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mighty-ant · 7 months ago

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heroes in need

ao3

It was far past the hour that Cody should be asleep by, but his dad usually made an exception for their solo father-son adventures, and tonight was no different.��

If schedules allowed, they might go camping or all the way to the mainland, but when Charlie had a patrol shift the next morning, they usually stuck closer to home. Chase had been a good sport about joining them for a screening at the drive-in, as he was about most things that Cody or Charlie asked of him.

With such a big family, that doubled in size with the arrival of the bots, getting his dad’s attention all to himself without having to end up in some sort of mortal peril first was harder than it looked, and it made Cody protective of their time together. It hurt when one of his siblings butted in, intentionally or otherwise, or if an emergency dragged his dad away.

Cody loved spending time with his entire family, really he did, but sometimes it was too easy to fade into the background when everyone was involved. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, just a drawback of being the youngest in a big family, and Cody knew now that it wasn’t because he was especially forgettable or anything.

It was different with the bots, as most things were, and he didn’t feel small or invisible when he was around them. The opposite, really.

When Cody and Boulder went to the far side of the island to stargaze, and Boulder told stories about Cybertron, holding Cody close to his chest, close enough to feel the thrum of his spark beneath his plating, it felt as if he had the universe at his fingertips.

And when Blades insisted on joining the Pioneer Scouts because he wanted to spend more time with Cody (and because he liked how the neckerchiefs looked), it was the first time anyone had gone to such lengths to share in his interests. He and Blades learned and explored together, did badgework together, and always paired up for their nature hikes. He was the person Cody watched cartoons with, and watching him be brave made Cody want to be brave too.

Heatwave, huge, angry, and the leader of a group of rescue workers turned interstellar refugees, gave Cody the same level of undivided attention he gave their Prime, if not more. Cody knew that his gruff voice gentled around him in a way it didn’t for anyone else, and that the only place safer than Heatwave’s cab was his dad’s own arms.

He saw Cody’s worth as a rescuer before anyone else did, and from that first day, when Heatwave refused to continue on with the team if Cody wasn’t part of it, Cody knew he didn’t have to worry about getting left behind ever again.

Chase had almost become an extension of his dad, protective and stern in equal measure. Just being near him was calming, even when Cody wasn’t doing anything more than reading, playing a video game, or just wanting some company. Not only did he not seem to mind these long stretches of silence, but Chase always seemed pleased to see him, the naturally severe set to his faceplates softening with his smile. And when his dad had to leave for the mainland for two weeks, Cody found himself slipping into the garage on more than a few nights to curl up in Chase’s passenger seat, and keep each other company for a few hours, missing Charlie together.

While Cody preferred that no one else interrupt his time with his dad, Chase’s presence felt natural now, and unobtrusive in a way the other bots or his siblings weren’t.

He was great to watch movies with once he got over his instinctual cringe every time a character broke a law, and had such a precise memory that he could save all of his questions for the end (once he learned that interrupting the movie to ask them was typically considered rude).

Cody hoped Chase had enjoyed tonight’s movie; the poor guy had practically leapt out of vehicle mode when Doc Brown revealed he’d stolen plutonium. At any rate, his avatar on the dashboard screen was smiling as they turned onto their block, but Cody couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just because his two charges were still talking and laughing inside his cabin.

“I can’t believe we haven’t shown the bots the Back to the Future movies yet,” Cody said, shaking his head in wonder.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Charlie chuckled. “They’re classics.”

“They’re showing the rest of the trilogy at the drive-in over the next two nights,” Cody exclaimed. “We could all go! What do you think, Chase?”

Chase hummed thoughtfully, and Cody felt his seat belt tighten gently in the bots’ vehicle mode version of a hug. “Boulder would certainly have something to say about the execution of time travel, having experienced it ourselves, and Blades will enjoy the music and general hilarity. Heatwave, I believe, will join us if you ask him to.”

“Oh, but they’ve gotta watch the first movie, or the second one won’t make any sense.” Cody turned pleading eyes on his dad.

Charlie laughed, shaking his head. “Oh no, it’s already way past shut-eye, kiddo. You can watch the movie in the morning.”

Cody sighed, if only on principle. He was pretty tired, and if he started the movie now, he’d fall asleep five minutes in. “Okay.”

Chase rolled into the garage, and opened his doors to the familiar sound of Kade and Heatwave arguing.

The firebot was looming over Kade, shoving a car buffer in his face. Undaunted by the difference in height, weight, and strength, Kade was waving his arms to ward him off, trying to skirt around Heatwave at the same time.

“I can’t right now! I’ve got a—”

Heatwave growled. “If you say ‘date,’ I swear next time I’ll lock you in my cab with Mr. Pettypaws.”

“Some partner!” Kade shot back.

“What’s all this now?” Charlie asked dryly.

Heatwave straightened up, coming somewhat to attention in Charlie’s presence. Not that it stopped him from shooting his fellow firefighter a dirty look. “I was just reminding Kade here that he agreed to buff out the dents on my back from our rescue at that rockslide this morning. Blades already took care of the deeper damage.”

“Damage?” Cody repeated, his heart skipping a beat. “I didn’t know you got hurt, Heatwave.”

He looked Heatwave over intently, and his worry eased a bit when he didn’t see any trace of the pink, alien blood they called energon.

It was extremely rare that any of the bots were injured enough to bleed—they weren’t soldiers, thankfully, and as dangerous as their rescues could be, there wasn’t a whole lot on their island that could hurt a Cybertronian. But an explosion at the rocket fuel reservoir last month had mangled Boulder’s arm, turning a routine inspection into something out of a nightmare.

The bulldozer handled the whole ordeal with his usual aplomb, staying calmer than any of them, even Blades who triaged him ahead of Velocity’s emergency arrival from the Autobots, D.C. base. Boulder had even eagerly helped with rebuilding his ruined limb, and had been officially cleared for duty as of two weeks ago.

But Cody couldn’t forget the chaos over the comm lines, Graham, the only one to see the explosion firsthand, desperately calling Boulder’s name from the reservoir control room. They’d airlifted Boulder to the firehouse and when Cody tried to get into the bunker to check on him, his dad held him back from where the three bots were gathered around the medical berth, hiding Boulder from view, but not the grunts of pain he couldn’t quite keep at bay or the trail of glowing energon they’d left in their wake.

In the present, Heatwave reached down, nudging a finger against Cody’s shoulder with gentle care. “Only a few dings, Cody,” he said in his comforting gravel voice, as warm with reassurance as it had been snappish with acrimony just moments before. “Got my tailboard caught in the rockslide when we were clearing out one of the houses.”

Charlie looked at Kade expectantly, arms crossed over his chest. “Did you agree to help? Because that sounds more than fair, son.”

Kade groaned. “Well, yeah, but I didn’t think I’d actually have to—”

Heatwave shoved the buffer into his arms again, letting go this time and forcing Kade to scramble to catch it before it hit the floor. “Thanks, champ,” Heatwave said with a grin that was all teeth.

“Oh hoho, you are gonna get it, Clifford, just you wait.”

“Good night, you two,” Charlie said pointedly as he started leading Cody toward the entrance to the firehouse proper. To Chase, he bid a much more pleasant, “I’ll see you in the morning, partner.”

“Good night, Chase!” Cody piped up.

Chase dipped his head slightly, his faceplates shifting into one of his subtle smiles. “Good night, Chief. Cody.”

He started for the platform that led down to the bunker, but he hadn’t even made it to the controls before he froze midstep.

Across the garage, Heatwave halted mid transformation into vehicle mode. He returned to root mood swiftly, startling Kade who’d just gotten the buffer started.

Judging by the tilt of the bots’ heads, they were receiving an internal comm. Chase’s brow furrowed at whatever he heard, but Cody didn’t think much of it until he saw Heatwave’s worried scowl.

“Did you just receive a distress signal from Boulder?” Chase asked, concern deepening his usually even tone.

“Yeah,” Heatwave muttered. “But it cut off.”

“For me as well.” Chase raised a hand to his comm unit. “I will attempt to contact Boulder directly.” He was quiet for a moment, as he presumably did just that, but his expression grew even more troubled. “He is not responding on any frequency.”

“Pull up his location,” Heatwave growled.

A hologram popped out of Chase’s wrist displaying a map of the island, which Cody would’ve usually marveled at. But all he could feel was the cold prickling of dread in his stomach. His dad put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, but it didn’t do much to make him feel better.

Chase’s optics widened. “I cannot detect Boulder’s energon signature.”

“What does that mean?” Cody asked hesitantly.

In a flash, Heatwave had a hand up to his comm. “Blades! Report in, do you have eyes on Boulder?”

“I cannot detect Blades’ signature either,” Chase said quietly.

Cody’s stomach dropped at the note of fear in the policebot’s voice. He looked up to his dad, but he was watching the bots with a knit brow and tension in his jaw.

“That’s it!” Heatwave snarled as he stormed the tall doors of the garage. “We’re going to Boulder’s last known location. He’s supposed to be at the lab, right?”

“Sir,” Chase murmured to Charlie, hesitating briefly between the two leaders.

Charlie nodded. “I’m coming along too, partner.”

“What’s the big deal?” Kade complained, even as he followed Heatwave. “Those nerds probably just got distracted by moss growing on the wrong side of a tree or something,” he said, only to run straight into the back of Heatwave’s lower leg when the firebot jerked to a stop before even reaching the doors.

Kade stumbled back with a curse, pressing a hand over his face. “Hey, ow! If you chipped my tooth, I’m making us swap bodies again so you can go to the dentist to deal with it.”

He looked up when there was no snide retort from his partner. “Heatwave?”

Heatwave wasn’t the only one not moving or reacting in any way. Chase was frozen, too. They shuddered into an uncanny stillness, completely unlike their earlier pause at the distress signal or their typical, imperfect robot mode. It happened in a blink, but in that second Cody swore he saw a bar of glowing red light arc over their bodies from head to toe, flickering at the edges like electricity.

That second of silence was like a held breath.

Kade, though, was apparently blind and deaf to it.

“What’s the deal, Heatw—WOAH!”

Kade threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding being crushed by Heatwave’s body as he collapsed backward, a twenty-foot-tall marionette with its strings cut. Cody had never thought about just how tall Heatwave was, or how broad, until he was toppling from his great height, deadly as a collapsing building.

Utterly limp, the force of his fall was like a miniature earthquake and it knocked Cody off his feet with a startled cry.

Behind him, he heard his dad call out as Chase slumped forward the same way Heatwave had, falling face first with a tooth rattling, deafening crash that rang in Cody’s ears long after it passed.

Staring over Chase’s prone form, Cody locked eyes with his dad, who’d been thrown to the ground just like him, expression blown wide with shock.

Cody sucked in air but couldn’t form words, ice-cold panic crystalizing in his chest. His mind was utterly blank, unable to comprehend what had happened. What little he understood .

Kade didn’t have that problem.

“Heatwave, what the hell? You could’ve killed me!” Pushing himself back onto his feet, Cody’s oldest brother whirled around with a snarl to put Heatwave to shame, but his ire sputtered out as he took in the true extent of the scene: both bots collapsed on the ground, and Cody and Charlie’s equally panicked faces.

“What the hell?” Kade repeated.

Heatwave had fallen with his face turned toward Cody.

He’d seen the bots’ faces when frozen by virus into an emotionless mask. He’d seen the bots’ faces when their memories were wiped, and they didn’t recognize their own family. He’d even seen the bots’ faces while mind controlled by Mrs. Pynch.

Heatwave’s face wasn’t just blank. It was slack, hints of confusion and pain frozen in the unmoving furrow of his brow and lines of tension around his mouth. His orange optics were dark, the light within guttered. They weren’t closed, or dimmed like when the bots were in recharge.

It was like he was…like he was…

Kade had scrambled around to Heatwave’s other side, slapping his palms against one broad red shoulder. “Heatwave, this isn’t funny, man!” he snapped, his voice cracking.

“Kade,” Charlie said hoarsely, too faint to be a reprimand. “This isn’t an act.” His hands were on Chase’s face and he didn’t look away from his partner for an instant. Cody was too afraid to check if his gold optics had gone dark too.

“So what the hell’s happened to them! Heatwave? C’mon, man, I need you to wake up now!”

Kade was kneeling by Cody, in front of Heatwave’s dark, empty face. His sightless optics seemed to stare at him over Kade’s shoulder, and Cody couldn’t look away, cold horror narrowing his vision.

“Cody!” Charlie yelled like he never did unless danger was barreling toward them, and Cody snapped to attention. Based on the desperation in his dad’s voice and the apology in his expression, it probably wasn’t the first time he’d called Cody’s name.

“Call Graham,” he instructed, his steady voice wavering only slightly. “Maybe he or Boulder knows what’s happening to them.”

“O-okay, Dad.”

Cody reached for his comm link. Maybe he’d turned it off for the movie and forgotten to turn it back on, or maybe the shattering slam of Heatwave and Chase’s collapse really had deafened him. Whatever the reason, the moment he reached for his comm, the line exploded with Graham and Dani’s shaking, terrified voices shouting to be heard over each other.

“—Dad with you? Are the bots there? We need to call Ratchet, call-call anyone! Boulder, he-he—”

“—Blades, we need to help Blades! I don’t know what’s going—!”

“Just collapsed—he’s unresponsive—”

“Blades fell out of the sky!”

–

Boulder rounded the bend coming down from Doc Greene’s lab, his open window letting in a breeze that ruffled Graham’s hair and cooled his skin. They’d lost track of time experimenting with new upgrades for the bots’ energon-powered tools, but Graham didn’t regret it, and he knew Boulder didn’t either.

After two weeks of medical leave, and down one arm almost the entire time, Boulder was eager to get back to work, having drawn up plans upon plans while his repairs set in and his new limb was manufactured. They included but were not limited to: visiting Leafy, visiting the Rubios, reinforcing the walls around the rocket fuel reservoir (as Kade would say, doy! ), and looking over the newest specs sent over by Wheeljack, which was best done with plenty of fire extinguishers around, or better yet, one Heatwave.

Graham’s engineering mind had been fascinated by Boulder’s self-repair network, so similar and yet nothing alike a human’s own immune system, preventing its host from going into shock from a missing limb by shutting off pain receptors and sealing off the flow of energon to damaged areas.

Not to mention rebuilding a Cybertronian limb from scratch was a truly humbling experience. Thirty years of their presence on Earth, and their biology was still a highly classified secret everywhere but the furthest reaches of the black market, and neither Graham nor Doc Greene took that trust and access for granted.

Boulder’s arm, much like his original, was a transformer all on its own, capable of turning into a welding torch, nail gun, and drill, not to mention a dozen other tools like saws and screwdrivers of various sizes. It was a wonder to build and even more gratifying to see in operation during their rescues since, but Graham wouldn’t soon forget the reason Boulder needed an entirely new limb in the first place.

The blast at the rocket fuel reservoir had been intense. Graham felt the heat behind the three foot thick concrete walls of the security room, and had been knocked off his feet by the force of the explosion. The sound of Boulder bellowing in pain wouldn’t leave his nightmares for a long time, if ever, nor the sight of his partner stumbling away from the flames once Graham scrambled out of the building with a fire extinguisher in hand, his left arm hanging limp, barely attached to his shoulder, and the rivulets of glowing pink energon pouring down his limp fingertips and pooling on the ground.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Boulder had grunted, somehow still managing to smile at Graham as he furiously put out the flames encroaching on his partner’s spilled energon.

Boulder was always doing that, trying to make the best of a bad situation and easing Graham out of his spirals of self-doubt. It didn’t work so much when he was in obvious pain and failing to hide it, but a part of Graham was still in awe and humbled that someone like Boulder, giant, powerful and unflinchingly kind, an alien from a society so advanced that humans must resemble cavemen playing with sticks and stones by comparison, would look at him and find someone worthwhile. Someone he called friend. Partner.

But Boulder did, and almost every day he reminded Graham that he’d chosen their family, and he'd chosen him, in a hundred small ways. Like now.

“It’s a beautiful night,” Boulder rumbled, his voice rolling warmly through his cab. “Makes me wish I had my paints with me.”

The view was especially nice tonight. A waxing moon painted the ocean in strokes of silver, and below them the town looked like a miniature, every light a little beacon in the darkness. There was little light pollution up on the hill to Griffin Rock Labs, save the street lights every few feet, and the stars above them were plentiful, if faint.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you paint a night sky before,” Graham wondered aloud. Boulder had been getting more experimental with his art style lately, inspired by Dalí and Van Gogh to try out oil paints. He wondered what The Starry Night by Boulder might look like. “We can grab them from the firehouse and come back if you want?”

On Boulder’s screen, his avatar smiled gratefully, but shook its head.

“Nah, it’s already pretty late. Maybe another night.” Boulder’s digital face brightened. “We can set out right after sunset!”

Graham smiled back, his pensiveness pushed aside by Boulder’s perpetually upbeat disposition. “Sounds good to me, partner.”

They fell into a comfortable silence again, but Graham could sense that Boulder still had something on his mind, judging by the thoughtful cant to his avatar’s face. He waited, looking back out Boulder’s window so he wouldn’t feel pressured to speak. Graham’s instincts proved right after another minute.

“I was just thinking; maybe we could take a trip one day?” Boulder wondered aloud, his voice going up hopefully. “To the mainland, I mean.”

“I’d love that,” Graham responded almost at once, and he meant it, too. Their bots had seen so little of Earth compared to the rest of the Autobots, who’d had fifteen years of peacetime to travel and get acclimated. Graham wanted to see their reactions to everything. Boulder’s especially.

He immediately jumped into plotting out the logistics in his head, though he was struck by a troubling thought almost as quickly.

“But what about G.H.O.S.T?”

They didn’t know much about the organization—nobody did, apparently, outside of internet conspiracy theorists—and Optimus was frustratingly vague whenever they tried to question him about it.

What they did know: G.H.O.S.T. was partnered with the Autobots’, serving as an intermediary with the U.S. government and helping to capture the remaining Decepticons in the country, which was a point of contention all its own. Even the Rescue Bots were split.

Boulder and Blades wanted peace on all fronts, and that included pardons for the Decepticons stuck on Earth. Chase was of the mind that they should serve some sort of time for their crimes against Cybertron and humanity, while Heatwave couldn’t care less what they did, as long as the Decepticons were locked away. Graham privately thought that the firebot wanted someone to blame for the destruction and eventual loss of their home, since they were beyond powerless to do anything about it, arriving twelve years after the loss of the Allspark.

Supposedly, G.H.O.S.T. was also meant to provide the Autobots with housing and support. But at the same time, the Rescue Bots had to remain a secret from them no matter what, because Optimus didn’t trust their partner’s intentions enough to let them know about the existence of possibly the last Cybertronian civilians in existence.

It was heavy stuff, not to mention extremely nerve-wracking, especially when they first learned of the Rescue Bots’ sentience and true origins. It had felt like just a matter of time before black helicopters and SWAT teams descended on the island and dragged their new Cybertronian partners away.

But Griffin Rock’s shielding remained intact, and the town was so used to advanced technology that they bought the Rescue Bots as being man-made, especially since none of them had ever had cause to meet a real Cybertronian up close before.

Boulder hummed, the sound nearly lost under the churning of his treads. “We’d be careful! Humans barely even bat an eye when they see a Cybertronian. We could visit Canada! Not a whole lot of G.H.O.S.T. activity up there, at least according to Teletraan I.”

Graham started to nod. “That does sound nice. No rescues for a few days, no siblings, no drama…” And close enough to home in case of an all-hands emergency.

Plus, Boulder had been stuck on Griffin Rock for three years, and hadn’t even gotten a real look at the rest of Maine, much less another country. And with the warmer weather, Canada wouldn’t even be a bad option for those who weren’t resistant to subzero temperatures.

Boulder began slowing down, and Graham first thought that some sort of animal must be in their path. But the road was clear, and Boulder’s digital face looked confused.

“Hmm. That’s strange,” he muttered to himself.

Graham leaned forward, much more alert now. “What is it?”

“I’m detecting an energy signature unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Boulder explained, sounding troubled. “It’s…incredibly powerful.”

A thrill of fear swept through Graham at the uncertainty in his partner’s voice, and he wrapped a hand around the edge of Boulder’s center console, though he wasn’t quite sure if he was seeking reassurance or trying to give it. “An energy signature? From where?”

Boulder didn’t sound any less perturbed, and Graham could only imagine that he was straining his many diagnostic sensors to the fullest. “Nowhere on the island. Its origin is somewhere west, on the mainland and…it’s spreading. Like a pulse.”

Boulder braked completely, and in a dizzying turn, Graham found himself an extra ten feet off the ground, the bot having converted to root mode much faster than he normally would have. “Hold on, Graham. This thing is coming straight at us, and I don’t know what effect it’ll have on humans.”

“But-but my family!” Graham insisted, that tease of fear sinking claws of terror into his heart.

“I’ve already sent out a distress signal,” Boulder tried to soothe despite the tension of what could only be his EM field thickening the air, and making Graham’s hair stand on end. “That should—”

Boulder cut himself off with a terrible gasp, shuddering around Graham like his armor was trying to rattle apart. Red light flashed through his interior, inexplicable as it was instantaneous, and so bright it burned an afterimage into Graham’s retinas.

“Boulder!” Graham cried, blinking hard. “Boulder, buddy, what’s wrong?”

“Wr-wrong-gg,” Boulder garbled out in a voice that was almost all static. The screen on his center console has gone dark.

He fell to his knees, and his windshield opened at the same time his seat belt retracted. The seat itself booted Graham out, and he hit the dirt hard, rocks tearing at the skin of palms when he instinctively stuck out his hands to catch himself, bashing his cheek and biting his tongue when his arms buckled. But his training didn’t let him dwell on those injuries for long as he rolled out from under Boulder’s shadow.

Boulder, who had gone eerily silent above him.

Graham craned his head up just in time to watch Boulder’s still form start to tip, before his arms gave out and he collapsed, utterly limp, into the dirt.

Hands stinging with blood and grit, half his face aching, and Graham barely felt any of it. He stared at Boulder’s motionless body with mounting horror for seconds that stretched into hours, every rational thought quailing as his mind refused to comprehend what was in front of him. He scarcely understood what had just happened, but the end result…?

“B-Boulder?” Graham stammered into the crushing, painful silence, his voice cracking. This fear, thick and nauseating, was familiar but had never been this intense. It was a byproduct of the helplessness of knowing his best friend was beyond his reach and his efforts were useless. He’d sampled this horror at the rocket fuel reservoir, hearing Boulder’s guttural roar of pain, seeing the ruin of his arm. But his silence was so much worse.

“Boulder!” Graham pleaded, louder now, as he fought past the shock and scrambled over to his partner’s side. Pressing scraped hands against Boulder’s plating, still warm with life, and moving up to palm Boulder’s rounded jaw hinge, Graham searched for his sunset orange optics only to find them dark and empty, the light within them completely extinguished.

His hand convulsed against the side of Boulder’s faceplate, and he fought to keep breathing against the vice tightening around his chest. Think, brainiac, he scolded himself, channeling Kade’s voice with only a small (and growing) amount of hysteria. Analyze the problem, craft a solution. You’re a rescuer, not a victim. Think.

Keeping one hand on Boulder’s face, as well as a breathless ramble even he wasn’t fully cognizant of producing, he searched his toolbelt with badly trembling fingers.

“Boulder, c-can you hear me, buddy? It wouldn’t be the first time a potentially alien virus froze you in your tracks, but-but hopefully it’ll be the last. It must’ve been that weird energy pulse you detected. Definitely not another solar flare. M-maybe it was some sort of EMP? But that might mean someone’s targeting Cybertronians…”

From his toolbelt he retrieved the human-sized Cybertronian med scanner that Boulder helped him build years ago (the original model, at least—they were currently on version 3.5). It was low-grade compared to the scanners most of the bots were equipped with, but more than enough to detect spark pulse and catalog injuries. Graham last used it on Boulder at the reservoir, submitting the injury report to Velocity with half a dozen priority markers even though his wounds hadn’t been spark-threatening.

It was after Blades’ tail rotor was struck by lightning, paralyzing him in his vehicle mode, that at Optimus’ urging, with maybe some minor begging involved, CMO Ratchet had visited under utmost secrecy to give the human members of the team a crash course in Cybertronian first aid.

That in of itself was unheard of. Even after thirty years, Cybertronian biology was still a heavily-guarded secret, betrayed by neither the Autobots or the Decepticons. Both sides knew the potential consequences of letting the human race know their weaknesses. Graham understood that, allies or not, there would always be some people who feared and hated anything they didn’t understand, and humans excelled at that especially.

Graham and his family learned the basics of Cybertronian biology, with an emphasis on the first aid they’d actually be capable of performing to keep their partner online until help arrived. Things like minor welding to damaged armor and leaking energon lines, how to monitor spark pulse and vitals, and the like.

Boulder had even gone to the extent of showing Graham his spark after their lesson, as cheerily practical as ever. “It would probably help if you had a good idea of what our sparks are supposed to look like first,” he’d remarked, before opening his chest plates and revealing his tangible soul, bright as a star plucked from the night sky, utterly alien and yet undoubtedly sacred.

Graham didn’t know if any of the other bots had done the same for their partners, though he wouldn’t be surprised if Boulder was the only one. He was a scientist, eager to share knowledge with a fellow scientist, and he was also the most empathetic person Graham had ever met, who wanted to share the innermost part of himself with a friend.

His reminiscing only lasted as long as it took the med scanner to generate a report on Boulder’s condition. The screen illuminated, and the cascade of information it revealed stopped his heart inside his chest.

Graham’s vision blurred as it tracked down the list, from the shaking of his hands or the tears in his eyes, he couldn’t say. Blood rushed in his ears with such force it was akin to the roaring of the ocean, threatening to swallow him whole.

POWER SYSTEMS OFFLINE

BACKUP POWER SYSTEMS OFFLINE

T-COG OFFLINE

CENTRAL PROCESSOR OFFLINE

OPTICS OFFLINE

AUDITORY SYSTEMS OFFLINE

VOCAL PROCESSOR OFFLINE

EMERGENCY DISTRESS SIGNAL OFFLINE

COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS OFFLINE

NO SPARK PULSE DETECTED

–

“Sooo how was dinner with Taylor?”

Blades’ voice was smug over the comm, and Dani could just imagine the conniving little face he was making to accompany it. She never would’ve thought that she’d be getting a fourth annoying brother when she was partnered with a gangly transforming alien robot, but that was life in Griffin Rock for you.

“It was nice,” she said thoughtfully after a moment, thinking back to the restaurant already a few blocks behind her with the view of a brilliant sunset on the island’s easternmost rocky shore, and the warm glow of candlelight deepening Taylor’s laugh lines and making his light hair shine gold.

“‘Nice?’” Blades repeated, utterly aghast. “Just ‘nice?’ Work with me here! Is Taylor your one true love or not?”

Dani rolled her eyes with undisguised fondness. And the boys called her a hopeless romantic?

She paused on the sidewalk to let a group of laughing teens pass; she didn’t recognize any of them, and guessed that they might be visiting from a school on the mainland. With the warmer weather, downtown was busy despite the late hour, both locals and tourists enjoying the same walk down to the waterfront as Dani.

She refocused on their conversation over the comm link with a great big scoff.

“Okay, first off, what movies have you been watching lately? Cuz if it’s The Notebook, how dare you watch it without me. And second, Taylor and I are taking things slow, Blades.” Her grin turned sly and she couldn’t help but add, “Not unlike you and a certain yellow scout I could mention.”

Blades let out a startlingly bitter laugh, nearly stopping Dani in her tracks at the wrongness of it. “There’s slow, and turtle speed in your case, and then there’s stock-still. Guess which one Bumblebee and me fall under.”

Dani frowned, wishing they were both at the beach already so she could give her partner a big hug. “What do you mean, Blades?” she asked, apology gentling her tone. “I thought you and Bee were hitting it off.”

“Yeah,” Blades muttered. “All the way off.”

Bumblebee had stayed with them for a little less than a year, ostensibly to work with the Rescue Bots on human-Cybertronian relations, but that quickly shifted into training the bots, both as a scout and a soldier. The combat training didn’t go over well with half the team (no surprise there, considering Blades’ anxiety and Boulder’s steadfast pacifist nature), but soon even Heatwave chafed under Bumblebee’s nerveracking tutelage, seemingly hellbent on convincing them that a Decepticon attack was imminent at any given moment, despite thirty years of no such thing on Griffin Rock.

The bots were all a little starstruck by Bumblebee’s presence in the beginning. But even considering his status as Optimus Prime’s most accomplished scout—and y’know, being presumed dead for fifteen years—no amount of fanboying could spare him from a collective intervention after he tried to get a cringing Blades to take a blaster for target practice.

The real surprise was that Blades started it, standing up for himself in a way none of them had ever seen before, hands clenched in shaking fists at his sides while his rotor blades rattled against his back.

"I-I'm sorry, Bumblebee, but I won't. Actually! Actually, I'm not sorry! I won't-I can't take the blaster because I refuse to hurt another living being that way. Or-or in any way, but especially that way! I'm— we’re —Rescue Bots! We can protect people without guns."

Visibly taken aback, Bumblebee had stared at Blades, and then the rest of the Rescue Bots, in a sort of horrified stupor, as though seeing them for the first time. Then he subspaced the offending blaster, ducked his head a quiet apology to Blades and to the Chief, before ending the lesson by transforming and speeding away down the street.

Humbled, though still a little high-strung, which seemed to be Bumblebee’s natural state, the scout’s second attempt at integrating with the team went much better after that.

Blades quietly told Dani late one movie night that Bumblebee had apologized to him, seeking him out not even a day after Blades’ legendary scolding.

“He knows we’re all Autobots, but he’s been in hiding so long, and at war for so much longer, that I think being a soldier is all he really knows,” Blades murmured, staring down at his hands as Dani paused the latest installment in their Sandra Bullock marathon. “Maybe…maybe we can show him the good things about Earth, like you all showed me? Since he’s safe from G.H.O.S.T. here, at least for a little while.”

And Blades had. With Bumblebee taking a break from teaching, Blades took that as the perfect opportunity to drag him all over the island, whether it was movies at the drive-in, Pioneer Scout outings, or karaoke. And, admittedly, Dani worried like any self respecting best friend ought to.

Blades had something of an obvious (full on flashing neon lights) crush on Bumblebee from the get-go and while Bumblebee had been friendly, he’d shown no sign of reciprocating. Then the incident with the blaster put the whole team on tenterhooks, with Blades being the first of them to reach out again. Dani was somewhat mollified by Bumblebee having to apologize before Blades took that step, but she wasn’t completely reassured either.

She’d never been able to get a real bead on Bumblebee. While never rude, he’d done little to ingratiate himself to the human members of the team, treating them all with distant politeness, like temporary coworkers he didn’t much want to bother with. Even Cody, their resident bot whisperer, couldn’t get through to him, and all the time Bumblebee didn’t spend training the Rescue Bots was devoted to his own exercises, moving with a deadly agility and violent grace she’d never seen in their bots.

Chase was the only Rescue Bot with anything resembling actual weapons incorporated in his frame, and even then they were a taser and small laser cutterer, both nonlethal. Bumblebee had guns in both arms, whining energon blasters brimming with alien power the likes of which Dani had last seen on the news fifteen years ago, crowded around the television set with Kade and Graham late at night when their dad was on patrol, and the Transformer War was still waging on the mainland, too close and yet a world away.

Dani hadn’t been afraid of Bumblebee, per say—she knew Optimus would never send them someone dangerous—but rather pointedly aware of his and Blades differences. Blades could be timid, high-strung, and a nuisance, and he was also the bravest person Dani knew, not to mention one of the sweetest. If he was gonna be with someone romantically, they needed to know and appreciate all of that about him. But more than anything, she wanted Blades to be happy .

Bumblebee already hurt him once. What if he did it again?

Dani fully was prepared to take matters into her own hands, when she noticed a change come over the scout.

Bumblebee started seeking out Blades rather than the other way around, to the point that it became rare to see one without the other. They ran drills and training sims together, just the two of them, of the rescue work variety rather than the more soldierly scenarios Bumblebee had started out with.

And as joined at the hip as they were, it became impossible not to notice the looks Bumblebee was constantly sending Blades.

Blades wasn’t exactly a master of subterfuge, but compared to Bumblebee, he was suddenly on Quickshadow's level. He could barely tear his optics away from Blades’ face whenever the helicopter-bot wasn’t looking straight at him and they held hands often, even going on long walks, just the two of them, along the very same beach Dani was meeting Blades at now.

Cody swore he’d caught them kissing behind the firehouse, but Dani chalked it up to wishful thinking and maybe an interrupted hug. Her baby brother was turning into a bigger romantic than she was.

Dani had walked it on them in the bunker late one night when everyone else was out, sitting on the Autobot-sized could with Blades’ arms around Bumblebee, one hand pressed between his doorwings and another cradling the back of his helm, letting Bumblebee hide his face against Blades’ shoulder.

Those doorwings twitched violently at the sound of the elevator doors opening, her presence clearly putting Bumblebee immediately on high alert. But Blades didn’t let him go, and after meeting her eyes over his head and seeing her waving apologeticly as she backed into the elevator again, he leaned down to murmur in Bumblebee’s audial. She only heard a snippet before the doors closed.

“You’re okay. It was just Dani, and she’s already—”

And then Bumblebee left, almost without warning, a few months later. Prime was reassigning him, he said. They’d thrown together a last minute goodbye, he and Blades had hugged, and that was it. They hadn’t received any word since, not that Dani knew of, but she’d assumed that it was a case of no news is good news.

But maybe she’d been wrong.

“It’s been almost six months,” she hedged, as the beach finally came into view directly ahead of her, where the storefronts ended. “Have you heard from Bee at all?”

“No, and I don’t want to,” Blades huffed petulantly.

Dani sighed as she stopped on the last stretch of sidewalk before the beach to take off her wedge heels. Near her were the remains of a few bonfires, all carefully contained to their brick fire pits and burned down to ashes by this point, and a few stragglers were packing up the last of their beach gear. She recognized one of the families from Boulder’s gardening club and waved.

“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” Dani said gently. “Who knows where Optimus sent him. Maybe he has to go radio silent.”

Blades went quiet for so long that Dani nearly tested her comm for signal interference. The surf pounded from a couple hundred feet away, nearly drowning out Blades’ whisper, wavering with false bravado. “Or maybe he never cared about…about Griffin Rock at all.”

Dani’s heart broke for him. “Aw, Blades…”

He came into view then, a white and orange speck growing larger as he followed where the rocky shoreline of the river curved into clear, sandy beach.

“It’s fine, Dani! I’m fine!” he shrilled so that Dani couldn’t get a word in edgewise, utterly unconvincing. “Let’s go home, huh? Miss Knightley’s Pride and Prejudice is calling my name.”

Before Dani could say another word, there was a flash of red light above her, rippling through the sky and across the ocean like a second set of waves. It struck Blades from tail rotor to strut, washing over him in an instant.

She watched as almost at once, the helicopter shuddered, blades freezing in place, before Blades transformed to robot mode in midair, and plunged out of the sky.

Around her, she heard other townspeople gasp.

Dani screamed. “BLADES!”

She was running before he even hit the ground. She had a second to pray he’d jolt back to vehicle mode and catch himself in time.

He didn’t.

The slam of Blades’ impact might’ve been muffled by the sand, but instead he hit the water with an almighty splash. He was facedown when Dani reached him, already half buried from the force of his landing, waves lapping at his frame as high up as his rotor assembly, as if to drag him out to sea.

Dani dropped her shoes somewhere behind her and sprinted, full tilt and clumsy, through the sand to reach him. The wet sand suctioned on her feet, nearly causing her to topple over, but it just made her all the more desperate.

Overbalanced and clumsily, she careened through the water with tremendous splash, soaking her jeans immediately and the cold shock of the water stole her breath. But she barely felt the discomfort, because Blades’ optics were dark and he was laying utterly still, as if in death.

It was all wrong. Sick and wrong.

Whenever Blades flew without her, this was his preferred meetup spot, in case he got overwhelmed flying alone and came down hard, the impact would be softened and the chances of hurting anyone was low.

Now, thanks to the lateness of the hour and the chill of the water, the beach was blessedly empty. She knew that Blades would never forgive himself if he’d hurt someone in his fall, but that was of cold comfort.

Nothing she did, from screaming his name to slapping his face until her hands ached got any reaction out of him. And when she turned to her comm for aid, she found the rest of her family embroiled in the same grief and chaos.

All she’d wanted was to protect Blades, and now she might never get another chance.

–

All of the Rescue Bots. Half of Cody’s family was down, unresponsive…dead? He could barely even think it. He didn’t dare.

But they’d never been so utterly disabled like this, not to this extent, and definitely not all at once.

This wasn’t like the virus that locked them in vehicle mode, stealing their ability to transform before stealing their voices. They’d still had Bumblebee and Blades to save the day, and Optimus to turn to for guidance. Even if the EMP zone froze them in their tracks, they could still communicate.

But Graham was saying they had no spark pulse. And even Cody, with his limited knowledge of the bots’ biology, knew what that meant.

His children’s panicked voices ringing around him, Charlie raised his head and shouted, “Sigma-1, call Optimus!”

The semi-sentient computer Boulder, Graham and Doc Greene had installed in the firehouse responded in its usual placid tone, which made its answer all the more chilling, “Optimus Prime: COMM DISABLED.”

Charlie’s expression contorted with true fear. “Call Elita-One! Call Megatron!” he demanded desperately.

“Elita-One: COMM DISABLED. Megatron: COMM DISABLED,” Sigma-1 responded, like nails in a coffin.

“Call any Autobot!”

“Unable to sync with any Autobot frequency,” Sigma-1 said, sounding almost apologetic. “Teletraan-1 is reporting total failure of Autobot communication systems.”

“Is-is it the Decepticons?” Kade wondered aloud, his voice shaking. He looked back over his shoulder at their dad. “Or….or something else? Who would go after the bots like this?”

Something, or some one. Anti-Transformer sentiment wasn’t going anywhere, but the Rescue Bots were supposed to be a secret . Griffin Rock was their home. For someone to learn about them—rescuers, the last of their kind—and still want to hurt them? What could Cody do against that kind of reckless hate?

His phone lit up with a call from Frankie, but Cody couldn’t imagine answering right now. He let it go to voicemail, only for Frankie to immediately call again. When he didn’t answer that, his phone blew up with texts.

He risked a glance at the screen. If Frankie was sending him memes, he might throw his phone against the wall.

But no. Instead, she’d sent him a series of links to news articles and online posts. The title of one read: TRANSFORMERS DEACTIVATING ACROSS THE GLOBE.

Cody clicked it, heart going cold and still in his chest.

The link led him to a video taken from someone’s phone of a silver and blue Autobot talking to a curly-haired man standing on a second story fire escape. Cody didn’t recognize either of them. With the Rescue Bots’ existence technically a secret, they’d had minimal interaction with other Autobots. It was mostly just Optimus and Bee.

In the video, the same red band of light he saw strike Chase and Heatwave flashed over the Autobot. And just like the Rescue Bots, he collapsed to a chorus of screams from the humans around him.

Cody scrolled mindlessly. Almost every other post was a similar video, or photo documenting a transformer (Autobot and Decepticon) crumpling where they stood.

“Dad, it’s not just our bots,” he found himself saying. Every part of him felt numb as he imparted information just like he would during a normal mission. “It’s happening to all Cybertronians, Autobot and Decepticon.”

Kade slumped against Heatwave’s shoulder. He looked shell shocked. “But who… Why-why would someone do this?”

Charlie was grim as he turned back to Chase’s slack, vacant face. His hand had never left his partner’s cheek. “Then we’re on our own,” he said tightly. “Sigma-1, call Doc. Tell him…tell him it’s an emergency. Omega level.”

Cody had to hope that they could fix this, that Doc Greene and Graham would pull through just as they had so many times before. Hope that this abrupt death wouldn’t be his last memory of the newest members of his family, who had already lost everything except each other and deserved better than this.

He dropped his phone on the floor. He didn’t want to see any more empty faces, the fallen bodies of those who might’ve been future friends.

Standing was hard on legs as shaky as his, and he resorted to half crawling to get closer to Heatwave. Kade had his fists pressed over his eyes, muttering a combination of swears and garbled apologies under his breath. Under normal circumstances, Cody would’ve gone to his oldest brother to try and comfort him, but things weren’t normal, and Cody wanted to be comforted too—by the one person who couldn’t offer it this time.

Heatwave’s palm lay half open, his massive metal fingers unmoving. Cody curled up around the hand that had snatched him out of harm’s way more times than could be counted, wrapped around his shoulders in their closest approximation of a hug, lifted him up to the safety of a cab, and done the same for every member of Cody’s family.

He wrapped his arms around Heatwave’s thumb, pressing his face against the cooling metal. He didn’t cry. He might have forgotten how.

Because he was pressed so close to Heatwave, he was the first to notice the change.

Cody’s skin startled to prickle, stinging almost, with a feeling not unlike static electricity when he pulled clothes out of the dryer. He opened his eyes when his hair stood on end, just in time to watch a ribbon of shimmering green sweep over Heatwave, just like the crimson light had crackled over him a few minutes or an hour ago.

And then, Heatwave’s thumb twitched.

Then, impossibly, inexplicably, Heatwave groaned.

“Ugh, what in Primus’ name… Did a combiner run me over?”

Cody didn’t look up. He couldn’t. He didn’t dare. But he felt the shifting of the Autobot beside him as Heatwave sat up.

Kade jumped like he’d been electrocuted, letting out a rasping, wet gasp. “N-no way. No freaking way.”

Cody glanced over at his dad when he made his own startled oath.

“Oh my god, Chase .”

No longer limp and still in death, Chase’s gold eyes were wide with confusion as he pushed himself off the floor. “My apologies, Chief. I…do not know what came over me. Or how I ended up on the ground.”

Charlie laughed, a hoarse burst of sound. “Don’t apologize, partner. I’m…I’m just glad to hear your voice.” Charlie’s own voice was thick, and in lieu of keeping a hand on Chase’s cheek, he’d wrapped his fingers around the edge of Chase’ forearm.

Cody couldn’t see his dad’s face from his vantage point, but Chase obviously could and judging by his worried frown, he didn’t like what he saw. “But, are you well, sir? Your eyes are…leaking? I was under the impression that only emotional distress triggered such a reaction in humans.”

Charlie laughed again, a thready sound of relief tinged with hysteria. “It’s called crying, Chase. And we do it when we’re happy too.”

A sense of unreality threatened to overcome Cody, watching Chase move and speak like normal, alive and unhurt as though the last several minutes weren’t some of the most terrifying in Cody’s short life. It almost felt too good to be true, but Chase’s bemusement and the way he remained kneeling by Charlie’s side, under his insistence that they all get medical scans immediately, was enough to buoy Cody from the cold, numb depths of shock that had swallowed him.

Heatwave’s thumb nudged Cody then, exceedingly gentle. Despite that encouragement, Cody had to muster his courage before he looked up at Heatwave’s face, some small part of him still afraid of what he would find.

Burning orange optics stared down at him in concern, a color Cody had started to think he’d never see again.

“What happened?” Heatwave rumbled. “Are you okay, Cody?”

It was too much. The lingering terror collided with the tidal wave of sheer mind bending relief inside of him. Thrust out of the cold numbness of shock like breaking the surface of the water after too long without air, Cody’s tenuous hold on his emotions snapped. He finally burst into tears.

A familiar, warm palm the size of a car door settled over his shoulders and another beneath him, scooping him up against a wide chestplate.

“Whoa, hey. You’re alright, Code.” Heatwave’s naturally gruff voice rumbled through the plating under Cody’s ear as a massive thumb carefully ruffled his hair.

He caught a glimpse of Heatwave’s Rescue Bots sigil through the haze of his tears before clenching his eyes shut and hiding his face against the red plating.

“Is this more…happy crying?” he heard Chase ask worriedly, slightly muffled through the metal of Heatwave’s hand.

Even while wiping away tears, trying to breath through hitching sobs, a giggle burst out of Cody without his control. Because yes, he was overwhelmed and terrified, but he was also happy . He had his family back.

–

Boulder returned to the waking world with a hard reboot, optics fizzing, and an alert on his HUD informing him of a gap in his memory banks.

He tried to run a diagnostic, but he wasn’t of a mind to even process the results.

Boulder didn’t frighten easily, but the last time he’d awoken missing time, he was emerging from a four million year stasis lock to discover their war ravaged planet was dead and that they were the last of their kind. He couldn’t go through something like that again, losing a home, a family all over again. Losing Graham. He wouldn’t survive it.

But the timestamp on his blank memory banks was little under five minutes and his chronometer was fully functional. Only four minutes, twenty-three seconds, and 0.47 milliseconds were missing.

He ran another self-diagnostic as he onlined his optics, this time actually paying attention to the readout.

POWER SYSTEMS ONLINE

BACKUP POWER SYSTEMS ONLINE

T-COG 100% FUNCTIONAL

CENTRAL PROCESSOR 100% FUNCTIONAL

OPTICS 100% FUNCTIONAL

AUDITORY SYSTEMS 100% FUNCTIONAL

VOCAL PROCESSOR 100% FUNCTIONAL

COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 100% FUNCTIONAL

SPARK PULSE NORMAL

Everything came back clear despite his processor’s inability to explain his crash. He just got error alerts flagged in red whenever he tried to access the missing memory files. It wasn’t that they'd been corrupted; this wasn’t the fault of a virus or any sort of hack. The files simply didn’t exist. As if Boulder had ceased to exist for those four minutes, twenty-three seconds, and 0.47 milliseconds.

Putting that troubling conundrum aside for now, he set about figuring out where he was.

His GPS placed him exactly where he remembered being last, on the road down from Griffin Rock Labs. He knew he was laying in the dirt before his visual feed even cleared, having detected trace minerals of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur, all of them well-known signifiers of Earth soil.

Until he banished the alert, his proximity sensor kept pinging him about a human heat signature less than a meter away. It was a subroutine he and the others installed when they arrived on the island since humans lacked a mech’s EM field, and the risk of one of those fragile lives getting passed over during a rescue or, Primus forbid, getting caught underfoot, was unthinkable.

Boulder didn’t need the faint frequency of a remote comm signal to know who was beside him. He would’ve known by their nearness, the press of two delicate, calloused human hands against the plating of his shoulder guards.

But his scanners picked up more. An abnormally fast heartbeat. Irregular breathing, quick and shallow. Those steady hands on his plating were trembling.

Boulder knew what he would find before he even raised his head, but the sight was no less troubling to wake up to.

Graham (for whom his processors automatically rattled off designation tags, buddy, love, partner).

Graham, always a dear sight for sore optics, had the color leached from his skin, and his dark, human eyes were glassy and unfocused as he hyperventilated fast enough to make his entire body shake. He didn’t even acknowledge Boulder’s gaze on him, or Boulder’s presence at all.

Graham had endured a few panic attacks since their partnership began, but this was the worst Boulder had seen since the first, on their first real rescue as a team, when he hadn’t known what was wrong or how to make it better.

Back then, they had been waiting for word from Heatwave and Kade, who had raced off to save Cody from a hidden lava flow they hadn’t noticed until it was too late. With nothing left except the waiting, Graham had folded in on himself, almost collapsing against Boulder, who until then he’d been careful to touch as little as possible, even while “driving” him.

While startled, Boulder had still been in vehicle mode and was careful not to do more than stiffen on his treads for fear of harming his charge. Graham’s hands were buried in his hair and his breathing had gone high and fast, and in Boulder’s own dismay, he’d run as many medical scans over Graham as his processors would let him. Humans were still so new to him then, not that that was any excuse, and he’d cursed himself for clearly missing some kind of injury.

While no less fascinating, humans were no longer the great mystery that they used to be, and Boulder knew his partner like he knew his own spark.

His memories from before his crash were fragmented, but he recalled a strange red flash and Graham’s soft voice tight with panic. Whatever had happened (and make no mistake, Boulder would figure out the exact details of what happened), it must have caused his crash and left Graham alone with his unresponsive frame for nearly five minutes.

Boulder would be in a much worse state if the reverse had been the case.

While he would’ve liked to gather Graham close at once, offering comfort in one of the few ways their difference in size allowed, experience told Boulder that it was best not to alarm Graham any further. Slowly pushing himself up onto his knees, Boulder reached out with just his voice, a lifeline spoken at such a low volume it was practically subsonic. “Hey, buddy.”

Jerking his head up with such force he nearly fell backward, Graham gasped, a brutal rattling sound as he sucked in too much air too fast. “Oh— god,” he choked out, throat clicking wetly, like something inside of him had torn. Tears welled up behind his glasses and overflowed, making trails through the dirt on his cheeks. One side of his face had an ugly bruise forming, crisscrossed by a handful of small abrasions, the pinpricks of blood already clotting.

With great care, Boulder wrapped both of his hands around Graham’s shoulders. Graham’s breath hitched again at the press of metal against his back but he didn’t pull away. The opposite, really.

“B-Boulder,” he croaked, latching onto one of Boulder’s thumbs with enough force to make his knuckles jut out, white and bloodless. “You—how—y-you’re—”

“Are you alright?” Boulder rumbled, brushing Graham’s injured cheek with his free thumb. “What happened?”

Graham made a strange wheezing sound. It took Boulder a klik to recognize it as a reedy laugh, lacking any signs of actual mirth, much less a smile.

“Am-am I okay?” Graham demanded. He sounded angry, but he still looked wrung out and devastated. “How can you even—Boulder, y-you were–you were offline! And I couldn’t–I wasn’t able–I was useless!”

“Hey,” Boulder chided gently, Graham’s stammering self-flagellation making his fuel pump churn. He’d never seen his partner in such distress before, and he hated that he was the cause, even unintentionally. “Don’t say that. You could never be useless. To be honest, I don’t even understand what happened.”

Graham’s frustration gutted out like a candle flame, breathless alarm surging to take its place. One of his hands snapped out and clung to Boulder’s wrist, the few inches his comparatively diminutive grip could cover.

“What do you mean? Do-do you think it could happen again?”

“No, no.” Aching to reassure him, Boulder ran his thumb up and down the center of Graham’ chest, gently, gently, following the line of his tie and feeling the racing of his heart beneath the fragile barrier of cotton.

“I’m pretty sure this was a one-time thing. My memory’s a little foggy, but I got hit with some kind of…energy pulse, right?” At Graham’s hesitant nod, he continued more confidently. “It completely blacked out my systems so I wasn’t able to get any readings, but one of Doc’s scanners must’ve picked it up. We’ll study it, figure out where it came from, and what it’s supposed to do. We’ll contact Optimus, too. See if some of the Autobot scientists have any idea what it is.”

“I think this is bigger than Griffin Rock, buddy.” Graham closed his eyes, taking a breath that trembled on the exhale, as if he was bracing himself. “When all four of you were…unresponsive, my dad tried to contact Optimus. It…it looks like this pulse was targeting all Cybertronians. And when…when it hit you, Boulder, you weren’t in stasis. You didn’t just crash. You…you were dead. Your spark…according to the med scanner, your spark had gone out.”

Boulder loosed a hand from around Graham and flattened it to the center of his chest without conscious thought. Beneath layers of heavy armor, his spark whirling feverishly in its chamber, as if reassuring him you’re still here!

“Oh,” he said, rather numbly.

Well, that would explain why his processors didn’t register his existence for those four minutes, twenty-three seconds, and 0.47 milliseconds, wouldn’t it?

“Boulder?” Graham murmured, expression open with affectionate concern as he rubbed Boulder’s wrist guard. Clearly he thought it was Boulder’s turn to be comforted, and he wasn’t exactly wrong.

Boulder shook his helm in an attempt to clear it. An existential crisis was the last thing he needed right now. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m…I’ll be okay.”

Graham bit his lower lip in a familiar show of uncertainty.

“The others…do you know if they’re…?”

Boulder had been aware of his teammates' presence in the back of his processors from the moment of onlining. Their inner comm system made communication possible via glyph and emotional impressions in a fraction of the time it took spoken dialogue, and all four of them tended to leave the channel open, maintained at a steady thrum that could be ignored if needed, but made them all feel less alone. Now that he paid attention though, he was conscious of the careful distance their impressions were maintaining from him, as though they were each trying to avoid overwhelming him.

When he finally consciously reached out, he was bombarded almost at once.

BOULDER[RESCUE-BOT-Σ1703]

: : Everyone okay? : :

/ relief / we’re safe / where are you /

HEATWAVE[RESCUE-BOT-Σ1701]

: : It’s about time. : :

: : What, did you get a bump on your head and let Graham kiss it better? : :

/ relief / thank primus / i don’t know what i’d do without / CHANNEL BLOCKED /

CHASE[RESCUE-BOT-Σ1702]

: : No injuries to report. : :

: : However, this is a troubling development. : :

: : We cannot allow ourselves to be caught unawares again. Being incapacitated in such a manner puts our partners at great risk. : :

: : We must find a way to contact the Prime at once. : :

/ relief / i’m glad you’re safe / how could this happen /

BLADES[RESCUE-BOT-Σ1704]

: : SAND! I'VE GOT SAND EVERYWHERE!! : :

/ panic / panic / panic /

Boulder huffed a laugh. “Everyone’s fine. I guess whatever that was only had a temporary effect on us.”

Graham still looked ill at ease, his expression far away as he pressed a hand against his mouth. Boulder could practically hear his brilliant mind already whirring away beneath his hard hat. “I don’t like this. We need to go back to Doc’s.”

“And we will,” Boulder soothed. He hadn’t forgotten about Graham’s panic attack; his partner was his own worst enemy sometimes, overworking himself half to the point of collapse. “But it’s late, Graham, and you need rest—”

“And you don’t?” Graham demanded, snapping his head up and pinning Boulder in place with laser sharp focus as effectively as a launched stasis net.

Boulder blinked, taken aback by the uncharacteristically sharp tone. Just as quickly, Graham softened in chagrin. He looked himself again, if a tired and hunted version of himself.

He sighed, wrapping a hand around Boulder’s thumb again. “I’m–I'm sorry, buddy. But I can’t just go to sleep like nothing’s wrong when there might be something out there with the power to hurt you again. I can’t. I won’t.” While Graham spoke gently, with that same, low fondness he seemed to reserve just for Boulder, there was a waver in his voice that spoke of lingering fear. But then he set his jaw, not out of stubbornness but in fierce determination, the same way his father did.

Boulder’s spark throbbed, once, twice, whirling brightly in its chamber. His plating was only just thick enough to obscure the glow from human sight. As if there was any chance he’d tell his partner ‘no’ after that.

“I…thank you,” he managed hoarsely.

Graham grinned up at him crookedly, and Boulder cherished the rare sight of the dimple in his right cheek. “Don’t thank me yet.”

Dani knelt in the surf, feeling hollow, carved out, her lungs, stomach, and heart scraped free from the force of her screaming and the retching she hadn’t been able to control, her lovely dinner with Taylor lost in the waves.

Now she tried to scrape sand out of the crevices of Blades’ face, where it caked beneath his chin and in the hollow of his dark optics, because she knew he would hate it. As much fun as he had on beach days, no matter how many immaculate sand castles he built, he would complain about sand in his joints as much as any human complained about finding sand in their shoes.

But hers was an exercise in futility. There was only one of her, and her two hands weren’t enough to lift Blades’ body out of the sand, or free him from the tide that lengthened/deepened every passing second, trying to claim him, dragging him further away from her than he already was.

Some of the townspeople who saw Blades fall had moved to help, but Dani waved them all away. A few of them left, after firing endless questions at her that she had no answer for, while others, Boulder’s garden club friends and a few kids Dani recognized as Teen Pioneers, lingered over by the incline leading down to the beach, clustered together and crying or speaking frantically into their phones. Dani tried to ignore them.

Without another one of the bots to carry Blades, they’d need something like a crane to lift him out of the surf and she was nowhere near ready to consider that horrifying eventuality.

It was almost utterly dark now, with only a few distant streetlights to see by. Almost up to her waist in frigid seawater, shivers wracked Dani’s body so strongly that her teeth chattered and her fingers were halfway numb. She couldn’t stay out here much longer without risking hypothermia, but what else could she do? Leave Blades here, alone?

As if both in answer and insult, a wave crashed against Blades’ back, soaking Dani down to the roots of her hair.

She was blinking saltwater out of her eyes when a second wave washed over Blades. Only this one was composed of green light, dazzling her vision as it left a glowing trail in its wake. Dani’s skin prickled with a feeling like static electricity, and she swore that the sea spray around them froze for a long heartbeat, as if suspended in time. The sounds of the ocean were a distant echo, and her heartbeat thundered in her ears instead.

With a great crash, the world reasserted itself.

The ocean roared, cold lanced through her like lightning, and Blades’ optics reignited as he awoke with a sputtering gasp, flailing in the surf.

“Ugh, oh, augh!! Sand! I’ve got sand in my mouth!” he spat out a mouthful, pawing at his face, neck, and finials. “And in my nose, and my optics—aw, it’s everywhere!”

“Blades!” Dani shrieked, her hoarse voice creaking horribly, and threw her arms around Blades’ neck. In typical fashion, Blades wailed and let her momentum knock him over, landing flat on his back in the water with a tremendous splash.

“Dani?” he stammered. “Whyyyy? I’m getting salt and sand in all my transformation seams! This is so embarrassing.” Despite his complaining, his hands gently settled around her to hug her back.

Dani couldn’t even think of responding right now. Distantly, she was aware of the crowd on the beach cheering for Blades’ miraculous revival but all she could do was hug him tighter. His voice, whiny and singsong, was the best thing she’d ever heard.

“Dani?” he murmured quietly. With careful movements, he sat up in the surf, taking Dani with him. Cradled gently in his hands against the round smoothness of his chestplate, she realized she was shaking from more than just cold. Silent tears were making hot trails down her face, and her breath hitched upon realizing she was crying, with no memory of when she started.

She leaned back roughly wiping at her cheeks with the heels of her palms and back of her hands. “It’s–I’m-I’m fine. How do you feel, Blades?” she demanded.

Blades blinked at her intensity. “Ummm…okay, I guess. My head hurts a little…” he glanced around, seemingly taking in their surroundings for the first time. “Uh… Dani?” his voice cracked, rising sharply with his sudden and growing panic. He’d noticed the Blades-shaped hole in the sand that the waves hadn’t washed away fast enough. “How did I get here? I…I don’t remember—I didn’t crash, did I?”

Dani caught his face between her comparatively small hands, giving him no choice but to look at her. “Blades— Blades, no. Something…something happened, but it wasn’t your fault. You’re okay. You’re here, and you’re okay,” she said firmly, repeating it for her sake.

A new thought hit her and she thumbed her comm link. “Guys? Blades—he’s back. The rest of the bots, are they…?”

Her father’s voice answered her, warm with exhausted relief. “We’re all here, Dani. Boulder’s with Graham. They’re heading back to Doc’s to try and figure out what just happened.”

Dani breathed for the first time in what felt like hours.

But above her, Blades had gone strangely silent.

When she looked up, she found him looking troubled, his gaze locked on the horizon.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

“It’s…Bumblebee,” Blades gasped. He tilted his helm, gesturing at his comm link. “He’s okay. He’s…he’s asking if we’re okay, too.” Blades’ eyes were wide, clearly wondering what exactly had happened to him, to all of them, but Dani couldn’t bear to explain and relive it right now.

“The same happened to them, right? Does he know what it was?” she pressed.

“He says…it’s a long story.”

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