An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Victorious Decepticons]

Galactipol Federation

At first, the defenders thought they'd have it made. Their adversary, the Decepticons, often didn't even bother trying to dodge their lesser weaponry. Instead, they'd charge on through, leaving seas of metal debris and not much more. Would it really be this easy to win? It was like...

Like coming up against a swarm of a billion killer bees.

Soon enough, those on Galactipol's inner worlds realized the true horror of the situation. One after another, their military bases began to report that they were out of the fuel they needed to fire their energy artillery and were almost out of their missiles and other more-standard ordnance. Only the black hole bombs and other serious weaponry in space was now able to create effects powerful enough to cause the vast hordes to part around them.

At the front of the horde was a familiar figure: Leader Megatron, who was now openly using his divine powers to grant himself the invincibility needed to stay intact while others were fragged all around him. His entire body glowed with light energy that served as a shield against the many missiles that hit him dead-on. To add insult to injury, he now bore a smug "victory is assured" expression that Galactipol was unable to wipe off of his face. This caused Galactipol to waste some extra ammo on him instead of focusing on the rest of his division.

Galactipol's high command was beside itself as radio traffic from its outer worlds came to a halt; their militaries simply overrun by the Decepticons' sheer numbers. The silence was especially eerie in contrast to the loud chatter that had been going on just moments before. "It's almost like they have a neverending supply of troops!" They said as they looked at the live video feeds of their core worlds. Meanwhile, one by one, the military bases on these worlds reported that they were out of all large-format ammunition and that the soldiers there were retreating to the bunkers. Even more silence entered the radio rooms, and with it, a sense of impending doom.

~~~~~~~~~~~

On the Decepticon Side

The secret to the "neverending horde" was just now firing up back on Cybertron, where 100 high-speed military factories were brought online and quickly staffed by soldiers assigned to military production. Within minutes, the assembly lines were running and identical bodies were being produced at the rate of one per minute per line. At special stations in each factory, secure connections were made between the Main Save Vault and these new forms, which angrily revved to life with precise regularity. The Decepticon Military did not let this anger go to waste. Each newly-reactivated soldier was given a super-fast briefing to let them know that they were now back on Cybertron due to "unfortunate results" and then given a map to get back to the battle from their current geographic location. Nothing else needed to be said: Each one sped off as soon as he fueled up, eager to rejoin the fray and kick the ass of whoever had blasted them before. All in all, there were 1,000 reactivations every minute, and the Decepticon Empire had the production capacity to speed that up far more if the situation required it.

Activating these factories had taken almost no time at all, in contrast to how it would be in many biological nations. That's because they were never truly "mothballed" like those in other nations often would be. Instead, everything was kept ready at all times: Parts to assemble 100,000 bodies each, assembly machines, and the lines themselves were all ready to go. All that was needed was to hit the main switch in each one, bring in the staff, and it was go time.

Outside, domestic cargo-bots - smaller than those used for interplanetary deliveries - brought in more parts long before the first 100,000 sets were used up, allowing continuous operation of these factories. Even further out, the Main Foundry and other government-run foundries all switched from whatever they'd been doing to producing even more parts to make up for those the cargo-bots took out of storage. There would be no running out of anything, at least not against a foe that wasn't able to last long enough to actually exhaust the massive resource backlog the Decepticons currently had - and thanks to their recent prior conquests, that backlog was huge. Mine slavery in all conquered territories had created a glut that had, until now, threatened to crash the metal markets entirely. Megatron's smug smile, it would turn out, wasn't just because he was winning against Galactipol with straight-up swarming. His company was going to make a huge profit thanks to the impending spike in metal demand.

On the civilian side, Decepticons who came back to Cybertron as data went to their own spares, which were hidden all around. The ground seemed to seethe as millions of bots continually emerged from the vents to the Underworks like ants from a hidden hill. Many of them went straight back to battle like the troops, but almost as many went home instead. Those who went home had no other spares, and weren't going to risk their final bodies on some Zerg rush attack. Almost immediately, there was some grumbling that Megatron had ordered that attack style not to crush Galactipol, but to force them to buy more metal. After the war, however, Megatron would remind them that he had not called for all Decepticons to join in with the Military - they had come on their own, fully cognizant of the risks.

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

SolarTempest's Mansion

SolarTempest wasn't really at all inclined to reactivate MasterBlaster. The thought momentarily crossed his mind to install him into a pony body and get revenge for that humiliation of long ago, but his logic told him that he would be better off without doing even that. After all, had not MasterBlaster tried to usurp his authority, with a self-entitled attitude as if he could just waltz up and give SolarTempest orders - and then want to kill him when that didn't work!?

"So the arrogant hothead has finally gone and gotten himself destroyed for good!" SolarTempest laughed. "Serves him right! Let him sit in the Neutral Realm making parts for a long time, or better yet, go to the Realm of Punishment as a mine slave pony. If I reactivate him, it'll only reinforce his weird delusion that being a Coder gives him some sort of privilege over me. When it comes down to it, he's still just a biological inside. And biological Coders are insufferable."

He dismissed SteelHard's words in favor of reactivation with a wave of his hand. "It is said that his original gang broke up because he had been planning on trying to deactivate me. Such things are not forgiven. Not only because of the simple logical principle of the thing, but because if you like your own life, you don't reactivate any entity that wants to kill you! Also, Coding is done because the Coder wanted to do it, not as some kind of personal favor to the one who happens to be activated as a result. It's not like I was there asking for a way into the realm beforehand!" SolarTempest truly wondered if SteelHard was nuts. His proposal was against all sense of logic and self-preservation.

This reaction went over great with the rest of his gang, who had - except for that one - all argued in favor of NOT reactivating MasterBlaster. Here on Cybertron, being a wimp because "oooh, it's my Cooodieee" was NOT a response that would win any points at all, especially when the Coder in question had proven to be an actual threat in the past. A Decepticon - and especially, a gang leader - was to be strong of mind at all times and never yield to a challenger ever!

Now, Haula had a conundrum. Should he just go over to MasterBlaster's place and scour it, hoping to find a Save? Should he search SolarTempest's place instead? What if SolarTempest decided to go ahead and destroy the Saves now that he knew that MasterBlaster wasn't anywhere around to defend them? Finally, Haula made a decision. He challenged SolarTempest to a duel to the point of disability, with a Save as the prize.

"Then we must fight for the Save one-on-one like proper Decepticons," Haula said aggressively, revving his engine. "It is clear that you have not destroyed the Saves that you know of. So let's go outside, and I will 'motivate' you to hand one over, right now!"

Meanwhile, thoughts were running through SolarTempest's mind as well. If this guy was here for the Save, that meant that the MasterBlaster Gang was now leaderless. It would be the perfect time to absorb the other gang into the Cybertronian Business Association and get full revenge. He remembered well that MasterBlaster had wanted him dead at one point - what better result could there be than for MasterBlaster to end up dead instead and then lose his gang to SolarTempest? It would be full of delicious irony, for the Coded to turn the tables so thoroughly! But first he would need to dispatch this Haula guy...

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

Earth

"The Decepticons have been attacking police? So that's what those warships here a while ago were about? They're stupid COPS of some sort?" The man chuckled. "I certainly came to the right place, then. But no, I hadn't been trying to become one of them. I just knew that this was where no cops could follow me, and that if I could make it past the slavers at the border, I'd be home free. Nobody really goes around looking for one little human except in that border zone or near the work sites. My plan is to sit tight until the statute of limitations runs out back home, and then openly stride back into civilization. It'll just kill those cops to have to sit on their hands when I arrive, knowing that they can't do shit!" He laughed jovially, and looked smug at his plan to evade whatever kind of justice he would have gotten if caught.

"So what makes YOU the enemy of cops? And why do you think it's better to become a machine because of it?" He assumed an authoritative air. It was, after all, his cave and Venables was still some uninvited visitor.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

It might have been expected in most cultures that SolarTempest would simply order his gang to blast Haula into small pieces of scrap metal, but if he did that it might cause problems down the line, as it could cause his gang to start thinking of him as weak. And if enough of his gang thought that, they might leave. The one thing a leader could not be , be it a leader of a small gang, all the way up to leading the Decepticon Nation at the very top, was to be thought of as weak. Haula did have a fair case for demanding a duel, and SolarTempest was near certain of winning it. So SolarTempest nodded and in fact found a Save. "Challenge accepted. My body has not suddenly degraded to a hunk of junk inside to the point where I cannot fight by myself and win.If you somehow do manage to win, you get the Save and no one is to stop you. If you lose, I plan to destroy every last MasterBlaster Save I can track down and absorb his gang. SteelHard, assuming I win this duel, you are to go to Debugging as you are a valued member of this gang and I can't have your mindboards going wrong on me."

Haula had brought some recent upgrades in the form of extra blasters in his wrists and chest specially designed for cutting through even strong armour but in fact he was very unlikely to win this duel, although he was no useless hunk of junk. They went outside so that the mansion was not damaged by blasting and Haula was the first to blast, trying to cut through SolarTempest 's armour to expose his boards. The rest of the gang had great interest but did not intervene. In the very unlikely event that SolarTempest lost, it would cause him major leadership problems.


Earth

"They arrested my family and jailed them for a long time. And there are far more reasons then a plain hatred of cops to become a machine. As a Decepticon, old age and natural death cannot claim me, and human and animal diseases won't affect me. I can raid other lands as well, by myself or in the military. Apart from treason being banned, there are no laws in the Decepticon Empire, although one has to be careful around other Deceptions to avoid being blasted. If you want I will go as you were clearly here first."

Galactipol Worlds

With the outer worlds taken, and most of their ordinance including the black hole bombs nearly used up, the Galactipol leaders prepared to try to flee to other planets. They were not out of ideas yet, such as a squadron of "Decepticons" with tinted cockpits to hide the view of their pilots who were to try and get near high ranking Decepticon Generals and assassinate them. They had jammers of a sort and blasters and in plane mode looked reasonably convincing. There were five of them who could transform, and from a distance would look reasonably like the real thing, but there were several differences. The Binary was in not quite the right accent and whilst it was understandable, it was the equivalent of speaking the English of Shakespear in England in modern times. The movement had to be controlled from the cockpit and in robot mode, to Decepticons who moved by thinking about it, would seem jerky and zombie like. Even the flying was not as good as Decepticon flight.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Afterlife

MasterBlaster immediately noticed it when the view on the screens changed from their typical views of the various afterlives. Now, they showed Haula and SolarTempest, who were marching out of SolarTempest's mansion in a way that clearly showed hostility. Behind the CBA leader stood a powerful-looking bot holding what was obviously a Save Disk.

"Your chances do not look good," the white-painted Afterlife Administrator said. "They are going to duel over the fate of that Save. Your Save."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

SolarTempest absorbed Haula's opening salvo without trouble, and thanks to freeze-face being active, showed no signs that it even hurt. With the speed of relative youth, he returned fire with great gusto. Since it was a duel to disability rather than death, he aimed not for the chest but the limbs. Specifically, he used his right blaster to go for the support struts that were typically right up the center of each limb. With his left blaster, he aimed just above and below the joints. Proper fighters always protected the joints themselves with plenty of armor, but some overlooked the area immediately surrounding the obvious targets.

As SolarTempest did all of this, he made sure to dance around like a human boxer in order to make himself harder to hit. He didn't bother to say many taunts, instead putting most of his RAM on the mechanics of winning.

The battle went on for many minutes, and for a while, it was unclear who would win. Haula didn't seem to be bothered by the strikes that landed, and the same could be said of SolarTempest. However, SolarTempest was doing something that Haula, being the slower bot, hadn't been able to pull off: He was hitting the same spots on Haula over and over again. Eventually, Haula's armor began to melt in those places, and it would just be a matter of time before SolarTempest managed to reach Haula's struts or the hydraulic lines leading to and from his joints - and bring him crashing to the ground.

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

MasterBlaster Gang Headquarters

When Haula did not quickly return with the Save and MasterBlaster did not show up reactivated either, everyone knew that something was seriously wrong. A scout was sent out, and quickly confirmed what they had all figured: SolarTempest was not cooperating. Not only that, Haula seemed to be losing a duel for the Save.

"If Haula loses, there is just one thing for us to do," said one who had earned a fairly dominant position. "We must attack the CBA right away, or else SolarTempest will start deleting all of the Saves he can find!"

"Not only that," said another, "he will surely want to initiate gang warfare against us and force us to bow to him. We're not about to do THAT! Let's get over there and blast 'em all into shards!"

After only a little more discussion, they had opened the base's Energon vault and were quickly chugging it in order to fuel up. Most were using their free hands to clean out one of their blasters as they drank - no time was being wasted in preparing for full battle.

"Hey," one protested. "Aren't we supposed to avoid fighting each other while a war is on?"

The rest of the gang gave him bad looks and kept on preparing for battle. "Are you suggesting we stand here and get killed? We have no choice! We have to attack, or he'll be in our faces instead of the other way around!"

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

Galactipol Worlds

There was no mistaking the leadership of Galactipol thanks to their ships being marked with titles such as "Chief of Police" and "Commander." After sending scouts to confirm that the leadership was really on those ships, the Decepticon Commanders quickly ordered troops to engage them in dogfights. Unlike the enemy's capital ships, the ones its leadership was on were fast and light. These craft had been intended to allow Galactipol leaders to get around faster, and now, they were being used as escape ships...or, at least, that's what the leadership had intended.

Soon enough, General Carjack noticed what appeared to be a real rookie coming near him. He barked out a battle formation number, ordering the errant "new troop" to take his place within it, but was taken aback to hear a strange form of Binary in response. This caused him to smell a rat - and run a scan. In less than a second, he picked up the energy signature of biological life within the "poorly-performing soldier."

Carjack's response was all but automatic. His blasters quickly zeroed in on this interloper, and less than a second later, he was firing. Meanwhile, he sent out an alert over the Decepticon Military Frequency that there were mimics attempting to infiltrate the lines, and that anyone who appeared to have notably substandard skills was suspect.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

"Well, you can stay for a while," said the big cave-dweller. "It's been a long time since I've seen a man who was actually made of flesh and who comes from somewhere that isn't stuck in Year One. Back home, 'bombing them back to the Stone Age' was just a saying. But I must say, the robots have done very well at doing that to the humans who used to live here. Some of them have managed to get metal, but only by scrounging it."

He made as if he was going to lower his gun, but then changed his mind. Venables still had his own firearm ready, so he figured he'd better keep his own ready as well. "If we're going to be peaceful-like, we're going to need to stop pointing these at each other...at the same time," he said.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Both SolarTempest and Haula managed to inflict damage upon each other's bodies-both had powerful blasters and knew how to fight. But as the better fighter with the stronger armour, SolarTempest was able to send his foe crashing to the ground. With his joints busted up, Haula said " You win. Take my body as your prize," and mind transferred to a spare. There was much loud cheering from the Cybertronian Business Associatian. Their leader had proved he was tough. SteelHard set off to Debugging, obeying his boss's orders, so that they could find out what went wrong with him. SolarTempest set about destroying every MasterBlaster Save Disc that he knew the location of, pleased to be rid of his unpleasant Coder.

The bot in the former MasterBlaster gang who warned of possible treason pointed out "Check your treason files, and if it is legal we will go straight into battle-if we have to wait for the war to end then so do they."

Afterlife

MasterBlaster watched the battle, cheering on Haula and vowing to himself that if Haula won he would need to reward him well, hating his offspring that he had once built with such care. When Haula crashed to the ground, the white painted Afterlife Administrator said "You have to move on now, but it will not be to the Realm of Punishment as you are no traitor and in fact died defending Cybertron. If you do somehow get brought back from a Save, there is no time limit on it, but that is very unlikely now." MasterBlaster nodded and entered the Afterlife proper.

Galactopol Worlds

Only one planet remained untaken now, the core planet of the Galactopol Alliance, a world with many prisons upon it, and possibly one with powerful defences. One of the fake Decepticons got close enough to General Skywarp to blast him, but it barely scratched his armour before being dispatched by the irate General. The rest were scanned, the Decepticons scanning any bots that seemed slow. Some had been hurt in battle-other ones were fake and they were destroyed without any mercy. Given what Decepticons got up to, there was not much hate aimed at them for being in disguise as the Decepticons had done that often enough.

Earth

On a count of three both humans sheathed their weapons and Venables offered to guard the cave entrance for a bit in exchange for shelter. He wanted to stay on the right side of this human.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Debugging Center, Cybertron

SteelHard was slightly sullen as he reported in for a check, and this was made worse by the fact that he had to wait a long time due to the presence of extra people who wanted patches against budding cases of PTSD caused by them having been SAMmed into millions of pieces in the current war. Still, he was eventually seen, and to his incredible surprise, was indeed found to be glitched.

"You have a faulty risk/benefit calculation sequence as well as a strangely defective vengeance-seeking/survival subroutine," he was told. The second one, the Debugger said, should have caused him to classify MasterBlaster as a proper foe given the circumstances. Of course, the risk/benefit sequence should have been telling him that the best option for dealing with a person who has proven to be hostile is always to delete him (or leave him deleted, in this case). To the Debugger, that was a simple calculation - as basic as knowing that 2+2 = 4 - and SteelHard's system returning any other result meant that it needed patching right away. In more human terms, a desire to reactivate MasterBlaster was akin to having a desire to keep a rabid animal alive and roaming around. "Such a person will attack again given the slightest chance," the Debugger said matter-of-factly. "The only reason the MasterBlaster gang hadn't already declared war on yours was surely that it knew it would lose."

Fixing these issues was simple for the Debugging Center, and in fact, the expert seemed to be glad to be coding something other than patches for raiders who had mistakenly thought that the current war would be easy.

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

At the Headquarters of the Gangs

Both gangs initially prepared for war against the other one, only to realize that they had to hold off as long as there was still an interplanetary war going on that could lead to threats against Cybertron. Each group, unknown to the other one, decided to go ahead and obey that directive. Even so, both made sure to ready their weapons and stay fueled up just in case the other side went ahead and attacked anyway.

SolarTempest's Mansion

SolarTempest quickly torched his way into Haula's body panels and melted down the mind-boards as well as the hidden personality chip within. Usually, finding the personality chip would be hard, but it was a cinch with an already-offline body. All he needed to do was trace the wiring down from the main boardset to find the chip on the other end of the connection.

Once it was certain that Haula couldn't snap that body back into action, SolarTempest took it and stuffed it into a storage room. "The price of metal should be going up soon, judging by how many people are arriving on the surface from hidden locations," he said. "Each one represents a body that was lost on the war front. We'll wait until that war is over, and replacement metal is at its highest demand, before selling this thing to the highest-paying foundry around."

Next, SolarTempest and his gang went around to all of the accessible locations that might hold MasterBlaster Saves. Melting down the ones he had within reach was easy, and it wasn't long before they successfully guessed the locations of a few others in the Underworks. One location, however, was likely to be harder to get into: MasterBlaster's mansion. "We've got to get in there before his gang does," SolarTempest said. "I don't know if there's a Save in there or not, but it's fairly likely since he wouldn't have even had to go anywhere to hide a copy in his own house."

One of the gang members quickly piped up. "I have an even better idea," he said. "Let's just bomb the place! A bunker buster will take out the roof, and then we can drop an incendiary bomb after that to engulf the insides with fire. Then the disks will melt, and we won't have to bother to find them at all!"

SolarTempest smiled wryly. "That would be a fittingly ironic way to be sure we got all of his Saves, wouldn't it? A big explosion for the one who so loved blowing everything up~! Plus, it'll be harder for his gang to interfere with that. Even if they come out to fight, we can let go of an explosive payload from the sky and gravity will do the rest."

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

Afterlife

"You certainly weren't a hit with your offspring," the Afterlife Administrator said to MasterBlaster as the screens faded to black. "And, according to our records here, there is good reason for that. After activating him and sending him off to a few raid games, you didn't seem to have much to do with him. Until, that is, he got his own gang. Then you wanted to co-opt it to raid what YOU wanted to, as if he should just go along." The Administrator was shaking his head disapprovingly. "Worse was your reaction when that didn't work. We have records of plans for an assassination attempt. It's no wonder that he is making sure that you will never be able to be a threat to him again..."

"In the Military, you were a C-grade performer, though you weren't convicted of any outright treason. You had a bit of a reputation for a lack of bravery, thanks to your need to get a patch just to be able to handle being around General Soundwave! And, outside the Forces, you had planned on cracking some domed cities to make the raiding easier, even though your gang wasn't nearly powerful enough to handle the massive blowback that doing that would have caused. A gang like the IOPC might be able to pull that off because of their size, and not faced punishment for it. That's because they would have been expected to commit all of their 10,000 adjuncts to fighting the inevitable war, and would very likely be able to take care of it on their own. YOU, on the other hand, would have dragged the Decepticon Military into war against a motivated opponent, and your gang wouldn't have been nearly big enough to handle it yourselves. All in all, these things show that you have a strange view of yourself: You underestimated yourself while in the Military, yet greatly overestimated yourself once outside of it."

"If that was all the info we had on you, you would be going to the Realm of Punishment for sure, and there, you would be condemned to be the offspring of a Coder like yourself, over and over again - as well as enduring other punishments. You are very lucky that we have other information as well."

"First, you did manage to get a big gang going, even after losing many of the members of your original group. But even more importantly, you saved Planet Cybertron from being in the way of that black hole bomb. This is a HUGE plus, despite the consternation of those who were caught in the blast you set off. You fought for your Nation at other times, too. Your loyalty level towards Leader Megatron is also in your favor. These things help cancel out the negatives, but do not completely negate them, so we are assigning you to the Neutral Realm."

"Once there, you will find that you have a unique position. You may or may not know that we have control over many afterlife realms. These other realms were taken by force, which means that we need to keep a military presence there - and keep the troops fully stocked. Your new job will be to help with that. You will be assigned to a military factory, and your work will be determined by the factory foreman. There, you will remain until you learn better discipline and judgment, and once that occurs, you will be reviewed for reassignment - either to some other part of the Afterlife Military Force, or to another part of the Neutral Realm altogether."

A portal opened, and a sudden suction yanked MasterBlaster through before he knew it.

Leader Megatron, perhaps, would reassign him at some other point. For now, the Divine Leader was headed for Galactipol's last remaining world with full concentration on his own present situation, and he trusted that his Afterlife Administrators were doing their jobs properly.

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

Galactipol Space

As each Galactipol planet fell, a large contingent of Decepticons broke off of the swarm to land on them as ground troops and make sure that they remained conquered territories. Many of the troops took to blasting any civilians they could see, and this terrified the remaining populations into staying indoors. This was partly planned - it would be far easier to take actual control without little aliens running around making mischief.

Now, Megatron and his personal division, as well as a large number of other troops, made their way to the core world. When he realized how many prisons it held, he quickly ordered General Shockwave and Soundwave to begin attempting to hack their door controls in an attempt to let all of the prisoners out. If it worked at even a decent number of them, the now-ex-prisoners would cause chaos, especially since many of them - by most nations' definitions - actually deserved to be incarcerated. Of course, the Decepticons would later do their best to find out which ones would qualify to be called Decepticons-in-Spirit rather than mere thugs, rapists, or other such types that even the Decepticon Nation would not want.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

The atmosphere inside the cave immediately became more relaxed once the weapons were put away. Venables holstered his pistol, while the cave's owner leaned his rifle up against the cave wall just outside the door.

"It's a bad idea to stay in the cave entrance," he said, turning down the guarding offer. "If you're there, you're right where an intruder looks first. It's far better to just stay back here, but keep your ears pricked. You'll almost always hear a trespasser long before he gets near the back, and then you just turn off the torches and sneak around in the dark. If it's a biological, he'll have to light some kind of torch to see where he's going, and if he needs to be dealt with, you let him have it. And if it isn't a biological, you'll smell the exhaust even before you leave this room. I have ways to deal with both of 'em. Don't worry about it."

"What I need you to do is far less fun. I know you heard me dragging that mountain goat..."

Soon enough, Venables found himself drafted to bring the kill into the main room. Next, he got his survival knife sharpened for free, but that was because he was then tasked with helping to skin and butcher the thing. It was hard work for him, but the other man did it as if he'd done hundreds of others before that.

"You can call me Bruno," the large man finally said as they kept working. "The Law started caring about me because I put a man into a coma in a bar fight. But that's not why I came here. I came here because of what we were fighting about." He proceeded to tell a tale of how he was actually a mob enforcer back home - a job which only sometimes involved delivering severe beatings. At other times, it included arson, the destruction of fancy cars and private planes, and...other...things. Though he never said it outright, it was clear that the "other" things actually meant murders. The man in the bar had suspected Bruno of murdering one of his confidants and had come at him with a knife, intent in paying him back. Bruno had won the fight, but he figured that the police or feds would investigate and perhaps find evidence of his other activities.

"They have nothing to point to 'other' things, but they might get evidence of some of the enforcement activities I've done. So I decided to come here and make sure that it wouldn't matter if they did find it. All of those lesser things have statutes of limitations. Burnin' down the competition, for example, has a limitation of 10 years. All in all, my country's not really a bad place. Cops are pretty sportsmanlike, if only because the law forces them to be. The culture basically says that if someone can avoid capture for however long a crime's statute of limitations is, he deserves to get off. At least, for most crimes."

After that, Bruno asked Venables his story. Asking about criminal activity was typically a not-done thing in a regular society, but they were both out in the middle of nowhere in a land that was lawless anyway. Venables then told him a bit about his own past, and how he had fought against the police when the Decepticons came to what had been his country. "I hope they let every prisoner out, and then send their most feared general to exterminate every last cop!" he concluded.

Bruno seemed like a tough, yet easy-going guy. Venables wondered if this was an act, or if he'd mellowed after spending what was likely years in the wilderness. Either way, he would be sure not to try to test Bruno's temper, though - it was a sure bet that the mobster would have no qualms in leaving a body out for the vultures if he thought that would be the smart thing to do. In fact, Venables wondered if Bruno had been responsible for the corpse he'd seen before.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Privately SteelHard was a little annoyed at being sent off to Debugging by his gang leader, but it turned out that SolarTempest was right and the Debugger discovered and fixed serious mental errors in SteelHard's mind boards that could have caused serious problems if they were not fixed. When he had been fixed and heard what had been wrong he gave a deep bow of thanks to the Debugger, the equvilent in Decepticon culture of a big hug. "Thank you for fixing me. I didn't think anything was wrong with me but my gang boss was right to send me here."

The Fists, as they were still known, realized that whilst they could not attack their foes whilst the Decepticon Nation was still at war, neither could they be attacked. Large scale interplanetary war brought a strange peace to Cybertron, as bots that fought each other might leave the Nation open to attack. Whilst as a God Megatron might well be possible to protect Decepticons from all other nations, that would lead to the long term Weakening of the Nation as well as making the Nation deeply bored out of it's collective mind boards, and much more likely with no challengers from outside to turn in on itself to an unhealthy degree. Both gangs made plans to attack each other. Whilst SolarTempest and his gang were planning to blow up MasterBlaster's house, the Fists wanted to fly in from behind and blast SolarTempest and other gang members from behind, and suspected that MasterBlaster's house would be a target of the Cybertronian Business Association. Both gangs were ready to fly into battle against each other as soon as Megaton declared victory over the despised Galactipol police.

Afterlife

Whilst martyrdom normally counted as a big minus, possibly saving Cybertron from being destroyed was a big plus (even as a God, having to remake Cybertron down to the last nail would be a major PITA for Megatron), and before he became a God there would have been no way to bring back Cybertron at all if a black hole destroyed it. Which would have brought great sadness to the Decepticon Nation, who loved their Metal Planet above all other planets in their entire Empire. It also helped that MasterBlaster's loyalty to Megatron had never been in question. On the other hand his various sins got him sucked into the Neutral Realm, but not as a mere part making machine. All would go reasonably well for MasterBlaster in fact.

Galactipol Space

Within only an hour or so General Soundwave was able to open almost every prison door on the planet, and the rampaging prisoners would make it much harder for the soldiers and police to keep control on the planet and defend themselves against the Decepticons at the same time. Surely there would be some Decepticons in Spirit and Megatronist amongst them. On every captured planet, once the survivors had been caged up, Megatronist Priests would walk amongst them, able to detect the true Megatronists who had risked their freedom or even their lives being secret Megatronists before the invasion, and whatever their body type, be it human, pony, changeling, or alien, they would be separated, as punishing hardcore loyalists who had placed themselves in danger was in Megatron's mind boards an idiotic idea that would harm Megatronism itself. Megatron was a little cautious, expecting some last form of defence-anything from the planet having it's own Ignore Cannon Array, to some huge bomb, to some other means of greatly harming Decepticons or even Himself. Perhaps they had some kind of God of Law that would suddenly show up.

Earth

Venables happily helped Bruno with the preparing of goat meat and the two exchanged stories of each other's life and crimes. Alone, on a lawless planet, only Domintel was listening and they just considered what they heard to be two humans practising the Decepticon Way. When Bruno had told his stories Venables told of his hatred for cops, after they jailed his family for what was meant to be their entire lives, and would have done that to him if he had not passed himself off as a juvenile to get out after just six months behind bars. "When the huge robots showed up, I joined in the fight against the police without hesitating, and was scooped up and taken to their Metal Planet, and now I hope to become one of them and live a long Decepticon life until some day in the far future I fall victim to one SAM or blast too many, hopefully not for many centuries." He sniffed. "I smell exhaust fumes, I think there is an android out there who is looking for his pet goat. Do you smell them too?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Galactipol Alliance: The Final Holdout

When the cell doors opened, it didn't take long for chaos to erupt on the final core world of what was once the very feared "interplanetary police." Violent prisoners soon took up defensive positions in civilians' homes, sometimes wreaking havoc upon their owners as they did so. Others quickly took to robbing the nearby businesses, figuring that they would need money in order to go further from the jail areas. Still others simply slithered away quietly, only to pop up a few towns over and engage in some sort of crime.

A few, however, had more sense and stole cars, buses, and other means of transportation and used it to get far from the prisons, but otherwise stayed off of the radar. These knew that there was a war on, and that best of all, the attackers were the Decepticon Forces. They made plans to attempt to join the Decepticons as soon as they could make contact. That way, they figured, they wouldn't have to worry about any police ever again.

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

Only a few hours later, Leader Megatron and his forces appeared on the radar of the main planet itself. This planet, officially known as Destra but called The Prison by its many just-recently-released prisoners, was indeed bristling with defenses. High-powered energy cannons fired as soon as the Decepticons came within range, taking out several without much trouble. Then, a powerful jamming frequency began to be broadcast. Galactipol had figured out for itself what the traitorous Decepticon would have told them for a fee.

Leader Megatron's response was instant. He used his divine power to magnify the Decepticon data-return frequency as well as a few decoy frequencies. This was done as quietly as possible in hopes that Galactipol wouldn't discover the right frequency and make it harder to counter its jamming.

Meanwhile, the elite troops began to release copious quantities of chaff to make it harder to hit them. They simultaneously activated all of their available cloaking technologies, relying on their training to be able to still avoid flying into each other. Needless to say, they also fired back at Destra's defenses, taking some of them offline in powerful salvos.

"General Shockwave, come to the final battlefield immediately and begin interplanetary bombardment!" Megatron ordered over his now-unjammed military frequency. Before long, Shockwave arrived at Destra's closest rock moon, with impressive blue swirls heralding his use of FTL travel.

Once on that moon, Shockwave landed in a place that had a direct line of sight to Destra. Then, he did something that every Decepticon knew he could, but that few had actually seen in person: He transformed into a massive laser cannon. After doing so, he radioed for everyone to get out of the way and awaited the all-clear.

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

On Destra

At first, the remaining Galactipol commanders thought they had a victory. The Decepticons in space had stopped firing and were spreading out in a way that looked like they might actually be retreating! Cheers went up in the command center...and then, just as suddenly, silence fell.

"They're not going away. They're moving out of the way of something..." One said, noting that they were still spewing chaff - and that now, the chaff was showing up in a distinct, donut-like pattern. The attackers were clearly leaving room for something to come right through the center.

Seconds later, they had their answer. General Shockwave began firing away for all he was worth, and in instants, entire cities and military bases were set ablaze by his laser fire. Alarms began to sound off as the bases went offline and the emergency reports came in from outposts near the targeted cities. Soon, entire console panels were lit with red alerts.

It didn't take long for Galactipol to pinpoint the source of the new attacks and return fire, but Shockwave just transformed back into robot mode and moved aside. Each return blast took 10 seconds to reach his position, and that was plenty of time for him to move over at an unconcerned-looking pace. Unfortunately for Galactipol, their bases and cities were not nearly so mobile! Every time they paused to re-aim at Shockwave, he turned back into a laser cannon and lit another one up.

Soon, Galactipol, now in somewhat of a panic, sent a squadron of space fighters up to try to engage Shockwave directly. Unfortunately for them, that meant trying to fly right through the "donut hole" left by Megatron and his elites. Needless to say, it only took a bit of maneuvering for the Decepticons to blast everything in the middle without hitting each other in the process.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The far side of Destra was, for now, safe from Shockwave's assault. However, thanks to the planet's rotation, it would be completely vulnerable in just 12 of its hours. Commanders on that side noted that Shockwave was not hitting everything on the planet, but instead, only attacking key targets. This told them that, while the attacker was powerful, his energy was not limitless. Could they hold out long enough to keep control of their planet, or would its rotation inexorably put them right in the path of doom? The far-side commanders could only wonder, and hope that the forces on the near side could break through the Decepticon lines and eliminate this mysterious new threat.

Meanwhile, at the Main Military Base on Cybertron, cargo-bots were being quickly filled with Energon Supreme. Their mission: To resupply General Shockwave so he could continue to blast Destra until nothing was left on it but small, non-militarized towns - or until it surrendered, whichever came first.

~~~~~~~~~~~

In a Small Civilian Basement

The group of teenagers had been laughed at, but they had doggedly pursued their plan. Now, they met in this basement, below the house of the ringleader, and began to chant.

"Lady Justice, we call upon you. Lady Justice, we call for your judgment against our foes. Lady Justice, come to us, and bring forth your sword!"

The move would prove to be a mistake.

Over the flaming ruins of the largest city that had been in Shockwave's way, the fires coalesced. A giant goddess, blindfolded but wielding an obviously-sharp sword, soon became visible in the flames. Her other hand was empty; she saw no need to bring her iconic Scales with her for this summoning.

"As requested, I arrive to judge and bring justice!" Her voice boomed out over the carnage. A few cheers came up from hidden locations, but before long, they were brutally silenced.

"Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy and double-dealing both infect this land!" Justice said scornfully as she stomped through the city, beheading the few remaining humans and ponies in her path. "Those here trespassed in foreign lands, attempting to bring misery to entire nations over the actions of a few of their nationals, all while falsely claiming jurisdiction over those countries! Meanwhile, those who dared to claim to act in my name meted out unjust punishments while committing even more injustices and crimes of their own! I SHALL CLEANSE MY LAND OF THE UNJUST!"

With that, Lady Justice began a determined march to the capitol building, which she sensed was the seat of this planet's injustices, intent on reaching those hiding in its basement. Along the way, she used her sword to cut down all who had supported them, who she saw as their accomplices.

Justice did note the presence of a massive army above in space, and sensed its conniving nature, but she judged their cause in this case to be just: They were here to exact retribution for trespass against them and ensure that such trespass did not recur - and despite the claims of various people looking to avoid their own just deserts, righteous retribution and pre-emptive self-defense were both indeed considered Just Causes by this goddess of justice.

Plus, unlike the "interplanetary police," Lady Justice had a wider view. She knew that the refinery owners affected by the original raiding had well deserved to lose a few million barrels of oil as bad karma for their own ill deeds, so to her, them getting hit by a few Decepticons had been justice - even if the raiders themselves didn't know and couldn't care less about this aspect! In fact, she had smiled upon the raids, glad that she would no longer have to work any of her own magic to cause distress to those underhanded businesspeople.

Despite all of these things, Lady Justice would have been fine with being seen mostly as an icon rather than a goddess - working behind the scenes to try to make sure everyone got what they deserved. However, she had been directly called upon, and thanks to the energy of the war, was able to manifest herself with ease. So, here she was, bringing her own justice to the land as requested...

Above, Leader Megatron and the Decepticons chuckled. They knew that praying for Justice, rather than victory, was a good way to get one's own ass kicked. No one is without sin, as some of Earth's major religions had put it...

~~~~~~~~

Earth

Bruno put his finger to his mouth to quiet Venables, and motioned for him to hide next to the door just inside the chamber. After a few very tense moments, the sound of a splash penetrated the air. Thanks to the previous silence and heart-pounding tension, it seemed extremely loud.

Then, a few moments later, there was the unmistakable long beep of an android body going offline forever.

"Pit traps are fun," Bruno grinned. "Especially when they're filled with acid."

It turned out that Venables had simply been lucky to not have walked over the trap, which was right in the middle of the floor of the first large chamber in the cave. The android, on the other hand, had been walking with angry purpose - and this caused him to take the straightest path to the back. It was a mistake, Bruno boasted, that had resulted in the deactivation of several androids in the past.

The trap was made by putting thin twigs across in a framework and then covering them with mud. Underneath that was a pool of the strong acid found in some of the area's natural mud pots. Once the mud cover dried, it looked like the rest of the cave floor, but would cave in immediately under the weight of an android, large human, bear, or any other significantly-heavy intruder.

"That acid stuff doesn't destroy their metal itself very fast, but it eats right through their sealing," he explained, "and then they short right out." He chuckled victoriously. "Now I'll get my pole and fish the thing out, and we can put that metal to some better use!"

Once this was done, revealing that it was indeed the bot with the pet goat, Bruno fired up a small furnace using logs as the fuel. That night, he would teach Venables how to forge his own knives, bayonets, and arrowheads from genuine Decepticon Steel. He would also begin to beat some of the metal into thick panels, saying that he needed a bigger icebox and that this would be great for it. "It's very resistant to temperature transfer when it's lined with this insulation they use," he said. That "insulation" was actually interior panels meant to resist the heat of re-entry, so of course, it did a great job of keeping the heat out of his icebox. Bruno was very glad to be able to get more of it.

DomIntel would not interfere with the cavemen. It was up to a Decepticon to avoid getting himself deactivated by, of all things, some puny human's primitive trap! They would, however, never let that agent live it down. He would surely be put through extra training on being observant when his commander got the report.

[Vallermoore]

Earth

Venables and Bruno both had a dislike for the police, neither had any reason to dislike the other one, and there were benefits to both of them sharing the cave rather then getting into a stupid fight that could end with one or both of them injured or dead. Venables was grateful for the help in fashioning spearheads and other such things. Bruno was grateful for the help with the chores and the first friendly person he had spoken to in several years, and his stories of the outside world. In a way, they were like two Decepticons who were on good terms with each other. "How does one go about fashioning a decent bed ?," Venables asked. "That's the one thing I'm finding very hard in roughing it out here."

Galactipol Alliance: The Final Holdout

When Soundwave cracked the code on all those prison doors, the rampaging criminals caused havoc and made it much harder for the defenders to concentrate on the Decepticon attack, as they were now forced to fight on two fronts. The cleverer criminals knew getting killed in their quest for revenge was not worth it, so they hid and took weapons from dead or overwhelmed Galactipol soldiers. As the Decepticons prepared to swoop down and land, the defenders got a powerful jammer up and running and backed it up with powerful energy cannons, killing a few Decepticons outright before Megatron could himself at least partly jam the jammer. Rather then risk getting large numbers of Decepticons sent to the Afterlife, which could risk damaging his reputation if enough were killed, General Shockwave was summoned and transformed into a mighty laser cannon capable of destroying whole towns with a single blast. Forces on the other undamaged side sent space fighters up with orders to fly away from the Decepticons and then double back to try and get around them and turn General Shockwave into scrap metal, not knowing just how hard the armour of a Decepticon High General really was.

Meanwhile, the leaders of Galactopol prepared their final weapon....a black hole bomb of huge size, much bigger then the one that MasterBlaster had prevented from swallowing the Metal Planet. It was the planet's most top secret weapon, so secret that not even Forintel had found out about it and nearly everyone who lived on the planet had no idea of it's existence. When the planet was subdued and Megatron landed on it, with the other High Generals, the plan was to detonate it and hopefully kill them all. The gravity well would act like a jammer just like it had done with MasterBlaster, and if it worked like they wanted it to, with their suicide they would kill all the Decepticon leaders and plunge the Decepticon Nation into chaos and full scale civil war.

When Lady Justice was summoned, rather then attacking the Decepticons she set about beheading random humans and sapient ponies, heading for the parliament building in a rage at Galactopol's actions. The Decepticons had been badly provoked after all.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Destra

Galactipol's high command was already beside itself with frantic action when reports started coming in of a giant, but not Decepticon, marauder coming toward the capitol city. The reports said that she appeared to be blindfolded and carrying a sword, like Lady Justice, but made entirely of flames. Attempts to put out her fire could not be made - the fire departments and their trucks had all been destroyed by Shockwave's bombardment. Other fire departments, from areas too rural to have drawn Shockwave's attacks, were too afraid to enter the city areas since they thought that more bombardments could be on the way. Plus, the fire departments reported, gangs of freed convicts were in the suburban areas between them and the cities anyway. These gangs would gladly hijack the fire trucks so they could get further from the war fronts.

It was in this scenario that Lady Justice was able to easily march right up to the capital building. There, however, she found herself far too tall to get in. After a pause, she put her fiery foot on its roof, easily setting the entire structure ablaze. As soon as the wood of the old building was sufficiently charred, she was able to kick it away and expose the cement hatch that led to the passageway to the bunkers. She began to stomp on this hatch, and each step heated and weakened the metal hinges holding it shut.

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

In the skies, the Decepticons saw this assault - and that Galactipol was no longer able to respond to even obvious threats. Megatron gave a coded wave, and a contingent of 100 troops began to spiral on down to take full control of what was, by now, actually just a field of smoking rubble. The few biologicals who had been underground in the civilian parts of the cities were almost all dead now, asphyxiated by the smoke and chemical offgassing of the burning structures if not outright cooked. Still, some troops were tasked with approaching the capital's bunker system - and the attacking goddess - and helping her open up that hatch. Such a backfired attempt to resist the Decepticons could not be squandered!

Meanwhile, Megatron and the rest of his troops saw Galactipol ships coming their way, and opened fire as they got closer. However, the Galactipol ships quickly changed course, attempting to dodge around and get to General Shockwave. Shockwave saw what was going on and transformed into robot mode, prepared to use his shoulder-mounted cannons to engage in direct combat.

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

One of the things police never seem to realize is that if they encourage a culture of narking, someone will think that it's a great idea to nark on them. This was what the remaining leadership soon found out when they became serious about murder-suiciding their entire last planet to try to take out the Decepticon high command. Before long, one of their own had sneaked away from the control room and into a private bathroom, got out a small radio, and began going through every frequency, hoping to find one that was currently being used by the Decepticons. This man wasn't on the side of the robots, really, but he was certainly very much against the idea of being killed in a futile "last statement" those one rank above him!

For a while, his attempts seemed hopeless, with every frequency greeting him with muffled static. Eventually, though, he heard what he had been searching for: Binary. Quickly, he began to send urgent message through his microphone with a furtive tone of voice, hoping to get an answer. "Please respond! Please respond! It is urgent!" He radioed.

It took a few minutes for the Decepticon Military to get annoyed by this equine voice interfering with its own radio commentary, and a few more moments for them to decide to go ahead and respond. After all, whoever it was had clearly heard them talking, and this had already let him find the anti-jammed frequency they were using.

When one of Soundwave's regiment finally responded, it didn't take long for him to get - and then spread - the news about the hidden black hole bomb.

"I see," Megatron cut in. "Well, thank you very much. You can rest assured that the entire planet won't be getting sucked into that..." With that, the Decepticon radio chatter returned to normal. Up in space, Megatron disappeared, seemingly winking out of existence.

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

Universal Physics Controller

It had been a while since Megatron was out here for any reason other than to make sure that the UPC was working properly, but now, he had other business. He quickly entered its passageways and made his way to the area that housed the machine's code, and made a few expert changes to set up new physics only for Galactipol's known device and any others like it.

Now, rather than being a huge planet-destroying device, Galactipol's black hole bomb would make only a few tiny black holes - inside the bodies of those who agreed with setting it off! This would cause them to be sucked inside-out just before they were absorbed into the gravity wells and condensed into spaces just 1 atom wide or less. After that happened, the black holes would dissipate without causing any further damage.

For now, nothing seemed to happen - Galactipol hadn't yet attempted to use its bomb. If it did, their leaders would get the "suicide" part instantly, but their attempt to take the rest of the planet and the Decepticons out with them would completely fail. Most of those on and around the planet would never even know that there had been a black hole bomb in the first place, or at least, they wouldn't know until the Decepticon Bureau of Propaganda put the news on every channel.

"This is why a government should not suffer a nark to live," Megatron laughed with self-satisfaction as he unjacked himself from the Physics Controller and returned to the battle front.

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

Outside Galactipol Space

The uppermost leaders of Galactipol weren't in on this black hole bomb plan, but instead, were still in space trying desperately to outrun the Decepticons who were chasing them. Alas, when they attempted to do this by using FTL, they instantly found that the Decepticons were able to keep up with them without a problem. One by one, their escape craft got hit by strong blaster fire, and before too long, all of them were either blown apart or totally disabled. The Decepticons then turned around and "took care of" the disabled craft, and all that remained of the highest members of the Galactipol command structure was a debris field.

Now, only the second-tier commanders - the ones with the black hole plan - remained. Back on Destra, they quickly registered the lack of pings from the now-destroyed ships, and full command officially shifted to the survivors.

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

Earth

Bruno chuckled. "A good bed, now that would be nice to have, wouldn't it?! Alas, natural bedding sucks. There's no real way around it. Hay is okay, but it pokes you, and then it rots. Fur is soft, but houses fleas and then you itch. And the ground is hard and damp. The big problem is the lack of real fabric and wool. If we had both of those, we could make a decent enough bed. But we don't. So you either get poked or you get fleas. Or sometimes, both." Bruno clearly wasn't too bothered by this. He'd been in so many uncomfortable situations that a real bed was a distant memory. In fact, even back at home, his bedding had been on the rough side...

[Vallermoore]

Galactipol Central Planet

Unlike the Decepticon Empire who saw narks, even those who warned of treason, as the worst rust imaginable, the Galactipol Confederation had greatly encouraged the nasty little pests in various ways, from bribes and private nark boxes, to witness protection schemes. And now one of them was to bite it on it's backside by narking to the Decepticons. After arranging the sabotage of the bombs (if it had gone off as intended, it could have been a genuine disaster, although, Megatron thought, no doubt as soon as he found out Loyal Star would be finding that Save Disc he had a foil paper link to, to bring Megatron back) he decided that if the pony nark survived he would use is powers as a God to find him and then let him leave unharmed. Possibly saving the Decepticon Nation from chaos just barely cancelled out the sin of narking. Most likely he would end up in the human neutral zone after death. With the Galactipol leading leaders either dead, captured, or having Justice chase them and chop them to bits, it was at last save to land. Only the occasional SAM, laser, or in one case cannon balls from a museum, was still being used. The row of cannon balls was the most surprising and for the bots who faced them, the most annoying ordinance ever, as it was so hard to dodge and a bot got a wing knocked right off and had to transform to stop his body being smashed into useless junk.

As the Decepticons landed, the senior surviving leader, a human, said over the planet's holovision "We may have been beaten, but you will have had your last victory." And detonated the bomb, only to have him and the others who thought up that idea be sucked into tiny gravity wells, a very painful way to go, with the Realm of Punishment swallowing their souls. Within the hour the planet surrendered, and it was just a question of caging up the human, pony, and alien survivors and deciding who would be genocided, who would be enslaved, and who would have a different fate. More ponies then normal had the despised nark cutie mark.There were a very few loyal Megatronists who had been that way before the war, foreign diplomats who were pro Megatron or neutral (hurting neutrals just caused more trouble later down the line) and of course the criminals, at least a few of which were Decepticons in spirit. Only when the planet was truly taken did Megatron declare victory.

Cybertron

Both gangs, the Cybertronian Business Association and the Fists had been playing cards and planning combat and preparing for battle whilst they waited for this moment. The Fists had asked Vintage if he could help them restore MasterBlaster. On foil-paper, SolarTempest's gang was far bigger and better, but unlike MasterBlaster, SolarTempest knew that blindly flying in without thinking could lead to the loss of a body or even the gaining of a Darwin Award. The CBA plan was to bomb MasterBlaster's mansion, and the Fists wanted to cloak themselves, come from the rear and blast SolarTempest out of the sky, running a jammer for a few seconds whilst doing so. Taking out the leader could cause the CBA to have to retreat and choose a new leader and would gain the Fists much needed time. The two gangs set off, each with a firm plan.

Earth

Venables sighed as one thing that was not here was a good bed, which he missed by now.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Cheers went up when Megatron's victory declaration came over the holovision. Almost as quickly, the Cybertronian Business Association took to the skies, ready to take care of business in a way that was very Cybertronian indeed. Soon enough, they arrived near MasterBlaster's mansion, coming toward it from high above in order to drop bombs.

"Funny how we haven't encountered any opposition," several CBA members noted, looking around through their rear and side cameras. "The mansion defenses haven't even triggered on us."

SolarTempest laughed at the last part. "He probably didn't think he even needed any defenses of that sort! If he has anything to protect the place at all, it's probably explosive booby traps or something like that. It should make a huge bang when we hit it and set all that stuff off." Inside, he silently thought how that old pony body he'd once been stuck in would make the most beautiful piece of shrapnel ever.

Down below, another android pony was visible: the one that was MasterBlaster's pet sapientCPU. It was standing in the metal yard, and at first, was minding its own business and looking at random stuff. Suddenly, however, it looked up and started flicking its tail excitedly, as if welcoming someone very familiar. SolarTempest noted with concern that it was not looking at him - it was looking behind him and his group.

"LOOK OUT! THERE'S SOMEONE BEHIND US!" He yelled over the radio.

They saw nobody back there, but as soon as they paid closer attention, they heard the distinctive soft, muffled hum of cloaked engine noise. The cloaking had been very good, but even the best of it couldn't bring complete silence to active flight engines - at least, not ones of the power used by Decepticons who intended to fight. Now that the CBA was listening up, it was easy to pick this unique "muffled" noise out of the ever-present roar the area's normal air traffic.

Immediately, the CBA began to turn around, using a paramilitary formation for good-sized gangs. As with all Decepticon groups that weren't brand-new, the sight of this was impressive. Everyone moved with precision and obvious skill. Unfortunately, even the best skill didn't eliminate the fact that it took time to move, and the CBA found itself under heavy fire the moment the Fists recognized that they had been spotted.

Due to the disadvantage of having to turn around, some of the CBA were hit in various places by the initial salvos of energy blasts. A few went toward the ground. Some did this on purpose in order to try to shoot the Fists from below, but others were too damaged to keep flying.

At least one CBA bot careened down, clearly out of control, and the Fists activated jamming to try to kill him for good. This one detected the jamming and refrained from trying to mind-transfer at the moment, instead hoping that his boards would remain intact enough to avoid death. He knew that someone would quickly try to scrounge his body, but figured that he could mind-transfer once he was out of range of the jamming signal. Soon, he crashed to the ground, and his onboard Energon erupted into a ball of fire.

Up in the air, the remaining CBA bots, including SolarTempest, got into position well enough to fully engage the Fists. The sky lit up with blaster fire as the radio waves came alive with taunts and curses. Below, pedestrians stopped and began to take videos of the battle. In the air - at a safe distance - other bots started to circle in order to watch. Many of them bore the markings of the ICC. They wanted to know which one of these up-and-coming gangs won, and they also wanted to see how they went about fighting. While no hostilities were planned by the ICC yet, the group figured that it was a good idea to gather as much intel as it could, just in case the information came in handy later on. A few other gangs had the same idea, and they also watched intently.

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

Occupied Galactipol

Victory was declared once all of Galactipol's planets were subdued, but the work for the Decepticons was far from over. There were so many planets in question that it took half of the Decepticon Military's massive numbers to keep control of them all even with their defenses crushed. There were also too many beings present to use the old system of caging them individually. Instead, massive corrals were set up to prevent free movement of the new livestock.

General Carjack's Battalion was pleasantly surprised to find that its part of the operation would be a delight to it. Usually it didn't like mop-up operations, finding it unsporting to slaughter the already-defeated, but these Galactipol citizens were just the types they liked to get rid of. They didn't even need to really sort them out, for the targets presented themselves quite readily. Every self-righteous, moralistic asshole was loudly piping up about how much better he or she was than those who had defeated them, even though these aggravating biologicals were little more than tiny dots in comparison to the ones who did the defeating! All the Genociders needed to do was take note of who was stupid enough to insult the giant war robots, and once they had used their onboard memory to store facial maps of all of these gits, they were able to blast them all to ashes with rapid-fire salvos. Those who had at least been intelligent enough to keep their mouths shut and not pretend to be better than the winners of the war were, for the moment, spared from death.

There was one exception to that sparing: Ponies with open-mouth cutie marks, which were now known to represent those with narkish personalities, were summarily deleted regardless of whether or not they said anything in this moment.

On the plus side, there was also an automatically-spared cutie mark: the Decepticon Seal. The Genociders noted that every one of these had been stuck with an "ankle bracelet" tracking device, indicating that the government considered simply bearing the Seal to be reasonable cause for suspicion. In that, their government had been right, but of course the Decepticons saw it as over-the-top interference in these ponies' ability to practice the Way! Under Carjack's direction, the electronic trackers were quickly cut off in ways that did not damage the overly-fragile bodies that bore them.

Right after the Genociders cleared an area, a new division arrived. These bots carried chip guns, and quickly chipped up every human and pony they saw was still living and not overly damaged. They also cataloged the other aliens they came across. There was an entire planet full of lizard people, one with furry bipedal beings, and even one with slithery mercury-like beings. These creatures, they figured, might be too physically different for the usual chips to work.

Another group soon visited every location that this division reported new species: the Biological Research Division. It set up quick-to-build, cheap structures that would later house laboratories. There, the new species would each be fully examined and tested. Each type of being would be fully DNA-mapped, gene-based "vaccines" would be developed as needed, and their physiology would be studied until fully understood. Finally, genetic engineering would be done to add the traits needed to make them good, loyal, and obedient slaves. Hardiness and biological efficiency would be improved as necessary. Genes that ran counter to these goals would be edited out.

As all of this was going on, soldiers who had performed poorly in war training were assigned to handle the easier task of the precision looting of the conquered worlds. While raiders from the general population went after the usual stuff, the soldiers quickly moved to secure the oil fields and any remaining refineries. It turned out that there weren't too many active refineries on Galactipol's more-advanced planets since they had moved to other types of fuel, but many of the less-advanced ones still had plenty of oil-processing capabilities. All, however, had some decent oil lands, whether they had been using them or not.

Meanwhile, the criminals of what was now Occupied Galactipol began to come out of the woodwork. They were then separated from the rest of the people, not to protect the remaining civilians, but to protect the criminals from being swept up in the chipping-and-enslaving operation. Later, the Decepticons would go through any surviving records to determine who was who and exactly what caused them to be considered criminals. "Many things are forbidden on planets like these," the Decepticons explained, "but only some of them qualify as being part of the Decepticon Way. What will happen with you next will depend on what we find out, and how Decepticonnish you seem to be..."

It would take a long time to go through all of the files and do all of the needed interviews, but eventually, every "criminal" on all of the planets would essentially be re-adjudicated. Most would end up being offered job positions rather than the chance to immigrate. As expected, they showed no initial interest in any job - until they learned what the jobs were. Once they were informed that the Decepticons were, for the first time, opening up the position of overseer to qualifying biologicals, that opinion changed. All of the criminals were excited to have the chance to now be the guards and jailers over those who had been fine with it being the other way around, and most were quite eager to grab these positions. They would turn out to be ruthless slavedrivers, second only to the staff of Mine Number One in their viciousness toward their charges.

As this was going on, a few of the criminals were quietly disappeared. Pedos and the like were considered too glitched to keep - inefficient as slaves, and too uncaring of productivity to be overseers - and were therefore deleted. However, the Decepticons didn't want the "good" criminals to be bothered by fears of execution, so they kept this particular "bycatch elimination" activity mostly under wraps.

Earth

As time went on, Venables and Bruno noted that a few Decepticons were trickling back to the planet. Jet noise became more frequent, and several planes bearing the logos of the various mines were seen going their own ways overhead.

"It looks like the war is over," Bruno said. "I doubt you will ever have to worry about Galactipol again."

Venables smiled, but he had a hint of sadness. He wished he could have been part of that invasion force and helped stomp Galactipol with his own two feet. Still, he was glad even at the thought of the Decepticon Empire having done it. "Served them right!" he said with firm conviction.

~~~~~~~~~

In just two weeks, Venables would no longer have to worry about bedding. At that time, his survival test would be completed, and an overt DomIntel agent would arrive to inform him of that fact. This time, however, there would be a departure from the usual protocol.

Bruno, it turned out, had been thoroughly background-checked once he was discovered. He had lived on Decepticon Earth for a few years now rather than just three months, and he had an impressive background in crime. Therefore, he was determined to be eligible for official immigration and would be offered the chance to take the psych tests to become a citizen. His time on Decepticon Earth made his own survival test moot: He obviously had been able to stay alive and out of the mines.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

The Fists were able to get themselves very close to the Cybertronian Business Association bots before they were detected, and managed to open fire on them as they turned, getting several free shots in upon them and actually shooting down a few , running their jammers as they did so. As battle was joined they decloaked to avoid friendly fire. Haula had a particular dislike for SolarTempest and despite SolarTempest showing mercy earlier, was now attempting to delete him for real. By now SolarTempest had just as big a dislike for Haula, having first had this bot insist on a duel that he had to fight to avoid looking weak in front of his whole gang, and then being ambushed, all over what his mind boards saw as a totally stupid desire to bring back MasterBlaster. SolarTempest would rather have had to give up the outer Decepticon Steel panels on his back, then have his hated and clearly glitched Coder back again. Unlike the Fists, the Cybertronian Business Association kept off it's jammers. This was partly to avoid accidently killing each other if any of them lost their bodies but mostly for another reason. This battle was taking place on Cybertron in a crowded neighbourhood and a large group of spectators including ICC bots had gathered to see the action. Normally spectators stayed well clear, and even if one was hit by accidental blaster fire, he would know it was an accident and not be quite angry enough to join in, in most cases (although a very angry or proud bot, or one who got his young offspring blasted, might be an exception to this rule.)

However, when jammers flicked on, this changed things dramatically. In human or sapient pony terms, it would be like someone threatening to let off a huge suicide bomb in the middle of a public street. Suddenly if a spectator lost a body to a random blast, they would not just end up in a spare, but dead and in the Decepticon Afterlife. All these spectators with no stake in the fight including children under the age of 4 were now being put in deadly danger by the Fists, and eyes darkened like hot coals that had water thrown on them. Smooth engines ran roughly and one actually backfired in shock. If the Fists were lucky, they would get warnings from the suddenly angry onlookers. If they were unlucky, or they refused to heed the warnings and complaints, the hundreds of bots around them might very easily decide to deal with them according to the Decepticon Way. It was one thing to fight; and another thing to put all the nearby bots in danger of outright death for no good reason.

******
Occupied Galactipol

With Galactipol defeated, the Genocide Battalion went in to deal with the assholes who sounded off, pony narks with open mouth cutie marks, and any surviving fighters or leaders. At the same time, ponies with the glittering mark of the Decepticon Seal were spared either death or slavery as no non loyalist pony could gain such a cutie mark, and there were those amongst them who had fought with the Decepticons from the start. Megatron Loyalists were never openly targeted for nasty fates, as it was something much prized by Megatron, even if they were mere biologicals. Everyone else who was neither a target or a Megatronist loyalist was rounded up and chipped, except a few aliens who proved unchippable and were trapped whilst they worked out what to do with them. There would be two more checks, one for those from friendly or neutral nations with ironclad proof, and one by the Priests of Megatron looking for long term Megatronists who had held their faith for a long time, before everyone remaining became a slave.

Those considered criminals by Galactipol were watched, fed and watered enough to keep them alive and checked. A few would end up as Decepticons, many more would end up as overseers, paid for their work (if a chip was to fail as some did after a long time, those trying to escape would now find it almost impossible to do so) and a few, mainly sex criminals, were quietly killed.

Earth

Venables and Bruno got on well and avoided trying to kill each other, and two weeks later a marked Domintel bot would show up with the good news and the offer for Bruno.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

The response to the jamming was swift, and in many cases, merciless. Immediately, many of the spectators began to yell at the offending Fists to turn that off or else. Some, however, went immediately to the "else" part. The Fists who were running jammers then found themselves under heavy fire from spectators intent on removing the threat to their own existence.

To the surprise of anyone not familiar with the ICC, these syndicate bots weren't among those blasting at the jammer-running Fists. Since their group was one of the cream of the crop, they had better equipment than the average Meltdown. Therefore, they simply jacked up their own signal wattage to override the jam - but only on their own frequencies. Anyone who used other frequencies to make connections to their spares would still be in danger. The ICC bots cursed at the offenders despite being able to handle themselves; it was beyond ridiculous that anyone would run jammers during a battle in a highly-populated area, and they wanted the Fists to know that they weren't remotely cool with that.

Of course, since there were now plenty of once-bystanders now attempting to stop the jamming by deleting the ones running it, the Cybertronian Business Association now found itself on the winning side. They had no trouble adding their firepower to all of the other blasting, and soon began to target individual Fists in an attempt to take them out one-by-one.

The Fists were very quick to react to this onslaught by turning their jammers off. While they hoped that this would cool the ire of those they hadn't intended to fight, they had an even bigger reason for releasing the airwaves: They were now likely to need to be able to mind-transfer themselves!

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

Off in the distance, in flight, Vintage noticed the small war going on and realized with a start who the combatants were. He immediately became concerned when he saw that SolarTempest was there but MasterBlaster was not. Alas, he couldn't stop to check it out more closely. He was hauling a glider-trailer full of oil with another glider-trailer hitched to that one that was full of high-tech Galactipol devices that he had looted. Stopping now would mean he would lose the entire haul, so he continued on to his shop to secure the loot. He would then go to a Raid Dropoff Point to turn the oil into money.

~~~~~~~~~~

Galactipol Alliance Planets

Being defeated by the Decepticons had been bad enough for the civilians of this alliance, though now that their old government was gone, they didn't exactly mourn the culling of the narks. For a moment, they could breathe easier knowing that someone wasn't going to report them for saying something that a nark didn't approve of, and in the process, cause them problems for nothing.

However, their relief was short-lived. They were soon fitted with implanted body-control chips, and though these weren't fully activated yet, it was still a bad sign. Concern turned to fear and then outright terror as rumors spread about what was to be done with them. Finally, they were marched into the mines and oil fields, where they began to realize the true horror of their situations.

Upon reaching their new work sites, the now-enslaved general populace was greeted by several overseers. Each site had at least one Decepticon, who was the site's chief. Under him, there were many biological overseers, who did most of the actual work of "maintaining productivity." What was so horrifying to the new slaves was that they recognized some of these overseers as criminals who were once on the Most Wanted Lists. Those on these lists were very infamous, and the Decepticons had made sure to station at least one at every mine and oil field of a decent size.

"What's the matter? The shoe isn't so comfortable for you now that it's on the other foot?" The ex-prisoners taunted while menacingly running their hands down their whips. Their new slaves were speechless with the horror of realizing just how their lives could be under these masters. Just a few days before, the average citizen of the Galactipol Federation had considered any sort of criminal to be a scumbag and a waste of oxygen - and would have made no secret of that opinion. Released convicts, in fact, had often found themselves unemployable and had huge problems trying to find places to live.

Now, those people, who in some cases had stewed under this society for years, were the slaves' immediate bosses.

As if on cue, the slaves attempted to stampede back out of the mine entrances and oil field fence gates all at once. However, their control chips now kicked in, forcing them to return and then line up like soldiers at roll call. There, they were forced to endure more taunting, not only from freed prisoners, but from criminals who had never been caught.

"If you were still in charge, I'd have to worry about a 30-year sentence for simply parting fools from their money and their things," one of these overseers said, pacing in front of his group of new charges. "But now, it's YOU who gets to be imprisoned by ME! You'll be doing everything I say, forever! Isn't that wonderful??" He grinned as he pressed a button on a remote control. His group of slaves were forced to cheer and respond with enthusiastic "yes sirs" in response, like some sort of highly-advanced puppets. The overseer made them cheer him for several minutes, and then sent them into the tunnels to work.

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

Destra

In another location, a group of 10,000 slaves found itself in much different conditions after a long and arduous march. Finally, the order was given for them to halt and sit, and after resting, they realized that they were in a huge field. This area of Destra had, until now, been designated as a Planetary Wildlife Refuge Site. It had been a controversial designation at the time the bill was presented, with many arguing that its wildlife was no more special than any other on Destra, while the pro-refuge side claimed that the area had several endangered species. In reality, though, the pro-refuge side had just been worried that everything on the planet would eventually be turned into city and simply wanted a place where people would always be able to hike and do low-impact camping. A couple of small areas did hold endangered species, but these needed far less land than the 100,000,000 acres the lobby had successfully claimed as wildlife refuge.

Now, the debate was forever over, and there was no question about what would become of the land - or, at least, the parts that didn't actually have endangered species on them. A giant Destran-language sign greeted the slaves who had just arrived: "CARJACK AGRICULTURE." This was repeated below in Binary, though to most of the biologicals, the Binary looked like no more than a squiggly flourish thanks to the font that was used.

Soon enough, General Carjack marched in front of the group with an authoritative air.

"As you may or may not already know, I am High General Carjack the Genocider. My name alone should tell you what will happen to anyone who disobeys an order. However, for those who do not know, I will let you know that I and my Genocide Battalion are the one who get rid of those deemed incorrigibly hostile to us or our Way - such as the narks, busybodies, and self-righteous tw*ts that used to infest these worlds. And if you are disobedient to the orders of me, my troops, or my overseers, you will join their ranks among the extinct."

"That is enough about me for now. Now, about my company, which you will be working for. Until now, I have not used slave labor on my farms due to...reasons...stemming from Earthian history, but that must change today. We have gained control of all of the planets of Galactipol's alliance, and except for the one we bare-sand raided, all of them still have millions or more people still on them. All of them need food. That's 12 planets' worth of surviving population to feed. Meanwhile, we Decepticons are flush with loot from this war, which means that nobody is going to be willing to take a job. So I'm drafting. And you're the draftees."

"You do your work as ordered and at the fastest possible speed, and you live. I like food - good food - and I hate starvation, so you'll eat well here. But if you disobey, or you try to protest, or you do that thing where you 'work' but only at glacial speed or your work is too poor to be useful, you get to be a mark on my blaster barrel. Simple as that."

Carjack paced around a couple of times in front of the huge mixed-species crowd. A few Decepticon soldiers, scattered among them, made sure that no one got the idea of trying to run off.

"The first thing you'll be doing is construction. You'll build yourselves barracks for housing." Carjack pointed at a forest in the distance. "Then, you'll dig wells, latrine holes, and all of that good stuff. Once a camp is established, it'll be time to plow up the land and plant it. After that, you'll be split up into smaller groups and build better housing in strategic areas on this property. You'll dismantle the original camp and reuse as much wood as possible. As for the claim that there are endangered species around here, there are two spots that actually have it. Those will be off-limits, unless, of course, the species in question have some weird desire to chew on metal. If they do, I will 'deal with it.'" He patted a blaster lightly, but in a serious way.

"As for the feeding of the people in the interim, you all are lucky for only one thing your old government did: It kept a 6-month supply of grain on every planet. So, at first, you won't be able to eat as well as I'd like, but you won't starve. My seeds take 2-3 months from planting to harvest, and once those come in, we'll have the good stuff. As in, vegetables that actually taste good! Those won't be put into general production, but on MY land, vegetables taste like junk food - like they should! I have seeds for Doritos flavor, Pringles flavor, and Chee-tos flavor right on that cart over there." The original vegetables these had been appended to were far less delightful without the edits: Cabbage, kale, and Brussels sprouts, to be exact. The Brussels sprouts recode was of particular note since it entirely changed the texture of the things - from mushy to airy and crunchy - as well as replacing their nasty, stinky, flavor with that of cheese balls. All, however, had even more nutritional value than the originals, though they were coded to meet the needs of the Human DNA Codec rather than that of ponies. Any ponies would have to make do with regular pony food (at least until apples grew), but at least their species wasn't inexplicably coded by evolution to perceive the natural flavor of healthy food as something akin to hot death.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

There were certain rules of etiquette on Cybertron that were seen as so important that breaking them could get one blasted, and one of these was simple Do not run your jammer in a highly populated area where innocent bystanders could get blasted in your fight. As well as a torrent of very rude curses, over a hundred of the angry bystanders turned vigilante and opened fire on the Fists. They quickly dropped their jamming , and Haula managed although wounded to get into MasterBlaster's house to search for the Save Discs that were sure to be there. He managed to find one; only to fall into the water trap that MasterBlaster had set up and short out, the water also destroying the Save Disc. The other Fists, although they had sent several members of the Cybertronian Business Association to their spares (and nearly to their deaths) were soon turned to scrap and the MasterBlaster Mansion was bombed, reducing it to scrap metal. SolarTempest ran a Save Disc Searcher over the wreckage and found two Save Discs, that he quickly melted down with his own blaster. Things that had somehow survived...a silver statue of MasterBlaster, for example, would soon be looted and after the Association had left, anything else would be taken away for what value a foundry would give to it. It was now extremely unlikely that MasterBlaster would ever be brought back again. An ICC bot would congratulate SolarTempest on how well he and his gang fought. Compliments like these went down well in Decepticon culture. When the pit trap full of water was discovered, it made the bots shudder a little; water to them was like acid to biologicals and shorting out was a nasty way to lose a body. One of them blasted the area next to the water to leave a message in Cybertronian Binary etched into the metal-DANGER-WATER PIT!

Galactipol Alliance Planets

The body control chips made it even worse being slaves then it had been before, since they would be unable to do anything other then what they were told until they overrode the chip, if they ever did. Those under High General Carjack were treated marginally better, as much to their surprise at least for now their chips were not activated. Chipped slaves were not as good at complex tasks as unchipped slaves, and none wanted to become a mark on the General's mighty blasters. The aliens whose bodies had defeated chipping ended up here.

Decepticon Earth

Just outside one mine, a Decepticon looked down sadly at one very special pony slave. Maud Pie had produced massive amounts of ore for him, and he actually liked her. She had her own bed to sleep in and had been fed many an apple, and now she lay there dying after a large rock had fallen on her. "I...I ask..please, bury me in the old Earth pony way. Don't burn or render me," she said before she died. The Decepticon mine boss gently stroked the now dead Maud with the tip of his little finger and in fact, he decided to follow her dying wish because of all the ore she had produced for him, scrapping a small (to him) hole in the ground and burying her, and even sending up a short prayer to Megatron to let this super-productive spell go somewhere nice in the afterlife.

*****
When a marked Domintel bot showed up Venables asked Bruno "Would you like to come to Cybertron with me and try and become a Decepticon? I think you would love the Decepticon Way."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

The foundry was quite surprised to get a statue that was made not of steel, but instead, silver. The first one wasn't even equipped to process it, and the Cybertronian Business Association had to go elsewhere to get it done. After a bit of discussion, they decided to sell it to the Main Foundry, which could handle any metal and even quite a few varieties of plastics. There, they stood silently as the statue, which was apparently the last relic of MasterBlaster, sank into one of the smaller pits. Soon after, they had a payment of 10,000 Cubes for the material. Its price was higher due to the relative lack of supply of silver compared to the more common metals.

Domestic Intelligence Supercomputer

With non-sapient precision, the DomIntel Supercomputer updated its files. MasterBlaster had already been marked as deactivated, and now, it noted that this bot had lost all Spares as well as many Saves. Its records now showed that he had only one Save left and that this disk was apparently unknown to all who might care.

Vintage's Shop

Vintage was just getting his cart full of non-oil loot secured when he found new business coming in. Unfortunately, these people were there to sell bodies rather than buy parts. One of these bodies had belonged to Haula, and to Vintage's surprise, it was all wet inside! "Lookit this fish I caught," the looter boasted.

Other looters soon showed up with bits and pieces of deactivated Fist bodies along with tales of the battle that brought them crashing to the ground. "Fools ran jammers right in the fancy part of Decepticon Headquarters," they said. "All we had to do to score was wait on the ground for this falling money."

Haula's body, it turned out, had many salvagable parts although all of the electronics were fried. The other bodies weren't in nearly as good of shape, and Vintage took only a few parts from some of them. He told the looters that the best bet for the rest was a foundry.

"Did you happen to see what happened to the boss?" He asked one who seemed to know of the gang.

"He wasn't there," came the response. "In fact, I'd say it looked like the CBA had intended on doing a mopping-up operation - but to their surprise, these other Fists showed up and there was a big battle. After that ended, though, they bombed the place and now only the walls are still there."

~~~~~~~~~

Afterlife

Megatron had heard the overseer's quite unexpected prayer, and in order to keep Maud Pie from arriving at the normal area for slaves - which was just a place where their spirits awaited a new worksite for even more slavery - he quickly diverted her to a different destination. With a little pop, her spirit arrived at the normal realm-assignment area for Decepticons.

This was a big shock to all involved. Biologicals weren't supposed to show up there at all, much less ones who had acquiesced to slavery! The glowing white Decepticon "angels" didn't know what to do with her, while she looked around in confusion at the completely metal walls and benches of the room.

Eventually, someone arrived from the administrative office of the Decepticon Realms holding a foil-paper bearing Megatron's hash sign. The Leader ordered them to simply keep Maud Pie safe until he could personally decide where to send her. "I sent her there for now so she doesn't get assimilated into the Afterlife Labor Divisions," he noted, "but I will need to set up something unique for that one. She is far from a Decepticon, but instead, an exemplary slave! That means that she will not fit into the Biological Realm of Pleasure, which is populated by Decepticons-in-Spirit. However, as the donor of the Equine Loyalty Code and the Equine Industriousness Code, she deserves better than more work. Unless she WANTS more work! Go ahead and ask her - perhaps she actually thinks that working in the mines all the time is paradise!! I wouldn't want to keep her from that sort of work if she wants to do it!"

The angels could practically see Megatron's somewhat-malevolent grin as he contemplated the idea that she might think it was paradise to be a mine slave forever. He did have a point - she had done the work well and without complaint, so maybe she did think it was wholesome and desirable labor instead of just being too afraid to rebel (though the angels thought this to be highly unlikely).

As directed, they asked her if she would prefer to just keep on doing that...

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Until now, Bruno had seemed a bit reluctant to embrace the idea of actually becoming a Decepticon. Now, however, he found himself looking up at a full-sized DomIntel agent. The agent gleamed with perfectly-waxed, flawless paint, and his soft engine noise was the sound of mechanical perfection. His two blasters glinted in the sunlight, each one as large as the barrel of what a human would consider heavy artillery, and he moved with them with as much ease as a fit human does his bare arms. Overall, he was not only a picture of machine might, but of a society where such armamentation is so normal that it wasn't given a second thought.

Bruno was immediately taken in with the idea of moving forward with immigration.

Though Venables didn't have the authority to invite Bruno - and was quickly reminded of this by the DomIntel agent - the agent ended up allowing him to try to make the leap. Bruno accepted the opportunity, and after putting out his in-cave fire and grabbing some arms to take with him mainly out of plain habit, he came out ready to take the next step.

There, he saw what few humans ever did: A Decepticon transforming. With a few quick zips, the agent entered plane mode and the two would-be immigrants climbed in. Soon, they were flying, and to Bruno's amazement, they were in space not long after that. Bruno had heard tales that said that the Decepticons flew through space on their own, rather than aboard larger ships, but he'd never believed them. Now he knew that the stories were true, and after a few moments, he was informed that the cargo-bots he sometimes saw typically only carried freight. They were not mere transports, the agent was sure to tell him, but bots in their own right who could transform into beings so massive that regular Decepticons were small in comparison. It was all very fascinating to Bruno.

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

Destra
Carjack Agriculture

It didn't take long for a few of the slaves to decide that it'd be a good idea to sneak off into the woods and make themselves scarce, and that's when they found out that their chips were indeed active after all. The chips stayed "silent" until they hit a pre-set perimeter line, but when they got to that point, each would-be escapee was stopped by a blinding blast of pain as well as paralysis. They screamed out, and soon, found themselves in the hands of Carjack himself - collected up almost like a child would pick up some hamsters.

Carjack didn't exterminate these at this point despite their disobedience. Instead, he simply let their stories spread so that everyone else would know that attempting to escape was futile. Not long after, he officially confirmed the rumors by noting that yes, the chips were active and would kick in upon trying to cross the perimeter line. Then, he gathered everyone and made a big display of sentencing those would-be escapees to total chip control. He made the controlled slaves wear garish blue outfits to denote their status as biological automatons as well. This was not for safety, but so that every other slave would be reminded of the punishment for trying to escape every time they saw one of these blue-suited workers. To cement the effect, he assigned at least one blue-suit to every labor group so everyone would see at least one of them at all times.

Slaves that could not be chipped threatened to pose more problems, and Carjack considered summarily exterminating them all so he didn't have to deal with them. For now, he held his fire, but he didn't trust them at all. This was especially true for those who could turn their bodies into flowing, mercury-like liquid.

Before long, his suspicions about the "mercurials," as he called them, would prove correct.

At first, everything seemed fine and the labor went well. A few tried to refuse to work and were showily deactivated for it, but overall, the biologicals wanted to live so they obeyed. In a couple of weeks, though, overseers started coming up deactivated with no evidence of how they got that way. All of Carjack's overseers were full Decepticons - he'd had far too much of human managers when he himself was a human to allow even one of them to serve in any position of authority now! This made their deactivations even more surprising. How could anything just turn off the giant machines without being noticed?

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

SteelHard, now cured of his earlier glitch, suggested to SolarTempest "The Fists will always be a threat and will never wish to join us willingly, so personally I think they need to be permanently destroyed. Otherwise they might come back one day and blast us when we least expect it. Of course, it's just a suggestion, I'm not trying to undermine your leadership." Different gang leaders had different styles of rule. A few leaders took any suggestions from their gang as a challenge, even to the point of blasting or outright killing anyone who made them. Such gangs did not last very long, as either the gang members got together and toppled their leader or just left en masse in disgust. A few leaders were remarkably open, with the closest thing to democracy seen in the Empire of Victorious Decepticons, but they tended not to last long either. If they were not overthrown by their own gang members for being seen as weak, they might even (rarely) get in trouble with Domintel for being on the verge of damaging the nation's unique culture. The Decepticon culture was protected more strongly then any national park was on biological planets. The vast majority of gang leaders were in the middle, much like biological Mafia bosses. Good suggestions were welcomed, but every bot knew his place.

*****
Haula, now in a spare, remembered that MasterBlaster had once told them about Vintage and decided to tell him the sad news. He went to the shop and said "MasterBlaster is dead-he died defending Cybertron from a black hole bomb, and our attempts to bring him back were ruined by the Cybertronian Business Association, led by his offspring SolarTempest."

*****
Loyal Star thought to himself about his Full Priesthood ceremony that would come soon and thought back to a pony memory when he was ceremonially robed in the vestments of the Harmonist Priesthood, with cheering ponies looking on. It had not been easy and had needed a lot of study and testing, and back then he had considered Princess Celestia to be a Goddess worth dedicating his life too.....until she had been vanquished by the Supreme God that he served now, as long as his fuel pump still beat and his mind boards still had machine life within them. He gently ran a finger down his Double Gold Stripe, the Decepticon equvilent of two Stars of Vallermoore, First Class. Not that he considered himself Vallermoorian any more-on the day he took his formal oath of loyalty to Megatron before being strapped into the transfer seat, he had renounced his Vallermoorian nationality although he had not had to destroy his Vallermoorian passport and in fact still had it. Mentally though, he was Decepticon. His true home world was the Metal Planet, and his culture was not pony culture but Decepticon culture. He retained his pony magic, as certain foes of his had found out when pony magic lightning fried their wiring.

Destra
Carjack Agriculture

After those who tried to escape were put under the full chip control, there was no more trouble for a while until a bot was found deactivated, with his main switch turned off and his mind boards corroded by slime. General Carjack had his suspicions and as it was most likely slaves could have got Domintel involved, but instead decided to lay a trap for whoever it was with himself as the bait and careful precautions so he didn't end up dead. If it was Decepticons who were doing this and it was not a treasonous plot, even High Generals were banned from using Domintel as a police force, such was the dislike of "ordinary" police. The very few laws of the Empire applied to High Generals too, as High General Starscream had found out to his cost.

Earth

When Venables invited Bruno along, the Domintel bot lightly scooped him up like a human might pick up a caterpillar without hurting it, and his eyes went dark. "You do not have the authority to invite anyone along...but this once I will allow it. We have been watching Bruno a long time, and he seems the sort of person who might indeed be an asset to the nation. He will still need to go through the written test and the code read, but he has passed his Survival Test many times over." He put Venables down lightly having made his point very clearly, and transformed, popping open his canopy to let them both in. Soon enough they took off and went into space, seeing the globe of Earth below them. They went into FTL and soon came out in front of the great gleaming Metal Planet. The raiders knew better then to attack an on duty open Domintel agent, and let them fly through unbothered. Soon they were facing a happy looking bright eyed Scope and Gatekeeper, happy to see two likely new immigrants.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

SolarTempest acted as if he was giving SteelHard's comments plenty of thought, but secretly, he had agreed right away. After enough minutes had passed to ensure that it wouldn't look as if he was being led by his underling, he made his agreement known.

"First, we need to repair the damage we sustained from that battle. Then, we need to make an upgrade before we attack: We each need to get better transmitters so we have a chance of overriding the jam if they try that trick again. After that...we go hunting." The orders were concise, but the entire gang had an air of purpose - and now, a solid plan. It would be the first time they wiped out another gang, and an important step for their own rise among Cybertron's many syndicates. Already, they had been congratulated by a member of the ICC, which in itself showed that they were gaining respect. A total victory over a competing gang would gain them even more, and the smaller and less-experienced local raid gangs would start moving out of their way as they went down the street rather than risk any trouble with them. Of course, the big syndicates like the ICC would still be the true kings of the streets at this point.

Hunting down the Fists, would now likely take more than just barging up somewhere and opening fire. The Fists - if any of them had enough experience to predict the next move - would surely make their replacement headquarters both less obvious and more fortified. Plus, if they expected to be defeated, they might decide to temporarily split up to make themselves harder to find.

That said, there was a chance that it'd be easy to find them and engage them in another battle. They were MasterBlaster's gang, after all - and "precaution" didn't seem to be part of his Code let alone his battle doctrine. Since they had followed him, it was likely that they weren't very cautious either...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Vintage's Shop

Vintage nearly backfired when Haula showed up in a body that looked almost exactly like the one he'd just bought. Secretly, he readied his blaster - it wouldn't be the first time someone came into his store looking to recover property he had purchased.

It was initially to Vintage's relief when Haula said he was there to bring news. The chop shop owner's practice of quickly hiding recognizable bodies in his back room had paid off! When he got the news, though, he lowered his head. After a long pause, he responded.

"I suppose it is no surprise that SolarTempest took the opportunity to finalize the result of MasterBlaster's encounter with the bomb. I tried to warn him not to code an offspring while he himself was so young, but he would not wait. And now he has reaped the full brunt of Cybertron's true culture, where no authority is gained without serious fighting and where insults and challenges are good grounds for mur...killing the offender. It is ironic that his actual termination came from actually trying to stop a bomb. I suppose it is fitting in a way, for him to finally be consumed by the type of power he loved so much. Hopefully his soul has reached a good location for his sacrifice for Cybertron..."

Vintage shook his head slowly, and hoped that if Megatron really was a god, he had sent MasterBlaster to a place that was at least somewhat decent.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Afterlife

MasterBlaster was less and less bothered by his sudden change of realmal residence as the days went by. He was now working at a huge bombing range testing out new designs for explosives. All day long, he got to drop, throw, rocket-propel, and otherwise fire newfangled bombs at all sorts of targets. He did indeed love the explosions.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Immigration Office, Cybertron

Venables was very glad to get to the Immigration Office and into some sort of civilization. He was offered a shower in a well-contained little cubicle, and he relished the hot water that poured down on him. This water came from a special reservoir and went into another one after use, where it was filtered before being warmed and sent around again. The soap, on the other hand, was a detergent that was a bit harsh on his skin. Immigration had actually provided a "car wash" style detergent, but it figured that anyone who would want a shower wouldn't be using his body for long anyway so it didn't matter if it was a bit bio-incompatible.

Bruno, on the other hand, instinctively tensed up in the presence of the officials. They were federal agents, and he had learned to hate feds after years of having to dodge around them. It took Scope and Gatekeeper a while to get him to relax around them and to realize that the only laws they had anything to do with were the ones pertaining to gaining citizenship.

As they were getting out their test foil-papers for Bruno to fill out, a bell-like sound went off and a screen activated. This screen was huge, sized to be read by Gatekeeper, so Bruno could easily see it once it was turned to face the counter he was standing on.

EXTRADITION REQUEST

WANTED: BRUNO GALVIERO
BY: SUMMERLAND INTERNATIONAL POLICE
FOR TRIAL FOR THE CRIME(S) OF: EXTORTION, AGGRAVATED ASSAULT, ARSON, MURDER, ATTEMPTED MURDER, ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF FIREARMS, EVADING ARREST

The phone number and address of the main office of the police force followed.

At the bottom, someone had added a note in Binary. With a couple of clicks, Gatekeeper had it translated. The translation read: "Get a load of this! Thought we'd give you the pleasure of responding."

"That came through the Cultural Liaison's Office," Gatekeeper said. "And now, you get the pleasure of hearing our response!"

Gatekeeper activated a communicator and turned on the speakerphone, sending the other side's voice into the room. Then, he called the number on the screen.

After getting through the secretary to the right person, Gatekeeper grinned as he delivered the official Decepticon response to the extradition request. "We do not extradite anyone," he said, striking a professional tone - but grinning widely as he talked. As expected, the police detective was not at all pleased and began to try to act all authoritative. Gatekeeper made dismissive gestures and rude faces at this, though of course, the person on the other end couldn't see any of that.

Soon enough, the police guy was demanding an official, written response from the Decepticon Government itself. He also wanted to speak to Gatekeeper's supervisor, and NOW! This changed Gatekeeper's demeanor - now, he was getting angry.

"I AM the head of the Immigration Office," he began.

"IMMIGRATION OFFICE!" The police detective bellowed. "What the hell are YOU doing calling me! I demand to speak to the chief of police!"

Now, Gatekeeper laughed openly, though not loudly. "You DO know who's calling, right? This is Victorious Decepticons~!" Gatekeeper unconsciously started rubbing his blaster. "Surely you know that we do not tolerate the presence of police within our lands."

The detective started to rant, but Gatekeeper was sick of playing his game and disconnected.

As "demanded," Gatekeeper then grabbed a piece of foil-paper.

"Hey Bruno, does this gesture have meaning in that Summerland place?" Gatekeeper showed a middle finger. Bruno told him that in Summerland, it needed to have the other hand holding the wrist, and made the rude symbol. Gatekeeper then copied the image to the paper freehand, producing a result as exacting as a photocopy. Next, he added the words: RE: EXTRADITION OF BRUNO GALVIERO.

He then got out a stamp that said "OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION - DECEPTICON IMMIGRATION OFFICE," stamped the paper, and sent the image of the file to the Summerland International Police.

Gatekeeper turned to Bruno, handed him his test papers and a pencil, and said smugly, "Welcome to Cybertron." At that moment, Bruno knew he would love this place. He made sure to answer every question very carefully - he definitely wanted to stay now.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

SolarTempest ran his fans for a few seconds but in fact it was just for show. SteelHard's mind boards were clearly successfully fixed by Debugging as he was now coming up with good ideas. They needed first to fix their battle damage that would not just heal on it's own and then the Fists and their spares and Save Discs needed to be dealt with once and for all. Then the average small raid gang of three to five bots would known not to tangle with the Association. There was a long way to go before they could one day challenge the ICC for the title of biggest most powerful syndicate on Cybertron, but unless they were unlucky or stupid enough to get killed, they had all the time in the universe. They fixed the damage they could do with bump hammers and other tools and then went out to buy armour for more severe damage and stronger transmitters. Bots in the local area got out of the way as they passed. Once they were ready they would look for saves and spares first (much like Domintel in fact) so they didn't have to run their jammers in a highly populated area and annoy all the spectators. Then they could go hunting.

*****
Although some Coders, particularly immigrant Coders who didn't know as well as they should how things worked on Cybertron, ended up in firefights with their offspring sometimes to the death, that was by no means always the case, which was just as well for the survival of the Nation. One reason for conscription at the age of five was to cut down on the number of sudden violent battles between Coder and offspring for dominance. Where things went well, it was not unknown for Coders to have love for their offspring just like biological fathers had love for their sons. Facing a very large raid gang now doubt intent on hunting him down, Haula decided that getting the advice of his Coder, a bot over five hundred years old, was needed, and made a radio call before going to the house he knew his Coder lived in. He knocked on the door in a certain coded way that showed who he was, and the door was opened by a navy blue and copper painted bot who wore a Silver stripe from an act of bravery in the war against Equestria. He welcomed Haula in and Haula told him about what had happened and said "I am here to get your advice, as you are a wise bot who has always been a good Coder to me."

*****
Afterlife

MasterBlaster was in fact having great fun in the Neutral Realm blowing things up.

Immigration Office, Cybertron

The Domintel bot was happy to get those icky biologicals out of his cockpit. Soon enough the two humans had washed when suddenly a telegram came through. Bruno, Venables noted, was clearly worried by these two Immigration Agents. Scope said "Clearly you have something against us, but we are here only to sieve out successful immigrants from those who would not make it, or those few who are spies. If you don't make it, we are not going to extradite you to where you will be jailed or worse. If we did, Domintel, our secret police, would execute US for treason against the Decepticon Way." Gatekeeper looked at the telegram. Soon they made it very clear what was the Cybertronian view of extradition, and Bruno ceased to tense up around them and laughed. Just before he started his exam, Venables asked if he wanted to go it alone if he made it or if they should stay friends. Better to ask it now then risk possible violence later on. Bruno decided that for now, they would stay friends and then started filling in his foil papers whilst Scope lightly picked up Venables and took him to the Immigration Chair.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Destra - Carjack Agriculture

General Carjack decided that he would pretend to begin his defrag sequence early, which is to say at night, in the hopes that whoever had deactivated his overseer would attempt to take him out. After all, many people slept then, even among the non-human biologicals. One of those would probably fall for the idea that he would do the same. His employees and troops, of course, knew that he had to be up to plenty.

Unfortunately, laying down looking at nothing but the ceiling was always maddeningly boring for Carjack. It wasn't long before some of his processing power had been diverted to other thoughts, and not long after that before a non-fully-immersive game was running. Unconsciously, he devoted more and more processing threads to this far more compelling activity, and before long, he was all but oblivious to the world.

By the time he detected the being oozing through his vents, it was too late. It was inside, and he couldn't blast it lest he blow his own boards out. He jumped up with an unhealthy rev and a gear-stripping noise and ran to a mirror, unlatching his face panel via an internal command as he moved. As he did this, he could feel this thick, gel-like substance moving over his boards and down his wiring, apparently seeking a specific item. Unfortunately for the intruder, he had eliminated his main switch and replaced it with solid wiring. That made things hard for Debugging, but this configuration was more secure for him.

Just as he got to the mirror, he began to experience psychological disturbances. Whatever it was, was leaving a corrosive slime that had already eaten through the thin anti-corrosive coating that covered his boards. Fortunately, he had plentiful compensation scripting for dealing with such mental off-notes, so he was still able to do what he intended, at least for now. Activating his night vision, he looked into the mirror as he swung his face panel all the way open.

As he suspected, he had been infiltrated by a Mercurial, and at the moment, said Mercurial was rushing to get out of sight. Carjack attempted to grab it out, but his hands just smooshed through the gel of its body and acquired a coating of corrosive slime. The thing then oozed quickly down his main command cable and lodged itself among his motion boards. He was about to pop open his chest panel to do more extrication attempts, but at this point, the corrosion worked its way through several of his board traces. Carjack's mind-evacuation program automatically activated, and he had just enough time to set a destination before the program ejected his consciousness to safety.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Mercurial was pleased as it felt the engine shut down and the body become statue-like; devoid of any energy of life or mechanical function. It oozed back up and out of the now-open head before re-forming into a humanoid shape. As it did this, it was so pleased with itself that it hadn't noticed the muffled sound of an engine turning over, quickly followed by silence. Once out of the carcass, however, it did feel a glare of hateful fury.

A bright flash was the last thing the assassin saw in this world.

Shortly after the glow of the energy blast subsided, a closet door slid open revealing General Carjack, now in a Spare he had gotten delivered upon opening this new location. He ran silently, still using his electrical backup engine, but soon enough the engine noise came again as he reactivated his main internal power plant. Across the room, near his old body, there was now nothing but some splattered silver gel - now thoroughly cooked and dead.

Carjack's first thought was to genocide the rest of the Mercurials as a matter of national security as well as his own and his farm's security, but in an unusual decision, he decided to call Biological Research first. He ordered them to have a control system for the species developed within 10 days. If they missed the deadline, he would control them "in the manner of the Orkin Man" - which is to say, he would eradicate the lot of them.

~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

Bruno watched with great interest as Venables was brought to the Transfer Seat and strapped in. He had heard of the transfer process being part of immigrating, but didn't know any details. Venables himself had only heard slightly more, and wasn't really prepared either. Soon enough, both would learn exactly how it went.

First, Venables' head was opened up so that Gatekeeper could insert the probes that would pick up and transfer his data. This itself was painful enough to get him to emit some stifled yells, but it was just the beginning. Over the next several hours, he screamed openly as he felt what seemed to be his brain and mind being ripped apart and then reassembled, in a fragged way, in his new body. Finally, the noise stopped, but Bruno saw - with some serious fear (which he tried to hide) - that Venables appeared to now be stone dead.

With a flourish, Gatekeeper walked over to the new body and flicked its internal power switch. Then, he closed the head panel with a firm clunk. After a long delay, during which a defrag program ran, the eyes lit up and the engine revved to life. Venables felt the power of the engine and the new, yet invigorating and wonderful, sensation of energy coursing through his wiring and mind-boards - however, he could not yet move. After a few sanity-verifying questions, however, Gatekeeper flicked the final switch and motion capabilities were activated.

As Venables took some test-steps around the office and felt the power and raw strength of the new body, as well as its excellent construction, any regrets he had during the process evaporated. He grinned in the way of someone who had plenty of crooked plans - and knew that he was now invincible to police. "Sooo worth it," he announced before the Immigration agents could even ask.

"So, Bruno, you still want to immigrate?" Scope asked the still-human one, who had stopped filling out his tests as he gawped at the transfer process. "Or are you going to chicken out and take a ride to wherever, choosing to grow old and DIE rather than endure a few hours of extreme error reporting? It would be the last time you'd have to put up with uncontrollable error reporting, by the way, at least unless you do something to get slow meltdown..."

Bruno had to think about it for a few minutes. Shudders still went down his spine at the thought of going through that much pain! Yet, he reminded himself, he was a hardened gangster; someone who could get anything done for the Summerland Mob! He wasn't going to chicken out now. He told the agents as much and resumed filling out his test papers, pushing the fears of what transfer would be like if he got accepted...

~~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Megatron

A small crowd of people began to assemble here. Ordination ceremonies weren't interesting to everyone, so they didn't draw huge audiences, but some really enjoyed watching them. A camera crew, from the recently-established Megatronist Network (operated by the Temple itself), also arrived.

Meanwhile, in the basement, Loyal Star and others who were waiting to be ordained had gathered. As in the prior ceremony, they would get priestly coating applied down here using pre-blessed paint - but this time, it would be the full paint job instead of just a stripe. Then, during the ceremony, Leader Megatron himself would activate it. Once activated, it would swirl in the manner denoting a Full Priest.

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

Underworks

The Fists had, at first, simply repaired their damages the best they could. However, as they got to talking, they realized that a likely next step would be an attempt to delete them rather than just their leader's Saves.

"In order to do it and not have it be a waste of firepower, they'll have to find and eliminate all of our Saves and Spares," one said, obviously confident that the CBA would not be able to do that. Some others, however, weren't so sure about such an inability. They quickly got to work either making extras of each or going off to better hide what they already had. Soon, only a few remained at the house of one of the other gang members. Usually they would have gathered at MasterBlaster's mansion, but the bombed-out structure offered no protection now.

Haula had other plans. First, he went to a weapons shop and bought himself a full-sized fusion cannon, clearing out one of his vaults in the process. Then, he went to an armor shop and upgraded his housing, though not to Ultimate Mod level.

After he did those things, he went into the Underworks and hid near one of his own Spares. This Spare was decently-hidden, but it was on one of the upper levels. If SolarTempest came looking for his Spares, he would likely find this one first. Haula intended to wait for him to do so, and then "reward" SolarTempest's searching abilities with a blast (or several) from his new cannon.

[Vallermoore]

Destra - Carjack Agriculture

Having had a very nasty experience with a Mercurial that could easily have killed him outright, General Carjack considered going out and slaughtering every last one under his control, but decided to see if they could be chipped first. One was soon scooped up, but chipping it was a problem, as it just rejected every chip that was put into it, and even threatening it with slaughter didn't work. Seemingly, it preferred death to everlasting farm slavery with it's every move controlled by a chip. A couple of days later a research bot got the idea of exposing it to the icy cold of a windigo on a research asteroid far from Cybertron, and it had to be transported there in a special box that was escape proof and could not be burned through. Once there, exposing it to the icy cold of a Windigo that fed on it's hate for Decepticons froze it solid, but there would still be some work to do to find a chip type that would work on it, and the clock was ticking. The others had to be watched with care to stop them sneaking away from the farm and escaping.

*****
Cybertron

Bruno thought of how good his life would be as a Decepticon, which gave him a sort of biological version of Bravery Up to go through with what would be an agonizingly painful process, and Venables promised to wait for him. Once they were both in robot bodies and had been presented with a welcoming Energon Cube each and taught how to fly well enough to avoid crashing/being shot down by random Decepticons for getting too close, they would both fit right in. By their conscription date, they had shared each other's radio numbers so they could reunite after their first conscription stint and start getting a gang set up. Bruno was likely to be the one who would end up leading it due to his experience but Venables woulden't exactly end up as the FNG either.

*****
First Temple of Megatron

Loyal Star tested his freeze face script several times and to his relief it worked. Soon enough he was painted in the special Priest paint that was the Megatronist equivalent of the Harmonist robes that the pony version of Loyal Star had worn once so long ago on Vallermoore, back when he was sure that he would live his entire life worshipping the Royal Pony Sisters. This was what he had come so far to do. For this, after hours of privately agonizing over it, he had deliberately defaced his Harmonist robes by cutting out the holy sun and moon symbols, for which his Bishop had publically excommunicated him, his family had shunned him, and the gates of Pony Hell had surely gaped open to receive his soul. He had made a long trek to Grand City, the only place at the time where a Megatronist Temple existed, and he remembered the first time he saw Fire Eater, who was in a body only a bit taller then a human to fit in the temple, his paint swirling like the clouds of a gas giant, two blasters on his arms, and red eyes that were of average brightness.

Flashback scene

"Can I help you?"

"I want to become a Priest of Megatron like you. I know it won't be easy, and a lot of study and menial duties lie ahead, but that is what I want. I was a priest of Ponyism once, like my father before me, but I got myself excommunicated on purpose to close Ponyism to me forevermore." He turned from side to side to show his defaced robes and his cutie mark which indicated a religious pony. The eyes of Fire Eater brightened. "Come into my study."

*****
Loyal Star had never looked back. He had brought a book of Megatron and studied it whilst also helping to keep the temple clean and such things, and had eventually earned the robes of an acolyte and something not that often earned from Decepticons-trust and yes, even friendship. When Fire Eater finally thought that Loyal Star had earned a chance of higher rank, he warned him that as a sapient pony, there was no way Megatron or High Priest Warfire would allow a sapient pony or indeed any biological to climb that far. The Megatronist Priesthood was for Decepticons only and to become a Decepticon, Loyal Star needed a Decepticon body. And so it was that he had travelled to Cybertron, tricked an attacker into blasting a cargo-bot (which made the escorts jump on the attacker) passed the needed tests and code read, won the Ultimate Upgrade and served in the Decepticon Military. And after many adventures, including the classified one in which he saved his God-classified it may have been, but the double Gold Stripes he had earned showed that he had done something amazing for the Nation-now he was about to become a Full Priest. He noticed Fire Eater in the small crowd of bots, his engine purring with joy that Loyal Star had got so far and his eyes like two hot coals. Loyal Star thought that as long as he avoided doing anything really stupid and he was not horribly unlucky, he could live perhaps eternally, but if the very worst happened after all and he was killed fighting for Cybertron and his faith, he would have a reasonable afterlife and Pony Hell would never get it's hooves on his soul. Any pony demons that showed up would get blasted by the Decepticon angels.

Underworks

The Fists did not lack RAM and knew what SolarTempest would want to do next-to delete them once and for all. Some made more Saves and brought more spares, and Haula decided to ambush SolarTempest with a fusion cannon. Losing a body like that might make SolarTempest leave Haula alone out of a fear of being one day perma-killed and ending up in the Neutral Realm. His Coder had given him the idea.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Research Asteroid

It didn't take long for top biologists from the Biological Research Division to arrive here and get started on trying to reverse-engineer the now-frozen Mercurial. After activating no-emotion scripts to avoid accidentally feeding the Windigo it was with, they opened the sealed cube (carefully avoiding the release of the living freezer within) and scraped off just a bit of the target creature's material. Then, they sealed the cube back up and examined the sample using the microscopic capabilities of their optics.

To their surprise, all they saw was what appeared to be regular body cells - no neurons. They repeated the test by taking samples from other parts of the Mercurial, hoping to find signs of a nervous system, but they had no luck.

"Without any nervous system for our chips to hook onto, we can't use any existing variation of chipping to control these things," the scientists said to each other.

"They must be using some other means of thinking and controlling their own bodies. Otherwise, they'd just be lifeless blobs, or perhaps plants!" One exclaimed.

After some discussion, they realized that the one who mentioned plants was likely onto something. Plants had no nerves, yet could detect light, damage, and even specific insects. General Carjack had even insisted that they could think - and had passed a test by Debugging proving that whatever he detected wasn't coming from his own circuits. Soon, the researchers called a botanist from the asteroid to ask him to explain how vegetation could detect anything without nerves.

"Plant life is much more advanced than humans gave it credit for, at least from a physiological standpoint," he explained over the communicator from Destra. He had rushed to Destra to study its botany the moment that planet had fallen. "Instead of using a unified command system like animals do, they rely on their individual cells to communicate to the other cells in their bodies. This communication goes from cell to cell at speeds not much slower than what is attained by nerves. In some cases, the result comes from a simple trigger/response 'circuit,' such as the one that causes some of the cells to speed up growth in the presence of darkness in order to push the stems toward light. Other communications are more complex and are triggered by chemicals released by nearby plants. This latter system does things like cause the release of pest-repelling biochemicals when there are plant-eating bugs in the vicinity."

The scientists considered this for a while. It did seem that perhaps this alien species was using a similar, but much faster, form of the same sort of direct cell-to-cell communication system.

"How the heck do we override THAT?" They wondered. Finally, one had an idea: Nanites. Nanites, built almost as small as viruses, could infiltrate each and every cell - or at least enough to take control of the system. Then, the slave's owner could run it like he would a chipped version.

"I'm not so sure about nanites," the group leader eventually said. "They could get into beings we don't want them infiltrating, and on top of that, it might be possible for outsiders to hack them..."

Over the next few days, the scientists hashed ideas around, but kept coming back to nanites. They could actually be made so that they had no method of remote access, and this would thwart hackers. In fact, each nanite could be made so simply that by itself, it could do nothing at all. "The system would only work when there are billions of these all in communication with each other. On the cellular basis, each one would only be responsible for a very specific task, such as contracting or relaxing its individual muscle cell - or the equivalent thereof. And, if they do spread to other slaves? Good! These machines would lie dormant unless the slave's overseer activates them and issues a command. As for understanding the command, that would actually be done by the consciousness-bearing structures of the slave itself. The nanites would simply deal with the response of those structures on a level that's too micro for them to self-generate commands."

"An interesting thing about consciousness is that even if a creature doesn't intend to obey, it will unconsciously flash the commands through that would result from obedience. For example, if one imagines throwing a ball, the impulses will go through its body as if it actually did it - just at too low of an energy level to make it happen. If these Mercurials do the same sort of thing, all our nanites will have to do is amplify that signal enough to turn it into actual action - while quieting any competing signals so the slave cannot resist that action."

The others nodded, though some still pushed for an alternative: Infecting the Mercurials with the Decepticon Loyalty Virus.

"The Virus would have to be engineered to work with their Code, and not only that, it would have to have enough control to force obedience to specific commands. Currently, while it will make its captives loyal to us, it leaves them to their own devices as to exactly HOW to show that loyalty. Refining it to give chip-like control, and work on a species that has no brains, would take far longer than the 10 days General Carjack gave us to figure it out. We must release something solid right away, if only on a few test subjects, or we'll lose our chance to examine these fascinating creatures further!"

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

On the 9th day, the captive Mercurial was surprised to find itself thawed out. The extended freezing had caused it significant damage, but it was still alive thanks to Biological Research using fast-thaw technology. After an hour or so, it gained its bearings just enough to check out its surroundings. It found itself in a sealed glass box, and the only tube leading into it - an air tube - had a blender-like spinning fan at the other end. Even for it, going through there would mean certain death.

Suddenly, the top of the box was opened slightly and a black dust was thrown onto the creature. Then the top closed again. It became aware of being stared at by 7 robots, all of whom were watching intently.

For many hours, the Mercurial was simply bored, and it weakly sat in its box in humanoid form as it continued to recover from the freezing. Then, suddenly, one of the robots said something to it in Binary, which it did not understand. Immediately, it stood up, bowed deeply, and then saluted with the utmost respect after coming out of the bow. It had intended to do none of this, and it became very confused and panicked. Instantly, it went into its mercurial mode and flowed all over the inside of the box in hopes of finding a safe exit.

Then, it heard another burst of Binary. With that, it immediately regained its solid humanoid form and stood there like a statue.

"Looks like the beta test is successful!" The lead scientist gushed in Binary. "Call the General and tell him to hold off on the eradication. This should be enough proof-of-concept to ensure that we will have subjects of this species for years to come, and not all as cadavers, either." He turned to the Mercurial. "Repeat after me," he commanded in its language. "I, a mere Mercurial, am still a biological and therefore still infinitely inferior to my Decepticon owners."

The Mercurial glared at this, but before it could formulate a nasty comment, its vocal system and mouth formed the commanded words. The Biological Researchers indeed had full physical control of its body. Its eyes grew wide and horrified at the fact that they could now even control what it said! It instantly began trying to think of a way around this situation, but so far, had no ideas. All that it knew of the system was that it involved that black dust - it didn't know Binary, so had no clue what the scientists had been saying all this time or what they had come up with.

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

First Temple of Cybertron

Not long after the last priest-to-be was painted, the ceremony began. Each one had been given a schedule so he would know where to stand, when and where to move, and what to say.

To a grand entrance, heralded by trumpets, they were ushered forth onto the Temple stage. High Priest Warfire gave a short introduction, and then, heralded by even grander trumpeting and lit by a spotlight, Leader Megatron made his entrance. He slowly walked past the assembled group, inspecting them military-style, before taking the podium.

There, Megatron gave a short but very powerful speech about how these soon-to-be full priests were taking on one of the most important duties of the Empire, second only to the top members of the Military. "The Decepticon Military is the Strength of the Nation, but these Priests will fill an equally-important role: They will spread the Way to all who are willing to receive it, whether by word or by cannon, and in doing so will allow our Military to focus on those who are dedicated to opposing us. Even better, planets that take up Megatronism and the Decepticon Way will join us on their own and add their economic and military might to our Empire - making it even easier to take over the stubbornly-heathen planets and either bring them to the Decepticon Way or eradicate them." Megatron announced.

He spoke for a few more minutes, and then the ceremony progressed to the part all of the successful candidates had been waiting for: The ordinations. Far from being like Christian ordinations, which were fairly boring, the Megatronism ones were marked with the showy, impressive, activations of the blessed paint jobs. One by one, at Megatron's touch, each priest's colors came alive with gold and white swirls, and the edges of their wings glowed in white. The entire ceremony was now more like a full-fledged theatrical production than a mere formality.

Not long after, Leader Megatron gave all of his new Priests a spoken blessing, and then, with an unmatchably regal air, exited the room.

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

Underworks

SolarTempest found a few of the Fists' spares and crudely, but effectively, deactivated them with brute force before continuing on. Then, he saw a nearly-hidden door in a nook and figured that someone's Spare had to be hidden in there, though he did not yet know whose. He approached the door intending to pick its lock and check, but just when he got in front of it, he heard an angry rev. This let him know that someone was on the other side - and that the someone in question had just readied himself for battle. SolarTempest immediately raised both blasters, and they came to the ready just as the door slid up and revealed Haula with his fusion cannon also ready to fire.

The two opened up on each other, and soon, the area was filled with the blinding light of Decepticon weaponry reflecting against all-metal surfaces...

[Vallermoore]

First Temple of Cybertron

Loyal Star may have had his freeze-face script running but inside he was immensely pleased and proud. He had made it from a sapient pony new Megatronist who knew almost nothing to a Decepticon Megatronist Priest of full rank and his God was going to ordain him personally. When Megatron gently touched him and his gold and white paint started to swirl it marked him out as a genuine Priest. Many things could be faked or copied but not that, and even High Generals did not wear holy paint like this. He would soon become a missionary, both covertly and at times overtly helping Megatronism-but he hoped to himself that he would have a short time to celebrate with Fire Eater as his earlier celebration was spoiled by Cybertron getting attacked. He wondered which planets he would be sent to, as the universe was a very big place. After Megatron had left and the ceremony was over, he turned off his freeze frame script, that made his eyes glow like fire, and he and Fire Eater gave a deep bow to each other. Because under normal circumstances Decepticons who were not trying to harm each other almost never touched each other, the depth of a bow was important. A little one was like a handshake, whilst one this deep when done to a social equal was like a big hug. Fire Eater was as happy as Loyal Star. Successfully guiding an acolyte to this level was very rare and was the sort of thing to get one positively noticed by the Archpriest WarFire, which could help one's clerical career.

"We need to find somewhere private where I can tell you the final secrets known only to the Full Priests," FireEater said. "Then we can have a day off to party-it's tradition. After that, in a few hours to a few days depending on chance, you'll get a new assignment, the first of very many in your clerical career. Some may be hard or even dangerous-but if you lose a body, you can come back if necessary in a full size body to kick the needed biological ass. And if you were to somehow get killed outright, if you trust me with a Save Disc I can bring you back. Normally, trusting another Decepticon with a Save Disc would be a Very Bad Idea, but I've known you since you were a pony."

"A pony, you say? I hate all ponies, even if they are in Decepticon bodies, even if they bear double Gold stripes." The bot who had spoken as they walked along the street had thicker then normal red armour and was clearly upgraded for physical strength, with impressive blasters. From the tone of his Binary and his darkened eyes and almost growling engine. he was anything but happy at learning the bot nearby had once been a pony. In his sheer joy, FireEater had temporarily forgotten how xenophobic some Decepticons were. The bot clearly had a gross disrespect for basic Decepticon etiquette which meant keeping out of the affairs of strangers who were not themselves poking into your affairs and he wasn't afraid to tangle with Priests of Megatron, obviously assuming that since they were off duty he would not be facing holy fusion fire. A panel opened, revealing the crossed wrenches and skull symbol of the Genocide Battalion. Clearly he was on one of said Battalion's brief periods of leave. "You are not on Temple business so I won't need to fear fusion fire, and how can a pony be a true Priest anyway?." Perhaps he was trying to impress some bots nearby who were likely to be gang members, although picking a fight with ordained Full Priests was a strange way to do it.

Loyal Star decided to give the bot one chance to back down, as he suspected the bot had very tough armour. That or he had not much sense. "First, I went through a lot-including a Full code read-to get this far. Second, this is the only warning you will get, O bot with little or no matters. Back off and walk away or you will find out that I am perfectly capable of using our Way to turning your body into scrap." In the next moment, Loyal Star found himself fighting as the bot pointed his blasters at him, and Fire Eater joined in against the possibly heretical and certainly deeply unpleasant Genocide Battalion member.

*****
Underworks

Haula flicked on his jammer-here he could do that as no other neutral bots were involved, and let loose at close range with a fusion cannon, trying to outright kill SolarTempest and send him to the Decepticon afterlife.

**********
Research Asteroid

The scientists had to be careful not to let the Windigo out, as they didn't want it to get very cold around there. It took a while to think of something that would work, and soon the partly injured Mercurial was horrified to find itself in effect chipped and in effect forced to do whatever the Decepticons told it. One of the scientists gave a small amount of his hatred of narks to the Windigo as a reward. The Windigos under Decepticon control were not chipped as they were in effect allies and chipping allies sent a bad message out to the universe.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

The Genocide Battalioneer was right when he guessed that he wouldn't face holy fusion cannon fire, but he hadn't counted on the effects of what Loyal Star had just received: Megatron's special blessing. This blessing wasn't the same as the one all Megatronists got, nor had it been given during the ceremony as a mere feel-good display. It was given only to full priests, and it gave a tremendous boost to fighting skills and blaster power. It also made it possible to override jamming, though since none was in effect, this aspect didn't become apparent. Other upgrades also resulted from the blessing, though it would take some time for Loyal Star to realize all of them. It was, in effect, a bit of Godmodium for Megatron's most loyal and dedicated non-military followers: his Priests of Megatronism. Megatron believed that this was necessary, both to show the power of his blessings and to protect his Priests from those who would attack them over their proselytizing.

Today, the blessing would work for Megatron's glory on Cybertron.

Loyal Star effortlessly dodged each of the Battalioneer's blasts, moving as though he was far lighter than his armored body should be. Meanwhile, every one of his own blasts landed precisely where he aimed them no matter how the Battalioneer tried to evade them. Within just a couple of minutes, the fearsome Genocide Battalioneer was on the ground, deactivated and smoking.

Fire Eater's eyes glowed with the clarity of one who was extremely pleased about the humiliating deactivation of an enemy.

"That's Megatron's Priestly Blessing that kicked in," he said to the somewhat-confused Loyal Star, who hadn't expected to suddenly perform with the skill of a High General on e-steroids. "It will be very hard for anyone to defeat you unless you have first done something to antagonize them, and of course, you remain in good standing in Megatronism. That said, you will still have to remain strong and skilled in order to keep the blessing of our god. Allowing yourself to become weak is forbidden, even with the blessing in force."

Soon, they arrived at Loyal Star's new house, which he had rented after realizing that it would be impossible to keep his mansion secure while he was on long missions. Fire Eater quickly swept it for bugs and found about 10, all from DomIntel. "Rental houses are always bugged even more than private ones," Fire Eater said. "With a steady stream of tenants coming through, it's likely that at least a few of them will say something worth listening to." With that, he took all of the bugs outside and left them in the open. It wouldn't be long before some scroungers came by and added the devices to their collections of scrap, which would be melted down by the end of the day.

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

Underworks

SolarTempest was very well-armored and had strong blasters, but his blasters were no match for a full-fledged fusion cannon. He took far more damage than he dealt, and it seemed like the result would be inevitable. This impression was cemented when Haula blasted SolarStorm's thighs, which each became a combination of flowing, molten metal and black vapors. SolarStorm went down with a bang, and Haula took careful aim at his head and chest, intending to take both sections offline with a single, full-powered blast.

Suddenly, blaster fire came at Haula from an angle behind SolarTempest but off to the side. Three beams came in and pasted him dead-on, indicating that there were likely at least two assailants. Haula had no choice to engage these newcomers in battle - if he ignored them, the damage from their fire would eventually add up and deactivate them. Immediately, the area was once again lit by energy blasts going in both directions, but as time went on, even more blasts were seen coming at Haula. After quite a few minutes of this, Haula suddenly turned off his jammer. By the time his foes got their own jammers on to try to gain a permanent victory, he had activated his mind-evacuation script and was gone. The engine of his now-empty body came to a halt, and his eye-lights faded to black.

"Looks like that guy forgot that we're a big syndicate!" Came SteelHard's voice from behind SolarTempest. "It also looks like we reminded him none too soon!" SolarTempest heard his top lieutenant's footsteps come over to him, and soon, he saw SteelHard looking down at his nearly-deactivated body.

"We came over as soon as we detected jamming in the area," SteelHard said as he and a few other CBA members lifted their leader up. "Since we knew you were around here, we figured you'd run into one of these losers." SteelHard kicked Haula's carcass with his foot. Soon after, some more CBA members came and picked up that body. It would be melted down by the end of the day, with one ingot saved out as a victory trophy.

Just as they were congratulating themselves on overwhelming Haula with brute force, a muffled rev was heard. The body that Haula had hidden himself near was now active. All of the present CBA members dropped whatever they were holding - resulting in an unceremonious, clanging, return to the ground for SolarTempest - and readied their weaponry. After a long pause, however, the engine noise stopped. When the CBA tracked down the source of the noise-turned-silence, they found only an empty body.

"Looks like he realized that attacking all of us with just that thing would only cause him to lose again," SteelHard said. Then, with a devious look, he turned to SolarTempest.

"It also looks like we won't ever be seeing that guy again," SteelHard announced, "because that there was his last Spare, and we nailed all of his Saves before we came down here. He just mind-transferred himself straight to the aether."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Carjack Agriculture, Destra Branch

General Carjack was surprised when, on the 9th day after he issued his deadline, he got a report of success from the Bureau of Biological Research. He had already gotten all of the Mercurials corralled within what had originally been several biological rendering pits, not because he had intended to render them that very moment, but because the big metal vats proved to be solid and deep enough to keep the things contained. A thick band of salt mixed with glue, applied at the top 5 feet of each metal vat, added even more insurance against them leaving in mercurial mode. Finally, a thick lid was placed on top of every one.

Before sealing the lids, Carjack had let them know that if things didn't work out right, he fully intended to connect the pits, one by one, to the biological rendering plant's equipment and turn the grinders on. "You'll all be slurry within seconds if those grinders run. Even your slime mode won't save you. It'll be like scrambling eggs. Your only hope now is Biological Research," he said to the huge throng of captives before he slammed the lids down and left them to sit in darkness. They could all tell that General Carjack would make good on his word and slaughter the lot of them if things didn't go exactly right.

Days later, the now-quite-dehydrated Mercurials had all but given up on the idea of living. "Instead of grinding us into oblivion, the Decepticon has decided to just forget about us!" They cried to each other. "He thinks we aren't even worth the Energon it would take to run the killing machines!"

As they were at their deepest despair, they heard several cargo-bots come in low and then land, apparently without transforming. Then, a rush of robotic activity was clearly heard as loud footsteps ran toward the landing area.

Only one hour after that, the lids on the pits were opened, revealing Mercurials who were now very wrinkly - almost raisin-like - from extreme dehydration. If they had been humans, they would have been long dead. Fortunately for them, their bodies were better at handling environmental extremes. Even so, they were very much distressed by going so long without any hydration.

Before they could say anything, fire hoses began to spray water toward them. The high-pressure sprays weren't aimed to hit them dead on, but instead, were bounced off of the pit walls just above their heads so that they were sprayed with voluminous showers of the fluid. This water was slightly gray, but as expected, the thirst-crazed beings quickly went into mercurial mode so that they could absorb the water as fast as possible. Carjack stood above one of the biggest pits, personally spraying one of the hoses with a foreboding little smile on his face. This spraying kept going until all of the Mercurials had absorbed all of the water they could. It didn't take long before the patches of mercury-like liquid grew to the point that they could reach halfway up the sides of the tanks. It also didn't take long before they started to work together to try to boost at least some of their population all the way out - and the lids were slammed down to prevent that.

Ten hours after that, they would find out that the water wasn't plain H2O. The lids were reopened, and Carjack and his overseers shouted down a command to line up to mount the ladders that were now being lowered. Then, the Decepticons commanded them to come up the ladders in humanoid form, walk to designated areas, and stand there soldier-like to await further orders.

The Mercurials, by now, almost all intended to pretend to obey just long enough to get out of the pits and then swarm the relatively few Decepticons who were yelling command at them. It wasn't until they reached the surface that they realized that they could no longer do anything other than what the Decepticons ordered them to do.

General Carjack stalked his way across the front of the now-waiting lines of Mercurial slaves. "Now that we can 'trust' you, you won't have to be exterminated. Of course, that does mean that you will also be some of our most obedient livestock. Except for you - " He pointed out 100 Mercurials, one by one, and had them stand apart from the others. "YOU will be going to Biological Research. They are very interested in getting to know all about your strange little bodies." The menace in Carjack's voice hinted that vivisection and other nasty fates likely awaited.

The others had no chance to ask questions about how they had ended up under total control, and Carjack didn't explain it. He thought that they should be smart enough to eventually figure out for themselves that the means of control had been hidden in the water - the water that they had been too thirsty to even question as they hastily chugged it down.

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-Sorry for the delay due to real life.)

Cybertron

The soldier of the Genocide Battalion was about to get a nasty shock and would find himself serving as a warning of what happened if one attacked a Full Priest of Megatron who had neither done nor said anything to deserve it. His blasts missed when they should have hit, whilst Loyal Star's blasts seemed always to be on target.
t was not long before he had lost a body, and ended up in a spare, vowing to himself not to repeat such a mistake again. Loyal Star looked in amazement at his blasters, and if any other bots had been thinking of attacking Loyal Star, such thoughts were canceled. Fire Eater explained, his eyes shining red and clear " That's Megatron's Priestly Blessing that kicked in. It will be very hard for anyone to defeat you unless you have first done something to antagonize them, and of course, you remain in good standing in Megatronism. That said, you will still have to remain strong and skilled in order to keep the blessing of our god. Allowing yourself to become weak is forbidden, even with the blessing in force."

Loyal Star replied "I have no intention of bothering, let alone attacking, other bots without a genuinely good reason, like if they are trying to harm or steal from me or if they attack a clearly ill bot that I am taking to Debugging. And I certainly want to stay strong as long as that is physically possible." When they were in private and had some Energon Fire Eater told Loyal Star of the Priestly Secrets known only to Full Priests.

*****
Underworks

Haula grinned as he did great damage to even SolarTempest's powerful body, blasting great holes in it and taking out the main command cable, paralysing SolarTempest. When he was about to kill SolarTempest outright and avenge MasterBlaster, other bots of the syndicate showed up and it was his turn to be turned into scrap. "Looks like that guy forgot that we're a big syndicate! It also looks like we reminded him none too soon!" SteelHard and other bots showed up, picked up SolarTempest, but had to drop him again when another body revved, only to go silent again. "Looks like he realized that attacking all of us with just that thing would only cause him to lose again. It also looks like we won't ever be seeing that guy again,because that there was his last Spare, and we nailed all of his Saves before we came down here. He just mind-transferred himself straight to the aether." After a good laugh was had by all, SteelHard asked SolarTempest "Would you rather mind transfer to a new body or have us take you to a good mechanic to get you up and running as good as new? Also, I would strongly suggest that we patrol in groups rather then go off alone, as the Fists may have other tricks and ambushes waiting for us and I'd hate for any of us to be perma-killed."

Afterlife

Haula did not go to the Realm of Punishment which was reserved for traitors. He would end up as an immobile part making machine in the Neutral Realm, but with a difference. Because it was his loyalty of MasterBlaster that got him in this situation, he was able to spend two hours in every twenty-four playing Decepticon games in his mind boards ,which made things slightly less unpleasant. Loyalty to a gang boss was a minor virtue in itself as long as the boss was not a traitor, as it was loyalty on small and large levels that bound the Decepticon Empire together.



Carjack Agriculture, Destra Branch

The Mercurials considered themselves to be suffering a living death as they could not control their own bodies and could do nothing but what they were told.



"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

To Loyal Star's likely disappointment, there weren't many secrets that he hadn't already been told. The really big secrets, like the Universal Physics Controller, were so secret that even the High Priests hadn't been told of them. However, Fire Eater did let out the fact that if Megatron so willed it, he could make every Decepticon invincible to enemy attack. "He doesn't do it because if he did, even Decepticons would eventually just lounge around and have him do all of the work. While that would produce results that were satisfactory in terms of battle victory, it would slowly corrode the very nature of the Nation. Eventually we'd turn into a bunch of wimps who didn't want anything to do with war ourselves, and after that, we'd become what the old USA of Earth used to call...'liberals' " Fire Eater shuddered at the very thought. It clearly struck him as intentionally building one's mind-boards out of reject parts. "When the people are personally strong, they get no such weak notions. They are proud of their strength, comfortable with it, and eager to show it off. And this is why Divine Leader Megatron does not just wave his fingers and take care of all of the challenging things."

Fire Eater went into more detail about Megatron's philosophies, but after his prior divulging of secrets, there wasn't much left that would really qualify as mind-blowing. Even Fire Eater did not yet know of the invention of nanites, which could, with minor adjustments, be militarized to devastating effect.

"You've already experienced the benefit of Megatron's Priestly Blessing, which I would have explained had it not been brought to bear in that battle before we got here. And I'm sure you know that our Nation's motto is not just feel-good spin, but our actual goal. Someday, the entire universe will be ours..."

~~~~~~~~

Underworks

SolarTempest asked the others to bring him back to his mansion. There, he would mind-transfer to a new body by using a direct cable hookup. This would make his transfer immune to any jamming that might come on by surprise. He agreed that completing their search in small groups was a good idea, and was eager to get back to it once he got into a new form. "As for this body, I'll strip it of all of the still-useful stuff that's in the storage panels, and then it will go to a foundry and gain new usefulness as material for new parts." SolarTempest concluded.

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

Carjack Agriculture - Destra Branch

Carjack could sense the desperation in the Mercurials, but he simply activated Empathy Down and made them keep working. All of them struck him as beings that would use their mercurial abilities to cause trouble or even take out more of his overseers - or himself - if they were left to their own devices.

Unknown to him, nanites were leaking from the pores of the Mercurials and starting to contaminate the ground where they worked. He could have seen the nanites with his optics set to microscopic vision, but he hadn't yet considered looking that closely. Within a month, he would find that many non-Mercurial slaves now had populations of the little machines lying dormant within them.