Siren had been in a good mood recently, but it couldn’t last long. Two fires had broken out in one day which interrupted the prep work he had been doing to take his team through routine training sims next week and pondering what to say in their performance reviews, in addition to the workday closing with a staff meeting (none of which had gone well since Megatron had been appointed captain). If just three of the four had occurred, he probably would have gone out to forget about it, but it was a rare instance of him feeling too tired to do so.

After some wandering through the halls and weighing his options, he decided he’d just head home. If it was empty, great, if his roommate was there, he would understand his subpar mood. He arrived at the door. The moment of truth. Company or no company? He wasn’t taking bets. He just opened the door.

Blaster was sitting on his bed, flipping through a box of records as the one currently playing neared the end of its final song. So long as Blaster was home there was never a moment of silence, and though he was known for his audial expertise, he also understood how much other aspects informed the listening experience and so had brought much nicer lighting that the room came with. It was like a warmer, brighter, less pretentious “Visages”. Though Blaster’s eyes were focused on the album art he was browsing, he was clearly putting most of his focus on the conversation he was having.

Nightbeat was there too, sitting on Siren’s bed.

They both looked up at the sound of the door sliding, and they both smiled when they saw who it was.

“Whoa!" Siren exclaimed and walked further in, confused. "Where'd he come from?"

“I can explain.” Blaster said as he switched the music to something upbeat but easily relegated to the background. “Nightbeat here needs me as an informant for this case of his…that’s why I bolted from the meeting the second it ended, I’ve got a packed schedule today. Once I let him in here and he realized it was yours, too, I couldn’t get him to leave.”

“Please.” Nightbeat scoffed. “I explained that I wanted to wait until you showed up, then we took bets on whether you’d be home early or not. He was sure you’d be at that post-staff-meeting party Bluestreak is throwing since you’ve never turned down an invitation to an after-hours party before. I, however, was certain you would, given that there were two fires and a meeting, and that you told me earlier you do, in fact, get tired under the right circumstances. And here you are, so unless you’re just stopping by, I win.”

“Wow!” Siren was awed as usual, both by Nightbeat’s confidence and that he and Blaster had been arguing over who was more attuned to his habits. Adopting a remorseful tone—it’s not that he didn’t want to join Blaster at the party, just that the timing was off—he gave them their answer. “Yeah, Nightbeat’s right.”

“Figures.” Blaster forked over a few shanix tokens. “Anyways, I’ve got to bounce. There’s a party that’s missing its DJ because I had to drop everything and supervise this serial snooper.”

“And here I thought you actually liked me telling you about the unsolved disappearances of those musicians of yours. Tsk tsk.”

Blaster rolled his eyes and got up to leave. Siren handed him the crate of records he could tell had been set aside. “We’re all gonna miss you, but do your thing.”

“Aw! See you later!” Siren said, closing the door behind him. 

Nightbeat studied Siren’s posture. It was the first time he had seen him not firing on all cylinders, so he wasn’t entirely sure what he was thinking. “I hope you don’t mind me being here.”

“Not at all! I like surprises! Especially if it’s a total turbofox in my room!” Siren said, taking a cross-legged seat on Blaster’s bed—furniture was kept to a minimum in their habsuite to make room for Blaster’s music collection that was floor-to-ceiling in most areas. “Did Blaster say I lived here or did you figure it out yourself?”

“The latter, and it wasn’t obvious at first, since most of this stuff is clearly his.”

“Oh, yeah, I don’t mind that he’s taking up the whole place, he’s got a bunch of crazy rare records and he doesn’t trust subspace storage not to lose them! I don’t have anything like that, so whatever!”

“You’re not one for possessions, are you? You must’ve served abroad a lot and learned to travel light—which explains why I didn’t meet you until now. Face-to-face, I mean. We've probably been in the same place at the same time a few times before, and I traveled here and there, but I was needed a lot on Cybertron.”

“Right again!” Siren said. One place could only hold his attention for so long, even if it was an entire planet, routinely switching up his surroundings was a must.

“Your giveaway was that Rodimus star—‘Best Under Pressure’.” Nightbeat pointed to the small pile of possessions on the nightstand between the beds where Siren had left it. “I thought that might have been First Aid's, but if Blaster lives with someone that fits that description, it has to be you.”

Siren looked at the object in question. He must have started staring because Nightbeat changed the subject.

“You look tired.”

“Yeah…But you still wanna hang out? Even if it’s boring?”

“No, Siren.” Nightbeat gave a soft chuckle. “I already waited it out just to see you. Blaster did not appreciate my stubbornness, no matter how many times I told him you wouldn’t mind me being here. He was dead-set on making sure I didn’t dig through your stuff. Or his.”

“We can look through my stuff if you want!”

“It’s your room. Your call.”

Siren stared at the floor for a while. He didn’t have many things, but he did wonder what Nightbeat might think of them. Then he thought of all the reaching up high and down low, unpacking and repacking, and keeping subspace in order was no small task… maybe some other time. “Can we just talk?”

“You really like talking, don't you? Sure. About what?”

“I don’t know! Anything!”

“Anything? Well, I looked into the whole outdated fire system thing and I have an answer.”

“Oh yeah?” Even if it was bad news, which it seemed to be based on Nightbeat’s tone, things of that nature seemed easier to handle coming from him as opposed to anyone else.

“You remember how Overlord was snuck on board in that detachable basement?”

Siren nodded. How could anyone forget?

“Well, as it turns out, Drift’s pockets are deep, but not endless. The fire system is outdated, sure, but the sprinklers were already automatic, at least, and everything else worked even if it’s not optimal. But there was no way to bring Overlord without attaching a cell to hold him, so that’s where the money went.”

“But…” Siren said, counting on his fingers. “Paying me to sit there for the better part of a day every day adds up!”

“True, but that comes from the wage budget, not maintenance. Cybertron’s government partially funds your salary since this quest is in Cybertron’s interest, but the ship itself is private property. It’s stupid, I know, but that’s how it is. It’s ridiculous that I’m the one telling you where your money comes from, too, but if they were transparent about it, people would have wondered what the basement-sized hole in the budget was.

“Anyways, this ship is an antique. You can’t get parts for it anymore. The basement and its systems were completely different—outfitted with what's readily available. For the rest of the ship, new systems would have to be modified to fit into what’s already there or completely invented. And considering that no one is spacefaring in anything of this era anymore besides us, even finding someone who could do that is a tall order.

“Maybe it’ll cost more to have you do it in the long run—depending on how long this quest takes, of course—but unlike getting it upgraded, it’s not all Drift’s money…and considering the time it would take to get something like that done, between finding the right person and assessing what changes need to be made and hiring a crew to do it and testing that it was done correctly, it makes sense. It wasn’t just a financial decision, all you first-launchers were itching to get the hell off Cybertron as soon as possible.”

“Wow,” Siren said, turning over the revelation in his mind. Nightbeat had clearly done more research than just asking Rodimus. “That…makes sense! It sucks, but it makes sense! Why was Overlord so important, again?”

“Drift was supposedly planning to reverse engineer an army of phase sixers from him. Personally, I don’t buy that. I don’t see how anyone could. I don’t think Drift is the one who’s really responsible. It’s too easy to pin the blame on an ex-Decepticon. This whole thing reeks of Prowl.”

Siren scratched his helmet. He didn’t see how that made sense, but he knew it probably did. It seemed no one alive had been spared from Prowl making their lives more miserable than they had to be.

“…Sorry. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to tell you all that.”

“No, I’m glad you told me!”

“Yeah, but…it feels like I just gave you a problem with no solution.”

“Eh.” Siren shrugged. “It’s not like you caused it or anything.”

“I suppose I was just hoping I could help you somehow.”

“You did, you did! It’s good to know!”

Nightbeat looked doubtful. More than that, he looked like he had realized something larger than what he was saying. But, since he wasn’t mentioning it, it was probably about something else.

“…Maybe I’ll rack up enough savings to get it fixed myself someday! And if not, the Lost Light’s not forever, right?”

“No, probably not.” Nightbeat agreed. “Which is good, since you hate it here.”

The record Blaster had left them with came to its end. The room was silent for a beat. Siren had been listening so intently to Nightbeat he had forgotten it had even been playing. Without it, he felt suddenly lost. “No, I wouldn’t s—”

“You don’t want to say it because you feel like you’re overreacting, but you’re right, it is unfair. Even though you volunteered to do this, you feel trapped. I can empathize.”

“You can?”

“Sure. I’ve been on mind-numbing, months-long stakeouts. They’re horrible. Imprisoned, too. More recently I was left in a universe almost entirely devoid of life for years. It was pretty demoralizing. You’re right that your situation isn't anywhere near as bad as that, but there are similarities.”

“Wait—prison? Decepticon or Autobot?”

“Both. Not at the same time, though. Obviously.”

“What’d you do?”

“Detective stuff. Have you ever been?”

“Not full-on prison, no…”

"Good. I don’t recommend it."

“See? I’m complaining about nothing compared to that!”

“No, that’s what I'm saying, Siren—I’ve been subjected to that, and I can see where you’re coming from. You don’t need to be there, it was just more convenient for others that way. You’re right to be angry. You’re also right to feel powerless, unfortunately. There’s nothing that can be done all the way out here. Just hold tight and hope we find Cyberutopia soon, I guess. But with Rodimus helming this, we’ll get there.”

“Uh… ” Siren could already feel himself asking a question he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to. “Do you think…that…Rodimus knew about Overlord?”

“I think he had to have known.”

Siren winced. There had been casualties thanks to Overlord, and that was far from an unpredictable outcome. Pipes had died. Pipes was killed. Rewind, too. Thank Primus it wasn’t more, but two was too many. How could anyone allow themselves to be complicit in something so dangerous, much less the captain? He knew it could feel hard to say no to Prowl. He also knew it wasn’t impossible, especially for someone of Rodimus’ standing. He couldn’t imagine that he would just go along with it if he were in the same position. No, he would have given Prowl a piece of his mind. If there was one thing Siren was good at, it was yelling some sense into people.

“That paints Rodimus in a bad light. He has no clue what he’s doing. He’s never been given full control of something of this magnitude—not that he has full control anymore, but in the beginning. And they don’t make manuals on how to lead a crew of lost souls to the promised land.”

There was truth to that. Siren was inexperienced, too, but his job did come with a manual, and if he had any questions, he just asked Inferno, who had been fire chief elsewhere. Rodimus had no such guidance because no one had ever done what he was doing.

“I want you to know he does feel guilty about being unfit for leadership. It eats away at him. It must be frustrating that that’s something he only shows his friends, but it is pretty embarrassing.”

Siren took a second to clear his head and rethink things. Rodimus hadn’t committed any Megatron-level atrocities, at least, and Nightbeat clearly did think he was in the wrong here if he had been involved but also understood why he would have agreed to it. He seemed to understand perfectly where everyone in this situation was coming from, actually, and he wasn’t necessarily condoning any of it. It was strangely objective for what was a very emotionally involved thing for Siren.

But that’s what he liked about Nightbeat—he saw things as they were. Siren had been pretty sure his feelings didn’t exactly line up with reality, and Nightbeat gave him a very sobering confirmation of that while still allowing him to feel how he did because while it may have been a disproportionate reaction, it wasn’t a baseless one. He was doing that for everyone else, too. It was only fair.

He even seemed to do it for himself, considering how detached he sounded from the Dead Universe incident he had mentioned earlier, which Siren still found impressive in a way. He wondered, if Nightbeat had died, been reanimated in a world where life and death worked differently, and come back, was he still dead? Alive? Somewhere in between? Could he be sparkless? Or brainless? He did get shot in the head, after all…or maybe the word that had gotten around about him was untrue in some aspects. Whatever it was, Siren had a feeling the answer involved a lot of technical terminologies that he didn’t have the capacity to comprehend at the moment, so he didn’t bring it up.

“You don’t look like you want to talk,” Nightbeat said.

“I—Yeah, I must be more tired than I thought!” Siren shook his head. “Can I have my bed?”

Nightbeat got up to dim the lights and sat on the floor between the beds, his head level with Siren’s, who had laid down. He settled in, anticipating that Siren wanted as much company as possible. Sleeping in the presence of others was no new thing to Siren who had been shoved in barracks with everyone else or with roommates he opted to have, but he hadn't ever felt this level of comfort so soon.

Nightbeat picked a lighter topic of conversation—well, it was still all about death, murder, and injustice, but legends about the mysterious ends of those who contributed to Blaster's record collection weren't so close to home. He spoke much quieter than before since the room was so much less lively than when Siren had arrived.

Siren followed along without a word, nodding, shaking, or cocking his head, for as long as he could, but eventually, he gave in. The medical display above his head flashed on the second he entered recharge. The last thing he remembered was Nightbeat giving him as much of an embrace as he could manage and himself barely reciprocating followed by the sound of the door opening and closing. ✧