Hello everyone and welcome to chapter 20. Hopefully it goes better than other things relating to the number twenty as of late… ahem.

And as usual responses to some of you glorious people who leave reviews.

Solid dog: Thank you for the apology, and don't be scared of leaving more reviews, just remember moderation is key my friend.

Ghostalker: So I believe that in the story I poorly explained that the forge recharges itself. Because why would an ancient relic of primus run out of juice after what three uses?

Atsik: So with the families asking about Jack's still yet to be removed con shield, I can't think of any reason as to why they would know what it was in the first place other than it being a different symbol then everyone else's which I suppose they could ask about.

d8rkforcen1ght7: thank you and I'll be sure to check for errors and better ways to phrase things in the future.

Kristinalprime23: Yeah, this virus has kept me boarded up inside and as much as I like being inside being stuck with my family constantly is starting to drive me nuts. And of course you made me realize more Cliffjumper needs to be in here, I brought him back he needs to be used.

Draegoon: Yep well not much can be done besides wait it out, or go full Mad Max. And yes Claire is the adorable, cookies must be delivered.

Starpottergeek: Yeah, Raf is getting to see his family now and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna end up doing everyone at this point. And yes I've tried to go into the weapons and abilities department without making it an entire chapter but I might have to delve a little deeper for that. And yes Starscream would have his dignity or what's left of it in shambles at that point.

Hawkeyestratos1996: Heh, well I can't speak from experience but videos and other forms of media have painted a glorious picture of the wrath they can dish out.

Thanks for the reviews and be sure to leave more and I'll answer them before the start of the next chapter. (Also Pilar is an actual character from TFP; she's mentions briefly in the episode where Megatron takes over Bee.)

Also as a quick warning 2 things in this chapter, not any kind of trigger warning hopefully. But I don't know much Spanish and many cultural things and such surrounding Mexico so if I make a mistake please let me know and I'll fix it ASAP, Secondly, I only have sister's so writing sisters is easier, brothers may sound a little odd when talking to one another so once again, any oddities just let me know and I'll fix it.

Hope everyone's taking care, and onto chapter 20.

-TFP-TFP-TFP-

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke

-TFP-TFP-TFP-

Listen up, There's more than you can see

Chapter 20

"You know I don't get what you were so worried about." Bee said over the comms as Raf was swarmed by his family, the younger mech mildly glared at him causing the scout to chortle in amusement. It only took a little bit of convincing from Raf and June to get his family to see it was really him, however it didn't stop Mrs. Esquivel to start going on a tangent in Spanish. It took Raf's sister Pilar and Mr. Gonzales his dad to finally calm her down enough to actually talk with Raf.

"Oh mi hijo, what happened to you…" Mrs. Esquivel was on the verge of tears, "I said you would grow up big and strong someday, just not something like this." She joked trying to get herself to calm down; Raf's oldest brother Miguel rubbed her back soothingly to help calm her nerves.

"I know mama; this was never supposed to happen." Raf got down on his knees so that he was closer to his family, and his mother came forward and rested a hand on his knee. "But hey, you guys can meet one of my best friends now I guess." Raf gestured to Bee who was stood behind him, and the scout waved as all eyes were on him, He beeped something and Raf translated. "He says hi and it's nice to meet all of you."

"Wait you actually understood all of that? It sounded like Morse code." Pilar asked and pointed out, and Raf nodded in confirmation although June stepped in to explain.

"Yes since Bumblebee is speaking a basic form of cybertronian and as we ourselves are now cybertronians our bodies translate the language for us." June explained quickly and although she got a few confused looks, Pilar nodded in understanding. "Although Raf for some reason could understand Bee long before we became cybertronian." Mrs. Darby added.

"So this was your after school computer club eh little man?" Raf's older brother Francisco. Raf nodded shyly as his family quickly got over their shock and as some families do fussed over their youngest member.

All of them stood in the hallway for over an hour just talking. Raf, Francisco, and Miguel all got along well, but weren't afraid of taking verbal jabs at one another. Pilar seemed to be the protective older sister while the other two were quieter and definitely more nervous of the giant robots they were surrounded by.

Optimus had come a few minutes after the initial meeting between Raf and his family, holding a very disgruntled federal agent. Apparently the family had slipped away while said agent and Prime were conversing even avoiding the Autobot leaders sensitive sensors. Fowler had made a comment once they found the wayward family, with something along the line of Hispanic ninjas, which earned him a flip flop to the head with speed and accuracy that would have made Ratchet jealous.

Raf and Bee couldn't stop themselves from laughing and had to hold onto each other to not fall over as Fowler got chewed out by an irate mother for five minutes of nonstop Spanish that he couldn't understand but very well got the message behind. Fowler quickly apologized and asked Optimus if he could take him back to the main room so he could leave, and June could swear she saw the edges of a smile on Optimus' faceplates.

"So when you said you knew a guy who knows cars, I never imagined he was the kind of guy you were talking about." Pilar said as she gestured to Bee, who promptly beeped and whirled and transformed into his Urbana 500 drawing sounds of surprise and awe as Raf's family looked over the muscle car now in front of them.

Raf's older brother's admired Bee's alt-mode when from inside the scout his radio dial producing a second of static before a music clip came forth, "I'm Sexy and I know it." Pilar stared at the car as she recognized it as the same one that picked her younger brother up almost every day something her mother also noticed but let it go unsaid.

"Great, so he can turn into a car too, can you do that?" Pilar said exasperatedly, as she gestured between her brother and the yellow muscle car.

"Er, yeah but it's into something different and I can't exactly do it yet." Raf explained facing his sister. "To be able to transform into anything, I need to scan a vehicle or something, and that would be my alternate mode, or I could do this." And Raf demonstrated his unique ability among the Autobots, by shifting into the scout that transformed back into his bipedal mode.

Most of the humans did a double take as Raf and Bee stood side by side looking identical, to one another until Raf shifted back into his root mode. "I can either shift into a vehicle mode, or I can disguise myself as other bots, Ratchet out medic explained it to me better but I don't think you would really understand any of it." Raf tried to make the last part sound as least discrediting as possible, and his family understood, none of this was really making sense in the first place so they just went with it.

"Most of us have abilities that help us do our jobs better, Like I've got these data-cables that help when I work at any of the terminals." Raf let one of the cables out of his back and it came around to tap his brother on the shoulder. "Sierra can turn invisible because of a light refraction modules in her armor, and Miko has her sonic cannons." Raf paused as he thought of anyone else but came up blank, "We aren't really sure if anyone else has these kind of abilities among the rest of us though."

"The rest of you?" Raf's father spoke up, finally allowing everything to process he caught onto that part of Raf's explanation. "There are more of you that this happened to?"

"Yes, in total this happened to twelve of us." Mrs. Darby interjected giving Raf a break from explaining everything. "I don't believe we've met before my names June Darby, Jack's mother who I think you've met before Mrs. Esquivel."

Said woman choked on air as she finally recognized the nurse standing in front of them, as the mother of one of her son's friends. "Dios mío, June, you too." Mrs. Esquivel stepped closer to the other mother. "Is Jack here to? Is he alright?"

June smiled at Mrs. Esquivel and nodded. Over the time that all the kids had known each other they had occasionally spent the night at the Darby household, and Mrs. Esquivel had spoken with June on multiple occasions mostly about how nice it was for Jack and Miko to be such good friends to her youngest son.

"He's here, along with Miko as Raf had said. She's obviously enjoying this so far, and She's been driving everyone crazy." And Mrs. Esquivel laughed; she liked the young Japanese teenager despite her crazy attitude.

"That is good to hear, is her family here as well?" and June nodded again, "That is good, Family is always good to keep around in times of hardship." Mrs. Esquivel patted her son's pede craning her neck to look up at him. "Now, you keep telling us about your new abilities… would you like to show us?"

Raf blinked in surprise, he would have figured his family freaking out more, not asking to show them what he could do now. "Uh yeah we can go down the training room." Bee beeped something at Raf as the scout knelt down placing his servo out before the humans, "He said to hop on, it's much faster than just letting you guys walk the whole way there." Raf translated.

Raf's brother's quickly hopped onto the yellow scouts servo with little hesitation and their father joined them, June picked up Raf's sisters while Raf picked up his mother who stepped on his servo with no little amount of trepidation. Mrs. Esquivel gulped as she glanced over the edge over her son's servo as they walked, "Rafael I swear if you drop me I will haunt you for the rest of your life." Raf chuckled uneasily as he quickly adjusted his servo to prevent anything from happening.

The Esquivel family was astounded by the size of the base as the bots carried them through corridor after corridor until they came to the elevator. The ride down felt short and uneventful and the bots all made their way down to the range, where Mikaela already was burning away the holographic Vehicons that ran between cover with her flamethrowers.

Everyone was thankful it was kept to a cool temperature down in the S.A.F.E. as the flames heated the surrounding area but never seemed to affect the femme using them. Mikaela noticed the family and bots coming over, so she gave them all a smile and left them the range to themselves. Raf, June, and Bee set Raf's family down on a nearby table giving them a good view of the range.

Raf stood at the center post for the range and Bee went to the command console for the training area. "Alright Bee just have a few targets running around and I'll try to hit them alright?" the scout gave Raf a thumbs up and pressed a few buttons.

Immediately Vehicon holoforms phased into existence and started ducking between cover. Raf deployed his blasters and began firing, although compared to everyone else, his accuracy was better due to his tactical visor he deployed to assist his aim. Raf out of everyone except for Sari, actually had the least amount of weapons training, the still did it just not to the extent of the others due to their age.

Despite their eagerness to join the Autobots fight against the Decepticons Raf and Sari were restricted to tactical support only unless a situation require them to be boots on the ground. And despite Sari's initial anger to not being allowed to fight they both understood that they were much younger than everyone else, physically. As everyone else's frame types were in the adult ranges even Miko, Raf and Sari were still classified as younglings.

So Raf and Sari spent most of their time training with computers, figuring out how to hack them with wireless connections from their processors and in Raf's case his data cables.

However that didn't stop Raf and Sari from training their weapons regardless, such as Raf had better accuracy than Miko because she always tried to get "cool" shots but a little bit worse than Jack as the older mech actually tried his best.

One by one the twenty holoforms that Bumblebee deployed were taken out, with Raf only missing a few of his shots. "More?" Bee asked and Raf nodded this time shifting his servo's into his tesla cannons, and Raf's family looked in awe as electrical coil nodes shifted out running down Raf's arms ending at odd looking barrels.

More holoforms popped up and Raf began charging his cannons causing visible arcs of electricity to spark and jump off of Raf's frame. Bee looked nervous as his charge readied his weapon, and June held the same sentiments as the electrical discharges looked highly unstable.

Finally the weapons hit max charge and Raf unleashed havoc on the firing range, with several holoforms getting instantly vaporized, and the massive lightning discharge scarred the paneling and cover which was made of cybertronian alloys. Raf's family had to shield their eyes from the intensity of the electricity, which overpowered the lighted and actually made the rest of the S.A.F.E. look darker because of it.

Raf managed to keep the arcs going for several moments and by then all the holoforms were taken out and the firing range looked like a warzone. Several bots that had been down in the range were drawn to the light show and surprised to see Raf as the epicenter.

"Dang, little man has the big guns huh." Mikaela pointed out as smoke blew off the barrels of Raf's tesla cannons. Wheeljack whistled in appreciation of the damage the fully charged blast did to the range.

Now however Mrs. Esquivel was going on another tangent in Spanish, June was able to make out small phrases but the Esquivel matriarch was talking too quickly for her to translate anything other than something about a war machine and a crazy world. Anger was still evident though, but it wasn't aimed at anyone in the room at least until someone tried to get her to calm down.

"They turned my boy into, a weapon and you're telling me to calm down!" Raf flinched as his mother turned on his father, wisely all of Raf's siblings had backed away when she first started yelling. With no one willing to step forward Raf quickly came forward and scooped her up in his arms and gave her a slightly awkward hug, but regardless it did the trick.

Mrs. Esquivel broke down, crying. Raf silently held her as his shoulder's shook, and everyone else who had initially come because of the light show left except for Jack who stood by his mom.

With Raf in such close proximity to the table his entire family came up to him and hugged or laid their hand on which ever part of him was closest. Jack gave him mother a look as he felt pulses of admiration from her, and small flashes of images as she undoubtedly etched the moment in her processor.

Several moments passed until the crying stopped and Raf let his mother down, "I'm sorry Mi hijo, everything has just been so crazy lately. And with you going missing everyone was worried sick about you," Mrs. Esquivel wiped away a tear as her family came around to support her.

Raf probably would have still been crying with his mother had he retained the ability to, but he straighten up and cleared his vocalizer. "I know mama; I worried about you guys too." Jack came up behind Raf and rested a servo on his friends shoulder, gaining his attention.

"Mrs. Esquivel, we've met before, but I'm Jack and I just wanted to say that I'll make sure that nothing happens to Raf." Said mech gave Jack a large smile, glad at his friend's proclamation. "Raf won't ever have to fight someone else's battles I'll make sure of it, he'll be as safe as possible."

Raf's family seemed to be awed by Jack's words to ensure his safety, "You are a great friend to my son Jack, but please make sure to take care of yourself as well." Mrs. Esquivel replied once again getting a little choked up. "I have seen many selfless individuals come to harm because they cared so much for others."

Jack smiled and nodded as he squeezed Raf's shoulder comfortingly and stood up to his towering height. "Hey Raf? How about a little competition?"

The young hacker's audials perked up at the mention of a competition. Despite being labeled as a nerd and geek by most of the school which the boy had actually held as a badge of honor, the youngest actually had a mean competitive side. "You're on! Bee wanna have a go too?"

The scout who had silently and nervously watching from the sidelines, beeped and whirled as his doorwings fluttered excitedly. "And that makes three. Alright Jack what are the stakes?"

"First one to get fifty hits wins. Losers have to take on the winner's slot on the base's chores roster." A voice spoke from behind that no one noticed was there. Carly stood against one of the S.A.F.E.'s supporting pillars. "Does that sound like a fair bet?"

Bee whirled and gave a thumbs up, and Raf and Jack both grinned as Carly took her own spot on the range ready for target to pop up. Raf's family eagerly took a seat and cheered Raf on as he readied himself. And June stepped up to the terminal to start the range's various programs. With everyone ready and waiting June pressed the button and various vehicon troopers popped up and began running.

"Come on Raf, you can do it! Kick their tin butts!" Pilar shouted getting a laugh out of June, and a grin from her brother.

"Gah, that was mine go aim somewhere else." Jack groaned as Bee stole a target out from underneath him.

"I'm sorry I didn't see you hitting him." Bee sassed back. Carly was an image of pure focus as she used her wrist mounted blasters to rapidly rack up a tally. It didn't stop her from snickering as she did the same thing to Bee though that he was doing to Jack and the scout started complaining.

Jack having enough of Bumblebee's shenanigans shifted his chain gun out and started spraying all over the range hoping to hit more targets. Carly hoping to keep up with Jack's rising score brought up her other arm which opened up revealing an array of missiles that she quickly deployed causing small explosions all over the range bringing her score dangerously close to the score limit.

This caused Raf's family to start cheering louder and both Raf and his guardian tried desperately to catch up to the rapidly increasing scores of their friends. Jack and Carly were neck and neck, when a bolt of lightning cut through the field and chained between several targets. It wasn't a fully charged shot from Raf but still enough to get the job done as more targets vanished.

Raf's brother's went wild as the score went in their youngest brother's favor, with Carly close behind. Jack was struggling to catch up as they either kept blowing up or zapping his targets and Bee happily kept snagging targets away from Jack who was growing increasingly frustrated as his score started falling behind.

June laughed as everyone was absorbed in their little competition; she left the terminal setting it to shut off when the score limit was reached. Instead she promptly settled in next to Mrs. Esquivel and watch their sons and friends. "It's always nice to see them acting like how they did before this happened." June noted, and Mrs. Esquivel hummed in agreement.

"When we were told that Rafael was missing, it felt as if my heart had been cut out of my chest." Mrs. Esquivel, looked June in her optics as she spoke and the nurse could see the deep pain in her eyes. "I prayed every day and every night for someone to bring my little boy home to us and to see him now despite his change is a huge blessing for us."

"Yes, when we were taken I was honestly terrified, but thanks to Jack we were able to escape." June vented a sigh as she looked at her son. "This is definitely a massive change for all of us but maybe something good can come of this. The Autobots were outnumbered but with us here maybe we can make a difference."

"But this is a war we are talking about, what difference is a bunch of teenagers and children going to make." Mrs. Esquivel was starting to getting angry again, and June really didn't want to make a scene again after everyone was so high in spirits.

"Maria, you see Bumblebee yes?" and the Hispanic mother nodded as her attention was shifted to the scout who was still on aiming at targets. "Really he's probably older than most of Jasper combined. But comparatively to human's he's only marginally older than Miko, and Arcee my son's guardian is only a few years older than him at the same scale."

Mrs. Esquivel was shocked to learn that despite being so old physically, he was still essentially a teenager. "And these Autobots just recruit them as they are children?" horrified at the aspect of what she thought she was hearing.

And June showed the same horror on her faceplates as she responded trying to sort out what she said. "No! Optimus would never do something like that; it's not out of want but out of requirement." June explained quickly, "Their planet has been destroyed by their war, and from I can understand those who didn't pick a side would get caught in the crossfire." June vented another sigh her systems getting worked up, and Jack's end of the creation bond prodded her with feelings of worry, and June responded with a calm collected attitude. "But I wasn't there; I only know what I've been told if you want to know more asking one of the bots may help you. But everyone here is willing to help the bots."

Mrs. Esquivel just nodded quietly as she took in what June was saying. And to hear that an entire planet was destroyed by these Decepticon's was exactly calming, but hearing someone was combating their aggression was better. "So the Autobots, they are here to protect everyone?"

June nodded and began telling stories of the various, times the Autobots helped protect the planet, or the various confrontation with the Decepticons that prevented the deaths of many people. She was finally interrupted from talking when the score limit was reached and the alarm blared declaring Carly as the winner, while the mechs all groaned that they lost.

"Don't worry Raf, I'm sure you'll get them next time." Francisco said as everyone watched Carly do a victory dance around the range.

"But until then, you three have a roster to sign yourselves up for." Carly said in a sing-song voice causing all three to groan again at the reminder of their bet.

"Alright well a bets a bet, might as well get to it." Jack accepted as he trudged away, with Bee sulkily following behind him. "You gonna come with Raf or do it later?"

Raf looked between his friends and his family, and before having to make a decision Carly cut in. "Don't worry about it Raf, you've got your family with you, if you really want to deal with your end of the bet you can do it later." Carly spoke with a smile, as she spoke to the younger former human.

"Thank you," Raf replied as he returned the smile. Carly rubbed his helm like someone would have done with his hair prior to his reformation.

"No problem." And off Carly went whistling a small tune with a small skip in her step. Both of Raf's brothers started snickering and if his faceplates could still turn red in embarrassment they would have.

"Oh it looks like the Rafster has it going with the ladies." Miguel joked while Francisco tried to compose himself. Raf's mother quickly intervened though as she saw her son's teasing her youngest, and swiftly and effectively reprimanded them with a threatening flip-flop and a rapid outburst of Spanish.

"Ignore them Rafael, they are just being bullies." Mrs. Esquivel sent a small glare at the older brother's effectively cowing them into silence as they tried to excuse their actions.

"It's alright mama," Raf defended as his brother's looked at him thankfully, to at least not receive the wrath of their mother. "Is there anything else you guys wanna see? I could take you to where the other families are."

"Where are you staying?" One of Raf's other sister's Victoria, asked. She had been quiet most of the time, probably shocked by everything. "Do you have your own room?"

"Oh yeah, do you guys wanna see it?" Raf asked and was met with everyone nodding in agreement. "Alright we'll take the elevator back up." Raf lowered his servo down for his parents and Pilar to climb on while June helped his brothers and sisters.

Raf secured Pilar up on his shoulder and made sure she was settled before he started moving as he held his parents close to his spark, June held Raf's brothers and sisters in both servo's respectively. It took no time at all to get to the elevator and even less time for it to come down from the main level.

Everyone was settled in and chatting with one another as the elevator went up. And the lift had just passed the halfway point when a loud boom echoed down the shaft, followed by the entire thing shaking uncontrollably. Everyone cried out in surprise and panic as it happened, however the elevator never stopped moving upward, the structural integrity of the shaft holding up under the strain of the vibrations.

June and Raf's comm links lit up as everyone tried to figure out what happened, but with everyone talking over each other it was hard to get a word in. Sean was on watch in the command room but wasn't answering his comm and neither was Cliffjumper. Arcee, Bulkhead, and Optimus were out of the base and on patrol and both tried to calm the panic as Jack Vince and Jameson secured the room with all the humans in it. Carly, Wheeljack, and Mikaela were all stuck down in the S.A.F.E. as the elevator was currently going up. Spike and Ratchet were both in the med-bay and were making their way to the command center.

When the elevator doors opened, Raf and June quickly exited and sent it back down to let the others still down there up. Rather than go to Raf's room, they rapidly made their way to the command center meeting up with Miko along the way.

"Sari is with the others and the families right now, she was recharging in her room when the explosion happened. Sierra dropped her off there and is also making her way to the command room." Miko explained as she ran ahead of the group.

It only took a few more turns through the corridors before they came across the smoke filled and very much damaged command center. Many of the terminals were damaged, Ratchet's area was better off than the rest of the area and the Medic was there with Miko helping him carry an unconscious Sean to one of the berths Sierra was pressing buttons and turning on equipment at the medics instruction. The ground bridge terminal was completely obliterated only a smoking husk remained; the ground bridge itself was thankfully unharmed.

"Ratchet what happened?!" Raf asked as he set his family down in the slightly damaged human area. The TV had a small crack in the corner of the screen, and the couch looked a little singed.

"I don't know but if I had to guess I would say that something ignited the energon line in the ground bridges terminal." Ratchet grunted as he situated Sean on the berth, the mech didn't look too damaged just some dents and quiet a nasty bump to the helm. "Honestly we're lucky the whole slagging base didn't go up in flames when the terminal burst. I sent Spike to check on Cliffjumper, Nurse Darby can you go there and make sure everything is alright."

"I can do that, is everything alright here?" June asked as he made a quick check up of Sean herself.

"Yes, yes I think the force of the blast just threw him into the wall over there. He should be up in a few minutes." Ratchet pulled a scanner out of his subspace, "Now go quickly Cliffjumper still isn't answering his comm-link."

June quickly left running at speed down the halls leaving just, leaving just Raf and his family in the command center with Miko and Ratchet. "Is there anything I can do Ratchet?" Raf asked as he examined the ruins of the terminal.

"Yes, can you access the terminals and figure out what caused everything to go haywire." Raf gave him a thumbs up, and quickly got to work deploying his data-cables and connecting to multiple terminals at once, within seconds he was connected to the system and combing through everything leading up to the detonation.

Quickly Raf was able to figure out that someone wired the terminal that as soon as the ground bridge shut off it would create a feedback loop in the circuits frying everything, The explosion seemed to be a side effect of that. Raf also discovered that someone activated the ground bridge and put in a random set of coordinates that were half corrupted due to the terminal's destruction.

"Ratchet, I'm at Cliffjumper right now, he's got a pretty bad gash along his side. Spike managed to stop some of the bleeding thankfully but Cliff's in stasis." June spoke through the comm on an open channel letting everyone in the Autobot comm network this however made everyone realize what shift that Cliffjumper was on and the only reason on base why he would be in such a condition.

"Everyone… Starscream's not in his cell."

Dun Dun DUUUUUUNNNN

Alright, this was kinda hard to write and I'm still not sure if I did it right. I saw Rambo Last blood recently and I took inspiration from that, for Maria Esquivel WHICH I SWEAR I NAMED HER THAT BEFORE I SAW THE MOVIE.

Also I know Raf's dad didn't actually have any dialog, I might update this later and add something for him but having to write dialog for six new people is slightly difficult.

Anyway I hope people enjoyed this, if you did leave a review follow or fav. Hope everyone has a good day/night and stay frosty my friends.