Chapter Text
It’s been a week.
A long, arduous week. A week of adjustment, not only for the new Prime, but for every mech and femme of Iacon. A third of the population had been cogless energon miners. Now, with transformation cogs restored to every bot and energon flowing freely from the Well of AllSparks, there’s no need to mine. They just need to learn how to transform. How to drive. How to fly.
Optimus Prime needs to learn how to feel like he isn’t still falling.
Every step he takes on the bridge is loud. So loud. He isn’t supposed to hear the sounds of his own frame over the noise of the city. He… he’s too big. Walking down the other end of the bridge, he feels clumsy. He’s too tall. Way too tall. His internal gyrosphere still struggles.
Just like the rest of his new frame. Reformatted twice in two solar cycles…
He can’t think about that right now.
“Hey, Ori- er, Optimus!”
He almost forgets to look down as he turns. “Hey, Ironhide. How’s reconstruction going?”
“It’s going great!” The red bot beams at him. It’s a sight Optimus still isn’t used to. “Engraving repairs on the wall are finished. Had a lot of volunteers for that. Now we’re just- Jazz! Stop fooling around!”
The Prime follows Ironhide’s gaze up to the top of the monument, where most of the construction was now concentrated. There’s his good friend, Jazz, dancing around the job like it’s a party. Optimus smiles and gently places a servo on Ironhide’s shoulder.
“Easy, now,” he chuckles, “Jazz is just having fun.”
“Having fun in the middle of a construction site is a recipe for disaster,” Ironhide retorts as he looks down at his datapad. “As I was saying… We’re just finishing up the top of the monument now, and we’re almost done clearing out the old Sentinel statues. You sure you don’t want ‘em replaced with your own?”
“Statues? Of me?” Optimus asks, pointing at himself with a mirthful smile. “No, no. I don’t think that’d be appropriate.”
Ironhide looks up at him and tilts his helm. “Well, why not? You are the Prime.”
Ironhide is right about that, but being called “Prime” just doesn’t sit right with him… not yet. But… that isn’t the reason. No, his reasoning is still unclear, even to himself. Optimus looks over at the two spots on either side of the monument, where only the bases of the false Prime’s statues remain, and his spark twists in on itself.
“If you want, we can forge statues of the other Primes instead,” Ironhide offers, looking back down at his datapad. “Maybe Zeta Prime, since he was the last Matrix-bearer. And Alpha Trion, since he helped you expose Sentinel and-”
“Leave them,” Optimus says.
Ironhide’s helm snaps up as he takes a half step back. When he doesn’t say anything, Optimus realizes he’d been sterner with his friend than he’d intended. He vents and relaxes his faceplate.
“Sorry…” The red and blue mech shakes his helm and offers an apologetic smile. “You make good suggestions, but I need more time to think about it. Just leave the foundations for now, and I’ll make up my processor later, okay?”
“Yeah, sure thing,” Ironhide says with a nod and a note on his datapad.
Optimus thanks his friend before the red bot departs the platform, then turns his attention back to the monument. Jazz has danced his way to the other side, where he seems to be helping unload materials from a crane. The Prime’s gaze wanders further, to the outer platform of the Well. He makes a mental note to check the integrity of the barrier that’s being erected around the Well opening. How there’s never been one before is something he’d never thought about as Orion, but now that there are dozens and dozens of bots learning how to drive… he believes it’s best to have something to prevent them from falling in. Just in case. There’s a small team still welding the final bars together now, and a flash of dark pink catches his optic.
Commander Elita-One.
So that’s where she’s been. Of course. She’s a meticulous, quality-oriented bot fit for leadership and delegation. Optimus… well, he’s working on those skills. He hadn’t even told Elita where or how to help before the reconstruction project started. He doesn’t tell most bots what to do, actually, even when he really should. As a bot who only a couple of weeks ago was nothing but a mischievous bottom-tier miner, it almost feels wrong for him to be the leader, not to mention the Prime.
I need to get over that.
Optimus vents and tries to remember to stand tall as he watches Elita assist the welding crew. He can’t help but smile to himself at the familiar sight of her serious expression, her authoritative pose, her commanding voice that carries so clearly. She’s been trying to teach him how to do that, but he’s got a long way to go before he can proudly say that he’s better than her at it.
Elita’s finials perk upright and her optics flick up to the top of the monument before finding Optimus. She makes a waving gesture at him and points to the monument. When he glances at it, he’s unsure what she’s pointing at and shrugs at her. The femme quickly looks up again. There’s a loud snap, and she launches herself off the top of the Well barrier. She transforms in the air, lands on the bridge with a spray of sparks that sends a couple of bots jumping back, and speeds to the center platform. She shifts back into bot mode at speed and catapults off the ground…
…straight into the chassis of one quite perplexed Optimus Prime.
Optimus’ battle mask reflexively snaps into place and he crashes onto his back with a yelp, the force of Elita’s momentum sending them both sliding to the center of the platform.
“Elita!” He grunts, trying to sit up with her knee struts digging into his abdominal plating. “What’re you-?!”
Movement catches his attention. Too much movement. The entire crane has tipped over, and in an instant, the section of the platform edge that Optimus had been standing on is crumpled.
For a long, tense moment, all that can be heard is the offensive cacophony of the crane tumbling down the Well of AllSparks. Elita stares back at the damaged portion of the platform until the sounds fade, then looks down at Optimus.
“Are you okay?” She asks, her servo lingering on his left arm as she carefully gets off of him.
Optimus pushes himself up to a kneel. He nods despite the slight tremor in his limbs. “Yeah…”
“Good.” Elita stands and whips around to point an aggressive digit at Jazz as he runs up to them. “Jazz! You almost just killed the Prime with your idiocy!”
Jazz halts in his tracks, his doorwings twitching downward. “I know, I know! I was goofing off… shoulda paid attention. I’m sorry.”
Elita pauses to take a deep vent. “Look. Just a couple of solar cycles ago, you almost dropped a slab of debris on Bluestreak’s helm. You were good at mining, but not this. You’re off the reconstruction crew.”
“But-!”
Elita has already turned and nudged Optimus to stand up and come with her. She walks on his left side, just like she usually does ever since his reformat. Before he can say anything about Jazz, she gives him a lengthy update on the Quintesson movements they’ve been able to track; so far, keeping their distance from Cybertron, nothing that seems aggressive.
“Probably confused about what happened to their little puppet,” the femme says with a shake of her helm.
Optimus resists the urge to let out a heavy vent. He realizes his mask is still on and deactivates it. “They don’t need to know.”
Elita gives him a pointed look. “They will come looking for him.”
“And I’ll handle it when they do,” he assures.
Elita does vent. Once they’re away from the Well and most other bots, she more directly leads Optimus toward the nearby train station via a servo on his shoulder.
“Well, in other news,” she says as she brings up the holographic display on her forearm to show him a verified report, “we’ve confirmed that the flowing energon is safe to use and consume without any refining at all.”
“That’s great!” Optimus pats Elita on the back a little too hard, causing her to stumble slightly. “Sorry, sorry. You’re doing a great job heading up the operations around here, Commander.”
“Thanks,” she grunts, rolling her shoulders back to realign her spinal strut. “You’re doing well as Prime, too.”
“So about Jazz, back there,” Optimus starts with a quick reset of his vocalizer.
“Do you think I was too harsh on him?” Elita asks, watching the train pull in.
Something about her tone catches Optimus off guard. He looks at her for a moment, then follows her onto the train.
“No, actually,” he says. “He’s been a bit off his game since getting his cog. Not in a bad way, just… I don’t think manual labor is his kind of job anymore.”
Optimus gently rests a servo on Elita’s shoulder and smiles when she looks up at him. “And I know it was an accident, but he did almost make me visit Primus again. I think you were as harsh as you needed to be.”
She gives him a small smile back. “I agree, manual labor isn’t for him. He comes off as more of a mental work kind of bot to me now. He needs something that will keep his processor occupied more than his servos.”
A small group of bots greets them as they board the other side of the train, just in time before the doors close. They promptly resume their own conversation, so Optimus returns his attention to Elita.
“But I was wondering why you didn’t immediately reassign him,” he says.
“I guess I’m still used to only being in charge of a servoful of bots at a time. Being in charge of every bot below my rank when that includes almost the entire population?” Elita chuckles. “At that scale, I have to actually look up where I can move a bot in the first place.”
“Ah, makes sense. That’s a lot of stress on one bot.”
“Well, it’s certainly not as stressful as your job, I’m sure,” Elita says with a playful nudge between their shoulders. “I can handle it.”
Optimus brushes off the twinge of discomfort in his spark and grins at her. “Easy, now, it’s not a competition. I can handle my job just fine, too.”
“Oh, really?” She gave him a sly look. “Mr. Zero Klicks Since My Last Accident?”
“Hey, that’s not fair!” He protests, though his grin is firmly stuck on his faceplate as he tries not to laugh. “I didn’t cause that one. And it’s been way more than zero klicks!”
“Uh-huh. You might not be Orion Pax anymore, but you’re still an incident magnet.”
Elita looks away with an amused expression still on her faceplate, missing the way Optimus’ smile falters.