Prologue: The Sword of Damocles

The fringes of galactic space by and large were quiet places. Far from the core with its ancient stars and civilizations, the cooler outskirts of the galaxy were home to but few young species who built their comfortably insular civilizations secure in their ignorance of the wider universe.

Sol system, however, as its inhabitants called it when they needed to call it anything other than "home," had lately come to a certain prominence – or was coming to it, slowly, as self-exiled citizens of Cybertron looked to the heavens and an older light and sent their messages – urgent, desperate, hopeful, weary, wondering – homeward.

Even with subspace messaging, it might take twenty years or even longer for a message to arrive at its destination, assuming it fell afoul of neither mishap nor malice. So when an unexpected pair of comets arrived in system, a bare year and a half after Mission City, it took everyone by surprise...


Author's Note: One of the great disappointments of Revenge of the Fallen was that in comparison to the trailers released, the actual film failed to take advantage of the promise these little two minute sequences generated. The trailers are actually better pieces of drama than the film itself, and beg the question: what other stories could they have supported than the one we actually got?

In light of this, I have undertaken to create and write to an AU trailer challenge. The rules I've set myself are:

1) Pick one of the trailers released for Revenge of the Fallen and develop an alternative sequel based on that trailer

2) Use all the scenes in one of the trailers: if it is in the trailer, it has to be somewhere in the AU

3) Must make some use of the term "the fallen"

4) Movie one is presupposed; while retcons are permissible that change the meaning of the film, no factual alterations are permitted.

5) No more than 4000 words per chapter (personal limit)

I chose the teaser trailer: http://www dot youtube dot com backslash watch?v=X2nNP2Y8pyw

This is a WiP; I'm hoping this will pan out, but it's going to be a long, slow haul.