Chapter Text
Millions of years ago, the cycle that the Cybertronian Civil War began, a pink-and-white bot onlined. She didn't know what happened, where she was, or how much time had passed. But she knew something was wrong.
The digits are the first to move. A twitch, testing out the circuitry. The joints are stiff, as if they have been used in a long time-- or not at all, she would come to learn. The servos are next, grazing the metal berth beneath her. Then the pedes, doing the same. The optics come online slowly throughout all of this, beginning with a simple registration between light and dark, then color in soft and harsh hues; there is a whirring focus, then a ceiling of softened lights and exposed wiring.
"Thank the Allspark," exclaims a relieved, exhausted vocalizer, gruff in the way that only Alpha Trion's could be. "You're alive."
She tries to turn her head to find him, but the helm bars her from doing so, in a way that she isn't used to, like two blocks on either side instead of the eave-like horns that should be there. Why aren't they there?
"Alph--" she starts, to ask him where they are, but startles at the foreign sound that bursts from her throat. That is not her vocalizer. This one is deeper, with a cold edge to it. Cold with new.
Alpha Trion comes into view at her side, appearing first as a blurry outline, before the optics refocus and took in the worry etched in every feature of his faceplate. "Are you alright? Does anything feel numb? Does anything ache?"
She opens the intake again, but asking another question much more pressing, "What... what happened?"
Alpha Trion wipes a damp rag over the forehead, but it seemed so far away from her optics. "What is the last thing you remember?"
The optics shift and search the ceiling. "I ... I remember..."
It all collapses on her like a crumbling mountain. A crowd excited beyond belief. A gold Seeker. The boiler room. Red, red optics. A pede. Pressing her faceplate down-- into-- mind-piercing agony--
The vents seize but no intakes come. Her spark burns and beats to break out of the chassis. The words force their way out of a choked throat.
"I died."
She flinches violently away when something brushes her dermas.
"Refuel," Alpha Trion says softly, tapping the edge of a small, pink energon cube to the intake, "you will need it."
She lets the cube drop into the intake. She crunches the glass methodically between undulled dentae. Alpha Trion picks off a piece of glass from the corner of the intake as she swallows.
"I'm--"
A distant explosion like a roll of thunder rocks the floor. Alpha Trion throws his frame over her, shielding her if anything were to collapse and crush them. Only dust falls, coating them in a thin layer of white.
"We don't have much time," Alpha Trion mutters urgently, "we have to go."
"What's-- What's going on?"
"I need you to understand," Alpha Trion says. His optics dim. "Orion found you beneath the rubble of the arena you were working security. I had already received word and ran into him there. Your frame was rendered irreparable. I was forced to put your spark into your new frame."
The optics focus and unfocus on his faceplate. "My ... my final one?"
Alpha Trion presses his dermas together tightly. He nods. "Yes..."
"I didn't ... I didn't graduate..."
Alpha Trion strokes her helm slowly, soothingly. "I know, dear apprentice, I know..."
The optics fall back to the ceiling. They whir in and out, zooming out and in out of sync. "Where's Orion? Jazz?"
He places a servo to the shoulder. "At some point, we were separated in the chaos. I know not their whereabouts."
Chaos... She presses the dermas into a neat seam. Something pricks at the edges of the optics.
Another explosion quakes. Closer.
Alpha Trion whips his head around, like he was expecting the door to be torn apart. "We must go. Now." He clutches the arm and tugs, willing her to stand. She struggles upright, but vertigo swims through the processor. She is so much taller than she was.
"Why? Where are we going?"
"Away, anywhere but here. The Decepticons are attacking Iacon."
She chokes. Cold horror and icy dread flood her spark, closing in on all sides.
Attacking? But they're just a political party. They're supposed to be a political party.
Another explosion detonates.
Alpha Trion leads her by the servo and she sits up fully. She swings the long legs over the side of the berth. Vertigo comes again, making the head loll. And she sees it.
In the corner, a lump, quiet and unmoving, lays at the far wall, covered by a tarp. Something sticks out from underneath. A pink-and-white arm, with the digits melted to stubs.
She stares. At the arm. At the stubs. At the hardened slag. At the pink and white. Alpha Trion follows her gaze, then quickly tries to turn the faceplate away.
"Don't look at that, my apprentice."
She whispers, stunned and horrified and her gaze never breaking, "That's me, isn't it?"
Alpha Trion hesitates. "It ... it is what used to be. It is no longer you."
She stands on clunky pedes that used to be so light and sleek and tries to take a step toward the tarp its lump, but another explosion rocks the world. She falls to her knees, her circuits lurching.
Above them, pedesteps pound like gunshots. Shouts come, looking for something-- someone. They are muffled but she hears them loud and clear.
"Where is he?!"
Alpha Trion kneels by her side and grips the shoulder. "No, we mustn't stay here much longer!"
She shoves his servo away and crawls toward the tarp, reaching out with stiff digits. The vocalizer asks, pleads, begs, "What happened to me?"
Alpha Trion takes her by both the shoulders and forces her to turn away. She bares the dentae in a snarl and shouts, "Let go of me!"
"Ariel, listen to me," Alpha Trion pleads, "Decepticons have breached the defenses and they will kill us both when they find us. We cannot stay here."
Crashes came from upstairs as Decepticons knock over furniture, kick down doors, throw weaponry to the floor, tear the walls down to find them.
"But I need a proper sendoff," she utters.
"I know but you must understand," Alpha Trion proclaims, his optics wide with fear and with promise, "War is coming. Something Cybertron has never seen before. I built this frame to withstand that coming storm. You must be there to lead the charge, I see it in you, one pied in the elect."
Something smashes above, and what follows: "Over here!"
Alpha Trion leaps to his pedes. He looks fearfully at the barred door. Pounding steps rain down from the ceiling, from the stairs.
"Your soldiers need you, dear apprentice," he says. He looks back down at her, with severity and empathy and all those in between. He holds out his servo, for her to take.
"Rise, Elita-1."
She stares up at him, the jaw slightly hanging. Then down at the offered servo. She reaches--
Something heavy rams into the door, jolting the frame. Alpha Trion gasps and runs to the door, knocking over a cabinet to block it. More rams shock the door, never ending.
Alpha Trion stays at the door, searching for more to barricade it. The apprentice watches, then slowly looks back toward the tarp.
Of their own volition, the servos and stabilizers drag her toward it. The servos reach out and pinch the tarp's edge. They fold it back.
She sees her. Ariel. Or what is left of her.
Her lower half is gone, blown off, pipes and wires hanging out like tentacles and staining the floor pink. Scorch marks riddle up and down the chassis and the arms lay limp and sprawled out on either side, the digits melted to stumps. And her head--
It lays there, half of it scorched and melted, the other half disarmingly pristine. She beholds the varnished dermas on the right, the dentae bared to the world on the left. The opal cheek, the smelted hollow. The polished crest, the hardened slag. The dimmed optic, the empty socket.
She stares down at it. It stares back. Into her. Through her. Rolled back some. And so, so utterly gray.
The door starts to crack. Alpha Trion presses his back to it. The door dents under outside abuse. And a single thought goes through her processor.
He lied to me. War isn't coming.
The door bursts like a dam. Alpha Trion falls to the floor. He turns and finds Decepticons pouring in. And a triple-barrel pointed between his optics.
It's already here.
And Elita-1 rises.
Millions of years ago, a red-and-orange bot onlined. She was surrounded by fire.
The optics burst open with a loud gasp through an intake she knows well. Her stabilizers spasm and two somethings at the ends of her arms scrape the metal berth. She bolts upright immediately; the joints are still loose.
Flames curl and lick and dance around the operating room. They crack screens and shatter vials joyously in their promenade. The roar and laugh and beckon her forward, crooking their digits, then pointing down with them, too.
The somethings scrape on the berth again. She looks down, and recoil at the sight of six pincer-like claws, three on each arm, attached at the wrists. She nearly screams.
But the flames pull her claws to her head, feeling around, sure that it too had been replaced. Yet it is the same as before-- an intake, an olfactory, two optics, and a two-pointed helm.
And a line of energon leaking from the first incision made to her forehead.
She holds her claws before her again, looking at the slight smear of pink on one claw. The flames reach out and try to caress it, glinting their light off it. The claws press themselves to her intake instead.
There is no one else in the room with her, she realizes.
They left me here, she thinks. Then can't help the laugh that bubbles up her own, lovely throat.
They left her here! In the terror of the very thing she craves and surrounds her now! The very namesake of that Primus-damned doctor! The cowards! All of them! Cowards!
Not quite, the fires whisper. And they point down again, toward a scorched lump on the floor. Flame the doctor. Dead to rights.
And she laughs so hard she almost throws her head off for him.
The lights overhead pop and glass showers down. She cringes and protects her head. Between nervous giggles, she mutters, "I need to go."
So soon? the flames chirp.
She swings her stabilizers over the side of the berth. Vertigo swims but she pushes it down. Flames stroke the end of her swaying pedes. She jumps to the floor, over the dead Flame.
And Firestar runs.
In between mesmerizing flames, burly guards, heavy locks, rioting prisoners, and electric fences, something in the most basic of her software must have taken over. The next thing she knows, she's running through the streets of Iacon with a burning, Unicron-spawned facility at her back. She slaps a claw over her forehead to hide the leaking cut as she keeps on running and dodging the sights of civilians and Rescue Bots swarming the scene every which way.
And a single thought goes through her processor, rolling around and around like a lead marble: No one will ever get their talons on her head.
Not without paying the price.