Optimus stood on the balcony of his hab overlooking the city he had fought to save. Civilians went about their regular routines, crowding the streets below as they moved from place to place.

He knew what was coming, what this familiar stirring in his spark meant. It didn’t have a name, not in the technical sense, but most mechs went through it. It wasn’t a season of courtship like humans have, but more of a merging between spark energy and core programming. For some mechs, it manifested as restlessness. For others a flood of heightened perception and reflexes. For Optimus, it came as a deep, primal possessiveness. Every few millennia, his systems surged toward a primal state. The same drive that during the war had pushed him to be relentless in battle.

Now that there was peace, it felt uncomfortable.

Optimus vented slowly, attempting to cycle the rising heat out of his frame before it could settle too deeply. He did not trust his own strength when this instinctive state pressed so close to the surface, so he had cleared out his schedule for a deca cycle in an attempt to manage this.

He watched the movement of the crowds again. Younglings weaving between taller frames, vendors calling out to passing mechs, and alt modes zipping overhead or driving through the streets. It was an easy unthinking coexistence of a world that had forgotten the taste of war.

He had fought for this peace. Bled for it. And yet moments like this made him feel like a relic standing above a city that had no idea what it meant to be Prime. Not politically, not symbolically, but functionally.

Primes weren’t meant to be passive.

And whatever ancient code stirred within his spark now… it wanted to claim. To define. To protect with the kind of territorial intensity that once made entire Decepticon battalions hesitate.

The pulse in his spark chamber persisted, spreading through his frame slowly. It made his plating feel tight, his sensors hyper-focused. He could feel the exact number of spark signatures within a half-klick radius. Could sense the faint electro-static signatures of weapons locked away in civilian storage lockers. Could even pick up a mech across the plaza whose stress levels rose sharply as they argued with a companion.

All details he should not have been able to perceive from this distance.

He braced both servos on the railing when his door chimed, debating between answering or ignoring it.