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Most viewed Red Alert as someone who didn’t smile, didn’t have fun, didn’t enjoy life overall. This was partially true, as his extreme paranoia did take a lot of enjoyment out of his life. However, being Director of Security, he saw a lot of things on the daily that were beyond funny.
Of course, there were MANY concerning happenings every day of their voyage: Swerve’s (often embarrassing and almost always untrue) rumors, Whirl’s pranks, Brainstorm’s newest “stroke of genius”, Rodimus’… Rodimusness, and so on. However, the bad didn’t ALWAYS outweigh the hilarious…and although no one would ever know, even though Red Alert saw everything, he didn’t always rat out his fellow crewmates.
For example, he saw when Swerve opened his bar, but he didn’t tell on him. He’d seen - multiple times - Rodimus and Drift racing on the lower decks, as well as some others, but he understood that speedsters needed to burn off their excess energy; therefore, unless they were posing a danger to others (and they usually weren’t; the lower decks were usually pretty empty and used mostly for storage), he didn’t tattle.
But those things weren’t exactly entertaining. A bit amusing, perhaps, but not really Red Alert’s idea of funny.
No, what Red Alert saw that was funny, was Brainstorm consistently thinking of new ways to attract the attention of his colleague - Perceptor - including but not limited to: Hanging upside down from the ceiling, constructing several microscopes that looked like miniatures of Perceptor’s alt mode, striding into the other scientist’s private workshop at any time he so desired, leaning over the other’s lab table to peer at what Perceptor was working on. Perceptor’s lack of patience and quick temper often created quite a scene when clashing with Brainstorm’s desperate need for attention to stroke his ego - specifically from his fellow engineer.
Funny was when Rodimus would shamelessly flirt with Ultra Magnus, the former being completely oblivious to it. Funny was when Trailcutter would sit on the ceiling in random corridors about the Lost Light, playing harmless pranks on his crewmates, like generating force fields for them to walk right into, or pretending to be a ghost. Funny was Skids hanging out in the vents, just reading a data pad or something, or lowering his grappling hook to snag something out of Swerve’s, the minibot being startled at the sudden disappearance of what was right next to him - and then for him to turn away and look back, all to find it right where he’d left it. Funny was watching events unfold that Swerve would be absolutely thrilled to find out about to submit to the Lost Light Insider.
Of course, so long as no one was getting hurt or causing real trouble, Red Alert would never tell.
His job was often boring and, at times, unsettling, but knowing that he could see what everyone was up to put his mind at ease, so he could sit back and enjoy the innocent fun of his crewmates. Although he wasn’t much of a people-person, the others on the ship would never quite grasp his silent presence in their day-to-day happenings, and he liked it that way.
Now, back to watching today’s episode of Tailgate persuading bots all around the ship to give him piggyback rides.