Author's Note: The past month has been absolutely nuts between family and starting a new story, but here I am. Started flowing yesterday and wouldn't stop util I was done. Please enjoy.
Chapter Seventeen: The Heart of Man
The Rotunda became so quiet, Jack could hear the various heartbeats in the room thrumming in a slight cacophony. "…The Chaos Bringer stirs." Jack intoned. As he scanned the room, Jack noticed the Romans looked scared if a bit confused. "The belief of my people tells of two gods: Primus who is my father The God of Light, Order, and Creation and his counterpart The Lord of Destruction." Jack closed his optics and focused on the sliver of Primus' essence in The Key to calm his fears at even thinking about Primus' opposite. "Before time, there was Chaos. Chaos generated many primordial forces including my father and The Lord of Destruction. Dad, in turn, created my older brothers and sister to help him defeat The Dark One once and for all. Battles raged, but victory came soon enough." Jack looked up at Arcee and remembered how The Well came to be with a violent shiver. "Unicron was set adrift in stasis and as debris gathered around him, some of his blood leeched into the mass and gave rise to the more familiar Primordials for us. Those spawned closer to his Dark Spark took after him more readily. Those removed by some distance still self-actualized but to a degree were kinder." Jack looked around at all the senators and saw their faces going ashen like a wave. In hushed whispers, Jack recognized one name: Saturn. His mind flashed back to the oracle's prophecy: The Five Spheres shall tremble under the might to bare.
Arcee knew next to nothing about the cultural nuances of Rome or Greece, but the hush over the senators with whispers of the local name of a gas giant in the system made her nervous. Part of her processor asked about possible orbital platforms stationed around the planet. The back processes of her mind told her such thinking didn't make sense considering Humanity barely knew how to reach the natural satellite of their homeworld. Arcee scanned The Mark of Vesta on her shoulder and thought back to what she had seen in the past few days. Arcee cut down or blasted her enemies. The femme had no mind for politics, but she protected those she considered family with all of her Spark. Is that why you chose me?
A gentle warmth settled in Arcee's chest in seeming answer to the question.
The two-wheeler wanted to reach over and put a hand on Jack's shoulder after he finished speaking. However, she didn't know if such an action would break some protocol and cast doubt on Jack's words. The Romans didn't look too pleased, and Arcee felt her tank lurch when she caught the eyes of a man in an odd state of dress. The golden laurel on his head in particular gave the blue femme pause. She remembered him as the one who fell back terrified of her when she and Jack first entered Camp Jupiter. Now, the man seemed to be in his element and almost pulled eyes toward him as he walked down the steps to the main floor. With an unnerved shutter, the femme remembered how Megatron acted in the decacycles leading up to the war.
Arcee, calm down, Jack tried to soothe. Octavian is not Megatron.
"How can we be certain what you say is truth?" Octavian turned and gestured to the senators grandly. "Think," the priest said with a frown. "The Scythe Bearer stirs." Octavian jerked an accusatory hand like lightning at Jack and Arcee. "Then, four strangers, with two of them being Graeci who were struck down by Jupiter himself moments before this meeting, come to our city and feed us these lies to distract us from the fact that Saturn rises around us at this very moment. We know The Lord of Time to be a crafty one. I say these…creatures are spies sent to weaken and pull us away from the true threat!"
To prove his point, Octavian brought forth Percy and Thalia who were flanked by two guards each. The daughter of Zeus looked a little worn but otherwise ok. Thalia seemed more irritated with the Romans than injured by the blast of lightning sent against her boyfriend. Percy seemed alright, but something struck Jack as different about the child of The Queen of the Sea when Jack met the eyes. They looked shattered and full of rage. If Jack focused his audios on The Little Tiber, the young Prime could hear the river rolling with confined rage. Zooming out from eyes, Jack gasped in shock. Dad help the poor bastard who activated THAT protection mechanism. The young Prime quickly scanned the room and seemed to be the only one besides Arcee and Thalia to notice the changes. Everyone else clearly fastened their eyes on the two Greeks. Even as he watched, Jack sighed in relief as Percy's form rippled back to its native state. Thalia looked over as she felt the ripple through her grip on his hand and smiled softly when she realized Percy was calming down gradually.
"As I was telling the guards," Thalia spoke calmly with bridled anger of her own in her speech. "We aren't spies for The Crooked One! We were sent to warn you and the gods of a threat beyond the scope of The Earth herself!"
Arcee's servos creaked and rattled with restrained rage. As she watched the senators pay no mind to Thalia's words, the femme felt her processor go back to the days of The High Council who were so content with Functionism until Megatron began to attack and forced the council to act. Granted, the councilors only selected Orion as Prime in an attempt to put a mesh patch on a wound that needed a wielder's torch, but Optimus proved to be exactly who Autobots needed to be able to face the Cons.
The mark on Arcee's shoulder glowed and almost burned with painful intensity. The femme then stood to her full fifteen-foot height. Passively, the scout engaged an arm blade and held it inches from Octavian's throat. "I've been running espionage operations longer than arguably you have known of your gods," she said with a dangerous acidity calm to her words. "If I wanted to know anything about your camp or the Greek one, I would find it, and you would never know. Your magical barriers classify me as a demigod. I could rip both camps down alone and with only minimal difficulty," Arcee withdrew her arm and disengaged the blade. "I am only a common 'mortal' where I come from. The Thirteen, Jack's brothers and sister, are like a fusion of your ideas of a minor god and demigod. Mind your next words carefully, Roman, for they may be your last as augur."
Octavian looked past Arcee to stare at Jack in absolute confusion that settled into terror. The young man looked close to wetting himself as his eyes met Jack's. For the first time, Octavian actually looked at the young man before him and felt the restrained aura of a god inside the stranger. (Of cause, this was The Key, but with Octavian completely ignorant of Cybertronians, he did not know or understand this.) The fool fell to his knees in front of Jack and looked up with tears in his eyes. "My lord," he clutched at Jack's jeans like a feeble peasant. "Please forgive me!"
Jack raised an eyebrow and fought a smirk; I think you overplayed our hand a little.
The Romans will listen to us without any reservations now, Arcee countered with a slight sternness. Besides, I really wanted to shut him down before he did here what Megatron did back home.
One of the guards picked up Octavian and carried him out of the senate hall without a word.
Then, the senators turned their full attention to Jack and Arcee. "How do we prepare for this threat?"
Jack sighed and looked at each senator and frowned, "This shall not be an easy fight," Jack said calmly. "You need to contact and organize with the Greeks and get all the manpower together possible because Saturn is just the beginning."
The senators and Consuls shifted their attention at Jack's words. When an uproar threatened to start in the chamber over questions of Terra moving and urging Saturn to rise with her own power from his state of dismemberment, Jack held his head and sank to his knees with a pained groan. The young Prime's hands shot to his ears as he tried to shut out Megatronus and Liege Maximo. The two elder Primes seemed ready to tear Unicron's spark out of the planet and damn whatever life lived on the world.
Torch and burn the world to a cinder! Liege Maximo roared. Would you not agree, brother, after Unicron played us both for fools?!
Jack felt horror roll through him at the thought of losing everything he knew because two hot-headed so-called Primes could not bring themselves to think beyond the quickest and messiest solution because of a millennia old festering grudge. The horror forged itself into anger as Jack heard Megatronus agree with Liege Maximo. "(Brothers,)" Jack growled in an ancient dialect of Cybertronian only known to dedicated scholars and The Primes. "(Do you forget so quickly that I and Father's Sparkmate call this world you wish to obliterate our home?)" Jack closed his optics and focused through The Key to generate holographic projections of his brothers to at least let the senators and Consuls know he wasn't a madman. Though it took effort, Jack also set part of his processor to translate in real-time to Latin. Then, Jack continued. "(As Lord or Light, Creation, and Order; father would be disgusted with your proposal!)"
Megatronus turned on his little brother, and Jack could see flashes of purple in the Prime's optics. "(You must see it is the only choice we have!)"
Liege Maximo guided Jack's optics to Arcee. In that moment, the nightmare of Team Prime as mindless Terrorcons that seemed years ago now came back to Jack fully. "(You infected my dreams!)"
The Loki lookalike smiled, "(It's the only way to save her from that fate. You must choose, brother: Earth or Cybertron.)"
Jack stared at Liege Maximo in shock and disbelief. A test… Jack tried to asuage his fears. He knew most Decepticons hated Earth. Was it some bit of random code in the processors of those Cybertronians whose Sparks resonated closely with The Chaos Bringer in an impressive irony? "(The Matrix can theoretically put Unicron in stasis again,)" Jack growled with a fire in his optics at his brothers. "(The Romans and Greeks can handle the 'smaller' matter of The Crooked One,)" Jack boomed through the Senate Hall. "(Old rivalries between Greeks and Romans no longer matter!)" Jack shook his head. "(It was utter folly for the gods to separate the camps. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I do not blame them; The Lord of Titans whispers in even the mightiest ears as Unicron does for us. That influence creeps in unawares and makes foolishness seem wise. Please, send a Roman envoy to The Greeks and declare parlay. The only way we can beat these monsters lies in a united front.)"
Arcee stared at Jack in stunned silence. She didn't know whether to kiss or slap him. With him aiming to unify the Humans against this "Saturn who was not a planet" and his talk of Unicron being a threat to Earth's populous and Cyvertron. Her tank flip-flopped uneasily at the thought of such a plan. You can't seriously be thinking what I think you're thinking! The femme decided to go for a third option and hugged the son of Primus from behind.
Jack relaxed into her strength and let her embrace swallow him while the din of the senators as they argued over Jack's words faded to a near silent buzz. Jack knew she and the rest of Team Prime with the exception of Optimus would vehemently oppose the next necessary step in his plan with Megatron mainlining Dark Energon with Starscream to a lesser extent. The idea made his skin crawl, but with The Crooked One drawing strength to rise, Unicron quickly gained strength in turn and began to fight stasis. The two created a positive feedback loop. Jack could put Energon on the idea neither egomaniac knew of the connection. Arcee, it's our best chance of coming out of this with minimal casualties. If the gods want to cower in the face of comparatively small threats like Kronos, they will be of no help against someone like Unicron. Without the gods, Megatron stands as our only help against The Dark One.
Arcee glared at him, showing her clear dislike for the plan. I hope you know what you're getting us into, Smooth Operator.
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