Author's Note: Apologies on the delay. Those who want to read my sad excuses are welcome to hop on over to our Yahoo group, but in the meantime, here's some love from author to reader. ;) Hope you enjoy!

Hunted

"So," I said the next night after the usual greetings. "Here's the thing. You know the Civil War, the U.S. one I mean? We didn't have Megatron around to reverse engineer anything. Right? 'Cause we didn't start working with him until 1930's. Same thing for the First World War. We figured that all out on our own. We probably didn't get much help from Cybertronian tech in World War II, either. At least not until the end."

He glanced at me sidelong and cautiously admitted, "Humans developed nuclear weaponry independent of us, it is true."

"So, yeah, the time period in which there was the least global conflict in the last hundred and fifty years was when the digital age began. Computers, cell phone technology, satellites…we owe all that to you guys. Which means we can blame you for Facebook but not for the nuclear arms race. Kinda ironic, don't you think?"

For the first time in this battle of wills that had been going on for most of the summer, I felt a slight give in his stubbornness. "Yes," he slowly agreed. "It is ironic."

"So...?"

"I stand by my decision."

Except...he didn't have quite as much conviction behind the words tonight. I pounced on the unexpected opening. "Even though we've had Cybertronian tech for like four generations and are still around to talk about it? In fact, we're probably better off because of it."

"It is only a matter of time, Sam, before even the information gleaned from Megatron is put to catastrophic use."

I frowned at him, catching a wisp of emotion, and suddenly felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. "It's not humans you distrust, is it? It's you."

I felt his spike of surprise and smiled just a little. "You think that you, personally, are the destroyer of worlds. But you know what? Even if you are as dangerous as you think, it doesn't matter. You're right – it is only a matter of time. All of us are going to die sooner or later. We're human; we do that. Everything for us is a matter of time."

He straightened his shoulders. "I will not hasten your demise."

"I'm the Human Prime," I insisted. "And I'm speaking for my race now. We can handle it. We've been handling Cybertronian tech for close on to a hundred years."

"A blink of an eye."

"A lifetime," I snapped back. "We're resourceful because we don't have as much time as you and so we have to be quick studies to get anything done. We learn. And while there are some dangerous people in this world, it's not you guys that have made 'em that way. We're hunters, too. We get that there are risks in everything."

"You also seek out unnecessary risks," he pointed out.

I frowned at him. "I'm the voice of the hunted to the hunter," I reminded him. "I've done some research on that. I can't tell you exactly what our brother Primes meant, but the glaring thing to me is that the hunted still die."

He stoically stared out over the ocean, trying to ignore my reference to my own mortality. "It is my fate to hunt stars, not other sentient species."

"And it's my fate to speak for the people who rely on those stars, not the stars themselves. And I'm telling you to trust us. We've got that whole yin-yang thing going - you need us." Frustrated, I stepped in front of him so that we were eye-to-optic. "There's a Cherokee belief that before a hunter kills his prey, he explains to the animal why he needs to hunt and asks the animal's permission to take its life. As they see it, the animals understand that hunter-and-hunted is the natural order of things, but the hunted also command respect. You. Need. Us. You need me. Courage and sacrifice, remember?"

He narrowed his optics at me. "I need you alive if you are to activate the solar harvester. There is no difference between destroying your sun and destroying your planet by giving your race technology they are not prepared for."

"We work opposite of that," I insisted. "The bloodiest conflicts our world has seen have been from weapons we created. We get the tech and then grow into it."

"At the cost of millions of lives."

"Choices have consequences, but we've learned from them," I pointed out. "It's been close a few times, but we haven't destroyed each other yet. We have better survival instincts than to start launching nukes."

"Mutually Assured Destruction," he murmured, and his stubbornness eased up a tiny bit more.

"Yeah. We're squishies, and we knew that long before you guys ever came along."

…

Hunter

It was only a matter of Time.

When we decided to stay on Earth, one of the first things I did was research the planet's myths and legends. I knew from experience that much insight could be gained about a culture from the stories they told about themselves, about where they came from and which values were most important. I had not been prepared for the sheer volume and diversity of human beliefs. Eventually, though, certain patterns became clear.

One of the most puzzling patterns was how time itself was frequently anthropomorphized. I'd never encountered another race that made myths about such an abstract and innocuous concept. To us, the passage of time was an opportunity to gain knowledge and to accomplish goals.

The humans' view of time was startlingly alien. The Greek god of time Kronos ate his children. Kala - literally 'Time' - was the destroyer of the worlds and slayer of armies in a Hindu sacred text. It was strange that a sentient race would fear mere time so intensely.

Now I understood. No matter my choices today, the passage of time would inevitably rob me of my brother. Time would claim him.

As never before, time mattered to me. We did not die of old age. Our frames were not subject to the same gradual, living decay that humans endured. It wasn't until I was fully bound to Sam that had this sense that time was a predator slowly closing in.

Sam was truly the hunted, but not by me. The natural order of things, as he put it, was his own death, but I could not bring myself to be the instrument. Time would claim him, not me, not my choices. I would lose him soon enough.

Time was a swift hunter.

The thought was chilling and I mentally turned away from it. Our brother Primes could not know of the relatively-obscure beliefs of a Native American tribe. Even the All Spark could not contain that knowledge. I could not deny the truth of Sam's words, though. The hunted still die. A small part of my spark ached at the injustice of it, that I would find Sam, that he would save my life twice over, that he would become my brother, and that he would die so soon. I'd had a hand in most of the tragedies our race endured, for good or for ill. This was completely beyond my control.

A part of me desperately wanted to evade that hunter, and were the circumstances different, I might have tried to find a way to extend or preserve Sam's life, but that was not his fate. His role as Prime was predicated on his short-lived, frail nature. The best I could do was to burn into my memory every moment with my brother Prime to cherish when he was gone. It was extremely frustrating that so far I had memories of arguments more than anything else.

Our lives were intertwined, our sparks were bound. The irony was not lost on me. I was old compared to Sam. Ancient. My people all were. Even Skids and Mudflap were older than the humans' first use of the wheel. Yes, their tyrants rose and fell in mere decades. So did their most brilliant sparks. They had to burn through an entire lifetime of experiences in a vorn, a mere 'year' to my race, though when compared to human lifetimes, it was more like a month.

We lacked the urgency - the vibrancy - of humanity. A human Prime gave to us a sense of timethat we did not in ourselves possess. But in my processors, I knew our time was quickly running out. I could only make energon when the need was great because the All Spark no longer held enough power to independently produce it. It had to absorb vast amounts of ambient energy for just a few drops. Even if I was supplying only my Autobots, we could not last for more than a few hundred years - a millennia at most - before our frames began to starve and, in extreme cases like Ironhide, go into stasis lock. It was no accident that the oldest of us carried the remaining energon. The All Spark could not be unmade, but like Sam and like us, it was running out of time.

It was not just Sam and I who were bound now. The fate of my entire race was intertwined with his. It was an interesting concept to apply yin and yang to flesh and frame. In many ways humans and Cybertronians were the opposites it described. The problem with that model was that yin and yang are two parts of a whole. The front and back of a hand together make a hand. If we were yin and yang, what did Sam and I together become? What would humanity and the Autobots together become?

Sam was wrong that I did not trust myself, or rather, I distrusted far more than just myself and humanity. I distrusted the new thing that, together, humans and Autobots would become if I let our fates become any more tightly bound. Perhaps that new Whole was what I distrusted the most. We were too different in some ways, and too alike in others. Perhaps we would work together better than I anticipated, complementing and balancing our strengths and weaknesses. It seemed far more likely that, being too similar in the wrong ways, we would throw each other into a greater imbalance.

Not for the last time, I wished for Elita. I was only half of that self she and I together made, and I came already unbalanced into my brother-bond with Sam. Whose side would she take in this argument? For an astrosecond, I flattered myself that she would side with me, her mate. She was far too wise to mindlessly take my side, though.

Without question, she would be the counterbalance to Sam that she was to Megatron, helping me stay grounded. Sam would accept her, though, as Megatron never did. He would welcome her perspective, I had no doubt, and she would be the tie-breaker as the humans put it. She could bring to bear the ethical and moral philosophy of dozens of worlds, though in my spark I knew that would mean nothing to Sam. He had made up his mind. Above all the intellectual arguments, though, she knew how to handle a stubborn Prime.

What would you say, dear spark? I whispered into the aching, broken bond. What counsel would you give?

There was only deathly silence in answer, but ghosts of her thought from aeons ago flitted through my processors. Freedom had been a guiding virtue for her, and it was one that defined and drove the new self our sparkbond created. But free will was not enough.

We are in her research office in the Political Philosophy department. I come here more and more frequently as our friendship grows and deepens. Megatron had come home in a fury because the council had voted in favor of an alliance with a race that, in my brother's view, was too weak. They would be nothing but a burden on us in the event of an actual conflict.

I am pacing Elita's office, and she is perched on the desk.

"We strong have a duty to the weak!" I say, frustrated with my brother. "Not simply to protect them physically but to protect their rights! He is the High Protector! How can he not understand that?"

"What rights, Optimus? Megatron isn't the Protector of the entire galaxy."

I huff, knowing she of all 'bots had already thought long and hard about that question. She is trying to lead me to the answer like a sparkling. I'd be angry if I didn't admire her so much. "If we enjoy a right, then any sentient race should as well."

She tilts her helm thoughtfully. "Freedom of self-determination, of thought and its expressions, of respect."

"These truths are so simple Megatron and I learned them while still in the academy as younglings."

Elita half-smiles. "They are only simple until you try to define them." She hops off the desk and steps in front of my pacing. Another reason I admire her - there are only a handful of mechs who would stand their ground in front of me when I'm agitated, and my mother is the only other femme who would. "Take justice, for instance. The most just place on our world is the Temple at Simfur."

I nod. "All are given equal gifts with equal deference. It doesn't matter whether you're a noble or a common laborer."

"Or it is the most unjust place on our world because everyone is given the same gifts regardless of their individual needs. A noble could buy vats of energon, and yet the temple guardians give him the same amount as a common laborer who doesn't have a single credit to his name. In some schools of thought, that is extremely unjust."

"The poorer mech isn't entitled to more," I protest. "He's entitled to no more nor less than any other."

"What makes either of them entitled to any of it?"

Despite myself, I am getting frustrated with her. "It is the law."

"Who decides it's the law?"

"The Dynasty of the Primes, in this case. They could read the glyphs on the All Spark, and the All Spark is the creator of energon. The Cube can declare the terms on which we receive its gifts."

She rises an optic ridge at me. "So who decides all sentient races are entitled to the same rights as us?"

That catches me flatfooted. "It is logical," I finally answer.

She half-smiles in that winning way of hers. "Which is your way of saying 'it's plain to me so it must be to everyone.' Logic can only be stretched so far to shape around an opinion. You're on the right track, though."

"Says you," I retort, drawing myself up to my full height.

"Says you," she shoots right back, her smile broadening.

It only takes a couple of astroseconds for me to understand. "It is plain to me."

She nods in earnest this time. "And that is where any ethical stance must begin. Arguments can be made for absolute moral authorities, but ultimately, you must choose for yourself. We don't idly call the Cube the All Spark, and our sparks come into being with a moral compass derived from that same light."

"As Alpha Trion would say, that light can be extinguished."

"It can also be kindled," she reminds me. "If it is truth from the All Spark it will resonate in our sparks. As with justice. If you are not entitled to something, it is not justice that you receive it. That is true for every philosophical system I've encountered. If you fulfilled your duty, it is not justice to condemn an ill result. Defining duty and entitlement are the difficult parts, but justice is absolute."

I had my answer, and a tendril of gratitude reached toward the broken bond before my spark remembered Elita did not exist anymore. I shoved the stab of grief aside by focusing again on the present. Most likely, she would have sided with Sam. My brother had a duty to fulfill for the All Spark - we knew this from the Dynasty of the Primes themselves - and I was actively impeding him accomplishing it. Whether I was wrong or right in my views, I was being unjust toward my brother.

I knew it in my spark and had ignored that knowledge this entire season, wallowing in arrogance and clinging to feared consequences. The voice of the Hunted had spoken, and whatever Whole thing Sam and I made together, I was the Hunter Prime. It was time I at least listened to what he had to say.