Alrighty. I'm a massive delinquent but I'm feeling up to some awesome tonight. It is now 9:27 p.m. eastern time. If I get this done by midnight, WHABAM! FF what know what hit its bandwidth.
First I'd like to thank everyone for being superspecialawesome. TB (haha, morbid…) has singleficcedly garnered more love than all of the rest of my life combined. No, that's a lie. Don't tell the twin, she'll freak. 50 reviews in 11 chapters! That's nuts!
I'm gonna glom all of my responses together in a free-for-all, ok? To the confused: fear not! You're not the only one who needs an Ironhide/English translator. It'll be cool. I'm decidedly not the caffeine-cultist, Simmons is. Coffee is nasty, though a mocha frappuchino is a lovely beverage. I start my mornings with hot chocolate featuring a tiny splash of coffee or else honey green tea. And I repost whenever you correct my spelling, by the way. I drive myself nuts otherwise. Oh Jazz. What am I going to do with you. Sidefic? Maaaaaaaybe. And sorry, I'm notoriously bad with non-mech names. I should have used wikipedia instead of my memory… is it bad that that's a substitute?
Everyone else, thanks! If you've just reviewed for the first time, that's awesome! If you haven't reviewed yet, think about it! And if you stalk me down every chapter, I guess I just need to write more…
Priority Numero Uno
"So what's this about me being an Autobot?"
Bumblebee supposed that it would be too much to hope for a nice ride home answering Sam's sometimes ridiculous but insightful questions. Optimus had, after all, seen fit to let slip a rather tantalizing bit of information that could hardly be ignored. He slowed immediately. There was no point in hurrying when he had this much explaining to do.
Might as well start with the obvious.
"You're not an Autobot, Sam. You are a human."
"But Optimus said-" The teenager stopped pretending to drive and leaned back in his seat to think. "Ok, he said I was given the rank of an Autobot. And the… something else too."
"Status. Rank and status classifying you as a member of the Autobots."
"Cool, what rank?"
"The lowest; something like a new cadet."
"Cool. Can I, like, get promoted and stuff?"
Bumblebee thought about that one for a moment. "I suppose, if you underwent training. Ultimately you won't live long enough to get very far. The reason you weren't told was so you could continue your life as you saw fit, with no extra baggage, as it were."
"Alright, I get it. So I'm obviously not a super-advanced giant robot. But what does all that mean?"
Bee paused before speaking. "It means many things. The primary purpose of such a designation being that we are within our own rights to protect you with any means we would use to defend each other. Secondarily, we may share with you any information for which your rank gives you clearance."
Sam didn't say anything for a while. "Are you going to leave me hanging or what?"
"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Sam."
Staring at the ceiling and running a hand through his mussed hair Sam sighed, "Fair. I guess I want to know why you guys… er, did whatever it is you did to do that. Does that make sense?"
"Certainly. You remember when Barricade attacked you?"
"Not something I can forget, man."
"I had been tracking him for some time and knew he was hunting you. Because of Autobot protocol I was not allowed to do anything out of the ordinary, even in your defense, until he was actually attacking you in his standard form. Thus you were chased through Tranquility by "Satan's Camaro," and you sustained considerable damage before I could neutralize the threat."
"Not to criticize my bright yellow savior or anything, but driving around- well, driver-less- isn't exactly normal. I pretty much knew something weird was up by that point. I'm not that dense."
"I am and was aware of that. I was able to exercise some… unorthodox loopholes to come to your aid."
"Like getting to Anti-Somewhere, Nevada in three hours? Don't think I didn't catch onto that one. You said you weren't allowed to speed either, even in defense of my attendance record."
Not liking where the conversation was going, Bee started steering it elsewhere. "I used similar loopholes to get to you faster, yes. Responsibility for your safety has a higher priority in my personal protocols than obeying traffic laws for human vehicles."
"Come on, how am I more important than your cover?"
"You clearly have no idea how a super-advanced alien robot makes his decisions."
Sam snorted and reclined further. "I've got a few hours of free time on my hands." Grinnning, he added, "Enlighten me."
Ignoring the reference to his least-favorite human, Bumblebee obliged. "To put it simply, we work on an elaborate system of prioritized actions. Under such a system, my cover trumps your lateness, but at the same time your personal safety is prioritized higher than my cover and I act accordingly."
The human made a face. "So everything you do is because of some set of rules?"
Bumblebee mentally rolled his eyes and snapped the driver's seat back into an upright position, startling his passenger. "It's called a thought process. Just because yours is such a nasty biological mess doesn't mean mine has to be. And it isn't as if we Autobots are simple automatons who follow a small set of directives; if nothing else the Decepticons should prove to you that we have at least as much free will as any human. Each of us develops millions of sets and subsets of programs and algorithms that make our minds as unique as our sparks. It just so happens that we generally allow several to supersede the others in a certain order."
"Sorry, you know I didn't mean it that way. Can I ask what number one is?"
"I was getting to that. It used to be that the safety of the Allspark was first and foremost in the processors of every Autobot and even the Decepticons, with few exceptions. For us, protecting and obeying Optimus Prime came second, then defending each other and our planet, followed by ensuring the safety of humans, and so on."
"You guys have a lot of faith in the big guy don't you? I guess now that the Allspark's toast, he's your main concern, huh? Must be tough being babysat by the lot of you. Glad I'm way down there with "ensuring the safety of humans" bit." Sam gave the armrest a friendly jab with his elbow. Bumblebee couldn't feel it, but it amused him anyway.
"For most Autobots, that is probably the case. However, you overlook some key details."
"Uhhh, sorry dude. I'm drawing a blank here."
"For all intents and purposes, we no longer count you with the rest of the humans."
"Right. Well, I'm still nice and cozy in the "defend each other" category."
"For some, perhaps. But you recall a certain handsome yellow mech ruining his paint job to keep you three-dimensional."
"Huh, the bridge thing. But I had the glasses, so that was about the Allspark right? But I did drop them…"
"Optimus is also under considerable pressure to defend himself. You think scaling fragile buildings while Megatron and Starscream wait above is less than reckless?"
"Duh, Allspark."
Bumblebee huffed. "Catching it at ground-level would have been acceptable. It is known for being indestructible by normal means. And, if it had been about the Allspark, having my feet snapped off in your defense and giving it to you after finally obtaining it would have also been a serious miscalculation. Ironhide or Jazz would have stood a much better chance of keeping it safe."
"Nuh uh, no way I'm more important than Optimus Prime, even to himself. And hey, I did pretty good for being chased by five stories of death on legs and four brands of flying nastiness!"
"As I recall, you actually obliterated it by jamming it into Megatron's spark."
Sam froze.
"Your heart rate is unacceptable. Relax now or I'll have to call Ratchet."
He let out the breath he'd been holding. "Bee! I destroyed it! I destroyed Priority One! Numero Uno!" He paused. "Optimus told me to. What the hell?"
"I implemented a clever change of policy, which Prime and the rest of the team decided to adopt upon your rescue of the Allspark and myself from Sector Seven. We decided that our war would have to end here, on this planet, and knew we had to destroy the Allspark to do it."
"I get that, but how do I figure in?"
"Do you doubt that I would die to end the fighting?"
"Wait right there, buddy. You're freaking me out! What does that have to do with anything?!"
"Do you doubt that I would?"
"No, you're a brave guy, but-"
"I had it in my hands, Sam! I was the first in thirty-six millennia to hold it, and with one move I could have ended Megatron's ambitions of universal domination and circumvented Prime's sacrifice before any Decepticon laid optics on it!" Bumblebee sighed, then muttered, "I couldn't do it. None of us could have. Not even Optimus. Especially not him, I think."
"Bumblebee...?"
"We needed the Allspark destroyed, Sam; it was imperative that we not protect it. It couldn't be priority 'numero uno,' it had caused too much fighting and too much death. But not one Autobot or Decepticon could destroy the thing that gave them their spark. Not a single one of us was willing to give ourselves and Cybertron to extinction."
"Dude, I'm not sure I could have if I'd known all that." Sam slouched in the leather seat, staring at the Autobrand shifting on the moving steering wheel.
"I'm afraid we took advantage of your courage in that respect. And don't tell Optimus I told you this, it's a bit of a sore point for him, but every Autobot will be eternally grateful that your decisive actions spared us Prime. I don't know what we would do without him. And, it may interest you to know that for roughly four hours you were technically Priority One for all Autobots."
"So you're telling me that for four random-ass hours that I spent being chased around with the cube, a thousand space robots were hell-bent on not letting me stub my toe. From space."
"Well, only five of us were in communications range, so no. But it's the thought that counts." Bumblebee chuckled at his friend's feigned disappointment. "If it makes you feel any better, eighteen generally-termed regulations form a brilliant loophole allowing a certain junior Autobot officer to 'temporarily, indefinitely designate his primary objective as the protection of a dependent Autobot of similar or lower rank'…"
"Bee? You're the best bud a guy could have."
"I know. 'You can check on the rep- yep! Second to none.'"
"I don't suppose you've got a loophole that says I don't have to tell my parents where I was until 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday?" Sam grumbled as they pulled into his driveway, parents dashing out from the kitchen undoubtedly prepared to give him a few decades' worth of grounding. Despite his tiredness and general unease over the whole night's events, his best friend's oh-so-sympathetic response drew a smile to his lips.
"I say, have a nice day. Have a nice day-ay-ay! Have a nice day!"
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Ok, so it's not like I actually stopped at midnight and actually got sleep or anything. But I got into it and probably confused everyone again going off on unplanned tangents. If you haven't noticed, I'm out of extra chapters. Woohoo! I'm wingin' it!
Projectron! For when you absolutely have to see eighties cartoons on a thirty-foot screen, he's your bot!
I like writing Bumblebee and Sam because Bee is awesome yet sweet and Sam is a spaz.
I maintain that upholstery doesn't feel your bum sitting on it. That would be uber-creepy.
Holy crap, things are going to start happening soon. Everyone do the robot!
