chapter I
. . .
Cybertron. The Silver Age was beginning at last. Humans had been at first welcomed, but after a few unfortunate underfoot indedents, it had been decided that humans probably shouldn't be on Cybertron for a while. Which wasn't to say that the humans hadn't had quite a large effect on Cybertron's current state of operations-they'd helped shape the new government's organization. On the flipside, they'd also shaped their social dynamics, which, arguably, could be both good and bad.
In the case of the upper class, it was a great thing. Sensational genius! What better way to reward the hardworking and deserving soldiers and officers of war than to give them the best of what Cybertron had to offer—especially those who sacrificed to help the Autobot cause?
However, the case of the lower, more neutral class, specifically our main character, Metrox cursed every day he had to go to work as a servant in one of the elite's household. As a member of the working middle class, he was stuck in the official position of manor manager of the esteemed Governor Councilmech Rodimus Prime and his sparkmate.
Most days, he could get away with making sure all the small everyday chores were being done by various members of the staff, with minimal interaction with his employers. He'd once gone almost a cycle without seeing the master and mistress once.
It was the best cycle of his working life.
None of this was running through his processor as he stood and listened absentmindedly in the master's study. He was only wondering how much more of his time the master would take.
"I told them I have a daughter," Master Rodimus mumbled, nearly out of his mind with high grade. "That idiotic Springer and his glitch of a son, they forced me, they did."
Metrox wasn't going to pretend he knew what he was supposed to do about it. He was "only a butler," after all (in the words of the master of the house the last time he'd asked his butler's opinion on something). As a member of the working class, he didn't matter.
"They want to see this….this lie at Mirage's annual dinner party. Springer is just waiting for me to show up with Moonracer without one, the slagger."
Metrox struggled to keep a glare from forming. He'd been taught it was impolite to glare.
Especially at the master of the house. Even if he felt that Master Rodimus needed a stern reality check.
"I know! I'll adopt one!" Even from where Metrox stood (an arm's length away on the other side of the desk), he could see the small glint of insanity in the mech's blue optics. "I can't wait to see the look on Springer's faceplate when me and the youngling-"
The youngling and I, Metrox refrained from correcting. When the master was drunk, Metrox found him to be most...irritable.
"- show up at Raj's party!" Rodimus let out a very un-noble round of giggles. He downed another third of the high grade cube.
He fell silent for a moment, then leaned forward, signaling to Metrox to listen.
Irritable mech. This time, Metrox did let a frown surface, but only for a moment.
"You. I need a femmling," he said forcefully. "First frame. Aesthetically pleasing. I don't care what color as long as she's here tomorrow. Find her or you're fired." The flame-colored mech spun in his chair and continued drinking the high grade.
Primus, the mech was a maniac. However, Metrox knew he had no time to sit and contemplate the ridiculousness of Rodimus's request.
Reluctantly, he turned on his heel and went back down the hall to the main computer, to plot a map of the few orphanages located in Iacon.
In all of Metrox's collective butler wisdom (comparable to the Wisdom of the Primes), he already knew exactly where the first one was to be found.
The Iacon Home for Orphaned Younglings had recently started up after Reconstruction had come to its unofficial end. Founded by a bonded couple, it wasn't very large, given the fact that younglings were not yet common post-war. However, it was one of the largest, at twenty-seven current inhabitants. Donations weren't lacking—younglings were one of the few causes all Cybertronians would come together for.
Outside the stained, bulletproof glass window, violet-colored clouds crowded in the sky, readying for a heavy downpour of acid rain.
Metrox pulled up the coordinates of its location as he put on the thick fabric cloak as cover in preparation for the oncoming storm.
. . .
Metrox found himself in front of a squat, dripping, four story building. It was made entirely of silver-colored bricks, with four windows going across each floor. Come to think of it, it half-reminded him of a prison or asylum on earth.
Trying not to think of the connection and similarities, he steeled his nerves and strode up to the large, black, metal door. He raised a hand, but the door opened before he could knock.
A young, orange mechling, about eight cycles old, answered. "Wait, wait, wait. I don't understand. What's someone like you doing here?" He questioned the butler like it was insulting to have him visit.
It hadn't been the welcome Metrox had expected. "Is this not the Iacon Home for Orphaned Younglings?" He tried to keep a straight face and not frown at the orange one.
The youngling still looked confused. "Yeah, but you're a lower class mech. Your type doesn't come around here."
Metrox looked down at himself. He didn't think he looked that much like the lower servant class. "How did you know that?"
"You looked scared. Why are you here?"
"I am here on account of my master, who would like to adopt a youngling," Metrox said primly, forcing the surprise off his faceplate. What a brat.
"Oh. Worker. You'll have to talk to Corkscrew, then. She's in charge of the kids." The youngling shrugged. "I feel like I should warn you. She's not nice."
Oh, pleasant day. Metrox coerced himself into taking the two steps inside. The youngling opened the door wider and stepped aside to let him in.
. . .
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There hadn't been any femmes under the age of ten, let alone in their first frame.
Metrox took a breath, stepping outside into air where a femme was not yelling at him. As his terrible day would have it, this "Corkscrew" not only had had a few screws loose and a hard time hearing herself, she assumed that everyone else did too.
His audios were still ringing.
As Metrox shook his head, trying to clear his audios, a drop of light acid rain landed on the back of his head. He cursed quietly, pulled up his hood, and readied himself for the next downpour and orphanage, hoping fervently that, for the sake of his job, the young femme existed.
. . .
When it acid-rained, Iacon was pleasantly deserted in the upperclass neighborhoods. Metrox found he didn't mind the quiet as much today. He'd had enough of the upper class to last him the rest of his life.
The air was thick with moisture but cool and refreshing and sunlight reflected off the newly finished buildings—
Before he could process what was happening, he was falling, a cord around his wrists and one pede. He let out a strangled grunt of pain as his faceplate hit the concrete.
Someone (who also had their pede against his back) pushed a gun up against the back of his helm. "Credits," it growled.
Horrible beggars, Metrox thought. Most didn't have the intelligence to acquire a firearm, but this one seemed...special. "Right cloak pocket. But if you bothered to actually look at me, you might see that I'm actually—"
"Quiet," the bot cut off, as it rummaged through said pocket.
"—quite lacking credits at the moment," Metrox finished as if he'd never been interrupted. "However if you're in need of monetary support, the Cybertronian Citizen Recovery Center in Central Iacon should be more than willing to help anyone in their time of need."
"Bullslag," it muttered, without stopping its search for the credits card.
Cloaks without pockets seemed to confuse would-be muggers very often and it amused Metrox to no end.
A few seconds was all he needed to twist out of the thin cord and turn over, hooking it around his attacker's neck and pulling it tight. "I said I'm broke." He punctuated the sentence by twisting it tighter and tried to send a communication to the Iacon Police but found his comm wasn't working. All he got in reply was static.
"So is Cybertron," the mugger hissed. It pulled out a dagger from seemingly nowhere and left Metrox on the ground, holding nothing but a broken cord and a bad day.
. . .
The other two youngling houses held the same results. No first frames available for adoption.
The rain hadn't let up at all. If anything, it had only increased.
He'd just decided that his working days were over and that he should head back to the servants' quarters at Governor Rodimus's manor while he still could. The thought of a nice cube of high grade and the latest installment of Cosmechpolitan was all he wanted.
Metrox was so lost in sweet thought about what possible political science would be in the most recent issue that he didn't notice a soft crying until he was almost standing in front of its source.
Shock rolled through him as he bent down and saw that it was a very, very, very small first frame femmeling, struggling to keep in sobs from inside an empty cargo shipment container. She looked even smaller curled up in on herself in a container that barely went to Metrox's knee joint.
Having not dealt with younglings since he himself had been one, he was at a loss. Part of him wanted to turn for home and drink. The other part of him, what the humans called a "conscience," wouldn't let him leave until he knew the small one was safe. Damn parental protocols.
"Hello, little one," he tried, faltering. "What ever is the matter?"
His words seemed to have the opposite effect of what he intended. "No no! Bad! Go way!" Fluid leaked even more profusely from her large yellow optics and she somehow made herself smaller inside the shipping container.
It occurred to him that his size might be intimidating to such a small personage. He sat down on the sidewalk in the rain. He was reminded of a common sparkhood query. "Why?"
The youngling, seeming a little surprised by it, replied, "Bad rain hurt."
Ohh. Younglings seemed to be more sensitive to acid rain. No wonder she'd been crying. Metrox pulled off the cloak and held it out. "Would you like cover, little one?"
"Box," she replied, as if to say no— she already had cover, thank you. The fluid from her optics seemed to dry a little, leading Metrox to think he didn't scare her as much as he thought he did.
"Better than the box. Cloaks are better," he said, holding out his hand to help her out.
She shook her head. "No leave box. Mama come back."
Oh, slag. Oh, fragging scrap his entire life to Pit and back.
He had the misfortune to discover the ONE youngling who didn't happen to be from the Well of Allsparks and therefore not able to be adopted.
He gave up hope of that drink, swallowed his pride that came from reading the Cosmechpolitan every day for the last ten cycles without fail and laid his cloak half over the box and over his helm, holding it up with a hand. "Is that better?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied curtly, the tears almost completely drying up.
There was something so familiar in the way she curled up against the wall of the container and sighed that was strangely familiar.
"What's your name, small one?" Metrox tried.
"No stranger," she told him, as if reminding him of stranger danger.
Why did younglings have to be so difficult? "My name is Metrox. I manage manors. I live two miles from here and I don't like rain. See?" He tried smiling. "No stranger."
"Stranger," she said, nodding and pulling away.
"How about this?" Metrox pulled out half a rust stick he'd accidentally left in his cloak from the day before. His "sweet tooth," as the humans said, had finally come in handy.
At first, he was afraid she'd refuse it, on the grounds that it was only half and he was still a stranger. She looked suspicious at first, raising an optic ridge in an insanely adorable human facial expression, but said, "Zen," and held out her tiny hand.
Finally he was getting somewhere. He slowly placed it in her hand.
"Hello, little Zen. What's your creator's name?"
Instead of eating it, she held it to her chest in a hug.
"Mama," she said, with all the certainty only a youngling could have.
Metrox was about to say that that wasn't a designation when he stopped and realized that she was so young that she'd probably never learned her creator's actual name.
"Where is your mama, Zen?" he asked instead.
"She run," she replied. "She come back. She do that."
"How long have you been here?" From how dirty she was, it might have been anywhere from a few hours to a few days because of the rain.
Zen held up three fingers.
"Three minutes?" Metrox tried.
She shook her head.
"Three hours?"
Again, she shook her head.
Primus forbid, but he had to ask. "Three cycles?"
But again, she shook her head, letting Metrox relax a little about her creator's bad parenting.
"Since... the clock struck three?" As a token of good will, the humans had helped commission a giant clock tower in the middle of town. In honor of the human contribution to the war effort, it chimed the human lengths of time in an extremely human fashion— via an extremely old copper bell hanging at the top. The surrounding population had taken to referencing it as a time piece.
It had been almost six hours since the clock struck three.
Zen nodded her head. Metrox was incredulous. "Aren't you hungry? Haven't you eaten? Primus, little one, your mama has been missing a very long time. Do you want to come with me and get something to eat?"
"No, no stranger," she said.
Metrox wanted to scream.
. . .
It was almost the eleventh chime when Zen fell into recharge within the shipping container. Realizing this was an opportunity, Metrox gingerly picked the box up, cradling it in his arms and covering it up with his cloak like a giant blue mother hen.
It occurred to him this might be kidnapping, but he consoled himself with the thought that no youngling this small should be left alone on the street for that long and that since he didn't plan on doing anything illegal with her, it was fine. Absolutely fine. I just need to borrow her, he told himself. It would be fine.
. . .
a cracky G1 AU. I am ugh. this is a writers block help, so updates are gonna be sporadic. also, i'm using "cycle" to mean "day" bc im too lazy to come up with an explanation for why cybertronians are on human time.
-tz