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Ravage continued to stay away, for the rest of the long ceremony. He could not bring himself to go far, keeping close to the shadows, cutting off any attempt at discourse with a long-fanged snarl. He found himself pacing, restless, conflicted, furious, his conflict turned into mindless motion around the edges of the hall. He avoided the mechling, most of all - while keeping Soundwave always in his sight.

After Ravage had departed, Soundwave had sat quietly for a long breem, the other eligible symbionts circling close. Then, quietly, he stood, and continued his duties - meeting, conversing, exchanging pleasantries as the orn wore on.

And the orn *did* wear on. Half-framed mechlings gathered up the somnolent hatchlings at last, letting them catch what recharge they could in the closely protective embrace of their elder siblings. Smaller symbionts sought out their carriers for docking. The highgrade flowed freely. And still Soundwave showed no sign of making his selection.

It was the symbionts, at long last, who took matters into their own talons. Twenty three of them - an unheard of number, almost every eligible symbiont on the planet - gathered in the center of the Skyhall's vast rotunda, Cybertron a distant glimmer among the cascade of stars overhead. Gradually, the surrounding carriers drew back, bonded symbionts with them, forming a ring of mecha around the center.

The carrier with whom Soundwave spoke touched his shoulder gently, smiled, backed away to join the others, leaving the mechling alone at last. Soundwave turned, glancing at the assemblage, the patiently waiting symbionts, scanning the vast hall. He turned to Recast, who gave his creation a small nod of acknowledgment.

Then he turned back to the waiting symbionts, standing dignified and tall, giving them the entirety of his focus. "Soundwave: is grateful for your patience, your consideration," he said, words pitched only to carry to the nearest ranks of mecha. A proper courtship demanded intimacy and honesty, not grand rhetoric. "Your efforts and your tutelage, appreciated."

He hesitated for a moment-only a sparkbeat, the briefest space of time-before making his choice clear. He turned to Raindance, the other symbionts making way as he advanced, and folded himself down upon his pedes, resting kneeplates upon the shining stone floor and opening his field, projecting warmth and welcome. With deliberate slowness, he unfurled the full array of his primary and secondary data-cables, uncoiling them to wreath outward and above him in a shining, segmented halo, a visible sign of his power and nascent ability.

The small seekerframe cycled a shuddering vent, drifting a little higher on his antigravs, every sensor attuned to that display, to the kneeling carrier. The warm flare of Soundwave's field was strikingly well-practiced, suffusing and nuanced yet flawless, better than some highly experienced carriers could manage at all, let alone one so young. He could feel it sway through every other unbonded symbiont nearby, an appreciative ripple. How had...?

/Memory-keeper Raindance./ Soundwave sent the final command, unsealing the armor over his chassis, the plating sliding back and outwards by careful degrees, baring the vulnerable components of his core, the empty and waiting docks. As those leaves of armor spread, vocalizers whirred faintly among the observers. The densely arching splay of datacables was impressive - and *ten* docks? /Soundwave: would off-/

The seekerframe held himself still, delighting in every broadcast word.

There was a slight stir in the assembled crowd as Soundwave spoke, a ripple of surprise and consternation that bounced from field to field, accompanied by a rising hum of comm chatter. The closest rank of mecha parted, a low metallic snarl granted to one particularly slow carrier mech-and a silver and ebony bladed frame stalked out into the open space, sensory spines hackled upwards.

Symbionts scrambled from the big bladeframe's path, tumbling aside. Raindance had more to defend. The seekerframe pivoted sharply, flaring the violently brilliant blue of his underside, blocking Ravage's way and his view of the terribly vulnerable carrier. His carrier, almost - *Raindance's* carrier, in full and magnificent courting display. Ten - Primus! And that warmth... /What do you think you're -!/

Ravage's razored armor plates spread, every edge a weapon. The spines and blades of his tail slipped apart, folded back into a heavy energon flail, already heating, rimed with plasma. His side guns, like the external weapons of all other mecha, had been left outside this sacred ceremony - but he would not need them. He could claw the seekerframe from the air in a single twisting leap. Ravage's jaws spread a killer's assemblage of blades. /MOVE./

Soundwave stilled, the confident warmth of his field suddenly tinged with confusion, uncertainty … and underneath it, so subtle as to be almost undetectable, the faintest golden threads of hope. The crowd stirred again. Millennia of tradition and protocol held them in place, barely, as elder carriers shifted and exchanged tightly-channelled queries, symbionts flaring plating and edging possessively closer to their own carrier-mecha. For a symbiont, even one of such high rank, to interfere with an bond-offer-!

Outmatched, outranked, Raindance still snarled, his field flaring with sudden spike-edged fury at Ravage's presumption. This carrier, newsparked and yet still radiant with possibility, had been about to offer for *him*, to make him his First. How dare Ravage try to take that away! Wingplates flared, Raindance's grappling talons unfolded, ready to defend his claim-

-when a change in that open, exposed field behind him, a sudden sharp spike of regret and yearning, of hope, stopped him. He half-turned, looking back over one wing to Soundwave. The unbonded carrier was still kneeling, his chestplates still opened in offering … but his optics were on the approaching bladeframe, his field open and welcoming, an almost tangible lure. Almost desperately, he looked back to Ravage. Surely the bladeframe didn't mean to-?

But to Raindance's chagrin, it was clear that despite all custom and expectation, Ravage did.

Raindance gave way, grudgingly retreating. Despite the palpable threat of the elder symbiont's razored plating and lethal talons, he gave only just enough ground for the bladeframe to stand before Soundwave, to offer himself for consideration alongside all the others, and not a step more. Perhaps he had misunderstood, and there was still a chance-

-but one glimpse at the look they shared told him otherwise. Raindance might yet be part of Soundwave's cohort, if the carrier's almost-offer had been made out of true interest. But he would not be Soundwave's First.

Watching the bladeframe's approach, Soundwave felt the last vestiges of regret and disappointment vanish. He'd been certain he'd utterly offended Ravage earlier-that his faint, half-formed hopes and plans for a future bonding, once he had proven himself, had proved too presumptuous to express. The idea of a newsparked carrier laying claim to a symbiont as rare and precious as Ravage-it was beyond arrogant. It was unthinkable, illogical. The bladeframe's sudden furious retreat had been all the proof he needed of that.

Or so he'd thought.

But now Ravage was *here*, before him, that narrowed crimson gaze focused on the opened plates of his chassis, his wreathed halo of datacables, his wide optics. The bladeframe stood, head lifting proudly, tail lashing just once … waiting for Soundwave to offer his courtship and his bond.

He spared a brief moment for Raindance, sending the seekerframe a tightly-banded, private message, an intertwined glyph of /promise/regret/future possibility/. Then he turned back to Ravage, bowing his helm and turning his hands open and upward at his sides, talon-tips tremoring finely with uncertainty and desperate hope. /Memory-keeper Ravage. Soundwave: would offer you my protection, my energon and my service. Will you accept my bond?/

Slowly, Ravage bent his head, forelegs dipping in a ritual genuflection. /Templar Soundwave./ The glyphs rang out around the gathered circle, firmly broadcast, nothing secretive or ambivalent about this act. High-ranking carriers, those who had hoped to court Ravage once his obsession had run its course, stirred. A few jerked as if to break the circle and move forward - others dragged them back, before they could forget themselves. The shocked background chatter faded, every mech on edge, waiting to see this completed. Not a sound disrupted the breaking-tense atmosphere.

The bladeframe lifted his head, stalked closer. /My spark and my obedience, my senses and my memory, I offer to you./ Each glyph fell into the quiet, like ripples in a clear pool. Ravage's tight-wound field unfolded itself, flared receptively, a ancient silver radiance every mech with even the most basic of EM sensors could sense. It felt like Cybertron itself. Vocalizers crack;ed as carriers around the circle felt that great metal-white halo flower open, receptive and waiting. /I accept your bond. Bind me, and bear witness to the genesis of us all./

And the armoring plates across Ravage's chest folded aside, exposing the largest of his hardline ports before his chosen.

This-was the one thing they'd never done before. Not in all of Ravage's tutoring, the orns of patient instruction, had they taken this last step. It belonged only between a symbiont and his Master, and no other.

Fierce joy welled up, an echo that underlaid every cascading emotion within his field. Soundwave lowered a primary cable, extending it outward, to the bare protometal-silver of that port. Silver-blue cilia blossomed from the sheath, touching the metal reverently, delicately exploring. The rim was smooth and sculpted, not rough-cut like the drone. The protometal was warm with the heat of the spark, pulsing beneath. The port was open, pristine and perfect as if Ravage had never suffered the terrible wounds that had brought him to Xyr. Soundwave took a deliberate, careful cycling of his vents, feeling the cooling air wash through his core, the press of the carriers' interest and disapproval about them.

Then he slipped the datacable home, cilia reaching in to intertwine and join in communion, tendrils finding hidden sockets, slipping deep. The inside of the port was deeply folded, every surface offering up a thousand living wires, a thousand tiny relays - and Soundwave's twining tendrils sank into them, metal to metal, and circuit to circuit, an elemental electrical union. The clawed clasping mechanisms ringing the sheath sought out the slitted notches around the port. Reconfiguring, folding blade into blade, the multitool tip locked him into place.

Soundwave reached out over that complex hardline, feeling for the touch of Ravage's mind-and tumbled into a deep well, an abyss of thought and memory that had no end, no beginning. He reeled from the immensity of that connection, of the razor-perfect edges to each memory. It was nothing like the drones he had trained with, the AIs and their data-handling protocols. This was something more, something spark-deep and incorruptible, and for the first time Soundwave truly saw how nothing a symbiont saw, nothing they learned or experienced, could ever be forgotten or forcibly erased. How could it, when every moment was engraved upon their very spark?

Remembering himself, remembering his place in the ceremony, Soundwave opened his own firewalls, offering them freely. Even now he was afraid of demanding too much, pushing too quickly. /Memory-keeper Ravage: will accept my protection?/

/Your shelter mine; my talons yours - I take your protection, and it is part of me,/ Ravage returned, the ritual affirmation ringing over the broadcast spectrum. And still Soundwave could feel the vastness of that memory well shuffling around him, a labyrinth of crystal shards, dendrite anamnesis like spindles of glass. Sharp, and confusing - more than a mech could ever learn or map, and was Soundwave meant to reach out to...? /Easy, Soundwave... my Master./ Gentle, and very private, a filtering thread of communication over the trembling web of the developing bond as the two mech's fields slowly meshed, merged. /Let me show you. This way.../

Touching, lightly, Ravage guided Soundwave's attention to the thinnest of layers, the outermost edge of the abyss, the merest rim of the chasm below. There were tatters of a firewall there already, snippets of code hanging unmaintained, corrupted lines and glitching recursions drifting, making tenuous connections and falling apart once more. It reminded Soundwave of the cobwebs of a Chaar spider, no longer a proper wall - just fragments. Unthinking, he bent himself to cleaning out that loose code, searing it away, breaking through the tattered remnants of a dead carrier.

Ravage shuddered a little, a physical trembling. /Good, my Master... yes, just so,/ he encouraged, when Soundwave hesitated. Then, when the last of the corrupted code was gone, Ravage added over that private contact, /now your own, overwriting. You need not fear - I will not break./ A line at a time, Soundwave copied his own firewalls into that raw and empty space, filling it, building the barrier layer by layer, a shield against any but himself.

And through those protocols, now he could feel... Soundwave startled, shuttering his optics in autonomic response. It took his senses a moment to focus down, to see the chip for the circuits, but then, with awe... /Query: this is you?/ A skewed system in miniature, a handful of processors coupled with a bank of sensors as elaborate as those of any special ops mech, a core relay of battle protocols and small power systems for weaponry and for simple transformation... and very little else. It seemed too stark, sensors aside - almost absurdly fragile. A sparkling of two vorns carried more hardware, more coding, but all of it was as open to Soundwave as if it was his own.

/The part of me you can touch, sense - yes, Master,/ Ravage agreed, drawing gently at Soundwave's attention when it seemed the carrier wished to trace out each of those relays, follow every line of code and explore each sensor assembly. The bond was stabilizing now, growing clearer, a spark-level communication running in parallel with the data transferring across hardline. /And now this.../ And Ravage guided him into the deep.

It was like dropping into a blade-edged abyss, memories swirling around him, knives that slipped between his talons... and then the memory that Ravage selected spiraled up, and twined the length of him, and the world broke open.

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This is the First Memory.

Devoid of timestamps or identifiers, it is older than counting. Numbers did not exist when it came into being, the arrangement of sparkbeats into astroseconds, astroseconds into kliks, breems, joor … rotations into cycles, cycles into vorn, each one thing distinct and connected to the next. The memory exists before these things, is born nameless, when glyphs were simple, single things of *warmth* and *alarm* and *energon*.

The first memory begins with light.

Optics spiralling open, limbs unfurling, armor shifting, stretching. A great darkness above, a sharp-edged shape that has no name crackling, seething with raw power, changing all that it touches. It hurts to be too near, you want to be *away*-and limbs push against the ground, obedient to your wishes. You know their functioning, the arrangements of their movement and operation engraved within you. You move away until the light is less, the prickle-pain along your armor less. The shape still looms above. As you watch, a raw assemblage of shiny-sharp-broken metals, half melted, rolls a little way past you. It brushes against the dark shape, and the light lifts it up, wraps around it and drops it down once more.

It looks at you. It has scarlet-bright optics, and limbs like yours. It did not have these before.

It uncurls upward, and stands; then lopes away.

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The memory changes, flickers of numberless times passing. A sun - white and warm and young, rising over the shining plains, rippled-alloy rainbows streaked with elaborate patterns of carbon and rust. Crystalline spires of purest energon rising into the sky, creating arches and towers that glow warm rose and aquamarine, whose tops disappear into the vastness above, high and impossible to see. Jagged ravines with molten-warm edges, liquid metal-rivers flowing yellow and red and black at their bottoms. And everywhere, creatures without names, large and small, spined and scaled, round and pointed, that leap and fly and move. Some pull apart anything else that they catch, taking armor and more for their own. Some ignore you, moving on their own paths, or clustering together, combining and changing and recombining, searching for new forms, new ways of running, seeing, being. Watching that makes you ache down inside. You want to change, to combine and be something new too.

And so when a new creature catches you, lifts you up and clicks at you, that is what you do. You like the feeling. You feel better, more armored; you *fit* with the other creature, where before you did not. The other creature likes it too, and you echo pleasure back and forth at each other, happy with this thing you have found.

You and he stay together. It is better; you are bigger this way, you have to run less. Your other can break off more energon, can fight and run, and you can watch and learn and warn when others try to devour your energon, to devour you. More creatures come, some like you, some like your other, and you find new ways of fitting together, of travelling the same paths and warning of the same dangers. Some of the others are as big as the rust-iron mountains, some are so small and swift they can hardly be seen; but they all change, they click-talk the same, and they all are brought together by the Primes.

The Primes stand tall in your memory, shining silver and gold, first in all things. When numbers are made, you know there are thirteen, twelve plus one, made together and first, always and ever a *prime*. Their Protector-brothers defend; the Primes call, and stand shining as the others come, moving together to talk and learn and change and build.

This is a good thing, you decide, always watching, always remembering. When you share it with the others, they agree. More to see, more learn, more to remember, and you pass it on to every kin-spark you make or find. Remember.

For this is the beginning, and no one yet knows the end.

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Soundwave lived every moment of it.

The input seemed to come from his own optics; blurry and new-made and witnessing the first of all life; from his own small pressure sensors firing as tiny limb-tips touch the ground for the first time; from primary buffer memories that hatchlings so young never recorded, never had the capacity to record... no hatchling save a symbiont. The first symbiont.

The record was thin at first, little more than touch and sight, exploring the newness of the world, and the vorns rushed by in moments. But over ages, the protoform found other ways of assembling pieces of metal, came to delight in complexity, found ever tinier and more efficient ways of building processors and sensors. And then the bliss of a warm sun became Soundwave's, and the fear of a hunter's closing jaws became his too, and the surprise and relief at that first inquisitive click.

Everything was in that record - everything. Even the feel of being first cradled in a roughly-shaped palm, the sensation of wrapping small talons around a larger one. And the euphoria of it, the first time the other learned to enfold him entirely. He came to know the tenor of voices of the first Primes, the way they moved, the way they came together with their Protector-brothers, every detail his down unto the very smallest - his, and then flowing on.

Soundwave lived every touch and emotion and sight and feel. He could have filled every data drive he possessed and still the experience would have flowed over, a lifetime of sensation, everything retained. Too much to keep, and he had to release those memories, processors running hot in the struggle to pare down and keep what he could.

There came a time when those optics - clear now, vision bright - turned on a symbiont sparkling, still small but big enough to share memory, a fierce black ball of sharpness and shadow and wary fascination. There came the long ritual of greeting, the touch of silvery fields, and finally the sharing, long transfers over primitive lines.

And then it was gone.

The memory unwound itself from Soundwave's presence, falling away, slipping back into that unending void, leaving him alone and empty within his own mind. And yet... not entirely alone. The shadowed sharpness, the wary fascination, was still here, still with him, easing him up from the depths to which he had fallen, from the fathomage of antiquity.

He was shaking, Soundwave realized.

He'd fallen to his hands, and his tanks pinged low. His chronometer registered the passage of nearly an orn. The hall was empty save for Ravage, who sat still and quiet beside him. The symbiont kept watch, stood guard and witness, the datacable still warm between them.

Oh.

So that's why the carrier always knelt to bond his first.

Trembling, Soundwave tested joints gone stiff, lifting one hand, reaching to be certain that the bladeframe was whole, was safe, was... real. And, without a word, Ravage pressed himself into that tenuous touch.

/... so much .../ Soundwave said, the channel between them opening without conscious effort. /Too much to keep, so much missing … / He lifted his helm, regarding his First with renewed wonder. He'd known, of course, that symbionts were the living memory of Cybertron. But he hadn't really understood what that *meant*. Not until this moment. /Ravage: holds it all. Nothing ever lost, or forgotten … / He sat carefully back on his pedes, his frame for a moment feeling strange, too-large and alien.

/...extraordinary./ Soundwave stroked a palm down gleaming ebony armor, marvelling at the ability to reach out and just … touch, whenever he wanted. Because Ravage, and all the history and memory that he guarded, had chosen him. /Soundwave: did not think this was possible,/ he confessed, stunned.

The bladeframe arched his head tiredly into the touch. He wasn't often able to offer up the entirety of that memory, its full depth and range. But Soundwave's capacity was, as he had suspected, exceptional. The sheer bandwidth and depth of this bond... And it was still expanding, would continue to settle for a vorn or more. /The exchange will become easier,/ Ravage assured the mechling. No, a mechling no longer, but a bonded carrier in truth- and that thought was a good one. /Control comes with time - you will be able to freeze and study a memory at will. And you need not always experience the full file. Visual or audible channels alone require a fraction of the bandwidth./ Ravage shouldered close. He was silent for a while, just giving Soundwave time enough to collect himself.

/But there are gaps. Some things are lost, or never recorded,/ Ravage said, looking up. /Without other symbionts, memories go unshared, and the loss of a single mech becomes the loss of history./ The bladeframe shook his head. /We do not know what became of the First. I was the last to share his memories, the file that you experienced./

Soundwave absorbed that statement, taking the time to examine it from all sides. It was a subtle, potent reminder. Carriers, for all their authority, their physical power, were expendable. But the death of the First-and all other symbionts who followed him to the Well before their knowledge could be shared-were an irreplaceable loss not just to their carriers and their cohorts, but to all of Cybertron.

/Soundwave: understands,/ he sent finally. /Gift of this memory, priceless. Your survival, imperative. Soundwave, grateful for the opportunity to serve as your guardian./

Ravage smoothed his plating flat under that careful touch. Every one of Soundwave's glyphs... was exactly what a carrier was supposed to say, was supposed to be - and the young carrier meant every word. A carrier put himself in harm's way, was the bulwark and the shield. A carrier was expendable. And yet, the thought of losing *this* one to the Well, the heat of that spark and the depth of this bond...

What could Ravage say to that innocent declaration? And so the bladeframe said nothing, kept his equivocation silent. After a moment he bent his head, nudging subtly at the cable, still locked close to his chest. Stiffly, the tiny fiber optical tendrils began to withdraw, breaking the connection a few at a time, then the locking blades petaled open, releasing the port. /Energon and a place to defragment are nearby./ Ravage stood ready to lend what support he could, as his carrier slowly levered himself to his feet.

/Consequences of our bonding, many,/ Soundwave observed, feeling unused joints and rotors creak as they were pressed into service after an orn of inactivity. He straightened, squaring his shoulders, and looked about the open, echoing expanse of the empty Starhall, the distant glimmer of Cybertron. He looked down at Ravage, and felt that ebullient joy bubble upwards once more. He was an Chronicler now in truth, and bonded, and he suddenly felt as if the entire galaxy was stretched out before them both. /Plans and decisions, will both need to be made./

Ravage looked up, finding his carrier's expression serious, his field sharp with determination, radiant with a joy and hope that the bladeframe could not help but reflect.

There would be decisions, and trials, and more. Soundwave would have to select at least a few other symbionts to form his full cohort, either from the colonies or Cybertron itself. Ravage's own choice would not have gone unnoticed - and while it was rare for another chronicler to try to court away a new carrier's First, it was not unheard of. It would not be long before research institutions and border units alike began to request Soundwave's presence. This newspark carrier, and the rest of his cohort, would be thrust into the domains and the machinations of mecha a thousand times his age and experience, who would very likely try to lure away his symbionts.

And yet... Ravage could not bring himself to regret his selection. This was a carrier like no other - something precious, something his. In the way of his kind, he would leave the planning to his Master, and focus on the moment. Fuel first, then rest.

/There will time enough for all those things,/ Ravage said, and led them out into the world.

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