Chapter 7: Trouble Is a Foe

Just because an Autobot's optics have darkened does not mean he's offline.

For almost a half hour Bumblebee leaned motionless against the cliff, waiting, and his patience and suspicion were rewarded when he heard a subtle creak of metal and a faint scraping of dirt. He kept his frame relaxed, head slumped sideways and hands curled casually in his lap, but internally he tensed in anticipation, prepared to come out swinging at the slightest sign of trouble. If the Decepticon attacked, he would be ready.

But the 'Con didn't. The faint stirring of the breeze and quiet footfalls told him that Knock Out had slipped past him. To minimize the light output, the Autobot expanded his mechanical pupils until they were as wide as they would go before bringing his optics online. He barely caught sight of the Decepticon's shadow sliding around the base of the cliff, out of sight.

Bumblebee counted to ten, rolled to his feet with only the faintest whirr, and followed. The shadows clung to his new paint job as he flanked the stones. He wasn't worried about being caught; he was a superb scout, and that was just a polite term for "spy." Besides, he had to know what the Decepticon was up to. Faking recharge and sneaking around—what was he scheming? Maybe he had the means of contacting the Decepticon ship after all, or maybe he was putting together some secret weapon, or maybe . . . well, that was all 'Bee could come up with right off the rotator cuff, but he was sure there were other possibilities.

He was more perplexed than relieved when Knock Out simply stretched his joints and sat down on a rock. The Autobot raised his stingers when Knock Out picked up the pronged half of his weapon, but the medic only jammed the staff among the rocks as an impromptu torch. Bumblebee finally lowered his stingers as the 'Con began his repairs.

It was off-putting, watching Knock Out pull off his pede, but 'Bee had seen it done before in more dire situations. Never so casually, though. Ratchet usually applied a local anesthetic before disconnecting anything from a bot, but the lack of it didn't seem to cause Knock Out any pain. There he sat, his pede nestled in the palm of his hand, loosening the casing with an absurdly tiny screwdriver pinched between two fingers. The glowing energon prod cast a halo—no, scratch that, not a halo, it was more like a cascade of illumination. The blue light poured down the craggy rocks and formed a small pool that the Decepticon leaned into as he worked. It was strange seeing him without a smirk or a sneer, his features set in a blank sort of intentness. Like Ratchet, losing himself in his work late at night in an empty lab when he thought everyone else was in recharge.

Somehow the similarity was more disturbing than earlier, when Knock Out was merely yelling. As the Decepticon finished with one foot and started on the other, Bumblebee quietly withdrew. He started walking.

The night was still, but there were signs of life. A deer grazing on a ridge raised her head with a jerk, barely looking at the Autobot before she disappeared over the far side of the hill in one flowing bound. Moths bumped and fluttered against his head, drawn by the glow of his eyes. He waved them off, brushing away as gently as possible the ones bold enough to land on his faceplate. He felt a little bit honored when their wings beat softly against his fingers and a little bit sad whenever a bat swirled past to snatch one from the air. Earth was a beautiful place, but everything was prey here.

Not that Cybertron had been such a peaceful place either. It had scraplets, ready to chew bots into scrap metal. It had astro-ticks, which sucked energon and spread disease. It had Decepticons . . .

Suddenly, something on his left—glowing eyes. He swirled into a battle stance, then straightened in embarrassment. It was a dog.

At least, he thought that's what it was. Of all Earth species, dogs had proven the hardest for Bumblebee to consistently recognize. There were so many variations. They were as small as a human's hand, they came up to a human's waist; their fur was smooth, fluffy, curly, non-existent; they were as stocky as Bulkhead or as sleek as Arcee or shaped like sausages, all long and skinny.

This dog-creature had triangular ears that swiveled, now pinned back against its head, now standing erect; a wet black nose that snuffed the air; a sandy-scruffy coat; and a bushy tail hanging down to its hocks. All traits Bumblebee had seen many times on many dogs as he rolled through Jasper. And yet . . . and yet . . .

It watched him with a lowered head and a lolling, feral grin, its eyes wary and glowing . . . not in a Cybertronian I-have-backlit-optics way, but in a flaring, alien, Earthen way that turned the entire eye, pupil and all, into a yellow blaze. When Bumblebee turned on the headlights built into his chest, the creature drifted effortlessly to the edge of the shadows and its eyes burned out of its triangular face like miniature suns.

"I don't have time to help you," said Bumblebee, who knew that dogs belonged with people. The dog, if that's what it was, just watched him. Its ears twitched backwards and suddenly it lifted its narrow muzzle skyward and loosed a shrill crescendo of howls and yaps that made a tremor prickle through the scout's circuitry. An answering chorus floated from the surrounding hills. The not-dog (no dog ever made a sound like that) gave him one last silent, curious, contemptuous look and coasted into the night.

Bumblebee looked after it, trying to slow the spinning of his spark deep in his chest. "Okay, now you're getting all worked up over Earth creatures. Earth creatures that don't even come up to your knee. Get it together, Bumblebee. You're wasting time, you're putting things off." He paused. "You know what you need to do."

What he need to do, of course, was find Smokescreen. Maybe his fellow Autobot would be his enemy and maybe he would be his friend, but either way Bumblebee still had the Phase Shifter. He could help Smokescreen or demand answers, whichever the situation called for. Just as soon as he found him.

Fortunately (in a manner of speaking) Bumblebee and Knock Out had left a trail of energon as they had staggered through the valley. And though the energon had long since lost its glow and evaporated, a scout could still discern the faint stains and blotches blending into the rocks, if he was good enough and careful enough. And Bumblebee had always been good.

And careful? Well, not so much. There had been a time when he was downright cocky, exuberant and young and sure he was immortal, but the war had ground that out of him. He didn't like to think about his capture on the battlefield of Tyger Pax and the ensuing, brutal interrogation by Megatron . . . the hand crushing his throat slowly, ever so slowly, and the torture that had left him, in purely statistical terms, more than half dead. A field medic had saved him (and he only pretended not to know who it was because Ratchet seemed to prefer it that way), brought him back from the brink, and fixed him up. All but his voicebox.

Bumblebee had recovered his spirits quickly, because it was his nature and because it was a way to spite Megatron. But although he was still cheerful and courageous, he was no longer cocksure. Perhaps that was why the brash and overconfident Smokescreen simultaneously annoyed, worried, and amused him. Perhaps that was why he had always known, deep in his spark, that he was going to sneak back to the imprisoned Autobot rookie.

Perhaps that was why his spark sank so dramatically when he found Smokescreen snarling impatience at the Vehicons chipping him out of the rock.

"Primus, could you be any slower? Is there, like, a PRIZE for the biggest slacker or something? Hurry up!"

"Yes, sir. We're trying our best, sir," one of the Vehicons said anxiously, giving a sort of half-bow.

"Well, your best isn't good enough!" Smokescreen pointed accusingly at the Vehicon, his red eyes glaring. The Vehicons had managed to free most of his left arm and were now working on his chest, chipping away with chisels, regular old chisels. Probably too dangerous to Smokescreen to use energy chippers. "If Optimus comes looking for me, I'm making sure YOU go down FIRST."

This sent a quiver through the amassed drones, who pressed closer and worked faster.

From the shadows, Bumblebee stared at them bleakly. From the moment Knock Out's superior sneer ("I am a Decepticon officer") had met with a barrage of Vehicon gunfire, he'd known something was wrong. But Bumblebee had hoped, prayed, that it was some elaborate Decepticon trick. Starscream or some other Decepticon could have turned the Vehicons against Knock Out (everyone knew the 'Cons were constantly in-fighting), and Knock Out himself could have used Smokescreen as a guinea pig for a new type of synthetic energon that effected his personality and his optics. That was what Bumblebee had stubbornly repeated to himself over and over again.

A small application of paint, so sloppily stenciled that its form was not immediately recognizable, was all it took to crush his hopes. Each Vehicon had a tiny white insignia, hardly lighter than their sky-blue bodies, spray painted on one shoulder. The Autobot insignia.

An Autobot insignia on a Vehicon, a mine that hadn't blown up, and a cruel parody of Smokescreen.

"Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore," Bumblebee muttered, then immediately hated himself for reducing the situation to that.

Somehow he found himself walking back across the plains, his feet leading him without requiring conscious direction. He felt like the top of his head was opening towards the stars, like his thoughts were winding away on the Milky Way. How could this happen? How could he get back? What would Team Prime do without him? What would he do without them?

There was energon on this Other Earth; the mine proved that. And the Phase Shifter was still rattling around inside his arm compartment. Acquiring fuel would not be a problem for the foreseeable future. Ha . . . the foreseeable future. The rest of his life. Scavenging fuel from Autobot Vehicons and crazy Autobots . . . No, he refused to let that be his future. He was going to get back. He WAS. Even if it took help from a Decepticon.

Decepticons were untrustworthy, but they weren't stupid. Never had the flaws and vagaries of the caste system been so apparent as when Megatron had aggressively recruited from the "lower" classes—resulting in an influx of engineers and mechanics into the Decepticon ranks. As a result, Decepticons built the best weapons. Decepticons constructed the most powerful warships. Decepticons had the best tech. And Knock Out was a Decepticon and a medic; that was sort of like an engineer, right? After all, Ratchet was the ground bridge expert on Team Prime; it only made sense that Knock Out would be the one on Team 'Con. Or would that be "Team Megatron"?

And he's probably just as desperate to get back, Bumblebee thought, if only to fix his paint. He's not going to blow away "an asset."

Now if only Knock Out would forget about the Phase Shifter. Why the Decepticon had thrown it to him he didn't know—an attempt to gain his trust, perhaps, or simply a bad decision on the part of an injured and groggy mech. Whatever the case, it was an Autobot relic and Bumblebee felt no obligation to return it; but the situation would be that much more peaceful if the medic didn't ask . . .

Bumblebee's steps slowed again as he once more waved away the moths eagerly circling around his eyes. The cloud of insects swirled around the metal digits passing through their midst, forming living eddies. Some of them flittered back towards his glowing optics, undeterred, while others flew away in the night, towards other tantalizing sources of light—the moon, the distant streetlamps on the highway, the shimmering . . . pool of . . . electric blue energon . . .

Bumblebee broke into a run.

The medic was hunched against the rocks, curled sideways a little. He was unconscious, or maybe dead, Bumblebee couldn't tell which. There was energon everywhere, splashed on the medic, the rocks, the ground, and a dabbled stream of it clearly marked where Knock Out had stumbled around the cliff. A faint buzz of wings accompanied Bumblebee's frantic search for a wound, as night bugs swarmed around and died in the glowing liquid. A flight of them surged towards him as he turned on his headlights.

The scout pulled back in revulsion when he saw Knock Out's arm, half the casing gone, a section of wire and cable gutted out, and energon sloshing freely in the remaining superstructure. Something must have attacked him, or . . . suicide? No, no time to think about that, it didn't matter. The tubes had been knotted and clamped, like Ratchet had taught them "just in case," but how much fluid had the Decepticon lost? A lot, judging by the landscape.

The scout stared helplessly at a drop of energon hanging sluggishly off one of the severed conduits; nothing in his basic first aid training had prepared him for a situation like this, literally kneeling in a pool of energon, watching someone die. Bumblebee took the Decepticon by the shoulders and shook him gently, then not so gently. He nearly dropped Knock Out in surprise when the Decepticon's vocalizer gave a short, meaningless burst of static. He took this as a sign to shake the medic harder.

The static morphed into something closer to words—they sounded a little like "stop" and "fragger"—and a shapeless splotch of red flickered across his optics. Bumblebee hastily knocked a small flask of energon out of his leg compartment (a scout is always prepared) and pressed Knock Out's fingers around it. It took a third bout of shaking and the support of the 'Con's uninjured arm before he could actually get Knock Out to drink.

The medic swallowed the energon in frantic gulps, his eyes flashing blindly before reforming their usual round, red irises. He stared at Bumblebee uncomprehendingly.

"Don't move, you're hurt," the Autobot said quickly.

"I noticed. I'm a doctor." He managed to make the words drip with sarcasm, despite the low volume and slurred syllables.

"Yes, I know that. Just . . . tell me what to do. I'll help you."

The Decepticon didn't answer, just dropped his head to the side to examine his injured arm. He grimaced and his eyes flickered, light-dark, light-dark.

"Knock Out. Did you hear me? I can help."

"No. You could've helped a half hour ago. By being here," the Decepticon hissed, thrusting his face close as his audio crackled. "Now it's too late. You understand, Autobot? Too late." His head dropped back against the cliff with a clang, but his irises dropped sideways to eye the flask still clenched in his fist. "Idiot Autobots . . ." His optics darkened as his speech trailed away.

Bumblebee backed away on his knees and tore himself away from the sight. He stepped out into the open, half-aware that he was leaving glowing blue footprints, half-aware that his headlights were still on. He raised his wrist to his faceplate, with a vague idea of calling Ratchet, even though he couldn't call Ratchet, but he had to try—

He froze. Something was buzzing, something other than insects. The high and distant buzz of a plane. It sounded suspiciously familiar.

Like a jet. An F-16 jet . . .

Bumblebee looked over his shoulder. He had no doubt what Knock Out would do if their positions were reversed. He was a Decepticon.

Bumblebee . . . was not. He lifted his stingers towards the moon and lit up the sky.

The F-16 swung in a broad circle around the flares as the Autobot fired.

Missiles screamed as it returned the favor.


A/N: If you knew how excited I am for the next chapter. IF YOU KNEW.

The animal Bumblebee comes across is a coyote. Not a technorganic coyote or anything, just a perfectly normal coyote. It is worth looking up clips of them howling on Youtube. When wolves howl, they sound noble and mournful. When coyotes howl, they sound like they're having a crazy coyote frat party.