I am literally beyond tired of the same old, boring, cliche Self-Insert fanfictions that keep coming out. I have been for about 5 years. It's why I started writing T0RN in the first place and why, inevitably, I had to return to it.
I can't promise this is going to be 100% the same story. The whole point of a rewrite is to correct past mistakes. And since that old story was written by the seat of my pants, there is a lot to correct plot-wise. However, I cannot guarantee that reading T0RN won't spoil you for future plot points - this is a rewrite, after all, not a brand-new story. The characters are the same, the basic theme is the same, and all the good trauma is the same.
So, now to ask and answer the main question; Would it really be a good thing to become a Transformer?
...This is gonna be a slow burn of a story. I can feel it.
Heehee, can't wait.
BR0K3N
(A rewrite of T0RN)
by SomeoneImSure
"All things are subject to interpretation - whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
GENESIS
Prologue
Mercy Ferris' favorite problem was entirely theoretical; if the Allspark was real and the Transformer fandom was real, the first question wasn't how did it become real but rather did it exist before the Transformer franchise existed? Either the fandom was meant to exist or wasn't harming anything by existing.
If it was meant to exist, then someone planned for the entire franchise to exist. The Autobots probably didn't exist on Earth – they weren't at St Hilary or the Moon or conducting missions across the world because no one had conspiracies of them existing. Likewise, Megatron couldn't be locked away in someone's cellar somewhere because, again, no one was making conspiracies of them. So that meant this someone could have run into the Allspark – or some other artifact that couldn't be as easily connected with the Transformers.
If the fandom wasn't harming anything by existing, then the Artifact could be completely disconnected from the Transformers franchise. Or it could mean that the government is trying to acclimate the world to the existence of giant robotic aliens from distant worlds, though they would have probably started dropping more hints after the Transformer movies became so successful. No, she could not assume that the Transformers were already on Earth. Which left the source of Transformer knowledge and existence entirely dependent on the Artifact being sentient and wanting to share that information with the human race for some reason or another. In other words, the existence of the franchise was the creation of the Allspark itself, only it was feeding those ideas to random humans who eventually get caught up in writing the franchise.
In that case, the government could have the Artifact and yet be completely unaware of its significance. Or else it was in some museum and treated like a piece of meteorite. She couldn't imagine it staying in a museum forever – meteorites were cut open all the time to identify what it's made of or to turn it into expensive jewelry. On top of that, radioactive meteorites would never make it on display and would be investigated by scientists, which there was no evidence , if any pieces of the Allspark existed, they would be in government custody. And if the government was aware of it or being controlled by it, then Hasbro would be government funded, but there were no conspiracies or evidence on that. The Artifact that produced the Transformers franchise could not be easily connected with the Transformers, which could be a sign of the Artifact being unable to properly translate it to the final product – probably because the human brain could only remember so many details.
In other words, the Allspark might not even be in a cubic shape. It could be a ball, like a meteorite. It could be in chunks and pieces. Regardless of whatever form it is in, though, it didn't change the fact that it could influence people to make a franchise. She felt like it could be in a museum somewhere, since there it could influence a large amount of people. But it could be stuck in the side of a cliff somewhere, just under the surface, and only affect the campers in that area. It literally could be anywhere. She had no way of knowing, unless the Allspark managed to hack into the internet and speak to her.
The problem was supposed to be theoretical, a fun little problem to think about when she was trying to write her next Transformers fanfic, not something that she might return to because of something that was actually happening to her.
She arrived from work, flew up the stairs, and landed in her white plush gaming chair. As if expecting her arrival, the chatroom notification binged.
TheAllspark: So, will you help me?
If any of it was true, Mercy didn't know what she was going to do about it. What could she do? She was a puny human, frail and pathetic next to the giant majesty of alien robots. She didn't know how to create a blaster let alone repair something that had been broken for thousands of years.
TheIronMaiden: Are you real?
TheIronMaiden: I need proof.
She had known him for over a year now. She had never pegged him for a lunatic, and he had never talked about visiting a psychiatrist for mental problems. In fact, he never seemed to have mental issues before this point. The only conclusion she could come to was that he had switched medications, but even then she never knew he was on medications.
In fact, she didn't know a lot about him. A huge oversight considering how long their friendship had been. Well, e xcept for the fact that he used to be CubicMetrons, and she had no idea how he managed to change his username since this chatroom didn't allow it. And except for the fact that the chatroom never said TheAllspark is typing or CubicMetrons is typing when her former boyfriend and everyone who showed up on chat in the youtube videos would always show Someone is typing . It irked her that she had only recently noticed that; she had become so comfortable chatting with her friend that she missed these essential clues, or else she would have questioned whether or not he was a living AI a long time ago. The only thing keeping her listening to him now was that there were only three AIs as far as she knew and none of them could hold up a real conversation. If he was a human AI, she would have seen through his behavior within weeks of meeting him.
She had also noticed he seemed a tiny bit autistic. He could do advanced physics and the math behind it in an instant. He could come up with theoretical science and possible hyper drives in seconds. Some autistic people could come up with whole blueprints in their head and remember it for months, so she hadn't exactly questioned it. She had simply chalked that up to him being very smart.
TheAllspark: I have sent it.
TheIronMaiden: When can I expect it to arrive?
TheAllspark: Soon.
The internet had been a huge shield around the true identity of CubicMetrons, aka TheAllspark. She couldn't see the man's face so she could never question whether or not he was even a man. She was lucky she had never thought to ask to meet him in real life.
It was almost like they hadn't connected over anything but Transformers over the last year. It felt wrong, like she should know him better than that or care about him more than just as a manufacturer of Transformer ideas.
But it wasn't all that surprising. Most of her real life friends had gone to different states or ended up dead, and most of her boyfriends had pretty much done the same. She had no desire to get back into a relationship with anyone and felt satisfied enough to have a sister who still wanted to talk with her – even if she was on the other side of the United States.
Over the last year, she hadn't felt like she had managed to make a deeper connection with this stranger. The last guy she had met over the internet she had tried it with was an ex-boyfriend who had decided to break up with her on Christmas, one day before her birthday, through chatroom text. She had no hope for any kind of long lasting friendship with any online friend. Everyone had been relegated to "acquaintance" eventually, as someone who had occupied her time for a few short fun months, before moving on with their life for one reason or another.
She had hoped that he would be different. She always hoped she would meet someone who would be different. In hindsight, she would have better progress shooting herself in the foot. She had shared a lot about her self with him over the last year, specifically her past traumas and her obsession with Transformers, in the hopes of connecting with him. But he had shared nothing beyond his own interest in Transfromers, had shown no interest in sharing anything of his personal life.
Until now.
She just wasn't expecting him to admit to being a giant intelligent alien cube.
But now her thoughts pulsed with an excitement that could only be born of a vain hope that her childhood heroes could be real. It was ridiculous; just because Transformers were real didn't mean that there were two groups of robots, one supposedly good and one supposedly evil, caught up in a self-destructive war which started because of a lack of food, something which should take more precedence than a petty grudge because the current government and enemies of freedom chose someone else to be their figurehead, as if the government's opinions are what actually matter to the people who want that freedom.
It was too much.
Except her friend had only ever talked about the characters, about the Autobots and Decepticons, as if they were real. Albeit, worded in such a way that it sounded like he was asking or answering "What if…" questions.
TheIronMaiden: How much of it is real?
TheAllspark: The war is real. Optimus Prime is real. Megatron is real.
TheIronMaiden: How did it start?
TheAllspark: Someone died.
TheIronMaiden: Who?
TheAllspark: Someone very important, and who you've never heard of before. In the end, it doesn't matter. The war happened and is happening, and the consequences have been felt all throughout the universe. I need someone who can help undo this damage, and there is no better person that I can think of than you.
She should have felt special. All she could think about was that her sister would have made a better choice. Her sister was smarter and wiser, all the things that the Autobots and Decepticons would need in a leader that could encourage the end the war. Sure, it would take a lot of time to do it that way, but her sister had the patience for it.
If Mercy did it, she would have the war end within a vorn, at the most, with a whole lot more dead mechs joining however many had already died in the war. She wasn't someone who twiddled her thumbs when work needed to be done, and she was far more aggressive than the average transformer fan. She was also emotionally stable and used to dealing with trauma, so whatever she ended up doing wouldn't traumatize her so much as her sister. Her sister hadn't seen anyone die before her eyes, or had to suffer years of guilt for a death that hadn't actually been her fault but she still believed she could have prevented had she been taller and stronger.
TheAllspark: I need you to end this war as quickly as possible and then to restore Cybertron, just as quickly, so that I can be repaired when I am returned to it.
TheIronMaiden: How would I return you to Cybertron? We don't have the technology.
TheAllspark: You're not going to return me to Cybertron. I will send you to Cybertron, and others will be responsible for finding me and taking me back.
Like the Autobots. Like her sister.
She was going to be one cog in this grand plan. It was almost a relief knowing that not everything depended on her, but that relief died quickly. She would be responsible for the most important aspects of the Allspark's plan: the end of the War and the restoration of planet Cybertron.
Her grades, her work ethic, even the death of her childhood friend, led her to one inescapable fact. But she couldn't say it. To say it would be an admission of guilt, of being responsible for something she couldn't be responsible for because she had been too small and too weak to close a massive, heavy, crooked gate. A kid is not responsible for not doing something she couldn't physically do.
But could she really turn down the opportunity to help her heroes, an alien race, survive a horrible war?
TheIronMaiden: How do you know that I can do this?
TheAllspark: Because only you can understand what you're fighting against.
Mercy grimaced and leaned back in her chair until she was staring at the bubbly white ceiling, wondering if he was purposefully being obtuse or if he was actually trying to make a point.
Could she understand what the Autobots, Decepticons, and Allspark had been through? Could she put herself in their proverbial shoes?
Yes, but that hardly seemed relevant to stopping in the war. The real issues were no longer based in the original problems that started the war: either side could easily save Cybertron once it's been conquered since all they needed to do was start importing energon and other resources from resource rich worlds off planet.
The real issue was getting both sides united so that the war could end. There were several simple ways to do this: have an enemy so massive that both sides have to be forced to help each other in order to prevent themselves and the planet from going extinct. If Unicron was real, it would be a simple matter of convincing both sides that he should be destroyed for the sake of Cybertron. If the Quintessons were real, it would be a simple matter of convincing everyone that they're only interest was turning all Cybertronians into their slaves. If neither of them were real, then she could create one, either by turning the Insecticon army against them or manufacturing a planet of drones to antagonize both sides and force them to fight said drones in order to regain their planet.
Regardless, every single way would result in mass death, and there were some characters that she didn't have the heart to kill. Thundercracker, Knockout, Jazz, Ratchet, Soundwave's minions, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Slipstream, Chromia, Firestar, and so on and so forth. She would have to make exceptions.
If any of them were real.
TheIronMaiden: Is every character… real?
TheAllspark : Yes, but they may not be as you remember them.
TheIronMaiden: That's as good as saying none of them are real.
TheAllspark: Every Transformer character exists but it would be like they are in an alternate universe. Characters like Jazz are still smooth and charismatic cool dudes in this universe as they are in your fantasies and they still go by that name. However, their histories are very different.
TheIronMaiden: So this is like an AU.
TheAllspark: It's the same basic idea, yes, but these are the originals. All of your fantasies are AUs of historical content. Like Abraham Lincoln being a vampire hunter.
TheIronMaiden: So characters like Jazz could be secretly Decepticon spies?
TheAllspark: Or, for example, Jazz and Meister are two separate individuals.
TheIronMaiden: Meister isn't canon.
TheAllspark: Technically neither are the Cartoons or Comics or Movies.
In other words, anything goes. Her favorite character, Prowl, could be the ninja from the Animated Series rather than the former Enforcer, Second-In-Command, and Head of Tactics from the comics. And she really preferred the later, which was strange considering her general distaste for authority figures. Plus his character was ruined for every other series because apparently writers kept forgetting there was a reason he was Second-in-Command and that all the Autobots who punched him in the face would be Court Marshall under any real military legal system regardless of moralistic reasons for why they punched him because they were in the middle of a fucking war and Prowl was the goddamn Second-In-Command of the entire goddamn army. And a Prowl who was not Second-in-Command and was just a one-note ninja who only cared about self-improvement wasn't worth even thinking about. At least in some amazing fanfics, ex-Enforcer Prowl wasn't a total asshole, at least for the stories where he was on good terms with Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, and Jazz. She wasn't sure if she liked the idea of Prowl being anyone other than the Prowl she liked, and would probably end up treating this other Prowl as that random background character who changed his name to Dent.
So the characters could be completely different from those she liked. Great. But that wasn't the only reason to become a Transformer. She could become responsible for ending the Autobot and Decepticon war. She could transform into monsters, dragons, animals, and vehicles.
She hated that she was resorting to thinking about basic physical attributes to convince herself to help the Autobots and Decepticons, and that it was working, because they honestly deserved a lot more respect than that. She shouldn't only care about the Transformers because becoming one would be awesome.
But what other reason did she have to help?
TheIronMaiden: Why me?
TheAllspark: Because you're the only one who can.
And what exactly was that supposed to mean?
Because she wasn't. She literally couldn't be. There were hundreds of thousands of other people who could actually make a difference. Natural-born leaders, activists, and commanders, with a strong sense of morals and a strong grasp of how people think, and there was probably a small percentage of those people who were huge fans of the series and loved the transformers regardless of how many times they were rebooted for no reason. There had to be at least a few of these people who had actually done something amazing in their life.
Maybe she was giving the silent majority too much credit, like politicians who were desperate to keep believing they were in the public's favor.
She kind of felt terrible; if it was all true and she was their last best hope for peace, she really did feel pity for the entire Cybertronian race. She spent her whole life wanting to write books but when she graduated from college, she could only write fanfiction. She had lost all meaning and hope in her life after being dragged through the proverbial coals for literally two decades and suffering PTSD for various things that weren't her fault and could have been prevented had certain authorities used their brains or tried to actually make a difference. Now, she was an alien race's last best hope for survival? It was enough to make her actually cry.
Because there really had to be a better choice out there. Somewhere.
And this guy had already given up on the rest of humanity and chosen her instead. Fucking A.
TheIronMaiden: So, tell me your story. How/when did you come to Earth?
TheAllspark: I was jettisoned from Cybertron during the war. Optimus Prime feared that the Decepticons would find me and use me to create life for their armies. My trajectory brought me here. I was damaged when I crashed on the surface, and I accidentally destroyed the surface of your planet thousands of years ago.
TheIronMaiden: Thousands? Don't you mean millions?
TheAllspark: You organic creatures can adapt faster than your scientists have led you to believe.
TheIronMaiden: You mean evolve?
TheAllspark: No. I mean adapt. Your DNA already contains all the codes necessary for survival. Epigenetics. Only when you loose bits of your DNA do you lose necessary codes for future survival and are less likely to survive a meteorite landing on your planet.
TheIronMaiden: You imply we are of intelligent design.
TheAllspark: You are.
TheIronMaiden: By whom?
TheAllspark: The lost lights. When I crashed on this planet, I was damaged. I lost some of the sparks I have been entrusted with. They roamed freely upon your planet as lost lights, influencing the development of your planet. They constructed for themselves the complete DNA sequence using the knowledge they possessed on the fundamental base code of the universe itself, and began encouraging life to grow larger and stronger in an attempt to find the correct body shape for themselves. They began possessing some of the more rapidly adapting creatures over the generations, those that would become apes. It took centuries, but eventually, they created intelligent bipedal creatures that look similar to Cybertronians. However, due to time and your own biological tendency to forget things, you eventually lost the knowledge that allowed you to become yourselves in the first place.
TheIronMaiden: So… we are our own gods.
TheAllspark: Hardly. A god has the power to create and control universes. You are scientists who constructed your bodies in a lab that was already teaming with raw material necessary to create them. You did not control the weather, the world, and everything else that helped to shape your bodies into bipedal forms.
TheIronMaiden: Okay, okay. Do you know if you wiped out the dinosaurs?
TheAllspark: I suppose.
TheIronMaiden: Was Megatron going to use you to create more sparked mecha for their army?
TheAllspark: No. Megatron had hoped that he could use my energy source to restart life on Cybertron and put it on the path to restoration. He had no intentions of using newsparks for his army, though that would have inevitably happened as he became more desperate to have an edge over the Autobots. However, it was farther down the line than Optimus Prime believed.
TheIronMaiden: You state facts. How can you be certain that is how things would have happened?
TheAllspark: I know the sparks of humans and machine. I am but one source for them, but mine come from the true source.
TheIronMaiden: Sparks are souls?
TheAllspark: All sparks come from the Well. All souls are sparks, but are smaller and malnourished. If a Cybertronian came upon this world, they would be horrified to find so many sparks so close to flickering out. It is horrifying, but it is also necessary.
TheIronMaiden: What do you mean? Flickering out just means they go back to you.
TheAllspark: Yes. A spark flickering out disburses. The energy is still coded for the spark so it naturally gravitates to the largest source of spark energy available. All those sparks that flicker out on Earth come to me, but because I cannot hold them they eventually return to the next human body that is available. It happens roughly once a vorn, such a small fraction of what its lifespan should be.
TheIronMaiden: I supposed that would be horrifying to a race that can live basically forever.
TheAllspark: The Transformers can live for however long they have the energy sustain their sparks. Humans do not gain much energy from their own bodies.
TheIronMaiden: But the sparks reconstitute in you. Are they restored to themselves again when they return to you?
TheAllspark: Yes. Every spark that leaves the Well remains itself.
TheIronMaiden: Is the Well Primus?
TheAllspark: Primus is the first complete spark. When all sparks return to the Well, we will become Primus once more but also as ourselves. It is like if you turned a metal ball into ball bearings and instead of melting them back together, you just put them all into the same container. We are the same but not the same.
TheIronMaiden: Why would Primus do this?
TheAllspark: All sentient and sapient have been made in Primus' image.
TheIronMaiden: Cool.
Mercy didn't know what else to say to this. All her questions were being answered but it felt unsatisfying. It was enough to make her get up and prepare for bed. She gave him her typical goodnight and then left. She dreamed of something completely unrelated. She felt lost and confused.
Why her? She almost couldn't believe that it was happening. No, she couldn't believe it could happen to her. After all, nothing had really happened yet. She had no real evidence that anything she had heard so far was true.
She really needed to just move on. She needed to actually spend time writing her books instead of doing nothing. She shouldn't be letting this promise to awaken her childish mindset. She needed to grow up, but she hated the idea of it.
There were too many disappointing adults in the world, people who should already know what it means to act responsibly yet who constantly tried to pretend certain things weren't their responsibility or that they had to be tricked or treated in order for them to achieve happiness just by being responsible. Growing up, in reality, was not pretending the world owed you something after graduating from school you didn't ask for. She did not want to become the adult that leeched off the government and pretend they didn't have a house so they could beg for goodies from passing strangers who should have more important things to worry about than what basically passes for the modern street rat. It was disgusting.
Yet, she hated being so bitter about it all the time. The world sucked. That wasn't new information. Everyone understood how crappy the world was and she was only adding to the bad side of things with her negative attitude. She needed to sit down, meditate, and just focus on fun things like writing fantasy adventures in some far off world that didn't have these problems, where the heroes could be epitomes of virtues and villains were worse than Hitler and always ended up dying. No more gray and gray morality that made you question what the hell morality was even supposed to be.
Though she supposed asking for stark black and white morality was being childish and irresponsible because life wasn't like that. What was the point of writing escapism if people kept complaining that it was escapism?
And suddenly she was reminded why she didn't want to write anymore.
She grabbed her tall black BEEOTCH mug with the yellow and black cameo on the side and raced down to make herself from hot chocolate and added enough black cherry rum that it tasted like liquidized chocolate cherry. It sounds grosser than it actually is. When she had gone back upstairs to her white chair, the doorbell rang.
Her thoughts immediately jumped to the proof the Allspark was talking about and she was racing downstairs like it was an Olympic race. When she yanked the heavy iron front door open, a small brown box about four inches wide, six long, and one tall greeted her. The mailman was already gone.
She slowly picked up the box and checked around the porch for anything else but there was nothing. The door slammed shut behind her as she weighed the package carefully in her hand. It was heavy, like whatever inside was made out of metal.
The waybill said it was Portland, Oregon.
She expected it to come from a crazy fan, the kind deluded into thinking they were the Allspark. It made no sense; the man she knew had a personality that was too autistic to be able to fall for fantastical delusions. Those kind of people don't really have imaginations, and therefore delusions. He could calculate the hypotenuse of a right triangle in a heartbeat, give accurate statistics on population without checking the internet first, and was capable of calculating the distance between planets purely by the intensity of the star. He was fairly accurate with the small stuff, and she couldn't question his ability to calculate the big stuff.
This was like a slap in the face. A bucket of cold water. It was hugely disappointing and she hadn't even opened the box.
She put it on her desk and stared at it. She couldn't describe what she felt. It was very close to disappointed indifference, the kind of feeling that comes over someone when they're watching a movie and realize how it's going to end before they're even ten minutes into it. She couldn't bring herself to believe anything fantastical waited in the box.
But she had the box now and it wasn't opened yet. She pulled out her letter opener and slashed it across the tape. She peeled back the tabs and yanked out the non-descript invoice. She half-expected to see the name of the original company on it, like Amazon or something, but it was blank except for the content list and her address. No price tag, either.
The sharp bing told her that her friend was online.
TheIronMaiden: It's here.
She went back to the box. Inside was a box that perfectly fit the brown box. It had a clear lid and a white bottom, and it contained a beautiful heavy gunmetal silver watch with a small metal computer replacing the round face. It reminded her of an Apple watch, except heavier like most of her jewelry. It was intricately carved with symbols that were basically circles within circles, half-circles and full circles, thick and thin circles, in a complicated alien pattern that looked almost like the Allspark's design from the movie. Except that design had more circuit-like designs involved, like someone from the design department in that movie had looked at a motherboard and decided to pick and choose what they'd add to the Allspark's design pattern. But t his wasn't even like crop circles. They were literally perfectly carved circles with deep, thin furrows in the metal that had to be carved by a needle-tipped machine. She tried to find a similar looking watch online but there was no "Allspark watch" to look at. There was the Decepticon watch from the movie and a whole bunch of random toys, but nothing like the heavy metal jewelry in her hand.
This was specifically made for her.
TheAllspark: Do you like it?
TheIronMaiden: I've always wanted a watch.
That was the end of that conversation, in her mind. This wasn't evidence. It wasn't even a consolatory prize. It was a gift from one friend to another, and it made her want to hide in her bed all over again. The world was cruel and unkind.
But she stayed and put the watch aside.
TheIronMaiden: What does it do?
TheAllspark: It will transform you.
TheIronMaiden: Into a transformer?
TheAllspark: Yes. All you have to do is touch the metal.
Touch the watch, she would become a transformer. Touch the watch, and it could reveal everything to be a lie. A simple choice.
TheIronMaiden: What exactly do you want me to do? I cannot repair you.
TheAllspark: I will send you to Cybertron after I rejuvenate your spark so that you can save it.
TheIronMaiden: What about ending the war?
TheAllspark: That is not as important as restoring Cybertron.
TheIronMaiden: Okay. HOW do I restore Cybertron?
TheAllspark: I am very confident that you will be able to figure it out for yourself.
In other words, once she achieved her final form, she was on her own.
Only I can do this, she thought, suddenly suspicious. Only I can figure it out.
TheIronMaiden: You don't know how to restore Cybertron, do you?
TheAllspark: My programming is to contain and rejuvenation certain sparks before they can pass on to the Well.
TheIronMaiden: What kind of sparks?
TheAllspark: Yours. Theirs. Anyone who was once a Knight of Cybertron, who sacrificed themselves for the betterment of Cybertron.
TheIronMaiden: Everyone who was in the war?
TheAllspark: Yes.
The entire human race, every single soul, were the victims and martyrs of the Cybertronian war.
TheIronMaiden: How far we've all fallen.
TheAllspark: Indeed. It is unfortunate. There are many souls who have lived their second life here who will be returning to the source instead of to me. They have already forgotten their past as martyrs and heroes, and will continue to devolve. Their souls have suffered enough; eternal rest is a small gift to the weary.
TheIronMaiden: Assuming they don't just all go to hell anyway. I'm just sorry that Optimus Prime was the one responsible for this, though considering who he is in the franchise I would not be surprised if learning this would actually make him feel more responsible for Earth and it's potential destruction, if Megatron does plan to destroy them.
TheAllspark: More than likely the Decepticons will simply turn the humans into minicons and eventually force them to join their army. What Optimus Prime feared when he sent me into space can very easily happen here if Megatron finds this place.
TheIronMaiden: Then should I stay here and protect this planet?
TheAllspark: The humans can protect themselves. Besides, their life is unnatural. It is only a matter of time before they self-destruct. Will you help me?
Mercy had always imagined that Earth would become so overpopulated that it would run out of available resources. The governments of the world would be pressured into doing something about it, whether that meant they would push to leave the planet, annihilate entire countries to make room for their own people, or unite to form one government of Earth. She would not be surprised if it was the latter.
She couldn't imagine staying behind. She was already seeing all three of those futures play out before her as modern humans grew more violent the less they had to do. Humanity's advancements in technology was only making them more repressed, encouraging them to trade real socialization for online socialization. Part of Mercy's own problems was the fact that she had no trust for strangers and preferred the safety of the internet to "going out" with people from work.
But staring at the watch reminded her of childhood, yearning to go to war so she could have the same adventures she'd seen in the cartoon. Her mother had told her no, and on some level she was grateful. Out of all the bad decisions her mother had made, preventing her from going to war had not been one of them. Child Mercy had no idea what was in store for her.
TheIronMaiden: Have you asked anyone else to do this for you?
TheAllspark: No. I have risked a lot just trying to contact you. I know your spark; I housed you for centuries. I do not believe you have changed that much in the time you have been gone. Our brief interaction has only strengthened my belief in you. Besides, I cannot send too many to Cybertron in this way. It would attract too much unwanted attention and put Earth in danger.
TheIronMaiden: And you in danger. You're right, too many would be self-defeating. Why only one?
TheAllspark: Because if I sent back more than one, my enemies would attack Cybertron. I will send you as a signal beacon to Cybertron. To anyone too far away from you, you will appear as just a signal carrying my energy signature. They will not detect your spark signature underneath it and won't realize what I am planning. However, if I send another one, they may be more alert to my signal and try to trace it back to you. I only want those who are willing to save me and protect Earth to come here, not those destined to destroy.
Like the Decepticons, if the cartoons were to be believed. She was going to have to learn about them all over again, like watching through another reboot cartoon series.
She was the only chance the Allspark had. The only one the Allspark trusted.
Her heart stirred and slowly swelled, and a thick cloud of emotion threatened to overwhelm her and make her start crying. She had never really grasped what it was like to have someone who had faith in her. She sucked in a breath and fought the thick emotions back down.
TheIronMaiden: My sister is a great person, Allspark. If there is anyone on this planet that could defend it and make peace with the Autobot, it is her. If you do not feel the same, then all I ask is that you protect her and ensure she lives a long, happy life.
TheAllspark: I promise.
TheIronMaiden: Then I will help you.
This was it. She was taking on this responsibility and abandoning everything that she had ever known. She felt like someone had blocked all the doors in her mind leading towards her potential future as a popular human being. But, somehow, it was like the world didn't matter anymore.
I'm going to start over, she thought, and this time I'm not going to be a weak, frail failure. This time, I'm going to do it right.
She pulled off the lid, slowly and deliberately. It felt like the world was standing still. Her hand touched the watch and a jolt of purplish-blue lightning zapped her finger. Her arm was tingling. Her body was heating up, as if someone was pouring hot chocolate straight into her veins. She could feel her heartbeat starting to slow down. The screen came on. An image of a rotating gold insignia flashed through her mind.
Then she was looking up at herself from the perspective of the watch. She saw her own head fall back into the chair, eyes staring lifelessly up at the ceiling.
Then there was nothing.