Chapter Text
The surface of Cybertron was undoubtedly beautiful.
D-16 is content to soak it in while on their long trek across it, though clearly some mechs weren’t quite as pleased with that arrangement—
“Oh man, Steve is going to love hearing about this. I mean, once I get his head back on.”
B-127 is remarkably good at talking. D-16 humours the idea of torturing Darkwing through the mech’s inane rambling. “Steve isn’t real, B.”
“Well, yeah,” he turns his helm to make optic contact with D-16. “But, like, still , he was one of my best buds for so long! I can’t just leave him there!”
Orion clears his intake, glancing wearily between the two. “Actually, speaking of that… B, what did you do to get sent to sublevel 50?”
“Wait, what ?” Elita spins around, freezing in her tracks. “You mean sublevel 40? Because there’s only 40 sublevels, I double-checked to make sure you idiots didn’t get me sent down to like, super-hell.”
“I also didn’t believe it until we had to climb up 50 levels. Also, we’ve got a Matrix to find,” D-16 nudges Elita. Or, tries to, but she glares at him until he also stops out of fear.
Elita sighs and drags a servo down her faceplates. “Climb— y’know what? Never mind. Please, B, enlighten us with whatever you did to get sent down to the fragging pits.”
B laughs awkwardly, walking faster and taking the lead. “Well, I already told you two, but I guess Elita wants to know? Was just too darn good at my job and, uh, Sentinel didn’t like that all too much… I think.” He shrugs and visibly forces a smile. “All good, he’s just mega-stressed because of the whole Matrix thing, I get it!”
“Sentinel?” Orion frowns, reaching out and lightly tugging on B’s servo to stop him. “Sentinel Prime himself sent you down there?”
“Also, how the hell can someone be too good at their job?” D-16 leans in to properly examine B. The smaller mech’s field radiates anxiety and he swiftly reels it in to press tight to his plating, something he’s never done. Interesting.
Elita hums thoughtfully. “Sounds more like you got demoted for being bad at your work.”
B pouts, looking genuinely offended. “No, I was great at it! I managed to work my way up into Sentinel’s quarters, it’s just… uh…”
“It’s just?” D-16 prompts. Mentally, he adjusts his view of B-127, because it made far more sense for him to have previously been assigned a cushy housekeeping job as opposed to mining. He tamps down his flare of malice and remembers that B was very clearly down in sublevel 50 for a while . Not the enemy. “How’d you get sent to a level nobody even knows about?”
B’s smile is sheepish as he stares at the ground. “This here dirt is really inter– ow!”
“Talk.” Elita tightens her grip on his upper arm with narrowed optics. D-16 and Orion simultaneously flinch back— that’s the voice she used when she was getting ready to chew a miner out for slacking.
“Okay, jeez , I poked around in the wrong archives and Sentinel didn’t appreciate it, so he sent me to the mining sector,” he says, shoulders slumping. “Then tried to sneak some datapads and got demoted again , tried to ask questions, demoted . Eventually they got so sick of me that they cut out the middle man and just… cut me off from everyone.” He shrugs again. “It sucked. A lot.”
D-16’s anger just about vanishes. “Oh, Primus, that sounds awful.” He glances back at Orion and Elita with a shared grimace. Mining was a very social job, communication between bots basically required to get anything done. Even then, he might’ve gone insane without Orion.
B claps his servos together, brightening back up. “No, no, it’s okay now, because I’ve got three new buddies!”
And, strangely, he doesn’t feel the urge to shoot down the little bot again. Elita tilts her helm and gives B a lopsided smile, patting him on the shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s get going again, right?”
They all give an affirmative nod and continue on. Stranger still, B doesn’t immediately resume talking, just quietly asks Elita how she got demoted, which sends her into a rant about how irresponsible those two are and about picking up after them.
It’s… nice.
Orion brushes shoulders with him, smile bright as ever. “See, D? Great ideas all around.”
He just lets out a huff that’s too amused to pack any heat. “I’ll agree when we’ve got the Matrix,” he says, reaching out and taking the servo closest to him. Orion laughs and squeezes it. “Now walk faster, idiot.”
Ahead, Elita laughs about how incompetent Brawl was at mining and Orion chimes in with a story about the bot running head first into a rock wall.
As D-16 offers his own anecdote about Brawl’s petty feud with Gears, his spark swells oddly. It’s always been easy with Orion, and somehow Elita and B managed to wiggle their way into the dynamic. It’s
nice
.
Maybe finding the Matrix can take just a little bit longer.
“Cyber-deer! Awesome, the datapads said they went extinct cycles ago!” B gestures frantically at the wildlife, which stares back at him with indifference. “That’s so cool , I wish I had a camera– man, Reflector would be having a field day up here!”
On the bright side, B was back to being his talkative self. The quiet on the journey was starting to make D-16 a tad nervous. On the other hand, that did mean he couldn’t hear as much.
“Reflector?” Orion asks, his optics dimming in the tell-tale sign that he’s thinking too hard about something. “Oh, wait, those three?”
B nods cheerfully. “Yeah! Too bad they’re probably dead.”
Elita examines the map, spinning the hologram around. “We’re close,” she says, turning it off. “All we need to do is…”
A cyber-deer shoots its helm up, ear signals turning red. The rest of the herd start chiming red as well, standing up and fleeing in unison.
“That… isn’t good,” D-16 says, looking behind them.
From the fog of the horizon, something breaks through it.
“Oh, that’s really not good–”
“ Run! ”
Elita takes off, Orion following suit. D-16 grumbles and grabs B’s servo as he drags him along, feeling a little bad as the smaller stumbles in an attempt to keep up.
They follow the herd into an abandoned city and Orion very briefly pauses to crane his helm up in wonderment at the site. D-16 shoves B forward then doubles back to smack Orion on the back. “Hurry up, moron!”
The four dodge into an alcove and Orion vents harshly, looking around. “This must be one of the cities everyone evacuated from… I had no idea any were still standing.”
“Very cool,” D-16 says, peering out to look at the ship now hovering above them. “ Not cool enough to stop running from the giant looming– thing !”
“What if it’s friendly?” B asks, poking his helm out beside D-16’s. “We’re not sure what it is, so what if it’s just a weird cloud?”
Elita sighs, pulling Orion over so they can all observe the ship. A cyber-deer, separated from its herd, bounces out from behind another building. It crosses under the path of a red beam and there’s a faint humming before it’s blasted to bits by a canon.
B winces. “I take it back, not friendly.”
The red beam expands into a vaguely net-shape, moving along the ground.
“Oh, Primus,” Elita says. “It’s scanning for life forms.”
With an alarmed shout from Orion, they take off in the opposite direction from the giant-laser-death-beam. Elita turns the map on and points to their left. “We’re close! Make your way that way if we get separated!”
D-16 spots an open spot in one of the buildings and pivots that way, ducking under cover as Elita follows. “Come on!”
“They’re not going to make it,” Elita says, voice dropping in horror.
Just as the net crosses over them, Orion freezes under an overhang, grabbing B to keep him still.
For a moment, D-16 pictures having to continue alone with Elita. They’d be broken up but know they have to fight on. He can taste the grief and anguish hanging in the air around them as they trek to the Matrix, if it’s even there. Maybe they’d find it and Sentinel would be their debt, but what would it matter if he couldn’t share it with Orion? Worse, what if it’s not there, the journey for not, two of their comrades dying for nothing ? Or maybe the blast would kill all of them, stuck on the surface of a planet that never cared for any of them. Maybe—
The beam passes clear over them and B falls, letting out a mix between a gasp and a wheeze. Further on, the net returns to a singular beam and then retracts.
Orion helps B up and they finally join the other two on the platform. Elita checks the map again, nodding. “We’re close. Come on, just a little more.”
“I think that was a Quintesson ship,” B says, answering the unspoken question bouncing around in D-16’s mind. “The mother of them, obviously, but…”
“Okay, but what the hell is a Quintesson ship doing here?” Elita turns, and if he didn’t know her well enough, he might mistake her for actually being mad at B. As it is, he can detect the faint sliver of fear that laces her words and field. “They left after the war!”
Orion sighs. “No idea. But it doesn’t matter right now, we have a mission to complete.”
D-16 steels himself, batting away the flashes of their narrowly avoided future. Even if they don’t find the Matrix wherever the coordinates lead them to, he has Orion to help figure it out.
He’s not alone.
“Scary cave. Scary cave with sharp knife teeth. Very welcoming.”
D-16 just nods in agreement. In most circumstances (namely, all but this one), he would take one look at the jagged edges of the cave and immediately leave, but he’s grimly aware that isn’t really an option at the moment.
“I’m sure it’s not that scary,” Orion says, putting on the voice he used when trying to hype himself up to smash a cyber-tick hive. “Perhaps it’s more than meets the eye.”
“Shut up, Orion,” Elita says, taking off the map chip and pressing it back onto his armour.
“Yes, Elita.”
Orion turns on his headlamp and starts the descent. D-16 turns on his and takes up the rear, trying to decide whether it’s better to be in front (eaten first and probably by surprise) or in the back (eaten last but you know what’s coming, probably won’t escape).
He decides he’d rather not be eaten at all and continues.
“Ugh, it’s so damp, it’s messing with my system,” Elita mutters as they go further in. “This better be worth it.”
The tunnel finally opens up into the cave proper. Ahead of him, he hears Orion gasp. “No…”
Strewn about the area are the bodies of the Thirteen.
Orion rushes forward to Zeta Prime but all D-16 can do is helplessly fumble his way to Megatronus’ body. The Prime is laid out, spark extinguished, body rusting and overgrown.
It’s horror in its purest form.
D-16 can spy the defeated vent and crumpled shoulders Orion bears from his vantage point. The Matrix wasn’t there— of course not. They had been ambushed, of course the Quintessions decided to snatch it up, probably not even knowing the significance.
Elita vents out slowly, wrapping her arms around herself. “I– I knew it would be bad. Alpha Trion said it himself, he needed backup, and the Thirteens have been dead for 50 cycles, but…”
“We weren’t expecting it to be so violent,” Orion finishes sombrely. He sighs, pressing his digits to his eyes in an attempt not to cry. “Stay on guard, look for anything useful here. What could possibly be useful here? goes unspoken.
D-16 numbly stands, the will to do anything drained out of him. A servo lands on his shoulder and he startles until realising it’s just B. “How are you holding up?” he says, gently, though the look in his optics says he already knows. His field brushes up against his own, projecting quiet comfort.
“Not… not great,” he says, grimacing down at the ground. “It’s one thing hearing that he died, it’s a whole ‘nother thing seeing his actual body.”
The biggest and strongest of the Primes died, so what chance do we have?
B winces and he realises how out of control his field is. He pulls it in, muttering an apology. A wave of pure, unfiltered dread and hopelessness can’t feel great.
“Guys?” Orion calls. D-16 turns and his spark stutters upon seeing the blue glow emanating near his friend. “Can I get some help?”
Rushing forward, he and Orion start bashing at the larger rocks, Elita swooping in to throw them off. B deals with the smaller ones already loose, muttering small cries of pain when a rock crushes a digit.
Elita moves a rock and gasps. “Alpha Trion,” she says, brushing off some dust from his faceplates.
Orion shoves the final boulder away and examines the mech. “It’s weak, but he still has a spark signature,” he mutters, the low vibrations of a med-scan washing over them. “This is…”
B opens a compartment of his arm and takes out an energon cube, tapping Orion with it. “Try this.”
It’s easy enough for Orion to place the cube in Alpha Trion’s mouth, closing it as they all watch.
The Prime awakes with a yell, violently jerking his limbs free from the static position they were stuck in.
“Wait, wait, hold on– the war is over, we got your message!” Orion holds his servos out in a gesture of peace. “We’re here to find the Matrix, we want to help!”
Alpha Trion twitches, flexing his digits as he settles down. “The war…” his already stern face somehow gets more sober. “Newbuilds? Why are you… where are your cogs?”
“We’re not newbuilds,” Orion says, smiling awkwardly. “We’re just cogless miners, essentially.”
“Cogless? That’s not possible, all Transformers are created with cogs,” Alpha Trion leans in, and D-16 realises very sharply how the Prime dwarfs them.
“Well, I know my frame, and ever since I onlined, this,” D-16 points to the open slot in his chest, “has been empty.”
“All Transformers are created with cogs,” the Prime repeats. “Before you were onlined, it was stolen from you.” His leg struts creak as he makes his way to the body of Prima. “... old friend, I have failed you,” he sighs. “You did not deserve this fate.”
Elita steps forward. “Respectfully, sir, you didn’t fail. The war ended.”
“Ended! Is that what they’re saying now?” The old mech sits on a gnarled branch of something organic, eyeing the group. “What was that about cogless miners?”
“We mine for energon,” she says, eyeridges raising.
“ Why? ”
D-16 motions at the ground. “Ever since the Matrix vanished, the energon stopped flowing. We got your transmission and came out here to help Sentinel Prime retrieve it—”
He’s interrupted by a ground shaking laugh. “ Sentinel ? He parades himself as a Prime now?” The old mech chuckles bitterly, stomping his pede on the floor. “Sentinel is no more a Prime than a Quintesson is merciful, and I’m willing to put shanix on the fact that he stole your cogs.”
Elita’s optics brighten. “That’s… no, Sentinel cares for us—”
Alpha Trion laughs again, an arm around his middle to keep himself from shaking too much. “A false prophet,” he says. “In fact, see for yourself. There is a way up to the surface of this mountain by climbing those vines. Keep quiet and watch.” He points to a ladder of something organic before leaning back and gesturing for them to go.
“I don’t see what this is going to do,” D-16 says, but goes up the vines first. They’re shockingly strong and hold the combined weight of all four without issues.
They ascend.
They descend.
D-16 shakes in anger, optics flaring open. “How dare he?” he hisses, visions of Sentinel kneeling to a Quintesson flashing through his mind, changing to how brutally he killed the Primes. “How could he? Our energon, he stole to give to those freaks ! A traitor!” He lets out a harsh peal of laughter and slams his servo into the rock. He savours the pain reverberating up his arm. “Primus, how could I be so stupid…” Anger licks at his spark. He devoted so much to Sentinel, and for what? Absolute scrap.
“I always knew,” Orion says from across the cave, pacing. The sand at his pedes scrapes along with his frantic steps. “I always knew something was wrong.”
Elita has her face in her servos. “I loaded that train. I loaded our energon as a slagging offering.” She stares up at the ceiling. “This whole time…”
B is quiet again. D-16 breaks out of his spiral to turn and look at the smaller bot. He’s sitting down, zoning off, not talking and concerningly unlike him. He approaches softly, kneeling. “B?” he says, reaching out with his field. Once again, the mech’s field is held tightly against him.
B blinks and looks up, mustering a smile. “Right, sorry. I just…” he sighs, fidgeting with his digits. “I guess that’s why I got kicked out.”
“It does cast everything in a whole new light,” he agrees, taking one of B’s servos and standing up with him. “But we know now.”
Alpha Trion clears his intake, commanding their attention once again. “I’ve put the vision I have shown you into this chip,” he says, holding it up. “Show it to the people of Iacon so they will know the truth.”
“Thank you,” Elita says, taking it and magnetising it back onto her arm.
“Do not thank me yet, young ones,” he says, before raising his arms. The Primes glow and their cogs drift out of their chests, coming to hover around him. “I will give you one final gift; the spark of courage that I saw in my fellow Primes is one I see in you four as well. Use these well, carry on their legacies, until all are one!”
The cogs fly at them and D-16 gasps at the sensation of it. It’s warm, a lost puzzle piece finally falling into place. He can hear a distant voice call to him but it’s lost in the way the energon roars in his audials, body reformatting around the cog. Internally, his processor lights up with newfound connections that he can’t even begin to understand the meanings of.
He lands with a thud , all shiny and new like he just rolled out of the factory.
“Cogs!” Elita says, staring at her servos. “We have fragging cogs!”
“Indeed you do,” Alpha Trion says. “Use this to take what you have learned back and dethrone Sentinel.”
D-16 runs an internals check, discovering a multiple of new weapons. “We can fight,” he mumbles, clenching his servos. “We can fight! We can show them that we’re not afraid!”
“D,” Orion says, frowning at him. “We can, but we shouldn’t. Once everyone learns the truth, we won’t have to. We can take Sentinel down and there won’t be a need for fighting.”
They make optic contact and D-16 shakes his helm. “That won’t do anything. We need to make him an example.”
“We need to do this in a sensible manner—”
D-16 grunts. “Really? Once we get down there, people are going to start asking questions. When Sentinel finds out we have cogs and went to the literal surface, he’s going to flip . He sent B down to fragging super-hell because he went looking a little too deep, how’s he going to react when he knows that we know he’s a traitor?”
“We’ll be ready for him,” Orion replies. “I’ve already got a plan—”
“Great! Orion Pax has another genius, master plan! We know how those work out!” He throws his arms into the air, venting heavily. Behind Orion, he can see Elita and B exchange a worried look.
“Don’t you want to stop him?”
“Stop him?” he laughs. “No, I want to kill him . I want to put him in chains and march him through the mines he’s had us break our spinal struts in, so everyone knows that he’s a false prime . I want him to suffer . I want to send him down to sublevel 50 and lock him in B’s cell until he dies in darkness .”
Orion flinches back, mouth open in horror. D-16 blinks and reigns himself in, the sudden rage dissipating.
“... we should go,” Elita says, turning back to the Prime. “Where do we go?”
Alpha Trion is silent for a moment. “Going out that way will put you on the path to Iacon,” he says. The cave shakes and he looks up, optics narrowing. “They’ve found us, go! ”
“We have a better chance of fighting!” D-16 says, watching Elita and Orion run past. B passes him and grabs at his servo, optics wide and honest. “B—”
“We need to be united,” B says, firmly. “Either we all run or we all fight, it won’t work any other way. Please , D.”
He’s right , he thinks. “Alright,” he says, letting B drag him down the tunnel. Behind them, Alpha Trion shoots at the entrance, rocks tumbling down and sealing it. The sound of shooting barely makes it to his audials before they’re too far.
Resentment grows in his spark.
He has killed.
He has killed, and it felt great .
The Death Trackers lay in ruins behind them and a sense of giddiness overtakes him. They are capable of far more than Sentinel thinks, and that will be his undoing.
Orion walks side by side with him, stealing obvious glances. “What, Pax?”
The mech flinches. “I was wondering if you were alright,” he mumbles, sheepish. “Thanks for the save back there.”
D-16 nods. “You’re welcome.”
“Just need to get to Iacon,” he trails off, thumbing at the chip. D-16’s optics follow the movement and he feels unease in his fuel tank. Orion turns around. “We all know what to do?”
“I was created for this,” Elita grins. “Oh, I can’t wait to watch Sentinel’s face once he learns that everyone knows the truth.”
D-16 glances at Orion and quickly plucks the chip from his arm. “I’ve got it, I’ll take the lead.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Orion grabs for it again. “Be careful, that’s our evidence you’re shaking around—”
“I. Got. It.” D-16 shoves Orion away, walking ahead.
Elita and Orion shuffle together, voices too low for him to catch.
Next to him, B appears. “Hey,” he says. “I, uh, appreciate the thought.” At D-16’s confused look, he just laughs lightly. “Putting him my ‘cell’ or whatever. Poetic justice, I guess.”
He hums. “He can sort the trash.”
“Trash sorting trash, revolutionary.” B says, and he can’t help but crack a smile at the terrible joke. “You meant it? And about the killing him?”
“Of course.”
B is quiet for a beat, nodding. “I… agree with you. I think. I don’t know if I could kill him myself, but he…” he makes a face. “I don’t know if I can forgive the things I know he’s done. To me and everyone else.”
D-16 makes a face of concern and B just smiles sadly, waving a servo. “It’s nothing. You guys were the miners, that’s really hard work—”
“Pointless labour under Sentinel is still pointless labour, even if it’s not quite as gruelling,” he says, cutting him off. “Besides, you had to deal with him personally. It cancels out.”
B snorts. “I guess it does.”
They walk together for a few minutes, taking in the scenery.
“... y’know, Orion said you and him raced in the Iacon 5000 together?”
A smile tugs at his lips. “I guess I can spare you some details.”
The sun sets and he has to begrudgingly admit that it’s nice . Detailing and reliving the race helps soothe his anger and he mentally kicks himself for snapping at Orion. He’ll apologise soon, just—
Elita lets out a short cry and collapses.
He and B both spin around at it, watching as Orion does the same. There’s a tiny prick in the back of his neck and he can only vaguely think ah, scraplets before he loses control of his body and also falls. His optics cut out just as he registers B’s horrified face.
Then, darkness.