Disclaimer: Transformers and all other characters related to the 2007 movie are owned by their respective owners, not me.

Note: In the last two chapters, the Decepticons have had their time to shine. Now it's the Autobots turn.

Chapter 3: Reconnaissance

The next morning, Saturday, the sun rose into the sky, bringing with it the kind of atmosphere that made you feel, that for one split second, everything was well in the world. At least, that was the feeling that washed over Sam as he lay on the lawn staring up at the sky.

For Sam, life couldn't get much better. He had helped saved the world, made a bunch of new friends, who happened to be 30 foot high transforming alien robots, and more importantly, he was the official boyfriend of the hottest girl in school. In fact, he had planned a special weekend just for the two of them. He had saved up most of his money for the last three months and spent it renting out the most luxurious beach hut he could find on the most romantic beach in the area. Sam was feeling good, and who knows, maybe this weekend would be the one that marked the change from a high school dating couple into something more serious. He would pick up Mikaela and take her to the beach for 48 hours of nothing but each other. Or at least, he would do if his car was around.

Since the conclusion of the Mission City battle and, once it had become apparent that the Transformer presence on Earth was going to be a long term arrangement, Optimus and the other Autobots had started to not only find out about the humans, but allow the humans to find out about them. One of the first things Sam had been told was the danger of long-term Transformation. In essence, in order to maintain a foolproof disguise as an Earth vehicle, it requires something of a change in the Transformer's actual main processor. To put it simply, Transformers are not robots looking like cars, they are actually cars, they merely retain some semblance of their personalities and processing capabilities while in vehicle form, and, as a direct consequence of this, if a Transformer spends too long in a vehicle form, their processors become more and more like that of a vehicle and it becomes harder to keep hold of that part which is an autonomous robot. Until eventually their processors become too used to vehicle form and they lose the ability to transform back. The remedy for this was for a Transformer to transform into robot mode for a few hours every day.

In Sam's case, this meant that Bumblebee would drive himself out of the garage every night, head either into the hills or into the old abandoned warehouse that the Autobots had found and become robot again. This was fine with Sam except for the fact that Bumblebee seemed to possess no sense of timing and his reappearances would be completely random. Sam leaned up on his elbows and looked at the garage. No Camaro. Sam sighed, fell back down, and continued to think about Mikaela.

The sun was high in the sky by the time the familiar roar of Bumblebee's engine was heard coming down the road. Sam was on his feet and standing on the sidewalk by the time Bumblebee rolled casually to a stop outside the house. Sam threw open the door, flung himself into the driver's seat and slammed the door behind him.

"Where were you?" He yelled, slapping the dashboard with one hand. Bumblebee said nothing. Sometimes having a dodgy voice box was very convenient Sam thought as he put his seatbelt on and floored the accelerator. "Now I'm late. You know how important this weekend is to me. Just once I needed you to be there on time." Bumblebee said nothing and continued to let Sam dictate the direction. Maybe, if Sam knew why he was so late, he'd be more understanding.

Sam pulled up on the corner of Mikaela's street. Sam still wasn't really comfortable in the presence of Mikaela's parents. Shortly after Mission City, Mikaela's father had had his parole hearing and had managed to be accepted. It had never been mentioned exactly how much of a hand Sam and the Autobots had played in her father's release. However, Mikaela's father was very possessive. After all, he had just had his little girl given back to him, and now this dweeb in the flashy Camaro was trying to take her away again. So Mikaela's father was not exactly buddy-buddy with Sam at the moment. Her mother was accepting of Sam given that he cared for Mikaela but, on Sam's first visit to the Banes' household, Mikaela's mother had discreetly pulled him aside and promised that if Sam ever let Mikaela down, he would never walk again. After that night, Sam had tried to avoid contact with Mikaela's family. Before too long, Mikaela looked out of her bedroom window on the top floor, spotted the bright yellow Camaro, waved (Bumblebee flashed his headlights in response), disappeared from view, and shortly appeared out of the front door with a backpack over her shoulder. She was wearing the exact same outfit that she'd been wearing at the lake over a year ago and Sam had to work hard to keep his eyes on her face as opposed to other parts of her body.

Mikaela opened the back door and put her backpack on the seat, then she walked back round to the front and got in the passenger side door.

"Hey Sam." She said, putting her seat belt on as Bumblebee started driving away by himself. "Hey Bumblebee." She added. The radio flicked on and the repeated Hello from "Sounds like Teen Spirit" started playing. Mikaela laughed as Sam turned the radio off. Mikaela turned to Sam.

"So, where are we going?"

"Just wait," Sam said grinning like a maniac, "I've rented this awesome hut on the beach for the weekend. Oh, just wait 'til you see it. It's…" Sam trailed off as he finally noticed where Bumblebee was going.

"Oh no, no, no. Bumblebee! Turn around right now." Bumblebee ignored his ranting charge and continued to trundle down the dirt path that led to the disused warehouse.

The warehouse had once been owned by a food company that had stored food in Tranquillity before taking the supplies over to the port towns by train. However, a strain of salmonella had been found in one batch, the customers had lost faith, the money had stopped coming in, and nonessential facilities were shut down. The site had been up for sale to property developers, but the site was too far out of the way to make development viable. Now, it was just left to rust. At least, it had been until the Autobots had moved in. It seemed a perfect home and the Autobots cared very little about the state of the place, being that they were so used to seeing damaged metal. They had seen so much scrap on Cybertron that a few knocks and dents in a warehouse were nothing to them.

Bumblebee squealed to a stop outside of the double doors and honked his horn three times. A few seconds later the doors were pushed open, seemingly by no-one. Bumblebee drove in, with Sam still protesting loudly. Once inside, the doors swung shut again. Bumblebee opened his doors and gave a little shake which was sufficiently violent for Sam and Mikaela to fall out. Sam pulled himself to him feet and rounded on the Camaro.

"I can't believe you'd do this Bumblebee. We had a deal man. I mean, wasn't two weeks off good enough for you. That was the deal right. All I wanted was for you to drive where I wanted today. After all, you're my guardian right? Doesn't that mean you do what I say?" Mikaela put her hand on Sam's shoulder, stopping him mid-rant.

"Sam," She said quietly, causing Sam to turn around. "Is that what I think it is?" Sam looked where Mikaela was looking and it suddenly dawned on him exactly why Bumblebee had brought them here.

"Jazz?"

The blackened hull of the Autobot second in command was lying on an impromptu workbench. Hundreds of cables snaked from various apertures on the robot's hull and fed into a computer on the desk. Despite how old the computer looked, Sam could tell it had been heavily modified by Ratchet. The screen was flashing, alternating between white, black and blue. Aside, from the flashing, nothing was moving. Then…

"S'up Sam? S'up Mikaela?" The screen flashed in time with the words. Mikaela gave a small scream and Sam, prepared as always merely stood with his mouth hanging open.

"Jazz?" Sam said slowly "Is that really you?"

"No." The voice said again, screen flashing. "It's the fraggin' tooth fairy. 'Course it's me."

"But, in Mission City, Megatron." That was Mikaela, having recovered enough to form a coherent sentence.

"Did a number on me good an' proper," The computer's speakers said. "But, while Sam was off saving the universe and you and Bumblebee were blastin' ol' Devastator to hell an' back, Ratchet found my personality chip. Soon as we got this place, he installed me into this thing. And I gotta tell ya kids, your technology is awful. I hadda spend this last year dumbin' myself down so I could use it."

"But your body," Sam said, looking at the heap of twisted metal.

"Ah, don' worry about that." The computer said. Sam was kind of disconcerted by the fact that it had managed to copy Jazz's accent as well. "I won't be getting that body back, if that's what you're thinking. Too much scrap, not enough parts. But hey, I'm still talkin' an' that's good enough for me." Jazz said as the two teenagers stared at the contraption on the desk. "So, what'd I miss? You two get it on yet?" This shocked Sam and Mikaela into silence. Ever since Ratchet's statement on the night they'd all met, the Autobots had been trying to master the art of what the humans called tact. They were coming along nicely but it was obvious that Jazz's lessons had been cut short. Jazz merely took there silence as a negative and continued talking. "Ok then, forget about that. Guess there's more important things to be talkin' 'bout anyway. So, start talking. Did we win?" That question seemed to do it. At least for Mikaela anyway, and, as she started to talk about everything that Jazz had missed Sam got the feeling that the beach and a romantic weekend were suddenly an awful long way away.

The comm screen was dead. Not that that was really surprising. The screen had been dead for a long time. Almost as long as the crew had been stranded on this barren asteroid. The departure from Cybertron had been proceeding nicely until that Decepticon cruiser had shown up out of nowhere and taken out their aft engines. With nowhere left to go, and the Ark easily outpacing them, the secondary escape ship had been forced to crash on the nearest stable planetary surface amidst a hail of plasma. Luckily, the crew of the Cruiser had assumed that the crew had died in the crash and flown off. But still, repair work had been slow and difficult. A lack of parts had meant that they had had to resort to using parts salvaged from the crew that did die in the crash. And most of their systems had been knocked offline, including the comm screen.

"crackle Allspark gone, we cannot return fizz" The transformer working at a panel suddenly dropped everything and ran for the comm, picking up the receiver from its bracket on the wall.

"Alert, Alert. Boss! Incoming Transmission! It's Optimus!" The last word was screamed with a mixture of joy and despair. The beloved leader of the Autobots was alive and safe. But, what had he said about the Allspark? It was gone? But that meant that Cybertron…

The Autobot was snapped out of his thoughts by the presence of their own leader who gently pushed him out of the way and listened to the message.

"fizz new world to call home. We live among its people now crackle" A long burst of static filled the airwaves and all of the Autobots that had rushed to the bridge waited in tense apprehension that the message was disrupted. But then, to everyone's relief it came back, clear as a bell, so that no one could mishear it.

"I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars: We are here. We are waiting." Then the message cut off, no static. The message had just ended. Silence filled the bridge of the Exodus until finally one Transformer dared to speak.

"Just like Optimus that. Short, and to the point." The leader suddenly rose from where he had been leaning on the comm panel.

"Right, I want two Autobots analyzing that signal. I want to know where it came from and if it was really Optimus who sent it. I know it sounds like him, but don't forget that there are Decepticons out there who want our sparks really badly. The rest of you, get this ship ready to move. As soon as we get confirmation one way or the other, we're heading out. If that message came from Optimus, lock onto the co-ordinates and follow it. If it didn't, that means the Decepticons have found us and we're not safe here anyway." And, as all the other Autobots on the ship scurried away to perform their duties, the leader muttered to himself, "And I hope to the Allspark that Optimus sent it."

Well, there we go. I'm introducing new Transformers now. It must admit that G1 transformers are not my strong suit so there may only be a few of them appearing. More likely the new characters will be Transformers from the Cybertron or Armada series. But, I'm always open to suggestions which can be submitted via the little blue button below. Also, there is a special prize for anyone who can guess the identity of "the leader"