Prism 11

A Transformers Prime Fanfiction

Explanations

"Hey!" Jack shouted, twisting away from the syringe the medic had used. "What was that?"

"I was simply replenishing you nanite supply," the red and white Cybertronian replied serenely as he turned to replace the device in its compartment. "It will take a few moments for your cells to accept them. Once that happens I will instruct you on how to use them, until that time there are things we need to discus."

"Wait! You just added nanites to me?"

"As I said the first time," Ratchet stated archly.

"Where I come from it is considered impolite to make permanent body modifications without permission," the human snapped.

Ratchet narrowed his optics at the youth and hummed thoughtfully.

"Jackson, I am sorry if I have offended you but you need this comm. unit to function on this ship. And it is very important that you do function. Megatron was perhaps not thinking quite clearly when he set you on your own so quickly and without instruction. The events of the past hours have rattled him to his very spark. Otherwise he would have made certain that you understand just how important you really are."

"Me?" Jack asked skeptically. "Even if I am some hotshot warrior in this reality, you have other ones. I mean Vince looks uber-confidant."

The medic held out his hand to the human and Jack scrambled up. Ratchet turned and started for the door to the second room.

"Your name young one; do you know what it is in this reality?"

"Jackson Darby Megatronus," the youth answered hesitantly his voice catching on the last name earning another sharp look from the healer.

"You bear the name of our Lord Protector," the medic stated, "the one being alive who has been directly blessed by Primus himself, the last tie to our fallen Prime, our last true hope of salvation. Megatron told you that Cybertron was tainted?"

"Ah, not exactly."

"With their final attack the Enemy poisoned the very core of our planet. No longer could it sustain the flow of life giving energon that allowed out population to live, no longer would the Well of Allsparks produce new offspring, we were a dead race and we knew it. That more than anything spelled our defeat. What point was there in fighting on when there would be no new generations to preserve our memory and continue our lineage? The very act of imprinting on new sparklings was counted a critical part of becoming a fully integrated member of the great Cybertronian machine, now there was an entire generation who would never know that joy."

Ratchet paused and shook his helm as he triggered the wall pad for the door. Jack glanced down and noted a smaller human sized one close to the ground. Through the door was what was obviously the medic's private office. The human blinked in surprise at the shelves cluttered with datapads, heavy medical tomes, and all sorts of medical paraphernalia both Cybertronian and human.

"Somehow, and Primus help me I will never know how, Megatronus found the strength to go on. It was then that he changed his name. Megatronus was the name of a Prime, he said, and one his failure had proven him unfit to carry, but we could not stop calling our Lord Protector by his name. Eventually we simply shortened it. I think he blamed himself for not being there during the final attack. It had nearly shattered his spark when Optimus died, from then on there was this cold fire in his optics. No mech could get close to him, he accepted no comfort from even his closest allies, but we all respected that flame. Its light was what sustained us when we fled into the darkness of space, leaving our beloved home to the Enemy. Megatron thought that Cybertron would satiate them, that we could fall back and regroup to retake the planet later, but it was not the planet they wanted, it was us; slaves to run their empire. They perused us across galaxies. Always Megatron was there, the first to attack, the last to retreat. To the scattered masses he became an invincible figurehead, the Blade of Primus as it were, but I could see it eating away at him."

Ratchet set Jack down on his desk and sunk into the bench behind it with a tired exvent. His blue optics were pale and focused far off.

"I watched the guilt and bitterness build with each battle. I knew we could not go on like this but he seemed to be caught in a never ending cycle of combat. I had our master tacticians devise a plan. There was one planet noted in the record; a little organic ball of carbon and water where we had stashed much energon and many supplies at the start of the war."

"Earth," Jack guessed.

"Indeed. We presented the plan to Megatron. Make a hard and fast retreat here, then a decisive strike at retaking Cybertron bolstered by the supplies we would find. But as always the Quintessions were ahead of us. They arrived years in advance and attempted to get your people to destroy themselves through nuclear war, but they were not able to manipulate humans as they did Cybertronians so they simply resorted to an outright attack. The strain of defending this world at the same time as retrieving the energon and artifacts was great and we were unable to launch the counter offensive on Cybertron."

The medic let out a tired exvent and rubbed his faceplates.

"Megatron has told you the rest I believe? Good then I will skip the historical details and get to the important part. I was terrified. I was so certain that without a decisive victory Megatron's will, that force that had kept us going for so long would fail, and yet it didn't. In fact despite everything, reports coming in from all over the galaxy of our positions being overrun, he only seemed to grow stronger. He began recalling all troops to Sol System. This was to be our new beachhead. He made alliances with the powers of Earth. I wondered most at this. Our glorious leader had never had much respect for other species; let alone organics, but my answers came with the Second Wave. As usual when the attack came Megatron was fighting at our head, but he fell back far too soon, relinquishing command to Commander Jazz. I was right to be concerned. His armor had been badly damaged and it did not take me long to find the reason for his weakness."

Jack shifted nervously as the intense blue optics burned into him and the human felt he should know the answer.

"You," the medic stated flatly. "The fiercest warrior ever sparked on Cybertron. The mech who had laid waste to countless enemies, brought half off-line to my medbay because he had imprinted on an organic sparkling."

"The armor softens to match the sparkling mesh," Jack murmured softly.

"Precisely," the medic huffed.

"So that makes me a liability," the raven haired youth stated in confusion, "not important."

"By the Matrix! Can't you see?" Ratchet demanded smacking the table in exasperation. "Haven't you been listening? That was the first imprinting that had occurred in eons, and it had happened not just to any mech but the Primus blessed Lord Protector! It was not exactly you but rather the bond itself. Never in all the recorded history of Cybertron had such a thing occurred, but here it was. Many took it as a sigh that Earth was to be our new home, many that with your aid we would retake Cybertron. Of course by then the Founds had proven their worth in battle but it was you who legitimized Megatron's decision to defend Earth. Before that our mechs and femmes had only been following orders, now they fought for a cause. Since then there have been other imprintings, human orphans are all too common, but you were the first, our shining hope."

Jack glanced away from the intense gaze of the medic and nodded his head slowly. It was all too much to take in really so he focused on what he would have to do.

"So you want me to pretend to be your Jack until you can switch us back?" he guessed. "That's why you snatched me away from the Seeker?"

"No," Ratchet huffed in annoyance. "If you are anything at all like your counterpart it would be utterly pointless to ask you to tell a successful lie. But it would be best if you did not mention that you and Megatron are less than family in your reality."

"I understand," the human replied and a wry smile twisted his lips, "and if it makes you feel any better I am probably the human Megatron is closest to in my universe as well."

They were interrupted as the doors swept open to reveal the grey and orange Seeker with the ginger human perched easily on his shoulder. Ratchet jerked up to snap something about door protocol to the mech but Jack was far too distracted by the smells emanating from the cardboard Vince was carrying to hear the medic. The taller human handed over the food and watched disinterestedly as the raven haired youth ripped into the burger and fries. Jack noted the redhead narrow his eyes again but this time the sensation that filled his head made him choke on a mouthful of food. Vince gave his back a hearty smack while Jack worked to clear his lungs.

"What was that?" he demanded pawing at a growing bump just below his right ear.

Ratchet lightly smacked away his hand with a single servo and gave a snorting exvent.

"That was a com signal. No doubt the Found wanted to crack wise without me hearing."

Jack made a mental note to ask what a Found was while he fought the urge to explore the protrusion on his neck.

"Really Megatronus," Thundercracker rumbled in amusement, "I hear the accident frazzled you but you taught most of the Founds how to use internal comm. systems."

*Can you understand me now?*

"Woah!" Jack jumped and looked around frantically.

The Seeker and Vince were beginning to give him suspicious looks and Jack backed frantically towards Ratchet.

"Medic?" Thundercracker growled.

"As you no doubt suspect," Ratchet stated calmly. "This is not in fact the Jackson Darby Megatronus that you know."

*Then who is he?* came the strange disembodied voice in Jack's head.

This time however the human was able to note Vince as the origin point and differentiate some of the strange sensations as Cybertronian glyphs and human text.

"He is from an alternate dimension," the medic explained curtly pushing the youth towards the other human. "I am assigning the two of you to keep him out of trouble until we find a way to reverse the ground bridge malfunction that brought him here. First order of business; teach him how to use the comm. system. Now I have to get back to work. Shoo, shoo!"