Title: Property Of
Rating: T
Summary: During Cybertronian 'peace,' ex-Cons hide the sentience of and sell humans as pets to secure Earth. Sam and Mikaela might just be the first to grasp the reality of the situation alongside their new owner.
Chapter: Homecoming
I was unreasonably excited over the fact that, before I made a few edits to previous chapters, the word count after chapter 19 was uploaded was '180,081.' That palindrome made me much happier than it should have (and realizing the edits had changed the word count made me sadder than it should have).
A nod of recognition to Faecat, who graciously recommended 'Property Of' in a chapter of her own fic, 'Science and Fiction.' I appreciate the mention, and thought I could return the favor.
And finally, another 'thank you' goes out to PyroDea, my unofficial post-upload beta reader (or so it would seem). As always, there are never enough thanks to be given for the care taken to actually mark where typos are and then bring them to my attention. So… thanks!
Being robbed of sight was not a pleasant sensation. It was awfully dark inside the emergency kit hideaway, with the only light sources being a dim bulb and several extremely small, indirect breathing pathways that connected the inside of the container to the outside. There was something unnerving about not being able to see anything more than a small cubicle.
At least neither Sam nor Mikaela was claustrophobic. If they had been, this would've been sheer torture.
"Think we arrived at the spaceport yet?" whispered Mikaela. She fiddled pointlessly with her hands and leaned more heavily onto Sam's right side. He shifted and tried to fix the edges of the sheet that she'd ruffled.
"Probably," Sam whispered back, stretching his legs out. They reached the opposite wall, and he had to tuck his feet in a little. "It got a lot louder a minute ago."
That was true, Mikaela acknowledged with a quiet "hmm." Sound, too, was imperfect – muffled through the walls – but it was a lot more reliable than sight. About one minute earlier the incomprehensible buzz of alien life from beyond the hideaway had grown louder and more consistent. The likeliest reason for that was that Bumblebee had reached the launch station.
"You know," Mikaela changed the subject abruptly while beginning to investigate the hem of her shirt, "I wonder if it would've killed them to make every piece of clothing they gave us out of this material. It's so much… cozier."
Sam studied the light blue garments that he and Mikaela now sported for the umpteenth time that day. First and foremost, the color was definitely a breath of fresh air compared to the gray-green and light green things they had been wearing for, apparently, the last nine and a half months (pretty much ten by now). Neither was positive about the material, but it was a lot softer then the greenish clothes – a lot like the fabric squares they'd been given for bedding both as pets in Bee's home and now as stowaways. The top and bottoms were still baggier than what they would've worn back home, but a lot less baggy than what they'd grown used to off-planet.
No, it probably wouldn't have done much damage for the mechs to make all of the clothes for humans out of higher quality fabric. Ultimately, it was simply one more insult they'd dealt with.
"Hey," Sam called Mikaela's attention back to him after a few minutes. She stopped playing with her shirt and looked at him. "Pretty soon, we'll get to wear normal clothes again. And underwear and shoes!"
"And bras," Mikaela thought mistily aloud. In perfect synchronization, both she and her boyfriend glanced down at her chest. "I took them for granted before, but never again." Her misty expression turned into one of open happiness. "And there will be a real bathroom, with a real toilet and a real shower, with a mirror – maybe one of those ones that have shelves behind them. Mm, and on those shelves: a comb, a brush, a razor, some shaving cream, tweezers, a nail file, a lifetime supply of extra soap… toothbrush, floss, toothpaste, and q-tips next to the sink… extra shampoo and conditioner hidden away somewhere…" She sighed. "At this point, that might as well be heaven."
Sam agreed, "I could go for a shave and a haircut right now," he gestured at his pathetic excuse for a beard and moustache (why was he incapable of growing facial hair? Miles looked like a wild man, and here he could still pass for a respectable member of society!). "But it's the food that I'm excited about."
Because honestly, apples and pears and oranges – no matter how awesome they were compared to the stuff in those packets – were still the same few things over and over again. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that they'd been drinking water, and water only, for almost ten months now.
It was going to be so awesome.
Two very purposeful taps above their heads caught the humans' attention.
Two taps meant they were supposed to be silent and still because someone was checking out the 'emergency kit,' then three taps were supposed to let them know that they were safe again. Four taps would mean they'd boarded the second ship and were about to be let out.
Mikaela and Sam waited out the two-tap phase by hugging one another and sinking to the floor of the secret compartment. Admittedly, they didn't have to drop to the floor, but they got the urge to and ran with it.
Some five nerve-wracking minutes passed before they heard – and felt – the three taps signaling that the coast was clear. By this point, neither wanted to move. Instead, they continued to 'lounge' in the tight space.
"There'll be actual beds, too," Sam pointed out. "With actual cushions."
"One for each of us?" asked Mikaela, smiling with her eyes.
Sam pouted. "I was hoping that one would be enough." He glanced around at the hiding place, again thankful that he didn't have claustrophobia. "This place is pretty small, and we seem to be doing just fine sharing tight spaces."
Mikaela rolled her eyes playfully, and couldn't stop from smiling when Sam rolled onto his side and kissed her. It was a brief kiss, yet managed to convey to both of them how crucial they'd been in keeping each other sane. Not for the first time, Sam was reminded of how awesome he felt having won the girl of his dreams; not for the first time, Mikaela was reminded of how lucky she was that he'd offered her a ride home that day, and that she'd given him a chance. Alien abduction and the more-or-less enslavement of their species aside, at least they'd had each other.
Laughing ever so quietly, Mikaela confided, "I think one bed should be fine."
Then, mostly without warning, she adopted a solemn face and made sure Sam was looking at her. "I mean, assuming we aren't killed on the way there or something, of course."
Sam studied her for a moment before raising a jokingly haughty eyebrow and responding, "Well, of course assuming we aren't killed. That you feel the need to mention it insults my intelligence." To finish it off, he snobbishly raised his chin up in the air and tried to give a superior-sounding snort. His ridiculousness, however, suddenly dawned on him, and he fell into hushed laughter before he could pull off that finishing touch.
Against her will – and despite the fact that it wasn't really that funny – Mikaela broke down into faint laughter. The prospect of dying had never been so humorous before.
The entire time that the security mech looked through the 'kit,' Bumblebee's processors turned nervously. Luckily, his anxiety was unfounded. The red-gazed mech was barely glancing at the contents, and never poked through the items at all. The fact that some of the objects were not real and were hollowed out into a carrying compartment clearly never even registered to the mech. Not that the mech had any reason to be suspicious, thought Bee; there was no reason for anyone to suspect that a single thing was amiss.
"Part of the land scouting crew?" the worker asked, closing the 'kit' without looking at it.
"Hmm?" buzzed Bumblebee. He replayed the question in his processors before responding, relieved, "Yes, I am."
The mech warbled back, "Good luck with that. I hear you're supposed to be looking for places with more expansion resources. If that's true, I wish you and yours the best. Primus knows we'll always need new resources with the AllSpark lost."
Limited resources were, sadly, a serious concern. But, their species would deal with that again when the time came – which, Bee mused seriously as he thanked the ex-Con and reclaimed his precious cargo, might be a problem they had to face sooner rather than later if Earth was removed from the picture as a source.
Bumblebee tapped the top of the secret carrier three times to let the humans know they could relax.
No stranger to spaceports, Bumblebee was very efficient with his time. He was on the initial ship a few breems before takeoff, settled and comfortable and cradling his 'kit' as levelly as he could on his lap. A couple other mechs on board commented that it was an unusually large emergency kit, to which Bee responded that he was only being careful. No one questioned that.
Had there been anyone aboard the ship that knew Bumblebee closely, he or she might have thought it odd that he was being so antisocial: the moment he stepped onto the first ship, he found the smaller vessel he was going to be getting into, sat outside it, and waited patiently. Fortunately no one aboard really knew him.
Before he knew it – despite the fact that a good quarter joor had already elapsed – the intercom message went out advising the scouters to board their secondary ships.
Just as before, Bee boarded and settled himself in as quickly as possible.
It was several more breems before they were given launch clearance. Bumblebee's was the eleventh of fifteen vessels to launch. He made sure to hold the kit especially steady throughout the launch sequence, and then relaxed some as the autopilot began the altered course it was set to.
Bee waited a couple breems more, until after the first few transwarps had been completed, before augmenting the ship code to match Payload's. The alteration took about half a breem.
Six transwarps later – and thousands of light-years away from Verita Pax – Bumblebee felt safe opening the 'kit' and its secret compartment. Who was most eager to have the thing opened was up for debate, since Sam might've been fine with continuing to rest alongside Mikaela, Mikaela normally would've felt the same except for the fact that she was starting to feel cramped, and Bumblebee had hated himself the whole time that he knew they were holed up in there. He'd made it perfectly clear he didn't want them in cages anymore, and this thing was significantly smaller than even their carrier had been.
As a result, Bumblebee found himself eagerly helping first Sam and then Mikaela out of their hiding spot. Once they were steadied and stretching on the ship's control panel, Bee took the few real items out of the emergency kit and subspaced them separately from the holder itself. Now, hopefully, they wouldn't have to be constrained like that ever again.
Sam began wandering the short expanse of the supersized alien dashboard at Mikaela's side. She was more than interested in the foreign mechanics – itching for the opportunity to peel back the console cover to see the intimate workings beneath – and he was intrigued by the glowing scanners, buttons, and Cybertronian symbols that littered the ship.
"We won't interfere with anything by being up here, will we?" asked Mikaela, her gaze lingering on a particularly complex panel before switching to Bumblebee. That he had the potential to mess something up had never dawned on Sam, and he looked speedily at Bee.
"No," he assured them, internally smiling at their curiosity. "All the guidance and piloting systems are locked. You probably shouldn't be up there during entry into Earth's atmosphere, though – for your safety, not the ship's safety."
Sam absently nodded. "And how long until that happens?"
Bumblebee, who was counting down every astrosecond of the ETA he'd developed, readily told his human companions, "Approximately one hour, slightly less." Then, wondering if perhaps they hadn't realized how much time had passed, he added, "It's already been a bit more than three hours since the initial launch. Between the warping on this ship and the first one, we're much closer to Earth now than we are to Verita Pax."
Technology was a funny thing, thought Sam. He recalled – however imperfectly – a quote by someone or another who had said that, after a point, technology and magic were pretty much indecipherable. The teleportation thing, as far as Sam was concerned, had reached that point.
"Why was it we couldn't just teleport straight there again?" he questioned.
Taking in a fresh system of air, Bee explained, "There are limits to transwarp stability. After a certain distance, the structural stability of whatever is being transwarped becomes compromised. Courses are plotted out as a series of smaller warps in order to avoid that danger.
"Once upon a time, though," Bumblebee conceded to Sam and Mikaela's surprise, "we are fairly certain our kind could open space bridges capable of safely transwarping any distance. There are legends of space bridges connecting Cybertron and very distant planets, from the age when a whole class of mechs were designed to search out worlds meeting certain criteria to use for energy."
Mikaela frowned slightly, without being truly upset. "You guys have been doing the 'take someone else's planet for your own gain' thing for a while, then?"
"Not really," defended Bee dejectedly. "The planets weren't allowed to have life on them if they were going to be used; it never affected anyone accept for us." Possibly to make himself feel better, he added, "And that practice ended a long, long time ago – back before the first war even started."
"We're supposed to be talking about teleporting right now anyway," Sam cut in, hoping to break the growing air of unease. "Magic space alien stuff. Which, by the way," he addressed Bumblebee, "you guys should totally consider sharing with us feeble humans after this thing is sorted out. I'm sure you guys could maximize energy efficiency, cure a bunch of diseases, the whole shebang."
'Shebang?' Mikaela mouthed back at him in disbelief.
Bumblebee weakly shrugged. "There are a bunch of regulations for sharing technology with other species, but… I'll make sure Prime considers it."
After all, it would be the least that they could do. Unfortunately, that made the assumption that the current fiasco could definitively be 'sorted out.' Prowl didn't seem to think it was possible; neither did Optimus.
They waited a couple silent minutes before Mikaela prompted, "So how much longer do we have left now?"
Unwilling to sit through an hour of 'are we there yet,' Sam suggested that they play a game to pass the time. When it became clear that they were ill-equipped to play any games that he knew of, Mikaela had an interesting idea. She proposed that she and Sam could describe Earth things – animals, plants, objects – and then Bumblebee could try and project on one of the walls what he thought the things must look like based on their descriptions.
It was a pretty appropriate suggestion, if Mikaela didn't say so herself, so all three enthusiastically agreed to give it a try. There were some interesting results.
A Christmas tree became a razor-sharp death tree topped with an angel/star hybrid (the teens couldn't choose), too-bright lights, and ridiculous ornaments; a giraffe became a polka-dotted horse with a neck even more absurdly long than normal; Shiva – and here, Sam apologized to every Hindu person in the world – became a blue human with extra arms spread out of his body in the same positioning as a spider's, clothed in actual gold, with a demonic face and laser beams coming out of his many hands, obliterating a small town.
In retrospect, Sam admitted he shouldn't have mentioned lasers in his description of the unfamiliar deity.
Other things, Bee got pretty spot on. His interpretation of what boots must look like could have been a real fashion trend; his version of a dog – despite the unnatural coloring – could have been a cross between a German Shepherd in the face, a Basset hound in the ears, a collie in the tail, a Great Dane with the size of its paws, and a mastiff in terms of sheer body mass.
They all enjoyed playing with the digital dog's appearance. Sam tried to give continuous feedback in an attempt to turn the image into a Chihuahua; Mikaela loved trying to explain her conflicting feelings about the Witwicky family pet, because she loved Mojo but disliked the breed as a whole; and Bumblebee was fascinated by the revelation that humans had kept various pets of their own.
Bumblebee had a brand new list of things to ask not only 'his' humans about, but the new humans he was going to meet.
Mikaela's game, surprisingly, ate up the rest of their time. Between the descriptions of the things, Bee's renderings of them, and then the subsequent discussions about how they related to either Sam or Mikaela, the hour flew by. Before any of them realized, a purple-green light began flickering in the corner of the console.
The flicker drew Bumblebee's surprised attention.
"We're almost there," he announced, dazed. A few scans of the control panel revealed that they were about to come out of their last transwarp before the final approach to the planet.
Both teenagers spun in place, unconsciously looking for a window.
"Really? Can we see it yet?" asked Mikaela.
"In a moment, I think…" said Bee. He leaned over them conscientiously and pressed a few buttons, bringing up a display screen. "When we come out of the last warp."
They all waited with rapt attention.
Then, in a way so sudden that Sam at first swore that it had to be fake, the blue-white off-sphere that was Earth appeared instantly on the monitor.
It actually made Mikaela gasp.
"The astronauts' pictures don't do it justice," she mumbled, in pure awe.
Struck into silence, Sam was left only nodding. That was, until he noticed how rapidly the size of the planet was growing, expanding beyond the screen. "It's getting big pretty fast, isn't it?"
"We are moving very, very quickly," Bumblebee agreed. He paused before saying, "I… would feel better if you let me hold you during atmospheric entry, which will be starting very soon. Most of the force should be deflected, but I don't want to take any risks."
The teens had seen one too many space movies – and one too many NASA specials on television – to underestimate the danger of reentry. They quickly acquiesced, happy to have the mech's protection as he let them get comfortable against his stomach plating and then carefully locked his arms in front of them.
"This is really happening," one of them – or all of them – whispered.
Gentle rumbling began to quake the small craft. Almost undetectable at first, it rapidly grew more prominent. More lights on the control panel flashed, indicating reentry protocols roaring to life: temperature and force diffusion, activation of reverse engines to help slow them so that they could land safely on the Earth's surface, and stabilization of the ship's internals. Cloaking systems had already been running.
Reentry was a lot faster than Sam or Mikaela had imagined possible, although in retrospect that wasn't so surprising; everything else had been happening so quickly at that time. After the rumbling started, it took only a couple minutes until the whole craft gave a sharp, firm jostle alongside a deep thudding sound that reverberated throughout the ship.
Sam, who had had his eyes shut the entire time, cracked his eyelids open.
"Was… that it?" he asked.
"It's over?" Mikaela doubled him, blinking around.
Bumblebee cautiously loosened his arms. He, too, looked around. Blue optics scanned the ship's screens as they began to print data and figures. Even as he read, he lowered Sam and Mikaela to the floor. New data registering atmospheric conditions and the ship's external status confirmed the simple, already known truth.
"Yes." He stood and then forced his optics away from the screens and onto the waiting teenagers. "You're home."
No one seemed to know what to say next.
Mikaela broke the silence by suggesting, in a tone much calmer than the words themselves probably called for, "Well, don't keep us waiting – open this ship up."
Bumblebee found some of his wits and turned quickly to the control panel. He pressed a single button, entered a single code, and then a wall to their left hissed softly with hydraulics. A line of light appeared and grew along the seam of a well-concealed sliding exit.
Mikaela and Sam rushed to the opening door. Bee was a little more tentative about moving.
When the door retracted fully, bright daylight flooded the inside of the small vessel. Sam inhaled when the sun hit him, like he'd never felt it before. Mikaela took a deep breath, deciding that Earth air had a very different feel to it than what she'd been breathing for months now. Slowly, Bumblebee came to stand behind them, bracing a hand on the doorframe as he took in the strange landscape for the first time.
The area was incredibly lightly forested, although it grew much thicker off in one direction. Brown soil peeked through faded-green grass, wildflowers, and weeds, while a rim of rich brown dirt framed the ship. The sky's light blue was spotted, sparingly, with fluffy cumulus clouds. A light scent of pine needle and bark – something completely new to Bumblebee – dotted the breeze. In the distance, a couple elongated notes whistled through the air.
Sam was overcome with excitement by the call of another living creature.
"Earth!" Sam cried in a hushed voice, flinging his hands into the air. The teen jumped the small gap between the ship and the ground without warning, much to Bumblebee's alarm. Bee's hand reached out automatically, but he stopped when he recognized the futility of it. Sam was already jump-running across the ground to the place where the dirt unsettled by the craft's landing did not cover the plants. Sam dropped to the ground and lay sprawled out, face down, on the soil of his home world. "Oh, grass – I thought I'd never see you again…"
Bumblebee only tore his concerned optics away from the display when Mikaela left his side and hopped down to rejoin her planet as well. She did not perform the same exaggerated ritual, but she did turn in a complete circle slowly and reverently. Bumblebee thought he saw her eyes watering.
"Are you alright?" Bee finally voiced, wary. He braced a hand on the doorframe and leaned partially out into the alien atmosphere. His sensors were quietly going crazy, logging all the new information and trying to adapt to the new environmental stimuli so that they weren't constantly being put on alert. He scanned the alien landscape that he'd only seen pictures or read descriptions of.
This… this was Earth.
Sam flopped over in place and raised himself on his elbows, so that he was half sitting and half lounging. "I never thought I'd get to see this place again. The only thing that could've been better was landing in Tranquility itself. God, I hope those guys didn't do too bad a number on the place."
"Is 'Tranquility' a special location? Is it unlike this?" asked Bee.
The teens regarded him quietly. "We never told you that's where we lived?" Mikaela asked in turn. Bee shook his head once, leaning even further out of the craft. The air was more humid than he was used to. "Well, it was the city we lived in. Some, um, Decepticons, I guess, were heading towards it the day we were caught. We were evacuating when they got us, remember?"
"I'd like to know if my house or school is still standing," Sam added. "But yeah, it was a city, you know? So it didn't exactly have this many trees or so many 'nature' things. I think the only reason people would be setting up camp somewhere like this would be for cover and secrecy."
Bee chirped quietly in understanding, forgetting that it would have been more understandable had he just said "oh." But, neither human seemed to mind, so he tried not to, either. Instead, he turned his head to focus on a small, feathered creature – a bird – that had just flown back and perched on one of the nearby trees. Bumblebee had not seen so much organic life in one place for some time now.
"Well?" Sam prompted then, reclaiming the scout's attention. Bee looked at him curiously, and blinked when Sam gestured at the hand that gripped the doorframe. "Are you gonna come out and give Earth a nice, big 'hello,' or are you just going to stand there and gawk at it?"
Bumblebee suddenly realized that he had been stalling. He wasn't certain why, since he was a scout – exploring new surroundings was his specialty. Perhaps, he thought subconsciously, he had been worried that the planet would reject him due to the actions the rest of his species had taken against its inhabitants. However, Sam and Mikaela were both watching him expectantly now, and he knew he had no logical reason not to exit the ship.
Carefully, Bumblebee extended one foot to the ground. When he put even the slightest weight onto it, his claw-like protoform toes sunk into the topsoil that the force of impact, albeit relatively light, had loosened. He whirred at the strangeness of it. It took him a couple tries before he actually dared to press his weight onto the limb and allow it to sink the couple inches it was capable of into the alien planet. The second foot was easier to place, although it, too, sunk into the ground like it never would have on the hard rock and metal of Cybertron and the colonies.
He was completely standing on the alien world now. Bee clicked quietly to himself and looked all around again. It was difficult refraining from tapping his fingers together nervously.
Mikaela was smiling at him, Sam grinning. "See?" said Sam. "Earth doesn't bite… much."
The idiom was lost on the Autobot, who glanced briefly at the soil as though expecting it to try and nibble on him.
Bumblebee took several more steps away from the ship, following a path similar to Sam's. The further he got from the landing site, the less his feet sank into the ground. Still, he made a mental note to try and reduce the number of toes he had after acquiring an Earthen alternative mode, because he was certain the multiple sources of impact were increasing his tendency to break the planet's fragile surface. A broader foot surface area would reduce that, he surmised.
"Jazz is only transmitting his location very vaguely, to avoid a signal interception," Bumblebee explained as he stepped carefully onto the grass Sam had expressed such a blatant love for. "If the defenders of your kind are trying to hide themselves, and they think I'm a threat, how should we find and approach them?"
It had seemed so easy in theory: land, follow Jazz's signal, locate the humans in charge, start explaining things to them, and work out a truce with at least the individuals found. Now, faced with the inherent wariness that came with again being the alien on a foreign planet – especially one where the dominant species was unlikely to be able to distinguish him from their hated foes – Bumblebee found the task more daunting than he had previously.
Sam tilted his head to the side and looked down, deep in thought.
"We can walk in that direction," Mikaela answered easily enough and with a small shrug. "We'll just go extra slowly and stay on alert. If he's monitoring a safe haven, then there are definitely going to be human patrols active in the area. We're bound to cross paths eventually, and when we do, we can just… talk to them or whatever."
"Yeah – they wouldn't attack us if we made it obvious we weren't trying to sneak up on them," Sam backed his girlfriend up.
Bumblebee beeped at them and nodded, trusting their plan of action.
"Which way?" asked Mikaela. "We probably shouldn't stay here too long, just in case." There was no point to milling about the middle of a forest beyond the sentimental value of it anyway, Mikaela added silently.
Consulting both the directions Jazz had given as well as the spy's signal, Bee pointed off into the line of trees to his right. "I don't have an accurate source signal, but based on the speed you usually walk, I predict that it would take at least an hour – perhaps as much as two hours – before we reach Jazz. How far out would you expect patrols to be? If… if you even know. I know you've never been to a safe point, so it's not your fault if you don't know," he made sure to recognize.
Mikaela and Sam made silent questioning gestures at one another. Sam eventually, looking uncertain while thoughtfully shrugging, said to Bumblebee, "We don't know for sure, but I'm willing to bet that they wouldn't let any strangers get within more than ten, fifteen – maybe twenty – minutes of the place."
"They might have something even farther out, too," warned Mikaela, trying to be realistic about it. "But I'm with Sam. I can't imagine they'd have anything looking for us more than thirty minutes out."
That would give Bee at least several good breems worth of studying his surroundings while he walked. The scout was eager for more time, and hoped he'd have it soon enough.
"Lead the way," gestured Sam with a sweep of his arms.
Bee was very conscious of his sub-optimal foot structure as he made his way towards the trees. He consciously determined what speed and length his strides needed to be to match the humans' usual, comfortable pace, and double checked that they were, indeed, coming with him. It was a silly thing to double check; not only were they happy to follow, they were eager to keep pace side by side with him.
They may not have been in their most usual environment, but the mech could see the confidence that being back on their home planet had given Sam and Mikaela – even though he doubted they'd be able to see it for themselves.
And so they began to walk.
Honestly, Sam didn't know if he'd ever walked this much at once in his life… and definitely not in the woods. Yeah, the makeshift shoes that one of the mechs had designed for them (after a discussion about how human feet didn't normally mesh so well with ground covered in tree needles and roots and sharp pebbles) made the ordeal way better than it would've been otherwise, but their soles were still rather thin. He could feel the twisted roots as he stepped on them, feel the small rocks that he navigated through.
In addition, Sam had almost forgotten about weather: humid, hot weather, to be precise. He and Mikaela were used to much hotter and much more humid, but he realized now that he'd been spoiled in Bumblebee's care. Never once had it gotten hot, and humidity was always more or less perfect.
Sun was another thing. Somehow it had managed to escape his notice for the past almost-ten months, but whichever star had provided the light in the colony was weaker than Earth's beloved Sun. Outside of Bee's home, no natural light was strong enough to make either teenager squint. They had missed, of course, the distinct feeling of sunlight hitting and warming their skin, yet they hadn't missed the discomfort that usually accompanied it.
All of that disappeared into the background. Sam couldn't care less, and neither could Mikaela. For all they cared, it could've been raining and they could be trenching through ankle-deep mud while gale-force winds blew forest debris into their hair and eyes.
It was Earth, and the phrase 'home planet' had never made more sense to them than it did now.
They happily reminisced throughout the walk. Bumblebee listened intently as Mikaela recalled the first time she'd ever gone hiking with her family – back when she was only four or five – and how much of a disaster it had been. Apparently she'd seen a deer, gotten excited, and ran off to try and catch it. In her excitement she hadn't paid attention to the ground, tripped over a broken branch, and landed in a thorn bush.
"All I remember is that it hurt," she reassured Bumblebee when he paused in sympathy. "I can't remember the pain itself anymore – only that it hurt at the time."
"I've never been hiking. My parents are garden freaks, but that's where their affair with nature ends," Sam said with a roll of his eyes. "Wherever they are now, I bet they did some landscaping when they got there."
When Bumblebee asked about landscaping and its purpose, Sam reluctantly tried to explain. However, he was interrupted multiple times, because Bumblebee found each new bird, chipmunk, and squirrel utterly fascinating. Even a particularly large beetle that stood out on a tree trunk demanded his attention for a few seconds before he remembered he wasn't supposed to be focusing on wildlife yet.
Not that Mikaela or Sam minded! They were entertained by his attentiveness, if nothing else, and were happy to explain things to him. He, in turn, explained that normally he'd be able to use wireless networks to locate the information he was after, but was having difficulty with the dismantled human systems.
"Hey," Sam broke a rare moment of silence about an hour into the trek. He tilted his head back to regard Bumblebee. "Are you going to turn into something while you're here?"
Bumblebee tilted his head curiously at him. "Turn into something?" Before he had a chance to answer, Bee understood. "Oh! Do you mean, will I adopt an Earth disguise?" Sam nodded; Mikaela looked instantly thoughtful and interested in the possibilities. For whatever reason, Bumblebee had forgotten that they knew Cybertronians were capable of full-figure transformations. "Of course. Jazz has already sent me the design specifications of several vehicles he thought I might like."
"How many?" Sam prompted.
"He's physically pre-scanned two vehicles for me, and found the digital specs of five more," Bee shared with them.
Mikaela bit her lip in thought. "I'm guessing either sports cars or military vehicles, right? Speed or fighting power?"
"Yes. All sporting cars so far; they are much more my style than military vehicles symbolically as well as visually," Bee said.
This seemed to please Sam. "The only car I ever owned was a sports car," he said, poking a strange fungus growing on the log he was stepping over with his toe. "An old Camaro, if that means anything to you."
The scout was about to admit that it didn't mean anything to him, when he remembered the branding on one of the pre-scanned cars Jazz had sent him. Wait a second…
He chirred amusedly to himself. "I doubt it's the same model if it's a series, but the specs of one of the cars Jazz sent me belonged to a Camaro."
Gaping, Sam looked up at Bee. "No way!" Mikaela echoed him. "I'm not telling you what to choose or anything, but I say go for the Camaro."
Still chirring, although he had quieted to a dull buzz, Bumblebee said, "I'll keep that in mind."
With that lovely new bit of information to work with, they kept on walking.
The signal continued to grow stronger with each step. Bumblebee frequently consulted the various information sources he had, comparing the blurred signal source with the coordinates Jazz had given Prime about where he'd met patrols, then comparing that with a larger and more general grid of the area. Steadily, points began to converge.
Some ten minutes after the brief discussion about his possible alt mode ended, Bee began to worry about the chance of running into natives. He ducked under a particularly low branch, side-stepping a couple more in the process. Trees, he was discovering, were not the best things to maneuver through when they were dense. "I believe we are approaching the coordinates where Jazz made contact with the settlement patrol. It'd be smart if you took the lead from now on," he advised.
"Oh, really?" Sam said, glancing upwards at the large yellow figure. "So no surprising anyone, then, unless we want to be attacked…"
Though she stayed quiet, Mikaela nodded. They walked only a few more feet before she started calling out, hushed, "Hello? Hello, anyone?" Sam began to do the same after a few more paces.
Briefly, Bumblebee considered doing the same. Concluding, however, that the strange humans might take that as either offensive or so out of the ordinary that it could prompt them to raise their defenses, he didn't. He contented himself instead with falling in behind Sam and Mikaela, then splitting his attention between scanning the scenery – visually as well as for signs that patrols might be present – and monitoring the teenagers.
Broken choruses of 'hello's and 'anyone there's filled the area for quite some time, prompting Bee to ponder how neither teenager managed to lose his or her voice or patience. Knowing that they had to be on the right track was the only thing that kept the three of them pressing onwards, since there wasn't a single sign indicating that humans lived anywhere in the vicinity. They'd expected a hint, a marker, a canopy lookout, or at least something proving that there were regular patrols in the area, but after twenty minutes, nothing had shown up.
"I didn't realize the safe points were this well hidden," remarked Sam in a mixture of irritation and respect.
"Makes you wonder what they did when new streams of people came in, you know?" Mikaela agreed. "Like when we were leaving Tranquility."
"Mm," Sam acknowledged. He glanced around. "You're sure this is the right direction?" It had better be… they'd spent over an hour walking through the stupid forest now.
Bumblebee nodded faintly. This was certainly the right area, and Jazz's signal was certainly coming from the general direction in which they were heading. "They must be around here somewhere, although I'll admit it's unsettling not to have detected a signal of them. My bioscanners are overwhelmed and unreliable right now, but that shouldn't be so big a problem."
They continued onward, Sam and Mikaela still making their muffled calls while Bee focused on trying to step in places where he'd cause the vegetation the least amount of damage.
It was Bumblebee who, about six minutes later, stopped quickly and silently in his tracks.
The teens made it several more feet before they realized that the gentle crushing of Bee's steps had stopped. Mikaela turned first, and then Sam. Warily, the former glanced off into the trees. Sam studied the yellow mech.
"What?" Mikaela ventured when no reason for the pause made itself clear.
Bee, however, was looking this way and that, back-panels flaring and twitching. Despite lacking facial muscles and a mouth, he pulled off 'seriously in thought' quite convincingly. When some brush rustled ever so faintly off to the side, his attention – as well as Sam and Mikaela's – snapped to it.
Nothing.
Not enjoying the growing tension, Sam offered, "I don't know if you can pick up mice or squirrels or anything, but I swear if that's what's making you do this, I'm gonna flip out. You're scaring us." Blue optics moved slowly onto him. "Humans would've responded to us by now I think. They would've heard the warning calls."
Begrudgingly, Bumblebee conceded. "I suppose you're right." It could've been (and was probably) nothing more than a creature his bioscans had missed. "It's just hard to believe trespassers wouldn't have run into defenses by now."
The nervousness was something all three shared at the moment. Sam released a covert sigh of relief, and Mikaela finally allowed herself to take another breath, both of them recognizing that it was just that – nerves (or whatever the equivalent was in Bumblebee's case). Bee took two steps and closed the distance that had grown between them from his abrupt stop. Nothing jumped out at him, thank Primus, and the scout was about ready to admit he'd paused out of fear and not suspicious surroundings. When Sam made to take another step, however…
"Wait!" Bumblebee said sharply, attention shooting to another source of rustling, then another of movement, and then a third; he instinctively took a step backwards. "There's definitely…!"
Both Sam and Mikaela screamed, although whose voice was higher, no one knew – or, for that matter, could really hear. Between the sudden eruption of gunfire and aggressive, demanding shouts from the black-and-green clothed figures leaping out at them, their cries of surprise and fright were lost.
"Get down!" one of the strangers bellowed. Heart pumping a mile a minute, Sam stared at the man, but a digitized cry from behind him had the teen spinning in the other direction.
Whatever bullets were being used, they weren't doing nearly as much damage to the mech currently waving off the attacks and quickly backtracking away from the foreign humans as the shot he'd taken from a fellow mech. Still, neither Sam nor Mikaela could help but cringe and wince every time a shot pinged off his armor and went ricocheting, managed to embed itself in a plate, got caught up between seams, or otherwise worked a pathetic response from Bumblebee.
"Stop it, just – stop it!" Sam screamed, about to shoot his hands up frantically before the gunfire made him think twice. "He's not gonna attack you!"
"I said to get down!" the same man bellowed. "On the ground, now," he followed up.
The sheer authority in his voice made the frightened couple jump. Mikaela shakily grabbed one of Sam's arms and pulled him down to the ground with her, trippingly, onto their knees.
"Please," she screamed fretfully over the frenzied sounds of attack and retreat, "stop shooting – we can explain."
The man who had been yelling – lightly tanned but clearly white, with hazel eyes and dirty-blonde-bordering-on-brown hair – stepped forward. His weapon was still trained on the retreating, defensively contorted form of Bumblebee, but he at least stopped firing. He had yet, however, to give the signal to stop the others.
"Who are you? What are you doing here – and with that thing?" he practically growled at them. The question had barely been asked before one of the other soldiers – this one a practically bald black man – stepped around them, joining the first guy. This man's weapon, as well as most of his attention, was also still trained on Bee.
"Sam – Witwicky!" Sam fumbled, thinking a million things at once and shooting a harried look over his shoulder, afraid that one of these times a shot might actually get past Bumblebee's defenses and do serious damage. He had to make them stop. "And Mikaela Banes! We just want to talk, we weren't trying to trespass or anything!" Then he added, too frantic to sound defensive, "We were trying to call you guys out, we didn't want to startle you. We're sorry!"
"The mech?"
"He's sorry, too!" was Sam's first thought.
Apparently that didn't answer the intended meaning of the question. The two men glanced at one another, relatively comically given the otherwise seriousness of their expressions, then back at the teens. They repeated the process when Mikaela begged, "Stop shooting at him, you'll hurt him!"
For a moment, it didn't seem like the stranger – apparently the man in charge – cared about what they had to say. He gave no indication of even having heard their pleas to stop shooting beyond glancing steadily at them and then over their heads at his men and the alien mech. Finally, he shouted loudly and clearly, "Cease fire!"
Sam and Mikaela's eyes widened in surprise. They hadn't expected the man to actually listen to them. From behind, they heard the volley of shots draw to a close. Bumblebee's squeaks quieted and turned instead to an uneasy whirring sound (the teens wondered if it was from his nervousness, or a side effect of systems stressed from the barrage of bullets).
Sam stole another look over his shoulder. The mech was warily unfolding his limbs, peeking out hesitant optics from behind protective hands, much to the obvious unease of the soldiers on standby.
"What are you really doing here? You didn't come here only 'to talk,'" demanded the blonde a bit more insistently.
"We know something really important about what's been happening. We swear, we weren't trying to surprise you or anything – we really do need to speak with you," Mikaela said, trying to sound every bit as earnest as she was.
Before answering, Blondie made several motions with his hands towards the others. The gestures were lost on Mikaela and Sam. "And you just happened to pick up a mech on your way here?" he asked, openly skeptical, almost taunting.
"He brought us, not the other way around," Sam corrected, eyes shooting between the two men that he was able to see. He warily tried to lower his arms, since they'd been raised submissively in the air for a bit and were now longing to be put down, and he received a threatening look for his daring. Whether or not the jostle of the man's gun was related to his efforts to lower his hands or not, Sam suddenly didn't mind them being up in the air anymore. "He's the one with most of the information."
With an approving nod from his blonde counterpart, the black soldier motioned the teens forward. He quickly frisked the oddly dressed duo, giving them a partial nod to indicate that now they could put their hands down. "And with most of the firepower, obviously," he concluded.
Sam shook his hands in place frantically (to the soldiers' disapproval). "No, no, no. He's not gonna hurt anyone or take anyone. I promise!"
Wisely, Bumblebee stayed out of it. Understanding the natives' terror and concern, the mech sheepishly clasped his hands together and took another step back. He hunched a little lower to the ground, but not – hopefully – in a threatening manner so much as a deferring one. The plating that the shots had seared into gave painful twinges, but the mech made sure not to move to inspect the minor wounds, afraid that that might warrant another negative reaction.
The armed group of men eyed Bumblebee like a huge and dangerous snake, sizing up him and his otherwise unthreatening motions. Bumblebee longed to do the same, yet stopped after one soldier's grip on his gun tightened at the beginnings of an inspection.
"What's the mech doing following you?" queried Blondie, practically growling. It was fairly clear that he didn't approve of Bumblebee's increased movement. He made a few more subtle motions that made the collection of patrollers fan out slightly. "You're not mech-loyal, are you?" he asked distastefully.
Mikaela and Sam both winced at the description. Had Bee not already been crouching, he might have, too.
"No. Well… we were, sorta… but we're not. Not anymore, no," Sam said. He felt stupid the moment he completed his shaky explanation. Mikaela offered her own, more coherent response.
"We used to be, but he doesn't consider us his anymore. Bumblebee's a good mech, we swear." When the serious faces studying them didn't so much as budge at her words, she tried again, "Please, he's not going to hurt anybody. He's not like the mechs that have been attacking us; he's here to help."
The black man appraised all three of them, unimpressed. "Got any proof to back that up? We've heard about people like you before. They lead hunter mechs right into settlements. Next thing you know, your family's split up or dead, and the city is destroyed with all the surrounding resources depleted."
"I don't think we have any proof, do we?" Mikaela anxiously wondered aloud. The weapons trained on them were beginning to frighten her, no matter how still they were.
"Would you let him explain it to you without you shooting, maybe?" Sam asked, hopeful. "He'll tell you anything you want to know. All three of us will."
The troops looked skeptical. "Doesn't mean the explanation will be truthful," the blonde addressed them again. He regarded Bumblebee through furrowed brows, actually looking quite menacing.
Bumblebee whirred, which earned an immediate reaction from the group. The aim on each gun was readjusted and attention snapped fully back to the yellow mech in record time. Bee recoiled a little from the hostility, though he still did not blame them for their distrust and fear.
Everything had been so much easier when they were nothing more than cute, harmless pets.
"Do you know how to offline weapons systems?" Bumblebee asked, directing the inquiry to the man in charge.
The man hesitated, not used to being addressed by his robotic enemies. "What, like a mech's?" Bee nodded. "Sort of. Why?"
"I was going to suggest that you offline mine, if it made you feel better… My communications systems as well, until you felt safer around me," he added as an afterthought. "I'm not asking to be brought to a human settlement," he said at length.
Every human present – including Sam and Mikaela – stared at Bumblebee.
"… You're not?" a Spanish-accented man questioned.
Bumblebee shook his head. "Only to speak with someone. Optimus never told me I had to go to a city or town or anything, just to find out what was going on and help Jazz manage the front here," he explained to a confused Mikaela and Sam. "If he can leave and come meet me, and all of us speak together here, we'd still be meeting the objective."
Unsurprisingly, the phrase 'managing the front' wasn't met with giggles and sunshine. Most of the army men took on even more suspicious expressions. "A front?" the head spokesman repeated. "Who's Optimus? And Jazz?"
"Optimus Prime used to be the Autobot commander – one of two armies in a race-wide war we were in for a long time. He was regular Prime before that – a leader to our people – but the job has changed a lot since reconstruction started…" Bee reigned himself in from his memories and thoughts and went on, "And Jazz is another ex-Autobot. He used to be a saboteur, our head of special operations. He's been on Earth for a while, helping Prime try and monitor what the other Cybertronians are doing on your planet. He was the one that acquired your language and sent it to me, actually," he threw in, nodding to himself.
"We've got robots spying on us?" the black man spoke up, looking less than pleased. He'd understood very little of the mech's rambling explanation, but he had caught onto that revelation sharply enough.
"Yes…" Bumblebee said apologetically. Sam and Mikaela sighed. "Jazz would never hurt one of you. He seems to be fascinated with human culture as far as I can tell, and he's more than ready to pick a fight for human rights."
A new man asked, not yet as irritated as his counterparts by this strange turn of events interrupting his day, "What do you mean by 'human rights?'"
Growing more confident, Sam jumped in, "They didn't think we were self-aware. The first mechs that came here and took down the internet and all our radios and everything, they didn't tell anyone else. Only a few of the other guys know humans are fully thinking and feeling, and the ones that do are as upset about what the mechs here are doing as you are." Sam paused. "They're as upset about it as Mikaela and I am; none of you guys have ever been caught. We have."
"And not to alarm you," Bumblebee spoke up quietly, "but if Jazz had wanted to make any sort of assaulting advance on you – you in particular – he would have done so already. He's stationed in this area. He's just very good at his job."
The information was followed by an uncertain silence. Each member of the group became visibly more measuring and thoughtful, and then the black man studied the ground extra hard. He raised a hand partially, and then raised his eyes. They were dangerously narrowed and had little trouble attracting Bumblebee's gaze.
"You mechs can all turn into things, right?" he asked.
Bumblebee hesitated and then nodded. "Almost all of us, yes, unless something has happened. That's why we thought 'Transformers' was an appropriate English label."
"Uh huh," the man continued, not seeming to care too much. "What does this Jazz guy turn into?"
Bee was unprepared for that question, even though by all accounts he shouldn't have been. He thought for a second, and then motioned for the humans to hold on. He quickly contacted Jazz and asked him what alt mode he had taken, and Jazz responded with all the necessary information.
"He says he's transformed as a… a Solstice, a Pontiac? He's silver," Bee shrugged. "I don't know if that answers your question or not. If you want me to be even more specific-"
"Holy hell," one of the other men interrupted, glancing around at his comrades. The man with the Spanish accent was stiffening noticeably. "That's the type of car that strange guy gave us a while ago, isn't it? The one Fig keeps trying to exorcise the demons out of or whatever voodoo he does?"
Another man twisted and said almost frantically, "But we checked that thing. We checked it a million times. It didn't scan positive. It can't be. It's gotta be a coincidence."
Sam and Mikaela looked at one another, then glanced up at Bumblebee, and then back at the men.
"What is it?" Sam ventured.
The man in charge eyed the kid. Calculating, and apparently deciding that figuring out whether or not their security had already been breached was the top priority, he gestured at Sam and Mikaela. "You two come with me. And that thing," he nodded at Bumblebee with a notable frown, "needs to stay here until we get back." The blonde glanced around at his team and pointed at nearly all of them, "Stay and keep watch. At the first sign of trouble or resistance, flare for backup and don't hold your fire."
After a series of nods from the army men, Sam and Mikaela were gestured forward by the in-charge man, the black man, and some other man – the one who had asked about human rights, they recognized – and were led away from the scene. The teens looked back at Bumblebee and frowned apologetically. The scout shrugged at them and proceeded to carefully settle onto the ground, trying his best to hide his wariness about the situation from both his new sentries and the retreating couple.
Bee could only hope that the humans wouldn't lash out at two of their own. It was a definite risk to let his former pets out of sight – let alone be taken into the custody of armed strangers – but short of directly disobeying and further frightening the locals, Bee knew there was nothing he could do.
The last thing Mikaela and Sam saw before committing all of their attention to following the soldiers was Bumblebee turning his optics nonthreateningly to the ground.
"They won't attack him, will they?" Mikaela asked when they'd gotten further away. The bright yellow of Bumblebee's armor could barely be glanced through the distant trees by the time she spoke up.
Blondie looked over his shoulder at her. "As long as it doesn't attack them first."
"Him," Sam said under his breath.
"What?" Blondie and Questions asked at the same time.
"You said 'it,' but Bumblebee's more like a 'him.' Sort of," explained Sam sheepishly. "Not that he's, like, actually male or anything…"
The soldiers exchanged looks.
Eventually, the black guy repeated, "Bumblebee? Thought that's what I heard you saying earlier. Did you come up with the name, or did he?"
"He did the translation, we… we don't really know what his normal name is. We probably wouldn't be able to say it anyway," Mikaela told him.
Three noises of acknowledgement were the soldiers' only responses before another few minutes of silence.
Sam, like most people, had never been a fan of uncomfortable silences. Since there was little else more uncomfortable than not knowing who one was with while worrying about whether one's friend was safe or not, Sam awkwardly rubbed at his neck. "Hey, um… you don't think we could get your names, do you? That is, if it's not… if it's not too much trouble."
"William Lennox," Blondie said distractedly. "That'd be Lennox or Captain Lennox for now."
Although it was obvious the man wouldn't be able to see it from his position, Mikaela and Sam gave slight nods.
"Toggen – Chris Toggen," said the other, larger white guy. He was a little less tense about the situation at this point, though by no means comfortable. "If you gotta call me something, 'Togg' is better."
"Tech Sergeant Epps," the final man introduced. "Epps is fine."
"We're not sellouts," Mikaela said, looking at Epps. If her expression was any more pointed, it could've been interpreted as openly challenging. "We would've been living in a safe point right now if we hadn't been caught on the way there. The last thing we want to do is give away where this place is to the bad guys."
Her last comment got Lennox to turn halfway towards them. Everyone waited for him to say something, since it was obvious that he wanted to, but after a few seconds he simply turned back around. Sam thought he heard him sigh, or mumble something to himself – or both.
"Pissed off as it'll make me to find out we personally brought one of those guys into the camp," Epps began, louder than he needed to be in a blatant attempt to draw attention away from whatever it was Lennox had just done, "it'd be nice to know we weren't all paranoid about that car."
"We're going to have to have some words," Lennox said suddenly, voice low.
Sam nervously eyed the man's back. "You and Jazz?"
"Me and them, me and you, me and her, all of us," the man clarified. He did another partial turn. "Whether you're giving us a load of bull or there's some truth to it, it doesn't matter. There is a long, long conversation to be had."
That didn't make Sam any less nervous. Since he didn't know exactly how to respond, Sam decided to awkwardly nod and then pretend something interesting was happening near his feet. Mikaela nudged him gently, and when he looked up, she gave him a shrug as if to say 'don't worry about it.'
"That's fine," Mikaela attempted to soothe some of the tension. "That's what we're after anyway."
Lennox turned even more so that he could look her in the eye. "And we're getting you out of those… whatever those are," he said, gesturing between them at their bodies. The teens glanced down at themselves self-consciously. "Those clothes are not helping your case any. You look like you broke out of a mental institution. Where did you get them?"
"A mech made them," answered Sam, still tense. "One that's never seen any clothes before for reference and lives light-years away from here. I…" He hesitated at the seriousness on the captain's face. "I thought whoever made them did a pretty good job, given the circumstances…"
The man looked like he wanted to say something again, badly. This time, he sighed openly and shook his head before turning back around.
Mikaela was about to ask why he was so upset – nicely, though, because she didn't fault him for being distrustful – but Togg shook his head at her. A quick glance at Epps proved that he, too, was subtly advising that she not pursue the issue.
The brunette had the sinking suspicion that Lennox had a personal reason for being so rough with them, that this wasn't his default personality and it wasn't merely a general dislike of mechs.
No matter what it was, Mikaela noted that it was a problem for another time. Right now, they had a strange mech to bring out of hiding and a friendly scout that they needed to get back to in order to make sure he was safe. Everything else was simply not a priority.
A.N.s
Yuppers – it's only a partial first contact chapter, despite being longer than normal. Jazz will be here next chapter. :D Yay for Jazz! …Boo for him being torn in half.
Hopefully you guys understand why Lennox is gruffer/more irritable than his character would normally be. He will be that way for a little while longer. As for the other Rangers… well, only a handful of them have official names (Lennox, Epps, Fig, and Donnelly), and as long I'm counting them right, there're at least four or five that don't. As far as I'm concerned, Christopher Toggen is that guy who, in the movie, goes to the showers in the first scene and says "Step aside, ladies." I write him into a lot of unposted fics/scenes I have that involved the army dudes. I don't know why I'm partial to him.
P.S. – 10 (in a couple hours, 9) days until the third movie releases (where I am, at least; I don't know the global release schedule). I am pumped, and am hoping that a) it's a lot better than RotF was, and b) they handle the Mikaela v. Carly thing in a decent enough way. I'm trying not to get my hopes too high for TF3 to minimize any disappointment; that method made the first movie that much more awesome for me. No matter what, I still can't wait!
Also, the technology/magic quote is from Arthur Clarke ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"), in case you were wondering.