"You were right."
Aurora Pax walked into the docks the next cycle looking like a drone. Her expression was flat and her optics dark.
Her statement made Dion jump; he hadn't seen her coming. "Right?" he echoed, momentarily confused. "Right about wha... frag, Aurora Pax." He stood and gathered her into a hug. Gratefully, she leant against him and let him soothe her. "I didn't want to be right," he muttered against her audio. "I'm sorry that I was right, but you had to see."
She pulled away, stood on her own again. "Did you know?" she asked, hands trembling. "Did you actually know, or was it just rumours and coincidences?"
He couldn't meet her optics.
"Dion," she begged him to tell her why. "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me do that?"
"You wouldn't have believed me," he said bitterly. "You would have gone running to him anyway, and the outcome would have been the same."
"Primus," she whispered, the enormity of the situation creeping into her awareness. "Dion- we have to go- to the enforcers. I probably know more about him than anyone not in his forces; his address, his description..."
"Aurora Pax..." he trailed off. She knew what he was going to ask, are you ready for this? She pre-empted him.
"I hate what he's doing to our planet. I need to do this to make up for how blind I've been this whole time."
He studied her intently, taking in the unpolished plates, the trembling limbs and carefully blank face. "Fine then," he said. "But we're taking the day off to do this; Primus knows you should have anyway after a revelation like that."
"We?" she questioned, looking at him, really looking for the first time. More than anything, that reassured him that it was the right thing to do.
"Yes, we," he emphasised. "Best friends, right? I won't let you do this on your own."
She smiled at him; it was a bit hesitant and a lot broken, but better than the blank look she'd been wearing until then.
"Great, just let me clear it with the office-"
"What's that?" she asked suddenly.
Dion had half-turned. He whirled back around to see her looking to the sky, searching for something.
"What are you looki-"
"It's an attack! Seekers!"
The cry sent the docks into a panic, people rushing for cover and not caring who they knocked over.
Aurora Pax stood frozen, oblivious to Dion trying to drag her away. Her optics were focussed above the skyline as she said, "Is this what you imagined might happen, Dion? What you thought might befall Central now he's here?"
He ignored her question, still trying to drag her away. "Aurora, we have to move now, come on! For the love of Primus, move!" He jerked hard on her arm with the last word. She stumbled, gaze averted, and only then seemed to become aware of what was going on around them.
"Come on," he repeated, still loud but more gently, and she nodded, moving with him in search for cover.
She saw the seeker before he did. It was coming in hot from the dockside, the sunlight behind it making it difficult to see. Acutely aware there was nothing nearby for shelter, she tripped her friend as he was running and jumped on top to cover him with her own frame. He struggled, but she had been hyped up for the last cycle; it was curiously easy to hold him down.
"Aurora Pax-"
She heard the shots coming closer and crouched lower, hoping they'd simply pass them over.
Then there was sharp pain in her shoulder, in her back, her leg...
She heard her name being screamed once more, amongst the flashes and warnings lighting up her CPU. There were too many for her to process, too much data incoming at one time.
There was a last sharp pain, her arm this time-
-then nothing.
She onlined with a groan, feeling the ache and stretch of cables replaced and parts repaired. Everything was out of sync, though, and when she tried to get an error report together, the information took a staggeringly long delay to reach her CPU. She hadn't felt like this in vorns, not since-
With a jolt, she realised.
Not since she'd been stuck in her second frame.
Primus, what had happened to her? She remembered the- Megatron- and the strike at the docks, but what- why was her frame behaving like-
The error report finally came through, completely derailing her thought process with the new influx of information.
Parts she didn't even know she had were reporting in as functional at 70%.
Didn't know she had..?
Aurora Pax had designed that frame from the inside out- processors, relays, cables; everything. There was not a part in her frame that she didn't know about.
What had happened to her?
External sensors finally came online; the first thing she noticed was the sound of confused babbling to her left, with a quieter voice trying to reassure it. She didn't recognise either of them, though she could just about make out the words.
"But this- this is unheard of! Never has the Matrix chosen a femme to wield itself, not since the era of Primus Almighty! How could this have happened, what did I do wrong?"
The other voice chimed in then- "Well, you didn't check she was a mech before upgrading her. It's not like it was hard to miss."
"But it shouldn't have accepted her! Why it would accept a femme's spark now of all times, I can't begin to imagine; we have no time to bring her gently into her role!"
"But it did accept her. I thought this was all down to the will of Primus?" Distinctly mocking, now.
Maybe the second voice was less reassuring and more irritated. She would be too, if she'd been listening to that for any length of time.
Her optics finally powered up; she looked around the room curiously. The last she remembered, she'd been shot repeatedly at the docks. Was this the local medical facility?
One look was enough to disprove her theory. If the room itself didn't do it (looking more like a lab than a hospital room), the mech still babbling in a somewhat panicked tone at her bedside was a solid indicator.
"What did you do to me?" she asked flatly. "Where am I; this isn't a medical facility? Who are you both?" She didn't care for the rudeness of her questions, or of talking over the old mech; at that point she only wanted her answers and didn't care who she had to interrogate to get them.
That... was an odd thought for her to have. Even odder was that while she was pondering this and the old mech didn't answer, she snapped out "Tell me!" and watched them both wince.
She'd never had the authority- or the bearings- to seriously order people around before. Drunken brawls notwithstanding, she felt like she actually expected to be obeyed. What had this fragger done to her?
"I am Alpha Trion," the babbling mech offered in answer to her demands. "I was guided to you in the aftermath of the attacks on Central, and brought you here to help your friends and yourself."
"My friends," Aurora Pax repeated slowly. Then- "Dion! Where is he, is he okay?"
"In a manner of speaking," Alpha Trion quickly replied. The other mech jerked his cranium sharply at this, looking incredulous. "It's just- this is all linked up into one critical piece of information. I don't know how to explain it to you-"
"Try." Her tone had hardened. If her friends were involved, she wanted to know what was going on, now.
The old mech took in a large amount of air and let it whistle out through his valves. "Very well," he said. "What do you know about the Matrix of Leadership?"
Alpha Trion had left- hurried out, to be honest, when she'd angrily ordered him to do so- leaving just her and Dion-
-her and Ultra Magnus -
-staring at each other from either side of the room.
He broke first. "You heard us."
"You onlined me," she shot back, in no mood to be accomodating.
"It's an interesting question, though. Why did the Matrix accept you?"
Her CPU sluggishly brought up her earliest memories: stumbling around in a mech frame and having that imprint on her spark, being unable to revert to a normal femme frame from then on. "Oh," she said softly, working it out.
He looked interested but didn't press her. She cast around for a new conversation starter, not wanting to explain.
"Did anyone else make it out?" She wondered quietly, picking a vaguely neutral topic.
Apparently it wasn't neutral enough; Dion- frag it, Ultra Magnus's face crumpled into an expression of grief and loss. She thought she knew what had caused it.
"Ariel," she said softly. There was a small noise of grief from her friend.
He visibly gathered himself and addressed her unspoken inquiry. "It's not as bad as it could have been," he explained, "only- frag it, Auror-" he cut himself off abruptly, remembering as she did that it wasn't her name anymore. "Only, she was close to the docks that cycle. Coming to visit us."
"Ariel was... offlined?" she prompted, hating the grief she was causing but needing to know.
"No; Alpha Trion brought her back, same as us two. Only... only, she hasn't onlined yet." His hands went to his cranium, pressing into the plates. "And if- and when she does, who's to say-"
"Who's to say what's going to happen?" she finished for him. It was a situation they had personal experience in, her more than her friend, she thought justifiably.
"She's not Ariel anymore," he whispered. "When she onlines- Alpha Trion rebuilt her from the base up- she's now Elita One. He planned for her to be femme commander, before realising the whole mistake with," he gestured at her, "now, I don't know what his plans are."
"He picks up three unarmed Cybertronians on the say so of a fragging crystal he has no full connection to and then just expects us to fight a war for him?"
Ultra Magnus gave her a long, searching look. "It wasn't the crystal that led him to us. It was the will of-"
"If you finish that sentence, delay or no delay I will get up and I will hurt you," she threatened.
The unspoken words hovered between them.
He broke their standoff. "I can't do this right now. I need some time to myself, some time to figure out where I stand- where Dion stands."
He went to the door, paused. "Maybe you should do the same." Walked through the door.
The unspoken words haunted the room after his exit.
Get your bearings together, Prime. Primus has called upon you.