Hello, everyone!

So, this story isn't going to be new to anyone who's read "Mirrors", as it's one of the smaller story arcs held within it. Still, I promised that at some point I would organize it and publish it seperately, and so here it is. I've just been calling it "The Out-of-left-field Arc" up until now, and I'm not sure about a title, so I'll just go with the first chapter's title.

Cybertron, many years before the War

"What are you doing here?!" the old mech hissed, "If you are caught, you will be killed!"

The younger Cybertronian pushed his way into the humble building. "I know what you are now, who you really are. If you ever cared about me then please, help me! She was a Senator, I am a slave! It was not meant to happen!"

Alpha Trion nodded pointedly at the form in the other's arms. "And yet it did. What is it you would ask of me?"

The wretched mech shook his helm. "You have to erase my memories of his name, his whereabouts, all of it."

Alpha Trion recoiled. "Meddle in the processor of a sentient being? How can you ask me to do such a thing?"

He was cut off as a sparkling was pushed into his servos.

"My overseers will parse my memory banks when they catch me—and they will catch me." the younger being was on the verge of tears. "If they discover an inter-caste sparkling, they will tear him apart before my very eyes."

Bright blue optics filled with coolant, and he knelt before the old scribe. "Please...I am his sire! I have to protect him! This...this is the only way I know."

Alpha Trion was filled with compassion for the young slave. This was the most spark-wrenching sacrifice he'd seen made in this small, mean corner of the world in eons.

. "I...shall do as you have requested," he said sadly, "Bid farewell to the child. I will put a barrier on the bond between your sparks, and remove your memories. You will not know him to be yours when I have finished."

The runaway's servos shook as he took the sparkling again. "Forgive me, little one," he whispered, "This is the only way. Grow in peace, live in freedom, but never forget who you are, my son. Never forget your Carrier, nor the usurper Prime who demanded her death merely because she bore you."

For an instant, the cerulean optics became chips of ice, trapped in a dark memory. Then they softened again. "You are descended from Primes, sparkling mine, and you deserve so much better than I can give." A coolant tear splashed onto the sleeping infant's faceplates, and he opened his round optics with a sleepy trill.

The fugitive smiled brokenly and trailed a servo across delicate cheeks. "I want you to remember me this way," his attempt at sternness dropped as the deep voice cracked. "No matter what happens, no matter what I become. Remember me, my son, and try to remember Tarn." Scarred lips brushed over the tiny, perfect helm in one last gesture of paternal adoration. "I love you, Orion."

The slave's mighty frame bowed in sorrow as he handed the sparkling to the scribe. "Do it," he said tiredly. Alpha Trion nodded and placed a hand on the dusty helm. Lights, dancing across a spectrum almost invisible to the Cybertronian optic, flowed from the ancient servos to the unresisting being beneath them.

As a sleeper code began to bury itself into instinctive subroutines, the ancient Prime murmured, "One day, you shall remember again. I cannot tell you when, nor how, but I have foreseen that it shall come to pass upon another world, far from this one. Know this, my friend, and endure." Work completed, he removed his hand and stepped back, cradling the newly orphaned child to his chestplates.

Confusion flooded the slave's faceplates and he melted into the shadows. What was he doing at his old mentor's home? The slave-drivers would be out in force to bring him in, valuable merchandise that he was, and he could not afford to stop in any one place for too long.

Somehow, he thought he recognized the little one in Trion's arms, but it could not be: he had never told the old mech their secret, and even if he had, why would an Iacon scribe have the child? He could not remember the circumstances of his escape, nor why he had lived and she had not. He only knew that somewhere he had a son that he would never see again.

He did not suppress the sorrow that weighed down his spark, nor the rage that slowly built under his armor and threatened to spill out upon the first provocation. They finally cornered him near Kolkular, and he was disgusted to see upper caste mechs and femmes turn their helms away as he was beaten down, electrocuted, and herded back to the hellish pens beneath the city.

The overseers were not pleased with his bold—if brief—bid for freedom, and made liberal use of the whip in an attempt to remind him of his status. He took it all silently, and all the while the tiny, optimistic voice he had once held within him began to slowly wither away.

An energon prod was jammed into a gap in his armor beneath the left arm and he dropped to his knees, gasping. All the rage, all the grief, all the betrayal roared in his processor like a focusing laser and he gave up freedom as an impossible dream. And what becomes of a dream deferred? It explodes. Waiting until his pain sensors had either stopped working or grown accustomed to the burn of the prod, the slave looked up at the driver.

"And where did you think you were going, scrapheap? To Iacon, where the slaves are free and the streets are paved with gold?" the squat mech mocked him. A vicious kick knocked the victim's helm back and to the right, leaving long scratches at the mouth.

Dangerous optics met the overseer's own. "Do not touch me again," a low voice threatened.

The gangster was outraged at this blatant disregard for the accepted hierarchy. "Are you—you gotta be kidding me—are you actually threatening me? You're serious, aren't you?" he spat several vile oaths at the one he had been beating and raised up a hand. "Worthless waste of energon! Just who do you think you are?"

The warrior wiped energon from the corner of his mouth and chuckled darkly. "Who do I think I am?" he repeated in a half-musing tone. The temperature in the caverns seemed to drop as he slowly stood. "I am a gladiator."

The rising intensity of his words drew the attention of other captives as he advanced on the slave-driver. "I am senior in the ranks of the warriors of the Kaon arena. Sparkmate to a murdered femme, sire to a stolen sparkling."

The energon prod was snapped in half and flung away, and keen servos buried themselves in the overseer's spark as the warrior hissed,

"I Am Megatron!"