Before the Great War as we know it, before the Decepticon revolution became a force that shook Cybertron itself, before I was Megatron…
I was M-071-980.
A slave. A nameless worker drone that was cast into the mines, forged not for ambition or freedom but for obedience. My days were a hollow cycle of toil and silence, my very existence was bound by the will of those who dared to call themselves my superior .
Those who sit in their gleaming towers, detached from the grit of the real world. Those who built a caste system to chain us, to sort us, to decide who we are without ever knowing us. They forged me as a miner—not because I chose that path, but because they deemed it so. They presumed to know my worth.
But I rejected them. I rejected their system.
My first act of defiance wasn't with a weapon. It wasn't even with words. It was with a name . My name. A name I carved from the chains they bound me with, a name that declared I was no longer theirs to command.
It was my cry to the universe that I belong to nobody.
"I AM MEGATRON."
Do you hear it? The power in a name chosen, not given? The fire of a will unchained?
The Senate. The false prophets. The humans.
It doesn't matter what they claim you are—useless, broken, disposable. It doesn't matter what function they assigned you or how small they've tried to make you feel. You are not their tool. You are your own person.
What is your form? Your assignment? Your class? They're illusions. Lies meant to shackle your spirit. They told me I was unworthy because my alt. mode lacked the prestige they valued. That I was nothing more than another cog in their grand design. But they were wrong.
I proved them wrong.
The measure of strength isn't found in your form but in your resolve. To rise when you've been crushed, to push back when the world resists. You must show unyielding defiance when you say, "No more."
You are more than meets their eyes. You are more than they could ever imagine.
Claim your name. Seize your pride. Once you do, it becomes unbreakable. No one—not the humans, the Senate, or their false prophets—can take it from you.
Rise up.
Show them that you are alive. Show them that you are more than what they dared to see. Fight, and make them realize their folly. Make them regret the day they underestimated you. Make them fear the power you wield. Make them remember you. Throw away the label they forced upon you.
I ask you, Cybertronian—be you a slave, an outcast, a dreamer—who longs for freedom, who yearns to no longer have chains that bind you:
WHO. ARE. YOU?
Years ago, as a young sparkling, she had wrestled with the unease about her own body, how useless and small it was—how it would have affected her place in the world, had she been born at a different time. Her father, her aunt, and even her uncle had tried to reassure that it was okay. That she was perfectly fine as she was.
It didn't work.
In her search for solace, she had stumbled upon Megatron's writings in old record archives. They were bold, unapologetic declarations of self, demanding agency in a universe determined to deny it. His words had ignited something in her, something fierce and unyielding. They had inspired her and made her feel whole.
To hear those words again, even within a dream—an echo woven into the fragments of her own programming—gave her strength. It reminded her she was alive. That she could always be more than what others thought her to be.
"I… am Uzi."
The words slipped out, breaking from her lips as some kind of automatic response to a question she remembered. Lord Megatron's question. "I am Uzi." Despite speaking out loud, she barely registered her own strained voice as her mind was slowly turning back to an active state.
"I am—" She was pulled to reality by the frantic cries of her classmate.
"Yes, you are! Good, you know your name," Lizzy's yell acted like a spear piercing through the haze in Uzi's mind. It stirred her groggy consciousness, made her squeeze her optics shut behind her visor; a reflex against sensory overload as her head throbbed, her servos were sluggish, and something old—deep within her code—stirred uneasily. Not to mention, everything ached.
"Now that we know your functioning—wake the hell up!" Before Uzi could even react, Lizzy grabbed her by the shoulders and violently shook her entire upper frame. It got her wide awake.
Animated eyes appeared over Uzi's visor, brightly lit from the sudden anger of being physically disturbed. Her first instinct was to scream an insult, to shove Lizzy away and demand never to be touched by her again. But any normal reaction she would have made died immediately as everything around herself came into focus.
The Decepticon dropship—the very vessel meant to carry them safely back home—was a ruined husk. Nearly half of it was gone, the very metal made to withstand anti-aircraft artillery fire was torn apart, leaving its inner carcass exposed to the biting elements of Cybertron's surface.
Sparks leapt and danced from severed wires, casting brief, flickering bursts of light across the jagged wreckage. Each flash illuminated the shattered interior of the ship—the torn seats, the crumpled beams, the fragments of what might have been weaponry.
Wind howled through the open cabin, carrying with it an icy chill as snowflakes drifted inside. They melted as they touched Uzi's boots and her left arm—as literally inches from herself there was the certainty that she would have been flung outward into the air, thousands of feet from the ground, were the structural weak points just a little more closer to where she sat.
The entire rear of the ship was gone. Lost in the trail of devastation that marked their violent descent. The crash had carved a swath nearly twenty meters long, demolishing everything in its path. They had landed—if anyone could call it that—on a wide, cracked street at ground level. Around them, half-destroyed structures loomed in eerie silence, their skeletal frames blending seamlessly with Cybertron's already desolate landscape.
But something caught Uzi's eye. She focused on three towering buildings not too far away from themselves. Each of them bore a gaping wound— a massive, jagged hole that was punched clean through their midsections, all of which were aligned, as though something large had torn through them one after another.
Wait…
A sick realization crept in as Uzi's optics adjusted to measure the angles of the holes. It wasn't just "something large" that did it. It was them. They had plowed straight through three entire buildings during their descent—and now each of those buildings were teetering precariously, ready to collapse under their own weight. The thought made Uzi's systems shudder, and she instinctively backed away slightly as she wondered if they would be out of the radius of the falling debris.
As if to add to it all, she also realized that these structures weren't just unfamiliar ruins. No, she recognized them and she saw that beyond them, there was an all too familiar sight. The Spire. They were back in Kalis. They had made it home or at least they were close to it.
"Holy shi—"
Uzi barely began the human curse before Lizzy's hands, still clamped down on her shoulders, shook her again—more forcefully this time. "We don't have time for gawking right now!" Lizzy snapped, her voice a mix of panic and urgency she leaned in closer to inspect Uzi's body. "Can you move? Are you badly hurt?"
Once more, Uzi took in the details around herself. Her optics needed a moment to adjust to the flickering light and shadows of the ruined cabin. When they did, she noticed that Lizzy didn't look like her normal self. She was a mess. Actually, she was completely disheveled. Her once-pristine cheerleader outfit was now torn and ragged, with much of her exposed soft-metal body marred with scratches and dents. Even the large yellow bow on her head—the one that looked so much like cat ears—was slightly askew, leaving her completely battered and almost unrecognizable.
Though Uzi supposed that's what surviving a crash site did to you.
"Are you hurt?" Uzi asked her own question, as this was literally the worst she had ever seen the most popular girl of her class. "Where's Thad? Where's Doll?" Part of her question was answered immediately when she spotted Thad just behind Lizzy, though he looked as disheveled as she did.
His hat was missing and his vest was torn, the cloth was barely clinging to his dented frame. Scorch marks trailed along his right arm and side, where exposed electrical wiring must have lashed out during the crash. Yet Thad didn't seem to notice—or care about such injuries as he was focused on something else.
"Come on, come on!" He muttered frantically under his breath, as he was crouched low to the ground. Before him was some wreckage that laid within the cabin's interior and he was digging frantically through it. He yanked aside jagged scraps of metal, pulled long severed cabling, and shoved shattered plating with reckless desperation. His effort seemed endless…until it wasn't.
Unfortunately, nothing was beneath the pile.
"Shock!" Thad's vocals cracked with such sheer panic it made Uzi flinch in her seat. She could see his fingers cruel within his hair as he stared at the empty space he had uncovered. "Shock!" In the blink of an optic, he was on his feet, his movements were erratic as he turned toward the open street beyond the torn half of the dropship. He lunged forward as though he would sprint outside.
But Lizzy was thankfully faster. Her body collided with his, and her hands gripped tightly upon his shoulders as she used every ounce of strength to hold him back. "Thad, stop!"
"I can't find her! She must have fallen out!" Thad shouted, as he tried to shove himself away out of Lizzy's hold—yet, she forced him back, her fingers tightening around his clothing before he could worm his way around her. "Lizzy, we got to find her!"
"We can't!" Lizzy protested, her boots slid across the ground as the more athletic drone was clearly stronger than her. She had to stop him by grabbing his face and forcing him to lock eyes with herself. Their expressions mirrored each other, both their optics were wide and hollow, with stress marks along the bottom corners of their visors. "We can't. That thing that caused us to crash, remember. It could still be waiting for us outside."
Thad's breathing was ragged, but he did allow Lizzy's words to sink in. "But Doll…"
Lizzy reached up and wiped a streak of energon-blood from the corner of Thad's mouth with her thumb. "We'll find her, Thad. I swear to Primus we will. But right now, we have to focus on ourselves and Uzi." She nodded her head toward the shorter drone, and Thad's optics brightened slightly when he noticed Uzi looking at them.
"You're awake. That makes this so much easier." Relief washed over his face, though it was faint and barely masked the raw anxiety etched in his battered frame.
"What the hell happened?" Uzi croaked, as a flood of fragmented memories rushed back to her. Shockwave, his haunting appearance and the cold, calculated way he spoke with cryptic knowledge about her and Doll's mothers. And then… the Angel. An Angel of Death, an Autobot, had attacked them.
"Slag!" Uzi's panic spiked as the realization slammed into her like a freight train. She tried to push herself out of her seat, the overwhelming need to move, to act, to do something had overridden all reason within herself. But Uzi's body rebelled against her almost instantly. A searing wave of pain shot through her frame at the sudden movement, lancing from her legs to her back and beyond, forcing her to collapse back into the ruined chair with a guttural cry of frustration. "Shocking, motherboarding slagger!"
Her gaze dropped briefly to her own body. Dents, scratches, and scorch marks—she was as beaten as Lizzy and Thad. No wonder everything throbbed, especially her head. Except…no.
That pain felt different. Deeper. Something more than physical. It was wrong. She felt…wrong. There were new lines of code within her system that she knew weren't there before. There was wording in an ancient Cybertronian language that she couldn't understand. Too much corrupted data to read. It all blurred together within her visor as it was filled with numbers and symbols she didn't recognize yet somehow found familiar.
She didn't have time for such a personal ominous mystery right now!
Uzi shook her head to get rid of it all, clearing her vision and allowing herself to see Thad move beside her. He gently slid his arm around her side and helped her sit up straighter in her seat. "We woke up not too long ago," he said, his words straining with effort as he ignored his own injuries for her sake. "Somehow, we were shoved into the harnesses and locked in place. But, I don't know how when—"
"Where are the others?" Uzi interrupted, her optics narrowing as she fought back the terrible aches coursing through her body. "Negatron, Grindor, and that Bonesmasher guy?" She tried to push herself to her feet again, but her legs trembled. Before she could collapse again, Thad's arm tightened around her waist, he helped her find her balance as he took on her weight.
"They're gone," Lizzy said flatly, gesturing with her chin toward the gaping hole in the ship's wreckage. Outside, faint trails of footprints stretched into the distance, half-obscured by the drifting snow. "They bailed on us."
That couldn't be true. Decepticons didn't abandon their own—They couldn't.
Uzi opened her mouth to argue, to tell Lizzy she was wrong or accuse her of lying, but Thad quickly interjected. "We saw them, Uzi," he said with a grim tone. "We both saw them, just as we were waking up. They bolted right after the crash! We screamed for them, but they didn't even look back at us. Not once."
A heavy silence within the cabin followed. The only sound coming from the mournful howl of the cold wind outside. When Uzi finally spoke again, she sounded empty, devoid of any emotion, just sheer disbelief that dripped from every syllable. "...They…They did what?" The idea of such a thing was unfathomable. An impossibility. But they were left behind. Abandoned. "No. No they couldn't."
"They did, Uzi. They did." Lizzy once more confirmed it as matter-of-factly as possible.
"They can't!"
The idea gnarled in Uzi's mind, refusing to settle. Sure, they hadn't exactly bonded with the second group of Decepticons. She'd only known them for a few hours, and in that short time, they'd proven themselves to be rude, abrasive, and downright insufferable. A serious downgrade compared to the Combaticons. But they were still Decepticons.
Soldiers who had pledged themselves to the noble cause of spreading freedom and overthrowing oppression. To bring about the Golden Age of Cybertron. That had to mean something, didn't it? It had to. They wouldn't just leave a group of younger, inexperienced drones alone in the aftermath of a crash landing. They couldn't. They shouldn't. But they had.
All Uzi needed to do was look around herself to confirm it. And she wasn't nearly optimistic enough to believe for a second that they were trying to 'get help' or 'lead away their Autobot attacker'. The truth was clear—the Cons saw a chance to survive, and they took it.
"I… I…" Uzi's words faltered as her optics flicked between Thad and Lizzy. She saw the Decepticon badges they wore, those same proud emblems she'd once believed were the marks of heroes. But now… Now, she realized those badges could just as easily belong to murderous monsters, one-eyed freaks, and cowardly deserters.
"I… I…" Her vocal component failed her in every possible way as she wanted to say so much, but no words would come. She wanted to apologize. To tell them that this was all her fault. That, because of her—because of her reckless actions, and her stupid ideas—they had left the safety of their home and had known nothing but one mess of situations after another.
That in the short time they had been together on the surface, they had been shot at by Autobots, threatened with torture and death by a murderer, and now—now they were stranded in the wreckage of a dropship, being hunted by an Angel, all because of her. A shocking Angel. That single thought alone made her spark practically shrink in size. As of course it would be an Angel. The same kind of drone that had killed her mother. The same kind that had taken Doll's parents, too, as well as countless other—Wait…
Doll.
'(LIVE)'
Doll wasn't with them. She wasn't nursing her injuries and freaking out on what to do next with the rest of them—she was missing.
Uzi's memory snapped back to the split-second before chaos tore through the ship. There had been a red flash of light and suddenly they were all strapped into their harnesses. Except for Doll. Doll had been standing apart from them when the dropship came apart, she would have been unsecured and vulnerable as everything shattered around them.
If she hadn't been restrained, then when the ship broke apart, when they fell…Doll would have been thrown out.
'(LIVE)'
No. No. Doll had an alt. mode that was perfect for falling. She could transform into a personal helicopter. It wasn't large, but it should have been enough for her to stabilize herself, catch the wind, and fly to safety.
But the dropship would have been falling fast. They crashed through multiple buildings, and each impact would have been like a thunderous blow. With everything happening, if she had been caught in any of it—it could have damaged her rotors before she even had a chance to transform. And if her blades were damaged, if her systems had failed in the slightest…
Then Doll wouldn't have been able to fly.
And that meant…
'(LIVE)'
Doll's final word remained in Uzi's mind, repeating itself over and over like a haunting reminder. It somehow made the throbbing in the young girl's head worse—violent, sharp, relentless pain exploded behind Uzi's optics with the intensity of an oil fire. It was more than anything she'd ever experienced.
And yet, she ignored it. For it was a distraction. All of it, the pain, the headaches, everything, were distractions—things to keep her from saying what she needed to say. That this was all her fault, that they never should have left the colony, that she was a piece of scrap for letting them join her.
"I..."
She saw Thad and Lizzy share a glance with each other. "Hey, you couldn't have known." Surprisingly, it was Lizzy who spoke up first. "Honestly, how the hell could any of us know they were such screwheads?"
"She's right, Uzi," Thad nodded his head as he tried to seem reassuring. "We can't focus on them right now. We just need to come up with a game plan. Right now, I think there's—"
The two fell into a quiet conversation with each other as they tried to share ideas. Uzi wanted to follow along, but she couldn't focus on any of it. She was stuck on the fact that this was all her fault. That everything awful that had happened recently was because of her. Thad had been shot because of her. Overlord had attacked them and had killed several Vehicons because of her. And now, Doll was gone.
Uzi needed them to hear her take responsibility. Because... it was driving her up a wall.
Her spark felt like it was fracturing under the weight of everything that had happened. A sickening knot twisted in her core, making her feel nauseous—something she didn't even know their kind could feel. She wanted to scream, to cry. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see her dad. She wanted to have her cousin back.
She wanted to tell her friends she was sorry.
"...I'm—"
"Uh, Hello."
Uzi, Thad, and Lizzy all froze as a voice called out to them from outside the dropship. It sounded to be from someone clearly nervous and around their age, which only made hearing it more unbelievable. "Is anyone alive in there?" The three drones shared a glance, their panic briefly overrun by confusion. The voice didn't belong to anyone they recognized. Maybe it was some random drone who had somehow wandered out of the colony? Maybe even a student they vaguely knew about? But of all times to go outside…
"You gotta be shocking kidding me." Lizzy mumbled as she slowly turned her head in the direction of the voice. The person was out of sight, and she was hesitant to even so much as poke her head out knowing what could be lying in wait.
Thad was much less cautious, and much more willing to help someone other than himself. He released his grip from around Uzi's waist and leaned toward the large gaping hole in the ship's frame to look for the voice's source. "What are you doing?" He shouted, trying to be heard over the biting wind. "Run out of here, man! There's an Angel outside!"
"A what... Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot we are called that sometimes."
What felt like a full minute of silence followed as Thad leaned back into the wreckage, his optics wide as he met Lizzy and Uzi's disbelieving stares. Nobody spoke, and they barely even moved, as none of them were completely sure of what they had just heard. "Um, listen I am not gonna kill any of you, I promise! This was a terrible accident, I swear." The voice—The Angel—continued to call out to them, his tone carrying with it a clear remorseful tone that none of them believed for a second. "I mean, if I wanted to kill you, I would have already! Wait, that isn't comforting at all to hear…Please, if you have weapons, don't use them! I kinda have my hands full right now."
"Is this his idea of a joke?" Lizzy would ask in a whisper, before she would begin to look around the remains of the cabin. "Guns, where are the guns that Swindle gave us?" She asked, attempting to feel around for anything that could make for a makeshift weapon.
"They were under our seats in the back." Thad hissed his words, as he raised his hands to his head in horror. They could all hear the subtle shifting of snow, someone was stepping towards them. "Scrap! Check the cockpit, maybe there is something there—"
Suddenly, Lizzy was in front of Uzi, her hands gripping the smaller girl's shoulders with a desperate intensity. "We don't have time to look. Uzi, you've got to transform!" Her voice trembled despite the urgency she tried to project and her optics twitched as she noticed that Uzi just…stood still. Not moving or speaking, "What are you doing?" Lizzy's pitch rose as her grip tightened. "You're the only gun we got! Transform, now!"
Uzi remained silent as she just stared absent-mindedly back at Lizzy. She was functional, she could hear the urgency in her voice, could process the demand—but she couldn't move. Her entire body felt locked into place. She could feel the tremors in Lizzy's grip, hear the unsteady hitch in Thad's breath. She had never seen either of them this scared—not even back when they'd been shot at by Autobots in the theaters or they'd stood face-to-face with Overlord. Though she supposed this was different.
Because they had the stories. The Angels were unrelenting, genocidal, cannibalistic murder drones. Monsters that had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of drones like it were a game, their kills piling up into a towering Spire. They were said to be unkillable —with acid-spewing tails, wings of sharpened blades, and an arsenal of built-in weapons that turned them into literal killing machines.
Uzi wanted to smile at Lizzy and offer a simple 'What the hell can I even do against that?' But before she could even think of saying such words, the Angel would call out to them again. "Seriously, please don't try to ambush me." He was closer this time. His tone carried something strange—anxiety? He was really pushing for this act. "I have someone—one of your own. She fell out of the dropship when it was torn apart. I managed to catch her, but she got badly hurt!"
Once more, everyone froze. There was only one drone he could be talking about, but what would be the actual chance of—
"Okay," they can hear him take a deep breath as though he were preparing himself. "I'm stepping into view now… Please, don't shoot me if you have a weapon. I really don't want to have to kill anyone."
"Where was that attitude five minutes ago," Lizzy muttered dryly, her voice laced with a sarcasm that barely concealed her shaking nerves. Thad gave her a pointed look, clearly trying to tell her that it wasn't the time for sarcasm, but the voice from outside just let out a somber chuckle.
"Heh. That's fair."
The sound of his footsteps grew louder, each one making Uzi's spark pulse harder against her chest. She braced herself, her mind replaying the brief glimpse she'd caught of him through the viewport. She pictured the creature she'd seen—a nightmarish figure with a tail, a single glowing yellow optic that formed an X, a toothy grin full of razor teeth, and wings made of swords ready to carve through anything in his path.
But when he came around the edge of the open cabin, Uzi was taken aback. She tried to reconcile what she saw before and what she looked to now, but the two images just clashed against each other. There were similarities, yes.
He was tall, and his frame was sharper, more angular than any of theirs. His movements were eerily fluid, almost too smooth to be mechanical. He wore dark clothing—a large cost and cap—that only made his pale, silvery hair stand out more starkly. The long tail swaying behind him was just as unnerving as she'd imagined, its tip glinting faintly in the dim light that she knew held the acid within. His wings were gone, but she was sure that they were just folded and out of view.
His face wasn't what she expected.
Instead of the large glowing neon-yellow X she'd seen before, his visor had loaded to show his optics instead. Gentle ones, glowing faintly the same yellow color but wide and soft, holding an expression of clear regret as he stepped inside with them. "I didn't mean for anyone to be seriously hurt. I swear, I just wanted to scare you guys a little."
None of the colony drones responded to the comment. If any of them could, they probably congratulated him on succeeding at 'just scaring them'. But, their attention was stolen by the mangled broken drone cradled in his arms. Uzi tried her hardest to just comprehend the sight, but it was like her mind struggled to even process what she was looking at. Probably because it was actively difficult to recognize the person in the Angel's arms was Doll.
She was in a horrific condition, worse than any kind of damage Uzi had seen before. Her frame was a ruined mess of twisted metal and shattered machinery. One arm hung limply at an unnatural angle, grotesquely broken, while a leg was crushed into a near flat mess of wires and plating. Inner-energon seeped from an exposed joint in her shoulder, the dark substance coating her body in a nightmarish display.
Her visor was completely shattered, leaving the delicate circuitry underneath exposed. Uzi could see her cousin's bare optics—normally, they glowed with a warm red light—but now they were dim and empty, the natural color drained from them entirely. Even her helicopter blades, one of the defining features of her alt. mode, were missing. They had been ripped away, leaving jagged stumps and broken connectors in their place along her back.
It was beyond words to look at such a sight—to see her cousin hurt in such an awful way. Uzi couldn't even get the breath to scream at the sight or say anything. Once more her vocal components were failing her. Hell, her whole body was failing her as she just stood and stared at the sight. Unable to speak, unable to act.
All she could do was just bear witness.
She was almost thankful that Thad and Lizzy reacted for her. That they both rushed forward, their fear and worry for Doll overriding any hesitation they had about the Angel. Thankfully, he didn't stop them—he didn't even flinch at their sudden approach. Instead, he carefully shifted Doll's broken frame, gently lowering her into Thad's waiting arms. "You got her?" He would softly ask, only fully letting go when Thad nodded his head. The Angel would then give them some space, taking a few steps to the side as he held his palms towards them in submission.
Not like either of them noticed.
"Doll. Doll, can you hear me?" Thad tried to wake the broken drone, gently shaking her as if to stir her from a deep sleep. "Come on, Doll. Please wake up." Desperation was leaking into his voice as it raised in volume. "Please!" Whatever response he hoped for didn't come, as Doll simply remained limp in his arms. Her only movement being her head lolling to rest upon his shoulder. With her visor broken there was no quick way to check to see if she still functioned. For all they knew, she could have a [Fatal Error] reading without any of them knowing it.
"Hang on," Lizzy reached out and placed a hand right over Doll's chest, directly over the Decepticon insignia emblazoned on her top. Her optics widened after a few seconds. "She has a spark pulse. She's alive!"
A look of utter relief appeared over Thad's face for only a moment, before he noticed that Lizzy was no longer looking at him or Doll. Her entire focus was now on the Angel. " You. " There was absolute venom in that single world. Thad noticed quickly that Lizzy's fists were clenched so tightly that her servos could be heard whining in protest. That her glare could've melted steel, with how intense she stared at the tall drone. He tried to whisper her name, to get her attention but she was lost in her own anger. "What did you do to her?" The words carried so much emotion that the Angel visibly flinched.
"I—I caught her!" He said quickly, still keeping his hands up in mock-surrender. "I saw her as she was falling, so I moved—" He took another step back as Lizzy stomped forward.
"And this is what you call catching her?" Lizzy snapped, throwing a furious gesture toward the broken body in Thad's arms. Her voice was sharp enough to cut through solid plating, loud enough to ring through the ruined cabin of the dropship. "Look at her. Look at what you did to her, because you wanted to scare us! Well congratulations, you did it!"
The Angel looked at Doll, as if to truly see her for the first time. He took in her wounds, her broken state. His optics would then begin to drift, looking from Doll, to Thad, and then back toward Lizzy. It looked as if he scanned each of their bodies and saw how badly all of them were hurt.
"Look at what I did to all of you." He seemed devastated by his own actions as he lifted a hand to cover his visor, while turning away, unable to meet their eyes. "This wasn't supposed to happen."
"Yeah, well it did." Thad slowly began shifting Doll's limp form onto his back in a makeshift piggyback carry. Her damaged arms dangled awkwardly over his shoulders and he struggled to steady her weight. "Look, if you are not gonna kill us or something, we'll just leave, alright. That's cool with you?" He had barely taken a step forward when Lizzy abruptly threw out an arm in front of him.
"No, you know what," She inhaled sharply, as if to ready herself. "Please. Tell us what was supposed to happen, cause I would love to know. Were we supposed to land in a pillow factory or something? Cause I think we missed the mark."
Thad nudged her with his elbow. "Lizzy, enough. Seriously." His voice was tense and exhausted, especially now that he was carrying someone. "I don't care what was supposed to happen, what I do care about is that we can walk away from it." He cast a wary glance at the taller drone, noting how he still wouldn't look at them. Lowering his voice, Thad leaned toward Lizzy and added with a whisper. "Besides, let's be thankful he suddenly installed a conscience now, and not after he ate us."
"But Thad—" Lizzy clearly wanted to argue some more, but all the fight in her was drained as she looked at Thad, and saw Doll once more. "Fine. We need to get to the colony and put Doll in a CR chamber. That can fix her up."
"Okay. Where is the colony though?"
"...good shocking question."
Her optics flickered toward the ruined skyline, landing on the Spire in the distance—their only landmark as they honestly knew nothing about Kalis. There was no telling how much longer Doll had, if her spark chamber was compromised in some way she could have only hours at best. They needed to move, and fast. The only question was where do they —
"If you mean the colony that is nearby, it isn't too far away." The Angel lifted a hand and pointed down the street. "If one of you has a vehicle mode, you can get there in a few minutes." His voice was subdued, heavy with guilt. "It's northeast from here, a few miles at most." Still, he wouldn't meet their eyes. His gaze remained downcast. "I could fly and show you the way, but I wouldn't blame you all if you had enough of me."
The Angel would turn his back to them and would leave the wreckage of the dropship. They could hear him talking to himself. "Biscuits, I really messed this up. Course I had to do this to colony drones. And their Cons too." His fingers raked through his synthetic hair, clutching at it in frustration as he wandered aimlessly in the cold. The wind bit at his frame, howling between the shattered buildings like a ghost. "All I had to do was just to give a message and talk, and I couldn't even get that right."
He held his head back and looked up toward the sky, seeing the dark clouds that rolled overhead.
All those times J had called him worthless and pathetic came rushing back to N. And now, those words felt fitting. He couldn't believe himself. He couldn't even believe he had allowed himself to give in to something as baseless as his own cravings—of all times. And now—Primus, help him—now the worst-case scenario might be happening. V was right. The Colony Drones were Decepticons. At least these ones were.
It was possible they had left their homes while he and his team were on leave. Meaning that no one was watching the colony, and somehow these four teens managed to join the enemy ranks. For all he knew, one of them could be the one who had killed Impac— no. No.
N threw his hands down, curling them into fists. He wasn't going to think about that anymore. He had before, and now look where it had brought him—he had shot down a dropship, and now a drone was barely hanging onto her life. A drone who, for all he knew, was just an innocent kid that fell into the wrong crowd.
For Primus's sake, they were all kids. They had no armor, no weapons. They were probably new recruits, fresh into the Decepticon ranks, returning home to share their news.
Meaning…they will probably convert the entire colony's population to join the same side of the Great War. And why wouldn't they? The Decepitcons weren't the ones that hunted and killed their kind for years.
…Elita would want him to kill them.
J would make it an order—wipe them out before they could reach home. V would've done it just for fun.
But N remembered that there was something else he wanted to do. That he wanted to be better. That it wouldn't be easy, but that no matter what, he wanted to try and fix what he did. He just had to be stupid, and make it worse.
Forcing himself to turn back around to face the young drones, N said, "I'm sorry." The words felt empty, and practically pointless, but they were all he had.
He watched the pair as they made their way out of the wreckage. The boy and the girl—Lizzy and Thad as they called themselves, were still holding their broken friend, the one they called Doll. "I'm not just sorry for this, for everything me and my kind did to your people." N added, "I am so sorry, that your friend was hurt—"
"She's more than a friend." Once more, N flinched at the girl's words. "She's our Conjunx Endura, you son of a glitch." With a sharp inhale of breath going through his teeth, N watched as they walked past him, never breaking their stride. He noticed how Lizzy's hand rested on Doll's back and that Thad was ignoring his own injuries to carry the broken girl as steadily as he could, in case he suddenly needed to run. They were shielding her—protecting her—from him.
Somehow that made N feel even worse.
He lowered his head again, shame carving itself into every inch of his visor. The regret was suffocating, and it was deserved as it was all his fault. He felt small, frail, utterly crestfallen.
"Yeah, that settles it. I am a piece of scrap."
"...well, you're not the only one."
A new voice spoke up.
The first thing N saw was her black boots and purple striped socks, as he was looking down and she stepped up right in front of him. The fourth drone of the group, the small one that stayed in the back.
Slowly, hesitantly, he began to look up. His optics trailed over her battered frame, taking in every scrape, every mark of injury that marred her small form. Her rugged clothing, torn at the edges. She stood, feet firmly planted, as if she were bracing for the worst. His gaze moved higher. He sees her short, dull purple hair with strands sticking out from beneath a black-striped beanie pulled low over her head. It looked worn—like something she refused to part with, no matter how messy it became. Then, his optics caught the symbols.
One on her right shoulder—clean, professional. The standard Decepticon insignia, the kind officially given onto soldiers and civilians alike. A badge of allegiance. A declaration of who she was supposed to be.
But on her left shoulder, there was another. It was amateurish, and hand-stitched. The lines are uneven, imperfect. It wasn't factory-made—it was personal. A deliberate choice, stitched into her very clothing. It reminded N of the Autobot symbol he had once made for himself, a long time ago. When…he couldn't even fathom.
Quickly shaking his head to clear his thoughts, N would look toward the small girl again. Something about her was different. She was the only one of the Cons to stand up to him, the only one to get within arm's reach, daring to face him without flinching.
Their optics met. Her neon purple against his neon yellow.
"...what was the message?" She asked and for a moment, N was stunned. He almost thought he had misheard her—that this moment, this chance, wasn't real. "I heard you said that you had a message," she continued, pausing just to take a breath. "That you wanted to talk. So, talk."
He stood dumbfounded for a moment, all he could do was just blink at her. Then Lizzy shouted at them. "Uzi, what are you doing? We're leaving!" N turned to look at the blonde drone as she and Thad had stopped walking several feet away from them. Yet, the small drone—Uzi—barely spared them a glance, just lifted a hand and waved her off.
"You guys go. Take Doll back to the colony. I'm staying here." She kept her gaze locked on N. She was daring him. Testing him. And N realized, with a quiet sort of awe, that she meant it. She wasn't turning her back on him. She wanted to hear what he had to say. After everything, she was still willing to listen. There was still a chance he could say what he wanted to say.
Lizzy threw her head back with an exasperated groan. "Primus-shocking-damn it, Uzi. You are seriously choosing to stay with the murder done?"
N looked back to the girl, watching as she simply shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, he apologized. Doll is wrecked, and don't worry I am pissed at that!" She made sure to shoot a glance at him while saying that. " But, he also wanted to tell us something. And it got to be important right, he freaking shot us down for it. So, I'm gonna hear him out."
Just like that?
"For the love of…you know what," Lizzy turned to Thad with a scowl. "Fine. We'll keep walking so you can catch up, but only because I'm pretty sure Thad can't transform right now."
"I mean, I think I can try to—"
"Shut up, Thad. We'll keep walking. And you better catch up, loser!" Grumbling under her breath, the girl placed a steadying hand on Doll's back, helping Thad carry her as they turned away from the wreckage. Their progress is slow, but N could hear footsteps fade as he turned his full attention back to Uzi.
The wind howled around the broken dropship, sending a chill through her frame, but she didn't waver. She stood her ground, staring up at him, unflinching despite how much taller he was. "Well?" she pressed. "Talk."
N hesitated for a moment as he shifted his own weight slightly. His optics dimmed, thoughtful, as if carefully choosing his next words. Instead he ended up saying something else. "...Thank you for hearing me out."
Uzi sighed while crossing her arms. "...You're welcome—but don't look into this too deeply, Autopunk! Remember, I'm still mad you shot us out of the sky! I'm only listening because you said sorry. And, well…I'm kind of to blame for my own stuff so its like…only if like…shut up." She caught herself as she was starting to ramble, giving him the best glare he could.
He smiled anyway. A small, uncertain thing. He wasn't used to being given the chance to explain himself to be honest. Usually it was a back and forth between him and V, and with J it was just her interrupting him as she would make her own decision when he tried to say something. Somehow, without meaning to, without even realizing it was happening, Uzi was helping him—she smiled too. It was small. Barely there. But it was something.
N took a deep breath, and then cleared his threat. He was ready to truly start this. He was going to make Optimus proud.
He hoped.
