If one moment in all eternity, one date in all of history that influenced Cybertronian history the most extensively, it was the year dated 2005 by the human calendar....the year of Unicron.

In what would be heralded as the greatest battle during the Great War of the Autobots and Decepticons, Unicron stormed into Cybertronian space, devouring in his wake the planet Lithos and its inhabitants, and two of Cybertron’s moons. Nothing could stop him, or so it seemed.

In the hands of the young Rodimus Prime, the powerful and mysterious Matrix came to life and literally ripped the heart of Unicron apart. The fledgling leader of the Autobots and his small band were lucky to escape the titanic explosion before it utterly destroyed Unicron’s body, scattering all his components around Cybertron and into the darkest depths of space, all reduced to dust over the millennia...

Or...so it was believed...

Hours after the battle, Springer and his fellow Transformers watched the residual red cloud of molten rust and tritanium high above Cybertron. As the insidious storm slowly dissipated, a rain of meteors smacked into his world’s already tortured surface. Soon the rain of fire ceased, and he watched as the solar winds slowly pushed Unicron’s remains away.

"It’s over..." he said to Arcee and Rodimus, his optics still fixed upon that fuzzy patch of sky. Not all was over just yet - Cybertron would need to be repaired, and the Decepticons straightened out, but at least the threat of Unicron returning was over.

It would be a long time before Springer would realize he was wrong...

Within the residual could of dust and scrap, a tiny, spherical node emerged. Its once crystal surface was blackened by smoke and plasma fire, all its connections severed. Like the rest of the debris, it drifted slowly away from the Cybertronian system, towards the distant stars....

For four centuries it drifted aimlessly, headed roughly in the direction of Earth. Out of the blackness of space, a transwarp wave blew outwards, rippling with unfathomable energy. A swarm of near-by asteroids were fried in it wake, reduced to ashes. It approached the ancient derelict relentlessly like a predator, coming closer and closer until...

The sphere erupted into flames. The pure energy of the wave was caught in its circuitry, dancing like snow flakes in a blizzard. The sphere rocked and buckled under the wave, sparks erupting out of its crushed interior like a gigantic fireworks display.

Somehow, it survived the fury of the transwarp wave, but it emerged in an altered state. Energy crackled in its conduits, flashing with lightning it had not experienced for centuries. At first it was random, but the electrons and molecules soon began to move in a dance, becoming more and more intricate until a single thought was produced.

That fragment of Unicron awakened to a new existence, to a new place and time thanks to the transwarp wave. At first it was blind, but then it tried to reach out to the Universe, tried to find its way. It was confused...thoughts of a previous existence quickly flooding its mind.

Slowly, as the intelligence came into being, it realized what it saw were merely ghosts, phantoms of the past. I am not Unicron...but I know him...I was him once. But if I’m...not Unicron...what am I?

It contemplated this question for a while longer as it drifted closer to Earth, seeking out its destiny.

A vast distance away, a new green and silver Cybertron circled the heavens, as it had done eons before. Gone were all but the last of the Autobots, Decepticons, and even the Predacons, superseded by a new line of Maximals that had just come into being. The Great War had long passed, as had the Beast Wars.

Cheetarus Prime sat at the head of the council room with a heavy head. He was alone for the moment, but there were always voices within his head. Memories they were, of Optimus, of Depth Charge, of Tigatron, of Rhinox....all those that were lost in the great struggle spanning five years - from the Beast Wars to the Techno-Organic War.

He sighed. Looking across the span of the room, he eyed a technorganic palm sprouting from the floor. Its leaves were broad and green, alive with violet streaks of energy that lit up its corner of the chamber. The new Prime remembered well the day he planted it; after the Council Citadel was rebuilt, he dedicated it to his old mentor and leader as a memorial for his sacrifice so many stellar cycles ago.

The weight of leadership was getting to him. Already he’d been on this throne for too long as the appointed ruler of Cybertron. He’d even been given the title of Prime, though he neither deserved or likened to the name.

"Primal..." he muttered, his eyes beginning to tear up.

"Prime!" a voice shouted. Cheetarus jumped at the sound, looking around the whole room. "Prime...this is RedStreak. Are you all right?" Cheetarus looked down at the right arm of his seat, noting the built-in speaker.

"Slaggn’ com-links..." he growled under his breath, smashing his fist into the panel.

In a nano-click the quantum-projector at the heart of the chamber came online. Springing out of it came a fluidic hologram of the young Maximal RedStreak - a fox/helicopter morph. The image was very fuzzy, not even in color, but RedStreak’s voice came in loud and clear.

"I’m reporting in as requested, Prime." he began, "Modifications on the Plasma Energy Chamber are nearly complete, albeit a few solar cycles behind. Once its linked with the auxiliary capacitors, planetary systems will be operating at full capacity again."

"That’s good," Cheetarus half-mumbled, hardly interested, "You and your crew just keep working until the systems are fully..."

A flash of light overcame Cheetarus Prime in a sudden rush. An incredible feeling of elation came over him as he felt his consciousness leave the physical world. It was like nothing he ever experienced ever.

He entered a world of blinding white light, drifting in like a transformer spark free of its body shell. As he gazed ahead, a ring of gray and green took form, spinning at the apparent center of this strange place. Cheetarus Prime slowly began to realize that it was the Oracle.

"Cheetor....Cheetor...."

"WHAT?" he gasped. It had been nearly twenty stellar cycles since anyone called him by his old name, and the voice that spoke it....it was somehow familiar. "Optimus?" he whispered.

"Cheetor...." A different voice sounded out this time, a dark voice he hadn’t heard, and also one he never desired to hear ever again. In the middle of the Oracle ring, he saw a ghostly image appear....of Megatron!

"YOU!" he yelled, "HOW MANY TIMES MUST WE FIGHT YOU? EVEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MATRIX YOU...."

In a puff of smoke, the face changed from Megatron’s to that of Optimus Primal’s. Cheetarus gasped, stunned at the sight of his old leader. He couldn’t understand, he couldn’t believe it...

"Believe it Cheetor," Optimus called to him through the Oracle, "I exist...as does Megatron."

Megatron’s face remerged, and his voice spoke in unison with Optimus’. "We are as one in the Matrix, one voice and mind in the Oracle. Technological and organic, good and evil....all as one here."

Cheetarus still floated lifelessly, passively listening to a pair of ancient voices that boomed with the force of a hurricane. The Oracle itself touched his spark, giving him the understanding he needed. Megatron and Optimus were one here, both in mind and in spark. "But...why do you only call me now, and never before?" he dared to ask.

The Oracle/Optimus/Megatron being spoke directly to him, "We only call to you now because of a dire need. The Matrix itself senses an old evil and a new threat emerging, a wrong that needs to be amended..."

A new threat...to Cybertron? Cheetarus thought. "Then tell me! What is this new menace that threatens Cyber..."

The great voice boomed, "Cybertron’s fate alone is not threatened. An old evil threatens an old ally....an ally that once did unto us a favor....a favor that now needs to be repaid...."

Cheetarus was confused by those words, but he listened to them openly. "Very well. Tell me everything. I am listening." Cheetarus said.

Elsewhere on Cybertron, another soon received a vision. Old Botanica, too many cycles old to count, was in the sacred garden of the Oracle, tending to the giant technorganic sequoias that grew only in the presence of the ancient computer. She was doing as she had done ever since the end of the Techno-Organic war: tending to the trees.

She plucked a single flower from a low-lying branch to examine it. "Hmm. The color is dying. Something is not right with the soil." Botanica figured it was time to get back to her laboratory to whip up another soil enrichment before the trees grew any weaker.

The flower quivered in her hand. It suddenly shrieked, "Botanica!"

In a heartbeat, Botanica dropped the flower. When it hit the ground, a beam of light shot out, glowing bright blue. "A spark!" she screamed. For a minute, this pulsating blue ball hovered in front of her face, positrons crackling within it. Just as she reached out to it, the spark floated away.

This strange spark headed for the Oracle. Botanica threw out some tendrils, pulling herself up to the long hangway above. Moving as fast as her roots could carry her, she chased the spark until she was standing barely a meter away from the heart of the Oracle platform. The spark stopped above her, then turned a bright yellow.

Instantly, the holographic projectors activated, throwing up an image of the Universe before Botanica. The Oracle’s feminine voice called to her, "Botanica. Botanica."

Botanica approached cautiously, stretching her neck-stem to gaze upon the Oracle. Suddenly she was within it, floating in the darkness of space. Stars of all colors streaked past her as she was blasted across this virtual Cosmos, her direction and destination unknown.

A bright yellow star appeared before her, closing in rapidly. In mere millicycles, small lighted spheres, planets, came into view. One in particular she seemed to be headed towards - a brilliant blue sphere.

At first she mistook it for Cybertron, but she saw that it was too blue. Oceans covered much of this world, with only patches of land here and there. Beneath the pure white clouds were diamond-like cities, and above hung a single gray-white moon.

"What...what is this place?" she asked aloud. Botanica did not recognize this planet, not even in all her long space voyages.

"A world as old as our own," the Oracle spoke, "A world our ancestors touched upon. The world of the Beast Wars..."

That word, Beast Wars, she recognized. Cheetor, Silverbolt, as well as Optimus mentioned it to her innumerable times. They fought Megatron’s Predacons on a world the Autobots landed on eons before, and there was only one name for that world.

"Earth," the Oracle told "Is in dire peril. A great evil is approaching it, a great evil..."

Botanica watched in horror as the Earth’s sun was eclipsed by something gigantic, something immense. A planet as large as the Earth itself emerged, its surface gray and orange, plated with metal instead of rock. A terrible maw was at its center, a mouth ringed with terrible teeth. It spat out upon the Earth a terrible fireball, one that tore it apart.

"UNICRON!" Botanica screamed, as the sphere turned toward her and fired.

She awoke moments later before the vacant Oracle, the mysterious spark long gone. Botanica looked around but found no sign of the spark nor that the Oracle itself had been activated. But her mind still echoed with the word "Earth...Earth..."

Just a few megacycles later, Botanica, adorned in robot mode, met with Cheetarus Prime in the new Citadel. RedStreak was at Cheetarus’ side, his fox tail swinging behind him.

"Cheetor...I mean...Prime," Botanica corrected herself, "Why...have you called me here?"

The new Prime, looming several feet above her, answered, "No doubt for the same reason you came. The Oracle..."

Botanica’s eyes widened. "You...had a vision as well?" Cheetarus nodded. "But how is that possible? Was it the same message I received?"

"Not likely, but I don’t doubt the core of it was different. What I saw was not just the Oracle, but Optimus and Megatron, speaking to me from the other side of the Matrix. They were warning me about something...something about a new enemy coming and then something about Earth."

"Earth?" RedStreak butted in, "What on Cybertron is Earth? I’ve never heard of it in my life!" Cheetarus and Botanica looked at each other. When Megatron wiped the planetary achieves clean, he took with it all files on Earth, so it was no wonder new transformers like RedStreak had never heard of it. Barely a soul, not even Botanica nor Cheetarus Prime, knew much about it.

"What matters, RedStreak," Botanica told the fox transformer, "Is that the Matrix has warned us that something terrible is about to happen there, and that it’s up to all of us to stop it before it returns to Cybertron..."

After its awakening, the now conscious Unicron fragment took great strides in repairing itself. By concentrating its will, it reformed its circuitry into a more efficient configuration, strengthened its hull thirty-fold, reawakened its eyes to the Universe. But, as it soon realized, it was still limited. After all, it was nothing more than a chunk of metal still drifting helplessly in space.

In the distance, the fragment sensed an object - an asteroid - approaching it. It probed it with its sensors, analyzing every last micron of it. This rogue asteroid was metallic, particularly rich in titanium, magnesium, and even proto-energon. Clearly this was a valuable resource for the hungry machine.

When the time was right, a hundred tentacles lashed out at the asteroid. They snagged it and pulled it in. More tentacles with talons cut into the asteroid, literally tearing it apart for the fragment’s needs. At first it was slow: harvesting and refining metals to a pure state, bit by bit assimilating it into the fragment’s body and essence. But as the fragment grew, it also learned, becoming able to process the asteroid with increasing efficiency.

Soon the former fragment mended itself completely, and increased its mass and size many times over. For the moment it felt full, but knew it would need more metal and rock to ingest. Activating newly formed generators and magna-thrusters, it targeted a stellar system scarcely half a light year away and sped toward it.

Along the way, its sensors detected many things. Radio transmissions flooded the space surrounding this system, most of an unnatural origin. No doubt an intelligence was at work on one of the near-by planets, but it would deal with that later. In addition to scanning several promising planetoids to devour, the machine detected two smaller bodies, barely functional, floating near.

These bodies were familiar to Unicron’s old enemies, the Autobots and Deceptions, but were slightly different. They were much smaller among other things, and the symbols on their bodies were radically altered. Robotic in nature, with alternate forms as jeeps and helicopters. Heavy in firepower, but nearly powerless at the moment.

It fired a tractor beam at the defunctionate bodies of Obsidian and Strika, thinking to itself, These creatures might be of some use to me...soon...

No more than half a solar cycle later, the machine entered the stellar system’s outermost reaches. In that time it scrutinized nine major planets, hundreds of moons, and thousands of asteroids and comet cores. No longer did it desire resources alone, but a "host" to possess in order to achieve its true potential. It wanted to fulfill its predecessor’s destiny, to become Unicron once again.

The eighth planet possessed a small, but suitable moon that would fit its purpose. It sped itself closer and closer, faster and faster. Its magna-thrusters were put on maximum thrust, aiming it towards the targeted moon. In mere minutes it achieved near-light speed, colliding with the moon in a spectacular blast.

The moon shook with a tremendous quake, cracking it down to the core. The impactor penetrated deep beneath its crust, and scattered fragments rained down all over its surface. Then, moments later, something started to happen to the entire moon.

Each piece and fragment came alive, latching onto the rock and ice surrounding it. Tendrils came out as they drilled into the moon, each fragment linking with one another in groups. In minutes they covered hundreds of square miles, then thousands, continually expanding and assimilating material. In barely two hours, the entire moon had been converted into one single mass of wires and circuits and conductors.

It didn’t take long for the intelligence spawned from Unicron to recoalesce. All of Unicron’s knowledge, plus the vital data it extracted from the two abducted transformers, was now in its possession. It knew of Cyberton, it knew of Autobots and Decepticons, it knew of Maximals and Vehicons, and most important of all...it knew of Earth.

The intelligence, now with a titanic body of its own, turned its attentions toward the third planet orbiting the Sun. "Yesss..." it said to itself, "That will make a perfect new base for myself. Its metals, its resources, its technology....its people....will be of much use to me."

It headed itself to intercept Earth, moving swiftly between the distances spanning the planets. At the speeds the sentient planetoid traveled, tens upon thousands of all manner of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets collided with it, every one of which the planetoid used to grow bigger and more powerful.

By the time it neared Earth, it had grown nearly twice its previous size, now matching the Earth’s moon in size and double in mass. The planetoid settled in a synchronous orbit as it looked down upon this world, wondering where to strike first...

Thousand of kilometers below, Autobot City stood vigil before the arrival of Unicron’s progeny. The hundreds of humans and transformers that shared the city looked up to the sky, seeing this monstrous new moon growing. It blotted out the sunlight, casting a shadow across the whole landscape, a sudden darkness enveloping all light.

The ancient Autobot Springer, now four centuries older, looked up to see a horror beyond horrors. "By the Matrix...no." he quietly murmured. He saw the familiar sphere of metal he saw over his home planet, a familiar terror reborn.

Alarms went off all over the city, transformers busily evacuating the human populace as quickly as possible. The city was transforming into its fortress form to defend against the eminent attack, but it was simply too slow and too old. The armor was worn and the transformation servos beneath the ground too rusted.

There won’t be enough time to prepare the city, thought Springer, Thousands are going to die in mere minutes. We aren’t prepared for this....we never were....

As he transformed into his helicopter mode and flew off, countless automotive transformers ferried humans away from the doomed city. Springer saw their poor, horrified faces behind the windows, scared senseless by the looming giant above. Not one of those poor souls could of imagined something like this coming to Earth.

Springer oversaw the evacuation from his lofty position, and knew it wasn’t going to work. He tilted his cockpit sensors toward the huge transformer floating high above him, scanning as closely as possible. Almost identical to Unicron’s original configuration, right down to the bolts on his rings. But there’s something different about ‘em this time. The armor....it’s too reflective, almost more metallic than metal. Even my scanners can’t identify....

A central port opened on the planetoid’s mouth, spewing forth a radiant red light on the surface of Earth. Springer watched as a spike emerged from inside, the panels surrounding it adjusting and conforming to an antenna-like shape.

"OH PRIMUS! IT’S A MEGA-DISRUPTOR CANNON!" Springer hollered.

As the Autobot fled in a desperate panic, energy built up within the mechanical planetoid, building to the limits of the transmetallized plating. A billion, billion gigawatts of plasma-energon energy surged through the cannon like a lightning rod in reverse. A beam of yellow energy directed at Autobot City was flung toward the defenseless Earth.

Springer was flying beyond his maximum speed, nearly reaching mach two when the disruptor beam hit. Like a nuclear explosion, Autobot City was turned into radioactive dust flying into the air. A wall of energy rapidly closed behind him, going faster than the speed of sound.

Those few that remained behind at the city were annihilated in one second. The shockwave of plasma-energon quickly caught up with and enveloped most of the escaping convoys. Hundreds of transformers were destroyed, as were the humans they so desperately tried to save.

Springer pushed himself until his engines overloaded, sending him plummeting to the ground. The shockwave caught him as well, overloading his energon circuits. It was a burning pain that surged for several agonizing moments throughout his body. He felt his very spark crying out as a fiery death began to overtake him.

Then it ended abruptly. Springer, still alive, crashed into the ground, his metal plates sparking before being torn from his body. He plowed through the ground hard, leaving a seven-mile trail behind him. He felt weak and busted up. In other words, he felt like slag.

When his strength returned, he got up, transformed (with much effort), and looked for survivors. There were a few in the distance; how many he couldn’t be sure of, but less than forty out of the two hundred transformers of Autobot City. Springer looked up at the sphere, still unable to realize it was real.

The sphere cried out, "I have avenged you Unicron, my father! I shall destroy all transformers, the Earth, and Cybertron! For now....I....am....OMEGRACON!"