Setting:Bee's fractured memory – Somewhere deep in his neural coreTime: Before the fall of Cybertron
It was not Night City. It was not Earth.It was Cybertron before the collapse. Before the war turned every steel tower into a grave marker.
Bee stood atop a silver citadel, overlooking endless spires glowing with energon veins. Iacon, the jewel of Cybertronian civilization, still thrumming with life.
He wasn't alone.
A voice firm, commanding, but kind echoed behind him.
"You're not ready for this, Bumblebee."
Bee turned.
A towering figure, red and blue, stood in the light of Cybertron's twin moons. Optimus Prime.
Bee stepped forward his smaller frame brimming with anxious energy.
"Then when, Prime? When the Decepticons reach the core? When we lose everything because I wasn't enough?"
Prime's optics dimmed with sorrow.
"It's not about being enough. It's about knowing what you stand for when the war takes everything."
A distant boom. The sky shimmered red Decepticon artillery cracking the dome over Iacon.
Another figure burst in sleek, sharp, a blur of speed and fury. Arcee.
"We've got seconds. Soundwave's jamming our signals. Bee go now. They need you on the Eastern wall."
Bee's voice fierce, confident rose with the storm.
"I won't let them take our home."
He raced out of the citadel, transformed mid-leap, wheels roaring as he darted across shattering roads and burning steel fields. His alt-mode then sleek, alien, faster than anything on Earth.
He reached the wall.
Decepticons Seekers, Drones, and something worse were breaching the front. A towering form loomed behind them, his fusion cannon glowing.
Megatron.
Bee skidded into a slide, popped up, and activated a weapon he didn't even know he still had
His hidden arm blade. Sleek. Cybertron-forged. Sharp enough to cut through tank plating.
He leapt onto a drone, carved through it in one motion, and launched himself into the fray. He wasn't the strongest but he was faster, smarter, and burning with purpose.
Until
A flash of white light.
A detonation.
Then silence.
Fragment – Unknown Location, Cybertron
Bee floated in a pod. Faint blue glow. Systems barely alive.
Voices filtered in warped, alien, echoing in binary tones.
"The spark survived… just barely.""Preserve him. Encode the memories. Lock the core.""One day, he'll remember. When the stars align."
The pod launched into the void. Away from Cybertron. Away from the war.
Now – Night City, 2075
Bee jolted upright in the warehouse, shaking off the memory.
Lucy rushed to his side. "Another vision?"
He looked at her. Eyes brighter than before. The blade hummed at his arm's edge, now stable, active, controlled.
"Yes," Bee whispered. "I was a soldier. A messenger. A guardian."
He looked to the skyline.
"I failed once. I won't again."