Optimus had said don't hide him.

Practically speaking, hiding Wheelie was impossible.

Arcee, at least, could generate the hologram of a pretty young woman. Said pretty young woman was currently downstairs in front of his dorm, leaning against her bike, arms folded, and pouting. There was nothing unusual about her except that she'd been sitting there for hours -- and her twin was guarding the dorm's back door. Her hologram was gorgeous enough to draw the attention of the occasional passing man; when Sam had pointed that, perhaps, a less attractive hologram might draw less interest from passing humans, Arcee had laughed and said, "Do you think I really mind?"

Apparently, Bee wasn't the only 'bot who was amused by flirting.

"Ooooooooh!" Wheelie exclaimed, emerging from the dorm room's closet with a whole stack of old CD's. "You have music!"

Sam glanced up from his homework. "Careful, those scratch easy."

"Why CDs? Why not an MP3 player?" Wheelie took the first one out of its case and, to Sam's bemusement, scanned it. A red light shone from Wheelie's good eye. He exclaimed, "Metallica! Goooooood music!"

"I haven't had time to rip them," Sam said, absently.

At that moment, the dorm door opened. Wheelie dove under the bed's rumpled covers, making a robot-shaped lump on the bed. He also wasn't fast enough to avoid being seen. Leo, and Leo's new girlfriend, stared at the bed in surprise.

Leo said, incredulously, "That's not that ... you brought that thing home with you?"

Sam, not looking up from his laptop said, "Yes."

Leo's girlfriend -- her name was Bethany -- said, "Wait. Wait. That was one of the robots from TV? One of the ones that saved the world? It's here?" Bethany stared at Wheelie, who twitched when he realized he'd been seen. And then he tensed up and muttered audibly when she added, "I thought it would be a lot bigger!"

"It's not an it, it's a he," Sam said, resignedly. "Wheelie, come out. There's not even a point in hiding."

Wheelie stuck his head out. Saw Bethany. And purred, with enthusiasm, "A girrrrrrl!"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Wheelie, I will punt you if you say anything inappropriate."

"I'll tell Optimus," Wheelie pouted.

"Be my guest. I don't think you'll find a sympathetic audience there, buddy," Sam reached out, flicked the 'bot in the head with one finger. Wheelie attempted to bite his finger, but he was ready for that, and Wheelie's toothy jaws clicked on air. "More to the point, if you want the pretty girl," he glanced at Bethany, who was anything but beautiful, unfortunately, "To like you, you will not hump her leg, wolf whistle at her, or suggest any inappropriate activities whatsoever. Is that clear?"

Bethany was staring at the 'bot with very wide eyes. "He does that?"

"To Mikaela." Leo giggled. "It was pretty funny. Sam kicked him."

Sam hastily assured her, "You can't judge Autobots by Wheelie. He's not one. He's a Decepticon."

"I AM so an Autobot!" Wheelie, hands balled on his hips, glared up at Sam. He was absolutely quivering with outrage. "Optimus said I could join! He said! I swore allegiance! You lie!"

Sam gave the other two humans in the room a pained expression. "He's also operating on about the level of a two year old child, I think."

"Am not a child!"

"Wheelie, I am older than you." Sam patted him on the head.

"It doesn't work the same for Cybertronians." Wheelie was pouting. "Besides, I spent hundreds of years in a stasis pod. That makes me older than you, buddy."

"That doesn't count, runt." Sam realized, belatedly, how this argument must look to Leo and Bethany and looked up again at them. "Err, seriously. He's not a good example of the 'bots."

Bethany suddenly squeaked. Leo pointed past Sam's shoulder, and said, in a somewhat nervous tone of voice, "I think that's one of the better examples."

Sam turned around in his desk chair to see a pair of glowing blue eyes, framed by neon yellow, peering through the open second floor dorm room window, on the other side of the desk. Shocked, Sam snapped, "Bee! Are you insane?"

Bee drooped visibly, "But Optimus said we don't have to hide anymore ... and Sam, I need to talk to you ..."

"Yeah, and I'd like to have a normal life!" Sam covered his face with one hand, and shook his head briefly, before surfacing again and pointing a finger sternly in the general direction of the parking lot. "Get! Shoo! Parking lot!" Sam bent over in his chair, grabbed Wheelie by the waist, and chucked him out the window in Bee's direction. "And babysit the runt while you're at it!"

"Fuck you, asswipe!" Wheelie shouted, from somewhere below the level of the window. Sam watched the back of Bee's head retreat without getting up from his chair. Bee stopped after a few strides, then disappeared from view. There had been no distinctive noise of an Autobot transformation, so he figured Bumblebee had bent over. With absolutely no surprise, he heard a growing crescendo of excited voices.

Sam covered his face with his hands, and said through his fingers, "Please tell me he's not drawing a crowd. Please?"

Leo walked to the dorm's other room and looked out the window with interest. Brightly, he said, "He's a fifteen foot tall yellow robot on a college campus with an enormous engineering department. He's drawing a crowd. Somebody just asked to see how his hand articulates."

"You were kinda mean to him," Leo's girlfriend said, uncertainly.

"Who, Wheelie? He'll get over it." Sam closed his laptop. Clearly, there would be no studying this afternoon.

Leo shook his head vigorously. "To Bee, she means. Sam, Bee's your friend. Why'd you do that?"

Defensively, Sam said, "He knows he's not supposed to draw attention to himself. I don't care if Optimus says he can lay off the subterfuge a bit. I still don't want him walking around campus. Can you imagine what the school will say? Wheelie's bad enough -- I'm trying to figure out if he qualifies as a pet or an extra roommate who's not attending the school. Either way, he's not actually allowed."

"Wheelie's a robot, half the geeks in the school have robots in their rooms. Yours is just a little more advanced. And -- Bee's nice." Leo said, sturdily, earning a black look from Sam. Leo continued, a little less certainly, but voice growing stronger as he spoke, "Look, the damn robots pretty much scare the damn crap out of me, but Bumblebee? Bumblebee adores you and Mikaela. He'd die for you two, literally. Do you treat all your friends that way?"

"I ..." Sam suddenly rose so he could see what was going on outside. Bumblebee, it turned out, was down on one knee, signing autographs for a growing mob.

Signing autographs.

Somebody had found him a very, very large marker. He was holding it pinched between thumb and forefinger with great care. People were crowding around and asking questions and handing him objects to sign. It was ludicrous. Surreal. Sam completely expected an entire armada of Decepticons to come pouring out of the heavens, or perhaps the military to descend en mass on Bee and haul him away in a block of ice. Instead, people were flocking to him as if he was some sort of superstar. And Bee seemed to completely be in his element.

Bumblebee noticed someone's rock t-shirt, and played a clip of music to match the band. His speakers were good enough to rattle the windows of the nearby buildings. The owner of the t-shirt began to dance in response. Bee, who loved music second only to life itself, joined in with surprisingly good grace for a fifteen foot tall, multi-ton alien robot. And just like that, the crowd started to bop with him. The Autobot truly appeared to be enjoying himself, and the crowd was obviously excited by his presence.

Bee, it turned out, could break dance. Quite well. Though the lawn was suffering a bit.

Sam beat his head against the window frame in time with the music. He could see that some of the people in the crowd had cell phones with video recorders, and in the distance, he could see someone running across the parking lot with a large professional video recorder up on one shoulder.

"I don't get you," his roommate said, sounding annoyed. "You could be the most popular guy on campus. You saved the world and your best friend's a space alien with ..." Leo regarded the scene below with a grin, "... some sick moves. And you're complaining about this?"

"Dude, I don't want to be popular," Sam paused from banging his forehead. "I want to be normal. Low profile. I want to go to my classes and hang out with my friends and ..."

He trailed off as he remembered most of those friends were big, decidedly not low-profile robots. Including the one who was pretty much his best friend in all the world, who was currently -- to the enormous laughter of a very large and rapidly crowd -- doing a surprisingly good moonwalk. Normal? Not happening.

"Uh-oh, there's the dean!" Leo announced. The man was approaching the impromptu jam session in a small electric golf cart.

Sam looked up. "Oh, crap!" He ran for the door. This could be ugly!

Mikaela met him halfway up the stairs. Her eyes were dang near shooting lasers at him. He guessed she'd seen his outburst -- which he was growing more and more guilty about. Bee was his best friend. "Sam Witwicky, what the hell was that about ..."

"I ... uh ... he's having fun ..."

"No." Mikaela said, very clearly. "He's doing PR and putting on a good show for the crowd, which he considers one of his duties at the moment. I sincerly doubt he's 'having fun' given the mood he was in to start with. What the hell is your problem, Sam?"

"I ..." She was mad. Maybe he had crossed the line, but damnit, he'd made it clear to Bumbeblee and the other 'bots on multiple different occasions that he didn't want them to draw attention to him. He'd originally even told Bumblebee not to follow him to college at all ... which Bee had ignored, and with very good reason, but still. Bee knew his feelings on the matter. He wanted to be a normal kid for once.

"We'll talk. Later." Mikaela made it sound like a threat. "Right now, we've got bigger problems. Bee's going to keep Wheelie busy for tonight. They had a new 'bot arrive, he's in pretty bad shape, and he's an old friend of all the others. Bumblebee was pretty bad shook up. Optimus is very clear he doesn't want Wheelie knowing about this 'bot, and I think he's worried about the human soldiers. He asked us to get back to the base, and it would have been real helpful if you'd just caught a ride with one of Arcee rather than making Bee drive me out here."

"You could have called me," he said, defensively.

"Cell phone communications are being monitored, remember?" she growled at him. "It was easier to just come get you than play twenty-questions-and-no-answers with you, when the Decepticons could figure things out from what we weren't saying just as easily as they could from what we are! What's your deal with Arcee, anyway?"

"She damn near killed me."

"And she said she was sorry, and Ratchet made her study what he termed 'human design tolerances.'" Mikaela, apparently, had gotten the story, likely either from Bee or Optimus himself.

Outside, the music stopped. A chorus of annoyed whines rose from the gathered crowd. Bee's voice, pitched to carry, said, "Don't worry. I'll be here all the time. I've got a friend here. I'm his ride."

The crowd laughed.

Sam emerged as many of the people were dispersing. Bee had stopped dancing, was sitting down on the ground, and the presence of the dean was encouraging most of the kids to move along. Those that remained were listening intently, however, as Bee had turned serious. The dean was standing a bit farther back than the students had, and as Sam approached he overheard the man ask, "... so you're protecting us?"

"Yup," Bumblebee assured them. "But I'm off duty right now. I'm just dropping a friend off, if that's okay."

The man pointed at the grass, which had been torn up badly by Bee's feet. "Just not on the grass, if you would."

"Oh." Bee drooped visibly. "I'm sorry about that."

The dean shook his head. "Its okay ... I've been reading about you guys online. It's an amazing story. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen that Decepticon-robot here last week, and saw you saving your friends. The president said ... and the media ... Did you really save all of Earth last week? All of us? The whole thing?"

Bee shrugged. "That's why we're here. We can't let the Decepticons win."

The man was silent for a long moment. Finally, in a voice that was shaking, he said, "Thank you."

Bee's eyes irised shut in a startled blink at the man's simple statement. Then he replied, not with his own voice, but with one of his movie quotes, in a deep western drawl, "Aw, shucks!" Before the man could come up with another response, Bee noticed Sam and Mikaela walking across the grass. He looked up, and when he saw them, he waved happily.

Sam's guilt doubled. He had been rude to Bumblebee, and Bumblebee had probably already forgiven and forgotten. Wheelie, on the other hand, had him fixed with a positively deadly glare that was a twin of the look in his girlfriend's eyes.

"Bee," Mikaela said, "We're going to go run some errands. Can you keep an eye on Wheelie?"

"Sure, Mikaela." Bee reached down and patted Wheelie on the head. Wheelie growled and stepped several strides away from the much larger Autobot. "Wheelie can keep me company."

"I want to go with my Warrior Goddess!" Wheelie folded his arms and glared up at Bumblebee.

"Sorry, runt," Bee said, not sounding nearly as apologetic to Wheelie as he had to the dean over the grass. "You're stuck with me for the rest of the day."

Mikaela's battered mustang rattled and chugged down the highway, and Sam sort've wondered if they'd make it to the base at all. The thing had no hood and to make it go she'd had to worm her way into the engine cavity and beat on something with a ball peen hammer. At every stop something in the front of the car was shifting forward and going, THUNK! And after riding with the 'bots for almost a year, Mikaela's beater felt strange and dead to him, even aside from the vehicle's dubious mechanical soundness

She was silent, and clearly mad at him. Bee might have already gotten over it, but Mikaela was still pissed. He tried again to explain, "Mikaela, I have asked Bumblebee lots of times to be discrete. He knows I don't ..."

"What, you don't want to be seen with him?" She cut his words off. "Sam, you've got some choices to make. You want the 'bots as your friends, but you don't want the hassle of the publicity. Given the way things are going, you're probably going to have to chose. I've already made my choice."

"Aren't you glad you got in the car?" he teased, trying to make her smile.

The look she gave him had absolutely no sense of humor to it. "You hurt Bumblebee's feelings. Badly."

"He was fine. You saw him!"

"Bullshit." She shot him a brief glare. "He's not fine. You owe him an apology."

"Okay, fine, I'll apologize."

She reached into her purse and handed him her cell phone. "Right now."

Uncertainly, he took it. He really didn't think that Bee was nearly as upset as Mikaela did, but if it would make Mikaela happy ... he dialed the number to Bee's internal phone. Bumblebee answered brightly, "Hey, Mikaela! What's up?"

"It's me, Bee. I'm using her phone. Umm ... I'm sorry for what I did, back at my room." There. That was enough, wasn't it?

Bee was quiet for a very long time -- long enough that he wondered if his call had been dropped. When the Autobot finally spoke, it was with a rare, completely serious tone. "Thank you, for the apology. Tell Mikaela I said thank you, also."

Uh-oh. But that tone, and the implications in the 'bots words, he had truly hurt Bumblebee's feelings. Bee was assuming this apology was being forced by Mikaela, too. And he really didn't like what that said about how Bee perceived him.

He recalled that it had been far from the first time that he'd done something like this. Once, it had been necessary, because Bee was effectively highly classified and top secret. But, even though Bee had proven that he could successfully hide as Sam's "car" for over a year, he'd still refused to allow Bumblebee to come with him to college. And before that ... well, he had often left Bee alone in the garage for days, even weeks, at a time, except for a perfunctory hello. He'd been caught up in his own life, and in a moment of crystal clarity he realized he had forgotten that when he was staying with the Witwickys, Bee really didn't have anyone to socialize with outside of him, Mikaela, and his parents.

"God, I'm sorry, Bee." This time he really meant it.

Bee's answer surprised him a bit. "Sam, there have been times in my life when I've struggled to find my way. I'm younger than most of the other Autobots, and I'm a lot smaller than nearly all of the warriors. But I'm also not much of a scientist, and I'm not particularly good at espionage, and I would prefer not to lead. Optimus insisted that I come on this mission, but if he'd picked a larger, more powerful 'bot, maybe Jazz and Jetfire would still be alive. Maybe you and Optimus would not have been hurt. Optimus had his pick of the Autobots, and he picked me, and I'm still not sure why."

Sam swallowed hard, suddenly and unaccountably at a loss for words.

Bee was also quiet for a moment, before adding, "I asked to stay with you for a reason, Sam, that goes beyond our friendship. I'm important, to you and Mikaela, and I didn't trust the others to take the responsibility of protecting you as seriously as I do ... you are my friends. And, sometimes, it feels good to be important to someone, and good to be a friend, too."

"Oh. Geeze. But Optimus likes you."

"He does," Bee agreed. "But if I were to die tomorrow, I could be replaced. I'm just another foot soldier, Sam. Not like ..." he trailed off, then said, "Optimus wants us to get to know the people of this world. He says they will not be afraid of us if they know us, and your president has agreed to that approach. That is why I did not bother to hide. However, if it makes you not fit in among the others, I will be more careful in the future."

"Shut up, Bee," he said, with sudden feeling. "No. You don't need to hide."

"Thanks, Sam." Bumblebee sounded like he meant it. "Listen, we will talk later. I'm going to take Wheelie to the dunes by the lake and let him run some energy off. He's driving me nuts."

"You too, huh?"

With feeling, Bumblebee said, "Optimus is out of his mind on this one."