Disclaimer: I own nought but Ashcast, Cinerator and Scanbar. And, admittedly, this fic, which was written for the Autobot City forum writing contest. Yay, contests!

Anyone who knows Armada but doesn't know Nightscream, it's because he didn't show up in the cartoon, and wouldn't have had any fun if he did anyway.

Late Night Worker

It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Nightscream drummed his fingers on the desk, just to hear the sound. For a moment the small noise was reassuring; then it died away into the silence and left him alone again.

Discouraged more than relieved, he leaned back in his seat, straining to pick up something, anything, any kind of message via the datatap trailing from his arm to the communications console. It wasn't necessary, of course, but it let him respond to callers faster – and more importantly, it made for a much better distraction from the silence around him.

He really hated the silence. It unnerved him. Especially here…

Someone had to call sometime, right? Well, of course they did, but he wished they'd hurry up about it.

Then he wondered if he should feel guilty for that.

Maybe, he decided, and wished for a call anyway.

Besides, it didn't have to mean that someone was…

Of course, that was the only reason anybody ever called.

Well, maybe they might pick the wrong channel by accident. It could happen.

They'd be kicking themselves afterwards, though.

Nightscream felt the comlink open before the person on the other end spoke. "Hello?" he greeted immediately, and too loudly. "Can I help you?"

For a second, the link was too quiet, although the straining Nightscream thought he heard a faint 'owww…' from the other end. Then, to his delight, he got an answer of sorts.

"Fraggit, Nightscream, do you have to yell like that? You'll wake the dead. That'd be the last thing we need." The leader of the Emergency Team sounded tetchy, but since there was only one reason he'd be calling, it was understandable.

"I didn't notice," replied Nightscream honestly. He was speaking aloud, too, and that was even more unnecessary. The more noise, the better, as far as he was concerned. "Things are kinda quiet around here."

"That's always good to hear from a mortuary worker," said Firebot, though his tone was grim. "It's about to get a bit busier. We've one for you down at the power plant. Name of Ashcast."

"I'm sorry," said Nightscream, a trifle insincerely. He knew from experience how much the Emergency Team hated deaths – not that that was surprising, of course.

Firebot grunted. "We can send someone up to you, if Cinerator's out."

"No, she's just coming in," Nightscream said, noticing a light flash on above the console; a moment later a low buzzer sounded. The mortuary being soundproofed, its workers needed some way of knowing when people had arrived. "I'll tell her."

"Thanks." The link shut off abruptly.

Nightscream was left alone but for the sound of his co-worker entering the main workroom. The only reason he could hear it was because he kept the office door wedged open with a block of scrap metal, something he technically wasn't supposed to do, or at least not when Cinerator might have caught him.

So that she wouldn't have time to notice the open door, he leapt off his chair and opened it all the way, kicking the block behind him as he went through; he heard as it skidded under his desk.

Cinerator was there, unloading a corpse from the back of her vehicle mode: she remote-activated the forcefield that was to hold the dead shell, then offloaded the corpse itself. Nightscream grabbed a toolkit and went over as the Autobot hearse transformed.

"Accident?" he asked quietly, a soft whisper in the silence. For a long time accidental death had been effectively the only kind on a colony so small it only needed one power plant. Recently that had started to change, enough that the question was worth asking.

Cinerator nodded, apparently feeling no need to say anything. From respect and ruling, the mortuary workers spoke seldom and softly; Nightscream had learned this on his first day, along with 'don't anger the scary boss'.

"There's another to be collected at the power plant," he told her. "Called 'Ashcast'."

The black Autobot nodded and left, trusting him to work unsupervised. Not all of Nightscream's superiors had had such faith. She was better than some, he had to admit, even if she wasn't great company. Besides, the pay here was better than he could get elsewhere, which was why he stayed, despite the silence.

Nightscream picked up a spare datapad – there were always a few left out on the counter by the office. He pulled a stepladder over to the holding field with his free hand, then hopped up to corpse height. He couldn't get a proper identification until he had a full scan of the dead one, and a medic to confirm cause of death and so on, but he could take some notes on what would need doing once the death was registered. The corpse would have to be cleaned, and the worst damage repaired, before any friends came around to confirm who it was.

Besides, any activity was better than none. The deathly stillness was worse than just the silence. Nightscream tried to ignore it for the money and not getting on the wrong side of Cinerator, but it wore him down after a while. He'd already been there for a few hours. At least he had the consolation of knowing that he'd have to go soon enough. Corpses were very good at waiting for the morning.

Done with note taking, he went back into the office and started going through the forms. Every death had to be registered, and putting in the vast amounts of information required was by far the longest part of the job. It was just as well deaths were so uncommon, or the mortuary's tiny complement of staff would never have been able to cope.

Nightscream pulled up a new form and looked through it. Let's see… date… cause I can't do… oh, here we go…

He was halfway through listing his own details – by law every technician and attendant involved in handling a body had to be listed – when the buzzer sounded. Nightscream looked up from the screen just as outside the door into the waiting room opened and somebody called out, "Hello-o!"

The attendant jumped off his seat and headed into the workroom. Scanbar, the mortuary's medic, smiled down at him cheerfully. "Hey, Nightscream. What's it today, just this one?" He waved a hand at the active force field and its occupant.

"Nah, there's another one on the way," replied the Minicon loudly, emboldened by his co-worker's audacity – and Cinerator's absence. He looked forward to Scanbar's haphazard appearances; the medic was only needed at the mortuary when they had a new body to sort out, and consequently there were regularly days when he didn't come into work at all. This suited Scanbar fine: he cheerfully described himself as 'an idler of the first order'. Firebot called him 'workshy'; Cinerator said nothing about him, and simply called him when he was wanted.

"Right-o." Scanbar walked over to get a look at his first subject. "This one won't take too long."

"No, but I dunno what the other one's like. Could be some huge shuttlecraft who died of about sixteen different things and'll keep you busy here for the rest of the day." Nightscream wandered after the Autobot. "You want some help with that?"

Scanbar stopped adjusting the force field settings, and grinned down understandingly at the black Minicon. "Well, it looks like it'll just be a standard scan job, but you never can tell, after all. You'd better stick around just in case this one turns out to have a UFO stuck in his fuel line and I need you to pass a scalpel."

Nightscream nodded and mounted the stepladder so he could watch. "Can't argue with the medic's orders."

"Then how come Makeshift was so ticked with you last week?"

"Long story."

"Really? I just heard you overloaded your audios at a party, and then ignored Makeshift's instructions to 'get some peace and quiet for a while' after he fixed them." The medic transformed into a medical scanning unit and got to work, sensor bars running back and forth over the dead shell.

"Yeah, well, peace 'n quiet don't suit me." Nightscream shrugged. Scanbar was pretty good company, even if the Minicon was increasingly amazed that he'd made it through medical training. He'd managed somehow, though, and once his scans and report confirmed the cause and time of death, Nightscream could get on and deal with the corpse itself. Until then, all he had to do was hang around and chat. And pass the tools if something odd (like an Unidentified Foreign Object) turned up in the corpse of the day.

"Then why in the name of all things sensible are you working in a mortuary, dimwad? Peace and quiet is what we're about!"

"I'm being paid to." Not enough, but was it ever?

"What a coincidence: so am I."

"Like you ever do any work."

"And what do you call this?"

"Sitting on the floor in your alt-mode looking at a dead guy's internals.

"And that," said the scanning unit cheerfully, "is my job."

Cinerator arrived back just as Scanbar finished his scans and transformed. "Heya, Cinny. I hear you've got another one for me," he grinned, inappropriately cheerful, although he kept his voice down now that the older Autobot had arrived.

She stared at him, expressionless as always. "I do," she said in a low voice, walking forward. Nightscream glanced at what she was holding; immediately, he leapt off the stepladder and ran to activate a much smaller force field.

Scanbar joined them around it as Cinerator gently laid down the Minicon corpse. "Well, this one won't take half as long," he observed, taking a datapad from a slot on his side and passing it to the senior technician. "The scans from the other one," he explained.

Cinerator gave him a look, clearly thinking he was stating the obvious. He shrugged and looked sheepish for a moment. The mortuary technician stared, then nodded curtly, turned and walked into the office; presumably she was going to check the scan results against the database and find out who the dead Autobot had been.

"You'll have to clean this guy fast when I'm done with him," said Scanbar while Nightscream was still deciding what to do.

"How come?"

"Because there're nowhere near as many Minicons as there are Autobots on this planet, even if the Minicon community here is one of the largest," explained the scanning unit. "So it'll take two seconds to identify him-"

"Firebot told me the name. Ashcast," Nightscream added.

"Oh." Scanbar paused. "Wasn't she the engineer overseeing the repairs at the… oh. Ow. So it'll take Cinerator three seconds to contact his friends- wait, did you say Firebot? Scrap; Makeshift'll have gone to tell them. You'd better have those tools out already."

"I got 'em out while you were gabbing. OK if I start on this one?" Nightscream jerked his head towards the larger corpse.

"Work away. But as I was saying, Minicons always turn up sharpish, and you'd just better hope that she wasn't in a team… Actually, scratch what I said before that: I'm done."

Scanbar transformed and immediately turned around to stare at the Minicon. "What're you doing over there, you twat? I told you: I'm done."

Nightscream blew static at him: the medic pulled a face and went into the office.

Was it his imagination, or was Scanbar nervous about the dead Minicon? Or was it the thought of something else? Nightscream shrugged to himself, and got to work on cleaning the engineer's shell. It wasn't difficult: there wasn't much dirt or dust and whatever had killed her hadn't done any external damage: at least, none that was visible.

His audios gratefully latched onto the sound of humming from inside the office; Scanbar was apparently redoubling his efforts to annoy his boss. He didn't think to wonder why the door was open for him to hear it, so it never occurred to him that the medic might be responsible.

It wasn't particularly tuneful, the humming. It sounded like the person responsible had as laid-back an attitude to music as to medical training, which was likely true…

Nightscream shook himself and tried to focus on his work. Joints were always the trickiest bit. The force field helped, always, enabling him to turn the shell easily to get at any angle, though there were limits.

His attention kept wandering back to the noise from the office; he scrubbed harder, so as to make more noise with the tools instead. He had been told to hurry.

There wasn't much to do, anyway: with no repairs to the shell and little to clean, the only other thing might be touch-ups to paint or trim, and they were matters for after discussion with friends of the deceased, which was a matter for Cinerator.

If Ashcast had been in a team, it was even more reason for Nightscream not to envy his boss's job.

A few minutes later he was sliding a capsule under the force field and lower the shell in; then he pressed a button on the capsule to slide the mirrored lid closed and deactivated the force field.

He heard footsteps behind him, and turned. Cinerator looked down at him impassively.

"You can go for today," she said quietly, then stepped past him. Nightscream turned to see the black Autobot crouch down and pick up the capsule, taking it into the viewing room.

"Guess they're on their way," he said to himself.

"So will you be, in a minute, you lucky wingnut." Scanbar was leaning against the office doorway when Nightscream turned. "At least, I assume you were talking to me, although you might not, in which case I apologise for interrupting you and yourself. Unless, of course, you were talking to him." The medic waved a hand at the dead Autobot. "All three were considered signs of madness back when I was in medical training," he went on lightly, "but they might have updated the rules since. I didn't really pay attention in psychology. Guess I didn't need it where I was going." He smiled, though he looked a bit unsteady. He was probably woozy from all the work, Nightscream reasoned. He wasn't used to it, after all.

"You do work with two living people," he pointed out, sniggering a bit at the Autobot's condition. "What's up with you? Can't cope with a bit of slog-work?"

"A bit? Have you seen the size of those forms?"

Nightscream snorted and headed for the door that led to the waiting room and out - then stopped for a second. "Have fun," he said teasingly. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'm afraid you might," said Scanbar regretfully as the door slid closed behind the Minicon. With a mournful look over his shoulder at the forms still waiting to be completed, he wrenched himself around and staggered back into the office.

Work, thought the 'medic'. What was the point?

Nightscream emerged from the mortuary and stopped for a moment. It was night, and only one or two people were passing through this street, already on their way to somewhere else.

The air out here was fresh and fast-blowing – not as cool, but a pleasantly far cry from the dead atmosphere inside. He whistled in quiet relief, a sharp grin of pleasure flaring in his aura and optics; then the black Minicon transformed to his car mode.

His engine's characteristic whine was audible before his wheels hit the ground, droning an obscure tribute to whichever of his designers had gifted him with such a quirk.

"NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

He let out a wild yell and charged forward, accelerating with a high scream of his engine that scattered the few remaining passers-by. Hey, he had places to go. Everyone else could just keep out of his way.

There were much livelier parts of town, and he had time to spare before he was due back at work. Nightscream sniggered to himself, speeding his way through darkened streets and slowly increasing traffic with the practiced ease of a night commuter. What was one Autobot's bashed leg worth compared to his time?

What the frag, he thought, and went faster. It was his life. He'd make the most of it while he could.

He sped onward, to noise, lights, and as wild a night as he could possibly make it.

Note: The title has nothing to do with any inspiration on my part and everything to do with Scanbar's sense of humour. (If that's what you want to call it.) Mortuary workers are a dodgy bunch: never let them into a fic.