Ignorance is Bliss

Chapter 7: Energon

Livia woke up the next morning feel absolutely great and refreshed. Ratchet had finally figured out that she needed energon, but he told her not to tell the other humans.

She agreed, although Livia was slightly confused, now that she thought about it. The thought never struck Livia before, but she never needed energon before she met Olivebranch.

She stole normal, human foods, but the need for those now had completely evaded her. As well as the need for water.

Other than her slight confusion, Livia was in a great mood. Raf and her planned to go racing today with Bumblebee and she could barely contain her excitement.

Of course, Livia was entirely sure what racing was, but she was bound to like it. Raf was probably her favorite of all the kids, despite her initial connection to Miko.

Jack seemed nice, but he hadn't attained her interest quite yet.

Right now, it was just the four of them sitting on the couch as Raf looked over the internet for Autobot sightings. The older three kids watched him happily.

Livia didn't really understand what these images were that Raf was using to replace the bots with, but she found them immensely amusing.

"Look, there's another!" Miko pointed to a picture of Bumblebee's alternative mode where the caption highlighted the fact that he had no driver.

"The camera sure loves Bee." Jack smiled.

"What can you do?" Miko asked. "When you're a superstar, you're paparazzi bait!"

Ratchet looked over at them. "Wait, is that Bumblebee?"

"On a conspiracy website, where users post evidence of close encounters. But we have it under control, Ratchet." Raf assured him, turning his computer so the older Autobot could see. "Just scrub the image and replace it with..."

He trailed off as he put a new image on, of a cat talking.

"Mars cat says: take me to your feeder!" It sang.

Ratchet laughed, but it was cut short immediately when he caught sight of the three surprised faces looking at him. Livia had no idea Ratchet wasn't a laugher, so she was left out of the loop.

"Ratchet actually laughed?" Miko asked in surprise.

An idea suddenly formed in Jack's head and he grinned.

"Hey, Optimus, want to see something funny?" He called out to the Prime.

"No." Optimus replied, continuing his research from afar.

Livia let loose a small laugh. Something about the whole situation just seemed funny to her.

"Don't take it personally." Arcee said as the three bots walked over. "Primes are built that way."

"I've never seen Optimus laugh, cry, or loose his cool. Closest thing we get is him being angry every once in a while and even that is a delayed reaction." Bulkhead told them.

"And while Optimus certainly keeps his emotions in check, I've known him far longer than any of you have." Ratchet said, looking up from his work toward the Prime. "And he was different before he was made a Prime."

"Optimus wasn't always a Prime?" Raf questioned.

"On Cybertron, one isn't born into greatness, one must earn it." Ratchet answered.

"So different, how? We talking party animal?" Miko questioned.

"No." Ratchet said quickly. "He was more like... Jack."