Chapter Text
“Blur?”
His voice reverberated strangely through the viscous yellow liquid.
“Override? Swerve?”
Mere talking was an effort, physical motion more so. Not just because of the gelatinous amber fluid surrounding him, but because of the hardy technorganic seaweed looped around his arms, legs and chassis.
“Anybody?”
Rodimus fought down the panic, the feeling of isolation. This wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Okay, so the ship had broken up in the atmosphere and shattered into a thousand ruby chunks. His comrades, like himself, had been flung from the ruined, rapidly fallen husk and deposited Primus-knew-where across a strange world. None of this was a reason to be fearful. Not at all. Especially not for an Autobot.
Those mechanical piranhas rapidly swimming toward him, however, were a fantastic reason to freak right out.
He forced himself to calm down. Utter terror ill befit a once-and-future bearer of the Creation Matrix. Being digested by extra-terrestrial fish would look even worse on his resume. Tow-Line had already ragged on him enough for one vorn.
As the piranhas drew closer, Rodimus shunted a small supply of Energon into the windshields beneath his forearms. The gold-tinted sheets – harder than diamond – began to hum slightly as they morphed into dangerous vibro-blades. Suddenly missing his Prime-mode’s Energon dagger, Rodimus slashed at the unhelpful seaweed and filleted two or three piranhas that drew too close. He lashed out at two more, cleaving one in half, before the rest of the school got the message and took off.
As he powered down the blades and stepped from the tangled mess, he thought he heard a faint voice calling his name, screaming for help. The young Autobot transformed into a red-and-orange sports car and made for the source of the sound. He strained his audio scanners, trying to pick up a trace of that pain-wracked voice.
There – about half a kilometre away. Was it Swerve? Maybe Blur? Had the piranhas turned to them instead?
He concentrated and manifested his Force Chip – a red disc that boosted his abilities tenfold – then willed it to slam into a port in his centre rear panelling. The change was instant. Small Energon wings leaped from his bodywork and snapped into place, cleaving the “water” and increasing his speed. Retro thrusters fired, dissolving the treacle-like fluid around him and he hurtled forward.
It wasn’t the piranhas. It was worse.
To all intents and purposes it was a squid – albeit a mechanical copy of the Earth creature – boasting segmented limbs and small, cruel eyes. He could see Override, Blur and Swerve, clutched in its tentacles. As he looked closer, he blanched – each of his comrades in a different state of disrepair or dismemberment.
Choking down a furious growl, Rodimus lifted his right arm, drew careful bead on the squid and fired. Triplet bolts of electricity arced through the fluid and crashed onto the beast, making it squeal with pain and surprise. The current carried across limbs, jumping the gap between each writhing appendage. In moments, the squid was ensnared in something far worse than seaweed and only to eager to drop the pieces of Rodimus’ friends. Now, its rage was directed solely toward him.
Just the way Rodimus wanted it.
The squid wrapped an arm around the Autobot and he let himself be pulled in, closer to the beast’s horrible maw. Halfway there, Rodimus reactivated the left-hand vibro-blade and hacked into the thick metal, forcing the beast to release him. A second arm caught him again, dragging him further away from safety but right to the spot he needed to be. Finally close enough, Rodimus fired a searing blast from the vents on his right forearm and detonated the squid’s eye, causing it to howl in agony. It dropped him again, permanently this time, and retreated in a cloud of black ink. Rodimus shielded his eyes and, when the pungent substance finally dispersed, he saw…
… the ruby walls of Override’s star ship.
Grunting, Rodimus uncrossed his stocky legs and lay flat on the floor. He’d been meditating in the empty chamber too long, this time… his attempts to contact and commune with the distant Creation Matrix had turned into some kind of weird combat training exercise. Maybe he’d gone too deep into the artifact, accessed a memory belonging to a now-deceased Transformer, and merged it with his own concerns. Or had a glimpse of the future. Maybe.
He stared at the ceiling. Like everything in the ship… everything on Speedia… it was red. It made for a nice change from the crystalline blue of anything to do with the Creation Matrix, and the purple/white of the Vector Sigma chamber, and especially the obsidian depths of Unicron’s singularity. “Nice ship for a short trip,” he chuckled to himself, “but I wouldn’t want to own one. Rather be back in the Axalon.”
Ahh, who are you kidding? asked a voice inside his head. And it was right – he was joking to cover up his sense of failure. Learning, vorns early, his destiny… that he was to be the next Prime, successor to Optimus and leader of the Transformer race… was humbling and spirit-crushing. In his brief stint as Autobot leader he’d almost gotten his team killed, saving them only through personal action. And while that was the sort of thing a “chosen one” could do, it didn’t make for great leadership skills. He needed a lot more wisdom than he currently possessed if he was going to one day take the reigns.
That meant understanding the Matrix, even though it wasn’t in his chest cavity anymore. He was still linked to it, he’d found, irrespective of distance. Idly, he wondered if Ultra Magnus felt the same tether, given he was one half of the binary Spark, the Omega Prime. In any event, Rodimus felt the only way to hone his new abilities – and master his new, sleeker body form – was to follow the ancient path of the Matrix Templars.
By reactivating the Underbase, the Autobots had learned a lot more about the venerable order. Forerunners to the famed Tyrestian Vanguard, the Templars believed all Transformers had a dedicated hard-link to the Matrix and could call on its powers at any time. Such teachings were shunned by the more religious High Council – it favoured the election of a sole Prime to lead the race. Still, the Templars had more insight than their rivals… their leader was Alpha Trion, now recognised as the first Prime of the Cybertronian race.
Rodimus hoped that, by studying the Templar ways, he could better himself for the task ahead. His meditations, however, had given him little more than processor fragmentation, stiff hydraulics and weird visions of metal-eating fish. Maybe, he mused, it’s time I stopped thinking about “the power within” and stepped outside.
Well, perhaps not stepped. Like anything to do with the racing-obsessed planet of Speedia, the interior of the bullet-shaped ship was a network of roads, loops and chicanes. You didn’t walk to the bridge, you drove there. Rodimus transformed into his new vehicle mode – he loved it so much more than his former, boxy truck styling – and headed out of the chamber.
He drove up and around a spiraling freeway, marveling at the artificial gravity that kept him from soaring up and away. The roads connected all of the chambers – each built into the sides of the bullet – and intersected and twisted around each other through its hollow centre. The bridge was at the tip of the craft though, in truth, it did very little. Override, the former Queen of Speedia, had told them it was a projectile by nature as well as shape – it had to be fired at its destination and could do precious little to deviate from its course. Following the defeat of Unicron, Downshift had managed to cobble together a launcher capable of sending them all back to the racing world, with the promise someone would be by to “pick them up” when their mission had been completed.
Our mission, Rodimus thought, and shuddered. In saving our own world, and the entire universe, from a massive black hole, we damned Speedia.
The distant red planet was one of three settled by the original Transformers following the betrayal of Nemesis Prime. It had become home to the red Planet Key, a device that controlled gravity, inertia and had a limited effect on time itself. Combined with the unique atmosphere of Speedia, the artifact jump-started an evolutionary process that left all Transformers with sleek race-styled designs and an obsession with velocity.
Speedia’s culture was based around car racing, its factions of Autobots and Decepticons living in relative peace by expressing their aggression on the track. Even the planet’s leader was selected by racing – a true “first past the post” system. Until the arrival of the Cybertronian Autobots, that leader had been Override. Now, thanks to the victory that secured the Key for Optimus Prime’s team, the top ‘bot on Speedia was Rodimus’ best friend, Blur.
He shuddered again, wishing the story ended there. It didn’t – in fact, it got worse.
While on Speedia, the Planet Key had regulated the flow of time and gravity to enhance speedy Transformers. Once it had been removed, so too had its balancing effect – plunging the entire world into a crazed fast-forward. Falling victim to the radiation that had soaked into the soil and structures for millennia, time itself accelerated and swept the native population along. With their duly "elected" leader off-world, old resentments flared and conflict had begun. Years worth of warfare had been waged in the space of days, making total planetary annihilation a very real possibility within a quarter of a vorn.
At least, that’s what they’d been told.
Rodimus pulled into the bridge and braked hard. No one turned to look… they were all busy with their own ruminations. Blur, usually a streak of perpetual nervous motion, was slumped over a table and tapping a finger on the red Planet Key. It was a large, slightly translucent red disk. One half of it was edged with golden designs – similar to a car's dashboard – while the other tapered into a key-like shape. In the centre of the disk was a design, also silver, that looked like the needle on a speedometer, but actually represented lightning over Cybertron. Blur was tapping on the artifact so fast that the motion was soundless – the vibrations were at a pitch above the register of Rodimus’ audio sensors.
Swerve, Blur’s twin, sat a short distance away at a computer terminal. No doubt the keen metallurgist was boning up on the rocks and dirt of Speedia, getting in research time while he could. Given his success with Key radiation on Animatros, the bestial world, Swerve hoped to permanently reverse the damage done to Speedia’s environment… just in case they needed to “borrow” the Key ever again.
A fast but not especially skilful driver, Swerve would do well on Speedia… with a little help from a friend. Incinerator was propped against the base of the console, optics shut down for his rest cycle. The Mini-con was the worst kind of insufferable braggart – the kind who backed up his boasts with panache and true ability. Alone, Incinerator was one of the fastest land-based Transformers. Combined with Swerve, they became Blur’s near-equal. Their Powerlinx mode also gave them flight capabilities – and on this mission, any tactical advantage was welcome.
Then there was Override. She stood at the very tip of the bridge, gazing out the main view screen with her hands clasped behind her back. Rodimus still wasn’t quite sure if he could trust the pink-and-white femme, who was actually one of the original 13 Transformers created by Primus. She and Blur had some kind of strange relationship going, but that wasn’t enough to give her a free pass. After all, she’d outright threatened them the last time they’d been on Speedia, then kicked all of their skid plates back on Cybertron.
Before they’d used the Key to close the black hole, Override had attacked them in the city of Iacon. She’d been ferocious, almost crazed, and had decimated half the Autobot ranks in her unending push for the Key.
“You have no idea of the mess you left on my world,” she’d spat at Rodimus. “There was no need for war, for bitterness or indignation, because there was always another race and another chance to come out on top. No Key meant no way for a lesser ‘bot to step up and take control. Our democracy was missing its cornerstone, and so crumbled. Dirt Boss rallied the Decepticons and they took up arms, attacking the Pits and laying siege to Accel City. We Autobots had no choice but to fight back, to create weapons of our own. Now half the planet lies in ruins!”
She’d turned to their side and helped destroy Unicron, of course, but his doubts still lingered. Privately, Red Alert and Downshift had also expressed disbelief at her story. They doubted any force, Planet Keys included, could warp the fabric of time itself – especially in such a localised way. Grimlock had disagreed, pointing to the effects of radiation on Animatros… ambient energy that had almost killed his entire team. Ever the pragmatist, Optimus Prime had insisted a team return with Override to assess the situation and restore order and, ever the adventurous hot-head, Rodimus had volunteered to lead the mission.
Selfishly, it was perfect timing for Rodimus. It gave him time to explore the Templar ways, a place to push the limits of his new, reformatted body… and it gave him distance from Arcee. He and the femme warrior had long shared an understanding, but it had been strained by the war and the presence of Thundercracker. The ex-Decepticon – whom Rodimus did not trust at all – had made his feelings about Arcee clear, and it seemed she shared them. That left Rodimus alone, wondering if he should take a stand to win back her affections… or if he should even try, given his future destiny.
Did a leader-born have the right to pursue a relationship when he’d have to give so much of himself to his troops? More concerning, should a Transformer even be thinking this way, or was Rodimus slipping too far into the ways of their human friends?
“Almost there,” Override said suddenly. “Almost home… what’s left of it.”
Blur was by her side in less than a second, fidgeting nervously with the Key. Swerve gently tapped Incinerator on the head and the Mini-con cycled awake with a gruff bark. “Who’m I racing?” he demanded, a belligerent smile spreading over his face plate. Rodimus ignored him and walked to the view screen, more than ready for some answers.
The last time he’d seen Speedia from orbit, it had looked like a paradise. Red clouds had wreathed the planet, giving it a ruby glow. The soil itself had been ochre-red and criss-crossed with mile upon mile of impossible roads. Freeways that twisted and turned impossibly had jutted out and around land formations, cutting through mountains and bridging valleys. Overpasses had joined underpasses that linked tunnels that connected to suspension bridges. Any breaks in the road network seemed to be jumps, offering a driver a thousand potential places to land... and keep driving.
Now… there was nowhere left to drive.
The breaks in the road weren’t jumps anymore – they were battle damage. Massive chunks of asphalt had been detonated, incinerated or simply blown out of the freeways and overpasses. Scattered, uniform holes in straight-ways had been created by fields of land mines, while support struts had been slashed and burned. The land had turned a dusty brown, the skies a thick grey with only wispy hints of their former crimson hue. The decimated planet seemed deserted.
“Is everyone dead already?” Incinerator snorted crassly.
“Notifyouputyourmouthinneutralandyouropticsondoublespeed,” Blur snapped back. “Lookalittlecloser, youidiot.”
Rodimus slipped his visor down, seeing through Matrix-enhanced optics. Sure enough, the roads were choked with cars. They were ramming into each other, gouging at tyres with spiked weapons and trying to force their foes off the road. Here and there were dotted Transformers in their robot modes, snapping off shots from small pistols or firing massive barrages from large, double-barrelled cannons. Perplexed, Rodimus retracted the visor… once again, the roads were seemingly empty.
“Invisibility?” he asked. “Stealth technology?”
“Super-speed,” Swerve said grimly. “They’re moving so fast they’re invisible to the naked optic. I can’t even see them properly – I can detect energy signatures due to the massive amounts of heat they’re generating, but nothing more.”
“Sounds like my kinda place,” Incinerator guffawed.
“Ireallyreallyreallyreallyreallywishyouweren’tneededforthismission,” Blur snarled. “Youjusthavenoideaoftheseriousnessofallofthis, do you?”
Rodimus reached out a hand to his friend’s shoulder. He knew Blur blamed himself for the chaos on Speedia. He’d been rightfully elected their leader, their king, and had instantly taken off with their most prized possession. The gentle, nearly pacifistic Transformer was carrying the sins of a race within his own Spark. Rodimus knew the feeling… the terror of impending responsibility. Maybe by helping Blur calm “his” world, Rodimus could start to find a way to tackle his own destiny.
“I don't know how long it will take for the Key to reassert the proper flow of time,” Override said regally. Rodimus noticed she didn’t stop to gloat about being right. “So we’re going to have to improvise. If Blur uses the Planet Key, I’ll use the Force Chip you Autobots brought here in the first place. Rodimus can manifest his own, so the three of us should at least be as fast those affected by the time-slip. Swerve and Incinerator, linked up, will be slower but should at least be able to do something to help.”
“Terrific,” Swerve moaned. “Why is it every time I set foot on an alien world, I’m at an instant disadvantage?”
“Maybe the universe hates you,” Incinerator quipped.
Override turned to Rodimus. “Do you approve of that plan… commander?”
He winced at her tone. Override had made no secret, back at the Decagon, of her dissatisfaction with the command structure. In her opinion Blur should be in charge, whether he wanted to or not, because he was the king of Speedia. Optimus had assured her the proper protocols would be followed when necessary but, in his opinion, Rodimus was the logical choice for team leader. The snipes and sarcasm began immediately.
Rodimus sighed and nodded. “Let’s do it,” he said, “And let’s do it the old fashioned way.”
He and Blur grabbed their weapons and made for the side hatch. Swerve and Incinerator transformed, the Mini-con slotting into a hatch just above his rear exhaust. The Autobot’s sides flipped down, becoming wings. Blur changed shape and summoned the Planet Key from subspace – the first time he’d done so – and yelped slightly as he, too, sprouted wings. “Thatwasunexpected,” he said quietly. “Usefulthough.”
The hatch opened and the twins accelerated into the atmosphere, firing afterburners and soaring down to the surface. Staying in robot mode, Rodimus leaped out after them. Red energy swirled around his shoulders as his Force Chip coalesced, then slammed into a vent on his back. Clear Energon wings sprouted from his rear spoiler and activated, allowing him to glide down through the grubby clouds… toward whatever awaited them.