It's been a while since I've written anything but I wanted to take another stab at it, I intend to update weekly, with each chapter being between two and three hundred words, without further ado, here's chapter one:



Ironhide sat on the cliff's edge, staring at the city she'd once called home, she pulled a cig from her subspace, and not wanting to waste fuel on lighting it, struck it against her forearm a couple of times, on the third try, the friction caused for it to light, and she placed the cig between her worn old maws. As she inhaled the smokes, she closed her optics, remembering the city as it had been before, glimmering skyscrapers, brightly painted orange buildings, and then she opened her optics, and a drop of oxidized energon rolled out of one, and down along her faceplate, as she saw once more what she had already known to be true, the city was turned to rust, and all the sparks of all who were unfortunate enough to be in it at the time had been extinguished, turned to dust. She held the cig in her hand, to prevent the tear from extinguishing it, because if it had and she tried to rekindle it with friction again, she'd just wind up with rust burnt into her arm. It had been a long cycle, and it would only get longer. She stared at the city one last time before she left, it would be suicide to go back in there now, she let out a sigh and walked away, heading southbound, hoping to find only Primus knew what.

 

It had been far too long since the war had started, it encompassed three, maybe thirteen, generations, with the latter most fighting blindly for reasons they had never known, many of them never even thought to ask, nevertheless, they were all so sure that their side was the only one in the right. As we got further into the war, the planet had stopped producing energon, we'd damaged it too much. That still didn't stop us from inventing weapons of more and more destruction. At some point we decided to abandon classic reproduction, as the well had stopped flowing as the allspark had been taken, we mass produced countless drones, any who served any significance were individualized and given synthetic sparks and sentience of their own. The Decepticons were lucky when they recovered the rust bomb, or so they had thought. Many cities were razed under its light, until the point that we had reached now. Cybertronian colonies, once great in number and culture, had nearly all been lost to war, with Cybertron itself having just taken its final bow, and with this last bomb, so did the war, few involved parties had survived, though a sixth of an eighth the population of Caminus still lived, many other planets had fallen to rust and fire and war. While the great war was now smoldering out, those on Cybertron's surface had no way of knowing this, and were more than likely to die at one another's hands, fighting a war that had already been lost.

 

The war was over. From the beginning Sunstreaker'd known it was a hopeless fight, but she never thought it'd go this far, and she always thought that in the end someone would've won, though she wouldn't've betted on herself. But now as the dust settled, there was no victor in sight, there was nobody, neither friend nor foe. She'd never end herself but she had joined the fight partially in hopes that someone else would. Now there was no one left, and as she wandered the rusted streets of Iacon, Sunstreaker couldn't help but feel guilt, with every corpse she saw, she wished it were her own, this war had been the pit to her, ever since it reached Velocitron's atmosphere. When that had been wiped away, at least she still had had Sideswipe as the dust settled. Now she was alone, all were none. Anyone else in the city would've died from the blast, but as a velocitronian, she had a resistance to the rust, and she was nearly outside the range of infliction as it went off. The rust had still damaged her t-cog, among other things, and while she was in pain, she didn't have anywhere else to go. Everyone she'd ever known was gone, and Iacon had been their last chance of survival. Still, she wasn't gonna give up just yet, she knew there had to be someone left, she refused to believe that she was completely alone. But then it struck her, too strongly to deny, the pain and the sorrow, and something else, too. And as she clutched her side, trying to stop the flow of energon from her wound, she fell to her knees, and felt the rust infecting her air intake. She'd need to hurry if she wanted to survive. She couldn't let Sideswipe's memory fade from time, as much as she'd like to.

 

Arcee was driving through Tarn, en route to Simfur, her alt mode wasn't the fastest, but it was sturdy, and it got the job done. She'd scanned some atmospheric displacement going on above the town not too long before and figured with almost everyone else dead, it'd be worth checking out. Ever since the war had started to dwindle out, she had felt a very different rage than the one she had become so accustomed to in the time since her sparking. This rage felt hollow in comparison to the rage she was used to, she felt there was nobody to direct it at but herself, and that just made her angrier. She was nearing her destination, and so she returned to her primary form, she didn't need to use her optic enhancers to tell where the disturbance was, as whatever it was had knocked down a good portion of a building when it landed. She approached the crash, and as she got closer, she took note of something she didn't quite recognize, although parts of it were familiar. She crouched down to poke it, it was hot, but not unbearably so. There was something familiar about this molten substance, though she couldn't quite put her finger on what exactly it was. One thing she did finally recognize, though, was a beating spark at its center. She panicked for a moment as realization dawned on her and she scrambled around looking for some energon. She couldn't find any other than that which was pumping through her, she realized she really didn't have a better choice, and approached the protoform, she opened her own spark chamber, and scraped some energon off of its walls, standing at a cautious distance, she let it drip from her fingers and onto the protoform, which then changed hues, from the bright blue of raw energon, to the red of the refined energon which ran through her systems. This caused her to panic again, as she didn't know if that was normal or not. She glanced around for a moment and saw a box, which she then put the protoform in and tied a stick to, so she could hold it as far away from herself as possible. Profanities would be heard if only there were anyone left alive to hear them. She searched and found nothing else of interest in the crash site. She began to search the town for some archives in hopes of advice on what in pit to do with a protoform.




(Yesterday was trans day of visibility so im posting an extra chapter this week.)

 

She was all but crawling now, the rust was so bad. She was finally out of the city though, and the rust could no longer affect her as much as it did when she was in the range of affliction. She wouldn't get any better without serious medical attention, but once she was in Protihex, she'd be able to provide that to herself, with some luck. Odds were all the students of the college had passed by now, but hopefully they'd left something of use behind. If nothing else, maybe she could plead to the well. She'd heard the stories after all. She felt the rust spread to her servos and she knew she should hurry, if anything was on her side, it sure as pit wasn't time. As she tried to activate a public transport, she came to the assumption that luck wasn't on her side either. It seemed if she was to reach Protihex, it would be on foot. And so she continued onwards. Despite the rust in her body and the aches in her servos and the flickering of her optics and the urge to rest. She knew if she tried, the rust would take her to Unicron's gates. She wouldn't let that happen. Not yet. She knew she still had more to do before she could burn out.

 

Ironhide sighed. Whatever she had hoped to find, she sure as pit hadn't found it. If anything, this town was worse than the last, at least she couldn't recognize the rusted corpses of the prior town. These ones, however, these ones had names to them, names she knew. Faces she recognized as those of her comrades in arms. The battle here must've gone south. It seemed the medics were the first to die, and with them gone, pit rust had come to all involved parties. No survivors from the looks of it. She began dragging the corpses one by one, to a place just outside the city. And with a shovel she found, she began to dig. Once the graves were all dug, she began to fill them, a corpse a piece. She tried her best to keep certain she'd placed each corpse near its loved ones, and as she buried each corpse, she put a chunk of nearby rock atop each grave, carving into them the names of those they held. She tried to place the correct names on each, but she didn't know the names of the decepticons and some of the autobots who'd fallen on that battlefield, on those stones she tried her best to carve their faces. As the cycle ended, she stared at her work, and mourned those she had known. Unlike the casualties at Iacon, at least these poor fools had the chance to become one with the all spark. She only hoped that she too would get that chance when her time came.

 

Simfur's archives had more about protoforms than she'd expected, she knew now that it wouldn't be long before this liquid metal took form and cooled, at which point she should probably give it a name. She had initially been worried but now she was glad she'd found the lil guy, worried what would've happened to it if she hadn't. She took it out of the box it was sleeping in, and like the archives had instructed, she rocked it back and forth. It was still soft, but it had cooled to the point that it would retain its shape, though said shape was not yet set in stone. She decided to mark this child as her own, the same way she had been marked in her youth. She opened her spark chamber, and stuck a finger in, pulling a drop from her spark. She brought the finger to the protoform's lower lip, where it made her familial mark. The child then attempted to suckle on said finger. She didn't stop it from doing so. The child's mark started to glow, in the same manner that hers did. She knew this was mostly pointless, but it made her feel warm, seeing her familial mark on the faceplate of another. The protoform was starting to take form now and so she held it as it cooled.

 

Luck was not on her side. Protihex was in sight, but her systems were failing and she was losing energon fast. Her optics shut down as she entered the Medical College, her legs failed shortly after. She searched in vain for a solution, and as her spark began to fade away, she found a familiar feeling shard. Immediately she pried open her spark chamber, shoving the shard in. If nothing else, she'd wanted to ease the pain. She apologized as she did so, Sideswipe would be forgotten to time.
And then she opened her optics, and the light they shone was different than before, and she moved her servos, and saw her fingers, and the lab around her, and the glowing purple shard in her chest, and as a pounding she heard a voice she'd never forget, a voice which spoke in a million tongues at once, a voice which was cut off mid sentence as she removed the shard from her chest. Her optics then faded, in both intensity and hue, where they once were a blinding violet, they now were a dimmed indigo. If nothing else she was alive, but as a realization dawned on her, she scuttered away from the shard, she understood now what she had done, and why she now was seemingly cured. She left the building uneasily, looking for a different kind of healing now