If it’s alright by you, I could write up a post about Nova Prime and the angelicon lore, if you’d like.
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Go right ahead.
Also, I have a question: if any of us make fanfiction or lore for the TOTGA-verse, is it able to be added to this thread?
If it’s approved by me, yeah.
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Here’s something for the TOTGA players. …And anybody else, really. My trashy fanfiction is available for all audiences.
The Star Saber was originally going to be acquired a fair bit earlier in TOTGA’s story. The circumstances through which the PCs would have gotten it would have played out much the same, with the difference being that the sword hadn’t aged quite as well as one might have hoped. That would have given it a disadvantage in the ensuing duel against Nemesis Prime, and by the end of it, the Star Saber would have been destroyed.
That, then, would have served as additional motivation to go to Solus Prime’s colony and find the Forge- it would have been the only thing capable of repairing the Star Saber. So after you guys restored the Astral Caminus, the PCs would have been “encouraged” to begin work on reforging the blade. The Heralds and their terrorcons would have shown up, naturally, and the PCs would’ve been forced to deal with them whilst the Star Saber was in the process of fixing itself it back up.
The kicker here is that the Star Saber would have still been usable during that process, gradually growing more powerful as whoever decided to wield it got more kills and the blade rebuilt itself little-by-little. Epic music’d play, Nemesis would’ve gotten his arm cut off, and so on.
Here are some mock-ups for how that might’ve gone down:
[details= the introductory scene, meant to go with the first minute and ten seconds of Destiny 2’s “Inner Light”. ]https://youtu.be/4jQ_NbelyZE?t=9
The Star Saber rested on the anvil, wreathed in curling tongues of steam and wisps of cosmic energy. The ancient metal shone like new, the edge of the blade glowing red-hot as the two shattered halves of the weapon pulled themselves together. Rivulets of liquid metal crept up and down the sword of Prima, filling in cracks and restoring the gold detailing in the hilt. Strings of Cyberglpyhs etched themselves along the blade, some of them glowing a faint blue. One could feel immense power radiating from the Star Saber: ancient, pure energies that defied science and resonated through the very fabric of the universe, and gave the legendary blade its awesome might. The broken sword could hardly contain it.
A horde of terrorcons charged at our heroes, screeching and howling, the purple aura of the Dark Energon coursing through their rusted bodies shining through the darkness. Such a force could overwhelm our heroes- tearing them apart and adding them to the ranks of Nemesis Prime’s forces…
…But the Star Saber had been born anew, and even in its half-finished state, the sword of Warrior of Light remained the mightiest in the universe. It had felled legions of the undead in its time, sundered mountains and carved deep canyons in the metal flesh of Unicron himself. What, then, were a mere hundred undead?[/details]
[details= The climax of the setpiece, in which the Star Saber would have been fully restored, and much terrorcon skidplate would have been kicked in the following moments.]https://youtu.be/4jQ_NbelyZE?t=216
The last jagged crack in the Star Saber’s blade faded, and a tremendous, echoing sound like the tolling of great bell erupts from the weapon and carries across the field. The glyphs on the blade shine as white as the stars as the polished silver metal lights up with a piercing cyan aura. Terrorcons instinctively flinch, shielding their violet eyes from the light as crackling bolts of energy shoot out from the sword, striking the ground, the ancient machinery of the Caminus, and many an undead bot.
The Star Saber had now been restored to its full might, and even the simple minds of the terrorcons knew that it spelled doom for all but the strongest of villains…[/details]
This is one of those things that I wish I had done, honestly. To me, at least, it just seemed so much cooler looking back on it.
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It would’ve been interesting but I do like how things turned out in the main RP; in the end, it all was really cool and fun.
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This is awesome! It’s always interesting to see how much the players derailed the plans.
still waiting for my cameo.
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No no, y’all didn’t derail anything here. This is just something that I up-and-decided not to do… for whatever reason.
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Well still, it’s fun to see the plans and then what actually happened.
Yeah; I’ve got a couple ideas like that. I could do more of these “what could have been” mock-ups if y’all are interested in that.
4 Likes
Yes please
Alternate endings? I’m down
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Here’s a little lore question: What happened to Dark Energon when Nemesis Prime and his Dead Matrix were destroyed, thus destroying Unicron’s Antispark?
Every bit of Dark Energon left in the universe went inert following Unicron’s “final death”. You can still find traces of it around here and there, but its basically just cosmic grape juice at this point, for all it’s worth. Anyone afflicted by the Blood of Unicron (think Firestorm or Fangmaw) had their ties to the Antispark severed and lost most of the special powers that Dark Energon gave them. Some, like Fangmaw, unfortunately were still left with lasting physical and/or psychological damages, depending on the extent of their use of/exposure to the substance.
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So, there’s no way to revive that power?
While I can’t say anything for certain, it’s highly unlikely.
Author’s note: This story takes place ten years after the events of Transformers: Twilight of the Golden Age.
From The Legacy of Sentinel Prime: the Rewritten Chapter of Cybertronian History by Cryptex of Kaon:
It has long been the practice of scholars and historians such as myself to look at our people’s deep history as a book: an ancient, ever-expanding record chronicling our storied existence from the moment Primus and Unicron first came into being, to the dawn of the Second Golden Age, not unlike the original Covenant of Primus of lore. And for just as long, we had been forced to reconcile with one irrefutable, inescapable reality. That being: that this tome was woefully incomplete. Entire chapters were absent, either burned away by the fires of war, or torn out by the hand of one conspiracy or another. Pre-Exploration Age society. The disappearance of the Knights of Cybertron. The Omega Lock. The vanishing of the Tomb of the Primes and the Matrix of Leadership, prior to the Great War. A thousand thousand people, places, and events, wiped from the pages by blast waves, or erased by the Thirteen themselves to hide powerful artifacts and even entire worlds.
I use the past tense, of course, because over the course of the last twenty million years, almost all of these missing chapters have been re-discovered. Where once pages of the chronicle were blank, brave heroes and adventurers have filled in the empty space. The voyage of the CFC Salvation proved the existence of the Omega Lock, along with discovering several “stronghold worlds” on which the Knights hid weapons and cultural artifacts, to save them from being destroyed in the War of the Primes. The contributions of Axis Prime and the rest of our most recent band of unlikely heroes to the historical record are far too great to summarize here- simply look at a holo-map and find the twelve new colonies in our New Imperium, among them the moon on which our Creator was born from an ocean of light. Listen to one of Liege Maximo or Firestorm’s lectures on their many battles with Unicron and his Heralds, millennia before the first opening of the Matrix of Leadership. At last, the secrets of our concealed past have been unraveled in full, and the threads woven into the tapestry of cybertronian history, once incomplete, now proudly waving in the winds of time as a finished masterpiece.
…At least, that is how it appears, at first. In reality, there is but one more chapter that eludes us. These pages were not torn out, I am afraid, but rather, rewritten. The story they tell is still there, in the ten thousand years leading up to the Great War, but their events have been edited, altered in a desperate attempt to keep Megatron and his Decepticons from discovering the secret of the Prime Colonies before more worthy sparks would come to seek their treasures for noble ends. Sentinel Prime hid the Matrix away within the Tomb of the Primes in the Great War’s early decades, so the story goes, and somehow all knowledge of the tomb’s location within the Hydrax Plateau was lost shortly after. I implore you to ask: how could that be the case? Records from the reign of Sentinel’s predecessor, Septimus Prime, show that the tomb’s location was common knowledge, just ten millennia before, and Sentinel himself visited the tomb to pay his respects to Septimus upon his interment there. How could a race as long-lived as ours suddenly forget one of our peoples’ most sacred sites in the mere five centuries the Great War endured? What could explain the sudden collective amnesia that befell an entire generation of transformers?
. . .
“Uh, hey, Wastebasket?” Bootleg calls to his reluctant manservant, a rusty, red-clad junkion who stood by his President-Czar-God-King’s side, “Do I have to, like, pay for this? I mean, I’m the big cheese now, ain’t I?”
“I’m fairly certain you would have to fork over such an insignificant percentage of your frankly absurd presidential salary, sir,” Wastebasket snarks.
“What salary?” Bootleg retorts, genuinely having no idea what his butler was talking about. “I thought I was broke after I fell for that Quintesson Prince scam an’…”
“Primus, save us from the queen,” Wastebasket asides as Bootleg continues to recount that particular misadventure. “Please.”
“Of course you have a presidential salary!” he then snaps at Bootleg, the yellow minicon jumping back a bit in shock. “Have you even read the terms of office since you were elected?”
“Uhhh… no?” Bootleg answers, looking around the room guiltily. “Ain’t that your job?”
“If my job was to lead the people of Junkion and represent them to the galaxy at large,” Wastebasket deadpans. “Unfortunately, however, it is not.”
Bootleg groans and turns back to his datapad, the excerpt from Cryptex’s latest book still glowing on its cracked screen, its burning questions demanding to be answered. With a shrug, he presses a finger on the “download” button.
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Humanity in the TOTGA-verse: General History
Author’s note: this story takes place roughly fifty years before Transformers: Twilight of the Golden Age.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: Iacon Hall of Records- study chamber 316//Cycle 63, Vorn 15 (NC)//1900
PARTIES: Chaplain of Pescus Hex (High Chancellor- Hecate), Teletraan Theta Archive Interface (TAI)
//START TRANSCRIPT
TAI: Good evening, High Chancellor. Thank you for using the Teletraan Theta Archive Interface- you may call me Tai. How may I be of service?
CHAPLAIN: Tai, I would like an overview of human history, please. Significant events from… hm… first contact, up until the present day. Can you do that for me?
TAI: Certainly, High Chancellor. Would you like me to send a timeline and relevant readings to this chamber’s terminal?
CHAPLAIN: Yes, thank you. Begin narration.
TAI: Yes, High Chancellor. First contact with the species Homo Sapiens, known colloquially as “Humans” or “Terrans”, was made by Quintus Prime and the Order of the Knights of Cybertron on the planet Earth, some time in the historical period referred to as “Dark” or “Middle Ages” by human historians. There is evidence to suggest that independent cybertronian explorers may have had unofficial relations with humanity before this, however. For example, the “echo” AIs encountered by the crew of the CFC Salvation bore names identical to mythological locations of human cultures predating these Dark Ages. For more information, see “Atlantis”, “Hyperborea”, “Ogygia”, and “Lemuria”.
CHAPLAIN: Compile a dossier on those four and have it sent to this terminal for later viewing, please.
TAI: Yes, High Chancellor.
CHAPLAIN: Continue, please.
TAI: Yes, High Chancellor. Unfortunately, most records of Human-Cybertronian relations from this time were lost in the War of the Primes, though the general consensus among human historians is that the Thirteen, the Knights of Cybertron, and other followers of the Primes were active across planet Earth throughout the Middle Ages, and may have inspired many of the legends and folklore that originated during this time. All exploratory missions were recalled to cybertronian space during the War of the Primes, and contact with humanity was not re-established until the year nineteen-eighty-four in the human calendar.
CHAPLAIN: Hmm… any rumors about more “unofficial” human-cybertronian relations between the end of these “dark ages” and… uhm… “nineteen-eighty-four”?
TAI: Yes, High Chancellor. Less-reputable human and cybertronian historians speculate that independent explorers may have revisited Earth sporadically throughout the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. There is little credible evidence to support this from either species, however.
CHAPLAIN: Intriguing… Very well. Continue, please.
TAI: Yes, High Chancellor. As I was saying, contact with humanity was re-established in nineteen-eighty-four when a scout ship captained by Vanguard Minor was sent to Earth by order of Aethus Prime. Political relations began shortly afterward between Cybertron and the human United Nations. Travel between Earth and Cybertron via warp-capable spacecraft was approved in the year two-thousand-seven, leading to an exchange of science, technology, and culture that led to the rapid advancement of humanity into an interstellar superpower. The resulting political entity, the United Human Polities, was officially inducted into the Federation of Allied Species in the year thirty-three-fifty-nine, following the Battle Over New Quintessa and the subsequent end of the Fourth Quintesson War.
CHAPLAIN: Humans fought in the Quintesson Wars?
TAI: The UHP was only involved in the tail-end of the fourth war, though their intervention was essential to the Quintesson’s final defeat. For this, The Imperium of Cybertron argued that they had earned membership into the Allied Species.
CHAPLAIN: And the rest, I suppose, is history, yes?
TAI: So to speak. For roughly the next one hundred million years, the UHP expanded throughout the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy and maintained close relations with the Imperium of Cybertron. Humanity came to our aid during the Dire Wraith Conflict, and supported the Autobots throughout the Great War. Sadly, the destruction wreaked across the galaxy from the Great War’s many battles lost our people favor in the eyes of the rest of the Allied Species, and shortly after the Autobot victory at the Battle of Mission City on Earth, the Imperium of Cybertron was voted out of the federation. The provisional government established by the Autobot High Council withdrew all cybertronian presence from federation space, and our people have remained in isolation from the rest of the Milky Way galaxy to this day.
[Long pause]
CHAPLAIN: …I see. And, what became of the humans, Tai?
TAI: Unknown, High Chancellor. As contact with them ceased almost twenty million years ago now, humanity’s current situation is anyone’s guess.
CHAPLAIN: Thank you, Tai. You’ve been very helpful to me.
TAI: It is my pleasure and my honor, High Chancellor. The dossiers that you have requested have been uploaded to this chamber’s terminal as requested, along with recommended readings and star charts. Do you require anything else from me at this time?
CHAPLAIN: No, Tai, thank you.
TAI: Affirmative, High Chancellor. Til All Are One.
CHAPLAIN: Til All Are One.
//END TRANSCRIPT
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A More Perfect Union
Author’s note: this story takes place one year after the events of Transformers: Twilight of the Golden Age
A cool nighttime breeze wafted gently through the rusted columns and worn filigree of the meeting place of the tribes of Eukaris: the former command deck of the colony ship that, under the will of Onyx Prime, had reformed the planet into a home for bestial transformers. The ship had been stripped for parts soon after it had cyberformed Eukaris, leaving the command deck exposed to the starry sky like a flower bathed in moonlight; a circular platform formed its center, with twelve smaller daises branching off of its circumference like grey petals, their rims adorned with long-dead husks of consoles and hologram projectors. Beneath the petals, four bridges led away from the command deck and out to the remains of the ring-shaped structure that formed the top of the spire-shaped colony ship. Knotted creepers wove through the superstructure’s exposed skeleton, and blankets of deep-green moss covered the patches of sloping hull plating that remained here-and-there.
Gossamer, Scribe to Queen Pterygota of the Below, scanned the deck, observing the chieftains of the other eukarian tribes gathered here. Each was accompanied by a compliment of guards and their finest warriors, and between them stood Apex, the king of the Steel Shard Mountains, whose duty it was to keep the peace between them all. Like his predecessors, he had earned his title in ritual combat, besting the previous king in the arena to prove his might and right to rule. So it had always been on Eukaris, its inhabitants eschewing the convoluted politics of Cybertron and the other colonies in favor of the natural law, the rules of nature which had governed this universe since its inception. It was the last decree of Onyx Prime, the Lord of Beasts, before his death that his successors would be chosen in this way.
…Or so it had been thought. Gossamer frowned as she once again went over Axis Prime’s recent revelation in her thoughts. Axis, who in three month’s time had risen from a fighter from the city beneath Mount Axalon to the latest in the lineage of the Primes: the demigods chosen by the Matrix of Leadership to lead all of cybertronian kind. Before the return of the Heralds of Unicron, Gossamer- along with virtually everyone else on Eukaris- knew nothing of the Matrix, or of other Primes and gods. Since she had risen from the Well of Sparks in the Fecund Pit thirty thousand years ago, she had been taught that Onyx was the only one, the bridge between his robotic people and the natural world, who led his followers to this planet when the rest of his kind became intoxicated off their obtuse metal cities, noisy starships, and voracious weapons.
But this was not so, Axis had said to king Apex and the other chieftains. Gossamer remembered Pterygota’s shrill cry of bewilderment, and the shock that she and the others had felt at this proclamation. No, it turned out that Onyx was but one of thirteen Primes, later only twelve following a terrible war. Onyx and brothers, Axis explained, has gone their separate ways after this war, each one founding his own colony world before passing on. What was more, Axis had spoken to the Lord of Beasts’s spirit during her quest to defeat Unicron’s heralds, and he had apparently expressed surprise at how his people had ruled themselves since his passing.
“I personally found that there’s more to it than simply being the strongest, or most vicious,” Onyx had said, according to her. “In some situations, that might be a component, yes, but I don’t believe it’s ever truly all that’s required.”
So Gossamer, and generations of eukarians before her, had been mistaken. Mistaken in the history of their own deity and his will. It was hard to take in- it still was- but that didn’t change the facts. Inspired by Onyx’s words, Axis had suggested that the king and chieftains do away with the ancient rites, and determine their rulers not by fighting, but by their ability to lead (a confusing distinction that Axis repeatedly made a point to impress upon them), and the will of the people they would preside over. “Democracy”, she had called it. It was but a suggestion, but Apex and the others were quick to heed the words of the new Prime, and so here they all were roughly a year later.
Gossamer noted few new faces in the gathering- almost none, in fact, aside from the chieftains’s guards. The insecticons of the Below had voted to keep Pterygota as their queen, and it seemed that the denizens of the other tribes had followed suit with their own rulers. Gossamer recalled how she had felt obligated to cast her vote in favor the queen- to do otherwise smacked of treason, and a wise eukarian never called her chieftain’s leadership into doubt unless she could fight to prove her claim. Clearly, such a dramatic change to her people’s culture would take more time to become acclimated to.
“One year has passed, as we agreed upon,” Apex spoke, getting right to the point of tonight’s gathering. “I trust that you all have done as our Prime asked of us, and allowed your constituents to permit those of who who’ve kept your thrones to do so by their will.”
“Of course we have!” said Sandstone, Lord of the Whispering Sands, rather quickly. The mandibles beside his jaws click nervously, and the stinger-tipped tail rising from over his shoulder twitched. Apex frowns at him, noting the scorpion-bot’s defensive demeanor.
“I will hold each of you to your honor that you have done so,” he said, though he clearly spoke to Sandstone alone. Pterygota hisses out a remark in the insecticon tongue, foreign to the audio receptors of the rest. Gossamer translates:
“The insecticons of the Below have chosen to remain under the leadership of her excellency, queen Pterygota, Tunneler and Protector of the Brood,” she said, adding a respectful “long may she reign” afterward, to the pleasure of the queen.
“Likewise, the transformers of the Whispering Sands have expressed their desire to remain under the wise leadership of I, Lord Standstone,” the scorpion-bot insisted, though he fooled no-one; Gossamer even saw one of his own bodyguards roll his eyes, and she stifled a laugh with her upper right hand.
A grey-armored techno-organic minicon perched atop a ruined data tower rises from the crouch he had assumed since the meeting had stared, white feathers waving in the wind between his mechanical components. His great, disk-shaped eyes glowed a deep red as they looked over the gathering, before the minicon whispered
“I, Snowblind, am honored to have been chosen by the transformers of the South Frost to lead them into this new era.” He was one of the new ones, Gossamer noted, and she wasn’t surprised; the previous ruler of Eukaris’s southern pole had been a bully, rumored to have cheated in his duel with his predecessor to take his title from her. Gossamer wondered what would become of him now…
Things continued like this for another few minutes, with the other nine chieftains proclaiming their leadership over their vast territories. When that was done with, they all looked expectantly to Apex. None of their discussions together had devised a means to elect a new king. Though he hailed from the Steel Shard Mountains, his duty was to the whole planet. Gossamer couldn’t imagine any feasible means by which to conduct a planet-wide election, with billions of cybertronians scattered across warrens, deserts, undersea caverns, and all other manner of environments.
“You must now be wondering where I will reside in this new system of government,” Apex said, seeming to read everyone’s minds.
“The answer is: I won’t.”
Now this was a bombshell, as that one scrappy junkion Gossamer had recently encountered would put it. Some bots gasped, and Snowblind’s already-wide eyes grew even larger. Gossamer hadn’t even thought that possible.
“There is no place for kings here, in this new world we are making,” Apex continued. “It falls to you- all of you- to preside over your own territories. Not as chieftains and rulers, but leaders who will serve their people and act at their behest.”
“But who will resolve disputes between us?” clicked a red bot with a hunched back and some kind of crustacean for an alt-mode. “If one of us is found to be guilty of wrongdoing, who will punish them accordingly?”
“Disputes between you are to be resolved through peaceful negotiation,” Apex answered. “We will not suffer the tribal wars of millennia past, and those of you who would slight against your people will find themselves removed from their throne by their hands.”
“What will you do?” growled an enormous green predacon to Apex. “If you are no longer king of Eukaris…”
“This is my last act as king,” Apex said. “Henceforth, I am but another resident of the Steel Shard Mountains, living under the leadership of you, Hookfang. The Triptych Mask, which has been passed through my lineage, will remain in the hands of the Onyx Temple’s caretakers.”
Apex stepped out of the center of the command deck as a silence befell the gathering. Gossamer looked to the east and saw a thin sliver of dawn beginning to peak out across the horizon, casting thin rays of orange light between the mountains that surrounded the colony ship. The chieftains each stepped forward, acknowledging one another’s sovereignty before declaring this first meeting of their council adjourned. They each gathered their guards and departed for their respective regions, returning to their people to lead them into a new age.
It’s about time I wrote a real story instead of just dropping lore on you guys, right? Please tell me what you think of it.
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Judgement
The blue-green glow of the space bridge portal retreated to the edges of Prima’s vision as he stepped out onto the circular observation deck of the Chronon. Behind him, the portal crackled as Megatronus and Quintus Prime also emerged from its gate. With a hiss, it dissipated, the bridge of frayed spacetime and extradimensional energy connecting the Chronon to Cybertron unraveling with it. A canvas of pale white light crept in from ahead to fill the darkness the portal left behind, and Prima looked up at its source.
The Benzuli Expanse. The anomalous halo of asteroids, ice, and stardust that churned around a silvery disk of light- a thinning in the barrier between this universe and the rest, Vector Prime had tried to explain. He was here now, at the edge of the deck, just within the atmospheric shield enveloping the Chronon- without it, the wall-less observation deck would be exposed to vacuum. Vector’s design choices for the Chronon had never bothered Prima before (it was his ship, after all), but at this moment he now felt exposed, vulnerable. The Firstborn’s gaze held upon the Expanse- or rather, what loomed in front of it, before the Chronon.
It hung in the void before Benzuli’s event horizon, tilted at an odd angle relative to the Chronon, like a sliver of obsidian tossed carelessly out into space. A spire of black metal silhouetted against the glow of the Expanse; long and jagged, with mushroom-like lumps of hull plating bulging out from its length. Between these sloping protrusions ran thick clumps of cabling, studded with pinpricks of crimson light- like bloody parodies of the silver-white stars that dotted the void around them. Unmoving, it hovered before the Primes, those red lights staring down at them like hundreds of tiny eyes.
“What… is it?” Prima found himself asking, his voice barely above a whisper. He had stopped walking, staring wide-eyed at the object, overcome with curiosity and unease.
“What I’ve brought you here to see,” Vector answered, facing him. Though younger that Prima, his voice sounded far older than the Firstborn’s. Ancient, almost. Prima looks down at his gold-armored friend, seeing that he was accompanied by fellow Primes Optimus and Alpha Trion, with the latter’s minicon companion, Beta Maxx, close by. Trion frowned into the pages of The Covenant of Primus, while Optimus gazed up at the spire, his face unreadable.
“Obviously,” Megatronus growls from Prima’s right. “But what is it, Vector?”
The Guardian of Space and time shook his head, looking down at the grey metal beneath his feet. “I don’t know,” he admits.
“I have looked through every timeline within my reach,” he says, drawing Rhisling. “Onyx has gazed across thousands more with his mask, and yet we have found nothing like it in any past or present.”
“Likewise, I have yet to find anything within The Covenant’s pages,” Alpha Trion adds, his sagely voice weighed with the same uneasy feeling that pressed against Prima’s spark. Prima casts another upward glance at the object, unable to escape the uncomfortable feeling that those red lights really were looking down at him, studying him as he and the other Primes studied it.
Megatronus stepped forward, joining Vector at the edge of the observation deck. He surveyed the black spire, scanning for weapons, engines, a bridge; targets to attack. He saw nothing. The spire was entirely alien to him, ominous and unknowable. The only thing worse to him than an enemy you knew you couldn’t defeat was one whose capabilities you didn’t- couldn’t- know. It made you unable to anticipate its actions, plan around its weaknesses.
“Let’s not be too hasty, Megatronus,” Beta Maxx cautioned the Dark Warrior, reading his thoughts. “It hasn’t shown any signs of hostility since it appeared.”
“And how long has it been here?” inquired Megatronus, keeping his gaze upon the spire, staring down its beady, unblinking eyes. “Have any of you attempted to make contact with it at all? Vector, I trust you’ve scanned-”
“Of course, I have,” Vector interrupted, scowling at the Dark Warrior. “It’s subtly warping the very fabric of this reality around itself, baffling the Chronon’s scanners.”
“It appeared almost six standard days ago,” Beta Maxx said, in answer to Megatronus’s first question. “Through the Expanse. The Chronon picked up the spacial-temporal rippling created from its arrival; the warping Vector just mentioned could be a side-effect of whatever method it used to travel through from… wherever it is it came from.”
Megatronus frowned, looking down at Vector and Beta- the uncertainty in the latter’s voice was troubling. They were all in the dark, even Beta Maxx and Alpha Trion, whose business it was to be in the know.
“So it is a visitor…” Quintus remarked quietly, drifting out from Prima’s left. Copper tassels and metallic ribbons floated gently around his frail form as he hovered above the deck, his hands clasped together.
“Or an invader,” Megatronus retorts. “This warping could be an unintended consequence of its approach, yes; or a deliberate masking of its nature and intent.”
“Megatronus, please,” Prima spoke up, walking forward to place a hand on the Dark Warrior’s shoulder. “You are right to be cautious, but let us not look for a battle where, perhaps, there does not have to be one.”
“I agree,” Quintus said with a nod of his head. “We should further endeavor to establish a dialogue with this entity; learn its intentions before simply assuming the worst.”
“And if our worst assumptions are confirmed?” asked Alpha Trion, closing The Covenant and attaching it to his hip. He looked at Prima, directing the question to him, the de facto leader of their fellowship. Prima felt Trion, Beta and Vector’s unease within himself, along with Megatronus’s wariness and Quintus’s curiosity. The only one he couldn’t discern was Optimus; the youngest of the Thirteen had remained silent, staring up at the black spire the whole time the rest of them had been talking. Prima relied on all his comrades’ input, and he often sought Optimus’s judgement to weigh against his own.
“What do you think, Optimus?” he asked.
Optimus turned his eyes away from the spire, and faced Prima and the rest. His expression was grim.
“Megatronus may be right,” he said gravely. “I can feel its gaze upon us now, poring over our weapons and this ship. It is studying us, as a predator does its prey.”
Prima gave a solemn nod. How Optimus knew this, like he knew so many other things, he suspected he may never know himself. But his judgement was always sound. Prima’s decision was made.
“Quintus,” he said, "you and Megatronus will return with me to Cybertron. I will dispatch Maximo to try and communicate with this… thing. Megatronus, I would like you to prepare a fleet- take whatever measures you deem appropriate, but do not act without my approval.
“I ask that you three remain here,” Prima continued, speaking to Vector, Alpha Trion, and Beta Maxx. “Continue your efforts. Optimus, you may do as you please.”
“Then I will remain aboard the Chronon,” Optimus replied with a nod. “Perhaps the light of the Matrix can illuminate this mystery.”
“Perhaps, indeed,” Prima agreed.
“We killed Unicron, and his heralds” boasted Megatronus. “Should this visitor show itself to be an enemy, we will make short work of it.”
With that, he and Quintus began to follow Prima as he turned around to re-open the space bridge. Silence fell across the observation deck as the Primes combed through timelines and libraries once again. Optimus looked back up at the black spire, the glow from the Benzuli Expanse washing across its sides.
“I fear Unicron may have only been the beginning,” he mutters, staring into the eyes of the invader, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that they were staring right back.
Hope you enjoyed that one. Constructive criticism is not only appreciated, but requested.
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I like the sense of mystery this passage is setting up. It’s making me eager to try and learn what this spire portends.
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