Reading the back and forth on this was absolutely fascinating. The Hunter and the Hunted perspectives were delightful and exceptionally thought-provoking. This is a particularly poignant and well-written piece.

You know, while I got where Optimus was coming from with his arguements about humanity's horrifying capacity for violence, as well as his fear of what humanity could do with Cybertronian technology there are several important factors he's overlooked that Sam has pointed out. It seems to me that Optimus is a bit prejudiced toward humans given how lowly he thinks of our capacity to handle the responsibility of Cybertronian technology and do the right thing. While he's right that our species has a long history of violence, I think what Optimus fails to realize that the past isn't necessarily a predictor of the future. He also seems to be a bit too arrogant to look at his own species' capacity for cruelty and violence. Their war completely destroyed their home planet. On top of that, he also seems to believe that because humans are so short-lived that somehow means he has infinitely more wisdom and automatically knows what's best for humans. What he fails to realize is that wisdom does not always come with age, and that for all his intelligence, compassion toward humanity, and ability to observe us, he still isn't human. He doesn't completely understand us because he isn't one of us. Optimus seems hung up on our capacity for violence, but he fails to recognize our capacity for courage and compassion. For all the horror humans can inflict on each other, it's still amazing to see true humanity still shine through. I completely got his fears, but Sam is right that humans had handled Cybertronian technology, primitive though it may be, for what was to us a lifetime, and we hadn't killed ourselves yet. Caution in a situation like this is needed, but humans have quite the capacity to change and adapt. With the guidance of the Autobots I have no doubt humanity would come to understand the burden and responsibility being given to them. Yes, there will always be humans who do bad and selfish things, but that doesn't mean humanity is incapable of growing to a point where we can overcome that. We just need to start somewhere, and guidance from millenia old beings seems like a good place to start to me. Humans are indeed short-lived, but in both fiction and reality we're also stubborn and creative. With the wisdom of the Autobots, I think the humans in this fanon have the capacity to do great things. I think our species in reality has the capacity to do great things. It's just a matter of harnessing that potential.

Excellent story can't wait for the next one

does this mean megatron will FINALLY find out about the brother bond!? please say yes!

Optimus really has become rather morbid, hasn't he? I wonder what Sam will say if/when he finds out how gloomy Optimus' mindset has turned, and how ironic it is that this... defeatist?... speech of his actually came across as a consequence of Optimus' mental and emotional load getting LIGHTER.

Okay, so this is bothering me-you've said there were always more mechs than femmes, and femmes apparently cannot create sibling bonds with mechs-they can cross the gender barrier only through the dramatic and singular commitment that is spark-bonding. Logically, femmes should be somewhat excluded from the clan system, because they can only be connected to mechs at a much more limited set of points. One can have many brothers, but only one mate. Yet somehow they carry the clan system. I see the corollary to our genders, but it does not follow. Even if femmes are more inclined to having sisters than mechs are to having brothers...and come to that, since bonded pairs can apparently spark mechs *or* femmes, shouldn't there be some cross-gender siblings out there, even if mechs and femmes can't forge sibling bonds on their own, for whatever reason?

That mechs and femmes who are close can become *very* close only through the most intense and exclusive bonding process in their culture is kind of creepy. You're either just friends or you're considering psychic marriage. Talk about charged gender dynamics.

I just...you've got an alien culture, and its reproduction is totally alien, and yet its treatment of gender mimics ours in an irrationally arbitrary manner. Why can't two mechs or two femmes be spark-mates? Why can't a mech and a femme come together and create a little brother or sister, and share that kind of bond? Moreover, this isn't a matter of frames or pronouns, but of souls. Their very intrinsic natures are apparently gendered, and these genders have real, powerful and palpable spiritual impact, separating individuals of different genders who are not willing to become one-self. A situation like that, a race *more firmly gendered* than humanity, and gender ought to be a foundational concept of their worldview. Ought at least to feature in their creation story, if it is so absolute. But Primus and Unicron are brothers. The Primes are all brothers. Femmes are a secondary creation, an afterthought. A decoration. They are not essential, not even to the wholly practical degree the female has always been, they are not relevant to foundational spirituality, and they approach importance only in who they mate.

Femmes do not by any obvious measure matter, and yet they are set apart from the rest of their race by impenetrable spiritual boundaries. What makes them different from other cybertronians? What do they contribute by being walled off like this? Seekers are less set-apart from the rest of the species by the quality of flight, than femmes are by that strange quality of spark that makes them unable to create sparklings with anyone who isn't a fellow femme or their own mate. And Seekers have a clear reason for being.

By rights, they should probably have been viewed more as a sub-race than anything-except of course that interbreeding was possible, and apparently mechs *can* under some circumstances have daughters without a femme in the mix because some of the Primes managed it. And that apparently mechs and femmes are somehow drawn to forge pair-bonds with one another. And why is that a thing in the first place?! What's it for? Why form pair-bonds, but only across the mysterious gender division? There have to be cultural understandings about that, theological underpinnings to a powerful experience like Optimus keeps describing his bond with Elita. Why are there femmes at all? Why are mechs drawn to them? How does the sex-analogue that allows for all the racy jokes fit into anything, since it obviously can't be reproductive?

It's just if you're going to remove the links between gender and reproduction, but still keep gender as a social construct almost unaltered, it needs a hell of a lot of BS to justify it, and it is seriously bothering me. I mean, it doesn't make sense as an identical construct in an alien race anyway, but without even the 'need to breed' pressure, what are they for? In human breeding, the male is the less-necessary party, providing only genetic information in the direct reproductive process, and justifying his existence to biology otherwise in matters of survival, but mechs have absolutely no need for femmes, because of the ability to create brothers. There is literally no purpose I can see to have sparked a whole type of mech that can't bond normally, but can form an especially intense kind of bond, but only with mechs not of its subtype. It's like vampire romance novels using a race of crippled savants in place of vampires. I wouldn't be surprised if the pointlessness of femmes was somewhere in Decepticon ideology, since they don't seem to have any among them, and that frivolity of existence seems like exactly the kind of thing that would annoy Megatron.

And...hang on...if only select Cybertronians are descended from the Dynasty of the Primes, where did the rest come from? Spontaneous generation, like Alpha? Or some kind of hands-off process in which the Primes were involved but not as creators? Were *those* cybertronians also brothers to one another, or were they alone in the world until they started forming bonds of their own? Or is dynastic descent only passed through a certain kind of creation, and the Primes made the initial everyone?

Basically, you've set up a structure that's really cool, but has holes you could drive Optimus Prime through, and especially because an awful lot of those holes come down to treating contemporary mainstream understandings of human gender identity as some kind of cosmic law, it's really annoying.

Ah, excellent hook! Well, this was very good. i disagree with Prime on a LOT of things here, but it's probably a bit of my G1 bias shining through. ;)

About time, Optimus. G1 Prime would be proud.

Nice family tree, there. I really hope Ultra Magnus is still alive in the Botosphere.

Optimus, we're in the cradle of Earth. But we NEED help to grow beyond it.

Oooooohhhhhh! THIS story was AWESOME! Thanks so much for writing it and transporting me from this mundane world into the extraordinary!

Many kudos and much applause! :D

I think the "uh-oh" here is implied.

Very good ending to this side story! I am curious to see what happens in the next story that follows this one. Your writing and plots and very well done and I am very eager to see what happens next within this continuity that you have been writing. Please keep up the wonderful work and I look forward to the following story of this. So until next time - Ja Ne!

Ooohh yay, Optimus agreed at long last - but Sam won't live to see it ._. Bawwww ;_;

Hmmm... Yes, curiouser and curiouser. Hopefully Megatron, even when he figures out what is going on, won't have the ability or the resources to muck up the building of the Solar Harvester that they ALL need. Not that I think it would happen, but it would be nice if he could add some of HIS resources (i.e. Soundwave for example) to help Optimus and Sam. However, we all know that that isn't likely to happen, as he is too selfish for something like that. Thank You. TTFN.