Orion POV
Over the next cycles, I kept up with my correspondence with Megatron. These conversations honed on my own sense of what I believed regarding castes, individuality, and free will. According to Megatron, their dialogue was also refining his ideas. "You force me to think clearly, librarian," Megatron said via videolink several cycles after their first interaction. "A leader needs this."
I thought that some of Megatron's ideas were still unclear. What exactly, he asked, did Megatron intend to do? Were they going to take their grievances to the High Council? What sort of plan was contemplated?
"I have other associates considering these questions, too," Megatron said, and he would say no more. This made me nervous—for good reason, according to Jazz. "You need to be very sure that you know what you're getting into here," Jazz said. "I'll stand by and watch, whatever happens; but you could be letting yourself in for serious consequences. Right now you're just talking; the minute you do more than that, there are laws involved. Are you prepared to break laws?"
I couldn't answer because of I didn't have one for this question, I asked it of Megatron.
"Who makes the laws?" was Megatron's answer. "Did anyone consult you? Did anyone consult me?" I had no answer for that, either.
"Listen, my friend," Jazz said. "What would happen if anytime one of us felt left out of the law-making process, he started a revolution? Can you imagine what this place would look like?"
"No," I said. "We're a long way from that. We've got the opposite, don't you see? Nobody ever says anything. Who decided that we should be in castes? What do our leaders say about it now?" I thought long and hard to find the answer but nothing came up the only one person that came up was Sentinel Prime was not a visible leader; the High Council busied itself with the minutiae of governance and avoided the big questions. Across Cybertron, argued Megatron—and I had to agree—Cybertronians had grown lazy, satisfied with what was handed to them. "Is this the same race that built the Space Bridges?" Megatron asked rhetorically. "Are we still alight with the AllSpark? Then why do we let others speak for us, act for us, decide what we will and will not do?"
There was something different about him. I could see it as well as any other sentient being who spent time in contact with Megatron. He was difficult to ignore, and when he spoke of individual freedom it was easy to think—no matter how many Cybertronians might be in his audience—that he was talking directly to you.
Still, I had never met him in person. He wasn't sure the risk was worth it. In truth, he wasn't sure what the risks were.
Megatron began to encourage him. "If you would understand Cybertron, librarian, you must see Kaon," he said.
"Maybe if you saw Iacon, you would understand Cybertron better yourself," I countered.
"Oh, I will see Iacon. Have no fear of that," Megatron said.
Something about the tone of his voice made me want to change the subject. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke a fight with Megatron when he was just beginning to understand what Megatron's ideas meant… and what he, me, had to contribute to the discussion. I believed some things in common with the hard-bitten survivor of Kaon's pits, but in other ways, he felt that despite their commonalities, there were fundamental differences in the way they approached the question of freedom and will.
"Why Megatronus?" I asked. I had heard Megatron answer the question before, in slightly different ways. I moved along, refined his ideas and rhetoric. I realized he was witnessing the growth and rise of a genuinely important leader… but of what? And where would he lead? "I assume the name of one of the Thirteen because—although only one of them ever called himself the Fallen—they all fell away from their original mission. They all failed their future, which is our present. I took that name because the principles I believe in have fallen. Freedom has no caste, so there is no place for it in Cybertron today. History makes some bots villains for doing what they thought was right; if that happens to me as well, so be it. I can only do what is the right thing to do." Megatron cycled through his alt-form weapons as he spoke. At the periphery of the screen I could see some of Megatron's inner circle. I only knew two of them, Soundwave and Shockwave. Soundwave carried Minicons, which made me nervous. Minicons made me think of surveillance and treachery. Shockwave was cold and formal, a dedicated scientist out of place among the bulk of Megatron's followers.
It seemed, to judge from the single example of Shockwave, that Megatron was beginning to realize his goal of bringing different castes together. Scientists and steelworkers—let alone gladiators—seldom mixed unless one was giving the other orders, and that relationship, I could see, was reversed here. Megatron was clearly in charge.
"In the pits of Kaon there is no second-guessing," he continued. "There are no shades of gray, no fine distinctions. You find those in the Hall of Records, perhaps, but not here. Down here you make a decision and commit to it with every atom… or else you die."
meanwhile back at the hidden Leaf Village
Kushina stood most of her days in a library trying to finish the tracking seal to bring her son back to them to her the most, with few of the components down for the tracking seal she could hear clips and Snippets of chatter coming from the other side one of the voices sounds like Naruto but it wasn't very clear to hear. She tried to listen closely to her baby boy's voices "ou really think the Thir-teen thou-ght a -about th eir acti ons this ay?"
She smiles knowing that she's getting somewhere it just take more time and effort to bring her son back home wherever he is, but she has noticed a change within her daughters Naruko is becoming more arrogant than an Uchiha and it's starting to get on her nerves she's been acting like a spoiled brat ever since Naruto ran away she hoped that Minato could bring their daughter back into shape and break her out of this spoiled brat attitude. And there is Narumi should become more dedicated to being a Shinobi training day in and day out only the stop to rest to eat food not being a kid. Kushina kind of blames herself for her daughter's new changes of attitude but she can't stop now she needs to finish the tracking seal to bring her son back home.
At Hokage's Office
Minato seems to be drowning himself in paperwork but he couldn't seem to get anything done he let out a tired side as he looked at the picture frame that had a happy family all except for one who's standing far away with a sad look on his face, "I really messed up..." Minato muttered. "It's not fair...I shoulda been a better father to you Naruto I'm so sorry my son!" Minato said as he started to cry for his son and for the lost time that he should have been a father to Naruto doing everything a father and his son should teaching him jutsus everything, but he threw it all away.
back in Cybertron with Orion POV
I looked around. I was alone in his wing of the Hall of Records and had done what he could to insulate this channel from the normal data-harvesting protocols that applied to traffic into and out of the Hall. Still, I spoke quietly. "You really think the Thirteen thought about their actions this way?"
"It doesn't matter to me," Megatron said. "Megatronus has been gone for a long time. I am here. You are here. What we do is not up to Megatronus, or to Liege Maximo, or any other myth. What we do is up to us."
"Who is us?" I asked a few solar cycles later.
"Whoever wants to be," Megatron said with a laugh. "When you're taking on the world, you can't be choosy about who wants to be on your side."
"So you have followers in Kaon," I said. "Where else?"
"That's the kind of question a spy would ask."
"If you were worried about that, we would have stopped talking a long time ago."
"Perhaps, perhaps not. Soundwave says I should worry that you will betray me." Megatron laughed. "I say back to him that if I thought you were going to betray me, I would meet you in the arena and settle things like warriors. Would you fight me in the ring for your principles, librarian? Can you tell your principles from mine?"
"I think I can," I said. "And I would fight anyone for them."
As I said it, I realized it was true. Always I had known that there was a larger world beyond the mundane horizons of the work I did and the caste I was part of. Hearing Megatron speak had lit a fire inside me that was not Megatron's fire, but mine. It was as if my Spark had never come to its full brightness until it had struck against the revolutionary ideas of this criminal gladiator.
"Then I will tell you. I have followers in Blaster City and across the Badlands to Slaughter City. I could make the spaceport at Hydrax mine tomorrow," Megatron said, as I fit those place names into a map of Cybertron into my mind. "And across Cybertron, there are pockets of Cybertronians who hear me. They will follow when I call them into action." "Which will be…?
"When the time is right. Remember, librarian. We have still never met. Until we can look each other in the face, we are discussing things that might never happen, the way we look up at the pieces of a Space Bridge and ask ourselves what it would be like if we could cross again to Velocitron or the Hub. We are friends, having a friendly conversation about things we believe."
Friends thought I. As unlikely as it might have seemed, this was correct. I was becoming friends with an agitator, a criminal, and possible traitor to the Council.
But in a society that was most of the way along a descent into stasis, what else could any right-thinking Cybertronian do?
"Tricky question," said Jazz when I asked him later. "I've started to look into these things. Your friend Megatronus—or Megatron—has an interesting history." "I know about his history," I said while petting Kurama as he purred.
Jazz said, "I know you do. But I did not and I thought I would look and see what I could find. What do you think he wants, Pax?"
I thought about this question for a long time. "He wants the Cybertron that used to be," he said eventually. "The Cybertron where you were not doomed to a Guild and caste the moment you emerged from the Well of AllSparks. The Cybertron where any Cybertronian could become anything. The Cybertron that looked to the stars, that fought the Quintessons, that challenged itself to reach out and see how far its grasp could extend."
"That's what you want," Jazz said. "It's time you stopped pretending otherwise." Again I took some time to think. "Yes, it is," I agreed.
"Good. I won't say you're wrong. I will tell you, my friend, that this is a dangerous line of thought. How do you think the upper castes are going to react to this idea? Do you think they want a return to the days when a Cybertronian's success was based on merit and dedication?" Jazz laughed at his own sarcasm.
"If I can't make myself do what's right," said I "how can I expect anyone else to?"
Jazz nodded. They looked up into the endless black of the sky. "Fine," Jazz said. "Just so you're not surprised when you find out that everyone else isn't likely to hold themselves to the same standard."
"Did I tell you that Megatron said he'd fight me if he thought I was going to betray him?" I said.
"Very funny," Jazz said.
"He did."
"Then watch your back," Jazz said. "If he brought that up, he's already half-convinced himself it will eventually happen."
I laughed. Then he said, "I better get practicing and learn how to fight."
And I did, carving out time every solar cycle to practice with others of my caste. I worked on the altform weapons I could create from my proto-form, the ion cannon, and Energon blasters. And I learned the ins and outs of the sword and axe that I could carry or manifest as another partial alteration. As I fought these mock battles I thought of Megatron, who for most of his existence had fought such battles for the stakes of his Only I thirst for knowledge, both of the past and of all the things about present-day Cybertron I had never thought worth knowing, kept me coming back.
That is my responsibility to my caste.
There the conflict inherent in my friendship with Megatron presented itself most clearly. It was because I was friends with Megatron that I had a rekindled interest in what was happening around me in this Cybertron that I lived on and experienced with other Cybertronians—yet if I kept any loyalty to my caste, that brought me into conflict with Megatron, who would abolish all castes immediately upon gaining the power to do so.
And wouldn't I as well? I asked myself. The answer was: perhaps. I understood Megatron's reasons, and perhaps even more than the gladiator did I wanted the freedom and initiative that would come with the end of caste and Guild.
Where they differed, I suspected, was in method. I believed the change could be created through political means: spreading new ideas, watching them catch fire, attracting enough followers to their vision that eventually the High Council and Sentinel Prime would have to take notice. That was the vision of mine.
Sometimes I was concerned that Megatron did not have as much patience as I did. I was beginning to attract followers of my own, though. Messages were appearing that mentioned me and not Megatron or mentioned Megatron only as secondary to me. I was, despite my best efforts at remaining concealed, becoming known.
Things were going to come to a head very shortly. It was time, at last, to meet Megatron face-to-face.
I looked at the screen of my workstation. I dictated a note to Alpha Trion asking for time free of work. On my way out of the Hall of Records, the Archivist contacted me directly, but I did not answer. I could not think of what to say, could not take the chance that Alpha Trion would convince me not to go.
I saw clearly what needed to be done. All that remained was to do it.