Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing Hasbro's loveable mechs in an attempt to weave a tale about radios that other people might find interesting. Any similarities between the events of this story to persons or Autobots, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

Bluestreak drove on in silence, letting the growl of his engine and the crackle of loose rock, gravel, and dirt fill his audios as he headed toward the fence marking the edge of the Autobots' territory on Earth. He turned a sensor to said chain-link and barbed wire mesh and a shudder ran through him as he got closer and closer to it.

He didn't like the fence.

He wasn't politically minded, not like Prowl or Ratchet, who knew how to negotiate and verbally fight until they got exactly what they wanted and more. But he knew in his spark that installing the fence had not exactly been for the Autobots' benefit, despite the reassurances from the human delegation. His memory cache helpfully replayed the memory of Prowl's unnaturally stiff doorwings (even for him) and Jazz's distinct lack of enthusiasm when the High Command has been informed of the new installation several weeks back.

He slowed down as he neared the iron menace. Inching his way forward cautiously, he pushed open the unlocked gate in the fence with his grill and pulled through. Moving around to the other side of the gate, he slowly nudged it shut, the metal mesh rattling angrily as it snapped close. Bluestreak turned away from the irrationally unnerving fence and quickly drove down the dirt road to the highway.

It was early in the evening, a bit after sunset. A quick check of his chronometer told Bluestreak it was nearing 2000 hours, local time. He stopped at the top of a small incline and watched for an opening in the light traffic. Spotting a small opening, he drove down the slope and merged into the highway traffic easily, maneuvering his way onto the cement road with more finesse than any Earthen vehicle could ever achieve. Blending into his surroundings as every Cybertronian was naturally inclined to do, he sped up and headed east into the oncoming night.

He let his mind wander as he headed for his destination, namely nowhere. He had to applaud himself on keeping his vocalizer offline for this long. He knew he talked a lot and he also knew that he liked to talk a lot.

It's just that he didn't like to talk when others didn't want to listen.

It had been a stressful week for the Autobots of Earth.

The Decepticons had attempted two raids in three days on opposite sides of the planet; seven mechs were in the Med-bay for extensive repairs from the recent battles; the rest were sore from freshly welded lacerations and replaced components; their energon supplies were running low and the command staff were having difficulties negotiating for more; the damned fence (they realized too late) was smaller than they had initially perceived, leaving the more restless Autobots with less room to spin their wheels; and (because things weren't bad enough) there had been a severe thunderstorm two days ago which, due to the lack of functioning, sealable hatches, had flooded the interior of the Ark.

All in all, the mechs were miserable.

Thus each had turned to his preferred coping mechanism in an attempt to lift their own spirits.

Unfortunately for Bluestreak, whose preferred coping mechanism was talking non-stop, he only succeeded in irritating his comrades with his chatter rather than bring up memories of better times. No one wanted to listen to Bluestreak talk. Even the Dinobots, who normally liked hearing Bluestreak tell them stories of Cybertron, weren't interested in listening. Bluestreak had left before they decided to smash him as well as the boulders they were currently venting with.

Without anyone to listen to him or any other available form of distraction, Bluestreak had decided to go driving.

Thirty miles from the Ark and he saw the town of Warm Springs, Oregon, on the horizon. Bluestreak slowed down as he moved closer and closer to the human's settlement, uncertainty filling his circuits. Deciding he didn't really want to go through the town, he exited the highway and took the first right turn he could, heading off into gently sloping roads that eventually flattened out on the high mesas.

The stars had come out and shone overhead with a soft light, the Milky Way galaxy stretching across the inky blue-black sky. Bluestreak slowed down the farther and farther south he went until he crawled off the road and onto the nonexistent shoulder. He stayed there for several minutes, thoughts and worries floating through his mind in a dizzying, tangled jumble.

He transformed smoothly and stretched, doorwings flapping to get the kinks out of his shoulder joints. He took a moment to admire the stars above him before he turned his attention back to the planet below him and started walking west.

He had no idea where he was going at this point. He just picked a direction and started walking. West seemed as good a direction as any, so why not? His thoughts drifted once again, mind running a mile a minute, mulling over everything and anything. He let his peds carry him wherever they wanted to go. Twenty minutes later, his peds had taken him to a building.

Bluestreak paused as he examined it.

It was an old, two story, wooden house with an open, but empty garage-like tin building and a radio tower just behind the tin garage. Bluestreak walked over to the wooden structure and noted the almost unused dirt road leading north and south away from the house. His scanners did not pick up any human life signals. The house was either unoccupied or abandoned.

He peered into the grimy second story window and saw a small spartan bedroom with several cots and a few dressers open and empty. There were two sets of double doors set into the wall. One of them was open, revealing a lone wire hanger in an otherwise empty closet. A door lead off to what Bluestreak assumed was the washracks. A thick layer of dust coated everything. Bluestreak guessed that no one had been there in years.

He bent down and looked across the rickety porch of the house and into the ground floor. It was a single large room with a desk, several filing cabinets, a few chairs, and a couch on the left side of the house, a staircase leading up to the second floor to the couch's immediate left, and a small old style kitchenette and a complete set of old radio equipment on the right side of the room. Bluestreak quickly scanned and examined the radio console situated innocently in the back right corner. It was dusty and rusted in places, paint peeling at the corners, but it was a fully functional, if unpowered, two-way radio. Bluestreak then noticed the microphone sitting innocently on the thick, dark wood desk in front of an empty wicker chair.

Never had Bluestreak wished he was a human more than he did at that moment.

He wanted to go over to that station, reactivate it, gently remove the organic particles littering its dull metal paneling, grab the microphone, and talk to someone on the other side of it.

He frowned, feeling dejected, wings drooping slightly. Humans had such a nice, if slow, partially garbled, and inefficient, way of communicating on mass frequencies, he thought. It was one-sided, yes, and you couldn't really answer back in a two-way communiqué unless there was someone nearby on the same frequency the broadcaster was using. Humans didn't have integrated comm. links in their chassis that allowed them to screen multiple frequencies at once and determine if there was a pattern or signal to the electromagnetic waves that indicated someone's use of a transmitter.

But that wasn't the point of the radio for humans, if Bluestreak thought about it. Its sole purpose was to broadcast on a specific frequency to anyone who wanted to listen. A continuous stream of sound and words that they could listen... to...

Bluestreak's doorwings shot upward as he stood up and looked at the radio tower. He walked between the two buildings to the radio tower's base, looking up at the multiple dishes attached to the top of it. He quickly scanned the tower and found where its cabling met up with the radio console in the house. He noticed that the tower wasn't powered either, but he was sure that his own systems could provide the power necessary to operate it, if he was careful. Bluestreak examined the cabling one more, noting which cable connected where and which one was the electrical input.

Processors already decided on the matter, Bluestreak slid back the panel cover on his wrist, revealing his data ports and connection cables. He quickly scanned the power cable's connector and had one cable mimic it. He quickly unplugged the power cord and slid his own cable home. Quickly and carefully modulating his electrical output to the required voltage and current so as not to blow out the tower's systems, he felt the electricity in his capacitors drain slightly as the transmitter tower came online with the faintest of mechanical hums.

Bluestreak's cyan optics glowed brighter at his success and a grin broke across his features. Checking the cabling once more, he quickly found the one labeled "Signal Input." After a quick examination of the connector and mimicking of its form, he slid the data cable home.

Hard-lining with the radio tower was like attempting to teach a rock how to pilot an armored Tyrestian Transport Cruiser MDS-29: It was easy to set everything up, but it was not so easy getting the cruiser or the rock to actually respond.

The tower was not a computer like the Earthen terminals which awaited input, but gave an response to indicate its ability or inability to respond to a specific command (even if it was an automated response). Nor was the tower anything remotely like any system on Cybertron, in which the most base, wildest, and crudest of machinery always gave an indication as to the input it required, regardless of whether a status report would be given or not upon its ability to act upon such input.

The tower felt like a dead weight, cold, uncaring, and just existing.

Bluestreak quickly pushed his opinions of the feel of the tower aside and he focused on finding a radio frequency he liked. He activated his internal comm. link and searched through the available radio frequencies for an empty channel. He recalled Spike telling them about Earth's radio stations before and how they operated by modulating frequency or amplitude to increase the number of usable broadcasting channels.

FM channels, Spike had said, were used more for entertainment, music, and commercials, where in clear sound quality was needed for its listeners to properly enjoy the broadcasts. It was the type of channel people listened to most often, but it had a relatively short broadcasting range.

AM channels, on the other servo, were used almost exclusively for talk shows and information dispersal as its broadcasting range was wider, with the drawback of low sound quality. Not many people listened to these frequencies, at least according to Spike.

Bluestreak knew that he wanted to be heard, but he didn't want to interrupt any already occupied frequencies or bother anyone needlessly. He would certainly find it rude if his radio frequency was being used by someone else without telling him. He would find an empty channel that caught his attention and go from there. He had already decided to find an empty AM channel. He wanted to talk, and since the main use of the AM channels was talk, it made sense to the Autobot to utilize one of those frequencies.

He quickly listened in to the local AM stations and waited until he heard nothing but static. He found several such frequencies and took his time choosing one he liked the most. He really had no idea what he was looking for in a station frequency. It wasn't like there was anything wrong with choosing 770 AM over 830 AM or even 1140 AM.

He did like the sound of 1140 AM, though, when he reviewed an audio file of its projected sound in his processor. He couldn't help but compare it to how the humans told time. That and he didn't like getting up out of recharge, same as every other mech on the Ark (including Prime), so 830 AM wasn't as nice sounding as 1140 AM.

Bluestreak quickly tuned his comm. link to broadcast at the 1140 AM frequency and to send the information through the cable connecting his systems to the tower.

"My designation is Autobot Bluestreak." He said clearly both out loud and over the comm. It felt good to use his vocalizer again despite no one being around to hear him. His comm. system picked up the broadcast on the AM frequency and played it back to the gray Autobot. It sounded scratchy and there was some static in the background, but it was no worse than some of the other broadcasts he had examined earlier.

Frequency found, he walked over to the tin building and laid down on his side with his back against the back wall. He expertly maneuvered his doorwings upward and pressed them lightly against the cool metal, the pressure noted on the sensory panels but not in any particularly annoying or painful manner. He lightly shook his frame in an attempt to remove any remaining tension and sighed quietly.

Bluestreak looked up at the glittering stars one more time before he offlined his optics and allowed his processors to recall the topics and opinions he had previously pushed aside to return to his main memory cache. He examined each one quickly, thinking of how he was going to phrase what he wanted to say. He sighed once more and began speaking.

"Hey." He began, somewhat lamely. "... My designation is Bluestreak. I am an Autobot sniper and long-range gunner under the command of Weapon's Specialist and Field Commander Ironhide." He paused. "It's actually kind of weird, if I'm honest. I've never spoken on a radio before, friend." He decided that whomever he pretended was listening in was his friend. It was a polite term, he thought. "Comm. links aren't like radios," he amended, "that's more like talking on a telephone 'cause when you talk to someone on it, you know someone's eventually going to talk back. Prowl sometimes doesn't talk back but that's because I think he's too preoccupied to actually respond, but I know he listens. Grimlock certainly doesn't talk back, but... Come to think of it, I don't know if the Dinobots even have integrated comm. links. I've never actually seen them use one. I know Wheeljack's talked to them through his comm. before but I don't know if they responded or wondered why there was this random voice in their heads telling them what to do."

Bluestreak let out a small laugh. "Would they even consider it weird? I know they're my friends and comrades, but they are such sparklings, you know? Maturing and learning on Earth probably isn't helping them much. Not enough stimuli to keep their attention for longer than five minutes, not to mention were in the middle of a fragging war." He paused here again.

"I like Earth." He said firmly. "It's certainly no home, but it's beautiful in its own right. Cybertron had a lot of lights when I was less mature. When they called it the Golden Age, it kind of was, literally. The planet literally glowed gold when viewed from the upper atmosphere, some of the old Vosians said. But because of that, I'd never seen stars. I knew what stars were, of course, but I'd never actually seen them before. When I looked up it was a black sky. Not a star in sensor range. And I wasn't a flight capable frame, not like Skyfire or Powerglide or the Aerialbots. I couldn't fly up and see what was above the tallest Tower.

"Mirage probably saw stars when he was maturing. He used to live in the Towers. He doesn't like talking about it though. It makes him sad and quiet and then he'll activate his electro-disrupter and disappear. Jazz probably knows where he goes, but no one else does. He shows up for his shifts same as everyone else, but he won't talk to anyone for a joor or two. I know. I tried asking him once about seeing stars from the Tower tops. He didn't talk to me or anyone for three joors.

"That's eighteen hours." He tacked on, pretending for a moment that his nonexistent listener was human. "A joor is about six Earth hours. Well, six Earth hours, three minutes, but we've learned to round down for convenience's sake. It's a lot easier if we just ignore the extra half breem when doing everything."

His voice took on a thoughtful tilt. "Earth and Cybertron have a lot in common actually. We've got astroseconds, breems, joors, orns, and vorns. Earth's got seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years." Bluestreak laughed a little. "I don't know where an astrosecond came from and I don't know why it sounds so much like a second but they're two different measurements. An astrosecond is about .45 seconds, so it's almost 2 astroseconds per second.

"A breem's a bit easier to understand. It's 8.3 Earth minutes. We've got a lot of extra three's running around our number system when we convert to yours, friend. An orn, which was one day or solar cycle back home, back when we actually had a star to orbit, is 13.3 Earth days. There again with the three's! See what I mean? And it gets even sillier when a vorn's counted as well. A vorn is a Cybertronian year, a stellar cycle, how long it took for our planet to orbit its home star before... well, it's hard to tell what a Cybertronian year is like when stars get lost okay? It's been standardized since then and it's 83.3 Earth years." He laughed lightly. "There are the three's again." He paused, smiling.

"Earth's really, really nice." Bluestreak said somewhat sadly, though he tried his best to keep his voice steady. "It's got sunlight for one thing. Seeing a star that close on a planet was a huge surprise to everyone. I'd never seen sunlight before I woke up here. I was created a while after Cybertron had broke loose of its orbit. I had heard stories from my creators about the feel of infrared electromagnetic radiation on their plating and how it was a pleasant and warm feeling. Cooled sensors were brought up to working order more quickly and worked more efficiently when exposed to sunlight. I didn't understand what they had meant until I first stood outside of the Ark. Just the utter warmth of the place made me feel more alive than ever." He laughed again. He allowed the contentment he felt to bleed into his voice.

"Earth is so, so warm. I love it! Especially the area around the Ark. It's flat and dry and open and there aren't any buildings or trees or towers to block the sunlight and it's funny how sometimes you can catch a few of the mechs shirking scrubbing duty or taking a break on their patrol or just using their time off to go roll around in the dust for an hour."

He laughed, a sparkfelt happy trill of his vocalizer that easily dissolved into a fit of giggles. "You can tell who's been outside recently and you know exactly what they've been up to when they come into the washracks covering from helm to ped in dust. It's really funny to watch some of those 'fierce Autobot warriors' roll around on the ground in the sun. I don't think anyone but Tracks or Sunstreaker really care that they sometimes have all these really tiny dents all over their plating which just scream they'd took a roll down a hill and landed in that hole/quarry thing to the northeast by accident, 'cause you don't get those kinds of dings on flat land unless you really tried to get dents.

"Nobody likes having dents. Ratchet certainly doesn't, especially if we did something stupid to get them. He cares about us. I know it and everyone else knows it." Bluestreak's voice became more somber, despite his best efforts. "Ratchet cares a lot about us, he really does. He's our resident CMO, Chief Medical Officer. He complains about his workload and how he has to put up with "a bunch of glitched and processor-frying fraggers that don't know their afts from their optics"– his words, not mine– and that if we do anything stupid, we can expect no sympathy from him and if it's bad enough, he'll threaten to turn us into toasters and sell them on the human market." He paused as a silly thought occurred to him. "How much would a sentient alien toaster cost anyway? Fifty dollars? Two hundred? How much does a non-sentient Earth toaster cost?" He paused as if expecting an answer before continuing, unperturbed.

"Well, despite his temper and his threats, like I said, Ratchet cares about us. I've seen him work after a battle, when... there's a chance one of the mechs won't make it. I saw how his shoulders were shaking after he came out of the Intensive Care Unit when Huffer had taken a high-burn missile to his lower torso. Huff lost his entire lower half and the rest of him had melted together into an almost unrecognizable lump." Bluestreak's voice nearly cracked as he remembered watching Hot Spot carry the minibot away from the battle, screaming for Ratchet over the open comms. "He pulled through though." Bluestreak finally managed to say. "Ratchet nearly lost him on the slab at one point. He was screaming about it in his office afterward, demolishing the entire place. I heard him shouting and cursing Primus." He paused again, longer this time.

"Ratchet cares. A lot." He said again, more firmly this time. "He hates feeling helpless. He knows he can do more but sometimes he just can't, and it's not his fault. He thinks we don't know. Heh," Bluestreak said humorlessly. "We know him too well. He wants this war to be over so badly." And this time Bluestreak's voice did crack. "H-he's seen... a lot of mechs go dark. Some of them so close to saving before their sparks just... gave up."

Bluestreak paused again, trying to regain his composure. "I think Ratchet hates that the most. He hates quitting. Hates it when others give up. When we give into despair." Bluestreak sighed sadly. "He's done a lot for me and the mechs. He's done more than enough for the Autobots. He's a fighter at spark and he loves us all... he's the kind of mech who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. But..." He said slowly. "We're at war. None of us are getting what we want."

Despair crept in before he could stop it.

"I want to go home." He said, his voice completely cracked. "I want this war to end. I want my friends to come back. I want to recharge and not wonder if I'm going to even online the next day or if my spark will just gutter when I can't feel it. I want to live and I want to be happy and I want to find someone who loves me and we'll get bonded and have as many sparklings as we can and we'll have a nice apartment in Praxus 'cause Praxus will be rebuilt when we go there and then we'll go see the Crystal Gardens again and I'll see my creators and they'll tell me they love me and– and–!"

Bluestreak stopped speaking, pain and sadness overcoming his stream of consciousness. He curled in on himself, releasing a low sad keen as his spark was shredded to pieces by dark unseen claws. The stars glinted off of his plating, indifferent to the pain the Autobot felt. He lay there for several minutes, low clicks, keens, and whirls leaving his vocalizer.

"I want to go home so badly." He finally said in a soft, low tone. "I want to go h-home." His vocalizer glitched once and he let out another sorrowful warble. He laid there for a few minutes, faceplates scrunched in interalized, spark-deep pain. He took a shuddering vent of air to cool his stressed systems. He looked up at the radio tower, suddenly not feeling up to talking anymore.

"I'd be-better get back." He said, his voice still completely broken. "R-red Alert's going to be suspicious if I'm not back soon. A-and I've got patrol in the morning. So... yeah. Thanks friend. I'll be back tomorrow night."

With a last sorrowful warble, his data and power cords disconnected themselves from the tower and reeled back into his wrist before the protective panel shut with an audible click. Bluestreak lay there for several minutes more, stewing in his own grief. A light wind blew across the mesa. The radio tower creaked and swayed slightly and the wind whistled through holes in the wooden house.

Bluestreak uncurled slowly. He looked around at the dark and empty landscape. Not a living thing in sight or sensor range. He stood up and his cyan optics dimmed to a deep blue-green as he realized that while he had been talking and broadcasting, no one had been listening. Pit, he had even made sure to talk on a frequency no one used and thus no one would listen to. Bluestreak smacked his forehead lightly with the palm of his hand and his doorwings dropped in sadness. He looked up once more at the stars stretching across the sky and their cool light shone on.

In that moment, Bluestreak felt completely and totally alone.

Thomas Malond took off his headphones and placed them slowly and gently on the table. His hands shook as he brought them up and he interlaced his fingers. He bowed his head and sighed heavily, his body shuddering from what he had just heard.

The last the he had expected when he had tuned the radio on his desk that night, in an attempt to find something to listen to, was to hear an alien talk about his life. Thomas liked talk shows, loved them in fact. Quality and underrated entertainment in the airwaves that he was content to keep to himself. He had all his favorite radio shows' AM frequencies and times memorized. Tuesday evenings were rather slow.

Or so he had thought.

He had sat down in his desk chair, grabbed his favorite headset and radio and sat down to tune into a new show, if any were broadcasting at 9:30 in the evening. Because of his frequent perusal of the AM channels, he knew which frequencies were broadcasting and which were not. So imagine his surprise at finding a new voice in the airwaves.

"–Would they even consider it weird? I know they're my friends and comrades, but they are such sparklings, you know? Maturing and learning on Earth probably isn't helping them much–"

Aliens.

... Correction.

Alien.

Singular.

"–I like Earth–" It had said. Thomas had listened to the alien talk, desperate and somewhat terrified to hear more.

He, like the rest of the world, had found the answer to one of humanity's most commonly asked existential questions in the most horrifying way possible: an invasion and an attack.

The giant, metallic, alien... things (because they had insisted that they were not robots) had come from nowhere and yet had claimed to have been on Earth longer than the human race had been in existence. And that they were fighting each other in some planet-wide civil war. Some of the robots (because if it walks like a robot and looks like a robot, it has to be a robot) seemed to want to protect Earth and these supposed "Autobots" were sworn to stop the other ones from strip-mining the planet and destroying any life they came across.

So it came as no surprise to any human, of course, that no one believed a word the aliens had said.

They were nothing like humanity had ever seen before. Even the more imaginative and truly alien creatures that appeared in science fiction were nothing even close to the cold titans that had found their way to Earth. And suddenly they were claiming that they were here to help? When some of their own were attacking and killing energy installations across the globe? No one in their right mind had thought to trust those metallic menaces. Several government officials and a few other higher-ups had apparently gone to talk to and work with the robots, but no one seriously believed that anything good could come of them.

The alien robot leader, while it talked well and spoke well, was large and terrifying and never showed its face, if it even had one. The cold, stoic, aloof cop car mimic was as hostile looking as the other robots that it apparently fought against. The black and white race car mimic had looked and acted like an amiable robot, but something about its lack of eyes and its too carefree movements were the almost glaring signs that its supposedly friendly personality was a sham. Looking and acting like a nice guy and being a nice guy were two completely different things.

No one wanted anything to do with those robot-things.

But Thomas listened.

He listened.

And heard the happiness, the nostalgia, the laughter, the confusion, and the deep, deep sadness and pain. He could imagine it was another human talking rather than an alien war machine. A young man, probably just out of college, who signed up for the military and had been shipped off to the war too soon. And the broadcast Thomas had just heard was that young man describing his home to a new friend he had met on the front lines.

The robot had sounded so desperate when he had cried for his home.

And Thomas didn't realize just when he had stopped referring to the alien speaker as 'it.'

His eyes were blurry and the tight lump in his throat pushed painfully against his windpipe. He shakily pushed his chair back and got to his feet. He sniffed once and took a shuddering breath. He silently pushed the chair back into place and turned toward the door. He turned off the light as he exited and headed straight for his room and his soft bed. He left a couple tears fall before he furiously wiped his eyes and closed the door.

He left the radio on, tuned to 1140 AM.