An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

The President politely thanked Megatron and said farewell, and he and his crew left Cybertron with a military escort until they were out of the area of space where a raid would be certain. Over the next forty days the visit was carefully planned so that nothing would go wrong. The security for the visit would be done by certain army regiments, just so Megatron would not have to view phalanxes of police, given that Decepticons had no liking for the police. As well as a one mile gun-free zone, warnings were made on Vallermooreian TV that if some crazy fool did attack Megatron, Megatron would be allowed to kill him or her for it. A Decepticon sized steel ladle was made and a band trained to play the Decepticon national anthem. Noone expected anything big from the meeting, but it would at least show that relations were not hostile between Vallermoore and the Decepticons. Large numbers of people and sapient ponies and changelings were eager to see Megatron in a peaceful setting where they didn't need to fear being blasted, crushed, or grabbed and enslaved.

*****
MasterBlaster added that Decree to his file on Treason and heard a question from SolarStorm that needed answering. "Coder, why are Autobots evil?"

He accessed his own file on the Autobots, not knowing much about them himself. "Well...several reasons. First, they were total goody-goodies, but that's not the main one. They were given half of Cybertron in itself, but not content with that they attempted to wipe out all Decepticons. If you or I kill a Decepticon, it's because he is a threat to us, our property, or both. If Domintel order an execution, or the Divine Lord Megatron kills a Decepticon, then the bot was a threat to Megatron, his property, or the Nation itself. Autobots tried to kill every one of our kind and nearly succeeded. We'll go out in a bit and get you a history movie, a fun one, to watch. Autobots were a rolling menace that even blasted new-born Decepticons before they had even the chance to have any sapience at all."

He had an idea, and checked his treason files with care in case it was treasonous, but it was not, at least not at this time. He would buy a game that ElectronBlitz would enjoy, and remove the fail safes in it that let ElectronBlitz know when his Energon/battery power was getting low. Because no slaver viruses or other viruses would be placed in it, ElectronBlitz's antivirus would show nothing wrong, and when he played the game, it would be as addictive as a drug like heroin was in Vallermoore. ElectronBlitz would if MasterBlaster's plan worked end up playing it in his Coder's house, and would go on playing it whilst his fuel and battery power ran out, and his Coder would find him dead in his bedroom in the morning. Perhaps he could be restored from a Save, perhaps not. Even if he was restored from a Save, he would lose at least some sapience most likely, perhaps even back to baby level depending on when the last Save Disc was made.

He went with SolarStorm to a holovid shop to get a history vid at SolarStorm's mental level, and then he got a game, took it back home, and took out the vital fail safes, turning it into in effect, Decepticon heroin. Then he and SolarStorm went to the Smuggler's Supply and for several Cubes had the packaging resealed so it looked like an un-tampered with game. He told SolarStorm "This game is not for you, you have to find a way to make sure ElectronBlitz gets his hands on it without him suspecting it's a trap for him. You have to be deceptive and conniving. It has no viruses in it, but it has a trap of a different sort." He got SolarStorm to hammer out the dents in his body, and after defragging the two of them went to the Raid Games Emporium, the same one that had gone to before, with SolarStorm with the tampered game in one of his body panels.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The movie about the history of the Great War was, as its packaging promised, perfectly geared for people of SolarStorm's age. In fact, its style would be instantly recognizable to someone who had been in range of the Autobots' first propaganda wave: It was a cartoon done in proper G1 style. Of course, there was one huge difference: The Autobots were undeniably the bad guys. Another difference was that some of the concepts had been simplified.

Through several very exciting scenes, the high and low points of the Cybertronian Great War were well-covered. Each of the smaller story arcs drove home the point that Autobots were not just bad, but downright evil and hellbent on the destruction of the Decepticons even though it was the Decepticon Way that was responsible for Cybertronians of any sort being free from biological rule - and the biologicals' desire to use them as expendable equipment. The ingrate Autobots not only rejected Megatron and the Decepticon Way after the Cybertronian Revolutionary War, but wanted to wipe it from the planet itself. Making this worse was the Autobots' insistence that *they* were good instead of the Decepticons!

As the movie went on, it showed the Autobots planning a variety of atrocities against the Decepticons and how they bragged about it through their corrupted version of the Decepticon National Anthem. It also showed how, despite the Decepticons' obvious superiority in the common sense department, the Autobots did manage to build a decent enough fighting force to pose a challenge all the way to the end.

Throughout the show, both sides were shown becoming more and more extreme in their beliefs while these beliefs became cemented far past any chance of diplomatic resolution. This, a helpful "older" character explained, was a typical result of a long-running war. He also added that unfortunately, it also meant that the Autobots just got more and more wrong as time went on.

Finally, the Final Battle came on the screen, showing how the Decepticons - of which only 7 remained - managed to destroy the last 11 Autobots in one last desperate maneuver. Music played that conveyed a feeling of relief, and then it became an uptempo anthem of victory as the next scenes showed the reconstruction of Planet Cybertron and the rebuilding of the Decepticon population.

After the movie ended, a short series of real, non-cartoon pictures came up that showed what some of the landmarks in the movie look like today. The rusted hulk of Iacon City, shown in the movie as a shiny metropolis, came up first. Then there were pictures of the actual Main Foundry and the plaque that commemorated the meltdown of Optimus Prime during the Final Battle. Other important sites were also shown, though for them, the most notable thing was usually the presence of plenty of Decepticons walking around with no Autobots in sight.

To an adult, the most interesting picture might have been one of the last ones. It showed a huge empty factory that appeared to be about 10 miles long as seen from the inside. This, the clip explained, was one of the high speed factories used for the Repopulation. It was able to produce 1,000,000 Decepticons every day when there were enough parts to assemble, and it was attached to a foundry dedicated to making these parts. The show also noted that factory production did not result in outcomes that were nearly as good as single Coder/single offspring reproduction, so the viewer - assumed to be a youngster - should be very glad to have a real Coder. Still, it noted that factory production was the only viable method for extremely fast repopulation, and that this very factory still existed and its automatic assembly machines were still kept in working order just in case the facility was ever needed again.

~~~~~~~~~~

Once the movie was over, MasterBlaster had finished altering the game and they went off to the Smuggler's Supply to have the final touches put on it. Then they arrived at the Raid Games Emporium.

It wasn't long before ElectronBlitz saw SolarStorm, but he waited until a game had begun before he approached him. He didn't give SolarStorm a chance to say anything before he strutted up with his engine revving a bit. Since he was no older than SolarStorm, he didn't have "playing it cool" down yet and his eye brightness kept changing; alternating between the darker shade of anger and the clear red of a conniver. "You may have been able to beat me, but my Coder says that, that doesn't mean you have any skill at all!" He said loud enough for all of the other kids to hear. "He says that only means that your Coder wrote a good self-defense routine for you, and that you don't have any real skills of your own. In fact, he figures that on your own, you're nothing but a useless heap of junk! You know what??" He leaned in close, but kept his voice loud. "I bet that if you fought on your own, you couldn't even beat this old dingy pile of junk in Iron City! I double dare you to go fight him right now!" He projected an image of a dirty, orange-red robot standing outside of a run-down-looking building.

Of course, ElectronBlitz didn't identify the robot in his holograph. His ploy counted on SolarStorm not having read about Masher in the news chips, or if he had, not realizing what kind of power was behind those unwashed panels.

[Vallermoore]

MasterBlaster was pleased that his offspring now knew just *why* the Autobots were bad and would not want to become one of them, which would be very awkward and bring Domintel's attention for certain. He took his eye panels off SolarStorm for a bit-a Raid Games Emporium was one of the few places where he could do that with relative safety, and so he missed ElectronBlitz's connive. No fully or even half sapient Decepticon would have been taken in by it for a second, both because of the flashing eyes and also because every adult Decepticon knew who Masher was, and why attacking him would be a very bad and almost certainly fatally idiotic idea. Masher rarely had security bots with him; a combination of a lot of spare bodies and armour that was almost at a Megatron level protected him. His own blasters were also very strong even by Decepticon standards. Short of committing treason or getting into a massive feud with a High General, Masher was unkillable, and had a frightening reputation for revenge. His armour was dusty because he was so powerful he could *dress down* with no consequences. Even a Scrounger like Blue would be making a very serious and fatal mistake if he went after Masher.

"That dusty old bot? He looks like he escaped from a junkyard. I can take him on, once I have reattached my blasters, but I want you to come and watch me blow him into pieces."

Twenty minutes afterwards the two bots already had flown to Iron City to the area where Masher was walking with his own offspring, an offspring at SolarStorm's level. ElectronBlitz dropped back so as not to be caught in his own trap. If he were lucky Masher would just blast SolarStorm with his jammer on. At least, that would be what he would do to a fully sapient bot that challenged him. It was an open question if he would outright kill the Decepticon equivalent of a five year old child who didn't even know that he was Masher or if he would suggest that the child looked at a news chip to find out who he was challenging before he did something fatally stupid. Whilst Decepticons would kill bots who were not fully sapient if need be, many preferred not to if it could be avoided, especially if the bot was really young and such a thing was clear. Coders in particular knew the stupid things barely sapient offspring could so easily get up to. But such a thing was often far from clear-cut-all bots were the same size, and on top of that, there were bots who made themselves appear not to be fully sapient as a connive. Also, this was Masher here, hardly a bot known for forgiveness.

SolarStorm took the stance of someone running an automatic self defence system. "Hey, Dust Bucket, I challenge you to a blaster duel." The other bots stared in shock that any bot would dare say such a thing to Masher. Even General Carjack was slightly wary of getting on Masher's bad side; Masher was one of a very few bots that was as strong as Carjack and had as many bots serving under him as the Genocide Battalion. However, if Carjack used his full forces (assuming they were not being used for Megatron's purposes) Masher's forces would be destroyed. As such, Masher generally stayed clear of Carjack, as if Megatron gave permission for Carjack to use all his forces, Masher's Company would be destroyed.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Masher stopped walking and slowly turned around with an amazed look on his face and a giant Cuban cigar hanging from his partially-open mouth. He calmly surveyed the situation, and immediately took in the presence of not only the challenger, his blue lights, and the way he was standing; but also the smirking, clear-eyed electric-blue robot - also with blue lights - now perched on top of a nearby building. Immediately, he saw that ElectronBlitz's smirks were not directed at him, but at the one calling him names.

He took a couple of steps forward, but didn't raise his blasters. Instead, he yanked the cigar from his mouth with his left hand, and said, "That kid con ya into coming here?" He jabbed the cigar up at ElectronBlitz. Without waiting long for a response, he asked, "Did he tell ya who I was, or is he trying to get ya killed so fast ya don' know what hit ya?"

Masher took another step closer, but still didn't make any moves that would activate SolarStorm's automatic self-defense routine. That routine wouldn't run unless it detected a threat, and SolarStorm being ready to attack was not, in itself, enough to start it going. "I'm Masha. Head a' da Inta'planetary Oil Procurement Corpa'ration. Ya know what da Corpa'ration is, kid? It's a syndicate. Biggest syndicate on Cybertron. Look me up in yer SEDP - Me an' my gang are in dere. And den' you tell me if ya still t'ink I'm a 'Dust Bucket.' An' if ya still t'ink dat I am, well, den' - tell me yer name, what city ya came from, and yer Coder's name so I know where ta leave da five bolts dat'll be left 'a ya when I'm done wit' ya."

[Vallermoore]

For a few seconds SolarStorm checked the never looked at before section of his SEDP that mentioned Masher in it. Once he realized just who he had insulted, his engine noise changed to one of deep fear, his eyes changed as well to the same, and he knelt on the ground before Masher, expecting to be blasted at any moment, probably permanently, expecting Masher's jammer to flick on. "I am so sorry, I'm only a few months old and had no idea who you are. That kid conned me into coming here to insult and fight you because he and I had a fight not long ago and I busted up one of his bodies, so he decided to make sure you turned me into small pieces of dead metal in revenge. I am SolarStorm, first offspring of MasterBlaster of Decepticon Headquarters. Please accept this as a token of how sorry and stupid I feel. Oh, and of course I take back the Dust Bucket insult. You may indeed be dusty, but it is a symbol of your power. You are so strong that you don't even need to look clean." And he took out the game from his panels, forgetting it was in fact an addictive drug, and placed it at Masher's feet. Masher's offspring, his first in an extraordinarily long time even by Decepticon standards, and the same age as SolarStorm, a dark purple bot with very powerful blasters, took the game and checked the packaging was intact. And smiled, this was a game he would love playing.

*****

Much later, that night, in the safety of Masher's mansion, Masher's offspring would take the game after Masher himself had checked the packaging for any rips, run it twice through his antivirus to make sure it was safe, and then play it. And play and play and play...
*****
For now though ElectronBlitz could not help laughing out loud at the trouble SolarStorm was now in, having been conned into insulting one of the top ten most powerful Decepticons in the whole of Cybertron. "Hey, SolarStorm...this is the end of this story, a blasting for you and street cred for me!" He didn't think that by taunting SolarStorm like that in front of Masher he was in effect totally revealing himself to Masher as the juvenile con artist whose actions directly led to Masher being publically insulted in the street by a small child who clearly had no idea until now who Masher even was.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Masher's offspring immediately grabbed the game with no thought to the seriousness of the overall situation, causing his Coder to give a quick angry rev in response. The offspring backed off a bit nervously, but still held the package tightly with both hands.

"I see...well, ya've learned one 'a today's lessons in connivery and corruption," Masher responded. "Go ahead 'n stand up..."

When SolarStorm stood, Masher immediately hit him with a salvo of blasts with his very, very powerful left blaster. Before the automatic self-defense routine even had a chance to finish initializing, SolarStorm was immobilized.

"And now, ya get ta learn da second lesson!" The don laughed. "You can file dis lesson as: 'How to Get a Company When Da Owner Ain't Been Cooperatin'!' T'anks for showin' up here, kid. T'anks." He seemed very sincere about his thanks, though of course, SolarStorm was unlikely to feel good about it anyway considering he'd just been blasted. Masher motioned to some bodyguard types who were standing around. "Take 'im ta my office. An' radio dat guy MastaBlasta. Tell 'im dat I've gotta deal for dat company a' his - a deal he can't refuse."

Masher looked up at ElectronBlitz.

"Oh, no," he called over. "Dis story ain't ova yet. I gotta lesson for you, too! It's called, 'What Happens to Idiots Who Troll People Inta Messin' wit' Masha!'" This time, he raised his right arm, which carried a fusion cannon. He paused just enough to give the kid a micro-chance to begin to mind-transfer away; he wanted the kid to be able to retain the memory of his obliteration so that he would not only learn not to mess with Masher, including by proxy, and so he'd be able to tell his friends about it and further increase Masher's reputation.

ElectronBlitz's automatic self-defense routine immediately activated when he saw a fusion cannon begin to be aimed, but this only cemented his doom. The routine was meant to run until threats were neutralized, which meant that he was now being forced to try to fight his far more powerful opponent. It barely had a chance to bring ElectronBlitz's body into the fighting stance when Masher spotted what was up and fired his fusion cannon, obliterating the kid's running instance in one blast. ElectronBlitz's mind managed to make it out, but only by nanoseconds.

"Okay, kid." Masher walked along next to the bodyguards carrying SolarStorm's immobilized form. "Now yer learnin' what it means ta be what dey call a 'bargaining chip' or a 'pawn.' It's like dis. Yer Coder's gotta company back in Vallermoore, and he's been resistin' handin' it ova ta da Corpa'ration. But I'm bettin' he'll hand it over nice and friendly like if he gets you back in exchange fer it..."

Of course, the proper response in a case like this was to quickly abandon the captured body and mind-transfer away, leaving the kidnapper with what amounted to an expensive and overcomplicated statue. Whether SolarStorm would be able to figure this out at his age, though, remained to be seen. Some Decepticons would respond that way as if it was second nature as early as the mental age of a human 3-year-old, but slower ones wouldn't immediately think of it. SolarStorm, at least, seemed to be on the bright side even though he didn't have the experience to spot ElectronBlitz's connive. Spotting the kid's connive required specific knowledge, but squirming away from a blatant capture is far more of an instinctual thing than that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Much later that night, Masher realized that his offspring hadn't yet gone to bed to defrag. After looking around, he found him sitting, statue-like, in the main room of his large mansion. His engine was off even though a glass of Energon sat beside him.

"Hey, Stomps!" He called out, using the short form of the name that he was sure Stomps would change as soon as he was fully mature. "Stomper!! Turn that off!"
There was no response.

Masher was quite old enough to remember the years before video games had alarms, so he knew what he was looking at. He tried to rouse the kid by smacking him in the arms, but it was a long shot - and this time, the long shot didn't come in. Groaning, Masher turned on his finger blowtorch and began to cut through the latches of Stomper's head panel. After a few minutes, he got it open and hit the switch inside - the switch that Debuggers usually used for manual activation and deactivation of patients.

Next, he cut into the torso panel that covered the battery compartment. After that was open, he opened his own torso panel and exposed his battery. Then he opened his leg panel and got out his field repair kit, which contained a set of jumper cables. Stomper's battery wasn't completely dead yet, but it was low enough that attempting to reactivate him without a recharge would likely drain it. To prevent that, he gave Stomper a goodly amount of energy from his own battery. The resulting scene was both very alien and machine-like while simultaneously being almost biological; it was clear that he was a parent doting on his stricken offspring, but the means he was using was anything but what would be seen on an organic world.

After about an hour, Masher figured that Stomper's battery was sufficiently charged to prevent any disasters from the rather large draw that would happen upon reactivation. He disconnected the cables, closed his own panels, and hit the switch. Immediately, Stomper's electric backup engine activated as his internal systems booted up. Since games weren't part of the boot sequence, the poison program didn't automatically reactivate.

"Heeyyy," Stomper whined upon regaining consciousness. "You wrecked my game! I didn't have a chance to hit 'save!' I was about to mind-transfer to Megatron's body and~~"

Stomper didn't have a chance to finish the sentence. Masher immediately began to harshly scold him for not checking the game out better before running it, failing to set up a double-failsafe alarm with his internal programming, and basically being way too trusting! Then he ordered his offspring to uninstall the game or else be given Low Standard Energon for the next year. He wanted to give Stomper a denting, but he most certainly didn't want to face the automatic self-defense routine that he had coded - it was meant to be good enough to defeat a squadron of execution troops - so he stuck with the threat of Low Standard. Stomper poutingly complied, and Masher confirmed that the game was uninstalled by comparing the size of Stomper's remaining data with the amount of data on his most recent save disk.

After Masher cooled down, they sat down together to figure out how Stomper could have gotten that deeply into the game. Soon, Masher noticed that there was a discrepancy between the file size stated on the package and the one on the chip. The game's actual file size was about 1,000 Kb smaller. This meant that it was very likely that it was not a manufacturing mistake, but the result of intentional tampering.

[Vallermoore]

ElectronBlitz's mind went into the last spare body that his Coder had made for him, having learned a very painful lesson.

*****

SolarStorm fell to the ground when blasted, agony pouring through his body until he turned off his pain sensors. When Masher blasted ElectronBlitz's body to small pieces, (meaning that he was now down to his very last spare and his Coder might well put him on Low Standard Energon for a while for messing with Masher) despite being blasted he would still have thanked Masher for blasting the conniver who put him in this position. As he was being carried away he realised that no jammer was running and there was a body back at his Coder's house and his eyes went dark as he mind transferred away. MasterBlaster had hard-coded it into him what to do if he was ever captured; get out to a new body if you have one.

MasterBlaster meanwhile had noticed SolarStorm was missing and radioed him. "SolarStorm-wherever you are, get back home now. NOW." He himself got home shortly afterwards and was surprised to see SolarStorm in a new body. "What happened to your old body? Did it get blasted? Who by and why?"

"ElectronBlitz conned me into trying to start a fight with a dusty bot who went by the name of Masher."

"Masher? Masher?? The head of the Interplanetary Oil Procurement Corporation?!! I'm surprised he didn't flick on his jammer before he blasted you. I can only assume he didn't want to kill a bot as young and as mislead as you. Masher is dusty because he does not need to be clean, much like a biological billionaire dresses down sometimes. If another bot tries to get you in a fight with someone else, at the very least run your SEDP first and make sure you are not being tricked into fighting a massively powerful bot. Masher might want to send out bots after us both to reduce us to scrap metal for that incident. What happened to ElectronBlitz?"

"Masher blasted him with a fusion cannon leaving just his legs behind, but he didn't have his jammer on then either."

"And the game that I meant you to make sure fell into the hands of ElectronBlitz?"

"Masher's offspring took it."

"Oh crap. That game, I modified it so it would be a deadly drug. If it kills Masher's offspring, Masher will hunt us down and throw us in a slag pit or worse, have us taken apart whilst still alive. We might have to look into changing our bodies and names-DIY witness protection, and relocating to the other side of Cybertron. Or...if we could lure those who came after us into the decaying city of the Autobots, it would quickly damage their bodies and minds until they were helpless. But unfortunately it would damage us too at the same rate or faster, so that's ruled out. And I don't dare trying to warn Masher about the game either, even if I knew where he was." He thought of all the bots he was either friendly or on even slightly friendly terms with.

Remediator. When Death was trying to kill me, he and his gang helped me to send Death to his own death. But first, he and I are not exactly on friendly terms. Also, it's Masher, so he could not be blown up by surprise with a fusion cannon like Death was as his armour must be some of the strongest armour in the whole Empire. It might wound him, but then he would be even angrier.
Vintage. The closest thing to a human friend, but how even if he wanted to could he possibly help me in this situation? Besides he has too much to lose if he gets sucked into this mess. He might give some good advice but I could not expect any more of him.
Blaze. If any bot had the weaponry that could even blast Masher into scrap it's him, but he hardly knows me very well, and a weapon that could take down Masher would cost a great number of Cubes. Plus whilst with Masher gone some of his leading bots might start fighting to succeed him, they would not all be so distracted as to forget to go after his killer.
Blue. I did save his life, but even so, he's not going to help me go after Masher.
General Carjack. He and Masher are hardly friends, and I did help him out earlier, but it's not as if we know each other well or are on radio terms. Besides, he's a High General and has his own things to do, plus my offspring caused this unholy mess in the first place.
Divine Leader Megatron. I could pray for guidance, but I would only do that if I was on the verge of death and that was my last option.
That magic armour could help me but I can't nick it from a military base, even if I could it would be High Treason to do so.

He radioed Vintage and told him what had happened. "What should I do? This is Masher who could end up on my tail here. What advice do you have?"

*****
It was easy enough for Masher to guess that as SolarStorm was too young to mess with a game, it was most likely his Coder who had done it. Stomper was just realising the danger he had been in. "Coder....thanks. You probably saved my life there. Whoever did this to me..."His young eyes glowed an angry red. "I want to blast him into scrap."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Masher was none too pleased when he heard SolarStorm's engine shut down. He knew exactly what that meant.
"Blast it! I should'a put the jammer on. He probably woulda been smart enough to not try ta transfer t'rough dat!" He knew that some kids would be smart enough to refrain from transfer attempts under a jam, but he also knew that some would just instinctively initiate transfer regardless and send themselves to oblivion in the process.

"Strip da body 'a anythin' worth havin', like dem ova'clocked blasters dere," he ordered, "and den dump da rest ova at MastaBlasta's so dat kid can see what happened to it. An' while yer ova dere...get a load of da defenses..." Checking out the defenses, of course, would make it easier for Masher to pull anything else in the future, such as trying to con SolarStorm into some other kind of trouble.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Vintage picked up his communicator, and after having MasterBlaster hold for about 10 minutes while he dealt with a customer, came on.

"Yer kid gave WHO an alarmless game?! Oh, you are in trouble. I never thought I'd say it, but your best bet is to come clean. That's the only way you have a chance of convincing him that you weren't trying to eradicate the next in the Masher Line."

"Even so, him and his kid are gonna be really pissed off about that. Worse yet, you just gave Masher a good opportunity to teach his kid what a battle's really like. Or, teach him how to use the resources of the Corporation for his personal ends. They probably won't try to perma-kill you if you can convince them that the game was meant for that other kid, but even so. I'd suggest getting yourself a spare if you don't have one - one for you as well as one for SolarStorm. And, make and hide new Saves as soon as you hang up. Again, that's not just for your kid, but for you, too. Then if I suddenly quit hearing from you, a few days later I'll start pokin' around and see if I can find them...but if you manage to talk your way out of a permanent kill attempt, definitely let me know. They say things can get creepy if there are two running instances of one person at once, so it's best that I only do a restore if I'm sure it's needed." The rumor was that the second instance would be soulless, but Vintage didn't know if that was true or not - and he hoped to never find out. That very idea gave him the willies.

"As for running and hiding, though, don't bother. The Corporation is said to have a corrupted DomIntel agent in every town. While I don't know if that's true, I do know that somehow, they almost always find someone if they're looking for him. Best to spin like mad if he shows up, or if you get lucky, get a message to him beforehand..."

Alas, there wasn't likely time to establish contact first. Masher and his offspring were already taking action of their own...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Masher's Mansion

"That game must have been edited by MasterBlaster, but given to SolarStorm for some reason," Masher figured. "I suspect it has to do with that kid that had tricked him into challenging me, but since he handed it directly over, it could well be that SolarStorm had decided to try to repurpose it in an attempt to still win against me! In any case, you are right to want to blast them into scrap, and we will be going to the armory right now to be sure that you can make that happen."

Stomper was eager, but his engine still revved angrily since he wanted to live up to his name by stomping MasterBlaster's panels in. Soon, they arrived at a low, square building that was very obviously a modern fort. Several very heavily armed guards gave sharp, professional bows and fist-across-the-chest salutes as the two approached the gate of the huge fence that surrounded it. This was the Armory of the IOPC, and inside, there were body-borne weapons that equaled those of the Decepticon Military.

Entering the building itself required passing even more heavily-armed guards, opening an extremely sensitive mechanometric lock that controlled a single, small, 10-inch-thick reinforced steel door, going through yet another door of this nature not far behind it, and then repeating this process two more times in order to reach the room Masher and Stomper were heading for. Finally, they entered the destination area: A room full of extremely-reinforced bodies.

"Select one," Masher said. "All of these are powerful enough to withstand a single blast from Megatron's fusion cannon, or 10 point-blank blasts from a High General blasting with both of his blasters. With one of these, there's no way that SolarStorm will be able to touch you." He exaggerated a bit - blasting enough would still eventually get through the armor - but it was unlikely that an opponent would have a chance to do that, especially when Masher got through outfitting the body with weapons.

Stomper looked at the massive selection of over 100 bodies for quite a long time before selecting an extremely big one that looked rather unusual. Its face was molded into a permanent furious scowl, complete with curled lip, and a strange metal-toothed part stuck out from behind each shoulder. It was also extremely heavily built. This body didn't transform into a plane like most other Decepticons. Instead, it transformed into a device that looked almost like a Jaws of Life combined with a sturdy base. Life, however, wasn't what these jaws would bring. Instead, it was built to allow the person to rip buildings apart - buildings, and any Decepticons fool enough to be in the way. The entire body, in robot mode, was about 1 1/2 times as big as a normal bot.

"They're not gonna just stand in da way 'a dat..." Masher noted.
"They'll be in my way if they're in their house when I crunch it up with this!" Stomper responded as he opened his chest panel and got out his mind-transfer cables to switch over. "And if they try to come out, that's when they meet the adjuncts!!" Stomper had it all planned out already, and had planned well since he'd been given the full series of Military Tactics and Strategy SEDP's by his well-heeled Coder along with several Corporation-only battle history packs, and of course, had been listening to Masher's stories since he was first activated. Still, since he was still so young, he had no actual experience. He also had not truly learned to appreciate the concept best stated as no plan survives contact with the enemy.

After Stomper was in the new body, which was much bigger and more powerful than his usual one, Masher locked up the old body so that none of his agents would think it was up for grabs. Most Decepticons didn't like reusing bodies, but the Corporation's elite fighters got over their squeamishness when they had a chance to grab one that was both powerful and suited for a mission. Plus, the risk of a virus being left behind was lower with the bodies here in the IOPC Armory, mainly because a painful and fatal retribution would await anyone who tried to leave one. Locking up any bodies that were not to be taken was therefore standard practice for Corporation members.

Soon, they went through more high-security doors and past more guards until they got to another room. There, over a thousand powerful fusion cannons - about 3/4 the strength of Megatron's - waited on walls. "That body holds four of these," Masher said with pride. He didn't skimp on the equipment. Stomper eagerly installed them all by himself after installing the manual chip that had been stored in the leg panel of his new body. Masher checked the work and saw that it was done right.

They weren't done yet. The body clearly had two more weapon brackets, one on each shoulder, but these were of a different kind than the others. Soon, they had cleared another set of security doors and guards, and were in a room full of small missiles and missile launchers. "That body there takes two of these," Masher said, pointing out two multi-missile launchers. "Install them first, and then load them. Otherwise, missiles may shoot off when you first make the connection."

Like the fusion cannons, these were made to be fired by mental command, like body parts. Soon, Stomper had all of the wires attached and had connected the launchers to the brackets. Next, he went over to the wall and selected the proper missiles. Each launcher could fire 10 of these relatively small missiles - in rapid succession if desired - before running out.

After everything was set up, they proceeded towards the back of the armory past several guards and a couple of sets of doors and made one last stop. "Drink up," Masher said, opening the door to a vault-room full of Energon Cubes. It took three Cubes to fill up the tank of this fuel-guzzling body, and Stomper found that four more Cubes' worth were able to fit in its leg panels. This extra Energon would not require the user to stop and drink it - hoses connected the leg-panel reservoirs to a pump that would deliver the fuel to the main tank on demand. For all of this, however, the total running time was only 10 hours. All of that armor and extra hydraulics made it so that the body needed a huge engine, and such configurations were far from cheap.

"Now let's go pay dat kid a visit, shall we?" The two left the armory, with Masher in fighter mode and Stomper flying in robot mode much like Megatron would. Before long, they were flying over the residential area of Decepticon Headquarters with Stomper in front, and Masher a bit behind but close enough to be able to take action if need be.

[Vallermoore]

MasterBlaster came up with several strategies in the next few minutes. First, was to take Vintage's advice and make several new Saves, some of which they would leave in their house, and others of which they hoped to leave in other places given the chance.
Second, was to get out of their house as quickly as possible and go to their vault. He had a plan that might just work., luring Masher and Stomper into their vault and exploding the Energon with Masher and Stomper right next to it...if it did, it would explode Masher and if Stomper entered the vault, Stomper too, and having his jammer on as they blew up would kill them for real. However, he was very reluctant to use it for a multitude of reasons.

First was the obvious reason-even if it worked; even if he somehow managed to slay both of his foes, the explosion would blow up his entire haul from the zombie event and he would have to go on an all or nothing raid before his remaining Energon and battery power ran out. Second, whilst killing Masher might fracture the IOPC leadership and make them fight each other, enough of the IOPC would still want to be after him to make staying on Cybertron very difficult and dangerous indeed. Third, perhaps he could tell Masher who the game really was for and might be believed and could work something out. Last, whatever bodies Masher and Stomper would use would be very well armoured indeed and might even survive the explosion.

He told SolarStorm internally though his radio that if Masher and Stomper managed to destroy the few full sized bodies they had, he had a sapient pony body or two hidden in a deep tunnel as a last resort, and with these they could fit into tunnels under Cybertron that were far too small for a full sized bot to fit into and try and hide out down there until the pressures of Company business forced Masher to stop looking for them and concentrate on running the Company instead. After buying a spare body for each of them, he and SolarStorm went to Blaze's Blasters with plenty of Energon. "I'm looking for the best of the best-things like blasters and explosives so powerful that they could even take down a bot on Masher's level." He did not say why he wanted such blasters and explosives for.

*****
Other bots scattered out of the way for Masher and Stomper as they flew along. Masher's personal version of the Company symbol was on his tail-the equivalent of a crown as not even a bot like Replicator would dare to wear that symbol. Silver Blaze happened to pass them as they flew along.

[Victorious Decepticons]

"Blasters that can take out Masher?" Blaze's eyes glowed with greed as he walked over to a well-sealed display case. "Planning on becoming the next leader of the IOPC? You'd be a good one for it, you know. You know how to do business. I mean REALLY know. Most people would have no clue how to run a 10,000-employee organization." He grinned, but he seemed to doubt that his customer was really planning to overthrow Masher.

Blaze opened the case and pulled out a giant fusion cannon, and his engine could be heard revving to provide more energy as he hefted its massive weight.

"This baby is as powerful as the one Megatron used prior to his last cannon upgrade," he boasted. "It'll only set you back 1,000,000,000 Cubes, and you'll need a new high-weight-rating body to use it. But what's a billion Cubes and a 50-million-Cube body when you're going to challenge someone powerful enough to require something like this to defeat? Surely the rewards would make it well worth it." He then set that cannon back in its place and picked up another, slightly lighter one. "This one here is a plasma cannon. It can melt down the average body in just 10 seconds, with board shutdown happening in only 1/10th of a second. The main reason people pick the Megatron 90 over this one is speed. With the Megatron 90 Fusion Cannon, you can deactivate someone before they have a chance to make the mind transfer - no jammers required. You mentioned Masher - that's the one he uses. If he gets it aimed at your vitals before you're done with your transfer, that's it. It's game over for you."

"Of course, skill is important with even the best weapon. The Megatron 90 and other hyper-powerful weapons will only help you if you can effectively aim and fire before your opponent does the same to you. Also, remember that if you get a body big enough to carry something like this, it'll almost surely be too heavy to move quickly, so you won't be able to dance around well enough to fool your opponent's aiming sequence."

"But don't let me stop you from choosing one. I'm always glad to outfit someone who wants to take over the IOPC, or blow up the Decepticon Parts Company, or perhaps try to raid the Main Refinery!" Blaze clearly thought that MasterBlaster was about to get in over his head, no matter what or who he intended to blast with something like that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As they flew along - not knowing or caring who they flew by as long as it wasn't their immediate targets - Masher had contacted one of his connections at Domestic Intelligence Headquarters to get MasterBlaster's specific address, and in the process, he had gotten some information about his target. Contrary to the rumors, he didn't have a bribed agent in every town - Masher was far too intelligent and efficient for that. Instead, he had just three corrupted agents right in DomIntel Headquarters - the branch that got information from all of the other branches. From there, it was possible to find out almost everything he wanted to know that was within the agency's purview, except, perhaps, for matters that involved important national security issues.

To his surprise, his agent told him that the tampered-with game had not been intended for him or his offspring at all! He patched Stomper into the connection so he could hear.

"Their plans were picked up by our bugs with no trouble at all," the agent was saying. "That game was to be given to ElectronBlitz as a 'gift,' and would have served as ElectronBlitz's first lesson in why we do not accept gifts from other Decepticons. They had gone off to the Raid Games Emporium with it. Then..." He proceeded to divulge everything the DomIntel bugs had picked up, from the issuing of the dare all the way up until the game ended up being handed over to Stomper instead of ElectronBlitz.

"The Supercomputer is saying that, according to the results of calculations on all known data, SolarStorm likely had Code kick in that told him to offer tribute - and since he still thinks of games as being the most valuable item rather than plain Energon, figured that a game would be the most serious and impressive offering. For some reason, he didn't consider that this particular game would be not so great to give. This is a sign of a slight glitch, and I have added a note to his file for Debugging to look at that the next time he goes in for a checkup."

After the agent disconnected, Masher felt like he had been wasting his time going after this kid. He silently cursed that he hadn't just got ahold of his double agent first.

Stomper, on the other hand, was still quite angry and hot for battle. "I'll teach him not to give me bad things!!" He insisted, and changed his course to fly directly at the house the agent had identified. "He'll never misfile a hacked game in his 'good game' memory slot ever again once I'm done with him! I'll 'debug' him in a way he'll NEVER forget!!" Soon, he came down at MasterBlaster's house with a bang and proceeded to use the "Jaws of Life" implement on one of his arms to rip the door open with brute force. After kicking it the rest of the way to the side, he barged in and found...nobody.

"Darn it, they cowarded out!" Stomper whined after checking the entire house.

"People tend ta do dat when dey know da Corpa'ration's afta dem, Stomps," Masher said. "Jus' be glad we didn't call in da adjuncts fer nuttin'. I don' wan' a reputation fer payin' fer nuttin' jobs; da adjuncts'll get lazy if we do dat. Anyway, dat's why we make sure ta' give certain people a lotta gifts - good gifts, I mean. Because 'a good gifts, I can find out where da rubber-rebarred cowards went..." He was about to open his communicator and talk to the corrupted agent again, but Stomper cut him off.

"Well, they still won't win! Solar is still gonna get Stormed by me!" Stomper opened the body's side panels and took out a strange-looking device. He then connected it to an Energon Cube. The normally-giant Cube (which was actually a rectangular box about 8-10 feet wide on the longest sides) immediately shrank to the size of a cubic centimeter.

"C-careful wit' dat, Stomps..." Masher, for what could have been the first time in a century, actually seemed nervous. Stomper didn't respond. He was indeed being VERY careful with it, and was using all of his RAM to concentrate on making sure it did what he wanted...and didn't do it before he wanted it to.

Very carefully, he went over to the chairs that were set up in front of the holovision and taped the tiny cube - and the small device that was shrinking it - to the bottom of one of the chairs. Then, he got out his field repair kit and picked out one tiny blank computer chip along with a super-sensitive wire. After going to the far other side of the room, he soldered a pattern onto the chip and attached it to two wires and a tiny battery. The super-sensitive wire was attached to another part of the chip. Soon, the detonator was complete. Once it was ready, he went back and very carefully attached the ends of the wires to the super-condensed Cube, one on each side. Then he attached the super-sensitive wire to the bottom of the chair. The chip and battery were also taped onto the bottom of the chair.

When someone sat in the chair, the super-sensitive wire would pick up the change in the electrical properties of the chair caused by its contact with the person's metal. This would send a signal to the chip, which would open the circuit between the wires and the battery. This would produce a spark, and set off the bomb. Since the Energon was so super-condensed, the sudden release of its power would have enough strength to flatten not only this house, but all of the ones around it - and, needless to say, utterly destroy whatever unlucky sap was sitting in the chair, standing in the house, or was in a nearby house with too weak of a body.

Energon bombs made by condensing the fuel to such a drastic extent were known to be extremely unstable, and as often as not, they blew up in the face of the one trying to set them. Both Masher and Stomper knew this, but Stomper wasn't old enough to have gotten sick of that downside. Now that it was set up, they both backed out of the house very gingerly, being careful not to let their huge, heavy bodies send any vibrations through the metal floor. Once outside, they backed off even more before daring to take off, but soon, they were in the air. As far as anyone could easily tell, they had simply given up after not finding their quarry at home.

Stomper smiled smugly as they flew away. Not everyone could make a bomb like that. Being the offspring of the head of the Corporation had its privileges. One of those privileges was having things in his standard kit that most didn't even think of owning, including the equipment and onboard education needed to make that and many other types of lethal traps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn't long before Silver Blaze was alerted to domestic raiding at MasterBlaster's address - the house's alarm system had automatically radioed him when the detectors in the door hinges were triggered. He had turned around and began flying back immediately, mainly to keep the house from being looted of the things that came with it as part of the rent, such as the vault and some of the furniture. When he got back into the area, he saw Masher and Stomper in the air once again.

"Surely my tenant isn't involved with them," he thought, and soon arrived at the house. A cursory glance showed no one around and nothing missing. Instead of being relieved, he was creeped out. NOBODY broke into a house, found no one home, and didn't take the opportunity to raid it to the bare walls. No one, that is, except for someone who was only interested in terminating the resident AND who was wealthy enough to not think that some opportunistic looting would be worth the bother when said resident wasn't there.

"Maybe he IS on the hit list," Silver Blaze thought as he quickly re-installed the door. For a moment, he paused and took note of the damage. The door hadn't just been kicked in, but pried off of its hinges with some sort of specialized tool. After finishing the job, he got out his communicator.

"MasterBlaster, this is Silver Blaze," he said. "I'm over at the house. Looks like someone was after you specifically. What in the Main Foundry have you gotten yourself into?"

[Vallermoore]

MasterBlaster said to Blaze, now that he knew that Blaze was not one of Masher's bots "I have a problem with Masher because, well, it's a long story, but a connive meant for someone else ended up conniving and nearly killing Masher's offspring. So like any decent Coder who loves his offspring, Masher is after my ass. I'm going to try and find him and talk with him, and if I do, one of three things will happen. One, worst case, I don't come back at all, and Masher has jammed me and blown me into scrap. I wouldn't really blame him, any Coder worth his oil would want to protect their offspring and deal with any bot who harmed them. Two, I manage to talk with Masher and somehow get him to realise that I never meant to injure his offspring. I don't want the IOPC unleashed on me, and there would be no point in hurting Masher's offspring anyway. Three, the best case from your point of view; I get away alive, but Masher is still after me and won't listen to reason, so I use what remains of my haul from the zombie event to buy the best blasters from you and a body to go with them, and try and take Masher down and then hide somewhere whilst the IOPC hopefully fragments whilst they fight to see who the new ruler will be."

He said to SolarStorm, "I think you should go home for now and stay there." Having gone back to his main Vault and dropped off his Energon, he had just gone off looking for Masher when he got a radio call from Silver Blaze. "MasterBlaster, this is Silver Blaze. I'm over at the house. Looks like someone was after you specifically. What in the Main Foundry have you gotten yourself into?"

"My offspring accidently nearly killed the offspring of Masher, the head of the IOPC. I'm going to try and tell him that his offspring was not the target. Feel free if you want to, to check if things have been looted from the place, you are my landlord after all."

He radioed SolarStorm. "Go back home but wait until Silver Blaze has checked things out before you go in, unless he would rather not do that."

Then he set off looking for Masher. If Stomper had not been in the body he was, he would have been unlikely to track them down, as it was, he got within radio range of Masher, ready if need be to cut his engines, drop out of the sky, and turn them on again feet from the ground for a speedy getaway. At this short range, direct radioing was possible. He had to choose his words with care; the wrong ones, and he would be in even greater danger then before. "O Masher, Head of the IOPC, I am very sorry for what happened, but your offspring was not the target, one ElectronBlitz was. Why would I try and kill your offspring when that would make you hunt me down to the next galaxy if need be?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Blaze was a bit disappointed to not be able to sell his billion-Cube weapons, but he couldn't help but think that MasterBlaster was making the right decision - at least when it came to not wasting his money. Still, after hearing the story, he couldn't help but think that MasterBlaster was about to get completely creamed. "I hope you have a spare and a save!" He yelled up as MasterBlaster took to the air.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"He did WHAT?!" Silver Blaze backfired in shocked horror, and the sound of the bang could be heard over his communicator. "Well, that explains it. The house wasn't looted at all. But I'd bet my vault that they've left something 'special' for you. I'll take a really good look around this time..." He disconnected without saying goodbye; his mind was preoccupied with the idea that the house had been turned into a death trap.

Carefully, SilverBlaze entered the house. He moved very slowly and deliberately, and looked carefully for anything that was amiss. After going through the place from front to back, he hadn't seen anything. Then, he heard a clang outside - someone had landed. He immediately got ready to do battle to the death, but to his relief, it was just SolarStorm coming in. "I couldn't find anything," he told the youngster, "but I'm sure something has been changed. Your Coder said it was probably the IOPC that had yanked the door down, and they didn't do that just to pay a friendly visit."

"You couldn't find anything? That means I can come in, then!" SolarStorm said, and in an instant, he was through the door. "I'll watch The Glorious Raiders while we wait for Codey to come back!" He announced, referring to a holovision serial that would be on at this time. Soon, he was making his way over to his usual seat in front of the holovision set.

"Hey, this isn't legit," he said, stopping suddenly.

"What's wrong?" Silver Blaze asked, trying to see what SolarStorm was looking at.

"My chair isn't supposed to glow like that. It's solid steel," he responded as he began to go over to it in curiosity. "Hmm! It looks like it's got a little Energon on the bottom, but~~"

"Wait! Wait a minute!" Silver Blaze said with urgency. "Don't go near that! It's got to be a trap!" He hoped that SolarStorm would listen - he knew that young Decepticons were not coded to have to obey just any adult, and in fact, many were coded to disobey adults who weren't within a couple of narrow category bands ("landlord" not being one of them). Silver Blaze stepped forward, but refrained from putting a hand on SolarStorm. Grabbing him could easily set off the automatic self-defense routine and get one or both of them killed.

SolarStorm slowed down, and acted as if he was unsure what to do. His base code told him to be very skeptical of any orders from people other than the government or his own Coder, yet his lie/trick detection system was also telling him that Silver Blaze's voice sounded legit. Finally he stopped, and it was clear that he was resisting the urge to go and check out that chair.

"Good, good," Silver Blaze said reassuringly. "Now, let me take a very careful look at that. I think it could be an extremely dangerous bomb, but I want to see it before I radio for the fire department. They don't like to be called out for false alarms..." He gingerly stepped forward, but made sure to glance behind himself frequently to make sure that SolarStorm wasn't coming along. Soon, he knelt down and peeked under the furniture, and then backed off and stood up with both great care and great haste.

"We have to leave here NOW!" He told SolarStorm. "That IS a bomb. A very dangerous, unstable kind of bomb. We'll have to leave the house entirely and then have the fire department come and defuse it." Soon, they were both standing outside across the street, and Silver Blaze called in the bomb report. Within a couple of minutes, red-painted, light-bodied fighters blazed into the area with red-and-white wing lights flashing. A light-bodied cargo plane with a hold full of fire-suppressant liquid came in right after them, transformed, and landed in robot mode some distance away. He quickly did another, minor, transformation that retracted his hands and exposed hollow, cannon-barrel-like, upper arms. If it was needed, these arms would mix air with the liquid and then shoot it to create a blanket of fire-suppressant foam.

The smaller firefighters landed quite some distance from the house and then ran in without making any clangs. It turned out that they wore thick anti-vibration padding on their feet. This wasn't the normal fire department. It was a specialized bomb squad that had been dispatched when Silver Blaze described what kind of device they would be facing.

"Just stay back," they ordered the two civilians as they quickly, but very carefully, rushed in. After what seemed like eternity, they came back outside with the equipment that was used to make the bomb. The Cube was still in its shrunken state.

"Cool, a micromilliCubelet! And look at how it glows! It's brighter than 10 regular Cubes!" SolarStorm exclaimed upon seeing the tiny Cube. He began to power-walk over for a closer look.

"Stay back or we'll blast you!" The other firebots ordered, simultaneously stepping far from the Cube and aiming their blasters at SolarStorm's motion boards. Once he stopped - because of his Code that said that he had to listen to government officials, not because he really wanted to stop at all - one firebot explained that it was a bomb, not a toy, and that any rough moves could set it off. He was sure to impress on the young bot that they would indeed blast him if that's what it took to maintain the security of the unstable explosive.

Soon, the firebots and their fire-suppressant hauler all took off back into the sky.
"Listen closely," Silver Blaze told SolarStorm. "In just a few minutes, we should hear a big boom from way away from here. That'll be them blowing up that bomb in a safe place. It's a good thing you noticed that glow. If you had sat down on top of that, it would have been the end of your running instance and everything else within a 1-block radius. But don't get any ideas about making one of your own. Even the best get themselves blown up about 1/2 the time when they mess with those. I'm willing to bet that it was Masher's kid that did it. Most adults won't touch condensed-Energon bombs if they have any other options at all. Don't be one of those guys who has to have himself blown to atoms 10 times before he gets the message. Just don't mess with those at all, right from the start."

SolarStorm nodded, but internally, he had already filed the concept under "possibilities" - and made a notation to put black tape all over the shrunken Cube to hide the glow if and when he ever implemented that plan.

After 20 minutes, a loud BOOM rumbled across the ground. Those who were paying attention could even feel a little shake.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Aww, that didn't come from the right place!" Stomper said. Just then, MasterBlaster managed to spot them, and his pitch came over his and Masher's radios.

"Yah I know," Masher said, going into a slow, circling pattern. "But my kid here, he wants ta kick some ass fer dat. An' as da' afflicted, it's up ta him whether he wants ta forgive ya or not. So you talk ta him." On a secret, private frequency, Masher whispered to Stomper: "Demand a big tribute."

Stomper, however, was having none of that suggestion. He was too young to really appreciate money, and he most certainly no longer trusted any other kind of a tribute - and definitely not one from the guy who Coded the kid with the corrupted game!

"I want to battle SolarStorm for one body in the Arena," Stomper announced. "This body versus whatever piece of junk he's trying to use! I want to see his antifreeze soaking into the ground where it belongs! DomIntel says he was glitched to think that game was a good tribute. I want to 'fix' those glitches, in a way that he'll remember right down to the base code." Stomper hovered in the air using his foot jets, and smacked one hand into the other to emphasize his points. "I'll make him sorry for not keeping his boards on straight!"

[Vallermoore]

MasterBlaster replied "I will happily do that. SolarStorm deserves to learn a lesson or two-one, if you want to con a bot, con the right one, two, don't mess with Masher. I assume you want the nearest arena. And there is a spare body waiting for SolarStorm afterwards." What he was careful not to say was that it was a sapient pony body only slightly stronger then a human. It had concealed blasters that were pretty strong for it's size, but it was not meant for Cybertron. A few days stuck in such a body would be a good punishment for SolarStorm, forcing him to stay close to MasterBlaster or in one of his panels when outside for protection.
Which was where that body was right now in fact. MasterBlaster first radioed SolarStorm, telling him where to come and to drink a Cube or two of Energon first. SolarStorm would have to learn a very painful lesson. He also decided that Silver Blaze deserved some sort of reward for saving the house from being blown up, although he was not sure what it would be yet. Maybe a cube of Energon Supreme. He was very aware of being circled by Masher, but at least he had not been blasted. It seemed that Masher believed that the poisoned game really was meant for another bot, not his offspring. All bots except the blasted and those who were clearly dying were strong, but Masher was strong on a whole new level. If Decepticons were fish, then Masher would be a Meglodon-sized shark.

Soon enough SolarStorm arrived, after MasterBlaster called him and told him where to go, and MasterBlaster explained "Here is what you have to do to put things right with Masher's son before you and I will be forgiven. You have to fight him to the body in the local arena. I know you don't want to do that; any bot who wanted to fight a bot at that level of armour and strength, but you have to. You will have another body to mind transfer to when your body is pulled apart. I suggest you greatly lower your pain sensors before the fight begins." Soon enough they went to an arena in which a fight was already going on-soon enough it would be over, but in seeing what happened to the loser SolarStorm could see his likely fate. This fight was not to the death, so no jammer was on.

[Victorious Decepticons]

"You think I wouldn't want to fight him?! Of course I would! Masher may be something, but that other guy is just some dipstick," SolarStorm boasted, totally unaware of Stomper's new body format. After MasterBlaster let the gatekeeper know that SolarStorm would be there to fight, the two were shown to a set of bleachers that were reserved for combatants. They eased onto a bleacher bench to watch the battle that was currently in progress.

Even though the current combatants were fairly evenly matched in terms of strength, one eventually gained the upper hand through skill. Once the battle was past the tipping point, it was over. Soon, the winner was standing over the loser, and with a couple of sweeping gestures, used his blaster to cut the loser's body into thirds.

When SolarStorm looked up, he noticed that Masher had sat down in the reserved section across the Arena - combatants were kept apart before their bouts to ensure that those bouts didn't start right there in the stands. There was an unknown, giant bot next to him.

"Where's Stomper?" SolarStorm asked with cocky hopefulness.

"That big one is him," MasterBlaster said, pointing at the massive demolisher. "He switched to that body at some point."

"Oooohhhh..." After a pause, he brightened. "I ought to be able to stay out of the way of that big thing!"

Soon, the Arena workers had hauled the prior loser away on a cart, and the winner had strutted out while making victory gestures. Almost immediately, the announcer's strong but excited voice blasted over a loud PA: "And now, two youngsters face each other for their inaugural duel! Welcome them to one of their rites of passage! On the east side of the Arena, we have SolarStorm, First Offspring of MasterBlaster of Decepticon Headquarters!! Over on the west side, we have Stomper, Third Offspring of Masher of Iron City!! Contestants, enter the Arena, and may your battle be decisive!!!"

A few surprised engine rolls, which meant about the same thing as gasps, were heard from the audience as they realized that this was indeed the Masher and his offspring sitting there. As Stomper got up, SolarStorm could hear various people whispering to each other in the crowd behind him:

It's got FOUR fusion cannons! And missiles!
Five Cubes says that other kid lasts 10 seconds or less.
I'm not bettin' against that...

Soon, both combatants were on the sand floor of the arena. This sand was actually unprocessed silicon - a low grade that was sold off to arenas and other combat forums by Megatron Metals. The gray/silver material crunched lightly as the two walked across it and took up positions opposite each other.

The difference between SolarStorm's body and Stomper's was extremely clear as they took their combat stances. SolarStorm's body transformed into a fighter, and while it wasn't overly light, it appeared to dwarfed by the Stomper's giant demolition-specialized, extremely armored, body. Stomper's multiple fusion cannons and double missile racks only added to the effect, and soon, SolarStorm realized that these weapons were on pivoting brackets - and that the weapons were all stealthily being pivoted right at him.

"Now you're gonna learn not to give bad things to just anybody! You're gonna remember to pick your targets well!" Stomper yelled out. "And that if yer gonna try to kill somebody, you'd better do it right the first time! Or else THIS will happen!!" With that, he fired all of his cannons at SolarStorm's position.

[Vallermoore]

MasterBlaster was well aware that his overconfident offspring would soon be learning a very painful lesson. Luckily, it was not a fatal one as could easily have been the case. Perhaps he could at least do his best and damage Stomper's armour plating. Before his offspring entered the arena he told him that if he was defeated he had to stay at home
*****
SolarStorm may have had no Bravery Up as he was too young,but he did not know the danger he was in so his bravery was high, confident that he was more agile then this armoured giant. Had he been in robot mode he would have been scrap in seconds, but as a plane, he could partly dodge. He was wounded but not yet hors de combat, and attempted to do an attack MasterBlaster had told him about; get close, turn off engines, and blast as you go down, cutting through the mind boards. Against a weak or average foe this might have worked, but although the blaster beams hit their target, they could scorch paint and cut slightly into the armour but nothing else. Strong as the blasters were, they were not strong enough to seriously damage Stomper's body, and as SolarStorm hit the sand he was now a very easy target.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Stomper laughed at the attack, not just because he thought it was funny, but in hopes of provoking his opponent into doing something stupid as a result of rage. Of course, he did think it was funny, too - it had made a couple of marks on him and exposed a bit of underlying metal, but his inner workings were behind so much armor that it hadn't even been a threat.

"Ha ha ha, so your Coder taught you a little military strategy! Impressive to see someone my age who knows about the Viper Strike...too bad you didn't know how to do it right, Atari Boards! Ha ha ha!! Now I'll show you what I learned from MY Coder!" Stomper released 5 heat-seeking missiles while also blasting his fusion cannons at SolarStorm. This time, if he managed to dodge the blasts, the missiles would keep coming after him. They were small, but each one could seriously damage a limb.

[Vallermoore]

When Stomper launched his missiles, SolarStorm had an idea that might just turn them back on him-fly away then turn back towards his foe to make the missiles blow up him instead. One of the missiles had to be blown up by Stomper himself, one actually did hit Stomper-although again the armour was just slightly damaged-but the other three hit the back of SolarStorm, not only destroying his jet engines but smashing his legs and one arm,leaving him with just one working blaster as Stomper closed in on him. MasterBlaster was certain that his offspring would not have long in that fine body and hoped he had turned his pain sensors far down before the fight began. In another part of the arena ElectroBlitz watched feeling very pleased. His connive that he did before had worked beyond his wildest dreams, even though he had it filed away as one not to repeat ever again.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Stomper lived up to his name as he stomped over to SolarStorm's stricken body with a sadistic grin on his face. Once he got very close, he transformed. Now, SolarStorm found himself facing what appeared to be a dark-side version of a construction machine. This form was usually used to demolish the factories or houses of those who dared to oppose the Corporation, and it did so in ways that left the metal intact enough to haul away for recycling. Now it was about to be put to use on a different type of "house."

"Hehhehhehhehheh," Stomper chuckled as he extended two hydraulic, construction-type arms toward SolarStorm. Each arm ended in a vicious-looking, sharp-toothed, grabber. Soon, he had grabbed two parts of SolarStorm's now-exposed frame and began to pull, but not enough to yank him apart. Simply yanking would just break the weakest side and potentially allow the important part to escape.

As SolarStorm looked up, Stomper began to rev his engine menacingly and roll coal through a modified diesel add-on. Two red lights began to shine from behind the thick black smoke, producing a scary and demonic effect.

But more. LOTS more.

Then a third arm came forth from amongst the black clouds. This one ended in an industrial-diamond-encrusted chainsaw blade.

"Better transfer now, loser!!" Stomper announced with a deep, roaring, monster-truck-announcer voice. With that, he started up the saw and began to cut through SolarStorm's engine with the intention of slicing it in two. Once that was done, he would begin to chop up the rest, including the areas that had motherboards in them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Up in the stands, ElectronBlitz laughed outright and yelled out hooting cheers. SolarStorm would surely recognize his voice. Stomper recognized it too, and was quite furious about how the other kid seemed to think of him as a pawn in his own plan. I'll destroy that little git next, the mob scion thought to himself as he continued to saw on SolarStorm.

Blasting out into the stands for an immediate strike wasn't easily possible thanks to a clear barrier that separated the audience from the fighting floor, and while a 4-cannon blast would be able to cut through it, doing that would bring Arena security running. Stomper would have to wait until a more opportune time to put the other kid in his place - and that place would be 'scattered all over the streets as a warning to others!'

[Edit: Fixed typo]

[Vallermoore]

SolarStorm took Stomper's advice and mind transferred away, grateful to still be alive. MasterBlaster gave a deep bow to Masher,also greatful that the IOPC commander had let him and his offspring live.ElectronBlitz also left, not knowing that Stomper was not happy with being used as a puppet and would want to kill him-with his jammer turned on this time.It might take a while,but ElectronBlitz was unlikely to reach anywhere near full sapience -or indeed live longer then a few days.

********

When SolarStorm found himself in a new body to his horror it was an android sapient pony body. Although stronger then a human, by Decepticon standards it was almost unimaginably weak and helpless. Soon enough MasterBlaster came back and laughed. "You look so sweet in that pony body. Maybe I should invite Vintage back to see you?"

Unknown to MasterBlaster Domintel were listening in and were horrified. If this threat was carried out it would be child abuse of a helpless offspring by humiliating it and humiliating the Decepticon Race as well. Engines ran rough and eyes darkened. What MasterBlaster was thinking about was nothing less then horrible. They were about to inform an execution squad when MasterBlaster checked his treason file. "I can't do that or it would be treason but I can make you think about things for half an hour or so before I put you in my panels and buy you a brand new body."

Whilst that was not treason as long as there were no other bodies in the house, a Domintel agent was so annoyed that MasterBlaster would even consider inviting his friend to laugh at his ponyfied offspring that he decided to go to pay him a visit.Whilst he could not kill him as a Domintel agent he could first of all,say just what he thought of him, second, warn him just what Decepticons as a whole thought of Coders who put their non sapient offspring into android sapient pony bodies and laughed at them and how he nearly committed treason earlier,and third, threaten to come back after work with friends to deal with him according to the Decepticon Way and take his offspring into care at a Raising Center.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Stomper himself was far from being fully sapient, but like any child, he knew how to mimic the adults around him - and the adults around him would turn ElectronBlitz into tiny pieces of scrap. He glowered as the brat left the Arena, and decided that he would get together with the offspring of other high-ranking Corporation members and form a team to find and dismantle him. Finding him, however, wouldn't be as easy as he would have liked. He and his Coder had no connection to the Raid Games Emporium, and in fact, didn't even know that it was where ElectronBlitz and SolarStorm had met.

~~~~~~~~~~

Back at MasterBlaster and SolarStorm's house, SolarStorm was happy to realize that he was still alive. Soon, though, he became very confused. Everything inside looked colossal!! Not only that, his body wasn't moving right. When he tried to walk using what he expected to be his two legs, he fell over something. As he looked down, he realized with horror that he didn't have two arms to catch himself with. Instead, he had legs in the front - and they ended in hooves!

"What in the Foundry?!" His voice pipsqueaked out. It didn't sound Decepticon at all. Now he was really horrified. Finally, he decided to fly. Instantly, two little wings started beating and he was carried, rather than jet-propelled, into the air. Soon, he managed to find his way to the workshop and look at himself in the big full-length mirror.

"Great Cybertron!! I've been turned into a, into a...thing!!" His eyes bugged out in an insufferably cute way as he beheld his pastel-purple, pegasus pony body. It even had a cutie mark - a cutely-proportioned oil barrel.

Frantically, SolarStorm searched through his SEDP and found just a paragraph about "ponies." Apparently, they believed that friendship was magic! He looked in the mirror again. The body didn't look like a fighter at all. It was a copy of a biological being, but it had a little tiny mouth with no apparent teeth, big eyes, ridiculous-looking legs, and of course, the wings.

"O Great Divine Leader," SolarStorm began to pray, but before he could continue, his Coder came home, laughed at his predicament, and then said he looked "sweet" of all things!! His little engine revved in fury. He wanted to blast him, but his coding was interfering with the objective. He concentrated as hard as he could to override it, but despite that, he couldn't seem to gin up the guts to outright open fire. Soon his engine was racing with frustrated rage. This was not the kind of 'thinking about things' that MasterBlaster had been hoping for...

SolarStorm soon fell silent, and his engine noise smoothed out. He was not, however, even considering what had happened prior to his mind-transfer to this awful body. Instead, he was meticulously looking through his own Code, line by line, trying to find the part that was keeping him from doing what he wanted to do. After about 25 minutes, he believed he had identified it. Now all he'd need to do is delete...

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door that brought him out of code view and back to being aware of his surroundings. "I HOPE IT'S DOMINTEL!" SolarStorm yelled brattily.

To MasterBlaster's dismay, it was indeed DomIntel. A very furious-looking agent pushed his way in and proceeded to tell MasterBlaster that he was being an awful Coder and that he never should have allowed SolarStorm to fight Stomper without already having a suitable Spare made and ready. This failure showed malice aforethought since he would have had reasonable expectation that Stomper would win.

"Technically, that's a loophole," the agent said. "The regulation just says that nonconforming bodies may be used if nothing else is available, and that there's no breach as long as the Coder acts immediately to make one available in the event of the deactivation of the other one. HOWEVER, Decepticon regulations say that as long as we're off duty, we are free to act as civilians to take care of 'personal matters.'" As he said the last few words, three other off-duty agents barged in.

"And we are personally offended that you would allow your offspring to end up unwillingly inhabiting THAT THING for even a moment - and that you would dare to even suggest intentionally showing his weak state to anyone!! The very idea is so un-Decepticon it's unthinkable! Surely losing a battle in a public arena was bad enough! Now YOU are going to get a lesson - a lesson about what happens to Coders who think that raising an offspring includes making it weak and poisoning its mind with the feelings that come from being that way!"

With that, the four off-duty agents advanced on MasterBlaster with the idea of delivering a very serious denting. They wouldn't kill him, but they wanted him to have to spend days with his collision-repair equipment while HE thought about what he'd done.

SolarStorm looked on with a mixture of extreme glee and a bit of concern. Luckily for MasterBlaster, he was still young enough that this scene fully distracted him from his original objective of deleting the coding controls that were still active.

[Vallermoore]

Before attacking the agents took their Domintel badges off to show this was an off duty thing and not *police* brutality. MasterBlaster managed to throw the first off duty agent to the metal floor, but had no chance against the other three, who had been Coders in the past although their offspring were adults in the Military now. Soon enough they had grabbed him, and with hydraically powered fists, talons and short metal clubs began scratching and *dinging* his paint, denting his body in plenty of places and even breaking non-vital bits of his body. They even soldered his pain level up, such was the disgust that they had for a Coder who was so cruel to his offspring. Through his agony and pain, MasterBlaster realised that this particular violence was justified. In Decepticon terms, what he had done was like dressing a boy as a girl and then threatening to publically humilate him in front of others.If he had gone all the way and brought Vintage home or even radioed him about it, it would have been an execution squad turning up at his house, and Megatron would have coldly turned down any appeal if he made one.

If Megatron had heard that prayer in full and found out why it was made, whatever the results were they would not have been good for MasterBlaster. Abusing very young offspring who could not fight back was one of the very few things that Megatron drew the line at for the sake of the strength of the Decepticon Nation itself.

For a full twenty minutes MasterBlaster was beaten before they stopped. "Domintel has it's eye on you now. Abusing your offspring like you wanted to do is a meltdown offence. Plus if we have to come back unofficially again because you are abusing your offspring we will be bringing an enslaver virus with us. You have twenty four hours, due to body damage, to buy a new body for SolarStorm or we will try and take you alive for slow meltdown on Interplanary Holovision. What you did was disgusting." He raised his finger and SolarStorm landed on it.

"You poor thing, you must hate being in that puny body. Soon you'll be in a proper one. Don't go out by yourself in that thing." SolarStorm flew off the finger and the off duty Domintel agents left. After eight hours MasterBlaster repaired enough dinks and dents and brought no less then four new full size Decepticon bodies, one at a time, two for SolarStorm and two for himself. SolarStorm gleefully entered a proper body and MasterBlaster entered one too, deciding to sell the other body to Vintage and claim he found it on the street. He had learnt a very painful and expensive lesson-child abuse was not tolerated by Decepticons.

"Do you forgive me for ponyfing you?" MasterBlaster asked SolarStorm.

[Victorious Decepticons]

MasterBlaster was so distraught by the beating that he forgot to break the soldering on his pain sensors when he started hammering on his own body. This caused him to yelp with surprise and pain, and now it was SolarStorm's turn to laugh. "Serves you right," he added after the chuckle.

SolarStorm was confused. Was his Coder his enemy? Why would he be glad to see him in such a weak state if that wasn't the case... He also pondered the events with DomIntel. The government had come to defend HIM! He was wowed by this idea. Was it because he had started to pray to Megatron? Maybe it was a fluke.

As the time went on, SolarStorm became very bored. He couldn't do anything in this tiny body, and even running Decepticon-grade video games through its tiny and reduced-capacity boards made his entire consciousness lag. Finally, he remembered what he had been trying to figure out before, and with nothing better to do, went back to the project. By the time the 8 hours of hammering had ceased, the code that blocked him from blasting his own Coder was gone. Not only that, but he had found the code that forced him to be obedient and deleted it too.

This deletion marked the most important milestone in his life: Sapience Day. While he left some vestiges of youth alone - most notably his automated self-defense routine - he would now have to be reasoned with rather than ordered about because he was now fully capable of refusing a command. If he was sapience tested by Debugging, however, they would say that he was still only 40% sapient and far from being mature. (As with human children, it takes more than being able to say "no" to be considered an adult.)

MasterBlaster didn't hear the purr of the tiny engine over the noise of his hammering as these successes were registered, and SolarStorm chose not to say anything at this point. Instead, he now waited to see what would come next. He would reveal his deletion of that restraining code either when he felt safe enough or when he believed it necessary to protect himself. This meant that MasterBlaster would be unlikely to immediately realize that Sapience Day had come, though SolarStorm's behavior would surely change - and become bolder - enough to eventually get MasterBlaster to realize that something was now different.

When MasterBlaster announced that he was going to buy new bodies, SolarStorm didn't have to think much to decide that opening fire now would be a stupid idea. After all, he had no big body of his own, and his current one wouldn't last a day on Cybertron with his current maturity level. He calmly said "okay," cringing at the weak sound of the pony voice, and waited impatiently.

When MasterBlaster came home with the new body, SolarStorm left the vault room and quickly mind-transferred to it. SolarStorm enjoyed the huge rush of power as he returned to a proper body. If the pony one was anything like what a human form felt like, he knew why his Coder had decided to change species! Even so, he was still pissed off and soon began to sulk.

"Do you forgive me for ponyfing you?" MasterBlaster asked SolarStorm.

"Say you're sorry!" SolarStorm insisted, crossing his arms in front of his chest and looking away with a pout. He wasn't about to forgive MasterBlaster if he wasn't sorry!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vintage's Shop

Vintage recognized MasterBlaster's old body immediately when he brought it in. After all, he'd seen it several times before, and every Decepticon tended to have a unique paint pattern. He also recognized the damage pattern.

"Man, what did you do to get DomIntel to give you the 'off-duty treatment?' Looks like they beat the hell out of you! It doesn't look like that body's innards would be all that damaged, though - are you sure you want to get rid of it? A new set of armor panels and outers and it'd be good to go~!"

[Vallermoore]

"I'm sorry, and I'm not being deceptive and conniving when I said that. You may have messed with Masher because of a connive, but trapping you in a weak pony body, laughing at you, and then wanting to show you to Vintage was horrible. In fact, if I had carried it out, because you cannot yet fight back it would have been treason. Clearly, and rightly too, Domintel hate child abuse. When you one day have your first Sapience Day, it will be your first birthday and I'll open some Energon Supreme for us and buy you some great gifts. And in just a few years you will have your first conscription term and then your first raids-and someday you too might decide to build offspring."

SolarStorm had internally made two lists. One was the good things MasterBlaster had done for him. He had built him, Coded him and had him activated. He kept him housed and fed and safe. He clearly cared about him. On the other list were the bad things, such as not spotting ElectronBlitz's connive (betraying it in such circumstances would not be treason as he would just be protecting his still semi-sapient offspring.) And of course the Pony Incident that was so foul that even Domintel had got involved to protect him. At the moment there were far more pluses then minuses but if it ever went the other way,he could either walk out-or outright blast his Coder if he was angry enough.

When Vintage asked him that MasterBlaster said "If I gave all the details Domintel would count it as treason-but let's just say that I humilated my offspring to the point where Domintel agents took off their badges and taught me a very painful lesson. Abusing a helpless offspring who cannot yet blast me for it is clearly not tolerated in the Empire. Even if he did mess with Masher. I brought four new bodies so by selling this one I can at least get some of the expense back. If you asked SolarStorm about what happened he could legally tell you but I doubt he would want to, at least not now."

**********
In Vallermoore things were ready for Megatron's visit. No one expected anything big either publically or privately on the diplomatic front-but the fact that Megatron had agreed to come at all showed that he did not want to destroy Vallermoore. The Vallermoorian Army provided security so that Megatron did not have to look at a load of police officers. On top of that, not only was there a one mile zone around the visit area where weapons were banned for civilians, but it was made crystal clear-attack Megatron and no one will object when he steps on you, blasts you or rips your body in two with his metal fingers. There was a band to play the Decepticon national anthem, an Energon Cube (provided in fact by Megatron himself as Vallermoore had no Energon of it's own) a carefully made ladle, nearly all of the Vallermoorian government, and plenty of changelings and sapient ponies of all three pony races. Large numbers of humans had come to gawp at the Supreme Decepticon.

[Victorious Decepticons]

SolarStorm seemed skeptical. It was most likely that MasterBlaster only realized it was abuse because DomIntel agents had come and literally pounded the message into him. He wasn't sure whether that made things better or worse. What else might he think of as okay??

He decided not to admit that it was already his Sapience Day, at least not yet. He figured he might have to catch MasterBlaster by surprise at some point in the future, and what better way than to pretend that he still wasn't capable of just opening fire? SolarStorm may have missed the connive about Masher, but he wasn't missing the possibilities when it came to this scenario, nor was he going to give up that advantage immediately.

"I suppose I can forgive you then," he said, "but hopefully it won't take DomIntel bashing you up to keep you from trying something like that again! I sure didn't like that little body. What's the point of even building such a thing? It's good only for the foundry. Heck, even the foundry wouldn't want it. It'd only make an ingot the size of a BB!" SolarStorm still hadn't thought of the possibility of pretending to be some other species for illicit reasons.

SolarStorm's internal lists didn't just count things up. They also assigned weight and value judgements to each item. Simply having Coded him wasn't given the weight that many humans seem to expect. Instead, that was noted as something MasterBlaster did for himself - because he wanted an offspring - rather than something done specifically for SolarStorm. After all, MasterBlaster would have had no idea of what personality would develop when he did it. On the other hand, MasterBlaster hadn't tried to deactivate him that day that he welded everything down and tried to blast his way into the household vault. This was given far more positive points, even though at the time, SolarStorm had been annoyed at orders not to do it again.

"And what's this about conscription once I'm old enough?" He went on. "My SEDP mentions it, but doesn't say what it's like to be in the Military..."

SolarStorm didn't ask anything about raiding yet. He had one of the Connivery AEDPs pre-installed by MasterBlaster, and he was still interested in practicing until he got that skill to a better level. In fact, it was possible that the idea of pretending to still be completely non-sapient had arisen from looking at that Pack, though SolarStorm wasn't conscious of any direct source of the notion and thought he had come up with it entirely on his own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You what?!" Vintage was shocked. "It's a wonder you're still alive. Native Decepticons don't put up with that nonsense that human parents like to pull on kids. That is a fairly rotten thing to do, though. You're lucky your kid still isn't sapient enough to blast you...or come up with some way to humiliate YOU. Maybe seeing that body of yours be given the approximate texture of a golf ball calmed him down a bit. Otherwise you might find yourself dancing the Funky Chicken one of these days courtesy of Baby's First Virus."

"In any case, if you have new bodies, I suppose getting rid of that one is a fine move. Put it up on the table here so I can look inside and appraise it..."

After the appraisal was done, it turned out that Vintage was willing to pay 100,000 Cubes. Value was deducted for the beat-up outer panels and several of the underlying outer panels, which Vintage advised MasterBlaster to take to a foundry. Vintage also noted that the head panel had been forced open and that the pain processing chips had been tampered with, but since boards were never re-used anyway and the panels had already been written off, that part didn't affect the valuation.

"Oh, there's one other thing. Decepticons don't do 'badges.' They're seals. It's just one of the things I like about this planet...no cop-like terms to cause me flashbacks." He smiled at that. "So did you figure out where the bugs were? You must be under active surveillance for them to come that quick. If you find 'em you can smelt 'em, and it'll be all legal-like. This isn't like Earth or wherever your old country is. Here, reasonably expected behavior is almost all legal by definition, and the reasonably expected behavior after finding a bug is to delete it. Now I'm not saying to blast it and then pull some rot on your kid! I'm just saying that you might not want to be so watched all the time..."

"The main 'reasonably expected behavior' I can think of that's highly illegal is trying to take over the government. That's actually considered reasonably expected because who doesn't want to rule an empire?! Even so, outside of the ivory tower, there's no doubt that it's illegal anyway. Of course, every so often, some suicidal idiot will challenge him to an official duel and then get massacred in the National Arena by Megatron himself..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Megatron headed to Vallermoore, he didn't take a huge contingent of troops like before. Instead, he only took two elite troops. He didn't think he needed them either, but took them because he knew that some humans got cocky if they saw someone alone and he didn't want to deal with any nuisances. When it came to the ponies, he didn't know how they'd act. He knew very little about them, actually, other than that they were supposedly magical and believed that the magic was powered by friendship of all things. He'd also heard that a species called "changelings" existed in the nation.

Megatron was quite interested in meeting these creatures as well as the ponies, and in fact, hoped to be able to persuade some of each species to provide blood samples that he could take back to the Bureau of Biological Research for DNA sequencing. To aid in this goal, he had brought along a significant amount of Chingchings, though they did happen to come from the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank rather than the Vallermoorian mint. After all, it's not like there was a handy Energon/Chingching currency exchange stand he could stop at out in space.

Once he got to a part of space close to Vallermoore's atmosphere, he radioed to announce his presence and ask where to land, whether the meeting would take place outside, and for any other important information. The troops with him waited as well, and for a moment, they transformed into robot mode to ready some unobtrusive broadcasting equipment. If everything seemed to be going well, they would broadcast the event back to Cybertron. There, the Bureau of Propaganda would clear it and then patch a live feed through to the news channels with just a slight delay in case something unseemly happened that caused them to need to go to commercials.

[Vallermoore]

MasterBlaster told SolarStorm "That body is useless on this world but if you wanted to go undercover on a planet full of sapient ponies, for spying or scamming, that would then be useful. And don't worry, if you get into a fight in an arena again, I'll make sure you have a decent spare to mind transfer into if you should lose. Still, as long as you don't get into a fight with a bot much stronger then yourself you should be ok. When you go to the Military you get introduced to discipline. A lot of bots attack their trainers at first and instead of the death penalty for treasonous mutiny, they get away with a denting, like what happened to me but not quite as badly."

"As time goes by, those who mess up have a slave virus forcibly inserted and spend a certain amount of time doing nasty jobs. That happened to me once for annoying General Soundwave, the head of Domintel and Forintel. I had to go to Debugging afterwards as I was so afraid of Soundwave that it was seriously messing with my life. Once you become a full soldier, you might get to go on Military Raids or be called upon to deactivate traitors-you might even get to fight alongside our Divine Leader Megatron if you are really lucky. But there are boring bits too. One plus is that when on duty, it's treason for another Decepticon soldier to try and kill you. I may not have been the perfect Coder, but I can make it up to you. For now I'm going to Vintage to sell my old body, don't worry, I won't mention you and you know what, I don't want Domintel to have me slain in the street or publically melted down and it's not fair on you either."

MasterBlaster added the seals thing to a file so he would not forget. Vintage was very pleased to be in a place with (apart from Domintel to deal with traitors) no law enforcement and indeed very few laws. He worked out where the bugs might be and made a mental note to leave the Autobot toys in the street somewhere.

"No way would I ever try to take over from Divine Leader Megatron, not only because I very much want to live, but because even if hypothetically such a thing was possible I would not be able to rule for more then a matter of days before civil war broke out. I want Cybertron to be strong, not consumed by the horrors of a civil war, and Megatron keeps it that way. That, and I swore a sacred oath of loyalty and will keep to it."

He had a brief image in his mind of what would happen if he did somehow take over...and it was anything but nice.

*****
Vallermoore

Within thirty seconds the reply came back. "The central square in Grand City, Yocasta Square, near the parliament building has been made ready for you. We can send a fighter plane up to guide you in if you want. The army will be doing the security so you don't have to look at ranks of policemen which might be offensive from your point of view. If some stupid idiot does somehow get to attack you despite that, feel free to use the Decepticon Way to deal with said idiot. No security is perfect after all. If you were to want to formally duel for fun though, noone would want to duel to the death, or duel against the full size you as you could just step on them. There will be lots of people taking photos, hopefully that's ok with you. We don't expect anything major to come from this in public or in private-but just the fact that you are coming here peacefully is a giant plus as we thought you wanted to destroy us earlier. Oh, there will be plenty of sapient ponies and changelings but don't worry about them."

Yocasta Square behind the barriers was packed with humans, sapient ponies and changelings, kept back by armed soldiers of the Vallermooreian Army. A band was waiting too and so was most of the government.