Optimus and Megatron woke up in a black void. They looked around, missing each other at first and thinking their optics were offline, then they spotted each other. “Where are we?” asked Megatron.
“I wish I knew,” replied Optimus.
“You are in a simulation of the void before stars,” explained a voice. The two bots turned to see a humanoid creature in black and white robes approach them. The face was that of a monkey’s, the hands had four digits instead of five, and it looked male. He wore a gold multi-faceted sphere on a chain around his neck. The creature grinned as Optimus and Megatron’s optics widened.
“Vector Sigma?” asked Optimus.
“I am,” replied the creature. “This is what I once was.”
“You were a monkey?” scoffed Megatron.
“Vok, actually.” Megatron took a while to realize what Vector Sigma said.
“…Vok?”
“Hold on, THE Vok?” asked Optimus. “I thought they were an energy-based race.”
“I thought they were a myth.”
“We are no myth,” replied Vector Sigma. “We once had no physical form you could comprehend, so, for the sake of your understanding, I will mark them with the images of your data-trax on us.” It was then that they all heard what sounded like someone weeping.
“Who’s that?!” asked Optimus.
“She had no name until we gave her one,” replied Vector Sigma. “She is the void around us. We gave her the name…Umbra.”
“…You called her Shadow?”
“That’s what she was. This is where our tale of long ago begins.”
“I’ve always been a sucker for long-ago tales!”
“Then permit me to tell it. Before the universe began, Umbra constantly wept her shadowy tears. She was alone, with no one to talk to. Because of that, she went mad with grief and loneliness. As she wept, nothing was created.” Just then, a second weeper was heard. A light then floated through the void. “It was then that a new being arrived on its lonely journey. Like Umbra, this being wept at being the only one of her kind. We gave her the name of Lux.” The collective weeping was then replaced with sniffling as Lux stopped. “The two then found each other and began to ask one another questions.”
“Who are you?” asked one woman’s voice.
“I have no name,” replied another. “You?”
“I also have no name,” answered the first. “What are you?”
“I believe I am…Light. You?”
“I think I am…Darkness.”
“Why are you sad?”
“I am alone.”
“As am I.”
“You have no one like you? I am sorry.”
“Are you just as cursed?”
“I am. No one is Darkness like me.”
“…Perhaps, we alone don’t need others like us to no longer feel lonely.”
“You wish to be with me?”
“You seem to understand my pain. Would you let me be with you?”
“…I see no reason to refuse.” Just then, an explosion occurred between them.
“That,” Vector Sigma chuckled to the startled bots, “was the result of beings of Light and Darkness touching each other. Look now at the results.” The void was soon filled with stars.
“So beautiful!” breathed Umbra. There was now a distinct ball of shadow roughly the same size as the ball of light Lux was. “We made this!”
“Light and Dark work best together!” The two beings then laughed in joy and danced near each other.
“Okay, so their contact was the catalyst for the Big Bang that birthed the universe,” remarked Megatron. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“The story is not over yet, Young Megatron,” replied Vector Sigma. As Lux and Umbra danced, their energies created new shapes, floating skulls with glowing eyes. “That is what we once were before we became solid.”
“…Rather creepy,” muttered Optimus. The Early Vok then came to Lux and Umbra.
“You have birthed us directly,” spoke one of the Early Vok. “Who are you?”
“…We…have no name,” replied Lux.
“We were so overjoyed in making this universe,” continued Umbra, “that we never named ourselves.”
“Would you like us to name you?” asked another.
“Yes, please!”
“Lady of Light, you shall be Lux.”
“I am Lux, then!”
“Lady of Darkness, you shall be Umbra.”
“I am Umbra!” Lux, Umbra, and the Early Vok then journeyed through the stars.
“As we wandered the universe,” explained Vector Sigma, “we soon found life that existed in various states! They were all single-formed, unlike us, so our Mothers decided to help us all understand life…by creating a home, Voksphere.”
A cube with purple energy thrashing inside it drifted throughout the cosmos. It then got caught in a planet’s gravity. The planet was metal with a massive pit at the equator and a curved claw at each side along the equator. Sensor spikes then made up the rest of the equator and a ring surrounded the planet, connected at the northern and southern poles and at the equator. The cube then fell into the planet’s atmosphere and crashed at the northern pole. The cube split open, and the energy then flowed all over the planet. It then faded, then lights switched on all over the planet as a light slowly came out of the pit. It then moved and turned its sights towards a misshapen world. It looked almost like a skull with its jaw open and surrounded by rings sprouting out of it.
This was Quintessa, home-world of the Quintessons. In the Citadel of Judgement, a Quintesson Judge was brought before a tribunal of his fellows. He stood on a platform over a pit of liquid swarming with Sharkticons. “Judge Deliberata,” boomed a two-faced Bailiff, “you are accused of theft of various artefacts. How do you plead?”
“Necessarily guilty,” replied Deliberata as he spoke through his face of Wisdom/Bitterness.
“Explain why you committed your crime,” ordered one of the Tribunal Members through her face of Judgement/Doubt.
“My dear Tribunal members,” began Deliberata, “the artefacts in question were holy relics that needed to be observed by the public. Rogue Sharkticons had stolen them previously, so I needed to sell them back to the church.”
“Have you any proof?” asked another member of the Tribunal with the same face as his colleague.
“There should be camera footage of me fighting off the Rogue Sharkticons, then drawing up a seller’s tablet on the artefacts.”
“The footage has been found,” reported the Bailiff.
“Play it,” ordered the last Tribunal Member through his face of Wisdom/Bitterness. The footage played on a screen and was exactly as Deliberata described. The female Quintesson then turned to her face of Laughter/War and spoke to her fellow Tribunal Members.
“It is clear that Deliberata has a family to feed,” she remarked.
“Then why not simply wait for the reward to come to him?!” demanded her colleague through his face of Wrath. The last one held up his hands for quiet.
“Has the Imperial Magistrate reached a verdict?” asked the Bailiff.
“I have,” replied the last member through his face of Laughter/War.
“Guilty or innocent?” The Imperial Magistrate’s turned to his face of Wisdom/Bitterness as he declared his verdict.
“Guilty, but necessary as Deliberata proclaims. The reward would have come too late. Deliberata, you are to continue your sale of the artefacts to the Church.”
“Your judgement is wisdom incarnate, my Magis-!” Deliberata’s praise was cut off as the entire planet shook. The unfortunate quakes made Deliberata fall into the Sharkticon pit, giving them a much-needed meal.
“What is happening?!” demanded the female Tribunal member through her face of Wrath.
“Magistrates! Up in the sky! Look! It’s Unicron!” wailed the Bailiff as he pointed to the sky. There, coming closer to Quintessa, was the strange planet the cube had reactivated. This was Unicron in his original alt-mode!
“THE SHIPS!” called the Imperial Magistrate through his face of Death. “GET TO THE SHIPS! IT’S OUR ONLY CHANCE! EVACUATE QUINTESSA!” Unicron then fired a beam of light onto Quintessa’s surface, forcing everyone, man, woman, and child, to their knees before they could get to the ships. His maw opened, and his horns dug into the misshapen planet. He then activated a tractor beam that brought everything and everyone into his maw. Soon, Quintessa broke apart and the remaining fragments entered Unicron. Quintessa and its main populace were now gone. Unicron then turned around, following the feeling of the Matrix, and recognizing the coordinates.
“So, it has returned to Primus,” rumbled Unicron to himself. “Optimus. For a time, I considered sparing your wretched little planet, Cybertron. But now, you shall witness…ITS DISMEMBERMENT!” Unicron then set a course for Cybertron and entered transwarp.