Chapter Text
Orion became enamoured.
Something bubbled and frothed from the depths of that faraway city-state, Kaon, catching the attention of the Hall of Records. It caught, also, the fears and scrutiny of the rest of Iacon.
Alpha Trion had put a disproportionate amount of trust in him, to assign such a critical developing subject to a newer archivist. Or perhaps it was another test that the Head Archivist chose not to disclose? Either way, Orion’s illusions of peace in their profession were soon shattered.
Where he once rejoiced in everything to be learned, Orion now frowned often at his workstation; everything seemed so much simpler when he didn’t understand a word anyone was saying to him—their glyphs only a meaningless, haphazard scribble. That little bot from the wastes, whose only concern was survival, could have never imagined the magnitude—the colder monotony—of the politics that the rest of Cybertron entrenched themselves in. But how could he wish for that innocence again when faced with these horrors? He could never go back, not even if he wanted to.
To be Cybertronian was to come already forged with the edge of some ideology. A bot would only ever be as good as their natural alt-mode designated them. Unless they had the funds and backing, they were all beggars with no right to choose any other work for themselves (Alpha Trion reminded Orion often, that he could have easily been relegated to the labour of hauling material of any hazard class between cities—that is, had he not already wandered off into the wastes before being seen). And if a bot was not working, too old, too scrapped, too tired, and on and on, they were unworthy of the fuel that Iacon so generously hoarded and budgeted for them.
Orion wanted the bleak picture he gradually pieced together proven wrong, but registries of bots by the thousands, who increasingly needed repairs or long-term maintenance (or were otherwise trouble), were littered with unnervingly euphemistic redactions. Annotations for the remaining legible names remarked on functional castes, medical services accessed, cities of origin, and all the rigid numbers for various contributions to their caste. Often in the negatives.
“And mind you, Orion, these were only the documents that I could recover before they were entirely redacted, overwritten, or destroyed; they are but one of many systemic components never meant to be seen by the public. Who knows how many remain nameless now?” Alpha Trion had said when he finally relented and showed Orion the lists.
It may have been that the unnamed Iaconian he first archived was similarly terminated for ultimately failing to contribute. It was the first Orion ever felt such a helpless rage, so strong a despair about all these lives wasted.
So he listened and watched and read, for that was all he could really do. Alpha Trion warned his archivists to never give hints that they thought any further about the materials they were supposed to merely skim, the Hall’s deeper understanding of events unfolding to be a secret kept among its shelves.
But as Orion watched a gladiator rise from the nothing that Kaon was left with, watched him rally those who had nothing, he could not keep it contained any longer. Through what seemed like every terminal unit in the archives, he would see that hopeful raging star from Kaon. He felt a strange pull to him; he reached for him.
“Megatronus; that is my designation! You will heed and remember it, for I will not be forgotten to the whims of your careless machine!”
There had been much more to Megatronus than high societies would grant him, of course. He was audacious, brutish, large and imposing. He was majestic, emotive, suave and compelling. He was unlike any other bot Orion had ever met—their clandestine meetings another secret that Orion would desperately hold against his spark, this time for his and Megatronus’ optics only.
“Something on your mind, Orion?”
Orion blinks. The tea between his servos has grown cold, but he smiles and shakes his helm.
“Ah, it is nothing. I was just reminiscing again.”
Megatronus’ home, buried deep below the centre of Kaon’s surface, is as comfortable as it is small. It reminds Orion faintly of the snug little burrows he once dug for himself when temperatures dropped, out in the wastes—though they never had such a soothing presence of another bot. His unexpected friend had little to his name, but even Orion could see how everything was hard-fought and precious-kept: rare trophies of tarnished reheated metal acknowledging his skill in the Pits; portrait copies of fellow gladiators he respected, one of the biggest depicting the taciturn and dear friend Soundwave; sparse and tattered datapads along his shelves, discarded by the wealthy and scavenged by others like him. One of the datapads had corrupted recently, to Megatronus’ great dismay, but with some help, the gladiator repurposed it into a rough little guestbook.
“I’ve always wanted one for myself,” he quietly mumbled, as though Orion needed any explanation for what Megatronus chose to do. “I could’ve done without it being at the expense of one of my favourite reads, however.”
The tablet had already been populated with little remarks and signatures from Megatronus’ associates by the time of Orion’s next visit.
A well-crafted home for a well-tuned thinker! May there be many more guests. –Terminus
Lugnut was here!!!
Barricade
Crystalware broke: III, sorry M - Rumble
^ broke so far
Soundwave + Ravage + Laserbeak + Fre (the rest of this inscription is indecipherable)
Thank you for having me over, Megatronus :] —Orion Pax
Orion fears that he must make for poor conversation for his worldly and resourceful friend—already surrounded by such lively characters—, but perhaps it’s just as well, since Megatronus only needs a companionable silence to get his work done. Sometimes, Orion still can’t fathom being able to pace around in the gladiator’s warmest spaces like this.
Not to say that Megatronus had never regarded him with a reasonable amount of cold suspicion, though.
“What do you want?” Megatronus barked when he first opened his door to see Orion, narrowing his optics at the archivist’s conspicuously northern paint scheme.
“Oh, um… I am Orion Pax, sir,” Orion responded in the politeness that eased his nervousness—habits drilled into him courtesy of Alpha Trion. “We’ve spoken over private communications.”
Then Megatronus’ impressive optical ridges shot up. Orion couldn’t help his flinch as the gladiator hovered over him to glance down both directions of the corridor. Orion had so many questions about this unusual introduction. Though the archivist grew to be on the bigger side of Iaconian mecha, the holovids of this gladiator could have never prepared Orion for how large he was.
“Come in, Orion Pax.”
Despite the initial distrust, Megatronus had given him tea in that first meeting, too (until Megatronus later joked about his fallible tendency to trust, it had never crossed Orion’s mind that the gladiator could have poisoned it if he wished). Orion stared at his reflection in the rich bronzed fluid, wide optics gazing back at him; tea was a rare treat for even the archives. He was sure it would be rude to ask how Megatronus came into possession of such a commodity.
“Ah, where do you think the other cities get it from?” Megatronus only teased when Orion finally mustered up the courage to pry at a later meeting. “The flatlands of Kaon aren’t just for show, you know. Some of us function in cropwork to help the uppers stave off their boredom of Energon.” He rolled his optics. “Might as well enjoy our hard work for ourselves. They won’t miss what little disappears.”
He easily fascinated Orion with the extent of his knowledge—lived in rather than read.
Orion murmured with awe, “I never encountered a source with such attention for these details about Kaon.”
“And you never will. This may well break your spark, little archivist, but scholars from your side of the planet historically don’t trouble themselves with the affairs and joys of our hemisphere. Even if there were ever academics interested in such topics, their home and sponsoring cities aren’t. We and all our practices are simply barbaric and stupid to them, that is all.”
Barbaric and stupid—Orion is familiar with that; he once could’ve been marked as such by the paradigms Megatronus described as well, no doubt.
“Orion, how would you say functionalism manifests in Kalis and Nova Cronum?” Megatronus eventually asks after an interval of drafting, holding up his pristine datapad (a common archivist’s gift) to skim over its writing. “Perhaps you would know some of the nuances that go unwritten? I hate to be presumptuous, but I only ask you because they border your own Iacon.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t frequent them often, but the engineers and academics there often seem to hold less regard for functional caste. I assume their own assigned functions expose them to different enough perspectives to form more open opinions, the implications of their practices’ geopolitical separation from the rest of Cybertron aside.” Orion fidgets with his glass of tea. “Although, given that both places are still technically under Iacon’s wider jurisdiction… I suppose there is little that individual Kalistians and Nova Cronites can do about how their institutions run things. And there are, of course, some bots who think themselves superior anyway, simply because they emerged in the ‘right form’ for thinking and intellectual pursuits.”
Intake feeling parched, Orion carefully tips the tea to rest against his dermas, speaking quieter. “Though, usually they don’t say it so blatantly.”
“Hmm… of course,” Megatronus echoes, an understandable disdain floating into his inflection, before setting the datapad down to continue working.
He adores Megatronus and the well-guarded generosity in his companionship, but a strange guilt often coils itself around Orion’s spark. Perhaps he is of no help to the gladiator after all; how could a brief function in the wastes—the memory mostly forgotten and spent alone, oppressed only by the elements and other equally starved creatures—possibly compare to the ongoing struggle of those pushed by their own fellows into the lowest depths? It would feel selfish to even voice these doubts to his friend. This Iaconian flavour of worry is to be Orion’s to sort alone.
Much of Kaon still lived by an extant bartering system. Outside of Kolkular, the more affluent entertainment capital of Kaon, and its surrounding locales, credits were an entirely foreign entity in the sprawling city-state. Orion unfortunately found this out only after asking for the price of a rough-edged data tablet, garnering him a quizzical look from its keeper while Megatronus’ field pulsed with amusement.
He folded a servo over Orion’s. “You may keep your hard-won credits, little archivist. Many Kaonians along the borders will never see a single one in their functioning, but they’ll never be hurting for any. Credits are essentially meaningless to some of us; we have our own ways of transacting between each other.”
The system was far too sophisticated for Orion to fully grasp, but Megatronus’ skill and status in Kaon’s entertainment sector were evidently enough to land him bargains everywhere they went. The gladiator relished most in the stare of Orion’s wide optics as he easily carried their next bounty.
“Perhaps I could teach you the art of the trade sometime, Orion. They may not like your paint much, but older sparks around here would still gladly offer you fuel at least to add some bulk to your plating.”
Orion looked at the ground with a flush. “That would be dishonest of me, Megatronus. I don’t have anything except credits to offer in return, and I am already healthy as I am.”
“Mm, that you are.” Megatronus chuckled breezily.
With how quickly gladiators went through their tea (and how often they visited each other in their cramped apartments off-shift), Orion had the honour of joining Megatronus in replenishing his stock, the pair taking rickety late-trams out to the stretches of flatland where the farmers toiled. It was a different side of Kaon: breaking through the quiet, they were surrounded by the soft whistling of workers—tunes that felt ancient, older than Orion and Megatronus combined, floating through the air above the heavy pulsing beat of the farmers’ tools striking the soil. Some whistles simply droned on the same ceaseless note, repetition nearly maddening—were they any lesser bots.
It only occurred to Orion that what they were doing may have been illegal, when they snuck along the shadows of sheds and silos in wait for the supervisors to leave the area. Megatronus had optics much better suited to the dark than Orion did, soft Energon blues shifting to a bold scarlet slicing through the shade.
He held out a servo to stop the archivist. “Wait here, Orion. I will return shortly with the goods.”
“But—”
Megatronus disappeared from his side before he could formulate a protest or offer of help. So wait Orion did.
He watched the gladiator signal to a worker at the edge of the fields, tapping lightly on the wall of the shed at his back. Under the wide-fanned brim of their helm, the farmer’s optics, also dimmed red, narrowed in suspicion before opening in clear excitement upon recognizing Megatronus. They glance around—a gesture in Kaon that felt so customary to Orion now; courteous and cautious, looking out for any trouble that may have followed a friend—and run up to greet the gladiator. Orion never thought it possible; the farmer may have been even larger than Megatronus.
Curiosity overwhelming his anxiety for a moment, Orion squints to watch their trade. Megatronus hands over a holograph (one of his written works?) and the farmer eagerly takes out an impressive bag of tea for him from their subspace. Orion’s optics cycle sharply as he makes some estimations—that amount of tea could easily last Megatronus and any guests a whole annum.
“How do they even take so much of the harvest without getting into trouble?” Orion asked on the next workers’ tram back to Kolkular, the bag given to him for closer inspection. He was under no delusions that workers could just keep the fruits of their labour without some caveat.
“Remember, the supervisors around here don’t choose their work either. They can be easily incentivized to turn a blind optic when they catch someone; they’re well-versed in Kaon’s barter system, too.” Megatronus grinned as he settled comfortably into his seat, draping an arm over the back of Orion’s.
Orion hummed thoughtfully as he looked back to the bag on his lap. Tea drinkers in Kaon rarely got to pick what kind they would be sipping on next, but Orion could imagine that was never a problem where the luxurious beverage was concerned. The essence of the crushed leaves seeped through the loosely woven bag, wafting pleasantly around them—a note of cesium softened in the tea’s base of bronze, Megatronus had said.
Alpha Trion quirked an optical ridge when Orion returned smelling strongly of it, but he mercifully made no comment. Tea was not the worst thing to linger around Orion’s station for a few cycles.
To Orion’s relief, most of their other outings in Kaon would never tread the hard lines of legality like the tea runs. He politely declined any invitations to join other, more daring farm ventures when Megatronus’ friends could not stand to wait anymore for their favourite produce to finally hit the markets of Kaon—he’s sure his loud colours would be terrible work to hide in an already large group. Megatronus did not seem to mind; while he enjoyed the thrill of those adventures with fellow labour and combat frames, the gladiator also found a boundless delight in the small things. A treasure, the archivist realizes, that Iacon hardly knew for all its largesse.
“Orion! You must try this.” Megatronus emerged from the little crowd that had briefly separated them at a colourful market stall, faceplates bright with excitement. He quickly ushered Orion to the side.
In his servo, a little fruit—the hue of dilute sunset; the space where cirri can only brush their digits against the dying light of Cybertron’s star—no bigger than half the gladiator’s palm. In his limitless strength, he carefully splits it before Orion’s optics, the archivist entranced by the little bubble of space they had unknowingly formed in their attention on this fruit. The market sounded cycles away as juice dripped onto the ground, despite Megatronus’ best efforts to contain it all in his servos. It was a difficult feat to split anything evenly with bare servos: a little wasteland bot had been quite familiar with that frustration. But Megatronus wordlessly hands Orion the larger half, already lapping up the rich fuel of his portion before Orion could say anything.
A fruit truly seemed like its own little celestial body, Orion mused. Its core was dark like molten rock, deep hues radiating through the soft flesh but never quite reaching the surface. It must be quite good, for Megatronus hadn’t spoken a word since he returned with it. Orion tentatively closed his own intake where the protective sheet opened up to the squishy jelly inside.
The fruit was mild, a little tart, but as Orion chewed and worked its sweeter juice out, it quickly hardened between his dentae without its moisture. His jaw stalls for a moment: was it… getting warmer in his intake?
He looks to Megatronus—there was no trace of the fruit left behind as the gladiator ate his last bite with relish. Following his lead, Orion carefully swallowed each compacted piece of fruit, feeling his fuel tank warm with each bite.
“So… what was that?” Orion eventually asked as they basked in the lingering warmth of the fruit. The little core between his digits was almost too hot to touch, exposed to the air.
“Ah, I was wondering what I had been forgetting… that was a Fireplum,” Megatronus said between licking its residue from his digits. “Your half of the planet might know it better as one of many varied Coalfruits, but I find that name quite… lacking in character. Sure, the Fireplum keeps workers warm and running in the harsh cold like any other Coalfruit, but it is a waste to reduce any part of them to simple raw fuel.”
Megatronus tapped on the pit in Orion’s servos, already starting to cool. “Coal and simple fuel never lives quite like the fruits of our labour, hm?”
Orion rolled the pit between his digits, sensing that the extinguishing of its heat would not be the end of its life—merely a dormant phase before the next. It was the first he ever got to enjoy the Energon sapped from another without hearing its struggle. Orion frowned. He never enjoyed the ambient desperation of the wastes, cries echoing through vast distances none of its inhabitants could ever dream of travelling, but he wasn’t sure he liked the silence behind Iacon’s more decadent treats either. How many farmers and workers, fellow thinkers who had to scavenge for that right, suffered for his half of the Fireplum? He subspaces the little core, the idea of parting with it suddenly intolerable.
Megatronus straightened. “Oh, wait here, Orion. I must get some more plums for the others before they run out of stock.”
Orion thought about every precious thing shared for cycles after. He found it the greatest shame that those in Iacon designating everything about Kaon never went to truly feel it for themselves. But perhaps it was easier to theatricalize the rage of the disenfranchised than the quiet cares which the elites take for granted. The two handed the sack of plums that Megatronus managed to earn over to trustworthy Soundwave for distribution, sticky traces of the fruit already savoured lingering along the mesh; Soundwave did not allow them to leave his apartment before they got to thoroughly wipe their plating clean.
Despite Orion’s protests, they had given him another plum to take back with him. He would leave it in a little dish on Alpha Trion’s desk later, and then wake the next cycle to a platter of clean plum slices waiting for him.
Kaon was so different from Iacon, but Orion felt a strange familiarity in all the boundaries between them. Everywhere Megatronus brought him, electromagnetics of all the bots around overwhelmingly pressed into Orion—the control of his own field slipping in the instinct to be noticed within the throngs, lest he be crushed. (Could Megatronus feel the rapid, ringing cycle of his spark through their plating, whenever the gladiator unceremoniously picked Orion up from the ground to escape the crowds faster?) The constant brush of magnetism was jarring, but freeing; for all that Kaon was made to lack, it shared a warmth as bluntly as its harshness—perfectly captured in the strong Kaonian sun glinting off roughened plating. Perhaps the two were really one and the same here, blunt comments and quiet hums for a simple-yet-hard work’s rhythm coming from the same fount of passion for how Kaon lives. To be Kaonian was to feel relentlessly, audaciously, stubbornly, to be warmth where there was none.
Orion could not help his sadness upon his eventual returns to Iacon, where he would have to mind himself and his field both. No proper Iaconian would dare bump into another or loosen their field in public. Why would they? There was plenty of space to walk; it would be rude not to maintain that distance.
At Iacon Central Station, he and Megatronus would stare at each other after saying their goodbyes, watching as the other disappeared from sight—Megatronus taken away by the rapid-train bound for Kaon.
For all their cherished meetings, there were many more cycles where they couldn’t see each other. Orion thought about him anyway, wondering if the gladiator had the processing space to think about him too, between those fights to the death. Orion worried himself sick with the ruminations—unwanted images of a scrapped silver frame flooding his mind the more he thought.
Would it be alright? To lose himself in study when he was alone, so that he may next meet Megatronus with a functional mind?
Orion opened the tattered datapad that Megatronus had first won for him without a glance in the edges of Kaon, a mystifying scrawl that he later learned to be a collection of scores. Centred throughout each piece were symbols nothing like the glyphs that Orion had become so acquainted with; they were loose yet precise, specks of rhombic light soaring within the confines of rigid lines, smaller glyphs forming scaffolds around them. A form of Olden Kaonian was hidden sparse between the compositions, and deciphering it for Orion was like learning to read and feel all over again.
Throughout Orion’s search (after all his assigned work for the cycle was done, of course), he heard Alpha Trion occasionally humming over a cube of Energon as his mentor curiously observed the newest fixation over his shoulder. But the intrigue had been enough for Orion to forget the nervousness of being seen studying for himself something potentially contentious. New materials he hadn’t even thought to peruse would silently appear at his station in later cycles, as if to aid his research.
Though the datapad itself was of a decadently Praxian make, pale blue crystal lined with embossed gold, he could never find a name ascribed to any of the works. Orion’s curiosity about the Kaonian features in an upper-hemisphere artefact quickly dwindled into a familiar despair as all lines of questioning led to the same conclusion: while the works must have been good enough to be published and distributed for higher-caste enjoyment, the same respect apparently could not be paid to the composers.
Orion’s optical ridges knitted together. He could not even distinguish the number of bots that could’ve been contained within this little tablet. Distinct little characteristics jumped out at him the more he pored over it, the more he listened to static-laden recordings from Altihex—all much different to the music he was infrequently exposed to in Iacon. Sharper shifts in tones and volume, soft and dissonant sounds both, but the occasional adherence to a strict rhythm suggested a different method rather than a lack of understanding. Iacon’s melodies languished and soaked up space as desired; these anonymous works bore their quiet contemplative notes too, but always pressed on with an often urgent momentum—too many things to say in so little space. Was it the Kaonian style of the time, or the idiosyncrasies of one particular bot?
It did not seem to matter how much the author craved the freedom they wrote about in their fading dialect; odes and eulogies to selfhood, some love and future unattainable for a ‘disposable’, denied along with the constant omission of their name. The author was all but begging to be known beyond what they produced for elite consumption. No other text he found confirmed the existence of even a single composer from Kaon.
“I wasn’t aware you had such an interest in music, Orion,” Megatronus would say delightedly when the archivist finally opened a line of inquiry directly to Kaon.
“I feel my curiosities in the matter are… too specific to claim that,” Orion admitted. He took out the datapad, one of many things he always carried with him lately. “I was only wondering if you might recognize the works of this bot? Or… these bots, perhaps. I’ve grown frustrated with the lack of published information about them, there’s not even a word about a possible designation.”
Megatronus skims through the tablet, optics darting across lines much faster than Orion could manage with its vernacular unfamiliar to him. “Ah…” Megatronus eventually set the datapad down, looking more despondent than when he started. “I never learned how to read music, but yes, I recognize the style of writing and lyric that came with it. This is the poetry of Syncopos.”
Optics widening at the sudden revelation, Orion leaned in to listen closer. Megatronus smiled a little in response.
“A pioneer of her time. One of many who popularized the powerful metaphor in choosing one’s own designation. Yet still she is full of mystery, even to us. We don’t know when she emerged, or even what happened to her after her brief encounter with renown. Her functioning began in an insignificant factory, but she seemed to absorb its rhythms the best, better than any bot pre-designated for such musical work—somehow taught herself to read and write, for both word and score. Orion, you must understand how incredible it was that a disposable-class mech could transcend the barriers of caste and language at the time. She might have been a genius, the stuff of legend with how easily she would transform the craft and go back to her simple factorywork the next cycle—even non-Kaonians could recognize it through our harsher tones. I recall she received the moniker ‘Rubati’ from her upper-hemisphere audiences at some point, perhaps that might help with your research? Terminus tells me it’s because Iacon inherited their signature flexibility in meter from her, but that is about as well as I understood it; you would have to ask him for the details. It is the only shame that she was foolish to think she could be good enough to be a cherished part of their history, despite her lesser origins. She worked herself down to the strut for her art and they stole it from her.”
Megatronus’ servo tightened around his cube of tea. “We think mere literacy can save us now, but what good is it when we are erased from our own texts anyway? All of Cybertron may forget, but Kaon will always remember. A factory bot rose from nothing and became Syncopos, the one who first proved without a word that the caste system is built on a foundation of oppressive lies. There is no set form for brilliance; it can absolutely come from anywhere.”
Megatronus pauses for a heavy gulp of tea. He lifts the glass with a renewed, defiant cheer.
“So we will not lose to despair, Orion! They will never be able to erase the fact that one of their abandoned greats was of the plateau; Syncopos lives whether she is named or not, and she possessed the very spark of Kaon. Perhaps her work as Anonymous or ‘Rubati’ has long fallen out of favour with the uppers, but her pulse persists with us.” He holds Orion’s servos earnestly. “I will show you sometime.”
Searching for a ‘Rubati’ in the archives did yield some more result, but even the well there ran dry before his next visit to Kaon. Most of what Orion found were simply speculative essays on who Rubati might have been—why a name never appeared with their distinctly lower-hemisphere compositions. It was all more-or-less the same as what Megatronus said, with some added remarks about Syncopos’ ‘untamed’ sound and a lack of clarity on the city she was based in, but Orion could guess that any thesis which even suggested Rubati as a counter to the system would be barred from publication, or at least heavily censored. Better that she seemed a humble, unusually learned and worldly Iaconian, than an arrogant Kaonian stepping where she wasn’t wanted.
Dissatisfied, Orion became restless during the period of waiting to see Megatronus again—to understand Syncopos within context, with him… What else could find a deeper curiosity from the archivist than that?
Helm resting on a servo, he sighed deeply at his station.
“Conjunx rites today, Orion?”
He jumped at Alpha Trion’s sudden question, scrambling to shut down his terminal and hide his fluster.
“Ah, Alpha Trion! I— m-my research into Kaon’s music has hit a bit of a wall. I suppose I was… curious about some of the other activities they might have used those compositions for.”
Alpha Trion lightly tapped a digit on Orion’s helm. “At ease, Orion. We archivists find ourselves studying many things—some certainly more controversial than simple rites of union. Such interests of study do not always have to relate to each other, anyhow.”
“Oh… th-thank you, sir.”
Despite the reassurance that he was not in trouble for straying somewhere he had no business being, Orion looked away from his mentor’s discerning optics, embarrassed at the possibility of having his spark read by the Head Archivist before he himself even understood it. Though he had the foresight to download information into packages for later musings, Orion never studied Conjunx rites so openly during the work cycle again. At least not during Alpha Trion’s terribly long shifts.
But on yet another near-empty train to Kaon, Orion was completely alone, so he pondered. The first three acts listed in every source he saw regarding the universal Conjunx Ritus were quite straightforward (he and Megatronus must have unwittingly performed all of them countless times already…), but the Act of Devotion… what would constitute a ‘spectacular demonstration’ of love? How long had these rites existed for? Were they real for Syncopos, back in the time and place where she composed?
Although he was painfully curious, Orion didn’t know if he could really ask anyone about it. It would be so frivolous—so typical—for him, an Iaconian observing from the side, to indulge under the faintly growing tensions in their planet.
With the speeds that transplanetary locomotives reached, it was hard to get a clear glimpse of anything outside before it was whisked away, though it got easier with every trip. Orion watched as the idyllic ruralscape of Cybertron’s northern half dropped below the tracks into the flatlands, at once the same as they always were, yet changed to him. It wasn’t often he got to revisit that place—even at this distance—, so Orion allowed his spark to its little pangs on its next revolution; he wasn’t sure he could ever truly let go, but that little wasteland bot simply didn’t exist anymore. And as quickly as it flashed before him, the strip of wasteland faded, almost peacefully, into Kaon’s large expanse, pressed insistently against Cybertron’s equator as if to challenge it. If he concentrated, Orion could almost bring into focus the powerful frames of the workers who tended the farms. Even they were rendered miniscule by the train in constant motion, and they disappeared like apparitions.
He returned to the underground Kolkular Station to see Megatronus already waiting, digits tapping impatiently against thigh plating. Dour faceplates immediately brightened upon seeing Orion emerge from the train.
With a flurry of the gladiator’s excitement, Orion was quickly led to an abandoned factory in the outskirts of a centralized slum. Kaon’s ever-changing functions in service to the whims of the powerful left many similar smaller structures forgotten—never even acknowledged when they functioned, far below notice—and repurposed by the desperate. Though the gathering today was anything but desperate. Persistent, perhaps.
A lively difficult-to-navigate crowd had formed within the factory’s rusty, but firm, walls. A din of raucous cheer permeated the entire building: bots clustering around stations set up along decommissioned conveyors, others near the main entrance embracing and collapsing into laughing heaps for what must have been long-awaited reunions. Lighting was of no concern, what with the sunbeams sneaking in through gaps in the rafters. Something warm and hearty wafted against the pair, awakening Orion’s olfactory sensors; he stood on the tips of his pedes to get a closer look at what everyone was clamouring around.
There had been no tangible program for this event, and Megatronus was uncharacteristically sparing with the details; everyone knew of it through the trust of spoken word alone, lest someone too grand for their own plating see and shut the whole thing down.
“Hold on, Orion.” Megatronus grabbed his servo and slipped into the sea of buzzing anticipation.
They wove through the masses together, Megatronus seemingly looking for something specific. The aroma, stronger within the crowds, lulled Orion into a stupor as he simply followed.
“Ah, there you are!” Megatronus tugs him along a more direct path. “Taken up the far wall again, Terminus?”
From the other side of an imposing cauldron, Orion could hear the older bot’s laugh over the other mecha’s vivacity. Terminus continued stirring his cauldron’s contents.
“Always liked a good wall behind me back, lad. Now, I know damn well you ain’t here just for a simple chat.”
Orion soon found himself being ushered along again. Megatronus handed him a bowl of something as they settled against the wall in wait: a soup of soft-cabled noodle coiled in the carefully hewn stoneware, splitting cleanly under an inquisitive prod with Orion’s fork. Megatronus had already started sipping on his.
“Eat while it’s still hot; the crew have a few more bots to feed and things to set up before things start.”
The soup was rich and savoury upon Orion’s glossa, a little spicy, and the cabling within, denser than most things he’d eaten before. It made plenty of sense for such a warm heavy meal to come from Kaon, Cybertron’s impressive cradle of physical labourers, but he feared he would not be able to finish his own bowl, too used to the much lighter fuel of plain Energon to keep his systems running. The noodles were so good, all the better for the passion put into making them for no cost, and they should not have to go to waste after everything.
Megatronus paused and shifted in between bites. “At peace, Orion. You can take what’s left home and return the bowl to Terminus at a later time.”
Orion blinked. He hadn’t realized he let his apprehensions slip through into his open field; embarrassing for an Iaconian, but Megatronus’ words were comforting, nonetheless.
“Ah, my apologies for the trouble. Thank you, Megatronus.”
The food was clearly excellent, for neither of them spoke a word until Terminus eventually dropped by. Though Orion was happy with simply waving in greeting, Megatronus could never remain in silence when it came to such a dear bot.
“Oh, here already?”
Terminus sank down next to Megatronus with a dramatic sigh. “Told ‘em to just help themselves if they were hungry. Don’t need anyone specific to do the scooping, really. We cooks just do it when we feel like it.” He laughed.
“Well, then that pot’s gonna be empty in no time.” Megatronus chuckled alongside him. “Seen Soundwave come in yet? He mentioned wanting to attend.”
Terminus waved a dismissive servo. “Probably in already! You know that bot’s everywhere. Let’s just hope he’s gotten his share o’ the fuel before it’s out.”
Megatronus hummed in agreement.
Terminus was one of Megatronus’ few surviving friends not from the gladiatorial rings. He continued working shifts in the mines long after Megatronus had left that life behind, the old miner content enough with the simple defiances of scavenging for published works and transcribing Megatronus’ speeches in his spare time. He had a keen optic for tablets too: though their contents were never a guarantee of quality, he amassed quite the collection of reading material in the long span of his functioning. Since their first meeting, Orion felt an unexpectedly sorrowful kinship with the miner; in another time, Terminus could’ve made for an excellent archivist if he chose… he could never bear to discard any of his finds and documentation, though he excitedly gave them away at the slightest hint of interest from a fellow reader. Many of Orion’s own vintages were from the miner.
Without the (costly and unnecessary) modification to switch between optical settings, Terminus’ always remained a sullen red. Though his merriment made them sparkle quite unlike any of the optics Orion would see in Iacon.
“Think I started collecting way before Megatronus even came online! Darkness o’ the mines is never so lonely when you got the thoughts of other mecha stored in your processor.”
Terminus’ plating often flared with pride on such topics. “Megatronus learned to read from me, y’know. Ah, he writes e’en better than me now, can you believe it?”
According to Terminus, a present-day observer could mark the phases of Syncopos’ life through her favoured style at the time, independent of wider conventions beyond herself. Like many other young sparks would, she likely started with the loosest and harshest combinations of her oeuvre: only familiar with the mechanics offered by the factory and the run-down trains come to take their products away—to silently take fellow manufacturers away—, her first works kept unchanging rhythms underneath solitary vocals.
Then something shifted in the middle of Syncopos’ career. Lower-hemisphere theories arose that her middle phase coincided with the first or second widespread Makers’ Revolt—factory bots sabotaged their own work and equipment, costing a Quintessian Cybertron millions with collateral damage and delays in shipments across the planet (Terminus did not specify whether these were losses in lives or credits). Syncopos’ music suddenly stuttered and started as it pleased, the composer growing creative with additional instrumentation alongside the omnipresent vocalist in her work.
“You ask me, she was an inventor more than anything. There are rumours that she made blueprints for some o’ the instruments she devised, but some of us joke that no one was literate enough to decipher any of ‘em past the sketches.” Terminus had made his way to Orion’s side, leaving Megatronus to quietly enjoy his soup. He sighed wistfully, “Don’t matter anymore if it’s true. All her originals—manuscripts, instruments, manuals—, probably lost to time.”
Some of her more controversial choices included single-use cores that loudly combusted when struck right. The more percussive works using those never made it out of the plateau (though miners still appreciated their own purposes for the bizarre instrument), but she did also engineer a fair resemblance to the favourite—thus restricted—singing strings emerging from the upper hemisphere. Questions remained on where her inspiration for these came from, but recognized musicians from north of the equator clearly held no qualms about having more compositions to work with. They were perhaps assured enough that some factory bot could never supplant them in their designated roles.
Syncopos’ late phase was as free as it was abrupt. She quickly moved on from her stint in musical conventions that earned her the elites’ begrudging favour, displaying her ability as she got to see just a little more beyond her bunk and position in the assembly line. Sense of consonance (and dissonance, by necessary extension) refined, she sharpened it under plays of rhythm—if her smooth, but heavy-textured chords weren’t the unusual component, it would always be the rhythms. They jumped and churned; they’d stop jarringly; she loved long pauses filled only with the low droning of a note repeated, sometimes escalating, sometimes not, which the vocals never overtook. Both worded and wordless work chants of her time often morphed into rhapsodies; at times impassioned recitations and instrumentation clashed, on purpose, yet their energies were inextricable from the other. It was her most avant-garde and debated period of work: notation became too rigid a medium, and she left emptier spaces behind for improvisation. And as her repute for these compositions—compelling and unsettling, depending on whom was asked—shot up, Syncopos disappeared from the records, written and spoken.
Orion felt his spark sink, optics cycling. “Just like that…?”
Staring at the floor, Terminus crossed his arms and slowly nodded. “Just like that.”
“But… it all seemed like she was building up to something else, that the late phase was just another midpoint for her.”
Terminus sighed and smiled softly. “She wanted to document all the work songs she was hearing across Kaon, publish ‘em for wider distribution and sturdier copies. Mind, we only know this ‘cause it was all she talked about to fill the quiet, some o’ her shifts. But work songs… they ain’t really got the same intrigue or bite for the uppers that her other pieces had, y’see—just a steady beat and the same words to help us remember what to do—, so they never got to be preserved like she wanted. I get to wonderin’ if any ever survived to be repeated by some of us these days.”
Then the miner’s gaze sharpened, boring holes into the dust at their pedes. “Coulda been a martyr, but I reckon some folks higher up were scared o’ that. She disappeared too quietly, just like the rest of us. In a way she got extremely lucky; I think there had to have been others like her, collaborating together—music’s no lonely activity, after all. But… not a trace left of ‘em now, outside whatever their marks mighta been on her and her work. We lose more than we even know to eons of silencing, lad.”
Before Terminus could say any more, the crowds receded towards the walls, some of the attendees draping mesh over larger gaps in the building and blocking out the daylight. Orion finally notices the bots along the walkways of the factory’s perimeter when they angle their own lights to a provisional elevation in the middle of the main floor. An impressively built mech grandly steps into the centre of the spotlight and a hush falls over the audience. They are forged from a standard slate-black, but light blues, greens, an audacious gold which caught the light, finely trace calculated edges of their plating—ornamental, but easily concealed. They pause for a moment with arms crossed behind their back, scanning the assembly with a faint air of delight on expressive features. Behind them, a few other bots in the dim shuffle quietly onto stage to set up their instruments—all put together out of unassuming scrap parts.
Based on the waves of recognition—mixed with a respective intrigue and excitement—from the fields of Megatronus and Terminus, Orion supposes that this must be a prominent current performer within Kaonian circles. The archivist decides to make no attempts at guessing the performer’s systemically assigned function.
Megatronus would later tell Orion that his stage name was K’narius. No one knew anything about the bot’s assigned designation, and everyone seemed content to keep it that way. Most bots he performed alongside remained anonymous: he and they all knew the risks already taken with such trivial pursuits of non-production.
K’narius lifts his servos, holding up a small drum extracted from his subspace. After a pause of stillness, he begins tapping out a complex rhythm in hypnotic repetition—free servo seeming to fly across the entire surface of the drum. K’narius hums a note, low and resonant, holds it for about half an eternity to instill a growing anticipation in the crowd—hanging on for his next action. K’narius’ secondary vents must have been running on high to sustain such a long note, but they are barely heard under his vocalizer.
He suddenly breaks the spell with a firmer strike of the drum, but the entire audience is already under his thrall, including Orion. K’narius begins the next sets of slightly simpler rhythms, reciting something as he gestures with his drum and servos for the audience to chant with him. Their mantras are in a Kaonian dialect Orion can’t recognize on his own; perhaps the same Olden Kaonian that Syncopos once spoke and wrote? It did not seem to matter its meaning: it sunk into the floor and reverberated throughout the factory, reaching deep into Orion’s spark chamber and brushing his core.
It’s warmer on the Kaonians’ glossae than Orion could’ve imagined through his feeble translations into Cybertronic Standard—it resembles some of Iacon’s own mellifluous dialects, before Kaon had diverged for the brusquely efficient.
It grew in intensity, K’narius’ increasing tempo on the drum pushing the chanters to go faster and harder until the sound seemed to strike hot on Orion’s receptors. Within the careful poetics of this dialect, pushed to the limits of practical language, he could finally feel the irresistible pulse that drove Kaon; within its strong vocalizers, Orion could hear the trains of Syncopos’ time.
By the time the ring of light grew to illuminate the instrumentalists, the air in the factory had grown electrifying. The audience roared and cheered as the band began their next number, strikingly different from the solo set before. K’narius tosses his drum into the sea of raised servos as the percussionist to his side, enshrined in their own tools of their trade, stands to take over for him with a delicate and familiar twinkling of bells—a mere prelude for them to somehow elaborate his rhythms further. The vocalist smoothly steps down from the platform to take a break, vapour from his vents floating after him and refracting the light as he goes.
The instrumentalists are left to play for an interval without K’narius: it reminded Orion of the sparse background music he had the treat to hear in a data clerk’s part of Iacon, but the constant percussion here was a distinctly new feature to him. Squinting past the crowd, Orion could see that the other three instrumentalists had digits modified to shift into their more precise work, but the percussionist’s servos kept their blunt and strong shape—their beats maintaining the current rippling through the audience. It made Orion wonder how much freer Iacon could be if they indulged in an open and willful pulse of their own.
K’narius eventually returns, emerging into the light with his powerful vocalizer soaring over the instrumentals. He glides effortlessly between the lowest and highest registers, as though he alone occupied the parts of two voices. Orion’s optics widened; he wasn’t sure if such a feat was possible without any modifications. He glanced towards Terminus for any indication, but the old miner was completely focused on the performance, servos clasped together over his intake.
He recognized this one, Orion realized, but there were never any vocals in the recordings he could find—the sharper clicks and accentuations of Olden Kaonian perhaps too difficult to replicate. In the northern hemisphere, it all simply stagnated along the same register of an instrument—disappeared into a sea of strings. He can now faintly see the score in his processor as K’narius goes, the archivist’s optics having countlessly traced the lyrics as best they could for so many nights. It was one of many pieces where he couldn’t tell if it was a restricted right or another spark that the composer yearned for. Perhaps both…
Orion could not help the servo pressing against his spark chamber. He fears it may fall apart otherwise.
Though that electricity still arced across the electromagnetics of the audience, it is dead quiet as K’narius’ voice fades on a two-tone harmony. Then, perhaps like the perpetually moving Kaon itself, something shifted gears again. The thinly built band burst back into that frenetic sound, the heavy-stringed instrumentalist breaking away from their lyrical support to introduce a counter rhythm to the drums in a plucky, percussive bass.
It was once again the steadfast repetition of the solitary work tunes and pulses Orion had heard on the farms, muted through facility walls, compounded over and over—now engineered for shared leisure and joy.
It almost seemed as if the band had started arguing with each other—horn and clavier overpowering K’narius (who let them)—, but the trading of solos, barely suppressed grins, and nodding of helms suggested they were truly having the time of their lives together. And the audience got to erupt again with them, shouting and clapping emphatically to join the thick musical texture. K’narius’ voice took on a smooth, conversational tone as he began to orate underneath, deliberately cutting and glitching his vocalizer throughout—suddenly the most striking rhythm to Orion amidst the lovely chaos. Every glyph’s presence became less about the meaning, more about the meter strung together by their syllables—their abrupt silences. Orion’s spark kept hammering against its confines, the excitable stress only released through the tapping of his digits against a thigh.
Did he wish he got to hear something like this from his workstation, read a transcript of it from a published score? He didn’t know; perhaps not. Absolutely surrounded by the draw and influence of these performers, who inexplicably made this art their own, Orion would have preferred nothing else. This was Kaon at its most vivacious, and any other rendition wouldn’t have felt so right.
(What a grand honour to witness the plateau’s guarded spirit…!)
Just when K’narius starts to propel another chant from the audience, arms raised in invitation while his frame ventilates with exertion, his little drum gets passed into Terminus’ servos. Carefully, the miner readjusts his grasp on it as Megatronus excitedly reaches over to tap a simple but stately triplet on the drum’s face.
“Here, Orion.” Terminus holds out the drum for him. “Special part o’ the show: everyone in the crowd gets a go at the minidrum—their own li’l rhythm they made or another they like. Recommending your weaker servo for your first try, though.”
It was so simple an act, but Orion will remember it for the rest of his functioning. All around them, the impressive unison maintained by the audience is splitting at the seams as they grow tired but no less eager—more and more distinct voices spilling out of the fraying edges of their collective sound. Terminus demonstrates with his own rhythm—a dotted couplet on the drum face, with a sharp, conclusive click against its rim—and Orion watches transfixed as a current reaches out for Terminus’ plating in the brief microkliks of contact.
Orion lifts his servo, heeding Terminus’ advice but still wondering how deeply he should be thinking about his action on the drum. Tentatively, he tries out a triplet on its face, surprises himself with how full its sound reverberates. His trio of pulses ends up erratic compared to Megatronus’, longer-short-long, which he tries to salvage with an additional firm strike like Terminus did.
He is not sure whether the built-up current in the drum or the embarrassment of being so clumsy stung more, but Terminus laughs warmly.
“Hah, that’s a good’un! Don’t recall my first rhythm ever being so interesting.”
As the miner passes the drum along to some bots in front of him, a wave of tiredness washes over Orion. His digits tremble rather pleasantly with aftershocks—energy from the mecha around him, he realized, physically exchanged with him through the drum. Smiling to himself, he flexes his servo to test the feeling.
The audience began to rise to a stand: infectious, jubilant delirium strengthening their struts. K’narius triumphantly raises a fist as the biggest energy surge of the event rushes through the crowd. The instrumentalists become fevered: horn’s smooth texture splits slightly on a wail; clavier matches the breakneck drums with heavy chords; a string snaps sharply with all the tension and activity, but the bass simply continues with one string less.
Right before everything seems naturally ready to fall apart, the band’s noise cuts off and leaves the percussionist alone to carry the audience towards the end—K’narius gesturing for them to keep going as he steps to the side. The percussionist drives the rhythm with a frantic momentum; the audience can’t exactly keep up with their more precise work of vocalization, and many members fade out of the chorus—though Orion could feel they were all itching to jump back in at any moment.
Finally, the percussionist rolls into such a clash of metal discs that Orion is surprised they did not also break under the force. One would think that persistent, tinny rattle is exactly what the audience—the chanters and the watchers, both—had been waiting for this whole time, the way they roar with delight and applaud the band, unconcerned with unity or rhythm this time. Someone in the crowd throws the little drum back on-stage, which K’narius catches with a gracious bow.
The factory had come to life again, humming—shaking—with these masses who came to honour everything Kaon would have freely offered, but now fights for instead. The rest of the band rises to join their vocalist, a satisfied exhaustion settling into their frames, and they all bow deeply together.
Having risen with the crowd, Orion blinks as he feels the performance dissipate, forgotten bowl of soup still grasped in his servos.
Megatronus nudges him playfully. “So Kaon can hold the rapture of a bot from Proper Cybertron too, hm?”
“Oh!” Orion shakes his helm to clear his thoughts, self-consciously drawing back his flared plating to be flush against his protoform once more. He clears his vocalizer for good measure. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I lost control of my frame like that.”
“Ah, don’t tease ‘im, Megatronus.” Terminus claps a servo on Orion’s shoulder, his other servo wiping a glassy optic. “But oh, lad, just wait ‘til you get to see K’narius goin’ at it alone. He can mimic up to a whole quintet of whatever instrument or voice arrangement when it comes down to it. Impressive, resourceful stuff, what our artists can do!”
Orion nods and glances back towards the band with a tiny smile. They were huddled and murmuring around the standing bass, inspecting its snapped string. The audience around him and his Kaonian companions had thinned to now anxiously await the performers’ descent by the stage.
There would still be some work left to do, packing everything up, though Kaonians were prideful enough to absolutely refuse any help from outsiders or guests. With his overtly cheery paints, Orion could only ruefully leave them to it.
“Terminus, before we part… I just wanted to give you this.” Orion extracts the collection of anonymized scores from his subspace. “They are but only a fraction of her works, but I think you could make more out of Syncopos’ scores than I ever could.”
Terminus’ optics widen upon seeing it, servo hovering hesitantly in the air. “For me, lad? You sure?”
Orion nods fervently. He extends the datapad out further, quietly urging the miner to hold it. “Please. Take it as my deepest thanks for your knowledge.”
“Well, then…” Terminus delicately holds onto it with both servos, bowing so deeply his helm becomes level with Orion’s. “I am honoured to accept your generosity.”
With the collection passed on, Terminus slowly scrolls through the datapad, giddy yet careful with the new treasure. Orion finds himself heartened to see the softness of recognition fall upon the miner’s features—immediate recognition of a fellow worker memorialized in print, rather than as something cryptic to be deciphered from half a world away. Indeed, Orion realized, this piece of her legacy had finally found its way back home.
Megatronus pings him while Terminus scans through the collection.
{ See, Orion, I knew you had it in you to trade like us big bots. }
The gladiator swiftly moves on before Orion could compose a response.
“Come now, Terminus. You will still have the datapad with you when you return to your bunk.” Megatronus jovially claps his mentor’s back struts. “I’m sure you would love to see the performers after such a show.”
“Ah, right you are.” Terminus laughs and stashes the tablet away, earnestly clasping Orion’s servo for a shake. “I must thank you again, li’l librarian. It’s a gift I ain’t forgettin’.”
Megatronus and Orion watched the miner disappear into the sea of bots jostling around the little group of performers—just for this eve, Kaon’s biggest stars in the area.
The instrumentalists have left their tools strewn along the stage, quiet personae lifted as they now chatter excitedly and are ushered along to some of the remaining soup. K’narius positively towers over the crowd of onlookers swarming him at ground-level, but he eagerly hugs and lifts to his height as many bots as he can reach, affectionately nuzzling the sides of their faces with a charming big grin plastered across his own. Orion thinks better of joining the rambunctious group: his thinner plating probably couldn’t withstand the crushing grip of an exuberant performer K’narius’ size—if he even made it within the Kaonian’s reach. But the longer he watches the chaos from afar, the closer a little warmth in his spark chamber seems to bursting.
At his side, Megatronus had just returned from stacking empty bowls in the vicinity. After a silent moment of watching with Orion, he huffs in amusement and turns to leave the factory. Orion supposes there was little else for him to do here, so he follows.
“You didn’t want to at least meet K’narius for yourself, Megatronus?” Orion asked once they were seated on another train bound for Iacon.
“Well… no, it’s not that.” Hunched over his knees, Megatronus loosely wrung his servos together, unusually pensive, though there was little agitation in his frame. “It’s just… I imagine he might already know of me, anyway, and what is there for us to talk about beyond that? He makes his entertainment in recreating with others, and I make mine in killing alone. We could not be any more different.”
Orion tilted his helm. “Could you and him really be that much more different than you and I? I’m sure there is something you could discuss with him. You both come from the plateau, after all.”
Megatronus chuffed, a fond smile appearing at the corner of his dermas. “Ah, I suppose you may be right, my archivist.” The smile lessened as the thoughtful furrow of optical ridges returned. “I think the concert had me musing: even our stages are rather different… the elites pride themselves on being above our practices, from the illegal to the sanctioned, but there is the undeniable touch of them in the gladiatorial rings. They would never allow bots like Terminus to cook in the stands for others, free of charge; they would never allow the audience to swarm the arena and gladiators after a fight, though I guess I wouldn’t be so eager to hug those who had happily watched us kill and die, anyway.
“I am… glad for K’narius, I think. There is the spirit of resistance in what he and fellow performers do in the dark of abandoned facilities, but I couldn’t have imagined any Kaonian worker would ever know such… fulfillment in the midst of it. Such momentary freedom from caste.” Metal creaked as Megatronus’ digits folded tensely. “I had always assumed the hunger for more was a given in revolution. Does K’narius hunger like we scrappers do? …I don’t know which answer I would prefer.”
Orion turned his helm to look out the window before them, watching Kaon’s farms rush past. “I don’t presume to know what it’s like to live directly under caste-rule in Kaon, of course, but I think I’ve come to better understand what sort of hunger you speak of. We don’t know what K’narius is subject to off the stage; who’s to say it doesn’t gut him, deprive him of something, too? Still, it is clear to me that he fills himself through his own chosen work, however unrecognized it may be.” Orion looked back to Megatronus. “You don’t have to only be defined by the mines or the Pits. Surely, you can choose for yourself like K’narius—like Syncopos—did? Whatever else you might want to do, Megatronus, I would be glad to see you there.”
Megatronus’ face softened, optics flitting about—despairing, hoping. “I… I might have liked partaking in the arts, too. Literature and poetry; oration with none of the bloodshed, perhaps. But…” He shuttered his optics and sighed. He stared out of the window with renewed conviction. “Cybertron must change first, and I think being a gladiator does suit me well enough in the meantime. I can somewhat enjoy it: spitting in the faces of those who would pray for my termination in the Pits, who would seek entertainment in pitting us against each other; to prove after a good show that I can express myself in ways other than violence—that I can speak their own damn language.
“I respect their craft dearly, but K’narius rightfully lingers with fellow workers, and Syncopos tried to appeal to the better nature of an inherently foul system; I cannot make my own peace in following them, not with everything that I’ve seen. The elites refuse to listen when all of us are screaming. Change for Cybertron could never happen like this, and change is what I want most of all. We need to make them listen, Orion.”
Megatronus’ words echoed in Orion’s mind long after he left the train station, the sun just seated upon the horizon.
He waits for his leftover soup to reheat in the archivists’ lounge. It’s quieter than usual after most of the Hall has left for the night, only a scattering of those taking later shifts or working overtime—more open datapads in the lounge than there were bots.
Without much conversation left for the day, other than brief greetings past the lounge tables and active workstations, Orion returns to his own quarters hidden along the shelves. Alpha Trion would not be checking on him for a while, so he treats himself to eating upon his berth. The cables had softened in their extended time submerged in the soup, but everything somehow tasted as good as it had in the factory. Alone again, Orion indulgently releases his field, pulsing with warmth for each bite of Terminus’ meal. And like everything else, the bowl of noodles ends all too soon.
Orion reclines to lean against the wall, gazing out the window right above his pillow. It was a mild evening; a brightly lit circuit moth fluttered against the crystal pane from outside. Alpha Trion would’ve been quite cross if Orion let the creature inside, but Orion didn’t mind this kind of company for the rest of the night. He falls into recharge like that, awkwardly propped against the wall, imagining he had opened the window for the moth, just a sliver. He would wake up to find the bowl relocated to his desk, his helm resting on the pillow proper with berth covers drawn over the rest of him. He has no dreams for what a changed Cybertron could possibly feel like; Orion is sure that, between them, only the moth would truly know of the indescribable freedoms that they all hungered for.
But to Orion, it was clear for anyone with the spark to see it; Megatronus was as kind as he was intelligent, though one was always guarded and the other, sharpened. He could’ve been a timeless, historical artist if he wanted to. If he and other Kaonians were allowed to.
…
Megatronus clattered around in his tiny, well-worn kitchen space, grabbing a canister and some crystalware. “Engex for you, Orion?”
“Oh.” Orion held up his servos apologetically. “I shouldn’t, but thank you. Alpha Trion might have… questions if I were to return intoxicated.”
“Ah.” Megatronus checked his cabinets again and handed Orion a can of bubbly Visco.
Moments spent with Megatronus were all so hard to rank—perhaps he didn’t need to rank anything—, but among them, Orion thinks these just might be his favourite. Sprawling as best they could together, on Megatronus’ too-small berth, while they listen to the rumble of Kaon’s constant activity through the walls. Though neither of them spoke, their worries and ruminations whispered throughout Megatronus’ place.
(Were the ambient temperatures kind for the farmers in the flatlands tonight? Were there manufacturers resisting sleep as they attached the same parts to a whole, over and over? Were other gladiators now ventilating deeper and deeper, pushed to cherish what may be their final moments? Would Terminus be able to get some recharge tonight, or was he condemned to another late shift in the dark? Who would take the fall for one worker to get that rest? It didn’t matter; many would gladly take it for a fellow worker every time.)
Sometimes, through Megatronus’ tiny faux window (simply a live feed constantly broadcast from the Crystal City Observatory), they would be lucky enough to catch a peek of one of the moons passing overhead—both of Cybertron’s moons, if Primus was truly smiling upon them.
“I used to be no more than a miner…” Megatronus mumbled one night, deep in thought.
“Yes, Megatronus, we know. You talk about it often in your speeches,” Orion teased as he rolled to look at the gladiator better. He asked more seriously, “What’s on your mind?”
“Heh…” A moon, barely poking in-frame on the feed, shone most brilliantly in Megatronus’ optics—blue as the day, for he forgot to switch back to his comfortable crimson. “Engex got to me. Was just thinking about how directionless it all seems. I escaped the death of the mines to instead face death by the servo of another desperate Kaonian. ‘Champion’ is just a pretty title to tide us over. There are no actual winners down here. Perhaps I should’ve just made my peace with simple poetry after all… I might’ve found less tragedy finally turning my back on all the bloodshed. At least, before I’m forced to face it again.”
Orion propped himself up on an arm. “Megatronus, you had once said change was what you wanted most. I think… you are change. You dared to speak about something other than glorious victory at the end of that battle, and you unsettled all of Cybertron for it; you made everyone think—made them want to hear more. The elites and their sympathizers hate and fear you because they know you may be right. You gave the words to fully realize what most Cybertronians had been feeling all this time…”
Orion shyly averted his gaze to a tiny space of berth between them. “I got to meet you because you chose to step out of line. You earn whatever titles you have because you fought for it, not because someone else had designated you so.”
The archivist had not a sip of Engex, yet his own processor had grown a little foggy—or maybe it was too erratic?
It was a lovely feeling; he had no idea what he was doing. Oh, he wished now that he had asked Alpha Trion all his ridiculous questions. He rested a servo on the gladiator’s faceplates; the gladiator’s pensive expression melted away, optics shuttering blissfully.
“Megatronus, if you’ll permit me to be a little foolish, I…” Orion could almost weep again with how bad the flushing on his own face felt. Did he dare like Megatronus does?
“I tried to study it, to understand it, but at some point, perhaps it is a matter of finding out for myself. I don’t know how grand a gesture it ultimately requires, but I feel there is… something about us.”
Primus, grant him strength.
“Oh, Megatronus, would you be opposed to making me your Conjunx? I really couldn’t tell you where this came from, but… it just feels so right to me. It would explain this odd pull I’ve always felt about you. Though… I understand if I might be more of a shackle for you. Er, you don’t have to agree to anything you don’t want, of course. I—” Before Orion knew it, he had horribly ruined whatever moment had tenderly blossomed between them. He hastily retracted his servo as though burned.
“I’m so sorry, Megatronus. I shouldn’t have said anything, I’ll leave your apartment if you…”
Orion trailed off as his systems finally cooled down enough to process something: Megatronus had not moved a cable since Orion rested a servo on him. In the silence he allowed to linger, Orion heard the easy motions of a steady ventilation in recharge.
Orion couldn’t quite stifle the laugh at his own expense; foolish, indeed. But a powerful relief soothed the embarrassed edge threatening to trickle out of his field. So Megatronus hadn't heard his poorly-veiled confession. He still had time to deliberate before the next attempt—if that strange courage ever returns.
His spark was racing, but he didn’t regret a thing. He rested himself back onto the berth, shifting slightly closer to his friend.
Orion had the next shift off. He did not need to return to Iacon tonight. And there was no place in the universe he’d want to be except right here, warm with Megatronus. Oh, he could not wait to wake up next to him. The gladiator would have feigned a dramatic hurt if he found out Orion took the train home by himself, anyway. The archivist huffed with a silly smile on his face.
Processor still hazy with something, Orion plants a light kiss on Megatronus’ faceguard.
“Good night, Megatronus.”