The Monster of Kaon (Transformers Si): Chapter 8

"…Mistress? May I ask a question?"

"You already did, young one, but go ahead."

"Why is it that he always gets the largest portions of the Energon rations while even the torchbearers do not get as much, especially now that the resources of our world are so low?"

"Come now, Pyra, where is this coming from?"

"Mistress! You forbade us from confiscating his laser cannon, you even had the Forgefire Parliament revoke my request to have his frame changed to a low-powered one like the rest of our people."

The Mistress of Flame, the spiritual leader of the Planet Caminus, fell silent at the protest of her young friend and leader of the Torchbearers, Pyra Magna.

"……Pyra, what brought this on? Tell me the truth."

"Mistress, the last of our ships have just been grounded due to the lack of Energon. We are bringing all of our people back from their exploration, and worse yet, our relationship with Eukaris is getting worse by the cycle which means that our ability to get our hands on more Energon or information about the rest of the galaxy is going to be cut off sooner or later."

"So, in light of this, you believe he is unworthy of getting more Energon, our very source of existence, than everyone else? Despite everything he has done for us in the past few thousand Meta-Cycles since he arrived here? Ignoring the fact that it was because of his diplomatic ability that we managed to make a deal with Eukaris and the tribes of Onyx Prime in the first place?"

This time, it was the young leader of the Torchbearers, the most Elite unit of soldiers on the planet, who fell silent at the question.

"…I am not belittling all the work he has done for us in all the time he has spent on Caminus, neither am I suggesting we put him in stasis because we cannot afford the high upkeep he requires to function. I am simply asking you to change his form to something more economical, just like we have done with everyone else on the planet, including yourself."

"Pyra, what do you know of how our people are born?"

The young captain of the Torchbearers looked confused at being asked such an elementary question.

"Our people are born from the spark of our Titan, just like all other colonies of ancient Cybertron. Once every few hundred Meta-Cycles, our Titan's spark swells in power and gives birth to new sparks that are placed in protoform bodies that our Blacksmiths create before the event. All of Caminus celebrates the birth of the young ones when they change the protoform to match their sparks, gaining their uniqueness thanks to the fact that their protoforms are created from Sentio Metallico, a lesser form of Cybermatter created from concentrated Energon and regular Cyber-steel. This is elementary knowledge that all Camieans know, why are you asking me this?"

The Mistress of Flame looked into the distance, where she knew a large cave existed, carved into the face of a mountain through the power of an overpowered laser weapon and served as the home of a bot that had lost all faith in others.

"Unlike the rest of the Camiens, those on the Forgefire Parliament and I are the only remaining bots that originally came from Cybertron. It is the reason why, we were the last ones to undergo the process of transferring our sparks from our old bodies into these economy models."

"I don't understand. What does that have anything to do with my question or yours?"

"Do you know what the Cybertronians call the process by which young Camieans are born? It is a process that is called Cold Constructed, and it is a title that carries a significant stigma and discrimination on Cybertron."

The Mistress just laughed at the affronted look on the young captain's face.

"It might be unthinkable to you and the rest of our people, but you must understand, Cybertron is the world blessed by the Primes, literally. It is the home to the Well of All-Spark, the source of all Cybertronian life, where sparks are born and given form from the massive well containing the sacred essence of Primus, the pools of Cybermatter. These pools are blessed by the very essence and relics of some of the 13 primes. For a bot born of such a sacred process, to be born and given form from the very essence of Primus and the blessing of the Primes, our way of birth is an affront, an abomination. It is one of the reasons why those of the various colonies were seen as lesser back during the times when we all were still connected by the Space Bridge network."

"It is also the reason why, despite having left Cybertron behind for millions of Meta-Cycles, we, the first colonizers of Camiens, were still apprehensive about changing our bodies in such a way, and while I believe he would not mind it, I wish to spare him the pain of changing his spark from his body a once again."

"Still, what are we to do about his Energon consumption?"

"We will find a way, as we always do. Besides, even if I had not interfered and stopped your request, the Forgefire Parliament would have still rejected it."

"Why?"

"Because it would go against our teachings, the Way of The Flame, to force our will upon one that has been blessed by a Prime, even more so, when that blessing originates from our very creator, Solus herself, or at least, from someone that has been blessed by Solus."

The way the captain's face twisted from disbelief to awe was something that the Mistress had predicted and the reason why she disclosed this secret that only she and the Parliament knew about. Not even the bot in question knew about his unique identity among the rulers of this planet.

While the Parliament believed the crashlanding of his stasis pod on this planet to be divine intervention from Solus herself, she knew it was probably sheer luck that he landed where he did. From the telemetric data she managed to retrieve from his pod, it was meant to travel to a distant world in a star system with 9 main planets and a few exo-planets, with the third planet from the star being the original destination.

The only reason why the pod fell on Caminus was that their Titan had awakened momentarily to give birth to their young, causing a disturbance in the local gravitational pull around the planet while spooling up his transportation systems, causing the stasis pod to drop out of sub-light warp and crash on Caminus. Of course, she had been the one to erase this data from the pod along with another data packet of catastrophic implications for both her people and for the bot himself.

"If that is true, why does he hate our way of life, or rather, our worship of the 13 Primes so much?"

The Mistress could not bring herself to tell the truth to the young and naïve Captain. That the bot hated the Primes to his Spark, so much so that the mere mention of their name would give rise to so much rage in him, that even without a faceplate to express his emotions, they were felt by everyone nearby all the same.

She did not know just what happened on Cybertron to give rise to such hatred for the Primes, she has made many educated guesses based on the details she managed to get out of him during many of their talks about his past and her own, but she never managed to get the full truth out of him. she wished that he would learn to let go of this hatred, whatever the reason for it may be, if only for his own good than anyone else. It was not healthy for a bot to dedicate so much of their emotional matrix's processing power to a singular emotion.

"….That is something that I cannot answer since I do not know the reason. What I do know is that it would not last long, especially if Windblade has anything to say about it."

At the mention of the young femme that was only born a hundred Meta-Cycles ago, even the always serious captain could not help but sigh with fond exasperation.

"That femme, she is too wilful. That other Joor, I had to drag her away from the Arena since she was too engrossed in the air race that was happening there, she was so distracted that she forgot it was her first Joor of training as a prospective Cityspeaker."

The two femmes shared a laugh at the mischievous acts of the youngling.

Pyra looked thoughtful before speaking again as they nearly reached their destination, the main chambers where the Mistress of the Flame resides. A massive chamber was surrounded by the statues of the thirteen primes, with the statue of Solus Prime being the largest and closest to the massive throne that was placed at the center of the chamber.

"If anyone can make that bot speak more than one word in a conversation, it would be Windblade. She is too persistent to let him be and too ignorant to take any hint when he wants her gone."

This time, it was the Mistress who looked surprised as she slowly took her place on the throne. A look that Pyra caught and gave a wry smile.

"I do not hate him, Mistress. In fact, I have nothing but respect for him, especially after you told me about his connection with a Prime, but my respect for him has nothing to do with my necessity to do my duty as a Torchbearer, one that protects our people and their interests."

The Mistress's faceplate did not change, but she was truly proud of the young femme. It spoke well of her character that she would separate her personal feelings from her duty to her people. It was also the reason why the Mistress had elevated the young femme to the position of captain despite the many protests from the Parliament.

Her musing came to an end as a Blacksmith ran into her chambers.

"Mistress! Please help! Windblade has-"

"Let me guess, she tried to use the Forges by herself, again, and caused injury to herself, again."

"Yes! But that is not all, she somehow managed to drag Chromia into her schemes as well. Now, they are trapped under the collapsed rubble of the Cyber-Steel forge and none of our equipment is strong enough to cut through the debris."

The Mistress leaned into her throne and sighed, a sight that had become much more common since the troublemaker that is Windblade was born.

"…I'll call Maximus. I hope he is in the mood for some manual labor because Windblade is getting some real talking to from him if he is not."

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The Mistress of Flame:


Pyra Magna:



Windblade:



Chromia: