Author notes: …Hi. Yes. Long time no write. I know. Life is being a butt.

Life being a butt is mostly why this is being written. Something I can dabble in where I don't have to stress out, can have fun, and something that almost no one will actually read. It's a Hunger Games spinoff. I know it's going to be terrible. xD

SO YES. This. Inspired by Hunger Games. With robots. WHEE.

The Games

Chapter One: Education

We learned about it in history class.

I'm going to assume come incredulity from anyone that isn't Cybertronian, so let me clear up a couple of misconceptions right now. Yes, we do have to learn things; straight information download is possible and sometimes useful in a hurry, but it tends to have side effects not worth the effort. Having those three hundred thousand files worth of information instantly for your big test is great, but if your processor aches so much that you can't move, what's the point?

No, we learn and gain information just like any other race. We even have childhoods, despite what urban myth will tell you. Granted, we don't physically mature like most organic races - in fact, it's probably where the idea of instant adults came from in the first place - but we do have youth and we do have to mature out of that stage.

I was still in Primary, still on factory grounds, when we learned about it in a run-of-the-mill history class. I was about a vorn old. Our teacher had led the lesson smiling and with such a cheerful disposition, how could we not learn to enjoy it?

We watched our first Games in the common room the following orn. The memory file will probably never degrade; there were thirty of us, lounging on couches and joking around like the idiot children we were. They were my cast-mates alongside the group cold cast the joor after we were. It was not too far out of the norm for two different sets of casts to room together; back then, there were more of us being forged than there are now. There just wasn't room on the factory grounds for so many sparklets; we shared rooms, even, bunking together.

At any rate, I digress. We laughed, snacked on whatever the patrons allowed the newforged to have, and watched our first Reading of the Names.

I guess it helped that none of us could be Read. We were too young; not until we hit six vorns or moved off on our own, whatever happened first.

So, we watched with smiles on our faces and joy in the air. We, like most of Cybertron not called and kept safe, bet on possible winners. Not that we had anything to bet with at the time, but, again, we were too young to really understand.

I'm digressing again.

It started as an overpopulation problem. The Games, I mean. That's what history class told us. That there were so many of us that we threatened to spill over on to other planets, that the other races in the Galactic Order had become wary and frightened. The Shanix was at an all time, historic low; people were starving. Empties roamed the streets in packs in poorer cities.

There hadn't even been a tournament or the idea of a fight at the start. The Council had decided on a lottery from the get-go, though; some brilliant mathematician, or maybe just a number picked out of a hat, came to the conclusion that two people per city-state per vorn were enough. Two randomly chosen mechs. Two poor saps sent on one hell of a two week vacation, all expense paid and no expense spared, before being painlessly and quietly euthanized.

Somehow, it actually worked. By the second vorn, restrictions the ORder had placed on Cybertron had been lifted; by the third, the Shanix had doubled in value. By the fifth, the economy had improved so drastically that there were nearly no Empties left at all.

The first problem came up eight vorns in; people began to protest.

Any intelligent person that isn't a Cybertronian would happily tell you how warlike of a people we are. How much destruction we caused whenever we landed anywhere; they're only half right. We are, generally, stubborn; we don't like to go down without our voices heard and our point made.

Being euthanized, according to many protestors of the time, seemed like the weakest way to die. No honor in it, some had said. It may have been a sacrifice to help Cybertron as a whole, but there was no chance or hope for those called.

The infamous press conference that followed was played for us in class.

"What do you expect us to do?!" Zeta Prime, who I thought looked thoroughly exasperated, had practically glared at the cameras. "This has to be done! There's just… No other way around this. Look, I know people are upset by the lottery… Hell, i'm in it and I'd die, too, if I was called, but this is working. What else are we supposed to do, have a giant battle royal instead of a vacation?!"

They had put it to a vote. Yes, as incredulous as it sounds, there had been a vote. The entire Cybertronian race had voted on the issue. Keep things as they were, or have a tournament where the last winner gets to go home. A whole lot of people still die, but there was at least some tiny glimmer of hope to be Read and come out alive.

The fight scenario won. It won by an overwhelming margin, even, according to our smiling teacher. It was what the people wanted.

We were even allowed to watch one of the first Games in class.

We were taught to fall in love with it. The fights, the action, the drama; most of Cybertron did, I suppose. The Games even bring in tourism; a hefty bit of our economy runs on it.

I still remember… One of my cast mates… It's been so long, I can't remember what name he settled on… He was obsessed with the Games. One of the first things he bought with his very first bit of spending money was a fifty-vorn pack of highlights and winner interviews. He took over the common room's viewscreen every day to watch it.

He was dead two vorn later.

No, he didn't die in the Games. He never even got Read. No, we were so in love with the Games themselves that he died imitating a move one of the winners had used.

By the way, my name is Bumblebee.

This is the story of the 558th Cybertronian Games.

This is the story of the year I was Read.

Author notes: WHEE. I have no idea when I'll update this. :D