Aaaand skipping this cycle's Race of Epistemus (Because really nothing of note happens there except a fairly young Skywarp wins by "cheating" with his newly stabilized alpha ability, confesses his undying love for his older trinemate Thundercracker and Starscream tries to murder them both. He is not happy that his clones keep winning the Race given his alpha ability is literally to be the best flyer in existence. Dai Atlas stops from killing anyone, of course, but the general couldn't stop him from sulking for nearly a vorn strait.) lands us on the Festival of Adaptus.
Summary: No-War, No-Factions AU. Festival of the Five: They were two stars circling a single gravitational point. One driven by faith, the other by desire. They came together only with the blessing of the Guiding Hand, and when they did all of Cybertron was caught in their orbit. They weren't destined for each other, but as Primus said: There is destiny, and then there is destiny.
Warnings: Sexual Content, including one (mild but detailed) tactile interfacing scene. Cannon-typical violence. Alien Religion and various issues thereof.
.
.
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Part Four: Festival of Adaptus
.
.
To his shame, Hound's first thought when he came home to see the formal plastic stationary adhered to his door was that Mirage had finally gotten tired of him and was using the most formal, rude method possible to announce he was cutting off the relationship. From the way Traibreaker, next to him, growled his engine that had been his thought too.
Mirage had tried teaching him read, but Hound had no aptitude for it and Mirage had always been willing to change activities when Hound got bored or frustrated.
On the off chance that the noble, knowing neither Hound nor Trailbreaker could properly read the glyphs, had included a datachip with a copy of the message he opened it as he let himself in their apartment. No luck.
Trailbreaker growled again. "Little glitch could have at least given you a rejection you could understand."
"I'm not sure it's from Mirage," Hound answered absently, "It doesn't have his seal." Seals were like a shorthand, an image or glyph that identified who the sender was. Why nobles needed both their own signatures and these seal things was one of the great mysteries of the caste in Hound's opinion, but Mirage compared it to Hound's own shorthand identifying-glyph. The one he used because he couldn't actually write his full formal Vector Sigma given name, in situations where his serial number wasn't appropriate. The various seals used by the various nobles was another thing Mirage had tried to teach him, but he'd not really learned. He knew a few though. Mirage's was one, and — "I think its from the Prime." — the Prime's was one of the few others, but the seal wasn't quite right.
Trailbreaker just scoffed, disbelieving. Hound had to agree. The seal wasn't right. Maybe someone was trying trick him by trying to imitate the Prime's seal, not expecting Hound to recognize the difference? If so they chose a poor method; he couldn't read it, and anyone he'd take it to to read for him would spot the fake.
Hound folded the plastic sheet and put it in his subspace. "No worries. Tomorrow's my half-orn; I'll just take it to the local Archive and have the librarian read it for me."
"What about the concert?"
"It doesn't start until late," Hound assured, "and this won't take that long. Just save me a seat." For the first time though, he was glad that Mirage was stuck (his word, not Hound's) in some formal noble's dinner. That way Hound wasn't going to have to embarrass himself calling to cancel meeting up before the concert in order to have someone else read a formal rejection notice that would mean the meet-up was canceled anyway, on the off chance that it wasn't a formal rejection and Mirage would be waiting for him.
True to his word, he went to the local Archive right after his shift of polishing crystals in the garden ended. Far from the main Archive of Iacon, this little sub-branch was more for the collection of data than its storage or distribution. And reading those few things that weren't distributed as downloadable data was one of the archivist-on-duty's primary jobs. This one was a spindly little blue and green bot whose alternate form Hound couldn't guess.
"'Sagacitas'" the archivist read, "I assume that's you," Hound nodded. "There's also several sub-glyphs added to the designation: friendly, loving and muddy. Are those part of your designation or added by the writer?"
Honestly Hound didn't know what a "sub-glyph" was or how to add one to a name. "The writer. What does that mean?"
"It means that the writer believes your name should be 'friendly, lovable, keen or intelligent scent-tracker who rolls in the mud'. Literally, not metaphorically or socially in this case," and Hound chuckled, because that sounded like something Mirage would have said — or, well, written. Mirage had never been anything but careful to always address Hound by his unmodified, chosen name after the first time he'd been offended by the noble's choice of pet name when they first started courting, but this was actually adorable. Muddy was just a plain fact. Whoever had written this had probably copied it from one of Mirage's journals or notes or whatever nobles did to write out their contacts lists.
"Okay. What's the rest say?"
The librarian nodded, adjusted his blue-tinted visor and continued. "'Beloved spark of my spark-companion' a formal way of describing your relationship to the writer," he explained before Hound could ask, "meaning that you've never met personally, but he knows you through a close friend of his." He continued reading without being prompted this time, "'Beloved spark of my spark-companion, I would like to extend the invitation to you, and one companion of your choice, to accompany me to Praxus for this year's Festival of Adaptus. Should you accept, I shall ensure all arrangements are made for you both.' It's signed and sealed by Optimus Prime. Quite an honor. I would not consider refusing, if I were you."
Hound took the letter as the archivist handed it back. "Can't be. I know the Prime's seal, and that's close but it's not it."
The archivist drew himself up, arrogant and snooty. "You're probably familiar with the Prime's professional seal. That's his personal seal. It means he wrote that letter by hand and sent it to you,"
Okay. Wow. Not a fake, and not from Mirage. That changed things a bit. "Alright. You mind helping me draft a response?"
"Of course," the spindly little bot sniffed and drew out a sheet and an etching pencil.
.
.
"What do you mean you accepted for both of us?" Trailbreaker hissed while they waited for the concert to start.
"Well I said that I'd have to check with you, and if you didn't want to, I'd go alone," Hound said. "It was a personal invitation from the Prime, Trails. I can't refuse that."
"Why not?" The black mech grumbled and Hound just shot him an amused look. Trailbreaker knew very well why he couldn't refuse the Prime.
Prime was the priest-king of all Cybertron, dating back to the time of Prima the First Prime. Nobles and merchants might rule the day-to-day workings of law and the economy, but ultimately everyone answered to the Prime. Without the Matrix, their species would die. Not immediately. They were a long-lived bunch, and cloning, like the military did, could artificially produce a second generation, but it was well known that you couldn't make a clone of a clone, so there'd be no third without the Matrix to call forth new sparks from Vector Sigma. The absolute authority invested in him may have been a holdover from a much more superstitious time, but the fact was that despite thousands of vorn of chipping away at the Prime's rulership, he retained almost all of it.
When he'd been sparked, Cybertron's religion had been in decline. No one Hound knew had believed in the gods. The Festival had just been a massive reason to take the mandatory free days off work, go out to get overcharged and confess your feelings to a current crush. But since Optimus' Ascension to Prime… well after that story had circulated, mechs stopped to listen whenever a priest told those old stories about the Matrix choosing the Prime not the other way around. And they didn't even know the whole story. Everyone knew that the Matrix had slipped from Sentinel Prime's fingers as he died and it had fallen into Optimus' reformatting him into Prime on the spot in front of hundreds or thousands of witnesses, but according to Mirage (who was there) it had been even more bizarre than that. The Matrix had slipped, and the successor chosen by the Senate had failed to grab it, but then so had about a dozen other mechs as it (a diamond-shaped object with sharp edges and flat sides) rolled across the floor, down a flight of stairs and into an air vent. Where it had somehow travelled from the medical center in the Nobles' Quarter to where Mirage and his companion had been buying energon to sip during the next orn's race from one of the vendors, and dropped right onto Orion's head.
There probably had only been about half as many witnesses to the reformatting as the stories said.
He also had heard Mirage's frightened speculation that if it hadn't been so public and they hadn't needed Prime to announce the beginning of the Race in only a few joors, the nobles might have tried getting rid of both of them, but the timing protected him and after such a public debut he couldn't be assassinated. There hadn't been any attempts yet, but "It's too soon," Mirage had muttered pessimistically, "Another 'mysteriously' dead Prime so soon after Sentinel's illness and people'll wonder." Especially given how obviously god-chosen this Prime was.
Hound still wasn't much of a believer, but it was hard not to believe in that.
"It's not right," Trailbreaker muttered. "He's just rubbing it in your faceplate that he's got a sidepiece and you're never going to be enough for him. You'd think after winning the Race for someone three times, even a noble'd accept a Bonding from a seeker, but he's just stringing both of you along."
"That's not how Mirage tells it," Hound said quietly. Hound wasn't much of a religious person, but Mirage sure was. He went to a temple service once a decaorn and split his time evenly amongst all the gods, and before Trailbreaker had started harping on this point, he'd been willing to discuss his relationship with the seeker, Sunstorm, as a religious experience. To Hound's audios it didn't sound like much of a real relationship, even if there had been spark sharing involved, but it had also sounded vitally important to Mirage.
Then Trailbreaker had reacted so negatively to an invitation to go to the Festival of Solomus and Mirage had been reluctant to discuss Sunstorm ever again.
Trailbreaker just harumphed. He thought Hound was being unbearably naive. It's possible he was, given he was pretty young still as that sort of thing was counted, but he didn't think so and this was one of the few things they fought about. Fortunately, though, they couldn't discuss this further and really start a fight because Jazz, Blaster and the rest of the band came on stage with a (literal) bang and the noise level in the concert hall skyrocketed.
.
.
"Did you know about it?" He asked Mirage the next time they were together. He'd managed not to say anything about the Festival for joors while they crawled around the brush looking for an oil pool he and Trailbreaker had discovered the last time he'd accompanied his friend on a surveying trip. Mirage's alt-mode was not very well suited for anything but smooth road so it had been slow going, but they'd gotten there and playing in it had been everything Hound imagined it could be. After they got back, Hound was helping buff out the scratches and touching up the places where Mirage's paint had chipped and he'd blurted it out without meaning to.
Mirage's engine purred as he looked up at Hound, almost in recharge. He loved getting his paint redone in a way Hound really couldn't understand but he liked doing it just to see that sleepy look of pleasure on his lover's faceplate. "About what, Hound?"
"The Prime sent me and Trailbreaker an invitation to go with him to the Festival. I wasn't sure I could refuse, so I didn't. Did he do it because we didn't go last time you invited us?"
The noble looked exasperated, and that huff of vents sounded angry, but affection for his friend suffused his EM field. "Prime did it because Optimus is an interfering busybody old femme who loves sticking his helm-crest in everybody's business. I swear, the thing he likes best about being Prime is that no one tells him to butt out anymore." Affection was replaced by concern. "I can tell him to drop it, if you want. He can bully someone else into accompanying him."
"No it's fine." He went back to his buffing, then paused again. "Aren't you going with him?" Mirage always went to the Festival.
"Yes and no," was his answer. "I'll be on the shuttle with him, as usual, but I won't be in the Prime's viewing box this vorn. Which leaves him with a selection of a dozen of Cybertron's most boring and self-interested members of my caste and in the interests of not dealing with the complications of another Dark Prime after he murders them all, I told him to pick someone else to sit with him. I believe he took it as a chance to finally meet you in a 'less formal' setting." As if any meeting with the Prime could be anything but formal, especially with a dozen nobles nearby.
Hound laughed. Only Mirage could get away with making jokes like that about the Prime going Dark, but it was because he'd been Orion's friend first. Hound couldn't imagine saying something like that, especially not when they finally had a god-chosen Prime again.
"So are you going?" Mirage pressed and Hound swore he could feel a flutter of nervousness in the plating beneath his brush. "Or should I tell him to get bent?"
"If it's that important to Prime, I'll go. Prime's viewing box has the best seats in the house, right."
"Right," and that was a well hidden whisper of relief in the noble's EM field, all out of proportion with just making sure his friend wasn't bored and frustrated with the other nobles he'd be sitting with but he took it as evidence of just how important Optimus's friendship was to him. "You really can't buy better."
.
.
.
tbc