Imagine a timeline where instead of safely descending them down the chute to sublevel 50, Darkwing just throws D-16 and Orion down.
For Orion, it's okay. He's used to jumping off buildings, he knows how to fall. But it's dark, and desperate, so all he does is spread his frame out and scramble to grab anything and everything that can slow his descent, and it works.
He and D-16 land with a sickening crunch, and he's injured, and winded, but he's laughing. "D! We made it!" he giggles, looking over at D-16's still form. "Oh, Primus! You okay?" Silence. "D?" No movement. He starts crawling over towards his still frame, watching it fade into a sickly monotone gray. "No, no, no no no D talk to me! D! D! D don't do this, please wake up, please don't do this..."
B-127 meets a mourning mech in shock that his best friend was just murdered.
Days pass where Orion just sits with D-16's sparkless frame, hollow-eyed. B-127 tries to help him feel better by sitting D-16 at the table with Steve and AAtron. That's when the emergency transmission is found. A way to find the Matrix. Orion latches onto it because maybe, just maybe, the Matrix can bring D-16 back.
They go up to the surface with Elita-1, who willingly follows them because Sentinel's begun working the miners to death. They learn the truth. B and Elita are in shock, but Orion? Something dark and ugly grows inside Orion. Sentinel was D's hero, second only to Megatronus Prime. And he killed him. But what's worse? He's the reason the Matrix was destroyed. The only way to get D-16 back. Sentinel may as well have killed him all over again.
Orion's optics slowly tinge purple.
By the time he rips Sentinel Prime in half in the middle of Iacon, his optics are red, his colors faded and matte. And when he takes Megatronus Prime's T-cog for himself, his colors turn black and purple. A mask grows to cover his face, leaving only hateful optics burning like hot coals. The Matrix does not appear. And D-16 is still dead.
But Optronix Prime rises.
Til All Are Gone.
