Reforged - Part 5

[heliopauseentertainments]

Part 5 contains chapters 71-87.

Continuity: IDW1

Rating: Teen

Relationship: Megatron/Rodimus

Characters: Megatron, Rodimus, Prowl, Mistress of Flame, Minimus Ambus, Ultra Magnus, Torchbearers, the Lost Light crew

Warnings: Suggestive themes, occasional depictions of trauma, alcohol & drug use, some gore, canon divergence and canon blending. Slow burn. Incredibly slow burn. Please see AO3 entry for full applicable tags.

AO3 Summary: In which Rodimus is "mistaken" as the reincarnation of Solus Prime.

A fanfic novel with themes of romance, xenoreligion, reincarnation, the role of fate, and religious political conspiracies, Reforged expands on the moon colony of Caminus, its dominant culture, and what myth means to a recalcitrant "former" Prime on "vacation" to forestall fate, a condemned war criminal living on borrowed time, and an obsessed investigator fixated on discovering a dangerous hidden agenda.

Crossposting: AO3

Chapters under each labeled cut. Please see AO3 for the most up-to-date versions. Some chapters may have chapter specific warnings not covered by the overall tags, so please mind the warning notes where applicable.

Chapter 71

Rodimus had not spent much time awake lately. Finding himself senseless except for touch in Megatron’s arms in the hot spot had been a new low for him during these trials. The familiar touch and knowing he was safe had been some measure of consolation. Nothing would have happened to him, he had known. But ever since he had been placed in something soft, presumably the berth they shared in the temple, he had struggled to maintain consciousness.

His internal chronometer made little sense whenever he tried to check it. He’d broken it. Was it the same day? Was it a week later? Rodimus could only wait to find out for sure.

Perhaps that had been intentional. Perhaps he’d been given anesthetics to ease him through repairs. That would make sense. Getting new… whatever all had to be replaced would probably not feel great to be aware of.

It was a shame he had failed. The hot spot was still dead. The sparks were still dying. He’d failed them. All for nothing. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to join them.

Something touched his face, a gentle but firm hand. Then a popping sensation. A pixelated flash of light. Then another popping sensation next to the first.

A face came into view, still somewhat blurry.

A face he knew well.

Megatron was leaning over him, holding some kind of tool in his hand. It looked like a pair of pliers.

Rodimus tried to say something, but no sound came out. Not a thing. No sound came in either.

Megatron held up a finger to his mouth, an indication to be quiet.

Maybe he had been talking.

The pliers disappeared and returned with a piece of blue glass clasped tightly. The glass was brought close to his face before being gently slotted into place, protecting the raw optic in the orbit behind it and clearing its vision. Another piece was brought in to match, Rodimus’s sight now fully restored.

One more face lingered at the foot of the berth, standing over what looked to be Megatron’s surgical kit rolled out on the covers.

Ratchet.

His mouth was moving.

They were talking, but Rodimus had no idea what was being said. It would probably take some time to repair his hearing. It was a shame Rodimus had never really learned to speak hand. That would have come in handy right now.

Ratchet pulled something out of his subspace, a small datapad, handing it over to Megatron, who, in turn, held it up for Rodimus to see with his freshly-installed optics.

His vocalizer activated, but he wasn’t sure what came out, only what he thought he wanted to say.

The screen showed a hot spot, glowing with newborns. Warm. Healthy. Alive.

He wanted to say “Where is this? What happened?” There was so little he knew, so much he wanted to ask.

What were they trying to tell him?

Had he… done it?

Had he saved the newsparks? Apparently he had managed to verbalize that question because both Megatron and Ratchet nodded.

Leaping before looking had done it once again. There was a stretching pain as his mouth pulled into a smile.

Worth it.

 

---

 

“He’s an idiot,” Megatron complained, while Ratchet supervised and tucked away the photograph he’d brought. He hadn’t been here long, but it appeared Megatron had done little but stabilize Rodimus since the trial ended. Perhaps he was worried about making a mistake, that was likely why he had asked for Ratchet’s presence. Strange, given how Megatron almost always met challenges with unshakable confidence bordering on bravado.

Ratchet had come as soon as he could peel himself from the throng of cheering Camiens on the temple grounds. They had, justifiably, been celebrating the rebirth of their moon’s hot spot, but in their fervor they made for better walls than doors. On his way to the habsuite, Ratchet had even seen priests ducking in and out of the tunnel. They had emerged with shining, freshly-harvested sparks, wreathed in their sentio metallico raiments and cushioned on little pillows, newborns immediately shuffled off to the beginnings of their lives.

Based on Megatron’s initial description of the injuries, Rodimus probably had no idea what he’d managed to do. All of these new Camiens owed him their very lives. How many of their species already did? The cold constructed Cybertronians, this batch of sparks, all of those in the Bronze Harvest, and how many others? Perhaps Drift had been onto something, thinking that Rodimus was crucial in some greater plan.

Just before joining Megatron at Rodimus’s bedside, Ratchet had despaired at the thought of a “greater plan” even existing. It had always unsettled him to think of divinity, something far beyond their capacity to know, meddling like they were but playthings, so he’d always rejected the very notion.

Now, though, Ratchet had more pressing and thankfully more mundane concerns as Rodimus was repaired in the comfort of his own berth.

It was strange watching Megatron work, the captain carefully checking that Rodimus’s new optics had been installed properly by waving a finger for vision tracking. He’d seen it before, sure, both for minor injuries and for his unprecedented healing of Drift from a zero point. Ratchet wasn’t sure he would ever get used to it.

It was also strange that the Mistress of Flame hadn’t had Rodimus treated at a hospital, but instead decided that whatever care Megatron could provide would have been sufficient. Something about that didn’t sit right with him, but so much about the organization of these “trials” got his hackles up.

“He’s always been an idiot,” he agreed. Now, while Rodimus was still deaf, was definitely the time to drag him, at least a little bit. From the way Megatron had delicately placed the replacement optics into their homes and from how tenderly he had welded broken plating, Ratchet knew the rude epithet was meant with as much affection as a jaded cynic could possibly funnel into it. Every touch was almost reverent. If he hadn’t known that his beliefs on the supernatural were the same as Megatron’s, he would have thought the unlicensed medic was performing an act of worship. “You aren’t the first to say so and probably won’t be the last.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s lucky you were there.” It was less unbelievable these days, but even knowing better, Ratchet’s processor tended summon images of horror at thoughts of Megatron’s involvement in anything. It would take a long time for the new to overwrite the old. “He would have died without whatever you did.”

Silence.

Megatron merely held out his hand for Ratchet to take the pliers and change them out with something else. Probably a mild paralytic mixed with anesthetic to keep Rodimus from moving… and babbling. Fixing his hearing would be a tricky process and the slightest movement could cause further damage.

He handed over the bottle of the necessary drugs and a syringe, the cap of the needle still in place. Ratchet would let Megatron have the fun the pulling it off with his teeth.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Megatron suddenly stiffened.

“I don’t mean that as some sort of slight to your image of stoic detachment. It’s just an observation.” Megatron scowled, turning away as he drew up the medication into the syringe. “It’s natural to love. Not everyone does, of course, but it’s just as normal to love as not.”

“Ratchet, I didn’t ask for you to—“

“Why did you ask for my help anyway?” he interrupted. “You could have asked any of the Lost Light’s medics and they would have agreed, even Spinister. Even Nickel.”

With a sigh, Megatron administered the medication, Rodimus mumbling something incoherent before going quiet. He reached out, patting the unconscious co-captain gingerly on the cheekguard. It was a brazen move, wordlessly confessing that Ratchet had been correct without having to actually say the incriminating words.

Handing the tools back to Ratchet, he knelt down next to the low Camien berth.

“I wanted someone here in case something went wrong. Spinister, while brilliant, gifted even, is not my choice for moral support. You and Nickel share a bedside manner but I do not have the same rapport with her. I have little use for First Aid’s commentary. Velocity would try to comfort me if something went awry in the treatment and in her good nature, she would cover for my mistakes. And you….”

Another sigh. Megatron still wouldn’t meet his gaze, only watching Rodimus’s sleeping face with what could be described as a soft, yearning concern.

“Ratchet, I trust that if something goes wrong, you will tell the truth, even if it were to my detriment, even if it meant Drift would come for me.” From the way Megatron shoulders slumped, Ratchet could only assume he would hold still and allow Drift to take revenge for his friend.

“A high compliment, especially from you.”

Another pause before Megatron changed tack, ignoring Ratchet’s comment.

“I would see the stars burn out before I let anything happen to him.”

Ratchet hadn’t asked about that, but alright.

“You’ve cared for him for a long time, haven’t you? Long before we came here.”

There was a sheepish nod, as though Megatron were ashamed of himself. Ratchet couldn’t determine if the source of shame was the feelings themselves or an internal sense that Megatron was unworthy. Maybe it was both.

“He deserves better, but refuses to see it.” Megatron held a hand out towards Ratchet, palm up. “I need a screwdriver to get his audio panel open.”

Chapter 72

Prowl’s habsuite on the Lost Light was cramped, already being small for one mech, but two, even with one being a minibot, was pushing the envelope a little. They had at least managed to source another chair for Minimus to sit on, but the additional furniture really only added to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

He had known Minimus would bring him the news as soon as the dust settled, as per their arrangement.

Star Saber, which was apparently that creature’s Primus-forsaken name, had stopped growling at Prowl an hour ago, having immediately perched on Prowl’s berth upon arriving in the habsuite.

The weird mechanimal had not yet been returned to its caretakers.

Interesting.

However, unfortunately, the lack of growling meant he was left with uncomfortable silence whenever Minimus paused his report on what data he had gathered from the more recent trial.

Together, they had witnessed what they could, waiting in the crowd, hearing little more than the sounds of struggling from the media drones, but Prowl had left early to ready his habsuite and center of operations.

“It appears in the course of events, Rodimus was severely injured. He was remanded to Megatron for treatment, rather than taken to a local medical center. I’m not sure why.” And an impromptu surgery would hardly be the place for a mechanimal prone to biting and getting underfoot. That explained the small monster Minimus had lugged along to their meeting.

“How injured did he seem to be?” he asked, reaching for his mug of warmed fuel. Optimus would want to know, especially if the injuries could be linked to Megatron… or the Mistress of Flame.

“I… I didn’t get a chance to see. I wasn’t allowed in. Only Ratchet was because Megatron had specifically requested his presence.” Minimus’s mustache seemed to droop. What a strange bit of decorative plating. It held all manner of tells. It was obvious that Minimus was worried for his friends. Rodimus did tend to summon chaos wherever he went, so that worry was understandable. Even Prowl could acknowledge that.

“We’ll get the details from Ratchet later, but for now it seems as though Rodimus managed to reignite the hot spot… or, at the very least, the already extant sparks that had failed to properly ignite.”

“Yes, that is about the size of it.”

Prowl sighed before picking up his mug and taking a swig. It briefly occurred to him that, perhaps, it would have been polite to prepare a mug for Minimus or at least offer one. As it stood, however, he only had the one mug and he wasn’t feeling particularly like a gracious host. Resources were limited and their alliance was built on mutual benefit, not friendship.

They would cooperate against a shared enemy, at least for the time being. Prowl still kept a target on Megatron, a pin to remind him not to let the former warlord too far from the center of his investigation. For now, though, the Camien government was a more immediate threat. The data, in the form of secret, florid love poetry, showed that, for the time being, Rodimus was safest in Megatron’s care, especially if Ratchet were there as well. At this point, Prowl doubted that Megatron’s grand scheme, whatever it was, would purposefully entail hurting Rodimus, using him certainly, but not hurting him.

The mug was returned to its coaster with a soft clack. Minimus, in his stuffy upper-class etiquette, said nothing. Prowl decided to take that as the tacit all clear for his willful ignorance of social graces. Good. He hated those. They only ever got in the way.

“I suppose we’re going to have to wait for more details then. More will probably leak out during the Camiens’ celebrating and Rodimus being a blabbermouth whenever he’s in better shape.” Pulling out a datapad, Prowl cleared his vocalizer with a cough. “For now, we should go over some other data.”

The datapad was propped on a stand and turned so they could both view it.

“This is the data from those slugs I found in Saxetum. I had the contents converted at the archives. I’m not sure yet, but I have a suspicion it could be beneficial. We need more information on the local religion and given where these were located, the odds are high that we’ll get at least something usable.”

Prowl scrolled around the list of files with his finger, sorting by timestamps. They seemed to be nonsense, but by whatever internal metric the datapad was using, the files ended up arranged in some kind of order. The one at the top was meant to have been the most recent, but he could only guess.

“We’ll start here. I’ll need you to provide more information about Camien culture when we interpret whatever this is.”

Minimus scoffed.

“I’m hardly an expert—“

“No, but you know more than I do, and like I said, you’re not in on what the Camiens are doing. That’s good enough for me right now.”

He touched the top file, opening it.

A voice called out, the screen filling with a point-of-view shot of some machine. The optics of the narrator looked up at what appeared to be a large ship, tethered to the ground in a rocky valley.

This was someone’s memory, retrieved and stored. Maybe or maybe not voluntarily, they couldn’t say at this point. The visible HUD had an archaic format, the layout belying the ancient vintage.

“Caminus.” The deep, eerily familiar voice, the accent archaic, shouting on the retrieved data was crackled and distorted, probably damaged over the course of millions of years. Even in ideal, isolated conditions like that stone box underneath Saxetum’s solar temple, some data degradation was to be expected. The voice reminded him of Megatron, but that was hopefully a coincidence.

Prowl didn’t believe in coincidences, but for once… he wished he did.

“Caminus, please open up. I need to speak with you. It’s about Solus.”

Solus.

Prowl’s optics went wide as he watched. Whose memory was this? He had thought the timestamps to be a mistake, nonsense dates, the result of failed data conversion. No… these were dates using the old calendar, something changed out not long before Prowl was constructed. He wasn’t as familiar with it, but he should have recognized it, especially since Caminus seemed to use that same archaic method of timekeeping.

The view panned upward, a clanking noise signaling the impending descent of a landing ramp. The mech who left this memory stood stock still and silent, waiting for it to reach him, evidence of this person’s patience and discipline. Once the ramp was settled, he stalked up the ramp in careful, confident, even strides. This was someone who knew their body well and how to move effectively, someone accustomed to combat.

The memory cut off here before jumping forward about fifteen minutes, according to what was visible of the narrator’s HUD. The fact that footage was missing without being a separate file either indicated editing, data degradation, or injury to the mech’s memory storage before retrieval. Prowl would need more information before he could make that determination.

The memory now showed the brain of a titan, floating above its station. Prowl had heard that titan brains weren’t hardwired in that same way as those of average mechs, but he’d yet to see one for himself.

Glyphs flashed above the brain, the titan attempting to communicate. It was preferred to verbal communication for that class of mech, but unfortunately… Prowl had no experience in interpreting the glyphs used only by titans. Some were shared between modern Neocybex, so he could hazard a guess, but it wouldn’t be reliably accurate.

He thought he saw the glyph for “sun” flash repeatedly, like a question. Why? What did the sun have to do with anything?

Wanting to consult Windblade was a rare occasion, but her expertise both as a Camien and a cityspeaker were presently far beyond his reach. She might also be a tainted source despite her honest reputation and new Autobot quasi-allegiance, if she turned out to be more loyal to Camien institutions than truth. A hypocritical thought, Prowl knew.

“Who—“ Prowl shushed Minimus.

The brain on the screen continued to flash more glyphs, including “sun” several more times.

“No, Caminus. I’m sorry.” The voice sounded… remorseful. “Solus is gone.”

An unknown glyph and then “sun” again but in vigorous, insistent repetition.

“She’s dead, Caminus.”

Chapter 73

“She’s dead, Caminus.”

Dead.

The voice reverberated with finality in Minimus’s processor, even with the audio distortions of the old data.

Of course, she was dead. That was hardly news millions of years in the future where Solus Prime’s demise was a well-known matter of public record… even if some of the details had become mythologized over time. Even Cybertron retained the legend that she had been murdered. All the same, Minimus was unsettled by the first-hand account, the relaying of dreadful news from presumably one friend of hers to another. The identity of the narrator, the donor of this memory, was still not known.

Minimus shifted in his seat, hands folded together to keep himself grounded.

The titan continued to ask for her, or at least mention her, frantic glyphs floating across the surface of the brain.

Or at least, that was how he interpreted the pointed use of the symbol for “sun.”

The Camiens often associated Solus with solar imagery. She was likely the main focus of the solar temple in Saxetum, but there had been so much erosion and ruination over time that, combined with his lack of expertise, Minimus couldn’t say for certain. Perhaps that was an outgrowth of this titan’s name for her. He doubted the titan on screen was asking what day it was.

Glyphs, including “sun” but many more including “friend” and possibly “pain,” stretched in bright yellows, agitated oranges. Perhaps the color-speech of titans was the inspiration for sprectralism’s spiritual interpretation of colors, he thought, trying not to let unrelated speculation distract him from the actual content of the footage. The occasional screen tearing effect didn’t help matters much.

The news of Solus’s passing must have been deeply traumatic for Caminus, as his close friendship with her was well-attested in the surviving records. Seeing it in real-time was a vastly different experience from the reading of cold fact. The static distortion and wild motion of the glyphs as they scattered spoke to the titan’s distress.

“I’m sorry.” The unknown voice continued. It was deep and gravelly, not unlike someone who had spent a significant time inhaling certain perfumed and chemical-laden smokes for recreation. Or who had spent time on burning battlefields. That would produce a similar effect depending on the length and frequency of exposure. All signs pointed to this person being a warrior of some kind, from the stance and disciplined motion. “You needed to hear it from me first. The officials won’t care how you feel, just that you’ll be in sufficient shape to launch.”

The implication being that the speaker was genuinely concerned with how Caminus would respond to the news. Out of the corner of his optic, Minimus saw Prowl lean closer to the screen. It was hard to interpret what the speaker was feeling through his voice alone. This person was likely stoic, either by nature or through rigorous discipline. It could be a hard habit to break in moments of sincerity, something Minimus knew all too well.

More glyphs flashed, but they went too quickly for Minimus to recognize any, even with his minimal understanding of the way titans used glyphs to communicate. Life on such a scale was difficult to comprehend. It was a wonder sometimes that he and that titan were the same species, members of the same people. Furthermore, with the titan in this alt-mode, there were no facial expressions to provide additional clues beyond the few blatant signals of distress.

The view shook, whether from data degradation or the titan moving. Perhaps both. However, then the mech who provided the memory stumbled once before regaining his footing. It had been Caminus moving. Trembling most likely, an expression of his grief while locked into this shape.

The bob of movement gave enough perspective to indicate that their narrator was also tall, almost forty feet given the similar view he had in the Magnus armor. He was also most likely broad given his presumed profession and the way his weight had shifted to compensate for the titan shifting.

“Take your time to grieve.” There was a sigh. “She thought of you, of us, often. Wherever she is, I’m sure she misses you too.”

More glyphs, hesitant and lingering, appeared. The sign for “friend” appeared, slow enough that Minimus’s optics could catch it as it scrawled bright green.

“No, I… I can’t come with you. Caminus, I have to leave Cybertron, but I need you to keep something safe for me, for Solus. Can do you do that?”

A single glyph appeared, which seemed to indicate a positive response.

“Thank you, I—“

He was cut off by more glyphs flashing, red and pleading. Probably a request in return.

“Yes, I’ll visit your newsparks before I go. I promise.” The speaker approached a console in front of where the brain floated high overhead, looking down as he touched it. Each motion caused a brief moment of static distortion in the footage. A huge, dark gray hand with a heavily armored wrist came into view. That wasn’t normal plating, but extra shielding, further confirmation that this mech was a professional warrior of some kind. Minimus was no expert on ancient Cybertronian cultures, but the style, sharp lines and points connecting sloping curves, reminded him of later depictions of Darklander armor. “I’ll tell them goodbye for her. It’s a shame she won’t see who they’ll become with your help.”

A drawer was pulled open on the console and several dataslugs were put inside, the same model as the ones on Prowl’s desk but certainly less banged up by the ravages of time.

“One more.” Another slug entered the frame. The mech turned his wrist over, flipped a panel cover open and inserted the slug just before the feed cut and the file reached its end.

Well, that was certainly more convenient than mnemosurgery. What a technology to lose to information creep. Megatron would have probably still found it distasteful but he could hardly be blamed for his discomfort with anything involving physically externalizing one’s memories. It was one thing to write them down, but it was quite another to remove or change them.

“Prowl, I—“

Prowl slammed his palms down on the desk, rattling the entire thing and every item on it. The mug, and its contents, threatened to abandon its coaster.

“What did we just watch?”

“Prowl, I think… I think we just saw one of Megatronus’s last memories.”

“What are we supposed to do with this? What kind of evidence is this?”

Certainly nothing immediately useful for figuring out what the modern day Camiens were up to, Minimus had to concede. However, the fact that this data not only existed and was in their hands was in and of itself astounding. If they were historians, this would have been a treasure trove. As it stood though, they were detectives… or at least trying to be, trying to sort through for clues to the current problem.

“… There’s more, isn’t there? That seems like a good place to start. Perhaps we can get more context.”

“Yes, but it feels like we’re wasting our time.” Prowl’s glower was pointedly aimed at the screen, now displaying the list of files once more, not Minimus and his apparently less than ideal suggestion.

“That’s not very thorough of you. We need to comb through every detail. You never know where the tiniest clue could be hiding. You know that by now, surely, in all your years of investigative legwork.”

Prowl’s remaining optic twitched but he nodded, a silent admission that Minimus had a point. With a sigh, he queued up the next memory before holding out the now cold mug of fuel towards his guest.

“Thank you, but….” Minimus put up his hands, waving them in polite refusal as he tried to keep a look of disgust from his face. A used, shared mug of fuel? Disgusting. Besides, it was a little late in the visit for Prowl to remember how to be a good host. “I appreciate the offer but I would rather have my own.”

“I only have the one mug.”

They had a mountain of work ahead of them, but the soft snoring nearby indicated that Star Saber had picked a fortuitous time to take a nap. He’d rather the impressionable young thing not see him make such questionable, ill-advised choices. With a nod, Minimus hesitantly held out his hand to accept the proffered drink.

“Thank you, Prowl.” An odd phrase. “That’s very kind.” Odder.

Chapter 74

“Babe, where’d you go?”

Did Rodimus have to whine? The soft singing of hymns of praise for what Rodimus had done for Caminus in the yard below the balcony was already aggravating enough.

The room was small but with the berth facing the balcony, it made sense that Rodimus couldn’t see him from there, not when he’d gone to the cupboard to prepare medicated fuel. The temple staff delivered plain fuel, seasoned only with apologies, for a late supper. Megatron knew that Rodimus would need more than hollow fuel, merely something to burn, to recover.

“I’m still here,” Megatron replied, measuring out some additives into a small cup of glowing energon.

It didn’t even occur to him that he was now actively responding to the pet name. Camiens cups were so… delicate and inefficient for a full meal, but they were a good size for serving small doses of medication. Several large drops of liquid anesthetic, some iron for general support, additional repair nanites in solution, and copper for immune boosting. The small bottles of additives were tucked back into Megatron’s surgical kit.

Unfortunately for Rodimus, a medical kit didn’t generally have additives meant to provide a pleasant flavor. He would just have to choke down the bitter mixture and live with it. The diminutive serving size would be the only blessing.

Star Saber was still with Minimus, even a few days into Rodimus’s recovery, but primarily for the fact that tiny teeth and electromagnet feet were not good accompaniments for a tender frame. Sure, the creature’s purring and chirping would probably do wonders for the patient’s morale, but Megatron would prefer to not have to also treat small cuts from “love nibbles” and hear Rodimus complain about additional pain. Star Saber was in good hands for the time being.

It wouldn't be long before it would too dark to effectively see what he was doing. Any minute now the automatic lights would dim, leaving them bathed in only the pale green glow of moon's host planet. Caminus was in the part of its orbital cycle that kept the gas giant visible during the moon's night. This cycle repeated every few days, leading to both bright and dark nights, an interesting astronomical phenomenon.

Even the light on these "bright nights" wasn't enough to do detailed medical work by, not without supplementary sources of light. Megatron had learned the hard way on the Warren to not measure by energon's meager glow. Now though, at least he was finished for the evening.

The surgical kit was left propped against the wall of the habsuite when Megatron approached the berth with the treated fuel.

"Sit up," he said, knowing he would still have to help Rodimus do even that. It must have been hard for someone normally so spirited and energetic to just lay there, more or less motionless, for so long.

In response, Rodimus only whined again, pitiful and needy. Megatron, kneeling down, was sure that to some extent his co-captain was playing it up for extra sympathy. There was no need, seeing as he was already in poor enough condition.

He slipped a hand beneath Rodimus's back and eased him upright enough to administer the medication. At least the repair work that could done was finished, senses put back where they ought to be and vital wiring replaced. All that was left was to convalesce until strength was regained and pain subsided.

"And don't spit it out this time—"

"I don't want it," Rodimus interrupted. Megatron knew what the complaint would be before it could even be uttered.

"I can't change how it tastes." He was no chemist.

"It's so bitter and sludgy." Rodimus wrinkled his nose in disgust and tried to turn away from the cup at his lips. That was just what supplementary nanites did to a solution. It couldn't be helped. Rodimus had fried most of his native nanites, and some of Megatron's, in that jumper cable stunt of his. They would need replacing and his frame wouldn’t manufacture enough at an adequate speed without either supplementation or a C.R. chamber.

"Don't be stubborn,” said a notoriously stubborn mech. The irony was not lost on him. “It's barely an eighth of a cube."

The singing outside stopped. On one hand, he was grateful, but on the other hand, it could have been a bad portent.

“Has Rodimus Prime recovered?” The Mistress of Flame’s voice rose up, as smooth as a silver-tongued politician’s campaign speech, over the balcony and in through the open doors. Rather than shout from where he knelt and risk damaging Rodimus’s freshly installed hearing, Megatron opted to prop Rodimus up against the charging console in the headboard.

“Drink it.” He pointed sternly at the cup left in Rodimus’s hand before walking out to see what the foolish priestess needed.

The distant, cold sun was beginning to dip down below the moon's far horizon, leaving only the eerie green glow of the gas giant to dominate the view. The planet with its swirling and shifting gales almost entirely filled Caminus's sky. Prokellox. That was the name, if he remembered correctly. Minimus would know for sure.

In a handful of weeks, it would come fully between the moon and the sun in an eclipse, a semiannual astronomical event given the size of the celestial body. Megatron briefly wondered if they would be here to see it, but, for now, more urgent matters demanded his attention.

On the balcony, Megatron stood at the railing, frowning down at the gathered worshipers. A mixture of clergy and laypeople, almost all with reverent red eye paint, with the high priestess in the middle. She must have been a recent arrival, her presence likely being what had interrupted the choir.

Religious practice unnerved him, but the singers had been thus far harmless, merely expressing whatever it was that had moved in their sparks. It wasn’t something he’d ever understood. In fact, he’d spent a long time despising it. Now though, as long as they didn’t bother him or threaten Rodimus, then he saw no reason not to simply let them be.

The Mistress of Flame smiled up at him from the paved yard below, the ground a mosaic of color. Her mouth was pulled a touch too wide, a practiced gesture.

"Lord Consort-Protector." If only Megatron had a rock at hand to throw—No, he still wouldn't cast it at her head but he would seriously consider it. Maybe fantasize about how cathartic the sound a stone crunching her perfect plating would be, but Megatron still had the strength to refrain. "Has Rodimus Prime recovered from his glorious sacrifice?"

"No." A simple and truthful answer. He was busy and Rodimus needed his help, so he turned to duck back under balcony's doorframe. Everything here was too damn short.

"Are you quite certain?"

"Yes." He didn't even look back over his shoulder. Electrocuting oneself generally didn't mean getting up and cartwheeling an hour later. What in the hell did this nosy mech expect?

"When do you anticipate his condition will return to normal?" Megatron shrugged in reply. "There's not much time before—"

He rounded on her, crossing the balcony to grab the railing and lean over.

"He'll be well enough in his own time and your badgering will not expedite matters!" A deep ventilation. He needed to restrain the urge escalate the situation. It was so tempting to verbally bite her head off, but it would bring no catharsis. "He did not agree to whatever timeline you're imagining. If you cannot schedule around the hazards of your own mad trials, that is on you, madam."

"Surely, with his divinity, he should recover more quickly than a mortal mech—" The Mistress of Flame was really getting under his plating. The fact that she was so poised while doing it just underscored the aggravation.

"That's enough!" he barked. "He would recover more quickly if you had let me take him to a medical center and put him in a C.R. chamber, but you decreed he would remain on the grounds. If anyone is at fault for his delayed recovery and prolonged suffering, it is you."

Megatron pointed at her. Perhaps he needn't bite to get the problem across.

"Furthermore, you came to ask in public, in front of these devotees, when you could have come privately, to our door, at any time if you were so concerned for his welfare." The worshipers in question muttered amongst themselves, some perhaps in shock and others offense, as he continued. "This is a publicity stunt, not an act of worship. You haven't done this out of reverence for your god."

Megatron bit down the growl trying to rise in his throat. A threat would do him no good, would do Rodimus no good. The Mistress of Flame still smiled all the while, as though determined to test his patience.

Another deep, calming ventilation came and went, followed by another as they stared at each other, scarlet to amber.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said coldly. "He gives your beloved world the gift of life, nearly at the expense of his own, and you behave so ungratefully. Disgraceful."

The priestess bared her teeth in a grin, conniving. Somewhere in his tirade, Megatron had made a misstep, showed his hand. He wasn't sure how, but he had.

A weakness for her to pounce on like a skilled predator.

He had gotten sloppy during his Autobot tenure, surrounded by more or less honest mechs in both this universe and the other one than during his time leading the Decepticons.

"What an interesting insight from you," she said, optics narrowing in the wavering pale green light of the planet overhead. Each word was toxic and saccharine. "Megatronus of Tarn."

Chapter 75

After the Mistress of Flame left and the faithful worshipers dispersed, Megatron returned to the habsuite. The doors to the balcony were closed behind him, the curtains drawn against the glaring green light. He leaned back against the covered glass, closing his optics behind their lenses.

She had said his name.

It wasn't new knowledge. It was publicly available information, even if he generally never answered to the full form. It existed only on documentation. What was different was the pointed intent, an intent that only had an effect in the context of the Way of Flame and the series of trials Rodimus has agreed to undergo.

Otherwise, it was just a name pulled from myth by bored factory workers.

Yet here, it served to remind him of the threat he posed, not just generally to their species, but to Rodimus personally. It was as though the Mistress of Flame was either expecting him to do something or… perhaps plant seeds of doubt. In the minds of the populace? Perhaps. In him? Potentially. Megatron still wasn’t sure what to make of her aims.

Minimus had assured him that he was still looking into it, that he had found some manner of “lead.” He’d declined to clarify, citing the need to protect his sources. So be it. They hadn’t dug up enough prior to the most recent trial to make much headway, but now with Rodimus in need of near constant care, Megatron had to rely on whatever Minimus and his “sources” could accomplish on their own.

These trials were becoming more dangerous. Although, he had to admit that Rodimus had been his own hazard in the most recent one. Who knew what else was coming, especially if the Mistress of Flame had some unknown schedule to keep. Perhaps that, in and of itself, was a clue.

“Tough crowd?” Rodimus was still sat up on the berth, not having moved from where he’d been propped up. His hands held what looked like the cup of medicine from before, empty. Hopefully he had drunk the contents and not just tipped them onto the floor behind the headboard. Again.

“You might say that,” Megatron said, tapping the “send” button on his message to Minimus before closing his comm’s panel. “But not for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you hear them all singing for you? It was going on for hours.” Until just now when that priestess had interrupted. He crossed the distance to the berth, collecting the empty cup from Rodimus’s hand. There was no incriminating glow of fuel on the berth or floor so he could only conclude that, for once, Rodimus had been a good patient.

“Singing?”

“Yes, the choir of ‘devoted faithful’ who came to thank you for rekindling the hot spot.”

“That was actual people outside?” Rodimus’s optics went wide. It looks like the installation of his replacements had taken correctly. Good.

“Yes? What did you think it was?”

“Dude, I thought someone had put up some sort of radio. You know, a station of soothing tunes to heal by or something.”

“No, they were praising you.” By the agreement in melody and word choice, Megatron could only assume they were using traditional Camien hymns of some kind. “They’re grateful for what you did.”

Instead of perking up at what ought to have been a solid boost to the ego, Rodimus seemed to wilt, flopping back against the charge console.

“Great.”

“Is it?”

All that Megatron received was a frown, which he took as a sufficient answer.

 

---

 

The remainder of the evening passed in uncharacteristic silence. Usually, Rodimus seemed keen to fill the quiet with words, but not tonight, it seemed. Megatron didn’t care for the soundless void, despite all his prior complaints on the Lost Light, wishing for peace and quiet.

It wasn’t until the automatic lights had shut off for the evening and, recharging cables plugged it, Megatron had joined Rodimus in the berth for the night that the latter finally spoke up.

“Hey, Megs, can I tell you something?”

What an odd question, he thought, still trying to carefully put his arm across Rodimus in a place that wouldn't hurt or otherwise aggravate healing injuries.

"I don't see why you couldn't."

"It's kind of embarrassing."

Inhibitions had rarely stopped Rodimus from saying whatever was on his mind before. Something must have been different this time.

"Go on."

"But you have to promise to keep it secret. You know, just between us. Captains only."

"Very well." It was the least he could do at this point.

There was a pause, as though Rodimus were weighing whether or not Megatron would keep his word. Or perhaps whether or not he really did want to share whatever it was.

"If you don't feel comfor—"

"What if I'm a fraud, Megs? What if I'm deceiving all these people?"

What an odd concern. Other than the occasional joke, he couldn't recall Rodimus himself claiming to be divine. It so far had seemed like he was merely tolerating the reverence the Camiens showed him. Megatron knew, of course, that Rodimus had always had a complicated relationship with his ascension, including his decision to step away from it.

"I don't want to, but I can't help but feel like I'm an imposter. I'm worried I'm almost buying my own stupid lie. I'm not who they think I am. I don't feel like a god. I never really even felt like a prime, even with what happened with the Matrix."

The change, the signs of affinity that had seized Hot Rod and saved him from death, had been undeniable. There was no way that could have been interpreted any other way, no alternative. Even Megatron, in all of his atheism and even antitheism, could see that the relic had done something. Rodimus had bonded with the Matrix. Of course, he would be the one to manage to talk himself out of it and convince himself it had been a mistake.

"I feel like a fake."

The words betrayed a hollowness that must have been quite deep-seated, indeed. A deeper discomfort with his position in society than had been previously voiced.

Megatron put his palm over Rodimus's badge. Underneath, in between the brightly painted plating and the outlier spark, the mangled remains of the Matrix sat. It was the same one he himself had yanked from Optimus's chest, the same one that had been stolen from his base by Hot Rod, the same one that Rodimus had used to save the cold constructed mechs from Tyrest's scheme. It wasn't one of the duplicates, fresh and new, that they'd used to save New Cybertron. The brave fool still carried the damaged original with him.

Rodimus had never been a fake.

The genuine article.

Unfortunately, Megatron had no words that could convince him of that truth.

Perhaps he was not a god as the Camiens believed—for as far as Megatron was concerned, there were no such things—but he was someone of worth, unique and irreplaceable.

“I do not think of you as a fake.”

“Don’t try to cheer me up.”

“I’m not.”

Rodimus grumbled something, but Megatron couldn’t hear it clearly. So, he kept talking.

“I don’t put much stock in old gods—” Perhaps with one person, whom he couldn’t really recall beyond a vague feeling knowing, as the sole exception. “—nor do I revere them, but that doesn’t change the fact that every single day, I find myself committing small acts of service… arguably of worship to someone who could easily be mistaken for the Divine.”

He probably shouldn’t have told Rodimus that, he thought, pulling himself close to Rodimus’s side where it was warmer, more comfortable.

It would already be difficult to tell him they had to break off whatever this relationship of theirs was before it went too far, before Rodimus was set up to be immeasurably hurt.

Now it would be worse.

Rodimus tensed under the thermal tarpaulin covers, blue optics staring forward at the ceiling.

“Do you really mean that or are you just trying to make me go to sleep?”

Now it would be so much harder to let go and tell Rodimus he needed to move on before it was too late. Megatron didn’t want to let go, but the inevitability of his fate was making it difficult for his processor to simply let him enjoy the present, to relish the time they would have together, no matter how brief. His mind kept pulling up the word “selfish” to describe his wants, to describe his rebellious wish to live. For so long, he’d had one foot in the grave.

He should have just said something now, while he was thinking about it.

Quick and easy.

“I do mean that,” he answered, moving his hand up from his companion’s red badge to his face, rubbing his thumb along Rodimus’s cheek-guard.

But not while Rodimus was injured and vulnerable, both emotionally and physically. Not while Rodimus was curled up next to him like a lover. They weren’t—despite earlier attempts an enthusiastic and eager “god” had made since they had returned from that solar temple in the wastes.

“And I want you to go to sleep.”

Soon though, he would have to let Rodimus go. One way or the other. This charade where they indulged in the decadent illusion of having something together needed to end, for Rodimus's own good, no matter the euphoria that could come from indulging the whims of the spark.

Chapter 76

Smoke lingered in the air on screen, clinging to the ceiling, yet there was no obvious alarm. A voice from the point of view of the screen mumbled to themselves as they walked down a dimly lit hallway, complaining about someone having forgotten to open up the flu.

“If I’d wanted to choke on smoke, I would have stayed on active duty.” The complaint was punctuated by a restrained, dry cough.

It was hard for Prowl to say for sure what type of building it was or where it was supposed to be. The metadata didn’t say. In fact, suspiciously, the metadata was functionally nonexistent except for a timestamp. This long dead mech would almost certainly not have noticed the missing metadata. That sort of memory file information wasn’t usually available to the mech experiencing them, a security feature, unless this person noticed upon memory extraction.

Perhaps this hallway was part of some sort of workshop. It was the same voice from the other memories. This one still belonged to, presumably, Megatronus.

Of course, that was only if Minimus had guessed correctly. They didn’t know for sure, no matter how high the odds were.

Prowl still wasn’t quite sure if the information in these memories would be relevant to their investigation, but he had to try.

Minimus had already gone for the evening, but Prowl kept going without him. That creature, Star Saber, apparently needed feeding and Minimus had assured him the alternative was Star Saber eating the dataslugs or furniture or perhaps even bits of their kibble. The minibot might have been bluffing, but it wasn’t worth the risk to find out for sure.

That left Prowl to pour over the data slugs and their ancient memories alone, well into the bright green Camien night. The reflected light of the stormy host planet, Prokellox, streamed into the small porthole window of habsuite.

This particular memory wasn’t particularly… interesting, not yet, aside from the occasional visual artifact from either degradation or tampering.

He wasn’t sure why Megatronus, if they were right about this mech’s identity, would have chosen to preserve this one in Caminus’s body. So far, the first five minutes at least, it was just walking through this long, winding hall and muttering complaints—about the layout of the building, about smacking his foot against a piece of furniture, about someone’s inappropriate working hours—under his breath.

Occasionally a tray of some kind came into view, like he was carrying it. There were some empty cups and a sealed, opaque bottle. Probably preparing for a meal.

When Megatronus passed by the occasional open window, the lack of sunlight… or starlight indicated it was most likely either very early in the morning or very late in a locale with significant light pollution. Given what he knew about Megatronus, the most likely location would be somewhere in Crystal City. That would also match the few architectural cues—the tops of glassy spires glinting out in the glowing haze—he could make out from the footage.

He doubted a nomadic Darklander would maintain a residence, let alone one this large, in Crystal City of his own volition. So, this, given what few scraps of information Prowl had about Megatronus’s social circle, was most likely Solus’s home. That would also explain the smoke and lack of alarm about its presence.

Prowl owed Optimus another report, an update at an “appropriate” Iaconian time, but he wasn't ready. There were too many questions and he felt like he hadn't gathered enough for a proper brief—Not that this memory seemed like it would reveal much. He didn’t really need a tour of Solus’s hallways in the wee hours of the morning.

The lack of green light in the footage, however, did remind Prowl of home, of Iacon when the polar nights did not play host to an aurora. A stark contrast to the wavering light coming in through the porthole of his Lost Light habsuite.

Hook would have badgered the others into their overly large berth under a similar sky, all after Mixmaster ensured everyone had fueled. Longhaul would have complained and Bonecrusher would have scooped him up and dragged him off. Scavenger would have already meekly slunk off to wallow until the others climbed in after him.

They always saved Prowl a spot in the middle, the warmest place in the pile.

Prowl held his cup of warmed fuel to his bumper, letting the heat suffuse through his hands and plating like a comforting embrace. Not something he would generally admit to wanting, but….

It was just the gentle weight of the quilted tarpaulin pressing down over his shoulders and folded doors.

That was all, nothing more.

Maybe that aggravating homesickness was just what he deserved for watching them out of order despite Minimus’s recommendation that they should try to at least keep some sort of consistent timeline. As far as Prowl was concerned, for now an awareness of the timestamps was sufficient to keep track of any chronological order. It would be easy enough to keep straight.

The footage stuttered, more than would be expected with simple time-related deterioration. Screen tearing and other artifacts interrupted the feed, static noises garbled what might have been speech. A sign of almost certain data tampering—or traumatic processor injury, which was unlikely.

Megatronus would likely not have noticed when reviewing the memory in his own processor, but extracting the data would exaggerate encoding imperfections. Did he alter the memory or… did someone else alter it for him before or after extraction?

When the footage cleared, another voice sounded from around the corner of an open doorway. Light flowed out from the room. This voice was higher-pitched than Megatronus’s, though still within the midrange of tones. It was also somewhat scratchy, but not unpleasant. The owner most likely spent a lot of time around smoke or other acrid chemicals that could damage a vocalizer through extended exposure.

“I’ve heard the news, Prima,” the voice said, downcast. Megatronus peered around the corner, the camera’s perspective tilting as he craned his neck. The back of a slender mech with an ornate headdress came into view. Prowl hadn’t seen a headdress like that, with bronzed and brassed decorative cables cascading down the back, except in museums. The cables dominated the image, obscuring the bulk of the details of the mech from the waist up. The legs and arms, what he could see of them, were similar in color and solid, despite being slender. This mech worked for a living and most likely wore different headgear while working. “It was a tragedy.”

This must have been Solus, her hands planted proudly on her hips and her feet set confidently apart. He’d seen Rodimus take that stance on many occasions, especially when being challenged. A thought crossed his processor that perhaps the similarities weren’t only superficial or coincidental. And Prowl hated it.

Data like this, however, would have been blasphemous to the Way of Flame, based on what he had heard from that head priestess in Saxetum.

Blasphemous but invaluable.

Besides, what was a little blasphemy if he could utilize it?

In front of Solus was a video screen of some kind, probably as part of a long-range communication system. It was archaic, the screen not even transmitting color but projecting a flat holographic image in bright white light. It was difficult to make out the face of the mech on the other side. It wasn’t one Prowl recognized, but why would he? He had no idea what this Prima was supposed to have looked like. He would have to take Solus’s word for it.

Megatronus, however, continued to lurk beyond the door, apparently not interested in making himself known, despite the obvious meal for two he’d been carrying around for several minutes.

“I don’t think you’ve heard the whole story, not from him.” Prima’s voice was distorted, pitched down like he was disguising it with something. It was possible that was just a side-effect of the technology used in this communicator. “If not for Megatronus giving into his thirst for violence before the diplomatic negotiations were concluded, this could have been avoided.”

“Are you sure? That doesn’t sound right—“

“I’m sure, Solus. I was there. I saw him lose control with my own optics. Please, Solus, I need to speak with him. In person.”

That mostly matched what surviving records said, at least the fact that Megatronus—usually referred to as "the Fallen" in records that had been scrubbed of his name—was present on Antilla and that the Antillans did not survive, but Prowl knew well enough that records weren’t always objective.

Not that he wanted to sympathize with the likes of Megatronus, especially since he would have been an active participant in that atrocity, but Prowl was beginning to wonder what was accurate, especially if this memory was tampered with.

Solus’s shoulders slumped and her hands slipped away from her hips to hang limply, the cables of her headdress swaying with the motion. The lighting on Solus didn’t seem to match everything around her, almost like she was added later by whomever was monkeying around in Megatronus’s processor.

Perhaps this entire memory was just a composite, created from various snippets and pieced together like a collage.

Megatronus wouldn’t have noticed unless he reviewed the memories on an external screen after pulling them. Maybe he had. Maybe that’s why he ultimately deposited this one with the others.

“We need to sort out an appropriate response. He may need to be penalized in some way. I know how… important he is to you seeing as you’re ‘close friends’—“ Ah, yes, the old fashioned public disgust for romance. It had fallen out of fashion to be so overt about it during the war, but Prowl remembered the attitude all too well. Sentinel Prime had always made a point to drive home how much he despised the idea of “sparkmates.” Prowl preferred to generally not think about the concept too hard. “—But that can’t get in the way of justice. He could be too dangerous to be allowed to roam free.”

The data was once again rife with static distortions before it settled back down after a second or so.

“Yes, if… if he did attack unprovoked, he… he would need to be punished. You’re right.”

Solus’s voice was different, like the tone was downshifted, but perhaps that was an artifact of the distortions. Prowl also felt the dialogue was a little… non sequitur and artificial. There was something wrong with the back and forth between Solus and Prima. More evidence of the memory being a fabrication.

This wasn’t meant to convince anyone but Megatronus.

Something didn’t seem right here. It didn’t sit well with Prowl’s fuel tank. Would Solus really give up her lover like this? Given that Megatronus had willingly copied out these memories and had Caminus hold them for safekeeping, it was probable that he too suspected something wasn’t right, but perhaps couldn’t pinpoint it.

“Whatever would satisfy justice,” Solus finally added, after allowing a melancholic silence to lapse.

“Let me know when you’ve arranged it.”

The call cut out and so did the memory.

Chapter 77

Minimus arrived at Prowl’s habsuite early the following morning, Star Saber sleepily clicking in his arms.

With Rodimus still injured, it would have been irresponsible to offload the ever “helpful” mechanimcal on his creator. The odds of a poorly placed nibble were minimal but not zero. Rodimus probably could have also done without the stress of Megatron having to constantly shoo him and his electromagnetic feet away from tender welds.

It was easier for Minimus to just keep a hold of Star Saber, with permission, of course, and make sure he didn’t get into too much trouble.

The biggest difficulty was keeping enough fuel on hand that Star Saber would even eat. He’d started getting picky. Apparently aluminum and tin scraps were no longer “acceptable.”  At least Minimus had been able to stop by a convenience store and pick up some bronze-based turbofox snacks before coming to see Prowl. He even tasted them—when no one was looking—to personally ensure they would be of appropriate quality.

After giving Star Saber a reassuring pat, Minimus reached out to put his palm on the access pad by the door to request passage.

The door to Prowl’s habsuite, immediately sliding wide as the pad beeped, opened without requiring an access code or being buzzed in.

That wasn’t right.

It was, hopefully, an indication that the commander simply had been too occupied with his investigation to remember to lock the door rather than something more sinister.

Peering into the habsuite, Minimus saw the top of Prowl’s chevron peeking up over the tarpaulin-covered lump on the chair. The light from memory footage playing on the screen haloed Prowl’s undignified silhouette.

“Prowl?” he called softly, tucking Star Saber close to his chest.

When the lump grumbled and sluggishly turned to look at him once the sound on the footage cut off, Minimus sighed with relief.

Prowl was fine, just… lacking in self-care skills. As usual.

Even now, when Prokellox’s light was once again accompanied by the system’s revenant sun, Prowl was still hunched over his desk, scouring memories for more information. Minimus wished he had opted to sleep instead. The screen they’d been using to watch the memories glowed, forming a halo around the edges of the tarpaulin where the screen was partially blocked.

“Have you… made any progress?” Minimus asked, releasing Star Saber to go make himself at home on the berth once the door closed behind them.

It was still debatable whether or not these memories would be of any value, but it was their only tangible lead right now. They’d already seen the “piety as morality” attitudes of some of the legal authorities, which closed off a lot of obvious investigative avenues.

If these memories didn’t pan out, they would have to resort to more… dubious methods, such as subterfuge. And neither of them were particularly subtle individuals. Two Cybertronians who stuck out like a sore thumb on Caminus poking around and asking too many questions about the regime? That would be a good way to land in a holding cell, especially with the ruckus that Prowl had caused with Devastator at Kremex’s space bridge awhile back.

Prowl grumbled, optics dim and haggard, and waved Minimus over to the desk. The footage that the commander had just been reviewing was rewound and played from the beginning.

Unfortunately, Minimus had to stand on his toes to lean around Prowl’s arm in the way to actually see anything.

“Prowl, please, could you—“ He tapped the arm before it was taken away. “Much better, thank you—We’ve missed the beginning.”

After a muttered swear, the footage was reset again.

“Thank you.”

 

---

 

Prowl felt… exhausted. He’d been running probabilities in his simulation software ever since he had first watched this particular memory. It was another one that seemed to have been heavily tampered with, perhaps even another complete composite, but that wasn’t really what had caught his optic about it.

On the surface, it was simple.

Megatronus was talking to another mech somewhere, perhaps elsewhere in Crystal City but the location wasn’t clear. The room was dimly lit, only a few electric lamps in the walls for minimal safety lighting. The timestamp indicated that this memory took place after that strange, bogus call between Solus and Prima.

However, what caught Prowl’s attention was the mech that Megatronus was talking to. They weren’t fully visible yet, no, but soon enough, this person would be revealed to the camera.

And now Minimus would see as well.

"You're wrong!" Megatronus hollered at the figure opposite the view, obscured in the shadows. "Solus would never—"

The figure, tall and broad in the chest, at last stepped into the light. Black armor, curving to sharp points, glinted in the dim light and reflected light from cold red optics. Great, imposing, almost skeletal wings spread behind the figure's back. Prowl had never seen anyone who looked like this before but something was familiar about their gait and manner.

This mech said nothing as the camera moved closer, rapidly crossing the distance.

"You're naïve, blinded by your petty feelings."

The unknown mech spoke at last, just as Megatronus came within arm's reach.

Last night while first watching this, Prowl had immediately recognized that voice, all thoughts of what he would tell Optimus banished as his dossier database had automatically launched in his HUD. The voice clip analyzer had immediately begun comparing data. Even now, it was still running, confirming earlier suspicions.

That voice shouldn't have been here. That voice shouldn't have been anywhere, let alone millions of years in the past in an unrecognizable beastformer body. The entire situation still baffled him.

There was no way this should have happened.

Shockwave.

"She would never undermine me, never plot against me," Megatronus continued, hands reaching out in front, just in view as he took a hold of Shockwave's chest armor. When had Shockwave ever looked like this?

"Especially not now! Not when we're so close to having everything we ever wanted! Why would she conspire with Prima?"

What did Megatronus want? He was no closer to understanding that now than he was the first time he had watched this. He could only make guesses based on other circumstantial data such as Megatronus having just returned from a campaign, the last one of his career.

Prowl leaned back in his chair, allowing Minimus to get a better view of the footage.

It was a shame memory files didn't preserve feelings or thoughts. Just audio and visual data, including the archaic HUDs.

Or… did they?

Perhaps Prowl and Minimus simply weren't accessing it correctly. It was almost a shame they didn't have access to the technology used in Aequitas. Then again, it would need to be tweaked and—Thoughts of Springer crossed his processor.

The broken wiring of his missing optic sparked, the ungrounded current snapping sharply against the delicate plating of his orbit as he suppressed a wince.

No, Prowl and Minimus would just have to work with what they had.

The raw memory data would have to do.

"You've foolishly given yourself over to thinking your emotional attachment to her is some sort of objective, all-encompassing truth."

Minimus paused the footage, turning to look up at Prowl.

“What are you—“

“Is your optic bothering you?”

“No!” Prowl stabbed the “play” button on the screen with his fingertip a little harder than was strictly necessary. “We have work to do.”

The memory resumed.

On the screen, Megatronus lifted Shockwave, a large mech himself, into the air by the chest, seemingly with little physical effort. The skeletal-looking wings on Shockwave's swayed with the momentum.

"Onyx, tell me—why would she ever betray me?"

Leaning in, he paused the data to take a screenshot of Shockwave's strange new frame, despite Minimus’s protests at the interruption. Perhaps someone would recognize this frame, but perhaps not. Minimus certainly hadn’t reacted to seeing it.

Onyx.

Onyx.

Prowl rolled the alias over in his mind before throwing it into a database search. He must have missed the name last night, too exhausted to fully take in the data. Wasn't one of the original Thirteen supposed to have been named—A hit appeared in his data.

Yes.

Onyx Prime.

According to Minimus's reports and what Prowl himself had seen in the temple at Saxetum, it was unlikely a Camien would recognize this frame then, not with the prohibitions against visual depictions. What an all too convenient disguise.

But what would Shockwave gain? Why was he here on this footage? Long-dead and masquerading as—Did this have something to do with his time drive? Hadn’t Prime destroyed that?

Prowl pulled up his simulation software and input new variables. The odds of Shockwave having somehow been thrown into the ancient past rather than having been killed in the explosion were astronomically low, but not impossible.

The question regarding purpose remained, looming large in his mind. It opened possibilities for even more far reaching, more convoluted conspiracies than Prowl had previously considered.

However, was whatever Shockwave was doing in this guise, masquerading as a Prime and antagonizing Megatronus, relevant to Prowl's current investigation or was it something to dig into further another time?

It was too soon to say, looking into Onyx's blank, uncaring face—even now with two optics and a masked mouth—frozen in time as a massive warframe held him up like a new-build's doll.

Prowl pressed the button on the datapad for the footage to continue playing.

"Because brutes like you, all fervent passion and volatile wrath, no matter the stoic mask you wear for others off the battlefield, are easy to manipulate. She knows this, I know this."

Shockwave's detached, calm voice played over the speakers as though he weren't a wire's breadth from being crushed like foil.

"In her opinion, mechs like you, Megatronus, were not forged to think. You were forged to fight. You were a fun diversion but now she thinks you’re too dangerous, a liability she would rather be rid of. What better way to safely get rid of you but by turning you over to Prima?”

The camera shook… or perhaps Shockwave was being shaken. A clawed hand came into view and quickly covered Megatronus’s optics, rendering the screen black, ending the memory.

The screen went blank a moment later and, even after reviewing it multiple times, Prowl was still no closer to understanding what he’d just seen. Perhaps Minimus would have some useful insight.

“Prowl, was that—“

“Yes, yes, it was.”

There was a shuffling noise and he glanced over to see Minimus had pulled a mug from his subspace, now helping himself to the energon from the warmer on Prowl’s desk. He supposed they would need that. Good thing he had put a stimulant infuser pod in the warmer earlier.

“Have you—“

“No, I haven’t figured out why. Or how."

“Well,” Minimus began, sighing as he held the newly filled mug between his hands. “I suppose we’d best review what we know and go from there. This rather changes things, doesn’t it?”

Prowl nodded, reaching for his own mug, forgotten hours earlier on the desk. If Shockwave and his schemes were involved, even across nearly unimaginable spans of time, then perhaps these memories weren’t so irrelevant after all. While he doubted the events on Caminus were part of Shockwave’s plan, so much as they were simply collateral damage… the consequences of some other plan, now they would have to sort them out.

Chapter 78

A few days after the Mistress of Flame’s unwarranted, nosy visit, Rodimus was finally up and running around… or, at least, trying to. His feet were still a little unsteady, something that Drift had found very amusing when he’d come by to visit the previous day. The unsteadiness was probably a side-effect of the low-dose painkillers that Megatron thought he still needed.

Even with his legs under him, Rodimus had still stayed mostly in their habsuite, occasionally lying out on the balcony to bask in the sunlight listening to a hymn now and then when a group of grateful worshipers wandered by. Even now, lying on his back, supported by the long cushion, on the balcony, he could still hardly believe it had worked. The late afternoon light from the distant sun lazily warmed his plating.

Going with his impulses had once again saved the day.

If he was honest with himself, Rodimus didn’t really feel terribly energetic, despite what should have been the satisfaction of a job well done. His ego wanted to proclaim a desire to roam around, visit the city, and have a fun time, but his body was staunchly against it. The stir crazy boredom still nagged at him off and on but somehow it was easier to ignore when napping seemed like the best activity.

Perhaps he was still just drained from having reignited the hot spot. That had taken a lot of power.

All those newsparks, glowing bright and healthy because of him. Soon they would grow into their natural shapes under the careful tending of Camien physicians and then find their places in the world, like those who would be collected from the impending Bronze Harvest on Luna-1 when the Lost Light was finally decommissioned.

It should have felt like a victory.

Why didn’t it?

Instead, he felt the oppressive weight of anxieties, some of which he could name and others whose names, if they had them, escaped him. Rodimus had personally brought so many newsparks to proper ignition, no less than two hot spots, protected the hot spot in Alyon, and saved the cold constructed mechs from Tyrest.

He was a hero. There was no question. It wasn’t a controversial statement, but simply a matter of fact.

Then why did he not feel like one? Rodimus still struggled with the overwhelming sense of being a fraud, a fake. He’d felt some of the weight lift when he’d told Megatron about his insecurities the other night, but… Megatron had still believed in him somehow.

Rodimus had inadvertently managed to trick him too, to trick someone so clever and wily in their own right. What an absolute sham. It was so much easier to believe that it was all a giant con rather than to accept that perhaps there was something more going on, that perhaps the Camiens weren’t wrong.

A sound snapped Rodimus out of his spiral.

Turning his head, he saw Megatron leaning through the balcony door. Maybe it was lunchtime.

“Hey, babe, what’s up?”

Megatron’s face was grave, more so than usual. Rodimus had long since gotten used to his resting bitch face, but this stoked his already heightened anxiety. A cold chill began to crawl along his back. The ends of his spoiler fins, hanging off the edges of the cushion, involuntarily twitched.

“Rodimus, we… need to talk about something.”

That was never a good thing to hear.

“Uh, what about?” He shakily propped himself up on his elbows. “You okay?”

With a heavy shuffle of armor, Megatron awkwardly set himself down on the balcony floor next to Rodimus, probably to make talking a little more comfortable. It also seemed he would be there for some time if he bothered to get on the ground.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, we need to talk about….” The silence hung in the air, like it was something Megatron would rather have not brought up at all. “Us.”

No, no, no—His tired spark sank in his chest.

“What… what about us? We’re fine!” Rodimus shifted his weight to rest on one elbow, hastily rolling onto his side. Waving his free arm back and forth between them with as much vigor as he could muster, he continued to stall. “We’re fine! What’s there to talk about? I love you, you somehow love me. It’s fine! What more could there even be to talk about?”

“That’s a beautiful bit of romantic fantasy, Rodimus,” Megatron started, gesturing calmly with one of his hands, “but I’m afraid the situation is… more complicated than what you would find in the contrived plots of one of those prewar novels.”

Rodimus hadn’t really read many of those in his day, but he knew a little of what they tended to be like. Flowery, full of ideals, and everything working out. A certain subset of the genre was notorious for its salacious content. He preferred those if he had to read a novel, but, honestly, Rodimus rarely had the attention span to sit through one unless it was particularly good.

He shrugged.

“Well, yeah, I mean, we haven’t even done any of—“

“There’s a reason for that, if you’d let me finish.”

“I thought you were just shy.” Being a complete bastard for millions of years on top of having a massive pipe up one’s aft about protocol probably didn’t lead to a lot of interfacing opportunities. Rodimus simply figured it had either been a very long time or that Megatron just didn’t have a lot of interest in that sort of thing. “I mean, if you’re not into that kind of thing, that’s okay—“

“Rodimus, let me finish. Please.”

Damn, he even remembered the magic word this time. That left him with little choice.

“Yeah, alright, uh…. Go ahead.” And now he could only brace for the worst.

Megatron took a long, slow ventilation, like he was regretting the words before they even came out.

“I think… it would be for the best if we didn’t continue.”

“Continue? I mean, yeah, this conversation’s kind of awkward—“

Megatron held up one finger to shut him up.

“If we didn’t continue our relationship. Now, before you say anything, I would like it if you allowed me to explain—”

“What? No!” Without thinking, Rodimus launched himself, with what energy he could muster, squarely at Megatron’s chest. Pain and recovering injuries be damned. Unprepared for a sudden assault, the larger mech was knocked onto his back. Straddling his partner, Rodimus grabbed onto the plating where a gray chest met a neck and held on for dear life. “Why? I don’t want that! I’m happy with you! Everything’s fine… isn’t it? It’s fine, right?”

“You’re happy for now.” A black hand closed gently over his own, not yet prying him free, but the intent to do so was there. It would be easy, what with Rodimus not being at his full strength. “But you won’t be forever. As soon as this is over, you’ll be hurt… and it will be my fault.”

“Your fault? How? What are you talking about?”

“This charade, this indulgent fiction, Rodimus, has an expiration date. And when I’m forced to part your company, you will suffer for it. Either from grief or from the inevitable stigma of association that even your ascendancy to Primehood can’t overcome—“

“No!” he snapped. “That’s not going to happen! We’ll figure something out. Some special dispensation or pushing Prowl into a smelter or… or something! We’ll find a way!”

Pushing Prowl into a smelter wouldn’t help. That would only mean someone else would come knocking to take Megatron away, not even considering the legal ramifications Rodimus would face for murdering a superior officer. It was all a bureaucratic problem anyway. This whole thing about handing Megatron over to the Galactic Council as a peace offering, a promise of cooperation… was just for show. It wouldn’t solve anything. Such a waste.

“We can run away or—“ Rodimus’s optics went wide, an idea forming in his head, panic pulling a beautifully deranged detail from the depths of his processor to the forefront. “There’s this quill, right? I read about it in that book you ‘accidentally’ stole! It's supposed to be on Caminus somewhere and it can change the future if I can just find it—"

"That's foolish." Megatron sat back up, Rodimus sliding down to rest on his legs. "Foolish and naïve."

There was another heavy sigh.

"I should have put a stop to this sooner to spare you the hurt. The reality of the matter is regardless of our feelings, I will most likely die before long. And you will go on. You will one day come to terms with the fact that you'll be better off. And then you will move on and with luck, you'll forget all about me."

It had been a long time since Rodimus had wanted to punch Megatron in the face. Not since they had figured out how to work together…. It was wrong to act on that, he knew, but the pain began to morph into a simmering anger. How dare Megatron assume—

"As it should be."

The flat of Rodimus's palm cracked against side of Megatron's face, which was only partially shielded by the flange of his helmet. His intent hadn't been to hurt, just to interrupt, just to snap Megatron out of his insensitive nihilism.

Silence fell as Rodimus received a shocked stare.

"How dare you! You don't know what I want! I don't care about what utilitarian answer you have to what's supposedly best for me!"

Apparently all that slap did was slow the nihilism down, because Megatron kept going.

“Rodimus, listen. It was selfish of me to allow this to continue for so long—“

On impulse, Rodimus put his hand over to Megatron’s mouth to physically shut him up. The only option for him to continue being a downer was to bite and given that entire “acts of worship” spiel from the other day, Rodimus had every reason to doubt that was going to happen.

“No, you’re going to listen! Okay?”

He took a deep ventilation to try and calm down.

However, instead of centering him, all it did was make it all the more obvious how much he was trembling. His plating rattled uncomfortably with every movement. Maybe it was the painkillers, maybe it was nerves, maybe it was how pissed off he was. Maybe it was all of them, who knew.

Right now, it didn’t matter.

“You’re being selfish right now! It’s not about you!” That wasn’t quite right. Rodimus shook his head, deciding to rephrase it. “Well, it is, but it isn’t all about you! It’s also about me and what I want.”

So far, so good. Megatron was still quiet, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in biting Rodimus to interrupt either. It was still too soon to let go of his face. He didn’t trust that the big guy wouldn’t pull some line or other hollow platitude.

“Look, I am keenly—no—painfully aware of what sort of garbage fate is waiting, for you, for me, for us. Megs, I’m not fucking stupid! I know how it ends if I don’t change it. I don’t want to hear about ‘inevitability.’ Once upon a time, you had an infamous penchant for telling fate to get fragged. Why not this time?”

The jaw under his palm started to move.

“No—no, that was a rhetorical question.”

Nothing. Alright. The hint was taken.

“Look, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about the unavoidable consequences. You should know that about me by now.” Such as the natural consequence of walking into an enemy base and getting shot to hell. And just look at where they were now.

“I agreed to these damn trials… to buy time. I wanted more time to find a solution. Even before, uh, this—“ He gestured between them. “Even before this, I didn’t want everything to end. I didn’t want them to take you away, to take away the ship, to take away everything that made me happy. I hate to say it because it sounds ridiculous, but you’re my friend.”

He sighed.

“Even if it didn’t work, I still wanted more time. At the minimum. Sure, it was selfish, but it’s my turn to be selfish. I saw an opportunity and I took it. And I’d take it again.”

As though they both weren’t selfish most of the time.

“What I want… is to be with you. No matter how much time that is. It could be another hour. It could be millions of years. However much time that is… is the time I want.”

He slumped, his spoiler drooping down and his palm falling from Megatron’s face to his chest, resting over the red Autobot badge that had once looked so out of place.

“Alright?”

“Very w—“ Megatron hesitated, like he was deeply conflicted. It hurt to see, but Rodimus tried to remind himself that he wasn’t the problem, just that the big guy was a worrywart. “Alright.”

“Great, so….” Rodimus sighed with relief. His spoiler canted upward as he found himself suddenly trembling, the pent-up energy from his worries now looking for an outlet.

He knew the perfect one.

With a bounce, entirely disregarding the pain not deadened by his medication, he scooted up and captured Megatron’s face in a kiss.

This wouldn’t solve everything, especially not the lingering hurt that Megatron thought leaving him “for his own good” had been a worthwhile option to pursue, but it was a start. For now, he just wanted to be close.

A soft shuffling noise came from underneath the balcony, like someone had been loitering. Megatron tensed, like he’d been caught doing something illicit. Rodimus pushed himself up to peer through the gaps in the railing, not bothering to stand when he could just lean awkwardly.

Nothing.

No one that he could see.

“Probably just Prowl being a voyeur again,” he said, shrugging before settling back onto his partner’s lap. “I don’t really care what he thinks anymore anyway. He can go suck a sp—”

“Rodimus, that’s not very ‘divine’ language. What if one of your devotees were to hear that?”

Fair point. Then again none of their earlier argument had been either. Oh well, in for a shanix and all that.

“Carry me back inside, babe, and you’ll hear more examples—No, don’t look at me like that! It’s not the painkillers talking!”

Rodimus vaguely caught sight of white and black paint scurrying away under the light of Caminus’s dying sun before Megatron scooped him up in his arms.

Chapter 79

A small mech with minimal kibble and an average build, Aphelion, tended to be the one in her unit assigned to any tasks requiring stealth.

She blended in with almost any crowd, even her own unit. More than once, they’d nearly left her behind by accidentally forgetting about her during a headcount.

The scarlet faith markings under her optics were common enough among Camiens, especially from Kremex, to go unnoticed.

Though, she had been surprised to see one of the Cybertronians, the one with a questionable number of swords, wearing them, since he had been of a different religion.  Perhaps some Cybertronians too recognized Caminus’s sacrifice. As that mech was close friends with Rodimus Prime, that must have been the case. He must have known and understood, even in his heresy.

There was hope, then, for their wayward kin.

The only thing that managed to make Aphelion stand out was her orange and red Torchbearer paint. A problem easily solved when needed, a small holomatter projector in her wrist shifted her perceived colors to mimic any paint job she required. Even some types of kibble could be pretended to, as long as no one touched her. That would destroy the illusion in a second.

This afternoon, on the orders of the Mistress of Flame, she had mimicked the paint of that Cybertronian law enforcement official, that… Prowl, the one who had a habit of lurking. If seen, if she was fast enough, only her colors and general shape would be noticed. She had even gone the extra mile of mimicking that bright red chevron of his, those broad, round doors, and the… generous bumper.

No one would think twice about him standing under the shadow of the Prime’s balcony, especially on a slow day. Hardly any worshipers had come to sing Rodimus Prime’s praises for reigniting their moon’s hot spot. Whenever someone did pop by, Aphelion merely hid herself behind the crystalline shrubbery, tricking any passersby into thinking Prowl was merely terrible at hiding himself.

No one gave her any trouble, ignoring her presence.

It was quite a shame, she thought, that there were so few faithful making pilgrimage to give thanks to Rodimus Prime.

Were she not on duty, Aphelion would have done so herself.

Oh, how she longed to have been present when he performed his miracle of life, but for now, she contented herself with having been assigned to escort him for as long as he remained on Caminus. It was among the highest honors she could have ever asked for.

He even occasionally had spoken to her, to her unit. The way he moved and acted was with far less dignity and poise than she had always imagined; of course, she ought not have been imagining what Solus Prime looked like, no, but she’d been unable to help herself.

Yet Aphelion had found there was a certain accidentally charismatic grace to Rodimus Prime that evoked a certain… energy, as bright as the sun itself, manic and captivating in its divinity.

She didn’t need these trials to know for sure that the Mistress of Flame had been right.

Solus Prime walked among them again in an unexpected guise, come to visit and take stock of her children. Would she—he—in his new form find them satisfactory or would he be left wanting?

It was a shame she was now required to spy upon him and violate that trust he had put in her team, but it was for his own good.

Yes, she thought as she heard Rodimus Prime whine from where he lounged under the sun, it was for the best.

May he forgive her betrayal.

She’d been there most of the day, listening in to whatever sounds wafted out through the balcony’s open doors.

“Hey, babe, what’s up?”

Aphelion tensed in her hiding spot behind the sculpted quartz shrubbery, having relaxed after Rodimus Prime’s quiet complaining had died down a few minutes prior.

“Rodimus, we… need to talk about something.”

Oh no.

 She recognized this new voice. Of course, it came as no surprise. No one else ought to be in the apartment with the Prime, no one else but his conjunx, the Lord Consort-Protector.

Notorious in his own right, Aphelion thought, Megatron was dangerous. She knew that, both from the rumors that had come in from contact with Cybertron, members of the Lost Light’s crew, and the briefing the Mistress of Flame had given her unit before the ship had even arrived.

Dangerous and yet still Rodimus Prime had willingly accepted him into his intimate companionship.

The Mistress of Flame feared that this mech was, like Rodimus Prime, one of the original Thirteen, come back to life again. Though where Rodimus Prime had come back with benevolence, Megatron had returned to bathe their race in spilled fuel and rain death down upon them like his prior self had done. He had already destroyed Cybertron, culled massive numbers of their kind, and was the reason so much of the universe would attack their race on sight.

The high priestess feared he would act to destroy Caminus, sheltered from the ravages of the Cybertronian war, but first he would commit his ancient sin again, taking their god reborn away from them all over again.

The Mistress of Flame had warned them to not get comfortable, that the stoic pacifism was but a mask, a disguise to fool any potential enemy into believing him harmless. Aphelion had heeded that warning ever since the Lost Light had arrived on their quiet moon.

That was why Heatsink was required to keep constant vigil whenever Megatron was alone… and why Aphelion had been sent to gather intelligence. Updraft had been sent by Megatron on errands, to pick up medical supplies and fuel. The other three of her unit—Valence, Infrared, and Blazar—were currently assigned split duties, rotating between assisting Heatsink with watch in the hall and with attending to the Mistress of Flame as needed.

She steeled herself against the arguing above her, not taking in much of words themselves as her hands gripped the gaps between the building’s bricks. In a pinch, she could scale the wall, climb the balcony and throw her frame between them. If Megatron was really the Fallen in a new life, then he could slay a Prime.

Aphelion would gladly sacrifice herself if needed, fall on any sword necessary, if it would buy Rodimus Prime the time he needed to get away.

But the argument subsided before any martyrdom was required of her.

Something… something Rodimus Prime had said stuck out to her, playing on a loop in her processor.

“There’s this quill, right?”

Yes.

Yes, that was the sort of thing the Mistress of Flame was looking for, she thought.

Aphelion stumbled as she let go of the wall, not having realized how much of her weight she’d put against it.

From the words overhead, it sounded like she’d been caught.

“Probably just Prowl being a voyeur again. I don’t really care what he thinks anymore anyway. He can go suck a sp—”

Well, at least Aphelion had chosen a very appropriate disguise today. The Cybertronian law enforcement officer—she did never quite grasp foreign rank structures—would likely be getting quite the dressing down later for peeping. She could practically hear Rodimus Prime unleashing a torrent of vitriol on the poor, bumbling idiot.

It was justified, of course.

Prowl, the Mistress of Flame’s erstwhile ally, was up to something, something that would prevent the Mistress’s plans from coming to fruition. Aphelion couldn’t have that.

“Rodimus, that’s not very ‘divine’ language. What if one of your devotees were to hear that?”

And, unfortunately, she had. She wished she hadn’t. However, while Megatron was right, that it wasn’t language expected of a god, pure and wonderful, it was the sort of thing she had become accustomed to Rodimus Prime saying. Even in his crass way, there was still something awe-inspiring in those crude words, a yet another reminder that mortals like her weren’t that different from the gods they served.

“Carry me back inside, babe, and you’ll hear more examples—No, don’t look at me like that! It’s not the painkillers talking!”

Time to go.

She bolted, hearing what might have been the beginning of an intimate moment on the balcony. Even if she hadn’t been caught, Aphelion would have left. Her holomatter disguise would take care of the rest as she made her escape.

Chapter 80

"Rodimus, I don’t recall receiving a brief this time,” Megatron said, taking his seat on the hovertain. He ought to have noticed, given that he’d been the one receiving all deliveries while Rodimus had been recovering. “Do you?”

At least, this time would be a far shorter trip than the excursion to Saxetum, only an hour in each direction as opposed to each leg taking up an entire day.

That was, of course, if the courier that showed up at the door that morning bearing an encrypted datapad from the Mistress of Flame could be believed. The datapad had looked like all the others, save for not containing a brief. The mech who had been the courier had also previously made similar missive deliveries, but it had been Rodimus who had declared it legitimate, despite Megatron’s reservations.

“Yeah, no, we didn’t.” Rodimus flopped sideways on the seat next to him, propping up his feet on Megatron’s lap as though he were some sort of personal footrest. He was, likely, still a little upset over the other day, especially since Megatron had turned down the offer of physical intimacy again.

Understandable.

And so was the rejection. Rodimus had still been recovering from his injuries, after all, let alone any other reasons Megatron had for being hesitant.

"Other than the note saying when to get on the train, we got zilch. Wonder what we’re doing this time. Do you know where we’re going?”

The not knowing was part of the problem.

“No.” Megatron shook his head. “Unfortunately, I only know that the trip will be shorter, based solely on the pittance of supplies they loaded into the luggage car.”

The Torchbearers loaded themselves onto the train in short order, taking up their various postings in and, in the case of one, outside the carriage. He didn’t bother to count them.

“A shame Saber couldn’t come,” Rodimus mused, stretching his legs out before settling them back across Megatron’s thighs. “I miss the little guy, but I don’t want him to eat whatever’s wherever we’re going. Probably. Unless it’s more scraplets. Then he’d be just who we need.”

The winged one, Updraft, remained by the door as though someone might make a run for it. Now his optic caught small engraving—wavy lines too stylized to accurately interpret at this distance—on an aileron of the left wing. Megatron remembered patching up their hand after being bitten by Star Saber. Not a talkative one. Heatsink had been protective of them back then, looming nearby during the entire procedure.

“Yes, perhaps it’s for the best he’s still in Minimus’s care. The trouble will likely be getting Minimus to give him back to us.”

Now Heatsink, surly as ever with their crossed arms, merely stood a few paces away from where Megatron sat. They also had an engraving on their left upper arm. A pair of jet’s wings.

Ah.

Of course.

The two were amica endurae, if he had correctly understood Nautica’s “lesson” on Camien engraving practices. No wonder Heatsink had behaved like that in the aftermath of Star Saber’s… creation, for lack of a better way to describe it.

A rebellious thought about perhaps one day getting paired engravings with Rodimus—fire in Rodimus’s stunning vermilion emblazoned across his own plating—crossed his processor before Megatron manually terminated the thread. Now was not the time for pointlessly self-indulgent fantasy.

Though, come to think of it, now that he was looking at Heatsink, Megatron couldn’t remember the names of the other three Torchbearers in this unit. Had they even been properly introduced after all this time?

Probably not. He only remembered learning the names of these two in the course of Heatsink being welded to his aft and treating Updraft’s injuries.

Perhaps it didn’t matter.

Or perhaps Megatron had just been too focused to notice, too fixated on whatever mad thing Rodimus had been up to since they had made moonfall all those weeks ago. He was losing his tactical edge in his old age, his keen optic for detail was finally failing him. Five million wasn’t ancient by any means—he was hardly older than Rodimus, approximately 800 thousand years was but a blink—but he certainly felt every one of those years in his endoskeleton and joints.

No crew members from the Lost Light had been invited and this trial had, apparently, not been widely advertised except for the date and time to listen to the live audio feeds. Perhaps the temple and parliament had caught on to Rewind’s casual capturing of some of the earlier trials. Technically, that would have been a cultural taboo, but not strictly illegal. The easiest way to prevent a transgression would be to prevent anyone nonessential from attending. That’s what he would have done if he were in their place.

Soon enough, the Mistress of Flame, in all her gaudy raiment, boarded, followed by more of those orb-shaped media drones. The door closed behind her as the drones zipped around the carriage to find the best places to lurk.

Fantastic.

The busybody-in-chief had arrived. Yet, she wasn’t alone.

The smallest of the six Torchbearers, reverent red streaks painted beneath their optics, huddled behind the priestess, like this particular one was ashamed, but why? Had this one boarded with the others?

Megatron could not recall; it was difficult to keep track of them all with their similar paints and relative wordlessness. How odd. However, for now, he would simply keep it in mind for later.

Two of the other Torchbearers—one with wide wheels in their shoulders and ankles and one with treads on their forearms and shins—had taken up posts at the far front of the carriage. Those two had often run errands when either he or Rodimus had asked. The sixth one—with a face obscuring visor and mask—had disappeared through the door at the front, presumably to stand with the driver. Megatron couldn't recall that one having done anything but be silently present.

“How are you feeling, Rodimus Prime?” The Mistress of Flame’s voice drew him back from his thoughts as she stood near where Rodimus was resting his head on the seats. “Have you recovered well?”

“Oh, yeah, Megs took great care of me. He’s the best doctor I could have asked for.” Rodimus paused, scratching his nose while he reclined with the other arm behind his head. “Ratchet’s great, sure, but he doesn’t also give me magical healing smooches, so yeah. Best doc.”

The egocentric part of Megatron’s processor wanted to relish in the compliments, but the unmitigated mortification from the second part of Rodimus’s professional review of his healthcare provider kept that in check. It was an act of willpower to keep from appearing embarrassed like some new-build caught in the act of fraternizing in a disused tunnel on break.

“Wonderful. I am relieved to hear it.”

Megatron narrowed his optics at her but bit his tongue instead of disputing her claim. She could have come to check on him at any time, not that she had beyond her public spectacle. He’d already chastised her for her impiety, despite his own atheism.

One of the things he hated the most about this “trip” to Caminus was his own inability to act, to intercede. Ever since the miners’s revolt on that outpost so long ago, Megatron had been the one to act, to cajole fate into taking him forward. He was not accustomed to being a passive participant, only reacting where possible and ultimately subject to forces entirely outside of his control.

Megatron could hardly turn Caminus inside out the way he’d used to solve problems once upon a time, not if he wanted to maintain his carefully nurtured principles.

This entire situation rendered him tethered to Rodimus’s heels, a highly visible position where he was powerless to deflect most threats. Even if the trials weren’t for him, at every opportunity, they tested Megatron too. The Mistress of Flame and her games tested his resolve, as though she was searching for a breaking point where he might snap and prove all his detractors right.

A nagging voice in his mind suggested that it was only a matter of time before the bomb of his suppressed anger stopped ticking down.

“Hey, babe.” Rodimus’s voice was like a soothing embrace, calling him back from a nightmare.

“Hm?”

“Easy on the leg unless you want to get more practice with the welder.”

Megatron glanced down to see where his hand, resting on Rodimus’s ankle was squeezing against the plating, not yet deforming it. He immediately relaxed his grip.

“My apologies.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Was this really the time to be so carefree? “You okay?”

The Mistress of Flame was still standing there with that empty grin, optics locked on his own like she knew he was struggling to not punt her through a window. She should have been focused on Rodimus, given how much she claimed to revere him. Megatron hardly ought to have been on her radar if she was truly so devoted, as opposed to merely paying lip-service to the concept.

The euphoria of being near a beloved god ought to be the entirety of her thoughts.

That small Torchbearer still lurked behind their master, but it was unclear whose gaze they were avoiding, either his or Rodimus’s. Though, Megatron doubted Rodimus was paying the Torchbearers any mind, if he ever had.

“Yes, I’m alright.” He gingerly patted Rodimus’s ankle, another apology, this one unspoken.

A sputtering roar sounded at the front of the hovertrain as the engine engaged. The carriage rattled before jumping from the dock and lurching away from the station.

Chapter 81

Minimus stood on the platform at the station, next to an empty hovertrain dock with his hands over his mouth. Star Saber had crawled onto his head, probably to get a better view of the busy station. Camiens bustled around them, going about their regular business with no mind paid to a panicking green minibot and weird-looking mechanimal on his head.

The train was gone.

Already gone.

Gone but where?

Where had it taken Megatron and Rodimus?

The only reason Minimus had even known to look here was because the temple staff had mentioned it this morning. He’d wanted to pay them a visit, to give them an update on what he’d found with Prowl. They had to be informed of Megatronus’s memories and Shockwave and—Minimus took a deep ventilation to ground himself.

His wrist commlink, unfortunately, hadn’t been working; apparently, it needed a software update that was still installing. In-person was the next best secure way to get them the information, but they’d already left by the time he had shown up at the temple.

Of course, they hadn’t been expecting him.

Because he still couldn’t have raised them on his commlink.

And they were gone.

Gone.

Just gone.

Already dragged off to who knew where, but why?

Surely it wasn’t the next trial already? There had been no warning. Megatron had not reported the arrival of any briefs or any scheduling updates.

He needed to contact Prowl immediately, but—Perhaps his commlink had finished updating.

Lifting up his wrist, Minimus flipped open the panel to check. The loading circle the installation wizard used was still rotating in place, not yet ready for use.

Blast it all.

Minimus overheard chattering nearby, turning to see a small crowd of mechs gathered around some sort of posting on a digital signboard.

Maybe it was the train schedule, but then why throw a fuss? Unless a train was delayed. That was worth filing a complaint. A functioning transportation system needed to run on time after all.

Somehow Minimus doubted the average Camien would agree with him. Not because of some cultural deficiency, no. Rather, he thought, because he knew he already cares more than the average mech, no matter their origin, about those sorts of mundane details.

Then just what was on that signboard?

Approaching the crowd, he politely coughed to announce himself. When no one responded, Minimus resorted to acquainting his elbows with kneecaps.

"Beg your pardon, if you'll just let me pass—Thank you."

The jostling and shoving, along with Star Saber's occasional growling, eventually saw him to the front of the group.

The signboard seemed to be showing an advertisement, a publication announcing the fifth trial and how the populace could participate. "Watch" wouldn't be quite the right word though there would apparently be a visual feed from the Mistress of Flame outside of the undisclosed trial location to supplement the live audio feed of whatever Rodimus would be doing.

Despite the futility of it, Minimus stretched up on his toes for a better look, as though it would somehow help.

The details were sparse, probably to prevent either outside interference in the trial itself or to prevent the masses from swarming in a place they couldn't—or perhaps shouldn't—go. That was Minimus's best guess at any rate.

The signboard was entirely text with only a few non-text elements. No photographs, no summary of the trial's nature. Just dates, times, and where to tune in to the various data feeds. There was an official seal stamp from the temple on the top of the posting, a stylized wreath of fire surrounding and embracing a caseless spark.

Minimus had seen some similar postings before, three times specifically.

Of course, the third trial hadn't had one given its… allegedly impromptu nature. If that trial had been spur of the moment and not carefully orchestrated, Minimus would eat his own armor.

All three trials that had taken place at the temple in Kremex had had summaries of the event and expected outcome, where to gather, post-miracle celebration information, and photographs of the temple itself, usually the expected gathering location on the grounds.

This new posting was absolutely barren in comparison.

The time listed on it was in just a few hours.

He had to contact Prowl immediately.

Minimus lifted his wrist, flipping the commlink panel open. The installation wizard flashed a smiling Autobrand, alerting him that the update was finally complete and he could resume using the commlink.

Finally.

Shoving his way back out of the crowd by the signboard, he pulled Prowl’s frequency from his list of contacts, praying that the insomniac would actually answer rather than staring at his commlink in an exhausted fog.

The last Minimus had seen of Prowl was the previous evening, slumped in his chair at the desk with his self-warming mug clutched in his hands, when they compiled their current findings… findings that thus far hadn’t been immediately useful. The horrible thought crossed his processor that they were only wasting their time on something that wouldn’t help them figure out what was going on on this moon.

Perhaps the memories were of better use to academics than to a pair of investigators, but they seemed important. What were the odds of firsthand footage like this of the original Thirteen on a far-flung moon colony none of them had ever been to? Especially when they contained footage of a Prime that Rodimus was supposedly the reincarnation of.

Star Saber, having been mostly silent this entire time, chirped when Prowl’s voice finally came through the commlink.

“Yes, Minimus? What is it?”

Prowl sounded groggy. Maybe he’d fallen asleep where Minimus had left him. He’d probably drifted off when his frame gave up asking nicely for recharge.

“Prowl, something’s happened.”

That wasn’t the least alarming way he could have started off, but it certainly wasn’t the most concerning. Minimus had already dialed it back from more upsetting options, including “they’re gone.”

There was a grunt through the commlink before Prowl’s voice snapped.

 

---

 

“Prowl, something’s happened.”

Prowl hadn’t been expecting to hear from Minimus quite this early. He had accidentally drifted off at some point after his colleague had left for the hotel the previous evening.

When his commlink woke him this morning, he was on his back on the floor, the quilted tarpaulin draped haphazardly over his doors and nothing else. The mug of fuel, which had been half-empty when he last saw it, was tipped over onto the floor in a puddle of dark purple energon, no longer glowing.

Dammit.

He must have knocked it over.

Oh well.

Prowl was even so drowsy that at first he thought he had heard Ultra Magnus’s voice. Strange. He also hadn’t seen Ultra Magnus since the Lost Light’s first officer had dropped him off at his temporary habsuite.

A problem for later, he thought, still lying on the floor. No need to get up.

He grunted before Minimus’s words finally finished processing in his head.

“Something—What?”

That could have meant anything, but Minimus wasn’t the type to panic over nothing.

“What exactly has happened?”

There was a shuffling noise in the background on the commlink, like Minimus was in a crowded public space.

“Rodimus and Megatron are gone. I don’t know where, just that they’ve gone by hovertrain this morning. I found a signboard advertising a media feed for the next trial starting in a few hours. It was all out of the blue, no warning whatsoever. I doubt they had much more than I did—“

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know. The posting didn’t say—“

Dammit!

Prowl hissed as he forced himself to sit up. The temple must have kept the details a secret on purpose, possibly to prevent any outside interference… or to prevent a crowd. That left them operating blind, especially if this trial was somehow more dangerous than any of the previous ones.

Not that Rodimus being in danger was the chief problem, though definitely a large one. Prowl wouldn’t admit it if someone put a gun to his head, but he felt reasonably certain that physically hurting Rodimus was not Megatron’s goal. Everything he’d seen since arriving on Caminus, including that god awful love poetry and—thanks to the productive Kremexian rumor mill—the incident at the hot spot, had pointed to Megatron actively looking to prevent harm coming to Rodimus. The idiot would probably be as safe as he could be provided he was not separated from Megatron.

He ought to send Megatron a bill though for stalling out Prowl’s analysis program with his “feelings.” It never was able to find a deeper pattern or suspicious code hidden within the florid lines. The poetry was, unfortunately, the genuine article, the product of a lovestruck wordsmith.

Disgusting.

However, the chief problem of immediate Prowl’s concern was needing to uncover whatever it was that the Camien authorities were trying to accomplish with this whole “reincarnated gods” farce. There had to be some ulterior motive, something beyond a religious experience.

“Prowl?”

“What?” he snapped, unwilling to acknowledge that he had been the one to lapse into silence.

“What’s our next move?”

Over the commlink, Minimus sounded so much like Ultra Magnus. It was almost like they had the same model of vocalizer, which was strange. They were such different size classes that even if they had both gotten replacements from the same manufacturer, they most likely wouldn’t have been identical models. How odd.

But not the immediate issue. He could ponder that at his leisure—whatever that was—when everything else was taken care of.

“… See if you can locate them. If you can’t, monitor the media feed. Send me the frequency of the feed but I need to make some phone calls.”

“Very well. I’ll message you the frequency and contact you when I have more information.”

Prowl snapped his commlink closed before double-checking the current time in Iacon.

Chapter 82

Rodimus had gotten pretty good at ignoring the Mistress of Flame when she started just… talking at him about this, that, or the other thing. He had been kneeling on the seat of the hovertrain, elbows crossed on the seat back to look outside as the land raced by.

They were going in the opposite direction of when they had set off for Saxetum. Instead of rough, red-flecked granite underneath the hovertrain, gray, almost black, stone dominated the view. While the area leading up to and surrounding Saxetum was featureless and flat, this way had been full of dark rolling hills and distant mountains, all eroded by the wind.

Megatron would probably know what type of rock that was. A shame he wasn’t available for a game of “hey, babe, what’s that rock?” Always a fun game.

Several minutes ago, Megatron had fallen into a light nap on the seat next to him, snoring loudly with his limbs laxly splayed out. No one had the spark to bother him about it. Either that or no one wanted to risk startling awake someone notorious for gratuitous violence, even if nowadays that violence was only really verbal.

As for himself, Rodimus had gotten used to the racket ages ago; he practically couldn’t hear it anymore. Besides, the big guy deserved a rest after the week or so of being on constant nursemaid duty.

He probably should have been paying attention. This time he only pulled his focus back from drifting hazily over the dry the landscape outside of the hovertrain’s windows when she said something about “titans.”

Titans.

Titans.

Where had he heard about titans recently? Rodimus tilted his head to the side, still not looking at the priestess. There had been a plague of them released from Luna-1 but that got resolved, if he remembered correctly. He hadn’t heard many details. Generally, details from home are not forthcoming when zipping around the galaxy actively avoiding being at home.

Wait.

Didn’t Solus have a titan friend? Yeah, that was right. The one actually named Caminus, the one who put the colony on this moon. That was it. Unfortunately, Rodimus didn’t really know anything about him aside from that.

Titans weren’t… always treated like individuals in their own right in historical narratives. Large living tools. Another consequence of the Functionist ideology that had dominated their society for so long—Great, now his thoughts were sounding like some of the slag that Megatron would say.

Didn't need that. No, thanks.

Slipping back down into the seat properly, he finally looked at the Mistress of Flame only to see  a flash of motion just past her.

A short Torchbearer with that eye paint he saw everywhere on Caminus was standing right behind her shoulder, looking a little sorry for themselves as they scrambled behind the priestess, like they didn’t want Rodimus to look at them. He’d seen this one before, on several occasions since they were part of the assigned guard unit, but he didn’t think they’d always looked quite so pitiful.

Well, best not look at them then. Didn’t want to make them uncomfortable.

Rodimus fixed his gaze on the Mistress of Flame’s intense, amber optics. Why did she always have to be at an eleven? Maybe she could dial it back to a five or something for awhile.

“Sorry, run that one by me one more time.” He pointed at the side of his head, indicating his audio processors. “That didn’t all make it in the sound-holes.”

Not that he was going to say it was because he hadn’t been paying attention. She would probably take offense to that, god or not.

It was still a little unclear to him if the Way of Flame had the concept of divine infallibility. If it did, he would have been stretching it to probably unforeseen limits since day one on this rock.

“Ah, yes, of course,” she said, still smiling even though she had just been blatantly ignored for at least the last ten minutes, maybe longer.

Either Rodimus was well on his way to pushing divine infallibility to its breaking point, accidentally triggering a religious reformation, or devout Way of Flame adherents were remarkably patient.

The Mistress of Flame, at least, seemed to be.

So far.

What a weird lady.

His anger at her locking him in a catacomb a few weeks back had mostly subsided, but her presence was still… off-putting in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Her behavior had always been a little strange, Rodimus thought, watching as she started elegantly gesturing with one arm.  He just hadn’t been previously bothered by it, with a few exceptions.

For one, she always insisted on his alleged full title. He hated being called “Prime,” but he had let it go, given her strongly held religious beliefs on the matter and the fact that his complaints about it had always gone absolutely nowhere with her.

For another, she almost never spoke to Megatron directly, like she considered him a nonentity. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually seen her do it, but he knew it had happened when he wasn’t around to bear witness.

The Mistress of Flame ignored and interrupted Megatron whenever he talked, even with Rodimus in the room, discounting the larger mech’s presence as little more than some sort of accessory that just happened to be part of Rodimus’s set of accoutrements.

The behavior had just become more and more blatant the longer they stayed on this moon. Rodimus would have to talk to her about it. “Now” was usually the best time to do something before he entirely forgot about it, but… he filed it away, setting a reminder flag on it so it would pop up in his HUD later.

Obnoxious alarms tended to work the best.

Megatron continued to snore behind him. Rodimus reached back to grab his hand but the angle wasn’t good, so after a moment of flailing awkwardly, he gave up.

Oblivious to Rodimus’s thoughts, the Mistress of Flame continued, drawing his focus back to titans.

“Of course, you may or may not have heard, but titans are sacred to us.”

This sounded like something he ought to already have known, but this was the first he had heard of it. Then again, maybe the Mistress of Flame had hoped he would do some self-directed research at the temple. Somehow, he didn’t feel particularly guilty about disappointing that expectation.

The Mistress of Flame continued, her grin not wavering.

Rodimus didn’t care for that smile of hers, never really had, and he had told Megatron as much this morning before they boarded the hovertrain. There was just something about it that didn’t sit right with him, but he hadn’t had much reason—yet—to point it out right to her face.

For now, he just tilted his head to the side, feigning interest.

“I suppose you may not remember him, Caminus, the titan who resides on our world.”

He barely remembered there had been a titan by that name. How in the hell was he supposed to a remember this specific detail from a life he had no recollection of? He still wasn’t sure if he was supposed to remember anything about being Solus in the first place, let alone the minutiae.

“… Sure, for argument’s sake, let’s just say I don’t remember.”

Rodimus, propping his elbow up on the ledge by the window, pulled up his legs to sit cross-legged on the wide seat. His relaxed and casual slump was a stark contrast to the priestess’s controlled, poised ruler-straight posture.

Did her back not hurt from holding herself so rigidly constantly? Maybe people like her and Minimus knew some sort of trick to avoid the strain. Then again, Rodimus was lucky and had a large living mattress, even if he snored like a trash shredder.

“You, in your original guise as Solus, had a close friendship with the titan who founded our colony so long ago."

She sounded so damn sure about this.

“His name is Caminus.”

Interesting use of the present tense. Also the name was a bit of a no-brainer.

“He permitted most of his body to be repurposed for shelter and construction.”

Rodimus nodded along.

“Ah, the self-sacrificing type—“ Then the operative word of the sentence processed. Good thing he didn’t have a beverage, or it would have been spat all over the priestess and her fancy vestments. “Most?”

Gruesome, but alright.

Titans were strange, but he supposed that since Caminus had always kind of been poor in resources, Caminus, the titan, might have been willing to surrender himself to provide for the colony. The ultimate dedication to his mission.

However, the Mistress of Flame’s word choice left Rodimus wondering how much exactly was left of the ancient titan if they had only used most of his body.

“We’re going to visit him,” she said, not really answering Rodimus’s question.

“His grave?”

That would have been quite the grave to dig—was there even a practical way to do that?

Maybe it was a memorial instead, or a museum for the components they didn’t use in establishing Caminus’s earliest infrastructure.

“No, his head and vital components are still extant and functional,” the priestess explained. The resulting mental image was something Rodimus wished he could unsee, but alas. “However, he has been in stasis for a few thousand years. Our cityspeakers and physicians have been struggling to wake him.”

“Let me guess… you want me to wake up Sleeping Beauty?”

“Who?” The Mistress of Flame tilted her head to the side.

“Never mind, I’ll wake up your boy.” Wait. “My boy? Our boy.”

Nailed it.

“I am a walking alarm clock. Ain’t that right, Megs?” He reached back and slapped at the mech sitting in the seat behind him, interrupting his chainsaw snoring with a blind palm right to the face.

Chapter 83

It had been a while since Prowl had called Optimus. His reports had stopped being frequent since the expedition to Saxetum, since he'd become engrossed in the more blatant danger.

As much as he wanted to disagree with his simulation software, the probabilities of Megatron being the active threat right now were low. While he wouldn't go so far as to say that the bastard had changed—that would ludicrous—Prowl would hazard that his priorities were… much more localized around Rodimus lately, rather than seeking galactic domination.

He watched the blue holographic circle of the commlink device on his desk ripple and buzz while it connected to Optimus's line. It had taken awhile to get through the absolutely god awful phone tree again—Optimus had stopped taking calls directly from Prowl's line after their falling out—but at least he had only been on hold for half an hour this time.

Prime would probably complain about the time, Iacon now enjoying its late evening while Kremex basked in its mid-morning sunshine. The glaringly white light of the stellar remnant that warmed the moon poured through the porthole in Prowl's habsuite. It was a shame he couldn’t show this world to Springer, now long disappeared into the Timemaze. His broken optic’s wiring arced again.

But Prime couldn't always choose when his attention was needed. That was part of being a leader, after all.

When the line finally picked up, the circle metamorphosed in a low-fidelity holographic projection of Optimus's head and shoulders.

"Prowl, you realize how late it is here—"

"Prime, this is important," he interrupted, waving a datapad at the projection with his left hand to underscore his point.

Prowl knew he was still on thin ice with his leader but that wouldn't hold him back now, not with something so urgent.

"I know you've been busy with integrating Earth into the Cybertronian Council of Worlds—“ Earth had been… complicated for all of them. At least Galvatron, a genuine and terrible threat, had been neutralized. “—But I have to speak with you about the investigation on Caminus."

"I've only been there once, Prowl, and only for a handful of moments. I don't think that I can really be of much help."

"You would be surprised."

"Is it really urgent?"

"Yes, it is. I need you to tell me what you know of the Mistress of Flame, what sorts of interactions you've had with her."

Apparently—thanks to a lucky discovery of the local wireless frequencies while tuning his commlink to the trial’s audio feed—the archives in the Memory District had some remotely accessible resources, which Prowl had poured through prior to his call to Optimus.

The Mistress of Flame, despite being a public figure, was not inclined to letting much slip about herself personally. Very little on her was available in records that Prowl could access.

He couldn’t even find her original name, only an earlier title, the Matriarch of Incaendium. The role of this “Matriarch” was unclear, especially as a new cleric had not ascended to take that empty posting since the current Mistress of Flame had vacated it. Clerics high enough in the hierarchy seemed to divest themselves of personal designations at a certain point, without records to match who they had been before. They seemed to become their roles.

Prowl couldn’t locate records of named clerics, low enough in seniority and importance to maintain their individual designations. They were likely behind higher security measures that he didn’t have the time right now to tackle. The high priestess’s background would have to remain mysterious for the time being.

The current Mistress of Flame appeared to have ascended to that title after a disastrous—without further explication in the texts—excursion to… Antilla, a planet from Megatronus’s memories. When he’d stumbled across that tidbit, Prowl had put a pin in that to note for later, to follow up when he had the chance.

"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to ask Windblade or even Starscream? They've had more interactions with her—"

"No, sir.” He let the honorific hang there for a moment, bouncing the light-pen in his hand against his knuckles with a soft clack. “This relates to your position as Prime."

Optimus narrowed his optics. If he weren't a hologram, Prowl imagined his optics would have dimmed as well. It appeared that Optimus understood.

"I see." There was a pause.

No matter how different Optimus and Rodimus were, their ascendencies to Primehood were something they shared, traumatic vaultings to positions they could never have been prepared for. They also shared the unique position of living deities in the Way of Flame. It would have been funny that neither living Prime even believed in that faith had the situation not been precarious.

Perhaps that was one reason Optimus looked out for Rodimus, even if Optimus's idea of "looking out" for someone sometimes left a lot to be desired. Prowl had long since learned to work around it, both out of necessity and out of respect. Rodimus never quite did. He had always seemed to chafe at it.

"I'll tell you what I can."

 

---

 

Half an hour later, Prowl was forced to come to the reluctant conclusion that Optimus had been right. He hardly knew more about the Mistress of Flame than anyone else seemed to.

The key difference being her assertion that Optimus, too, was the reincarnation of one of the Thirteen, not merely a modern Prime in his own right. She had claimed he was the “Arisen.” The removal of the Arisen’s name from records and history had been far more complete than that of Megatronus’s.

Prowl set down the light-pen he had been taking notes with and folded his hands on his desk.

“And… that’s all you know, Prime?” he asked, more for formality’s sake than anything else. He doubted Optimus would suddenly remember something relevant or divulge anything more than he already had. There was the nonzero chance that Prime was holding something back, something that he wouldn’t trust Prowl with, especially with the shaky nature of their current working relationship. However, his probability simulations assigned that possibility an almost negligibly low risk.

Though, this move to declare Optimus a reincarnation of a revered deity by the Mistress of Flame had not been without some measure of controversy. One of her bands of Torchbearers, the one led by Pyra Magna, had gone rogue after the sacrilegious assertion.

Prowl remembered this band.

In the wilds of the Rust Sea on Cybertron, they’d been touched by the Enigma of Combination, forming the powerful gestalt of Victorion. He had even communicated with Pyra Magna occasionally but hadn’t known about why she had left Caminus and left the Mistress of Flame’s service. It was a shame Pyra Magna was incommunicado at the moment, otherwise she would have been able to provide valuable insight.

It would stand to reason that Pyra Magna and her freelance Torchbearers would likely also regard Rodimus’s claim to being Solus with offense and suspicion, much like they had Optimus’s.

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s all.” The holographic projection of Optimus nodded solemnly. “When she’d said it, it hadn’t really meant anything to me at the time.”

The words “at the time” pinged in Prowl’s processor, something to follow up with when his current investigation was over. He wondered briefly if the Mistress of Flame’s interference had, intentionally or not, been partially to blame for the disaster that the post-war Earth campaign against Galvatron had turned into.

Had the idea of divine purpose wormed its way into Optimus’s head, even nonconsciously?

Not a problem for the here and now though, Prowl determined, but for when he had finished with Caminus.

“Thank you for your time, Prime,” he said flatly, lifting his hand to reach for the commlink, ready to end the call. “That was all I had for you. I’ll contact you when I have an update on the situation worth your attention—”

“Oh, Prowl,” Optimus interrupted, cheerfully.

The jovial mentor routine.

It would have been comforting had Optimus possessed a sense of humor that wasn’t based on inadvertent condescension framed as uplifting motivation. After working with Sentinel Prime and Zeta Prime who were decidedly not known for easy-going attitudes, Prowl had once upon a time found this attitude refreshing.

After millions of years, it had become tedious, no matter Prowl’s loyalties to the Autobots and, by extension, Optimus. No wonder Rodimus had chafed under it all, choosing instead to run away and reject the legacy of the Primes.

“There was actually something I wanted to tell you. Since I have you now, I might as well.”

Prowl sighed, bracing for the joke.

“Yes, Prime?”

“I’m going to be visiting Caminus in a week or so.”

Optimus? Coming here? But—

“Why?” Prowl couldn’t stop himself from blurting out the question, the word taking on a sharper than necessary edge in the process.

“The Mistress of Flame invited me. There’s going to be some sort of event, something to do with the solar eclipse. I’m not sure of the details.”

Of course not. Optimus often left details to everyone else, usually Prowl and Jazz.

Prowl opened his mouth to ask for more information, but Optimus continued before he could get any words out.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you all again.”

Prowl did not respond.

“Tell Rodimus and Megatron ‘hello’ from me when you see them.” Had Optimus forgotten the serious nature of Prowl’s investigation here? He had been the one to authorize him to even carry a firearm! “And tell Ultra Magnus he should be relaxing on his vacation, not working. I’m sure he’s been—“

“I’ll tell them, Prime. You’ve been more helpful than you know, sir.” Prowl pressed a button on the commlink, hanging up.

Ultra Magnus. Another thing to put a pin in later.

An event… involving the solar eclipse. Prokellox was going to come between Caminus and its sun in about a week, rendering the moon dark for some hours.

What could it be?

The audio feed from the advertisement at the hovertrain station crackled to life with the Mistress of Flame’s voice, startling Prowl from thought, nearly knocking over the commlink device on his desk.

The fifth trial was starting.

Chapter 84

The hovertrain had pulled to a stop in a shallow gorge between a trio of low, black mountains, worn smooth by the moon’s thin winds. However, what caught Megatron’s optic when they disembarked was something… far grislier than a mere majestic landscape.

Though… he supposed what he was seeing was majestic in its own macabre sort of way, saturated in the gentle breeze and soft, mournful hymns of the few Camiens already in the valley.

Lying wedged between the rounded peaks was the massive, limbless chest, split open and hollowed out to line the dark ridges of the valley.

From where Megatron stood, it appeared that brightly colored glyphs had been used to mark what was left of the titan’s interior. Some red, some blue, some yellow, and so on. The glyphs appeared to be highly-stylized versions of what was once used to write an older variety of Neocybex, nothing like the modern, native script used by the Camiens. The spread of colors reminded him somewhat of Kremex’s decorated streets and the archive’s color-coded navigation system.

In the middle of the hollowed out chest was a dome-shaped structure, thick, heavy cables running towards the tunnel-like neck at the far end of the valley, an approximation of a more average mech’s lifecord.

This building was most likely something the Camiens had built to house and protect their titan’s spark, the one remaining component. The entire surface of the structure was covered in white and pale blue pigments, probably to visually mimic the spark stored inside.

A normal Cybertronian would have died without any number of their internal components.

Yet, here, gutted of all but his brain and spark—the most basic elements of their kind aside from a transformation cog—and lying in state: Caminus lived.

Small stone shrines, arches of carved rock with pedestal altars laden with the offerings of pilgrims, dotted the rough footpath towards the back of the valley. The path itself, little more than a shallow trail worn into the basalt, was leading them around the sheltered spark in the center of the basin to the cavernous neck laid against the foot of the mountain.

The handful of Camiens that had already been here when they’d arrived ceased their loitering around some of the shrines to stare at the newcomers. There had been no other transports on-site besides their hovertrain on which they’d arrived. So, these were most likely clerics, caretakers of Caminus’s loosely-inhabited remains.

They said nothing, only watching the small procession with curious optics wreathed in that devoted scarlet color. With the proscription against visually depicting a Prime, they probably hadn’t yet seen what Rodimus looked like and were almost certainly keen to see a god walking.

Reason enough to stare, Megatron supposed. Rodimus was always quite a sight, even when he wasn’t trying to be.

No, Megatron couldn’t have blamed them at all.

A few of the onlookers had what appeared to be air brushes in hand, while others held buckets connected to the air brushes by tubing. Probably paint. Most likely for Caminus to help protect his body from the elements or for some other ritual purpose. Maybe both.

“Whoa, look at that!” Rodimus tugged on Megatron’s arm, pointing at the far end of the valley with his usual enthusiasm.

Reclined back on the third summit, as though merely resting, was the titan’s head, giant optics dark and blind over the flaking red paint underneath on Caminus’s cheeks.

Either the priests didn’t restore the markings on his face in their care taking or they simply hadn’t gotten to that part of him yet this time around.

What a grotesque display.

“Kind of creepy, isn’t it?” Rodimus suggested, still holding onto his arm, like he thought Megatron would wander off and get lost in the valley like a confused new-build.

“I suppose ‘creepy’ is a word for it.”

Perhaps not the right word, but certainly applicable.

“Come on; let’s go!” Rodimus pulled him forward along the path, small stones tumbling away as they were kicked out of the way.

Rodimus had seen inactive titans before, hadn’t he? On Luna-1, if Megatron remembered correctly from the prior mission reports he had read during his early tenure the Lost Light.

Perhaps that familiarity was why he seemed to be reacting with amused curiosity rather than any visible discomfort.

The media drones were already streaming live data, their red lights burning bright as they hovered around them, occasionally darting forward to catch whatever drivel came out of the Mistress of Flame’s mouth.

If not for the loud hum of spark energy surging through those insulated cables and the Mistress of Flame’s assurances as they abandoned the hovertrain with their honor guard of Torchbearers, Megatron would have thought the titan long-dead.

He and Rodimus had both seen far worse than this during the course of the war.

Yet, it was still discomfiting to see something nominally revered and sacred to adherents of the Way of Flame so dismembered and kept in a sort of undeath.

This complicated arrangement of Caminus’s body, somehow, must have been one of their ways of honoring that.

For now, Megatron decided to chalk it up to cultural differences, but this seemed less like a resting place for a beloved titan and more like a scaled up version of Decepticon interrogation torture practices. He even recalled Tarn’s reports of this sort of thing done to traitors, slowly removing all but the most vital components. Worse, Megatron had signed off on it. He’d not only allowed it, but had approved it. Back then was… not truly so long ago, was it?

His disgust at the memory itself, however, was consolation, of a kind, that he had, in the intervening years, changed for the better. No longer did death and suffering delight him or bring him comfort.

The Mistress of Flame, her voice droning on in that dramatic showman way of hers as she walked them up through the canyon, reassured them that the Caminus chose to sacrifice himself for the people he had nurtured, that this was his decision, that it was what he had wanted.

Megatron silently wondered if Caminus had anticipated dying in the process or if he had also chosen to be kept on life support like this, propped up in between mountain ridges like it was a dignified hospice.

The ancient plating, he saw as they began to trek up the valley, had, despite the priests efforts, begun to show signs of weathering, an unavoidable side effect of being too large to actually shelter without a massive amount of resources. This valley had probably been the closest the ancient Camiens could have gotten with their limited supplies. Even now, with Caminus being part of the Council of Worlds, that would probably have been too tall an order.

When Megatron had had his fill of looking at the ghoulish display of Caminus’s remaining frame, he turned to look at the landscape. He’d seen it on the hovertrain but hadn’t really taken it in. The bulk of the stone in the area was basalt, a volcanic rock. Many of the mountains in the region were likely extinct shield volcanoes, eroded down over the eons. Perhaps some areas had been part of larger basalt flows.

Caminus had probably chosen to land here because basalt deposits sometimes held valuable ores. It would have been an important early resource for the colonists… if any ores had been here to find in the first place with the moon being so barren.

Old instincts to dig and scan for deposits, long dormant subroutines that he had only booted up during the war on the rare occasion they could have been useful, asked for permission to launch.

Megatron denied the request.

He didn’t even have the ultrasound emitter and receiver hardware anymore, nor a pick to hand. All he had was his fists, which would work in a pinch but was not sustainable—No, no!

He did not exist to dig, even as his processor relished in the featureless, deeply-ingrained memory of how he would need to move his limbs to swing a pick. Wasn’t it comforting to dig? To break rich soil and rock to find something useful? To be useful? To create space where there had been none before?

No, Megatron lied to himself.

He would not give in, neither to the conditioned drive for violence nor to the conditioned compulsion to rend the earth beneath his feet. Clenching his jaw, he summoned up his hatred for the cramped, dark tunnels, the deathtraps he’d been forced to work in, to push that damned compulsion back down into the depths of his processor where it belonged. He could never purge it completely from his system, not without mnemosurgery, but that… would have been a bridge too far.

“Hey, babe, what’s wrong?” Rodimus. His processor returned to the here and now, sore jaw relaxing at last.

Rodimus was waving his slender golden hand in front of Megatron’s face.

 A media drone hovered just behind Rodimus’s palm, the blinking “live” light wordlessly mocking him. At least they were “audio only.” A small mercy.

“Yoo-hoo! Babe, you looked like that titan said something mean about your mentor.” It might as well have. “You alright?”

Quickly shaking his head, Megatron shifted his weight in an attempt to loosen his tense joints and pneumatics.

He hadn’t realized that he’d stopped walking at some point. The Torchbearers still framed him, aside from the small, nervous one that had pulled ahead to lurk behind Rodimus. Most likely they were at the ready should he suddenly snap. In the past, that would have been a reasonable concern.

Perfectly understandable. Megatron had once upon a time even flaunted how much of a threat he could be. The fear and dread he had aroused in others had been a special, horrible joy all on its own.

Yet now, when he no longer craved the suffering of others, he simply felt as though he were a prisoner on an invisible leash, paraded around to remind some proverbial audience that the demon had been captured.

“Yes, I’m fine. I… was momentarily distracted, is all. Nothing you need to worry over, Rodimus.” Noticing his hand had instinctively drifted to his surgical kit, he sighed and let that hand drop once more to his side. “We have more important places to be though, don’t we?

Chapter 85

“And, so, no one’s tried… a stimulant of some kind?” Rodimus asked, hands on his hips as he stood before the floating, darkened orb of Caminus’s brain module.

Lifeless, disconnected cables hung across the top of the chamber and consoles sat unresponsive. The hum of the spark energy traveling uselessly to the base underneath the brain via the giant cords connected to the titanic spark outside was the only other noise.

It was too quiet in here. It felt like a grave, like all those half-dead titans on Luna-1. That place had been creepy and the inside of Caminus’s head wasn’t really any better.

“I hear that works for most people,” he added, tapping at a dead console in thought.

Stimulants in recreational doses generally just made him fall asleep, but apparently that wasn’t really their intended effect. Go figure. That also explained the funny looks people gave him when he offered them a hot, stimulant-laced beverage when they were stressed.

Megatron kept recommending he take a specific microdose of stimulant every day to improve his ability to focus, but that sounded fake.

Also remembering take medication every day at a specific time was kind of… part of the trouble that he generally had with schedules. Megatron wasn’t stupid; he should have seen the obvious problem inherent in his advice.

But that was neither here nor there, Rodimus thought, lifting his hand to his chin. The Mistress of Flame waited quietly towards the tunnel that led back out of Caminus’s head. The Torchbearers had remained outside, guarding the neck opening in the valley below.

“Rodimus.” Here it comes, he thought. “If you can source a stimulant dosage that would affect a titan, by all means, you’re welcome to try.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe,” he answered, deciding not to acknowledge the sarcasm. If he didn’t acknowledge it, it couldn’t hurt him, right? “But, look, I was just throwing out an idea, okay? Gotta start somewhere. It’s called ‘brainstorming.’”

Or was this technically “spitballing”? Oh well.

The media drones slowly circled around him, one ducking back to catch Megatron coughing, because that was apparently something worth including in the audio feed.

These not-quite paparazzi drones were strange, but at least they weren’t snapping photos. The small mercy of the Way of Flame’s visual depiction of Primes taboo. The downside was that they wouldn’t catch him striking cool poses that showed off how awesome he could be, or, at least, how awesome he could pretend to be.

If the consoles weren’t all dark, Rodimus would have thought to give them a whirl. Maybe someone forgot to make sure a setting was toggled correctly or something. Technology was finicky like that sometimes and, from what he gathered from Megatron and Ratchet, Cybertronian bodies with their mechanical nature weren’t that much different in that respect.

Rodimus tapped his chin a couple more times before wandering closer to the base of the brain. Standing up on the tips of his feet, he stretched out his hand towards the offline brain module—

“Don’t touch that.”

Rodimus had lost track of how many times Megatron had told him that over their few years together on the Lost Light.

“Why?” he whined, arm still in the air.

“You could damage the delicate circuitry if you don’t handle it correctly—“

Rodimus sighed, sinking back down to stand normally. He wouldn’t have been able to reach anyway. The brain was floating higher than he could get to without help of some kind.

“Yeah, alright. Fine.”

On the wall nearby, several smaller coils waited on hooks. Those looked not unlike cityspeaker cables.

Drift had shown him one before. Allegedly he’d won it in a poker game.

Since no one onboard had been a cityspeaker, Rodimus had traded the cable for explosives at one of their ports of call. They could always make use of explosives. One of the things he agreed with Brainstorm about. You could always use more explosives.

“You guys think maybe he’s just starving? I don’t see any fuel lines in here.”

Unless they were sharing space with those spark energy wires inside those gigantic cables from the spark outside. Potentially a dangerous setup what with energon being prone to going kaboom if you even looked at it funny.

“If you forget to eat for long enough, you can go into stasis—”

“Rodimus.”

Megatron was an awful buzzkill at times.

Though, the Mistress of Flame’s disapproving face every time Megatron contradicted him was almost worth the aggravation.

“Yes, doc bot? What’s your professional opinion?”

“Titans are not my expertise—“

“Come on, he’s just a big dude. How different could he be from any other large dude, like Magnus. Besides, that used to happen to me all the time before I started setting alerts to eat lunch in my chronometer—“

Wait.

“That’s it!” Whipping around to face Megatron and the Mistress of Flame, Rodimus clapped his hands together. “I’ve got it. Alerts. Caminus here needs an alarm.”

And he knew just how to do it.

“Babe, give me a boost. I need to be tall.”

 

---

 

“Rodimus, have you thought this through?”

What a dumb question, Rodimus thought, held up to the lowest hanging spark energy cable by Megatron’s hands around his hips. It was the only way to get him so high overhead. There weren’t exactly a bunch of ladders just hanging around in Caminus’s head.

“Of course not.” He shrugged. “Why do you ask?”

One of the cityspeaker lines he had nicked from the wall hung, coiled, over his arm. It wobbled whenever his arm moved.

He poked around in the hole he’d made in the insulating mesh with one of Megatron’s surgical tools. The “good doctor” had protested the misuse and abuse of his lifesaving tools, but he had begrudgingly permitted Rodimus to use them, provided he was “careful.”

Rodimus barely knew what the word “careful” meant on a good day. He knew Megatron knew that too. He probably didn’t expect to get his tools back in a functional state.

The poor sap would probably let him get away with murder. Rodimus had called it “wuv” once in his presence and Megatron had nearly had an involuntary hard reboot.

Worth it.

“What is it you’re even attempting to do up there?”

“Waking up Caminus; I thought that was obvious.” Megatron usually paid more attention than that. “The Mistress of Flame told us on the way here and when we got in the cranium, babe. Memory starting to go? Even I retained that.”

There was a long-suffering sigh below him, but the hands holding him up didn’t waver.

“I meant, what are you specifically doing to wake Caminus. What it looks like is that you’re attempting to rig an explosion.”

“Good eye. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, he’s too big for a regular alarm and his chronometer is probably busted. If he still has one. An airhorn or siren probably wouldn’t do the trick. We also don’t have those on hand.” The one time he really wished either Ratchet or Prowl were here to unleash their sirens. “Unless you’ve got a klaxon in your subspace that I don’t know about.”

“Rodimus, that’s not—“

“So, a big ol’ kaboom will have to do. Even a titan can’t sleep through that, especially right next to his brain.”

The mother of all alarms, he thought, carefully pinching the end of the cityspeaking cable to one of the fuel lines. Probably not the smartest setup to have a volatile, explosive chemical tube running parallel to a power source, but that was a complaint to take up with Primus.

If he were truly a god, maybe he could do just that. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d yelled at Primus, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

This plan would even wake someone dead drunk on engex or someone who’d been in a medically induced comas for thousands of years, Rodimus was sure of it.

“You realize there is a nonzero chance this would kill him, yes?” As usual, Megatron had more to complain about, despite dutifully holding Rodimus steady high overhead. “Brain modules are delicate, no matter how large.”

“Yeah, I did consider that, but this is still the best option.” Given that the other options were more or less nonexistent. He didn’t exactly hear Megatron supplying any better ones right now. So much for all that self-taught medical knowledge.

All that earned him was another sigh, but he was grateful that Megatron didn’t move, otherwise this would have been even more dangerous.

Rodimus began unspooling the cable from his shoulder. He’d need more of these to get enough length. While he could just route this back to the spark energy line right here, he would have preferred to be farther away from the explosion. He could be reckless, sure, but even he didn’t want a titan’s portion of energon igniting right in his face.

“Hey, so I’m going to need the rest of those cityspeaking cables. I need to do unspeakable—“ He stopped to snort at his own unintentional pun. “—things to them with your pliers to get this crime against reality on the road.”

 

---

 

“Ready?” Rodimus asked, holding the last cable in one hand and the rubber handled pliers in the other.

Megatron steadied him from underneath like before, hands still holding him by the hips so he didn’t shift around and risk falling. This time, they were on the far side of cranium from where they’d begun, to get the best lead time on not being blown to pieces.

“I think we should at least evacuate the priestess and her honor guard.”

True, they had little way to know what sort of structural damage could occur from an undirected energon explosion.

Oh well.

Rodimus just shrugged.

“You realize this could also very well kill us?”

“So could some bad fuel. So could a particularly unhappy turbofox. So could gravity and a tall cliff. An explosion isn’t special.”

“Very well,” Megatron said, probably restraining his stronger objections on the grounds that Rodimus had already made up his mind. “Just get on with it then.”

“Thanks, babe. Hold on to your bolts.” Rodimus paused as he reached into Caminus’s power cabling. “Metaphorically, of course. Otherwise, you’d drop me and royally piss me off, so let’s not do that.”

“Rodimus.”

“Alright, alright. One kaboom coming right up.”

The mutilated cityspeaker cable, with its couplings bent and twisted, the mesh insulation peeled away at the end, was roughly clipped onto the power line.

And nothing.

“Megs, do you think we did it wro—“

Bright violet light flashed behind them. The screech of metal rending and the rush of energon igniting reached them just as the first shock wave shook the floor beneath their feet. The Mistress of Flame screamed from her place near the titan’s throat. Rodimus, dropping the tool from his hand and scrabbling for purchase on the insulated power line, would have lost his balance if he weren’t held tightly.

The modified lead wire, assembled from ruined cityspeaking cables, fell free, losing its connection to a live current.

Another shock wave rumbled through the cranium’s flooring. Cracks formed in the walls and ceiling. Caminus’s plating must have become brittle over time.

Rodimus made the mistake of looking down just as he was yanked off the cable. The floor that had been beneath Megatron’s feet split open just as they retreated towards Caminus’s neck.

There was no sight of the Mistress of Flame or her Torchbearers as Megatron ran to the exit, but the others had already been closer to it. Probably already escaped down the tunnel to the safety of the valley below.

Chunks of Caminus’s plating began to fall, the dislodged pieces of frame forming stumbling blocks in their path. The thick metal panels crashed into the crumbling floor. Rodimus could feel the breeze off one just narrowly missing his leg.

Megatron hauled them over fallen bits of metal and cabling as Caminus’s body trembled and caved in around them, a desperate bid to reach the throat before it too fell to pieces. It was hard for Rodimus to keep track of the falling objects and their own escape path in the chaos.

But it was all a futile effort.

The ear-splitting noise of metal rending close by sounded overhead and then Rodimus was on the ground, face down in the dark. Arms still held him tightly.

Chapter 86

Chapter specific warning for death and gore

The heavy lines tethering Caminus in his alt-mode to the valley floor creaked and groaned as Liege Maximo moved through the titan’s sleeping body towards the hot spot nestled safely deep inside. He hurried, agitation and impatience spurring his haste.

Onyx had called him all the way out here.

Maximo had been due a final visit to his loyal titan friend, Vigilem, who hadn’t yet left the system.

However, despite Maximo’s busy schedule, Onyx had said he wanted Maximo to see something, to “help” with something. What exactly, of course, had never been made clear. As usual.

Onyx had a love of secrets, of information dispensed only as minimally as necessary. An occasionally frustrating trait that Maximo generally admired about his mentor, something he strove to emulate, up until it interfered with his own personal business.

Maximo, therefore, had to meet his mentor at Caminus’s artificial hot spot for as yet undisclosed reasons, per the encrypted, self-deleting message he had received.

Onyx had also always had a knack for contacting him at the most inconvenient moments.

This time Maximo had been about to board the shuttle that would have ferried him out to Vigilem.

The crew had already been paid the agreed upon fees for the trip, but had agreed to wait longer provided they were paid extra for the “involuntary downtime.” Maximo was their only passenger after all.

Maximo had reluctantly handed over the extra shanix. He knew Onyx wouldn’t be reimbursing him, even though this was Onyx’s fault in the first place.

Vigilem, however, was still waiting for Maximo in a tenuous orbit by the system’s heliopause, so he could properly say goodbye before his loyal titan went off to fulfill their empire’s colonial ambitions. Most of the titan’s crew were in stasis aside from those tasked with harvesting the newsparks and preserving them to develop later.

Vigilem would, for better or worse, wait. He would understand the delay, would know that Maximo wouldn’t keep him waiting longer than absolutely necessary.

However, Onyx had only just returned to the planet. The fleet, which had just passed into communications range a few days prior, returning from the failed annexation of Antilla before entering Cybertron’s orbit earlier this morning.

There was no reason for Onyx to summon him out here!

Did Onyx know something he didn’t? The thought circled in his mind as Maximo clambered through the titan towards the ship’s core. 

Well, of course, Onyx did, he reminded himself. Onyx usually knew something no one else did, but Maximo wished his mentor would clue him in at least a little more than the contextless instructions he’d received.

His hands quickly pulled him up one of the internal access ladders. Luckily, Vigilem had a similar interior layout, which made navigation a little easier, even in areas without posted orienteering signage. That kept him from getting too lost.

His mentor was always planning and Maximo, who generally gladly aided and abetted with these plans, wasn’t sure exactly what he would see upon arrival.

It was probably yet another thing he would have to keep hidden from his brother-in-arms.

Megatronus was smarter and more wily than Onyx usually gave him credit for, which meant that keeping information from him was always difficult. Prudently, Onyx made sure to keep those views to himself whenever Megatronus was actually present.

Unfortunately, Maximo was burdened with having to delicately balance Onyx’s dismissal of Megatronus’s intelligence and how clever his violent brother-in-arms could be. He was glad to not have been made to go with them on that damn campaign. It would have been a lie if he denied having silently hoped they had imploded out there, among the stars. Then neither of them would have been Maximo’s problem.

Maximo stopped short when he entered the chamber containing the hot spot. Violently contrasting smells—the acrid stench of scorched, dear metal and the far subtler odor of hot, condensing sentio metallico around ignited sparks—immediately assaulted his olfactory sensors.

He staggered back from the door with a hand on his chest as his senses reeled.

He had not been prepared to see Solus’s body on the floor, fallen to the side next to the hot spot itself. The body was barely not touching the protective metal ring containing the specially-treated soil.

Or, at least, he was fairly certain that charred frame was Solus.

The mech’s chest was popped open with cables trailing away into the hot spot itself, with the disconnected ends framing a spark burning brightly on the gray soil. The knees were bent, as though they’d been kneeling. Whomever this had been, had tried to jumpstart the newsparks. The elaborate cabled headdress that had slipped off when the mech fell was enough for Maximo to confirm their identity.

This indeed had once been Solus, but no longer.

He needed to contact Onyx immediately—Turning to run back the way he came, Maximo was stopped when he ran into what felt like a wall.

“I take it you now understand the urgency of the situation,” explained Onyx’s calm, near-monotone voice while Maximo shook sense back into his head.

Colliding with another mech in a panic was never a gentle experience. He was lucky that the horns of his helmet didn’t get either broken off or jammed into a piece of Onyx’s dark armor.

“I need your assistance,” Onyx continued, immediately to business, staring down at Maximo from his full, imposing height.

“Assistance?” he asked.

Of course, that was what he’d been told that before arriving here but given that Solus was dead on the floor…. He was tempted to ask how Onyx knew she would be here, like this, but he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut. The less he explicitly knew, the less he was potentially culpable for.

“Yes, take her to her workshop before Megatronus returns there.” Onyx waved an arm at the fried corpse behind them. “She was obviously not at the landing pad for the shuttle this morning and his suspicions are running high. He has already been to her workshop and has since left to rove throughout Crystal City for her.”

He couldn’t stop himself from blurting out the beginnings of a question.

“What about—“

“I will take care of him.” Whatever that meant.

Maximo just knew he wanted to be nowhere near Megatronus when he discovered the news.

His brother-in-arms had never one to take poor news well and this would have qualified as “catastrophic.” Maximo’s begrudging respect for him only extended as far as keeping out of the blood circle of whatever Megatronus happened to be holding.

They had never been particularly close. He doubted that Megatronus would hesitate if he thought, even for a second, that Maximo had been involved in his lover’s death. There would have been no love lost between them.

“Take her to the workshop,” Onyx continued, “clean her up, and pose her on the floor by the forge. I will handle the rest.”

Did Caminus not notice what had happened? Surely, he would have noticed Solus arrive to visit. She was—had been—a loud person.

Had he… gone into unintentional stasis, knocked inactive from a power surge related to whatever had happened down here?

The titan had certainly been offline when Maximo had arrived.

“Of course.”

“And then I will contact you with further instructions.” Onyx’s face was inscrutable, always had been, but it never stopped being unsettling. “This was not what I originally had envisioned but it will suffice.”

Liege Maximo, armed now with his mentor’s orders, knew not to ask any further questions.

 

---

 

“Caminus, I’ve… I’ve brought you awful news.” At least that part was sincere, though the portion Liege Maximo considered “awful” would likely be very different from Caminus’s assessment.

Almost nothing else he had prepared to say to the titan would be truthful, not beyond the core fact of Solus’s death.

He stood, hands clasped politely behind his back, in front of the titan’s brain module, familiar with interpreting the floating glyphs from communicating with Vigilem while he was in his nonverbal alt-mode. That had left him the most appropriate one to deliver the official news from Crystal City’s government.

Onyx wouldn’t have bothered to do this himself, preferring to send a “lackey,” a word Maximo chafed at, despite its accuracy.

Megatronus, of course, had been taken care of already, a loose end tied up. Onyx assured him that, though he lived for the time being, he would be taking the fall. Although, Maximo felt a twinge of discomfort at not knowing why. What could Onyx possibly gain by framing Megatronus for murder? For the murder of the mech’s own beloved? Maximo couldn’t begin to imagine what utility that could have.

Probably some long game, the conclusion of which that only Onyx could foresee.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first crime that Maximo had assisted his master with covering up, but that meant that he would have to continue to do so in perpetuity, lest his own involvement be leaked. It had always been safer, so far, to remain on Onyx’s side, to do as he was told, Maximo reasoned, than to cross him. He could only hope that would bear true going forward, otherwise… otherwise he didn’t want to think too deeply about the potential consequences.

If he stopped being useful to Onyx one day, would a fate like either Solus’s or Megatronus’s await him? When he had agreed to learn under Onyx Prime, Maximo had wanted to gain from Onyx’s brilliance. Had the lessons in treachery been worth it?

Bright green, almost yellow glyphs appeared across Caminus’s brain. These glyphs didn’t map to words in any language Maximo knew, just to the concept of being attentive to whatever information was forthcoming.

“What I have to say may be… difficult for you to hear.”

It had been a few days since he had moved the body of Solus from the hot spot.

He, personally, had not seen Megatronus in all that time. He had no clue where Megatronus had gone, no one did. They only knew that he had fled the planet. Beyond that Maximo knew only what Onyx had told him and the images of what Onyx had done with Solus’s body.

Of course, those were the “official” images used to file a warrant for Megatronus’s arrest, along with stripping him of all ranks and titles. His brother-in-arms had been labeled a persona non grata by the Cybertronian government for allegedly murdering his lover in a rage.

“Solus….” Maximo hesitated, taking a shaking, deep ventilation to add to the appearance of barely suppressed emotional distress.

An act, a performance for an audience of one.

A twinge of pity and sympathy pinched at his spark.

Previously, he had not cared particularly one way or the other for Solus beyond their rare work together and there was no love lost between him and Megatronus. Despite that emotional distance, Maximo felt for Solus, whose presumably accidental death was being used as a cudgel.

She hadn’t deserved this and neither had Caminus. The thought of someone telling a similar lie to Vigilem left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

Another deep breath, though this one with the goal of appearing to soothe himself.

“Solus is… Solus is dead.”

The sword she had lovingly forged for Megatronus to take to war had been found, plunged into her torso, pinning her to the floor like a specimen for examination. The Star Saber had been wedged through her spark chamber. The narrative Maximo had been asked, by Onyx, to perpetuate was that Megatronus had taken offense to being asked to retire, to being relieved of his weapon, and that he had, finally, after years of brewing mental instability, snapped.

Most that had served closely with Megatronus would doubt some of the details, but all of Cybertron and the imperial colonies they were still in contact with knew of his capacity for violence. The public would believe it and Onyx had assured Maximo that that was all that mattered.

It took several seconds for Caminus to respond.

:: Dead ::

Caminus repeated the glyph, rapidly, in a way that implied a question, the signs dispersing too quickly for Maximo to interpret mood from the color.

“Yes, dead. She was… murdered.”

Maximo waited for the inevitable question.

:: Who ::

“By Megatronus.”

:: Night Wander :: Caminus confirmed.

The titan’s nickname for him, a play on his culture as a nomadic Darklander, flashed bright red in alarm. It was an amusing counterpart to the glyph of “sun” for Solus. The night, as it wandered over the planet each day, hiding away the sun from sight.

There was much more sophistication to the glyphs than most Cybertronians could understand, really only seeing surface-level communication. More layers of meaning to distinguish between a glyph with its standard meaning and those used as part of names.

Even Maximo, who was more skilled than most who were not cityspeakers, knew he was still missing information.

However, the glyph’s shape didn’t waver; it was calm in structure, despite the color.

Caminus was lying. Poorly.

He already knew. Though the question remained of what exactly he knew.

It hardly mattered though. Caminus would be leaving in the next few days, most likely never to be heard from again as he founded his colony in the far-flung reaches of space. Onyx had already removed a necessary component from the titan’s space bridge. Whatever Caminus knew, in his limited capacity to speak in a way most of their species could understand, would stay with him, far away.

“Yes. It was Megatronus. He was responsible for her death.”

And now, orders carried out, Liege Maximo could return to Vigilem, to say farewell before the titan went off on his own colonization mission.

“I’m sorry you had to find out this way. It really had only been a matter of time before something like this had happened.”

It was a shame, Maximo thought, that he couldn’t go with Vigilem, to remain with his only friend.

Little did he know that he would be granted that very wish… in a way.

Chapter 87

For what felt like an eternity, even if Rodimus’s chronometer determined that it was just several seconds, everything around him seemed to shake. He could hear Caminus collapsing around them before it was suddenly silent.

Megatron was still here, holding onto him like his life depended on it, but he wasn’t moving, just pinning him down. He was probably the only thing keeping him from being crushed right now.

Nothing felt crushed anyway.

Rodimus didn’t hurt more than when he fell on any other occasion.

Just a little sore. Fingers and feet could still wiggle. Spoiler was a little pinched but there was an entire guy on top of his back so that was to be expected. There was a little more space than Rodimus would have expected though. He supposed Megatron had managed to get up onto his knees before they had been buried.

Yeah, he was fine. His paint was scratched to hell, and he was covered in shrapnel and dust, from what he could see of his body in the dim glow of his optics and biolights, but he was fine.

“Megs?”

Rodimus got a grunt in reply, but there was a new red glow adding to the low lights. Megatron must have turned his optics on.

“Cool, you’re still kicking.”

One less thing to worry about.

He sighed with relief, now better able to appreciate the warm shield on top of him. In a situation where they weren’t buried alive, Rodimus thought, that might have been a fun time.

Just how much rubble were they under anyway? It would take some time to dig themselves out… or wait for someone to come do it. Hopefully they wouldn’t overheat before then. What a dumb way to go.

Well, they weren’t going to go anywhere for a while either way, might as well take stock of the situation.

“Hey, do you think she got crushed?” he asked, casually, as though they were merely lounging back at the temple.

“Hm?”

“The Mistress of Flame.” Who else? “Do you think she got crushed when the neck collapsed?”

She didn’t have a walking indestructible wall to lovingly shelter her after all.

“I… I have no idea. I can’t begin to speculate.”

There was an edge there in Megatron’s voice that wasn’t usually there. The last time Rodimus had heard it was when he’d been woken from nightmares.

Had he… been having nightmares about being buried alive? Rodimus supposed that, given past lines of work, it had once upon a time been a very real possibility, a very real fear. Especially being buried alone with no chance of escape deep underground. His spark stirred in empathy.

“… Look, it’s okay.” Rodimus wriggled one of his arms out from under his own chest, now free to reach back and pat Megatron’s arm in an attempt at comfort. Best do what he could to prevent a panic, not that he really thought Megatron would panic. Unadulterated “panic” wasn’t generally one of the things he was known to give free reign. But the added stress certainly wouldn’t help their situation any. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Rodimus, it’s alright.”

It was really hard to pat effectively at this angle. His elbow and shoulder were starting to hurt, but the partial contact with Megatron’s arm was worth it.

“You don’t have to play tough about it. I know you get claustrophobic real bad—”

Megatron’s grip loosened as he adjusted his hunched posture over Rodimus. Rubble could be heard shifting above them.

“… Thank you, but, no, it really is alright.”

There was more space suddenly around them. Rodimus used it to roll over onto his back, taking care to not catch his spoiler on anything. He still accidentally smacked one of the fins against Megatron’s arm in the process, a sharp but quickly dissipating pain.

“What do you mean?”

Now that he could see Megatron’s face, the strain of old fears was more obvious to the optic, mostly in the tense way he held his jaw. Rodimus had figured out over their shared tenure on the Lost Light that was usually a clue, a minute one, but a clue all the same.

He’d take it.

“I’ve been making subtle shifts against the rubble to see where it might give. I don’t have an ultrasound emitter anymore, no, but I can still make educated guesses about a path out.”

Megatron shifted more of his weight to one arm, picking up the other to push at some of the rubble, a rush of cooler air coming through the cracks in the crumbled plating that surrounded them.

“Besides, unlike a mineshaft, we’re not buried deep. I wouldn’t exactly call this ‘entombed.’”

Sure, but Rodimus had to wonder whom exactly he was trying to convince that it was fine.

“Oh.” He pushed himself up on his elbows, bringing them nearly face-to-face. He reached up, putting a palm on the side of the Megatron’s face. The jaw tension melted away. “Just let me know if I can help.”

 

---

 

It took what must have been twenty minutes to dig their way to an open space, but, luckily, unlike when the ground crumbled, Caminus only had so much plating. There had only been a layer or two above them that Rodimus and Megatron had had to push aside. Unfortunately, the layers had been heavy, which had made the endeavor slow going.

At least Megatron would be happy that they weren’t covered in soot this time, just dust and dirt that they’d scrub from each other’s frames when they got back to the temple.

One last thick sheet of metal was tossed away and Rodimus crawled into the resulting clearing. 

Searingly cold light from the moon’s distant star burnt his optical sensors. He shielded his face against the brightness with his hand as he got to his feet.

Right. The cranium was toast. No more ceiling. Insides were suddenly outsides.

Was Caminus even still alive?

As Rodimus’s optics adjusted, he realized they were standing in front of Caminus’s brain module, still floating in place, seemingly unperturbed by the destruction of the rest of his frame.

The cables bringing fuel and spark energy to module’s supporting base still seemed to be mostly intact too, even if now they were lying on the rubble rather than being suspended high above.

Well, alright, that looked pretty alive.

Rodimus put his hands on his hips.

“Babe, do titan’s brains drop when they die? Or can they still float like some creepy undead thing?”

Megatron didn’t answer immediately. The shuffling of rubble told him the big guy was still moving titan bits around to make space.

“No rush.”

There was a sigh, like Megatron had interpreted that as imploring him to hurry it up.

“I don’t know. How many titans do you think I’ve operated on, Rodimus?”

“No clue. Give me a rough guesstimate.”

What remained of the floor rumbled as a chunk of dislodged plating collided with it further away. Megatron must have been just throwing pieces at this point.

“Zero.”

Unless moving titan chunks around constituted a type of surgical procedure.

“Thanks, doc. I’m going to guess he’s alive based on the evidence that I personally think it would be too creepy for a dead brain to float.” He turned to look at Megatron over his shoulder. “And you just admitted to not having enough evidence to disprove that so it’s what we’re going with.”

That earned him yet another sigh.

“Fine. I pronounce him ‘not dead.’ Happy? You successfully did not kill a dormant colony titan on a moon whose hegemonic faith worships you like a god.”

“Babe, could you maybe put the sarcasm away for a little bit? That’d be great.”

“Bah!” Another piece of rubble was thrown somewhere, once more shuddering the floor.

The important question was still unanswered. Had Rodimus managed to wake him up?

Something bright flashed over the surface of the brain module.

It looked like… writing.

Strange, for a second there, Rodimus thought he could almost read it.

It flashed again, a burning yellow.

:: Sun ::

Damn, they really did wake him up. That wasn’t just wishful thinking. They’d succeeded. He had succeeded.

Caminus was awake!

Rodimus threw his arms into the air, scraped up spoiler fins canting high in triumph.

“It worked! Yes!” Hold on. He tentatively lowered his arms halfway. “Wait—Sun?”

The glyph pulsed insistently.

“I don’t get it, pal—“ Why did he even recognize this much? Rodimus decided to wonder about that later and for now just relish in the communication they had.

Then again, the glyphs were only somewhat different from the ones they used now. Markedly different than the ones he’d seen Camiens using but, so far, most things were also available in the script he could understand. The ones on Caminus’s brain weren’t too strange.

:: Sun ::

What he wouldn’t give for a cityspeaker to interpret this. Their direct thinking-bit-to-thinking-bit connections could probably pull a lot more out of this. The sheer scale of what a Cybertronian could be sometimes left gaps in understanding.

“What was that, Rodimus?” Another thud sounded as Megatron threw another piece of Caminus. He wasn’t looking, but he had probably cleared a lot of floor by now.

“Babe, Caminus is talking to me.”

“Hm?”

“He’s talking to me with words.” Only after the sentence left his mouth did he realize how stupid that sounded. Most talking happened with “words.” “You know what I meant.”

“No, I—“ There was a crunch, probably Megatron turning around. “Oh.”

:: Sun ::

“He’s… I think he’s talking to you.”

No need to sound so surprised though, Rodimus thought.

Who else could Caminus have even been talking to? They were the only ones here. Probably. Assuming the Torchbearers and the Mistress of Flame had either gotten crushed in the collapse or escaped back out into the valley.

“Yeah, we got that, but—“

“No, I mean, he’s saying your name. Or Solus’s name, rather.”

“How do you figure?” Rodimus leaned back to look over his shoulder.

“The Camiens associate her with the sun.” Megatron pointed up the small white orb of the sun in the sky. “You haven’t noticed by now?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, this—“ That pointing finger swung forward to indicate Caminus’s brain module, still flashing the same glyph over and over. “—Is most likely why the association was made.”

:: Sun ::

The flash was more insistent.

Better try to have a conversation with a being that lived on an entirely different scale than he did, he supposed. And they were still somehow the same species.

“That’s what they keep telling me.” Rodimus paused, wondering if Caminus could even hear him. “I guess you’d be the one to know for sure though, huh?”

:: Sun not dead ::

The glyphs shifted to a bright, ecstatic green blue, the lines of the shapes turning wavy rather than rigid.

Caminus could clearly sense him, but it wasn’t clear how. No obvious optics or sensory organs of any kind. Maybe that didn’t matter. Titans were… different.

Megatron must have leaned down, because the next thing Rodimus knew, there was a stage whisper at the side of his head.

“Do you think he might be confused? You did just blow him up. Or what was left of him anyway.”

Rodimus started to say something about maybe Megatron shouldn’t say that so loud but stopped himself. Right, Megatron couldn’t tell that he wasn’t actually whispering. Points for effort, he had definitely given discretion a solid go.

“No, I… don’t think so.”

:: Night Wander ::

“Okay, Caminus,” Rodimus said, spoiler drooping in confusion, “you’ve completely lost me.”

:: Night Wander ::

The flashes paused, before shifting.

Purple.

What did that mean? He was still relatively new to spectralism, at least compared to Drift. He hadn’t memorized all the possible color associations yet. There was also a chance that Caminus was using colors in an entirely unrelated way.

Purple could mean “vengeance,” with the right complementary colors. He knew that. He had chosen a paint scheme for that purpose once upon a time, but Rodimus doubted Caminus meant to imply that here.

He put his hand to his chin in thought. What was the usual underlying meaning of purple again?

:: Here ::

“Is that a person? A place? What does that mean, buddy? You’ve gotta give me a little more to work with here.”

:: Here :: Rodimus turned around, seeing only Megatron who seemed to be a little perplexed, looking at Caminus’s processor. Huh. Maybe Caminus had just given Megatron a funny nickname. He turned back to face the floating brain. :: With you. ::

A sound, a voice, one he knew, caught Rodimus’s attention before he could reply to Caminus. He turned and leaned around Megatron to get a look back down towards the valley. Climbing up the rubble-strewn slope of the destroyed neck were some of the Torchbearers, one having shifted into tank mode to make an easier go of the rough terrain.

It wasn’t any of their voices though. He could discount that immediately.

“Rodimus Prime!”

Dammit.

He looked up, overhead, the Mistress of Flame sat on top of the back of the sixth Torchbearer, the one with wings. Updraft, Megatron had called them once. They were in their alt-mode, hovering in place just out of reach with down-turned jets for stability.

As far as he knew, the priestess had a flight-capable alt-mode, but he’d never seen it. She probably preferred to not disrupt her vestments by transforming. Or at least, that was his best guess.

She grinned down from her perch, seated with the same poise and dignity she constantly carried. Notably, however, her staff was gone. Perhaps she’d dropped it in the dash for freedom. Maybe it was buried under Caminus’s frame.

And with her… came the audio drones, homing in on him faster than he could think.

“It seems you’ve woken him up after all, just like the faithful knew you would.”

Distant cheering could be heard from the valley, as though the priests that had been milling about down there had taken to celebrating… despite the destruction of the rest of Caminus’s frail body.

“Has he said anything?”

What an odd question. She wasn’t concerned with whether or not Caminus, the colony’s sacred titan, was alright? He functionally didn’t have a body anymore, so that seemed a little more… urgent.

“In a manner of speaking, yeah.”

Rodimus, hands defiantly on his hips, could still see the titan’s brain module floating just out of the corner of his optic. The glyphs were still flashing, like he was trying to communicate, but from this angle he couldn’t see them well enough to take any meaning.

“Never mind anything he’s said; he must be terribly confused after such a long slumber.”

“Hey, shouldn’t you… do something to protect his brain?”

Open to the sky, Caminus would be exposed to the elements now, and, as Megatron had said, brain modules were delicate components. Given the sacred nature of titans, surely his suggestion wasn’t exactly controversial.

“Oh, of course, yes, of course,” the priestess said, patting Updraft on the wing to bring her low enough to hop down. “That will be of the utmost importance, I assure you.”

Rodimus glanced back to Caminus, turning to see the purple flashing of glyphs again, glyphs he couldn’t recognize this time.

Now he remembered: purple signified “pain.”