Sam had never explained about the Cybertronians to his best friend, and although this meant Bumblebee had to continuously pretend to be a regular non-sentient car whenever Miles was around, he was willing to do it. He understood that Sam was worried that the Decepticons might target Miles and do him harm. What he didn't know was Sam was more worried about what would happen while they were harming Miles, and that it might actually make his charge pity the Decepticons a bit.
Barricade had shown up out of the blue, taking them all by surprise. Bumblebee had assumed that the Decepticon had offlined at some point, either through the injuries he inflicted on him in their tussle over Sam that first night, or through the injuries he would have gotten during the fight in Mission City. Sam and Mikaela just forget about him, not afraid of the Decepticon when they had Bumblebee there to protect them. Miles, on the other hand, was just wondering why the f*ck a police car had slammed into the side of Sam's Camaro.
Like usual, the first thing Bumblebee had tried to do was get the organics inside of him to safety. Mikaela and Sam were sitting in his front seat, while Miles was sitting in his back seat. Sam and Mikaela already knew the routine: hang on tight and listen for instructions. Miles got knocked around a bit, but when Bumblebee ordered them out he'd scrambled out even faster than Mikaela, though he didn't manage to beat Sam.
Miles had been too shocked to really feel anything when he watched Bumblebee transform and stand off to face Barricade, something Sam was incredibly grateful for as he dragged his friend and girlfriend into the abandoned warehouse that Bumblebee had taken them too. Big enough to hide in, and unfortunately big enough to get lost in.
Bumblebee ran into the room that Sam and Mikaela were in, the two teens sagging in relief when the Autobot peered behind the overturned table they were hiding behind. An abandoned warehouse might have seemed like a great place to hide, but when humans left someplace they tended to take a lot of what they had in it with them. This meant a lot of big empty rooms, or rooms with even worse hiding spaces than an overturned table.
"Bee, are you okay?" Sam cried when he saw the state of him.
It was no wonder that Bumblebee hadn't been in alt mode so he could get to them faster. One of his doorwings had been ripped completely off, and one servo looked like it had been flattened somehow. There were also several trails of energon going down his frame, either caused by scratches from Barricade’s claws or actual torn wires from where the ‘con had managed to get under his plating.
Bumblebee nodded, optics dulling to the dark blue that indicated he was scanning the humans. "Barricade has taken up non-traditional Cybertronian fighting and took me by surprise."
"Non-traditional Cybertronian fighting?" Mikaela walked out from behind the table, feeling much safer with Bumblebee standing in front of her.
"Remember the old fashioned karate moviethon Sam wished to take you to? It appears Barricade enjoys those movies just as much." Bumblebee said dryly, glancing around before realizing there was an organic missing. "Where is Miles?"
Sam made a face, “We got separated. One minute he was behind us and the next he wasn't."
“One minute he was behind us?” Mikaela gave an ugly snort, turning to glare at him. “If you had let me hold his hand he would be with us! Really, we were on the run, and you got jealous of me holding his hand! Over holding Miles' hand!"
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Sam flushed an angry red, “Don't you think I regret that now? My best friend is missing when there’s a Decepticon on the loose!"
"Way to state the obvious!” Mikaela snapped. Sam visibly deflated a bit and it almost made her feel bad for being so angry at him. She understood he was a bit insecure, but there was a time and place for it, and they would be having a very long talk about it. She took a deep breath, "Okay, so we know that Barricade's pulling out moves Bee doesn't know how to counter. What do we do?"
"We find Miles first. I can easily distract Barricade while you two—" Bumblebee cut himself off as he listened. "What is that noise? Is it… laughing?"
Mikaela looked just as oblivious as Bumblebee felt, but Sam let out a loud groan.
"Hey, you remember mentioning how Prowl had that glitch thing when something is too illogical?” Sam looked up at Bee, “Does Barricade have one too?"
Bumblebee gave him a confused look, "As far as I am aware, Barricade has no such glitch."
"Then we better go find where that sound is coming from," Sam sighed. “We’ll most likely find Barricade there.”
Barricade was pissed. While Frenzy had been annoying and his virus addled processor had made him hard to understand, he had still cared for the tiny mech. Frenzy had been all he had and the pathetic organics had gone and killed him.
The damned Autobots had let Frenzy be killed by organics. Megatron had also been killed by an organic, by LadiesMan217 specifically, but that had only been with Optimus Prime helping him. And Megatron had never been a friend to him, not like Frenzy had been.
Frenzy had been his one and only friend… and now he was gone. Only a few Cybertonians knew that, like Bumblebee, he had been just a youngling when the war began. Unlike Bumblebee, he had been forced to fight even as a youngling, and had never received any praise or rewards for what he did. His work had earned him his next share of energon and repairs in the Medbay and that had been it. It had been the only life Barricade had known—one where there was no love or anyone to care for him.
Frenzy, as one of Soundwave’s cassetticons, had received plenty of love and preferential treatment from not only Soundwave but several others. Despite how messed up Frenzy had been he had made sure to force what affection he could on Barricade. He had been the only one who had ever actually cared about Barricade.
And now he was dead.
Barricade had managed to stumble across the Autobot Scout, and before he could even really put any thought into it he had just charged at him. He had crashed head on into Bumblebee’s side, shaking up the three organics inside of him and sending him spinning. He knew that Bumblebee hadn’t personally killed Frenzy, and given the mech’s soft spark he probably would have even spared him, but he had just gotten so angry so quickly. Someone had to pay for Frenzy's death.
He wasn’t exactly proud of the moves he had used on Bumblebee. Barricade only had two reasons for doing what he had done: the biggest one was because Frenzy had adored those weird organic movies and made Barricade suffer through all kinds of them, and the second was because he needed anything he could possibly use to make it a fair match. He’d been low on energon since the fight in Mission City and hadn’t been able to properly repair himself, so he went into the fight at a disadvantage.
So he had started to use the organic fighting style in an attempt to win the upper hand through the element of surprise. Given his unorthodox fighting, Barricade wasn’t surprised at all when Bumblebee saw an opportunity to escape and took it, fleeing into the abandoned structure he had hidden the organics inside. Watching Bumblebee run away had just made him angrier, and he had followed after him with the intent of finding either the mech or one of the organics he was trying so hard to protect and offlinging them permanently.
He hadn’t come out unscathed in their tussle, and after some damage to the paneling on one of his legs he was walking slowly and unable to transform. With a missing doorwing and a flattened servo, Bumblebee would also be stuck in his bipedal form, which meant he wouldn’t be able to use his speed to grab the organics and get out. The abandoned warehouse was a large one with only one exit, and Barricade was sure he'd find an organic or Bumblebee himself before they got out, so his slow pace didn't bother him.
He'd barely walked inside before he'd run across one of the organics. This one was neither LadiesMan217, birth designation of Samuel, nor his little femme, birth designation of Mikaela. He did recognize the organic from Frenzy's extensive research on LadiesMan217, a male his age with the birth designation of some form of human distance measurement. Miles, he recalled.
The human hadn’t noticed him, so Barricade let out a loud growl. Miles turned to him with wide, terrified eyes, and he slapped both his hands over his mouth. Barricade could only assume it was to keep himself from making any noise so as not to appear weak, but he wasn’t impressed by the organics’ attempt at bravery. The anger inside of him was demanding to be let free, and if it could only be taken out on a tiny insignificant organic then so be it. He allowed his arm to transform into a plasma cannon, pointing it right at Miles.
"Pfft!" Barricade stilled at the sound that Miles made, cannon still warming up. "Pfffffft! Hahahaha!"
Barricade shuttered his optics in disbelief at the organic in front of him. The organic was laughing. Laughing in the face of what could only surely be his death. How did the little fleshy have the gall? Barricade took a closer look at the organic, becoming even more confused. The organic looked pale, hands clenched over his mouth as hard as he could get them, but it couldn't stop the sound that leaked out. He even appeared to be shaking.
"Why are you laughing?" Barricade demanded, "What is so funny?"
"I- ahahahaha!" Miles seemed to give up on that direction of talking when Barricade took a step forward and shoved the cannon towards his face. It only made him laugh harder, "N-nervous laugh! I have a nervous laugh!"
A nervous laugh? Barricade had never heard of such a stupid thing in his life, and compared to the little mud ball planet he was on that was a very long life. The organic had to be lying, trying to trick him somehow. He shoved his cannon up against the organic's chest, Miles stumbling back and falling on his ass with a shriek.
The shriek started out normal, full of fear like Barricade was expecting, but towards the end it tapered off into loud laughter, echoing throughout the entire warehouse as the organic before him turned red in the face. Barricade snorted, his anger starting to dissolve. Every other sign of his body screamed that he was absolutely petrified, and yet Miles sat there laughing in the face of his death because of some sort of nervous tic. This organic was hilarious.
As much as he hated it, Bumblebee made them all wait before they went to rescue Miles. He had to stem the major energon leak or he’d be no good to Sam and Mikaela at all, and it was obvious that Barricade already had his servos on Miles. Since they could still hear him it was obvious that Barricade hadn’t decided to kill him for whatever reason, but that meant that Bumblebee was either looking at another fight or some kind of wicked plan meant to mess with him and Sam. He prayed to Primus that Barricade wouldn’t just kill him as soon as they walked into the room.
Ten minutes was all Bumblebee could spare to patch himself up, and then he couldn’t get Sam or Mikaela to stay put. They at least agreed to let him take the lead, hiding behind his peds as he trudged down one of the hallways towards Miles’ laughter. Sam was grumbling to himself, clearly irritated, and it was Mikaela who seemed to be the one actually worried about Miles despite the fact that she and the other boy had never gotten along well.
He put down his battle mask to protect his optics and readied his only working cannon before rounding the door of the room Barricade and Miles were in. And then he froze in place, trying to process just what it was he was seeing. Mikaela froze beside his right ped, but Sam walked a little further in, arms crossed over his chest.
It hadn’t taken long for Barricade to realize that Miles hadn’t been lying when he said he had a nervous laugh. As amusing as he found it, he had still been ready to kill the organic, perhaps even draw it out a little just to see how he laughed when he died, but then Miles had started to snort. Or at least that was the term Barricade thought the humans used for it, though it sounded extremely similar to the geese he had heard the one time he had taken Frenzy to the lake, back before they were ordered to find LadiesMan217. The things had taken offense to something Frenzy had done and a group of eight or so had attacked him.
There was a saying somewhere that laughter like that was addictive, and Barricade was finding out just how true that was.
So Barricade had sat himself down on the concrete and picked Miles up by his foot, letting the teen dangle there for a while as he laughed hysterically while he swung back and forth. At one point, Miles had gotten so red in the face that Barricade had been certain something bad was going to happen to him, but a quick internet search had explained that it was gravity making the blood rush to his head.
After a few minutes of that treatment, Miles was barely able to breathe. He couldn’t stop laughing to get a good breath in, and it got even worse when he started to hiccup because of it.
Realizing his fun would be over if Miles passed out, Barricade had laid the organic down on his leg and used two claws to pin him in place by his shirt. Surprisingly enough this made him laugh harder, because it was somehow worse when Miles no longer thought he was going to be killed and that the giant robot thing was actually trying to be nice or just doing something cruel that he hadn’t quite worked out yet. The geese noise even started back up.
And that was when Bumblebee walked in with his two little organics in tow. Sam had already explained about Miles’ nervous laugh while Bumblebee had been repairing himself. Miles had suffered from it since they were young, and Sam himself had suffered because of it. Sam had once accidentally slammed his hand in his father’s car door back when his father had owned a car that automatically locked; Miles had immediately started to laugh when Sam had started to cry, so when he first went in and told Ron that Sam’s hand was stuck in the car door Ron hadn’t believed him. Miles had gone back out to Sam, laughing even harder because he hadn’t been believed. It took Miles three tries before Ron decided to actually go check, and by that point it was hard to tell who had been crying harder.
Over the years both boys would come to hate Miles' nervous reaction, Sam even more than Miles.
Bumblebee had been thankful that Sam had explained, but it had been pretty self evident when all they could hear while he repaired himself was Miles’ raucous laughter. It hadn’t prepared him to walk in and see Barricade with Miles on his leg, Miles’ face red and laughing so hard he was in tears, and Barricade’s frame shaking nearly as hard as Miles was. For whatever reason, Barricade was getting a huge kick out of Miles’ terror.
It took him a second to recover, but when he did he took a step forward so that Sam would be behind his peds just like Mikaela before he risked bringing Barricade’s attention to himself.
“Let him go, Barricade.” Bumblebee ordered, plasma cannon raised in obvious threat.
Barricade didn’t even bother to look at him, “You already have two pet organics, Autobot. This one is mine.”
Even Miles was shocked into silence by that statement. Bumblebee stared at Barricade in complete disbelief, and Barricade finally looked up just to glare at him, as if daring Bumblebee to argue with him. But of course Bumblebee would.
“You–you can’t just claim a human, Barricade!” Bumblebee took a chance by inching slowly closer, “Even if Miles did decide he’d allow you around him, there’s no way we’d trust you with him!”
“Back off, Autobot! I won’t hesitate to kill your two organic pets!” Barricade warned.
He said this while picking Miles up by the two claws he had just been using to pin him down, placing him in his servo and then holding that servo against his chassis. Another hysterical bubble of laughter left the organic in his grasp, distracting him from the Autobot for a moment.
Sam moved out from behind Bumblebee’s ped for a second time, “Then I think we know what needs to happen here. Barricade needs to join the Autobots.”
“What?” Barricade snarled.
“Sam!” Mikaela groaned.
“What?” Bumblebee gaped at him.
Miles was the only silent one, if one didn’t count his desperate wheezes as he tried to catch his breath.
“This is the safest option for everyone,” Sam adopted his ‘I am explaining something to a child’ tone. “For you and Barricade, and for Miles! We have nothing to lose here except Miles, Bee, and I’m not willing to lose him. On the other hand, Barricade has a lot to gain by joining the Autobots. Energon, repairs, a place to sleep around other mechs, and in turn we could maybe get some Decepticon intel. Imagine the morale when we start reuniting the factions, because as Optimus has pointed out, the war is over.”
There was silence for a moment as everyone but Miles looked at Sam as if he had grown a second head.
“An organic that makes sense,” Barricade said in amazement, before looking at Bumblebee. “And why didn’t you think of that? I would be willing to listen to logic.”
“Oh, shut up!” Bumblebee grumbled. “You only want one for his laugh!”
"Hey, Sam?"
"Yeah, 'Kaela?"
Two hours later, they were at the Autobot base. Mikaela and Sam had decided to go to the mess hall so they could grab some dinner, and so they could escape the chaos as the Autobots went insane over bringing a Decepticon into their midst.
"Do you think this means that all Decepticons really like laughter?" Mikaela mused.
"I dunno."
"If so, could you have imagined Mission City if we had Miles with us?"
"God, Megatron would be giving up just so he could keep Miles as a pet."
Mikaela snickered, and the two sat in companionable silence for a minute, Sam's fingers intertwining with hers. Miles' laughter drifted in through one of the open windows.
Mikaela gave him an amused look, "What do you wanna bet he just met Ironhide and his cannons?"
"Either that or Barricade met Ironhide and his cannons and Miles is still being held captive by him." Sam sighed, "He is literally the only person who could turn a Decepticon good through laughter."
"You gotta admit, his laugh is kind of contagious."
