Disclaimer: I only own my OCs. Vox belongs to a friend.

Authoress: This was a lot harder to write than I thought, but it is going to be good now that I have the swing of this story again!

Prologue

Vox's 1st P.O.V.

Even though I knew that if I got caught doing this, I would be thrown into the stockades, if not outright banished from Cybertron, I was excited. When I got to Cybertron those forty solars ago, I had been disappointed to find out about Paul's imprisonment in that fragging tower. He was a sentient being, just like the rest of us. Instead of being kept away like some gilded prize in a vault, he should be allowed to go out and about like the rest of us. From the stories that I heard from those at Decepticon Village, Paul was witty and smart and did honestly care about us. During the fighting on Earth, he was in the center of the fighting at times and was interactive with all of them.

But then they found out that he was Primus during the final battle here on Cybertron, and suddenly he was too important to be let outside. That was despite his wishes to be among us. So, I immediately started to find out all that I could about what happened on Earth from the bots at Decepticon Village. I had tried to ask others who didn't live there, but they didn't have time to 'answer questions'. Since that was the case, the bots in Decepticon Village were my only hope.

And frag did they pull through.

All of the Decepticons and Autobots there were more than willing to tell me about Earth and everything that happened there. It was during those talks that I found out more about Pandimala. There were light rumors where I was hiding out about a neutral femme helping the Autobots on Earth. that alone was strange because neutrals, for the most part, avoided anything to do with the war like it was cosmic rust. But she did so much more than help.

She sacrificed herself to save Cybertron.

The more that the bots in the Village told me about the femme, the more I wished I had gotten the chance to meet her. She seemed to really care about the war and looked at situations neutrally, as was her right. Even when she had her disagreements with either side, though, she rarely held a grudge. From what Knockout had told me, the femme had even forgiven Megatron for trying to offline her at different points of the fighting.

Pandimala was a bot that could have changed Cybertron for the better if she had been here.

However, since she was not here, I was now taking up that responsibility. About ten solars after my arrival on Cybertron, Knockout asked to meet me at Darkmount. It was strange that he wanted to meet there, but I agreed. Why he wanted to meet there made more sense once he told me their plan. They wanted to break Paul out of that tower and they had pegged me as a bot who they trusted to help.

The only downside to this is that I couldn't know anything more about the operation than I was a part of. I wasn't sure about the exit plan or anybot outside of the Knockout, my friend Domino, and his creators, Solitaire and Euchre, who are a part of this. All I knew was that, with Domino's help, I was to get the message to Paul about us breaking him out of that tower and get him to the space bridge in Decepticon Village. That was it. I didn't even know which bot they were having to pull Paul out of the tower. Once I had laid out my plan, and the need for a flier to get Paul, Knockout said that they would deal with that.

And it made sense as to why we were doing it like that. If I was to get captured, I wouldn't be able to be forced to tell my interrogators about anything else in the plan. This way, they could try again. But we weren't going to get caught. The helm-cases here on Cybertron wouldn't even know that we had broken Paul out until he was well on his way to Decepticon Village. Domino and I would already be there. Our job was to just drop off the message to Paul about the escape. We didn't have a click to waste.

But, I was curious about who was pulling the strings behind this operation. Since Knockout was my contact, it wasn't him. However, without it being him, there weren't too many other choices that I saw. Soundwave, perhaps. Or maybe Wheeljack…though that one was a stretch. Wheeljack, while firmly on the Village's side, didn't have the kind of pull to get this to work. Or…I guess it could be a bot that I hadn't met. Though, that didn't seem very likely. I made it my mission to meet all of the bots connected to Decepticon Village. I was almost positive that there were none that I hadn't met.

"Vox!"

I came out of my thoughts when I saw Domino waving at me, a tray in his servo. It was not hard to guess what was under that. "So, is that the meal?" I asked. Domino's family was known for giving Paul complex meals that, when the tray came back down, were always finished. That meant that Paul had to like it. Of course, they had lived on several organic and techno-organic planets during the war, so they would have a better idea of what our humanized god might appreciate.

Domino nodded. "Yeah, mech. However, carrier wasn't happy that we were sending this. To be fair, this 'chicken pot pie' seems very subpar compared to what we normally give him. However, she was soothed by the fact that we were sneaking a dessert onto the tray. Of course, neither carrier nor sire knew what this 'fortune cookie' was either."

That was weird. They knew a lot about organic food, and for two of the items to be unfamiliar to them made me nervous. "Then, why are we giving it to him?"

"Knockout said that the meal itself would be a message to Paul that he can trust the note." He whispered to me.

Talk between the two of us stopped as we approached the entrance of the tower, though 'entrance' was a bit of a stretch. No bot…outside of maybe a minicon or symbiot, would physically be able to get into the tower, and even then, they wouldn't be able to reach Paul's room. Outside of the window, the only exit and entrance to the room was the dumbwaiter.

"Halt," the guard stated as we approached with the meal. "What business do you have here?"

This was tedious. Thankfully, Domino had this part covered. "I am Domino, creation of Solitaire and Euchre, and we are here to deliver our solar meal to Primus." We couldn't call him Paul to the guards. We weren't allowed to say his name in their presence—well, his human name anyway.

The guard motioned us forward, and so we approached. Once we were up to the mech, he opened the top and looked at the meal inside. Honestly, it did look plain. No wonder Euchre was upset. "A chicken pot pie with a hardened sweet cookie for dessert," Domino stated to the mech when he looked confused at the meal.

This was it. If our part of the plan was going to go wrong at any moment, this was it. If the guard broke open that cookie, he would see the note, and we would be in deep slag—just as long as he didn't open that fragging cookie.

It took all of my restraint to not vent in relief as the guard simply shut the lid again. "Seems like Solitaire and Euchre are finally understanding what to feed him." He then motioned to the dumbwaiter. "Go ahead."

We nodded before I followed Domino, who was very tense, as he walked over to the dumb waiter in question. Without hesitation, he set down the meal before the two of us moved away. Once we were out of the mech's audio range, Domino let out a growl. "I will be informing my creators about what he said before we leave. They won't let slander like that go unanswered."

"Yeah, I don't know about you, but I don't want to get on your carrier's bad side. She is terrifying when she is angry," I agreed with my friend. The two of us then transformed before we sped away toward the Village.

Paul's 1st P.O.V.

I never thought that it would come to this. After all of the work I did to help peace return to Cybertron, this is what I was to suffer. A life of solitude and reverence from afar. It had been months since I had last interacted with anybot close. Frag, they even delivered my lunches through a dumb waiter system. Frag this new Council! And frag Prime and Bumblebee for going along with them. I understood that they were trying to show a unified front to the galaxies. To show that Cybertron was unified in its decisions. But this went too far. My freedom was being stopped due to the bureaucracy of these fragging politicians!

She wouldn't have stood for this. I knew that. Pandimala would have charged forward without care of what anybot thought. If somebot tried to stop her, she would put them down or go down herself trying to get to me. This was a load of scrap, and it infuriated me. But I couldn't do much. My powers were slow in returning since my main spark had to focus on restoring more of Cybertron's systems. Given the lack of supplies we all were working with, that was understandable.

What wasn't understandable was the fragging dollhouse they had put me in! Grabbing one of the fluffy pillows that littered the room, I threw it against the wall in anger. Frag them! Cybertron was still struggling and needed to be focused on. Instead, they decided to restore this fragging tower and lock me up in the top tower. Like I was some damsel in distress! I was not as frail as they wished I was! Yet I was locked up as a 'treasure of Cybertron', as councilmech Dragstrip had said. Frag him! When I finally got out of here, they would regret locking me in here!

Taking a deep breath, I looked around and saw the calendar hanging on the wall. Unlike Earth's calendars, they were just pages upon pages of blank squares. I had to fight to even get this much. I guess they were worried about what I might be able to do with a calendar. What could I do? Even if I could use it to offline myself, I couldn't die. Not that I wanted to try that, but I had a feeling. So honestly, their adamant refusal to give me a calendar was just making them look ridiculous.

Honestly, I had Solitaire and Euchre to thank for this. For being previous nobles from Polyhex, they had stable processors in their helms. While they weren't able to negotiate for an actual calendar, they were able to get me this blank one. With it, I kept track of a few things. One was the days that I had been up here. While I didn't know the exact number off the top of my helm now, all I had to do was count the days I had marked off to figure that out. Secondly, though, I was starting to keep track of which families brought me my meals. While they weren't allowed to sign a card to let me know, it was easy to guess based on what was brought this solar. Picking up my green crayon, I looked at the calendar.

…Yes, I had a crayon. It was the only writing utensil they would let me have because I 'might hurt myself' with a fragging pen or pencil. By the Allspark, we had better not get into what debate they had for sharpies. Frag even quills were discussed. All too dangerous. Finally, a single crayon was given to me. Fraggers. Good thing they didn't know all the dangers of crayons. They might just take this from me, too.

Let's see, this solar was…ah, it was my meal from Solitaire and Euchre. They were the only ones to bring me actual food that wasn't reheated in a microwave. What's more, I suspected they had a chef who specialized in organic cuisine cooking the meals. They were balanced and delicious.

That was unlike a certain councilmech's literal rock soup. I chucked it out the window, and I got a fragging lecture about waste. I had to break down the fact that I could not eat fragging rocks. Since the mech gave me the same thing the next time, I was sure he was just a lost cause.

The ding of the dumb waiter drew my attention to said devise. Finally! I was curious about what I was getting this time. Maybe some ribeye steak for the entree? With mixed vegetables on the side and some wild rice? The baby-back ribs that they got me last time were divine! I couldn't wait to dig in! However, when I got to the dumb waiter and opened it, I stared in confusion. What…?

It was a chicken pot pie and a fortune cookie.

First of all, how did they even know what those were? While there were vaguely similar things to these items in the remote reaches of space, the way that these looked had me thinking that they were inspired by Earth? But how? None of that family had been to Earth before. Perhaps they heard about it from one of the bots at the Village. I knew there were at least a couple of stories about me that had to do with….

Wait a click…

I quickly ate my pot pie, which tasted just like the ones that I used to eat with Lizzie. I didn't want to raise their suspicions if what I thought was happening was happening. For the first time since my incarceration, I felt hope. Hope that I was going to be getting out of this fragging place. Once that was done, I hesitantly turned to the fortune cookie. This was it. All of my hopes lay with that fortune cookie and if the saying inside would change my future.

After only a click of hesitation, I reached down and cracked open the cookie. A note! This was a communication. "Would you like another fortune?" I read out loud. Silence enveloped the room as I processed what I said. "Those fraggers!" I growled softly before turning the fortune over. Of course, they made it authentic. Now that I stared at the back, I felt hope again.

'Ten clicks after delivery mech leaves.

Get rid of bars.

Prepare for a leap of faith.'

Thinking about how short of time the bots who delivered the meal had, I realized I had about three clicks before my pickup. Scrap! Faster than I thought possible, I ran across the room and gathered the few possessions that were mine. Most important were mine and Pandimala's old cell phones. Call me sentimental, but I liked having it near. Her voice was still on the answering machine, so I could listen to her voice on the bad solars.

There were a lot of bad solars.

Once I had everything I wanted to keep in one of the bags lying around here, I used a small portion of my power and removed the bars—one click left. If I tried to remove the bars any other time, they would notice and take away my window privileges, period. Now that I was leaving here forever, I didn't mind showing that I could remove them.

Once I was standing on the ledge, I glanced from left to right for any sign of a bot that I knew. Hopefully, they sent somebot that I knew. It would be pretty embarrassing if I missed my pickup. That was especially true after all of the hard work that they had all put into this. That would be a major letdown on my part. Definitely couldn't let that happen.

I felt relief when I saw Soundwave coming in hot from my left. I figured that I would only have a few nanos for him to stop and let me on. His stopping by my window for too long would draw everybot's attention, and that would get the enforcers and maybe the Elite Guard on us a lot faster than they were probably planning. Once Soundwave paused at my window, I didn't hesitate and jumped down on his alt mode. Thankfully, his cables came out and held me down so I would fall as he blasted away from there.

Honestly, with how smoothly that went, I was sure my absence wouldn't be noticed until one of the fraggers from the Council checked up on my window. Once they saw that the bars were gone, they could put two and two together pretty quickly. However, none of that was important right now.

What was important was that I was finally free!

Knockout's 1st P.O.V.

My circuits were frying with tension as I waited for the two groups to return. Pandimala was disguised in Vestium Major cloaking technology. Had to say, for such an uppity planet, they were pretty chill about who they sold their tech to. I had reached out to Swindle, for the mech could get a deal like no bot should be able to. He had bought it and dropped it off at Darkmount for us on one of his trips. I owed that mech. Now, Pandimala could move about everybot, and only those of us who were completely in the know knew she was here. Not even Paul was going to know about her until we were safely away from Cybertron.

Well, if this plan even worked.

We had spent all of this time working out the best plan to not only break Paul out of the prison that they were keeping him in but also plan where we were going to flee with him. We couldn't stay on Cybertron. The Council and all of the bots that supported them would be after us in no time. So, we had to get away from here and to a planet that most of the civilians would know almost nothing about.

Earth was our intended target. Not only did most of our refugee group know Earth well enough to stay living in disguise, but we already had ties with one of the human governments. If we could convince Fowler's government, which we did, to give us all sanctuary and block the bots who would chase us from taking Paul back without consequence, then that would be perfect. But, given that we had to do this anyway, perfect wasn't always available to us.

This whole mission was going to be cutting it close, and I wasn't sure if we were going to get away with this as cleanly as we wanted. Frag, I was just waiting for the battle sirens to start ringing out over Cybertron once they discovered Paul was 'stolen'. This had to go alright. this would be the first mission I had worked with Pandimala since she came back.

A part of me still couldn't believe that she was back at all.

"You are stressing out too much,"

I jumped when Cohrada's vocals came from behind me. Sure enough, the mech was in his bipedal mode, smirking. "Fragger, I thought you were supposed to be making sure everybot was ready at the bridge. We are only getting one shot at this," I growled at him. Fragger enjoyed sneaking up on bots too much.

He laughed at that. "Don't stress your circuits over that Knockout. Everybot except for Soundwave is at the bridge…well, all bots except for you and me. I came to get you. Why are you so stressed about this?"

I scoffed at him as we made our way to the bridge. "Why aren't you more stressed? We are fragging kidnapping our god from Cybertron. We are all going to have a hit out for our helms, and there will be plenty of bots willing to chase us down."

Cohrada had the nerve to laugh. "We'll be fine. Let them come. We will have the advantage against everybot that they send. Not only will we learn about Earth, for those of us going who have never been, but we will gain the loyalty of the locals. From the little I have studied about humans, their technology isn't as behind us as many would like to think. That is especially true in their military capabilities. They've almost made finding ways to offline each other an art form. I'm sure that they will create measures against us, too, that we can use against bots who come for us." He then smirked. "Plus, we have that ace up our sleeve should all of that fail."

Pandimala. If all else failed, we had her. And she would not go down easily. that I did know.

"You're right," I agreed as we arrived at the bridge with the others. While I wanted to stand by Pandimala, I knew that I needed to stay separate from her. We were avoiding saying her name until we were off the planet. Outside of Darkmount, the Council had devices listening in everywhere. Didn't want to give away our ace to them. "Wrecker, you ready?" I called to Wheeljack as he tinkered with the explosives attached to the bridge.

He tinkered for another nano before he turned and grinned. "You bet. Once we are all through, these beauties will go off and light up this area so bright that this half of Cybertron couldn't miss it." Well, at least it wouldn't be missed. I had this. We just had to get through this. Just one pede step at a,

The sound of a familiar engine had me looking up to see Soundwave coming in fast with Paul. "Alright, you glitches, get ready to go through. Fowler told me last time we talked that they are staying clear on their side enough for us all to get in!" I yelled as Soundwave transformed and landed in front of me, Paul in servo. "Okay Wheeljack let's go!"

The ground bridge hummed to life in the click hesitation there was before all of us made our way through. While there weren't too many of us, there were still enough to make a point to Fowler. This was not a small thing we were doing. And this was going to have major consequences if we were caught. I waited until it was just Wheeljack and myself left before I ran through. As I heard the Wrecker running, I also heard the muted sound of an explosion behind me. Perfect, that had worked. Now, they wouldn't be able to track us through our ground bridge coordinates. That would give us plenty of time to make some allies in this.

We were going to need them.

Once the Wrecker and I were through, the bridge was closed, and I took in the area around us. This was the base for Unit E, the military company Fowler fell under, which already knew of our existence.

"Will one of you care to explain to me what the hell is going on?" The human I recognized as General Bryce asked as he walked up. "I thought you were going to be coming quietly. The whole base is in a flurry because we heard explosions."

Wheeljack spoke up before any of us could. "Had to blow up the bridge on the other side. If you remember from what I told you, we are kind of committing treason right now, and I don't know about you, but I don't want to be caught. We blew the bridge so we couldn't be traced." He then smirked. "You're welcome."

General Bryce, however, looked like he had aged a hundred stellars at that moment. "I forgot what it is like working with you all. This is going to kill me this time," he said, then turned to one of the troops following him. "Tell the base to stand down. It's only our guests arriving."

Wait… "Where is Fowler? I thought he was supposed to be our liaison for this?" I had been in contact with the human agent during the majority of this planning, and he had worked to get us this chance. For him not to be here was strange.

The grave look on the human's face told me I was not going to like the answer. "He wanted to be here. But he was visiting the children and June when he went radio silent. When we investigated Jasper, we found traces of MECH's presence."

"MECH? I thought they were done when Silas died?" Paul asked, looking just as worried as the rest of us did.

General Bryce shook his head. "No. We think one of his contractor buddies took the reigns. Prometheus Black was a military contractor who worked closely with Silas' unit. However, when we investigated him before Silas' death, nothing came up. His hands were clean. Or so we thought. Then, about a month after you all left,"

"So, about thirty solars ago," I said for the benefit of those who didn't know Earth words yet.

"Prometheus fell off the grid entirely," Bryce continued. "A man like that doesn't just disappear. Our suspicions were confirmed during a raid on a MECH facility still in operation. We must have caught them cleaning up because they were running around confused during the raid. We found him there, and he took a couple of shots at our troops. Fowler reported that Prometheus engaged him and made it clear that they had something big planned for Earth."

"How did that lead up to what happened?" Pandimala, whose disguise I noticed was starting to flicker, asked.

Bryce looked up at her. "About a week ago, a video was posted to the web about your existence and how MECH was humanity's only chance to fight against you. Thankfully, most seem to be on your side, but we had to get the video down. Fowler went to see the kids because Rafael Esquivel had experience taking down videos of the Autobots while they were here. The last communication we had from Fowler was that he had arrived at young Esquivel's house and that June Darby, Jack Darby, and Miko Nakadai were there. When we went to investigate, the house was in ruins. Thankfully, none of the young boy's family was injured, but we moved them and Miss Nakadai's foster parents here for their safety. Those who didn't know have been filled in on you all and how the children are involved." He then paused and looked back at her. "And who are you? You're wearing some sort of disguise. It is flickering."

I needed to give the human more credit. Most of our allies that we came with hadn't even realized that she was in disguise. Now that Bryce had said something, everybot, and Paul turned to her. Well, we were safe to do this now, so it would be best to get them out of the way. "Go ahead. I think they've waited long enough."

She shrugged before reaching to the back of her neck and removing the device. The disguise shimmered one more time before it finally removed itself. Gasps followed as everybot, and Primus realized who it was. "Pandimala, I should have known you were behind this," Paul said with a smile.

In return, she smiled. "You probably should have Paul. But we will have to wait for reunions until we get Fowler and the kids back. I don't know what this Prometheus guy has planned, but he won't succeed. We will all stop him. Together."

Paul: *happy* Pandimala is online. She's...online.

Pandimala: *smiles* Of course, Paul. And now that we have to save the kids and Fowler before we can build our alliances up here on Earth.

Paul: *crying* You're online!

Pandimala: *laughs*

AN: And here is the first chapter of The Power of One's sequel! I hope you all enjoyed this opening chapter. It does feel strange writing a good Paul again since I just spent Resolve of One tearing one down. But, who cares. This is starting to feel like it is going to focus a lot on MECH for this first arc. As this prologue suggests, though, they will be working on making allies against Cybertron so once they find where our refugees went our refugees will have some support.

Well, until next time, here at the names of the next chapters!

Chapter 1: The Power of MECH

Chapter 2: Storming the Base

Chapter 3: ...(find out next time!)

And that's all for now! Leave a review or say hi if you like. Thank you all for reading (especially this far) and I hope you continue to enjoy it! Until next time though, TTYL! *listening to BeeGees*