>>114435342TFA Detroit is futuristic both because it's the future (22nd century, specifically) and because Sumdac was reverse engineering shit from Megatron.
The Decepticons were exiled from Cybertron after the Great War, living on far off worlds.
Sari learns she's (100%) a Transformer while still a kid. She had been modelocked in human mode for 8 years, and her child size was her normal, default size (see
>>114415177) She never fully transformed into robot mode as a kid, only converting her hands when she got angry.
Sari used her Allspark Key to upgrade herself, aging up her superstructure and mind while simultaneously unlocking her robot mode. Sari was more liberal than other Transformers with partially transforming herself (robot hands in beast mode, beast head in robot mode), but it's not something that's unheard of, especially in Animated (the best examples being Bulkhead's kibble chair, and Bumblebee popping an arm out in car mode.)
