Chapter 15
Following a message from the Matrix, the four Autobots Hotrod, Ultra Magnus, Kup and Goldbug had traveled into the deepest underground levels of Cybertron.
Here, at the core of their home-planet, they found something that was nearly unbelievable.
They were confronted with a mysterious being that, as it seemed, existed down here at the core of the planet and maybe had been here since the beginning of this world.
This being, that only appeared to them through holographic displays and it´s voice, claimed to be nothing else when the creator of Cybertron, the ancient creature named Primus.
They were standing in a large, kilometers wide hall, surrounded by the remains of organic life that might once have existed on this planet. The voice that was talking to them seemed to come from everywhere, filling the room around them.
They were still watching the holographic displays and listening to the story that the being who claimed to be their creator was telling them.
Primus, that name was for them known only out of legends. It was a god from their earliest history and before, so old that nobody actually knew where it originated. He was said to be the creator of Cybertron itself and of the earliest forms of mechanical lifeforms like the them.
For millions of years many cybertronians worshiped him as a deity. Primus was considered to be the god of their world and the Transformers race, even now after all this years of war. He was the base of the most forms of cybertronian religion. Many cults existed and did still exist that referred to him as the highest god of the Transformers races, right after the creator of the universe. That meant if they happened to belief in such an entity.
Others thought of Primus as only a myth and dismissed his existence.
But he did exist, that much was clear to them, they were standing directly before him.
Even if he wasn´t really a god, it was obvious that he at least existed as some kind of super intelligence deep in the core regions of Cybertron.
That was the reason they came here. Hotrod admitted to himself he wasn´t really that surprised, not as much as he should be. The Matrix had called out to him and to Optimus and led their group here. He had actually anticipated to find something like this.
Many people in his situation would obviously think of this as some kind of sham, as a trick.
Nobody would simply accept that he went to a exploration mission and found the god of his people in the process.
But Hotrod was a Matrix bearer, a Prime and it had been the Matrix that led him and the others here. He knew to trust what it was telling him.
Some of the others like Kup of course would be more skeptical.
Despite that, there was something else.
Religion never played such a big role in the society on Cybertron as it had been on other planets. Some people thought this was because the Transformers were machines and therefore they were more rational and less prone to faith than the organics. But that wasn´t true.
It was simply that religion, like many other aspects of civilian life, was on Cybertron always pushed back behind the wars and political crisis.
The believers under the cybertronians were as convinced and as determined as other species and the ones who believed thought of Primus as the creator of the Transformers.
There was only one problem, six years ago the Matrix itself had revealed to Rodimus Prime that it had been the Quintessons who had created them.
That revelation six years ago had caused great distress for many Autobots. Nobody felt comfortable with the thought that their creators were supposed to be a race of enslaving half-organics. Some of the more religious downright refused to believe it or some of them claimed that this couldn´t have been the whole truth and as it looked now they had been right.
The voice that had been talking to Hotrod this six years ago, it was the same they were hearing now, the voice of Primus, as he himself claimed. Something was definitely not right here.
"Primus", Hotrod addressed the entity. His voice was loud and demanding, not exactly the way you would talk to a god, but it didn´t matter, he wanted an explanation.
"I have one question."
"Of course Rodimus Prime", Primus replied. "You can ask me what you want. That was the reason I contacted you, to answer your questions."
Yes and you are the reason I need to answer this question in the first place, Hotrod thought.
"When my mind had traveled inside the Matrix six years ago, you have told me that the Quintessons are the creators of the Transformers. Now you have called us here and are telling us that you are the creator of Cybertron and that means ultimately of us. How does that work out?"
"You are asking a good question Hotrod", the voice of Primus replied. "Indeed I have told you that the Transformers, the Transformers as you know them today, had been created by the Quintessons and that is essentially true. You have only forgotten to ask one question."
"And what is that?"
"Where did the Quintessons came from in the first place", Primus answered him.
"What do you mean with that?"
"Look."
The holographic pictures before them began to change. The face of the ancient being vanished and instead it showed now the sight of a planet from orbit. They easily recognized it as their home-world, but it looked still quite different. Beside the metallic structures that they were used to they saw areas that resembled a organic world, plant life, grass, seas and rivers and even small forests.
"As you should know my children", Primus informed them, "Unicron had found and attacked Cybertron once before a long time ago. That happened over a million years before your history even began. This world had been much different at that time as you know it today."
The hologram began to quickly move closer to the planet. They were watching in amazement a detailed recording of an pre-historical Cybertron. The different sectors of the planet became visible, large cities, the skylines of their planet, giant skyscraper were to see.
Finally the movement stopped. It was now so close that they could get a clear look at the beings who had been living on this ancient version of their world.
At the one side, they saw robots, Transformers, pretty much like themselves, but beside them also organic creatures of different forms and at some points beings who looked like they were a mixture of both. They were a form of Cyborgs, part organic, part mechanical life-form.
Trans-organics, Hotrod remembered the creatures that had been spawned by the experiments of the Quintessons, monstrosities, hidden in the underground chambers of Cybertron.
But this beings were different. The Quintesson experiments looked twisted, like abominations, a crude mix of organic and technological parts, looking as if they had been randomly fused together.
This ones however seemed more like natural life-forms instead of abnormal nightmares.
The most of the creatures they saw had a roughly humanoid shape, walking on two legs, two arms and so forth. But there were also some in the form of birds or other animals. There were many different variants.
As far as they could tell, around two thirds of the people they saw were Transformers. They could also see at least three different variants of obviously intelligent transorganics.
The most full organic creatures seemed to be animals, but in between they could also make out a few members of some humanoid species.
"What you see here is Cybertron as it had originally been created in this universe", Primus told them. "As you can see, it had a far greater diversity of life and allowed also organic existences. That was until it had all been destroyed."
"What had happened?" Hotrod asked.
"What was always meant to happen", Primus replied, "but not in the way I wanted. Unicron found us, like I had always known he would sooner or later. The next battle between us was unavoidable. At that time I was confident that I and my creations would be able to fight him. But something happened what I hadn´t anticipated.
One of the thirteen Primes who I had chosen to lead and guide my children in the battle had betrayed us."
They all knew who he was talking about, the one of the thirteen legendary original Transformers who had sided with the Chaos Bringer and tried to help him to destroy the universe.
"He had allied himself with Unicron and his forces and he was persuading others of my creations to join him.
The name of this Prime was erased from the history of Cybertron. From that time on, he was only known to everyone as "The Fallen". In our time the only ones who even remember his true name in this universe may be only me and Unicron himself.
Ironically even he called himself that. In some twisted way he was probably proud of the name he had been given. He stroke while we were still preparing for Unicron´s arrival", Primus continued. "His first action was to take control of the plasma energy chamber."
The four Autobots were looking now at the image of another large room somewhere at the inside of Cybertron. At the center of it was a ancient looking device that none of them could recognize.
"This is the machine that as you say can blows up stars?" Kup asked him critically.
"Yes, in the older times it had been used by the Primes to first cover the needs of Cybertron for energy and second to built up storage's for the coming battle. It was only to be used on not inhabited and lifeless star systems. I thought back then when I could trust anybody it would be my own creations."
"A mistake that many lifeforms had made."
"Indeed", Primus admitted.
xxx
The hologram changed again. This time it showed them the picture of a planetary system. It was a world none of them had ever seen before, a organic planet from the appearance. There were only few similarities to Earth or Nebulos, the home-worlds of the humanoid species that were their allies today.
The sky was green, an result from a different build up atmosphere than the one on Earth or Cybertron. It was a planet with two moons.
Then they saw horrified how a shock-wave raced through the star system and hit this world, devastating the surface.
The sun had become a super nova, they realized. A few seconds later the explosion reached the planet, the wave of fire burned the atmosphere away and ripped it apart.
xxx
"The Fallen used the plasma energy chamber to destroy an inhabited star system", Primus said. "Every living being on that world died on that day, over 5 billion sentient lives killed in a matter of moments." Primus voice sounded sad now and with a visible hint of regret.
"And it all only happened because I created this machine in the first place."
"It wasn´t your fault. You couldn´t have known that he would do something like that", Ultra Magnus assured him.
The Autobots were still shocked from the things they had seen. But they had started to believe them.
"I designed and built a weapon that could destroy entire star systems and I was arrogant enough to think nobody would ever misuse it. Others paid for my arrogance with their lives.
After this had happened, the Primes who were still loyal to me attacked The Fallen and his troops. A battle over Cybertron started and this before Unicron had even reached us."
xxx
The display showed now a a battle between a large group of robots. Hotrod could make out four under them who were Primes, he somehow recognized them.
The scene concentrated now on a group of five fighters.
One of them, The Fallen, they all realized, was facing two of the other Primes and was backed up by two other heavily armed robots.
"We will stop you here and now", one of the two Primes told them.
Both were large robots around Optimus stature. One of them was colored mostly in a dark blue and the other was grey with parts of yellow.
"You can try it", The Fallen replied as he and his opponents charged at each other.
While the other two Primes and his own followers were carrying heavy blasters, The Fallen was also wielding an ancient looking staff weapon, in addition to the cannon that was attached to his right arm and reminded the watching Autobots a bit of Megatron.
They watched a short struggle between the five warriors.
The grey Prime was in a firefight with The Fallen´s two soldiers. He shot one of the Unicron minions into the head that exploded into shrapnel.
His partner was fighting the renegade Prime himself. He had materialized a sword from subspace that he was now crossing with The Fallen´s staff weapon.
"Why, tell me, why did you do this?" the blue Prime asked him.
"That brother, is something you will never understand", The Fallen replied.
He raised his cannon and shot the Prime who had been talking to him. The robot fell down with a burning whole in his front. Then The Fallen brought his battle staff down and rammed it through the damaged robot´s chest.
"Good bye, my brother", he said as the other lay dead to his feet.
"What have you done?" The grey Prime asked him in shock.
"What needed to be done. It seems from now on there are only eleven anymore, at least for now", he said, pointing his weapon at his other opponent.
xxx
The picture changed again. This time it showed them the same machine they had seen before, but this time it was obviously deactivated, all lights were out and it showed no sign of activity and it was surrounded by corpses.
"My loyal creations where able to shut the plasma energy chamber down and made sure that it would no longer be used to cause harm", Primus told them.
"But as Unicron himself then attacked, we were already not longer at full strength. He and Unicron fought side by side against us.
The Fallen believed that all life as it was, was not worthy to exist. He wanted to destroy everything and then recreate the universe by his own designs. For that reason he had sworn loyalty to Unicron. Both of them had in a sense the same goal, absolute destruction."
They saw now the battle on the outside. The sky over Cybertron was literally in flames. Robots, organics and transorganics were all over the planet´s surface, fighting, fleeing for their life´s or being already dead.
They saw Unicron´s giant shape over the planet, barely different from how he had been millions of years later. Another thing that didn´t completely ad up.
A mad scientist calling himself Primacron had claimed to have build Unicron. They knew of course that this couldn´t be correct, at least not completely. No rogue scientist, no matter how ingenious, would have the resources to build something like this. They would ask Primus, later.
"The battle continued for days, the same life that I had created and wanted to protect was wiped out by it." They could hear the sadness in his voice.
"The Matrix was created by me as a source of guidance for the Transformers, but also as a weapon. It contains nothing else than my own spark as you would call it.
Cybertron is my body, recreated in form of a planet, but in some sense the Matrix is far more my true self.
It is also a collector. Everyone of my creations is made in that way that it´s life energy, it´s spark will join with the Matrix, with me, if it physically dies."
Hotrod and Kup looked at each other. Primus had just confirmed an old belief of the cybertronians. It had often been thought that the sparks of all Transformers or at least of all Autobots became one with the Matrix, but only for the Matrix bearers there was proof.
"All this energy, the sum of all we are, can be released and directed against our enemy. Ironically, even if it was the last thing that I wanted, as Unicron destroyed the life on Cybertron, he only made the Matrix stronger."
They saw one of the Primes, a robot in orange and blue, open the well known object."
"And like in our first battle", Primus told them, "I managed to trick him."
Unicron was thrown backwards as the light of the Matrix hit him. This was, it seemed, partly a reflex reaction to draw back from a force that could destroy him and partly a panicked but willing retreat.
Then they saw what Primus meant when he said that he had tricked him. The battle took place relatively close to a black hole. During the fight the Transformers had managed to maneuver Unicron into a good position, in the heat of the fight he didn´t seemed to have realized this and as the Matrix was opened, it forced him beyond the event horizon.
Hotrod, Ultra Magnus, Kup and Goldbug saw from over 12 million years later, how Unicron´s physical form was crushed under the gravitational forces. What was left of the Chaos Bringer was swallowed by the black hole in minutes.
xxx
"Unicron´s body was destroyed, but his mind, his essence wasn´t, couldn´t be vanquished", Primus said to them. "He was however gone from this universe and thrown into another.
You know, his servant The Fallen met later a very similar fate.*
After the battle Cybertron was left alone, a devastated, burned out ruin of a world. From the billions of beings that I had created only five of my thirteen original creations were left, five out of billions. The seven other Primes had died in the war.
This five however were also forced to leave to fulfill other important duties.
Cybertron was left alone, a lifeless world. Unicron was defeated but everything I had created was gone. I had won but I still lost.
And so it staid that way for hundred thousands of years until someone finally returned to me. It were however not the Primes.
During the battle with Unicron a few groups of the creations you would call transorganics had managed to escape from Cybertron, they fled out into space, to other worlds.
They had changed drastically but I still recognized them. It were the descendants of one of this groups of survivors. Over time and generations they had mutated and degenerated. They had experimented on themselves and changed their own genetics. All this to a point there they had barely any resemblance to what I had created anymore.
They were now a hostile, corrupt and xenophobic species, calling themselves the Quintessons. Like I found out later, they held other sentient beings as slaves and abused and destroyed other species for their own gain.
This degenerated descendants of my creations returned to their old home-world and took control of the planet. My consciousness was still active in the planet and at first I thought it was a good thing. I did not saw how far my former creations had fallen. They found and reactivated Vector Sigma, a machine that was capable of creating new sparks, they rebuilt Cybertron, now as a purely mechanical world.
But I soon realized that they rebuild it into nothing but a giant slave camp."
The four Autobots saw now pictures from that time, pictures that Hotrod had already seen six years ago.
"The Quintessons started to use Vector Sigma to build a new race of robots, nearly identical with my first one, your direct ancestors. But they intended them to be nothing then a race of slaves.
For the Quintessons their robotic relatives were nothing but workers, drone-soldiers and toys anymore. But they couldn´t wipe out their souls, their free will.
The robots were as alive as them, in many senses even more.
You know what happened, after nearly one million years a rebellion rose and the Quintessons had to flee from Cybertron.
Unintentionally however, they had brought up a completely new generation of my children for me. Your ancestors took over Cybertron, a planet that was always yours.
Two lines of robots, one of workers and scientists becoming the Autobots and one that was intended to be warriors, the ancestors of the Decepticons."
Hotrod and the others were stunned by this particular revelation. They knew that either the Quintessons or Primus were said to be their creators. This was however a very interesting variant.
"So this means the Quintessons are more our cousins then our creators", Ultra Magnus remarked.
"Whatever else they are, they are despicable scum", Goldbug pointed out.
"Yes that too", Magnus admitted a bit sardonically.
xxx
"As you know very good, that wasn´t the end", Primus said. "The disagreements and frictions between the two groups of Transformers led to the conflicts between Autobots and Decepticons and finally to the great war as you call it.
But what fewer beings know, this wasn´t the only threat at this time", he continued.
"When his master was defeated The Fallen vanished. Millions of years later however he returned to Cybertron and found the new civilization of robots.
Like before he had tried to gather and corrupt some of my creations and win them as his followers and he succeeded. He founded a movement, a religious cult that worshiped Unicron. You know this sect as the brotherhood of chaos."
They had all known of this cult, even met them, they were known to sacrifice other Transformers in bizarre rituals, a dangerous group of fanatics, ready to kill or die for the Chaos Bringer and undermine the society of Cybertron.
"This cult still exists"; Primus said to them, "but also here I am telling you nothing new."
He was right. For millions of years it was believed that the sect had been extinct. But that had turned out as wrong as members of the cult had been seen, surviving and active, only a few years ago.
"Why are you telling us all this?" Hotrod asked, "why now?"
"I will tell you. But there are two other things you have to know.
Unicron´s body was destroyed, his essence banished from this reality. But millions of years later he came back to this universe as a disembodied entity, a energy being without form.
Here he started to take influence of different lifeforms in that region of the universe. He mentally manipulated entire species into recreating his body. It was a work that took decades.
The creature who was overseeing this operation was a brilliant but mentally unstable and power-hungry scientist, a member of a species of small primates. Like Galvatron millions of years later, Unicron tried to keep him under mental control and like Galvatron he went insane. This being called himself Primacron after the Chaos Bringer and myself."
xxx
Before them appeared a image of the mad scientist who the Dinobots had captured over five years ago.
xxx
"He thought that he could control Unicron and use him for his own plans. With the time, he began to think that he had been the master all along and Unicron his slave. As the new body was finished it turned out of course that his "control" over him had never been more than an illusion.
Unicron continued his war against the universe and the scientists home-world was one of the first targets."
"I understand", Hotrod said, "and that was until we stopped him."
"Yes, seven of your years ago, he found Cybertron again and attacked it. You have defeated him and with that you have more than proven yourself, all of you.
The truth was Unicron had underestimated you from the beginning. He thought your generation was only a shadow of my original creation and that it was only the Matrix alone that was a threat to his plans.
Unicron rebuilt the Decepticon leader Megatron into Galvatron and tried to control him. He wanted to force him into the role as his harbinger that The Fallen had once served and destroy the Matrix for him.
But Galvatron resisted him and didn´t destroy it but attempted to stop him with it. He failed, but was able to protect the Matrix long enough for you to get it.
And as he finally broke down and succumbed to Unicron´s influence, you defeated him and stopped the Chaos Bringer. Yes, he misjudged all of you badly and that turned out to be his doom.
But again it was only temporally. The Decepticon named Starscream had reactivated his remains a few years ago and he tried to take a new body, mine, Cybertron itself.
That last attempt had failed, but now and that is the second thing I needed to tell you, it seems that he had succeeded. Unicron had found a new body and is about to return."
"That is terrible", Ultra Magnus worried, "are you sure?"
"Since our earliest fights, there is a mental link between him and me. I can feel his presence and he mine. Sometime we can even see what the other is thinking.
That was also the reason I staid in stasis for a great part of your history, to hide us from him.
But now he is mentally blocking me. I can not see his thoughts or what he is doing.
But his presence itself had grown stronger and that can only mean that he has found a new body. There is no doubt, Unicron has returned."
"We were forced to use the Matrix two times in the last years", Hotrod said, "first against him and then to cure the hate plaque. It´s energy is depleted."
"I know and this is the reason he is returning now. He is attacking you when you are at your weakest."
Some of the topics of this chapter will become important in the later parts of the story.
The backstory that I have described here is a mixture of different elements from the g1 cartoons and comics, the movies and beast wars. I have taken some freedoms there.
I actually don´t like the idea of Primacron from the cartoon and think it was nonsense. Before this background here, Unicron´s body destroyed in an earlier battle and rebuild later, the existence of somebody like him makes at least "some" sense.
The battle on the planet Nebulos will be continued in the next chapter.