Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Swerve leaned over the bar, one elbow propped against the counter while the other hand balanced a battered datapad that had seen far too many drinks spilled across it. A stylus hung from his denta like a half-smoked cigar, bouncing slightly as he muttered around it with exaggerated gravitas. His optics were narrowed—not in focus, but with the particular gleam of a mech who had far more important things to do and had willfully chosen chaos instead.

“I’m just saying,” he said, pulling the stylus free to scribble something with a dramatic tsk, “we either start a betting pool or stage an intervention. Possibly both. Maybe a fundraiser.”

Across the lounge, voices were rising again—sharp, familiar, and all-too-predictable. Rodimus was in rare Form. Arms flailing, vents flaring, his entire frame vibrating with barely-contained fury. Roller, by contrast, stood like a monolith: arms crossed, expression cold enough to frost a lens. He didn’t need to shout—his tone was low, level, and infinitely more dangerous. The kind of calm that came with knowing exactly where to hit for maximum psychological damage.

They were arguing again. Loudly. Passionately. About who had technically saved whose aft on the last mission. It had devolved into semantic warfare, overflowing with personal jabs, stubborn pride, and increasingly dramatic storytelling. Rodimus gestured like he was performing for a jury; Roller stood unmoved, looking like he’d rather be fighting a thunderstorm than dealing with this.

“And that,” Swerve said, circling something on the pad with flourish, “is sexual tension if I’ve ever seen it.”

“You say that about everyone,” Bluestreak mumbled from a few stools down, nursing his drink without looking up.

Swerve pointed the stylus at him like a blade. “And I’ve been right thirteen times.”

Just then, Rodimus jabbed a finger into Roller’s chest. Roller didn’t flinch. He stepped forward. Now their faces were inches apart, well inside any socially acceptable distance. Optics locked. Vents flaring. The tension was tangible—so thick you could pack it in cubes and ship it to Velocitron.

Swerve grinned like a mech watching a slow-burning fuse. “Oh, this is better than cable.”

He ducked behind the bar and emerged seconds later with two cleaning gloves stretched over his servos. One had Rodimus’s flame decals drawn on in red marker; the other bore a rough frown and a black line down the middle of its face to mimic Roller’s helm. He crouched low, arms raised, and began an impromptu puppet show behind the counter.

“‘I didn’t need saving,’” he growled in a gruff, fake-Roller voice, stiffly waggling the puppet like it was carved from concrete. From across the room, the real Roller’s voice echoed—cold, sharp, and almost perfectly timed: “I didn’t need saving.”

Swerve didn’t miss a beat. He popped the Rodimus glove up, flailing dramatically. “‘Oh yeah? Then next time I’ll just let you bleed out on the crater floor!’” Rodimus, in perfect sync and high-volume passion, yelled: “Oh yeah? Then next time I’ll just let you bleed out on the crater floor!”

Swerve gasped like a theater mech watching the climax of a tragedy. He brought the puppets nose-to-nose. “Gasp! The drama!” he whispered reverently. 

Bluestreak leaned over just enough to see. “You need help.”

“I am helping,” Swerve replied, deadly serious. “This is a public service.”

Behind them, Rodimus and Roller had launched into another heated round—oblivious to their rubber-glove doppelgängers playing out their every word. Whirl, dangling upside down from the ceiling like an oversized insect, twisted his head to peer at Swerve’s datapad.

“Put me down for fifty shanix,” he said. “I give ‘em two more arguments before one of them snaps and kisses the other stupid.”

“That’s not how the pool works, Whirl,” Swerve grumbled. “You have to bet when it’ll happen, not how many—wait. Are we doing a ‘first kiss’ sub-category? That’s genius.”

“I am invoking Regulation 34.7 of the Lost Light handbook,” came Ultra Magnus’s voice as he passed the bar with all the sternness of a walking injunction. His struts moved with visible tension. “No unauthorized fraternization pools. Shut it down.”

“Not until you place a bet!” Swerve called after him, entirely unfazed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you smirking every time Rodimus trips over his own feet when Roller so much as breathes in his general direction!”

One of the puppet gloves flopped limply on his hand as he pointed dramatically.

Ultra Magnus paused, turned his head slightly, and fixed Swerve with a look so precise, so judicially disappointed, it could have filed paperwork on its own. His optics narrowed with the meticulous calculation of a mech already drafting formal disciplinary documents—complete with sub-sections and citations. Then, with military crispness, he turned and marched down the corridor, leaving behind only the faint scent of frustration and moral superiority.

Across the room, the yelling had stopped—but the energy hadn’t. Rodimus and Roller now stood chest-to-chest, locked in a silent standoff. They weren’t speaking, but every movement screamed with tension. Their shoulders were squared. Their optics locked. Vents came hard and fast, like engines ready to redline.

Rodimus’ jaw twitched, his mouth struggling to decide whether it wanted to form another argument or a grin. Roller’s fingers clenched subtly at his arms, restrained, bracing—like he was one second away from grabbing Rodimus by the collar or walking away.

Then Roller leaned in, just a fraction. He muttered something—too low to catch—but whatever it was made Rodimus freeze. A beat of charged silence followed. And then Rodimus let out a short, surprised laugh. It wasn’t mocking. It cracked something brittle in the moment—like ice under too much pressure. And for one fleeting second, the tension behind his optics softened. It wasn’t just amusement. It was fondness. Something real. Swerve nearly dropped his stylus.

“Okay. What the frag was that?!” he hissed, scanning the bar. “Did anyone see that?! That was not normal arguing. That was intimate.”

“I saw it,” Rung said, voice calm as he sipped his energon. “And I’m absolutely not getting involved.”

Swerve spun, pointing his stylus like an accusation. “Thank you! That was, like—like forbidden romance in the back of an ancient archive. That was smoldering.” 

Rodimus stormed out of the room, vents flaring, frame taut and coiled. Roller remained behind, arms crossed, optics tracking him like a radar locked onto target.

“I’m not saying they kissed,” Swerve whispered, leaning closer to Rung. “But I am saying they emotionally kissed. Like… with their brains.”

Rung sighed, setting down his cube. “You are aware that’s not how cognitive circuits function, yes?”

“Oh, I know what I saw.” Swerve jabbed the stylus at the now-empty doorway. “Classic enemies-to-lovers setup. Slow burn. Repressed emotions. Moral conflict. I give it three more arguments before they either kiss or kill each other. Possibly both.”

Bluestreak raised a servo. “I’m in. Two more arguments. There’s way too much venting for this to stay platonic.”

“Thank you!” Swerve beamed. “Finally, someone with optics and taste. They’re practically breathing the same air. I’ve seen fusion reactors with less intensity.”

Rung stood up, wiping his hands. “And this is why I don’t do group therapy.”

Swerve tapped his chin with the stylus, deep in thought. “Okay, so here’s what we do—hear me out—we engineer a scenario where they’re forced to work together. High stakes. Tense atmosphere. Moral ambiguity. Unresolved feelings. All the right ingredients.”

With perfect timing, Whirl dropped from the ceiling with a clatter, claws outstretched, landing like a feral cat with a cause.

“Sounds like we need to call Brainstorm,” he said ominously.

Swerve gasped like he’d just had a religious experience. “You are absolutely right, my erratically unstable friend.”

Bluestreak raised an optic ridge. “Wait, Brainstorm? The guy who nearly tore a hole in space-time to flirt with Perceptor?”

“Yes!” Swerve slapped the bar. “Because he gets it. Theatrical nonsense with emotional stakes is his entire brand. And he owes me five drinks and three favors.”

Whirl pointed at him. “You know it’s going to end in explosions and accidental time loops, right?”

“Exactly,” Swerve said brightly. “That’s how real bonds are formed. Adrenaline. Fear. Possibly waking up married in an alternate timeline. Boom. Connection.”

Bluestreak hesitated. “…Fine. But I’m not explaining it to Ultra Magnus if the ship gets vaporized again.”

Whirl cracked his claws. “Oh, I am. I’m dying to tell him we orchestrated a near-death scenario for romantic development.”

Swerve scribbled madly into his datapad. “Okay. Step one: get Brainstorm. Step two: get Rodimus and Roller on the same shuttle. Step three: drop them somewhere dramatic. Preferably with fog. Or lava.”

Bluestreak blinked. “Fog and lava?”

Whirl snickered. “Ooh! I know a place.”

Swerve grinned. “Of course you do. You’re a treasure.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Whirl muttered, already climbing back toward the ceiling. “This is gonna be great. And if it doesn’t work, someone explodes. Win-win.”

Rodimus stormed down the corridor with the intensity of a mech trying to outpace his own feelings. His steps echoed like cannon fire, each one just slightly harder than necessary. The hallway was empty—thank Primus—because if anyone tried to talk to him right now, he might combust on the spot. His vents were running hot. Too hot.

“Primus frag it,” he hissed under his breath, dragging a hand down his faceplate.

That mech.

That smug, stubborn, slab-of-forged-stoicism mech.

Rodimus didn’t know what was worse: that Roller had gotten under his plating again with that too-calm, too-close stare, or that part of him liked it. No—not liked. That wasn’t the word.

He grit his denta. No, it was the word, and that’s what made it worse.

The memory of Roller leaning in—barely, just enough to breach personal space—and muttering something that Rodimus still hadn’t fully processed came back like a shot to the processor. The words weren’t even that cutting. It was the delivery. That low, gravel-lined voice. That barely-there smirk. That infuriating, quiet confidence like he could see through Rodimus, down to the wiring.

Rodimus nearly tripped over his own pede as another wave of heat surged across his frame—not from anger this time, but something worse. He slammed his shoulder into the wall just to feel something else.

“Ugh! No. No, no, no. This is not happening.”

He started pacing. Right in the middle of the corridor, hands flailing now that there was no one around to see the meltdown. His vents wheezed like a faulty engine. If a maintenance bot rounded the corner right now, Rodimus might end up on a no-fly list.

“He’s infuriating!” he barked to no one. “He always thinks he’s right! Always so calm and—stoic and—and broad!”

That last word slipped out before he could stop it. He froze mid-step, optics wide. Then groaned and dragged both hands down his face.

“I can’t believe I want to kiss him. I want to punch him. He’s basically Ultra Magnus with less paperwork and more biceps!”

His shoulders slumped as the shame caught up. It wasn’t like this was the first time Roller had gotten under his armor. It had started forever ago—before the war ended, back when they were on opposite ends of the battlefield but always orbiting the same damn cause. Roller always had this frustrating gravitational pull. Rodimus had spent vorns trying to fight it off with jokes and bravado.

And yet here he was. Alone in a hallway. Flushed from an argument. Half-hard and fuming like a glitching lovesick teenager.

“Okay,” he muttered, shaking himself off. “Just. Cool down. Take a recharge cycle. Forget this ever happened. Ignore the optics. The voice. The shoulders. The way he—No. No! Frag it!”

He punched the wall. The wall did not punch back. Rodimus ex-vented so hard it rattled the paneling.

“I hate him.”

A beat.

“…I’m gonna dream about him.”

Another beat.

“I really hate him.”

He turned and resumed his furious march, now filled with the singular and irrational purpose of distracting himself before he did something stupid. Like call Roller. Or message him. Or look at him too long. Or confess literally anything.

“Professional,” he muttered, clenching his fists. “Commanding officer. Control. I’ve got this.”

He did not have this.

Roller remained where he was long after Rodimus had stormed off. He stood in the center of the rec room, arms crossed, expression unreadable, vents cycling low and slow. His optics were fixed on the hallway Rodimus had disappeared down, but his focus was turned inward—processing, reprocessing, trying to file the whole encounter into some logical category that didn’t exist.

He’d meant to walk away five minutes ago. He still hadn’t moved. The argument had been nothing new. They fought like they always did—loudly, stubbornly, dramatically. But this time… this time it felt different. The way Rodimus had looked at him. The way their bodies had closed the space between them without thinking. The way Roller had leaned in, intending to disarm him with one low comment—

—and gotten that laugh in return.

Primus. That laugh.

Rodimus didn’t laugh like that often. Not genuinely. Not when his guard was up. But something about that moment had caught him off-balance—and it showed. That flicker of softness in his optics, that half-second where the snarl on his face gave way to something real. It lingered in Roller’s processor now like a ghost.

He shifted his stance slightly and rubbed at the inside of his forearm—an old tick from a younger version of himself that he hadn’t shaken, not even after the war. It was something he did when his spark felt louder than his thoughts.

“Pull it together,” he murmured.

He wasn’t angry, not really. Not like Rodimus had been—stomping off with flared vents and clenched fists. Roller had learned how to keep things beneath the surface a long time ago. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling anything.

If anything, he felt too much.

Rodimus made him feel too much. He always had. The way he talked too fast and thought too loud. The way he cared with the subtlety of a solar flare. The way he kept looking at Roller like they were one argument away from either throwing punches or… Or doing something a lot more complicated.

Roller ex-vented slowly and finally turned away from the hallway. He headed for the door, his movements controlled, composed. But his mind was still wrapped in the moment, stuck on the way Rodimus’s voice had cracked—not from volume, but emotion. He didn’t know what that moment had meant, and maybe Rodimus didn’t either. But it was something.

And if he was being honest with himself—and he tried to be, even when it hurt—he’d liked standing that close. He liked the fire in Rodimus’s optics. He’d liked that they always fought like they meant it, because underneath the jabs and the pride, there was a kind of unspoken truth neither of them wanted to name. Not yet.

As he passed through the door, he muttered under his breath, “Damn it all… I still love him.”

Chapter Text

Rodimus was halfway through a recharge cycle when his comm crackled to life with all the grace of a blender full of scrap metal.

“Rodimus—Captain Rodimus—uh, we’ve got a hull-level alert. Cargo bay two. Something’s moving near the shuttle docks. Looks like a breach alarm might’ve triggered, but nothing’s getting picked up on visual.”

It was Rewind’s voice, clipped and static-soaked. Rodimus groaned into the crook of his arm and rolled off the recharge slab.

“Of course it’s the middle of the night cycle,” he muttered as he dragged on his plating and slapped his badge. “Of course the ship’s falling apart. Again.”

He was halfway out the hab before the alarm actually started to sound, warbling low and half-hearted—probably a system fault, or a lazy klaxon, or Brainstorm testing new sub-audible panic frequencies for science. The Lost Light had a knack for emergencies that felt just fake enough to ruin your day, but real enough to make you feel guilty for being annoyed. Rodimus jogged toward the lift, grumbling about power distribution nodes and faulty diagnostics.

And then he heard it—another set of heavy steps pounding down the corridor behind him. He didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“Roller?” he called out, trying not to sound too incredulous.

Roller caught up in two strides, helm slightly tilted, optics narrowed. “Got the same comm alert. I thought the cargo bay was a one-mech problem. Or are you the one who triggered it?”

“Oh, I’m thrilled to see you too,” Rodimus shot back, stepping into the lift with exaggerated flair. “What are the odds, huh? Just the two of us, once again, dragged down to investigate some probably-false-alarm situation in the dead of ship’s night.”

Roller’s expression didn’t change, but the twitch in his jaw said plenty. The lift doors opened with a hiss, revealing the dull, ambient light of cargo bay two—still quiet, still sealed.

Rodimus pulled out his scanner. “No energy readings. No life signs. Definitely suspicious.”

“Or broken.”

“Or haunted. Don’t forget haunted. We’re due.”

They stepped inside, optics scanning the corners. Nothing jumped out. Nothing moved. The docking clamps were locked. The crates were undisturbed. And then, because the universe had a sense of humor, Brainstorm’s voice came over the comms.

“Oh, hey! Good, good, you’re both down there. Perfect.”

Rodimus’s optics narrowed. “...Brainstorm. Why do you sound like you’ve been waiting for us to be specifically down here?”

“I have been waiting for you to be specifically down there.”

Roller crossed his arms. “Why.”

“So, funny thing. There’s a hostile signal coming from the lunar colony below us. It’s scrambled, erratic, and probably not local. Something Decepticon-coded but old. Like pre-reformatting old. Big energy signature, hard to trace. Could be a trap. Definitely dangerous.”

Rodimus and Roller exchanged a look.

“And here’s the kicker,” Brainstorm added. “After running it through every database I could access, I realized only two people aboard this ship have the necessary background to deal with it. One is a hot-headed ex-Prime with an unpredictable leadership style, and the other is... well, basically a grumpy sledgehammer with military clearance.”

Rodimus looked up toward the ceiling like he was praying to someone. “You mean me and Roller.”

“Yup!”

“Brainstorm,” Roller said slowly, “what exactly makes us the only two qualified?”

“Great question! One of you has field experience with encrypted lunar Decepticon protocols. The other has tactical knowledge of the old weapon signatures. Plus, you’ve both punched things into compliance before. That’s what this mission needs.”

Rodimus squinted. “That’s awfully specific.”

“Also,” Brainstorm added, far too innocently, “we already loaded the shuttle for you. Coordinates are patched in. Mission brief’s waiting in the cockpit.”

There was silence.

“...This is a setup,” Rodimus muttered.

“Obviously,” Roller replied.

But neither of them moved to leave.

Rodimus glanced sideways at him. “So we’re going anyway?”

Roller shrugged. “If it isn’t a trap, we’re leaving something dangerous unchecked. If it is a trap, someone’s gotta walk into it.”

Rodimus sighed. “It’s always us.”

They turned and started walking toward the docked shuttle, shoulder to shoulder, neither of them commenting on the small, familiar rhythm they fell into when walking together. Rodimus tried not to think about how weirdly in sync their footfalls sounded. Or how Brainstorm had clearly designed this whole thing like it was a fragging date.

He tried even harder not to think about how he wasn’t entirely mad about it. The shuttle’s boarding ramp hissed open, and Rodimus immediately clocked two things: One, the cockpit had been stocked with just enough rations, fuel cells, and weaponry for exactly two bots. No more, no less. The shelf in the back had been cleared out, then inexplicably re-stocked with energon cubes labeled “for sharing.”

Two, there was one recharge berth.

Rodimus squinted. “Are we on a scout-class transport?”

“Looks like it,” Roller replied blandly, already ducking under the hatch and stepping inside with the ease of someone who had resigned himself to nonsense.

Rodimus followed, his frame immediately brushing the edge of the hatch. “Seriously? The ship’s full of long-range craft and Brainstorm sends us down in a glorified shuttle-pod? What, was the ‘Barely Room for One Bot, Hope You Like Elbow Contact’ model the only one available?”

The door sealed behind them with a huff. The interior wasn’t cramped, exactly—but it was definitely tight. The two of them filled the cabin easily, their shoulders nearly brushing even when standing apart. The nav controls were rudimentary, the pilot and co-pilot chairs close enough to share armrests, and the back of the cabin housed the single recharge slab that was about the size of Rodimus’s ego pre-character development.

Roller gave it a look, then looked at Rodimus. “You take the berth. You’ll probably need it.”

Rodimus scoffed. “What makes you think you don’t?”

“You get twitchy without sleep.”

“I do not get twitchy.”

“You pace.”

“That’s tactical movement!”

“It’s muttering about being betrayed by furniture while knocking over crates.”

Rodimus huffed and slumped into the pilot’s chair instead, twisting sideways so he could gesture wildly at the terminal. “Fine. But if I have a psychotic recharge dream and wake up swinging, you’re not allowed to judge me.”

“Noted,” Roller muttered, settling into the co-pilot seat beside him, arms crossed—but not uncomfortably so.

Their frames sat close. Too close, really. When Rodimus shifted, his elbow brushed Roller's. When Roller leaned back slightly, the side of his arm bumped Rodimus with a dull, ka-thunk. It was the kind of contact that wouldn’t have mattered on a battlefield—but here, with no wind, no gunfire, no distractions—it lingered. Rodimus tried to focus on the nav screen.

“Did Brainstorm tell you it would be just the two of us?” he asked, voice carefully neutral.

“No,” Roller replied, expression unreadable. “But I figured.”

“Figured?”

Roller glanced at him. “He’s subtle like a wrecking ball.”

Rodimus made a noise that was half-snort, half-laugh. “You think this is, like… a mission? Or a Mission™?”

“Honestly?” Roller shrugged. “Bit of both.”

They were quiet for a minute. The shuttle systems purred to life, thrumming gently under their feet as the engines prepped for departure. Rodimus tried to ignore how warm the cabin felt, how aware he was of Roller’s field brushing faintly against his own in the enclosed space.

“So,” he said abruptly. “Wanna bet on how long it takes for this to go horribly wrong?”

Roller’s mouth curved, just a little. “Five minutes after landing.”

“That’s generous.”

“I have faith in you.”

Rodimus turned to look at him, half-annoyed and half-wary of the fondness threatening to sneak into that voice. 

“You better not be flirting with me.”

Roller blinked, deadpan. “You’d know if I was.”

Rodimus looked away quickly. “...Right.”

Another beat of silence. The shuttle lifted off with a low whir, pulling free of the Lost Light’s docking clamps and easing toward the grey curve of the lunar colony below. In the distance, storm clouds rolled across the surface—swirling ash-grey and violet under the planet’s weak light. A perfect place for secrets, or traps, or maybe just whatever the frag Brainstorm had planted down there to force the two of them together. Rodimus leaned back in his seat, trying to act casual as their knees bumped for the third time. He didn’t move away. 

The shuttle touched down with a low thrum, the landing struts groaning softly beneath them as dust plumed across the viewing port. Pale grey coated everything. The terrain was jagged and bone-dry, its silence somehow oppressive under the weak light filtering through the lunar atmosphere. Outcroppings of cracked metal and ancient debris jutted out like half-buried teeth.

Rodimus unbuckled and stood a little too quickly. “All right. Let’s find whatever signal Brainstorm swore only we could deal with before he beams back up wearing a ‘Matchmaker of the Year’ sash.”

Roller didn’t move immediately. He watched the storm clouds rolling in over the distant ridge—slow and heavy with static discharge. “Doesn’t feel right.”

Rodimus paused at the hatch control. “That we’re here?”

“That it’s quiet.”

Rodimus gave a tight, humorless grin. “You did bet on five minutes.”

Roller finally stood, his steps deliberate, optics scanning the terrain. “Still ticking.”

The shuttle’s boarding ramp lowered with a hiss of depressurization, releasing a gust of stale, recycled air into the open lunar haze. Rodimus and Roller descended side by side, their armored feet striking the ground with muted clinks—sharp against the muffled stillness of the surface. Within seconds, the fine grey dust clung to their legs and lower plating like soot, streaking up across their boots and knee joints as if the planet itself were trying to claim them.

The air, if it could even be called that, was dry and metallic, clinging to their vents with the sterile tang of oxidized alloys and disuse. The low gravity was subtle but disorienting—every step felt like a half-measured leap, the weight of their bodies too slow to follow. Their balance recalibrated automatically, but it didn’t stop Rodimus from swaying a little on his second step, muttering something under his breath.

Ahead, the ruins of the lunar colony unfolded like the skeleton of a forgotten world. Structures once upright and purposeful now lay in warped ruin—frames bowed in on themselves, panels shredded open like peeled fruit, windows shattered to glittering dust. Skylights gaped toward the ash-colored sky, edges crumbled, as if the buildings had been reaching upward in their final moments and collapsed from exhaustion.

The colony was silent. Not peaceful—hollow. A vacuum of history and abandonment. It felt like walking through a mausoleum. Then the signal pinged again. Rodimus’s scanner lit up with a flicker of red: weak, garbled, and erratic. A threadbare trace of energy bleeding from below the central communications tower. It didn’t pulse like an active distress call—it bled, fractured and half-lost, like the dying echo of a voice long since abandoned.

Brainstorm’s assessment had been clear: Decepticon-coded. But not standard. Not even recent. It bore traces of pre-refinement coding, obsolete encryption buried beneath junk data. Nothing about it said "trap" in the traditional sense. But it didn’t feel like a beacon either. It felt like something that had been sealed, and was trying, weakly, to leak back out.

“Ghosts,” Rodimus murmured, glancing up at the comms tower now looming like a crooked tooth against the pale sky.

“Buried tech,” Roller corrected. But even his voice was quieter now, his field drawn tight around his frame. 

Whatever it was, it wasn’t just waiting. It had endured. And now it was stirring.

Rodimus adjusted the scanner slung over his shoulder, muttering, “I really hope we don’t run into any long-dormant AI with personality disorders.”

“Or worse,” Roller added. “Relics from your fan club.”

Rodimus rolled his optics. “Please. I didn’t have fans. Just a very loud hate-following.”

They reached the outer rim of the old control station—a squat structure half-collapsed in on itself. Metal twisted at odd angles like the aftermath of a pressure bomb, its entry hatch fused part way open. Rodimus bent, wedging his fingers into the gap and grunting as he pulled it free with a metallic shriek. The darkness inside felt deep. Like it had been waiting.

“Lights on,” Roller muttered, casting a cool beam ahead with a flick of his helm-lamp. Dust danced in the glow.

They stepped inside. The inside of the tower was lined with ruined terminals and scorched metal, old energon stains dried to rust. Most of it had been stripped clean—looted or decommissioned cycles ago—but a central chamber remained sealed beneath a collapsed staircase. The signal was coming from there. Rodimus crouched by the floor panel, brushing aside rubble.

“Help me pry this—”

Before he could finish, the panel gave way beneath him with a sharp crack, and he dropped like a stone.

“Rodimus!” Roller was at the edge in a second, peering down.

A long pause.

“I’m fine!” Rodimus called up, voice echoing from the dark below. “Landed on something soft!”

“What kind of soft?”

Rodimus squinted beneath him. “...A Decepticon flag.”

“Figures.”

Roller dropped down after him, landing beside him with a thud and a soft curse. They stood slowly, brushing dust from their joints as their optics adjusted. In the low light, a row of ancient storage units blinked faintly in standby mode. One of them hissed as they approached, leaking static from a long-dead voice processor.

“--Recognition error. Identity mismatch. Security override required--”

Rodimus winced. “Please tell me you know how to override Decepticon bunk tech.”

“I can try,” Roller muttered, stepping forward. He keyed in a code, paused, then keyed in a second, slower this time.

The console blinked once—hesitant, like a processor waking from long-idle sleep. Then it let out a sharp beep, followed by a grinding thrum that vibrated up through the floor plating.

Rodimus’s hand hovered over the screen, optics narrowing. “That can’t be good.”

From the far side of the room, something moved. It started as a low rumble, the kind that lives beneath structure and memory—deep and deliberate, as if the very walls had taken a breath. Plates of ancient alloy groaned as they retracted into themselves, grinding with the sluggishness of mechanisms untouched for centuries. Dust billowed from the seams, casting the chamber in a haze of grey and gold.

Then the wall split open. A panel peeled back in uneven, jerking increments, revealing a recessed alcove framed by blackened metal and lined with pulsing circuitry that still sputtered with flickers of light. Cold, recycled air hissed out from within, stale and sharp, laced with ozone and energon fumes long congealed. Rodimus reached for his weapon on instinct, fingers curling around the hilt of his blaster before he’d even registered the thought. Beside him, Roller stepped forward just enough to shift into his path—shielding, unthinking, automatic. His optics locked on the emerging structure, his field flattening with trained restraint.

Then they both froze. A stasis pod sat cradled in the alcove. Upright. Impossibly intact. Its surface was layered with grime and dust, but beneath it, the casing still glowed faintly with residual power—veins of dim energon pulsing through the reinforced glass like breath. Cold vapor hissed softly from the seals, leaking around the edges in pale tendrils. Inside the pod stood a form.

It was vaguely Cybertronian—two arms, two legs, a torso shaped for humanoid motion—but it was wrong. Off. The proportions were too lean, too angular, the armor segmented in ways that suggested speed over strength, stealth over stability. There were no faction symbols visible, but the design language was unmistakable.Rodimus felt his tank lurch.

“Decepticon-built,” he murmured, optics narrowed.

Roller ex-vented through his nose. “Not built for the front lines.”

No, not this one.

The figure inside the pod had the sleekness of something meant to infiltrate. To disappear. Or maybe to hunt. Its helm was narrow, elongated at the crown, and the faceplate was featureless, save for a single dark slit where a visor might rest. The lines of its plating curled like circuitry down its arms, and something about its stillness felt far too intentional. Rodimus’s grip tightened on his blaster.

“It’s not broadcasting a spark signature,” he said.

“Not dead either,” Roller replied, stepping closer. “Look at the pod’s power supply. It’s still cycling. This wasn’t forgotten. It was hidden.”

Rodimus ex-vented, low and long. “Well. That’s not suspicious at all.”

A moment passed. Then another.

Rodimus glanced sideways at him. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Roller didn’t answer immediately. Then:

“I’m thinking if this thing wakes up and kills us both, I’m haunting Brainstorm first.”