Benjamin Bane

Benjamin Broderick Bane (a.k.a. Bumblebee)

Benjamin Bane would be hard-pressed to come up with a single good memory concerning his biological family during his childhood, and not for the lack of trying. Born to an upper middle-class family in New York comprising a bullish, hot-tempered police sergeant father and a housewife mother, he grew up in the shadow of the son his father, who came from a family of law enforcers, wanted him to be in order to carry on the family legacy.
That he was a gentle, bubbly, sensitive child who loved following his mother around in the kitchen and spending his free time drawing did not bode well for the image his father wished to portray, and it didn’t take long for the discipline intended to mold him into a ‘man’ to become horrifically physical when he was barely five.
His mother, already used to his old man’s temper and quick hand, would often step in to take the punishment meant for him whenever he did something undesirable, though she couldn’t save Ben from the man’s wrath completely, and by the time he was nine, he was never seen without a hoodie in school and had perfected every excuse he’d been told to repeat when asked why he could not take it off or why he would come in on some days with a split lip.
He was small for his size, quiet, and took great pains not to be noticed, which had the opposite effect of making him the target of every other larger child looking to blow off steam, and he became good at running.
Really good.
There was no running from home however, home where the walls were insulated so neighbours wouldn’t hear what was happening within, and while some days would be better than others, there wasn’t a moment that he didn’t break into a cold sweat whenever he heard his father’s footsteps approaching his room.
With his mother unable to bear more children due to an illness, his father furiously continued with the campaign (sometimes the carrot was used though mostly it was the stick) to mold him into the son the man wanted, so he could make the cut during the streaming process prior to high school where students would be sorted into their future occupational classes.
What support he might have had from his mother in his young years also evaporated, as she pushed him to be the son his father needed him to be to keep the peace, putting the weight of the household’s sanctity on his slight shoulders.
He was forced into marksmanship lessons (where his first attempt to fire a gun went awry and left him with a deep slide bite wound), multiple self-defence classes to toughen him up (helpful for bullies whenever they didn’t come in packs), and a series of workouts to encourage a growth spurt so he could catch up to other potential cadet candidates.
The little sliver of hope that he would be good enough to make the junior police cadets went up in smoke when he was assigned to the manual class instead, owing to his size and his visceral aversion to handling firearms.
Branded as worthless and only good for paying off the ‘debt’ accumulated from the classes his father had earlier forced him into, Ben entered high school with his self-esteem scrapping at topsoil and digging deeper, and had it not been for a chance encounter with another boy who was evading a group of military-classed students intending to instil a lesson about talking back to those higher in the hierarchy, it might have dug itself into a grave.
The boy, who introduced himself as Guillermo ‘Memo’ Gutierrez after Ben dutifully sent the bullies scattering, was also assigned to the manual class and both of them decided to stick together for safety in numbers.
Ben had ruefully accepted his lot in life after years of being broken and beaten down. Memo, however, had a loving and supportive family; this kept the spark of his defiance to the system alive and he kindled it in Ben’s by giving his friend a safe space to escape to whenever the situation at Ben’s home became too intense.
Among Memo and Memo’s family was the first time where Ben opened up about his interests, could speak freely and found acceptance for what he liked and who he was.
The desire to reclaim the things he loved pushed him to seek out part-time work, which he eventually found after befriending a girl, Charlie Watson, who had helped put an end to the harassment he and Memo endured at school by playing the hierarchy to their favour and wielding her Navy ‘prime-pick’ status.
That she actually wanted nothing to do with the class she was pushed into (Navy) and wished to pursue a career in automotives despite parental objections was something that she and Ben bonded over, and she brought him to the scrapyard her uncle ran where he found work sorting out car parts and helping perform repairs.
He began to pursue art and dance in secret with part of his pay (keeping his sketchbooks and supplies at Memo’s place and taking dance lessons under the guise of after-class study sessions), while saving up the rest and planning for the day he would eventually break free of his father, ‘debt’ or no ‘debt’.
During this time, he subtly packed away important items and was careful not to anger his old man more than his mere presence already did on a good day——something which would become increasingly hard when the Clampdown began.
He would hear his father rant over the dinner table about how ungrateful the protesters who were made up mostly of the Manual Class were, how they weren’t worth the safety net they were demanding for the job they were doing, how they needed to know their place.
He would hear, as time went by, about how his father would beat the ones who were arrested, and more than once, how he would be killed if he, as the man’s son, ever did something as stupid and insolent as that.
He bit his tongue through all this and reluctantly refused Memo’s offer to join a peaceful protest for better wages and workplace compensation.
The protest turned violent after police assaulted those taking part however, and as he watched the news hoping to see if Memo was alright, he saw his friend among those who were tossed into the dreaded black vans to be brought over to stations for interrogation.
His father, fielding a call from a colleague about the batch of protesters being brought in, told them to separate the adults from the teenagers, who would be easier to break, and it was at this point Ben’s spark turned into a bonfire.
As his father got dressed for work, he crept into the man’s study and managed to figure out the combination to the safe where the man’s gun was kept, retrieving it and aiming it at the police sergeant who came in and demanded for him to stand down.
Ben, in turn, demanded for his father to call the station and have Memo released, and when his father laughed at his audacity, mocked the way his hands shook while he was holding the gun and threatened to beat him senseless once this was all over, he shot the man close enough to the head to clip an ear to prove a point, before repeating his demand again.
This time, his father complied and called the station to order for Memo’s release; Ben’s relief however was all the momentary lapse of guard that his father needed to rush in and attempt to wrest the gun back, and in the struggle, he accidentally shot his father in the knee.
Under the hail of threats on how he was going to die once his father got hands on him, Ben flung the gun where the man could not reach, grabbed one of the bags he had secretly packed and ran out of the house to the screams of his mother.
He called Charlie and explained the situation to her, as both of them made their way to the station where his father worked to pick up Memo, who was confused about the state of affairs.
At 18 years, Ben was now a fugitive who could no longer go home; Memo brought him to the manual class district where Ben could hide among allies, and it was here that he spent a few months in hiding, disguised as a manual worker.
However, still fully terrified at the thought of his father eventually hunting him down within the confines of the city, he made plans to leave and head to the West Coast, far away from any chance that he would meet his old man by accident on the streets.
To his surprise, Charlie and Memo elected to join him in the move, and the three of them left together on a Greyhound bus; Him to escape his father, Charlie to escape her future with a military complex which her father died for and Memo to protect his family after he was named a person of interest in the protest.
However, they were forced to stop in Texas when police were inspecting passing buses for runaway Cold Constructs. Here, they met Ian Hart (Ironhide), a rancher secretly helping Cold Constructs escape ownership by crossing over into Mexico to start new lives.
Ian, seeing how they ran from the bus, assumed they were young Cold Constructs and immediately took them in and offered them shelter; when they explained their situation, he kept his offer, letting them stay until they had their plans sorted out and paying them for work done on his ranch in the meantime.
All three of them grew fond of him and spent a month working on his ranch, helping out equally between his longhorn cattle and the Cold Constructs who would come in scared, starving, and seeking refuge from bounty hunters looking to bring them back to the establishments they were assigned to.
Someone however, had gotten wind of Ian’s clandestine operation, and the man was arrested during a midnight raid, though not before he flung Ben, Charlie and Memo into a secret basement with three Cold Constructs who he told them to help cross the border the next day.
They did as they were told, but decided to return to the ranch to figure out how to help Ian, and when they came back there, it was to come face to face with two strangers who were also seeking Ian after seeing him on the news.
These strangers introduced themselves as Omar Parvez (Optimus Prime), Jace Zayden (Jazz) and Preston Wan (Prowl), members of a rebellion that had sprung up in the UK, and upon hearing that they had been with Ian for the past month, requested for their help in tracking the man down to save him from a terrible fate at the hands of government interrogators.
Realising that they were now caught up in something bigger than they ever imagined, Ben nonetheless accepted the request, unwilling to stand back and do nothing while a good man suffered.
Youth, size and a lifetime of abuse would not be an obstacle to him helping someone else, especially with his best friends by his side.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Fit, with a slender but sinewy dancer's build from his ballet training. Very agile and fast, which makes up for his lack of power.

Social

Hobbies & Pets

Owns a pet rabbit named BigWig, which he is delighted by and overprotective of as his father explicitly banned pets from the household and once took a kitten he rescued and abandoned it at the docks before he had a chance to rehome it as punishment for breaking the rule. In his free time, he enjoys drawing, dancing ballet, Parkour and playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch.

Honorary & Occupational Titles

Autobot Scout

Age

18 (Start of war)

Birthplace

New York, USA

Pronouns

He/Him

Gender

Male

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Wavy and blond, worn short and parted to a side

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Cream, with freckles

Height

5'4