The Adventures of the Chibi-Bumbles

By Nurannoniel Amruniel T.I.M.E.

Who would've thought that this time, it wasn't Vista's fault?

A/N: I don't actually have a beta right now, so if you guys see something that needs fixing – be it grammatical, spelling, or something that just plain doesn't make sense -, please point it out in a review or email me at nurannoniel (at) yahoo (dot) com with the details and I'll try and fix it. Thank you!

Chapter one

(1)

"Bee!"

The yellow, silver, and black laptop shut off his screen and transformed, a scowl showing in his optics. The speaker screen in his faceplate bent ever-so slightly downwards.

"You're pulling my hydraulics," he snarled. "You're introduction sucks ball-bearings."

"I don't see you coming up with any brilliant ideas, Bumbles," replied the 'bots 'owner', Kelsey. She pulled back her medium-length blond hair into a ponytail and flopped back onto her bed with a sigh.

The laptop's cooling fan revved. Standing at three-foot four, he was more menacing than one would think for one that size. Yellow horn-like antennae flicked back and forth above a pair of sapphire-blue compounded optics. Claws stretched out from the ends of long, thin arms. He folded his arms across his chest in a human gesture of impatience. Wings composed of the laptop's halved screen flicked slightly as the tiny Autobot bounced once on the mattress and landed on his aft. Cylindrical framed legs crossed and came to rest on Kelsey's lap.

"Okay, so writing a 'fan fiction' about yourself is harder than it sounds," grumbled the 'bot. Why he'd agreed to let the human write about him, he'd never figure out. He briefly wondered if he had a glitch in his processors – then he remembered the 'operating system' that was taking up a good deal of his memory, and he decided that yes, that must have been the problem. He made a mental note to have a medic remove all traces of it if he ever got back to his universe.

The twenty-one year old, five-foot tall human laying next to him just grinned. "Why don't you try for a bit, then? A real team effort for once, since you're so sick of me dictating to you."

The mini-bot contemplated this for a moment. "Yeah, okay."

(1)

My name is…

Your inferior organic vocalizers can't pronounce my real name, so you can address me by the name my human gave me; Chibi-BumbleBee.

I'm an Autobot.

Now, I hear humans in this universe believe that us Autobots are a bunch of fictional characters, created for your amusement.

That's why I hate your universe.

I wouldn't be here, except…

(1)

"Bee!"

"WhaaAAAaaat?"

Kelsey threw a ball of paper at the mini-'bot.

"Show some manners to our audience you pile of scrap!"

A loud clank emanated from the yellow Autobot as he slapped his forehead.

"Smelt you."

(1)

Where was I? Oh yeah, so that's why I dislike your universe.

I wouldn't be here, except for what happened while I was out on a mission.

I was out spying on Decepticons when something really freaky happened. The 'con I was tracking pulled out the lamest looking ray gun I have EVER seen and shot me with it. My aft was still smoking when I came to some time later, laying in a ditch that looked the similar to the one I thought I had been left in. Damaged and desperate to get out of there before that glitch-mouse came back to finish me, I snuck on to a truck that had stopped on the side of the road. My luck appeared to be improving; the truck was delivering computers. I scanned a bright yellow laptop and… misplaced it (outside the back of the truck) before settling in for the long run.

I was startled out of my repair cycle when the box I'd hidden in opened to reveal a rather geeky-looking human. He opened up my screen and started trying to "boot me up," oo-ing and ah-ing over my alt mode and muttering something about his sister was going to love me. I did my best to improvise data I'd picked up from the original laptop computer, but I knew I'd be in trouble soon because I had no idea what I was supposed to be displaying on my screen at that moment. Within a few breems a golden-furred organic femme entered the building and joined the other one in poking and prodding me.

I displayed screen after screen of useless data, allowing them to fill in blanks like computer name and network information. Then I came across an interesting file that gave me an idea:

"Would you like to password protect your computer?"

"Yeah, sure, since I'm going to be taking it out in public," replied the femme.

Perfect.

The human entered her username and password information, then went to start up the operating system I'd come to know as "Windows Vista." Suddenly, everything froze.

The femme typed her information in again, and I returned the display to its default blank text boxes. She tried a third time, then cursed.

"It's not letting me in!"

"Here, let me try," and the male pushed her aside. "What'd you use?" She replied with some gibberish and he clicked away on the keyboard a few times before giving up. "Are you sure you didn't screw it up?"

This time she shoved him aside and tried a different combination, similar to her original. She tried a number of combinations, becoming more and more frustrated each time I refused to allow her access. This little dance continued for over an hour before they finally stopped. The femme was leaking fluid from her optics by this point.

The male tried to comfort her and told her they'd call something called "tech support" if their maternal unit couldn't get me to work either. She begrudgingly agreed to this before storming off. Seemingly concerned for his sibling, the male whose designation seemed to be "Matt" picked up a communication device hanging on the wall and started to explain to someone on the other end about the "computer trouble" they were having. When he returned the receiver to its cradle, he called the femme called "Kelsey" back in to the room and told her that their maternal unit had suggested reinstalling Vista.

Now, I'll admit, I was a bit nervous about letting them install alien software onto me, but if I was going to keep my disguise for any length of time then I didn't have much of a choice. They opened my disk drive and stuck in a disk. I reviewed the information quickly and had to resist violently purging it; I had never seen such a mess of coding in my life! Contradictions in coding, programs that if I was stupid enough to run them would cause severe glitches… But I sucked in air through my vents and started copying the data anyways. I had some experience in programming, so I modified as much coding as I could in order to preserve my own functions. It wasn't easy; the OS was serious slag. By the time I returned to the password protect screen, the femme had decided to forgo the extra security measures and went on to finish the boot up protocols. Now knowing what to display, I let them play with my alt mode. As… distasteful as having organic digits running over me was, I was lost and still had some internal damage. Begrudgingly, I settled in for a long, nightmarish wait.

(1)

Another paper ball flew through the air and connected with the Autobot's head. This time, he tossed it back at the girl. "Now what did I say wrong?"

"Oh c'mon," Kelsey said, "the past year hasn't been that bad, has it?"

Chibi-'Bee's fan revved a bit in aggravation.

The human rolled her eyes before sitting back on her bed once more. 'Bee had been pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor of Kelsey's bedroom, reciting out loud what he had been recording in their shared short story.

"You know, whatever…" he at last grumbled at her and transformed. She screamed at him them left the room; she had learned that when the mini-bot clammed up like this, it was useless to try and talk to him. He had, after all, been able to keep quite for almost a year before revealing himself and she knew he would maintain an extended silence once again just to annoy her.

Not too long ago she had thought that he was nothing more than a malfunctioning compact computer unit. He had waited in silence, accessing the Internet at every chance possible in order to try and contact his people. He had found ghost traces of others who were lost like him, but each attempt to ping the signals for coordinates had left him nothing but sluggish processors and a strong desire to slag someone. It didn't help that his 'net surfing had revealed just how slagged he truly was. While he clearly didn't feel like a member of a fictional race, he had found pictures and data referring to Autobots as cartoon and movie characters. Whatever this place was, Cybertronians clearly weren't supposed to exist here...

On the bright side, a few weeks prior to this conflict he had finally received a response from someone.

A micro-bot scout calling himself "Byte" had been tracking 'bots vanishing from their home universe. When he found a Decepticon agent reported to have been using a weapon that made 'bots disappear into thin air, he had known that he'd found the cause of the disappearances and had tried to steal the weapon. The gun had been fired by accident, however, and now he was stuck here too. After making contact with 'Bee, Byte had made his way to the Autobot tracker and had also secretly settled in with the quirky human girl, posing as her iPod.

Then everything changed.

While Chibi-'Bee, Byte and Kelsey were attending classes the two Autobots had detected a Decepticon energy signature. Fearing the worst, the two 'bots made a pact to reveal themselves to the woman. That afternoon, they had done just that.

But not before the yellow Autobot could cause one last bit of mischief…

Hm. Not a bad place to pick up the story.

(1)

"What do you mean it's not Vista's fault? My laptop's been glitching out since the moment we installed that damn – hey, don't you – hello? Hello?? SLAG!!"

I snickered to myself as Kelsey slammed down the phone in anger. Byte scolded me from the next room where he had been listening to the altercation on the phone. Just after my arrival to her home, I had gotten bored with playing the good little laptop and had started to interrupt her work. It was just little stuff at first; screwing with her word processing program, reorganizing applications, making rude noises... You know, nothing that would get myself slagged. I didn't really intend to do much more than that, but this would be my last chance to mess with her. So when she tried to boot me up to do homework, I froze the start-up and displayed a code which, if she'd been able to read binary, could be interpreted to mean "bite me." She'd finally gotten mad enough to call this "tech support" line that she'd been threatening to contact since the beginning. Needless to say, the man on the other end denied that his employer had any and all fault for the error.

I watched her for a moment before Byte crept out of her room and waved at me. It was now or never. I revved my cooling fan and un-muted my vocals.

"He lied – it's all Vista's fault."

The human's head whipped up so fast that even Byte winced. "What?" she asked.

I was getting pretty amused by that point. But enough with the games, we had Decepticon aft to kick. "Ya heard me, he lied."

One eyebrow slowly raised itself a little higher. "Uh, duh…" By this point she had pinpointed the voice as coming from my speakers. Cautiously she poked my side.

"Hey, that tickles!"

"HOLY SLAG!!"

I quickly transformed and put a hand over her mouth to quiet her. Behind her, Byte was on the floor laughing so hard his frame was vibrating. Kelsey seemed to get over the shock rather quickly though, and before her family could come see what the fuss was about she grabbed me and darted around the corner into her personal quarters. Byte ducked inside just as she turned and closed the door.

I wiggled out of her grip and grabbed my companion, climbing up onto her favourite chair and reclining as if the entire situation was completely normal. Byte sat in my lap and flashed the human an apologetic look. Kelsey was shaking, but otherwise for an organic she was taking things extremely well. Finally, she managed to squeak out a single word:

"Autobots?"

Byte (who I'd neglected to share my research regarding the cartoons/movies with) looked as shocked as my human. "How did you know?"

I databurst him with the information I'd found.

"Oh. Never mind."

From there, Byte and I filled her in on what we knew.

Which basically wasn't much. The Decepticons had a weapon that was sending 'bots to other realities, we were stuck in one of said alternate realities, and now a big bad and ugly was nearby probably looking to pick off as many Autobots as he could while we were separated from the main forces. She sat on her bed thoughtfully for a few minutes before she replied "okay."

(1)

After that, they had decided to sit and wait for the Decepticon to make a move. The chance that he would attack directly was low, relying more on mini-bots like themselves to locate and take out the Autobots while remaining safely under cover himself.

The Decepticon hadn't reappeared for two weeks. In that time, Byte and Chibi-'Bee had redoubled their efforts to contact other Autobots by sending encrypted messages throughout the web. So far there had been no response. Then Kelsey had suggested a different approach; use the fandom to make direct contact.

She had theorized that that if 'Bee could find the Transformer fan sites, then other Autobots could as well. By making posts that at first glance looked like everyone else's, they could try and sneak messages out to the others. Just a few key words sprinkled into a forum debate or story…

Which was why they were writing something called "fanfiction." Chibi-'Bee hated the entire idea, but the organic was right. Traditional, direct forms of Cybertronian communication could be compromised. So here he was, trying to write up how he had gotten here in the first place, hoping someone on their side would see it and try to contact them.

Later that night after Kelsey and Byte had gone to sleep/defrag, Chibi-'Bee finished reviewing what he had written and posted it to the woman's internet account.

Now, he mused, the real waiting would begin.

(1)

HA! Pardon the bragging, but I haven't written this much since junior high! I'm actually kinda giddy right now. If you're having any trouble picturing CB, he looks like a cross between Bumblebee and Frenzy. That's the Chibi-Bee.

Thanks to TinySprite for putting this story on alert! Getting that notice kicked my aft into gear to finish this chapter.

Thank you for reading my fan fiction!