Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The auditorium was typical, with descending rows of benches in a more or less universal size, a giant screen for displays and a podium with a console and a smaller screen to control the display. Two exits at two sides of the highest row and one additional at the back of the stage. And the feeling of being absolutely exposed and somehow encircled. The unfortunate lecturer was all too aware of it as, alone on the podium, he had trouble with navigating his materials – trouble that was only contributing to his already serious case of performance jitters.

“Please, give me a moment and I’ll find the right picture, th-thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemechs,” he asked, searching between his data slug plugged into the console and several datapads. He wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on amongst his bored audience. He didn’t notice the door sliding open and shut, didn’t hear footsteps slowly nearing the podium, wasn’t aware of a new arrival that both shushed his listeners and sent them into a chittering frenzy.

“Frag me with a chainsaw! Grapple… Long time not see!”

Grapple jumped and dropped one datapad. He knew this voice all too well, after nearly seven vorns of sharing the room with its owner in the North Iaconian Student Halls. He dove behind the console to retrieve the fallen ‘pad, did retrieve it and slowly rose to his feet, peeking downwards and still disbelieving. But here he was – the green and purple mech standing in front of the platform in the middle of the deserted first row. The troubled lecturer’s face lit up, overjoyed with the sight.

“Scrapper! I heard rumours that you’ve been seen but couldn’t believe it… The Crystal City has barely been opened!” He pointed out. “Also, I didn’t see your name in the programme…”

“Hah!” Pleased with himself, Scrapper plopped down and stretched pleasantly in a manner unbecoming a guest on a lecture given in the most snobbish place on an above Cybertron during the most prestigious event in the industry. “That’s because I’m a nor-mal a-tten-dee!”

The audience gasped, and Grapple together with them.

“No way… Somebody like you – a normal attendee?… How did it even happen?”

Was that even… Allowed?

The non-guest of honour shrugged, his voice noticeably less smug than earlier.

“Ah, see, my mechs sent me here – as a gift. They thought that I needed rest or some slag… I checked how much they had to pay and, frag! I’ll have to take ‘em all to Monacus or something to get even,” he declared, regaining his high spirits.

Grapple snorted.

“No, don’t take them to this den of sin!”

“My dear Grapple,” Scrapper wiggled a finger at him. “If I’m going to take my mechs someplace for a good time, I sure as frag hope it’s a den of sin, and a good one!”

“Well, you’re the foremech, you know what’s best for them… And they clearly know what’s best for you… But really – you, a normal attendee?” Grapple shook his head, still disbelieving. And since he was the one on the platform who was supposed to share his knowledge with the audience, he decided to try to at least explain this one absolutely crucial question. “You would be the biggest guest of honour this vorn, if not decavorn!”

“Yeah, tell me that! At first, I was sure that they were gonna do me dirty like this!”

“Do you dirty?”

“Precisely!” Scrapper sat up straight and clasped his hands together as if making an announcement to somebody: “Alright, my mechs, we’re done in this crystal pit, what are we doin’ next?” He waved flamboyantly and said in a higher pitch: “‘Oh, that’s easy, foremech! We’ll stay here and clean, and you’ll go to Altihex tomorrow morning.’ Altihex? Like, giving lectures and talking to people? And here I was thinking that I’ve done everything right and you guys actually like me…”

He sighed dramatically.

“And what am I supposed to do there? Just show them the pictures of crystal buildings or something?” He pointed at non-existing objects in front of him. “Here’s a picture of a crystal building. Here’s a picture of another crystal building. And here’s a picture of the same crystal building, but from a slightly different angle. And now, a joke to lighten the mood, courtesy of my friend Bonecrusher: What are you gonna get after mixing equal amounts of crystals and slag? – Twice as much slag!”

“That’s a good one, Scrapper!” Grapple was leaning heavily on the console to see him better, the picture on the large screen behind him flickering. Not like he – or anyone else – cared. “Everyone would love it.”

Scrapper shook his head, horrified by the prospect.

“No, thanks. I’d rather do something actually productive, like watching crystals gro- Ugh, no, maybe not that.”

“You know, even if you were simply showing pictures and commenting ‘This is Crystal City. This is also Crystal City. This, again, is Crystal City,’ people would be still rioting to be there…”

“Pfft!” Scrapper was clearly meaning to say that people were stupid, but stopped himself in time. “I could, but I won’t. That’s the beauty of this, Grapple – as a normal attendee, I don’t have to do anything,” he bragged instead. “Not one thing!… Okay, I guess that I should still behave like a civilised being, but didn’t get any backlash so far… Hm. I should probably let them learn the hard way that enabling me like that is a veeery bad idea… Amirite, Grapps?”

“Enabling you like that is a cosmically bad idea,” Grapple confirmed.

“Yes, indeed! I’ll show those suck-ups, I’ll show them good… Buuut, it seems that you were actually doing something before I interrupted you? What were you doing here with all these people, Grapps?…” He looked around the not even half-full auditorium. Mmm… Could that moderate popularity mean that no crystals were involved? “I guess it was mentioned somewhere in the programme, but I kinda…”

“Didn’t care to check?” Grapple smirked knowingly, old memories resurfacing in his processor.

“I was very busy with…”

“Not caring who’s here and what they’re up to?”

“Yeah! How did you know?”

“No idea. It just came to me out of nowhere, I swear.”

“But now I care!” Scrapper ensured. “See? This is my caring face. What are you up to right now, my mech?”

And that was it. With the pleasant intermission over, Grapple found himself back in the hostile environment of public presentations where nothing seemed to go according to plan.

“Um, oh, well… I was trying to give a lecture, I guess-”

“Oh, frag, sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your moment in the spotlight!” Ashamed, Scrapper sat himself properly at last, with a perfectly straight back and hands resting on his knees, looking so much unlike himself. It didn’t sit well with Grapple.

“Ah, you didn’t ruin anything! It barely started, if at all…”

“Oh, shoot!” Scrapper jumped, excited. “Can I stay and listen, or is that ‘pre-registered mechs only’?”

Well, great. Because the pressure to impress everyone with his unimpressive performance hadn’t been already suffocating.

“No, you can stay, but you’re gonna get really bored, I’m afraid…” Grapple murmured, desperately trying to find his way in his datapads and on the screen. “And I can’t even seem to find the beginning…”

“Oh? No, I’m sure it’s awesome!” Scrapper innocently put even more pressure on him. “What is that actually about?”

“Um… About lithotermic cylinders,” Grapple explained, congratulating himself that he remembered at least this much.

“Oh… Cool! And what are they?”

“They’re cylinders you put into engines to make them run…”

“Ah, right! And what do they look like?”

This was the moment when Grapple gave up. There wasn’t going to be a lecture, he couldn’t piece it up together for the life of his and his head felt empty… Unless asked a question. So, no lecture. He could just chat with the most famous non-guest of honour in the room, hoping that at least this one person would learn something useful. He shrugged, finally calm.

“Eh, you can just come over here and see for yourself, if you manage to find them here… I personally can’t…”

“Yeah, sure!” Unconcerned with an alleged lecture, Scrapper happily jolted upward and stopped right before the chest-high podium. “A helping hand, Grapple?… You know, you can use your hook if your hands are tied!”

“No need for hook!” Grapple half-knelt over him, grabbed his hand and hoisted him onto the scene. “Huh… You’re a big machine, Scrapper, you know that?”

“Kinda necessary when you want to throw your weight around,” Scrapper remarked smugly and he was already standing next to Grapple and scrolling the screen’s contents. “Ah! Is that it? Very nice, very nice indeed!… So, what is that?”

“Wait, let me check…” Grapple picked up the nearest datapad and did his own scrolling. “Ah, a hard fusion engine with lithotermic cylinders in it.”

“Ooh, so shiny!”

“How about sharing it with the audience?” Grapple half-joked, half-improvised. His new lecture partner shrugged.

“Nah, they don’t deserve it.”

“Wha… Scrapper, that’s this presentation’s intended purpose!”

“What, you didn’t make it all just for me?” Scrapper turned to him, pretend hurt in his voice. “And I thought that we were friends!”

The audience gave away a weird sound resembling a collective cooing.

Grapple elbowed him to regain access to the console.

“Ugh, move!… So, here it is – um, a hard fusion engine with lithotermic cylinders,” he informed nobody in particular, and neither did he look at anyone from the audience. This lecture had already been a failure, there was no need to pretend that it was salvageable. It was going to be his first and last solo presentation in Altihex, that was for sure!

“And what can they be used for?” Scrapper was still determined to learn more about the cylinders… Maybe he even decided to be generous and share with the audience this time.

“Em, great for automated doors, gates or bridges, for one thing… Y’know, everywhere where you need engines.”

“Ooh! The principle of ‘active architecture’ in practice?”

Hearing Scrapper talking about architecture – even in the passing – the audience sighed, elated.

“You can put it that way, yes.”

“Awesome! Can people use them?”

“It’s still tested…”

“And I bet that they’re too robust to attach any crystal structures to them?”

“Wha- What type of crystal structures?”

“You know… Crystal gates, bridges…”

“No, don’t be ridiculous… These engines are supposed to support actual, honest structures, not some trinkets pretending to be something functional…”

More wonderful words hadn’t been uttered to him ever since he’d arrived to the Symposium.

“I love you, you beautiful matrix-fragger,” Scrapper whispered with a shiver, overcome by emotions.

“Um… Okay?” Grapple offlined and onlined his optics, having no idea what had he possibly done to be awarded with such affection.

“Oh my god, I want a whole bunch!… Can I buy some? Where does one go to get them?”

“There’s still only a couple of prototypes, Scrapper, they’ve yet to enter normal distribution… Or any distribution for that matter…” Grapple smiled. Scrapper’s enthusiasm had always been infectious. “But I’ll let you know as soon as they’re available, so you could use them for… Whatever you like. Okay?”

“Great! I’m sure that Hook will love to take them apart and…” Scrapper realized that he’d just screwed up big time. “Um, ehem…” Not knowing where to look, he accidentally looked at the audience who were mesmerized by his discussion with Grapple, and decided to use them as a distraction. “See, people? These cylinders are neat, really, really neat… If you know what’s good for you and your taste in technology isn’t absolute trash, then you’ll use those engines as soon as they’re available, right? Right,” he jabbed a finger at the console screen. “This thing of beauty is what you really want. Not those other engines with normal, boring cylinders that are not made of lithium and termite, but this specimen right here! That’s what everyone should be doing, right, Grapple?…” Grapple frantically hijacked the console and scrolled its contents down, and then up. “Grapple?”

“Oh… Oh, dear… Actually, I made a mistake – this was a normal engine, the one with lithotermic cylinders is…” His mad scrolling finally had come to an end. “Here.”

Scrapper stared at another engine, a little taken aback.

“Oh… One unassuming little bastard, eh?”

“That’s the thing with them,” Grapple explained hastily. “Lithotermic cylinders are so efficient that you’ll need smaller engines, and you can use freed up space for something else…”

That was enough for Scrapper to anchor himself back in the discourse.

“Did you hear that, people? That previous engine was some flashy piece of junk taking up all the space, but this thing…” He jabbed the screen in front of him. “This thing is future. You know you want it over that stupid trash from earlier.”

“Um, yes…” Grapple nodded in agreement, even though he wouldn’t choose such wording in the first place. “Hm. Why do I feel that something’s horribly wrong?” He turned around and froze in horror. “O my god, Scrapper! The picture is upside-down!… But the console is alright – see? I don’t understand…”

Seeing for himself, Scrapper started laughing right next to despairing Grapple, the absurdity of the situation getting to him.

“Whoa! No… I can’t believe it!… Why ain’t you just sayin’ anything, people?”

People shrugged. The presentation not being upside-down clearly wasn’t their priority right now.

“We’re done, we’re done, we’re done…” Grapple tried correcting the error but to no avail. “Primus clearly hates me today!”

“Oh, don’t say that… I know!” Scrapper typed in some quick commands. The screens flickered and the pixels moved all over the chart. “All’s just scrambled. What was held here before you came along? I bet it was about crystal magnetism or some stupid scrap like that… No wonder you couldn’t find anything – it’s all over the place! Now all the guests should get a refund, and they should pay you damages for forcing you to give your lecture in such slagged conditions!”

The audience murmured at the mention of a refund. Grapple reset his vocalizer.

“R-really? And I thought it was just me…”

Scrapper rolled his optics.

“You? Oh, please… Believe in yourself more, my mech! Your notes had always the weirdest, most elaborate system to them and you’d never get lost in them! What’s some straightforward lecture and presentation compared to the Blue Furnace Principle?”

The audience collectively moaned, hearing Scrapper mention architecture in the passing yet again.

Grapple raised his optical ridges, surprised.

“I thought that you were the one with the most sophisticated jotting system?”

Scrapper’s shoulders visibly sunk in shame.

“Em, no, my notes were always a mess – my memory was good and more often than not I wouldn’t even read them again… I was just lying to you this entire time.”

“Huh! What a shocker. That explains why you never shared them. Anyway…” Grapple turned to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemechs, my deepest apologies for this lecture’s mediocre execution-”

“Don’t apologize for something that’s not your fault!” Scrapper protested, his tone firm as if he was Grapple’s foremech.

“Oh, but it’s really unfair for all these people who paid their fees and made time to attend something they expected to be carried out professionally, and I definitely let them down-”

“No, you didn’t. Stop apologizing.”

“But it should be expected-”

“No, it shouldn’t! Stop apologizing. It’s forbidden.”

“But… Really?”

“Really!” Arms akimbo, Scrapper looked bigger and meaner than moments before. “If someone has a problem with that, they’ll have to deal with me.”

The audience went silent, clearly no one having a problem with that.

Grapple didn’t feel like arguing with him.

“Alright… Well… Thank you very much for attending! The presentation and additional materials are available for free at the Symposium’s page, right between materials about crystal doorknobs and metaphors with windows, if anyone’s interested-”

“Hey!” Scrapper was done dealing with the audience having problems with Grapple. Now he was dealing with him specifically. “Don’t hand your scrap out for free, it’s not a charity function!”

“B-but they already paid for it, in a way…”

“No, they paid for the possibility to see and hear you,” Scrapper argued. “And they got it. Don’t give them things for free! Set a price or they won’t treat it like something of value… Am I right, people? You’re not gonna treat somethin’ as valuable unless you gotta pay for it, ain’t you?”

The audience confirmed happily.

“O-okay, it’s available for fifty credits if someone is interested… Thank you all for attending, it was my pleasure to lecture you, ladies and gentlemechs,” Grapple hastily bid his listeners goodbye.

“See?” Satisfied, Scrapper patted his arm. “Sounds much better now!”

“Yeah…” Grapple shrugged. “Now I should give you half of it for giving me such brilliant advice…”

“Ah, there’s no need! Just buy me a drink and we’ll be even.”

“A drink? In Altihex? You want me to go bankrupt, Scrapper?”

“If you’re going to go bankrupt, there’s no better reason than going bankrupt for a friend!… Now, give me a sec, let’s set you up with a nice little paywall… Ah, done!”

Grapple was looking at the contents of his returned datapad, horrified.

“O-one hundred credits?”

“Shhh, if they’ll want it, they’ll pay… And I’m sure they would want it, it’s just the future in the making!… Amirite, people?”

The people happily confirmed. Grapple sighed, feeling defeated.

“Alright, you’re the one in business, not me…”

“Yeah!” Scrapper moved to the audience who, frustratingly, still weren’t showing any signs of getting up and going away. “And you people know what these shuttles are like when it comes to money. Y’all better hurry before they tell you that the refund fund’s been exhausted!”

With his tone half-persuasive and half-ordering, people had no choice but to hurry out, leaving the two of them at long last alone.

* * * * *

Scrapper was sure that the next move would be his.

He was watching intently until the automated door closed behind the lecture’s last hapless (but not unhappy) listeners. For a moment he considered possible surveillance as an obstacle for what he was planning to do, only to decide that it was worth it anyway. Let the scandalous materials leak out, let the idiots gossip, let lots of people get busy setting facts straight for the thrill-seeking public.

But the next move wasn’t his.

He managed to turn to Grapple – who was surely still dazed after the recent developments and thinking mostly about his data slug and datapads, right? – and open his arms, only to himself get violently pulled into a passionate hug and almost get knocked down in the process.

“Oh, Scrapps… It’s so fraggin’ good to see you again!”

“Heeey, you old fragger!” Responding in kind to this demonstration of strength, Scrapper tightly embraced Grapple’s back (or rather tried to). “You have no idea how happy I was to accidentally notice your name on the door – I wasn’t expecting you here at all!”

“Then guess what, I wasn’t expecting you here even more!”

“Huh! I’ve been saying this to people since yesterday, but so wasn’t I…”

“Oh, Scrapps!” Grapple hugged him tighter, as if Scrapper needed any more evidence that he’d gotten some major upgrades since leaving university. “It’s been so, so long since the last time we met… I had no idea what’s going to happen when we meet again – if we meet again…”

“And how could we not meet again?”

“Dunno… You have your team now, you’re accomplished, practically the hottest mech on Cybertron right now – I thought that you changed… But then you came here and acted all the same, like the graduation never happened, and… We’re still friends, right?”

“Sure we are! The bestest friends in this stupid flying city!”

“Oh, god… I missed you so much!”

“Heh, give me a joor and you’ll be fed up with me!”

“That… Sounds absolutely like you, yeah…”

Something clicked under the ceiling. Grapple jumped away from Scrapper, startled. Ah, so there was surveillance in the lecture room! Not bothering to turn around, Scrapper gave the clicking thing the finger and said loudly to the world in general:

“And we were roommates!”

“Not… That kind of roommates,” Grapple protested weakly.

“Of course not,” Scrapper agreed. “We were even closer! I want this detail down – if you’ll omit it, you spying fraggers, I will sue! I fragged my entire department and several others, but how many of them can call themselves my best friends? Huh?”

Grapple sighed and started:

“Me, because I put up with your bullslag, Mixmaster, because he provided you with drugs, and Hook, because you really wanted him, but he didn’t really want you, so you had to play the long game… Is that correct?”

Surprised, Scrapper reset his vocaliser.

“Um… Yeah, that checks out! I thought it would be more people, but it looks like all the others are dead or something…”

“It’s… Too soon to talk about the campus killer, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh… Yeah, probably,” Scrapper agreed, always appreciating a normal mech’s perspective in that matter.

He kept forgetting that what served for him as an exhilarating way to self-discovery and his first artistic manifesto, for others was a traumatic period of “Who’s the killer? Why are they doing it? Who’s gonna die next?” and “Those killed will always remain in our sparks… We were the ones to find their horribly mangled bodies and no amount of therapy is going to make us forget!” So, yeah, remembering it fondly probably wasn’t a socially accepted way of dealing with this “traumatic event from his formative vorns”…

“Also… I think that it was just air conditioning,” Grapple added.

“Oh… Really?”

“And even if there were cameras somewhere, there wouldn’t be any sound recorded, no matter how loud you can get.”

That sounded even more ludicrous.

“N-no?”

“No. If the Althexians were both filming and recording conferences or lectures, they could be accused of stealing other people’s intellectual property, and no one would want to use their facilities anymore… I thought that you were the one business-savvy, Scrapper.”

“Ah, well… You know how it is – something is too beautiful to be true, but you really want it to be true and you act accordingly… I never paid much attention to those things anyway. As long as the patents were in our names, everything was alright.”

Smiling, Grapple crouched behind the console and turned it off.

“Ooh, looks like someone’s lost contact with his academic side! Better watch out, or it’s gonna return with vengeance…”

“Say what? I’ve never had any academic side!” Scrapper protested. “I have a designing side, a constructing side, and a performing side,” he disambiguated. “Maybe Mixmaster and Hook used to have it in them, and maybe they even have some left, but it was never me.”

“And this ‘performing side’ is you making scrap up while you go and then telling people that it was your performance art?”

“Ah, well, you got me… Since no one’s ever caught up, maybe we should consider this my sweet little secret we should both take to our graves… If you get my drift, my beloved friend…” Scrapper punctuated the word “friend” with a strangling gesture.

“Out of all your secrets I should be keeping this one must be the lamest, but if it makes you feel better… Just, if you want to ‘perform’ anything freaky, don’t rely on video surveillance in secluded places.”

“You’re right, now I’ll know better.”

“Hopefully,” Grapple shrugged. “If you really want to make embarrassing confessions, you’ll need to first find some people you can confess to.”

“Um, too much work, I think I’ll reconsider.”

“Be my guest.”

“But we’ll totally do something embarrassing in public, right?”

“Of course not – we have reputations to uphold!”

“Eh, if you insist…” Scrapper looked around the deserted auditorium. “Maybe we’d better get going before our systems get scrambled as well…”

“Good idea!” Grapple retrieved his data slug and grabbed all three datapads. “Be a nice mech and open the door, will ya?”

“And where are you going?”

“To my room, to leave all the materials behind. I still have almost two joors to the next event.”

“Hm… Me too!” Scrapper started going towards the stairs at the podium’s end to then start climbing the stairs leading to one of the two main entrances, his attendee’s ID ready in his hand to set them both free. Grapple was right behind him, happy to leave the blasted room.

“If you wanna hang out, I’ll be happy to have you. We could catch up and stuff…”

Just, don’t embarrass me in public, came unsaid.

Truly, Grapple was a little perplexed with how quickly had they fallen into their old roles. It was only a question of time when Scrapper would suggest that they skip lectures, hide somewhere in the premises and get drunk, or take illicit substances, or both. Then, Grapple would have to use all his limited charisma, power of persuasion and Scrapper’s sleepy conscience to convince him to stay, instead of going and taking Grapple with him. In the end, they would probably compromise, and that would lead to some unforeseen consequences.

“You want to show me where’s your room?” Scrapper chuckled darkly. “Ain’t you afraid that I’ll come later and murder you in your sleep?”

“You’d rather murder my mini-bar and leave me with the bill.”

“Yeah, that’s more likely!… Also, we have to file a complaint about your slagged conditions for this lecture – no worries, Grapps, just let me handle everything! They’re going to apologize to you on their knees, slaggers…”

He was quite sure that Grapple wouldn’t take any action and he’d even find a way to blame himself and ask the organizers for forgiveness, which couldn’t fly with Scrapper. He knew how Grapple was with performing in public – witnessing his unnecessary distress resulting from faulty conditions, Scrapper was out for blood.

“Well, if you’re so sure… Thanks,” Grapple smiled, remembering how Scrapper would both shamelessly exploit his help and fearlessly advocate for him back in their university days. He could probably live with that mini-bar bill. “And, where were you supposed to be, if not here, and where are you going next?”

Scrapper scanned his ID and the swoosh of opening doors gave him a jolt of joy. Yaay, freedom of movement! Until his next event, at least…

“I had ‘Satellites through history’ as strongly suggested,” he shrugged and started following Grapple in the large Althexian hall, blessedly deserted at this eventful time of the day. “It’s not like I had specific things booked, I can go wherever I like, maybe just risking sitting on the floor…”

Yeah, like anyone in the Symposium would be irritated with his last-klik appearance and make him sit on the floor or even get out! Grapple snorted, clearly doubtful.

“Hook and Mixmaster mostly chose for me more, um, sophisticated events, because there’s always a greater chance to spot some buffoon’s grave mistake and mock it, they care about my entertainment like that… But sometimes I’m not sure… With those satellites, I suspect that they wanted me to learn or relearn some relevant stuff they think I’m lacking… Oh, well, too bad, I’ve learned about some fantastic engines instead!” He felt like adding, so Grapple wouldn’t feel guilty for preventing him from gaining some useful knowledge somewhere else. “And the next is ‘Future of Concentric Urban Planning’, and it’s, thankfully, the last for today; I think that I can get away with skipping the Praxian Crystal Garden Society’s banquet and go somewhere get slagfaced instead,” he winked at Grapple, making it clear who was he hoping to get slagfaced with. “What are ya havin’?”

* * * * *

Standing in front of an elevator and contemplating its display, Grapple finally pressed the button marked as “commercial & transit area”. The doors slid open and he waved at Scrapper to get in.

“Um, the ‘Big Mortar Smash’ with Crushdance and Wreckball-”

“The big what?!” Scrapper immediately decided that future of Concentric Urban Planning wasn’t his concern anymore. He even forgot to joke about how courageous Grapple was for getting with him into a small enclosed space with no exit at will.

“You know, the thing where Crushdance and Wreckball test different mortars on different bricks, to see which are best, which are worst, and how they crumble,” Grapple explained. “They… Do things like that all the time, you know,” he reminded him.

“No… I had no idea!… I didn’t even know they’re here,” Scrapper admitted; not like he could brag an intimate knowledge of the Symposium’s programme, of course.

Since the elevator was shuttle-sized, they could both enter it and fit into it comfortably. Luckily, they were alone. There was probably at least one camera there but – again, luckily – Scrapper settled to not doing anything embarrassing there. So far.

“I think that it’s a last-moment thing, where something else was scheduled but didn’t come through…”

“Well, then I’m really happy that it didn’t come through!” Scrapper declared, nice as ever. “Heeey… Have you planned to witness this beautiful spectacle alone, or can I tag along?”

“Course not! Wreckball and Crushdance’s displays are social events, after all,” Grapple pointed out. “This one is packed, obviously, but we’ll manage; you can sit on my lap or something.”

Scrapper snorted.

“If you want your lap crushed, then sure, why not”

“Say what?” Grapple looked at him with mock anger before the doors hissing open prompted them to leave the elevator. “In case you didn’t notice, I got some major upgrades after graduation. Rest assured that I can comfortably take your weight – and I mean it in a mechanical way, don’t you dare make it a double entendre, Scrapper.”

Scrapper shrugged, smiling sheepishly behind his mask. Somehow, he felt like being crass and juvenile, but not like that. Maybe those vorns passed had made him more mature at least in some aspects. Or, more probably, such jokes weren’t appropriate anymore ever since he’d found himself a taken mech (and he’d worked long and hard to become this taken mech so, no, thanks, he was absolutely over acting as if he were still single).

“Ah… Well, I did in fact notice – it was hard not to,” he admitted as they walked through a spacious lobby/commercial area at the top of the Conference Centre to wait for a small bullet train designed to take them to the hotel part of the Conference Complex – calling it “a shuttle” would probably be perceived as very rude, thus Scrapper was feeling more and more tempted to naturally work it into conversation. “You’re definitely bigger and tougher than ever… I had some upgrades myself and here we are again, almost the same size!”

“Sure you had,” Grapple nonchalantly sized him up. Too nonchalantly. Scrapper felt self-conscious. “I lifted you with my own hands and I can confirm: your upgrades were massive… Almost as massive as your feet,” he added with a giggle.

Scrapper shrugged. He wasn’t going to tell Grapple that after their… Final upgrades his entire team got bigger feet – mass-shifting or not, they still needed some additional mass and material to form Devastator, and enlarging their feet seemed like a safe bet without compromising their balance and all the functions. They all had their tastes but, fortunately, none of them had a thing for petit pedes, both in others and in himself.

“They’re quite handy if you like stomp walking,” he said instead.

“And you got a bigger scoop too,” Grapple continued with a grin. “You know what they say about a payloader with a big scoop.”

“That he has a lot of slag to move around?” Scrapper made an educated guess.

Grapple laughed.

“That he’s there to sweep you off your feet!”

“Huh,” Scrapper thought about it. “Isn’t that… A porn cliché?”

“Oh… Maybe it is,” Grapple thought about it as well, deeply. Scrapper wasn’t disturbing him. “Huh… Yeah… Dammit!” His conclusions made him angry. “Everything about us is somehow associated with those flicks. You can’t be an industrial frame and say something funny about another industrial frame and not come across as a porn addict!” Agitated, he shook his head. “Professor Softcore was right – we’ll have to rise and either change or reclaim certain words and phrases, or people would never take us seriously!”

“And that’s what the backhoe said,” Scrapper commented. Grapple groaned.

“It really is exactly as she put it: by controlling the discourse, they’re restraining us with just words and stereotypes, and have us exactly where they wanted. Nothing happens by accident, even…” He calmed his indignation and finished quietly: “Even porn cliches.”

“What… Softcore was talking about porn?” Scrapper absolutely wasn’t going to lower his volume for the occasion. “How come I don’t remember about it?”

“Not about porn, about contemporary social discourse in modern linguistics!” Grapple rolled his optics.

“Ah, now I remember why I don’t remember most of her slag,” Scrapper murmured to himself. “Primuuus…”

“Well… I remember it mostly because it was the same lecture when she asked you if you didn’t need a pillow.”

“Sh-she did?”

“And you answered that your scoop makes a great pillow…”

“Aah, right, now I remember!” Scrapper chortled.

“And you were kind enough to ensure her that you were neither ill nor tired and you were dosing off in her evening lecture because of a massive hangover.”

“But I apologized to her! And I gave her my final project from Perspective classes.”

“Yeah, and she really liked it until she learned that you named it What a Titan Purged,” Grapple chuckled. “I heard that she sold it five or ten vorns ago to buy a loft in the Towers.”

“Eh… Really? I thought that those are expensive like frag…”

“No one knew about that figurine, so there were no replicas. Your unique works usually go for crazy amounts of money.”

“Huh,” Scrapper summed up. “People are weird. Sooo, getting back to your impressive upgrades… You grew tired with other people carrying out your projects and flunking them? No one’s gonna build them as well as yourself?”

“I simply like designing, and then building what I designed,” came Grapple’s very proper response. Scrapper deduced from it that he, indeed, had problems with careless builders.

“Well, that’s great! You got yourself a team?… Why are you here alone?”

“No, I don’t have a team,” Grapple confessed, blue undertones in his voice. “I’m not that good at directing people, but I don’t like working for others either… Some people can do that, but not me.”

“My poor little friend… I’d gladly work with you, but it wouldn’t end pretty,” Scrapper murmured. “Namely, there would be no way to keep you safe from Hook. Oh, he would tear your spark out with his teeth if left alone with you!” He sounded half-amused and half-apologetic. “He can really sense a weakness in anybody, and with your good nature in general and, well, kindness… Oh, look! Our shuttle’s arrived!” He nearly shouted, glad that an external occurrence saved him from saying more uncomfortable things.

“Bullet train! It’s bullet train!” Grapple noticed several local vendors and customers giving them dirty looks and hastily proceeded to do some damage control. “I know they’re called differently in Iacon, Scrapper…”

Hearing the offender’s name, the nearest shuttleformers gasped and then tried to look busy. Of course, no one was going to chew out the most prominent attendee of the current major event; the entire Cybertron would watch and judge them for doing that.

“No, they’re not,” Scrapper corrected smugly and they boarded a small train car. When they were comfortably sitting opposite each other, the door closing and the engines of their little driverless transport activating again, Grapple quietly named Scrapper a stupid glitch. Definitely guilty, Scrapper simply shrugged and braced himself for the ride.

Their short journey was designed to be both quick and efficient and as picturesque as Altihex required. Their track got them into a glass tube as they left the conference part and were heading towards the hotel building. Those two were the tallest buildings on the third level of Altihex, which was also known as the Commercial Level. The views were breathtaking – the sunset setting the visible western part of the sky on fire, the first stars blinking in the evening sky, the first lights turning on in the city below them, the large ring’s borders glowing for security reasons, and the proper land below – so far, far below. The train, mercifully, slowed down to give them time to take the landscape in before, both metaphorically and literally, sending them to their rooms. Scrapper felt a bit ill, remembering about his altitude sickness. Today’s morning, he’d taken the normal ground-level passage and now he decided that, crowded or not, he was going to stick to it from now on… Unless Grapple would insist. If he was going to make himself sick, he might as well do it in the name of friendship.

“Oh, how beautiful!” Grapple commented on the view.

“Uh-huh…”

“Would be really impressive if you didn’t know how stupidly fragile it all is.”

“Uh-huh…”

“See? All’s good, no works in sight – I heard that they did their best to have all their conservation works either finished or rescheduled after the Symposium so, y’know, all those architects and engineers wouldn’t see that! Hard to disagree, I’d say…”

“Uh-huh…”

“And it all looks the same. Not unified, but you can see the same style – flashy and impractical – even though every building tries to look unique. And those colours! You could go blind just looking at them…”

“Mmm-hmm…”

“And just by looks, you can’t guess what kinds of buildings they even are! Unlike your designs… Even that Conference Centre – I heard it’s just a copy of old Iaconian Minor City Hall, but bigger and better, of course…”

“Grapps,” Scrapper grunted. “Why did you have to choose the possibly worst moment to have possibly the best conversation to be had?”

“Oh?” Grapple stopped looking out the windows and focused on his fellow passenger. “You alright, my mech?”

They arrived into the hotel’s terminal with a bump. Scrapper offlined his optics and moaned through his vents.

“Me: too fraggin’ high, ground… Too fraggin’ low!”

He exvented and onlined back his optics. Grapple’s hands were full, it was inconsiderate to make him worried while he couldn’t even reassuringly pat his arm, not to mention offer him a hand.

“Um, sorry…” All that was left for Grapple to do was watch his knees and datapads resting on them. “Let’s just say that we had this discussion, it was great and we agreed on most of the things…”

And an almost airborne, rather surveillance-free bullet train was probably the only place in Altihex for safe Altihex-bashing.

“Wanna sit here for a bit longer?… It’s okay, the next train’s arriving in a joor… I’ll explain it to people if they’ll have problem with it – but I don’t think they would…” Not with you.

“Ah, now’s…” Scrapper looked around the hotel’s top level which appeared to be all windows and no walls. “A bit better, I guess. I think I’ll manage. Let’s get movin’!”

* * * * *

“Let’s,” Grapple lightly bumped their feet and left the bullet train, Scrapper following suit. They crossed the spacious and luxurious terminal and moved to the side corridor leading to the elevators. Being surrounded by walls helped tremendously with Scrapper’s symptoms.

“So…” He broke an awkward silence, trying to move their attention from his ailment. “Explain it to me again, Grapps: how did it happen that I found you here today, alone, and talking about new technologies – are you inventing new engines by mixing lithium and termite?”

This last remark earned him a glare.

“Scrapper, lithotermic engines are not made of termite!”

“No? Weird, they sound like they were… So! Have you invented them?”

“Um, no,” Grapple shook his head, not really happy with the new topic. “I was just tired of working alone, and I don’t really like working for other people… I’ve recently gotten into a partnership with Rotor Crash and Speedroller, because their inventions seemed interesting… We were supposed to do our promotion stint here, almost last-klik after someone else was, I think, suddenly arrested for tax evasion and their event fell through… But literally the night before our departure here they got into talks with a big, big investor, so I was the only one able to make it… So, here I am,” he turned to Scrapper and gave him an awkward smile and a shrug.

“Ow… But I still don’t remember seeing you anywhere in the programme!”

“I’m there as ‘Rotor-Roller Inc.’ Only, the actual Inc. hasn’t made it, and that’s just me, an associate!” He eagerly approached the right elevator and chose his floor, suddenly shy about his official presence.

“Ah, that explains it!” Scrapper laughed, seeing how many happy (or not that happy) coincidences had led to their meeting. “See, if your name was anywhere there, Hook could reconsider sending me here in the first place…”

“Oh?” Grapple quirked his optical ridge. “Is he… Still jealous?… Was he ever?”

“Looks like that,” Scrapper shrugged and moved to the side so Grapple could easily enter their elevator. “I’ve known you longer than him, after all.”

“But not actively known,” Grapple pointed out all the vorns they hadn’t heard from each other. “Really, he has nothing to worry, I don’t walk around stealing people’s bondmates!”

“We’re not bonded,” Scrapper admitted sheepishly – lying, but only partially. “He’s just that – possessive… Mixmaster too, but to a lesser degree, of course; they… Don’t really like when I see people from the old times, and probably wouldn’t be happy with you. We’re… Quite close, all of us, and I guess that they don’t like to remember that I used to be close with other people as well.”

The elevator abruptly stopped and pinged open. Scrapper’s tanks churned a little.

“That’s a lot of people to consider,” Grapple remarked as he exited the elevator cabin and started leading the way. Scrapper couldn’t determine whether he said it innocently or as a jab. He knew, after all; he’d been there. “You were bound to bump here into some of them.”

“I remember very distinctly not seeing anyone interesting when I skimmed the programme. I guess it was good enough for them.”

“So, what, they sent you here – alone – and expected that you’re gonna have a grand time and all – alone?” Grapple took a turn into a side corridor right before a lounging area with a large table and chairs, two smaller benches, two energon dispensers – a bigger one, with shuttle-grade fuel, currently out of order – and windows. Big, bright windows with cool sunset glow bleeding through them. Even though it was only the fifth floor, they surely offered a great view! Scrapper hastily followed his friend, not even stealing a glance.

“Well… I was supposed to rest, and Mixmaster and Hook generally find other people irritating, so, I guess it made perfect sense for them? And maybe to see what’s happening, do some networking, possibly land us some future gigs, learn something useful… The rest of my mechs probably had more realistic expectations considering my stay here, and look, they were right!”

“Weren’t they,” Grapple gave him the datapads and opened the door with his magnetic key. He took the ‘pads back and stepped aside. “Come in, come in, don’t stay for too long!” He welcomed him jokingly.

“Nice place,” Scrapper commented, as if his suite wasn’t almost the same – down to magenta shades on three rectangular windows and little turbofox-shaped ornaments hanging from their strings. The only difference was that the interior was a mirror of his – the washroom was right from the entrance and the berth and a locked balcony (you shouldn’t trust those pesky groundpounders with balconies, right?) were on the left, while the walls were painted pale blue instead of vibrant green. Actually, he liked his room better, but he wasn’t telling this to Grapple.

“Dunno, I haven’t felt so small…” Grapple shook his head and marched to the table to dump his intellectual property on it. Clearly, after all his upgrades he wasn’t appreciating the feeling at all. “Ah, Pit. This entire place makes me feel that way. Outside of the Conference Centre, they rarely remember that people smaller than them exist. The mini-bar is over there,” he waved at Scrapper, guiding him to the place that was, seemingly, the most interesting for him in Grapple’s room.

“Aw, thanks!” Scrapper made a beeline to something rather full-sized than miniature, quickly punched in the code listed on the door and took a small cube out to wash down his pill. Grapple was watching him with something that, vorns ago, might have been a concern, but time and experience had transformed it into mere curiosity.

“You’re taking your medicine with mid-grade?” He asked, just to be sure. Scrapper had an actual medic and a pharmacist working for him, after all – he surely knew how to be safe?…

Scrapper nodded and swallowed the remainder of his energon. Feeling at ease, he didn’t shut his facemask right away.

“It adds a bit of nice buzz to Mixmaster’s homemade remedies,” he winked to Grapple who sighed, clearly seeing that Scrapper purposefully worded it in as shady a way as possible.

“What are you even taking? You’re feeling unwell?… Or is that just drugs?” He tried not to make his last remark sound like “Have you brought enough for the rest of the group, young mech?”

“No, no!” Scrapper binned the empty cube and mercifully closed the mini-bar. “It’s not drugs! Well… Am no longer hangover or sleep-deprived, but the altitude sickness is still gettin’ to me whenever I remember where I am.”

Actually, Mixmaster had given him some drugs as well – probably in case the Symposium was really boring, and probably in secret from Hook – but he didn’t have to come clear right now.

“You poor thing,” Grapple inserted his data slug into an empty datapad to check if it was scrambled to the Pit. It was. “Were you having it when you were working in Vos on the Revolutionary Palace’s west wing?”

Slowly making his way to him while taking in the slightly messy surroundings and trying to guess what Grapple’s life was like based on this evidence, Scrapper shook his head.

“You know that Vos is different,” he observed. “They move in the air and have their high entrances and, dunno, perches and suspension bridges – but there’s still whole infrastructure for us grounders; and it all isn’t even that high. But this… Takes some getting used to.”

He was about to complain yet again about his general surroundings but decided not to. There was no use, especially after their chance meeting had made things for him significantly better. He instead looked over the TV set and pressed the recording station open to see what holovid was inside.

“You watched Shuttles Gone Wild?”

“Not yet,” Grapple shrugged, only traces of shame in his voice – they were both adult now, right? “Is that any good?”

He had probably already mourned his data slug and now was wondering about the proper way to dispose of it. Pity, good data slugs came a long way…

“Shuttle wings all the way, if that’s your thing.”

“Yeah… No,” Grapple disconnected and opened the slug, seeing if there were any salvageable parts. “Y’know, I really wouldn’t want to fetishize my own class, all things considered, but what remains… If you don’t have a military fetish, you’re pretty screwed in this regard.”

“No, it’s okay!” Scrapper disagreed cheerfully, climbing on an armchair and making himself comfortable. “It’s like Long Haul complaining about Kalis pretty much every time he mentions it, but if someone else does it, he gets defensive. It’s okay when he does it, because he’s from there – get it? Or when professor Perish Point would say that all architects are uneducated glory hounds and drama addicts, but almost nailed to the wall this one Information Systems adjunct for making similar generalizations… It’s okay for you to like industrial frames, being one yourself, that’s what I mean.”

“Huh! That’s the thought,” Grapple raked through the disembowelled slug with tweezers and sighed, deciding to discard it altogether.

“Or you can just watch The Postmech Always Rings Twice, if you’re feeling fancy,” Scrapper kept encouraging him.

Grapple stopped doing whatever he was doing (at this point, probably nothing) and glared at him.

“First: it absolutely surely isn’t here, anywhere, to watch,” he declared. “Frankly, if it is anywhere, I don’t believe this place would want it known. Second: if I’m feeling fancy, I’d rather get trashed and watch a shuttle period drama or some slag I got to choose from – not… Not this piece of, hopefully, lost media. I… Don’t want to remember it exists, and that we all wanted to see it so badly…” He shook his head, overcome by cringe. “Gah! Why do you remember that?”

Scrapper shrugged.

“I guess it holds a special place in my memory banks for… Reasons.”

“W-what reasons?” Grapple appeared worried.

“Huh… Remember how we watched it over and over because we thought that Long Haul was in it?”

“Oh…” Now Grapple cringed even more over his old and erroneous ways. All those joors of rewatching and meticulous nitpicking, the joors they weren’t getting back, Primus have mercy on their sparks! “Oh. Yeah… But it really wasn’t him, right?”

“Of course not!” Scrapper spoke with confidence and no intention to explain that this confidence arose from being Long Haul’s gestalt leader. So, Grapple was probably still doubtful but Scrapper had to live with that. “Also, well… Back in the day, Hook tried using it to, um, ‘educate himself’ a bit… Yeah.”

Shocked, Grapple had to reset his vocalizer.

“He… Really?”

“Really… And then he was quite surprised that things in real life don’t really work that way.”

“I guess he was!”

“Uh-huh…” Scrapper quirked a corner of his mouth. “At least, he saw it after we already started ‘facing – otherwise, it’d probably scare him from doing anything with his cables.”

Exasperated, Grapple finally disposed of the slug’s remains and moved to his datapads – thankfully, non-scrambled.

“But… Didn’t they teach him how it works?”

“Um… Not really?” Scrapper pondered this question. “They don’t really teach medics how to be freaks in berth, just like they don’t teach us how to kill people with bricks, I guess. It doesn’t… Really have anything to do with their function.”

He managed not to sound wistful that nobody had taught him how to kill people with bricks and he had to figure it out himself.

“Oh…” Grapple appeared ashamed. “Right”

“I know, I know, the stereotype says otherwise,” Scrapper raised a hand in an appeasing gesture, probably also asking his friend not to prod further. “Nobody knows their way around your frame type like your doctor, an’ so on, an’ so forth. Anyway… What I said is extremely confidential and no one else can ever hear about it… Or someone will die. Hopefully, it won’t be me,” he added.

“Sure!” Grapple agreed, scrolling the contents of one of the ‘pads and mulling over a potentially dangerous question. “Good thing that you were so thoroughly experienced to make up for that!”

“Um… Yeah,” Scrapper wasn’t at all enthusiastic to admit this.

“Absolutely,” Grapple made an emphasis for him and finally his curiosity took the better of him: “So… You and him are still going strong, I gather?”

“Strong as ever,” Scrapper gave him a bright and honest smile.