I am so sorry to whoever read this before... I have no idea how the programming, so can somebody please explain that to me? Anyway, I thought of this months and months ago as a back story for our favorite hero: Optimus Prime, but only started typing recently. Enjoy! Please review if you like it, and also if you don't.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Transformers: Prime or the Transformers franchise.

Piow. Piow. Piow. The PA system rang out once, then twice, then thrice, signaling the end of classes.

"And the day is over! Yes!" Ratchet grinned as he and his friend got up from their places and walked out of the classroom. Ratchet had been sparked in the engineering caste and so, he was a little bulky, but in a way that made him seem athletic rather than fat. But rather than engineering, he'd always had more of an interest in biology. He had an orange and white paintjob, with longish, thoughtful features that were now spread in a grin.

Orion Pax, Ratchet's closest friend, looked disappointed, however. He had been sparked in the archivist caste, which lent him a natural affinity for books and the like. He was tall for his age and indeed, for his caste, with a bright blue and red finish. "Aw, I was actually enjoying history."

They turned into a narrow, dimly lit hall in order to ride the flow out of the academic building. Ratchet made a face. "Not me. History is equal parts boring and useless." Orion looked a little offended at this assumption. "That's not true. Through history we can-"

Ratchet rolled his optics. "Don't give me another lecture." Orion was famous in their little circle of friends for doing just that. In a way, he was proud of it; he was the voice of caution in their group and who the others looked to any kind of moral advice. But the same thing sometimes made him seem annoying sometimes. He smiled a little half-smile.

They walked out with all the other students of 9A. They were each 9 vorns old and the top of their grade, hence 9A. 9B and 9C students followed them, adding to the tide of brightly colored younglings rushing out of the burnished steel double doors.

The duo stood out of the way and just off the quiet road to wait for Jazz. He was in 9C, a fact that he was very proud of. In truth, academics did not interest him in the least. Long hours in class made him irritable, despite Ratchet and Orion's repeated advice to pay attention. He was short and stocky, with a gold and black finish and tiny red highlights. He also had an appreciable voice. Singing was Jazz's favorite pass time. Orion sometimes wished he could sing like that.

Jazz pushed through quickly with a sly grin and a "Hey, yeah!" as he had been doing for the past few solar cycles. He greeted them with a new expression every few cycles. Sometimes their peculiarity made them all laugh.

They talked for a while. The rest of their friends were all a vorn younger than them, so they had been let out a cycle earlier – only 6, 9, 12 and 15 A, B and C were let out at this time. Orion was glad to have some time to talk, since they otherwise didn't meet - 9A and 9C had breaks at different times and Orion occasionally missed Jazz's lighthearted company. Eventually, though, most of the crowd dispersed, so they decided to roll, too. They all went their own separate ways as they all lived in different parts of Iacon.

Orion clutched the datapad he was holding close as he started off. He hadn't told any of his friends, but he had been dreading going home alone since the last groon.

They always made him a target.

Sure enough, here they were.

"Hehe, here's Mr. Shiny again." said a mocking voice. Orion felt irritated, as he always did, at the nickname. Keeping his paintjob neat was a matter of decency, he felt, and not vanity. But he ignored the voice, kept his helm low and attempted to move on. A pair of pedes appeared in his line of vision, blocking his way.

Orion did not like swearing but this time he felt that the occasion demanded it. "You can't escape us." said a devilish looking ultramarine blue mech. "I'm trying anyway." Orion back answered. He'd had enough of their bullying. He tried to run past, but a pair of strong arms caught him and threw him down onto the ground. Coolant stung his optics from the impact.

"Oooh, Shiny's crying." Orion glared at them as he sat up and wiped the tears away immediately. If there was something he hated doing, it was crying. He looked to his side to find the datapad shattered, a big crack going through its normally vibrant screen. He groaned. That was the third one. His carrier, a strict, no-nonsense femme, would be very, very mad.

He looked back at them again. They were all from 12C and a higher caste than his, that much was clear, but he didn't know their names. A servo shot out in front of him. "Credits. Now." The ultramarine mech demanded. Orion meekly took the card out of his subspace – he didn't have a choice. He felt humiliated, angry and scared of what they would do to him if he didn't comply. The older mechs laughed, loaded all of his credits on to their cards and sped away. "Catch ya later, Shiny!"

Orion pulled himself up with more than a little reluctance and began to trudge his weary way home. He didn't bother to try to salvage the datapad.

The sky was overcast with giant purplish-reddish cloud formations. Acid rain. Wonderful. He would have to hurry. As a youngling, his armor was still soft and as such, if he got caught in the rain for too long, the acid cold burn holes in his armor. It had never happened to him before, but he was quite sure that it wasn't pleasant.

He walked on, trying to forget what had just happened. It was of no use telling the instructors anything. Anyway, a few 12C higher caste students picking on a lower caste was some thing they couldn't help. He wished that he was already grown up and he had an awesome, fast alt mode. Then he could really leave them in the dust. Orion smiled at the thought. He pushed it away immediately, though - he knew that his caste usually had alt-modes suitable for hauling cargo. Whatever he would to get would be far from flashy or speedy.

He heard the clatter of light trods, breaking him out of his reverie. He looked up and a whirlwind force knocked into him and Orion tumbled over for the second time that day. "By Primus, what-" he started angrily and stopped just as quick.

A short, nimble looking femme, maybe a few vorns younger than him had slammed into him. She was from a low caste; it was quite obvious from her paintjob - or rather, the lack of one. Lower castes were not allowed paintjobs. In young Orion's optics, this only served to create a bigger divide between the upper and lower castes, but he had learned long ago not to question the system.

Instead he turned his attention to reining in all his suppressed anger and irritation that would have exploded at the femme. She was now lying dizzily on the road. Orion got up. He figured that it was really just as much his fault as hers; he hadn't been looking where he'd been going either, after all. He was about to offer her a hand in order to pull her up, when he heard the typical honk of a racer.

The racer was orange and had a beautiful, sleek alt mode that was probably the envy of all of Iacon, but right now Orion needed to pull the femme off the road, quick, or she would be scrap in seconds. He heaved with all his might - physical stuff wasn't really his area - and got her out of the way just in time. Stupid racer, he thought as he propped the dazed femme up. "Are you okay?"

Blue optics with pretty purple rings met his own baby blue.

And then she bolted.

Like a complete idiot, he ran after her.

She dashed across the now empty road, went parallel for a while, took a turn, and then another and then another. Orion had no idea where she was heading, since he'd never gone this way before, but he got the sense that they were somewhere in Iacon's deepest bowels. Orion was panting in a matter of moments, while the femme never slowed her stride. But Orion was not a quitter. He wanted to talk to the femme whose life he had saved.

Eventually he saw that even she was beginning to tire. "Hey, wait up!" But she only increased her pace. Orion realized that she was afraid of him. But why? He couldn't understand it.

After a while, she slowed again. It was evident that she'd expended all her energy in that final spurt. But Orion did not do the same, instead using this opportunity to try and reclaim a little long-lost ground.

A final turn and he was in a long alley with a dead end. The femme appeared to almost give up - she was quite tuckered out. Orion, too, was gasping to vent. She reached the dead end, a high metal wall, stopped and turned around.

Orion stopped, too. Those entrancing optics met his again, this time filled with both fear and a defiant will. He recognized that look and realized that it was the same look that he had worn when he was being attacked by those younglings from 12C. They gazed at each other, sizing them up as they caught their breath.

"Hey." he said bleakly, breaking the stare. "I-I'm not going to hurt you." He raised his servos up in a position of surrender. She gave him a dubious look.

"I had a bad day too, see?" He offered. She gave him another look, as if saying, Really? I bet you don't even know what a bad day is.

Then Orion had an idea. He reached into his subspace - slowly, so as not to startle her - and brought out an energon treat. He'd brought two to school to trade with Spinner, a friend of his in 6B, but Spinner had come down with a virus and hence, had been absent. Orion had eaten one in the break at school. Now there was only one remaining. He held it out to her as a kind of peace offering. Didn't all younglings like energon treats, after all? "Here, have it."

Her optics darted here and there, as though she suspected it to be some kind of trick. "Here, I mean it. You look kind of hungry." That, Orion realized quickly, was an understatement. She looked as though she'd been surviving on merely half a cube. Classics signs of energon deprivation included a dull mesh color, nervous behavior and dim optics and as Ratchet would have been proud to conclude, the femme showed all three. There was a certain desolate air to her that made him feel no small amount of pity.

Orion was about to offer it to her again, when, quicker than lightning, her digits shot out and snatched it from his. He watched, a little indignant, as she pushed it into her subspace. He guessed that she was saving it for later. "Thanks." She said in a small voice. Then, "Do you have any more?"

Orion smiled and shrugged apologetically. "No, I'm sorry. That was the last one."

Thanks." She repeated again. "For saving me back there."

"Uh…yeah." He said awkwardly. Accepting praise was not really his thing. "You're welcome… By the way, I'm Orion Pax. Though, well, most call me Orion. What's your name?"

The young femme said it hesitantly. "RC-13. It's not much of a name, but it works, I suppose."

"I'll just call you RC. " Orion suggested. RC shrugged. "Sure."

"The first drop of acid rain hit his helm, making him yelp in surprise. "It's raining." noted RC with more curiosity than caution. Orion groaned. "I'll never make it home in time."

"Where is it?" RC wondered. Orion sighed. "It's all the way in Dafelix sector."

"Yeah, that is far away." she agreed. After a moment's consideration, she said, "You could come with me…"

"Where?" Orion asked. From the look of RC, one might doubt she had any sort of accommodation in the first place. "You'll see." Was her only reply.

For people who are confused about the whole RC/RC-13/Arcee thing, it's done on purpose. It's canon that low castes didn't have names, I think. Again, I'm sorry to the people who read this when it was covered in programming and could some please tell me how to avoid that? Thanks.