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Third-shift watch duty was remarkably pleasant, though under the circumstances it shouldn’t have been. From the guard tower, the night sky was visible for miles and miles, dotted with little bright stars marred only by the occasional floating cloud. Aside from the occasional chittering from night insects and the hum of the wind along the tower walls, it was peacefully silent, a welcome reprieve from the usual chaos and noise of an active Autobot base.
A comet flashed overhead, leaving a faint shimmering trail against the darkness. Lancer watched it fall, trying to recall the sparklings’ rhyme about wishing on a falling star. How had it started?
“Have you ever thought about Predacons?”
Well, it hit the right rhythm, but that was decidedly not the phrase she’d been looking for. Lancer turned away from the comet to blink in confusion at Greenlight, who was perched on the opposite seat ledge a few yards away. “…Sorry, what?”
“You know, Predacons? The extinct giant fliers that looked kind of like dragons?” While Greenlight’s features were hard to make out in the dark, the amusement in her tone was unmistakable. “I was just thinking about what Cybertron must have been like before the Development Age. You know how they used to say you could wish on a comet, when we were sparklings? That was always mine. I used to wish I’d been there. When there were Predacons everywhere, and Cybertronians were just barely starting to build settlements—you know, the really early stuff, from our paleoarchaeology courses.”
“Courses, plural? I only took one of those. You got lucky.” Lancer smiled and turned her gaze back to the road. “I used to wish for Predacons too, sometimes. I wanted to ride one. Do you still want to live back in the Development Age?”
“Not anymore, actually. If I thought it’d work, I’d wish for a Predacon right now,” Greenlight admitted. “I mean, think about it. They wouldn’t be stuck up here watching through scopes and night-vision scanners—combine your wish and mine, and we’d have a flying dragon with fire breath and natural heat sensors and built-in weapons. Forget guard towers, we could see anything coming and deal with it all at once.”
“Aye, but you couldn’t exactly control it, could you?” Lancer stared down at something that looked like it was moving, angling her scope to get a better look. On inspection, it was a tiny juvenile static shark, probably making its way to the marshes on the other side of Nova Cronum. “Don’t get me wrong, riding a Predacon into battle was my life’s dream when I was little, but that was assuming it was my best friend. Now that I’ve been an actual soldier—it’s not the most practical option, is it?”
“Oh, come on, we’re talking about wishing on a comet. Who cares if it’s practical, it’d be cool.” Greenlight had warmed to her subject and gestured animatedly, green plating flickering in the dark. “I mean, as long as we’re daydreaming, I could always wish I was a Predacon. That solves your problem right there. Best buddy, wings, weapons, night vision, the works—there’s your battle Predacon partner.”
Lancer had to laugh. “You’re saying you’d be okay with me riding you?”
The immediate pause seemed to stretch out for hours before Greenlight started giggling and Lancer could get out the words “That did not come out the way I meant it to! Oh, Primus. I didn’t—I wasn’t—that’s not where I was going with that.”
Greenlight made a valiant attempt to stifle her giggles, but barely even managed to smother them. “Aww, don’t get my hopes up like that, come on.” Even in the dark, Lancer was pretty sure Greenlight had blushed as intensely as she had, despite the laughter.
“Yeah. Yeah, that is not where I meant this conversation to go. What are we doing? Guard duty. Let’s go back to guard duty.”
There were a few moments of silence, in which only the piercing call of a rockhopper in the distance echoed down the road. Greenlight finally broke it, whispering, “I’d be a kick-ass Predacon, though. You gotta admit that.”