So I've had this idea floating around for the past few months and aside from work school and other obligations, have been compiling. I play a little bit with canon happenings and facts which will become more apparent as it goes on. This is the first little bit, let me know what you think.

As always nothing but the OCs are mine.

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The Archivist Part 1

Erudite had worked in the archives for vorns. His apprenticeship had been under a truly miserable femme known as Austere, her claim to fame was being so horrifically unpleasant that not even the bravest Prime or Lord Protector would dare darken her door. It was simply so deceiving due to her appearance.

Austere was a gentle glitter-rose colour with white accents and rare green optics. She was extremely delicate, her features looked to be carved from glass, with a thin olfactory sensor and soft mouthplates. Her optics were oversized, giving her a constant slightly surprised/amazed expression on her faceplates. She was taller than the average femme as well as larger than many mechs and built with thin, frail limbs that gave her the illusion of floating as she moved, making her look lighter than air, and as graceful as any flier.

This was a dangerous misconception.

The femme was a master of several different forms of combat and was known to toss shuttle-class mechs out the Archive doors, if it so suited her. Not to mention that merely hearing the femme talk was a true test of courage. With such a light frame, it was expected she would have a light gentle voice.

This was not the case.

Whenever the femme spoke, it was the equivalent of listening to the screech of metal on metal, overlapped with the screams of her previous victims. It was a guttural rasping sound, that made it seem like she would blow out her vocal processing unit with every noise she made. Nothing was more terrifying then suddenly hearing her speak from behind you. The femme moved silently and seemed to teleport around to loom as needed. A common theory was that she had a portal to the Pit from whence she came and would use it to travel around the Archives. Honestly, it was a valid theory when it came to that femme.

In short, Austere, was the bane of society. She was the Master of Cybertronian Knowledge, more commonly known as the Head Archivist, and very well known to the general public as the Sparkeater Supreme. By the time Erudite had been unfortunate enough to become her apprentice, she had terrifying the general population part of her existence down to an art. She had burned the desire to do archive work out of 27 different femmes and 19 different mechs. Normally these numbers would not be too outrageous over several decades, however, Austere, had insisted on going for, and shattering, the record. She had gone through nearly 50 apprentices in under half a vorn. She may have continued her reign of terror if not for his sheer tenacity.

If Erudite was honest with himself, he was a half-cocked little bastard of a glitch who was determined to prove his Creators wrong. They had sent in his application for the Archives without him knowing and sent him off to Iacon to suffer under the tyranny of the Sparkeater Supreme. The only reason they did so was because they believed that he would not be able to do the work. Spite, as it turns out, is a very powerful motivator. Erudite had devoted himself entirely to the task in an effort to prove them wrong.

The first decade had nearly off lined him. Austere was relentless, there were orns where he had neither the time nor the ability to recharge simply due to her training regime. She would have him organize the Archives only for him to find out that she had switched the arrangement of the entire building after he had finished, much to the fury of the unwilling patrons. He had confronted her once, only once, near the beginning after he had reorganized 4 times.

"Fracking Pit femme! This is fragging ridiculous and you damn well know it!" Erudite had snarled and slammed the stack of pads on a cart he was using.

Ice cold green optics slid lazily but with intent to appraise the young mech, "Do I?" she rumbled.

Suppressing the involuntary shivers he got from hearing her speak, Erudite stepped closer, "Yeah, you do."

"Hmmm, most intriguing," she deadpanned without a trace of emotion.

"This is a waste of time! You could at least act like you care, you slagging psychopath!" He snapped.

There was a moment of pure silence throughout the building before she turned to face him fully and walked up till there was mere inches between them. The femme towered over him and she stared down at him for a moment before rasping, "Where is section IV of the Old Cybertronian Laws and Regulations?"

"What does that have to do with anything!?"

She stared him down, "Section IV, if you please, and do be specific."

"It's in section VII datapad 4 if you want Animatonal's historical report or in section XVI datapads X to XV if you are looking for academic publications or section IV and section V datapads L to LV for historical accounts and research or-" Erudite paused and stared at the femme with clarity. Her mouthplates twitched up into what might be considered a small smile if it was anyone but Austere and ground out, "Now you understand. And if you ever speak to me in such a manner again," she paused, "I will punish you in ways so excruciating you could never imagine them. Now, redo it all."

Erudite had grumbled but didn't dare snark back. Ever. Or at least, hardly ever. She had worked him till he had passed out and would wake up in a back room she had set up and promptly being sent back to work. At times he would mess up and she would beat him until he was sure that he would die, before she would repair him and send him back to work.

He distinctly remembered the orn he took over as Head Archivist. There was a soirée for the higher class that Austere had insisted they crash without an invitation. Naturally no one said anything and let both of them in. It was disconcerting watching her float from mech to mech before disappearing with one half his age. Erudite had escaped to a balcony that extended out and gave a breathtaking view of the city. With the murmur of the party behind him it had been peaceful until Austere had reappeared next to him.

"I have taught you as much as you will learn from me."

He damn near launched himself off the balcony out of surprise, "Primus! Don't do that! What does that even mean? Austere-"

"No," she snarled, "We are finished- I am finished."

Erudite stared at her uncomprehending, "I do not understand."

She snorted, a truly horrific noise, "I do not expect you to. You may be considered old, but you are still a mere youngling, you have no idea."

Trying to reign in his, slowly becoming legendary, temper he spoke, "Forgive me for being crass, but that is a load of slag."

She tossed her helm back and laughed. It was the first and only time he had ever heard her do so. It had jumped up a few octaves and her normal rasp gave it a metallic ring. It was, surprisingly, almost something pleasant to hear. "Ah, Erudite. If you ever are as old as I am, you may yet understand. And with your insatiable knowledge I have no doubt you may do so."

"I still have no idea what you are talking about!" He rolled his optics exasperated.

Austere turned to him and with severe intensity, grabbed his left servo and placed her other on his faceplates, cupping the angles and dips. "Erudite. You are my only student that I have ever trained fully. I spent millennia waiting for you. You have disappointed me at every turn and yet I have faith that you will not destroy the Archives, nor our peoples history."

A stab of disappointment and shame flashed through his spark but he kept his expression neutral but attentive as she continued. It had been the most she had ever spoken to him in one go despite the near millennium he had spent as her apprentice.

"I do not want to leave my home, but I am needed elsewhere. One day, when you have your own student, you will understand."

"I doubt I'll ever take a student, Teacher," he said calmly. He had expected her to brush him off and was surprised with the violence she answered with.

She tightened her grip and broke his servo and crushed some of his faceplates, as a finishing touch she made sure to crack his optic before calmly brushing over the injuries and returning back to her position. He grit his denta and quickly overrode, and shut down his neural net in the damaged areas. It was scary how used to her abuse he was, he would have been horrified before. Now it was something he prepared for and survived.

"Erudite," her death rattle drug him back to her optics, "you will have a student. You must. There is no alternative. You may wait an orn, vorns, or millennia for your student but you will wait. And you will teach them."

She pulled him down so they were eye level -and when had he grown taller? "Archivists will come and go, they are disposable. There is only one Master of Cybertronian Knowledge. There can only be one at a time and they must be taught by the previous one. You are the last of a dying breed. I foresee that knowledge will eventually lose its worth. Why else would there only be two left out of a thriving population."

She finally released him and stepped back, towards the gathering inside, "You were a disappointment, Erudite, I expected you to do better." With that she turned on her heel and disappeared into the crowds of mechs and femmes. It was the last time he ever saw her.

And she was right. Granted, it took a very very long time, but Austere had practically predicted the civil war between the Prime and the Lord Protector. At that point he had been such a permanent fixture in the Archives that most did not even remember Austere ever existed.

He had been there long before Orion Pax had become Optimus Prime. In fact, the archivist had allowed the former dock worker into his archives and taught him how to do basic trainee level work. He wasn't his apprentice, or ever would be for that matter, he did it as a form of payment for allowing the young mech to utilize his information for a little hard labour. Nothing he wasn't already used to. Chasing his older and younger brothers out of the Archives had become the norm for him. Before the little shit went and became Prime and drug his family along with him.

The archivist vented sharply and quickly signed the datapad to get the increasingly uncomfortable mech out of his office. "Is that all, or are you here to also stand around and waste my time?"

The mech snapped to attention, "Yes- I mean no. Sir. No sir, I'm not here to waste your time."

Erudite loomed rather impressively for a mech sitting down, "Then why, exactly, are you still in my archives? Shoo."

The teal and orange mech jumped, "Er, yes sir! I'll just- leave then. Sir." He spun on his heel and very nearly knocked a stack of datapads Erudite had just sorted. Unsurprisingly, reorganizing various political treaties of the First Age was not on his rather full list of things to do that orn.

"Kid," the old mech grunted, "try to remember why you were here in the first place."

The mech froze and gaped for a moment before skittering back to grab the datapad. He practically fled the Archives in his haste to return to the Autobot headquarters. Erudite could hardly remember being so uncertain as a juvenile, then again, he was more focused on his training than any war that was occurring outside of his duties.

It was the reason why the Archives had not yet fallen. As deluded as Megatron was, not even he dared face the wrath of the Master of Cybertronian Knowledge.

Austere had not told him exactly what his title had entailed when she abandoned him on that balcony, and even after all those vorns, Erudite had not discovered all it entailed.

He shook his head and tried to return to his paperwork, there certainly was enough of that and more than enough of his moping. He had work to do and a war to document