Author's Note: This chapter ties in to chapters 15 and 16 of The Daily Buzz, also listed on our profile. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up through those chapters (since I summarize some things here that are handled more in-depth in The Buzz). This story should still make sense on its own, though. Hope you enjoy! ~ Eowyn77

Life fell back into its slightly schizophrenic rhythm. My life was occupied by Astronomy, English, American History, and Algebra during the week, and then Mikaela and I had our webdates on the weekends. Bumblebee and I would go for Sunday drives, and every now and again, al-Sharif called to keep me up to date on the publicity and politics end of things – like the whole thing with the eclipse Optimus caused by using the Matrix. Except it wasn't an eclipse as much as it was a…funnel for the light, I guess. Al-Sharif read me a report by some geek about it, but it was over both our heads.

Luckily, the black-out wasn't a global thing and only about a 1000-mile radius from Diego Garcia was darkened. And even then, the further you got from Diego Garcia, the more light had remained. The only other side effect was that some unusually strong thunderstorms popped up when the heat got pulled out of the air, too. Pretty much anywhere else in the world, this would have been a problem, but since we were in the middle of the Indian Ocean at the time, the whole incident pretty much flew under the radar, according to Al-Sharif. The nearest cities just happened to have cloud cover and rain that day anyway, so it never even made the local news. How was that for luck? (Or maybe the Dynasty of the Primes was smarter – and more aware – than I thought.)

I missed my brother, of course, but the party on Diego Garcia had been the last weekend in October and he would be coming here for Thanksgiving, so I only had to make it through a few more weeks. Things seemed to be in a pretty good balance, all in all.

Midterms rolled around, but Leo and the roomies couldn't be bothered with that – they were too busy setting up a gambling conspiracy for the big rivalry football game. And I mean conspiracy, with hacking and lapel cams and sending Sharsky undercover to the stadium to sell some disgustingly cute Sports Kitties calendars.

Pretty much against my will, they hauled me off to the pre-game bonfire which turned out to be a complete nightmare. The alcohol was flowing freely and people were so plastered that girls were even hitting on Sharsky. They had a bunch of soda for the freshmen since we weren't legal to drink, but it really wasn't much fun after they torched an effigy of the opposing team's mascot, a geek bobcat. My roomies and I left about half-way through.

Even worse, though, was that Bumblebee didn't know the difference between root beer and the real thing, and so he told all the Autobots on his blog that I'd been out drinking. Mikaela woke me up on Saturday morning with an irate tirade about me being so stupid. She was so mad, in fact, that she wouldn't let me explain and I finally ended up apologizing and promising her it wouldn't happen again. That was what tipped me off about Bumblebee tattling on the blog for something I didn't even do and so instead of sleeping in, I got to read everyone's opinion on the fact that I was supposedly an underage alcoholic. Ratchet was on the warpath about it (ironically enough), and especially after seeing how he took down Optimus, I was grateful he was on the other side of the planet. BrassEagle overruled Ratchet's order to Bumblebee to blast any alcohol near me, which made me hopeful that I wouldn't soon be face-to-face with a furious Hummer.

Frustrated, embarrassed, and all-around pissed, I marched down to the street where 'Bee was parked and thumped him on the hood with my fist. A vicious part of me hoped I was pulling him out of recharge for this. Walking around to the driver's side, I said, "You and me, we need to have a little talk!"

After a second's hesitation, he popped the door open for me and I climbed in behind the wheel. He started his engine and pulled out onto the street, driving nowhere in particular.

"Google 'root beer,'" I ordered.

After a couple of seconds, he played a sound clip of "Oh…"

"Yeah," I snarked back. "Mikaela woke me up having a total hissy fit about me going out drinking. How could you live on Earth for years and not know that root beer isn't real beer? Seriously, 'Bee!"

"What can I say?" he quoted.

But I wasn't done. "If you thought I was out of line, you should have said something to me. Next time ask before you get me in trouble!"

"I'm sorry, so sorry..."

I was about to pounce on that, to tell him sorry wasn't good enough, that he owed me. But then I had the mental image of him and me in an old prison yard, hiding from the world after Optimus' death. Bumblebee's mistake was nothing by comparison, and he'd stuck by me through it all. Even if he did owe me for this one, I owed him way more. "Just…" I sighed, frustrated that I couldn't even be mad at him. "Don't do it again, okay? You and me, we've got to stick together. Right?"

"Right," a chipper female voice answered.

"And no more tattling without taking it me to first."

"I promise."

I grimaced a little, annoyed still, but I couldn't do anything about it. It's not like I could make him take it all back on the blog – he didn't know that I knew about it.

"I'll make things right…with your girlfriend," he said with two different clips.

That was the most important part, I guessed. After all, she was the one angry enough to actually make the phone call. And he'd probably set the record straight with Optimus, too. "Thanks."

He pulled into one of those diners that serve breakfast 24 hours a day and his Cam Romero holoform flickered into existence beside me. With a tentative smile, he nodded his head at the restaurant, inviting me inside.

I sighed again, this time in defeat. "I can't. I've got a paper in American History due in a week, and I don't even know what I'm writing it on."

"I can help!" his radio cheerfully offered.

Yeah, he probably could, come to think of it. Besides, he was trying to do anything he could to make it up to me. How could I turn him down? "Alright. But you're buying."

He grinned ear to ear. "That was the plan."

…

When I got back to the dorm, Leo, Fassbinder, and Sharsky were all crammed together around a computer. "New trailer come out?" I asked as I tossed my jacket on the bed.

"New post on The Buzz," Fassbinder eagerly answered. "The pedophile is local! He's a Trouts fan!"

"Yeah," Sharsky added. "He was at the bonfire last night and he said he'll be at the game today!"

Leo gave me a conspiratorial look. "We're going to see if we can spot him in the stadium. He's obviously military, so I'm betting he'll be in fatigues."

I smothered a smile at Leo's obvious red herring and nodded my head in agreement. "Probably. I wonder what branch of the military he's in, because they all have different uniforms."

"Air Force?" Fassbinder speculated. "With all those travel logs, he's gotta be jetting it."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything," Sharsky retorted. "They've all got planes. With all the secrecy and everything, I was thinking he's a Navy SEAL."

"Mechanized cavalry?" I suggested, and Leo tried to cuff me.

"Gotta be a Marine," he added after I ducked.

Sharsky looked vaguely panicked. "I don't know anything about the military – what uniforms and rank badge-thingies they have."

"Get researching, muchachos," Leo ordered. "If Sharsky's gonna make first contact with Camaro76, we better know what we're talking about."

Now that Leo had the roomies completely looking for the wrong guy, I decided I needed to work on that paper while everything was still fresh in my mind. Grabbing my laptop, I sat in my bed and settled in to write.

They threw themselves into it, and I started sifting through the transcript 'Bee had made of our conversation and emailed to me. About five minutes before Sharsky had to leave for the stadium for his special-ops calendar sales, I got sucked back into the bizarre game of baiting the roomies.

"What should I say if I see him?" Sharsky whined. "I mean, I can't just walk up to him and say, 'Are you Camaro76? 'Cause I'm you're biggest fan!'"

"Be discreet," Fassbinder retorted. "I know that's not in your vocab lists, but you can't make a big deal out of it or he ain't coming near us ever again."

"Would that be so bad?" I asked, unable to resist. "We don't know if this guy is stable."

"We'll never know unless we try," Sharsky pointed out. "I'm all for going in."

"Wait a minute," Leo interrupted, trying to throw the guys off even more. "Do we even know if he's a he?"

Fassbinder immediately started scrolling through the posts. "There are a thousand references to The Boy and hints of a relationship with BikerChick and maybe even BeeFF, but there isn't really any concrete proof either way."

Sharsky nodded sagely. "Even NotTheToothFairy's crack about masculine pride could be him treating Camaro76 as one of the boys instead of him actually being a guy."

"Don't ask, don't tell?" Leo drawled.

"I can't wrap my head around the alternative," I admitted, remembering again Bumblebee's blog entry about being female for a day. "He's definitely not a GI Jane."

"Definitely not," Sharsky agreed.

"There's a greeting. 'Hi, Mr. Secret Agent Man. You'd make a really hot chick,'" I said, sniggering at the mental image of how badly that one could turn out. What would Sharsky do if 'Bee took him up on the suggestion and switched to a girl holoform?

"Add that to the list of top ten ways to earn a restraining order," Leo snorted. "I thought we were going for discreet."

"Discreet it is," Fassbinder said in the interest of getting us back on topic. To Sharsky, he said, "We'll keep you informed on the earwig and steer you towards any likely candidates. We'll leave the timing up to your discretion."

"But take it from me," I added. "Don't glomp him or anything." That was Arcee's territory, and I doubted Sharsky could take it or dish it out like the femme did.

…

We lost. Not that I was big into football, but it was pretty embarrassing. Even Sharsky, when he finally dragged himself back into the dorm, was a little shell-shocked from the final score. Honestly, though, I think the guys were way more bummed about missing out on meeting the elusive Camaro76. Too bad they didn't realize that, when Sharsky almost got caught in minor brawl, 'Bee's holoform Cam Romero was smack-dab in the middle of it.

Fassbinder eased the pain of getting walloped by our state rivals by turning to technology. Typical. I went back to writing my paper.

A few minutes later, Leo made all of us jump when he shouted, "BINDER! LAY OFF THE PERCUSSION SECTION!"

"Shut up," Binder snapped back. "I'm thinking."

I wasn't sure which was more shocking – that he would mouth off to Leo or that he was actually thinking.

Finally Leo broke the stunned silence. "Care to enlighten us?"

Leo's sarcasm was apparently lost on Fassbinder. "Last Buzz post," he said. "This guy isn't just local. He's playing the field."

Sharsky flew to Binder to read over his shoulder. "You're kidding! That narrows it down even more."

"Not really," Leo said dismissively. "This is college. Everyone with a libido is trying to play the field. Some of us chamacos are just experts in that field."

"Well, pedophile isn't doing too bad," Fassbinder retorted. "Check this out: 'And speaking of up-close and personal, the final score of assaults inflicted on me by female fans is a staggering five slaps to the face, three beers thrown at me, two phone numbers suggestively slipped into my rear pocket, and one knee to the groin. Either my new look was based on someone who's a total player, or the enemy has a lot of co-ed Pretenders on campus. The knee-er certainly felt strong enough to be one.'"

Sharsky was dying of laughter, and I facepalmed at the 'knee-to-the-groin' thing. I mean, sure, he was in his Cam Romero holoform, but I was positive the things weren't that close to human anatomy. Were they?

"What did BikerChick have to say to that?" Sharsky wheezed.

Oh jeez – this was bound to be good! Someone knocked at the door, but I was still catching my breath at Arcee's rant about 'Bee standing up for himself, so Leo hollered, "Come in."

…and in walked the blogger himself. CRAP! I made a grab at his arm, trying to drag him out of the room before he could see. "Bee! Let's go get some air."

It was like trying to grab a statue. His eyebrows furrowed as he looked at me curiously, and then he glanced at the computer screen. He froze for a heartbeat and then bolted from the room.

Slag! I ran after him, out into the hallway and down to the stairs that weren't usually used. He was leaning against the wall, doubled over at the waist and silently shaking.

"Oh man," I muttered, kneeling down so I could see his eyes. He wasn't so upset he was crying about it was he? "Hey, 'Bee," I soothingly said.

He lifted his head with a brilliant grin and started shaking again – with laughter. Slapping his knee a couple of times, he straightened, and I studied him closely. "You're not mad?"

Bumblebee shook his head no and his shoulders started bobbing up and down in laughter again. Patting the top of my arm reassuringly, he tipped his head toward the stairs, inviting me outside. To his alt-form, I realized, so we could talk more freely. I nodded, a little relieved smile creeping over my face, and he all but skipped down the stairs.

I followed to where he was parked and climbed into the driver's side. As soon as his windows were dark enough, his holoform disappeared. When we were cruising, I repeated my earlier question. "You're not mad?"

"Well that's a relief!" a female voice answered through the radio speakers.

"You're relieved?" And then I remembered how they were trying to get 'the boy' clearance but there was a backlog on paperwork. "You've been trying to let me in for a while, haven't you."

"Bingo!" an older man exclaimed, and another, younger woman said (sounding like she was talking to her child), "No, I could never hate you."

I grinned.

He played my own question back at me. "You're not mad?"

"I was at first," I confessed. "But it was actually kind of fun to go back and read the earlier posts. I still remember the whole thing when you hit that squirrel, and it's kind of nice to finally understand why you were so upset about it. I'm sorry you've had such a rough time with the War and everything."

The seat under me moved in a gesture I recognized as a shrug.

"What's his opinion?" a military-sounding guy asked.

"Whose opinion?"

"All of them," another guy clarified.

"Oh, the roomies!" I grimaced. "Well…think about it, 'Bee. In one of the earliest posts you were going on about 'what me and the boy share' and all that, and they thought you're an adult human."

He didn't answer for four or five blocks, and then he asked again, "What's his opinion?"

I headdesked on the steering wheel. "They think you're…attracted to me. That we're in a relationship."

His engine kind of choked and died and he drifted to the side of the road for a second. "Not you 'Cam Romero' but you 'Camaro76,'" I tried to explain. "Having all these different forms and names confuses me sometimes, and I'm in the know! They haven't figured out yet that I'm 'the boy.'"

And then his frame started shimmying in a roar of laughter. I grinned, even more relieved that he'd taken this news well. I was sure he'd freak out – which was part of why I'd been reluctant to let him know I'd read his blog.

"Are we human?" the radio sang after he settled down a little bit and pulled back into traffic.

"Yep. They think you guys are all pretty weird, but they have no idea that you aren't native. So good job on that."

"Sweet!" a little kid exclaimed over the speakers.

"But I guess you'll have to shut the blog down, now, huh?" We cruised in silence for a few seconds, but knowing him, I thought he was kind of bummed. "Of course, they don't have to know that I know, do they? Lennox or BrassEagle or whoever? Because everybody's having fun with it. Even Sharsky and Fassbinder. They check your blog like daily and know your personalities and everything."

"I think he's on to something!" 'Bee quoted, spliced with, "Welcome to the club."

"The club? You mean the blog?"

"Affirmative, captain…We're not leaving you behind!"

"But…"

"I won't tell if you won't," a woman coyly said.

And then I got it. "We don't have to tell 'em how I found out, and that way I can still get a user name. 'Bee, that's devious."

"Why thank you," he answered in a cowboy's drawl. He reused the clip from earlier, saying "All of them," and then adding, "Can I see it, Mom? Can I? Can I? Can I?"

'All of them' meant the roommates… "You want to see the guys as they read your blog?"

His own, mangled voice came over the speakers in an eager, "Uh-huh."

"Why?"

"PSYCH!" 'Bee exclaimed, his engine vibrating in a chuckle.

"You wanna mess with their minds?" I asked, breaking down in giggles. "Okay, that's just too much fun to pass up. How are we gonna make it work, though?"

"Leave that to me," he said with Darth Vader's voice.

"But you can't talk," I protested.

"Old football injury," a man explained.

I sniggered. "They'd buy that one, I think. Alright, let's do it!"

…

The guys were all on their computers when Cam Romero and I came back to the dorm.

"NewEgg's having a sale on video cards," Fassbinder announced.

"I'm gonna order some of those Bags O' Crap off Woot," Sharsky countered. "Mom never let me get those back home."

"Dude, it's crap," Binder pointed out.

Leo looked at Sharsky disdainfully. "You let your ma tell you what you couldn't buy online?"

"Didn't have a credit card, and after I hacked into her account she swore she'd never cosign with me."

I cleared my throat and Leo glanced up from his online shopping. "Yeah?"

"You guys all remember Cam, right?"

"You mean Bee?" Fassbinder corrected.

Oops. "Yeah, that's his nickname," I floundered.

"It's a weird nickname for a jock," Sharsky bluntly said.

"Yeah," Leo chimed in. "What's the story behind it?"

I could have smacked him for that one, but Cam just gave them his best dorky grin and made a show of fumbling with his cell phone for a second. The ringtone sang "...buzz like a bee..."

Nice recovery! "And that's all we're gonna say about it," I added. At the roomies' confused expression, I explained, "Cam lost his voice in a football accident back when we were both in high school. He's had a few surgeries, but the best he can manage with his real voice is mumbling. So he can write his part of the conversation or he has his cell phone programmed with a lot of different sound clips that express what he's trying to say."

'Bee moved his hands in what was obviously sign language, though I didn't have a clue what he was saying. "Or that," I added.

"Man, that sucks," Sharsky sympathetically said.

"Yeah. So anyway, it makes it kinda hard for him to socialize; that's why he hasn't been hanging out with us before now. But when he saw you guys were following a blog about football…"

Fassbinder narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "So a jock wants to hang with us?"

"Yep," I answered. "I let him in on the secret that it's really a government blog you guys hacked and he wants to hear all about it. He thinks it sounds even more exciting than sports."

It finally dawned on Leo what 'Bee and I were doing – keeping The Buzz up and running. He grinned and crowed, "You're effin' kidding me!"

"Nope," I grinned back. "Cam's really cool that way."

Looking like a kid on Christmas morning, 'Bee's holoform plopped down into an office chair, looked expectantly at Sharsky and Fassbinder, and tilted his head toward the computer monitor.

"Go on guys," Leo encouraged with a laugh. "Tell him everything."

Bumblebee's Song Clips:
"I'm Sorry" by Brenda Lee
"Are We Human" by The Killers