CHAPTER-5: PAIN
A cloud of dust was left in the yellow Camero's wake a he drove down the deserted road that led to the Autobot's secret base. Raf sat patiently in the back seat, silently looking out of the window.
The young boy was a little worried about his friend. Bumblebee had been extremely quiet for the last few days, since he had been pick up from school on he day after the accident, when normally they just couldn't stop talking. And Raf had also noticed that Bee was driving quite a bit slower than usual. Looking at his watch Raf noticed it had taken them also half an hour longer than normal as they drove into the main rec-room.
Raf had told Bee all about what had happened at A&E and that nurse Darby had given him the all clear. The Camero seemed relived at hearing the news, but he still looked sad when he was looking at the human boy in front of him. Raf knew Bee felt guilty for what happened and had tried on multiple occasions to reassure him that it wasn't his fault, but to no avail.
"Hey Bee. What took you? A flat tire?" Bulkhead called over as Bee transformed and walked over to the rest of the group huddled around the main monitors.
"What's going on?" Bumblebee asked, ignoring Bulkhead's comment.
"Probably just a glitch. Nothing to worry about." Arcee replied not turning away from the screen.
"Or maybe the Nemesis's cloaking is malfunctioning again. Either way it's best we check it out." Ratchet informed the team.
"Ratchet stay here and monitor the situation. Autobot's roll out." Optimus ordered his team sternly.
"See you later Bee" Raf called to his yellow friend who waved at him before transforming and following his leader through the ground bridge.
The Autobot's drove through the ground bridge and into the middle of the desert. The late afternoon sun, shone magnificently off of their bright armour as they transformed and began looking around.
"There's nothing here!" Bulkhead exclaimed after they had searched the area.
"Agreed. We should return back to base." Arcee stated, and the group all nodded in agreement until the faint sound of a jet engine met there audio sensors.
"Not so fast Autobot's. You don't want to miss the party." Starscream sneered as he landed a few feet in front of them, a large group of drones beside him.
"Starscream, we have no quarrel with you. But if you refuse to surrender, then you leave us no chose but to fight." Optimus announces in his usual sturdy tone.
"Sorry Prime. But surrender is not in my vocabulary." Starscream replies before signalling for the drones to attack.
The low class Decepticons lunged toward the team, firing laser blasts as they went. The team skilfully dodged them as they drew their weapons and began to fight back. While Bulkhead, Arcee and Bumblebee where preoccupied with the Drones, Optimus headed towards Starscream, shooting down anything in his way.
As Bumblebee continued to fight, slashing and shooting at his enemies, a momentary wave of dizziness struck him. A nearby drone saw this and used it to his advantage. The anonymous drone raced forward and landed a hard punch right in the middle of Bee's chassis, the impacted knocked the Camero backwards ad he crashed straight into Arcee, who was fighting just behind him, sending them both to the desert floor with a hard thump. Seeing the two Autobots down, the drone pulled out a grenade and threw it right next to them.
Still slightly dazed from the fall and the dizziness, it took Bumblebee a moment to focus on the situation, before he noticed the grenade. Rushing to his pedes along with Arcee, they both ran as fast as they could away from the immanent danger.
The grenade exploded, and the impacted threw both Arcee and Bumblebee back to the harsh, hard ground. Hearing the explosion, both Bulkhead and Optimus turned towards the sound before abandoning their fights and running to their friends aid.
"Arcee, Bumblebee. Are you damaged?" Optimus questioned as they reached their fallen team mates.
"I'm fine. No thanks to Bumblebee." Arcee snapped at her companion as Bulkhead helped her to her pedes once more.
"Bumblebee?" Optimus questioned once more as he also helped the scout stand. The Camero was too winded from the blast to answer, so instead he just nodded.
Looking around the battle field, Starscream had vanished along with most of the drones. Sighing Optimus decided to call for a ground bridge and moments later the team where back in the rec-room.
"What happened?" Ratchet fretted as he looked at the battle worn team.
"Starscream happened, that's what. And then this lousy excuse for a scout almost got up both killed." Arcee ranted angrily as she glared at the Camero as he slowly followed his team.
"Arcee, calm down. I'm sure it was just an accident. At least nobody was hurt." Bulkhead tried to calm her.
"Well, you wouldn't be saying that Bulk, if it was your aft that almost got blown into a million pieces of scrap." The blue bike retaliated.
"Arcee, I'm sorry I really didn't mean to-" Bumblebee tried to apologize, but was rudely cut off by the Femme.
"Don't even bother apologizing. You're a liability. I don't even want to look at you. Get out of my sight." Arcee ordered angrily.
Bumblebee looked really hurt at Acree's rant and he decided to do as he was told, turning and heading to his quarters as quickly as he could while trying no to agitate his hidden wounds.
"Bumblebee!" Raf called after his yellow friend, but the Scout ignored him.
"Don't take it personally Raf. I'm sure Bee just needs some time to cool off." Jack tried to reassure as he placed a hand on the brunette's shoulder.
Once again Bumblebee sat on his berth, cleaning out the wound on his chassis before rewrapping it in gaze. Bee had been doing this twice a day, for the last four day's and was becoming quite efficient at the task.
Bee winced sharply as he finished wrapping the gash, before laying back on his berth. The wounds where still extremely painful and didn't seem to be improving at all, if anything they where becoming worse. The pain had increased, and hiding it became more and more difficult. It was even still leaking Energon slowly, and Bee was sure it should have stopped by now. A kind of rust like substance had also began to form in the gash. Bumblebee had also started suffering from dizzy spells and now the Camero was starting to feel quite ill.
Bumblebee was lost in his thoughts, trying to figure out why the wound wasn't healing, when a quiet knock was planted on his door. The Camero stood up and carefully made his was over to open the iron door. A look of confusion passed over his faceplate when he saw nobody their, until he felt a small tap to his leg and looked down. There stood Miko, Jack and Raf.
"Hi there, Bumblebee." Raf greeted cheerfully to his friend.
"Hey Raf. What's up." Bee buzzed not too enthusiastically.
"Not much really. But Jack has a favour to ask you." Raf informed while Jack stepped forward.
"Well, yeah. You see, you remember that guy Vince, from school, who's a total jerk. Well he challenged me into another race today, and with out thinking I agreed. But here's the problem, Arcee refused to race with me, and I was wondering if you'd race with me again." Jack explained.
"I can't I promised Optimus I wouldn't race again. And imagine how mad Arcee would be if she found out. She already hates me." Bee told Raf, knowing that the others wouldn't understand him.
"It's ok Bee. We understand. We just wanted to pay Vince back for being mean to us all again." Raf told the Camero.
"Yeah. Vince was picking on Raf again at school today and that's how Jack got into the race." Miko explained. Now this got Bee's attention. If this Vince guy was picking on Raf, then Bee wound have to show him who's boss.
"Ok, let's do this. But we have to make sure nobody finds out." Bumblebee stated and the children cheered at the Camero's change of heart.
"Right, meet me at my house tonight at 11pm." Jack suggested and they all agreed.
At 11pm, Bumblebee met the raven haired human at Jack's house, just like they agreed, and then the they went down to the race track. Jack had sighed them in and now Bee sad in the pits waiting for the race to start while Jack sat patiently in the drivers seat.
"You ready Bee?" Jack asked the Camero as a blond girl walked into the middle of the track holding a black and white chequered flag.
In all honesty, Bee wasn't ready. He wasn't ready at all. His wounds where really painful and he was still feeling dizzy from earlier that day. Sighing to himself he honked his horn twice to tell Jack he was ready. And then a second later the Blond girl dropped the flag.
The sounds of rubber tyres screeched on the tarmac roads of Jasper, as all muscle cars began their race. The drove all around the secluded downtown streets of Jasper and threw the storm drains. After the first lap Bumblebee had made a comfortable lead with only Vince and a Red headed woman behind him.
"Wow, Bee. You're the best." Jack cheered as the Camero revved his engine and veered off to the left, turning down a storm drain, leaving the two drivers behind him in a cloud of dust.
Bumblebee maintained the lead for another six laps until everything went horribly wrong. Vince had managed to catch up to the Camero and rammed as hard as he could into Bee's right side.
Bumblebee shrieked as his injured side was agitated once again. The impact of the hit also made him veer off the side of the road and crash threw several rows of crops before coming to a complete stop. And all the other cars in the race carried on driving right past them.
Now that the coast was clear, Jack stepped out of the Camero, rubbing his sore neck. While Bumblebee transformed. The scout knelt low on the ground, still mostly hidden from the deserted road. Both his servo's wrapped around his injured right side protectively as he tried to ease the pain.
Bee felt sick, the pain was that bad and the dizziness had returned ten times worse. He could hardly keep himself balanced as his blurry optics searched the area looking for Jack. He found the human teen sat on the dirt, to his right looking up at him with concern.
"Bee, you ok?" Jack asked the Camero who only nodded slightly before he turned back to the teen, a silent question in his worried optics.
"Yeah. Don't worry I'm fine." Jack answered reassuringly with a soft smile.
The Camero sighed in relief before he tried to stand, immediately wishing he hadn't as pain from his injured shoulder and chassis reached his processor. Another wave of dizziness past over him and before he could do anything about it he doubled over and purged everything he had in his tanks, onto the ground in front of him.
Jack's eyes widened in shock as Bee continued to heave. He had never seen an Autobot be sick before, and in all honesty didn't even know that they could. The human stepped forward and placed a hand on the Camero's armour covered arm reassuringly as Bee's heaving subsided.
"You ok?" Jack asked once more and Bee nodded before trying to stand up once more on his shaky pedes, although this time much more successfully. Once Bumblebee had regained his balance a little he transformed and Jack hopped in.
The Camero drove slowly back towards town so that he could drop Jack back home. They spend most of the trip in silence, while Bee fretted about how he would keep Jack quiet about the incident back in the field, when Bee came up with an idea.
Jack's mobile flashed and buzzed, and the raven haired teen pulled it out of his pocket to find he had a new text.
/JACK. WE NEED TO KEEP THIS A SECRET OR WE WILL BOTH END UP IN A LOT OF TROUBLE./ The message stated.
Jack looked up at Bee in amazement, knowing that the text had come from him. Before his face turned sturdier.
"But Bee we gotta tell Ratchet about the crash, you might hurt." Jack told the scout before his phone beeped, telling him he had another text.
/ I'M FINE NOW JACK. BUT WE CANT TELL ANYBODY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT OR I WILL NEVER BEE ALOUD OUT OF THE BASE AGAIN AND ARCEE WILL NEVER LET YOU RUDE HER AGAIN./ It read and Jack contemplated this for a moment.
"Ok, agreed. It'll be our secret." Jack said reluctantly as Bumblebee turned into his driveway and the teen hopped out.
"Night Bee." Jack said before he hurried off into his house hopping that he didn't wake his mum, while Bee drove away slowly heading back to Base.
Finished…
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