"Robin! I needed that!"
Ratchet had been off making minor repairs to part of the computer system and returned to find one of his tools on the floor utterly demolished. In the middle of the disassembled object was Robin, reassembling it into something completely unrecognizable.
At Ratchet's exclamation, Robin looked up.
"Really?" he asked quizzically, "I thought it was broken."
"Ugh... yes," Ratchet grumbled, "Bulkhead smashed it accidentally a few days ago. I hadn't gotten around to fixing it."
"Well I'm sorry," this statement didn't surprise Ratchet, but the next did, "I'll fix it for you."
At first, Ratchet thought Robin meant that he would put it back the way he'd found it. But it soon became apparent that Robin fully intended to repair the thing.
"Do you even know what that is?" Ratchet asked after a time.
"Yes," Robin replied brightly, after a moment adding, "No. Well... sort of."
"Sort of?" Ratchet grunted.
"Well, I know how it works and what it's supposed to do, but I haven't the foggiest idea what you'd call it. I know what I'd call it, but that's probably something else entirely."
Ratchet didn't believe any of this, at least not at first. But after several minutes of silence, he was somewhat in awe of Robin's proficiency with what, to the human, had to be a completely new device. In Ratchet's experience, humanity was, taken as a whole, not especially good with technology. He'd seen one exception with Raff, and knew he was now looking on another who'd evidently had more experience than the aforementioned Rafael.
"You've encountered a lot of alien technology, haven't you?" Ratchet asked when Robin was very nearly finished reassembling, and repairing, the tool.
Robin paused his work and looked thoughtfully at a nearby wall for a time. Then he shrugged and returned to work, replying modestly, "I suppose I've had a fair amount of experience."
His tone suggested that he knew of certain individuals who were even more technologically inclined than he was, but not very many.
Finishing his work, Robin stood up and dusted off his hands, stepping back from the tool which was very nearly as large as he was. Ratchet picked it up, tested it, found that it worked.
"Well..." Ratchet said begrudgingly, "...thank you. Now, if you don't mind my asking... what were you trying to build in the first place?"
"Hmm?" Robin seemed distracted, then he shrugged indifferently, "Oh, nothing important. I'll find something else to build it out of."
Without another word, he sauntered off in the general direction of the exit, leaving Ratchet to gape after him. In truth, Robin had no idea how to go about finding the materials for the device he wanted to build, but he wasn't about to say so to Ratchet because then he would have to explain that he was attempting to build something with which to kill a transformer. He didn't plan on using it on an Autobot, but Ratchet had no way of knowing that, nor did he have cause to believe it if Robin decided to tell him so.
This would not be the last time Robin left someone speechless.
It was late afternoon on a school day. The kids were doing their homework, but finding it hard to concentrate because someone was making a lot of noise downstairs. They exchanged looks of irritation, then finally got fed up and went down the stairs to tell Robin to stop whatever it was he was doing. They never got to that though, because what he was doing seemed so utterly bizarre.
He was jumping and looking around wildly, shouting what seemed to be random words at Bumblebee, who was visually tracking his movements and looking terribly excited about something.
"Wall! Light! Gray! Um... stairs! Floor! Concrete! Sofa!"
Bumblebee let out a mournful wail and gestured frantically off to the right, burring urgently.
"No, no," Robin exclaimed, "don't tell me, I'll get it!"
At this point, the other Autobots began to gather, having overheard Robin and Bumblebee and wondering what the heck was going on. It was unclear whether Robin's last comment had been meant for them or for Bumblebee.
"Chair! Computer... uh... uh.. um... keyboard? Keyboard!"
Bumblebee let out a delighted buzz and punched the air enthusiastically. Robin jumped around as if he'd won some kind of epic victory, whooping wildly.
"Alright, say it again," Robin said.
Bumblebee made a noise which Jack and Miko could only assume meant 'keyboard'. Robin nodded, eyes alight with understanding and unbridled excitement.
"What are you doing?" Miko broke in.
"Yeah... what she said," Bulkhead agreed.
Bumblebee started to buzz and gesture and Robin was speaking at the same time. It was only Raff who was able to understand the gist of it with both speaking at once.
"They were playing a kind of charades," Raff said, adjusting his glasses, "Robin's trying to learn Bumblebee's language by having him say words and guessing what they mean."
"Language?" Miko scoffed, "Bee buzzes, whistles, beeps and occasionally wheezes but it's not a language."
Robin spat out a series of words that left all but Miko bewildered. She scowled at him and crossed her arms, making it clear that she understood exactly what he'd said and took offense to it.
"What?" Jack asked, addressing Robin, but it was Miko who answered.
"He said if it's not a language, then neither is Japanese."
"It's true," Robin insisted, "And if any of you took the time to listen, you'd know it too."
Bumblebee said something, and Robin responded without even thinking.
"No, it is their fault," he growled, "There's nothing wrong with you, it's only because they don't take the time or put in the effort."
"Wait..." Miko hesitated to ask, but felt she had to, "Did you just understand him? Like.. perfectly?"
"Huh?" Robin looked away from Bumblebee towards her, then back thoughtfully, "Well, yeah, I guess so. Why? What does it matter to you?"
For once in her life, Miko had absolutely no answer. None whatsoever.
When Robin wasn't inspiring shock and awe, he was generally off on his own, doing things which were at best a mystery to everyone around him. Sometimes he would disappear for hours, and no amount of searching would divulge his whereabouts. He would always reappear, strolling in nonchalantly, as if his vanishing act were nothing worth remarking on. If the Autobots had ever had one, they'd have thought that Robin was rather like a cat, always up to something when you weren't looking.
Once when Arcee was bringing him to base, Jack spotted Robin out running in the desert. He had been surprised by how far out Robin was, knowing the masked fellow had probably run the whole way. Robin's speed and agility were uncanny, and nowhere were his abilities so spectacularly displayed as when he was out in the desert 'scampering around' as Ratchet rather sourly put it.
One day Raff found him doing acrobatics on the ceiling. Raff had gotten bored of watching Jack and Miko playing video games and wandered off to do something on his own. He had been playing an imaginary game in what he presumed to be an empty hallway.
A heavy 'thud' ahead interrupted his game. He moved forward cautiously, remembering the last time he'd found a strange creature roaming the halls.
But it wasn't a scraplet, it was Robin, alternately striking a training dummy he had cobbled together from things lying around the base and racing around the room he was in, making use of a variety of objects he'd clearly set up as obstacles, some of which were attached to the ceiling. At one point he was walking on his hands only to push off the ground suddenly, launching himself right for the training dummy's head, feet first. The head snapped off and Robin sailed right on past it into a nearby wall, which he bounced off of, sending him into a backward flip. He touched down on his hands, then bounced to his feet.
"Hi!" he panted, apparently having noticed Raff in the doorway almost at once, "Care to join me?"
"Who me?" Raff asked, "I dunno, it looks hard."
Robin coughed politely in a vain attempt at hiding his laughter.
"Not once you get the hang of it," he said, "I was born to this stuff... well... not the punching bit. That part I learned when I was nine."
At Raff's bewildered look, Robin went on.
"I was a circus performer," he explained, "Knew trapeze stunts better than my own name. When I was nine... well.. everything changed and I became sidekick to a vigilante."
Raff found this remarkable, but Robin was so casual in speaking of it that he dared not comment, assuming (incorrectly) that this must be fairly normal in Robin's world. He would have been more impressed to know that Robin did not share casually the information he had just given Raff.
"Here, let me show you something," Robin waved Raff further into the room, "Now, you stand like this... no, no... here... like this. There ya go."
Self defense was something Raff had never thought about, always assuming he was too small and weak to learn it. It was something cooler, and taller, kids did. Kids like Jack, and Miko. But Robin was used to being the small one in a fight, and it didn't take much thinking on his part to figure out how to compensate for Raff's glasses, allowing him to execute some basic moves without losing them.
When eventually Miko and Jack got to wondering where Raff had gone, they found him performing some exercises with Robin, which looked extremely complicated from the outside. Raff was a quick study, and Robin a surprisingly good teacher.
Robin had missed practicing with his team. Heck, he flat missed his team. He was used to having company, be it Batman or the Team. He appeared to be a loner to the Team, but that really wasn't the case. As a circus performer, he'd worked closely with his family. As Batman's sidekick, he'd never been left on his own for long. And the trend continued when he'd joined the Team. More than anything since landing on this rock, Robin had been terribly, desperately lonely.
Seeing Jack and Miko, Raff stopped what he was doing, halfway embarrassed. Then he nudged Robin.
"Can you teach them too?"
"Hmm? Oh sure," Robin said brightly, then waved them in, "Come on in guys."
Jack went in, but Miko hesitated, frowning doubtfully at Robin.
"Oh come on," Robin groaned, "You're not still mad at me, are you?"
"Come on," Raff encouraged, "It's really fun."
Miko raised a skeptical eyebrow and crossed her arms.
"Wouldn't you like to know how I tackled you?" Robin tempted her, "And how to do it yourself?"
Miko bristled, but said nothing. She rarely had anything to say to Robin, which made theirs the most unique relationship either Jack or Raff had seen.
"And how to defend against it?" he added enticingly, dangling the phrase like bait.
At last Miko smiled, accepting the veiled challenge.
"Bring it," she said.
It was much later that Bumblebee noticed them as he was walking down the hall looking for Raff. He watched as Miko enthusiastically struck out at Robin, who slipped to the side and then watched dispassionately as she crashed into a nearby wall. At first, he thought Miko was actually attacking Robin, but then noticed that both of them seemed to be having fun.
Bulkhead noticed Bumblebee standing in the hallway and came to investigate, just in time to watch Miko strike out at Robin, this time completely missing. She almost did a face plant on the concrete floor, but in a flash Robin had caught her and righted her. She pushed him off indignantly and he seemed to dance away, his eyes daring her to come at him again.
One by one, the Autobots gathered around the door until they were crowded there, completely unnoticed by all except perhaps Robin. The kids took it in turns to attack Robin, with him calling out clear instructions which they generally ignored the first time around, thinking that they knew better.
When at last Miko finally succeeded in tackling Robin from the side, Bulkhead let out a cheer for her, which so thoroughly startled her that she lost focus, which allowed Robin to turn the tables and pin her.
"Focus," he whispered to her, "is paramount to survival."
He got off her and offered a helping hand, which she brushed away, getting up on her own.
"I almost had you that time," Miko said, pointing a meaningful finger in his face.
Robin nodded fractionally.
"That time," he agreed, "Now... I'm starving. What's for lunch?"
In reality, he was exhausted. He had been almost through exercising when Raff had come upon him, and training three beginners was not as easy as certain members of the League made it look.
All was not fun and games for Robin. Aside from loneliness, he continued to feel unease at the Autobot base. Though the Autobots were used to watching their step during the day when Jack, Miko and Raff were around, they tended to not watch where they were going at night, meaning that Robin had to be constantly keeping an eye on the air above him, lest he find himself most unfortunately crushed.
Aside from the fear of being squished, there was also soul crushing boredom to consider. Though the Autobots were attentive with their own humans, they generally ignored Robin or they were out on patrol. Even Bumblebee, whom Robin had bonded with somewhat, was poor in the way of companionship. The kids were at school all day most days and, when they weren't, they were either playing with their bots or doing homework. Ratchet was grumpy, and only grudgingly allowed Robin to participate in the designing and eventual building of the Abyss Device (or AD, as Robin frequently referred to it, usually while laughing. The Autobots didn't get the joke. The humans just didn't think it was particularly funny).
There was also the occasional visit from Agent Fowler. Robin declined to meet the fellow, hanging about in the rafters until the man was gone. He never went too far, always in earshot so he could eavesdrop. In this way he learned of M.E.C.H., as well as getting more intel on the Decepticons. Basically, they were galaxy conquering evil-doers who killed anyone who got in their way. This had been Robin's first, second and third impressions, supporting the theory that the first impression is not always the wrong one. It was a little while before Robin caught on that M.E.C.H. were humans, as they were spoken of in general terms and basically sounded like paranoid evil-doers who killed anyone that got in their way, not unlike galaxy conquering evil-doers who also killed anyone who got in their way. Funny thing about evil-doers, there was generally a lot of killing going on where they were involved.
The middle of the Nevada desert is no place for a superhero. Robin could hear all he wanted, and more, about crimes taking place out in the real world, but could do nothing about it. He had no mode of transport other than walking or hitching a ride with an Autobot (which was an exercise in frustration). Even the miniscule town of Jasper where the kids lived was too far to walk to. Even if he did get there, the biggest criminals seemed to be school bullies, from what he'd heard. Frankly, there just wasn't anything for him to do with himself. None of his skills did him a bit of good here.
Robin didn't spend any time worrying about how his Team was getting on without him. He knew they were fine. It was in their training, in their experience, and in their very nature to adapt to new situations, whether they liked it or not. In fact, Robin spent as little time thinking of them as he possibly could. All it did was make him homesick, which didn't help anyone, least of all himself.
However, Robin did feel a constant ache inside, which was something other than an emotional reaction to missing his home. It started off hardly noticeable, especially with the injuries he'd sustained fighting the Decepticons. But it got worse fairly steadily, spreading from his heart to the rest of him until he felt a dull pain just about everywhere, almost like he had the flu or something. Instinct told him that he had to find his way home, that things would get worse the longer he was away. He didn't know how or why this was so, knew only that it was. He had long ago learned that, if you must question your instincts, you should only do it after the situation has passed, and so he did not question the powerful desire within, urging him to go home, and get there soon.
