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The sky burned when Invictus Prime touched the Matrix.
Rumours on how he got it ran wild through Iacon - that he was an avenging spirit of Primus manifested in the wake of the previous Prime's violent death, if you asked the mechs living in the twilight levels where he first appeared; that he was actually a false Prime, a demon of the Underdark trying and failing to contain the power of Primus' blessing, if you asked those who really didn't want a Prime more dangerous than the last had been.
It was true that his steps had melted the metal under him, outside of the ground zero of his ascension. Very few thought to question the small, crumbling building that had been a clinic before it was bombed with the last Prime inside it.
Invictus circled the planet like an oncoming meteor. White fire burned around him, optics molten gold and phosphorous-flames warning of his approach, and even the comet trail of mechs he picked up could get only so close to him and no further. The Heads of the Towers fell screaming; the pit masters of Kaon threw hundreds of gladiator-slaves in his path, and only those who came at him with resignation and the choice of die, or die faster in their faces survived with their paint burned away to bare metal in places as marker, solid rounds melting in the air and laserfire refracting in the ache of white light and the masters picked off one by one by a gun firing a judgement that did not miss.
(The council of elders in Praxus met him quietly, and their people peered out with wide optics and sparklings in their arms as they talked on the city border. It seemed unreal, somehow, that the new Prime was so small, that the burning light around him could ebb close to his plating as well as flare to the stars in threat. The edible crystals of the public gardens glowed with a radiance never seen before as they spread in a wide carpet behind him as he walked away, not a single mech harmed in his wake.)
By the time he returned to Iacon, the horizon glowing with the oncoming sun of his presence, Iacon General had become the hub for the anti-Senate movement. The Autobots braced and winced as reports came in - Invictus Prime moving up through the city by the main grand highway, citizens fleeing and hiding, those Senators who'd tried to do the same being dragged screaming into the light by either Invictus himself or his followers. Most of them were puddles of molten metal, and by the time he reached the Senate compound where the old guard who'd killed Optimus and refused to cede power had gone to ground...
Well. They didn't need the Senate buildings anymore anyway, especially not full of holes.
Then Invictus turned towards the hospital, and like hell was Ratchet standing for that.
He waited, pedes braced and arms folded, the other Autobots standing at his back and refusing to run. The point of light making its way down from the Senate cliff was blinding, cold heat making sensors run wild - Primus' rage, mechs were calling it, and frankly Ratchet wasn't having any truck with it. He could treat a tyrant for radiation poisoning just as well as anyone else.
"If you think you're getting to my patients," he told the glowing figure as it came out into the ambulance drop-off zone, "then you've got another think coming."
Invictus stopped.
Ratchet blinked, then ran his optics through an immediate reset.
The light was pulling in on itself, the uncanny heat withdrawing, and as Invictus took one step - unsteady, like the metal below his pedes wasn't stable anymore - then another, molten golden optics fixed on Ratchet's face and then the features around them suddenly snapped into focus.
"Holy slag," Ratchet blurted, and took a step forward without thinking twice. "Drift?"
"I thought," Invictus rasped, and Ratchet was running before anything else registered, an alarmed leggy Towers-frame hovering at Drift's back with hands not-quite-touching but still closer than anyone else seemed to manage. "I thought they'd - Ratchet."
He tripped forward, and Ratchet lunged to catch him before his knees could hit metal. "Wait-!" the Towers-frame blurted, hands darting, but the flames were fading in curls of gentle radiance around his hands even as Ratchet reached out, harmless against his plating.
"I got you," he said, down on one knee on the cooling plate floor, unfamiliar armour and a familiar spark in his arms, Drift-Invictus-Drift's hands latching onto his plating and not letting go. "It's okay, kid, I got you. It's okay."