#echo circuit writes

I did the @tf-bigbang this year! It was my first long form writing project and I'm so proud of myself!

Here is the first sneak peek of my 12 chapter story!

"But then came the court. Endless sessions with ministers and generals, all trying to carve off more power, more credit, more blood. Every word was a dagger hidden in a velvet glove, and Megatron had to smile through it, his tail twitching behind him like a predator barely leashed.

He needed peace. Even just a moment. A breath.

~~The mortal~~ The human, was supposed to be in his room, resting. The stubborn little creature had been unconscious when Megatron found him on that altar, barely alive. Megatron hadn’t meant to keep him. But the longer he was there, pale and curled under thick blankets, eyes occasionally cracking open just long enough to glare something had shifted in Megatron's chest.

I can't stop myself and it's been eating me so here's a snippet from the 4th chapter which is from soundwaves perspective!

TW DEATH, ROT AND GROSS BODY HORROR

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The canopy hissed, pressurized locks releasing with sluggish effort.

The body came out wet.

Slid more than fell, like it had been waiting behind the plating, sloshing against the cockpit glass with each of Jazz’s movements. The initial impact made a sickening thwack, even without audio, the visual enough to conjure it.

Organic. Clearly.

The figure was bipedal. Symmetrical. The features, distended as they were, suggested a face, a torso, limbs,vaguely familiar patterns of structure. Almost deliberately mock-Cybertronian, though no mechanical exostructure supported it.

The skin had ruptured in multiple places from internal pressure. Pale-brown tissue had turned to a marbled patchwork of greenish-grey and oily black, veins like broken circuitry threading down bloated arms. The chassis had distended something inside had expanded beyond capacity and then split open, a thick rope of rotten... something coiling out in a tangle of glistening, viscous loops. They shimmered wetly under the hab’s white light, already darkening at the edges.

The faceplate..

Soundwave enhanced the image. Slowly.

The features were nearly unreadable, distorted with rot. One optic had collapsed into the socket, the other bulged outward, milk-white and framed by splitting flesh. The jaw had slackened. Derma peeled back from white sharp canine denta in a half snarl, the harsh rictus of death. Glossa swollen. Neck bloated to the width of the torso.

Curling strands, sparse and matted, clung to the crown. There was a smell, he was sure of it. He couldn’t detect it, his feed didn’t transmit olfactory data, but the visual stank. The black stain spreading beneath the carcass told him the fluids had been under pressure. Internal decomposition gases had swelled the chassis until the dermal layer tore.

But his bag was nearly empty. And there were no medics in the forward camp but him.

So, he crept out through the perimeter and into the forest, breath fogging in the cold. The woods out here had the old feel untouched. Magic clung like dew to the trees. Good place for herbs, and for thinking.

That’s what Ratchet told himself as he slipped past the sentries and into the forest.

The moon hung low and full tonight, brushing silver against everything it touched. The old trees creaked with the wind, their branches bare and slick with dew. He moved quietly, hand brushing over undergrowth, following a memory of his lessons redcap root grew where the ground dipped, stargrass bloomed near the edge of quiet streams.

Redcap root. Wild nightshade for tincture bases. Stargrass, if he was lucky.

He crouched near a patch of dark soil, brushing aside moss when something shifted. A growl, ragged and low, came from the shadows. He tensed, fingers curling toward his dagger, but didn’t draw it.

A body lay half-curled beneath a thorn tree. Huge, trembling. Furred. Wolf-like.

Ratchet exhaled.

Not a beast. A man. Well mostly. Golden eyes stared up at him, luminous in the dark, wild and half-lidded with fever. Fangs glinted beneath cracked lips. Blood matted dark fur and torn armor. Poison made his breath wheeze.

“A werewolf,” Ratchet murmured, stepping closer, crouching low, “or something close. Hey it's ok kid. I'm gonna help you.”

The man bared his teeth. “Spirit,” he rasped, “I’m.. I'm ready.. now"

Ratchet blinked. Then he laughed. “Hardly.”

The man’s golden gaze flicked up to meet his, dazed and shining with delirium. ““You’re not… ” he croaked. “You’re not death?”

Ratchet took the satchel off his shoulder and opened it. “No, I’m a medic. Ratchet. Try not to die.”

He’d dressed the wounds the best he could. The fever would break soon, now that the wolfsbane was out of his system.

What surprised him was the way the werewolf Deadlock, he said, voice slurred with sleep didn’t attack. Didn’t run. Just watched him, like he’d never seen anything like him before.

Maybe he hadn’t.

Ratchet poured water between his lips, felt the heat finally ebbing from the man’s skin. “You’ll wake up sore. But alive.”

“if you’re not a spirit,” Deadlock murmured. “Maybe... you're a sign.”

Ratchet raised a brow. “Of what?”

Deadlock’s eyes fluttered shut. “That the world has need of me yet.”

Ratchet stood, shouldering his bag. He’d return before sunrise. No one needed to know he’d gone.

He looked back once. At the blood-streaked warrior curled beneath the moonlit tree, sleeping, looking like a long forgotten knight, half overgrown in the faint light.

“Get some rest, wolf,” Ratchet said quietly.

Part 1 here👇

Orion Pax fell, silently, his frame greying as he descended. He had made a choice, and he was ok with the risk it brought. That was what he'd told D-16 so many times, in late-night whispers beneath rusted towers and miner’s lights. It felt like forever ago now. A different lifetime.

He remembered the warmth in D’s voice then. The way it softened when they were alone. The way Orion had leaned in once, just once and D had let him. Had wrapped his servos him around him back, trembling like he was afraid the whole world might catch fire.

But now, the only fire was in his chassis.

He fell through Cybertron’s crust, layer after layer parting for him like a grave making room. The planet carried him, reverently, deeper into its heart.

To the Core.

Light, impossibly bright, flooded him. The voices of the Primes, ancient and thunderous, rose in chorus.

“Primus has deemed you worthy.”

The Matrix descended divine, perfect. Meant to cleanse, to elevate. But something within Orion twisted that purity. The betrayal. The pain. The love D had thrown away like scrap metal on the floor, he'd be better than than sentinel, than megatronus if that's what it took to change D's mind then so be it.

The Matrix cracked. And when it rebuilt him, it didn’t make Optimus Prime

It made something else, someone else.

"Rise, Nemesis Prime"

The ground above the battlefield trembled, then exploded in a column of violet light.

Megatron,no longer D-16, turned to the crater, his optics narrowing. The battle stilled behind him. Even the High Guard, even Elita, frozen at the edge of disbelief.

The mech who rose from the crater was no longer Orion Pax.

Taller now, frame a deep burning violet lined with black, dark as the void between stars,and venomous green. His optics gleamed a glowing red, but not with rage.

With possession.

“Orion...?” Megatron breathed, his whisper a breath on the wind.

Nemesis grinned.

He stepped onto the scorched platform, helm tilting, that smile stretching just a little too wide. “You can’t destroy everything Sentinel built, D-16” he said, voice smooth like oil, but sharp at the edges. “It’s mine now.”

He took another step.

“But it could be ours, D.”

Megatron flinched. At the offer and at the name. No one would ever call him that anymore, D-16 was dead.

“I died for you,” Nemesis continued, voice low, almost reverent. “I loved you. I still do. Even now. Even after you let me fall.”

“Orion...” Megatron’s voice cracked.

“Ahh No,” Nemesis said, stepping closer, “that's not my name anymore. I'm Nemesis Prime."

He reached out, gently brushing Megatron’s jaw with digits that could crush steel.

“You made me into this,” he whispered. “So I’m going to make everything ours. The city. The guard. The planet.”

He leaned in, optics glowing inches from Megatron’s.

“Or I’ll burn it all until there’s nothing left but you and me.”

And with that, Nemesis turned his gaze to the High Guard, who stood awaiting his orders.

'All gone'

---------------

A hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back just in time for a missile to explode where he had been kneeling. The blast sent him skidding across the ground, his old joints screaming in protest.

Bulkhead was already pulling him up, voice panicked. “We gotta go! Now!”

Ratchet twisted back toward Bumblebee’s body—but it was already being swallowed by the dust and smoke.

The battlefield was collapsing. They had seconds.

And he knew.

He knew they wouldn’t reach him in time.

Because Bee wasn’t getting up.

And they couldn’t afford to die with him.

Optimus’s voice was final. Heavy. Like it hurt to say it.

“Autobots—retreat.”

Ratchet froze.

His processor blanked for a second, his entire frame locking up in horrified disbelief—

Leave him?

Leave Bumblebee?

“No!” Ratchet snarled, struggling against Bulkhead’s grip. “I’m not leaving him out here, Prime! We can’t just—just—!”

But another explosion rocked the ground beneath them, and suddenly they weren’t given a choice.

The fight was lost.

Each heartbeat thudded like a war drum in his ears. His body refused to shift, it wouldn’t shift. The poison was working too well, knotting his blood, dragging him down into a half-wolf, half-dead nightmare.

This was how it ended. Alone. Drunk on pain. Hunted. Too slow to kill the ones who had slipped the needle into his back. Too proud to call for help. Typical.

He’d closed his eyes expecting darkness. Instead, a figure burned into his vision like fire against snow.

Red hair, slightly curled and shoulder length. Bright as the setting sun. A face pale and severe, with eyes like rusted iron catching the moonlight. Kneeling over him.

A spirit. Surely. A keeper of the dead. His time had come.

“Spirit, I'm ready.. now,” he whispered, throat raw.

The figure snorted. “I’m not here to take you. Hold still.”

Then pain exploded across his senses. And cool fingers against his chest. Something bitter forced past his lips.

He choked.

And then, breath. His lungs opened. The fire in his veins dulled.

“You’re not..” he croaked. “You’re not death?”

“No.” A voice full of annoyance and strange tenderness. “I’m a medic. Ratchet. Try not to die.”

Deadlock blinked up at him.

He wasn’t glowing anymore. Or maybe he never was.

Just a young man. Tired. Sharp-edged. Pale bruised hands smeared with dirt and tincture. His Jaw clenched, eyes tight as he worked in light too dim for human eyes.

Beautiful.

Still unreal.

“ I’ll live?” he asked, as his vision swam and colors blurred, the world taken over by fiery orange red.

The realization hit Ratchet at the exact moment he was still trying to restart Bumblebee’s spark.

“Prime, we have to fall back!” Prowl’s voice was sharp over the comms, forced to dodge yet another blaster barrage from Starscream’s seekers.

Ratchet ignored them.

He wasn’t leaving Bumblebee.

His servos pressed harder into the kid’s plating, his own field flaring with raw, helpless rage as his medical scans kept screaming the same thing back at him—

⚠ No Spark Pulse Detected.

⚠ Processor Non-Responsive.

⚠ Core Systems: OFFLINE.

“No, no, no, no, no—” Ratchet muttered, pushing another desperate jolt of electricity into the kid’s chest. “You stubborn little glitch, you do NOT get to pull this slag—!”

Nothing.

Not even a twitch.

His servos were shaking now. His spark was pounding, his mind reeling because this wasn’t supposed to happen.

-------------------

Vampire bumblebee au short!

We're back baby!!

--------------------------------------------------

Bumblebee first noticed it after the space barnacles incident.

They had barely survived—again. Another battle. Another close call.

It was after one of those fights that the static started.

A faint, crawling sensation under his plating, like tiny jolts of electricity licking at his protoform.

He wrote it off. Probably just damage from the fight.

Then came the glitches. His HUD flickered randomly. His fuel pump stuttered sometimes, just enough to make him pause, but not enough to make him worry.

Ratchet told him to recharge more, to stop running his systems ragged.

He tried. But he couldn't sleep.

His processor raced at night, tangled in static and half-formed images he couldn’t make sense of.

Then his taste receptors changed.

Energon started tasting... thin. Weak. Like he was drinking half-processed coolant instead of actual fuel.

It got worse every day.