B-127 had been unbelievably lonely down in sublevel 50.

Weeks, months—maybe years?—had passed since he’d been assigned down there. Endless amounts of time passed as he sorted garbage in deafening silence, save for the periodic clatter made whenever a new load of junk tumbled down the trash chute and hit the conveyor belt.

He hadn’t had much bot-to-bot interaction during that time. His friends weren’t allowed to visit him—“to avoid distractions,” he’d been told—and for a social butterfly like B, it was a devastating blow.

Finally, he couldn’t take the solitude anymore, and he made some new friends. Literally.

Taking any piece of scrap he thought looked useable, B-127 built statues to keep himself company, going as far as giving them names. He talked to them endlessly, having one-way conversations with them on a daily basis.

The companionship, though make-belief, was what kept him sane until he finally got promoted and moved back up to the mining levels.

When he stepped out of the miner residential barracks, the artificial daylight hitting his faceplates made him stop in his tracks. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed the sun… how different its warmth was compared to the furnace’s he’d gotten so used to…

Several excited voices calling his name yanked his attention back to ground-level, where he was met with the sight of several of his friends running at him with grins on their faces. Then he was swarmed, swooped up in tight hugs and nearly knocked off balance by enthusiastic shoulder pats.

There was much catching up to do, and questions frequently overlapped to the point that it was impossible to tell what had been asked.

However, when B-127 finished recounting his depressing experience in sublevel 50, his friends reached the immediate conclusion that a celebration was in order to welcome him back.

Thus began the day-long excursion around Iacon. B’s friends took the day off to show him all that had changed and every new thing worth seeing. They took him to a new bazaar, his favorite energon joint from before his demotion, and to several new parks and social areas that had sprung up while he was away, all while animatedly catching each other up on anything and everything.

As the light cycle started to come to an end, B-127 was pleasantly tired and just generally grateful to be back. He was honestly ready to call it a day, but his friends insisted there was one more thing he needed to see.

They said they were going to end the day on something… special.

This is how B soon found himself sitting in a booth inside of a rowdy club, fidgeting anxiously while squished between the frames of his friends.

They hadn’t told him that was where they were going, but once he had figured out, he’d tried to politely decline. It obviously hadn’t worked.

B-127 felt awkward and out-of-place in this strange environment. His friends had told him that it was a pretty new club, that it was the only one in Iacon that allowed both No-Cog and Cogged patrons alike, and that it was pretty popular because of it.

However, that didn’t seem to stop some of the Cogged bots that were there from being openly prejudiced.

B was actively trying to avoid optic-contact with Cogged bot that was glaring daggers at him and his group from the bar—he looked like a mining supervisor. His friends didn’t seem to notice though, laughing and joking around without a care in the world.

Trying to focus on anything else than the mech’s hostility, he forced his gaze towards the front of the room, where he caught a glimpse of you.

You were gorgeous. His jaw literally dropped and he straightened in his seat, trying to keep you in his sights as you moved through the crowd. Woah… He whispered, his voice awestruck as he openly stared. Who is that? He asked his friends.