Your father wants me to tell you a story, Annabelle. Don't know why. Don't imagine you understand, at this age. But I'm going to talk. You should listen.

Before you were born, your people existed. Before your people existed, mine existed. You don't know how long ago, or how far away. The number's too big. Maybe someday. Point is- we lived. And we died. We might not be meat like you, but we're alive, and living things can die. They can always die. And when they do, their sparks- you'd say their souls- they go back to where they began, join with the others. Back to the Allspark, again and again, until all are one.

First time one of us died, ever, we called him the Fallen. And when he fell, the others who were left made a light against the darkness. They each took part of their sparks and put it into a holding matrix. There were twelve. The Allspark lit the thirteenth share, for the one who'd died. He wasn't coming back from that, see. Nobody is mightier than the Fallen. No one is mightier than death.

The Matrix was supposed to let us touch on that little bit of all those sparks. Let us see and understand what those Firstforged knew. Let us reach a little bit of them, maybe. Sometimes it could reach those who'd died, but hadn't joined with the Allspark completely- weren't dead forever yet. Didn't happen often. Then again, we didn't die often, back then.

Point is, we had the Matrix, and the Lord held it, or the Prime did. Or they were supposed to. The Second Lord and the Second Prime fought over it one day, far from Cybertron, deep in space. Their ship was lost in the process. We found them, eventually. And some of the ship. But not the Matrix. That was lost. We thought maybe forever, like the Fallen.

Only it turned out not to be forever. You can't destroy something like that. That's going to last, and last, and last as long as worlds. Maybe longer. It fell through space so long we almost forgot it. Fell right out of history and into legend. Wound up falling onto a planet in the end, though. This one. Earth.

My people stopped fighting then, for a long time. Not forever, though. Always gonna be someone who wants more than what he's got. And one day the one who wanted more got dangerous. That was Lord Megatron. He wanted the Allspark- all the sparks that ever were or would be. Wanted absolute power, life and death, beginning and ending. We couldn't let him take that, some of us, so we fought him. Long fight- longer than your people've lived. In the end we couldn't win. We shot the Allspark into space, got it away from him. We hoped forever. Turned out it wasn't. It came to Earth, too.

Yeah.

Your people found it, and hid it. They found Megatron, too, and hid him when they did. When Bumblebee, and Optimus, and Jazz, and I came to Earth, we went to find it. So did those who followed Megatron. There was... there was a lot of fighting. People died. Yours, and mine. And we lost the Allspark, to end Megatron. We hoped it was forever. It wasn't.

It's never forever.

It was a human who used the Allspark to end Megatron. You might know him. Sam Witwicky. Good kid. Tried to be normal. Couldn't. Your people can't handle all the lives of an entire world, all at once, and not have it leave a mark. Sam got marked, though he didn't know it. Got all kinds of memories in his head. All kinds of things our people knew, all at once. He hid it a while. Tried to keep his head his own. Didn't work too well, but he tried. I can't blame him.

We didn't know, you understand. He didn't tell us. Not even Bumblebee, who loved him. We didn't think to ask. It's not the kind of thing you think of. The Allspark isn't destroyed every day.

Sam wanted to live like a human, so he tried. Went off to school, left us behind. We kept an optic on him anyway. Just in case. Turned out it was a good thing. See, Megatron had followers. Some were traitors and scum. Some were loyal. One was more dangerous than all the rest put together. You don't mess with Shockwave. It's not a good idea.

Shockwave gathered the Decepticons up and brought them to Earth. He knocked all the human satellites out of the skies. Blinded your people to what was coming. Kept them from reaching to each other to find out what was wrong. Attacked them in the chaos. Attacked us.

Attacked Sam.

We were watching Sam, like I said, but- well. Shockwave was attacking the planet, all over, everywhere at once. Some of the humans could handle it. Most of them couldn't. We had to help them, all over, everywhere. We went where we could. Sam... we were almost too late. Bumblebee and Prowl and Arcee found him, with Mikaela and Aymer. They're Autobots. Mikaela and Aymer are human. So did Skywarp, and Thundercracker. They're Decepticons. They fought, and it... didn't go well. Prowl got broken in a lot of places. Arcee got pinned under Prowl. Bumblebee fought like a mech three times his size, and took down Thundercracker... and while he was weak, and staggering, Skywarp pinned him down.

And crushed his- you'd call it his throat. And put out his spark.

Thundercracker got up then, and he and Skywarp got away with Sam. We... had to get Bumblebee back. Couldn't just leave him there. The... humans... they picked him up for us. We couldn't... we'd mourn him later. We... had to find Sam first.

Perceptor found him. The Decepticons took him out to sea, to their base- a big, big 'Con named Tidal Wave. They'd found Megatron's body. Brought him up from the deeps of the sea. They'd found something else, too. Shockwave found the Matrix of Leadership, buried in Earth's mud, under the water off your Maryland coast. Shockwave brought them together, and... well. No Allspark left, right? Nowhere for the sparks to go. Megatron's spark was still out there. And Sam was the closest thing they had to it- Sam knew all the things our people knew, even if he couldn't make sense of it. So. Shockwave killed an Autobot prisoner, Sunstreaker. Used his body to repair Megatron's.

Put Sam's hands on Megatron's.

Forced the Matrix to open, and channeled its power through Sam.

Don't know why Sam's not dead. Allspark energy must've protected him. I don't know. All I know is, Megatron's spark came back to his body, and he and the Decepticons rose up. Prowl, Arcee, Mikaela, Aymer- they were all as good as dead. It was Perceptor saved 'em. Jumped in front of 'em, between them and Megatron, and told him two human words. "Μολὼν λάβε."

Your father says it means, come and claim them.

Perceptor fought Megatron as long as he could. No one's ever seen a fight like that. Perceptor should've been dead in seconds. How he lasted as long as he did, I don't know. All I know is, when he fell, Megatron kicked him off Tidal Wave's deck. And that was when the Decepticons realized Prowl and Arcee and Mikaela and Aymer were all gone, and Sam with them.

Yeah.

Megatron decided he wasn't gonna chase them then. He'd just go to the only place that mattered. Autobase. He'd find all that we had left in this world and destroy it. Force us to come to him. We figured as much. It's why Optimus was waiting for him when he arrived- and why I wasn't there. See, there were a lot more Decepticons on Earth than there were Autobots. We had to get more. Couldn't, though. Not with the Cons in orbit. Had to find another way to get them- and there was.

When you're old enough, I'll tell you about Milliways. All you need to know now is, we had some things at the base that we took apart a while ago that let us open bridges through space. Had to put 'em back together in a hurry. We got help for that. Human help. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They built with us, and we got it up before Megatron arrived, and I went through. Wasn't like anyone else was tough enough to take the trip, except Prime, and he was busy. He had two things to do. One of 'em was talking to Sam.

Optimus knew as well as anyone that the dead join with the Allspark, but since Megatron'd risen... well. There was a chance that something like that might happen again. And Sam... you know how all you have to do is call, sometimes, and your father or your mother will be there? Because they just- that's just how it is? Yeah. Sam and Bumblebee were like that. He had to try, with Optimus Prime's help. And, Primus help me, it worked. When Prime opened the Matrix, and Sam called, Bumblebee heard him. It wouldn't work with anyone else, not even Sunstreaker, not even with Sunstreaker's twin brother calling- but between Sam and the Matrix and the Allspark, we got Bumblebee back.

And then, well, Optimus had his other thing to do. Someone had to keep Megatron from winning while I was gone. So he did.

Optimus Prime held that line against Megatron and all his hordes with nothing more than a handful of wounded mechs and a unit of bleeding, battered human soldiers. He fought like all the Primes of old were feeding into him, like all the Lords that ever were were whispering in his auds just exactly what to do. It wasn't enough to win- not quite- but it was enough for what mattered.

Because I'll tell you, the look on Megatron's face when he saw me and every. single. Autobot that had left Cybertron to come and find Earth. Ready to throw down with him and all his kind? That was a moment beyond price.

Took a long time for the smoke to clear. When it was all over, Megatron was still alive- gone, though. And Shockwave was dead. Starscream got him, in the end. Should've seen it coming, but for some reason no one ever does. The Decepticons were on the run, and the space bridge was still humming.

And the slagging thing would. Not. Stop.

Optimus saw it was gonna overload, and he did the only thing he could do. He ripped that thing's central core out and ran- fast as he could, faster than I've ever seen him go. Maybe Sideswipe could've caught up with him- I don't know. All i know is Prime got out into the desert with it, alone, and we couldn't see him any more- and then there was bright, white light. And then the air slammed against us all at once, biggest thunder you ever heard.

And when we could all hear again Prime was broadcasting to us to come to him, because there was something we had to see.

That's why you're in this building, while we wait for your father. That's how we got to where we are now. That's how it went- and I'll tell you again someday, when you want to know more, or your father says I should do it again. You should know.

Now go to sleep. It's gonna be a long wait.

Ironhide was doing his best not to drive the Autobase humans up the wall. He really was. Not being able to get outisde in 'bot form as often as he wanted was making his already-bad temper even worse, and he knew it, but he kept telling himself that it wasn't their fault. Lennox, Epps, Figueroa, Manners and the others didn't need to get growled at any more than the usual- Oh, slag, who was he kidding. Somebody needed a pounding, and there wasn't anybody to take it out on. Ironhide could only run through so many sims and games before they got old. If he didn't find a distraction soon, something was gonna burst into flames.

With an irritated whistle, he opened up a datastream connection to one of the cable television feeds. Maybe there was a wrestling match or a movie worth watching. Once the commercials got out of the way, anyway.

Although, speaking of commercials...



"We got a problem."

Finding a space to work on the space bridge project wasn't all that hard. Finding that space and making sure it was adequately secured, lit, powered, and otherwise prepped for the situation? Another story altogether. That took preparation and doing. Fortunately, Ironhide managed his end of things eventually; any Autobot more than a few days out of the factory would probably have to agree that the workspace is as ready as he's ever gonna get it.

Now it's just down to Rad and his crew.

This is to keep track of mechs Ironhide's mentioned that didn't appear in the 2007 live-action movie. Will be edited further as various mechs get mentioned.

Perceptor, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe - Went off down the Galactic arm in search of what they thought were Allspark energy traces. Perceptor still a scientist, Sunny and Swipes still twins. No mention of their alt forms. Perceptor was 'one of our best scientists' and was not at Tyger Pax. Sunny and Swipes were infiltrators.

Mainframe: Extremely dangerous Decepticon rendered inoperative at the Battle of Tyger Pax. Essentially the adversary in the Rise of the Chevy Autobots web game, without the elements that contradicted movie canon.

The first thirteen: Ironhide doesn't know the names of the first thirteen mechs supposedly created by the Allspark upon its arrival, but he does know that's how many were in the first generation. Also that as soon as there was a first generation, 'there was trouble', although what manner of trouble hasn't been specified.

The Quintessons: These are a standard horror story told to scare new incepts. Hide does not believe in them.

Wheeljack: Described as enthusiastic. Used as a comparison for Ratchet when the medic is faced with a new challenge. Assumption is that it's fundamentally the same mech as in the G1 universe. Esp. since Ace's behavior post-demon bunny incineration is compared to Wheeljack's. 'hide refers to Wheeljack as 'an old buddy of mine' when making that comparison.

Dinobots: Mentioned, but not described or named. autocommander has precedence when it comes to determining whether they exist, how they exist, and what their forms/origin are in the movieverse.

'this or that mutant Spark that refused to join with Primus again after death' - See Quintessons.

Kup - Ironhide refers to Kup as having been his mentor, and remembering stories that other mechs had forgotten (or at least allowed to cycle so far back into storage that they didn't bother retrieving them any more). Probably present at Ironhide's inception, too.

Mechs who could carry two sparks at once, because they had to retrieve or temporarily carry someone else's spark for a while - stories for 'sparklings'. As Ironhide normally uses the phrase 'new incepts' to describe new Transformers, I suspect 'sparkling' is a dialect word for him that specifically refers to a level of naivete, perhaps equivalent to 'kid' as opposed to 'child'. The stories usually involve changes to the carrier mech's physical form or some kind of added or improved power. Yes, this is a nod in the direction of things that happen in Beast Wars, whether that ever actually gets used in movie continuity or not. The stories are said to be so old that they have no physical record to back them up any more.

Blurr- An especially talkative human who doesn't appear to need to stop for breath more than once per very long paragraph reminds Ironhide of Blurr. This is all that was mentioned about him one way or the other.

Jetfire - Mentioned in passing as being a scientist.


Somewhat related:

Reference is made to both Simfur and Tyger Pax, from the prequel comic. They have only so far been described as cities you could never get on Earth because the architecture isn't advanced enough.

Ironhide's account of the causes of the Great War. Includes some discussion of the roles of the Lord and the Prime (the Lord protects, the Prime allocates; Ironhide refers to them as 'the Closed Hand and the Open'; etc.).

By now all of the soldiers who were affiliated with Autobase had learned to recognize at least a few of the Transformers' expressions. The aliens' faces weren't particularly expressive by human standards, but the way they carried themselves was another story. Once you had the hang of looking for the tilt of a shoulder or the line of a back, you were in much better shape It wasn't infallible, of course, but then- as Epps pointed out- it wasn't as if even an old married man like Lennox could tell what his own wife was going through all the time just by looking at her, let alone a giant alien robot. You did your best and usually that worked out pretty well.

Of course, you had to be paying attention at all for it to work. Corporal Wasserman (doomed to the position of New Guy until someone else came along with enough of a clearance to boot him up the human contingent's hierarchy) was a little too distracted to notice the gradual bunching and shifting of Ironhide's shoulders as the weapons specialist scanned through the Internet. He scarcely had time to notice the mech's sudden sharp forward lean, which his compatriots well knew by now meant irritation about to peak- but he definitely realized what was going on when Ironhide burst out with a blistering "Mine tailings, all of it!" and whipped around to look for the nearest human.

"I have been trying to access some information on the Web about the coming human celebrations, but your web pages are half poisoned with BLINK and MARQUEE and flashing pictures and horrible MIDI files. All the capacitors between my head and my center section are throbbing from trying to plough through it."

"Erp," said Corporal Wasserman. "I'm sorry?"

It almost seemed as if Ironhide were gritting his nonexistent teeth for a moment; then the Autobot nodded. "Fine. Not your fault. You don't write computer code, do you."

Corporal Wasserman shook his head mutely.

"Fine," Ironhide repeated. "Maybe you can help me anyway. You told me about one holiday already, the day of averted genocide-"

"Purim, yeah-"

"Good. Then tell me about the other one." After a moment, Ironhide remembered to add, "Please."

"Uh- what, Hanukkah? That's-"

"No, no, I know that one, that was easy. The civil war, the revolt, the sacred building retaken, the supplies that lasted longer than they should, it's simple enough. I mean the other one. Christmas."

"Um," said Corporal Wasserman, and looked over his shoulder desperately, but all the other humans had fled the room.

(After this.)

Prime had briefed all the Autobots on his encounter with Isaac as soon as it had concluded, so Ironhide was well aware of the entity's presence when he reached out to connect.As yet, there wasn't any communication between the two of them beyond an acknowledgment. Ironhide wasn't quite ready to say sorry about all the times I trash-talked your parents, today least of all; as for why Isaac didn't make contact himself, Ironhide didn't know. One day, maybe. For now he had information to find. Humans were a young species, and shockingly short-lived. It stood to reason that if they were being incepted- born, whatever- and dying at such a swift rate, then probably there were changes being made in both their physical forms and their society at a pretty good clip as well.

On the first front, it seemed, the only significant changes were an increase in height, a tendency to weigh more, and a much lower number of females dying during the reproductive process. Everything else about their physical forms in the past hundred years seemed to be a matter of the development of medical techniques. He noted a few of the more peculiar ones to ask Ratchet about. 'Body modification' sounded promising at first, but turned out to be confined to ornamentation. Most of that seemed highly counter-productive, from what little he knew of the human body to start with. Ironhide was about to give up when he encountered the term 'transhuman'; that caught his attention, all right. Most of the material associated with the term appeared to be some kind of planning for the future, though, so he merely marked it down for later examination.

The social changes were something else entirely. That changed more rapidly than any biological cycle in the species could account for, in hundreds if not thousands of places across the planet. Ironhide shunted most of the information aside and concentrated on two places: England (since Yorkshire turned out to be part of it), and America. Several of his circuits rebelled at the description of a part of the English government called the House of Lords, but it turned out that the name was about all that they shared with the position he understood from home. The King or the Queen was a lot closer to any Cybertronian Lord than anyone in Parliament. Once he got past that it was relatively easy to determine that their naming customs were still much the same as they'd been in 1906, and that they still made a fuss over reproduction outside of the structure of a bonded pair. Weird, but he supposed that if they incepted while the physical form was still constructing itself, it made sense to insist that two fully formed humans be present to ensure that someone could accomplish all necessary functions until the new incept came fully online.

For some reason virtually all the bonded pairs seemed to be one male, one female. He'd have to check out why that mattered later.

America, when Ironhide turned his attention that way, was prone to even more rapid social changes, although there were more humans there than in England. Apparently they had less social inertia despite their greater number. It might, he thought, have something to do with their government; they seemed to make a point of changing rulers a lot more often. Secretary of Defense Keller had mentioned that, but Ironhide hadn't been aware of just how often the changes happened. Possibly they were trying to burn through all of their mistaken leaders until they found a few worth keeping for a longer period? He'd have to ask about that... for now, there was something more important, and that was locating some part of the Web that could tell him about the Lennox ancestry. Captain Lennox was a good man, and Ironhide respected him as much as he respected any human, but if he shared genetic programming with that child in Milliways then Ironhide was going to have words with someone about the Captain's and Sarah's offspring.

Actually, he'd probably have words anyway, just to be on the safe side. Orientation and debriefing were vital to setting new incepts up on their best paths in life. With humans it seemed to be much the same. It just took longer to sink in.

Down the elevator and into the garage, and back to his normal size- that's a relief if anything ever was- and past all the other vehicles to the garage door. Ironhide's scanners pick up the immense heat of the sands of Qatar almost before the door begins to open. When he rolls through, it's straight from one garage to another- from Milliways to the SOCCENT facility, where Ratchet is waiting. The medic listens to Ironhide's tale with equanimity and perhaps a little irritation at seemingly being the only Autobot not to find his way to the strange place at the end of the universe.

When he hears about Ironhide's meeting with a different universe's Autobots he blurts something in Cybertronian that nearly scorches the paint off the walls, and then repeats himself when he hears about the effects of nucleon. Ironhide's pretty sure he's gonna be sharing the hangar with a mech in total sensor lockdown tonight. He knows what it looks like when Ratchet devotes all of his facilities to thinking through an unprecedented situation.

He'll tell him about the Nullspark another time.

---

Scorponok's on to them by now, Ironhide's sure of it. He keeps finding energy traces that fairly scream the Decepticon's presence- days-old traces- and every one of them leads to somewhere more blatantly inconvenient than the last. It's irritating, to say the very least. At this point, if he were to find the bug right on the other side of the next dune, there's a pretty good chance Ironhide'd go straight for what's left of his tail and start slamming him into the nearest solid objects at hand, just to blow off a little steam. Tracking something with that little processor power shouldn't be this difficult.

He's starting to understand humans who fish for things like trout. The first time, you do it because you're interested. The next time, you do it because you got it wrong the first time. After that you do it because you're not about to let something with less processor power than a calculator beat you.

---

They'll be going home soon. They've been here long enough and then some. They haven't found Scorponok yet, for all their trying. He's still there somewhere, though. They'll flush that bug out of the ground, or the humans will. Then it'll just be a matter of calling up Captain Lennox and getting him some leave, because if anyone deserves to see Scorpy get what's coming to him, it's Lennox.

Thing is.

Thing is, there haven't been any responses to their signals to the stars yet. Not that Ironhide expected any. It's been a couple of months since Prime started signaling. The only way anyone'd pick up on that is if they were already in-system or on their way to Earth. The nearest star hasn't got planets, and that's four years out at lightspeed. No one's gonna be answering for a while, and Ironhide knows it.

But the thing is that you spend long enough tootling around in the desert all on your own, or next to a mech who's too busy thinking to talk, and you get to thinking yourself. And you gotta wonder: who else is left? Who else are you ever gonna see again? How long before anyone hears, how long before they show up?

Does anyone else hear? Is there anyone left to hear?

There has to be, doesn't there? They can't all be offline...

Ironhide's not real good at being the philosophical, speculative kind of mech, so when Ratchet asks him what's got him so quiet all of a sudden the medic just gets a grunt.

He'll be outside shooting things for a while as they get ready to head back. Beats thinking.

Earth. What a planet. What a people... and what a mess. For all their good intentions, the thing Optimus had feared had come to pass: the Allspark was here, the Decepticons were here, and interstellar war was about to come to Earth.

Slaggit.

Ironhide has just enough respect for what he's seen of the more comprehensible aspects of the human species to remember his passenger, and to decide that he really does owe the sprite something better than the possibility of going into darkness. Not that he expects to get killed in battle, per se, but if it should happen, Bob deserves a better fate than that. It's not his fault he got stuck in the Cybertronian's systems.

So, when no one's looking, Ironhide shifts into alt mode and finds himself the nearest available publicly accessible computer that seems like its code should be reasonably compatible with Bob's own. It's a vending machine of some kind, but it's got a network connection. Once he's negotiated a link with the computer- okay, 'negotiated' is too nice a word, more like 'demanded and slagging well got'- he reactivates the stasis sector Bob's been stored in.

"Wake up, Bob. We're on Earth."

His avatar's changed. It's still his bot mode, but... well, Ironhide does like to show off. It wasn't all that hard to change it to match his new, part-Earth-aesthetic appearance.

It's a long slagging way to Earth from where Cybertron used to be. Most of the trip is in the past by now. When you're an organism that measures its lifespan in numbers that require scientific notation by human standards, a couple of decades left hardly mean anything at all.

Or they shouldn't mean anything at all, anyway. Nobody ever makes it to the end of the trip as placid as they were in the middle- and Ironhide's got another reason to look forward to Earth now. One that he figures deserves a crack at coming out of stasis lock once in a while.

"Hey, you," are the first words Bob hears when Ironhide reactivates his particular unit of storage. "Wake up. It's been ten years."