Miko Nakadai had found her purpose in life.
Not music. Not art. Not the electric guitar that she had carried across the Pacific Ocean from Tokyo to Jasper, Nevada, like a holy relic from a religion she had invented specifically to annoy her host parents. Not the punk rock aesthetic that she had cultivated with the dedication of a monk pursuing enlightenment, if enlightenment involved studded bracelets and hair dye in colors that didn't exist in nature.
No.
Her purpose in life was Optimus Prime.
Specifically, her purpose in life was to follow Optimus Prime around the Autobot base like a duckling that had imprinted on a thirty-foot-tall walking armory and could not be dissuaded from this attachment by logic, reason, physical barriers, stern lectures from Ratchet, pleading looks from Bulkhead, or the fundamental incompatibility of scale between a five-foot-two Japanese teenager and a Cybertronian war machine whose left foot was larger than her entire body.
She had been doing this for three days.
Three solid days.
Every moment she wasn't at school—and some moments she was supposed to be at school but had instead convinced Jack to cover for her with a series of increasingly elaborate lies about dental appointments—Miko was there. In the base. Following Optimus. With her phone. Recording everything. Asking questions. So many questions.
"Hey, Optimus, what's the energy output on the barrage cannon?"
"Classified."
"Hey, Optimus, could you cut through a mountain with the energon swords?"
"I have not tested that hypothesis."
"Hey, Optimus, if you used all your weapons at once, what would happen?"
"The immediate area would cease to exist."
"Hey, Optimus, can I ride on your shoulder during the next battle?"
"No."
"Hey, Optimus, what about your other shoulder?"
"No, Miko."
"Hey, Optimus—"
"Miko."
"Yeah?"
"I appreciate your enthusiasm. Truly, I do. But I am currently performing a diagnostic on my weapons systems, and several of these weapons are capable of accidentally vaporizing organic matter at distances of up to fifty meters, and you are standing at a distance of approximately four meters, and I would very much like you to not be vaporized today."
Miko took exactly one step backward. "How about now?"
"...That is not meaningfully farther."
"Cool. So anyway, about the axe—"
Marcus-Optimus sighed. It was becoming his signature gesture. He had sighed more in the past week than TFP Optimus had sighed in three entire seasons of television, and he was beginning to suspect that the Matrix of Leadership was somehow amplifying the sound for comedic effect, because every sigh he produced resonated through the base like a foghorn made of existential exhaustion.
He was in the maintenance bay. He had been in the maintenance bay for two hours, running systematic checks on every weapon in his frame, because the fight at the mining facility had revealed some interesting calibration issues with his shoulder-mounted rotary cannons—specifically, they were pulling slightly to the left, which meant that instead of hitting center-mass on his targets, he was hitting slightly left of center-mass, and while this difference was irrelevant when the targets were Vehicon drones that exploded regardless of where you hit them, it would matter against tougher opponents, and Marcus-Optimus was nothing if not thorough.
Also, he had discovered something new.
Something that had not been in his initial weapons inventory.
Something that he had stumbled upon entirely by accident when he was cycling through his forearm transformation sequences and hit a configuration he didn't recognize and his left arm had suddenly, unexpectedly, and spectacularly produced a six-foot jet of superheated plasma that scorched a black line across the maintenance bay wall, set fire to a stack of spare parts that Ratchet had been organizing for three weeks, and triggered every fire suppression system in the base simultaneously.
He had flamethrowers.
He had flamethrowers.
Hidden in his forearms, nested beneath the sword mechanisms and the energon hooks and the barrage cannon housing, were a pair of integrated plasma projection systems that could produce sustained streams of fire hot enough to melt Cybertronian armor at close range.
Flamethrowers.
The Marcus part of his brain had exactly one reaction to this discovery: WHY DO I HAVE FLAMETHROWERS?!
The Bayverse part of his brain had a very different reaction: Why did it take me this long to find the flamethrowers?
And somewhere deep in his processor, in the place where the Matrix of Leadership interfaced with his neural architecture, he could have sworn he felt something that was laughing.
He was currently running diagnostics on the flamethrowers—carefully, with his arm pointed at the already-scorched wall, because he was a responsible weapons owner even if "responsible" was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence—when Miko appeared at his elbow like a teenager-shaped manifestation of chaos and immediately zeroed in on the burn mark.
"Did you do that?"
"...Yes."
"With what?"
He hesitated. He genuinely, seriously hesitated, because telling Miko about the flamethrowers was going to produce a reaction that would be audible from orbit, and he was fairly certain that Bulkhead's emotional state could not survive another escalation of Miko's Optimus-worship.
"I have... recently discovered an additional weapons system that I was not previously aware of."
Miko's eyes narrowed. Her nose wrinkled. The expression on her face was that of a bloodhound catching a scent, and the scent was awesome. "What kind of weapons system?"
"The kind that produces extreme heat."
"Like a laser?"
"No."
"Like a plasma cannon?"
"No."
"Like a—" Her eyes went wide. So wide that the whites were visible all the way around. Her mouth dropped open. Her phone nearly fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. "Flamethrowers?"
Marcus-Optimus said nothing.
"YOU HAVE FLAMETHROWERS?!"
The sound that came out of Miko Nakadai at that moment was not a word. It was not a scream. It was not any sound that could be accurately described using the limited vocabulary of human language. It was a frequency—a pure, crystalline tone of absolute, unbridled, cosmic joy that bypassed the auditory system entirely and hit the soul directly, and it was loud enough to make Ratchet drop a wrench three rooms away and shout "WHAT NOW?!" with the resigned fury of a medic who had been dealing with too much for too long.
"Miko—" Marcus-Optimus started.
"BULKHEAD!" Miko was already running. Not away from Optimus—she would never run away from Optimus—but toward the main bay, where Bulkhead was sitting quietly and trying to enjoy five minutes of peace. "BULKHEAD! HE HAS FLAMETHROWERS! ACTUAL FLAMETHROWERS! YOUR WRECKING BALL IS A BALL ON A CHAIN, HE HAS FLAMETHROWERS!"
From the main bay, distantly: "Please stop..."
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW COOL FLAMETHROWERS ARE COMPARED TO A BALL ON A CHAIN?! IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE! IT'S NOT EVEN IN THE SAME GALAXY!"
"I know, Miko..."
"HE'S LIKE IF A TANK AND A JET AND A SWISS ARMY KNIFE AND A DRAGON ALL HAD A BABY AND THE BABY WAS ALSO A TRUCK!"
"...I'm going to go for a drive."
"CAN OPTIMUS COME?!"
"Please stop."
Marcus-Optimus listened to this exchange from the maintenance bay and felt a complex emotion that he could not entirely categorize. It was part guilt—because Bulkhead was a good mech and a good warrior and didn't deserve to have his self-esteem dismantled by a teenager's shifting loyalties—and part amusement, because Miko's enthusiasm was genuinely infectious in a way that reminded him of being a kid and seeing the first Transformers movie in theaters and watching Optimus Prime transform for the first time and thinking yes, THIS is the coolest thing that has ever existed.
And part... something else. Something warm. Something that the Marcus part of him recognized as belonging. Because for all the absurdity of his situation—the reincarnation, the weapons, the crackfic-level ridiculousness of his entire existence—he was here. He was with people who cared about each other. He had a purpose. He had a home.
He had flamethrowers.
Life, Marcus-Optimus reflected, was weird. But it wasn't bad.
Meanwhile, in a place that was decidedly not the material plane of existence...
The Realm of the Primes was, by any standard of measurement, the nicest place in the multiverse. It existed outside of time, beyond space, in a dimension of pure light and ancient wisdom where the greatest leaders Cybertron had ever produced spent eternity in peaceful contemplation of the cosmic truths that governed all of existence.
It was also, at this particular moment, in an uproar.
Thirteen beings stood in a semicircle around a viewing portal that showed the events unfolding in the TFP universe in real time. They were the original Primes—the Thirteen, the first Transformers, the architects of Cybertronian civilization—and they were watching Optimus Prime discover his flamethrowers with expressions that ranged from "deeply concerned" to "is it possible for a dead god to have a panic attack, because I think I'm having one."
Prima, the First Prime, the wielder of the Star Saber, the noblest and most dignified being in the history of Cybertron, was standing at the front of the group with his arms crossed and his optics fixed on the viewing portal. His expression was... complicated.
"He has flamethrowers," Prima said.
"He has flamethrowers," confirmed Vector Prime, the guardian of time and space, who was standing to Prima's right and consulting a temporal analysis that was apparently giving him results he didn't like. "They're not standard. They're not from any known Cybertronian weapons database. They appear to have simply... manifested in his frame."
"Manifested."
"Yes."
"Weapons are manifesting in his frame."
"Yes."
"New weapons. That he didn't have before. Are appearing inside his body. Without explanation."
"That is an accurate summary, yes."
Prima stared at the viewing portal. In it, Optimus Prime was carefully testing the flamethrowers' range and heat output while a human teenager filmed the process from what was definitely not a safe distance. As they watched, the left flamethrower produced a sustained jet of plasma that turned a section of wall into glowing slag, and the human teenager made a sound of delight that was audible even through the dimensional barrier.
"I have concerns," Prima said.
"We ALL have concerns," said Solus Prime, the master forger, who was examining the weapon schematics that the viewing portal was displaying with the critical eye of someone who built weapons for a living and was having opinions about the engineering. "But I will say this: the flamethrower design is excellent. Dual-nozzle plasma projection with variable spread and adjustable temperature gradient? That's not amateur work. Whoever—or whatever—is adding weapons to his frame knows what they're doing."
"That is NOT reassuring, Solus."
"It's a little reassuring."
"It is NOT—"
"The combustion efficiency alone is remarkable. Look at that fuel-to-heat ratio. I couldn't have done better myself."
"SOLUS."
"What? I'm a craftsman. I appreciate good work."
Megatronus—the Fallen, the Thirteenth Prime, the one whose name would eventually be shortened and stolen by a gladiator from Kaon who would go on to start a four-million-year war—was standing at the back of the group. He was not speaking. He was watching. And he had a datapad out.
He was taking notes.
"What are you doing?" Alpha Trion asked, peering over Megatronus's shoulder with the suspicion of a scholar who had spent eternity cataloguing knowledge and recognized unauthorized documentation when he saw it.
"Research," Megatronus said, without looking up.
"Research into what?"
"Combat methodology." He made another note. His handwriting—if it could be called handwriting when it was being produced by a being of living light on a metaphysical datapad in a dimension outside of time—was meticulous. "The way he fights. It's... different."
"Different how?"
Megatronus finally looked up. His optics—ancient, burning, carrying the weight of being the Prime who had fallen from grace and whose legacy had been one of war and destruction—held something that Alpha Trion had never seen in them before.
Admiration.
"He fights like he means it," Megatronus said. "Not like a philosopher playing at war. Not like a politician wearing a warrior's armor. He fights like someone who looked at four million years of conflict and made a decision. A real, final, irreversible decision about what kind of Prime he was going to be." He paused. Looked back at the viewing portal, where Optimus was now carefully explaining to the human teenager why she could not, under any circumstances, have a flamethrower of her own. "I don't know what happened to him. I don't know where this version of him came from. But for the first time in four million years... I'm not ashamed of what my name became."
The silence that followed this statement was profound.
"That's..." Alpha Trion started.
"Don't ruin it."
"I was going to say 'touching.'"
"It is NOT touching. It is a tactical assessment. I am making tactical assessments."
"You're proud of him."
"I am OBSERVATIONALLY IMPRESSED. There is a difference."
"You're proud."
"I will END you, Alpha Trion. I am the Fallen. I ended civilizations. I—"
"You're proud and it's adorable."
"I AM NOT ADORABLE—"
"ENOUGH," Prima said, in a voice that shook the foundations of the Realm and made several metaphysical concepts briefly question their own existence. "We are the Thirteen Primes. We are the architects of Cybertronian civilization. We are the guardians of the legacy of Primus himself. We do not bicker like—"
The viewing portal chimed. New data scrolled across it. Vector Prime leaned in, read it, and went very still.
"What?" Prima asked. "What is it?"
"He's going to school," Vector Prime said.
"He's going to what?"
"Not literally. The human children—his charges—they attend a human educational facility. And the temporal probability matrices are showing a... a convergence. A hostile convergence. At the school."
Prima's optics narrowed. "Decepticons?"
"One Decepticon. The Seeker. Starscream."
The Thirteen looked at each other. They looked at the viewing portal. They looked at the probability matrices that Vector Prime was now projecting in the air above the portal, showing branching timelines and possible outcomes, and the dominant outcome—the one that glowed brightest, the one that the universe seemed to be leaning toward with the inevitability of gravity—was highlighted in red.
"Oh no," said Nexus Prime.
"Oh no," said Amalgamous Prime.
"Oh," said Megatronus, picking up his datapad again, "yes."
Starscream's plan was, by Starscream standards, actually quite clever.
This was immediately suspicious, because Starscream's plans were rarely clever and frequently self-defeating, but this particular plan had the virtue of simplicity: the Autobots had human allies. The human allies attended a human school. The school was undefended. If you wanted to hurt the Autobots without actually fighting the Autobots—and after the last two engagements, Starscream wanted to not fight the Autobots more than he had ever wanted anything in his entire existence—you went after the humans.
It was logical. It was pragmatic. It was exactly the kind of indirect, cowardly, underhanded tactic that Starscream excelled at, and he had spent two days planning it with a level of detail that he normally reserved for assassination attempts against Megatron.
He would arrive at the school in the early afternoon, when the human population was at its peak. He would identify and isolate the three humans known to associate with the Autobots. He would take them hostage. He would use them as leverage to force the Autobots into a disadvantageous position. And then—then—he would call for Decepticon reinforcements and eliminate the Autobot team while they were compromised by their ridiculous emotional attachment to squishy organic creatures who lived for maybe eighty years and spent a significant portion of that time sleeping.
It was a good plan.
It was a solid plan.
It was a plan that accounted for every variable except one: the variable where Optimus Prime had spent his previous human life watching every episode of Transformers Prime and therefore knew exactly what Starscream was going to do before Starscream did it.
Marcus-Optimus was in the main bay when his proximity sensors—which he had upgraded, expanded, and linked to a network of micro-satellites that he had launched into low Earth orbit using his jet pack and some creative engineering during what he had told Ratchet was "a routine aerial patrol"—detected a Cybertronian energy signature approaching Jasper, Nevada.
One signature. Moving fast. Aerial approach vector. Flight-capable frame.
Starscream.
Moving toward the town.
Moving toward the school.
Something inside Marcus-Optimus went very quiet, and very cold, and very, very still.
He had been expecting this. Not this specific attack—the show's timeline had been altered enough by his presence that exact event matching was no longer reliable—but something like this. The Decepticons probing for weaknesses. Testing boundaries. Looking for the soft targets that they could use as leverage against the Autobots.
The children.
His children.
Not biologically, obviously. Not even legally. But in every way that mattered—in the way that the Matrix pulsed when he thought about Jack's quiet courage, in the way that his spark warmed when he watched Raf's face light up during a conversation with Bumblebee, in the way that Miko's irrepressible energy made him feel something that he was fairly certain was the Cybertronian equivalent of paternal exasperation—they were his.
And someone was going to threaten them.
The cold thing inside him crystallized into something diamond-hard and razor-edged and utterly, completely devoid of mercy.
"Ratchet," he said, and his voice was so flat that Ratchet looked up from his workstation with the expression of a mech who had just heard a sound he couldn't identify and wasn't sure he wanted to. "Open a ground bridge. These coordinates. Now."
He sent the coordinates. They were not the school's location. They were a point in three-dimensional space approximately two hundred feet above the school's location—directly in Starscream's flight path.
Ratchet looked at the coordinates. Looked at Optimus. Looked at the coordinates again. "Optimus, those coordinates are in mid-air."
"Yes."
"You want me to open a ground bridge in mid-air?"
"Yes."
"You're going to—" Ratchet's optics widened as the implications hit him. "You're going to JUMP THROUGH A GROUND BRIDGE IN MID-AIR?!"
"Ratchet." Marcus-Optimus was already walking toward the ground bridge chamber. His battle mask deployed with a click that echoed through the base like the sound of a safety being taken off a weapon, which was essentially what it was. "There is a Decepticon approaching the children's school. Open the bridge. I will handle the rest."
"Optimus, we should send a team—"
"There is no time for a team. Open. The. Bridge."
Ratchet looked at him. Saw something in his optics that made every argument die in his vocalizer. Turned to the console. Entered the coordinates.
The ground bridge opened.
Marcus-Optimus ran.
Not jogged. Not strode purposefully. Ran. Full sprint. Thirty-foot robot at maximum velocity, each footstep cracking the floor, his frame leaning forward with the predatory angle of something that had identified its prey and was closing distance with the single-minded determination of a missile locked on target.
He hit the ground bridge at full speed and the universe folded around him—green light, white light, the sensation of being everywhere and nowhere simultaneously—and then he was out, exploding from the other end of the bridge into open sky two hundred feet above Jasper, Nevada, and for one perfect, terrifying, beautiful moment, he was falling.
The town spread out below him like a map. He could see the school—a low cluster of beige buildings, a parking lot, a football field, hundreds of tiny human figures moving between classes, completely unaware that a Decepticon Seeker was approaching from the northeast at Mach 2 with hostile intent.
He could see Starscream.
The Seeker was in his jet mode—sleek, silver, fast—cutting through the sky like a knife through silk, his trajectory aimed directly at the school, his weapons systems charging with the telltale energy buildup that preceded a strafing run. He was thirty seconds from weapons range. Twenty-five. Twenty.
Marcus-Optimus activated his jet pack.
The thrust hit him like a giant hand shoving him forward, and suddenly he wasn't falling anymore—he was flying, rocketing through the sky on twin columns of blue fire, his frame cutting through the air with a sonic boom that rattled windows across the entire town of Jasper and made every student at the school look up from their phones simultaneously for possibly the first time in recorded history.
Starscream saw him.
Marcus-Optimus knew the exact moment Starscream saw him because the Seeker's jet mode actually wobbled—a brief, involuntary destabilization that was the aerial equivalent of a double-take—and then Starscream was pulling up, trying to abort the strafing run, trying to climb, trying to run—
Too late.
Marcus-Optimus hit Starscream at approximately six hundred miles per hour.
The impact was apocalyptic. Metal screamed against metal. The shockwave shattered every window within a quarter mile. Starscream's jet mode crumpled around the point of impact like aluminum foil, and both of them went tumbling through the sky—a tangle of limbs and wings and thruster fire that looked, from the ground, like two meteors having a fistfight.
Starscream transformed involuntarily—his frame couldn't maintain jet mode with a thirty-foot Prime embedded in his fuselage—and suddenly they were two robots grappling in freefall, the ground rushing up at terminal velocity, and Starscream was screaming, actually screaming, his vocalizer producing a sound that was equal parts fear and fury and the specific kind of panic that came from realizing you had made a terrible, terrible mistake.
"PRIME! PRIME, WHAT ARE YOU—"
"YOU CAME TO THE SCHOOL."
Marcus-Optimus's voice was not loud. It was not shouting. It was quiet, and calm, and terrible, and it cut through Starscream's screaming like a blade through paper.
"You came to the school, Starscream. You came to where the children are."
"I—I was just—reconnaissance—I wasn't going to—"
"Liar."
He grabbed Starscream by the wing. The left wing. The one that was already damaged from their mid-air collision. He grabbed it and he pulled, and the sound that Starscream made was not a scream—it was beyond screaming, it was the sound of a being whose pain receptors had been overwhelmed so completely that his vocalizer could only produce a raw, unmodulated wail of agony that went on and on and on.
The wing came off.
Not cleanly. Not surgically. It tore free with a shower of sparks and energon, trailing cables and conduits that snapped like guitar strings, and Marcus-Optimus hurled it away from them with a contemptuous flick of his wrist and watched it spiral toward the desert outside of town like a silver leaf in a hurricane.
"AAAAAAGH! MY WING! YOU—YOU TORE OFF MY—"
Marcus-Optimus activated his jet pack again, arresting their descent, and suddenly they were hovering—two hundred feet up, Starscream dangling from his grip by the remaining wing, energon streaming from the wound where his left wing had been, his optics wide and red and terrified.
"Ratchet," Marcus-Optimus said, his comm activating with a thought. "Ground bridge. My coordinates. Output point: one mile north of the Nemesis."
"Optimus, what are you—"
"Now, Ratchet."
The ground bridge opened beside them. A swirling vortex of green and white, hovering in mid-air like a doorway to somewhere else, its edges crackling with spatial distortion energy.
Marcus-Optimus looked at Starscream. Starscream looked back. And in Starscream's optics, Marcus-Optimus could see the moment when the Seeker realized what was about to happen—not the general concept, but the specific, horrifying, moment-by-moment reality of what Optimus Prime was about to do to him.
"No," Starscream whispered. "No, no, no—Prime, please—I'll leave—I'll never come back—I'll—"
"You threatened the children, Starscream."
"I DIDN'T TOUCH THEM! I DIDN'T—"
"You would have."
And then Marcus-Optimus did something that no version of Optimus Prime had ever done in any continuity, in any medium, in any timeline.
He dragged Starscream through the ground bridge.
Face first.
The thing about a ground bridge was that it was a portal—a controlled tear in the fabric of space-time that connected two points across any distance. The interior of the bridge was a tunnel of swirling energy, and the walls of that tunnel were made of raw spatial distortion—not solid, not liquid, not gas, but something else, something that existed in the space between dimensions and interacted with physical matter in ways that Cybertronian science could describe mathematically but never fully explain.
What Cybertronian science could explain was what happened when you dragged a Cybertronian's face along the interior wall of a ground bridge at high speed.
It was not pretty.
The spatial distortion energy interacted with Starscream's facial plating the way a belt sander interacted with a piece of soft wood. Metal screamed. Not metaphorically. The sound was physical—a shrieking, grinding, tearing sound that resonated through the bridge tunnel with a harmonic frequency that made the entire portal shudder and distort. Sparks flew in cascading sheets of orange and white. Pieces of Starscream's face—plating, sensors, optical housing components, the delicate mechanisms that controlled his expressions and his speech and his identity—were stripped away in a continuous stream of debris that trailed behind them like a comet's tail made of someone's face.
Starscream screamed. Then he stopped screaming, because the components that produced his scream were being removed.
Marcus-Optimus flew through the bridge in four seconds. Four seconds of sustained contact between Starscream's face and the bridge wall. Four seconds that did more damage to Starscream's cranial assembly than a direct hit from a fusion cannon.
They exited the bridge.
The Nemesis loomed before them—massive, dark, terrible—and Marcus-Optimus hovered for a moment, one mile out, exactly as he had specified. He looked at what he was holding.
Starscream was no longer struggling. Starscream was no longer functioning. His remaining wing hung limp. His limbs dangled. His optics—optic, singular, because the other one was gone, ground away along with most of the left side of his face—flickered weakly, the dim red glow of a system running on emergency power and losing.
His face was... gone.
Not damaged. Not scarred. Gone. The entire front of his cranial assembly had been abraded down to the underlying protoform structure, a raw, exposed lattice of neural pathways and structural supports that looked like a anatomical diagram that had been drawn by someone who hated the person they were drawing. There was no mouth. There was no nose. There were no cheek plates or brow ridges or any of the features that had made Starscream look like Starscream. There was just... metal. Raw, stripped, featureless metal, weeping energon from a hundred tiny wounds.
Marcus-Optimus felt the Bayverse part of his processor note this with grim satisfaction.
The Marcus part of his processor noted it with... something more complicated. Something that was uncomfortably close to horror at what he had just done, tempered by the absolute, granite-hard conviction that this was necessary. That Starscream had come to the school. That Starscream had intended to hurt the children. That in any universe, in any timeline, in any continuity, threatening children was the line that you did not cross, and if you crossed it, you did not get mercy.
You did not get speeches.
You did not get philosophical debates about the nature of freedom and tyranny.
You got your face dragged along the inside of a ground bridge until there was nothing left.
"Ratchet," he said. "Second bridge. Directly to the Nemesis flight deck."
A pause. Then, very quietly: "...Optimus, what did you do?"
"What was necessary. Open the bridge."
The second bridge opened. Marcus-Optimus flew through it, emerged onto the Nemesis flight deck—which was, thankfully, empty of personnel, because even Decepticons needed downtime—and deposited Starscream's remains on the deck with a care that was somewhat undermined by the fact that there wasn't much left to be careful with.
He looked at what remained.
A wing. The right wing, still attached to the torso, though barely.
A head. Faceless, sparking, the single remaining optic dimming rapidly.
Not much else that was recognizable as having once been the Decepticon Second-in-Command.
Marcus-Optimus stood over the remains for a moment. Then he reached down and placed the severed left wing—which he had carried through both bridges, because he was making a point—neatly beside the body. He arranged the pieces with a deliberate, almost ceremonial care, like a hunter displaying a kill.
Then he activated his comm on the Nemesis's general frequency. The one that would be heard on every speaker, in every room, on every deck of the ship.
"Megatron."
His voice echoed through the corridors of the Nemesis like the voice of a god delivering judgment. In crew quarters, Vehicons froze. In the medical bay, Knockout dropped a tool. In the command center, Soundwave's visor flickered with something that might have been surprise, which was remarkable because Soundwave's visor never flickered.
"Your Second-in-Command attempted to attack a human school. A school full of children. I have returned what is left of him. I suggest you have your medic attend to him quickly, as I am... uncertain... how much of him is recoverable."
A pause. A long, terrible, loaded pause.
"This is your final warning. If any Decepticon threatens the human population of this planet—if any Decepticon so much as looks at a human child with hostile intent—I will not stop at the attacker. I will come to this ship. And I will dismantle it. Piece. By. Piece. Starting with you."
He cut the comm. Activated his jet pack. Flew back through the ground bridge.
Behind him, on the flight deck of the Nemesis, Starscream's remaining optic flickered one last time and went dark.
On the command deck, Megatron stood frozen at his console.
He had heard everything.
He had heard everything.
The command center of the Nemesis was silent for exactly twelve seconds after Optimus Prime's transmission ended. Twelve seconds of absolute, crystalline silence in which every Decepticon aboard the ship collectively processed what they had just heard and arrived at the same conclusion: something had gone horribly, fundamentally, catastrophically wrong with Optimus Prime, and whatever it was, it was their problem now.
Then Megatron moved.
He walked to the flight deck. He walked quickly, but not too quickly, because he was Megatron, Lord of the Decepticons, and he did not rush. He did not show concern. He did not display the kind of emotional response that might suggest he was rattled by the fact that his most persistent enemy had just delivered the dismembered remains of his Second-in-Command to his doorstep like a cat leaving a dead bird on its owner's pillow.
He was not rattled.
He was not rattled.
He reached the flight deck. He looked down.
He was rattled.
Starscream—or what had been Starscream, or what was left of what had been Starscream—lay on the deck in two main pieces plus assorted debris. The wing. The head. Connecting tissue that was more abstract concept than physical structure. And the face—or rather, the absence of face, the raw, stripped, violated expanse of protoform where a face had once been—stared up at the sky with a single dim optic that was no longer seeing anything.
Megatron stared.
"Get Knockout," he said, without looking at the Vehicon who had followed him to the flight deck and was currently standing three steps behind him, vibrating with the kind of fear that came from being in close proximity to both a dismembered Seeker and a Decepticon leader who was clearly having A Moment. "Get him NOW."
The Vehicon fled.
Megatron continued to stare at Starscream's remains, and his processor—that brilliant, broken, four-million-year-old processor that had orchestrated the fall of Cybertron and the near-extinction of the Autobot faction—ran calculations.
And the calculations didn't make sense.
Not the combat mathematics. Those were straightforward, if terrifying. Optimus had engaged Starscream in mid-air, overpowered him, and... done this. That was within the realm of physical possibility, even if it was far beyond anything Optimus had demonstrated in their four-million-year history of conflict.
What didn't make sense was the behavior.
There were rules. Unspoken rules, yes. Unwritten rules. Rules that had never been formalized in any treaty or agreement because they didn't need to be. They were the rules of the game—the four-million-year game that Megatron and Optimus had been playing since the fall of Cybertron, the game that had consumed worlds and devoured civilizations and ground entire species to dust between its gears.
Rule One: Vehicons were expendable. Both sides knew this. Vehicons were factory-produced, mass-manufactured, drone-adjacent soldiers with minimal individual identity. They were cannon fodder. They were resources. You destroyed them, you lost them, you built more. Nobody mourned a Vehicon. Nobody avenged a Vehicon. Vehicons were the currency of the war—spent freely, replaced easily, forgotten immediately.
Rule Two: Named mechs were different. Named mechs had identities. Named mechs had histories, personalities, relationships, value beyond their tactical utility. Named mechs were the players in the game—the pieces that mattered, the ones you captured but didn't destroy, the ones you defeated but didn't kill, because if you started killing named mechs, the game changed, and nobody wanted the game to change because the game was the only thing keeping the war from becoming something truly horrible.
Rule Three: You did not escalate. You fought. You clashed. You exchanged philosophical barbs and tactical gambits. You won some battles and lost others. You maintained the equilibrium—the careful, fragile, centuries-old balance of power that ensured the war continued without ever reaching the point of total annihilation. Because total annihilation meant losing, and losing was unacceptable for both sides.
These rules had governed the war for four million years. They were the invisible framework that held the conflict together, the shared understanding between Autobot and Decepticon that made the war survivable—not pleasant, not moral, not good, but survivable.
And Optimus Prime had just shattered all three of them simultaneously.
He had destroyed Vehicons—that was fine, that was normal, that was Rule One in action. But he hadn't just destroyed them. He had annihilated them. Torn them apart with his bare hands. Bisected them with hidden blades. Reduced entire formations to shrapnel with weapons that weren't supposed to exist. He had treated Vehicons not as opponents to be defeated but as obstacles to be removed, and the sheer, contemptuous efficiency of the removal was something that Megatron had never seen from any Autobot, ever.
But that was manageable. That was an escalation of degree, not of kind. Optimus was fighting harder. Fine. Megatron could adapt to that.
What he could NOT adapt to—what his processor kept circling back to with the obsessive persistence of a corrupted data loop—was what Optimus had done to Starscream.
Starscream was a named mech. Starscream was the Decepticon Second-in-Command. Starscream was a player—annoying, treacherous, occasionally competent, but a PLAYER. You didn't do this to a player. You didn't drag a player's face along the inside of a ground bridge until there was nothing left. You didn't tear off their wing and carry it as a trophy. You didn't deliver their remains to the enemy's doorstep with a threat.
That wasn't how the game was played.
That was how the game ended.
"Since when," Megatron said, to nobody, to the empty flight deck, to the stars above and the desert below and the remains of his Second-in-Command at his feet, "since when does Optimus Prime fight like this?"
No answer. There was nobody to answer. Soundwave was in the command center. Knockout was on his way. The Vehicon had fled. Megatron was alone with the wreckage and the question and the slow, creeping, inexorable realization that was building in the back of his processor like pressure behind a dam.
Optimus Prime was not playing the game anymore.
Optimus Prime had looked at four million years of unspoken rules and gentleman's agreements and carefully maintained equilibrium and had decided—unilaterally, irreversibly, absolutely—that the game was over.
And if the game was over...
If the rules no longer applied...
If Optimus Prime was willing to do this to Starscream—Starscream, who was annoying but ultimately survivable, who was a nuisance but not a threat, who was the kind of enemy you tolerated because eliminating him would be disproportionate—then what would he do to someone who was an actual threat?
What would he do to someone who had spent four million years being his nemesis, his opposite number, the dark mirror of everything he stood for?
What would he do to Megatron?
The answer to that question was the thing lurking behind the dam, and Megatron could feel it pressing, pressing, pressing, and he did NOT want to let it through because letting it through would mean acknowledging something that the Lord of the Decepticons, Master of Dark Energon, future ruler of Cybertron, had never in four million years of war had to acknowledge:
He was afraid.
Not of death. Megatron had made peace with death eons ago. Death was simple. Death was clean. Death was the end of everything, and the end of everything held no terror for a being who had seen everything and done everything and broken everything worth breaking.
No, what Megatron was afraid of was something much worse than death.
He was afraid of an Optimus Prime who had stopped caring about the rules.
Because a rule-following Optimus was predictable. A rule-following Optimus could be manipulated, anticipated, managed. You knew what he would do. You knew what he wouldn't do. You knew that he would give speeches instead of killing blows, that he would offer mercy instead of execution, that he would hold back because holding back was what good leaders did and Optimus Prime was, above all else, a good leader.
But this Optimus...
This Optimus had dragged Starscream's face along a ground bridge wall until there was nothing left but raw protoform and a fading optic.
This Optimus had smiled about it.
Megatron felt the fear settle into his struts like cold energon, and he hated it, and he hated Optimus for making him feel it, and he hated himself for being capable of feeling it, and the hatred was familiar and comfortable and useful in a way that fear was not, so he wrapped himself in it like armor and turned away from Starscream's remains and walked back into the ship.
"Soundwave," he said, when he reached the command center. "Pull up everything we have on Optimus Prime's combat capabilities. Everything. I want a full analysis. I want to know what changed. I want to know why it changed. And I want to know how to stop it."
Soundwave complied. Data filled his visor. Analysis ran. Results compiled.
The results were not encouraging.
Megatron sat in his throne and stared at the data and did not sleep that night.
He did not sleep the next night, either.
On the third night, he tried to sleep, and dreamed of blue optics and a faceless head and a voice that said piece by piece, starting with you, and he woke up with his fusion cannon charged and aimed at his own door and the taste of fear-generated coolant in his mouth.
He did not tell anyone about the dream.
Soundwave had it recorded.
Soundwave always had it recorded.
Back at the Autobot base, Marcus-Optimus stepped through the ground bridge and immediately found himself facing five Autobots, three humans, and a silence so dense it had its own gravitational field.
He retracted his battle mask.
"The threat has been neutralized," he said.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The silence stretched like taffy made of judgment.
Then Miko raised her phone. The screen showed a video—filmed from a window at Jasper High School—of Optimus Prime mid-air tackling a Decepticon jet at six hundred miles per hour. The footage was shaky, blurry, and approximately fourteen seconds long, and it had already been uploaded to the internet, where it had been viewed forty-seven thousand times in the twelve minutes since the incident and was climbing at a rate that suggested it would break a million before sunset.
The video's title, which Miko had chosen, was: "GIANT ROBOT BODYSLAMS JET IN MID AIR (NOT CLICKBAIT) (I'M NOT JOKING) (BULKHEAD COULD NEVER)."
In the corner, Bulkhead made a sound like a balloon deflating, sat down on the floor, and put his head in his hands.
"I just have a wrecking ball," he whispered.
"It's a very nice wrecking ball," Bumblebee beeped, putting a comforting hand on Bulkhead's shoulder.
"She used to think I was cool, Bee."
"You ARE cool, Bulkhead."
"He has flamethrowers."
"...Okay, the flamethrowers are pretty cool, but—"
"He body-slammed a jet. A jet, Bee. At six hundred miles per hour. I can't compete with that. I'm a Wrecker. I wreck things. That's my whole personality. And he just..." Bulkhead gestured vaguely at everything. "He does that."
"Hey, Bulkhead?" Miko called over, and for a moment, Bulkhead's optics lit up with fragile hope.
"Yeah, Miko?"
"Can you hold my phone while I go ask Optimus about the flamethrowers?"
The hope died. Bulkhead's optics dimmed. He took the phone. He held it. He sat in his corner and held Miko's phone while she ran across the base toward Optimus, already shouting questions about plasma temperature and fuel consumption rates.
"I'm going to be okay," Bulkhead said, to nobody.
Nobody seemed convinced. Least of all Bulkhead.
Cliffjumper, meanwhile, had watched the entire Starscream incident unfold via the base's monitors and was now sitting on a crate in the far corner of the storage bay, staring at the wall, his optics unfocused and his processor running a loop that went something like:
He tore off a wing. He dragged him face-first through a ground bridge. He delivered the remains to the Nemesis. Like a MESSAGE. Like a "here's what's left of your guy, you're welcome." That's not—that's not normal. That's not how Primes behave. That's not how ANYONE behaves. That's—that's—
Why am I still surprised? I watched him cave in a Vehicon's face with his bare hand three days ago. I WATCHED it. I saw the fingers go through the visor. I heard the sound. The sound was—
Don't think about the sound.
The sound was—
DON'T THINK ABOUT THE SOUND.
—like someone crushing a tin can full of wires and the can was SCREAMING—
"Cliffjumper?" Arcee's voice, from the doorway. Concerned. Gentle. The voice she used when she was worried about him but didn't want to say she was worried because Arcee expressed emotions through the strategic deployment of sarcasm and the occasional punch, not through words.
"I'm fine," he said.
"You've been staring at that wall for forty minutes."
"It's a nice wall."
"Cliff."
"I'm fine, Arcee. I just need a minute. Or several minutes. Or possibly several weeks. Did you know he has flamethrowers now? FLAMETHROWERS. On top of everything else. I just—I need to recalibrate my understanding of what Optimus Prime is, as a concept, because the Optimus Prime I signed up to follow was a philosopher-king who gave speeches about freedom and occasionally deployed arm blades in a tasteful and restrained manner, and the Optimus Prime who is currently standing in the next room is a weapon of mass destruction who dragged Starscream's face off and then delivered the body like he was returning a library book."
"...A really overdue library book."
"Arcee, this is not the time for—"
"I know. I'm sorry. I don't know how to process this either."
"How are YOU handling it?"
Arcee leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. Her expression was complicated—the kind of complicated that came from being a warrior who respected strength but also recognized that the line between "strength" and "something deeply concerning" had been not just crossed but obliterated. "Honestly? Part of me is glad. Part of me watched Starscream—the mech who helped kill Tailgate, who's been a threat to us for millions of years—get exactly what he deserved, and part of me felt... satisfied. And I don't know how to feel about feeling satisfied."
"And the other part?"
"The other part wants to know if the real Optimus is still in there somewhere, or if we're following someone who's going to escalate until there's nothing left to escalate to."
They sat in silence for a moment, two warriors who had followed a leader across a galaxy and were now trying to figure out if the leader they were following was the same one they had started with.
"He saved Cliffjumper, though," Arcee said, quietly. "Remember? Before any of this. Before the fighting and the weapons and the... face thing. The first thing he did, when he changed, was recall you from that energon patrol. He pulled you back to base for no reason that any of us could see. And then, three days later, the Decepticons hit that exact location with a force that would have killed you."
Cliffjumper blinked. He hadn't thought about that. He'd been so focused on the violence—on the crushing and the tearing and the dragging and the sounds, don't think about the sounds—that he'd forgotten the quiet moment at the beginning, when Optimus had looked at Ratchet with those strange, different optics and said recall him, please, with an intensity that suggested he already knew what was coming.
"He knew," Cliffjumper said. "He knew I was going to die."
"He knew something. And instead of waiting for it to happen, instead of reacting to it, he prevented it. That's not the behavior of a mech who's lost control. That's the behavior of a mech who has too much control and is using it to protect the people he cares about."
"By tearing Decepticons apart with his bare hands?"
"By whatever means necessary."
Another silence. Longer this time. Heavier.
"I'm still going to need therapy," Cliffjumper said.
"We're ALL going to need therapy."
"Ratchet doesn't do therapy."
"Then we're all going to need to develop really good coping mechanisms."
"My coping mechanism is sitting in this room and staring at this wall."
"That's not a coping mechanism, Cliff. That's dissociation."
"Well, it's all I've got."
Arcee sighed. Then she sat down next to him on the crate, close enough that their shoulders touched, and together they stared at the wall and tried not to think about the sound of a face being dragged along the inside of a ground bridge at three hundred miles per hour.
They were not entirely successful.
In the main bay, Miko had cornered Optimus near the ground bridge controls and was engaged in what could only be described as an interrogation regarding his weapons capabilities, his combat methodology, and whether or not he would consider allowing her to film a "weapons demonstration reel" that she could upload to her YouTube channel, which currently had fourteen subscribers but which she was certain would explode in popularity if she could just get some quality content of a giant alien robot deploying an arsenal that violated several international weapons treaties by existing.
Marcus-Optimus was handling this with the patient exhaustion of a being who had fought two major engagements, face-dragged a Decepticon, and delivered a death threat to an enemy warship, all in the last seventy-two hours, and was now being asked whether the flamethrowers could "do colors" by a teenager who had apparently decided that he was the single greatest thing in the universe and would not be convinced otherwise.
"The flamethrowers do not 'do colors,' Miko. They produce plasma. Plasma is a state of matter, not an art medium."
"But what if you added, like, chemicals? Different chemicals make different colored flames. I saw it on YouTube."
"I am not adding chemicals to my integrated weapons systems to produce aesthetically pleasing fire."
"But it would be SO COOL—"
"It would be a chemical contamination of a precision plasma projection system that could result in unpredictable thermal output and potential self-immolation."
"...So that's a maybe?"
"That is a no, Miko."
"Okay, but what about the axe? Can the axe do colors?"
"No."
"What if—"
"No."
Jack, who had been listening to this exchange from the human-sized observation platform that Ratchet had hastily constructed (with blast shielding, as requested), leaned over to Raf and whispered: "Is it weird that the giant alien robot leader is the most patient person I've ever met and also the most violent?"
Raf, who was twelve years old and processing the events of the past week with the quiet analytical intensity that would eventually make him one of Earth's greatest scientists, adjusted his glasses and said: "I think it's called 'compartmentalization.' I read about it in a psychology textbook."
"You read psychology textbooks?"
"I read everything."
"That tracks."
They watched Miko attempt to convince Optimus to deploy the energon hooks "just for a second, just so I can get a picture, I'll use a good filter, you'll look AMAZING." Optimus declined. Miko pivoted to the missile launchers. Optimus declined again. Miko pivoted to the chest-mounted particle beam cannon. Optimus's optics widened in a way that suggested he had forgotten that particular weapon existed and was briefly alarmed by the reminder.
"Perhaps," Marcus-Optimus said, gently extracting himself from the conversation with the diplomatic skill of a Prime who had spent millennia negotiating with beings far more dangerous than a fifteen-year-old with a smartphone, "we could continue this discussion at a later time. I have... strategic planning to attend to."
"Can I watch you do strategic planning?"
"No."
"Can I film you doing strategic planning?"
"No."
"Can I—"
"Miko." He knelt down—carefully, because the size differential between them meant that "kneeling" still put his head about twelve feet above hers, but it was the gesture that mattered. "I am grateful for your enthusiasm. Truly. Your spirit is... remarkable. But I need you to understand that what I do—what I am—is not entertainment. It is not content for your social media. It is war. And war, no matter how necessary, is not something to celebrate."
Miko looked up at him. For a moment—just a moment—the manic energy faded, and something more thoughtful took its place. Something that suggested that underneath the punk rock exterior and the adrenaline addiction and the absolute inability to stay where she was told, there was a person who understood more than she let on.
"I know it's war," she said. "I know it's serious. But... you're protecting people, Optimus. You're protecting us. And I think that's worth celebrating. Even if it's scary. Even if it's—" She paused. Searched for the right word. "—messy."
Marcus-Optimus felt the Matrix pulse warmly.
"You are wise beyond your years, Miko Nakadai."
"Does that mean I can see the flamethrowers?"
"...We will discuss it."
"YES!" She pumped her fist and sprinted toward Bulkhead, who flinched involuntarily. "BULKHEAD! HE SAID WE'LL DISCUSS IT! THAT'S BASICALLY A YES!"
"It is NOT basically a yes—" Marcus-Optimus started, but she was already gone, a blur of pink-streaked hair and boundless energy, and he was left kneeling on the floor of the Autobot base, surrounded by his team, his humans, his family, and the quiet, impossible, ridiculous certainty that despite everything—the violence, the fear, the face-dragging, the Decepticon death threats, the flamethrowers, the flamethrowers—this was exactly where he was supposed to be.
He stood up. Rolled his shoulders. Felt the weapons hum beneath his plating, felt the Matrix hum in his chest, felt the weight of responsibility and the warmth of purpose and the absolute, unshakeable conviction that he would protect these people—all of these people, human and Cybertronian alike—with everything he had.
Which, given the increasingly ridiculous number of weapons that kept manifesting in his frame, was quite a lot.
"Ratchet," he said.
"What, Optimus."
"Run another weapons diagnostic on me."
"WHY?"
"Because I just felt something click in my left shin and I want to make sure it's not another flamethrower."
Ratchet stared at him. Stared at his shin. Put down his tools. Picked up his medical scanner. Put down his medical scanner. Picked up a wrench instead. Held the wrench like he was seriously considering using it as a weapon against the concept of Optimus Prime in general.
"I am going to retire," Ratchet said, with absolute conviction. "I am going to find a nice, quiet planet with no wars and no Primes and no flamethrowers manifesting in people's shins, and I am going to retire, and nobody is going to stop me."
"It might just be a joint actuator."
"It is NEVER 'just a joint actuator' with you anymore, Optimus! Last time you said 'it might be nothing,' it was a PARTICLE BEAM CANNON!"
"That is a fair point."
"I know it's a fair point! I MADE the fair point! Now hold still and let me scan your shin before it shoots something!"
Marcus-Optimus held still. Ratchet scanned. And in the corner, Bulkhead held Miko's phone and stared into the middle distance and wondered, not for the first time, if there was a support group for Autobots whose favorite humans had emotionally abandoned them for their team leader.
If there was, he was going to be the founding member.
And the only member.
And probably also the secretary.
Being Bulkhead was suffering.
In the Realm of the Primes...
The Thirteen stood around the viewing portal in silence. The events on the Nemesis flight deck replayed in slow motion—Starscream's faceless head, the severed wing, the arranged remains, Megatron's face as he stared down at them.
"Well," said Prima, after a long, very long, extremely long pause. "That happened."
Nobody disagreed.
Megatronus had filled three datapads.
"I have questions," he said, his stylus still moving. "How did he modulate the ground bridge frequency to maximize abrasive contact? That's not standard bridge physics. That's improvised bridge physics. He weaponized a ground bridge. On the fly. While flying. While holding a screaming Seeker by one wing. That's—"
"Horrifying," Alpha Trion offered.
"Brilliant."
"HORRIFYING."
"Both things can be true, Alpha Trion."
Solus Prime had stopped examining weapon schematics and was now staring at the viewing portal with an expression that combined professional interest with what could only be described as maternal concern. "The flamethrowers are definitely spontaneous manifestation. They weren't there yesterday. His frame is generating new weapons autonomously. It's as if the Matrix is... responding to his combative intent and producing tools to match."
"The Matrix doesn't DO that," Prima said. "The Matrix has NEVER done that. I designed the Matrix. It is a repository of wisdom and leadership, not a weapons manufacturing facility!"
"Tell that to the flamethrowers."
"I—" Prima sputtered. "I can't tell things to flamethrowers! They're FLAMETHROWERS!"
"Technically, they're precision plasma projection systems with dual-nozzle—"
"SOLUS."
"I'm just saying, the engineering is remarkable—"
"Can we PLEASE focus on the fact that our successor is fighting like a berserker from the Rust Age and may or may not be generating an infinite arsenal from his own body?"
Vector Prime cleared his throat. "There's... one more thing."
Everyone turned to him.
"His shin," Vector Prime said. "The thing he felt click in his shin."
"What about it?"
Vector Prime consulted his temporal analysis. Read the results. Read them again. Closed his optics. Opened them.
"It's a grenade launcher."
Silence.
"Of COURSE it is," Prima said, throwing his hands up. "Of COURSE there's a grenade launcher in his shin. Why WOULDN'T there be a grenade launcher in his shin?! Next you'll tell me he's going to find a sword in his SPINE!"
"He already has the axe in his spine."
"A DIFFERENT sword!"
Vector Prime checked again. "...Give it two weeks."
Prima sat down. On the floor. Of the Realm of the Primes. The most dignified location in all of existence. And he sat on the floor like a being who had been defeated not by an enemy but by the sheer, relentless absurdity of the universe he had helped create.
"I need a drink," he said.
"We don't drink," Alpha Trion reminded him. "We're ascended metaphysical entities."
"Then I need to invent drinking. Solus, can you forge me a cup?"
"I can forge you a cup that's also a weapon, if you want."
"Please stop making everything a weapon."
"I didn't start this! Blame the Matrix! Or blame whatever cosmic entity decided to put a human's consciousness in our successor's body and give him the combat protocols of a version of himself from a universe where the primary directorial aesthetic is EXPLOSIONS!"
That brought everyone up short.
"...She's right," Nexus Prime said. "Whatever is happening to Optimus—the weapons, the aggression, the flamethrowers—it's not random. It's not corruption. It's integration. He's becoming something new. Something that's neither the Optimus this universe was supposed to have nor the Bayverse Optimus whose memories he's carrying. He's becoming a synthesis."
"A synthesis of what?" Prima asked.
"Of everything. Every version of Optimus Prime that has ever existed, focused through the lens of a human soul that loved them all. The philosopher. The warrior. The leader. The executioner. He's all of them, Prima. And the Matrix knows it. That's why it's giving him weapons. That's why it's responding to him in ways it's never responded to anyone before. Because for the first time in history, it has a bearer who understands what it means to fight not because you want to, but because you've seen what happens when you don't."
The Thirteen considered this. They looked at the viewing portal, where Optimus Prime was currently standing very still while Ratchet scanned his shin with the frantic energy of a medic who expected to find a gun where a joint should be.
Ratchet found the grenade launcher.
His scream was audible in the Realm of the Primes.
Megatronus started a fourth datapad.
"I'm going to write a book," he said, to nobody in particular. "I'm going to call it The Art of Disproportionate Response: A Study in Applied Violence by a Really Angry Prime."
"That's a terrible title," Alpha Trion said.
"It's a WORKING title."
"It's a terrible WORKING title."
"Your FACE is a terrible working title."
"That doesn't even make SENSE—"
"QUIET," Prima said, from the floor, where he was still sitting. "Just... quiet. Everyone. Please. I need to process the fact that my successor has a grenade launcher in his shin and flamethrowers in his forearms and apparently the capacity to weaponize a ground bridge, and I need to process this in SILENCE."
The Thirteen went silent. The viewing portal hummed. Somewhere in the material universe, Ratchet was having a breakdown and Miko was asking if she could see the grenade launcher and Bulkhead was crying and Megatron was not sleeping and Starscream was in intensive care and Optimus Prime was standing in the middle of all of it, calm and resolute and armed to the teeth, and the Matrix in his chest was humming with a warmth that felt like approval from a source much, much older than any of them.
"He's going to be fine," Nexus Prime said, quietly.
"The UNIVERSE isn't going to be fine," Prima muttered.
"Maybe that's the point."
Prima looked up. "What?"
"Maybe the universe needs a Prime who isn't fine. Maybe it needs a Prime who's angry, and scared, and tired, and human in all the ways that matter and Cybertronian in all the ways that count. Maybe it needs a Prime who has too many weapons and not enough patience and the willingness to drag a Seeker's face off to protect a school full of children. Maybe that's what the Matrix has been waiting for all along."
Prima stared at Nexus for a long moment. Then he looked at the viewing portal. Then he looked at Megatronus, who had stopped writing and was looking at Nexus with an expression that was—despite his very best efforts to prevent it—unmistakably, undeniably, irreversibly proud.
"Fine," Prima said. "FINE. He can have the grenade launcher. He can have the flamethrowers. He can have WHATEVER the Matrix wants to give him. But if a railgun shows up in his OTHER shin, I am filing a FORMAL COMPLAINT with Primus."
"Noted," Vector Prime said, checking his temporal analysis one more time. "For the record, it's not a railgun."
"Oh, thank the Allspark—"
"It's a shotgun."
"I HATE EVERYTHING."
END OF CHAPTER 2
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Yeah, so Starscream's dead. Or at least, he's in the Cybertronian equivalent of intensive care with no face and one wing and a really compelling argument for never going near a school again. Knockout is working on him. Knockout is... not having a great time. There's only so much a medic can do when the patient's face has been literally sanded off by weaponized spatial distortion energy and the patient's boss keeps showing up to stare at the remains with an expression that suggests he's rethinking his entire career trajectory.
Some of you are going to say "that was too violent." To which I say: he threatened CHILDREN. In the show, Starscream threatened Jack, Miko, and Raf multiple times and kept getting away with it because TFP had rating restrictions and the writers couldn't actually follow through on the implied consequences. This is not TFP. This is a crackfic with a Bayverse Optimus, and Bayverse Optimus does not do "implied consequences." Bayverse Optimus does ACTUAL consequences. With IMPLEMENTS.
Also, yes, weapons are manifesting in his frame. No, I will not explain how. Yes, it will continue. No, there is no upper limit. The Matrix has decided that its new bearer is a walking armory and it is going to COMMIT to that aesthetic. Think of it like a video game where you keep finding weapon upgrades except the game is reality and the weapon upgrades are appearing inside your own body and the person playing doesn't remember buying the DLC.
Next chapter: Unicron. Optimus finds out this planet is Unicron. Optimus... reacts.
Bulkhead update: Still sad. Miko update: Started a second fan page. This one has a fire emoji AND a robot emoji. Cliffjumper update: Found him in the storage bay at 3 AM holding a blanket he made out of packing materials. We're getting him help.
Megatron update: Hasn't slept in four days. Soundwave has seventeen recordings. Knockout is considering defection. Breakdown refused to leave the ship. The Vehicon union (yes, there is a Vehicon union, it was formed in response to recent events, their first demand was "please stop sending us to fight Optimus Prime") has submitted a formal grievance.
The Vehicon union's grievance was denied.
The Vehicon union is not happy about this.
Neither are the Vehicons.
AuthorDude