Chapter Text
Zeta Prime thought that once he died, he would have returned to the planet’s core, to Primus and the All Spark, to live in peace and quiet for the rest of time. And while he certainly hadn’t died in peace and quiet, it hadn’t shaken his belief of that afterlife for him or his resignation with the fact he was dying as he stared up at Sentinel’s face.
So, when he instead onlined his optics to see the very same cave he had died in, he felt just a bit of shock.
Well, actually a lot of shock.
“What?” He asked empty air after a moment, his voice sounding to his own ears like it was being spoken from a couple of meters away, with a hollow ring to it. The cave around him was silent and untouched, much different from the calamity he had just been in, and when he gazed around, trying to get some grasp on the situation he found himself in, he laid optics on his own body.
“What?” He asked again, his own hollowed out optics staring back at him.
A roar suddenly ripped through the cave and Zeta swung around, reaching one arm up for a weapon that wasn’t there for some reason, and it was only his long history with the mech that he recognized his voice as a friend.
Megatronus Prime appeared in a burst of glowing light, rage, and noise. He lunged forward, seemingly at nothing, and fell to the ground. There was no color on him, looking instead like a painting that had only been outlines and nothing out, glowing a haunting ethereal color that reminded Zeta of the Matrix.
It was then that Zeta Prime noticed that he was also the same and when he gazed down at his limbs, he could see the ground through them.
Megatronus roared again and Zeta shook himself. He could deliberate later. “Megatronus!” He called out, moving forward to reach out and touch his brother’s shoulder when the other Prime yet again landed on the ground. Thankfully, it seemed that they were corporeal, at least to each other, and his contact landed, startling his brother out of his rage.
Or, it seemed to give his brother a target for his rage.
Within an instant, Megatronus reared up and launched himself at Zeta, tackling them both to the ground. Thankfully, it seemed Megatronus was also missing his weapons.
“Megatronus!” Zeta grunted out, landing on the ground in a huff with his brother leaning over him. It seemed injuries didn’t hurt as much in whatever state they were, as he barely felt the impact on the hard stone beneath him. “Megatronus, it is me, Zeta!”
Luckily, that seemed to be enough to snap Megatronus out of whatever mood he had been in. “Zeta?” He breathed out, leaning a little closer before recoiling as his optics fully cleared. “Oh, I apologize.” He reached an arm down and Zeta took the offering, hoisting himself back to his pedes and clasping Megatronus’s other arm as well, pulling him close enough to touch their helms together for a moment.
In the cave, at that moment when Sentinel stabbed his blade down, all he had wanted was to be with his siblings again. And now, for some miracle, he had Megatronus back even after witnessing him being decapitated by Sentinel. He would revel in it for just a moment.
“My brother,” he murmured out and felt Megatronus relax just a little further. “You are here.”
For a moment, they just existed, even with the post-battle, and post-death, adrenaline still running through them both.
“Zeta.” Megatronus was the one to eventually break the silence, backing up a step and staring into Zeta’s optics. “How… Aren’t I dead?”
“Yes,” Zeta replied. “And I am as well.”
Megatronus’s optics widened a little at that before narrowing. “Sentinel,” he growled, optic color darkening. “That glitch.” Zeta couldn’t help but wince at that. Yes, Sentinel’s betrayal was still fresh in his mind, but Sentinel was also the young bot that Zeta had mentored, had all but raised in certain aspects, hoping to instill good values in him. That maybe, he could be the next Lead Prime one day, once Zeta retired.
Well, Sentinel had certainly tried to reach those expectations, but not in the best of ways.
“Sentinel!?” Came the voice of Solus Prime and both bots turned to watch her fade into existence, much like Megatronus had done, though she landed on her pedes and didn’t try to fight invisible enemies. Instead, she glared around until she spotted them, shock clear on her face as she no doubt took in their new, much changed, shapes.
“Solus,” Megatronus breathed out, sounding sad, and Zeta was reminded that Megatronus had been one of the first to die, only after Nexus, and thus, hadn’t seen the rest of their deaths. The bigger mech moved, heading over to Solus, and she moved to meet him, reaching out as if she couldn’t believe it.
Zeta also was still reeling. Now that Megatronus was absorbed with Solus, he took in a deep breath, staring around the cave again in greater detail. Much to his sadness, he was able to see each body of his siblings, all laid out in different forms of agony and death. All the Quintesson bodies were gone, meaning that it had to have been at least a little while since their deaths, if they were able to clean the cave that thoroughly, but that brought up another question.
Why, and how, were they somehow alive again after their deaths?
“Zeta?” Prima asked and he turned to see him and Vector rippling into being as well, Vector reaching out to support the other as they both stood. “What…?”
“We are still figuring it out,” he soothed his brothers, trying to put a reassuring look on his face but he didn’t know if he succeeded.
“But we’re all dead,” Vector said in his gravelly voice, not asking a question, and Zeta winced again.
By then, both Solus and Megatronus noticed the new arrivals and they both hurried over, Solus wrapping herself around Vector, and then Prima, in a hug, closing her optics for a moment as she did so. Megatronus settled himself next to Zeta, something unreadable in his optics.
“Are we waiting for the others?” He questioned gruffly and Zeta nodded slowly. Now that there were five of them, it wasn’t hard to guess that the others would show up as well. If the five of them had been deemed special enough by Primus to somehow return from death, Zeta had no doubt that the other eight would be as well.
Sure enough, the sound of flapping wings announced Onyx’s entrance, the Prime flying up to the ceiling, still stuck in battle as Megatronus had been, before spotting them all and returning to ground, something lost and broken in her optics. Zeta wasn’t blind to the fact that when she settled with them to wait, her wings curled around Vector and Zeta himself, the two of her siblings close enough for her to unconsciously try to protect.
Nexus came next, the most surprise of all of them in his optics and it took both Solus and Zeta to calm him as he frantically tried to tell them that Sentinel was a traitor before they could explain that they knew. He slumped to the ground in despair once their predicament became known, carefully hid self-hatred in his optics for being the first one to die to Sentinel’s betrayal, for being taken off guard like that. But Zeta saw all, knew all his siblings almost as well as he knew themselves, and he tried not to let his own spark sink to sadness as well as Solus curled up next to her brother, pressing their helms together like they had when they were younger.
Quintus joined them calmly, as if they hadn’t just been killed by a betrayer and a horde of Quintessons, and simply settled down on Solus’s other side, their four legs tucked carefully underneath themself as they stared sadly out at the bodies that littered the ground. It was their words, soothing and quiet that lulled Solus and Nexus to sleep as they continued to wait.
Zeta didn’t know why it seemed to be taking so long for the rest of them to join, but maybe it took Primus a lot of energy to bring them back to life. It certainly seemed like something that would take a lot out of a being, breaking the laws of the universe like that, even for a god.
He also didn’t know how they could sleep when they were spirits living in the realm of the living, but he didn’t question it that much.
Megatronus had settled on one of the bigger outcroppings of rock, glaring out into the depths of the cave and clenching a fist in his lap like he could summon his weapon from nothing. Always the guardian, even in the end.
Liege Maximo and Micronus returned to the land of the living in similar fashions to Megatronus, both reacting to a battle they no longer had a part in and reaching for weapons they no longer had. Zeta reached for them like he had Megatronus, though the aforementioned brother was the one to jump in the way and take Micronus’s blow when the shorter Prime reacted much like his brother had when confronted by Zeta while in the midst of an imaginary battle. Maximo simply seemed profoundly sad, much like how Quintus reacted, and lowered his helm, closing his optics and breathing through whatever was going through his head.
Amalgamous was the one to emerge with words that weren’t yells of fury, calling out desperately for Onyx and Vector in their glitching voice, more emotion in their tone than Zeta had almost ever heard from them. Onyx and Vector rose to the call, attempting to reassure their sibling that they were there now, and Zeta heard muttered words of “it’s only us left” and closed his optics at the confirmation of whom, at least, died last.
By that point, the sunlight that filtered in through the top of the cave had almost fully died, leaving the cave in dim, shadowy lighting that didn’t hinder them too much, with their night vision, though it did give the place a more ominous feel. Though, it did mean that the sun stopped reflecting off their dead bodies and Zeta could be thankful for that.
“The Matrix of Leadership is gone,” Alchemist noted in a dull tone and the eleven Primes turned in surprise, not having seen their brother appear into the world. The science focused Prime was leaning over Zeta’s body, something clinical but also deeply shattered in his optics, and was staring at Zeta’s chassis. Zeta couldn’t help the jolt of unease that went through him when he stared at his own body, having avoided it for the time they were waiting for the rest of their siblings, but he looked then.
His chassis had been pried open, sending a bolt of revulsion through him at the violation, and when he ventured closer, he could indeed see that the place that used to hold the Matrix of Leadership was empty, no Matrix or even a replacement transformation cog there. The Matrix had long served a double purpose of both a guide and his cog, but he knew he used to have a normal one before he was granted the Matrix. Guess it didn’t go both ways.
“Sentinel tried to take it,” Quintus revealed in their soft voice, their four arms held carefully in their lap. “I saw him.”
“The Matrix is not something to be taken,” Zeta muttered, something deep within him rebelling at the very idea of taking the Matrix like it was any old object.
“Obviously,” Quintus replied steadily, moving their gaze to stare at Zeta instead of his body. “Which is why it left.”
“It… left?” Micronus questioned and Quintus hummed, closing their optics for a moment. Zeta let them think. While he was the one who held the Matrix, Quintus had always been the one more in tune with Primus and all of the more mystical aspects of their world.
“It will wait, until it is earned again,” Quintus eventually responded, opening their optics again. “It will wait, for a new Prime.”
“A new Prime?” Solus breathed and Quintus nodded. “What, like someone created by Primus? Like we were?”
“Primus hasn’t been around in vorns,” Vector interjected, and Quintus hummed again.
“Maybe not from Primus,” they said vaguely, and Zeta had a feeling that was all they were going to get out of them. Though, was Quintus implying that the Matrix could be given to just any ordinary Cybertronian, if they proved themselves…?
“Where is Trion?” Amalgamous asked after a beat, their head swinging around to gaze around the rest of the cave. “We are all here, where is he?”
“He survived longer than us,” Onyx piped up, her wings fluttering slightly as she spoke. “Maybe it’s taking more time for him to appear?”
“Order of death doesn’t seem to be having any affect on when we appear,” Maximo disagreed with a frown, crossing his arms over his chassis and having his own wings, as small as they were, flutter just like Onyx’s were.
“I think… he’s still alive,” Nexus said in surprise and the Primes turned to see their brother standing by Trion’s body, optics wide. He reached out and brushed Trion’s chassis, for all that it had been covered by rocks from some collapse during the fight.
Now that he had brought attention to it, they could all see the still glowing light coming from their brother’s chassis, indicating his survival. “He’s alive?” Solus asked, voice rising in hope, and Nexus nodded slowly. Something also unwound in Zeta’s chassis at that, sending his optics closed and shoulders slumping. One of his siblings was alive. He hadn’t completely failed them as their older brother.
“He’s in stasis,” Alchemist diagnosed, heading to Nexus’s side and gazing at their brother. “He won’t awaken until he gets Energon.”
“And who’s going to find us out here?” Megatronus growled, finally speaking up again as he stood, optics dark. “We didn’t tell anyone about this because we didn’t want the High Guard to die for something we thought we could handle ourselves.”
None of the Primes had anything to say about that.
“Maybe that’s why we’re here,” Solus murmured softly, staring at her asleep brother. “We were born together, created together. Perhaps we can’t move on until we’re together again.”
“But how long will that be?” Vector questioned and Zeta slumped his shoulders slightly. He didn’t know.
“I suppose,” he started, looking back up at his different siblings, all stuck in the in-between world as he was. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”