You Are Not Alone

An LLS Production

It started with a Decepticon attack around the South China Sea, and ended with the JSDF covering on Ironhide's window.

"What..." Will gaped at the doodle of the chibi commando, and somewhere in his organic brain was a system crash. It was... cute.

"One of your organic compatriots across the Pacific decided I was too intimidating and needed it," Ironhide grumbled. "The context was also... appropriate. So he thought."

"Uh huh..." Will nodded. "You still got a cartoon character on your ass, though."

"With guns. Clearly we are alike. I shall have to look up the stories that feature Hommando, Goddess of War."

That was how Japanese animé and the Autobots made their acquaintance. Well, great. Will was usually all for whatever bridged cultural divides between their new Cybertronian allies and humanity. Usually, it didn't take the form of girl-soldiers being brutally killed in battle against supernatural monsters that may or may not be related to those same girls, under the thin veneer of magic, but whatever. Yeah... the cartoon was not going to appear in the Lennox household any time soon.

Horrified gasps, or something like vents cycling air at accelerated paces, echoed around the third, seventh and tenth episodes, along with what every human and Autobot in NEST suspected were tears from Ironhide. Manly tears, of course.

Ratchet had been horrified, especially around the third episode that the Autobots actually watched in real-time with their optics as a blonde musket-wielding girl became a victim of decapitation. "Humans let their children watch this?"

Bumblebee had joined in the dirge – and in cursing the cat mascot thing – during the second brutal death. A number of rather creatively arranged insults followed.

"Never mind that," Ironhide rumbled as the magical girl in purple unleashed a tanker truck of oil on the well-dressed gear monster. "Human imagination is an incomprehensible thing."

It didn't stop him from imitating her on the next Decepticon mission.

"If you really think like that, then you really are our enemy," the protagonist had been saying on the screen. For the sake of those on Diego Garcia who didn't speak Japanese, subtitles had been employed, but the Autobots had had no need of it. The reason for such contextual information, was that her prompting had sent the illustrious Autobot leader into a funk deep enough to join Megatron's torn corpse at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Sam had been traumatised enough when the Peterbilt 379 had arrived talking about fully informed consent, aliens, and cultural contexts informing US policy with regards to the Autobots.

Also present at the scene was Mikaela, who had coughed to interrupt when the Peterbilt looked to catch something like a full overload. "Erm, Optimus... maybe you look up refugee treatment before making such an assumption."

There was a pause. Then the flame-painted semi truck had moved out of the Witwicky driveway – and ruined lawn – and silently rolled out to the road without a driver. The poignant silence echoed with Awkward.

The most extreme reaction, however, came from Bumblebee. After the secret behind the girls' magical powers were revealed, Bumblebee had strode out of the movie theatre that served as the Autobots' hangar cum living room. Explosions followed, and the whole of NEST had run out to see the firing range destroyed.

Bumblebee's arm cannon was still out. "If I ever see that... monster... around Sam... I will kill him."

"I'll help," Ratchet volunteered.

The concept of Soul Gems had been marginally horrifying for the Autobots, who couldn't imagine putting their soul into a vessel like glass, though Ratchet had postulated that it meant the Puella Magi depicted shared certain characteristics with them. Which made it all the more ironic that, the time they watched the magical lying cat get fifteen gunshots in the face, there was a standing ovation led by Ironhide.

At the end, though, at the bittersweet ending, there had been applause, the feeling that despite cultural differences at least something had been reached between humans and Cybertronians, a Decepticon learned that scrapping the Hommando picture off got him a last look at Ironhide's cannons close-up, and there was a banner that, while grammatically inaccurate, was semantically faithful, and fine since Cybertronians had no gender-specific pronouns to begin with.

Don't forget. Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember her, you are not alone.

Yes, I realise Ironhide wouldn't be alive when Madoka Magica was made in 2011. So I took certain liberties.

Now I wonder if anyone tried to implant a Soul Gem into a dead Transformer.

The Transformers know that Puella Magi Madoka Magica is fiction. Fiction, by definition, is unreal, but it does not mean that the story would not resonate with them. Ratchet can be horrified at how easily Mami died, Optimus uneasy at how the Incubators and Transformers are similar in withholding information that may prove vital and how do humans see space aliens otherwise, Ironhide... well, I got a feeling Homura and Ironhide might get along. And in the end, the sweet part of the ending gives them hope, and reminds them that their fight is not alone. And also, in the story, that hope is spread between Transformers and humans, that they have so much in common.

Critiquez, s'il vous plaît!