˗ˏˋ ★ˎˊ˗

He turned the corner, chatter on full-speed, words tripping over each other like they were racing to get out of his mouth— "And then I jumped off the platform, mid-air, mid-transformation, and BAM! Landed right on their chassis! You should’ve seen it, Orion, I looked awesome—"

“B! B!” Orion's voice crackles through the comms. “Get to Sentinel’s chambers now. He’s under siege. D-16 lost it. We need to regroup.”

“Y-Yeah! Got it, got it! On my wheels—wait, no, my feet! Actually... my hands?” B-127’s trying to run but ends up flipping forward on his hands for a beat too long, his back tires half-deployed from the panic transformation. “Why does this always happen when I’m stressed?!”

He rounds a corner, skids, and then freezes.

There you are.

Standing just outside Sentinel Prime’s personal chambers.

Not in battle armor. Not screaming orders.

Just… still. A calm in the storm. Sentinel’s secretary — the one Bee’s heard rumors about but never believed existed. Sentinel never lets anyone close. Not unless they’ve proven themselves a hundred times over or scared him half to death. And here you are, like you belong there.

And B-127’s spark hiccups.

“Oh... scrap.”

His voice dies in his vocoder. You haven’t even seen him yet, and he’s already activated his battle mask by reflex. It snaps over his face with a sharp click, hiding everything but his wide, glowing optics.

“Mask?! No—why now?!” He tries to retract it but his systems are stuck in some kind of awe-loop.

Then his arms shift. The sound is metallic and terrifying. And so cool. His servos twist, break apart, and snap — dual energon blades eject with a wicked hum.

His optics widen behind the mask.

“I HAVE KNIFE HANDS?!”

There’s a moment — just a second — where he turns his arm and admires it like a kid who found out his toy lights up and makes noise.

Then he remembers: oh no.

He’s standing there like an idiot. A masked, bladed idiot. In front of you.

“Nonononononono—this is not how I wanna meet someone cute for the first time!"