Grim Tidings

Ch 1

It was night on "Robot Island" as media had dubbed it, ever since the so called Pyramid Incident it had been on the news. Aside from one official statement that the robots where not highly advanced japanese warmachines/toys or similar, there had only been silence. Weeks passed and the world waited for a more thorough statement. Officials had been invited from all over the world, the date had been set to the 22 may, not a special date to many, but to the Autobots it marked the third anniversary of their landing.

There were plans of a press conference, press releases, and of course, t-shirts coffee cups and all sorts of merchandise. This had all been Simmons idea, at first they had ignored him, but after some consideration.. it seemed smarter and smarter. They'd sell it off and make tons of money on it, money that would be used to fund NEST operations.

However this was still a bit off, and Optimus Prime thought that this was something best left to the humans. He had other matters to attend to. A signal had arrived from deep space, and he was deeply disturbed. "Why now" he often asked himself. He had not brought it up with Ironhide yet. He didn't know how to give him the news. After all it was a joyous occasion. Or was it?

Aerial intakes took in cold air in what seemed like a sigh. "Something wrong Prime?" Lennox asked, walking into Primes hangar with a cup of coffee in his hand, Lennox had been growing quite attached to the Autobot leader. Even if Lennox himself was the official leader of the NEST island everyone knew that it was Prime who was the true leader there. He may have been a machine, but through some strange machination he made you WANT to follow him. No questions asked, Prime said, you obeyed, and you did it gladly with extra effort on the top.

"No, nothing is wrong.. on the contrary actually." Primes tone indicated otherwise. Lennox had never heard Prime speak like that, he'd stared down the abyss with this machine, and not even in the darkest hour had Prime sounded hesitant.

"I may not be a mind reader Prime, but we all know it, your soldiers as well, I had a talk with Ironhide before coming to you as well." He looked out through the open doors in the hangar bay, watching the sun set in the distance. "He figures it is about the encrypted signal you recieved, our own satellites detected it by mistake, we asked 'Hide if he recognized the signals, he said it was autobot encryption, Squad commander to leader encryption. Trouble brewing?"

Prime once again sighed. "Possibly.." He looked at the human. "Not as much for you as for me though." Lennox voice took a scolding tone. "Ey.. we are in this together Prime, out with it."

Lennox knew that if Prime had one weakness, it was his inability to let others help him..

Prime nodded. "I appreciate the thought Major Lennox, however this is not a matter that can be solved by humans."

Realizing that Lennox might have been offended by his comment he added:

"I'll explain, it is a story from the very beginnings of the Cybertronian civil war" Prime played a holographic video, a somewhat brighter Cybertron than Lennox had previously seen.

"I was just getting used to my role as a faction leader, and the civil war was nothing more than minor skirmishes between other factions." He paused, and the holographic vid changed to what seemed to be a debriefing room on Cybertron. Prime was there, as was Ironhide and Ratchet, and several others Lennox did not recognize.

"We had heard of an illegal gladiator ring on one of our moons, it didn't seem to important. One of my soldiers, Guile volunteered." A large bot, maybe a head higher than Prime, and even more massive shoulders left the room.

Lennox wondered where this would lead, The autobots had told them a lot of their history, but since one could live for more than a hundred thousand years, it was hard to imagine that they'd ever be able to tell anyone everything.

"I considered Guile to be a possible successor should I be deactivated, as well as a good friend." Primes optics dimmed.

"He volunteered. He took the trip to the moon, and the last we heard was that contact had been established, he had applied as a combatant in the arena, and we where supposed to strike before the match begun. However…"

Primes holo displayed a scene. One attack on a single security station escalated, and like wildfire it spread, across the whole planet. Civil war had truly begun

"We lost all contact with the moon. It was now a Decepticon stronghold, 227 of your years passed before we mounted an assault to take it back. I had since long given up hope to find Guile, or even any remains of him. However, after a few days of fighting we where at the doorsteps of their HQ but as we entered, we where met by this gruesome sight.

The holo shifted to what seemed to be Prime's own point of view. He had entered a corridor, decorated with the remains of decepticon warriors. Torn to pieces, one with its own arm buried in it's chest

"What the.." Lennox heard Ironhides voice, the holomachine redubbed the original voices to english.

"Stay alert" Prime said as he kneeled beside a fallen decepticon.

Lennox was no robot CSI master but he could see that all wounds had been inflicted by blunt force trauma or blades. He had seen what Sideswipe could do with a sword, but this was something different, instead of millimeter precision this was chaotic, random and brutal.

"They where surprised." Jazz's voice was heard, Lennox could see that Prime looked something that could only be described sad as he heard his fallen friends voice.

The holographic Jazz couldn't notice this and continued to speak from the past. "Two gunshots from six, no.. seven armed deceps." He pointed at two bullet holes in the wall.

"Whomever did this where on them in an instant, moved on to the next before the previous one hit the floor, and only the last one had time to shoot, judging by the heat in the gun barrel, he also missed despite beeing in the face of his opponent."

"Conclusion? We're dealing with a highly skilled dude here."

The autobots moved down the corridors of the hallway. Only finding crushed, maimed and otherwise destroyed decepticons.

"I don't like this one bit." Ironhide said as they closed in on the briefing room of the base, all tracks lead there, however they had found two additional entrypoints, and two similar tracks of bodies who had converged on each other. There seemed to be two others who also had a penchant for ripping into decepticons.

Now they had arrived at a door, Prime took position in front of it, Jazz and Ironhide at his sides with the rest of their troops down the halls. Prime nodded to Jazz who opened the door by pressing the console beside it. All three rushed in.

What met them were three robots, two whom Lennox didn't recognize, and the third was oddly familiar. Metallic black head, mouthplate, faded yellow body

"That's the Guile fellow?" Prime didn't answer. Instead the hologram did.

"Guile?" Prime had asked back then. The autobot had scars all over the metal, but no serious damage. However where he used to have a brightly lit blue visor, a red one took its place.

"Guile waited for 130 years, like brave soldier he fought in arena.. again and again, not wanting to die, he knew Prime would come." The robot replied. His voicebox sounded damaged

"Dear god.." Lennox said. He could not imagine what kind of hell that arena had been.

The video continued.

"One day, Guile face autobot in arena. Old damaged autobot, Guile could not kill him, despite knowing both die otherwise. Old autobot pleaded that Guile kill him so one might live. Guile faded as he crushed old ones spark.. left was only me, Grimlock. "

The hologram faded, and Prime continued "Grimlock rejoined the Autobots. But he was different."

~ No wonder~ Lennox thought

"Once he was as devout as me to the Autobot cause, now he sees things differently. Instead of fighting to protect, he fights only to fight, to rid the universe of Decepticons, and he doesn't care if anyone gets caught in the middle, And he has a slight problem with the chain of command"

"I've met some people who are like that.. Not giant alien robots of course." Lennox looked at Prime.

"Look, I can see where this is going Prime, but I'd like to hear it from you"

Prime nodded "This is the message that I received"

"Me, my team, and stragglers we found arrive in three days, help you clean out mess."

Even if he was a robot, you could hear it in his voice, Grimlock was not a robot who'd take a no for an answer, and there was a certain menacing quality to the way he said "clean out"

Lennox rubbed his temples, He had hoped it would have been a more simple problem than this.

"Prime.. say Grimlock fights a decepticon in a suburb, and a schoolbus is not able to get away in time, what would he do. Worst case scenario"

"Worst case.. He'd grab the bus and smash the decepticon with it, repeatedly."

Lennox spoke up with a sarcastic tone.

"And he decides to show up the week before we start promoting Earth/Autobot relations.. nice"

"Indeed." Prime added.