All Applicants Welcome

Warnings: this chapter: robotic versions of depression and anxiety. Overall; graphic plug and play smut, threesomes, violence, genocide, questionable humor.

Pairing(s): Bluestreak/Thundercracker/Skywarp, Sideswipe/Sunstreaker

Summary: Destitute and desperate, Bluestreak becomes the Cybertronian equivalent of a mail-order bride. A story about politics.

Continuity: Marvel G1 inspired pre-war AU

Notes - Geography: I'm playing a bit fast and loose with the geography of Cybertron and the location of it's city-state here, but it's all for a Greater Cause (plot device). For the purpose of this fic, Praxus shares a border with Vos to the North East, Protihex to the South and South West, and the Neutral Territories to the North West. They are closely allied with Protihex and the city-state Uraya, which sits opposite them across the Neutral territories. Vos borders Praxus and Tarn, with a length of the Rust Sea separating them the nearby Iacon.

Notes - Time units:

Cybertron has a long, elliptical orbit around its sun; at the extreme ends of the orbit, it receives very little solar radiation, resulting in two light seasons and two dark seasons. A vorn is the length of time it takes Cybertron to complete an orbit, roughly eighty-three years. An orn is a single rotation of Cybertron on its axis; it is broken up into six shifts. Each shift is eight joor. Five orn make up a megacycle. A rotation is the time it takes the slowest of Cybertron's two moons to orbit the planet.

A joor is 1 and 1/4th hours

A shift is 10 hours

An orn is 60 hours

A megacycle is 12. 5 days, just shy of two weeks

A rotation is 60 day, or 8.5 weeks

A breem is 8.3 minutes.

A klik is just over a minute.

A nanoklik is a second.

There were sites and adverts for it all over the net, but according to his research, the legit requests were only posted through the official city network and accessible at the community hubs.

So the first thing he did after receiving yet another rejection notice was head to the local town square, tap in his citizenship code at the hub, and download that orn's repository of legally vetted 'Want' ads. It took a couple of breem to weed out the type he was specifically looking for, then a full joor to steadily pare it down to a list of half a dozen that fit his requirements, didn't creep him out too much, and that he had even a small chance of getting accepted for. This ended up being good timing, because a final eviction notice landed in his inbox right about then and he had to frantically drive home to confront his landmanager.

"I still have two more megacycles!" he said desperately, "You can't kick me out now!"

Heavyswipe just shook his helm. "I'm sorry about this, Bluestreak, I really am. But even if you find a job tomorrow you won't be able to work enough duty shifts to meet the housing requirements. I'm going have to fudge some documentation to avoid having to file a complaint against you as it is. You know that."

"I do know! But we still agreed I could stay until the end of the rotation," Bluestreak insisted, "It's not like the city is going to be fining you either way. I just don't understand what changed."

Heavyswipe made a face.

"My new agent with the city has got tighter bolts than the previous one," he said, "He saw the status of your contract and started sending me requests for eviction processing and potential new renters. It doesn't help that the list of low-income applicants for this place is longer than you are tall.

"You aren't the only mech I've bent the rules for, Bluestreak," Heavyswipe added in a lower voice when Bluestreak started to argue again, "I can't afford an audit right now. It'll cost me my license."

"B-but if you kick me out I don't have anywhere else to go. My friends can only put me up for so long and the creditors are always on my aft and -" Bluestreak struggled to think clearly past the rising surge of distress in his processor, fully aware that he was loosing hold. "- and I know it's not your fault you've done so much for me already it's just that it's not like I don't try to hold down a job and I've put out dozens of applications and -"

Heavyswipe put a hand on his shoulder. It was like a blade, cutting off the stream of helpless babble. Bluestreak locked down his vocalizer with a mix of embarrassment and relief.

"I'm sorry," Heavyswipe said again, kind but unmovable, "You have a joor to clear out."

He spent most of that time messaging friends and wandering aimlessly around his soon-to-be former apartment, trying to stay calm more than anything else. Anything of significant value had long been sold to make rent and bills, leaving him with a mix of maintenance supplies, keepsakes, and various borrowed items. He eventually gave up trying to make intelligent decisions about what to keep and what to leave, and just tossed whatever came to hand in his subspace. There was still more left over than he expected and he only hoped no one hated him too much for forgetting something that belonged to them.

Two of his friends sent replies at the same time Heavyswipe arrived to change the access codes and escort him off the grounds.

Of them, Sideswipe was the closest and since Bluestreak knew better than to drive in his current condition, he decided that was his best option.

Heavyswipe left him at the front gate with a final apology. "I'll refund you that two megacyles worth of rent. You should have it within the joor. Hopefully it'll help."

Bluestreak nodded silently, not trusting what would happen if he released the lock on his vocalizer. Those funds would, at most, pay for a quarter tank of fuel and a few recharge cycles at a rented charging dock. If that. He didn't want to think about what would happen when his other bills started coming due again.

He gripped Heavyswipe's hand in a formal farewell and started his several mile trek to Sideswipe's home. He avoided public transportation out of a mix of remembered embarrassment and fear.

The calm he'd been holding on to steadily began to break. Two miles out from his former home, he'd released his vocalizer without fully realizing it and was talking to himself about anything and everything. It earned him a mix of annoyed and weird looks from other mechs on the street, and not a few irritated requests to not answer his intercom out loud. He kept his optics focused on the ground and walked faster, not responding to anyone directly. Four miles out, he had his arms tightly wrapped himself and fingers digging into previously made dents in his shoulders. He was completely unaware that his self-talk had gone into incoherent mumbling.

Five miles out, the attack hit full force.

He barely managed to get himself out of the flow of foot traffic and into an empty access way. There, he hunkered down against a wall and got lost in a world of false errors and contradictorily alerts. One warning told him his engine was failing even has he felt it roar into its highest output; others screamed about multiple malfunctioning sensors even as those sensors snapped into hyper alert and flooded him with detailed reports of his surroundings. His various fluid tanks pinged him with both empty and overfull warnings, nearly causing him to purge them all in confused reaction. Every single joint tightened and pressurized to its limit, as if frozen at the edge of a transformation. Terror reigned, sending every thought and normally ordered process into shrieking chaos.

He felt like he was dying.

Afterwards, he'd learn it lasted for all of a kilk. At the time, it felt like forever. It always did. And like always, it ended suddenly. The mess of red and yellow warnings cluttering his HUD were smothered under an "Emergency Reboot Initiated" alert and with the briefest blip his entire system reset itself. His HUD cleared and all systems reported their previous status of normal operations. His body unlocked, relaxed, and his vents stretched open wide, sucking in air to cool his overstressed engine.

Relief at being back to normal thudded through him. It was fast followed by frustration and humiliation and a crushing sense of defeat. He was so tired of this.

His sensors alerted him to someone standing over him. He allowed himself a few more seconds to stew in his misery and embarrassment, before looking up to acknowledge the other mech.

A Protector unit. The mech hovered a carefully calculated distance away; far enough back not to crowd Bluestreak and to discourage other mechs from approaching, close enough to jump in and restrain him if needed. Bluestreak's log, now that he was coherent enough to pay attention to it, helpfully informed him that the mech's energy signature had been following him for close to a hundred meters. Someone had probably alerted the unit the moment Bluestreak started to act strange. Great.

"Uh, hi," Bluestreak said weakly, "Sorry about this. I would've found somewhere better to stay to wait it out but I didn't -"

"Can you vocalize your short tag, full designation, and citizenship ranking?" the Protector interrupted in the standard neutral tone.

Bluestreak did so, and, depressingly familiar with this routine by now, pinged the same information to the mech's comms, including his intended destination, his emergency contacts, and his former medic's contact. Technically most of this was in the Protector database, but providing it was as much procedure as it was a test of his coherency. He also, without being asked, stood up and went through the usual set of physical tests too. The Protector's expression slowly went from neutrality to bemusement to mild annoyance.

"Do you need a medic or an escort for the remainder of your trip?" the mech asked and vented a sigh when Bluestreak indicated a negative, "Right. I'm obliged to suggest that in the future, you should travel with an escort or assistant, or, should you feel the onset of a software malfunction, move to a secure location and ping the Protector frequency for help."

Bluestreak gave a non-committal mumble and the Protector's mouth twisted in disapproval.

"The notes on your records indicate you've been fully advised on the reasons for this suggestion and the dangers both to yourself and your fellow citizens should you choose not to follow it. Is this correct?"

"That's correct and I really do listen each time, I swear it's pretty much hard coded into my -"

"Then I won't reissue the statement," the unit said, though it was clear from his posture and pointed stare that he badly wanted to, "Please continue safely to your destination."

"- sure, thanks, got it," Bluestreak said and hurried on his way before the unit could change his mind. The last thing he wanted to deal with right now was being brought in for a discussion and examination. He'd be filling out documentation for the rest of the orn if that happened.

He arrived at Sideswipe's place during fourth shift to find the shop still open, standing out among its dark and closed up neighbors. Most shops in the district were only open from first through third shift, but Sideswipe and his partner, Sunstreaker, worked by appointment and could be found entertaining clientele at literally any part of the orn.

Bluestreak stuck his head in to see Sideswipe and a mech he didn't know in deep discussion over a hologram that hovered between them. The hologram displayed a more modern, contemporary version of the unknown mech, with a deep purple color scheme gilded in sweeps of chrome. As Bluestreak watched, Sideswipe brushed his hand through the hologram and most of the chrome detailing vanished. It still looked pretty good to Bluestreak's optics, but the mech shook his helm in an instant negative. Sideswipe looked pleased and called back the detailing with another brush.

The stranger spared Bluestreak only a cursory optical scan as he invited himself the rest of the way in; Sideswipe pinged him with a private comm request.

::About time,:: he said, ::I've had a Protector unit harassing me for almost three joor now to let him know when you showed up.::

Bluestreak winced. ::Sorry, sorry, I had a malfunction on the way and if I'd been thinking straight, I would've realized it was coming and waited it out at a rest stop or something, but I didn't and -::

::A Protector unit found you and made a nuisance of itself,:: Sideswipe finished knowingly, ::Well, you made it in one piece, so I can get him off my tail-pipe. If you're up for earning your keep, Sunstreaker left you a mess in the work room. You know the drill.::

::Got it,:: Bluestreak said. He headed to the door at the back of the hexagonal lobby, leaving Sideswipe alone with his customer once again.

The work room was adjacent to the lobby and went down two stories below the main shop. It was filled end-to-end with the tools and equipment of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's body modification business. Huge vents ran constantly, filling the space with a sub-sonic hum as they filtered chemical fumes out of the air. Bluestreak looked out over the edge of the first-story platform to see if Sunstreaker was still around.

He wasn't, but as Sideswipe had said, he'd certainly left his mark behind. In addition to spilled paint and chemicals and tools scattered across every surface, an entire, disembodied exterior shell was laid out on one of the work tables, gleaming faintly in the shop lights. Bluestreak quickly made his way down to the bottom floor to get a closer look.

The shell was about mid-range size, probably for a mech no more than half-again Bluestreak's height, and done up in sleek lines of bright green and blue-tinted black. He muttered his appreciation to himself as he walked around it, trying to construct the mech it belonged to in his processor. It couldn't possibly be for one of the Praxian models, not with that curvature. In fact...

Bluestreak held up his thumb near the edge of one panel to gauge its thickness. Much, much heavier duty than Praxian regulations permitted for exterior plating. Maybe they had non-local customers they worked with? Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were citizens, but they weren't native, after all, even if they had been granted citizenship and right to purchase property in a third of the time it took most non-natives. They were exported Kaon models from Tyrest, originally. Some of their clientele may have followed them through the relocation.

Bluestreak shrugged. It hardly mattered in the long road. He had more important things to worry about. Like a messy work room, a depleted bank account, a skyscraper worth of debt, and a list of "Want" ads that may be his only ticket out of the pit he'd found himself at the bottom of.

He turned away from the table and applied himself to the problems he could deal with now.

"Hey, Bluestreak! You done in here yet?"

Bluestreak halted the one-sided conversation he'd been having with the paint jars and extracted himself from the storage cabinet. "Just another klik," he yelled up, "I've almost got these sorted!"

Sideswipe waved from the first-story platform in acknowledgment. "Come up to the apartment when you're done. I wanna talk."

Sideswipe's voice was jovial, but dread made Bluestreak's processor race anyway. This was the fourth time they'd put him up and while Sideswipe's patience was seemingly endless, at least as long as Bluestreak provided free labor around the shop, Sunstreaker's had been running thin by the last stay.

He did another quick review of the application and resume packet he'd put together for answering the ads. At least he'd have something substantial to show Sunstreaker and Sideswipe.

"I'll be right there!" he called.

Sideswipe waved again and vanished back behind the railing.

In stark contrast to the cluttered state of the work room, the apartment was clean, sparsely decorated, and pleasingly utilitarian in design. Bluestreak felt himself relaxing even with Sunstreaker's looming, annoyed presence by the wall.

"I have a plan," Bluestreak blurted out, "I've had it for a while, actually, but I was hesitating on it because I really was hoping one of those three places I interviewed at would pan out, but now it's gotten desperate and this is the only thing I can think of. And I know you gotta be tired of having me crash with you all the time, so I wanted to let you know that it won't be for long and it really will be the last time, I swear."

"Easy, Blue, easy," Sideswipe said, "I said you can stay here for the next megacycle and I meant it. Don't let fuss-bot there twist your pistons. He's just sour over getting his finish scratched."

"That's not all I'm sour about," Sunstreaker said. He was frowning at the wall when he said it and didn't elaborate, so Bluestreak had no idea whether the comment was directed at him or not. Sunstreaker was well-known for his mercurial moods and could have been annoyed at literally anything.

Sideswipe pointedly turned away, giving Sunstreaker his shoulder. He held out his hand to Bluestreak in invitation, wrist bent to expose the data ports along his base of his palm. "Tell me about this plan of yours," he said.

Bluestreak accepted the offered hand, fit his finger-tip jacks into the adjacent ports, and uploaded the packet he'd put together. He'd gone ahead and bundled up everything that had happened in the megacycles since they'd last talked and packed it in with the details of his plan, just in case Sideswipe was interested. Sideswipe, in return, send his own data packet.

It was almost as big as Bluestreak's, which wasn't uncommon with Sideswipe and something Bluestreak still found a charming novelty. Most everyone else he knew liked to convey as much information as they could in as few bytes as possible.

"One of these orn, Bluestreak, I'm going to convince you that I don't need two outlines and a cross index to follow a-what the scrap kind of plan is this?"

Even though he'd been half expecting it, Bluestreak still jumped at the sudden outburst. "I told you I'm only doing it because I've gotten desperate! I really don't like it either, but if you look again at the list of pros and cons I put together, you can see that -"

"What's he planning?" Sunstreaker demanded of Sideswipe.

"He's going to answer an ad for a contract bonding," Sideswipe said, "Look at this slag."

Bluestreaker sensed the comm connection between them and squirmed under Sideswipe's open disapproval. "Bonding" was the act of two or more mechs entering into a partnership agreement where they co-habituated, shared resources, and spoke for each other in medical and legal matters. While all bonding involved contracts, "contract bonding" specifically referred to a bond entered into for a set period of time, until a particular goal was accomplished, or in exchange for funds. A "union of convenience", as the phrase went, and one that ran counter to all the emotional sentiment and devotion that was cited as the real reason mechs were supposed to become partners.

Even though perfectly legal and fairly common, putting out - or answering - an ad looking for someone to contract-bond with was kind of considered just a little bit...well...

Be honest, Bluestreak, he thought, It means you're a loser.

"I know I said you should leave Praxus," Sideswipe ranted, "But I didn't mean like this! You have no idea what kind of conditions these mechs live in or what you might be getting yourself into."

"They all have good references," Bluestreak said, "You know I'm not being impulsive; you've seen all the research I've done and all the thought I put into it. I've been planning this for a long time."

"Not nearly long enough if you're planning to answer one from Vos! Have you even listened to the news recently?"

Bluestreak frowned, stung. He actually liked the Vosian one the most. "I'm not sensor glitched. I know what relations between Vos and Praxus are like right now, but that ad specifically requested a Praxian and why would a Vosian go through the whole verification process if they don't like mechs from Praxus anyway?"

"You're sending these picture with your application?" Sunstreaker demanded before Sideswipe could answer Bluestreak's question. Not that Bluestreak particularly wanted to hear what Sideswipe planned to say. He considered Sideswipe a good friend and was deeply grateful to him, but Sideswipe seemed to view him as terribly naive and flighty. "Those colors looked like absolute slag on you."

It was true. Orange and cream had been awful color choices for his frame in retrospect, but he'd wanted so badly to have a look modeled after his favorite stage performer at the time. It was one of the rare cases his patrons had indulged his whims without discussion or requesting a properly researched and presented explanation. Yet another sign of trouble ignored until too late.

"Yeah, but at least I was freshly painted and clean in those shots," Bluestreak said, "I mean, just look at me now."

He held out his arms in illustration. He still had the white base coat from his frame overhaul two vorn ago; a paint job that had only been meant to protect and heal welds, not to be attractive. On top of that, the remains of old grease stained his exposed joints and streaked onto the nearby plating, minor scuffs and dents speckled his exterior shell, the delicate mechanisms of his hands were a wreck, and top to bottom, he was covered in a thin layer of accumulated atmosphere pollution. He wasn't completely disgusting yet, but he was far closer than he'd ever let himself get before. He was ashamed of letting his self-maintenance slide for so long, but increasingly, it seemed like the shame only made it harder to resolve the problem.

Sunstreaker focused on Bluestreak for the first time since he'd entered the apartment and pulled a disgusted sneer. "Ugh. Tell me you weren't planning to show up like that if someone accepts your application."

"Would you stop distracting him?" Sideswipe said, "That's not the issue here."

"And of course I wasn't going to show up like this," Bluestreak said. He winced when Sideswipe gave him a dirty look and compulsively started talking faster to make up for annoying him. "I mean, I still have pride and part of my acceptance terms is an advance payment to close a couple overdue accounts and I'd budgeted a portion of that advance payment to fund a complete repaint and detailing and a system flush too, because I've had this gunk in my forward intake filter that been bugging me like you wouldn't believe and I don't even know where it -"

Sideswipe covered his face and made a helpless 'get on with it' gesture. Bluestreak realized he didn't know where he was going with the conversation thread anymore and made himself stop, embarrassed.

In the following brief silence, Bluestreak's inbox pinged him with a scheduling request for a free repaint as provided by Sunstreaker, of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's Body Shop. Bluestreak stared at Sunstreaker in shock. It was probably the kindest thing the other mech had ever offered him.

"For the love of Primus, Sunstreaker!" Sideswipe snapped. He must have gotten the alert too.

"Scrap you, I don't want him in my apartment in that condition," Sunstreaker said and stepped forward aggressively to poke his partner in the chest, "In fact, you're going to take him out and get him cleaned off before he even touches our charging dock."

Sideswipe didn't respond out loud, but Bluestreak could sense the encrypted conversation that flew between them. He waited, but they didn't seem in any rush to wrap it up. His feelings of unease began to roll over into despair. Sideswipe was right, of course. It was a horrible plan. An unsuitable, deeming one. He'd be going from a life of independence and devotion to hard work, community service, and utilizing his abilities to the fullest to... to being an accessory. None of the ads stated that he couldn't get a job or engage in hobbies after the bonding occurred, but they did state that his partner's requests for companionship and assistance with household matters were to take precedence over any other activity. Unless he lucked out with a partner who only wanted his company to see a stage play or concert once a megacycle, Bluestreak's time for the next ten vorn was not going to be his own.

But what other options did he have left? Continue bouncing between friends until they ran out of patience and spare funds? Squat in the underlevels with the rest of the homeless and beg for resources? Hide until the creditors found him? Deal with the steady decay of his glitch until the City Protection Force successfully got him committed to the care facilities? Maybe that would be a good thing; he'd be shut off from all his friends, from the outside world, have his every move restricted and monitored… but at least they would work on fixing his glitch. Assuming it was something that could be fixed. Assuming the damage wasn't permanent.

The sheer hopelessness of his situation crashed over him, sending a warning scatter of error messages across his vision. He stiffened in sharp, sudden fear and the emotional surge triggered several false alerts that his core temperature was in the red and that his frantically spinning heat sinks were malfunctioning. No, slag it, not again.

He initiated force shut down commands to the programs that seemed most affected and oh, thank Primus, they responded. Only the system that monitored his internal temperature crashed in the process of shutting down and needed a full hardware boot. His second one of the orn. He wrote himself a note to do that during his next recharge cycle, trusted the failsafe to protect him for now, restarted the disabled programs, and ran a diagnostic.

"-uestreak?"

Bluestreak jerked his head up.

"Huh, what?" he stammered, completely flustered. A backlog of external data abruptly loaded into in his cache, informing him that Sideswipe had been trying to get his attention for a while. He hadn't even noticed that he'd stopped receiving from his sensors. "I - I wasn't paying attention, sorry, I just got - what did you say?"

Oh, this was awful; they'd been staring at him for a full klik while he stood there failing to respond. It wasn't the first time they'd seen him in the middle of an attack, but that did nothing to stem the mortification and self-disgust that made him hunch his shoulders and babble defensive excuses.

Sunstreaker looked away and investigated his hand, never once loosing the expression of cynical distaste.

Sideswipe, by contrast, was unreadable. He firmly cut off Bluestreak's stream of words. "I checked with the local auto-wash and they have a slot open. If we head out now, I can keep you company until my next appointment. And I'll pay for it," he added, when Bluestreak started to talk again.

"I - thanks," Bluestreak said in a small voice.

They left Sunstreaker were he stood, still adjusting something in his hand. Bluestreak waved a dutiful goodbye; Sideswipe made no tangible acknowledgement of his partner, but that was common with the pair.

He fell in behind Sideswipe as they went through the small office that connected the apartment to the shop lobby. He stared at his friend's back, unconsciously flaring and angling his sensor panels as he tried to get a gauge on Sideswipe's mood and the reason for the abrupt change. Was he mad? Still thought Bluestreak was being stupid? Unsettled by the attack? Bluestreak, himself, would've been bothered to witness something like that.

"So," Sideswipe said suddenly, "I figured I could go over that list of ads you're responding to. Vet the references, give pointers for tailoring your resume. Stuff like that." He cast a cautious look over his shoulder as he triggered open the door into the lobby.

Relief and gratefulness flooded Bluestreak and perked up his entire posture. Sideswipe didn't approve, but he was accepting, and for that, Bluestreak couldn't be more grateful.

"Yes! That would be really great, I mean it," he said.

The tension left Sideswipe's frame and he returned Bluestreak's smile. "In that case, I got a thing or two to say about this Polyhex fellow with the turbofox collection..."

TBC