Chapter Text
Prowl woke up annoyed. He had come to expect it as of recently, a fact that irritated him to no end. Even now, he could hear the TV playing through his closed door. Chances are, the mech responsible hadn’t bothered going to sleep at all, staying up all night to “grind” a video game, whatever that meant.
Actually, checking his chronometer, it wasn’t even morning yet. The ninja groaned, resigned to his fate, and slid up to his pedes. The base was dark when he left the room, quiet, save for the staticky noise from their scavenged TV.
As expected, the yellow scout was hunched over on their makeshift couch, optics locked on the screen. Prowl didn’t bother trying to interrupt him, it would just cause an unnecessary annoyance that he didn’t want to deal with this late at night.
Instead, he hoisted himself up to the rafters, found a good vantage point, and settled himself into a lounge, passively watching his teammate play the game.
The alarm rang before the sun had come up, and Prowl found himself, in a weird way, grateful he was already awake. As annoying as it was to wake up to Bumblebee’s incessant noises, it was far more irritating to have to fight a battle immediately after waking up.
Bee reacted abruptly and erratically, as he always did, jolting from his game and twisting his helm so fast that Prowl was surprised he didn’t strain something. The scout’s optics were almost comically wide as he heaved himself over the back of the couch and rushed to the console.
He reached it at the same time that Prowl dropped from the rafters, startling Bumblebee enough that he squeaked and stumbled back a bit. Prowl ignored him in order to check the alert, even as the scout exaggeratedly darted his vision between the ninjabot and the rafters with a ridiculously incredulous expression on his faceplate.
His voice was just as annoyingly grating as usual when he asked, “How long were you up there for?”
Prowl didn’t grace the question with a response, especially since the rest of the team had finally made their way into the main room. He read out the report before Optimus could ask, “Lugnut and Blitzwing are attacking a construction site downtown.”
Multiple tired voices echoed in response: the medic’s gruff, “Again?” Bulkhead's worried grumbling, “This is the third time this week…”, and most annoyingly, Bumblebee’s shrill, “Dumb cons, why can’t they just leave us alone for once!”
Optimus was quick to call them to action, transforming and rushing to the scene of the crime. It was in a more scarcely populated part of the city, with more empty buildings than there were lived in ones.
They arrived at the site just as the decepticon pair were preparing to take off. Optimus reacted first, slinging his grappling hook out to wrap around Lugnut’s bunch of supplies and wrenching it out of his grasp.
The con let out an outraged shout as Optimus gave his orders, “Bee and Prowl, you’re on Blitzwing duty. Bulkhead, you’re with me on Lugnut, and Ratchet, keep the supplies away from them.”
Right as Optimus finished, Blitzwing fired his cannons and the group scattered. Prowl rushed at Blitzwing, flinging ninja stars at the con as Bumblebee skidded around, spewing up dust while screeching insults at the large mech.
Then, it went wrong.
Bumblebee got too close, and Blitzwing kicked him through the dust cloud he’d managed to form. Prowl was just about to follow when something crashed into him, sending him tumbling to the ground under its weight.
He groaned from his spot on the ground, and so did the bot on top of him; Bulkhead, by the sound of it. Before he could even hope to get up, a shadow loomed over them, fist raised. In his usual grandiose tone, Lugnut declared, “Die in the name of Megatron!”
Prowl tensed as the fist was brought down, but in the moments before it reached them, him and Bulkhead were caught up in Ratchet’s magnet and flung out of the way, and Optimus’ grapple wrapped around the con’s pede, sending him face first to the ground.
And then the world exploded.
Lugnut’s punch sent all of them flying. Prowl slammed into something metal, bouncing off of it and tumbling for a moment before landing on his side in the dust. His audials were ringing as he cracked open his optics, squinting through the grime.
The sounds of fighting slowly came back to him, and he blearily propped himself up. That’s when he saw Bumblebee, cornered by Blitzwing. The scout was crouched under some construction equipment, back pressed against it with his stingers bared, and the con was squatting in front of him, scuttling around similarly to an Earth insect, with his maniac face front and center.
Blitzwing’s voice was drowned out by the ringing in Prowl’s head, but he was clearly taunting the scout in his usual insane manner. The ninja lay there dumbly, his cognizance hanging just out of reach.
Suddenly, Bee’s voice stabbed straight into his processor, screeching with offended bravado, “Hey! I am not short!” It was so absurd that Prowl couldn’t help but let out a choked huff, just barely reminiscent of a laugh, despite the dread and dizziness flooding his systems.
“Oh, little bug?” the con giggled, shooting at the equipment as Bumblebee darted out, just barely dodging the debris. “Ze little bitty bot iss so fery big, ja?” The scout quickly scurried back his cockiest smile stretching his face.
“Yeah! Big enough to beat an oversized cog-brain like you, slaghead!” Surprisingly, the con’s face didn’t change. Instead, his smile grew wider, and he tilted his head to the side. He shot at the yellow bot, who yelped and leapt out of the way, shooting his stingers at the con and scrambling behind another bunch of equipment.
Blitzwing cackled, prancing forward, “Ze little annoying pesky bug… jusht a tiny shparkling playing vit ze big bad cons.” Bumblebee jumped to his pedes and fired again, each shot harmlessly bouncing off the behemoth.
He darted away just as the Decepticon started firing again, but this time, a shot landed right in front of Bee and sent him flying. Something in Prowl’s processor flared, trying to connect, and he hoisted himself to his pedes, swaying slightly. He was supposed to be doing… something.
The scout landed on his back, vents audibly stuttering, and Blitzwing strutted over. Bumblebee shakily stood up, in an almost mirror image of Prowl, but before he could even hope to defend himself, the massive mech slammed into a squat in front of him.
Blitzwing abruptly shot out a servo and snagged one of Bee’s pedes, pulling him off the ground until he was hanging upside down, kicking and screaming. “Let go of me!” Prowl’s processor finally clicked into place, and he burst into action, spark falling to his tanks.
Cackling, Blitzwing tossed the small bot in his grasp, “Does ze little shparkling vant to be big? Vant to grow up?” His thrusters started humming, preparing to lift his giant frame into the air, and Prowl was too far away. The ninja-bot’s vents wheezed, pushed to the limit as they sputtered through the dust.
Bee was still yelling angrily, nearly drowned out by the sound of a large crash on the other end of the battlefield. Blitzwing shot into the air, swinging the squirming bot. And then, for a moment, the ninja and the scout locked optics. In that split second, Bumblebee’s ridges furrowed, and Prowl, for once, couldn’t tell what it meant.
Prowl sprinted. He leapt over scattered debris, and, with an unusual burst of adrenaline, vaulted off the side of a metal beam, stabbing his ninja stars as deep as he could into Blitzwing’s back strut.
In sync with Prowl’s attack, Bumblebee took his chance to stab his stingers into his captor’s wrists. The mech’s face spun to red, and he let out an enraged yell, flinging the scout into the rebar, twisting to grab at the ninja.
Prowl yanked out his ninja stars and let himself fall to the ground before the con could get any higher. He fell to the ground hard, but picked himself up hurriedly, rushing to find Bumblebee.
He found him crouched behind a part of the unfinished building, clutching his side and panting. As soon as the yellow bot saw him, he gave a small smirk, straightening up as if nothing was wrong, “Hey, Prowl…”
The ninja was quick to squat beside him, just close enough to scan him over for injuries without obviously looking at him but not enough to incite the bot to talk to him.
Of course, after a while of trying to parse what was happening to the rest of their team through the dust, he started talking anyway, mumbling to himself at a tone that Prowl wouldn’t have heard if he wasn’t listening for it, “Dumb Blitzbrain. Few screws loose, yeah right. I bet he doesn’t even have any screws to get loose… calling me little… dumb con. I’m normal sized. Not my fault he’s freakishly big…”
Other than a dent in his side where he had hit the rebar, the scout seemed okay, but Bumblebee was notorious for hiding injuries, so it took three different lookovers before Prowl was confident there was nothing life-threatening.
Blitzwing’s yelling echoed through the battlefield, and Bee stiffened minutely before rolling his shoulders back, glancing around the beam serving as their cover. One of Prowl’s ridges raised in amusement, about to say something about it when there was a ping in his HUD.
The ninja-bot’s optics blew wide in surprise, and, all at once, the sounds of battle went quiet. Him and the scout locked gazes for a long moment. And then, in a flash, the yellow bot moved, jumping to his pedes and transforming. His wheels were spinning before they even hit the ground.
Prowl scrambled to follow, as the sounds of various engines, bot and con, harshly broke the tense silence. The alert flashed in his vision
:: Allspark energy detected ::