Epilogue: The Beginning

It was quiet on New Cybertron, and all the mechs around knew that could only mean trouble. Youngling trouble.

"Shut up, Terrowing! You're going to get us caught."

"I don't think me telling you this is a bad idea would get us caught over you yelling at me!" his brother whispered harshly.

Blizburst rolled his optics and turned the remote control over in his servo. "Well, we're too far into it now to stop. At least we have a good vantage point to see his face."

"And what in Primus's name are you two doing?"

The younglings winced and they shared one thought between their optics. Absolutely busted.

"It certainly doesn't look like flying lessons from Skydive or s-curve training from Sunstreaker."

The twins turned to face their creator, as Blizburst quietly hid the remote behind his back. It didn't escape the optics of their creator though.

"What was that?"

"N-nothing-"

Their creator grabbed the younglings wing firmly and spun the young seeker around. It was forcibly pried from the youngling's servo and inspected under an inscrutable gaze.

"Pranking Red Alert? That's hardly even sporting." Their creator looked them over with a "wait 'til we get home" look that made their sparks skip a few pulses.

"What's going on?" came a deep, rumbling voice.

"Slag," Blitzburst muttered.

"What did you just say? Youngling, I'll have you cleaning your glossa with sand if you keep it up."

"Yes Ama."

"Thundercracker, it appears your younglings not only enjoy pranking members of the council, let alone our chief of town security, but also using disgusting language designed for the gutters."

Thundercracker took a long hard look at the younglings, making sure to give his best glare. "I am very disappointed in both of you." He turned to his bond-mate. "Hydraspark, I will deal with their punishment. And then I'll take that," he said, indicating the remote, "to make sure they deactivate it."

"I expect details," she said lowly, making the younglings shiver a little. She then stalked off to her job as energon purifier on the other end of town.

"Primus, I thought she was going to hand our aft to us," Blitzburst said, relaxing.

Thundercracker chuckled when his bond-mate was out of audio-range. "Seriously, lay off the language will you? I mean, way to make her think I was going to lay into you, but geez. It only makes her more mad."

"We really ticked her off this time, didn't we dad?"

Thundercracker looked to his other youngling, Terrorwing, whose doorwings had drooped a little at his mother's tirade. The seeker put a hand on his youngling's helm to reassure him. "That's just her way. If it were just me all of the time, you two would get away with everything. And then all of your pranking wouldn't have any risk."

Terrorwing smiled at that and nodded, affirmed.

"Now, let's see what you had cooked up for good ole Red," he grinned, pushing the button.

Hydraspark submitted to yet another scan, this one of Ratchet's design. She hated these helm dissections because it reminded her of what she had been like before she had been released from her mental prison.

Apparently, right before Sanctuary had left the planet, Starscream had slipped a data-chip to the sparklings, telling them to give it to Ratchet once they had taken off. They had performed their duty, and Ratchet looked at it immediately when he had heard it was from the red seeker. On the chip was an entire schematic of the procedure he had done on Hydraspark with explicit details on how he surmised it could be reversed if someone in the future deemed it necessary.

After hearing about their story, Ratchet set aside all other projects and dove into helping them out. He had seen it as an olive branch: he would be the first of the ones Shockwave had collected to accept that Thundercracker was not only sincere in his actions, but one of them. So he took Hydraspark's case very seriously and finally discovered a way to get her back most of her emotional subroutines.

It had been a slow recovery, but it so was acclimating to their new life. Everyone had different skills and various levels of job experience, and it had been difficult to find a fulfilling position for everyone. She had been given the glorious job of energon purification. Whoppee.

But they were happy. Their little town had blossomed over the vorns, and the schools were filled to the brim with sparklings.

But in the back of everyone's mind loomed the horrible events they had lived through just previously. And also was the thought that their paradise was not complete: the Cybertronian civil war still kept their two factions separated. Even in less numbers, the war could not be over with until... Well.

'Til all are one.

But for now they had no interest in their former home or their former masters, choosing instead to focus on creating a society that could flourish away from the horrors of their past.

The two seeker scouts pushed each other in an argument as they flew over a small, sandy planet.

"I'm telling you, we already scanned this planet, bolts for brains!"

"And I'm telling you that we scanned one very similar to it, but it wasn't this one." He shoved the other, as if being physical would convince his trinemate that he was right.

"Oh, is that the best you can do, you aft-plate fragging, outdated, binary-"

"Will you two shut up?" came a voice over their comms. It was their third trinemate, back on their base with the other seekers. "If you two don't remember, scan it again."

One of them rolled their optics while the other one pulled out their scanner from subspace. "But if we are scanning it for the second time, then we are wasting-"

Blips. Where there should be flatlines.

"Well? Come'on, quick! Starscream is coming over here for an update."

"We... uh, we have... something."

"Blips, rather."

"Yeah, blips."

They heard their trinemate talking rapidly to their Air Commander. Suddenly Starscream patched onto their frequency. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, er, yes sir. Definitely blips."

"I'm coming to your location. Do not engage in any fashion. That means stay still."

"Yessir," came the reply as the two grinned wickedly.

Blizburst kicked some gravel as he heard his mother yell at his father. His dad had taken full responsibility for the prank, saying that he was curious what his younglings had cooked up.

Their house was at the edge of town, sitting on a nice little plot of gravel and sand, just like the rest of the planet. What had stood out for them was the huge valley they overlooked that emptied a river into a lake, which was perfect for their amphibious mother and their seeker father. The younglings too enjoyed the space because it gave them the opportunity to go exploring, something they both found they loved. There was not much greenery: just some scrub grass and the occasional stunted tree. The planet looked a lot like a desert, but it was more full of dirt and gravel rather than sand, which suited the abundant car-alts just fine.

Another reason their house was at the edge of town was one of those silently understood things that no one had ever talked about, but it was still there at the edge of their minds. Thundercracker was the only former Decepticon among them, and even if he had made up for his crimes, he was still different. And though no one really treated him or his family differently, at the same time they did.

Unfortunately, sparklings and younglings are the first to catch on to this unspoken rule, and Blitzburst and Terrorwing both found themselves picked last for games and often overlooked in activities. Terrorwing was quiet and hopeful, while his brother was often getting in some fist-fights with other younglings over something that none of them quite understood.

It was when he heard his mother sobbing that he rolled his optics and transformed into a small jet, gunning his engines to get out of there. He knew the scene that was going on in there: his mom would yell at his father, he would calmly defend himself, she would lash out at him and then start sobbing, at which point Thundercracker would embrace her and console her, everything forgiven. His dad had assured him that his mother's aggression and other randomly changing emotions were a result of her processor still being a little laggy from the operation. Blitzburst didn't care. He and his mother had not gotten along since she was "fixed," and every time everyone stopped everything to help her he was usually gone for cycles, trying to get away from them.

Usually Terrorwing followed him on the ground, if anything but for company. But today Terrorwing himself was out, so Blitzburst took off and glided over the valley, practicing his barrel rolls.

He was far away from the house when he was joined in the two points behind him by two grown jets.

Blitzburst panicked and gunned his engines, trying to speed past the two mechs. They merely sped up, allowing their nosecones to get within a breadth of the youngling seeker's wings. The young seeker yelped and then pulled up, banking to slow down enough to transform.

The other two jets, one orange and the other a green transformed and eyed the little mech before them.

"Aw, he's barely a youngling! I thought for sure he was just some stunted Aerialbot."

"But do you see, he's a seeker. Been a while since I saw such a young one."

"You suppose he even knows who we are?"

Blitzburst regarded the two with his best Starscream impression. "You're Decepticons."

"Ha! Did you hear that, Ailron?"

"I sure did, Wingslat. Little slagger knows who we are, and knows enough to try and run."

"What do ya think Starscream would want us to do?"

"I don't know, Wingslat, you want to comm him and ask him?"

The green one, Wingslat apparently, shuddered. "No thank you. I'd just as soon shoot my own thruster off rather than tell him we'd disobeyed orders."

"St-starscream?" the youngling said, trying to remain haughty.

The orange seeker, apparently Ailron turned his red optics back to the youngling. "Yeah, kid. That flyin' son of a cessna's our boss, and he and the rest of us been looking for your little friends over there for several vorns."

Blitzburst's optics went wide. "He's... coming here?"

"Well, probably. I mean I assume that's why he wanted us to come here and find you. Right Wingslat?"

"I mean, yeah. That sounds right. But we should probably get back up to where he said to meet him. But what do we do with the brat?"

"Slagger's seen us, 'Slat. We can't let him wander off and tell ole Prime what we've arrived, can we?"

The little black and cyan seeker visibly shivered. "Just whatever you do, don't bring me to him!"

The two mechs looked at each other, a brilliant idea suddenly gracing their processors. "Hey 'Ron."

"What could it be, 'Slat?"

"I think we should bring this youngling as a gift for our glorious Air Commander, ya'think?"

"I think that would be smashing." They both lunged for the seeker, laughing when the youngling struggled.

"Ah. Let me go slaggers." They seemed to believe it, but Blitzburst silently chided himself for not being very convincing.

"Let's move, 'Slat, before we're made into energon dispensers."

"Well, stop talking and gun, it, idiot!"

Blitzburst thought to himself: How could his uncle employ these idiots?

Starscream followed the coordinates to the small planet. Surprisingly, it wasn't that far away from Cybertron, but the fleeing Autobots probably had thought that the Decepticons would be in no shape to pursue them for a long time.

And in many respects, they were probably right.

He transformed when he saw two idiotic grins greeting him. "Well?" he asked, huffing his vents in annoyance.

"Oh, right. Here you are sir, several blips of energy signatures on a relatively energy...-less... planet, just like you said."

"This says there are over 700 hundred of them."

"Seems they, uh, were busy."

Starscream rolled his optics. Then he noticed the two other seekers were watching him closely. Then they looked at each other, and seemed to be giving looks to the other to try and make them speak first. Starscream snapped his digits. "What the slag is your problem?"

"We brought you a gift!" Ailron said, pushing the little seeker out in front of him.

Starscream gaped at the youngling, then he pinched the bridge of his nose while shuttering his optics in annoyance. "You went down to the planet," he said, simply.

The two seekers didn't pick up on the danger yet. "Well not so much as we went down-"

"-as he was up-"

"-and he had seen us-"

"-so we nabbed him."

Starscream's wings shook, but he stopped himself, trying to regain control of his intakes. "Did it occur to you slag-for-processors that a youngling would be missed? And while their searching for him- a flier no less- they might say, 'Ooo Prime, let's scan the skies!' Tell me what they would find if they scanned the skies."

Ailron meekly replied, "Us?"

"So you have at least half of a processor. And when they find us, we sparklingnappers will be the creators of the next stage of the civil war. Brilliant job, aftheads. Excellent."

"Uhm, I'm sorry, Starscream," Blitzburst said, catching a small silence in Starscream's tirade.

"You doubtless have little to be sorry for, youngling-" but then he stopped. "Primus. Blitzburst?"

"I'm sorry, I convinced them to bring me. I don't want to go back."

Starscream put his servo to his face. "This is the last thing I need right now."

"I'm serious," the youngling cried. He was sick of adults ignoring him, and this was his only chance. "I don't belong down there. I'm not an Autobot."

Starscream's optics softened a little, but he frowned. "And what about your brother?"

Blitzburst's faceplate looked a little shamed.

"And your father, Thundercracker," he growled, glaring at his subordinate seekers. When they realized whom they had kidnapped, they realized just how much slag they were really in.

"He was a Decepticon once too. He'd understand."

Starscream hovered over to his nephew, making himself optic-level with the young seeker. "Blitzburst. You can't be a Decepticon. Not now anyway. You have too many obligations back home."

Blitzburst jutted out his chin. "If you send me back, I'll them that you are here."

Starscream snarled. "Blitzburst. If you say that, you will force my servo. I do not like to be forced."

"I see no other option," the youngling said, crossing his arms over his chassis.

Starscream almost smirked. This youngling, besides being the spawn of Unicron, was definitely his "nephew." He saw a Skywarp in him, a tiny bit of Thundercracker, and a lot of himself in the pretentious little upstart. He tried a different tactic. "Do you remember Megatron?"

Blitzburst nodded after a moment's hesitation.

"You only met him few times, so I understand if you've forgotten. He's the scariest mech alive, Blitzburst, and that is putting it mildly. The scary things that still haunt under your berth, even though you think you are old enough to have forgotten about them? They cower in fear before Megatron. He's the one that decreed your mother be altered. He's the one that had Prime as a pet. And you would willingly submit yourself to his rule?"

Blitzburst looked confused. "But you're there."

Starscream opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked away at the stars thinking that this youngling was very, very right, and very, very wrong all at the same time. The red and white seeker turned again to the young seeker.

"You're right. I have an obligation to the Decepticons, and with that comes Megatron, no matter how I feel about the arrangement. But you have an obligation to them," he said, pointing down towards "New Cybertron." "You are a youngling and you are part of their society. It doesn't have to be permanent though." Blitzburst looked wide, his purple optics swimming with hope.

"There will come a time when the Decepticons will again meet the Autobots, and whether that will be on the battlefield or in a conference room, I can't say. Things have changed much over the vorns, but some things," he said, glancing at the two seekers who withered under his gaze, "...some things, remain the same. So here is how this is going to work. You will go back down there and tell no one about us. We will leave and the next time we come back, Prime will know we are coming. No surprise attack." The two seekers seemed confused about what Starscream was saying, since it didn't seem to be what Megatron was preaching.

"And when we do meet again, if you still feel this way about your place, you can join us. However, you are not old enough to make that decision for yourself."

Blitzburst nodded slowly, disappointed but accepting. "What about Terrorwing?"

"What about him?"

"Well you said I could never keep secrets from him, but I don't think he'll want to be a Decepticon."

Starscream frowned, not wanting to rescind his previous statement. "I told you that because the 'Splintering' was caused by too many secrets. I think you can keep one from your brother for his own safety."

Starscream turned around. "We'll be back, Blitzburst. But for now, go back to them, and prove to us you can keep a secret."

Blitzburst eagerly nodded, transforming and heading back towards his home.

"As for you two," he said, grabbing them roughly by the wings. "Don't abduct younglings! Understand?" They nodded rapidly.

Starscream threw them away from him and transformed, flying into the blanket of stars that awaited him.

A/N: And so ends the descent into madness, and the rise of something else. Whether good or bad is for you to judge, and decide on your own terms.

This is set up nicely for a sequel, but I hope you're not too mad when I say I have too many other projects going one right now to delve into that. I just couldn't offer you the same quality of twists as were in this one... and writing sequels is always tricky since there is a new audience to consider. Still, at some point, I might revisit this.

Ultimately, there were some major problems with this story, and I'll be the first to admit it. But it was my first foray into writing TF fiction, so I thought for that at least, I'm happy with it. For a little bunny that bit me, it turned out okay, but it didn't have nearly the scope I wanted nor the amount of fairness of writing to both the Autobots and the Decepticons. I've decided I have to get a bit better before I try to write Autobots again without making them flat characters. Part of it is I haven't read fanfiction with the Autobots... and that I haven't found how they are fun to write yet.

And so if you enjoyed it, please tell me. If you hated it... well, I guess tell me anyway, but give me a cookie to soften the blow. As always, I've been truly blessed by my reviewers, and I thank you so much for poking me to continue and giving me the absolute joy it is to see that someone took the time to leave me some feedback. So to you, I thank you.

9aza: You were my first reviewer, and you've stuck with me for every chappie. Thank you so much for that support and I've really grown to admire you in the fandom for reviewing so often. You make this fandom rock! It really meant a lot to see what you wrote and you are so kind for it. You are truly appreciated.

Shadir: Heh, I want to personally thank you as well for reviewing so often. Yo creo que hablas espanol, y perdóneme por favor que mi español es terrible. Ha significado mucho para mí que revisar tan a menudo, así que sólo quería darle las gracias desde el fondo de mi corazón. Like I said, terrible, but I think you might be able to understand. Muchas gracias.

Skywarped: I owe a lot to you, because you called me out on some things, and you were absolutely right to question me. You were also very kind in your reviewing, and I found it to be a personal victory if I got you to review it positively. That to me meant a lot that you were being honest, and still being excited about what I was writing. I also remember you giving me that push about a month ago to finish this thing up, and I really and honestly have to owe it to you. Thanks.

Not so Dark: Seriously; love you. That was so much fun to see you reading along with it, and getting your reactions as you got to certain parts... It was like I was reading it beside you and seeing you react. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I've actually taken you as my role model now every time I set out to review a fic that's already written many chapters: by reviewing each one, it makes the writer smile.

Vivienne Grainger: Meant a lot to see you review too. I'm a huge fan of your work and I really appreciate you taking a look at mine. Thanks for the glowing reviews.

Starfire201: I also appreciate your comments because I'm also a fan of yours. Thanks so much for helping me along, and I'm glad to have given something that you found entertaining.

The Starscream: Aw, thanks friend. You didn't have to review just because I was beta'ing! But you did anyway, and you enjoyed my stuff before I mentioned it. It meant a lot to here you say that you read it and enjoyed it before you started reviewing because that made me think of all of the others who enjoy it. Thanks.

Wol lo: Thank you so much for your reviews. You always made me smile, so thanks.

Kathleen: Wow, I am honored by your long critique. Totally threw me by surprise to find such a developed piece from an anon reviewer! First off, thank you! But I will address some things here: I completely agree with you that the Autobots did not have a whole lot of emotional duress, and I'll be the first to admit it going back. Part of that is they have moved on, as you have surmised, but the other part of it is that I chose not to dwell on it. I never felt the fic was about them, and I didn't want to give crappy writing to address something I didn't feel was necessary. Also, I always thought the Autobots would be emotionally stronger by default as they have to be fully aware of the evils of the universe and then try and save everyone. In retrospect, some enslavement might actually be just a little blip on their radar. However, you're not the first to tell me this, so I am glad you told me again, it just gives more credence to the critique and adds to my repertoire. By the end, this fic was already written in my head, and I really was so ready to move on, but I had to finish it. So while there were some pieces I would have changed, ultimately this is what we got. Thanks for reviewing, and thanks for liking it anyway despite it's drawbacks.

Then to the others not mentioned above: I think no less of you, and every single one of you contributed to this story whether you think so or not. You make this fandom great.

To the lurkers: Thanks for being little visitors to my fic! I would always check my traffic page and see the little number go up at the amount of people that read it. The "blips" in this last chapter were for you!