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unstableomni · 7 hours ago

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Symbiosis AU

For those without context (1 / 2 / 3 / 4) click on these posts.

Alright let me set down some actual world building and clear up stuff. If anything conflicts with some of my previous posts you can consider that retconned.

First the basic biology of the humans and transformers. They are quite literally built different in this au.

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Biology

Humans are about 90% organic and 10% living metal. The bones, iris plus pupil, nervous system, and stomach are always made out of living metal; in some cases where there's genetic mutations a few people will have extra parts of their body be metal. It can be anything like nails, teeth, a patch of skin, or parts of their brain. This is fairly common and is treated as average people would with someone with ginger hair. It's rarely ever more extreme than that.

Their diet is still mostly that of an omnivorous one but now with various metals, plus a bit of energon. It's highly advised for humans not to consume more than a few sips of energon in a day. Anymore than that then they run the risk of becoming overcharged. While it would give the person a huge temporary power boost for a few minutes once it's over the side effects are quite severe.

Humans live about twice as long as normal ones would and experience less age related problems on average. Naturally colored hair is also a common feature, be that genetic editing or a rare gene mutation. (Yeah I know anime-esc logic syndrome but I couldn't help myself)

Cybertronians are about 95% living metal and 5% organic. Their organic side is only used to bond with their human, more on that later. On average a bot will be 10-25 ft tall. Other than the bonding stuff, weapon limitations, and being unable to clean themselves well, cybertronians are essentially the same as their canon counterparts.

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Relationships

There are five types of bonds humans and transformers can form; of course there's there's many little sub genres of different relationships but they, in general, will fall under these categories:

Coworkers

As the name would imply this relationship is strictly professional and only for mutual physical gain. There's barely to no deep emotions involved here. Before the virus, around 60% of the relationship bonds were coworkers.

Partners

This is not an inherently romantic relationship. Think of close friends or trusted co-workers. Partner bonds are a type of relationship between a bot and a human who trust each other and have spent a great amount of time together. Most partners will also regularly fight together in the field.

Charges

It's when someone (usually the bot) is tasked with the care of the other being. It can vary from being more like a bodyguard or something like a teacher.

Soul bound

This is the peak of cybertronian and human relations. When someone is soul bound it means their life force is directly attached to another. If one of the pairs dies, so does the other.

To even attempt this bond is extremely serious and dangerous. A human will take something sharp, (usually a ceremonial knife) and skewer their own heart, then the transformer’s spark. Both of their blood will bleed out onto each other and if the relationship is strong enough the innards will then graft together and revive the pair. Once connected like this they will have ✨The Experience✨ as it has come to be called. This one hour affair is every feeling, pain, and memory each of them have ever had being felt at that exact moment; nothing will be left unturned. These pairs are extremely powerful and akin to demi-gods. Even the “humans” will no longer age anymore.

(A more in depth post about this process will come later)

Togetherness

Don't let the name fool you. In this dynamic a person (99.9% of being human) is treated like property. There's virtually no antonymy from the humans and are bound to the whims of their “owners.” This practice is heavily frowned upon and is almost exclusively practiced by decepticons. When the virus happened however this relationship became much more popular.

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General info about post-virus humanity

All of humanity lives in twenty various megacities all over the globe. These cities are all surrounded by a special barrier connected through highways that are also shielded. These barriers will prevent cybertronians from passing through; or more specifically their sparks. Humans for decades have been trying to solve transformers’ obsession with them but no cure could be found. However during this research the scientists made an astonishing discovery; when they add the energy of dark energon and just the right mixture of plasma and electricity then power it into a shield a transformer's spark could not pass through it. It would always send the spark flying back, oftentimes damaged by the barrier. Humans implemented these new shields instantly into their structures and onto their person.

Once the virus truly had been eradicated and every human was vaccinated against it a new conflict brewed. For every human there were five more cybertronians. It is obvious how this is a HUGE problem; Cybertronians couldn't get their human fix so the obsession/withdrawal had raged out of control and forced humans into their current shielded cities. It's a stalemate for all involved as humans can't escape the planet and transformers can't get through the shields no matter how much they try.

Surprisingly humans aren't in a dystopia for any of their megacities. (Guess that's what a huge life threatening currently unsolvable problem will do to you.) How the cities are governed varies from city to city but all of them will check on each other to make sure it's not becoming corrupt. The cities will also have vastly different aesthetics/ways of life; like one will be very solarpunk and another is something that came straight out of a biohacking based video game. No two cities alike, which once again surprisingly has caused no real problems.

Sidenote for the future story I'm probably only going to be focusing on five megacities because I ain't writing twenty unique city lore for background. If someone has a good idea for a city I might make it canon though.

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Cleaning

Slightly unrelated but I always wondered if cybertronians could actually clean themselves without outside help. It basically seems impossible, ever try getting crumbs out of a keyboard? That's already a pain, I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like cleaning sand out of at least ten-thousand different wires.

Anyways when humans and cybertronians first started their symbiotic relationship one of the main duties for humans would be cleaning. Thanks to their smaller stature and nimble fingers it made them well suited for getting dirt or anything else off their robot friends. Through specialized evolution humans gained an instinctive knowledge/impulse to clean any cybertronian they come across. They did this to such an effective and common degree it was deemed unnecessary for self-cleaning protocols to be downloaded for cybertronians anymore. So eventually transformers no longer knew how to clean themselves, they had knowledge of how it worked but they wouldn't be able to clean themselves as effectively as humans or as effectively do it in practice. When humans were driven into their shielded cities there was a large hygiene crisis for the whole cybertronian race. They had to manually relearn how to clean themselves as while it was easy for them to download data and learn concepts in an instant, if it had to be done without data it was quite a challenge. Humanity did try to help to some degree at first but it ultimately ended in failure. Transformers did eventually relearn to clean themselves but it's mostly not well done or as thorough and most of them live like pigs with various illnesses.

Honestly, humans are more mad about it than they are. Further down the timeline when the main TF humans are teamed up with their respective bots it drives them crazy about their lack of cleanliness.

Miko for instance while being a messy ADHD teen stereotype personified she couldn't STAND all the dirt Bulkhead was covered in. It wasn't really relevant at first with them making sure Bulkhead wasn't going to go crazy and kidnap her but once Miko trusted him enough to get close she went to town on cleaning. Humans still had that instinct buried in them, so she knew without any previous experience on how to clean things in what way they needed to be cleaned. Bulkhead wasn't really complaining as he enjoyed the pampering but it did catch him off guard at first. She was extremely diligent in her work and would scrub at staines to an almost obsessive degree.

Bulkhead would soon try to be a bit cleaner for Miko’s sake.

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The effects of human deficiency for Cybertronians

This is probably what some of you were waiting for.

Cybertronians can become “human deficient” when they have not bonded one for a long time and/or not been within human company. How long it takes for these symptoms to develop and how much time it takes for them to worsen will vary from bot to bot. On average it can be expected to take 1,000-10,000 years to reach the final late stage.

At first the symptoms are barely noticeable, a bot might be a bit more emotional and tired than usually but otherwise is perfectly healthy.

They then start becoming reluctant to leave human company, showing signs of separation anxiety. Picking at paint is also a common symptom. At the next stage it's still pretty manageable and no cause for alarm, however it will continually get much worse if left untreated. The bot will start to feel very tired, paranoid, and as if a heavy weight was weighing down their spark. Increased agitation is also extremely common. If still unable to bond with a human, the bot will now start displaying outright aggression to those around them. They will become very possessive to any human they are near regardless of their personal history or their lack of. If a human shows any sort of negative emotion to this bot they will become irrationally upset because of it; believing they are a failure or a bad person. Most also will stop trying to clean themselves at all and or practice self care.

It is to be noted though that a bot can still come back from this. With lots of therapy and an emotional stable bond there are almost little to no long lasting effects. However beyond this point the physiological effects are often permanent and often severe.

Next cybertronians will start experiencingrandom moments of hysteria followed by obsessive searching for human companionship. Walking in circles again, and again, repeating their words. Lots of negative emotions have built up by this point with no real outlet so transformers will start destroying stuff around themselves in a desperate need to rid of these feelings. Fits of painful coughing sessions are also prevalent at this stage.

It's strongly advised for humans to avoid these bots, this might seem counterintuitive but it's for the best. Transformers by this point are extremely unstable and will most likely end up hurting any humans around them, which will inevitably have them spiral further. The best thing to do would be to restrain the cybertronian and over the course of a few weeks, slowly introduce them to humans. If rushed too fast the bot can be sent into a state of mania and self destructive behavior. Lasting effects often included random bursts of glitching, clinical depression, permanently damaged intakes, extreme monophobia, and general anxiety disorder.

If still left without human company the transformer will enter a rabies-like state. They will become completely disillusioned with reality constantly plagued by extremely potent hallucinations. They are still very much conscious but beyond saving at this point. All of their worst personality traits will be pulled to the surface and amplified a thousand times over.

They are almost always constantly coughing up a black viscous liquid, that at times will come from their optics in especially strong emotional moments. It is unclear why this happens. There was no determinable source of this substance or cause. When scientists had tested the liquid nearly every result came back inconclusive with the only solid information they could get was that it was highly flammable and it at one point used to be energon.

For the longest time it was believed this was the last “stage” of deterioration. No bot has ever not died from self inflicted harm or their cortex giving out to get worse.

That was... at least until Megatron.

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Woof, well how's about that for you? The virus specifics, soul bonds, power boosting, how bots can be human addicted, Megatron, and other stuff will be explained later on. This post has already gotten too long. If you have any questions just send an Ask about it! I do see them.

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Beta read by @a-non-ymouswriter, thank you for the help as always. 👋

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