Chapter Text
Tyran 707.03 Delta: a universal stream that was much like any other. It had matter, energy, it had dark matter and dark energy. It had dimensions and time that made it pleasantly malleable in the hands of cause and effect. There were galaxies (if I remember right, Alpha Trion said there were about 676,800,034,219 of them), and each galaxy had a few million stars—some red ones and blues, nebulas too—and each star had their share of planets. Yes, there was most certainly a Milky Way, and it had a Solar System.
And there used to be an Earth. Just like there used to be a Cybertron.
Neither of those planets exist anymore.
Let us turn back the clock a few centuries to an era when these entwined worlds not only still roamed the canvas of spacetime, but when they roamed it together. Imagine, if you will, one planet; black, boiling, rivers and oceans of molten loam ensnaring every broken landmass. This is the Earth. Once upon a time it looked in every way identical to the planet on which you stand. Water and trees swaddled a stably dancing orb of fertile essence, fostered by a well mixed atmosphere and acutely tuned magnetic field. Fauna and flora, humans and Transformers coexisting as well as any mortal can in a blind and hostile universe. Why, I’m even certain you had a Tyran counterpart who lived there. And this jewel of a planet had a twin, of sorts.
Cybertron. Ordinarily this unique world of boundless machinery would have haunted the furthest edge of the Milky Way, a war-scorched husk drifting like a ghost in the gulfs between stars, bereft of a sun to call it’s own. But, by the machinations of a certain Cybertronian sorceress (with whom I’m sure many of you are already familiar with), Cybertron was guided across the cosmos until it at last found companionship with the Earth, settling so close to it’s lapidarian cousin that the two worlds thereafter became locked in a binary orbit. As the local timeline quietly encroached it’s inevitable end, the allied Autobots and humans believed the joining of their respective worlds would herald a new era of prosperity and reconstruction. With Megatron having lost a majority of his army to countless battles, the Decepticons remained but the meekest of threats. The location of the warlord himself would remain unknown for several decades, having presumably gone into self exile. Having come dangerously close to extinction on several occasions, political friction the world over was redirected and then soothed as mankind learned that bickering among themselves was far too counterproductive. But just when the twin worlds of Tyran 707.03 Delta had at long last found peace, the Earth began to *transform*. The world the humans called home was not a planet, no more than a typical Throttlebot is a car. It looked like a planet, and nursed many diverse ecosystems like a planet, but the Earth was more akin to Cybertron than anyone ever anticipated.
The Earth was an egg.
… … …
Beneath the thin crust a very gradual metamorphosis was taking place. Like a fetal bird thrashing for the first time in it’s new life, so to did the the entity within the planet’s core. Over the centuries, colossal gears and servos began turning and flexing into a new shape dictated by incalculably ancient algorithms. Millions of sensors activated one by one, gradually amounting to rudimentary awareness and rapidly evolving to absolute omniscience as time went on. Soon memories trickled back into the entity’s cold mind: An awakening, a release from the hands of a cosmic entity, swords clashing against shields, the voracious imbibing of planets, the agony of being torn to pieces, both in a corporal and spiritual sense. The code flowing through the entity’s moon-sized processors penned names—infinite, largely insignificant names—across the panoply in it’s mind, but only two elicited any emotions:
Unicron.
That was the entity’s own name. It’s pronunciation conjured feelings of pride and potency. He was Unicron, the Chaos Bringer, the one who was to prove how disgustingly fragile cosmic order really was and, ultimately, bring the bliss of oblivion to all of creation. That was his purpose, but something was amiss. He was trapped. Not just within an inert body drifting mechanically around a humble star, but within a single universe. There was once a time when he roamed the many universes, fulfilling his destiny and tearing apart the filth his progenitor left him with. It was a demanding but gratifying occupation, and it was all the more pleasant imagining the comfortable emptiness that will be left behind once his job was complete.
His sensors peered beyond the layer of gasses clinging to his being at the mass of alloys latching onto his side. Suddenly, the second name made sense.
Primus. Unicron’s loathsome departed half. This name summoned a surge of pure hatred through the entity’s fabric. He reflected on the all calamities that betided him during the aeons since his anti-spark first flickered into being, and each time, as he recalled, Primus was the orchestrator. Him and his wretched children. It was he who imprisoned the entity in it’s mechanical body and thwarted it’s many attempts to cleanse this malformed cosmos. He remembered the Matrix. Just thinking about his brother’s talisman made the Chaos Bringer sick. Primus—that coward!—ever since he fled to the material realm he lacked the bearings to face Unicron himself. He created a race of delicate worms to do his dirty work, and only bequeathed them a piece of his spark to aid them in their fight. The Matrix. Unicron understood, unfortunately, that the Matrix would be enough to put his immortal anti-spark into stasis. But where is the Matrix? Where is Primus? Where are his children?
Unicron perceived the world growing like fungus across his prone body and felt the vexatious tickling of billions of tiny feet—both organic and mechanical—skittering endlessly across a land they believed to be theirs. The stench of energon—Primus’ blood—clung to his body. The transformers, his brother’s offspring, they were there, mingling with the bacteria that spread during his slumber. He did not like them. So he did what any god was wont to do: he killed them all. But before he could do that, Unicron made sure the transformers knew they were about to die. As an omen of the extinction to come, the dark god extended his teeth out the planet’s crust, gritting them for all the mortals to behold. Why the children of Primus didn’t put up more a fight, Unicron would never understand, but it was an easy feat to boil the organics off his hide with his own body heat. The transformers, on the other hand, were more resilient, but in time Unicron managed to snuff out their sparks with his antibodies. How he savored their suffering—and the horrified surprise distorting their faceplates—as his avatars broke through the planet’s ground and pried their bodies apart bit by bit. Within the savage warrior named Optimus Prime, Unicron found the Matrix of Leadership, but upon closer scrutiny he learned that this was not the same Matrix he feared. It was a powerful relic indeed, as it was saturated in the essence of Primus (known locally as the Allspark, as Unicron learned earlier), but it was but a grain compared to what the Chaos Bringer was expecting. Likewise, the small planet at his side—Cybertron, allegedly the very body of Primus—was equally innocuous. He sniffed the broken world but could detect no trace of his brother. Was Primus dead? Has his Matrix and his servants been nothing more than a show this whole time?
No. Unicron thought. I remember now. The Shroud. The Thirteen. Nexus Prime. Nexus Prime used more of Primus’ tools to divide the multiverse and locked them away from one another. He divided Primus and left his fragments scattered across the multiverse. He divided the Matrix. He divided me. As I am now, I am merely a fraction of what I once was. Surely, there are others pieces of myself in other universes.
He used his incorporeal influence to rap at the fabric of spacetime in attempt to tear a portal to another universe, where he hoped to reunite with another version of himself, but he was unsuccessful. The walls between realities were noticeably stronger. If the deity weren’t so enraged, he would have commended Nexus for doing something only the One should have been able to do. He reshaped the multiverse, in the act stripping both Unicron and Primus of their status. The Chaos Bringer really hoped that vile combiner agonized over damming his own god. It would be the least he deserved.
Unicron has been scheming his whole life, formulating plans that spanned across space and time just to stay one step ahead of his brother and his machinations, but nothing in all of those vague memories could have prepared him for this. For the first time in eternity, Unicron felt powerless. He was once a true deity, but now he was just a planet. A very hungry planet.
Unicron shifted his celestial mass, compacting his many limbs toward his center of gravity and flexing his protrusive claws. Slowly sloughing off chunks of the Earth’s continents, casting his scorched shell out into space, Unicron skimmed the many points of light that surrounded his solar system. He instantly identified thousands of stars and the traces of millions of orbiting planets. He may be incarcerated, but this universe alone will slake his hunger for awhile, at least until he can constitute a new plan.
Unicron’s claws reached and found the honeycombed surface of Cybertron. The fragile epidermis covering Primus’ corpse fell away as easily as frost on a window and plummeted towards the black abyss of the monster planet’s awaiting maw. The six teeth bit down deeper into the planet’s true surface, gouging out countless cities and mountains, sending it all into frenzy of clashing metallic terrain as the beast inhaled the debris in one, greedy swill. Iacon, Altihex, the Manganese Mountains, Tarn, the Omega Lock, and the Well of All Sparks, as well the dozens of decrepit survivors who fled after the Optimus’ spectacular death, were all reduced to atoms in the universe wake of Unicron’s raking claws. With demoniac ecstasy surging through him, he crushed the last few chunks of Cybertron between his mandibles and gorged, assuring not a single ounce of his brother’s carcass escaped into the sun’s orbit. Though he found delight in finally purging this universe of Cybertron, Unicron couldn’t help fretting over what became of Primus. The Chaos Bringer could feel his vestiges of his presence clinging to very material of spacetime, but those were but ghosts and nothing more. For all the monster planet knew, his brother was truly dead.
Unicron lamented losing the chance to end Primus himself, but at least that left the dark god unopposed and left this universe at his mercy.
A distant ripple in the fabric of space interrupted his reverie. Another planet orbited nearby, and as Unicron focused his collective scanners in it’s direction he found it was a desolate world, almost the size of himself, and composed almost entirely of monotonous orange ore. He detected no signs of life, but the planet equally lacked a magnetic field, making it an easy morsel to consume. Being robbed of the succulent screaming of whole civilizations as they faced armageddon was most unfortunate, but the planet would provide sufficient nourishment until he could find something more delectable, be it in this universe or another.
Thousands of spines flared out of the monster planet’s surface, clinging to the substance of spacetime, much in the same way the pads of an organism cling to matter, and began propelling the austere world of black steel, corrosive blood, and ravenous teeth towards his next prey.