Family | Tfp AU

Coded

*meanwhile at the elementary school*

It was recess and Smokescreen was playing on the swings, trying to see how high he could go. 1st grade had been fun so far, but long too; they had been busy all day and he hadn't really had a chance to make friends, but he tried not to think about it like that. He could always make friends later.

“Hey, kid!” Smokescreen looked down to see a kid from his class off to the side talking to him. “You wanna play tag?”

“Sure!” Smokescreen grinned and jumped off the swings, earning a reprimand from a nearby teacher, which he ignored as he walked over to the kid. “I'm Smokescreen, what's your name?”

“Steve,” the kid smirked. He had brown, slightly spiky hair and a dark purple jacket that had silver and red stripes on the arms and down the front on either side of the zipper, and glasses which oddly had a faint reddish tint. Smokescreen returned the boy's smirk as he followed him over to a small group of boys, and noticed a few of them were dressed similarly to Steve.

“These are my brothers,” Steve explained, apparently noticing Smokescreen's noticing. “We're quadruplets. This is Peter, Joe, and Sam,” he pointed to each one in turn, and they nodded as their names were said.

“But what's really cool is we figured up code names!” Peter smirked, gesturing to his brothers and himself proudly.

“Whoa, really?” Smokescreen grinned, excited he'd found such cool friends. “What are they?”

“Well, they go with our real names, so mine is P3T3R.”

“I'm ST3V3.”

“5AM.”

“J03.”

“Awesome!” Smokescreen grinned, thinking these boys must be really smart if they already knew their numbers so well that they could make such cool code names for themselves. “What would mine be?”

Steve frowned in thought. “Well, Smokescreen is a lot longer than our names, so maybe do you have a nickname we could do?”

“Um, well my family calls me Smokes sometimes.”

“Smokes, yeah we can work with that,” Steve nodded as his brothers gathered around in a sort of huddle. Steve picked up a stick and wrote ‘Smokes’ in the dirt, and the numbers one through nine under it.

“The ‘s’s can be fives,” Sam suggested as Steve wrote it under the line of numbers, leaving plenty of room for the rest of Smokescreen's name.

“And the ‘o’ and the ‘e’ can be zeros and threes,” Joe put in. Steve nodded and wrote them in as well.

“I don't think we can really do much with the ‘m’ or ‘k’ though,” Peter frowned, looking through the number line for anything resembling the two letters.

“Well they can be the ones that stay letters, I guess,” Steve shrugged, writing in the last two, completing the name. “And there you are! 5m0k35!”

“A little harder to say than ours, but that's okay,” Joe smirked as the huddle broke up.

“Thanks guys!” Smokescreen beamed, excited to have a special code name like his friends.

Steve gestured to the other boys off the the side, three in total. “I guess you should meet these guys, too.” The three boys walked over and introduced themselves.

“I'm Breakdown,” the taller, darker haired boy said with a smirk. “My brother is a high schooler.”

“Hey cool, mine too!” Smokescreen grinned. “And my sister!”

“What're their names?”

“Jazz and Arcee. What's your brother's name?”

“Knockout. He's super tough!” Breakdown said proudly. “I bet he could beat up your brother.”

“No way, Jazz is strong and tough.”

“Anyways,” a smaller, yet surprisingly proud looking boy with a red stripe in the front of his dark hair stepped up, pushing Breakdown back and standing up tall. “I'm Starscream. My daddy’s a cop!”

“My dad…” Smokescreen paused as he realized he wasn't sure what his dad did. “Could probably beat up your dad!”

“Nu-uh! My daddy has a gun! Your daddy wouldn't even get close before my daddy shot him!” This made Smokescreen very uncomfortable, so he turned to the other boy, who hadn't said a word.

“Oh, this is Soundwave,” Steve stepped in. “He doesn't talk much, but his big brother is in high school too; his second year.”

“Oh cool,” Smokescreen smiled at the small boy, whose expression was so completely unreadable, it may as well be made of glass. “My brother's crush is in first year.”

“Ooh, a crush?” Sam smirked, conspiratorially.

“Yeah, he wants to be her boyfriend, but mommy says she's not 16 yet, so he can't.” Smokescreen laughed. The other boys laughed as well, until the still expressionless Soundwave pointed slowly yet insistently to the field.

“Oh right, tag!” Breakdown smirked. “Guess we forgot. Who's gonna be it first?”

No one spoke up.

“Nose goes!” Sam shouted, his hand flying up to his face. Smokescreen, Steve, Joe, Peter, and even Soundwave quickly smacked themselves in the face. Starscream was a little slower, and ended up putting his hand to his nose last.

“Ha ha, you're it, Screamer!” Peter smirked. “The sandpit is the safe-base! 5 second head start, ready set go!”

The only word to describe the next minute or so is chaos. The boys quickly scattered, trying to get as far as possible from Starscream before the 5 seconds were up. Once they were, Starscream bolted after Sam, who was closest.

“Nyah, nyah, you can't catch me!” Sam laughed, making a beeline for the sandpit, sliding into its safety just before Starscream could tag him. “Safe!”

Starscream quickly moved on, this time targeting Peter, who had been hiding behind a tree to catch his breath.

“You're it!” he cried, slapping Peter on the back as he ran up behind him, and then immediately running as fast as he could away from the new ‘it’.

Smokescreen smiled as he watched the game from his perch in a tree- not too high, the teachers would get mad at him- and waited for someone to come his way. Not that he would do anything, but he just wanted a little action since he wasn't fast enough to outrun probably any of them. He watched as Peter tagged Soundwave, and the boy instantly took off towards the tree in which Smokescreen now sat.

“Scrap, he's way fast!” Smokescreen observed with a small gasp, using a sort of curse he'd picked up from Jazz in his sudden nervousness. Soundwave came to a stop at the base of Smokescreen's tree, and looked up at him, his face still impossible to read. A smaller boy, probably in kindergarten, suddenly ran up and Soundwave tagged him silently. Without a second of hesitation, the boy scrambled up into the tree and slapped Smokescreen's shoe.

“You're it!” the boy proclaimed, jumping down from the tree and running off toward the kindergarten playground. Smokescreen jumped down a second later, and looked around. He had assumed he could simply tag Soundwave again, but the silent boy was already halfway across the field.

Frowning slightly, Smokescreen searched for someone close enough to go after, and found Sam and Joe near the fence only about ten yards away. Smokescreen took a deep breath and ran as fast as he could, determined to tag one of them.

“Uh-oh!” Joe cried out as he saw Smokescreen sprinting towards them. “Run, Sam!”

But it was too late. Smokescreen skidded to a stop and half tagged, half crashed into Sam.

“You're...it!” he panted, standing back up and brushing the dirt from his clothes. Sam laughed and turned to tag Joe, but before he could they heard the teachers’ whistles signaling the end of recess. The boys looked at each other and shrugged before running off to line up with their separate classes to go back inside.

They could play tag again tomorrow.