Soundwave was already running a finger down his creation's throat and chest, making the liquid go down easier.
"Who is screaming?" he asked, after a few breems of silence.
Soundwave did not react, but Ravage indulged his question, her head tilting to one side in a position where her audio receptors could best pick up any sound waves.
"No one is," she told him.
Soundwave lifted Sonar's mask, fully revealing his face. He grunted as the glaring white lights overhead reached his infrared-accustomed eyes, and raised a hand, as if in protest, but at Ravage's low growl thought the better of it, and put his arm back down. Soundwave took his chin in between a thumb and a forefinger, looking carefully into one eye and then into the other.
"Visual processors: hazy. Drug utilization: suspected," he proclaimed, releasing his face.
Sonar put his mask back down, flustered, and Ravage smirked from where she was sitting. "I do not do drugs," he said indignantly.
Another silence, and Ravage could feel through her bond with Soundwave that he was searching through Sonar's frequencies to make sure that he wasn't under the influence. "Statement accepted. Recharge and recover," he ordered. Sonar sat up, displeased, and was pushed back down by Soundwave's hand.
"If you recharge now, you may join the others later for practice," Ravage said, and they both looked up to Soundwave for approval. He regarded both his creations—his oldest and his youngest—silently, before giving a small nod. Sonar leaned back down, shifting to a more comfortable position, cheek leaning against Soundwave's spark casing. Ravage watched as the form quieted and then stilled.
Ravage curled up slightly, and Soundwave transferred his creation over to her care. She nuzzled him until he had settled next to her, one hand coming up to grasp one of her shoulders. She looked up to Soundwave, who nodded once before leaving. She settled down too, feeling her spark pulse come into rhythm with the heartbeat of the being beside her.