Work Text:
B-127 sparked with words falling out of his voice box. The world was such a beautiful place! Had anyone noticed? Did anyone else see how Primus totally twitched and the sidewalk jumped there? Isn't this bolt just the perfect shape? Don't the city lights create such a nice rainbow from here? He had to know. More than that, he had to know that everyone else knew, too.
Most bots thought he was just really friendly. Harmless, if a bit annoying. Yeah, well, all it takes is one transformer to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to change things. Waste management wasn't so bad with friends, right? And when that transformer had a crushed holopad in one servo and a snarl on their lip plates, then maybe, he'd thought, they could do with some day-brightening!
He'd slid up to their side with a waste bin at the ready and started a joke.
You ready for it? It's a good one.
Why doesn't Sentinel Prime ever get scared?
That snarl twisted sharper and green optics narrowed down at him.
Because he's got nerves of steel!
B-127 ended that shift at sub level 10. Which. Okay. Whatever. That's fine. Waste management isn't so bad with friends! He just had to make some new ones. It didn't help that all the mechs and femmes at sub level 10 looked like they left their sparks in their berth when they onlined for the shift. Their optics dimmed and struts hanging loose in their joints. But! Okay! Whatever! That's fine! B-127 doesn't run from a challenge!
Why did the doc bot go on a diet?
What do you call a big group of musical femmes?
How do you impress your conjunx?
What's a miners favourite tool?
What did the racer say when she lost two wheels on the track?
Sub level 20 was nice. In a very quiet, depressing way. Bots stopped responding to his questions at all, or even really speaking to one another. Everyone just shuffling along.
Sub level 30 and 40 were nearly identical save for how many bots were there. They just kept dwindling. Getting colder and smaller with each drop deeper into Cybertron. Less and less ready to hear a joke.
Funnily enough, it was "good morning," that got him sent to sub level 50. Not a joke.
He can remember exactly what Y-832 said right before his tier got knocked for the final time. "Sweet Primus! Why can't we just throw you out with the rest of the junk?"
Staring at the endless stream of old parts and trash rolling past now, B-127 is pretty sure that's exactly what happened. Most bots don't even know the sub levels go to 50. Most bots think that they end right at 40. Most bots know how to do their job. They don't try to do anything unnecessary.
B-127 didn't have a real shift manager anymore, or a barracks. He got a temp-berth to recharge and an energon chute and sometimes he'd get a comm about his productivity levels. Supposedly, if they ever got high enough, upper management would consider reopening his public indecency case and granting him access back to sub level 40. He wasn't...really sure how to do that though? His job was to watch the line of trash roll into the incinerator to be recycled for anything valuable. He wasn't sure how to watch harder.
He tried for a while! Keeping detailed logs of everything that came down and submitting super long reports to the comm signal that he was allowed to communicate with.
Waste Report #1CY34CH58-9, Acting Technician B-127
Plate - Zircon - 5836
Plate - Steel - 21910
Plate - Iron - 875
Plate - PF - 182900
Wire - Copper - 21182
Wire - Gold - 97
Wire - Silver - 6789
Complex Chunks - 46
Simple Chunks - 857783930
Glass by Weight - 5638
Energon Scrap - 90297
And he's pretty sure that got his performance rating to go up by one or two percent! He even started breaking down the big chunks of scrap to make them more manageable for the incinerator! Which was hard, but, someone had to do it! So, he kept doing the reports.
Waste Report #68CY35CH10-0, Acting Technician B-127
And doing them.
Waste Report #502CY37CH24-1, Acting Technician B-127
And at a certain point, he started wondering if he could just start...lying is maybe a bit harsh, but, exaggerating? Maybe if upper management saw how much stuff he was watching each cycle they would bump his performance! So, he started fluffing up each number to be double what it was. Then triple. Then quintuple. Then ten times just to see what would happen.
Waste Report #8744CY39CH63-0, Acting Technician B-127
His progress report stayed the same. It didn't even get dinged when he zeroed out his report. Or wrote in it, or changed his designation.
Waste Report #6574390CY50CH09-4, Acting Technician B
Plate - Zircon - Why did the mech cross the medic flyway?
Plate - Steel - To get to the other wing!
Plate - Iron - Why didn't the garbage chute eat the sparkling?
Plate - PF - Because he tasted funny!
Wire - Copper - Does anyone read these? At all?
Wire - Gold - Or are you just screening them!
Wire - Silver - Why did you put me down here?
Complex Chunks - Why did you put me down here?
Simple Chunks - Why did you put me down here?
Glass by Weight - Why did you put me down here?
Energon Scrap - Orange you glad I didn't ask it again?
No response.
He didn't turn one in once and his productivity went down sharply. So, they didn't really care what was in the reports, just that he was making them. Proving that he was doing something down there. The only way to be bad at watching trash was probably not watching it in the first place so...he guessed that made sense.
B-127 didn't know what to do if he wasn't counting. His higher level systems had gotten used to the monotony of it. Without really thinking about it one chord he grabbed a piece of scrap off the line and pretended it could fly.
'Cause maybe it wasn't a warped strip of plating, maybe it was a transformer with a flyer alt-mode named Badassatron who could get out of any danger! Nobody could trap Badassatron, he was too strong and too fast and had epic knife hands that could cut through anything! B-127 created nasty mechs and aliens for Badassatron to fight. He made all the sound effects for their battles and even made some voices for them. He passed the cycles like this, letting his voice box fill up the space and drown out the warping gargles of the incinerator.
And that was fine for a while! Kept his processor stimulated and his memory from eating itself trying to capture all the nothing going on around him.
But around Waste Report#87772112CY60CH58-9 he had to start replaying his memories to remind himself what other bots looked like. He started playing memories on top of his visual feed and pretending the old conversations were still happening.
He tried out telling different jokes and he was always guaranteed a laugh from his audience! Even when the jokes weren't that good.
B-127 replayed those memories so often that by Waste Report#90000000CY62CH10-0 the code had started to corrupt. It made his memory-friends jerk and jolt, freeze in place or skip to a different memory entirely. It was the kind of thing that basic maintenance could fix but he didn't exactly have a doc bot to visit down here. Y'know, unless he wanted to visit doctor incinerator in the corner. Which was-
...
And anyway, he knew that this memory thing wouldn't last forever—he'd get out someday!—so he stole some extra trash off the conveyor and built himself some real friends.
EP-508 was the first one he built and he tried to make her as real as possible. B-127 decided she worked in the mines as a shift lead and got sent down to sub level 50 because some bots died on her watch. He decided she was tormented by guilt and liked to just stare at the incinerator sometimes, thinking about what it would be like to wander into it. He would have to talk her down, and that was always hard, but she was thankful for it in the end.
But he couldn't do it alone! So he made her a friend, too. A-A-tron, the optimistic, level-headed mech with a gnarly sense of humour and an easy smile. A-A-tron laughed a lot and laughed the loudest at B-127's jokes. Which was very nice of him. B-127 decided that A-A-tron had a crush on EP-508 and was working up the gears to confess.
He made sure to dim the lights and give the two of them privacy one day when the trash line was slow and the incinerator was burning 0.002* cooler than normal. B-127 kept his audials dialled all the way up to try and overhear their conversation. Unfortunately, they were really good at timing their whispers with the belches of the incinerator.
He knew they weren't real. Because they weren't. Because he made them.
...
Except...well, maybe he was just seeing the reflection of the fire in their optics and against their chassis but he swore he saw them spark. Maybe. Maybe. But definitely not, because they weren't real.
EP-508 and A-A-tron eventually announced that they had decided to become conjunx. He threw them the biggest party he could with recycled lights hanging from the ceiling and his ration split three ways.
The happy couple let him eat their portions (because they were very nice, and also not real, probably) and they even decided to leave the decorations up. It made their break room/recharge room/closet feel more cozy.
Last was Steve. B-127 knew that bots who got designations with actual words were the kinds of bots who sparked a little brighter than the rest. They were supposed to have big, flashy personalities that commanded attention. Steve, though, was pretty quiet. He liked to keep to himself, just thinking.
Right after B-127 submitted report #936212520CY67CH73-1 he paused, one servo trailing through the trash on the line.
I believe I have finally landed on something. Steve didn't say.
"Oh, yeah?" B-127 prompted.
Well, don't leave us hanging, buddy! A-A-tron didn't say.
I've been considering our situation. Steve didn't continue. And I believe there are exactly two ways out of here. Through the chute, or through the maw.
"Uh, and being promoted?"
EP-508 didn't shake her head and sigh. Face it, B, all of Cybertron has forgotten us down here. Nobody's watching for the moment any of us earn a promotion.
B-127 frowned, opening his mouth but then A-A-tron wasn't leaning forward to grip EP-508's pauldron and pulling her back. EP, we've talked about this...not in front of B.
"Not in front of B?" He says and it echoes too loudly off the walls. He dulls his audials and slices into a large hunk of garbage to distract himself. "What's that supposed to mean?"
EP-508 and A-A-tron didn't avoid his optics so Steve didn't pick up their slack in the conversation. They don't want you to turn out like them. You're so young, B. Your optimism keeps us going, though we hate how much of a burden that places on your shoulders. But you should face the truth all the same.
Well, that was silly, he couldn't ever turn out like his friends because B-127 was real! He doesn't like saying that to his friends, though. The reminder always makes their joints stiffen and optics dim back to cloudy glass shards and cracked bulbs. His servos tightened on the lip of the conveyor. "Fine, let's say you're right, Steve. There's still hope, isn't there? I could just climb up the chute and be home free!"
The silence greeted him warmly, and he hated it.
He climbed up on to the conveyor belt and jogged to the chute right then. To prove a point. Some scrap rained down on his helm but he ignored it. He swung himself up into the tunnel and pushed hard with his pedes to keep from falling back down. The garbage pelted him every so often but he was making progress, he was making it! He was-!
B-127 slipped.
He fell so hard he almost didn't blink his systems back into focus before he passed into the incinerator's grinning jaws. He flailed, limbs tangling, wires pulling painfully as they snagged on his plating. He jerked into a heap on the floor. His ex-vents were loud. So, so loud. And he couldn't feel his cooling fans working, even though he knew they had to be. His internal temperatures were still in the green so he was-
...
And anyway the ceiling was-
...
His chassis was scratched pretty hard but the thought of-
...
His servos were so heavy-
...
Were his cables even-
...
So! Anyway, that was a failure.
And the next attempt.
And the next one.
And the next one.
And-
"Why won't you guys help me?" B-127 snapped in the middle of a shift. "I can't make it up the shaft on my own so- so- so get off your lazy afts and help a mech out!"
B, do we really need to say it? A-A-tron didn't ask.
B-127 scowled, shoving some random piece of ore scrap further down the line. "Say that the three of you are total slackers and never pull your weight on shift?"
You know as well as we do what you can't seem to decide to deny. We can't help you. Steve didn't say.
Which was super infuriatingly vague and awful because, okay, maybe B-127 did know and was avoiding it but they were his friends! They should want to be real and want to be around him! The fact that they didn't, apparently, was-
It wasn't possible, end of.
It wasn't possible that his own friends, that he made, wouldn't want to be around him either.
"You're supposed to say that your bolts are too rusty to make the journey with me." B-127 said under his breath.
I, for one, have aching joints that can't make the journey into that death tunnel. EP-508 didn't say.
"And, that you're really upset you can't help me."
Steve didn't sigh, slumping against the table. We know how much this means to you B...it pains us that we cannot assist you any further than this.
"But that we can still have fun down here together in the meantime."
But, hey! At least this way you won't have to miss out on open mic night! A-A-tron didn't add.
Which was a good point, B-127 thought.
I know, A-A-tron didn't preen, I do happen to make those.
B-127 laughed, and his friends couldn't laugh louder than him so they let him do all the laughing for them, and everything was okay again.
-
And then it's now, and B-127 is on shift, when the wall. Opens. And two mechs fall out of it in a heap of gleaming limbs and bright, but chipped, paint. They bicker in hushed whispers. With voices that. Echo. Really echo in a way that makes his audials tingle unpleasantly.
"You're- you're real!" He exclaims, mask flipping up off his face, "you're not me! You're here!"
The blue and red one starts, "uh, yeah-"
"AWESOME!" B-127 interrupts. "I'm sorry, that must've been weird for you. I-I just," his servos wind around each other as he talks, "I haven't had a lot of company since they put me down here in sub level 50."
The grey one's face plate scrunches. "Fifty? There are only forty sub levels."
"Oh, no, there's fifty. And let me tell you they're not pleasant!"
Blue and red gets to his pedes. "How long have you been down here?"
B-127 blinks. "How long have I been here?" He laughs because he's been waiting for this question. "Let's see, somewhere between a long time and forever?" The other two mechs don't laugh at his great joke so he tries again. "Oh! I'm B-127, by the way, but you can call me B. I've been working on some nicknames. Like Badassatron, but that one's actually pronounced-" he drops his voice modulator to his favourite pre-set, "-Badassatron. But if you have any critiques-"
"Yeah, great. How do we get out of here?" The grey one is also standing now and looking even more panicked.
"Great question! You don't." They don't take that very well so he decides to introduce them to all of his friends! Waste management is better with friends, right? He introduces them one by one. They don't take that very well either so he has to grab Steve by the shoulders and shake him a bit. "Um, they're not real! Jeez, you think I'm that crazy?"
You are, a bit. Steve doesn't grunt, dizzy from the shaking.
Blue and red has his hands up. "No, no, it's just you've been down here a long time-"
"No, I was talking to Steve." B-127 corrects.
This isn't helping your 'I'm not that crazy' case, B. Steve doesn't say.
B-127 laughs, classic Steve!
But then blue and red knocks Steve's head off and something comes tumbling out and B-127 forgets to mourn Steve for the nanoclicks it takes for the video message to play.
The other two mechs start talking back and forth together and it's really easy to just let them. Steve needs a doc-bot after all! And B-127 feels like a youngling next to the other two mechs and their grand talks of adventure and matrixes and glory. He's not. He doesn't think. A youngling, that is. But he feels like one standing next to the two of them. And not just because they're just that much taller than him.
They help him crawl up the chute and when he slips, blue and red—Orion Pax—catches him, and grey—D-16—shows him how to hold onto the walls better. They don't let him fall. Which is both weird and makes his spark jump in its chamber.
-
B-127 goes on an adventure. And it is amazing. And it feels like one of his stories. He keeps up the running narration, because that's just fitting, isn't it?
He's almost certain that between one optic cycle and the next the brilliant cyan sky will fall back to smouldering reds and oranges. That the world will burn away in front of him and he'll be staring at scrap again.
It doesn't happen, though.
He thinks it really should.
How could a bot who couldn't even climb up a chute deserve a T-cog and real, fully sparked friends? It honestly eats at him more than the whole "Sentinel Prime has been a piece of scrap this whole time!" thing.
But, whatever.
B-127 doesn't really have time to think about those things with all the chasing and hiding and then when D-16 starts fighting back against Sentinel—starts talking back. It's both inspiring and also, terrifying!
He really doesn't want to see D-16's plating and protoform roll down the conveyor piece by piece, dripped down the funnels and chutes over countless cycles until even the incinerator has scraped all evidence of him out from itself.
B-127 thinks, when Sentinel brings out the blowtorch, about how he'll have to adjust his latest Waste Report to account for D-16's corpse. He's got the calculation figured out by the time the train crashes through Sentinel's giant windows.
-
Figuring out that he has weapons and a battle mask—like, a real one—makes the whole world feel even less real. Everything around him goes blue-green instead of red-orange but he can hear the crackle of the incinerator along the edge of his stingers. When they find purchase into the twisted chunks of scrap, the heat lets B-127 carve them into properly sized Complex Chunks. A flick of the wrist and there's 4 Plate - Steel and 1 Plate - Iron. An extra swipe gets him 21 Wire - Gold, 81 Wire - Copper, and Glass by Weight 29 StU.
Orion Pax calls out three more large chunks coming down the line and B-127 spins and cuts them down to size. The battle mask flips up for a nanoklik and he sees—weird, they didn't quite look like mechs anymore but they definitely weren't his friends, so—but it's down again and the chunks are chunks. Some of the more Complex Chunks whir to life and start trying to roll back up the chute.
Which is not allowed. He tells them so, commands they come back before they fall and hurt themselves, and when he catches them the report updates quickly. Practice makes perfect, after all! And he's had a lot of practice with the line.
There's even a moment where the whole belt is full of chunks and he loses himself in the hum of his stingers and the rush of doing a good job. He's being productive. He might even get promoted for this.
A voice breaks through the exhilaration. "B! These are not the bad guys." Orion Pax says, his optics darting around and his shoulder struts wedged open with stress.
"Why did you cut the door?" Elita-1 asks, eyeing the still-glowing metal.
The battle mask stays in place even as his processor soft-reboots. The chunks are not chunks but. They're still scrap to sort. B-127 laughs, just on the inside. "It-it was already like this." He says quickly. If it's a joke, then they won't laugh, because they don't think he's funny, and they can all ignore it.
Orion Pax shoves his way to a terminal and they don't ask B-127 any more questions.
-
The aftermath is. Weird.
But B-127 gets access down to sub level 50 and the walls will open to the lift when he calls for it so he can visit his friends and not worry about the reunion turning back into a forever slumber party.
A-A-tron doesn't greet him. Woah! Look at the big bot, all grown up!
He doesn't actually look all that much taller. EP-508 doesn't say.
"Aw, guys," B-127 slides in to his spot around their table. "You won't be-lieve what's been happening!"
And maybe Steve dies again but it's okay because B-127 puts him back together and he can get his friends out of sub level 50. They move in with him into his new quarters and A-A-tron bugs him endlessly about his decorations.
But they can't bask in their victory over tyranny forever. The battle with Sentinel caused a lot of damage. Damage that needs to be repaired.
And where there's repairs, there's scraps.
B-127 walks around the construction site, counting out loud, and nobody tries to stop him. They look at him from the corner of their optics but then they whisper to each other something about Optimus and then look away.
He's halfway through his report when Optimus actually shows up.
"I heard you were doing some work over here?" The new Prime says. His way of asking 'what are you doing?' without sounding too demanding. Optimus worries about stuff like that. B-127 thinks Sentinel's legacy is almost worse than the bot himself.
"Mmhm!" B-127 nods, catching sight of a stray piece of ore trapped under a pile of wires and swiftly adding it to his count. "I'm working on my report."
Optimus blinks his huge blue optics down at the smaller bot. "Your report?"
Now it's B-127's turn to blink. Then it hits him. "Oh! Right, you guys were only in waste management for like, barely a joor! Duh! Well, just watching out for valuable scrap isn't enough, you know? So, I started making reports breaking down everything that got melted each cycle! Upper management really liked that. This is report #1072378934CY92CH03-6! See, it's number out of the total, then cycle, then chord, then joor! Pretty neat, huh?"
Optimus doesn't say anything for a long time. B-127 counts it. It's 85 nanokliks. When the Prime finally unfreezes his face plates have been melted into something very sad. "Oh, B, I'm so sorry."
"For what?" B-127 asks, laughing.
"For everything." When Optimus sighs, he sighs with the weight of Cybertron. "Every moment you were stuck down there. I'm sorry for all of it. You didn't deserve that. No one deserves that."
"But I'm okay!" B-127 says. He spins around to show how much he means it. "Don't worry, Boss-Bot, it's all energon under the bridge now. That's what you said to all the bots who're upset about the cogless having cogs now, right?"
Optimus hesitates. "I did say that. But your time in the belly of Cybertron is very different from some grumbling old bots. I keep worrying that we've missed another one of you down there somewhere...all alone and talking to the trash."
B-127 hums again. He isn't really sure what to do with that, so. "Hey, wanna hear a joke? It's a good one." He's recently learned that Optimus finds him a lot more funny when the fate of Cybertron isn't hanging in the balance.
"Sure," Optimus says with a bad attempt at a smile.
"Why does Optimus Prime never get scared?"
The mech himself asks, "why?"
"Because he's got nerves of steel!"
Thankfully, Optimus Prime laughs. It doesn't echo quite right, and B-127 doubts. For the barest of moments, he doubts. But Optimus pats at his helm, and that's real, so everything is okay.