Smoke lingered in the ruins of Mission City long after the fighting had ended. The silence now felt heavier than the thunder of battle. Among twisted rebar and burning metal, Optimus Prime stood alone, staring into the place where the stranger had vanished.
Not Decepticon. Not Autobot. Not human either.
"You carry the AllSpark's echo," Prime had said."I'm just passing through," the man had replied. "But I needed this."
And then he was gone—ripped from the world like a phantom, leaving only questions in his wake.
Optimus looked down at the shattered fragment of the AllSpark cube still clutched in his hand. Though most of it had been consumed by the Rift, a piece remained—a pulsing shard of what once powered the entire Cybertronian race.
"Tell your world to prepare. The Cube was just one piece."
Prime's metal brow furrowed. He had heard whispers across the stars of multiversal war machines, of beings that walked between realities like gods. But this one… this Shepherd… was different. Tactical. Cold. And yet—carrying a thread of purpose.
And that made him dangerous.
Elsewhere...
The Rift tore open in a burst of warped light, depositing Shepherd Fox in the dead of night beneath the shadows of Egyptian sands.
The stars had shifted. Time had passed.
"Alix," he muttered, stabilizing himself against a dune. "Where—?"
"Earth. Dimension still locked to the Transformers universe. Timestamp: two years later. AllSpark energy absorbed. Tracking next artifact—Matrix of Leadership."
Shepherd's eyes glowed briefly as his Rift Core scanned the sands. Heat signatures flickered beneath the surface—debris, war-wreckage, and remnants of Cybertronian tech long buried.
"Get me coordinates," he ordered. "We need to melt down as much of their metal as possible."
"Understood. Begin Transformium recovery."
The Graveyard Harvest
In the abandoned outskirts of Qatar, Shepherd followed coordinates to a site scorched by the earlier Decepticon skirmishes. Massive skeletons of alien war machines lay exposed to the desert sun—Blackout, Bonecrusher, and dozens of lesser units.
Each of them carried within their corpses the one thing he needed: Transformium.
This programmable metal—able to morph and shift, self-heal, and adapt to commands—was priceless. With the AllSpark absorbed, and his Rift Core finally active, Shepherd had access to systems that let him reshape matter, repurpose it for his own arsenal.
As the wind howled around him, Shepherd knelt beside Blackout's rusting form and extended his hand. The Rift Core pulsed, then a web of light shot outward, deconstructing chunks of Cybertronian steel.
"Initiating Transformium extraction protocol," Alix confirmed. "Purifying materials. Storage capacity: 62%. More required."
He moved quickly from body to body, gathering parts, sometimes fighting off surviving Scavenger Drones that hunted the metal for their own purposes. One lunged at him—a snake-like drone made from Devastator fragments.
Without hesitation, he ignited a blade from his wrist and sliced it clean in half.
"No time for pests," he muttered.
The Next Objective: The Matrix
Back at a makeshift hideout within an abandoned archaeological dig site, Shepherd opened a hardlight map conjured by Alix.
"Cross-reference energy spikes with ancient texts—find the Prime tomb."
"Confirmed," Alix responded. "Matrix of Leadership is buried in Petra's hidden caverns. Energy dormant. Autobot signal inbound—Optimus Prime en route with human Sam Witwicky."
Shepherd raised an eyebrow.
"The kid again."
It seemed his presence had not shifted the timeline too far. Sam was still alive, still tied to the artifact Shepherd now needed.
"New Objective: Acquire the Matrix before its fusion with Prime."
"Caution: Nexus moment approaching. Major canon convergence. Minimal interference advised."
"Then we move in shadows."
Watching the Fall
Shepherd tracked the Autobot convoy from afar, hidden inside a modified Sector 7 surveillance drone he had hijacked and rebuilt with Rift-powered cloaking tech.
Through its eyes, he watched as Megatron and The Fallen ambushed the Autobots.
Optimus fought valiantly.
Too valiantly.
In a blur of fire and metal, Prime fell, struck down in the forest by Megatron's blade.
Shepherd closed his fist slowly as the vision faded.
"So that's the cost of waiting."
He didn't intervene. Not yet. The Matrix had not emerged. His purpose was higher—he could not alter too much, or the chain reaction might spiral out of control.
Sam would carry Prime's corpse to the ancient temple. The boy would be tested, reborn, and only then would the Matrix appear.
And that's when Shepherd would act.
The Temple of the Primes
Petra's hidden chamber glowed with pale light as Sam approached the resting place of the Original Primes. Dust clung to the ceiling, whispers of the past clinging to each carved pillar.
The Matrix appeared briefly before crumbling to dust in Sam's hands.
All hope seemed lost—until the boy's heart revived it with sheer will.
The fragments reassembled into the glowing Matrix.
Shepherd emerged from the shadows behind a collapsed statue, cloaked in Rift static.
"Beautiful," he whispered.
He didn't move, didn't strike. Not yet. Sam was meant to revive Prime. That was canon. That was necessary.
But afterward... the Matrix would be vulnerable.
Rift Echo: Extraction Point
Minutes later, Prime stood once more, risen by Sam's gift.
The Matrix pulsed faintly in his chest—new, unstable.
"He lives," Alix confirmed. "Matrix now synchronized. You have sixty seconds to lock residual echoes and extract target data."
Shepherd activated a containment field. A ripple of Rift energy pulsed outward, subtly draining excess power from the Matrix before Prime fully bonded with it.
"We're not stealing it," he muttered. "Just copying it."
The Matrix stabilized. Prime didn't even notice the dip in energy.
His mission was complete.
"Return to stealth," Shepherd ordered. "We wait. Let Earth believe it saved itself again."
"Until the next artifact," Alix answered.