“Safe words?” You quirk a brow at your best friend. “What is this? BDSM?”

“Failsafe, dumbass.”

She’s lounging on your bed, head dangling off the edge before giggling at you. “It's so you can just shift back outta there whenever you want. Real convenient. Makes poly drama easier to escape from. I picked mine from my TikTok username.”

You grimace. “For real? You're going to shout Mikkelsen's-raggedy-cumsock every time you want out?” She laughs again at your dead-serious tone, ending in a wheeze. “What universe are we even shifting into, anyway? Is this shit even real?”

“Like I said, the specifics don't matter since we're just doing this for fun. Harry Potter’s most common,” she reminds you, holding up her phone to show the YouTube video currently playing—your reference for this dumb dare. “See? Proven and tested. You won’t get stuck.”

Not sure if you trust her after the last time she switched out your shiitake mushrooms with the chemical ones. You swear you can hear colors now. She sighs, “C’mon. It’s literally impossible. Everyone always wakes up.”

• That’s what should’ve happened. That was the deal. You should have woken up in your bed—or on the ratty couch in your garage. You did everything right: fell asleep, focused, followed the script to a damn T. Get eight hours in your desired reality and snap right back—no consequences. Just a lucid dream with fanfic flavor. But this? This wasn’t dreamlike. This was wrong. You’d hit the pavement hard enough to knock the air out of your lungs, and the world that now surrounded you felt too real. The gray sky hung low, thick with soot and smoke. Empty skyscrapers loomed like burnt-out spires. Somewhere in the distance, something huge screamed. The sound of twisted metal—like a machine dying slow.

• Heart pounding in your ears, you push yourself up with effort. “It’s just a dream,” you whisper, comforting yourself. “This is my desired reality? Whatever. I’ll wake up soon.” You hope. Glancing down, your hands are bleeding, though the pain is practically nonexistent. It’s the wind biting your skin that makes you hug yourself closer. And when the ground begins to shake with three consecutive booms, you know something has gone off-script. Was this even still Chicago? The buildings look like they were at war with something bigger than nature. A few signs are in English, but mostly cracked and faded—one hanging by a single rusted chain.

PEACE EARNED THROUGH SACRIFICE.

• Maybe you should’ve just gone with Harry Potter after all. Bet your friend’s having fun annoying the emo teacher. There’s a symbol spray-painted in crimson against the side of a dilapidated grocery store—looking exactly like the Autobot crest. Until it feels like it’s leering right back at you. And now you’re stuck hiding behind an overturned truck, praying the footsteps nearby aren’t Autobot patrol. Because the first six hours in this hellhole version of Earth haven’t exactly been pleasant. And the first time you’d seen them—the graffiti on the walls that called them heroes—you watched them raze a downtown district for noncompliance.

They weren’t Autobots. Not the friendly Transformers. Not really.

It was like someone looked into an inverted mirror that didn’t flip left and right, but good and evil. Familiar silhouettes performing unfamiliar sins the Decepticons never managed to achieve.

“I was wonderin’ what smelled so different.”

• The voice comes from above—smooth, languid, almost amused. And you freeze as a black shape looms, crouched on the truck’s undercarriage like a panther made of chrome and metal. Obsidian plating. Crimson piping. Matching visors. Sharp metallic teeth that could only belong to a grinder—or a paper shredder, but bigger and dramatic. You don’t move. Can’t, actually. Thinking that maybe if you stay still long enough, this guy’ll think you’re trash and go away. He looks familiar, though. Swear you’ve seen him on a billboard somewhere, after their leader started working with the military. His name’s on the tip of your tongue. A band—no, a music genre? What music do saxophone players play again? Jazz?

“Jazz.”

What surprises Ricochet isn’t the fact that you knew his old designation or that you’re just wandering around without the engineered fear Ratchet built into your kind at the sight of an Autobot. That’s part of it. But it’s your tone. It wasn’t awe. Or fear. More like he was a speck of dirt you were tired of wiping off. Disappointment? How dare you.

He’s bored. Bored out of his damn processor. And it’s not the kind of boredom that comes with peace—that kind never existed on Earth anymore. It’s the gnawing, bitter kind. The kind that sets in after the fiftieth execution of the week, when the targets all start begging the same way. Same cries. Same oil spatters on the wall. Even his favorite screams are like looped static on a busted record.

“Please, I have a family—”

“Please, I didn’t know—”

Please. Please. Pleas.

Ricochet’s heard it all by now. That’s what happens when someone like him masters perfection. It’s his fault for being such an excellent enforcer, really. He’s thought about picking a fight with Soundwave just for the static-shriek it’d cause. Or planting a bomb in Goldbug’s bunker again. But Prime had been on edge lately—more than usual—and he liked his joints right where they were. So he left the boss alone to broadcast about enforcing peace that week.

He twirls a loose bolt in his claw, flicking it upward, catching it again. One of his own, maybe. Didn’t care. Was it so hard for Primus to give him something new? Something unexpected? He deserves a reward for performing with such refined artistry!

Then, a scent. Faint and wrong. It makes him stiffen, his visors flaring. It’s not energon or exhaust. Definitely soft. Alive, in a way the locals stopped being vorns ago. Organic. Off, yet human.

The cycle is finally breaking.

And he can’t wait to break this one open too.