Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The fight was a struggle as they had to blast and slice through the new High Guard, but they made it. Standing on a platform overlooking the Well of All Sparks was him.

Sentinel Prime.

The source of all their anguish.

They had made a promise to drag him down into the mines to feel the same suffering that he had wrought, but seeing that smug son-of-a-glitch still smiling as his guards were cut down one by one, something snapped within D-16.

There was no room for compromise. Sentinel had to die for his crimes right here , right now . He raised his canon to the traitor.

“Wait! We had a plan!”

Orion was in his way. Fueled by rage, he shoves his best friend ally brother-in-arms maybe future conjux him aside.

“Plans change, Pax! If he threw away his own guards so callously, how can we expect anything to change?!”

D-16 takes the shot. Orion leaps. Time slows to a crawl… as the fusion blast hits Orion’s left side, melting it and severing his left arm instantly. The force blows him back into the Well. He rushes to the edge only to be a moment too slow and he gasps empty air. Orion stares back with a haunted expression of pure shock as he falls agonizingly slowly into the darkness. Then he’s gone and time returns to normal.

In that moment his spark shatters.

Sentinel didn’t kill Orion, he did. The one bot who was supposed to have his back instead shot it, and all he can do is wail in impotent regret.

There’s a cruel snicker behind him, but D-16 can’t bring himself to care. He hopes that Elita and Bee can handle Sentinel as he’s stuck in a fugue state. He stares into the abyssal darkness as the whole world fades from notice.

It may as well have been millenia that he sits there, and then a crack splits the air, followed by a low roar gradually growing in volume, and the Well erupts in violet light. Something is coming. Something big. Something only vaguely bot-shaped. D-16 backs up as it reaches the top and extends massive scaled wings, wreathed in purple flame.

The thing is three times larger than Sentinel. It sports three pairs of wings on its back, the largest are amethyst scaled like predacons of sparkling tales, the middle-sized ones below them are long blades, and the smallest pair on the shoulders are covered in titanium feathers, with rachises of gold. The left arm isn’t an arm, more of a braided mass of tentacles that branch and fuse in impossible patterns. Purple optics stud the tentacles randomly. No, they’re not optics… they’re eyes. Those tentacles are undoubtedly organic.

The face is Orion’s, but it isn’t quite right. The mouth is too wide, the optics too large and of course now glow deep purple instead of bright blue, and countless other tiny abnormalities that only someone like D-16 would notice. It is firmly in the pit of the uncanny valley of being so much like and yet not quite Orion that it stirs primordial fear and forces his plates shut in fear of making a single noise to attract a predator’s attention.

Its body is also hauntingly familiar, though where there once was blue it has shifted to almost-black deep navy, and red has been replaced by violet. The armor is thick and boxy, yet somehow still elegant. It draws in attention like a flame to mechanomoths, yet there is still that deep sense of wrongness feeling like to stare too long will make him go blind. Perhaps he would, given that the edges had a strange fuzziness to them, and no amount of optic resetting would bring them into proper focus.

It’s clear that whatever this is, it’s not meant to be confined to three dimensions. The helmache from staring too long alone proves it.

“I am Optimus Prime, and for fifty stellar cycles, you have been deceived. Sentinel was no Prime, and for his hubris, Primus has made me his judge.”

The voice is deep and resounding. It’s not comforting. It’s not the strength of a protector, it’s the command of an absolute ruler.

“Let all of Cybertron see what happens when one defies Primus’ will!”

Every screen flickers on to show the unfolding scene. Every single bot’s optics are compelled to the nearest screen to watch. Whatever color they held has been drained. From the smallest cogless bot to the largest transformer, all have incandescent white optics.

Pulled by an invisible thread, Sentinel is dragged into the air to the faceplates of the new Prime. Violet optics burn with a hatred beyond comprehension.

“You betrayed my siblings. It was not enough to kill them, no, you had to pretend to be their staunch ally. You ran about, managing whatever tasks below such great beings, all while plotting their demise. You sold us out, and for what? Power? Fame? Control?”

A cruel laugh bellows out. Some glass on the tower closest to the Well shatters from the sound alone. For D-16, it’s audial-splitting agony.

“Primus has had enough of your lies and of his children's suffering.”

Six tentacles untangle themselves from the true Prime’s left side, one for each appendage. They wrap around pedes, servos, and wings with a strength thought impossible for something organic. Sentinel hisses in pain.

“You tore us open as sparklings. Allow me to return the favor!”

The tentacles tighten even further and they begin to pull. Sickening pops and cracks are heard as one-by-one, cables are pulled, armor split, and struts crackle. Sentinel can’t do anything but scream in torment as the pull continues at a glacial pace. Individual wires strain, then snap. Energon oozes from millions of microscopic tears that widen and combine.

The whole process is filled with screams of incomprehensible pain. Then it gives way to more and more static as systems are overwhelmed and crash one by one. The whole time the thing smiles a far-too-wide smile.

The first limb to fail is the left wing. The last cables holding it on snap, leaving behind a gaping hole. Energon profuses through the main line, pouring out in a sickening cascade. The severed wing is tossed aside without a second thought, discarded as easily as plastic wrapping by the meaty tentacle that had torn it off. Now freed from its task, it winds around Sentinel’s faceplate in a cruel mockery of tenderness.

“My, my… Just as fragile as your rule.”

The right arm is next to fail with a loud crack. The structural integrity of Sentinel’s other limbs is critically low, so the tentacle snakes around his torso to keep him held to the monster’s faceplate. He’s forced to maintain optic contact the whole time. All at once, the rest of the limbs are rent and thrown away. Such trauma would knock a mech into emergency stasis, but the true Prime is somehow forcing Sentinel to remain online the whole time.

“And now, little thief, I’ll give you your last mercy. Let it be known that even the worst heretics are given some reprieve… for Primus still loves his children, even the most rotten of the bunch!”

The last act of butchery is for two tentacles to tear open Sentinel’s chest and pry out Megatronus’ stolen t-cog. The abomination holds it aloft proudly.

“You can finally rest, brother. Your great defilement has been avenged!”

Only then is Sentinel allowed to fall offline and grey, bathed in his own energon and tears of anguish.

The thing lands on the platform. One tentacle sets down Megatronus’ t-cog with all the reverence such an artifact deserves, while another drops Sentinel’s corpse off to the side. Wings flap once more and it takes to the skies again. Its whole form is covered in violet flame as it makes a lazy circle of the Primal tower.

“Now that the traitor has been dealt with, let all know that the age of suffering has ended. No longer will Primus’ children starve while serving another race, and no longer shall they toil for the right to survive!”

Another low rumble resounds through all of Iacon and every dry river and streambed flows once more with energon. From them, motes of light float up and into the chests of every cogless worker. They were the t-cogs they were supposed to have.

Every screen flickers off and optic colors return to normal, but it does little to alleviate the oppressive atmosphere. Then someone cries out in triumph of finally having their true form, and jubilation breaks out, but on the platform, D-16, Bee, and Elita share a look of uncertain dread that they try their best to hide as the true Prime lands once more. It shifts, shrinking to be twice D-16’s size and its tentacle arm is replaced by a regular one along with two pairs of wings vanishing, leaving only the scaled ones draped behind it like a cape.

“Come then, friends, and refuel. I’m sure you need it after such a perilous fight to free our world.”

It escorts them down to the ground level where a grand fountain of energon sits at the base of the Primal tower.

The one thought as D-16 took his first sip of the freshly-flowing energon rivers was this: was energon always this purple, and cloyingly sweet? It gave him a bit of a helmache from how sweet it was. For a moment, his senses dulled, like he was about to fall into recharge, but as quickly as it came the sensation left.

He doesn’t like this. The sense of wrongness and foreboding is only growing by the second, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Bee and Elita seem to be thinking much the same thing, if their frigid expressions are anything to go by.

What have they gotten themselves into now?

-()-

Giving them sentience was a mistake. Why did I ever let my foolish brother influence me? They were always mine to create and mine to control.

>Bonding protocol initiated

>Initial synchronization rate: 40%

All will be one.