Part 2 – To Hell on Earth

"Ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it."
-Phantoms (Dean Koontz)

"What in..." began one Autobot as another exclaimed, "Great Cybertron!"

The Scout stirred from his doze. The new unit of Autobots sent to Earth had made it through their first week, nervously and with much complaint. The posted sentry hadn't picked up on the change in the air or -if he had- he'd failed to realize what it implied. Bumblebee looked around, but he'd grown so used to the weather of Earth over the last five years (a meaningless number told to him by his new CO) that he didn't at first understand what all the fuss was about.

"It's like a cloud of smoke, only wet!" cried one of them whose name Bumblebee hadn't yet seen fit to learn, flinching away from the dampness, though it was a futile gesture as the wet was quite literally everywhere.

Bumblebee could already feel that the rust prevention measures the Autobot scientists had developed weren't as effective as anticipated or desired. But he knew that they were far better than nothing. For reasons he didn't know or care about, not one of the Autobots who'd arrived was a medic, so there was nobody with the supplies or knowledge to undo whatever damage Bumblebee had sustained, but there had come with these bots a number of items to reduce any future damage.

It was clear, however, that certain portions of his reports had been lost, ignored, misinterpreted or at least not passed on to the grunts going into the field. Or perhaps these bots simply hadn't believed their audio receivers when they were told about all the ways water might come at them.

{It's only fog,} Bumblebee supplied casually, {It's normal.}

"You might have warned us," Axle, his new CO, snapped.

{I did!} Bumblebee snarled right back.

"Do not take that tone with your commanding officer!" yelled a Warrior.

{I'll take any tone I like!} Bumblebee shot back without hesitation, {I will not be blamed for things which are not my fault! And fog is not my fault! I am not responsible for the weather!}

"Calm down!" Axle broke in, "The both of you! Bumblebee, you're out of line. I've cut you slack because you've been here longer than the rest of us, which means you've suffered more and also have knowledge of the area. But I draw the line at insubordination. And Throttle, I can defend myself. Now look, we're tired, wet and miserable, but we're in this together so we should make the best of it. Our enemy is the Decepticons, not each other."

"Pardon me, sir," interrupted a Warrior, younger than the one Axle had referred to as Throttle, "But the Decepticons are light-years away. It's not likely they'll ever come here, or that we'll ever get another shot at them. We're glorified security guards."

"And what purpose do you suppose security guards serve?" Axle asked pointedly.

These Autobots were actually a kind of advanced guard. They had brought some energon with them, but primarily their purpose was to make sure the way was clear for those who would follow.

They were a heavily armed company whose main purpose would be to defend Earth, and in particular the energon caches once they were put in place, against any and all Decepticon threats. Their training and function here was not only to fight against the Decepticons, but potentially to do it against overwhelming numbers. Their ranks were swollen by Autobots trained in the sciences, primarily research and development, sent to make sense of Bumblebee's reports, and to provide detailed answers to questions of those still on Cybertron, who were in the process of designing technologies for this new terrain, and conducting accelerated training courses for bots on the verge of being deployed to Earth.

Bumblebee was the Scout, his years here were nothing more than a first impression for the Autobots. He didn't resent that. There was a lot of stuff he didn't know, didn't understand and didn't care to. He'd admitted as much in his reports. And anyway, the fact was that he was tired. It was a relief to have other bots here, taking over. And it was even more of one to finally have a clear objective again.

But the reunion with his kind was not what he'd hoped it would be.

He'd been a Scout in the field for so long that he wasn't even sure how to connect with other beings anymore. Damage sustained and years on Earth had not exactly helped matters. Worse, they'd brought out an anger in him that he hadn't realized had been lying dormant inside for years. The anger didn't seem to have a direction, and he didn't know its cause, but its slow burn had made it powerful, and Bumblebee found himself lashing out before he even knew it was happening.

These bots were stranger to him than the fog, and he couldn't feel comfortable around them.

Am I a Rogue? Bumblebee wondered.

He didn't feel especially treacherous. It wasn't that he didn't feel loyal to the Autobots, or that he had thoughts of abandoning the war, or that he had any love for Decepticons. None of that had changed. It was more like he'd had a list of things that made up his opinions and governed his behaviors, and suddenly there was something new there, that bumped the positioning of everything else down a notch.

Only... he didn't know what that something was. No, to be more accurate, he didn't want to know.

The war had changed him, and now Earth had changed him too. What he didn't know was exactly what had changed. He didn't know who he was anymore. And that scared him. That fear, he realized, was what had made him angry. But knowing that didn't seem to make it any more manageable.

He realized the discussion had gone on without him. That happened a lot. Before Earth, he had sometimes lost interest or purposely stopped paying attention to a conversation which seemed to have no relevance, but now he would wax thoughtful and reflective without realizing it, losing seconds or even minutes of time by his inattention. It disturbed him, but did not greatly distress him. He had been through too much for such minor ticks to upset him to any significant degree. It was just a new fact of his existence, like his mangled voice box, or his water damaged T-cog that rendered transformation slower and noisier than it ought to have been. Perhaps the rust had got to his brain. He didn't know, but he also couldn't do anything about it, so he merely accepted it.

Vaguely he wondered if the bots who'd chosen the soldiers for this mission had neglected to send a medic out of stupidity, ignorance, misguided optimism, or something worse... like maybe there weren't enough medics left to go around. Decepticons made targets of medics because they knew that taking out one medic weakened the Autobot army more than killing twenty Warriors. Medics by necessity were excellent fighters, particularly in close combat, because Decepticon assassins tended to come at them in their medical tents while they worked. But medics were not front line fighters, and were guarded as well as the Autobots could manage. If there were so few of them that not even one could be spared for this far-flung, dangerous mission to Earth... then things were as bad back home as Bumblebee had feared in his darker moments.

"Nobody said anything about Earth scraplets," a Warrior was complaining, "I dunno what these bugs are doin', but it don't feel right."

Bumblebee decided to say nothing. He had reported on the plethora of nesting animals in as much detail as he was able. But those reports probably hadn't been seen by these bots. They were just grunts, there were things the higher ups decided they 'didn't need to know'. Or forgot that they needed to know. It was easy to gloss over the nesting habits of organics when you were faced with the horrors of falling water, rising water, sand storms and various other things which were equally dangerous and/or painful.

The 'Earth scraplets' were mosquitoes. The Autobots had noticed that they sucked the lifeblood from other organics, though they were harmless to Cybertronians. They also loved water, it was where they laid their eggs. Bumblebee had failed to even notice them in his first year on Earth. They were so small, and there were so many other organics, the likes of which Bumblebee had never seen nor heard of.

"Let them be," Axle said unnecessarily, "They can't hurt you, your weapons or the energon we're guarding, so they're to be ignored and harmed as little as possible."

Bumblebee was relieved by the updated orders. He'd been terrified of being punished for not having avoided harming any lifeforms whatsoever. But the reality of the Earth situation had sunk into someone's consciousness. Destruction on some level was literally unavoidable.

"We weren't meant for this," the Warrior grumbled, "Everything on this planet goes 'squish' too easily. And it's all so tiny. It's unreasonable to expect us to notice every bug we step on."

"Not all of them are bugs," a scientist corrected him.

"Yeah? Then what are they?" the Warrior asked.

"Unclassified. But certainly they are nothing like insecticons or scraplets."

Bumblebee wasn't so sure of that, but then again he wasn't a scientist.

This particular researcher was an excitable type, energetic in an annoying kind of way. Obviously new to the field, he was high on energon, and low on experience. Soldiers in the field often went without, running on minimal internal reserves of energon because transporting it took time, and was a risky business. Even when they had energon provided, there was never enough to go around. Not anymore.

But for those who had worked behind walls, well within secured Autobot territory, the pinch of the energon shortage wasn't really felt. It wasn't cruelty on the part of the Autobot army, but practicality. It wasn't just that it was easier, faster and safer to transport energon to secure locations; it was that the transports more often reached their destination in the first place. It was simply a fact of reality that they all faced.

The upshot of this was that Bumblebee and the others were long-used to conserving what little they had. The researcher had enough extra energon to be lively and annoying, and had no practice doing without. Nobody bothered him about it, it was the kind of thing you had to learn for yourself. Way out here on Earth, where their duty was to cache and defend energon and avoid using it whenever possible, he was going to get a crash course in it fairly shortly.

In the meantime, he was annoyance Axle was willing to tolerate, and therefore the other Warriors also tolerated. Bumblebee was quietly amused, partly because he remembered having so much energy. In fact, he was young enough that, with a little more energon than he had, he could be nearly that lively.

"I, for one, relish the historical opportunities presented by this world," the researcher commented, and Bumblebee realized the conversation had once more moved on without him.

"Here we go," Throttle rolled his eyes.

"This is a chance we never could have expected. The opportunity to see history made, to witness how things must have been on Cybertron eons before the Autobots and Decepticons were a distant idea."

"They're organics," Throttle reminded him harshly, "What could they possibly have in common with us?"

"Oh a lot," the researcher persisted, "A lot."

"Jax," Axle said, "How would you know? You haven't even seen a human yet."

"I read the reports," Jax replied sensibly, "And history was a sort of... hobby of mine. Before."

Bumblebee perked up a little. At least someone had read his reports.

"Anyway, study of humans is part of my job here," Jax continued, "The Scout did the best he could with what he had, but there's things I know that he doesn't, questions I can answer because of that, given the opportunity to observe them."

"Yes, yes, we all know you're excited about humans," Throttle spat, "It's just some of us aren't so keen on 'em."

Tension rippled through Bumblebee. It wasn't a threat against humanity, but it sure had the makings of one. With a twitch of his head, Bumblebee gauged how difficult it would be to take Throttle down, or maybe even out. Throttle was no easy target. He was a big bruiser, twice Bumblebee's size. But he was not slow of mind or body. Bumblebee hoped he'd never have to find out if he could take him.

But the simple fact of the matter was that when he'd received the message telling him there would be Autobots coming, his orders were somewhat revised. It was his job to protect humans, and to prevent interference with them, from Decepticons or Autobots. By any means necessary.

"Settle," Axle growled, evidently not liking the look he saw in Bumblebee's eyes, "Scout, is there any way out of this wet?"

{No,} Bumblebee said, {Fog gets everywhere, there is no escape. It should disappear in awhile.}

"In awhile?" Throttle asked, "What's that mean?"

"He's talking about evaporation," Jax replied evenly, "When the Earth's sun gets higher in the sky, it'll start to burn off the water. It'll turn into steam then, and float off."

{Sort of,} Bumblebee amended.

"Sort of," Jax said agreeably.

"Well," Throttle grunted sarcastically, "I don't know 'bout anybody else, but I feel reassured."

Ignoring him, Jax turned to Bumblebee, "I'd like to see the humans. Can you take me to them?"

Bumblebee didn't move for an extended moment. He looked to his new CO at last. He'd been a loner for a long time, far longer than he'd been on Earth. But he realized that, as a soldier, he must be bound by the laws that governed those of his ilk. It startled him that he actually wanted to show Jax the humans, to explain all he'd learned to someone who could share his enthusiasm and perplexed amusement at the antics of the small, fragile, but very fierce creatures of Earth.

At a nod from Axle, Bumblebee turned and headed off. Axle stayed to supervise the concealment of the energon they had brought with them. He figured the Scout had lived here long enough on his own to take care of himself. And hopefully Jax as well.