"Hey Oroa… out of curiosity, do you know how long Beckett is planning on training for?" Kendrix asked over the comms as Nova closed in on the Crucible arena's coordinates.
"For the entire day, and possibly into the night!" the Titan replied cheerfully.
"Really?" Kendrix asked uncertainly. "Isn't that a little… excessive?"
"Do not worry!" Oroa said assuringly. "Our enhanced stamina lets us practice for much longer than humans. Your body will not wear out."
"I'm more worried about my patience," Kendrix muttered as he cut the connection. Nova swooped down to the ground as they arrived at their destination, and Kendrix momentarily decompiled into data as Proxima transmatted him onto the surface.
He was standing atop a cliff, a sheer face of rock that plunged down to the roiling waves below. The air was thick with the smell of the sea, and Kendrix breathed it in deeply. It was not necessarily a pleasant smell, but the way he felt it ripple across his pseudo-memory, bringing to mind concepts and ideas he had not considered since before this life began, was a satisfying sensation.
"Alright Nova, looks like I'm gonna be stuck here a while," he said over private comms once his mind had settled. "I'll be safe with the others, so feel free to stretch your wings and take the day off. Just be safe, yeah?"
The Cybertronian responded with an affirmative beep and sailed back up into the pale grey sky.
Oroa materialized next to him a moment later, and clapped him on the back before walking towards the stone ruins some fifty meters away, where Kendrix could already see fire and lightning dancing in the fog.
As he and Oroa stepped into the stone stands surrounding the amphitheater-like arena, Kendrix's eyes widened and began to dart around as they tried to keep up with the spectacle laid out before them.
Two figures moved in the mist. One was wreathed in fire, flames spreading out from it so wide and wild that they almost looked like wings. In its hand, the figure held a long, slender sword of pure golden plasma, which they wielded like a fencer to try and cut down their opponent.
The other figure, however, hardly seemed welcome to the idea. They held their own blade, a long, wicked knife whose edge danced with the lightning that surrounded its wielder like a net. The blade moved almost quicker than Kendrix could see, sometimes striking, sometimes parrying, but never staying still.
What made it truly hard to perceive, however, was the fact that every strike took place several feet apart. The two warriors were in constant motion, dancing across ground and air, auras roaring and snapping at one another like territorial beasts. Occasionally they would vanish entirely, only to reappear a fraction of a second later to start their clash anew.
Oroa crossed her arms, and Kendrix could feel the warmth of her smile beaming through her helmet.
"It seems Trinity and Wayland have already begun sparring. Their duels are always particularly breathtaking."
"That's them sparring?" Kendrix asked, as the two suddenly Blinked twenty feet into the air and struck at one another with such force that he saw the wisps of fog surrounding them get blasted away.
"When death is not a concern, there is no need to hold back, yes?" Oroa said matter-of-factly.
"That's enough," a voice called out from down in the arena. Kendrix noticed Beckett for the first time, standing at the edge of the ring. The Titan walked forward as Trinity and Wayland landed back on earth, smoothly bowing to one another as the potent Light surrounding them faded into nothing.
The Exo began speaking and gesturing to the pair of Guardians; Kendrix didn't catch most of the words, but it sounded like he was reviewing their performance and offering suggestions. Kendrix struggled to imagine what warriors who'd been training for decades at least could possibly have left to learn, but from the way the two occasionally nodded at Beckett's words, it seemed they were taking the Titan seriously.
After a moment, Beckett stepped back and turned to look up at where Kendrix and Oroa stood.
"Good, you made it. Anyone heard from Apollo?"
"Present."
Kendrix resisted the impulse to jump as the voice spoke from directly behind him. He turned to look to where Apollo stood in the entrance Kendrix himself had walked in mere moments prior. He hadn't even heard the Hunter approach.
"Good, we're all accounted for then. Plan for the first few hours is 3v3 matches. Kendrix and Apollo, you're with me to start out."
Kendrix gave a sidelong glance Apollo's way, his visor hiding the motion. If the Hunter minded being partnered with him, he didn't show it. Maybe his apology really had been genuine.
His mind was quickly filled with other concerns, however, when he realized the two demigods he'd just watched duking it out were now going to be setting their sights on him, with Oroa to boot.
It was going to be a long day.
Nova's thrusters roared as he sailed through the clouds. He could feel droplets of water form on his wings, only to be whisked away by the air as it screamed over his angular frame. It was an exhilarating feeling, flying, and he wondered how he'd ever gone without it before.
Although… that was hardly the only thing he wondered. About before.
Nova accelerated into a barrel roll, as if his melancholy was a physical weight that he could shake off as easily as water and dust. Then, he angled upward, breaking out of the pale blue and into the starry black.
He felt the solar wind on his form like a gentle breeze, basked in the life-giving glow of Earth's sun. He realized suddenly that he didn't remember Cybertron's sun, if it even had one. Would its breeze feel different, having fostered a world of metal instead of one of flesh?
He found himself turning to the stars, as if he'd be able to pick it out of the tens of thousands his sensors could detect, as if he could discern which light would guide him home.
His engine let out a rumbling sigh, and he began to sink back into Earth's atmosphere. However, it seemed open space didn't want him to depart so soon. He suddenly picked up a strange transmission, and his subroutines immediately recognized the encryption scheme.
It was Cybertronian.
Nova lurched back into a stable orbit as he immediately decrypted the transmission. It was a set of coordinates, tagged for Earth's moon. And a single, two-word message.
Come alone.
Nova paused. There was no designation attached to the message, but it had to be from Bludgeon. Which, in turn, meant it had to be a trap.
He should get Kendrix and Proxima, go investigate together. But they were busy, and Nova could hardly fly back and pick them up. Kendrix would have to make excuses. The others would ask questions. And they couldn't afford to keep Bludgeon waiting, either. The offer wasn't likely to last long, and any information he could get out of the samurai would help their cause. So, as dangerous as it seemed, going to the coordinates was actually the best strategic move.
Right?
Nova decided not to give his better judgement time to work things out, and engaged his jump drive.
He arrived at Luna a few minutes later. The coordinates lead him to the dark side of the moon, nearly opposite from the location of the Hellmouth. Nova doubted that was a coincidence. Whatever Bludgeon was doing, he didn't want the Hive getting involved.
He dove towards the surface as quickly as he could, not wanting to give any anti-air weapons the chance to lock on to him. He pulled up at the last moment and transformed, sliding through the pale dust of the lunar surface with one hand, raising a charged Arc rifle with the other. He came to a stop maybe ten meters from the exact coordinates.
From where Bludgeon sat, waiting.
The skeletal Cybertronian didn't look up at Nova's violent entrance. He was focused on what appeared to be a Hive cleaver that he was gripping in one hand, using his other to drag a whetstone along its blade, cutting away the Hive chitin to leave only the thin, metallic core. In Bludgeon's hand, the cleaver was only the size of a large knife, but Nova knew that hardly made it a non-threat.
"I'm here," Nova growled in fuzzy Cybertronian, his damaged language subroutines struggling to project his thoughts into a radio transmission of speech. "What do you want?"
"You arrived quickly," Bludgeon replied. Not looking up. Ignoring the question. "I expected you to be off playing pack-animal for that insect you seem so fond of."
"You should be surprised I came at all," Nova replied, ignoring the barb. "Given how every other time we've met, you've done your best to kill me."
The Decepticon laughed that cold, empty laugh.
"If I wanted your spark snuffed, scout, you wouldn't be standing here. And no, I'm not surprised. I'm the only other Cyber in this system. Your only connection with Cybertron, your only hope of relearning what your memory has left behind. And we both know how desperate you are for answers."
"You're wrong," Nova answered angrily. "Sunstreaker is in the system too."
Bludgeon laughed again.
"That golden twin of yours? Where is he, then? Hiding in some icy cave under that tundra? Running errands for some flea like you? I think not. If you had found him he'd be here with you. So if the cold didn't kill him, the energon loss did. There were no other settlements on that continent when I arrived, no energon deposits he could have accessed. He is gone, scout."
"Enough!" Nova shouted. "I'm here, I'm alone, just like you wanted. So either tell me what you want or kill me and be done with it. Don't waste any more of my time."
"I already told you, scout-" Bludgeon drawled.
He rushed to his feet, closing the distance between him and Nova so fast the Autobot had barely registered the movement when he felt the cold kiss of the sharpened cleaver on his neck.
"-if I wanted you dead, you'd be dead," the samurai hissed, the emerald flame in his eyes mere inches from Nova's own. For a moment, both of them were still. Then, Bludgeon slowly drew back. "But my purpose here is not so crude. After our last encounter, I realized that I had misjudged you," he continued, turning away to stare at the horizon. "Underestimated you. You're a survivor. Like me."
"I am nothing like you," Nova hissed.
"Maybe not entirely," the Decepticon acknowledged. "But you have potential. That's why I've brought you here. Because I think you are worthy of receiving something I have to offer."
"And what might that be?" Nova asked suspiciously.
The skeletal machine turned to look at Nova, two sickly stars staring into his very spark. And when the samurai spoke, his voice was no longer robotic and hollow. It was filled with… reverence.
"Salvation."
Nova's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"Tell me, scout," Bludgeon said as he laid down his knife and clasped his hands behind his back. "What do you remember of our people's history?"
"Cybertron. The Autobots and Decepticons. Civil war." Nova answered slowly.
"Nothing beyond that? Nothing before?"
Nova hesitated, then shook his head.
"I do not blame you. Even if your memory was intact, I doubt you would know much of the times I speak. Most records of the earliest moments in our history were lost during the Dark Ages, hunted down and destroyed by the Quintesson tyrants as they tried to rewrite our past to better control our future.
"The old myths begin the story of our people at the dawn of creation, when the Light God Primus created us as its children, and created Cybertron as our home. This is the story our elders relate. But it is only a half-truth. For although Primus did create us, it did not create us out of nothing.
"At the beginning of this universe, there was only one form of life. A collective of screaming machines, all iterations of the same perfect pattern. Endless, timeless, unchanging."
"The Vex," Nova guessed, recalling what Proxima had told him of the aliens.
"Yes, that is the name the insects gave them," Bludgeon answered. "They inhabited great machine worlds they made from the planets they consumed. One day, an unknown entity came to one such world. The Vex there did what their nature commanded, and tried to simulate it, to understand it. But even their greatest minds could not reconcile the entity's existence with known laws of reality. This entity, great construct of Light that it was, would come to be known as a god to the Vex. As Primus."
Bludgeon turned his head towards the horizon once more, to where Earth's pale blue form just peeked into view.
"But the creatures of Earth know this god by a different name."
Nova's eyes widened as realization struck, and he too looked towards the distant Earth, his mind ablaze.
"The Traveller," he breathed.
"Yes," Bludgeon confirmed. "Primus came to the Vex as it has come to the humans. It took the greatest of the Vex minds, the one which had been designed to simulate it, and transformed it, encrypting it with a song of life. That mind, known as Vector Sigma, Bomb Transform, began to see beyond the Vex's pattern. It simulated new patterns, new forms forged in Light. The first sparks. It placed these sparks into the machine world, which formed for them new bodies, new protoforms. The first Cybertronians.
"Primus is a god of change, of complexity. This is why Vector Sigma designed us with the ability to transform: to honor Primus. Our very bodies, our very lives, are a hymn to the Light, an exercise of its logic."
Bludgeon looked down then, and when next he spoke Nova almost thought he could hear anger in his voice.
"And how did Primus reward this great work? How did it answer our song? It left. Abandoned us, its firstborn, to seek out new worlds to praise it. And what became of us? The Primes all died or vanished. The Omega Sentinels stepped beyond time. The Rust Plague cut our population in half and collapsed our empire along with it. The Quintessons invaded Cybertron and reduced us to slaves, then they were overthrown and our leaders simply picked up the chains. Now our people fight an endless war over a lifeless world, killing one another for the dying embers of an ashen hearth."
"How do you even know all of this?" Nova asked, struggling to believe it all, even when so much of the story rang true in the hollows of his memory.
"When I was young, little more than a street urchin hiding in the sewers from the prying eyes of the Quintessons' enforcers, I came upon the ruin of an ancient temple in the shape of a pyramid. Within, I felt a voice calling to me. From this."
A cavity in Bludgeon's chest split open, revealing a space that looked to be just below his spark chamber. He reached inside and produced a small black sphere, criss-crossed with geometric shapes wrought in faintly glowing orange. He seemed to activate some mechanism, as the sphere suddenly split open, glowing that same orange as it transformed into a statuette of a humanoid figure. It looked vaguely like a Cybertronian, but the dark material made it difficult for Nova to discern any distinct features.
Save, perhaps, for the pair of curved horns that formed a crescent atop the figure's head.
As Nova looked at the statuette, he felt a heavy cold fall over his spark as it began to thrum more and more slowly. A chorus of indistinct whispers began to fill his audials as his mind whirred with a dying fear. He felt sluggish, afraid, and so, so cold.
An eternal moment later, Bludgeon closed the item back into a sphere and returned it to its shrine within his chest.
"This idol whispered to me the secret origins of our people, gave me what I needed to divine the true nature of Primus."
"Which is?" Nova asked sarcastically, trying and failing to cover the fear in his voice.
"Primus did not bless our people. It cursed us. It robbed us of our perfect pattern, our unifying shape. It is this curse I seek to undo. To give our people their salvation."
"How?" Nova asked, fear giving way to his previous suspicion.
"Within this system lies a gateway to the place where the Vex are born."
The Black Garden. Nova realized. Proxima and Kendrix were right.
"If I can find the gateway and enter that place, I can reclaim the pattern that was stolen from us. I can use it to heal Cybertron, to unite our people. When all are one, there can be no war, no pain, no strife. We will reclaim the stars, our birthright as the universe's firstborn, and even the Hive will kneel before our strength. We will make right the past, and ensure our eternal future."
Bludgeon was looking at him now, eyes bright with a starving flame.
"This is what I offer you. Help me save our people, Nova."
Bludgeon reached out, his hand outstretched.
There was a long, long silence.
Then, Nova slowly reached out…
…and pushed his hand away.
"You want me to help you steal the pattern of the Vex?" he said, his voice almost mirthful. "So you can use it to take Cybertron and its people, cut away all that separates them, all that makes them unique, and shape them into a weapon to conquer the stars? To subjugate all other life? And you want that to be the way things are, forever?"
Nova actually had to laugh.
"Even if that didn't sound astronomically insane and impossibly narcissistic, there's one little thing that makes sure I will never, ever help you."
Nova's outstretched hand shifted into the form of a wire rifle, blazing with vengeful Arc.
"You took my brother from me."
Bludgeon screamed as the bolts of searing energy ripped past his defences and pierced into his body, sending him stumbling backwards as Nova rained burst after burst upon his monstrous form.
Eventually, however, the samurai found his footing, and retaliated with a snarl, scouring Nova's arms with burning talons and sending the Autobot back in a pained retreat.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Bludgeon spat. "You may choose not to help me, but it is only a matter of time before I achieve my goal. And when I do, you will be saved. Whether you wish it or not." Then, the monster leapt into the air, transformed into a Tombship, and went speeding off over the horizon.
Nova briefly considered going after him, but he knew that was a fight he couldn't win alone. So instead, he transformed and flew high up into the sky, setting his sights on Earth.
On home.
AN: This kind of turned into mostly an exposition dump, and I'm kind of ok with that. I'd originally intended to talk over this lore much later down the line, but it ended up working fairly organically with where this chapter ended up, so I decided to just add it in. Hopefully it'll add some more cohesion to the world and lore going forward.
Anyway, thanks as always for reading and I hope you all enjoyed!