Tales of the Fallen issue 1

After the events of Alliance #4, Bumblebee returns to his role as guardian to Sam Witwicky. In doing so, 'Bee scares Mojo onto the front lawn, much to the displeasure of Ron Witwicky, and a cat up into a tree. After Sam returns Mojo to the back yard, Bumblebee "helps" by shaking the tree until the traumatized cat is free.

After discovering that Bumblebee is there to watch over him, Sam uses the Autobot as his ride for a double date to the movies. Sam and Mikaela are accompanied by Miles Lancaster and Mikaela's friend Lindsey. On the way to the movie, Sam sees Trent's truck and totally freaks out. The movie night goes without a hitch, but it seems Bumblebee decided to overturn Trent's truck, much to the jock's consternation.

Without the guiding influence of the other Autobots, Bumblebee grows more reckless and impulsive, running red lights and even flinging a random punk into the air with his vehicle doors.

Sam discusses his upcoming college plans with Bumblebee, explaining that the yellow guy might not be able to accompany him at school. Sam tries to persuade his parents to let Bumblebee stay in the garage while he's at school, but Ron rather strenuously rejects that notion, stating that 'Bee can only stay for the summer.

Frustrated, Sam decides to walk to Mikaela's to cool off, but twenty minutes in, Sam encounters a rather less friendly Cybertronian presence. Hours later as Bumblebee prepares to shut down for the night, Ron comes into the garage and explains that Sam never made it to Mikaela's.

Bumblebee zooms out of the garage and drives towards Mikaela's house but he hears a report of hacked highway matrix signs on the radio. The signs turn out to be a message in the Cybertronian alphabet: "The AllSpark for the boy."

"The boy" is chained up and hanging from a hook over a junkyard car crusher as he is being interrogated by Barricade. The Decepticon is trying to find the location of Bumblebee or the AllSpark fragment. Sam, having no idea where these items are located, is being a less than stellar interviewee. Barricade makes preparations to drop the fleshling into the crusher, but is interrupted by Bumblebee leaping in. The Autobot's intervention is timely enough that Sam is able to fall onto a pile of tires while Barricade is taunting Bumblebee.

Barricade easily swats Bumblebee aside and begins to re-apprehend Sam using a shuriken-like weapon. Bumblebee manages to pull himself out of the scrap and assaults Barricade once more. The two robots duke it out, with the Decepticon having the upper hand until Sam drives in with a crane. However, Sam is having trouble controlling the vehicle and Barricade snaps the chain-hook off and tosses it aside before charging at the crane's occupant. Bumblebee swings the abandoned chain-hook and knocks Barricade into a pool of gasoline.

Barricade rises from the gasoline pool and stalks towards Bumblebee. Bumblebee sends Sam off to a safer distance and fires his cannon at the gasoline-soaked Decepticon menace, causing a massive explosion. Bumblebee steps out of the explosion to pick up Sam, but makes it clear he doesn't think Barricade is finished. Sure, enough, this is confirmed as we see Barricade driving out of the flames.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Animals
Bumblebee (2)	Barricade (10)	Sam Witwicky (1) Miles Lancaster (5) Trent DeMarco (6) Street Punk (7) Ron Witwicky (8) Judy Witwicky (9)	House cat (3) Mojo (4)

Quotes

Notes

Continuity notes

While not explicitly stated, this follows on from Bumblebee being reassigned to Sam at the end of Alliance #4.
Sam's parents are already aware of Bumblebee, though as in the second film it's not stated when they became aware.
Barricade still refers to Sam as Ladiesman217.

Other trivia

This is now the fourth time that Barricade has turned up in Revenge of the Fallen prequel fiction, despite not being in the actual film and only having a handful of spin-off toys. Neither the book nor the IDW comics take the path of killing him off to explain his ROTF absence either, as he keeps escaping to fight another day; Chris Mowry states he was barred from killing off the guy [1]. Apparently, everyone just loves Barricade!
It's possible that artist Carlos Magno wasn't allowed to draw Sam Witwicky to resemble actor Shia LaBeouf. It's rather unlikely that the extra body mass was part of this requirement, however.
Bumblebee never puts on his battle mask during the entire fight with Barricade.
Since Mikaela was angry at Miles in the days after the date, he must've not abided by the rules set for the date.
A rather weird coloring choice results in Barricade looking vaguely like his "Recon Barricade" repaint from the first movie toyline.

Covers (4)

Cover A: Bumblebee and Sam by Alex Milne
Cover B: Bumblebee protecting Sam by Carlos Magno and colors by Josh Perez
Cover RI: Virgin cover of cover A
Cover RE: Fan Expo Canada exclusive, press photo of Mikaela Banes next to one of the stone buildings. This edition came in a special polybag with a Fanexpo logo and was limited to 1000 copies. They did not sell out by the end of the convention.