I'm not sure which beach location they're actually at. It was originally going to be a Californian beach, but I don't think horseshoe crabs live in Cali. Maybe they're at the Gulf of Mexico? Anyway, I wrote this to celebrate the last month of summer. This summer was too short. I'm not ready to go back to school next month!

It's also noteworthy that this takes place sometime in my Solace universe (hence why Barricade's with them).

Also, I wrote this and watched Appleseed Ex Machina at the same time. My advice: Don't write and watch movies at the same time...it's distracting-especially when there are characters as surprisingly hot as Briareos.

"Finally, after a long drive, we're finally here!" Jazz said enthusiastically as he slid down the side of a sand dune.

"It wouldn't have taken that long if someone didn't make us turn back every five minutes after we left the base because he forgot something," Prowl said irritably.

"Really? Who was that?" Bumblebee asked.

"You!"

"Oh…" Bumblebee looked away.

"I mean, did you even bother packing before we left?"

"Who packs?!" Jazz called from the bottom.

"Hey Daddy, where are we?" Diesel asked his father as he climbed out of the passenger side of his alt-mode, allowing him to transform.

"This would be what the humans call the beach, Diesel," Ironhide replied, picking him up and carrying him to the water with Sniper tagging along behind them.

"Yay! Beach! Daddy, what's a beach?" Diesel asked again.

"We're at one, Diesel," Sniper answered.

"I can't believe I let you drag me here. Why did you make me come here, anyway?" Prowl grumbled.

"Because I love you," Jazz teased, giving him a hug from behind.

"Take them off before I break them off, Jazz," Prowl threatened. Jazz quickly let go and backed away. "This place is too bright, a seagull is sitting on me, it's hard to move through all this god damn sand, the water is too cold, the sun is too hot, it smells like fish, and I'm hungry. When can we leave?"

"Oh come on, Prowler, quit being so pessimistic and have fun for once!" Jazz retorted.

"I'm allergic to fun. And eww, I just stepped on a dead squid!" Prowl said, lifting his foot off the ground. "I'm gonna go crawl someplace dark and take a nap," he grumbled, storming off. "Don't call me if you need me."

"Killjoy!" Jazz called after him. "Now what?" He noticed Wheeljack sitting next to Ratchet by the tide line and got an idea. "Hey Wheeljack, can I bury you?"

"What? Bury me?" Wheeljack asked.

"Bury him?" Ratchet asked also. "Don't let him…" he whispered to his friend.

"Why do you want to bury me?"

"Just for the hell of it," Jazz shrugged.

Wheeljack thought about this a moment, then shrugged. "Sure. Why the hell not?" Ratchet face-palmed.

"Alright Wheeljack, try to move!" Jazz challenged.

Wheeljack was buried in the wet sand up to his neck. He tried to wiggle, but couldn't move anything other than his head. "I'm stuck pretty tight, Jazz."

Jazz smiled. "Perfect." He started walking away.

"Hey, aren't you gonna dig me out?" Wheeljack called after him. Jazz laughed and continued walking. He waited for a while. "I think a clam just bit me…"

Jazz looked around and saw Prowl snoozing in a shady area. He tapped on Bumblebee's shoulder. "Hey Bumblebee, wanna help me with something?"

Bumblebee looked up from the dead jellyfish he was poking. "It depends…what am I helping you with?"

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were wandering along the beach, seeing what they can find. "Hey Sunstreaker, look! A horseshoe crab washed up on the shore!" Sideswipe pointed out.

"Let's go poke it!" Sunstreaker suggested. They both approached the spider-crab thing and flipped it over. Its legs started kicking. "Oh, look! It's still alive!"

"Wow, I've never seen a living one before," Sideswipe said in wonder.

"Hey Sides, you know what this thing looks like?" Sunstreaker said excitedly.

"What, Sun?"

"It looks like one of those alien monsters from that one alien movie…what was it called again?"

Sideswipe gave him a sideways glance. "Um…Alien?"

"Yeah, Alien! That's it! It looks like one of those things that latches onto your face and lays eggs in your stomach!" he said a bit too enthusiastically.

"Hey, what if this is one of those alien facehugger things? What if she's waiting for us to lower our guard so she can latch onto our faces and lay eggs in our stomachs?" Sideswipe thought out loud. They were both silent for a moment.

Barricade and Optimus were both relaxing on the beach when the twins ran by, screaming.

"Run for your life! They'll rape your face!" Sunstreaker screamed as they streaked past. Barricade glanced at them, then turned to Optimus, with a disturbed and confused look, awaiting an explanation.

"We try not to know, Barricade," Optimus replied calmly without looking up.

Back at the tide line…

Wheeljack was occupying his time by reading a gum wrapper that had blown up and smacked into his face. He heard panting and looked up to see a black labradoodle sniffing one of his head fins. "Oh, hello, woof-woof!" he said to the dog. "What are you doing, then?" The dog moved closer and lifted one of his legs. "Oh, shit! Bad dog! Bad dog!"

"Ironhide, Diesel's eating sand, again," Sniper pointed out, watching his little "brother" eating a handful of sand.

"Diesel, eww! Spit that out!" Ironhide scolded, knocking the sand out of his hand. "Come over here and play in the water!"

"But that water's yucky!" Diesel complained. "Fishies and Loch Ness Monsters live in it!"

"First of all, the Loch Ness Monster lives in Loch Ness, not the ocean," Ironhide corrected.

"Where's Loch Ness?" Diesel asked curiously.

"In Scotland," Ironhide replied.

"Where's Scotland?" he asked again.

"Europe."

"Where's Europe?"

Ironhide shook his head. "Don't you ever stop asking questions?"

Diesel shrugged. "I don't know, do I?"

"Come on, if animals can survive in it, than it's clean to some degree," Ironhide reasoned.

"Ironhide, Jazz hasn't seen his bedroom floor in six weeks, but he can survive in there. Does that make his room clean too?" Sniper asked.

"Stop helping…" Ironhide grumbled. Jazz and Bumblebee were approaching the water from the sand dune they were playing with. "Oh look Diesel, Bumblebee and Jazz are going in the water!" he pointed out.

Jazz left Bumblebee, running at the surf and jumped into the water, creating a gynormous wave. "Wow! The water's kinda warmer than I thought it would be," he said. Bumblebee slowly and cautiously walked out into the water after him. Sniper was sitting by the water's edge when Jazz's wave knocked him over backwards. Jazz splashed Bumblebee, who splashed him back, eventually leading to an aggressive splash fight, which slowly turned into something off of Street Fighter, only in water.

"Come on, don't you wanna go in the water?" Ironhide asked again. Diesel was eating sand again. "Spit that out!"

"Only if Sniper goes, too!" Diesel protested.

Ironhide looked up at Sniper. "Yeah, sure, I guess I'll go in," he shrugged.

"Alright Diesel, come on," Ironhide said, picking his son up and carrying him into the water. Sniper didn't seem to be appreciating the water much.

"Eww, Diesel's right, this water looks kinda icky," Sniper said upon looking down at the water. Ironhide splashed him angrily. "No, really! I feel dirty!"

"I feel wet!" Diesel said.

"I feel a warm spot…" Ironhide added.

"Jazz did it!" Bumblebee quickly said. Jazz looked away.

"I'm out!" Sniper called back to them, running out of the water.

Back at the tide line…

Wheeljack stared into the sun. "Wow…my optics hurt…and I feel dizzy all of a sudden…" He attempted to wiggle again in discomfort. "And there is a crab down there in a place where no crab should ever be!"

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were busy building a sand castle. "Wow, if I were six inches tall, I would so live here," Sunstreaker said.

"Yeah…you could be a princess!" Sideswipe teased.

Sunstreaker glared at him. "That was messed up…"

"What? I always did think you were a chick in a dude's body," Sideswipe retorted.

"I am not!"

"Did you know that back on Cybertron, Smokescreen used to start bets on how long it would take for you to get ready to go someplace?" Sideswipe asked. "Bro, your masculinity definitely comes into question after that…"

"Yeah, well you're just jealous because yellow's a much better color than red," Sunstreaker snapped back.

"What's wrong with the color red?"

"It's stupid, and also it's…stupid…"

"Yeah, see, you can't even come up with a good reason!" Sideswipe growled. "At least I don't look like a god damn banana!"

"I'd rather be a banana than the color of that red stuff that spills out of humans when they break!"

"It's called "blood", stupid!"

"Don't call me stupid!" Sunstreaker snapped, pushing him.

"Don't push me!" Sideswipe retorted, pushing him back. They started pushing each other. "Oh, it's on now, Banana Boy!" Sideswipe jumped on Sunstreaker and started beating the crap out of him. Somehow, Sunstreaker managed to flip his brother off of him and get him into a chokehold.

Bumblebee and Barricade walked by. "Hey, look at that, Bee! They fight like the chimpanzees on Animal Planet!" Barricade pointed out.

"Hey, yeah! Just like chimpanzees!" Bumblebee laughed.

"Oh great, I went from a princess to a banana to a chimpanzee!" Sunstreaker whined.

"Let go!" Sideswipe struggled.

Back at the tide line…

Wheeljack was humming off-tune to show tunes that were stuck in his head since watching "The Sound of Music" last week. He noticed Barricade walking by, drinking a can of energon through a straw, and realized he was thirsty. "Hey Barricade, can I have some of that?" Barricade shrugged and set it about three inches from his face and walked away. Wheeljack struggled to reach the straw. "Hmm…this could be a problem…"

"Daddy, I'm hungry!" Diesel complained.

"Hungry? How can you be hungry? You ate half the beach!" Ironhide asked.

"Maybe he can eat that dead squid that Prowl stepped in earlier?" Jazz suggested. "Hey Bee, go find the dead squid!"

"No thanks. I'm not hungry anymore!" Diesel quickly protested.

"Good boy," Jazz smirked.

Everyone was sitting around a fire that Jazz had built. "Wow…the beach looks cool at night!" Sniper observed.

"Yeah…has anyone seen Prowl? I haven't seen him since we got here…" Optimus asked, leaning against the sand dune Jazz and Bumblebee were playing with earlier. The "sand dune" sat up and glared at him. "Oh…never mind…I think I just found him."

"You buried me under a mountain of sand?!" Prowl screamed at Jazz.

"We had to do something with all that extra sand leftover from when we buried Wheeljack. You were recharging, so you made yourself a pretty easy target," Jazz replied coolly, roasting a marshmallow over the fire.

Prowl shook his head to rattle loose all the excess sand. "Primus…there's gonna be sand in my gears for weeks…"

"You shouldn't eat marshmallows, Jazz. They stick to your insides," Ratchet warned.

Jazz shrugged, catching his marshmallow on fire. "Who says anything about eating them? I like to set them on fire, flick them across the beach, and watch 'em burn…" He flicked the stick he was using, causing the sugary fireball of death to go flying off and land on the sand still covering Prowl's lower half.

"Oh, hell!" Prowl said, quickly standing up.

Jazz laughed at him. "It's a marshmallow Prowl, not a Hedgehog grenade."

"Yeah, but it was on fire!" he protested.

"Hey, can I have a marshmallow?!" Wheeljack called from the tide line. Jazz caught one on fire and flung it over in his direction. It landed on his face and continued to burn. "Thank you…" he mumbled.

"So, are you guys about ready to go home?" Optimus asked.

Diesel had fallen asleep in his father's arms. "Yeah…Diesel needs to get to bed," Ironhide replied.

"I was ready to go home since before we left," Prowl added.

"Alright then, grab your stuff and let's go," Optimus nodded.

Some time later…

Wheeljack woke from recharge in the middle of the night. He looked around and realized he couldn't see anybody. "Hello? Is somebody there?" There was no answer. "Ratchet? Jazz? Anybody?" He struggled to turn his head around to see the rest of the beach. "Can somebody come and dig me out?" He felt something wet pooling around his neck and steadily rising and glanced around him. "Oh, son of a bitch! The tide's coming in!"