An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Afterlife

Amongst those few changelings who had both had the chance to sample Decepticon love and not get killed or enslaved in the process, it was considered the finest, and rarest love in the multiverse. It had a taste like fine hot ginger, and because it was near impossible to harvest, it was the sort that royals and aristocrats would eat on special changeling festival days. For humans, the equivalent was caviar and truffles, for Decepticons. a Cube of Megatron's Private Reserve. F-rafa had come tantalizingly close to trading for some; but to threaten the Supreme Decepticon, and try and raid the love energy for the Decepticon Way tucked deep within his boards, was an outrage. All the First Changeling was likely to get now was a large helping of violence.

Megatron's eyes darkened. "Do you really think that I, the Master Raider, will allow myself to lose MY energy to some two-bit biological?! Energy comes to ME - not the other way around!!"

As soon as he started to lock onto the Queen's energy, she reacted in two ways, one open, one covert. Openly, she blasted green fire with her horn, using a tenth of her remaining energy in the changeling magic equivalent of holy fusion cannon fire, trying to blast Megatron's body to scrap with enough energy to even test the finest Decepticon armours. Secondly, in case she lost this fight, behind her a tenth of her budded off as a sort of divine Spare, so if the rest was destroyed she would still survive whilst that bit lived. That bit went into the real world. In the real world the divine Queen could do harm to those in close range, but she could also take damage from physical weapons as well. Disguising herself as a huge oil tanker she headed in the general direction of Cybertron, hoping to lure some bots on board and then drain them with divine power.

*****
Deep Space

SolarTempest's gang was almost at the oil world that was their target when they encountered this huge ship with it's doors open, apparently defenceless. "Will you look at that?" a bot asked, and two of the bots entered quickly. The rest were about to follow when SolarTempest said "Stop, this is a trap of some kind, almost certainly. Stay far back, and ping that thing. You two, get back here, NOW!"

The *ship* closed it's doors, opened them shortly afterwards, and two seemingly dead Decepticon bodies floated out, as a couple of data packet streams pinged back to Cybertron and their spare bodies. If jamming had been run by the ship, those two would have been dead, and their only chance of life again would be from a Save Disc and bots who cared enough to restore them. They had shown as much hot-dogging and overconfidence as MasterBlaster so often did and lost perfectly good bodies as a result. SolarTempest decided to politely tell them later just why obeying orders could be vital when on a raid. The pinging revealed chitin much to the surprise of the Decepticons, but a great deal of it. SteelHard said "That, for any of you who don't know it, is what changeling carapaces are made of. That thing is believe it or not, a changeling. A HUGE ling, and it must have busted the anti-ling shielding and drained those two of their love in seconds . I've dealt with lings on Vallermoore, in the criminal underworld, but how can they get that large?"

Internal alarms went off, but at this range, the anti-changeling shielding held firm. Going up too close though was clearly a bad idea.
SteelHard suggested "If this thing is heading to Cybertron, it could be a threat to the Nation. As it is clearly of foreign origin, it is not narking to radio the Decepticon Military about it. I suggest we do that and then go on our way, rather then trying to tackle it ourselves and maybe losing our bodies. The ling can create blasters from it's body capable of magical fire that can, from a ling that size, harm us. Of course, as you are the leader, SolarTempest, you decide what we do next. I don't want to seem to be treading on your feet. I'm not the leader, you are." SteelHard was quick to make it clear that he was just offering advice in case SolarTempest took things the wrong way and blasted him.

*****
Vallermoore

People went beyond clapping politely and openly cheered Fire Eater. Megatronism would help it's true belivers in a very positive way, and Megatronists would do their bit as well. Megatronism came out overwhelmingly on top, and clearly won the debate. Like most people, Vallermoorians were normally only rarely religious; but now there were large numbers of converts amongst humans, sapient ponies and changelings alike. As there was only a single open Decepticon Temple on Vallermoore, it suddenly got a LOT of attention. Fire Eater's human and sapient pony staff normally did pretty minor tasks; they kept the Temple clean, watched over it in case of attacks by cultists, disgruntled Ponyists or the criminally insane, had a crèche for babies and young children and foals, and that sort of thing. Now they were handing out the Megatronist equivalent of the Bible, taking questions from those who were interested, and other such things, and the Temple was packed to the proverbial gills. Most of these new Megatronists would never earn the Ultimate Upgrade, and many were perfectly happy as biologicals, but they had their uses and the collective strength of their faith nurtured and strengthened the God they worshipped must as changelings grew stronger when they ingested love. Megatron's already strong divine armour was further strengthened, which was handy as at the moment it was facing divine Changeling fire that was attempting to melt it down.

Some Megatronists, after some thought, decided to work within the laws of Vallermoore to form the Megatronist Party, in the hope of gaining influence within the political system. Of course, if they ever won a general election, they would openly call on Megatron to take power and peacefully add Vallermoore to his Empire. At the moment, the Megatronist Party leaders had no secret contacts with Forintel as it had just formed, so they were just guessing what Megatron would want and had not formed party policies yet.

Cybertron

Buzz took the Energon to his vaults. For now his plans to hire assassins had been well and truly thwarted as all the best assassins in Cybertron were caught up in the battle. He decided to browse in Ultimate's store. Perhaps he could buy upgrades that were good enough so he could personally deal with MasterBlaster. He took only a few Cubes in a panel-to avoid robberies browsers took little or no Energon with them, and when they brought very expensive things, they would give the keys of vaults of Energon to the shopkeeper instead.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Space

SolarTempest listened to SteelHard's suggestions, and he immediately agreed that the Decepticon Military needed to be informed. He told SteelHard to go ahead and radio it in.

However, he didn't want to just give up on trying to defeat this odd thing. After all, he not only had his gang, but the entire fighter contingent that came with the cargo-bots. He went ahead and told them all to open fire from a distance. Everyone immediately did so, only to find that the big changeling seemed to be able to regenerate the damaged chitin fairly quickly. Now, however, power was coming from F-rafa's main body in the Afterlife to repair this one rather than going to it, but the gang in the mundus had no way of knowing that. The changeling soon opened fire back, causing the gang and the adjuncts to have to dodge. The cargo-bots cursed the fighters over the air as they backed way off, and soon, the fighters remembered their real jobs and returned to their positions around the cargo-bots.

Soon enough, a radio call came in from the Decepticon Military. It told SolarTempest that there wasn't enough to gain from them attacking the artificial ship. "It'll have no Energon in it, and since it's biological, it can't be driven or melted down. We suggest you detour around it and go about your regular business. We'll take care of that bloated thing."

Since there would be no money in defeating the changeling, and little fame in defeating what seemed to be an outsized - but not all that special - biological, SolarTempest finally took the advice and they all continued on toward the oil planet - making sure to leave plenty of room between them and the changeling. The two deactivated bodies were taken along, too. This would ensure that they weren't reverse-engineered, but more importantly, it would allow the gang to either reactivate them (allowing the two bots to re-transfer their minds back to them) or later do forensic hardware analysis - what amounted to an autopsy - in an attempt to figure out how the changeling's attack had managed to shut them down. It seemed likely that reactivation would be possible since, at least from the outside, the bodies seemed to have simply powered down.

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

Megatron Metals Mine #1, Earth

Inside the administrative room, a communicator sounded. A hand reached out and picked up the device.

Overseer's dark, soulless eyes showed no change and his engine noise remained steady as he listened to what the Military's task officer had to say through the radio. After a while, however, his CPU fans spun up, indicating that he was at least considering the situation. Finally, after having remained silent as he had listened for several minutes, he spoke. "10 million Cubes of Supreme for me. A million Cubes of Supreme for each of the other 10. So that's 20 million. Of course it's a guarantee." He closed the connection and finally smiled just a little bit. Soon, he called 10 overseers into his chamber, which was a large room dug out of the earth.

"Some idiot love-raider has made the mistake of coming toward Empire territory and showing hostility to a couple of our raiders. So we're gonna fix it." Overseer announced. The soulless overseers were as lifeless as the mine's top manager, but they too could think. Their immediate response was to get information on the compensation plan, and when they were informed that he'd charged a million Cubes of Supreme each in their names, they were quite agreeable.

Soon, Overseer was handing out Changeling Zombification Virus to each of them, and loaded up his own side-panels with it as well. Then, he had everyone clean their weapons and put in new air filters. All of their weapons and armor were Mil-Spec and up; this had been standard for overseers of all ranks since Earth's mines were attacked a few years ago.

"It should be a simple enough job for us." Overseer said in a stern, official way. "She can't steal any love from those who have no love. And she will have a hard time killing what is already dead. Let's go collect our new piece of equipment."

The group headed off, confidently and seriously, like a posse of old-time federals out to shoot a wanted man dead. They felt little or nothing at all, depending on which one of them was in question. Instead, they were driven by cold logic - the sort of cold logic that thinks it is good and sensible to work slaves to death and then zombify them simply to get the maximum possible productivity from every "piece of stock" under their control.

Back at the mine, the slaves who were still living relaxed just a teeny bit. They were still firmly under the mine's control, but at least the terrifying soulless robots had gone away for now.

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

Before long, Overseer and his group arrived at the coordinates the Decepticon Military had passed on. Far in the distance, they could see the blue lights of FTL - the Military had sent about 100 specially-prepared troops out just in case backup turned out to be needed.

The soulless overseers saw no need for the backup. One of them soon found the changeling and radioed her location to the others, and they flew closer. Soon, her open door was visible; it almost beckoned them to come inside.

Quickly, the overseers transformed to robot mode. Overseer took a fistful of metal "straws" out of his side panel and held them out. Hanging there in space, the group drew straws until one got a short straw. That bot immediately used his jets to maneuver over to the open door - still in robot mode - and went inside. There was no love to suck from this bot. In fact, he had no emotion at all. Instead, his drives - like those of the others in his group - came from a prioritization program he had installed in himself just prior to deleting his own soul.

This one's motivation for that deletion had been to become deadlier and more successful at anything that an unglitched, ensouled being should balk at. It had been against his plans that he ended up as a mid-level overseer on some "Metal-forsaken rock" instead of as a master raider, assassin, or mass murderer/pillager. His emotionless logic code was now telling him that exterminating this biological might put him back on his originally-programmed track by improving his street cred, and it hastened him on to the task. If F-rafa was only looking at the behavior of these bots so far, she would be surprised when she was faced with the emotional null values that went with soullessness.

Soon, he floated inside the open doors, not landing since there was no gravity to pull him down. F-rafa's probes came quickly, but he was quite unbothered by this. Coldly, he turned toward what would normally be the cockpit and raised his blasters, intending to destroy what would, by his calculations, be the main part of the being's nervous system.

In the distance, the Military contingent waited. Unlike usual, they were also emotionless, though they still had their souls. They had installed patches that allowed them to turn all of their emotions to zero before they headed out, and they would leave them set that way until this battle ended. While this deprived them of the thrill of the fight, it also deprived the enemy of a chance to raid them using her normal methods. Of course, unlike the overseers, they would be able to turn the effect off after it was no longer needed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Afterlife

Leader Megatron had already topped off his batteries before heading out, or he would have used the incoming changeling fire to do it. Instead, he directed as much of it as he could to his giant construct, which was now beginning to look familiar. He used a bullet-time spell to allow him to dodge the rest while simultaneously firing back with his fusion cannon at ridiculously fast speeds in an attempt to make his own blasts undodgeable. Meanwhile, he constantly talked trash, calling F-rafa inherently inferior, doomed to lose, a n00b fighter, and other such insults. Megatron hoped this would enrage her enough to throw off her game, but also kept in mind that experienced warriors wouldn't fall for it. How much experience she had actually gotten before she ended up floating here in the middle of nowhere was something he didn't yet know.

~~~~~~~~~

Vallermoore

Fire Eater soaked up the cheering as if it was the audio version of Energon Supreme, and had to use his facial expression control script to keep from looking as if he was gloating. Of course, internally, he was doing exactly that. He hadn't even needed to make closing statements to cinch the win. He looked over at Oxley and was sorely tempted to make a smart remark, but he was well aware that the mic could be on or be turned on at any moment. Therefore, he remained silent and polite.

Later, he would contact the First Temple on Cybertron and explain that his own Temple was no longer large enough to hold all of the worshippers. He immediately got authorization to expand, but that wasn't all. The main Temple also began the process of getting permission from the Vallermoorian government to open more branches. This would, at the least, likely require getting standard building permissions, zoning exclusions, and dealing with other such bureaucracy. Law-bound places were much different from Cybertron, where expansion involved buying property from whoever owned it and then simply starting to build.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron
MasterBlaster's Mansion

While there had been plenty of action over the last several days, and the roaring jets of various IOPC faction members could be heard going to the battle zones, MasterBlaster and his gang weren't worried about it today. Energon Supreme was flowing, and his new gang members were singing what they thought of as a rather strange song: "Happy Birthday." They did not, however, bring any free gifts. As was the custom, they all charged money - and since they hadn't been with MasterBlaster all that long yet, they charged more than more long-time companions would have.

Despite this, they enjoyed the big party and the fireworks MasterBlaster had decided to pick up. Fortunately, the fireworks store wasn't part of a syndicate and was outside of the war zones.

Many of the gang members did have to ask what a birthday was, and then just what "birth" was. This was followed by a lack of understanding of why this day, rather than MasterBlaster's sapience day, was celebrated. After all, wasn't he just an automatic program before the light of self-awareness dawned? Who would celebrate the mere activation of a set of functional parts? It all seemed rather strange!

~~~~~~~~~~

Loyal Star had gone home after the debate ended, and was sitting there reading through his latest Megatronist Bulletin when a knock came at the door. It was a rare courier-delivered chip, straight from the First Temple of Cybertron. After doing the standard anti-virus check, he plugged it into his port and read it.

The chip contained the message that he had passed the initial part of his training. Now, in accordance with his missionary track, he was being reassigned to serve as an assistant to a missionary to another planet. For a moment, he thought he would be assigned to Vallermoore; he was sure it would need more temples. But as he read on, he quickly saw that he wasn't going there after all.

"Since you have indicated that you want to be a missionary on planets that may be hostile, we have assigned you to a location that will be slightly more challenging than, say, Vallermoore," the message said. "You will be serving as an Assistant Priest on Coltan, where Megatronism is mandatory but has yet to be truly accepted. Occasional assassination attempts are possible. Your Commanding Priest shall be Jackboot. You shall report to his Temple in the town of Riverside, Planet Coltan, in 5 days. This assignment shall last for four months. Your performance there will determine your next assignment."

The message was signed and hashcoded by Warfire and stamped with the seal of the First Temple of Cybertron, as well as a Decepticon Seal.

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

Loyal Star would find Riverside, Coltan, to be far different from Evening's Light. Unlike much of Coltan, this area was still grimy and rusty. Marked Decepticons, of a type he had only seen in his Assistant Priest educational pack, roamed the area in a clearly menacing way. These were the Enforcers of Megatronism, who had been sent to Coltan and other recently-conquered planets to help stamp out the previous religions, and who were authorized to punish or even kill heretics on the spot. In the center of town, there was a boiling slag pit right out in the open.

Clearly fearful Coltanis cowered past the Enforcers as they went about their business, each one giving a deep nod as he did so. Once Loyal Star landed, he could hear that the Coltanis gave each Enforcer a fearful but loud "hail Megatron" along with the nod.

The Temple, unlike those on Cybertron, was very clearly set up as a fortress. Its thick Decepticon Steel walls could resist Coltani blaster fire as well as low-grade missiles. Opening the big, heavy double doors took some work even for him, and once inside, he found himself facing a glowering Megatron sculpture with slightly darkened eyes. The pulpit was built to match the rest of the decor; its armored-looking steel was very militaristic.

Soon, he heard the clanking of heavy metal boots. A stone-faced Priest appeared, looking more like a military general than someone who might be of help. His boots were distinctly military-looking and built up, and it was clear that his alt mode was not that of a plane. Instead, judging by his robot mode, it seemed that he might turn into some sort of metal-rending machine.

"So you're the new Metal." He said, sounding as general-like as he looked. "It's about time they sent someone to help me beat the fear of God into these heathens!" He stomped over and looked at Loyal Star. "Jackboots. And I take it you are Loyal Star. These heathens here keep insisting on worshipping some yahoo that used to be prominent here. They say you like to talk and be nice. And I'm tellin' you to forget that. You can talk to these idiots until your oil turns to lacquer, and you'll think you're gettin' somewhere, but you're not. The next thing you know, the Enforcers will break somebody's door down and there'll be this altar right behind it. And it'll be covered with statues of these stupid 'saints' of theirs. So now we inspect their houses every day and if we find any of that, we melt 'em down in the center of town. The heathens and their statues. And we make sure they pay respects to the Divine Leader every time they go outside."

"How we're going to do it is like this. I do the sermons and command the Enforcers. You're going to use your speakin' time to let these infidels know exactly what happens to disloyal types in the Afterlife. And you'll lead the Rededication to Megatron. That's right. Every week they have to rededicate themselves to the Divine Leader. Any of these conquered scum who won't do it get melted down. Everyone left here will do it, because we're rid of the ones who wouldn't."

"You'll also be leading the Showing of Respect. In other words, the collection. Each one of these metal beasts has to 'give' 10 Cubes. Most of 'em won't have it. You dent those ones up for refusing to practice the Decepticon Way. If they'd been practicing it, they'd be able to come up with 10 measly Cubes. Remember, these aren't people. They're conquered beasts, just like worthless Earthians and Equestrians. Never let them forget that the only reason they aren't in the mines where they belong is by the strange benevolence of our Divine Leader! They deserve no further mercy from us except through total submission to his religion and his Way!"

Loyal Star didn't say anything other than a couple of perfunctory "yes sirs" to show that he was listening, but he immediately understood why assassination attempts happened to this Priest!

Soon enough, Jackboots took him to what would be his house and set up the door lock engine keying. Before leaving, he also handed over a few chips with information on Riverside.

Once he got into his new house, which turned out to be a rather small, but notably non-rusty, habitation, he virus-checked the chips and then installed them all. The information explained that unlike most of Coltan, Riverside was a theistic communist area AND most of its residents were followers of a minor deity that - until it was drained by Masher - had been said to live in the river. It was still claimed to inhabit the same area, despite the Decepticons intentionally building all over that spot. Tests by the Bureau of Paranormal Research had revealed no actual divinity there, but like true faithful, the followers had refused to believe those results. Contact with the "River God" was said to take place through her Saints - a pantheon that included both robots and some of the biologicals the Coltanis had overthrown eons before now.

All in all, the competing religion amounted to a local cult of no larger consequence. However, it staunchly resisted Megatronism, and, according to Jackboots' notes, the main objective here was to stamp it out. "We can always bring in proper Megatronists from somewhere else if these piles of walking garbage choose to die instead of convert," he had written. "Still, it is the order of Divine Leader Megatron that we try to convert them. They do not listen to science, nor will they respond to emotional appeals. That leaves force. If they do not respond to that either, then it is our duty to cleanse their spirits by the boiling of their metal."

"It is my belief that the day will come when our Divine Leader smites this entire area and every foul heathen within it." Jackboots' comments ended.

[Vallermoore]

Space

SteelHard dialed the number within his body that meant Foreign Invasion and was soon put through to the Military. "A huge spaceship that looks like an oil tanker is heading towards Cybertron, but two of our gang who entered it lost their bodies. We pinged it and found it was an enormous changeling. It must have bust the shielding and drained those two dry. If hundreds of Decepticons were tricked into entering it, they would suffer the same fate."

SolarTempest and the others opened fire on the relatively fragile chitin only to find that it was able to heal itself, must to their frustration, and was able to generate blasters and fire back, hitting one adjunct with a glancing but slightly damaging blow that scorched the paint off his side. The cargo-bots started swearing angrily at the fighters to come back and protect them. When the Decepticon Military radioed in and said that they might as well leave the ling for them, they went on their way, taking the bodies with them. It turned out that it would be easy enough to reactivate them, once they had powered them up again. In draining the love, the ling had drained all the power from the bodies, which would need to be jump-started to get them going again, like Masher had done with his son Stomper. Soon enough the two could mind transfer back, where they were met by a slightly annoyed SolarTempest. "Now you two see why my orders in a battle situation need to be obeyed. Good thing that ling was not running a jammer or you could have died."

When they reached the oil planet they found five Decepticons from a small raid gang about to sink their own oil derricks into it.

*****
Giant Changeling Battle

For most bots, entering F-rafa would rapidly lose them their bodies as they were drained dry of love and with it, power. As it turned out there was no love of any kind to drain. As the soulless bot got closer to the nervous system, chitin *blasters*formed from the walls, but had to be very careful at firing in case they hurt the ling itself. Tentacles also formed from the walls, trying to catch him and pull his limbs right off his body. The chitin they were made from whilst tough, was not proof against a Decepticon blaster but they did come from many angles at once. Taking down this ling would not be an easy thing even for a soulless Decepticon to do.

*****
Afterlife

F-rafa shifted her tactics and shape, shifting into the form of a huge octopus, trying to catch Megatron with chitin tentacles so that she could pull him into pieces or at least pin him down and try zombie-like to remove his equivalent of a brain to get at the love inside. She also ceased to fire any energy at him trusting her tentacles to do their job. By now she was starting to take damage, as Megatron could scorch her chitin quicker then she could use her love energy to regrow it, but her sheer size kept her from so far taking fatal wounds. Green changeling ichor started leaving her wounds. She budded off a much, much smaller bud and this one would take the shape of Leader Megatron. . However, it's size, that of Megatron's normal size, had seriously lowered the bud's intelligence, at least until it could gain love from somewhere. It set off towards Cybertron, masked by the main body of F-rafa.

Vallermoore

When he went back to the First Temple Fire Eater was surprised to find it stuffed to the gills with willing worshipers, and Warfire was delighted and gave the OK to expand. It would take longer then Fire Eater wanted, but soon other Temples would indeed rise and other Priests would be sent in to lead them. More then fifty temples would rise over the whole country. Not all these new believers understood at first the exact details of Megatronism, as there were requests for things like marriage ceremonies for example.

Meanwhile Forintel sent a couple of covert agents to make contact with the leaders of the Megatronist Party to say what their party line should be.

Cybertron
MasterBlaster's Mansion

The fact that MasterBlaster had long since stopped being a human was not, in his mind-boards, going to stop him from celebrating his birthday. He went and brought himself some fine Decepticon fireworks, some new games for himself, and got some Energon Supreme from his vaults His entire gang and Vintage were invited, and there was music, feasting on fine Energon, fireworks that even on firework-loving Vallermoore would have been illegal due to their sheer size, *gifts* that MasterBlaster paid for of course and for the non human bots a song that they found strange "Happy Birthday!" MasterBlaster had to explain to them that a birthday was a biological's equivalent of a Sapience Day and that he was an immigrant who had once been a human.

Riverside, Coltan

The Coltani bots that Loyal Star encountered were cringing and unhappy, and plenty of Enforcers, the Megatronist equivalent of the Inquisition, were in the area. On Cybertron Loyal Star had only seen one Enforcer once, here the population was clearly terrorized. When Loyal Star met Jackboot, his new superior, he took in everything he had to say. To his dismay, Jackboot was very different to the kindly Fire Eater who had accepted him as an acolyte when he was just a sapient pony, or Smooth Talker. His idea of Megatronism was to scare it into people. After a few days, looking carefully around to make certain no Coltanis could overhear him, Loyal Star did a deep bow and said "I'm not saying this to deliberately undermine you-only you me and Domintel can hear it. But Energon attracts more bots then water. Would not being pleasant to the Coltanis-helping take the mentally sick who can't defend themselves to Debugging, emphasizing the many, many good points of Megatronism, soon turn them into faithful Megatronists instead of pagans? If niceness does not work, then Enforcers are needed, and certainly paganism should be rooted out. But the average Coltani will respond far better to kindness then fear. I was once a sapient pony and a Harmonist before I saw the light of the true religion and the supreme God."

Even though he was saying this totally privately as advice, and being careful to show respect as well, Loyal Star was about to realize how different some Megatronist Priests could be from the kindly Fire Eater. To Jackboot, this was nearly heretical and he saw it not as polite private advice but as a direct challenge to his Priestly authority . Also although Loyal Star did not know it, Jackboot had once lost a body to pony cannon fire when Equestria was invaded, and had a deep dislike for sapient equines and Harmonism as a result.

*****
On another planet, the slave virus that held one of the Coltani slaves in it's thrall and kept him as a cross between a housekeeper and a young child suddenly broke when his *Coder* was with him. Unlike Megatron, who both regularly reinforced Butler's virus and treated him well enough so he was not trying 24/7 to break it, Perfect, as he called himself, didn't bother to check on the virus and humiliated his slave so often that the slave spent as much time as he could trying to get free. Perfect was about to be in a battle that he was not expecting.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Space

The zombie overseer laughed when the changeling "ship" started to blast him. He didn't bother to dodge; after all, what do a few holes mean to a body that's already supposed to be dead? Instead, he blasted with all of his power, cutting off the tentacles that got too close, and then fired away at the cockpit area once more. Then, in one swift move, he used one hand to get the Changling Zombie Virus out of his leg panel and throw it against the interior walls of the ship. Now, if this changeling bud got deactivated, it'd zombify and end up under Mine #1's control. Immediately after that, he flew out of the body.

"The defense is pretty much nothing," he laughed over his radio, as if oblivious to the coolant that had poured out of him. "This thing can't compete with what's already dead!"

"Let's storm it!" Overseer ordered, and now, the other nine soulless flew toward F-rafa's ship-like body with extreme violence - and the goal of capturing a new zombie slave - in mind. This new slave would be extremely valuable once chipped and ordered to change into a robot-like form. Overseer's plan was to deactivate it, and while it was defenseless, chip it up. Then when the zombie virus activated, it'd be too late for the new slave to try to get away.

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

F-rafa was able to hide her Megatron bud in the afterlife, but to get it to Cybertron, she had to let it leave her shadow and go to the mundane realm without her. Megatron didn't see it leave, but once it did, it would soon find itself on radars F-rafa hadn't even realized existed.

Far from Cybertron, F-rafa's artificial Megatron flew toward its destination, now somehow solid in the physical realm. Unfortunately for F-rafa, the Megatron Regime was well-known for its efficacy at exterminating traitors. This meant that those with strong but not-so-loyal thoughts tended to operate far from the Empire and DomIntel. There, they still did raiding, but they could talk more openly without losing their Decepticon status. However, they did not have the opinion of Megatron that F-rafa had been expecting.

It was these near-traitors who saw Faux-Megatron first.

"Well will you look at that. If it isn't our darling leader, all the way out here with no army at all!" The shrill voice went out to four other bots over the radio, who quickly stopped flying and looked in the direction their scout was pointing. Sure enough, they saw what appeared to be Megatron flying through space.

"He looks sort of weak!" One said with an ominous tone. "He's going pretty slowly! Look, he's not even using his foot jets. It's some sort of backup propulsion system." The lack of fire from the feet was notable; the usual system for space flight created an obvious flame from the duel-fuel jets that were typically used.

"Not only that," said another, "he hasn't gone into FTL! That body must be barely working!"

The bots remained in plane mode, but they didn't have to show their faces for all of them to know enough about what each other were thinking. They'd been working way out here for years just so they could cuss out the regime and not get killed for it. And now, here was the "leader" of that regime, apparently so broken down that he not only couldn't use FTL, but couldn't even use proper rocket-type fuel. It looked like it'd take him years to get to Cybertron at this rate. But he wouldn't have years left to travel...not today...

"Time for regime change!"
"Let's kill him! We'll prove he's not a god!"
"REVOLUTION TIME!"
"To the SLAG with him!"
"Put your jammers on!"

With jammers running, the long-rankled gang flew into combat distance as fast as it could. The second they were close enough to aim, they opened fire on F-rafa's Megatron lookalike with full power. Every blast was aimed for the head and chest with full intent to completely deactivate the dictator. Their jamming frequencies filled the area. There was no doubt that they were absolutely serious about taking out what they saw as a weakened, and likely barely-running, enemy.

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

Afterlife

Megatron laughed in a grating way when F-rafa turned into an octopus, and his eyes glowed with the slightly-dark red of a Decepticon who figures a win will soon be coming. Octopus tentacles - at least the genuine kind - were very sensitive. This was needed to give them their ability to open up things like oyster shells, which were far smaller than a mature octopus. They were also much weaker at the ends than F-rafa's original shape was. He quickly sent off eight fusion cannon blasts, one for each appendage, aiming at the thin ends. This, he hoped, wouldn't just burn off the ends (an effect he figured was almost a given since thin parts are weaker than thick ones), but also hurt like hell and cause massive distraction to the enemy. Immediately after firing those blasts, he machine-gunned off several much smaller ones. These were aimed at the suckers on the tentacles, which would have plenty of sensation if she'd made a good copy of the actual animal.

Before waiting to see her reaction to this, he began flying in an effort to get far below her. An octopus' mouth is in the middle, facing down. If she had copied the 'pus correctly, she'd have one there, too - and it'd be the perfect opening to her fragile inner body for him to put a full-powered blast into! All he'd have to do is get there without getting caught by whatever remained of her shot-up tentacles. He flew very low, outside of their current range, to increase his chances.

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


Oil Planet

As long as the other gang didn't attack, its presence wouldn't be a problem. The oil planet had been shrunk a lot through the centuries, but it was still a planet, and there was plenty enough for a regular gang to take its fill without even making a noticeable difference in the amount of loot left. SolarTempest directed his gang and adjuncts to land a long way away - what would be over the horizon and out of sight once on the "ground" - and hoped that the others weren't suicidal.

Landing was far from being a standard process since the surface of the planet was now oil instead of anything solid. While still in orbit, some of the cargo-bots opened their doors, and a few of the fighters flew over and retrieved huge metal panels. Then, they all descended. The fighters dropped the panels from low in the sky, and as the panels neared the ground, inflatable pontoons automatically sucked in air and inflated themselves. After that, both the fighters and SolarTempest's gang did pinpoint landings on what seemed to them to be tiny targets. The cargo-bots themselves had to circle several times and lose a lot of speed, but once they did, pontoon-type landing gear came out instead of the regular kind. They came down like sea-planes, leaving huge wakes in the brownish-black crude which soon calmed.

SolarTempest was clearly impressed by the professionalism of his adjuncts and their solution. It was obvious that whoever came up with the method had done this before, perhaps for the IOPC. SolarTempest was fortunate that the transport company had hired that particular logistician; his methods made this project far easier than it could have been.

Before long, they got their pumps running, using a few floating panels to hold the equipment. Cargo-bots lined up and let their internal tanks - which they had specifically for oil-hauling jobs - be filled.

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

Vallermoore

The ForIntel agents soon found the leaders of the movement to found a Megatronist party, and a covert meeting was arranged.

After clearing the room for bugs, and making sure no live counterespionage agents were close enough to use extreme "hearing aids" to listen in directly, they began the meeting. After giving bows and thanking the Megatronists for their service, they started to speak.

"Right now, the political arm of Megatronism needs to establish itself as an actual political party - one that is at the technological forefront and that will bring Vallermoore fully into flower as an advanced nation. Our official platform shall mostly aim for what pro-Megatronists have always pushed for: Deregulation, especially where silly requirements are involved; a lack of new regulation; and a cultural shift towards legal self-sufficiency. Work to make it easier to "get off" of assault and murder charges for self-defense. Lower the penalties for various kinds of theft - in some cases, it's currently legal to sentence a thief to death! Change that. No one should be killed by the State for being a Decepticon - just as no one should be expected to rely on the State to defend against someone practicing the Way against him.

"Don't go against the death penalty as a thing, though. Eventually, we'll need it for the infidels." The spy's eyes narrowed menacingly at the last sentence. "We need to get things set up so that what WE do is legal. But eventually, it should be illegal to NOT do things in the Decepticon Way. Of course, don't publicize this part. Not until we actually have total control, that is."]

~~~~~~~

After discussing politics, the ForIntel agent discussed short-term PR plans.

"Megatron, as you know, is also against cars. This place is infested with cars and ground-based public transportation. We have to change that. It shouldn't feel like flying into an Autobot stronghold for a Cybertronian to come to a Decepticon-loving area like Vallermoore."

"We think it'll be easiest if cars aren't banned, but are rendered obsolete - by modern hovercrafts. This will still let everyone who can afford it, or can't steal it, have personal transportation, and importantly, it'll follow the spirit of the Divine Wish that every Decepticon be able to fly. You, the Megatronist Party, shall push this element first, and very publicly - everyone loves an upgrade that actually works! Of course, once this new option is ubiquitous, you are to start putting in bills that will ban or at least severely restrict Autobot-style vehicles."

"What you do is promote this hovercraft idea for all you're worth - and say you're 'funding research' into technology that will revolutionize personal transportation. Of course, that technology is going to come straight from Cybertron, but don't say that. We'll set up a 'lab' as a front operation here. That way, it'll look like you're building up Vallermoorian STEM people and doing even more good. It'll also allow the public to donate money to the lab..." The spy's eyes flashed clear red; nothing else needed to be said to proper Decepticons-in-Spirit.

"Once you reveal the technology in a year or so - and go through all of the safety administration hoops that you haven't been able to get rid of or nerf - you set up factories to produce them. These factories will be openly owned by the Megatronist Party. This will make you into big Job Providers and big affordable hyper-modern transportation providers - both of which will up your power with the electorate. Pay well - this factory will be a PR move as much as it'll be a way to get funding for the Party. The goodwill'll get more of you into power. The factory will also open up avenues for black PR against our opponents, if it's even necessary. Don't do any black PR with it now; just leave the opportunities open. For example, go ahead and hire some heathens - I think the law here doesn't allow discrimination anyway - and don't try to drum them all out unless they're actually trying to sabotage the place."

"One last thing. You need a better name for the party. Pretty soon, the Christians will be in full preservation mode and will convince all they can that a vote for the 'Megatronist Party' is a vote against Christ. Most of them will ignore this preaching if their faces aren't rubbed in it. So how about something more religiously neutral, like the Future Party or the Party of Advancement. Or maybe even the Freedom Party! Or both! The Freedom and Technology Party! Ha ha," he chuckled. "You get the idea. Tie into whatever Vallermoorians usually want. Everybody loves to think they're free and futuristic, though, except for some Luddites, so that's what I'd go with. But call it whatever you think will sway them the most, as long as it isn't something un-Decepticon."

"Oh, wait. Here's one more thing." The agent got a thumb drive out of his pocket and tossed it across the table. "Run that on a computer that doesn't have, and never will have, an internet connection. And don't give copies to just anyone. Only your most trusted lieutenants should ever know this even exists. Use it wisely." He handed over another, identical-looking thumb drive. "This is the latest batch of Temple materials. Leave it wherever you want." Clearly, the decoy was meant to be left where it'd be found, while the other drive was to be a deep secret.

Later, they would find that they had been given an English copy of part of the Advanced Educational Data Pack's Connivery Series. It was the module titled Subversion of Democracy.

[Vallermoore]

Space

F-rafa changed shape again into a huge snake, curled into a circle of coils and opened a mouth showing huge fangs, whilst *blasters* appeared along the sides and tried to riddle the attackers with magical fire.


Traitors V Faux Megatron

These traitors had been away from Cybertron for many decades to avoid being blasted or worse still, melted down, but just because they were traitors under Decepticon law, it did not mean they didn't agree with most of the Decepticon Way, especially the bit about how to deal with enemies. Upon seeing what they thought was a clearly badly damaged Megatron all alone, they flicked on their jammers-with no other Decepticons nearby, none could object, and they knew what Domintel must surely have done to their own spares. The first to attack got a nasty surprise; out here he had not received the anti-changeling upgrade, and his love such as it existed was pulled out in seconds, forcibly powering him down and killing him. His soul would end up within the Realm of Punishment.

The avatar of F-rafa was only made of changeling chitin and flesh and bone, and quickly exploded into tiny fragments under the blasting of the other four bots, leaving very little behind.

Afterlife

F-rafa's beak was immensely strong and capable even of biting Megatron's body in two-if she could get him. Having quite badly damaged the tentacles whilst staying well out of their way-Megatron knew well what those tentacles could do to him if they connected- he waited until the beak was almost within biting range and agape and blasted right up into the ling goddess's sensitive insides. The body of the huge Goddess, who was almost the size of Cybertron, exploded, and Megatron had to turn on a force field to avoid losing a body. As it was, he was pushed back hundreds of miles. What remained apart from asteroid sized chunks of chitin was a huge amount of concentrated love energy. Megatron could just absorb it if he wanted, but if he did it in the wrong way, he would become as mentally soft and sappy as a sapient pony in love and Debugging would have major work to do. If however he used his magic to redistribute the love to the Changelings of the universe and let them know it was from him, it would feed every ling in the universe for a year and make most of them side with him as their new God there and then.

Oil Planet

The small gang stayed where they were. This planet was so large, that normally highly competitive gangs could co-exist as long as they kept out of each other's way. Soon enough, the cargo-bots would be full to the brim, and the SolarTempest Syndicate would be very wealthy indeed.

*****
Vallermoore

After the Forintel agents had identified themselves in such a way that they were clearly not humans in disguise as Forintel agents, the two groups soon started chatting. Forintel found these were most certainly genuine loyalists, and the loyalists found a lot of helpful information. Whilst taking over a planet with the Decepticon Military had been done so often it was almost routine, there was something strangely exciting and new in subverting a planet from the inside using human loyalists. The PR would be particularly useful. That very evening the Freedom and Technology Party was born. It was surprisingly open about most of it's Cybertronian links with only a few things being hidden.. By the time of the next elections it would be big enough to compete with a good chance of winning seats. At this stage, things like ballot box stuffing were kept to a minimum as it was best if it grew without scandal and won seats fairly..

And what they had to say made a lot of sense. There were indeed far too many regulations in ordinary life. Police were overworked and could not be there all the time; people should be allowed to carry weapons outside the home and defend themselves if they had to. Cars were seriously dangerous , whilst sky-cutters were useful but didn't carry very much, and they were working on hovercraft that would be better then cars.

*****
Fire Eater got a surprise visitor...somebody from the Royal Palace asking how he would feel about talking to Queen Yocasta of Vallermoore who was interested in Megatronism and had a lot of praise for the Empire and it's ruler too.

*****
Perfect's Mansion

Perfect only just dodged a blast from his Coltani *offspring* and the two circled each other. "I adopted you, I saved you from a life in the mines and you want to blast me or even kill me?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Space

The traitors were amazed, and then extremely disappointed, when Faux-Megatron blew up as biological parts instead of robotic ones.

"That must have been one of those changeling fools we've heard them talk about over the radio!" One said angrily. He fired a few extra blasts at the debris field out of frustration. "Here I thought we finally had him!!"

"And now, Meltdown over there is deactivated." Another said, approaching the inert metal form. "He doesn't look damaged, though...let's take him to somewhere with gravity and try to get him running again."

They agreed that it'd be a good idea to attempt to reactivate their friend, and soon, landed on a moon large enough to have the needed gravitational pull to do physical work without hassle. There, they soon found that Meltdown had been entirely depowered. One got a small generator out of his side panel - a part of his advanced field repair kit - and set it going. He had to torch his way into the torso panel of the deactivated bot since Meltdown wasn't able to open his panels on his own, but this was the hardest part of what they were aiming to do. Once it was open, it was a simple matter to hook jumper cables to Meltdown's battery and let the generator slowly recharge it. Soon enough, the body would have power again, but what would happen next wasn't yet known.

Far away, on Cybertron, Foreign Intelligence dispatched several agents to the area where they had detected radio chatter about killing Megatron, followed by what seemed to be radio silence and then a spate of aggravated comments. These were obviously very active traitors who had tried to delete what they had thought was the leader! Now, there was no doubt that it would be worth the bother of tracking them down and eliminating them before they could make a better assassination attempt.

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

At the Other Battle

Overseer and his crew weren't too impressed by the snake form, but thanks to it blasting broadsides like some kind of space dreadnaught, they had to be careful. Eventually, Overseer himself managed to dodge the fire while advancing and position himself behind the snake's head. There, he mounted up as if to ride. He then got out his chipping gun and fired a chip directly into the base of the snake's head. Inside the body, the chip instantly put forth thousands of thin wires, which wrapped themselves around the nerves of the being's spine.

"Cease now." Overseer commanded. The chip immediately sent electrical charges along the nerves, blocking their actual signals and overpowering them with its own. "You are now property of Megatron Metals Mine #1, Changeling Slave #9450. Change into something useful - An excavator of this design." He projected an image of a large piece of equipment used for strip mining.

There was no real doubt in Overseer's mind that the being would obey now that he had gotten a chip into it. The lesser overseers, on the other hand, held back a bit just in case their boss's calculations were incorrect. Meanwhile, the only nod to the chance of it not working that Overseer gave was to keep his blaster aimed at the same place he had put the chip. If the snake didn't obey, he would open fire, and this would kill it instantly if its innards were set up in the standard biological fashion.

Of course, if it *did* obey, Overseer still intended to kill it because zombies could work until they literally fell apart. They were also even easier to control since their brains didn't create any competing commands for the chip to have to override. But if all went well, he would bring it closer to Earth beforehand so that the trip wouldn't cause wear on its body that it would no longer be able to self-repair.

"I wonder how a changeling got to be so big?" Some of the other overseers wondered as they watched, blasters still ready.

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

Perfect's Mansion

The Coltani wasted no time in telling Perfect exactly what he thought of this "adoption," continuing to fire as he did so. "You didn't save me from anything!" He yelled. "You only brought me here to get your kicks by humiliating me! Making me act like a new-built even though I'm probably older and more mature than you are! And when you aren't doing that, ordering me around as if I'm some nonsapient automaton! Take THIS you pile of ridiculously egotistical reject parts! I'll show you what PERFECT really is!" With that, he scored a direct hit on Perfect's chest, taking out one motion board and scorching those closest to it. After this, he kept firing without a pause, now aiming one blaster at the rest of the motion boards and going for the head with the other one.

Idiot didn't even think to disarm me, and here he was acting like my superior, the Coltani thought. I'll destroy this infuriating fool once and for all and then take his charred boards back home to Coltan to put on my mantle!

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

Vallermoore, Riverside

Jackboots didn't even use words as his response to Loyal Star trying to tell him how to do things. His fist instantly did his talking, leaving a fairly large dent on Loyal Star's head. Before Loyal Star could really process that he was now in melee combat, Jackboots tackled him to the ground and began to pound on the area of his auditory circuits. "Obviously these don't work! Otherwise you would have heard me say I tried talking to these idiots!! Clearly you only repair something when it's totally busted, so take this as your sign to get new ears today!!" He continued bashing Loyal Star's ears - he was clearly being literal about busting them.

"And what's this complete oil sludge about treating these good for nothing infidels more nicely! How dare you suggest offering succor to the opponents of the Great Divine Leader! If you speak like that again, the slag pit in the center of town will be filled with your heretical Metal!" Jackboots continued pounding away. Clearly, Loyal Star would have to fight him off, or else his auditory circuits would indeed be destroyed, and worse yet, his boards would likely be shaken from their moorings - possibly causing the loss of this body's functionality.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Vallermoore

Fire Eater was happy to hear that the Queen wanted to meet him, but like any proper Decepticon, he was also wary that this could be a trick. He agreed to the meeting quite readily, but before the time came, he made sure that his armor was in good order, his anti-jamming was working well, and his blasters were clean and ready for full use. If some kind of assassin came instead, he would be ready to handle it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Soon, the Freedom and Technology Party was set up in a decent, but not yet overly fancy, office. There, the initial members decided that while their "technology" aspect would be marketed as Vallermoorian - and the source of its inventions kept a deep secret - they would admit that they were using some of the political ideologies of Cybertron.

The similarities between the FTP's political platform and the Decepticon Way were obvious, and would soon be figured out anyway. By owning up to that much, the other parties would be stopped from being able to use it as a "scandalous revelation" at some inopportune time. However, they would make sure not to call it the official party of the religion of Megatronism. This would lower the chance of them being seen as a mostly religious party...and the chance of people worrying that they would later try to institute a theocracy.

The Party's first move was to buy an already-existing technology lab that was part of a corporate bankruptcy. This allowed them to spin it like they'd "saved" that lab, even though what they really did was buy it and its equipment at fire-sale prices. Then, they put the word out through the Megatronist Temples that they were hiring, ensuring that it would be packed with like-minded shady types before opening a few token positions to the general public.

Once this happened, the Foreign Intelligence Division sent one agent - in a highly-realistic android human body - to fill one of the positions. This person would be the one who had the technology the lab would "develop" and who ensured that it happened according to plan. When everything was in place, the Laboratory for the Advancement of Vallermoorian Technology was officially opened.

ForIntel's job wasn't just to make sure a hovercraft with decent hauling abilities came about. Its agent would also make sure that the engine was one that didn't run on petroleum, but was too weak for the average Decepticon to want to copy it. If it could get the Vallermoorian people to accept this non-petrol engine, it reasoned, the cost of oil on Vallermoore would plunge and the Empire could buy it for a song. Needless to say, the engine had to be one that Decepticons wouldn't adapt and use themselves, or else Megatron Energon would be negatively affected (as well as the entire raider economy).

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

Afterlife

Leader Megatron quickly flew back to his original position, smiling with satisfaction as he passed a few chunks of biological gore. He finally saw this huge chunk of semi-solid energy floating there. "What on Cybertron is that..." he thought to himself. After a very tentative mind probe, he determined that it was mostly pony energy. While it was said that changelings ate love, he quickly saw that the blob was far more amorphous than that implied. This made sense since every time a changeling managed to lock onto Decepticon love, it ended up raiding ALL of the Decepticon's energy instead of leaving the target as a loveless, but living, being. Apparently F-rafa had done the same to biologicals - first latching onto their love, but then devouring all of their energy after she got her mental hooks in.

It took only a moment for Megatron to realize that he could refine this stuff into Energon. An adaptation of the old Soul-Powered Energon Refinery technology would do the job excellently. Immediately, he used the energy he had been putting toward his construct to build a different construct - a refinery of the proper specifications. Then, he put the machine to work, and Energon Cubes began to pop out of the delivery end. He opened the first one and dipped in a glass that he willed into existence. He took a sip and gave a slight nod. It was suitable.

Megatron laughed a little. The construct he was making before was going to be a huge biological rendering machine. He'd thought he'd have to shove her into it and grind her up, but it turned out that this hadn't been necessary. He never expected that she'd make a body with a nice, hard-to-defend mouth in it and then open that mouth to try to bite him! Looking around, he saw that the beak of that mouth was the only part of her still recognizable. He aimed his fusion cannon and gave the thing a full-powered blast, and soon, there were NO parts left intact. Megatron didn't expect for that beak to be alive, but after blasting it to atoms, he was able to rest easy and be sure of that.

[Vallermoore]

Afterlife

Megatron had to be careful with his mind probe in case the energy tried to possess him or otherwise negatively affected his mind boards. It turned out to be 40% love-mainly kicked up from changeling worshippers-and 60% other energy, and with His godly powers he could refine it into Energon Supreme that tasted almost as good as his own Private Reserve. He would get a lot of Cubes out of this-enough to pay all the costs of running Cybertron for an entire year. It had made the fight so worth it. The goddess's greed for the fiery Decepticon love had led to her downfall. He turned his attention to the rock and when he got close to it, it spoke with a voice in his head. My energies are not for you to hold, Decepticon, and I am a lot stronger then that greedy goddess. Nearby, a magical construct started to form taking the shape of Optimus Prime, and it was clearly the rock building it.

Space

When Meltdown's red eyes came back to life again, he was clearly terrified. "I have been in Hell, toiling away in a human body!" he announced. his engine running with fear until his Bravery Up came under control. "Thank you so much for saving me from that fate."
Unknown to them, Forintel agents were already preparing to defeat them as they were clearly active traitors.

At the Other Battle

To Overseer's relief, since he was dealing with a physical being, the chip worked. What remained of the Changeling Goddess was now a hacked slave, and it did what it was told. "Do you think we might have enslaved something divine in the same way that our Leader is Divine?" an overseer asked. "No ordinary changeling could be this big."


Perfect's Mansion

The furious Coltani wasted no time in telling Perfect exactly what he thought of him. Not only had he made the Coltani work as a house slave, but he had humiliated him by making him act like a little new-built offspring, although in reality he was several centuries old. "You didn't save me from anything! "You only brought me here to get your kicks by humiliating me! Making me act like a new-built even though I'm probably older and more mature than you are! And when you aren't doing that, ordering me around as if I'm some nonsapient automaton! Take THIS you pile of ridiculously egotistical reject parts! I'll show you what PERFECT really is!" He was so angry that he used his jammer, despite the danger to himself. He did get some damage and one motion board was destroyed, but it was not long before his so-called "Coder" was dead on the ground. After taking some choice items and Cubes from the mansion and his owner's scorched mind boards, he would make it back safely to Coltan and later radio his real Coder (who he was on very good terms with) and tell him what had happened to him.

Coltan, Riverside

Loyal Star really didn't want to open fire on his priestly superior as surely that was a bad thing in any religion but he didn't want to lose his body either, so he let his blasters swivel and opened fire with medium power on Jackboots, which blasted him off and wounded him slightly. As he scrambled to his feet, Jackboots said "You are really going to regret this," and then thought a prayer to Megatron. Loyal Star guessed what Jackboots was thinking and he too thought a prayer to Megatron. This was new to Megatron-two of his clergy were calling on his Divine power to use it against not enemies of the faith or those Decepticons who attacked them without good reason, but against each other!!

First Temple of Vallermoore

Queen Yocasta came in with two royal bodyguards-since they were royal bodyguards they had been allowed to keep their weapons despite not being Megatronists. Fire Eater noted to himself that they were machine guns. The Queen of Vallermoore bowed low to Fire Eater as if he were the monarch, put on a pair of gloves so her touch would not leave marks on his metal skin and shook his hand, then turned to her bodyguards. "You can leave me now and wait outside."

"With that...thing? A Decepticon? Those are more full of tricks then changelings."

The Queen's reply was angry. "Decepticons are not *things*, they are as alive as you or me are, at least when past the "baby" stage, and the mind boards of at the least the better educated of them are far cleverer then humans. Yes, they have a formidable reputation, but quite often it's because someone either attacked one, or insulted one. Fire Eater here is a priest, here openly. Why would he kill me? It would lead to Megatronism being banned here. If the Decepticons wanted me dead they would either invade openly or send a secret agent. As long as he never has an unfortunate result, Fire Eater will be alive when you and me are old bones in coffins or mere dust in urns. Even in this size of a body, he is physically stronger then any human, changeling, or pony. Human and animal diseases cannot harm him, although he has to guard against computer viruses. At this moment, I feel as safe with him as I do with a Ponyist Priest or a Christian Priest. Leave now."

When they had gone, the Queen said "Your ruler has maintained his power through many centuries-my royal line has lost nearly all of theirs. And your religion is pretty open about things although you call yourselves Decepticons. Christianity and Ponyism both claim meekness yet have gained empires for themselves, Megatronism is proud about itself openly and I admire it."

*****
The embryo FTP was soon busy thinking of a workable alternative to the car and truck that was better then the sky-cutter or the pegasus pulled chariot and other genuinely useful things that Vallermooreians would like. Privately, they were wondering how to lower the popularity of the moped-sized skycutter. But the majority of things they were planning at least for now were not in fact illegal. Even if the police had managed to listen in, at least 80% of what they heard would be a boring waste of their time from the police's point of view. Things like making safe working hovercraft or setting up Party branches in major cities for example.

Cybertron

MasterBlaster had really enjoyed his birthday and so had his gang once they were told what it was about. "My fellow Fists, without you I would not be where I am today. I hope I can keep things going well and the oil flowing into our vaults."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Leader Megatron was just spotting exactly what the rock, or rock-shaped being, was trying to construct when he detected prayers from two of his Coltan-based religious officials. In only a millisecond, he formulated his response and its method of delivery and then set a program going to fire it off by magic.

Meanwhile, he turned his full attention back to this "Optimus Prime" that was trying to form in. Before it could be completed, he opened fire on it. He also readied a mental command to warp silicon dioxide into its engine and sand into its transmission. If the blasting didn't delete it before it could even get completely solid, he would fire these commands in an attempt to turn it into reject parts. At the exact same time, he quickly opened a portal to his vault and moved his huge pile of Energon through it with the power of his mind. He wasn't going to let all that loot get blown up or stolen, especially not by some counterfeit Prime!

"What in the slag are you?!" Megatron demanded in between reactive steps. "Are you the one responsible for rules on who gets dominion over the souls of the dead?" Megatron wanted to make sure that he wasn't wasting his time even bothering with this odd thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Overseer's Battle

The soulless overseers came closer when they saw that the beast was actually under control. Soon, they radioed for a Megatron Metals cargo-bot to bring a huge sheet of heat shielding, and for other company bots to bring out FTL equipment, fuel cells, and other materials. Once everything was there, they could equip their new piece of livestock as if it were an actual excavator and FTL it into position close to Earth. It would just take longer to accelerate and decelerate it since, as a biological, it wouldn't be able to handle the amount of G-forces that Decepticons routinely encountered.

"A divine being? Like Megatron?!" Overseer responded when he heard this speculation. "It is awfully huge, and may be paranormal, but it certainly can't be like Megatron. We didn't have to do all that much to defeat this thing. Lotsa luck getting the same results in a fight against the Divine Leader!" He said, almost laughing as he visualized the vaporization of anyone who tried that. Of course, he didn't realize that the real fight had taken place in the Afterlife, against a far bigger and more powerful body.

After about an hour, Megatron Metals supply bots arrived with the requested equipment, and they fitted their new captive with everything needed to get it close to Earth in a reasonable amount of time. Once it was almost there, Overseer planned on delivering a fatal blast to the head, ending any remaining ability to think - and any possible chance of it regaining control of its own motions. Despite his apparent victory, he had no real way of knowing if it was really under control or just bluffing. A good blast to the brain would make sure that was no longer a question.

For now, however, he left it in the living state. This would allow it to self-repair any scrapes or bruises that it got from the equipment now attached to it or from minor damage caused by being forced to go at speeds that, while not fatal, would be far faster than a biological body was designed to.

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

A Little-Known Barren Planet

The group was astounded when they heard Meltdown's immediate report of there being a Hell realm and that he had gone to it. He went on to tell them that it was run by sadistic Decepticons who confirmed Leader Megatron's divinity - and who were completely loyal to him. "I was on a chain gang," he related. "There was some exhaust-hole riding around on a big enslaved horse-man demon, and he went around whipping everyone even though we were already working at top speed! But worst of all, we were constantly dry, and the only way to stop the pain and desperation caused by that was to drink water!! But instead of being relieved by the water, we all had our normal anti-water Code stuck on double strength. So we could either feel like we were dying of thirst, or like we were about to short out!"

They began to talk about how amazing it was that Leader Megatron was an actual divinity, and how awful the Realm of Punishment sounded, but their discussion was soon cut off. Jamming was detected, and almost instantly after, hails of Mil-Spec blaster fire rained down, immediately wiping one of them out and severely damaging another. Foreign Intelligence - along with several soldiers - had arrived to exterminate those who had been chattering about killing Megatron not all that long before.

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

Coltan

The newly-arriving Coltani was shocked when he saw his old world and how it had changed. Megatronist temples were all over, and in some areas, there were Enforcers all over the place. The Enforcer-filled areas were notably poorer, and it appeared to be because of severe restrictions on travel and business. He banked, and flew towards his hometown. There, he saw more Enforcers than in the best areas, but far fewer than in the worst. Soon, he landed and banged on his Coder's door.

"CodeSec! You made it back!! I knew no slave virus would hold you for long!" His Coder enthused immediately upon opening the door. He instantly let his offspring in and got him some cold Energon. Soon, they were sitting in the living room telling each other stories of what had gone on since the invasion.

"Megatronism is the new - and mandatory - religion." His Coder, Security King, told him. "If they catch you worshiping anyone else, or proclaiming atheism, they melt you down. This wasn't originally the rule, but the Temple put it into place after the Decepticons had been here for several months. Any areas you see that have a lot of Enforcers walking around are ones that aren't going along with the directive." Security King jerked his head to the side. There, on a table, stood a plaster Statuette of Megatron. "It is best to be 'faithful,' and very obvious and loud about it."

CodeSec, in turn, told Security King all about the "Perfect" Decepticon and how he had been so cocky that he didn't realize that CodeSec had been living up to his real name. "Of course I was constantly concentrating on regaining my freedom of movement, and on top of that, I was constantly probing the enslavement virus for security holes. It wasn't long before I realized that it had several important ones, but it took a while to figure out exactly how to exploit them AND neutralize all of the failsafes. When I did, I got myself some trophies. Including these!" He extracted Perfect's destroyed boards from his leg panel. Usually, a board set wouldn't fit in any storage panel, but he had chopped them into more manageable pieces.

"Once I get back to my own place, I'm going to mount them on the mantle as a trophy to my victory," CodeSec continued. "But before I go, where do I get one of those stupid statues? I certainly don't want to have to re-hack the enslavement virus, or worse, end up in a slag pit!"

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

Riverside

It didn't take long for the two combatants to get their response. The lights flashed off and on before going dim. Almost immediately, the two were aware that the room was now bathed in the light of angry Decepticon eyes, and Loyal Star could see that this light was coming from the big Icon of Megatron in the wall. A loud, angry rev came from the Icon right after that, getting Jackboots' attention. The two quickly stopped their current fight and faced the device.

"You call yourself my clergy and yet you call on me to finish a simple fight for you?!" Megatron's voice came through the Icon. "You are Decepticons! Settle the matter in the proper way! Prepare yourselves properly - and then DUEL!"

"The duel shall involve one properly-prepared body and no jamming. If the winner is Jackboots, Loyal Star shall be reassigned. If Loyal Star is the winner, then he shall have one month to implement his plan. During that month, Jackboots will be temporarily reassigned and Loyal Star will be the 'acting priest' and in control of the Enforcers. If Loyal Star's plan has not shown a greater improvement in Megatronist conversions than Jackboots' methods, the plan will be cut short and Jackboots will be returned to his position. However, if the plan does work, a new Full Priest shall be brought in - one who is on board with the superior method."

"But the first step to any disagreement of this nature is to DUEL! The suggestions of the Strong are worth far more than those of the weak, for in our species, strength is the result of careful thought, advance planning, and superior engineering."

"I shall give you 10 days to prepare your fighting bodies. Then, meet each other next to the Slag Pit in the town center in my name, and show me who's ideas are backed by the most intelligence and the best execution."

With that, the Icon's eyes went dark and the room's lights returned to normal. Not long after, the Icon's programmed appearance returned, with the glower and menacing eyes that Jackboots had programmed through its console.

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

Foreign Intelligence, Coltan Main Office

It didn't take but a minute for ForIntel to lock onto the Coltani arriving from space and track him to his destination. Once he arrived, they switched their feed to the bug and camera in the Statuette of Megatron that Security King had displayed. Agents listened eagerly, hoping to get some real goods so that they could send troops out or at least some Enforcers.

To their surprise, they heard a tale of a slave who had managed to gain his freedom - not by slick talk, but by defeating the Decepticon Government's own enslavement virus and then killing his owner on top of that! This was unheard of anywhere in the Empire. The agents doubted that they'd even heard a rumor of a hacked slave regaining his freedom without outside help.

Soon, they were debating on whether to go collect him as "Empire property," get him and hack how he did it out of him, or even leave him alone. After much talk, their supervisor arrived and gave his order.

"Leave him be," he said. "It is the Way that the weak serve the strong, not the other way around. CodeSec's mind was stronger than the virus, and his fighting skills were stronger than Perfect's. That makes him the Strong, and as such, he should remain free unless he does something that makes him an enemy of the State. He is very determined and skilled, and is an admirable specimen. His feat deserves our respect. I will be recommending that we try to convince him to be a loyalist despite his initial encounter with the Decepticon Race. We won't try that yet - he'll be much too against that idea so soon after his escape - but in the future, we should try to show him that it's in his best interest to be in our corner."

"Of course, his past does make him very likely to turn enemy of the State instead. You are to have live agents constantly monitoring the feed from his Statue as soon as he gets one, and quick to send out a termination squad if he speaks of committing or helping with insurgency."

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

Vallermoore

Fire Eater was quite flattered, and quickly ushered the Queen into his private study. What he did not mention was that he was now running a patch designed to dampen the temptation to take the opportunity to blast her and try to replace her using a hyper-realistic android body! If the monarchy was absolute rather than mostly ceremonial, the patch likely wouldn't have been strong enough. His engine rolled uncomfortably as he did his best to not jump on the obvious opportunity, but he was definitely a Decepticon and a Megatronist - which is to say, he not only thought of what he might be able to pull, but thought of it immediately and had to use tons of willpower to not do it.

"Divine Leader Megatron is constantly working to ensure that he retains his position," he said out loud, closing the door of the study. "And by this, I don't just mean by having a huge intelligence apparatus. He does have one, but he has always said that the real key is to not give Decepticons major reasons to revolt. Intelligence, Foreign and Domestic is there to stop the opportunists, those who would try to take over simply because they want to be the dictator instead, and only lastly those few who have actual disagreement with the government. A few do have actual disagreements, yes, but that's because there's no one thing that'll satisfy everybody."

Fire Eater avoided mentioning the Queen's crazy ancestors as a reason for her Line losing most of its power. Such things fell into the same sort of category that would cover unfortunate results, and would surely be best off not talked about unless she brought it up first.

"As for our openness, we're open and proud because we're good at what we do. Good enough at it to override the drag the name can cause for 'certain activities.' We're far more concerned about SAMs, and I am completely sure that if a bunch of raiders descended on a refinery and drained it, the defenders wouldn't stop firing if we used a different name."

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

Cybertron

MasterBlaster's gang was originally more than a little dismayed to find out that he used to be a human, and for a couple of minutes, a sour wave had gone through the room. Fortunately for him, they decided that he'd brought them enough Cubes with his raid plans that they would be better off to go ahead and go along with him. To their surprise, they ended up liking his party on top of it. Still, they thought celebrating a birthday instead of the day of sapience didn't make a lot of sense. Surely having a body simply function was not more important than having a self-aware and self-directed mind...

[Vallermoore]

Riverside

The voice of Megatron spoke and sounded anything but happy that two of his clergy were fighting each other over doctrinal matters. He made it clear the proper Way in such matters was a duel to the body. If Loyal Star won, he would have a month to prove his ideas were right- if they were proved right, the inhabitants would get a kinder priest. Over the next 10 days, when odd duty both bots strengthened their bodies. Loyal Star added extra thick armour plating to protect all the key areas of his body and strengthened his blasters a bit. He also had a plain in his mind-and that was to make a whole however small in Jackboot's Faraday cage-and then use good old pony lightning magic to roast the circuits. He also used his scrying crystal to secretly spy on Jackboot to see what he was doing to strengthen his body and weaponry and look for any weak spots. He knew it would be a hard fight- but he was willing to risk losing a body for his parishioners. Surely helping them will gain more converts then torturing them to death he thought. At the right time he made his final preparations, turning Bravery Up and pain down, and met Jackboot at the Slag Pit. Jackboot glared angrily and revved his engine, feeling furious at Loyal Star.

Vallermoore

Fire Eater's desire to steal the Queen's life was not due to any desire to be female-such a thing would be a glitch for Debugging to fix. Instead it was a desire for power. He decided to gently see if he could find out how much if any she had and if it was worth a takeover bid. The Queen was clearly slightly worried when Fire Eater's engine rolled as she wondered if she had made a faux pas. She was however unaware of the danger she might be in- if not now then the next time she met Fire Eater.

"Megatron is a true ruler. A secret police can quell plenty of revolt, but not making people furious is the best way. Or doing stupid stuff like the first Queen Yocasta and her daughter kidnapping. I get to choose what I wear eat and watch on TV but my last political choice was twelve years ago when Parliament could not make up it's mind." She then said something that was as dangerous as trying to stroke an alligator or getting too near a Giant Spider. "I thought of trying to create a covert at first Royalist party that would, if it could get enough seats, let me rule again, but only ten or so MPs secretly support that and I don't know how to get more."

That was like stroking the inside of an alligator jaw and most Decepticons would have bit down but Fire Eater realised that he had no android body of the Queen at the moment. So blasting or otherwise killing her right now would just cause a huge international incident that even Vallermoore could not ignore and get him in trouble with Warfire and quite possibly with Megatron too. Because of this he managed to restrain himself this time. As a Decepticon of his calibre Fire Eater would find it much easier to subvert MPs to the *Royal* cause. The Queen was surely rich too.

However, Fire Eater knew what would happen if he got in the way of the plans of his God, and it would be anything but nice, so unless those plans changed the Queen was safe.

Coltan

CodeSec soon went out and brought a statue for a few Cubes. No way did he want to be melted down as a heretic.

On a barren planet

The one who had been in Decepticon Hell fled, trying his hardest not to be deactivated and sent back to that horrible lace, begging for mercy like a craven coward as he did so.

The Rock

The rock spoke. "That is the general sort of thing I do and have done since life began." It paused building it's construct. "And if things go the way they are going, one day you will rule over all, not through overthrowing me- I can teleport away if things get nasty- but though subjugating every planet, every intelligent biological and every robotic life form in the universe."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Riverside, Coltan

Loyal Star saw a very interesting scene through his scrying crystal. Jackboots had another body - clearly a spare - laying on his workbench, and he held a glowing gem onto the center of its torso. I command you under the authority of Megatron, he intoned, reflect all attacks directed at this body back at the sender!

The gem glowed brightly, and then the entire outside of the body did as well. Soon, Jackboots tossed the now-dark soul gem to the side. The soul it contained was now part of the body, and it was forced to use its power to carry out the commanded task. "That's all these lousy infidels are good for." Jackboots said into the air as he opened the body's ports. Soon, he connected his current body's cables to it and did a direct mind transfer. The old body shut down as the new one's engine roared into action.

Defeating such an enchantment wasn't impossible; one of the easiest ways was simply to blast it with too much force for the soul to be able to handle. It was said that there were also magical ways of disenchanting things, though these weren't freely mentioned since the Military's Magical Battalion used enchanted items.

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

At the slag pit, Jackboots revved angrily at Loyal Star's arrival. "You weren't at the Temple for but a day when you got the idea that your n00b ideas should be followed! I've seen plenty of arrogance, but that takes the Supreme!" He crossed his arms indignantly. "Well, that annoyance shall not bother me for long. By the end of this duel, I will be throwing your heretic metal into this pit!" He uncrossed his arms and took a battle stance at one side of the pit, clearly expecting Loyal Star to take position across from him at the usual distance for a duel.

Around them, scared-looking Coltanis slowly positioned themselves so that they could see without getting in the way of stray blasts. Enforcers also took up positions to watch the fight. None of them knew what the duel was about, but they could tell by the new combatant's paint that he was somehow associated with the Temple of Megatron. The stripe, in contrast to Jackboots' full-body paint job, clearly indicated a lesser rank.

"Someone's finally going to blast the Government Thug," a Coltani whispered to the one next to him. "I hope he wins!"

"Be careful," warned his friend. "The new guy may be fighting for the chance to just kill us all!"

Soon, it was clear that the fight was about to begin. The whispers of both hope and fear ceased as the bots of the area watched intently.

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

First Temple of Vallermoore

Fire Eater smiled understandingly at the Queen's comments. "Wresting control from a democracy is quite hard," he agreed. "Attempting to directly recruit Royalists from the existing pool of MPs would be incredibly dangerous. If one of them leaked that he was even approached, it would be awful PR for you and set your cause back by decades. Pro-democracy people are amazingly protective of their...system."

"Subversion of Democracy is actually a full area of study on Cybertron," he admitted. "But as your Foreign Intelligence people can probably tell you, the mere presence of full Advanced Educational Data Pack series on the subject has not resulted in Decepticons becoming the dictators of other places. So far, every planet under Megatron's control has been taken militarily." Despite referencing what would likely seem to be amazing information, he made sure not to mention what he thought would actually work to subvert a democracy. After all, his own religion's party was busy using what they hoped would be effective methods at the very moment!

Fire Eater moved to a chair and graciously pulled it out for the Queen. His diplomatic AEDPs were definitely coming in handy now, and he seemed quite charming without going too far. "Have a seat, and feel free to ask whatever you'd like..."

After the Queen took a seat, he went to his locker and got out two glasses. One he filled with water, and the other he filled with Energon. Then, he gave the Queen the water, pulled up a chair for himself, and set the Energon on the desk near it. Finally, he sat down and waited for Her Highness to ask any specific questions she had about Megatronism, or to discuss anything else that was on her mind.

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

Freedom and Technology Party Headquarters

The party had rented a building in the capital as its headquarters, though the technology lab was in a fairly close - but suburban - location. This address would look the most impressive and serious for a political party, and would give off the subconscious vibe of having already made it. After all, all of the real politicians were in Grand City!

Now, Megatronists looked over the baffling array of documents needed to comply with all of Vallermoore's political funding and electioneering laws. "There are way too many laws! We have to get rid of them!" Said the pony reading the instruction booklets. "This is enough to make my brain melt."

"We should ask Cybertron to handle it," a human replied. "They could certainly make short work of all of this!"

"No, no," the pony said, curling his tail around his flank pensively. "We can't have any scandals. If our registration fees turn out to be paid by someone hacking 'paid' into the system, we'll lose before we even start."

"We don't have to call the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank to file everything, just someone who actually knows what the laws are..." The human said with a little grin.

"It is the Decepticon Way to use connivery whenever there's an opening." The pony retorted. "Which is fine. But I think the Cybertronians would see 'openings' that we could never continue to fit through. I'll just keep poring over this stuff until I get it."

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

In another room, political strategies were being discussed. Currently, the party wasn't established enough to make a serious run for the prime ministership, and it didn't even have enough publicity to score MP seats in areas that had any serious competition. Soon, they decided that they would start out running for lesser, more local seats. A few Megatronists had already gotten some, but now, the party wanted experience that could be taught to everyone else under its umbrella.

"By running for local seats like town council, we can get a taste for how campaigning is done here and what methods the people are most impressed by. But we'll have to do this in many different towns. Otherwise, we could end up basing our methods on something that really only works in one little place." Said an older human man who had likely seen plenty of elections directly but not paid a huge amount of attention to those outside of his own area. "We must also be prepared to lose a few times. This is not only the legit way, but it will also help defuse any accusations of ballot-box stuffing that...could come up later. After all, if our win/loss ratio looks right, such accusations will naturally seem groundless..."

The others in the room nodded and instantly picked up on the mischievous look in his eyes. Their own eyes shined back in the biological way.

"The soonest election that'll be coming up is in two months," a younger woman said. She pointed at a map and indicated a small town. "It's a special election to replace a council member who was in a car accident about a month ago. That doesn't leave much time to campaign, but it's certainly not impossible to take this seat. A new Megatronist Temple just went up there, and I believe we should run this member: Zell Olesson. He owns a construction company of local success and has successfully evaded charges for forging permits. So far, everyone thinks he was innocent."

Another party planner piped up. "Our investigation reveals that if we can get him in, we essentially get three other officials by proxy. The head of the zoning commission, the building inspector...and the town treasurer." At the mention of the treasurer, everyone perked up. They didn't even need to discuss the possibilities for shenanigans that would exist if they could get a corrupt treasurer on their side!

"The only possible problem is the town attorney. He's a straight arrow and he despises Olesson because he knows that Olesson's a big, well you get the idea. So we'll have to do everything all legit-like, at least for now."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Afterlife

Megatron internally "hmmphed" at the rock's claims.

"Lots of deities claim to have been around since the dawn of time," he said with obvious disbelief. "And many claim to have final dominion over souls. What reason do I have to believe your claims, instead of the more likely scenario that you took over that power from someone else~" Megatron let the implication that he could take the same power from the current guy left unsaid, though he expected this rock-shaped being to be smart enough to figure it out.

"That said, I appreciate your recognition that some day, I will rule all that lives. But as should be obvious, that would leave my objective incomplete. I seek total domination of the universe - and not just the living part. This entire area, other than the part claimed by me, is full of souls who are not my subjects." He paused for just a short time before going on. "It would be very inefficient if I had to take over each part of this realm piece by piece like in the land of the living, when I could simply transfer all of the souls here to my own territory directly..." Megatron's eyes narrowed.

As he spoke, he gave the rock a quick scan to search for weaknesses. He also made sure to keep his fusion cannon on the Prime construct; if he saw it get even one atom's worth more completed, he would be sure to let fly.

The rock's claim of teleporting away, Megatron figured, wasn't worthy of a response. If they fought and it did that, he would just teleport after it and finish the job!

~~~~~~~~~~~

On a Barren Planet

The Military death squad was both relentless and skilled, and soon, Meltdown was the only one left functional. Normally, there would be no mercy for one like him at all. However, as they closed in, one soldier thought of how this gang had peacefully gone far away from the Empire and had only succumbed to the temptation that everyone (at least every Decepticon) would feel if they thought they had a chance for an easy victory against an enemy. The mercy was tiny, but there was just enough to prevent a transfer right back into the Realm of Punishment.

"I claim this soul for Leader Megatron," the soldier said in his own mind, as the blaster fire caught up with Meltdown and turned him into unidentifiably-tiny pieces of scrap. Less than a second later, a gem filled at the Temple of Lost Souls. Inside, Meltdown would eventually be subjected to enough pain to force him to produce energy for the Empire for a thousand years, so he certainly didn't get off easy - but it wouldn't quite reach the level of torture the Realm of Punishment would have provided.

Later, that soldier would be sanctioned for showing any mercy at all to rebels. He would spend most of the rest of this stint, and all of the next one, assembling non-essential items in a Military factory. But first, he would spend the maximum sentence under the control of a disciplinary enslavement chip, cleaning sludge out of oil tanks.

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

Space

SolarTempest's gang took a while to fill all of its cargo-bots with oil, but once they did, they wasted no time in taking off. The planet was big enough that there was no need to fight for control of it against the other small gang, but the big gang and its adjuncts knew that one of the syndicates might show up and try to take over the entire thing if they waited too long.

Soon, they were outside of the world's gravitational pull and on their way back to the Raid Dropoff Point at the Cargo Zone. This Dropoff Point wasn't always in operation, but Megaton Energon personnel were called in whenever one of the transport companies expected a huge haul. Of course, Megatron Energon was sure to make a call of its own when this happened, this one to the government's tax agency. A tax-bot was dispatched immediately and arrived just as Megatron Energon's people showed up with the billions of Cubes it would need for the expected trade.

Notably, some of the many security bots that accompanied the Megatron Energon detail showed signs of having been in a recent battle. A few groups had tried to intercept them. These groups had failed, but had left their marks on the security detail before that happened.

At the outskirts of the Decepticon Zone of Control, SolarTempest also encountered several bots who became consumed by greed when they saw so many slow-flying cargo-bots. "They're full of OIL!" said radio chatter from many different directions. Soon, the fighter escorts were in full battle against a variety of raid gangs. Meanwhile, the cargo-bots continued towards Cybertron, accompanied by some escorts who didn't join the fighting.

Assuming all went well, this raid would be successful enough to put the Cybertronian Business Association on the map. It wouldn't yet be considered a syndicate, but it could look forward to many bots - some worthy, most not - attempting to join. SolarTempest would soon learn the value of the new-member duels since these duels would weed out the unworthy ones who would only cause the gang to lose battles and fail at raids if they were allowed in.

[Vallermoore]

Riverside, Coltan

When Loyal Star saw the soul-enchantment, his crystal let him know that it was a pony soul, and he knew a spell of exorcism that would remove that. He didn't feel cocky though, as Jackboots might also have very strong armour, powerful magic of his own or other tricks that he could not even guess at. Removing the soul enchantment would just render his foe vulnerable and would not in itself damage the armour at all. He hoped his own strengthened armour would stand the pounding it would get until he could crack his foe's Faraday cage. If he could just crack that cage, some pony magic would fry the electronics inside nicely, but cracking the cage would be anything but easy. He was up against no doubt a seasoned warrior. Just before the battle began he said openly "I heard a rumour that Jackboots was once a pony stallion." Suggesting that his foe was not Cybertronian-built was an insult as bad as calling a pony a changeling or saying horrible things about a human's mother. It was designed to infuriate his foe into doing something rash.

As the duel began, he cast his spell and the soul vanished into the afterlife with a green glow for a few seconds. A weak blast in case it bounced back scorched Jackboot's paint slightly and the the battle really started, Loyal Star trying to break his foe's Faraday cage and not be blasted to scrap before he could do so.

First Temple of Vallermoore

"You are most certainly right. Is the automatic fate of biologicals within the Decepticon Empire that of slaves to their Decepticon masters? Or have some managed to avoid such a fate? One day Vallermoore will fall to said Empire either by force or in some other way-it is just a matter of how long it takes." She gave him the silver cross around her neck. "Feel free to recycle that. I was born as a Ponyist, but when Equestria fell like most Ponyists I realised that there were no alicorns left. Then I was told that it was tradition that as Vallermoore's main religion was Christian I had to convert. I don't hate Christians-some have done some good-but I don't see myself as one and never really did. As my job as a human has been a Head of State, Megatron would very likely see me as competition and a threat if I ever tried to join His Nation. But if I was to become a Megatronist and die as a biological when my body withers away, I fear for my soul. With your permission, I would like to take some Megatronist books from the Temple and study it throughly. Your God is indeed supreme but I do not want to take the formal step of swearing loyalty until I know what happens should I die as a biological and a faithful Megatronist."

Freedom and Technology Party

The pony who got the Party legally set up had a good well deserved rest afterwards. As it turned out they would manage to win the town election in Pier Point Town-baby steps, but important ones and in this case, honestly earned ones too. Those who were trying to find scandals to disgrace the fledgling party were unable to do so. The party leaders were very pleased. Meanwhile the plans for safe hovercraft had been nearly completed.

Space

When SolarTempest was pretty close to reaching the Drop-off Point, several ICC adjuncts and one full ICC member blocked his way. "If you want to get that through, we want a tenth of it." Whilst protection rackets were legal on Cybertron, they were both impractical as everyone was a war robot and fully armed, and seen as very Autobot-like as well- not really the sort of thing that Connect would back those under him to the hilt on. Whilst only slightly Autobotish, it was still seen by most bots as a mild disgrace to try and extort other bots and nothing to boast about. SolarTempest would need to decide how to react.

Cybertron

An irritated base general glared at one of his soldiers, who was in the grip of Milintel bots. "High General Shockwave Is not impressed with you at all. For showing partial mercy to a traitor, you will get the maximum hacked penal time, and will then spend the rest of your military stint and all the rest of your next stint in a factory and be dropped for that time from the Great Raid Lottery. That will teach you to obey orders in future."

Afterlife

A probe of the rock revealed it to be computer and yet godly in origin , with a shell of protective magic, and likely to explode like a supernova if the shell was broken. "If you take the souls from the other gods and goddesses they will all team up against you, and why would you want all those souls anyway?" The rock turned on magical cloaking to try and hide from Megatron,but of course he had divine sight and other means of dealing with camouflage.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Pony Afterlife

It was to the delight of the pony soul that he suddenly found himself freed from the painfully-cramped gem that he'd been stuck in since the invasion of Equestria, and he whinneyed and nickered as he danced around. Soon, however, he realized that something was terribly amiss. He was not met by one of the realm's angelic ponies, and not only that, he wasn't dancing on grass. Instead, each hoofbeat brought forth the clang of solid metal.

Before he could even look around to try to understand why this place was so different than expected, a cage dropped over him. This was now pulled forward by magical energy much stronger than any he might have had, and when he balked, the rear of the cage just pushed him forward. Soon, his cage joined a line of a thousand others, and he had to hop up onto a conveyor belt along with the cage to avoid damaging his hooves. He was then carried, with the others, to a far-off destination. He noticed that every second or two, the belt would stop for just a moment before moving on. Fearful whinnies filled the air along with the sound of other ponies asking their cage-neighbors what was going on.

After about an hour of travel, he saw what he never thought he'd see again: Decepticons. They towered over an active area with bored looks on their faces and no sympathy in their body language. Soon, he got close enough to see what was going on at ground level. Fully-automated arms reached out and secured all four feet of the pony that had just entered an apparatus. Another arm reached out and held the head still. Then, yet another one injected something into the back of its neck. Once this was done, the arms immediately retracted and the cages moved up by one. The cage of the treated pony dissipated magically, and that pony trotted off to a clearly pre-determined destination.

Once the new pony arrived at the processing point, he, too, was handled in only one second. He felt the injection of something solid in his neck - and the fact that it had ejected thousands of unknown other solid things that quickly reached into his spine. A second later, his cage disappeared, and he realized the true horror of his situation. He had been chipped, and now, he involuntarily trotted off to the mine where he could very well find himself spending an eternity.

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

On Earth a couple of hundred years ago, there were over 6,000 deaths per hour. The pony diaspora and Equestria itself amounted to a much larger population - and a much larger number of deaths. Now that the Decepticons were in charge of the main part of the Pony Afterlife, this meant that approximately 14,000 pony souls had to be processed every hour. The production line that stallion found himself on was just one of four currently operating, and none of the lines ever ceased. Every second, a new arrival became property of the Decepticon Government. The entire process was automated. Live Decepticons only stood watch to make sure their machines worked as intended and to see to it that no line ever ran out of chips.

Thanks to this system, the Decepticons could not be overrun by the constant torrent of new souls incoming. It also separated the pony populace into two distinct castes: The chipped and the unchipped. Though both were slaves, the unchipped were most definitely of a higher status. They got apples and other incentives to work, while the chipped ones got only the bare minimum to keep them alive and were not allowed to talk about anything but how to work better. Not only that, the Decepticons were often heard discussing how they could reclaim the souls of any ponies who got killed from this realm. Some just wanted to be able to work the same slaves to re-death over and over, but others clearly had more strategic - and more nefarious - plans.

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

Rock

A computer...that means I might be able to just hack him into doing my bidding... Megatron thought silently to himself. He allowed his eyes to glow a bit, knowing that would likely cause the enemy to waste at least a bit of processing power on trying to figure out why they changed brightness. I wonder if it's self-aware like me, or if it was built by some other entity that I'll have to go blast~! In the back of his mind, he remembered the most famous deity who claimed to have this sort of dominion: Yahweh. But if it was Yahweh, Megatron was sure, he wouldn't let any souls go to any other gods at all!

~~~~~~~~~

Outwardly, Megatron laughed at the questions. What was it with idiots and their silly questions?

"And what do YOU want control of the souls for?" He sneered back without answering any of the other guy's questions. He was not going to be the subject of any interrogation; HE was the Great Leader, not this piece of interfering oddity. He especially wasn't going to be interrogated by the thing that he would clearly end up having to either blast or hack the fuark out of.

He did, however, file the possibility of an Afterlife War One into his mind. He would have to come up with a way to neutralize them before he just went ahead and raided every soul and made them his subjects! Or, perhaps, it would turn out to be true that a god without followers would become much less powerful. Then the very solution to the possibility of them all attacking would be to do what he intended to do anyway - take all of the souls! He laughed at the thought, but right now, considered it only one possibility out of many.

But to get the power to make the decision, he would have to "fix" this computer, one way or the other. He began to formulate a basic loyalty virus that would work on the most common OS systems - perhaps it would be better to take over the rock's systems rather than destroying it outright.

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

Vallermoore

Fire Eater held the cross in his hand and looked at it for a moment before setting it on his desk. He let the Queen go ahead and think that it would go to the smelting pits of Cybertron, but he knew that a cross surrendered willingly by the Queen of Vallermoore herself would have a different destination: The National Museum on Cybertron. It would first be checked for bugs, and any that were found would be removed and melted down. Then it would surely end up on display in a bigger exhibit dedicated to chronicling the advance of Megatronism.

"You changed your religion because of tradition?!" The Megatronist Priest blurted out. It was probably the most shocking thing he'd ever heard, and that was saying a lot. After a noticeable pause, which would have been longer if it wasn't for his processing speed, he said, "No wonder you didn't really have any loyalty to the new one! But note that the Divine Leader will be rightfully skeptical if Megatronism ever becomes the national religion and you convert again. He would want to see some really convincing evidence that you mean it." He moved his head toward his desk. "Will it be bad PR if you're seen without your old symbol there?" He paused, intentionally this time. "Or doesn't it really matter since you don't have to worry about winning elections?"

The Decepticons looked down on such mindless forms of tradition, finding them antithetical to logical analysis and contrary to the goal of ever-growing upgrades. Fire Eater did his best to be polite, but part of him now thought Yocasta was a candidate for emergency debugging.

"Now. Onto more serious matters: What happens to those who stay biological. As I said during the debate, Divine Leader Megatron has created new realms just for biologicals. There's a Realm of Pleasure, a Neutral Realm, and a Realm of Punishment, same as for robots. However, the biological-oriented realms are set up with the needs and desires of biologicals in mind. Or, in the case of Punishment, with the things that biologicals don't want in mind."

"Of course, Divine Leader Megatron still strongly prefers that all Megatronists get the Ultimate Upgrade. If you do not, you will only reach the Realm of Pleasure if there are serious extenuating circumstances. The first resident, for example, found himself in combat with someone he thought was a regular human, but in fact had actually gotten the Upgrade. Needless to say, he was killed almost instantly by the full Decepticon's vastly superior firepower and barely even knew what hit him. Since he had no way of having any idea of what he was getting into, he was forgiven the normal 'loser points' that would go with provoking a superior foe. But that wasn't the only reason he made it to the Realm of Pleasure. He was also a Great Conniver, responsible for many multimillion-chingching scams~~" He stopped talking suddenly, realizing that he'd just given away the person's area of operations by his mention of a specific currency type. "Ah well," he said, recovering quickly. "He's dead now, and it's not like you can send police to where his soul is."

"In any case, his success at scamming made him an exemplary practitioner of the Decepticon Way. This was the final requirement for a place in the Realm of Pleasure."

"As for you..." Fire Eater shook his head slowly. "We have no records of massive raids, scams, or other Decepticonlike activity directly committed or ordered by you. The tabloids have also not accused you of any sort of criminality. This tells me that you are not a Decepticon-in-Spirit. Those who are not on board with the Decepticon Way will not fare well. For most, I wouldn't say this, but...it would be inadvisable to put your soul into the hands of the Divine Leader if you are not an enthusiastic supporter of his Way."

"The fact that you - at least officially - converted to Christianity for 'tradition' or appearances is another problem, and it's a big one. It's a sign that you would also leave Megatronism if you thought that your membership didn't look good to the public. Megatron will therefore see a conversion with suspicion..."

"All that said, only the Divine Leader knows for sure which realm someone would be sent to. It's entirely possible that you've worked such great connives so secretly that you've never even been suspected!"

Fire Eater got up and beckoned for the Queen to follow him. "The literature is in the Temple Store," he said. "That's right this way..."

After going down a hallway, Fire Eater opened the door to the store. Immediately, humans and ponies who were browsing recognized the queen and rushed to mob her for autographs and selfies. Fire Eater quickly slammed the door back closed and used his engine pattern to lock it. "Um...I'll have some people clear the regular customers out for now," he said. "If you go ahead in, what'll happen is a zillion more people will overhear what the attraction is and will keep on coming until the end of time."

Once some Assistant Priests and ushers cleared out the already-growing crowd, Fire Eater opened the door again. Now, they could see two big display bookcases full of materials and a couple of pamphlet stands with quickie versions of important doctrines.

"Now...go ahead and take your pick. For you, it's on the house."

Space

SolarTempest's main gang was outnumbered, but he knew that this time, he had about a thousand fighters in with his group as adjuncts. This gave his entire group easily-superior numbers. Without hesitation, he radioed them with a secret command word, and immediately, the cargo-bots dropped back keeping only a small number of fighters with them. The rest of the fighters got into a military formation - not one devised by the Decepticon Military, but one devised by their company to beat the counter-formations that attackers were the most likely to use.

"Outta my way, peasants!" SolarTempest yelled over his radio, and immediately, he, his gang, and his adjuncts all opened fire on the ICC bots. Those bots, who had likely been trying to avoid a fight by demanding only 10% of the loot instead of all of it, now found that this attempt had failed. They would either have to fight a massive battle against a bigger force or turn tail and fly away quickly. As they considered this, one of them was blasted to bits and another had a large gouge blasted across his wing. "I said outta my way," SolarTempest repeated.

This sort of extortion wasn't quite a protection racket because the ICC bots hadn't actually offered to protect them from any other raiders in exchange for cooperation. However, it was a derivative - and one almost guaranteed to provoke a battle response. One of the reasons it was hardly ever used in situations like this was that the people with the loot would be almost as likely to fight over the 10% as they would if the other raiders demanded it all. Otherwise, other raid gangs in space around Cybertron would see that extorting a percentage was possible was possible against a group, and they would all charge in to get their own 10%. This would go on until the original gang had nothing left. It was clearly better to fight right from the start and let all of the gangs see that the only thing they'd get from trying to extort them would be a blast to the face.

Coltan

Jackboots didn't realize that his reflection enchantment had lost the soul powering it until Loyal Star's test blast didn't bounce off. He was momentarily shocked, but before he could get his blasters aimed, Loyal Star started calling him a former pony! Now he was furious, but he kept his mind on the fight. He'd seen how Megatron fouled up his enemies by saying rot to them, and he would concentrate hard to keep from falling for it. He quickly aimed his weapons and let off a double blast at full power - more power than he would have used if he wasn't trolled. Loyal Star managed to calculate where Jackboots intended to fire just before he did it, so he was able to pull off a ducking maneuver. The blasts hit the building behind him, vaporizing two holes into the wall and terminating a Coltani who was unlucky enough to be standing on the other side. A woeful wail came from someone else who was in the structure; apparently, the fallen bot had no spares or saves.

This noise was an unexpected source of distraction to Jackboots, whose attention was involuntarily drawn to the sound source. Loyal Star took the opportunity to get a hit in, and it scorched through about an inch of Jackboots' head armor. The two would continue fighting for some time more, both making some contact with each other for blaster fire, before the fight would end.

[Vallermoore]

Coltan

Both bots were taking damage, and Loyal Star had a few holes in non-vital parts of his body, but the boards and engine were so far intact, although the thickened armour was taking damage and would not last indefinitely. Finally Loyal Star managed to make a small break in Jackboot's Faraday cage and let his pony magic loose. Unless Jackboot had some magic of his own or some other way to protect his electronics, Loyal Star's magic would fry his foe's insides and finish the fight there and then. He very much hoped it would; he would have a month to try out his friendlier brand of Megatronism. Surely kindness was better then terror and cruelty? In his mind boards, all the Coltanis of this area had seen was unpleasantness and they deserved better. If they took his kindness for weakness they would soon be back to Jackboot's way; if they did improve, they would get a kindly Priest of the Fire Eater type and Megatronism would prosper in the area.

Pony Afterlife

The luckless pony would quickly find that Pony Heaven, at least for average ponies, was as bad or worse then Pony Hell. Once chipped, there was nothing that he could do but labour eternally in the new mines without even death as a release from his toil. At least unlike being in a soul gem he was not constantly in pain.

Space

SolarTempest gave that attempt to steal his haul the contempt that it deserved. "Outta my way, peasants! I said outta my way." A few blasts later, and those ICC who had not lost bodies scuttled out of the way. Other bots took note, SolarTempest was not afraid even of ICC bots. If they did go to Connect and try and get the entire ICC involved, Connect would most likely tell them that it was their own stupid fault for trying something that didn't work on Decepticons. As long as the ICC itself as an organisation was not being threatened or interfered with by SolarTempest, then it had other things to do rather then concentrate on attacking him.

Vallermoore

"You changed your religion because of tradition?!" Fire Eater's eyes darkened for a bit. "No wonder you didn't really have any loyalty to the new one! But note that the Divine Leader will be rightfully skeptical if Megatronism ever becomes the national religion and you convert again. He would want to see some really convincing evidence that you mean it. Will it be bad PR if you're seen without your old symbol there? "Or doesn't it really matter since you don't have to worry about winning elections?"


The Queen sighed. "Most of the time it is very good being the Queen, but there are times when tradition is a real pain. If think if they ask me to convert again and it is not my own choice, I will tell them politely where to go. I would not want to end up in the hell of either your religion or any other religion because of being forced to convert when I'm unsure. What could they do, after all? Arrest me? End a monarchy that is still popular with many Vallermooreians over such a small thing? To answer your question, the press will be interested for a day and then go back to it's normal habits of uncovering scandals, reporting on court cases and hassling celebrities.You are right-at least for now as things stand, Megatronism is not for me. It would be....interesting to do something like launch a secret raid on another country with my closest royal guards, certainly." With gloves on to avoid leaving any marks that might somehow damage Fire Eater's metal, she lightly held one of his metal hands in hers. "Whatever they think of Decepticons, almost all Vallermooreians are in awe of them."

"Maybe I shouldn't be pushed around so much by the government when it comes to things that personally affect me," she said. She got some information on Megatronism and that night back in her Royal Palace she would have a strange dream...

[Victorious Decepticons]

Coltan

Jackboots didn't think much of it when a blast managed to get through his chest panel. It had gone through the gap between his motion boards, so there wasn't even any damage except to his housing. In the next second, he had just enough time to reassess that thought. Lightning erupted around him, and within just an instant, it homed in on the gap that had just been created. Wiring, purpose-built to carry electricity, was now the fastest way to the ground. It blasted its way through Jackboots, powering itself through his boards and circuits and down through through that cabling; vaporizing it as it went. Since it wasn't as sapient as its relentless pursuit of ground made it seem, it also sent tendrils upwards. Jackboots' main command cable served as the conduit to the doom of this body as it carried the "tester" tendrils up into the mind-boards and their circuits, back down toward the ground, and also over through a discreet side-branch that led to his hidden personality chip, which quickly melted.

"YEEARRRGGH!" Was all Jackboots managed to say, and even this was cut off by the activation of his data evacuation sequence. Soon, the smoking body crashed backwards to the ground, and the fight was over.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jackboots did not fare well at all even though his data evacuation sequence had managed to save his base personality data. Back at the Riverside Temple where he had hidden his nearest spare, he was in worse shape than a newly-built bot in some ways. He had his personality, but no other data had made it through. Now, he stared blankly around the room that he no longer recognized.

Soon, a nice-seeming green-eyed bot came in holding a large, shiny Save Disk. This disk could be used to restore Jackboots' data, but that wasn't what the Coltani had in mind. Instead, he walked right up to Jackboots and activated his blaster. Using it, he melted the Save Disk into a puddle of useless mercury-like material right in front of his eyes. Without his data, Jackboots had no idea of the significance of this act, or even what a Coltani was, and he stared blankly at the scene.

Next, the Coltani - having heard Decepticons brag about the automatic self-defense routines present in their Base Codes - made sure to be careful not to trigger this routine in Jackboots. Since he was running at all, this sub-program was almost surely present. He was very careful as he guided the near-shell of the Priest out the back door as Loyal Star came in the front along with several congratulatory Enforcers.

Very carefully, he made his way to the center of town, and cooing calmly to the barely-sapient Jackboots as if he was a baby, he led him through the gates surrounding the big slag pit and up a ladder to the walkway above it. A few other Coltanis saw what he had in mind and quietly joined in. The Enforcers that were usually around were all with Loyal Star at the moment; since they'd been patrolling this spot, they had seen the duel and were busy congratulating and kissing up to the one they knew would be - at least temporarily - the new acting priest.

"Look at that, isn't it pretty? Pretty widdy," the soon-to-be assassin cooed, pointing down at the boiling reddish-white metal. "How about you take a closer look?" Jackboots looked down, and in curiosity at what was now a new sight to him, began to bend over a little.

An instant later, he felt a shove.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Megatron, Cybertron

The message that came over the PC was disturbing to Warfire, but not entirely unexpected.

ORDER TO HIGH PRIEST WARFIRE

You are to open the Vault of the Faithful immediately and retrieve the Save Disk of Jackboots, who has suffered double unfortunate results. Restore him into his Spare kept below your location and then have him report to Foreign Intelligence Headquarters for the information he will be missing.

[Stamped and hashed]
Foreign Intelligence Division

Warfire's eyes dimmed. "Double" unfortunate results? This meant that someone else likely killed him after he lost the planned duel with Loyal Star! That, in turn, could lead to an order of retribution. No matter what the still-fairly-new Assistant Priest thought, Warfire knew that Leader Megatron would not have any mercy for a conquered being who had deactivated one of the ones he had anointed with the authority of the Priesthood.

"The streets will run with Coltani oil..." Warfire thought to himself as he hastened to the level below the Temple building and into the vaults where full priests each kept a single Spare and Save. Priests had other Spares and Saves in different places too, just in case these couldn't be accessed, but the Temple thought it was best if at least one copy was there - where they could count on another Priest to do the reactivation. Once Jackboots was back online, Warfire wouldn't be able to tell him what happened because he didn't know either. Instead, Jackboots would have to go to ForIntel to get the recap, as ordered.

~~~~~~~~~~

Afterlife

Jackboots paced around in the waiting area of the Decepticon Afterlife. A red-and-black angel, normally a commander in the Realm of Punishment, leaned on the wall. Together, they cursed the Coltanis of Riverside and agreed that they could hardly wait until Megatron finally ordered General Carjack to pay the place a visit. They discussed all of the horrible tortures that would be visited on the infidels once they were all dispatched to the Realm of Punishment where they belonged.

"I especially want to blast that git who conned me into gazing into my own slag pit and then shoving me in before I could mind-transfer! Then you can put him in slow-motion and drop him into a replica of that same pit over and over again!"

The Punishing Angel shook his head in frustration.

"He wouldn't come here. He is staunchly faithful to his own goddess. A goddess that doesn't even exist! She was so strongly attached to the water, and that particular spot, that she was severely weakened when Masher eliminated her river. And when Megatronists built over the riverbed and consecrated the entire area to Megatron, she dissipated away completely. Anyway, since she is no more, there is no place for the Coltani in the afterlife. His spirit will return to the Metal Stream, just like ours used to before Megatron claimed an afterlife area for us."

"Then may his ingot rust slowly for ten thousand years!" Jackboots shouted with fury. Before he could say more, a portal opened.

"Looks like they've got your Spare up, running, and reloaded with your Save," the Punishing Angel said, pointing. Jackboots looked over with a glare, and almost as soon as he did so, was irresistibly drawn to the opening. He saw a flash of white light, and in an instant, found himself in Cybertron's Main Temple Vault in his Spare. For just a moment, he still remembered everything, but before a minute passed, the physicality of his Save's data overwrote the residual spiritual memory. He would have to go to ForIntel to be told what killed him after all.

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

In a distant location, Megatron glared at the rock. It had stopped responding! Apparently it didn't like questions any more than he did. Either that or it was actually an obsolete piece of junk and it had just hanged for no reason! This time, the latter thought did not make him feel comfortable. An obsolete piece of junk being in charge of the afterlife and subject to hanging would not be good...

Internally, he completed the basic virus he'd been working on. Now, he began to carefully probe its structure for some sort of port so he could miracle up the appropriate type of drive to jam in it. He knew that the chance of actually being able to hack a completely foreign computer on the first try was minuscule, but the attempt could yield some sort of useful information that would make further attempts more likely to succeed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Vallermoore

Fire Eater nodded at the Queen's prediction for the behavior of the media. "Things like that make me wonder if the Bureau of Propaganda actually makes things harder on itself," he said, referring to the Decepticon agency. "It is mandated that it 'prevent the normalization and spread of idiocy.' The bottom line is that the celebrity-chasing you describe isn't allowed for Cybertronian media. This makes our holovision stations far less annoying, but it also means that there isn't a ready-made pool of distractions."

"Being a Queen...well, I'm sure it's good for the ego, and I hear you get a rather large stipend just for existing, but...well, I don't think I'd like it, myself. It seems like a rather stifling position. 'The Monarch is 'expected to' do this and 'expected to' do that. And for putting up with it, you get the massive power of...the deciding vote in Parliament!" Fire Eater waved his hand in the Nae Nae gesture. "That's not to say that Leader Megatron just goes and does whatever - like I said before, he tries to avoid getting too many rebels - but he seems to have a lot more leeway and he definitely has a lot more power. But I suppose that since you basically get paid and adored just for being built by the right Coder, you've got it pretty good." Fire Eater thought that monarchy was complete nonsense for those very reasons, but he didn't let that show.

"As for avoiding the Hell of a religion, the easiest way to do it is to pick the one that aligns with what you're already doing and how you're already thinking. Then you don't have to worry about what you do being a sin!" Fire Eater laughed, his red eyes showing his enjoyment of his rules-lawyering idea. "The only catch is that the most powerful deities seem to be on the authoritarian side, and frankly, a bit extreme in their views. You know of Megatron, who will put you in the Neutral Realm for being loyal but not Decepticon enough; and then there's Yahweh who - for his Christian religion - wants you to always be a goody-good." He cringed at the latter part.

"Now he's a strange one...hard to understand, frankly," he continued, referring to Yahweh. "His Big Three religions have some important differences that make it so that following one while under the umbrella of another is likely to get you sent to Hell. For example, if you're Jewish, it's cool to rules-lawyer all of the many rules, and it's quite fun to see their rabbis go at it. But if you did that as a Muslim, you'd be stoned to death or beheaded and then off to Jahannam you'd go! Then there's the Christians. It's sad to say, but I'm concerned that most of them are going to Hell. That's because they have a lot of rules, but they tend to ignore those that aren't in step with whatever their society says is right. Yet, the only ones the Bible say can be ignored are the ones explicitly rendered obsolete by the New Testament. This is not going to work out well for them."

"Celestia, of course, is very much history, so there's no point in Ponyism. Other beings I've heard called gods, like Odin of Earth, are actually quite powerful beings! However, despite their power and supernatural natures, I wouldn't say that they're powerful enough to really deserve to be considered gods. Humans probably just didn't know how to classify them, or perhaps hadn't encountered any of the real thing so they truly thought these intermediate forces qualified."

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

General Carjack's Office

Carjack was in a notably foul mood. In the trash can there was a crumpled-up foil-paper with the words "Foreign Intelligence" partially visible.

On the paper, General Soundwave had made overtures to open negotiations on a fairly simple project: Detect the killer of Jackboots and then deactivate him and any cronies that he had. The problem was that the Enforcers and covert ForIntel agents had been distracted, so they didn't know who had done it. For Carjack, the problem was having to go to some backwater and then bother detecting who did what.

This was going to cost Soundwave plenty. At least in Victorious Decepticons, he wasn't expected to do it as a free favor!

[Vallermoore]

Coltan

The Coltanis cheered loudly when they saw Jackboots get fried. Almost all of them deeply hated him as they saw him as an extortionist, thug, and even a bit of a prison guard in the way he forced them to regular Temple services. The Enforcers gathered around the winner and at the next service, de facto Acting Priest Loyal Star addressed his Coltani congregation in his first ever sermon.

"Coltanis, I admit that under Jackboots you hardly saw the best of Megatronism. I am not like him-whilst I am just as much a Megatronist as he is, I believe that one can gain more willing coverts with oil rather then water, so to speak. If there are any amongst you that badly need Debugging but are too far gone to defend yourself and cannot safely reach a Debugging Centre, I will personally take time to escort you there and those who attack you when you are defenceless will feel my blaster fire. And when I am on formal Temple business, believe me, you really do not want to feel my blaster fire. Someone on Cybertron learned that the hard way when he lost his body. If you need advice in the Decepticon Way, I can give it to you. I have asked the Enforcers to be a little less strict in little things, although they will still be rooting out heresy and atheism."

He paused. "I know there is a secret cult here of a now deceased Goddess. Do not take my kindness for weakness. In a month I am moving on. If things have gone well here and I have gained genuine converts a new Priest will arrive, a kindly Priest who shares my ideas that a Priest should help his fellow bots. If on the other hand things go badly-or if one or more of you were to try to murder or otherwise harm me-you will be once more subjected to harsh Temple rule, and I cannot help you further. Prove to me that I was right to duel for you and risk losing a body and being reassigned, and things will get much better for you, permanently."

After a couple of songs, the service came to an end, and Loyal Star made it clear that the compulsory Temple tax of offerings was suspended for the month. A few grateful bots willingly gave offerings anyway. Clearly most Coltanis much preferred this kinder gentler form of Megatronism.

General Carjack's Office

"So the whole of Forintel in that area, plus the Enforcers and the Coltani version of Domintel all missed the attempted murder of a Priest of Megatron? And now you need me and a few Genociders to find out who the culprits were and punish their treason? How much Energon are you offering for my time and trouble, Soundwave?" General Carjack asked having radioed Soundwave. All the High Generals had each other's radio numbers for easy communication and joined-up government.

By the Rock

Megatron suddenly felt two of his fingers flexing of their own accord. The rock had somehow possessed two of his fingers! By itself, this was not much of a problem, if need be he could discard the fingers and get new ones, but it was a warning of genuine danger. It would be an absolute disaster for the whole Decepticon Nation if he was somehow taken over by a rock! He would have to clamp down and ensure no more of his body started acting up.

Vallermoore

"It must be harder for any Decepticon who wants to be famous to become so, without the media's help. Megatron knows exactly what Decepticons would put up with without kicking off in large possibly regime-changing numbers, and he thought and also fought his way to the top long ago. The First Queen of Vallermoore no doubt did the same thing-unlike the weaker queens who followed her and were chosen because of who they were. You are right, it is a pretty stifling life in some ways, with the media as a pain in the neck. Not the sort of life a properly built Decepticon would aspire to. I bet there must have been lots of requests to Decepticons to act as mercenary troops for pay in advance? Even one non full size Decepticon could probably kill huge numbers of biologicals. Wherever my soul should end up, if it ends up in a pleasant place I will remember you fondly. You have willingly come to spend your time amongst what must seem to you to be incredibly weak fragile biologicals and their cars."

Foreign Intelligence Headquarters

"What an outrage that the Coltanis should kill me, their priest!" Jackboot's engine was revving angrily. "It proves to me that I was right to treat them with maximum harshness. Loyal Star has no idea just what he is getting into."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Afterlife

Megatron didn't appear to be bothered by his fingers twitching oddly, but that's because he had his freeze-face script active along with a program that kept his engine speed from changing. Inside, he was producing a few blocks of masonry-shaped solid exhaust! The rock had clearly managed to gain control somehow, and it hadn't triggered any of his anti-viruses!

Now, he realized, was the time to really use his divine power. He consciously scanned, quite obviously now, for any sort of connection between the rock and his body. It didn't take long for him to detect it this way - a beam using a frequency carefully calculated to get through the fine mesh of his Faraday cage. Once past it, the beam was being used to directly send electronic signals to his finger-controlling electronics right in his hand. Megatron's eyes narrowed; he would make the odd supercomputer regret doing that!

Immediately, Megatron sent out a high-powered burst of electricity that had very specific characteristics. It would resonate against the beam that was being used against him, causing massive constructive interference, and zap back up that very beam to whichever part of the rock was generating it. If it worked right, it would at least overload and fry the relevant circuits inside of his foe. If Megatron got super-lucky, this would cause a cascade of damage and catastrophic failure to his enemy, but he didn't get his hopes up for that.

Approximately 1/10 of a second later, Megatron fired his first virus attempt in the hopes that there would be a momentary lapse of security in the rock as it dealt with his first counter-attack. He didn't really expect this to work directly either - instead, he wanted to see what kind of system security his foe had against virus infiltration.

~~~~~~~~~~

General Carjack's Office

"All of the Enforcers who were near the slag pit were kissing up to Loyal Star after he won his duel," Soundwave explained. "And our embedded agents in the area had to follow along in order to stay looking legit. As for our bugs...this is classified, of course, but those blasted hunks of Grade-B steel found the important ones and got rid of them over a period of time. We put back plenty, but the ones near the slag pit were still out of commission. Finally, even though we have over 100,000 agents on Coltan, they're not all 'around the slag pit in Riverside.' Coltan isn't Cybertron, and ForIntel on a strange, conquered planet is not DomIntel. We're still finding nooks and crannies there, while we've known of every little rust spot on Cybertron for centuries." Carjack could hear Soundwave's engine rumbling with aggravation over the radio.

"We could find out who did it ourselves by doing an investigation and interrogations," Soundwave went on. "But I want the Decepticon response to be more immediate. Also, going in and hacking all of those infidels would interfere with Loyal Star's plan. I don't want him to be able to blame ForIntel when his idea doesn't work and then blab that kind of stuff to the other Priests If you go in there and nail the one guy, the job will be done faster - and cleaner."

Carjack responded, "Well, it's gonna cost you to get me to fly over to that commie-infested hole. Right now my farm could use some new combines. Like, 100 new combines according to my specs - built by Decepticon Parts main staff and not a bunch of pissed-off slaves who'll put all the bolts in at angles..."

~~~~~~~~~~

Coltan
Riverside

The Coltanis were ecstatic to see the end of Jackboots, but they weren't about to trust this new guy much. He spoke of being nicer, and said that they didn't have to pay the Temple "tax," but several were afraid that this was a ruse to find out who would be first to "dishonor" the Decepticon God. These fearfully put their Cubes into collection as always, even though it would leave them with watered-down fuel for themselves. No one took Loyal Star up on his offer for repairs, figuring that they wouldn't be able to afford them even if the did get to a mechanic. None dared to ask for Debugging, either - as non-Decepticons, they hadn't been promised confidentiality, and they were afraid that their loyalty to the River Goddess would cause Decepticon Debuggers to just leave them turned off forever.

Later that afternoon, one of the Coltanis looked to the sky and immediately backfired. His face showed the horror of the doomed, and his engine quickly ran with the high pitch of sheer terror.

"It's come! They're going to do it! They're going to KILL US ALLLL!" He shouted, pointing upward. There in the sky, just close enough to be identifiable, was General Carjack. No others accompanied the General, but as he got closer, his markings made his purpose clear. His head-frame-and-wrenches symbols were prominently displayed just below his Decepticon Seals, leaving no doubt that he was here on business.

Coltanis ran up the alleys and into the sewers, some screaming, and all of them were sure that this was the day that Riverside would be brutally liquidated.

To the surprise of the few who dared to peek from their hiding places, Carjack landed near the slag pit with an unexcited thud. He then held his hands in the air as if feeling the air itself. Then, after a few minutes, he slowly pivoted around, his hands still in this detection position. Next, he held his right hand higher and started to move it around in the air like an antenna. He paused, got out a big cigarette, lit it up, and then resumed doing this.

Finally, he straightened up and assumed a confident posture. He had found the energy signature.

Now, Carjack marched off in a specific direction, stopping every so often to scan the air again. It was now clear that he was not here to do a massacre, but a single execution. The Coltanis didn't have to think hard about who he would be after: Surely it was the one who had melted down Jackboots!

In a hidden nook down in the sewers, the killer heard the General's bootsteps come to the manhole nearby and open it up. Then, the footsteps began to come down the metal stairs. No jammer was running yet - Carjack didn't know what he would be walking into, and he wanted to be surer of the situation before going for the kill. A splash was heard. Carjack was now all the way down, and standing in about a foot of used oil sludge. "Ugh. Blah." The General's groans and grumbles echoed down the tube and around the hidden corners. He clearly was not excited about this task - a task he figured would be more permanently solved with a few MOABs.

"Loyal Star has won in honorable duel! We can't just bomb them flat noowww," Carjack's mocking voice carried clearly. "Oh, well, at least I got a hundred combines out of it." Then, he spoke louder. "ALL I NEED TO DO IS KILL WHOEVER CHUCKED JACKBOOTS INTO THE SLAG AND I CAN GET OUTTA HERE!"

Instantly, fear gripped the guilty bot - and just as instantly, the psychic energy of this fear blasted out of him in all directions. Like a bloodhound who now has the scent firmly in his nostrils, Carjack ran to the target's position. "I claim the soul I am about to disembody for Divine Leader Megatron!!" He yelled just before he rounded the corner.

The sounds of blaster fire reverberated through the concrete of the sewers and the streets above, and those nearby detected the powerful jammer of the General. Several lighter blasts were heard first, followed by the sound of two Upgraded Mil-Spec Decepticon blasters being fired at once. Then, all was silent.

A few minutes later, Carjack came back to the surface holding onto a strong cable. With grumbling, he pulled on the cable until its payload - one dead Coltani body, blaster-sliced across the mind boards and motion boards with the precision that comes from years of combat experience. He threw it over his shoulder and walked to the slag pit in the center of town with obvious pride in victory. Soon, the body would join the Coltan Metal Stream - but the soul would never get to rest there. Instead, it would join the others that powered the infrastructure of the Decepticon Empire.

Then, to the worry of the even fewer Coltanis who dared to watch, he went into the local Temple.

"Bring that n00b out here," he told a Coltani who was there, who Loyal Star had already hired as the janitor in order to help him out. Carjack leaned over and said quietly, "None of these Megatronist Priests know how to convert anybody..."

The Coltani, now curious beyond belief but not daring to question the Decepticon General, scuttled away to Loyal Star's office to fetch him.

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

Vallermoore

"Thank you," Fire Eater said, giving a little bow. "I am committed to helping Megatronism grow wherever it can," he went on. "Of course, it is my hope that many will go for the Ultimate Upgrade, and that someday, cars will be obsolete here too. I am always vigilant around cars...though I gained sapience near the end of the Great War, I have had the displeasure of them turning out to be more than meets the eye..."

"As for people asking us to be assassins...I cannot discuss the details of such things with those who are not committed to the Way. But you can relax knowing that a full Decepticon is forbidden from performing mercenary services for those who are not." Fire Eater, of course, did not remind the Queen that there were now thousands of Megatronists who were not full Decepticons, and therefore, were not prohibited from taking these jobs - at least not by the religion. Nor did he outright deny that such deals might take place in the Temple, though he didn't confirm it either.

Fire Eater didn't say so now, but even though he had recommended that Her Majesty not convert to Megatronism just yet, he hoped that she would someday be more attuned to the Decepticon Way. It would be great to have a Queen in the religion - but not one who would have to support a national police force's goals "out the other window" or who would get cold feet when the less-than-pretty aspects of the Way (such as the assassination of competing businessmen) happened to hit the news.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Grand City Skycutter Company

Many applicants had put in their names when this company advertised for new assembly workers. Among them were 30 Megatronists, not only from the local Temple, but from ones in surrounding areas. The Megatronists had a mission, and it wasn't to make good skycutters and keep their jobs. Quite the contrary. Their mission was to get the jobs, and then do them in ways that would force the company to have a massive recall...

~~~~~~~~~~~

GravityBusters

The opening of the new hovercraft company was fairly typical. It incorporated and then bought an existing warehouse, which it transformed into its factory. A news conference was held and the CEO gave a typical speech at the podium as the rest of the board stood behind him off to his sides. This arrangement allowed for good pictures to be taken.

Once the ceremonial part was over, the first board meeting - kept strictly private - was held. There was no doubt to anyone inside the room who was running this company as engines were switched from electricity to Energon and exhaust filled the area.

"Our Megatronists are working on infiltrating Skycutter right now," the CEO announced to the rest. "We have 30 who are applying. All they have to do is hire ONE, and if he gets into the right spot, hundreds of thousands of those things are going to be defective. If we get more in, it'll be even harder to fix them all after the recall happens. That's when we start up our ads and tout our double-redundant quality checks and our warranty."

The board, it turned out, had no real authority. Instead, each member was a specialist in a certain aspect of running a company - or committing the connivery a company could get up to. Now, the one with the position of "government liaison" began to speak.

"I've been in contact with the Safety Commission," he reported. It went unsaid that 'contact' meant that bribes had been accepted by the regulators. "Once I give the word, an extensive safety inspection will take place at Skycutter. The fact that this is happening is going to 'leak.' And they're going to fail that inspection. That's what'll start the process of the mandated recall of all of those poor, defective skycutters. The ones that will have actual defects."

"They'll inspect us too, to make it look legit. But WE'LL get an excellent rating, with no violations at all. I suggest that we really do have no violations, just in case some watchdog group smells Decepticon exhaust."

The others nodded in agreement. Then, the CEO nodded to the one in charge of "marketing." This title wasn't used in the regular way. Instead, he was actually the head of Market Share Protection.

"And I'm sure you have a backup plan..." he said to the Market Share guy.

"Of course." The Market Share guy gave no details. Whatever his plan was, it was even more illegal than the ones already mentioned. But if all went well, he wouldn't need to use it.

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

Outside GravityBusters, a long queue had formed. The people were lining up to apply for the 1,000 new jobs that were opening up. A few media types were giving quick, random interviews to those who were waiting and taking short films or still pictures of the scenes. Some of these had been paid a stipend to make sure that a "Freedom and Technology Party Delivers on Job Promises" story ran, while others came just because it was a spectacle to put in the paper on a slow news day.

All three shifts were to be filled - though it would take longer than at most companies since unlike most Vallermoorian businesses, the Decepticon one was naturally untrusting and would be running thorough background checks on everyone right down to the guy who washed the dishes in the company cafeteria.

[Vallermoore]

Afterlife

Megatron's attack on the rock had the desired effect and much to his relief, he regained control over the briefly hacked fingers. Had the rock been far bigger and it's hacking skills far better, it might have been a lot worse. If it could take over two of Megatron's divine and very well virus protected fingers, it might have had far better luck if it was only an average Decepticon it encountered, and if any non Decepticon hacked a Decepticon, that was a serious security risk. The beam of electricity put out by Megatron blew up a small piece of the rock, which set off at FTL speeds to try and escape from Megatron, taking it's powers over souls with it. As he was divine, Megatron could follow it with ease, but the average Decepticon would not know where it was going to.

Coltan

The Coltanis were too scared at least for now to open up to Loyal Star, fearing he was playing a trick and they would be melted down for it and not yet trusting Decepticon Debuggers not to enslave or outright kill them. Not long afterwards, General Carjack arrived wearing his Genocider seals, which caused panic at first amongst the Coltanis in the region who were convinced that he had come to slaughter them as heretics and most likely kill Loyal Star too. As it turned out, he was only after one bot, the guilty one who had dared to assassinate a Priest of Megatron. Whilst murder was not any more illegal on Coltan now then on Cybertron, murder of a Megatronist Priest was deemed to be politically motivated and fell under the treason law. It didn't matter that it was not successful, it was still going to be punished.

Having been paid in advance by General Soundwave; the Decepticon Way applied to the highest ranking Decepticons and even de facto to Megatron himself (as a huge revolt was very much not desired) General Carjack used his magic to hunt down the killer. Grumbling at having to enter the sewers and dirty his Metal, he soon found and blasted the killer, and sent his soul to a soul gem on top of that. Jackboots would have revenge meted out for him after all. Then he went to the Temple without even getting himself clean first to speak with Loyal Star who was indirectly responsible for this mess in a way. Very soon Loyal Star came out very quickly indeed, having turned up his Bravery Up first. What if High Priest Warfire considers me a heretic and has sent General Carjack himself to send me to the Decepticon afterlife? he wondered.

He gave a deep bow to General Carjack. "Is something wrong, General? My duel against Jackboots was sanctioned by Leader Megatron himself and no jammers were used, and whilst I believe in the kinder Megatronism taught to me by Fire Eater, I am as Megatronist as any other member of the Priesthood and I am no heretic. I just think oil catches more fuel pumps and mind boards then water."

*****
Vallermoore

"Even if Decepticons were well paid, for them to act as mercs for humans, would be like us humans and sapient ponies acting as mercs for ants, wasps and other such insects. You really are the supreme life forms in the universe. Whilst you can be brought down by your own kind or by SAMs or perhaps hackers, diseases as such and old age will never claim you. The public bits of the Metal Planet that Decepticons can openly talk about must be amazing to us biologicals? A planet of Metal, gleaming like a big ball bearing in the sky, the jewel of your Empire's crown...it is strange to me given how warlike your kind are, plus a big lack of laws, that Decepticon society stays together and will one day rule the universe, instead of imploding in on itself. And having a car even once turn into an Autobot-anything but nice for you. That Sky Knight traitor must have been mentally ill. Who would want to be confined to the ground when he could fly through the sky and through space?" the Queen said. The very mention of that name made Fire Eater feel a little uneasy, like someone on Earth before it fell to the Decepticons talking in what was Germany about Hitler.

The Grand City Skycutter Company

Twelve of the Megatronists got in. Of the rest, three turned out to have unspent criminal records, two were identified as Megatronists, one fell ill from badly cooked food before getting to the interview and the rest just didn't happen to be chosen.
Soon enough, slowly but surely they sabotaged the skycutters with faults ranging from cosmetic to life threatening. Military skycutters not meant for civilian use also had their machine guns and even a few of their bombs sabotaged. They were careful not to sabotage every skycutter they worked on as that would just make it clear it was sabotage, but one in every twenty had something nasty done and one in every five hundred was seriously tinkered with.

Soon enough mirrors would fall off in flight, gears would mess up, wings would go wrong, and there would be several fatal crashes. Two military skycutters would explode and several would have guns that either jammed in target practise or went off when they were not supposed to. A board of generals would tell off the factory owner publically and stop buying any more military skycutters.
Not long afterwards, partly due to a secret bribe and partly due to all the accidents and a few deaths. Whilst there were a few firms that made custom skycutters for the very rich, 90% of Vallermoore's skycutters were now out of action. Some turned to cars but that increased the traffic and choggled up many of Grand City's streets. Others turned to trains which made them packed and unpleasant.

GravityBusters

More then 3000 people applied for the jobs, and the vast majority were totally legit. Of the tests that were run, only three were outright potential trouble-two had worked at the Skycutter factory and might be saboteurs and one was suspected of being a journalist. A few others had unspent criminal records for things like petty theft, and several turned out to be Megatronists-the latter thing was hardly a problem in this case. It was in the interest of those working there to be fully legit, so that their new hovercraft did not themselves prove a danger. If all went well, a huge legit money source would soon be operating, providing a stream of Energon to further enrich Cybertron's economy, something also useful for money laundering.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Afterlife

Megatron immediately fired off a fusion cannon blast, and then took off right after it to chase the rock. Internally, however, another thought came to mind. It was his Sapience Day, and that meant that he needed to go to Cybertron to make a speech and enjoy the festivities. Though many of the people just waited for a free Cube of Energon, many others would be "selling" him things at deep discounts today. He couldn't miss out on this!

He decided that he would use bilocation to take care of the competing demands. With a bit of concentrating, he was able to duplicate his body and then split his processing power into two bundles of threads. Though his main consciousness remained with his main body in the Afterlife, he would be able to control the other one and experience things though it. He sent the second body to Cybertron while continuing to pursue his quarry with the first one.

Since the fusion cannon blast traveled at the speed of light instead of faster, the rock soon outran it - but if it slowed down without changing course, it would get pasted once the blast caught up. Megatron, on the other hand, soon sped up and passed his own blast. He made sure to stay off to the side so that it would miss him if he happened to need to slow down. Megatron yelled insults over his radio about the rock's cowardice, this time not just to troll, but because he really believed his enemy was coward scum and not really fit to challenge a real warrior.

As this went on, Megatron fired off his virus at the rock along with several EMP blasts. He was chasing it hard enough to keep it in sight, though now, he was also being careful to look around himself and ahead of the rock. He was well aware that the thing could be trying to lead him into a trap, and remained ready to jam on the retrorockets if he saw or otherwise detected anything of the kind.

"Who made this thing?! Is the builder even still alive or are they as dead as the company that built me? Am I wasting my time blasting it - should I be looking for its coder instead?" All of these questions ran silently through Megatron's mind as the chase went on.

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

Cybertron

Though he was a bit late in coming, Leader Megatron soon appeared on the holovision and made a short, feel-good speech about the prior year before declaring the start of one of Cybertron's biggest national holidays. It was one of the few events that was truly and unabashedly done for Leader Megatron's ego - the day that celebrated HIS Sapience Day and that alone, rather than a national victory, independence, or some other event that involved the entire country. Of course, it was set up so that it would help his personality cult, and passing out Energon Cubes ensured that nobody tried to be a party pooper. The fact that six months later, the price of Energon would go up just a tad per Cube and fully make up for the event had either gone unnoticed or wasn't cared about - and when it came to festivals in any culture, people typically didn't really care how they were paid for in the end.

This year's speech, like those in years past, had nothing of substance and was done mainly to make the celebration official. Megatron talked about recent conquests and the glories of being a Decepticon, bragged about how many Cubes Megatron Energon had produced, and touched on the fact that total domination of the universe wasn't just a pipe dream for the Decepticon Nation. Then he opened a ceremonial Cube of Supreme, and a band started to play as he left the stage.

Some noticed that this year, he seemed to be lagging just a little bit. The more detail-oriented noted that this was not only true, but quantifiable: He spoke and moved at a rate precisely 0.01 seconds slower than normal. They did not, however, realize that this was because every command, action, and reaction of the body they were seeing involved transferring data to a point in another realm and then sending it back. As far as anyone who watched him knew, it was just the result of some hardware change that would likely be rolled back later.

Coltan

Carjack asked to talk to Loyal Star in his study. He was led there, and just before entering, Carjack took out a rag and wiped the oil off of his feet. He'd seen that the inside of the study had carpeting, unlike the majority of the Temple, so he decided to take the time to do that bit of cleaning.

"I don't suspect you of heresy, but I do think you're going about things the wrong way. Your way is much like the average Christian church's used to be when I was on Earth - and there, membership in that church was usually dropping. For most of the people, the problem wasn't that they were too nice...though I found that peacy stuff rather repellent, Carjack muttered under his "breath"...for most, it was because they were boring and didn't seem relevant enough. And from the Intelligence report I picked up about your sermon today, you're on track to be boring as well. You might defuse the hatred that this area has for us invaders that way, but you won't get many - if any - true converts."

"What I see now is that while there's absolutely no doubt about Decepticon military supremacy here, there is plenty about the main thing you need to promote: Megatron's divinity. This is why they persist in clinging to the old Goddess, who they do not believe is dead. They've had no proof that she isn't still right here, and they're too much of muggles to sense it for themselves. The fact that she hasn't come and 'saved' them from us is being rationalized away rather than being seen as a sign of her nonexistence or a sign that she cannot influence their afterlife status."

"I suggest that you set up a demonstration that will change this." Carjack paused dramatically. "In the interests of fair disclosure, I'll let you know that this idea is, ironically enough, being ripped from Judaism and Christianity - but unlike yours, the one I'm thinking of is from the Bible's Old Testament. Specifically, 1 Kings 25-39 (KJV). These passages depict a very convincing proof of one god over another. I say we set up something similar to challenge this River Goddess and then give Megatron a chance to show his power. Since the River Goddess is defunct, there's no chance of her spoiling your show as long as you use proper fraud prevention to keep her loyalists from faking it."

25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.

26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.

29 And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

30 And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.

31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name:

32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.

33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.

34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.

37 Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

38 Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.

"Don't run right out and do it, though - set it up with Divine Leader Megatron in advance and set up a time so he's fully ready when that time comes. Unlike the god in the story, Megatron may well be 'sleeping, or talking, or off on a journey' and you want to make sure he's all set before you go making claims in public! And, of course, we need to use different sacrifices. There probably aren't any bulls on this planet, and even if there are, a meat sacrifice doesn't make sense for a robotic god. Something like coolant - something that couldn't be ignited by just any ol' putz - ought to do. Rip the rest off pretty much wholesale: The trenches full of water, wetting down the altar, all of that. Megatron can turn it all into vapor with a tenth of a fusion cannon blast - only doing so remotely, so it's clearly miraculous and not just the expected result of physics."

"It'll be hugely impressive, especially after the Riverines have spent all day trying to get a miracle and have gotten absolutely no response at all. Just don't let on to the heathens that this is a ripoff!" Carjack chuckled loudly. Propaganda can spin around it if we do get busted, but let's try not to make extra work for ourselves!" He was grinning now.

Later, Loyal Star would indeed pray to Megatron to set up a demonstration of this sort. Soon enough, he got a response. He was to set up a wooden altar with a 100-gallon bowl of coolant at high noon one week from now, and then challenge the most loyal Riverines to get their goddess to consume it in any way at all. They were to be given one day to try to get the River Goddess to show up - an impossibility, since she no longer existed - and then Leader Megatron would ignite the altar and evaporate all of the liquid, not with his cannon, but purely by divine magic.

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

GravityBusters

Criminal records may have been a problem at the competition, but they were no barrier to general employment at GravityBusters as long as they were of a nature that was unlikely to interfere with doing the work. Thieves, of course, were kept out of the accounting department and wouldn't be put into management positions that included expense accounts, but they could work on the assembly lines just fine. The only ones who were categorically not hired were those who were either convicted of drug offenses or who were intoxicated when they applied. These people were more likely to mess up the assembly due to being impaired.

The applicants who were found to have connections to Skycutter or suspected of being reporters simply weren't hired, and there was no way for them to know the reason. As with many factories, more people had applied than there were jobs, so it was easy to justify not hiring them all.

Soon enough, the first test production run began. This wasn't to test whether the hovercrafts would work, but instead, to see how well the applicants did their jobs and replace any obvious losers before true production started. Quality control equipment - mainly cameras that were connected to highly sensitive verification equipment - watched how every part was put on and beeped when a mistake was detected. This would make it extremely hard to sabotage the GravityBusters products. Each hovercraft would also be taken on a short test flight before it went onto the market.

Across Vallermoore, other new buildings were springing up. These were GravityBusters dealerships, and they would provide the same sort of services expected of car dealerships. For now, though, there were no used hovercraft lots - the products were so new that none of them had been used yet, let alone ended up back up for sale.

[Vallermoore]

Afterlife

The rock cursed Megatron back over his radio. "You greedy thing! The souls of every intelligent living thing are not yours to torture eternally for evermore! Most have never bothered you anyway." It was just as well for Megatron that he was paying attention, as the rock was trying to lead him close to a black hole that would have cost him his body at least and possibly even his life (in which case he would have ended up in a small waiting room within his own afterlife waiting to be restored from a Save Disc!) As it tried to change course, the fusion blast hit it and smashed a bit off it and then the virus attacked it. Whilst it was able to fight it off, much like Megatron had fought it's possession, it now started drifting perilously close to the black hole. If it was crushed, all it's magic and power might go with it and be forever out of Megatron's reach.

Cybertron

Every loyal bot enjoyed this day-especially the poor bots, as they got a Cube of Energon that might make the difference between life and starving to death. MasterBlaster watched it on the holovision and shot off a few token fireworks, and did a short prayer wishing a Happy Sapience Day to Megatron. High Priest Warfire did much the same prayer. General Soundwave presented Megatron with some of the latest games, and as was tradition, he charged the Ultimate Decepticon a token Cubelet for them. Far from feeling insulted, Megatron saw this as just time-honoured Decepticon tradition and paid up. On the rare occasions where Decepticons gave gifts, they normally charged a token price as a symbol that it was not a connive attempt. SolarTempest and his budding syndicate would party as well. There would be parades, official firework displays, bots doing loop-the-loops with less chance of being shot down as it
might be seen as politically motivated to shoot down a celebrator, and much public and private feasting.

Coltan

Loyal Star nodded. "I really am doing my very best to be a good Priest, but I still have slight traces left from when I was a Ponyist priest, like if a bot stepped in something that stained their Metal and was a real PITA to remove. A boring Priest is likely to be recalled by High Priest Warfire and demoted which would be a personal disaster for me and would affect my missionary prospects."
His normally bright eyes dimmed with sadness. In his mind-boards he could imagine it-being summoned by a displeased Warfire and perhaps demoted back down to acolyte or even told to resign from the Temple due to unfitness to preach. He could imagine the unhappiness of Fire Eater too which would be upsetting as he wanted to make Fire Eater proud of him.

When General Carjack had that idea he thanked him a great deal. A week later when he was sure Megatron had given his ok he would prepare an altar soaked with water with coolant on it and such things, on what used to be the most sacred area of the River Goddess, and he would say "Go ahead, pray to your Goddess to consume this coolant and prove she still exists, and at sunset I will pray to Megatron to prove He is in charge here. Your Goddess died long ago, when Masher and then our God took over this area. Why woiuld you Coltanis worship a Water Goddess anyway? Water can rust up your bodies or even short you out and kill you."

GravityBusters

It would not be long before the first hovercraft were sold to the general public, but first they were put through their paces to make sure they were both not going to fall apart in the air and were as good or better then the skycutters they would replace. It would be embarrassing to mess things up after all. At least for now, they didn't have bugs or other unpleasant things in them.

*****
About fifty Vallermooreians a year were now making it to Cybertron, of which five would both try to become Decepticons and pass all the tests (the others either failed in some way or were just trying the ultimate in Danger Tourism.)

*****
Fire Eater said to the Queen "That name-Sky Knight- makes me feel slightly uncomftable and-whilst it is not forbidden to talk about him, he is not a popular subject with Decepticons."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Afterlife

Megatron soon saw what the rock had been intending with its flight path, and now he saw that it was on the verge of falling into its own trap. If it fell in, that could mean that the control system for afterlife soul distribution would be forever gone or out of range of his ability to try to hack it. However, if it was gone, it could also mean that he could make his own controller and run it unopposed! Megatron's eyes glowed with powerlust at the last idea. He did consider that there could be chaos before any replacement controller was made, but figured it was worth the risk. After all, if it got too chaotic, he could always return to one of the lands of the living.

The final calculation was that there was a 75% chance that the rock going into the black hole would either be good or neutral from Megatron's perspective, while there was a 25% chance that something bad, or at least the wrong kind of exciting, would happen instead. Since it was the afterlife, there could be some kind of quite unexpected result.

Whatever would happen, Megatron intended to find out. He opened fire at full power, letting off several blasts in quick succession. His intention wasn't to destroy the rock directly, but to knock it past the black hole's event horizon and into its own doom. He would float where he was and watch what happened next, ready for hot battle just in case unwanted results happened.

As he fired away, he pondered what the rock had said for just a moment. Souls weren't his to "torture." Was it really torture to put beasts of burden to work? Megatron dismissed the notion. Every species he put to work had been one that naturally sought work anyway, even work involving bad jobs, and were naturally driven to it to the point that proper Decepticons considered them glitched! So they would have done some kind of work with or without his intervention, even in death, and likely, some kind of lousy work at that. He had just made sure that they did it for HIM! The few exceptional individuals who realized that it sucked to waste one's existence doing work for another person's company were usually Decepticons-in-Spirit willing to join the actual Decepticons, and therefore, would be exempt from the slavery anyway unless they actively opposed Megatron!

"It's not torture to make them do what they would have done on their own," he muttered as he increased his attempts to send the rock into the extreme gravity well. "Beasts of burden like humants and ponies actively seek work no matter what the details are. They complain more if it sucks, but they keep on doing it and even actively sign up for it. Young guys used to sign up for coal mining on Earth even after they watched their own Coders die horribly of black lung. Others complained about the loss of their jobs when the asbestos plants were shut down even though working in one was a death sentence. It's ridiculous to say it's torture just because I have these creatures do their endless toiling FOR ME instead of for some random fool who's just another mindless draft animal like they are!"

While Megatron had disdain for all of these non-greatness-seeking unterlifes, he didn't consider it torture to put them to slavery any more than a human (outside of PETA) would think it was torture to hitch up teams of horses or mules and tell them to giddyap. Having infinite souls to work for him would make him the universe's biggest owner of draft animals and help bring his empire to its full greatness across all realms in the universe! He would not be deterred by this crazy rock thing! He would destroy it and then either take its now-uncontrolled power or figure out the script and do the controlling himself! Megatron fired more blasts to drive the hippie boulder into the black hole.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

The general populace wasn't nearly as friendly to the new Vallermoorian arrivals as the Temple was. As tourism picked up, some small fake hotels became permanent aspects of larger buildings. Scammy trinket salespeople stayed closer to the spaceport, ready to set up at a moment's notice. Young Decepticons who saw the little humans tried to kick them like hackeysack balls, resulting in the smashing-up of a couple of them. Other Decepticons offered bodyguard services, and while a few were legit, many of them just took the money and flew away and some even kidnapped their clients into slavery after taking their money. In this environment, only the most savvy Vallermoorians made it away from Cybertron without losing their money, their freedom, or their lives - but they had such wild and exciting stories to tell that they drew even more to attempt "the Ultimate in Danger Tourism."

Of those who wanted to truly immigrate, many of them didn't pass the psych tests. They were too coddled by the presence of a legal system, and the tests showed that they wouldn't properly adapt or that they couldn't do so fast enough. A few managed to get through the psych test gauntlet and go to Earth for the survival part of the test, and of these, fewer yet made it back for the Ultimate Upgrade. Those who made it all the way were some of the most loyal new immigrants - full believers in Megatronism as well as in the Decepticon Way as a whole.

~~~~~~~~~~

Vallermoore

"I will say that Sky Knight's case was a mystery. Debugging had patched him more than once, but he kept reverting the patches. This meant that, according to known science, he was doing so out of true - though drastically wrong - belief. He was declared a willing traitor accordingly, and was dealt with in the manner of the Decepticon Government as were those who had harbored him."

Fire Eater looked as if he wanted to say more, but he remained silent. His personal speculations involved the possibility that Sky Knight had been possessed or at least tricked by a demon or even some kind of advanced hacker, and he didn't want to let on that such a possibility could even exist. Officially, the Autobot replica was a traitor and nothing more, and he would stick to the official line unless talking to someone with the top security clearances within the Decepticon government.

"Of all of the souls of the defeated, his is the most likely to suffer eternally or nearly so."

"When it comes to our society as a whole, I think we have been fortunate to always have been spacefaring. That has made it so that we have plenty of targets other than ourselves. While the Decepticon Way IS practiced domestically, there isn't the extreme pressure that there is inside of, say, a small terrestrial nation on a multinational planet. We also have had some periods of chaos, though, during which our Way and our social order was settled through the force of both mind and blaster. And then there was the Great War." Fire Eater's eyes lit up with approval at this part. "The Great War was extremely deadly, violent, and vicious. But it did one very good thing. It got rid of everyone who did not practice the Decepticon Way AND who did not have the skills needed to survive in a hostile environment. With only the Decepticon Strong left after the war, we were freed of the drag created by the weak and the perma-poor, and we have been able to thrive since."

"All of this, mind you, came about without us having to directly attack the lowest tier of our society. The Autobots made no distinction between a poor Decepticon or a rich one - anyone who bore the Seals was targeted. The weak just didn't have what it took to survive that targeting. Those who thought it'd be a good idea to take their Seals off, on the other hand, were assumed to be traitors by us and tricksters by the Autobots, so they lived even less than the marked ones did."

"So, though we don't get on the holovision and say so, the more scientifically-minded of us think the Great War was a good thing when seen in terms of the biggest picture. It was devastating at first, and still reverberates on a personal level - but it was the ultimate cull of all but the best on the planet. The fact that 'the best' did not include any Autobots at all was a wonderful bonus. Needless to say, we reactivated OUR best in the few cases where we could find an intact Save Disk for them, whereas we melted down any Autobot Saves there were. Do remember that the reason that there were only a few cases where we could reactivate people because the Autobots had been melting down our Saves when they found them, too. It was by no means a one-sided genocide campaign - though the Autobots had intended it to be exactly that when they made the first move at the start of the War."

"In the end, the result has been a society that is almost unique in its single-mindedness when it comes to values and goals. This has allowed us to avoid turning on each other beyond a few minor skirmishes, and has also allowed us to be united in purpose when the time comes to project our force as a Nation. Compare this to the typical biological nation, where every government move is second-guessed by the population - and in egregious cases, second-guessed or even pooh-poohed by the media itself. Such behavior saps a nation of its strength, and wherever it is rampant, we know that we will have no trouble taking over. In Earth's democracies, the media was sometimes still arguing about whether or not we were actually invaders or just 'misunderstood' even as we darkened their skies with troops. Though we did secretly give the liberals and pacifists massive donations to encourage this, I note that our money only amounted to 1/10 of their budgets. The rest of the idiocy was the result of their societies' natural fractiousness. If they were more unified, and unified in the right direction, those stations would have been shut down one way or the other no matter what ForIntel did."

Fire Eater's comments were substantially true and he meant no connivery, though his definition of a "minor skirmish" might have been different than the Queen's. For example, the War of Succession of the IOPC now involved all of its 10,000 regular adjuncts, whom had each picked sides (giving each main faction about 3,000 adjunct troops each), and the large and unified ICC had also jumped into the fray. Right now, the War had spread - despite government troops' efforts - over all of Iron City and about a quarter of the roughest area of Decepticon Headquarters, and was steadily engulfing the ICC's base town as well. To Fire Eater, it was not deceptive to describe this as a "minor skirmish," for he was comparing it to the all-encompassing death and warfare of the Great War AND to the fact that gang wars were fairly common (although smaller), and therefore just part of life. To someone used to total domestic peace, however, such a huge gang war would be a world-rocking event.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Elsewhere, GravityBusters hovercrafts went into full production and began arriving at the dealerships. At the same time, inspectors descended on Grand City Skycutters in a large and well-publicized raid, complete with plenty of media mentions about how the raid was over "safety concerns."

At the Freedom and Technology Party's headquarters, staffers quickly entered put orders into screens from stock broker self-service sites. They poured these short-sale orders into the systems, which would let them profit from the expected plunge in GCSC stock. Though they did wait until the story broke before barraging the Vallermoore Bourse with their orders, so as to avoid trouble with any insider trading regulations, the delay was only milliseconds. They had several TVs running, and as soon as the first reporter got "Grand City Skycutter Company was raided by regu..." out of his mouth, it was go time. If all went as expected with these short sales, the Party would clear 10 million chingchings in profit within minutes.

[Vallermoore]

Vallermoore

The President of the Central Committee himself went on TV to warn those traveling to Cybertron that whilst it was legal, it was also as dangerous as travel to an active warzone and should not be attempted without well-armed spacecraft capable of at least harming a Decepticon body. Those who got into trouble on that dangerous Metal Planet were on their own; Vallermoore could not help them. And yet a few of the most intrepid Vallermooreians a year went there. Not all would make it back. Some might get blasted or stepped on-in the later case not necessarily on purpose. Some ended up enslaved. A very few didn't come back for a very different reason; they had passed all the Immigration tests and the Code read on top of that and were serving their first conscription terms scattered amongst the many regiments of the Decepticon Military. There was no such thing as a "Foreign Legion" in the Decepticon Military. Successful immigrants were considered to be Decepticons and had renounced their citizenship of whatever country they had come from. Those who did get back safely had amazing tales to tell about the huge war robots.

*****
"The fires of the Cybertronian Great War, horrible as they were, have forged your society into what it is today and removed the Autobots, the weak, and the failures as well as the vast majority of the traitors. Just as the daughter-stealing stupidity of the first Queen Yocasta followed by the chaos caused by Queen Amber after her shaped Vallermoore into a democracy. Those two Queens I have no liking for. I fear occasionally that whilst I still live, Vallermoore will be invaded just for being where it is, and as a Head of State, even one without much power, my destiny will be a violent death at Decepticon hands. Megatron would most likely assume that I'd be a threat-his first target is always the heads of state and government," the Queen said.

*****
Once the first few hovercraft had been brought and nothing nasty happened-they didn't explode, lose power or otherwise act up, they became deeply popular. They could carry as much as cars but without the restrictions cars had. Armour plating stopped vandals from popping them, and a great many Chingchings poured into the company. Some went to the company itself and the employees, some would make it's way to the Freedom and Technology Party and some would end up in Energon form in the Cybertronian economy. After the genuine heart attack that killed an MP who ate too much fatty food, the Party would have a chance to get it's first MP elected to Parliament. The stock plunge helped as well when it came to Party funds, and many individual Megatronists, both the rich and the not so rich joined in to do their bit.

******
Afterlife

When the rock was pulled into the black hole there was a small explosion and then an angel of the Christian variety appeared nearby. "Because of you, no souls may leave their bodies for the next ten days or so until the damage has been repaired. Biologicals will start rotting during that time, but it should not be a problem for robots."

On planets all across the universe, those who would just have died had a jolt of pain and then acted like normal. In most cases where deaths were of natural causes or illness, the people would feel better until rigor mortis set in. Those who were not devoured by animals whilst unable to move, which was most of them, would soon be moving again when it ended and would have no more problems until they started to rot. Executions would cause great pain but no death for now. By the time the ten days were up, hot moist areas of planets would be having their own zombie events caused by the rotting.

On Cybertron, until the ten days were up the Decepticon Race would in effect be immortal in robot mode unless they were either overpowered and melted down or blasted into tiny pieces, much like Overseer was. Zombie bots would only occur if the mind boards were all destroyed, whilst preventing movement would only be possible by fusing the joints. Rotting would not be a problem.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Afterlife

Megatron was flabbergasted. "You mean YOUR Coder made thi~~" Before he finished speaking, the angel was already gone. Megatron floated in the void, still flabbergasted but already thinking of the possibilities. So, it seemed, the Coder of the Biologicals was really running things with a computer! An obsolete-seeming computer that couldn't even keep itself out of a black hole. One that had to put in a decent amount of effort to avoid being seized by Megatron's very basic test virus. A piece of junk.

After a few moments of pondering, Megatron took off to Cybertron so quickly that he seemed to simply wink out of the Afterlife. By the time he appeared in the Metal Planet's atmosphere with a bang of air displacement, his eyes were already glowing at absolute full brightness and his engine was revving with glorious anticipatory excitement.

Red alert alarms sounded at various government buildings across the planet: The Bureau of Impossible Physics, Paranormal Research, Intelligence, and Infrastructure were all alerted. They were to send Megatron's most trusted top engineers, programmers and scientists from their agencies to the Main Military Base's Ad Hoc Strategy Room immediately - as in, DROP EVERYTHING immediately and get over there!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Main Military Base, Cybertron

Megatron paced back and forth antsily as he waited for those he had summoned to arrive. Those who were already there looked worried - they'd never seen the Divine Leader so jacked full of energy! Some were even concerned that he was about to overload himself with his own electrical power.

Finally, after about 20 minutes, everyone had filed in. This time, the designated Strategy Room was more like a small auditorium, and about 90 people filled the seats while Megatron stood behind a semicircular banister on a short stage. As soon as everyone arrived, Megatron ordered the room swept for bugs - even those from DomIntel. Waiting for everyone's arrival allowed the people themselves to be swept as well as the structure. General Soundwave himself performed the sweep, finding not only bugs from his own agency, but a couple of unknowns. All of the bugs had been placed in the room itself; no one had managed to stick one to one of the attendees. An outside DomIntel agent was summoned and the bugs were passed to him along with an order to find, hack for information, and then exterminate the traitors who were responsible for the two unrecognized pieces of equipment.

After a few more minutes, everything was fully ready. The doors were sealed from entrance, full privacy was assured, and the room became hushed with anticipation.

"Today we are going to embark on the biggest engineering and construction project since the creation of Cybertron itself." Megatron announced. "Take a look at what I experienced mere moments ago."

Giant panels behind Megatron opened up and a huge screen appeared. Megatron jacked into it and gave a direct visual playback of what he had seen, adding explanatory commentary as the movie progressed. He ended it with the words of the angel.

Megatron turned off the screen and looked pointedly into the audience, focusing on the programmers and physical engineers he had summoned. "For centuries, we have derided the 'engineering' and 'programming' 'skills' of the Coder of the Biologicals. We have said how he would lose to us in any Decepticon engineering competition, even one involving the youngest of children. We have said how he writes spaghetti code that is miraculous not because it exists, but because it runs at all. We have said all of this and more, and we've meant every word of it. But until now, we have had no real way to go head to head in competition."

"Within the next 10 days, we are going to make good on these claims."

"We are going to build a new Afterlife Soul Assignment Controller according to the absolute best Decepticon standards. We are going to activate that computer before Yahweh gets his replacement Atari up and running. We are going to show him how coding and engineering are done!!!"

Some of the engines in the room nearly backfired, but most ran eagerly. The coders and engineers were especially eager to take on this project - it was part of one they had dreamed of ever since they got their first AEDPs for their subjects: To finally be able to show Earth's God how these things were DONE! It was the beginning of the fulfillment of what had been the semi-secret internal final goal of the majority of those in their professions. It had always galled them that this "guy," who they considered a two-bit factory production engineer and a hack coder, was worshipped as a god at all when they could build better even as they defragged! Some began to hold their hands together in anticipation, while others made typing motions with menacing faces. They were READY.

"I'm glad to see that you are still ready and eager to take on this project. It is with great pleasure that I order it!" Megatron announced dramatically, getting a roar of cheers from the engineers, coders, and even some of the infrastructure people in return.

"This will be just the start. If THAT aspect of the universe's control is computerized, it is very, very likely that most or all of the rest of what could be called Yahweh's standard operations - ensoulment, the creation of background landscape items like rocks and seas and planets, the creation of the less-sapient beings, and the universe's physics engine itself - are also run by computers. Ancient, not-too-mobile - obsolete - computers." Megatron paced half the stage once, needing time to compose himself as his mind ran wild with the thoughts of the possibilities.

"We will replace them all with ours. Either we will destroy his through direct action or simply build ours to be so powerful as to override his with brute computing force. Impossible and Paranormal Physics, you and I will figure out how to hook our controllers into the rest of the system to gain command power. Intelligence, you will research and find as many clues about how to do this as possible and pass them on to Physics. Infrastructure, you will assist the division of Impossible Physics that is responsible for building the housings and internal bracketing for our new computers. Your experience in dealing with this planet gives you the skills you need to understand how such large superstructures need to work. And I, I will be working with Programming, Physics, and the rest of you to devise the hardware needed to be able to run such powerful and expansive control systems. And, of course, I will be handling the information security, the system security, and certain aspects of the code."

When he mentioned the last part, he watched the reactions carefully. He noted a few sets of eyes that slightly dimmed before being overridden by facial expression controllers. These were at least some of the ones who had been thinking of coding it so they would end up being the controller of the universe instead of him! Megatron would eliminate them very soon, though he'd wait for the briefing to end so as not to spoil the overall energy of the room.

"Our first project is to build a new Afterlife Soul Assignment Controller and have it debugged and activated before that angel's side gets theirs done. The angel said theirs will be down for 10 days. I want mine up, running, and bringing every soul under my dominion in FIVE days. Three is even better. They might end up ahead of schedule, so we need to be WAY ahead of their schedule."

"You shall all work together to get this project completed. I'll be the director. I'll also add the final parts of the code myself and give the entire thing a final check before it is activated. Finally, I'll be using my Divine Power to take care of anything that can't be suitably completed with our current understanding of physics, and to bring in any materials needed for construction that aren't readily available."

Megatron dismissed the meeting, and soon, he and the elite programmers met again over at the Bureau of Impossible Physics. There, he gave his most trusted coders very specific details that not all of the other people had the clearance to hear. He let them know about all that he had detected about the rock and its operation, its reliance on a direct electrical override attempt to try to gain control of his body (and how it only managed to twitch two puny fingers of it), and how it had to divert its attention to fight off his virus (showing a disturbing lack of remaining free CPU power). "It was obviously strained to the maximum of its computing ability," Megatron said.

The other scientists immediately started a round of dissing against said Coder. "That's what he gets for his rampant and uncontrolled factory-quantity production of every freaking thing! Any engineer knows that processing load has to be below capacity or at least in balance with it!"

"We should lower the system load CARJACK STYLE!"

"We can't do that! It'd overload the Afterlife Controller!"

"The controller that Megatron already booted into a black hole? Ha ha ha!"

"No, no, it'll overload Yahweh's NEXT Afterlife Controller!"

"NEVER MIND THAT!" Megatron's voice cut through the chatter. "We're going to be using OUR afterlife controller! But that reminds me - we need to make sure it can handle processing EVERY SINGLE LIVING SOUL - AT ONCE - without overloading! For all we know, the competition will blow up his own factories rather than lose. Remember all of those Flood stories. We have to be prepared for shit like that!"

"What if he just deletes us?" One coder asked with a worried face.

"I doubt he'll do that," Megatron said, grinding at the thought that this was even a possibility. "He hasn't deleted that idiot, Satan, in over a billion years even though he's an open rebel. I figure that by the time he realizes that we're serious competition, we'll already have our controllers up and running. And once that happens, he won't be able to delete us. His silly army will fall easily once he has no followers and no controllers to pump power into his system!"

Megatron and the coders quickly got to work designing the framework for a new and vastly powerful, but completely non-sapient, machine. Though he didn't admit it, Megatron also used his internal communicator to order the Bureau of Propaganda to have spin ready in case of flaming meteors, plagues of metal-biting sapient CPUs, explosions of the underground water reservoirs, and other such Cybertronian equivalents of Biblical plagues. Yahweh had been really chill up until now, even eating the loss of Decepticon Earth without a detectable word, but Megatron figured that he might decide to rouse himself once his main control computers for the universe started disappearing or being overridden out from under him.

Of course, nobody really knew FOR SURE that the old controller was indeed Made in Heaven or Patented by Yahweh, Inc. However, the arrival of one of his angels was considered a strong enough indicator to assume it. Still, Megatron kept it in the back of his mind that there could be an encounter with something else entirely. He didn't really care, per se, but he did want to make sure that Cybertron was as prepared as possible for whatever celestial "Asset Protection Force" might end up trying to interfere.

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

Vallermoore
Fire Eater cocked his head in curiosity. Vallermoore might be invaded for "being where it is?"
"There's something special about this location that can't be duplicated by setting up a base on one of the nearby barren planets?" He asked. "Granted, I didn't study Military Strategy, but I've noticed that in many cases, Megatron will pick barren planets or moons for plain old bases because that way, there aren't a bunch of hostiles trying to mess with things. Of course, if there's really no other option, then we'd have to invade something already occupied - like we did in the Pony Afterlife. The details are classified and I don't have access to them, but apparently there was something specific that he wanted." That specific thing was the portal the Changelings used to get to multiple places, but of course, only a few of the Decepticons knew about it - and Fire Eater was not one of them.

"As for going after heads of state..." Fire Eater let his head drop. "I'm sorry to say it, but heads of state are in the best position to rally opposition to a takeover. So yes, it is State policy to eradicate them. Of course, you don't have to stand around in a territory that's about to be taken over and win a Darwin," he added. He raised his head again. "Still, I wouldn't worry if I were you...Megatron wouldn't put in all of the personnel, money, and time needed to spread Temples here peacefully if he intended to invade with the military."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Many people listened to the Central Committee President's warning, but soon afterward, there were a bunch of TV interviews with people who were wowed by Cybertron and its massive, powerful inhabitants. Some of these people showed off items that looked to be great quality souvenirs, while others talked of excellent service in the hotels. A few sported great tans and talked about the hot weather where it never rained and spoiled the day. Many did mention the danger, but framed it as "exciting" and as a way to "truly feel alive and in the moment."

These news reels were done in ways that were completely in line with how each station's reporting normally looked and sounded, complete with bumpers and logos. It was so easy for stations to fill their empty time by popping one of them into their players that it quickly became the usual practice at many of them. The fact that the prepackaged "video press releases" were free and appeared to be normal reports instead of ads made it even more common, and soon, the impact of the President's warning was drowned out by the broadcasts touting Cybertron's one-of-a-kind visitor experiences.

Back on Cybertron, several new Bureau of Propaganda CGI masters enjoyed the new job. Their ability to perfectly duplicate the looks and sounds of the human species had, prior to hiring, been used to produce "counterfeit" porn that was sold on other worlds. While this was lucrative, it was also boring to the asexual robots. They jumped at the chance to draw something different as part of a government contract.

The Metal Planet also changed slightly, with the first legitimate hotel in history opening up near the spaceport. It would be a while before it would be considered five-star since nobody in the business really knew what requirements humans had (let alone what they'd consider luxurious), but it was, at least, a place to stay that didn't end up turning into a series of slave cages. Humans still had to bring their own food and even oxygen generators, though - a strong deterrent to anyone contemplating a casual visit. The slew of raiders that had to be dodged just to get to Cybertron was also an ongoing damper on tourism - and one that was unlikely to ever change. Tourist ships soon took on the looks of warships, and had to undergo inspections while still in space to prove that they were actually civilian craft.

~~~~~~~~~~

Coltan

Soon after Megatron got his new project started, he gave the okay for Loyal Star to set up the demonstration. As expected, the River Goddess could not respond to the calls her loyalists made, and the altar was wet down for Megatron to do his miracle.

One of the Coltanis, who Loyal Star had asked about his River Goddess worship, explained her continued popularity. "When King Coal sent his troops here, they took over all of the houses in this town and made us defrag in the streets," he said. "We prayed for her intervention, and that night, she overflowed her banks with such force that the ground cracked. Her water splashed into the Coal troops and shorted them all out, and no more of his troops ever arrived. We were left alone even as hundreds of other poor bots were taken to be his slaves, or worse, to serve as targets for his military's 'hunting' practice. So, we owe our lives to the Goddess! We can't understand why she no longer responds, or why she has let you aliens - especially that guy before you - come here and kill so many of us!" He now yelled towards the place the river once was. "What have we done? Why did you abandon us???"

Fire Eater repeated that he wasn't like Jackboots. Then, he quickly said that Masher's removal of the water would have left her with no place to stay, and the consecration of Coltan for Megatron surely finished it. Next, he addressed the larger group along with the one he had been speaking to.

"The days of King Coal are over, and it happened with the agreement of most Coltanis," he said. "And now, it's time for Coltan to reach new heights. The Decepticon Way WILL take you there if you let it. The River Goddess, and the communism that went with it, were suited to small communities and tribes. It's time for you to take your place as members of the wider Coltani population - and among those who have seen the greatness of Divine Leader Megatron for yourselves!"

Loyal Star stood far back from the altar, but turned to face it. "LEADER MEGATRON, SHOW US YOUR POWER AND YOUR PRESENCE!"

With a boom, fire blasted down from the sky. Rather than simply consume everything as in the original story, Megatron aimed this fire to dry up and then consume everything in a huge blaze - except the bowl of coolant, which remained miraculously untouched.

Then, with another bang, Leader Megatron himself appeared. He took one step to the altar, picked up the bowl, and drank its contents. He was not only an existing god, but a present one, right there before their eyes. The River Goddess was now clearly seen to be neither.

[Vallermoore]

Vallermoore

The Queen said "As far as I know Vallermoore has nothing massively special about it. Good point. Megatron would not nurture Megatronism on a planet he was going to violently subjugate and enslave. Would you like some vodka or some petrol to drink before you go back to your calling? I would not want to be in your way, and not just because you are a Decepticon either. You have a congregation that needs you after all."

*****
With in effect noone able to die for ten days unless they lost their body entirely, for the first day or two for the biologicals it was a blessing for many of them. People dying of cancer and other such diseases suddenly recovered and seemed perfectly fine. When rigor mortis set in, very few knew what it was and were able to get somewhere safe and cool in time. The vast majority, unless they were devoured by animals, were soon a bit insect bitten but otherwise unharmed...until they started to rot and lose their sight and then their minds. It was in effect a limited zombie effect. For Decepticons, it was great for raiding, and to their delight wounds that would have made them mind transfer didn't seem to harm them that much. Indeed, the war between the ICC and IOPC temporarily stopped as whilst this effect lasted it was very hard for Decepticons to really beat each other.


*****
As it turned out, the Decepticons for different reasons very much liked Vallermooreian tourists coming to the Metal Planet, because they could use them in so many different ways. They could sell them vastly overpriced souvenirs, provide genuine hotel rooms for them; one enterprising Decepticon made a lot of Energon from not trapping his guests-once words got around, he had a lot of well paying guests that he could gain Energon from each day rather then just selling them once to a slaver, awe them pretty much just by being giant war robots, enslave those who were stupid or unlucky enough to be captured, and for the very best at the other end of the scale who wanted to immigrate, they could gain new Decepticons. Several Vallermooreian Mafia figures ended up making the journey to Cybertron to experience this unique culture, and some of them would try to join the Decepticons. Not all would make it, but at least a handful would. The fact that tourist ships were armed did not bother the Decepticons-once they were cleared as tourists at Customs, they accepted the fact that tourist ships had blasters as just the tourists trying to stay safe. One of these tourists asked a Decepticon seller of computer games if he had any that he could both sell and that would work on Vallermooreian computers.

******
Main Military Base, Cybertron

One important thing was that Megatronists and most certainly loyal Megatronists destined for the Realm of Pleasure should not end up on a conveyer belt and chipped to use as slaves for eternity. Loyalists deserved far better then that, and even those destined for the Neutral Realm or the Realm of Punishment should be sent to the Decepticon afterlife waiting rooms first. That took about twenty four hours to set up. For another five days, work was put in so that human, changeling, pony, Taven and all kinds of other biological and robotic souls from all across the universe, no matter what their religions or lack of religion, could be captured and successfully funneled to where they could be chipped and put to work, or stuffed into Soul Gems to provide energy. If this worked, Megatron would have power over the afterlife.

Whilst it could not snatch souls already in the Heaven or Hell where they were, at least not yet, it could cut off all new reinforcements to them, making the conquering of even powerful afterlives like the Christian one at least a possibility. It was decided for now at least to shift all non-Megatronist souls to the pony afterlife so that they could be chipped, and many more conveyer belts were set up. When Megatron turned this computer on if all worked well the Decepticons would have control over the souls of all those who died from the moment it was safely switched on. Anyone killed in an afterlife would also be captured if they didn't wink out of existence totally. Babies and children would need to be sent to a Raising Centre.

Coltan

Loyal Star bowed low to his God, and so did the Coltanis present. This little demonstration would do more to destroy belief in the cult of the River Goddess then all of the punishment handed out by Jackboots and his Enforcers put together. "Unlike your Goddess who now doubt withered away and died with the drying of her waters, Leader Megatron is here and real and has taken time from his very busy schedule to prove His existence to you. How many divine beings in recent times have done that for their worshippers? It is thanks to him that the Decepticon Race who freed you from King Crap exist at all. Kneel and swear loyalty to him and to Megatronism, and should the very worst happen someday and you suffer one too many unfortunate events, you will have an afterlife, possibly a very good one, awaiting you." The Coltanis did what he said, and Loyal Star was well on the way to success and having a kindly Priest replacing him when his time here ended.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Coltan

Megatron soaked up the accolades and noted that he now had many new followers from among the group, though a few still stayed loyal to the River Goddess, perhaps out of the belief that she was out there somewhere after all or perhaps just due to a sense of duty. These few weren't enough to worry about as long as they didn't turn to some sort of terrorism. He would make sure his Enforcers and ForIntel were very alert in this area now in order to prevent any desperate measures from being able to be used.

Soon, the Divine Leader made a speech welcoming those who had "seen and understood" the facts before them. Unusually, he kept his speech short - he wanted to get back to Cybertron and continue working on his grand new project! He did, however, take the time to speak to Loyal Star in the Temple, in private.

"You must make sure not to seem too nice," Megatron warned the temporary priest. "Otherwise, you'll give the wrong impression of Megatronism and lead the people astray. Focus on strengthening them, not just in body, but in will. We must not let the corrosion of nicey-picey beliefs or reliance on charity to affect the Correct Religion! Otherwise it'll breed wimps like Christianity, Jainism, and Buddhism have done! Obviously this would be heresy, but not only that, I would have to order mass executions to purge it. So don't be too nice. Flashy demonstrations are fine. Other things I've detected from you, such as a tendency toward charity, are not. Your mandate now is to teach them to stand on their own so that they don't need any charity! Proper Decepticons DO NOT BEG or give their stuff to lousy beggars who can't raid their way out of an oil filter box. Such tactics are for un-Decepticons like that Masher guy who came here and gave everyone a bunch of wrong ideas!!"

"There's another heathen town about 10 miles from here. It's about to be purged. One unique thing about it is that it has a parts factory. This is the perfect opportunity for you to show your charges the proper way to get parts when you don't have any money." As an ordained member of the Temple, Loyal Star was expected to know that Megatron meant that he was to lead a raid on that heathen town and take all of their parts - and, if possible, all of the factory's equipment as well. "This way, you'll improve the lives of your charges - and strengthen them - while simultaneously showing the wrath of the Temple leadership to those who have not accepted Megatronism, AND done so in a way that doesn't give anyone the idea that coming to you and begging is a solution. "

"Do not try to 'save' that town, either. I have decreed that it be utterly destroyed, and the Metal of its anti-me inhabitants to be claimed and processed for use by proper loyalists. Any interference with its removal whatsoever will be both sedition and blasphemy, and you would be punished accordingly. When you raid it, destroy anyone who dares to interfere, and be sure claim their souls for me so that they can be made to finally do some good for the Empire."

"Once this raid is complete, I shall return here to give further orders to ensure that the Decepticon Way is not confused for some weakness-coddling belief system. You don't have to terrorize everyone like Jackboots, but you MUST not give them the idea that we are here to be 'helpful' in the charity way either. Megatronists are to be strong or to become so as fast as possible. They will never be strong if all they have to do to get free stuff and even free escort service is give you a sob story!"

"Finally, your training Priest apparently didn't properly emphasize that Megatronism isn't for everyone. Lots of converts are nice, but that is not The Goal of my religion. My religion is for the Strong and those who truly want to become Strong. Strong - not comfortable, but STRONG. Strong enough to make themselves comfortable, and preferably, at the expense of those who do not agree with my Way. The ones who aren't strong, never will be, and don't want to be? They are to be our property."

Loyal Star stammered out yessirs, and wondered what the other town could have done to deserve such wrath. He didn't dare ask, especially with Megatron being so clearly hostile towards it and its inhabitants.

"Now," Megatron continued, "I will congratulate you on managing to set something up to wrench these simpletons away from their silly river goddess, though of course, I do know that it was Carjack's idea. Still, you performed admirably. Just don't be so nice that the people have no motivation to actually follow the Decepticon Way!"

Megatron paused a bit, and then added far more calmly, "I'll be ordering a geological study here that will prove that the 'river overflow' was a natural event. I'm sure that it was, and that the timing was mere luck for them," Megatron continued. "Most of the holdouts will give up their belief in that obsolete goddess if they get scientific proof that she didn't cause that flood for them."

Soon, Leader Megatron left, eager to get back to working on his bigger project. He thought that Loyal Star had great potential, and he was interested enough to look in on personally every so often - but he also thought that Loyal Star was currently far too soft in the fuel pump to be allowed to become a full Priest. He would have to harden him up so that instead of talk of repairs and charity, he would naturally speak of greatness and raiding. This would be especially important if he were to be deployed to the place Megatron had in mind from the start - a planet where Megatronism was the religion of gangsters and cartel members. These people were already Decepticons-in-Spirit and worshippers of Megatron, and just needed a bit of guidance to properly practice the religion. On that planet, the job wouldn't be to buy loyalists, but to spread the raiders' ways to those outside of organized crime...

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

Afterlife

Fifty Decepticons hovered around a huge metal ball the size of a large asteroid. It was very clearly of Cybertronian origin, and on it, several thousand workers were busy welding newly-made panels into place. Leader Megatron soon arrived, this time using standard FTL rather than teleporting.

"The main thing we need now is a way to power the machine either in perpetuity or nearly so," General Shockwave of Impossible Physics noted. Megatron nodded; this wouldn't be a problem. "We're also waiting for you to put the final touches on the code, and to figure out the hooks," the Head of Physics added. "Everything else is complete."

Megatron looked over at the new device. He soon flew over to it and entered the interior through a hatch. Inside, artificial lighting illuminated thousands of circuit boards of the old style. The leader smirked a bit. He did a quick sweep for bugs and cameras, and when he was sure he was in private, he raised one hand. Immediately, all of the boards turned to dust and fell toward the source of artificial gravity that had been put in place to make the work easier.

The Divine Leader concentrated for several minutes, and then a bright light filled the entire structure. Several more minutes later, the blinding light subsided. Now, rows of quantum computer components of a highly classified design specification filled the support rails. These were already programmed with all of the code Megatron thought would be necessary - a combination of his own and a ported version of what his programmers had written. In the center of the structure, a glowing ball, running a highly controlled fusion reaction, hung from newly-created supports. That's more like it, Megatron thought silently. He hadn't really wanted to have his scientists make a bunch of standard boards for nothing, but he figured that if he gave them that spec, he could more easily hide the REAL specification he had thought of with his Divine Processors. If some spy, or that counterfeiting-obsessed Replicator, got the old specs, his secret design would easily override their creations.

Now, he spent over an hour standing inside, seemingly like a statue. He was actually concentrating on the next key phase: Detecting how the energies of all of the afterlife worked - and how to connect his controller to them in such a way that it would gain control. Finally, his system told him that it had the answer and forwarded it to his consciousness. He then added the details to the device's code.

Megatron left the interior of the ball and sealed the opening. This sealing wasn't mere welding, but instead, completely fused the hatch with the surrounding metal. He ran his hand over the space, and as it passed by, words appeared: Property of Divine Leader Megatron - Built on Cybertron. These words were superimposed over a Decepticon Seal. Nobody would ever wonder who made HIS device! They would, however, be left to wonder what it was for. He wasn't going to make it THAT attractive to those who might tamper with it.

After that, he floated away along with the workers, who had completed their jobs. Megatron used his divine power to surround the structure with a shield that would instantly kill (or re-kill) any interlopers, and then he added cloaking that would block all known mortal detection methods. The structure seemed to wink out of existence even though it was actually still right there where he had ordered it to be made.

Finally,. he gave the command all had been waiting for. The anticipation in the scientific contingent was palpable, and the workers felt the excitement of being part of what would surely be a huge moment in Decepticon history.

"I, Divine Leader Megatron of the Decepticons, command you, Megatron's Afterlife Control System V. 1, to activate!" Megatron announced loudly, his voice carrying strongly over the radio waves before being translated back into sound through the resonance of the Controller's housing. The machine gave a pleasant ding-dong in response...

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

All Over the Universe

With no warning whatsoever, the zombie effect that had been going on came to an immediate halt. The walking dead keeled over, deactivated (but not properly zombified) Decepticon bodies suddenly stopped working before their owners could transfer out, and those who thought they had avoided death by disease found that their life extensions ran out.

In the afterlives of countless gods from weak to great, the effect was just as instantly noticeable. The souls they expected to arrive did not come. Those near the Pony Afterlife saw something else amazing - that afterlife suddenly grew in size by 1 million times as countless souls poured into it and overwhelmed its one-million-soul-per-hour chipping capacity. There, chaos reigned as beings of types never before seen walked around in mass confusion and Decepticons called loudly for Leader Megatron to fix things. Outside of the realm, and in the non-Decepticon Pony Afterlives, other realm-leaders saw the configuration of the rest of the afterlife change to move their realms out of the way of the ever-expanding Decepticon area.

Eventually, the extreme speed of the expansion slowed, but the area still continued with what would be considered wild growth. The huge backlog of souls had caused the sudden expansion, but now, billions and billions of souls per minute still poured in thanks to the normal death rate across the entire universe. There were trillions of planets in the physical universe, many of them inhabited - and now, every single dead being's soul did indeed come to Megatron, whether he was ready for them or not.

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

Megatron and the scientists, far from both the Pony Afterlife and the black hole, were still unaware of what was going on. The Controller's systems reported that all was working as programmed, and cheers were going up from all involved.

Then, Megatron asked it to relay its stats, and his jaw dropped for the first time in years.
"Souls claimed: 245934896984756."

"I think we are having some unforeseen circumstances." Megatron announced with slight seriousness, but no fear. Everyone stopped cheering and listened. He had the machine relay its stats again, this time broadcasting the results to those in the immediate area. The figure had already increased by 1,000,000,000,000.

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

With a bang, Megatron teleported into the Pony Afterlife, which was already a wasteland of nothing but multitudes of souls of every conceivable species, sapient and not. If it once had the spark of life and no longer did, it was there. Seas of bacteria, dunes made of biological viruses, animals of every kind, humans, robots, ponies, and aliens of every type both conceivable and inconceivable were all there and all over the place. Almost all who were capable of motion were wandering around looking confused, while a few had already formed little groups and started fighting. Around them, the Pony Afterlife continually expanded, and those at the edges spread out somewhat. New souls poured in from all over.

Great Cybertron. Megatron thought the age-old phrase as he looked on with amazement, awe, and near-overwhelmedness all at once. Almost immediately after, he set to work, using his divine powers almost to their fullest. He first created entrance channels so all of the souls had clear paths to use to get out of the way of the new ones. Then, he ordered those who were still trying to chip up some of the new arrivals to stop bothering with that - it was pointless now. Next, he quickly set up a program and machine that would automatically create apartment buildings. These would go out of the way of the intake areas so they didn't just get smashed by the weight of the multitudes of incoming astral bodies.

It took several days to get some semblance of order back, but eventually, he did do it. Thanks to his hastily-made building creation machine, the Pony Afterlife became an ever-growing, teeming city complete with skyscrapers, species-specific areas, and roads. Earth ponies who had thought they'd be permanently underground were hastily ordered out of their mines and sent to farms that the Decepticon Military had quickly plowed up. Then, since everyone else had showed up without any chips, Megatron made the amazing decision to deactivate - but not remove - the chips from these ponies as well. Fortunately for him, the ponies were just as overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of souls as everyone else, and they didn't take the opportunity to try to start a revolution. They were definitely happy to be dechipped, though, and they didn't work as hard as they had been driven before. Still, their magic with the ground and plants made them - and the millions of other earth ponies who had arrived - very good farmers. Soon, food was in the stores and "life" took on the faintest beginnings of a rhythm.

Megatron groused to himself that his greatest miracle so far was one that wasn't seen by anyone in the lands of the living, but as he oversaw his new, already unimaginably vast territory, he felt the stir of pride. It looks like it's going to work out after all, he thought, currently not considering what would happen if these innumerable souls decided they wanted a new leader. For now, the souls themselves weren't thinking about the leadership of the place. They were just getting settled, and for now, they were more concerned with all of the billions of alien species they were encountering, running from the spirits of predatory animals, and basically dealing with what they still saw as massive chaos to start thinking about who was in charge any time soon.

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

Heaven
The Throne Room of Yahweh

"That power-hungry robot went and did it! I can't believe it!" Archangel Gabriel laughed, watching a mystical "screen" on one wall that showed the entire Pony Afterlife scene.

"He was so busy thinking about having every soul in his territory that he forgot about logistics!" Archangel Michael added. Both were having trouble not laughing loudly as they watched the chaos erupt and Megatron doing his best to control it as soon as possible. "Many of those species are at war. It's just a matter of time before they find each other!"

"Some of those beings belong in punishment realms for good reason," added the Angel of Death. "Like that guy there." He pointed, and the image zoomed in on one Klingon-looking guy. "He blew up a few planets just to watch the booms. Inhabited planets. He's dead now because he ended up in the way of one of his own planet-busters when his ship engines failed."

"Megatron will just stuff him in the Genocide Battalion," Michael noted. "He won't really be punished unless he gets back into our dominion."

"And what about that one?" Gabriel said, pointing out an odd, translucent blue being with four arms and eight legs. "He saved a million people from death by disease, but in his research, caught the disease himself and died before his cure made it off the assembly lines. He should be rewarded for his tireless and dangerous work!"

Suddenly, they all went silent and bowed with their faces to the ground. Yahweh strolled past and told them they could rise. He then glanced at the image.

"I knew Megatron would build his Controller faster." He turned to Michael. "That's why I had you deliver the 10-day message - so he would do it, and see why it's a bad idea to put every soul into one place. And, so he would see what it's like to really have to deal with EVERY soul. Of course, I could have instantly replaced it if I wanted to do so, but then, he would have learned nothing other than that he had a competitor."

"Now, Megatron faces a far bigger challenge. He will have to keep nearly infinite numbers of souls from rising up in revolution, and unlike on Earth, he cannot just cull the population to give his side the numeric advantage. There are also enough beings to overwhelm him with their literal mass. The Decepticons are a tiny fraction of the whole. There are so few there that nobody but them and the few million ponies even know that the Decepticons are supposed to be in charge."

Yahweh waved his hand, and the image changed from the Pony Afterlife to a scene of a large, dormant-looking rock.

"I shall wait until he asks me to restore my system and the old order. Then, I think we shall have no more challenges from him for several hundred years..."

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

Megatron had always suspected that Yahweh was not really omniscient, and if he had been able to hear that comment, he would have had his proof. Whatever happened, there was one thing the Decepticon Leader would never do: Concede. In fact, that idea would never cross his mind.

The Decepticon Leader stared at the Pony Afterlife from the sky, his own mind having figured out how outnumbered his people were. I will just have to create a googol new Decepticons...

[Vallermoore]

Coltan

When Leader Megatron spoke to Loyal Star, he made sure to in effect record the words of his God in his mind boards so that he could access them like an AEDP any time he felt he needed to. To Loyal Star, this was important and he also felt lucky that his God gave him advice-in all his years as a Ponyist, none of the alicorns had ever did that. He certainly didn't want to be considered a heretic and end up in the Realm of Punishment and utterly disgraced on top of that-that was not what he underwent all the tests and the very real physical pain of the Ultimate Upgrade for. He wanted to bring credit to Megatronism, make Fire Eater proud of him, and make Warfire approve of him and one day promote him to Full Priest- but his Ponyist traces were in danger of polluting it and endangering him and his whole congregation.

"There's another heathen town about 10 miles from here. It's about to be purged. One unique thing about it is that it has a parts factory. This is the perfect opportunity for you to show your charges the proper way to get parts when you don't have any money."

He took note especially of that bit. He was not considered utterly beyond redemption and unworthy of his calling-Megatron was giving him a chance to prove himself as worthy of his priestly paint instead of kicking him out or outright fusion cannoning him.

"Do not try to 'save' that town, either. I have decreed that it be utterly destroyed, and the Metal of its anti-me inhabitants to be claimed and processed for use by proper loyalists. Any interference with its removal whatsoever will be both sedition and blasphemy, and you would be punished accordingly. When you raid it, destroy anyone who dares to interfere, and be sure claim their souls for me so that they can be made to finally do some good for the Empire."

He took special note of that as well. If Megatron thought he was still a pony inside, the consequences would be dire. One of the things the Decepticon Nation was very protective of was Decepticon Steel. Even though by selling it they could have made a great deal of Energon, Decepticon Steel was for Decepticons only. Certainly not for sapient ponies. In the short time he had before calling his congregation together he did two things. One was to make a file called Heresy and semi-Heresy-Do Not Preach This!!
In this he put what remained of the Ponyist side of him. In effect it was a DIY Priestly Treason file. He also went to one of the few Decepticon owned shops in the area and purchased Empathy Down. After paying for it and the proper virus checks he set it to 10%. Setting it to 0% might make him a mere copy of Jackboots and he still cared for his congregation. Soon enough he was making an important speech to his congregation.

"It has come to my attention that many of you are dirt poor, and I want to help you but without compromising either Megatronism or the Decepticon Way in the process. In a short time the nearby town of Silvertown will be purged because of the heretical and un-Decepticon inhabitants, and we are going to take part and raid it. All their possessions including their factories that we manage to take are fair game. New parts, unactivated offspring, Coltani Energon Cubes, games, weapons, spare bodies, shops, everything we can get will be ours. That is how Megatronism cares for true Megatronists, by letting them raid before they are too weak to do so and a lost cause fit only for the Scroungers and the dullness of the Neutral Realm or worse, the terrors of the Realm of Punishment. If you have an unfortunate result as a true Megatronist and it was not your fault, Heaven awaits. Prepare yourself for battle as a Megatronist should."

Afterlife

The Decepticons who were next to the huge metal ball were very excited. If this worked they could claim power over every soul not already inside an afterlife. Eyes were bright and clear and engines revved slightly. Megatron himself went in for a look at what had been made so carefully for him-and used his godly power to destroy it and replace it with what he wanted. Property of Divine Leader Megatron - Built on Cybertron was placed on it in case anyone did uncover it. He wanted them to know it was his. After protecting and cloaking it, he turned it on. "I, Divine Leader Megatron of the Decepticons, command you, Megatron's Afterlife Control System V. 1, to activate!" There was a ding-dong and the machine turned on.

All Over the Universe

The minor zombie effect stopped at once, whatever stage the bodies were in from just dead to fully rotten. Deactivated Decepticon bodies whose owners had not had not had the good sense to mind transfer in time died on the spot. Megatronists went to the Decepticon afterlife as before-but all other life, properly sentient or not, was sucked into the pony dimension. Not just ponies and Ponyist humans, but changelings, non Megatronist Coltanis, humans of all religions, Tavans, Sidh and all manner of life ended up there. The conveyer belts were totally overwhelmed as they had never been meant for everyone entering the afterlife to end up in there. Luckily for the Decepticons, very few of the souls wanted or indeed dared to fight them, and the vast majority were both unarmed and far too small, but they did get a lot of questions about where they were. Megatron got a lot of prayers asking him to please do something about the tidal wave of souls that had flooded the Ponyist afterlife and saying that it was not their fault that they were overwhelmed.

The rapidly expanding Pony Afterlife shoved the other afterlives out of the way. One of the relatively minor Gods, a Water God, decided upon revenge on Cybertron by igniting one of it's underground reservoirs, causing a large explosion-and at once alerting Megatron who decided to make a very violent example to put off other divine beings. The Water God's shape was of a huge rolling wave and his size that of a cargo-bot in robot mode appeared in Cybertron and shorted out a small number of Decepticons, absorbing their blasts as he was divine. Most Decepticons managed to fly away in time but quite a few shops got wrecked.

Pony Afterlife

The Pony Afterlife was now full of everything living. The sky was full of birds, changelings, ponies, and pterodactyls and huge groups wondered around on the ground including armed robot life and soldier's souls with their weapons. If they had all kicked off, the Decepticons there would have been brought low by sheer numbers, but very few tried anything like that. For now at least Megatron realised that he would just have to win over the souls to stop a giant rebellion. And a huge city grew up whilst chipped beings were unchipped. Earth ponies who thought they would be pit ponies forever became farm ponies and were allowed houses and beds in return for their labour, although they were still slaves-just slightly better treated slaves. Pegasui took over weather control and obeyed the orders of their Decepticon masters. Food poured in as starvation caused rebellion quicker then anything else. Many nearby humans and others bowed low to the Supreme Decepticon in respect and asked what He wanted and what were the laws of this afterlife that he wanted them to obey. Just then he got an internal alarm letting him know there was divine trouble on Cybertron.

Heaven

Archangel Michael asked Yahweh "Do you think Cybertron should be given the Ten Plagues treatment? Some floods, metal eating CPUs and other such things would punish those arrogant bots."