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Chapter Text

Perceptor had no shortage of human colleagues. While some Cybertronians might have scorned the idea of working with their short-lived and rather simple organic hosts, Perceptor rather enjoyed his time with the humans. In his experience, they were innovative creatures and very eager learners. The speeds at which they adapted to new technology and ideas was enviable—though perhaps their spark-breakingly short lifespans had something to do with that.

But when they came to him asking if Perceptor had an explanation for the large celestial object rapidly bearing down on Earth, he was surprised. Surely if something significant was approaching from space, Teletraan-1 would have picked it up. But the object, whatever it was, was still far out of the supercomputer’s reach, mostly due to the fact that the majority of the Ark’s sensors were still buried in a mountainside.

So Perceptor visited several different astronomical observatories, and listened patiently while the humans showed him all the data they had gathered on the Unidentified Astronomical Object, or UAO. The humans had been able to pick it up on their own primitive telescopes due to its sheer size, and it was causing quite a stir in the mainstream media.

Privately, Perceptor hypothesized that their computers were glitching (and who would be surprised?) because the UAO was ridiculously large, classifiable as a planetary-mass object. Yes, nomad planets existed—Cybertron herself was one, floating through space unbound to any star. But Cybertron was not barreling through an inhabited solar system at a ridiculously high speed. And Cybertron was not on a statistically impossible collision course with Earth.

The UAO, however, was.

Despite this troubling information, Perceptor had not been too concerned—a simple computer glitch remained the most likely explanation. He had smiled and reassured the humans that there was no need for panic because the Autobot scientists would begin an investigation immediately.

And they had. Cosmos was sent out into space to gather data, and Perceptor invited a few prominent human scientists to the Ark to be present for the live feed that the minibot would be sending back.

A few days later, an assortment of human scientists from all over the globe stood on Teletraan-1’s keyboard so they didn’t accidentally get squished undepede by any of the other Autobot scientists. Outside the Ark, members of the press had gathered to await an official announcement—Red Alert refused to let any journalists inside as a matter of policy.

The atmosphere in the room was rather tense, and Perceptor supposed he could not blame the humans. They held their primitive technology in such high esteem, even when it was so obviously malfunctioning. If Perceptor believed for a moment that the humans’ calculations were actually correct, he would have been nervous as well.

[Um, I’m starting the feed,] said Cosmos at last. [Uh. Primus…]

“Is there a problem, Cosmos?” asked Perceptor.

[Uh…] The usually-jovial minibot sounded distinctly uncomfortable. [Just…just standby for transmission.]

Perceptor did not allow his concern to show on his faceplates—it would only worry the humans, and worried humans could be very dangerous. Fortunately, none of them were fluent in Iaconian, and so they had no way of knowing anything was amiss.

Teletraan-1’s screens flickered, and the first live images of the celestial trespasser reached Earth.

The majority of the UAO was the sickening orange-brown color of rust, while the rest of it was silver. It was difficult to tell, but it appeared that the surface was made of countless panels, not unlike Cybertron itself. A delicate ring surrounded the sphere, but it did not appear to be made of collected debris and ice crystals. Instead, it was perfectly symmetrical all the way around, like a carefully measured pipe.

“Cosmos!” Perceptor snapped at last, hating himself for the way his vocalizer quavered. “This is—this is not amusing in the slightest! Now relay the true footage, or I will report you to Prowl!”

[This isn’t a prank. You’re seeing exactly what I’m seeing,] said Cosmos grimly. [Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to withdraw before he notices me. Over and out.]

“Is something wrong?” asked one of the scientists in English. Perceptor didn’t reply because he didn’t trust himself to speak. The last frame of the very short transmission was still onscreen, looking like something out of a sparkling’s tale.

“We need to tell Prime,” said Wheeljack in a low voice.

“Tell him what?” snapped Perceptor, forgetting that even if the humans could not understand his words, they would certainly understand his tone.

“Tell him—this!” Wheeljack gestured to the screen helplessly.

“So, what, nobody’s going to say it?” asked Hoist.

“Is everything alright?” asked another human, tapping at Perceptor’s wrist insistently, only to be ignored. “What’s going on?”

“Yes, I am sure that will go over splendidly,” retorted Perceptor. “‘I am very sorry, Prime, but it appears the mechs of the science department have finally lost all semblance of rationality.’”

“You don’t have to get sarcastic,” protested Wheeljack. “I’m only—”

“If no one’s going to say it, I will,” threatened Hoist.

“Skyfire, you agree with me, don’t you?” asked Perceptor, turning around. Skyfire was in his customary place at the back of the room, as not to block anyone’s view of the screen.

“Cosmos has been known to play pranks,” said Skyfire slowly. “Especially on humans.”

“But Cosmos didn’t sound like he was joking,” objected Grapple. Naturally, he was on Hoist’s side. “He sounded frightened.”

“I do think we should notify Prime,” said Skyfire. “Even if it’s not…what it appears to be…”

“Who it appears to be, you mean,” muttered Hoist.

“—that doesn’t change the fact that there is a massive unidentified object hurtling towards Earth, and if Cosmos’ projections are correct, it will be here in less than a month.”

Perceptor had to admit Skyfire had a point there.

“HEY!” bellowed one of the human scientists. He had climbed to the very top of the keyboard, and was now waving his arms in the air frantically. “What. Is. HAPPENING!?”

And for the first time in a very long time, Perceptor had absolutely no idea what to say.

Chapter Text

“I know what to do,” said Prime.

The scientists all glanced at each other. This had not been the reaction they’d been expecting from their leader when they told him that a large orange sphere that matched the physical description of the chaos-bringer was approaching Earth.

“You do, sir?” asked Perceptor when it at last became evident that nobody knew how to respond.

“Yes,” said Prime, resting one large servo on his own chestplates. “Within the Matrix is the power to defeat Unicron. I have no doubt that I can drive him back.”

“So you believe that the approaching object is really Unicron?” asked Ratchet.

“I do,” said Prime simply, as if there was anything simple about the situation they were currently in. “And I will make an announcement to the entire army immediately. But I also require something from all of you.”

“Of course,” said Ratchet immediately. “What is it?”

Prime looked around at each of the scientists. “In order to defeat Unicron, I will need to venture inside his physical body to unleash the power of the Matrix.”

“Now hold on—” began Ironhide sharply.

“However, I do not believe I am currently powerful enough to fight my way to his core,” continued Prime, as if his bodyguard had not spoken. “Therefore, I will need you to construct armor powerful enough to withstand the attacks that he will inevitably send once he realizes my intentions. I know that our resources are highly limited, but I have faith in your abilities.”

And that was the thing about Prime. He had a gift. No matter how dire the situation appeared to be, and no matter how absurd his requests sounded, nobody ever seemed willing to disappoint him.

* * *

“I have an idea,” announced Wheeljack. The scientists were gathered around a table in the rec room with their rations. Each had been lost in his own thoughts until Wheeljack spoke.

“What is it?” asked Ratchet wearily.

“What if,” and there was a slightly deranged gleam in Wheeljack’s optics that filled every mech present with dread. “What if instead of upgrading Prime, we gave him the power to combine with another mech?”

Perceptor let his helm hit the surface of the table.

“I can’t believe I have to tell you this, but now is not the time, Wheeljack,” said Ratchet crossly.

“I’m serious!” said Wheeljack, his helm-fins flashing with excitement. “Twice as powerful, it would completely solve the issue of getting enough materials to reinforce his armor, and if we merged him with a Decepticon, he’d even be flight-capable!”

“A Decepticon?” repeated Ratchet, openly horrified. “Are you glitching? You want our Prime to merge with a Decepticon?”

“Well, they do have all the war-builds,” reasoned Wheeljack. “Just think—if we fused him with Megatron, he’d be unstoppable!”

“But it would be a massive security issue,” pointed out Skyfire. He’d been characteristically quiet up until that point, but now he seemed a little exasperated. “Everything that Prime knows, from the most important Autobot secrets down to the smallest details of his personal life, would fall into Decepticon hands.”

“Besides,” added Perceptor, “a merge of any kind is only possible when the sparks involved accept each other. The core personalities of Prime and any Decepticon—especially Megatron—would simply be too different.”

“No, wait!” said Wheeljack excitedly. “I don’t think that’s exactly the case.”

“Why not?” asked Ratchet.

“Well. Um,” said Wheeljack. His helm-fins flashed in distress. “Give me a klick. Um...”

Perceptor reached into his subspace and removed a cube of high-grade that he’d been saving for an emergency.

“Frag, okay, I got nothing,” admitted Wheeljack at last.

“Damn it, Wheeljack!” shouted Ratchet. “You just want to make another combiner don’t even try to deny it—!”

Perceptor downed the entire cube in one quick gulp, set it down on the table, and unsubspaced a second one without missing a beat.

“—going to have to come up with a better reason than ‘but think of how awesome it would be’ this time!” Ratchet slammed one fist down on the table for emphasis.

“Fine!” retorted Wheeljack. He took a long, long moment to formulate a response. “It could be Earth’s last hope! If Prime is wrong—if the power of the Matrix isn’t enough to stop Unicron—then that means Prime will need to be able to fight Unicron himself, hand-to-hand!”

“It’s another vanity project, Wheeljack,” said Ratchet flatly. “That’s all anything ever is to you, isn’t it? I thought maybe you could take something seriously for once—clearly I was wrong!”

Perceptor’s cube was empty and that was very sad. He placed it on top of the first one to make a tower.

“You always do this, Ratchet!" retorted Wheeljack. "Whenever I get a good idea, you refuse to admit it and change the subject back to how ‘oh Wheeljack just wants to blow things up’ and ‘Wheeljack never takes anything seriously!’ Well, maybe I think it’s an actual good idea that could work!”

“OR MAYBE IT’S JUST MORE SELF-CONGRATULATORY SHOWBOATING!” Ratchet roared.

Resting his helm on his arms, Perceptor mumbled, “I hate it when we fight.”

“Perceptor’s right,” said Skyfire. “We shouldn’t be arguing, especially not now. Why don’t we run the idea by Prime? It can’t hurt to ask. The worst he can say is no.”

* * *

“No,” said Megatron.

“But—” began Prime.

“No,” said Megatron again, crossing his arms stubbornly.

Surprisingly enough, Prime had not been completely adverse to Wheeljack’s plan, even though the other scientists had been expecting him to get angry and chase them out of his office. But this was Optimus Prime they were dealing with. He'd immediately put in a call to the Victory and excitedly described the plan to Megatron. Over the course of Prime's monologue, the warlord's faceplates had gradually twisted into an expression that was currently beyond all description.

“Megatron, this is serious!” cried Prime. “Right now we’re all in danger, and if we—”

“We?” repeated Megatron. “My entire army can be transported back to Cybertron at a moment’s notice. The only ones in peril are the humans, who are trapped on this miserable planet due to their own inferiority. But we both know that you are far too noble to leave them to their fate.”

“I know you care nothing for the humans, or Earth,” said Prime. “But what will stop Unicron from turning his attentions to Cybertron once Earth is devoured?”

“If he does, we will worry about that when the time comes,” said Megatron. "Now, if you are done wasting my time?"

He didn't wait for an answer before cutting the call. Prime's shoulders slumped in disappointment as the screen went black.

"Well, we tried," said Ratchet, not sounding particularly bothered by this outcome. "Don't be upset, Prime, it never would have worked anyway."

"Perhaps you are correct," Prime granted. "Perhaps Megatron and I are simply too different for a merge. But I haven't given up hope yet. Have you considered anyone from the Autobot faction as a candidate? What about Grimlock? He is certainly powerful enough."

“Unfortunately, Grimlock’s brain just wouldn't be advanced enough for this kind of merge,” said Wheeljack. “At best, you’d reject each other. At worst, you’d lose control and go on an unstoppable rampage.”

“Alright,” said Prime, who couldn’t quite hide his disappointment. “What about Omega Supreme?”

“No! He's far too complex,” said Ratchet, alarmed by the very idea. “Even if we could come up with enough energon to keep him online for more than a few cycles, a merge would cause your processor to melt out your audials. Regular mechs aren’t meant to interface with the Omega Sentinels.”

“Very well,” said Prime. "Then who do you suggest?"

“Unfortunately, it’s not a very long list,” confessed Wheeljack. “Ultra Magnus, if we're able to locate him in time. Ironhide. Possibly Silverbolt..."

"If we can verify your spark can handle synchronization with his gestalt-bond," interrupted Ratchet. "And, of course, there's Elita-1. To be honest, she's the favorite because we already know for certain that your sparks would never reject each other.”

Prime nodded. It was not a secret that he and Elita had once been bonded. Unfortunately, once it became apparent that the civil war was not going to come to a peaceful end anytime soon, they had agreed to break their bond. Couples on both sides of the war had been encouraged to do the same, and many had. In times of unspeakable violence and cruelty, the benefits of a sparkbond were drastically outweighed by the drawbacks.

"Are we able to reach Elita currently?" asked Prime. The small band of Autobots on Cybertron operated in utmost secrecy, and the Ark seldom received transmissions from them. Sending the femmes a message would be an incredibly risky thing to do, even now.

"We don't know," admitted Wheeljack. "You'll have to take that up with Prowl. Otherwise, like I said, Ironhide or Silverbolt."

"Yes," said Prime slowly, but he didn’t seem to be listening anymore as his optics traveled over the four scientists that stood before him. Wheeljack looked elated that his plan was coming to fruition, and Ratchet was clearly trying to act as if there was nothing undignified or desperate about their situation. Perceptor was not even pretending to be awake as he leaned up against Skyfire's frame, his energy field buzzing with evidence of having recently consumed too much high-grade. And Skyfire...

Well, he loomed without really meaning to. Prime looked up and took in Skyfire's heavy space-grade plating, immense wingspan, and gentle blue optics.

"What about you?" Prime asked him.

Chapter Text

While some parts of the Ark were always crowded, there were other rooms that nobody ever used. If a mech were to travel down past the medbay, past the labs, and even past the auxiliary engines that had long since gone still and cold, then he might find the cargo bays.

In the old days, the cargo bays would have been filled with energon cubes, goods for trading and transport, or any of the myriad things that a group of spacefaring Cybertronians might find themselves in need of. But now they were empty—or they had been.

Not long after his second removal from the ice, Skyfire had more or less taken over one of the cargo bays and turned it into a Cybertronian crystal garden. It wouldn’t have been considered particularly notable during the Golden Age, but now, after vorns of destruction and warfare, it was a priceless treasure.

Traditionally, new crystal structures required two things: a seed crystal, and a very specific solution to supersaturate it in. Different seed crystals required different solutions in order to grow correctly, but creating the solutions was not difficult. Locating seed crystals, however, was an entirely different matter.

The few seed crystals that Skyfire had managed to get his servos on had been carefully activated and then placed inside protective transparent cases. It could be many vorns before a new crystal structure began exhibiting any significant signs of growth, so the cases looked more or less empty. But that didn’t stop Skyfire from examining them regularly.

But before that, Skyfire had started his work by bringing in whole living crystal structures from Cybertron (and those had not been easy to locate) and then collecting up every single crystal fragment he could get his servos on, beginning with the ornamental, non-edible ones he’d had in his subspace before the crash. By grafting them onto the larger living crystals, he could encourage them to begin growing once more until they were stable enough to remove and place elsewhere.

Constructed against the far wall was a large hand-made wire trellis. It stretched all the way up into the ceilings, and was home to three different varieties of climbing crystal vines, which were making steady progress towards the pipes that ran horizontally against the ceiling.

He had also tried to work some Earth crystals in, just to see if it could be done. The results were not quite as remarkable. But Skyfire had to remind himself that the humans had not been selectively breeding crystals for countless vorns, and so it would make sense that what they had was not as impressive.

Skyfire hadn’t really expected Prime to approve the project in the first place, seeing as they were in the middle of a war. But Prime had been thrilled by the idea, and he had been the one to suggest that Skyfire fly to Cybertron and search for more surviving species of crystals.

Prime had also turned a blind optic to Skyfire’s supplementing of his collection by trading cuttings with Shockwave and purchasing seeds from Swindle. And when Skyfire had caught Bluestreak and the twins eating his Tarnian Blue Galaxias, Prime had forced them to pay compensation for the loss.

Out of all the Autobots, it was Prime who seemed to appreciate the garden the most—second only to Mirage, who had actually run out of the room crying when Hound brought him in for the first time.

As for the scientists, Perceptor had even donated some crystal samples for Skyfire to graft, but he preferred to spend his time on more practical projects. And Wheeljack didn’t have the patience for crystal growing, though he had brought the Dinobots, Aerialbots, and Protectobots in for lectures—though not all at once, thank Primus. Skyfire was fairly certain that the initial sight of the entire Dinobot team wandering through the colorful, glittering collection had taken at least a vorn off his life, but fortunately there had been no damage to any of the structures—not from the Dinobots, at least. Fireflight had managed to earn himself an indefinite ban in the space of three breems.

Skyfire spent a significant portion of his free time in the garden. It was peaceful work, and if he threw himself into it wholesparkedly, he could pretend that he was back on Cybertron, there was no war, and nothing had ever gone wrong.

Mechs sometimes asked him if tending to the crystals was difficult. It was, a little. But returning to reality was harder.

The rutilus cluster was growing a bit oddly, and Skyfire was afraid the lattice structure might have been damaged. He was absorbed in examining it when there was a soft sound of someone clearing his vocalizer from behind him.

“Prime, sir,” said Skyfire, straightening up immediately.

“It’s alright,” said Prime, putting one servo out and gesturing for Skyfire to remain as he was. “I just wanted a word before the test merge.”

The test merge, scheduled for a few cycles time, would be the first step in turning Wheeljack’s plan into a reality. Before the scientists could even think about beginning to integrate Prime’s frame with Skyfire’s, they had to make sure the two mechs would not reject each other.

And yes, Skyfire was nervous. How could he not be nervous about having another mech—a mech that he barely knew—in his processor, reading all his thoughts and watching all his memories? And not just any mech, but the Prime.

“I understand how important this is,” said Skyfire, subspacing his tools. “I won’t back out at the last klick, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No. Of course not,” said Prime. “You have never been anything but reliable, Skyfire. I just…I regret that we haven’t had the time to get to know each other better before the merge.”

“Well, we have both been busy,” said Skyfire awkwardly, which was the truth.

Prime appeared to be struggling to say something. Finally, he gave up. “I will see you in a few cycles, then,” he said at last.

Skyfire nodded and turned his attention back to the crystal in his servo. But there was no squashing the dread that was growing in his spark.

* * *

The medbay had been completely cleared of patients for the duration of the test merge. Prime and Skyfire were both lying on medical berths, lightly restrained “just in case.” Their frames had been hooked up to every monitoring device that Ratchet owned, and Skyfire tried to pretend that the readouts weren’t claiming that both participants displayed elevated stress levels.

Skyfire glanced over at Prime. His battlemask was retracted, something Skyfire had never actually seen before. Meanwhile, Ratchet and Wheeljack were fussing over some wires. Skyfire himself had helped set up the connection that would merge his mind with Prime’s, and so he wasn’t too worried about the hardware. Honestly, Ratchet just liked to fuss.

Ratchet came over and plugged a cable into Skyfire’s medical access port, just below his spark. The other end was inserted into an adaptor, one meant to forge a connection between air-frames and ground-frames. Then he did the same to Prime.

Another cable, this time with a larger adapter in the middle of it, was plugged into the side of Skyfire’s helm. This one had a three-way connector, one for Prime and one for the medbay’s computer systems.

Ratchet and Wheeljack were still bickering. Skyfire tried to force his spark to calm down. Alright, yes. Prime was about to see everything. Everything. But maybe he was overreacting. The worst that could happen was…

…pretty bad, actually.

“And we’re ready to synchronize,” announced Perceptor from the computer terminals.

“Engage,” said Ratchet.

Skyfire looked at Prime again—

But instead Skyfire was looking at himself, comically oversized on the too-small medical berth, his round white faceplates flushed with energon…

“Oh,” he said in surprise, but it was Prime’s voice that said the word.

Perceptor was talking, but he—whoever he was—wasn’t listening. He wanted to try and move his wings—his wings, their wings, whose wings? Who was he? He had two sets of optics, two sets of audials, and he could see everything at once. Was he the transport-class aerial? Or the grounder, the Prime?

Through Prime’s optics he saw Skyfire’s wings shift a little. In Skyfire’s body, he felt Skyfire’s wings move.

“Preliminary synchronization is a success,” said Perceptor, and he heard it in both sets of audials.

“Start the processor merge,” ordered Ratchet.

The first wave of information was gentle and familiar. The only thing that made it unusual was that it was from Prime’s perspective, rather than Skyfire’s. He sat at Prime’s desk, solicited advice from Prowl and Jazz, reassured the humans, fought Megatron hand-to-hand under an alien sun…

More memories, a deluge of them, overpowering Skyfire’s processor, making him forget himself, forget everything except—

His name was Orion Pax, and he lived a simple life, quiet and peaceful. He had a job—something to be grateful for in these hard times—working the Iacon docks by day and returning home to his creators at night. They were good mechs, his creators, honest mechs who had raised him to be honest in turn. They valued hard work, and loyalty, too: loyalty to one's friends, to one's city, and of course, to the Prime in his palace—though what someone as important as Sentinel Prime might ever want with a dockhand's loyalty, Orion could not say.

Orion had not been the best student, taking no interest in either programming or the sciences, or the antiquated novels that his teachers assured him were classics. But he had liked the stories told by his history teachers, especially the old stories of the Primes and their generals, and if books weren't so expensive, he might have read more about them. Orion had only completed the minimum of education required by Iacon city before starting work, but that was alright, he liked it that way. Better to be outside, working under the sky and earing credits, than sitting in an overpriced classroom all day.

Some called it the Golden Age. Orion wasn't sure about that—supposed he wasn't qualified to judge. But there was Ariel, and she was his as much as he was hers, and when they sat on the roof together watching the stars, Orion supposed he must be quite lucky because of all the times and places to be alive, the universe had set him down right here.

Ariel had quit school because she had come online with war programming in her helm even though her creators were civilians, and her creators' creators as well. None of the medics knew what to do about it, either, so they painted her the color of spilled energon as a warning and just left it at that.

But not everyone heeded that warning, and when someone picked a fight with her, the programming would roar to life like an ancient beast awoken from a long slumber. Sometimes she talked about how she might want to go to Kaon to be a gladiator, but her spark wasn't in the words, and Orion was grateful to Primus for that, for he did not think he could bear to see her leave Iacon.

Orion did not consider himself a sophisticated mech, an intelligent mech, a well-traveled mech. The first day he met an aerial-spark was also the first day he met a war-frame, and that day was also the last day of his life.

The stranger had come to the docks with a facade of friendliness that Orion had no reason to mistrust. His frame was massive and powerful, with silver plating that looked like it could have withstood an enforcer's weapons. When he spoke, it was with a harsh and unfamiliar accent, and Orion Pax fell a little bit in love with it all.

Then, suddenly—

—pain, overwhelming, threatening to crush him.

Ariel was screaming, Dion was screaming.

The memory blurred. Reality blurred.

And then—

Light. Light. Light.

It was warm. He felt…what? The memories went hazy again. Light. Warmth. A powerful, authoritative voice was telling him something important, and he was being pulled away from the warmth and the light, even though he did not want to go, he had no choice, no say in the matter because he was small and weak, a servant of Primus and the people—

There is work to be done, the massive voice had said.

And he had known the moment he onlined his optics again that nothing would ever be the same, because Alpha Trion (Alpha Trion, Alpha Trion, Alpha-fragging-Trion!) was standing over him and telling him that he was alright and Orion realized that he was correct, even though his spark felt strange, almost as if it wasn’t his spark at all…

The memories were coming more quickly again. Optimus Prime’s first battle, defending the city of Iacon. And then afterwards, when he learned that just before Sentinel had been killed by Megatron’s own hand, Alpha Trion had stolen away with the Matrix in search of a new bearer.

And so the new Prime entered a world where powerful and highly-educated mechs stood and saluted when he walked into a room. And that was overwhelming enough as it was, so did they all have to call him ‘sir’ on top of it? Mechs and femmes alike threw themselves at him, despite Elita’s best efforts to dissuade them. Nobles who wouldn’t have even looked at him on the street suddenly wanted to talk to him, to know what he was thinking, to ask him questions as if Optimus had all the answers they were searching for, as if they honestly thought he was the one that could save them all.

He was kissing Elita in a dimly-lit hallway. There was an extravagant party going on in the next room, but it was boring, nothing like the parties Ariel and Orion were familiar with, and so they’d slipped away. They both felt like imposters in this new world. The only thing they were certain of any more was each other. He kissed her, tasted the expensive high-grade on her lipplates—

New friends, new allies, priceless allies. Ironhide. Ratchet. Prowl. Jazz. Tirelessly loyal, infinitely patient, by his side through a hundred intrigues and betrayals. By his side while a thousand cities burned and he could do nothing, nothing to stop it except burn a thousand more.

Friends, comrades, soldiers—their voices and faceplates all blurred together, and Optimus was grateful for it because it was easier to look at them that way.

In the quiet darkness of a too-large berthroom, Elita was coaxing his spark-plating open with her glossae.

Battles. Death. Carnage.

And then one day, Optimus Prime had looked out across the battlefield and realized that he no longer felt sickened by the slaughter.

He no longer felt anything at all.

Chapter Text

And still the memories came.

Skyfire had been protoformed and raised in a beautiful city of gleaming towers, delicate spires, and enormous sweeping balconies. He had two loving creators, large but gentle shuttleformers who carried him in their arms when they flew so that he would learn to love the sky.

As a sparkling, he and all his fellow shuttles were taught to always be gentle, especially around the tiny, fragile seekerlets in their class. Skyfire could have easily harmed one of them if he was careless. But, like most mechs of his frame-type, Skyfire was gentle by nature. When it came time for his upgrades, nobody worried that he might use his natural size and strength against his fellow Cybertronians.

With his first upgrade he learned to fly. With his second upgrade, he experienced the exhilarating joy of heat searing his wings as he tore through the atmosphere into the inky darkness of space. There were countless cycles of these memories, flying with his friends for the sheer pleasure of it until his parents called him home.

Skyfire enjoyed learning very much, especially about alien life-forms, and his teachers always told him that he could probably go to the Iacon Acadamy after graduation, if he wanted. Skyfire found that he wanted this very much—in a city where the only higher education offered was the War Acadamy, sometimes he felt that his academic achievements went underappreciated.

So, as his last year of school came to an end, Skyfire applied to continue his education in Iacon. The application process was long and tedious, and Skyfire hated every moment of it. While his classmates went out and celebrated their upcoming graduation, Skyfire filled out countless forms, wrote several essays, and begged recommendations from all his teachers.

But that wasn’t the last of it. Skyfire also had to file for a residency in the notoriously xenophobic Iacon. The forms were not available in Vosian, and Skyfire could have sworn that the Iaconian politicians had deliberately made the application process as difficult as possible. Some nights, after long and fruitless calls to the Iacon Bureau of Foreign Affairs, Skyfire wondered if maybe he should just stay in Vos, where he was actually wanted.

But then he looked over at his table of homemade experiments and his collection of scientific datapads, and he knew he could not.

His parents and teachers were ecstatic when Skyfire received his notice of acceptance. They threw a party for him, which was actually rather embarrassing. Also, for some reason, all his friends thought it would be a good idea to share stories of terrible things happening to aerial-sparked tourists who had made the mistake of venturing into the wrong parts of Iacon. Perhaps they thought they were being helpful. They were not.

As it happened, the city of Vos offered a full scholarship for any mech who could get himself accepted into the Iacon Acadamy. Skyfire knew—because his teachers had told him so—that he would get it simply by virtue of being the only applicant. That was what had happened every year. But this year…this year was different.

This year there were two applicants.

This had never happened before, not once in Vos’ long history. And so both applicants—neither of which had worked particularly hard on their scholarship application—were called in to the Summit to settle the matter.

The Summit was the largest tower in the city, and the Vosian equivalent of Iacon’s senatorial palace. Skyfire had visited it several times on school trips, but never for official business. This time, he was accompanied by both of his creators.

They flew up to the ninety-third floor and entered via the balcony. This was traditional—there wasn’t a single building in the city that didn’t have a balcony on every floor for this exact purpose. Two seekers were already waiting when they arrived, an adult and a younger mech who looked like he was in Skyfire’s age group. As Skyfire transformed back into root mode, the young blue-and-white seeker squared his shoulders and looked at Skyfire as if sizing him up.

“You’re the one who wants my scholarship?” he asked. He was lovely, with dark faceplates and the petite frame of an air racer, but his voice was unusually harsh, almost grating.

“Star, it’s not your scholarship,” admonished the elder seeker behind him.

“I’ll fight you for it,” said Star, as if his creator had not spoken.

“Uh…” said Skyfire, looking back at his own creators for help. He was used to dealing with pushy, melodramatic seekers, but he’d never been challenged to a fight by one before. “No thank you?”

In the end, it was decided that the scholarship would be split between the two mechs. Skyfire’s creators weren’t thrilled, but it was certainly better than having to pay full tuition.

The memory blurred, and the spires of Vos became the graceful, elaborate architecture of the Iacon Academy, where long lectures were delivered under ancient domed ceilings and the noise and bustle of Iacon City was kept at bay by the Academy’s high walls. Skyfire quickly fell into a peaceful routine, and even made a few friends who hardly ever made disparaging comments about his frametype.

Skyfire found that his natural inclination to be polite and helpful (he was a shuttle, after all) was serving him well. Star, on the other servo, appeared to have a death wish. So Skyfire kept a watchful optic on him. This was made easy by the fact that they were roommates—apparently someone had decided that the only two aerials on campus should live together, even though a mech of Skyfire’s size really would have been better off in a single room.

It quickly became apparent that Skyfire would have to accompany Star almost everywhere if he didn’t want his roommate cornered and beaten half-unconscious by their classmates. Iacon wasn’t known for its hospitality towards aerial sparks to begin with, and Star only made the situation worse by behaving as abrasively as possible.

That wasn’t to say that Skyfire didn’t enjoy Iacon. Yes, energon was getting more expensive every day, but he genuinely loved his classes. He suspected that he might have learned more in his first vorn at Iacon than he had during his entire academic career in Vos. And Star…Star wasn’t so bad, really.

In the evenings, Skyfire would tell Star about the independent experiments he’d conducted in Vos, about learning to speak Iaconian just so he could read scientific journals, about hunting through every shop for this or that datapad.

At first Star didn’t respond at all to Skyfire’s stories, and Skyfire thought he might actually have offlined his audials. But then, one night, Star shared a story of his own:

Iaconian novels were popular all over Cybertron, but it often took many stellar cycles for translations to reach outside city-states. But someone in Star’s class had managed to get his servos on a long-awaited sequel to a particularly popular novel. Unfortunately, the novel was in Iaconian. So Star had been given the task of translating it aloud for a group of his peers.

Star had protested at first, but it was mostly for show. In truth, he was thrilled that they were acknowledging his superior linguistic skills. Translating on the spot was incredibly difficult, but Star would have rather died than admit it was beyond his skills. He might have had to skip a line here or there, but nobody noticed—or if they did, they were smart enough to keep quiet about it.

That night, Skyfire went to recharge with a ridiculous smile on his faceplates.

Time passed, but it was difficult to say how much. Being at Iacon was like being sealed off from the rest of the planet. Nobody paid any attention to the news and current events unless they involved a scientific breakthrough or a member of the academic community. It was easy to forget that the rest of Cybertron was very slowly slipping into turmoil.

And Star had recently fallen into the habit of letting his servo linger on Skyfire’s arm just a few kliks longer than was entirely necessary. Whenever this happened, Skyfire’s spark would flutter oddly and he would find himself at a complete loss for words.

Finally, one day, Skyfire and Star were working side-by-side in their room, struggling to finish a report that they’d put off for far too long. Skyfire was in the middle of asking how many references needed to be cited for a passing grade when Star simply leaned over and kissed him.

Skyfire thought this over for several klicks. Then he returned the kiss.

Then the memories became disjointed, flowing into each other like they were made of water.

The Academy was quiet at night. The darkness of their room was illuminated only by the weak lamps outside on the ground below…and by the crimson optics that gazed up at him in utter adoration.

And then there was the day Skyfire had returned from a class to find Star working quietly at his desk…except something was different. Star had repainted the stripes on his wings, and now, instead of pale blue, they were bright red—the same red that Skyfire had always done his own detailing in.

A few solar cycles later, Skyfire repainted some of his own detailing in blue.

The moderately unfair treatment from their professors never ceased, nor the casual bigotry from their classmates, and sometimes they went to recharge with empty tanks because the Academy refused to adjust their fuel allotments even though, as aerials, they had very different energy intake requirements than the other students.

Graduation came, and Skyfire and Star both left Academy grounds to join their classmates in celebration. They got a few odd looks, but the nights went without any great incident—though perhaps Skyfire’s size had something to do with that…

Even in the darkness, Skyfire knew his partner's frame. He ran his servos over broad wings, enjoying the soft gasp he got in response. He felt the heat of Star's frame beneath his own, the way the seeker’s spark-plating separated under the lightest touch of Skyfire’s servo, revealing a bright blue spark.

“I love you,” gasped Star in Vosian. Here in Iacon, it might as well have been a made-up language; their own private code. “Skyfire…I love you, I…”

They had planned to return home to Vos after graduation, and Star had half-joked that there would be a large mob waiting to chase them both off-campus as soon as the ceremony was over. But the Academy surprised them by offering them work. Iacon needed mechs to scout unknown worlds for energy sources. As aerials, Skyfire and Star were ideal for the job.

Leaving Cybertron for the first time was a little bit scary. But the freedom was unlike anything either of them had ever experienced before. And they never went hungry, not like they had in Iacon. Even though they didn’t find any planets with abundant energy sources, there was always enough to keep them fueled.

With each expedition, it became harder and harder to force themselves to return to Iacon, where the riots were growing more frequent, anti-aerial sentiment was at an all-time high, and not a single Enforcer was capable of letting them pass without searching their subspace pockets first. So they strayed further and further into space, taking the missions that no other mechs wanted and writing reports that nobody actually appeared to be reading. If it didn’t involve energy, no one cared.

They found worlds made of silicone and glass, worlds made of dirt and debris. They found a race that lived for only a single solar cycle, hatching with the rising sun and drifting into death as the first of their world’s three moons was still rising. They found an organic race that could subsist on pure sunlight and had no word for hunger. They bonded in the skies of an alien world where bioluminescent organics made the oceans glow with an ethereal blue-green light. And they told nobody, for there was nobody to tell.

Vorns passed, and they were assigned to a new part of the galaxy. That was when they happened upon the world. It was small and young and unremarkable, really, after all they had seen together, even though it was rather pretty from a distance. But Skyfire was intrigued, and he wanted a closer look.

Star had half-sparkedly said that it was probably a bad idea, the weather patterns looked like they could turn dangerous, but Skyfire had insisted and now…

Now…

Now ice crystals were forming on his wings, freezing his systems and making his processor panic. Immensely powerful winds buffeted him as if his size and strength meant absolutely nothing. Desperate blue servos reached out, and Skyfire caught them.

But the wind was stronger, and Skyfire could not hold on for long. And he realized that his partner was now in mortal danger as well. If Skyfire fell, he would take Star with him.

So he let go.

White. White. White.

Star was screaming over their bond, screaming in pain and misery and fear. Skyfire tried to reach back to him, to assure him that everything would be alright, but he was having trouble mustering up the strength to do it…

The ice was sinking into his circuits. It felt like it was gathering around his spark, but perhaps that was just his imagination. He was suddenly very tired, almost too tired to be frightened.

He was shutting down. Faintly, he was aware of a sharp pain in his chassis—it would have been excruciating, had he not been in the middle of a full systems failure. Star’s cries suddenly ceased.

Time blurred.

Then…

Light! Warmth!

Voices!

Familiar shrieking—and Skyfire’s spark lifted at the sound. He forced his optics to online, and the very first thing he saw was Star’s worried smile. He reached for their bond, but there was no bond.

Skyfire paused to take in his surroundings. It felt like half his systems were offline, but he was on some sort of berth, and there were walls of crystalline ice everywhere he looked. Star was in a new frame, an unusual frame—Skyfire had never seen anything like it in his entire existence. He also seemed to have added more red to it.

And there were other mechs, too, unfamiliar war-builds. But they weren’t important. Star was talking to him, explaining something and Skyfire could barely follow it because the dialect was strange, foreign…

Skyfire stammered out some weak questions, and Star immediately pinged him with some updated language files. When Skyfire saw the date on them, he felt his tanks lurch. Then Star said something else, and gestured to the mech standing just beside him. He was also a war-build, large and silver, with an inelegantly large weapon attached to one arm—

Inside Skyfire’s processor, Prime cried out in horror as he finally realized exactly who Skyfire’s sweet, affectionate seeker bondmate had been.

The merge broke.

* * *

“Three and a quarter breems, sixteen klicks,” Perceptor was reporting happily. “Both test subjects appear stable. Wheeljack, if you could disconnect those cables for me?”

Wheeljack said something in reply, but Skyfire wasn’t listening. He didn’t trust himself to move yet.

Over on the opposite berth, Prime was gazing at him with—what? Disgust? Pity? Fear? Maybe Prime was still confused, disoriented from the merge. Because there was no reason for him to be looking at Skyfire like that. No reason at all.

“That was him,” Prime said to Skyfire. He had a very strange expression on his faceplates.

“That was who?” asked Skyfire.

“Prime?” asked Ratchet. “Is everything—?”

“You tried to hide it from me,” said Prime, accusingly. “I didn’t notice—not at first—but you deliberately blocked out his name, didn’t you?”

“It was not intentional,” said Skyfire, struggling to meet Prime’s optics. “No—it was. Subconsciously, it must have been, there is no other explanation, but…”

There was no need for Prime to make that face at him. After all, it was not Skyfire who had slaughtered countless mechs by his own hand, and ordered the slaughter of countless more. It was not Skyfire who had burned cities, and then whole worlds. It was not Skyfire who had turned a blind optic to Jazz’s missing Decepticon prisoners and Prowl’s nameless operations.

“That wasn’t bad for a first attempt,” said Wheeljack encouragingly. “I’d call it a success, wouldn’t you?”

Prime got up and very quietly walked out of the medbay.

Chapter Text

The bridge of the Victory was empty, and Megatron actually preferred it that way. Only Soundwave was working at a terminal, and Laserbeak had curled up in the crook of Megatron’s elbow about a cycle ago. He could no longer feel his arm.

Megatron pondered the situation that he had found himself in. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but it seemed that things had become increasingly strange ever since they’d awoken on this annoying little planet.

He didn’t actually want Earth to be devoured. It was full of incredible resources that he and his army had yet to fully tap. That wasn’t to say he wouldn’t withdraw to Cybertron if he felt his mechs were in danger of being consumed by the chaos-bringer (if that truly was what the thing in the sky was. Astrotrain and Blitzwing certainly seemed to feel that it was. Megatron was reserving judgment).

Megatron had been keeping a cursory optic on the Autobots ever since that rather offensive call from Prime, suggesting they become a temporary combiner (honestly, that took some nerve). Megatron knew his adversaries could be counted on to take responsibility for dealing with Unicron’s approach, but whether or not they would actually be victorious still remained to be seen.

So he had ordered his men to be prepared to return to Cybertron at the first sign of true danger, but continue normally in the meantime. With any luck, the Autobots would be so preoccupied by Unicron that the Decepticons would be able to pull off a few successful energy raids behind their backs.

The clattering of little pedes drew Megatron’s attention back to the present. He looked up, and saw Soundwave stepping away from his console. Rumble and Frenzy had returned, and from the triumphant looks on their tiny faceplates he could tell that they’d come back with something good. Their orders had been to record any plans the Autobots might have regarding Unicron. It appeared that the Autobots were going ahead with their ridiculous combiner plan…and the mech who had been chosen to merge with Prime was one of Megatron’s least favorite Autobots of all time.

Megatron allowed Soundwave to meticulously examine each inch of Rumble and Frenzy’s frames for damage before they delivered their report. When Soundwave was satisfied, he stepped back to his customary spot beside Megatron’s throne and ordered, “Report.”

“You’re gonna like this,” said Rumble, unsubspacing a data disc and passing it up to Megatron. Frenzy giggled and nudged his twin a little.

“Contents of disc: Inappropriate?” asked Soundwave, with a distinct warning in his tone.

“No!” said Rumble, and the twins both straightened up immediately. “Just—just watch it. It’s good. Even better than yesterday.” Yesterday, the twins had managed to get footage of Skyfire and Prime’s first merge, which had admittedly been pretty boring, since it was just two mechs lying on medical berths for four breems, followed by a short fight and then Prime storming out in a huff.

“Alright,” said Megatron. Few on the Victory knew that the twins were actually far more mature than they acted, and Megatron actually trusted their judgment in most things. If they said they’d retrieved valuable information, then he believed them. “You can go.”

The twins scampered off, and Megatron passed the disc over to Soundwave. The tape deck went over and inserted the disc into the main viewscreen.

As it loaded, Megatron saw that the footage was from a familiar angle: the ventilation shaft just over Prime’s office. It was a grievous security error, honestly, and Megatron had no idea how the paranoid Security Director had managed to overlook it for so long.

Prime was at his desk, reading a datapad, but then he glanced up at the sound of a knock at the door.

“You may come in,” Prime said. A moment later, Skyfire entered the office, his wings held defensively high. Prime did not acknowledge this—or perhaps he did not notice. Skyfire looked down and evaluated the chair in front of the desk, clearly wondering if it could hold his weight. The shuttle reached out and tested it with one servo.

“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize him eventually?” asked Prime, without preamble.

“You didn’t, though,” said Skyfire without looking up. The chair was groaning a little under the weight of his servo, and he appeared to decide that sitting in it would probably be a bad idea. “Thousands of vorns of memories, and you only recognized him when he was standing next to Megatron.”

Megatron felt himself frown slightly. He was no fool—there was only one mech they could be discussing, though both Autobots were apparently reluctant to speak his name.

Skyfire raised his helm just as Prime sat back in his own chair. They both seemed to be struggling for the right words.

“Are you still—are you—do you meet with him?” Prime asked.

Skyfire met Prime’s optics for just a moment. “Perhaps if you had not broken the merge, you would know the answer.”

Prime leaned forward sharply. “Skyfire, this is not amusing.”

“That fits, because I am not amused.”

Prime rose very quickly, and for a moment Megatron thought he might actually be moving to attack. But instead, Prime went to his window and gazed at the desert outside.

“With every moment that passes, Unicron draws closer to us,” Prime announced at last. Megatron groaned internally, because that sounded like the start of another boring speech. “And make no mistake, that is the only reason why you’re not sitting in the brig right now.”

“Why?” demanded Skyfire. “Because, nine million years ago, I loved a mech?”

“Because you love him still!” shouted Prime. Skyfire’s entire frame went tense and Megatron realized the shuttle had probably never actually heard Prime yell before. “Or do you deny it?”

“So loving a mech is what earns brig time in this faction,” said Skyfire, clearly fighting to keep his composure. “I suppose I cannot claim I’m surprised, now can I?”

Prime came back over to his desk and put both servos on it. Resting his weight on his arms, he said, “I take it there is something you want to say?”

“Only that if I were to dedicate my life from this moment onward to causing as much misery and destruction as I possibly could, I still would not be able to compete with what you have already wrought!”

Prime squared his shoulders. “You know nothing of war,” he said.

“And you know nothing of love.” Skyfire paused, and the faintest hint of a smile appeared on his faceplates for a moment. “Though I noticed Elita was too polite to say anything.”

“Excuse me?” demanded Prime.

“What? Oh. Nothing,” said Skyfire. “Just a passing thought. Forget I said anything.”

“You—you have a—a problem with my interfacing technique?” Prime was practically sputtering.

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Skyfire, in a faux-casual tone, one that Megatron had not thought him capable of. “I wouldn’t call it a technique.”

In the recording, Megatron could hear Rumble and Frenzy choking on their laughter and shushing each other. For a moment, he was certain that Prime was going to hit Skyfire. But, somehow, miraculously, he didn’t.

“You are dismissed,” said Prime at last, tapping his digits on his desk in annoyance. Skyfire turned and left the office without another word. When the door had slid shut again, Prime reached out and pressed a button on his desk.

“Ironhide? Can you come to my office? I need to ask you about something… Yes, right now.”

The footage came to an end, and Soundwave withdrew the data disc. He said nothing.

Starscream was going to throw an absolute fit once he found out about this. And as amusing as that was sure to be, it could also spell danger for the Decepticons. According to Soundwave, Starscream still had a moderate amount of influence over Skyfire’s actions. If Starscream insisted that Skyfire never merge with Prime again—and Megatron knew Starscream would—there was a very good chance that Skyfire just might give in.

And then who would deal with Unicron? As far as Megatron knew, the Autobots had no backup plan. The Decepticons would be forced to withdraw from Earth or worse—they might actually have to join in and help defeat Unicron.

No. Starscream would have to be kept in the dark for as long as possible. With any luck, he wouldn’t discover what the Autobots were planning until it was too late to stop them. And then Megatron would be happy to watch the drama unfold.

* * *

“You shouldn’t argue with him if you can avoid it,” said Perceptor. “I’m serious. It could affect the merge.”

Skyfire didn’t respond. He was supposed to be helping the other scientists design the alterations that would be made to his and Prime’s frames so that they could merge physically as well as mentally. But Skyfire was having trouble focusing, and his fellow scientists were being too perceptive for their own good.

“What did you disagree about, anyway?” asked Wheeljack, turning away from the 3D blueprints that were hanging in the air in front of him.

“It’s not important,” said Skyfire, staring at his servos.

“Actually, it is,” Perceptor said, leaning his elbows back against a table. “If you reject each other during the full merge tomorrow, the entire project will—”

“It will be fine,” snapped Skyfire in an uncharacteristically harsh tone. The lab was quiet for a moment.

“This isn’t like you,” said Wheeljack. “What happened? You can tell us. We’re your friends…”

“A side effect of the merge, maybe?” Perceptor seemed to brighten up a little.

“I think so,” said Skyfire, rubbing his optics. Honestly, he was still stunned by what he’d said to Prime earlier today. That he’d spoken to the Matrix-bearer in such a way—it was mortifying. But he had been completely unable to stop himself. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Excuse you, it’s the best idea,” said Wheeljack.

“I just don’t think I’m the best one to merge with Prime,” continued Skyfire. “We should have gotten Ironhide or, or Silverbolt, or anyone…”

Perceptor frowned. “Skyfire, did you see something disturbing in Prime’s memories?”

“Hey, you can’t ask that, that’s medical confidentiality,” protested Wheeljack. “Ratch would kill you if he was here.”

“The war,” said Skyfire. “The whole war. I saw the whole war.”

Perceptor came around to pat Skyfire’s arm comfortingly. “I am sorry,” he said.

“So am I,” said Skyfire.

Chapter Text

Skyfire fidgeted, trying to come to terms with all the additions that had been made to his frame. The modifications were small and unobtrusive, but they were numerous. Skyfire didn’t think he’d ever grow accustomed to them, and in fact was already looking forward to the day when they could be removed permanently.

The medbay had been cleared to make room for the merge. All the berths had been pushed into one corner, and Skyfire and Prime stood opposite from one another, pointedly looking everywhere except at each other. Skyfire, honestly, was a little glad that Prime wasn’t trying to talk to him. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. And even if he was, what could he say? What could either of them say?

This time, there were no tangles of cables and wires connecting the two mechs—those wouldn’t be needed anymore. When their frames merged, Skyfire and Prime would be joined so closely that their processors would become one—though their sparks would remain safely separate from one another.

Behind the scientists was the entire Autobot command staff. None of them looked very happy, but they hadn’t been able to come up with any alternatives to Wheeljack’s idea, so they’d been forced to stand back and watch as their Prime’s frame was tweaked and reshaped and transformed into something that was designed to link into a second mech.

The Autobot soldiers were very curious about the project, and Ratchet had left the medbay twice to bellow at some mechs who ‘just happened’ to be hanging around outside. Only the threat of cleaning duty had kept them from returning a third time.

“Are you ready?” asked Perceptor.

Skyfire and Prime glanced at each other. Neither said anything.

“Right. Start the merge,” said Wheeljack brightly. “Whenever the two of you are ready.”

Skyfire gave a slight nod and reached into his central database for the new code that had been installed just recently. It was an enormous program, and he could feel it taking over his entire frame as he brought it online. He felt the shifting of machinery and plating, almost like a transformation sequence, but not quite.

Skyfire felt his entire self reach out for Prime, and then—

He—they?—he could hear the scientists shouting excitedly to each other, but that wasn’t important. He felt his entire frame expand as a thousand new links were forged between machinery that had once been incompatible. There was a wash of new memories, but this time he was ready for them and embraced them as though they were his own because they were his own.

He felt the power in his frame, strength unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It was accompanied by a peaceful self-assurance, a bright optimism, and an overpowering love.

Meanwhile, in his chest, the Matrix was singing triumphantly.

* * *

Gigantic blue eyes gazed around the medbay, and a silver battlemask snapped open. Ratchet rushed forward immediately.

“Are you alright?” the medic asked.

The new mech smiled the most beautiful smile any of the Autobots had ever seen. “I am in fine health, my cherished companions,” he said warmly. “This new body shall surely lead our forces to victory—I feel it in my sparks.”

“Oh wow, this is bad,” said Wheeljack.

“What dialect is that?” asked Ratchet.

“Classical pre-war Iaconian, I believe,” Perceptor was frowning. “But I do not understand why he is using it.”

“Is it possible his language files were corrupted in the merge?” asked Prowl, moving forward cautiously, as if he thought he might be approaching something dangerous.

“Prime? Can you—do you understand me?” asked Ratchet, speaking loudly and slowly.

Large blue optics flickered for a moment, and then the new mech nodded. He seemed to be struggling for the correct words. Finally, he said, “I…understand.”

There were some murmurs of relief from the command staff, though Red Alert had not yet let go of Inferno’s arm.

“Alright. What’s your name?” asked Ratchet.

“I am Sky Convoy,” he said, and then he stood, majestically, and struck his helm on the ceiling.

“Perhaps we should take this outside,” suggested Wheeljack.

* * *

Sky Convoy basked in the sunlight, angling his broad wings to take in as much warmth as possible. He was crouched down in the dust, studying a clump of mariposa lilies, apparently entranced. His enormous servos reached out to gently, very gently, touch the soft white petals.

“Well, he’s in perfect health,” reported Ratchet.

“I told you it would work!” announced Wheeljack to nobody in particular.

“I dunno. It seems…wrong,” said Ironhide. “Gives me the creeps to look at him.”

“I hear you, mech,” agreed Jazz grimly.

Sky Convoy was larger than Skyfire had been, with bigger wings and thicker limbs. But Prime and Skyfire’s frames had been integrated into each other so cleanly that it was easy to see which pieces of each mech had been used to create each part of the new combiner. Sky Convoy’s helm was a mix of Skyfire’s and Prime’s, featuring a soft, rounded shape, an intimidating battlemask, warm blue optics, and an irresistible smile.

“Sir?” asked Prowl at last.

Sky Convoy straightened up and turned to face Prowl. “Is my assistance required?” he asked.

“Ah…” Prowl looked around at all the others for help.

“Prime, we’ve been out here for almost a cycle,” said Ironhide flatly.

“Has it been that long?” Sky Convoy’s enormous blue optics brightened in surprise. “You have my sincerest apologies!”

Ironhide looked taken aback. “Oh. Uh. That’s alright?”

Sky Convoy smiled, and it was as though a second sun had appeared in the sky. “Shall we return to the Ark, then?” he asked. “You must be exhausted. And my crystals need tending.”

“Sir, we were actually hoping we could discuss the issue of Unicron’s approach,” Prowl reminded him.

“Unicron?” suddenly, Sky Convoy wasn’t smiling anymore, and the sky seemed to darken a little. All the Autobots took an automatic step back. “He must be destroyed!”

“Yes, of course,” said Prowl quickly. “So I think it would be best if we formulate a plan as soon as possible, don’t you?”

“Yes. Of course. Of course.” Sky Convoy nodded to himself for a moment. “This beautiful world is under my protection, after all. If I allowed it to be consumed, I would be no better than Unicron himself.”

“Well, I, uh, wouldn’t go that far—” began Jazz.

“Let’s get you inside, big guy,” said Ratchet, taking one of Sky Convoy’s arms very firmly. “And be sure to watch your helm.”

* * *

The next morning, Megatron walked onto the bridge of the Nemesis for first shift and immediately knew something was wrong. There was a small crowd gathered at the front of the room, and Starscream was at the center of it.

Fearing the worst, Megatron pushed his way through the group, sending a short command that would power up his cannon at the same time.

But Starscream wasn’t making a speech, or holding a weapon, or doing any of the other myriad things that frequently earned him a beating. In fact, he was simply standing there quietly, staring down at a datapad with a most un-Starscream-like expression on his face. One of his servos was pressed up against his cheek, and one of his digits on that servo was in his mouth.

On the datapad itself was a poem (Megatron could tell by the irregular line breaks) written in a dialect so flowery that Megatron could not actually make out a single word. But, oddly, the warlord found that he understood the overall message of the piece nonetheless.

“What is this?” asked Megatron.

“I…I don't know,” said Starscream in an uncharacteristically soft voice. His dark faceplates were tinged pink. “It just came in from a frequency I don’t recognize.”

“You got me. I confess,” said Skywarp brightly, peering around Starscream’s shoulder. “I wrote it.”

Starscream shot his wingmate an exasperated look.

“No, really! I did! I wrote it. With the words and all that. Just last night, I was overcome by how much I want to frag you, so I—”

Starscream shoved Skywarp in Thundercracker’s direction. “Get out of my faceplates, you idiot.” Then he subspaced the datapad. With a glance at Megatron, he added, “It’s not important. I don’t care who sent it.”

Megatron did not reply, because long experience had taught him that it would be pointless.

“Probably just a prank,” Starscream was mumbling to himself as he went to his station. “Those stupid cadets think they’re so funny…they’re sadly mistaken. In fact, I think they just earned themselves two extra cycles of drills today. And when I find out which one of them it was, I’ll nail him to the wall by his wings—you can count on that.”

“Starscream,” said Megatron tiredly. “Shut up.”

Chapter Text

Sky Convoy was having a lovely day, which was really no surprise since Earth was such a lovely planet. He could marvel at the wonders of the desert for hours, or study the progress of a beetle crawling across his arm. But alas, there was work to be done.

As he tended to his crystals (they were really coming along quite well), he heard Ratchet say, “No, I think this is about normal.”

“Well, at least they’re stable,” contributed Prowl. “How long has it been?”

“Two hours,” said Jazz. “Feels more like five, though, don’t it?”

Sky Convoy glanced back over his shoulder, moving one of his enormous wings out of the way for the sake of getting a clear view. For whatever reason, the entire Autobot command staff had fallen into the habit of following him around, watching him go about his business and occasionally muttering to each other.

“Is something wrong, my friends?” he asked at last, being careful to speak in the ugly modern dialect that they seemed to prefer.

“Er,” said Jazz, raising one servo to scratch the back of his helm, “not that this ain’t…fascinatin’…but maybe we could start talkin’ about what you plan to do? The humans are getting nervous.”

“Yes. I understand,” Sky Convoy nodded. “I, too, am anxious about the rising tensions between the United States and Russia. I would like to schedule a summit—”

“Why don’t we head out to the targeting range?” interrupted Prowl. “We haven’t tested your weapons capabilities yet.”

Sky Convoy frowned deeply. “I dislike the use of firearms,” he said. “Surely there is a more civilized means of self-expression available.”

“Prime, you’re gonna be fightin’ Unicron, so you need a damn weapon,” said Ironhide sharply.

Sky Convoy’s optics lit immediately. “Unicron!” he said, remembering. “Yes. He will be destroyed, for the sake of this humble but beautiful planet.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Ironhide, looking back at the others anxiously.

* * *

The targeting range was outside the Ark, and Sky Convoy was very much enjoying the feel of the wind and the sun on his wings. A bit of a crowd had gathered to watch, though Sky Convoy was not exactly sure why.

“You’ll find your primary weapon in your subspace pocket,” advised Ratchet. “Wheeljack took the liberty of putting something together for you.”

Sky Convoy unsubspaced the weapon carefully, disliking everything about it. It was rather large—it had to be, to fit into his servo. It was approximately the same size as a minibot, and Sky Convoy found that he could not hold it easily with only one servo. He took a few klicks to figure out the best way to balance it in his arms. It was quite like holding a sparkling.

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Prowl encouragingly. Sky Convoy looked out at the brightly-colored targets across the shooting range. They were all different sizes, and heights, and some of them even moved. They weren’t real—physical targets would have been destroyed too quickly. Rather, they were holographic projections that would disappear when they sensed an object passing through themselves. Nearby, a small board displayed the highest scores achieved so far. Bluestreak was in the lead, followed by Mirage, and then Perceptor (nobody was quite sure how that had happened).

Sky Convoy was no sharpshooter, however, and he knew his score wouldn’t even make the top ten. Still, with all his dear friends watching, he was determined to do his best. He raised the weapon and focused his attention on the largest of the targets. He felt his targeting systems come online, and fired.

The weapon leapt in his arms, kicking him in the chassis. An enormous explosion rocked the canyon, followed by the sound of falling rock chips. The targeting range was now completely obscured by reddish dust—he wasn’t even sure if he’d hit the target. But from the sound of it, the other Autobots didn’t care. Sky Convoy smiled brightly at their approval.

“I was not expectin’ that,” said Ironhide.

“Neither was I,” admitted Sky Convoy, his audials still ringing a bit. “I only wish such things were not necessary.”

The other Autobots were coming to crowd around him, all speaking at once. Sky Convoy subspaced the weapon, glad to be done with it.

“You’re gonna kick Unicron’s skidplate for sure!” said Bumblebee happily. “See, Brawn, I told you he’d be great.”

“I never said he wouldn’t be!” objected Brawn. “I just—”

“Who do I have to bribe to get a gun like that?” asked Cliffjumper.

Sky Convoy retracted his battlemask and smiled down at his soldiers. “I am glad to hear that you have faith in me,” he said very seriously.

“It’s not that we didn’t!” said Cliffjumper quickly, elbowing his companions. “Right guys?”

“I believed in you the whole time!” cried Bluestreak. “I even said so, and you guys just laughed at me well who’s laughing now I was right and you were wrong this is gonna be awesome so can we come help you fight Unicron?”

“Absolutely not,” said Prowl.

As the other Autobots laughed, Sky Convoy looked up. The sky was clear and bright and beautiful, so beautiful he almost wanted to cry. Something inside of him was begging to reach out and become part of it.

“I want to fly,” he said urgently, turning to look at Ratchet.

“Um, what?” asked Ratchet. “Wait, maybe you should—”

But Sky Convoy had made his decision. He ignited his thrusters to full power and, without another word, shot upwards into the sky in a plume of fire and dust.

Flying…was a lot harder than he thought it would be. Strange. He had memories of graceful, effortless flight—too many to count. He’d even interfaced in midair a few times. And yet, it seemed like his own frame was resisting him as he tried to level out. Transforming was out of the question, for Sky Convoy had no altmode, but that shouldn’t have made a difference.

Maybe his frame was too heavy? Maybe his wheels were in the way? Suddenly anxious, Sky Convoy ran a quick check on all his flight systems. They responded normally. Why was this so difficult, then? Flight was supposed to be a joyful, uncomplicated matter, a natural expression of himself. So why was half of his processor screaming in fear?

He flew onward, experimenting with height and speed, trying to find a pace he was comfortable with. Fortunately, there were no other aerials around to see his awkward attempts at flight. How his beloved would laugh at him if he—if she?—could see him now.

Sky Convoy frowned a little bit as his processor tried to settle on the correct pronouns for his beloved. Cybertronian pronouns were based around sparktype, and for some reason he was having difficulty remembering which ones to use. He knew his ex-bondmate was very small, and very fast, and very dangerous. But half of his processor was insisting that he was an aerial-spark with a seeker frame, while the other half was positive that he was a civilian-spark with a femme frame painted in a terrifying shade of energon-pink.

Well, that wasn’t important. The important thing was that Sky Convoy loved him—or her, as the case may be—more than anything in the universe.

“I think I feel another poem coming on,” he said to nobody in particular.

* * *

Astoria Carlton-Ritz roller skated down the halls of the Ark, her big white skirt fluffing out behind her as music blasted from her Walkman headphones. She was not an uncommon sight around the Ark these days, though usually Powerglide ran around after her making sure she didn’t hurt herself—or someone else.

But today she was a woman on a mission. She skated through the halls, occasionally stopping to consult a very crumpled hand-drawn map or take a drink from a water bottle.

“Astoria,” said Prowl. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Astoria glanced up and stuffed her map in her pocket. The Autobot tactician had just emerged from his office, and he did not look amused.

“I was looking for you!” said Astoria, tilting her head upwards. “Well, not you. Anyone. But you're good. Fine. Perfect. You’re perfect. Don’t pick me up or I'll kill you.”

Prowl did the thing with his vents that the Cybertronians tended to do a lot whenever Astoria was around.

“Alright, Astoria,” said Prowl. “Why are you here? I sincerely hope this is important.”

“It is important,” said Astoria, surprising herself with how authoritative she sounded. “I mean, it's seriously important. It's about the thingy—the thingy in the sky. The unicorn.”

“Unicron,” Prowl corrected automatically.

“Yeah. Him.”

Prowl did the thing with his vents again. “Astoria, I understand that you’re concerned, but the situation is under control. In the meantime, you know Red Alert doesn’t like it when you run around the—”

“It’s not under control,” interrupted Astoria. "It’s not because I know a thing that you don’t know. I know because he told me.”

“Who told you what?” asked Prowl, his optics dimming a little bit. Astoria took this as a sign that he was actually listening now.

“Unicron told me,” said Astoria. “He told me everything. Don’t touch me or I'll kill you. That’s not a threat, it’s a warning. I can’t control it yet.”

Chapter Text

“This is not amusing,” said Elita, waving the datapad in the air. Her soldiers all looked up at her helplessly. Elita had been lecturing them for almost a cycle, but none of the femmes before her appeared to be any about to own up to sending her either of the two love poems that she’d received recently.

“We already told you it wasn’t us,” objected Moonracer for the thousandth time. “Honest! None of us can write fancy like that!”

“Then I suppose it just wrote itself?” retorted Elita dryly.

“Hey, maybe it was Shockwave,” suggested Chromia with a broad grin.

“Oh, shut up,” said Elita, tossing the datapad into her subspace pocket.

* * *

“Explain,” said Prowl flatly. He’d ushered Astoria into his office and sealed the door behind them—all the while being very careful not to touch her. Now he was struggling to keep his processor under control. It wanted to calculate scenarios and outcomes and probabilities. But he knew he had to listen to Astoria, no matter how frustrating that might be.

“Okay,” said Astoria. “But—but stop freaking out, because you’re gonna make me freak out and it’s bad for my skin. I’m gonna start at the beginning, okay?”

Prowl sat down behind his desk and stared down at her, his lipplates pressed tightly together.

“I’ve always had things break on me,” began Astoria. “Electronics and stuff. Machines. Metal stuff. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. But I was like, whatever, right? See this?” She held up her Walkman and waved it around. “It’s probably going to be broken by the time I get home. But I never really thought about it because that’s the way it’s always been. Right?”

Prowl was silent.

“But then the thing with the Decepticons happened, on my birthday,” said Astoria. “I should have died. I should have died like ten times. And that electricity stuff they put into my brain? It didn’t do anything to me at all. It—it didn’t even hurt. And I didn’t think about it because I didn’t know it was supposed to hurt because I’m not, like, you know, smart. But I did an interview on The California Show—you know, with Angie and Mark—no? They’re really funny…”

“Astoria,” said Prowl.

“Right! Sorry! So, I did an interview with them and I told them the story about the Decepticons kidnapping me from my own birthday party and how I made friends with Powerglide, and then I got to the part where the Decepticons put the thing with the electricity into my brain and Angie asked, ‘didn’t that hurt?’ And like, I laughed, but the audience wasn’t laughing, and neither was she and then Mark leaned in towards me like this—” Astoria leaned forward to demonstrate. “And he said, ‘ninety-thousand volts should have killed you! You must have heard them wrong.’ And so I said, ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ but I knew he wasn’t. I know what I heard. And then…then I started having these dreams, right around the same time that the thing in the sky started appearing on the news. And he told me—”

“He?” interrupted Prowl.

“Unicron. Unicron told me it was because of him that Soundwave couldn’t read my mind and, and I didn’t get hurt by the Decepticons and I can make things stop working just by touching them. He said they were gifts, because I’m his…his…herald.”

Prowl’s entire frame went still upon hearing the last word. Then he got up out of his chair and began to pace around the room, one servo pressed to his forehelm and optics locked on the floor.

“So I asked him what happens if I don’t want to be his herald, and he said it doesn’t matter what I want, it’s already been done.” Astoria began rotating where she stood in order to follow Prowl’s progress. “So I told him thanks but I don’t want to kill Autobots, or even Decepticons, because they’re kinda cute even if they are big jerks, and he said it didn’t matter what I wanted and so I told him if he was going to be rude I was gonna ignore him so I did and that was it.”

One of Prowl’s optics flickered in an unusual way. Apparently finished with her narrative, Astoria clasped her hands behind her back and looked up at him expectantly. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

“I beg your pardon?” Prowl managed to gasp out.

“He’s your god! Why’s he’s in my head? I’m not a robot! I’m a human! And I don’t know anything about wars, or eating planets, or, or—whatever! And I’d like to listen to music without the radio exploding because it turns out that isn’t a thing that usually happens to every other human being on Earth!”

“Astoria, if what you say is true—”

“It is!”

“—then exploding radios are the least of your problems. Please wait here. I must inform Prime. Wait here. And do not—”

“—touch anything,” finished Astoria. “Yeah. I know. Jeez.”

* * *

They’d been on Earth for a few years now, so Blaster was quite used to giving press conferences. He liked humans, and the humans liked him. Except now, ever since Unicron had been discovered, Blaster was starting to see a whole new side of the race that he’d previously thought of as sweet, friendly, and a little bit dim.

“But won’t Unicron will go away if there are no Cybertronians on earth?” one of the journalists was in the middle of insisting. Blaster was horrified to see that a few others were actually nodding along with her.

“He’s obviously only here for you!” yelled someone else from the back of the crowd.

“Hey, now, let’s not—” began Blaster helplessly. “Guys. Guys. Come on, guys. Listen. The reason we’re here today is because I have an announcement to make. There’s some good news!” Blaster looked out across the enormous crowd, which was now regarding him curiously. “See, Unicron's slowed down. Came to a complete stop, actually—just a few hours ago! The bad news...um...the bad news is Unicron has eaten Pluto."

The humans had suddenly gone very quiet. Then there was the shriek of amplifier feedback as one of the journalists in the front row dropped her microphone on the grass.

Blaster honestly hadn't been expecting such a strong reaction. The humans weren’t using Pluto for anything. Frag, the Cybertronians weren’t even using it. He wasn’t even sure if it could really even be classified as a planet! And yet they were all staring at him like he’d personally been responsible for the loss.

“So,” said Blaster, turning his attention back to the script that had been prepared for him. “Yes. The Prime expresses his condolences and reminds us that Pluto will live on forever in our processors and our sparks. And he would especially like to emphasize that this was not his fault in any way.”

“...WHAT?” yelled one of the journalists.

“We're, uh, pretty sure the loss won't impact the orbital pattern of Earth in any significant way, assuming we survive to next week. In th' meantime, we're working to combine Prime's body with the body of our most powerful aerial mech and then send him off to fight Unicron, preferably before you are all eaten. Lucky for you humans, the remainders of Unicron should get caught in orbit and serve as your new Pluto." Blaster tried to smile. The silence was almost deafening. "...And if not, any pieces from Unicron's frame should burn up in your atmosphere and probably not land in any densely populated areas...Primus, this is terrible, who wrote this?"

In Blaster’s experience, press reports were usually composed by Prowl, then edited by Jazz, and then re-edited by Prowl. The end results were usually pretty good. Blaster took a closer look at the text file, and saw that it had been compiled by…

Red Alert.

Of course.

Ten minutes later, Blaster was chased home by an angry mob.

* * *

Something strange was going on, and Starscream was going to get to the bottom of it. The most recent air patrol had come back with some blurry pictures of something enormous in the skies on the edge of Autobot territory, and unless Superion had learned to fly, it could only be a new soldier.

But Megatron had brushed him off when Starscream had raised the subject, telling him to worry about the upcoming energon raids and leave matters of espionage to Soundwave. So Starscream had sulked and muttered to himself, but not brought the matter up again—if Megatron didn’t want to investigate the new soldier, then Starscream would do it himself.

And then once he’d figured out what was going on, Starscream would use the information to his advantage (somehow, he was still a little hazy on the details, but he’d work it out later) and eventually kill Megatron and take over as rightful leader as the Decepticons!

These were the thoughts that Starscream consoled himself with as he flew across the desert to the prearranged meeting spot. He was not going to risk his own safety stalking an unknown mech who appeared to be the same approximate size of a combiner. He had a far more pleasant means of getting information about Autobot activities.

Skyfire may have left the Decepticons, but he could always be counted on to come when Starscream called. And tonight would be no different.

Starscream transformed and landed, scanning the rock formations for any Cybertronian energy fields. It took a moment, because the stones interfered with his sensors and the quickly-dying light created long and confusing shadows. But then Starscream caught a flash of something familiar.

“There you are—” he began, and spun around on one-thruster heel to see that he was, in fact, completely incorrect. This mech was not Skyfire, because not even Skyfire was so large. Immediately, Starscream’s processor began coming up with excuses for being so near to Autobot territory…

And yet…those wings. That helm. Those servos. Even the energy field was disturbingly familiar.

The giant’s faceplates lit up in a smile that probably could have brought dead turbopuppies back to life.

“Starlita!” he cried in delight, grabbing Starscream and hugging him to his chassis as if the seeker weighed nothing at all.

Starscream screeched until his vocalizer shorted out.

Chapter Text

Starscream wrenched himself free of the titan’s enormous arms and went stumbling backwards, finally landing on his knees. Starscream looked up to make sure the other mech wasn’t going to try to grab him again, but it looked like Starscream had managed to take him by surprise.

“Starlita!” said the mech again. Starscream just shook his helm in confusion and directed his self-repair protocols to focus on his vocalizer. “Are you injured? Did I hurt you?” The enormous mech wrung his servos.

“Who are you?” Starscream managed to gasp out.

The other mech’s face fell. “You do not recognize me, Starlita?”

“…not my name…”

“But perhaps that is to be expected,” continued the giant, speaking as though he was an actor delivering a soliloquy. “My new form is unfamiliar to you, is it not? But rest assured—my love for you remains unchanged.”

“Skyfire…?” mumbled Starscream, his optics settling on the familiar broad red stripes across the other mech’s wings. Starscream staggered back to his pedes and found a large rock formation to lean against—for some reason his legs wouldn’t stop shaking.

The giant mech tilted his helm in a nod, “That is the designation of one of my components. But you may call me Sky Convoy.”

“I don’t understand,” said Starscream faintly.

“Ratchet says I will be a more effective warrior if I spend more time in this form,” said Sky Convoy, as though this explained anything. “I did not think you would mind. I have missed you.”

Starscream shook his helm vigorously, trying to make sense of what was in front of his optics. “You’re not Skyfire. You can’t be Skyfire. What…what did they do to you?” He stepped forward and pressed both servos to Sky Convoy’s massive chassis, feeling the familiar space-grade plating. “Oh Primus, the Autobots took him apart, didn’t they? Your faction butchered him to create you!” Starscream raised his arms, null-rays blazing to life. “I’ll destroy you in return!”

“Ah! I forgot you were not informed!” and Sky Convoy smiled again, so disarmingly that Starscream actually found himself lowering his arms. “I was created for the purpose of driving Unicron away from this wonderful planet. Skyfire is unharmed. We are unharmed, love.”

“Don’t call me that!” Really, this was becoming more eerie with every klick that passed. “What are you? Who are you?”

Sky Convoy looked surprised. “As I said, my name is Sky Convoy, and I am the defender of this world.”

“I don’t care what your name is, and I certainly don’t care about Earth!” shrilled Starscream. “Tell me what happened to Skyfire, or I’ll blast your helm off!”

“Skyfire is right here,” said Sky Convoy, and he reached out and took one of Starscream’s servos. Before Starscream could object, Sky Convoy had pressed it his enormous chassis. Starscream tried to pull away automatically, but then he realized that there was something familiar and warm beneath the plating.

A sparkpulse.

Skyfire.

He could have wept with relief, except Starscream didn’t cry. Ever. Not even a little bit.

“And this,” continued Sky Convoy, pulling Starscream’s servo up a little bit higher, “is the Prime.”

Starscream felt his mouth fall open as he stared up at Sky Convoy, dumbstruck. But the silence only lasted a moment before Starscream regained his senses and ripped his servo away from Sky Convoy’s chassis, screeching incoherently.

“Starlita—” cried Sky Convoy in dismay. Starscream ran around one of the rock formations and leaned down to pick something up off the ground. A moment later, a large stone struck Sky Convoy’s helm. “Ow! What—?”

“That’s not even my name!” raged Starscream. Now that he knew what to look for, it was obvious. Sky Convoy had Skyfire’s wings, and his helm, but there was just as much of Prime in the frame as there was Skyfire.

“Why are you angry with me?” pleaded Sky Convoy.

“BECAUSE YOU’VE MERGED WITH THE PRIME!” Starscream would be very surprised if there weren’t Autobots heading their way at this very moment, drawn by the noise. “You merged with him and you didn’t even ask me first! You didn’t even tell me! Did you think I wouldn’t mind? Are you really that stupid!?”

"Star, I—"

"And don't call me that either! You don't get to call me that! You're not Skyfire!"

Sky Convoy looked as though he had been slapped. "But..."

"No! No! You know I hate the Prime more than anything, you know what he and Sentinel did to us! Don't you? Can't you see it in his memories? Or do you just not care? Do you just NOT CARE?"

"But..." Sky Convoy was trembling now, thick armor rattling against his frame and big blue optics quickly filling with white static. "I love you, Star."

"YOU DON'T GET TO CALL ME STAR! ONLY SKYFIRE WAS ALLOWED TO CALL ME STAR AND NOW SKYFIRE IS DEAD AND YOU'RE JUST SOME HORRIBLE FUSION OF PRIME AND HIM AND I DON'T EVEN CARE JUST STAY AWAY FROM ME!"

What happened next would have been impossible for Starscream to describe. But if he’d had to compare it to anything, he would probably say it was like watching Devastator or one of the other combiners separate back into their individual components after a battle. Sky Convoy’s frame whirled and groaned and shifted, almost artfully. Thick armor moved as fluidly as water as parts were pushed into and pulled out of countless subspace pockets, combining and separating in a meticulous dance that Starscream’s optics could barely follow, more amazing than any transformation sequence.

And at the end of it, Optimus Prime sat on the ground, optics flickering in confusion but looking no different than usual. Beside him stood Skyfire, with a few small additions to his frame but otherwise the same as ever. Starscream looked from one to the other, optics burning with fury.

“What happened?” asked Skyfire, looking around at their surroundings.

“I think we lost control,” said Prime, getting to his pedes rather unsteadily. Skyfire reached out to help him.

Furious at being ignored, Starscream stomped his pede against the dust. Both Autobots looked at him in surprise, but neither said anything. Starscream scowled at them both, and at least Skyfire had the sense to look ashamed.

Starscream turned around and leapt into the air, transforming as he went.

"Star! Star, come back!" yelled Skyfire.

He didn’t.

* * *

The next morning, the entire Autobot command staff (plus Skyfire, who was technically part of Prime now) gathered in the main conference room to listen to Astoria’s claims. Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice that Prime and Skyfire were being quieter than usual—Prowl’s announcement that he’d located Unicron’s herald was currently occupying everyone’s attentions.

The concept of the Herald of Unicron was not new. It featured in several—but not all—of the texts regarding the legends of Primus and his dark brother. According to these stories, Unicron would bestow his gifts upon one inhabitant of the planet he was preparing to devour. This person—his Herald—would be responsible for sowing chaos and fear and destruction until Unicron himself arrived to end it all.

Astoria Carlton-Ritz stood on the conference table. She was wrapped in a designer-label winter coat, complete with gloves and a fashionable scarf. This, she claimed, was for the Autobots’ own protection—she didn’t want to accidentally brush someone with her bare skin and “like, totally crumble you into ash.”

But Astoria had expressed confidence that she could be picked up without killing anyone—she now had it under control. Probably. Ironhide had very bravely deposited her on the table, though he’d used a polishing cloth to do it.

Prowl looked like he could use a drink. Jazz was leaning forward, optics bright with interest. Red Alert appeared to be fighting down a panic attack.

Skyfire and Prime were staring intently at everywhere except each other, but nobody paid any attention to that.

“He says I don’t have to do anything fancy to destroy you all,” Astoria was explaining. “Which I guess is good? Because I didn’t want to have a battle with you.”

“Astoria, girl, what are you talking about?” asked Jazz.

“I thought he was going to make me attack you! With space magic and lasers and computer stuff! I even thought I might turn into a robot, and I don’t want to be a robot because I won’t fit in any of my dresses!” Astoria was sweating a little bit. She lowered the hood of her jacket, even though it made her look a little less fabulous.

“What is ‘space magic’?” asked Red Alert, sounding legitimately concerned.

“Well, it’s what makes me make electronic things blow up, isn’t it?” reasoned Astoria. “But listen! I don’t think that’s what he’s planning on making me do to you. It…like…it doesn’t feel like that. Like, when we talk.” Astoria frowned at her shoes and shook her head, her auburn curls bouncing around her face. “It’s…hard to explain. But when we talk, it’s more like we’re talking with our brains. So I don’t just hear words. I hear—I feel—”

“I understand,” interrupted Prime quietly.

“Yeah,” Astoria agreed.

“I’m confused,” said Prowl. “If Unicron is our enemy, why is he allowing you to tell us all this?”

Astoria’s face lit up in a smile. “Oh! I know that one! It’s because he’s hoping I’ll tell you that the only reason he,” Astoria spun around to point at Skyfire, who stared back at her in shock, “got lost in the ice a bazillion years ago was because Primus wanted him to be here on Earth to combine with Optimus when Unicron finally came.”

There was a sudden smashing sound as Skyfire fell out of his chair. Astoria’s smile evaporated.

“…I messed up, didn’t I?” she asked.

Chapter Text

Starscream sat perched on the edge of his berth and tried to think. It was difficult, with his processor in an outright panic—he’d devoted a solid three breems to simply crashing around his quarters and shrieking incoherently, but eventually self-preservation won out and he settled down to plot.

Setting aside the outrageous betrayal that was Skyfire practically bonding with the Prime (Starscream clenched his fists and ground his dentae), there was also the issue of how much Prime had seen in Skyfire’s memories.

Skyfire, thank Primus, had never taken very much interest in matters of war, and he didn’t know anything he wasn’t supposed to about the Decepticon cause—any security codes he’d been given upon awakening from the ice had been changed by Soundwave immediately after Skyfire defected.

But he still knew more about Starscream than any other mech, dead or alive.

Starscream’s only consolation was the fact that he hadn’t sparkmerged with Skyfire at all after he’d been rescued from the ice. All of Starscream’s wartime memories were still private, thank Primus. Their bond had been broken during the crash, but Skyfire had wanted to renew it the moment his was back up on his pedes. Starscream had used the excuse that bonding in wartime was extremely dangerous, but that was only part of the reason why he’d declined. In truth, Starscream hadn’t wanted Skyfire to see the horrible things he’d long ago become desensitized to, hadn’t wanted Skyfire to see the atrocities he’d committed.

And Skyfire might insist that nothing Starscream had done in his absence would ever change anything between them, but Starscream knew better. Not even Skyfire was that tolerant or understanding. Sooner or later…

Well, now wasn’t the time to worry about such things.

The Prime had never paid too much attention to Starscream—his focus was generally on Megatron when the two armies met—and Starscream couldn’t be sure what he might do with the information he’d seen in Skyfire’s processor. For now, he had to assume the worst.

(Starscream gave a little shudder at the idea of Prime watching Skyfire’s memories of the Academy. Those were highly personal!)

Short of murdering everyone, there was only one solution to this problem. Starscream would have to strike before Prime did. He couldn’t erase Skyfire’s memories from Prime’s processors, but he could keep Prime too busy to even think of trying to blackmail Starscream. It was going to be difficult, but Starscream had pulled off more complex gambits than this one.

He did a quick search of his recent memory files—fortunately, they were still fresh, and had hardly degraded at all. It only took him about a breem to find a good, clear shot of Primefire or whatever the frag the monstrosity was calling himself. Starscream lightened the image a bit, cropped it, and saved it.

Now that he was feeling a little bit calmer, Starscream reflected that perhaps he should not have fled the scene so quickly. If he’d been in his right mind, he would have asked Skyfire if he’d seen any useful passwords in Prime’s memories.

* * *

“You’re lying,” said Skyfire brokenly. He had not moved from his spot on the floor where he’d fallen, but he was still tall enough to see over the table easily.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” cried Astoria. “Oh my God, the magazines are right, I really am an idiot!” Tears sprang to her eyes and she clutched at her face in despair. “Now we’re going to get eaten and it’s my fault!”

Several mechs had gone over to help Skyfire back up, but he refused the helpful servos. Instead, he continued to stare at the human girl.

“Explain,” he said, and his quiet fury was far worse than any shouting could have been. Astoria withdrew a silk handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose and daubed her eyes.

“I don’t, like, understand it,” she said in a watery voice. “I’m not, you know, smart. I just know…they’re old. They’re really, really old. They’ve been fighting for such a long time.”

“Primus and Unicron?” Prowl interrupted. He hadn’t moved from his chair, nor had his expression changed upon hearing Astoria’s declaration. He seemed to be trying his very best to remain impartial.

“Yes.” Astoria paused to crumple up her handkerchief and put it back in her pocket. “And the way they look at time, it’s…different. It’s like they can take a step back and see the whole picture at once.” Astoria raised her hands as if framing a photograph with them. “Except the whole picture is everything that ever happened, and will ever happened—happen. Forward and backwards. He showed me, once. It made me throw up.”

“You’re lying,” repeated Skyfire, rising to his pedes very unsteadily. He leaned his servos on the table for balance, which caused it to tilt dramatically and send Astoria spilling in his direction. Prime reached in to rescue her, cupping the human girl in his servos.

“PRAHM, PUT HER DOWN!” yelled Ironhide, leaping to his own pedes. “She’ll pull out your spark!”

“It’s alright,” said Prime quietly. He retracted his battlemask and raised Astoria up to about chest-level. “Please, tell us everything you can remember.”

Astoria looked around the room shakily and seemed to withdraw further into her jacket. “They, like, knew you were going to come to Earth.” She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. “Some things change, some things are blurry, some things can be made to come out different. But not you guys. No matter what, you were going to crash on Earth. So Unicron showed Primus his memory of the future, where he eats us all and you die because the Autobots are too good to leave Earth even after it’s too late.”

“We’re going to lose?” shrieked Red Alert.

“No! Maybe. Listen.” Astoria pressed her fists to the sides of her head. “That future is gone. Wiped away. It never happened.”

“I think I get it,” said Jazz. “It’s cuz we didn’t have Skyfire, right? So Sky Convoy wasn’t a thing.”

“Yes!” cried Astoria, her face shining with relief that somebody understood. “He wasn’t on Earth. He wasn’t even part of the war. He was a neutral, and he lived on this peaceful planet very far away.”

Skyfire tilted his helm curiously upon hearing this. He looked like he wanted to ask something, but didn’t.

“So Primus pushed some things around until he found a future that he was happy with. This one.” Astoria nodded to herself. “He knew it was a mean thing to do, but he didn’t think you guys would ever find out. He never thinks of things like that, it’s just, like, his personality.”

“I, uh, wouldn’t know,” said Jazz. “Anyone writin’ this down? I feel like we should be writin’ this down.”

“He’s big, so sometimes he misses the little things,” said Astoria, as if this was just common sense. “Not that you’re small, because you’re totally not. Except to him, you are. Everyone is. We’re all small together.”

“If you saw our future, then you can tell us whether this entire enterprise is a waste of time or not,” said Red Alert, leaning forward almost menacingly across the table. “In fact, I’m going to have to insist that you do.”

“I can’t,” said Astoria. “I would if I could, honest! I don’t want any of you to get hurt or eaten up! But when big things like this happen, the whole picture goes blurry. There’s too many pieces. Not even they know how it’s gonna come out. They’re scared, even though they won’t admit it. Unicron is afraid that Primus will destroy his body. And Primus is afraid Unicron will eat—” Astoria suddenly pointed to the divider across Prime’s windshield, “—the thing in Prime’s chest.”

“Question,” said Jazz. “What happens if Unicron does just that?”

“The Matrix has been the physical body of Primus for countless vorns,” said Prime. “If Unicron consumes that…I cannot say for certain.”

“Except now he’s going to,” moaned Astoria, “all because I’m so stupid and did exactly what he wanted me to even though I knew he was the bad guy. I should have just stayed home! But I wanted to warn you!”

“Hey, Astoria, this ain’t on you,” said Jazz. “Unicron’s tricked mechs way older and more experienced than you. It’s just how he rolls—and he’s been doin’ it for billions of stellar cycles.”

“But I should have known that I’m too dumb to help with anything!” Astoria cried. “Everyone’s always said it and I didn’t listen! And now it’s going to turn out just how Unicron wants it to.”

“And how is that, exactly?” asked Prowl.

Astoria took a deep breath and then recited: “Skyfire’s going to refuse to merge with Prime to fight Unicron because even though Unicron is a jerk, Primus was the one who ruined his life so he deserves to get eaten because Primus claims to be the protector of all life but he’s just a hypocrite and a liar. Also Primus doesn’t even exist and the whole thing is stupid. Earth is stupid and the Sky Convoy project is stupid and he just wants to fly away and be left in peace.”

There was a moment of complete silence as the Autobots took this all in. Skyfire was the first to move, stepping away from the table and towards the door.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” the shuttle said, walking out of the room.

* * *

“Look what I got!” sang Moonracer as she ran through the femme’s base, a datastick of information clutched in one servo. She sprinted down the halls, narrowly dodged Greenlight and Lancer, who were totally making out again, vaulted over a stack of crates, and skidded to a halt just outside Elita’s office.

“Moonracer, what are you doing?” sighed the femme commander. Standing just behind her was Chromia, who looked equally exasperated with Moonracer’s antics. In response, Moonracer slapped the datastick down on Elita’s desk.

“New information from Shockwave!” said Moonracer. “And I almost didn’t set off any traps while I was there!”

“Moonracer,” said Chromia disapprovingly. “We’ve talked about your unauthorized excursions.”

“Yeah, I know, but look what I found! Plug it in! Shockwave just got all this information from Earth and it’s flagged with every single notification I’ve ever seen—important, top secret, time-sensitive…it’s like they wanted me to steal it!”

Chromia was immediately suspicious. “If you think they did, then you’re probably right. Did you scan it for viruses?”

“Of course I did! It’s clean! I swear!”

Elita brought the argument to an end by very delicately lifting up the datastick and plugging it into her work terminal. Moonracer scurried around her desk and nudged Chromia over so that she could look, too.

There was actually not very much data in the file, but Elita browsed through it anyway. To Moonracer’s optics, it looked like boring sciencey stuff. But then, just as she was giving up hope, Elita opened up the single image that had been included in the file.

Moonracer gave a little gasp as she realized exactly what she was looking at. Elita’s lipplates tensed, and Chromia looked down at her leader with a very worried expression on her faceplates.

“We are going to Earth,” said Elita very quietly.

Chapter Text

He’d received the comm from Red Alert a quarter-cycle ago. Waiting, Optimus Prime reflected, was honestly the most difficult part. He supposed he should go out there to meet their visitors, but his legs were not cooperating (perhaps they had a better sense of self-preservation than he did). And so he sat, occasionally moving some things around on his desk, and waited for—

“O-RI-ON!”

—that.

Optimus’ entire frame tensed as he momentarily considered hiding under his own desk. A klick later, there was the screech of metal being torn as his office door was kicked down.

“It was unlocked,” said Optimus, brushing a few orange paint flecks off his desk. In the doorway before him stood Elita, her optics bright and servos clenched into fists. She marched up to his desk, unsubspaced something, and slapped it down in front of him.

“What is this?” she demanded.

Optimus reached out and picked up the object in question. It was a datapad, with a single blurry image on it—one of Sky Convoy. Before he could study it further, she'd snatched it from his servo and tossed it back into her subspace pocket.

“It’s…difficult to explain,” said Optimus.

“I’m listening!”

“Ariel…”

“That’s not an explanation!”

Optimus shot her a pleading look, and Elita seemed to soften just a bit.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said. “But I didn’t want to risk your safety. I know Shockwave is still searching for your base, and that’s more important than…”

Elita suddenly went quiet. She crossed her arms and appeared to study her pedes. “On the drive here, your soldiers shared some very interesting information with me,” she said at last. “Is it really Unicron, then?”

“Yes,” said Optimus simply. He knew not all the mechs on the Ark believed him, even now, and he supposed he could not blame them. They couldn’t feel the way the Matrix burned simultaneously hot and cold, sorrowful and furious, whenever Optimus looked up at the sky.

“And who is this…Skyfire?”

“He’s an aerial mech. Transport-class. You probably heard about him, he’s the one we recovered from the Arctic.”

“Right. Him.” Elita frowned and leaned up against the wall.

"Elita, it's not like that—"

“Wasn’t he a Decepticon once?”

“I—yes.”

Elita shook her helm and looked into his optics. “I don’t like this, Orion.”

Prime allowed his face to connect with his palms. “I know. I know. But—”

Elita gave a little sigh. “I don’t suppose I could talk you out of this?”

“The merge? Or confronting Unicron?”

“Either. The merge, I suppose. I know there’s no stopping you from going against Unicron, but surely there has to be another way? One that doesn’t involve merging with a mech we hardly know?”

“Skyfire is…” Optimus stopped, realizing that he wasn’t sure where to even begin. “I believe he has some impressive qualities. One day, when the war is over, he will have much to teach us. When we first took him in, I was impressed by his strength of character.”

Elita’s optics dimmed in suspicion, “But?”

“It’s become more complicated than I could have ever anticipated. At this point, I don’t even know if he’ll ever agree to merge with me again.”

“What? Does he want Earth to be eaten?”

“At this point? I think so, yes.”

Elita raised both optical ridges and let her arms drop to her sides. “Really? I was being sarcastic.”

Prime stood up and walked around the desk. He could feel Elita's energy field reaching out for his, and he was aware that his own field was reaching back. He pulled her into his chassis and held her frame there.

"I missed you," he said.

"Missed you more," Elita murmured into his plating. "You're still in trouble, though."

* * *

Starscream had gone back to the Victory to report for a shift a few cycles ago, leaving Skyfire alone in the secluded Hawaiian cliffs. He had picked this particular location because it was almost impossible for a grounder to reach. Aside from a few passing helicopters, he had not been bothered at all.

Speaking of helicopters, that one looked familiar. It wasn’t a Cybertronian, but Skyfire knew he had seen it before. It had flown overhead twice in the last cycle, and now it was coming down for a landing.

Skyfire considered flying away, but his curiosity won out. He moved his legs in order to give the human vehicle room for a proper landing and waited. Eventually, the rotors slowed and a human girl dressed in a gaudy floral sarong and giant straw hat stepped out onto the stone.

“The army people told me you were here,” said Astoria, tying her hair back into a ponytail and wiping a bit of sweat from her forehead. “You can’t hide from them, you’re massive. Sorry. Was that rude? That sounded sort of rude. But it’s true. Don’t worry, you’re still cute, though.”

“Astoria,” said Skyfire heavily. “I’m not really in the mood to talk.”

Astoria nodded. “I know. But this isn’t about you, okay? I mean, it sort of is, but, like…just listen, okay?”

Skyfire just stared at her, too emotionally exhausted to come up with a retort.

“Primus is a jerk. What he did to you? Making you crash? That was lame. He thinks that just because he’s, like, the multiversal singularity who created everything, he can do whatever he wants. And like, normally I’d be like ‘well, screw him’, right? Why should we do anything he wants us to do? Let’s do the opposite just to spite him.” Astoria peered up at Skyfire, clearly hoping for a reaction. Skyfire said nothing. “But Earth is my home, okay? And we haven’t worked out space travel yet. And if you let it be eaten, I’m gonna get eaten too. Me, my horses and my birds, and all my friends, and every human you’ve ever met, and also all the ones you haven’t met. So—”

“Astoria—”

“I’m talking!” she shrieked, and the air around her body seemed to tingle a little, as if it was filled with electricity. “I’d fight him myself if I could, but I can’t! I checked! They can’t build me outer-space armor in a week!”

“Who can’t?” asked Skyfire, somewhat lost. Talking to Astoria always made him feel like he was a little overcharged.

“The people. Daddy’s people. I know, it’s total crap, right? Like, what am I paying you guys for? I even drew up plans. Of the armor. It looked awesome. I was all excited. Carly was all, ‘oh my God, Astoria, you can’t go to outer space and fight the thing in the sky, you’ll get killed!’ But you know, I was really looking forward to it.”

Skyfire felt his brow crease. “You wanted to fight Unicron yourself?”

“Someone’s got to! And that’s my whole point, okay? We can’t do it ourselves. I mean, if it comes down to it, we’ll try. They’re making speeches on the TV all the time about how they’ll fire all our nuclear weapons at it if Unicron gets too close. But…I dunno if it’ll do any good. I think the only thing that can really hurt him is the thing in Prime’s chest. And maybe me. I mean, he says I can’t hurt him because my powers come from him, but I think he might be lying. He lies a lot. It’s, like, a thing. But I can’t breathe in space, so I can’t test it out.”

“Astoria, I really would just like to be alone right now,” said Skyfire.

“No! You’ve been left alone for two days! That’s long enough!”

“Astoria—”

“Sometimes stuff happens, and it sucks!” yelled Astoria. “And sometimes you can spend a month in your room crying about it, but sometimes you can’t because five billion people are relying on you to not let them get eaten and this is one of those times!”

“I can’t merge with Prime again,” said Skyfire heavily, turning his gaze to the skies. “I can’t have that…thing…next to my spark. And even if I didn’t find the idea repulsive, I have no intention of defeating Unicron for the one who destroyed my future.”

“So don’t do it for him!” Astoria cried. “Do it for me!”

“I can’t!”

“Then we are all going to die!” The sudden harshness in Astoria’s usually-bubbly tone took him by surprise. “You’re upset. I get it. You think I don’t, but I do. But by hiding up here and refusing to talk to anyone, you’re doing exactly what Unicron wants you to do so he can eat the whatsitcalled in Prime’s chest without anyone giving him trouble. As far as I know, Sky Convoy is the only thing that can stop him. So you have to take responsibility. Because you’re the only one who can take responsibility, I guess.” Astoria seemed to be finished talking, because she went back over to her helicopter and pulled the door open. The pilot looked at her and she climbed inside, and the rotors began to spin again.

Then Astoria seemed to remember something and put one foot back on the ground.

“I forgot,” she yelled, over the whirling of the rotors. “You want to know what I saw, right?”

“What?” asked Skyfire.

“In the old timeline! The one where you never crashed!” Astoria’s hand was the only thing keeping her hat from being sliced into thousands of pieces. “You want to know what planet you lived on, and what sort of work you did, and if he was there with you, and what you named your babies. By the way, robot babies? I didn’t know that was a thing.” Astoria blew a few strands of hair out of her mouth.

“You—”

“I saw it!” said Astoria. “I know you want to know. I bet it’s driving you crazy! Like having to wait for a surprise! So ask me! Ask me what I saw!”

“What did you see?” Skyfire leaned forward on his servos.

But Astoria just laughed.

“Defeat Unicron and I’ll tell you!”

Then she climbed into the helicopter and flew away.

Chapter Text

"I want to thank you for coming back," said Prime.

Skyfire did not look up from his crystals right away. It was difficult to say for certain, but it looked like someone had clipped one of the edible pink clusters off of his golden Iaconian climbing vines.

"I know this situation is difficult," continued Prime. "But I knew in my spark that you wouldn't leave this planet to its doom."

Whoever had stolen the cluster had done a very good job of hiding it. They'd clipped close to the vine, leaving no trace of color behind to betray them. But Skyfire had a scientist's specialized optical sensors, as well as many vorns field work behind him. There was no question about it: One small area of the vine's rounded surface had been scraped flat.

"I can't make excuses for Primus, and I won't try."

The thief had been smart enough to not use an energy blade—while harmless to all but the most delicate of crystals, they had a chance of leaving incriminating burns behind. With that in mind, Skyfire immediately ruled out the twins as suspects.

"But when this is all over, if you wish to leave the planet, or the Autobots altogether, nobody here will try to stop you. There will be no repercussions. I...I feel that it is the least that I can do."

The thief Skyfire was dealing with here was someone new. Someone intelligent. And, most importantly, it was someone who seemed to have some experience with tending to crystals himself.

“Our enemy here is not Primus, and it is not each other. Unicron’s plan to divide us cannot—”

Skyfire rose to his pedes, and Prime took a step backwards. But instead of acknowledging that he’d heard a word of Prime’s speech, Skyfire went over to the computer terminal in the corner. He mostly used it for documenting his work, but it also granted access to the room’s security camera.

Due to Red Alert’s paranoia, Skyfire could neither edit nor delete footage. The only thing he was authorized to do on this machine was view it. But that would be enough for Skyfire’s purposes. He opened the program and ran the footage from the last few solar cycles at an accelerated speed.

“Are you even listening?” demanded Prime. He leaned to one side and then the other, trying to see around Skyfire’s wings. “What are you doing?”

It appeared that the room had not seen any traffic until—there! One of the visiting femmes had just walked into the room. The timestamp showed that it was early this morning, long before the first shift. Most mechs would still be in recharge. Skyfire slowed the footage down to a normal speed.

The intruder wandered through the garden, stopping to examine a few plants. She didn’t appear to have a particular destination in mind or even follow any sort of logical path. But eventually she found herself at the far end of the room, directly in front of the long vines that reached up into the ceiling.

She leaned in to examine each of the vines in turn, but finally settled on the Iaconian Gold. Then a blade appeared in her servo, removed from subspace. It was ancient in design, but still very functional. Skyfire recognized it immediately as a tool that had been created specifically to tend to crystal growths. He hadn’t seen one since before the ice.

A moment later, the cluster had been removed with a single expert cut. So the femmes did have their own gardens, just as Skyfire had always suspected. Perhaps she was hoping to take the cluster back to Cybertron and graft it onto one of—

Moonracer turned around, smiled directly at the camera, and put the entire cluster in her mouth.

“Oh,” said Prime.

“Permission to go sit on her?” asked Skyfire. He had to admit, he was surprised. Elita was incredibly intimidating. Surely Moonracer was afraid of crossing her? Apparently not. In fact, if that smile was any indicator, this was not exactly new behavior for the young femme.

“I will inform Elita as soon as she returns,” said Prime. For whatever reason, the humans were fascinated by Elita, and so she had agreed to do some interviews with them. From what he could gather, the humans perceived the femme frametype to be analogous to their own female gender, and everyone was too polite to correct them. They even liked to call them by different pronouns.

Human pronouns, in Skyfire’s opinion, were highly limiting. On Cybertron, pronouns were based on the thirteen spark-types. In Iaconian, and indeed all of the Cybertronian dialects, the femme frametype used the same pronouns as any other civilian-spark.

Upon arriving on Earth, however, the humans had simply identified the alien intruders as male and thought no more about it. The Cybertronians had said nothing, for there was nothing to be said. But when the humans were first introduced to Elita and her forces on Cybertron, they’d somehow become convinced that the femme frametype was in fact a Cybertronian sparktype, the second of two. The Autobots were all under strict orders not to upset their human hosts, and so the humans had gone uncorrected for a while now.

Skyfire really did not approve of keeping the humans ignorant, but he supposed it wasn’t really that important. Perceptor had suggested that the humans did not actually have processors complex enough to handle the information, and trying to educate them would only trigger a systems failure. Skyfire wasn’t sure about that—Spike and Carly were learning Iaconian, after all, and their brains had not melted yet.

According to Starscream, Slipstream’s forces on Femax were experiencing something very similar. So perhaps it was just an organic thing.

Elita was actually in a fairly good mood when she returned that afternoon. Apparently the humans had only asked stupid questions, mostly about her personal relationships, but they’d made up for it by constantly praising her physical appearance and taking lots of pictures.

Skyfire would have been offended if he’d gone for an interview and they’d only wanted to talk about his looks. But he understood. The Autobots had been at war for so long, they’d almost forgotten what it was like to think about one’s frametype in terms of anything beyond functionality (except Sunstreaker, of course). Things that Skyfire was used to thinking of as frivolous or novelties were now so rare that when they did appear, they were to be cherished.

In fact, as Elita relayed the story in the rec room, the general consensus seemed to be that the Autobots on Earth never got the degree of compliments that Elita and her team had, and this was colossally unfair.

As Skyfire watched from a distance, he thought about the humans he’d encountered so far. Even the human scientists that Skyfire had befriended were prone to episodes of ridiculousness and superstition. But as Skyfire watched the other Autobots tease each other and compare frames, he reflected that there didn’t seem to be any harm in a bit of occasional ridiculousness.

Skyfire wondered what the humans would be like if they had a life expectancy of more than a single vorn.

Then he wondered what the Cybertronians would be like if they didn’t.

* * *

Red Alert was not having a particularly good week.

The mood in the base was high, despite the looming threat of Unicron. To Red Alert, excessively high morale always corresponded with exponentially increased chances of rule-breaking. Prowl had even done the calculations to confirm it for him.

The femmes were causing Red Alert particular stress. Moonracer had already vandalized one of that shuttle’s crystal growths. Fortunately, the garden’s camera had recorded the crime. Red Alert was furious with himself for not catching her himself. He only checked the garden’s footage once every deca-cycle; since Prime had made it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate any damage to the crystal growths, the incidents had come to a complete stop until now.

But that didn’t excuse how lax he had been! A deca-cycle without once checking that camera! Ten solar cycles! What if Soundwave’s cassettes had been using the room to break into the Ark? He’d been so negligent! What kind of security director was he???

Red Alert checked the monitors and found Moonracer outside on the shooting range with a few other bots. She probably couldn’t do too much damage there, but Red Alert would be keeping an optic on her from now on. Elita had chased her around the Ark in vehicle mode for a while after learning about Moonracer’s actions, but in Red Alert’s opinion, this was not much of a punishment. He was prepared to file a complaint if the incident was allowed to drop after that.

And, as if the situation wasn’t bad enough, Elita had brought Firestar with her from Cybertron as well and now he had to deal with her hanging around and, and looking at Inferno and asking Red Alert invasive personal questions like “how are you doing?” and “would you like to refuel with us?”

Also, the humans were taking the whole Pluto thing far too seriously, if all the hate mail being directed towards the Ark was anything to judge by. The Ark received threatening letters from the humans all the time, but those were usually just demands to vacate the planet ‘or else’. The sudden influx of mail after the destruction of Pluto was honestly a surprise. Red Alert hadn’t had any idea that the humans were so attached to their little dwarf planet, but then, the humans weren’t exactly known for their rationality.

A bit of movement on the feed just outside Red Alert’s door caught his optic. A moment later, Prowl entered the security room.

“Have you been monitoring Unicron’s progress?” asked Prowl without preamble.

“No,” said Red Alert impatiently. “I told you, the Ark’s sensors can’t detect things that far away.”

“He’s accelerating.” Prowl put a datapad down on the keyboard in front of Red Alert. “There’s no question about it. I believe the consumption of that dwarf planet energized him.”

Red Alert picked up the datapad—it was nothing but times and calculations. “How long do we have?”

“Just under four solar cycles. I haven’t alerted Prime yet.”

Red Alert glanced back at the viewscreen, and located Prime. He was in the rec room, surrounded by laughing mechs and smiling. Elita was beside him, her servo casually resting in his own.

Prime had been distraught after Astoria’s revelation and Skyfire’s subsequent departure. It seemed a shame to deliver bad news to him now that he was finally happy again.

But some things were more important than any one mech’s happiness—even the Prime’s.

Prowl seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because he’d already opened up a comm channel for all the officers on the ship.

[Prime, we need you in the security center immediately,] said Prowl.

Chapter Text

In a place that was not a place at all, two ancient consciousnesses greeted each other.

::My herald has served me well,:: gloated the first. ::Your chosen warrior is weak. ::

::No, :: said the second. ::He is many things, but he is not weak.::

The first mind spread out like a mech languishing on a recliner, soundless laughter reverberating through the anti-space. ::Tell yourself that if it helps you feel better. Soon we will be one, as we were always meant to be. I think it will be an improvement for you. ::

::Enough.::

::Do I wound you with the truth? Your own champion hates you.::

::Enough!::

::Do not mourn, my dear brother,:: the voice reached across spacetime, a mind to mind touch, sound that could be felt more than heard ::I still love you.::

At those words, the first mind recoiled as if it had been struck. It slammed down on the connection that kept the two linked, but not quickly enough to avoid hearing the eerie echoes of triumphant laughter.

* * *

“How long have you known?” asked Prime, tearing his optics away from Prowl’s calculations after a long collection of klicks.

Prowl shook his helm. “Only a few breems. I called you the moment I was certain.”

“Then we must not delay any longer,” Prime spoke like he was addressing a crowd, though the only mech in the room beside the two of them was Red Alert. “I will go to confront Unicron now.”

“Are you ready?” worried Red Alert. “What if something goes wrong? What if—”

“Red Alert, I appreciate your concern, but it is not a luxury we can afford,” Prime interrupted. “And we cannot waste any more time. Contact Skyfire. We must go immediately.”

The news of Unicron’s acceleration spread through the Ark in what felt like mere klicks. By the time Prime and Skyfire met outside to begin their combination sequence, every single crewmember had gathered to see them off (except Red Alert, who refused to leave his post even now).

Prime considered making a short speech, but fortunately his common sense won out. Instead, he gave Skyfire a curt nod and initiated the protocols that would trigger a merge.

It should have been easy. They’d done it so many times before, spent so much time as Sky Convoy. It should have been easy. Their plating should have meshed together with the satisfying series of clicks that signified metal panels locking together, their processors should have tangled and merged, their sparks not-quite-touching but still near enough to form the most fragile and temporary of bonds—

The final result should not have seen Prime and Skyfire sitting in the sand, both looking mildly concussed.

There were some anxious murmurs from the onlookers, but Prime did his best to block out their words.

“Try it…try it again,” suggested Ratchet.

Prime began the sequence again, but even as he activated them, he knew what the outcome would be. The moment the Matrix came near to Skyfire’s spark, Skyfire’s entire self tore away and the merge came to a sudden end.

“This is bad,” said Wheeljack after a long pause.

“Skyfire?” asked Prime, looking over at the shuttle. “I thought you—why did you end the merge?”

Skyfire pulled up his wings defensively (Prime had become more skilled in reading wings in the past few solar cycles). “It’s not working,” he proclaimed unhelpfully.

Elita stepped out of the slowly-panicking crowd and marched towards her ex-bondmate. “What happened?” she demanded, her voice carrying across the desert. “Why isn’t it working?”

Prime forced himself back to his feet and raised his servos reassuringly. “Just a minor glitch. I’m sure our scientists are already working on a solution…”

“Hey kids, who wants to be a gestalt?” Wheeljack addressed the Dinobots.

“No!” yelled Ratchet.

Wheeljack turned back to look at him, disappointed. “Well, then what if we merged Superion and Defensor into a—”

“Crime against nature?”

“Yes. No! What I’m trying to say is—”

Ratchet was clearly at his wit’s end. “Now is not the time for this, Wheeljack! You can’t solve everything with merges!”

“Maybe we can,” said Prime.

Wheeljack’s faceplates lit with joy, and Ratchet smacked himself in the helm.

Prime turned to Skyfire and lowered his voice. “I think I might have an idea,” he said, keeping his vocalizer measured and even. Skyfire just stared at him. On instinct, Prime took one of Skyfire’s enormous servos in both of his. “Skyfire would you go into the Matrix with me to commune with Primus directly?”

“Excuse me, no,” Elita stepped between them, forcing Prime to release Skyfire’s servos. “Also: no.”

“I believe it would help,” he pleaded. “Please, it’s our only solution.”

“No it’s not,” Elita’s optics darkened to midnight-blue. “There’s a perfectly functional space bridge only a few cycle’s drive from where we’re standing.”

“I will not leave this planet unprotected!”

“But—”

“I’ll try it,” interrupted Skyfire. Elita and Prime both looked at him curiously.

“Are you aware that you’ll need to—?” began Elita, but Prime cut her off.

“Let’s go inside,” he suggested. “We…we should talk about this.”

* * *

Skyfire was aware that recent events had made the command staff even more wary of him than they’d been after he was initially pulled from the ice. But Prime had promised that he wouldn’t be punished if he decided to leave when the crisis was over.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do then. He would never be an Autobot, but his chances with the Decepticons weren’t looking much better. He wondered, briefly, if the neutral planet that Astoria had spoken of still existed in this timeline, or if the cascade of tiny changes caused by the shifting of realities had wiped it from existence.

The Ark had a chapel, a small and disused place that Skyfire had never actually been inside. This was where Prime led him now. A few times, Skyfire considered trying to start up a conversation, but Prime’s uncomfortable silence seemed to have taken hold of him as well.
Standing before the small and dusty altar, Skyfire wondered if there was something wrong with him because, even now, the gleaming idol that represented Primus in the abstract meant nothing to him.

“Are you ready?” asked Prime.

“What do you—” Skyfire turned around and saw that Prime was now kneeling down on the broken tiles of the chapel. “Prime, why are you—”

Prime’s chestplates snapped open, revealing the pulsing blue light of his spark.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” yelled Skyfire.

Prime looked up at him. “If you are to join me in consulting the Matrix, we must—”

“Absolutely not,” Skyfire backed away so quickly that his lower wings struck the altar. “I have been unfaithful enough just by combining with you! I won’t add this to it!”

“It’s just a surface merge,” soothed Prime. “We will not share anything. I wouldn’t ask it of you if billions of lives weren’t at stake.”

Skyfire said nothing.

“We have already shared everything,” Prime added. “There is nothing more to hide.”

“It’s the principle of it,” Skyfire had the sudden surreal feeling that he was watching himself from somewhere very far away. “I’ve never sparkmerged with anyone except…”

“I haven’t either,” admitted Prime. “But sometimes, for the greater good, we need to make sacrifices.”

“You’d know all about sacrificing others, wouldn’t you?” Skyfire snapped, but it was not Prime he addressed, but rather the artifact in his chest. He’d seen pictures and statues and recreations of the Matrix before, but this was Skyfire’s first time seeing it with his own optics. “Fine. But nothing beyond a surface merge, or I will leave you to be eaten.”

Prime nodded his understanding, and Skyfire moved to kneel beside him. At this distance, he could hear the hum of the Matrix clearly, as though it was singing (Cybertronian theologians claimed that it actually did sing, but Skyfire was no theologian).

He reluctantly opened his spark chamber, and the two mechs moved closer together. Almost automatically, his spark reached for the incredible warmth that was the Matrix, and he had just enough time to put up barriers to ensure Prime wouldn’t be able to search his spark before he found himself in another place altogether.

* * *

There was nothing here but whiteness and mist. They weren’t flying, or even hovering, but there was no ground beneath their pedes. Skyfire tried to initiate some scans, but when he reached for the software, he found nothing. Everything, down to the most basic chronometers, was missing.

Fighting down panic (this whole situation was eerily similar to the ice), Skyfire looked around. Prime stood beside him, apparently unbothered by the situation.

“You know this is a sacred place,” said a voice that Skyfire had not heard in a very long time. “And yet you bring an aerial mech into it?”

“There,” said Prime, pointing, and he was correct. A tall purple civilian-frame was walking towards them. Skyfire recognized him immediately; the mech had borne the Matrix for Skyfire’s entire lifetime.

“I can’t say I’m pleased that he chose you,” said Sentinel Prime, giving Skyfire an unimpressed once-over. “I did my best to protect Iacon from your kind.”

“I know,” Skyfire felt his wings shift defensively. “Perhaps if you’d been less of a zealot, it would still be standing today.”

“Skyfire!” Optimus Prime looked mortified. “I apologize, sir, he’s not usually—”

“Do not apologize on my behalf! I’m not sorry!”

“You see? Back in my day, nobody was ashamed to say the war-builds were inferior. I don’t know what happened—”

“I’m going to hit him,” announced Skyfire.

“You can’t,” said Optimus Prime. “You’re a disembodied spark right now. Your frame is an illusion.”

::ENOUGH,:: boomed a voice that came from nowhere and everywhere. ::THIS IS NOT WHY YOU ARE HERE.::

Sentinel looked annoyed. “What do you want me to tell them? It’s wrong, what you’ve fused them into. Decent civilian mechs shouldn’t have to combine with violent war-frames. I’m not surprised they can’t merge. It’s only natural.”

::YOU ARE NOT HELPING,:: proclaimed Primus. ::SEND OUT THE NEXT ONE. GO.::

Sentinel turned and marched back into the void. Soon enough, his form was lost to the mist.

“Now I know why Megatron liked to brag about killing him,” said Skyfire in a low voice.

“You’re taking this better than I expected,” Prime observed. “As a scientist, how do—?”

“I’ll work it out later,” Skyfire lifted his helm in what he supposed was a general ‘upward’ direction. “I don’t suppose I’m going to get an apology for the ice, am I?”

::I REGRET YOU WERE UNABLE TO LIVE THE LIFE YOU DESERVED,:: said Primus. ::BUT I DID IT FOR THE SAKE OF THIS UNIVERSE.::

“I’m not the only mech of my frametype,” said Skyfire in what he hoped was a calm and even voice. “You could have picked someone else.”

::I DID,:: Primus said. ::A MILLION UNIVERSES, A MILLION CHOICES. FAR MORE THAN A MILLION, ACTUALLY, BUT YOU GET MY POINT. IN THIS UNIVERSE, AND A FEW LIKE IT, YOU WERE CHOSEN. IN OTHER UNIVERSES, OTHER MECHS FIGHT UNICRON IN OTHER WAYS. NO TWO ARE COMPLETELY IDENTICAL.::

::BUT YOU LEFT OUT THE BEST PART!:: cried a new voice, equally large and equally powerful. But this one was smooth and cold and cruel, and something about it made Skyfire’s spark stutter with fear.

::GET OUT!:: roared Primus, his rage flooding the misty expanse. ::THIS PLACE IS NOT YOURS!::

Unicron laughed like an earthquake. ::NOT YET. BUT SOON IT SHALL BE OURS TO SHARE, WHEN WE ARE FINALLY ONE.::

And now Skyfire could feel the overwhelming hunger that could only belong to the Chaos-Bringer; hunger and desire and a maddening need, though for what, Skyfire could not guess.

::AS I WAS SAYING,:: Unicron began again. ::MY BELOVED HAS LEFT OUT MY FAVORITE PART OF THE STORY.::

::I AM NOT YOUR—::

::SENDING YOU INTO THAT STORM DID NOT ONLY BENEFIT PRIMUS. I GAINED A POWERFUL WARRIOR THAT DAY AS WELL, FORGED IN BITTERNESS AND HATRED.:: Unicron’s essence seemed to reach out and coil around Skyfire’s possibly-illusionary frame. ::IF ONLY YOU HADN’T LET GO OF HIS SERVO.::

“What?” whispered Skyfire.

::YOU REMEMBER. YOU SAVED YOUR BONDMATE FROM JOINING YOU IN THE ICE, AND YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVED YOU WERE DOING HIM A FAVOR. YOU HATE WHAT HE HAS BECOME? THAT WAS NOT MY DOING. IT WAS YOURS.::

Skyfire lashed out at Unicron, but he might as well have been attacking the mist. The entire space rumbled with cruel laughter.

::IN THE BILLIONS OF YEARS SINCE YOUR SPECIES CAME INTO EXISTENCE, YOU IRRITATING CREATURES HAVE NEVER GRASPED THAT DEATH IS OFTEN PREFERABLE TO SURVIVAL, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I DEMONSTRATE IT. OF ALL YOUR QUALITIES, IT IS MY FAVORITE. I WILL ALMOST BE SAD TO CONSUME YOU.::

And then, as quickly as he’d come, he was gone.

* * *

Outside the Ark, Elita paced. Most of the Autobots had wandered off in the meantime, but she was trying to hold on to her confidence. If the merge didn’t work (and she was fairly certain it wouldn’t) perhaps Wheeljack could modify her frame instead and she could help Optimus fight Unicron.

And then after that, they could deal with Megatron.

“Elita!” cried Chromia. Elita turned back to the Ark and saw a massive figure standing in the entryway to the Ark, knees slightly bent to avoid smashing his helm into the too-low ceiling.

Sky Convoy stepped into the sunlight.

Chapter Text

The atmosphere seared at Sky Convoy's wings, but it wasn't an unpleasant sensation by any means. It felt natural. It felt right.

There was a sudden jolt as he broke through Earth's atmosphere, and as Sky Convoy flew onward, up into the welcoming darkness of space, there was no fear in his sparks, only a sort of serene anticipation.

[Prime? Can you hear me? Do you have a visual yet?] That was Prowl, still on Earth with all the other Autobots.

Sky Convoy checked his radar. Though his optics weren’t picking up anything yet, his radar was receiving massive energy readings, even higher than a Metrotitan might give off. The output was so high that he felt his scanners trying to recalibrate themselves, to fix whatever error was causing them to detect something that couldn’t possibly be.

[My adversary is near,] Sky Convoy informed Prowl. [I expect to meet him very soon.]

Prowl began to reply, but the comm line went dead before he could get more than a few words out. Sky Convoy paused to check his systems for errors, but found nothing alarming. Nevertheless, it seemed that his comms—his only connection to his companions on Earth—were now down.

Running a quick analysis, Sky Convoy realized he had entered Unicron’s energy field, which was slowly beginning to tamper with his non-essential systems. Well, there was no point in worrying about that now. There was nowhere to go but onward.

As the massive orange planetoid entered Sky Convoy’s line of vision, it began to shift and change, plating moving and folding with laborious slowness. Some parts were thrust into subspace, and other were removed. Sky Convoy kept his distance and waited politely for the chaos-bringer to complete his transformation sequence.

“So, you have come!” roared Unicron, despite the fact that sound does not carry through space.

“I have,” said Sky Convoy. “But I offer you the opportunity to turn back now.”

“You offer me?” cried Unicron. “You deluded insect! You cannot defeat me! Even if you manage to destroy my body, I exist across all realities! I am infinite!”

Sky Convoy ignited his thrusters to full power and leapt down Unicron's throat.

* * *

The assembled Autobots watched Sky Convoy shoot off into the atmosphere until he could no longer be seen by even the sharpshooters.

"So...now what do we do?" Bumblebee asked, echoing everyone’s thoughts.

Nobody wanted to go inside; it seemed a bit like sacrilege. The officers had all gathered around near the entrance to the Ark to discuss something in hushed voices.

It wasn’t long before the roar of jet engines approached. Every Autobot raised his blaster, but nobody actually fired as Starscream transformed in midair and then dropped to the sand.

“What are you doin’ here?” demanded Jazz, pushing to the front of the army.

“I could ask you the same thing,” retorted Starscream. “That—thing is going to be here in a matter of hours. What are you all standing around for?”

“Where are the rest of your soldiers?” Prowl pressed.

“Gone,” Starscream waved a dismissive servo. “They’ve all withdrawn to Cybertron, like you should have.”

The general impression amongst the remaining Autobot soldiers seemed to be something not unlike agreement until Ironhide bellowed at them to all shut up.

“Well,” said Starscream. “It would seem you’re all doomed. Where is that miserable creature?”

“Sky Convoy has gone to fight Unicron, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Ratchet. “You just missed him.”

Starscream looked murderous for a moment and clenched his dentae together. But whatever he was planning to say next was cut off by Prowl.

“I’ve lost him.” There was a note of genuine panic in the tactician’s voice as he held one servo up to the internal comm system in his audial. “I’ve lost contact with him!”

“What do you mean, you’ve lost him?” Elita hurried over to his side. “He only just left, how could—”

“Of course,” spat Starscream. “I am so glad you’re all going to be dead soon. I’m leaving.”

“Wait!” Elita took a few steps towards him. “You’re going after him, aren’t you?”

Starscream seemed uncertain for a moment, but collected himself rather quickly. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. What does it matter to you?”

Elita turned back to the crowd of soldiers. “Someone get me a jetpack!” she yelled.

“You can’t be serious.” But the annoying red Autobot twin was now passing his jetpack up to the front. “You’ll never make escape velocity with that thing!”

“I might,” said Elita, as if she thought she might break the laws of physics through sheer willpower.

“You’ll be burned up alive in the atmosphere—” began Starscream, but then he remembered he didn’t care. Elita, however, did seem to care about that, and some of her fire seemed to die away.

"Fine," she said at last. "Then I suppose you'll have to go alone." There was a long an awkward pause. "You have my gratitude."

"I'm not doing it for you," snapped Starscream.

* * *

Sky Convoy ignited his thrusters to slow his descent as he fell down the long passageway that was Unicron’s throat. The temperature was rising quickly, but fortunately it wasn’t anything his sophisticated shields couldn’t handle.

Unicron’s interior was dimly-lit, and reminded Sky Convoy of a disused factory, coated in rust and falling to pieces. He raised one hand to his upper spark, the one that carried the Matrix, and prepared to slide his chest plates open to reveal it. But deep inside him, something whispered, Not yet.

“When?” he whispered back.

Nearer to the spark.

There was no arguing with that, so Sky Convoy pressed onward. It was not dark at all inside Unicron’s body, though the heat was quickly becoming oppressive. Still, it was better than being cold—or so one of his components insisted.

He was getting closer, though, that much was evident—especially when long tentacles emerged from the walls and wrapped themselves around his limbs. Sky Convoy wrenched them out of their sockets, but still the wires snaked towards him. It seemed as though Unicron had an endless supply.

They were coming faster, now, digging into his plating and slowing his progress dramatically. Sky Convoy had no doubt that once he was completely immobilized, the tentacles would drag him down to be digested in Unicron’s stomach.

As he struggled to break free, it occurred to Sky Convoy that perhaps this plan had not been the best one.

And now the heat was becoming too much to handle as well. He felt his shields rise to maximum, his vents roaring as they tried to expel the excess warmth, but nothing was good enough. He could feel his processor slowing…perhaps it would be best if he rested for just a moment to recover his strength…

He fell to his knees and offlined his optics...

Just a moment...

Then someone slapped him across the face.

Shocked blue optics flickered online, and Sky Convoy smiled brightly.

“Starlita,” he murmured.

“Get up, you idiot!” yelled the most beautiful Cybertronian in the universe. The searing shots of a null ray blast the wires around his limbs to pieces and they fell from his frame, useless. Without the burden of the wires, he felt his strength return to him, and eventually worked himself back to his pedes.

“Right,” said Starlita, his frame shimmering in the heat. “Why haven’t you used the Matrix against him yet?”

“It must be done near his spark,” explained Sky Convoy, which made Starlita scowl heavily.

“What’s the difference? Just do it now and we can get out of here.”

“It must be done near his spark,” Sky Convoy repeated. "I am sorry. It must be so."

Starlita made an exasperated noise. “Do you even have a weapon?” he demanded. “Or have you just been punching all your adversaries into submission?”

Sky Convoy opened his mouth to speak, but then he remembered the uncivilized device that his friends had constructed for him. Loathe as he was to use such a thing, he pulled it out of subspace anyway. It was worth it just for the expression on Starlita’s face.

“Give me that!” cried Starlita, trying to take the too-large weapon from Sky Convoy’s arms. “If you’re not going to use it, I will! I’ll go back out there and shoot him between the optics, maybe I’ll hit his brain module—”

Sky Convoy found himself taken aback by the venom in his beloved’s voice when he spoke of Unicron, but then he realized it might not have been without reason. “You spoke to Unicron, didn’t you? Did he agitate you?”

Starlita made that noise again. “Doesn’t matter. I broke his optic for it. That’s how I got in here, in case you were wondering. Either give me the gun, or start moving so we can get this over with.”

As Sky Convoy was fairly certain that Starlita would not be able to lift the weapon and didn’t want to hurt his feelings, he opted to keep moving. The tentacles came at them again, but this time they were easily dispatched with a few blasts.

Still, the temperature seemed to be rising exponentially, even now, slowing his processors to a crawl. The eternal winter that always loomed at the back of Sky Convoy's memories had been the opposite, the cold speeding his processors into lightning-fast panic even as it locked up his joints. He wondered which was worse.

The endless network of corridors that made up Unicron's internals must have seemed like an incomprehensible mess to Starlita, but with the Matrix guiding him, Sky Convoy had no fear of getting lost. Eventually they emerged into a large, bright room just as Starlita collapsed against him.

Sky Convoy gathered his sparkmate into his arms and raised his optics upwards to look at the burning spark of Unicron.

“You think you’ve won?” roared the Chaos-Bringing, his entire body rumbling like an earthquake. “Turn back now, and perhaps your mate will survive!”

Despite himself, Sky Convoy glanced down at the figure in his arms. Starlita’s frame was so hot that it burned the plating on his arms, but he would not let go.

“Why didn’t you order him to turn back?” demanded Unicron. “So selfish. So stupid. Retreating is the least you could do for him now, before his processor melts out his audials.”

Sky Convoy struggled with the commands to open his spark chamber. He was having trouble focusing. Pieces of the room were peeling off the walls and smashing down to the floor around the massive fiery spark. One of Star’s wings bent softly under the heat, and that was enough to snap him back to the present. Sky Convoy sent the command to his spark chamber.

Request Pending. Pending. Pending. Pending…

Pending…

His processors had never run so slowly in his entire existence.

Pending...

“Turn back NOW!” Unicron bellowed, but now Sky Convoy could barely hear him. His vision went dark at last, just as he felt his spark chamber slide open, exposing it to the burning heat. Sky Convoy screamed and fell to his knees.

He had just enough time to wrap his entire frame around his beloved Starlita as Unicron exploded into light.

Chapter Text

Sky Convoy eventually came back online in a field of debris. The icy coldness of space seemed like a blissful springtime breeze in comparison to the boiling heat of Unicron’s internals.

Sky Convoy looked down at the unconscious seeker in his arms. Star was heavily damaged, and his field was dim and inactive. Sky Convoy put one giant servo over the seeker’s spark. After a few painfully long moments, he was able to detect a weak but persistent sparkbeat.

Red optics flickered online.

“Skyfire?” mumbled Star.

“Star,” whispered Sky Convoy, tears of relief springing to his optics. “It’s over. We won.”

Star took a moment to process this, and then he frowned. “Then...” his voice was even raspier than usual. “Then...why are you still merged, you idiot?”

Sky Convoy gave a small laugh. “Let me fly us back to Earth, and I will separate for the last time. I swear it.”

Star didn’t seem too pleased with this, but he must have been too exhausted to argue. He pressed himself against Sky Convoy’s chest and appeared to fall offline again.

Sky Convoy still lacked a true aerial’s grace, but his powerful engines meant that he’d be back at the Ark shortly. His only priority now was getting medical attention for Star. A tiny part of him worried that the Autobots would be unwilling to give treatment to an enemy, but that thought was beaten down by his conviction that Star was his mate first and a Decepticon second (no pun intended).

He broke through Earth’s atmosphere in a blaze of fire, energy coursing down his frame. But he had no time to enjoy the sensation, not while Star was in such fragile conditions. Fortunately, the burn of re-entry was nothing compared with the heat of Unicron’s internals, and Star had been specifically modified to be able to leave and enter atmospheres since their school days.

The rush of energy fizzled out as they approached the planet, sparkling blue oceans beneath them. Sky Convoy checked his sensors—they seemed to be working again, thankfully—and started in the direction of home.

Eventually, the endless sea gave way to golden beaches and grassy plains and finally, finally, finally, the familiar red-gold desert that had become the Ark’s resting place. Sky Convoy picked up a burst of speed at the sight of the familiar landmarks.

His friends—the other Autobots—were all just as he had left them, standing outside the Ark, optics to the sky but otherwise not doing much. When they caught sight of Sky Convoy, though, that was when the eager waving and shouting began.

Sky Convoy came in for a painfully awkward landing and was immediately swarmed by the Autobots. Star, perhaps sensing the proximity of Autobots, came back online with a sharp jerk. “Put me down!” he hissed at Sky Convoy, but Sky Convoy could not imagine why he should do such a thing.

Elita was edging her way through the crowd, and Sky Convoy grabbed her around the waist. She shrieked in a mix of surprise and outrage as Sky Convoy cuddled her to his chassis alongside Starscream. Both of his mates cried out in disgust and annoyance, but Sky Convoy was deaf to their protests. He had his mates, the earth was safe, and all was well.

Ratchet finally approached, silencing the excited crowd. “Medbay,” he said. “Both—all of you. Now.”

“Take Star first,” said Sky Convoy. “His damage is far greater than mine.”

To his eternal credit, Ratchet didn’t even hesitate. “Fine. First Aid, help me transport—”

“We can help!” the Aerialbots were there in a flash, surrounding Star the moment his pedes touched the ground. As Star was led away, Sky Convoy could hear him lecturing the Aerialbots about proper military conduct.

Elita looked up at Sky Convoy, who was still holding her close. “Aren’t you going to break the merge?” she asked.

“Do you really hate me as I am?” asked Sky Convoy sadly. “I am a far more adequate protector now. I think of all I could accomplish in this form—”

“Orion.”

“Very well, love.” He very gently set Elita back down, and she took a step back to watch as Sky Convoy separated into his components for the very last time. A moment later, Skyfire and Optimus Prime stood in his place.

“PARTY IN THE REC ROOM!” shouted someone, and the crowd began to move back indoors. Prime put an arm around Elita and they followed, leaving only Skyfire behind in the warmth of Earth’s sunlight.

But he wasn’t alone, he realized. Astoria was standing just inside the Ark’s entryway. She looked up at Skyfire and smiled.

“You did good,” she said as he approached. “I heard some of it. You really made him mad.”

“I suppose you’re free now that Unicron is dead?” asked Skyfire.

Astoria shook her head. “Not dead. Never dead. It’s more like you’ve chopped off one of his heads, and he’s got a billion heads. But none of them are anywhere near here, so we don’t have to worry.” Astoria seemed introspective for a moment, but then her bright smile returned. “But he’s gone quiet. It’s nice. I’m hoping maybe I’ll be able to touch machines without breaking them soon.”

“I think everyone will appreciate that,” said Skyfire. He knelt down so Astoria could step into the palm of his servo, and began to walk down the familiar hallways. He could hear loud music blaring from the direction of the rec room, but he wasn’t quite in the mood for a party yet. Instead, he started for the medbay.

“So,” said Astoria. “I guess you want to know what I saw, right? In the other future? I mean, I did promise.”

“You did,” agreed Skyfire. “And I think I did want to know. But... it’s gone, isn’t it? Wiped away. Dwelling on it isn’t going to help anyone. I can’t, I can’t—I want to move forward. I can’t do that if I’m obsessing over something that never happened.”

Astoria didn’t speak right away.

“You were together,” she said at last. “That’s the most important thing. But maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s better not to know.”

“I wanted to before,” admitted Skyfire. “But now...I think I’d rather wait and see my future...my real future...when I get to it.”

“I understand,” said Astoria. “Just call me if you need help with baby names, okay? I’ve got lots. I might be dead by then, but maybe not because I’m going to see if they can put my brain in a robot body. So you’ve got no excuse not to call me.”

Skyfire gave a small laugh. “I’ll certainly keep you in mind.”

“Good,” Astoria preened. “Now, put me down. I’ve got to go work on stealing Carly away from Spike. She’s too good for him anyway, and I’ve seen what happens if they get married.”

“What’s going to happen?” asked Skyfire as he lowered her to the ground. Astoria took off in the direction of the party, her high-heeled shoes—quite like thrusters, now that Skyfire thought of it—clicking all the way down the hall.

“They’re going to give birth to the most annoying child in human history!” Astoria cried without looking back. “I have to put a stop to it!”

Skyfire gave a small laugh and continued on his way to the medbay, where Starscream was insisting he be released early so he could go back to the empty Victory and sit on Megatron’s throne for a few hours before the Decepticons returned.