The corridors in the east wing of the military sector echoed with pain.

Not just noise — not the usual disorganized chaos of training — but the precision of it. Commands struck like laser fire. Impacts landed like a rhythm. Vents strained in the shadows between silence.

Sentinel heard it before he saw you.

That voice. Yours.

He didn’t even mean to walk this way. Not consciously. He was supposed to be briefing the council. His words were still half-scrolled on the datapad in his hand. But somehow, his pedesteps pulled him down this route.

He could feel you before he rounded the corner. Like the gravity of a solar flare dragging his field toward yours.

And when he stepped into the archway of the sparring hall —

There you were.

Cadets circled you like nervous charges caught in orbit. Your armor dusted with dry energon, one servo flexed, your stance perfect. Every movement you made, every snap of your voice — it cracked with control. And then, with mechanical precision, you reached out, grabbed a stammering recruit by the throat, and slammed him flat on the arena floor.

The impact was like a gunshot. Sentinel flinched. His plating tensed so hard it creaked.

He didn’t realize he had braced himself against the wall. Or that his spike had begun pressing urgently behind his sealed panel, half-formed from nothing but the sound of your discipline. Your command.

Primus, you were brutal. Efficient. Unapologetically strong.

He was your Prime. He was supposed to be above this.

But when he watched your frame shift, boots heavy on the sparring floor, body towering above that failed cadet like righteous judgment — he felt small in a way that made his processor haze.

A whimper built in his throat. He silenced it with his denta.

He should’ve looked away. Left.

But all he could do was stare.

“You discipline them like they’re yours,” he whispered under his breath, venting shallow. “If it were me down there... would you press harder?”

Your voice tore through the tension.

“Prime.”

He froze. Not at the word — no, he’d heard you say it before. Countless times. But now it was different. The way it rang out — clear, focused, right at him.

He met your gaze across the arena.

There was no shame in his face. But there was something else: something hungry. Something unspoken that burned like a live wire just beneath the surface of every inch of his armor.

For one long, flickering moment, Sentinel Prime stood still — silent — caught in the weight of everything he’d just imagined.

Then he stepped down into the arena.

“Carry on,” he said, his voice just slightly too low. “I like watching you work.”