An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

When the store owner heard the Binary that translated as "three million Cubes" he at once paid a lot of attention to MasterBlaster. It was exceedingly rare for any bot to spend that many Cubes in one go on fireworks. Indeed, it was almost unheard of. He started telling asterBlaster of just how good his display would be. In his mind boards he had visions of what that many Cubes could buy. Maybe a new body with the finest armour and blasters or/and a lot of new games. Unusually for a Decepticon, whose advice (not counting that of Debuggers) was quite often not to be trusted, he had a lot of genuinely good advice for MasterBlaster. Soon enough a show would be arranged on a big almost totally free blank metal plate of Cybertron, where there was very little chance of exploding any bot's house or shop or mansion. First, MasterBlaster and Vintage would go to the bots living near that area to about the free firework show they wanted to put on.

When they did, the results were almost universally positive. Most bots liked this sort of thing, and it was not as if anything of theirs was in danger. Whilst a few bots were planning airshows, it was easy to find a night where the metal plate was free.
To be polite, MasterBlaster also told the local firebots for miles around about it, and they said a couple of them would watch just in case anything went horribly wrong. Seeing a human in a spacecraft about the size of the ship MasterBlaster had showed up in as a human, he told the human too. When everything was ready and set up, and MasterBlaster was sure it was not a trick (in this case, it was not, partly because a customer with this much Energon to spend was worth staying on the good side of) he would hand over a vault with all those three million Cubes inside it. He had set up billboards around, half of them advertising Vintage's shop, and half his own gang. When it was a short time before the fireworks were to be let off, large numbers of bots (and the one human) had turned up. There were bots who were many centuries old and bots just a year old, rich bots and poorer bots, shopkeepers and foundary workers and raiders and others. Somewhere in the crowd, SolarTempest had turned up although MasterBlaster didn't see him.

MasterBlaster said a few words over the sound system. "Welcome to the MasterBlaster Firework Display, made possible by the Fabulous Fireworks Emporium. Three things-first, this is partly to honour Leader Megatron who made us who we are today. Second, this is for my friend Vintage, whose shop address is on some of the billboards, third, my gang is rich and successful or I would not be able to spend this much Energon, and after the display if any raiders are thinking of joining up, it is accepting new members and going on a new raid, and when the show is over I'll be here if any bot is interested.. Let the fun begin."

When the display began, it was glorious even by Decepticon standards. Small fireworks let off where noone was angry enough to blast were common, but full scale shows like these were rare. To humans, the explosions would have been truly gigantic. For a full twenty minutes the show lasted. Very young Decepticon children were in awe-even adult Decepticons enjoyed the spectacle. As it turned out, after the show the Fabulous Fireworks emporium would get a couple of hundred new customers although none spent remotely as much as MasterBlaster had done. All the same, it meant there was one very happy salesbot. Luckily, no bot came down blasting at MasterBlaster. Indeed if one had, some of the other bots would most likely have blasted that bot for trying to ruin their fun. The final firework said in red sparks "JOIN THE MASTERBLASTER GANG TODAY AND GET RICH!" MasterBlaster wondered if any bots from the thirty-thousand plus bot crowd at all would be interested in joining, and as he waited he asked Vintage if he had enjoyed the fun.

*********
Loyal Star, when it came to the very few Decepticon laws of the Empire, was in fact a very law-abiding bot indeed to the point where he had once risked his life to obey them. The very tastefulness of Loyal Star's mansion attracted the wrong sort of attention from a Decepticon thief. When he got in, he very nearly gave himself away through backfiring, as he thought for a few seconds that the Face and then that the statue were real Decepticons. When he tried to steal the statue he set off the alarms.
Loyal Star was having a dream of flying through a gas planet's atmosphere with big bolts of lightning around and for him it was a good dream, but he was rudely awakened. At once he decided to try and destroy the invader's body but not kill him outright-unless he was facing a really tough robber, and then he would reluctantly, since he was not strictly on Temple business, try and invoke holy fusion fire. If the robber surrendered without a fight, he might show mercy.

The door that opened led into Loyal Star's study and the Priest raised his blasters at the thief, wondering if he would surrender and ask for mercy, or fight. "How dare you rob a PRIEST OF MEGATRON?" he demanded, hoping the thief would think he would be facing holy fusion fire from the start and surrender.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Vintage and MasterBlaster were talking about the show, and Vintage was saying how amazing it was, when the little spacecraft flew up. The human inside looked very impressed, and through the ship's speaker, started saying how he wanted to become a Decepticon and join what was clearly a great raid gang. MasterBlaster was quite flattered and was about to tell the tiny man all about Immigration when his ears picked up an extremely unexpected sound: Vintage's engine was revving so angrily that it was clear that lethal violence was imminent.

MasterBlaster turned to him with a curious and alarmed look. Before he could ask what was wrong, Vintage was telling him exactly that in fast, angry Binary. "That guy has a secret signal going out of his ship straight to Galactopol! It's a multi-planetary policing alliance over in the Alpha Centauri system. To make it quick, those assholes have built an orbiting jail that they think can hold US!"

Now, MasterBlaster faced a quandary. Should he assume - like Vintage clearly did - that the guy was an interstellar federal investigator/spy, or should he consider it a possibility that the ship had been bugged without its driver's knowledge?

As he considered this, a tough-looking, but non-hostile, group of thugs approached, perhaps to take him up on his offer of attempting to get membership into the MasterBlaster gang. They stopped when they saw that he was already talking to the human in the ship and waited, with just a little impatience, at a distance.

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

In the distance, SolarTempest watched both the show and the events afterward. His Coder could put on a good show, but he knew that secretly, MasterBlaster just loved to see things go boom. He also knew that, at some point, hostilities could erupt again. He turned and left, giving a slight wing-tip to a familiar-looking bot on the way out.

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

Suddenly, MasterBlaster's concentration was harshly broken by a hail of strafing blaster fire, some of which connected. That familiar-looking bot turned out to be none other than Buzz, who had been wanting to deactivate him for some time now. With the Holy Wars over and the Zombie Event similarly done, he finally had his chance to fight. Thanks to the giant fireworks show, which ended with MasterBlaster's name literally in fiery lights, he didn't have to look any further to find his target. He hoped that his upgraded blasters would be able to cut through his foe's armor and send him, or at least his current - and very expensive - body to the Main Pit of the nearest foundry.

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

Megatron Mansion

Leader Megatron picked up Loyal Star's prayer for holy fusion cannon fire, but he instantly detected the situation and decided against granting it. Defending against a thief was not Temple business, priest defending or not - but more importantly, a Priest of Megatron of all people had to be able to defend himself without intervention. This was a basic qualification. One could not be an official representative of the Decepticon Way, let alone Megatron himself, if he couldn't win against some random schmuck without help! Personal strength was a foundation requirement of Megatronism.

This thief's upgrades were made to increase his stealth ability, not make him a more powerful fighter. Loyal Star, on the other hand, had a decent fighting body and good blasters. Therefore, Megatron knew, the only way Loyal Star could lose is if he didn't have the mental fortitude to secure the victory. The Divine Leader watched closely with his mind to see the result of the impending fight, but would not interfere.

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

Loyal Star's Mansion

The thief never even considered that there would be the slightest chance for mercy. Mercy was nearly unheard-of as a concept on Cybertron, especially in a situation like this, where one party clearly deserved blasting. It was the way of Cybertron to attempt to deactivate someone in his position - a thief caught in the act, and as of now, trapped in a room with only one door.

With this cultural background, he didn't think twice when Loyal Star appeared in that doorway and began to raise his blasters. Before the homeowner could get his weapons aimed, the thief whipped his own into position at top speed and opened fire for all he was worth. In his mind, there were only two options: take out the homeowner, or lose a body of his own. He noted that the owner didn't put his jammers on, so he didn't activate his own either, but other than that, he expected no quarter and also would give none.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

As the last fireworks went off, MasterBlaster smiled and he looked at Vintage. Vintage's eyes were bright, his engine was purring like a very happy tiger might purr, and he had a big smile on his face. Not only had he seen a display he had not seen for a long while at no cost to himself, but his store had been well advertised and he could look forward to more customers and more Energon. Just then a spaceship about the size of the ship MasterBlaster had used as Auric came over and dipped in a bow. It had four energy weapons, two in front and two behind, and a human at the controls. MasterBlaster knew what it was like being a human on Cybertron, and when he was not raiding them or severing in or with the Decepticon Military, quite liked them. When the human said over a radio that he wanted to become a Decepticon and join MasterBlaster's gang, MasterBlaster was about to tell him about the perils of Immigration when something strange happened. The happy purr of a fully contented Vintage changed to an engine growling with anger, and the bright eyes darkened dramatically. Seconds later Vintage revealed why, in quick pulses of Binary, and it was all about the human.

"That guy has a secret signal going out of his ship straight to Galactopol! It's a multi-planetary policing alliance over in the Alpha Centauri system. To make it quick, those assholes have built an orbiting jail that they think can hold US!"

On top of that five thuggish looking but clearly not wanting to fight him bots turned up and clearly wanted to speak with him. He decided Vintage surely would not lie to him and grabbed the craft, flipping it downwards and quickly snapping off the energy blasters before giving the craft to Vintage. "Do what you like to that undercover pig, I need to speak with some bots who look like raiders." He quickly walked up to the bots with a slight apology bow. "Sorry for making you wait, a human spy needed dealing with, but now my time is yours." Before he or they could say anything more, to his shock and pain MasterBlaster came under attack. The other bots quickly got out of the way, although they stayed in the area. The five raider bots would now get to see if he could fight. If he did well and despatched his foe quickly, it would give him a good reputation as a bot who was clearly tough. If he lost a body, it would mark him out as weak. If it was a long drawn out battle, it meant he and his foe were as skilled and upgraded as each other. The crowd of bots in general would get to see a fight to the body on top of the firework display and felt really entertained.

MasterBlaster found that whilst he could absorb about 60% of the blast, the other 40% got through, cutting into the outer layers of his armour. He quickly went into full battle mode and blasted back at Buzz, wondering just how good Buzz's upgrades were and if his own blasters would affect him. Clearly Buzz had been to the Ultimate Mods shop and spent lots of Energon to fight his hated foe. Neither bot used their jammer-both would have liked to, but the other bots would not have taken kindly to them endangering every bot in the place.

Megatron Mansion

Megatron heard the thought of Loyal Star but turned it down. Partly as it was not Temple Business, but partly because a Priest of Megatron was expected to fight and prove how strong he was. He did hope Loyal Star would win though-a bot as loyal as he was, was a bot that was worth having around. He did watch with His mind though.

Loyal Star's Mansion

Loyal Star with a thought flicked his Empathy Down to 0%, his pain level to 10%, and went into full Battle Mode. Since his foe had not surrendered, he would have to get his body turned to scrap as a warning not to steal from a Megatronist Priest. The battle was short and sharp, and Loyal Star took 30% damage, but his foe's lighter less armed body was blasted into scrap. Loyal Star turned his Empathy Down from no empathy at all, to 25%. A priest with no empathy at all would not be a good priest. He mounted the head and hands of the body on his mansion as a warning to thieves and spent hours repairing the damage to his own body, before going to a security shop to get some anti thief defences and anti thief advice.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Loyal Star's Mansion

In the street, passers-by stopped and watched as the windows flashed with light. Everyone recognized that type of lighting: blaster fire. Almost instantly, about 20% of the people formed up into impromptu betting groups, with most of the money being put on the homeowner. They knew that people in their area, a very rich neighborhood, were usually able to afford bodies that could defeat the average thief. Since no one had seen Loyal Star accepting guests, they figured that the battle was indeed against a thief instead of an argument between friends (who would be more likely to be evenly matched).

Once the windows went dark again, the people waited around to see if someone would come out carrying a deactivated body. Then, they'd know right away who the winner was. Unfortunately for them, nobody came out right away. However, the house lights soon went on, and nobody was heard coming out the back. This was a good enough sign for most, and small amounts of Cubes began to change hands. Soon enough, most of the crowd dispersed.

Later, Loyal Star did appear, carrying the scorched body of his foe over one shoulder and holding himself with a victorious attitude. He would first stop at the foundry to cash in his winnings, gaining a cart of 3,000 Cubes in the process, and then go to a security store for better locks and other equipment. Across the street from the mansion, a bot got out his communicator. "Now," he said tersely, and broke the connection.

Within two minutes, two other bots came gliding in with a trailer and landed nimbly in the street in robot mode. They immediately entered the now-undefended property and went around the back. As their scout expected, the back door had not yet been fixed. It was a simple matter to walk in.

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

By the time Loyal Star came back to fix that door, he would find that his Temple room was now missing one statue and a robot's head; the Face remained, apparently too big to take along. His study was now sans its fancy chair, and the walls had been damaged due to the thieves hoping to find a hidden safe behind them (there was none). The workshop was entirely blanked out down to the walls - while fancy stuff was nice, tools and fluids were always the most fencable items, and they made sure to take every single one. Finally, the door of Loyal Star's home vault had been destroyed with a good blast of liquid nitrogen to make it brittle, followed by a hammer; and no Energon remained.

Loyal Star sat down on one of the plain steel benches that had been left - they'd been considered too heavy to carry for the low price they'd bring - and held his head. He had momentarily forgotten that a thief wasn't a one-off type of person on Cybertron, and that as soon as others saw him leave, they'd search for the now-undefended opening. The thieves, on the other hand, had not forgotten that. In fact, as he was pondering, he heard still more coming in.

With a jump, he ran to the hallway and aimed blaster fire toward the sound. Instantly, there was the noise of energy hitting metal, followed by a yelp and the pounding of feet now running away. Loyal Star quickly grabbed the new lock, ran to the door, and installed it after cursing at the sight of the receding flight-lights of the latest fleeing thief. NOW his place was secure again, and he could go inside and try to wind down.

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

Later, Loyal Star was calm enough to get out his Book of Megatron in hopes of finding advice. He was relieved once again that this Book spoke not in parables, but in plain language that could not be honestly misinterpreted.

Someone who suffers unfortunate results from thieves has many options, said the chapter on Mastering the Defending Side of the Decepticon Way. The best is to find out who the thieves were and then go rob them of everything they own, and preferably, deactivate at least one of the bodies of each of them. Next-best is to track down the goods and then take them back from whoever has them now. If there is no opportunity to even up, then the defender should at least take all reasonable steps to prevent further unfortunate results. In fact, in ALL cases, such steps should be taken.

Loyal Star stared at the ceiling as he thought hard. How could he find out who stole his stuff? Eventually, it came to him. Long ago, when he had been sent to his first assistant priest assignment, it had been noted that every Statue of Megatron was bugged. That likely included even his own, life-sized, Statue! This meant that DomIntel would know exactly where his Statue was now, assuming that it hadn't already been melted down. He would just need to bring a "helpful donation" to the back of his most local office and ask them to help him find his "lost" statue and any other "misplaced" equipment of his they might know about.

It would be important for him to NOT mention that it was stolen; it would be un-Decepticon for DomIntel to openly help someone get thieves in trouble, and worse, could cause them to be seen as taking a police role. But they would be glad to help someone find a thing that was simply "lost" or "misplaced"...for about 10,000 Cubes brought through the back door, that is. Being a Priest would not help him in this. DomIntel would suddenly know nothing at all about any item locations if the correct procedures for bribery, combined with the actual bribe, were not paid first. Even with the bribe, names would not be forthcoming. Loyal Star would simply get a set of geo-coordinates for the statue and/or other equipment, and a perfunctory "good luck."

~~~~~~~~~

As Loyal Star left his mansion, this time after making sure it was completely secure, Leader Megatron smiled over in his own home. His priest hadn't caught all of the angles at first, but, like a proper Decepticon, was off to do something serious to correct the initial oversight. He continued to observe as Loyal Star flew to the vault complex and withdrew the bribe price. Soon, Megatron was sure, there would be another battle. The Divine Leader approved. He would hate to have to keep such a loyal bot from advancement, but he still insisted that his representatives be part of the Strong. So far, Loyal Star had shown no hesitation to take up that mantle when the situation called for it - and it called for it now.

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

One Neighborhood Over

"So he's some religious whackjob!" The thieves were laughing. "I can't believe he had a mini-Temple in there! Ha ha ha!" The gang leader slapped a hand on the statue's shoulder. "Well, Meggy, you must have been bored standing there. But don't worry. I've got something really 'interesting' planned for YOU."

"Yeah, the 'pool' opens in six hours, and you'll be going for a nice, HOT swim!" Another said jeeringly. The statue stared back blankly from now-hollow eye sockets. Over in the corner of the room, the third thief was busy chiseling the lab-produced ruby panels into tiny, jewelry-type gems that would be sold on other planets. The sound of his methodical chipping formed a quiet drumbeat behind the raucous voices of the other two bots.

"Looks like we're going to get a couple of thousand carats out of each eye, all of top quality" he said. "Definitely worth a flight to a planet that cares about jewels for jewels' sake."

"The rest of the loot was pretty good, too. The finest oil and anti-boil, 100 Cubes of Supreme, top-of-the-line genuine Decepticon Parts tools and filters, a can of some 30-Cube/lb wax, and a chair with gold legs." One of the chair's legs was already off, and was now sitting next to the gem guy. Once he was done turning the rubies into jewels small enough for humans to use, he would melt down the chair leg to make rings, earrings, and other jewelry. Some would be combined with the cut rubies to make bejeweled versions of these things. It would all be worth far more sold to some human-operated jewelry store in these forms than practically given to a foundry as bulk scrap.

"This guy had to have been some kind of biological. They're the only ones who care about gold enough to make chair legs out of it. A real Decepticon would consider it too soft for anything practical like that." The boss noted.

"Too bad this statue isn't 100% silver, though." Another added. The thieves could tell by its weight that most of it was made of something sturdier, as was the practice among most companies who produced such things. "We could have just taken the eye panels if we weren't in a hurry, and made almost as much money."

The thieves spent several hours talking like this as they waited for the foundry to open so they could unload the statue. As they killed time, they had no idea that the original owner of the haul was now on his way...

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

Fireworks Area

About 3,000 people from the crowd immediately formed a very wide circle to watch the unexpected new show. They ooh'd in pleasant surprise when MasterBlaster opened fire not only with his two upgraded Standard-shaped weapons, but with several other ones that had previously gone unnoticed. Buzz's surprise, on the other hand, was anything BUT pleasant when he found his own armor seared through and several holes now melted through his wings. The air howled through these new openings, destroying his original aerodynamics. He could have stayed aloft anyway - his Navigation Module quickly recalculated how to do it according to the new physics in play - but he chose to transform for a landing so that he could fight on solid ground.

This turned out to be a big mistake for Buzz. MasterBlaster kept firing as Buzz entered the transformation sequence. He was an open target until he got about 75% through that sequence and was once again able to bring his blasters to bear, and by continuing to fire, MasterBlaster made full use of the opportunity. By the time Buzz started to fall the last few feet to the ground to complete the landing on foot, his wings were thoroughly ventilated and one arm was ready to fall off. He had also taken a few blasts to the face, which, it turned out, had some very solid armor behind it.

Buzz did not admit to thinking that he was now on the losing side. He saw that his initial salvo had done damage, and would do his best to get some blasts all the way through to gain the victory. Now, he opened fire with his other Double-Strength blaster. On the other side of his body, a new weapon came up from a panel in his shoulder, and it began to fire blasts as well. Other barrels on this shoulder-mounted weapon ejected small missiles, which raced toward MasterBlaster with the unerring aim that came with internal guidance systems.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, the human was spinning like a centrifuge to try to appease Vintage, who was holding his now-disarmed ship. That human had been quite shocked when MasterBlaster attacked. He had fired away frantically before his ship's weapons were snapped off like thick toothpicks, but it had done nothing to his attacker's armor. Now, by the looks on Vintage's face, it seemed like he might be summarily crushed without a second thought. He was really regretting his decision to join Galactipol now, and that he took the assignment of trying to find out where some Decepticon gangs were going so that they could (theoretically) be intercepted, tried, and jailed. He was also seriously regretting the very idea that the Decepticons could be "brought to justice," either one gang at a time or as a people in general.

For now, however, his final end was delayed. Vintage was watching the fight, ready to join in if called upon.

[Vallermoore]

Loyal Star's Mansion

As the battle took place in the mansion, the neighbours and random Decepticons saw and heard what was going on and betting on the outcome started. Later on Loyal Star planned to nail the head and hands to the mansion for now as a warning to others. However, he made the cardinal mistake of not calling Fire Eater to see if Fire Eater would do a small amount of house-sitting, and as he went off to the foundary other thieves struck, stealing Energon, his tools, and all sort of other stuff although not the Face. His eyes dimmed dramatically at all the stolen items and damage. As another thief came in, he blasted at him and locked the door properly. If he had still been a pony, he would have cried tears of rage. He decided, since his Book of Megatron was still there, to look through it's foil papers for advice and soon found it. And then realized that because his Megatron statue had been taken, a good bribe to Domintel and reporting that he had accidently lost the statue would gain the information needed. First he went to his main vault and soon had seriously upgraded himself, with some extra-thick armour, a weaker version of MasterBlaster's mod, that would absorb two-thirds of the energy of any blasters fired at him, and some triple-strength blasters of his own. Hopefully those thieves would soon be in the afterlife when he had finished with them.

One Neighborhood Over

Loyal Star found his target, blasted open the door and charged right in, flicking on his jammer as he did so and blasting one of the five thieves into bits before he knew what had happened. "Rob a Megatronist Priest, would you?" The four others opened fire, but to their horror their foe was seriously armoured and modded up to greatly lower the power of their own blasters. Whilst they did do 50% damage to Loyal Star and he would again need to spend a while repairing the damage, every last one of them was killed, and ended up in the afterlife. Now it was up to Megatron as to what their ultimate fate would be there. Loyal Star made a quick, silent prayer that at the least, they would end up in the Neutral Realm for desecrating the holy objects they had stolen. However, he refrained from outright praying that they went to Hell as they were just being Decepticons. After repairing himself, he would find that they had a whole vault of 30,000+ stolen Energon Cubes as well as various other stolen items on the premises-stuff that was now his. Soon enough his stuff would be back-his statue given new eyes, a good security system installed at his property-and there were several hands and heads firmly nailed to the walls, brass plates announcing under each one "I tried to steal from Loyal Star." Hopefully, at least for now, that would deter other burglars.

Fireworks Area

A very annoyed MasterBlaster-not only had he been attacked, but at his show as well-let all his blasters from Ultimate Mods off at Buzz and did quite a bit of damage to him. Calculating that without help he only had a 30% chance of victory that went up to 80% with help, he decided that now was a good time to call Vintage. "Vintage, please could you come and help me blast Buzz to bits?" he asked urgently. Surely as he was his friend and on top of that had just got a free fireworks display and free advertising for his shop on top of that, Vintage would charge in and help blast the wounded Buzz into scrap.

The human hoped to take advantage of Vintage being distracted to leave Cybertron, but Vintage, before putting his ship down, crushed it's engines so the ship would not be going anywhere. He could either wait for Vintage or put on a spacesuit and risk leaving his ship.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Fireworks Area

Vintage quickly responded to MasterBlaster's weirdly polite call for help, leaving the disabled spaceship on the ground. The human didn't waste any time - he immediately put on his spacesuit, which was a form-fitting and futuristic style except for the air tank, and opened the door. Stairs came down, and he bounded down them four steps at a time. As soon as he hit the ground, he began to run, knowing that if he stayed where he was, the angry robot would kill him for sure.

Almost immediately, he realized that the massive size of the robots had, when viewed from the air, given an illusion that it wouldn't take long to cross the open area and reach the first shacks on its outskirts. In reality, the shacks were at least 15 miles away, and there was a huge crowd of building-sized people between him and them. Not only that, he was at great peril even out here. The ones who didn't notice him were milling about and could step on him by accident, while a few of the ones who did see him started to move toward him with apparent menace.

The human didn't have too long to worry about all of this. Suddenly, he saw a bot bearing a strange symbol (along with his Decepticon Seals) coming toward him. The symbol, two simple painted-on Decepticon eye panels with words in an official-looking Binary font just below them, seemed to instill fear in those around him. They quickly moved out his way, and within a minute, the human was taken up in this bot's hand. "Domestic Intelligence," the bot identified himself. Without waiting for a response, he turned around and began to march his captive over to the local office for interrogation. It was clear that Vintage wasn't the only one who had detected the signals coming from his ship.

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

Once Vintage joined the battle, Buzz's chances dropped precipitously. MasterBlaster targeted his remaining blaster while Vintage went after the shoulder-mounted armament. Soon, despite taking some damage in the process, they had blown Buzz's weapons off of his body. Buzz went to grab a handheld automatic energy rifle out of his thigh panel, but before he could succeed, the defending pair managed to blast the rest of the way through his armor. Soon, he was forced to mind-transfer, and his body fell to the ground with smoke coming from its internals. Vintage made his way over to it with quick strides and delivered a few more carefully-aimed blasts to destroy all of its boards and ensure that Buzz couldn't transfer back to it and blast them when they least expected it.

"Nice way to end a show, isn't it?" Vintage asked. "A 4,000-Cube hunk of scrap!" Buzz's body was worth more than most thanks to its extra armor. Though the armor's functionality was destroyed, it would add plenty of weight to a foundrybot's scale. The now-destroyed weapons that went with it would fetch another 100 Cubes or so.

After having seen MasterBlaster fight, and that he could do so in tandem with another person, the tough-looking robots were more impressed. They soon made their way over to ask about the basics of working with his gang, such as how the loot would be divided and what types of bots were already in the gang. They all expected to have to fight for their ranks, so they wanted to know just what they would be up against when that happened.

Vintage, on the other hand, was now staring into the disabled spaceship. Though he was still flush with the thrill of victory, and the general feeling of enjoyment left over from the show had returned, he was still a bit sad. The human was gone. Now, he wouldn't get to either flatten him, or ransom him back to his solar system for a million Cubes and force his government to issue an apology on top of it. Vintage looked around, but all he saw were robotic spectators who were now making their way to the edges of the show area and taking off into the skies. He marveled for a moment at how orderly their exits were. They were using the basic rank-after-rank takeoff pattern first learned by new military recruits. By avoiding any fancy moves in these crowded conditions, they could all anticipate each other's position and avoid crashes.

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

Loyal Star's Mansion

When Loyal Star returned home, he saw evidence that others had been poking around in hopes of finding an insecure door. Thankfully, his new locks held, and no one had gotten in.

His idea of mounting parts of his dead foes had the right motivation behind it, but alas, it would not work as he'd planned if someone got in. Once anyone could see the macabre display, they would already be inside - and once a Decepticon thief got in, it'd take more than a shocking sight to get him to leave without any loot. Instead, he would be more likely to steal the parts and sell them to a foundry to get a bonus on whatever else he managed to get. Perhaps later, when talking to someone at the Temple, a friendly bot would suggest that he mount things like that outside the house. If he did mention it to someone, he would also be told that it was a gangsterish thing to do, and best left to the rear doors in an area like his.

For now, Loyal Star didn't need to worry about that. Instead, he placed his tools back in his workshop and his Energon back in the still-wrecked vault. There, it would at least be neatly arrayed instead of piled up for him to trip on. He also brought in the rest of the haul of what were now twice-stolen goods. There was a decent blaster, parts and tools of all sorts, many software chips of unknown provenance and unknown type (all best to be tested on a separate, expendable, computer), several fake stock certificates apparently meant to be foisted off on tourists, some fake money, and a whole batch of thieves' tools. A large pile of Energon in all grades topped off the haul. He quickly decided to exchange the Low Standard portion for something better at a Raid Dropoff Point. It would cost 1.5 Cubes of Low Standard to get a Cube of Standard, but it'd be worth it to avoid drinking that only-semi-filtered stuff.

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

Decepticon Afterlife

The new arrivals were soon greeted by a couple of Decepticon afterlife angels, one from the Neutral Realm and one from the Realm of Pleasure. Four of the five bots were taken by the Neutral bot even though only three of them had been in on the last raid. The final one, who also wasn't in on the raid against Loyal Star, gave a final wave to the others as he was taken to the Realm of Pleasure. He was the one who happened to be in the way when they were first caught by surprise, and his unfortunate result had been forgiven due to the suddenness and unexpectedness of the fire he had taken.

[Vallermoore]

Fireworks Area

When Vintage joined in the fight, between them they managed to disarm Buzz and blow his upgraded-and fortunately without his "buzz" ability, body into scrap metal. Buzz wound mind-transfer to another body in his house in a foul mood. Not only was MasterBlaster's greatly upgraded body still repairable, but Buzz had lost his own upgraded body on top of that, and for now lacked enough Cubes to get another one that could take on MasterBlaster and win. Cursing, he vowed his revenge some day. He surely would have a long time to carry it out.

"Nice way to end a show, isn't it?" Vintage asked. "A 4,000-Cube hunk of scrap!"

"Yes. And we can split it 50?50 as I would have lost but for you. For now those bots need my time."

He gave the bots a light bow and they bowed back in the same way. It was the equivalent of a handshake. Bots didn't shake hands in case hands got crushed by mistake. There was a gesture where they pressed hands together but it was incredibly rare, the equivalent of a forehead kiss, and only done between Coder and offspring at some very bittersweet moment like when SolarTempest grew fully sapient. "Sorry about the delay, but an old enemy had to be dealt with first." This did not put the bots off-indeed they had seen he could fight and win and fight with another bot on his side without friendly fire problems. If anything, it was a plus in their eyes. He told them the number of bots in the gang and their names, which gave a clue to their personalities and fighting skills, but didn't give too much away, as the existing gang bots would hardly thank him if he did that. "I also need a day or so to get my body repaired as I can't be expected to fight for dominance whilst my body has several large holes in the armour." They nodded and understood fully, and gave him a way to contact them when all was ready. Also, if they were planning to upgrade it would give them time to upgrade as well.

They left and MasterBlaster turned to Vintage. "My time is once more yours. Don't be unhappy, that human will either be found by Domintel, enslaved or stepped on, or will die of hunger and thirst very quickly. When we have been to the foundary, could you help me rearmour myself? I'd happily pay you for your help."

*****
When the human was scooped up by a marked Domintel bot, he wailed "I WILL TELL YOU ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU JUST DON'T KILL OR HURT ME!" The Domintel bot felt disgusted. Most biologicals begged for mercy so easily and so much. When the Popa had not begged for mercy and yammered with fear, but had just said that he was only trying to stay in power and asked politely only to be allowed to pass on to the afterlife (this was before Megatron had defeated Yahweh) even mighty Megatron had respected this (to him) tiny biological that was so different to the rest of them and had bravely accepted that his execution was necessary. He took the human into a Domintel station for interrogation Domintel style. About some things the Decepticons were surprisingly open, but spies were heartily hated.

*****
Loyal Star's Mansion

After making sure he had all the needed Cubes, Loyal Star would call out a security business and pay well to have got strong doors fitted with extra strong locks, and set up a trap where if bots came in that were not recognised by him, blasters would start blasting them until they either fled, lost a body, or managed to destroy the six ore so blasters. The good thing with this trap was if it went wrong, it would not at once be fatal. Later he would buy a new internal vault and several other good things. He knew even now there was a danger of being broken into, but at least the average burglar or small gang would be kept out. He would later radio Fire Eater to ask him about the heads and arms on the outside of his house idea. With things back to normal (for now) he could play games, read and study his Book of Megatron, and generally have fun. He decided to see what it would be like to fly through the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, mind transferring to a spare body that didn't have any rare mods and games that would be a real PITA to lose first if things went wrong, and setting things to make sure if his body lost power or was sucked down in such a way that there would be no escape, he could mind transfer automatically. Whilst he didn't fear Hell, it would be utterly idiotic to get killed in such a way and end up in the Neutral Realm.

Finding a large multi-coloured gas giant a few light years away, he flew into the upper atmosphere, something he had imagined doing since when he was a young pony.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Vintage gladly accepted both the 50% cut of the scrap price and the offer to help with the repairs. He may have been a friend, but he wasn't into turning down money. Soon enough, the two watched Buzz's upgraded body slowly melt and become part of a wider batch of metal, which was then separated into its constituent parts by a device that worked based on the differences of those metals' densities. A layer of sludge formed on the top of the pit and was quickly removed by an automatic skimmer - this had been Buzz's plastic and rubberized components. The combination of scorched and still-molten plastics would be dumped into rough molds and later sold off to a different recycling facility for further processing.

Other customers could tell that MasterBlaster and Vintage had been the winners thanks to their grins. They sure weren't mourning the loss of the guy in the pit! A few congratulated them as the foundrybot stacked up 4 large Cubes and a few regular ones to make a payment of just over Vintage's guess of 4,000.

Their next stop would be an outlet of the Decepticon Parts Company. While Vintage had a shop, it still specialized in used parts - typically in older models - and MasterBlaster had no need to settle for secondhand. They soon converted his share of the haul into brand new parts. Next, they went to MasterBlaster's mansion, which had plenty of copies of the specialized mod parts needed to repair his Ultimate Mods components. There, they would complete the needed repairs.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Domestic Intelligence Office, City of Flashbang

The DomIntel agent wasted no time in telling his superior officer the reason for bringing the human in. "This is the one that was transmitting signals back to Galactipol." He nearly shouted over the human's continued pleading. "As you can hear, he's been trying to blow out my auditory circuits since I picked him up."

The supervisor, a gray robot who seemed to epitomize the concept of lifelessness, stared down dispassionately. "A civilian who begs like that is genuinely afraid," he noted. "But if you pay attention to its biofeedback signals, you'll detect that his heart rate is steady and not very elevated. Like most spies, he has been trained in how to react if busted. And his boss clearly told him to act like a 'regular person.'"

It was true; the agent's hand sensors picked up a fairly calm heart rate as well as too little sweat for someone who acted so scared. The human had to be acting.

"Just code read it, and send the data to dev/null once it passes through the porting system. Then I will forward the information to MilIntel, and we'll see what comes of it..."

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

A Gas Giant

Several swirls of color were splashed across the surface of this behemoth - giant, hurricane-like storms that raged for decades or longer. Loyal Star knew that these were the most obviously-dangerous areas, so he picked a plainer-looking place to enter the upper atmosphere. Soon, he found himself engulfed in darkness - the clouds were so thick that they blocked out the light. He switched to radar and other instruments to "see" where he was going, and soon, he was able to concentrate on navigating the still-high winds of his immediate area.

After flying around for a decent amount of time, his radar picked up a large, solid object that appeared to be hovering in place. It seemed to be some sort of platform, perhaps put there to harvest energy. He couldn't tell whether or not it was still occupied or if it was a derelict left by some other civilization long ago.

[Vallermoore]

Domestic Intelligence Office, City of Flashbang

The human would soon have a genuine reason to be afraid, and was screaming in agony as he was strapped into a transfer seat and the information read and sent to dev-null, whilst the spy's soul would end up in the Realm of Punishment as a spy and an Autobot-in-spirit, and his body would be thrown into a slag pit to burn to ash. They now knew the location of a partly built prison for Decepticons, and the fact that they were working on a virus that would if they could somehow perfect it act like a slave chip for Decepticons to force them to behave and not try and escape or lose themselves in their internal games. Several planets had put money into this but the one who put the most in was a human-settled planet named Arcturus.

**********
MasterBlaster was very pleased when his body including it's mods were fully repaired. "Clearly there are blasters out there that can defeat even my Mods. Maybe I need an upgrade. Without you, Vintage, I would have lost this body, and although I have spares I would be vulnerable to say the least. If you are ever in a similar predicament to what I was facing, I would jump in for certain. You have helped me time after time." Once he was repaired fully he radioed both his gang and the new bots to arrange a time that was fine for them all for the needed duels to the body and then the planned raid. He was not sure yet where the raid would be against but he wanted it to be big enough to enrich the whole gang. Rich bots were content, happy bots who had no need to try to overthrow their leader.

*****
A Gas Giant

Loyal Star felt a thrill of power as he neared the huge planet. He knew not to descend into the great red spots as even a High General would lose a body if he flew into them. Instead he picked a-relatively-safe area where the winds were not ridiculously dangerous for a Decepticon and were *only* as strong as a hurricane on Earth. Soon enough he descended into these winds and after going not that far in found it was dark, only lit by far away lightning storms that he knew well not to fly within a mile of. He turned on radar, infer-red and other such things to *see* down there and to pinpoint dangerous downdrafts. He was about to fly back out again, when to his surprise he picked up a platform. He turned on his camouflage and looked for IOPC or ICC symbols or Decepticons on guard duty. Finding none, he landed and held onto the door to avoid being blown away. He decided to pick the lock with a lock picking tool, and soon he was inside. He was aware that if this belonged to Decepticons he could very easily have a fight on his hands, so he readied himself for one but was ready to try and talk his way out of one if possible.

[Victorious Decepticons]

MilIntel

The officers at Military Intelligence were quite surprised to get a fairly urgent, though not emergency, report from their civilian counterparts at the main Decepticon Intelligence Division. It was signed by officials from both DomIntel and ForIntel, and warned of the attempts at creating an enslavement virus that would, if it worked, be able to affect Decepticons. It also listed all of the involved planets, starting with Arcturus, but going all the way down the list to the tiny and weak planet that only put a couple of million NSD into the project.

One of the commanders, who had the report in his hand, soon had a big, malicious grin on his face. "Boys," he announced into the room, "It looks like we finally have a good enough casus belli to wipe Galactipol off the map."

Immediately, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to face him, their engines semi-revving with expectation. The commander quickly passed on the relevant information, and several of the MilIntel agents nodded as if they'd heard good news. For them, it was indeed good news, for they'd been hoping to find something out that would get Megatron to authorize full military action against the pesky "galactic police." This would almost certainly qualify.

Only a few minutes later, the commander activated his hotline to Leader Megatron. To his dismay, he did not get an immediate war order to pass on to the High Generals. Instead, he was to send a few agents - disguised as common raiders - to check out this orbital prison complex and see how complete it actually was along with just what kind of containment measures it had. "Don't forget to make a Save just before you go," Megatron ordered the agents. "If you actually get captured, you'll have to delete yourselves to protect your Code and the Decepticon OS from these known hackers! As long as you have Saves, this will only be an aggravation to you..."

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

Galactipol Orbital Prison

As the newly-sent agents got close to this facility, they immediately saw that the captured spy's information was obsolete. He might have been told that it wasn't ready, but it clearly was either complete or nearly so. Not only that, it wasn't just made to hold a few hapless raiders. It was the size of a Death Star and easily had room for 10,000 Decepticon prisoners and perhaps another 100,000 smaller prisoners - as well as any guard staff it employed. The moon-like structure itself was a depressing and foreboding dark gray.

"I say we steal the entire thing!" The lead agent said over the open air, in keeping with his 'raider' persona. "It looks like it's worth a few billion Cubes at the foundries!"

"We should raid it for slaves," said another agent. "I'm sure it has plenty of little coplets all waiting for a free trip to Mine #1!"

Inside the prison, alarms quickly began to shriek out their warnings. Galactipol had detected the intentionally-obvious radio transmissions, decoded the Binary, and pinpointed the prison as the target of an impending raid. Troops, rather than the expected police, quickly took their positions behind laser cannon and EMP cannon control consoles. Many prisoners in the biological cells covered their ears, but several of them looked hopeful. They saw the urgency of the guard-troops and knew that the facility was about to be attacked by something serious. Perhaps it would be serious enough to be able to get them out? A few prisoners, however, cowered in fear and a couple even shed a few tears. These were thinking that the prison's airlocks would be blown open and that everyone stuck inside would suffocate to death.

In just a few minutes, MilIntel started getting its first serious reports. Live-feed cameras, hidden behind the lenses of the agents' flight lights, showed the events in near real time. Blasts of light blazed out of the prison-moon's weapons ports, and the agents - all excellent aerobats - dodged them fairly easily. Apparently, the defenders hadn't heard the old Earthian saying about not firing too soon. The difficulty in approaching the facility increased as the agents got closer, and one managed to get clipped at the edge of one wing. That's when they found out about the EMP that followed each blast of laser fire; it knocked out all of the electronics of the agent's wing, rendering it both unresponsive and unfeeling. Fortunately for the agent, internal anti-EMP "firewalls" kept the rest of his system safe from that secondary attack.

As this happened, all of the unhit agents concentrated their firepower on the cannon that had hit their comrade. The cannon operator, not expecting such an immediate response after clearly causing damage, didn't respond in time and had the barrel of his weapon vaporized. Though he wasn't hurt since he was running it from a remote panel, the counterattack did take out his weapon. Now, the agents could more easily approach. Similar tactics - and much more careful flying - allowed the agents to get rid of enough enemy weaponry to finally come in and land.

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

It took several minutes of outright blasting to cut a hole in the outer shell of the prison-moon, but finally, a big enough entranceway was made. The agents hopped in one at a time - only to find some huge robot drones trying to forcefully stick them with enslavement chips! Instantly, the agents opened fire on the chips, vaporizing them, and then turned their attentions to this drone squad. At first, the main combat seemed quite even, but it didn't take long for the difference between an AI and a truly intelligent robot to become obvious. Once the Decepticons figured out the algo their opponents were running on, they made short work of them.

"Video game grade junk." One of the agents said dismissively. The others concurred. They then moved, as a group, to an obvious airlock leading into the main part of the structure. It was locked, but picking that lock was a simple matter for a Decepticon. This drew some more derisive remarks as the thick steel door was swung upward and they jumped through.

Normally, the next step would have been to lock that first door back up and then pick the next one in order to get through without leaving an opening to the area that was now exposed to space. However, in this case, the top door slammed shut on its own and powerful acid began to spray out on the invading party. Needless to say, this sped things up quite a lot! Soon, they resorted to opening fire on the inner door and just blasting it until the lock melted. Then, a couple of them kicked it open and they all jumped out into the hallway, now with their outer panels and their outermost underlayers visibly melted.

"We should have just sent the raiders in!" An agent complained. While all of them could sympathize with the idea, they also knew why Megatron hadn't done that. Run-of-the-mill raiders couldn't be absolutely counted on to be patriotic enough to delete themselves (if necessary) to protect Decepticon secrets. Only tried and tested agents could be trusted with jobs that could require such extreme countermeasures. Of course, they all hoped that they would return to Cybertron by wing, rather than by restoration from saves.

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

Once they got out of the acid, they found themselves in a hallway. There was only one open direction, so they decided to take it. Soon, they found themselves facing a contingent of soldier-guards with powerful electrical weapons. This was not met with the hesitation the troops expected, but instead, the Decepticons continued on as if there wasn't even anything in their way. Soon, the troops found out why: The agents' Faraday caging easily deflected all of the electrical energy around their bodies, stopping any chance of damage. Before the troops could switch to their backup weapons, the Decepticons were upon them, firing away.

Without stopping to make any comments, the agents continued on until they came to the door at the other end of the hall. A quick pick of the lock let them into the massive Decepticon Prisoner Area, which was completely empty of prisoners except for one dude. The agents made sure that he wasn't a decoy, and then picked his cell door lock and told him to be more careful next time. They also warned about the acid. Rather than try to barge through it, the freed prisoner decided to stay with the agents. He did not seem to have been hacked; apparently, that technology wasn't actually ready.

Not long after that, the agents cleared this area and found themselves looking at a tiny little door. Behind it, a sign noted, was where the biological prisoners were kept. After a bit of discussion, they decided to just blast until the door was "big enough." This, of course, alerted every guard on the other side, and ensured that more blasting would be needed once they were done "remodeling."

Unlike the Decepticon Prisoner Area, this section was quite full. Only about 1,000 cells of the 100,000 were empty. All manner of species were locked inside, ranging from mundane humans to weird, slimy, octopus-like things. The agents looked at each other, but before they said anything, the prisoner they had freed pointed at a big guard station. This station was in the center of the main shaft, round, and had a 360-degree view of the entire section. "There's a control in there that can open every door at once," he said. "They use it every day to let these inferiors out for exercise."

Needless to say, it wasn't long before the "impenetrable, absolutely escape-proof, Galactipol Orbital Prison" was not only penetrated but had the biggest set of escapes in the agency's history. Just as predictably, the prisoners took all of the shuttle ships, leaving the guards stranded. The Decepticons then went ahead and made a new opening in an acid-free spot and flew off into the void. Guards too close to this hole were sucked right out, while those further away had to run quickly to get into sections with still-intact airlocks and then hope that someone came for them in time.

None of the Decepticons gave a second glance to the hapless guards who had been too near the hole. To them, they were - at best - a few less enemies they'd otherwise have to kill later.

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

Main Military Base, Cybertron

Megatron and the High Generals soon arrived at this base, and before long, they were in the Strategy Room looking over the footage the agents had sent over the radio. The prison itself, it was clear, would be no challenge to the Decepticon Military. However, the types of weapons seen indicated that at least one member of the Galactipol Consortium had some decent technology. It would be a good idea to send elite troops against that planet. The n00bs could go for the weakest ones. Those in the middle would meet the Decepticons' average-level soldiers.

"Not all of these planets will be as intractable as the worst ones," Megatron said. "We should decide which ones to bother trying to convert before we attack. Any who don't make the list...we shall exterminate. I shall direct ForIntel to provide a list of those where at least 50% of the population can, after a couple of generations, be converted to the Decepticon Way - and, of course, to Megatronism. Advanced planets are harder to convert to a religion, though, so we will focus on the wider Decepticon Way for this calculation. We'll focus on the rest only after we eradicate their desire to have police, along with other obnoxious cultural traits they may be infested with."

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

Gas Giant

Loyal Star found himself in the cargo bay of a huge floating platform. This area was easily big enough for him, but to his dismay, the door leading into the rest of the structure was quite small - about 1 1/2 times the height of a human. He also couldn't tell whether blasting it bigger would expose a larger hallway, or if he'd just see a tiny hall to go with the tiny door. Not only that, blasting it could let any air in the structure out, which would be anything but pleasing to any biologicals who happened to be there. Blasting could also cause some hidden thing to ignite or explode.

After thinking about it, he decided to use a trick he'd picked up during his military service. He activated his size-and-density changer to shrink himself down to the size needed to fit into this opening. This was hard on the S&D changer, which was actually calibrated to work with his alt mode, but it wouldn't cause it to crash any time soon. Then, he picked the lock. After finding himself in an airlock, he closed the first door and picked the second to go through.

As he had suspected, he found himself looking down a long, but narrow, hallway. He never would have fit into it at full size. Dim, red emergency lighting was the only illumination. About 1/3 of the way down on the left, he could see one regular door. Halfway down on the right, there was another door. He couldn't see if there were doors beyond that point.

[Vallermoore]

Gas Giant

Loyal Star was ready to fight if he had to do so, but he didn't consider this a raid unless he saw something that was really worth having. He had his internal sonar and radar pinging looking for others and threats as he opened the regular door. Two human crew were behind it and as their hands went to their guns, Loyal Star said in the human tongue, hoping they could understand Vallermooreian "You can fight and I'll blast you, or we can talk. I'm not here to raid. What is this place?" If they did start shooting, he meant what he said. Many biologicals not unreasonably thought any Decepticon they saw was a raider who had come to kill or enslave them. He hoped they would see sense, as then he could find out what this place was for.

Add to dictionary Orbital Prison

The prisoners were deeply pleased to be set free, and many of them thanked their rescuers and wished them luck. There were humans, sapient ponies, changelings, centaurs, and many strange looking aliens as well including octopod like creatures and beings the Decepticon secret agents had never seen before. There was also a single Decepticon whose blasters had been removed, and the agents found them nearby and gave them back to him, but not before chiding him a little for getting caught by biologicals in the first place-which was like a human or a sapient pony getting imprisoned by ants. Soon enough they flew back to Cybertron.

Main Military Base, Cybertron

At the moment only Megatron, the High Generals and a few other bots knew of the planned war, but once all was ready, the news would go out on Cybertronian holovision. Except for the very few times when total surprise was needed, wars were not kept a secret from the Decepticon population. Doing so would be counterproductive as it would deny the help of the adult civilian population and increase the time taken to win. Also, there was almost no such thing as an unpopular war for a Decepticon, unless it was one where the Metal Planet was threatened, which made it's population as angry as hornets whose nest was damaged, and in that case it was just the foe that was unpopular. For now, Forintel was still carrying out spying missions.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Gas Giant

The humans were quite afraid at first. They had been up there with what they thought was no easy way to reach them, when suddenly, the red alert alarms had gone off signaling a forceful intrusion into the cargo bay. Monitors had depicted a giant robot, obviously armed for war, just before the airlocks reported breaches. Now, they found themselves facing a much smaller bot than the one their cameras had depicted just moments before, and it was talking to them in what seemed to be a strange, but biological, tongue.

One of them carefully, and as non-threateningly as possible, got out a small radio-like device. After hitting a switch, it connected to the platform's surveillance, found the tape of the bot talking, and ran through a rather long sequence in which it searched for the language it would need. Finally, after an entire minute - during which both sides stayed on edge in case the other opened fire - it returned the result: Vallermoorian.

"Ah. Now that this device has matched up your language, we can communicate!" The one holding the gadget said in his own language. The translation machine began to speak after processing the message, and it came out in perfunctory, if not perfect, Vallermoorian.

"Let us talk first," the human went on. "Unlike some of our species, we would really rather prefer to avoid violence. This is the Long Mission Scientific Observation Platform, a suborbital platform for extensive observation of this planet. It's run by a consortium of nations called the United Scientific Space Exploration Group, from planet Azar. We have five large labs and several small ones here, and many scientists on board. Right now, our biggest project seeks life here. At one point, it was believed that it would be impossible for life to exist on a planet like this, which has no solid core and is made mainly of gases that cannot support the type of life we are used to looking for. However, our drones have consistently picked up what appear to be self-directed bodies far below, and they follow patterns approximating certain types of lifeforms we have run into."

The other human was becoming excited, and now spoke up. "If there is life here - biological life - it will have to use a type of metabolism we can't even imagine! We've been searching for it for 10 years now. But every time we send a robot down, all activity around the sensor area ceases, as if the creatures are hiding!" Suddenly, he looked worried. "It's not some of your kind, is it?! I'm not sure what you are, but you surely didn't arise from some biological process..." The human would clearly be disappointed if Cybertron or some other source of manufactured life, rather than local evolution, was responsible for the natural-seeming phenomenon they'd been studying.

Loyal Star finally got a chance to talk. "I am Loyal Star of the Decepticons, a Priest-in-Training of the Megatronist religion, and am from Planet Cybertron. As long as this planet doesn't hold oil or perhaps large amounts of pure methane gas, it is unlikely that the activity you're seeing is of a Decepticon nature. A few of us go exploring - that's what I was doing - but not enough to create the appearance of large biological migrations or other group activities like that. Plus, you can't miss a Deception. As you noted, nature does not produce body types quite like this. Even the rays, which look sort of plane-like, have that 'organic' factor to them."

"My reason for coming out here was much like yours, though not nearly as detailed. I wanted to check out a gas giant and see what it'd be like to fly through the atmosphere. When I saw a construct floating with no outward sign of activity, I decided to take a look."

The two humans gave each other quick sideways glances. Their translation machine had, apparently accurately, converted everything the bot had told them into their own language - and it said that he identified himself as being "of the Decepticons." They had never encountered one of these beings, but through various signals their nations had picked up in the past, knew that the Decepticons were associated with things like sudden militaryesque assaults, slavery, and various forms of mayhem. Stories about them were couched in myth and mystery, with tales of giants so tall their heads couldn't even be seen, a gleaming metal ball of a planet...and deceit. They are named for this, said local myths. And if they can't fool you into giving up your resources, they take them with brute force.

Now, the humans appeared skeptical. "We don't know of any prior contact with your kind," they said, "but we have heard of you. The great Raider Race of robots from beyond. And you say you came here just to see what's here?" One of the men moved his hand toward his gun, not realizing that it - assuming it was of the normal variety - would surely do him no good even if he did a magdump. The one next to him, a woman who now looked stern, didn't reach for her gun but looked ready to at a moment's notice.

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

Galactipol Headquarters

Representatives from all of the member nations and planets sat in a large, round room in emergency session. The Decepticons had not only freed the one of their own that was held, but everyone else as well. Worse, 100 guards had died in the jailbreak thanks to either running out of oxygen or being outright spaced. Emergency rescue craft had managed to save the other 900 or so, but now, news of the event was on everyone's TV, holovision, or other local mass media device.

"We must not just sit here and let those rogues attack us again!" Thundered the leader of Arcturus. "We must prove to the universe that there is nowhere that is not subject to law and order!" Massive applause met his words. "I propose, right now, that every nation commit 10% of its military forces for something we should have done long ago. I say that we should create a new army, not one that belongs to any one of our nations, but one that is meant to enforce Galactipol jurisdiction and take that jurisdiction to our enemies!"

Despite the strong start of the session, it was, like most major decisions done under democratic conditions, soon bogged down in debates and speeches. Still, the direction this session was taking eventually became clear.

"There is one problem," noted an ambassador from Genji, one of the midsized powers in the alliance. "Decepticon territory is not in any of our jurisdictions. In fact, with the exception of a random gang or two, there has been no Decepticon activity against us. How can we call them 'criminals' when everything they do is legal in their lands, and even now, only a few raiders came to our prison? This is hardly enough activity to justify war, and make no mistake - what we have been talking about is war!"

This was all it took to cause the session to devolve into another 10 hours of arguing, and before it was finished, they had to adjourn. They would return over several more days to complete all of the politicking.

Finally, a decision was made. They would form the Galactipol Policing Army as originally planned, but before attacking Decepticon positions, they would send an official ultimatum to the Decepticon government. The government would have to surrender the raiders who had attacked the prison, along with the original prisoner, to face Galactipol justice for crimes committed in the organization's territory (the prison). Otherwise, the agency would do whatever was needed to bring the perpetrators and those who harbor them 'to justice.'

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

In the back of the room, a shy-seeming ambassador fiddled with what seemed to be an old-fashioned notepad. Those next to him thought he was just making doodles; the page was filled with little circles and circles with dots in the middle, seemingly the result of nothing but nervous energy. Meanwhile, at Decepticon ForIntel, agents crowded around a screen to read off the Binary that was appearing, hand-drawn, transmitted live from the notebook that turned out to be far more modern than it appeared. Before long, the agency cut MilIntel into their live feed, and both agencies watched with interest.

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

Cultural Liaison's Office, Cybertron

Peals of laughter weren't often heard here, in this government office that usually did nothing. Today, however, was different. Today was one of the rare days when some foreigner did something so culturally outlandish that only laughter could result.

"Get this," a bot said after retrieving a sheet from a little-used fax-like machine. He was openly laughing as he handed it over to his assistant so that he could join in the humor.

OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION
FROM: GALACTIPOL
TO: THE CHIEF OF POLICE OF VICTORIOUS DECEPTICONS

Already, both bots were overtaken by chuckles.

The message went on to detail Galactipol's grievances, not only with the prison break, but with the Decepticons' activity in general. Decepticons, it noted, had raided many refineries of the member planets. This, it said in the sanctimonious way of those who would promote themselves as 'police' above all others, was highly illegal in the jurisdictions it was done in and that therefore, all of the raiders were extremely wanted fugitives.

"If these fugitives are not delivered to Galactipol member nations for trial, and imprisonment upon conviction, then Galactipol will have no choice but to undertake full action to interdict them wherever they may be," the message concluded. An official-looking signature, clearly by someone who thought he had Au-Thor-I-Tay, finished it at the bottom.

Soon after this had arrived, the machine began to print more. One hundred sheets followed, each one adorned with a picture of a raider that had been photographed raiding or otherwise breaking the puny laws of the Galactipol nations. At the end, the team of MilIntel agents came up, identified as a raid gang who had 'obstructed justice' by releasing all of those other prisoners.

The Cultural Liaison bots didn't stop laughing for one second as they haltingly went back over to the fax-like machine. Without a word, the supervisor put the things into the communicator's intake feeder and punched in a number, followed by a letter for the proper department. "Megatron has to see this just as it is," he said through his guffaws. "I'm sure he could use a laugh to break up the seriousness of his position!"

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

Main Military Base

The number the Liaison's Office had used went not to the Megatron Mansion, but to the Tactics and Strategy Division of the Military. All war threats were sent here as a matter of course so that they could be evaluated to determine what, if any, response was needed. Usually, it turned out that no response was required - threats came in all the time from sources like cheesed-off refinery owners, random people who just didn't like Decepticons, trolls, and the occasional government that wanted to look strong but was really so weak that they weren't worth a second thought.

This time, however, the threat would be taken more seriously. Galactipol, the brass knew, was a big multi-planetary consortium that included some decently-advanced members. T&S was also alert to the fact that MilIntel had just engaged in an operation that could, to put it mildly, piss them off quite a lot. Here, there were some chuckles, but the humor came from the fact that Galactipol apparently knew so little about the Decepticons that they thought there was a "chief of police" and that the Decepticon Government would ever surrender a citizen to some foreigner for any reason.

"They obviously know nothing about us!" The strategists marveled. "Or at least, whatever planet of theirs sent this out doesn't. Still, we should be ready. Send it on to Megatron, too. He might authorize something 'special' for these apparently clueless creatures..."

~~~~~~~~~~

Tactics and Strategy wasn't wrong at all about the idea that Megatron would think of cooking up a connive for Galactipol. As soon as he had the message in his hand, he was laughing for two reasons. One was the idea that it thought the Decepticons would ever hand over 'fugitives.' The other reason was that Galactipol seemed not to know this.

Soon, he called a meeting with 100 of his most elite troops, and brought in General Soundwave on top of that.

"Idiot Galactipol is demanding that we surrender 'fugitives' to them for trials!" Megatron said with a fairly evil grin. He passed out copies of the pictures Galactipol had sent over. "You will each be repainted to look like one of these guys. Then, you'll go over there via military cargo-bots as if you're captives. You'll all have puny weapons where your Military Blasters usually are, so when they "disarm" you, they won't get any technology worth stealing. Hidden inside your bodies, you'll have Double-Strength Military Blasters ready to pop up. Then, when the time is right, you teach them the proper respect for the Decepticon Race. After the complete massacre, return here."

The elite troops nodded very officially. They were not spies, but full-on soldiers, and even though they would penetrate the enemy's position by stealth, their mission was to destroy as many of the enemy as possible.

"Galactipol will surely chase you once you leave for Cybertron, and most likely, will send an entire fleet to try to get you back. Lead them back here. In fact, fly just fast enough to avoid being shot up, but not so fast that you lose them. Stay out of FTL unless they have it too - you want them to get so focused on catching you that they stop really looking where they're going. Then when you get about 10,000 miles outside of the Zone of Control, the first wave of regulars will fly out by surprise and completely destroy their interdiction fleet. We'll be monitoring from here, so I'll be sure to send enough to make it a quick and total wipeout.

"That is when I'll make my war announcement to the general public, and while space is still clear of interfering Galactipol ships, the raiders will take to the skies. They will be directed at the weakest members of Galactipol - the planets and nations who send their men, but have no real hardware of their own. This will force the major powers, such as Arcturus and its large allies, to either let those weaker nations fall to us - and lose standing and credibility - or spread their equipment far too thin in a vain attempt to stop the raiders."

"General Soundwave here has the intel on these cretins. He will be leading your special forces effort. He'll ride with you in one of the cargo-bots in the form of a 'tracking and controlling system' instead of his usual tape deck mode. That mode is far too recognizable..." Soundwave looked a bit put out about having to use a different body, but didn't openly complain. The trick wouldn't work if the enemy saw an obvious High General in the mix.

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

In various places across the Galactipol area, people ranging from ambassadors to assembly workers "coincidentally" quit their jobs or straight-out disappeared. Some went to non-Galactipol nations in the area, while others left the system entirely. The only thing they had in common was that they'd been watching TV (or equivalents) just beforehand, and had heard the "strange glitch" that had gone over the air. To most, it was just a noise. To ForIntel and MilIntel, it was the emergency evacuation order.

[Vallermoore]

Cultural Liaison's Office, Cybertron[/Military Strategy Room

Even with the slowly increasing tourism from places like Vallermoore, the Cultural Liaison's Office on Cybertron was hardly one of the more active offices of the Decepticon Government. Today the two bots in there were about to get the robotic equivalent of a giggle-fit when they got a fax from Galactipol asking from help from their "Chief of Police" to help extradite Decepticons.

"Get this, snerk...hehehahaha!" The other bot, curious about what was apparently so funny, had a look. "Hhhahahahaha! Those biologicals are so ignorant about us-they think we have a police force here! We do have Domintel, but they are hardly a police force in the way they think it is. We don't even have many laws to enforce here anyway, let alone police. And they seriously think we will extradite anyone, let alone another bot? In most cases, our Military would blast anyone who chased us into the Empire-we have a number just for that! In many cases, we would go to at least low level war rather then hand a bot over. We don't even extradite biologicals! Megatron will have a real laugh at this, so lets send it to him. If he finds it as funny as us, it certainly won't do our careers any harm, that's for sure."

Megatron had not laughed out loud in quite a while, and he did indeed find it funny that biologicals could be so ignorant. Rather then just send out the Military, which had been done so often that it was nearly routine and nothing special, he decided to do a prank of his own and pretend to extradite the wanted bots. Soon enough some bots dressed up with fake paint jobs and badges as "police" bots handed over the supposed fugitives who just waited for the right time to blast all these pesky coplets in front of their own media.

*****
Gas Giant

Loyal Star was used to the fear biologicals had of him by now, something well-founded. "If you want I can take a camera down and get a good look at those biological beasties for you and we both get something out of it. I wouldn't expect you to trust a Decepticon though, especially a Megatronist Priest. Oh, and shooting me will get both of you blasted for sure." They looked at each other warily but the humans decided to take him up on his offer. Although tempted to call them suckers Loyal Star was interested to see if there was biological life on this gas giant and set off in robot mode looking for it, flying with jets for his feet. He soon found it, as a tentacle coiled around his foot and his infer-red and light on the camera revealed a huge bloated gasbag half his size with fins along the sides and long tentacles . Not wanting to take any chances with the thing's teeth, he blasted it. With a loud hiss the gasbag tore open and the thing plummeted into the planet's hot interior. Loyal Star flew up with the footage and, rarely for a Decepticon, gave the camera back to the humans.

"You were right about there being life down there and are very lucky that it has not come up here, as it could kill an astronaut with ease and perhaps even damage or destroy this station. As the footage shows, there are huge gasbags down there with teeth, so be careful exploring. I'm going back to Cybertron now. It was fun flying here." He left the place and one short FTL trip later was back in his mansion on Cybertron which much to his relief had not been burgled.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Galactipol Headquarters
Arcturus

As Megatron had predicted, the police agency thought there was nothing amiss when it got word from the Decepticon government that the fugitives would be delivered. The message didn't sound strange to them at all - it contained the usual statements that a government was sure that its citizens were innocent and that it was sure that "full justice would soon be delivered." This wording might, with hindsight, be seen as a tell that something was up - but the cops saw it through their own lens, and therefore, saw only a statement of faith in the Galactipol agency and the courts that were associated with it. Of course, Decepticon justice was actually much different from their own...

Soon enough, four large cargo-bots, all painted in deep blue with gold sheriff's stars, appeared at the edge of Arcturus' zone of control and radioed for permission to enter. Fighters came up to meet them, and for a moment, it seemed as though a firefight would break out as the cargo-bots' own fighter escorts went into battle positions to protect their charges. The situation, fortunately, was defused by General Soundwave, who pretended that he was observing from back on Cybertron. After some diplomatic words, the would-be combatants took more-peaceful positions and the Cybertronian group was allowed to enter.

Once on the ground, Megatron's troops left the cargo-bots along with several navy blue bots with sheriff's stars underneath their Decepticon Seals. The latter pretended to be guards, of course, so they were openly and heavily armed. To the surprise of the Galactipol contingent, the "prisoners" seemed to have at least some sort of armamentation as well. The "guards" soon explained that on Cybertron, no one is ever completely disarmed. "Plus," they added, "we're not sure that you don't want to just massacre these people. We will not leave them defenseless against those who think that grand theft oil should be a capital crime."

To the dismay of the Cybertronians, there was no media circus waiting for them at the spaceport. Discrete questioning revealed that the media would instead be waiting at the court, which would surely be packed with observers. Until the trial date, the "prisoners" were to be held on Arcturus since the main prison had been partially destroyed. This, they were told, would happen within 10 days. "Usually we hold trials within a couple of days in cases that are so cut-and-dried," a Galactipol chief said, "but we need to wait for witnesses to come from the more far-flung parts of the confederation." With that, puny humans led the "prisoners" away to a special cell block at their terrestrial prison. The engines of the elite troops revved mightily at the indignity of this, and more than one almost broke cover. Only their loyalty to Megatron - and by extension, the mission he had given them - allowed them to resist the urge to kick the tiny beings into the walls of the nearby buildings.

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

Inside the offices of Galactipol, a few police stood out with worried faces amongst an otherwise-jubilant force. When asked what was wrong, they cited all of the rumors that the Decepticons had no police. "The Military would have brought those prisoners if everything was on the up-and-up," they said. "But what we saw were perfectly-painted police bots, done in a style instantly recognized by humans."

Another one noted that the prisoners had made no attempt to leave. "They could have just flown away. You saw how huge they were compared to our officers! Yet they stayed. They're not surrendering. They're staying because they want to."

Despite the obvious logic of these misgivings, the other officers - including their commanders - did what human groups usually do when most of their members think they've won: The others ignored all of the warnings and even dissed the sensible ones as being "pessimistic" and "worry warts." Some even suggested that they were dim. It was the good fortune of the sensible ones that, unlike in many cases, it wouldn't take too long for the truth of their words to become undeniable...

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

10 Days Later

It was now, rather than at arrival time, that there would be plenty of publicity. Media lined the sidewalks as the "prisoners" were brought out of the holding cells and paraded down the main street to the courthouse. Since the Decepticons were so big, their trial wouldn't actually take place inside the court. Instead, it would be held in the square just outside the building, with media and crowds ringing the area. The original Decepticon "police" would be providing much of the security - Galactipol wanted its entire network of planets to see that even the supposedly-incorrigible Decepticon Government had decided to cooperate with the (great and wonderful) galactic police.

To the shock of all of the biologicals watching, the robots did not arrive with bowed heads nor did they cover their faces - a vast departure from the cultural norms in Galactipol's member states. In fact, the bots all looked pleased as punch. Few, however, caught the nuances of the expressions on their faces. Only a few in the crowd - people who were actually criminals themselves - spotted the expression and demeanor that meant that these "prisoners" were not only up to plenty, but about to spring it. The human criminals discreetly backed out of the masses and then ran far away from the crowds, expecting violence to erupt at any time.

The Decepticons surveyed the situation with calculating eyes. Some began to tap on their thighs in what appeared to be nervous gesturing, but in reality, was open Binary. Soon, the area was filled with tapping noises, but the biologicals around missed the significance of it all.

"These are just civilian clods."
"Blasting them will just get us bad PR."
"We need to do something to draw hundreds of coplets to us, and chase these nothings away at the same time!"
"Let's hold the judge prisoner..."
"Nah, that'll bring the hostage negotiators. We need a bunch of riot police or SWAT teams!"
"Let's just attack the court building and then mill around until they gear up."

Suddenly, all of the noises stopped. It was decided: they would attack the building as the one suggested, but instead of leaving, they'd stand around and boast. The boasting would, in reality, just be to kill time until the entire local police force could muster and come to try to do something about them.

Without warning, all of the Decepticons present - including those marked like police - assaulted the court building in a military manner, severely damaging the front courtrooms as well as the top-ranking judge who was just about to make his appearance for their "trials." Immediately, the crowd backed way off, with the more-cowardly civilians outright running away without any pre-planning. The media, however, moved even closer in order to get better views for their cameras.

As expected, this behavior set off all of the alarms at all of the police stations in the city as well as the planet's Galactipol headquarters, and it wasn't long before several SWAT teams and riot police were on their way to the scene along with a few hundred regular police. The Decepticons stood around and engaged the media as they waited, boasting about how no real Decepticon would submit himself to a trial, much less one held by puny humants and other sundry inferior species. "If your federation is lucky, most of its citizens will earn the privilege to work in our mines," they said arrogantly. "But if Megatron decides that he has no use for anyone defective enough to think that WE would ever legitimately surrender to some foreign force, then he'll just wipe all of you out."

As the sirens sounded at Galactipol Headquarters, a few officers smiled with smug vindication. They pointed at the "police" robots in particular as the group stared at TV screens showing the events live. "See?!" They rubbed in. "See how those so-called 'police' bots are now busy kicking down our court and bragging to the reporters right along with the others?! Maybe next time you'll listen to us!"

~~~~~~~~~~

Just a few minutes later, the various police forces arrived. A few hotheads opened fire, and in response, learned how puny their weapons really were. They were just ready to feel relieved that the Decepticons were, at least, unarmed when the soldiers' hidden weapons popped up out of their arm panels. At this moment, General Soundwave also transformed out of his alt mode.

"As promised, we are here to ensure that JUSTICE IS DONE!" Soundwave hollered over the already-growing racket of biological shouting. "And JUSTICE means that Galactipol shall now pay for its overreach!"

With that, the Decepticons opened fire on all of the police as well as any other officials foolish enough to still be around.

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

Just a couple of blocks away, in various alleys, the criminals who had backed off earlier smiled. They knew the look of a connive in progress when they saw it - and here it was! All of them waited eagerly for the Decepticon victory. Once the city's cops were out of commission, they would be able to loot with impunity - at least for a while.

Farther away, at what was a reinforced terrestrial prison, every cell door automatically opened at once while the doors to the guards' areas did the reverse and locked up tight. Most of the prisoners flooded out instantly, barreling over any guards who were outside of their stations and caught by surprise. The idea of putting all of the prison's doors on an automatic, computer-controlled system had seemed like a great thought when it was approved. Now that the Decepticons had hacked it on their way out...not so much! Alas, it was too late now, and the jailbreak was on.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Gas Giant

The scientists were beside themselves with joy to know at least some of what was below them. This was a wonderful discovery! Now that they had footage, they would be able to secure funding for an upgraded, scientific-type robotic explorer craft and maybe even a cage to hold one of these beings. Then, they'd be able to study the discovered creature better and perhaps find even more species. It didn't take them long to determine that the first one found was a predator: It had grabby tentacles, and had even slithered one of them around Loyal Star. It also had teeth, indicating that its diet was made up of something large enough to have to chew it or at least rip it up.

They thanked Loyal Star profusely, and one even gave him some souvenirs from their meager personal supplies: An MRE-type meal and a patch with the space agency's logo on it. These things weren't meant to be useful to the robot, but instead, simply serve as mementos.

While the scientists didn't know much about Decepticons other than the legends they'd heard and what they had just experienced, their governments did. For quite a while, they worried that Loyal Star would come back with a gang and try to raid them or steal their observation platform for scrap. Fortunately, no such thing happened, and Loyal Star would - at some point in the future - get a small mention in their history books as having been essential to an effort that would come to catalog over 1,000 species on a planet once believed to be unable to support biological life.

[Vallermoore]

Galactipol Headquarters
Arcturus

Most of the police at Galactipol arrogantly thought that indeed the Decepticons would be going to extradite their own citizens, and the few who didn't made themselves scarce and so managed to stay alive. Soon enough four cargo-bots in police blue and flying sheriff's insignia showed up with a fighter escort. Galactipol fighters went up to meet them and there was nearly a fight there and then until General Soundwave sorted things out. A battle now would be far too soon. When the *guards* and the prisoners came out, every bot present was longing to just step on the uppity coplets or kick them into buildings. How could such tiny beings think themselves to be even on an equal level, let alone superior, to huge full-body size war robots? However they controlled themselves, as messing up Leader Megatron's connive would get them into real trouble with the Decepticon government. Besides, the wait would make it all the sweeter when they did kick off. They could play games whilst they waited.

On the day of their trial, they talked in tapped Binary to each other. Humans just heard tapping, but Decepticon ears and mind boards heard covert and perfectly pronounced Binary. Then all of them, including the *police bots* swung into action and attacked the court building and any police and judges present. A single human, clearly a criminal, pulled out a concealed gun and joined the attack at once on the Decepticon side without waiting to see who would win or if a full scale Decepticon invasion was taking place. He was using a Decepticon leg as a shield, but the Decepticon decided to overlook it. Clearly, this tiny biological seemed to be a Decepticon-in-Spirit and was doing his bit to help them. The Decepticon decided to ask this biological his name.

Soon enough, every police and SWAT team in the city turned up with their best weapons, which could just damage Decepticon paint and at worst maybe snap a wire or two. The Decepticons made it clear that their government would never extradite them to any government, biological or robotic. Indeed, one of the very few laws that Cybertron had prevented extradition no matter what crime had been done in some other world or outer space. When the police turned up General Soundwave transformed, revealing his true identity right before a firefight which destroyed the hopelessly outgunned and out-armoured police. One Decepticon had a finger wire cut by a bullet which would need rewiring, and every bot got scratched paint and a few tiny bullet dents.

At a prison, there was a mass escape and the screens flashed up the Decepticon symbol, letting the convicts know who had freed them. Surely that would bring in a few Megatronists. From other cities, ships capable of doing damage to Decepticons took off and headed towards the area.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Decepticon whose leg was being used for cover was slightly irked at this. While the fact that the human was drawing fire which was slightly chipping his paint was annoying, the bigger issue was that he felt constrained in his ability to dodge around. If he moved too fast, the human would be exposed, and if he was somehow forced to change his footing without warning, he might even step on him. Fortunately, the initial firefight was over almost before it began, and no harm came to the little "helper" who obviously had a big beef against the cops.

Before they could relax, Soundwave detected that ships were incoming thanks to their police radio chatter. Needless to say, he was already equipped to listen to all frequencies, so local prohibitions against the sale and use of police scanners did the cops no good. He quickly gave the alert - the first wave of an interdiction force was on its way.

"What do we do with this ant?" The soldier closest to the human asked, knowing that the man wouldn't be able to understand Binary and would therefore miss the speciesist slur. "It'd be bad PR if we left him to get busted."

"Take him," Soundwave said, already firing his foot jets to take off. The soldier first looked shocked and then miffed as he realized that he'd have to give this loose cannon a ride. This result would normally have been predictable, but he had been too busy thinking about the battle to run the calculations to the end. Now he was stuck.

As the Decepticons took off toward the cargo-bot landing area, the one soldier roughly grabbed the human and chucked him into the cockpit as he transformed and joined the others. The human made an "oof" sound as he landed inside, and was clearly confused about what was going on. When he looked out, however, his confusion evaporated. Police-marked aircraft were incoming, and in the distance, he could see the cargo-bots and their escorts in the process of blasting off.

Soon, the Decepticons had made it to space, but now, they seemed to be lollygagging around. Some kept tilting strangely and the others circled.

Not long after, the soldiers had the answer to their silent question. Slowly, the police ships made their way upward. They were indeed spaceworthy and were coming, but their engines weren't nearly as good at breaking free of gravity as those of the Decepticons. The robots had to outright wait in order to begin the next phase of the operation and try to lead the cops into a huge ambush 10,000 miles outside of Cybertronian space.

What the troops didn't realize was that as soon as they took off for outer space, Galactipol had alerted a much better fleet. Before long, missiles shot through their formations, nearly hitting some of them. If they hadn't been members of the Decepticon Military's top forces - Megatron's division - there surely would have been casualties. As it was, the missiles were dodged, even if barely, and the second phase began in earnest.

"Hope you like both war and metal," the soldier said to the human, "because first we're going to do a bit of a war, and then we're landing on Cybertron. You'll be going to Immigration whether you want to immigrate or not, because that's the only office that's sure to have enough oxygen for you. They can figure out what to do with you if you don't want to stay!"

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

After the Galactipol Interdiction Force saw that its missiles had missed, it changed its formation and began to chase what it thought were fleeing criminals. To its irritation, the Decepticons stayed just ahead of them. Not only that, they didn't seem to be straining to keep that distance, but instead, were actually getting quite a ways ahead and then dropping back.

"They're toying with us," the Force's captain complained. "They're clearly teasing us by hanging back. We'll wipe that attitude off of them - fire the railguns!"

Railguns were able to fire projectiles at very high velocities, but to the enemy's dismay, the Decepticons had put enough distance between themselves and the enemy ships to give them enough time to react. To the Interdiction Force's great irritation, the robots that would have been in the way tilted over a bit, allowing the projectiles to harmlessly pass by. Even worse, some of them had so much aerobatic skill that they were able to do this in a way that made it seem like they only lazily moved over rather than rushing. This effect, of course, was more of an illusion than actual slowness - the more-skilled ones had simply done all of the needed calculations faster and were able to start their dodge maneuvers a bit sooner than the others, giving them time to complete their moves without the need for extra hurry.

The Decepticons, unwilling to just put up with that, swiveled their blasters so they faced backwards and fired a few shots while continuing to fly forward. The blasts made contact with the flagship, forcing it to activate emergency measures to prevent total loss of its internal air. Most of the ships, however, were left unbothered as the robots continued to fly toward home.

By the time they arrived at the designated place 10,000 miles outside of normal Decepticon space borders, the robots felt like they'd been flying forever at painfully slow speeds. The biologicals chasing them, on the other hand, were so used to going slower that they perceived it as a high-speed chase and they felt like they'd gotten there in fairly short order.

Before long, all thoughts of relative travel speed were put on the back burner. The Decepticons crossed the invisible line that triggered the deployment of several thousand more troops, and by the time Galactipol's fleet made it across after them, those soldiers had FTL'd over and into firing range. "The Law" was about to see outlawhood taken to the level of a national science.

[Vallermoore]

Inwardly the Decepticon was rather annoyed at General Soundwave's order, but an order from a High General, in a battle situation on top of that had to be obeyed unless he wanted a brief swim in a smelting pit. So he lightly picked up the human and tossed him into his seat. This human had rushed to aid the Decepticons as soon as they started fighting without waiting even a second to see who would win and as such he was a Decepticon loyalist, and leaving him to be killed, executed or jailed was bad publicity for the Decepticons and went against Megatron's thoughts that a true loyalist was good even if he or she was stuck in a tiny weak biological body. Soon they were rocketing off into space, where they then went around in a holding pattern giving the human a great view of the planet he was born on. As it turned out, they were waiting for their foes to catch up with them, and they then tricked them over the borders of the Empire where the Decepticon Military as a whole then pounced on the hated Galactipol ships. Whilst the Galactipol ships were not useless and took down some Decepticons, they were totally outnumbered and only one made it out and back home again before the rest were destroyed. A full half of the total Galactipol ships had been destroyed-the rest had not joined in the pursuit. There was much joy at their downfall although no bot looped the loop or did anything of that kind until Megatron himself had announced the battle was over.

Soon enough the human would find himself in Immigration facing Scope and Gatekeeper-who unusually looked quite pleased when they heard how he got here. They wondered in their mind boards even before they spoke if he had what it took to become a Decepticon.

******
Cybertron

Having at least for now dealt with the theft problem and put strong doors and locks on his mansion, Loyal Star was going off to buy a couple of games, when he saw a bot with the symbol of a local manager giving a speech to a large crowd of bots. He decided to quietly listen to what he was saying, as it was most likely important. To his surprise, the manager-bot, one GoodCouncil by name, was announcing that a large number of new laws were being introduced by him! in his area. And they were pretty petty ones as well. Bots were to keep their windows and houses clean. No bot was to do the bot equivalent of crying. Several other equally petty laws followed. The local Domintel bots were to act as enforcers of such petty laws-and if any bot dared to blast him, a manager, they would end up in a smelting pit as rebels. Quietly Loyal Star recorded all of this with his own body's cameras and recorders, and then decided that he would have to say something. Normally he utterly stayed out of politics, but what he was hearing sounded like it came out of an Autobot's voice chip. A manager could give some orders, yes, and recommend other things, but this was going far beyond that. If this manager had problems with other bots, then he should have used his well armoured body and blasters to settle things according to the de facto law of Cybertron, the Decepticon Way.

"What you are saying is wrong! If you bots don't know who is right, check your treason files and if what he has banned is not in there, it is not the law and you don't have to obey it."

"You dammed seditious rebel..." As the two bots raised their blasters, the other bots suddenly stepped in and GoodCouncil was blasted into scrap fit only for a foundary by their blasters.

With an angry rev, he popped into a spare body in his mansion. The accepted procedure in this case was to either find Loyal Star for a rematch when Loyal Star didn't have a huge crowd of bots on his side, or to, since he had plenty of his own Energon, hire assassins and send them after Loyal Star. Instead, he called up Domintel and ordered them to treat Loyal Star, one of the most loyal bots in the Empire with a double gold stripe for services to the Empire, as a rebel! Unknown to him, Loyal Star's bodies were not destroyed but merely guarded just in case the manager knew something even Domintel didn't know. When a firing squad showed up for Loyal Star, he raised his hands and invoked the one right that did indeed exist in the Decepticon Empire. "I appeal to Megatron!" He allowed himself to be chained up and put in a Domintel station until Megatron had the time to hear his case. The next day he was taken to the Megatron Mansion, and remained silent whilst the manager put his case forward and in doing so, told several outright lies to Megatron.

When it was his turn to speak, he made a prayer to Megatron. and in it sent all the audio and video he had recorded before of just how GoodCouncil was acting and what he was saying to Megatron, to let Megatron know what had really been going on. GoodCouncil was grinning, thinking Loyal Star would soon be molten metal and publically declared a traitor. Megatron's eyes darkened dramatically, and he spoke and pronounced his judgement.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Immigration Office

The human was quite discombobulated by his recent experiences: First, being suddenly popped into someone's cockpit, then finding himself going into space, after that experiencing a big battle from the perspective of being right in the middle of it, and now, being in an official-looking office on a very distant world.

Scope and Gatekeeper looked at him with a bit of dismay.

"We suppose the first thing we have to ask you is if you even want to immigrate!" Scope said. "The soldier said he took you to this office because this is the only place he was sure would have enough oxygen for you. This is the Immigration Office, but under those circumstances, your presence here doesn't necessarily mean that you want to do anything other than be able to breathe."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Megatron Mansion

Megatron listened to the area manager's accusations, and then heard Loyal Star's side come in as a prayer. "Talk out loud," Megatron ordered Loyal Star. "Your response needs to be in the open so that your accuser can hear your side of the case."

After this, Loyal Star repeated what he said before and offered to make copies of the relevant files for any recordkeeping that needed to be done. Megatron listened and nodded, but did not yet rule.

To GoodCouncil's surprise, Megatron then pulled out a laptop and accessed the Domestic Intelligence Supercomputer. After logging in, he directed its results to a much larger screen - one that could be seen by everyone in the room. GoodCouncil had the look of the busted on his face as it soon showed images from cameras he hadn't known existed - and therefore, hadn't disabled - as well as audio from bugs he couldn't have hoped to find. The footage immediately showed what had really happened.

Then, the image changed to another location: The local DomIntel office. There, it caused the image of an amazing five different agents to flash.

Megatron's next move still wasn't to issue a ruling. Instead, he ordered highly-loyal agents from DomIntel Headquarters to capture the other agents for interrogation. He also ordered that the head of the local office be removed from duty. Whether or not the removal would be permanent would depend on whether or not the just-started investigation revealed that he was either in on it or had chosen to be intentionally blind to it.

Finally, Megatron sat up straighter, and in response, both Loyal Star and GoodCouncil stiffened up and stood at attention.

"Today," Megatron began, "the fires of the Main Foundry will run hot and long." He activated his communicator and ordered that foundry to clear enough space in its Main Pit for seven condemnees. Megatron wasn't sure whether or not there'd really end up being seven or just six, but he wanted to make sure everything was ready for the possible maximum. After giving the order, he turned off the communicator and returned his attention to the two before him.

"It is clear that you, 'Good' Council, are one of the most subversive and corrosive bots currently in the Empire. You tried to take control of the daily lives of the citizens of your area, corrupted at least five DomIntel bots to obey your commands as if you had the authority to issue any orders to their Division, and as these videos show, attempted to frame Loyal Star rather than engage him in proper battle. My ruling is simple. You shall be melted down at the Main Foundry, and all of your Saves and Spares destroyed along with you. As of now, you are no longer considered Decepticon, but instead, an enemy of the State and its People."

"The corrupted agents shall suffer a similar fate as you. Domestic Intelligence Headquarters is already working to purge the rust you have spread to that office."

Suddenly, GoodCouncil remembered at least a little of his Decepticonness - the part that resulted in a fight to the death rather than a surrender. He quickly raised his blasters and opened fire on Megatron himself, seeing him as the current greatest threat to his own survival. To his surprise, however, Megatron neither got damaged nor immediately returned fire. He also realized that now, every move he made was 100x harder than it should be. As a bot who had been stripped of his citizenship, he was now subject to Megatron's curse against all who oppose the Decepticons.

Once the futility of his attack became clear, Megatron's personal troops moved in and easily seized the now severely-underpowered traitor. It was simple to just snap his weapons off thanks to the curse, and once that was done, they bound him in chains.

"Take him to the Main Foundry and keep him there until I have word about the others," Megatron ordered. "I want this to be a proper mass execution so that it will make the biggest possible impact on both the holovision viewers and any DomIntel agents who might have considered taking a deal like the one the subverted ones had accepted."

"Loyal Star, as I expected, you have committed no treason. You are free to go."

With that, the troops hauled the traitor away to await not only his doom, but the doom of all of his co-conspirators.

Before long, code reads would reveal that all five of the initially-spotted agents were guilty, and that the local branch commander had chosen to ignore this fact - making him guilty of gross and intentional malfeasance since his job as a DomIntel agent was to bust such people. All would see GoodCouncil one last time as they arrived at the Main Foundry to await their meltdowns.

Meanwhile, agents from DomIntel Headquarters had wasted no time. The spares and saves of the condemnees were destroyed, leaving no place for their minds or souls to go after death but the Realm of Punishment.

[Vallermoore]

Megatron Mansion

When Megatron gave judgement, his tone of voice was as icy as a Windigo. Loyal Star was cleared there and then, and GoodCouncil was in the deepest of deep trouble. He had made false accusations against Loyal Star instead of going after him with his own blasters, he had made laws of his own and hassled the bots living in his area, but worst of all, he had brought corruption to one of the few places where it really wasn't allowed-Domintel, and had built up his own nasty little treasonous powerbase in the local Domintel office. And that was a deadly serious matter. Not just him, but the Domintel bots who had helped him were themselves traitors who could easily have compromised the loyalty of an entire region of Cybertron if the bots there had thought it was Megatron's fault. Even as a God, loyalty still mattered to Megatron, and this sort of rusty stuff was exactly the sort of thing that if unchecked, could stir up unrest.

The Domintel traitors were grabbed by other Domintel bots, and they would meet at the Main Foundary, where the words they had for GoodCouncil were anything but PG 13. His actions had cost them their jobs and their lives. General Soundwave himself was there, dark eyed and deeply disappointed at the shameful corruption in his own Division on a scale not seen for centuries, and he had politely asked for Megatron's permission to despatch them himself.

Whilst most secret police forces would keep their muck-ups private to avoid embarrassment, this was a public execution to prove to the Decepticon Nation that Domintel members who committed treason would suffer the same fate as ordinary Decepticons, and that they were not above the treason laws. The new manager would quickly repeal all the old manager's petty rules and soon, the loyalty in that region would shoot back up to normal sky-high levels.

Loyal Star thanked Megatron, bowed quickly but politely, and took off. Within a short time he was out of the Government District and went back to his life, buying a few games and then playing them and now and then, like priests did in the whole multiverse, studying his holy book from time to time.

After the deaths of the rogue Decepticons, their souls would end up in the Realm of Punishment.

*****
Immigration Office

"What is it like being a Decepticon? Galactipol obviously stopped news about Cybertron from reaching the planet it controlled and said all sorts of horrible things about them as if they were Satan incarnate," the human asked.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Since there were multiple traitors to execute, it took more than the Main Pit and a single suspension chain to get them ready for their punishment. The Foundry's normal mechanism for bringing multiple pieces of large scrap to the Pit was used. It was an overhead conveyor with suspension chains every several feet, and soon, there was a prisoner on each of the next four of them. There was no need for a fifth in this area - one of the prisoners was already hanging over the Pit and feeling the heat of the shallow layer of molten metal below him. Usually the Pit was deeply filled, but as Megatron had commanded, most of its current load had been moved to the side pits in order to make way for the incoming material.

Soundwave had no trouble securing permission to be the one to pull the lever each time a condemnee was brought into position. Before beginning, he gave a scathing speech about how, while bribe-taking itself was not illegal, taking any that led to treason against the Decepticon Way or to the attempted wrongful State execution of a non-traitor most certainly was! He revealed that each of the corrupted agents currently awaiting meltdown had betrayed the Nation for a mere 100,000 Cubes.

The exception was GoodCouncil - the one now suspended over the Main Pit and who would be the first to die. He got most of his money from raiding, but as it turned out, he had only applied for the Area Manager position in order to try a different scam. He had fully expected his nitpicky directives to be utterly ignored, and was planning on getting very rich on the fines he thought he could levy. Soundwave commended the people of the area for not only not going along with that, but for showing GoodCouncil their displeasure via a hail of blaster fire.

Until he had gotten overly greed-bound, Soundwave noted, GoodCouncil had passed all of the investigations and had come up as a loyal Decepticon. He had even passed a code-read when he applied for the position. "Alas, greed is the weakness of many, and when this traitor read about how much money some other nations make with fines, he decided to try to come up with an excuse to charge them here. His mind, now blinded by greed, failed to give enough concern to the fact that the nations that levy fines do so by making orders that are completely against the Decepticon Way - and that attempting this here would not only cause his orders to be ignored, but would mark him as a traitor."

"He is also guilty of far overstepping the authority of his position, both by his attempts at making decrees and by subverting the local Domestic Intelligence Office." Soundwave waved his arm up toward the other prisoners. "Finally, when he faced armed opposition from a citizen of his area, whose actions instigated a wider armed response from a crowd, he attempted to frame that loyal defender of the Way for treason! For these crimes, GoodCouncil has been sentenced to permanent deactivation by Leader Megatron, and I have been given the privilege of carrying out the sentence."

With that, GoodCouncil - his pain chips soldered into the active detection position - was dropped into the angrily-boiling metal with the pull of a lever. GoodCouncil had said nothing during this time, determined to take his fate with dignity, but he let off a short scream upon splashdown. Within a second, all was silent except for the massive mechanical stirrer that mixed his already pnly semi-solid body into the white-hot liquid.

The next prisoners were processed with much shorter speeches from Soundwave, but each comment indicated how insulted he was that they would tarnish the reputation of "Cybertron's most important domestic agency" and how he was in full agreement with Megatron that this tarnish could only be cleansed by the fire of the Main Pit. Still, taitors or not, these condemnees were trained agents, and they received their fate with stern faces and stony silence. At least, Soundwave thought to himself, they did not die as cowards. Cowardly responses would have made them, and by extension DomIntel, look even worse.

Just as Soundwave was about to wrap up, another bot was brought in, this time held by some of the top-ranking officials at DomIntel Headquarters. The markings on this bot indicated that he, too, had high rank and even some minor honors. A silver stripe adorned his wings along with a DomIntel Seal of the style used by one of decent, though not top, rank.

Megatron quickly marched over and got the story, and after a pause, gave a command. The captors of this bot quickly brought him up to the suspension chain, hooked him up, and moved him over what was now a quite full Main Pit. A sluice opened, and several tons of molten metal were transferred out to a holding pit on the side. As this happened, Megatron conferred with Soundwave.

Taking his position back at the pit control area, Soundwave once again addressed the cameras. "We have just found out how this corroded cell went 'unnoticed' by Main for so long. This bot here - Ganglion - who until about an hour ago was in charge of the Internal Investigations Subdivision that included that area, 'didn't notice' any reports for a fee of one million Cubes of Supreme. It is treason for an agent to ignore any serious report of other treason, especially when it involves the agents below him. Irrefutable proof has been found within the archives of the Supercomputer. This proof included another kind of proof - records of this traitor's attempts to delete the first proof from the machine. Unfortunately for him, hidden programming made it so that his attempts did not work."

"Now, we can be sure that the same problem will not be happening again. Its chance of happening shall be eradicated with this, the final execution of the day." Soundwave pulled the lever a final time, and with an "eep" followed by a long, automatically-emitted error beep, Ganglion's body became part of the Metal Stream.

~~~~~~~~~

Immigration Office

Scope and Gatekeeper were dismayed that the human didn't even know what the Decepticons were like! "If you didn't know anything about us, what made you decide to take our side and blast the police? You could very well have been killed, either by return fire, or by the guy you used as cover stepping over a bit!" Even for Decepticons, that seemed like a quite reckless course of action for a human to take, given that he didn't know anything about the bots.

After getting the answer, the two gave a standard introductory course on the Decepticon Way, making sure to note that Megatronism - and the worship of Leader Megatron - were now mandatory parts of it. "DomIntel will be starting the first purge of heretics any time now," they warned.

Before they could get any further, the live executions of the DomIntel traitors and the bad district manager came on. Someone called the office to clue them in, and they all watched the event live on the holovision. "You don't want to be a lousy traitor around here," Gatekeeper warned. "Or else this happens. And after this, they'll be in the Realm of Punishment for sure."

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

The Realm of Punishment

Unlike most times, the officials of the Realm had advanced notice of the impending arrivals. They had already prepared a place for the first round of punishment. It was not a slag pit, nor a sea of metal-eating replicants, or even a place where they would be beaten up by some kind of puny things. Instead, it had a look that was so benign-seeming that it was clear that it actually would turn nasty: a grade-school classroom.

With a series of bangs, the condemned souls arrived in the waiting area. Without a word, the Punishing Angels tossed them through the portal into their realm. After a short walk through a dark, void-like place - during which no notes arrived - they saw a wide, low, building with warm lights showing from inside. It didn't take them long to approach since everything else seemed barren of all resources, and they hadn't been there long enough to realize that barren could be an improvement.

Upon approaching the building, they suddenly found themselves turned into 8-year-old human boys. Immediately a voice rang out. "You're not supposed to be out here! I'm teellllinggg!" They turned with rage and saw another 8-year-old run into the building. Immediately, the condemnees raised their arms to blast - hypocritically finding outrage in someone else having watched THEM with the intent of getting THEM in trouble - only to find that they had no blasters. Then, without warning, they were surrounded by teachers and dragged inside.

Soon, they reached "their classroom," but to their dismay, they were to be punished for being outside of the school. Each one got a paddling in front of the room, which was now full of snickering children of both genders.

For the next few years, they would find themselves prisoners of this "boarding school for children under 12," but what would make it hellish was one fact: All of the other children, bar none, was a goody-two-shoes ubernark who never did one thing even minorly wrong. They, on the other hand, were left with their natural minds - Decepticon minds. Needless to say, they were constantly up to things, but because they were surrounded by these other kids, they were narked on every 10 minutes all day and night, and each time, they got a paddling in front of the others.

After that time passed, they had developed an all-consuming hatred of humans and could think of nothing else but trying to figure out ways to delete them all. However, at "graduation day," the children exposed themselves as AI-driven Punishment Constructs instead of actual humans or even sapient bots. The condemnees immediately moved to attack them, but to their dismay, they were still in child forms themselves and so did not have the strength needed to overwhelm them.

Still, they had hope for the first time in years. It was still "graduation day!" Alas, to their dismay, they found that this meant that they had "graduated" to...mine slavery. They were all chipped and marched away, and soon, forced to work in a coal mine with absolutely no safety protection. An ominous graffito, apparently written in blood, marked the entrance: "OHSA's never been here."

Only after these "human child" bodies died of either accidents or coal dust exposure would the traitor souls see a new environment - and that one would be even more hellacious. Their conditions would get progressively worse with each situation for at least 1,000 years, after which Megatron would finally review their cases to decide if they'd been punished enough.

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

Loyal Star's Mansion

Some time after the events leading to the mass executions, Loyal Star got a sealed letter. It was from the First Temple, and reminded him that his time off was almost over. In just 3-4 weeks, he would need to deploy. For now, the message said, the First Temple and ForIntel were working to get some things set up.

[Vallermoore]

Loyal Star's Mansion

Loyal Star noted with interest that the letter was signed by High Priest Warfire, and set an internal "alarm" in his mind boards like an alarm clock so he would get to the Main Temple on time and not forget about it. He remembered that when he was a Ponyist priest, not once in his career did an Archbishop of Ponyism ever visit his temple or send him a letter, let alone an alicorn. The fact that higher ranking bots would, when needed, speak directly to the lowest ranking bots, was one reason why the Decepticon Military was one of the best militaries in the universe since it was first founded. Many biological marshals and generals had their orders get messed up and even changed by the time they reached those who they were meant to. And there were so many laws on other planets whilst things were so much simpler upon Cybertron and within the Empire. In the next few weeks he only had to use his blasters once, against a persistent would be thief to get him to fly off, and never needed to call on holy fusion fire once.

When it was the time to report in his internal alarm did it's job and soon he had flown to the Main Temple, something which he could sense the holiness of. Even as a sapient pony he had acquired this skill, but now his internal instruments could measure it. He introduced himself politely and soon enough was allowed to enter a room where High Priest Warfire, two bots he didn't know and to his delight, Fire Eater, were. Fire Eater's eyes glowed warmly although he didn't for now at least say anything as he didn't want to get in the way of Warfire, but the eye glow said all by itself "Loyal Star, I'm proud of you." The other bots had a neutral look in their eyes, the *normal* eye glow of a Decepticon.

*****
Realm of Punishment

For what they had done, the Decepticons including GoodCouncil who had subverted Domintel and the Way found themselves prisoners of a school full of narks and were paddled again and again, before being chipped and made into mind slavery, with many other horrors (many of them not at all PG 13) awaiting them. After a thousand years all but GoodCouncil would be moved to the Neutral Realm, but GoodCouncil would serve another thousand years in the Realm of Punishment.

*****
Immigration Office

"Those cops and judges jailed all my brothers and handed down long sentences! Yes, they were bad guys according to Galactipol's laws, but it still gave me a hatred of police, prison officers and judges. Then I was suddenly picked up-much better then being caught by the police and killed or jailed for the rest of my life, and ended up here. If I fail the written test-what happens to me? Do I end up a slave for the rest of my life or left to choke to death on Cybertron because I risked my life to fight from the first second with the Decepticon Nation?" He was clearly worried that that was a real possibility, as he was helpless against the bots if they decided to turn nasty, being the size of Scope's first finger.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Immigration Office

"Ah! So you have a justified hatred of police and typical legal systems in general!" The agents loosened up noticeably, but maintained their official demeanors.

"Long sentences, hmm?" Scope asked, knowing that this usually meant something serious had been done, but also knowing that some countries were crazy and would give a guy a life sentence for trying to sell off a kilo of pot. "So what did they do, anyway?"

Once this was answered, Gatekeeper answered the human's question. "Usually if someone fails the Immigration Tests at some point, we send them back to where they came from. However, in instances like yours - where a return trip would drop the person right into legal trouble and could be mistaken for an extradition - we make the destination wherever the failed applicant would like to go, within reason, of course. We're not going to try to land somewhere that we're going to be met with a thousand nuclear SAMs, for example, or on some planet made out of acid."

"The exception is if we find, at some point, that you're actually a spy or someone who intends to instigate political trouble. Then, it's Biological Rendering for you, or if you make it to the code-read stage, simple deletion. And, as you now know, failing the Survival Test means that you didn't survive, or at best, that you ended up in some mine."

"Say, what's your name, by the way? Or your street name, or a Decepticon-style one..." Gatekeeper shrugged a little, knowing that many of the criminal sort were worried about giving out their real names. It was rightful caution for those who had bodies that were relatively easy to track down and apprehend.

~~~~~~~~~~

The First Temple of Cybertron

Upon arrival, Loyal Star was told that he was getting his toughest practice assignment of all. If he managed to pass this, he could be sent to his first full priest assignment.

"Navigator won't be coming with you in any obvious way this time," said Warfire. "Instead, he'll be somewhere nearby, but fully incognito unless the circumstances absolutely demand that he reveals himself." He turned to the two strangers. "These two will be going with you as part of the ruse that will get you into position. When you're on the target planet, you and they will fight, with you playing the part of a brutal thug. You'll beat them to pulps and take their money. You will do this in full view of a CCTV camera, while wearing no mask or other disguise. And then, as you continue to walk around openly in the same general area, you will be recognized, arrested, tried, and sent to jail for felonious battery."

Loyal Star backfired in shock. He jumped back and looked at the other two, who silently nodded their assent. Fire Eater gave a little nod, too, but his was reassuring.

Warfire waited until Loyal Star's attention returned to him and then continued. "Jailhouse ministry has always been a strong, if not all-powerful, tool for religions of all sorts. Christians use the jails to catch those who feel confused and hopeless. Radical Muslim organizations seek those who seethe with resentment and can be radicalized. You will have it the easiest of all. YOU will get to preach that the prisoners will gain Megatron's favor not by doing something against their natural Code, nor by being suicidal, but by simply being better at who they already are. It should be a shoo-in to get loads of converts to Megatronism in a prison for violent criminals. All you need to do is get yourself into that prison without catching too much attention, and that's where your little scenario comes in."

"Of course, all of you will be given hyper-realistic bodies from ForIntel. After all, you can't exactly beat a couple of robots 'to a pulp.' It also wouldn't get the visceral reaction that it will when the cops show up and see those two as biologicals, with their brutally-broken faces and blood all over them..."

One of the other two spoke up. "It goes without saying that we'll have our damage sensors set to not report," he said. "We're just going to be pretending to be in pain. However, the appearance of damage will follow the normal course of healing. That way, when we testify against you, it'll look legit."

Warfire spoke again, this time with more details. "We're going to set you up as a human thug, while they will be ponies. There is hostility between the species on the planet you're going to, and it's especially strong in the area where you'll enact this ruse. It will be written off as yet another hate crime, though there, 'hate crime' is a colloquial term rather than a legal one. The bottom line is that the cops won't look too hard into your reasons or into the physiology of any of you. They'll shuffle you into the system, the trial will run its course, and that'll be that. Off to the jail. The sentence is 10 years per victim."

"Ten years!" Loyal Star exclaimed. "So long for my last assignment?!"

"Actually, it'd be 20 years for the full sentence. Ten per victim. But once there's a good, booming jailhouse ministry that will perpetuate itself through the coming and going of prisoners, the system will get an order to transfer you to a different prison. Then, there'll be an 'accident' that causes the transport bus to roll over, and during the chaos, one of the prisoners will 'die.' That will be you, who has mind-transferred back to Cybertron, leaving behind a body that - as a mere prisoner's carcass - will be buried without the bother of an autopsy. The nation's own disdain for the prisoner class will be what preserves the secret of the body's mechanical innards. Meanwhile, the cops won't bother looking for you because 'your dead body' will have been seen and catalogued."

Warfire finally gave Fire Eater the nod, and now, he could finally talk. After saying a bit about how proud he was of Loyal Star, he went on to extol the importance of the prison ministry. "This type of ministry will give us a literal captive audience," he gushed. "As prisoners come in, we'll be able to convert a much larger than normal percentage of them to Megatronism. Then, when they are released, they'll spread it to the outside world. The prison then ceases to be a place where the Decepticon Way is tamped down, and instead, becomes like an extremely fertile garden that grows almost nothing but new Megatronists. It is one of the greatest subversions of the legal system there is - even better than corrupting judges and police. Best of all, other religions cannot gain the same benefit from ministries in these places. Other religions fit prisoners like straitjackets, while ours fits like a well-oiled glove."

Later, they would explain that Loyal Star wouldn't be immediately accepted by the prison population. Instead, he would have to prove himself - mostly by kicking the right asses - and then demand the attention of the others, lest they get their asses kicked too. Once he got their respect in this way, he would be a leader in the prison's harsh society. After he reached that point, he would be able to talk about Megatronism and gain the others' rapt attention instead of their jeers and fight-attempts.

"Just remember: These bodies are extremely human-like." Warfire warned before sending the trio off to ForIntel to mind-transfer. "They're even more lifelike than your other ones. So, while they're certainly augmented to help you win in fights, you will need to avoid taking too harsh of blows or else they will bleed all over. Some of the fake bones can even break. Internal self-repair systems do exist - thanks to ForIntel's need to avoid involving doctors too deeply in any sort of injury repair - but too much damage will weaken you and allow hostiles to trash the body. All in all, its fight power is akin to that of a serious bodybuilder who seems to have amazingly strong fists and resilience to common fight moves like jaw strikes. That said, if worst comes to worst - for example, if someone outright tries to execute you and you can't fistfight your way out of it - you will have, as always, two blasters hidden deep within your arms. Of course, using them would completely blow your cover as well as the construction of your biological-like arms, so they're only to be used as the last of the last resorts. Just because Megatron won't send anyone out unarmed doesn't mean that you should actually open fire!"

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

Later, at the ForIntel office, Loyal Star found himself getting used to a decently-tall, very muscular human male body. It appeared to be about 45 and the face was grizzled like that of a long-term alcoholic. A few scars marked the face and arms, apparent souvenirs of many fights. Meanwhile, the other two Temple agents had pony bodies. One had a cutie mark indicating skill at woodworking, while the other had a TV. The TV was supposed to show that he was good at spreading a message - or, in his case, advertising. Together, they would play the part of small businesspeople who were just looking to get new customers from the gritty neighborhood they'd end up in.

"The planet you're going to is Asila, and the nation you will operate in is the United Asilan Territories," a ForIntel agent announced. You'll be landing in separate planes at separate airports so there's no hint of a connection. Of course, those planes will be our agents. Once all of you land, you'll take shuttle buses to different hotels, pretending to be tourists. But instead of checking in, you'll go right out the back and meet up here - " He showed a map with a spot marked by an X. Right next to the X was a camera-eye symbol. "Whoever gets there first will loiter right in view of that camera. When the other party arrives, Loyal Star here will demand everything of you two. You two refuse. He will then beat you both into the pavement, pretty much destroying those bodies yet not quite, and take what you have."

"Only after the fight is over and Loyal Star has gone away will the shopkeeper come out - our agents confirm that he's too cowardly to actually interfere. Then, he'll call the police and ambulance. It should be two days, tops, before Loyal Star is recognized and the legal phase will begin."

Not long after that, they were on their way to the new world. Far behind them, with cloaking on, an agent carried Navigator in a faux-human body. He would be getting into the jail too, though if all went well, he would not be revealing himself.

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-I will make sure my computer does not eat this post.)

IC-Immigration Office

"My brothers, until all but me went down with fifty year prison sentences, were armed robbers who raided banks and armoured cars and when that got too hard because of things like dye packs and time-locked safes, we switched to robbing jewellery shops and supermarkets at closing time. We would hide in the toilets until the supermarket had shut, and then mask up, rob the place and leave the staff bound and gagged. We never raped anyone though and we only killed three. One was a cop who pulled a gun on us, one was a have-a-go-hero who got involved even though it was not his stuff we were robbing, and one was a fence who not only cheated us but turned out to be a police informer too. The only reason I didn't get fifty years was that I shaved my body hair back then, dressed as a schoolboy and, with some difficulty, kept my voice high enough to pass as a fifteen year old rather then a twenty-five year old, along with a fake ID saying I was fifteen.. Apart from murder, which they couldn't prove I'd done, or rape which I had never done, the age of full criminal responsibility in the country I was in was sixteen, and all they could do was give me six months in a borstal for all the robberies I'd done, not that such a thing was at all pleasant. I hate law enforcement, prison officers and judges because of what they did to my brothers. My name is Robert Venables, by the way."

The First Temple of Cybertron

When Warfire explained what his final test would be, Loyal Star was so shocked that he was unable to prevent a backfire happening from his engine. Given the circumstances, Warfire chose to turn a blind eye to the backfire as Loyal Star was truly shocked. He was being asked to surrender to biological police and let himself be convicted and jailed-something that seemed to go against the Decepticon Way itself. Warfire was quick to explain why.

"Jailhouse ministry has always been a strong, if not all-powerful, tool for religions of all sorts. Christians use the jails to catch those who feel confused and hopeless. Radical Muslim organizations seek those who seethe with resentment and can be radicalized. You will have it the easiest of all. YOU will get to preach that the prisoners will gain Megatron's favor not by doing something against their natural Code, nor by being suicidal, but by simply being better at who they already are. It should be a shoo-in to get loads of converts to Megatronism in a prison for violent criminals. All you need to do is get yourself into that prison without catching too much attention, and that's where your little scenario comes in."

Loyal Star realized that once Megatronism was firmly established in a prison, it would not only be impossible to stamp it out but it would spread through the rest of the prison system through transfers and to the outside and the underworld in general through releases. Then given enough time, it would spread to those who were not in themselves hardcore criminals though family relationships and the bringing up of children, from them to politicians and those kind of people, and eventually to the general population within as little as a century or two, a small scale time for Decepticons who unless they were killed or starved to death were immortal. The bots he would beat up made it clear that they would have their pain sensors turned off and were using borrowed bodies from Forintel so would not hold it against him on Cybertron later. Warfire made it clear that once Loyal Star's mission was a success, there would be a way to extricate him with a faked death rather then leaving him to serve twenty years in prison. Even for a bot as dedicated and loyal as Loyal Star, having to serve twenty years in prison was a bit much to ask.

Once High Priest Warfire had said his piece, Fire Eater stepped forward, smiling and his eyes glowing a warm happy red. "Loyal Star, I am so happy that you've come so far. I remember when you first turned up as a sapient pony and a defrocked ex Harmonist Priest who had cut the symbols out of his priestly robes and appeared like that in front of his Bishop and congregation. You told me you had seen the light and wanted to be a Megatronist Priest but to go about it in the right and orthodox way. You studied well and became my first ever acolyte, immigrated successfully, served as a soldier, helped out Leader Megatron somehow-whatever it was, it got a double Gold Stripe and required almost unimaginable loyalty!-truly your name fits you-and are so close to earning the full Priesthood Stripes like me. You make me feel proud almost like I'm a Coder."

After more chatting and explaining, Loyal Star would mind transfer to the new body. Whilst very strong, compared to a normal full size Decepticon body it was very weak. They would be flown to their target planet by a few cloaked FNGs of Forintel, a downside of being an FNG in that ministry. The planet they traveled to was a rocky planet called Asila with rings like Saturn which looked impressive from ground level and was shared by humans and ponies, who had serious negative issues with each other made worse by the fall of Equestria and mostly avoided each other's neighbourhoods. Soon enough Loyal Star came to where the other agents were, in earth pony bodies with saddle-bags on. "Give me everything in those bags, pony scum! You should be slaves for us to ride." After the ponies cursed him, Loyal Star picked one up and through him into a wall and proceeded to beat up the other, both only making token attempts to fight back. Which was just as well as many real earth ponies could break human bones with kicks in the right place. After taking their money, all Loyal Star's instincts were telling him to escape, but the thinking part of his mind boards told his instincts, the *primitive* part of the mind boards, for want of a better term , to STFU. I went through a lot to get this far, mind boards, you are not going to stop me earning my Full Priest stripes!!

Soon enough the police picked him up after he made just a token attempt to flee, and he would go to trial in just a few days. For now he was locked up in Foalsom Prison on the unconvicted wing, where both humans and pony prisoners, many of the latter with scary cutie marks, were held.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Immigration Office

Scope was the first to react to the answer. "Ah, so you were in a raid gang, and you're an expert counterfeiter as well? How did you handle the backend - making sure that when they put your ID in the computer, it actually spit out a record? Are you a data specialist as well?" Scope's questions seemed innocent enough, and he was genuinely excited to see a human who could actually counterfeit. However, he was secretly concerned about the last issue. A hacker of foreign computer systems would not be automatically disqualified, but he certainly would face extra scrutiny to make sure that Decepticon systems - especially Decepticon people - would not become certain targets.

Gatekeeper then spoke up. "It sounds like those cops were idiots, especially the ones running that juvie. How could they miss it when your body hair started to grow out again? Surely they weren't dumb enough to leave convicts alone with something as dangerous as razors! Ah, humans. It seems that the ones with the least RAM manage to wiggle their way into all sorts of positions of petty authority, like guarding that place."

"As for your brothers," Gatekeeper continued, "they are likely free now. One of the things our soldiers did when they revealed themselves was open all of the computerized locks in the prison system. So unless they were that weird kind of wimp that stays behind during a jailbreak, they're long gone from there."

Scope approached, this time with some foil-papers. "So, do you want to take the tests? Or are you going to ask for a ride to a less-hostile area?" He seemed sure that this wily man would want to become a Decepticon, despite the risks of the physical portion of the testing sequence. Venables certainly seemed crooked enough to fit in!

~~~~~~~~~~

Foalsom Prison

The prisoners in the unconvicted wing were extremely tight-lipped. As non-convicts, any boasts or even shamed admissions of criminal activity could be used as evidence to turn them into convicts! Therefore, everyone would, if someone made the serious mistake of even asking, say that they had done nothing at all. Loyal Star was quickly told not to be nosy - and to not say anything about himself, either. Nobody wanted to know because they didn't want to deal with the cops trying to get them to spill any information.

Soon enough, a cop came and gruffly demanded to know if Loyal Star had a lawyer. When he said that he didn't, the cop just grunted and went away.

Loyal Star would not meet his court-assigned public defender - a very young, overworked-looking pony who looked like he just got his law degree yesterday - until only 10 minutes before he was scheduled to appear in the court. His conviction was all but assured.

As expected, the public defender wasn't worth the horseshoes he walked in on, and he missed several opportunities to challenge the prosecution on procedural grounds. It was all Loyal Star could do to keep up his act as his SEDP module on Foreign Legal Procedures binged off all of the mistakes - and that was just the basic education every Decepticon had! He wondered if the pony was legitimately so incompetent or if he was biased against what he thought was a human and was intentionally blowing the case.

All of this, however, became moot once the CCTV footage was shown. There he was, caught on camera, brutally beating and robbing two "innocent" ponies. Then, the prosecution called those two to the stand, and they proceeded to testify that they were just in the area to sell people new windows when that "horrible human" came and pounded the daylights out of them. One even still had a big fist mark across his jowl, and what appeared to be a broken eye socket. The eye itself was swollen closed. The other pony looked no better off, with one leg in a walking cast "from being thrown into the wall and hitting it at a bad angle."

At this point, a good lawyer would have set up a big sob story about how Loyal Star was a poor and downtrodden human with no other apparent options, who had left home only to seek money for some starving child he knew, and who was filled with remorse already, etc. etc. etc. The incompetent public defender, however, did not even call a witness and made only a perfunctory attempt at a closing statement. With this sort of presentation, it was easy for the prosecutor to ask the jury for the maximum sentence after portraying Loyal Star as a vicious would-be killer who didn't even have it in him to TRY a peaceful way of life.

Only one hour after the trial had begun, the jury came back with the verdict: Guilty of 2 counts of robbery and 2 counts of felonious aggravated battery. The robbery charge hadn't even been part of the original plan, but it did make sense.

It also added a huge amount of extra time to the sentence. Because of it, the battery charges became aggravated battery charges, earning Loyal Star 20 years for each count (40 total). The robbery charges themselves were worth 15 years apiece, for a total of 30 for those alone. The judge, appalled by the wanton brutality of the crime, handed down the full maximum on all counts for a total of 70 years in prison - starting immediately. Parole would be a possibility, but only after 20 years.

"You can always appeal," the public defender said nonchalantly as he walked away, clearly not caring about this outcome one bit.

~~~~~~~~~~

The first part of Loyal Star's sentence would be served in Foalsom Prison, but he was unlikely to spend much of his sentence there. This prison was more of a starting point into the system than an end destination, and it was typical for convicts to be shifted around every so often. However, for now, this would be his new home.

When he got into the rest of the prison, he was given a different outfit - this time one of a pansyish pink color - and led to a cell. Instead of having the entire cell to himself, he would have to share it. He found that his cellmate would not be a human, but instead, a hugely muscular draft pony wearing a pink blanket who looked like he had been practicing to be in a bodybuilding competition. Even worse, the pony immediately started to complain and make speciesist comments plainly showing his hatred for humans. As he did this, Loyal Star got a glimpse of his cutie mark - a blood-covered tire iron.

[Vallermoore]

Immigration Office

"I have a friend who is part of the gang I'm in, or was in, rather, until I ended up here, that works as a clerk in the government's records department. He never directly commits robberies or beats or kills people himself, but he helps with false IDs and with finding out things like people who we want to trace, or when a gold shipment or something of that kind is happening so that our gang have a chance to rob it. So I'm not a hacker as such, he does that sort of thing for me. I doubt a hacker would be popular around here, given that your minds are living computers. Security in the juvie was strong enough to stop people getting out, but as long as we didn't riot, attack guards or attack each other right in front of the guards, they turned not a blind eye, but a cataracted eye to certain smuggling. Some would even, for bribes from the outside, smuggle stuff like drugs. Of course, we self-policed ourselves, and smuggling firearms of any kind was a no-no, as it meant that security would be ratcheted up to maximum security levels for every inmate in there.We gave the guards an easy life as long as they did the same for us. No riots, escapes, or attacking staff as long as they didn't hurt us, take our stuff or block our visitors. The adult prisons are far stricter, tougher places."

When it was revealed that his brothers were free he clapped his hands together in sheer joy. "Thank you so much. I thought they would only get out again as men in their eighties. I think I'll see if I can take the tests. If I fail by a few points on the mental test, I know I can have a ride to a planet near my own where I won't be slammed into a prison. If I fail the physical test, I deserve to die, and wherever my soul ends up, it won't be the Realm of Punishment. " Soon enough he was busy carefully filling in the non physical part of the test under the benevolent gaze of Scope and Gatekeeper, who felt much warmer towards him now that they knew he was a member of a gang of armed robbers. Most nations would never let a person like him immigrate, but for Cybertron, people of his kind might well be just what the nation needed and were considered a bonus rather then a bane.

*****

When Loyal Star entered the unconvicted wing an inmate quietly but firmly warned him "Keep your mouth shut about what you have done, and don't ask anyone about their cases, as we are awaiting trial here. You don't want to be mistaken for a police spy or an outright nark." Soon enough Loyal Star would meet his defence lawyer, and wondered if his so called lawyer was a Decepticon in a pony body who was making sure he got in the maximum trouble or just could not care less. It was not the fact his lawyer was a sapient pony that if he had not been on a secret mission would have greatly bothered him-his lawyer had a legal scroll as a cutie mark, and having been a sapient pony for over fifty years, Loyal Star had no hatred for the sapient pony race. It was just that he was, if he was a genuine defence lawyer, pretty useless-or had a strong dislike for humans. He thought to himself quietly of Leader Megatron at the moment when he had brought him back from death, and another memory from long ago popped into his head.

Forty six years in the past.

A blank flanked unicorn pony foal named Loyal Star sat near his father , a Harmonist Priest, who was telling him about Princess Celestia and how amazing she was. As he listened to the stories of the benevolent alicorn pony monarch, he wanted to serve her, and with a flash, his cutie mark appeared-a Harmonist religious symbol. He gave a whinney of joy, and his parents hugged and kissed their foal, told him how proud they were of him and set about getting his cutecenara sorted out.

*****
Loyal Star pushed that memory back into storage. It was a good memory-for a pony getting a cutie mark nearly always was, so he didn't delete it, but he was a Decepticon now, and his loyalty was reserved for Leader Megatron and the Decepticon Way. Soon enough he was convicted and got a sentence of seventy years in prison with at least twenty to serve, given by a pony judge with a gavel on his flank. Soon enough he was taken to Foalsom Prison where his sentence would begin, and put in a cell with a pony with a tire iron as a cutie mark, a bloodstained tire iron. When the guard locked him in and walked away, the pony reared up to attack him, only for Loyal Star to deliver several hard punches in between the ribs of the pony. No bones broke, but the pony was utterly winded and defenceless.

"I understand you don't like humans, but don't take it out on me unless you want me to break those ribs of yours. I don't hate ponies-I've lived with them in the past, but I won't take crap from anyone. You don't have to be my friend, but if you come after me I'll be your worst nightmare." The pony shrunk away against the cell walls, and Loyal Star wondered when the unofficial toughest convicts, be they pony or human, would try and push him around. Only when he was recognised as the toughest convict by the other convicts-much like in Decepticon society in fact-could he start preaching and winning converts to his God.