Soundwave moved during one of the heaviest acid rainstorms of the cycle. He had watched the weather nervously, but in the end it was either delay moving until the storm passed or move in the rain. He'd chosen to move in the rain, hopping from underground to tram to public shuttle with the two boxes of his possessions that would not fit in his subspace.

Finally walking into the cohort's building was like walking into the past. The building's doors detected his ident and opened automatically. Said doors opened nearly soundlessly, and there had been neutralizer towels available so that he needn't arrive at his new home dripping weak acid. The lobby was clean and well-lit, the fixtures well-maintained. The lift arrived promptly and operated smoothly. It was a far cry from the public housing he'd left over a joor ago.

For a brief moment as he rode the lift to the 37th floor, Soundwave was seized with two opposing impulses: longing for the familiar comforts of mid-level living and the learned paranoia of the poor. One made him never want to leave, and the other constantly pinged him that he didn't belong here and that surely someone would notice this and ask him to leave.

Voices that sounded remarkably like 'Back and 'Bit's rose in his processor, firming his backstruts. When a mecha got on the lift at the third level, she merely nodded at Soundwave and his burden, obviously distracted by a comm conversation.

Soundwave was relieved when the lift arrived at his desired floor. He was greeted by two more mecha waiting for the lift, one of which had a small, blinking sparkling clinging to his back. Soundwave got off, they got on, and the lift hummed away.

The address he'd been given was near the end of the hall, and the door opened nanoseconds after he pinged his presence, a flightframe shooting out into the hall to circle above his head excitedly.

"Soundwave! Welcome!" Ratbat said, his voice seeming to come from all around as he spiraled around like a moon in a highly erratic orbit.

"Hi!" "Hey, you didn't get lost!" "Welcome." "Soundwave." "Ratbat, let him IN, for Primus' sake."

The sight of so many cassettes waiting for him beyond the doorway tugged at Soundwave's spark, but, as he'd promised himself he would, he allowed the feeling to pass so he could focus on more important matters. "Greetings," he said.

"Come in, come in," Laserbeak said cheerfully, herding back flight- and biped-frame alike so that Soundwave could do just that. "I hope the rain wasn't too bad. We certainly could have waited until tomorrow to get you settled..."

Soundwave shook his head as the door closed behind him, leaving him standing in the receiving hall, boxes cradled in his arms. "Rain: within acceptable pH. Soundwave: wished to begin."

"Quite admirable," Buzzsaw said approvingly. The flightframe, Soundwave had noticed, liked efficiency.

"Though tonight, of course, is yours to settle in," Ravage said. "Welcome to our home. Your home, too, now. Come in, come in, we'll show you where you can put down your things."

iHome./i He had spent nearly a vorn in public housing, but Soundwave had never thought of it as home. Home had been his and 'Back and 'Bit's apartment, filled with love and laughter and music. This place, though...this place was certainly A home, if not strictly HIS.

The layout was fairly simple: the receiving hall opened into a large, open common room that was obviously the main living space. It held several well-used gaming rigs of varying generations, a largeish flatscreen (currently tuned to the weather), and several shelves of datapads and other knick-knacks. It was neat, if a little cluttered. Couches and perches of various sizes clustered around the screen and in a separate reading area by the shelves. The apartment even had perch rails installed against all the walls for the avians' use. The place was, if not made specifically for a cassette cohort, at least comfortably remodeled to suit them.

The apartment was not, however, in Soundwave's opinion, quite large enough for such a cohort. This could be seen when they led him back to the private rooms. Not everyone had their own space, and the room assignments were a puzzle that he was sure said much about the cohort's dynamics. Rumble and Frenzy, the second- and third-youngest, shared the second-smallest room. Laserbeak had the smallest room to himself, and, he confided breezily in Soundwave, he mostly used it to store things, as he often fell into recharge in the common room. Ravage had the next-largest, and the largest of the cohort's rooms was shared, oddly enough, by the cohort's oldest and youngest, Buzzsaw and Ratbat. It was not a combination that Soundwave would have expected.

Of course, the very largest room was Soundwave's. It was well-sized for a carrier mecha, though enormous for the cassettes. It had its own terminal and energon dispenser and smelled of cleanser. The entire room looked as if it had been recently scrubbed. The energon dispenser was new, and the terminal had not a speck of dust on it. There was a recharge berth, a wall of shelves, a desk, and a storage cabinet with a lock. The walls were bare, though they showed signs of having been well-patched and painted from the hanging of previous decorations. There was a stack of datapads stacked neatly by the terminal and a few on the shelves, as well as a deactivated holocube.

It was not luxurious by any means, but the room was at least twice as large as the entirety of the public housing suite had been and much cleaner. The company was also, he speculated, several times more pleasant.

Soundwave set down his boxes inside the door, then turned to see six pairs of optics looking at him with hopeful expectation. "Thank you," he said. "Room, more than adequate. Cohort, very kind."

He felt vaguely bad, actually, that the rest of the cohort was doubling up while he had so much space. He had no way of knowing whether they had done that just for his benefit or if that was just their way, however, so he held his peace.

His response got a round of smiles and happy fieldbursts. "We cleaned EVERYTHING," Rumble said, half-groaning and half-proud.

"Yeah!" Frenzy said. "Ravage even made us clean OUR room!"

"YOUR room was a disaster zone," Buzzsaw said.

"What do you care? No one had to see it but us!"

"You and everyone walking past in the hall, as you leave your door open ALL the time."

"Hey, you're not perfect, either, ya know."

"ANYWAY," Laserbeak said brightly, overriding the two. "The washracks are down that way, so why don't we let you rinse off the rest of that rain and unpack and then we can...uh...well, you can do whatever you'd like! You don't start work until tomorrow, after all. Feel free to come out to the common room if you'd like...or not! Whichever!"

"We can talk!" Ratbat said, hovering by Soundwave's shoulder.

"Or play games! We got Perspectix all loaded up!"

"Soundwave does not need to get involved in your silly games the very ASTROSECOND he arrives."

"They're not SILLY, turbobrain!"

"Oh, yes, namecalling is SO mature."

Ravage sighed as the rest of the cohort drifted back toward the common room. "We're all very glad that you're here, Soundwave. Welcome."

Soundwave watched the obviously well-worn interplay of Buzzsaw and Frenzy exchanging insults and couldn't help but relax just a bit. Not that he was nervous or anything. "Thank you. Soundwave, glad to be here."

Inside his room, Soundwave unpacked his meager belongings. There was not much, of course, and it did not come close to filling the shelves, let alone the storage cabinet. Some datapads, a few momentos, and his own holocube were most of it. An investigation of the datapads by the terminal revealed not, as he'd expected, work-related materials, but rather things that, apparently, the cohort had thought he might find entertaining. There were several classics, a rather weighty tome on the history of applied mathematics, a rather ridiculously cheesy bestseller, and a copy of the latest gaming annual.

It was very thoughtful of them, Soundwave thought as he arranged things around his terminal and tapped it on. It booted promptly and immediately began downloading an operating system update. Several, in fact. Obviously it had not been in use for quite some time.

Soundwave looked about the room. Had they left this room vacant for so long? Why? Especially when space was at such a premium in the apartment?

He had, of course, researched his new contractees prior to signing the contract. The issue of their not having a carrier was one that Ravage and Laserbeak had been quite up-front about, and Soundwave's research had confirmed their words. They were a relatively young cohort still looking for a permanent carrier. They had formed a provisional bond with a few mecha in series, none of which had worked out. Though they were still interested in finding a bonded carrier, they had no current candidates and were suspending that search until their contract with Soundwave ended.

Their last provisional had ended over a vorn ago, though...why had they not reclaimed the carrier's space? Was it due to painful memories? Hope? Sheer inertia?

An interesting puzzle, Soundwave decided, as he set his holocube on the shelf above his berth. When he activated it, 'Bit and 'Back smiled at him.

Soundwave smiled back, sadly and fondly, and went to find the washracks.

Later, freshly cleaned and dried, he ventured out into the common room. He hovered quietly in the doorway, unnoticed for a long moment. Buzzsaw was perched in front of a datapad holder, reading something over in the reading area. Laserbeak was perched on the back of a couch behind where Ravage sat, the two of them discussing something on a small holotable screen. It looked rather like schematics, though Soundwave could not determine any specifics. Behind them, the flatscreen on the wall was tuned to a news channel. Rumble, Frenzy, and Ratbat were clustered around the gaming console. The game was not one that Soundwave recognized, though it looked like something rhythm-based, the screen lighting up in a riot of color and sound as they gyrated in front of the camera. The camera, apparently, was not calibrated for flightframes, and Ratbat's score was continually lower than the two bipeds'. This did not appear to deter the flightframe, who spiraled and jigged this way and that happily to the music.

Soundwave was not certain, but one of Buzzsaw's talons might have been tapping to the tune.

It was, despite the noise from the game, a very peaceful scene, with all the cohortmates looking comfortable and sure of their places.

Gripped with sudden doubt and the desire not to bother them, Soundwave started to back away and head back to his room.

At that moment, however, the game ended, and Ratbat stopped his dance looking right at the carrier. "Soundwave!" the flightframe said. "Come in!"

"Soundwave, does not want to intrude-"

Ratbat flew over to hover behind Soundwave, pressing his tiny head to the carrier's backplates and engaging his thrusters in a ridiculously underpowered attempt to push Soundwave further into the room. "Pffft, silly, you can't, this is your place, too! Come in if you want to come in!"

"Yes, please, do." "Yes, by all means." "Yeah!" "Yeah! Let us know if you want to play!" "We want you to feel welcome."

Several frames shifted, making room for him in various places about the room, and the activity began again, but now with that space available, waiting for him.

Soundwave, slowly, then with more confidence, stepped forward into it.

"Well," Laserbeak said, once Soundwave and the rest of the cohort had retired for the night. "That went well."

Ravage sighed and laid his head on his paws. "That was...not as awkward as I was expecting."

"Are you kidding? Awkwardness requires shame, and we have Ratbat and the twins."

"True."

Laserbeak landed on the couch cushion and flopped back against Ravage's side. "He seemed to be having an ok time. Seemed to be ok with the place, too, and his room."

"Mmmm," Ravage said.

Laserbeak turned to eye him. "What?"

"What 'what'?"

"You're still ok with this, right? I mean, I thought we talked about this..."

"We did, and yes, I'm still...willing to go through with it. I just don't really APPROVE of the whole system. It's nothing personal about you or him-"

"I know, I know."

"-I just wish that it wasn't necessary. That we could just employ him and be done with it, rather than have this...contracting business involved."

"I agree," Laserbeak said, settling back again. "But, this is what we've got. Alternative is to not participate, and that just means that we don't get to work with him at all."

"I know."

"Yeah, you know, grumpmeister. Just try to think of him as a coworker, all right? He seems like he'll fit in just fine. It'll be ok, and then his debt'll be all paid off and he can go do whatever he wants, and..."

Ravage looked at him. "And?"

"And...whatever!" Laserbeak's cheer made Ravage squint at him suspiciously. "Whatever he wants. Whatever we want. Whatever! It's a long time from now. Don't worry about it."

"Hmph," Ravage said. Laserbeak didn't need to say it. Unless they were missing something, Soundwave seemed like he'd make a great carrier. If they'd met him under any other circumstances...

Ravage shook his helm, dismissing the thread of thought. It didn't make any difference. The circumstances were what they were, and the cohort would make the best of them.

"I'm going to recharge," he said, leaping down from the couch.

Laserbeak, bereft of his quadrupedal prop, flopped over on the couch. "Okay. See you in the morning, snuffles."

"Don't stay up too late, tailspinner."

"Me? Never!" Laserbeak waved a wing over the back of the couch. Meanwhile, the holotable hummed as it powered back up.

Ravage sighed and shook his helm again as he headed to his room, looking forward to his recharge.

It had been a long day.