Chapter Text
Earth--6000 years, D.W. (during war)
The recorded memories played before her, forming the faces of ghosts long since perished. A small protoform rolled into view, its frame colorless. Only the tiny cockpit on its chest and wing-nubs on its back marked it as a flight frame. It stared up with orange optics that were too big for its head, wiggling its knobby limbs when it spotted her. She reached down a finger for it to grab but was instead met with tiny teeth clamping down around the digits. Elita watched as her hands reached down and scooped the sparkling protoform up.
Shortly after she had gotten fired from her position as a major in the Cybertronian army due to her fraternization with known rebels, she had begun to miss the thrill that commanding brought her. From what she knew, raising a sparkling didn’t seem to be too different from leading an army, at least from an intelligence stand point, so she had applied to be a mentor.
The protoform in the video leaned forward to try and bite one of the servos holding it, causing Orion to laugh from off camera.
Elita wouldn’t have done this if she knew the coming war would be as bad as it was. Especially if she knew how big a role she would play in it.
The sound of blaring alarms broke through her thoughts. Elita quickly ended the recording and ran out of her chamber to where the troops were gathering. There was certainly one thing she had been right about. Leading an army was a lot like raising a whiny protoform.
Elita made her way to the front of the crowd and took her place next to Optimus Prime as his second in command. She shook her head to clear the tired fog of grief that had settled over her processor. It was times like these that she looked forward to battle the most. There was nothing like defeating an army of Decepticons to get your mind off of internal pain.
The battle was just as chaotic as she had imagined.
Elita set her sights on where two combaticons were scrambling to gather up as much energon as they could carry. She ran toward them, transforming halfway there, and barreled into them. She transformed back into her bipedal mode shortly before coming to a stop.
The car scanned the battlefield for her leader, and finally spotted him fighting his mortal enemy in a part of the mine that sloped down into a ring of rocks, similar to the gladiatorial pits in Kaon. Optimus swung his axe at Megatron’s helm, but the warlord’s reaction was apace. While the Prime was distracted with his miss, Megatron slammed his fist into his former comrade, sending him flying across the makeshift arena.
The warlord continued to advance on her leader and conjunx, an odious grin cutting a crescent across his face. Optimus rose up to meet the challenge, but it was clear that he had taken some hits before she had spotted him. Her Prime would survive, of course, but he wouldn’t win the way he was currently fighting.
A small distance away, Starscream was hovering just above the arena, watching the fracas from the shadows with a calculating look in his orange optics. Perfect.
She leapt from her position, twisting in the air with well-practiced precision and landing a swift and heavy blow to the side of his helm, knocking him to the ground.Elita put all her weight on the pede that she pressed against Starscream’s chest, sending small cracks across the glass of his cockpit. She pressed her blaster against the Seeker’s helm, tilting the weapon so that Megatron could see the settings were set to kill.
“Hey!” she shouted.
Both Optimus and Megatron turned in her direction, momentarily pausing their tussle.
Elita scowled at the warlord, the muzzle of her blaster pressing harder against his second’s helm. “Let him go,” she demanded. “Or I pull the trigger.”
The expression on Megatron’s facial plates shifted from the pure, unfiltered hatred he normally wore into a look of boredom and mild annoyance. “You won’t.”
“Try me.”
Starscream struggled beneath her, casting a pleading look at his leader. Megatron allowed a small smirk to grace his facial plates. “Oh, Elita-One,” he said, mockingly. “I know that even you wouldn’t harm your own sparkling.”