Chapter 1: Home
The day started like clockwork. At 0200 the scout jolted up from his berth in a panic spurned by his usual nightmares. Tyger Pax was played over and over again in his processor. Each time, the scout tried to escape with his voice box but Megatron thwarted him without fail. For the last ten thousand years this was how Bumblebee woke up for his duties.
Standing up the yellow Autobot rubbed his exhausted optics and stretched his back. The fear he had felt moments before faded away now that he was sure he was back to reality. He lazily walked across his quarters to the massive bay door that concealed his room. The bots had turned the empty missile bays of the silo into their barracks. It was meager yet far more comfortable than sleeping on the ground wherever they were fighting back on Cybertron.
His patrol shift technically didn't start for another three hours as Arcee was scheduled to come back at 0500. Bumblebee made his way into the main atrium of base regardless as going back into recharge would be nearly impossible. Besides, the scout enjoyed helping Optimus run the scanners every morning. The Prime seldom slept in and always got a head start on the day's duties as did 'Bee.
Checking his systems, Bumblebee realized that it was a Friday and found himself looking forward to picking up Raf from school for an extended stay at base. The human children's parents often allowed the kids to stay out extra late before a weekend without questioning where they were all day. Rafael had purchased a new video game the other day which further encouraged the scout to get his tasks done.
"Morning, Optimus."
The red and blue bot halted his typing and glanced down over his shoulder at Bumblebee. A gentle smile spread across his faceplates. "Good morning, Bumblebee," he said, "Up early as always." 'Bee shrugged and stepped up to the Autobot commander. With a gesture he inquired if there was anything Prime needed done.
"I've been decoding a series of incoming transmissions from an off-world source."
Bumblebee's doorwings rose in alert and his optics widened. It had been so long since they'd heard from any Autobot remnants so the scout hoped this might be reinforcements of some kind. For the last three planet cycles they have held out hope to reamass their forces since the Exodus. Prime continuously sent out a homing beacon calling all of their allies to Earth but no one had responded since Arcee and Cliffjumper arrived two years prior. Now, with Cliffjumper gone, they needed all the firepower they could get.
"Any idea who it's from, sir?"
"I do not wish to get your hopes up, young one," Prime answered. He continued working as the younger mech leaned over to try and see what was transpiring. "I am cross referencing the signature against all known parties but have yet to find a match."
Bumblebee shrugged his shoulders, never having been proficient with all the tech stuff. Scouting and breaking things was his specialty. Calculating that he wouldn't be much help to Prime at the moment the scout strolled over to the base scanners and stared at the screen. He could manage monitoring this until the motorcycle returned to base.
He had been standing there for perhaps an hour - slipping in and out of a subprocessor nap - when the scanner began beeping rapidly. The sudden alarm startled Bumblebee and made his spark skip a pulse. Optimus snapped his optics to the computer and then looked to the scout for an explanation.
Reading the symbols on the screen Bumblebee buzzed a gasp, feeling his spark pounding in his chassis. "Optimus, we've got an unknown craft entering Earth's atmosphere," he reported. The fact that the scanner couldn't tell if this was of Decepticon or Autobot origin wasn't helping the growing anxiety in his gears.
"Where?" Prime asked as he stepped away from his station. He towered over the yellow bot, optics following the plotted trajectory the scanner predicted.
"The scanner is saying it's headed somewhere in Germany," Bumblebee said. His optic brows were scrunched together in concentration. The computer continued updating until it gave a less vague estimate of the craft's destination. "It should land within a mile of these coordinates."
The Prime was satisfied with those numbers and the fact that the crash would take place far enough from the nearest human population. They would not need to alert Agent Fowler just yet. "Wake Ratchet and Bulkhead," Optimus ordered, "I'll call Arcee back to base."
"On it," the scout nodded crisply before charging back down the hallway towards the barracks.
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The escape pod's blaring alarms woke the femme from her reboot. As soon as her optic shudders opened the pain of the violent crash reached her systems. Groaning, the Elite Guardsman cradled her strained neck cables and crawled out of the damaged pilot seat. Through the cracks to the pod's hull she could hear a gunfight off in the distance. Whoever had shot her down most likely came back to finish the job. Yet, the femme was unsure what or who they were firing at.
She had been the only survivor aboard the Soul Hunter after the Exodus, so there were no other pods or Guards with her. It had to be Autobots. That realization motivated her to move quicker and get into the fight.
Wires caught on her cat-like ears and tail, forcing her to free them. The silver appendages were dented and adorned with small cuts, but it was nothing a good buffing wouldn't fix. She had gotten lucky to be created so small and sleek. Any mech would have been crushed easily with the pod being tossed around the forest.
As the Praxian - adorned in black armor and a sniper rifle attached to her back - climbed out of the wreckage, she was met with a battle. Purple cloned Cons closer to her position were shooting at different colored bots in the treeline. They were small blobs at their distance, but the femme didn't need to see them to tell they were Autobots. She already knew her father was on this planet with the remnants of the resistance, a last holdout in defense against the Decepticon armada.
Once she was out of the pod, the bot slung her rifle over her shoulder and began picking off the rest of the Cons to help her compatriots. They attempted to locate where the secondary fire was coming from but by the time they found her position she was already sprinting full speed to take advantage of their confusion.
The bolts from the Autobots had ceased once the femme slammed into the first Decepticon as they must've realized she was an ally. She quickly dispatched the Con before dodging a servo from the other. Though smaller and more fragile than her mech counterparts, the female Cybertronian's dexterity and reflexes allowed her to move faster and knock the second Con into a processor reboot.
"Echo?"
The femme froze midway through standing up. Hearing her sire's voice again after thousands of years was paralyzing. He sounded in disbelief as though she should be dead. In that moment, she regretted not reaching out to him after leaving the Autobots. She should have let him know she was alright. But reaching out to him would have risked revealing her existence to his subordinates. There was a reason she left and never looked back.
Turning around to face Prime with a guilt stricken stare, Echo was not ready to see the emotions playing on the normally stoic commander's faceplates. In his optics she saw the fatherly love she had missed so greatly in their time apart. He did not seem disparaged with her, only wanting to hold her.
"Sire," she said in a trembling voice.
Optimus rushed forward, capturing his adopted daughter in a tight embrace as he knelt down to her height. The femme wrapped her servos around him as best she could, letting out a tender sob matching his own. Ever since receiving his encrypted message calling all Autobots to Earth she had been looking forward to this moment. She had played this scenario over and over in her processor, not able to fathom what to say to him.
"Those were your transmissions?" Optimus stuttered. His daughter nodded her helm against him. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," she said.
"I thought you had perished, my sparkling," Prime spoke in Praxian. Echo scoffed in amusement as she nuzzled him. "I had thought the same of you until I heard your message," she said. Her sire pulled away some, staring at her with a smile. Caressing her face he went on to say, "Thank the AllSpark you are alright."
Echo placed her digits over his own and returned his smile.
"I guess she's not a Con after all," a deep voice chuckled from behind Prime. Both Echo and Optimus turned to the giant green mech approaching. A pink and blue femme - half Echo's size - waltzed beside him with a smirk. "You know this bot, Optimus?" she asked.
Prime stood up, taking a step back from his charge to introduce her to his team. "Autobots, this is Sergeant Echo," he said, pausing to place a servo on the femme's shoulders, "My daughter."
"Daughter?!" the other bots exclaimed in unison. They glanced between themselves before peering at Echo in utter shock. It was quite clear that no one beyond Ratchet had been privy to the femme's existence after she left the Autobots to join the Elite Guard. Prime was normally a very reserved bot, but one might think he would mention at some point he was a father.
"Echo, this is Bulkhead and Arcee," Optimus said, "A Wrecker and a warrior from the intelligence division." His voice conveyed that they were trusted friends of his with the way he spoke their names and specialties.
The black and silver fembot took in the intel with a crisp nod before sending her new teammates a welcoming smile. However, that soon faded when Prime gestured toward a third bot strolling up to the group. Her spark sensed its mate nearby, pulsing harder in excitement. Echo felt her gears grate together as she met optics with the yellow scout for the first time in nearly ten thousand years.
"This is our scout: Bumblebee." Optimus carefully watched Echo's faceplates, optimistic that time had healed the rift between them.
Echo's spark was pounding, begging to get closer to the one it had merged with eons ago. She pleaded for it to stop, knowing Bumblebee's spark no longer called for hers. It wouldn't recognize her.
The young mech's doorwings were raised up in alertness, his helm titled to the side as he took in the young femme's frame. For a moment, Echo held a fleeting hope that he would remember her and rush towards her professing his love and how much he had missed her. She wanted him to tell her that he had gotten better since Tyger Pax and his memory files had been restored.
As Bumblebee's optics rotated to analyze her they reminded Echo of the day she lost him. The trees melted away as she was swept back through the past to relive the worst day of her life.
The femme screamed in agony as the former gladiator held up the yellow scout by his neck. Blue oozed from the damaged cables and the hole where his voice box once was. His optics flickered and he clawed at Megatron in a futile attempt at escape. With nothing to vocalize the excruciating pain he was in, the bot could only cry.
"Bumblebee!" Echo yelled as the silver Con's fist collided with 'Bee's faceplates. Dropping the scout, Megatron watched with a smirk as the Autobot tried to crawl away weakly. He repeatedly kicked the mech's helm, cackling every time Bumblebee got back up. The scout spat energon from his mouth and curled up.
"No!" the femme attempted to pry herself from Skywarp's grip, only to be struck by Blitzwing. It was hard enough to make her vision blur and the sounds around her dull. Still, as she fought slipping into a processor reboot, the femme could still see Bumblebee's frame being thrashed around like a toy.
Megatron threw punch after punch, kick after kick, until the young scout looked like a scrapheap. His armor dented and cracked, energon pipes busted, and systems shutting down, Bumblebee was slowly fading away; and there was nothing Echo could do as the Seekers made her watch. The last thing she remembered was her mate reaching out to her in desperation as his optics offlined.
Now, in the present, those optics held no knowledge of her. Echo painfully realized his amnesia had not magically cured itself in these many years. Despite all of Ratchet's endless attempts Bumblebee still could not remember his own sparkmate.
In the microseconds of their exchange, Echo's spark had gone through pure joy at reuniting with her sire to absolute anguish. Everything shattered around her and returned to the dull, depressing existence she had survived in since losing Bumblebee the first time. She had watched her mate - the mech she wanted to sire her children - ebb away and die. The Bumblebee she knew never came back and neither did the femme she once was.
The femme that longed for a perfect life and a family was gone. The femme that dreamed of a future with Bumblebee was gone. In her optics, they both died that day.
On the other side of the encounter Bumblebee was internally shuddering. This femme was luring him in unlike any bot he has ever met before. It felt as though he had been electrified the moment their optics met. He couldn't understand what he was feeling. His processor racked itself trying to figure out what was happening to his systems. 'Bee had found himself attracted to femmes before. What mech wouldn't? Yet this, as far as the scout could tell, was so much more than that.
Instead of greeting the mech like she had the others, Echo promptly turned on her peddes to retrieve her fallen rifle. Bumblebee's gears dropped as he watched her snap the weapon back in place between her shoulder plates as if she hadn't even noticed him.
The femme missed the dejected look on Bumblebee's faceplates. Optimus dropped his smile, knowing exactly what had just happened. He thought himself foolish to think after millennia his daughter would just rush up and hug the scout or that Bumblebee would miraculously recognize her out of nowhere. Unsure how to proceed past the awkwardness he raised his servo to contact base. "Ratchet…" he said as he turned away.
At the mention of the old grumpy Autobot's name, Echo perked up and glanced at her father. The prospect of seeing the medic balmed her pain momentarily. With Optimus raising Echo as a single bot for most of her life he was forced to leave her with Uncle Ratchet when things got dangerous. She had spent countless cycles watching him work on his patients and learned many things about Cybertronian technology from the old bot. He was a mentor to her and just as much a part of her family as Optimus was.
'Bee stared after Echo while she eagerly awaited Ratchet's reply. He was still reeling from her response to seeing him but couldn't help look at her. Something about her was churning his gears and he wasn't quite sure if it was a good or bad thing. Perhaps it was that she was Optimus' daughter and unbelievingly attractive? No, he thought to himself, it's something else.
When Bulkhead spoke out to the femme, asking her what unit she was apart of, Bumblebee wasn't surprised to hear she was a Guard. For a femme to take out as many Cons she did singehandedly was impressive. He was reminded that she was raised by one of the most skilled bots ever to walk the face of Cybertron so her prowess must be something to behold.
Echo had finished her statement to Bulkhead before her optics drifted past the team and landed on the ground so she would not see the scout. Again, he felt his spark jolt with dismissal. It was apparent this femme did not like him for whatever reason. Over the years, he had not had the best luck with females so a cold shoulder was nothing new to him. What was new was this unshakable draw to her.
Bumblebee's stare bore into the back of Echo's helmet. She kept her optics glued to the green trees of the forest surrounding them as if that would make the scout disappear. As if that would make her spark calm down. It was still tugging at her chamber desperate to collide with its twin flame.
A groundbridge portal saved her from her inner pain. Echo smiled as her sire gestured for her to go first. She shoved any thoughts of her former sparkmate to the side as she rushed through the bridge hoping to see her old friend on the other side.
"So, what was all the commotion about?" the white and red mech grumbled to himself when he heard steps emerging from the bridge. He didn't seem all too interested in whatever Team Prime had found in Germany. Optimus had intentionally left him uninformed when requesting for a groundbridge to surprise his friend. The other bots stopped behind Echo to watch the medic's reaction. It wasn't too often someone got to rile him up in a good way or in any way that wouldn't end in him retrieving his "throwing" wrench.
"I don't even get a hello, Ratch?" Echo called out. She smirked when the old timer dropped his tool and spun around to face her. "I see you're still as grumpy as ever," she added.
"Echo!" Ratchet took a few steps to close the gap between them and picked her up in a tight hug. "You wreckless child," he continued, most likely referring to her pod crashing. The femme laughed and tried to reciprocate the embrace but her servos were pinned. "That would be me," she vented.
Bumblebee smiled with his optics at the scene in front of him. He had never seen Ratchet so happy to see someone before. Even after the medic saved the scout from his injuries at Tyger Pax he was a reserved and grumpy bot. 'Bee could tell by the giant grin on Ratchet's face that he loved this femme dearly.
Optimus chuckled heartily, optics full of cheer he hadn't experienced in a long time. He, Ratchet, and Echo had been a perfect little family all those years ago. They had gotten him through the worst of times and even just the memories kept him going to this day. Prime looked on as the medic placed Echo back down on the ground and unceremoniously cuffed the back of her helm in his usual lecturing fashion.
"That's for making me drop my favorite wrench," he grumbled when Echo pouted up at him. She rubbed her helm and ignored the rest of the team snickering behind her.
Glancing around the base, Echo analyzed the odd mixture of both Cybertronian and Earth technologies. Team Prime was evidently on the low with how meager their resources were, but the femme looked forward to helping change that. She peered at the computers, wondering what kind of primitive creatures made them.
"It may not be much," Optimus started, "But it's home." Echo nodded in understanding, walking around to get a good feel for her new surroundings. "How long have you and your team been here?" she asked. "Three cycles," Ratchet answered for Prime, "Far too long in my opinion." The young femme glanced back just in time to see her uncle roll his optics. "I see," Echo said through a smile.
"He hates humans," Bulkhead chuckled, crossing his servos over his chassis. He earned a couple laughs from Arcee and Bumblebee. "Humans?" Echo inquired, returning to the group.
Consequently, this put her closer to the scout, who blushed and glanced her up and down heatedly. Thankfully no one seemed to notice him analyzing her frame.
"Small organic lifeforms that inhabit this planet," Optimus said, "We are working with a local government to protect their planet from the Decepitcons looking to conquer its energon sources."
"Megatron will never stop, will he?" Echo inquired with a scrunched up face. Her sire vented in relief, earning her attention. "Megatron is no more," he said. The femme stepped back in shock, scanning the other bots' faceplates - even Bumblebee's - to gather whether this was really true. If Megatron was dead, then who was leading the Cons? Why wasn't the war over?
"Starscream commands the armada now," Prime stated, as if reading his daughter's thoughts.
"Slag," she cursed, placing her servos on her hips, "Well, I'm here now to do my part. How can I help?" Optimus smiled pridefully at her determination. He was about to comment that he'd rather focus on catching up about all her doings since leaving his side before Ratchet spoke up.
"If we need help setting my lab on fire we'll let you know."
His words both infuriated the femme and sent the other Autobots into a fit of laughter. Echo rolled her optics and vented. "That was only one time, uncle, and not my fault," she huffed. Her tail swiped defensively through the air.
She felt all but one set of optics leave her and focus on Prime as he went on a rather lengthy tale of all the trouble he and Ratchet would have to get Echo out of as a juvenile. Arcee and Bulkhead seemed quite amused by his words, though a certain scout was focused on her.
As the femme stood there across from him her spark started humming again. It didn't want to listen to stories. All it wanted was Bumblebee.
Echo clenched her digits in frustration and pretended to listen to what Optimus was saying. Every now and then, when he looked to her for approval or a comment, she merely smiled and shrugged innocently. She nodded when appropriate and laughed when the others did, her processor running on autopilot. Still, no matter how hard she tried, she could not ignore the feel of the scout's gaze or the tugging in her chassis.
Optimus's previous words about Earth being home came back to her. This may be her new base but Echo knew what home really meant to her. It was standing right in front of her painted yellow and black.
