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Rubble woke up with a gulp and a gasp, stumbling forward on suddenly unstable pedes. The world spun around him, liquid lapping at his pedes. He wheezed at the ground, collapsing back to his knees like he had been what felt like only mere nano-kliks before.
But he must’ve lost consciousness, something must have happened, because he was no longer trying to crawl away from the murderer’s furious steps, servos bunched into fists. No longer was his trembling servo lifting up to protect his face from the punch that was too come–
In fact, he didn’t hurt at all. Rubble had gotten enough scrapes to know that he should be hurting, at least a little, right now. He didn’t remember the blow landing, but it must’ve, right? It had gotten too close to not hit.
His servos lifted to pull at his face, searching for dents or scrapes, even something as unassuming as dried energon, but he found none.
Rubble was… safe? He was alive? How?
He didn’t…
Confusion spun itself in a steady circle around his chassis. He had to… do something. Contact help or something.
He lifted his wrist to begin punching in random buttons until he got Prowl or Wheeljack or Bumblebee or someone, but nothing greeted him. Instead, he found himself staring at smooth white plating. That wasn’t right, either. He was a blue mech. He was blue. He shouldn’t be… he wasn’t…
“White?” He muttered, in a language he had never heard before, never spoken before, but he knew the words anyway. He gasped, lifting a servo up to touch his throat, feeling his voice box rumble with the word.
He didn’t like how it sounded. Rubble wanted to sound like him again, wanted to speak in his Cybertronian language, but when he tried to search up the files, he came up blank.
That didn’t… make sense.
“Bumblebee?” He called to the rock walls, as if his mentor would be able to find him, as isolated as he was.
Studying around himself until he found an opening in the far corner of the room, pale light streaming through, Rubble started to wade through the liquid. Upon reaching the dry rocks, Rubble dragged himself up and onto them, stumbling upright to his pedes once more.
Liquid rolled off of him and onto the ground, making the flooring slippery, but Rubble didn’t concern himself with that. He needed to find a way out of here. Find a way to Bumblebee, wherever his mentor had gone.
By this time – judging by the light it was closer to the morning – Bumblebee should’ve made it back to their apartment and realized that Rubble wasn’t there. He would be looking for him, wouldn’t he? Contact his old friends, organize a search party…
Prowl had been on the line before Rubble lost consciousness. He would be looking even if Bumblebee couldn’t. Someone, anyone, would be looking for Rubble. His absence would not go unnoticed.
Standing beneath the opening, Rubble began searching along the walls for a grip, searching for anything that would allow him to begin his climb. He didn’t know how sturdy these rocks actually were, but he couldn’t stay down here forever, right?
Finding a grip, Rubble began the tedious process of boosting himself up, servo over servo, scaling up the wall. The rocks didn’t start to crumble under his grip, which he counted as a good sign, and he made it up without issue.
As he finally and fully boosted himself up out of the hole, he was hit by sunlight, glowing sharply through green and blinding his optics. Already used to the darkness of the hole he had been stuck in, Rubble had to readjust his optics, struggling with the bright light.
It wasn’t until he could see again that he took notice of the feeling of the ground under his pedes and servos. Fine, coarse, so little his digits couldn’t separate the material, couldn’t squish. It was softer than a majority of the material on Cybertron, but he had felt it before.
“Dirt?” He said aloud, fighting against the everpresent confusion of this unfamiliar language as he rolled his digits together. “Why is there dirt…”
He looked out around him, where it extended as far as he could see, broken up only by short wisps of green and taller and more solid brown material, extended up until that, too, divided into green.
“...everywhere?” He finished in confusion, pushing himself to shaky pedes as he stared out over the environment.
Bumblebee had told him over and over again to take proper precautions before wandering into the more organic areas of Cybertron. Sealant, cleaning supplies, plenty of energon…
Rubble had none of that. Just a cave filled with unfamiliar liquid, and no sense of direction.
What had Bumblebee told him to do if he ever got lost? Aside from attempting to use his comms, because that was impossible to do if no such comm existed.
He remembered something about how… no matter what, he’d be able to find the sun. Even if it was during the lunar-cycle, he just had to find somewhere to wait. And then, no matter what, follow the sun north. The harsher weather made it difficult for the organics to survive, so Cybertronians claimed that part of the planet as their own.
He just… had to start heading North.
Rubble looked at the sun. It was blinding, but his suspicion that it was morning was confirmed as he watched it slowly start to advance across the sky. He turned to begin walking perpendicular to the sun, allowing it to advance as he walked.
He’d find Cybertronians eventually, and they’d be able to help him. He knew they would.
(:)
He was officially starting to hate the organic stuff. He thought Bumblebee was being dramatic, or maybe Wheeljack was being biased, whenever either complained. But now, he kind of understood. The textures were numerous, each flick of green irritating against his sensitive digits.
Worse than that, though, was the prickling… something that hit his plating even when there was nothing around to touch. Rubble couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or not, but it felt like he was surrounded. Likes fields were constantly meshed against his. The more he looked, the less he found.
It just didn’t feel right.
Rubble could do nothing but keep walking. He hoped Bumblebee, or Prowl, or somebody, found him soon. He hated this. He hated the wilderness.
All this started because of his own reckless desire to do something important. He could solve a murder, he knew he could. How often Bumblebee had held him and told him that if he could do something good, he should do it. Try, if nothing else. So he had tried to do some good, and now here he was.
He didn’t regret it, not exactly, but he was lost and terrified and all he wanted to do was go home. He didn’t know why he was here, in new armor, speaking a language he didn’t know, without any way to contact his mentor.
Rubble already hated it. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to find Bumblebee, to be held and kept in their apartment and be told that everything would be okay.
Yet, here he was, surrounded by material Bumblebee had yet to tell him about. He wondered if Gauge knew what it was called, what Arcee and Greenlight had told her that Bumblebee hadn’t.
Every mentor, Bumblebee once said, chose different things to teach their iron apprentices. The basics stayed the same, but beyond that, it could be as unpredictable as Primus’ will.
Rubble just didn’t like the idea that somebody else would be more prepared for this then he was, he guessed.
His walking and distraction was interrupted by the snap of something, light and weak, behind him. And then came the shuffling, akin to the noises he had been making while traversing his own way through the environment. He swung around, spark spinning within his chassis as fear blazed through him, and he lifted his servos protectively.
Bumblebee had tried to teach him self-defense, once. But just like the comms, Rubble had never fully grasped how to do it properly. He was, admittedly, terrified. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him, and the last bot that had seen him had attacked him, and just because it didn’t hurt didn’t mean he wasn’t scared, and–
The green fuzzy stuff parted, and a yellow mech stepped into view, blue optics finding Rubble almost immediately. Confusion hit his gaze almost immediately, and then cleared into something more calm while he stumbled over his own words.
“Oh! Hi– Hello! When the Terrans told me they felt someone I didn’t think they were being…” The yellow bot cut himself off, finding a bright smile for Rubble. “Hi! It’s nice to meet you. I’m a friend of your family’s, my name’s Bumblebee! What’s yours–?”
What? That wasn’t right.
“There’s two Bumblebees?” Rubble asked, confused, taking a step backward. It was kind of funny that they were both yellow with sensory horns, he could admit, but… he thought Bumblebee told him once that names were unique to the bot.
Wait– Wait, no, he had heard about this. Bumblebee told him, once upon a time, there had been a bot that emerged shortly after Bumblebee had been. The bot had also introduced himself as Bumblebee. It had been a flaw, a mistake, but that bot had quickly found his own identity, ignoring the uncanny resemblance the two shared.
Not only had that bot been rebranded, but he was also red.
Nothing like this bot standing before him. Who looked, admittedly, barely anything like Rubble’s own Bumblebee. Not only was that a fluke, but it would never happen twice, would it?
This Bumblebee, however, was starting to frown, optic ridges pinching in confusion. “Two? No, there’s only… me? There shouldn’t be another… Wait, is your name Bumblebee?”
“No!” Rubble balked, trying to scramble through the messy collapse of knowledge within his own processor. “I’m– My name’s Rubble! I just emerged from the Well a couple stellar-cycles ago on Cybertron! I was assigned to Bumblebee. A different Bumblebee! I don’t know…”
He looked up at the blue sky, devoid of any structures filling it, Wheeljack’s work nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t know where I am.” Rubble admitted, voice trembling its way out of his voice box. Realization gripped him, and his optics flicked offline as he tried to steady himself. “This isn’t Cybertron. This is… I don’t know…”
“This is Earth,” This Bumblebee said, optic ridges starting to narrow. “But you said you… were sparked on Cybertron?” he echoed, reaching out a servo for Rubble. “A few stellar-cycles ago?” His servo extended slowly, not demandingly, waiting patiently for Rubble to do something with it.
Rubble accepted the silent offer, latching onto the servo tightly. This Bumblebee brought their joined servos to Rubble’s chassis, optics searching for something. Rubble offered this new Bumblebee a tight nod, ignoring how the mech’s face went through multiple stages of terror and confusion all at once.
“You’re definitely a Terran,” This Bumblebee noted, the digits of his free servo smoothing out over Rubble’s chassis where a pale teal light, similar to the liquid in the cave, was shining. “But you came from Cybertron... That’s…” He shook his helm. “We’re going to find out what happened to you, I promise. But until we can find your… other Bumblebee, why don’t you come with me? I can get you some nice cave water, and you can meet the others.”
“Others?” Rubble said, letting himself be guided along as the new Bumblebee turned around and began to guide them both through the environment again, ducking underneath the brown, flimsy rods.
“The other Terrans, and some humans.” This Bumblebee explained. “They’re known as the Maltos. Maltobots, whatever. They were born here, on Earth, and share a connection to each other. They’re why we’re out here for you at all looking. I just found you first, I guess. Magical connections are nothing next to good, old fashioned scouting routines.”
“Oh.” Rubble said softly, nodding his helm. He wasn’t sure he was quite following.
The new Bumblebee seemed to realize, because he frowned. “Hey… are you okay? Suddenly switching between planets can be pretty disorienting. And if it happened randomly, when you’re not prepared…”
“I don’t feel okay. I want my mentor.” Rubble admitted quietly. “I don’t know where he is, or where I am. He can make it all better. If he could just explain…”
He knew that his own Bumblebee didn’t know everything, but he knew more than Rubble. Everything he did know, he tried his best to explain to Rubble, anyway. There was a steady fascination in everything Rubble experienced, simply because Bumblebee was so eager to show him the world through his own optics.
Rubble relied on Bumblebee. To not have him here was… admittedly terrifying.
“I know.” This Bumblebee sympathized. “I’m sorry I can’t be… Hey, I need to call my team and let them know I’ve found you. After I do that, why don’t you walk me through what happened? Maybe then we can figure out what’s going on.”
Rubble nodded, allowing this Bumblebee to find a straight path through the trees for both of them, easily guiding them through the foliage. Rubble tried to focus on his story, the best way to word it.
As he did, this Bumblebee pulled out a small yellow device, the same colour as his plating, and held it up to his intake. “I found him, kids. We’re going to start heading back to the dugout. Meet you there?”
A grouping of voices exploded from the device, and Rubble cringed, taking a step away from this Bumblebee. The older bot kept a tight grip, wincing slightly though he made no attempt to stop them. Instead, he waited until the noise died down before speaking. “Guys, please, you’ll meet him at home, okay? He’s freaked out from waking up alone, and I don’t want to overwhelm him.”
Everything silenced for a solid six nano-kliks – Rubble counted – before a slightly too-excited voice responded with a “Okay. Thanks, Bee! See you soon.”
“You too, Twitch.” This Bumblebee relayed, and then finally looked down at Rubble. He squeezed his servo until Rubble locked optics with him. Offering him a small smile, this Bumblebee prompted Rubble on. “Alright, bud. Why don’t you walk me through your story?”
“Well you know how there hasn’t been any death on Cybertron in megacycles?” Rubble began, not waiting for this Bumblebee to agree before forging on. “Well, when Brainstorm died… I was kind of in the thick of it. My Bumblebee was taking me to visit him, but we found out something had… killed him.”
“No death.” This Bumblebee repeated thickly. “Until… Brainstorm.”
“Yeah.” Rubble said, confused on how this Bumblebee had never heard the news. Then again, Rubble was in a body that wasn’t his own and with a Bumblebee that most definitely wasn’t his mentor. He was starting to suspect that he was, at best, a megacycle or two in the future.
“Anyway,” Rubble continued, instead of trying to process any of that. “I knew of a Voin nearby that might’ve seen what happened to him, but everyone said I’d never be able to find it again. They looked too similar for me to… But I tried to, anyway.”
“Voin.” This Bumblebee repeated quietly to himself, diverting his gaze away from Rubble, pointing his helm away so that Rubble couldn’t see whatever funny thing his expression did.
“Yeah.” Rubble agreed quietly, letting this Bumblebee adjust his hold on his servo. “I know it was a lost cause, but I wanted to try. I’ve never really been good at anything, or had any idea of what I was going to do with my life. I thought if I could solve this mystery… I don’t know.”
“You were doing the best you could.” This Bumblebee sympathized.
“Exactly! And I, uh.” Rubble ducked his helm, embarrassed over how quickly he had latched onto the validation. “I don’t know. I didn’t really have a lot of other opportunities to find it from there. I knew I could if I just got the chance, but… I guess I got lost on the way to our apartment, and I…”
“You found it.” This Bumblebee summerized, quietly.
“I think so.” Rubble whispered. “But someone else was on the trail, too. I wasn’t able to catch up to the Voin before… He killed it. And then he saw me, and he came at me, and–”
Nothing. Liquid, the cave.
“I don’t know.” He whispered, lifting his free servo to rest as a fist against his forehelm. “I was here. There... nothing else happened. I don’t know…”
“Woah.” This Bumblebee came to a halt, twisting around so that he could set a servo on Rubble’s shoulder. “Woah, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“I’m not even on the right planet!”
“I know.” This Bumblebee sympathized. “I know, and this must all be so confusing. But I’m here for you now, kid, okay? I’m here.”
Rubble shook his helm. It didn’t sound nearly as comforting as he knew this Bumblebee wanted it to. Maybe it was just because this Bumblebee wasn’t his, maybe it was because he sounded just as confused as Rubble did.
Which frankly didn’t make any sense at all. After all, this Bumblebee said there were more bots like him, didn’t he? “You said there were bots like me?” Rubble asked, desperate. “Turrets, or something? What do they remember?”
“Terrans.” This Bumblebee softly corrected. “And they don’t… I meant it when I said they were sparked here, on Earth. They don’t… They were never Cybertronian first, the way you… are.”
“Oh.” Rubble whispered, disappointed. He stared bitterly down at their pedes, silver and gold facing each other. “So what… Why did I emerge like this? Why do I remember…” it felt like a curse to say it out loud, and even less real considering he hadn’t felt it happen, but it slipped out anyway. “...dying?”
This Bumblebee grew very, very still. “I don’t know. I have an idea, but I’d rather get you safe before I share it.”
“Okay.” Rubble said, even though it wasn’t okay. He watched quietly as this Bumblebee slid his servo down to hold his once again, latching his digits around Rubble nice and tight. Rubble blinked heavily as this Bumblebee set off into a brisk pace again, keeping the younger grappled onto him once again.
(:)
Rubble wasn’t sure what to make of the suite he found himself in. It was considerably bigger than his and his own Bumblebee’s apartment, which made sense considering how this Bumblebee implied there were a lot more… Terrans living here.
The size itself wasn’t an issue, it was the fact that it was underground, underneath the rock. It wasn’t a crashed shuttle or anything. It was actually built in, within the rock but encased with metal. Rubble thought rock was exclusively Voin territory, but he supposed that since this was a different planet, anything was possible.
“Here, sit down.” This Bumblebee invited, tapping his servo against the top of a table-berth hybrid, turning around briefly to dig underneath it for a case. Obediently, Rubble climbed up, sitting down and anxiously twisting digits together as this Bumblebee withdrew a scanner.
“This’ll take a nano-klik.” This Bumblebee warned, pointing it straight at him and letting it slide over Rubble’s frame. The light reflected back blue, and he nodded in relief. “Okay, good. It says you’re healthy. That’s to be expected. If… you got any blunt force trauma, it doesn’t seem to have stuck to your new frame.”
Rubble slid his digits over his helm. While he could feel that for himself, the confirmation made something loose start to unspool in his chassis.
“We should probably talk about…” This Bumblebee hesitated, rolling his servo quietly. “You know. This whole situation.”
“You have a theory?” Rubble pressed. “Do you have an idea of how I can get home?”
At that, this Bumblebee visibly stalled. Rubble wasn’t sure if it was because he was put on the spot, or because he had to reboot his processor after an unexpected question. With how quickly, albeit hesitantly, Bumblebee recovered, Rubble believed the former.
“I’m sorry,” This Bumblebee apologized gently, reaching out a servo towards Rubble’s forehelm, digits coming close to skating against his hem but coming to a stop right before. “I don’t know how you would… I don’t even know if it’d be possible…”
Something slammed up above them, and this Bumblebee drew away with a jolt, turning to face the staircase they had come down. Rubble, for his part, felt his spark twist over itself over and over again. Anxiety coursed through him, and all he wanted to do was bite down on his bottom derma until energon swelled out but–
His Bumblebee had put a stop to that habit long ago.
Rubble still barely managed to stop himself from carrying through with it when the entrance was filled with five unfamiliar bots, all different sizes, their fields lurching forth with great excitement and anticipation.
His Bumblebee always tried to limit his interaction. The most bots he ever had to interact with at one time was when he was hanging out with Wheeljack or swerving through busy streets, and when that happened, he was never the full focus of their attention.
Except at his ceremony, but he scarcely remembered that.
“Hi!” A little red seeker burst forward, hovering two meters in the air as she reached forward to seize his servo before he could even process that she had approached, bringing it up to her chassis. “I’m Twitch! I’m your big sister!”
“I’m your biggest sister!” A small organic femme called out, a couple steps behind Twitch.
“And Robby’s even bigger,” Twitch added, nodding over her pauldron at a subtly taller organic. She rolled her optics at Rubble, leaning in close. “You’ve got a big family looking out for you already, okay? We’re going to be here with you every step of the way! And I know it must’ve been scary to wake up all alone–”
“Twitch!” Bumblebee called, finally managing to weave around the children to grab her shoulder and pull her back. She immediately let go, releasing him and letting him tip away as she turned to obediently face the yellow bot, perking up at the sound of his voice. “Yes?”
“Give him some space,” Bumblebee ordered. “His situation is a bit different from yours. You… has anyone ever told you about reincarnation?”
Rubble and the two organics were the only ones who nodded. Rubble had grown up hearing about how sparks were refurbished for each new Cybertronian who was born. Nobody was a complete copy of another, as Primus used pieces of different sparks, making every single bot unique and fresh.
The only thing that got fully was the physical material for frames, and even that might be a patch work if the fact that Gauge had emerged a smaller bot than Brainstorm was anything to go by. But reincarnation itself was as familiar to their society as energon was.
“Well,” Bumblebee said, to the confused Terrans. “Reincarnation is…” he shot Rubble an apologetic look. “It’s a little different on Earth than it is on Cybertron. Reincarnation is almost a complete copy of another person. Their soul goes into another body. Usually, it’s used as them holding all of their memories, repressed if nothing else. From what I can tell, Rubble, here, was fully reincarnated.”
Yeah. That’s what Rubble figured, even if the idea of being a full copy was pretty foreign, it was the only explanation. Even if he was confused on how his spark ended up on Earth in the first place, or where the materials came from.
“So he’s the bigger brother?” The other small bot, this one in silver, asked in mounting distress.
Weird thing to prioritize, but okay.
“Hi,” Rubble said, a bit shyly, wishing there was his own Bumblebee here for him to hold the servo of. But it was just him alone, sitting on a table, trying to grapple with his newfound identity. “I’m Rubble.”
“Hi.” Said the taller organic, moving past the Terrans with ease to set his servo down on Rubble’s knee. Rubble started for a nano-klik, and then relaxed. The organic’s servo was smooth and gentle. “I’m Robby. You’ve already met Mo and Twitch, and Bee.” The last name was said with a nod towards their Bumblebee, and the nickname solidified itself in Rubble’s processor.
He latched onto it, grateful for the distinction, relieved of needing to constantly think of this one and his. Two bots with gold plating and similar names wasn’t unheard of, after all. “Yeah.” Rubble agreed quietly. “I have.”
“And then this is Thrash,” Robby continued, pointing to each Terran in turn, slowly so Rubble could commit them to memory. “After him comes the triplets. Nightshade, Hashtag, and Jawbreaker. We’re the Maltos, and we’re your new family. Or, at least.” He smiled a bit, crooked and nervous. “We’re going to do our best to help you, if you’ll have us.”
Rubble nodded. It was too early to say if he liked them yet or not, but he really hadn’t met a single bot he hadn’t liked yet, aside from the bot who had killed the Voin and had… killed him, too.
They seemed nice, at least, but Bumblebee had warned him not every bot who was nice had his best intentions in mind. Rubble didn’t want to believe his mentor on that this time. He needed someone on his side, someone who could understand what was happening to him. If that could be these bots, he’d take it.
“I think,” Bee spoke up carefully, “that it’s a bit more complicated then… simple reincarnation.”
“Simple?” Nightshade blinked up at him, confusion gushing out of their field. “There is nothing simple about reincarnation. The idea that a spark or a soul can be reharvested is not a matter of science, it’s magic! And I understand the Emberstone is–”
Bee clamped a servo over their intake, cutting them off from their spiel. “Anyway,” Bee continued. “I don’t think you were pulled from the past, Rubble. I think you were pulled from another space and time altogether.”
Rubble stiffened, optics finding their way to meet Bee’s. Oh, Primus, he looked genuine. He looked genuine. “How do you know?” Rubble asked, nervous.
“Because. Optimus trained me on the history of Cybertron.” Bee relayed. “And I have never heard of anything called a “Voin” before. And there haven't been megacycles of peace since…” He shook his helm. “Before recorded history, if I had to guess.”
Rubble felt his spark drop right through his plating, leaking out from between his pedes’ plating and falling onto the ground. He felt cold and wrong and off. Wheeljack had shared the theory of parallel worlds before. He was no stranger to the theory of alternate dimensions, but even so, the idea that… The thought of being unable to…
No wonder Bee didn’t think he’d be able to get him home. No wonder.
“And… even if we did pull you here in real time,” Bee continued, like the news could possibly get worse. “Cybertron has been decaying for over four vorns now. The Allspark is gone. I don’t think there’s anything left for any of us anymore.”
Rubble quietly lifted up his servos and clamped them over his audials, as if that would drown out anything. As if he could wallow in his self-pity and find peace. As if he could just try hard enough, he’d wake back up in his apartment.
Bumblebee would already be drinking energon and reading something he would turn away from Rubble to greet him with a smile. He’d hold out his arm and Rubble would tumble into his side, and everything would be okay again.
Everything would be okay, because Bumblebee was here.
But when he blinked his optics open, he was still in the dugout. And everyone was staring at him with spark-wrenching pity.
He wanted to scream, but that wouldn’t be very polite, now would it? And Bumblebee also raised him to be polite.
Sometimes, he still wished Bumblebee had raised him differently.
(:)
“It’s good to have you in our family.” Another organic, Dot, said after she came home from wherever her job was, patting his servo. He resisted the urge to pull back. “I wish your siblings had told me when you arrived…” At that, she cast a glare over his shoulder at the awkward Terrans. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
“Actually, Dot, can I talk to you about that?” Bee asked, and Rubble was relieved to be free of the explanation a second time as Bee pulled Dot and a returning Alex to the side to tell them the whole story.
(:)
“What was the old Cybertron like?” Twitch asked as she sat on the hay bales up above Rubble, pedes swinging in the air as she peered down at him, optics locked on the top of his helm. When he looked up, she fed him a bright smile that didn’t do much to soothe him.
“I don’t know.” Rubble said, half-distracted. “It’s a weird thing to answer, because I’ve never thought about it. It’s… Cybertron. What else is there?”
“Hmm.” Twitch agreed with a light nod. “I get that. It’s like asking what it’s like to be siblings with humans! I don’t know how it’s different then not having siblings, or just being siblings with other Cybertronians, because it’s all I’ve ever known. We’ve always been a mixed family, you know?”
Rubble nodded quietly. It was a fair comparison. He realized, numbly, that he had never had siblings before, either. Not only was this planet new, but the fact that he was in a family at all was an abnormality.
He missed Bumblebee and Wheeljack. So much.
“I guess Cybertron was just… familiar.” Rubble told her, pulling from the basic rundown Bee had given him the night before of the current state of things. “There weren't supposed to be bots at each other’s throats, trying to kill each other. There were some political factions, but Bee always said I didn’t have to worry about them yet. Decepticons and Autobots weren’t at war. The Prime was… off world.”
“Optimus?” Twitch pressed.
Silently, Rubble shook his helm. “No. I don’t know… who that is. His name was Sentinel. I don’t think Bumblebee liked him very much. He never really talked about him.”
“Bee loves Optimus.” Twitch said softly. “Mom says Optimus doesn’t always deserve it, either. She says that sometimes Optimus can be pretty mean. I think he hurt Bee pretty badly when he was younger, but Bee doesn’t act like he cares.”
Rubble picked at his plating. He didn’t know what to say to that at all. “I’m sorry.”
Twitch shrugged. “I am too. Mom says Optimus isn’t really supposed to be here alone with any of us, so I don’t know how long it’ll take you to meet him. I think he’s nicer now, but… I dunno.”
Sometimes bots who acted nice weren’t to be trusted.
“That’s okay.” Rubble said dully. “If he can’t help me get home, I’m not sure I really care about meeting him. I don’t think Bumblebee would’ve cared about making me meet him, anyway. He was never one for politics.” Just one for lots of meetings he never let Rubble come on.
It kind of made Rubble feel alone, even on his best days. At least he had Wheeljack there, but that didn’t always fix everything.
“That’s good, then!” Twitch chirped, putting one servo on the hay bale as she boosted herself down, landing on the ground alongside Rubble. She tucked herself as much against him as she could. He put an arm around her shoulders on instinct.
“I know you don’t like being here,” Twitch told him. He startled, and she grinned smugly up at him. “You’re a really bad actor, Rubble. It’s super obvious that you don’t. But… I’m pretty happy you’re here anyway. I mean, if you weren’t, you’d be dead, right? And then nobody would be happy.”
Right.
Dead.
Rubble nodded his helm numbly, allowing his optics to offline as pure dread circulated through him. He was relieved that he hadn’t felt the nano-klik the impact had landed, hadn’t felt his death. He didn’t think it’d be too pleasant. Still, he wasn’t sure how he felt landing in a new world like this.
He liked the Maltos just fine, that much he knew by this point, but he was out of his depth.
If he was going to get fully reborn as himself, just silver instead of blue, why couldn’t he have woken up back on his own Cybertron? If he emerged, and he was the same, wouldn’t they let him go back to Bumblebee? Or would Bumblebee be kept away from him for letting him die, even though it hadn’t been his fault?
Rubble couldn’t imagine going home and not having Bumblebee nearby. Would his new mentor let him visit?
Maybe it was better to stay here, where he had one version of Bumblebee, rather than be stuck with none at all.
“I’m glad I’m here, too,” he whispered, even if it was only in the barest sense of the word.
Better to be living then dead, he supposed.
(:)
“This energon tastes weird.” Rubble announced. It had taken him over half a deca-cycle to say as much, and almost immediately he earned a grouping of wide-optic stares. “It’s just… different than what I’m used to, is all. I find it interesting.”
“That’s not energon,” Thrash said, setting his servo flat over the top of Rubble’s cube and stopping him from drinking any more. “That’s cave water. Us Terrans drink it, but it shouldn’t taste bad. So, does it?”
Rubble blinked at him, confused. “Why cave water?”
Thrash shrugged. “I don’t know. Good ol’ Quintus, I guess. Trust me, drinking it instead of energon has caused us all kinds of grief. One time Twitch and I almost died from starvation because all we had was energon!”
Over their shoulders, Bee winced.
“Oh.” Rubble stared at him.
“So does it taste bad?” Thrash pushed. “Because you might be different from us in more ways than just…” He waved a servo, gesturing at Rubble’s chassis. “You know. The whole reincarnation-slash-“from-another-world-bizz”.”
“Maybe a little bit?” Rubble offered, ultimately unsure. “It tastes kind of like…” He tried to put it into words.
Not quite bad, but certainly not something he readily enjoyed. Bumblebee once let him try his energon, topped with copper flakes. Rubble could say, with ease, that it wasn’t his style or taste. He could understand why other bots might like it, but for him? He was kind of sick of it already.
He shook his helm. “I’ll drink it, but if there’s another type, I’d like to taste that first.”
“What are your fuel levels at?” Robby asked, and then his nose scrunched up. “I don’t know why I’m asking. I don’t know what to do with that information.”
“I don’t know how to check that yet.” Rubble said. He had been told, once, but… he was quickly figuring out that learning to do anything with the information was difficult. He just wasn’t really all that skilled in anything that he tried to do.
“Here,” Bee said, still standing on the edges of the Terrans but watching him with curious, almost prying optics. “It should be fairly straight-forward, if you’re anything like me. Energy and fuel levels are paired together. You don’t have to worry about the math and calculations that go into them, just… navigate to your HUD and pull up your personal biorhythmics. It should be within the first five.”
Rubble took the instructions, trying to commit them to memory as he had so many times before. They’d be forgotten and dismissed within a few kliks, but he could at least try his best to keep them there for as long as possible, right?
“I’m sitting at 47% fuel, and 85% energy.” Rubble said. “The energy is good, right?”
Bee’s expression pinched, and Rubble silently mourned his ability to do anything right.
“That’s not right,” Hashtag huffed, audibly distressed. “He’s been refueling just as much as the rest of us, right?” Twitch nudged her sharply in response, lifting a digit to her intake. Hashtag just looked more confused.
“Hold on, H.T.… You’re right, Rubble, the higher energy is a good thing,” Bee allowed. “But the fact that the fuel levels are low tells me it’s more of recharge that’s fulfilling that need instead of refueling.”
Rubble frowned, silently cursing his disinterest in ever learning about how Cybertronian inner workings, well, worked. “Oh…?”
“Oh.” Bee repeated. “Basically, once that fuel level runs out, you’ll spend a couple hours trying to seek out the nearest fuel source. And if that fails, then you’ll have to be constantly recharging in order to make enough energy to keep your spark lit, much less able to move around. If you’re… alone, then you’ll never wake up in order to refuel, even if you have fuel readily available to you at that point.”
“Bee,” Mo quietly scolded.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” Bee said, avoiding looking at her directly in the optics. “At the moment, it probably just means that cave water isn’t working for you. I’m glad you said something before starvation mode kicked in.”
“Me too?” Rubble agreed nervously. “So if I can’t have cave water, am I stuck?”
“No! No. We’ll try energon first.” Bee told him. “If it doesn’t immediately start refueling you, you let me know and we'll reevaluate. The longest it should take is four joors. If it doesn’t work by that point, I’ll call the Autobots and see if we can work something else out.”
That would mean talking to the Prime. Rubble didn’t think that was allowed. “Okay. Energon sounds good…?”
“Do you have a preferance?” Bee asked, already turning away to begin preparing a cube. “Or do you just like it plain?”
“I’ve tried it with copper and silver flakes before.” Rubble told him. “Neither of them tasted good.”
Bee barked out a short laugh, turning back around with the cube. He passed it to Thrash, who promptly passed it to Rubble. “Plain it is. Let me know if you change your mind. We can experiment around until we find something you like.”
Rubble nodded, glancing down at the energon for a few kliks before daring to take a sip. It looked different from the energon of his world, too. This time, he couldn’t tell if it was in a bad way or not.
When he finally took a sip, the sense of relief was immediate. Instead of the texture being more smooth and thick like the cave water was, this had a fizzle, popping against the inside of his intake. It was familiar. It was right.
“Taste okay?” Bee asked, watching him carefully for any signs of distress.
“It tastes really good,” Rubble permitted, almost laughing at the quick-spreading relief that took hold in Bee’s gaze. “It tastes just like it used to.” What it’s supposed to, he didn’t say. “Thank you.”
“Of course, bud.” Bee said, expression fully untensing. “Let me know if anything changes within the next few minutes, okay? I don’t want to overlook anything.”
“I will.” Rubble promised.
Bee looked at him the same way Bumblebee used to, whenever Rubble promised he would stay with Wheeljack for the day or… when they were calling over video-chat and Rubble told him he’d be able to find his own way back to his apartment.
Rubble didn’t think he had ever seen Bumblebee look disappointed, even once. It was hard to imagine Bumblebee upset, either, but he must’ve been. When he first heard that Rubble was… gone…
Life went on without Rubble. It must’ve. Because… life went on with Rubble but without everything he ever knew. To think Primus had crafted him, carefully sculpted and forged him, and now he was so far away from his creator. Another universe entirely, refitted for Quintus Prime’s purposes instead.
At least Rubble still got energon that tasted the same. Small mercies, and he supposed he could not afford to be selfish.
(:)
The first time he met Optimus, the whole family was there. Optimus didn’t even notice him, optics only for the Terrans that approached – only Jawbreaker – and Bee. Dot and Alex watched from a close distance, but Dot easily got distracted talking to a grey mech that had arrived at Optimus’ side.
There was something hauntingly familiar about Optimus, and it took Rubble a handful of kliks to figure out what it was.
When it did, it brought everything to a fumbling halt. “Wait,” he said, trying to find the right words for it as he gestured vaguely at the bigger mech from his half-hidden position behind Hashtag’s back strut with Twitch and Robby. “That’s Optimus? But he– He looks just like Bumblebee’s friend Orion.”
Orion was one of the few politicians Rubble had any amount of knowledge of. He had refueled at their apartment a handful of times before. He had entered with a hug for Bumblebee, a puzzle for Rubble to solve, and a soft smile plastered over his faceplate. Bumblebee had told Rubble that it was all Orion who had nominated him to become Rubble’s mentor. It was all thanks to him that they had each other.
“His name used to be Orion,” Robby told Rubble, frowning at him. Well, that sure didn’t help his confusion. “I’m not sure how you know that. He only told us a few months ago.”
“And by “us”, he means Robby and Mo.” Twitch added. “But they can’t hide secrets from us! They’ve tried, it’s impossible.”
“Yeah.” Robby frowned at her. “It can be pretty annoying sometimes, but it’s whatever.” He waved a servo, hand, away. “But, yeah. Now he’s Optimus. Has been as long as Mom’s known him.”
Rubble frowned, poking his helm from around Hashtag to squint up at him. The Maltos had told him over and over that he didn’t have to meet anyone he didn’t want to. They hadn’t shared news of his emergence with anyone except the family.
It was the whole reason he was behind Hashtag, Robby and Twitch with him. Nobody wanted to reveal him before he was ready. He really did appreciate it, but a small part of him wanted to just get it over with.
He looked up at Optimus’ face, and he both wanted to hide and run to him to say “hi”. Somehow, in this world Optimus had hurt Bee. Rubble didn’t know how or why; nobody did, after all, but it still ached to know.
Because Orion was so nice in his world. But some bots that were nice…
He shook away the whisper of the memory from his processor. When Rubble started going for the barn door, Hashtag sensed his retreat and followed, using her frame to shield his body even as she turned around to keep herding them in front of her.
The nano-klik Rubble was far enough away to not be seen, he hurried his pace and ducked into the dugout, running down the stairs to throw himself into the berthing he shared with the twins. Pulling the blanket over his face, Rubble resisted the urge to scream at yet another thing that was ruined for him.
Sometimes, Bumblebee didn’t know everything. Because Bumblebee never would’ve let a bot who would hurt him into their apartment.
But sometimes, at the same time, Bumblebee knew enough to warn Rubble. Sometimes he was right on the shanix without even meaning to be.
Rubble may have wished Bumblebee had taught him differently, but he also wished Bumblebee was right in the correct way. Not just “differently wrong”, as Dot had put it, once.
But most of all, he wished he could hug his mentor again.
(:)
“How do you feel about this world?” Nightshade asked expectantly, a full deca-cycle later as the two of them lay in a field.
Staring up at the insects and butterflies fluttering through the air, Rubble considered his answers. “It’s all very weird.” Rubble admitted once he had gotten his processor wrapped around it. “Not bad, just… different.
“Is that so?”
“It’s… hard to be here without anyone I know.” Rubble said quietly. “I know Bee’s here, but he’s not… actually my mentor. And everyone says Wheeljack’s around, but I haven’t seen him, and what if he’s different too?! I don’t know.”
Nightshade let the silence stew for a few nano-kliks, digit extending to offer a perch to a butterfly. It accepted their offer.
“Sometimes, I can pretend Bumblebee just put me on another planet.” Rubble continued. He held up his own servo, but all it did was startle away Nightshade’s butterfly. No others came to either of them. “Far away from whatever was going on. People were starting to kill on Cybertron. He wanted to keep me away from that.”
“You’re choosing to believe unreality?” Nightshade pressed, confused. “You know that’s not what’s going on.”
“Yeah… I know.” Rubble nodded. “Sometimes it just makes it… easier to believe, I guess. I’m not always trying to pretend. When something exciting happens, I often think about how badly I want to tell Bumblebee about it. And then I remember that I won’t. I’m not waiting for him to pick me up, or even just to go back to Cybertron by myself.”
Out of the corner of his optic, Rubble could see Nightshade frowning at him, expression pinched with deep calculation. It made Rubble want to squirm.
“I’m just…” Rubble said slowly, fighting for the right words. “I’m not going back. And I know, I get it, but sometimes I forget.”
“I understand.” Nightshade said softly, and relief pooled up through Rubble’s spark. “I had a friend for two days. And after I lost him, even though it was such a short amount of time, I kept wanting to return to him and tell him about my day. I almost went straight to his lab to show him a discovery I had made.”
“After only two days?” Rubble repeated, mystified.
“Yes.” Nightshade nodded. “I… miscalculated, and accidentally latched on too quickly. I thought I’d have him in my life a lot longer, so I… perhaps, started making long-term plans involving us being mentor and apprentice myself.”
“What happened to him?”
“We have told you about G.H.O.S.T., yes? Well, they… killed him.” Nightshade stared up at the sky, shaking their helm. “The files on that night say that they were simply trying to apprehend, but a misfire from one of their newer recruits led to his offlining. Bumblebee managed to recover the report for me when Megatron reported that he had yet to be placed in our holding cells.”
“Oh.” Rubble blinked. “I’m sorry.”
Nightshade shrugged. “Mom and Dad have pointed out that it was, perhaps, not the most healthy relationship in a few ways. I am not happy he is dead, and he is the reason I found the courage to get this alt-mode for myself… But I have stopped missing him as deeply as I had after that conversation.”
Rubble nodded slowly to himself. He wasn’t sure he quite followed, but if Nightshade was able to get over their grief, then he wouldn’t complain.
“What about you?” Nightshade asked, tipping their helm towards him.
“Me?”
“Yes. You have yet to scan an alt-mode. And I understand the decision could be quite overwhelming, but I assure you, it is worth it in the end. However, I will not pressure you either way if you do not want it.”
“I don’t know.” Rubble said again. Bumblebee probably would joke that it was becoming his motto. “I guess I always thought I’d find it with Bumblebee. He always said that I could take my time.”
“And he is right.” Nightshade agreed. “Our older siblings have always been very excited for us to scan something, but there is no pressure on you to do it if you don’t want to.”
“Okay.” Rubble nodded. “I… thank you, Nightshade.”
“Of course.” Nightshade agreed. “I am always here for you, little brother.”
There was little they could’ve said more comforting than that.
(:)
“If you ever want to talk to me,” Bee offered, hovering at the doorway to Rubble’s room. “About anything at all…”
Rubble tried not to wince. He liked Bee, he really did, but it was hard to forget the initial shock of Bee sharing the same name with his mentor. And whenever he thought about it too hard, he remembered that, technically, Bee was just another, slanted version of his own. With ten times the awkwardness and half the experience.
Rubble had already lived under his own Bumblebee for stellar-cycles, and Bee simply… didn’t seem to know what to do with that. Rubble was still a protoform, but he wasn’t a completely naive newspark. Bee had only really interacted with the former.
“I’ll tell you.” Rubble promised.
He just didn’t think there’d be anything to say.
(:)
“And this is when we had to wash down the cows.” Hashtag said quietly, scrolling through the album quietly. How she had known it was a sleepless lunar-cycle for Rubble, he’d never know, but he lounged against her side and felt utter peace that he got to spend so much time with his sister.
“And this,” she continued on, “is the one time Jawbreaker and I got to interview Elita-1 and Megatron. They told us we can’t share the video with anyone, so I haven’t, but they said we could take a couple photos! I took so many photos.”
“Did the video have secrets?” Rubble asked softly, tapping the screen to scroll back a few rolls to see if he could find the video.
“Yeah,” Hashtag huffed. “Apparently really big ones they didn’t even want Mom, Dad, or Robby and Mo knowing.”
“That’s big,” Rubble noted, because if how Robby spoke revealed anything, then secrets weren’t particularly that big of a thing within their family. He never really understood what the hype was about secrets, frustrated whenever Bumblebee didn’t tell him where he was going but just shoved him off to spend time with Wheeljack for the day.
But even he could admit that if Hashtag said something was a secret, and it stayed that way, then it must be big.
“I’ll probably be able to show you later,” she told him with a wink. “It’s Cybertronians only, after all, and I know they never gave you explicit permission, but you also didn't emerge before then, and… Eh.”
“...can I at least get a hint?”
Hashtag looked nervously around, even though she leaned in close to whisper into his audial. “We have this extra organ… called a t-cog. Helps us transform. They don’t want anyone finding out about it.”
Was she joking?
Rubble pulled away to frown up at her.
Hashtag’s strained smile slipped into something even more panicked when she caught sight of his face. “What?” She asked, obviously confused, and not in the fake-acting way she got where she was much too overly dramatic. “What did I say?”
“T-cogs are common knowledge, aren’t they?”
“Well not among humans!” Hashtag gasped, fidgeting restlessly. “How do you even know about–” and then she tapered off, burying her face into her servos. “Right. I remember now. Sorry, Rubs.”
Rubble patted her arm. “It’s okay, Hashtag.” Mentally, however, he was already marking it down as another disconnect between him and them. He wished they could get over it already.
(:)
“Everyone’s been calling you our little brother.” Jawbreaker said slowly as Rubble perched on his shoulder to try to pull some tarps out of the loft without risking the ladder. “Do you like that?”
“I think so?” Rubble shrugged, sparing him a glance. “Why?”
“You’re older, aren’t you? So maybe you should be our big brother, even if you emerged last.”
Rubble thought about it for a few nano-kliks as he pulled out two rolls and threw them at the ground. “I don’t mind.” He told Jawbreaker genuinely. “I’m still a protoform. So we’re okay if I’m the little brother.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Rubble smiled.
Content, Jawbreaker nodded.
(:)
“What about us?” Twitch asked one day, a few orbital-cycles in, startling Rubble out the puzzle he had been working on with Nightshade.
For a nano-klik, Rubble didn’t think she was talking to him, so out of the blue was it that he had looked behind him to see who she was speaking to. When no other bot presented themself, he turned back to her, confused.
“Like, we know how you feel about Cybertron,” Twitch said busily. “And about here. And about Bee. But how do you feel about us?”
Rubble barely even had to think about it. Since the first klik he had woken up, he had felt their fields against his, whether or not he had been aware of it until later. They had all come to find him, and ever since he arrived, they had been nothing but calm spools of gentle and steadfast love.
He didn’t know how anyone was supposed to not love that.
Even Bee, who he didn’t necessarily get along with all that much – even if he wished he did and everything wasn't so awkward – had always treated him with utmost kindness and tenderness.
There was nothing more to it.
“You’re my family.” Rubble said softly. “I’m happy to have an opportunity to be a part of it, and I… I wouldn’t give it up any other way.”
Almost immediately, the Maltos bundled him up into their arms, holding him tight.
It was all he could do to hug back.