One moment everything was silent.

Then there was noise.

The collapse of buildings produced a resonating shudder, boom, thud, that chilled even the most resilient to their very core. The shrieking of bombing Seekers tore into audials and pierced sparks with talons of despair and terror.

A great cacophony of screaming began.

The bots standing in the street were extinguished near immediately, reports later confirmed.

The night sky was lit with hues of crimson and gold as explosions filled the world as they knew it.

Spark-wrenching howling filled the city as some ducked for cover and others called out with dying breaths. Crystalline buildings screeched as they fell on others, then they screamed too.

Horrified cries took up when some, then all, realized what was happening to their city. To their Gardens. To them.

Other, more piercing wails ratcheted up too, when bonds shattered or when the boom, shrrk, thud collapse of the Sparkling and Youngling Center reached them.

The bombs kept coming, just as the Seekers kept coming, just as the noise kept coming.

Then it stopped. Those who remained froze and prayed and cried.

Until the shooting started.

The ones with red optics, the glaring and malevolent insignia drove in, manic with homicidal glee, and systematically – or was it chaotically? – annihilate the survivors. Not murder, but humiliate. Once the survivors grasped that some screams were beheadings and yet others de-wingings, an eerie silence settled amongst the ruins. The survivors hid and prayed and cried, silently.

Of course there was the occasional sound as someone was found and executed. There were many of them left after the Seekers finished. The ground-based intruders took no time to complete their task, roaring with sadistic pleasure when they uncovered a survivor.

So slowly, gradually, the sounds ceased completely. Footsteps walked away, voices drifted off, and no one was left to pray or to cry.

Except for one. He was scrawny, scruffy, nothing special, and all alone. Bashful, sometimes. Standard model, doorwings and chevron. Mostly grey.

Two things were important now: silence and this spot. Being quiet meant he would survive longer – that's what the mech said when he shoved him into this spot, at least. But to survive, to live longer… meant listening to the silence and gawking at the greying face of that same mech.

And in the silence, he could see. Beyond that were twenty more, and beyond that, a hundred. A thousand. A million. So wasn't he staring at all of their quiet, dying, dead faces, in some twisted way?

Was he it? The last? Did the ones with red optics hurt every other city too? Was he the last?

The mechling curled up and wished that he, too, could join the world's slumber.

"Bluestreak?" A sharp voice cut through the fog, though the tone was soothing. The startled mech glanced up and beamed, wings flicking.

"Prowl! Wow, thanks, I needed that you don't even know! So what are you in the rec room for, huh? Oh, you've got a cube in your hand, silly me. Sorry! Ha!" The laugh sounded forced and his voice harried, even to him. "Did Ratchet make you come down here? He's been surlier than usual - I don't know if you noticed. I did when I went in to have me shoulder calibrated and -" Prowl let him ramble as he sat next quietly beside Bluestreak, knowing he needed the sound.

Because after Praxus, you see, Bluestreak never could decide if it was the noise or silence he feared most.