My Crazy Robotic Family

Distractions

Slowly, the thought starts to seep deeper into my mind. Cliffjumper is dead. My bother is dead. He's always been there for me, we laughed together at jokes and at our own stupidity. We've been there to bring each other back up when we are down. Sure, he's always been closer to Arcee and I've always been closer to Bee, but Cliff was my family. He's always been my family, he's been there all my life. I don't think a day in my life has gone by without seeing each of the autobots, including Cliffjumper. To think that so suddenly, I'll never see him again, brought me to my knees. My knees softly clanked on Bumblebee's shoulder, as I held my head and let out silent tears. I wasn't even able to say goodbye, I almost never do. I never stopped to think that maybe today would be the last time I would see one of the bots. It never crossed my mind that I could lose a part of my family.

How stupid could I have been? Sure, there hasn't been activity for years, but I should have known that anything could happen. The other bots, they've all faced this before. They've all lost people close to them. Family, friends, partners, but I'm only seventeen. I've never experienced this war like the bots have. I've never had to face loss before. I've never really considered the loss of my biological family to really be a "loss". It's always been me and the Autobots. Now, there's one less bot on base, and he's never coming back. As it starts to sink deeper into my mind, the thought becomes more concrete to me, the tears become faster and slightly louder. The bots are all silent as we slowly walk through the ground bridge and to base. My cries are only loud enough for Bumblebee to hear them.

"Do you want to go to you room, Jade" Bumblebee asks softly and quietly.

"Where are the others going?" I croak out quietly through my tears.

"I suppose some sort of short service for Cliff, probably up top." Bumblebee answers softly.

"I want to go with them. Then maybe the two of us can go for a drive?" I ask him.

"Of course we can." He answers as we follow the older bots up to the top of the old missile silo we call home.

Arcee softly sets Cliffjumper's horn on the top of the rock we stood on.

"We must not allow the loss of Cliffjumper to impair our judgement. As of today, only we five autobot remain on this Earth. We owe it to ourselves, to the memory of Cybertron, to any autobots in any galaxy seeking safe harbor, to human kind. And, we owe it to our fallen comrade, to survive." Optimus finishes. I continue to softly and, as quietly as I can, sob from atop Bumblebee's shoulder. Arcee suddenly straightens and hardens her look, starting to walk off.

"Arcee?" I start, worried about her and her intentions.

"If Cliff's really gone standing around here sulking won't bring him back." Arcee replied in a hard tone. I do my best to calm my cries after her words. "So, unless anyone minds, I think I'll get back to protecting human kind." Arcee almost growls as she transforms and rides off in her motorcycle form.

"Optimus, helping humans will only result in more tragedy." Ratchet said as he glared at the sunset on the horizon.

"Your opinion is noted." Optimus answered. With both Arcee's and Ratchet's words imprinted in my mind, I suddenly quiet and turn to Bumblebee's audio receptors.

"Do you think we could go on that drive now?" I ask him quietly so only he hears me. He nods and turns toward relatively the same direction Arcee went.

A few minutes of silent pass before I start letting tears seep out of my eyes again in Bee's passenger seat.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Bee asked. I shook my head no and continued to look out the window at passing rocks and sand.