Agoge. To a young sparkling, it meant that Lycurgus was Primus incarnate and we had to do whatever he said and that we lived in a jungle world outside the Decepticon Empire. There was a dozen of us and the beasts could kill us anytime. Since we were all young sparklings and our organic alt modes slowed the process of building internal energon generators, we stole from a nearby Maximal settlement and the old mech that came with us to survive. If we got caught, we're punished and left to get away from the ones that caught us on our own. If not, we simply had fuel for another day. Do or die, it was, in a way.
We were preparing for another raid when Lycurgus came with a new plan. Fly in, steal energon, get out, right? No. Not this time.
"Kill these Maximals. I want two heads by the time we leave."
My memory core was not fully formed at the time, and so I do not recall the full action sequence. Trapping our Maximal prey was easy. Killing, according to Lycurgus's commands, was difficult to Bolts, who later became one of my most trusted advisors.
We had the first one pinned and stasis locked. Bolts stopped just short of taking off the head, his hands shaking.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Lycurgus. Without waiting for an answer, he shoved Bolts aside. "Every minute you waste not collecting the prize we're bringing to the Empress, we get one more minute were we could starve in this Primus-forsaken dump. Lightning."
Our leader turned to me. "Finish him."
Without a minute of hesitation, I did just that. My first true kill.
It was a simple concept to the mind of a young sparkling. Kill the Maximal or Lycurgus slags you. And it was an easy choice to make. Our goal that day, I later learned, had been to return to Cybertron in good standing and collect the rewards that the Empress had set for the delivery of the heads of Autobot descendants on silver platters. It was a brilliant plan devised by one sparkling and it almost worked, except that Lycurgus failed to comprehend the complexity, and simplicity behind the Empress's reasoning in exiling us.
I'm hoping to prove that ruthlessness is but a trait learned from experience, no different from logic. As you, I'm quite certain, the heir to my Predacon Empire, are reading through these logs that are reserved solely for your optics, you probably find that you have a relatively easy time obtaining the rare treasure called truth. Somewhere else in these musings, I will give you truths that I took eons to pry out and even longer to falsify to the historians.