051315 - Rise

Awakening again is always the hardest part. The pain, the diagnostics racing across my vision, the feeling of confusion and disorientation. The ringing in my audials as I slowly worked through the initations of my systems so I would not overwork anything that had already been taxed too far and push it into shutdown. Finally, once everything was where it should be, there was one system that I could no longer ignore simply by shutting down.

Energon Reserves: CRITICAL.

I knew if I didn't find fuel soon, I would enter a shutdown from which I may never return. I had figured out where I was finally. The Undergrid. I was somewhere deep within Cybertron. The mapping systems I had on hand were outdated for the area. I was lost, depleted, and barely hanging on. Things were looking bad.

<<Pax. Orion Pax, do you read me?>>

The sound of my radio going off had caught me off-guard. I had thought I was so far underground that I would not have any chance of point-to-point transmission, not to mention any number of the satellites that orbitted the planet. But to hear a voice, a real voice, finally motivated me.

<<Yes. Who is this?>>

<<A friend. I can't reach you, but you might be able to reach me. But you've got your work cut out for you. How are your systems?>>

<<My fuel's critical. I lost a lot of energon and armor in the battle... and I have no idea where I am.>>

<<And that's never stopped you before, Pax. Think. Remember what you were before you were a soldier. What drove you?>>

Curiosity wracked at me. I had no idea who this was, but the voice was right. I needed to remember. I needed that jar to my memory. I hadn't always been an Autobot field commander. Or a police chief. Or even a police officer.

I had been an archivist. And that part of me should be estatic for where I am now. I was deep within the living history of Cybertron. I couldn't help but to chuckle, having felt that I was probably living one of Alpha Trion's stories.

Fortune offered me her first smile after I had wandered the tunnels for a few hours. My steps were slow and steady and true, and eventually I had come across an abandoned construction station that had been left for some long ago project that had been lost. There was still energon, no matter how stale, in the tanks of some of the equipment. I pulled out some of my own damaged fuel lines and fashioned them into a makeshift syphon. As I removed my faceplate to take a long drink, I nearly choked on the taste and fatigue of hunger I had not realized I was facing. I forced myself to slowdown and rethink my course of action.

"Prioritize." I reminded myself. Repairs to the fuel system were needed. There was no need to refuel if I was just going to spill it all over the floor. Fortunately, there was plenty of scrap metal to use to fuse the damaged lines and seal them off. Standing in front of the most reflective surface I could find, I worked on sealing and closing off the lines that had leaked and broken. With only one hand, it was a daunting task, and most of my repairs consisted of squeezing the metal into a crumpled ball around the damaged area to seal it off. Ratchet was going to have a field day when I returned to the surface.

The surface. It was the first time I had truly thought about it. A grunt of pain greeted me as I had allowed my thoughts to wander too far as I closed off a line and winced in pain. Megatron had caused similar wounds on Cybertron. A large swath had been cut through Cybertron by his march on Iacon. Had Zeta Prime been wrong? Yes. That much I had been certain of. It is why I had stood up to the impossibility of the Omega Destuctors in Nyon.

Nyon. Hot Rod. I could only imagined what had happened to him at this point. As bright opticed and forgiving as the mech was, there was little doubt in my mind that Megatron was introducing him to a world that would be perfect under the Decepticons and Hot Rod should join them.

Because it had been the same thing that Megatron had done to me. I refelected on that meeting in the cargo hanger at Kolkular and I realized one of the first things that Megatron had said to me. 'You have come to see me already.'. Whatever test he had given me at that point of the first meeting I had failed and Megatron had already written me off.

For a fleeting moment I felt foolish for ever believing that I had understood Megatron. Someone I had thought of as friend. Someone that in turned had played me to his ends. And was possibly using my demise to rally Cybertron to him.

That was when I felt the anger for the first time. I was furious that I had been used. I had been just another weapon in Megatron's arsenal to overthrow the Primes and conquer Cybertron for himself. Conquer. Was that too strong a world? I had read once about the Primal Vanguard. How Nova Prime had used them - first as diplomats for agents of peace and what good works Cybertronians could do for an alien world - and when that failed, as a conquering force. Megatron had employed the very same tactics.

Megatron, in the end, had become no better than a Prime, I realized. But something about that thought didn't sit right as my hand lifted to my chest, against that modification that Senator Shockwave had made within me so long ago. What had the Senator seen in me as a possible Prime candidate that would make me any different than those that had come before me. Zeta. Sentinel. Nominus, Nova.

Megatron. He had become a Prime. Not in name, not in a Senatorial grant. Not even with Alpha Trion's blessing. He was now a Prime by force. And possibly worse than any Prime before him because of it.

And once again.. for the third time. I had to stop a Prime.