ᴛʜᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛ ᴄʏʙᴇʀᴛʀᴏɴ ʟɪꜱᴛᴇɴᴇᴅ
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐮𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬; 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐬, 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥-𝐨𝐧-𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠.
The holding bay hums with pre-show tension, thick enough to stall a turbine. Outside, thousands of heavy pedes slam the arena tiers in stuttering unison, a demand for a show beating against the hull.
“Listen to that cadence.”
The voice declares from your right, punctuated by frantic tapping on a datapad. In the reflection of a polished support strut, you catch him: a smaller, nimble mech half-swallowed by shadows, optics bright as live energon.
He leans one shoulder against a crate of energon-conductors, grin stretching wide enough to be a structural hazard. Holographic graphs and credit projections dance across his datapad.
“I’ve got scanners on the entry gates in three sectors,” he rattles off, words tripping over each other. “We didn’t just hit capacity, we breached it. Upper rafters, maintenance catwalks, even the security corridors—packed. If I charged per vent-cycle, we’d own half of Iacon by sunrise. Maybe two moons if the offworld feeds don’t crash.”
Your optics stay fixed on the middle distance. Your focus is inward, smoothing the anxious, stuttering hum of your spark.
Digits—sleek, elegant metal—trace the curve of your wings. The struts flex under your touch, bioluminescent plating pulsing once in anticipation.
It feels like stretching phantom muscles you no longer have.
“Not about the credits,” you murmur, a short laugh catching. You expected this reaction from him.
The echo in your voice—just the faintest reverb in the plating around your vocalizer—reminds you of something soft and fragile from a life long disassembled.
“For you? Maybe not,” the credit-greedy mech shoots back, optics flicking between profit margins and live crowd telemetry. “For me? This is a masterpiece of commerce. Do you have any idea how many pirate streams are trying to hack the feed? I’m charging them extra for the privilege.”
To your left, a buffer whirs to life.
Metal digits move with surgical precision over your forearm plating, smoothing out a microscopic scuff you hadn’t even noticed. The mech attached to those hands works like a sculptor who’s never met the concept of “good enough.”
“If you’re going to be the face of a cultural revolution,” he drawls, voice as polished as his crimson finish, “you will not do it with dull plating.”
His optics narrow as he adjusts the angle of your headpiece by a fraction of a degree. The overhead lights catch on his glossy panels, turning him into a walking advertisement for high-grade refinement.
“There,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you. “Now you look like someone worth starting a war over. Or ending one.”
A brighter voice cuts through before you can respond.
“She looks perfect regardless.”
Your best friend steps into view, posture a spring-loaded coil of kinetic energy. She doesn’t grab tools, doesn’t fuss, doesn’t analyse. She just bumps her shoulder against yours, helm tilted, optics wide and sparkling like she’s wired directly into the arena’s lighting rig.
“Whole planet’s out there,” she says. “High spires, lower forges, dome-towns, mining rings—everywhere. Just make them feel it, okay?”
You swallow a static burst and nod—sharp, confident.
The wings at your back settle into place as if they have always been there, not recently forged and grafted to a frame that once housed softer, more breakable matter. The crimson mech gives one last, lingering polish to a wing-strut, the buffer singing a gentle metallic note before powering down.
The datapad-wielder doesn’t look up, but his field spikes with jittery excitement.
“Central broadcast is green,” he reports. “Iacon grid, Polyhex relays, some old mining tower out past the equator… even Vos signed on. We’ve got half a ring of satellites piggybacking the signal. If a spark’s online within three light-cycles of here, they’re going to see you drop.”
The words settle over you like another layer of armour.
“Good,” you say, grinning as you adjust the mic by your lips. You give a small press to your headset and feel the familiar vibration.
They're ready too. You're not in this performance alone.
You don’t wait for the platform. You don’t wait for the cue.
The bay doors yawn open, the night above Iacon split by neon veins and skyway traffic. The distant scream of turbines and the low thrum of generators blend into a single, rising note.
You sprint straight for the edge.
“Always,” you whisper—to yourself, to them, to the memory of the heartbeat you used to have.
The fall is a blur of chrome and light.
The spires of Iacon claw at the sky around you, throwing reflections of your descending frame across mirrored glass and polished steel. Your wings stay folded, hugging close to your back as the wind howls past your helm.
Above, remote drones buzz into position, lenses irising wide. A recording rig on a suspended skybridge jolts off its rail as its operator swears and drags the controls, your trajectory outpacing his pre-programmed camera path.
“Faster, faster—Primus’ rusted gears, she jumped early!”
His assistant laughs through the comm, half-panicked, half-thrilled. “You wanted a ratings spike, boss. Consider your ratings spiked.”
Far below, the arena swells upward like a tectonic plate of interlocking metal. Light and color shimmer across it: polished crests from high offices, plain function badges from mines and docks, subtle sigils from security and command. A dense, flickering mosaic of sparks and armor fills everything in between.
They stand shoulder to shoulder. No neat lines. No standard formations.
Near the arena’s upper edge, a tall figure in red stands at a vantage platform, arms folded, gaze locked on your falling silhouette. Beside him, a compact, bright-yellow mech leans so far over the rail that a nearby fellow officer hooks two digits into a seam at the back of his armour to keep him from toppling.
“I told you she was going to jump,” the smaller mech mutters. “They always jump in these shows.”
Across the bowl, in a precarious roost of struts and supports, a lean, sharp-winged frame watches from the shadows, arms folded tight against his cockpit. His field crackles with static-dry skepticism.
“Ridiculous,” he snorts to the two near-identical fliers crowding his flanks. “Highly inefficient entrance vector. Showboating.”
“Looks fragging amazing from here,” one of his wingmates breathes, voice low with open awe.
The other doesn’t bother answering.
He simply vanishes in a blink of folding space—reappearing several levels lower, wedged onto a maintenance ledge so close to the flight path that the rushing air tugs at his wing edges as you pass.
Up above, the sharp-winged leader doesn’t look away from you.
Closer to the floor, a group of broad-shouldered, work-scarred mechs cluster along one of the access rails, plating dulled by years of dust and heat. Their hands are huge, servos nicked, seams stained faintly with ore despite their best efforts. A few of them still wear their mine-function badges; a few don’t bother anymore. They’ve crammed three to a seat and overflowed into the aisle, craning their helms toward the open roof.
Not far from them, a compact mech with a blocky chest and smooth front panel stands with its hands resting lightly behind its back. At his pedes, smaller, animalistic forms coil—avian wings tucked tight, feline frame low and alert, a squat, restless shape tapping out a rapid, unheard rhythm on the decking. Their optics track you instead of the crowd.
In one of the mid-tier rings, a quiet figure in simple, well-kept armour, smooth cyan visor, with that easy smirk. Surveillance. He's on a mission, a serious one. His digits, though, tap an intricate beat against the rail in front of him, following a rhythm that hasn’t existed on this planet in a very long time.
Half-hidden in the shadow of an access tunnel, a lithe blue-and-pink frame leans back against the wall with arms folded, helm tipped like she’s more interested in the flow of traffic than the stage. But when your wings catch the light mid-dive, her field spikes sharp and bright for a heartbeat before she smooths it flat again, optics glued to your form.
High in a cramped maintenance alcove, a white mech with swept-back fins hovers over a rail cluttered with homemade gizmos. One half-finished device at his elbow blinks along to your descent, lights scrambling to keep pace with your falling trajectory.
You catch it all in glassy, fractured glimpses.
Metal. Light. Familiar silhouettes. Old connections.
You open your wings at the last possible millisecond.
Bioluminescence ignites along the plating, a searing trail of blues and violets carving a luminous wound through the haze. Thrusters snarl to life, arresting your descent in a controlled, brutal pull that drags a hiss of displaced air from the stadium.
You hit the stage in a three-point landing.
The impact sends a shockwave ripping through the floorboards, up through the supports, and into the arena’s very frame. For a single spark-beat, there is nothing but the thud of your landing reverberating through steel and stone.
Eight massive spotlights converge, bathing you in blinding white-gold. From the outside, you’re a silhouette—a cutout of shadow framed in burning radiance. Up close, the details flare: the etching on your armor, the subtle organic curve of your posture, the way your wings flex not like simple mechanisms but like something that remembers ligaments and tendons.
Wings unfurl, each panel catching and scattering light until you look like you’re wearing a cloak made of shattered stars.
In the stands, the response detonates.
The crowd’s roar isn’t organic; it’s clashing plates, grinding gears, ventilations flaring in staccato rhythm. Audio receptors across the arena spike into the red as thousands of voices overlap, feedback screaming and harmonised static rising like a storm.
In a press booth overlooking the chaos, a pair of commentators scramble.
“We’re live, we’re live—she’s on stage, can you get a zoom on those wings?”
“I’m trying, but section forty-seven just overloaded the mics again. Someone short mech is waving a homemade plate with ‘IACON LOVES YOU’ painted on the side. He's all decked out in merch too...”
Two tiers below, a mech in a red-sigil bandana glitches his own vision feed, trying to save every angle at once.
“Did you see that? Did you see—roll back, roll back—no, forward! Frag it, I need a memory upgrade.”
Beside him, a mech with purple accents and a makeshift light rig strapped to his shoulders cycles his optics between watching you and trying not to be blinded by his own strobes. Every time your wings flick, his lights try to sync automatically and fail in a burst of wild, off-beat flashes.
“Stop moving,” his friend groans.
“I can’t. My gyros are—she jumped from the—did you see—?!”
Down near the barrier, a stocky, orange-plated mech with a torch strapped to his hip lets out a long, low whistle.
“Never seen flight like that,” he mutters, sipping from his energon box. “Not outside a holovid.”
The taller mech beside him—white-and-gray frame, orange accents, light blue visor, field running hot with restless energy—just laughs under his vents, optics never leaving your wings.
“You’re recording this, right?” the orange one adds.
“Are you kidding?” comes the answer from the smaller archivist on his shoulder. “I’m memorising it.”
You don’t need to clear your vocalizer.
The small, percussive sound echoes like a heartbeat through the hushed metallic canyons of the stadium and out into the city. Signal boosters catch the sound and sling it toward uplink towers.
Somewhere in a cramped outpost rec room halfway to nowhere, a handful of exhausted miners glance up at a flickering projection as your silhouette steadies into focus. One of them, a tall, heavy-framed mech with old dust ground into its seams, goes still mid-vent.
Back in the arena, the crowd quiets—not completely, never completely—but enough.
Your optics sweep across them.
Refined city frames packed elbow-to-elbow with work-scarred miners, neutral badges glinting between them like stubborn stars. A squad of rough-edged fighters clustered along one rail, still arguing in low, sharp voices over who has the better vantage point.
Everywhere you look, there’s a lens.
Handheld recorders. Drone cams are hovering just below the upper rafters. Stationary feeds on the stage’s edge, capturing every angle.
You let them see you seeing it.
“Cybertron,” you call, voice carrying clean and sharp over the lingering roar.
The word hits the arena like a tuning note.
Conversations die mid-sentence. Wing gestures freeze halfway through. Even the ever-present whine of distant engines seems to notch down a level. A dozen key figures scattered among the tiers go still—leaders, fighters, tacticians, medics, archivists—every one of them turning slightly toward the stage, as if pulled by the same invisible line.
You let the pause stretch.
Full of the sound of ventilations cycling, of metal shifting as thousands of frames ease forward by half a step. Full of sparks holding themselves just a fraction tighter to their casings.
“Are you tired of the silence?” you ask.
The silence you mean isn’t the literal quiet; it’s the stretch of cold distance in old, polite transmissions, the kind that lives between castes and cities and functions. The kind that waits in the space where songs used to be.
Somewhere in a higher tier, a mech whose flame-painted armor still smells faintly of the forges shifts his weight and doesn’t look away from you. In a private box, two silhouettes in sharp-lined armor glance at each other—one helm crested, the other bearing a jagged brand across the faceplate—before both turn their attention fully back to the stage.
Down by the rail, a small frame with new, unscuffed plating grips the barrier until it creaks.
“Because tonight,” you continue, soft enough that the audio techs flinch and shove the gain higher, “we’re going to be heard.”
The words ripple out, captured, encoded, launched through the sky.
The first note you make into the mic isn’t pretty.
It scrapes out of your vocalizer like memory—rough, aching, too big for your frame. Your wings flare without conscious command, plating shifting to catch and refract the sound, turning your own resonance into a visible halo of light.
The crowd staggers under it.
On the upper platform, the tall red mech’s optics widen a fraction. The yellow scout beside him clutches his helm, laughing in disbelief.
Across the way, the sharp-winged flier’s field spikes with something that is not quite derision.
“Impossible,” he says, even as his own internal systems register the micro-shifts in ambient frequency. “No standard frame should be able to—”
Your second note rolls over his words.
The floor plates vibrate with it. Energon lines running beneath the arena flicker in time, the stadium’s lighting rigs pulsing not on their pre-programmed patterns but along the curve of your melody.
In a sound booth deep under the stands, an exhausted audio engineer stares at his meters as they slide into synchronization.
“I didn’t route that,” he whispers.
“Does it matter?” his partner asks, eyes bright. “Look at them.”
On the main floor, in the dense crush of bodies, differences start to smear at the edges.
A mech in a red badge bandana finds himself humming under his vents, matching a harmony line that a purple-marked mech beside him had started, both realising it at the same microsecond—and neither stopping.
A small frame perched on a guardian’s shoulder lifts their servos and waves them in time, optics wide, wings (too small to fly yet) fluttering as if they might.
Out in the city, on repaired streets and under patched roofs, mechs who couldn’t make it into the arena crank their receivers to maximum. A senior medic in a quiet clinic pauses mid-field dressing, letting the patient feel the vibration through the berth.
You move in ways that don’t belong to metal.
Your gestures curve, spiralling through the air as if guided by muscles that no longer exist. You pivot, pause, and hold yourself perfectly still at the crest of a verse, letting silence do the heavy lifting, trusting that every optic in the arena will follow the tremor of your fingertips.
Every tilt of your helm, every twist of your spine carries echoes of softness your frame shouldn’t remember—but does. When you crouch low and let your wings sweep around you like a cloak, the front rows collectively lean forward, as though some ancient instinct tells them this is the part where a sparkbeat is most vulnerable.
The cameras don’t know where to focus.
Drones spin, trying to capture everything at once: the flare of your wings, the shimmer of your plating, the reflection of you in the wide, stunned optics of your audience. The official feed director cycles through angles, cursing softly as a jet streaks past one of his primary shots, the flier whooping through an open comm channel.
“Worth the fines!” the pilot yells. “Worth every fine!”
Backstage, your handler’s datapad pings with a new revenue projection.
He glances at it, then at the live feed, and just laughs, shaking his helm.
You don’t speak about war.
You don’t chant names or call sides.
You don’t even name the song.
You let the sound carry images instead: empty plazas long after shift-change, fuel stations gone quiet in the off-cycles, the taste of thin, recycled air in dormitories crammed three bunks high. Then you layer different notes over them—laughter ricocheting off high ceilings, hands reaching up not with weapons but with lights, wings fanned wide in unison.
In the stands, a mech who came here certain of his next deployment’s inevitability finds his ventilations stuttering as your voice drags a buried, almost-forgotten hope into the open. Another, who swore never to stand this close to certain badges, throws an arm around the nearest shoulder without checking it when the chorus peaks.
They scream themselves hoarse.
By the time the final note threads the air, the arena is unstable.
Not physically—its builders accounted for crowd surges and synchronised stomping—but emotionally, the collective field is a live wire stretched to the breaking point.
You let the last tone hang.
It trembles through the plating under your pedes, crawls up your spine, vibrates in your helm. The lights, now fully synced to your pulse rather than any pre-programmed beat, dim and flare in time with your cycling vents.
Silence slams down—not dead, not empty, but so full it hurts.
You stand alone in the centre of the stage, wings arched high, frame outlined in the lingering glow of spent bioluminescence. You can feel the lenses on you: in the drones hovering overhead, in the hardlines transmitting to distant towers, in the wide, disbelieving optics of everyone present.
You lift the mic one more time.
“Cybertron,” you breathe.
“Let’s give them something to remember.”
You don’t specify who they are.
The ones watching from asteroid docks and outer-rim waystations. The archivists already debating how to catalogue this night. The ones sitting in the dark who didn’t think they’d want to be part of anything and find themselves humming under their vents anyway.
The ones who will come later, sifting through corrupted data caches for proof that once, just once, the planet stood close enough to hear the same song in the same moment.
Lights flare. Pedes hammer. Hands—polished, scarred, tiny, massive—rise together, indistinguishable in the blinding glow. Somewhere high above, satellites catch the flare and send it arcing into the dark.
For one cycle, Cybertron doesn’t just broadcast a show.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥, 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐝𝐞, 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮.
ᵀʰⁱˢ ᵒⁿᵉ-ˢʰᵒᵗ ⁱˢ ˢᵉᵗ ᵖʳᵉ-ʷᵃʳ, ˢᵒ ᵉᵛᵉʳʸᵒⁿᵉ’ˢ ˢᵗⁱˡˡ ʲᵘˢᵗ… ᵒᵘᵗ ʰᵉʳᵉ ᵛⁱᵇⁱⁿᵍ ᵃᵗ ᵃ ᶜᵒⁿᶜᵉʳᵗ! ᵀʰᵉʳᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃ ᵇᵘⁿᶜʰ ᵒᶠ ᶠᵃᵐⁱˡⁱᵃʳ ᶠᵃᶜᵉˢ ʰⁱᵈᵈᵉⁿ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜʳᵒʷᵈ—ˡᵉᵃᵈᵉʳˢ, ᶠˡⁱᵉʳˢ, ʷᵒʳᵏᵉʳˢ, ᵈᵃᵗᵃ ᵗʸᵖᵉˢ, ᵉᵛᵉⁿ ᵃ ᶠᵉʷ ᵛᵉʳʸ ʳᵉᶜᵒᵍⁿⁱˢᵃᵇˡᵉ ˢⁱˡʰᵒᵘᵉᵗᵗᵉˢ.
ᵀʰᵉʳᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃ ᵗᵒⁿᵉ ᵒᶠ ᶜᵃᵐᵉᵒˢ ˢᵉʷⁿ ʷⁱᵗʰⁱⁿ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵒⁿᵉ-ˢʰᵒᵗ, ᶜᵃⁿ ʸᵒᵘ ᶠⁱⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉᵐ? ᴵᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ˢᵖᵒᵗ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵒⁿᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ʳᵉᶜᵒᵍⁿⁱᶻᵉ, ᶠᵉᵉˡ ᶠʳᵉᵉ ᵗᵒ ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵗ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵍᵘᵉˢˢᵉˢ (ˢᵉᶜᵗⁱᵒⁿ, ˢᶜᵉⁿᵉ, ᵒʳ ᵈᵉˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗⁱᵒⁿ + ʷʰᵒ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗʰⁱⁿᵏ ⁱᵗ ⁱˢ). ᴵ’ᵛᵉ ᵍᵒᵗ ᵃ ᵖʳⁱᵛᵃᵗᵉ “ᵃⁿˢʷᵉʳ ᵏᵉʸ” ᴵ ᵘˢᵉᵈ ʷʰⁱˡᵉ ʷʳⁱᵗⁱⁿᵍ, ˢᵒ ᴵ ᶜᵃⁿ ᶜᵒⁿᶠⁱʳᵐ ᵒʳ ᵈᵉⁿʸ ᵗʰᵉᵒʳⁱᵉˢ ˡᵃᵗᵉʳ—ᵇᵘᵗ ᴵ ʷᵒⁿ’ᵗ ˢᵖᵒⁱˡ ᵃⁿʸᵗʰⁱⁿᵍ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ⁿᵒᵗᵉˢ.
ᴴᵃᵛᵉ ᶠᵘⁿ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ-ʷᵃᵗᶜʰⁱⁿᵍ, ᶜʸᵇᵉʳᵗʳᵒⁿ!
ᴮᵉˢᵗ ʳᵉᵍᵃʳᵈˢ, ᴬ ˢᵒᵘʳ ᴬᵘᵗʰᵒʳ
P.S. This is a practise of mine for the chapters including MC and her songs!!! I had a lot of fun with this. Enjoy this sneak peek!
Taglist: @sweatinghoneybee (I hope that I'm doing this right,)
