"Hahaha! And miko wins again!" The pink haired girl yelled happily from the human perch. Two of the kids were playing video games with one another, as well as with Bulkhead. Who was clearly avoiding a certain con.
Raf - or was it rafeal? - groaned in disappointment.
"Miko, will you please be quiet! I'm trying to focus." Ratchet called out to her. He was fixing breakdown. Who has sitting quietly and patiently on the med table.
"You shouldn't be helping a con anyways!" She called back.
Ratchet didn't answer.
"It's just for the time being, he'll be out of here soon. Don't worry." Bulkhead said to her, trying to calm her down. An answer that breakdown completely expected from him.
This was the third fight they had on this subject. Not once did Breakdown interject, he didn't want to make it worse. He could tell that ratchet was thankful that he was staying silent. He only spoke when spoken to.
All breakdown wanted was for this too to go faster. Currently, Ratchet was taking is sweet time. And sure he was thankful that he was helping him. But he just wanted knockout to do this, not this grumpy autobot. He wished he just fixed his comlink and sent him on his way.
"I hope he's out of here soon!" Miko yelled so he could hear her. Ratchet flinched, expecting him to react in a violent manner. But no, he just sat their sternly. Staring up at the ceiling.
"I expected you to be a lot more . . . Violent." Ratchet said to him.
"This isn't the place or the time to fight." He answered back. And he was right, sure, but from what Ratchet had seen on the battle field they never would've expected that. So this took him by complete surprise.
"YES!" The girls voice echoed through the cave. Interrupting everything. Ratchet grunted, but ignored it this time.
Was it always like this here? So loud and Choatic. Why did they keep the humans around if all they did was distract them? Especially from important jobs. It seemed like the girl was more trouble then she was worth. Constantly getting in the way, and making herself seem more important then she was.
But from the looks of it, it looked like bulkhead was having fun with them. Smiling and laughing along with them. Maybe they were Optimuses way of keeping morale up. Well also providing a once in a lifetime chance to some random human kids.
What that chance was? Well, it was either gain some memories or be squashed by decepticons.
Arcee and her human rushed in from the entrance. "WOO! New high score arcee! That was awesome!" He jumped off, and she transformed. She held her hand and he climbed on. Arcee walked over to the platform with the other two humans, and the human boy jumped onto it. "Whatcha playing guys?"
"An awesome racing game!" Miko screeched.
"Miko keeps winning." Raf said in a rather content tone of voice.
"I've almost got it!" Bulkhead said excitedly.
Breakdown was listening to all of this from the med table. He was interested to see what they were doing. And kinda wanted to jump up and look. He was so tempted to, but they wouldn't want to hang around him. Miko was making that extremely obvious already.
Ratchet stood up straight, admiring his work. "I was able to work through the noise after all." He grumbled. He turned away from him. "Alright, your officially good to go. I did as best as I could with what we have. Your red medic buddy might want to patch some things up but that's all I can do for now."
Breakdown sat up. He looked around the room, with only half his range of vision. He held up a hand in front of his missing optic, completely unable to see it. He hated this so much.
How was he gonna fight if he could only see half of he old before?
He got up from the table. Everyone in the room was ignoring him completely. He decided it was worth it, and wandered over to the group of humans and bots.
He saw the screen. The graphics were horrid. He assumed the winning car was mikos. It tore through the finish line - or at least he assumed it was. Cause miko jumped up in excitement.
"She wins again!" She called out. The others groaned in annoyance.
Bulkhead spotted breakdown finally. He nervously looked away at the ground. But quickly held up the little remote and slightly smiled. It was funny to see him smile. "Wanna play?"
Breakdown wasn't sure. He should probably be on his way back to the harbinger by now. But at the same time he didn't want to deal with Megatron at the moment.
He nodded, and took the tiny remote from bulkhead. "How do, uh, play?"
"Okay, so this button is the gas peddle, and this is the breaks. This stick is the steering wheel." He explained. Trying to point at the tiny buttons.
"Don't break that, con!" Miko yelled at him sternly. But then said, "if you do, we'd have to get another one. And that would be the fourth in a row. So just, don't."
"Don't worry, I can always fix it." The small boy said.
"Do you see his hands!? He could crush that thing, and turn it to dust! You can't fix dust."
"Oh yeah, I guess that's true. But if he damages it a little bit, I can fix it." He smiled up at breakdown.
Breakdown liked this small human. If he saw him on the battlefield, he'd go out of why to avoid crushing him. But not the girl, he didn't care about her.
"Alright! No more talking! Let's start so I can crush you both!" Ironic choice of words.
She pressed play, and the race began with a countdown.
3.
2.
1.
Breakdown didn't know much about racing. He knew things from listening to his partner rant on and on about it, but he never actually experienced a real race. Why would he? He clearly wasn't the type for those kinds of things.
He quickly assumed that this game was nothing like the real life sport.
The controls were impossible for his big digits to press. The controller was obviously far to small for him. And the controls themselves were just plain bad. Nothing like real life driving.
Arcee, bulkhead and the bigger human boy were cheering them on. From the corner of his optic he noticed ratchet sigh in frustration. But also chuckle to himself.
Everyone seemed genuinely happy. There was no fighting. The base was calm and there were smiles plastered on everyone's face.
He didn't notice, but he himself was smiling. Not from a malicious reason like usual. No, this time he was content with a stupid little human game that had no reason to be as fun as it was.
He was in second place. Just that close to first place. How he was beating the smallest human? He seemed like a techy human who should know how to play, but clearly was awful.
He was so close to winning. But miko raced right on through.
"Boo ya! That's five times in a row! Beat that jack!" She snatched the remote from rafeal, who didn't seem to care at all, and handed it to the big human.
He now had a name. Jack.
Jack only grinned. "Bring it on!"
They played like that for a while. Each time one or the other winning. Breakdown won once, somehow.
It seemed like they had forgotten about the big bad decepticon playing a game with them. Almost anyways.
"Ratchet, we need a ground bridge." Optimuses voice rang through the computer.
"Coming right up." He punched in the coordinates, and pulled the lever. Opening up a ground bridge.
Optimus and bumblebee came through.
"Anything?" Arcee asked as she walked over to them.
"Nothing." Bumblebee whined.
"The mine was completely empty." Optimus explained.
"Do the decepticons really need that much energon?" Arcee vented. Balling up her hands into fists, glaring at the ground.
"They do have all those vehicons." Rafeal chimed in.
"Those vehicons die within a week anyways. Why are they so selfish?" Arcee frowned.
Breakdown stood uncomfortably in the corner, holding the tiny little human remote. The game was paused, due to obvious reasons.
They were right, the decepticons didn't need all that energon. They were just trying to slow down the autobots using - unsavory tactics.
"It seems the decepticons are getting desperate." Optimus fretted in his normally slow voice.
"Yeah well, so are we." Arcee crossed her arms across her body in anger. "It's almost as if-" she paused, and looked up at breakdown. "Oh yeah, your here."
Suddenly all the attention was on him. He stood there, nervously glancing at all of the autobots. Bulkhead was still beside him.
"I guess I shouldn't say an idea if we have you among us." She glared at him.
"I guess not." He shrugged. He didn't care about their ideas, or their schemes. He wanted to either go back to playing the video game or get out of here.
The room went utterly silent after that.
He watched as the autobots seemed to huddle up in the center of the room, by the computers and began to chat. He wasn't paying attention to what they were saying anymore. He didn't care.
"Hey." Mikos voice said from the platform beside him. She reached out her arm and pointed at his hands. "Can I have the remote back?"
"Oh, uh, yeah, of course." He laid it flat on his digit and brought it infront of her. She hesitated for a second, glancing up at him nervously. Then quickly snatched from his hand as fast as she could. Which honestly, was a completely fair reaction. If he was her he wouldn't trust him either.
"Hey um," she started, but then her voice caught in her throat. She looked over at the autobots.
"Yeah?" He wanted to know what she was gonna say.
"What's it like? Being a decepticon that is."
Well, this was a funny predicament. A human asking him that question, in the autobots base, after everything that had happened.
"It's just life. I've always been one." He thought for a moment. "Well, not always. Back before there was no war, I was a wrecker."
She looked shocked. "No way. What happened?"
She was a brave little human this one. Were they all like this? The males seemed to be a lot more shy. Maybe it was just this one?
"It's a long story." She looked disappointed. "Maybe I can tell you some other time?" He highly doubted it. But she brightened up a little bit.
The humans were kinda like a smaller, weaker version of the vehicons, who couldn't actually do anything. But he kinda liked them, somehow.
"Did you used to be friends with Bulkhead?"
This took him by surprise even more then before. He nodded. "Yeah, I was his friend for many years before the war."
"Oh, huh. It's too bad the war happened then."
"Yeah, it's . . . done a lot of damage."
Rafeal and Jack were listening to this from the couch. Nervous for miko. But at the same time, curious about the topic as well.
Miko had one last question. "Would you ever consider being an autobot?"
It was almost the as if the air got sucked out the room. He physically had to take a step back. Everyone heard, and now they were staring at him.