A/N: Wow...I fail. It's been more than a month! I'm so sorry everybody! I got so tied up in a paper I've been working on for the past few weeks and then some. I haven't really had much time to work on this. So yeah, I apologize for that. Thank you all for the encouraging reviews everyone! :D Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know that I think I'm going to try to upload a new chapter every other week. It really depends on my school work. (I know I'll be swamped next week because I have to make an election commercial for US History all week for the candidate I support. I'm not going to say who that is because it doesn't matter. I'm not even old enough to vote and I don't want people who support the other candidate to flame my fic for stupid and irrelevant reasons.) So enjoy!!

Disclaimer: We all know that if I actually owned anything connected to Transformers, I would die happy. Sadly I do not. As I've stated, I've drawn inspirations from episodes of many series with this plot, but I will not copy every single word and event; just the concept of the plot.

Warning: An epically awesome (not the cool way) turn of events, Starscream's crude humor, and perhaps cursing with Cybertronian diction.


We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

-Oscar Wilde

Hope is the most exciting thing in life and if you honestly believe that love is out there, it will come. And even if it doesn't come straight away there is still that chance all through your life that it will.

-Josh Hartnett

Where there's life, there's hope.

-Terence

"My name's Hope," she explained as she poked a small portion metal in her hand. Curiously, she glanced back to Bumblebee after a few moments. "What's yours?"

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Same As It Never Was

Chapter Five

"I'm Bumblebee," Bumblebee replied as he nervously shifted by the teenaged girl. It was unexpected that one of the humans was willing to talk to him, but it was a good relief.

"Bumblebee?" Hope asked, following with a giggle. This caused Bumblebee to cock an optic ridge at her and the sudden laughing. Was she making fun of him? Did she come to talk to him, just to laugh at him? Bumblebee slowly sunk his head downward and gave an equivalent to a 'sigh'. He (or any other of his kind) couldn't sigh – no, it was physically impossible for they did not breathe, but it was a useful human expression to mimic.

"I'm sorry!" Hope suddenly blurted, making Bumblebee to glance in her direction. She leapt up from her spot and quickly waved her arms in an apologetic, yet exasperated manner as she continued. "I didn't mean to laugh! I just didn't expect you to have such a cute name!"

"My name's cute?" Bumblebee asked, grateful that Hope wasn't laughing at him. But that didn't mean that it wasn't a bit awkward. There was no way that Sentinel, wherever the fragging glitch-head was or even if he was still online, had cute in mind when he grudgingly named Bumblebee.

"Well, I would have never guessed 'Bumblebee.' To me, you look more like a 'Hotshot.' Heh heh...," Hope sprightly reasoned as she leaned against the wall and slid back down to the floor level. She picked up the sparking remains of the "Spy-bot" that had fallen to the ground when she had jumped up and began prodding the exposed wires and circuitry with her index digit. Bumblebee watched her for a few quiet moments and listened as Hope murmured a few inaudible words.

"So you built that?" he asked, not expecting Hope to jerk her head upward suddenly the way she did. It was like that she was so intensely focused that she had forgotten about the yellow mech was sitting beside her.

"Oh...Yeah...I started studying schematics of the D.S.U. robots a few years ago. I still don't think I'm really good at this though. I can't even build a simple radio without it exploding in my face..."

"D.S.U?"

"That means 'Decepticon Search Units.' They're the little robots that are always flying around on the streets. Anyway, I didn't really understand a lot about circuitry or technology, but Bulkhead gave me some tips when he brought me some parts of robots that he destroyed. Prowl was the most help to me because he tutored me for a little while. I was surprised by how much he knows, but I guess that was because he was on the space bridge repair crew..."

"How do you know about that?" Bumblebee asked.

"Well he didn't say a whole lot about the past, but Prowl told me a little about what he did before all of this happened," Hope stated as she moved her arms around in emphasis, "He told me about how your crew found the AllSpark, how you all came to Earth, when you met Sari...Never anything more though," Hope's voice drawled off as she looked towards Bumblebee and frowned at his oncoming expression of sadness.

"It must be nice not to be hated by everyone," Bumblebee mumbled in a melancholious manner and titled his head back against the wall. "How did this all happen? What if this really is my fault?"

"I know this is a shock Bumblebee, but you can't let what Prowl or that big jerk Starscream said get to you. Megatron did this. Not you."

"Everything just feels so wrong. Some of my closest friends are gone!...Nothing should be this way!"

"..." Bumblebee swore that he saw Hope open her mouth as if to say something, but she instead brought the mechanical leftovers closer to her front and rested her head down onto the support of her knees.

Heaving another sighing motion, Bumblebee shook his head vigorously and slowly rose from the ground, placing his servo on the wall for support once again. He had forgotten that he wasn't the only one who thought this future was a nightmare. He had only been here for what, two or three Earth hours? Humans like Hope were accustomed to it because they had grown into it. They probably thought there was no way to oppose Megatron and change the future because they had never known anything else.

"I guess there's nothing I can do about the past right now...I should focus on the present and what I can do to change it for now."

"Perfect timing! You couldn't have picked a better time to quit moaning like a protoform!"

Bumblebee and Hope alike looked up in surprise to see a partially gasping Starscream grasping his left servical unit as sparks swarmed from it and the exposed circuitry.

"What happened?!" Bumblebee asked slightly concerned about the seeker, but more so of what had caused the damage.

"Apparently those pesky little mockeries of true technological superiority ambushed me when I arrived to the designated area of that lecherous bounty hunter. It was almost as if they expected me." The anger and annoyance in Starscream's voice was evident as he leaned against some rubble and rubbed the abrasion haphazardly. "Son of a glitch! Fragging codpiece!!"

"You were able to destroy them right?" Bumblebee asked cautiously. He was aware of how dangerous Starscream could be when he was bothered- he learned that from 'interrupting his speech'.

"What do you think fool?! Even I know when it's pointless to fight a battle when you're outmatched. I barely escaped without serious damage..."

"Wait! So you just came back knowing that they would follow you?!"

"Ofcourse! While I was at it, I personally invited them for a visit!"

"Starscream," Bumblebee growled and placed his servos on his pelvic arch, glaring unmercifully at the intimidatingly taller seeker.

"Relax shrimp," Starscream 'assuringly' replied as he examined his injury in an uncaring manner without bothering to look at Bumblebee once. "Those glitches aren't skilled enough to keep up with my superb flying tactics. The malfunctions give up the chase when they lost sight their prey anyway. Obviously insistence wasn't held in processor when that foolish bag of bolts, Megatron, built those nuisances."

It all happened so quickly. Suddenly the ground began to shake as, if on queue, lasers perturbed through the walls and made little work of the already crumbling structure. The humans began to frightfully scurry back and forth in every which direction; their screams of confusion only slightly muted by the buzzes of the lasers. Hope too was crying in fear, but instead of running away, she quickly scuttled over to Bumblebee stabilizing servos and grasped on for dear life.

"Looks like you've lost your touch over the stellar cycles Starscream!" Bumblebee cried angrily over the chaos and sent the seeker a short glare. Relying solely on his logic of keeping the human girl safe, Bumblebee crouched down above Hope to protect her from the falling debris of the building. He saw that she had curled into a tight, cowering ball with her small human hands covering her ears like she was trying to block out the screams of the other humans. That was the last thing Bumblebee remembered before feeling something large and heavy striking against a fragile spot on the back on his processor.

Whut? Whut? Cliffhanger? Yes, indeed. Happy early Halloween! I planted an itsy Easter egg here. Can you find it?

Hope doesn't seem like a Mary-sue right?...Right?...

CW, you are helping me out more than you know and mentioning my mistakes (despite how small they may become) is a big plus. I forget some grammar rules quite easily so, I usually look back on your reviews for a quick reminder. So yeah, you are a big help! Thank you for your compliments!