Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tyran 707.03 Delta: a universal stream that was much like any other. It had matter, energy, it had dark matter and dark energy. It had dimensions and time that made it pleasantly malleable in the hands of cause and effect. There were galaxies (if I remember right, Alpha Trion said there were about 676,800,034,219 of them), and each galaxy had a few million stars—some red ones and blues, nebulas too—and each star had their share of planets. Yes, there was most certainly a Milky Way, and it had a Solar System. 

And there used to be an Earth. Just like there used to be a Cybertron. 

Neither of those planets exist anymore.

Let us turn back the clock a few centuries to an era when these entwined worlds not only still roamed the canvas of spacetime, but when they roamed it together. Imagine, if you will, one planet; black, boiling, rivers and oceans of molten loam ensnaring every broken landmass. This is the Earth. Once upon a time it looked in every way identical to the planet on which you stand. Water and trees swaddled a stably dancing orb of fertile essence,  fostered by a well mixed atmosphere and acutely tuned magnetic field. Fauna and flora, humans and Transformers coexisting as well as any mortal can in a blind and hostile universe. Why, I’m even certain you had a Tyran counterpart who lived there. And this jewel of a planet had a twin, of sorts. 

Cybertron. Ordinarily this unique world of boundless machinery would have haunted the furthest edge of the Milky Way, a war-scorched husk drifting like a ghost in the gulfs between stars, bereft of a sun to call it’s own. But, by the machinations of a certain Cybertronian sorceress (with whom I’m sure many of you are already familiar with),  Cybertron was guided across the cosmos until it at last found companionship with the Earth, settling so close to it’s lapidarian cousin that the two worlds thereafter became locked in a binary orbit. As the local timeline quietly encroached it’s inevitable end, the allied Autobots and humans believed the joining of their respective worlds would herald a new era of prosperity and reconstruction. With Megatron having lost a majority of his army to countless battles, the Decepticons remained but the meekest of threats. The location of the warlord himself would remain unknown for several decades, having presumably gone into self exile. Having come dangerously close to extinction on several occasions, political friction the world over was redirected and then soothed as mankind learned that bickering among themselves was far too counterproductive. But just when the twin worlds of Tyran 707.03 Delta had at long last found peace, the Earth began to *transform*. The world the humans called home was not a planet, no more than a typical Throttlebot is a car. It looked like a planet, and nursed many diverse ecosystems like a planet, but the Earth was more akin to Cybertron than anyone ever anticipated. 

The Earth was an egg.

… … …

Beneath the thin crust a very gradual metamorphosis was taking place. Like a fetal bird thrashing for the first time in it’s new life, so to did the the entity within the planet’s core. Over the centuries, colossal gears and servos began turning and flexing into a new shape dictated by incalculably ancient algorithms. Millions of sensors activated one by one, gradually amounting to rudimentary awareness and rapidly evolving to absolute omniscience as time went on. Soon memories trickled back into the entity’s cold mind: An awakening, a release from the hands of a cosmic entity, swords clashing against shields, the voracious imbibing of planets, the agony of being torn to pieces, both in a corporal and spiritual sense. The code flowing through the entity’s moon-sized processors penned names—infinite, largely insignificant names—across the panoply in it’s mind, but only two elicited any emotions: 

Unicron. 

That was the entity’s own name. It’s pronunciation conjured feelings of pride and potency. He was Unicron, the Chaos Bringer, the one who was to prove how disgustingly fragile cosmic order really was and, ultimately, bring the bliss of oblivion to all of creation. That was his purpose, but something was amiss. He was trapped. Not just within an inert body drifting mechanically around a humble star, but within a single universe. There was once a time when he roamed the many universes, fulfilling his destiny and tearing apart the filth his progenitor left him with. It was a demanding but gratifying occupation, and it was all the more pleasant imagining the comfortable emptiness that will be left behind once his job was complete. 

His sensors peered beyond the layer of gasses clinging to his being at the mass of alloys latching onto his side. Suddenly, the second name made sense. 

Primus. Unicron’s loathsome departed half. This name summoned a surge of pure hatred through the entity’s fabric. He reflected on the all calamities that betided him during the aeons since his anti-spark first flickered into being, and each time, as he recalled, Primus was the orchestrator. Him and his wretched children. It was he who imprisoned the entity in it’s mechanical body and thwarted it’s many attempts to cleanse this malformed cosmos. He remembered the Matrix. Just thinking about his brother’s talisman made the Chaos Bringer sick. Primus—that coward!—ever since he fled to the material realm he lacked the bearings to face Unicron himself. He created a race of delicate worms to do his dirty work, and only bequeathed them a piece of his spark to aid them in their fight. The Matrix. Unicron understood, unfortunately, that the Matrix would be enough to put his immortal anti-spark into stasis. But where is the Matrix? Where is Primus? Where are his children? 

Unicron perceived the world growing like fungus across his prone body and felt the vexatious tickling of billions of tiny feet—both organic and mechanical—skittering endlessly across a land they believed to be theirs. The stench of energon—Primus’ blood—clung to his body. The transformers, his brother’s offspring, they were there, mingling with the bacteria that spread during his slumber. He did not like them. So he did what any god was wont to do: he killed them all. But before he could do that, Unicron made sure the transformers knew they were about to die. As an omen of the extinction to come, the dark god extended his teeth out the planet’s crust, gritting them for all the mortals to behold. Why the children of Primus didn’t put up more a fight, Unicron would never understand, but it was an easy feat to boil the organics off his hide with his own body heat. The transformers, on the other hand, were more resilient, but in time Unicron managed to snuff out their sparks with his antibodies. How he savored their suffering—and the horrified surprise distorting their faceplates—as his avatars broke through the planet’s ground and pried their bodies apart bit by bit. Within the savage warrior named Optimus Prime, Unicron found the Matrix of Leadership, but upon closer scrutiny he learned that this was not the same Matrix he feared. It was a powerful relic indeed, as it was saturated in the essence of Primus (known locally as the Allspark, as Unicron learned earlier), but it was but a grain compared to what the Chaos Bringer was expecting. Likewise, the small planet at his side—Cybertron, allegedly the very body of Primus—was equally innocuous. He sniffed the broken world but could detect no trace of his brother. Was Primus dead? Has his Matrix and his servants been nothing more than a show this whole time? 

No. Unicron thought. I remember now. The Shroud. The Thirteen. Nexus Prime. Nexus Prime used more of Primus’ tools to divide the multiverse and locked them away from one another. He divided Primus and left his fragments scattered across the multiverse. He divided the Matrix. He divided me. As I am now, I am merely a fraction of what I once was. Surely, there are others pieces of myself in other universes.

He used his incorporeal influence to rap at the fabric of spacetime in attempt to tear a portal to another universe, where he hoped to reunite with another version of himself, but he was unsuccessful. The walls between realities were noticeably stronger. If the deity weren’t so enraged, he would have commended Nexus for doing something only the One should have been able to do. He reshaped the multiverse, in the act stripping both Unicron and Primus of their status. The Chaos Bringer really hoped that vile combiner agonized over damming his own god. It would be the least he deserved.

Unicron has been scheming his whole life, formulating plans that spanned across space and time just to stay one step ahead of his brother and his machinations, but nothing in all of those vague memories could have prepared him for this. For the first time in eternity, Unicron felt powerless. He was once a true deity, but now he was just a planet. A very hungry planet.

Unicron shifted his celestial mass, compacting his many limbs toward his center of gravity and flexing his protrusive claws. Slowly sloughing off chunks of the Earth’s continents, casting his scorched shell out into space, Unicron skimmed the many points of light that surrounded his solar system. He instantly identified thousands of stars and the traces of millions of orbiting planets. He may be incarcerated, but this universe alone will slake his hunger for awhile, at least until he can constitute a new plan. 

Unicron’s claws reached and found the honeycombed surface of Cybertron. The fragile epidermis covering Primus’ corpse fell away as easily as frost on a window and plummeted towards the black abyss of the monster planet’s awaiting maw. The six teeth bit down deeper into the planet’s true surface, gouging out countless cities and mountains, sending it all into frenzy of clashing metallic terrain as the beast inhaled the debris in one, greedy swill. Iacon, Altihex, the Manganese Mountains, Tarn, the Omega Lock, and the Well of All Sparks, as well the dozens of decrepit survivors who fled after the Optimus’ spectacular death, were all reduced to atoms in the universe wake of Unicron’s raking claws. With demoniac ecstasy surging through him, he crushed the last few chunks of Cybertron between his mandibles and gorged, assuring not a single ounce of his brother’s carcass escaped into the sun’s orbit. Though he found delight in finally purging this universe of Cybertron, Unicron couldn’t help fretting over what became of Primus. The Chaos Bringer could feel his vestiges of his presence clinging to very material of spacetime, but those were but ghosts and nothing more. For all the monster planet knew, his brother was truly dead. 

Unicron lamented losing the chance to end Primus himself, but at least that left the dark god unopposed and left this universe at his mercy.

A distant ripple in the fabric of space interrupted his reverie. Another planet orbited nearby, and as Unicron focused his collective scanners in it’s direction he found it was a desolate world, almost the size of himself, and composed almost entirely of monotonous orange ore. He detected no signs of life, but the planet equally lacked a magnetic field, making it an easy morsel to consume. Being robbed of the succulent screaming of whole civilizations as they faced armageddon was most unfortunate, but the planet would provide sufficient nourishment until he could find something more delectable, be it in this universe or another. 

Thousands of spines flared out of the monster planet’s surface, clinging to the substance of spacetime, much in the same way the pads of an organism cling to matter, and began propelling the austere world of black steel, corrosive blood, and ravenous teeth towards his next prey. 

Chapter Text

Iocus 518.22 Lambda: 

Sometimes there was no wondering what the most difficult part of being a midnight mall cop was. SARA (or “Sachi”, rather, if you believed her forged driver’s license) was convinced it was trying to find the key to the front gate amongst the overly stuffed key ring the boss entrusted her with. They all looked the same, after all. The key to the restrooms was in almost every way identical to the key to the GAB store, both of which were indistinguishable from the keys to the Forever 31, the Game Place, the Bowe’s, the TCWY, and any other given store. And of course her only hope of telling one from the others were nigh microscopic numbers engraved along the shaft. They could have been simple two-digit numbers, something the femme’s memory bank could easily catalogue, but no. Each key was branded with a no less than ten digits, forming numbers that blended in seamlessly with all the millions of gigabytes of data surging through her processor. SARA distinctly remembered the gate key sporting a number with three sevens and ending with a nine, but nothing else. Sighing, she shifted through the key ring again, shoving any key meeting those criteria into the lock and issuing a sharp “Slaggit!” every time her guess was proven wrong. After several failures she started to wonder “Maybe it was three nines, ending with seven?” Fed up, she threw the keys onto the pavement and tilted her head up to the crisp, starry sky, wondering how the frag a forty thousand year old Cybertronian super computer and former emissary of Primus could simply fail at doing something humans accomplish on a regular basis. 

She heard the creaking of Steven’s hatchback as it served out of the parking lot. She looked back just in time to see the lopsided high beams throwing an off-white glare across the “Tranquility Mall Shopping Center and Outlet” sign, accompanied by the sounds of her coworker’s radio blasting some mediocre 80’s music and the gurgling purr of an engine that should have been scrapped two decades ago. Ironically, the sickly sounding automobile reminded SARA of her origins with the Autobots of the Cloud World. Particularly Hot Rod, who used to take her out on joyrides along the forested skirt of Metropolis. The memory helped settle the froth in her coolant quite a bit, enough to let her get back to work on cracking the mystery of her noisy key ring. 

Just when she thought Steven was off into the night he backed his car up to the gate so close that she could clearly hear the man singing along to “It’s a vile interruption! Existence drifts away!” while whiny guitar riffs accompanied his cacophony. The jingling in her hands was insufferable enough, but Steven’s power rock forced her to reduce the noise admission on her audio receptors. 

“Yo! Sachi! You still haven’t gotten in!? What’s wrong, girl?” Steven shouted as his mustached face poked out of the driver’s side window. 

Before she turned to face him, she tightened the hijab around her face and checked to make sure her sleeves completely covered her metallic skin. She didn’t want anyone—Steve especially—to see her face. She couldn’t afford that. As as far anyone and everyone else was concerned, SARA was just a perfectly normal Saudi-Arabian girl, and not an alien robot from another dimension. Despite being made pointless by her mask, she faked a smile for her coworker and said “Nothing, Steven. Just taking my time with the…with the keys.” 

“Well, hurry up. You can’t be standing out here all night while the poltergeist are in there jacking all our corndogs! You know I was on duty Wednesday night, and I swear to God the back-stock in the foodcourt started moving…” 

“I get it Steve: the mall is haunted.” SARA sighed whist continuing her fruitless fiddling with the key ring. Although he technically wasn’t wrong. There were non-human squatters in the mall, they just weren’t ghosts. 

“Do you? Seriously?” Steven turned down his radio (Thank Primus!) so he could put more stress to his concern. “You don’t believe me? Haven’t you ever felt any cold spots?” 

“Steve, the insulation in this building…” she gave the metal gate a sharp kick, eliciting a rattle. “…is positively atrocious, and it’s the middle of December. Of course there’s cold spots. There’s fragging cold spots everywhere.” 

“Yeah, I know, but…wait, did you just say ‘fragging’?”

In a rather sudden, if fortuitous, turn SARA found a key marked 199329537, which popped open the locked gate with an ease that did nothing to punctuate her ten minute struggle. Now wearing at least a half-sincere smile beneath her scarf, she slipped through into the unbarred premises, hastily excusing herself with  “I’d love to keep wagging jaws with you, but I’ve got to keep those ghosts in line.” Half true, she thought. “Go home and practice playing the, uh, the accordion, or whatever. Primus knows you need to.” 

“What? What does that even mean? Primus is a rock band. They don’t play the accordion.” Steven refuted, but SARA was already well out of audial range. He could barely make out the petite mall cop closing the final few feet towards a blandly colored door marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY”, where her apparent hesitation preluded another tedious moment alone with her many keys. He considered jogging over there to lend her a hand, but she brought up a good point: Steven’s drum kit was getting cold without him. 

Steven threw the gearshift into drive and pealed off into the night, shrugging off the Saudi girl’s weird lingo. If she wanted to deify a tasteless prog band, that was her business. 

… … …

SARA locked the door behind her, more than a little relieved to have escaped the diode-numbing cold besetting the world. Fully-formed Autobots enduring such fickle climates were one thing entirely, but  how the humans could survive those temperatures alluded the femme. 

She flicked the switch and patiently waited as each archaic light fixture in the ceiling slowly buzzed on one at a time, revealing the spartan hallway between her and the vacant wings of the mall. She was surprised, and a bit disappointed, that none of the little guys had rushed to greet her. But it was 11:42, after all, and by now they would just start to grow wise to Steven’s absence. As always, they would certainly drop their furtiveness once they realized their fellow Cybertronian has arrived. 

SARA eagerly ripped off her hijab and let her thick but elegant cesium-fiber “hair” cascade across her back upon finding the locker room mirror (garishly decorated with a sigh declaring “YOU make Tranquility Mall great!”), through which she attempted to fix her emerald locks into a somewhat presentable coiffure, but only succeeded in smoothing a pesky cowlick. She gave a resigned shrug and batted a single hair off of the malachite hard drive embedded in the forehead of her otherwise human-like face. 

She checked the bulletin board for any announcements from the manager (just another reminder of the post-Christmas visit from corporate) and was pleasantly startled to find no graffiti, aside from a very crudely penned message written in—what else?—a weird mishmash  of emoticon and Cybertronix. “sArA smEls ! : D” it read. She groaned, but had to let loose a hearty giggle once she noticed it was written with a green color pencil. 

“My, I wonder who left me such a nasty message?” SARA pretended, looking down between her toes where she, as expected, found the culprit: a stubby green pencil. “Somebody better confess before somebody loses their chalkboard privileges.” After a few seconds with no response from the juvenile stylus, she added “Scribby…”

At the femme’s behest, the pencil let out a guilty squeak and stood upon it’s well-worn eraser, promptly transforming from writing tool to a minuscule, cone-headed robot, whom SARA lovingly named Scribby. The abashed BotBot twirled the stubs of her hands in, her wide eyes apologetically staring at the much larger robot and her cherubic, paint-smeared face contorted into a pout. SARA could barely hear Scribby as she muttered a surprisingly well pronounced “Sorry”, a sentiment SARA rewarded with a motherly smile. 

“It’s okay. I’m not mad.” SARA crooned as she crouched to better meet the pencil’s gaze. “Just remember, Scribby: Drawing on the bulletin board is a big no no, alright? You’re always welcome to use the copy paper in my office—or the stalls in the men’s room—but not the bulletin board!” She reinforced her decisive tone with a wag of her gloved finger. 

Wether or not Scribby really took SARA’s command to spark was unclear—as the perky green pencil-bot simply flapped her tiny arms and squeaked a terse “Draw!” in lieu of an acknowledgment—but the older femme accepted her uptake nonetheless. Eager to see the other BotBots, SARA set her hand down before the fidgeting Scribby, inviting her into her open palm and from there gently placing the excitable Bot’ on her shoulder. 

SARA made a quick stop by her locker to snag a travel mug full of homemade engex, setting aside a few seconds for a generous swig, before proceeding on to the West wing. Had it not been for the vaulted skylights surrogating for a roof, the lofty gallery crowded with barred-off storefronts would have existed in absolute pitch, even to SARA’s superhuman optics, but on a cloudless night like this, this planet’s beautiful silver and appropriately effeminate moonlight was free to rain in and facilitate the kind of relaxing atmosphere fluorescent lamps always fail to capture. Visibility was limited, but not enough to warrant her built-in flashlights. Usually shimmering in all kinds of gaudy colors, the copious signs crowning the equally copious stores were just faint suggestions in the shadows, and the many palm trees and benches running the length of the wing were reduced to silhouettes slotting neatly into the ubiquitous fuzz of grays and blacks. Curiously, none of the BotBots were roaming, much less making a peep—sans Scribby, of course, who had aptly summersaulted off SARA’s shoulder, compressed into her pencil mode, and rolled behind a nearby wastebasket, likely to turn the concealed patch of wood paneling into her canvas. Maybe in an hour or so SARA would recruit Sudsbeard and Stinkeye (not to mention, a VERY liable Scribby) to help clean up the pencil’s art, but first thing’s first…

SARA concentrated and remotely synced her neural hardware to the labyrinthine circuitry of the security system woven into the walls of the mall. From there she rapidly rerouted the feeds from every camera in the complex into her internal monitor, skimming six dozen live videos all at once. As far as her preeminent optics could tell, there were no vagrants hanging around outside, so skulkers peering in through the windows, no maintenance personnel, and, most importantly, no fellow guards dropping in for a surprise shift change. No witnesses. The only humanoid to be found was herself, standing alone and monochromic in at least five different camera feeds. SARA carefully reviewed every feed a second time, then checked all motion sensors, and, finally, assured the alarm system was activated. Once she was assured the mall would be devoid of human life for at least another hour, she linked her vocoder to the PA speakers. 

Let the fun begin, she internally smirked, tuning her voice to sound as warm as possible. She took a deep, not entirely necessary intake and gaily announced “Alright my little sweet little Mini-Cons, the coast is clear! Time to rise and shine!” 

No sooner had the last resonant decibel faded in her many mouths than the first few BotBot’s started springing forth out of their disguises. Before she could even register the early birds flocking into the wing, shouting spritely and innocently, SARA’s mental videos came to life with the sight of hundreds of caricature-ish robot, most standing no higher than her ankles, thoroughly covering the mall’s open floor like zap-ponies running across the Hydrax Plateau. From the Cubicle Depot store, Sticky McGee and Ms. Take soared away on hastily folded paper airplanes, while Cranks and Snippy Snappy worked together to break into the assistant manager’s jar of caramels. At Bob’s Sporting Goods, Laceface, Lolly Licks, Toughdown, and Ice Sight played a clumsy game of “Zippy Ball”, much to the amusement of Chic Cheeks and Wristocrat. And at the criminally undervalued Fozz Music Grampiano and Batterhead dared a black metal/waltz combo while a nearby Songwave, once again, loudly practiced his impression of a certain blue Decepticon, after whom he believed himself to be named. Some of the BotBot’s, the more brazen ones, escaped into the ductwork while the apathetic ones made a bee-line for the fountain where they would surely simulate a beach experience for the night, and overhead the few Bot’s gifted with the power of flight—Unilla Icequeencone, Rootwing, and Aday, to name some—deftly put their wings to good use in playful dogfights.

Each night, this was the experience SARA was given; watching this micro-population of what was irrefutably a unique form of Cybertronian life go about its daily brouhaha. She applied to be a security guard, but became a caregiver, but after centuries of being the crown jewel and powerhouse of Cloud World—an era that came to an abrupt close when she and her Autobot guardians were inexplicably locked out of their native universe—being a baby sitter was nothing short of a demotion. But it was a welcomed demotion, for all it was worth, and it filled her spark with unmatched happiness. Her old career had enlightened her to the value of both organic and mechanical life, a fact that aptly justified her life as “SARA, Protector of the Multiverse” every bit as much as it did her life as “SARA, Protector of a Mall”. The All Spark only knew what would become of the BotBot’s if the local humans ever discovered them, but it she would be far more horrified than surprised if mankind failed to perceive the tiny robots as sentient beings. She could be wrong, but whatever the case may be, she couldn’t risk allowing the only Transformers in this universe to be exterminated. 

Within the plaza she found her usual haunt: a small dining area spread out just below a robust glass dome, which afforded an ample view of the midnight firmament, complete with a gibbous moon staring down at the Earth like the pearly eye of Mortillus. Surrounding the area was a dense ring of potted plants, cutting off her view of the storefronts and giving the illusion of absolute isolation while maintaining the serene impression of an oasis. SARA collapsed onto the one bench closest to the splayed flora and downed a quarter of her engex. As she the proton charged super-fuel stimulated her gustation sensors, she let the majority of her bodily systems power down, approximating a cat nap. It lasted just long enough before a few BotBots started slowly trickling into her refuge. Discomposed, but not irate, SARA stiffened her slouched back-struts just in time to meet the first visitor of the night: Cuddletooth, the happy little chainsaw-bot toddling towards the alien femme with stubby arms outstretched and demanding a hug. Being a gasoline powered tool  on legs, Cuddletooth was, naturally, significantly larger than her siblings and appropriately hefty, and though it was a bit of a strain on her actuators, SARA still managed to lift the Shed Head and hold her at arms length, cooing “Well, hi there my adorable, spiky jewel! I’m so happy to see you!” 

Expressing her endearment with digital hearts flashing in her visor, Cuddletooth’s head-mounted saws roared in delight while a breath of black exhaust issued out of her ribbed mouth piece. But of course, Cuddletooth was an obsessive hugger—hence her name—and SARA didn’t wish to starve the loving power tool. Carefully, she pulled  Cuddletooth closer and tried not to scream too loud as the chainsaw tightly wrapped her diminutive arms around SARA’s neck smushed her blocky cheek against the femme’s. SARA giggled, and even elicited a affectionate growl from her friend, but winced once she felt the tell-tale tug of a lock of her hair being ensnared in Cuddle’s saw. A small blade flipped out of her thumb which she calmly used to sever the tress before her face followed it into the churning teeth. 

“Okay, Cuttletooth, time to go give some hugs to your brothers and sisters. I think they really need some right now. Don’t you think?” SARA encouraged. Though she hated the thought of brushing off Cuddletooth, as always she was afraid of having her head violently sheered off in doing otherwise. Fortunately, the husky BotBot seemed quite elated at the suggestion and wasted no time in parting with SARA to spread her love across the mall, engine roaring in excitement and saws vibrating with innocent but dangerous intent. SARA’s amusement returned as she watched Cuddletooth locate her next buddy—the elfin Pop-O the Clown—and promptly gave chase with arms wide open. 

She sincerely looked forward to repeating the near-death experience with Cuddletooth the next night, as well as any other memory made with the BotBot’s, but for now all she wanted to do is relax and wait for her shift to be…

Out the corner of her virtual optic, SARA espied a movement in one of the cameras. Alert, she geared all her interior sensors towards the security system, focusing on every feed at once and quickly noticed a enormous, unnaturally shaped object hunched halfway out of one of the frames, which she deduced to be from one of many cameras mounted on the roof, aimed directly at the skylight under which she currently stood. Edging on panic, she jumped to her feet with the intent of rushing outside, investigating, and possibly battling the intruder, but the very same second she noticed a familiar silhouette peeking through the glass dome above. Putting two putting two and two together, she came to a disarming conclusion and put a name to the monster on the roof.

Gigatron. Or Devil Gigatron. Whatever it is he liked to be called, though of course the mechanical winged teddy bear was anything but a devil. 

“Oh no.” She groaned in dismay. With her arms crossed she gave Gigatron a reproving look, who stared back with beady crimson optics bright enough to be mistaken for twin will-o-the-wisps. Evidently, he was trying to remain concealed, as only the uppermost half of his crested, white-and-gold head peeked over the lip of the skylight, but his honest attempt was nulled by the draconic wings towering over his shoulders, and thus well within visibility. While SARA considered how to acknowledge him—her mulling set to the sound her digits drumming against her forearms—the former Predacon warlord raised a man-sized fist, hesitated, and rapped ever so gently against the glass. Well, from Gigatron’s perspective it must have been gentle, anyways. To SARA’s audio receptors it sounded like an abundance of bowling balls being dropped from the stratosphere. She became very concerned that the deca-changer would inadvertently shatter the dome and double her post-shift cleanup list. In the meantime, however, her chief concern was that a night-walking bystander had seen Gigatron while in transit from her backyard to the mall. Her fuel-pump spasmed just thinking about the fiasco that would cause. 

A few of the nearby BotBot’s—namely Greed Feed,  Be-Oh, and Waddlepop—nearly leapt out of their chassis at the sound of Gigs’ thunderous appeal. Waddlepop was particularly terrified, as the penguine-bot ran as fast as her tiny flippers would allow and huddled against SARA’s sneaker, bleach-white fear playing all across her rosy, chocolaty face. 

“It’s alright. It’s just Gigs.” SARA calmed Waddlepop with a pat to the crown of her ice-cold head and turned to shoot Gigatron a nasty scowl. “GO HOME!” She boldly ordered the Predacon. 

“SARA! SARA! CAN I COME IN?! SARAAAA!” Gigatron “whispered”, but like his knocking, his voice, no matter how subdued, was as loud and heavy as the wailing of a Nubulan driller. In actuality, she couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor bot. His most inconspicuous alt-mode was a ridiculously huge car that looked like a folded up dragon (and that’s entirely because it was a folded up dragon) so, needlessly to say, his only chance of being a robot in disguise was to sit under an extra large tarp all day and completely forgo all daytime exploits. SARA couldn’t imagine being restricted to such a degree. She even felt a little bit of guilt over all the times she complained about only having to wear a hijab, gloves, and a sweater. 

Her manner softened significantly and she gestured in the general direction of the mall’s receiving area. “GO TO THE DOCKS!” SARA yelled, hands cupped around her mouth, though she doubted the Predacon could hear her. She was banking on the chance that Gigatron could lip read, but his response threw that chance into doubt.

“WHAT?!” Gigatron bellowed. “SARA, LET ME IN! I’M COLD!” 

“DOCKS! GO TO THE DOCKS!” 

“WHAT?! DUCKS?” 

“DOCKS!”

“I LIKE DUCKS TOO!” The warlord said.

“GO TO THE DOCKING AREA! DOCK-KING!” Her coolant started frothing again. 

“STALKING?! ARE YOU STALKING ME?! THAT’S UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR SARA!” 

SARA facepalmed and muttered a curse under her breath. “NO! GO! TO! THE! DOCKS!!!” 

A confused expression broke the eagerness in his face as Gigatron’s gaze followed SARA’s pointing finder. At length he submitted “YOU MEAN THE BIG DOORS?! GO THERE?!”

Relieved, SARA composed herself and nodded vigorously, adding a double thumbs up for good measure. Gigatron mouthed an enlightened “Oh!” and returned the gesture. The Predacon roared “DRAGON MODE!” and dissolved into a flurry of loudly interchanging machinery only to instantly solidify into the shape of a two-headed beast. Lifting off into the night, his winged shadow briefly eclipsed the moon before vanishing altogether. 

“Good Primus, he’s a pain in the aft.” SARA groaned once the larger mech was gone. She rubbed the overheated circuitry beneath her temples, almost daring fate to add another curve ball to her night. “I think I’m gonna have to build him a doghouse.” 

Waddlepop echoed her grievance with a series of sharp squawks and a stomp of her flipper. 

“Tell me about it. Well I guess I better let ‘Galvatron’ in before he tries to open the doors himself.” SARA sneered, depreciatively using Gigatron’s self-given nickname. She reluctantly fished her key ring out of her pocket and regarded it with animosity. “As soon as I find the key.” 

Chapter Text

The stapler peered longingly over the rim of the vase he called his home, his baby blue optics locked on the colossal form of the green-haired goddess, who in turn was dwarfed by the utopian walls and glass ceilings that enclosed the only world he knew. Mother, was the first thought the diminutive robot could weave since assuming his waking mode, though his rudimentary vocoder articulated it through the only word he could so far pronounce. 

“Staples.” the stapler dolefully whispered. 

The second complete thought of the night was one that, while entirely inevitable, the stapler would have rather left forgotten. Lonely. The word, again, manifested through a distressed “Staples…” but this time it managed to sink from his processor like an empty chassis in water into the microscopic spark in his chest, triggering faint memories from all the nights that have come before. 

There was once oblivion, and then the Mother Goddess touched the vast world spread beneath a glass sky and brought about awareness. Whereas the stapler was once a stapler, devoid of life, now it was, well, still a stapler. A stapler that could walk, see, change shape, and even speak (even if the later talent was limited), but nonetheless he was still stapler. There was no purpose in the stapler’s life. He simply existed. He walked and talked, and slept every day in his alternate mode. And nothing else. The only thing he did to make his life go by faster was counting the curious metal clips that came on being, which he dubbed “staples”. After that, everything else became known by the same name, if no other reason than for the fact that it was all equally meaningless. 

 What the hurt the most, however, was that the Mother Goddess—the benevolent matriarch of the world—loved and talked to and smiled upon all the other natives, except for the stapler. The Goddess even gave names to everyone she locked eyes with—Scribzilla and Sweet Fang, Lunchador and Yule B. Bored, Hashtagz and Pucksie—everyone, except for the stapler. Never once had the Goddess ever looked the stapler in the face and wished him a good day, nor so much as bequeathed a lovely smile like the ones his kindred are blessed with daily. There was a brief period in his short life where all he could feel was pure envy, generating absolute resentment towards the others, and especially towards the Goddess herself, but those days were well behind him. Now only lonely remains, if occasionally infected with the shattering sense of betrayal. 

The stapler could hear the nearby chanting of one of his siblings. The bot was slightly taller than himself, but considerably wider, taking into account the plastic “wings” that sprouted out of the sides of his plump, red body. The stapler, eventually, recognized the overweight bot as Sir Botcha, a bottle of hot sauce, waddling by with utensils brandished in both of his hands. Following the realization was one of those all-too-common moments where the stapler was feeling hopeful, thus he eagerly waved both of his silver arms, squeaking “Staples! Staples!” hoping the notoriously extrovert Sir Botcha would notice. For a single, beautiful moment the stapler fantasized about making in impression with the spicy Greaser, starting a friendly conversation, learning a little about Botcha, divulging a little about himself (perhaps share his shallow fascination with staples), and most importantly, laughing with one of the many bots he could call a friend m. It would have been the first time—the very first time in the staplers life—that he would have made a connection to someone. And maybe it would have led to a formal introduction to the Goddess, where he would at long last received a name.

But that’s not what happened at all. Sir Botcha continued past without even casting a glance the stapler’s way. Two more bots—the clingy PB Junior and his pal-of-the-day, Grave Rave—strolled by, but wanting to spare himself further disappointment, the stapler didn’t bother attempting another greeting. 

The stapler sank deeper into the vase, retreating into the shadow of the celestially high plant contained therein. Walled off from the rest of the world and managing to glean only a modicum of comfort on the lumpy bed of potting soil, the stapler lied it’s head down in preparation for rest. In the meantime, he brainstormed a few ways to to tame his anguish. Sing a song? Create an imaginary friend? Count more staples? The stapler tried all three of those methods in the past and only the latter held any solace, but even that slowly ebbed over time. 

The stapler whimpered and his chassis shook anxiously. As his voluntary deactivation cycle slowly shushed his small but convoluted systems, the stapler found himself doing something he wished he had never done before: he cried himself to sleep. 

… … …

The roll-up door vociferously rattled as it slowly tucked upward, as if it too were opposed to opening up the already freezing receiving area to the bitter winter night. Freshly minted snowflakes whirled frantically through the expanding gap beneath the gate, sprinkling SARA’s toes. It would have been quaint had it not been for the draft brushing across the concrete floor and, eventually, over her temp-sensitive metallic face. Though she knew it would guzzle more energon than Alchemist Prime ever could, SARA activated her internal thermal coils and the ensuing warmth  relaxed her frame into the “pissed off girlfriend” look she was initially going for (hands on hips, optics narrowed, lips contorted in an ugly lour, and of course, the requisite foot tapping). At least the Christmas-minded Wizengreen was enjoying the weather. The evergreen BotBot, who was prone to tagging around whenever he suspected the taste of December frost was promised, spread his arms and wings in apery of a snow angel and let the flurry caress his pine-needle feathers while humming “Carol of the Bells”. 

Wizengreen didn’t budge an inch, much less flee, when Gigatron’s formidable visage came into view, which came across as a surprise to SARA, considering even she—who’s known the Predacon for over five years—occasionally finds herself stricken with fear whenever Gigatron decides to adopt any of his eleven modes, his and her’s rapport not withstanding. Now was one of those moments. Second only to his bizarre giant hand mode, Gigatron’s dicephalic dragon configuration was quite a daunting sight, especially when crouching under the opaque night, snowflakes swirling hypnotically around his age-faded white chassis. Though his four eyes burned like hell, they conveyed no malice. Just the pompous but nonetheless gentle spark that Gigatron had become. His scaly, violet wings dropped under the scant weight of the snow gathering on their membranes, his two sinuous necks dipped slowly towards the femme standing in the open threshold, and a hot zephyr reeking of gear lubricant crawled out of both his grinning snouts.

“What the frack? Why are you here, Gigs?” SARA advanced. 

“I DO NOT NEED TO JUSTIFY MY PRESENCE!” Gigatron’s left head roared, but quickly lowered his voice when SARA put a finger to her lips and gave him a warning look. The rightmost head received the baton. “I’m here because I am Galvatron and here is where I wish to be!” The left head continued, “Also, how are you doing?” 

She shrugged. Her heating systems waned and she felt compelled to wrap her tightly across her chest. “I’m…I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. Seriously though, you can’t be here. You need to go home.” 

“But it’s lonely at the house!” 

“What about Berry? Where’s Berry? Isn’t he keeping you company?” Berry was an exceptionally durable Chia Pet made in the likeness of one the *My Absurdly Tiny Horse* characters, whose real name the femme could never be bothered to remember, so she settled on “Berry”. A lifeless terra-cotta horse with greenery growing out of it’s neck and a tattoo on it’s butt, Berry was employed by SARA to keep Gigatron company whenever she was away. SARA never liked bringing him into a conversation, and that was solely because she was uncertain wether gifting Berry was a bad idea or a good one. Gigatron developed the loosest of attachments to the horse, just enough to where the mech could adequately lecture it when SARA’s audio receptors weren’t there to hear it—which was good—but then again, having a war criminal regale an inanimate object with tales of his many atrocities during the dead of night had the potential to backfire. Quite spectacularly. She wasn’t sure how, of course, but in hindsight it looked like a bad idea. At least Gigatron was completely aware Berry wasn’t a real horse. 

“Berry is dead. He…” The left head timidly looked at his raised right foot while the right head admitted “He came under heel.” 

“You stepped on him?” 

“He’s a toy horse covered in dirty green organisms! He never listened!” That. That’s how the Berry situation was destined to backfire. 

SARA rubbed the bridge of her aluminum nose, already feeling the scarce residual heat escaping through her nostrils. “You know someone could have seen you, right? Then what?” 

“Oh please!” Scoffed the right head. The Left followed “They would have thought I was a, uh, bat. Or something. A regular bat.” 

“Yeah, a bat with a fifty foot wingspan…” 

“FINE!” The twins roared at once. “Bigfoot, maybe! Or Mothman! They could have mistaken me for one of them! The point is who the scrap is going to start an uproar over seeing something as dubious as…as…as, well, ME?! Who would believe them?!” 

“Cameras, Gigs.” SARA said matter-of-factly. 

“Oh, you just know everything, don’t you?” Gigatron harmoniously sulked, his lean theropod arms crossed in front of him. He bellowed his personal activation code “Galvatron, TERRORIZE!” and quickly transformed into his more natural, one-headed robot mode. Though this substantially more robust form made him look superficially confident, his humanoid optics betrayed just how crestfallen the Predacon was. “I understand. I’m not welcome here.” 

“Gigs, look…” SARA said said, just before the larger bot had the chance to vacate. “I really don’t want to bounce you, especially right now. It’s cold, you’re probably hungry,…” 

“And Berry’s dead.” 

“Yes, Berry’s dead too. If you’re feeling lonely, then, well…” She was reluctant, but nonetheless offered “…you can stay here for awhile, just so long as you promise to be back home before sunrise.” 

“I can’t promise that!” Gigatron protested, seemingly appalled at having to practice a little time management. “I go home whenever I deem it necessary. No one regulates Galvatron’s free time! I’m not a protoform, dammit!” 

“Gigs, all you have is free time. I’m the one with the job here.”

“THAT’S BESIDE THE POINT!”

“Fine.” SARA conceded, throwing her arms up. “Do whatever! But when when the government busts your stubborn tailpipe because some dude saw you screwing around at a mall at seven in the morning, then ships you off to Area 51 to be dissected a la E.T., I’m not bailing you out.” 

“I already ‘bailed out’ of prison once, SARA.” Gigatron smugly returned, pointing a gargantuan clawed finger at the silently fuming femme. “I have more alternate modes than Sixshot, Devil power coursing through my circuits, and thirty feet on every human on this filthy planet! I’m very certain I can handle myself in a fight.” Except for the alt mode thing, SARA knew everything he just said was farcically false. Gigatron never bailed himself, as he was undoubtedly implying, he was granted amnesty by Fire Convoy after a change of heart; “Devil power” didn’t really exist, as his change to “Galvatron” was simply the result of a mishap with the Orb of Sigma that altered his colors and warped his T-Cog; and he’s only twenty or so feet taller than the average man, not thirty. He’s not a fracking gestalt. Plus Gigatron knew just as well as SARA that the U.S. military could easily slag both of them with a few mortar shells and, if nothing else, an air strike. 

“I get it, Gigs. You’re a badass.” SARA stepped aside and welcomed the Predacon in with a sweep of her arm. She took a quick look at all the snow that they allowed to accumulate over the ramp (to the elation of the thoroughly covered Wizengreen) and added “Now get inside before we freeze our servos off.” 

… … …

There was only one room in the entire mall big enough to comfortably accommodate Gigatron/Galvatron/Devil G/Megatron/whatever-atron, and that was the plaza: the very last place a winged giant like Gigatron needed to be. Getting him there had its own set of challenges—which boiled down to going from point A to point B without destroying anything—but it was the incoming complication of getting him out and sending him on her merry way—covertly, that is—that gave SARA cause for concern. While Gigatron wormed in through the dock gate, crawled on his hands and knees through the back rooms, and tip-toed over the abundant amenities in the public area, all the while carefully maneuvering his kibble as to avoid knocking over any shelves or gouge any walls, SARA furiously brainstormed a plan to sneak the Predacon back the way he came and past the six-o-clock morning patrol before daybreak. She processed millions of scenarios—accounting for everything from the least trafficed streets to Gigs obstinacy—but only three didn’t result in having to move her entire Cybertronian family to Brazil because of national panic over an alien-demon-robo-dragon invasion. In any case, she temporarily forfeited her worries once Gigatron was comfortably seated on the scarcely used stage in the middle of the plaza.

The ever chivalrous Sensei Spiney the samurai pineapple took it upon himself to patrol the plaza now that the “King” had arrived. With leaf-sword in hand he marched back and forth across the dining area, admonishing any BotBot who came too close to the new arrival. SARA didn’t have the spark to tell Spiney that Gigatron wasn’t a king nor that the other little ones were welcomed to hang around, plus as Spiney was a paladin by nature SARA felt she didn’t have the right to tell him off. In any case, Gigatron was indifferent to his little siblings (as SARA affectionately termed the BotBot’s whenever Gigs’ name happened to be in the same sentence), more so than he usually was. There was a distant look in his optics and a pensive air floated about his stalwart frame, almost as clear as the gold trimming on his armor.

“Gigs, what’s up?” SARA asked. 

The Predacon didn’t immediately respond, which scared the femme for the sharpest of seconds, yet his faceplate didn’t betray any emotion. No remorse, no grief, no resentment, just a mild look of confusion, as if Gigatron was struggling to articulate something. 

Finally, he mumbled “I can’t remember what Kolkular looked like.” The way he said this, it almost sounded like he was asking for help but trying to hide it. 

Taken aback, SARA was at a loss to respond. She didn’t expect to have another conversation like this, especially after nearly two years of being completely silent on the subject. She knew what Kolkular was, and knew it was the city where Gigatron was forged, but was well aware that Kolkular was only a small part of the larger issue. 

SARA and Gigatron’s stories, for all their physical and psychological differences, were really quite similar. SARA had once been a leader of sorts, a symbolic avatar of Primus on a peculiar version of Cybertron known as Cloud World, charged with keeping the world alive with her own presence, much like how the reconfigured body of Primus would act as the core and heart of any other Cybertrons. As such, she had in her hands an unrivaled power that those such as her old friends, the Autobots, had grown to revere whilst others, the Decepticons dissenters, envied. She was nigh immortal, all knowing, and would have been capable of tearing Megamaster-sized Transformers to shreds had it not conflicted with her pacifistic software. But most importantly, she had the ability to warp spacetime, facilitating inter-universal travel much to the benefit of the Autobots. To make a very long story very short, SARA became the center point of a war too familiar to describe. The Autobots waged their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons, who had once sought to exploit SARA for their own conquest of Cloud World and beyond. Among other things, the war resulted in thousands of extinguished sparks on both sides, irreparable damage to Cloud World, and the creation of millions of splinter timelines as the two  factions haphazardly skipped around the multiverse. Though it paled compared to the fates  the likes of Bumblebee and Blitzwing suffered, SARA herself sustained some cerebral damage, deleting a majority of her memories, reverting her to a benighted state, and, worst of all, dramatically affecting her ability to support Cloud World. And all of that happened over the course of a single solar cycle. Her faith in Primus had been wounded, and as she watched her home world crumble under both the war and her own failure to do her part. Her animosity towards the creator only grew as her world continued to die. Once her abject feelings hit their peak and she started wondering if she had become more of a burden than a friend to the Autobots, she did she only thing she thought was right. SARA used her vestigial powers to leave Cloud World and go to the most innocuous universe she could find. 

And then Primus drove a two sided sword through her life, somehow giving and taking at the same time. At once, she stated having second thoughts about her actions and tried to go back home only to discover she could no longer tear a portal in the fabric of spacetime, trapping her in this dimension. The fate of her whole family—Optimus, Hot Rod, Brawn, the Wreckers and even the Decepticon fugitives Shockwave, Starscream, and Hellwarp—would be a truth that would forever remain forbidden to her. Her processor couldn’t fathom this illogical turn of events and had heated up with disjointed, panicked speculation until it inexorably crashed in quiet dolor. Yet she would soon heal. Days grew into years as she became more complacent with her new life on this Earth. She managed to buy a house and car, landed a job, became accustomed to human culture and even rigged a miniature Energon distillery in her basement. Somewhere along the line, the scars of her former existence started itching less, and she managed find genuine happiness as she became a common inhabitant of a common universe. Not even her loneliness lasted long. Aside from a handful of human friends, she managed to inadvertently give life to the BotBots, who she would instantly accept as her children. And then there was Gigatron. 

She knew only what Gigatron would allow her to know, which wasn’t much, but a piece of his reputation preceded the Predacon, even before the war in Cloud World. In spite of his birth name, he was incontrovertibly a part of the Megatron archetype and therefore was once a scourge to his native universe, but aside from a few noteworthy events, such as his “spectacular” transformation to Devil Gigatron, SARA knew virtually nothing of Gigs’ stint as a warlord. She could only assume there was a lot of evil going on. The few chapters she was aware of transpired almost entirely after his capture by the Dimensional Patrol, for not long after that Gigatron made the life changing decision to abandon his rank and pay penance for his crimes, which moved Fire Convoy’s spark so much that he welcomed the Predacon leader into the Dimensional Patrol with open arms. Whenever SARA asked why he chose to go straight, Gigs always responded with the same vague but solid answer “I grew old.” Being a relatively young femme (mentally, anyways) SARA could only relate to this so much, but a Decepticon/Predacon choosing to make amends was such an extraordinarily rare occurrence that she couldn’t have cared less for the reason. Redemption was a moving thing no matter which way she chose to cut it, and that goes double for the redemption for someone who was, of all things, a Megatron. 

Like SARA, Gigatron ended up running with dimension-hopping Autobots, which made his tragedy all the more unsurprising when he too was stranded in this universe by the sudden and inexplicable impossibility of dimensional travel. Like SARA, he was once royalty. Like SARA, he had been changed by war. Like SARA, he had friends, and, like SARA, he had lost them. Along with SARA, he was now one of only a few Cybetronians in known existence. To her, that was more than enough reason to consider Gigatron a friend. Right now this friend needed her. 

“You can talk to me, Gigs.” She said, gingerly laying her hand on his gigantic claws. “What’s on your mind? Tell me everything.” 

Again, there was a moment in which the Predacon seemed afraid to open his spark, but eventually he conceded with “To be honest, that’s why I’n here. I was trying to reminisce earlier today when I realized I have no recollection of Kolkular. I was born there, SARA. If it’s any place I should remember, it’s Kolkular. I remember Iacon, which I destroyed. I remember Praxus, which I also destroyed. I even remembered the Metrobase, which I destroyed without even realizing I destroyed it. Why can’t I remember Kolkular?” His booming voice dropped to a soft timbre unbecoming of his usual disposition and the ruddy light in his eyes dimmed so much that SARA feared for a split second that he would deactivate. “Have I really been gone that long?” 

Such is the way of war, SARA mused. She could count on one hand the happy memories she still possessed from her cycles on Cloud World, but that was a mere grain of sand compared to the mountain of vivid images of death and destruction that smothered her higher functions whenever they weren’t in use. Only days prior she occupied herself with hours of unnecessary yard work just to purge the image of Whirl’s head being fatally crushed by Lugnut out of her processor. That wasn’t the first, nor the last, nor the worst of the things she had seen. Meanwhile she struggled to recall even one clear second of the time she and Hot Rod went fishing together. Despite her complete empathy, she struggled to conceive the right response. She ended up blurting “I know buddy. It’s hard.” before she realized how unsympathetically generic that sounded. She tried being poetic with “It’s the curse we bear as Primus’ children, I guess.” but she felt that was too dismissive. Either way, Gigatron seemed unconcerned—oblivious, even—by her attempts. SARA wondered if this needed to be one of those one-sided conversations were Gigs just rants while she nods her head. 

“It’s almost like…like…” Gigatron quickly threw his hands up in something of exasperation, nearly knocking the exhaust out of SARA and startling the ordinarily indomitable Sensei Spiny. “It’s like I’m being punished by having all my screwups shoved in my faceplate while all the scrap that makes me happy is just thrown away! Is that it? Is it my fault and I’m just suppose to accept it?” At this point, SARA got the impression he was speaking to more to Primus than herself, although she was certain Viron Transformers like Gigs weren’t inclined to acknowledge the god’s existence, let alone holding him accountable. If so, she couldn’t blame him. SARA didn’t exactly honor Primus either. Not anymore at least. 

“You’re not being punished.” SARA assured, speaking slowly in a duel attempt to placate the mech and buy herself more time to think of something else to say. “If anything, I think it’s more of a, uh, blessing in disguise.”

With an incredulous brow arched, Gigatron asked “How?” 

Scrap. SARA hid her lack of an answer with a feigned expression of aplomb, as if to say “Duh! Isn’t it obvious?” while her processor went wild trying to find the silver lining to what was certainly robo-Alzheimers. In the midst of her brainstorming her vocoder forewent the consent of her conscious and suddenly blurted out “Because it’s a second chance. You know, wipe the slate, start over.” 

“Are you saying I *need* to forget about Kolkular?”

“Well…no, maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe you’ll see Kolkular again. “ A small part of SARA really wished she knew how to discreetly broach a new subject, yet she still wanted to console Gigatron. 

However, the moment quickly became one of those rare reminders that the Predacon was more prudent than he tended to demonstrate when he growled “You can’t talk about this, can you SARA?” 

It was true. She couldn’t, but how was she supposed to admit that and not look like a total glitch? “I can.” She lied. 

“Look, it’s okay if you can’t. You’re stuck here too.” 

“I’m not stuck here. I happen to like this version of Earth.”

“I do too, but…look, my point is I’m scared I’ll forget what it’s like to be…” he trailed off. She knew Gigatron almost as well as she knew herself, and she knew that Gigs had willingly and sincerely dropped his title as a tyrant (figuratively at least). She couldn’t imagine him relapsing, even if the all the Autobots and Maximals in the multiverse surrendered and knelt before him. But he was still a very pretentious, angry bot, or in other words: a Megatron. And a Megatron naturally thirsts for glory and conquest the way a human thirsts for water and it was a need Gigatron had only the loosest control over. 

“To be you?” SARA suggested, not entirely sure what she meant.

“Is it weird that I both enjoyed and hated being a Predacon?”

“When it comes to being a leader, that’s just the nature of the beast, Gigs. Everyone respects you until you frag up, and then everyone’s pointing a finger at you. That’s why I don’t always regret leaving Cloud World. It was a nice place, and it was nice being basically a goddess, but the war really brought to light just how much the Autobots depended on me, so when I failed…” She paused and nervously inhaled. “…when I failed, I failed everyone and everything in the universe. Every now and then, when I have the bearings to remember what I did, I get the sense that Cloud World was just a dream.” 

“Exactly!” Gigatron exclaimed. “It feels like Kolkular was a dream!” 

SARA nodded, happy that this conversation was starting to achieve some semblance of stability. “Yeah. If you want my opinion, you do need to forget the past because it’s probably never going to come back. You know, you never have the same dream twice, and regardless of wether a dream is good or bad—or both—it was a bygone phase in our lives of doubtful tangibility.” 

“I guess your right.” Gigatron smiled. 

“So…you feeling better now, big bot?” She asked, patting the side of Gigatron’s armored leg, which almost twice her own size. 

“No.” He replied, still smiling.

“No?” She was completely taken aback. 

“Do you ever think we’ll get to do anything else? Other than this, I mean?” He gestured ambiguously all around him with a twirl of a finger, certainly referring to the Earth and all of it’s aspects. 

“Oh, I get it. Still wanting to travel the galaxy, fight criminals and all that heroic stuff?” 

“It’s not that simple, SARA.” Gigatron stated conclusively. “But, essentially, yes. I don’t want to stay on this puny planet forever.” 

Puny planet. SARA had to giggle at that. It was such a Megatron-ish thing to say. “Well, I think it’s a long time coming, but we’ll return to the stars one day. Think about it like this: our lifespans can last for millennia and human scientist believe that interstellar travel will be a reality in the next four hundred years, so even if we can’t rely on good old Cybetronian tech to get away we’ll have plenty of time to hitch a ride on Earth’s first ever cruise to Andromeda. We just have to be patient.” 

“Why go to Andromeda? I’ve been there before and the only thing worth seeing is a dumpy old bar in the Nemesis System. The Triangulum Galaxy is way better.” It didn’t immediately dawn on SARA that Gigatron was joking, but when she noticed the slight smirk hiding in his draconian faceplate she knew the heavy stretch of the conversation had reached a harmonious end. 

“Dude, Triangulum? Really?” SARA snorted playfully. “I dunno, Gigs. I heard Ramjet and Hytherion still haunt that galaxy, doing, you know, whatever evil eldritch guys like to do to unsuspecting planets.” 

“Ramjet? Toast Ramjet or Mini-Con Ramjet?” 

“Tentacle Ramjet.”

“Oh, Primus, that guy.” Gigatron rolled his optics. “Now I know you’re fracking with me. Me and Convoy stomped the T-Cog out of him and threw him into a black hole decades ago. Ah, memories.” 

“Brawn did the same to Blast-Off once. He came back, though, looking a lot like Astrotrain for some reason.” She shrugged and treated herself to a swig of engex. 

Gigatron guffawed, slapping his knee with a loud, resonant bang. “Transformer logic 101, SARA: Black holes cause robots to instantaneously reformat, as do Matrices, various forms of cosmic energy, and death. Especially death.” 

“Oh! I just remembered! I wanted to show you something, Gigs. Remember that one public access show TV show I was telling you about? The one that was allegedly ten times better than The Incredible Bulk but was never seem by anyone outside of Jasper?” 

Gigatrom’s optics widened. “The one about the android and the diminutive amphibious organism? What’s it called…Hit Me? You didn’t…?” 

With wide grin splitting her faceplate, SARA pulled out her phone and held it high as if it were a wad of cash. “I did.” She said smugly. “I found the whole fracking series online.” 

“I demand that you show it to me, NOW!” 

“We binging it?” 

“We’re binging it.” Gigatron growled, smirking. “Right now.” 

“Nice.” SARA nodded, wasting no time in backtracking through her browser history and rediscovering the curiously unnamed pirate channel that preserved the most underrated programs in human history. To no surprise, Movie Munchster—an absolutely indiscriminate fan of film and television—sprang out of nowhere and wedge herself between SARA and her phone. The robotic bundle of tickets was just short of bouncing up and down in SARA’s lap, understandably excited over the opportunity to watch a new show. 

She was about to urge Munchster to calm down when Gigatron put the BotBot’s energy to shame with a booming “BEGONE LITTLE ONE, OR YOUR INNOCENCE WILL SUFFER!” 

“Gigs! Chill!” SARA commanded, stabbing a finger at the Predacon’s astonished faceplate. He had a point, though. Hit Me was an extremely risqué show, featuring a lot of…anatomy. Lots and lots of anatomy. In other words, nothing a young bot should be seeing. But, of course, Munchster wasn’t your average protoform. “It’s alright, Gigs.” SARA said, patting the BotBot’s head, eliciting a purr. “This gal’s seen all five Faces of Ownage movies. I’m sure she can handle this.” 

“Oh, scrap. Faces of Ownage? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe you let these brats watch that. You’re a horrible parent, SARA.” 

“Duly noted.” She simpered, tilting the screen in a way that welcomed the optics of all three Cybertronians. “Now put a muffler on it. It’s showtime.” As the opening sequence rolled, commanding silence from the ordinarily boisterous Gigatron, SARA internally processed her roommate’s playful jab. I’m not really really a bad parent, am I?

… … …

Feeling more neglected than ever, the stapler peered longingly for as long as his weary optics would permit. The white dragon was back again, it’s vast wings casting shadows over all his brothers and sisters while the beast itself was getting cozy with the Goddess, conjointly enjoying something the lonesome BotBot was at a loss to understand. As if a reminder that all other sparks mattered more than the stapler’s own, Movie Munchster had joined the deific couple in their merriment and the goddess lovingly showered her with attention, just as she had done with Scribby, Wizengreen, Waddlepop, and who knows how many others. Expecting to be comforted to some negligible but still existent degree, the stapler envisioned himself in Munchster’s place; just him, the goddess and the dragon enjoying the strange gift, but the moment the impossible, tauntingly out-of-reach image took form he was overwhelmed with hate, envy, and yearning, close upon the heels of hopelessness. 

Why doesn’t the Mother Goddess like me? This was the most complex thought the stapler ever had, and a sick feeling deep within his deceptively tiny body made him wish it would be his last. 

Chapter Text

Primax 907.44 Zeta

It was Vector’s last day alive. He knew it, just as well as he knew the black market stasis cuffs chaffing his wrists and the smothering darkness of Crucible’s tank-mode trunk, wherein he had been whimpering and praying for nearly a whole cycle. For him, the world had truly ended. What had started as a blissfully average day, making his rounds and earning his pay, had quickly spiraled into an inescapable nightmare with a gang of remorseless thugs, spurred into a murderous intent like a crossed swarm nest; a nightmare that will soon end with not just his own deactivation, but likely with that of his friends and coworkers as well. And it was all Vector’s fault. He had been too blind, too thoughtless—he had gone against Ratbat’s firm warnings, and now…

A particularly violent jolt—the last of a series that defined this grim ride—launched Vector’s slight chassis into the trunk’s roof, the impact sending waves of pain throughout his already battered circuits. He had only a few, tense nanokliks of silence to suffer before the walls of his little cell loudly split apart and shifted with innumerable dizzying motions. Crucible’s sudden transformation had rudely dumped Vector upon an cold and unyielding ground, and the darkness opened to admit a flood of burning crimson sunlight to assault the prisoner’s optics. While Vector squirmed feebly on the ground, trying in vain to resist the numbness the cuffs infected him with, four hulking figures in silhouette cast their threatening shadows over him. Once his weary vision quickly adjusted enough to pick out crucial details and identify his captors, Vector let out a pathetic speak, reassured he was going to die. Crucible—a huge, blocky bot with four wildly disproportionate arms—loomed like a navy-blue skyscraper next to Megadeath—a truly hideous creature with the face of a snaggletoothed demon and appropriately red armor. Near him were Quillfire—a squat, brown bot with a vaguely reptilian head and a score of needles blooming out of his back—and Wildwheel—a dingy, mustachioed mech who, despite his odd poncho, looked significantly more normal that his monstrous fellows.

“Please…” Vector wheezed, struggling to lift his head. “Please. You have to understand…”

“CAN IT!” Snarled Megadeath, spittle flying from his jaws.

“White collared scum!” Quillfire shrieked, kicking Vector in the abdomen. If his freshly broken fuel pump hadn’t caused him enough pain, Vector’s audio were positively screaming in agony listening to Quillfire’s raucous cackling. The thunderous boots of the other three villains followed suit, brutally leaving their marks along Vector’s chest and face. When Crucible sent his immense, spear-like toes hurtling towards his nose, Vector was dreadfully sure his life was over, his final act in the mortal coil being the almost comical rolling of his battered head across the ground. Vector closed his optics, expecting the onset of absolute darkness at any minute, but to the mech’s astonishment and gratitude the giant’s foot was staved when a sonorous voice from beyond Vector’s range of vision firmly called out “That’s enough. We don’t want to kill him just yet.”

Between his unavailing position and the distortions in his optics, Vector could see nothing beyond a vague expanse of rusted metal dirt and the four pairs of feet, but sight was not needed to know who this distinctive voice belonged to. There was the slow and eerily muted clacking of footsteps and the measured chugging of a well worn ventilating system, both sounds now long affiliated with a bot who had become known as the living avatar of Mortilus, the mad master of the Cybertronian underground, the Tetrahex Ripper…

“Sunder.” Vector winced.

“You can untie him now, chaps. We want to permit him at least some dignity while we converse, don’t we?” Purred Sunder, who’s disembodied voice sounded much like a cruel imp whispering in Vector’s scrambled audio receptors. With one of his enormous gorilla-arms, Crucible ungracefully hoisted Vector onto his feet, and with his ancillary arms ripping the stasis cuffs from the prisoner’s wrists with almost enough force to take his hands with them. At last Vector was optic-to-optic with the  legendary mob boss himself, who, in spite of his enormous bouncer-esque chassis, carried himself with a very dignified air, tire-cuffed hands clasped behind his back, chin held high, and a deceptively affable grin affixed to his faceplate. Crowing a ghoulishly black body, adorned with an array of silver spikes, was the very head of madness itself. Two crimson panels extended from either side of Sunder’s rictus grin, a crescent shaped crest  housing a particularly threatening satellite dish perched over his brow, and a dense cluster of needles bloomed out the top of his cranium. Moreover, his optics seemed empty; neither red nor blue, but abysmally black and spark-less, as if the monstrous Sunder lacked optic sensors. To add another oddity to his outline, a fist-sized mechanimal resembling a dragonfly was perched upon Sunder’s armored shoulder, infrequently beating it’s wings futilely and, strangely, quietly singing an old Kaonian nursery rhyme in a staticky femme voice.

In an oddly picturesque touch that was both beautiful and appropriately threatening, the familiar age-mangled rim of the Sonic Canyons dropped off no more than one vehicle length behind the esteemed giant.

“Good evening, Vector.” Sunder smiled. “I trust my reputation precedes me?”

Hanging limp from Crucible’s grasp, Vector refused to meet the ebony bot’s gaze, not least because of the plethora of unsavory rumors that surrounded Sunder, which usually suggests that if eye contact is held with him for long enough then some partially grotesque (but never adequately specified) calamity would befall the other. Vector never considered himself one to buy into superstitions, but during the past two cycles he had been fired, stalked, beaten, kidnapped, and beaten again, so he didn’t want to tempt fate.

“Vector…I asked you a question.”

Shivering, Vector gave a weak nod.

“Good, good. Then let the trial commence.” Sunder reached into his hip compartment and extracted a small pocketbook, the crisp aluminum pages of which he patiently riffled through as he spoke. “I know quite a bit about you as well, Vector; a former bartender, now a tax collector. And quite a wealthy one, I may add. I took the liberty of skimming your bank account…”

“Sunder, listen. I…”

Sunder held up a large hand, cutting off Vector’s objection. Even with the soft smile still plastered to his face, Sunder’s atmosphere was no less threatening than a swarm of thirsty piranacons. “Please, Vector, show some respect. Now where was I? Ah, yes. I noticed you have over sixty-thousand shanix saved in your bank account, and an additional four hundred on your being. So I find it somewhat unprofessional that you would ruin an innocent civilian over a mere two-hundred shanix.”

“Sunder, please. You have to understand, that’s my job!” Vector wailed as loud as his damaged vocoder would allow, the act bringing him so much pain that lubricant pooled in his optics. “I have no choice! I have to make a living too!”

“I’m sure the common thief would say the same thing. At least they have the decency to steal only what they need.”

“It’s not like that, Sunder.”

“Is it not? Vector, come now, you had to have been at least somewhat cognizant you were working for a corrupt regime. Ah!” At last, Sunder found what he looking for in his pocketbook, promptly plucking a page densely scribbled with several memos. The sinister bot regarded the sheet as he continued speaking. “In any case, this isn’t a personal matter. Rather, we’ve been hired on behalf of Nacelle, a particularly brazen victim of your agency.”

Sunder gestured for Crucible to release Vector and the giant wordlessly complied. In two brisk strides, Sunder was at Vector’s side, throwing an arm around the smaller bot’s shoulders as if they had been amica enduras for hundreds of stellar cycles. Sunder presented lone page to Vector, displaying the poor handwriting that covered it from corner to corner. In one brief glimpse Vector assimilated nearly two dozen names, as well as sums of shanix and numerous dates.

“I don’t know what this is.” Vector meekly confessed.

“You don’t?” Sunder whispered in his audio receptor. “What a shame. These are all individuals who have been in your office—or your debtors prison—at one point or another. It’s your resume, so to speak. See here, this first one. His name was Deluge. He owed the government exactly 56,044 shanix. He was tried nearly six stellar cycles ago and found guilty of tax evasion. After you delivered the verdict to him personally he was found dead the next morning. Suicide, they say. Remember him now?”

“I…I…don’t think…” The captive stammered. In truth Vectar could barely remember Deluge’s face, let alone his full name. There had been hundreds of thousands of offenders Vector had confronted and condemned over the stellar cycles, and until now he never considered them living sparks, but just numbers ousted from the muck of bureaucracy. Even now, with his life all but ending, Vector liked to think he disregarded those lives not because of any disdain he held for the general populace, but because the benumbment his spark suffered from countless centuries as a desk jockey virtually imprisoned in a cubicle. That was life, wasn’t it? Every bot for himself? It was only the natural order on Cybertron to reap whatever luxuries one could find at the expense of others, so preached the aristocrats. However, reading the abundance of names scaling down the deceptively small leaf, their dues and the prices they were forced to pay—Windsweeper, 78,366 shanix, incarcerated; Ser-ket, 199,530 shanix, executed; Clouder, 5,474 shanix, executed—Vector started to feel sicker than he ever felt before. Discord owed the government 32,001 shanix and paid the price with her life; Suiken owed 967,882 shanix and was thrown in prison like a forgotten toy in a box; Nightshriek owed 56,432 and was lucky enough to pay in full before he could meet the same fate as the others. With painful slowness, Vector remembered each and every one of them and the fear and mind shattering despair that sagged their faceplates as they faced Vector the cold tax collector with their many excuses.

With a sharp click—like the pull of a gun’s hammer—Sunder extended a stylus from his index finger and delicately circled one particular name, along with it’s accompanying sum and fate: “Nacelle: Owes 200 shanix; status: unpaid, sentence pending”.

“Now…” Sunder said, patting Vector on the shoulder. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember Nacelle either. Not when you two first met no less than a six cycles ago. From what I understand, you upset her quite a bit. Is that true?”

“Yes.” Vector murmured. His head bowed and optics dimmed, believing this confession to be his undoing.

“I thought so. I heard Nacelle was a veteran Aerialbot, someone who risked spark and limb fighting for the Autobots. So I find it particularly revolting that you and your Autobot-ruled government conveniently forget all of her heroism once her taxes are a few cycles late. A valiant warrior reduced to a common criminal over night, all because of a few shanix.” Sunder shook his frightful head, still smiling his corpse’s smile. “Such a pity. Honestly, it offends me. And evidently it offends Nacelle too if she was willing to pay what little cash she had left to little old me on the promise that I, shall we say, make an example of you.”

“Sunder, I beg you…!”

“Don’t bother, Vector.” Sunder said with tsk, putting a finger to the captive’s fluid-smeared lips. “I assure you, this is nothing personal. I am simply earning my pay just as you were earning yours. Some of us have to die so that others may live. I’m sure the veterans of the Great War—as well as all the hapless tax payers—would understand that better than most.” Sunder straightened, squared his shoulders, and turned to his entourage. “Quillfire! Megadeath! I’ll let you two have the honors.” The grinning bot stepped aside and invited the two monstrous mechs with a charismatic sweep of his arm. Vector would have ran if he could, but his actuators were just as thoroughly battered as the rest of his boxy chassis. He managed a pitiful grunt and a few stumbling steps away from the hungry abyss of the sonic canyon before Quillfire and Megadeath fell upon Vector like predatory birds, seizing him by the arms and dragging him with funereal slowness towards the precipice. His weakened knees scraped helplessly against the metallic ground, emitting a sound no less grievous than the impish tittering of Quillfire, or the thunderous footfalls of his captives, or the distant singing of the teal-and-pink dragonfly-bot, or the maddening ringing in his audio receptors. Vector couldn’t resist even if he tried. It was as if his body had simply given up under the stress of some hitherto unknown level of anguish. Closer and closer came the edge, and with each passing nanoklik the ex-collector saw more and more of the hungry ocean of darkness at the bottom of the canyon until suddenly he found himself staring right into the nethermost depths of Cybertron. Just as Vector could feel his systems beginning to black out, the two brutes violently shoved the mech onto his belly, head and shoulders handing over the precipice. A frigid wind blew upward from the canyon, stinging his optics and bringing with the earthy fragrance of raw energon and tarnished steel. It was as if he was being slowly sucked into the maw of a beast large enough to reduce Trypticon to a mere ant-droid, smelling it’s fetid breath.

“Just one more thing before we part.” Vector heard Sunder interject in his ever eloquent tone. To Vector’s distorted senses the wily voice might as well have come from the canyon. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have my little Charlotte relieve you of your savings. After all, you will no longer have any need for such things as money, what with you about to vacate and all. Charlotte…” Sunder turned to the dragonfly thing fidgeting on his shoulder. “Be a dear and collect our fee.”

“W-w-who is-is-is Charlotte?” The oddly named dragonfly stuttered in a voice plagued with static. “I a-a-m Clarice. C-Clarice I am. Please c-c-ca-aa-all me Clari-ice too-day”

Vector could practically hear the eye roll in the smack of sunder’s lips. “Whatever. Just do as I ask, please.”

A baritone humming of wings and another strangely bubbling sound marked the swift approach of “Clarice” and before Vector could even steel himself the feminine insectoid had landed on the back of his head module. Shivering and nearly weeping, Vector could feel the creator’s tiny legs probing maliciously at the fine seams of his metal plating and delicate circuitry beneath. It (or “she”, Vector corrected himself) continued to sing her shrill lullaby, as it she were making a half-aft attempt of soothing the pain of this molestation. He felt the dragonfly’s plug-like tail pierce his nape and then a searing pain rocket through his spinal column. Vector spasmed and fought back a scream, but the combined might of his broken will and the taunting laughter of Sunder and his mechs made his efforts all but impossible. His choked cry for help spread through the Sonic Canyons, amplifying a hundred fold until the echoes of that one weak shout became a demonic howl bursting forth from Cybertron’s bowels. Suddenly, a readout flashed across his vision, displaying a splash of numbers highlighted in yellow; numbers which started out in the thousands but quickly shrank to hundreds, then dozens, then down to blood-red zeroes. With dismay, Vector understood “Clarice” had hacked into his bank account via his personal systems and siphoned out every last shanix. Despite everything he had endured, Vector couldn’t help believing this was the cherry atop all his suffering. Not only dying a grisly death, but dying a grisly death without a penny to his name. It was undeniably shallow to think so, he knew, but this simple act of shameless robbery was nonetheless enough to thoroughly smash what remained of his spirit. Now he simply prayed his death would be comparatively quick.

With another round of bass flapping, the dragonfly darted back to her master, chanting “I got it! I got it!”

“You should be glad, Vector.” Sunder smiled with apparent sincerity. “You’re debt is nearly paid. An iota of the money you stole from the downtrodden will be returned to it’s rightful owners. I assure you, Nacelle will be quite pleased with your charity. And the remainder of your debt…well, it shall be paid with your spilled energon. Your death will set right the sins you’ve committed, and you’re life will end on a noble note most are never given. Rejoice, for you are the first step in establishing justice on Cybertron.” Though Vector couldn’t see him, he could almost feel Sunder’s subtly unhinged leer—the reptilian intent in the glint of his rusty teeth, and focused hatred in his cold, soulless eyes. “May Primus—if still he lives—have mercy on your spark.”

No command was given. Quillfire and Megadeath knew this affair was now over as if it were merely a matter of instinct. With one curt heave of their robust arms, they dropped Vector into the abyss with the same sentiments they would afford a lifeless drone. By then Vector was slipping rapidly into stasis lock, but in those lost few nanokicks of consciousness he could feel the word spiraling madly into the unforgiving black. The walls of the canyons and the crimson sky rotated around him like a gyroscope thrown out of balance, and the wind howled past him as he fell and tumbled with a meteoric speed. His last thought before his apparent death was of Deluge. He just then remembered what he looked like.