Posting this ahead of Hurricane Ian. Hopefully I will be posting again soon.

Project Grey Ghost

Visiting his family was a complication and completely frustrating affair that left Raf sometimes wishing he could just stay at the base.

Officially, he was in government protection because he had accidentally discovered MECH and they nearly blew up his house in retaliation (thanks to the project Damocles attack, this was true). Unofficially, his parents were aware of everything he had gotten up to, and only the fact that Agent Fowler had explained that the meteor shower on Jasper had been the Decepticons way of trying to kill his family had his mother listened to why Raf had been driving with Bumblebee for months without her knowing (he may have told her that Bumblebee was Jack's car, at one point) and without supervision.

That said, his siblings liked Bumblebee and his father was accepting of the situation.

His mother just kept adding ridiculous rules that Raf ignored because they were impossible to follow. The base didn't have a tutor to help with school work, and Raf was already ahead.

Needless to say, after a weekend spent with his family, Raf was ready to stay at the base for another week.

His family didn't use to be this exhausting. He still loved them and he had been homesick for his mother's cooking, but it was just easier staying with Bumblebee.

"Bee, do you think I'm drifting away from my family?" Raf asked as Bumblebee headed to the coordinate's for their ground bridge.

'No, it's just been busy.' Bee assured him.

"I guess. Do you think Jack's okay?"

'He's fine, we would have heard otherwise.' Bee suddenly sped up. 'We're being followed.'

Raf called Agent Fowler just as multiple cars boxed Bee in.

"Hang on Raf, we're on our way-"

Something hit Bee. It shocked Raf and as he blacked out, all he could think of was that the dark energon had felt colder.

Raf woke up with a headache. It took a little longer to realize he was on a cot and not at home, though someone had left his glasses nearby.

He didn't like what he could see when he put his glasses on. The room he was in was concrete with a metal door and about the size of the janitor's closet at school. There was also a camera pointed at him from just above the door.

His phone was missing.

"Um, hello?" Raf waved at the camera. What would Jack do? Miko would start a fight and Raf was pretty sure that was the wrong thing to do when you were kidnapped.

The door beeped and slid open.

"The doctor wishes to see you." There was a woman with a shaved head and electrodes sticking out of her skin. "Don't dawdle." Two really big men in MECH's faceless gear stood behind her.

"Ookay." Raf had to scramble to keep up and grimaced as they got into an old service elevator. There wasn't much talking, and Raf tried not to stare at the woman, especially with the way the electrodes in her skin lit up. "Um, can I ask you questions?"

"No." Was the short answer.

"Okay." Raf nearly fell over as the elevator came to a shuddering halt.

They came into a room with a lot of computer monitors, including two on the ceiling. There was a door that had the label of server room one on the far side of the room.

"Welcome, young Rafael. I am Doctor Arkeville." The man was elderly and had white hair, a metal arm and made Raf want to hide. "I see you've met my best Agent, code name Circuit Breaker."

"Hi." Raf greeted, extremely uncomfortable. He wasn't supposed to play with hands when talking to someone, but he didn't have his backpack to play with its straps, so he ended up playing with his vest out of discomfort.

"I apologize for the spartan accommodations, but it suits our purposes."

"And those are?" Raf asked.

"Why, the study of the cybertronians who invaded our planet." Dr. Arkeville paused.

Raf didn't object to the statement. With certain adults, like his mother, it was safer to just let them talk without arguing until the end.

"You don't disagree?" Dr. Arkeville asked.

"I'm just waiting for to finish what you're saying." Raf shrugged. "I'm not rude."

One of the MECH men made a noise that sounded like a smothered cough.

"I see. Well, regardless of what the alien robots have said, they're not benevolent. Their first introduction to this world leveled a city block." One of the larger monitors had a fight between Bumblebee and a Vehicon. "Humanity has a need to evolve before the next war, and these life forms may have the key, but they guard their secrets."

Raf really didn't like where this was going. Bee had told him, back when they were scattered and trying to get back to Jasper, about how their first contact with earth had gone sideways, thanks to the decepticons, and how much work Optimus had to put in talking with the world governments in order to get permission to get energon and the right to deal with the Decepticons solo. It was why Agent Fowler had been so unpleasant in the beginning.

"They left many broken bodies when they landed. Including my own." Circuit Breaker hissed. "They don't care for humanity. They just wrecked another city!"

"If you can help us decode their signals, we can finally make progress in our preparations for the coming war!"

"I'll have to ask my mother." Raf watched as the two people in front of him look like they had bitten into a lemon.

"You were abducted by these aliens-" Circuit Breaker recovered quicker.

"Abducted by Decepticons, rescued by the Autobots, and my mom yelled at them for five hours for not telling her what was happening. She made my Autobot guardian apologize multiple times." Raf explained. His mother had even thrown her chancla at Optimus Prime. (Raf had thought he would die from mortification.) "I'm twelve, I know stranger danger."

"You little-" Circuit Breaker looked furious, and Raf noticed some of the wires and monitors near her moving.

"I see we need to make a more pressing argument."

Raf looked at the monitor Dr.Arkeville was pointing at. Bumblebee was strapped down to a moving platform in bot mode. "Bumblebee!"

"Bumble…bee?" One of the MECH men asked.

"It's the English translation of his name." Raf offered. "Translation isn't 100 percent exact, but it's the closest translation accuracy wise."

"A giant killer robot is called Bumblebee…"

"He's a scout, he likes studying new places, and he really likes our racing video games."

"Are you kidding me?! You think a killer like that enjoys being around a kid like you?!" Circuit Breaker apparently hit her very short limit. "He's obviously playing you for a sap, kid!"

"You just don't want to listen to information outside your own bias." Raf pointed out. Which, she had probably been really hurt- the Autobots were actively trying to avoid casualties, but that was difficult when the decepticons didn't care and the ones they were trying to protect were very fragile; Bee had taken a few tries to learn how to hold Raf without accidentally bruising him- but she was just set in believing that she was right that all robots were evil.

"Why you-!"

"Enough! Allow me to show you our facilities. You may find it enlightening." Dr. Arkeville was scowling.

Raf was used to having to take extra steps to keep up, but usually everyone tried to keep his short legs in mind.

Optimus had told them that cybertronians had visited their planet in the past, and that there were scattered gravesites around the planet.

Looked like MECH had found and raided those gravesites. There were a lot of dead cybertronians. Their bodies had been dissected and pulled apart.

There was also samples of dark energon, red energon and regular energon.

There was a large gunmetal grey transformer, bigger than any Raf had seen. He guessed it was as big as a space shuttle. It was still intact, and judging from the computer readouts, in stasis.

"This is project Grey Ghost, once we can hack and reprogram it, we will have the means to fight the aliens."

"Depends on how long they've been here and what they are. Some of the earliest cybertronians don't have built in weapons." Raf frowned. Those numbers looked wrong. From what he could tell, he would guess that this was the stasis system failure Ratchet had mentioned, when a bot was in stasis too long and their systems began to fail.

And the adults around him wouldn't care, they'd just make the cybertronian's corpse remote controlled.

"We can fix that." Dr. Arkeville waved his hand. "Technology is always hackable, even alien technology."

Raf scowled at that.

"Clearly the boy needs some time to consider our offer."

Raf was picked up like a sack of potatoes. So much for Jack's stay calm approach. Maybe he should have tried Miko's approach and kicked a few shins.

Instead of being put back in the cell, they put him in the room with Bumblebee after putting him in a metal crate and suspending it.

"Hey Bee, I think we're in trouble."

'I think you're right.' Bee gave a beep and a trill. 'What do they want?'

"Me to translate cybertronian, apparently."

'How do they know you can do that?'

"I didn't ask." Raf wrapped his arms around himself. "There's another cybertronian, Bee, in stasis, but they're going into stasis systems failure, and these people don't care. They're really big, like space shuttle sized."

'That's rare.' Bee noted. 'Most larger sized transformers died out in the early days of the war. Too big of a target.'

"I think we're wasting time. Just tell the kid we'll kill his family if he doesn't help and be done with it."

"I'm surprised at you, my dear, we need him to help hack the Grey Ghost."

"We don't need to hack the Grey Ghost, I can control it!"

"You were able to control one limb, and promptly passed out and had a seizure." Dr. Arkeville steepled his fingers. "The boy's brain will be an interesting study, I suspect you and he have similarities."

"I don't trust giant killer robots over my own kind." Circuit Breaker scoffed.

"I meant there may be an overlap- you can understand binary code instinctively as well as manipulating electricity. He may be able to understand their coding because he doesn't have your bias."

There was a pop as one of the monitors blew.

"Sir, phone call. It's Attinger, he wants you to come in." One of the MECH men came to the door.

"Alright, tell everyone to stop work until I return."

"We'd be farther along if you would let us work when you're not here." Circuit Breaker scowled.

"And be left out of the greatest discoveries for mankind? Never." Dr. Arkeville scoffed. "Besides, this will give the boy longer to think on his situation."

"Hmph." Circuit Breaker crossed her arms. Two more monitors blew.

"If you want to work while I'm gone, fix the monitors in this room."

That parting shot had half the remaining monitors blow out, including the ones with security footage.

"They didn't lock the crate Bee." Raf noticed. "They latched it, but they didn't lock it."

'There's no safe place for you to land.'

"I can climb the rope and get to the crane, and if I slide down far enough." It was a little nerve wracking getting to the top of the crate. "You know Bee, I didn't think about how useful climbing a rope in gym class would be in real life." It wasn't the exact same, but the principal of it was. "Just can't look down." Raf squeaked as he slipped.

'I ever tell you about the time Optimus and I went climbing in Praxus?'

"Nope. Talk to me, Bee."

'I was still new to being a scout and Optimus had to track down our new communication officer Blaster. The poor guy had gotten caught in a seeker bombing run and we had to get him out of this crevice.' Bee's story was punctuated with chirps that Raf noticed didn't really mean anything, but were comforting.

Raf was exhausted once he got to the top, but it wasn't hard to slide and scoot his was down the crane arm until he was able to drop on one of the raised walkways.

Bee's restraints didn't set off an alarm when he was freed.

Bee transformed, and Raf was able to grab his phone (the screen was cracked, but that could be repaired) and try to call home.

There was no signal.

There were also apparently no guards in the interior of this place.

"I guess they rely on cameras for security. Let's see if we can save the Cybertronian they've got."

There's a lock on the computers and Raf finds it all too easy to break and start the process for waking the big guy up.

Bee grabs the already processed Energon and clumsily makes an iv.

There's a moment where there's a hissing staticky scream before Bee starts talking to the bot, and it quickly turns into a lot of panicked and confused questions.

Raf ignored them, trying to get the bot released from the crude hacking that was keeping him paralyzed.

"What are you doing?! You brat-" Circuit Breaker shrieked.

The electronics in the room that didn't have a power surge moved, sparking wires trying to grab him.

Something very big scooped him up from the ground. Raf blinked up at large blue optics with a small orange ring around them. It reminded Raf of Arcee's pink and blue optics.

"You are a juvenile of your species, are you not?" The voice was soft compared to the size.

"Yep. I'm Rafael Esquivel, my friends call me Raf, it's nice to meet you." Raf managed.

"I am Skyfire." He shielded Raf from more wires. "Who is that?"

"Circuit Breaker, she's an adult female of my species but she kidnapped me and Bee." Raf explained.

"I see. I think I remember hearing something about her as I was trapped." Skyfire glanced down and looked horrified.

Raf didn't get a chance to see what had startled him, as Skyfire closed his servoes around, but Raf could hear as something exploded followed by howls and roars.

"Predacons! How-? I thought they were mostly extinct, save a few descendants!"

Skyfire sounded fascinated. Raf wasn't able to see anything, but he did hear Circuit Breaker screeching and cursing in words that Raf could never ever repeat if he wanted to avoid his mother's chancla, or worse, grounding until he was fifty!

It was a while before everything went quiet.

"Where's Raf?"

"The little one is here." Skyfire gently lowered him before opening his fist. "I believe he's alright."

Raf immediately launched himself into Agent Fowler's arms, surprising the agent and Corporal Fig who was standing behind him. Raf didn't want to explain that he could handle giant robots, the fact it was humans that had kidnapped him and put him in a crate was what was making him upset- Circuit Breaker had tried to kill him.

"We got you, kid, let's get you home." Agent Fowler picked him up.

"Can we go back to the base? My mom will just yell and I'm tired of yelling." Raf requested.

"Of course, we'll have the medics or nurse Darby check you out, but we won't be able to stall your parents long." Agent Fowler gets him into Ultra Magnus' cab. It's a short drive through the ground bridge and then Nurse Darby is bundling him in a blanket.

"He's in shock. Corporal, I need you to get him something to drink- if there's hot chocolate get that. If not, tea."

"Yes Ma'am!" Corporal Fig took off.

"Raf, sweetheart, I need to look you over, is that alright?"

Raf nodded. Everything felt a little fuzzy as Nurse Darby checked him over. Miko messed with his hair a bit.

Bee started the chirping again.

"Nothing's hurt, some bruising. You'll be okay."

"Hey chico, got you the good stuff." Corporal Fig passed him a mug. "Had to cut some corners and call in favors, but it's good."

Mexican Hot Chocolate. Or rather a very good attempt at it using a powder mix. It wasn't quite right, a little watery, but Raf instantly latched onto it.

"Raf, when you're up to it, I need to know what happened."

"Bill." Nurse Darby hissed.

"He called himself Dr. Arkeville, the woman was his agent and called herself Circuit Breaker." Raf spoke up.

Miko popped up out of nowhere to hug him.

"She was injured during your first contact, the fight against the decepticon's in a city? She really really hates all robots. They said they were going to use Skyfire as a weapon to fight both autobots and decepticons. Wanted me to help hack into his head. I noticed he was going into stasis system failure, so once I escaped my cage and freed Bee we started to wake him up. Circuit Breaker wasn't happy, she … I think she tried to kill me. On purpose. Just because I was trying to save Skyfire." Raf felt a little shaky. "Is Skyfire okay?"

"I'm fine, Ratchet is running diagnostics. It's a little cramped in here for me." Skyfire had to crouch. "I'm Skyfire, Iacon Science Academy, I was studying developing worlds when my altimeter got messed up by this planets magnetic poles. I put myself in stasis … but apparently things have changed. When I went under the Prime was Sentinel Zeta."

"A long story. One we will go into detail later."

"Right, just one quick question, why are Decepticons organized?"

"What do you mean?"

"Decepticons is the label for the criminals after conviction. Why are they organized? And why is a Senator a field medic?"

"Sentinel Zeta and part of the senate were corrupt, they started imprisoning those who didn't fit their view of Cybertronian excellence." Ratchet scowled. "Including those who disagreed with them. Megatron decided to name his faction that to prove a point, but he very quickly fell to the same corruption he claimed to be fighting. We have a copy of the Iacon database if you need it."

"Thank you."

"How'd you find us?" Raf asked.

"Roadhauler reminded us that he could find us by a half remembered scent within moments of transformation into a Predacon. He and the others easily tracked your and Bumblbee's scents to their base." Ultra Magnus explained. "They are in their den."

Fig felt a little sick and a greater sense of foreboding. He had felt he was supposed to protect the kids, but he hadn't expected that he was supposed to be protecting the kids from his own agency.

Raf recovered fairly quickly, especially after talking to Roadhauler and Bumblebee.

The next morning, Fig watched as the giant robot scanned a C-5 Galaxy and transformed.

"Better. I don't mind running errands for the humans if you need it. My space flying capabilities definitely failed while in stasis and it's gonna take a while before my internal repairs reset everything. Especially with the lack of energon. Not complaining, just noting." Skyfire explained while in plane mode. "I can get a limited charge from this planet's sun, so I'll stay like this for a bit." Skyfire ran through a systems check, even opening the hold.

"Cool, I think you can fit everyone inside you, dude!" Miko began exploring inside the transformed bot, who laughed.

"I used to be an exploration shuttle, carrying scientists and equipment before I was able to get my degree and travel on my own." Skyfire explained. "Took a lot of hard work to prove I was smart enough to even apply."

"Didn't think robots had racism." Fig admitted.

"Mm, if I understand that word right, the answer is we didn't really use to, but there was a difference between being created to be something, like me, and those that hatched, like Bumblebee. Past few primes got really… sectional about it. Even adding specific rules that blocked certain types of bots from certain city states from doing things. When I left there had been a lot of pushback and even overturning of most of the unjust laws… I had thought civil war had been completely avoided." Skyfire admitted. "Things were supposed to get better."

"Hatched?"

"Yeah, from the Well of Allsparks."

"… Really?" Fig blinked. The more he learned the more confused he got.

"Rumor has it the Predacons were capable of live birth, but the Well of Allsparks has been around since our planet formed, so then you have the debates, especially with the Dinobots and other beast formers supposedly descended from them also being made by the well. It's a truly fascinating study." Fig realized too late the danger and reluctantly settled down with a few others who were too curious to run to listen to a very long lecture that he just barely understood that contained Robot Religion, Robot Creationism and Robot evolution. (It was worth it to see one of the drill sergeants get everyone moving, only for Skyfire to offer to answer any questions when the soldiers got off duty.)

It soon became a common site for the men who were off duty to be seen hanging around Skyfire, who not only delighted in telling people about cybertron, but in learning about Earth from anyone who would talk to him.

Skyfire also became a favorite because he allowed the soldiers to hide some of their contraband items inside him. Though the sergeants did their best to discourage them, Skyfire's fascination with Earth objects meant he kept allowing items to be stored as long as he could study them.

The Predacons could also be found hiding in him, in particular the one named Paddles.

General Bryce liked to think he had an even keel when things got rough. Agent Fowler had concerns over the fact that not long after Raf had told Corporal Figuroa about his being fluent in cybertronian programming the boy was kidnapped.

It could have been a different leak, but Bryce agreed that it was too much of a coincidence.

Especially since the boy had positively identified Dr. Arkeville, though Attinger claimed that since the doctor wasn't there at the base they had no proof of any wrongdoing and was obviously pulling strings to keep his pet scientist.

Thankfully, he was able to use this to quickly finish the necessary paperwork and certifications for the specialist he and Bill had spoken of.

"Dr. Keen, thank you for coming. Your list of patients has grown."

Author Notes:

Look, I get carried away with adding my favorite characters. Circuit Breaker is from the G1 Marvel Comics, she was a secretary that was paralyzed in a deception attack and became a techno path who then created a 'computer tape' she could wear and use her mind so she could move.

She was also violent against all giant robots and saw no difference in their allegiances, even allying with the Decepticons at one point to try and kill all of them.

I left it ambiguous on which faction injured her in this reality, mostly because she herself doesn't care she just wants them gone.

Initially Transformers Prime was tied into the live action movies before officially becoming its own thing, but there is a mention of a fight with decepticons when they first arrived, bulkhead instead of ratchet getting tangled in power lines and not to mention Bee's design. I expanded upon it, and added Skyfire in place of Megatron as a bot trapped in a lab because G1 Skyfire was found in the artic like live action Megatron.

Instead of a space shuttle, I made Skyfire a C-5 Galaxy cargo plane. Albeit one that will eventually be capable of space flight.

The C-5 is one of the the biggest cargo planes in the world.

Dr. Keen is from Shade Penn, in particular the sequel to Come and Get it.

Project Grey Ghost was a failure, but Shockwave has a special project about to make it's debut.

Next up, Project Abominus