Old Habits

Bumblebee was used to running on half-empty batteries. Although he had all the time he needed to recharge, now that he was guardian of a handful of sparklings and only occasionally an actually useful scout/soldier/ hero , he just couldn't. Shutting down was a vulnerability, and despite his insistence, no one actually cared for the rest shifts he had set up and failed to enforce. His two sparkling charges were snug asleep in the hay of the Malto family's barn, a place that still gave him a sense of undignified sometimes. Then he remembered how good these humans were, how wholeheartedly they loved their Terrans, and that they were only trying their best, really. Hell, even his little parking area was personalized. He couldn't not be fond of them.

He also couldn't not recharge.

Some habits die hard.

As he quietly walked perimeters around the humans' territory, he tried to appreciate how clear the sky was out here. He could see the stars. Hardly any light pollution, which was rare for Earth. But with the core-deep tiredness came an unshakeable sense of unease, and every shadow turned into a potential threat the moment his focus wandered.

His new altmode didn't help with that either. Yes, he had spent quite some time now with an actual racer frame, and he immensely enjoyed how he could be even faster now-but it also made him jumpier. Engaging combat-suite at every rustle of the bushes jumpier.

In hindsight, he should have followed the impulse to take off into the night. On previous occasions, he had done just that, forsaking his duty to keep watch over the barn, but not this night. He considered it, feeling out the familiar half-truth that racing around in a larger circle definitely, totally counted as scouting, keeping an eye out, staying vigilant. He just didn't have it in him that particular night. Maybe it was the restlessness keeping him from rest; too tired to go, too tired to stay. In hindsight, he had allowed himself to wallow in undeserved self-pity (because really, his situation could have been so, so much worse, he was just bad at being grateful- ), and that self-pity had made him inattentive. In hindsight, Bumblebee was sure that there had been many moments leading up to the coming nightmare when he could have taken a different turn and evaded what was to follow.

He sat down somewhere not too far away from the barn, where he could just so see the lights in the family's house shut off in slow order, as well as the gently flickering lights in the sky above. He noticed, twenty minutes after turning her lights off, a smaller light came back to life in Mo's room, and not long after, his audials picked up on a very hushed but still pretty excited conversation in the barn, where Thrash likely tried to interpret from sleeve feedback just what comic Mo was reading in secret. Bumblebee tuned in to the unimportant murmur and leaned back on his hands. So this was peace, he thought, a summer night in which nothing more exciting than sneaky reading was happening.

Maybe he'd get used to it eventually.

Shortly after local midnight, Mo turned her light off again, and not long after that her parents too went to sleep. The kind of silence fell in which no communications were taking place anymore, verbal or digital, and the gentle background noise of night time animals took over.

A signal pinged on his radar. Bumblebee tried checking the signal for specifics but came up with a blank, the signal disappearing into stealth mode shortly after he caught it. It wasn't hostile, at least. No Decepticon would forget to hide their signal on approach, although the quick hiding of it was at least a little suspicious. Judging by the sounds in the trees and the local bird's changing songs, he guessed it was nearing 2 am. A check with his internal chronometer confirmed that guess, and he grinned to himself about the small achievement, a little bit of Ranger Malto knowledge that didn't fly right back out of his processor after hearing it. That odd sense of dread was still there from earlier, that restless feeling of an idling engine with nowhere to go. He got up and stretched as quietly as was possible for a mech in an empty field, hoping that whoever it was that was approaching was a friendly distraction and not an ambush.