-1Drone

Chapter Four

The 'Personal Touch'

Dawn broke, and Sam awoke to sunlight trying to pierce the fabric of the curtains in his room. Yawning, he dressed, and then opened his window. His yellow Camaro was outside, looking like nothing more than a flashy car.

"Bumblebee?" Sam called down quietly to his Autobot friend.

"Sam? Good morning!" called up Bumblebee, equally quietly. "There was no sign of Barricade last night or this morning." he said. Sam breathed out in relief: maybe his last fight with his Autobot guardian had tired out Barricade too.

"Sam? It is a Sunday today. That means that you have most of the day free. Could you and Mikaela give me a wash?" Bumblebee asked.

Sam grinned: Bumblebee enjoyed being washed, and not because he was a clean freak. Bumblebee had once explained to Sam that a network of sensors extended through his systems, both inside and out. Bumblebee's metal skin was therefore as sensitive, if not more so, than Sam's own organic skin. Sam knew that Bumblebee was tactilely stimulated by being washed, even in car form. It was Sam's intention to one day ask Bumblebee if he could wash him at the Autobot base in robot form: he was curious to see how sensitive Bumblebee was in robot form, and exactly where.

"I'll call Mikaela, I'm sure she'll agree, and you do know that it's a fortnight since your last wax? That means you're due a wax today as well." Sam said, and turned to get his phone.

"We could go for a drive about afterwards, if you like." Bumblebee said. "We could go to the Lookout, or to where Optimus landed, or somewhere you think of, if you like."

Sam called Mikaela, and she was more than happy to come and give Bumblebee a wash, especially if it involved a drive around afterwards. Sam got in, and Bumblebee drove them to Mikaela's, where she, with a bag of spare clothes and some towels, got in.

"Hi, Bumblebee, feeing better?" Mikaela asked, stroking his dash affectionately.

"Yes, thank you, much better, Ratchet's repairs mean the scars are healing very well." Bumblebee assured Mikaela.

Bumblebee then drove them back to Sam's house, where Sam and Mikaela got ready the buckets of soapy water, the sponges, the soft leathers (One for each human to use) and the bottle of wax. Mikaela's spare clothes and towels were waiting for her in the Witwicky downstairs bathroom, for when washing their Autobot friend, Sam and Mikaela tended to get thoroughly soaked.

They gave him a thorough wetting and scrubbing, making sure to wash all those parts that other people might forget: behind the tires, under the bumper, under the doors, around the outside edges of the chassis, and around the door, hood, and trunk hinges and edges. The tires got a good hosing down too, and just for good measure, Mikaela took a quick look at his engine, which was still clean and looked in great condition to Mikaela's practiced eye. To help the time pass, Bumblebee alternately talked to them and played them songs from the radio.

After that, they used the wax and leathers to good effect, so that once they had finished, although they were damp, grubby, and sweaty, Bumblebee gleamed in the morning sun.

"Thank you." Bumblebee said once they had finished, showing them his appreciation by playing them the "Wonderful, you're wonderful" clip he'd played when Mikaela had worked out that he was alien, after that first Barricade/Bumblebee fight at the dump.

"Well, we'd best clean up, so we'll see you in about half an hour, buddy." said Sam. Sam took the upstairs bathroom and Mikaela the downstairs one (after advising Ron and Judy to 'go' if they needed to) and then they changed into fresh clothes. Judy told Mikaela to dump her stuff in the wash basket, she was doing a wash anyway, and after thanking her, Sam and Mikaela went back downstairs. Bumblebee flicked open his doors for them, an open invitation that both Sam and Mikaela accepted, sitting down in his front seats, which Bumblebee moulded to give them optimum comfort. They fastened their seat belts, and only then did Bumblebee start his engine.

"Where do you want to go?" Bumblebee asked.

"The Lookout, please!" Mikaela asked, as Sam smiled. They both had some very fond memories of that location, as Optimus had stood, looking into space and beaming out his message to the other Autobots. Neither Sam nor Mikaela had heard the contents of that message, as much as because they were too involved with each other as that Optimus had sent it out quietly.

The message had been a signal to other Autobots, inviting them to join Optimus and the other four on Earth. Several had turned up in the intervening months. 'Who would have thought that nine months on from my presentation about my great-grandfather Archibald Witwicky's expedition to the North Pole, that we'd have big alien friends with names like Cliffjumper, Mirage, Prowl, Jazz, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, Hound and, of course, Bumblebee?'

Sam thought amusedly to himself.

'Not forgetting having fought enemies with names like Megatron, Blackout, Starscream, Bonecrusher, Brawl, Barricade and Frenzy. Trent would accuse me of being mad like my great grandfather if I told him!' Sam thought sourly, but, then, at least with his friends, the Mission City battle was one fight they had won. 'That, at least, is something that neither Barricade nor Trent can take away from me." thought Sam, cheering up at the thought.

As Bumblebee pulled away with his human friends relaxed inside him, Bumblebee ignored the tickling sensation that was running along his auto-repair sensors. It was probably a side-effect of the systems working to repair the gashes Barricade had inflicted. Healing armour always itched, as he knew, so he ignored it, and took his human friends where they wanted to go. Ignoring it seemed to work: five minutes later the sensation was gone.

Unbeknownst to Bumblebee, the nasty little drone had finished its first task: Bumblebee's damage detection system and auto-repair function was now completely destroyed. The second stage of its programming-the 'personal touch' Starscream had introduced-kicked in, and the scuttling mechanoid scurried up inside Bumblebee's body. It briefly paused by his Spark chamber, but its programming contained instructions for dealing with that further on: for now it was to ignore it.

It scuttled up into Bumblebee's chest/throat junction, and set about its assigned task. Starscream knew enough about Bumblebee to have ensured that this test of his invention would hurt Bumblebee as much as possible, both physically and psychologically.

Following Starscream's recently-programmed instructions to it, the drone began to attack and destroy Bumblebee's vocal processing unit, one chip and circuit at a time.