Where the Heart Is Epilogue 1
Explanations
A Transformers Prime Fanfiction
Set During the Events of "Darkest Hour" "Darkmount NV" "Scattered" "Prey"
"You really messed up our planet you know that right?" Salcha was saying as he rolled back and forth in front of the Prime. "Not that it was all that great to start off with, humans are crazy and no one's denying that, but we had a balance. Things worked."
"I am aware that our war has damaged your planet and cost lives since we arrived," the Prime offered when it seemed a response was required.
The death colored semi growled pulled a few tight circles in front of the Cybertronian.
"No, that's not what I'm talking about. The humans? They can handle war. They know war. They can handle you. Meagtron? Please, we get one of him every generation. No, back when you, your kind, first came here it upset things."
"When we first came?" Optimus asked with a frown.
"Yeah. Then there was the Erie Accord, and the humans were chosen, and then they were set apart, and they aren't like me, they can't be apart. It hurts them."
Optimus stared thoughtfully down at his companion.
"Perhaps you should begin at the beginning."
"Right. You already know that the humans are not the only-what's the word you use? Sentient, beings on this planet."
"Clearly," Optimus said with a smile nodding at the big rig circling in front of him.
"No."
"What?"
"I'm not counting myself," the Franklin stated grimly. "I depend of the humans for that. You know about the 'red oil' I require?"
"The human blood," the Prime acknowledged gently, stroking the trucker.
"I am almost certain that is the source of my sentience," Salcha went on bitterly, but leaning gratefully into the comforting touch. "My mind, my thinking ability, fades fast if I don't get that dose. My family has never let it go all the way but without it I don't even know if I would qualify as an animal."
Optimus looked as if he wanted to protest but the truck ploughed on.
"But there are the Others. They can think and reason and do all that stuff. Some of them can."
"Only some of this species?"
"You're not getting it," Sal growled in frustration. "This isn't one species or even a lot of species. Heck! I don't even know if you can call them 'species' at all. There is no one thing that you could point to and say, 'that is them'. Some look like animals, or can if they want to. Some look like humans. Some look like just light on the water. Others don't look like anything at all the only reason we know they are there is we can see what affect they have on the world around them."
The semi paused and seemed to be gathering himself.
"That is why we call them the Others. The only thing that unites them as a group is what they are not, and they are not human."
"You are not human," the Prime pointed out gently.
"Getting there, but you said start at the beginning. I guess it all really started several thousand years ago or so. Something bad happened. The details are sketchy. Humans are really bad at remembering history. Some say it was Divine punishment, some say it was just the natural consequences of their actions, and some say random chance but the devastation was very real. Whatever it was ripped the sky, cracked the earth, froze the poles, flooded everything, and stole the fire from the core of the planet."
"The core?" Optimus demanded suddenly stiffening.
"Please don't interrupt," Sal groaned. "I am having to use logic, and reason, and piecing together hundreds of different story-histories to figure all this out and it hurts! I'm not human or Dragon!"
The Prime nodded and relaxed a bit as the creature continued.
"Anyway none of the Others had even seen what had happened. More of them survived the cataclysm than humans because they are," Sal paused and hummed trying to find a word, "different," he finally sighed. "In fact almost none died from the original disaster but they were so dependent on the humans that with only eight left many starved in the cold hungry days to come."
The Cybertronian clearly wanted to ask a question and Sal growled.
"Yes they starved because there were so few humans around for them to feed on! Don't look so shocked for the most part it's perfectly benig…benine…not hurting the humans. Like how plants rely on animals for carbon and animals rely on plants for oxygen. Humans give off," a deep growl of frustration came from the engine compartment, "something! Humans generate their own life energy and they make far more than they need. They still can't figure out what but it is like energon is to you and the Others absorb it. Like I said there was balance. After the disaster, with only four breeding pairs left there just wasn't enough to go around."
Sal gave a huff and began rocking back and forth muttering low. Just as Optimus was about to ask a question he darted forward and place a tie stap against the Prime's lip-plates.
"Shush! Thinking! Anyway the Others, they don't really care about human affairs as long as they are well fed so they never paid attention before. It took several human generations for the wisest of the Others to figure out what was happening and by then the lesser Others had begun actively hunting humans. By feeding directly on one human instead of passively absorbing from the collective they could get at a more concentrated form of the life-force. It wasn't the natural order of things and over time the process drove many of the Others mad and they began to prefer the fear tainted life-force over the freely given kind…Like I do," the final sentence was spoken low and shamefully.
The Prime frowned.
"It is difficult to see how the humans could have survived such a situation."
"Yeah, luckily humans breed pretty quickly, and they weren't without defenses. In fact for those who followed the old laws it was pretty difficult for the Others to get at them so they had to resort to trickery to lure the humans into their clutches but it got easier as the population increased and the humans began to forget what had happened and ignore the laws. Anyway the Others who were talking to the humans at the time got the story of the thing that had fallen from space, what they called the void, from the few left who remembered. They figured something should be done so they called a counsel. It took a long time to gather. Pretty much the only ones everyone would talk to were the humans and humans are fragile and forget tasks in just a few decades. Also none of the Others had seen the danger come in but a few could feel the heat draining out of Earth's core and see the effects of something poisoning the surface from beneath. From what the humans had told them the Dragons were able to turn their gaze outward and they saw something in the void; a path forged by the journey of the thing that had nearly destroyed our planet leading from this world to another. A strange world that they could not understand, where things moved as if they were alive but they could sense no life-force."
"Cybertron," Optimus murmured.
"That's what I figure," Sal agreed grimly. "And if Dragons were capable of being afraid they would have been. Finally enough of the Others had agreed to attend to make a Full Counsel and they gathered at Kealkil on the Emerald Isle. It was decided that one kind should be assigned to deal with it if any more of the ones who could walk across the void showed up. Which kind it would be was debated long and hard finally they decided."
"The ones who actually showed the ability to observe and react to the 'voidwalkers' in the first place," Optimus said as understanding dawned.
"Yup, humans; also the ones who had a proven track record of being able to deal with other, well, let's use 'species' for lack of a better word. Of course they didn't want the responsibility anymore than the Others and argued that their strength was in numbers and the cataclysm had left them too few to deal with the problem. That in fact in the intervening time more lesser voidwalkers were already here and that humanity's best weapons had been destroyed when the crust had shattered. They would need time to breed and prepare their strength again. So the Erie Accord was struck; basically the humans would protect Earth from any threat that came from the void, be it living or not, entirely by their own power. In exchange for dealing with the problem of the voidwalkers they would be granted protections. Mainly that there would be no hunting of humans so the population could rebound. If they failed the protections would be lifted and they would become fair game again. The Dragons estimated what they thought was the minimum time it would take for the voidwalkers to get here and set a small portion of that aside for the humans to breed up to safe numbers. Until that time was up the Dragons offered to use their powers to strike down any new voidwalkers that showed up, all the humans had to do was aim and they would blast them out of the sky. To deal with the voidwalkers already on the planet, Dragon powers are too great to use in the lower atmosphere I mean they seriously can burn the sky, certain humans were granted the use of powerful weapons. The controls for the weapons were woven into their bloodlines so if one fell he could pass the ability onto his offspring."
"So there humans were sent to battle the Predacons?" the Prime demanded in shock.
"Is that what you call the metal mockeries of the Dragons?" Sal asked. "If so yes. By the time the powered up humans found the voidwalkers still on Earth, remember there are seven big continents and the atmosphere was still reeling from the initial impact so travel was difficult, the man shaped ones had all killed each other off leaving their tools and what I am guessing form the description was energon behind. All that was left was those Predacons."
"This explains why my scouts did not report the presence of humans when they first landed," Optimus said thoughtfully. "The population was simply too small, and you say the humans slew the Predacons?"
Sal growled and bumped him.
"Did it not occur to you as odd that for creatures as long lived as you are that they died off in a few thousand years?"
The Prime was silent as he considered this and the semi went on.
"But no; they did not kill them all. You see that is where one of the Others' massive blind spots is. For as much as they depend on the humans they don't understand them. In order to keep the human eating Others from breaking the treaty the Barrier was formed. Humans give off that energy field I told you about? Well some of the Others were very skilled at manipulating that field. Imagine if each individual human produced one strand of energy. Each strand was woven together until the collected field of the human race formed a," Sal hesitated and huffed, "barrier isn't really the right word. They are something like the mortar in a stone wall; for as much as they keep the stones apart they bind them together. Anyway, at first the Barrier was weak and many of the Others could slip through and continue hunting. So the humans forged agreements, made alliances, that sort of thing for protection, thus the Northclan, and as their numbers grew so did the strength of the Barrier. It has been generations since most humans have seen an Other. Even in the Northclan it grows rarer with each passing year."
There was an odd smugness in the semi's voice at this point.
"Now calling the instructions the Others gave the humans vague would be overly optimistic. Basically they just said don't let bad things happen and don't let anything out there know about us. So the humans had to figure out what they were dealing with and how to do it on their own."
Sal stopped at this point and gave a dry chuckle.
"They all assumed that the humans would just go forth and destroy whatever they found. After all what is more dangerous than humanity? They are good at war and destruction. So the humans prepared. They figured out early on that they could not completely sever their link to the Others. They were too connected and that posed a real problem because humans are bad at keeping secrets. Their solution was to create two worlds within one. The majority of humanity would be devoted to recreating the weapons of science and logic that had been lost and the memory of the Others would be hidden in legends. A few, like the Northclan would be assigned to remember and hold onto the old ways, to manage any interactions. In order to assure that nothing slipped through this double layer, safeties were woven into the bloodlines by the more cunning Others. Literally if a human even thinks about telling you anything about this, or even fails to protect the secret it could kill them from within. The less they know of the Others the safer it is for them. So the only ones allowed to interact with you were the ones from the bloodlines that had been assigned to forget. Because it is tied to the Barrier this mental block gets stronger as the population increases."
The big rig paused here and seemed to hesitate before plunging on.
"But anyway, the chosen warriors did find the Predacons. One of the first and greatest, he is known as St. George, killed many of them in his area but he also made a discovery. They weren't all bad. Most just killed humans who got too close to their treasures and a lot had taken to hunting humans for fun but some could be tamed. That was when the first hint of what was to come showed up but like I said the Others had a huge blind spot and never saw it coming. The humans started living with these 'dragons' who were peaceful; treating them like they did their allies and friends among the Others."
"Did not the Others eventually discover this and object?" Optimus asked.
"No," Sal replied, "because that was when the humans discovered what would become Wilderness Protocol. Understand this Prime" the death colored big rig was speaking low and earnestly now. "The only reason I can see you, recognize you as a living being, is the human blood I consume. The non-humans cannot perceive you directly. They can only see through the senses of the humans and they see through the aggregate, not the perspective of one human but that of all of them. Right now the humans see you as a 'not us' so if the Others were to really look for a voidwalker they would see you, and because the humans are technically still in that grace period the Dragons set out they would destroy you so the humans could finish their preparations."
The trucker wrung his tie-straps in frustration as he continued.
"Then there was the thing in the blind spot. The humans, they were never meant to be alone like they are now. They need friendship and companionship beyond themselves. The Others fulfilled that need but now they are cut off from that; cut off and forced into close association with a species," and now the deep voice took on a bitter tone, "that is far more compatible with them than the Others ever were."
"This is why the government is still keeping us a secret," Optimus stated nodding in understanding. "Since the majority of humanity is unaware of us the Others cannot locate us and cannot enact their plans. But that situation cannot last forever."
"No, that's where the Wilderness Protocol comes in," Sal continued. "I have been trying to figure out how to explain it and nothing sounds right but I will try my best. Humans have a superpower unlike anything else in the universe. At least that is what I thought until I met you. Cybertronians seem to have it too but not as strong. They can change reality."