A/N: Hello fellow readers its Dreadwing346 here to say sorry for the long wait for an update for the next chapter to Rebirth, I had a bad case of writer's block and school and work all together we're a nasty combination to come up with anything to write for the story or any of my stories but I will persevere for the summer. But I wish to inform you on further chapters to rebirth will be solely focused on what's going on Cybertron and later on when Naruto/Orion becomes Optimus Prime and slowly going back into the ninja world but small portions of it because I'm planning to re-create the holde War and how the struggles of the people of Cybertron before they came to Earth.
Third person view
The first thing Orion Pax thought about Kaon was that he had never seen anything like it. Of course, he had seen images, but experiencing the place with all of his sensory arrays at once, getting the totality of the experience…
He had come to Kaon in his alt-form, rolling down through Kalis and near the Well of AllSparks, source of every living Cybertronian. Then he crossed the Torus States and entered the Sea of Rust, with the Sonic Canyons to the south. Skirting the Canyons, Orion Pax entered the Badlands and watched as the groomed, civilized surface of Cybertron was replaced by rugged, broken territory. Metallic ridges and sinuous canyons filled axle-deep with rust were the norm; in places, ancient ruins sprouted from the formations. Orion Pax knew that the Badlands had been the scene of great deeds and immensely important moments in the history of Cybertron, but he had never gained access to the records that might have told him what those deeds and moments were. So he rolled on, drinking in all of the information he could by observing the environment around him.
Once, he imagined, this had been an industrial area but not a wasteland. Now it was hard to see it as anything but a dead remnant of a civilization irrevocably in decline.
That, however, was what Orion Pax was out to change. He and Megatron together could spearhead that change.
The city of Kaon sprawled across a plateau three times the surface area of Iacon. Over it hung a perpetual cloud of smoke and heavy-metal compounds. Whereas the architecture of Iacon reached up and out, defined by towers and arches, stepping-stone ridges of residential blocks and marvels of engineering, Kaon, in contrast, was like an endless tumble of blackened rubble, immense mechanical structures collapsing onto one another, and newer generations of the same built upon them. It looked as if it had been bombed from orbit, then pieced back together by blind Minicons. In alt-form, Orion Pax rumbled through the outskirts of Kaon, returning to protoform when he got toward the center of the city, where the roads became tangled and overhung with conduits, catwalks… it was impossible to keep oriented without satellite and Grid interface. You couldn't see in Kaon. There was no way to understand where you were in relation to the rest of the city. In Iacon you had a sense of space and location.
What must it have been like to live here from the moment you came out of the Well of AllSparks?
Walking now, Orion Pax looked for the building Megatron had described to him. It was to the south of Kaon's center and in between two slag pits so deep that Orion Pax could not see to the bottom unless he came right to the edge. The building itself was a pyramidal black monument, squared at the top for a landing pad. Inside it, Megatron had said, was an abandoned cyber-hydraulic work. It was the perfect venue for gladiatorial matches as well as black-market production of optics and auditory components. Those degraded fast in the heavily polluted atmosphere of Kaon, and especially in the gladiatorial arenas, where injuries to sensory arrays were extremely common in surviving combatants.
But it was below those workshops that the real action took place. For nearly half a hic below street level, interconnected subterranean levels of support mechanisms, workers' housing, materials storage, and refinery pipelines formed a perfect series of spaces for gladiatorial matches. There were more than a dozen places like it just in Kaon; twenty more in Slaughter City; more yet in various outlying settlements in the Badlands and right up to the eastern terminus of the Sonic Canyons.
Here, though, was the heart of the gladiator profession. All the fighting Cybertronians from other districts
came here to make their names—literally, in Megatron's case—and now that Megatron had thrown out the criminal syndicate that had controlled the pits, he was in the process of turning the gladiators into the seeds of an army. Orion Pax approached the pyramid as if it held the secret of a Cybertron he had never known existed.
At the side door, two Cybertronians—one slightly smaller than Orion Pax, black and white with eyes like red searchlights, and one enormous, four or five times his mass and carrying a mace the size of Orion Pax at least—appeared to block his way. "Match entrance is on the other side," the small one said.
"You must be Barricade," Orion Pax said. He turned to the big one. "And you're Lugnut, right? Megatron told me you might be out here. I'm here to meet him."
"Just strolling through beautiful Kaon to meet the boss, are you?" Barricade said. "Funny. He didn't say anything about that to us."
"You sure?" Orion Pax glanced at Lugnut, who wasn't speaking. He thought he understood. Lugnut would watch whatever happened until one of his superiors told him to act.
The trick with beings like that was to convince them you were one of their superiors without them ever knowing you were trying to convince them.
"Lugnut. He must have told you," Orion Pax said.
Lugnut looked surprised that anyone was talking to him. "Could be," he said. "I don't always—"
"Shut up," Barricade snapped. He glared at Orion Pax. "You don't know what the boss said to who."
Orion Pax said, "I know what he said to me."
Standoff. Orion Pax could feel the tension. Barricade couldn't stand the idea of being shown up in front of Lugnut; he was that easy to manipulate. Or was he? Was he making this easy to test Orion Pax?
Kaon was a long, long way from the House of Records in Iacon.
"Listen," Orion Pax said. He thought he'd already made his point. "I'll stay here with the big guy. You go ask the boss. Easy, right?"
"I don't need you to tell me what's easy and what isn't," Barricade said. But he was already moving to go back inside. Perfect. "Lugnut," he added with the door open. "Don't let this mech go anywhere."
Mech thought Orion Pax. He's got to put me in my place. Gladiators wore their emotions on their sleeves, it seemed. He wondered if he should have reacted to the insult, or if a reaction would have been too provocative. Then he started thinking that he was being too deliberative, overthinking everything he did, overanalyzing everything others did.
What else? Megatron would have said. What else are you going to do when you've been told for your entire existence that you can't analyze, can't think for yourself… and then you get the chance?
Yes, Orion Pax thought. And on the heels of that thought, another: He might have said it even before Megatron.
It occurred to Orion Pax that he was on the verge of becoming a revolutionary. It was, in fact, a revolutionary act just meeting Megatron, whose reputation was already spreading. There were rumbles around the Grid that Sentinel Prime was "concerned," and that the High Council was "considering action."
If he himself kept on with his present course of action, Sentinel Prime might well express concerns about him. A data clerk from the Hall of Records, drawing the attention of Sentinel Prime! Or the High Council!
It was hard to imagine.
Still… what else could he do? Every Cybertronian deserved the right of self-determination. Orion Pax believed this, and his friend Megatron believed it as well.
As if summoned, Megatron loomed in the pyramid's doorway. Behind him glowered Barricade. "I see you've met some of the indigenous semi-intelligent life," Megatron said. They clasped hands. "It is good to see "And you," responded Orion Pax. Friend. There was a word he had not used much… perhaps only with Jazz, and some of the now-forgotten fellow students in his first training sessions out of the Well of AllSparks, when they had initially learned how to assume alt-forms, and learned what their natural alt-forms would be.
Inside, the pyramid was largely hollowed out. The internal space was crisscrossed with girders and catwalks, and much of its floor lined with spectator seating. Only the farthest comers appeared to still be used for manufacturing.
"We have a separate aerial tournament that takes place here," Megatron explained. "I fought here a few times. Mostly underground, though."
"You're running it all now?" Orion Pax prompted as Kurama nuzzled Orion nick cables as he was laying on his shoulder plates.
"Barricade takes care of the day-to-day details, and Shockwave handles keeping the gladiators healthy and putting them back together." Far off in the dimness, Orion Pax heard the skitter of tiny servos he always associated with Minicons. Megatron chuckled. "Soundwave spies on everyone," he said. "Even me, and especially you. This is how he demonstrates his loyalty."
They fell into a conversation then, as Megatron gave Orion Pax a tour of the pyramid and the uppermost subterranean levels. They passed through a training facility where ranks of Cybertronians did martial exercises under the direction of a drillmaster. Not far from there, a level down was a vast machine shop in which armor and weapons were coming together under the skilled and watchful eye of wordsmiths.
"This is all for the gladiator pits?" Orion Pax asked.
"It might be," said Megatron. "Depending on what else might require the services of a well-trained fighting force." A thrill sparkled through Orion Pax's circuits then. "My idea is that we advance our cause by spreading the concepts of freedom and self-determination," he said. "We talk, we argue, we convince. Sentinel Prime is slow to react; the High Council will dither endlessly unless a problem walks directly into their chambers and demands to be solved. I don't think armed insurrection is going to be necessary." "Maybe that's what it looks like from Iacon," Megatron said.
"It does." Orion Pax persisted. "You came up through the gladiator ranks. Every problem looks to you like it can be solved by fighting."
"And every problem looks to you like it can be solved by reading," Megatron came back.
"Sounds like a compromise is in order," Barricade interrupted. He had only just caught up with them after disappearing for a few cycles on some errand. "And around here, Orion Pax, compromise means agree with the boss."
"Whoa there," Megatron said. "This is a scholar, from Iacon. He's not an ore hauler or smelter you can threaten. Orion Pax is a friend. He is my friend and the movement's friend." He locked optics with Barricade, whose ruby spotlight gaze was the first to drop. "Understood, boss," he said. "No offense meant." "None taken," Orion Pax said.
"Still," Megatron said. "We have talked and talked and talked. And here, in this pyramid, where so many like me have fought and died, we have talked and talked of freedom. It is time to act. Some Cybertronians loyal to me are out searching the planet for some of the artifacts of the Primes; if it is granted to us to find them, that will be a sign that our cause is just. And others…" He trailed off as if uncertain how to go on.
"Others what?" asked Orion Pax.
"Our ideas have taken root in different ways, my friend. Some of the more combative and fiery citizens of Kaon do not believe that ideas spread by talking. They believe that ideas spread by action."
"Then we need to distance ourselves from them before they do anything stupid," Orion Pax said immediately. "Violence at this stage will be counterproductive." "Counterproductive? Not wrong?" Megatron said.
It took Orion Pax a moment to notice that the great gladiator was teasing him. "Of course, wrong," he said. "Megatron, if a bunch of firebrands goes around Cybertron destroying things and putting our names on those acts, our ideas will be tarnished as well. We'll be written off as radicals. We'll be defined by the worst excesses of our followers."
"Perhaps," Megatron said. "Another way to look at it is that if we truly believe in self-determination and free will, we must respect the right of our followers to disagree with our methods and choose their own."
In a philosophical sense, of course, this was true. But Orion Pax knew—he could tell, could feel it right down to the Spark in his body—that their philosophical discussion was not going to stay philosophical for long.
Time was going to come when he would have to insist on doing things his way. But that time had not come yet. Not here, on Megatron's home ground, among Megatron's followers, who did not yet know that many of Megatron's ideas, in fact, came from Orion Pax.
Of course, the reverse was also true. "So you are with me, librarian?" Megatron asked.
Orion Pax looked around at the inner circle of ex-gladiators and other low-caste Cybertronians. He did not fit in, yet he was not afraid. "I am with your ideas," he said. "They are my ideas as well."
"Excellent," Megatron said. He turned to the gladiators who had paused in their work to watch them. A more brutish lot of Cybertronians, thought Orion Pax, could not have existed outside Slaughter City. And these were the Cybertronians who would usher in the new age of free will. "Cybertronians!" Megatron called out. "My friend Orion Pax! Together we will lead all sentient citizens of Cybertron to a new age, a restoration of our former greatness!"
MEGATRON! MEGATRON! MEGATRON!
Megatron leaned close to Orion Pax as the chant washed over them. "Soon they will chant your name, too," he said.
"As long as they hold to the ideals," said Orion Pax, "they can chant whatever they want to."
Megatron laughed. "We need a name for our movement and its followers," he said. "Something in line with what other great movements in Cybertronian history has been named."
Orion Pax had in fact been thinking about this for as long as he had taken seriously the idea that he might have some effect on the future history of Cybertron. The archives at Iacon were full of long-gone and forgotten movements that incorporated their beliefs in their names, one-word distillations of complex philosophies…
"Autobots," he said. "For we seek autonomy, and see it as our basic right."
"Interesting. I, too, had thought of a name." He looked as if he was about to say more, but Shockwave approached and said something quietly enough that Orion Pax could not hear it. "Ah," Megatron said. "Come with me, librarian. Something is about to happen that you will want to see."