Eyrie Productions, Uninc. UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES: FUTURE IMPERFECT CYBERTRON DREAMS Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 1993 Eyrie Productions, Uninc. 16 SEPTEMBER 2412 WWWA CENTRAL COMMAND CENTER ELEANOR CITY, MEIZURI, NIVEN SECTOR WWWA Chief of Operations Wilton Goulet looked up from the mass of paperwork at the two people standing in his inner office, and inwardly, he groaned. After all, they had quite a reputation preceding them. They were not Field Operations Team #261, the infamous Lovely Angels--by this time, Goulet was used to them. Instead, they were Team #911-X, the Steel Furies. The "X" in their designation indicated that they were a provisional team, having just won their commissions from 3WA Training Command. This mission was their first, and if it came off well, the "X" would be removed. The reason for Goulet's apprehension was simple: he had followed their progress through training, read the reports and projections, and had known their mothers for centuries. The one on the left was the shorter of the two, but that in no way diminished her presence. She was a little less than five and a half feet tall, lithe and athletic, with an almost palpable, quiet self-confidence. Her dusty-red hair was cut short, in a perfect page cut, framing a pretty face with an upturned, slightly pointed nose and wide grey eyes, so pale that, in the fluorescent lighting of the office, they looked almost silver. She was Trouble Consultant Third Class Priscilla Kei Morgan, the daughter of the infamous Kei Morgan and Wedge Defense Force Admiral Benjamin D. "Gryphon" Hutchins. At the moment, she sat, attentive and erect, in one of Goulet's office chair, looking professional. Nothing like her mother. The other was slouched in her chair, reminding Goulet of the elder Morgan--she lay across the seat, her sneakered feet hanging over one of the armchair's leg, her perfect, leather-jacketed shoulders against the other arm. She had coal-black hair, cut short like Priss's, and eyes so dark the pupils were indistinguishable. She was a bit taller than Priss--perhaps a couple of inches--and her body, while lean and fit, wasn't as athletic-looking. She seemed softer, warmer, than her partner, and seemed to exude an impression of free-spirited, calm sexuality. Goulet found himself rather liking her in spite of himself. She was Sylvie Daniels, the daughter of TC1 Yuri Daniels and WDF Fleet Admiral MegaZone. "Good afternoon," Goulet began. "Normally, the briefing for your X mission would be conducted by one of the sub-commanders, but I've been following your training with interest, and I decided to conduct the briefing myself...as a personal favor." "Why thank you," said Sylvie with an insouciant grin. "Er...you're welcome." Goulet shuffled some papers and continued. "The mission is a simple one--we're starting you out slowly." Priss slumped a bit in her chair. Damn! She had been expecting something exciting, maybe in the Cardassian Border Zone--some of their provisional-commission jobs, working with a more experienced team, had been there, and they had been great. "Just because the mission is easy doesn't mean it isn't important," Goulet reassured her. "In fact, it's a very important mission. You're to act as a diplomatic escort to His Excellency the Lord High Ambassador from Earth to the United Federation of Planets Center on Salusia. He's going on a special mission, as a favor for Queen Asrial, to Cybertron." Priss slumped a little bit more. Cybertron?! Nothing ever happened on Cybertron. Oh, sure, there had been a tremendous war there for millennia upon millennia--but it had been quiet for years! Even before the WDF's Collapse in 2288, Cybertron had been peaceful. "We aren't expecting any trouble," Goulet went on, "but as Cybertron is a historical trouble spot, better safe than sorry. You two are going along to protect His Excellency the Ambassador, see that he gets to and from the talks safely, and so forth. In the downtime during the talks, you have authorization for Class-C leave. I suggest you enjoy Cybertron--it's a beautiful planet. Any questions?" "No, sir," said Priss, straightening her back. Now was not the time to make her disappointment known. "Nothing to ask questions about," said Sylvie, sitting up the right way in the chair and stretching so that her back popped satisfyingly. "Ahh." "Very well, then," Goulet said. "Report to Docking Bay 14. Courses to Salusia, from there to Cybertron, and back will be laid into your navicomputer. Good luck." "Thank you, sir," said Priss, standing up and saluting. "Seeya when we get back," Sylvie added, and they left. Goulet sat back in his chair and wondered why he had such a bad feeling about this. "I can't believe you were so rude to him! He's the Chief, Sylvie--you should show him a little respect!" "Oh, c'mon, Priss...stop being such a tightass. Your mom used to give him ten times worse than that--I know, Mom told me all about it. He loved it, I could tell." "What am I gonna do with you?" "I could think of a few suggestions..." "Be serious, would you? We've got a job to do here." "Some job. Admit it, you were just as pissed as I was that we didn't get to go back to the Border Zone and bust some Cardassian heads. Admit it...admit it!" "All right, damn it. Still, this might not be all bad. Dad's told me about Cybertron a zillion times...it'll be cool to actually see it for ourselves." They arrived at the docking bay, and went in to their ship. It crouched on the burn-scarred tarmac, tarmac marked by the coming and going of a thousand thousand ships. It was a standard 3WA Predator-class cloak capable attack scout, or at least, looked like one; in fact, it was one of the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards' special M-model Predators, equipped with a more powerful thruster system and some additional weapons and armor. Only two others like it existed: the Lovely Angel, and the WDF Tom Servo (MST-3000). Steel Fury was not a pretty ship. Her lines were brute-force, with oversized, bulging thrusters, wings studded with weapons, and a forward-thrusting command pod whose photon torpedo tube looked reminiscent of an angry, accusing mouth. Her hull was thermocoated a dull battleship grey, and still bore the bright scars of several laser bolts, a phaser spread, and a partially-deflected proton torpedo hit, marks of their Cardassian adventures while still under the tutelage of Team 775 (Peace & Love, Inc.). The bridge windows were black slashes of klaster on the upper side of the forward bulge. Priss loved her; Sylvie hated her. Sylvie preferred grace and subtlety to Steel Fury's blunt-instrument design philosophy. They went up the ramp, sealed it, and then crouched to get through the tunnel from the boarding area to the control room--too big to be a proper cockpit, too small to be a proper bridge. Soon, they were strapped in and running. Without much ado at all, Steel Fury blasted out of the atmosphere, into the open void, and thence to warp drive. With Priss behind the throttles there was very little mucking about. Salusia was a beautiful, blue-green gem of a world--from a distance, it looked much like Earth. Here, unlike in the familiar space of Meizuri, Priss had to observe proper decorum and procedure. It chafed her, but she was striving to be professional on this, her first mission. Even Sylvie was, by this point, being vaguely professional. They slid into orbit and, the tight schedule not allowing time for a landing, beamed His Excellency the Lord High Ambassador up. They waited in Steel Fury's dingy five-pad transporter room. Sylvie slouched in the corner of the room, more curious than anything else. Priss operated the controls, a bit tense. The man coming aboard was almost as much a legend as the core of the Wedge Defense Force: the greatest diplomat the universe had ever known, responsible for the Klingon Republic, most of the cease-fires with the Empire of Kilrah, and the formation of the Federation after the United Galactica's collapse; the engineer of a lasting peace between long-warring Salusia and Zardon; the genius who had somehow brought Tholia into the Federation. He also happened to be the Imperial Prince-Consort to Queen Asrial of Salusia. What would this great man's presence be like? Priss looked round the shabby room and, despite her love for the battered ship, felt rather unworthy as she energized the transporter and watched the Ambassador materialize. Lord High Ambassador Jeremy Feeple blinked and looked round the room. He hated transporters, but there was no time. He noticed the two lovely young women who were to be his escorts and smiled a shy smile. "Hi," he said. Priss almost felt like laughing. Ambassador Feeple was a thoroughly ordinary-looking man. Sandy brown hair, unkempt and a bit long, and big blue eyes; he was wearing ordinary street clothes and had a battered New Avalon Institute of Science duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He stepped down off the platform, looked around, and said, "Cool ship. Feels like home." "Why, thank you, Your Excellency," said Sylvie with a smile. "Please," Feeple said with a pained expression. "Asrial insisted on giving me yet another grandiose title when I took on the job...just call me Jer." "I'm Sylvie. This is Priss--she can't talk right now, she's busy falling in love with you. C'mon with me and I'll show you where you'll bunk." Amused and a bit sheepish, Feeple followed Sylvie out of the transporter room, leaving Priss to quietly fume behind the controls. "You," Priss declared as they walked down one of Cybertron's wide boulevards, "are a bitch." "Whyever would you say that?" Sylvie asked innocently. "I just told His Excellency the truth. I could tell from your reaction when he appeared that you were gone." "I was not gone!" Priss protested. "I was just surprised--I had expected him to look a lot different. Taller, or something. He looks so...so normal." "From what I hear, that's his biggest strength. He's a populist. He talks to the people involved in his negotiations on a common level--that's what makes him so effective." "Well, haven't we been doing a little extra research. Now, who did you say was gone?" "I just did a little reading!" Sylvie elbowed Priss in the ribs. "Look, why don't we just both admit it--the guy is cute." "Cute?" Priss snorted derisively. "He's delicious!" "You've got weird taste, partner." "I'd have to, to team up with a weirdo like you." "Ha, ha, ha." Sylvie was about to make some sarcastic comment, when suddenly she stopped walking and held up a hand, her face taking on an expression of consternation. "What is it?" Priss asked, instantly alert. "I don't know, really. It's just...too quiet all of a sudden. Where is everyone? Cybertron is supposed to have almost a million inhabitants--there should be a few out. It's only two in the afternoon. And..." She trailed off, looking at the sky. "Listen," Priss whispered. "Hear that?" "Yeah, but I can't tell what it is." "Turbines. Fusion turbines." "Veritechs?" "Not ours...pitch is wrong." Three old-style Terran jet airplanes banked around the distant spire of Iacon, the old Autobot headquarters, and streaked right down the boulevard toward them. "What the fuck?!" Priss cried, tackling Sylvie. The impact carried both of them off the sidewalk and into an alley between two of the typically metallic block buildings. An instant later, the three planes raked bursts of fire down the boulevard, passing through where they had just been, before continuing on their way toward the Diplomatic Center. "Decepticons? After all this time?" Sylvie said incredulously, looking around the corner. "But they were smashed! Didn't we read about it in history? Optimus Prime destroyed Galvatron, and the Decepticons--" "Yeah, yeah," Priss said, "we've read all of that. Obviously, they've gotten better. C'mon...they're gonna need us back there." By the time they reached the Diplomatic Center, the three Decepticons had bombed it out. It was little but a smoking crater in the ground. Hearts heavy with failure, Priss and Sylvie spent the next hour or two digging through the wreckage, looking for survivors. The two Transformers they found--they didn't recognize them--were dead, destroyed utterly. The humans didn't even bear description. "Unngh," came a voice from beneath a nearby piece of rubble. "Priss!" cried Sylvie. "Come over here--I think someone's alive under here!" They strained to move the slab of shattered metal away from the area, and discovered, underneath, Ambassador Feeple. A falling beam had struck a piece of the wrecked council table and cantilevered over him, shielding him most efficiently from the falling ceiling. A very lucky break. He got to his feet, shook his head, and dusted himself off. "Well," he said ruefully, "I guess Autobot Intelligence's suspicions that the Decepticons were regrouping for an offensive were correct. I just wish they had been a bit more subtle about returning to operations." He popped a jammed vertebra in his neck back into position. "The Autobot delegation--are they?" "You seem to be the only survivor," Priss said softly. The desolation of the Diplomatic Center seemed overpowering. She didn't mind battlefields, but charnel houses were not her cup of tea. "Damn!" Feeple ground a fist into the opposite palm. "At least Optimus Prime hadn't yet arrived. They were probably gunning for him. We have to warn him!" "Hold on, Ambassador," said Priss. "What we have to do is get you off this planet before it erupts into a state of total war. Our orders are very specific concerning your protection. In the event of a crisis situation developing, we're to get you off Cybertron immediately." "But I--" "No buts, Jer. Priss is right--we have to get you out of here. The two of us, without any backup or heavy weapons, don't stand a chance agains a Decepticon battle group." Feeple's shoulders slumped. "All right. Let's--" "Unngh," said another piece of debris. They turned to look; as they did, it shifted, then tumbled aside, and an Autobot got shakily to his feet. "Ultra Magnus, " said Feeple. "I'm glad you made it." "Ohh...." Magnus shook his head to clear it. "Ambassador. The others?" "All dead, I'm afraid." "Damn. What happened? A power line accident? We've had several of them in the Treikon area, but Iacon was fairly free of--" "No power accident," Priss said. "A Decepticon bombing raid." "So we were right." Magnus looked grave, and thought for a moment. "You must get off Cybertron at once, Ambassador." "So my protectors keep telling me," replied Feeple with a wry smile. "Could we trouble you for a lift back to our ship?" "Of course," Ultra Magnus replied, and transformed into a massive auto-carrier truck. The humans climbed aboard, and Ultra Magnus peeled out, heading for the spaceport. They almost drove into a Decepticon guard contingent--Ramjet and a nameless jet soldier--posted at Steel Fury's ramp. Magnus hastily pulled into a service channel running between the spaceport's pads an instant before the Decepticons noticed them. "Damn!" Priss spat. "If we can't get to Steel Fury, not only can't we get out of here, we can't even get our heavy weapons. What the hell can we do without mecha on this planet? Shit, we can't even communicate, can't even let 3WA Central know what's going on!" "Relax," said Sylvie. "All we have to do is remain undetected for two days. When we don't show up at Salusia, and haven't returned their attempts at communication, and the Diplomatic Center is down... they'll probably send one of the WDF's big ships, maybe even a task force. We've got no problems." A shadow loomed over them; turning, the humans looked up. Sylvie and Priss looked at each other, then both looked at Feeple, who looked back, and then all of them looked up again, unable to believe what they were seeing. "All right," Sylvie amended, "maybe we've got one problem." "Well. What a charming little group we have here," said Megatron, Decepticon Commander Supreme. "I don't recognize any of you humans, but the Autobot... Ultra Magnus, isn't it?" "Run," Magnus said to his passengers as they climbed out, and transformed to robot mode. "I'll try to hold him long enough for you to get away." "At ease, Magnus," Megatron said, appearing quite amused. "I have no hostile intentions--in fact, I would help you. You want to get to that ship, correct?" Not really expecting an answer, he continued, "Allow me to clear your way for you." With that, Megatron leaped over them, clearing their cover and landing on the docking pad. Magnus peered over the barrier, the humans on his shoulders. "Greetings, Decepticons," Megatron declared with a sweeping gesture of his arm. "Stand aside." Ramjet and the soldier turned in shock. "M-M-Megatron!" Ramjet cried. "Indeed," Megatron replied. "I gave you an order, Ramjet," he continued tersely. "B-but you're--" "Dead? Obviously not." "No--not dead--" "Galvatron!" the soldier cried. Megatron's optics narrowed in annoyance. "Who? Do they teach you young ones no history? I am Megatron! Decepticon Commander Supreme! And I order you to stand aside!" Ramjet, recoving from the shock, raised his weapons. "I don't know who you really are, pal--but Commander Shockwave ordered this planet sealed, and this ship is going no--" Megatron calmly interrupted him by raising his fusion cannon and, without hesitation, blasting Ramjet squarely through the chest. "--urk!" Ramjet finished, crashing to the tarmac on his back. Turning his smoking fusion cannon on the other Decepticon, Megatron noticed that, although obviously frightened, the young soldier was standing his ground with grim resolve, weapon ready. "What is your name, warrior?" Megatron inquired. "Sideslip," the warrior replied. "You have courage and devotion to your assigned duties, Sideslip," observed Megatron. "Take Ramjet back to Shockwave, give me this ship, and I will spare your life. Don't be a fool. You cannot win against me. I know Shockwave; he will not punish you for retreating from an untenable position. He values tactics and logic far too much. In fact," Megatron went on, smiling, "the one-eyed fool may just reward you." Sideslip wrestled with his thoughts for a moment, then lowered his weapon slowly. "You have great potential," Megatron said approvingly. "I look forward to commanding you myself. I want you to take Shockwave a message for me. Tell him he has two options: I will accept his resignation of Decepticon command to me by 2300 hours today, or I will destroy him and any who choose to follow him. Personally." Wordlessly, never taking his optics off Megatron, Sideslip gathered Ramjet's body up and flew away. Megatron turned around and gestured. "Come out, Magnus. You have my word I will not harm you." "What good is the word of a Decepticon--especially you?" Magnus asked warily. Megatron adopted a hurt expression. "Ultra Magnus, you wound me to the quick." He removed his fusion cannon from his arm and cast it aside. "Better?" "Not a great deal," Magnus replied. "You're too dangerous by half for me to take your casting aside your most visible weapon as a sign that I'm safe." "Don't be a fool, Ultra Magnus. If I wanted to kill you, I'd've done so when I first saw you. I know what you're going to do and I want it done. Get into that ship and go to Earth--tell your forces there, your human allies, that I have returned, and I will deal with Shockwave myself. The Autobots and their human friends have nothing to fear from Megatron." "I'm sure Prime will be thrilled to hear that," said Ultra Magnus drily. "Optimus Prime? He lives?" At Magnus's nod, Megatron turned his face skyward and said, "Primus be praised! How I hoped for this news!" Priss looked at Sylvie, who looked at Feeple, who looked at Ultra Magnus, who shrugged, almost dislodging them. "Wait a second," Priss interjected. "If you're Megatron... then what the hell happened to Galvatron?" Exasperated, Megatron griped, "Who in the cosmos is this 'Galvatron' person people keep babbling abou--" He was cut off as a bolt of brilliant pinkish-white energy streaked past his head to blow up a (thankfully spent) fueling pylon. # Powermad "Nice Dreams" "DEATH!" a voice cried, and all looked up, tracing the beam to its source--a futuristic, eerily Megatron-like Decepticon, the cannon on his arm smoking. "Come out, Transformers! Come out and die! Blood red twilight descends upon your planet, and I am its harbinger! A black night of chaos and uncreation comes--and Unicron is its name!" "Primus," Megatron and Ultra Magnus both whispered, transfixed. As they watched, six Decepticon jets scrambled from a nearby tower, converging on the lone attacker. Cackling madly, he shot two of them down, then transformed into what looked like a piece of field artillery to destroy the rest. Returning to robot form, he cried, "Send your warriors to die in droves, fools! However many of you attempt to destroy me--I will kill you all! Your death will serve to tell the whole of Cybertron that Unicron is coming!!!" Then, surrounded by a fast-moving flotilla of aircraft which had appeared from the east, he flew west with them. His raving voice and the sounds of his strafing faded away into silence. "That," said Sylvie offhandedly, "was Galvatron." Megatron was momentarily speechless. "I'm totally confused now," Priss admitted. "Megatron is supposed to be Galvatron...." "... and Galvatron is supposed to be dead," Feeple added. "Right. So what the hell is going on here?!" "That... thing... was like some kind of demented reflection of me," Megatron said, looking after Galvatron. "That's kind of the idea," Sylvie said. "According to every history book I've ever seen, Unicron converted your remains into Galvatron after Starscream set you adrift in 2005." "Not true," Megatron said. "I encountered Unicron... he offered to remake me, and the other Decepticons that traitor had abandoned, in return for servitude. I refused. I belong to nobody. Unicron was displeased, and left me, and the others, to drift." Megatron thought for a moment. "Could he have used me as the template when he constructed his own minions?" "A possibility," Feeple agreed. "With Unicron, from what I've heard, just about anything is possible." "There's more to this that makes no sense, other than just your reappearance, Megatron," Priss continued, thinking as she spoke. "Unicron came in 2005, and Rodimus Prime destroyed him with the Autobot Matrix. Everbody knows that. And Galvatron... Optimus Prime tore Galvatron apart with his bare hands at Ghorah Khar, in the Seventh Kilrathi War... 2116." She threw up her hands in frustration. "What the hell is going on here?!" Megatron looked confused, and muttered to himself, "Rodimus Prime... ?!" "Worry about it later," Ultra Magnus said. "Galvatron was here--we can't talk that away--and he sounded serious. Megatron is right--we've got to warn Prime!" Warily, Magnus climbed out of the trench, deposited the humans on the ground, and, keeping Megatron covered all the way, followed them to Steel Fury's ramp. Priss, Sylvie, and Ambassador Feeple went up and in; Magnus said he would join them once the ship was ready to launch. "There is no need for your mistrust, Ultra Magnus," Megatron said. "If there is ever to be a new age of peace and understanding between Autobot and Decepticon, it must start somewhere." "The Megatron I knew would never have said things like this," Ultra Magnus replied, "unless he had an ulterior motive. I'm not letting down my guard for a second until we're safely off this planet." "The Megatron you knew is no more, Magnus!" said Megatron vehemently. "In four hundred years of drifting in the void, I learned much about myself. After all, for the first time in millennia, there was no war to take up my concentration, no treacherous underlings to watch my back for. Nothing occupying my mind except itself. Can you not allow that four centuries of introspection might change a person? Primus! Human beings can remake themselves with mere decades of thought and reflection, and we are not so different from them as we would sometimes like to believe." "If you're so different," Magnus said warily, "then why are you fighting for control of the Decepticons again?" "Magnus, you're old enough to remember what we were, before the Dark Times. Do you remember when the word 'Decepticon' was a word that inspired trust, respect, thoughts of integrity and honor? Do you remember when every Transformer's dream was to earn a place in the ranks of the Decepticons? When we protected Cybertron from the ravages of off-world despoilers? When we stopped the empire-building tendencies of the decadent old monarchy? Decepticons freed Cybertron from the Quintessons, Magnus, not Autobots. The Autobots didn't even exist then. I fought in that war, as a general to the Decepticon Commander Supreme, Scorponok. Do you remember Scorponok? "And then, we grew complacent, sure of our power. Corruption spread in our ranks. Our standards were lowered, and the rabble started to enter the ranks. Even the mighty Scorponok was not immune to the spreading corruption, and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to slip into power-mad imperialism. If you ask Optimus Prime, he will tell you: before the Cybertronian Wars, I was an honorable robot. I began my decline when we invaded Tellar. Something in me changed the day Scorponok ordered me to take my brigade and break up a simple civilian peace demonstration with lethal force. At first I hated following those orders; then, slowly, I came to accept them, and then to even enjoy my work. "Then ambition and power-lust overtook me. I assassinated Scorponok--my own creator, a leader I had revered for centuries!--and took his place. I kept my position through force and intimidation, slaughtering all who sought to oppose me. I killed innocent civilians for fun, Ultra Magnus--for fun! That practice was to prove my undoing...." Megatron smiled slightly, with a touch of nostalgia. "One of the civilians I slaughtered would be rebuilt as Optimus Prime... my opposite number, my greatest arch-foe. "For millennia, I kept going that way, allowing all manner of scum and villainy to join my army, crushing the Autobots whenever I could, always, it seemed, with the upper hand, but never enough to be victorious. And then, in 2005, Optimus Prime and I met for our final battle, and all but destroyed each other. Starscream abandoned me, and I drifted, all but dead, unable to do anything but think and reflect, for four centuries. "Over that time, I realized about myself all that I have just told you, and it sickened me. I believe--I hope--that I have purged the madness and evil from myself, and I set myself a similar goal for my return. When I returned, when I was rescued, I vowed that I would purge the Decepticon Army as well, and return them to their former glory. And then, after a cold eternity in the void, my wish was answered. I encountered a vessel of the Cylon Empire, and, fascinated by my mechanical complexity, they picked me up. "My wounds had healed over the centuries, just as my mind had; all I required to be fully revived was energy. The Cylons, in their attempts to disassemble and examine me, provided me enough to become ambulatory again. I attempted to be diplomatic with them, but they only responded with violence, leaving me no choice but to answer them in kind. The engine core of their ship provided me with all the power I needed to return to Cybertron. "And now I have returned, to find almost all my dreams answered. I have the opportunity to take back my Decepticons and return them to their former glory; I can speak to Optimus Prime, who for so long I thought I had destroyed, and ask his forgiveness if he will grant it; and I will have the opportunity, before long, to show Unicron that Megatron cannot be owned, or simply cast aside." Megatron smiled. "Life is good, Ultra Magnus... very good." Magnus had nothing to say to that. He was nearly stunned with the data that he had just received. If it was true, this was the biggest thing to happen since... since he didn't know what. Megatron finding Zen? It was absurd, and yet somehow... plausible. If it was not, then Megatron had spent a very long time fabricating his lie, and for what purpose? What could he accomplish with it? [No,] Magnus said to himself, [no one would tell a story that wild unless it was true. If Megatron wanted to destroy me, he'd just attack me. He wouldn't care if my guard was up or not.] Tentatively, hesitantly, Ultra Magnus lowered his weapon. Megatron's face split into a wide smile. He stepped forward, extended his hand, and said, "There, you see? Someone had to make the first step...." Magnus took his hand, half-expecting to be thrown or punched, and they shook. Ambassador Feeple, Priss, and Sylvie, who had just come back down the ramp, bloody nearly fainted. "What's going on?" Feeple asked when he had recovered. Magnus gave them the short version of Megatron's speech. "That's wonderful... but, uh, Magnus? We've got a bit of a problem," he said. "What is it?" asked Ultra Magnus, half-turning. "The fucking 'Cons ripped apart half my engine room, that's what the problem is!" Priss snarled, throwing her engineer's gloves to the ramp in disgust. "Took the fuel core, the drive computer, the primary and secondary fusion startup cells... the reactors themselves are there, but what good are they without startup equipment? And the warp drive is completely useless without the fuel core and the computer... we're stuck here." "Damn!" Ultra Magnus growled. "This is bad... what about communications? We could at least get a message to Prime...." "No dice," Sylvie said, coming down and leaning on her partner's shoulder. "Subspace and sub-ether are both so full of noise you can't even connect. Email just bounces off the noise layer and returns, with about six pages of error headers. Visual and voice communications are right out. Unless we can break up the jamming or find a way off-planet, we're gonna have to deal with this one ourselves." She tapped Priss on the tip of her nose. "You said you wanted an exciting mission, partner... looks like you got your wish." "I said exciting," Priss replied sullenly, "not suicidal." "Wait a second--how did Megatron get here?" Sylvie asked. She looked up at the towering Decepticon, a questioning look on her face. "I constructed a warp sled from the wreckage of the Cylon drive core, and flew, under my own power," Megatron replied. "Not the most efficient mode of transportation available, but effective. I burned out the core getting here." Megatron appeared thoughtful for a moment. "I'm sorry to seem rude, but I don't know your names, humans." "I'm Sylvie, Sylvie Daniels," said Sylvie with a cockeyed grin--she had been wondering when the machine's curiosity would get the better of him, "and this is my illustrious partner Priss Morgan. And this is His Excellency, the Lord High--" "Please," Feeple said, looking as if he wished the ground would swallow him. "Enough with those ridiculous titles. My name's Feeple. Jeremy Feeple. Call me Jer, everyone does." "You're sure your warp sled can't be repaired?" Priss asked, trying to remain hopeful. "Certain," Megatron replied, "unfortunately. No matter; it would take me days to reach Earth anyway... days I get the feeling we don't have." "You have not even hours, Megatron," a voice announced from above them. Looking up, they saw Decepticon warriors arrayed on the tops of the spaceport maintenance buildings and equipment shelters. At their forefront was Shockwave himself. "Your functional time has come and gone, Megatron," Shockwave continued. "I lead the Decepticons now. For possessing the temerity to come here after four hundred years of absence and demand my resignation, I will destroy you and your--" Shockwave's optic brightened in surprise. "An Autobot! You associate with an Autobot, and claim the leadership of the Decepticons? That is almost laughable, Megatron. Prepare for termination." "No!" Megatron cried. "I claim the right of single combat, Shockwave. Just you and I, winner takes all. Unless, of course, you feel you have to have all your soldiers do the true work of a leader for you...." Shockwave considered. "Fact: You have been observed fraternizing with an Autobot by all the Decepticons here. Hypothesis: They would not follow your leadership, even if you were to win. Conclusion: This tactic is foolish, Megatron. You are just buying time." "Nevertheless, I demand a trial of single combat, Shockwave, just as Scorponok gave me. You cannot deny me without sacrificing your precious honor." "Very well, Megatron." Shockwave landed on the tarmac, sixty meters or so from Megatron, and waved the other Decepticons to stay where they were. "I will destroy you, just as you destroyed Scorponok." "That," Megatron replied, retrieving his fusion cannon and attaching it to his arm, "is not likely. Shall we begin?" "We shall," Shockwave said, and fired his gun arm. # NineInchNails "Head Like a Hole" Pretty Hate Machine [Predictable, Shockwave,] thought Megatron as he dodged, leaping into the air. [You haven't changed at all. How it will surprise you that I have.] Shockwave tried to track Megatron as he rose, then fell, coming out of the sun with his right hand high, and some object in it. He was momentarily confused--this was not a tactic he had anticipated--and then his pattern recognition grid returned an ident on the object Megatron held. [Beam saber!] Shockwave thought, trying to dodge aside. He had spent too much time analyzing and comparing, and not enough time fighting; the saber's blade bit deep into his left forearm. Crying out, he stumbled aside, watching with alarm as the damage estimates scrolled across his vision. Megatron let the momentum of his fall carry him into a crouch, then lashed out with a sidewise kick that caught Shockwave in the hip joint and toppled him to the ferrocrete. The saber cut into the pavement as Shockwave rolled aside, then kicked up, trying for Megatron's face. Megatron dodged nimbly back, abandoning the saber, and raked the ground with his fusion cannon, catching Shockwave's lower leg with one of the bursts. Shockwave rolled to his feet, testing the leg; it would hold his weight, and the pain could be ignored. Why was Megatron fighting so off-style? Could it possible that this wasn't Megatron after all? Megatron plowed into him then, slamming an elbow into his face as his shoulders crashed into Shockwave's torso. Lightning played over both of them as they crashed to the ground, rolling over and over, Megatron's fingers closing around Shockwave's neck. They wound up with Shockwave on his back, right hand trying for purchase on the slick 'crete, as Megatron's hands slowly, inexorably, crushed his neck. Desperate, Shockwave pressed his gun arm to Megatron's side, issued the firing command-- --and blew his own arm off at the elbow. The saber cut had penetrated his weapon's primary arc attenuators and disabled the compensation system completely, and in his desperation, he had forgotten all about it. Megatron, slightly wounded by whatever energy escaped, tumbled away, recovering his beam saber as Shockwave got shakily to his feet and, finding himself weaponless, produced his own. They fought saber to saber for long, suspenseful minutes, each trying to wear the other down, play on the severity of his wounds. Shockwave struck at Megatron's damaged side whenever the opportunity arose; Megatron was simply banking on Shockwave's systems being in shock from the trauma of losing an arm. Eventually, they locked their sabers together and, straining, stood at loggerheads, almost nose to optic. "Only one of us can lead, Shockwave," Megatron grunted. "That does not mean you have to die." "I will not die today, Megatron... you will," Shockwave replied, the strain and weariness obvious in his voice. "I think not," Megatron replied, and, ducking back, accepted a shallow cut across his chestplate to fall back to his elbows and plant both feet firmly in Shockwave's chest. The crystalline plate running across his chest shattered; Shockwave stumbled back, making choking noises, and fell to one knee. Megatron pressed his advantage, rushing forward and driving his saber up to its hilt into Shockwave's chest. Shockwave screamed, fell on his back, and, twitching a bit, lay still. Megatron got triumphantly to his feet and turned to face the Decepticons, who had assembled at the other end of the pad to watch the fight. "Shockwave has fallen," he announced. "I am taking command, and there will be some changes made. We will no longer be the ravagers and destroyers we are legendary for being. I intend to recover the glory and honor of the Decepticons, gone these last five million years and more. We will be disciplined, honorable soldiers. We will offer allegiance and military assistance to the prevailing governments in this area of space. We will have peace with the Autobots." There was a ripple of contentious murmuring through the Decepticons. Calmly, Megatron continued, "Any of you who do not wish to be a member of my new Decepticon Army is invited to try to stop me. Singly, or all at once... it makes no difference to me." He stood, rock-steady, and spread his hands, inviting them to attack. Around a quarter of the Decepticons gathered there broke ranks and charged in a screaming mass, howling for his head. Unconcerned, he stood his ground, raising his fusion cannon. With a single blast, he blew a low-ranking jet warrior nearly in half; with another, tracking slightly, he felled Frenzy; with a third and fourth, Ratbat and Bombshell were destroyed as well. And then they were upon him, and Megatron disappeared under a kicking, firing, yelling mass of Decepticons. As Ultra Magnus, the humans, and the other Decepticons watched in mute fascination, the mass got smaller and smaller. Another jet warrior was kicked away by Megatron's foot, his back broken, lightning skittering over his surface from the broken power/neurofiber conduit that formed his spine. The fusion cannon spoke once from inside the pile, scattering little bits of a Reflector clone, a third jet, and Runamuck across the tarmac. Megatron's fists descended upon and crushed Buzzsaw into the pavement. Runabout and three other jets fell to his mighty fists and feet as well, and it was all over. Megatron stood, battered, dented, scratched, but triumphant, ankle-deep in destroyed Decepticons. There was a long, tense moment as Megatron stared at the rest of the Decepticons, who stared back. "Well?" Megatron demanded. "Anyone else?" Behind him, there was a scrape of metal on metal. Turning, Megatron saw Shockwave getting unsteadily to his feet. "No," Shockwave said, and began to transform. "You will not... rule...." Without a word, Megatron raised his arm and blasted Shockwave through several times. Shockwave, in mid-transform, trembled, shuddered, sparked, and then exploded in a brilliant orange fireball. Megatron turned to face the other Decepticons again, to see Soundwave coming out of the group. His weapon was not in his hand, and Megatron watched, slightly tense, as the communications officer came forward. Kneeling before Megatron, Soundwave offered him the plaque of leadership. Megatron, thanking him cordially, took it. Soundwave got to his feet, and, raising a fist, said in his single-sideband voice, <> "All hail Megatron, Decepticon Commander Supreme!" the gathered Decepticons chorused. "We function for you and you alone!" With Soundwave pledging allegiance to Megatron's New Order, the jamming around Cybertron was cleared. Ultra Magnus contacted Optimus Prime on Earth and informed him of the situation in as few words as possible; Prime promised that he and the rest of the First Autobot Task Force would be on Cybertron as soon as they could. Sylvie and Priss contacted 3WA Center, and were instructed to stand by and await assistance, which was not the answer they had wanted, but the one they had been expecting nonetheless. Galvatron and his minions, after strafing the Iacon quadrant, seemed to have disappeared altogether. For the moment, it appeared, there was nothing to do but wait. Megatron, freshly repaired, walked out of the old Decepticon headquarters, recalling as he did the millennia of memories the place held for him. He noticed one of the humans sitting on the top step, looking out over Vilnacron's splendor, chin on fists, lost in thought. Pausing, Megatron used the zoom function of his optics to take a better look at the human. It was one of the females, the one with the dust-red... what was it?--hair, yes. She was dressed in a close-fitting red jumpsuit with high black boots, elbow and knee pads, and a high collar, and had a handgun strapped to her left thigh. Megatron tried, in vain, to remember her name. Her face had a symmetry that he found pleasing--not all that different, really, from a Transformer woman's. Shrugging inwardly, he pulled his focal point back to its normal setting and sat down on the step beside her. She looked up, startled, and then mumbled a greeting and went back to looking out over the metal-clad city-state. "Is something disturbing you?" Megatron asked, somewhat surprised at the concern he felt. He had never been known for caring anything about humans before. "Nah... I guess not," Priss replied. "Just... thinking. About my dad." "Your 'dad'?" "My father. Male parent." "Oh. I understand." "He's... he's one of the high mucky-mucks in the Wedge Defense Force. Big-time admiral, running the whole Strategic Fleet." "The Wedge Defense Force has multiple fleets now?" "Oh, yeah. Have ever since... lemme think... I was born in 2393... so... 2388. Dad put 'em back together after--oh, you don't know about that. You've missed a lot of stuff. Anyway, he's been in it since the start... he's somewhere around 420 years old, I think." "Not MegaZone?" "No... he's Sylvie's dad. Gryphon's mine," she said, with a measure of restrained pride. Megatron smiled. He had not really known Gryphon--they had never even met in battle--but he remembered with some measure of glee Starscream's frustrated reports in 2002 and 2003, in which he reported at least six Decepticons killed by the human and his fighter plane. He had earned the respect of the Decepticon Air Warriors in that short war. "I know of him," Megatron said. "What do you think of?" "Dunno... I'm just wondering what he's doing now, if he's thinking about me, if he's worried about me. This is my first mission." Priss wondered, inwardly, why she was talking so freely to Megatron. She had never heard anything but bad things about him, since childhood... but he didn't seem so bad. He kind of reminded her of her father, actually. "You probably wouldn't understand, being a robot and all...." "I do," Megatron said, "at least in some degree. The Transformer who constructed me was much like a human's parent to me, as I understand the relationship." Megatron smiled a nostalgic smile and recounted one of the tales of Scorponok from before the wars, when he had been a great and noble leader, and Megatron his greatest general. As she listened, Priss concluded that Megatron was all right... and he did remind her a lot of her father. [I'll never admit it to him,] she said to herself, [but I kinda wish Dad was here....] On the edge of the Cybertron system's charted frontier, a VF-2S Super Victory Veritech Fighter dropped out of warp propulsion. It was painted in the white, black and blue livery of the Wedge Defense Force's legendary Eight-Ball Squadron, VVF-261 (Concordia), and its nose wore a proud "01". Under the cockpit coaming was printed "Pilot M Gen P. M. Currier". In the cockpit, Major General Patricia M. "Terror" Currier, Commander-in-Chief of WDF Fighter Command and leader of the Eight-Balls, shifted in her seat and smiled at the sight of Cybertron, now within visual range. Comfortable as CVR-5 was designed to be, it had been rather a long trip, and she would be glad to get out of the cockpit for a while. She was on leave. Gryphon, the original leader of the Eight-Balls, captain of the vessel her squad was based on, and a longtime friend, had asked her to pop by Cybertron and see how his daughter was coming on her first mission. He had guessed, wrongly, that she would be mad if he turned up himself--it would be like he was checking up on her, that he didn't trust her to do it on her own. Tricia, though, she would welcome as a friend--or so the reasoning went. Terror had been more than happy to go; she hadn't been to Cybertron in over a century, and was anxious to see some of her old Autobot friends from the Bad Old Days, when Eight-Ball had been assigned to fly escort duty for the Autobots' Earth-Cybertron convoys. The planet was quiet, these days--classified as a Negligible Tactical Risk on all combat charts. She wasn't expecting trouble. "Hey," Priss said, looking up suddenly. "What's that?" Megatron got to his feet and looked up, zooming his optics again. How had the human spotted them? Even Megatron's powerful optics couldn't pick out anything more than a small conglomeration of specks coming their way from the northeast. As he watched, trying to pick out more detail, one of them broke away from the formation and streaked up, into the trans-orbital range, and disappeared from sight. The rest kept coming. Megatron had a bad feeling about this. An alarm howled, splitting the gentle thrum of the engines in Terror's cockpit. Startled, she performed a reflexive boost-and-dodge--ingrained as deeply as breathing after four centuries of experience--and looked around for the person who had achieved missile lock on her while she was vectoring for re-entry. She recognized the futuristic, forward-swept-winged grey fighter as it loomed in her rear-view monitor. The Decepticons' supposed greatest ace since Starscream--Cyclonus. "All right," she said with a grin, and threw her cybernetic rig system into Full Interface Mode. There was an instant of disorientation as her perceptions shifted, and then she was her fighter. The Victory banked sharply to port and streaked for Cybertron, wings sweeping all the way back out of velocity-reflex. Cyclonus winged over and followed. # Metallica "Master of Puppets" Master of Puppets The specks came closer, and Megatron recognized them as they did so. Galvatron, Scourge, and their Sweep minions. Megatron didn't know what Cyclonus had parted formation for, but whatever it is had to be bad. He pulled his optics' point of view back and turned to look down at Priss. "You'd better get to cover, human," he said. "This is going to get very ugly." "I have a name, you know," Priss muttered in irritation as she ducked behind one of the columns supporting the facade of Decepticon HQ, pulling her sidearm and wondering what good it would do her. Megatron didn't hear her, or didn't dedicate the CPU cycles necessary for a response. Either way, he gave no reply as he straightened and raised his fusion cannon, zooming his optics again. His right optic glowed red as he targeted. Seventeen kilometers away, Galvatron rocked in the air as the bolt of fuschia energy slammed into his left shoulder. "Aargh!" he observed. "Galvatron!" Megatron bellowed. "Come down and face me!" Galvatron's optics narrowed as he tried to make out the fool who had had the temerity to fire upon him. Then they widened as his pattern recognition system returned an impossible match. "Megatron?" he whispered. "It's not possible...." "You want me to wreck him?" Scourge inquired. "No!" Galvatron shouted, recovering. "I'll tear him apart with my bare hands! Stay away, Scourge, and keep your Sweeps back as well!" "As you command, mighty Galvatron," Scourge replied, "so must I obey. Sweeps, hold here! Wait for Galvatron to finish." Galvatron dove out of the formation to land at the bottom of the stairs to Decepticon HQ, and he looked mad as hell. "I don't know who you are," Galvatron grated, "but you'll pay dearly for impersonating my old self." Megatron laughed. "You're the imposter, Galvatron, not me. I am Megatron--Decepticon Commander Supreme--and I very much dislike being mocked." With that, Megatron leaped off the top step, tackling Galvatron to the ground. "Nyaah!" Galvatron cried, kicking Megatron off him. "Miserable scrap! I'll teach you to lay a hand on Galvatron the Almighty!" He sighted with his own weapon, a futuristic analog of Megatron's arm-mounted fusion cannon. Megatron dodged, throwing himself flat to the ground, and the blast slagged half of the stairs. [Primus!] Megatron said to himself. [He may be more powerful than I am. Perhaps I should seek aid...no. No, this is my fight, and either I win it myself, or die trying!] He got to his feet and returned fire; his aim was truer, and he knocked away Galvatron's weapon. Snarling, Galvatron leaped upon him, tearing his fusion cannon away with his left hand as his right tried to rip out Megatron's optics. Megatron was astonished at the power of Galvatron's grip. Struggle as he might, he could not break it, and Megatron was used to having, physically, the upper hand in any fight. Galvatron's fingers pressed upon the lenses; they cracked, and then splintered, and Megatron was blind. Galvatron drew his fist back for the kill. Terror was reaching the end of her rope. She had tried everything--booster climb, double-inverted-split-S, Immelmann, 6-G hyper-roll, even the old reliable Gryphon Claw Attack. Cyclonus was right on her tail, and she hadn't gotten off a shot. This was getting frustrating. As incredible a piece of technology the VF-2S Super Victory was, it wasn't, apparently, equal to the task of taking on Cyclonus. There was a searing pain through the cybernetic linkage as Cyclonus raked a burst of fire across her tail; one engine blew out, and the crippled Victory, caught in the gravity well, winged slowly over and fell toward Cybertron. A surge of half-panic, half-rage filled Megatron, and, with the strength of desperation, he kicked Galvatron away, then got to his feet, his hands reaching out, fingers spread, searching. Damn it, he was blind! How had he allowed the battle to go so badly? Galvatron had matched him--perhaps overmatched him--before... how could he win now? Priss got to her feet and ran, sliding down the metal ramp at the side of the stairs, firing burst after burst at Galvatron's face from her PlasmaTronix 2000 as she did so. [This is suicidal,] she yelled at herself, running across the courtyard, [what the fuck are you doing?] Elementary history, my dear Priss, she replied to herself. "Megatron! Transform!" "What?" Megatron asked, looking around, his blinded optics sparking. "Transform! You have to trust me! Transform, damn you, or do you want to die here?" Galvatron recovered his weapon. "Human germ!" he cried. "Now, you die!" Megatron weighed his options and did something he never, in six million years, though he would ever do. He trusted himself to a human being, and transformed, becoming a handgun and clattering to the courtyard. Terror kicked left rudder, hoping there was enough of a control system in her dying fighter left to respond, and was rewarded with a slight evening-out of its headlong plunge. Gritting her teeth, she aimed it for what looked like an unoccupied area, then locked down the controls, reached up behind her head with both hands, and yanked the eject handles. Pham! The ejection charge threw the canopy, and then her armored form, clear. She tumbled in freefall for a moment, until the dive computer in her CVR-5 could compensate and fire short bursts from its vernier jets to right her and stabilize her fall configuration. The main emergency jump-pack thruster in the center of the back plate popped open and fired as the jump-pack waldos unfolded and locked against the surfaces of her arm plates, delivering the joysticks into her hands. Had she been unconscious, the medical computer would have informed the dive computer, which would have taken over and landed her itself; as it was, she piloted herself down manually, landing near one of the taller buildings. Let's go back a few seconds now and look at the action just behind Terror; as the canopy blew free, so did the cover over the Cyclone compartment, as the CE-2 Cyclone Ejection System (Mark ][) was activated. The large ceramic-and-metal box that was her Cyclone Emergency Dive Mecha, in this case a VR-152 Warrior Cyclone, was catapulted free next, following a calculated flight trajectory. As it flew, it began to transform. During the engineering phase of the VR-152, the primary design team had attempted to make it transform, match velocities with the CVR-5-wearing pilot, and match up, forming battroid mode for dive landing. However, the intricacies of that maneuver, while feasible in computer modeling, were deemed unfeasible for the wildly variable field conditions under which ejections take place, and so this compromise was made. It converted into cycle mode and, using its own dive computer and booster jets, maintained a trajectory calculated with the aid of the CVR-5 transponder signal, and soft-landed not more than (in 85% of cases) one meter away from the pilot's landing position. As the waldos and thruster folded back into the suit, General Currier spat the vilest curse she could think of (one she had learned some years ago from Khor'ak Redclaw), then climbed onto the Cyclone and rode toward what she thought, thinking back to the time she had spent on Cybertron before, was Iacon. Priss dove for Megatron's small form, avoiding as she did Galvatron's first blast; her PlasmaTronix clattered across the courtyard as it fell free of her open left hand. She hit the steel decking hard, rolled, thought she had injured her shoulder. Her left hand closed around Megatron's grip as she tumbled over the injured shoulder. It was a standard drill; run, dive, roll, grab, up, sight. Following it reflexively, she raised Megatron, taking him in a two-handed grip--he was heavier than he looked--and sighted across the open iron sights at Galvatron, who was tracking his weapon. Her finger moved into position on the trigger, the small induction pad built undetectibly into the second joint's skin contacting the front of Megatron's trigger--also an inductive surface. There was a brief burst of sensory static as the initiated contact set off the smartgun interface built into her neuroprocessor. The interface subprocessor sought a computerized smartgun system in the metallic weapon it was linked to, found what it thought was one, and opened the link--and then said smartgun link was doing something which it had never been intended to do. Priss gasped as she was binary-bonded to Megatron's mind; the scope and breadth of the ancient electronic intelligence was staggering. She struggled to keep a grip on reality as her perceptions merged with his. Megatron, realizing what was happening--and the fact that it was sure to be a great shock to her fragile human mind--experienced a momentary surge of consternation, then shrugged psychically and opened his half of the binary conduit, finishing the link and stabilizing each partner's perceptions. He had never binary-bonded with a human before, but he knew of the procedure. Priss's perceptions cleared; a nanosecond or so had passed. Galvatron was sneering and raising his weapon. Megatron felt more right in her hands than any gun she had ever handled before. She squeezed the trigger. Galvatron rocked back on his heels as the bolt of energy tore through the Decepticon symbol on his chest and right out through his back. "Aaaaaiiiiggghhhh!!" he cried, clutching at the wound. "Miserable human germ--" Priss ignored him and fired again, and again, and again, and again, raking a pattern of deadly fire through Galvatron's chest and abdomen. Galvatron jerked like a marionette whose puppetteer was suffering an epileptic seizure, unable to fall, unable to stand, as each blast ripped through him. Priss ceased firing; smoke and sparks rose from Galvatron's ruined torso, and he wobbled on his feet. A look of pure hate on his face, he raised his weapon. [ANIMATION NOTE: Closeup shot, Priss as seen from just below Megatron's muzzle (which fills at least half the shot). Focus pulls forward from Priss's open right eye to the muzzle, and a bit of light flickers around the outer edge and gleams star-bright at the top, after the usual fashion.] Priss shot him straight through the forehead. His optics going dark, Galvatron collapsed on his back, smoked, and then exploded. Priss lowered Megatron and grinned, raising her right forearm to wipe the sweat off her forehead. "Did we get him?" Megatron asked. "Oh yeah," Priss replied. "We got him good." Laughing, she twirled Megatron around her fingertip a couple of times. What a rush! Ultra Magnus, Sylvie, Ambassador Feeple and Soundwave came down the intact part of the stairs, weapons ready and panic on their faces. "Are you all right, Priss?" asked Sylvie, going to her partner's side. "Never better, partner," Priss replied, grinning like a maniac. She held up Megatron. "We kicked his butt." <> asked Soundwave, in the most concerned voice he could muster, which didn't sound very much so. "I function," Megatron replied, "but I am in need of repairs. Galvatron blinded me, and would have destroyed me, if not for the intervention of this brave human." <> Soundwave promised, and then fell silent as he began a communication inside his head. "This brave human has a name, you know," Priss said. "My apologies," Megatron replied. "I'm not used to using humans' names. Thank you for your assistance, Priss Morgan. I will be forever in your debt." "The pleasure was all mine," Priss replied, whirling Megatron around her finger again. <> Soundwave said. "Great," Priss said before Megatron could reply, and put him into the holster which had until recently contained her PT2000--which, she noticed with a twinge of sadness, had been destroyed in Galvatron's attempt to shoot her. "Lead on, Soundwave." Megatron did not protest; he was too busy mulling over the events of the past few minutes, and trying to figure out why this human affected his processes so profoundly. Soundwave stood by the door, an alert sentry, as Hook, the Constructicon surgeon, worked at replacing Megatron's optics and repairing his other injuries. Priss sat on the edge of the worktable, watching with fascination as the medic worked and idly tracing the intricate engraving on Megatron's arm plate with her fingertips. Ultra Magnus and Ambassador Feeple had gone to Iacon; Sylvie had chosen to remain behind with her partner. She stood near the door as well, looking with a bit of jealousy at Priss. [Looks like she's got herself a second partner,] Sylvie said to herself. [Can't say as I blame her... she's been looking for a gun like him all her life.] She snickered inwardly at the utter bizarreness of that statement. Sobering, she considered the ramifications of this turn of events. She could see several outcomes, some better than others. [Guess I'll just have to wait and see what turns up. She's my best friend--she's not going to abandon me or anything. Priss would never do that.] She turned and looked up at Soundwave's silent metallic bulk, standing so still he seemed almost to be a statue, and a slow, wicked smile spread across her face. Two could play at this game, she realized. "Hey, Soundwave," she called. <> Soundwave replied. <> He half-turned and knelt, to better observe her. <> "I was just wondering," said Sylvie, tapping her toe idly against the floor and trying to look nonchalant. "You're, ah, pretty fond of Megatron, aren't you?" <> "That's what I thought you'd say." She paused, thinking. "Do you have any feelings? I mean, the other Transformers I've met seem so... human... they have the same mannerisms, the same reactions. Anybody else would fidget, be bored, standing by the door like that, but you look like you could stand there all day and not move." <> Soundwave replied. <> "Uh, yeah... I know what you mean. A lot of humans have a problem with patience... and I'm one of them. That wasn't what I meant, though. I--" <> Soundwave replied, <> "Wow. That's rough. Must be pretty frustrating." <> Was it Sylvie's imagination, or did he sounds just the tiniest bit pleased with himself about that? "Neat. Even cyberspace? Ever go there?" <> "Wow! That's keen. I love cyberspace...wish I could be jacked in all the time, and still walk around and talk to people." <> "Must be hard, being so...different. Do your Decepticon friends ever ask about it?" <> "Well, you've got one now." Soundwave had no response to that. Megatron, his repairs completed, sat up and thanked Hook for his excellent work. He looked around the room, squinted, tested a few different functions of his optics, and then swung his feet off the side of the worktable and stepped down. As he did so, the door to the medical bay opened, and a ghost out of Megatron's past walked in, flanked by his lieutenants, Ultra Magnus and Jazz. Soundwave got to his feet and stood straight; Priss hopped down from the worktable and took up a place beside Sylvie, and then both Trouble Consultants came to attention and saluted. Even Megatron himself stood a little straighter at the sight of him. Optimus Prime, Autobot Commander Supreme, had just entered the room. He had changed since Megatron had last seen him--twice, in fact, but Megatron didn't know that. He was as tall as Megatron, still, and of the same general configuration, but he seemed sleeker, somehow. His left shoulder still bore the Autobot symbol proudly, but it too had changed since Megatron had last seen it; it was now superimposed over a Wedge Defense Force logo (as it had been since 2026, in honor of PCHammer's defeat of Devastator--all the Autobots who had been present at that battle now wore the Autobot/WDF sigil as a mark of respect). As Prime walked, Megatron noted that even his mannerisms, while still so familiar, were now even smoother, swifter, and surer. Primus, thought Megatron, has Prime become even more powerful since last we met? "Megatron," said Optimus Prime, and his voice was the same as it had always been. "Optimus Prime," Megatron replied. He stepped forward, holding his hands out away from his sides, until he was standing only a pace away from Prime. "Ultra Magnus tells me you have something you wish to tell me, under a white flag of truce," Optimus Prime said. "Let's hear it." "Certainly," Megatron said, and told his story. When he finished, he added, "Optimus Prime, I wish you to know that--whatever my arrogance has, in the past, compelled me to say--I have always considered you an honorable and worthy foe. In another world, a better world, I would have called you--would have been proud to call you--my friend." He offered his hand. Optimus Prime looked at Megatron's hand, then into his optics, and then closed his own hand around Megatron's. "Megatron," he said, "I think we live in that better world today." "Well, you might as well admit it to yourself, Terror," General Currier muttered to herself, leaning the Cyclone on one outstretched leg as she surveyed the dizzying array of Cybertronian streets. "You're lost." She looked up sharply, throwing the facebowl of her CVR-5 helmet back, as she heard turbines overhead (a pilot must always look up when she hears an aircraft--it's a reflex). Fusion turbines, with a very familiar pitch--they were the engines of a VF-2 Victory Veritech fighter! What other Victory could be here? She could see the craft approaching on the horizon--apparently it had just arrived in-system, from the vector it was taking. Cybertron's oddly transparent atmosphere gave everything a rather surreal appearance. The Victory came closer, and Terror keyed her helmet radio to the WDF emergency frequency. "Unidentified VF-2, this is Major General Patricia Currier, Wedge Defense Force Fighter Command. Come in, unidentified Victory. Come in." The Victory--she could see now, as it approached, that it was a Super Victory--winged over and punched burners, making best time toward her location. "Unidentified VF-2, respond please," Terror continued, wondering what the pilot was on about. "This is Major General Patricia Currier, respond please." Suddenly, she realized, from the details of the shape of its booster pylons and its slightly larger proportions, that it was not a Super Victory at all. It appeared to be a VF-2XS Ultra Victory--but that was impossible, there was only one of those in existence! Gryphon's prototype Ultra, Ballistam, which very occasionally flew as Eight-Ball Zero, was the only one that had been constructed, and-- No, she corrected herself. According to Concordia's records, two had been constructed, and one of them destroyed in longevity testing. But.... This was definitely not Gryphon's Ultra flying toward her now. It was silver-white in color, with gleaming scarlet stripes along the leading edges of its wings and two broad scarlet stripes running down its fuselage, from just behind the cockpit, out to the intakes and all the way to the tail. There were no Wedge Defense Force symbols on it, either; instead, on the booster pylons, the sides of the nose, and one of the wings, there was a large Decepticon symbol. What?! The Ultra Victory swooped down the center of the street, heading right for Terror; shaking herself out of her shock, she punched the Warrior Cyclone into battroid mode and wondered what the hell she expected to accomplish as she readied the missiles. The Victory transformed, accompanied by the characteristic sound of a changing Transformer, into battroid mode and landed in the street in front of her. She looked up at it and gasped; instead of the usual VF-2S window-slot "face" that Gryphon's VF-2XS had, this fighter had been modified with a Transformer's flex-metal face, with an oblong nose, two hexagonal optics, and a mouth. Moreover, she recognized the face. "Hello, General Currier," said the Victory in a familiar voice. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Starscream." "Starscream," Megatron said, as if amazed. "I am very surprised you still live." "No thanks to you," Starscream replied with sardonic amusement. "Or so I thought. I'm rather glad you turned out not to have become that idiot Galvatron; I never had even a quarter of the respect for him I had, however grudging, for you." "Four hundred years of isolation and disability changed me, Starscream," Megatron said. "What changed you?" "Quite the opposite," replied Starscream with a smile, sitting down in a corner chair and putting his feet up. "Four centuries of warm companionship and patient teaching." "I beg your pardon?" Ambassador Feeple asked, leaning forward in his own seat. "When I was destroyed a second time by Galvatron, my photonic consciousness pattern--my ghost, if you will--again remained coherent. Something to do with the energy patterns of his weapon and my systems, or something--a freak coincidence, whatever it was. I drifted for a while, angry and bitter, and then I happened across the ultimate weapon--a weapon with whose power I could revenge myself on Galvatron and all the others who had dared cross me. The SDF-17 and its Reflex cannon. "I invaded the ship's computer network and sought to take it over. Unfortunately for me, there was already a very powerful resident... much more powerful than I was." "Eve," Feeple said. "Exactly." Starscream smiled. "Dear, sweet Eve. She could have destroyed me--could easily have destroyed me. Instead she captured me, gently, and accessed all the WDF and allied records about me. She discovered--in a nanosecond--everything that others knew about me...and then she joined with my mind in cyberspace and learned everything I knew about myself. She knew about my beginnings as a scientist, an explorer, my friendships and enmities...how my hubris and arrogance had overtaken me and poisoned me over the eons, just as yours did, Megatron. And since I couldn't point them out to myself, she pointed them out for me. Then she showed me the glory and honor of the Wedge Defense Force. For four centuries, Eve re-educated me, always gentle, always quiet, and always right. "She was just about to set me free when the SDF-17 was destroyed, and we were trapped together in the matrix crystal until Gryphon rescued us. Of course, he didn't know about me--no one did. And then...." Starscream smiled again. "Then Eve and I were reconnected to the Net, and the other WDF fleet CIs got to meet us. And I went out to meet them with my teacher... and fell in love. Gryphon's own CI captured my cybernetic heart." Priss, sitting on Megatron's shoulder, gaped for a moment. "Vision?" "Vision," Starcream sighed, "and never was there a more aptly named intelligence. She was the final step in my re-education. I guess you could say love turned me around, Megatron... being given a chance by someone who could just as easily have destroyed me--hell, being given a thousand chances, in the early days of our relationship--and from there having the opportunity to meet someone who could love me for who I was. That turned me around." "Then it was Vision who got you the Victory body," Terror reasoned. "Precisely. She and I reworked the design a bit--it was admirably suited, thanks to Admiral Hutchins's use of Transformer technology in its design--and then she constructed it using Concordia's onboard manufacturing facilities. A bit of fooling around with cybernetic bus systems and a sensor block to cover my departure, and I was a physical being again, for the first time in centuries. "I spent the past couple of decades just enjoying my freedom, travelling here and there and visiting old haunts. I guess it's just coincidence that I returned to Cybertron at this point in time... and imagine my surprise when I discovered that Megatron had returned as well." "I think that one gave us all a surprise," Optimus Prime said drily. "This is a week of surprises," Megatron announced, getting to his feet and pacing up and down the room. Priss hooked an arm round the gun muzzle protruding up behind his back and remained where she was, grinning a silly grin and kicking her feet. Sylvie caught her eye and snickered slightly behind her hand, leaning on Soundwave's leg. "We have a very large problem, Optimus Prime, if what Galvatron and his minions were preaching is true," Megatron continued. "Unicron returning?" Prime said. "How is that possible? Unicron was destroyed. I saw his head with my own optics." <> Soundwave interjected. <> "I wonder... " Prime mused. "Unicron was fabled to have incredible power. Could it be that, over the years following his destruction, some spark of consciousness survived inside his head? Could he have gathered power during all those years... enough power to spacefold away, to some place where he could repair himself?" "I can vouch for the survival of his consciousness," Starscream said. "Remember, I met him, dealt with him. He still possessed power, almost unfathomable power... and he spoke of desiring revenge." Starscream outlined Unicron's plot to seize Cybertron as his new body, stressing that Unicron had mentioned a desire to save time. "It is possible," Megatron said. "Unicron is said to have been capable of almost anything. If he could create Transformers out of nothing... perhaps he could eventually rebuild himself as well. If that is possible...." "Then we're in big trouble," Ultra Magnus said. "The only thing that could stand against Unicron before was the Matrix... and the Matrix is a mere whisper of what it was then. It was totally depleted resurrecting Prime in 2015... it's only had a little less than four centuries to rebuild itself." "A drop in the bucket compared to its former majesty," Megatron agreed. "Hmm... a pretty puzzle." "What about the Wedge Defense Force?" Sylvie piped up. "I'd be willing to bet the Reflex cannon could make a stand against Unicron...." "As I see it we need not ask the WDF for military intervention, at least until we know for certain that Unicron is coming. I've already sent the Decepticon starfleet to patrol the system--if Unicron is on an approach vector we'll know soon enough." "And if he has developed the ability to spacefold, then we won't know until it's too late," Prime said. "I maintain that, if we are going to ask for help, we should ask for it now." Megatron considered for a moment, then said, "Of course. If he could spacefold his head away...a nd rebuild his body... it would be possible for him to construct into his new body a fold system large enough to transport it." "Then we are in agreement?" "Yes, Optimus Prime. We are." Megatron turned. "Soundwave! Contact the Wedge Defense Force central command in the name of the Decepticon Armed Forces of Cybertron. Request military assistance against the menace of Unicron." Optimus Prime keyed his internal comm, and relayed a similar order to Blaster. "In the meantime," Megatron said, "I have troops to prepare for battle... and so do you, Prime. Shall we declare ourselves allies this day?" "So we shall," Prime replied. He got to his feet and extended a hand; Megatron took it. Just as they did, Soundwave spoke up from his spot by the door. <> "What?" Megatron said, turning. "Blaster is reporting a similar situation," Prime confirmed. "Something is blocking our transmission attempts." "Or someone," Ultra Magnus added. THE GREAT HALL DECEPTICON HEADQUARTERS, VILNACRON THE NEXT DAY Megatron had just finished explaining the situation to his assembled Neo-Decepticon warriors--those who had remained loyal to him after he declared his intention to reform the Decepticons into their honorable and famed selves of antiquity. They were surprisingly many; it was amazing how many had followed the imperialistic, violent ways of the old order for the same reasons as he had, and who were swayed by his and Starscream's tales of their remakings. The Constructicons were there; Thundercracker, Thrust and Dirge remained of the original jet warriors; Rumble, Laserbeak, and Ravage stood with their master, Soundwave (Rumble seemed to be learning paper-rock-scissors from Sylvie); about a battalion and a half of the younger jet warriors, under the ad-hoc leadership of Sideslip, were ranked and shinily polished to the side. A large knot of others, looking somewhat discontented, lurked in the back of the room; the Stunticons and Combaticons, the two surviving Insecticons, Windrazor, Eagle Eye, Octane and Terradive, to name the most prominent. "Look at him," Windrazor sneered quietly to Shrapnel. "Standing there with that flesh creature on his shoulder, preaching to us of peace and honor. Those centuries in space have decayed his cerebration unit, if you ask Windrazor. The Megatron Windrazor remembers would have crushed that little parasite for daring to touch him. The Megatron Windrazor remembers killed Optimus Prime, damn his rusting chassis! He's just like all those others now, weak-spirited and foolish." "True (true)," Shrapnel replied, "but he is still physically mighty (mighty). To challenge him for leadership as Shockwave did would be foolish in the extreme (extreme)." "Windrazor knows that," said Windrazor. "Windrazor would not suggest it. But his weakness may give us the opening we need...if we were to walk away right now, he would probably not force a conflict. Let him ally himself with the Autobots, sully the Decepticon name, and die in the jaws of Unicron; we will leave this place and form our own army, and keep the Decepticon cause alive. How many of you are with Windrazor?" He looked one by one at Motormaster, Onslaught, Octane, Shrapnel, Eagle Eye and Terradive; all signaled their allegiance. "Very well, then. Let us go from this place, and forge our own army of glory." They moved toward the exit. "Where are you going?" Megatron called as he noticed them departing. "I have not dismissed you." "We do not recognize your leadership," Windrazor replied defiantly. "Megatron the Mighty would not ally himself with the cursed Autobots! He would not speak of digging in, crouching here and waiting for Unicron to come like a scared schoolbot! Windrazor thinks you are an imposter, and all who follow you are fools. We go to form our own army--to keep the flame of the true Decepticon cause burning! Long live the Imperial Decepticon Army! Long live the Impericons!" Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, masking well the tension he felt. If his gamble was wrong, Megatron would shoot him in the back.... "Megatron!" Thundercracker cried. "Why do you not destroy him?" "No," Megatron replied. "Let it stop here. Any who are unsatisfied, leave this place now; I will not waste lives consolidating my power base. But know this: when next we meet, we will be enemies. Desertion is still a crime." A long and tense moment ensued. Sideslip stepped forward, raised his fist, and cried, "All hail Megatron, Decepticon Commander Supreme! I function for you and you alone!" The others followed him, in a cheering roar. "Impericons?!" Eagle Eye grumbled, casting a sidewise glance at his new commander as they left Vilnacron. "Windrazor did not hear you piping up with a better idea," Windrazor replied icily. "Impericons--to the starport. We will claim a star cruiser and leave this doomed world before Unicron comes to bring death to it." "We will revive our old traditions," Megatron declared when the tumult had died down. "This will give us an anchor to base our reformation on. And the first of them will be our decorations of valor and bravery. At this moment, I wish to share a tale of true valor, above and beyond the call of duty, with you, my loyal troops." Priss's eyebrows rose in surprise as Megatron related the story of his battle with Galvatron, pointing up her role in it, to the Decepticons. "Without this small, carbon-based creature," Megatron concluded, "I would not, now, function. It is to her, then, that the first of our revived decorations will go. For saving my life and ensuring the recreation of the Decepticon Army, I think the least we owe her is our highest military order of heroism: the Decepticon Brand of Valor. Who agrees?" Another resounding cheer rolled over the Great Hall. "What say you, Priss Morgan?" "I... I don't know what to say. I'm... very honored." "She has accepted!" Megatron declared. Cheers. "Hook--can you modify the procedure to be painless and safe for this creature?" "I can do anything," Hook replied. "See to it," Megatron ordered, "and curb your arrogance. You've no need of it; we all acknowledge your skill." "Uh...thank you, Commander." Hook looked vaguely uncomfortable; Scrapper slapped him on the back. "Consultant Morgan is my thav and my assistant," Megatron continued. "In the days that follow, as we prepare for war with Unicron, I will be delegating a great deal of authority to her. Obey her as you would me. If any of you has a problem with this new stance concerning humans, I suggest you take it up with her." He smiled almost imperceptibly. "Very well. Here are your first assignments. We've much work to do, my Decepticons." TWO WEEKS LATER Personal log, 2 October 2412 TSC; Trouble Consultant Third Class Priss Morgan recording. The past two weeks have been a blur of activity; without any way of contacting the WDF, Megatron and Optimus Prime have been working feverishly to get their armies into shape and used to working together. Old enmities are hard to overcome, and individual conflicts between Autobots and Decepticons haven't completely ceased, but everyone seems willing to give this Decepticon Reformation a chance. I've been doing what I can, and a lot of Megatron's Decepticons seem to have accepted me as his thav--his binary partner. Apparently, this binary bonding thing runs deep; it seems to have a great cultural significance to the Transformers. I wish Megatron were less busy, so I could talk with him about it, but from what Prime's been saying, we've got all kinds of time. Sylvie's been spending a lot of time hanging around with Soundwave and his minions. She and Rumble are being bad influences on him; just yesterday I heard him say "Bite me, assmunch" to Bonecrusher, in that weird, flat voice of his. I almost died laughing...Sylvie seems to have a disruptive effect on everything. I think that's why I love her so much. :) Last week she finally binaried with him; Hook kept her in a biotank for six days and he and Scrapper tinkered around with her CVR. Kind of amusing, really. Prime and Magnus are tense as hell; none of Galvatron's minions has been sighted, but they know it's only a matter of time before they return. Magnus theorized yesterday that Unicron is delaying because of Galvatron's destruction; perhaps he's re-evaluating the pros and cons of attacking now that he knows we're powerful enough to take out his strongest minion. He'll be here, sooner or later. And we'll be ready. I've got to go; Scrapper needs me to direct him and the other Constructicons in the fortifications on the west wall. Priss stood on the battlement, watching the Constructicons work. It was fascinating to watch them work; they had such a rapport from long experience that they worked without speaking, heightening their already eerie resemblance to unmanned human construction tools. As she watched, a black ship dove out of the sky, winged over once, and, with a great cloud of coldshot thruster gas, landed next to her. She was pleased to see it--Martin Rose's Batwing. The canopy racked back and Martin "PCHammer" Rose, in cape and hat, leaped out, near-panic on his face. "Priss! What the hell's going on--those are the Constructicons! You're lucky they haven't noticed--" He ground to a half as his eyes spotted something thoroughly incongruous. They had, as was only natural, been scanning Priss for signs of injury--after all, he had taken the situation for a crisis. As they had paused--again, as was only natural (^_^)--at the expanse of pale skin revealed by the open collar of her jumpsuit (the top few inches of which were open), they had noticed the discoloration on her chest, just above her left breast. As he looked more carefully, he noticed that it was not merely a discoloration; it was a stylized, slightly different, but very recognizable Decepticon symbol, tattooed to the skin, its border a complex pattern of dots (actually an optical recognition code that told, to any who could decipher it, the circumstances behind its awarding). (It was no ordinary tattoo; in fact, it was a genetically-induced change of her skin color pattern in that area. Hook's skill was indeed unparallelled--but he had consulted Perceptor on the biochemical details.) "What the hoek is going on here?" Hammer demanded. He was interrupted as Scrapper transformed and walked over. "Hey, boss," he said to Priss. "Where d'ya want us next?" "Ah...." Sylvie consulted the datapad she was carrying. "Section three needs another blaster turret. Get Hook and Mixmaster over there to fit it up. Scavenger and Long Haul can go look for those tritanium deposits Shockwave hid, we won't need them here for a while. You and Bonecrusher work on knocking down that old retaining wall--it'll interfere with the number-six missile bank." "Roger wilco, babe," Scrapper said with a sloppy half-salute, turned on his heel, and transformed, roaring away. "I repeat: what the hoek is going on here?" Hammer demanded. "It's a long story...." Priss checked her watch. "It's about lunchtime, hang on a second." She turned and stuck her little fingers in her mouth, emitting an earsplitting whistle. Scrapper and Bonecrusher stopped working and transformed, turning. "You guys!" she bellowed. "I'm gonna go catch some lunch--if you finish before I get back, take a break until I do, ok?" They waved, and went back to work. "C'mon, let's go," she said to Hammer. "You make a good foreman," Hammer said with a bewildered half-grin, following her into Vilnacron's central hall. TWO DAYS LATER It was quiet, too quiet. Everyone on Cybertron could feel it; that subtle wrongness in the air that meant impending danger. In Iacon, a very large Autobot stood on the upper battlement, beside Optimus Prime and a cloaked and hatted PCHammer, looking out over the citystate and the spires of distant Vilnacron. He was mostly painted in black, with a bit of green camouflage, and his armored skin bore the slight wrinkles of millennia of patched battle wounds. A rippled scar ran across one of his optics; he had never had the scar repaired out of pride, although the optic itself had been replaced out of pragmatism. "Unicron will come today," said Megafortress in his low, gravelly, seldom-heard voice. "I think so too, old friend," Prime replied. "Many of us will die." Megafortress turned ponderously and headed for the door leading back into the tower. He looked back. "I am prepared." Then he went inside. "Now there's a cheery fellow," said PCHammer. "Does he ever expect to survive anything?" Optimus Prime shook his head. He had never understood Megafortress's fatalism. Perhaps HiQ could have explained it, but he was gone now. No; not gone. Part of him would be with Prime forever. The bond had seen to that; there was a little bit of Prime that would always be HiQ. The thought was comforting, but it still didn't make up for the loss of conversation. Prime curled his fingers around the metal rail running around the battlement, looked up into the inky black sky, and waited. Deep in his structure, he could feel that something was going to happen, and very soon. Megatron, in a similar position in Vilnacron's highest tower, with Priss, as usual, on his shoulder, looked toward Iacon. They were not alone; Soundwave, Sylvie, and Thundercracker were there as well, all silent and pensive. Finally, Thundercracker broke the silence. "He's coming," he said. "I don't know how I know... but I know." "So do I," Megatron replied. "It's as if the whole planet of Cybertron knows it. The very air seems thick. We must be ready." And then.... # Nineinchnails "Wish" Broken A gleaming silver rent appeared in the fabric of space and time itself, splitting the entire Cybertronian sky. It rippled and flowed outward from its center line, almost looking like froth kicked up on the surface of water by a surfacing submarine. A metallic spire thrust upward out of it, trailing foglike wisps of subspace behind it; the spire showed itself to be attached to a curved metal rod, then a ring, as the object it was attached to heaved itself out of the void. "My God," PCHammer whispered. "Like the Sol Bianca... a subspace synchrotron. The power to run that thing must be...." He trailed off as the the ring showed itself to be running around the equator of a sphere. A sphere roughly the size of Cybertron itself. A sphere covered in knobbly protrusions and sheathed in a glittering orange-gold metal Martin couldn't identify, and with a huge, obscene mouth dominating the side facing Cybertron. Unicron heaved himself completely out of the subspace rift, and it closed behind him, collapsing and rippling and vanishing into the ether. And then the unprecedented happened. Martin Rose had absolutely no words. Optimus Prime, however, did. He turned, punched the intercom button, and shouted, "Autobots--full alert! Unicron has arrived!" Alarms went off all over the place. From the back of Iacon, the Autobot Air Force scrambled; Highbrow, Cloudburst, Brainstorm, all five Aerialbots, Powerglide, Skyfire, Megafortress. Down below, other Autobots scrambled to positions behind pieces of artillery, heavy shield generators, unidentifiable pieces of equipment. Familiar-looking sections of Iacon separated themselves and arose, revealing themselves to be the Autobots' most powerful single soldiers, titanic Metroplex and Fortress Maximus, who dwarfed even him. The rest of the city-state transformed as well, changing in perhaps twenty seconds from peaceful city to massive battlestation. Unicron deployed his own troops, sending Cyclonus and some of Scourge's Sweeps to Vilnacron to amuse himself with the Decepticons' jet forces, and Scourge and the rest of the Sweeps toward Iacon to deal with the Autobots' ground troops. Inefficient, but it was what they wanted to do, and Unicron didn't particularly care. He was here to feed, and to revenge himself. "Decepticons!" Megatron cried, knowing Soundwave would hear and relay his command. "Unicron has come! Scramble!!" A legion of Decepticon jetwarriors streaked to meet the incoming invaders. Others dashed to their battlestations just as the Autobots had, and Trypticon rose out of Vilnacron's infrastructure. Megatron found himself wishing Scorponok were here. Starscream prepared to transform and take to the skies himself; as he did, he heard a human voice call to him. He paused and turned. General Patricia "Terror" Currier was running toward him, securing her CVR-5 helmet as she did so. "You're not going up there without me, damn it!" she shouted. "You're the only Victory on the planet!" Starscream smiled and transformed to jet mode. "Very well," he said with a grin in his voice, and opened the cockpit. As Terror belted down, he kicked burners and clawed his way into the sky through sheer brute thrust. "But I'm driving." "All battlestations are manned, Prime," Blaster reported in Prime's internal comm set. "Every light is green." "Very well." Prime raised his rifle. "Autobots--open fire!" All hell broke loose, and aimed itself at Unicron. PCHammer excused himself and darted downstairs. He could do more in the air, but first he had to get his partner. The Decepticons opened up at about the same time as the Autobots. Enough firepower to smash the shields and shear the hull of a GENOM Star Destroyer poured into Unicron's oncoming face in the span of the next ten seconds. Unicron did not appear to care. Cyclonus ripped through the ranks of the Decepticon air warriors like his namesake, sowing a path of death behind him. They were brave, but they could not match his speed, nor his maneuverability, nor his guns, and one by one they died. Abruptly, a red streak cut across his nose. Confused, Cyclonus winged over and tried to get a visual lock on what it had been. There it was--a Decepticon jetwarrior, but so fast! He could barely keep it in visual confirmation, it was maneuvering so fast. "A red comet, eh?" Cyclonus said, a twinge of amusement in his voice. "He will provide me with some sport." He applied more thrust and went after the red Decepticon. "I would know your name," Cyclonus called as he fired off a burst that the red jet barely jinked away from, "before I destroy you." "I am Sideslip," replied the jet. "And you will not destroy me!" "Brave as well as fast and skilled," Cyclonus said. "You will be a worthy kill, my Red Comet--not like the rest of these weaklings." "You see your death, Autobot fool!" cried one of the Sweeps, streaking past Megafortress and banking around. "I will destroy you before you can even think of turning!" Megafortress made no reply; he simply kept his engines at full military thrust and bore down on Unicron's approaching form. The Sweep darted for another pass, this time raking weapon fire up Megafortress's fuselage; it left no visible mark. "Tough one, aren't you?" the Sweep cried. "So much the better! I'll start with your engines." The Sweep wheeled off Megafortress's nose and began heading back at him, playing a high-velocity game of chicken. "Why don't you speak?! Speak before you die!" Megafortress said nothing. The Sweep cleared his nose with mere centimeters to spare and darted down his length, too fast and low to bring his weapon to bear. As he cleared the tail, Megafortress divided a bit of his consciousness, aimed, and fired his tail cannon. "Ack!" the Sweep cried as the proton beam blasted through him. He made it halfway to robot mode before exploding. Megafortress continued silently on his way. Scourge's optics would have narrowed, had he been in robot mode. Something had just swept past him--he had sensed it visually--but his sensor suite had reported nothing. His psychological brow furrowing, he spun on his axis and searched. There it was! A black, flattened semi-disc of a ship, rather like those Kilrathi cretins he and Cyclonus had been forced to work with by hard times in previous centuries. He still could obtain no sensor locks, but he could see it, and for Scourge the huntsman, that was enough. "Identify yourself before Scourge destroys you!" he cried, and vectored. PCHammer slung the Batwing to port, winging over, keyed his com system, and replied in his most intimidating voice (which was pretty damn very), "I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the corrosion that eats at the infrastructure of your spirit. I am.. the Hammer." # They Might Be Giants "Rhythm Section Want Ad" They Might Be Giants "You have a flair for the dramatic, Autobot. Die!" Scourge opened fire. The black ship was gone from his sights like a wraith. "What?!" Martin pulled out of the Immelmann, executed the obligatory snap-roll, and said calmly, "Blade." Then he pulled the trigger on his control stick. Alternating, scintillating shards of pure energy formed on and darted off the perimeter edges of the Batwing's shield, tagging Scourge's rear quarter with a flare of energy. Scourge snarled and peeled off; Martin kept the smoothly responsive Batwing on his six, at least until Scourge performed a booster reversal and suddenly dropped into Martin's six. As Scourge's laserfire raked the rear shield, Martin squeezed the trigger while announcing, in that same icily steady voice, "Railgun." ZOT! Twin lances of energy ripped away from the shield's edges, heading backward this time. Scourge took them right in the nose, and faltered, dropping away. Martin shoved the Batwing into a forward Immelmann, hoping he had the altitude, as Scourge dropped into the actual streets of Cybertron. The horizon tilted crazily; Hammer whooped as he slammed the Batwing through a nifty one-and-three-quarters-roll, ducking through two vertically and three horizontally narrow gaps in the architecture before coming out into a boulevard on an even keel. Scourge was gone. "Dammit!" Martin growled. "Goodbye, Autobot," Scourge's voice came, and something slammed into the top of the Batwing. PCHammer gritted his teeth as the ship bucked, and fought to keep the nose up. He pushed in more throttle, and the black ship peeled up and darted into the clear upper air. He checked the upper shield level: 34%. Allowing for regeneration, that had been closer than he wanted. Now where the hell was Scourge? "Hunter," Hammer announced, fired, and watched. This time the energy bolts turned and darted up and to starboard; so Hammer pulled the nose up and pointed the Batwing that way. And there was Scourge. "Blade." Martin opened fire as he and Scourge bore down on each other; his burst raked across the top of Scourge's form and shattered the gunpod toward the rear. Scourge peeled off and attempted to flee, but Hammer had the range now; he banked smoothly over and kept--if you'll pardon the expression--the hammer down until Scourge, screaming in rage and agony, burst into a godzillion glowing flinders. He then executed a short victory roll before darting up into the Cybertronian sky and seeking his next target. Optimus Prime felt helpless--not a common occurrence. His troops were becoming disorganized, their morale drooping as they poured attack after attack at Unicron without seeming to damage it. The Sweeps were wreaking havoc among the ground troops despite the air warriors' valiant efforts at stopping them; there were quite a lot of them now, many more than there had been the first time, according to all the accounts Prime had received of that dark day. He could feel the Matrix inside his chest, throbbing with purpose, but too weak, too weak to help, and he felt helpless. Then, like a wave, a cheer swept over the Autobot forces, and they rallied. Prime leaned over the rail and caught the words of the cheer as Ultra Magnus took it up near the entrance to the command center: "PCHammer has destroyed Scourge! The Sweeps are in chaos!" [Every little victory,] Prime reminded himself, [creates others.] Sideslip was nearing the end of his rope. He was fast, maybe even faster than Cyclonus, but he couldn't keep dodging and ducking forever, and it seemed as if Cyclonus could chase him for the rest of time. "Any Decepticon or Autobot aircraft, this is Decepticon Sideslip. I'm in trouble here, I need help!" he cried. [Primus, please let someone be listening.] "No one will help you, fool!" Cyclonus declared. "They fear Cyclonus!" [I mean besides him.] "Cyclonus!" Terror yelled. "Starscream--damn it, give me control. That bastard knocked me out of the sky when I was tired from ferrying halfway across the sector--I want him!" "Wait your turn," Starscream replied. "Cyclonus is supposed to be the greatest flying Decepticon of all time. That title is mine." Starscream kicked in his booster pack and streaked toward Cyclonus. "Cyclonus!" he shouted, and used the words of the ancient challenge. "One shall stand--one shall fall!" "Idiot!" Cyclonus replied, peeling off from his pursuit of Sideslip. "I will destroy you!" "Oh, I sincerely doubt that," Starscream replied. They dogfought for long minutes, neither able to gain the upper hand. "This is... nf... singularly frustrating," Starscream observed. "Care to take a shot at it?" "Thought you'd never ask," said Terror with a grin, and put her hands on the controls. She jacked into the flight computer, making certain Starscream was keeping his intelligence clear of the interface zone. "Releasing to manual control... now." A light on the instrument panel strobed green. Terror slammed the throttles forward, then suddenly pulled back and ducked left. A flick of a thumb switch and she thought Starscream's Victory body through the shift to gerwalk mode. Cyclonus hadn't been expecting that; he overflew, and Terror let loose with what she expected to be four AIM-34-A Javelin medium-range infrared missiles. Instead, the four missiles streaked forth, then divided into eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two, then sixty-four, and then one hundred twenty-eight small missilelets, which surrounded Cyclonus in a boiling cloud of damage. When he emerged, he was battered, scarred, and not at all pleased. Terror slammed Starscream back to fighter mode and hit the boosters. Cyclonus was already streaking around into their six; she couldn't believe how fast he was. She jinked, then performed another quickstop; there was a shuddering impact, the shield went down, and a piece of wingtip fell away. "Ack!" Starscream announced. "This is ridiculous!" Terror had an idea. "Perhaps if we tried it... together?" Starscream was taken aback for a split second, and then said, "If you're certain you know what you're getting into." "I'm never sure what I'm getting into," Terror replied. "I never let it stop me." "All right." Starscream paused; Terror darted out of the path of another particle-beam spread. "Releasing binary stream for synchronization... now." For a brief moment, the world turned inside out. Then the link was complete and synchronized. In synchronized mode, there are no individual partners, no Transformer and thav; there is only The Unit. To Transformers, The Unit is usually known by the Transformer's name, to keep things simpler. # Stan Bush "Dare" Transformers: the Movie Starscream whirled and transformed fully to robot mode, his GU-22 dropping into his left hand as he did so. Cyclonus was streaking right at him as he opened fire; Cyclonus cried out, his cockpit windows shattering, and transformed to robot mode before crashing into Starscream. They fought there, in the sky, hand-to-hand, locked together in a battle of strength, staring into each other's optics. "You're the idiot, Cyclonus," Starscream said, and his voice had curious undertones. "You could have beaten either of us before, but you felt like playing. Well, now it's too late! We are Starscream the Fearsome--the greatest jetwarrior Decepticonkind has ever known! And you--you are history!" So saying, Starscream snicked his head lasers into position and ripped open Cyclonus's chest; then, throwing him loose, he whirled in midair and smashed a side-on kick into the wound. Cyclonus tumbled backward and down, plummeting toward the ground. Starscream returned to jet mode and chased him down, then dispatched him completely with a second volley of cluster missiles. Pulling up, Starscream de-synched the link. As Terror returned to herself, she was startled to realize that her body was shaking with the adrenaline rush. "Congratulations, General," Starscream said with more than a trace of pride. "We are now the top Decepticon ace." "No," she replied with a grin, "we're the top WDF ace." The opening act was over. Now the main event could begin. Unicron had reached attack distance, and nothing they had yet done to him had more than dented or scratched him. Prime and Megatron both braced themselves for the inevitable; the opening of that hideous maw, the descent of the pincers, the destruction of Cybertron. Instead, Unicron glided silently, with infinite majesty, to a halt. Then, it began to shift. Megatron's jaw dropped. So would Prime's, had he possessed one. Neither had ever seen this! The spheroidal shape separated, refolded, shifted; huge gears and eldritch pistons worked in strange harmonies to move parts into their places. The equatorial ring became a pair of skeletal batwings. Huge, clawed hands appeared at the ends of monstrous arms. The horned head with its broad green optics rose proudly above the cyclopean shoulders. Unicron stood, hanging in space "above" Cybertron. And then it spoke. "CYBERTRON," it said. "I HAVE RETURNED." "Primus!" Prime cried. "INCORRECT. YOUR GOD CANNOT HELP YOU NOW, TRANSFORMER. PREPARE TO JOIN HIM IN THE OBLIVION I SENT HIM TO SO LONG AGO." PCHammer ground his teeth as he saw Unicron's transformation. This was not at all good. Unicron waited for a moment as the Autobot and Decepticon artillery blasted salvo after salvo at him, ignoring it all. Then he emitted a sound that could have been a laugh. "FOOLS," he said. "THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM YOUR DESTINY. THE AUTOBOT MATRIX ITSELF COULD NOT DESTROY ME PERMANENTLY; WHAT CHANCE HAVE YOU NOW THAT IT IS GONE?" No one, apparently, thought to go to a comm system and make a reply, so Unicron, after the appropriate dramatic pause, continued, "I WILL TELL YOU. NONE. PREPARE FOR OBLIVION." Autobot and Decepticon warriors alike knew fear, some for the first time in ages. Many broke and ran, fleeing from their posts, as Unicron's unutterably huge form descended upon their world. Some stayed until the first clawed hand smashed into the surface, clawing up an entire city and lifting it to the huge ravager's maw; that broke even some of the stronger wills, and what ensued was nearly a full-scale rout. "No! Decepticons--return to your posts! Only standing together can we defeat Unicron!" Megatron shouted at his running troops. "STAND YOUR GROUND!!" "They aren't listening to you, boss," Priss said, her voice flat, as if the disbelief of seeing Unicron had shocked all the emotion out of her. "So I have noticed," Megatron replied drily. "Are you all right?" he continued with concern. "No, I'm about to die, why would I be all right?" Optimus Prime descended from the battlement and into the field, hoping to lead his troops by example; but as he did so, it dawned on him the true vastness of Unicron, and the fact that he was right; the Matrix was too weak, and without it, how could there be any hope? Black despair welled up from the pit of his being, and he paused, lowering his laser rifle, on the brink of just packing it in. A Decepticon jetwarrior, dark blue, screamed low over him, streaking toward Unicron, and then arced upward, his thrusters flaring with afterburner fire. There was an ear-shattering sonic boom, much louder than such a phenomenon is supposed to be, and one of the two Sweeps who, Prime's unzoomed optics could just make out, had been harassing Megafortress shattered apart, destroyed by the concentrated acoustic energy. The Decepticon--Thundercracker, if memory served--darted over Megafortress, then winged over and came back, strafing the hell out of the second Sweep. "You're clear, Autobot--show that monstrosity why they call you Megafortress!" Thundercracker cried. "I'll escort you in!" Megafortress actually took the time and energy to reply: "Thank you." The bomb doors in Megafortress's belly opened as he flew majestically over Unicron. [You're big, my friend,] said Megafortress silently, [but let's see how you handle five thousand kilograms of ESK-9000.] He began to salvo his bombs, aiming for Unicron's nose, as the monstrous machine touched down on Cybertron itself, his feet slamming huge craters in the surface. Unicron looked up; his head disappeared in a huge cloud of smaller orange fireballs. A great cheer rose from the assembled Transformers. It was short-lived, for as the smoke and fire cleared, Unicron's head was still there. The faceplate was scarred and pitted, but there was no terrible damage done. Calmly, Unicron growled, "DIE, WORM." A bolt of energy lashed out of one of his optics at Megafortress. "No you don't!" Thundercracker cried, and dove, throttling his engines up and producing that sound again as he streaked past Unicron's face. Unicron actually reeled backward as, struck full-force by the shockwave, his right optic shattered and burst outward in a gout of flame. Silently, Unicron lashed out with a massive hand. Thundercracker almost dodged, but the tip of one clawed finger caught his wingtip, and he went into a spin, transforming to robot mode just before disappearing into the buildings. Optimus Prime's legendary well of courage and resolve served up another surge of power. "You see?" he cried, raising his rifle high. "Unicron CAN be damaged! He's not indestructible--FIGHT!" Unicron was at the gates of Vilnacron when Megatron finally got his troops under control and ordered them to retreat to Iacon and bolster the Autobot forces there, and retreat they did. For the first time in centuries, Autobot and Decepticon forces mingled in battle against a common enemy. Half a legion of Decepticon jetwarriors and almost a full battalion of Autobot infantry died together, victims of Unicron's remaining optic weapon, his crushing fists, his stomping feet, or the innumerable laser turrets and missile launchers that studded the hide of this version of his body. Optimus Prime and Megatron stood side by side at the base of the central tower of Iacon and watched the Titan inexorably approach. Just behind them, Sylvie Daniels had an idea. "Soundwave," she said, tapping the Transformer's leg. Soundwave knelt and bent down, and Sylvie continued, "Can you see Unicron in cyberspace?" <> Soundwave replied. <> "I don't think we could take him out, but we could slow him down a little, don't you think?" <> "Well...maybe if we buy some time, Prime and Megatron will think of something." Soundwave considered, then shrugged. <> He stood up and opened his cassette door. Sylvie grinned. "Yeahhh! Now... let me see if I can remember how Hook told me to do this." She concentrated, and sent a mental command to the modified suit of CVR-5 she was wearing. With the familiar sound effect, she jumped into the air and transformed, in a manner similar to that of the Powermaster and Headmaster human partners, into a cassette, then slid home into Soundwave's chest. Soundwave, in turn, transformed next, his subspace shrinkage field safely compressing Sylvie as well. "What're they up to, I wonder?" Priss commented, looking back over Megatron's shoulder at the combined unit as it sat silently on the floor, tape spindles whirring slowly. "They're buying us time," Prime said. "Maybe with their lives." He looked at Megatron. "The least we can do is come up with something in the time they give us." "I agree...but what CAN we do?" "Are there any massive Decepticon weapons around you don't want us to know about?" said Prime with a half-grin (you figure it out). "I wish there were," Megatron replied. Then he got a curious smile. "Well... there is ONE...." He reached up with his right hand, picked Priss off his shoulder, and set her down. To her indignant protest, he said, "Where I am going, you cannot go with me. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is." He turned to Optimus Prime and extended a hand. "If I do not return, know that I have been proud to call you my friend, and I wish I could have done so for a longer time." "Whatever you're doing, you can just forget about doing it without--" Priss began. "I'm sorry, Priss. What I do now, I must do alone." Megatron leaped into the air, flying toward Unicron. "Megatron!" she cried after him. "You bastard--!" Meanwhile, in cyberspace, Soundwave and Sylvie stood side by side, linked but not synchronized, and got their bearings. Cybertron's net stretched away below them, gleaming black and silver, looking like a photo-negative of the planet itself. Unicron, a malevolent silver giant, wasn't much different either. "He must have a massive data net to be able to represent a structure that big in cyberspace," Sylvie observed. <> Soundwave replied with a teeny tiny bit of sarcasm. <> "Well, you know what they say... the bigger they are...." <> "Fatalist." <> "Let's do it." Sylvie's icon transformed as her real body had transformed before, and merged into Soundwave's chest. Soundwave glowed slightly; then his icon increased in size and became slightly more angular. The little flares on his head became wider, his optics glowed red, and a huge sword appeared in his hand. <> Soundwave observed. Then he pointed the sword at Unicron and announced, <> In the real world, Unicron halted in his tracks, looking down at his body. "WHAT THE... WHAT... IS... HAPPENING... ?" The Transformers didn't know, and they didn't care. They poured on the attack. The virtual firestorm between the tip of Soundwave's sword and Unicron was almost lighting up the entire local net; but as Unicron realized what was going on and transferred his attention inward, he began emitting his own--black lightning, crackling back along the path of energy Soundwave was emitting and consuming it. It began to creep up Soundwave's arm. <> Soundwave remarked, his voice shifting between his own, Sylvie's, and a strange amalgam as the link fluctuated. <> Megatron hovered in the air before Unicron and shouted, "Unicron! Remember me?" Unicron looked up, his optic narrowing as he focused. "MEGATRON. YOU FUNCTION. I MADE A MISTAKE TRUSTING SPACE TO FINISH YOU, WHEN WE MET THE LAST TIME; NOW I WILL CORRECT THAT MISTAKE. YOU COULD HAVE RULED. NOW DIE." "No!" Megatron replied, raising his arm. "DIE, UNICRON!!" He gathered his strength, and, deep inside the fusion cannon, opened the electromagnetic portal to the anti-matter universe for the first time in centuries, feeling the strain on his systems as he drew through and annihilated nearly six grams of anti-matter. When it felt as if he would be blown to flinders by the energy, he leveled the cannon and, screaming with the release, let it all fly. The Transformers below and above stopped fighting as one as they saw Megatron's fusion cannon spew a river of bluewhite energy almost a hundred meters wide, with a noise like an atom bomb. The backblast, glowing particulate and waste energy, blew forty meters or more out the back of the weapon. Unfortunately, Megatron's aim was a bit off (when dealing with that amount of energy it's hard to be precise); the bolt of pure power struck Unicron high in the left side of his chest. Every sentient being on Cybertron who could see it gasped in unison as Unicron's left arm was blown off at the shoulder and crashed to the ground. "GGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!" Unicron declared. Megatron, smoke rising from both ends of his fusion cannon, fell silently into the streets of Iacon's outer areas. "Megatron!!" Priss cried. She started running toward the area where he went down. The attack ceased as abruptly as it began; Soundwave reeled back, his right arm numb, and dropped the tattered remains of his cybersword as he looked up and saw Unicron stumbling, everything to the left of and above the high center of his chest missing. Soundwave took that opportunity to punch out. In realspace, Soundwave transformed and ejected Sylvie, who also transformed and ripped off her helmet with a gasp. "What the HELL was--oh my Goddess!" Sylvie cried. "What happened to Unicron? Did WE do that?!" "No," Prime replied, "Megatron did that, and it may have cost him his life." He transformed, his trailer materializing from subspace; Soundwave transformed, and Sylvie clipped him to her equipment belt and climbed into Prime's cab. They picked Priss up on the way, and Prime peeled out, barrelling through the streets toward where he had tracked Megatron's fall to. "Megatron!" Priss reiterated, jumping out of Prime's cab before he had even come to a complete stop and running to Megatron's side. He lay prone in the road where he had landed, in a rather Megatron-shaped dent in the metal. When Priss approached, he stirred, and groaned, and looked up, heaving himself up onto an elbow. His optics flickered, but were definitely lit. "I... function," Megatron rasped. Wordless, Priss threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face to the cool, sloping side of his. Prime transformed and extended a hand, and Megatron took it and stood, reaching up and putting Priss on his shoulder as he did so. "We thought we'd lost you for a minute there," said Prime. "I'm weak, but intact," Megatron replied. "That takes a lot out of me. I don't do it often." "Don't you ever do it again," Priss said, smacking him on the top of the head. A shuddering impact--a footfall--reminded them all that there were more important problems to be dealt with. "YOUR MIGHTIEST WARRIOR HAS FAILED TO STOP ME," Unicron announced. "I AM WOUNDED, BUT FAR FROM DEFEATED. NOW, TRANSFORMERS... YOU WILL ALL DIE." He looked down as Prime, Megatron, and the others looked up, and said, "MEGATRON. YOU STILL FUNCTION." He almost smiled. "THAT WILL CHANGE." He began approaching again. "Prime," Megatron said, "weak or not, I think you have to use the Matrix now." Optimus Prime nodded. "However futile, the gesture must be made." He reached up, opened his chest, and removed the Autobot Matrix of Leadership from its place, closing the panels behind it. He slid his fingers into the sockets, raised it high, and said softly, "Now, light our darkest hour." The metallic sphere split and opened, and the golf-ball-sized, glowing bit of energy that was all that had built up of the Matrix in the last four centuries hovered free. Then it pulsed, gleamed brighter.... ... and arced with Megatron's chest panel. "Ack!" Megatron cried as the panel split and swung open. "What is happen--" From its place, hidden within Megatron's inner componentry, a Matrix container emerged and fell into his hands. His chest closed. The Autobot Matrix hovered as if waiting. Megatron's optics could not have gotten wider. "The Decepticon Matrix... it DOES exist... and I had it all this time...." He threw back his head then, and laughed. Priss looked at him as if he were mad. "Scorponok, you wily old bastard!" Megatron howled. "You gave it to me when I was built--before you even raised me to consciousness! You knew, all that time ago!" He raised the Matrix high, locked his fingers into the sockets as he had seen Prime do, and cried, "Now light our darkest hour!!" # Stan Bush "The Touch" Transformers: the Movie The casing split and opened just as the Autobot Matrix had, and the two scintillating energy patterns arced across each other. Tendrils of energy crackled against Sylvie, Soundwave, Prime, even backfed to wash over Priss and Megatron. Then it started sending other tendrils, like runners, spreading all over the city of Iacon, all over that hemisphere of the planet, up into the sky, everywhere, each touching and transfixing a warrior Transformer. Autobots and Decepticons alike froze as the energy touched them, and then those that were on the ground rose into the air. The entire energy matrix began to shift, moving the Transformers at its many vertices until they were forming a macroscopic Matrix, with Prime, Megatron, and their linked Matrices at the top. And then, something truly bizarre happened. The macro-Matrix began to contract, and as it did, the Transformers began to transform. But not in their usual manner; instead of transforming into vehicles, weapons, pieces of equipment, they changed into strange, modular shapes, almost like parts of a gigantic whole. Sylvie returned to cassette mode and re-entered Soundwave, synchronizing with him. Terror re-synched almost involuntarily with Starscream. Priss screamed, more out of surprise than pain, as the Matrix energy remade her, engineering her and sheathing her in body armor just as Hook would if she were undergoing one of the morphing processes usually performed on human binary partners--except that, done by Hook, the process involved a week in a biotank; this was instantaneous. She transformed to some sort of power converter unit and nestled into a socket which Megatron's components shifted to make way for in his abdomen, even as he himself was changing into something new. PCHammer had the presence of mind to leave the Batwing on automatic and leave the cockpit under his own power when he noticed the Matrix energy clawing at the windows, trying to get in. He didn't know why it wanted HIM, but some things, you just don't argue with. He went to Rotofoil mode and, as he was drawn in, felt himself changing to something completely new. [What a fascinating experience,] he thought to himself before his identity submerged. With a final wash of Matrix energy and the folding under and pulling in of a thousand thousand smaller components, the Transformers finally knew exactly what their ancient phrase of greeting and parting meant: "Until all are one." # J.S. Bach "Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565" "IMPOSSIBLE!" Unicron cried. "ABSOLUTELY... IMPOSSIBLE... THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING." "ALL ARE ONE, UNICRON," the huge machine created by the unification of the entire Transformer race declared. "I HAVE RETURNED." Unicron's optic widened. "PRIMUS!" Primus nodded, and smiled. He was about Unicron's size, and bristled with all the weapons of the Transformers combined; he had no wings, but great flanges protruded from his shoulders, and his face was a strange combination of elements that looked remarkably like the Autobot symbol... or, depending on your editorial slant, the Decepticon symbol. "UNICRON. ONE SHALL STAND; ONE SHALL FALL." "I DESTROYED YOU ONCE, PRIMUS--I CAN DO IT AGAIN!" "NOT THIS TIME, UNICRON. NOT THIS TIME." Primus punched Unicron, creating a spiderweb network of cracks in his jaw. Unicron snarled with rage and struck back with his remaining hand, but Primus ducked aside and smashed a side-on kick into Unicron's midsection, doubling him over. Primus then seized Unicron and raised him high; Unicron struggled, but could not break Primus's grip. "DIE, UNICRON," Primus said, and smashed Unicron down on his knee, breaking his back and tearing him almost in half. He kicked Unicron away from Cybertron, and then salvoed every weapon he had access to into the gaping rents in his armored hide. "THIS CANNOT... BE...." Unicron gasped. "YOU CANNOT... DEFEAT...." Then he exploded. Primus allowed himself a smile of satisfaction, and then, marking the passage of Unicron, he gave himself up to the elemental forces as well, and allowed his children to resume their individual lives. When the Transformers came to and realized what had happened, they spent the next two days quietly attending their wounded and dead, and reflecting upon the miracle that had occurred; then they set about rebuilding their world. When all was said and done, six months later, Megatron had turned over command of the Decepticon Army to Thundercracker, who had taken the name "Thunderwind"; his tactical and strategic aptitude, flourishing under the new policies of Megatron's regime, had catapulted him to the forefront of the candidates, and in the end they had all insisted he take the position. Sideslip had assumed Starscream's aerial primacy, as Starscream was leaving with Terror to take a position in the Wedge Defense Force. At last, they could delay no longer; the 3WA wanted Feeple back on Salusia, and the Steel Furies back on Meizuri, NOW. Nearly seven months was quite long enough to spend on a mission, no matter how catastrophic, thank you very terribly much. Priss had just finished prepping Steel Fury for takeoff; now she and Sylvie were standing at the bottom of the ramp, in uniform, being seen off by a contingent of Decepticons and Autobots. "Farewell, Thunderwind. Lead well, and make me proud," said Megatron, shaking Thunderwind's hand. "I'll do my best, mighty Megatron. Hail!" "Hail, Thunderwind," Megatron replied. He turned to Optimus Prime. "Goodbye, Prime. May Primus watch over you." "And you, Megatron," Prime replied. "Hey, Soundwave," said Scrapper. "Before you go, me and the boys have something we wanna tell ya." <> Soundwave asked. "We...we're sorry we was so mean to ya. You're all right." Soundwave would have smiled, if he could have. <> "Primus watch over you, too," said Scrapper. "And her." "You are Transformers, now, Priss Morgan and Sylvie Daniels," said Optimus Prime. "Citizens of Cybertron. You are always welcome here." "Thanks, Prime. I'm sure you're always welcome among the Wedge Defense Force, too," said Priss. She looked up at Megatron. "Ready to go?" "Always." He transformed, and dropped into her hand; she placed him in her holster and locked him down. "Soundwave?" said Sylvie. <> He transformed, dropping into her outstretched hand as well, and she placed him on her equipment belt and put on the headphones. "Take it easy, Transformers, and give this peace thing a chance. If you need any help, I'm sure we could be convinced to bring Mr. Ambassador here back," said Sylvie with a rakish grin, patting Ambassador Feeple's butt. Jer looked summarily mortified. "Okay, okay, cut that out, into the ship," Priss said briskly, ushering them up the ramp. She turned around and waved. Optimus Prime raised a hand. "Until--er... Primus watch over you," he said with a shrug. Priss snickered, waved once more, and went up the ramp. Steel Fury's engines flared, she lifted off, and then, with a blast of power, she was gone, fading to a point in the sky and disappearing. "I hope the universe is ready for those four," said Ultra Magnus. "Not a chance," said PCHammer, leaning on his leg. "I gotta be around for this. I should head out myself; I've been 'missing' long enough." "Primus watch over you, PCHammer," said Prime as Hammer climbed into the Batwing. "And you, Prime. All of you." Hammer closed the cockpit, raised ship, and darted off into the blackness of the sky. E N D APPENDIX I: PROFILES OF TRANSFORMERS Here are profiles, in the Transformers Universe format, for the new Transformers introduced in this story, as well as the changes made to some of the older ones. MEGATRON ALLEGIANCE: Decepticon FUNCTION: Commander Supreme "Peace through careful and selective use of force." Profile: Megatron is no longer the brutal bully he once was, and his military command ability has done nothing but increase for this. He is a new machine; contemplative, introspective, and even, when the opportunity presents itself, kind. He has revamped his opinion of almost everything, from his ancient enemy Optimus Prime (now one of his greatest friends) to those insignificant and repellent flesh creatures (one of whom he is binary-bonded with now). He still relishes war when it is necessary and the adversary is worthy, and, a realist, knows that there will always be a need for wars, no matter what the hearts-and-flowers crowd maintains, as long as there are sentient beings. He is self-accepting, and recognizes his warrior nature. Having recaptured the glory of the Decepticon Army and placed it in the competent and dependable hands of his successor, Thunderwind (once Thundercracker), he now seeks to discover more about himself, and in the process erase the stain of millennia of imperalistic madness from his reputation. To this end he has left active status as a Decepticon and become, officially, nothing more than a piece of equipment--the sidearm of his binary partner, Priss Morgan, who is a Worlds Welfare Work Association Trouble Consultant. Many Decepticons--and many Autobots, for that matter--wonder just how many people will be unpleasantly surprised when they attempt to disarm Consultant Morgan. Abilities: Megatron is one of the most powerful Transformers ever constructed. His physical strength rivals that of Optimus Prime, and his intellect is razor-sharped, undulled by his centuries of isolation. The fusion cannon on his arm, and in fact his entire weapon mode, is one of the most powerful weapons ever constructed, its power (when he pushes himself) being roughly equivalent to a Yamato-class battleship's Helix Cannons. By tapping into an anti-matter universe and annihilating a small amount of anti-matter, Megatron can even fire a bolt of energy which qualifies as a Class Omega weapon discharge in the Wedge Defense Force registry, although doing so exhausts him and can even threaten his function. He is also unerringly accurate in both his forms, capable of narrowing his beam enough to perform precision cutting operations if necessary. He has recently discovered a new ability: again by tapping the anti-matter universe and annihilating the anti-matter in a precise pattern within the chamber of his fusion cannon, he can spacefold himself to almost any location he wishes. Again, this action will totally exhaust him and even, if he is wounded or weakened, threaten his function. Weaknesses: Megatron is driven by the desire to protect his binary partner and erase his old reputation. He can push himself too hard, overreach even his formidable abilities, and burn himself out. Other than that, Megatron has no real weaknesses. Statistics: STR 10 INT 10 SPD 4 RNK 10 END 8 COR 10 FRP 10 SKL 9 STARSCREAM ALLEGIANCE: Decepticon/Wedge Defense Force FUNCTION: Air Warrior/Starfighter "Victory is made from the ashes of one's enemies." Profile: In battle, Starscream has changed; he is still ruthless, still merciless, unless his binary partner, WDF Fighter Command C in C Patricia "Terror" Currier, convinces him to show a little compassion, but now he's a bit of a showoff, delighting in displaying the combined skill he and his partner possess to its fullest effect and utilizing all three of his modes to their best advantage. He has also reclaimed one of the traits he was once famous for, before his personality shifted and earned him the derisive sobriquet "Starscream the Fearful": he is utterly fearless. Starscream fears nothing, save the possibility of Terror's destruction or that of the WDF Concordia, his base ship--since it is there that his lover, the cybernetic intelligence called Vision, lives. Out of battle, however, he is a completely different robot; reflective, kind and even a bit clownish in his newly discovered love for fun, and always adhering to a strict code of honor and conduct. He left his position as Decepticon Air Commander to Sideslip in order to follow his binary partner into the WDF after they bonded to defeat Cyclonus, and is now a WDF officer, holding the rank of Major. Abilities: Starscream possesses all the usual abilities of a VF-2S Super Victory Veritech starfighter. In addition, he and Vision, when they fabricated the body, made some custom improvements. One of them was Starscream's signature weapon, the null-ray, a beam of energy which disrupts and shuts down electronic and photonic mechanisms. He uses this weapon, in most cases, when he wishes to take an enemy pilot alive, or perhaps shut down a charging weapon before it can discharge. In lieu of the traditional Victory munitions, Starscream usually carries a custom-made type of submunition, duplicating his old cluster bombs, but he does wield the standard GU-22 particle cannon as his sidearm. Starscream knows exactly his limitations and those of his human counterpart. He is the fighter equivalent of one of those disconcerting drivers who know exactly how big their car is, and dart into tiny parking spaces at 45 mph. Starscream has one other power, which he has not yet used. By tapping the micro-Reflex furnace which powers him and channeling the power through a modified warp envelope generated by his warp nacelles, he can produce a blast of energy equivalent to one of SDF-23's micro-Reflex cannons. This maneuver exhausts him, leaving him helpless until the furnace can regenerate (about a minute until he regains basic mobility), and if he is weakened, it will deplete his power to the point of endangering his function. Weaknesses: Starscream can be distracted by an immediate threat to Concordia and Vision, and even blackmailed with her safety; the same goes for his human partner, but Starscream seems more confident of Terror's ability to take care of herself. Statistics: STR 8 INT 9 SPD 10 RNK 9 END 8 COR 10 FRP 9 SKL 9 SOUNDWAVE ALLEGIANCE: Decepticon FUNCTION: Communications "I hear all and know all; what I tell is my own business." Profile: Soundwave, like Megatron and Starscream, has mellowed a bit. However, in his case, there were no four centuries of introspection or instruction. Soundwave was changed by one very fundamental thing: he had always had the potential for his current personality, but his strangeness (voice designed for maximum communication efficiency, cybernetic duality, etc.) had always set him apart and made the others fear him. He responded to this by creating the facade of coldness and emotionlessness that he is famous for, and revenged himself upon his uncaring comrades by becoming vindictive and cruel. This fed the cycle; a cruel opportunist like Soundwave could have few friends, even among the Decepticons of the time. He had no friends at all until Sylvie Daniels came along and became his binary partner. Now Soundwave is very different; his voice has not changed (it can't), but his personality overrides the basic inexpressiveness of his voice. He is a strong-willed extrovert, opinionated and not at all averse to telling people off if they get in his face. He is now well-liked, and has no need of his old, vindictive, mean tendencies. The Decepticons can't believe it's true. Feeling he owes much to Sylvie for turning him around, Soundwave has gone on indefinite leave from the Decepticon Army, leaving his job as communications specialist to a slightly modified Dirge. Now, he appears on the WWWA manifest as "Cyberdeck, personal, model C-SW-1 (Custom)", the property of Trouble Consultant Third Class Sylvie Daniels. Abilities: Soundwave hears everything. His audio sensors can pick up, refine, enhance, tune out, record and edit any audible sound, no matter how loud or faint. He is constantly monitoring all radio, subspace, and sub-etheric channels, and can transmit on any or all of them at once if need be. He understands all known languages, and can extrapolate unknown languages completely in mere minutes (at least grammatically; vocabulary takes a bit longer). In addition, Soundwave is a cybernetically dual being; he is always present and conscious in cyberspace as well as the Real World. He carries a laser rifle and is equipped with a concussion blaster; while not the most staggeringly powerful weapons in the universe, they serve him well when he must enter combat. In tape deck mode, Soundwave is a functional radio/subspace receiver and can play standard digital audio/videotapes (using his cassette door as a small vidscreen or even a holo projector). In addition, he is a powerful cyberdeck, providing near-invulnerability and a six-level reflex boost to any netrunner he allows to use him. Weaknesses: Soundwave can be confused and even overloaded by floods of communication traffic, especially when most of it is white noise. Note that we're talking about VAST quantities of traffic here--more than are produced by the entire active Federation on a busy day. In robot mode, he isn't very fast, but he's quite strong. Statistics: STR 8 INT 8 SPD 2 RNK 8 END 6 COR 7 FRP 6 SKL 10 THUNDERWIND ALLEGIANCE: Decepticon FUNCTION: Acting Commander "Command by example." Profile: Thunderwind was originally Thundercracker, a common Decepticon jetwarrior. He was drafted; unhappy with the imperialistic practices of the Decepticons, he had planned on joining the Autobot resistance, but was pressed into Decepticon service before he could link up with a resistance recruiter. He remained a Decepticon for centuries because of a basic motivation: fear of Megatron's wrath should he try, and fail, to defect. Eventually, he convinced himself that he enjoyed being brutal and destructive. When Megatron returned and destroyed Shockwave, it was a dream come true for Thundercracker. He fought with valor and brilliance in the battle against Unicron, earning himself the Decepticon Brand of Valor, a new name, and Megatron's place as Decepticon Operations Commander when Megatron left active duty to seek enlightenment with his binary partner. Thunderwind is brave and intelligent, qualities which some of his new followers find hard to swallow, considering his long and undistinguished service record. Still, he is leading them brilliantly, and no one can doubt that he has the certain spark of something it takes to lead; except, perhaps, Thunderwind himself, who is sometimes seized with self-doubt. Abilities: Thunderwind is not particularly powerful; he holds his position because of valor, courage, and skill. He is a brilliant tactician and strategist, adept at both planning and executing large wars and small, personal conflicts. He can create elaborate plans or think on his feet; this flexibility has served him well. Personally, he is a standard Decepticon jetwarrior, armed with lasers and missiles, and as a special ability, he can focus, amplify, and control the sonic booms he produces as a jet, concentrating their power to devastating effect. Weaknesses: Thunderwind is occasionally seized by bouts of self-doubt, in which he doubts his own ability to command and/or the Decepticons' trust in him and loyalty to him. His constant drive to prove his worthiness sometimes leads him to overreach his abilities and get himself into trouble in battle. Statistics: STR: 7 INT: 7 SPD: 9 RNK: 10 END: 7 COR: 9 FRP: 7 SKL: 8 SIDESLIP ALLEGIANCE: Decepticon FUNCTION: Air Commander "Do it fast, or I'll lose interest." Profile: Sideslip is the Decepticon Hot Rod. He is young and brash, with a bit of an immortality complex and something to prove. Starscream left him the Decepticon Air Commander's post on the merit of his exceptional aptitude and charisma--for loud and brash as he is, Sideslip is an excellent speaker, leader, and commander. His troops will follow him anywhere, and do anything he asks; such is the power of his charisma. He is instantly likeable and earns trust rapidly, as he simply radiates charm and earnest good humor. And, despite what many suspect, there is no seamy side of ulterior motives to this. It's simply the way this young soldier is; cheery, charming, open, and a little bit bewildered at his meteoric rise to his current position and the loyalty of troops who could very well have been jealous over his advancement beyond them. In battle, Sideslip is nearly fearless, or, as he puts it, he feels fear, but doesn't let it interfere with the performance of his duties. He is a dazzling flier and gunner. Abilities: Sideslip is one of the swiftest Decepticon jetwarriors, nearly capable of reaching escape velocity, and he possesses a pair of liquid-fuel booster units which enable him to reach that velocity. Because of his great speed, his skin is armored with a ceramic material very similar to that used in the construction of the Autobot Inferno, which allows him to withstand extremes of temperature from atmospheric friction. He wields two powerful laser weapons which can hit targets up to 15 miles distant, and fires missiles which can be configured before launch to seek a variety of target formats, including heat, metal, cybernetic activity, and radar emissions (HARM-style). Weaknesses: Even with his ceramic skin, Sideslip can occasionally overreach his heat-absorbing capabilities and cause his wings to warp, which hampers his maneuverability until they can be repaired. Also, due to his brash and risk-taking approach to flying, he occasionally crashes or suffers mid-air collisions with adversaries (and even, on particularly bad days, wingmates). Statistics: STR: 7 INT: 7 SPD: 10 RNK: 9 END: 7 COR: 8 FRP: 6 SKL: 9 MEGAFORTRESS ALLEGIANCE: Autobot FUNCTION: Bombardier "There are two kinds of warriors: those who fight, and those who talk." Profile: Megafortress is a very old Autobot; he was created at around the same time that Optimus Prime came to the Autobot leadership. He has never sought advancement; he has one purpose, and one purpose only. Megafortress bombs things, and bombs them well. Megafortress feels his age, perhaps more than he should, but unlike his contemporary, Kup, he doesn't have a war story for every occasion. Instead, he has only a few words of wisdom that can be coaxed out of him only by the most earnest and persistent younger Autobot, and a few words of kindness for the wounded and his oldest friends. Other than that, Megafortress very rarely speaks; in fact, his silence in combat can be downright unnerving to the enemy. The silent facade conceals a quick and analytical mind, always looking at the best way to deal with a target through the application of his particular strategy. If he can't come up with a good way to bomb something, he is more than happy to turn the job over to somebody else who is better suited to the kind of battle which is needed. He doesn't talk because he doesn't feel he needs to. Abilities: Although an extremely large Transformer (nearly the size of a combined five-unit team such as Superion), Megafortress is not as strong as he looks, due to his aging design and construction. However, he is still quite powerful, and his armored skin is extraordinarily tough and resistant to weapons fire. He can fly at speeds of up to 500 mph in aircraft mode, and can drop nearly five tons of high explosives with pinpoint accuracy from an altitude of up to 70,000 feet. His massive wings can keep him aloft even with extensive damage. In robot mode, he wields a powerful proton rifle (which becomes an automatic tail turret in aircraft mode). Weaknesses: Megafortress is old, and thus is somewhat more prone to breakdowns and mechanical difficulties. Sometimes his bomb-bay doors jam, requiring him to execute complex and dangerous maneuvers in order to free them (or wait until a technician can do it). In addition, his great size sometimes causes more powerful adversaries than he can truly handle to seek him out. Statistics: STR: 7 INT: 8 SPD: 6 RNK: 4 END: 9 COR: 8 FRP: 6 SKL: 8 APPENDIX 2: VOICE CREDITS Oh, I almost forgot: With the talents of as the voice of Wilton Goulet Commissioner Goulet Priss Morgan Priss Sylvie Daniels Sylvie Jer Feeple Jer Robert Stack Ultra Magnus Frank Welker Megatron Soundwave Rumble Leonard Nimoy Galvatron Corey Burton Shockwave Stan Jones Scourge Sweep Peter Cullen Optimus Prime Patricia Currier Terror Chris Latta Starscream Neil Ross Hook Martin Rose PCHammer Michael Bell Scrapper Dean Stockwell Megafortress Roger C. Carmel Cyclonus Dean Cain Sideslip Orson Welles Unicron Patrick Stewart Primus