Loyalty.
Loyalty is everything.
Well; one third of everything, actually.
Everything, you see, is the Cause. And the Cause have three cores, three concepts which make out its whole.
Supremacy is one. We are superior to all other beings, and thus we are their masters. Law of nature. One part of the Cause.
Ambition is the second. Ambition for the whole, ambition for the Cause. Be ambitious for yourself if it helps the grand design. Another part of the Cause.
The last is loyalty. Loyalty to the Cause, and to your comrades, and, most of all, to your leader. Your leader is the Cause. The definitive part of the Cause.
Those three things I tell myself. Whenever we fail; when I must save someone from His temper; when I am blamed and hurt. These things I tell myself.
For He is the Cause.
He is supreme, and we should bow before Him.
He holds our ambition, and we are ambitious for Him.
He is the Cause, and we grand Him our loyalty. Unconditionally.
Loyalty to Him.
He trusts no one, but I will show Him.
My loyalty will heal Him.
My loyalty will help Him.
My loyalty will open His eyes.
He will save us all; lead us to glory, be well again. And me by His side, in the shadows, loyal.
Loyalty is everything.
My loyalty will heal Him, and He'll lead us to glory.
If I keep telling myself that, I may even come to believe it.
I had a friend once.
He was my best friend.
He grew old, I did not; but he was my friend; but he was not. I was confused.
Then I did something stupid.
Then I did something inevitable.
Then I lost him.
Everytime our optics meet, his glow bright for a moment. A moment and a lifetime; of hurt, betrayal, guilt, confusion, hate. He suffers. I can't help him.
Then they turn indifferent, cold. That hurts most of all, for I know that look; that resignation. The thought that his life will always be this way. He suffers. I can't help him.
I know, I've seen, how those thoughts penetrate his very core. He's turning bitter; he thinks that no one will ever be there for him; he seems all alone without me. Indeed, he suffers. And I can't help him.
I do my job, my daily wont. Sometimes I can even forget.
But, mind you, not for long.
It always comes back.
I just want it to end.
I just want peace.
I had a friend once.
I just want him back.
I am lonely. That's all I can say.
Don't look at me like that!
Bloody fool...
I am lonely.
Sure, I hide it well behind a wall of bravado, but still.
Even when I'm with my comrades, I am lonely.
They're laughing, frolicking, being generally happy, and I am lonely.
There are times when I'm fighting, waiting, always with my comrades, yet so far away, when I just want to break down and go into a fit of hysteria. I want this war to end! It just makes me more lonely.
I hear the fleshlings have something they call crying. It sounds immensely practical.
I want to cry, too. But you need someone whose shoulder to cry on, right? And I can't go past my pride for it; I don't dare to open. What if they laugh; what if they sneer; what if they don't even give damn? I dare not to cry. And so, I am lonely.
And I go on in my day, lonely, longing, watching, waiting.
Hiding behind my solid wall of arrogance.
Who wants to befriend the great me?
They shall be rejected!
They'll laugh at me.
I couldn't bare that.
And so, I am lonely.
We all wear masks.
At least, so I'm told.
I cannot see these masks.
Only my own.
When I look, I see their souls. And they take off their masks to show me. I stand to see their core, and I see beyond the masks.
How simple their masks are. I find myself thinking, why do they not make them so much more obscure, so much harder to penetrate? But no answers are forthcoming.
I myself wear masks; but no one comes to remove mine.
And those who did I feared to let in.
What interest could they have in me?
What reasons to see beyond the mask?
A trick? A truth? Who to trust?
I trust hardly anyone.
And I think it's because I cannot trust myself.
And when I look beyond my screeching paranoia, and its insistent warning, and tries to remove these masks of mine, I am frightened.
My fuel runs cold.
My pump stops for a second.
My calmness cracks.
For then I find that my worst fears have come true.
And I cannot remove the masks at all.
'We shall victor!'
'We shall save!'
'We shall protect!'
Thus spake thy master, the Grand Optimus Prime.
And we follow, without question, without hesitation, without argument.
And, I fear now, without cause.
He speaks of freedom, and of truth and mercy. We give our lives and battle on in a hopeless war on a planet we do not know. This is our Cause. Is it worth it?
The humans mean nothing to me. And from what I see, we mean nothing to them! Do they offer us energy in return for our favours? Do they do more than complain of damage when we save some factory? Do they even seem to care?
Yet, we fight on.
Yes, we fight on.
Freedom, after all, is the right of all sentient beings.
Thus spake Primus. Thus spake Prime.
It has, I fear, degenerated into a game of tug-war.
They pull this way, we pull that way.
And Prime cajoles us on.
What for, I want to ask. Why, I want to ask.
But I do not; for if I did, he would look disappointed. He's very good at that.
And he'd tell me that we do it for good.
So calmly.
So knowingly.
So damn smugly.
Yes, we fight on.
Thus spake Prime.