Telling Starr about Sides staying with them in the morning went just about as well as Ari assumed it would.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE IS SOMEONE YOU USED TO KNOW?! FROM THE CAGES?! YOU WANT HIM TO STAY WITH US?! HERE?! IN THIS HOUSE?!"

Ari cupped her hands to her ears in an attempt to protect her eardrums from the sheer volume of the woman's voice. "Can we talk about this without the screaming?"

Starr's next words were derisive but also lowered in volume. "Oh, yeah let's just have some tea and gossip about what the weather is like while we are at it. Ari, do you really know him? I don't mean to sound like a bigot but look at him. He looks like someone who could fuck a person up. And what about you?"

"What about me?" Ari could feel the baby hairs on the back of her neck raise in indignation.

"I mean it's not been a huge amount of time since you left the cages. Are you sure that seeing someone from your past like this isn't going to bring it all up again?" Her friend said softly, as if she was afraid that the comment would set her off again.

"I've got you and James to keep me from making dumb decisions, right? Listen, I know that this is dumb and stupid and I should know better. But can you trust that this feels like the right thing? If something goes wrong, I will fix it. That I'll keep you safe?" Starr looked at her best friend. The two had known each other for a long time, much longer than many friends. There was an emotion in the raven haired woman's eyes that had Starr thinking back to all the times Arianna had come to her house late at night in a halo of blood and tears. A simple sigh of defeat graced Starr's lips and forced her to submit to her friend's demand.

"Alright." She threw her hands up. "Alright. But the door to our room gets locked and I am buying a chain." She pointed at Ari. "You may 'know' this man but it has been years since you have seen him and people can change. I am not leaving it up to chance."

A soft little smile ran across Arianna's face. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Just make sure I don't regret doing this…" She was silent for a moment then looked back at the raven haired woman. "You know this is the first time I've heard of Sides. I know that you don't like to talk about it but I thought that if there was someone you knew back in the day that you would be willing to trust I would have known about it."

"It's not trust. We don't have that kind of relationship. It's just that you and James are the reason that I'm not in jail. You gave me a chance when everyone else would have considered me a lost cause. Shouldn't I do the same to give him a chance when he needs help?"

Starr was quiet for a while. Sides, so far, had been perfectly polite when she saw him this morning and had even talked good naturedly with her. Starr had just thought that Ari had hooked up with him last night and he had slept over. Wouldn't that have been the normal thing to have thought? It wasn't till Ari had told her that Sides would be renting the living room that Starr had been brought up short.

Ari explained with Sides sitting there quietly why he had to stay with them for a while and Starr had lost all sense of self for fear of her friend. She hadn't liked who Ari had become when she had started the Cage Fight scene. She had understood on some base level but the experience had been hard for the two girl's friendship. She didn't want to see that side of her again.

Arianna had been doing so well. This man could have put in jeopardy all that Ari had worked for, and pulled her back into that life. She knew that it was hard to leave once she started.

Starr had all but picked up the young man's stuff and thrown it out the door while yelling at him before Ari had interfered and told him to wait in the garage for her to talk to the raging brunette.

Said brunette looked into her friend's turbulent grey eyes before saying. "I don't trust him, Ari, but I trust you to know when you've bitten off too much. So look me in the eyes and tell me that you think this man really isn't going to be a lot of trouble."

"We talked yesterday and I promise no trouble."

Sideswipe's POV

Sides sat on the trunk of his alt mod. The yelling had died down and the house was now silent. Sides had thought that since the girl, Starr, had been fine with him this morning that she would be more inclined to allow him to stay. After all, femmes often allowed him niceties that few other mechs got. However, she exploded at the thought of someone like him staying in the house with them.

It made the kindness of Arianna's proposal that much more welcomed. He knew that the brown head femme was smart in not letting Sides near the two of them. After all, Arianna didn't really know him but the sentiment was less than ideal if he wanted to stay with his brother.

While he wanted to walk in there and tell the woman that he wouldn't hurt them, he knew that he would just be making the whole situation so much worse. So he sat and watched the klicks go by. He had counted 12 Klicks before Arianna had come out to him. She had a soft but tired smile on her face pla...no just face.

"Sorry about this morning, I didn't think that she would do that or I would have faced her wrath by myself." The woman just smiled sadly at the man. "She shouldn't have yelled at you like that and she'll apologize to you later."

Sideswipe didn't say anything and the two sat in silence as Arianna began pulling things out once again to do some more work on his brother. Sides was not a mech who enjoyed basking in the quiet. That was his twin's area so it wasn't long before the red mech couldn't help but break the tentative silence that had fallen over the two.

"You wanted to know about Cybertron right?"

Arianna's eyes flashed with interest and that made the mech pull out a boyish grin before delving into a mostly one sided conversation about life on Cybertron: what it had been, what it turned into, and the conversation flowed like that with Ari asking for clarification on certain things and Sides just telling her everything that came to mind.

Unknown POV

In a secret, undisclosed location (Under the Hoover Dam)

"Sir you have to see this." A man in a black suit uniform came running into the office. Seated inside was a puffy haired man looking at the door that had just been flung open. He immediately held his hand out for the laptop that the man was holding. Upon the screen was a video waiting to be played. It was a video of a junkyard, nothing really interesting until one of the seemingly totaled cars suddenly sprang up. The video had no sound but the man leant forward intently looking at the paused screen. It was only a few seconds of clip and the angle wasn't great but it was undeniable that it was an NBE.

"Get me a team down there. NOW! Move, move, move!" He bellowed, making the man skitter out of the room. The man leaned back over the video watching it replay. "Hello, NBE-2. We'll be acquainted soon. Real soon."