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In hindsight, Bumblebee should’ve known the tarp they use to disguise Grimlock on Earth probably wouldn’t be as effective when used on Cybertron.
In his defense, the words “disguise” and “Grimlock” never go well together, no matter how many times he says “Robots in disguise, Grimlock!”
That doesn’t matter anyways. What matters is that it’s only been a few seconds since they were found out and they’ve already been completely surrounded.
“Listen to us, we're not your enemies.”
“We're here to help you! You're being mind-controlled!”
No matter what Bumblebee or Strongarm said though, that stupid recording of the High Council continued to play all around them. He assumes hearing “Your High Council knows what is best,” while facing enemies of the High Council isn’t helping them convince the guards to lower their blasters.
“Stand down. I'll take custody of these perps.” A familiar voice says.
A space opens in the crowd of guards for the mini-con police detective, Dropforge, and his officers to walk through.
“Detective Dropforge, sir!” Strongarm quickly greets before—
“One more step and you're dented, leadhead.”
His guards move to arrest Bumblebee and his team while Dropforge turns to the crowd of guards.
“The High Council has total confidence in me and the High Council knows what’s best—”
“No can do, sir. You're not the bot assigned to their case anymore, remember?”
A new bot walked up next to Dropforge. His words implied he was strict, yet his expression was anything but. He held himself loosely and spoke with a large amount of confidence that few others had. Bumblebee could recognize it anywhere.
“And I especially can’t trust you to take care of these dangerous criminals since you’re the bot that lost them last time.”
The blue-and-yellow bot leaned down to look the mini-con in the optics. Dropforge glared at him, frowning in response to his smirk.
“These aren’t your average street punks, they’re an elite guard level threat. And who’s the only bot here to have been part of the elite guard? Who recently got assigned to take care of these bots due to your failure?”
Dropforge sighed, turning his head away from the taller bot.
“You, Smokescreen.”
Smokescreen leans back up and turns to walk towards Bumblebee’s team.
“See? You’re still useful after all. I will be coming with you to take these criminals into custody, though.”
He walks right in front of Bumblebee, hands on his hips as he stares into his partner’s eyes.
“He and I have some unfinished business.”
————————————————————————
“You know that bot, lieutenant?” Strongarm whispers to him as they walk.
Finally away from the crowd, Dropforge and Smokescreen walked a few steps ahead. Bumblebee’s team walked in a group behind them with two Dropforge’s officers on their sides and one on their tail.
“Yes. He is—or, I guess, was—my partner.” He whispers back, hesitant on the status of their relationship.
His confused thoughts are interrupted by the sound of bots slamming into each other. He turns to see Sideswipe staring at him after walking into a stunned Strongarm.
“HE’S YOUR PARTNER?!”
“YOU HAVE A PARTNER?!”
“Yes, I do, Sideswipe. And thanks to you and Strongarm’s shouting, all of Cybertron knows too.”
The rest of the group stops as well, much to Bumblebee’s annoyance.
“I didn’t know you were into the confident type, Bumblebee. Have our battles been—”
“Can it, Steeljaw, I’m not into wannabe dictators.”
Steeljaw only grins in response.
“Besides, we never broke up—”
“I think ditching me for several months out of nowhere counts as ‘breaking up’, Bee.”
Smokescreen crosses his arms and walks towards Bumblebee.
“But what do I know? Maybe flaking on your partner is seen as a romantic thing on Earth.”
He continues to walk towards him, only stopping when Bumblebee has to lean back so their faces don’t touch each other.
“Well? Is it, Bee? I’d expect you to know since you seem to love it so much. Love it enough that you’d jump into the first spacebridge you came across to get there, unauthorized no less, right?”
Smokescreen looked furious, optics glaring straight into Bumblebee’s spark as if his anger was enough to melt it. Bumblebee, on the other hand, looked incredibly uncomfortable.
“Well? Is it?”
Smokescreen uncrosses his arms, his right servo falling to his side as it transforms into a blaster. Before he could raise it, Dropforge jumps and hits him on the back of his helm with his nightstick. Dropping to his knees, Smokescreen tries to raise his blaster at the mini-con, but gets kicked in the face by Bumblebee before he can shoot him.
“Pick a less annoying partner next time, leadhead.”
“Can we talk about my taste in partners after we escape?”
Smokescreen’s blaster transforms back into a servo as he uses it to sit up. While doing that, Dropforge runs over to him and puts him in stasis cuffs before he can react. He glares at the mini-con as he struggles against the stasis cuffs, trying to swing at him and failing to hit anything.
“I knew you were useless, but a traitor? That’s a new low for you. And that’s saying something for a mini-con.”
“Shut up, leadhead.”
Dropforge punches him in the face, knocking him out. Afterwards, he and his officers walk Team Bee into an alley on their left before taking off their stasis cuffs, dragging Smokescreen’s body along the way.
“I’ve been wanting to give that perp a piece of my mind since we came back to Cybertron. I didn’t know your leader fancied him, Scoot.”
“We didn’t know either, sir.”
“I can explain later, but can you promise me you won’t hurt him again unless he attacks you.”
“Hurt him?! Shouldn’t we be worried about not getting him to hurt us?!” Grimlock complained.
“I agree with Grimlock, our priority should be getting to the High Council building.”
“I know, Drift. Like I said, I’ll explain later, just—”
“No need to worry, copper, I won’t dent any more of his panels than necessary.”
“Thanks, now can you tell us the story behind these so-called glorious leaders?”
Dropforge points a servo at one of his officers before pointing at Smokescreen. Said officer picks Smokescreen’s body up and tosses it onto his shoulder. Dropforge then motions for the whole team to follow him.
“No one ever heard of these bums before they ran for Council. It's like they showed up outta nowhere.”
————————————————————————
“Well, OP, looks like you and your buddies are heroes again.” Grimlock said as both Optimus and Bumblebee’s team walked out onto the balcony of the High Council building. Thousands of citizens could be seen cheering from below.
“Thanks in part to a timely assist from Steeljaw.” Fixit turns to make optic contact with the rest of the team.
“And if there are more Decepticons like Cyberwarp, there might be a real chance of peace someday between the two factions.”
“We can hope, Strongarm. Meanwhile, for the first time since its rebirth, Cybertron can truly begin anew.” Optimus gazed upon a finally free Cybertron, a sight he never thought he’d get to see.
Noticing his hopeful gaze, Bumblebee asks, “Will you lead that beginning?”
Optimus shakes his head with a smile.
“I am a leader of warriors, not governments, and I am eager for time away from fighting. But I will be ready whenever Cybertron needs me.”
He then turns to look at Ratchet, Bulkhead, Windblade, and Jazz.
“I can think of none better than you to serve as temporary High Council until free elections can be held.”
Ratchet looks briefly shocked before gasping out, “Optimus, We…We'd be honored.”
Abruptly, Strongarm turns to look at Bumblebee before saluting.
“When do we leave for Earth, sir?”
Bumblebee gave her a confused look.
“But it's all over. You're home! You're heroes, for Prime's sake!” He quickly makes optic contact with the whole team, noticing that none of them disagreed with her, stuttering out, “I—I'm more at home on Earth than Cybertron these days, but why would you want to go back?”
Sideswipe rolls his optics.
“'Cause Cybertron is gonna be all boring and happy for a while. Earth is where the action is!”
Optimus, taking note of this, turns to look at Ratchet.
“Maybe you should consider Bumblebee and his team to be Cybertron's first ambassadors to Earth.”
“A fine idea.” Ratchet says before looking at Bumblebee. “And in the meantime, will you continue as Earth's protectors?”
Bumblebee smiles at him.
“We wouldn't want it any other way.”
As he feels a sense of fulfillment emanate from his spark, Grimlock raises one of his clawed servos.
“Hate to interrupt, but does anyone else hear that?”
The group stops and, as they tune out the cheering of the crowd, they can all faintly hear a rumbling sound.
“Is it just me, or is it getting louder?”
Just as Sideswipe suggested, the sound was gradually increasing. As it does, it becomes clearer and clearer what it is.
“Is that a car?”
They all turn to see Bulkhead pointing at the doorway they entered from. Looking through, they see the headlights of a car quickly approaching.
“Is it Steeljaw?”
“Whoever it is, Grimlock, they do not show any signs of stopping.”
At Drift’s words, everyone steps away from the door's path.
Everyone but Grimlock.
“What does that mean?”
“HE MEANS GET OUT OF THE CAR’S WAY!” Bumblebee shouts, pushing him out of the door’s path right before the car speeds through and drifts to a stop on the edge of the balcony.
The car was definitely not Steeljaw, with bright blue plating all around and yellow stripes on its hood. Even if he didn’t have his signature 38’s on his doors, Bumblebee could recognize him anywhere.
Before he could say his name, the bot started driving at Bumblebee before transforming out of his alt mode and jumping on him. Sending them both crashing on the floor, the bot clung onto Bumblebee with an iron grip.
“Bee! I’m so sorry for trying to arrest you, I don’t know what happened, I was—”
Putting his arms around him, Bumblebee patted him on the back.
“Hey, it’s ok Smokey. I know you were being mind-controlled, I’m not angry at you.”
“But I was about to blast you!—”
“But you didn’t. Dropforge stopped you before you could, so it doesn’t matter.”
Smokescreen didn’t have any good comeback to that, so he squeezed Bumblebee closer and shoved his helm onto his neck.
“I know you want to hug me longer, but if you don’t stop I think my team’s processors are going to crash.”
If Bumblebee wasn’t slightly embarrassed by Optimus and Ratchet seeing him like this, he’d be cackling at his team's shocked reactions. It looked like they all forgot how to close their intakes with how wide they were.
Except for Drift, who only widened his optics and raised his optic ridges. By Drift standards of expression, though, that was the same as a jaw drop.
Optimus walked towards Bumblebee and Smokescreen before kneeling by their side.
“It is good to see you, Smokescreen.”
Moving his helm up, he turned to see Optimus before immediately jumping off of Bumblebee.
“Optimus! I—I didn’t—how—what?!”
“I know it is hard to accept, but I hope you can understand why I could not—”
Whatever long-winded apology Optimus was going to say was interrupted by Smokescreen hugging him, his arms wrapping around his neck.
“I’m glad you’re alive, just…don’t take so long next time, ok?”
For once, Optimus was speechless. He simply wrapped his arms around Smokescreen and hugged him back.
Getting up from the floor, Bumblebee looked at his still stunned team members and started to laugh.
“I told you guys that we never broke up, what are you so shocked about?”
The team’s optics finally tore away from Smokescreen to look at Bumblebee. Drift was the first to recover from the shock, back to his usual neutral expression in seconds.
“I assume this is part of your ‘I will explain later’ statement from earlier?”
Bumblebee nodded. “I knew it wasn’t the right time to talk about it since our priority was to deal with the corrupt High Council. It wouldn’t have been able to convince him to stop arresting us either due to the mind-control.”
At the mention of himself, Smokescreen let go of Optimus and turned back towards Bumblebee’s team with a guilty expression.
“Sorry about that again, not my best first impression.”
“It beats nearly killing all of Team Prime by shooting at liquid energon without telling us.”
Smokescreen punches Bumblebee affectionately in the shoulder.
“Arcee reminds me of that enough, I don’t need you getting on my case about it too.”
Mentioning Team Prime seems to knock Strongarm out of her stunned state.
“Wait, you worked with Team Prime during the war?”
Sideswipe, remembering the incident that got him stuck on Earth in the first place, also looked confused.
“How come you didn’t get a statue in Kaon Plaza like the rest of Team Prime?”
Bumblebee looked annoyed and Smokescreen, noticing the change, simply shrugged.
“I told them to not make one.”
This shocked the team all over again.
“Why wouldn’t you want a statue of yourself standing with Team Prime!? They’re the papers—makers—saviors of Cybertron!”
“And without his help, Cybertron would still be lost and the Decepticons would’ve won the war.” Bumblebee adds to Fixit’s statement, clearly not agreeing with Smokescreen’s decision.
“Because I wasn’t there for most of the war,” He explained, putting one servo on his hip and moving his other around as he spoke. “It felt wrong for me to get a statue when all of Team Prime had to fight and survive through the whole war to get here. All I did was get knocked out for a few millennia and land on Earth during the end of it, holding a relic inside me that I didn’t even know existed until it was torn out.”
“You had a relic inside you?” Grimlock asked, struggling to understand how that would work.
Smokescreen gave a halfhearted laugh. “Alpha Trion was an interesting bot to say the least. In hindsight, feeling a stabbing pain in my gut every time I turned my body too much should’ve been a sign that something was wrong.”
Before any of the team could comment on Smokescreen casually mentioning that he somehow knew Alpha Trion, Bumblebee sighed.
“I still think you should get a statue of your own, you were integral to ending the war too and none of us would be standing here without you.” Bumblebee raised an optic ridge at his partner.
“The statues have been there for an entire year already, adding another one at this point would be a hassle.” Smokescreen crossed his arms. “We have more important stuff to deal with anyways, like if your ship has enough space for me.”
It was Bumblebee’s turn to be shocked, though he was quickly cut off from stuttering something out by Smokescreen.
“What? Did you really think I’d let you run away to Earth again without me? What kind of partner do you take me for? Bulkhead?”
The joke was lost on the team, but Bumblebee seemed to get it and laughed.
“Don’t compare me to Wheeljack, I didn’t abandon you by choice!”
“Sure,” Smokescreen said, rolling his optics. “You’re still charged with unauthorized use of a spacebridge so, as the cop assigned to your case, I have to go with you anyways. For investigative reasons.”
“Oh, so it’s not because you love me? What a great partner you are.” Bumblebee quipped sarcastically.
“I know, right?—”
“Primus, if this is what partners are like, I’m going to stay single forever.”
Bumblebee and Smokescreen suddenly remembered where they were and noticed the whole team looking at them with various expressions of boredom and annoyance, with only Strongarm turning her helm to look at Sideswipe with a raised optic ridge.
“Didn’t you already say you never wanted a partner?”
“Yeah, but this confirms it. They better not do this all the time or I’m staying on Cybertron.”
“To answer your earlier question,” Drift interrupted, “the ship does have space for you. The problem is if we have space in Denny’s scrapyard. Five bots and three mini-cons is already stretching the limit of his area.”
“And that’s assuming they let us still stay in the scrapyard after this.” Bumblebee adds.
“It’s ok if you don’t, I can stay somewhere else on my own. I’m great at blending in.” Smokescreen says proudly, pointing a thumb at himself.
“Says the bot that revealed himself to a human as a joke two days after he came to earth.”
“Hey!—”
“You’re better than Sideswipe at least,” Strongarm pointed a thumb at him. “He ran into Russel only a few minutes after we landed on Earth.”
Sideswipe glared at her, crossing his arms as he turned his helm. “He saw you too!”
“Only after you drove him to us!”
“While all of this reminiscing is fun,” Fixit rolled in front of Bumblebee, “I think we should leave before Steeljaw goes back to Earth without must—dust—us.”
The calm atmosphere the team developed shattered.
“Oh scrap, we forgot about Steeljaw!” Bumblebee transformed into his alt mode. “Let’s rev up and roll out!”
As Bumblebee sped off, Smokescreen looked on in confusion.
“One, who’s Steeljaw? And two, does Bee have his own rallying cry now?”
All the others transformed into their alt modes and drove away, or ran in Grimlock’s case. All except for Fixit, who rolled over to Smokescreen.
“One, I will explain on the drive. And two, yes he does! It took him a while to find a good one.”
Smokescreen transformed with a grin and opened his passenger door for Fixit.
“Tell me everything, I need to know all of his failed ones.”
————————————————————————
“Sounds like you guys had a heck of a hullabaloo back home!” Denny says as he scratches the back of his head.
“Dad, this is their home.” Russel comments from above, sitting on the edge of Fixit’s command center. “Right, guys?”
“If you still want us here.” Bumblebee said with a raised optic ridge. “You've been chased, captured, and nearly blown up since we first met you.”
“Yeah, it's been a blast and a half!” Russel smiled back.
“Before you officially agree let us stay though,” Strongarm raises a finger before pointing at Bumblebee, “the lieutenant has someone to introduce to you.”
Sideswipe side-eyes her. “You’re making it sound weird, just let Bee do it on his own.”
Denny and Russel share a look before Denny speaks.
“Is it a new bot? Because we should still have enough space.”
“There’s a surprising amount of good hiding places in big scrapyards,” Russel says with a smile, “especially for big alien robots that can turn into cars.”
“That’s great for me then!”
Russel and Denny’s heads snap to the right to see Smokescreen next to the Alchemor. They jump at his sudden appearance.
“What the—how did you get there?” A confused Denny asks.
“I’m just that good at—”
“We let him into the scrapyard before we started discussing what happened on Cybertron and he’s been waiting there the whole time! Isn’t that funny?!”
Sideswipe puts both servos on his face in despair as Fixit smiled widely.
“It’s not funny if you explain it, Fixit!”
“Oh…forget I said anything!”
Smokescreen doesn’t look annoyed, seemingly glad he was able to surprise the humans at all. He walks over to Bumblebee before slinging one of his arms over his shoulder.
“I’m Smokescreen. Since Bumblebee never mentioned me for some reason—”
“When would I need to mention you on a mission?—”
“—I’ll introduce myself.”
He held out the servo that wasn’t over Bumblebee’s shoulder and counted his fingers off as he listed things about himself.
“I like driving fast, beating Decepti-creeps, I’ve already been on Earth before back when the war was still going on,” He snaps his fingers to form a finger gun before pointing at himself. “And I’m Bumblebee’s partner.”
Russel tilted his head in confusion. “Bee’s partner? Aren’t all of you part of Bee’s team?”
Smokescreen opened his intake to explain before closing it, looking at the ground as he thought. He stood in silence for a couple seconds, his free servo rubbing his chin. He then patted Bumblebee’s shoulder with his other servo.
“Can you explain what partners are to him, BB?”
Bumblebee gave a soft laugh before focusing his attention on Russel.
“From what I remember, humans call their partners ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’ when they’re young and ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ after they ‘marry’ each other when they’re older. Since we’re not that old compared to other bots—”
“Sure you aren’t—OW!”
Bumblebee gave an annoyed glance at Sideswipe, who was rubbing his side after Strongarm elbowed him, before continuing.
“—Smokey would be my ‘boyfriend’ in human terms.”
Denny had a feeling that’s what partner meant but didn’t say anything until Bumblebee confirmed it.
“Us humans also use ‘partner’ when talking about relationships too, it’s just not used as much as the other two.” Knowing how much Bumblebee liked to learn about human culture, Denny made it a habit to explain some of it to him whenever it happened to be brought up. “It’s also used when people don’t want to refer to their partner by gender. Married people also have a non-gendered word for each other, which is ‘spouse’.”
While Bumblebee looked very interested, all the other bots looked confused.
“Why do you guys need three words for the same thing?”
“I agree with Grimlock. It is very confusing.” Drift said as Grimlock smiled widely at him.
Before Denny could even think of how to explain the concept of gender and how ingrained it was into human society to a seemingly gender-blind species of alien robots, Russel finally spoke again.
“I didn’t know you were gay.”
Denny turned to Russel with a panicked stare as Bumblebee’s optics widened.
“Russel! You can’t just—”
Whatever explanation he was going to say was cut off by startled laughter.
“It’s ok, Denny, I know he didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just forgot humans had terms for that.”
Bumblebee then looked at Russel, who seemed to realize his mistake, giving an apologetic smile to Bumblebee.
“And yes, I’m gay. Technically, I mean,” Bumblebee crossed his arms before raising one of his servos out, pointing one finger up, “Cybertronian relationships don’t usually have anything to do with gender like human’s do, so most of us are technically gay. I was really surprised to learn how much humans—”
“Sorry to interrupt sir,” Strongarm said unapologetically, stopping Bumblebee from rambling about human culture for another hour, “but if we're staying, we should have a formal chain of command.”
“What, with you as second in command, I suppose?” Sideswipe leaned forward, servos on his hips as he glared at Strongarm.
Before she could respond, Grimlock raised both of his clawed servos.
“Oh! Stay right there!” He quickly grabbed a piece of scrap from behind him in one servo before raising his other to point out a thumb, angling it around in their direction. “I wanna sculpt you two having an argument!”
Growing tired of their constant bickering, Drift tilts his head up at the two and closes his optics before announcing to Jetstorm and Slipstream, “Students, Sideswipe and Strongarm are excellent examples of how not to behave when part of a team.”
Fixit, ignoring the other bots that spoke after her, pulls out a screen. “I like your idea, Strongarm! I'll work up a slow-mart—glow-heart—flowchart!”
Before Bumblebee could comment on the whole team interrupting not just his rambling about human culture, but Smokescreen’s introduction to Denny and Russel, a howl could be heard in the distance.
The team has been on Earth long enough to know, however, that there was only one wolf who lurked around Crown City.
“Steeljaw?” Russel asked in a surprised voice.
“Saved by the howl,” Bumblebee smiled to himself before nudging Smokescreen off of him.
Walking towards the scrapyard exit, he turned to look at the team.
“Autobots, let's rev up and roll out!”
Everyone transformed except for Smokescreen and Bumblebee.
“Nice rallying cry, though I think I prefer ‘assume cover and burn rubber’.”
“What? Wait, how do you—Fixit!”
Fixit, who was at the command center working on Strongarm’s ‘formal chain of command’ flowchart, smiled at Bumblebee.
“Smokescreen wasn’t there during your early-leader days, so it’s only fair to share some moments of that with him.”
Sighing heavily, Bumblebee transformed as he said, “Put Smokescreen on the bottom of the flowchart,” before driving out of the scrapyard.
“Hey!” Smokescreen transformed and followed behind, “I should at least be second in command! I’ve been on Earth longer than any of your teammates.”
“That’s not fair!” Strongarm drove close behind.
“Yeah, you shouldn’t get an advantage just because you’re old!” Sideswipe complained as he drove past Strongarm to tail Smokescreen.
“If we’re going by time spent on Earth, does that mean I’m higher than Drift?” Grimlock excitedly said as he ran behind Drift.
“I, too, find this system to be unfair.” Drift’s voice was the closest it could be to sounding angry without shouting. “I deserve to be second in command.”
“I’m his partner, so I get to be second in command,” Smokescreen commented through their comms, “It doesn’t get more simple than that.”
Fixit giggled to himself while listening to their conversation.
Russel walked up next to him. “What’s so funny?”
Fixit smiled at him, pointing one of his three fingers at the screen he was holding.
“They don’t know that I’m making the flowchart based on age, and since I’m older than all of them, I’m putting myself as the lieutenant!”
Russel, recognizing a golden opportunity, asks, “Can I be your second in command?”
“Aren’t you the youngest member of the team?”
“Well…human ages work differently than Cybertronian ones! We age in reverse, so I’m actually older than the rest of the team!”
“Hm…alright, thank you Commander Russel.”
“You’re welcome, Lieutenant Fixit.”
Walking away, Russel couldn’t wait for the whole team to get back.