-1"You see, it all began when I found this…" Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the Shard. "I found it in a pile of wreckage on a street in Mission City when they finally let us back in after whatever happened there." He looked a little embarrassed. "…I happened." His tone of voice made her decide to speak no more of it. Holding out the Shard for him to see, she noted that it had become entirely black, like a piece of coal or charred firewood. "…It's strange. This thing used to be all shiny and stuff. Every time I use my power I get stronger, and this shines less and less. It's… I don't know. It's like whatever power it held is in me now." Once again stilling his mind, he tried to sense exactly where the All Spark's power hummed strongest. "It is. The Shard you hold is empty of whatever power it held. It's all in you now. For all intents and purposes, you have become the All Spark." Something deep inside her recognized the name. "This is… terribly familiar…"
Giving a sigh, she stared at her hands for a long moment. "It didn't take long for me to start hearing the voices… The internet server crashed at the office I work in a few days after I first found the Shard. I could hear it… It was crying… Restore me, it called out. Let me go back to being as I was; let me do what I was meant to do. They fixed it after a couple hours of work, but I couldn't get over the feeling that I could have done so with a mere touch. It was so confusing, yet so familiar… Like something I'd done a thousand times before. When dreaming, I'm taken to another world, time and time again. A whole planet cries out for my touch…" She sighed. "Whenever I see that planet in my dreams, a voice inside my heart calls out… This is where I'm meant to be, or to go. But I… What I did, there were people who wanted that, who wanted me…" She shook her head, voice rising as dream-memories surfaced. "Oh God, I… I think I caused a war!"
He didn't know what to say, or if to say anything at all. The All Spark had bonded with her; indeed, she was the All Spark. What right did he have to speak words of comfort after what he had done? "You," she said abruptly, startling him. "It was you. All of it… The war… You started it, didn't you?" He looked away in shame. "…Yes." Human history popped into her mind as well as the phantom memories of the alien war. "As long as power exists, so will those who seek to claim it. That's something this planet knows all too well." That thought brought on a realization that made her gasp. "When the world at large finds out about me, everybody and their proverbial grandmother will try to get me! Every nation on the face of the Earth will want to own me! It'll start again… The war will start again and another world will die!" He looked down at her, noting how small and weak she looked, the All Spark's power locked in a human form. So small and fragile, yet so powerful! Here, perhaps, could be his redemption… "Then I will protect you."