A/N: I WROTE THIS ENTIRE THING IN LESS THAN TWO CONSECUTIVE HOURS. THAT IS A NEW RECORD. One which I doubt I'll be repeating any time soon, but hey.

Anywho, I decided that since Bumblebee got some time in the spotlight over on the Rescue Bots tv show, Raf deserved to show up there too. There might be further crossovers following this, there might not be, but I hope you at least enjoy this one.

-Triscribe

For once, the silo was completely silent, and it was a good thing rather than a sign of something terrible. Miko and Bulkhead were off at a monster truck rally, Arcee and Jack were working on stealth and survival training a few states away, June had insisted Ratchet accompany her to a medical convention in New York (with the medic technically remaining out in the parking lot, but with the nurse sending him audio and visual feed from within the building), and Optimus was out for a long, peaceful drive.

Meaning that Rafael and Bumblebee had the base all to themselves.

"Hah! And Esquivel takes the lead!" The twelve year old boy cheered as his car on the television screen pulled ahead of the other racers. Beeping out a protest, Bee maneuvered his own vehicle avatar around a computer player, sliding into the spot behind Raf.

"And the gold goes to...!" With mere seconds to spare, the Autobot's car scooted just close enough that he and Rafael crossed the finish line in a tie. Each of them burst into laughter - it was the third round, with a previous win to both the competitors.

"Well, that's a draw." Raf said as he ended the game. "What do you want to do next, Bee?"

The yellow scout considered it for a moment *Hm... What about those videos you were telling me about the other day? The ones with that idiot reporter-*

"Who keeps getting himself in over his head and needs to be rescued, yeah! The 'I Dare Me' segments." Rafael snickered as he opened up his laptop. "Miko called him an idiot, and I kind of have to agree with her. But the real reason I want to show those to you is 'cause that team of Rescue Bots Optimus assigned to Griffin Rock are usually in them."

*Doing the rescuing, I'm guessing?*

"Yep. Here we go!" With YouTube opened, Raf selected one of his saved videos of a reporter by the name of Huxley getting ready to jump out of an airplane.

*His parachute cord is tangled.* Bee observed after a moment. And sure enough, trouble arose when the man attempted to open the chute, only for it to fail. He started screaming and babbling incoherently, which was as entertaining as it was pitiful.

Suddenly, an orange and white copter zoomed through the shot, sending Huxley spinning and screeching even louder. The camera tilted slightly, allowing viewers to see the incoming ground and what looked like... a bounce house?

It was indeed a bouncy house, which the reporter landed on, the camera capturing his every hysterical moment as he then became airborne once more. There were a few moments of confusion, during which Bee assumed the man knocked into his camera, after which the parachute finally deployed. Huxley had a sad moment to try and recover some of his dignity before fainting. Then, a grey haired man with a mustache and police uniform stepped into view of the camera.

"That's why you shouldn't try this at home, folks." He said, clearly attempting to hold back laughter, before reaching up and ending the video feed.

Raf looked up at Bumblebee, who shuttered his optics and proceeded to start chuckling.

*That,* the Autobot laughed. *Was hilarious. Are there more?*

"At least a dozen, last time I checked." And with that said, the kid fired up another one. For the next hour, the bot and his boy watched a total of fourteen 'I Dare Me' segments, laughing at Huxley's ineptitude and admiring the skills of the human/Cybertronian team that continually bailed him out. By the end of it, Raf was curious enough about Rescue Bots that he asked Bee to explain about them. Having been so young when the War broke out, Bumblebee didn't know much firsthand, but he was able to say that the Rescue units had once been Cybertron's primary defensive line against natural disasters, with smaller teams being put into stasis around the galaxy so as to make sure there would always be someone close by should a problem occur on any of the planet's colony worlds.

Sadly, with the Decepticon uprising and destruction of the Cybertronian Senate, most Rescue Bot teams were put out of commission, many of their numbers flooding into the new Autobot ranks.

*Bulkhead could tell you more, actually. I'm pretty sure he's said his younger brother was a Rescue Bot.* Bee finished up, leaving his human charge in awe.

"Cool," Raf breathed. "Do you think we could meet the team here on Earth?"

*Probably. I know Optimus checks in with them fairly regularly - maybe we can convince him an inspection in person would be a good-* The scout was interrupted by a sudden beeping on the control station console. *Huh. Um, Raf?*

"On it, Bee." Switching windows on his laptop, the kid opened up his link to the silo's systems, something he and Ratchet had set up some time ago so as to make things easier when he needed Raf's help. "Looks like there's a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere... I'm getting some weird readings off of it... Oh, no way."

*What? What is it?*

"...You'll never guess where this thing is about to crash."

-BRR-

"Do you think we'll actually meet them out here? I mean, we're close by, but this is a different island after all..." Raf muttered as he and Bee walked through the groundbridge portal, which closed behind them thanks to the timer the boy had put on the controls. "And if they don't show up, then we're stuck out here without a ride or means of communication to the others... Our individual comm signals don't reach this far out, and if we run into trouble before someone gets back to base-"

Bee chirped, interrupting his small charge.

"Okay, maybe I'm over-reacting, but you know I'm not good with camping." The Autobot snickered, bent down to scoop up the boy, and placed Raf onto his shoulder.

*You mind if we take to the trees, oh Mastermind of Tech? It'll probably be faster, and definitely more fun.*

"Well... Sure. If you think it's a good ide-aaaah!" Raf couldn't help the small shriek as Bee suddenly leapt upwards, grabbing a sturdy branch and swinging the two of them up and over into the next tree-top. "Whoah."

*You okay there, little buddy?*

"Y-yeah... I might not be as much of an excitement fanatic as Miko, but-" he paused to look directly into Bee's concerned optics. "Let's do that again!"

Laughing and whooping, the pair continued onwards, until spotting some fallen trees ahead where the meteor must have come down. It was about that same time that Bumblebee picked up a quartet of approaching Cybertronian signals.

Quickly, but with a great deal less noise, Bee and Raf headed back down the ridgeline through the foliage.

"You don't think they'll mind we came by, do you?" The kid asked as they went. His guardian gave a noncommittal beep, and the two continued in silence up until they heard a voice shout in alarm.

With a flurry of leaves, Bumblebee dropped to the ground, allowing him and Rafael their first look at the Rescue Team of Griffin Rock. The four bots commanded the most attention, all of them wearing identical expressions of shock that were rapidly turning to awe. One was mostly red, with a helm like a firefighter's helmet, while another was blue and white with police lights tucked behind his shoulders. The third was white and orange, with helicopter rotors hanging down from his back, and the fourth was eerily similar to Bulkhead - green with a wide, sturdy frame.

Then there was the group of humans gathered by the bots' pedes; the Burns family, Optimus had said before. The older man in the police uniform, the ginger with a firefighting outfit, the glasses wearing brunette, and the young woman in a flight suit. New to Raf and Bee, though, was the blonde kid whom the policeman was standing in front of protectively.

"It's... Bumblebee!" The red bot exclaimed, moving to grasp the Autobot's servo in a welcoming gesture.

"And a kid?" Asked the lady, as Bee chirruped his hellos and gently deposited Raf on the ground.

"Uh, hi. I'm Rafael. And this is Bee, as you've just heard..." Raf said bashfully, hiking up the backpack he wore. "We detected the meteor coming in for a landing and thought we'd come check it out, maybe meet you guys."

He stayed silent as the Rescue Bots quickly explained to their human companions just why Bumblebee was such a big deal, suppressing a snicker when the helicopter, Blades, forgot his own name when introducing himself to the scout. Then the other boy came over.

"So, you get to work with Bumblebee and the rest of the Autobots on Team Prime?" The kid asked, to which Raf nodded.

"Yeah, sometimes it's just helping blend human and Cybertronian tech, but my friends and I have also gone into the field a few times." Usually when chasing after Miko to make sure she didn't do something stupid, but he didn't really want to mention that.

"That's so cool! My name's Cody, by the way, Cody Burns. That's my dad, he's the Chief of police, and those are my siblings Kade," the firefighter, "Graham," the brunette, "and Dani."

Raf grinned. "Youngest, huh? Me too. That's why I like hanging out with the bots so much."

"Same here!" Cody laughed.

Bee chirruped something, and Raf spoke up to translate before any of the other bots could. "Bumblebee said we should go ahead and find the meteor. We were up by the ridge before, and saw some trees that were knocked over when it came down."

The firefighter, Kade, blinked as he looked back and forth between the two newcomers. "Wait a minute. You can actually understand Mister Beep and Click there?"

"Yeah. I'm the only human able to."

"How... Is that possible?" Boulder, the big green bot, asked in shock. "He's using the Binominal Dialect - that's much too complex for any human to hear and interpret."

"Well, I just do. We've never been able to explain it." Raf shrugged, as he and Bee started walking, the latter trying to avoid getting irritated over the subject as he usually did whenever it came up.

When the group split up a bit, Cody ended up joining Raf and Bee as they headed up the ridgeline, Blades and Dani flying above them.

"So, when you said you've been in the field before," the other boy spoke up after a while. "Does that mean you've seen the other kind of Cybertronian? The ones the Bots have been fighting in their war?"

Raf suppressed a shudder. "The Decepticons. I've seen them, spoken to a few, nearly been squashed a whole bunch of times - they aren't very nice." Bumblebee beeped back a few words of encouragements from where he walked a bit ahead of them, causing his charge to smile.

"What did he say?" Cody prodded.

"That some of the Cons don't think I'm very nice, either." At the other boy's look of confusion, Raf elaborated. "One of their officers, Soundwave, had hacked his way into a satellite array so the Decepticons could target and activate their spacebridge, and we needed to stop him. So, me and my friends Jack and Miko were sent into the facility so that I could physically bypass their firewalls and lock Soundwave out. It wouldn't worked, except it turned out he was there too, and he fought us off before cutting the cable connection I needed. I've fought him online a few times since, and all the Autobots say he probably dislikes me the most out of the bots' humans."

"Wow... But, um, what's a 'spacebridge'?" Raf spent several minutes explaining about space and groundbridge portals, up until Blades yelled something to Bee, dipping low and getting his winch cable stuck on a tree branch. The human boys stared up in horror as the helicopter panicked, jerking and swinging through the air as he attempted to get free. Neither of them noticed Bumblebee climbing the tree until he reached the trapped hook and freed Blades. The yellow scout beeped something to the embarrassed copter before swiftly climbing back down.

At Cody's questioning glance, Raf grinned and translated. "'Some days, you're the rescuer, and others, you're the one being rescued.' Bee's been told that so many times over his time as a scout, I bet he's gonna be in a good mood the rest of the day 'cause he got to pass it along to someone else." Both boys started giggling, ignoring Bumblebee's arched optic-ridge when he rejoined them on the ground.

An hour later, after the rest of the team checked over the meteor and doused the entire area, they all agreed to head back to the Burns' family boat. It wasn't until they'd almost gotten to the beach that Raf reminded Bee about getting a ride and borrowing the team's communications systems.

At several skeptical looks and the dreaded question Optimus does know you're here, doesn't he?, the pair exchanged sheepish expressions.

Kade snickered. "Yeah, no translation needed for that look."

-BRR-

"...I am very disappointed that you did not inform me before taking yourself and Rafael on this mission, Bumblebee." Prime said sternly, causing both the scout and boy to look down in shame. "However, as you are already there and it is a long weekend, I believe it would be beneficially for the both of you to remain with the Rescue team and Burns family for a few days, as observers to how they operate together."

"Really?" Raf exclaimed, startled by the turn around. Bee chirruped out an equally stunned sound.

*Of course, Optimus! We won't let you down!*

The Prime merely smiled. "I am sure you won't Bumblebee. Call back when you are ready to return to base." When the Autobot leader signed off, both Bee and Raf let out a triumphant whoop, the bot holding up a servo for his charge to high-five.

"No Miko being obnoxious, no Nurse Darby getting over-protective-"

*No Ratchet throwing wrenches, or Arcee in a grumpy mood-*

"This is gonna be awesome!" The two of them cheered.

"Well, you guys seem really happy about this," Dani grinned, crossing her arms.

"We already got to spend this morning just by ourselves, which was great in and of itself, but now we have the next three days away from the others!" Raf explained excitedly. "Now the only question is, what are we going to do first?"

He'd directed the inquiry up at Bee, only for the four Rescue Bots to suddenly speak up with their own suggestions. None seemed really appealing, and the pair exchanged a glance as they tried to figure out how to turn down the excited Cybertronians, when an alarm started to blare.

The Rescue team headed out to repair a retaining wall, Bee and Raf sharing a sigh of relief that Cody picked up on. "I know, they can be a bit overwhelming sometimes. But come on, I'll show you guys the Command Center."

It ended up not being that different from the system control station that Ratchet had in their silo, just smaller. Bumblebee started to explore around the space as Cody explained the different elements of the console to Raf. Everything seemed to be going well... up until Boulder unexpectedly transformed and froze.

Then Heatwave.

Then Chase.

Leaving Blades to hold up the wall on his own, nearing a panic as the earth built up against it and pressed down on him.

Rafael knew the instant that things went wrong, Bee was going to insist on heading out to help. So when the distressed chirp reached his ear, the boy grabbed Cody by the sleeve and dragged him to where Bumblebee waited, already in vehicle mode. The three of them tore up the mountain road at a breakneck pace that the Autobot usually reserved for outrunning Decepticons, reaching the site of the damaged wall in record time.

Not bothering to stop, Bee transformed with the boys still in his chest compartment, grabbed a support, and jammed it against the wall just before Blades' arms gave out.

"I guess today is my day to be rescued twice," the helicopter murmured dejectedly.

Energon still humming from his recent burst of speed, the yellow bot shifted back to his vehicle mode, allowing Cody and Raf to jump out.

"Guys!" The blonde shouted dashing towards his friends and family. "What happened?"

"I wish I knew." Heatwave growled.

"Let's head back to the station, we'll figure it out there." Chief Burns called out. Raf started to turn back to Bee, until Graham asked Blades and the Autobot to remain so they could put up a few more girders to help support the wall. The others waited a few more minutes until the task was done, then entered their various partners for the drive back home.

...Only to discover that the bots couldn't drive themselves either.

Rafael and Bumblebee hung back as the Burns family members got the Rescue Bots started, following up at the rear of the group, just in case anything else weird happened.

"Bee...? You think there's a chance you could be infected with whatever's affecting the others?" Hearing the nervousness in his charge's voice, the scout answered back with a reassuring whistle.

He ignored his own fear of the very same thing.

-BRR-

When the lot of them reached the firehouse, they learned the even more distressing news that the three frozen bots had gotten to the point that they couldn't even communicate. Bee chirruped in sympathy, while Blades attempted to cajole his teammates into talking, clinging to the hope that it was all just a joke. When none of the trio responded, the helicopter found his panic levels just growing even more.

"Why is that Blades and Bumblebee haven't been affected?" Graham wondered aloud, catching Raf and Cody's attention.

"The meteor!" They said in sync.

"We were up on the ridge the whole time that the others were exposed to it, to that green dust!" The youngest Burns exclaimed.

*We need to call base,* Bee piped up.

"He's right," Blades agreed hopefully. "Optimus will know what to do."

Raf made it to the bunker's communications array first, quickly accessing the silo's emergency frequency as everyone else filed in behind him. It wasn't the Prime who answered, though.

"Rafael? What's wrong, why are you-"

"Ratchet, did Optimus tell you where Bee and I are right now?"

"Yeees, something about the team of Rescue Bots on that island of inventors."

"Right, but now, that team's been reduced to one member. The others were infected with some sort of green dust off of the meteor that crashed nearby, probably some sort of microbic invader, and now they're trapped in their vehicle modes, unable to talk!"

On the screen, the Autobot medic stared at him, stunned. Then Ratchet's internal programming kicked him into gear, and he started to give Rafael a string of medical jargon, instructing him on how to tweak certain components of the bots to give them greater resistance to the infection, and hopefully prolong the time before the microbes completely shut down their processors and sparks.

"I highly suspect, though, that in the end you will need to use some of the antibiotic solutions that should be stored aboard the Rescue team's ship." He pulled up an image of a round, metal disk with several solution-filled bubbles on it.

"I know where those are," Blades breathed. "We still have them!"

"Good! But, before use of any sort of antidote, you'll need a sample of the microbes on the meteor for analysis, so as to avoid using something that could worsen the situation rather than fix it. And for Primus' sake, make sure to destroy every other piece of that thing, or else the same thing might happen again - on accident, or if the Decepticons retrieve it."

None of the Rescue team members present missed the way that both Bee and Raf reacted to that statement - the latter paling, the former's doorwings hitching up in a sign of agitation.

*We'll make sure that doesn't happen, Ratch.* The scout promised.

Once again upstairs, though, things were getting worse. The trio of frozen bots were completely disabled, unable to start their engines, while physical signs of the microbial infection were spreading across their plating. Blades had gone and gotten their stash of antidote disks, ready to be checked once a sample was retrieved.

Chief Burns attempted to get both the remaining bots to stay put, but the visiting scout was having none of it. Bee insisted on accompanying them, an argument that Raf backed him up on.

"He's one of the fastest vehicles on the planet - there's no one better to have along when you need a quick getaway." The kid stated. "And besides, even if he were infected, you're bringing the antidote back along with you anyway!"

Muttering under his breath about stubborn bots and kids too smart for their own good, the Chief reluctantly agreed. "But you are staying on that boat!"

In the end, it turned out to have been a very good thing Bee went too.

With the winds picking up and ocean swells getting rougher, their boat had a hard time making it to the island's beach. Instead, it collided against some rocks just offshore, knocking Graham off the side and into the turbulent ocean. Dani tried throwing a life preserver, but her brother was unable to reach it, the current pulling him beneath the surface.

Bumblebee, spotting another coil of rope tied to the boat for mooring, grabbed the end of it and leapt into the water.

Optics lighting up the area, he sank towards Graham's struggling form, both jerked to a halt when the rope became taut. Without hesitation, Bee released the end, speeded up his descent with a few kicks and caught up to the lanky human. Then, the Autobot hurled him through the water, giving Graham enough momentum back topside to grab the mooring line.

Bee continued to sink.

Several dozen feet down, he hit the side of an undersea cliff, skidding and bumping before landing on a narrow ledge. Shaking off the impact, Bumblebee attempted to climb back upwards, with no luck.

Meanwhile, a spluttering Graham was hauled back aboard, Dani anxiously bringing forth a towel to wrap around him. "Bee's still down there?!"

"Y-yeah," her brother choked out, shivering violently. On the other end of the video feed they maintained with the Command Center, Blades took one look at Rafael's ashen face and steeled his courage.

"Today is the day I get to be the hero." He muttered. "Don't worry, Raf, I'll get him back." And before either of the startled boys could say a word, Blades hurried to his launch pad and took off.

Aboard the Burns family boat, a new problem had arisen - despite the hull being intact, Chief was unable to get the engine going again. And the bomb that they'd prepared to use on the meteor was starting its countdown, tricked by the impact against the rocks, with its abort sequence nonfunctional.

"We have less that four minutes," Graham said in a panicked tone. Kade frowned, opening his mouth to ask if they could disable the thing any other way, when the sound of a helicopter caught their collective attention.

Overhead, Blades was flying back and forth with his winch cable extended to full length down below the waves. "C'mon, c'mon, please be close enough," the Rescue Bot muttered to himself. A sudden weight on his cable caused Blades to yelp, but when he pulled upwards, there was no resistance to say he'd gotten snagged on a rock.

Instead, once the cable came up far enough, a yellow and black figure burst out of the water, holding to the line with one servo as his pede rested firmly on the end hook.

"Look what I caught!" Blades hollered in triumph as he approached the Burns boat.

"The explosive device is about to blow!" Chief yelled back, killing the moment of good cheer. "Can you get it out to sea?"

*I thought the whole point was to get it to the meteor.* Bumblebee chirruped.

"I'm right there with you." With that, Blades flew forward so that his passenger could grab the bomb, and then they headed in towards the island.

Pushing his engine and rotors as fast as possible, the Rescue Bot prayed to Primus that they'd make it in time. As soon as they were close enough, Bee jumped down, punched a hole into the meteor's surface and stuffed the device in.

They cleared the blast zone half a second before the bomb detonated.

Back on the boat, Graham and Kade worked to get the engine functioning again. "Try it now, Dad!"

Turning the ignition once again, Chief breathed a sigh of relief when it worked, and back them out of the rocks. A few moments later, everyone's eyes turned skyward as Bee and Blades returned, covered with soot but intact.

"Mission accomplished!" The copter grinned as he dropped Bumblebee to the deck, then landed himself and transformed.

"But, you were exposed!" Dani protested.

"I'm fine! See, no sign of- of- ohhh-" Frame shuddering, Blades found himself dropping back into vehicle mode.

"What about the sample?" Graham cried, just as the same thing happened to Bee.

But as the Autobot transformed, he dropped a single, glowing meteor shard.

-BRR-

"How... Are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" Raf asked, not looking up from the scanner device he'd hooked up to his laptop, running tests on the meteor sample.

In Cybertronian code.

Graham started to clarify, but then decided it could wait. For all his supposed genius and the work he'd been doing with Boulder to learn more about Cybertronian tech, he'd barely begun to gain an understanding of the bots' physiology, language, or computronics. And yet, here was a twelve year old kid working out advanced scientific analysis programs from another species, who knew exactly what he was doing with every keystroke. If the current situation weren't so dire, he'd probably be asking the kid for tutoring.

"Got it!" Raf suddenly snapped his laptop shut, startling Graham and Dani, who'd also been close by. "The microbes in the dust are unknown to the Cybertronian database, but they're similar enough in genetic makeup to another virus that... This antidote should do the trick!" He grabbed one of the disks labelled in Cybertronian glyphs, and immediately started dispersing the correct antibody into each of the others so that they could cure the bots all at once.

"Should?" Kade asked as he and Cody walked over. Rafael shot a glare his way, one so fierce that the burly firefighter took a step back.

"Will." The kid shot back, grabbing one of the disks and running it over to Bumblebee. Each of the Burns kids also took one, placing them onto the different bots. It took a few seconds for the solution to be absorbed, but once it was in their systems, the grey coating of microbes fell away, and each of the Rescue Bots transformed, greatly relieved.

Outside, Raf waited anxiously for the antidote to be absorbed by Bee. He nearly melted in relief when the scout beeped cheerfully at him, returning to bi-pedal mode.

Bumblebee's own relief disappeared in an instant, though, when his charge gained a menacing expression and pulled a wrench from his backpack.

*Raf, wait, you know I was only doing my-* His protest was cut off as Rafael threw the wrench, hitting his guardian square between the optics. The Rescue team halted in their own celebration to watch - the bots in shock, the humans with amusement.

"So help me, Bumblebee, if you ever do something that scares me like that again, a wrench to helm will be the least of your worries!" Raf bellowed, surprisingly loud for such a scrawny kid. Rubbing his newest ding, Bee sighed in acknowledgement.

*Message received loud and clear, Mini-Ratchet.*

Despite his deep dislike of that particular nickname, Rafael quickly lost his anger, and ran forward to leap into the palm Bee held open for him.

"Don't go away like that again." He whispered, clutching onto Bumblebee's plating as he curled into the warm metal chest, spark beating away reassuringly beneath several layers of armor.

*I won't. I promise.*

"...Can we go home now?" Nodding, Bee lifted his helm to look down at the gathered Rescue team members, none of whom voiced a protest when he explained that they'd go ahead and return to Prime's base.

"Ooh, wait, you two can't leave until I get my camera." Dani ordered. "Group photo!"

Laughing, Bumblebee went ahead and scooped up Cody so that he and Raf could sit together on the scout's shoulder. Dani got her picture, the other bots said their goodbyes, and then Bee turned to Blades.

*How about one with just you and me, dude?*

"Really?" The copter grinned shyly, nodding. Down below, Dani snapped another photo as the boys said their own farewell.

"You've got to come see the silo sometime, and meet the rest of Team Prime." Raf stated as he resettled his backpack.

"Only if you promise to come hang out again some time." Cody fired back. Seeing the broad grin on Blades faceplates as he gave Bee a hug, and the awkward pat he was given in return, Raf had to laugh.

"I'm sure we will."