Chapter Text
good-old-times-and-drunk-sudden-photo
He liked his job.
He liked this damn mine.
He had a slot for two (ONLY TWO!!) mechs, and his slotmate wasn't that bad at all, and he had his own berth.
And there were doors. Real, honest to Primus, closing doors.
His shift was young, there weren't many mechs much older than his own ragging three vorns, frag, even his supervisor probably wasn't as big aft as the one on his first assignment. He hadn't had a chance to see surface, yet, but fragging Primus below, it was Nova Point. Nova fragging Point.
And of course, this heavenly existence couldn't last, because his slotmate got crushed in some stupid accident and guess who got the newest addition to the mine, the tunneler from the downsized, energy-efficient batch, widely known for their one track, cheerful as a bedrock personality, as his very own slot buddy? Impactor, that's who, because it turned out Driller was vindictive fragger who couldn't take a joke like a real mech.
It turned out the tunneler was really as cheerful as a basalt bedrock and calm and quiet in a way that put everyone on edge, because well, everyone knew what it's said about quiet ones and, seriously, nobody could be that calm and quiet and not to think about, like, turning into a sparkeater and, really, who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to downsize normal tunneler like a four times, and squish all that power into a calm and quiet mech who wasn't even a head taller than Impactor himself, and so give said mech all the means to sparkeat or collapse the damn mine when, not if, he decides calm and quiet aren't his thing after all.
On top of it all, and it really got on everybody nerves (because they were serious mechs and all, even when they weren't Impactor and they hadn't had to bear witness to the fact every time he was off shift), the damn fragger was shiny.
Shiny, like really, factory fresh shiny, and what the frag.
What the frag. Impactor met a tunneler from the same batch in his first mine, two vorns before this glorious transfer. The same plain, boring frame, the same fluorescent number on his chest, but D-10 was neither calm nor quiet. And older than Impactor. And definitely not shiny.
So, everyone, or at least Impactor, waited when the shiny block of granite will finally begin his sparkeating frenzy or maybe even start to respond to normal jokes, and lo and behold, he only had to wait till the end of the first tenthday.
Unfortunately, he didn't have a pleasure to see it, because he had to... deal with more important matters in one of the tunnels, and so didn't manage to get in time to the shift-end check-in. Sure, nobody died, only a bit of energon was spilled but uproar was worth waiting.
As Impactor was gleefully told later, the shiny glitch quietly and very calmly asked their supervisor what their percentage from the new vein they discovered was. When Driller didn't respond, obviously unable to process reality of a miner being THAT stupid, the glitch started to produce words and numbers, which probably made sense and meant there are some super extra wow shanix waiting for their brigade. Driller restarted himself in the middle of that grand speech and told his new sidekick, Fistsmasher, to get all close and personal with the shiny idiot. Who didn't shut up for surprisingly long time.
So, Impactor should not be surprised when he gets back to his slot and see somebody definitely not shiny in there. But, you know, shiny or not, the mech was kind of right, that was, you know, a fraggin big vein...
Impactor was cackling to himself all the way back to the slot level, maybe it wasn't sparkeating massacre, but somebody telling Driller, straight to his face and in front of witnesses that he owed money? Yeah, that was the level of cracked processors one could expect from fragging glitched experiments. Impactor smiled at his (HIS precious) door and pulled them to the side. The experiment, definitely less shiny, straightened from his hunched position on the berth, revealing scratched D-16 on his chest, and said from behind his hand, held to his evidently broken nose.
“We are being deceived.”
Impactor cackled again.
„What this time?” - Impactor said by the way of greeting when terribly dusty and scratched Megatron stumbled into their slot, hilariously careful with their tinfoil door despite his shaking hands. The Door, Impactor made sure to explain their importance in long and loud detail. Repeatedly.
„Squiker.”
„Squiker hit you?” - Impactor sat up and didn't even try to stop slag eating grin. - „That, you know, sloooow, ooold tunneler? How? Rusted on you?”
„Did you know he has to pay for his repairs?”
“Everybody has to, so what?”
“Driller sent him to unstable location!”
“You were in cave-in?”
“No.” - Megatron dropped on his berth like a dead weight, coughed when impact rattled something inside him, absently looked at his energon stained palm and licked it.
Impactor stared with kind of appalled disbelief, because he knew such behavior, he had seen it in a dead-end corners and the lowest slums where mechs knew true hunger and the price of every drop of energon was measured in lives. Megatron with his shiny (not anymore), modern frame, traces of education and general naive idiocy, had no right or reason to act like this.
Miners were low in the caste system, sure, but still quite far from that bottom, they had job, place to sleep and enough energon to function. Plus shanix, when they were lucky enough to meet their quota and have a whole tenthday without accidents or getting on overseers' nerves, or having to buy spare parts or equipment, or paying debts or... Well. The point was, they weren't starving. Sure, their tanks were rarely full, but they definitely didn't have to scavenge every spilled drop of energon.
Megatron caught up on what he was doing and Impactor staring. He reset his optics, twice, as if getting back to reality. And scowled.
“Squiker was in that cave-in, I helped to dig him out.” - his fist clenched - “It was a fragging accident not his fault! He should get compensation not punishment! Half his gear is not working, he lost an arm and Driller told Fistsmasher to beat him...”
“And you just couldn't shut up?” - Impactor rolled his optics, completely unmoved by this sob story. As if it was something exciting. Megatron jumped to his feet.
“This isn't right!” - he yelled - "We are not tools, some tiny, disposable cogs in the shanix making machine! This whole fragging system, manipulating, using, twisting, keeping us in the dark! THEY think we ARE dead things, cold-constructed slaves, a tool for the Regime and they only want more and more, and more. More productivity, more efficiency, more shanix...”
“Whoah” - Impactor sat straighter, this was a lot more serious than typical Megatron being upset over some perfectly normal thing. This was political. Even he knew political was BAD. Talk like that was worse than punch to supervisor’s face, and a sure way to get a mech in real trouble if those words reached wrong audios. - “you didn't say that to Driller, right?”
“Just called him a fragging debil. And then Squiker stopped me.” - Megatron visibly deflated.
“And...?”
“And?! He has no right to treat us like that! We are not drones, or sparkless trash!”
“Oh, fragging Primus below...”
“There's no reg or law that allows...”
“Shanix, Megs, they have shanix.”
“Really?! No maintenance, no parts, the cheapest trash for equipment, how much do you think it costs?!”
“Dunno, not much?”
“And” - Megatron's optics flared - "look at me. Why did they need anything like that? This size, sensors, engine?! What even am I?!" - he hit his chest, over barely visible number. Impactor blinked, tilted his head and decided he had enough.
"Well, kinda hard to tell front from the back," - he said critically - "nothing fancy really, but somebody obviously wanted experimental weirdo..."
"I'm not experimental." - Megatron sneered - "I'm cheap."
"..."
"Sure I am. Half of me is in the subspace, an engine on treads really, power source for the gear I am using! It's cheap, fast and it doesn't get tired, it has no demands, and unlike Squiker, it doesn't feel pain, and they only have to give me a third of Squiker's energon." - Megatron spread his hands -"Ten times as much for three times less! Profit! And that's THE problem!"
"...that's quite nice frame..."
"Impactor! THAT'S not the point! How much shanix, exactly, do you THINK we make in one tenthday?!" - Megatron's expression changed, there and gone, something looked through his optics, and it wasn't calm and quiet. - “Enough to pay everybody in this mine maximum wage for a halfvorn at least!”
“... ya kidding me...”
“Look.” - Megatron pulled something from his subspace and...
“YOU HAVE A DATAPAD AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME!!?”
Megatron took a long, long swig from the engex bottle. Impactor watched, torn between worry for his buddy and rapidly dropping engex level.
“Squiker's dead.” - Megatron announced and handed him back the bottle.
“Aw frag, ya gonna work double?”
“Yes...No! The mech is dead!”
“Rest in pieces old fragger.” - Impactor saluted with the bottle because it looked like Megatron expected some reaction, so probably there were some proper reactions in situations like this. Megatron groaned, tried to stand up and promptly got tangled in Impactor's legs because they were sitting on their berths and there was only enough space for one set of feet on the floor and it always took a bit of planning to move around.
“He wasn't even that old but they said his parts were too expensive and he wasn't productive any more and I can't stop thinking it's my fault!” - he spat after they managed to sort their limbs out - “I know it's not, but I can make more for less, when my cutting head breaks they don't have to put me in the medbay they just switch that fragging thing on the spot, no breaks necessary, and they only think about profit!”
“G'd for ya...?” - Impactor mumbled and took a sip of engex, completely at peace with the topic and Megatron's agitation over it. After nearly four vorns in the mines it was totally normal, day to day thing, a part of conversation really “Hey 'pactor there's new hot stuff at Trasher's place, good engex too, and Hauler hit the dirt ya'ain't getting that shanix back...”. Big deal. Mechs died. All the fragging time. Megatron deflated, grabbed the bottle and finished it with two big gulps. And pulled another from his subspace. And that was actually really interesting, because, you know: more engex, and even more: how this whiny glitch managed to get it...
“He was forged, you knew?”
“Squiker was forged?”
“And his name was Roadbreaker. He was 667 vorns old, the second generation of this mine.”
“How did...” - Impactor sat up straighter, gleefully curious - “that's where you were sneaking out on your off shifts?" - Now that was really interesting. - “Megs, you clanged Squiker?”
“WHAT!?”
“Come on Megs, det...”
“I TALKED with him you fragging glitch! He was a tunneler, old tunneler who made this fragging mine and he knew everything about it! And they scrapped him because they got some cheap, disposable replacement, like me, just like they will scrap ME when they will finally get their purple with our energon claws on fully automatic mining machines!”
“Oh shut it, that will never happen. You can't mine energon without getting all close and personal with it” - Impactor snatched the bottle before it got crushed or worse, flung against the wall, as it already had happened once or twice.
“Sure, and you can't make a tunneler in the size of normal mech.”- Megatron snatched it back and finally started to act like a normal mech, promptly drowning sad reality in engex.
„Why” - bang, bang - „why... why...”
BANG.
Impactor pounded his moronic friend's backs, the traditional, foolproof way to fix basically everything, while Megatron clutched the wall, jerking and straining with vents on his abdomen and sides fully open and producing the most awful mix of coughs and wheezes ever.
“WHY couldn't ya just tell him to go frag himself like ya always DO?” - words were followed by a sparkfelt BANG, something inside Megatron went CRUNCH and a cloud of dust and yellowish gas exploded from his vents. Impactor jumped back waving his hands, trying to avoid inhaling any of that stuff, Megatron wheezed and sagged, relief clear in every line of his body.
“Wo... khhk...rth... it.” - it was barely more than a static rasp, but grey shoulders shuddered with laughter. Or beginning of seizures. Impactor groaned and just hit him again, because what else could he do with this fragging glitch who obviously thought that digging straight through a gas pocket was the best way to win an argument with Driller.
Notably it was a small, not explosive pocket, but Driller had to be taken to medbay and Megatron, after getting beaten to near scrap, yelled at and having his shanix cut for whole twenty tenthdays, triumphantly dragged himself all the way up from tunneling levels, wheezing and coughing toxic fumes and rasping like a trash grinder infected by scraplets, and trading high-fives when he wasn't too busy dying.
Impactor found him slumped against the wall near their slot, and well, the banging session followed, widely witnessed and cheered at by half of their shift because rumor mill was defying laws of physics, reason and stumbling, rasping mechs, and everybody just loved Driller that much.
Besides, Megatron's stunts with spitting laws and other smart words into various overseers faces, no frag given how high and mighty they were, gained him an ever-growing peanut gallery gleefully waiting for a show. And distraction, do not forget distraction those stunts and following shows provided, which allowed serious mechs to get their serious businesses done sooo much easier, straight under supervisors distracted noses. And last but not least the sounds he just managed to produce, chocking on gas and debris, were so gross and hilarious and Impactor would be as appallingly amused as everybody else if he wasn't so. Fragging. MAD.
“Gonna sparkbond that wall?”
“...'s... g'd wall... ada..khh... adamellite...”
Impactor's facepalm literally echoed in the corridor. The fan club cheered with glee.
Megatron twitched and very slowly pulled his fingers from deep gouges he made in the stone and with sudden lurch managed to turn. His vents stuttered again, producing small cloud of smoke and energon mist. Impactor took another step back and someone from the amused peanut gallery whistled with appreciation at the sight of lumpy, a bit smoking mess caked to his front vents.
“Ugh, wow ...”
“Megs?”
“Wo... khhth... it..” Megatron repeated and finally raised his head and Impactor promptly stopped being mad. After nearly a vorn he was familiar with that glazed look and blank expression. Picking on Megatron usually was like a poking a lone, half-dead scraplet: no fun at all. But those rare moments, like this one, were a reminder why nobody should poke any lone, half-dead scraplets, even they were capable of last, explosive berserk rage and it never ended well for anyone involved.
“Wash racks.” - Impactor said loudly - “ya ain't touching my door.”
Megatron rasped a laugh and that something that looked like energon crystals on a brink of explosion disappeared from his optics.