Planet Cybertron, one year after the War of the Spark ended with the death of both the malignant Megatron and the heroic Optimus Primal. Cheetor now leads the remaining Maximals, Predicon, and the few Cybertronians who have been re-awakened after the freeing of the Sparks. Cheetor now sitting in the command chair of the Cybertronian capital of New Iacon with his trusted advisor, Rattrap, seated next to him.
"It looks like another month before Zeta Colony is rebuilt, and it only looks like about 25 of the people infected by Megatron's virus have come back online here." Rattrap said with his distinct, almost Brooklyn- sounding accent.
"Thanks, cat toy." Cheetor said, teasing him as usual.
"Listen here litter box, the only reason any of us even listens to you is because the boss monkey made it pretty clear…" Before he could finish, Cheetor dropped to his knees, gripping his head out of pain.
Rattrap ran up to him, panicked. "Hot head! Are you, uhh, alright?" He said with a mechanical quiver in his voice.
"I hear them… all of them." Cheetor said, obviously incoherent and disoriented.
"Who in the Inferno are you talking 'bout kid?" Rattrap blurted out in his usual disbelief in what happens around him.
"I've got to go!" Cheetor said firmly as he pulled himself up from the floor and ran for the door. "Tell the others!"
"Tell 'em what?" The mechanized rat questioned, "Going where?"
"Tell them Vector Sigma is calling." With that, the metallic doors slid shut and Rattrap was left alone in the control room confused, and concerned. A familiar pessimism crept over him as he stared at the exit and said "Well ain't that prime."
The aged steel doors slid open with mild resistance as Cheetor's large, slender technorganic body stepped through the now ajar portal to the chamber of all Sparks, the very essence of life itself. Cheetor slowly approached the large liquid sphere in the center of the chamber. He gazed up at it and asked the only question he could. "Why! Why am I here? I'm not Optimus."
It was then that the shimmering surface of the sphere gently rippled. Then suddenly like an animal leaping from the surface of water something propelled itself from Vector Sigma and landed at Cheetor's feet. He instantly gazed down at it and recognized the luminous orb within an oval retainer.
"The Matrix!" He whispered in absolute shock. This relic of the Autobot/Decepticon era was long thought to be destroyed, or worse, nothing more than a myth. But here it was lying before him (though he knew better).
'No,' He thought, 'I absolutely don't deserve this.' He then reached down and picked up this artifact of power. As he did a blinding blue light emanated from the center of the matrix. Suddenly his sensory nodes were over loaded with pain as his body reshaped itself. Crying out in pain he fell to one knee as the pain subsided. He looked upon his body and remembered it instantly, it was the form he first took at the dawn of the beast wars only bulkier, stronger. Then the voice came to him, a hauntingly familiar voice.
"Arise cheetah prime" it spoke into his mind.
Cheetor finally recognized this mysterious voice "Big Bot?" He gently asked already knowing the answer. Knowledge he couldn't fathom, much of it hided to him, was now inside him. And yet somehow it felt wrong, incomplete.