Chapter Text
3.0: Ancient History
Cybertron
A very long time ago
Quite without meaning to, he slipped into memory and in his memories, he ran for his life.
Tarn burned around him, ripped apart by a dozen conflicting insurrections. It was not so much a civil war as a free-for-all, warlords and their gangs struggling for control of the streets without any real plan for what to do next. Anyone with the wrong brand was a target. Anyone without a brand was a target. In fact, the only way not to be a target for someone was to hide under a rock.
And pray that no one came along to turn it over.
Vaulting the remains of a heavy construction mech, he made a dash for the cover of a nearby workshop, micro-shells raining down around him. Twisting as he reached the doorway, flinging up his arm and barely bothering to aim, he fired back. The cannon he had fitted in place of his left hand spat plasma bolts, burning shards that sliced angrily into his pursuers. The lead thug, a massive quad with blue optics and an enormous mortar fitted to its back, reared up and shrieked in pain, claws swiping great chunks out of the make-shift barricades scattered across the street.
Turning his back on it, he plunged into the darkness of the building, picking out a path through the detritus littering the interior. The place must have been used for fitting out aircraft at some point. Hulking engine cowls and the rusting remains of turbines loomed under the arching roof, turning the building into a twisting maze. Behind him, he could hear the rising growl of engines – smaller mechs or femes, he guessed, transforming to race after him in the tight space.
Their eagerness worked in his favour. Caught up in the headlong rush to escape, he did not see the collision, but he certainly felt the heat of the explosion and the rush of air that washed over him, driving him onwards. Someone – probably the giant quad – bellowed obscenities over the din. The engines rose in pitch, the remaining pursuers speeding up in response to the curses being hurled at them. He fled onwards.
Blind luck brought him to a gap in the workshop's far wall, one that opened out on to what was left of one of the orbital express-ways. He scrambled through and stumbled a little way out across the broken expanse of roadway. Looking back, he saw a blaze of lights rushing out of the gloom, making straight for him.
Fighting down a wave of panic, he flipped into tank mode, spun, lifted his gun barrel to point at the wall above the hole, and fired. The single shot – which swallowed a worryingly large chunk of his remaining fuel – detonated against the metal and blew it to fragments. For a horrible, lingering micro-cycle, the wall only sagged, stubbornly resisting the tug of gravity. Then, with an almighty groan, the panels gave way and cascaded down, completely covering the gap.
The muffled screams and reverberations told him that not all his pursuers had managed to stop in time.
Not willing to risk waiting to see if any of them managed to get through, or found a way around, he spun back and drove north along the express-way, as fast as he dared. It was rough going, avoiding the potholes and bomb craters that consumed most of the road surface. He managed to make it to a junction that had not been torn apart, though, and swung down into the underpass, transforming to find a better grip on the uneven surfaces.
He was met by the sharp click of an expanding weapons system. Automatically, he brought his gun arm to bear on the source of the noise and came face-to-face with a grubby yellow feme, her armour cracked and dented. Her optics widened behind the maser rifle, then she visibly relaxed and lowered the gun. “Thank Primus it's you.”
“You were waiting for me?”
“I thought you'd probably come this way. You or one of the others.” She looked past him, searching for something that was not there. “Do you know what happened to them after we ran into those Destrons?”
“No. I think Toraizer got away but the others...” He shrugged helplessly.
“Frag. You think they made it?”
Not wanting to answer, he turned to look down into the heart of the city. Smoke was rising thickly from between the gutted towers, punctuated by irregular bursts of light and flame. There was no way of telling who was attacking whom and, really, it hardly mattered. The crossfire was all the same to those caught in the middle of it.
“We need to get under cover,” he said quietly, “It looks like it's moving this way –” The scream of jet engines cut him off. Five silvery darts hurtled overhead in close formation, banking to avoid a stream of flak that promptly erupted out of the approaching battlefront. His companion stared in shock at the vapour trails, and she started violently as more jets rocketed across the sky, groups of three arrayed in spread-out triangles.
“What in the name of – who the frag has the fuel for that many flyers?!”
“Stormhammer going by the colours on the leaders but...” He frowned. “But those are Vosian models.”
“Vosans? Why would the Vosians be helping Stormhammer?”
The flyers were disgorging bombs now, points of glittering metal that tore up the ground in brilliant bursts of colour. “No idea, but I really wouldn't want to be Ruination at the mo –” Another wave flashed by, their bay doors gaping. “Get down!”
He shoved her away, trying to throw her back deeper into the meagre cover offered by the underpass. The ground shook, rocked, shattered beneath him. Pure noise flooded his hearing, the concussion from the explosion tossing him helplessly into the air. As the world shattered around him, he heard the yellow feme crying out, shouting his name.
“Xaaron!”
“XAARON!”
“Xaaron?”
The communications unit drew him out of his reverie, the collapsing towers of the old Tarn blurring back into the familiar golden glow of his office. Traachon's face was peering at him from the communication unit. He acknowledged and accepted the incoming call, noting with alarm how flustered the Iaconian Emirate was looking. “What is it? What's happened?”
“I think you should join me in the Decagon,” Traachon said slowly, “Xaaron...it's started.”