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pluralsword · 7 months

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Very Late Transformers: 2023 Rare Pairing Fest Post: The Fall of Mars (was less late on Ao3 lmao)

Hey so our life has kind of had a lot going on, so we weren't able to put this story out on the right day (got it out on the 22nd, the theme trust and failure was earlier so this fitting lol) and we weren't able to get it on tumblr along with a lot of other content that hasn't made it to tumblr, but here's the summary of this story that is near and dear to us:

Rating: PG-13 Written for the theme of Day 3 of the 2023 Transformers Rare Pairing Fest, the theme being Trust and Failure, which we were fittingly late for due to having to take care of family. In this story, the Great War rages on in the Solar System: Mars has fallen, and among remaining Autobots are three special forces Wreckers deployed there; reluctant warrior Arcee, die hard soldier Impactor, and hopeful strategist Aileron. They are holding the line against the Decepticons until civilians can be evacuated by the Earth Defense Command, but things take a turn for the worse when a Decepticon battlecruiser starts to fall out of the sky near the spaceport, and a bearer if Unicron's Matrix of Conquest enters the field... the three don't give up on hope, on love, and must make some difficult decisions in their last stand, including whether to bear the Matrix of Leadership... as always, the transformation of the present is the key to the future. Thank you to dear @maximus-dork (Take_it_to_the_Max on Ao3) for looking this over and greenlighting it!

Please note Unicron is a gaslighting jerk on trans stuff for a bit but this is not at all in the same way as how we write Functionists in other fics etc. they is entirely is doing it for the gaslight intentionally and not because they believe it. Also this is a Wrecker Love Wrecker (wlw, pun intended) story so yeah there is a casualty rate.

One other thing. This story was inspired by @quetzalpapalotl shipping Impactor and Arcee, this is our own spin on the concept with she/her Impactor, while also dating Aileron and Roddy (who's a trans gal)

And now, the story, which you can also check out on Ao3:

Ishtar Port, Nemesis Polity, surrounded by the Valles Marineris canyons, Mars. 2258 CE.

“At least I get to go out in your arms,” purple and yellow bulky slope chested Impactor tried to smile, but her jaw was too loose, bleeding inside and out, and she reached up with a quivering hand to touch Arcee’s own battle scarred helm’s left cheek guard, broken, missing the lower half, while she tended to the gash across Impactor’s waist with a metal seal painted with yellow and black stripes.

“Shh, save your strength, you flirt, you’ll need it for the next attack, you’ll live, if I don’t see to it, Aileron will, and to saving my aft too,” robust back stacked deep pink cyan white and gray Arcee leaned into Impactor’s touch as she finished sealing the wound by pressing firmly by hand.

Her work was done under the dying flickers of biolights of the dozens of felled Deceptivons nearby, blazing light of spreading fires, passing artillery and blaster fire screaming overhead, and shadows of steely colorful halls and towers falling and collapsing from barrages throughout the broken hab dome. Booms shook through the atmosphere down from the pinkish-red sky every time a lone massive golden half circle bowed long Autobot dreadnought overhead exchanged volleys with three pointy purple Decepticon battlecruisers.

While Arcee helped lift Impactor to her feet, the two’s Conjunx was busy watching the front and on a comms line from behind a mangled white with blue trim Earth Defense Command cybersteel barricade.

=“Windblade, we’re the last non-militia combat unit operational that we know of. The fight is finished here. I… I watched Optimus fall with my own optics,”= rounded stout and Aileron winced, her wings flapped nervously while she held her ironsighted double barreled pistol and fiery orange thermal saber ahead of her, the transformer and human body part strewn street before her vivid with the image of seeing blocky tall red and blue Optimus fire cyan light from the golden orb Matrix of Leadership with handles in their hands. The Matrix beam fired from there that promptly melted Nova Prime through his spark chamber before Optimus was struck down from a headshot from behind by burly blue and gold armored Zeta, before Aileron and her team could respond. =“The Wreckers here are finished. The rest gave their lives bringing down the traitorous Elite Guard along with Decepticon Mayhem forces. How long until reinforcements?”=

Windblade’s voice from her busy command center’s battle room within the Titan Metroplex on Earth in the Pacific crackled through Decepticon ship jamming, relayed by the Autobot dreadnought and aided by Windblade’s battle meditative cityspeaking in tandem with Metroplex, while the two attempted to manage command of the Sol System’s defenses with hundreds of staff and commanders to attend to: = “Thank you, Aileron, and your loves. Admiral Faireborn has broken through the high orbit and lunar sieges. Extraction: 2 hours from now. Do you have the Matrix?”=

Aileron gripped her sword hilt tightly, and looked behind her to see her loves moving to cover her, Arcee with her long side mlunted scope sniper rifle aimed ahead in her arms sweeping around, Impactor with a blue-green ununtrium cutlass ready alongside her harpoon and shoulder cannon.

Aileron looked at Arcee for a little longer than tactically advisable, thinking about the relic in one of her back stacks above a wheel, that Aileron had wished Arcee would put over her spark. =“Optimus gave the Matrix to Arcee. She refuses to bear it. She’s scared. You know how it is. She doesn’t want to have even more mythos around her and be made into a keeper of the status quo, instead of working to transform the world for the better more freely. She’s scared of- being the excuse for a new hierarchy.”=

Windblade-Metroplex minds churned with empathy and memory of the work for collective history for autonomy and transformation they and Arcee had been part of for hundreds and thousands of years, and amped up their neutrino channeling broadcast to Aileron, ready to reach out to her lancemates. =“Aileron, let her know we wish to speak to her. If our intel reports are right, there is a Matrix of Conquest bearer among the enemy.”=

A younger Aileron would have trembled in fear. Instead, she nodded, acknowledging her elected leader, home, and immense fear all at once. =“I’ll tell her.”= She looked over at Arcee, who had advanced up to her right shoulder, Impactor on her left. “Darling, Windblade and Metroplex want to speak with you. It’s about the Matrix… there’s a Conquest bearer on the field. I know that’s a touchy subject for you…”

Arcee stiffened, her memories rushed back to that fateful hour she and her purple brawny tank brother Galvatron and the old Knight Vanguard had bought time for Solus Prime and the delegates she defended of Cybertron’s early democracy to escape the mutated Terrorcon army and armada with towering gray densely armored Megatronus at the head of the assault. Megatronus, willing bearer of the violet blade spiraled Matrix of Conquest, who after the twins’ bloody fight defeating him and his vanguard, the dying Megatronus shoved the Matrix into Galvatron, leaving Arcee to kill her own Unicron corrupted sibling. To wander the planet after the war for a millennia, consumed by grief until she had the will to care to be around other people again.

The memories boiled in her into a wordless rage that she did her best to hold in, not wanting to alert enemies to their position. “I thought Unicron was dead long before I met either of you. Tell me. Where. I will. End it and them.”

“Dear, we have to defend the remaining civilians so they can leave,” Aileron’s face softened as she leaned on Arcee’s arm. “I think this is about a defensive measure.”

“I-,” Arcee blinked. “You are right. Tell Windblade she can reach out.”

=“All clear, Windplex,= Aileron turned her gaze skyward. The Autobot dreadnought’s hull was overheated and torn up by enemy plasma and railgun fire, while one of the Decepticon battlecruisers with thrusters aflame and hull broken towards the rear started to plummet from the sky down towards the outer perimeter of the habdome. Her yellow optics widened with alarm and rapid trajectory calculations, immediately thinking of the massive explosion that would occur when the warship crashed. =“All Autobot units and civilians, abandon the shuttle ports and get to the blast bunkers! A Decepticon battlecruiser is going to hit outside the city in ten minutes! DECEPTICON VESSEL, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GODS HIT ALL THE BREAKS YOU CAN TO SLOW YOUR FALL! YOU’LL DIE IN THE EXPLOSION OTHERWISE!!”=

The battlecruiser did not reply, but the other three ships stopped fighting and moved in after the falling vessel, attempting to fire grapple tows to pull the ship up or slow it down to no avail.

Aileron turned and ran towards the nearest bunker entrance, down the street behind the barricade, next to the hexagonal port hall layered in dying red vines slowly suffocating from the loss of an oxygen rich atmosphere when the habdome was blown out. She leapt into her spaceplane mode, shoulders and forearms forming her engine thrusters, and rocketed off towards the hall, checking for ambushes in the surrounding buildings while her partners caught up. =“Um- Windblade, Arcee is willing to speak with you.”=

Impactor in her blocky artillery tank mode tailed behind armored muscle car Arcee, and while Impactor would have liked to take the time to admire Arcee and Aileron in action, she knew it was not the time. Instead, she swiveled her turret around to guard the rear of their retreat, raising her flat and wide cannon up towards the sky.

No one came. Impactor’s unease at the lack of fighting in the warzone clenched her fuel tank tight, as her spark roiled for vengeance. For Topspin, for Xaaron, for Spindle, for Thunderclash, for Cyclonus, for all of them… damn you Decepticons.

=“Thank you love,”= Arcee reached the thickset metal bunker blast gate built into the side of the port hall and stepped out of her car mode while Aileron finished her sweep of the skies, equally perplexed as Impactor to see the enemy had not fled in the direction of the militia and conventional military units they had fought for the nearest bunker.

Arcee was not surprised. She had expected this as soon as the Matrix of Conquest was mentioned. =“I expect they want to pull back and wait for the inevitable attack by their Matrix bearer rather than… overextend. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bearer was directing the battlecruiser to crash, Unicron not caring about the allied death toll.”= She inputted the keypad code to to get inside and waited for the bunker gates to part while Aileron landed on her feet and Impactor folded herself up to a stand, both with guns raised, while Arcee gripped a two handed guarded hilt of silver and electric blue, and sighed. =“Windplex, can you hear me?”=

Windblade and Metroplex were quickly redirecting any spareable ship from the fights around the Solar System to aid in recovery efforts at Nemesis and the surrounding Martian area, and their sparks sang to hear Arcee finally make contact for a moment long awaited. =“We hear you, Arcee of Protohex, beloved friend. We will do everything in our power to continue to prevent and reduce mythologizing of you. And you know that power entrusted by the people is vast. Please. Take up the conduit. Do as I will, one day.”=

=“All right, once we are safe, thank you both.”= Arcee smiled as she felt the golden neural soft warmth of the vastness of Metroplex and Windblade’s joined minds across the solar system touch her, to share adoration for her, to say do what you must, a kiss of encouragement to her spark that overlocked Arcee’s self repair and fuel circulation systems. She started to make her way inside, following Impactor and Aileron, and then pressed the red button within to shut the gates while Aileron called an elevator up in the white-blue Sentinel sized shaft.

The whirr of an elevator on that scale rose up before the lift itself arrived. When the doors whished open the three hurried inside, and sat down together, holding each other.

Finally away from the fighting, Aileron started to tear up first.

“I can’t believe it… we lost our whole company we deployed with… and Optimus…” Aileron held on tightly to Arcee’s and Impactor’s rounded and square backs. “I just- I knew we never should have kept Zeta on, but Optimus wouldn’t listen… All I know is that between now and when Marissa’s fleet gets here in less than two hours, we might well join them to save lives. If either of you or both of you die I’ll- probably die inside.” She started to quake, sobbing, missing the trees, leafed and solar paneled, and mountains and song filled forges of her home at Caminus’s capital Dialgem. “I never thought when the Autobot Revolution got kicked off of Cybertron, that it would come down to this… to not even die where our bodies could be recycled on Earth or Caminus…”

Impactor held back from expressing the bloodlust that suffused her, enraged to see Aileron so pained. She knew it would scare Aileron and Arcee, that it scared her too. “I-,” she pressed her lips together tightly as she ran a hand over Aileron’s wing, finding that part of her holding still from her gentle caresses. “We’re not going to die, Aileron. We know you won’t let us, that we won’t let each other. That company of rascals died for us because they wouldn’t have it any other way, when they had a choice in the matter. I’ll never forget when Firedrive told me that the loss of us would break all their sparks and hearts and then she-” Impactor shut her optics, trying to shake the image of the black and red exosuit entwined Nebulan cyborg who had binary bonded to the late Rodimus Prime take down Thunderwing with final forearm blasts after Thunderwing had torn her in half at the waist. “For her to say that- with how much we all miss Roddy… my spark has been off ever since, and I want to live up to what she wanted for us.”

The elevator stopped at the bottom, and the three quickly ran towards the inner doors, which opened for them, revealing a brightly painted interior walls that had been decorated with art by children, protoforms, and adults alike, showing scenes of people dancing, reading, sparring, embracing, sculpting, healing wounds, cultivating plants, flying through skies and the starry void.

Among them were thousands of bots, green toned Nebulans in spacesuits and humans also in protective gear filtering in from other elevators or hallways into the vast underground plaza. Many carried arms: solid and thermal blades, rifles, holstered pistols, amd some bots with body integrated blasters, missile launchers, and cannons. About a third of the organics were also too young for combat duty. People were huddling together over food and gladness to meet each other or sorrow over those they had lost. Aileron, Arcee, and Impactor looked on and put away their armaments and held hands.

Impactor simmered. “Damn the Decepticons for fighting with so little care for how they destroy people’s homes and lives.”

Arcee took a curious, concerned look at Impactor’s glowing narrowed optics, and gave her hand a squeeze. “Even though we fight with the goal of only bombarding conventional military installations, it is not as if our infantry scuffles or missing artillery and bomb salvos do not have accidents that we weep over and cannot ever fully repay. All war, all violence beyond sparring and the like, is a violation of autonomy, even with supposedly good cause. Are you all right love?”

“The line has indeed grown thin between us and them despite our ideals, darling, we are part of a many thousands of years old actively fighting military industrial complex,” Impactor bowed her head, pressing a hand against her purple crest. “I just want to get over with as quickly as possible so we can actually practice peace. And that scares me, about myself, that the corners we’re not supposed to cut are looking… cuttable.”

“Peace at the cost of ethics of love and mercy would make us into them. We would have lost,” Aileron put a hand on Impactor’s waist, and pressed her own dome helmed low crested head against the blue squat Wrecker head over hammers insignia on Impactor’s chest. “Please- we will find a way. We have fallback strategies…” she noticed the room had grown quiet except for whispers. “They’re looking at us, aren’t they.”

“Yes, the only military personnel here and with enough publicly known record to be household names, that would make sense,” Arcee sighed. “They want to know that we can save them. Stand up tall you two, it’s time to inspire.”

Aileron and Impactor parted the huddle to flank Arcee, arms around her, faces with half smiles in response to the onlookers muttering curiosity, admiration, and worry.

One human came forward, the only one in a conventional military exosuit, sleek and white in the thighs, waist, and shoulders, boxy and red in the forearms, chest, pelvis, helmet, and legs, her forearms bearing cannons. She turned off her blue visor obscurer to reveal her beige-bronze skinned face, shiny straight jet black hair, and piercing brown eyes meeting the Wreckers in turn. “I know you three by reputation and what you’ve done here today, and speaking over comms. Always wanted to meet you, wish it wasn’t like this. My name is Verity Carlo, she/her, I’m sure you might recognize me...”

“Yes, of course,” Impactor saluted with a left hand over her spark. “Mayor of Nemesis, EDF reservist, veteran of the Battle of the Curve. It’s an honor.”

Aileron and Arcee joined in, and Verity returned the gesture with a grin, “Likewise, Wreckers, from the head diplomat and commander of first contact and alliance with Earth, to a first generation Solusian Knight, to the former Wrecker admiral, Autobot founders all. Tell me, how do you propose our bunker cells will survive-”

A thundering boom the likes of which Arcee had not heard since the collision of scuttled Autobot capital ships onto Unicron while she, Rodimus, other Wreckers and entire fleets fought Scourge desperately to keep Unicron’s fleet from launching back in 2005 before Unicron was finally killed. The sharp memory of the cacophony on top of the din of the din of battle made her think of orange and pink Rodimus fighting alongside her, and she reached out a hand to hold hers, and remembered she wasn’t here. “Roddy…” she tightened her hand into a fist, hoping no one had heard her.

Indeed no one had, many of the organics stumbling from the awful crashing sound and hungry burningly loud shockwave that came after and passed overhead.

Arcee took the time to, slowly, reluctantly, acknowledging all her fear, to pull the Matrix of Leadership out of her back stack and hold it in her hands by it’s gray handles, and all she could think of was how she wanted her mentees Gauge and Sideswipe to be safe, and that she wanted to teach when this was over, to carry and care for younger life and encourage them to go their own way-

Ah, so this is what the Matrix is trying to show me, ask me if I want to change my shape with its power. Her face tightened with thought while urges coursed through her to assume an affirming set of shapes the likes of which she had not had to see to since her youth.

What everyone else in the room saw was her enveloped in cyan light emanating from the blue crystals within the spokes and core of the Matrix. She was barely visible.

Do you want this? My dear knight, you can keep your form if you want. The Matrix only wishes to encourage you to be who you want to be. You are tired of the path of the warrior, old friend. the voice and ghostly visage of colossal lavender and purple rounded and squarish cable hair helmed Solus Prime towered over Arcee, smiling, golden and silver Forge hammer in hand, among a sea of stars forming the millions of faces Arcee had come across and cared for, near those she knew they were close to. The room she stood in was beyond sight, but she could feel Aileron and Impactor’s hands on her back, and hear Aileron singing wordlessly, humming a slow, high and low tune with her thruster shoulders providing soft thrumming percussion base chords to the melody Arcee recognized as a mountain song from her village she grew up in on Caminus: Love To and From a Prime.

Arcee’s spark oscillated and crashed around in its chamber, and she put her hands over the car hood armor covered it while Matrix remained hovering ahead of her. Her body and mind warmly relived all the amorous touches, dancing, sparring, and resting together with her loves she could remember, with her shape as it was now and as it had been in her first relationship both roiled in sensation across her. She knew that if she took the shape she thought she wanted, she would be taller than she had ever been, that Aileron’s hand would barely reach her waist, and neither her nor Impactor would be able to lean up or in to kiss her.

Aileron spoke a single verse, as her hand trembled, a tear down her face, worrying about Arcee being in the Matrix’s light so long:

“I will always love you,

No matter how large or small you are,

No matter who you become for goodness.”

Impactor wrapped her harpoon arm around Aileron, while looking around behind at the door they had come through, hearing the elevator going up, and immediately whirled around to face the doors. “Arcee, you may need to differ some of this for later. We’re about to have company, and I’m not about to let another Prime or you get shot in the back.”

“I…” Arcee tried to meet Solus’s violet optics she had last seen smiling and dim when Solus rejoined the Allspark when she immersed herself back in, cables of Cybertron’s metal underground plugged into her neck and back, prismatic crystals growing around her as she said goodbye.

“Solus, and Matrix both, the shape decision can wait. But I accept being a Prime.” Arcee smiled, and the energies around her permeate her frame, and she knelt, grunting at the searing pain of her armor, actuators, engine, and fuel lines getting souped up, and forming a new conduit of circuit responsive connection to the Star Saber hilt in her back stacks, usable as more than a blade. As she grabbed onto the Matrix, the A deep breeze of signals ran through her circuits to her module via my neural cluster and spark chamber. Arcee was one with the awareness of a vast conglomeration of sparks across a vastness, with billions grouped together in thirty different star systems, and less so in other places. The Matrix posed ideas and strategies to her the way a Titan does to a Cityspeaker, an array of thoughts and data, in this case drawn from her life, Rodimus’, Optimus’s, Tigerhawk’s, Override’s, Delta Magnus’s, Solus’s, and Primon’s, the previous Primes. All at once with the roiling emotional turmoil of the sparks around, mountainous waves of pain and stress and terror and fear and misery, pushed against with recognition and joy and resolve and spite.

Arcee let the access to knowledge and spark-visible kind guide her, and immediately she became aware that a terrible hunger consuming a desperately brave spark that… longed for me, Aileron, and Impactor? Oh no… Roddy… not you…

She narrowed her optics and drew in the Matrix energies and vision around her, Solus nodding at her as her visage disappeared into the Matrix that Arcee stored in her own opened car hood chest, feeling crushed by the weight of what lay ahead, wracking her mind and the Matrix for a solution. Maybe there’s a way to cleanse her… She sensed no other sparks with the descending one suffused with the Matrix of Conquest that gnawed at Arcee’s spark perception.

No. She blocked out Unicron’s Matrix using all her love and will, thinking of fighting for her loved ones and for her home, Earth, and for the galaxy’s sake.

Militia bots and humans had formed up with Impactor and Aileron to get between Arcee and the doors, weapons brandished.

“Stand back,” Arcee stepped forward, drawing the Star Saber, while still running through options offered by the Matrix of Conquest from past encounters with Conquest bearers, all unsatisfactorily lethal to her. “The Conquest Bearer is approaching. And I think I know who she is. Rodimus.”

Mutters and whispers ran through the group, who backed away to the edges of the hall, except for Verity, Impactor, and Aileron, the latter two conflicted between relief that Rodimus was alive and anguish that she was not in control of her faculties. Some of the adults who backed off shielded the eyes of the youngsters, wrapping themselves around them or urged them to hide under bunks or in smaller rooms. The interactions were not all tearless.

Arcee drew and ignited the Star Saber’s cyan golden broad blade. “If the Matrix and all the Primes don’t have a solution that doesn’t involve killing her, I damn well will touch my way through finding one. I make my own magic with strength, have all my life and because of that my name besides Arcee-” she and the Matrix spoke as one, “is Arcana Magnus. You all down to fight a Cron we care for? Keep in mind we have to minimize violence, since that feeds Unicron.”

The elevator hit the ground floor, and slow heavy footsteps thundered towards the doors.

“Being a Wrecker means signing up with a high chance of dying in some nearly impossible operation that we make possible,” Aileron smiled, her fingers wry around her sabers. “Wouldn’t have that any other way than for love, it’s why we’re here.”

“Aye, though this seems to be dangerously close relationship abuse, at the very least traumatic for everyone. But at least it’s not the bloody Noisemaze, Circuit Smasher, Flame’s zombies, Shadow Leeches, or Thunder Mayhem.” Impactor sighed and assumed a front stance with her harpoon, cutlass, and shoulder cannon. “Suppose this makes you a Wrecker, Verity. Though a counselor will have to assess you later.”

“Honored,” Verity leveled her cannons. “I do have this odd feeling that most of us are outclassed, though.”

The footsteps reached the doors ahead of the four, and stopped. Violet flames cut the doors in twain, revealing large thighed angularly and roundly lanky Rodimus in black and purple with smoking forearm barrels and a twisted grin. “How delightful, maybe I can finally crush the lazy vain hothead’s do-gooder attitude with the torture killing you will be for her.”

“Scrap you, Unicron,” Arcana Magnus seethed, showing her fangs, while Aileron and Impactor simmered and Verity stared slack jawed. Arcee cut down, channeling the might of her spark and the Matrix to galvanize the Star Saber’s energies into a precise arc of blue-white hot plasma that cut through the opening towards Rodimus, while Arcana still raced to construct a solution of Matrix of Leadership energies to quell the Matrix of Conquest, until considering what her own spark was doing. “Expose her spark housing so I can destroy her Matrix with mine!” She yelled as she leapt forward alongside her cut to stab forward-

Meeting Rodimus leaping over the arc of plasma, who stared with wide optics at Arcee’s follow up: “Would you really kill me sweetiegear?” Unicron toned in Rodimus’s softest coo that left Arcana and her partners freeze and want to belch up their energon, as did Rodimus’s own spark and mind overwhelmed by Unicron.

Verity immediately growled and fired off a volley of blue bolt ion blaster rounds into the center of Rodimus’s chest, tearing off the glacis point and halfway through the exterior armor as Rodimus twisted her torso to avoid Arcana’s stab, but was thrown back towards the floor by Verity’s blasts-

As Aileron and Arcana ran up on Rodimus, Impactor promptly aimed and fired her harpoon with the words “forgive me dear,” pinning Rodimus to the ground by her left arm, spilling purple Dark Energon out near her shoulder.

“How dare you! You say you love me for who I am, and this is how you treat me?” Unicron bellowed and fired a steady triple flare of violet Angolmois fire from the pinned arm into Impactor, straight through the armor towards the spark chamber-

Arcana Magnus had followed the move since the cannons started heating up and extended a protective cascade of energon plasma from the Matrix of Leadership through her hand that reached Impactor just as her armor was torn up, holding the blast short of the spark chamber.

“Of course you’d take her side, Arcee,” Unicron sneered through Rodimus’s face. “You don’t think I’m as real as you or your journey, do you? I’m not worth it. A waste. You bloody gatekeeper.”

Arcana struggled to stay afoot, tears streaming down her cheeks in equal measure to the quakes of Rodimus’s spark, the only thing Arcee could hold onto to keep from collapsing and sobbing. “Roddy would never say that… we helped each other find our way. You would never understand that.”

Aileron made use of the conversation to angrily move in with a heavy spark to rush and slice out the remaining front portion of Roddy’s car hood covering her spark and the cyclopean glow of the bladed Matrix of Conquest her two blades.

The Matrix’s twelve blades turned and launched cutting through Aileron’s torso from front to back, one through the spark.

“ AILERON! ” Arcana and Impactor both screamed.

“What do you expect Arcee would do if you did that to her, hmm? Our love is dead, like you,” Unicron kicked optics dimming Aileron over, and then pulled out the harpoon from Rodimus’s arm, shutting off the fire, cackling at the sensation of her spark shrinking and dying from the traumatic agony, and sealed the wound with Angolmois while projecting a shield sphere of such Unicron blood with a teethy maw and horns around Rodimus’s body. “You sweet fool. You denied me my champion of violence by showing her that she is ‘loveable and trustworthy,’ and listening to her when few would in the millennia leading to my triumph. I never wanted you, Rodimus Cron. I was always after Arcana, and you were never in the way. Aileron was, and so is the companion of violence, Impactor.”

The onlooking militia and civilians looked on in distraught, some saying prayers or speaking last rites, others turning to run into the tunnels only to see dead mangled and torn Angolmois filled bodies both human and transformer advancing slowly, and retreating back inside, opening fire on the Terrorcons, panic rising among the mass.

Arcee ran the words over in her head while she wove a song of wordless love with Matrix energies towards Aileron’s spark instinctively from Matrix memory, rekindling the sweet fire of the beloved bot, mending pierced fuel lines, while Arcana braced the Star Saber, knowing she could kill Rodimus and maybe the Matrix of Conquest, but it would be in violence. That cannot be the solution to this problem… Unicron feeds on that, something all prior Primes had missed, that we only learned during the recent Armada Wars after Unicron’s destruction. What if…

She will never give up. You are getting more than you bargained for. I took down Scourge and Shockwave and sent the Matrix away from your grasp so the last of your soul would have to possess me to avoid the Omniversal Matrix reconciling you before your Light and Dark peers, you idiot. I let you have me, knowing that the Autobots and my partners can beat you. Rodimus’s spark laughed, and reached out during Unicron’s shock to say to Arcee, Aileron, and Impactor: I love you all. Keep trying. Whatever it takes.

Impactor knelt, trembling after the shoulder cannon blast she fired did nothing to Rodimus’s Angolmois shield. “What use am I? I just know how to fight, to kill, to teach those things! Tearing into Rodimus made me feel worse than anything i’ve ever done. I’m no mage or philosopher! I just- have always been the last line. Arcee, what do we do?”

Verity looked up at Arcana Magnus. “Arcee… if not violence, then…”

“Then love,” Arcana Magnus leapt into the Angolmois sphere, shutting off the Star Saber to let it’s Cutting energies mingle with the Matrix, tearing apart the Angolmois shielding while Unicron attempted to fire full blasts of Hungry Fire with Rodimus’s arms, only to find the flames deflected-

Arcana let the Cutting fall away from her hands that she wrapped around Rodimus’s long pointy helm guard audials and her back, and plucked a kiss on her lips that Rodimus’s spark and module eagerly met, while Arcee exposed her own Matrix to simply shine upon the Matrix of Conquest, not attack it. “I love you, Roddy, dear transformation of my spark.”

I’m sorry, Primus toned through the Matrix to Unicron, all the way from and as the distant Allspark deep in the planet Cybertron. I didn’t mean for you to have to be the arbiter of destruction for so long, but ‘I’m sorry’ won’t fix that. Please- take this time as-

Rodimus put her arms around Arcana, smirking, “well this is just prime,” and smooched back, hands moving to her back stacks, while Impactor quickly ran over to a finger twitching Aileron, and Verity backed off to check on her people, trying to give assurances with words of hope.

Sibling, this is inane. You expect me to stop taking down your grand experiment with exposed spark life because of- sensory realizations and soulful iteration and… family? Unicron harumphed from within the Matrix of Conquest.

Then what are you, if not soulful iteration of someone lost in violence? Is it no surprise you were drawn to Arcee and her brother? You wanted to find a way to be good again. You can see into her, into me, right now. We have no moves to make. Primus-AllSpark hummed chords of song of Light and Dark that made emanations of stars and black holes dance among the onlookers, and stopped the Terrorcons in their tracks. You need rest. I don’t think I get to say I love you, sibling, after all this, but I do get to say- please take care. You can kill my spark, if you like- but it will live on in all of them, in all of you. We have done this dance before and will again. But Arcana convinced me that- violence is never the final answer. It is just a failure of society. And our Omniversal society, myself included, failed you.

Aileron came to slowly in Impactor’s arms, looking up at the splendor of starstuff filling the room and smiling down on her, and within Angolmois sharing tender touches hosting long lost family. “Wha- what did I miss? Did we win?”

“I have no damn idea,” Impactor kissed Aileron’s helm softly and laughed. “But I bet Arcee can tell you.”

“Let me go see her, then,” Aileron clasped Impactor’s chin, and the latter helped lift her to her feet, the two making their way over to Rodimus and Arcana, with only the Angolmois between them.

Unicron gazed, gazed upon the Matrix and AllSpark they had craved to consume for so long, and saw the lives that relived time after time in the memories of the sparks that came and went, that formed multitudes and stories, that all shared the conclusion of we are each other, different and alike, we are alone, we are together, infinite variation sparking again and again even when all times end, love remembers .

And Unicron gazed at Arcee’s spark, too, seeing that in all her anguish over the Cybertron’s bouts of reactionary violence and empire that had led to the Decepticons, that in all her loneliness when those cycles devalued all that she was and her only fearful worth to many was her honed capacity to fight, that she never let go of wanting to trust and love, because love is the greatest strength in the universe , because of the love she had gotten and given from time to time, once often, and then often once more a long while after.

Oh. The Matrix of Conquest dissolved, the last remains of Unicron’s violet anti-spark departing through a golden circle that formed in the ceiling. Will you join me?

I must. For all that I have done wrong. Primus departed from the AllSpark, saying farewells, and passed from the Matrix of Leadership, that remained not from their will, but from the love of an arcane mage for knowledge and teaching, longing to share all it’s wisdom, in peace, when the Great War would hopefully end. Good luck, Arcee, Rodimus, for all time. It was nice knowing you both. Their cyan spark left through the golden circle, which disappeared after.

The Angolmois and miniature stellar apparitions all fell away, the Terrorcons collapsing into corpses that blossomed with blue flowers and shrubs whether organic or metal- and the four Wrecker bots embraced, smiling, apologizing, soothing, kissing.

=”To all remaining Autobots and allies, this is Admiral Marissa Faireborn with EDCS Admiral Screwball! We have made an opening over Nemesis Polity, do any of you read? Do you need extra transport or medical evacs? We are ready to receive or send any transports necessary.”=

=“We read you, Admirals,”= Verity smiled. =“This is Mayor Verity Carlo, I will direct my people and remaining military units to take the shuttles now. We may be leaving Mars, but I trust that Unicron is no longer a problem. We also have a new Prime- maybe an old one again too.”

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