Transformers: Primed To Fall

Chapter Two

Little did he know that he was thinking of the wrong brother.

"I am on your side, brother Prima," Liege Maximo said, bowing once more. "And if you so desire, I shall watch our Megatronus' behavior. He is up to some form of malevolence, I believe."

Prima looked away from Maximo, out of his window that stretched across Cybertron's surface, over its currently primitive inhabitants. They spotted it in small parts, crawling around fires and chunks of Energon. They would evolve at some point, and he looked forward to it. They would become intelligent life he would not have to control. Ones that could depend on themselves without him to do things for them. This world needed people who could shape its history, not just the Thirteen. He could not let his twin take away that freedom, as Prima knew he would.

"Agreed, and my thanks to you." He said, still not looking away. The Liege Maximo turned and left, hands clasped behind his back, horned head held high. Prima muttered under his breath, "I just hope you are wrong about him." He meant it. Truthfully, deep down, he hoped that he himself was wrong about his suspicions.

* * *

Now his trust in me is solidified, the Liege Maximo thought, satisfied with his words and work. Prima had full confidence in him to watch over their extremely dangerous brother Megatronus. If only he knew, he thought with a smile. Then he would know to fear me. If the Dark Prime, as he called Megatronus, was to try to dominate the Primes, then the Liege would make himself look a hero for defeating him with his army.

"Yes," he whispered to himself. "My army."

He climbed into a small, wheeled transport he powered manually that would help him cross Cybertron to his secret lair. He had no other means of accelerated movement, and almost wished for all on Cybertron to possess some means of better transportation. Maybe they would after eons of evolution. Now, they were mindless creatures, capable of consumption, movement, and nothing more. Unlike his little army.

He rode it across the Cybertronian plains, the other life-forms dotting it scattering before him. There was no detail around him to describe as he moved on, until he reached a small, metal structure, so small that it could barely hold one bot inside it. He dismounted his transport and walked toward it. The door opened to his presence, as it did only to him. He entered it, and the door closed behind him. Then it began moving downward. It wasn't a building at all.

It was an elevator, dragging him down to his secret underground home. When the door finally opened, it opened to a long, low corridor lined with cylindrical tubes along the walls, just tall enough to reach the low, stone ceiling. Those tubes contained more than just what the Liege Maximo had admitted creating, although his Legian Darts were real artifacts. But these held what seemed to be... living beings, like the other life-forms dotted across Cybertron, but different. They were beastial, not humanoid, and laid in stasis. Dozens of them lined the two walls, some long-necked and narrow faced, some winged, others with four clawed legs.

This was his army. He planned on using the chemicals in his Liegian Darts to bend them to his will. He hoped he didn't ever need to use them. He just wanted to have a place of power over the Thirteen, free of violence. That was why he was tricking all his brethren into letting him be. Prima was not the only one he had manipulated. He had managed to glean a sample of Onyx Prime's cyber nucleic acids to create these beasts. He made his darts with Solus Prime's Forge. He learned the procedure from an innocent Alchemist Prime. Nearly all of his brothers trusted him, even the supposedly "wise" archivist Alpha Trion.

But Solus didn't. Nor did Megatronus or Thirteen. He knew that at some point, the Dark Prime would accept his inner evil and try to take Cybertron by force. And the Liege Maximo would be there to stop him with his army, eliminating a suspect as well as placing him higher in popularity.