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“I’m so bored!” Miko cried, tossing her hands up before she dramatically collapsed on the couch next to Jack, who didn’t even bother sparing her a glance.
“You should read your English homework,” Jack says, flicking the book in his hand at her before smoothing out the page he was reading. “You know, actually use your time productively.”
“As if!” Miko draped her arms over her eyes. “That would just make my boredom worse. Ugh, Ratchet, when’s everyone coming back?”
Ratchet rolled his eyes as he finished cleaning the medical area. Bulkhead had taken a nasty hit, nothing fatal or long lasting, but just enough to require a bit of supervision. “They’ll come back when they come back. Arcee and Bulkhead are on a patrol, and Smokescreen and Optimus are searching for the signals we saw of Decepticon activity a city or so over. Bumblebee is taking his time getting Raf here, though.”
Ratchet appears disgruntled, probably both at having to remind Miko of where everyone was, and the fact that he was alone with the humans, and worst of all, the human children.
“Ugh! I can’t even understand Bumblebee and I’d still have a better conversation with him than you guys.” Miko huffs, crossing her arms before sitting up. “C’mon Ratchet, don’t you have any fun stories or something to pass the time with?”
“I think you’d be wise to listen to Jack and focus on your studies. On Cybertron, our education system was dismantled after Decepticons began targeting academies as a war effort to decrease the amount of scholars and potential scientists in the Autobot army. And of course, since our planet’s dead, we certainly don’t have school any more. Be grateful for what you have, Miko.”
“Jeez, you sound just like my host mom.” Miko rolls off the couch, moving to a standing position. Jack ignores her and continues to read. “Ratchet, I’m dying of boredom here, c’mon. You're a medic, save me.”
“I’m an Autobot medic, not a human medic, so suffer, and preferably, suffer quietly.”
Jack snorted, and Miko glared at him before she responded, “I’ve never done anything quietly before, and I certainly don’t plan to, now.”
“Of course not.”
Miko leaned against the railing, trying to think of a conversation topic. Bulkhead was always happy to regal her with tales from his wrecker days. If properly cajoled, Optimus will occasionally talk about his time as an archivist, and while they were boring, they were sometimes rather insightful. Smokescreen loved to tell stories, but they were more about bragging about how cool he was, and he honestly doesn’t have a lot of interesting stories from his time before going into stasis. Arcee didn’t like to tell many stories, but if she was with Bulkhead, the two might start to reminisce and Miko would be lucky to hear them share a few tales about Cliffjumper or other bots she wasn’t able to meet.
Bumblebee, from what Raf says, loves to tell stories, and they also seem to be extremely funny. It’s times like those, when Miko watches Bumblebee and Raf share their private conversations and tell inside jokes none of the humans can be privy to, that makes her a bit jealous.
She loves Bulkhead, of course, but she often wishes she could talk to Bumblebee. He’s funny, from how often Raf will laugh when he seems to make a few quips during Ratchet’s long winded lectures or Bulkhead’s anxious rambling or Optimus’s boring speeches. Plus, he’s pretty young, isn’t he? Ratchet mentioned that he’s a lot younger than the others. He’s probably around their age, at least closer than Arcee and Bulkhead.
“Hey, Ratchet,” Miko calls, and Ratchet doesn’t spare a glance towards her, but he’s turned his body slightly towards her, indicating he was listening. “Hey, you can do math and stuff. Cybertronian lives are super long and stuff, but like, how old would you guys be if we compared it to a human lifespan?”
Jack glanced up from his book, looking interested. “Oh, that’s actually an interesting question-”
“Of course it was!”
“-and I’ve always kind of wondered how old Arcee was, in like, human life span terms.”
Ratchet hums, fiddling with some of the medical equipment. “To condense millions of years of life into simply a feeble one hundred is near impossible. Whatever number I give you won’t be a true estimation, you know.”
“Oh, just give it a try, huh?”
“Fine, fine…” He pauses, clearly trying to think. He must be running a few calculations through his processor to convert to human years. “I believe Optimus would be about eighty, and Smokescreen sixty-”
“Woah, woah.” Miko shook her head. “Yeah, I think those calculations are off. Optimus being an old man makes sense, but not Smokescreen.”
Ratchet appeared annoyed, but seemed to consider her words. “As I said, estimating a comparison to your lifespan is more difficult than you might think.”
“Come on… one more time!”
He shifts on his pedes, appearing unamused by her insistence, but Miko knows that he’ll oblige. “Fine, I believe the conversion is as follows. Optimus is roughly forty, I’m roughly forty five, Bulkhead is twenty four, Arcee is twenty five, Wheel Jack is about thirty, Smokescreen is nineteen, and Bumblebee is fifteen.”
Miko and Jack spare a glance at each other, matching sets of furrowed brows, before Miko raises her hand and objects, “I think you’re a bit off on Bumblebee.”
“No, I’m not.” He doesn’t elaborate, and there’s something painfully sharp and sad in his tone. Miko almost considers letting go, but doesn’t.
“He’s my age!” Miko shouts, and Jack looks almost stressed.
“I mean, I figured Arcee and Bulkhead would be quite a bit older than me, but I thought Smokescreen and Bumblebee would be around the same age,” Jack murmurs. “I knew they were younger bots, but I didn’t realise Bee was that young…”
“Yes, but Smokescreen’s immaturity does seem to make him younger than he is. Primus knows how I wish he would act his age.”
“Are you sure you didn’t do the math wrong again?” Miko asks, because there’s no way any of the Autobots could be that young, right? They’re all soldiers in a war. Bumblebee can’t possibly be her age.
And yet, the more she thinks about it, the more it kind of makes sense.
She’s always known that Bumblebee was younger than the others, and he even acted like it, too. He was high energy, attention seeking, and had strange swings in emotions. He had a dedication to Optimus and a respect to the cause, but he was more than willing to be a bit rebellious towards his superiors (especially Ratchet) and go against orders.
He was fun, and youthful, and the more Miko thought about it, the sadder she got. Of course he was fifteen, he acted like every fifteen year old in all of her classes. Headstrong, curious, rebellious- if anything, he almost kind of sounded like her.
It makes sense, yet it’s still surreal to think of him as that young, as any of the Autobots as young. Even Smokescreen seemed young, just a teenager not much older than Jack. Bumblebee’s even younger than Jack.
Miko’s never cared for history much, but she always listened to the stories of historical figures around her age. Young revolutionaries, child soldiers, people like her who lived extraordinary lives. It’s one thing to listen to stories of ancient heroes immortalized in their youth, and another to see a person in real time, a person her age, perform those same heroics.
“I’m sure,” Ratchet begins, quietly, clutching a wrench he had picked up to put away. “We had tried to keep him away from the fight, but he was… energetic and couldn’t handle tasks that required him to sit still for a long period of time. He eventually became my apprentice, carrying medical supplies for me and helping as best he could, but as the war continued, more and more lives were lost, and we needed every hand we could get.”
Ratchet sighed. “We tried to keep him away, but he wouldn’t let us. He didn’t want to be useless, and we tried to offer him a non-combative spot, as a scout.” He scoffed. “I suppose we can all see how well that ended up working out.”
Jack hesitated, and Miko could clearly tell that he was going to ask a question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. “How old was Bee when… when he lost his voice?”
Ratchet paused, trying to calculate it. “Roughly fourteen.”
Miko rubbed her throat absent mindedly. At fourteen, she was trying write her crush a cool rock song. She couldn’t imagine being in a war, being a scout, or being tortured by the leader of the faction she stood against. She still couldn’t imagine it now, despite having been so heavily involved in this war now.
“He was just a kid…” Ratchet was mumbling, placing the wrench down as he spoke, more to himself than anyone else. “Just a kid, barely a youngling, and Megatron…”
He sighed, then turned to the children. “I gave up fighting this war a long time ago because I believed in the Autobot cause. Don’t get me wrong- I still stand by the cause, I’m still an Autobot, but that’s not really what I’m fighting for, anymore. All I want is to end this war for all the young kids like Bumblebee, and even Arcee and Bulkhead. I’m going to make sure they all see the end of this.”
He pauses, then turns around, his back towards them. “I believe in Optimus, I truly do, but after Tyger Pax… I still do not understand why he hesitates to slaughter Megatron where he stands. I know that given the opportunity, I will gladly take the tyrant down.”
He ran a hand over his face, mimicking an expression June often makes. “Ah, but I suppose I oughtn’t talk like this to you… just keep all of this between us, alright? Bumblebee’s age is a point of contention for a lot of arguments.”
Miko knows that she isn’t well known for her self control, but she still manages to stop herself from asking about what kind of arguments they all get into. She has a feeling she can guess, anyway.
Jack opens his mouth to ask another question, but the sound of a thrumming engine interrupts him. Headlights brighten up the entrance to the base and soon Bumblebee flies through the entrance, skidding to a stop hard enough to leave skid marks. Raf jumps out, laughing loudly, and Bumblebee transforms immediately out of his alt mode, buzzing a bit, which causes Raf to laugh louder.
“And where have you two been?” Ratchet chides, appearing annoyed. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
Bumblebee buzzed, and Raf giggles slightly before translating. “Sorry, Ratchet, but we ran into a few Decepticon scouts. Bee took care of it, though.”
Bumblebee buzzed excitedly, making muscles to show how strong he was, before moving to speak. He buzzed again, speaking, and moved his hands as he spoke. He made finger guns with his hand before punching the air, then began to buzz even quicker. Raf laughed at his antics, while Ratchet looked unimpressed.
“Just because you managed to take them all out doesn’t mean you’re not getting lectured for this,” Ratchet states, sighing. “You should have called for backup.”
Bumblebee crossed his arms and buzzed. He then points to Raf.
“I know Raf was unharmed. You did a good job, but you needlessly endangered him, too.”
Bumblebee buzzed again, huffing. Miko watched as Raf’s smile seemed to grow. Ratchet rolled his eyes.
“The Decepticons jammed your comms, hm? Fine, I’ll let this pass, but I’ll tell you the truth, and it’s that I don’t believe you. Just make sure to keep in contact next time something like this happens.”
Bumblebee buzzed triumphantly. Ratchet sighed, before moving away from the group of teenagers. “Stay out of trouble, I’m going to put this back in storage.”
Bumblebee and Raf spared a glance at each other after Ratchet disappeared, and the two of them began laughing. “Bee, that was amazing! Remember how you flipped over that Vehicon and went pow! Pow! Pow!” Raf made finger guns and mimed shooting at invisible enemies.
Bumblebee trilled in response, causing Raf to laugh. Miko listened to them for a few moments, as Rafael gave her half the conversation, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous. The one bot their age, and they couldn’t even communicate with him. She wishes now more than ever that she could figure out how Raf knew what he was saying.
Suddenly, Raf laughed even louder. “Bee, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Bee buzzed again, and Raf shrugged. “Smokescreen won’t be happy. He’s just as vain as Knock Out sometimes.”
Bumblebee buzzed again, pointing at Raf. “Alright, alright, I won’t stop you!”
“Wait, what does he wanna do?” Jack asks, confused.
“He’s gonna hide Smokescreen’s buffing supplies,” Raf explains, giggling. “Don’t tell anyone, alright?”
Miko watches Bumblebee glance at them earnestly, and wonders how she ever thought he could be anything other than a kid like them. A kid who likes to watch Saturday morning cartoons, a kid who likes to race, to play video games, to pull pranks on his friends, to tell big and exciting stories…
Miko places a hand on her heart. “Your secret’s safe with me!”