Chapter 4 - CHAPTER 4: FACES, FIRE, AND THE COST OF MERCY

Starscream saw his new face for the first time at 0347 hours, ship time, aboard the Nemesis.

Knockout had done his best. He genuinely, truly, sincerely had done his best. He was the finest medic in the Decepticon army—arguably the finest medic alive, period, given that Ratchet was the only real competition and Ratchet didn't have access to the Nemesis's fabrication facilities. Knockout had spent six days reconstructing Starscream's cranial assembly from scratch, working around the clock, skipping recharge cycles, consuming enough medical-grade energon to fuel a small shuttle, and performing what he privately considered the most challenging surgical procedure of his entire career.

The problem was that he had been working with scraps.

Starscream's original facial plating was gone. Not damaged. Not warped. Gone. Ground away to nothing by the interior wall of a ground bridge, scattered across a dimensional tunnel as microscopic debris that was probably still floating in the space between spaces, drifting through the quantum foam like the universe's worst confetti. There was nothing to repair. Nothing to rebuild from. Knockout had been forced to fabricate an entirely new face using whatever materials and design templates were available in the Nemesis's databanks.

The Nemesis's databanks had a lot of things.

Accurate Seeker facial reconstruction templates were not among them.

Knockout had improvised. He had done his best. He had used Vehicon chassis plating for the cheek structure—it was the right alloy, if not the right shape—and repurposed optical sensor components from a decommissioned surveillance drone for the replacement left optic. He had fabricated a new mouth assembly from three different donor mechanisms because no single mechanism was the right size. He had reconstructed the nasal ridge, the brow plates, the chin guard, the everything, one piece at a time, fitting them together with the care and precision of a sculptor working in a medium that screamed at him.

The result was... functional.

The result was, objectively speaking, a face.

It was not, objectively speaking, Starscream's face.

It was a face. It had all the components that a face required—two optics (one original, one replacement, slightly different shade of red), a mouth (wider than the original due to the donor mechanisms), a nasal ridge (shorter, blunter, made from a plate originally designed for a completely different part of the anatomy), brow plates (uneven, one sitting approximately 3mm higher than the other due to a slight miscalculation during the fabrication process that Knockout had noticed too late to correct without starting over and he was NOT starting over), and a chin guard (too angular, too sharp, giving the overall face a vaguely triangular quality that the original had not possessed).

The overall effect was that of a face that had been described to someone over a bad phone connection and then assembled by a committee with conflicting priorities.

Knockout stood beside the medical berth and held a mirror. His own face—perfect, symmetrical, beautiful—was carefully arranged into an expression of professional neutrality that masked a depth of anxiety usually reserved for bomb disposal technicians.

"Now," he said, in the calm, measured tone that medical professionals used when they were about to show a patient something that might cause psychological damage, "before you look, I want you to know that the reconstruction was extremely challenging, and there may be some differences from your original—"

"Give me the mirror, Knockout."

"—and facial reconstruction technology has come a long way, and with some additional procedures we can certainly refine—"

"Give me the mirror."

Knockout gave him the mirror.

Starscream looked.

The scream was heard on every deck of the Nemesis.

It began as a sound and evolved into something that transcended sound—a frequency, a wavelength, a harmonic resonance of pure psychological anguish that bypassed the auditory system and hit the soul directly. It started high—higher than Starscream's vocalizer should have been capable of producing—and went higher, climbing through octaves that Cybertronian audio engineers had previously believed to be theoretical, reaching a pitch that made Soundwave's visor crack (an event so unprecedented that Soundwave actually touched his own face to confirm it had happened), shattered three windows on the medical deck, caused a Vehicon on deck seven to spontaneously void its fuel tanks, and triggered an automatic distress beacon that was briefly detected by a human military satellite before being classified as "atmospheric anomaly, disregard."

It went on for forty-seven seconds.

Then it stopped.

Then Starscream said, very quietly, in a voice that was the vocal equivalent of a flat line on a heart monitor: "What is that."

"Your... your new face," Knockout said, with the careful cheerfulness of someone standing next to an active volcano and trying to convince it not to erupt.

"That is not a face."

"It IS a face. It's a perfectly functional—"

"That is not a face, Knockout. That is a crime scene. That is what happens when spare parts have a nightmare. That is—" He turned the mirror slightly. The replacement optic—the one that was a slightly different shade of red—caught the light and glinted in a way that made the asymmetry even more obvious. "—my optics are different colors."

"They're both red!"

"They are DIFFERENT REDS! One is crimson and the other is SCARLET! I look like I'm WINKING at all times!"

"That's a slight exaggeration—"

"My NOSE is BLUNT! I had a REGAL nose! An AQUILINE nose! A nose that said 'I am Starscream, Air Commander of the Decepticon Seekers, and my nasal ridge is as sharp as my ambition!' THIS nose says 'I walked into a door and the door won!'"

"The donor plate was—"

"My MOUTH is too WIDE! I look like I'm GRINNING! I am NOT grinning, Knockout! There is NOTHING to grin about! I have the face of a DIFFERENT PERSON! I look like—I look like—" He caught his reflection again and his voice dropped to a horrified whisper. "I look like a Vehicon who's been promoted."

In the doorway of the medical bay, a Vehicon who had come to deliver an energon ration heard this, looked at Starscream's new face, looked at its own reflection in a polished wall panel, and noted with some alarm that the resemblance was, in fact, not zero.

Starscream threw the mirror. It hit the wall and shattered into seventeen pieces, each of which reflected a different fragment of his new face back at him in a kaleidoscope of asymmetric horror.

"FIX IT!"

"I CAN'T! There are no Seeker-standard facial components anywhere in our inventory! What do you want me to do, FABRICATE a face from SCRATCH?!"

"YES!"

"THAT'S WHAT I ALREADY DID! This IS fabricated from scratch! This is SIX DAYS of fabrication from scratch! This is the BEST I can do with the materials available!"

"Then GET BETTER MATERIALS!"

"FROM WHERE?! We're in orbit around a PRIMITIVE ORGANIC PLANET that doesn't have a SINGLE Cybertronian parts dealer! The nearest supply depot is in the ANDROMEDA GALAXY!"

Starscream stared at Knockout. Knockout stared back. The shattered mirror glittered between them like the remnants of Starscream's dignity, which was itself in approximately seventeen pieces.

"This is his fault," Starscream said.

He didn't need to specify who "he" was. On the Nemesis, in the current climate, "he" only ever referred to one mech.

"Optimus Prime did this to me." Starscream's mismatched optics—crimson and scarlet, forever different, forever wrong—narrowed with a hatred so pure it was almost beautiful. "He took my face. My REAL face. The face I've had for four million years. The face that launched a thousand campaigns. The face that was on RECRUITMENT POSTERS, Knockout! I was the FACE OF DECEPTICON AERIAL SUPERIORITY! And he—he—"

His voice broke. Not with anger. With something worse than anger. Something deeper.

Loss.

Because a face was not just plating and sensors and aesthetic components. A face was identity. A face was the thing that other beings saw when they looked at you, the thing that made you you, the interface between self and world that was more fundamental than name or rank or faction because it was the first thing and the last thing and the only thing that was always, always, always present.

Starscream's face was gone. The face he had been forged with. The face he had worn through the Golden Age, through the fall of Cybertron, through four million years of war and treachery and ambition and fear. It was gone, abraded away by the inside of a ground bridge, and in its place was a patchwork approximation built from spare parts and desperation that looked like him the way a child's drawing of a house looked like a house—technically correct, fundamentally wrong.

Knockout, to his credit, recognized the moment for what it was. He put down his tools. He sat on the edge of the medical berth. And he said, with a gentleness that was entirely out of character and which he would deny if anyone asked about it later: "I'm sorry, Starscream."

Starscream didn't respond. He sat on the berth, staring at the broken mirror, his new face—his wrong face—reflected in seventeen fragments, each one a reminder of what he had lost and who had taken it.

After a long time, he said: "I want him to pay."

"I know."

"Not Megatron-'pay.' Not 'lose a battle and retreat and come back next week'-'pay.' I want him to pay. I want him to lose something that matters. Something that CAN'T be rebuilt."

Knockout looked at Starscream. Looked at the fury in those mismatched optics. Looked at the set of that wrong jaw and the tension in those uneven brow plates. And felt, for the first time in a very long time, something that was uncomfortably close to sympathy.

"Get in line," Knockout said, quietly. "There's a Vehicon union, six Constructicons, and your boss ahead of you. And they're all saying the same thing."

"They don't have my motivation."

"They don't have your face, either." Beat. "...Sorry. That was—"

"Get out."

"—yeah, I'll go."

Knockout left. Starscream sat alone in the medical bay, surrounded by fragments of mirror and the echo of a scream that had been heard on every deck.

He touched his new face. Felt the unfamiliar contours. The blunt nose. The wide mouth. The uneven brows.

Somewhere in his processor, a plan began to form.

It was a terrible plan.

It would end badly.

But Starscream had never let that stop him before.

The Dinobots arrived on a Tuesday.

Marcus-Optimus felt them before anyone else—a thrumming in the Matrix, a deep resonance like a tuning fork being struck against the bedrock of reality, that said your people are here and they are ancient and they are ANGRY.

The ship came down in the mountains northeast of Jasper, in a valley so remote that the nearest human settlement was a ranger station forty miles away and the nearest cell tower was in a different county. It was a Cybertronian vessel—old, battered, scarred by re-entry and what looked like weapons fire, its hull plating scorched black and peeling away in strips that trailed behind it like banners of a defeated army.

The ship hit the ground hard enough to carve a trench half a mile long. Trees snapped. Rock shattered. A family of elk that had been peacefully grazing in the valley relocated to a different valley with a speed that suggested they had collectively decided that this particular real estate was no longer suitable for elk purposes.

Marcus-Optimus took the ground bridge. Alone.

"Alone?!" Ratchet had said. "You're going ALONE to investigate an unidentified Cybertronian vessel? After everything that's happened? After the Constructicons? After STARSCREAM?"

"I know who it is, Ratchet."

"HOW do you know who it is?!"

"The Matrix."

"The Matrix told you."

"Yes."

"The same Matrix that is apparently generating weapons in your body at random intervals?"

"It is not random. It is responsive."

"The SHOTGUN, Optimus. In your SHIN. Was that RESPONSIVE?"

"...The shotgun has proven tactically useful."

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT—"

But Marcus-Optimus was already through the bridge, and Ratchet was left shouting at empty air, which was becoming a depressingly familiar experience for the Autobot medic.

The valley was quiet. The ship was smoking. And standing in front of it, arranged in a loose formation that was less "military" and more "barely contained mob," were the Dinobots.

Grimlock. Slug. Snarl. Swoop. Sludge.

Five of the most powerful, most volatile, most difficult Autobots ever created, standing in a mountain valley on an alien planet, radiating a collective aura of barely restrained violence that made the local wildlife reclassify them as an extinction-level event.

Grimlock was at the front. Because Grimlock was always at the front. The Dinobot leader was massive—taller than Optimus, broader, heavier, a fortress of gold and silver and gunmetal gray that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. His visor burned blue-white, the color of a star going supernova in slow motion. His hands—each one large enough to wrap around a Vehicon's torso and squeeze—hung at his sides with the deceptive looseness of a predator at rest.

He looked at Marcus-Optimus.

Marcus-Optimus looked at him.

Two leaders. Two warriors. Two beings who had known each other for millions of years and had spent most of those years disagreeing about virtually everything—strategy, tactics, philosophy, the appropriate use of force, the appropriate use of fire, the definition of "restraint," the definition of "excessive," and whether or not it was acceptable to eat Decepticons (Grimlock said yes, Optimus said absolutely not, this argument had been ongoing for approximately two million years and showed no signs of resolution).

"Prime," Grimlock said.

His voice was exactly as Marcus-Optimus remembered from the memories—deep, rough, carrying the gravelly texture of a being whose vocalizer had been designed for roaring rather than speaking and had never fully adapted to the downgrade. It was a voice that sounded like tectonic plates having a conversation.

"Grimlock," Marcus-Optimus said. "It's been a long time."

"Hmph." Grimlock's visor swept over him—assessing, evaluating, measuring. Dinobots did not do pleasantries. Dinobots did not do small talk. Dinobots did "are you strong enough to be worth my time" and "can you help me fight things" and very little else. "Heard you were here. On this mud-ball planet. Protecting the squishies."

"I am."

"Heard you got soft."

"...You may have heard wrong."

"That what I'm here to find out." Grimlock stepped forward. One step. Two. Close enough that Marcus-Optimus could feel the heat radiating from his frame—Dinobots ran hot, their systems generating excess thermal energy as a byproduct of the modifications that allowed them to transform into their beast modes. Close enough that the size difference between them was apparent—Grimlock had six inches and probably eighty tons on him, and he carried that advantage with the casual arrogance of someone who had never once in his existence met a problem that couldn't be solved by being bigger.

"My ship's damaged," Grimlock said. "Need repairs. Need energon. Need a place to be while we figure out our next move."

"You're welcome here. All of you."

"Didn't ask if we were welcome. We go where we want." A pause. That visor—burning, intense, ancient—bore into Marcus-Optimus with the weight of shared history and shared blood and the complicated, grudging, hard-won respect of one warrior for another. "Asked if you got soft."

Marcus-Optimus held Grimlock's gaze. He didn't flinch. He didn't look away. He didn't bristle or posture or deploy any of the dozens of weapons that were humming beneath his plating with the eager anticipation of systems that recognized a potential sparring partner and were interested.

Instead, he smiled.

Not the warm, reassuring smile of TFP Optimus. Not the cold, predatory smile of Bayverse Optimus. Something in between. Something that was new—warm enough to be genuine, sharp enough to be dangerous, and carrying the specific quality of a being who had recently climbed a gestalt combiner and blown it up from the inside and was not particularly concerned about proving anything to anyone.

"Come to the base," he said. "See for yourself."

Grimlock stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, a sound emerged from his chest—a low, rumbling vibration that was the Dinobot equivalent of a thoughtful "hmm."

"Fine," he said. "But if you've gone soft, Prime, I'm taking my Dinobots and leaving. And I'm taking whatever energon I want on the way out."

"Fair enough."

"And if your medic touches my ship, I'll eat him."

"...I'll let Ratchet know."

The Dinobots came to the base.

The base was not ready for the Dinobots.

The base would never, in any timeline, in any universe, in any conceivable configuration of reality, be ready for the Dinobots.

Grimlock walked through the ground bridge and immediately had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. Slug walked through the ground bridge and immediately scraped both walls with his shoulder armor, leaving parallel gouges in the rock that Ratchet would later photograph and add to his growing file of "structural damage caused by people who are not me." Snarl walked through the ground bridge and knocked over a computer terminal with his tail—his tail, because even in robot mode, Snarl had a tail, and the tail had opinions about spatial awareness that were consistently negative. Swoop flew through the ground bridge—flew—and nearly collided with the ceiling before pulling up at the last second and perching on a support strut like a twenty-foot metal pterodactyl who had mistaken the Autobot base for a really ugly tree. Sludge walked through the ground bridge and simply stood in the middle of the main bay, taking up approximately a third of the available floor space, and did not move, because Sludge did not move unless Sludge had a reason to move, and "you're in the way" had never been a sufficient reason.

Ratchet looked at the Dinobots. Looked at his base. Looked at the gouges, the knocked-over terminal, the giant robot on his ceiling, and the immovable object in his main bay. Looked at Marcus-Optimus.

"No," he said.

"Ratchet—"

"No."

"They need our help—"

"They need a HANGAR. They need a WAREHOUSE. They need a DIFFERENT PLANET. What they do NOT need is to be in MY BASE, breaking MY EQUIPMENT, scratching MY WALLS—"

"Me Sludge sorry," Sludge said, from the middle of the room, in a voice like a gentle avalanche.

Ratchet paused. Looked at Sludge. Sludge looked back with an expression of such genuine, bovine, sincere apology that Ratchet's righteous fury stuttered like an engine running out of fuel.

"...Just don't touch anything," Ratchet said, in a much smaller voice.

"Me Sludge touch nothing," Sludge agreed, and continued to stand in the middle of the room, touching nothing, taking up a third of the floor space, and radiating the calm, immovable energy of a being who had found his spot and was committed to it.

And then Miko arrived.

She came around the corner at speed—she always came around corners at speed, because Miko Nakadai did not believe in walking when running was available or running when sprinting was available—and she saw the Dinobots and she stopped.

Not because she was scared. Miko did not scare. Miko had watched Optimus Prime climb a gestalt combiner and detonate it from the inside. Miko had watched Optimus Prime drag Starscream's face through a ground bridge. Miko had, at this point, been so thoroughly desensitized to giant robot violence that her baseline for "impressive" was set at a level that would give most humans permanent psychological damage.

She stopped because the Dinobots were the single most magnificent things she had ever seen, and she needed a moment—just one moment—to take in the full scope of their majesty before her brain could start processing it.

Five massive warriors. Ancient. Battle-scarred. Feral in a way that the other Autobots were not—less polished, less civilized, more raw, carrying themselves with the primal confidence of beings who had been designed for destruction and had never once apologized for it.

"Oh," Miko said, in a very small voice. "Oh."

Then: "OPTIMUS DO THEY TURN INTO DINOSAURS?!"

"Yes, Miko."

"GIANT. ROBOT. DINOSAURS."

"Yes, Miko."

"CAN I RIDE ONE?!"

"No, Miko."

"CAN YOU RIDE ONE?!"

Marcus-Optimus paused.

Because that was—that was actually—

That was the thing. The Bayverse thing. The thing from Age of Extinction that had made him stand up in a movie theater at age seventeen and pump his fist in the air and not care that the rest of the audience was looking at him because OPTIMUS PRIME WAS RIDING A GIANT ROBOT T-REX INTO BATTLE WITH A SWORD AND A SHIELD AND IT WAS THE COOLEST THING THAT HAD EVER BEEN COMMITTED TO FILM.

He looked at Grimlock.

Grimlock was looking at Miko. His visor was angled downward at the tiny human with an expression that was halfway between curiosity and the specific look that large predators gave small animals when they were trying to decide if the small animal was food or entertainment.

"Your human is loud," Grimlock said.

"She is... enthusiastic."

"Hmph." Grimlock looked back at Marcus-Optimus. "You let humans in your base?"

"They are under our protection."

"They're fragile."

"They are brave. And they are ours."

Something shifted in Grimlock's visor—a fractional brightening, a micro-adjustment of the light behind the blue glass, that was the Dinobot equivalent of raised eyebrows. He looked at Marcus-Optimus with renewed interest. With the look of a being who had just detected something different in a mech he'd known for millions of years and was trying to identify what it was.

"You've changed, Prime," Grimlock said.

"So people keep telling me."

"Used to be all talk. Speeches. Philosophy. 'Freedom is the right of blah blah blah.' Good words. Weak words. Words don't win wars."

"I still believe in those words, Grimlock."

"Yeah? What else do you believe in now?"

Marcus-Optimus met Grimlock's visor. Held it. And said, with a simplicity that was more powerful than any speech:

"Results."

Grimlock's visor flickered. That rumbling sound again—the deep, tectonic vibration of a Dinobot thinking, really thinking, processing something that didn't fit his existing model of who Optimus Prime was and what Optimus Prime stood for.

"Show me," Grimlock said.

The demonstration happened an hour later, at the training area, with the entire team assembled and Miko perched on her usual spot on Marcus-Optimus's shoulder like a small, loud bird of paradise.

The holographic simulation system had been recalibrated to accommodate the Dinobots' size—which meant the ceiling projectors were running at maximum elevation and Ratchet was hovering over the control console with the nervous energy of a man watching someone else drive his car over a cliff. The simulation scenario was straightforward: twenty holographic Vehicons, standard armament, standard tactics. A warm-up exercise.

"I'll go first," Marcus-Optimus said.

He stepped into the training area. The holograms activated. Twenty drones, spread across the space in a standard defensive formation, their weapons hot, their AI set to "aggressive."

Miko hopped off his shoulder—she had learned, over the past week, exactly when to dismount, and the timing had been refined to the point where she could go from "riding the shoulder" to "safely behind cover" in under three seconds, which was genuinely impressive for a human who had no military training and whose primary physical qualification was "really good at climbing things she shouldn't climb."

Marcus-Optimus rolled his shoulders. Cracked his neck. Deployed his battle mask.

And then he went to work.

The first Vehicon died before it registered his movement. One moment it was standing in formation, arm blaster raised, targeting systems acquiring—and the next moment Marcus-Optimus was there, inside its guard, his right hand wrapped around its face, and he squeezed. The visor cracked, then shattered, then the entire head crumpled, and he dropped the body and was already moving to the next target.

Grimlock watched.

The second Vehicon got the swords. Both blades, deployed simultaneously, crossing in an X-pattern that bisected the drone through the chest and the waist at the same time, producing four distinct pieces that tumbled to the floor in a cascade of sparks and simulated energon. Marcus-Optimus didn't even break stride—the swords retracted and the barrage cannon deployed and the third and fourth Vehicons simply ceased to exist in twin flashes of concentrated energon fire.

Grimlock's visor brightened.

Five through eight tried to form a firing line. Marcus-Optimus charged them. Not around them. Not over them. Through them. He hit the line like a freight train hitting a paper wall, his shoulder leading, and the four drones scattered like bowling pins. He caught one in mid-air—snagged it by the ankle as it tumbled past him—and slammed it into the ground with enough force to crack the training area floor. Then he picked it up and threw it at drone number six, and the two of them collided in a shower of holographic shrapnel that was actually, genuinely beautiful in a horrible sort of way.

Grimlock leaned forward.

Nine tried to run. Marcus-Optimus caught it, spun it around, and delivered a headbutt that caved in its facial plating. Ten got the hooks—both energon hooks, deployed simultaneously, punching through its chest from both sides, and Marcus-Optimus pulled and the drone came apart like a wishbone. Eleven and twelve got the shoulder cannons—a brief, thunderous burst of rotary fire that reduced both targets to component atoms.

Thirteen through sixteen made the mistake of clustering together. Marcus-Optimus deployed the battle axe. One swing. Horizontal. The axe carved through all four drones in a single, devastating arc, and the sound it made—the whoom-crack of energon-enhanced metal passing through four bodies simultaneously—was a sound that Grimlock had heard a thousand times before on a thousand battlefields, and it was the sound of someone who knew how to use a weapon.

Seventeen got suplexed.

Actually, genuinely suplexed. Marcus-Optimus grabbed the drone around the waist, lifted it over his head, arched his back, and drove it headfirst into the floor with a wrestling move that had absolutely no business being in a Cybertronian combat repertoire but which was so devastatingly effective that the training area floor cratered on impact and the holographic drone's head was driven six inches into the rock.

Grimlock's mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again.

"Did he just—"

"He did," Arcee confirmed, from the sideline, in the tone of someone who had seen this before and was still not used to it.

Eighteen charged. Marcus-Optimus met it with a front kick that connected with the drone's center mass and sent it flying backward at approximately the speed of sound. It hit the far wall of the training area and the wall dented. The drone did not get up. The drone would never get up. The drone had experienced a force-to-mass ratio that was incompatible with continued structural integrity.

Nineteen got punted.

Not kicked. Punted. Marcus-Optimus's foot connected with the drone's midsection in a rising arc that launched it into the air like a football, and it sailed across the training area in a perfect parabolic trajectory, spinning end over end, trailing sparks and dignity, until it hit the opposite wall approximately thirty feet above the floor and embedded itself in the rock face like a mechanical fossil.

"He punted it," Grimlock said. His voice had changed. It was no longer the gruff, dismissive tone of a warrior evaluating a rival. It was something else. Something that Grimlock was not accustomed to feeling and was processing with the careful confusion of a being encountering an entirely new emotion for the first time in four million years.

Awe.

"He punted it into a wall," Grimlock said again, as if repetition would help him process what he was seeing.

Twenty. The last drone. It was standing at the far end of the training area, alone, its AI apparently running the combat equivalent of an existential crisis—target assessment complete, threat level: BEYOND MAXIMUM PARAMETERS, recommended action: PRAYER.

Marcus-Optimus walked toward it.

Not ran. Walked. Each step deliberate. Each step measured. The axe over his shoulder, the energon dripping from his hooks, the battle mask deployed, his optics burning behind it with a light that was less "noble Autobot leader" and more "natural disaster with a weapons budget."

The holographic Vehicon dropped its weapon.

The holographic Vehicon dropped its weapon.

A simulation. A computer program. A collection of hard-light photons and behavioral algorithms that was not alive and could not feel fear—dropped its weapon and stood there, arms at its sides, as if the AI driving it had looked at the thing approaching and decided that resistance was not just futile but philosophically incoherent.

Marcus-Optimus stopped in front of it. Looked at it. Tilted his head.

Then he reached out, very gently, and pushed it over with one finger.

It fell. Hit the ground. Deactivated.

End of simulation.

The training area was silent. Twenty holographic Vehicons, destroyed. Time elapsed: forty-three seconds. Weapons used: swords, hooks, axe, barrage cannon, shoulder cannons, bare hands, and a suplex. Methods of elimination: standard combat, creative combat, and what could only be described as interpretive violence.

Marcus-Optimus retracted his weapons. Retracted his battle mask. Turned to face the assembled audience—five Autobots, five Dinobots, three humans, and one medic who was clutching his scanner like a rosary.

"That," he said, "is the standard."

Silence.

Then Grimlock spoke.

"...Prime."

"Yes, Grimlock?"

Grimlock was standing very still. His visor was burning at maximum brightness—a blue-white star set in a face of ancient gold—and the expression beneath it was something that the other Dinobots had never seen on their leader's face before. Something that made Slug and Snarl and Swoop and Sludge exchange glances of confusion and concern, because Grimlock did not do this expression, Grimlock did intimidating and angry and hungry and occasionally bored, but he did NOT do—

"Me Grimlock..." He paused. The rumbling in his chest intensified. His hands clenched. His jaw worked. He was fighting something—fighting a word, a concept, an admission—with the same ferocity he applied to fighting Decepticons. "Me Grimlock will..."

The other Dinobots held their collective breath.

"...follow."

One word. One syllable. One tiny, earth-shattering, impossible syllable that meant more than a thousand speeches because it came from Grimlock—Grimlock—the Dinobot who followed NO ONE, who obeyed NO ONE, who had spent four million years butting heads with every Prime and commander and authority figure who had ever tried to tell him what to do.

Grimlock would follow.

"Me Grimlock follow this Prime," Grimlock continued, his voice gaining strength with each word as the decision solidified from something fragile and uncertain into something hard and permanent and real. "Me Grimlock follow Prime who fights. Who finishes. Who don't make speeches while enemies get back up. Who don't hold back. Who SUPLEXES." He paused. "...That was good suplex."

"Thank you, Grimlock."

"Where did you learn suplex?"

"...Wrestling. On human television."

Grimlock's visor flickered. For a moment—one brief, bizarre, beautiful moment—the Dinobot leader's face contorted into something that was unmistakably, undeniably a grin.

"Me Grimlock want to learn suplex."

"I will teach you."

"Me Grimlock want to suplex Megatron."

"...Let's start with the training dummies."

"Me Grimlock want to suplex Megatron INTO training dummies."

"One step at a time, Grimlock."

From the sideline, the other Autobots watched this exchange with expressions that ran the full spectrum of emotional response.

Bumblebee's doorwings were vibrating so fast they were blurring. Bwee bwoo bwee, he beeped to Arcee, which roughly translated to: "Grimlock said 'follow.' GRIMLOCK. Said FOLLOW. Did I glitch? Am I glitching? Someone check if I'm glitching."

Arcee was standing very still with her arms crossed and her optics unreadable. But the corner of her mouth—the tiny, almost imperceptible corner—was turned upward by approximately two millimeters, and for Arcee, that was the equivalent of dancing on a table.

Bulkhead was staring at the wall where Vehicon eighteen was still embedded in the rock face, thirty feet up, arms and legs splayed in a spread-eagle of mechanical defeat, and his mouth was moving silently as he tried to calculate the amount of force required to punt something that size that far and that high and kept arriving at numbers that made his processor hurt.

Cliffjumper was—

Actually, Cliffjumper was okay.

Not great. Not "I have fully processed the trauma of watching my leader crush a Vehicon's face and I am now emotionally balanced" okay. But better. Measurably, observably better. Because watching Optimus fight the holographic drones—watching him do it with efficiency rather than brutality, with precision rather than rage, with the controlled, purposeful violence of a warrior who knew exactly what he was doing and why—had shown Cliffjumper something that the face-crushing and the ground-bridge-dragging had not.

It had shown him that Optimus was not out of control.

The violence was not random. It was not mindless. It was not the product of a corrupted processor or a broken spark or a leader who had snapped under the weight of four million years of war. It was deliberate. It was calculated. Every punch, every swing, every shot was placed with intent, and the intent was always the same: end the threat, protect the team, go home.

That didn't make the sounds go away. The sounds—the crunching, the tearing, the wet snap of metal giving way under pressure that metal was never designed to endure—were still there, lurking in the corners of Cliffjumper's processor like uninvited guests who had moved in and were refusing to leave.

But the sounds were quieter now. Because understanding the why behind the violence made the violence itself less alien, less incomprehensible, and therefore less terrifying.

Optimus was not a monster.

Optimus was a weapon. A weapon that had chosen to aim itself at the things that threatened the people it loved. And if the weapon was louder and sharper and more devastating than anything Cliffjumper had expected—well, that was because the threats were real, and the stakes were high, and the time for half-measures had passed.

Cliffjumper watched Optimus Prime teach Grimlock how to suplex, and for the first time in weeks, the red warrior smiled.

It was a small smile. A careful smile. The smile of someone who was still healing, still processing, still putting himself back together one piece at a time.

But it was a smile.

Arcee saw it. She didn't comment. She didn't need to. She just stood a little closer, let her shoulder touch his, and watched their Prime demonstrate the finer points of professional wrestling to a Dinobot, and the moment was quiet and warm and human in all the ways that mattered.

And then, three days later, the Decepticons attacked Jasper.

Not a probe. Not a test. Not a reconnaissance-in-force or a probing action or any of the careful, tentative approaches that Megatron had been using since Optimus's transformation had rewritten the rules of engagement.

A full assault.

Forty Vehicons. Knockout. Breakdown. And Megatron himself, standing on the Nemesis's command deck, watching through the ship's sensors, directing the attack from orbit with the cold precision of a commander who had decided that if the game was over, then the only move left was to play a different game.

The target was not the Autobot base. It was not an energon deposit. It was not a military installation or a strategic chokepoint or any of the standard targets that four million years of warfare had established as legitimate.

The target was downtown Jasper.

Buildings. Streets. People.

The Vehicons descended from the Nemesis in drop pods—forty metal coffins screaming through the atmosphere, trailing fire and sonic booms, hitting the outskirts of Jasper like a hailstorm made of murder. They transformed on impact, their arm blasters charging, their targeting systems acquiring civilian structures, and they began firing.

Not at Autobots.

At buildings.

A gas station exploded. A strip mall crumbled. A parking lot full of cars became a parking lot full of fireballs. The sounds—the explosions, the screaming, the crumbling of concrete and the shattering of glass—rolled across the town like thunder, and the people of Jasper, Nevada—thirty thousand human beings who had been going about their Tuesday afternoon with the comfortable assumption that giant alien robots were not going to blow up their gas station—began to run.

The alarm hit the Autobot base like a physical blow.

Marcus-Optimus heard it. Processed it. And something inside him—something deeper than the Bayverse, deeper than the Matrix, deeper than any combat protocol or tactical subroutine—went cold.

Not angry. Not furious. Not the hot, burning rage that had driven him to tear Vehicons apart and drag Starscream's face off and climb a combiner.

Cold.

The kind of cold that came from absolute certainty. The kind of cold that froze everything else—fear, hesitation, mercy, doubt—and left nothing but purpose.

"All Autobots," he said, and his voice was ice. "Dinobots. Everyone. Jasper is under attack. Civilians are in danger. This is not a drill. This is not a skirmish. This is MEGATRON declaring war on HUMANS." He paused. One breath. Two. "He will regret it."

He turned to Grimlock.

"Grimlock."

"Prime."

"Transform."

Grimlock's visor burned. His mouth split into that impossible grin—all teeth, all predator, all hunger. "Me Grimlock thought you'd never ask."

The Dinobot leader transformed.

The process was not like normal transformation. It was not smooth or elegant or aerodynamic. It was primal—a tectonic rearrangement of matter and form that produced not a vehicle but a creature, a thing of ancient design and modern fury, a mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex that stood forty feet tall at the hip and sixty feet from nose to tail and weighed approximately two hundred tons and had teeth the size of surfboards.

Grimlock in beast mode was not a robot pretending to be a dinosaur.

Grimlock in beast mode was a force of nature wearing a dinosaur costume.

He lowered his head. His tail swept the ground. His optics—burning blue in the skull of a mechanical monster—fixed on Marcus-Optimus with the unwavering attention of a predator acknowledging its alpha.

Marcus-Optimus looked at Grimlock.

Grimlock looked at Marcus-Optimus.

Miko, who had appeared from approximately nowhere—because Miko always appeared from approximately nowhere at the exact moment when something incredible was about to happen, to the point where Marcus-Optimus was beginning to suspect she had developed a sixth sense for awesomeness—stared at the two of them with an expression that transcended joy, transcended excitement, transcended every positive emotion that the human brain was capable of producing, and entered a state of emotional experience that psychologists would later struggle to classify and would eventually simply label "Miko."

"He's going to ride the dinosaur," she whispered. "He's going to ride the dinosaur. He's going to ride the dinosaur."

Marcus-Optimus jumped.

He cleared fifteen feet in a single bound, landed on Grimlock's back—his feet finding purchase on the broad, armored spine with the natural ease of a rider who had been designed for this—and settled into a position that was half standing, half crouching, his left hand gripping one of Grimlock's spinal ridges for stability, his right hand reaching back and drawing the battle axe from his back.

The axe deployed. Twelve feet of gleaming metal and energon fire, humming in his hand like a tuning fork made of destiny.

He looked down at his team—Autobots and Dinobots alike, assembled and armed and ready, ready in a way they had never been before, ready because he had made them ready, had trained them and pushed them and broken them down and built them back up stronger—and he felt the Matrix pulse with a warmth so intense it was almost painful.

"Autobots," he said. "Dinobots."

He raised the axe.

"ROLL OUT."

Grimlock roared. The sound shook the base. Shook the mesa. Registered on seismographs in three states and caused a brief, confused alert at NORAD that was classified before anyone could ask questions. It was not a sound that belonged in this century, or this millennium, or this geological era—it was the sound of the ancient world, of things that had ruled the earth before humanity existed, of primal power and primal fury and the absolute, unstoppable force of a predator that had no natural enemies because it had eaten them all.

The ground bridge opened.

Marcus-Optimus rode Grimlock through it.

They emerged into hell.

Downtown Jasper was burning. Three buildings were fully engulfed. Two more were collapsed. The streets were full of debris and abandoned cars and running humans—tiny, fragile, screaming humans who were doing their best to flee a situation that their evolution had not prepared them for, because human evolution had optimized for things like "outrun the lion" and "avoid the cliff" and had never once considered the possibility of "forty alien robots are blowing up the Chevron station."

Marcus-Optimus took in the scene in 0.8 seconds. Catalogued the threats. Identified the civilians. Calculated the engagement zones.

The Vehicons were spread through the downtown area in a loose cordon—not trying to hold territory, but trying to cause maximum destruction. Maximum fear. They were shooting at buildings, at vehicles, at infrastructure. Not at people. Not yet. But the line between "shooting at buildings" and "shooting at people" was measured in inches and seconds, and Marcus-Optimus had no intention of letting a single inch or a single second pass without response.

"Dinobots! Clear the streets! Get the humans to safety!" He pointed with the axe—a sweeping gesture that covered the eastern half of downtown. "Slug, Snarl—take the east. Swoop—aerial cover. Sludge—" He looked at the massive Dinobot, who had transformed into beast mode and was currently a mechanical Brontosaurus occupying most of an intersection. "—stand in the middle of Main Street and don't let anything past you."

"Me Sludge can do that," Sludge said, with the calm confidence of a being who had been standing in the middle of things and not letting things past him for four million years and was, frankly, great at it.

"Autobots! Bulkhead, Bumblebee—west side. Arcee, Cliffjumper—north. Engage and eliminate. No prisoners. No mercy. These Decepticons attacked civilians." His voice dropped. The ice in it deepened. "They don't get to walk away from that."

The team split. Deployed. And Marcus-Optimus—still mounted on Grimlock's back, still holding the axe, still burning with a cold fury that made the air around him seem to shimmer—turned to face the largest concentration of Vehicons.

There were fifteen of them, clustered around the town's main intersection, methodically destroying everything within weapons range. They saw him. They saw Grimlock. They saw the thirty-foot Prime mounted on the back of a sixty-foot mechanical T-Rex, wielding a twelve-foot battle axe that was glowing with energon fire, framed against the smoke and flame of the burning town like a figure from a myth—a myth about the end of things.

Several Vehicons lowered their weapons. Not in surrender. In shock. In the kind of full-body systems failure that occurred when a combat drone's threat assessment exceeded its processing capacity and the only response left was blue screen of death.

"Grimlock," Marcus-Optimus said.

"Yeah, Prime?"

"Charge."

Grimlock charged.

Two hundred tons of mechanical dinosaur at full sprint, each footstep cratering the asphalt, each stride covering thirty feet, the ground shaking, the air splitting, the sound of his approach like the hoofbeats of the apocalypse if the apocalypse was a T-Rex and the hoofbeats were capable of flattening cars.

The Vehicons opened fire. Energon bolts peppered Grimlock's hide—pinging off his armor like rain off a tank, because Dinobot armor was the thickest, strongest, most ridiculously over-engineered protective plating in Cybertronian history, and shooting at Grimlock with standard arm blasters was approximately as effective as shooting at a mountain with a squirt gun.

Marcus-Optimus rode the charge. He crouched low on Grimlock's back, axe extended behind him, wind and fire and energon bolts streaming past him, and in that moment—that perfect, impossible, transcendent moment—he was exactly where the Marcus part of him had always dreamed of being.

He was Optimus Prime, riding a giant robot dinosaur into battle.

And it was everything.

Grimlock hit the Vehicon line like a bowling ball hitting a row of very, very unfortunate pins. His jaws—those massive, impossible jaws, lined with teeth that could bite through starship hulls—closed around the first Vehicon and snapped. The drone ceased to exist in a spray of metal and energon that painted Grimlock's muzzle in the colors of victory. His tail swept left and sent three more Vehicons flying—spinning, tumbling, disintegrating on impact with the buildings they hit. His feet crushed two more flat, the asphalt beneath them cracking under the combined weight of Dinobot and destroyed drone.

And Marcus-Optimus, standing on Grimlock's back, swung the axe.

He swung it with the full rotation of his torso, using Grimlock's forward momentum to add velocity, and the blade carved through the air with a sound like reality tearing and hit a Vehicon at chest height and did not stop. It passed through the first drone and into the second drone and into the third drone, the energon edge burning through armor and protoform and spark casing with the unstoppable momentum of a blade that had been designed for moments exactly like this, and three Vehicons fell in a single stroke, bisected, finished, done.

Ten seconds. Eight Vehicons down. Seven remaining.

Grimlock skidded to a halt—his claws carving four trenches in the asphalt that would later be turned into a tourist attraction by the Jasper Chamber of Commerce—and spun to face the survivors. Marcus-Optimus leaped from his back, axe in hand, and hit the ground running.

Two Vehicons tried to flank him. He caught the first one's arm—the blaster arm, the weapon arm, the only thing making it a threat—and twisted. The arm came off with a shriek of tearing metal, and Marcus-Optimus used it like a bat, swinging the severed arm into the second Vehicon's head with enough force to send the head spinning off into the smoke like a very unfortunate frisbee.

Three more formed a desperate firing line. Marcus-Optimus deployed the flamethrowers. Both forearms ignited—twin jets of blue-white plasma that turned the air between him and the firing line into a corridor of fire—and the three Vehicons were engulfed in flame so hot that their armor didn't melt, it sublimated, transitioning directly from solid to gas without passing through liquid, and the three drones simply vanished inside the inferno, leaving behind nothing but thermal shadows on the asphalt and a smell like burning reality.

The last two Vehicons looked at each other. Looked at Marcus-Optimus—standing in the middle of a burning street, axe in one hand, the other arm still wreathed in dissipating plasma fire, his optics burning behind his battle mask with a light that suggested he had plenty more where that came from. Looked at Grimlock—mechanical jaws dripping with Vehicon energon, tail swishing, a low rumble building in his chest that was either a growl or a laugh and either way was bad news.

The Vehicons dropped their weapons. Put their hands up. And one of them—one lone, terrified, fundamentally broken Vehicon drone whose entire worldview had been disassembled and reconstructed in the last thirty seconds—spoke:

"We... we surrender?"

The question mark was audible.

Marcus-Optimus looked at them. Behind his mask, the Bayverse screamed finish them. The Marcus part of him—the part that remembered being human, the part that valued mercy, the part that was aware that this moment was being watched by human civilians who were peering out from behind overturned cars and collapsed buildings—said no.

"Drop your weapons. Deactivate your combat systems. Kneel."

They dropped. They deactivated. They knelt.

Marcus-Optimus stood over them for a moment, axe resting on his shoulder, the burning town reflected in his optics, and made a decision that the Bayverse would not have made and that TFP Optimus would not have needed to make because TFP Optimus had never been in a situation where the choice between mercy and execution was this immediate.

He let them live.

Not because they deserved it. Not because mercy was always the right answer. But because the humans were watching, and the humans needed to see that Optimus Prime was not just destruction—that the same hands that wielded the axe could also stay the blade, that the same voice that promised annihilation could also offer grace.

"Run," he said. "Tell Megatron what you saw. Tell him what happens when he attacks my planet."

They ran.

The battle continued for another twenty minutes, but it was cleanup—the Autobots and Dinobots sweeping through the town sector by sector, engaging and eliminating the remaining Vehicons with an efficiency that was, for the first time, consistent. The training drills were paying off. Bulkhead confirmed his kills. Arcee finished her fights. Bumblebee's blaster was on setting eight (he'd compromised from seven, and Marcus-Optimus had let it slide because eight was still very, very dead). Even Cliffjumper was fighting—shaky, yes, still flinching at the sounds, but fighting, because his Prime needed him and that was enough.

The Dinobots were... the Dinobots. Slug gored three Vehicons on his horns and seemed disappointed when there weren't more. Snarl used his tail like a flail and took out a cluster of five drones in a single sweep. Swoop dive-bombed from altitude and carried a Vehicon into the upper atmosphere before dropping it, and the resulting crater would later be incorporated into the town's new park design. Sludge stood in the middle of Main Street and did not let anything past him, which was exactly what he had been told to do, and he did it with the serene satisfaction of a being who had found his purpose.

And through it all, Grimlock fought beside Optimus. Not behind him. Not ahead of him. Beside him. The T-Rex and the Prime, moving through the burning streets of Jasper like a paired weapons system—Grimlock clearing the way with jaws and tail and crushing feet, Optimus following up with axe and blade and fire, the two of them communicating through some unspoken channel that was part shared history and part newfound respect and part the simple, wordless understanding that existed between warriors who had found, at last, someone worth fighting with.

It was, by any reasonable standard, the most one-sided military engagement in the history of the Autobot-Decepticon war.

It was also, in a way that Marcus-Optimus would only appreciate later, the moment when everything changed.

The aftermath was quiet.

The fires were out. The Vehicons were gone—destroyed or fled or kneeling in surrender and being escorted away by Bulkhead, who had discovered that he was surprisingly good at "prisoner management" and who was, for the first time in weeks, doing something that made him feel useful that wasn't combat-related, and the relief on his face was palpable.

The humans emerged. Slowly, cautiously, blinking in the smoke-filtered sunlight like cave dwellers seeing the sky for the first time. They looked at the damage—the collapsed buildings, the cratered streets, the scorch marks and debris. They looked at the Autobots—battle-scarred, energon-splattered, standing amid the wreckage of the battle. They looked at the Dinobots—massive, terrifying, utterly alien—and they looked at Marcus-Optimus, standing in the center of it all with his axe at his side and his mask retracted and his optics carrying a light that was not fire but was close.

A child—small, maybe five years old, clutched in her mother's arms—looked up at him with eyes that were wide and wet and not quite afraid but not quite not afraid either.

Marcus-Optimus knelt.

The axe dissolved into his frame. The battle mask stayed retracted. He lowered himself until his face was approximately level with the child's—still ten feet up, still impossibly large, but the gesture mattered—and he spoke in a voice that had no ice in it, no edge, no Bayverse growl or tactical precision. Just warmth.

"You are safe," he said. "You are all safe. And you will always be safe. I promise."

The child looked at him. Then she waved. A small, uncertain wave, the kind that children gave to things they didn't understand but had decided, on some instinctive level, were not threats.

Marcus-Optimus waved back.

Behind him, Grimlock—sixty feet of mechanical T-Rex, the most fearsome thing on two legs, apex predator of a dead world—watched this exchange and felt something shift in his spark that he would never, ever admit to feeling, and which he would violently deny if anyone asked, and which was absolutely, unmistakably, tender.

"...Good Prime," Grimlock said, very quietly.

Nobody heard him.

Except Miko, who heard everything, and who added it to the fan page.

That evening, back at the base, three things happened simultaneously.

The first was that Miko made s'mores.

She had been planning this since Marcus-Optimus's ill-advised "I will look into it" comment from the previous week, and she had come prepared with a bag of marshmallows, a package of graham crackers, a stack of chocolate bars, and the unwavering conviction that using an alien plasma weapon system to toast dessert foods was not only acceptable but necessary.

Marcus-Optimus stood in the maintenance bay—which had been designated the "s'mores zone" by Miko and the "absolutely not" zone by Ratchet—and extended his left forearm. The flamethrower deployed. He dialed the output down to approximately one percent of its maximum capacity, which produced a gentle, flickering jet of blue-white flame that was technically still hot enough to cut through steel but which, at the distance Miko was holding her marshmallow (on a stick that Raf had measured and cut to precisely the right length using calculations that accounted for plasma temperature, thermal radiation falloff, and marshmallow caramelization thresholds), provided a perfect toasting heat.

The marshmallow turned golden brown.

"It works," Miko breathed. "It actually works."

"I cannot believe I'm doing this," Marcus-Optimus said.

"Best. Flamethrower. Ever."

"Please do not describe my weapons systems as 's'mores accessories.'"

"Too late. Fan page updated."

Jack and Raf sat on the observation platform, watching Miko toast marshmallows with an alien flamethrower, and processed this scene with the respective coping mechanisms they had developed over the past two weeks.

Jack's coping mechanism was "quiet incredulity." He sat with his arms crossed, his eyebrows at maximum elevation, and a expression that said "I am watching a teenager use a weapon of mass destruction to make a snack and nobody seems to think this is unusual." He had learned, in his time with the Autobots, that the appropriate response to insanity was not to fight it but to observe it, to bear witness to the absurdity and catalog it for the memoir he was increasingly certain he would one day need to write.

Raf's coping mechanism was "scientific fascination." He had his laptop open and was recording the thermal output data from the flamethrower's low-power mode, comparing it against standard combustion temperatures, and calculating the optimal marshmallow-to-flame distance for even caramelization. He had already produced a graph. The graph had labels. The labels were in both English and Cybertronian, because Raf had learned to read Cybertronian two days ago and was using every opportunity to practice.

"The plasma temperature at two percent output is approximately 650 degrees Celsius," Raf said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Which is actually within the optimal range for Maillard reaction in sugar-based confections. The blue-white spectrum suggests a hydrogen-enriched plasma, which would produce less particulate contamination than a hydrocarbon flame, meaning the marshmallow is actually cleaner than one toasted over a campfire."

"So you're saying the alien death ray makes healthier s'mores," Jack said.

"I'm saying it makes scientifically superior s'mores."

"...I don't know how to feel about that."

"Feel hungry. Miko's making extras."

Jack looked at Miko. Miko was assembling her third s'more with the focus and precision of a surgeon performing a critical operation. The chocolate was melting. The marshmallow was perfect. The graham cracker was—

"This is the best day of my life," Miko said, with total sincerity, and took a bite, and the sound she made was so expressive that it qualified as a review.

Marcus-Optimus watched her eat the s'more and felt the Marcus part of his soul ache with a longing so sharp it was almost physical. He missed eating. He missed coffee. He missed the simple, human pleasure of tasting something good and feeling it warm you from the inside.

But this—watching Miko enjoy a s'more that he had helped make, watching Raf calculate marshmallow physics, watching Jack slowly accepting that his life was insane and finding peace with it—this was close. This was enough.

And then the second thing happened, which was that Jack asked the question.

It started quietly. Miko and Raf had drifted to the main bay—Miko to show Grimlock her s'mores footage, Raf to compare notes with Bumblebee about the battle—and Jack found himself alone on the observation platform with Marcus-Optimus, who was performing his nightly weapons diagnostic (current count: twenty weapons systems, including the recently discovered retractable energon knuckle dusters in both fists that had appeared during the battle when Marcus-Optimus punched a Vehicon so hard his hand decided it needed more punching power) and humming a tune that Jack didn't recognize but which was, in fact, "Arrival to Earth" by Steve Jablonsky, because some habits transcended death and reincarnation.

"Optimus?" Jack said.

"Yes, Jack?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Marcus-Optimus paused his diagnostic. Looked at Jack. The teenager was sitting with his knees drawn up, his chin resting on his arms, his expression thoughtful in the way that Jack's expressions were always thoughtful—not showy, not dramatic, just genuine, the face of a person who took things seriously because the alternative was to not take things seriously and the world was too important for that.

"You may ask me anything, Jack."

"Why do you fight the way you do?"

The question was simple. The answer was not.

Marcus-Optimus was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Jack started to wonder if he had crossed a line, if the question was too personal, too invasive, too close to the core of whatever transformation had turned the calm, philosophical Autobot leader into a walking weapons platform with a combat style that made horror movies look like children's programming.

Then Marcus-Optimus sat down.

Not on a chair. Not on a bench. On the floor. He folded his thirty-foot frame into a seated position against the wall of the maintenance bay, his legs extended before him, his hands resting on his knees, and the posture was so human—so reminiscent of a tired person settling in for a difficult conversation—that Jack felt a jolt of recognition that he couldn't quite explain.

"Do you know how long this war has been going on, Jack?" Marcus-Optimus asked.

"Millions of years. That's what Arcee said."

"Four million years. Four million years of fighting the same enemy, having the same arguments, watching the same cycle repeat over and over and over again." He paused. His optics dimmed slightly—not in sadness, but in memory, as if he was looking at something very far away that only he could see. "In that time, I have lost... more friends than I can count. More soldiers. More people. Good people. Brave people. People who believed in what we were fighting for and gave their lives to defend it."

Jack was quiet. The kind of quiet that came from understanding that he was being told something important and that the best thing he could do was listen.

"And every single one of those deaths," Marcus-Optimus continued, his voice dropping lower, "every single one—I could have prevented. Not all of them. But many. More than I want to admit. Because I held back. Because I showed mercy to enemies who did not deserve it. Because I believed—genuinely, deeply, desperately believed—that if I just kept talking, just kept trying, just kept extending the hand of peace one more time, one more time, one more time—that eventually, the war would end. That Megatron would see reason. That the Decepticons would lay down their weapons. That words could accomplish what four million years of fighting could not."

He looked at Jack. And in his optics—those blue optics that were both ancient and impossibly new—there was a rawness that Jack had never seen before. A vulnerability that was more terrifying than any weapon because it was real.

"I was wrong, Jack."

The words hung in the air.

"Not about the ideals. Never about the ideals. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. Peace is worth fighting for. Mercy is a virtue. These things are true. They will always be true. And I will spend whatever remains of my existence defending them."

"But?"

"But ideals without action are just words. And words—beautiful, noble, inspiring words—have never once stopped Megatron from firing his cannon. They have never once brought back a soldier who died because I chose to give a speech instead of giving a fight. They have never once protected the people I love from the consequences of my restraint."

He paused. Flexed his hands. The energon knuckle dusters glinted faintly beneath his plating—the newest addition to an arsenal that kept growing because the universe, or the Matrix, or whatever cosmic force was responsible for his ridiculous existence, had apparently decided that the appropriate response to his resolve was to give him more weapons.

"I fight the way I do," Marcus-Optimus said, "because I have watched good people die for four million years, and I could have saved them. I fight the way I do because every moment I spend talking to a Decepticon is a moment that Decepticon could be using to hurt someone who can't fight back. I fight the way I do because this war needs to end, and it is never going to end through diplomacy, because Megatron does not want it to end. Megatron wants to win. And every time I show him mercy, every time I let him retreat, every time I pull my punch or sheathe my blade or lower my gun because I hope that he'll change—I am choosing my hope over my team's lives."

He looked at his hands again. Large, blue, capable of crushing a Vehicon's face into scrap.

"I cannot do that anymore. I will not do that anymore."

"Even if it changes you?" Jack asked. His voice was small but steady. "Even if... even if fighting like that makes you into something you don't want to be?"

Marcus-Optimus was quiet for a very long time.

The Marcus part of him—the part that had been a barista from Portland who owned a cat named Megatron and spent his weekends editing wiki articles about fictional characters—knew exactly what Jack was asking. He was asking: Are you becoming a monster? He was asking: Is the violence consuming you? He was asking: Where is the line between warrior and weapon, between protector and destroyer, between the Prime who defends and the Prime who simply... destroys?

"Yes," Marcus-Optimus said. "Even then."

Jack blinked. "What?"

"You asked if I'm willing to become something I don't want to be. The answer is yes. If becoming a monster is what it takes to protect you—you, Miko, Raf, my team, the humans of this planet, every living thing that cannot protect itself—then I will become a monster. Gladly. Without hesitation. Without regret."

He turned to face Jack fully, and the weight of what he was saying—the cost of what he was saying—was visible in every line of his frame, every micro-expression on his face, every flicker of the optics that had seen four million years of war and had decided, finally, irrevocably, to stop looking for alternatives.

"That is the sacrifice, Jack. Not my life. Not my body. Not my spark. Those are easy to give. Those are simple sacrifices. The real sacrifice—the sacrifice that costs something—is my goodness. My restraint. My hope. The parts of me that make me more than a weapon. I give those up willingly, knowingly, deliberately, because the alternative is to keep them and lose you. And that..." His voice broke. Just for a moment. Just a fracture, a hairline crack in the facade of the warrior-Prime, showing the person underneath—the exhausted, grieving, determined person who had made an impossible choice and was living with the consequences. "That is a price I cannot pay."

Jack stared at him.

Then Jack did something that Marcus-Optimus did not expect.

He climbed down from the observation platform. Walked across the maintenance bay. Stood at Marcus-Optimus's foot—tiny, insignificant, human, fragile—and looked up at him with eyes that were wet but steady.

And he said: "You're not a monster, Optimus."

"Jack—"

"You're NOT. A monster wouldn't make s'mores with Miko. A monster wouldn't teach Raf Cybertronian. A monster wouldn't kneel down to wave at a little girl after a battle. A monster wouldn't sit on the floor and explain himself to a sixteen-year-old kid because the kid asked."

He wiped his eyes. Not crying. Not quite. But close enough.

"You fight like you do because you care. You fight that hard because you care that much. And yeah, it's scary. Yeah, it's violent. Yeah, sometimes I look at you and I don't recognize the Optimus Prime that Arcee first told me about—the one who gave speeches and believed in the best version of everyone."

He paused. Swallowed. And finished:

"But I think I like this version better. Because this version doesn't just believe in protecting people. This version does it. No matter what it costs."

Marcus-Optimus looked at Jack. Jack looked back. And between them—between a thirty-foot alien war machine and a sixteen-year-old human kid in a parking lot employee's t-shirt—something passed that was not words and was not logic and was not any of the things that either of them would have been comfortable naming.

It was understanding.

The Matrix pulsed. Not with warmth or approval or any of the sensations that Marcus-Optimus had come to associate with its presence. It pulsed with something new—something that felt like validation, like confirmation, like a very old, very wise intelligence saying yes, THIS is why I chose you.

"Thank you, Jack," Marcus-Optimus said.

"Don't mention it." Jack paused. "Seriously, don't. If Miko finds out I had a 'moment' with Optimus Prime, I'll never hear the end of it."

"Your secret is safe with me."

"Cool." Jack sniffed. Straightened his shirt. Reassembled his composure with the speed and efficiency of a teenager who had not signed up for emotional vulnerability and was eager to return to his default state of guarded nonchalance. "So, uh... can I have a s'more?"

"Miko has the marshmallows."

"Right. I'll, uh... I'll go find her." He turned. Walked toward the door. Paused. Turned back. "Optimus?"

"Yes?"

"The knuckle dusters are cool."

"...Thank you, Jack."

"Still not as cool as the flamethrowers, though."

"I will inform Miko of your ranking."

"Please don't."

"It would make an excellent addition to the fan page."

"You KNOW about the fan page?!"

"I know about both fan pages, Jack. Including the one about my optic twitching."

"That one has two hundred followers now."

"...I am choosing not to process that information."

Jack left. Marcus-Optimus sat on the floor of the maintenance bay, alone, surrounded by the quiet hum of alien technology and the distant sounds of his family—human and Cybertronian—being alive and safe and together.

He looked at his hands. The hands of a monster. The hands of a protector. The hands of a being who had made a choice that could not be unmade and was determined to live with the consequences.

The knuckle dusters glinted faintly in the ambient light.

He closed his fists.

Opened them.

Closed them again.

And sat in the quiet, and let the cost of what he was doing settle over him like snow—cold, and heavy, and necessary, and his.

And the third thing that happened was this:

Grimlock found Marcus-Optimus in the maintenance bay an hour later. The Dinobot leader ducked through the doorway—scraping the frame, because the base was not designed for Dinobots and never would be—and stood in front of the seated Prime with his arms crossed and his visor burning.

"Good fight today, Prime."

"Thank you, Grimlock."

"Me Grimlock have question."

"Ask."

Grimlock's visor dimmed slightly. Not with anger. With something softer—something that the warrior was allowing himself to feel only because they were alone and the room was dark and nobody could see him being anything other than the invincible, inexhaustible engine of destruction that his reputation demanded.

"The human. Small one. With the loud voice."

"Miko."

"Miko." He said the name carefully, as if testing its weight on his vocalizer. "She... sits on your shoulder."

"She does."

"In battle."

"Not in battle. She stays in the safe zone during—"

"She would not stay in safe zone if safe zone was boring."

"...How do you know that?"

"Me Grimlock hear her say it. She say it very loud. She say most things very loud." A pause. "Me Grimlock like loud."

Marcus-Optimus looked at Grimlock. Something in the Dinobot's posture—something in the way he was standing, the way his hands were unclenched, the way his visor was gentle—told Marcus-Optimus that this conversation was not about Miko.

Not entirely.

"Grimlock," Marcus-Optimus said. "Would you like a s'more?"

Grimlock's visor flickered. "What is s'more?"

"Come with me. I'll show you."

Twenty minutes later, Grimlock was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the maintenance bay—an image so incongruous that Ratchet walked past the doorway, saw it, and kept walking without a word because he had reached his limit—holding a marshmallow on a stick while Marcus-Optimus used his flamethrower at 1.5% power to toast it.

Miko appeared. Because Miko always appeared.

She took one look at Grimlock holding a marshmallow, and her phone was out before the next heartbeat.

"Oh my GOD."

"Do not—" Marcus-Optimus started.

"BULKHEAD! GRIMLOCK IS MAKING S'MORES!"

"DON'T TELL—" Grimlock began, but it was too late.

Bulkhead appeared in the doorway. Saw Grimlock. Saw the marshmallow. Saw Marcus-Optimus's flamethrower.

His wrecking ball drooped.

"I can't even make s'mores," he said, to nobody.

"BULKHEAD!" Miko whirled on him. "Get over here! You can hold the chocolate!"

Bulkhead blinked. "...I can?"

"YES! Get over here! S'mores are a TEAM activity!"

Bulkhead's optics brightened. His wrecking ball retracted. He crossed the room in three quick strides and sat down next to Grimlock—which was like a house sitting down next to a slightly larger house—and Miko handed him a chocolate bar and he held it with the delicate care of a mech holding a holy relic.

"I'm helping," he whispered. "I'm part of it."

"You're part of it, Bulk."

"She said I'm part of it," Bulkhead said to Grimlock.

"Me Grimlock hear," Grimlock said, focusing on his marshmallow with the intensity of a warrior facing a critical tactical challenge. "Me Grimlock also part of it."

"We're ALL part of it!" Miko declared, throwing her arms wide. "S'mores for EVERYONE! AUTOBOTS! DINOBOTS! WHOEVER ELSE IS IN THIS BASE! GET IN HERE!"

And they came.

One by one. Two by two. Arcee and Cliffjumper, shoulder to shoulder. Bumblebee with Raf on his shoulder, the small boy already calculating optimal chocolate-to-marshmallow ratios. Slug and Snarl, squeezing through the doorway and taking up most of the remaining floor space. Swoop, dropping from the ceiling and landing with a grace that belied his size. Sludge, who had to sit in the doorway because he didn't fit inside but who was there, and that was what mattered.

Even Ratchet came. He stood in the back, arms crossed, face set in an expression of professional disapproval that was completely undermined by the fact that he was holding a graham cracker and didn't seem to know how it had gotten there.

Marcus-Optimus sat in the middle of them all, his flamethrower on low, toasting marshmallows for a family that was cobbled together from broken soldiers and loud teenagers and a cat-sized portion of hope, and he felt the Matrix hum with something that was beyond warmth, beyond approval.

It was joy.

The joy of a being who had spent four million years fighting and had finally, finally, found something worth fighting for that didn't involve axes or explosions or face removal.

Something worth living for.

S'mores.

And family.

And the small, fragile, precious moments between battles when the weapons were cold and the company was warm and the universe, despite its best efforts, had not managed to take away the things that mattered.

Not yet.

Not ever.

Not while he had anything to say about it.

Which, given the number of weapons currently residing in his frame, was quite a lot.

Aboard the Nemesis...

Megatron watched the footage from the battle of Jasper. He watched it on loop. He watched it forwards. He watched it backwards. He watched it frame by frame, millisecond by millisecond, cataloguing every movement, every weapon, every impossibility.

He watched Optimus Prime ride Grimlock into battle.

He watched Optimus Prime swing a battle axe through three Vehicons in a single stroke.

He watched Optimus Prime deploy flamethrowers and vaporize a firing line.

He watched Optimus Prime punch a Vehicon so hard that new weapons manifested in his fists.

He watched all of it. Again and again. And each viewing made the ice in his spark grow colder and the fear in his processor grow louder and the question in his mind grow more urgent:

How do I fight THAT?

"Soundwave."

Soundwave turned.

"The Dinobots. They're with him now."

Soundwave confirmed.

"Grimlock is with him."

Confirmed.

"Grimlock—who has never followed anyone, who has never respected anyone, who has spent four million years being the most uncontrollable asset in the Autobot army—is following Optimus Prime."

Confirmed.

Megatron stared at the footage. At the image of Optimus mounted on Grimlock's back, axe raised, battle mask deployed, riding a mechanical dinosaur into battle like a warrior-king from a myth that Cybertron had never written but should have.

"I need a bigger army," Megatron said.

Soundwave displayed the current force roster. It was not encouraging. Between the Vehicon losses, the Constructicon defection (they had sent a resignation letter, which Soundwave had filed under "unprecedented"), and Starscream's ongoing facial crisis, the Decepticon forces on Earth were at their lowest point in history.

"I need a MUCH bigger army."

Soundwave displayed the recruitment figures. They were worse.

"I need—" Megatron stopped. Pressed his hands to his face. Sat in silence for a long moment.

Then: "Is Starscream still screaming about his face?"

Soundwave played a brief audio clip. It was, in fact, screaming. About the face.

"Tell him to stop screaming about his face and start planning a counteroffensive."

Soundwave relayed the message. From the medical bay, the screaming briefly intensified, then was replaced by a string of Cybertronian profanity so creative that Soundwave's linguistics database flagged seven new compound words for inclusion.

Megatron slumped in his throne.

He was tired.

Not physically—Cybertronian frames did not experience fatigue the way organic beings did, although the Dark Energon in his system had been making his recharge cycles... unpleasant. But existentially. He was existentially tired. Tired of the war. Tired of the cycle. Tired of facing an enemy who had somehow, impossibly, evolved beyond the rules of the game that Megatron had spent four million years mastering.

He was playing chess. Optimus was playing demolition derby.

You couldn't win chess against someone who kept eating the board.

"Soundwave," Megatron said, one last time.

Soundwave turned. Patient. Silent. The only being aboard the Nemesis who did not fear Megatron, because Soundwave did not fear anything, because Soundwave had replaced the section of his processor that handled "fear" with additional processing power for surveillance data, which was the most Soundwave decision that Soundwave had ever made.

"How many nightmare recordings do you have now?"

Soundwave checked.

"MEGATRON_NIGHTMARE_FILE_041.wav."

Forty-one.

Megatron closed his optics.

"Delete them."

Soundwave did not delete them. Soundwave filed them. Soundwave filed everything.

The ship hummed. The Dark Energon pulsed. The war continued.

And somewhere below, on the surface of a planet that was more than it seemed, a Prime sat among his family and toasted marshmallows with a weapon of war and dared the universe to take this moment from him.

The universe, wisely, did not try.

END OF CHAPTER 4

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

HE RODE THE DINOSAUR.

HE. RODE. THE DINOSAUR.

I have been WAITING to write this scene since I started this fic and it was EVERYTHING I wanted it to be. Optimus Prime. On Grimlock's back. With the battle axe. Charging into a line of Vehicons. If you did not get chills reading that scene, you do not have a pulse. Go check. I'll wait.

The s'mores scene was not planned. I did not sit down to write this chapter thinking "and then they'll all make s'mores with the flamethrower." It just HAPPENED. It wrote itself. The flamethrower demanded to be used for culinary purposes and I am but a humble servant of the narrative. Also, Raf calculating optimal marshmallow-to-flame distance is the most Raf thing that has ever been written and I stand by it.

Jack's conversation with Optimus was the hardest scene in this fic so far. Because it's the scene where the crackfic stops being a crackfic for five minutes and becomes something REAL. Because underneath all the weapons and the face-ripping and the combiner-climbing and Miko's fan pages, there is a PERSON inside that frame—a person who has made an impossible choice and is living with the weight of it every single day. A person who has decided to become a monster so that others don't have to. A person who KNOWS what it's costing him and pays the price anyway because the alternative is worse.

That's Bayverse Optimus. That's the REAL Bayverse Optimus, underneath the explosions and the one-liners and the face collection. He's a guy who has been fighting for so long that he's forgotten how to do anything else, and the tragedy is not that he fights—the tragedy is that he fights KNOWING that every fight takes something from him that he'll never get back, and he fights ANYWAY, because the people he's protecting are worth more than whatever he's losing.

And then he makes s'mores. Because even monsters need marshmallows.

STARSCREAM FACE UPDATE: It's bad. It's REALLY bad. Knockout did his best and his best was "technically a face." Starscream has been screaming about it for three days. He has invented seven new Cybertronian swear words. Soundwave catalogued them all. The Vehicon union has requested that Starscream be given "a nice hat or something" to cover the face because "it's affecting morale, which is already at 'would rather fight Unicron' levels and honestly at this point we might PREFER Unicron."

GRIMLOCK UPDATE: He said "good Prime" and I'm not emotionally okay about it. He also learned what s'mores are and he's never going back. Slug tried one and set a wall on fire. Snarl ate three without toasting them. Swoop dropped one from the ceiling and it landed on Ratchet. Sludge held his very carefully and took forty-five minutes to eat it and said "me Sludge like soft food" and I'm ALSO not emotionally okay about that.

BULKHEAD UPDATE: HE'S PART OF IT. HE HELD THE CHOCOLATE. MIKO SAID HE WAS PART OF IT. Recovery status: SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT. Wrecking ball status: Temporarily forgotten in favor of chocolate-holding duties. Emotional state: "I'm helping. I'm PART of it." We're so proud of him.

WEAPONS COUNT: 21. The knuckle dusters appeared DURING COMBAT. The Matrix is no longer waiting for downtime to manifest new weapons. It is now generating weapons in REAL TIME based on COMBAT NEEDS. This is either the most incredible tactical adaptation in Cybertronian history or the most terrifying escalation of an already terrifying situation and honestly it might be both.

Ratchet's spreadsheet now has 21 entries. The most recent entry says "KNUCKLE DUSTERS (appeared mid-punch, I am going to have a spark attack)." The entry before that says "RETRACTABLE ENERGON BRASS KNUCKLES ARE NOT A STANDARD FEATURE OF ANY KNOWN CYBERTRONIAN FRAME AND I WANT TO SPEAK TO WHATEVER COSMIC ENTITY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS."

He cannot speak to the cosmic entity.

The cosmic entity is too busy giving Optimus more weapons.

Next chapter: Unicron. The big one. The one that's been building since chapter one. Optimus finds out what's under his feet.

It goes... poorly.

For everyone.

Especially Unicron.

AuthorDude