Author's Notes: This is the story that didn't want to end. It's three times as long as I'd intended it to be, but I think it's a lot more fun. Written for the Insecticons.com Non-True-Love Relationships contest.

Disclaimer: Transformers and all related indicia are property of Hasbro/Takara. No profit is made from this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended. A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend.

So she'd met this guy.

And honestly, he was just sort of a guy. Nice build, nice face, nice hair, but nothing special, nothing stand-out. His dress sense was T-shirts and jeans all the way, and if he had a fatal flaw, it was either that he could just talk... and talk... and talk... or that he seemed borderline obsessed over his car.

Of course, his talking was... also kind of fun, really-- half the time he'd swallow his foot up to the knee, but he never, ever failed to make her laugh, to take her mind off the undergrad studies that just got more grueling as she went on through them. And he had a good smile and a good laugh.

Then there was the car thing-- the color could only have been more obnoxious if it had been day-glo rather than primary, but he'd explained that it hadn't exactly been his choice. But he loved that car, really loved it. He'd park somewhere, climb out, and give the car a pat on the door panel or a thump on the hood, like he was David Hasselhoff or something. She'd never been in such a clean car, either, especially not a college boy's car. Inside and out, it was always spotless-- which would only have been half as odd if he were some kind of neat freak, but his dorm room was comfortably cluttered.

The thing was...

The thing was, really, there was nothing that made him stand out. He was just... there. Just another funny guy.

But he knew how to take care of things, including himself, he wasn't fussy, didn't have a temper, drank but not too much, wasn't as smart as she was (well, she was sort of used to the fact that very few people were as smart as she was, never mind that she kept on finding new things to learn), and-- unusually for someone his age-- had managed to get over himself. Never took himself too seriously, didn't get discouraged at life's minor setbacks, just found a new angle to attack the problem from and ran with it.

He lacked a lot of bad qualities, even if his good qualities were subtle and under-advertised.

She hadn't been fishing for an invitation at all when she'd complained about not being able to go back to Boston for Thanksgiving that year-- but when he'd offered, in his usual way, "You could spend Thanksgiving at my house, if you want. ... Once I talk to my mom about it, because that's... I'm sure she'll say yes, but she's cooking and she can get kinda territorial over the holidays when it comes to the kitchen. It's a thing. ... Right, so, I can ask if it's okay if you wanted to come hang out with my family," well, what was there to say?

"I'd love to, Sam," Carly said.

So there was this girl.

And she was hot, but she was more than just hot. She was smart, but not in that 'I'm such a smart girl, look at me!' way. No, she was... practical-smart, real-smart. She was the kind of girl who could do things, who needed a guy (especially a guy like him) like a fish needed a bicycle.

He usually got all caught up in how a girl looked, and damn but she had a lot to look at-- showed it off, too, skimpy little outfits under her coveralls. Nice. But she was working at the garage with him, and once she got her coveralls on and her hair tied up and started banging around in the engine or transmission or whatever it was they were doing that day, it was almost like she was one of the guys.

Only she wasn't, because she was a girl.

They had a lot in common, he'd found out. He used to be in the same business as her old man, but her old man was out on parole and going straight while he'd just wised up after a brush with a really scary damn cop. She'd stared at him and then laughed when he told her the story about the cop car down in LA that was empty one second and occupied the next, but when he told her what was written on the side, she promised she believed him.

And he was sure he did.

She told him about the time she did in juvie, even though an ex-boyfriend had pulled some strings and gotten it wiped off her record. "Hell of an ex-boyfriend," he told her.

"That's why he's my ex-boyfriend," she'd answered, "and everyone else is just some guy I used to date." They were still friends, her and the ex, which was cool in a kind of weird way. He didn't know anyone else who could say let's be friends and not only mean it but do it. Still, she was a hell of a girl that way.

Even if he sometimes wondered where in the hell she'd gotten her hands on that slick Corvette on her salary. He never asked-- if it was hot, he didn't want to know. Maybe she'd put it together herself, since she had a magic damn touch with cars. And she loved that 'vette, anybody could tell that much. Ran her hand over the hood when she got out like it was a pet cat, and it was the sexiest damn thing he'd ever seen.

So.

She was beautiful, and she was hot. She was smart. She didn't judge him because of what he used to do, wouldn't blab on him to the cops. She loved cars as much as he did, even if she did have better wheels. And they clicked, like he could forget she was so hot and just hang out with her. Didn't seem like there was much to think over, once he got it all lined up in front of him.

"Hey, Mikaela. I was thinkin', after work you want to go for a drive somewhere? Here you got that sweet Corvette and I haven't even seen the interior yet."

She flashed him one of those megawatt smiles over her shoulder. "Thought you'd never ask, Raul. Just don't ask to drive-- my car's picky."

He couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. They'd seemed so compatible, and they'd come together so quickly. Their parting had been slow, slow enough he'd hardly noticed it when their lives started drifting apart.

They were still close, still good friends.

He had the vague impression that wasn't supposed to happen.

All he'd wanted was for them both to have what they wanted-- just for them both to be happy. It was hard to believe they were happier as friends instead of a couple, even when the evidence was staring him in the face.

Charlotte-- no, Carly, she'd made it clear she preferred Carly-- really was good for Sam. She challenged him, made him think, made him smile and laugh. The way they got along together was... easy, natural, as though they'd known each other for years-- as though it wasn't important at all that Carly had studied at MIT while Sam was still in junior high, despite the fact that she was only a year older than he was.

And according to Tracks, Mikaela had met someone... perhaps not wonderful, but who suited her. Raul could appreciate Mikaela for who she was even more than Sam could-- they shared a background, having plenty to talk about and bond over even once the initial physical attraction became commonplace.

Mikaela and Raul were even stopping by tomorrow-- first she'd had him meet her father and grandmother, so the Witwickys were the next step, considering how close she'd grown to the whole family.

He wondered what she'd think of Carly.

He wondered what he would think of Raul.

And then Sam banged through the back door-- "Watch the screen!" Ron called, to Sam's almost simultaneous "Sorry!"

"Dinner went well," Bumblebee said quietly.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, grinning. "Yeah, it did. Only slightly mortifying."

Judy had vanished in the wee small hours of the morning for Black Friday shopping-- every year Ron told her that everybody would be perfectly happy with a bottle of wine except for his brother Ben, who'd rather have tequila, and every year Judy instead put together elaborate gift baskets-- and Ron, after a hug for Mikaela and a handshake for Raul, had gone scavenging for leftovers and trying to bully the DVR into working, leaving the four of them to their own devices. They were different enough that being odd man out alternated; right now, with Mikaela, Raul, and Sam all going on about cars, it was Carly's turn.

She figured it was only fair; earlier they'd made Sam and Raul both flee the room talking about shoes. (Mikaela's were adorable and Carly had commented on them. It had snowballed from there.)

But Raul was saying something about Mikaela's car that Carly had only half-caught-- "You drive a Corvette?"

"We came in it," Raul confirmed before Mikaela could answer, and before Sam could make a joke that would require Carly to step on his foot, Raul continued, "Sweet ride, but Mickey's got the magic touch with cars."

"... Mickey?" Sam asked.

"He heard my nana call me Mickey, once." It earned Raul a not-too-hard elbow in the ribs.

"I don't know much about cars," Carly said, trying to steer things out of 'embarrassing nickname' country before Sam mentioned that a couple of Carly's friends called her Chuck, "But I know Corvettes are absolutely beautiful."

"You'd like Mickey's machine," Raul said, chuckling. "Thing runs on flattery instead of gas, I swear."

Sam snorted like he was trying to keep a small laugh from turning into a bigger one, especially when Mikaela leaned back and crossed her legs and announced, "Hey, I treat him right and he treats me right."

"Speaking of incredibly hot cars," Raul said, "Who's the bitchin' Camaro out front belong to?"

"That would be Sam's bitchin' Camaro," Sam said, grinning-- and Carly had to smile, herself. Sam just soaked up flattery for that car.

"How fast does she go?" Raul asked.

"The Bee is a he," Carly replied, "Or so I'm told. I can't figure out how Sam knows."

"You have to ask nicely," Sam said, and Mikaela snickered like it was a private joke. Maybe it was-- she was the high school sweetheart, after all.

"Okay, how fast does he go?" Raul rephrased.

"Dunno. Fast as he needs to?" Sam didn't tend to speed, at least not when Carly was with him.

"Raul." Mikaela looked levelly at her boyfriend. "Are you trying to challenge my ex to a drag race or something?"

"Not a race... exactly. Just... you know. C'mon, we go, what, five miles out of Tranquility and suddenly we're in the middle of nowhere, and we got two stupidly hot cars just sitting in the driveway. Think how bored those cars must be, Mickey. Think of the cars."

Mikaela snickered at Raul, who was desperately trying to keep a straight face. "Well, Sam, how bored do you think Bee is?"

"... He does like a nice friendly not-race..."

"And here I thought The Bee liked going parking," Carly said, proud of how almost-primly it came out.

"You know, sounds like Bee hasn't changed much since high school," Mikaela said.

Raul looked around the group of them. "We good for this or what, guys?"

There was a beat.

And Sam hollered, "We're going for a drive, Dad!"

"Bring Mojo in before you leave!" was Ron's condition, so while Raul led the ladies out front, Sam dashed into the back yard, playing with Mojo for a few minutes before shutting him in the kitchen. It was November, after all-- just a little cold to let a chihuahua roam around outside, even in Nevada.

Practically before Carly knew it, the bright yellow Camaro and the dark blue Corvette were tearing down a deserted stretch of highway, neck-and-neck. Sam and Mikaela had set their phones on speaker, providing a handy way for all four of them to cheer and tease and laugh together... and although speeding (she couldn't quite see the speedometer, but she knew they had to be up past a hundred miles an hour) wasn't usually Carly's idea of an activity all its own, or even of a good time, well, she was having a lot of fun.

Or rather, she'd been having a lot of fun, until a pair of jets-- military jets, what in the hell?-- screamed overhead and blasted the road ahead of them into a riot of torn asphalt and flying dust. Carly screamed, Sam, Mikaela, and Raul swore-- though Raul sounded more afraid than Sam or Mikaela-- an Carly was dimly aware of two things as the Camaro and the Corvette squealed into a simultaneous spin and hurtled down the road in the other direction.

She thought that looked suspiciously like a warning shot.

She also thought she'd heard an unfamiliar voice cry out slag!

"What the fuck is going on?" Raul demanded.

"We can't be anywhere we're not supposed to be!" Carly said, looking to Sam as though he had some kind of answers-- had they blundered into Area 51 by mistake or something?

"You guys okay over there?" Sam asked the phone.

Raul only swore again, but Mikaela answered, "All in one piece. That look like two thirds of the Three Stooges to you guys?"

The Bee's radio dial slid over static for a moment before settling on a resounding "Nyuck nyuck nyuck!"

"What the-- Sam?" Carly didn't hate anything as much as she hated not knowing what was going on.

"Well, there goes hiding in plain sight," said a cultured male voice that absolutely didn't belong to Sam or Raul, but sounded like it was coming over the phone.

Carly recognized the accent. "They've got a Masshole in their trunk?"

"Long story," Sam told her, "and we kinda need to--"

"Shit, Mickey, watch the road!" Raul blurted, and Carly looked across to see Mikaela leaning back to look through the Corvette's sunroof and Raul dive to grab hold of the wheel.

"Larry and Curly are coming back for another pass!" she announced-- over the increasing scream of jet engines.

Sam took his hands off the wheel.

"All right, guys, let us out," he said, simply.

And both cars skidded to a stop, doors flung wide and seat belts unbuckling without any of the humans so much as lifting a finger. Mikaela snatched up her phone, Sam snatched up Carly, and they all fled for the side of the road. "Sam, please!" Carly begged.

"Just get to cover!" a voice from Sam's car said.

And then both cars unfolded.

They shifted and twisted and flipped and came up as bipedal humanoid shapes brandishing weapons at the two jets who were still incoming. Mikaela was fiddling with her phone, for some absolutely insane reason, Raul was staring and swearing almost reverently, and Sam was saying something.

... Sam was saying something. That was probably answers. Carly tried to shift her attention away from the-- oh god, the giant robots fighting--

"... jets are bad guys," Sam concluded.

"Sam--"

"I know, I know, it's a lot to take in, but-- trust me. Trust us. That's still Bee out there, okay?"

"Why are they attacking your cars?" Carly asked, desperately. It didn't make any sense. They were all robots, why fight?

"Warring factions?" Sam offered. "Also the jets are kind of jerks. I'm starting to think that being a jet goes hand in hand with being a jerk, but I've only met, like, four, and--"

"Should we be helping?"

"Lady, are you crazy?" Raul turned to stare at Carly. "Look, the box is locked, the lights are up, it's robot fightin' time and we're all kinda squishy, you know?"

"No weapons," Mikaela said, simply, then into her phone, "Hello? Thank god, Tracks and Bumblebee are fighting Skywarp and Thundercracker and do you have any idea how much bigger those two morons are?" She looked around wildly for a moment, then found a sign and started to rattle off their location.

"Tell me that's the army," Raul pleaded, eyes closed.

"It's somebody's army," Sam said.

"More robots." This was... this was too much. Sam and Mikaela were one thing, but giant robots who turned into cars-- oh god, how many times had she and Sam made out in The Bee? Mortified embarrassment overcame everything else for a good long moment.

"Look, we'll be fine, we just need to stay on the sidelines. Thundercracker has this thing about not deliberately damaging innocent bystanders--"

"Sam, we haven't been innocent bystanders since high school--" Mikaela cut in.

"Because he figures it's not his fault we're not as awesome as he is. Which is a warm and fuzzy attitude for a Decepticon-- Bee!"

And Sam was gone, just like that, racing toward the battling robots despite the fact that he didn't even come up to The Other Car's-- Tracks'?-- waist... because Bumblebee had fallen and one of the jets-- Carly couldn't remember the names, so she decided he was Larry-- bending over him with some kind of gun... looking... weapon thing.

Part of her wanted to take it apart and see how it worked.

"Sam!" Mikaela shouted, then yelled at her phone, "I know there's crazy traffic, that's what Ratchet, Prowl, and Inferno are for! Sam is fighting seekers! I know, I know, but we're not armed!"

Carly didn't ask what seekers were; context dictated that Larry and Curly were seekers, and she kind of hoped she never met Moe. But The Bee was down and Sam was running toward him-- what Sam was planning to do, Carly didn't know-- and she had to do something.

Sam was a runner. It was what he was built for, and he was fast and agile and usually a pleasure to watch. Larry-the-plane was doing an impromptu dance, trying to get a bead on Sam without tripping over him while The Bee's side sparked in a way that looked painful. Curly hissed and burbled something at Larry, then said plainly-- "'Warp, Autobots, not squishies! Focus!"

Sam was a runner.

Carly was a mathematician with a bent toward engineering.

She was also a pretty good softball pitcher, and there was a rock about the right size just sitting at her feet, looking tempting.

"Guys?" she murmured, trying not to remember that scene in Jurassic Park where the mathematician tried to help out the guy who knew what he was doing and got a broken leg for his trouble. "You might want to run, okay?"

"Chica, what in the hell are you--" But Carly wasn't listening to Raul-- she just scooped up that nice big rock and threw it as hard as she could.

It slammed into Curly's right wing with a satisfying clang, and Curly turned to look at the three humans who were supposed to be hiding in terror.

Mikaela and Raul fled in opposite directions, but Carly scooped up another rock and drew back to throw. "By Primus," the jet muttered, "You're actually throwing rocks. I thought--"

And that was then The Car That Was Not The Bee But Was Probably Tracks Or Something slammed into Curly's knees, knocking him down and kicking up sparks against the pavement.

Larry whirled around, weapons leveled at Not-Bee, and Carly scrambled for the rock she'd dropped when Curly had fallen. "Sam, get clear!" she heard Mikaela order, then something that sounded like, "No, trigger that relay there--"

And there was an explosion.

Well, a plasma blast, she corrected herself, which was probably more efficient for giant robots who might not have the time to reload their weapons.

Focus, Carly.

Larry had gone down, one wing smoking, and Mikaela and Raul were operating one of The Bee's weapons, with The Bee lending what help he could with his good arm-- the damage to his side seemed to have taken one out of commission. Sam...

... Where was Sam?

She scanned frantically, then spotted him safe on the other side of the road, if a little scraped up.

Sirens caught her attention, coming from back the way they'd originally come-- from Tranquility, from civilization, and Carly spotted at least a fire truck and police cruiser barreling down the road.

"This isn't gonna be a fun report," Curly muttered, shoving Not-Bee off of him roughly and grabbing at Larry.

"Oh, let us help you out with that--" Not-Bee fired on the jets, but Curly was faster than he had any right to be-- made sense, his backup was down and scared-as-shit runs faster than madder-than-hell. It looked awkward to be flying double, but Curly flew double anyway, and probably as fast as he could manage under the circumstances.

"Ratchet!" Sam was yelling. ... Sam was okay, if he was yelling, making lots of noise was Sam's base state-- "Bee got hit-- I don't know how bad--"

"M'okay," came the rattled response from The Bee, but Mikaela was looking up at a... a Hummer, a search-and-rescue Hummer, the sort of thing that was starting to replace ambulances in some places.

"He's got some structural damage," she said, "and a lot of sheared wiring. No energon or coolant lines cut, we're lucky there."

"Indeed we are," the Hummer agreed and-- oh. More unfolding. More robots. That was right. He knelt next to The Bee, prodding the damage almost gently. "Just what in the Pit were you two thinking, taking on that pair of airborne yahoos?" he demanded.

"Hey, man, the yahoos started it," Raul pointed out. "Don't take it out on Sam's totally not a car right now. Um."

"That's just how Ratchet shows he loves you," someone chuckled-- the fire truck chuckled, Carly guessed.

"We seem to have more humans than usual," noted another voice, this one calmer than the rest. Carly finally registered that there was a police cruiser, too, and tried to remember the names Mikaela had shouted into the phone earlier.

"Carly!" And there were hands on her shoulders, brown eyes locked on hers.

... Sam. "Sam. Sam! What... what happened? Really what happened, because this..." She waved a hand vaguely, including the five robots, the battle-damaged highway, possibly the suddenly entirely re-ordered universe, in the gesture.

"You threw a rock at a Decepticon, that's what happened. God, that was so awesome--"

"I know about the rock! I mean the rest of it, with the robots and... and your car..." She turned to look at The Bee, still looking broken and oddly vulnerable while-- Ratchet, wasn't it?-- bent over him, soldering things and Mikaela watched like she was learning something. "Oh my god, Bee, I'm so sorry for making out... in you... so often..."

Raul's face froze for a moment, then twisted as he shouted "Oh my god!"

Mikaela's car doubled over laughing.

Okay, so, it worked like this.

There were these giant alien robots, half were refugees and freedom fighters, half were basically fascist jerks looking to enslave or destroy or exploit whatever they could. Sam's car, Mikaela's car, and their friends were the good guys, the refugees and all that. The jets had been bad guys, and there were more of them.

They could look like anything, within reason-- any machine the same mass.

Sam's Camaro was Bumblebee, not just Bee or The Bee; Mikaela's Corvette was Tracks.

Apparently neither one of them minded being used as a make-out vehicle, which was pretty lucky. Raul refused to think of what else it might be.

The ambulance thingy was Ratchet, and he was a doctor and not as big a jerk as he sounded when somebody got hurt. The police car was Prowl. The fire truck was Inferno. The jets had been Skywarp and Thundercracker, not Larry and Curly.

And Sam's dad was surprisingly okay with Sam and Carly getting dropped off by a cop car-- although he took one look at the four of them as they came in and asked if Sam was okay and then if Bee was okay.

"He's gonna be," Sam promised.

"Yeah, now how about you, mister big damn hero?" Ron had asked, looking hard at Sam.

"I just need a shower," Sam protested. "And a nap. Maybe an ice pack. First aid kit. Don't mind me, I'm used to this. Carly went and threw rocks at Decepticons."

But Carly had been looking kind of pale and shook up since the whole thing had started.

"Go clean up, man," Raul told Sam. "You look like you rolled down a hill."

Sam kissed Carly's cheek-- she smiled for him, a little-- and headed off to rinse the highway out of his skin, and Raul steered Carly to the couch. "It's all a little much to take in," she managed, right before Sam howled down from upstairs.

"Aw, man, why didn't anybody tell me I ripped the hell out of my jeans!"

Carly managed to snicker. Raul chuckled a little, and Ron laughed, and Mikaela giggled, and pretty soon they were all laughing out loud, even if there was kind of a hysterical edge to Carly's laughter. It was getting the tension out, that's what was important.

"Robots made him tear up his pants," Raul muttered when the laughter had subsided.

"Robots and Sam's pants don't mix," Mikaela said. "Seriously, though, you guys were amazing. Both of you."

"I know she threw rocks," Ron said to Raul, "What'd you do?"

"Nothin', man, I just helped Mickey shoot a big gun."

"Did we kill him?" Carly asked quietly, but intense.

"... Who," Mikaela asked, "Skywarp?"

"Sure." Raul couldn't blame her, it wasn't like the names were easy.

"Nah, he'll be back, good as new and twice as annoying. We didn't have anything like what it takes to kill one of them."

"... I'm glad," Carly admitted.

"Hey, chica..." Raul looked at Mikaela, half helpless. Okay, so the giant alien robots were kinda freaky, but dealing with the freaked-out college girl was hard.

"No, no, it... I get that there's a war. At least I think I got that. I get that they would have killed us." She looked up, looked from Mikaela to Ron to Raul. "But we're not alone in the universe. I... it wouldn't have been... right if the first time I'd met an alien..." She trailed off.

"Don't think about it that way, chica," Raul told her, hand on her shoulder, not sure if he should hug his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's girlfriend, no matter how bad she seemed to need it. Carly seemed to retreat into herself. "No, really, don't think of it like that. We didn't almost kill an alien, okay? We saved an alien, one you already know. You saved Bumblebee, you hear me? Throwin' rocks at crazy planes, telling us to run. You helped people today. And that guy who got hurt? He wouldn't have got hurt if he wasn't out throwing missiles at people who were just out driving. You hear me?"

Carly looked up, slowly, an odd sort of look on her face, like she was stuck between laughing and crying. "Chica?" Raul asked. "Carly?"

"The only thing I could think," she said slowly, "when I saw that road... blow up... was 'speed enforced by aircraft.'"

That surprised a laugh out of Raul, and before he knew it, Carly was laughing, too, and sagging against him, and then crying, and he held on, rubbing her back. It probably should have been Sam, but Raul figured he was a decent stand-in-- he was the other newcomer, after all. "She's gonna be okay," he mouthed at Mikaela.

She just needed to process or whatever. Girl who could throw rocks at giant alien robots and then make speed limit jokes was gonna be fine.

"We could definitely have found a better way to introduce ourselves," Tracks muttered. He was more embarrassed than anything by the attack. He'd come to join Bumblebee in the makeshift medbay to touch up his paint while Bumblebee's self-repair programs did what Ratchet had insisted they were perfectly capable of doing so lie still and try not to drive headlong into any more jets, slaggit.

"Easier," Bumblebee agreed, "But nothing that could have tested them better."

"They're only human, Bumblebee. They don't really need that kind of testing. Besides, if they'd failed, they could well have been killed. They could have been killed anyway."

"Carly threw a rock at Thundercracker, and was going to throw more," Bumblebee said. "Raul helped Mikaela use one of my plasma cannons to shoot Skywarp before he could attack you. I don't want them to be on the front lines, Tracks, not if they don't have to be. But that's where Sam and Mikaela end up more often than not, and you know it."

"... They just won your approval, didn't they?" Tracks asked.

Bumblebee was silent. Maybe they had...

"Judy mentioned that you seemed to take Sam and Mikaela's breaking up harder than they did-- I wondered why, but didn't think too much about it. I suppose I just thought you'd wanted the best for Sam, and Mikaela does seem to fit that criteria, by current standards." Humans did consider Mikaela to be exceedingly beautiful, that was true-- but she was also clever and she understood the Autobots, sometimes better than Sam did. And Sam, Bumblebee knew, would need that. Just as she'd need someone to make jokes, to make light.

To convince her to get in the car.

"It wasn't just that," Bumblebee finally admitted quietly. "When they first met, they made each other happy. They reacted, they had what humans call personal chemistry. I wanted them to keep that, I wanted to keep that... happiness safe for them."

He'd wanted Sam to be happy for a little while, he'd wanted Mikaela to smile and have an adventure, even if their world was about to end.

And he'd made their relationship for them. He'd given them each other, and when they broke up... part of him had wondered what he'd done wrong.

"They seem to have found a measure of happiness with Carly and Raul, respectively," Tracks pointed out.

"And I'm glad. But I worried, too-- Sam and Mikaela are Decepticon targets just as much as you and I are, they've done more than their part in defending their world, their friends, their lives. Carly's very nice-- I do like her-- but she's a scientist, not a fighter."

"Since you're injured, I'll be kind and avoid repeating that in Ratchet's hearing," Tracks chuckled. "Or Wheeljack's. Or Perceptor's."

Bumblebee rasped out a chuckle, careful not to move too much. "I appreciate it." But war had made warriors of their scientists and medics-- Carly hadn't been touched by it.

On the other hand, as soon as she saw Sam in danger, she helped with the only weapon at her disposal. That it had worked so well-- at least as a distraction-- was pure luck.

If Carly was willing to fight for Sam, then Bumblebee would find it in his spark to trust her to. "You're sure about Raul?" he asked Tracks. Bumblebee hadn't had much time to get to know the other mechanic.

... The other ex-car-thief, too.

"Oh yes, quite sure. I think he'll need a bit of a run-up to wrap his mind around things, but if I didn't think he were a decent sort underneath it all, I would have tipped off Mikaela's grandmother."

"Not her father?"

Tracks shook his head. "Mrs. Banes can be quite frightening when she puts her mind to it. It's always the humans you least expect capable of it, somehow."

"I'd still like to talk to him, if you don't mind." He just needed to be sure. Mikaela wasn't Sam, but she was still very special to Bumblebee.

"You don't need my permission," Tracks said, simply. "... But no, I don't mind."

"Thank you."

He'd wanted Sam and Mikaela to have one another to lean on, to have the kind of relationship that humans seemed to spend their lives pursuing or yearning after.

He was disappointed that they hadn't found it in each other... but he could still want it for them.