One

A/N: I never have, and I never will own Transformers or their characters. I simply wrote this plot. So please read and review :)

"Ratchet, are you positive that this is where the source of the energon signal originated from?" Optimus Prime inquired grimly over the com link. The Autobot's mighty footfalls shook the ground as he carefully navigated through the dense forest, one servo against his helm in anticipation of the medic's answer.

"Of course," Ratchet said over the connection, "My readings are hardly inaccurate, even with this scrapping human technology. Why, is something wrong?"

Optimus finally reached the edge of the tree line, and spread out below him shone the lights of a small town. But most troubling, was that hanging above them, darker than the night sky itself, was the Nemesis.

The Prime lifted a digit to activate his com again. "I am afraid that something is very wrong, old friend."

.

In a bedroom with walls painted cream and emblazoned with a child's multitudinous drawing, a little blonde girl awoke.

She sat up in bed, pushing her pink comforter aside and yawned, tiredly rubbing her eyes. She did not know what had woken her, and she didn't give it any thought as she carefully climbed out of bed, tugging her furry pink bear loose of its blanket restraints.

Padding into the hall, dragging her bear behind her, the girl walked over to her parents' bedroom. Standing outside the door, the child heard a faint thrumming in the distance. Still, she paid the abnormality no heed.

She turned the doorknob, poking her head into the gloom of the bedroom. On the king-sized bed in the center of the room she faintly made out the slumbering forms of her mother and father.

As soon as her eyes had adjusted enough, the girl softly waded in, leaving the door open behind her. Walking over to her father's side of the bed, she tugged on his hand.

"Huh? Wha…?" he mumbled incoherently, sleep clouding his vision as he lifted his head from the pillow.

"Daddy," the little girl sniveled, clutching her bear tightly to her chest, "I….I can't sleep."

"Nightmare?" her father slurred. She shook her head.

"Then go back to bed, honey," he muttered, allowing his head to collapse back into the sanctity of his pillow. "Daddy needs sleep because he goes to work early tomorrow."

The child whimpered, her hold on the bear tightening. "But Daddy–"

"Go back to sleep, kiddo."

In moments the girl's father was back under and snoring loudly. She sniffed morosely, hugging her bear, when the thrumming from before became more pronounced.

Sniffing and wiping her eyes, the girl left her parents' bedroom; her curiosity aroused, and walked into the living rom. The large window behind the couch was covered, curtains drawn over it, but beyond them an unearthly blue light glowed fiercely.

As she made her way over, the thrumming became a buzzing sound, like what the electric bug zapper on the porch made, and her ears began ringing from the force of it.

The child finally managed to clamber onto the couch, and bravely pulled the curtains aside. The blue light instantly enveloped her, and she had to squint against the brightness. After a few seconds the radiance subsided, and the scene that met the girl made her eyes widen, and her bear nearly fell from her embrace.

Above her sleepy town was an enormous ship, like ones she'd seen in an alien movie with her father. It was blacker than black, and it blocked out the moon and stars, and the blinding light had just been coming from it.

Before she could wonder whether they were good aliens or not, another light was fired from the ship's underbelly, but this one a luminous garnet color. It shot straight down, into the center of town, and the earth shook.

The girl nearly fell from her perch on the couch from the force of the explosion, and though she didn't know it, the blast had destroyed every single building in the middle of her community.

Seconds after the blast, a glowing shockwave extended outward, like the ripples in a pond. The beam from the ship continued bearing down.

And the little girl watched in horror as the brilliant, blood red light rushed towards her, casting terrifying shadows and stark figures over her features. Her pink bear fell from her hands just as the shockwave enveloped her.

.

Amid the thick smoke and debris an enormous humanoid figure stood, pillar like legs surrounded by the carcasses of fallen Decepticons, his head bowed in mourning for the souls he had been unable to save. Optimus Prime's battle mask retracted at the same time as his energon soaked blade, almost soundlessly. Looking down at the wreckage of a home below him, the Autobot leader spotted something pink among the rubble. With more care than someone his size should've possessed, he lifted the small pink lump, allowing it to fall into his palm. A pair of button eyes and the stitched smile of a burned stuffed bear looked back at him.

Optimus Prime shuttered his optics, softly cycling air through his vents. "I am…sorry," he murmured to both the young owner of the stuffed creature and the hundred others who had perished.

"Optimus?" The medic's voice came over the com, respectfully soft and cautious. "The town…?"

"The town is no more, Ratchet," Optimus Prime answered wearily, sorrow in his optics and permanently set into his faceplates.

Ratchet was silent for several moments. "And the Decepticons?"

"Have exhumed the energon they had come for," the Prime said. The medic was quiet again. "I will arrive back at base shortly," he continued, "And I will call for a GroundBridge."

"Very well, Optimus." The line fell silent, and the gangly Autobot returned his attention to the wreckage, the various buildings lying around him like collapsed matchstick houses, and had fallen just as easily. In the center of what had once been a town, a hundred feet long, was a deep scar—the crater that proved the Decepticons' plan had come to fruition, and all that was left as proof of their beam beside the devastation around the Prime. It was a symbol of his failure to protect his new home.

And then his optics flickered, returning to the child's toy in his massive palm.

Optimus Prime couldn't allow himself to look at the burned cadavers of the townspeople…those very people who he had sworn to protect, just as he'd sworn to do for his Autobots. And how many had fallen since their endless war had begun? The stuffed bear symbolized them—their innocence, perhaps not in life, but in their war. His war. He couldn't look for the little girl who the bear had once belonged to. He couldn't abide salvaging them. Somehow, seeing their small broken forms was nearly as horrible as seeing his own soldiers the same way. Almost.

Bowing his helm once more, Optimus Prime addressed all who had fallen.

"Till all are one."

Bending down on one knee, he returned the scorched bear to his shattered home and radioed Ratchet for a GroundBridge.

.

Later, when all of the humans at the site had been buried, the Prime would go to their memorial, and leave the same bear leaning against the marble of the monument. He never did learn the name of the little girl who it had belonged to.