A/N: I'm back! Thank you all so much for reading this! I've decided to update this because inspiration suddenly hit me! Plus, I had a free day, so this is how I decided to spend!

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye. I only own Paian.


*Optimus' POV*

Bumblebee showed me to where that had captured the remaining Decepticons. But, their prison was not what I had in mind. The more I saw, the worse things looked. With Megatron missing and Galvatron presumed dead, the Decepticons were directionless.

"You've herded them into the barrel of Kimia's gun?" I asked Bumblebee. "I don't like this."

"Well, yeah. But we had to do something while they were still weak after becoming part of that... that weird gestalt monster thing." Bumblebee turned away from the prison.

And, if I am honest with myself, I felt like turning away myself.

"I'm not one of them! I don't belong in here!"

"Prime, we can make a deal!"

"Let us out!"

"Prime, may I have a word, please?" Ratbat flew to the front of the pack.

"Oh, please..." Starscream grumbled, right behind Ratbat.

"Optimus, surely you can help a senator whose reputation has been unfairly tarnished..." Ratbat tried to negotiate with me.

"Ratbat, whatever your title, your time is long gone." I said to him, then turning my attention to the Decepticons behind Ratbat. "You all chose the wrong side; now live with the consequences."

Then, Bumblebee gestured for me to lead the way.

"Is this place secure?" I asked Bumblebee, ignoring the shouts behind me.

"Well, they're all outfitted with I/D chips to...uh... keep track of them and..." Bumblebee sighed. "Honestly, Prime? I think they could get out if they wanted to... But where would they go?"

Bumblebee and I both knew that this was a temporary solution. The Decepticons were prisoners of war. What would become of them now that the war was over?

Perceptor called before I could ask the question. He'd been studying the remains of the Matrix. I could tell something was up because, for the first time in his life, he sounded... excited.


*The workshop*

As soon as I entered the workshop, I saw that Perceptor was standing near one of the Matrix halves, while Rewind, an archivist, held the other half. The sparkling I saw with Sideswipe earlier was also with them, clinging onto Perceptor's cannon turret.

When he noticed me, Perceptor carefully pried the sparkling off of himself and placed him on the ground. "Why don't you go find your father, Paian?"

The sparkling, Paian, smiled brightly at Perceptor and ran out of the workshop, arms out and mimicking a Seeker.

Perceptor turned back to me. "That is Paian, Rung's sparkling."

"Cute little thing, isn't he?" Rewind chimed in.

I vaguely remembered Rung as Red Alert's psychiatrist. I nodded slightly, and returned my attention to the problem at hand.

"What did you discover, Perceptor?"

"Well, I promised to let Rewind go first. I called him down here because-"

"-There's an inscription on the inside!" Rewind said, excitedly.

"What does it say?" I asked, smiling behind my mask.

Rewind said something what may have been Cybertronian, but in no dialect I had ever heard before.

I clumsily repeated what Rewind had said, then asked, "What is that? Old Cybertronian?"

"Old, old Cybertronian."

"Pre-war?"

"Pre-everything." Rewind replied. "I think it says 'many from one' or 'one from many.' Not sure of the syntax. And there's more, too. Something about light. Compressed light? Trapped light? And here, it talks about a fist. Either a fist or a hand."

"The Guiding Hand." I said.

"The what? I've studied Cybertronian history all my life and I've never heard of it." Rewind said, confused.

"Not 'it.' Them." I said. "Thanks to the Matrix, I was privy to certain details. A rival set of facts. Alternate truths. Now I feel all of it slipping away- lost forever."

"Maybe not. You see, the are just a caption to a much bigger picture. The Matrix is a photonic crystal, composed of billions of metallo-dielectric nanostructures. I assumed the crystal was naturally occurring, but it's not. It's synthetic. It contains deliberate fracture lines. It was designed to split open. I had no idea why that might be until I trained a spotlight on it, and this happened."

The half-Matrix lit up, then the light broke into tiny individual specks of light that arranged themselves in patterns that I never seen before.

"What... am I looking at?"

"Optimus, I think... I think the Matrix is a map."


We didn't see it coming. Or if we did, we chose to ignore it.

But the first protestor became ten. Ten became a hundred. And a hundred became a thousand. And all the while High command was holed up inside Kimia, happy to be distracted by other matters...


I stood on the balcony, looking over the thousands of protestors against the Autobots. I saw hundreds of signs against both Autobot and Decepticons. 'Under conditions of peace, the war-like attack themselves.' Makes you wonder what the other signs say, for I did not bother to look. But one thing I couldn't help notice is the figure of me hanging from a pole, as if I were being... what was the human word? Crucified?

Behind me, Prowl, Ultra Magnus, Bumblebee, Rodimus, and Drift were having an argument, like always.

"The map that Perceptor found in the Matrix... It's not just any map. It's the map. It shows the way to Cyberutopia- To the Knights of Cybertron themselves!" Drift said, airily.

"The Knights of Cybertron." Bumblebee said, dubiously. "As in the entirely fictional Knights of Cybertron?"

"The original Cybertronians!" Drift corrected. "They turned this planet into a paradise and then left to spread peace and enlightenment across the universe."

"And that was supposed to be, what ten million years ago? And no one's heard from them since. And what we think we know about them is based on contested texts and artifacts of dubious authenticity."

"They never existed, Drift." Prowl said, bitterly. "They were invented by 'disciples' like Dai Atlas as an excuse to hide away in Crystal City and pretend war was something that happened only to other people."

"Even assuming the Knights of Cybertron are real, what makes you think that the Matrix Map relates to them?" Bumblebee asked Drift.

"I spent time in Crystal City. Dai Atlas was obsessed with finding what he called the Road map to Cyberutopia. His name in Old Cybertronian is Dei Atlas- Literally, 'God Map.' Ha always said the Matrix was the key." Drift explained.

"You really think this map will lead us to the Knights of Cybertron?" Rodimus asked out of the blue.

"Yes."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's fire up Omega Supreme and-"

"And nothing." Bumblebee interrupted. "We've got work to do here. Now's not the time to go chasing after myths."

"Take a look outside, Bumblebee. Listen to that crowd. We don't belong here anymore!" Rodimus shouted.

"How can you say that? How can you even think that? This is our home!" Prowl protested.

"We're all in this together. We just need to convince the NAILS of our good intentions. This is our opportunity to start over." Bumblebee pleaded to Rodimus.

"Yeah, well good luck with that. But as soon as I get the chance, I'm gone." Rodimus replied, stubbornly.

"Oh please. Haven't we been here before? Are you going to have a tantrum and storm off every time you have to do something you disagree with?"

"This isn't me having a tantrum. This is me growing up." Rodimus ranted. "Why throw everything away just to start over again? Maybe carrying the Matrix changed me, but I'm not ready to write off ten million years of our culture just yet. I still believe in the old ways- and the Knights of Cybertron epitomize the old ways. Find the Knights an we regain everything we've los-"

At that very moment, a massive explosion went off literally on our doorstep. We were flung across the room and into a pile a rubble.

Prowl was first to recover. "What just happened?"

"Prowl? This is Sideswipe. Do you copy?"

"I copy."

"One of the NAILS just lobbed a power cell at you. They took it from one of their ships. It's escalating out here, and were seriously outnumbered. There's fifty of us, and a thousand of them. A thousand and counting! Can you send Omega?"

"Negative He's still recharging." Prowl replied. The rest of us had already recovered and were paying rapt attention to Prowl and Sideswipe's conversation.

"Well, you've gotta do something, Prowl! They're gonna storm the building!"

"Are lives at risk? This is important, Sideswipe! Are Autobots' lives at risk?" Prowl practically shouted into the comm.

"We're dropping like flies, Prowl!"

"Okay, okay. That's all I needed to hear." Prowl took a deep intake. "I'm going to ask you to do something, and you're going to protest, and I'm going to insist, and we're all going to live with the consequences."

"What is it, Prowl! Hurry!"

"I need you to release the Decepticons."


A/N: FINALLY! FINISHED!

I know there's not much of Paian, but there will be soon! So please just bear with me!

Thanks for reading and please review!