Work Text:
The crystal planes gape around the remnant where Nyon once stood. For a hundred miles in every direction Cybertron's ground has been barred to the scarred inner metal. Time had turned burned metal and raw ore to tarnish and rust; travelers have left stacked stones along the path winding through hulking tumbled masses of metal.
Thunderclash pieces his way through a maze of rusted out metalwork. He rests his hand against a great rusted spear, jutting towards Cybertron's sky like a reaching hand, only for the metal to give way with a tired groan, tilting wildly to the left before collapsing in a puff of powdered red rust under its own weight.
"Hey!" His doorwings flick up as Trailbreaker jostles into his space, all bristled plating and fury. "Hey, we're supposed to be leaving as much of the landscape untouched as we can! That means as much as we can."
Thunderclash watches the pillar bury itself further into the silicone and rust sand of the desert. "I don't think there's as much to save as you would prefer," he says. "But I'll do my best." He turns a charming smile on the mech until, like a flash flare against a stone wall, the Senate scientist's anger peters out.
The Pit is at the center of the great mass of desert and destruction, its dark mouth ringed in white phosphorous and dripping silvered mercury. It's visible only from low-orbit fly overs, and then only when the ground was free of the fierce, near constant sandstorms caused by the flat, loose desert sands of Cybertron's great Rust Bowl. The air smells like dry dust and hot sunlight. It builds like clay inside him, clogging his vents, sticking in his creases and armor seams.
Three vorns of searching had brought him here, to a barely remembered dream: the last recorded location of the city Nyon, and the resting place of a hundred million lost sparks.
As they approach the Pit, its mouth a slumped hill falling into the absolute dark of a depthless cavern, the wind changes. Thunderclash can feel skittering along the sensitive edges of his doorwings, a pressure in the joints, the drift of grit over the smooth planes of his windows.
Worry sparks. He drops his gear down near the solid edge of the cavern, then turns to a drifting Hot Shot. The Rescuebot is drifting at the edges of the group, gently herding them closer together. The young bot has the worried air of a hound left to his own devices, his herd an undisciplined thing prone to stepping too far off the shepherd's path. "The weather?" He asks. He keeps his tone pitched too low for the others to hear.
"Radar was fine when we set out this morning. We won't be turning back now."
"Good." Thunderclash starts setting the line anchors. The others would take a moment to join him - they all have their own research here, and not all of it confined to what could be discovered below the ground.
He's testing the give on the anchors as they file up. "We're going down in pairs. We've drilled this - we don't know what we'll find down there. Alpha team may have scouted ahead, but there's no guarantee of safety here."
There's a scattered murmur. His team is more concerned with checking their gear than they are listening to him lecture about safety.
He takes point, grappling down first both to test the anchor's weight bearing capability and to scout ahead. He's followed closely behind by their medic, Minerva, then Trailbreaker, Ricochet, and Circuit. Hotshot follows up on the rear, making sure that the anchors are properly attached for their ascent.
Thunderclash feels the cool of the cave sweep around him. Above, the sun had been a physical thing, with fingers that reached inside a mech and melted delicate components. Even the shade had been a sharp, too hot thing.
Inside, the Pit is a wondrous thing. The sunlight from above cuts sharp, bright shapes against the cavern walls. Rain storms had left rivulets of red rust painting the raw metal wall; deep crevasses have been carved into it by acid raining, leaving the surface wrinkled, droplets of mercury and thin solvent beading up from deep within Primus's frame. In the remnants of sunlight they shine like stars.
Behind him the ground falls away, and the empty below looms.
The world beneath Primus's surface is bracingly dark. The space beneath the ground has been scored away by four millenia of acid rain washing through the cracks made by Nyon's fall. The stone walls are smooth and amorphous, falling slowly towards Primus's core.
The Alpha team had left markers behind for them to follow. The reflective red tags glitter in the light of their headlamps. It's the only direction they have; a scarce hour into the cave and they loose all communication with the surface.
Thunderclash had made them stop to mark the moment. "Send your letters home," he'd told them, "Because these may be our last."
He'd wished he'd saved the dramatics. The first reports of Nyon's remains had marked them as only a few hours out from the mouth of the cave. When Alpa team had been sent in, their first reports had been only slightly further along the cave system than that - less than a thousand meters beneath the ground, and most of days' journey through a series of tunnels and caverns. Their reports had indicated that the trip wasn't difficult.
Waist deep in an underground river, the roof of the tunnel short enough to force him into an uncomfortable crouch, Thunderclash is quite sure that they'd lied. They'd lost contact with the surface several hours before - he'd stopped receiving updates from the Big Conversation in the last cathedral. He'd had Minerva switch them over to her inbuilt shortwave to replace the team-wide comm system.
"Are we sure we're going in the right direction?"
"We're following the markings!" Thunderclash rubs his thumb over the slash of red pressed against the stone wall.
He hopes the confidence holds.
–
The cavern is obviously Alpha team's base camp. Ricochet pokes through the kitchen, still out, a meals' worth of dishes left out to dry at some point and now covered in dust. "They've been gone a while. I guess they didn't just get too caught up to report back."
"Jazz wouldn't have forgotten." Trailbreaker pokes at a dead computer.
"He has the attention span of a bumblebee. He wouldn't forget, he'd ignore it." Ricochet scoffs. "This is a fraggin' wonderland for the little weirdo."
"Let's find their research, rest for the night, and then keep going." Thunderclash circles the far edge of the camp. The other end of the cavern has been marked out by Alpha team's red paint, a sharp brush stroke arching left, over a crowded growth of false-energon gambit crystals. They glow faintly in the dark of the cavern, a milky, pale mauve. They're not bright enough to be true energon, but, before the adoption of modern mining equipment, they had often been mistaken for it.
They grow near underground solid energon sources; the gambit was always if that energon was as close as a seeker thought. It's good news for Alpha team's chances of survival.
News is even better back at camp.
Ricochet is sprawls over a pile of blankets left by the team, his peds kicked up to rest on a rock that had been uprooted and pulled into position. "So they made it to the edge of the ruins," he announces, pitched voice echoing through the cathedral. "I've got some exciting notes about the composites of, uh, looks like some really boring rocks. Remains, Whatever. It's from one of the scientists, though, not Jazz, so who knows if there was anything else going on."
"It's a good sign. They're probably in the city proper, then."
"And they just left camp set up back here?" Hotshot pokes at the pot left on the smokeless stove. It had been cleaned before they'd left, but it was obviously set up in preparation for the next meal. "Maybe if they'd left the stuff for a satellite camp behind, but it's all here."
"Check your chronos." He tells them. "We stopped recording time when we lost contact with the surface - we're all tied into the chronographer in Iacon, the central clock. We didn't switch over to our internal clocks and, I bet, neither did the scientists. They might not know how long they've been down here, how long they've been in Nyon proper."
"Or they couldn't make it back here." Ricochet says.
"We have to keep hope. We're not here to rescue corpses. We're here to check in on our friends. So -"
"Stay positive. Yeah, sure. Can do, boss mech."
"Ricochet… just. Keep reading. We may not be too far from them."
"Last record was taken a week ago."
"And they only missed check in three days ago. That's not bad." He crosses around the edge of the fueling areas. Navigating the stones, stalagmites, and the mess of the camp isn't easy for a mech his size, forcing him to pick each step with care. "We';; fuel. We'll catch up on their research. And, come morning, we'll go in after them."
–
Thunderclash wakes to the sound of skittering. It's the sharp tap-tap-tap of something sharp against the stone of the cave. It's too even, too rythmic. The sound is enough to rouse him from defrag recharge.
It's Minerva's watch. They'd reset their chronos to work off of their internal systems, and by his reckon they shouldn't have a changeover for a few more hours yet. She's quiet, has a habit of tapping her fingers. There are too many taps in a row to be ten fingers.
He doesn't open his optics.
The skittering is faint. Too far away, he realizes now, to have been Minerva. Too many of them to be just her. He counts them: ten, twenty, thirty. He hears the scrape of heavy carapaces against stone.
He needs to open his optics. He needs to wake up. There is something in the cavern. There is something there with them, in the dark, chattering, stepping, walking in between his team's frame as they sleep -
Where is Minerva? He thinks.
Something brushes his shoulder. He can't make his frame move. He clenches his jaw; the joint creaks. He can't move, he can't move.
Where is my team
They're all over him, the things in the dark. Their legs feel like fingertips tapping on his plating in the dark, sharp, each touch reverberating through his plating.
He is trapped and he is covered and he cannot move, he cannot wake -
And then there are hands on his shoulders, shaking him.
It's like a bug being patched, sudden and jarring. Ice water splashing against the bared components in his helm. An electric jolt straight to the spark chamber.
It's awful, sudden wakefulness.
There's a mech in his face. Large, soft cheeks, flat nose, heavy helm. In the faint, milky light of the gambit crystals his plating looks the grey of the dead. He has a gun in his hand. His badge is orange, and Thunderclash recognizes Nyon's sigil in the grim-angled face.
"Up," the mech says, and Thunderclash obeys.
The memory purge's helpless terrror clings to him like the web of some grand and awful spider.
"Walk," the guard says, and Thunderclash - seeing his team following the mechs' direction, and the guard boxing them in on the other side - obeys.
They're past the gambit crystals and deep into the gently sloping tunnel before any of them manage to shake off the skittering terror of the night. At that point there's nothing else to do but follow - this tunnel is branching, and oddly twisted, like Primus's mantel had formed from folds of mixed ores. The spaces they're lead through are too narrow to turn and fight the Nyans, and even if they weren't Thunderclash would stay their hand.
No wonder the camp had been left untouched and undisturbed. There were mechs down here, mech with answers, likely guarding a territory and wary of outsiders after the war.
If rumors stood true this would be an issue, but this was undoubtedly why the Alpha team had missed check in.
Questions sit behind his teeth. He curls his tongue around them, tastes them, but the guards say nothing to invite them and he doesn't trust them not to turn vicious. There's no reason to believe that Alpha team hadn't checked in because they were no longer able to check in, ever. Best to stay cautious while everything was so terribly new.
Eventually the smooth, almost organic whorls of stone give way to something shaped more purposefully.
The city grows very suddenly around them; they're forced through a squeeze just large enough for Thunderclash, doorwings scraping against stone, and on the other size is Nyon. The stone ceiling bulges above their heads, draperies and stalactites giving way to velvet dark. They're on a shelf above the city. The sweep of stone below encompasses the wreckage of a city long gone, lit in neons. It's the only source of light in the otherwise absolute dark of the great cavern. Its haloed edges disappear into it, until Thunderclash can't possibly tell where the edges of it disappear.
The guards continue their silence as they descend into the lit city below.
Even Hot Shot's childish, rude insults - calling into question their shapes, their intelligence, and even the truck's pulling power - get nothing more than vague noises of interest from them.
The city is clean. The empty streets, ruined buildings looming in shapes drawn in sharp relief by glowing murals. Light scatters, too weak to see by, over black roads and the still, watching frames of the city's inhabitants. Their optics are pinpricks of nearly white light in the shadows of the ruins.
From the shadowed edges of the cavern Nyon now called its home rises the proud dome of the Acroplolis. It, unlike so much of the city, had been lovingly restored. Columns arch and curve; its high dome has been layered in gold and platinum shined to yellow-white brilliance, though the lack of lights in the fallen city has left the lattice patterns set into the metal blurred and unrecognizable.
It feels like something from legend, stepping into those halls. The ceiling, dotted with a scattering of pinprick glowing lights, soars high over their heads.
Trailbreaker is straining against his guards' hold on his wrists, helm whipping back and forth to take in the building. Every time it feels like he's wandered too far, missed a half step, the guards silently tug him back into position. "This - we've only ever had photos of the grand front hall of the Acropolis, and even those suffered data drift. I've never seen anything like this."
"It looks like the Grand Senate Hall, before the war." The soft, reverent susurrus of Thunderclash's voice is lost to the eaves above their helms. "But older, like the temples to Primus."
Thunderclash had wasted vorns of his youth studying the oughts of Cybertronian history. He recognizes the hall that they're brought to as a grand anteroom, a throne room for the long dead and deposed leaders of the city. The edges of the room have been draped with gauzy fabric, lit in red ands golds by grand banks of brightly lit LEDs. It feels echoing and empty for all the obvious attempt at something softer.
Thunderclash watches a thin fingered hand sweep aside the curtain separating the rest of the room from the throne tucked against the far bank of false windows. They paint bright shapes against the brilliantly dyed cloth, blurring against the winged black silhouette.
The mech that slips between the curtain folds is slim, painted red. He feels too vibrant for the room, red as smelt iron traced over in gold light paint, glowing beneath the buzzing overheads. Thunderlcash catches his optics, searingly blue, like dwarf stars caught and set behind glass.
"I didn't expect the city guard to actually find anyone nosing around the edges." There's a husky edge to his voice, a rasp like smoke damage clinging to the corners of each glyph. "Well? Gonna tell me what you were doing?"
It takes a moment for Thunderclash to gather enough thought to speak. "We're explorers. We … didn't realize there was anyone left of Nyon."
"They tried." The mech takes another step towards them. The pronged tip of his ped scrapes against the ground, gouging into the metal. "So. You here to loot, murder, and blow what's left of us to the Pit?"
"I - no. Never."
"Whole war up there to tell me that it's what you sort do."
"Us 'sort'?" Thunderclash swallows his affront, but he can feel Ricochet bristling behind him. None of them were anything less than war machines these days, but - it stung. They were used to hearing it from the colonies, but this mech was so clearly Cybertronian. Sleek, and thinly armored, but -
A thin finger taps the brand at the center of his chest. The mech has to reach up to do so. Thunderclash can see clear over his helm, the breath of his shoulders wider than the Nyan's spoiler. His plating is hot as a starship engine's casing, hot enough to make him worried that his paint is bubbling up from the contact. "Autobots."
"I didn't know Nyon was a Decepticon city during the war."
"We weren't anything, during the war or before. You made sure of that." Those optics - blue as a spark, blue as the Matrix is rumored to be - go dim. "And then you blew us all to the Pit." He takes a step back, and the sudden cold that fills his absence makes Thunderclash's internals clench. "But I guess the war is over, huh?"
"Technically there are still peace talks taking place, but - functionally, yes. I guess we're all just too tired to take up our weapons, now. Not when we've had some time to see our world without one in our hands."
"Boredom in peace time, huh?" His optics skip over the team; his shoulders loosen. "Well, I guess there are worse reasons for someone to find us down here." He tilts his helm towards the mechs still standing guard at their backs. "Hope I didn't scare you too much. Just don't have many friendly meetings with the sorts of mechs who were finding their way down here."
"Then -" Thunderclash pauses. Considers the mech in front of him, what he knows of the Nyon that stood before the war. The Nyon that existed before even that, lost and buried as it was beneath what the Senate had forced it to become. "Then would you mind it if my team continued their efforts? We're here to study the Knights of Cybertron. To regain some of the history we lost."
"Well, we've got a lot of that down here." His smile reveals fangs, small and sharp as kitten teeth. "Sure. And, since we're not gonna just end up killing you lot - call me Rodimus. Welcome to the sunken city of Nyon."
–
To say that they were guided through the endless halls of the Acropolis would be generous. The guards keep pace at their backs, silent and looming, as Rodimus traces a wandering path in front. Every so often he pauses at a mural, or a figure carved and set into the wall, or an array of lights glowing in the ceiling, to explain some rambling story.
He never pauses long, but there's hardly any directionality to their path. Branching corridors become long and snaking, before branching off again. Hallways barely wide enough to stand one abreast balloon outward into grand ballroooms. The lights overhead shift in colors, red to green, blue to pink, matched by murals in livid lightpaint covering every surface. Wide, arching spaces where windows once were have been punched out, leaving empty air. They must be one of the things the mechs in the city couldn't repair, but set into the frantic light of the hallways they mark dark and ominous shapes.
There's no way to mark chronology beneath the city. The central database that Thunderclash had come to rely on while living in wartime bases can't reach beneath the city; the interconnected social network is even quieter, with only his team to respond to his pings. His own chrono's been on the fritz for so long that he's not sure it's worked since before the Senate fell the first time, and all he can mark the passage of time by is the ever changing halls and his own growing exhaustion.
"And here we are!" Rodimus throws his arms wide, grin sharp as knives, as two broad doors swing open wide, spilling them onto the street. "Nyon proper! Formerly home to the Knights of Cybertron, before they ran off and abandoned us here. Now it's just us Nyans - and you, I guess." He spins on the tip of his ped, almost dancing. The nearly empty streets echo his words back at him. "We saved most of the old district, when everything sunk, so this is technically one of the original main streets on the cog."
Thunderclash blinks, trying to reset his optics. After so long in the frenzied bright of the Acropolis, Nyon's quiet gray is almost blinding. "That is … fascinating, Rodimus. But I think my team and I could use a place to rest and set up?"
The mech pouts, the expression overwrought and dramatic like a poorly programmed midday soap opera actor. "Cutting the tour short on the first day?"
"You did catch us right before our midday fuel. It's been a rather eventful afternoon for my team and I."
"Ugh, whatever, fine." His heels make a soft 'clack' against the pavement as he straightens. "So I can't put anyone out of hab and home for you, but there's plenty of room at the temple. Worse places to be, really, so."
"I didn't know there was a temple in Nyon." Circuit hurries to step up next to Thunderclash, ignoring the way the guards tense around them. "I'm the team's expert on the Knights, as well as their chronicler. Is it new? Who was it dedicated to? Can I -"
"I think your interrogation can wait." Thunderclash steps just ahead of Circuit, placing his bulk between his teammate and Rodimus. "At least until we've got everyone settled and Rodimus can give you his full attention."
"Oh. Right, yeah. Sure."
The silence of Nyon's grey streets wraps around them. It hangs in the air, stifling, like the eddies of dust caught shifting in endless drifts by the lights set into Nyon's far off ceiling. The mechs guarding them don't make a sound; even their servos are oil slicked smooth.
They're lead to the looming shape of the temple, dark and unlit against its painted streetmates. Thunderclash only recognizes it by the wild energon caught at the foundations, bursting from the ground in great spiny masses. The tradition had fallen far out of favor by the time he'd been sparked. He recognizes it only through the datafiles he'd studied before the war, from the remnants documented by Senate-controlled historians. He knows that what he'd studied was likely not the truth of what came before, but this -
He can almost see what the Senate had hidden, and why. There's beauty in it like there never was in the Senate prescribed and approved architectural plans.
They're lead through dark hallways, the corners muffled by dark tapestries, up a broad stairwell, and into a hall of rooms. It's impossible to see into the shadows after so long in Nyon's dizzying, neon brightness. "I'd show you more of the temple, but, well." Rodimus tilts his helm, back towards them, the blue light of his optics making his smile seem dark as an oil slick. "You said you wanted to sleep."
To the right of them a door swings open. Like the rest of the temple it has been confined to darkness. The lights flicker on, pale as starlight, when Thunderclash steps past the mech inside.
It's a small room, poorly appointed but large enough to fit the team as they squeeze in behind him. The front room has a sofa and a sitting area. The back wall is a pane of windows overlooking the neon city below.
His team crowds up behind him like a pack of pups, jostling him forward. "I call the bed!"
"I'm on the sofa!"
"How are we going to sleep with all the light outside?"
Thunderclash feels Rodimus step back into the hallway, the door sliding closed behind him. "We'll all sleep in the berthroom together. In shifts. I don't want anyone going off alone. Understood?"
There's a gaggle of nods. Minerva is swaying on her peds, her optics dark. He doesn't know how she's staying awake. Ricochet has already pushed through the door, and he flops onto the wide berth with a gasping little laugh. "We made it!"
They had. Now there was just everything else.
Morning sweeps in quietly. It's been a millenia or more since Thunderclash required a sun to wake up, but he'd gotten used to the chatter of a ship at shift change. The quiet urges him back to the berth beneath him, smelling gently of dust and age and slow rot. He doesn't even have a reckoning for time beyond his internal clock; there's no alarm to force him out of the berth.
Minerva nudges him to gentle wakefulness. "The guards have fetched us for breakfast," she whispers, her cheek brushing his helm. "I think Ricochet is about to leave without us."
Thunderclash hauls himself from the embrace of recharge with a groan. The light inside the room is false and pale, painting everything in sickly pastels. The light that cuts through the building is faintly red, hitting the walls and ceiling at odd angles. "We'd best go before he causes an incident." He blinks the last of the sleep static from his vision. "He likes incidents." He should be kinder, he thinks, but he's too tired for pointless kindness. None of this ragtag team would appreciate it, beyond Minerva, and she's lost no love of the scout.
The guards are waiting in the hallway.
In the velvet black of the cavernous corridors, splashed with remnants of reflected neon light, the guards had seemed mechlike. Now, in the pale stark bright of Nyon's false day, he sees what the shadows had softened.
The one on the left is rictus stiff, his optics a dully glowing orange the same shade as his plating. He might have been a car once, or a small truck, but his kibble has been stripped away until he's been left with nothing but smooth armor and cutaway uniqueness.
To the right, looming just a shy inch taller, the other mech could be his twin. They share a hard set jaw and smoothed shape, but his optics are a dull green, his plating edging towards aquamarine.
He'd seen their sort around Veteran Services too often for comfort. He shuffles forward, all friendly smiles and outstretched hands, but -
It's not, he considers, that their fields rebuff him. They were dull, empty, and vaguely soft in nature. Hardly welcoming, but not unwelcoming, either. Absent, almost. Their expressions are roughly the same, with a dullness expressed through soft mouths and dim biolights.
And yet he pulls away. The guards don't seem to notice. Thunderclash is oddly grateful for it, pretend or not. He's broken an expectation with himself.
–
Breakfast takes place in a hall ringed in broken windows, not far from the suite they'd slept in the night before. Nyon's day, produced by huge, round lights set into the ceiling, floods the echoingly large room with pale light. This, unlike the Acropolis, has not been well maintained.
It has the same swept-clean sterility of the city outside, but that doesn't hide the cracks in the columns along the wall or the way that the once grand tile murals have broken into nothing but smudged colors. The floor beneath them is a map of gold stars against grand slabs of azul blue stone, smoothed by millenia of worshippers.
The table set in the middle of the room is a long, made of grey slate, with a weight to it that seems to leech color from ground its sat on. When Thunderclash settles at the head, his back to the entrance, he realizes that energon has already been set.
He lifts the cube, small in his hand, towards the lamp above his helm. Light cuts through the fine crystal in fractal rainbows, setting the pale lavender energon inside aglow. Highgrade? The color veers towards purple enough, but it's too pale, too thin. If it were darker, more viscous, he would accuse their host of trying to fuel them on inner energon.
It must be some effect of pulling the energon from so close to Primus's core. When he takes a sip there's nothing but the crackle and ozone taste of pure energon. ::Fuel,:: He tells his team. They sit, hovering over fuel cubes, and he knows that it's their position as something not quite prisoner, not quite guest that stays their hands. They don't know the rules of this place yet. ::We'll be no better off if we're all starving.::
Ricochet is the first to move. He shoot askance glances in Trailbreaker's direction as he throwns back the cube in three quick swallows, unwilling to even try tasting it. The others follow; only Minerva takes the time to savor it.
Whatever conversation that might have carried them through the meal is stymied by the dead gazes of the guards. Thunderclash, even as slowly as he intended to fuel, finds himself finishing his cube quickly without mindless morning chatter to eat at his time.
Finally, the entrance to the hall flings open, and out steps their erstwhile host. He's shined to the sort of high gloss that makes a mech look slicked in solvents, with scrollwork paint curling in golds and reds wherever there's room on his frame to do so. It's beyond the simple, wiped clean look of the night before. He's trying to impress them. Thunderclash can admit to himself that he has.
His grin is still as sharp as it was the night before. He levels it on them like a weapon. "So!" He claps his hands together. "I thought we could finish the tour this morning!"
–
They had, as it turns out, done much of the tour the night before.
With the floodlights set the temple is much easier to navigate. The neon mazework from the night before was lovely, and a testament to the ingenuity of their people, but impossible to navigate for anyone who had not spent millenia walking them in the dark.
"I wanted to save the best for last!" Rodimus chatters. He's lead them through the snaking corridors of the temple, gently sloping downwards. The windows rise up, up, until they're merely slits along the ceiling. Thunderclash didn't realize they could get any closer towards Primus's spark. The lights, he realizes, are fading. The further they descend, the dimmer they are, until the only light in the temple is faded, ancient glowing paint.
The hall that Rodimus leads them into is cavernous. There's a painting up on one wall, taller than even Thunderclash is, as grand as a Titan's spark, with paint so old the glow's gone out of it. The awe of it, the punch in the gut utter awe that something so grand could have survived the razing of their homeworld, is enough to make him sway on his peds.
The Matrix of Leadership is Primus writ physical; whatever artist had made it had known this, and the effort to drip creation from his brush had left an intricate attempt of their homeworld in barely glowing teal on smooth stone walls. A shuttle's view of Cybertron sits between boldly painted handles, each tower and city broken out in paler teal paint. The detail is impossible, dizzying - it seems to draw him in
Thunderclash's attention is taken up by the mural - a step closer, he thinks, to the legend that they're chasing - but his team have more focus. Minerva's small, smooth hand on his forearm redirects his attention to the center of the room, and the column sitting at its center. Rodimus has circled behind it, arms thrown wide in presentation.
"And this," he says, grin wild, "Is the last great treasure of Nyon. The heart of Primus, the -"
The piece of idolatry that could tumble their nascent, juvenile government back into endless war.
The thing their friends had been sent to destroy, before they'd been lost themselves.
"The Matrix of Leadership." The words tumble out of him, too fast, hurried, fascinated. "The Matrix of Leadership was here?"
Rodimus wilts. "Well, there went that surprise. But yeah, of course it's here." He pats the top of the Matrix; it bobs merrily on its pedestal, a boat caught in a suddenly unfavorable wind. "We're where you topsiders throw all your trash." There's a flash of something, slick and dark and grim, before Rodimus turns a blinding grin on them. "Nyon was entrusted with this Matrix by the Knights, before they left the planet."
"And it's just … been here?"
"We found it when the city collapsed. Funny thing, that, all the things you find when the ground crumbles underneath you."
"I suppose." Thunderclash watches Ricochet circle the room, obviously more interested in the murals than the ancient relic. "Though I thought that Nova Prime, at least, had possessed it."
"Are you disappointed?"
"I don't know."
Trailbreaker scuffs his ped against the floor. He's half turned from the relic, arm crossed, but Thunderclash can't read his expression in Nyon's odd lighting. He's one of Orion's officers, he remembers, a mech who'd accompanied Orion to Earth, who had fought in the Last Battle before the armistice. "I'm not. What have the Prime's ever done for us? Get us into war, that's what, making stupid rules and convincing everyone that they were right." His engine rumbles, just a touch too loud to be idling. "Functionist, that's what that thing is."
"Didn't realize you were a reformer," Minerva mutters.
"Just because my badge was red doesn't mean I was a shapist."
Thunderclash pastes a pleasant look on himself. "And whatever we were before we were on the team, what we are now is a team, yeah? The Matrix is a fascinating relic, Rodimus, and a treasure from our history long past. Thank you for showing it to us. I don't think any of us would have ever seen it otherwise, Prime or not."
"Cool! Then how do you mechs feel about seeing out naturally occurring acid pools…"
–
Miverva waits until their guide is distracted to pull up the group comm. ::So is that what we're here for?::
::This is a study and retrieval mission only, Minerva. We're here for our team and their information::
::Then is that what they were sent here for?::
:: … It is possible, yes, that the original team was sent to see if rumors of Nyon's possession of the Matrix was true. A Prime would destabilize the new government.::
::So search and destroy.:: Ricochet cuts in. ::Of course. What else would my brother go off for?::
::Jazz volunteered.:: Trailbreaker steps too close to a wall, shoulder banging hard into the corner. The world around them creaks, the building singing out in sharp noises like a record skipping beat. ::He wasn't like you, wasn't a coward. He knew to follow up the likely leads.::
::And now Stepford Barbie's probably got him tied up in basement somewhere::
::Rodimus has been a perfectly polite host.:: Odd, Thunderclash doesn't say, But good. Giving any ground to the racer would be losing to him. ::And Jazz is likely perfectly fine, and looking for a way back up to the surface. We've only got access to shortwave comms. He could still be out there.::
::You said there were monsters outside the city limits.::
::They don't seem to like light. They don't bother the city. Your brother would realize that.::
Ricochet hurries into the next room. ::So are we going to steal it?::
::The Matrix? No. We know it's here now. That should be enough for command.::
::But if the 'Cons -::
::The NAILs. Us 'Cons aren't too unhappy with how things are turning out for us.::
::But if someone wanted to cause as much chaos as possible, they have the means to do it right here. And no offense to Rodimus, but if we've found it, then so have tons of other people. So will tons of other people.::
::We still can't steal it. We'd be the first people he thought of.::
:::Then we do it on our way out.:: Minerva, thin hands skittering through the air like a pianist plying a phantom, frantic melody, hums. ::But they're not even using it. What do they need it for down here?::
There are lots of things Thunderclash could say to that, none of them with grace, but he limits himself to simple disappointment. Minerva is a medic brought up in war; she recycles with vigor. ::We shouldn't exceed the bounds of our mission.::
::And whose to say that they didn't intend for us to finish Alpha's team mission when we got here? Sounds like just the sort of slag Prowl would pull, not telling you everything and getting pissed when you've not finished the job like he wanted.::
Thunderclash grimaces, but more for the acknowledgement that Ricochet is right than any sense of discontent. Prowl had done that during the war, and peace hadn't softened his proclivities. They'd needed him hard, and harsh, but it left Thunderclash in situations like this: making a choice he wouldn't have agreed to because Prowl hadn't given him the choice to say no.
He could still say no.
::We take the Matrix, and we have to leave. We can't move until we're absolutely sure we're done here.::
::So we find Alpha team first.:: Ricochet bounces ahead of them. ::We aren't leaving without my brother.::
The plan settles between them with the declaration. Thunderclash hadn't realized the rising tensions until they've already broken. ::We find the Alpha team, first.::
If all else fails, he knows, then getting his mechs home has to be his first priority.
#
Despite their newfound goal, the reality of Nyon allows no actual planning to take place. The city is a maze work of neon lights under an eternal night, and simply navigating the city and its people becomes their first pressing priority.
Trailbreaker takes point on organizing an effort to map what they can of the city and its surrounding territory. He keeps his voice jovial, but Thunderclash can read the tension in his shoulders, the way he hesitates over his building map like a mech handed a puzzle with too many pieces for the picture he's trying to make.
"I don't understand," Thunderclash says. Their nascent map is spread over the low table at the center of their suite's front room. Vast swathes of it are black, not yet mapped out; more are a jumble of overlapping shapes, the edges just barely aligned. "It's a mess."
"And that's the problem." Trailbreaker gestures towards a jumble of red over green shapes. "When Ricochet and I mapped out the same area of the city, we had two different reports. We're both trained scouts. These maps should be accurate, but they're a mess." He points towards the edges of the sections, where the shapes smooth out and begin to align with each other; a touchstone of similarity. "And they're not different parts of the map, or misaligned. They're just different." He makes a frustrated noise. "It's like the city is changing right out under us."
Thunderclash frowns. "It's hard to orient ourselves so deep below ground." He spreads his hand over one of the dark sections of the map. "You can't know that you're retreading the same territory."
"Are you calling my training into doubt?"
"I'm saying that we haven't prepared for this city before, and what is required to navigate it."
Trailbreaker taps the edge of the map, considering. Resentment burn in the underpinnings of his field, a background radiation of quiet rage like the sun edging bright under the fog. "We can try again. There might be a map available somewhere in the city. What we have found is that there's very little of the city that matches up to the records we found in Iacon's archives."
"Rodimus told me that the city was extensively rebuilt after the fall. It's unlikely that much of anything is the same."
"Then ask Rodimus for a map."
Ricochet scoffs. "What's the point of bringing the energon guzzler if he can't do his job?"
"Ricochet!"
Minerva, quiet, sinks further back into her corner. At least Hot Shot is missing. Thunderclash can feel the weight of the city all around them, bearing down on their helms.
"It's true! He fuels so fragging much we might as well've brought a convoy to carry his rations!"
"That is enough, Ricochet!" The roar of his voice is loud enough to rattle the windows. Loud enough to make even the 'con flinch back, to startle Minerva back into her corner. A bubble rises in his chest, thick walled, and he swallows it down like a mouthful of vomit. "I'm sorry, Ricochet," he says. "I shouldn't have yelled." He drags his hand down his face, grimacing into his palm. "But we're down here together, and we're only going to make it out of here together. We can't fight."
There are hesitant nods all around. Minerva fiddles with her fingers, scratching at the edges of her fingertips. "So … the map?" Her voice is small, pitched oddly like she can't imagine possible speaking up.
"… I'll talk to Rodimus. One of the issues we're having with the map is that we're new, and we can't track where we are on it. We don't need a map of the city; we need to know the fastest route from the temple to the city's exit. That requires less of us." He taps his finger against the blackest swathe of the map - the area between the Acropolis and the fissure. "Here. This is all we need." Light glitches gold-white static under his touch. "Once we know this area better, we can spread out into the tunnels. I doubt Rodimus would follow us out to the surface. I'll ask him for a tour of the city."
They break.
He watches his team scatter, Ricochet out the window, Minerva slinking past his bulk and into the hallway, while Trailbreaker concentrates too hard on breaking down the map before the maid sweeps in and sees it. Thunderclash watches this with a cool gaze, and he doesn't move until Trailbreaker has finished his slow, methodical work and left the suit.
An expectation has been set; he’s required to fulfill it.
He finds himself at the edge of the city proper after hours on the tangled roads.
Nyon is quiet. Thunderclash hadn't realized it the night they'd entered the city, and their time in the city had been hectic in its oddness.
Now, standing above Nyon's shattered buildings, he hears very little. He knows the sounds of a city at night. He was raised in the midst of Iacon's grand tangle of lives, where so many sparks pressed together that the rub of them was a great hum of movement. Nyon, in the dark of their all encompassing night, is still.
Rodimus finds him sitting on the ledge, legs dangling over the city. Thunderclash glances up from his examination of a mural painted on the wall above his helm, the fractured image little more than a smear of colors. It is, he thinks, the story of Prima realizing her role as the First Prime. He traces the tips of his fingers over the line of her painted frame, the ink faded by time. They come away coated in soot.
"I didn't expect you to wander this far," Rodimus says. Thunderclash watches as he gives a wide berth to one of the rocky outcroppings. The shape is vaguely mechlike; he wonders if Rodimus is superstitious, avoiding stone that could be Primus given form. In some of the older legends, so old that Thunderclah remembers bare remnants, mechs of stone were Primus's vessels among his people. Their god has always been hungry for a sense of connection with his creations. "The rest of your team are in the Acropolis, talking to my people."
"I have time to talk to them," Thunderclash says. "But a city at night is a different world. I only get to see it for the first time once."
"Is different from your cities above?" He turns, gaze sweeping out over the great crevasse where his city had fallen. It's a sea of sunken stars and faint, dying phophorous paint. "I don't remember the first time I saw this."
"Then maybe this is the first time you've ever really looked. I don't think I could ever forget something like this. Your home is beautiful."
"Only the parts you're looking at." He heaves a great, gusty sigh, the sort of sound that makes internal vents rattle. It brings to mind the divas Thunderclash had met the few times he'd been invited backstage for Academy plays - personality too big for their coding, for their frames. "But it's a place to live."
Thunderclash thinks of walking around the question held, clenched, behind his teeth. But what would be the point? Rodimus already knows they're here to ask questions. If he leaves without an answer he'll never get a real chance to ask again. Not when the part he plays is so encompassing. Here, now, Thunderclash can see the mech behind the role. "Why not leave?"
"For the surface?"
"For anywhere. There are miles of tunnels here."
"Kind of rude to ask, don't you think?"
"You don't strike me as a mech bothered by someone asking rude questions."
"I guess not." He pauses, biting at his lip, fangs digging indents into the mesh. "Guess I figured we couldn't. The surface's war - that was one. We didn't want to fight. And the tunnels aren't safe."
"The cave-ins." The sway of the rocks under ped, the sound of the stone groaning above his helm, are only memories caught in a loop, left to be purged during his next defrag. He knows, but he can still feel it, hear it, frame tensing at only the thought of it.
"Something like that. A lot of things can get you dead down here."
"And your city fell a long time ago. Do you remember, before?"
"Better than most. I was just a kid. A kid and an insurrectionist. A Nyan separatist. Read a lot of Decepticon manifestos, before I realized they wouldn't save us any more than the Autobots would."
"The war's won. You've been found again."
"The war's won, but that doesn't mean we'd be safe." He rubs his thumb over a bit of stone outcropping. The paint smudges under his hand, pink staining his plating like old energon. "We're Nyon." He turns, and that pink thumb smudges warm paint over the red symbol on Thunderclash's chest. His hand is blazingly warm. Thunderclash can still feel it as he pulls away. "And our city fell because of the mechs who wore this symbol."
"The council. The senate."
"The Prime."
"Sentinel is dead. Megatron killed him. Orion is -"
"It doesn't matter if your people don't have a Prime, 'Clash. They never needed on in the first place, not to do the worst of things."
"Your people don't need to come with me. You could come to the surface, you could see for yourself -"
"We're not talking about this. Not now, not here." That mouth - that smiling, brilliant mouth - pulls into a deep grimace. "You should head back into the city. It's not safe to be away from the lights."
"I didn't know that."
"We forgot to tell you. Everyone here knows. It would be like telling you to vent." The stone above their helms groans. Thunderclash would mistake it for another phantom tremor, the sound so faint his sensors nearly failed to pick it up, but for Rodimus's suddenly tense frame. "Run. Now!"
Thunderclash pulls back, away from the sound, from the world suddenly breaking apart around him. Rocks fall. They tumble with the groans of a dying titan, falling into the crevasse and stacking, heavy, in the open air between them and the city.
Dust puffs up in swollen plumes of grey and blue. It sticks like concrete dust to their vents.
And then the only light left is the smeared pink of the broken mural.
The city is gone. The dust settles slowly.
Thunderclash feels out the new space left to them. He feels his bulk pressing against the walls on either side, helm tilted against the ceiling now bearing down on it. He can't stretch his legs all the way; it leaves him hunched over and aching. Cool air wisps against his back.
"Rodimus?" He rasps. He'd inhaled a bucket of dust when the ceiling fell on them. He feels it all now, rattling around in his vocoder, scraping against delicate components. He can't see through the velvet dark of the cave.
"Alive." Blue optics flicker online. "But we should get moving, if we can. A second cave in's usually not far behind."
"There's an opening behind me." Thunderclash slowly shuffles backwards. He uncurls slowly as the floor under him shifts from rough stone to something smoother. "I think it opened up a passage."
"Part of the old city. It all fell when the city fell." Rodimus presses up against him, close enough to feel the heat of his frame, to have the blue of his optics become their only source of light. "I think it's part of the original Acropolis."
Thunderclash invents slowly, frame straightening. The tunnel is darker than space ever was - there are no stars below ground. Even the glowstick only shows the outline of broken walls and half collapsed ceiling. "Is there a way back into the main cavern from here?"
"Probably." Rodimus's voice is tense, the word drawn short. "And we'll want to take it."
Thunderclash starts shuffling down the narrow hallway. He stumbles as his ped hits open air - the blank wall of stone that had once been the edge of the crevasse is gone. His frame lurches back and to the side, nothing to keep him from falling, and for a spark churning moment he thinks that he's going to fall -
But then his ped hits broken stone, knee deep in the new space between the ground in front and behind him. "I'm fine, I'm fine. There's a gap in the floor. It's not too deep, but mind your step."
"Twist an ankle?"
"No." He tests the give in the stone. His ped wiggles in the space, caught at an awkward angle. He feels the joint in his knee groan as he twists, toe scraping against stone in the sharp, high whine of rending metal. "But I don't think I came out of that misstep unscathed." He can feel hot, wet energon dripping down his ped. "But I don't think we have the light or time to assess the damage here." He shifts, swinging one leg over the gap, until he's standing on the other side. The ceiling looms just over his helm. "But I can put weight on it. We're fine to keep moving."
Rust won't settle in fast enough to worry about, and he knows it's not deep enough to make him worry about energon loss. The pain barely registers.
"Then we keep on," Rodimus says. There's a firmness to his voice that tells Thunderclash that they would be moving on no matter the state of his ped. He can't say he doesn't understand it.
There are different fields of war. Rodimus, he thinks, sounds like a general on the ground.
Thunderclash continues to walk backwards, each step preceded by him carefully nudging his ped back, testing the ground. There's no more gaps, only fissures, sharp, empty lines that spew cool air against his peds.
They walk for almost a half mile by his reckoning before there's space enough for him to turn around. They're quiet as they walk; Thunderclash because he needs to concentrate, and Rodimus for reasons that Thunderclash can't fathom. The mech hadn't seemed the quiet sort before, The lack of chatter is disturbing.
"What sort of place is this?" Thunderclash asks. The ground underped has shifted from solvent-smoothed stone to worn tile. In the light of the glowstick they glitter like a radioactive green sky. "The old Acropolis."
"Dunno. We used to hide here as kids." He twitches left, hand warm on Thunderclash's hip. "Take this hallway. That one leads to a prayer room. Dead end, unless we can squeeze our way down the trash shoot. I haven't fit since I was ten."
"And I'm much larger than you." He shuffles left. "What makes you think there's an opening ahead?"
There's a pause. He can feel Rodimus tensing, the sudden static in his field. "Because of what's here with us."
Impatience wells like a bubble in his chest, small, easily ignored. "And what's that?"
Rodimus moves slowly. He wraps a hand around Thunderclash's thick wrist, gently pushing at it until Thunderclash moves. Green light from the glowstick, faint and failing against the swallowing dark of the tunnel, washes against the wall.
It takes him a moment to see the shape against the tunnel wall.
The space between its plated exoskeleton is pale. The armor is grey and glittering, like dead metal washed in solvents. There are no optics - but then nothing from this deep would need optics. The head, narrow and wedged, are a blank space. It has two sharp mandibles around a odd, circular mouth. A long segmented body. Legs jut out from its hard sides, pointed at the tip, joints bent oddly to allow it to skitter over rock and stone.
Along its back, like a frame not fully realized, a protoform half formed in the primordial soup of a hotspot, the rictus shape of a mech rises out of dead grey plating. Its arms are thin, the hands at the ends missing half their fingers, twisted into sharply curved claws. The legs are molted stumps, as if at one point they had existed but the vorns below ground had caused them to recede into the thing it had become.
"Don't scream. Don't move too fast. It won't react if you pretend you can't see it."
There's a face on it, just behind the neck joint. It's half melted into shapeless lumps, but he can make out optics, a mouth, denta. It's screaming in silence.
"What is it, Rodimus?"
"Does it matter? It's here."
"And so is my team. What is it?"
"A predator." Rodimus drops his hand, and without his support the glow light wavers, the creature falling in and out of sight. "And not the most dangerous one down here, so we should keep moving. They don't like light, and they don't like open spaces. The sooner we're back in the city the better."
"Why didn't you tell us they were here?"
Rodimus makes a derisive noise. "Because you're scientists. You'd go poking things you shoudn't and bring them into the city. If you'd stayed where I'd told you we'd be fine."
"Except for the monsters skittering around in the dark."
"There are always monsters in the dark. We should keep moving before worse shows up."
"And what's worse?"
"Something actually capable of killing a mech your size. Something worse than a corpseroach."
They keep walking.
The old Acropolis is a twisting mazework of hallways made worse by ancient collapses and fresh cave-ins. He can hear them, now, skittering along the walls, a thousand legs attached to a thousand twisted frames.
The energon on his ped has gone tacky and cool before Rodimus speaks again. In the dim, green bruised black of the hallway his words have a weight to them that Thunderclash barely recognizes. "They showed up a few years after the city fell. We think they were living off of the same energon source we were, and we starved them out. They didn't look like this, at first. That took time. But they were hungry, and we here. We learned to stay out of the light."
"Why do they look like -" He doesn't have the words for it. They stick to his teeth, tumbling into one another until his mouth feels full of nothing but bad ideas.
"We are what we eat. And they ate us."
"You said they weren't dangerous."
"They're not. But mechs die, and we had a lot of corpses to deal with."
There are entire planets whose only enhabitants are Cybertronian corpses. Thunderclash feels nothing but a dull sort of horror at the idea that the mech he'd seen melted into the bug's frame was once someone Rodimus knew.
The skittering follows them. The world, pressed tight around them, rumbles. The threat of another cave-in makes them hurry.
"Take a left here."
The city comes into view like the turning of the moon, a sliver at a time. The light coming off the city is brilliant, a kaliedescope rainbow cast into the distance; with each step towards it the sound of skittering needle-feet fades.
Thunderclash doesn't pretend like he isn't relieved. He rolls his shoulders and feels the lack of the world pressing quite so heavy down on him.
Rodimus a beacon of heat next to him. "… I guess after a walk in the dark, it does look better."
"I think what you're feeling is relief."
–
No one had realized they had gone.
Thunderclash hesitates at the edge of the suite his team had been granted. He can hear their voices through the door, muffled and pitchy with overcharge.
"They'd be fine if you left them for the night." Rodimus says. He's come up behind Thunderclash, close enough that he can feel the heat roiling off his frame like the heatsink of a galaxy-class ship, close enough that the edges of their frame almost touch. His hand brushes the side of Thunderclash's hip, broad, scarred palm resting there. "Just the night."
He can hear Ricochet cackling. The edge of Minerva's voice as she tells a bawdy joke. There's sunlight in that room, the kind of joy that grows between comrades. The weight of command crashes down on his shoulders. He won't be welcome there. They would open the door, and his presence would sweep through the room, extinguishing what little joy they'd managed to eke out on this mission. He can't do this to them.
After hours in the dark of the ancient Acropolis it's the easiest thing in the universe to step back into Rodimus's waiting embrace.