Author's note: I reference a number of other stories in this work. For a complete list, and more complete notes, please see the original posting on Archive of Our Own, a link to my stories is in my profile.
Please also know that this story is kind of dark and does not have a happy ending. Nobody dies, but the bad guys are definitely winning.
Circenses Et Panem
(Circus and Bread)
"How much will you give for it?" The grimy bot asked, crossing thin arms over her rusting chest plate. Long ago she'd probably been blue but dying paint nanites left her almost grey. The acidic rain falling outside would certainly strip away the last of her color before daybreak, though for now she was protected from the elements, safely hidden inside one of the circus's makeshift buildings.
The circus bot standing across from her chuckled. "I'm taking your word that it would be useful or at least entertaining; pardon my bluntness, but your word isn't worth very much." His voice came out confident and refined, so unlike his late-night visitor's voice. In the building's dim light, his paint was black, but in the bright lights of the show ring, he was maroon.
"I can show you." The gutter bot insisted, her tone agitated. She crouched, grabbing the youngling cowering at her peds by the back of its neck, and pulled it up to stand between her and the circus bot.
The youngling was in a similar state as the bot holding it, dead nanites exposing base grey color on plating riddled with rust and dents. If the circus bot was a betting bot—and he whole-sparkedly was—he would give the youngling 60:40 odds of it surviving through the next lunar cycle in its current condition. The pair of gutter bots made a pathetic sight, but the circus bot seldom found himself moved by pity.
The fembot pressed her mouth against the youngling's left audial, muttering too quietly for the mechbot to make out her words. The youngling's half-closed optics opened wide, exposing the pale blue of its irises. It pulled away from the bot it came with, twisting toward the exit as if to flee. The actuators in its hips were the first things to freeze, sending the youngling tumbling to the ground. It thrashed on the ground for a minute, losing coordination as its ankles and then knee joints locked. Its arms flailed wildly until they too finally froze. The youngling lay contorted before the two bots, its frame trembling with tension. Everything was quiet and still for a moment, then its optics flashed white, and a spark of electricity arced between its small horns as it released the piercing scream of a wounded mechanimal. Then it was over. The optics went dark and the frame went slack.
"A freak like that has to be worth something to you." The gutter bot wheedled, giving no more attention to the youngling sprawled near her peds than the circus bot gave to the small omhrats that appeared wherever the circus went.
The mechbot frowned. "A glitch that severe could be fatal in a few years. Maybe sooner." He shook his head. "I'll give you two cubes of energon."
The fembot opened her mouth to protest.
Raising a servo, the circus bot forestalled her. "That is a very generous offer, considering nowhere else would buy it. I cannot imagine a factory that wants to buy a worker who will fall into the machines at the slightest provocation. Nor can I imagine it would be much fun to frag, even in a bot frame."
The gutter bot spat out a glob of oil then stuck out her servos petulantly, waiting for her payment as she muttered invectives.
The mechbot pulled two cubes of energon from his subspace but kept them out of the fembot's reach. "It is not registered anywhere, is it?" He asked.
"No." She grunted, optics fixed on the glowing energon.
"Any added software packets?" Sparkings and younglings were technically created with all the software they needed, but most also got upgrade packets to speed up development.
"Like I have energon to waste on that slag."
He smiled, the tips of sharp denta visible behind his lips. He gave her the energon cubes. "A pleasure doing business." He said. The fembot snatched the cubes away and fled into the darkness from which she emerged, probably heading back to whatever gutter she pulled herself out of to make a quick meal.
The circus bot walked over to the youngling, still offline on the ground. He grinned, trailing a digit down the malnourished frame before scooping it up in his arms and exiting the building in search of the circus's medic. He'd paid two good cubes of energon for this youngling, it would be a shame if it expired before earning that back.
The circus came down with practiced efficiency. In half a day, the sprawling attractions—shows, and rides, and games, and exotic animals—were safely stashed away in the circus's giant transport. The bots themselves piled into the transport, congregating on different levels and rolling out cushioned mats to get settled for a long ride to the next city on their circuit.
Opim, the closest thing the circus had to a medic, claimed a spot among the cages of Cybertronian and alien organisms. Most bots avoided this level because of the noise and smell. While these factors certainly bothered Opim, they also kept all but the most dedicated bots from seeking his help during the trip. If the other bots could take a break from their normal work between camps, then he figured he could too.
Today, Opim sat amid the stacks of empty cages near the front of the transport, his solitude disrupted by three circus mechlings. They came to gawk at Opim's current, and hopefully only, patient, the youngling that Ringleader unceremoniously dumped into his medic's care last night. He hadn't done much so far, other than give the starving youngling a few energon chips to suck. He would scrape and seal the rust spots sometime today. Although not hard, de-rusting was tedious, and Opim imagined the youngling was going to put up a fuss about holding still for so long. For now, he was happy to let it sit in one of the spare cages and entertain the three mechlings.
The red and black mechling named Skyline held out a sticky, partly eaten energon chip to the youngling. His creators were acrobats and their performances usually brought in enough onlookers for Skyline to collect a sizable stash of dropped energon chips. "You can have this one." He said earnestly.
The youngling reached a thin arm between the bars of the cage to take the offered food. It pushed the whole chip into its mouth, sucking on it contentedly as the mechlings continued to stare. Opim guessed either the youngling's central processor hadn't developed any sense of 'stranger danger' yet or else it learned that getting energon was more important.
"Hi!" One of the other mechlings said, shoving a servo into the cage and patting the youngling's knee. "I'm Shortchange. What's your name?"
The grey youngling flinched away from the rough patting, still sucking on the energon chip. It didn't answer.
Shortchange turned to Opim, his face crestfallen. "Opim," He said. "Why doesn't she want to talk to me? I'm really nice."
Opim shrugged, his bright green shoulder plating puffing out a little. Shortchange was a very friendly, talkative mechling and the circus bots happily let him hang around the game booths, telling jokes to players and distracting them when the games were rigged. "It's not a she," Opim said. "It's still a youngling: it hasn't picked a gender, and it doesn't have a name."
"But it will, eventually." Ringleader stated in his deep, refined voice that captivated audiences night after night in the show ring.
Opim looked over to the circus leader who always managed to appear without a sound. "We're keeping it then?" He asked.
"Of course." Ringleader smiled.
"Woohoo!" Skyline exclaimed, clapping his servos. Circus mechlings and femlings shared a special kind of comradery based on their nomadic lifestyle and the general knowledge that they were worthless outside the circus troop. Skyline's shout startled a nearby organic animal. The creature's eye bulged from its narrow head as it screeched and flapped its wings in the small cage.
"Woops." Shortchange muttered, and the three mechlings ran off before either of the mechbots could reprimand them.
Opim's optic followed the mechings' flight to the lift before turning back to the maroon bot. Ringleader watched the youngling intently. At the organic creature's scream, the youngling panicked, throwing itself against the back of its own cage and flailing around, as if fighting off invisible attackers. Opim watched in morbid curiosity as the youngling's frame froze joint by joint until it became a grotesque statue. Once the youngling screamed and offlined, Ringleader turned to his green companion.
"City bots love a good freak show." He stated.
"I guess." Opim conceded. He felt equal parts fascinated, unnerved, and concerned for the youngling's ability to function. "Is that why you got it?"
Ringleader nodded. "I'm doing it a favor, really." He added. "I'm sure the bot who sold it would have let it die by the year's end."
Opim shrugged again, pushing down his discomfort. "I haven't taken care of the rust yet, but I'd guess that with a few days of rest and adequate fueling, it won't be in danger of expiring from malnutrition. The plate nanites might even recover, too." He mused.
"Excellent." Ringleader chuckled, rubbing his servos together in that habit he had whenever he was formulating a new attraction.
"Any idea how old it is?" Opim asked as he unpacked his cleaning tools. "I'm going into Polyhex to purchase software upgrades for Wrench and Stop Sign once we're set up. I can pick something up for it too." The two femlings were almost fembots, and after this upgrade, they'd be able to work in Gaslight's show without inspectors or enforcers asking questions.
Ringleader shook his helm, opening the cage and pulling the limp youngling out for Opim. "I'm not investing anymore until it proves its value." The youngling didn't have a creator or a guardian to save up energon or credits to pay for software packages, so the cost would have to come directly out of the circus's own nominal savings.
Opim took the youngling and laid it next to his tools. "I'll just clean it up and keep it alive then." He said, once again stamping down on the unease that tugged at him.
Ringleader smiled.
The youngling was worth the two cubes of energon.
Ringleader didn't put it on display every day. He saved it for the last night or two of each camp when fewer families came to the circus and the audiences grew more jaded. When the 'Show of Peculiarities' became more of the 'Show of Freaks.' When, after the show was over, a bot or two would find him in the shadows and ask a few questions, to which Ringleader always grinned and said, 'maybe next time.' The days it was not on display, he kept it in a cage in one of their makeshift buildings. The youngling didn't try to run away, but when the circus was in full swing few bots had time to mind an orphaned youngling, and Ringleader certainly didn't want to give anybot a free show.
Between cities, the youngling was free to move around the transport like any of the other circus children. It tended to follow Skyline around, trailing behind the mechling with wide, watchful optics. Skyline, in turn, tended to let the youngling lick one of his energon chips and sometimes even have one all to itself. The other bots in the troop began taking a liking to the quiet youngling too, and slowly it began fitting into the odd community (not quite family, not quite business) of the circus.
Today, Skyline and the youngling sat high up on boxes of costumes, watching a servoful of mechbots and fembots workout.
"That's Clobber," Skyline said, pointing a digit at a massive purple and grey fembot below them. "She's the strongest bot on Cybertron." He stated as Clobber effortlessly lifted a giant box full of spikes used to construct makeshift buildings when the troop set up camp.
The grey youngling looked up at its companion and then down at Clobber. The bot balanced her load on one servo, using the other to wave up at her small audience. Skyline waved back enthusiastically.
"She's the best." He said, optics gazing off into nowhere. "She says I'm a few thousand stellar cycles too young for her, but one of these days I'm gonna kis—Hey!" He exclaimed, interrupting himself as the youngling began climbing perilously down the stack of boxes. "Where are you going?" He asked, scrambling down after it.
The youngling made a b-line toward the bright green bot who just stepped out of the lift, heedless of the possibility of getting crushed by one of the large bots it walked under. It raised an arm up toward Opim once it reached him, opening and closing the servo repeatedly.
"Primus," Opim grumbled. "That's all you ever want." He pulled a cylinder of liquid energon out of his subspace and gave it to the waiting youngling.
"Do I get some?" Skyline asked when he arrived, looking up hopefully at the medic.
"No," Opim said. "Your creators give you plenty."
Skyline kicked at the floor. "Slag it." He muttered and wandered off.
The green bot looked down at the youngling, now contentedly sucking the fuel out of the cylinder. Its plating wasn't as thin as it had been a few lunar cycles ago, and paint nanites were starting to reactivate, creating tiny flecks of red. It was finally starting to look like it might belong to somebot instead of the gutters.
"Come on," Opim said, hoisting the youngling up by its free arm. "Ringleader wants a look at you." He got back on the lift, taking it down three levels to where the maroon bot waited.
"We can't just keep calling it 'youngling.'" Rattletrap stated after falling gracelessly onto his pedestal in the 'Show of Peculiarities.' Grunting, the brown bot arranged his malformed limbs beneath him until he looked more like a giant ohmrat than a mechbot in the poor lighting of the flimsy building.
"Why?" Beam asked in a muffled voice, shuffling ponderously out of her booth to squint myopically at Rattletrap. Thick growths of protoform sprouted flaccidly from her chassis and head, limiting her mobility and blocking most of her vision. "We know who we're talking about."
Rattletrap clicked his glassa against his crooked denta. "But that's not really a name, and it ain't gonna be a youngling forever."
"Would you shut up?" An angry voice shouted from a booth deeper in the building. "Ringleader will blow a fuse if he finds out you're chatting instead of entertaining!"
"Cool it, Flare Up!" Rattletrap shouted back. "It's raining like the pits outside. Ain't no function-loving Protihexians coming out in this weather."
Flare Up grumbled but fell silent.
"Anyways," The brown bot continued. "I was thinking we'd better come up with a name for it. Slag knows Ringleader won't come up with one."
"Not a good one, at least." The mechbot in the booth closest to the entrance interjected. He lacked a name when he came hobbling to the circus, begging for work and energon. Ringleader had laughed once, prodding the orange bot's extra leg with a ped tip before announcing that Tripod was more than welcome in his show of peculiarities.
"Yeah," Rattletrap agreed. "I for one don't want to have to go around calling it 'Freakout.'"
Beam shifted her bulk. "Can you come up with something better?" She wondered.
"I've got several." Rattletrap chirped. "We can all vote on the best one."
The building soon filled with the sounds of hushed voices in serious debate. After all, with the rain falling outside, the bots had little else to do.
"Ringleader! Hey, Ringleader!" Rattletrap shouted, scuttling after the maroon bot on all fours—it was faster than walking.
"What?" Ringleader replied, still striding between the piles of crates waiting to be stashed inside the transport as the troop broke camp again. He was in a dark mood. The storm made Protihex a total loss and they were all going to feel it by the time they crossed the vast beryllium planes and reached Valvolux.
"Well, some of us got to talking the other day, and we got a name for the youngling." Rattletrap said between gasps, systems straining to keep up with Ringleader's pace. "With Protihex being such a bust, seems like a naming announcement is just what we need to raise everybot's spirits."
Ringleader grunted noncommittally.
"We wanted to come up with something real good. A name that carries meaning and makes a bot proud to use, you know?"
Another grunt.
Rattletrap rushed on. "Well, we figured its name should be connected to its new life with us. And the biggest thing—the biggest thing that's changed is its paint nanites are working again. So, now it's got red, not just grey."
"Get on with it." Ringleader rumbled.
"We want to name it Red." Rattletrap finished with a squeak.
"That's fine." The troop leader said carelessly before picking up his pace, leaving the deformed bot behind as he went to investigate the hold-up that was stopping crates from being loaded into the transport.
The troop had just enough stockpiled energon to make it to Valvolux, provided they followed strict rationing. No one was happy with the arrangement, and the circus bots were unusually subdued. Ringleader spent most of his time going over numbers and maps with the transport's piloting computer. Skyline's creators spent most of their time snapping at each other, so the mechling kept away from them as much as he could.
A couple lunar cycles ago, Skyline would have been upset about the rationing, but he'd gotten a software update and he felt much older and wiser. He was practically a sage now, filled with as much knowledge as the legendary Alpha Trion. Skyline suddenly imagined himself with Alpha Trion's flowing cape and beard. He giggled.
"What's so funny, young bot?" Opim asked, looking up from the dark green paint he was applying to his plating.
"Nothing." Skyline replied, looking slightly abashed at his outburst of mirth. "Just daydreaming."
Opim nodded. "Just as long as you're not laughing at my paint job."
"Never." The mechling said seriously.
"Good." The medic went back to his painting.
Skyline spent a better part of the day with the bot, watching him prime his paint nanites to accept a new color. The actual painting was rather dull but the black and red mechling had nothing else to do, and sometimes Red did something entertaining. The red and grey youngling was playing with a reflective bobble in the cage that Opim put it in whenever the youngling needed to stay out of the way.
Red carried the bobble to the side of the cage facing Skyline. The mechling waved at it from his perch on the empty cages Opim was using as a work table. Red waved back before working the large bobble through a gap in the bars. Once the bobble was through, Red tried throwing it across the walkway to Skyline. The bobble fell short, falling to the floor between them and rolling further down the walkway. Skyline sighed, jumping off the table to retrieve the toy. He brought it back and tossed it up the Red. The youngling caught the bobble and tossed it back to the mechling with a giggle. Skyline caught it and threw it back, smiling a little. Red squealed in excitement.
They played catch for a while. Eventually, Red worked the bobble back through the bars and returned to rolling it across the cage's floor. Skyline turned back to Opim. The bot was now carefully removing his back plating so he could more easily paint it.
"Why is Red so slow?" The mechling asked.
"What do you mean?" Opim sounded distracted.
Skyline shrugged. It never seemed important when he was younger, but now he thought it was very strange. "Red's as big as me when I decided I was a mechling, but it can't even talk yet." He squinted at the youngling. "Is there something wrong with it?" Realizing how silly that question was, he quickly added, "Other than the whole freezing thing."
"Oh," Opim set his brush aside, looking over at the youngling in question. "Well, you know those software packages I've installed in you?"
Skyline nodded.
"Those packages help you learn stuff faster, and your creators saved up energon to buy them. Most creators do that these days. Otherwise, creations take a long time to grow up." Opim shifted so he was sitting next to the mechling. "But Red doesn't have any creators who can save their energon to buy software, so it has to grow up slowly."
Skyline frowned thoughtfully. "And Ringleader has to ration our energon so we can get to Valvolux, so there isn't any extra for you to buy software for Red."
"Exactly."
"Oh." The mechling kicked his peds against the empty cage below him. He thought for a moment, then looked up with a smile. "Someone needs to teach Red how to talk and stuff!"
"I guess." Opim sighed, starting to reattach his back plating. "Not sure anyone has the time or interest, though." He certainly was not going to spend hours upon hours trying to teach the youngling the basics of life just because Ringleader didn't want to spend energon on the youngling he decided to buy.
"I can do it!" Skyline exclaimed.
"Knock yourself out, mechling." Opim said without interest, putting the paint back in his subspace. He checked his reflection on the tank filled with dark oil and dwarf sharkticons and straightened a plate on his shoulder.
Skyline took his new role of instructor very seriously.
When the circus was in full swing, he spent most of his time cleaning makeshift buildings and the surrounding grounds. City bots left behind all kinds of trash and sometimes he found things with bright colors, odd textures, or words (like energon candy wrappers or pieces of toys). Rather than tossing them in the incinerator with the rest of the garbage, he stuffed them into his little subspace pockets, saving them to show to Red during the long trips between cities. When the circus ran, Skyline did not have time for teaching.
Red didn't have much time either. It was big enough now that most bots could not tell it was a youngling just from looking, so Ringleader put it in the 'Show of Peculiarities' more often. Its shrill mechanimal-like screams bothered the other circus bots in the building. After Valvolux and Tarn, and Rattletrap repeatedly bringing up the bots' complaints, Ringleader dug a vocal suppressor out of an old storage crate and tossed it to the 'Show of Peculiarities's unofficial spokes bot. 'Find someone to stick this on it's voicebox,' he'd said. 'It won't be as loud.' Rattletrap did. The complaints stopped. When Red was not on display, it lay in a cage in one of the buildings, motionless except for when Opim brought it energon. When the circus ran, Red did not have energy for learning.
Things were different during the treks between cities.
Skyline jumped out of the lift as soon as the doors opened. He clutched a pair of long hemostats that Opim used for clamping off lines when bots were really injured. The mechanimal level was dim and quiet, the mechanical and organic animals still sedated from when they were loaded into the transport. Skyline ran down the pathway to Red's cage.
"Hey, Red." The mechling said as he dialed in the code for the cage door's mechanical lock with one servo, the other still clutching the hemostats.
The youngling looked up and smiled at Skyline, getting up from its spot at the back of the cage and crawling to the open door. It was big enough now that it couldn't stand upright in the cage, so crawling was easier. Red sat at the edge of the cage, legs dangling off the end as it waited patiently with its head tilted back and mouth open.
Skyline put his free servo under the youngling's chin to stabilize its helm. Carefully, he stuck the forceps down Red's intake, sliding down the anterior side until the tool's tip hit the suppressor clinging to its voicebox.
"Got it." He said, locking the forceps onto the device and pulling back slowly until it disconnected. He removed his servo from Red's mouth and released its chin. Setting the vocal suppressor aside, he grabbed the youngling and heaved it out of the cage and down to the floor.
Red rubbed at its throat, face scrunching in concentration. "Fanx." It finally said.
"Ooh," Skyline said with joy. "That was really good!"
He pulled a half-eaten energon chip out of his full subspace and gave it to Red. Once the youngling finished, Skyline took its servo in his and they walked deeper into the lines of creature cages. Red never had much energy this soon after a camp, so the mechling planned to stay on the creature level today.
"Let's practice the mechanimal sounds." He said. One of his best finds while cleaning the circus grounds was a small datapad about raising sparklings. The author said creators could help sparklings develop a broad range of vocalizations by teaching them mechanimal sounds. The examples in the datapad sounded nothing like mechanimals in the circus, but Skyline supposed city bots probably didn't know what real mechanimals sounded like. The author also had a chapter all about how to wrap a sparking up in a mesh to make it feel safe, but as cute as that sounded he doubted Red would be interested.
He pointed at a turbofox curled up under a box in its cage. "What sound does a turbofox make?" he asked.
"Ky! Ky!" Red yipped softly.
The drowsy turbofox tilted one orange audial toward the pair but otherwise remained still.
"What about spacemice?" Skyline pointed up at a vacuum tank with six little mechanimals perched on an old piece of a scrapped spaceship.
Red stuck the tip of its glassa out over its lower denta and inhaled. "Tz."
Skyline grinned. Red was not a sparkling, but it certainly liked making mechanimal noises. He pointed at the sharkticons. "What about—"
"What are you doing?" Ringleader's rich voice demanded.
Skyline jumped with surprise. Dropping Red's servo, he turned to face the circus master. 'Nothing,' he tried to say. The word stuck in his throat. He didn't think they were doing anything wrong, but Ringleader's demanding question and hard face frightened the mechling. His mouth worked wordlessly for a moment longer before finally saying "looking at the animals" with a squeak.
The bot raised the corner of his mouth into a smile, looking at Red. The youngling had fallen to the ground, thrashing limbs slowly freezing. "Don't get them too riled up." Ringleader admonished without looking back at Skyline. He turned around, picking up the abandoned forceps and suppressor as he returned to the lift, leaving the uneasy mechling and frozen youngling behind.
The lift doors closed on Red's scream.
"I'm getting out of here one day, you mark my words Red," Skyline said as he wound metal cords together, slowly building a new trapeze cable. The circus was traveling again, making the long trek across the salt flats to Remnacon.
"Why?" The red and white youngling asked, passing spools of cord to the mechling who was almost a mechbot now.
"Because there's so much world out there!" He said, throwing an arm out to point at a wall of the transport. Skyline had been thinking about leaving for a while and a couple cities back he found an abandoned datapad with pictures from all across Cybertron.
Red cocked its head to the side. "The salt flats?"
"All of Cybertron—all of the universe," Skyline said, servos returning to making the cable. "I want to see it all, and not just from the circus grounds. And once I've seen everything there is to see, I want to go to a university and learn to be a teacher."
"Scary," Red muttered.
"Not scary; exciting." Skyline insisted. "There's so much out there, and you don't get to see any of it 'cause Ringleader always puts you in a cage. You have to see the world, Red; I can't explain it all to you. I can't even explain genders properly!"
It was true. Over the last couple of years, ever since Red started to grasp more abstract ideas, Skyline tried on and off to explain the difference between mech and fem. He never had to think about it before. His creators had a bit of a celebration after a software update he got as a youngling and a few days later he just knew what he was. He tried explaining the difference by frame type once:
'Mechbots are broader and bigger.' Skyline said, laying back on his rubber sleeping mat with Red curled up next to him. 'Like Ringleader, and Opim, and my carrier. Fembots are slimmer. Like Gaslight, and Stop Sign, and my sire.'
Red shook its head sleepily. 'You said Wrench is fem. Wrench looks like Opim, not Stop Sign.' It yawned. 'And Clobber fem. No bot bigger than her.'
Skyline had nothing to counter that.
More recently he tried to explain how mechlings and femlings knew which one they were:
'I wanted to play with other mechlings and do what mechbots do.' Skyline said as he and Red scrubbed out a mechanimal cage used in the last show. 'Shortchange and Wildride played with little soldier figures, so I wanted to play with them too. And when I grow up, I want to be strong and brave, like other mechbots.'
Red stopped scrubbing at a particularly stubborn dark stain, face scrunching as it thought hard. Finally, it looked up at Skyline and earnestly asked 'Am I a mechanimal?'
Skyline nearly spilled his bottle of solvent. 'No, silly. Why would you say that?'
Red's large optics blinked. 'I sit in a cage. I scream.'
He never managed to explain it right.
"You should come with me." He said. "It'd just be me and you and all of Cybertron before us." He put a servo over one of Red's smaller servos. "No more Ringleader. No more transport. No more cages."
Red's servo trembled and it almost dropped the spools of cord. "N-no." It stuttered.
"Okay," Skyline sighed, removing his servo. After all, there was plenty of time before they reached Remnacon, maybe he'd convince Red by then.
Skyline didn't convince Red by the time the circus reached Remnacon. Once they arrived, he didn't have much time to think about Red or his plans for running away. Setting up the circus, the stages and buildings and rides, was always some form of organized chaos. Older bots sent Skyline from task to task from the moment the sun rose until long after it sank below the far horizon and the circus grounds were lit by floodlights. Finally, he had a moment to sit on an empty box near the transport and take a few bites out of an energon cube.
As the young bot sat, he saw Rattletrap hobble out of the transport, toward a newly erected building near the 'Show of Peculiarities.' Red clung to the bot's twisted torso, its face buried against Rattletrap's neck cables.
Skyline had been so focused on getting away, and convincing Red to escape with him, that he never considered why the youngling—if he could really call it that anymore—was so terrified of the idea. Ringleader added the youngling to his troop years ago. Since then, Red spent all of its time in the transport or a cage at the circus. Skyline spent most of his time in the transport too, but his experience in the circus was lightyears different. Yes, he was usually setting up, taking down, or cleaning, but he had ample opportunity to see the city bots laughing and smiling. Sometimes a bot would give him a few credits and push him toward the game booths saying it was too nice a day for a handsome young mechling to spend all his time working. He'd hear about things in the cities, interesting things, and he'd wish he had the time to go see them. Red never got any of that. It just sat in a cage in a dark building until Ringleader decided to put it on display for bots to laugh at and point at. Skyline did not know why Red's joints froze but he knew it happened when it was surprised or scared. When Red left the transport, it spent day after day isolated and terrified.
Skyline looked down at his energon cube, no longer interested in eating.
Slowly, he put the cube back in his subspace, next to the few personal belongings he was taking with him. Swallowing nervously, he walked back into the chaos of setup, his spark pounding.
It wasn't until the afternoon of the next day, when the circus was in full swing, that Skyline had time to really think about his plan again. He was gathering trash at the main entry point into the circus grounds, a simple enough task that his processor had plenty of time to think. In the days he spent contemplating his escape, he decided that running just before takedown gave him the best chance. Everything was so busy then that his parents, more importantly, Ringleader, may not notice he was gone for hours. When somebot eventually figured it out, they wouldn't have much time to search for him before the transport had to head out. Getting to the next city, the next paying crowd, was more important than one missing bot.
The problem with that plan was that it would be harder to take Red. Ringleader left Red on display nearly all the time over the last couple of days, taking advantage of an audience that found it entertaining to watch a youngling scream and writhe in a cage. As soon as the show finished, Opim carried Red back into the transport to feed it and repair any damage it did to itself. Even if Skyline could slip in and out of the transport undetected, Red would be too exhausted to walk, let alone run. If they left on the last night, he'd need to carry Red. It wasn't that small anymore and he worried they would not find a safe hiding place fast enough.
After yesterday, Skyline knew he couldn't leave without Red.
So everything boiled down to this: he needed to take Red before Ringleader put it on display. Or, they had to run today. Skyline knew Red was in the little building behind the peculiarity show. There were still too many happy families around for Ringleader to think terrorizing a youngling in the middle of the day was good for a laugh. The door was locked but it had a standard code used to keep city bots out, so that wasn't a problem. Walking out with the crowds of city bots made it less likely that anyone would notice them, but Red would be scared out of its mind and probably have a fit. Skyline supposed if he used a mesh blanket or banner, like one of those flown on poles outside major attractions, he could wrap Red up tight enough to keep it from thrashing. Then, he might look like a young mechbot with a tired little sibling that liked being wrapped up like a sparkling still.
Turning with his bucket full of trash, Skyline walked casually back into the circus grounds. As he went, he kept an optic open for an unwatched mesh he could take.
He found one sooner than he expected, discarded outside the entrance to 'The Grandest Show' building. The bot grabbed the mesh, stuffing it into his bucket in case its owner saw him.
He turned to continue toward the building where Red was caged but paused. Ringleader's magnified voice drifted out of the building. Slowly, almost unwillingly, Skyline turned back and walked to a small, rust-eaten hole in one of the wall panels. Crouching slightly, he put an optic up to the hole and looked into the show.
Ringleader stood on a dais in the middle of the stage. Trained mechanimals performed around him as the maroon bot recounted outrageous—mostly false—tales to the audience about how the mechanimals were captured and subjugated to the will of their new masters. The city bots listened with wrapped attention and cheered when Ringleader cracked an energy whip, sending a muzzled cyberwolf bounding through blazing rings of fire.
Skyline looked away and spat on the ground. He didn't know how Ringleader always managed to fool the bots around him. The city bots saw Ringleader as a master entertainer and business bot. The circus bots thought he did everything he could to keep his troop of misfits and drifters alive and happy. It wasn't until Skyline's last software upgrade that he saw through the act, saw the cruel bot beneath the perfect paint and polished voice. Now that he had, he would never unsee it.
Spinning on his heel, Skyline left the building, striding with determination toward Red's prison.
"Relax." He muttered to himself as he moved through the crowds. He tried calming his face and slowing his steps. He didn't make a habit of walking around like a bot on a quest and doing that now might cause another circus bot to wonder what he was doing. That was absolutely the last thing he needed.
Finally, he reached the small building behind the 'Show of Peculiarities'. Setting down the bucket, he typed the code into the lock and heard the latch spring open. He pushed the door. Nothing happened.
Skyline pushed again, and again nothing happened. The door remained firmly in place.
For a moment, the young bot feared Ringleader had known what he was planning. Except, that was crazy. He hadn't even known what he was doing until this afternoon. He took a deep breath to give his processor time to think. There were things stored in the building besides Red. Maybe a crate fell and blocked the door. That would be bad, but Skyline knew he could figure out a way around it.
"Okay, mech," he told himself. "Just need to figure out what's stopping the door." He exhaled.
Three lunar cycles ago, Shortchange put a patch on one of the wall panels after a large ohmrat chewed through it. If Skyline found the patch he could probably pry it off, look into the building and see what the problem was—provided no crates were stacked in front of it. He set off around the building, optics trained on the bottom edge of the panels, searching for the patch.
Skyline fell to his knees when he found the spot. Hissing with effort, he worked his digits under the plastic patch's edge and heaved, breaking it loose from the metal. The bot laid on his chest and looked into the building.
The room was lit by a single, weak, solar-powered bulb. It provided just enough illumination for bots to make out shapes and avoid tripping over anything. Cheap, and exactly the kind of light Ringleader would buy. A crate hadn't fallen and blocked the door. A slip of metal had been wedged into the latch, preventing it from releasing its connection between the door and wall, even when the locking mechanism opened. It was a common enough trick and a slightly more expensive lock and latch system would have it impossible. But again, Ringleader liked things cheap enough to function. Skyline failed to notice this. He forgot about the door entirely.
A mechbot was inside the makeshift building. His plating was dark, the color indistinguishable in the light of the dim bulb. Skyline didn't recognize the bot's silhouette. He knelt on the ground, servos pressing down on something between his legs. The young bot could barely see the thing through the shadow the strange bot cast but he could tell it was struggling. For a moment he thought it was a mechanimal, maybe a large cyberhound. Then he heard the choked-off cries it made, only the faintest vocalizations making it past the suppressor in its throat.
"Red." Skyline thought he shouted the name, but the word barely made it out of his own voicebox. The ringing he heard in his audials was due to fear, not sound. Scrambling away from the wall, the young bot threw himself to his peds and ran. He ran to the only bot he could think of, panic gripping his spark, unaware of the city bots he ran past or pushed aside.
"Clobber!" He screamed when he saw the giant bot in her uncovered show ring. "Clobber!"
"Huh?" She said in confusion, setting down the two circus bots she'd been about to throw into the sky. "Skyline?"
"Clobber," he cried again, gasping for breath as he reached her. "Somebot's hurting Red. I couldn't get through the door. Somebot's hurting Red!"
Clobber, to her eternal credit, wasted no time. She grabbed one of her startled assistants. "Get Ringleader." She ordered before chucking the bot in an arching trajectory toward the building where the maroon bot performed his grandest show. The thrown bot tucked her arms and legs, mentally bracing herself for a rough landing. The moment the bot left her servo, Clobber turned and ran back the way Skyline came, rumbling 'outta mah way' at the startled city bots.
Skyline sprinted after her.
Clobber was too big for the door. That was true for most things in her life and she never let it stop her. She punched a servo through the makeshift building's front wall and tore the flimsy metal away, casting it to the side. The massive bot stepped into the small room.
The mechbot was still there. Yelling in surprise at the sudden intrusion and bright light, the dark blue bot rolled off of Red, narrowly avoiding Clobber first grab. As his evasion brought him to the back wall, he had no way of avoiding her second hand. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him bodily from the building.
"I think there's been some confusion." The bot tried to say, his voice a strange mix of shook and cultured consonants. Clobber punched him before the words were fully out. The bot went limp and she dropped him.
"Red? Red?" Skyline cried, sliding past the giant to kneel next to his senseless friend. Red's plating was askew, some of it entirely knocked off, but he couldn't see any major damage or leaking energon. Crying, Skyline hugged Red's slack frame, pulling it into his lap. "You're okay, you're okay." He recited over and over, willing the words to be true.
"By Primus!" Ringleader's surprised voice shouted, anger crackling at the edges. "What is going on here!"
Clobber pointed at the dark blue bot who was starting to regain consciousness. "This bot was tryna do sommit to little Red." She rumbled, planting a servo on the bot's helm and shoving him back to the ground when he attempted to rise.
"As I was attempting to explain to your associate," The bot said, wiping a trickle of energon from his mouth but otherwise staying put. "I work for a company that researches glitches. We heard your circus has a young bot with a potentially very unique glitch. I was simply assessing the extent of the glitch." His voice was calmer now, confident and controlled.
Slowly, he began rising to his peds again, keeping an optic on Clobber's servos. Ringleader placed a servo on the fembot's elbow stopping her from sending the blue bot back to the ground. Smiling, the look triumphant than pleasant, the bot climbed to his peds and dusted himself off.
"My bosses are definitely going to want to talk about acquiring that glitch." He extended a servo to Ringleader. "My name's Disinge—"
He didn't get to finish.
Ringleader slammed his fist into the blue bot's mouth, sending his yet again unconscious frame back to the ground. "Shut up." He spat.
Opim arrived at about that moment. "Oh my," He said passively, looking down at the bot who now had two streams of energon running out of his mouth.
Ringleader grabbed Opim's arm and shoved the medic through the open front of the broken building. "Check Red." He ordered.
The dark green bot knelt next to Skyline. "It probably just had a fit." He stated after a cursory glance revealed no damage. "But give it here, and I'll take it to my station to have a closer look."
Reluctantly, Skyline handed the limp frame to Opim. Dried tears made his face itch and he scratched at it to distract himself from the feeling of loss as he let Red go.
"Come one." The medic said in a once habitual show of niceness. "You might as well come too."
Skyline gathered the few plates that the blue bot knocked off of Red in the struggle and climbed to his peds, following right behind the bot as they made their way through a small ground of city bots who stopped to watch the surprise, unscripted show.
Skyline felt the anger radiating off Ringleader as he passed him. If somebot asked the young mechbot to describe what feeling that anger was like, he would have thought for half a moment and then said 'like when a creator is disappointed, not because you did something wrong, but because you didn't ask for permission first.'
Skyline lay on his mat, spooned protectively around Red, who was curled up, arms clutching its knees to its chest.
At the first aid building, Opim ran a basic diagnostic scan on Red, who was still unconscious, before announcing 'It's basically fine, a few bumps and strained joints.' He'd set about reattaching the loose plates while the scan finished.
The scan chimed and Opim looked over at the attached datapad. 'Hm,' His voice was more interested. 'Looks like its spark casing was opened for a complete diagnostic analysis. Whoever that blue bot is, he knew what he was doing.'
Skyline shuddered at the crawling sensation that ran through his own spark. He didn't know if Red's limited experiences and understanding of the world would make what happened more or less frightening; none of the sparkling or youngling datapads he's gotten his servos on over the years addressed how to deal with trauma. All Skyline knew was that if he'd been attacked and had his central processor and spark forcefully scanned, he would be very, very scared.
'I hope Ringleader doesn't want to use this for a while.' Opim said as he extracted the vocal suppressor from Red's throat. 'It's pretty fried.' He dropped the device and hemostats in a jar of sterilizing solvent and then set about straightening his workspace.
'Nothing that some rest shouldn't fix' Opim said as he put away the last of his tools. He looked out the small window at the groups of city bots wandering by. 'Everything's pretty noisy out here. You go ahead and take it back to a quiet spot in the transport, I'll break the news to Ringleader.'
'Okay." Skyline whispered. He heaved Red into his arms and trekked across the circus grounds to the transport. He was gasping for breath again when he reached the massive machine. He had to put Red down to enter the code and open a small entrance door.
He was staggering by the time he got to the secluded spot where he sometimes brought Red to read to it. He slid down the wall to the floor, trying to not jostle the still frame as he worked his mat out of his subspace and rolled it open. Carefully, ever so carefully, he laid Red out on the mat and then set cross-legged next to it, waiting for his friend's optics to light up.
Opim hasn't said he could stay with Red, but no bot came looking for him.
Red shook violently against him, its plating rattling with the force.
"You're okay." Skyline soothed. "That bot's gone. I won't let anything happen.'
"No, no, no," Red said in the thinnest, tiniest voice the bot ever heard. "No, no, no." It hadn't said anything else since waking up and latching onto Skyline's armor with weak digits.
He didn't say anything to that because nothing he said or did made a difference. He used all the soothing words he knew until he did not know what else to do but lay there and hold Red. And the longer he held Red, the dimmer his dream of running away got, because he couldn't leave Red, and Red couldn't leave like this. As he lay there, another tear rolled down his face, leaving a glowing trail in its wake. Skyline was unsure if this time he was crying for himself or Red.
Or both.