Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ratchet had once agreed with him that talking about personal situations could be helpful.  It wasn’t necessarily pleasant and it wasn’t necessarily what you’d want to do, but the process was helpful afterwards.  It let weight be shared.  It could help you process.  Both were good in tough situations. 

When faced with a problem, speaking to a trusted friend in private could be just the tactic needed.

This right here was a problem.

This was a problem he had no idea how to face alone.

This would be a great example of something he’d benefit from getting to talk over.

Well, Ratchet wasn’t here to vent to.  Actually, that statement was factually incorrect.  Not that being factually correct made anything feel less ludicrous.  

If Ratchet- the right Ratchet, no offense intended- was here, then he’d start this headache at the beginning.

But the beginning was Archa VII, in the evening, that fateful day everything had gone up in flames: two friendships, his career, his respect, his self respect, damn it, and a mountain of responsibility and regret came crashing down.

And remained there.  A present weight even as cycles passed into stellar cycles and long distance made things numb.

The guilt flared up with vengeful passion after their first Earth Halloween.

And that had been when he’d gone to Ratchet with it.  It made sense, even if he hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all.  He’d told the team medic that talking could help after the run in with Lockdown brought up old pain; it was only sensical that it would go in the other direction.

So technically, maybe Ratchet wouldn’t need to hear the beginning beginning.  Maybe he’d just want to know what the slag happened on that island that night.

Optimus didn’t really know much more than his friend back in Detroit likely would.  The medic would be worrying, that much the prime did know.  The whole team would be.  He was worrying them.  He couldn’t do a thing to help them with that now.

They were on planet Earth, he was on planet Earth, and no amount of driving would be letting him reach them here.

They’d know what little he did know though, however vague and unsubstantial those details were: there had been an explosion on the island; unstable transwarp energy had gone critical; a few people had been caught in that energy and ensuing explosion and were nowhere near the island now.

And that was it from his side of the know-how.

Dinobot Island had been a nice enough place.  Despite its namesake dinobots.  And all the remnants of Meltdown’s lab.  And-

You got the point.

It was a large island, full of vibrant plant growth and animal life.  Although every time he’d been called over to it was for some problem or other, which unfortunately didn’t give him a chance to appreciate the island’s peace and beauty. 

Optimus wondered if it was still there at all.  There was no saying how bad the transwarp explosion had been from the outside.  Maybe it had all been destroyed.  Or maybe Blackarachnia’s webs had made for a distorted cocoon that may have shielded the brunt of it and preserved the island.  Optimus could hope so.  Hope was all he could do on the matter. 

Reassuring, wasn’t it?

The island hadn’t really been at the front of his thoughts when it had actually happened.  Things had devolved too quickly.  There were dinobots laying by or under rocks and the jettwins may have been saying something- Bumblebee may have been saying something too from where he was squished under Sentinel’s weight- and Optimus hadn’t been able to register any of that.  They weren’t priorities in this emergency. 

What he’d heard were her words. 

What he’d seen was the energy tearing Wasp’s new body open at the seams and Blackarachnia’s webs poured from her back rather than servos-

And he’d acted, then.

Heard, seen, act.

He wasn’t about to let this end with he and Sentinel trapped and watching her disappear to a likely death again.  

Great quick thinking on his part, really.  Now he and Sentinel got to disappear to their likely deaths too.

He came to with his back on dirt and his head aching as it tried to catch up to malfunctioning systems.

His grappler was ripped and the cable still connected to him hung loosely out of his arm over the dirt.  He could just barely recall it being torn in the explosion after it had tugged him- plus unhappy party (though thankfully Bumblebee had managed to escape getting dragged along with Sentinel; Optimus didn’t want to be responsible for the kid being in this situation too)- into the center of the unfinished cocoon. 

It was the most physical of his injuries.  There were some surface burns and cuts from the explosion too, but nothing critical.  The rest of his problems came from internal systems then. 

His chronometer was completely shot.  The Earth date and Cybertronian calendar date were inaccessible.  Even the cycle clock was fritzed beyond deciphering.  Optimus could tell it was night on this part of the planet by how the sky was black and star dotted, but what time of night it was he could only guess.  His comms were blank static.  There wasn’t a signal in reach.  Of them all, his positioning system was doing the best.  It gave him coordinates on Earth.  That answered the question of what planet the transwarp energy had sent him to.  He was on the west side of the continent Detroit was in. 

The problem was that Detroit, his Detroit, wasn’t there. 

Even without his comms able to reach any of his team or their allies (Fanzone barely even knew how to use his phone though, so that one wasn’t unexpected the way the rest of the silences were), let alone pick up cybertronian chatter, Optimus could filter in radiowaves from ground and satellite sources.  The global network was quickly entered and…

The dates were all wrong.  The technological level.  Searching for Detroit, for Sumdac Systems, for Sumdac himself: all the same startling results.  There were a few small articles and encyclopedic entries on an Isaac Sumdac, but they said nothing about a robotic revolution, extraordinary tech experiments, robotics breakthroughs, nothing. 

At first he wondered if it was time travel.  If he’d gone back to before they’d all crashed and Sumdac had found Megatron’s body.  But worse still was the possibility that this wasn’t his timeline at all. 

The functions of transwarp energy weren’t his area of expertise.  He could help restore and do minor repairs on spacebridges, but that didn’t mean he understood much of the technicalities of the energy it used.  Bulkhead’s explanations never helped.  All he knew was that it was vast, that no one knew everything about how transwarp energy poked holes in reality for warping, and that it was very, very volatile.  Smart people didn’t play with transwarp energy for a reason.  Not without plenty of precautions. 

They’d teleported, that much was absolutely clear.  They’d gone from the northeast to a half continent away.  There was no debating that part.  What he couldn’t figure out concretely was where the transwarp explosion had dropped them off after ripping its hole in reality this time. 

Sari had them watch quite a lot of TV with her to absorb human pop culture.  It tended to be very varied.  The entertainment media on Cybertron had far less genres and independent storytelling.  There weren’t really ‘standalones’.  Everything came as a part of a long established saga and even the stuff Ratchet didn’t turn off on account of being tiresome propaganda, he’d get tired of rewatching.  Not that there was much else to do spending stellar cycles in space moving from one spacebridge to the next, but Earth gave more actual entertainment from its entertainment media than the stuff on their ship had. 

Their lessons on the matter were very extensive.  Humans had all kinds of ideas and there was no way to watch them all within a short period of time.  And the likes of Bumblebee hardly needed to be given the opportunity to sit in front of the base’s screen all day anyways.

Sari would probably find it amusing that this is what he was thinking about right now.  Granted, she’d probably have an idea about what was going on too and maybe some of those ideas would come from the more fantastical imaginations seen in some of the ‘scifi’ human films.  But Sari wasn’t here to be amused or give ideas.  Sari wasn’t anywhere near now. 

We’re not in Kansas anymore.  Sari and Sumdac and his team, they were still in Detroit, on Earth, home.  And he…

He had no idea where he was now, but what Optimus did know was that he wasn’t home anymore. 

He was sitting upright long before the blue cybertronian nearby stirred.  Optimus had used the time to give a cursory look at their surroundings to make sure the scene was safe and then sit once more to stall rising panic. 

They appeared to be in some kind of desert.  Having grown used to the ecosystem surrounding Lake Eerie, this came with some shock factor.  His external thermometers reported that it was what humans would consider chilly.  The sky was far darker than it ever appeared at the base.  Even nights on Dinobot Island wouldn’t show this many stars.  There was still some light pollution off to his left where the outline of a town could be seen but the haze of light there wasn’t enough to effect the whole dome of sky above. 

It was nice, actually.  Optimus let himself sit back on the weight of his servos and stare up at the expanse.  He was able to sit in this quiet reverie until the first groan came from nearby.

Ah.  That would be Sentinel.  His prone form had been nearest when Optimus had gone to briefly investigate.  He’d also found track marks like someone had dragged themselves through the dust.  Its owner wasn’t visible but the markings themselves seemed very likely to have belonged to Blackarachnia.  As for Wasp, there was no sign of him in sight.  Optimus could only hope that didn’t mean he’d been ripped apart fatally.  Troublemaker or not, he’d meant everything he said to Sentinel about Wasp not being their concern let alone deserving to go into custody again.

Speaking of the other autobot, he'd been facedown when Optimus had been checking the scene.  He’d briefly entertained the thought of leaving him there, knowing Sentinel would hate having his face that near the organic ground, but ultimately shoved him over supine before going back to waiting. 

Waiting for either his systems to realign (unlikely, on their own) or for someone else to wake up. 

A part of him almost wished it’d be Blackarachnia if she'd still been around to break the silence first.  Instead, she’d evidently pulled herself together before either of them and crawled away to nurse her own wounds.  Which left him alone to be there when Sentinel got up and, presumably, started yelling at him for answers.  Answers that Optimus couldn’t give, but when would that ever stop the other prime from yelling?

As predicted, Sentinel shot upright, took a sharp inhale, and spun at him. 

Unlike his assumptions, there was no immediate yelling.  Or even speaking at a more reasonable volume.  Sentinel’s mouth opened a few times but nothing came out.  His optics were wide and their white pupils darted around to take in where they were.  Optimus cued his headlights on to give them both more room to see by. 

Instead of commenting on the explosion or Wasp or Blackarachnia, his first words were about their location.

“What happened to the city?”

Optimus blinked at him.

“What?” he asked.  Intelligent, he knew. 

“The city,” Sentinel repeated, this time slowly enunciating both words.  “The sad replica of a metal haven to escape from all the rest of this planet’s nature?”

Prowl rather thought its nature was the best aspect of Earth.  Prowl really would never have much common ground with Sentinel. 

“It should be- we should be able to see it from where we are.  Were.”  The blue prime frowned and looked around again.  “Where the frag are we?”

Right.  Well, good to see the explosion hadn’t shaken him too much if he remembered their last location enough to tell their current one was far from it.  Optimus could feel the ache in his helm worsen and lifted one servo to rub at at.  The contact didn’t really help.  He left it there anyways.

“I’m not sure,” he said honestly. 

Probably eager to get off of as much as the sand as he could, the other bot pushed up to his stabilizing servos.  Optimus could feel the grains in plating seams and vents and realized that was probably not a bad idea.  He certainly didn’t have the disgust for nature that Sentinel did, but getting dirt into his filters would be discomforting later and Ratchet wasn’t around to clean them out.

He wondered how Ratchet was right now.  How all of them were.  How this news would be broken to the group back at base and to Jazz where he was waiting in the ship of prisoners for a commander who was who knew where in the universe.  Multiverse.  Timeline.  Whatever it was. 

“It’s still this disgusting organic planet, clearly,” Sentinel added his clearly invaluable two-cents as he frowned down at the dirt like it had personally offended him.  Granted, with how easily he took offense, nothing had to try very hard to earn it. 

“Did you really think it wasn’t?” the blue bot continued, this time with a hint of his usual arrogance.  It’d been rather absent, now that he thought of it.  In his headlights, he could see the lines and shadows on Sentinel’s face.

If they were back on the version of Earth they’d been on, the prime would probably have gotten the jettwins to take him back to his ship without ever waiting for Optimus or Bumblebee to catch up.  And then he’d lock them all out.  Because Sentinel, of all people, didn’t understand how it could help to talk to people when desperately upset.

That chance was stolen now.  There was no ship to retreat back to, no doors that could be locked.  No privacy to hide in and fall apart. 

He almost turned the headlights off but at this point it’d be weirder to do so than to have never onlined them in the first place.

“No,” Optimus said slowly.  He was still rubbing his servo against the side of his head.  “By all intents, this is Earth still.  But if my systems are correct, then we’re a good couple days distant from Detroit.  These coordinates are in a different state altogether.” 

He pinched both sides of his forehead before dropping the servo.  

“My positioning systems seem to be malfunctioning.”

That seemed to bring Sentinel out of his reverie.  

“What?” he said, shouted, demanded, panicked, whatever you wanted to call it.  Optimus’s headache felt far from dissipating.  

The blue prime screwed his face up in intense concentration, undoubtedly to check his own coordinates.   “What the slag is this?”

Definitely panic, then.  

Which was fair enough, even if Optimus would rather the other not act so loudly demanding when panicking.  It didn’t help the universe calm down and cut them a break, so there was no reason for the attitude.  

“Nothing that Ratchet can’t calibrate for us,” he answered.  

There was laughter.  Very distinctly non-Sentinel laughter.  It came from further away than the blue mech was to him and its rasp left very little guesswork as to who it belonged to.  

The singular guess was very quickly confirmed as soon as the culprit started talking.

“Ratchet, or any of your useless new friends, does not appear to be here, now does he?” Blackarachnia’s voice commented.  

While he was instantly relieved to find out all three of them had survived, Optimus tensed in apprehension: if not for another fight, then for the arguing to come that would undoubtedly make this headache worse.  His servo lifted to his helm again.

If Sentinel had looked out of sorts before, he looked even worse now.  The mech jerked backwards from the voice and all the shadows on his face deepened.

Optimus glanced away from him to look out for wherever Blackarachnia was.  His lights were overexposing the area in front of him, but the desert’s darkness remained elsewhere.  Four red slits glowed in the direction of the tracks he’d found earlier.  Purple biolights were dimly illuminated somewhere above those narrowed optics.  Right, the helmet.  It’d been torn off before he’d caught up to where she and Sentinel had fought.  There’d been far too much going on to really register it at that time.  He’d seen it all, of course- seen the lines of exposed cranial circuitry, seen the organic flesh and nostrils, seen the sharp mandibles and horns- but there wasn’t time to exactly let it soak in. 

Not that there was that much to soak in anyways.  It was unlike anything he’d seen before, but so had humans been when they’d first landed. 

The optics dimmed as they looked aside before Blackarachnia seemingly made a decision to walk closer.  She didn’t get close enough to really make out with their current light source, but it had to mean something that she’d came back instead of leaving for good.  Maybe it was as simple as her realizing what he had about their uncertain status quo.  There was a safety in numbers in a completely unknown situation, even if those numbers consisted of individuals without the best feelings held towards each other.  In the times they’d crossed paths, Blackarachnia had seemed pragmatic enough though.  Even when matters were personal, she could set them aside to get herself out of a bad situation.  After that was free game but that could be worried about later. 

Sentinel seemed less enthused that she’d stuck around, even if she’d stopped quite a distance away.

“Don’t come near!  I’m warning you!” he cried out while trying (and failing) to energize his signature sword and shield.  Between her energy draining attack earlier, the explosion, and the who-knew-how-long-distance teleportation, there wasn’t enough in him to keep either device stable.  They flickered in the air translucently before failing. 

Optimus had tried to shift his weight subtly until his lights' beams came to the edge of where Blackarachnia was standing.  She hadn’t moved or told him off for it, so he supposed it had been subtle enough.  With the better view, he could see her sneering, black lip pulled up to bare fangs. 

“You think I want anywhere near you either?  Frag off,” she snarled.  Then her optics shifted his way and he thought they may have widened ever slightly from their angry slits. 

“This is your fault, you know,” the femme said.  It felt darkly casual.  He could hear far more blame behind it than just the current situation’s.  And it was still with more ease than she addressed Sentinel.  Wrong, how very wrong.  “Is it too much to imagine you have a plan to get yourself out of here?”

“And what, leave her?  And Wasp?” Sentinel turned on Optimus to say.  “It’s a ploy.  We can't leave them to get away.”

Blackarachnia’s laugh had no humor in it.  It carried on the desert wind like shards of glass. 

“Yes, this seems all very planned, doesn’t it?  I really wanted to be somewhere with no Allspark, no lab, no connections.  You’re as sharp as ever, Sentinel!”

“Don’t say my name!” the other prime snapped.

“Because what, I don’t deserve to?” she sneered.  “Maybe I could’ve bought that about my own, but you think awfully highly of yourself for someone who can’t even look his old friend Elita-1 in the eye.”

There was years’ worth of pain in between it.  Between them all.  But for the moment, he almost felt detached to it.  It didn’t stab his spark the way it normally would.  He was still in emergency action mode.  When there came time to relax and defrag and know he was in a safe location, then it could hurt. 

It would. 

But later.

“Hey.”  Optimus spoke, tone clipped, over them both.  Surprisingly, they fell quiet.  “Does it really seem like a good time for this?  We don’t even know where we are.”

“We're on Earth, stupid,” Sentinel ‘answered’ him.  

“Oh, brilliant deduction!  Very helpful!” Blackarachnia drawled, clapping sarcastically.  

“Hey!” Optimus cut over them both again.  Again, they deferred to it.  Probably would for as long as they did the last time.  Sentinel alone was always going to talk over him and Blackarachnia…

Well, in any case, he had a feeling he was trapped with what Sari would refer to as a peanut gallery.  

Wonderful.

“Let’s work out where we are.  Fighting can come after.”

And it would, of course.  Even without Sentinel in the mix, Blackarachnia had always ended their encounters with a quick attack and departure.  No matter what he told her or what he offered or if he’d helped her out of danger from the likes of Meltdown, she’d leave without accepting apology or hope.

With Sentinel in the mix?  It seemed very unlikely there wouldn’t be a fight at some point. 

But he hadn’t left either of them behind.  That much counted for something no matter how inevitable the fighting was. 

“You never answered.  If you have a plan or not,” she turned back to him, still bristling.  Sentinel likewise had plating flared as he looked out at the horizon instead of either of them.

It was his idea to not leave her behind (even if it had backfired into being taken with her rather than getting her out).  He wished he had more of an idea what to do now. 

It was rare enough to be looked at for directions from either of these two.  He’d gotten more accustomed to it with his team and the people of Detroit but it still took him by surprise when anyone outside of that circle on Earth offered him that sort of authority.

Well, he may not have a plan now but so long as they didn’t devolve into fighting and put some thought into this, they could probably gather enough information for a direction to appear. 

He let his servo drop.  It clanged at his side, another sound loud in the empty desert. 

“No,” he answered.  “We need to scout and then we can figure out where we can go from here to get home.  Get all of us home.”  Blackarachnia scoffed and looked to the side.  Sentinel was still apparently too ragged from everything to protest.  Optimus tried to push back the guilt he felt at having either be in this situation.  He could have tried to warn Sentinel off of pursuing the dinobot better, he could have kept him from going, could have, should have, done something more, his fault- …not the time.  “First, we need to find out where we really are.”

Neither protested that idea because this time neither got the chance. 

An unknown voice cut over them at the same time as the noise of a blaster priming.  That was…less than reassuring. 

“I can answer that.”

Optimus tried to keep himself nonthreatening as he turned around.  He could see Sentinel in his periphery trying once again to activate his weapon as he turned.  Blackarachnia blended far better than either of them in the darkness and, facing around, he couldn’t see her at all.  He wondered if she’d sneak away.  It seemed quite likely, considering all the other run-ins.

The person who’d snuck up on them all during their spatting held their rectangular blaster point at them with the other arm underneath bracing it.  There was something practiced and professional about the pose.  Something that reminded him of Ratchet and the decepticons they fought on Earth.  

Someone with experience, then.  Not like him and Sentinel and their textbook academy movesets that he’d only started to shake up in the last months on earth. 

The cybertronian- someone that seemed to be between him and Blackarachnia in size- kept the stance steady and spoke with the exact same steadiness.  The tone was dry but blue and pink optics were narrowed enough to let them know this was no casual game.  Optimus had the brief, stupidly out of place feeling that he was in the role of the likes of Angry Archer or Nanosec after the criminals were caught by his team in Detroit.  Or like he'd been ordered to a dressing down and had the full helplessness of knowing it was unavoidable.  There was no badge on the new cybertronian but the size was far from a warbuild and that suggested autobot; that didn’t really leave him all the more reassured about getting caught like this.  Getting an aforementioned dressing down was never pleasant.

“You’re in Nevada,” the cybertronian holding them at gunpoint continued.  “And it’s not supposed to be the party location it seems to be these days.  I can’t wait to hear the explanation for this one.”

Chapter Text

Arcee was, officially, a scout.

She hadn’t had a lot of chances to live up to that livelihood recently (no more than all the team did), but she still was one.

She and Bee were experienced scouts by profession, actually.  Even if Team Prime used soldiers more than spies, they remained the go-to when their team needed someone to scout ahead for intel on suspicious activity.  Sure, everyone- even Bulkhead, who wasn’t always the most dexterous to say the least- had to do the job.  They were all sent to different locations to investigate and it’d depend on what they found whether the team got called in or not.  But in the rarer incidents when the whole team knew something was going on and were on standby already, it’d be one of those two options who were sent to scout out ahead.  

When it came to nights, Arcee tended to be that one. 

Bee, for all his skills, still happened to be very bright yellow.

Ratchet had picked up the odd readings at around 2:20 am in PDT (the medic used to complain about the very idea of time zones instead of universal cybertronian time but having the kids around had seen to him defaulting to it without seeming to notice he’d done so) (Ratchet happened to be like that; the kids had seen him adjusting in a lot of regards he’d loudly complained about before their presence normalized all things human for him) (wow none of this mattered- com’n Arcee, you’re supposed to be one of the ones good at focusing.  Who’ve you become, Cliff?).  The point was, Ratchet had picked up the signals in the middle of what the kids would call night even though it was also called morning.  It wouldn’t be human caused, most likely.  Not when most would be asleep.  The ones that weren’t and were outdoors at this time could, granted, be causing trouble.  But it was pretty doubtful humans would end up being the cause of these readings.  

It was an exposed energon reading very, very close by.  Or...similar to one, at any rate.  But exposed energon wouldn’t lose its readings so fast.  This did.  It had flared and faded in under a minute.  Ratchet said it had almost acted like a spacebridge’s readings rather than an energon exposure or explosion.

Alongside that was a different concern.  There were life signs connected to an old autobot database when the sigils used to keep trackers inside them.  It’d had its uses but decepticons had hacked the frequencies too many times and used them to either set traps or find lone bots.  Ratchet could trace the team’s life signs, but they’d all had his own homemade program for it and any others had been scrapped as soon as they’d gotten to Earth (if they hadn’t been already).  It was a limited thing, but it kept them alive.  

These signals were open like bleeding wounds.  If the cons still looked on old autobot frequencies, they’d see these.  And this was far too close to base for them to want any con attention brought over.  

Between the two phenomena, Ratchet and Optimus had been quick to put the team on alert.  They’d bridged Arcee in from the Darby’s garage and the other two were on comms waiting to find out if they needed to head in too.  For now, it was just her.  Just her against two ‘autobot’ life signs that had exploded into being with energon-like readings before they vanished inexplicably.  

Arcee bridged a good distance away in the hopes that it would be enough for the light of the groundbridge to keep on the down low.  From there, she’d done what any scout would: gotten close and observed.  

By the time she’d gotten to the location of the readings, it was clear someone else was shuffling around.  Arcee had lowered and crept closer more carefully.  

She wasn’t a human.  Cybertronians had better ‘night vision’ (the humans called it) than those organics.  It was still plenty affected by lighting.  Arcee saw a mech sitting up near lumps that were probably a second mech, but the colors and fine details were pretty muted.  

She waited.  

The seated mech would shift around where he sat every once in a while, head staring upright or sometimes glancing over in Jasper’s direction, but otherwise not doing anything.  Still, he was alert.  Too alert for her to get up close and poke at the unconscious one no matter how she wanted to.  It’d have made it easier to get info if both were offline.

Then the other had got up and they’d both started talking and that was where she started getting information.  Pretty interesting information, though it left her far more confused than when she’d started.  She’d figured this was an instance of a bridge gone wrong, or someone’s energon going volatile and the explosion damaging their masking systems enough to let their signatures come up on scans.  She’d figured these were either autobots or cons trying to set a trap that had just landed down new to Earth.  Her observations didn’t really imply that.

It’d all been different, that’s for sure.  Different with a capital D.  Arcee wasn’t about to say she’d seen it all, because somehow the world always managed to toss a new surprise at them, but with that said… with that said, this was different than expected.

Not that Arcee really knew what was expected.  

Not anymore.

This group (there was a third now that had joined in) didn’t act new to Earth.  They knew the name of the planet.  They knew they were on it, claimed to have positioning systems set to Earth.  But they acted like they weren’t on Earth at the same time.

Team Prime saw a lot of scrap.  An army of zombies from the dead of Cybertron flying towards a spacebridge?  Pit, zombies in the first place?  The blood of Unicron?  Unicron being confirmed as a real entity from the entire incident?  

And there was always the more mundane.  Scraplets in the arctic.  Starscream trying to melt the icecaps.  That one time Optimus got himself defeated by a vehicon with a log.  Things happened.  Scrap happened.  Arcee wasn’t really going to bat an eye anymore- human expression.  Heh.  See, she’d even adopted expressions- and a teenager while she was at it- that didn’t belong to her.  Team Prime wasn’t like any other squad she’d ever been with.

So she tried to keep a clear and even head while she eavesdropped and relayed her information back to base.  They were all very curious.  Although the two that weren’t actually at base or technically involved here were the most curious.  

<Can you ID them at all?> Ratchet pressed.

Shifting on the dirt, she tried to get a good look at the strangers.  Then, Arcee sent pictures of the two she could easily see.  Which mainly amounted to the blue one because the mech with his lights on was too overexposed by said lights to get the greatest quality picture of.

<One’s got an Elite Guard brand on him.  I can’t get a good look at the one in the back at this distance.  The two I can see are autobots.  Or wearing the brands anyways.>

They hadn’t had connections with any of the Elite Guard in vorns.  Optimus would be excited to have acquaintances of his old mentor Alpha Trion here.  

<They may just be autobots responding to the old call here> Ratchet started.

Her mouth curled down.

<I’d say so too, but they’re acting like they hadn’t planned to be here.>

Arcee organized her recent memory files into a transcript and sent it over.

<See what I mean?>

The medic’s hum carried over comms.

<They’re too close to base to leave unattended> she started up again.  <And if they are bots, we can’t just leave ‘em for the cons to snatch up.  If they were cons, we couldn’t let that happen either.  No need to let Megatron’s army get even bigger.>

<Yeah> Bulkhead threw in.  He was still on curbside duty despite wanting to be bridged over when Arcee was.  Well, if things went downhill, he and Bee both could get pulled from the curb.  Arcee supposed they hoped it wouldn’t come to that.  <It’s bad enough they got Breakdown and his hack doctor back.>

<It’s bad enough they got Megatron back> Arcee retorted.  <But back to the point here? I’ve got sand in my wiring and I’d like to find out what I’m supposed to be doing next.>

Ratchet has started suggesting further observation, but Optimus weighed in at that point.

<Approach, but remain cautious.  We are prepared to back you up.>

Ah good, permission to go right ahead and ask these people what the frag they were doing.  

And, with any luck, Bulkhead wouldn’t get his excuse to get off Miko’s roadway for a late night adventure.

What was she saying? They were Team Prime.  They never had that kind of luck.

“How long have you been there?” Optimus broke the silence first.  Yes, it may have been rude to match this stranger’s answer to their location with a question of his own.  But to be fair?  Courtesy and manners were his greatest concern right now.

The bot didn’t shift the position of their weapon at all.

“Long enough.  Do me a favor and let me do the questioning; who are you?” the- she?-the identity carried through fields under the noise of vocal speech- she asked.  

“We’re…” he hesitated.  For the moment, Sentinel did so with him.  The encounter with Blackarachnia had really thrown him and, when endangered, he defaulted to Optimus’s lead. 

(Then most likely took the credit later if there’d been any successes)

that was needless, enough

Well, it’d be pretty pretty obvious anyway.  Both of them had their autobrands in sight.  His could’ve blended with the paint of his shoulder in this lighting, but Sentinel’s stuck out clearly.  

“Autobots.”  Optimus hoped this wasn’t about to bite them all.  “We’re autobots.”

“Like you,” Sentinel scoffed as he pointed at the stranger as though she wasn’t pointing a weapon at them in return.  Stress.  He was still stressed.  The reveal on Dinobot Island had taken a lot out of him.  Optimus could excuse the behavior.  

“What?” the stranger asked.  It sounded genuinely surprised.  

“You’re no warframe, so what else are you going to be?” the blue prime elaborated, crossing his arms and trying to posture.  It didn’t really work with the energy level he currently had.  “So, do me a favor and get your piston out of your servos like a useful soldier because we need the nearest station to contact Ultra Magnus on Cybertron.”

Magnus was injured, wasn't he?  It was stress.  Slips happened.  Besides, of more concern, that was one way to approach it that he'd just gone right for.  

Optimus held himself still.  

If this was an autobot, then she’d understand.  A member of the Elite Guard needed to report to superiors and quite often they were primes: thus, the chain of command went up to the magnus.  Yes, Sentinel was abrasive about the power he held, but they'd all gone through the academy.  They were all used to abrasive. 

If this wasn’t an autobot…

“What? ” the bot asked again, this time even more flatly.  

Sentinel was back to looking at Optimus.  

Behind them, he thought he could hear Blackarachnia chuckling quietly.  At least she hadn’t left yet, he reminded himself.  

He decided his best option was changing directions completely.  

“Who are you?” 

Ice blue optics looked back his way.  They were narrowed enough to keep much of the pink specks out of sight.  Her head tilted incrementally like she was taking a comm.

“...Arcee,” she finally said.

Arcee.  Like the agent that Ratchet had spoken of after Optimus had gotten him to talk in the aftermath of Lockdown’s first visit.  He’d kept a lot of details vague at that time- like Omega Supreme, in hindsight- but the veteran had slipped her name.  

Except by all accounts, that agent was hospitalized, on the homeworld, and looked quite different.  

An amnesiac might ask the sort of questions this bot was asking them and express the same confusion over rank and duty, but surely Arcee wasn’t on Earth and, in fact, comfortable with Earth enough to know exactly where she was on the planet.  Besides, Optimus had never seen internal weapons that came in that model.  It was similar to Bumblebee’s stingers, but he could bet these weren’t as safety locked as those.  He didn’t feel like finding out.  

“You said we were in- Nevada?” Optimus broke the silence again.  He put on his most diplomatic tone.  It was one he’d gotten more used to after all the time on Earth.  “Maybe you can help us?”

“Maybe you can tell me who you are,” Arcee said immediately.  “You’ve got mine so let’s hear names from you, then.  I’ve sat here long enough to pick two of them up but I don’t know yours-“ she nodded at Optimus “-yet.”

Sentinel bristled up.

“We don’t owe you anything.  Don’t say a word, you,” he added to the other prime before going back to posturing.  “Do you know who you’re talking to? I am a comm-“

“You're Sentinel.”  Her interruption turned the desert back into instant silence.  Optimus wanted to sigh.  Well, she had warned that she’d been eavesdropping and had heard their designations already.  But he was glad for the interruption.  Trying to flaunt being Elite Guard to a stranger didn’t feel entirely wise and that had been what Sentinel had intended to do.  For all they knew, this bot was hostile to autobots- let alone the Elite Guard.  She hadn’t exactly expressed her loyalties yet, even though they’d stated theirs.  Ratchet said Arcee was an autobot but…Again, something didn’t add up. 

As people tended to, she'd gone right ahead heedless of pausing for his thoughts.  “And you said you were Elita-1, so who-“

Before she could finish asking Optimus his name (again), both the other two had spoken over her and each other.

“Don’t assume-“

“Do not call her-”

“-oh, you shut up, this isn’t about you-”

“Enough!” Optimus cut them off.  

Arcee was looking beyond him, semi-discreetly but not subtly enough to keep him from knowing she was trying to catch a look at the still-hiding cybertronian.  

“Sorry.  I’m sorry.”  He took a deep vent.  “We’re confused here,” he told the bot holding them at gunpoint, servos out in casual supplication.  Treat her comfortably.  Act like you’re not a threat, act like you shouldn’t even be read as a threat.  Sentinel didn’t have the energy to summon his weapons and Optimus was exhausted.  Blackarachnia wasn’t all that visible, but he’d still seen she was injured.  They couldn't afford a fight.  “We don’t want trouble.  We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Her attention moved away from the two bristled up and, when it returned to him, her own posture lost some of its visible tension.  The gun’s point dipped slightly like she wasn’t considering using it.  

“You tripped a lot of alarms.  I’m just trying to figure out why as well.”

There was a dry edge to her voice that almost let Optimus feel more comfortable.  It sounded a bit like Ratchet.  Abrasive, but word meanings being genuine despite the sarcastic tone.  

“Tell you what.  I’ll get some friends here.  Even us out.  And then we can all decide what goes on from there,” Arcee spoke up again.  The weapon was dipping even further.  “You all group up.  I want eyes on you all.”

Earth term.  Interesting.  Optimus took note.

Sentinel, meanwhile, didn't care to take note of the slip and its implications.  He was busy looking at her and then behind them and back in alarm. 

“No,” he said (Optimus internally shook his head; so much for placating the strangers holding power in the situation).  “I’m not standing near that freak.”

“Here we are again!” the individual in question said.  Optimus pleaded silently for both to stop.  He wished they hadn’t crossed paths.  He wished he’d done better in keeping Sentinel away from her island.  He could've done more.

“What do you mean?” Arcee lifted a brow high.  It went ignored.  

“Besides, she’s not an autobot,” Sentinel growled.  “Even if you’re out of line or just too new to understand how the chain of command works, you still aren’t about to spill secrets to her.  Are you?”  

Arcee, however, still had no answer.  The elevated brow had yet to even drop.  

“Confidentiality, slag it.  First you-” the blue prime directed to Optimus, “-now others, does no one get it?  No wonder we’ve had a spy running loose on Cybertron!  You’re letting p-people like her run around near us!”  

He cast another disgusted look back into the darkness.  

“Oh, shut up,” Blackarachnia growled.  It came consecutive to her arm lifting and a web springing from somewhere under her servo into the air.  The pink translucent substance hit him in the face.  Deja vu, Sari called it.  Optimus was back in the cave again.  Back in the cave, the lab, after finding out his best effort to race over still wasn’t enough to get there in time before Sentinel and their old friend crossed paths.  She’d slammed the stuff on his face then, too, and focused only on explaining her plan regarding Wasp to Optimus.  

He was the one to blame.  He was the one she had blamed all the time before then.  It hadn’t spared Sentinel from her ire and attacks.  

But he had to stay present here.  Had to keep the ire and tension around them all from going anywhere.  This wasn’t the time.  

(he wished there never was a time for it)

So he looked away from where Sentinel was shouting behind the organic bindings and stared at the self proclaimed Arcee.  

The gun was up again, he noted nervously.  It wasn’t held with nearly the professionalism as before, however.  It hovered there- not quite shaking, but not stable.  Her optics had widened to full orbs, focused in total on the web covering the prime's mouth. 

Maybe she hadn’t seen techno-organic material before?  It could be jarring.

(just ask Sentinel, his brain piped up hysterically)

Something about the gaze reminded him of Ratchet.  Optimus didn’t really know what and it wasn’t the time to think too hard about it now.  But that was how he read it.  And if Ratchet was wearing an expression like that, he'd be trying to deescalate things for the team medic.

By now, Sentinel had ripped the web off easily this time as compared to in the lab.  Likely a benefit of not having nearly all strength sapped as he had then.

“Would you stop getting your freaky organic stuff near me?” he demanded, but it came an octave higher than the previous arrogant demands had.

Even in this darkness, Optimus could see the glint of her teeth and the crescenting of all four optics when Blackarachnia answered in a sneering smile.  

“Um-” he tried to start lightly.  Draw attention away from them.  Especially away from the organic web, when it seemed to affect Arcee so badly.  They didn’t need her to start combat.  Even outnumbering her, none of them were at full strength, all were dinged up from the transwarp explosion, and there was no saying what this stranger of a cybertronian was capable of.  “You wanted- let’s finish introductions.  Arcee- this is Sentinel and Blackarachnia,” he nodded absently to both and ignored the hiss coming from the dark behind him at giving away her name.  “And I’m Optimus.”  

For now, he’d exclude the prime title and see how hostile- or loyal- this stranger on a strange Earth was.  What mattered was getting her hostility away from Blackarachnia (and Sentinel, though she seemed far more concerned by whoever had produced the webbing compared to who fell victim to it).  

Besides.  Saying his name couldn’t get any worse reactions than the rest of this slagshow had produced so far.  

Could it?

Chapter Text

The bot didn’t react as he’d expected.

He expected to get about the same bland reaction to his name as Arcee seemed to have about the other two’s. He did not expect to get what looked like recognition and then perhaps anger. It was tamped down on quickly.

“That’s real cute,” she smirked.  “Lucky of me, too, to have met Optimus Prime right in the flesh.”

Alright, so there was going to be an issue over his...name. He hadn’t given the title. He hadn’t given her the title. Something was wrong.

(He just had to have tempted fate, a voice that sounded like Sari's ran through his thoughts)

“Flesh? Ew. Why would that be lucky?” Sentinel muttered.

Optimus shifted and part of his headlights landed on the blue mech who was asking what was undoubtedly the most unimportant question. It had, however, sent Arcee back into looking more confused rather than hostile.

“It’s an expression,” he said to the other prime (prime...how had she known he was a prime?). “Earth expression. If we’re going to be on Earth a while, you might want to pick up on some.”

Sentinel, apparently, found that an upsetting thing to hear.

“We won’t be here a while!” he shouted, jabbing a digit back at their third in the darkness. “We’ll find a way to undo what she did.”

Blackarachnia’s response was immediate. “Again, I never asked for either of you to follow.”

There was a grinding, sputtering sound, like the cough of an engine mixed with a very different kind of cough that happened to humans. Optimus turned back on Arcee, the culprit responsible for the strange synthetic noise. She was still staring at him alone.

“Fun as this all is,” she started (and he wondered if it really was amusing for others or if their tiring fighting had her feeling one patient step away from shooting them just to get peace and quiet). “-would you mind telling me your real name?”

“I...I did,” he said in confusion.

“Uhuh.” Arcee sounded unimpressed. “I've met a few other afts in the past that figured I fall for that.  Some of them had even convinced some others before their fun little attention seeking lie broke down.  Care to try again?”

“No, actually,” Optimus found himself saying. Time with his team really had rubbed off on him. Maybe in a way that could be considered a bad influence. Ratchet would tell any of that opinion that they could frag themselves.

(so yes, maybe picking up things from Ratchet would count as bad influence)

His arms had crossed to belay what confidence he had in this one thing. Sure, you could find a dozen other reasons to make him second guess himself, but his own name?

(something about that rubbed him the wrong way)

(something about how they’d seemed too familiar with it, but-)

It wasn't one of them.

Her optics cycled down into a very suspicious glare. She didn’t reply again this time. He couldn’t help but feel he’d failed a test.  Wouldn't that be familiar.

Maybe this Arcee was a decepticon. Actually, now that he thought of it, it made a sort of sense. She hadn’t given her allegiance, she changed the subject whenever it lay on her, she had kept them at gunpoint all this while- yes, Megatron insisted on calling him ‘autobot’, but he very likely knew the names of all the autobots in Detroit. His avoidance of them was a matter of disrespect, but his intel...His intel always seemed uncomfortably good. Though Optimus supposed the amount of screen coverage they got in the city gave away enough and it couldn’t exactly be helped

In any case, perhaps Megatron had spread their names around. Maybe people like Lockdown had a list of people to hunt and they were on it. Maybe Arcee knew.

Except…

Except that Ratchet wasn’t here, their Detroit wasn’t here, Sumdac was a different person, the name Arcee meant a different person- Earth was a different Earth.

So how would his- their- Megatron be here? It wouldn’t make sense.

She ignored his internal debate and went to tilt her head away.  Optimus could recognize the way she talked low and to the side- comms.  She was calling someone.  Or answering.

And whoever these people were, they knew more about him than he knew on them.  He hadn’t called himself a prime.

It couldn’t have just been a coincidence.

Arcee finished up her call and leveled them all a stare again.

There was a beat. Sari or Sumdac or Fanzone would’ve spent it taking a deep breath. Cybertronians, predictably, wouldn’t, but Optimus couldn’t help but feel it was the same style of pausing.

Then her glare lost some of its tension and she mimicked his earlier action to cross her own arms.

“Heh,” Arcee smirked. “Well, look, I happen to know Optimus Prime. Pretty well, really. So you can stop bullshitting me.”

He could have reeled back.

No wonder she would recognize the name, then. No wonder she would be skeptical.

He thought of the pictures of ‘Isaac Sumdac’ found on human websites called things like ‘wikipedia’ and ‘linkedin’. He remembered how they were the man but not the man- he lacked the white strip in his hair, he lacked a daughter, he looked younger but less distinct, like a human that could end up falling unnoticed in a crowd of other humans.

He thought of the name ‘Arcee’ and how it spoke of two now.

He felt like there was no surface beneath his stabilizing servos as he realized that Sumdac and Arcee would never be the only doppelgangers.

Optimus Prime existed outside of just him now.

The conversation continued along with no care for if he was reeling and needed time to think.

“Stop doing what to you?” Sentinel once again responded first and once again it was to the least important part of the conversation.

“Another expression,” he answered quickly and had to bite down a brief moment of spite suggesting he add ‘look it up’. It was probably a bit far to give Sentinel a breakdown over a discovery of organic waste disposal. Some things about humans were hard to handle.

He still didn’t think he had moved on past what Sari told them about the origin of children.

Of far greater importance than the way most human children (Sari being a lucky exception, really) were propagated, however, was the implications in Arcee’s actual statement.

It was time for her to finally give a little info on herself here.

“If...you work with an Optimus Prime,” he tried not to feel completely weird saying it, “-then...you are an autobot?”

Arcee gave a little sigh that left her stiff posture deflating just slightly.

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “Yeah, I work for him; yeah, I’m an autobot.”

Alright. Well. There were even more implications with that one to unpack. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one to think so considering Sentinel was squeaking disbelievingly.

“Work for?  Him?” This time, the blue prime’s digits were jabbing at Optimus.

He gave a sigh just like Arcee’s.

“Not me, clearly.  But…”

But some other me. Some other Optimus.

And maybe there was some other Sentinel and Elita and how would him and Blackarachnia feel about the concept of meeting them? Probably as weird as Optimus felt now. Luckily for them, they didn’t have to consider it right now.

“Imagine that,” Blackarachnia drawled.  “Somewhere out there, you actually managed to make it big.”

It felt like a punch because it always would. But it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. The comment would’ve felt far more cutting just a year before. He’d never been a glory seeker despite what Sentinel said about him again and again. His grief over being stripped of the possibilities of actually making it somewhere in the Elite Guard came less from the lost chance at power and more the why he’d lost it- the friend he’d left behind to die, who’d ended up a spiteful, selfhating survivor who made a point to tell him her existence was his fault, the other friend he’d lost though still alive, the knowledge that he was the senior cadet, he could have stopped them, he could have stopped the illicit trip-

Except too much had changed in the last year. He was still responsible for his parts in the events, but his team, the humans, the responsibility to stop the decepticons, they’d all given him the understanding that he was doing his part now in helping so many more.

And that was far better than glory would’ve been. Cybertron probably didn’t know he was doing a thing on Earth to keep Megatron away from them and it didn’t matter to Optimus.

(Even if, sometimes, he wished Sentinel would at least recognize it if just to shut him up about how Optimus wasn’t able to handle a thing)

“Let’s concentrate here,” he waved off both their comments. “Arcee. You probably will need harder proof before believing me, but I think...I think we’re not meant to be here. There was a transwarp accident. I think this is the wrong universe.”

She looked grim, but unsurprised.

“That was kind of the guess from the start here. You know too much about Earth to have never gone to Earth before, but you act like this Earth is the wrong place. My team’s on the up and up,” she gave the slightest smile. “Your name pretty much seals it. So long as you aren’t just an idiot from deep space trying to fool people into thinking you’re the autobot leader.”

The what .

Sentinel seemed about as caught on that as he was. In fact, Sentinel looked ready to faint over it so maybe he was more caught on it.

Optimus would be in that boat later once this all became more real to him. Which would probably need to wait for after a recharge. He just wanted to go back to base. He just wanted his team.

“I’m not. I swear,” he promised. “I wouldn’t pretend to be anything more than I am.”

Nobody would believe it.  Not when the very way he carried himself let them know he was a washed up drop out no good.

“Where- where we’re from, I’m not- I’m just a commander.”

“It’d be a joke, making him Magnus,” Sentinel ‘supported’ him. Thank you, Sentinel.

Once again, Arcee’s brows furrowed. He wondered if maybe there was no Ultra Magnus here. Or maybe he had died and that would be why his- why whoever had his name here- seemingly took the role.

“Doesn’t matter right now what you were in wherever you came from,” she finally said. “What really matters is that we’re all out in the open near where weird energy signals went off earlier and this is a dangerous place to be. Some of my team is going to come through soon. We’ll take you with us. With precautions, but with your story checking out, there’s not a lot of reason to treat some weird autobots as enemies.”

That was...good. He guessed. Or not great. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be herded into some new unknown location while outnumbered.

Not that the three of them would have a chance or choice.

They’d figure out where to go from there after getting some privacy (if they could).

“Then you trust us?” he asked.

“We can believe you.  Probably.  Weirder things have happened,” Arcee shrugged.

Now that was kind of a surprise.

“Really?” he added.

“No,” Arcee said. “Anyway, line up before the others get here, will you? We'll talk about the details of your stories and ours later.”

He was almost ready to think the hardest part was covered before that command really registered.

It’d mean they’d all need to group up. It’d mean they’d all be illuminated by his and Arcee’s lights.

It’d mean that the one of them who’d rather purposefully stayed hidden this whole time wouldn’t get to stay that way.

Optimus wondered nervously which Arcee, self professed autobot soldier, would be more likely to panic over: the techno-organic aspects of Blackarachnia or the fact that she had the decepticon brand in plain sight.

Chapter Text

Having just come to the realization that putting Blackarachnia in any form of illumination was going to cause who knew what conflict with the alien autobot here, Optimus instinctively did the very wise panicked thing of turning- headlights of course included- to look at the object of his worries.  

He immediately cursed himself and stopped pivoting, but the damage had been done.

It was just enough light to shift over Blackarachnia’s frame.  The techno-organic grimaced and shifted her optics out of the direct glare.  Part of Optimus wondered if she was also trying to limit the amount of her face seen.  She’d not been very willing to part with her helmet before he’d barged into the cavern to find her on top of Sentinel and it’d been left behind in the ensuing emergency.  He’d been willing to bet that it hadn’t been taken off by choice.  Not unless her goal had been to shock Sentinel to death or something.  With as cynical as she’d become over the years, there was no way she expected anything except repulsion from him at the reveal.  Baring flesh and revealing what was kept private could have been a sign of trust or a plea for trust at any rate, but she wouldn’t have expected it to work.  And Blackarachnia didn’t seem the type to do something sentimental if she didn’t think she could get the upper servo on it all.

No, in all of their run-ins and whatever sentiments were dug up therein, he could say with confidence that she did not seem the type at all.

Letting out first a hiss and then a sigh, Blackarachnia stiffened taller and prowled right for them.  It seemed she felt the damage had been done by the light and she would move to hostile intimidation instead of staying shadowed now.  

Which was...Not the plan he would want her to enact.  

As much as he did not want to have to fight an autobot (well, generally.  There were a few he couldn’t deny wanting to deck occasionally), they were in a completely new dimension here.  He wouldn’t let a stranger shoot at one of the few people he had here that he knew from his world.

And if Blackarachnia decided acting aggressive was her best course of action (which it wasn’t), then he had a feeling Arcee would respond in kind (and then he’d have to too).

So Optimus shifted in an attempt to get between the two.

“Wait-” he tried to preempt, lifting his servos at the blue autobot. 

Blackarachnia stopped right behind him where he’d stepped in her way.  There was an unhappy hiss.  He didn’t look back at its origin.

Arcee’s gun was up again. Over what, he didn’t know yet. The decepticon problem would be both trickier to handle and easier depending on how organiophobic this new autobot was. When he and his team had awakened on Earth, they’d found the decepticon presence there far more disturbing than the fact the aliens were organic. But he and his team had been away from Cybertron for ages. Rejects cast off in a job no one would come check them on or care if they returned from. When Sentinel had first arrived on Earth as a part of Magnus’s team, they’d...stayed civil towards the humans from the start. Civil being that they weren’t hostile, even if they were disrespectful. They’d worried more about staying quarantined from organics than they had the idea of living decepticons.  That'd been the clash of priorities. 

And Arcee seemed a lot more trigger-happy than someone as professionally high ranked like Ultra Magnus.

Alright. So it’d probably be the organic bit. She’d reacted uneasily to the sight of Blackarachnia’s webs earlier. How much more exponentially uneasy would she be seeing the rest?

On the bright side, came a part of his mind he really didn’t need to hear, -it can’t be much worse than when Sentinel saw her.

“Wait,” he repeated while the techno-organic scowled audibly behind him, “I don’t know what laws you have on organics here but-”

Blackarachnia shoved past him. Her claws left paint scratched away on his shoulder and chest where she’d pushed.  The marks stung in more way than one.

“I don’t need you to protect me, Optimus,” she spat and marched right up to Arcee.

If this wasn’t a wire's breadth away from going wrong, he might have found time to feel hurt over that. Or at least sigh over it. For all that Blackarachnia was a pragmatist, she hated acknowledging that he was her ally even when she didn’t want him to be. He didn’t have to help her with her schemes to be counted as such. The alliance was more...stopping her plans when they were hurting others and then stopping others from hurting her when they realized their own alliance with her was going to end in their loss when she won. He’d helped with Meltdown. He’d wished he could have helped far earlier instead of writing her off for dead.

Hm. Maybe he’d had time right now to hurt over it after all.

“What’s the problem?” Blackarachnia was smiling sickly sweet up at Arcee’s face. No shots had been fired yet, not matter how narrowed the blue bot’s optics had gotten. She was restraining herself. Hopefully, Blackarachnia would recognize that and not push her over the edge of restraint. Getting any more into her face would probably do it. A shame that Blackarachnia’s style very much was getting into someone’s face. Either to snarl better at them or to say sweet things like “hold me closer” and it didn’t matter which because she’d be stabbing you with her energy drainers a minute later either way.

Said instruments- the tall legs normally pointing up over her shoulders- didn’t seem quite right. There were flecks of energon on her back now that Optimus could actually see from that angle. Both of those two pointed legs were missing and their stumps sparked.

If she couldn’t activate her power, why would she get so close? He put it down as force of habit.

Arcee, to her credit, didn’t shoot. She did use one of her active guns to poke at the purple brand on the shorter cybertronian’s collaring though.

“So, Optimus- wanna explain this one away?” the blue bot said.

Blackarachnia didn’t seem to appreciate being ignored. She especially did not appear to appreciate being ignored for the sake of the mech she’d just told to stand back from this fight a moment earlier.

The remains of her weaponized legs flared out a few inches. It did little good, considering the weapon part of them themselves was not present.

“If you have something to say, say it to me-” she hissed. “It won’t be anything new.”

She jabbed a claw at Arcee’s chest.  Blue paint scratched aside.

“You think I haven’t heard it all before?  I’m disgusting, sure, and I’ll gut you-“

“You’re what?” Arcee’s brow furrowed.

Blackarachnia ignored the confused interruption. She’d leaned back to throw her servos in the air and for now Arcee seemed so distracted she didn’t jump (or shoot) at the sudden motion.

“I didn’t pick to live this way.  How is that always so hard to understand?”

The autobot paused. Optimus wondered if he should try to interject again. He didn’t think Blackarachnia would appreciate it though. If she wanted to work this out alone, he’d respect that until it was too dangerous for the three of them to do so.

Arcee looked down at the other again, this time more carefully taking in every detail visible in the lighting rather than focusing only on the decepticon symbol. When she spoke again, it was hesitantly.

“Are you one of…Shockwave’s?” the bot asked.

Blackarachnia blinked.

“What?”

“Shockwave’s.” Arcee continued. “I’ve seen his labs.  And I had a friend once, Shadowstriker, she-“

“I’ve never met Shockwave in my life,” the techno-organic interrupted flatly.

Sentinel made a scoffing noise and Optimus grew acutely aware of how thankful he was the prime had been silent up to this point. Had he been at full energy rather than recuperating from a stressful, painful day, there was no saying how rash he could’ve been in dealing with this strange autobot on her equally strange playing field.

“You wouldn’t,” he directed at Blackarachnia. “Not when he’s been on my world so long. You on Cybertron?" His tone made it sound like the most unbelievable joke.  "You’d never have gotten away with it.”

She sneered at the other prime. Optimus had a feeling there was more hurt than anger behind it at the moment, no matter how effectively convincing the expression was with its fangs bared and optics brightly hostile.

It’d been a point of contention for her before, after all. That inability to go home. To trust anyone enough to believe they could bring her there safely. It was her world but she’d felt for so long that the only place there that’d welcome her now was a lab.

Meanwhile, Arcee had stepped back and was shaking her head.

“I don’t get it. You’re- she’s- a con. Why?” She frowned and looked to him for answers. "Are you at war in your world or aren’t you?”

Sentinel answered “no” at the same time that Optimus said “yes”.  They whipped their heads around to glare at each other.  Arcee glared at them both.

They really were not leaving a good impression on her, he felt.

“Technically…” he started slowly.  “It’s been over for centuries.  But Megatron and a few of his decepticons have been trying to restart the war on Earth.”

“So you-?” she prompted Blackarachnia, who crossed her arms and looked away rudely.

“So she-?” she turned instead to the other two. 

Sentinel was quick to jump in.

"The badge is right there, isn’t it?  She’s been on Earth, conducting horrible experiments on innocent- er, innocent- bots while her existence was hidden by some people.”

(Ah, so Wasp was innocent now?  Funny how that worked out in Sentinel's mind)

Sentinel was not what one could call a subtle bot.  This was to say, he made it entirely clear who he was talking about.  

Was this the time, buddy.  Was it really.

“So you do work for Megatron directly?” Arcee turned on Blackarachnia again.  She sneered.

“Hardly,” she waved flippantly. “I’m, mm, non-practicing, let’s put it.”

“You’re practicing something else, huh?”  Sentinel said.  “Just ask Wasp-“

“Who- and what- never mind,” Arcee shook her head.  “I need to make another call.”

They couldn’t be branded as enemies.

They couldn’t.

This was their first contact in this place and they needed friends here. The last thing they needed was to have to run and find some place to hide when everyone native here actually knew their surroundings and they didn’t.

Optimus held up a servo to stop her.

“Wait- it doesn’t- it doesn’t work the way you think.”

The rest glared at him.

Fine.

“Look.  Please.” He sighed. “The three of us, we don’t belong here.  We’re together in that.  Blackarachnia, do you feel like joining decepticons here in their war?”

She made a show of thinking it over. It was really not the time.

“Nyeh...Maybe if they don’t have that idiot Lugnut and those annoying maniacs Blitzwing and Starscream here,” she said in disdain.

It wasn’t the most swaying answer for a stranger who didn’t like cons. Or he didn’t expect it to be. But it was within her personality and she stuck to that, now didn’t she.  No matter if it was the time and place for the attitude.

Arcee gave a snort of laughter.  She tried to abort the noise but finally acquiesced to the amusement after a moment of the other three staring at her.  

“No, they still have Starscream here,” she confirmed.

Blackarachnia flicked something off her claws.  

“Aw.” There was no disappointment in the noise. “Sounds like I’d rather stick with the boy scouts then.”

Sentinel started making a confused fuss over that, but the rest understood the human-based commentary.  

And Optimus understood it as more than a play on words.  He heard all the bitter, bitter hate underneath it.  The way that she viewed them as friends that would rather climb the autobot rank and file than go find her, go back for her, they should have gone back for her. The way she thought they faked their virtues and called his emphasis on his team's camaraderie a fake sentiment he'd toss aside, like the two of them had her.  It wasn't fair.  He should never have left her behind.

“That’s fine and all to hear, but I don’t want to bring a con back to my base,” Arcee returned to seriousness. Blackarachnia stopped playing her her claws and perked up.

“Well, actually, I’d rather not go with you or them anywhere either,” she said brightly. “I’ll just be going my own way now.  Ta-!”

“No.”

Arcee had her by the wrist before she’d even finished turning around.  Four red optics narrowed into angry slits.

Whatever the blue bot was planning to say before grabbing ahold of her, they wouldn’t know. The bot had gone quiet. Her servo tightened and loosened and tightened again on that wrist. That flesh coated wrist.

“Squeezing isn’t going to make it go away, sweetspark,” Blackarachnia growled, all blade’s edge and poison.

Though her optics were still slits, it was Arcee’s time to narrow her own.

“What are you? No. Don’t answer now. It’s not important.” While Blackarachnia looked somewhere between miffed and dumbfounded at having her organic side called such, Arcee went right on like- like it was no big deal. Like there were bigger deals to worry about. “I’m not letting some extra-dimensional traveler disappear on me and do who knows what. That goes for all of you,” she glanced to the two primes. “My team agrees. Our base needs to stay secure and sure, inviting a con back into it is a fragging stupid idea in that regard, but it’s better than any of you pulling a disappearing act. You’re coming with us.”

Blackarachnia’s free servo took hold of Arcee’s own wrist and plucked it off her skin. She dropped it sneering and backed away.

“I’m not heading into some autobot base in cuffs.”

“No.”

The techno-organic opened her right two optics wider at the interruption. She kept them arched when she realized who had stepped up next to her side. Optimus stayed there, staring Arcee down.

“It wouldn’t be fair to treat any of us like criminals,” he continued. “Any of us. We’ve done nothing in your world yet and you don’t know what we did in ours. There’ll be no cuffs.”

The finality of his tone left Blackarachnia still looking his way and Sentinel was looking pointedly at the dirt rather than following her stead.

Arcee only threw her arms up. He realized only now that she’d transformed her weapons away.

“I never said anything about cuffs!” she replied in exasperation.

She tilted her head to the side, vision glazing. Taking a call again. From this base of hers, no doubt. Optimus wondered how many reinforcements would ever arrive to help their outnumbered scout. The thought left him a bit nervous.

Arcee finished listening or comming or whatever it had been and looked back at them all.

“No cuffs, on us. No trying to leave the base and find its location, on you. Talking out everything and figuring out what the frag is going on with this situation, on all of us. Sound acceptable?”

He answered in the affirmative while Sentinel muttered something. Probably about being given proper respect. Optimus couldn’t really tell.

“I’d still rather leave,” Blackarachnia smiled.

Whether it was true or just a way to bother a bot who’d revealed she wanted all three of them contained, he couldn’t say. It was a mystery to anyone but her.

It certainly was a success if the intention had been the latter. He could see Arcee’s jaw clenching in the light of his headlamps.

“And I said no,” she ground out. “What are you going to want to change your mind?”

“A private space to research how to reverse this transwarp disaster,” the shorter cybertronian said, before frowning and adding: “And a helmet.”

“A helmet?” Arcee lifted a brow.

“A helmet,” Blackarachnia insisted with a hiss.  “Full face. Everything but my mouth and eyes. Golden, if you can.  We do so like pretty matching color schemes.  You’ll get me one and I’ll be a good girl.”

Arcee glanced his way as if to try to get his confirmation before giving a shrug. It was...strange, to be treated like the final voice on things. To have a stranger make assumptions about his authority being the final authority. Anyone in his universe would have seen the Elite Guard symbols on Sentinel’s shoulder and known to go to him, no matter if he and Optimus technically did share the same rank and authority.

Of course, anyone in his universe wouldn’t know his name and associate it with someone else they knew. This was, as the professor or Prowl would put it, uncharted water.

“Right. Right then.” Arcee gave a couple more steps back. She glanced over them all and Optimus realized they’d done as she’d asked them to before the slag had gone down over the trio’s faction loyalty. They were more or less lined up. “On we go, then.”

And, on her signal, something entirely unnatural happened.

Optimus had expected they would journey in vehicle-mode to where this base was. It seemed close enough that Arcee had arrived within a few hours of their own unconscious arrival. That, or she’d come in ship. In that case, he’d imagined they’d drive to that ship and go from there.

He had not expected her signal to mean the giant flash in the desert air.

The night darkness was torn apart by a splitting green light.  A pinpoint expanded into a huge spinning vortex and from this light-

The silhouettes appeared first.  Big, hulking black shapes in the green.  As they reached the edge (which hovered a few feet above the ground as an apparently solid floor despite appearing to be mist), these shapes grew distinct in color and detail.  

Then the welcoming group was dropping to the desert dirt and the glow was sucked away.

It was only (only, hah! Both were larger than any of them) two mechs.  Maybe that was just protocol.  Maybe Arcee’s group of autobots was as small as his back in Detroit.  He’d wait to ask.

The one that stole most of the attention first was the larger of the two.  He was instantly familiar.  Not a direct duplicate by any means, but there was something hard to mistake about the rounded shape balanced on squarish large pedes and a similarly square silver face with a jutting jaw.  Yes, his friend’s jaw was as green as he was all over and this mech’s was gray, but-

It was a Bulkhead.  He could swear it.

Attention taken so much by the reality of meeting doppelgängers of those close to him (He’d not met the Arcee Ratchet spoke of; he was aware this was an Arcee and that was an Arcee and there was an Optimus out there in this world and their alternate beings did not seem to stick too closely to those he was familiar with; but he’d not met or been close to the Arcee of his world- he recognized how different this one appeared to be from the spy of Ratchet’s stories, but it was…clinical.  There was the word for it.  Clinical.), he barely took in the second, shorter mech.  He was a bright yellow with stripes of black accents and stood slightly taller than either he or Sentinel.  There was a battlemask over where many bots' mouths would be and both his arms ended in rounded guns much like Arcee’s.  It was odd to see internal weaponry with such prominence.  Most of the Elite Guard trained with specialty external weapons and tools and only Bumblebee on his team came equipped with stingers.  Between Arcee and this new mech, Optimus began thinking this world preferred these stinger-branch weaponry.  He wondered if this Bulkhead-lookalike had a wrecking ball system equipped.  He wasn’t sure if it’d be better or less comforting if he did.  There was something very uncomfortable about having a complete stranger so similar to a good friend.  

The yellow one turned enough to showcase what at first glance looked like wings.  Before he could begin questioning that, he realized their shape was that of car doors rather than a seeker’s appendage.  Completely ignorant of how Optimus was working through this, the bot gestured to them and buzzed at Arcee.  She grinned.  

“I know.”

“And that one is named Optimus?” the probably-Bulkhead pointed at him.  He tried not to feel offended at the sense he was being the punchline of a joke.  Judging by the scoff besides him, Sentinel was also trying not to be offended.  Most likely about people being more interested in Optimus than him, if he had to bet (which ignored the fact that this interest was being laughed at).  

“Worse,” Arcee smirked.  “That’s someone out there's actual Optimus.”

The green mech nodded his head side to side, taking him in before shaking his thoughts clear.  

“Well hey, then.  No offense,” (Optimus was about to be offended again, he could tell) “-but you’re smaller than I ever expected you to be.”

(Optimus had guessed rather correctly)

The yellow bot’s whirring seemed to be an amused agreement, judging by how he leaned up against his larger ally in mirth.  The motion didn’t even draw tense attention.  They were close, then.  Not a military unit that drilled and operated like Sentinel’s and any other good primes would.  More like his own unit, on Earth, that liked to ignore protocol because they didn’t see each other as a squadron so much as family, teammates, friends.  

“Anyway, you three, this is Bulkhead and Bumblebee.  We inviting them back right now?”

Optimus had already known what name would be coming for the green mech, before Arcee even verbalized it.  

But the second name was a different story.

Bumblebee?

A part of him said that he should be relieved how many familiar names were going to be near (and alive) in this place they’d accidentally trapped themselves in.  They knew a version of himself, Ratchet’s friend-of-sorts was here, and now two of his team.  Perhaps Prowl would be in this ‘base’ of theirs, for all he knew.  

Except, as easy as it made it to remember names, it wouldn't be his Prowl anymore than either of these two were his teammates.  Bumblebee?  This was a warrior class.  Elite Guard build at least.  Not quite a warbuild, but large and equipped like he and Sentinel were through their ranks when they’d become minors.  This mech was at least twice the height, let alone mass, of the rambunctious yellow repair bot in Detroit.  

Sentinel whistled.  Optimus broke out of his rather despairing mood when the other prime elbowed him, expression sleazy.  

“Damn.”  He was grinning (the same kind of grin he’d grown all too used to Sentinel wearing while explaining how he was going to ignore any and all advice or rules and laugh at the idea of owing someone who was just a repair bot).  “If that annoying minibot of yours could get this kinda upgrade, I’m looking forward to seeing how big I must be here.”

“Magnus-sized, I’m sure,” Optimus humored him without paying much attention. 

If this was some...there was a word Sari used while paying real or game currencies to mod her playable fighters (which was not, to his knowledge, the best use of said currencies or time, but his words were always downvoted by the likes of an excited Bumblebee encouraging her to spend more).  Souped up.  That was it.  He really wished he could think of a more professional synonym to think in the privacy of his own brain, but, sadly, he could not.  So the thought went on with all of Sari’s influence.  If there was some souped up version of the Bumblebee of his world here, and there was a version of him here already confirmed when Arcee explained he was her commander, then…

Well.  He wasn’t immune to the same curiosity as Sentinel.  But he felt far from excited at the prospect of coming face to hips with some Megatron-sized version of himself.  The idea left him agitated for a multitude of reasons.  

Unfortunately, his own nerves weren’t going to stop the passage of time.  Bulkhead- this Bulkhead- had already shrugged in answer to Arcee’s comment.

“Yeah,” the mech said casually (he wished he could take a bit of that casual air now, shake off these uneasy concerns).  “Optimus is ready for these guys.”

The other Optimus, in contrast, was suddenly feeling a whole lot less ready.  Swallowing back apprehension, he let Arcee wave him towards the green light and whatever version of him lay beyond.

Chapter Text

Going through the green vortex was...disorienting.  As a repair crew, there’d been a few times spacebridges had been used by their ship.  This felt different.  A little more similar to the transwarp explosion that carried them here.  It felt like less of a pinpointing squeeze and more of a twisting spinning pressure.  Optimus thought in the immediate moment it was occurring that he’d rather have driven whatever distance they’d just teleported than feel that spinning sense.

The three strange autobots didn’t seem to notice this disorientation.  Blackarachnia was grimacing and bent slightly over her front like it had felt even worse for her.  It might have, for all he could say. 

“Alright,” Arcee spoke first.  Her arms still ended in their weapons where they swung at her sides.  Even though the yellow and green bots (Bumblebee and Bulkhead, Bumblebee and Bulkhead, he had to start adjusting to that) didn’t act nervous or all that aggressive, she'd kept hers out.  “Pick a seat or something.  We’re going to get this cleared up.”

Despite how clear and likely pragmatic that order was, none of the trio followed it.  Optimus was distracted by taking in his surroundings.  They were in a tall but small room.  An autobot sigil was painted on the concrete floor.  There were dirty tire tracks running across that floor too.  Most were prevalent on the part of the floor at one nearby large opening in the room’s walls.  That seemed to be some kind of hall or roadway but it was too dark to see the length of.  In any case, someone had clearly tried to clean these tracks up but their traces remained shadowed in the concrete.  There was something homely about that mess.  It spoke of a makeshift home base.  Not some quarantined clean office where entry and exit always occurred in contamination hallways.  If there ever was to be an official emissary of Cybertron on Earth, it would look like that.  Large, beautiful, clean and complex and too cold to be a home.  

Of course, it felt unlikely to Optimus such a place would be built anyways.  The Commonwealth did not send many emissaries out.  Cybertron had paid slight attention to Earth, but only because the Allspark and Megatron were there.  Without that….

Not that it currently mattered.  Optimus was a world- or universe or something- away from that Earth and that Cybertron.  At the least, this base felt a little more like his team’s in the warehouse Detroit had given them and a little less like the Commonwealth’s uncommon emissary bases would have.  

Although this place looked notably less homely itself.  There were no autobot sized couches here.  No jumbo bean bags covered in sparkly blankets and cluttered colorful junk.  There was no giant TV screen where Bumblebee and Sari would play games until kicked off to go do something else.  

In contrast, there were metal stairs and walkways to one side of the room.  Multiple smaller screens had been set up against this upper, human sized floor.  Standing by those green lit screens was a broad bot with their back turned.  This bot had moved a servo to a latch and pulled it downwards.  With that movement, the whine of the vortex and its glow shut off from behind them.  Optimus turned to look.  Where they had hopped out of it, there now was a circular hall ending in a wall.  

Back in the room, the cybertronian who had been at the screens had turned to face them all.  The bot was taller than this Bumblebee, probably even taller than he and Sentinel though it was hard to tell without standing closer.  

“Great,” he spoke, optics flicking over them all.   

From tone alone, Optimus could tell this bot didn’t think anything was great about this.  There was another sense of deja vu.  That attitude was startlingly familiar-yet-different than one he saw daily from a friend of his. 

He had a feeling he’d be getting hit by that disorienting deja vu lot in this world.  

“So this is the bunch broadcasting their life signs to the whole damn world.”

Anddd he was right for 'calling bs' (thank you, Sari, and your likely, had to be, he hoped, age-inappropriate language and reproduction knowledge). 

“They’re dampened in here, aren’t they?” this Bulkhead asked casually. 

The broad bot lifted and dropped his shoulders in a heavy shrug.  He was primarily white and orange and had the same ‘heartbeat’ symbol on him that Ratchet did.  It meant that his earth altmode was probably an ambulance or some other sort of transport used for medical matters.

What would the odds be that…

“Are you Ratchet, by any chance?” Optimus piped up.  The other two stopped their conversation to look at him.  

It couldn’t be, could it?  Why on Earth would there be so many of his team on ...Earth?  This Earth.  Well, that could have been thought clearer.  

The alternative Bulkhead slapped his medic over the shoulders.  While he was laughing, the medic himself had rocked forward from the hit and his glare suggested he didn’t appreciate the familiarity.  Or at least not the strength of the familiarity.

“Hey, you’ll never guess who that one is,” the green bot laughed.  

The glare being sent back at Bulkhead was a Ratchet Glare, through and through.  This mech’s face may have been a lot less weary looking and held no damage like Optimus’s friend, but the look in those optics was briefly identical.  

As such, it really wasn’t a surprise when the medic looked back to him and slowly answered, “I am, yes.”  

First Bumblebee and Bulkhead, now Ratchet.  So far, the only alternate he’d met here that he didn’t know his own version of was Arcee.  She was the least disorienting as a consequence.  

The other two fanned out behind him.  Sentinel, amusingly enough, stuck close to him.  His face was still lined in tired shadows.  Had this been any other day, the blue prime probably wouldn’t have been caught dead standing so close behind Optimus.  Blackarachnia’s pride, on the other servo, had never minded using him as a shield on Earth.  No more than she minded using plenty of the people she manipulated in that way.  

The techno-organic was frowning at the base sprawled out in front of them, but her head kept turning back from where they’d come.

“Hey, medic.  What was that?” Blackarachnia pointed at the circular hall that had, so recently, been lit up.

This Ratchet looked surprised at being addressed.  Or maybe he was just surprised at who had addressed him since, until then, only Optimus had spoken.  

He recovered like a champ.  Optimus got the sense that this Ratchet- like his friend- was used to getting interruptions from all directions.  Maybe this base held less messy distractions and maybe the main offenders of Bumblebee and Bulkhead looked less likely here to be playing video games loud enough for the whole base to hear or accidentally knocking walls down in the middle of painting a new masterpiece, but the medic seemed practiced enough in dealing with twenty different messes occuring at once.  

“A groundbrige,” he answered.  Optimus felt himself perk up at the word.  Bridge, he knew.  The prefix belonging there, he didn’t.  “It works for planet-to-far-atmosphere based locations.”

A transporter like a spacebridge, then.  Which meant this world/dimension/whatever-it-was had transwarp energy too.  

While he didn’t know how to use transwarp energy, Blackarachnia would.  She’d been experimenting with it to create techno-organics in her lab.  It had been what had mutilated Wasp and it had been what sent them here.  

“Does it go to Cybertron?” Sentinel perked up.

After a day like this, Optimus couldn’t even fault him for wanting to go back home.  Optimus wanted to go back home plenty of times.  It hurt, being isolated from Cybertron with his spacebridge repair crew.  Autobots were very connected to their homeworld.  While the job had let him keep his rank as a prime, the virtual exile made him question if it’d been worth it.  It was only after waking on Earth and protecting it from the decepticons there that the idea of ‘home’ had started getting a bit more scrambled in his cortex circuits.  He had a strong feeling it had for all his team.  

This Ratchet frowned.

“I just said planet-to-atmosphere locations.  So no.”

Ready to take the pressure off of a now similarly frowning Sentinel, Optimus stepped over to the servo-held controls he’d seen the medic operating the bridge with.  

“How did it open in the desert?” he asked as he looked it over.  It seemed like a simple enough setup.  Far more simple than he would have expected, especially after seeing everything that got put into spacebridge operation when Bulkhead had made that one on Earth.  “There wasn’t a corresponding gateway there.”

Not that all spacebridges had to have a two-way doorway, but all those connected to the spacebridge nexus did.  Transwarp was far too unreliable without two corresponding gateways.  Optimus had enough firsthand experience to know that.  Its secondary location would be randomized rather than specific enough to be of use.

Or it should have been, when thinking in his world’s terms.  

Ratchet was just staring at him.  

“There doesn’t need to be,” the medic finally replied.  “The groundbridge operates from here and can be opened anywhere so long as it’s got coordinates.”

Aha!  That confirmed it then.  This was transwarp used unlike how his world’s technology utilized it.  Rather than needing a nexus and corresponding bridges, this could teleport to any and all locations with a one-way operator.  

Fascinating.

“So it’s a remote application to spacebridges?  And it’s usable regularly?  It doesn’t drain resources too fast?”  Optimus looked back to the hall and then the handle.  A thought had struck him at this unlikely conversation.  He couldn’t hold back a smile.  “Bulkhead would be thrilled.”

“I what?”

Oh.  Right.  

Optimus stared at the green mech that was present in this room.  The Bulkhead who was not Bulkhead stared back.

Ratchet interrupted the awkward standoff.  “Why ask anyways?” 

Thankful for a new subject to leap onto, Optimus was quick to answer.

“That’s not how transwarp bridges work, in my knowledge.”

The medic’s optics were narrowed and directed at all three.  “I’d be curious to know how yours work,” he said.

While Blackarachnia was probably the most expert of them all (Optimus really didn’t know much about spacebridges outside of the basics on repairing them.  It’d been Bulkhead who had done the studying on how to be a spacebridge technician.  And Sentinel...wouldn’t know a spacebridge nexus from the strange hallway behind them, probably) on teleporters and transwarp, she wasn’t paying visual attention to Ratchet.  She was still looking over the arches of the hall.  Coincidentally, it had her facing away where her unshielded face could be hidden.

Well, she had insisted to Arcee that these autobots give her a lab to experiment on getting them back.  With that end of the deal held up, Ratchet probably would get his chance to hear more about their spacebridges.

All that thought was interrupted by an arm slamming down on his shoulders unexpectedly enough to send Optimus leaning forward.  Sentinel leaned in close to his head and he didn’t even have to look over to confirm the mech was smirking.

“Well, that’s more Optimus’s area of expertise, isn’t it old buddy?” he said while rattling the red and blue prime’s shoulders around.  

Been there, done that with this pose a bit too often.  Sometimes, Optimus wondered why he humored it outside of just respecting their power difference.  It was what Sentinel wanted, wasn’t it, so it’s what he’d let him do.  That’s what people did with friends.

It’d taken longer than it should have to finally accept Sentinel didn’t treat him like a friend.  Once again, the sort of change that only happened after Earth.

For all the scrap Megatron and his decepticons put him through in Detroit, he could thank their presence and his team’s handling of them for his boosts in self confidence.  

The alternate autobots were looking at them both strangely.  Blackarachnia turned her head enough towards them to give a sniff of laughter.  

“What?” came at least two voices at once.

They acted a little too surprised at the reference to his old occupation for Optimus’s comfort.  He ducked free of Sentinel’s ‘hug’ and wondered how to answer their confusion.

“I- ...ignore him.  Let’s move on,” he said, deciding against even trying.  

The medic here, unfortunately, wouldn’t let it go so easily.

So he was as stubborn and observant as his Ratchet, then.  So much for using this unplanned other-dimensional vacation as a way to skip on allotted recharge time and avoid the Ratchet-assigned health supplements in all their energon and oil.

“In a minute,” this Ratchet waved him off.  “I want to know what that was supposed to mean.”

Luckily, Sentinel was willing to explain all.  The other prime patted Optimus’s back.

“He’s been cleaning and repairing spacebridges for stellar cycles now!  It’s the only type of work he’s really good for,” he added, somewhere in a tone between conspiratorial, patronizing, and condolence.  

Ratchet blinked at the confident speaker slowly.  “Uhuh.”

Optimus hoped the conversation moved away.  It’d veered down into territory he was not comfortable addressing with strangers.  Mainly because those strangers would end up being an audience to him and Sentinel arguing and those arguments couldn’t be fun to watch (or shouldn’t, anyways, because they certainly weren’t fun to participate in when everything he said hit audials with listening skills as good as a steel wall and both devolved into throwing immature potshots at each other).  Even if Blackarachnia would probably be very amused by that.

Luckily- once again- (but this time he meant it), Sentinel decided to change the subject himself.  Maybe discussing spacebridge repair at Optimus’s expense was too boring for him.  

He put an elbow up on Optimus’s shoulder and leaned his weight casually against it.  It would have been preferable from having the whole arm gripped tight and pointedly around him, except that said elbow was now digging into his neck.  

“Anyway, isn’t their Optimus supposed to be in charge?” Sentinel muttered to him.  Being Sentinel, it was loud enough for the strange autobots to hear.  “Where’s he at, if he’s the boss?  Shouldn’t he be here too?”

His alternate or not, anyone with authority over a squad and base held authority over guests like them.  No matter what rank they held in some other world, it stayed in that other world.  Not one of the three knew of the laws here, the systems here, whether being an elite guard meant anything here…

The point was that this world’s version of him was apparently a leader for this squad.  The autobots here seemed to respect that leader.  Making comments that seemed to imply judgment on that leader was not a move Optimus wanted them to be making so early in the stay here.

Bulkhead and Arcee were frowning slightly at the two.  Blackarachnia was, once again, snickering quietly at their- or his- expense.  Whatever expression the Bumblebee here wore, Optimus couldn’t tell with the battlemask up.  

Ratchet tilted his head to one side and he thought he could see a smile twitch up on one side of the medic’s mouth.  

For whatever reason, he doubted that smile meant great friendly things for them.  No more than his Ratchet’s cranky frowns did when the veteran was ordering them to drink their supplements down or sit a battle out.

“He’s right down there,” Ratchet pointed at one of the two other halls., the one Optimus suspected was a roadway.  “I’ll call him in if you’re ready.”

“Ready-?” Sentinel startled.  

What sort of wording was that?

The orange and white mech did the quick upturn of lips again.  

“Done, called.”

Well.  So much for continuing to adjust to the news that spacebridge technology could work on remote local scales, or that three of his teammates (friends) from Earth were here and not here with their shared names but status as different people, or investigating the spartan base itself and what its status may implicate.  

The sound of steady driving could be heard coming out of the hall, getting louder.  A moment later, that sound changed instead to the noise of a transformation sequence (at least that was the same) before that sound changed a final time to pedesteps.

Heavy, deliberate, (had he said heavy already?) pedesteps.  It sounded like a decepticon walking towards him by weight alone.  It sounded like it could be Megatron, even.  

Sentinel was the one to drop off of him this time.  The blue prime backed up a few steps towards where Blackarachnia had yet to step out into the open.  In a brief moment, everything between them felt unimportant enough to forget.  Optimus found himself doing the same until he could stand closely in front of them both.  His posture slipped into a protective one automatically.

The mech that turned the corner and exited the hall was not Megatron.  No matter the size, he couldn’t be mistaken as a decepticon.  There were none of the branded red optics or signature purple that tended to come as a package deal with the deceptibrand.  

This mech’s optics were a clear blue shuttered in complex gray metal.  Optimus suspected the gray was an orb.  A full, round optic like a human’s.  It wasn’t just this Arcee here who had curious optical structure.  All of them held intricacies and centered colored orbs where a human iris or pupil would be.  

His stature certainly matched Megatron’s.  The mech towered over even this Bulkhead.  He seemed taller at a glance than Ultra Magnus.  He was broad, well armed, undoubtedly a powerhouse of a warrior with that frame.  And he was painted in a scheme Optimus hadn’t seen many bots outside himself use.  

Heh.  Outside of himself.  Did this even qualify?

Because with Ratchet’s preamble of an introduction, there was no questioning who this giant was.  

The massive cybertronian looked over all three of them with those disconcerting human structured optics.  The blue center whirred in dilation before the optics as a whole were shuttered and reopened.  

“My team’s information suggested that gradual introductions would be better,” the mech began. 

And his voice.  His voice was so deep.  It seemed old, aged, far, far older than his own.  There was no youth or insecurity to be found in it.  

“I had no wish to alarm you.”

However much that was working, the smaller of the Optimus’s couldn’t say.  Sentinel was letting out a high pitched, if very quiet, whine.  Blackarachnia had bristled up on the defensive, almost hissing.  Her two missing legs’ stumps lifted as high as they could go.  

Sentinel’s whine morphed into tiny words.  “Holy frag… holy frag.”  

They repeated like that while Blackarachnia kept her arched posture looking for all intents like she was trying to find the best escape route to flee down.  

Well.  He couldn’t say it was comfortable, but if neither of them were going to step up, he would.  It wasn’t the first time he’d addressed a bot easily over three times his mass before.

He stepped forward and craned his neck to stare at the giant.  

“Optimus, I’m guessing?” he greeted.

The mech who was apparently this universe’s version of him gave him a nod.  

“Indeed.”

Sentinel shook his head by Optimus’s side.

“What the ever loving holiest of frags-” 

The taller of the two looked over his short counterpart’s head at the others before glancing at his own waiting team.

“These circumstances are...unique,” the other Optimus began with that smoothly deep voice of his.  “Let’s speak.”

They’d all found a nice if messy circle to stand in for the chat.  Optimus got the sense these bots didn’t sit much.  It explained the lack of couches and chairs in what was, apparently, their main room.

It’d be a difference to chalk up between their universes.  For now, he’d have to manage with however awkward standing for long periods left him feeling.  It was like being at constant attention.  And, based on how the other version of himself had acted thus far, he understood that what he viewed as being at attention was these autobots’ attempts at treating this all casually.  

Optimus stood across from the other in this circle of theirs.  Sentinel was right next to him on one side while Blackarachnia had had to be effectively coaxed over to join them.  Her distaste for being in plain sight among these strangers was clear enough.  Optimus did feel bad for her about it, but there was nothing to be done.  She couldn’t exactly sit out what they were about to do.  Eventually, she’d come to his other side and stood there a few feet back; just enough to still be there, but also enough to make the circle feel like it was missing a portion of its wall.  

He felt a bit lucky in a way.  After all, he didn’t have to stand next to any of the strangers.  They’d volunteered to by wordlessly deciding to make Optimus stand between them as a buffer.  

Considering what had gone down today at Dinobot Island- Considering what had happened thousands of years before on Archa VII- 

Well, it wasn’t a surprise.

The blue Arcee had gone to stand by their Optimus and this Ratchet had taken his other side.  That left Bulkhead by Sentinel and Bumblebee by Blackarachnia.  The former hadn’t really interacted much with the blue prime, and the latter had been limited in interactions to a friendly wave and buzz that the techno-organic had not replicated.  

With their awkward sharing circle settled down, the largest of the strangers made a staticky noise (it sounded like humans clearing their throat, uncannily close to that noise, actually) to break the silence.

“Let’s begin with what information we do have shared,” that Optimus began.  He looked directly at his smaller counterpart.  “I will begin with names, since I have yet to meet any of you.  I understand you are Optimus Prime.  And your names are Sentinel and Blackarachnia.  Correct?”

Sentinel straightened up from his tired slump.

“Hey, I’m a prime too!” he protested.  

That seemed to surprise the alternate autobots.  A few shared glances with each other.  If their Optimus was surprised, he didn’t let it show outside a slight dilation of the blue of his optics.

“How so?” he asked genuinely.

Sentinel puffed his chest out.  

“I’ve been a prime for thousands of stellar cycles!  I graduated from the Academy as a minor and then straight to the Elite Guard, unlike this washout,” he pointed a thumb at the prime right next to him (Optimus wouldn’t take offense to it, now wasn’t the time, he wouldn’t bother), before putting his servos on his hips to add proudly:  “You could be looking at the future Magnus!”

That, once again, led to a bunch of exchanged wide-optic’d glances.

“Academy…” the green one muttered.  

“Magnus…” at least two of the other voices added simultaneously.  

Their optics moved from each other to the two primes.  Sentinel lost his posturing in order to lean into his audial.

“Hey.  Pst.  Optimus,” he whispered while poking his side.  “Why are they all staring at me?”

The other Optimus spoke up before he could even start thinking of an answer to that.  

“Do these titles refer to a... shared rank then?” the big mech asked.

It was his and Sentinel’s turn to exchange glances this time.  

“Yes?” they answered in confused hesitation.

“A political rank?” that Optimus pressed.  “Or a religious title?”

“Um, the first?  Kind of?  It’s a military position,” he tried to answer.  “A very high one.  Especially when it coincides with a job in the Elite Guard.”

The strangers went back to muttering between themselves.  Their Optimus waved off some unheard question from Ratchet and looked back to them.

“I see.  Are there many primes in your world?”

The way that these autobots acted like it was a surprise for there to even be two…

(Wait.  They’d accepted him as a prime easily.  It was tagged onto his name by them like it was natural for ‘prime’ to go after ‘Optimus’.  Arcee had put it there after he’d only given her his name alone.)

(But if they acted like it was weird news for there to be two primes in one group.  Or two primes at all.  As though the rank meant something else for them, something that only belonged to this giant of a cybertronian across from him.)

(What exactly was his counterpart here?  How had some version of himself across the multiverse become...whatever it was that was treated like these autobots treated him and the word ‘prime’ combined?)

“Not that many,” Sentinel said.  “It’s a hard job to get to.  Few make the cut.  It’s a prestigious role in society,” he added, chin jutting out, just in case the listeners didn’t connect A and B that he was talking about himself.  

“When I left Cybertron, there were a few hundred,” Optimus put in.  “He’s right, it’s a rare job to get.”

They were met with dead silence again.  

This version of Ratchet leaned up to say something low to their Optimus again.  Said mech made the clearing-throat sound again.  

“I see,” he said simply, even though Optimus had the feeling that none of the other autobots had understood a thing about what he and Sentinel had just said.  

“Why the worry about their stuffy title anyways?” Blackarachnia sneered from her spot distant from the rest of the circle.  She did a good job at looking unflinching when the attention was drawn her way.

“What, is the Academy some sort of big deal here too?” she shrugged.  “You get top of your class or something and never let go of those glory days?  That why you’re acting special?”

Really, Optimus would think working and living with high level decepticons would’ve taught him, in her place, to be quiet and let his commanders step all over him in anxiety that they’d disembowel him messily if he talked back when one of them bragged.  Or that they'd send him off to get lectured by the big green one, Lugnut, about the glory of Megatron and honestly that would be punishment enough for him to stay in line.  

Evidently his expectation about what life was like on a decepticon warship wasn’t how Blackarachnia herself saw it.  She had no qualms making barbs about anyone to their face.

The other Optimus looked at her calmly even as some of the autobots around him seemed a mix of amused and annoyed.  

“Not exactly,” he said evenly.  

The elaboration that ensued was...unexpected for the trio, to say the least.

Chapter Text

Needless to say, the overall reaction was summed up by Sentinel when he’d yelped, “A Prime is what here??”  

And, for once, his response was a fair one. Optimus Prime (not this kinda Prime, more of a lowercase prime himself) couldn’t wrap his head around this either. Start to finish, it hadn’t gotten any easier to digest.

Maybe the moral of the story was to not follow ex-friends into transwarp explosions. Those that didn't listen to the aesop got the confused headache he had now.

The other Optimus shifted uncomfortably after his brief statement. He looked to Ratchet. Ratchet looked at him. He looked back to the trio with what Optimus could’ve called an almost mournful resignation. Yeah, he could recognize when work and explanations got dumped on a single person’s responsibility to give.

While Ratchet kept up that prodding stare, the large Optimus began the interrogation again with a question that had no meaning for any of the three.

“Your primes- your academies- have no ties to Primus, then?”

“We’re using made-up words now?” Sentinel grumbled with a sneer. It was quite the disrespecting attitude towards a new group, but Optimus pinned it down to stress. Learning something extremely different in this world was going to stress him out too. He’d want to deny anything too hard to take in. Sentinel’s form of denial and confusion and fear was to start disregarding and disrespecting whatever (whoever) it was upsetting him.

That may also have been giving him extra credit. Sentinel had managed to not upset public relations on Earth, but he certainly toed the line sometimes. The mech didn’t tend to think about what he said before saying it. Meeting these autobots should be mentally treated like meeting Detroit’s official humans for the first time: stay respectful, dont say everything with no filler, and learn who this new alien culture was. Sentinel just automatically expected people to know who he was and listen to him.

Still. Stress. Because he sure was stressed here.

Meeting a new society always had a level of stress, but with humans, he’d had his team there. They were (mostly) young and inexperienced and wouldn't know how to handle first contact. He felt a certain confidence when he knew something had to be his role, that his team looked to him for it. Had any other prime or minor been present, he would not have had that confidence and he probably wouldn’t have touched such a role with the strangers in Detroit himself.

Here, if primes and ranks meant nothing the same, if Sentinel was exhausted from the news delivered by Blackarachnia, if she herself acted like she’d defer much of the technicalities to Optimus like his team would have-

if all these all were accurate, then he would take that speaking role in this completely new world. And thus far, he had assumed automatically those ‘ifs’ were truths. It wouldn’t due to lose that tired confidence now.

“Sorry,” Optimus shook his head. “I don’t think we know what that is?” He gave a quick look at Blackarachnia to make sure. “So I don’t believe there’s a connection to the Academy.”

“Not what, who,” Ratchet frowned. Come to think of it, he’d been frowning (more distinctly) since Sentinel’s comment. Bulkhead looked confused, Bumblebee curious (from his optics, at least), and Arcee had one pronounced optical brow raised high above the other. 

The other Optimus himself was unreadable.

The medic at his side looked at them with interest.

“No relation to Primus, huh? Primes are military, then?” Ratchet asked. The way he squinted had Optimus thinking of his Ratchet, right before the medic would lay into the inaccuracies of Cybertron’s war videos or something.

“Yes,” Sentinel answered, as he said “Not entirely” (he preferred to think of them as a bit more civilian focused and, besides, space bridge cleaning and repair was also not a very impressive military function), and Blackarachnia concurrently had started laughing raucously. She pretended to ignore the stares that got.

Her opinions on primes and the Academy were clearly rather low.

Or they were on the surface, at least. She wanted others to view them that way. He wondered if she ever imagined a past where she’d gotten to graduate and move from a student to minor to prime. She’d be wearing the elite guard wings by now. She’d never settle for cleaning spacebridges.

“Then it’s a secularized position.” Ratchet nodded to himself. It seemed like he’d guessed as much. “Well, I can see some perks of secularization with government roles, except it almost sounds like Primes aren’t governing leadership positions in your world.”

The elite guard were a part of the government, because guarding the members of that government was a close business. But that wasn’t what the medic meant, was it? 

“Not like a Magnus, but they are…What…” Optimus hesitated. He didn’t know that he actually wanted an answer to this. The Optimus here held an authority that intimidated him on an almost existential level. “What are they here?”

“A Magnus?” Ratchet, again, was the first to voice confusion, but their Optimus spoke over him a moment later.

“A Prime is less of a…taught…position here. There is no Academy for the position. Only a single cybertronian at a time is chosen.”

Sentinel made a choking noise next to him. 

Optimus patted him on the back blankly. Yes, old buddy, he was caught up in the same thing, though for different reasons: if only one cybertronian at a time was some kind of important prime, then why was it him? Why an Optimus? 

A year ago, he wouldn’t have ever thought that right. Of course, it was sort of impossible to deny the existence of the Optimus Prime in front of him. But he would have felt completely separated from him. He would have basically been his own bot and the shared name would’ve been a coincidence. He’d gotten his name from Magnus before the whole Archa VII everything, and it was a pretty complimentary designation. It wouldn’t have been that weird for other people to go for a name like that.

Now, he did think this was supposed to be him. A different universe version, emphasis on different, but that universe’s version of him. Not an alternate version of somebody else with the same name. 

And it wasn’t even incomprehensible. That was the weirdest part. He could accept this. Being on Earth, stopping Megatron on more than one occasion now, see- it let him know that he did play some kind of purpose aside from a cleaning bot and helper to prop up the likes of Sentinel. 

Accepting that this was some doppelganger alternate version of himself just made it actually harder to wrap his head around just how important that version of himself seemed to be. Protecting Earth and Cybertron from Megatron was far cry from being good for nothing except janitorial work, but he was doing that sort of thing with a team and human support. He wasn’t some one-of-a-kind government leader. 

(He never would be, not after that court martial)

The giant in front of them continued on a moment after that little surprise had dropped.

“It is also not military exclusive. Primes are tied instead to Primus,” (there it was again) “rather than a government. They act with direct wisdom from him.”

“And you-” Ratchet interrupted him, pointing at the three, “-don’t even know who Primus is. Was that the same for all of your Cybertron?”

“Uhm. I’m afraid so,” Optimus apologized, without really knowing why this was something he needed to apologize for.

Again, the autobot strangers all around them looked near scandalized. This Primus was well known here. Primes were supposed to listen to his wisdom, they’d said, so…Perhaps he was the first Prime? The ‘wisdom’ would need to be recorded if he was dead already, and that seemed likely when the impression seemed to be great age. Plus, he’d said there was only one prime at a time. This Primus couldn’t be alive still if somebody else was also a Prime.

Or his theory was just wrong.

The large Optimus gave a solemn nod. “Primus is our lifegiver.”

Which was as far as he made it before Sentinel snapped his digits and casually leaned back.

“Oh, so like the Allspark,” he said confidently (when did he ever talk without confidence?)

Actually, that wasn’t a bad point. So, was Primus the name for the Allspark here?”

His alternate self debunked that even as Optimus was finding all the ways it could’ve been a reasonable guess.

“The Allspark is related to him, yes,” the Prime confirmed. “It is tied to Primus’s spark.”

‘Tied to’ didn’t equate to being the same thing. So the Allspark and Primus weren’t synonymous. 

“Primus was the original cybertronian,” their Optimus went on. 

Oh. 

Hm, so not the first Prime necessarily, but certainly a historical icon. 

“He created the Primes and modern Primes are chosen one at a time to carry his mantle.”

A historical icon that…somehow had a spark tied to the Allspark, but he’d mull over that later…that had set up the rank. A bit like the Academy and Magnus rolled into a single probably-dead person. 

There was something wrong with that assumption.

Optimus knew there was more to this. He could see the serious sincerity in all the other bots’s faces. He could hear the importance they were laying on this topic. 

The truth was, he didn’t want to let himself think it could be any more than his assumption because that assumption was already pretty fantastical.

He lifted a servo over his mouth to think.

“So now the rank is tied to someone who, um, was the first to be sparked- or did the Allspark come after- or-?”

“He’s a god,” Ratchet corrected bluntly.

And…yep.

Too fantastical.

Optimus could’ve done a hard reboot right there. 

Unfortunately, the other two were busy panicking.

“Primus’s body makes up the whole of our planet, Cybertron," the other Optimus started explaining. "His core is meant to contain his spark alongside the Allspark, but…”

But whatever that was, they never got to hear. They were a little busy shouting at each other. 

Sentinel had turned to look at Optimus like the mech had somehow dramatically betrayed him. Blackarachnia, he realized, was also turned to stare at him a little too intensely for his liking. And he really couldn’t be humoring either, because he was a little busy panicking and needed to direct that panic at his alternate self.

“A Prime is what here? Wait, you got picked by a god?” Sentinel yelped.

Optimus tried to ignore him. “Cybertron is a god?” he asked the Prime and his optics darted to the medic beside him because- because Ratchet had been the one to be blunt about it? Because his Ratchet had never steered him wrong and he needed some kind of answer?

“You got picked by a god?” Sentinel repeated.

Blackarachnia set an arm on his back to lean into his audial. 

“Optimus Prime, heh…You did make it somewhere. Guess I wasn’t in this one to ruin your reputation and chances,” she sneered lowly, leaned close enough that it was clearly only meant for him to hear.

He tried not to be hurt by that and right now his best way of trying that was to pay attention to something else. Unfortunately, the alternative was looking at Sentinel and currently the blue mech looked like he’d be crying if he was human.

Okay. 

He was too tired for any of this.

“I’m really going to need you to start over,” he said weakly.

Thankfully, the strange autobots accepted that. Maybe they realized how crazy this would be for someone else to digest.

Blackarachnia better be regretting playing with transwarp now.

By the time that the other Optimus got started, he was really wishing they had some chairs here. It seemed like this would be a long explanation and he really was tired. All of them were.

The big Prime began in the same steady, rumbling voice he'd had since greeting them. Optimus was once again struck by the thought of age and experience and still something gentle beyond it all. The former two made him think of the Magnus, but…The latter made it seem like he was invested in them listening to his story the way a passionate school teacher would care about the information actually soaking in for their students.

“Then I will begin with the origins of our Primes here. Primus is a being and a planet all at once,” the giant began. “The physical body transformed into our planet long ago, so that his children would have a world to live on.” 

Cybertron was a person. Cybertronians had a god here.

It was no easier to accept the second time around either.

“But he had an enemy,” Optimus went on. “A godly power born in dark reaches. It wandered through galaxies, devouring worlds and people and gods alike. This being found Primus after he had begun the process of being Cybertron. He could fight this enemy on the astral field, but not physically without transforming again and devastating the new life growing atop him. There was another problem as well: the lifeblood of this creature is a deadly poison to all matter of Primus.”

Planet eating poison monsters. Planets that were people. What happened if Primus did transform and take a stretch? Would cybertronians just fall off? No, no, that wasn’t how gravity worked. Still, it would damage something. He'd just said it would be devastating.

How did you live on a person without worrying about that constantly? Optimus didn’t like it. He wouldn’t be comfortable with it. He wished Sari were here because she’d probably be able to voice all his concerns with that idea better than he.

“He could not allow the monster to come near him physically. If he did, and he was damaged and bled on Primus, that toxic substance could come into contact with the planet to detrimental ends. So he created warriors to fight this threat: the original Thirteen Primes.”

“What- but- I thought you said there was only one at a time!” Sentinel protested. His tone was the same as it was whenever he thought he’d won an argument, or managed to insult someone in a way they’d never come back from. Granted, that was pretty much his usual tone when interacting with anybody. He treated everything like a competition that he was always beating others in. (Optimus, in contrast, had spent far too much time in Sentinel’s circle and the lasting effects were a similar sense of a competition existing that he was always losing.)

“For modern Primes, this is true,” their Optimus nodded at the mech politely. “The Thirteen were a case of their own. They functioned with far more power than I or any Prime would. They shaped the creation of cybertronians and Cybertron with relics of power far greater than any weapon we have.”

It sounded so entirely fictional. 

And Optimus couldn’t disbelieve a word of it. Yes, it’d be little more than a tall tale in his world, but here…

They’d been dropped into the tall tale and they were far unequipped for that kind of reality.

“They successfully fought off the dark being. After this war, they set about helping to create a young cybertronian society but their family was not to be. One of the Thirteen convinced another to fight his allies. This splintering culminated in the death of one of their members and the remaining eleven joined to defeat the traitor who had manipulated these events. But after his defeat, they could not go back to their lives before. They traveled away and faded until none remained. From that point on, there has only been a singular Prime at a time.”

Optimus found himself speaking up again.

“How long ago was this?” he asked.

“The Thirteen’s disappearance marked the first wave of sparks from the Allspark and the beginning of the Age of Evolution. Subsequent ages lost much data and historical fact. We do not know,” their Optimus answered. “It is likely that the age of the Thirteen occurred half a billion years ago. We did not begin having Primes again until the last twenty millennia.”

That scope of time was a little distracting. Then again, of course it would be large. They were talking about creation and creators and the planet being a person and there was no way those sort of events were recent things. No way.

“What we call Primes now are individuals chosen to seek out and take on the Matrix of Responsibility. Am I correct in assuming there is no such relic in your world?”

For once, that wasn’t something he could answer while the other two hid behind him. He hadn’t been on Cybertron in a long time and he’d never been a high rank that got to hear about state secrets or the like. Blackarachnia would likely be in the same ship, except that she may know information from other decepticon scientists and spies that he wouldn’t. That left Sentinel, who was, probably, (unfortunately), the highest ranking prime under Magnus’s direct command. 

He turned to the mech. Said mech crossed his arms and looked away at the attention.

“I’m not about to divulge anything classified to anyone below my rank,” he sniffed. Good for him, getting the chance to feel an ounce of control and power again. Hope it was worth being a pain and not letting any of them move closer to the end of this.

“I don’t think so,” Optimus said in lieu of Sentinel being helpful. 

“The Matrix is tied to Primus in our world; if you do not have a Primus, it is likely the Matrix would not exist,” the other him replied. “It is the only mortal conduit to him. Within it is stored the collective wisdom of every Prime that held it before, as well as the wisdom of the Thirteen despite their Primehood not relying on holding the Matrix. Primus divulges the Matrix upon the cybertronian he chooses as his Prime and they are reformatted to hold it within their spark. Their body will reformat according to what the Matrix deems the current Age to need from their Prime.”

Optimus Prime’s optics looked down, brows falling with them.

“I was given the Matrix in an age of turmoil. It determined that its current Prime would need to be one of war.”

Oh, he was a warframe alright. But judging from the sound of that, he didn’t like it. The war existing, not his body, he meant.

He wasn’t like Optimus in all those years spent in Omega, going from one space bridge to the next watching old tapes on the "Great" war and its brave, mighty soldiers. That Optimus had watched those videos and felt sad that he would never live up to those fighters. That Optimus had yet to land on Earth and face how the dangers of war affected every life around, not just those of a wannabe soldier.

This Optimus in front of them clearly knew as much as his Ratchet did about what living through a war was like. 

No wonder he had an old air about him. War seemed to do that. Prowl and Ratchet were constructed about the same time, but Prowl had run from the draft and missed the war. Ratchet hadn’t. It was easy to guess which one seemed older. 

“You’re saying this Matrix thing is up there with the Allspark in power,” Sentinel thought aloud, before shaking his head. “No way. This is all a load of slag. No way! There’s no magic power that goes to one guy! Prove it,” he pointed an accusatory digit at the other Optimus. 

The other Optimus, who was big enough to fit his entire servo over any one of their heads with ease and pluck it off. It was like pointing a finger and sassing off to Megatron. 

(Except Optimus had done that to Megatron and he wouldn’t lie: it was kind of fun.)

So maybe it was more like sassing the Magnus. And Ultra Magnus was about the only person in the world that Sentinel didn’t outwardly disrespect for a reason. That reason just evidently didn’t carry over to this situation.

Their Ratchet bristled up.

“We don’t owe you anything, kid.”

He looked like he was going to say more (Optimus recognized a lecture from a Ratchet when it was coming), but the Prime set a servo on his shoulder carefully.

“Ratchet, they are new here,” he said. “They are owed explanations on this world.”

While the medic looked over to protest, the giant had already stepped forward into the circle of cybertronians and a resounding click quieted them all. Sparklight shone through a long, linear gap in his chest as plates slid that far apart before they all collapsed into doors that swung all the way open. And there, in what seemed to be a chest cavity (these cybertronians had large hollow spaces in their chests??), was a golden orb held in place by two handles set into the Prime’s circuitry.

The teeth of the orb had enough gaps to see the blue glow within the metal casing. 

It did feel like the Allspark. Like being near the Allspark. Like there was something powerful, something that could shape life itself, nearby. It was bigger and less unassuming than Sari’s key, but it emanated waves of strength clearly enough. 

And the funniest thing was, it looked kind of like the Allspark shard holder that Prowl and Bumblebee had been designing for him.

Sentinel started making that quiet high pitched whine again. Blackarachnia tilted her face so that two of the optics there could take in the sight in the middle of their circle. The sharp tips of her teeth were visible as her lip curled up. With her face half hidden, he couldn’t tell whether it was a sneer or smirk or grimace or something else on her mouth. 

“Now that looks impressive,” she murmured. “Gotta wonder what it can do.”

Hm. Maybe, just maybe, this Optimus should close those chest doors again and not be left alone with her. She might try to dissect him. 

Sentinel was back to a stream of tiny “holy frag”s. Their Optimus was staring at him. His chest closed slowly, covering up the glow of the thing that shone with power. With them closed, he took another step closer and, with his size, this put him practically on their end of the circle. Blackarachnia hissed and backed away to the wall again. Optimus shifted to block her. It was just a courtesy at this point. She was surrounded by autobots and didn’t have a helmet and it was pretty clear she felt uncomfortable about both. The whole alternate-dimension thing may have been the part she was least uncomfortable with. 

At this distance, he lifted a servo that landed easily on the blue prime’s shoulder. Sentinel hadn’t been paying attention to his approach (which was impressive, really, and spoke to his fatigue because it was kinda hard to miss someone the size of their Prime) and let out an eep at the unexpected (for him, because again, he’d somehow missed that he was now in the shadow of someone twice his height) touch. His face shot to look up and if Optimus were any less mature of a person, he’d have taken an image of expression. 

The alternate Optimus wore a tiny frown as he looked down. The entire pose looked like one that could’ve come from a few movies Optimus had seen when Bumblebee was off doing something that wasn’t monopolizing their screen. There were some with large commanding characters that lost the gruff attitude in order to act fatherly to their team (that was the word Sari used for it and based on what he saw of her and professor Sumdac, he supposed he could see it). The only difference was that Sentinel looked less like someone used to having their team leader be fatherly and more like an earth animal that wasn’t moving out of the road despite being driven towards. 

“You all look tired,” the Prime said, his servo not moving from its grip of camaraderie/comfort/whatever-it-was-doing-there. 

Sentinel made another choking sound. Blackarachnia was facing the shadows. 

Well, words were up to him again.

“Sorry,” Optimus apologized. “It’s been a long day. Even before waking up here.”

His alternate nodded.

He gave one last look at Sentinel with all the lines of fatigue and freak-out shadowing his face and then brought his arm back to his side to look at Optimus.

“It has. There is still so much to discuss on the origin of your travel here and what we may do from here to send you home. And I admit curiosity in learning more about your world.” 

The Prime stepped back to better look over all three.

“I would appreciate talking with each of you later.  But the events of the day would demand the chance to rest and recuperate. We will provide you a place to recharge,” their Optimus said, looking back to his own team and waiting for their nods. Ratchet was the last and did so with a grumble. “This base is a haven to you. We ask that you do not leave it, but please, find it a place to rest in safety.”

And as much as he didn’t want to stop figuring things out in order to go find a recharge slab in the middle of an unknown base surrounded by unknown people, Optimus couldn’t deny that it was a necessity. He would only grow less useful the more exhausted he became. And he needed to be useful. He had two others leaning on him for that, whether they realized they were or not.

Though they had yet to get to go down the hallway that their Prime had been waiting for them in earlier, he saw what seemed to be the rest of the base just on the trip down to a free room. It…wasn’t large. The room or the base. 

The room itself was being used as storage and the Bulkhead here gave an awkward laugh as he cleared off some of it until he found a berth. 

“This i-was Cliff’s, so, uh. Yeah, feel free. I’ll just go grab Ratchet’s extra medical one.”

He left as awkwardly as he came and it was a relief (not that Optimus would tell the poor guy that).

But that left them waiting in the halfway with a glaring Ratchet, a quiet Bumblebee (wasn’t that a sentence that felt wrong), and an Arcee that looked like she was pretending to not be completely invested in the situation but that was also subtly tensed and probably ready to attempt to use the environment to her favor the instant a fight broke out.

Which it wasn’t going to, but the point was, she was the type of person to be ready.

Like a more blunt, slightly crankier, less friendly version of Prowl.

Bulkhead was back to shove another flat slab of metal into the too-crowded supply room and then stepped out brushing his servos against each other. 

It was about then that Blackarachnia- still shadowing the other two so that they blocked her from the four autobots’s view- interrupted the plans to go in, plug into the recharge station, and collapse.

“I’m not sitting in a small room with these two,” she said flatly. 

“We don’t have any other room,” Arcee was the quickest to reply. “And we’re not letting you find some unsupervised place in the base alone.”

Blackarachnia’s sneer was audible in her voice.

“Then I’ll web up on the ceiling outside yours and you can take in my good looks all night, sweetspark,” she shot back. “But I’m not getting squished between Sentinel or the boy scout.”

Sentinel gave an exaggerated shudder.

“No way. Don’t even make me imagine that. You trying to make me sick?”

“Always,” Blackarachnia cooed, but Optimus could hear the anger behind it. She didn’t like Sentinel’s reaction. Not even if she claimed she agreed with it, even when Optimus told her that her organic half wasn’t some sort of repulsive secret that she had to hide in shame about. Maybe on Cybertron, but they weren’t on Cybertron. That wasn’t how Earth worked. It wasn’t how his Earth worked. 

Arcee glared for a moment before giving a shrug.

“Fine. Dont try anything, con. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“Nobody can tear their eyes away, believe me,” Blackarachnia sneered. “Whatever. You’ve already seen me.”

“Knock it off and go to bed,” Ratchet interrupted. “I’m not sticking around for more of this.”

True to his word, he stomped his way back to the main room. Bumblebee gave a whirling noise and patted Optimus on the shoulder. It was an odd experience. The prime-sized yellow bot waved and bounced off after. That’d… probably been a goodnight? 

There was no world where Bumblebee should be his height though. 

Arcee rolled her head and shoulders before heading off. She paused a few steps in and looked back.

“Thought you said you wanted to camp in my hallway,” she said drily.

It just got another sneer from Blackarachnia, but the techno-organic hesitated again. She had moved jerkily forward when the autobot first took off, but hadn’t made it further than where Optimus was standing. Under the spotlight now, she made another abrupt, short movement and hesitated.

He wanted to reach out, but she didn’t like touch that she didn’t initiate and she only initiated when she was about to use someone. 

“Hey, you don’t have to split up,” he muttered instead of taking her arm. “It’s okay.”

Maybe it was him offering help that made her decide to march off away from them. 

That was okay. It didn’t hurt. It was fine.

It ended up being just him and Sentinel in the dark supply room after Bulkhead had slid the industrial door down. Optimus walked around what little free floor space there was and took in their temporary new apartment. Well, all things considered, it was probably better than the barracks at the Academy. He and Blackarachnia- Elita, then- had barely had any room in that practical closet and he just barely fit on its bunk. It didn’t stop them from setting posters up or sitting on cramped bunks until late into the lights off cycle because Elita would want to talk about Sentinel or gossip about whatever sergeant or minor she hated the most that week. 

The biggest problem with this room was probably that the berths did not seem to have recharge stations on them.

“They don’t have recharge stations here for us,” he said aloud as he felt around. “Maybe they don’t use any?” Optimus thought that over and decided it wouldn’t even be a surprise. He sat up on the berth and crawled his way back over the second one to hop onto the floor again. “I’m going to go see Ratchet about them. Maybe he can whip something up for us.”

No response for that. Optimus turned around and headed past where Sentinel was standing in the exact same spot he’d started in the room so that he could reach the door. There was also no response from getting walked by. 

It didn’t feel right.

Optimus paused next to Sentinel’s side. The mech was staring forward and down and the shadows on his face were more pronounced than ever. They almost looked as bad as they had been right after Optimus had found him on the floor with Blackarachnia. Between the transwarp explosion and the strange new autobots, he probably hadn’t had time to process everything she’d revealed for him. It’d taken Optimus weeks to. And he wasn’t as close to Elita as Sentinel had been, barrack roommates or not. Those two had always had similar abrasive, young personalities in the academy, with nigh-matching egos, and, despite Sentinel completely lacking an interest in history or science where Optimus could hold his own in a conversation on those subjects, she’d preferred to gravitate to him and the blue mech vice versa.

Sentinel had never forgiven Optimus for what happened on Archa VII, even if their being there was his and Elita’s idea to start with. And Optimus had willingly taken the blame, had tried to shoulder sole responsibility so that at least Sentinel wouldn’t be any more hurt. Except…

Well, that had worked out brilliantly. Sentinel certainly got the life he’d always wanted. He became twice as insufferable and cruel while he was at it, though. 

For him to find out Blackarachnia’s secret was clearly something that was going to hit him hard. They’d already grieved her death. It was like a wound reopened. And while Optimus had gone through that fresh already and moved past it, Sentinel had only now just found out.

Sentinel, who thought organics were the worst things to ever crawl out of a planet. 

Yeah. It wasn’t a good meeting for him or Blackarachnia to have had. Optimus would’ve preferred breaking it far far slower, if he had to let Sentinel know at all. 

So it’d been a rough day. And now was the first quiet moment in a relatively safe place where he could start processing that.

Optimus frowned at the drained expression and slumped posture of someone he’d never known to give up (Sentinel was far to dense and overconfident and plain stupid to give up, in his experience; not even getting his head removed from his body would make him do so). 

“Are you holding up?” he asked, setting a servo on one of those large shoulders.  It got shrugged off.

“I can take care of myself, Optimus, thank you very much,” Sentinel replied. Shaken out of his frozen reverie, the other prime finally moved from that spot in the room to lay face down on the larger berth. 

Optimus stared on.

“Please do,” he said quietly and it went mercifully unresponded to.

Chapter Text

In a lone part of the desert, someone was leaving a trail of footprints too large and mutilated to be recognized as footprints by any human that came upon them. Each foot responsible had been split apart and seamed together again. Oils dripped out of each hairy tarsus and torn wires spat sparks. The liquid and occasional fragment of a wire could have been equally confusing to anyone that stumbled across them, if not for how spread apart each step was. It would be difficult to piece together a trail to follow if someone wasn’t already the size of whoever had made it, and the fact was that no sentient creature native to Earth was.

The other fact remained that this area of the wilderness was little more than canyon and buttes left alone during the summer and only really visited in cooler seasons by campers.

No one bore witness to the sparking and fizzling creature that took step after limping step through these canyons. No home saw the creature pass through their yard and took to the internet with pictures of a Nevadan cryptid that would eventually be found, investigated, and scrubbed by the members of Autobot Outpost Omega One.

So the green giant was free to keep stumbling unnoticed. Sometimes, his body would crash into the occasional dry tree or weak rock structure and knock them down alongside himself. Sometimes, that body would fall apart upon the landing. Arms would amputate and slip out of sockets to roll over the dirt. The green abdomen would rip open until sand got into the internal cavities. And it never mattered. It never mattered, because he could get up again. He could split into over twenty pieces and still get up again. He had, in fact, and it was those seams where the pieces held together weakly that so often broke apart again at the smallest stimuli.

The lost arms would crawl back over the ground to the source body. Wires would stretch and wiggle against the floor like tiny feet. Hair would wind and wrap around other hair to tie areas together. Magnetic strength would pull and keep the body together.

It wouldn’t matter.

The damage, the leaking, the way any other mech should’ve been dead from shock systems alone.

The heat and sand and broken mapping systems.

None of it would matter.

Because as much as they might have for others- as much as it all might have mattered for Wasp even-, he wasn’t about to slow down and let the traitor-bots find him. He wasn’t about to let them or the environment offline him.

Not so long as he had plans for himself.

Blackarachnia didn’t like this place. She didn’t hate it either, so that was something. 

A long, long time ago, she’d liked the idea of travel. One of Cybertron’s greatest flaws was staying within the borders of its system. There were things to learn out there. Think of the history. Think of the science. Think of the resources, advantages, progress. It was funny how decepticons got to think seriously about all of those, because they got to actually explore and find such resources without the stigma and restrictions of the Commonwealth. They got to, but most, if you got them drunk and poisoned enough, admitted that all they wanted was the chance to go back home. 

She’d liked the idea of travel- before it became all her life would get the chance for. 

There used to be times that she’d speak up in Academy classes against the restrictions and isolationist ideology until other students would grow nervous and try to shush her or professors would outright tell her to go quiet or else be expelled from their class. Their loss. A few old veteran professors at the Academy would instead agree (very carefully, though, talking in hypotheticals and ensuring they could not be called dissidents of the Commonwealth) with her points and would humor her talks on the advantages they could be finding. One of them, she could still remember now. He’d been a jolly sort, a bit idiotic, not the type she’d enjoy associating with nowadays. He’d had a very pronounced family crest above and around his upper lip. Wheeljack, former engineer, science type. Definitely not someone she’d associate with now. But he’d been one of the more engaging professors, even if Sentinel hated him for being unprofessional (he really just hated being required to take science classes when all he wanted was fame for busting heads) and Optimus tended to prefer the more hard fact science courses than the theoretical ones. Wheeljack was easily distracted with talks of the unknown, unproven, untested. She’d stood up in one of those classes to protest the isolationist restrictions again and, somehow or other, this had ended up in Wheeljack talking about the ideas of multiverse theory and his own unrecognized theory on something called ‘unspace'.

Oh, she’d been interested then.

She’d always been interested in the more untested realms of science.

Multiverse theory certainly hadn’t been all slag. Transwarp was a strong enough thing to fold and flex reality, apparently. All of this needed to be looked into. Of course it did and it would. Optimus expected her to work on transwarp and find them a way home. Home. Ha. 

What did he mean: Cybertron?

Cybertron wasn’t her home.

She wasn’t even one of those decepticons that really badly wanted back on it. Yes, it drove her mad to know that she couldn’t go back if she wanted to. That was a helplessness she couldn’t stand. 

Blackarachnia wasn’t restricted under the Commonwealth. She could travel and steal all she liked. There were some off limits planets or systems. The decepticons had many alliances with different planetary systems and governments. They had to respect boundary treaties. Otherwise, they may lose their sovereign recognition, like Cybertron had been pressing they do for centuries. That all was politics. Not her favorite thing to deal with. What mattered was knowing where she was allowed to go.

She’d gone to decepticon worlds. Chaar, of course, but also more minor colony stations and planets. She’d gone to populated alien worlds with a heavy decepticon presence. Those were often bustling and chaotic and full of people who’d raise a brow at the sight of her, but that could recognize a deceptibrand just fine. Among those were the type that picked fights anyways, the type that gave her lots of talks on how forward thinking they were and how they’d treat ‘her kind’ ‘normal’, and the types that wanted an interface. There were always the type that wanted to interface.

Then there were the alien worlds with a far more rare cybertronian presence. They didn’t tend to realize there was anything wrong with her to start with. Somehow, this was never that much better than the people that recognized she was a techno-organic and what that meant for her.

So there were complaints to be made for all of them. And maybe she made some allies, hired some employees, here or there. Maybe she bought property or frequently visited some spots. There were still none that she considered home. 

In all the travel she’d gotten to have in a life as Blackarachnia, she had never gone to a planet that she ‘liked’. 

In other words, not minding a place was rare enough. 

Their base here was crowded and dirty and overstuffed. It was full of autobots along with the residual pheromones and scents of humanity. It was far from safe. She definitely didn’t like all that.

But it was also familiar in a way that highlighted potential differences. Oh, she could care less about this Earth or the last one. But what about Cybertron? She hadn’t heard enough at all about Cybertron yet. It would’ve been easy to assume it was the same as the Commonwealth's planet- the same as the place that had brought her into an Academy with promises of greatness and strength and glory and who would now cut her apart the moment she tried to return to them, the same place that stayed clean and safe and cut off from organics and warmongering brutish decepticon tribes alike and refused to let any citizens out beyond its borders into such dangers despite advantages- except that assuming and proof weren’t the same thing. And Blackarachnia liked proof.

That group the night before hadn’t really talked about Cybertron. Well, aside from the fact that it was the body of a god. Apparently, that was just a widely accepted fact though, so who was she to make a big deal out of it. She really couldn’t care. Not unless this supposed core of Primus was stronger than the Allspark and actually let her purge her organic half where the Allspark hadn’t. 

Which, hah, implied she’d be on Cybertron to start with. And she wasn’t setting foot on that planet. She was not about to end up in any lab but her own. 

The moment she was sighted on her homeworld, it’d be the Elite Guard and exo-hazardous containment crews and then the labs. 

Unless there were no Elite Guard and exo-haz-con crews and organic study labs on this version of her homeworld.

Then…what?

Would she suddenly want to go back?

Yes. For the same reasons that she wanted to go to Archa VII and to AST-009 and a dozen other mystery locations: simply because she could and her curiosity wanted answers. She did not like to waste resources that she knew she could get, even if no one else was going to get them either. 

It wouldn’t be her Cybertron. It wouldn’t be returning to the world that threw her away. The world that thought her dead and, upon learning anything otherwise, would prefer to view her as dead. It wouldn’t be slipping back into her form and life and going to classes and doing drills for awful boot camp instructors and making plans to have the most successful life possible. That Cybertron was long gone and she wanted nothing but misery like her own for the remains that refused her. 

So what about this Cybertron?

There was something sickening in the temptation to go to a planet identical to the one she’d been barred from so long. At the same time, it would be as clinical as any other investigation she’d had on alien worlds. There’d be no emotional ties to it. No emotional stakes. 

Just history, science, and resources to unbare and utilize.

Blackarachnia thought about it all night. She watched the blue autobot leave her room and go down the hallway suspiciously a few hours later. Arcee was clearly no fan of hers. Blackarachnia was used to that. She’d find it weirder if an autobot was. But she’d also not really glanced around to find the techno-organic and make some morning threat. 

It was easy to crawl along the ceilings after her. Arcee was called a scout, but few were ever equipped to expect and prepare against beings with an organic nature. Their manners of stealth were different. 

The blue one reached the main chamber and started talking with the medic that was already there. Blackarachnia listened in and picked up words on ‘Jack’, ‘school’, ‘left the garage’, ‘need to be back’, etc. Interesting enough and without any meaning of value for her.

She waited until the medic had told the autobot to wait a moment and he left whatever he had been working on to go to his…groundbridge, they called it, station.

That left Blackarachnia with a choice: watch him and learn more about this remote application to spacebridge transwarp, or get a different sort of information altogether out of the lone autobot waiting. 

She dropped silently into the hall and sent a web out to tug Arcee deeper into that tunnel away from Ratchet’s audials.

The autobot was severely displeased at this motion. Right, right, webs, organic material, disgusting. She knew, she’d heard it all before. Really, now wasn’t the time for some talk on how disturbing organics were. They could have that later.

So after Arcee had cut through the web and looked ready to cut through its maker too, Blackarachnia bluntly asked her question.

“Do you have any scientists in this dump of yours?” 

The autobot looked irritated at the insult to her base. In honesty, it wasn’t any more of a dump than all those Blackarachnia had made for herself (and Meltdown, though he wasn’t supposed to take any measure of control over them) on the dinobot’s island. But Blackarachnia rarely liked to be honest.

Arcee took a moment before she stood up straight and her blade shifted away. She looked confused, if anything. First aggressive, then irritated, now confused. Oh, Blackarachnia could work with any of them. 

“Do…I-”

Yes?

Oh really, was it that hard of a question? It could have a simple yes or no answer. It could have a numerical answer. Just say ‘no’ or say ‘three of them’ or whatever, really, Blackarachnia didn’t care. 

There was a noise identical to the one earlier in the dark cycle when the transwarp bridge had opened. Ratchet called Arcee over, clearly unaware or uncaring that she was in a more important conversation. Blackarachnia sneered at the sound of his voice. 

“Ratchet probably is the closest thing we’ve got to a scientist,” Arcee finally answered. “Optimus knows his way around data and I can mess around a few formulas, but he’s the only one with actual science experience.”

She looked like she was about to ask why the question had even been brought up, but closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes suspiciously instead. 

“Don’t even try to hurt him while I’m gone. The rest will kick your aft.” 

Mhm. Yes, a truly frightening threat. Blackarachnia just waved her off and vanished back into the hall. 

It was only after Arcee left and the noise of the groundbridge cut off that she ventured into the main room again. Her first idea was to explore the tunnel hall they hadn’t gone down hours previous and that, she assumed, led to an exit. It couldn’t be that hard to break through an exit, especially if it was made with the same unofficial materials the rest of this base seemed made with. 

But she could see the shape of a large human-model truck parked in those shadows and she did not plan on attempting to sneak past this world’s version of Optimus Prime anytime soon. No, she could wait until the exit was a little less guarded by such overkill. 

That idea foiled, she enacted her next plan.

Her target was Ratchet and despite the way his rank as a scientist made her organic skin crawl, he would still be easy prey. 

Blackarachnia only wished she had her helmet already. It left her with an illusion of being a little more cybertronian than she was. And looking more cybertronian than not helped put targets of such species at ease. Her body shape, after all, wasn’t that alien. And much of it had the illusion of metal plating from a distance. She’d been told that it only became evident that it was different once someone was actually close enough to be touching. A few freaky fraggers really liked that. Meh, their choice. She thought she was disgusting, but she also rather liked the fact that she could control people through so many means. She was just only mildly more handicapped without the helmet. 

Still. No one had commented on it in the meeting prior. 

And how weird was that? No one had commented.

It felt completely nervewracking. 

That’s what this was for. It was to determine more about this universe’s version of Cybertron and cybertronians. It was to learn what to expect from them on the matters of organics. 

If the autobots here wanted to cut her up, then it wasn’t going to matter if Optimus claimed their best chance was to work together here. She’d be leaving before anyone could remember how to stop her. And she’d probably try to blow the whole joint up on the way out, except those idiots would still be inside and, for whatever reason, she couldn’t bring herself to kill Optimus. Oh, now Sentinel. Ha. He was a different matter. He was a right fragging traitor. He was more disgusting than she was. There were good reasons she’d planned on never running into him. But of fragging course Optimus had to bring him to her. After she’d thought she’d made her stance on autobots and their stance on techno-organics vice versa pretty damn clear. 

Regardless, this was a matter of investigation. Information exposure and retrieval. 

Easy enough, in other words.

She’d always been good at all that. With the autobots, she’d been good at it by acting unassuming, young, bright eyed, just a cadet with some questions that came from an innocent source. She’d been the one to find out about Archa VII in a rather forbidden area of the extra-galactic mapping library. With organic aliens, she just had to find their edge and use it. Maybe that’d be threatening them, maybe it’d be a sob story, maybe it’d be as simple as breaking and entering and never being found. And decepticons could respond to plenty of things. Threats, bribery, flirting, it all could work. She had blackmail on all of high command. She’d made weapons for use against all of high command sans Megatron. She’d made some of high command. Blitzwing? Some of her best work, really. So yes, she knew how to excavate information out of them when she needed to.

The medic and apparently only scientist of the group was back to working away at some rather archaic looking computer in the corner of the room. Blackarachnia slipped from the ceiling into this cordoned off room and gave a cough into her hand when she realized the old mech didn’t even catch on to her presence there. Honestly, these people had failed twice now. They needed to improve their ability to detect short range dangers. 

He jumped at her cough and spun around until his hips actually clanged up against his counter, rattling the tools there. Jumpy, really. Not her favorite effect to have on people. The jumpy ones were always thinking too much too fast. She preferred the slow thinkers that just ate up whatever she told them. 

And the jumpy ones were more likely to immediately comm for backup. She didn’t want to deal with any of that. It’d crowd her into this tiny medbay. And she couldn’t promise heads wouldn’t roll the moment these strangers tried to box her into any small space. 

Not for the last time, she wished she had her helmet. The curl of her lips in a disappointed grimace was bad enough to reveal to her target. She’d rather it wasn’t quite so illuminated. It gave away some of the illusion that she was innocently interested in someone else rather than waiting for them to get to the point that she needed them for. 

Blackarachnia couldn’t stop the frown though, so she made to own it. 

“Calm down,” she said flatly. Seriously. What did he think she could do? Stupid, jumpy old science mechs. Always ready for their former actions to sneak up on them. “I’m not here to cause any problems.”

The autobot’s eyes narrowed like he didn’t believe it. 

Probably because he shouldn’t, but she’d have to distract him away from that reality.

“I just wanted to see what your workspace was like,” she cooed as she brushed a purple hand over the counter nearest her in the entryway. It rubbed against the texture of the material and its dust. She hid the grimace this time. “My…dear friends want me to research a way for us to go home.” Her hand continued to brush along the counters as she dragged it beside her, walking deeper into the tiny medical office. The autobot was still frowning even as he moved aside so she could prowl past him to the other end. “And I’m afraid that we’ll likely need help with that. So I came to see what sort of lab we had to work with.”

The word 'lab' disturbed her. She hated that weakness in herself. But no matter how many of her own labs she made for herself, it still just made her think of her homeworld and the waiting scalpels there. Cybertronians didn’t shiver, but her organic side sure had introduced such a body function to her. 

“It’s a medbay,” Ratchet finally found his big boy words again. Good on him. It only took an annoying amount of extra words to coax it out of him. “It doesn’t have any of the equipment to be much of a lab. And-” His eyes narrowed, all suspicious, again. “-I’m not about to show what equipment we do have to a complete stranger that happens to be on the enemy’s side.”

It was funny, really, how these autobots acted more caught up in the decepticon business than the organic business. 

They were very good at masking their repulsion and pretending to have more tact than her natural world’s autobots would have. 

“I’m not an enemy,” she said. “And I hope I’m not always seen as one.”

She’d bat her eyes like a proper organic, except she knew how fragging disgusting they looked without a helmet. Nobody needed their attention drawn over to where her face was a mass of ugly mutations. 

Blackarachnia returned to her strolling pace and casual investigation of the room. She crouched to feel over the berth and noted the slots where restraints slid out of. Lovely. And wasn’t that typical for a mech calling himself a medic while also being a known scientist. 

She paused on her way up from the crouch and met his eyes again. 

“You have a nice medbay.”

She straightened up and walked near him again. He moved out of the way again as well. 

There were a few tools she recognized well enough from her own time messing around in labs. There were also multiple that she couldn’t recognize at all. It was a fascinating side effect of a multiverse, she supposed. 

Blackarachnia let her fingers drift over these.

“Well equipped. No good medbay can last without a silicon replicating grafter. Mm, and is this an artificial spark chamber cage?”

She dropped said tool when she smiled over at the medic. 

“I’m sure you keep a very tight ship. Only the best in here for you.”

Truth be told, she wasn’t very reassured at the sight of any of these recognizable items. She knew the extent of things they could be used for from personal experience. No matter how some were nontransferable to techno-organics, all would be dangerous. 

Blackarachnia tried to walk back over to the biggest danger in question, but he again side stepped and left her to slide her abdomen up onto the medical berth until her thighs could hit its side comfortably. 

“What sort of work do you get up to in here?”

A few field repairs for little dents on little cybertronians when they tripped and fell?

Or close observation on the variety of the ecosystem they could sample from this planet?

Perhaps, even, a dissection of its technology or inhabitants?

If not for the fact that most autobots would be too repulsed to even go near touching distance with a non-cybertronian, Blackarachnia might expect more to answer that. But most autobots were far too caught up in the idea of contamination and danger and the ugly being contagious. Only their scientists really remembered the importance of observation and research.

Ratchet looked disinterested in all these thoughts as he glared at her.

“Why are you in my medbay?” he asked. 

Talkative fellow. Really giving her information to work off of. 

Ugh. Maybe she could get away with stealing something from out of here, but it appeared that the information was being held on the computers and they were far too large to just spirit away.

“Nothing,” she waved nonchalantly. “You just seemed to be involved in the most interesting profession. I hear things, word of mouth. And I just had to come visit and see for myself.”

Now he was just frowning deeper. His eyes kept glancing between her and the entryway like he could summon his behemoth of an Optimus over through desperate glances alone. Sorry, big fellow, but you can’t.

“I’m hardly the most interesting one here,” Ratchet offered. 

Ah. Bashfulness. She knew how to work that. She knew all about mechs that pretended they didn’t think they were worth much, even though their egos were truly phenomenal at rating them above all others.

“Anyone who’s able to do something as hard as medical work is interesting,” she argued. 

He shrugged that one off and snubbed her to look at his computers. Perhaps it was just his way of looking away from the organic. She could bet it was. 

“Arcee talked you up,” Blackarachnia purred, hopping off the berth’s edge to approach him. This time, he didn’t shrug away. Which was…weird. Unexpected. She figured he would. She figured all autobots would unless they were trying to attack. Nobody wanted an organic getting into touching range. 

Unless, maybe, the autobots here didn’t realize what she was. From a distance, much of her organic surface material could be mistaken as metal and protoform. The strongest exception were the growths on her face and crest and there was no way Ratchet couldn’t see those in this proximity.

Touching him would ruin that illusion that she wasn’t…what she was, so she aborted any motion to put a hand on his chest and slid up on the counter next to him instead. A few tools clattered down to the ground. She could practically see the irritation buzzing through him at that. How amusing. 

“So you’re a real science type, hm?” she hummed, letting her head drop closer to one of his shoulders to purr words out more effectively. “That’s what I hear. What sort of research have you gotten to do? Have any hypotheses you’d like testing about your new visitors, hm? Any big accomplishments you’d like to show off to me?”

See, she thought that was a good enough approach. A few sweet words and misdirection and her real point would get missed, but its answers would come out of whatever got volunteered. 

Bots loved to brag. 

So whatever dangerous science projects the medic had done back on Cybertron, he’d spill them. She’d figure out exactly what caliber of danger she was dealing with here. 

Blackarachnia only just resisted letting her smirk slide over her face. 

Fishing answers out of fools never got old. And if this bot was the type to test on organics and propagate the anti-organic sentiments of Cybertron that left her unwelcome to go back, then she’d orchestrate a way to deal with him. There was no chance that she’d stay put under the same roof as a scientist like that.

Except that instead of volunteering all his ‘greatest accomplishments’, the autobot just narrowed his eyes at her and bluntly asked, “Are you hitting on me?”

Was she what?

With him??

He has an old rust bucket. He probably was a cesspool of viruses waiting to happen. 

He was a scientist.

She supposed her usual body language and words could’ve been taken that way, though. It wasn’t like she thought to turn it off.

And if there was anything she’d learned over the centuries, it was that such an approach often loosened lips. It was what she automatically slipped into with strangers.

But that was with organics, techno-organics, idiot decepticons. Never autobots if they’d figured out she was organic. Or… almost never autobots. It was still very effective on suckers like Optimus after he’d learned. 

Blackarachnia’s disarming smile twisted into an ugly scowl. She knew her fangs were bared and ready to strike and she couldn’t care. 

While the medic just stood with crossed arms and the same blunt expression, she hopped off his counter and squared off in front of him. He was larger than her, but he had no backup near enough to react before she could take him down. 

“Is that what you’d like?” she snapped. His expression didn’t change. It was infuriating. 

Blackarachnia brought one flexed hand up and scraped its claws down the autobot’s chest. “Or would you rather just skip to the hitting part?” she sneered and pressed the palm and all its organic nastiness against him.  “A big, strong autobot, doing his part against those nasty decepticons, doing his duty for the war. It’s all an excuse to get close enough to touch, isn’t it?”

She threw her head back to laugh.

“You want to see if it feels as weird as it looks.”

Her hand ripped away and if paint was stripped along with the force, well, what did she care?

“So you wish that’s what I was here for,” Blackarachnia growled and retreated. 

By now, one of his pronounced optical brows had lifted higher than the other. Yes, she’s sure she was fascinating and her aggression was just quite the curious thing to pull apart. 

Maybe, just maybe, if he’d sounded just the slightest bit enthused when he’d asked it, she wouldn’t feel as judged right now.

Scientists were always like this. They stared down at her like she was in a petri dish. She hated it, hated them. 

“So you weren’t.” Ratchet said simply when he did speak up again. 

There were plenty of medical tools in arms reach that she really should just pick up and throw at the slagger’s head. 

She settled for dramatically scoffing.

“I’m hardly the studliest here, so I’d feel suspicious if you were,” the autobot said just as bluntly. 

He bent down with a few audible creaks and picked up the tools her seating choice had knocked over earlier. Blackarachnia watched him do it and wondered if she could begin erasing this mess from their memories if she helped. A little bit of endearment was useful. Just as useful was observing weaknesses and she was picking up plenty from far away.

For a doctor, he didn’t seem to have the best care of his joints. 

The autobot looked grumpier than ever by the time he creaked upright again and reorganized his stuff. 

“Are you actually going to ask whatever you came for? Because otherwise, you’re in my space.”

Yes, she was so very inconvenient. It wasn’t like being stuck in a base of people from a faction that hated you, in another dimension, was inconvenient too. 

Whatever. 

“Cybertron,” she said. “How many scientists are on your Cybertron?”

Ratchet dropped the tool in his servo. He stood there a moment before shaking himself. 

“None, as far as I know,” he said, tight and careful. 

Oh really?

Yeah right. 

“How many hospitals then? How many crowded cities?”

He kept staring down at the counter. 

“None of those either,” Ratchet finally said after far too long of a pause.

So, flat out lies, was it? That was answer enough.

Blackarachnia scoffed.

“That so,” she muttered disbelieving. “In that case, how about you tell me where I can find the nearest spacebridge?”

Now, he finally looked over. She didn’t know how to use whatever expression that was. 

“I want to see Cybertron,” Blackarachnia said. 

The autobot stared without a change in that expression. 

“No you don’t,” he slowly answered. 

Assumptions, assumptions. Peoples’ assumptions on her wants were always wrong. 

“Why? No decepticons allowed there?” she asked, letting hostility slip through.

Except instead of growing defensive, he gave a scoff of his own and shrugged away.

“Decepticons can go there all they want,” he said. “But there’s nothing there for any of us anymore.”

“And what does that mean?” she pressed.

He motioned for her to wait and began to pull images up on one of his computers.

And that was how Blackarachnia learned about the devastated state of this universe’s Cybertron a half day before the other two did.

Before she did leave that medbay with a head spinning from information she had no real idea how to process, Blackarachnia had paused on the other side of the berth from the autobot.

“You are a scientist though, aren’t you?” she asked. 

Ratchet made a grumbling sound and dragged a servo down his face. He left it there and spoke past its soft metal.

“Yes, yes. A medical scientist.”

He glared at her past the gaps of his digits.

“I help people.”

Uh huh.

Yeah, that’s what autobot doctors did. 

They’d also consider cutting her into pieces helping. Like Sentinel had said, she was better off dead than this. 

Fragging Sentinel.

“People? And do organics count as people?” she huffed. “Or are they pests here too?”

“Oh, they’re pests,” he grumbled almost too quietly to be heard. “Optimus views all life as life. It’s never mattered what planet or origin.”

It took her a moment to remember he meant that Optimus- the giant one out in the driveway that was apparently some pseudo-godly figure here. 

Funnily enough, it almost didn’t make a difference to the honesty of Ratchet’s claim anyways.

Blackarachnia felt annoyed. 

“Optimus does, sure, I won’t argue that. But you’re the one with the scalpels. So let’s hear some honesty, huh? Do you want to feel and figure out what all this is?” she lifted her fleshy arms and rubbed a hand down one. It was still uncomfortable, no matter how many centuries she had to adjust to it. For the autobot, who’d only just recently felt the skin and tissue, the initial curiosity and revulsion had to burn.

“This again,” Ratchet mumbled and shook his head. “Look, I don’t know what the frag you are.”

Hah. He could admit it. 

Nobody did.

There were the factual answers: she was part cybertronian, part organic, she was called a techno-organic, etc. 

They didn’t do her justice, she’d realized. 

What she looked like and was made out of was just one thing. What I am is a whole lot more complicated . 

“And I don’t really give a shit,” the medic continued. 

See, tha-

That.

That sounded like the sort of slag Optimus- her Optimus (that was a disgusting way to say it, a disgusting word choice, a very true one- her possessions were her possessions and she knew she could rely on him no matter how she felt about the coward)- said. Claimed. Claimed that she should feel too, or that Cybertron should feel and that in turn would give her the choice to pursue a cure or live a life without fear of rejection for it. 

It sounded like a lie. 

Because it was, in her home universe.

Because it always would be, back there, on its alive and flourishing Cybertron. 

Blackarachnia needed time to think.

“Hmph.” She looked away. “I’m something of a scientist too.”

If dissecting, splicing, and mixing practical magic with lab materials all in an effort to cure herself or frag with others like Blitzwing counted as science.

“I guess we’ll be working together on this mess. I expect you to follow my expertise with transwarp.”

Actually, she expected he wouldn’t. She expected he’d try to take seniority, disregard her knowledge on account of her only being a techno-organic, and ultimately start expecting her to follow his lead unquestioningly.

If not turn on her completely, like Meltdown and multiple others. 

She’d stayed in the dark edge of the hall even after the base had grown alive with noise and she’d spotted her two…companions…go out into the main room. 

The next time she had to talk to anyone was after creeping unnoticed into the secondary hall and starting down it in the hopes of finding the exit. Instead of finding the exit, some autobot found her.

It was the big green one. The same one that her Optimus had on his Earth team. That same clumsy, big academy washout whose chin dropped at a few sultry touches and cooed words. 

She didn’t like the size. She’d never liked being smaller than most of the decepticons she’d be stuck on a ship or neighborhood of Chaar on. Oh, most never figured it out. They’d suggest it and tease it and her reactions never fueled their fun. Her revenge never left any of them very happy. People learned that she was a force to be reckoned with and a fearless monstrosity that could stand side by side with figures like Blitzwing. 

Size mattered, but the key was knowing how to play with it.

And she knew a great many strategies for dealing with people physically stronger than her while in the decepticon ranks.

“Uh- hey, here,” he said, so he obviously had been waiting to stop her rather than just being surprised and going still and cumbersome and blocking the road in that surprise.

Great. It wasn’t a problem. She knew how to handle creatures far bigger than her.

One of his arms came out from behind him and he held out what looked at first like a bucket. 

It still looked like a large bucket on closer notice. She took it on instinct and felt its soft metal. Hm. Not true gold, but close and painted to look like it. 

“We’ve got some welding stuff. Ratchet does, mainly. So you can, you know, cut it up how you want and stuff.” He shrugged. “We just thought we’d get it to you while school was still going, ‘cause it seemed like you really wanted it.”

And she did. The sooner, the better. She left naked, far, far too bare. She felt like her usual means of dealing with people- strangers or enemies alike- was impossible without it. She needed a helmet. She needed it.

So if she held the bucket slightly behind her like some part of her expected it to get snatched away, well. Who’s concern was that?

Blackarachnia kept it held back that way even as she used her free arm to trail a hand up the giant warframe’s rounded arm.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she hummed. 

He shifted his weight. 

“So it’s…good enough?”

“Mhm. It’s more than good enough,” Blackarachnia purred upwards, leaning all the way up against that arm.

“Okay?” he said, looking more confused than interested.

Hmph. Well, no point in endearing him into her ranks just yet. She had the helmet and that was enough to find satisfaction in now. It was always best to go one step at a time anyways.

She dropped the act and walked back in the direction she’d come. 

At least the green one was too dense to report her immediately for going into that hall to start with.

Chapter Text

Something had changed at the base. Miko was no idiot. There was a reason everyone was acting shifty. Bulkhead drove back to the curb instead of going over and gave her some excuse about them all ‘cleaning’ up, as if that was a reason that she couldn’t be there. What, too many fumes? Yeah, she doubted it. 

And when she’d snuck out of the house and made her way to Jack’s place, she knew he was in the same boat. Which helped because it meant this wasn’t favoritism. It wasn’t people singling her specifically out and then giving some lousy reason why she couldn’t be nearby, because one reason would filtered into the next and the next until it’d been months since she’d even gotten a message. Though she did suppose basing her comfort off of Jack alone wasn’t good enough. He was way more of a loser than she was. 

Still, she pushed a few of Ms. Darby’s boxes around and then climbed up them to see through a small garage window and boom, voila, whatever the word, what’dya know: Arcee. If she was here, so was Jack. No sleepovers at the base were happening without her. 

She almost regretted that she’d gone on this search first instead of trying to email either him or Raf or Ratchet himself. 

(Getting Ratchet an SSN account so they could use its DMs to communicate outside of phone calls had been so funny, she still wasn’t over it. He was such an old dude on it. Old dudes had no idea how to use social media.)

But no, this was fine. She didn’t need to rely on that. She could just ask Jack what he knew!

Except Jack had been all huffy about her prying open one of the house’s windows and Arcee had almost given herself away to Jack’s mom and Miko might have almost died, but like, that was chill. She’d broken into places before, they didn’t have to act like it was a big deal. 

Sure, she’d gotten Jack grounded. And Ms. Darby was being Like That, one of those adults, and setting up to call Miko’s host family, and so Miko decided to just think of her as June until she started being cool. Getting all huffy just like her kid and making all these assumptions about Jack having a girlfriend, hahahahahaha, Miko wasn’t falling through opened windows to smooch Jack. Jeez. She just wanted to know what was up with their big alien buddies. 

June drove her back to the host house and it occurred to Miko that this was the first time she actually met Jack’s mom. It was a quiet drive. She didn’t even play any music even though she also didn’t talk outside of some stiff lectures about how unsafe it was for a kid to be outside at 2:00 a.m. Big deal! Miko was scrappy, she’d deal with anything that tried to be a problem. She could hit and wreck with the best of them, and she was not above biting. She’d seen aliens get their wires ripped out. Humans had nothing on her. But she couldn’t say that to June because uh-uh, no way, she wasn’t getting a boring adult involved in her secret club. The lady would probably try to send her home from it and claim it was dangerous, just like she was doing right now in this car on this grumpy drive. Boo. No wonder Jack was Like That too. 

There was some promise to talk to her host family in the morning and then June sat there in the car until she’d watched Miko go back inside. 

She gave it ten minutes (excruciating minutes spent twitching and hopping and impatient) before going outside and poking at Bulkhead. 

Oh, he was so maaad when he realized she’d snuck a few blocks away while he didn’t notice. She felt kinda bad about how upset he seemed with himself. More bad than Jack’s mom made her feel. She talked about dangers and whatever and Miko seriously couldn’t care, but she was some stranger doing what adults always did and Bulkhead was Bulkhead. 

“Well, I had to find out!” she eventually protested because she couldn’t not make excuses for herself. “You wouldn’t take me to base! I just wanted to know why!”

He started flubbing things, ‘cause Bulkhead was fantastic but terrible at lying. 

“It was being cleaned,” he tried after those noises. 

Miko crossed her arms and slumped deep down on the passenger’s seat. Uhuh. Yeah. Right. 

Try again, autobots. Leaving the deceiving business up to the ‘cons. 

“It’s not forever,” Bulkhead tried to say. 

She continued being loud in her angry silence. 

“It’s just- It may not be safe right now.”

“Yeah?” she grunted. “Scraplets get into your hair again? We took care of that. We’re good at things.”

You need us.

She wanted to think they did, anyway. Because she needed them. And it sucked to need someone if they didn’t need you in return. 

“I don’t care about safety,” she said instead. 

“Yes, but, Miko-”

“I know, I know,” she muttered and rolled over onto her side so she faced his door. It hid her pout better. She wasn’t going to be all emotional in front of them. She heard them before. Don’t go in the groundbridge, Miko. Don’t come with us. Don’t go dune blasting with Bulkhead. Don’t stay at the base with the big robots that could step on you. Don’t sneak out at night. Don’t go overseas. Don’t have any fun. Yeah, yeah, she knew. 

It wasn’t like she wanted to get hurt. Pain sucked. She just knew she wasn’t going to be. 

Really, Bulkhead needed to have more faith that he could keep her just fine and safe at the base or anywhere. But especially the base, it was his house. Come on now. 

He was so cool and he didn’t think he was good enough for that much? 

He shouldn’t have to be down on himself. Ever. Cause it also sucked to feel bad about yourself and she wanted good vibes only for her and her crew. Bulkhead would figure it out soon, she figured. He’d catch on to how he was so awesome that duh she wasn’t gonna get hurt. He was there to make sure of it. They were a team that way. 

“So how long am I grounded? When do I get to go home?” Miko asked. 

“Miko…” Bulkhead drew out. Ah, she knew this whole tone. He was frustrated. And he was feeling Guilty. Which meant-

“I promise I’ll stay away from the cleaning things. Unless it’s something else making it dangerous there. You can make sure, too! You can protect me.”

(As if she needed protection. She was like a wrecker too! Just small. And human. But she could ride with ‘em.)

“I just don’t know how I feel about you being around those gu-”

He was so bad at keeping up with a story!

Miko grinned and shot upright in the chair.

“Those guys? Who? So it isn’t ‘cleaning’ bogus. Whose there? Fowler having people check out the base? Is that why you have to hide us? Come on, Bulkhead, you can tell me. I won’t even ask to go to the base if you tell me what’s going on, until it’s cleared!”

(That was a lie. But she was better at those than Bulkhead and the other bots.)

Bulkhead groaned and protested and clearly did calls and things with the others privately while simultaneously talking with her. 

Finally, he explained why they hadn’t taken her to the base after school. Which Miko took in maturely just like she promised. 

“YOU HAVE NEW GUYS??”

It was settled. She was not budging on this. Nope! Raf and Jack could stay back all they liked. That was on them if they wanted to be chickens. But she wasn’t leaving Bulkhead until she got to see the new guys. She was on strike. And the autobots were always too-aware about how humans had to eat and things, so they’d want her to get out and get food. And go to school (bleh). She made them promise to take her to base if they wanted her to get out of Bulkhead and walk into that place. It wasn’t as if he could just transform an arm and pull her out. He had to maintain his cover. 

Midway through the schoolday, after calls from Jack and Raf both asking where she was, a call from her host family (that got sent to voicemail, so, basically, sent to the void because she never bothered to check that mess), and a call from Fowler (that she also tried to ignore until Bulkhead contacted the guy instead and put him on speakerphone), a deal was finally struck. The strike paid off. She Succeeded. 

An absence mark aside, she had no worries at all. It was base time. All her. On her own. Getting to see the New People. 

Well, actually, Fowler had gotten into some argument with Bulkhead about the presence of newbies while on the phone, so he’d probably be there too to chew out Optimus. He had guts for that. She admired it. Sure, he was one of those adults who said she absolutely should not be around, and constantly tried to get her away from the base (and its groundbridge), but he also had made the bots swear them all on as wards after they said the cons might target the three of them, and he probably was keeping them a secret from all his own coworkers. So he was better than Jack’s mom and all the rest. 

On the drive over, Bulkhead tried to tell her weird things about the rookies, but he kept being super vague, and not finishing sentences, and she learned, like, nothing. That was fine, though, cause she could ask the newbies themselves. 

She was so pumped. They hadn’t had anyone new since Wheeljack! And he ditched. 

Were any of these guys gonna be wreckers? Man, she hoped they’d be wreckers. 

She asked Bulkhead about it but honestly she kept talking after and so maybe he’d answered but she’d missed it. That was her bad, she could admit it. 

The second they drove into base, she slammed the door open and sped out while Ratchet yelled. Nobody out of the ordinary was in the main room with him though, so she didn’t stop. She recalled Bulkhead and Fowler talking about formal introductions and being careful. 

But it’d be fine! The bots would be right behind her. 

And the newbies wouldn’t be dangerous. Because…

Why would the bots let dangerous guys into the base?

(Fake Wheeljack was considered and forgotten in a single second, because he didn’t count, because he got his butt kicked and it’d been fine.)

She ran into the hall and wondered if maybe they’d be in the game room playing wrecker games. Why not, she figured. So she headed there until she caught sight of something that made her screech (not actually, she didn’t have tires and metal and brakes, but she could imagine the sound accompanied her sneakers. A guy could dream.) to a halt. 

Way up in the rafters, it shone and sparkled. 

A glittering pink …rug…rope? things? They looked too thick to really call ropes, and too thin and flat, and she thought of gum when you bit one part and then pulled the rest out while keeping your teeth clenched. Except it was more translucent than gum and that’s why it looked shiny, like glass. 

It was cool. She stood there with her mouth open just staring up at the whatever-it-was in awe. 

Ok. How much trouble would she get in if she tried to climb the thirty foot walls? They were too flat to be very climbable but she could make it work. The pink stuff was huuge and she could totally climb around in it, like the world’s most gigantic hammock. Would it be kinda like a trampoline? She wanted to go up there and trip a bunch while scrambling around. 

While she stared up at the Thing, some bot stepped a foot out of one of the rooms they had and squealed. Miko expected Bulkhead to be there when she spun around. He managed sounds like that when there were scraplets around, so who else would it be? Of course he was right behind her after she ran down here!

Bulkhead wasn’t blue. And also was way more dense and strong than whoever this way. Bulkhead could crush things like a monster truck, and so he was big and tall and just overall way-cool. 

Not that this robot wasn’t cool too! Miko had her favorites, but, like, Arcee was still cool to her even though she was a tiny little motorcycle instead of a wrecker . And Bee was cool too even though Miko didn’t really ever do much with him on account of the whole no speaking thing. So twiggy robots weren’t lame by default. 

The more she took the guy in, the more she could find him cool too. He had big shoulders and arms so he could probably punch things pretty great. Sure, he had a tiny waist and…how did it keep his body up? Whatever, Optimus had a tiny waist too compared to how huge he was on top. And he was short like Bumblebee instead of being tall like Bulkhead. Honestly, it just meant Bulkhead was still the best around here and she didn’t mind that. She wanted him to be. 

Based on his size and bright colors, she was drawn even more to comparisons with Bumblebee. He probably turned into a sports car too. Man, was that his chin? Wow, that was a chin. It was even more chin than Bulkhead. Bulkhead’s was cooler looking. 

Hm, though, his shoulders were pretty big and fancy. That was more like Wheeljack and he was a wrecker. So maybe…

Nothing to do but ask!

Miko had already started talking before even finishing all those thoughts. 

“You!” she pointed. “You’re one of the new guys! What’s your deal? Where are the rest of you? What’s so special about you that the base got shut down? Huh?”

Maybe she imagined it, but she thought he looked really grumpy except when she’d said ‘special’ and he’d perked up a bit. 

“Hey, do you know what this is?” she went on and pointed up behind her at the pink stuff, because she hadn’t forgot it was there. 

Oh, but priorities. Finding out about the robot alien was more interesting. 

Miko ran up a little closer and craned her neck way back (even though all she got a view of was chin, chin, and more chin instead of eyes). There were autobot-y symbols that let her know he was one of the cool guys. Not like that loser Breakdown, who needed a beatdown (she couldn’t help but mentally giggle over making the words and name sound the same). Granted, that guy could be called cool, but he was way more lame than Bulkhead and he needed to get that through his head. 

(She had dreams where she got smushed by that pillar sometimes. She didn’t mention it.)

(Stupid Breakdown and his stupid face and stupid name.)

Behind the guy, someone new was walking over. He did it while the blue guy shuffled back. Miko just ran to catch up. 

They clonked together and she peered up on her tiptoes around the blue guy to see the new dude. He was also blue, but mostly red, and also small (shame) with a teeny tiny waist. His face was blue instead of silver. It was weird. He had lips. Oh my gosh, he has lips. Would he mind if she painted them? They were just screaming to get pinkified, like a star. They could build him a big guitar too. She bet he could dance, like Bee, or better. Yeah. She could picture it. Definitely a style and flair guy and it would be so cool to make a music video. 

Something about his face bothered her though. 

A weird feeling wanted her attention but she stomped it down. 

“So what are you? Wreckers? Oo oo, are you a wrecker? That’d be sweeeet-” 

“Optimus, buddy,” the blue guy smiled super wide. “You talk to the organics, yeah? That’s something you’re good for.”

Wow. He sounded like a douche. 

-wait-

wait a second there

Whatever wild thoughts were catching up, Miko didn’t quite understand them. 

Her memory screamed at her for attention but she was still on a roll. 

The blue guy was still closest, so she ignored how he was putting his elbows on the red guy to say things in his ear…thing…whatever they had, and brushed her hands over the paint of the nearest foot. She’d started to say wow, because she was still impressed with them, but the word was a squeak of air. 

Wow became ow. 

That…Oof. Did he just kick her? Miko rolled up on her elbows. He had! He’d pushed her onto her back! 

OK, douche was right. Blue guy was not cool. 

Blue guy was squeaking too, even though they didn’t need air to breathe? Normally she would laugh at the little girl sounds, but she was busy wrestling back a need to punch metal. 

“Get it away!” the guy was squealing while he held his leg up in the air and hopped and looked at his foot and her like she was actually poop. Wow. That…(stung). 

“Sentinel-” the red bot started. 

“No,” he got shaken off, literally. Which could’ve been an impressive trick considering the guy was still balancing on one leg only and both his arms were busy clinging to the one that had kicked her over. “I don’t need some excuse! You deal with this infestation and don’t bother me ‘til it’s gone! Bad enough we have that- that- her around-”

By now, Miko was standing again, but anything she said was overpowered by how loud the unknown robots were. Oh, and Ratchet. Because Ratchet had just caught up with them in the hallway and he’d tugged the two apart. The blue one finally put his leg down after hitting up against the hall’s wall, but he was looking at it with a grimace. 

Miko crossed her arms. 

“I’m not an ‘it’,” she said in offense. 

Bulkhead hovered over Ratchet now, looking like he wanted to get through to reach her, but he’d never fit. It was fine, she tried to portray to him. She was fine. She just wanted to go listen to music so loud that her brain couldn’t think, or break something, or both. They’d go duneblasting and then both of them would feel all better. 

“No, that’s a Miko,” Ratchet grumbled, before turning on the blue guy and poking him with a finger. “You. Main room. Optimus is going to need to give more ground rules, especially before agent Fowler shows up. And yo-” He’d glanced back to the red one and faltered awkwardly. “You too.” He didn’t sound mad with him, but he also wouldn’t look the newbie in the eye. The blue guy was already making some excuse that made her frown more. 

She watched them go, each shuffling past Bulkhead one at a time while Ratchet literally pulled the chin guy along. Yeah, you go. Optimus was going to make him feel so bad. Good. Lips guy hadn’t done anything, so he didn’t need to get told off, but she wanted to watch the other one get told to Respect her. She was at this base first! She was an important member of the team, unlike some rookies! 

She sniffed, arms still crossed. Take that, ‘Sentinel’. You and Optimus can go-

Huh.

Oh yeah. 

That had been what she heard. 

??? 

Miko blinked. 

Optimus?