Author's note: Optimus reflections in this chapter on humanity's family tree comes from www . sciencedaily releases/2004/09/040930122428 . htm For clarity, this is NOT the mitochondrial Eve (who is modern humanity's direct matrilineal ancestor) but rather a male or a female that every human alive today can claim as a common ancestor through matrilineal or patrilineal descent, or a combination of both.

Hunted
It was another week and a half before I thought up another argument to throw at Optimus. "So..." I said as I joined him on the flight deck. "You're going to just take from Earth and give nothing back?"

He shook his head, feeling oddly defeated. "There are vast resources in your solar system beyond Earth."

"And you're really gonna take 'Bee away from me to put him in a mine on Europa or somewhere else off-world?" Like a sudden punch to the gut, I realized, "You'd go, too."

He bowed his head, duty and his need for kin wrestling across the bond.

"You don't have enough mechs here to do this by yourself," I urgently pointed out, not letting him get a chance to actually say that he would leave the range of our bond if he had to. I wasn't ready for that even if he was willing to make the sacrifice. "You've got a whole planet full of people who can help." I half-smiled. "We're talking some serious human resources."

"I will not enslave your race!" he rumbled.

"So pay us!" I insisted, my own determination pushing back against his anger. "You're already rolling in dough. And if you would sell even the simplest tech..."

"That would be little better," he interrupted. Again, where I expected frustration and maybe irritation, there was only a heaviness in his spark. "You'd be reduced to minions."

He was softening, I realized, and I latched onto that weakness. "No. We would be your brothers."

That brought him up sharp.

"Okay, yeah, little brothers. Baby brothers, even. But if you really believe that this is your home, if you really believe I'm your brother and it's your fate to be here, then you've got seven billion kin here, too. Otherwise, this is just another stop on the road. You've gotta decide."

Again I felt him ease up a little, more thoughtful than just blindly stubborn. "To quote Quinn, you would not give a two-year-old a hunting knife."

"Yeah, well, we're already playing with knives. And with guns. And with nuclear weapons. And even some Cybertronian tech. Are you going to let us learn the right way to handle all that from our own mistakes? Or are you going to lay some ground rules? Or, better yet, you could actually teach us."

"We are an unworthy example."

I stepped in front of him, my fierce confidence swelling across the bond. "Are you better than us or not?"

He opened his mouth to protest, but my impatience cut off his weary frustration.

"Because you keep saying that we're too young and violent. So which is it? Are you older and wiser or not? You said once that I was a Prime to the Autobots as much as I was to my own race. Do you still believe that's true? Because if it is, then you are a Prime to my race just like I am to yours."

I had him then, and we both knew it.

"Look," I said, trying soften the blow. "None of us are perfect. We just need you to do your best. We need you to be Optimus."

...

Hunter
Ironhide was sand-coated in the morning light, already putting his fellow Autobots through their paces at Boomtown. He was relentless with Skids and Mudflap, but they were on their way to the med bay for repairs and Arcee was the one now training with Ironhide. I was next, and I idly watched them.

My mate's sister and their sister's mate - both Ironhide and Arcee were kin, though they were severed from me. Arcee was the one holding the clan together now, invoking sister privilege for Elita, Moonracer, and Chromia. It was an act of profound amity to stand in the stead of them all. It was a heavy burden to watch over her kin and, to the best of her ability, offer the support and protection of our extinguished and missing mates as only she could. She was the older sister of them all and had known their sparks from the moment they had been brought online.

There had been a time when sibling privilege was the exception rather than the rule. I still remembered when my parents and their creators and kin had been an actual clan. My father's father Stromancer was bound to a femme named Solar Flare and was our clan leader. It wasn't until I myself met the Dynasty of the Primes that I learned his was actually a clan name. My mother's creator-sisters were Beta Three and Starsheen. Through them we were bound to Alpha Trion's clan - all two dozen of his descendants, plus the brothers and sisters they created. When allied with us and others, Alpha's clan rose to the strength of a tribe.

We weren't strong in might alone; we were strong in the spark. The mechs and femmes to whom I was bound were a web of support, of guidance, of affection. I had more than a hundred bonds: primary, secondary, and kin. All of their sparks touched mine. It was difficult to remember now, not because my memory degraded like a human's but because it made the grief so much greater. In that moment, I chose to remember anyway. I had forced myself to forget them for too long.

There was Metatron, my father's friend-turned-brother from a seer clan with whom he created a younger brother named Chiron. It was Chiron who first gave me the sparkling-name of Orion. Metatron had another brother, a temple guardian named Tyr with whom he created Rune and all four of them allied with my grandfather's clan. Polymer was a small-framed mech from the industrial guilds department of the Science Division, and with my father he created a youngling brother named Ultra Magnus. Magnus was bigger than both his creator-brothers, and my father was taller than both Megatron and I. I still couldn't help but smile at the memory of him carrying his creator brother in much the same way I carried Sam. Magnus was created shortly after Megatron was sparked, which technically made him younger than us though he came of age a couple of orbital cycles ahead of me. In many ways, he was more brother than uncle, and he stood by me throughout the War. Like Chromia, he was lost to the stars and I didn't know if he still lived or if he'd already been extinguished. There was also Diadem, a commerce-clan femme with whom my mother created a sister named Amber, and her mate and three sparklings - Sterling, Adamant, Gilt. Into the midst of all that came Elita as my sparkbound mate, bringing with her Arcee and Chromia and eventually Moonracer, Lancer, Flareup, Firestar, and their mates - Ironhide, Ratchet, and Inferno.

The tribe began to erode when my grandfather was extinguished, and with my parent's death, Megatron and I were cut off from the entire clan. Our only connection to them was through my parents, and neither of us had entered into creator-brother bonds. Megatron and I alone remained, and he was already preparing to sever our brother bond. I was never so grateful for my mate as I was after my parents died. Through her sisters, I was still kin-bound, but more importantly, she and I together were strong enough to anchor a new clan.

We tried to forge a new bond with Alpha Trion when Elita created a sister with Beta Five, Beta Three's granddaughter. Corona was her name, and her brief life brought a pang of sorrow all its own. She was created after Megatron corrupted the Cube, and she was born with code The Fallen had programmed into the surface of her spark that demanded she obey my former brother. Even that could not override her will and she made the only free choice she thought she had. Rather than betray those she loved, she severed her bonds and committed suicide. It was her death - so devastating for us all - that convinced me we needed to remove the All Spark from Megatron's custody. Stealing it was what sparked the War.

Though we were never as many as Alpha Trion's, we were a strong clan. When I accepted the title of Prime, the members of my clan were called Prime-bound and my Autobots took special care to protect them. That is part of why so many of my kin still survived.

Now our clan was shattered as thoroughly as Elita's spark. We continued to take our stand on Earth as severed kin, isolated and utterly alone in our sparks. Sam had hope that Elita would be reignited, but until that day, I was incapable of being a clan leader. I was halved without her and alone I was not strong enough to anchor one. Arcee was doing all that could be done, binding our clan together by frayed threads.

We supported her in that role as best we could, watching over our severed kin and her, standing in the stead of her sisters. That was why Ironhide didn't pull any punches as he sparred with her now, to keep her as sharp as Chromia would have. That was why Ratchet was on his way to join us, knowing Moonracer wouldn't make her sister limp all the way back to the medbay for repairs after a brutal training session. That was why I turned a blind optic to the fact that Arcee and Bumblebee had broken one of our most fundamental regulations - because Elita would have not only approved of their deepening relationship but would have encouraged the two of them.

They were ghosts of bonds, but we clung to them. The social infrastructure of my entire world had been destroyed. But as he did in so many ways, Samuel Prime changed everything. Hunted and Hunter, we were kin. Cybertronians no longer had clans. Through the bond I shared with my brother, however, I was now part of a family. Sam was not a clan leader; human cultures no longer functioned that way. He was related, though, to every single human being on Earth. According to their own research, the most recent common ancestor of all the humans now living likely lived less than 3000 years ago - a short time to us. I was bound to Sam and he was blood-bound to the rest of humanity. Like Amicus Prime, Sam stood with a foot in both worlds. Our bond was literally a bridge between his race and mine.

Ratchet arrived and started berating Ironhide for the amount of damage Arcee had sustained. Predictably, she bristled at the slightest insinuation that she couldn't handle a bigger and more heavily-armed mech, and Ratchet had his servos full as he bickered with her. Arcee insisted that Ratchet repair Ironhide first, since she wasn't really that damaged and she didn't want to make me stand around all day waiting for my chance to slag Ironhide. Ironhide joined the verbal fray then, and my spark warmed despite the fact that we were such a dysfunctional clan. We shared a camaraderie, an amity, that was the closest to happiness any of us could come anymore.

A curious nudge over my brother bond reminded me that it wasn't entirely true, and I allowed my wry humor to flow freely across the bond.

Yes, I mentally told him, though he was too far away to hear it, they warm my spark.

He wrapped me up in his happiness, so young and unsullied that I wished my severed kin could feel it and find the comfort and encouragement in it as I did.

Even as I made that wish, a new thought took hold in my processors. The tribes were destroyed. I could not alone anchor a clan. Any future for my kind lay in the human race. The Whole we could become would be new - neither family nor clan but something more fundamental. A kinship. And if humans were kin, I had an even deeper duty to protect them. If they were my "baby" brothers and sisters, if Sam and I were creators of this new Whole, I also had a duty to guide them as their older brother.

The thought boggled the processors and made my spark sing. I could not in good conscience use the human race, but we could work together with Sam and I guiding our kinship.

Trusting Sam meant embracing this new Whole. I felt foolish for not seeing the connection sooner - the creation of brother bonds only occurred with the creation of a brother. Though it was not literal in this case, the underlying truth remained, and this new kinship had been created by the All Spark months ago. The choice as to whether the Autobots and humanity would form a new Whole was not mine. The All Spark made that decision when it bound me and Sam as brothers. My choice was whether I would accept the kinbonds with my younger, human brothers and sisters that were created when I was bound to the human Prime. The thought resonated in my spark, filling me with a certainty that this was the right choice, despite my previous misgivings.

Ironhide finally shook Ratchet off and made his way toward the training ring, and I moved to join him, my certainty growing stronger with every step. Every human alive was my kin as much as Arcee or Ironhide or Ratchet - with all the responsibilities that relationship entailed. Here was the answer I'd hunted for all this rainy season. I would be the Prime that my brothers - human and Autobot - needed me to be.