Hello, again! New story (like, five years old, actually)! This one is based off ajremix's story And Now for Something Completely Different, chapter 13 Prime Rising, which story was based off Andrew Griffith's Thunderous Prime artwork (go look both up, they are both perfect). I did indeed get permission to post this story! (two years ago, heheh), and I am excited to finally do so!

With that, enjoy.

They had called her Star, once upon a time, she remembered distantly as she swirled her high grade. It seemed to have been so very, very long ago now. She sighed despondently as she set the glass down, letting her head fall back to stare at the ceiling. It had been a while since anybody had called her Star, even Ricochet, and she wondered what had happened to that femme. She remembered, of course, exactly what had happened to force her away from being Star; that was easy. It wasn't a date to be forgotten. It had been the day Optimus Prime had died—and Megatron as well, she mused, since things probably would have gone very differently if Starscream had not murdered his leader and claimed the Matrix as his own. So, it was the combination of the Prime and the Decepticon Lord dying that had brought about the change.

Verasuvius traced the purple insignia adorning her shoulder, a familiar motion that still brought that feeling of loss bubbling up through her tanks, especially after a few rounds of high grade. She off-lined her optics to think, leaning back in the chair even further. Yes, it had been a while, it had even been a while since she had really pondered the whole ordeal.

The day had been terrible. What had followed had been even more so. Star had fought with her Autobot brothers and sisters when Starscream had ordered the slaughter, after he had claimed the Matrix and Decepticon leadership, but she had been stunned, too. So stunned that any ability she held to command the army had gone out the window as they scattered. And what else could they do but scatter to the four winds and try to hide, regroup, come to grips with the facts and return to the battle another day?

She had distributed the forces under her purview carefully in their strongest fortresses, and then she had gone back to look for those who had not been accounted for. She had prayed they were alive.

Ironhide had been among the dead. Blaster had fallen, as well, his cassettes curled up all around him like lost sparklings. Wheeljack had gone out with a bang, nothing but a charred mess beneath a collapsed building. Star had counted 30 Decepticon chassis in the rubble with him, and those were just the ones still recognizable as having once been mechs. There were other Autobots she had found dead that day, names and faces blurred with time into a mass of mecha she had known, once, but forgotten now. After some searching she had found Red Alert and Inferno in a bombed-out shell of a bunker nearby. She had thought they were both dead, but then Red Alert's horns had sparked feebly at her proximity and she had looked closer. Inferno was deactivated, thoroughly slagged, and Red Alert was clutching the chassis to his chest desperately, as still as his best friend and so covered in dust as to look deactivated, but he wasn't. So she had carefully pulled the mechs out of the corner they were jammed into and started to work, stabilizing the security director until he woke up. He had jumped, as he always did, and she had calmed him, and he had been confused until he saw what was left of Inferno. Then he had remembered what had happened and Star had never seen the usually hysterical mech break down so quietly.

"He protected me." Red had managed to choke out before she sent him back into the blissful world of stasis lock. She still hadn't heard him speak since.

There had been some happier moments that day, too. She also found Perceptor's stasis-locked chassis half buried in the same building Wheeljack had brought down. She had stabilized him for transport back to where most of the Autobots were hiding out, where he made a full recovery under Ratchet's care. When she moved to the underground she found quite a few bots stumbling about, searching for a place to be safe, and directed them to the nearest base that hadn't been overrun yet. She tripped over a few energon-deprived chassis before exploring yet another sheltered cranny to come face-to-barrel with a sophisticated rifle she knew all too well, and carefully talked Prowl out of his battle-computer driven survival mode before taking him back to the Autobot main forces. Other rescue workers had brought back even more mecha.

She had thought they could pull together and work it out. She had been wrong.

'Bots had flocked to their shelters, running from the Decepticon forces that scoured the land, constantly retreating and retreating until there was nothing left to retreat to, until they were just bands of Autobots hiding and striking and running, simply surviving, ironically similar to how the Decepticon movement had started. Not that anybody appreciated the irony.

Star had left long before the last Autobot province had fallen. Not because she wanted to, not because she didn't care, just because she knew she needed to get herself a spot in the Decepticon ranks before the whole thing went to Pit and it was too late for such an inside position to help anything. In the end, though, it had been too late anyway.

~0~

Verasuvius had already been working her way up the ranks before It happened, having a thorough understanding of how the Decepticons worked and perfectly capable of excelling among them. The day Iacon had fallen had been the day she had been promoted to Province Manager over what used to be the Tagan Heights. It had meant very little at that point in the war, now that the Decepticons controlled all of Cybertron, and since it had been mostly destroyed only two Vorns earlier. It was basically a house-keeping position, but it had suited Vera just fine. She was good at building things from the ground up.

It also left her alone to wallow in despair for Cybertron every once in a while.

There had been a plan in all this, even though it felt pointless by then. She had maintained close contact with Prowl, and she knew the numbers of fallen comrades, the names of the officers no longer with them. But Prowl was one of very few who knew what she was, and it was only a matter of time before the first wandering contingent of Autobots tried to use the nearby Sonic Canyons—which were under her jurisdiction—as a base, and the plan began to bear fruit.

Her patrols found them fairly quickly and brought them in with only a minor skirmish. The Decepticon called Verasuvius had been mostly invisible to the Autobots up to that point, but she made sure to make a good first impression, and her reputation spread quickly. She wasn't the worst 'Con officer to run into, that was for certain, but she wasn't pleasant to deal with, either.

Still, the Sonic Canyons were difficult to monitor, due to the inhospitable environment and the extensive catacombs in the walls—not to mention the noise—and the Autobots got smarter at hiding in them and using the confusing network to their advantage. The patrols caught units fairly regularly, though, regularly enough to keep Starscream happy and reassured that he had nothing to worry about from her or the Sonic Canyons, and batch after batch of unfortunate mechs were dropped into the seemingly bottomless pit—simply called 'the Hole' by most—at the end of the fissure, screaming to their deaths. Of course, that was where the plan finally came into play, and the only reason Star could live with herself through all this was because not a single one of those Autobots ever found out if the Hole was truly bottomless or not, and not a single one of them perished from the drop.

A seeker who liked to drop groundpounders from high places was only half of Verasuvius' reputation, though. The other half was established with the third group of Autobots they caught.

Verasuvius had slowly walked down the line of demoralized mechs, hands clasped behind her back, optics passing over each one, and a cruel little smile playing about her admittedly beautiful face—until she reached the end of the line, where one mech sat up marginally straighter than the others and met her gaze without looking away. Verasuvius had paused, cocking her helm at the mech with a smirk, amused by his quiet defiance.

"A little bold of you, don't you think?" she had asked, almost gently. The mech had blinked.

"I do not fear you." He had replied, quiet but firm.

"Don't you?" She had raised both optic ridges at that before leaning over, cupping his chin in one hand as her grin slowly grew. "Perhaps I should teach you to."

He hadn't replied, but his gaze hadn't wavered either, and Verasuvius' grin had broken into a full-fledged smile. Not a very nice one.

She had chuckled, straightening and turning away. "I want him." She told her lieutenant with a casual gesture to the half red Autobot. "Dump the rest. But keep him."

The lieutenant had blinked in surprise, but obediently asked, "Where would you like him, Ma'am?"

Verasuvius had paused, her back facing all but the door guards. Her wings twitched and the shark-like smile that spread across her face had made the two guards shudder. "My quarters." She had said simply, and then swept out of the courtyard, her dark, sinuous seeker frame disappearing quickly. The Decepticon shrugged.

"You heard the boss-lady."

As he was hauled to his feet and shoved in the opposite direction of all his comrades, Perceptor had to wonder what on Cybertron he had just gotten himself into.

Nobody had seen the mech after that, except for the ridge guards. They saw all they needed to and reported the battered frame getting dropped down the Hole early the next on-cycle. Pretty regularly after that Verasuvius would pick one, or maybe two, when the fancy struck her, out of the captured groups for herself, and she would personally drop them when she was done with them. The rumors absolutely flew through the base, but nobody really knew what she did with them, besides beat them to scrap. Nobody except maybe Ricochet.

Ricochet was the second in command of the Tagan Heights. He had been a neutral to join the Decepticons shortly after that fateful day when It happened, as many neutrals had. He had been assigned to the Tagan Heights province and rose quickly through the ranks thanks to his underhanded methods of getting what he wanted. He had a nasty rep for blackmail and sneaking about and would carve a mech up pretty bad when confronted or provoked—though, being smaller than a lot of mecha, he wasn't the most confrontational guy. He was actually pretty level-headed, most of the time, making him an excellent second in command and a very dangerous mech to cross. Verasuvius seemed to trust the mech quite a bit, perhaps more than she should, and he held a lot of power in the province. They spent a lot of time together, not unusual for the first and second in command of a province, but an inordinate amount of it was in private, and Ricochet was possibly the only mech who had codes to get into the femme's private quarters. The rumors flew for them, too, but not where either could hear.

And Verasuvius let them think what they wanted. Her business was private and it made no difference to her what the grunts said. Though it did accomplish the task of giving her a filled out and rather…colorful reputation.

But despite all the work they had done rescuing so many Autobots, Star still couldn't help but feel it was all in vain. To what point and purpose was this? The Autobots were a broken and scattered lot. They had no real leader, despite all that Prowl and the remaining officers attempted to do. They were getting nowhere, and that situation didn't look to be changing anytime soon.

"You keep doin' this an' one o' these days yer gonna get us in trouble for it." A soft voice pulled her from her thoughts and Verasuvius lifted her helm and on-lined her optics to give the black and red mech a hard stare.

"You know I can't get drunk." She retorted.

Ricochet shrugged as he sauntered over to take the seat across the small table from her. "I'd call ya out on that claim, but'cher right, I know better. You gonna finish that?" he asked, gesturing to the crystal glass less than a quarter full of green-blue liquid.

Vera sighed, letting her head fall back again. "No, you can have it. But take it slow." She reminded as the mech eagerly took the glass, ready to knock it back. Ricochet rolled his optics, but complied.

The first sip made his frame vibrate for a moment, sharp crimson optics flaring briefly as energy exploded in his systems. "Holy-!" the mech coughed, shaking his helm at the sudden weightlessness he felt. "What is this stuff?"

His optics were giving him a fuzzy input, but he didn't miss Vera's grin. "My personal brew, which you should have known better than to try." She chuckled, her voice echoing around in his head. Ricochet gagged as the overload sent the room spinning around him, and the next thing he knew he was on the floor with his commander leaning over him, still grinning. "You okay?" she asked.

The explosion of energy had calmed to the regular buzz of high grade and Ricochet grunted. "Ye're an evil femme."

Verasuvius laughed, offering a hand to help him up, which he unsteadily took. "No more for you, then." She said as she put him back in his seat, where he slumped onto the table. The femme picked up the glass, sent a sly look down at her second, and then drained the rest of it. Ricochet groaned.

"Show off." He muttered.

Vera grinned, taking her seat again, optics almost pink but otherwise unaffected. "So you come all the way here just to cheer me up, or do you have business for me?" she asked.

Ricochet tried to lift his head off the table, but it thumped right back down and he muttered something into the crook of his arm. Vera sat back, relaxing as she waited for the buzz to wear off so her second could be coherent again, turning the delicate glass over in her hands.

"What were ya thinkin' 'bout when I came in?" was the airy question that finally came out of the mech.

Verasuvius immediately glanced away to look out the windows at the light of the Sonic Canyon, her smile falling. The noise it produced was a dull throb in here, even though it was pretty noticeable anywhere else in the fortress, and faded easily into the background. She scanned the room again, to be sure no espionage equipment had been planted in her sanctum since the last she had checked, before speaking.

"What are we still doing here, Jazz?" she asked quietly.

"Whatcha mean?" he asked, resting his chin on his forearms so he could look at her, still pleasantly buzzed and not thinking very straight.

"What are we trying to accomplish here? What is there to accomplish? Without the Matrix…" she sealed her lips, glancing away again to fix her optics on the glass in her hands.

"What else would we be doin'?" Jazz wondered after a moment. "What else is there t'do?"

Star sighed deeply. "I don't know, Jazz. We're losing more every day, no matter what we do here, we're divided and scattered across the planet, and it feels like we just keep losing no matter what we do. I'm afraid…"

The black and red mech reached over to put a wobbly hand on her arm. "We're all afraid, Star. It don't mean we gotta back down."

"Of course not." She agreed softly, looking up at him. "I just wish—"

Verasuvius froze, optics flaring pure white as a presence filled her. It flooded through her awareness like a burst of sunlight, fresh and new and alive. A power she had not felt for a very long time was exploding across the planet, roaring out its authority and continued existence.

Somewhere, somehow, the Matrix had awoken and chose its next bearer.

The surge of power brought with it something she had forgotten over the vorns as well, something she had known once, but left behind in the spiraling war. A name echoed through her spark, as loudly as the Sonic Canyons, blasting away her doubts until there were none left and she knew. Knew as she hadn't known ever since It had happened.

When she came back to herself she was on the floor with Ricochet kneeling beside her, looking concerned. "You alright?" he asked, searching her white optics intently.

A slow smile spread across her face, and she reached up to clap a hand on the mech's shoulder, making him wobble. "I haven't felt this good for a long time, friend. Come on." She got up quickly, rolling to her feet. "We're going downstairs."

Jazz hurried to catch up as she strode toward the second door in the room, an inner sanctum that was even more off-limits than the room they were in now. He struggled to walk straight and understand what was going on. "Why? What happened?"

Star turned to look at him with a grin, optics sparkling, as an elevator pad lit up on the tinted window of her berthroom. "There is a Prime on Cybertron once more."