Chapter Text
D-16 was short. He was tall among cogless bots but nearly everyone had theirs now, so he was short.
There wasn't anything wrong with that, of course! His small stature was useful when the other miners couldn't fit into places he could, and he also needed less energon to keep going. But.., being half of everyone's size was a bit alienating when he had yet to choose his designation.
D-16 just hadn't found a designation that fit him well. He knew he needed one, otherwise he was going to die an early death, a grave marked with what's supposed to be his placeholder designation, but it was difficult nonetheless. Plus, if he could find one soon, he'd finally gain his transformation cog. Everyone in his sector had already chosen one, chosen a designation that fit them so well that D-16 had jealousy spike his processor every time he had to look up.
The rules were these for designations: everybot is cogless at onlining with a placeholder designation. Once they hit about 15 cycles, they must choose a designation to replace the old one, and then gain their transformation cog forms, and by extension their alt modes. Most choose one by the time they're 20 cycles. If a bot has yet to choose a designation when they are 25 cycles, then they cease functioning.
That was an undeniable thing amongst Cybertronians and an uncontrollable thing. Bots were going to name themselves regardless of rules, and the fact that gaining a T-cog through designating yourself wasn't bound by laws and was a thing declared outside of it made lawmakers relent. It added longevity to their castes anyway, why make it more difficult to replenish? The Well of the Allspark ran out 20 cycles ago. Might as well just leave the miners to it.
"Hey," and D-16 looks up from his cube. He was always looking up. Everyone was always looking down at him. Orion gives him a meek smile. "No dice on the designation?"
"No…"
Orion leaned forward in his seat, if only to try and match D-16's optic level. The cube in his servo twisted like a gyroscope and refused to spill. "Still? Well, you've got a couple deca-cycles before your creation day."
An arm swung over D-16's head. He didn't even need to dodge because he was so short. He sighed. Usually declaring your designation happened on your creation day, and for D-16, that was coming up fast. "I know… I just– you know me."
"Can't find the right one?" Orion's optics were like spotlights. They would be comparable to if D-16 made a circle with his servo. Radiant and blue, like pools of energon crystals.
He cleared his intake and replied, "How did you pick yours? I know Jazz picked his from the music he liked, Prowl because he's always doing that so might as well, on and on. But you already picked yours when I met you."
Orion sat back and D-16 has to strain his struts to turn. His friend was quiet, odd, considering this was Pax, but not unwarranted. Anyone that had ever spoken to Orion would feel that his designation was a bit… out there and almost out of place with his personality. So, whatever led to Orion picking his designation must've been a well thought out one if he chose something so unfitting.
"I was fresh off the belt and it was night when I onlined," Orion said deliberately. He looked to have been choosing his words carefully and methodically, not at all like the Pax that D-16 knew. "I looked up at the sky and saw the stars. I was so captured by it that I ran into a pole while I wasn't looking."
D-16 puffed out a laugh, a snicker, and Orion reciprocated. "And?"
A smile ghosted Orion's face. "Later, I started sneaking into the archives—"
"You were doing that before I met you?" D-16 interrupted. Oh, his friend was fully an idiot if he was doing that for ages. "Really? What were you looking for? The Matrix again?"
Orion laughed, the joy on his face bright like the setting sun. "No no, that was cycles before I met you. Wasn't even in double-digits yet. A bot actually taught me how to read. C-17? He was in a higher caste and already cogged, so that must've been his placeholder– Whatever. Point is, I snuck into the archives and just read."
"Read what?"
"Just read whatever I could get my servos on. Mostly fiction and foreign stuff since that was what C-17 read me. Not all the data there are holovids, a lot of it was just glyphs, so I just read and read and read until…" Orion stalled for a dramatic pause. D-16 couldn't help but smile. "I found some myths about the stars from alien worlds."
D-16 balked. "Tell me you didn't."
"Tell you what?" Orion put up a smug face and shut his optics. D-16's optics followed the servo that went to Orion's intake and pouring in a cube.
He scooted closer, leaned his head in. "You didn't designate yourself after some fictional character. That's cheesy. You're cheesy ."
" I think it's a good one. And it's my designation so you've got no say in it."
D-16 laughed. "Doesn't quite help my question though. Designating myself something like… I dunno. Uh… Gah. See? I'm even struggling to come up with generic designations."
"Dee, it's fine," Orion said, placing a servo to D-16's back struts. His servo was half the size of D-16's waist and the contact did little to comfort. "You've still got time. Not the end of the world."
"Pax, I'm 22 cycles. I will literally offline in three of those if I don't."
Orion huffed. "I'd say mine took a while but, no. I chose mine at 15. I was impatient."
"Not that I couldn't guess," D-16 replied, and he realized he had yet to finish his cube. He opened his mouth to speak once more, only for their shifts to start and the conversation to be abandoned. The yell to announce made the miner wince.
"That's our cue." Orion stood to his full height, D-16 taking a pensive glance at what he could see. Sitting down, the bot barely made it to Orion's waist. D-16 frowned, the cube's rim to his dentae, bending under them. He downed the energon in one go and hesitated standing.
He was always a goody two-shoes when it came to work, but the chances of getting bumped into again were high. His reservations about choosing his designation were his own fault, and his own stature was his own fault. He was stalling. He didn't want to but he was. Nothing was just… fitting for him. He could change it later, lots of bots did, if he chose one, but he wanted it to feel right . Choosing willy-nilly felt wrong.
He rubbed a thumb over the hazard tape on him. They were specifically for him because of his stature, his hesitance. His dull and scratched up gunmetal gray wasn't visible enough in the mines. It was a reminder that he was quite an afterthought in the minds of his co-workers. It was nearly everyday that someone would step on his pedes or slam into him without seeing him. It wasn't hazardous by any means, just annoying. If he could just choose , he wouldn't be having these problems. He stood in reluctance and grabbed Orion's servo.
He had a couple deca-cycles to choose, and only three proper cycles before he couldn't. Today just wasn't it.
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"Say, Dee," Orion drew out as D-16 dusted the other off. He had come from another archives run and D-16 had to cover his aft again. "When you get your alt mode, what do you think it will be?"
"A shovel," D-16 replied without a beat. In fact, "to beat you with it."
Orion scoffed a laugh, his face scrunching beautifully as he did. Even from down at D-16's height, his face was a delight to see form joy with his voice. "Little worrying how quickly you answered with that, but no, for real. What do you think it is?"
"Something heavy I imagine. I've got Sunstreaker saying I'd be better off with treads instead of stomping my pedes whenever I walk by."
Orion leaned in, which was completely normal, definitely not too close for comfort or anything ( not that D-16 would complain, gah ). He smiled and it was so radiant that his red and blue plating was practically reflecting it. "I hope it's something with weighty, something solid enough that I don't have to worry."
"Pax," and D-16 gave him a look, y'know, that one, that replaced his small smile, "I'm not made of glass. I can take a punch or two. I'm already solid enough anyway because I weigh 40 tons. You're only like 17 or so."
It was honestly extremely funny that this cogless bot was probably heavier than his entire sector's weight combined.
"Ah, it doesn't help that everyone else barely gets up to 2 or 5 tons, does it?" Orion sighed, and what he said wasn't really posed as a question. "But… well if you did turn into a shovel, you wouldn't be able to use this super duper ultra cool Megatronus Prime thing I got, but it's cool, I'll just give it to someone else."
D-16 immediately got on his bestie's case. "What Megatronus Prime thing?"
I think you know what happened next.
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The Iacon 5000 ended with them in dead last, not helped by Orion's alt mode.
D-16 got fashioned with a jetpack and got assigned to fend off the racers that got too close, but Orion's alt just wasn't built for racing. As a truck, he was made for long distance traveling, carrying heavy duty stuff and staying for a long haul. Fast and furious wasn't a truck's pay grade.
They got close, oh they got close, but it was D-16's own injury that costed them their victory. Orion could grab him, sure, but D-16 was denser, more weighty even as a cogless. Bots always said that D-16's alt mode would just have to be as heavy. Still, it made D-16 feel like… well, dead weight to what could've been a victory. And yeah, this was Pax's plan, a lot of things D-16 got involved in were, but D-16 grew to want to win or at the very least let Pax win. They were so close and yet it was his own faults that cost them this, not to mention that they were probably getting in trouble for it.
By the Pit, they were getting in trouble for it, even with Sentinel Prime's enthusiasm. Darkwing threw them down all the way to Sub-level 50, ten floors below what was thought to be the last levels.
D-16's venting hitched at the sight of the only other bot besides Orion. Short. That bot was short. Shorter than him. It felt… oddly cathartic that a bot, a cogless bot no less, was shorter than him.
Yellow swamps his vision, a color that matched poorly with D-16's golden optics as the bot stuck his face into his. Bright-eyed, colored in a blue that was lacking compared to Orion's, it still did not change the fact that life breathed its way into them. The bot, B-127 they learned, was entrenched in high spirits now that Orion and D-16 were here.
"So you just watch trash burn?" He applied more bite to question than he intended, but if B-127 noticed, the yellow bot didn't care.
"Yes." The helmet that was dropped onto the conveyor belt cracked in flames. Orion winced and D-16 frowned.
This was going to be a long day.
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It's when they're trekking through the surface that D-16 realized he still couldn't get his mind off of B-127. That was discounting the constant yapping the yellow bot did too. Elita was also there, but she was still towering over him, but he was used to that.
It was just… he hadn't seen another cogless bot in so long. The last he remembered was Cliffjumper, and that had to be about five cycles ago. He ran a thumb over the peeling edge of the hazard tape. No one in their sector pressured him to choose quickly; the threat of death was already enough of an incentive. D-16 was just being an idiot for holding out for so long.
B-127… he just had to be younger than him, right? Through all the yellow bots yapping, that amount of energy couldn't have come from one that was older, right? It was odd that the yellow one was cogless with his upbeat demeanor. Most bots like that tended to choose quickly and strongly. The designations they chose were good ones despite the little hesitation thrown to them.
"And that's how I met A-A-Tron!" B-127 finished what was a very long and almost confusing story involving foreign names that were definitely mispronounced and something about a roster? Whatever. It was a story that was quite numbing to his mood. "After that, Steve came around—"
D-16 conked the back of his helm against Orion's truck bed. He and B-127 were on Orion's alt mode since Elita would rather careen into the Pit before either of them handled her alt mode. D-16 didn't mind, he was used to hitching a ride on Orion at the other's insistence, though D-16's weight was a lot on him. It was still much less humiliating than Orion just grabbing him and carrying him around like some tool.
The sky's melding gradients burned into his optics, the colors as if you were squinting into a crowd of color coordinated bots. The planet's two moons looked to be embossed into the sky rather than entities miles away.
The delight D-16 felt was a guiltiful one. It was one that he was relishing in despite him not wanting to. Another cogless bot, another bot who's been holding out on it. He finally wasn't alone in this. Someone who was just like him. He shouldn't have been liking that. He shouldn't be glad that a fellow bot couldn't transform. After all, those without designations were on time limits; he shouldn't be liking that B-127 was on a time limit.
Orion must've bumped into a particularly large rock, because the truck suddenly jolted and threw off the two cogless bots, causing them to eat slag. "Frag! Ghh, Pax…" D-16 groaned.
"Ow…" B-127 moaned.
The sound of tires came to a halt and the rough rumble of it came back around. The sound of transforming could be heard, a shadow now casting over the miner. D-16 squinting, his vents coming in and out deeply. Orion leaned over, nearly doubling over, to reach out a servo. "Sorry! Sorry… Are you two okay? No dented plating or dislocated joints?"
D-16 made a noise which was more of annoyance than of any pain. Pax ex-vented with a sigh of relief.
Elita returned, having been the one with the map. She hoisted up B-127 by the cables and set him down while D-16 was hefted up by Orion. She tilted her helm and frowned for no reason. "Alright. I think we should take a break."
"This early?" Orion asked, shading his optics with a servo. It was still midday, the sun burning bright.
"Not a long one, mind you, just a few kliks."
"Oh… okay." Orion sat down right next to D-16 and the other frowned at how Orion's height at sitting is barely shorter than D-16's at standing. D-16 didn't elect to sit and instead watched Orion take out a worn datapad and turn it on. He wasn't even sure where Orion got a datapad, but it was his and his alone, made sure with the designation carved into it.
Not many of the miners were fully literate; most could read well enough to parse designations but that was about it. Writing only extended to being able to write their own designations since what was the use in writing anything else? Orion was not an average miner. Mech could read for ages and did when left to his own devices. If Orion wasn't going off on master plans, he was reading, reading and reading until he ran out of material, and then he'd reread it all over again. What he was reading was most definitely obtained illegally and definitely not supposed to be in the servos of a miner but no one really cared what Pax did on his break so no one ever said anything. Besides, reading made Orion happy. Who was D-16 to deny him that?
"What's that?" B-127 asked, standing on the tips of his pedes to read over Orion's shoulder.
"Just some paragraphs on… oh, looks like I was reading about aliens again." Orion raised the datapad to B-127's face. "I like to read, so I go to the archives a lot and copy whatever I find onto this datapad. I can't copy holovids though. Well, I can but only small clips."
Orion tapped the thumbnail of what seemed to be a clip. It was some sort of alien creature, round and fuzzy, with wings like glass. It was striped as well, yellow and black. The clip was of the creature on some sort of colorful… plant? D-16 was still getting the hang of other life that wasn't made of metal.
B-127's optics glowed in curiosity, wonder and joy. "Woah!" Without thinking of much the bot grabbed the datapad from Orion and brought the image closer. "What is that ?"
Orion tilted the datapad slightly with a digit, squinting his optics and reading the text. "It's called a… bumblebee. It's some sort of insect? An insect is like a tiny animal but some can fly and oh right. You don't know what animals are—"
"I– I love it," B-127 cut him off, like he was almost rendered speechless. Despite the time of day, the holovid glowed bright upon his face, like there was a whole world he was looking on. Whatever yapping B-127 was about to do was put to rest, as the bot was enamored by this singular image. "It looks like me."
"Well, I wouldn't say it looks like you. I can see the resemblance—"
"Bumblebee," B-127 repeated. D-16's fuel tank dropped. He knew this kind of gentleness that came with that tone of voice. "Bumblebee. I… I like that. I really like that. I…"
"B?" Orion asked and Elita halted as well. "If you like that holovid that much I can let you copy it onto your memory banks."
The holovid reflected black and yellow into B-127's optics, matching the colors just so. That alien lifeform buzzed around like it wasn't being watched. Fondness was forming in the bot's face. "N-no. That's fine. My… my creation day is today, actually. I just met you all so I didn't want to jump that on you but... I want this. Yeah. I want this as my designation. Bumblebee."
Any and all guilty delight D-16 had for B-127's cogless status was gone and B-127 made his final words as B-127 known.
"Bumblebee is my designation."
The light that bursted from Bumblebee's chest was like a bomb went off. It was blinding, like D-16 had stared beauty in the face, like he had stared Orion in the optics. The shifting of panels and turning of gears, a loud clank rang off. When the light died down, shiny metal, but not of gold, was in the place of corroded fool's. The sheen was rivaling Orion's with how shiny it was, how clean it was.
O-oh. Bumblebee… Bumblebee gained his T-cog. Several vorns in and Bumblebee can transform.
D-16 looked up. Someone twice his size looked down. Blue optics that were but a drop in the bucket compared to Pax's stared back.
D-16 was back to where he started.
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The idea that you could use another bot's T-cog was laughable. There were too many variables, too many points to line up correctly. There was an issue of compatibility. Just because you could steal a cog of another bot didn't mean it would fit right. You'd be even more outta luck if you were significantly smaller than the bot you stole from. That wasn't even touching on how difficult it was to take them out. Too many wires and nuts and bolts to unlatch and unscrew. Too many panels and plates in the way that, even with small and dexterous hands, sticking a tool in there would be too cumbersome. Stealing a cog would be too much work and installing them into someone incompatible would be a nightmare for any medic.
That was why, despite how we knew how it went, D-16 did not gain a cog from a Prime. They just wouldn't be able to fit and Alpha Trion would surely be displeased if he tried to desecrate the council's frames for it. The idea never even crossed the group's mind if you wondered how much one could contemplate it with our knowledge.
The drive back to Iacon was quiet, only the faint rumble of three engines going. No one wanted to really talk about the lies they were exposed to, all the work that was for naught. D-16 shuddered at the thought of working for nothing. He was a pretty high rank all things considered and to find out that all of it was just worthless became uncomfortable to him, dysphoric. Orion was right, there was more than just protocol, so much.
He held a servo up to the sky, the stars now glowing brightly against the deep navy blue. The stars were quiet it seemed, not that they should've been screaming at any point. He tried to fit his servo between the many gaps of twinkling silt, tracing a line through three bright stars.
His silent brooding was interrupted, when, upon a curious moment, what felt like a snap to have gone off. It was more of a feeling of something snapping rather, one that was so strong that his group had returned to root mode. D-16, having been on Orion during this, was unceremoniously flung off once again by this, but this kind of thing was normal from Pax. D-16 had the forethought to tuck and roll instead of crashing into the ground, landing against Bumblebee as the other shifted out of his alt mode. His disgustingly beautiful, shiny, only to be Bumblebee's alt mode.
"What was that?" D-16 stood up, all three of his friends now tense and glassy opticed. Uncanny and uncomfortable. A servo was leaned against Bumblebee's leg and not a moment later was the yellow mech rattling. "Bee?"
Before D-16's processor could, well, process it, Bee convulsed, shuddering in on himself and compressing. The bot shook, his mass displacing and disappearing into what was little more than a dot to D-16. He yelped in doing so, a short buzz overtaking the scream; D-16 flinched at the action. He cupped his servos around the now flying dot, resting sorely in them as he brought what was probably Bumblebee to his face. He opened up his servos and his venting halted for but a moment.
It was a bumblebee. As in, a bumblebee just like the one in the holovid. The thing wasn't even the size of his digits. It was so tiny that anything could've easily—
D-16 fumbled for an empty cube in his subspace, replacing the servo over the bee with it. He rotated his servos, doing his best to ignore the crawling feeling in his palm as the bee— which was most definitely Bumblebee— fumbled in the cube. He cracked the lid back on and tore a few strips of hazard tape to keep it there as he D-16 tried to parse what just happened.
Bumblebee turned into a… a bumblebee. That. That was weird, right?
"Uh, Orion? Elita? Did you all see–" He held his glossa when he turned back around, only finding Orion still standing stock, hazy beautiful blue optics unfocused, and the small sound of a mining badge hitting the ground where Elita once was. "Elita? Elita!"
D-16 stumbled forward, on his shin guards and clumsily grabbing the badge up to his optics. Upon closer inspection, it was more like a shiny, new, very prestigious badge someone in the higher castes would wear, the elites as one would say, only that "Elita-1" was scrawled in where a designation would be. Confusion broke into his lines of code, of thinking. What was going on? First, Bee turned into a bee and now Elita vanished into nothing? Or even turned into a badge?? And Orion! He hadn't even reacted to either of these happenings!
"Orion!" D-16 was on his pedes and gave way to rushing. Orion had yet to say anything at all and nothing was coming out of his agape intake. His friend just… stared, into nothing. He waved a servo before Orion's optics. "Orion? Orion. Pax, c'mon, don't play me like this!"
His friend sucked in a vent, but his coherence was clearly gone, fully ignoring D-16's intervention. One step at a time, D-16 was pushed aside as Orion walked on to… somewhere. Where it was, he didn't know, but it was in the opposite direction of Iacon so D-16 had no choice but to chase after him yet again. He was fortunate enough that Orion didn't transform into his alt mode, but the mech was still twice as tall as him so his strides were longer.
"Orion! Orion, wait! Where are you going? Pax!" D-16 stuck the high quality badge (it had to be Elita, right?) onto his chassis and held the cube imprisoning Bumblebee with both servos. He rushed forward, trying to match a stride that dwarfed his own before losing sight of his still intact friend to the flats of the surface.