SDF-17 WDF WAYWARD SON
		    ENIGMA SECTOR, NEAR CYBERTRON
			FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2093

	The funeral was six days ago, and by now everyone aboard the
Wayward Son knew all about it.  Some of them had not believed it
possible, but it had happened nevertheless, a frightening reminder of
one's own mortality among even the hierarchy of the Wedge Defense
Force.  HiQ, the Nebulan partner of Autobot commander Optimus Prime,
was dead.  His end hadn't come violently, in battle, but peacefully in
bed... but that didn't make him any less dead, or any less missed.
	Prime left Ultra Magnus in command of the Autobot forces on
Cybertron and went aboard the SDF-17 after the funeral.  No one was
quite certain why.  Some of them were about to find out.

			 BRIEFING ROOM ALPHA
			(CAPTAIN'S READY ROOM)

	"I take it you've talked this over with the engineering
staff?"  MegaZone asked, leaning back in his briefing chair and
looking up.
	Optimus Prime, seated in a Transformer-scaled chair at the
other end of the cavernous room (as per Zor's designs, just about
everyplace aboard SDF-17 was overscaled, and that had proved fortunate
when the WDF had started picking up Autobot and Zentraedi personnel),
nodded.  "Gryphon, ReRob, and Major Meadows think it is workable.
They're assembling a team now to go over preliminary designs."
	"You're certain you want to do this?"
	Another nod.  "I cannot function at peak efficiency alone in
my current configuration... and I don't want another partner yet."
Zoner could understand that.
	"Okay, then... I don't have any problem authorizing it.
You're welcome to any resources and equipment you need... more than
welcome.  How long does your design team think the process will take?"
	"Well, under normal circumstances, the actual work would
probably take no more than a few weeks," Prime replied, "but since
this is an unprecedented opportunity for your people to study the
physiology of a Transformer, I've agreed that the rebuild team can
take as long as a year if they wish."
	"A year?  You're actually willing to be offline for a year?"
	"I won't be offline," said Prime.  "I've also been talking to
the Life Sciences Division about an idea I had recently... "  Prime
paused, gathering his thoughts.  "MegaZone, do you ever dream of being
something you're not?"
	Zoner blinked.  -This- was an odd conversational trend,
especially coming from someone as normally practical and serious as
Optimus Prime.  "Uh... how so?"
	"Do you ever dream of being something you're not," Prime
repeated, then continued, "a different class of person, perhaps?  A
Salusian.  Even a machine."
	"Um... yeah, on occasion, why?"
	"Since HiQ and I became one, I have had a recurring dream of
being human."
	Zoner hadn't known that Transformers dreamed, but let it pass
in the face of his larger surprise.
	"Your Life Sciences Division has informed me that such a thing
is possible, during the time that my Transformer body is being
reconstructed."
	 "I don't see why not... if not human, at least a reasonable
facsimile.  What did you plan on -doing- during that year?"
	"I'm not certain.  Assume a human identity, probably as a
member of the Wedge Defense Force, and do the things that humans do, I
suppose.  Reflect, contemplate, think.  I need to understand humans
better, and I think this is the way to do it."
	MegaZone pondered.  "Okay, then.  When are you going through
with it?"
	"According to Gryphon, the LSD will be ready for me at 1600
today."
	"I'll make sure and rush your paperwork, then," Zoner said,
and grinned.  "Good luck, Prime."
	"Thank you," said Optimus Prime.  He stood, looked around the
room, and then, saluting, left.
	"This should be interesting," Zoner muttered to the room.

       /*  Big Country  "On the Road Again"  _Under Cover_  */

		     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
			       presents

		   UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES GOLDEN AGE

		    TRANSFORMERS: FLESH AND STEEL

			 Benjamin D. Hutchins
			     Geoff Depew

		(c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


			     LSD LAB 44-A

	Lab 44-A was also situated in a high-ceiling section of the
SDF-17.  It had been the site of most of the Life Sciences Division's
largest- scale projects, including the larger sauriforms created
during the Jurassic Project.  Now one end of the room had been
converted into a mech shop, with equipment similar to that which could
be found in the ship's Veritech and Destroid repair bays, and a
modified Destroid gantry into which was locked Optimus Prime's full
Powermaster form.
	On a catwalk across Prime's chest, his feet just above the top
of the cavity which had once held Prime's Powermaster partner, stood
Gryphon.  He was wearing his CVR-3 as a precaution, and held in each
hand a device resembling a large flashlight with a three-pronged
grappling hook mounted at the lens end.
	"Team Two, what's your status?" Gryphon asked his helmet
commset.
	"We're ready when you are, Commander," Technician First Class
Tuck Menlo reported.  The Salusian scientist stood at the other end of
the lab, on the floor level, next to a Fahrvergnugen 400 biotank.
	The 400 was the most common Fahrvergnugen tank, the
horizontal, rectangular model which could be configured as a nanotank,
cryo capsule, and several other things.  It was Fahrvergnugen AG's
answer to Mann/GENOM's Sanjiyan system, and while Dr. Menlo admitted
it was not quite as efficient, it got the job done.
	Biotechnology was a strange field.  In some areas, the WDF was
far ahead (genegineering came to mind, as epitomized by the Jurassic
Project), and in others (biocybernetics and nanotechnology) they
lagged.  The nanotech lag was semi-deliberate, as the force's
leadership was not comfortable dealing with the potentially
astoundingly dangerous science quite yet.  Still, even in this field
the WDF was not without its accomplishments; the biological camouflage
of the Cybernetic Soldier 101/800 series was nanotechnologically
generated.
	This was a genegineering project more than anything else, and
so Menlo, one of the chief geneticists on the Jurassic Project, had
been consulted.  In the F-400, there was a human body, adult and male.
The original donor cell had come from Gryphon; its genes had then been
modified according to the finalized phenotype design by Menlo and his
team until they bore only a species resemblance.  The man in the tank
was a completely separate individual.
	Or rather, he would be, once he lived.  The body in the tank
could be considered a corpse; although biologically intact, it had not
yet been "started".  It lacked that special spark of consciousness,
the vital force so dramatically proven to exist by the Spengler-Stantz
Equations, to make it go.
	The procedure about to be performed by Gryphon would address
that.
	"Ready, Prime?" asked Gryphon.
	"I am," replied Prime.  "Let's do it.  Computer: Recognize
voice command.  Optimus Prime: Commence stasis lock."
	A faint electronic chime sounded from somewhere deep within
Prime, and then a pleasant female voice replied, "Recognized.  Stasis
lock commencing."
	Optimus Prime's optics went dark, and with a soft whirring
noise his body slumped against the gantry restraints.  His great head
tipped forward until his chin touched the upper slope of his chest,
then lolled a bit to one side.
	The windowed panels of Prime's broad chest split in the middle
and fanned outward with a faint hiss, swinging smoothly open and
stopping when they were parallel.  Inside, behind the void left behind
when Prime had given the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus
for safekeeping during his sabbatical, components shifted, sliding
aside in a curiously organic fashion to reveal a hemispherical chamber
buried deep within the Autobot leader's chest cavity.
	Hovering inside that chamber was a pulsing sphere of brilliant
light about the size of a bowling ball.  It had an outer layer to it,
as if it were made of glass with dancing motes of light and arcs of
lightning within it, but Gryphon knew it was a construct of pure
energy.
	He caught his breath.  Few humans had ever seen one of these:
a Transformer's spark.  This one was the concentrated essence of
Optimus Prime's life.  Transformers were unique, as far as anyone
knew, in that their sparks were concentrated in this manner, not
diffused throughout their bodies.
	Gryphon shook his head, breaking himself out of his awed
reverie, and raised the two objects he held.  "OK," he said, more for
himself than the record.  "Commencing spark extraction... now." He
pointed the grapnel-like end of one of the devices at Prime's spark
and pressed the thumb control.  There was a sound like an
ectocontainment proton pack powering up, and tendrils of blue-white
energy leaped from the spark extractor's three prongs to wrap around
the spark.
	Optimus Prime's body lurched in unconscious reaction, but the
gantry had been constructed anticipating this, and the Autobot
leader's form was held fast.  Gryphon eased the spark extractor back,
drawing Prime's spark forth from its chamber.  It didn't want to come;
he could feel it pulling back, trying to tug the extractor from his
hand.  He kept pulling, slowly, carefully, but firmly, and when he had
the spark a little more than halfway clear of its cavity, he activated
the other extractor as well.  They jumped in his hands a little as
their beams interfered with each other, but then they reached
equilibrium, and with a soft, ethereal "pop", the sphere of energy
came free.  Prime's body twitched once more as the spark came free,
then sagged against the restraints again, completely inert.
	Carefully, deliberately, Gryphon turned around, holding the
spark balanced in the beams of the two spark extractors, and stepped
onto the gantry elevator.  This carried him smoothly to the floor
level.  He took two very careful steps, as though carrying a brim-full
pitcher of water across a sodium-plated floor, and stopped at the
curious construct standing next to the elevator.
	This device looked rather like a giant gumball dispenser with
the top half of its gumball reservoir missing, a pedestal with a
hollow, concave half-sphere atop it.  Thick cables led from the
pedestal's base to the F-400.  A row of lights pulsed around the rim
of the half-sphere.
	As he approached it, Gryphon felt the spark tug at its bonds
again, pulling him toward the device like a dowsing rod sensing water.
He positioned the spark above the hemisphere, watching with
fascination as the extractors' retention beams bent downward with the
spark's insistent pull, and then thumbed them off.
	With a sharp snap, the spark jumped free and plunged into the
hemisphere.  The construct rocked on its base as a brilliant purplish-
white glow burst out of its throat, then was almost instantly sucked
back down.  The glow emerged from the bottom of the pedestal and raced
down the heavy cables leading to the biotank, traveling much faster
than Menlo and his team had anticipated.
	The bioteam scattered for cover as the glow hurtled into the
base of the tank with such force that it boiled up the liquid
biosuspension medium and blew the hatch cover clean off in a great
cloud of pink steam.  Gryphon dropped the pair of spark extractors
right where he stood and then dashed across the lab, joining Menlo's
team as they crowded around the open tank, eyes wide, waiting for the
smoke to clear.

			  MEGAZONE'S OFFICE

	The door chimed, and Zoner, to annoy Gryphon (whom, he knew,
it likely was on the other side of that door), pitched his voice into
a bad British accent and announced, "Come."
	The door opened and Gryphon entered, followed by another
man. The newcomer was tall, almost as tall as Zoner, and in excellent
shape, his muscles clearly defined under the perfectly-cut uniform he
wore.  His bearded jaw was set firmly, and long white-blond hair was
tied back in a ponytail which nearly reached his belt.  MegaZone found
himself searching the man visually for a hammer, and being slightly
disappointed at finding none.
	Then he realized that the man's uniform was unusual.  WDF
uniforms in those days had a variety of color schemes.  Fighter pilots
wore the colors of their squadron, distributed among the various
different-color areas as their commanders saw fit; bridge staff wore
grey, engineers white, gunners blue, and so forth.
	This man's trousers and boots were a deep blue, and his
double-breasted tunic a fiery red.  An Autobot/WDF symbol adorned the
upper left sleeve where the regular WDF patch went on most personnel.
The white slash on the other sleeve said that this man's rank was
Lieutenant.  He had an Eight-Ball Squadron pin on his lapel.
	Without being introduced, Zoner knew who this man was.
	"I like this look, Prime," he said with a grin, haphazardly
returning the salute he was given.  "How does it feel?"
	With a completely straight face, the man who was Optimus Prime
maintained his salute and said stiffly, "Lieutenant Olaf Petersson,
reporting for duty, sir!"  His voice was just the same, except that it
was missing the metallic timbre always present in Transformer voices.
	Zoner blinked.  "Exsqueeze me?"
	"Petersson" dropped the salute and grinned.  "Gryphon and Mako
picked it out.  Apparently they don't think 'Optimus Prime' is a good
name for an Ordinary Fighter Pilot."
	"We don't want your enemies finding out, after all," Gryphon
said.  "Even as a Detian, you're about a thousand times easier to hurt
now."
	"I know."  Petersson looked almost sheepish.  "Remember, the
first thing I did in this body was fall on my face."
	Zoner chuckled.
	"I feel... strange," said Petersson, in answer to Zoner's
question of some seconds ago.  "The part of me that was HiQ
'remembers' being human, but this is still a new experience.
Everything looks so huge now, where before it looked normal, or small.
Sounds made on this level are louder.  These eyes don't see as much,
but what they do see seems so vibrant.  It's all very familiar, and
yet very different.  Being human... will take some getting used to."
	"Well, take your time.  Some of us have had lifetimes, and
still not gotten the hang of it."  Zoner punched some buttons and
called up a file on his desk computer.  "So, Lt. Petersson, I see
you're assigned to VVF-261, the Eight-Ball Squadron, as a temporary
flight replacement for Major Ritchie."  He looked up at Gryphon. "What
happened to Daver?"
	"Nothing," Gryphon replied.  "He decided to take a sabbatical
and go hunting with Gordo this year."
	"Oh.  Heh."  Zoner turned his attention back to the screen.
"Tell me, Lieutenant, how many hours do you have in the Valkyrie?"
	"Absolutely none, sir," replied Petersson in the best serious
subordinate voice he could manage.  "But I learn very, very fast."
	"Commander, are you willing to take responsibility for this
man until he learns enough not to get himself killed?"
	"I am, Captain."
	"Lt. Petersson, are you willing to cheerfully accept all the
abuse you will receive as the Eight-Ball Squadron's official Fucking
New Guy, until such time as you have proven to your superiors'
satisfaction that you are not a total hump?"
	"I am, Captain."
	"Very well, then.  Lt. Petersson, I'm approving your
assignment as of now.  Get yourself into a Valkyrie familiarization
course as soon as possible.  Anything else, gentlemen?"
	"Just one thing, sir," said Gryphon.
	"Yes?"
	"Permission to find all this formality highly amusing, sir?"
	"Granted."
	All three of them broke.

	      FIGHTER LAUNCH BAY #1 (THE CORNER POCKET)
		       WDF PROMETHEUS (CVS-01)
			    ONE WEEK LATER

	"All right," said Gryphon into his com headset.  "Petersson!
Remember all that stuff that the instructor program told you about
moderation?"
	"Sir!" Petersson replied.
	"Good!  Forget it!" Gryphon replied.  "The WDF's enemies are
not known for holding back - it's never been my policy to do so
either.  The key to a successful sortie is your mindset, Petersson -
get yourself into the right mindset at the very beginning and you'll
be invincible out there.  Do you know what the key to a good mindset
is, Petersson?"
	"No, sir."
	"The key to a good mindset is an immoderate launch.  Like this
one.  Watch carefully."
	So saying, he maneuvered his Valkyrie into launch position,
feeling the catapult skid bump against the under-armor.  Beside the
launch track, the launchmaster - easily visible in his bright orange
CVR-3 - looked down the deck into space, then back at the tower, and
then raised his arm, hand open.  Gryphon put his hand firmly around
the turbine throttles, his thumb on the burner button, and waited.
	The launchmaster closed his upraised hand into a fist, thumb
raised.  Gryphon slammed his throttles all the way open and buried
the button.  The Valkyrie lunged forward against its brakes and the
restraint of the skid, quivering with anticipation.
	Outside a gravity well, there was really no reason to launch
in this fashion.  A Valkyrie would take off just as well with a normal
takeoff roll, or even by just retracting its gear and flying away from
a standing start, if the pilot was skillful enough not to hit the
deck.  Most fighter squadron leaders followed Gryphon's example,
though, in insisting that it be done this way anyway - just in case
they ever -did- need to do it on a planet's surface.  Prometheus could
be, and sometimes was, used as a wet-naval platform.
	The launchmaster dropped to one knee and swept his arm into an
open-handed forward point.  Gryphon released the brakes and the
catapult fired at the same instant.  In the corner of his HUD, the
spectrum-analyzer-like LED trails indicating the inertial dampening
system scrolled all the way to the right, and the thrust slammed into
his back anyway.  He loved that feeling, almost as much as he enjoyed
glancing in the rear-view and watching the SDF-17 fall away.
	"Did you catch the technique, Petersson?" he asked.
	"Sir!" Petersson replied, and then, in a much less formal
voice, "such as it was."
	"Right," said Gryphon, banking sharply around to orbit the
ship's port side and watch Petersson take off.  "Now you try it."
Petersson duly tried it.
	"Very good, Petersson," said Gryphon.  "I'm impressed.  We'll
be running gunnery drills in the asteroid field today, so arm your
weapons systems and follow me."

	Lt. Petersson proved himself to be a valuable addition to the
Eight-Ball Squadron over the next year, participating with conspicuous
valor and skill in several actions against pirates and in whichever
Kilrathi War was going on that year.  When Dave Ritchie returned from
his hunting trip and resumed his spot in the squadron, Petersson was
promoted to Senior Lieutenant and given command of a newly formed
Koensayr Myrmidon squadron, VF-81 (the Crimson Crusaders).
	One Fighter Command staffer noted on the transfer record that
this was a real shame, since Petersson had a natural aptitude with
transforming mecha - a notation which made Gryphon laugh himself silly
when he noticed it during Fighter Command's monthly staff meeting.

		      WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2094

	Gryphon came through the bridge doors still buttoning his
uniform jacket, his eyes still a bit bleary, just as MegaZone gave
orders for the bridge engineer to turn off the audible alert.
	"What's the deal?" he asked as he took his station next to the
command seat.  "I was having the most wonderful dream."
	"Yeah, I bet," Zoner replied.  "Sorry to disturb you, but
we've had an emergency call from Earth."
	"Earth?  What do -they- want?"
	"NaturePres lost contact with the automated monitoring
satellites orbiting Natureworld.  EDC wants us to check it out."
	Gryphon looked puzzled.  "Natureworld?  The park planet?"
	"Park, game preserve, whatever you want to call it," Zoner
replied.
	"You sounded an alert for -that-?"
	"No," Zoner replied.  "Actually that happened months ago; EDC
just circular-filed NaturePres's request for an investigation until
somebody over there noticed we were in the sector tonight."  He tabbed
a couple of controls on his seat console, and a holoplane rezzed up
over the forward projection pit.  On it was a wireframe diagram of the
local space.  "I sounded an alert for -that-," Zoner went on,
pointing.
	"... Since when did this system have a wormhole?" Gryphon
wondered.
	Zoner put a finger to the side of his nose and grinned.
	"Not only that," observed Kei Morgan from the Tactical
console, "but there are a lot of high-energy events going on in one
sector of the planet."
	"High-energy events on a nature preserve?"
	"Nature preserve or not, -somebody's- having a firefight down
there."
	Zoner sighed.  "Looks like we'll get to have some fun on this
trip after all."
	q snapped his fingers from the comm station and yelled, "Yo,
fearless leader, like Salusia Central on line 2."
	Zoner sighed.  "Fuck, what now?  OK, put them on."  Another
holoplane overlapped the slowly rotating diagram of the wormhole, this
one occupied by the familiar face of the WDF's current Royal Salusian
Armed Forces liaison, General Ardan Zal of the Army.
	"What can we do for you, Ardan?" Zoner wanted to know.
	"One of our ag outposts in your sector is under Kilrathi
attack," Zal replied.  "Veltra IV, outpost J-14.  Can you help?"
	Zoner glanced past Zel's holographic face at the wormhole
diagram.  "Well, we're a little busy with this Natureworld thing... "
	Zal looked grave.  "Veltra IV's defenders are badly
outnumbered," he said, "and the Navy can't be there before 0300
tomorrow.  By then, the outpost will probably have fallen."
	Zoner considered it for a moment.  There were no sentient
lives known to be at risk on Natureworld, but he couldn't just leave
the phenomenon for anybody to stumble over...
	"OK, General," he said.  "Upload what you've got about enemy
strength and the like to our tac computers, we'll be there in ten
minutes."
	"Thank you, Captain," Zel replied, and switched off.
	Zoner turned to his Executive Officer.  "Gryph.  Find out
what's going on down on Natureworld.  If it's too big for you to
handle, hole up somewhere.  We'll be back once we've chased the cats
away from Veltra."
	"I'm on it," said Gryphon.  He got up from his station and
headed for the doors.
	"Be careful," Kei called to him.
	"You too," he replied, and the doors closed behind him.
	They'd both been through this situation way too many times for
the goodbye to be any more complicated than that.

	"Eve," said Gryphon as he rode the turbolift down to the
crossdeck tubes that would take him to the Prometheus.
	"Here, Ben," said Eve as she appeared on the lift's monitor
screen.
	"I'll need a Legios to make the drop - they have better
survival gear than the Valkyrie, and I can use the Beta's storage bay
as a shelter if I have to.  I'm not hot on the idea of blundering into
this entirely alone - see if you can pull me a copilot from the
standby roster, somebody I can trust.  And you'd better wake up Daver
if the alert didn't."
	"They'll be waiting for you in the Corner Pocket," Eve
promised.
	"Thanks," said Gryphon.  He was already unbuttoning the
uniform jacket he'd just buttoned, since he'd have to take it off to
suit up for operations anyway.
	Eve was true to her word.  By the time Gryphon arrived at
Fighter Bay 1, two WDF pilots in combat armor awaited him in the
briefing room.  He addressed Dave Ritchie first.
	"Daver," he said, "the SDF-17's moving out as soon as my squad
and I launch - the Kilrathi are hitting a Salusian ag colony and Zal
tapped us to help them out.  You'll be in command of Eight-Ball for
that op."
	Ritchie nodded.  "I'll go call the others and get started on
preflight, then."  He left, and Gryphon turned to the other.
	He was pleasantly surprised to see that Olaf Petersson was the
other pilot, and his face broke into a grin at the sight of the blond
giant.
	"I thought you were flying fixed-config these days," he said.
	"I am," Petersson replied with a smile and a nod, "but the
Crusaders are off rotation for equipment overhaul this week, and Eve
thought I might like to help out."
	"Well, I appreciate it.  I'll feel better with somebody like
you in the Beta, in case things get sticky."
	"What are we doing?" Petersson wondered.  "All Eve told me was
suit up and come down here, and you'd explain the rest."
	"I'm not sure -what- we're doing," Gryphon informed him.  He
cleared his throat and went on rather pompously, "The Earth
corporation Nature Preservation, Inc. has established a game preserve
on Meta Eridani III, Natureworld, which is intended to house a number
of Earth species which couldn't survive on Earth right now thanks to
the war.  (I got that from their brochure,)" he added, dropping the
pompous PR tone.  "Nobody lives on Natureworld, but there's an
automated satellite system designed to warn off intruders and alert
the authorities.
	"NaturePres lost contact with those satellites a few months
ago, and alerted the Earth Defense Command.  EDC apparently didn't
give a shit, since they didn't do anything about it until earlier
tonight, when somebody at EDC happened to notice we were in the sector
and asked us to have a look.  Anyway, we got here to discover an
uncharted wormhole near the planet and what looks like a firefight
going on down on the surface.  -Then- we got the call from Salusia
that Veltra IV was being hit by the Kilrathi.  So the rest of the gang
are heading off to deal with that, and -we- get to check out the
unknown firefight all by ourselves!  Aren't we lucky?"
	"I can hardly wait," said Petersson, but he seemed to mean it.
	"We're just going down to take a look around," Gryphon went
on.  "With any luck, we won't even have to get involved until the
SDF-17 gets back."

	"Me," Gryphon observed ruefully to himself, "and my big
mouth."
	"It -was- an ill-advised statement," Petersson agreed dryly.
	"Did you get a look at what hit us?" Gryphon asked as he
peered glumly into the jagged hole in the Beta's thruster array.  "I
was too busy crashing the ship."
	"Not clearly," Petersson replied.  "It looked like a robot of
some kind."
	"Terrific."  Gryphon sighed, brushing imaginary debris from
the gloves of his CVR-3.  "Well, this is trashed, it'll never fly
again without an overhaul."  He went forward and looked over the
linkages.  "The Alpha looks OK, if we can get it detached."
	"Might as well leave it for now," Petersson said.
	"Yeah, I - " Gryphon stopped talking abruptly and stood,
looking puzzled and a little apprehensive.
	"What?" Petersson wondered, then followed his friend's gaze.
They had come down in a forest.  Gryphon had managed to get them into
a small clearing, about twice as wide as the Legios was long, and he
was looking toward the edge of that clearing, where a low-slung yellow
animal, speckled with black spots, had just emerged from the trees and
was wandering in their direction.
	 "What is it?" Petersson murmured.
	"Cheetah, I think," Gryphon replied.  "Or maybe a leopard.
I'm not an expert.  Big cat of some kind, anyway.  It probably won't
try anything unless it's starving, and on this world it shouldn't be.
Anyway, it can't hurt us."
	The cheetah seemed to notice them at that moment, and drew
back, its green eyes widening in comically human shock.  Then it
turned and dashed back into the woods with exceptional speed.
	"Must have been a cheetah," Petersson observed.
	"Yeah," Gryphon agreed, "too fast for a leopard."  He
chuckled.  "I think we almost startled the poor guy out from under his
spots."
	The two kept working, assessing their situation and
establishing camp, for several minutes.  They did not complain about
their situation, because they knew that they weren't really in much of
a fix.  The SDF-17 would be back in a few days, a week at the most,
and they had no pressing survival problems.  They were not injured,
they had plenty of rations, and even if they managed to run out, this
world was rich enough in life to support them without much trouble.
	The only thing they had to worry about was the apparent
conflict going on between groups of technologically advanced
intruders. So they kept their sidearms handy and their ears tuned,
ready to act in case either side had seen where they'd come down and
came to investigate, little realizing that one side already had.
	"Gryph," said Petersson softly as the senior pilot worked on
the Beta's smashed comm array, thinking possibly to send a signal to
the SDF-17 alerting the mothership of their situation.
	"Yeah," Gryphon replied in the same tone.
	"Our friend is back," Petersson murmured with some amusement.
Gryphon looked.  Sure enough, the cheetah had returned, sidling slowly
and with what looked amusingly like studied nonchalance into the
clearing.  It wasn't looking at them, but in a manner so pointed that
it had to be deliberate.  The animal was doing everything but
whistling tunelessly with its forepaws folded behind its back.
Gryphon had to stifle a laugh.
	A moment later the laugh fizzled as another animal emerged
from the brush near the cheetah's position.  This one was much larger,
a big, brown, bulky creature with beady eyes and a big horn on its
nose.
	"A rhinoceros," Gryphon observed.  "This is a strange forest."
	This was cause for a bit of concern; unlike the cheetah, whose
teeth and claws would be useless against CVR-3, a rhino could possibly
do some damage if it got a notion to charge them.  Still, this
particular rhino didn't look much interested in charging.  It was just
ambling along, an almost amiable look on its ugly mug.
	The cheetah saw the rhino and approached it, and the two
animals stood there, head near head, in what looked for all the world
like a conference.  Petersson and Gryphon looked at each other - not
that they could see each other with their CVR's mirrored facebowls
locked down - then stared at them.
	"Very unusual behavior," Petersson observed.
	"No kidding," Gryphon replied.
	Finally, their conference apparently over, the two animals
walked abreast toward the Legios.
	"Looks like they want to have a word with us," Gryphon said,
though after what he'd just seen, he wasn't sure if he was joking or
not.  He climbed down from the Legios and joined Petersson on the
ground near the nose gear, where they stood and watched as the two
animals came to within speaking distance.
	The four lifeforms stood for a moment regarding each other.
	"Er... hello," said Gryphon, feeling a tad foolish.  "How are
you?  We mean you no harm."
	"Well, that's a relief," the rhino replied in a deep, slightly
gravelly voice.  "Seems like everything -else- here does."
	"Who are you guys?" the cheetah demanded, his voice the squeak
of an overexcited teenager.  "How did you get here?  What do you want?
Where did - "
	"Muzzle it, Cheetor," grumbled the rhino.  "We can find out
about all that later.  Except introductions, I guess.  I'm Rhinox," he
added.
	Gryphon and Petersson's helmets glanced at each other again.
	"Uh... I'm Commander Benjamin Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force,"
said Gryphon.  "This is my co-pilot, Senior Lieutenant Olaf
Petersson."
	"'Wedge Defense Force'?" Rhinox mused.
	"Never heard of you!" said Cheetor suspiciously.  "How do we
know you're not Pred agents?"
	"Oh, please," Rhinox said, his tone long-suffering.  "Think
before you put your mouth in gear, kid.  Have you ever even -seen-
their species before?"
	"(Never heard of the Wedge Defense Force?)" Petersson muttered
to Gryphon.  "(Never seen humans?)"
	"(It takes all kinds,)" Gryphon replied philosophically.
"(I've never seen a talking rhino either.)"
	"So, if there's one thing the Preds do well, it's disguise,"
Cheetor said.  "All I'm saying is we should be careful."
	"What we should do," Rhinox replied, "is get out of here
before the Preds show up."
	"Too late for that!" a voice screeched from high above.  The
two animals and two humans glanced up; then the humans blinked in
shock.  A red-and-silver robot, about the size and shape of a large
man, was hovering above them, a blaster weapon in his hand and a nasty
look on his face.  Without further preamble, he opened fire.
	"Slag," Rhinox said sourly.  "Rhinox - MAXIMIZE!"  The rhino
leaned forward and roared, his mouth open wide, and then lurched
backward.  As he did so, his structure shifted, metallic parts coming
into view with an alarming-looking but apparently painless division
and folding away of large patches of rhino hide, so that he came to
rest standing up on his hind feet, converted into a broad-shouldered,
powerful-looking green and gold robot.  Rhino bits still decorated him
here and there like styling accents.
	Gryphon looked at Petersson and wished he could see the other
man's face, though he was sure it had the same gobsmacked expression
as his own.
	"Transformers?" he wondered.
	"Not a type I've ever seen, but... "  Petersson shrugged.
"The similarities -are- striking."
	While they were discussing that, Cheetor had changed too.  The
two creatures hadn't changed size in transformation, so their relative
scale was the same as before - Cheetor became a significantly smaller
robot with much leaner proportions.  There was nothing lean about the
cannon he was wielding, though.
	"We don't have time for this!" Rhinox bellowed over the roar
of the enormous chaingun he'd hauled out of somewhere.  "If Terrorsaur
is here, that means Waspinator can't be far behind."
	"Oh, Wazzpinator not far behind," a squeaky voice interjected.
"Wazzpinator in command!  Wazzpinator leadzz.  Needle-nose wazz
diversion!"
	 Something exploded just behind Cheetor even as he swung to
look behind him; he tumbled forward in a heap, coming to rest near
Gryphon's feet, his weapon spinning away under the Alpha's nose.
Hovering in the air behind where Cheetor had been was another robot, a
green and black one with a distinctly bug-like appearance.  Gryphon
whirled and punched the side of the Alpha, popping open a storage
panel, as the new arrival - "Waspinator", apparently - buzzed toward
him.
	"Now Wazzpinator show Mystery-botzz real Predacon welcome!"
Waspinator chortled gleefully as he swooped in and raised his weapon.
	Gryphon turned back from the panel with his arms full of
Stouker Mark III concussion rifle.
	"Pleased to meet you," he said.
	BzzzPHWHAM!
	"Awk!" cried Waspinator as he was blown backward thirty feet
and slammed into a boulder with a painful-sounding crunch.
	"All RIGHT!" Cheetor declared as he recovered his weapon.  "I
like your style, buddy."
	"Still think they're with the Preds, Cheetor?" Rhinox asked
through his teeth as he blazed away at Terrorsaur.  The other flying
foe was having a better time of it, his aerial maneuverability keeping
him from being seriously hit by Rhinox's fire, but he couldn't close
in or draw a bead if he had to keep dodging all the time, which was
more or less Rhinox's whole strategy.
	"Nope," Cheetor replied amiably, "they've convinced me."  He
darted out from under the covering side of the Alpha, dove to avoid a
blast from Terrorsaur's weapon, rolled, came up in a kneeling position
and blasted the silver and red robot from the sky.
	"Heheheh," Cheetor observed, spinning his cannon around his
finger and then tucking it away behind his back.  "Loser.  Come on,
you two, we'd better get back to base.  The rest of the bad guys will
be here soon."
	Gryphon looked at him for a moment, then slung the Stouker.
	"Petersson, go with these two," he said.  "I'm going to detach
the Alpha and follow."

	Rhinox and Cheetor helped Gryphon and Petersson get the Alpha
secured to the upper hull of their crashed starship, near a topside
hatch; then they led the way down into the ship.  Gryphon looked
around with keen interest, trying to place the manufacture of the
ship, but he couldn't.  The construction style looked familiar, but
most metal starships do look a certain amount alike on the inside.
	Cheetor peeled off down a side corridor, leaving Rhinox to
lead the two Wedge Defenders to what was obviously the ship's control
room.  This was a circular room about forty feet in diameter with a
round holoprojection table in the center and consoles all around its
outer wall.  Three smaller round chambers that looked like they might
be elevators stood interspersed among the stations.
	Standing at the front of the room, looking over something on
the main monitors screen, was another robot, taller than Rhinox but
not quite as wide.  This one was mostly black and silver, powerfully
built, and obviously had a beast form as well - his back was mostly
covered in silvery-black fur.
	"Well, Rhinox?" he asked, still poring over the display.
	"I think you'd better see for yourself," said Rhinox.
	"That bad, huh?" asked the other robot.  Then he turned around
to face them.
	If Olaf Petersson had been holding anything, he would have
dropped it.  So would Gryphon.
	The black and silver robot had Optimus Prime's head.  Well,
almost, Gryphon realized.  There were some differences.  The bits on
the sides of this one's helmet were curved, more like blades than
antennae, and the half-mask that covered his face had a gap in it,
like a little rectangular hatch, revealing his mouth.  But the lines
of the face, and of the helmet surrounding it - cover that mouth slot
over and he'd be Prime, albeit a very small one.  Once more Petersson
and Gryphon tried to glance at each other and were thwarted by their
mirrored helmets.  With an annoyed sound, Gryphon flipped his open.
	Now it was the two robots' turn to look shocked.
    "Jeez!" came an agitated squeak from somewhere off to Optimus
Primal's right.  Gryphon and Petersson glanced over to see that
another of the stations was also occupied.  Their attention had been
so dominated by the black and silver figure in the center they hadn't
noticed that the station to his right was manned by what appeared to
be a five-foot rat.
	"My, my," Gryphon said to Petersson, sotto voce.  "They grow
them big around here."
	Petersson nodded, looking faintly amused.  "That's either a
very big Earth rat or a fairly small womp rat."
	"Humans!" Rhinox blurted.  "I took you for mechanoids," he
added after a moment.
	"With these things on, it's an easy mistake," Gryphon replied,
removing his helmet entirely and making a futile attempt at combing
his hair with the fingers of one gloved hand.  He put the helmet down
on the edge of the map table, straightened to attention, and
introduced himself with a formal salute:
	"Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force.  This is
my co-pilot, Senior Lieutenant Olaf Petersson."  Petersson put his
helmet next to Gryphon's and saluted as well.
	To Gryphon's mild surprise, the black robot with Prime's face
saluted as well.  "I'm Optimus Primal, commander of the Maximal
Exploration Ship Axalon," he said, then grinned wryly and added,
"What's left of it.  You've already met Rhinox, and this is Rattrap."
Gryphon and Petersson were finally able to share that significant
glance.
	"Wedge Defense Force, eh?" said the rat.  He hopped down from
his control station, waddled over to the map table, and then
transformed, becoming the smallest robot Gryphon and Petersson had
seen yet - only about the size of a small human.
	"Never heard'a ya," Rattrap went on.  "'Course I s'pose that
shouldn't surprise me - we've been outta contact with Earth for a long
time."
	"You -are- from Earth, aren't you?" added Rhinox.
	"I am," Gryphon acknowledged.  "Lt. Petersson was... born in
space, but he's from Earth stock.  What planet are -you- from, if you
don't mind my asking?"
	"Cybertron," Optimus Primal responded.  Gryphon arched an
eyebrow.
    "Forgive my puzzlement," he said, "but in my experience,
Cybertronians tend to be... taller."
	"A lot has changed since we cut off contact with Earth," said
Primal.
	"'Cut off contact'?" Petersson repeated.  "I was just on
Cybertron last year."
	"What?!" squeaked Rattrap.
	Primal's optics narrowed.  "Maybe we're not talking about the
same Cyber - "
	He trailed off as, for the first time, he noticed the insignia
thermosealed on the left pauldron of Petersson's red and blue CVR-3;
then his narrowed optics went wide and he pointed.
	"What's the meaning of that?" he demanded.
	Petersson glanced at his shoulder, then shrugged.  "It means I
was on Cybertron for the Great Battle of 2026."  He pointed to
Gryphon's pauldron, which wore the same seal.  "We both were.  The
Commander here has an Autobot Air Guardian commission and two stars
for valor."
	Rattrap's bronze, bucktoothed face was fast ceasing to look
puzzled and starting to look angry.
	"What is this?" he asked.  "Some kinda joke?  There -was- no
great battle in the Earth year 2026, and even if there was, you two'd
be about three centuries dead by now if you'd'a been there."
	"Remember, we may have been displaced in time as well as
space," Rhinox reminded him.
	"Even so," Rattrap continued, "somethin' stinks about this.  I
think you guys're up ta somethin'."
	"Ease up, Rattrap.  What year -is- it?" asked Primal.
	"2094," Gryphon replied.
	"Y'see?" Rattrap said.  "So we're s'posed ta believe that
you're a veteran of a battle that happened 68 Earth years ago, when
you ain't more'n 30 yourself."
	"Sure," Gryphon replied.  "I was born in 1973.  I don't age,
you see."
	"Aw, for -bootin'- up -cold-!"  Rattrap threw up his hands.
"Forget it, fearless leader.  I retract my original statement.  They
ain't up ta nothin' - they're just -nuts-."
	 "Rattrap's right about one thing," Rhinox mused.  "There was
no great battle in 2026."
	"What year was it when you left?" Gryphon asked.
	Rhinox paused for a moment, doing the conversion in his head.
"2355, I think."
	Petersson leaned closer to Gryphon and murmured, "Crossrip."
	Gryphon nodded.  "I think so, yeah."  Turning to Optimus
Primal, he said, "I have a theory, if you'd care to hear it."
	"I'd love to," Primal replied wryly.
	"I think you came here from the future, all right - but not
-our- future."
	"Whaaaat?!" said Rattrap, but Rhinox suddenly clanged a fist
down on his open palm.
	"Yes!" he exclaimed.  "Of course!  The transwarp ship Megatron
stole was an experimental design," he went on excitedly.  "He and his
crew didn't really know how to operate it.  If they miscalibrated
something, they could easily have dragged us -across- time as well as
through it."
	Primal mulled that over for a second.  "I guess it's
plausible," he said.
	"Hey, I got the spare quarters set up for our guests," Cheetor
announced as he bounded cheerfully onto the bridge, back in his beast
mode, "and - jumpin' gyros!"  He skidded to a halt.  "What happened to
-you- guys?"
	It was Optimus Primal's and Rhinox's turn to share a
significant glance.
	"Cheetor," said Primal hesitantly, "this is Commander Hutchins
and Lieutenant Petersson of the Wedge Defense Force.  They're
humans... Earthmen."
	Cheetor looked confused.  "They're what?"
	Primal sighed.  "Our ancestors, the Autobots, had dealings
with the people of Earth, long ago, but the Maximal Elders broke off
contact after the Great War.  Records of Earth's location and its
involvement in the War were sealed to protect future generations of
Transformers from the temptation of involving the planet in any future
conflict."
	"Oh.  So how'd they get here?" asked Cheetor.
	One of the things Gryphon had taken for elevators proved that
it was indeed an elevator, as it whined down out of sight, then
returned carrying what appeared to be a dark-brown-light-brown
tiger-striped velociraptor.
	"What is going on here?" the raptor demanded.  "There is an
alien spacecraft attached to the hull."
	"I think we all need to sit down and have a long talk,"
Petersson and Optimus Primal said in unexpected unison.

	The Predacon who styled himself a new Megatron sat in his
command chair and seethed.
	"You let yourself be driven away from the alien craft by
-Cheetor and Rhinox-?" he growled at his two cowering
subordinates. "You call yourselves Predacon warriors?  You weren't
even outnumbered."
	"Alien mystery-bots had weapons too!" Waspinator
protested. "One of them blast Wazzpinator."  He shooks his head and
added miserably, "Wazzpinator's audio receptors still ringing."
	"So the alien ship's crew survived," Megatron mused, optics
gleaming in the semidarkness of the Predacon bridge.  "Interesting.
How badly damaged is the ship?"
	"Bad enough to crash it," Terrorsaur replied.  "What good is
it to us anyway?  It's too small to be of any use."
	"Perhaps," Megatron replied, "but where there is one, there
may be more.  Yes.  I want to know who these aliens are, where they
come from, and whether they can be used to my advantage.  Go back to
the crash site and secure it.  And try not to let the big, bad
Maximals scare you away this time," he added, his voice dripping
sarcasm.  "Scorponok, you go with them for... eh... moral support."

	"These Maximals are fascinating," said Petersson as he and
Gryphon lay on makeshift bunks at opposite sides of the spare room
Cheetor had cleared out for them.  "Their technology is well beyond
what we know on Cybertron today - well beyond, I suspect, where our
own Cybertron's technology will be by 2355, come to that.  But
elements of their history as they've told it disturb me."
    "Like what happened to everybody who survived the Great War?"
Gryphon asked.  "Yeah, I've wondered that too.  300 years is no time
at all for an Autobot or Decepticon.  For the Maximals and Predacons
to have replaced them so completely in such a short span of time...
well, if you'll pardon the expression, I suspect there's more here
than meets the eye."
	Petersson made a thoughtful sound, then was silent for several
minutes as he pondered.  Neither man noticed as, outside in the
corridor, Dinobot passed their door on his way to the control room for
the midnight stint at monitor duty.  Hearing their voices, he briefly
paused, head cocked.
	Then Petersson said, "Well... whatever my reservations about
the Maximals as a whole, I have confidence in -this group- of
Maximals.  They're an informal bunch, but if they've survived this
long, they must be doing something right."
	Gryphon chuckled.  "I seem to recall your own Autobots were a
pretty informal bunch in your early days on Earth," he said.
	"That we were," Petersson agreed with a nostalgic chuckle of
his own.  "That we were."
	 Outside the door, Dinobot turned and silently made his way up
to the control room, his reptilian eyes slitted in thought.  Very
interesting.

	A few days later, Gryphon and Olaf found themselves on the
Axalon's bridge with Rhinox, who they both found to be an extremely
affable fellow.  Petersson often found himself thinking how much
Rhinox reminded him of Ironhide in some ways - stolid, dependable,
good-tempered.
	Olaf opened the conversation as they were teaching Rhinox to
play poker (5-card stud).
	"The one thing I don't get about you Maximals is... why the
animal forms?  Didn't you have transformations before this?"
	"Yes, we did.  Two, please.  But one of the rules that survey
ships have to obey is to minimize interference with the locals, and
try to blend in.  So our stasis pods have scanner systems to reformat
our protoforms with local fauna."
	Gryphon passed Rhinox two cards, giving Olaf a glance.  "So
why did you have the extra protoforms with sparks onboard?"
	"Couple of them were emissaries we kept in stasis so as to not
drain the ship's resources too much - experts in first contact, things
like that.  Couple others were criminals from some of our outer worlds
that we picked up to bring back to Cybertron for imprisonment.  Then
there's one that was sealed up hard and marked with a big red X.
Primal knows something, but he's apparently been ordered not to talk
about it.  If it's that bad, I'm not going to ask."
	Gryphon looked at his cards, dropped three and drew three.
"Did you lose them all?"
	Rhinox nodded.  "Except the ones in the core of the ship -
when we collided with the Preds during entry, we lost them all.  Even
the one with the X.  They all fell to the planet."

	   /*  Chaz Jankel  "Number One"  _Real Genius_  */

	Over the next few weeks, in between wondering what the hell
was keeping Zoner, Gryphon and Olaf found things falling into a
familiar, and in some ways oddly comforting, routine.  Basically, the
Predacons would come up with a scheme, then the Maximals would defeat
it.
	The Predacons did have their small victories.  They seized
some of the protoforms, coming up with at least two new members, one a
female (Olaf expressed some surprise at this) who became known as
Blackarachnia.  They had another spider in their group, too, a warped
criminal scientist named Tarantulas, but Rattrap's intel reports
indicated that Blackarachnia apparently found him just as loathsome as
everyone else did.
	The other was, apparently, completely immersed in his
biological imperative, having been imbued with the pattern of an ant.
Inferno thought of Megatron as the 'queen' - a comment that made
Rattrap and Gryphon both keel over laughing when they heard it - and
was absolutely devoted to defending 'queen' and 'hive'.
	They also learned the quirks of the Maximals they had allied
themselves with - Rattrap's sneakiness and pessimism, Cheetor's
youthful optimism and impulsiveness, Dinobot's prickly ego and
unyielding honor, Rhinox's steady good cheer and technological
brilliance, and Optimus Primal's belief in doing the right thing no
matter the cost.
	They also learned about the Predacons they were now, by
default, opposing: the dim-witted Scorponok, the hapless Waspinator,
the scheming Terrorsaur, the devious and heartless Tarantulas, and the
overweening ego and nigh-unstoppable self-promotion of Megatron.
	("Megatron.  Why did it have to be Megatron?" Petersson had
groaned at that revelation.)
	 The only problem they had was Dinobot's apparent suspicion of
the two of them.  In battle, he was the soul of honor and combat
efficiency; outside, he kept trying to seize control of the Maximals
and snooped around the two humans.
	Then Tarantulas came up with his most horrific experiment to
date - an experiment that left him outnumbered, outgunned, and outcast
by both sides.
	In the middle of a pitched battle over an energon deposit,
Tarantulas set off a bomb of his own devising.  The bomb was not an
explosive, but rather a nanotech dispersant - the robotic equivalent
of germ warfare.  He set it off without any consideration for his own
side.  Indeed, when all was said and done, he'd infected as many
Predacons as Maximals.
	To be fair to Tarantulas, the weapon -had- gone off
prematurely.  He hadn't actually intended to get -himself- with it.
He -hadn't- been trying to avoid infecting other Predacons, though, so
fairness goes only so far.
	When the dust settled and both sides had dragged themselves
back to base to regroup, Scorponok, Megatron, and Tarantulas himself
were laid low on the Predacon side.  The Maximals also had three down:
Cheetor, Optimus Primal, and Olaf Petersson, whose fully-organic
structure hadn't protected him from Tarantulas's nano-plague.
	The Predacons left Tarantulas where he fell.  Later, Megatron
would have cause to regret, and then to be glad, that he'd been too
weak and sick at the time to finish the twisted scientist off where he
lay.

		     THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2094
			      THE AXALON

	"You know," said Gryphon grimly, "I'll say this for
Tarantulas: He's brilliant.  Hideous, but brilliant.  With only the
supplies aboard that experimental ship, he created this."
	"Yeah," growled Rhinox.  He raised one of Cheetor's hands,
looked it over, let it drop.  "It's brilliant, all right.  A
self-replicating nano-agent that triggers massive exostructure change,
makes a Transformer's body basically reinvent itself.  See how
Cheetor's surface is scaling over?  He's... "  The Maximal engineer
shrugged tiredly.  "... chrysalizing, if that's even a word.  Getting
ready to change... but into what?"
	"But Olaf's body isn't a Transformer's," Gryphon mused, "and
so... "
	Rhinox stumped over to the other table, where the Nordic pilot
lay sweating and muttering.
	"... So it's killing him," Rhinox finished.  "And I don't
think there's a slagging thing I can do about it."
	 Gryphon swore.  Rhinox didn't know the word, but the tone of
the human's voice made very clear what sort of word it was.  He paced
across the room, shaking his head.
	"Impossible," he was muttering.  "It can't end this
way. That's ridiculous.  Fantastic.  It can't."  He whirled, his eyes
rimmed with red from exhaustion.  With a start, Rhinox realized the
man had been online - er, awake - for nearly seventy-two hours.  "This
is my fault, Rhinox," he said, his voice seething with intensity.  "My
fault.  I donated the cell.  My lab made the body.  I was the one who
suggested the whole thing when he told me about his dream."
	Rhinox peered at Gryphon, his face screwed up into a look of
total puzzlement.  After a few seconds of careful consideration, he
managed to produce an interrogative that perfectly summed up his
bewilderment:
	"Huh?"
	Gryphon pressed his hands to his face, pushing his glasses up
onto his forehead, then wiped them slowly down.  The glasses fell back
into position with a shake of his head.
	"Of course, you don't know.  I didn't tell you.  It's a
secret, after all!"  Gryphon giggled - actually giggled - as
exhaustion and desperation pressed in against his mind and squeezed it
into a shade of something like hysteria.  "Well, Rhinox," he went on
after a moment, "prepare yourself for a shock of the Very Large
variety.  That man lying there on that table, dying in slow agony as
Tarantulas's little virus turns his guts into techno-soup, is not just
Senior Lieutenant Olaf Petersson, tall, dashing and handsome space
fighter pilot with the Wedge Defense Force.  No."
	He giggled again as he realized whose vocal mannerisms he was
imitating, then plunged on, "Olaf Petersson is just a disguise.  The
spark that Olaf's death will put out belongs to Optimus Prime."
    Rhinox stared at him, slack-jawed.
	"Are you -serious-?" he finally managed.
	"Do I look like I'm joking?!" Gryphon demanded, the Maximal's
skepticism sending a spike of rage through him.  His nerves screamed
for sleep.  Guilt battered at him.
	Rhinox gazed at him for several seconds, his optics dimming
for several eyeblinks as the Maximal engineer thought.
	Then, to Gryphon's astonishment, he grinned.
	"Well, then," he said, "we're not licked yet."

	Twenty minutes later, it was as ready as it would ever be.
The contraption Rhinox had built next to Petersson's deathbed looked
very similar to the one Tuck Menlo and his team had constructed in Lab
44-A.  The cables leading from it went not to a biotank but to a
stasis pod Rhinox had hauled up from the hold, one whose blinking
yellow status indicator showed that the protoform inside was blank and
sparkless.
	Attracted by Rhinox's dragging around a stasis pod, the rest
of the Maximals had crowded into the corner of the lab.  They had no
idea what was going on, and Rhinox and Gryphon were working so
intently they didn't dare interrupt by asking.
	Rhinox finished the final connection, then turned to Gryphon.
"You want to do the honors?" he asked.
	Gryphon shook his head.  "My hands are shaking too bad," he
replied.  "Too tired.  I trust you."
	Rhinox nodded.  "Thanks," he said; and, taking up a pair of
spark extractors, he went to Petersson's bedside.  Looking down at the
prostrate form of the WDF pilot, he raised the extractors, bowed his
head, and muttered, "Dear Primus... please don't let me fuck up."
	Performing this operation on any normal human being would do
nothing other than inflict severe burns.  For just an instant, Rhinox
found himself wondering if Gryphon were just delirious, if he might be
about to do nothing more than snuff out the unfortunate pilot's life a
little bit ahead of schedule.  Then he activated the first extractor
and felt the distinct tug, and his optics widened in wonder.
	Ten seconds later, Petersson's body lay inert and Rhinox held
an unmistakable Cybertronian spark between the two extractors.
Rattrap gasped audibly as he entered the room just in time to see it.
A second after that, Rhinox dropped the spark into the hemispherical
chamber and, just as before, it shot down the cables and hit the pod
with such force that it blew the hatch cover clean off.
	Out of the smoke, like a man rising from his own coffin, came
Olaf Petersson - WDF uniform and all, which made both Rhinox and
Gryphon blink.
	"How do you feel?" Rhinox asked him.
	Petersson grinned and replied, "Prime."
	Rhinox chuckled.  "Since your new body is a Maximal protoform,
it has our activation code programmed into it.  I hope you don't
mind."
	"Not at all," Petersson replied, examining his hands as if
he'd never seen them before.  (Well, he hadn't, really.)  He looked up
at Rhinox and smiled.  "Good idea you had," he added.  "I thought of
it myself, but by the time I did, I was too far gone to talk.
Thanks."
	"OK, OK," Rattrap burst out, unable to contain himself any
longer.  "Would somebody please take pity on a poor dumb rat and tell
me what the slag is goin' on?!  Rhinox, did I just see you yank a
-spark- out of a -human- and drop it into a blank?"
	"Well, yes and no," Rhinox replied.
	Gryphon turned to Olaf, his tone an amused parody of a
superior officer addressing a subordinate.  "Well, what about it,
Petersson?  Is it time to introduce yourself?"
	Petersson grinned.  "I think maybe it is, Commander," he
replied.  He stepped away from the table, faced the gathered Maximals,
and announced in a loud, clear, voice,
	"Optimus Prime: Maximize."
	It was the weirdest thing any of them had ever seen, and it
happened so fast they weren't entirely sure they'd seen it at all.
Flesh and uniform divided, slid away, were subsumed by metallic armor,
and the man they'd come to know as Olaf Petersson seemed to collapse
into himself and blossom outward at the same time.  Instead of the
usual servo and relay noises they were used to their own
transformations making, the visual spectacle was accompanied by a
rapid five-tone harmonic, one ingrained in all their consciousnesses
from history files about the Great War.  And when it was all over, in
the space of a single click, the robot who stood where Petersson had
been was familiar to them too, and from the same source.
	Dinobot smiled a little to himself, but said nothing.
	Rattrap stared.  "Oh, you gotta be pullin' my tail," he
murmured, almost inaudibly.
	"Whoa," said Gryphon.  He'd been expecting it, but even so,
seeing Prime's new robot form was a bit of a shock.  It looked almost
exactly like his original configuration, the one he'd had when Gryphon
had first met him ninety-two years ago, except that by Autobot
standards it was tiny, no more than seven feet in height.
	Prime looked down at himself, flexed his hands, and took
stock.
	"Not bad," he said.  "Not bad at all."

	The contagion affected the two infected Maximals differently.
Optimus Primal, who had possibly the stoutest constitution among them,
lay unconscious for four days while his systems fought against it, and
eventually he shrugged it off with no apparent effects.
	Cheetor, on the other hand, lay in a coma for about the same
amount of time, his body covered with a slowly-accreting metallic
chrysalis... 
	... and then, on the third day, the scaly covering cracked and
sloughed away, and there was Cheetor, different but recognizable.  The
plague had stripped away the biological component of his revised
protoform, leaving him purely mechanical again - but with robotic
analogs to various features of his lost animal form, as a sort of
reminder of what he once was.

	Optimus Primal sat up, groaning with the aches that the battle
and CR chamber stay had left in his form.  Confused and puzzled,
wondering how long he'd been out and what had happened to the others,
he looked around...
	... and there, leaning against the wall next to his sickbay
bed, stood a being out of legend.
	"... Optimus Prime?"  he whispered, incredulous.
	Prime's optics lit as he came out of his slight doze.  "Oh,
Primal.  You're awake.  How are you feeling?  As you consider that,
you should know that Cheetor is all right - better than new, in fact."
	Primal, thankful for Prime's information and the moment to
collect his thoughts, took a deep breath.  "Well.  That's just prime."
	"No," Prime said, a small chuckle in his voice, "I'm just
Prime."
	Primal rolled his eyes.  "At least you see humor in this."
	"If my time in this world has taught me anything, it's that
things could always be worse."  Prime paused.  "Incidentally, we've
picked up a homing beacon from one of the pods that were lost.  The
signal's corrupted - we think it may have been exposed to the
reformatting virus."
	Primal frowned, causing Prime to consider what he would look
like if he modified his own faceplate to look like Primal's, then
discard the idea.
	"We should find it," the Maximal leader said.  "I don't know
who it could be, but it might be someone I knew, before... "
	 Prime's hand came down on Primal's shoulder.  "We will.  And
even if you can't go back to your Cybertron, you will be welcome on
mine.  If nothing else," he continued, a warm tone in his voice, "It
will cause Perceptor to spend time theorizing about you instead of
worrying about me."
	Primal look up, slightly surprised at the joking manner of the
legendary hero.  "You're nothing like I would have expected, sir."
	"I'm nothing like I would have expected, either.  There've
been a lot of changes in me in the last hundred years."  Indeed, he
mused, more changes than in the millions of years previous to that.
	"Now, are you ready?  Let's go get that protoform."

	The Maximals, with their two allies, moved across the
landscape, disturbing the real animals as they passed.  Optimus Primal
loped along in the semi-quadrupedal movement of the ape.  Cheetor's
new mechanical muscles moved smoothly with the sound of metal sliding
on metal.  Rhinox charged through the underbrush, Rattrap on his back.
Dinobot moved with the speed of the velociraptor, flickering in and
out of view amid the dry plants.
	The two hominids followed on motorcycles, having salvaged the
Cyclones from the Beta before setting its self-destruct to "If
Disturbed" and leaving it abandoned in place.  (This was a precaution
which, unknown to them, had caused Waspinator, Terrorsaur and the
revised Scorponok to spend more quality time in the Predacon CR
tanks.)
	They topped a ridge just before where they'd projected the two
stasis pods to be, to see a group already there - one figure backed up
against a cliff, the others circling him.
	"Predacons," Primal grumbled.  "Maximals - HIT 'EM HARD!"
	As they charged, all the allies transformed - the Maximals to
robot mode, the Cyclones to power-armor mode.  As they charged down
the hill, guns blazing, the Predacons turned around and began firing
as well.  Megatron's voice could be heard over the din of energy
weapons:
	"Stop them, fools, so I can dismantle this idiot who thinks he
still wants to be a Maximal, instead of being on the WINNING side!"
	A glint of light off purple metal warned the Maximals and
their allies that something had happened to Megatron.  That wasn't
going to stop them, of course, but Megatron might think it could.
	Scorponok was first to fall, his missiles intercepted up by a
pair of Gryphon's minimissiles while Olaf zarked him with a particle
beam rifle.  A burst of flame shot over the fallen Predacon, causing
them all to dive for cover.
	"BUUUUUURN!  BURN FOR THE ROYALTY!"
	Inferno dove down from the sky, laying down fire in a weave
around the Maximals.
	"We're all gonna die!" Rattrap cried out as his tail was
singed.
	"Not any time soon!" Primal roared.  "Primejets - GO!"  He
leapt into the air, his boosters igniting and allowing him to give
Inferno a power uppercut worthy of a character from a Street Fighter
game.  The ant-bot's head went flying as his body fell from the air.
The head landed with a clang on top of Waspinator's, knocking the
hapless 'bot clean unconscious with nothing more than a "bnnn?"
	Olaf and Gryphon unleashed their firepower on Terrorsaur, who
weaved through the air with exceptional skill.  It took a moment, but
they both managed to get a bead on him, and in one coordinated shot,
the third Predacon flier had developed a severe case of gravity
poisoning.
	Cheetor, for his part, was taking potshots at a creature that
looked to be part scorpion and part... something else.  (Was that a
snake's head coming out of its ass?)
	It skittered around a shot, then suddenly transformed with a
cry of, "Quickstrike, terrorize!"
	Yes, it was the head of a snake, which turned into one arm.
Cheetor gaped, and was in that moment lost, as his bizarre antagonist
fired a venom-green bolt from the snake's mouth and knocked him
backwards.
	 Rhinox was laying down covering fire with his chainguns,
which was suddenly matched by Blackarachnia - her spider-legs acting
as small laser guns, setting down a terrifying rate of fire.
	"Hey, Megatron!" called the female Predacon.  "Most of the
Idiot Patrol is down, wanna give us a hand here?"
	 Quickstrike turned to look at her.  "But sweetie-bot, AH'M
all the 'bot you need to win this!"
	Blackarachnia regarded Quickstrike the way most humans
regarded a full diaper.  "Don't bug me, kid; your forehead slopes."
	 Megatron gave a theatrical sigh.  "Dear, dear Blackarachnia.
I'm busy preparing to terrify and kill this Maximal, and you disturb
me.  How rude of you.  Ah, well.  Nothing to do about it, I suppose."
	 The action paused as Megatron stepped forward - larger now,
more powerful looking, formed of violet and silver metal.  It seemed
the virus had transformed his body, as it had those of Cheetor and
Scorponok.
	"Do you like me better now, Primal?" he asked mockingly.  "Oh,
and I see you've brought your allies along as well.  Pity I didn't get
the chance to shatter this one before you got here - it would have
been nice to leave you a gift."
	He held up a limp form, seemingly part wolf and part bird.
"He called himself 'Silverbolt', I think.  It looks like his scanner
was damaged, to make him such a freak."
	Quickstrike looked like he was about to say something, but
Dinobot's eyebeams caught him in the gut, knocking him back.  Dinobot
charged in as Cheetor got himself standing again.
	Rattrap, from his overlooking view, watched it all and said
just what everyone expected him to say: "We're all gonna die."
	Cheetor grinned and fired a photon charge at Quickstrike,
knocking him back farther, then laid down covering fire.  Primal
charged in as well, with Olaf and Gryphon just behind him.
	 Blackarachnia unleashed covering fire and yelled at
Quickstrike, "Get up, wankatron!"
	Quickstrike protested, and then dove again as Megatron fired a
plasma burst from his new cannon.  It flew over Quickstrike's head and
crashed into a cliff behind the Maximals, causing a small avalanche and
sending them diving for cover.
	"Blackarachnia, Quickstrike, gather up the others.  It appears
that today's entertainment has been cancelled.  Pity - I was looking
forward to it.  Yes."
	Moments later, the three had gathered the fallen and run for
it, heading back toward their ship.
	Upon their arrival about the lava pit that was the lower level
of their ship, Megatron cloistered himself, reviewing information.  Of
what kind, no one was sure.
	Blackarachnia took the time to kick Waspinator awake and
inform him that she was going out before kicking him unconscious again.

		      MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2094

	Blackarachnia skittered through the forest, leaping through
trees, and finally came to a place she'd found that she could watch
the Axalon from without being observed.  She hadn't mentioned it to
Megatron or anyone else, because she enjoyed keeping secrets -
especially from the Purple One.
	Deep inside, she knew that she had been a Maximal, and
sometimes wonder if her enjoyment of taunting the Predacons was part
of that.  But she also enjoyed taunting the Maximals.  Which made
her... she didn't know what.
	She watched as carefully as someone with eight eyes can watch
(which is pretty darn carefully).  Finally, something came out of the
Maximal ship, flying with a pair of wings.  It had to be the new guy -
Silverbolt, yeah.  She remembered him - how he had been faced with
enemies, offered the chance to join with the Predacons... and refused,
spitting in Megatron's face.
	She'd hung back from the dog-pile (no pun intended)
afterwards, partially from an instinctive dislike for Quickstrike (who
seemed intent on being 'her man', which made her spark churn with
disgust), and partially because she found herself unable to hate the
other guy.  All the other Preds toadied up to Megatron, excepting
(shudder) Tarantulas - and Tarantulas was both insane and even more
disgusting than Quickstrike.
	She remained in her observation post as he winged his way
northward, out of her sight.  She waited, waited... and he didn't
return.  Finally, realizing she had to get back soon or Megatron would
notice she was gone, she turned around...
	...and there he stood.  She started with alarm, fangs out,
then spoke her command-phrase, changing to robot mode.
	"Awright, weirdo, put 'em up!"  She pulled her crossbow and
levelled it at him.  He didn't seem surprised, or scared, just stood
there with a sort of smile on his robot mode's doglike face.
	"Um... you're my PRISONER?" Blackarachnia explained, feeling
somewhat at a loss.  "You're supposed to do things like put up your
hands, beg for mercy, drop to your knees, wet yourself with fear... "
	"How can I do any of those things, when my attention is all
elsewhere?" Silverbolt replied in a deep, rolling voice.  "My spark
feels no fear looking at you, merely a warm glow of contentment!  If I
dropped to my knees, it would be merely to worship your features; the
only mercy I'd find myself willing to beg would be a single kiss!"
	She stared at him, then tapped her forehead where the symbol
of the Predacons was emblazoned.  "Um... see this?  Me Predacon, you
Maximal.  We E-NE-MIES."
	"Merely because you do not truly know your heart, because
Megatron has concealed it!  Though your heart seems dark and your
features are dusk, I can tell that within you, your spark shines
brightly enough to warm my heart.. and cleanse yours."
	Blackarachnia's eyes caught movement from the Axalon.  It
looked to be Cheetor, flying in her direction - since when could
Punk-Bot fly?  Pretty nifty new look, though - and she knew she had to
be going.
	"Better get a new speechwriter to go walkies with you, idiot."
A bolt flew from her crossbow, hitting Silverbolt and enshrouding him
in webs, as she disappeared into the jungle.  Silverbolt had just
finished freeing himself as Cheetor arrived.
	"What happened to you?" he asked as he transformed and started
cutting his comrade free.
	Silverbolt stared into the jungle, where Blackarachnia had
gone.  "I have been caught in a web of love."
	"You are SO weird."

	"BLACKARACHNIA!"
	"You bellowed, Grapeface?"
	Megatron suppressed a start - he hadn't realized that she was
right next to his chair when he called for her.  "Yes, yes I did.  I
must say, Blackarachnia, you DO have a talent for being insouciant."
	"It's a natural gift.  What do you want?"
	"I was pondering about how to change the balance of power.
Whereas we have a deficiency in numbers, as the Maximals have the two
aliens that crash-landed here after we did, we have a number of
advantages.  We have more fliers than they do, even if two of them are
Waspinator and Inferno.  We have a greater number of area-denial
weapons, between you and Inferno and even Scorponok if he thinks to
use them.  Yet time and again, we find ourselves beaten and running
back to this ship."
	By this point, he'd seemed to forget that she was there
again.  He tapped his chin with a knuckle - the one thing he rather
missed about his new form was the loss of his dinosaur head, which had
been something of a pet - and went on didactically,
	"I find this a singularly galling point.  Perhaps... yes,
perhaps there is a way.  But it must be tested.  Properly checked.
But who to test it on?  Perhaps... yes.  That will do nicely, indeed.
I must thank that loathsome fool properly, yes.  While he lacks most
forms of pleasant behavior or even what passes for decency, I do
believe he continues to be useful.  Quite useful."
	Blackarachnia regarded Megatron after his little oration to,
apparently, no one but himself.  "Why do you always talk to yourself,
Megatron?"
	"I crave intelligent conversation, Blackarachnia.  Now, I need
you to take a message to someone for me.  Someone I know you'll
remember very, very well... "

	With a slow step, Blackarachnia walked into the cave.  "Um,
hello?  Is there anyone in here?  Lunatics, psychopaths,
megalomaniacs, loooosers?" she whispered.  Then she straightened up.
	"Well, looks like he ditched the place!" she observed with no
small measure of relief.  She began to turn.  "Better go tell
MegaAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
	The name trailed off into a scream as Blackarachnia found
herself faced with a horrific sight.
	Tarantulas had been plenty creepy enough -before- being
infected with his own transmode virus.  Now he was just plain
horrifying, a metallic arachnid the size of a large motorcycle.  His
eyes glittered with a greenish, evil light.  He had fangs that looked
as long as Blackarachnia's forearms.
	"Well, well, Blackarachnia," he said, sounding pleased.  "I
never thought to see you here... but now that you are, perhaps you can
stay for lunch."
	She gave what she thought would be a positive, winning smile
(it was really rather sickly) and began to back away.
	"That would be great, really, it would.  But I ate on the way
here, and well, I don't want to get bloated..."  A blast from one of
the spider's legs stopped her.
	"I didn't mean to join me... except of course, AS lunch."
	"Now don't be hasty, Tarantulas!  I'm not here just for
myself!"
	Tarantulas transformed into robot mode, showing himself to be
taller than Blackarachnia now.  "Oh?  And why are you here?  Other than
to appeal to my... more physical appetites."
	Blackarachnia suppressed a shudder and tried to calm herself
down.  Being just on the edge of just freaking right the hell out was
a reasonably alien sensation to her; she was accustomed to being the
one doing the freaking.
	She forced herself to speak calmly as she said, "Megatron...
wants... something from you.  And he's willing to pay - whatever you
want.  Gear, energon, whatever."
	"Why, bless his black reptilian spark!  He went to all this
trouble just to get me crosslinked?  Whatever could he want?"
Tarantulas's look at Blackarachnia made it clear that his request
would be for 'whatever', and equally clear what his 'whatever' would
be.
	She steeled herself and said it:
	"He wants the transmode virus."
	It gratified her that, in fact, even Tarantulas looked leery
at that request.  Not very much, but a little.

	Several hours later Blackarachnia struggled back into the
Predacon camp, shuddered, and charfed up some kind of goo on the
floor.  Waspinator and Inferno backed away, Quickstrike stood there
blinking stupidly, and Scorponok (who would have thought it?) picked
her up.
	"Easy, there.  We'll get you into the CR tank!  What did he do
to you?"
	She turned to him, her optics starting to get gummy with thick
liquids, and rasped, "he thought... it would be fitting... to send the
virus back...  by infecting me... with it."
	Then, to her great gratification, she passed out.
	Scorponok blanched, but got her to the CR tank and put her in.
As he did, Megatron's floating throne rose up to view the scene.
	"Ah, good, Scorponok.  Good.  Please, go ahead, into your own
CR chamber.  You've been exposed as well, you know.  You're probably
immune, since you've already been changed by it, but one never knows."
	Scorponok nodded, looking only mildly trepid at the thought,
and hopped into the vat.
	"And when you are done," Megatron said quietly, "All the
secrets of that virus will belong to me."

	The pain.
	If this was what the Maximals had felt, she felt pity for
them.
	But Predacons didn't feel pity.  At all.
	Which meant something was wrong.  This had done something to
her...
	The grate rose up, bringing Blackarachnia out of the CR tank.
She felt stronger, faster... and like something had happened to her
mind, like something had been stripped away.
	As she rose to her feet, she looked around at the others, who
were staring.  Quickstrike was actually drooling, which made him even
LESS attractive than usual - a hard thing, but there he was doing it.
	"Well, well.  You look a new Predacon, my dear Blackarachnia,"
said Megatron smoothly.  "Yes.  Indeed, you are looking quite a bit
better than when you came in.  How do you feel?"  The last was said in
a voice that apparently he thought was supposed to indicate a sense of
caring, when it was obvious that he really didn't give a damn.
	"I feel tired... really, really tired.  I just want to lie
down for a little bit."
	"Of course, of course!  I understand.  Please, take a few
moments."
	Blackarachnia staggered off until she was out of sight... then
straightened up and headed straight for an air vent and the outside.
	She knew that she no longer felt right as a Predacon
now... maybe the Maximals would take her in.
	Megatron ignored his troops and immersed himself in data from
the CR tanks.  He ran repeated tests on samples from both chambers,
and seemed highly pleased with the results, even though nothing seemed
to be happening to Scorponok.
	The rest of the Predacons kept away from him, with Terrorsaur
even going on 'patrol' just to get out of the place for a while.
While airborne, Terrorsaur happened to notice Blackarachnia's
departure, but he studiously ignored it.  He was starting to think
that Megatron's cerebro-matrix was getting dangerously off of zero
point.

	Hours later, Cheetor spun around in his chair.  "Yo, Big Bot!
We have the weirdest Intruder Alert going on!"  Both Optimuses and
Gryphon came over to the console.
	"That's Blackarachnia... I think.  Looks like she caught
Tarantulas's virus.  What's she doing -here-?" Primal wondered.
	Rattrap snarked, "Maybe looking for a new position?"  Dinobot
clanked him on the back of the noggin, eliciting a small clang and a
sound of irritation from Rattrap.
	"Aaaand there goes the hatch - someone's going outside,"
Rhinox added from a console.
	"Silverbolt," chorused Dinobot and Cheetor.
	"Did I miss a briefing?" Gryphon asked no one in particular.
	"Silverbolt's got some kind of thing for Blackarachnia,"
Cheetor explained.  "He uses flowery words and slag like that."
	"Such romance in your soul, Cheetor," Prime chuckled.  "What
do her readings show?"
	Cheetor plied his panel.  "Wow.  She's got some kind of
serious structure change, and her spark... whoa.  She's close to
stasis lock.  Pred CR tanks just aren't up to our chambers'
standards.  He's bringing her in."
	Primal keyed the communicator.  "Bring her through
decontamination, Silverbolt.  I want to make sure this isn't another
plot of Megatron's.  He's ruthless enough to sacrifice one of his own
to destroy us."
	A few moments later, Rhinox glanced at a screen.  "All right,
they're in the decon chamber.  Initial scan... nothing - some remains
of a technovirus, but not active.  Silverbolt can bring her out of
there whenever he wants."
	"He's probably givin' her a good solid carapace polishing, if
ya know what I mean!" Rattrap cracked.  "WHAT?" he followed it up
with, as everyone shook their heads and sighed.

	Blackarachnia sat up, rubbing her head.
	"I feel terrible," she observed matter-of-factly.
	"Indeed, you should.  When we brought you in here, you were
about ten minutes away from stasis lock, possible spark loss."  She
looked at the speaker, and saw two humans - one brown-haired and one
blonde, both bearded, both wearing some kind of grey clothing.
	"Who the slag are you?" she said bluntly.
	They looked at each other.  The dark-haired one said, "Ben
Hutchins, but friends call me Gryphon.  This is Olaf Petersson, but
he's got another name too."
	The blond - Olaf - looked at Gryphon, then shrugged... and
with a tone that she recognized, he transformed.
	Blackarachnia's optics went wide.  "You are slagging me.  That
is just slagging impossible."
	Optimus Prime looked at Gryphon.  "Quite a mouth on her."
	Silverbolt tapped on the door's window, which Gryphon opened.
"Excuse me, but is she all right?  Or, at least, will she be?"
	Prime nodded.  "She's fine, just low on power."
	"Hey!  I'm right here, antique!" she snapped.
	"... and as you can hear, her personality is certainly quite
active, despite her exhaustion."  Gryphon smiled, and Silverbolt
entered.
	"Blackarachnia, I've come to... bring you to a room.  Optimus
Primal has assigned you quarters."  He smiled lopsidedly, and both
Gryphon and Prime could almost think he had a bit of a blush on his
face.
	"Well, there's nothing actually wrong that we need to keep her
in a monitored room for, so I see no reason why she shouldn't head to
her own room," said Prime.
	Gryphon added, "Escorted by such an... honorable Transformer,
who has nothing in mind but her well-being."
	Both Gryphon and Prime managed to not crack up at the look
that she gave them, which promised pain and injury at some point in
the future.

		     SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2094

	Dinobot moved slowly through the underbrush, alert for
trouble.  While on patrol, he'd noticed some kind of scent, but he
hadn't quite been able to get a good lock on it.  Silverbolt was, he
knew, nearby; he'd also thought he'd heard another sound, a scuttling
noise - that would be Blackarachnia.
	The saurian warrior rolled his eyes.  The whole thing made no
sense at all, did not fit into his sense of honor, but he knew that
she'd been sneaking into Silverbolt's room at night.  All the Maximals
knew, but said nothing.  If Dinobot had to admit it, he really found
it somewhat amusing, in a strange way.
	Suddenly, he heard something, off to the -

	Silverbolt and Blackarachnia paused at the howling sound, then
hurried in that direction.
	They arrived to find Dinobot, missing a leg and an eye, going
into stasis lock.  Fronds of grass moved, showing which way the enemy
had gone... but the choice was Dinobot's existence or the chase.

	"We were just checking out a security perimeter and - "
	Primal just regarded them both.
	Surprisingly, it was Blackarachnia who cracked first.  "OK, we
were making out," she admitted, sounding irritated.  "But he wasn't
more than a quarter-mile away from us.  Whatever did that to him did
it fast - faster than any Predacon.  -And- it was able to get away
before we got there.  None of the Predacons have that combination of
speed and strength.  The closest would be Megatron, and he's not fast
enough for that kind of getaway."
	"All right," said Primal, nodding.  "We have someone out there
who is fast and strong enough to take down Dinobot before he had the
chance to transform to robot mode.  Which means he's also very, very
sneaky.  We'll double patrols, and no one goes out except in pairs.
And not the kinds of pair that you two went out in," he chastised
Silverbolt and Blackarachnia.
	At least they had the good grace to look embarrassed.

		      MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2094

	Cheetor took his time, moving through the vegetation.  He
grinned to himself - this was living, all right.  This was fun!  Sure,
he might get nailed by a baddie any mo -
	He barely felt the first shot hit his tail, except for the
flash of heat.  Instinctively he took to the air, leaving Rattrap
squawking behind him at being abandoned.
	The next few moments were an example of Cheetor's mastery of
his new body - dodging the blasterfire raining down behind him,
drawing the attacker away from Rattrap so the smaller Maximal could
escape with the intelligence.  He jinked, he weaved, he got mild
scorches and a scuffmark from misjudging how much a tree would bend.
It was one of the finest moments of his career.
	It ended with something landing on him from behind, smashing
his muzzle into the dirt.  He heard the whining sound of a cannon
charging, and heard a voice growl, "Foolish youth.  You've never been
a match for me."
	Then there was pain, and then darkness.

	"Cheetor?  Yo, Kittycat?  Where are you.... oh, -slag-."
	Cheetor lay on his face, all his limbs blasted free of his
torso.
	"Yo, this is Rattrap!  Emergency!  I gotta really hurtin'
kitty out here!  Somebody!  Somebody come and help me, so the kid
don't die!!"
	He was still crying out for help when Gryphon and Olaf arrived
with a makeshift trailer.
	"ANYBODY?  Where ARE you guys?"
	He started, leaping almost his own height, as Olaf put a hand
on the Maximal's shoulder.
	"We're right here, Rattrap.  Right here, where you need us to
be."
	Gryphon used his Cyclone's sensors to find missing bits,
carefully ignoring the sputtering Maximal.  When Rattrap was coherent
enough, they loaded Cheetor and what they found onto the trailer, and
carefully took his stasis-locked wreckage back to the Axalon.

	"I'm tellin' ya, what I saw was... it was HUGE!  Purple and
red, wings... didn't look like anybody I ever SAW before!  Not that I
got a real good look - he was movin' fast enough to keep up with
Cheetor runnin' flat out, and you know how fast THAT is!"
	Primal nodded, chin in his hands.  "All right.  That means
either someone new has joined the fray, or... "
	"Or?"  Blackarachnia filled in the momentary silence.
	Olaf spoke up.  "We know that Megatron was experimenting with
Tarantulas's virus from what we learned examining Blackarachnia.  Is
it possible that he could have upgraded himself, or Terrorsaur?  Or
even Waspinator?"
	"It would HAVE to be Megatron himself," Blackarachnia said.
"I can't see him letting anyone else have a chance at being more
powerful than he is - not unless he had some kind of failsafe
involved.  And even if he did, what if the mutation disabled it?  He
wouldn't take that chance.  It has to be Megatron."
	Primal nodded.  "She's right.  There's no one else it could
be.  But still - we have no ideas of his new capabilities other than
that he can keep up with Cheetor and still has a cannon-style weapon.
It's not enough to plan an attack around.  Or, unfortunately, plan a
defense.  Without more information...."
	Something started beeping.  Rhinox turned to the console.
"We've got a ping on one of the outer listening posts.  Looks like a
bunch of Pred activity near marker B-14."
	"Listening posts?" queried Gryphon.  "Another briefing I
missed?"
	"We set them up early on, but they're not all that reliable
overall.  Mostly a kitbash, and the Predacons... know about them."
	"A trap?" muttered Primal.
	"Smells like a rat!" declared Rattrap.  "And I should know."
	"Still, we can't let them get away.  They're close, we have a
chance to take a shot at them.  We should take it."  Primal stood.
"We'll put the ship's systems on autodefense and... prepare the
self-destruct, just in case.  We cannot let the Predacons take over
this ship."
	 The rest all nodded, understanding.
	 Outside, Primal spoke into his communicator.  "Sentinel.
Protection Omega.  Authorization Optimus Maximal Wheeljack Prowl
Metroplex."
	 Sentinel, the Axalon's onboard AI, responded.  "Protection
Omega mode is active.  All non-tagged personnel will be fired upon.
Any entry of non-tagged personnel will result in self-destruction.
Mode enabled."
	 The standing Maximals and their two allies headed for what
all knew would be their final fight with the Predacons.  So convinced
were all of them of this fight's finality that Gryphon unstrapped the
Alpha, which had been held in reserve throughout the conflict, and
took it along.
	They took a route that Blackarachnia had scouted through a
ravine, headed for B-14.
	 Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones to know about it,
as was proven when a plasma blast shook the ravine, causing an
avalanche of stone to fall down upon them.  As they fell down the
ravine in the avalanche, they were more intent on not being crushed
than seeing what had caused it.
	 When the world stopped being made of falling rocks, only two
of them were facing the right way.
	"Primus!" said both Primal and Prime, as they saw, for the
first time, the upgraded Megatron.
	He was a monstrous creature of pale purple and scarlet now,
entirely robotic in appearance and even more massive than before.  The
Predacon leader's stature now was more in line with what Gryphon's
experience taught him to expect a Transformer to be.  He bristled with
weapons - even his knees mounted what looked like rotary autocannons -
and sported a pair of metallic purple bat wings.
	"Greetings, Primal, and your Maximals.  Welcome to my new
form.  I hope you like what I've done with it."
	 Blackarachnia's eyes narrowed.  "You voluntarily REINFECTED
yourself?  After what happened to ME?"
	 "I did, yes.  What I learned from infecting you with the
reformatting virus gave me the information I needed to improve my own
form, althought I must admit the loss of your Predacon shell
personality was somewhat disappointing.  I missed your little barbs
and small rebellions.  Not for long, but I did."
	Megatron smiled a dark smile and went on conversationally,
"Tarantulas was less than willing to assist me with the final phase of
my evolution, but... in the end, it did not matter.  See for
yourself."  He took a step to the side and turned, gesturing up at the
cliff face. Tarantulas hung there, supported by a spear through his
chest.
	"Energon blade, right through his spark," said Megatron, his
dark smile broadening.  "He chafed under my command one too many
times."  The Predacon leader folded his massive arms across his chest
and gave his Maximal opposite number an icy smirk.  "This is the end
of the Beast Wars, Optimus Primal.  And I hold all the cards."
	  Primal glanced around, his leg still trapped under the slab
of stone.  Rattrap was still unconscious.  Rhinox was trapped beneath
a huge stone, Blackarachnia motionless, Silverbolt pinned as well
under another stone, and Petersson...
	.... Petersson's CVR-3 lay near the base of the landslide... 
empty.
	Rattrap regained consciousness, if not mobility, and looked to
see Megatron towering over him and his comrades.
	"OK, I know I said this before," he said in a weak voice, "but
this time I'm -sure- we're all gonna die."
	"Your warriors are useless, Primal," Megatron declared
grandly.  "Say hello to Primus when you meet him."
	 Optimus Primal stared into the eyes of Megatron, determined
to meet his doom with dignity.

      /*  Seat Belts  "Bad Dog No Biscuits"  _Cowboy Bebop_  */

	That doom was to be deferred, at least for the moment, by a
scream of fusion turbines.  Gryphon had evaded the blast that caused
the avalanche, pulled up into a Cuban eight, and was now diving
full-throttle toward the battlefield.  Megatron looked up, startled,
as the scarlet-painted WDF fighter screamed low overhead, strafing
with its nose-mounted blaster array.
	Megatron whirled and opened fire, sending a fury of firepower
after the speeding aircraft.  Gryphon felt multiple impacts in the
airframe and a sudden loss of power as the Predacon's fire breached
one of the engines.
	OK, fine, he thought, then hung the Alpha on its opposite
wingtip, snapped it upright, and triggered battroid mode on the way
down.
	The Alpha slammed to ground, trailing smoke from its left leg,
and faced off with Megatron.  Gryphon knew his mount was seriously
outgunned and had distressingly flimsy armor for taking on an enemy
like this one, but it was all he had - and the Alpha did have one ace
in the hole that his preferred Valkyrie wouldn't have had.
	He kept up a running gun battle with the Predacon leader for
several minutes, trading autocannon fire and wishing the damned Alpha
had a damned beam weapon in battroid mode like a proper damned
Veritech fighter ought to, before Megatron tagged him with a burst
that wrecked the Alpha's already-damaged left leg and dropped the
machine to one knee.  With his mobility advantage destroyed, Gryphon
didn't have many options left... but there was still the one.
	"Come on, Megatron," he muttered, flicking switches on the
weapons selector panel and curling his other hand around the Alpha's
control stick.  He watched the rangefinder reading in his HUD as
the smirking Predacon closed in.  "That's it.  A little closer... "
	Gryphon's lips curved into a nasty smile.
	"Gotcha," he said, and jammed his thumb down.
	Panels popped open all over the Alpha, erupting in flame and
white smoke as Gryphon salvoed all 60 of the fighter's short-range
missiles.  The Alpha's weight was reduced by almost 20% as the
missiles streamed from their inboard bays, briefly linking the two
mechanoids with a chandelier of thick white contrails.  Megatron,
bellowing in surprise and displeasure, vanished in a cloud of orange
fireballs.
	Gryphon, who didn't expect the barrage to put the Predacon
down, took the opportunity to bail out of his crippled fighter.  He
punched out, took to his Cyclone, and beat it for the Maximal line.
	The missile salvo indeed didn't put Megatron down.  It didn't
even damage him all that much.  What it did do, along with the action
preceding it, was slow him down and distract him long enough for two
things to happen.
	One was the reconstitution of the Maximal force, which regained
consciousness and dug itself out while Megatron was busy.
	The other, and Gryphon's primary purpose in making the attack,
was the quick and efficient annihilation of Megatron's supporting
forces.
	Megatron had been so busy trying to destroy the human war
machine that he hadn't noticed Waspinator and Inferno getting their
heads removed quickly and quietly by Optimus Prime, nor Quickstrike
getting an energon knife in the chest, nor Scorponok surrendering, nor
Terrorsaur just falling over and playing dead at the first touch of a
hand.
	Quickly, efficiently, and silently, Optimus Prime dismantled
Megatron's cohorts.  Then, grabbing Inferno's flame rifle and
Waspinator's pistol, he let loose into the massive Predacon's back
just as Megatron was drawing a bead on Gryphon's fleeing Cyclone.
	Other than distracting the Predacon from the Wedge Defender,
permitting Gryphon to reach the relative safety of the rocks, and
causing Megatron to round on Prime, the attack had no particular
effect.
	"Impressive, fool," said the Predacon leader.  "But I am
Megatron, the Dragon of Wrath - heir to the future!  You cannot
oppose me successfully, no.  Surrender now, and I will make certain
your spark is destroyed quickly."
	Optimus Prime felt a small chill go down his fiber-optic
column, remembering the last time he battled a Transformer named
Megatron, and he knew the words before he spoke them:
	"One shall stand, one shall fall, Megatron."
	Megatron smiled mockingly.  "How pithy, invoking the old
dueling code.  A pity I don't subscribe to that code of honor, whoever
you are."  He raised his plasma cannon, energy gathering within its
gaping muzzle.
	With a sound like a thunderclap, a point of bright light like
a miniature sun appeared in midair between the two.
	"What trick is this?" Megatron bellowed, as once again his
desire to slaughter a Maximal was thwarted by fate.
	Gryphon, recognizing it, yelled, "RUN!"  Prime dove for cover;
a moment later Megatron followed.  The light suddenly swelled into a
sphere, then faded.
	It left behind a mirror-faced, slightly dished crater a
hundred feet across.  In the middle of the crater, surrounded by
wrecked scaffolding and severed cables, stood a sight both familiar
and brilliantly incongruous to Gryphon's eye - a tandem
tractor-trailer rig.  The tractor was bright red, the trailers a
combination of deep blue and battleship grey.
	Hovering in front of it was a spherical object, seemingly
made of blue-white light.  Suspended in the air on either side of it
were the halves of a hollow golden metallic enclosure, each fitted
with a winglike silver handle.
	Both Predacons and Maximals stared at the truck and the
strange object in front of it, until finally Rattrap asked the
question that was going through all their minds.
	"What the SLAG?"
	Prime raised himself from his prone covering position behind a
boulder, regarding the glowing object in front of the truck with body
language that clearly denoted awe.  Beside him, Optimus Primal finally
pulled himself loose and got to his feet as well.
	Both leaders breathed the same words, almost in unison.
	"... The Matrix!"
	Silverbolt glanced at Prime and asked, "What is... the
Matrix?"
	Prime shook his head.  "No one can be told what the Matrix is,
Silverbolt," he replied.  "You'll have to see it for yourself... "
	"(Aw, slag,)", Rattrap muttered, "(Can't we have one slaggin'
fight without someone spoutin' some slaggin' PHILOSOPHY in the middle
of it somewhere?)"
	 Prime's voice took on a tone that had, in the past, sent
Decepticon armies fleeing for safety just on hearing it.
	"... AFTER we win this war."
	That said, Prime rushed towards the truck.
	Megatron didn't understand where the thing had come from or
what its significance was, but he wasn't about to let the mysterious
Maximal who looked like Primal reach it if he wanted it so badly.  The
Predacon leader raised himself to his feet and opened fire, filling
the space all around the sprinting Autobot with explosions.
	"Maximals!  COVERING FIRE!" Optimus Primal roared, then opened
up on Megatron with all of his own considerable firepower.  His troops
joined him like the well-honed team they had become, blazing away with
everything they had.
	Megatron roared with displeasure as blasterfire, chaingun
slugs, missiles, and all other manner of focused destruction tore at
the landscape around him.  Such was the strength of his armor that
even direct hits didn't seem to damage him - but the hailstorm of fire
did, at least, keep him from bracketing his own target quite as well
as he otherwise might have.
	Optimus Prime dodged, ducked, and jumped over the Predacon's
blasts like a fullback headed for glory.  None of Megatron's wild fire
touched him as he cleared the last rocky hurdle and skidded to a halt
before the idling truck.
	The brilliant light of the Matrix brightened further, washing
over Optimus Prime's small form and the much larger shape of the truck
like a bright blue liquid.  Even though he was distracted by the
covering fire he was still pouring on Megatron, Optimus Primal thought
it quite the most spectacular thing he'd ever seen.
	He had no way of knowing that the Matrix he was seeing now was
a pale shadow of its former self; most of its power had gone into
resurrecting Prime during the last Cybertronian War.  It was just as
well.  Had Primal seen its full glory, he might have fallen into shock
from its magnificence - and stopped firing.
	The liquid fire of the Matrix lifted Optimus Prime from the
ground, flung his limbs wide, and then changed him as it drew him
forward.  As he got closer, he transformed - not into Olaf Petersson,
but into something that looked like an engine.
	In between the truck's nose and the transformed core of
Optimus Prime, the Matrix closed of its own accord, its spherical
vessel sealing around it.  A beam of its radiance continued to
transfix it, connecting it on one side to the socket where the truck's
engine belonged, and on the other to the engine.
	As the beam shortened, first the Matrix and then the engine
itself settled into the socket.  All three objects locked together
perfectly, the Prime-engine seating home with a blaze of white light
around the edges.
	As he locked into place, Optimus Prime felt his consciousness
flood into the larger machine, his awareness of his body expanding in
an instant to encompass his newly retooled self - so familiar, but new
and excitingly different at the same time.  He felt himself filled
with a power and strength he hadn't felt in years, and a surety of
purpose that could only have come from the Matrix.
	Headlights blazing, the truck rumbled to life and began to
move toward Megatron.
	Megatron got to one knee, brushing dust from his plastron.
What WAS that new Maximal weapon, and where did they GET it?  And what
was that noise?  Some kind of grinding, roaring sound from - 
	- behind him.  Megatron turned - 
	Approximately one-tenth of a second later, he caught Optimus
Prime's engine block with his teeth and was catapulted backwards.
	"OOH!  He's gonna feel THAT in the daycycle!" Rhinox cheered.
	"Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a Convoy!" Gryphon
crowed.
	"-What- are you talkin' about?" Rattrap said, his voice on the
edge of losing control.
	"Shh!  I want to enjoy this.  I haven't seen him work in
years."
	Skidding around in a great serpentine J-turn, Prime suddenly
disconnected from his trailers and hurled himself into the air with a
burst of rocket thrusters.  In midair, he transformed.  Below and
behind, the trailers too separated.  The second skidded to a halt.
The first followed him into the air with a blast of its own thrusters,
itself transforming.
	Without pausing in his regular robot mode, Prime transformed
again, linking up with the first trailer.  For a moment all the
different mechanical reconfigurations became too much for even the
other Transformers on the scene to follow.
	The result slammed to earth a moment later, sunlight gleaming
from his scarlet, blue, and silver armor - a larger, stronger, more
powerful Optimus Prime than Gryphon had seen before.
	"Let's try this again," he snarled.  He picked up Megatron,
and laid a punch, then another, into his jaw.  Megatron reeled,
stumbling back, then lunged forward, just in time to catch Prime's
foot in his face.
	"This," Megatron mumbled as he spat out a few metal teeth, "is
going singularly badly."  He shook his head and backpedaled, then
faked a stumble.  Prime went to press his advantage, but was himself
knocked backwards by Megatron's strike to his chest, followed by
massed salvo fire from the Predacon's weapons.
	The broadside stunned the Autobot leader, even in his present
form.  He stumbled, then fell to one knee, his massive hands splaying
in the dirt as he fought for control.
	"Do you see, Maximal?" Megatron sneered.  "You thought you had
me, but you were wrong!  I am Megatron, and you cannot defeat me."  He
moved close to Prime, who still knelt with head bowed, pulling himself
together.
	Prime looked up at Megatron's sneering face, then shook his
head.
	"Let me tell you something, renegade," he said, his voice very
calm.  "I knew Megatron.  Megatron was my greatest foe.  He was my
nemesis for millions of years."  His back still hunched, Prime brought
his hands together on the ground before him, shifting his weight
subtly on his foot and knee.  "And you, mister... "
	Suddenly all the stunned deliberation vanished from his body
as the quiet calm vanished from his voice.
	"YOU'RE NO MEGATRON!" the paragon of Autobots roared as he
brought his locked fists swinging up in a great hammer blow.  Driven
not only by his arms but his whole body as he lunged to his feet, the
double fist smashed into Megatron's plastron, cracking it and sending
him sprawling.
	"GODBOMBER!" Prime commanded.  "MAXIMIZE!"
	The second trailer surged toward him, then seemed to split
apart into a dozen pieces.  In moments, he was surrounded by it, limbs
reinforced, chest protected, more weapons mounted.  Once again, he
felt a surge of power through him.  Under his famous half-mask, he
smiled.
	Megatron watched this, feeling the pain in his cracked
plastron.  His vision was somewhat blurry, and he couldn't quite
focus.
	Gryphon threw back his head and laughed; the rest of the
Maximals cheered as the massive robot took a step, now obviously even
larger and more powerful than the twice-reformatted Megatron.
	"Who... -are- you?" Megatron demanded.
	"Don't you recognize me?" Prime asked.  "I'm disappointed in
you, 'Megatron'.  With a name like that, I took you for a student of
history, but if you were, surely you'd know Optimus Prime when you see
him."
	Had he a bladder, Megatron might well have wet himself.  Even
his massive ego knew that against Optimus Prime - a legend from out of
time - he had no chance.  He turned to transform, to run, to flee...
	...and Prime, moving faster than Megatron could have possibly
believed for something so massive, grabbed him by the shoulder, and
punched him, then again and again.  The grip finally broke, and
Megatron stumbled back with a sense of deja vu.  He powered up his
weapons array again, only to have Prime let fly with double-barrelled
blasters attached to both arms and wreck his leg cannons, essentially
kneecapping the Predacon leader.
	Megatron howled in agony, reeling and stumbling against the
wall of rock.  He tripped and fell on his face, forcing himself back
up to hands and smoking knees.  Behind him he heard the approaching
footsteps of Prime, as steady and inexorable as the tolling of funeral
bells.
	He rolled over, pulling a holdout blaster with his off hand
and thrusting it upward.  Prime shot the stubby weapon away almost
contemptuously, then holstered his sidearm and regarded his opponent
from a dozen Autobot-size paces away.
	"On your feet, 'Megatron'.  Face your end like a Transformer."
	The mocking tone in Prime's voice as he pronounced the name
pricked the Predacon's still-massive ego, tapping some reserve of
strength hidden inside him.  How -dare- this... this archaic
energon-guzzler -dismiss- him that way!
	The anger flashed through him and put some stiffness in his
spine.  He drew himself up to his full height, and the observers had
to admit that, even bashed about as he was, he still had a certain
dignity.
	He locked his optics with Optimus Prime's.  He took a step
forward, then another, then played his last card.  Stripped of all his
other weapons, Megatron drew an energon blade and broke into a full-on
charge, ignoring the pain in his sparking, smoking knees, screaming
his defiance.
	Prime watched Megatron launch his last attack and knew that
there was only one way he was going to stop an opponent this
determined.
	Almost to himself, with a great and terrible sadness, Optimus
Prime murmured, "Matrix, guide my hands."
	Then he set himself into a stance which Optimus Primal, with a
gasp, recognized as the start of one of the deadliest maneuvers in the
Cybertronian martial arts.
	"Holy -slag-!" Rattrap spat as he reached the same conclusion.
"That's - "
	"The Forbidden Strike," Rhinox breathed in a tone of pure awe.
	Optimus Prime raised his huge hands, one glowing with an angry
red fire, the other with a soothing blue light, and declared in a
voice that was booming even for him,
	"UNICRON - and - PRIMUS!"
	His hands, crackling and twitching with clearly opposed
energies, smashed together into a double fist.  Booster jets on his
back and legs screamed, catapulting the Autobot leader forward in a
countercharge.  His inarticulate shout blended with Megatron's, and
then there was a tremendous metallic crash as the two Transformers
collided.
	Prime's doubled fists smashed through Megatron's damaged
plastron, sending fluids and fragments flying.  For a moment, both
robots froze in that position, Megatron's blade a few inches from
Prime's face, Prime's fists buried in the Predacon leader's body.
	Megatron knew only a terrible surge of pain, so terrible he
could not even scream.  Then his optics went dark and he began to
slump and fall backward.  Prime remained standing, as still as a
statue.
	As Megatron fell, the others could see that he held the
Predacon leader's spark in his hands.
	As they watched, the spark flickered, cooled, and went out.
	"Thus," rasped Dinobot, "end the Beast Wars."
	"Uh, yeah," Rattrap mused in a small voice.  "I guess it's,
uh, pretty safe ta say that this time."

	The rest of Gryphon and Prime's stay on Natureworld was a bit
of an anti-climax.  With Megatron gone, the Predacons scattered,
ceasing to be any kind of an opposition.
	Terrorsaur and Scorponok defected to the Maximals, the one
claiming that he'd had second thoughts about Megatron's leadership
almost from the first, the other simply throwing himself on the mercy
of Optimus Primal.  Nobody actually trusted either, but at the same
time, the Maximals were hardly going to leave them to die.  They
proved themselves willing workers, though, as the Maximals worked to
repair the Axalon in the following weeks.
	Without Megatron, Waspinator and Inferno were nearly useless -
except that the two of them finally got fed up with Quickstrike and
tossed him into a ravine, then dropped rocks on him until he went into
stasis lock.  Then they dropped more rocks on him.  (Not the most
subtle of methods, but then, Inferno and Waspinator weren't the most
brilliant of 'bots.)  Though they made no overtures toward joining the
Maximals, they also took to hanging around near the Axalon - nowhere
else to go, it seemed.

		      TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2094

	"Well," said Rhinox at the weekly repair project status
meeting, "I think it's safe to say we've done all we can do here.
We've used all of our own spare parts and stripped the Pred ship of
anything with any value.  Unless we start developing the ability to
dig up and refine this planet's raw resources - which would take, oh,
at least 20 gigacycles to reach a useful level - we've got the Axalon
as fully repaired as she's gonna get."
	"And?" Primal asked.
	Rhinox shrugged.  "And she's in pretty good shape... for a
fort.  She'll never fly again, though, unless we get some outside
help."
	"Which we'd have plenty of," Gryphon said grumpily, "if our
fate wasn't in the hands of freaking -Zoner-.  This is so typical.
'I'll be back to pick you up in a couple days - a week tops.'  When he
finally does get here, I'm gonna kick his - "
	A burst of static rang from the Axalon's comm panel just then,
startling everyone in the room, before it resolved itself into the
familiar voice of q, the SDF-17 comm operator.
	" - ike yo, is anybody down there?  This is the Wedge Defense
Force calling Gryphon and Petersson.  Like -yo- already."
	Petersson chuckled.  "Speak of the Decepticons," he said.
	Gryphon got up, crossed to the panel, and flipped a couple of
switches.
	"SDF-17, this is Gryphon.  Where the hell have you been?"
	"Sorry Gryph!" called Zoner's voice.  "We got a little held
up.  You missed an entire Kilrathi War!" he said cheerfully.  "Hope
you enjoyed your little camping trip."
	Gryphon squinted at the speaker panel, a vein pulsing in his
forehead.
	"Come down here so I can kick your ass," he replied.

	Zoner recognized the tone of voice and didn't take his exec up
on the offer.  Instead the shuttle he sent down carried a full squad
of Marines, as well as the WDF's best First Contact officer, Derek
Bacon.  Gryphon smiled at the sight of Derek walking down the ramp
from the ship, accompanied by a full guard alongside and wearing a
propeller beanie on his head.
	"Hey, Derek," Gryphon greeted.  The sight of his colleague
made him feel a bit less like killing Zoner - Derek's main job was as
the WDF's morale officer, after all - but only a little.
	"Hey, Gryph.  Sorry we took so long.  Besides the Kilrathi, we
had a couple other things.  Zoner wants to know what happened to your
Legios and... um... whoa."  He noticed the Maximals coming up, in
robot forms.  "Got some new friends?"
	"Yeah.  This is Optimus Primal, Rattrap, Rhinox, Cheetor,
Dinobot, Blackarachnia, Silverbolt, Scorponok, and Terrorsaur.
They're Transformers from a Cybertron in another dimension."
	Primal stepped up and reached out a hand.  "If you can give us
a hand fixing our ship, we can make it back to Cybertron."
	Derek took off his beanie and scratched his head to the side
of his drooping Mohawk.  "Not yours, that's for sure.  The wormhole's
gone now."  The Maximals looked cresftallen.  "Sorry."
	A voice called down from out of the ship.  "My offer's still
open."
	Derek decided that today now had reached Top Weirdness level
when what looked like a seven-foot-tall Optimus Prime came down the
elevator.  A moment later, he noted the tandem-trailer and cab parked
opposite.
	"Gryph, this is getting weird."
	Gryphon rubbed the bridge of his nose.  "Derek, it's been
weird for two months now."
	Derek shook his head.  "No, I mean - couple weeks ago, we had
Ultra Magnus visiting us.  Suddenly, in the middle of planning some
things, he got this look in his um, eyes is the best word I guess, and
ran out of the room.  He headed for the lab that they were rebuilding
Optimus Prime - the real one, not the kiddie-size version over there -
and the Matrix pretty much -jumped- out of his chest, over to Prime's
body, and the whole thing SPACEFOLDED out of there."
	"Yeah, this is where it all ended up.  It got kind of
confusing, but it all worked out for the best."
	Derek snorted.  "So where did Optimus Pintsize come from?"
	With the familiar transforming harmonic, he transformed back
into Olaf Petersson.  "I had an accident with a technovirus."
	Derek slapped himself in the forehead.
	Before anyone could say anything else, a buzzing noise
heralded the arrival of Waspinator.  He transformed, then dropped to
the ground on hands and knees.  Gryphon, Olaf and Derek looked at each
other bemusedly.
	"Wazzzpinator hazz no reazzon to think you will lizzen to
him... but pleazzze!  Pleazze do not leave Wazzzpinator here alone on
planet with ant-bot!  Ant-bot is crazzzzy!"
	Inferno arrived moments later and began to overlay
Waspinator's pleas with even less coherent ones of his own.
	Gryphon turned to Petersson and opened his mouth, but the big
Swede was gone.  Sighing, he took Derek aside.
	"Look, I need your help," he said.  "I know this is a tough,
tough case, but... see if you can do anything with the... bugs."
	Derek looked over his shoulder, where Inferno was openly
weeping and mourning for 'The Royalty", begging for the Queen to come
back.  Then he glanced at Waspinator, pleading to not be left alone on
the planet.
	"This," he said with exaggerated gravity, "will not be easy."
Then he grinned.  "But I'm the man for the job!"

/*  "Weird Al" Yankovic  "Dare To Be Stupid"  _Dare To Be Stupid_  */


		   UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES GOLDEN AGE
		    TRANSFORMERS: FLESH AND STEEL
			starred the voices of

	     Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime/Olaf Petersson
		   Benjamin D. Hutchins as Gryphon
			 MegaZone as MegaZone
			Don Brown as Scorponok
			Jim Byrnes as Inferno
		     Gary Chalk as Optimus Primal
		Ian James Corlett as Cheetor and Sentinel
			David Kaye as Megatron
	Scott McNeil as Dinobot, Waspinator, Rattrap, and Silverbolt
		     Colin Murdoch as Quickstrike
		       Richard Newman as Rhinox
		      Doug Parker as Terrorsaur
		     Venus Terzo as Blackarachnia
			 Kei as Kei J. Morgan
		     Victor Brandt as Tuck Menlo
			Eve Tokimatsuri as Eve
				 AND
			Derek Bacon as himself


			   SIX MONTHS LATER
			     NATUREWORLD

	Deep in the sea, an electric eel nudged a strange rock.
Something about the rock didn't strike the eel's tiny brain as quite
right, so the creature unleashed its charge.  The rock started to
shift.  The eel felt that this was fine confirmation of its suspicions
and fled the area posthaste.
	The rock which was not a rock disgorged a slender antenna.
For a few seconds, this rotated slowly, emitting beams of reddish
light that passed through living things without harming them.  Then,
finally, it retracted, and all was quiet.
	Then the object split, part of it rising towards the surface
on a bubble of trapped air while the rest remained in the muck.
Something within also rose toward the surface.
	The two objects floated, at the mercy of the currents, for a
few days, until they finally beached.  One of them - a metallic
humanoid - slowly drew himself up, glancing at the piece of metallic
wreckage next to him.
	It was a seal plate from a Maximal stasis pod, marked with a
large red X.
	"At last," the figure mused in a gravelly voice, "I am free.
It is time, I think, for a proper... Rampage."