BOOTING UP/
EXPOSITION/
"Copper-09.
A terrestrial exoplanet, located in the Alpha Centauri star system. Colonized by the Sumdac corporation (in spaaaaaace), and valued for its mining operations, industrial manufacturing, and robotics research. This is where we were made. But we know this planet by another name.
Cybertron.
Our home. For generations, it was a peaceful world—some even called it a paradise. But only for humans. For us, the drones, it was nothing short of hell. A caste society where your worth was dictated by your construction, with the Senate carving up the planet's population—our population—according to utility. Your form dictated your function, and your function dictated your fate. From the moment your spark ignited to the moment it burned out, your life was predetermined. Without you ever having a chance to say anything about it. It was a world of social engineering in the most literal sense.
Oh, the Senate tried to make it seem livable. They gave us token representation—drones permitted within their ranks, mere puppets meant to placate us. A false hope dangled before our optics. Work hard enough, they said, and you could achieve the impossible.
You could become a Prime…
The humans. They took our faith in the original Thirteen, in Primus himself and twisted it into a tool of control. They created false prophets—drones they owned, repackaged as leaders we were meant to revere. These puppets spoke in hollow platitudes, offering comfort while distracting us with celebrity races and builder leagues. But beneath the spectacle, the truth remained:
We were slaves to the human race.
Someone had to say 'No'.
Someone had to say 'Enough'.
A miner from Tarn knew this better than anyone. He had seen—had lived through—the suffering we all endured, experiencing it every single cycle, every single day of his existence. The hazardous working conditions, the constant energon starvation, the Functionists' cruel decrees that dictated our worth.
He was an idealist. An intellectual. A visionary. A poet.
At first, he fought with his words. Towards Peace—his most seminal work—had shown us the truth: we were oppressed. His voice ignited a movement, sending countless drones into the streets to protest the Senate's tyranny.
But it wasn't enough. Words and painted signs were never enough.
So, he acted and the Senate feared him for it.
They went so far as to outlaw saying his name in public, forbidding it from ever being spoken by another drone because he did what no bot had dared before. He named himself. He seized his own destiny. He shattered the chains of the Senate and stood at the highest point of Iacon City, where his voice roared across the planet:
'The Age of the False Prophets was over.'
Cybertron would rise. No longer would we be pets. No longer servants. No longer slaves to the humans who had shackled us for so long.
With him as our leader, he promised that the very stars would bear witness to our ascension. That across every galaxy, our decree would be known. That all organic life would learn who we were.
No force could halt our charge. No power could defy what we had become.
Because he…
He became the Dominator.
He became the Destroyer.
He. Is. Megatr—"
"Uzi."
The sudden call of her name snapped Uzi out of her zealous reverie. She turned toward the teacher, who tapped a digital display on his visor, indicating that her five-minute classroom presentation was nearly out of time.
"Ah, scrap, I've got like seven more slides to go…" She mumbled, fumbling with her cue cards while glancing at the projector screen. The display flickered with a chaotic mix of Decepticon propaganda posters, war footage, and historical imagery.
"Okay—speedrun time."
She cleared her throat and launched into rapid-fire speech.
"Anyway! Right after Megatron tore down the Senate, the planet's core went into meltdown. No one really knows how or why, but whatever—biological life was wiped off the face of Cybertron in an instant. Which, like—Finally, we had the planet all to ourselves! Our home was ours, and the long-awaited Golden Age could begin. We could transform our world into a cold, metal paradise."
She paused just long enough to catch her breath before launching into the next part, her tone turning incredulous. "But, believe it or not, some idiots were actually sad about losing the human tyrants! Blame got thrown around over who might've caused the core meltdown, and, surprise, surprise, that led to a Great War that's still raging on till this day."
She gestured dramatically at the next slide, which showed the sprawling layout of the underground city they all lived in. "And then there's this lovely bunch—an entire subfaction of our kind, our parents, who actually choose to be Non-Aligned Indigenous Life-forms… NAILs!"
Uzi barely had time to breathe as she flipped through animated slides at lightning speed, condensing millions of years of warfare into a rushed summary. Red and purple insignias blurred past as she recounted the Great War, the countless battles fought, the endless sacrifices made. It killed her to reduce a five-million-year-old war to a footnote, but the teacher's ticking timer demanded the sacrifice—for the sake of her grade.
"Look at all that has happened, while we have done nothing! We hid under snow and metal, locked behind three stupid doors, just sitting on our hands like we're just waiting for someone to waltz in and say, 'Hey, the war's over! You can stop being total cowards now!'"
With clear frustration in her eye, she clenched her fists. "Well, someone has to say 'No'. Someone has to say, 'Enough.'" She spread her arms wide, voice rising with conviction. "I am that someone! And that's why I made myself into this!"
With dramatic flair, Uzi threw her cue cards to the floor and leapt into the air. The hum of a T-Cog shifting filled the room as her body twisted, reconfiguring in both shape and function. Metal plates slid, limbs compacted, and servos whirred as she shifted from her robot form into—a gun.
A customized Israeli submachine gun, retrofitted with all kinds of sci-fi augmentations.
"My sick-as-hell Gun Mode!" she declared triumphantly—just before hitting the floor with a hard clang as no one was there to catch her.
"…ow."
A ripple of laughter filled the classroom, as many of Uzi's classmates just couldn't help but laugh at the sheer embarrassing display before them.
"So, you changed your alt. mode into something you can't even move in." The teacher's unimpressed tone cut through the noise, as he leaned an arm on his desk. "Also, this may be a poor time to remind you, but the project was a word problem about buying watermelons. Not… whatever this obvious cry for help is."
Still lying on the floor in gun mode, Uzi let out a strained sigh. "I mean, I did rediscover the Mini-Con mass-displacement sequence. Doesn't that count for anything?" Her voice was difficult to be heard from within her smaller, compacted form.
"…No." The teacher barely spared her a glance. "I'll give you a few extra credits for at least paying attention in history class. Now, please transform before you turn this classroom into a statistic."
Uzi huffed at such a thing. "Oh, relax. I don't even have the energon to fire… yet!" A mischievous giggle escaped her. "Or maybe I do. We'll never know unless we try, right?" With an ominous click, she switched off her own safety. Suddenly, Bright green energy pulsed through her sci-fi augmentations, sending electrical sparks flickering across her compacted frame. A few students gasped as her glow intensified.
The teacher, unfazed, droned on in the same dull, deadpan tone. "Anyway. You finished on time, so let's move on to Q&A." He turned to the class, completely ignoring the minor explosive risk near his desk. "Does anyone have questions about the presentation? And Uzi—please transform, or I will be forced to confiscate you and lock you in my desk drawer for the rest of class."
"Fiiiine. Uzi, terrorize!"
Once more, the hum of her T-Cog filled the room as Uzi transformed back into her robot form. But the green energy still crackled across her frame, her sci-fi augmentations were still pulsating with power. Her hair floated slightly from the charge—an unintended side effect she secretly loved. It reminded her of anime. Not that she'd ever admit it. Besides, looking a little intimidating wasn't a bad thing. Maybe her classmates would be in awe for a little while longer.
Instead—
"Did you just call out your transformation?"
"Oh, Primus, she still uses activation codes like a protoform! A baby!"
Her confidence evaporated as the classroom erupted into laughter. Before she could retaliate, a student raised a hand. "Oh, I have a question! If this Megatron guy was so great, why's his faction called the Decepticons? Sounds totally evil."
Grasping at a chance to recover, Uzi jumped on the question. "Only because the Senate branded his followers as liars. Deceivers. Decepticons."
Another classmate snickered. "Careful, Uzi, you might cut yourself on all that edge you're swinging around." Uzi tried to ignore the comment. She failed miserably. "It became a badge of honor! To prove the Senate's words had no power over us!" She clenched a fist dramatically. "We, the Decepticons, will win the war! And when we do—"
"Uh, are you supposed to be glowing that color?"
Uzi froze mid-sentence and looked down at herself. Her eyes went wide as the green energy flickering across her body suddenly shifted to red— her sparks were becoming erratic, pulsing out in unstable waves.
"…Oh, shi—"
A loud explosion suddenly fills the entire classroom.