An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Main Drill Range

General Carjack was pleased with most of the unit, but was not happy about the early decloaker who could not contain his urge to genocide or the one who ended up in the river, who if it had been real would have lost his body and been pinged back to the Main Save Vault. The next drill would be harder. Pesticide found it fun...as he could use his magic to trigger the packs near him in such a way that they would not hurt him or any other bot. He told other bots when he would be pushing down buildings. Not all the bots did that, and at least one whilst shamelessly hot-dogging in a way that would have made MasterBlaster proud, managed to push a huge skyscraper directly onto another bot. A second tripped over a wire and knocked another bot over so that the other bot's arm ended up in the river, which would have shorted it out. Most bots preformed the drill reasonably well and with care, Pesticide being one of them. It took quite a while before the city was rubble and the drill was over, and the feet of the bots were checked for dye.

**********

First Temple of Cybertron

The two priests had chosen to fly in openly rather then covertly as androids. This planet enjoyed freedom of religion so they could get things done faster in robot mode. When the nearby humans saw two planes fly in and then transform near the ground into two giant war robots, at first they panicked. When they realized the bots were not going to destroy the entire area, the bravest ones came close enough to talk. "We are missionaries who want to buy land for a Temple rather then take it," Loyal Star told them. Soon enough the humans were asking them lets of questions. Who or what were they? Were they alive in their own right or very complicated mechs? Where did they come from? What did they want from them? They came from far and wide, full of awe at the multi-coloured robots that towered above them and could clearly destroy the entire area if they wanted, yet seemed to be peaceful. None were deliberately insulting, probably because of how dangerous the bots clearly could be. A few humans mistook the Priests themselves for Gods at first, not knowing yet about Megatron. Fire Eater and Loyal Star began explaining about a Divine bot far greater then they and that they were not themselves divine.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Drill Range

After this, drills were declared over for the day - not because Carjack was really ready to stop "playing genocide" with the n00bs, but because the range was all out of dye packs, tripwires, and other hardware. Plus, the floor needed to be gone over by repair people thanks to the heavy blasting that had gone on. This wasn't a problem for Carjack - ranges were meant for that sort of thing, after all - but it would make it so that practice couldn't continue until the next day.

"MOST of you did quite well, and some of you were quite conscientious," Carjack said. "A couple of you, however, obviously need more impulse-control training. You will be taking part in special extra drills for that. The rest of you, meet me back here tomorrow at 3PM. For now, stand there in 4 equal lines while I see who didn't pay enough attention to where he was walking."

Carjack then went up and down the rows of troops, checking each one's foot for dye marks. As expected, some had none, most had a few, and some had so many that their entire foot treads were multicolored. Pesticide had none. All of the results of this check were tallied into a computer, where they would factor into future scoring.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next day's drill started with basically more of the same, but this time, Berlin was the first simulated city. Then, there was a simulation of attacking a planet that was foreign to almost all of the recruits.

"This is a pony planet," Carjack announced. "However, except for the unicorns - which have magic - the ponies aren't the biggest danger here. Instead, it's these creeps." A holographic Windigo rezzed in and hovered there, much larger than life. "They're drawn to negative feelings. And, while WE'LL probably be feeling just fine, our targets most certainly will not. Their terror, pain, and despair will all combine to be a giant Windigo magnet. And when these things show up in crowds, this happens..." The holograph changed, and now, it showed a squadron of iced-over Decepticons flying slowly. "As you all should know, considering that it's in the SEDP, too much ice on the wings ruins your aerodynamics and makes you crash. When we attack a pony planet, we always install wing heaters first. Windigoes, however, produce so much cold that it eventually overwhelms the heating capabilities."

"Because of this, the standard protocol is simple: We have to kill all of our targets as fast as physically possible! They produce plenty of negative emotions during the process, yes...but the dead feel nothing. Once the emotional output is permanently shut off, there is no more draw for the Windigoes and they fly off to other locations. Of course, if one of those frigid things gets in the way of your blaster, you just eradicate it outright - but it can seem like there's an infinite amount of the things. Because of this, it's important not to divert your attention to blast Windigoes unless they outright attack us. If you divert, the real targets will be able to keep producing Windigo-drawing energy, and enough will come to force us out of the sky, and in the worst case, freeze us into statues after we land. If we get so ice-coated that we can't move, it'll be no problem at all for the ponies to just bomb us to bits from outside of the cold zone. Obviously we can't have that!"

"Another problem with pony planets is the presence of Changelings. These things are shape-changers, and can assume almost any shape. They do, however, have trouble trying to imitate our size. Look for them to have bodies that we would normally associate with smaller scouts or active ForIntel agents. They can also look like ponies, other animals, and even inanimate objects. When we attack planets where they are known to exist, we are equipped with special sensors that make them obvious to us. We also have enchantments that block their love-raiding abilities. Still, it's important to be careful - if you let down your guard, they'll drain your love of Cybertron and the Decepticon Way, and your system will use up all of its energy trying to regain equilibrium. Then you run out of power, your body shuts down, and - if your emergency system sees it coming in time - it's back to the Save Vault for you."

The General waved, and the new scene appeared. It first showed the planet from space, and then zoomed in on the capital city. The city's streets were all but abandoned, and a few downed Decepticons were spread out over some of the buildings - as barely-recognizable aircraft debris fields. A cannonball hole could be seen in one larger bit of metal.

"As you can see, the main front has already been through, so all of the people know there's a war on and just what they're up against. Fortunately, the type of energy a Decepticon produces when he's about to crash - a definite "HMPH!" rather than fear or despair - doesn't draw Windigoes. The ponies and Changelings still hiding in this city, though, are far less brave. Their fear is already drawing those demons of the cold down from the mountains. We have to find and delete all of these hidden ponies, starting...now!"

Carjack stood back, and the drill commenced.

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

UC of Ceridignon

At first, things went quite smoothly, with everyone being quite impressed by the giant robots. Though the majority weren't ready to convert at the drop of a wrench, they weren't hostile, and a couple of people promised to tell the owner of the land about the offer. This, however, was just the townspeople's response.

The Fortress

The Fortress was a giant, fort-shaped building, but it mostly held offices instead of troops. These offices belonged to the high command of the United Confederacy's military, a huge, multi-branched organization that had an army, navy, and air force.

"Giant space ROBOTS!? Are you crazy? How could you listen to a report like that, much less bring it to my desk!" The 4-star Chief of Staff raged at the 3-star general now standing, somewhat panicked, at his desk.

"There are pictures, sir," the one with the report said as he slid some over, "and it's all over the radio and TV there."

The Chief of Staff looked, expecting to see an obvious forgery, and as he examined the photos, his expression changed to one of shock.

"Ooo. Kay." He said softly, drawing out the word. "Send a unit out there just to make sure there isn't any trouble for now, while we decide on a long-term response..."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Loyal Star and Fire Eater were sitting in the field when the landowner came up in an old pickup truck. At first, he didn't want to sell, claiming that he intended to sell it to a hotel company for a fortune. However, after being promised a few barrels of oil, he changed his mind. Oil was expensive all over Ceridignon, not because it was all that rare, but because the planet had not yet developed highly-efficient drilling techniques. He could resell it for a lot of money easily enough.

"Oil isn't quite the Universal Currency," Fire Eater said later, "but it's as good as money on any planet where petroleum is still the major fuel for vehicles." He radioed the Temple on Cybertron, and soon, a small (by Cybertronian standards) interplanetary transport was on its way with 100 barrels of hard-to-refine heavy crude. The landowner hadn't demanded sweet light, so Megatron Energon had taken the opportunity to send some of the "low-grade" stuff.

Shortly after the purchase was complete, the soldiers arrived. They came in looking as tough as possible, but as soon as they saw the priests, their act was blown. They ended up standing there, flabbergasted, at the sight.

Meanwhile, the Cybertronians soon heard what a biological would mistake for someone drumming his fingers on a dead tree branch. Loyal Star and Fire Eater, however, knew that it was no random noise. Whoever was tapping was actually "speaking" a message in Binary.

"So you've come to the Confederacy," the message said. "Perhaps you could use the aid of the ICC. There's a clearing in the woods just on the other side of the border. Meet me over there at 10PM if you're interested..."

The two made sure not to blatantly look at where the sound had come from, but did start to look in all directions as if familiarizing themselves with the area. Of course, they did make sure that this "looking around" secretly included the source of the sound. There, a poor-looking, stooped-over fisherman-type guy was walking away. The ICC's drug mule had spared no effort in looking completely unobtrusive and non-suspicious.

"He's probably been doing this for decades..." Fire Eater whispered in Binary. "Oh, and since you were once of the fleshly type...do you think these troops mean trouble for us?"

[Vallermoore]

Main Drill Range

After a good defrag Pesticide was ready for the next drill, which was against a partly destroyed pony city. The sight of a Decepticon wing holed by a cannon showed that the fight had not wholly been one sided. Carjack warned them about the main danger-Windigos had been drawn to the area from the bad feelings of the survivors and enough of them could even overcome Decepticon heaters, cause ice to build of on the wings and crash flying Decepticons or even freeze Decepticons in robot mode, jamming the joints or even freezing the Energon. A bot in that situation would have to mind transfer as he'd be helpless and a standing target. Even with anti-changeling enchantments, bots that let their guard down around Changelings still had a chance of being drained and sent off to the Save Vault. One or two civilian bots had found that out to their cost after trying to sell their own love to Changelings in exchange for oil. The greedy and frankly deceptive and conniving Changelings had drained the gullible Decepticons of their love-all of it, and they ended up in their spares. Then when they went back for revenge, the changelings had changed shape and hidden elsewhere and couldn't be found. Pesticide decided to use 5% of his power to keep his anti changeling shielding up, just in case a whole Hive of changelings were hiding in that destroyed city. Just because it was a drill did not mean Pesticide was not going to treat it as if it was real-he took training very seriously. He wanted to earn that coveted Skull and Wrenches insignia badly-it was what he had abandoned his old life for after all.

As soon as the drill began, he started pulling over buildings, sitting on manholes, and blasting any biological he saw whilst running his changeling detection script. This flashed up a few hidden lings who he busted. A pony with a Decepticon Seal ran out and said "I'm on your side!" He replied "Megatron will know His own, " and blasted the pony. If this pony was indeed a Megatronist, getting killed would count as a minus but not a huge one, and enough plusses would cancel the minus out and send the pony to a neutral or indeed a good part of the afterlife. More likely he was a changeling or a disguised pony. Things were getting colder but not yet dangerously so. A small scout Decepticon showed up and flashed the Forintel symbol. Pesticide, not wanting to commit treason by mistake said "Decepticon, identify yourself using Binary within ten seconds or be considered hostile." Any genuine Decepticon knew Binary-it kept their internal workings going, so if this bot knew no Binary, it was a changeling in disguise. Within three seconds it identified itself loudly in Binary as a Forintel agent and took to the sky, but had to dodge blasts from futher away bots who hadn't heard it, yelling over the radios in perfect Binary "Forintel, I'm Forintel you idiots, and we are at war! Stop trying to kill me!" A concealed cannon blasted at Pesticide but he knew how to dodge it and blew up the gunpowder near it.

Within half an hour the last ponies and changelings-along with many Windigoes who got too close-had been killed, and the drill was finished. The temperature went back to normal.

**********

UC of Ceridignon

One human started worshipping LoyaL Star, and he had to tell him to quit it as the human was accidently blashpheming. "Stop it! I'm not a God any more then one of your priests or priestesses is a God.Divine Leader Megatron-He is the God, not me or Fire Eater here." Meanwhile the military of that world showed up with missles but didn't get too close, yet, anyway. The Cybertronians heard Binary which was being covertly sent out by an undercover ICC type.


"He's probably been doing this for decades..." Fire Eater whispered in Binary. "Oh, and since you were once of the fleshly type...do you think these troops mean trouble for us?"

"They might do but I hope not, as it'll hold things up if we get into a huge firefight and that means your holiday will be delayed," Loyal Star whispered back.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

After one more drill session led by Carjack, the General announced that for the next several weeks, Genocider training would be handled by a Trainer as he needed to get back to his regular duties. "This is Destructicon," he said, introducing a reddish-purple bot whose main color exactly matched that of deoxygenated, dead meat. "He has been with the Battalion for a hundred years, and has 10,000 kills to his name. He will be your Trainer until the last two weeks of training. That is when we engage in the exercise that will be the final determinant of your status with us. Until then, train hard. I do not say 'good luck' because getting to show the Skull and Wrenches is not a matter of luck. A reliance on luck is for those who do not have SKILL, and to join the Genocide Battalion, you need skill."

While General Carjack did prize skill, the full reality was that he was not at all averse to moments of good fortune. However, he knew not to admit that to the newbies, or else they would learn to rely on luck instead of thinking of it in the right way: as a fluke that could never be counted on. Enough skill, on the other hand, could make losing all but impossible.

~~~~~~~~~~

After Carjack strode off towards his office, Destructicon gave a slight introduction of himself and then came toward the assembled troops. He pointed at the ones who, according to Carjack's records, had underperformed in the drills. "You will report to the Remedial Training Program after every standard drill session," he ordered them. There, they would have to drill on their weak points over and over again, mainly through the use of specialized full-immersion sims that would make it so they felt every misstep as if it were real.

"For now, all of you will be coming with me for flight drills of our special formations. The General, skilled as he is, tends to skip these drills in favor of ones that teach direct lethality. But without advanced flight drills, you won't be getting close enough to a real city to kill so much as a pigeon!"

Soon, they arrived at an area designated for flight drills, where they had already been booked in for four hours of sky time. Pesticide noticed that the entire ground area was riddled with SAM batteries, though their markings made it clear that their missiles had paint-filled warheads instead of explosive ones. As expected, everyone who didn't successfully dodge would end up with a big blotch of gray paint wherever they were hit.

"These will be going off against you all with a variety of accuracies and timings," Destructicon informed them while pointing at the batteries. "This simulates the varying tech levels and skill levels of common opponents. For now, difficulty will progress from least to greatest, but later on in the training phase, things will randomize to better replicate the varying levels of our opponents - both between their armies, and within them. That, however, won't be for a few weeks. For now, get ready to get some chips."

Destructicon walked among the troops and passed out chips. After virus-checking his and then installing it, Pesticide found that this one contained five different mass formations, along with the "training" counterpart for each of them. The full, non-training version was meant to be used along with the Battalion's full 10,000 troops, so it would not be used in its original form yet.

"Okay, let's go!" Destructicon ordered, and soon, they were all transforming and taking flight.

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

In the distance, Carjack could be seen flying away. His "duties," at this time, consisted of heading to Earth to check on all of his holdings there, and making sure to grab the ingredients he had ordered from the Cloning Center to make a giant foundry steak. Then, he would cook it over the smelting pit at the big Megatron Metals Mine #95 foundry, and, for a while at least, enjoy the taste of some old-fashioned food. After that, he would check the latest sales reports and handle other business-related things. Like most of the High Generals, he actually spent more time on non-military things than actual general's duties. Most of the Military ran itself just fine, and the High Generals' military skills were mostly called upon in war or in preparation for war. Unlike most militaries, however, the Decepticons didn't make them sit in offices all day pretending that they were 100% busy just dealing with daily operations.

~~~~~~~~~~

UC of Ceridignon
National Space Agency

This agency, whose claim to fame so far was a successful launch of an unmanned probe to the planet's nearest moon, soon got wind of the news that there were alien robots right on the planet. It immediately sent out a couple of scientists and two vans full of its own troops, who usually spent their days "protecting" its main launch area.

"We must capture these aliens and bring them back here!" The director ordered. "Just think of the technology we'll learn when we dismantle them and see all of their parts!! The ability to fly to any planet we want to will be ours, and then we can conquer the whole solar system!" He was quite ecstatic about this possibility, and didn't think at all about the fact that "these aliens" might respond to such attempts by opening fire. Soon, the convoy of troops - and a set of flatbed trucks to carry the aliens they hoped to deactivate - was on its way, with a projected arrival date of three days later.

While two government agencies now knew of the Decepticons' arrival, several were still in the dark - including all of the political branches.

~~~~~~~~~~

At the border town, Fire Eater was getting a bit antsy to go across and see what the ICC bot had in mind. However, he knew that if they took off now, it could give away secret information about the operative. It would also immediately involve the DPR of Benyay, and he thought it was better to avoid causing an open international incident, at least for now.

"Let's wait until dark, and then fly there under cloaking," Fire Eater said. Loyal Star agreed, so for now, they spent their time answering questions as well as doing their best to line up construction materials for a Temple. This building would be put up by them before there were many converts, mainly because if they didn't do the work themselves, they would be sleeping under the stars for a long time.

So far, the troops didn't make any hostile moves. They were, however, constantly radioing updates back to the Fortress, and both Loyal Star and Fire Eater turned their hearing up so they'd know right away if any attack orders came in. So far, there wasn't much coming from the other end of the walkie-talkie-like long-range radios other than basic acknowledgments of the information received. Since this group wasn't working with the Space Agency, there was no talk of the Agency's group at all.

[Vallermoore]

Main Military Base

Over the next few weeks the would be Genociders would train and train again mainly in flying practise. At first Pesticide was quite easily able to dodge the paint SAMS but as time went by and things got harder he was unable to avoid getting hit a few times. Fortunately every other bot was in the same situation so Destructicon was not really harsh towards him. No bot fully got through this kind of training without a few hits landing on him. Destructicon was very strict but relatively fair, only singling out bots who obviously messed up. They did a few other drills in the firing range on different targets. This included a changeling Hive in a rocky area (if it were real, they would have to be in smaller bodies to fit down the tunnel) various human cities, another pony city, and a Coltani city where a rebellion had broken out (Coltanis were able to fire back and were dangerous in their own right, if this had been the real thing instead of a drill.) They didn't drill all the time as even for bots, this would cause burnout and some rests were needed. Finally Destructicon told them "You are almost there. We will do one final major drill.....and then we will do the real thing. There is no substitute for the real thing to see who is capable enough and has what it takes to wear the Skull and Wrenches. The real thing is a country called Arqa on the moon of a gas giant, whose leaders have been publically and privately agitating against us. If we leave them alone, within five years they will have weaponry capable of seriously harming us and within twenty years they'll be a threat. But the thing that makes them really a target is a Decepticon traitor that has shared the secrets of our own bodies with them so they can make mechs that look and fly like us if we don't destroy them within days."

There were revs of rage from the trainees at the very thought. In human or pony terms, that would be like the making of zombies-repulsive and vile.

"Domintel has destroyed the saves and spare bodies of this traitor but the traitor is living a life of luxury on Arqa where he thinks he is safe-that is where we come in. If all goes well, he'll be in the Realm of Punishment soon enough. General Carjack will be leading you. The planet is 70% human, 25% pony, and we think 5% changeling, and everybody of all ages on that entire moon is to be killed. The only exceptions to this are undercover Forintel agents who have not had time to get out-and only if they promptly identify themselves using Binary. If you accidently kill a Forintel agent it won't be punished as long as jamming is not used-accidents happen in wartime, and the bot will go to Forintel's Save Vault. Any attempt to spare anybody who is not a Forintel agent, will get the guilty bot thrown out of the Genociders at least, or worse. All biologicals, even animals if they are big enough to notice, are to be killed. Afterwards we'll erect a monument saying why as a warning. Any intelligent life that does survive, will be sent back to the Stone Age and will take a very long time to reach even the Bronze Age. Final warnings-keep your anti changeling shielding on, however tempting it is to drop it for more power. If you get all your love drained and end up in the Main Save Vault we won't be impressed and it could negatively affect your membership chances. And they have a few SAM batteries, a few fighter planes, and a very few cannons. "

After the final drill, which involved fake SAMs and then destroying a simulated city, everyone got cleaned and ready and General Carjack came to lead from the front. Pesticide felt extremely excited, and in his old body his tail would have been flicking uncontrollably. As it was, his eyes were a bright red and his engine was purring like a happy cat.

*****
UC of Ceridignon

The new Temple had just been built when Fire Eater and Loyal Star overheard orders to blast them to bits. Loyal Star snorted. "That's not going to happen." Half an hour later the soldiers were either dead with the souls claimed for Leader Megatron or fled, and the missiles were blown up before they could reach the Decepticons. Only a few bullets had scratched their paintwork a bit.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

When General Carjack ordered the cadets to assemble, he was met with eager, but smoothly-running, engine noise from all present. They were clearly ready to go show Arqa the fruits of their training! Still, the General's attitude was a bit subdued.

"This nasty little moon we're going to is small enough to take it with just a cadet force, which is why it was chosen for the 'final exam' of your preparation. Still, I know from experience that some of you will have your Energon tanks turn into rubber as soon as real blood fills real streets. Others of you will reveal an as-yet-hidden desire to stop and torture or terrorize once you see the variety of real reactions to you and what you're doing. And, you who fit these descriptions will fail your exams. The same goes for those who, despite extra training, lose your self-control or simply do not have the skills needed to join an elite Battalion."

"That said, I have confidence that, as a group, you will perform well enough to get the job done. Barring unforeseen circumstances, this mission should take only two days. We will be leaving out of here at, believe it or not, dawn. This will make it so that we arrive there at high noon in the time zone of the target's rural areas. We will attack starting in these areas, in a formation that will actually be a huge ring around its biggest city. This will drive our targets toward, and then into, that city. I will then drop one of these babies on that city." Carjack moved over a bit, revealing a rather large nuclear bomb. It was, 200 years after the Invasion of Earth, still marked with the words "United States of America." A Decepticon Seal had been hastily graffitied over its military star, and a line scrawled through the words. It was good enough, Carjack figured - after all, it would soon be blown to bits.

"Even with a nuke, not everyone there will be killed. Some will be behind enough masonry to not get a lethal dose of radiation or heat, others will be hidden in bunkers, and some will simply be too far from the blast radius to get nailed. Also, weirdly enough, one or two houses will probably stay standing even as everything around them is flattened. We will step on these and flatten them, even if no one is inside. There will be no iconic pictures of seemingly-invincible stuff for people to distribute after we're done."

"After this, we will repeat the tactic on other big cities as long as it still works. Once they catch on, we'll switch to starting out in the cities and simply mowing them down."

"Finally, our work will be done. Then, I'll radio back to the Main Base, and the word will go out to the raid gangs. The raid list will also be updated to put a bounty on everything on that moon but the ground itself. These independent gangs will be our mop-up crew, and will handle the rest of the order concerning Arqa: the bare-sand raid. Once it has been completely wiped out of everything except the ground itself, we will place our stark obelisk to warn others in the area what happens to those who seriously oppose the mighty Empire of Victorious Decepticons."

Carjack finished with some rousing words of encouragement, and then gave the order to get into formation for flight to the target location. Everyone eagerly did so, forming precise ranks within a minute. Engines now revved in preparation for takeoff.

With the roar of hundreds of transformation noises sounding off at once, the General and his cadets took flight.

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

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater was clearly angry when the order to attack came to the UC troops and battle was commenced. Even though the outcome was a mop-up in favor of the Decepticons, this meant that more soldiers would likely come. Now, he would have to leave Loyal Star in charge of defending the new Temple in order to meet the ICC contact.

After some thought, he decided to go ahead with the plan. "You can certainly take on any of these twerps by yourself," he told Loyal Star. "I'm going to set up some 'conversions' from the ICC if I can. Drink a Cube of Energon right now, so you won't have to deal with them trying to blow it up in your face later."

Loyal Star quickly chugged as much Energon as he could, filling his tank and emptying about 3/4 of a Cube. Once Fire Eater put his cloaking on and flew away, the newer Priest smiled. He could, at least for a while, finally operate on his own again. If he did well, maybe he would be able to operate solo after this mission ended. It had already been made clear that he would remain a missionary, rather than a stationary high priest, but at least, perhaps, he would be able to make operating decisions at that time.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Benyay

As soon as he crossed the border, Fire Eater felt like he was in a different world. The buildings were made of a depressing gray masonry, and the people in the border town on its side hurried home quickly from some state-run factory that had made them work into the night. They appeared to be overly lean, and some of them dragged their tails on the ground as if exhausted and not all that healthy. On one corner, he noticed a better-looking guy with a large jacket. Many of the Benyans made quick stops near him, and it became apparent that he was selling drugs - perhaps the only mental respite from the bleak, overworked lives of the locals. At this point, he recognized the thin look as that of the addicts of Cybertronian opium, which had been recalibrated to allow just enough hunger and general maintenance instincts to operate to preserve users' lives much longer than the original would. Dead customers, after all, were bad for business.

Fire Eater kept going. While that dealer was obviously ICC, judging by the looks of the customers, it wasn't the one who had given the message. Soon, after gliding silently over the town, he found the woods the message spoke of. There, he fired his jets just enough to stay aloft, and then turned them off to glide silently to the meeting point. He transformed as quietly as possible, and landed with a soft thud on the clearing's grass.

For a while, it seemed like he had come for nothing. Crickets were making a racket, and an owl hooted off in the trees. There was one cicada sounding off. One cicada...those never come in ones...Fire Eater thought. He looked toward the sound, and took a couple of steps in its direction.

Sure enough, his night vision soon picked up the sight of the beast-man he had seen earlier. This time, though, he walked straight and seemed healthier.

"So, you've come to Ceridignon to spread the Way of the Great Leader. I know that our groups think much alike. For example, I'm betting that you could use some fake 'seed' converts to convince the others to join up. The only question is, how are you going to make that worth our time? We're Megatronists, of course, but we're also businesspeople. And our business is keeping these Benyans nice and docile, and too poor to buy weapons for a revolution..."

So. The ICC was secretly operating here under the auspices of the Benyay government itself! Fire Eater hid it, but he was a bit surprised by this Machiavellian ploy. He was also a bit disgruntled - he would have preferred for the totalitarian socialist country to go boom. He would have to look in his Book of Megatron later for more guidance on that...

Fire Eater first sat down, and then decided to lie down on his front. This way, he could speak very softly and still be heard. If he tried to get his voice to carry from his full height, he would almost have to yell, and even he didn't know for sure that there was nobody else (and no listening devices) around.

"I certainly could use that, but I've actually come to meet you for something else that's even more important," Fire Eater said, as softly as he could while still being heard. "There is a cult on this side of the bor~~"

"OH, you're after those Autobot-worshipping scum! Those damn scum! Every time they see one of us doing business, they call it in and make a big scene out of having done that, and then Benyay has to make a pretense of arresting us. It's a big pain in the exhaust pipe for everybody. Yet, if we just go blast 'em all, then the people will demand some sort of huge action against us for being too cartel-like. We've popped a few of 'em off anyway - the most troublesome ones - but so far, Connect says it's more profitable to leave the rest than it would be to have to operate against the full force of the Benyan National Police. There are local and national police here. The national ones are like the FBI of Old Earth, if you've heard of them...far better than the locals, and much less corrupt, at least unless you pay them unreasonable amounts of bribe money..."

Fire Eater listened, and at an opportune time, asked about the Mekkanist base and any weapons they might have. The ICC bot was all too eager to spill every bean, hoping that Fire Eater would delete them for him. "If you go there and just blast 'em, the people here will be looking for more giant robots instead of us 'Ceri smugglers,'" he chuckled. "So bombs away, if you've got 'em!"

Alas, the missionaries had no big bombs, so something else would need to be done. For now, he at least had a rough map of the Mekkanist's territory, the names of some key people ("they stay up there [on the mountain] all the time, and we haven't been able to kill them yet"), and plenty of complaints about how they're all a bunch of worthless narks. In exchange, Fire Eater told him about the afterlife they ended up in, and how Megatron had fixed it to be a realm of punishment after his takeover of the place. The ICC bot hardened upon hearing this news. "What happens to them in the afterlife doesn't make our business easier," he said. "They need to go there NOW, and in a way that doesn't connect their going with the ICC."

This, it turned out, would end up being the price of getting the local ICC dealers, smugglers, and general agents to very publicly 'convert to' the religion they actually already followed. When the Mekkanists were gone, the smuggler promised, the mass conversion would take place.

Fire Eater knew full well to never believe promises of future payment from a Decepticon, let alone a syndicate one! "Swear your agreement on this Chip of Megatron," he insisted, holding out a chip containing the words of the Book of Megatron that had been transcribed to it.

Suddenly, the ICC bot wasn't so confident. He knew of Megatron's tendency to smite those who angered him! He pulled his fur-covered hand back, and then mumbled that he'd better get the approval of the local commander before he committed. It would likely go through, but until then, he had to remember that he didn't have enough rank to give orders like that...

With that, he disappeared into the trees, and the meeting was over.

[Vallermoore]

Main Military Base/Arqa

General Carjack said his final words before battle to his Genocider Cadets. When he said " Still, I know from experience that some of you will have your Energon tanks turn into rubber as soon as real blood fills real streets. Others of you will reveal an as-yet-hidden desire to stop and torture or terrorize once you see the variety of real reactions to you and what you're doing. And, you who fit these descriptions will fail your exams. The same goes for those who, despite extra training, lose your self-control or simply do not have the skills needed to join an elite Battalion." Pesticide hoped very much that he would not be one of those bots. What he wanted was so close after all. They transformed into planes, took off in a ring formation and went in FTL to their destination. When they came out of FTL they saw a red and black gas giant with several moons, all but one being lifeless.

On the pony moon, ponies went about their duties and jobs like any other day. It was in the countryside rather then the towns that the ponies were horrified when Decepticons in large numbers showed up. Carjack showed his gleaming Skull and Wrenches symbol and yelled "KILL THEM ALLLLLLLL!" to his Cadets. Pesticide blasted away at the ponies and although it was harder then he thought to hit such small beings, he did send almost all the survivors galloping away into the nearest city, New Manehatten, that was styled after Equestria with a big bronze statue of Princess Celestia. Here there was a bit of military resistance from a cannon battery that broke the leg of the bot near Pesticide before Pesticide blew the battery up with one blast in the right place. The General then dropped a nuclear bomb on the city, killing most ponies outright. There would be survivors however, and the cadets moved in. Pesticide pulled apart a mausoleum in a cemetery to reveal two adult ponies and three foals without their cutie marks amongst the lead coffins-and quickly stomped on them, giving them a painful but quick death.

Nearby a bot had found another unhurt survivor, but instead of killing her at once, he was playing with her, stroking her cutie mark and mane whilst holding her gently. "I can do whatever I like to you," the bot said softly in Equish "and if you can make me like you, I'll have you fitted with pretty silver horseshoes and put gold thread loosely in your mane." He then put the pony in a large jar full of air and then into a panel. Pesticide didn't say anything-he was not a General or a Trainer and certainly not a grass-but he thought to himself That bot will fail his exam for sure. No Skull and Wrenches for him. After a few more cities were destroyed a pony with a Decepticon cutie mark came up to Pesticide and announced he was a Megatronist. "Our God will know his own," Pesticide replied in Equish and then blasted the pony. Most bots, three quarters of them, were preforming well, but 5% had cloaked and were trying to stay idle, 19% of them were engaged in uncalled for terror or torture, and 1% were either looting when they should be killing or worse, in one case, were taking bribes from rich ponies to spare them, as well as the one bot who had kidnapped a mare to use as a pet. Milintel agents were finding out through spying who the failures were.

**********
UC of Ceridignon

After a while more soldiers arrived with some tanks but didn't have much more luck, only managing to lightly damage Loyal Star before being killed or otherwise sent packing.

Benyay

Fire Eater talked with an ICC member and knowing how conniving any adult Decepticon normally was, wanted to seal the deal they made on a Chip of Megatron. Not wanting to be smited by having his wires burnt out or worse by an angry Megatron, the ICC bot soon brought his capo who was in command of all the ICC bots who were undercover in the country to see if a deal could be done.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Arqa

General Carjack was looking angrier and angrier as he ran through the city repeatedly ordering the torturers to get on with it. He even blasted a few of them in the butt, telling them that this wasn't an amusement park and that he would melt them down if they delayed the operation long enough for any allies to arrive and interfere. Then, he went to the rich zones, and said in Binary that those who accepted bribes had better be planning on laughing and saying "sucker" after they got the money, meaning that they were to kill those ponies despite their bribes! Carjack used Binary to make sure that his order wouldn't blow any connives that were in progress, and only a few really geeky types were able to understand it. Unfortunately for the non-geeky ones, they weren't prone to listening to these introverted multilingual ponies, so they ended up getting killed even when warned. Many of the would-be Genociders enjoyed this fact, as did the General himself. "Serves 'em all right for not listening to their intellectual betters," he sneered.

After two days of raining horror upon Arqa, there were no longer enough lifeforms left for the cadet Genociders to bother with. Carjack then authorized 10 hours of looting, and the cadets practically went nuts grabbing up things that they figured they could sell, whether on Cybertron or on other planets. There was only one restriction, and that was that no lifeforms were to be taken alive. "We will not spoil our own victory by deliberately creating survivors," Carjack commanded.

Soon after that comment, Carjack got news from MilIntel that one of the cadets was planning on smuggling a pony out of the kill zone. Everyone knew something was up when Carjack marched very deliberately toward one bot, with rage on his face and his blasters ready to go. That bot didn't have a chance to cook up any spin, because he soon found himself under fire - Carjack's fire. The General was now yelling curses and calling him a traitor to the Battalion and its goals. Carjack's physical superiority over the cadets' standard-issue bodies was quite clear, as each of his blasts did significant damage. Finally, he sent a blast directly through the leg panel of the offender, instantly vaporizing the pony inside along with a serious amount of the surrounding metal. "Make sure you've killed them all WHEREVER THEY ARE!" He ordered the others. "Even if they're inside the panels of some idiot who mistook himself for a zookeeper!"

By the time Carjack was done with the offending soldier, that soldier was barely flightworthy. He would, at the very least, have to fly back at sub-FTL speeds to avoid breaking apart. This could cause him to encounter Scroungers or other hostiles on the way back to Cybertron.

"It looks like you aren't capable of making it back to the base safely," Carjack observed menacingly. "Guess you'll have to go back the HARD WAY!" With that, he blasted both sets of the offender's boards, and he returned to the Main Base as data packets.

As this was going on, several other cadets quietly deleted their own equine contraband. This was noted by the MilIntel bots planted within their ranks, as well as by its cloaked spy drones.

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

After the looting period was over, General Carjack radioed the main base to start the next phase of the operation. On Cybertron, an updated raid list with the moon's name, location, and the words "Bare Sand Raid Pricing Now Active" was published. Clicking this revealed the fact that all opposition had already It would take several hours for word to spread all over the planet, but the few gangs who happened to get the list right after publication immediately went into action. Within an hour, the first of these gangs arrived with huge flying trailers, and by the next day, the larger gangs would be coming in with cargo-bots.

Once everyone had refilled their Energon tanks and done any needed field repairs, it was time to go. The cadets all got into formation with Carjack in front, and in unison, they took off with their own loot and headed for Cybertron.

After arrival at the Main Base, everyone except Carjack would store their loot in lockers and have any damages repaired. During this time, Carjack would go over the results of the operation with MilIntel and choose who would be joining the Genociders on a permanent basis. Those who had failed, but were on the government's draft list, would be referred to DomIntel for other placement attempts. Anyone who failed but was not on the list would simply return to being a regular soldier until his time was up.

Late that night, at about 1 AM, names began to be called over the barracks PAs. Instructions for the ones named were to assemble at the main entrance to the Genocider area. At first, there was a bit of excitement, but then, people recognized some of the names as belonging to people they'd seen goofing off, hiding, torturing, or otherwise not following orders. Then, a sense of nervousness came across the area - these weren't the ones who had made it, but instead, they were the failures. They were being assembled at the entrance in preparation for ejection from Carjack's area.

After a few minutes of this, almost all of the failures had been called out. A few minutes later, the area was rocked by the sound of blaster fire and cursing. "I'll show you ONE person I know how to kill!" Someone's voice was heard, followed by the sound of a few blasts. It sounded like a huge row was going on!

Suddenly, music was heard. Like "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," this was a jarring rock number apparently named "Die Motherfucker Die!" Some of the cadets came out to gawk, and they realized that Carjack himself was hollering this out - using his voice chip as an amp - while laughing and quite efficiently deactivating one mutinous failure after the other. A quick scan revealed that jamming was in place and that it was originating from the General. He clearly had no sympathy for the mutinous.

Within 10 minutes, the base was quiet again. Dead mutineers covered the ground, and off to the rear sides, those who had chosen not to fight stood there with afraid looks on their faces. Soon enough, the jamming was turned off and Carjack strode victoriously through the litter of blasted forms, making a blowing motion towards the ends of his blasters. He took out a walkie-talkie, hooked into his area's PA system, and announced, "The rest of you, report to Basic Maintenance tomorrow at 2PM for hot-waxing. Then, report to the Main Assembly Area for your inaugural ceremony at 3. That is all." He said nothing about the fight, bu it was quite easy to hear the lingering battle excitement in his voice.

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

Benyay

Fire Eater was surprised at how fast the capo came - he'd expected him to be further away from such a desolate area. He resolved to try to find out where the secret woods base was at some opportune time - there surely was one, if a boss was this close at hand.

The capo turned out to be quite a bit wilier than the original dealer, and soon, he and Fire Eater were cooking up plans to attack the Mekkanists. "Since they think it's a religion, they surely have some sort of temple or church they assemble at," Fire Eater said.

The capo soon confirmed that this was true. "It's impossible to see from the air, and hard to reach from the ground due to the presence of bears near the footpath," he explained. "The footpath itself is barely wider than an animal path, and looks like it is one, so it's easy to get lost by accidentally going onto an actual animal path. But once you find the right path, it'll lead you right to it. Despite their machine focus, the building itself is made of wood."

Fire Eater and the capo paused for a moment. "Shame if it burned down," they both said simultaneously. "With all of them in it," Fire Eater concluded. "When's the service?"

It turned out that the service was on Monday morning at dawn - the same day, according to the Mekkanists, that the Prophet Optius had come to reveal the Way of Life to them.

"OptIUS? How'd that butchery happen?" Fire Eater laughed.

"No one knows for sure," said the capo. "But our guess is that the original document was altered, perhaps by mistake, by the guy who turned it into a long-lasting cult. He changed quite a few things around, and he wasn't all that good at writing. Although, it's been a few hundred years - so no one really knows how the 'M' got dropped from the name. There are a lot of differences like that. Their Seal got changed, too."

Now, Fire Eater began to think strategy. He considered trying to get the ICC to light the Mekkanist meeting house on fire after welding the doors closed, but he also thought it would be both fun and effective to show up as open Decepticons and make the Mekkanist's fears of the "red-eyed devils" come true - before locking the doors and lighting the place on fire. Whichever strategy he used, he'd make sure that the fire seemed to either be accidental or caused by lightning. While the ICC was worried about the legal hassles that would come from an obvious arson, Fire Eater had another concern: He didn't want to do something that outsiders could see as proof of Mekkanism's claims. Lighting a building on fire to cause a small (by Decepticon standards) massacre would make them seem like they were indeed devilish, and that would, in turn, make the Autobots seem like the good guys. Fire Eater couldn't have that!

"It'd be easy to bolt the doors shut and light 'em all up," Fire Eater said. "But it'd be hard to make it look legit. Perhaps you could guide me up there. Then we can bolt the doors closed so those infidels can't get out, and then ask for Divine Leader Megatron to smite the building with actual lightning to start a raging fire..."

[Vallermoore]

Arqa

General Carjack was anything but happy with the failures amongst his cadets, and was not averse to blasting those who were underperforming in the robot equvilent of the bottom. Those who took bribes were warned in Binary that it had better be a connive if they didn't want to be in trouble for it. Bribery and corruption in themselves were fine-with the key exceptions of those in Debugging and certain other positions it was so common as to be a national trait-but not if it messed up a mission and certainly not if it interfered with a genocide. Pesticide, of course, never felt a blast in the bottom or any other manifestation of his general's ire as he was preforming flawlessly. Although his temper was well known to be ferocious, it was very rare for Carjack to just randomly blast a bot serving under him for no reason. The one major exception to this was if he had to be woken up and on the few occasions that this was an absolute military necessity because of a surprise attack that could not be dealt with by itself, those bots who worked closely with Carjack had developed ways to wake him without losing a body or worse. Even other High Generals did not lightly wake up Carjack for fun-the only bot in the entire Decepticon Empire that could do so with utterly no danger of retribution was Leader Megatron Himself.

After two days of dire destruction ten hours of looting were allowed so the troops could be paid. Pesticide looted a small oil refinery of sweet light crude, a bank vault full of gold, and a few metal girders. One of the bots was carrying contraband aboard, however, and was about to discover what happened when one blatantly disobeyed General Carjack the Genocider. The bot planned to pamper the pony and keep her more as a pet then a slave. He would make her sing for him. However, he was not to get the chance. Pesticide was nearby and quietly watched as General Carjack, his eyes dark and the tips of his blasters glowing, marched up to the misbehaving bot and started calling him a traitor to the mission and other things that were anything but PG 13 related, whilst also letting his blasters do the talking, vaporizing the unfortunate pony and doing great damage to the bot, who knew it would be mutiny if he fired back, and his blasters probably wouldn't damage Carjack anyway. "Make sure you've killed them all WHEREVER THEY ARE! Even if they're inside the panels of some idiot who mistook himself for a zookeeper!" Any other bot who perhaps was hoping to ransom his equine contraband later quietly killed it. The soldier was left incapable of flying quickly, let alone at FTL speed, and this damaged would be instant prey for any Scroungers that he saw. "It looks like you aren't capable of making it back to the base safely," General Carjack said. "Guess you'll have to go back the HARD WAY!" He blasted the soldier and his body keeled over, his mind flying back to the Main Save Vault as data packets, whilst his body became another soldier's loot.

Once they had flown back in a triangle formation with Carjack at their head, any battle wounds and small scratches and dents were repaired and they got fully waxed, which was the human or pony equvilent of putting on their very best clothes. Since bots didn't wear clothes, the quality and good looks of their bodies was what divided the ultra rich bot from the rich bot, the rich bot from the average bot, the average bot from the poor bot, and the poor bot from the broken down rustbucket that became Scrounger prey. Masher before he was banished from Cybertron was known for "dressing down" like an average bot, causing some to overlook and underestimate him which made conning-and winning fights-easier.

At about 1:00AM in the morning the barracks PA called for the hiders, the torturers, the would be equine smugglers and the other failures, so they could be rejected from the Genocide Battalion. Not long afterwards the cadets heard the sound of blasting and a bot yelled "I'll show you ONE person I know how to kill!" Then music was heard, a song called "Die Motherfucker Die!" Pesticide was one of the gawking cadets, and it was the General making the music as he despatched the mutineers one by one wit his jammer on, sending them as traitors to the Realm of Punishment. Those who did not fight were allowed to leave alive as rejects. "The rest of you, report to Basic Maintenance tomorrow at 2PM for hot-waxing. Then, report to the Main Assembly Area for your inaugural ceremony at 3. That is all." He was clearly excited from battle. Pesticide felt very excited as tomorrow he would earn what he had abandoned his pony body for-the Skull and Wrenches that made other bots often think twice before lightly taking on a Genocider.

***********
Benyay

The capo and Fire Eater worked out a deal surprisingly easily and then decided to sneak up and lock the Mekkanists in their church. Once they had done so, Fire Eater sent up a quick prayer to Megatron, explaining why he wanted divine help in this matter so as not to help the cult by directly setting the fire by himself.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

Carjack let the notion go uncontested most of the time, but it was actually a misconception that Leader Megatron could wake him up without repercussions. The reality was that he would open fire long before his coding even got to the "identification" part, so the battle would be on even before he knew who he was shooting at. This had led to at least once instance in which Megatron, who was not yet divine, was only able to keep his body because of his extreme level of armor.

As one might expect, Megatron's immediate response was to fire back with superior force, and even then, Carjack was still in battle mode, despite wutting and being quite disoriented, when he came to in a set of boards at Military Intelligence. There, he had been given the choice of either being code read or permanently deleted. Of course, he chose the code read; not only would it likely save his life, but also save him from trying to explain what was, to him, a series of unconscious and not-very-conscious events.

Only after extensive examination were the Military Debuggers able to get through the morass that was ported human code well enough to confirm for sure that yes, Carjack's boot sequence naturally got an instinctual automatic self-defense routine running long before anything resembling a subroutine for identifying a person came online - or any other truly conscious thought was happening, for that matter. Conscious thought only came online after an internal security check showed that no blasting was required. Waking Carjack up was always interpreted as a hostile act and triggered battle, with no serious consciousness involved.

On top of that, there was a strange error in the boot sequence that would send signals of massive physical upheaval to Carjack's internal bug-checking system if defragging or even resting was interrupted by any kind of sudden, outside influence. This would, as one might imagine, cause plenty of both pain and rage on its own - and combined with the presence of anyone in the room, would automatically be seen as the result of a direct assault. The end result was inevitable - battle would instantly begin with full force - but it was all in accordance with the Code as seen on the screen. Carjack was thereby absolved of guilt for what would otherwise have been considered a deliberate attempt to bring on regime change.

Megatron, of course, wanted this to be debugged right away so that recognition came online before battle mode in the boot sequence - and preferably, so being woken up by surprise wouldn't induce any errors. However, after spending many hours trying to figure out exactly how evolution had set up the entire schema - and how Carjack had somewhat ham-handedly changed things around as a human at some point, by willpower and practice alone (which is to say, with no real manual being involved) - and only getting massive crashes when attempting to change anything, Military Debugging AND the top regular Debuggers almost begged for permission to give up. After many days, and Megatron's own examination of the Code, permission was granted. Waking up the General would, forevermore, remain a gravely dangerous proposition for all who tried it - no exceptions whatsoever.

The next day, the soon-to-be-minted Genociders lined up eagerly at the area where the hot-waxing would take place. They not only knew they were getting in, but had also done plenty of looting on Arqa. Since it was done during a real combat mission that did not have raiding as its primary purpose, their loot would be a bonus on top of their combat pay.

At the waxing station, bots who had mostly failed as soldiers did the work of getting them ceremony-ready. Ten full coats of wax were carefully hand-applied and buffed, and after this was done, they each had a "showroom shine" that would put a brand-new Decepticon Parts body to shame.

Soon, it was time to meet up at the Main Assembly Area. Everyone stood at attention as General Carjack walked up on the stage with a stencil and a huge can of spray paint meant for use on metal. A long-time member of the Battalion came up behind him with a can of solvent and a blowtorch. Then, other highly-esteemed members followed, each carrying a can of paint of a different color.

The stage itself had been decorated with skirting that had a Skull and Wrenches symbol on each end and the words "Genocide Battalion Inauguration" written across the front. This pattern was repeated on all four sides of the stage.

Now, Carjack called up the first new member. Once he was on stage and in the prominent central position, the other Genocider taped the stencil on his wings just under his Decepticon Seals. The solvent was then applied. It was a strong chemical, and once heated by the blowtorch, it easily removed the paint in the stencil area. After a quick but vigorous wipe, his Skull and Wrenches-shaped bare metal spot was ready to be repainted with the coveted official symbol.

Now, Carjack attached a can of paint to a large, professional spray-painting kit. He then reapplied the template and sprayed his symbol on. After that, the bot with the torch baked it in with fire. The symbol was then waxed once and polished, so it shined like the rest of his body.

Carjack now announced, in ceremonial style, that "[name] is now and forever a Genocider - one of the elite who cleanses the universe of the Inferiors and prepares the way for the neverending advance of the mighty Decepticon Nation."

Everyone knew by now that Carjack would have loved to say much more, but with over 100 cadets to inaugurate, he had to stick to just that one line for now. It was fine enough for those getting their first Genocider Seals, and the first one stood tall with pride at his new position.

One by one, the others were called up by name, painted, and inaugurated with the same one-sentence statement. Once they were painted, they returned to their former positions. All stood at full attention during the entire ceremony. It was not overly physically tiring for Decepticons to do this like it would be for a biological, though they did secretly get bored waiting for the others after their own turns were done with.

During the first half of the ceremony, Pesticide got his turn. Like the others, he made sure to turn his pain detection off so he wouldn't get any error signals from having the bit of old paint stripped and blowtorched, or the new paint being heat-sealed on. He realized then that Carjack hadn't been calling people up by alphabetical order or even by soldier number. Instead, it seemed to be done at random, perhaps to make it so the same people weren't always either first or last.

All of the new Genociders got Seals that contrasted tastefully with their background colors, hence the many cans of paint that had been brought in. The end result looked great - and, to those who knew what the insignia stood for, at least somewhat scary. This, of course, pleased the new Genociders greatly, and they all were clearly proud to have their lethality so obviously recognized. At this point, even the serial killers who had been drafted weren't too bothered by the loss of their ability to catch people by surprise.

~~~~~~~~~

Despite the celebratory feeling in the air, Carjack didn't give anyone a leave that day. That was because early in the Battalion's history, he tried doing that and the result was that plenty of the new Genociders had decided to show off their skills - right in the streets of Cybertron! Since then, there were no off-base leaves on inauguration days. Instead, the newly-promoted troops would get three days of ON-base leave, with the only instruction (beyond the usual base regulations) being that they not interfere with the operations of any other troops.

~~~~~~~~~~

Benyay

Just as the ICC's undercover bots had warned, the path to the Mekkanist church was invisible from high up - including normal Decepticon standing height. Fire Eater used his size-and-density changer to shrink down, though he kept his usual appearance other than that. Then, he, the capo, and the drug mule all went up a tiny footpath.

About halfway up, a bear came down the path. When he saw the trio, he got an expression indicating that he was considering an attack. Fire Eater strode forward and gave a loud rev, but the creature was not deterred. He bounded forward as if to attack, but once he got very close, he stopped. He sniffed the air, glanced at each being, and then suddenly lost interest. Without even a snort, he went off into the woods.

"We learned long ago not to make these bodies smell legit," the capo said. "It greatly cuts down on both bear and snake attacks. Once they get close enough to smell our machine nature, their instincts stop telling them that we're potential threats. Stay on your guard, though...some of them don't pause long enough to even care about how we smell. While that won't bother your form, ours have this fake fur coating, so we have to delete them before they can bite against it so they don't expose our metal."

No other bears came out on the way up, but Fire Eater kept that in mind. Soon, they arrived at the church, which was currently in service. Loud singing, of the pro-Autobot version of what Fire Eater knew only as the Decepticon National Anthem, was going on. He revved in rage when he heard the part that said "Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons!" Even so, he otherwise kept his cool. He realized that the loud singing could easily cover up the sound of what they would soon be doing outside.

Quietly, the three collected thick branches by cutting them off with as low a power of blaster fire as they could get to work. This kept the telltale pew-pewing noise to a minimum, and it was easily drowned out by the Mekkanist's extended version of the theme. Then, in time with the beat, they bolted the branches over the door using parts from their field repair kits. Not all of the parts were actual bolts, but they were shaped well enough to work. For good measure, Fire Eater heated the metal hinges of the door until their parts welded together.

Then, they went around and very sneakily collected more branches. There were two large windows, one on each side, and then another one behind the altar. It would be trickier to cover these without being seen!

Slowly, they put the leafiest branches against one window, and once they were sure it had been assumed to be part of a nearby tree, they hammered the other branches up behind it - making sure to keep the noise in time with the song so it seemed like the church simply had some unseen new drummer banging on its seats. This was carefully repeated at the other window.

Now, it was time for the coup de gras: the calling down of the lightning. Decepticons, as a rule, liked those who they were about to defeat to know exactly who defeated them, so Fire Eater enlarged enough to end up looking directly into the altar window with his red eyes glowing with the clarity of one who was about to pull off a grand plan. Then, he prayed for Leader Megatron to send the lightning down upon the infidels and blasphemers who followed the Autobot Way!

As soon as the congregation saw his red eyes, it panicked and ran for the door - only to find it immobilized. Many began to stampede into each other, damaging each other in the process, before some decided to try the windows. There, more Mekkanists piled into each other as they couldn't get out even after breaking the glass. The altar window was out of the question for them; they were far too afraid of the giant Decepticon face menacingly looking through it.

"The Metal Devils are real! They have come for us!" Some screamed with great despair. Others cried out for "Prophet Optius" to send his spirit to save them! Then the thunder boomed.

"Idiots!" Came Megatron's voice from all around, rumbling the walls of the decently-made building. "You don't even know the name of your so-called prophet, yet you consider yourself religious?" Derisive laughter was heard. "The name was OptiMUS. And he was never a prophet; he was a silly politician with silly ideas. He is dead by my hand. And now, you shall die by heat and fire, just like the Autobot leader you stupidly chose to follow!"

With that, lightning crashed into the most flammable parts of the roof as well as the wall near the altar window. Immediately, the structure was set ablaze, and thanks to the strikes on the wall, even that exit was now completely blocked. A downward wind soon came, spreading the fire down from the roof to the other walls. Panicked screams, themselves scary enough to make a biological's blood run cold, filled the air. Fire Eater and the other Decepticons backed away from the now exceedingly hot building, with the ICC ones going even further away so their "fur" didn't get scorched.

As the Mekkanists tried to brave the flames enough to climb out of the now-deadly building, they saw those flames supernaturally change shape. There, they saw the sign that they had been taught to fear all of their lives: The Decepticon Seal. Then, some more lightning came down, igniting several more points in the interior of the "Church of Optius," and the view was totally obscured by fire. Within a couple more minutes, all was silent other than the popping of the dry wood.

Miraculously, the fire did not spread to the surrounding forest except for a few token blazelets that were most likely intentionally set to make it look more legit. Less than 1/2-hour later, the building was completely gone, and nothing was left of the Mekkanist cult's attending members but charred bones. Then, a big rain came down, extinguishing the fire and ensuring that the forest - and the ICC hiding places within - wouldn't become collateral damage.

"You have done well," Megatron's voice said once the fire was out. A strange, divinely supernatural - but not sublime - feeling came in the air. "However, there are three of those scum still in this realm. They are staying in the nearest big city in Benyay. They must be eradicated, lest they restart this disgusting little 'religion.' I would blast them the same as these, but my calculations show that the Benyan government would respond to a deadly miracle by saying that it should stick to atheism in order to avoid attracting 'religious nonsense'. That would be bad PR, and make it temporarily harder to spread Megatronism, or any other religion..."

His voice now addressed the ICC agents. "You ICC, you shall be the instrument that cuts the rest of the line off from its root. Assassinate these three. Two are in the Hotel Megopolis, and one is just coming back from narking on some of you at the Anti-Drug Force building in the city. Intercept the nark on your way into the city and make sure he never completes his journey back here. Then continue on to the hotel and take care of those two however you'd like...without getting busted, of course..."

The strange feeling went away. Fire Eater and the other two were clearly on their own once more.

Back at the new Megatronist temple, things were about to get more serious. The Space Agency's soldiers were just coming up the road, complete with shoulder-fired rocket launchers and a rather large howitzer. They weren't working with the rest of the UC of Ceridignon's military, but instead, intended to seize a robot for their own plans of reverse-engineering. Soon, they would have their weapons within range of Loyal Star, who was busy looking in the direction the military had been coming from. His giant form loomed up over the tree line, and once the Agency troops were within range, they would fire the howitzer, not realizing just how big of a hole they'd have to make (or how perfectly they'd have to aim with a smaller explosive shell) to deactivate, rather than hurt and enrage, their target.

[Vallermoore]

Main Military Base

Pesticide felt very pleased and proud when he had his Skull and Wrenches symbol formally added to his body. He had gone through more then most bots to own it. He had passed a written test and a survival test as a sapient pony, had been code read and become a Deception robot, had survived numerous battles with other bots who could very easily have killed him outright-compared to all of that, Genocider training had been easy. And now he would be able to do what he wanted most-to wipe others out. Once the ceremony was over he touched his new symbol and walked around the base showing it off for an hour or so, feeling like he did when as a foal, he had got his shining new razorback boomerang cutie mark.

Benyay

When the Space Agency tried to kneecap Loyal Star, it dented the fluted armour and it hurt. Loyal Star decided to let loose holy fusion fire on them-as he was on duty and certainly had not done or said anything to start the fight apart from just being there, it cremated the humans so only smoking boots were left and exploded the cannon. Annoyed, he claimed their souls for Leader Megatron. He could understand being blasted if he raided somewhere or otherwise caused trouble, but he had just been minding his own business and not even breaking the laws.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

The other Trainers were clearly annoyed as a few hundred new Genociders started prancing everywhere and showing off. This distracted their cadets and even scared a few, who were worried that the new inductees would decide to demonstrate their skills as well as their symbols. Fortunately for them, nobody did that, or at least, not yet. In fact, new inductees were the most likely to be on their toes. It was only after sitting around the base for a long time that Genociders got bored...and more randomly dangerous.

Later, Pesticide would be surprised to learn that many members of the Decepticon Military, including its special branches, were to begin practicing for a massive airshow.

"We've just found out that it won't be long until the DomIntel Supercomputer recognizes the sapience of the 20 billionth Decepticon," a Trainer who had been sent to spread the news informed everyone in the barracks. "In celebration, we're going to have a mass airshow. We don't know exactly when it will happen, but judging by our population growth, it'll be somewhere between the next one and three weeks. Here are chips with the flight patterns we need to practice." He handed them out. "These patterns are used only for show, but they can be easily modified into battle patterns if any fool foreigners are suicidal enough to attack while we're already flying."

It felt strange to Pesticide to celebrate the anticipated arrival of new life. He would much rather deactivate 20 billion targets! However, he knew that it was important for PR to have the Genocide Battalion present in this "aerial march" along with the rest of the overt Battalions, Divisions, and other such groupings. Most of those in the show, of course, would be regulars. For them, their sheer numbers would be the impressive part.

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

UC of Ceridignon

The Space Agency group didn't last long at all, and the final thing they saw was Loyal Star's angry, yet bewildered face as he opened fire on them. What kind of fire it was made no difference to the tiny creatures, who would have been just as vaporized by the blasts from a scout's downsized weaponry.

As Loyal Star thought about it, he remembered that the SEDP had mentioned that Decepticons often got such reactions from what they considered primitive, but not ultra-primitive, planets. When their first scouts had gone to Earth a half-century before its invasion, someone had managed to shoot one down near a place they called "Area 51." Fortunately for the Decepticons, the humans had gone off looking for "the pilot," and when they did that, ForIntel had replaced the body with one that used bogus, non-functional "technology" in order to prevent reverse engineering. The reason for the shootdown had turned out to be simple: The scout had simply gotten within range.

Planets at this technology level, it seemed, simply responded to aliens of all sorts by trying to delete them, dissect them, or dismantle them. Loyal Star looked down and saw the Space Agency symbol and writing on the charred side of the howitzer, and guessed that they had wanted to reverse-engineer him. Space agencies, as a rule, had the more-scientific types working for them. Meanwhile, armies were there to destroy.

Loyal Star now hoped that Fire Eater would come back fast. Maybe the High Priest would be able to talk to one of the UC's leaders and get him to be more sensible. He paused a moment, though, and silently wondered if being peaceful actually was the sensible thing for the UC - and in fact, this entire plant - to do. After all, they were indeed there to delete one group and also spread Megatronism to the planet. He knew that the point of spreading his religion was to someday pave the way for the planet to first become a Decepticon vassal, and then to get fully absorbed into the Empire! Maybe the violence code, despite being the result of blind evolution, was actually the most sensible one. By having this Code in their DNA, the UC's people were much less likely to fall for foreign machinations.

Then again, Megatron was not one who would just give up if his more-peaceful attempts didn't work. If the priests couldn't take this planet by religious fiat, then the Military would take it the old-fashioned way. At best, Loyal Star knew, the planet would buy itself a few more years of self-rule. Then, one way or another, it would become Decepticon property. He hoped that he and Fire Eater would be able to convert the people, so that they would actually want Megatron to rule them. This way, the people could become loyal followers instead of just more expendable "livestock" for the mining system.

[Vallermoore]

Military Base

The trainers looked dark eyed at Pesticide and let out a few angry revs at his arrogance as he paraded himself around the base, but as he didn't disobey any base regulations or interfere with any troops, they couldn't do anything. Pesticide had the permission of no less then General Carjack to be on leave, and they understood why the Genociders could not be allowed exspecially now to leave the base, as they would cause chaos in the streets of Cybertron. Once when they were allowed leave outside the base just after earning their Skulls and Wrenches they decided to get together, act as a unit, turn on their jammers and cut a swathe through the local Decepticon population. General Carjack had to order them back to base before they started an outright civil war and make it clear that in future that sort of thing was Not Allowed and would be treated as mutiny if it ever happened again. "Decepticons do not genocide each other, or our Empire will fall."

Soon enough Pesticide was training for the air show and was rather looking forward to it. As part of a grand military parade he would get to fly over the Government District and even the Megatron Mansion and see it with his ground facing cameras. On their very first parade drill General Carjack told them that there might be a small number of biological tourists watching from the ground. "As long as they do and say nothing wrong, you are to resist blasting them. That is a direct order from me. We want them to see how mighty we are as it might put their countries off from doing anything utterly stupid. If the biologicals were spies Domintel would find out and deal with them."

******
UC of Ceredigion

Loyal Star soon deleted the biologicals and realised that they were trying to destroy him so they could reuse his parts for space travel and other such things. He said in Binary "No wonder you don't get many visitors from space- you are as dangerous to space travelers as Cybertron is to non Decepticons or even more so. There is no way I will let you bust my body. If you reject Megatronism, the Decepticon Military and maybe even the Genocide Battalion will show up and take this place over. The universe belongs to us, the Decepticons." Then he radioed Fire Eater with the news of how they tried to bust up his body.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

As he was warned, things soon got boring for the Genociders. There was plenty of air practice and range work, mostly to keep them occupied, but everyone was itching for the sights and sounds of terrified, doomed, REAL targets scrambling for their lives.

Then, one day, they saw all of the High Generals fly in along with Leader Megatron. It didn't take long for Pesticide to figure that they might end up involved in whatever was being planned. Almost all of the long-time Battalion members perked up, and even those who refused to show any facial expressions besides glowers were clearly running more smoothly.

"Looks like an invasion is coming," one of the newer, but not brand-new, Genociders said to Pesticide. "They're all here, and that means they're coming up with a unified plan. I hope we'll get to seize the target." He outright chuckled like a cartoon bad guy. "Whenever we seize a place, there are insurgents that have to go..." He rubbed his hands together a couple of times before quickly stopping. Though no one spoke of their origins, he clearly was a biological at some point, and had forgotten that rubbing unlubricated metal against more of the same didn't produce a good feeling - at least, until he did it, and his damage sensors immediately warned him to knock it off.

Pesticide pretended he didn't notice the gesture, and agreed that he hoped a big invasion would be coming soon.

~~~~~~~~~~

Strategy Room

"Copper." Megatron announced, showing a big holographic map of a planet right in the same galaxy. "We have plenty of iron, and loads of silicon, but we don't have enough copper. It's cheap on a lot of planets, but that's because those people don't really need a lot of it. That makes it so that their idea of 'plenty of copper' isn't really all that much. We, however, need quite a lot of it. Most of us still use copper traces for our boards - miles of it per board, if you ran it out in a straight line. We've all but run out of Earthian copper, and many of our other planets will run out of it soon. It has reached the point where it is now cheaper to seize a copper-rich planet than it is to mine the last of what we have."

Everyone present didn't even need to discuss which option to choose. The Empire would be expanding.

"This planet here," Megatron went on, "is very unique for a rock world. Unlike most such planets, which have molten iron centers - and iron easily found throughout the higher layers - this one is predominately copper from the crust to the core. There is so much copper there that it colors the skin of the inhabitants."

General Soundwave now spoke up. He opened with pictures of somewhat humanoid beings with metallic, coppery skin - and hard, beetle-type shells on their backs. One picture answered everyone's immediate question; in it, the being was flying with the shells fully open and gossamer wings now extended and doing the work. "These things like to collect in big groups like roaches. They appear to follow the biggest, healthiest, creature without question. It will be quite easy to get them to mine for us with that sort of social system. WE are the biggest, and since shell shine is an indicator of health, about 15 coats of fine wax should be all an overseer needs to take command."

Soundwave now showed some other pictures. These creatures looked much the same, but instead of being the color of new copper, they were a tarnished green shade. "THESE will be the problems. That green color is from copper, but it has tarnished. According to Biological Research's DNA analysis, this effect results from the loss of an antioxidant enzyme that keeps the majority population from internal oxidation. The problem for us, is that this mutation also caused them to lose their instinctual following drive. In short, they can and will rebel on us. Since they have, so far, been oppressed by the majority, they may even try to take over so that they can gain the leadership position. They believe that they should be in charge thanks to their ability to make their own decisions. The only reason they haven't done it already is that the current leaders always order their mindless hordes to attack them if they do so much as look at them wrong."

Skywarp asked, "So are they all non-sapient, or can the leaders think?"

Soundwave said, "The leaders are the only ones that think. However, if a leader falls, the next-most impressive one becomes the leader. This causes a biological change in the new leader that unlocks his sapience. The change also produces pheromones and appearance changes that cause the swarm to follow him. It all only takes a few days. In order for us to win, we'll need to kill all of the current swarm leaders and immediately install ourselves as the replacements - before any competitors arise. Alternatively, if we can cow the current leaders under, they'll lose their leadership status automatically. However, as we know from ourselves, once a being has had his sapience unlocked, he'll fight to the death rather than give it up..." He glanced over at Megatron.

The others listened silently, figuring out what parts their divisions would play.

Megatron didn't let them wonder for long. "First, we'll fly in and show their little 1,000-roach clans what a SWARM really is. We'll then broadcast our ultimatum: Surrender or die. I expect about 1 in 1,000 leaders will do it - maybe less. We'll set up camps away from the cities, and those that surrender will be kept there and guarded. The guarding will be to protect them from the non-surrenderers, who may try to massacre them for their treason."

"Then, it'll be time to try to collect more to our side. I and about 10,000 troops will land, with our extra coats of wax, in the less-defended areas. Some of their leaders will automatically lose their positions by their biological processes, but others won't. This, Biological Research says, depends on whether they have the gene for species-specific leadership recognition or not. If their biological systems don't care that we are robots, we automatically win. Those who fall this way will be taken to the guarded camps like the others; they will now be ours to command."

"And then, there are the others. This will be most of the population. We will have to take them by force, killing their leaders whenever possible and making our strength and shine undeniable. Without suitable existing leaders, those swarms will almost all follow us since it's either that or be completely leaderless. A swarm of this species tends to just die off over time if it has no leader..."

"Finally, there are the Tarnished Ones." Megatron now looked at Carjack. "We will just exterminate those. We do not need to put up with creatures that can create ongoing rebellions when there are billions of others that cannot."

"Of course," Megatron concluded, "Once we take over, the fate of all of the survivors will be simple: Their swarms will be broken up from their normal 1,000-member hordes and put into groups no larger than 100. Then, they'll be put to work in existing mines, and where there aren't any existing mines, put to work changing that fact. At first, we - the Military - will run the mines. But over time, the mines will be sold off to various private individuals to run."

"Oh, there is one last thing: Biological Research says these beings reproduce by parthenogenesis as well as sexually. They also love to hide their eggs really well. So, mine conditions will be harsh, lest we be overrun by the things. We'll also ensure that there is nowhere to *hide* any eggs. That way, we can collect them and sell them to other planets as delicacies, and we won't end up with a surprise infestation. Speaking of the eggs, they don't just lay one at a time. They lay clutches of 10,000 tiny ones per estrus, mated or not. About 1,000 will hatch, and 100 of those would normally make it to adulthood. So we will sell them as 'roe' instead like chicken eggs. It might even be worth it to farm them if there's enough of a market for that."

Everyone thought the plan sounded great. Since the non-leading members of the species weren't even sapient, the idea of butchering them for their roe - which already wouldn't have been much of a concern other than the hassle of trying to get those eggs from such tiny creatures - was absolutely no problem at all. General Carjack was especially fond of the idea since it'd mean another product for Carjack Agriculture to sell, as well as the chance to run a slaughter line. If Megatron did the promoting, that was even better - there'd be ready-made customers.

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

Soon, all of the High Generals and Megatron flew to their respective parts of the base to choose which soldiers would come. Most picked according to soldier number, taking, for example, everyone whose numbers ended in 5 or 9. However, all of those in the special divisions that were deemed relevant got to come, ranging from the Paranormal Division (which would help find especially large caches of eggs) to the Genociders.

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

UC of Ceridignon

In the middle of the night, after seeing that the Mekkanist church and its currently-present members were utterly destroyed, Fire Eater made his way back to the Temple with his cloaking on. He was dismayed to find it quite damaged, with plenty of burned-up UC military hardware scattered about.

Fire Eater landed with a dejected look. "It appears I chose a bad town for us to land in," he said. "And, perhaps, this entire continent isn't ready for conversion except for a few people. At least, not if we're in the open like this. I shall radio the First Temple and see if they'll agree to send us some androids to use instead. Then, we can go somewhere else, land as if we're regular - but futuristic - planes, and then switch to those new bodies to disembark. But for now, they have obviously attacked you full-on. This means that we must show whatever base they're coming from that doing that was a very bad idea. Otherwise, they'll think that they ran us off with their puny 'force,' and we can't have that. They must learn that the Decepticons are not to be messed with..."

It was obvious that Fire Eater was disappointed by the UC's hostility, and Loyal Star was still more than irked about the little beings having tried to deactivate him.

[Vallermoore]

Main Military Base

Pesticide had expected that one of the main foes of a Genocider (and the hardest to fight) would be boredom. He enjoyed the training, played cards and chess and the internal games that he had brought earlier from the proper shop, talked to other bots ( being careful not to out himself as a former pony as to them, this would not go down well to say the least) rested, and watched the other troops as they went about their business. One day he saw all the High Generals ( who bore special symbols on their tails in plane mode) fly in with Leader Megatron and go to a room to talk and plan in private.

Rumours were soon winging there way around the base about a new battle. Bored dull eyes brightened a nice shade of red. Engines run better. Amongst the Genocide Battalion excitement was in the air. They would be needed and get a chance to show off their talents again. Of course Pesticide said nothing when a bot near him rubbed his hands with glee and caused them to give off pain signals-but he did think to himself that the bot was most likely a human once.

**********

Stratagy Room

General ThunderCracker said "These aliens look rather like unchanged changelings. Do they have the ability to drain us if we don't have our anti-changeling shields turned on?" He had a point-they did look very changeling-like and it would be an unpleasant shock if it turned out that they were able to drain Decepticons. He liked to know what he was going up against if possible.

UC of Ceridignon

"When the Decepticon Military and if nesscessary the Genocide Battalion shows up to take this world by force, then they will wish that they had become Megatronists when they had the chance. Let's show that base what happens to weak little biologicals who attack Priests of Megatron." Loyal Star looked forward to some revenge.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base
Strategy Room

"Changelings? We've seen no indication that they have any abilities to change, or in fact, that they have any magical capabilities at all," Soundwave responded. "Plus, they are of bipedal form, while the Changelings are quadrupeds in their natural mode. These also have no weird holes in them, thankfully..." He looked a bit disturbed at the thought of the Changelings' unchanged, hole-filled forms. "I think it's safe - well, at least as 'safe' as a war will ever be - to just barge in."

Leader Megatron agreed with Soundwave. "Our scouts have experienced nothing to indicate that they have any special skills," he said. "The entire species, including the mutated variant, seems rather primitive in terms of biological abilities. In fact, the lack of universal sapience among them is likely an adaptation to an inability to get much food that beset them for a long period at some point in their history. There are no other sapients on their planet that they could use as prey like a Changeling would, so there would be no reason for them to have developed such a capacity. Instead, it seems that they adapted to have their brains use less energy, at the cost of the sapience of the majority of their people. This, of course, was an evolutionary adaptation, not one they planned on."

"Now, the few who can think have developed agriculture and many other things, and order their swarms to carry out the work, but it takes a long time for beta code to change to adapt to such things. We estimate that it would take at least 100,000 years for evolution to properly put the calories they take in back into bigger and more-functional brains."

Soon, the meeting ended. Now, it was time to inform the troops that they were soon going to see some action.

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

It wasn't long before the calls to assembly sounded off across the base. When a call went out, there was actually a half-hour for each base's troops to assemble in the areas designated for their divisions.This gave everyone a chance to wrap up what they were doing, so there would be no mishaps like machines left running or spray-wax hoses left on and making a mess. It also lowered the chance of random troops missing half of the orders because they couldn't get there instantly.

Even special groups like the Genociders were to assemble along with the regulars assigned to the High General that led them, though secret groups would be given orders separately. The Genociders were far from being a secret group, so this meant Pesticide would report to Carjack's quite large main area.

~~~~~~~~~~

Soon enough, everyone except the rank novices were lined up and standing at attention. General Carjack sat on the edge of the stage looking bored for ten more minutes. He wasn't concerned about punctuality himself, and as the High General, he had unintentionally set a strong example for his division. Slowly, his troops moseyed up, some gliding in without even bothering to run their jets, and others strolling into their locations. Once on the battlefield, though, everyone in his division would be flying in synchrony with all of the other troops, and the pace would pick up by an order of magnitude.

After the 10 minutes was up, Carjack stood up with an authoritative air. Everyone could tell that now, it was time to get down to business.

"The time has come for the Empire to expand!" Carjack began. "Tonight, we will be taking off for Planet A19. It is in our galaxy, so it won't be a long flight. The goal is to seize it completely so that we can gain control of all of its copper. I'm sure you've noticed that the price of this metal has been spiking. Once we take A19, that problem will soon be fixed."

After this short intro, Carjack went into the details of flight formations, battle plans, and the population. "Genociders, you will be getting rid of those copper-rusty ones as your first order of business. Then, if any swarms refuse to surrender and the snipers can't get their leaders, you will delete those, too. But first, go after the ones that are color-coded for our convenience."

Once the details were given out, Carjack used about 20 minutes to pump up the excitement level and get everybody revving to go to war. This was his favorite part of speaking to the troops, and soon, his own excitement had everybody fully awake and ready to rumble.

"Between now and takeoff time at 9PM, fill up your tanks and your spare Cubes with Energon. Then, give yourselves 10 fresh coats of wax. Each one of us should look shinier and more impressive than any of the enemy leaders so that the non-sapients will want to follow our commands!"

As the High Generals gave out their orders, each according to their own style, giant screens in the planet's other bases relayed the scenes to the soldiers in those locations. Soon, everyone was getting ready as ordered.

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

UC of Ceridignon

It didn't take much for Loyal Star and Fire Eater to find the offending military base. Its tanks had left obvious tracks across their field, which they soon followed to a road. By looking at the angle the tracks left the road, they could tell which direction they came from. Soon, they were marching down that same road as sternly as they could while avoiding stepping on random civilians in their cars. Behind them, they could hear a few cars crashing into each other as their drivers became distracted by the totally amazing sight of giant robots. Within minutes, traffic was hopelessly snarled in both directions, and the priests had to walk off to the side of it to get anywhere without just stomping on the giant traffic jam.

Above them, they saw their first news helicopter as well as a couple of police ones. They ignored these, and continued on to the base.

There, they decided to use one of the 2-bot formations they learned in the Military. Both would attack from one side of the base, since the goal was to make a point more than to try to kill every living thing within it. In fact, soldiers leaking out the back of the base was good - it would leave plenty of people to spread the tale of what just two Decepticons could do.

Once that was decided, they marched right through the bar at the entry checkpoint at the front of the base's driveway, turning it into splinters, and then continued on to the more-serious gate in front of the base proper. There, they marched right through that, turning its cyclone-fence-style metal into a mangled mass. Then, they took battle stances.

"You have attacked Priests of Megatron, and now you shall know our wrath!" Fire Eater yelled out. With that, the pair opened fire, and almost instantly destroyed or ignited several nearby buildings. Alarms sounded all over the base, and within an instant, troops began to run out of the remaining buildings with old-fashioned sub-machine guns. Those in the burning buildings were running out too, but they were just trying to escape the flames.

Though Fire Eater looked properly tough, inside, his mind was racing. What would they do next? Should they bother to try to infiltrate as androids from a location the UC wouldn't expect? Or should he consider it a lost cause? He decided that he would radio the First Temple of Cybertron after this battle and pass the buck to Warfire. Of course, he wouldn't outright SAY he was passing the buck...

[Vallermoore]

Main Military Base, Strategy Room

"That is a relief, I look forward to the battle ," said General ThunderCracker. During the invasion of Equestria before any anti-changeling shields had been invented he had very nearly suffered an unfortunate event which only his quick reflexes and expert blasters had saved him from when some changelings had started draining away his love of everything Decepticon. As it was, some parts of his body had gone offline for a few seconds, making him think he would faint and after the battle was over he had gone to Debugging to remove a totally unwanted fear of changelings. There was no shame on Cybertron about a Debugging visit-in the long term if Decepticons could never Debug, insanity would be the result and that would certainly weaken the nation. Uniquely in the Empire, Debuggers could not legally be forcibly hacked by Domintel to take the information about their clients, because then the Decepticon Nation would stop using them if it led to the smelting pit.

Military Base

Soon enough Pesticide was listening to General Carjack and memorising the important parts of what he had to say. Soon the Genocide Battalion would be able to practice its deadly trade once more and excitement ran like an electric current through it from bot to bot. Soon they were clean, waxed and ready.

UC of Ceridignon

The priests avoided deliberately squashing harmless civilians who had neither said nor done anything to deserve it. They were not Genociders after all. The base, on the other hand, they reduced to ruins and rubble, killing any soldiers who dared to open fire at them with their blasters, as they wanted to make it crystal clear what Megatronist Priests did if they were attacked. Then they flew a few dozen miles away and transformed. "I think you should tell High Priest Warfire what happened as you are the senior Priest here. If anyone knows what to do it will be him," Loyal Star said. Looking at Fire Eater his mind boards were full of memories of the kindly Priest who had accepted him when he was a mere sapient pony and taught him true Megatronism.

Somewhere in the galaxy

After the last raid went wrong and lost the whole gang their bodies, Spectre was looking for a new target with his camouflage turned on. He saw a transformed Decepticon that he knew and was on speaking rather than blasting terms with who was a member of a small gang that called itself the Big 5. The bot was speaking on friendly terms with a human policeman and he decided to spy for fun. To his horror he found the bot was informing on various planned raids and scams of other Deceptions and even gave the humans a Decepticon jammer. Videoing the scene he sent the vid to Remediator, and in doing so caught the Big 5 bot admitting to foiling Remediator's latest raid and to the gang deciding to make a living as police informants. Back on Cybertron Remediator was drinking a Cube of Energon when he downloaded the vid.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

As everyone was getting ready, Pesticide was surprised to hear the roar of jets grow even louder than it usually was. He looked up, and saw thousands of raid gangs flying off into space in the direction of their intended target. Almost immediately, he remembered the strategy of letting independent raiders have the first crack at a designated enemy. Some of them would get lucky and be able to take all of the loot they could hold, but many would end up getting blasted. This would cause the enemy to waste a lot of ammo and lose their "fresh" status, regardless of how many raiders it managed to intercept.

By the time the troops were ready to carry out the main plan, the raiders were about 5 hours ahead. Since they hadn't been told anything about how the civilians worked, they wouldn't become competition for what the Military really wanted: the copper mines, the slaves to work them, and the planet itself. Instead, the raiders would almost surely focus on taking any oil they found as well as anything on the surface that wasn't bolted down. In fact, even if it was bolted down, they'd still take it if it was seen as valuable enough to bother to get out a wrench and disconnect it.

~~~~~~~~~

Soon, the order came out for everyone to get into formation. Everyone's engine revved eagerly, and within minutes after the formations were ready. They would fly toward the target in a huge swarm, but when they were about two planets' distance away, they were to break up into smaller groups. "Smaller," in this case, was relative - they would be going in using 100,000-bot formations. These would then simultaneously attack the entire planet at once, making it impossible for the enemy to adjust the placements of its defensive weaponry in time to defend anything besides what was already covered by its current locations. Megatron's division, the elites, would then attack the most well-defended areas since it had the lowest chance of getting shot down even by serious defenses. The others would take on less-defended, but not necessarily smaller, cities and towns.

Once the initial onslaught was finished, the Genociders and other special groups would split off from their bigger divisions and take care of their unique duties.

~~~~~~~~~~~

When they arrived at Planet A-1-9, the raiders had already turned significant swaths of the populated areas into rubble. To Megatron's delight, one of the gangs - the Cybertronian Business Association - had managed to raid the biggest refinery on the planet, thereby depriving its military of much-needed gasoline. Thanks to this, its military would only have enough fuel on hand to run all of its equipment for a single day, after which they would have to allow much of its mechanized force to sit dormant. Megatron also saw that one raider had figured out that looking flashy and huge was a Very Good Thing here. This raider had an entire swarm of biologicals following him like loyal dogs, and was ordering it to do his looting for him. It was obediently doing so, and even putting the loot onto a big hover-cart that he had with him.

It didn't take long for Soundwave to send one of his troops to interview this raider, and he learned that all it took to get this effect was to kill the old leader in front of the swarm and then loudly claim that he was the new one. "They're just biological AIs," the raider said with a tone that made it clear that he looked down on them. "I thought I'd never see a species dumber than humans, but here it is. As soon as I did that, I not only got a bunch of drones to do all of my work for me, but the other swarms stayed away. I think their leaders are afraid I'll steal their drones, too - and they're right!"

Soundwave's soldier didn't say so, but he knew that this raider would have a whole lot of competition in about 10 minutes.

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

The defenders were almost pre-beaten due to the fact that even in their military bases, only the very top leader was sapient. The huge amounts of troops, even if they came from all different swarms, de-sapientized once another one was recognized as the leader. This made it so that each base was effectively just one guy with a whole lot of mindless drones.

Even so, there were plenty of them in the air in fighter planes engaging the raider front as the real Military began to come in. Each base/swarm had its own fighting pattern, which was set by the sapient one of that base. Still, it didn't take long for the Decepticons to figure out all of these and begin to shoot them down video game style. None of the Decepticons missed the irony of being the ones to figure out AI patterns being used by biologicals. The Decepticon Military put a lot of effort into ensuring that their patterns were NOT immutable and that there was enough chaos inherent in them all to thwart such things, yet here were billions of biologicals with that very weakness.

Still, Megatron warned over the secret Military frequency that they had better not let down their guard. "All it takes is one in the right position who figures out how to win, and gets the right orders out to the rest, and this war could get serious," he cautioned. "Because of that, we will now be jamming all standard communication frequencies to ensure that no such orders go anywhere!" He then added. Right after that, static filled all but the highly-secret mind-transfer frequencies and the Decepticons' military command frequency - frequencies which were all outside of the range of the target's normal communications equipment.

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

On the ground, the strange insect-looking people were mostly either huddled in huge groups, roach-style, or running around like ants. The ones running around, it turned out, had lost their leaders and had not yet come to accept new ones. Some, however, were - as Megatron had warned - going around in very organized ways. Often, one could easily be seen that was physically superior to the others, waving and pointing and clearly serving as their controller. These would often make their way to some sort of weapon system and begin firing it at the invaders. Usually, this came to naught, but as the real Military approached, they could see a few downed raiders near these positions.

~~~~~~~~~~~

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater radioed the Main Temple, and it wasn't long before he was put through to Warfire.

After hearing what had happened, Warfire responded, "We will sneak a shipment to you at this dirt-path 'airfield' 50 miles inland from there. There, you will find two android bodies. These will come complete with 1,000 UC Notes each, as well as passports that indicate that they are from New Ceri, a vassal of the UC that happens to speak the same language. Transform into plane mode, and then mind-transfer to the androids."

"From there, walk out and go to the town nearby. There's a long-trip bus station there. Take the bus to Port City. Like most places with 'city' right in the name, it's actually a podunk town. This one, however, is far from any military bases. Don't set up a Temple there, though. That town is very conservative and won't dream of converting. It also doesn't stay up at night, and for you, that's a good thing. Once they roll up the streets and go to bed at 11, wait a couple more hours and then hike to the next town over...at 1AM. Even the one cop will be asleep by then."

"When you get to the next town, you'll find a thriving party atmosphere, and you'll also know where all of the teenagers in Port City went to!" Warfire chuckled. "There, find the dealer who serves the raves that are always going on, and mention that you have a deal with that other capo. Then, quietly set up your Temple. Once you get it open, the ICC should pack about half of your seats with 'young,' fake converts that will tell everyone how cool Megatronism is. Once word gets around, be sure to have a big program for the young schoolchildren ready to go. The teenagers are a bit too old to have the Code of Megatron written within them, but the grade-schoolers will...and your job will be to let them know that Megatron, and not whoever their usual religion calls the Bad Guy, is the one they need to be following. Remember that all other religions' Bad Guys are the competition and would hack us as soon as look at us!"

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

Cybertron

Remediator was lucky that Decepticons had no spit-take reflex, or else his holovision set would have been doused with Energon.

"They're narking for nothing?! Not even for revenge?" He was flabbergasted. He also didn't consider an informant's fee to be "something." Such bribes were always too small to sway any proper Decepticon, who could raid several times what any government would pay for information!

"Get all of the information you can on this 'Big 5.' Then come back here as soon as you can, so we can put that data to use when we send them where they belong!" He played a sound effect of boiling metal. "For now, we'll keep that information to ourselves so these cowards don't all fly off in different directions before we're ready. If he detects you, pretend you heard nothing - then we can catch them by surprise when they're all together and thinking they're safe." Remediator's voice was hard and angry. There would surely be gang warfare as soon as Remediator and his gang had made sure that they had the strength to win and a good plan to make sure (as sure as possible) that they would be victorious.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Remediator sent urgent radio messages to his gang that something very important had come up and they were to meet him as soon as possible. Once they were there he told them "Remember the failure of our last raid? Well, Spectre, who will be back in a few hours at most, found out why it failed. That Big 5 gang that we once did a major raid with on an oil facility too big for us to tackle and split the loot with? They have turned into," and here his eyes darkened and he spat the words out with hatred " police informers! They are informing on gangs like ours who they don't even have a beef with-it's not even for revenge! to biologicals, and selling the biologicals Decepticon jammers!! On Cybertron, Domintel knows all, at least unless lengthy precautions are done-but when it comes to traitors, Domintel would love it if vigilantes did their job for them." He showed the gang what Spectre had sent him, and there was much angry revving. Narks were heartily hated by all true Decepticons-and even more so if their raids had been foiled by them. "When Spectre returned and announced that he had found out that this gang was planning to sell a Decepticon body to humans and where they were going to get it from and were going to, they prepared for battle and decided to turn the narks into dead metal themselves.

Main Military Base/Planet A19

Pesticide was pleased when he heard the roar of the jet engines of the Raider Front. It meant that it would be less dangerous for him, as a lot of the SAMs and other genuinely dangerous ammunition would be used on the Raiders. Soon enough the regiments including the Genociders took off and the excitement grew. The final orders were given by Megatron before they set off into FTL. "For now, the non-generals are to maintain radio silence except in an emergency. Until you get the OK to talk and then you can curse the foe as much as you like. Set your radios to military frequency or you'll hear all the chatter of the Raider Front and won't be able to hear any orders. And of course, it goes without saying-keep your jammers off or another bot will blast you for endangering the whole unit. You don't need them anyway as we are fighting biologicals. DECEPTICONS, ATTACK!" They went into FTL and soon enough they were over the planet and the battle began.

Pesticide was careful to target the dark green-copper roaches, but he also blasted at every roach of any colour that attacked him or got in the way. He dodged a SAM, got in a short dogfight with a fighter plane, shot it down, and then a jamming field blanketed the area. "TURN THAT OFF NOW!" shouted Megatron angrily, and the other bots protested that it was not them. After two minites someone found it was coming from a building and called in a bomber that blew it up. It appeared that the roaches had at least one jammer. General Soundwave called Forintel and in a few minites they sent the infomation back that a Decepticon gang called the Big 5 had sold the jammer to the roaches but that the only reason that Domintel had not acted already was that another gang was about to go vigilante on them within minites. The infomation was sent up to Megatron and the reply went back "Prepare the Military death squads and if any of the Big 5 evade the rival gang, or if the Big 5 win the battle, deal with them in the normal way, and have Domintel interrogate the Coders of said bots to see if they are in any way responsible. Destroy all the spares and saves of the Big 5 as well. I hope that they will be wiped out by the rival gang rather then Domintel needing to do that, as that is more in tune with the Decepticon Way and shows why we don't need police."

Many of the swarms had either been defeated already or meekly surrendered and were allowed to live and put in cages. This was helped as Forintel knew where the officer's quarters were on the military bases and targeted them to kill the sentinent roaches. It took another two hours until the roaches had fired their last SAMs and other weapons capable of harming Decepticons. Over five thousand bots were in the Main Save Vault, another couple of thousand were in their spares, and seven were in the afterlife because of the actions of the Big 5.

*****
On Cybertron four of the five Coders of the Big 5 were found not guilty after code reading, and the last one was bound to await Megatron's return, as he was found to have coded an urge to nark on the Decepticons to biologicals, and Megatron blamed him for the whole episode and wanted to execute him personally.

*****
UC of Ceridignon

Soon enough Loyal Star and Fire Eater were in android bodies, where they would have a better chance of success. Loyal Star hoped that the aliens here would convert in time to avoid enslavement or extermination. Megatronist biologicals might still be subjects of the Empire, but unless born into slavery, they had a reasonable chance of avoiding it and the best and toughest of them might have the chance of earning the Ultimate Upgrade.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

While most of the gangs still on the planet had been part of prior raider fronts and stayed back, choosing to turn the tables and let the Military clear the way for them instead of the other way around, one had plans to go somewhere entirely different. The Petroleum Extrication Force would be meeting up with Specter...and then they would wait at the location where the Decepticon body was to be delivered. Then, if all went well, they would not only ambush and kill the Big 5 with their jammers running, but they'd also either steal or destroy the body the Big 5 brought in.

In preparation for this jammers-running battle, all of the PEF members made two fresh Saves of themselves. One copy was left at the base, since it was likely that at least one member would make it back and be able to reinstall the rest. Each member then left the base and dropped their other copy off at the house of a trusted Line member or a friend outside the gang. This gave them two layers of protection in case they had unfortunate results and were blocked from mind-transferring by their own - or someone else's - jamming.

"I hope those idiots don't have a bunch of Saves, too," Remediator said loudly, pointedly looking out the window at a particular streetlight.

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

Domestic Intelligence Headquarters

DomIntel had managed to miss what the Big 5 had been doing thanks to their preference for doing it on planets far away, but as soon as Specter's original report went through the airwaves to Cybertron, that had changed. The Supercomputer had sounded loud alarms in certain areas of the headquarters, and within minutes, a task force had been formed. Since then, all likely participants in the surely-coming battle had been under live surveillance as well as being the recipients of extra bugs and hidden cameras.

With all of this watching and listening, the agency instantly picked it up when Remediator "mentioned" that he hoped there were no Saves of the Big 5 members.

"There won't be for very long," the task force leader said, and with that, he gave out orders. All of the Big 5's Spares and Saves were to be destroyed as soon as they left Cybertron to try to deliver the body they had promised. Clearly, Remediator figured that the PEF didn't have the capabilities to be sure that there would be no backups of their enemies, and by saying so while facing a lamppost that was well-known to carry surveillance equipment, he was low-key asking for DomIntel to take care of that for them. In this instance, the agency would gladly oblige.

DomIntel also took another action. It had the Supercomputer predict just which body the Big 5 would buy for its delivery, and which store they would likely use. Thanks to its massive files on everybody, it was easily able to calculate the preferences of all 5 members, weight them according to the members' standing in the gang, and come up with an answer that had over 90% predictive value. Then, DomIntel went to the predicted store and drafted its management into cooperation.

After a few minutes, all other instances of the predicted preferred body were hidden in the back, leaving just one on the sales floor. That body was then given a "special upgrade:" Its boards were replaced with ones of an entirely different (and therefore, useless for reverse-engineering Decepticons) design spec, parts that were uniquely Decepticon were switched for those that were more generic, a special anti-jamming radio was installed, and finally, an agent mind-transferred in.

"If all goes well for the A side, you'll be mind-transferring out of there using that radio," one of the other agents said."But if the targets manage to escape, you know what to do."

The agent in the body gave a slight nod. Of course he did: If Remediator's gang didn't kill the Big 5, he would signal the agency that the wrong side had the fortunate results, and then he would turn on them with the intent to destroy them. Backup would arrive shortly if this happened, but if they weren't fast enough, he would be able to mind-transfer thanks to his powerful anti-jamming radio.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It was unusual for Megatron or anybody else to order a code-read of Coders when the suspects were well into adulthood, but they followed the command just the same. After all, if he thought what was going on was fishy enough to order that, they certainly didn't have the rank to question it - and even if they did, this certainly wasn't something worth risking a body, or worse, about.

They were a bit surprised when the results showed that one of them had outright coded his offspring to not only want to nark, but to biologicals! Then, the true experts at coding and hacking were called in. These were people who were genius enough to be top members of the Debugging Center, but who had failed their honesty tests for having desires to hack, mess with code, and other such things - but not so badly that they couldn't qualify as interrogators.

It took them a long time, but after meticulously checking every line of code, they found hidden bits of data carefully spread throughout the guilty bot's codebase. There, after a huge amount of hacking and decrypting (using the power of the Supercomputer to crack what was actually high-grade encryption), they found the rest of the story. This bot was not only actually an immigrant who had managed to ditch DomIntel's record of the fact by switching between several bodies while offworld, he was a spy! So far, he had been on Cybertron for at least 300 years - since before Gatekeeper and his co-worker had come to Immigration. His original boss had long since died, but his government had kept him in position all this time. About 75 years ago, he had been "activated" - given an openly anti-Cybertronian task: Build a bot who would pass on info to his employers.

To accomplish this task, he decided to build an offspring who would think that it was a good thing to disclose the desired information to the right people. This included raiding plans, Decepticon design specifications, and anything else of extreme interest. The spy actually did not disclose his spy-ness to his offspring. He just set up the base code, and let the toxic nature it produced take its course. Now, the other planet had been able to obtain a steady stream of information, and only one thing explicitly sought still remained not-yet-delivered: A Decepticon body.

"Megatron," the task force leader radioed as the Military was still descending on A19, "You might want to add another stop to your expedition..." He then informed Megatron of all that they had discovered, including the fact that a foreign government's spy had been detected and that the Big 5 were actually unwitting tools of that government's spy program.

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

A19

Once the major defenses were taken out, it was quite easy to steamroll the population. Their swarm leaders were very obvious, not only in their physical appearances, but also in how they acted. The Decepticons popped them off like shooting carnival targets, and then quickly landed and proclaimed themselves the leaders. In about 20% of cases, this resulted in the leaderless swarms immediately following the Decepticons who presented themselves. The other 80% of swarms recognized that there was a species difference and didn't follow, but since it took a few days for a proper new leader to appear, they now wandered or ran around aimlessly. These uncontrollable ones were easily and summarily dispatched.

Finally, it was time for General Carjack to assume his role as the leader of the Genociders rather than serve as a Division General like he had been during the heat of the hostilities. The chorus of "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" played once over his command frequency, and in a well-practiced maneuver, the Genociders split out of the massive troop swarm and formed up as a separate group. Their Skulls and Wrenches were soon showing, and Carjack took position at the head of the new formation.

"They say there's a TARNISH PROBLEM on this rock! TIME TO CLEAN IT UP!" Carjack ordered with obviously-positive excitement. It would be positive for the Genociders, that is. Not so much so for those with the green wings and the prevalent sapience!

"Remember, roaches like to hide in dark places. We've been calling them 'roaches' because they're the targets, so they may or may not act like real ones. But if we notice that there are only a few within sight, check the dark places first: Caves, basements, forests...anywhere they may try vainly to hide!"

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

UC of Ceridignon

After switching bodies and taking the bus ride, Fire Eater and Loyal Star found themselves in Port City. As promised, it was a podunk fishing town that featured a lot of middle-aged and old people, quite a few young children, and only a couple of teenagers. All present were dressed conservatively and talked softly. In the distance, a crew of 20-somethings was on a boat wrestling with nets full of tuna, or at least, fish that looked like tuna. At the shoreline, a cannery was operating. It was likely that more working-age younger people were busy in there.

When it came to services for travelers, there were almost none. One small motel, with a tiny cafe attached, was it. There was one overpriced gas station as well, and it had customers only because there wasn't any competition.

That night, they made their way to the much more lively, carni-atmosphered, town down the road. Loud music thumped its way down the street, and was clearly audible a mile out. As they walked, a car zoomed past them at top speed, and someone drunkenly yelled "WATCH IT BOYS" through a rear window.

In town, fairly large, but low, buildings had music blaring out of them and teenagers loitering around them. Several cabs were in the streets - not a city's worth by any stretch, but enough to show that there was decent business for them in the form of older kids too drunk or stoned to drive. The ICC's dealers were also there in force, and they milled openly through the crowds selling their wares.

One of these saw Fire Eater and Loyal Star, and he soon approached them.

"You're new here! Welcome to Peaceful Waters!" He laughed openly at the town's name. "So what you want to make your party more hearty? Coke, crack, crank...maybe you'd like to experience Ecstasy?" He opened his coat, showing bags of his product all packaged up nicely and ready to go. He clearly thought that they were just more potential customers. It was also very clear that if there were any police here at all, they were on the take.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Remediator and his gang were furious with the Big 5, not just because they foiled their last raid and lost them their bodies, but because of the way they did it. Narking-and what was worse, narking to biologicals-was a disgraceful thing to do and totally against the Decepticon Way. Remediator, without directly asking for help from Domintel, did so indirectly by saying "I hope those idiots don't have a bunch of Saves, too," in a place he knew was likely to be bugged. In this case, Domintel were happy to help. Spectre's radio messages had been intercepted and triggered alarms in Domintel's Main Headquarters and a task force had been rapidly formed. Agents had been sent to do undercover surveillance of both gangs-but only the Big 5 were in legal trouble for breaking one of the very few laws that existed on Cybertron-committing various forms of treason. At the same time, they went to the shop the Big 5 were likely to use to make sure if they did win the battle with the PEF they could not sell a proper Decepticon body to foreigners to reverse engineer and find out about. Through all the existence of the Empire, no fully intact Decepticon body had ever been allowed to fall into foreign hands and Domintel was not about to let that chance and endanger national security in a big way.

It was very unusual for a mind read of Coders when the suspects were adults, but an order from Megatron was not one to be disobeyed or ignored. Four of the Coders proved to be innocent and were set free with not a negative mark against them, but the fifth was an immigrant spy! Centuries ago, testing of immigrants was not quite as through as it should have been, and he had passed the tests and sneaked in, to be activated centuries later to build a bot who would be a spy and a nark. Which was what he had done, deliberately putting the hated and forbidden nark code into his offspring. The planet was not Vallermoore, luckily for it's Megatronist ruler Clever One, but a large and very hi tech planet called Woden. Woden had one big continent and a large number of small islands and had a population of 90% humans, 9% sapient ponies, and 1% changelings-and it was marked on the Raid Danger List as a planet that was genuinely dangerous to raid. It had been getting a steady stream of information, low level but quite useful. Had the nark bot tried to join Forintel or Domintel, the code check would have uncovered his spy activities.
So angry was Megatron that the spy bot was tied up and held for his special attention later. Woden was moved up the list of planets to take over to the top position after their existing target.

Meanwhile the PEF headed out to where the Big 5 were likely to be, with murder in their minds, having made Saves first in case they ended up being killed.

Galaxy Threat, the leader of the Big 5, was excited as they brought a body that would soon be in foreign hands. As they left the shop into a relatively sparsely populated area, jamming blanketed the area and seconds later they came under attack. "NARK on me and my gang to HUMANS, would you??? Prepare to DIE!" snapped Remediator in angry tones of Binary. The Big 5 were perfectly capable of fighting back and did so, and Galaxy Threat had stronger armour then the average bot.

*****
A19

Once the planet's defences were seriously breaking down, it was time for the Genociders to do their thing.""They say there's a TARNISH PROBLEM on this rock! TIME TO CLEAN IT UP!" shouted General Carjack, and Pesticide destroyed every house in sight to uncover the foe, used his size and density charger to shrink down and explore caves, woods and other places, and do whatever he did to track down the tarnished roaches and destroy them. He did get the outer layer of his armour scratched by buckshot from a shotgun that a roach fired off at him, but otherwise it was easy, and he destroyed every man, woman, child and unborn egg of the roaches that he could find, as well as turning over a small ocean liner full of them. His fellow Genociders did the same, except for when they discovered one roach that transformed into a human android whilst flashing the Decepticon and Forintel Seals and explaining hurriedly that he was an undercover Forintel agent and would they please not shoot his expensive body.

It took three whole days of destruction to slaughter every last tarnished roach as well as every burnished roach that had not surrendered meekly. Pesticide was in his element, but even though he had been assured that the roaches were not changelings, he kept his anti changeling defences on at all times. Just like cars reminded Decepticons unpleasantly of Autobots, the roaches reminded Pesticide all too well of undisguised changelings. He had encountered changelings at least once as a pony and whilst it did not result in a fight, he had been wary of them in case they sucked his love out. So he was not taking any chances as if he lost his body he couldn't get any loot. At last it was time for the looting of the planet to begin.

UC of Ceredigion

The two priests went to a conservative city called Port Town that was clearly a dull place full of hard workers and that night sneaked out to a much more jolly town called Peaceful Waters that had been heavily infiltrated by the drug dealers of the ICC. When one offered them his drug wares Loyal Star held up a hand and flashed the Symbol of Megatronism and then the Decepticon Seal for a few seconds, revealing himself as an undercover Megatronist Priest to the android in front of him. "We are Priests of Megatron and we would like some help from the ICC. We have a deal with a capo." He mentioned the capo's name. "We are happy to talk terms of payment and then pay up front with enough Energon to make it well worth your while-but if you then cheat us and refuse your help, you will find out just how hot Holy Fusion Fire can be, even from an android's guns," he said in quiet Binary that only android ears could pick up.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Decepticons in the immediate area instantly took notice when the jamming went up. They were about to come and blast the source of this radio noise when they heard the accusation of narking! Now, they wanted to see who this awful charge was being leveled against, and they approached more slowly so they could get a good view before possibly joining in the battle.

There, the onlookers quickly spotted Remediator and Galaxy Threat as the leaders of their respective gangs. Some saw that it was "just more gang warfare" and went on their way, but others waited to decide which side to take. They were divided between which ones to blast, with some wanting to get rid of the jamming and others believing the accusation Remediator had yelled out.

"You can give it up," Galaxy Threat yelled back. "I am built far better than you are, and I am proud to be an essential member of the Woden Law Enforcement Service!" He began to blast, and it was immediately apparent that he had the double-strength version of weapons. He carried two of these, one on each arm, and fired them off simultaneously.

Remediator, who had already been firing, upped his efforts. The rest of both gangs were about to join in when they realized that all of the pedestrians had now taken a side: The side of the Petroleum Extrication Force. As soon as Galaxy Threat had identified himself not only as a nark, but as actual police, he was fully hated by all within earshot except for his own gang. Now, he and his gang found themselves under fire from everyone else. The PEF quickly maneuvered to get their own shots in as well.

Within seconds, what could have been a hard battle for the PEF became almost as easy as a game with the God Mode on. The 4 current PEF members and 10 onlookers were all opening fire on the five Big 5 members for all they were worth. Even worse, the body the Big 5 had bought suddenly activated and started firing at the gang too. Galaxy Threat managed to take out an onlooker and severely damage another, but it wasn't long before he was overwhelmed. Surprise blasts from the "body" did significant damage, but the killshot was left for Remediator.

Despite the now very lopsided numbers, the Big 5 fought adamantly, and it took about an hour to deactivate the last of them. Now, Remediator and his gang strode over to the fallen bodies and hoisted them over their shoulders, with Seething Ember carrying two. "Where's the foundry?" He asked some of the still-functioning onlookers, and soon, he got directions from some of them that led to the local metal-recycling establishment.

Remediator looked over at "the body" that was now very obviously not a blank. He gave the agent a grin.

"We figured some insurance was in order," the agent said seriously, before backing into the now fairly large crowd and blending in.

As each Big 5 member fell, he tried to mind-transfer in hopes that the jamming would fail, but it did not. Their data dissipated, and they found themselves in a room waiting for entry into the Realm of Punishment. There would be no mercy even for the one hard-coded to want to nark, because at his age, he would have known from exposure to Decepticon society that such an urge wasn't normal (and in fact was considered very wrong), and he could have gone to Debugging to have that patched out.

A few hours later, the Petroleum Extrication Force was 15,000 Cubes of Standard richer, and there were several more tons of materials in the Metal Stream. They stopped at a Raid Dropoff Point and had it converted to Supreme. Tonight, they would celebrate their victory and the resulting improvement in the security of proper Decepticon operations.

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

Woden

It would take a few days for them to realize it, but when they did, it would cause quite a lot of panic.

"Our Cybertronian agent has not returned," a messenger said gravely to the head of Woden's intelligence bureau, the Department of Space Security. "Not only that, we have not been able to establish contact over the secret channel. It has been several days now."

The head of the department, an old man named Jonnel, looked up from his desk. "Has there been a public execution? They're always very loud about it when they catch a traitor..."

"No, but there was a widely-publicized battle." The messenger reported. "Here is the video we picked up." With that, he took his leave, allowing Jonnel to see it with his own eyes.

He popped the video chip into his player, a fancy, but still TV-like, device. A chaotic battle with what looked like over 20 Decepticons fighting 5 others came up, and in between the flashes of blaster fire and people all jockeying for positions, he saw a familiar paint job. Immediately, he hit pause and then backed it up frame by frame. Sure enough, that was Galaxy Threat that everyone was trying to delete. Jonnel then played the video to the end, which clearly showed Galaxy Threat and the rest of his gang being carried off, presumably to a nearby foundry.

After the action stopped, a screen came up noting that it had been picked up from a broadcast on the Decepticons' main government-run station, and that the station had identified Galaxy Threat as "actual police by his own admission" AND that Galaxy Threat had said exactly which police force he was a part of.

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

One hour later, alarms were sounding at military bases all over Woden. Their leaders knew that it would just be a matter of time before the Decepticon Forces came to pay them back, not only for spying, but for using the information in ways that had materially harmed Cybertron's raiders. "We are ready for them," the generals said to each other with confidence as they walked down the street of their main base. "We already have copies of the Minimum Design Specification for the Decepticon Body, and of the Minimum Specifications for Code Intended to be Sapient. We've made weapons based on this information. There's no way they can win!"

Off in the distance, far enough away that no actual human would be able to hear, a "new recruit" listened and broadcast the information to his headquarters over a secret frequency. That headquarters, however, was not on Woden. It was on Cybertron.

There would be a lot of new recruits coming in now. It was almost as if there was a factory somewhere pumping out 18-year-olds ready to fight.

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

Foreign Intelligence Division, Cybertron

With General Soundwave out on the front lines, it was left to his underling Trich to take the lead in the intelligence operations against Woden. So far, he was doing very well. He had ordered 1,000 agents to take on human forms and go to Woden to join their military. Once in, they wouldn't just watch and listen. They were to undertake sabotage operations against any equipment they could, send in fake messages, and when fighting broke out, put highly unstrategic counterfeit orders into the command streams. Finally, when war was hot on, they were to go ahead and open fire on the Woden troops that they were embedded with. This would not only cause massive casualties to the compromised units, but would sow fear throughout the rest of the Woden military as its troops all wondered if their own units also had killer spies within them.

Trich's name was short for Trichonosis - a parasitic disease spread by eating insufficiently-cooked pork, and that resulted in encysted worms ending up in random parts of the eater. These worms often stayed unnoticed until they caused symptoms, after which the infestation was quite bothersome. It was the perfect name for him, who preferred to infest an enemy with huge numbers of agents, who would then cause hell once activated.

A satisfied smile was now on Trich's face. He would soon show Woden which agency was the true master of spying and sabotage.

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

UC of Ceridignon

The drug dealer looked disappointed. These weren't customers at all! They also mentioned the name of a capo who was actually rival to his own. For a moment, he scowled. Then, his mammalian-style eyes took on a distinct shine.

"You'll pay in advance?" He asked, as if he hadn't heard that right. The threats were already in the ignore file. He didn't plan to stay within blasting range if he had a chance to take off with a huge load of loot.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

The fight attracted a crowd of spectators quickly, and at first they wanted to blast the PER for endangering their lives, but when Remediator accused the Big 5 of narking to biologicals, many of them believed him. A bot that would nark-to biologicals! was only one level below a hacker in terms of being disliked. Galaxy Threat, instead of denying it like a sensible Decepticon would, yelled back "You can give it up, I am built far better than you are, and I am proud to be an essential member of the Woden Law Enforcement Service!" As soon as he said that and announced that he was a police officer, the pedestrians who were watching showed their displeasure by joining in against the Big 5, who were riddled with blaster fire very quickly, the "body" they were transporting joining in as well. A Decepticon of that type, was in their eyes an Autobot in a Decepticon body-and Decepticon Steel was for Decepticons only. All the same, it took an hour to deal with them.

When they found themselves in the Decepticon afterlife, it would be the Realm of Punishment that they were bound for. Galaxy Threat protested that it was his Coder's fault. but it was pointed out that once he was sapient enough to disobey his Coder and understand the basics of Decepticon life, he could have gone to a Debugger without that automatically meaning his Coder's execution, as Debuggers were not allowed to tell anyone about their patients and even the mighty Domintel were not allowed to forcibly hack an official Debugger in case the long term results meant a large number of insane bots.

Remediator and his gang would make quite a few cubes selling their nark carcasses to a nearby foundry, more then enough to fix blast damage to their bodies, and would have a pleasant celebration dinner of Energon Supreme, the Decepticon equivalent of fine biological food. Due to the circumstances, the battle was made public by the government, disgracing the Big 5 in front of all of Cybertron.

Woden

When Woden found out what had happened,, they called in all the reserves, declared emergency conscription, and built new weapons and spacecraft as fast as they could, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before the Decepticons came to mete out some extreme violence and try to add their planet to their Empire. All the Decepticons needed to do was to get the logistics ready and fix any bot in the Main Save Vault from the last battle, and, to get the Decepticon public interested, to tell them the reason for the war to get a lot of gangs joining in as well. The Genocide Battalion was very likely to get to join in as well after an insult to the Decepticons of this magnitude.

UC of Ceridignon

"How about, half in advance...and half afterwards? So if you do cheat us and manage first not to be blasted by us, and second our God decides not to curse you or outright overload you for cheating His Priests, you still won't get the other half-and the other half is well worth it. Oh, and we want to talk with your capo before you see so much as a single Cube." When the capo arrived Loyal Star let Fire Eater work out the exact details. After getting half the Cubes, the capo decided not to cheat the Priests or to try and outright murder them. First, he wouldn't get the other half if he did that. Second, he liked their idea. Third, cheating Megatron's Priests-and certainly outright killing them-might very well mean unfortunate results. In the earliest days of the Priesthood, a few bots had thought they would be mild and weak like the Priests of other nations and easy raid targets, and those bots were in some cases no longer amongst the living. Holy Fusion Fire had the power of Megatron's fusion cannon, and these Priests were very much on duty. At the back of his mind boards was the thought that if he did manage to murder these Priests and manage to get away with it, if he ever had an unfortunate result some time far in the future-the gates of the Realm of Punishment would surely yawn wide to swallow his soul.
Soon the ICC did their thing to help the Priests.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Planet A19

Thanks to the fact that only swarm leaders could come up with plans above the instinct level, it didn't take long to subdue this world. Soon, Megatron and the High Generals were assigning specific soldiers to be the new swarm leaders, and those who accepted them were easily led to various pre-designated sites to start working. Most, but not all, of the rest were wiped out in what would truly seem more like a pest-control operation than a genocide. The efforts of the Battalion were met not with families huddling together pitifully, but by the mindless roach-like scattering of this biologically-primitive species.

Both the Genociders and General Shockwave wondered whether they really had once been a fully-sapient species at all, or if the reality was that sapience had just recently ("recently" by an evolutionary time scale) begun to develop and had not yet spread to the other members. Over time, they figured, the truth would become known. If it was once a decently-advanced species, then artifacts of ancient civilizations would be found as new mines were dug. If their guesses were right, however, the most they would ever find would be some fossils and no signs of very old tools or buildings. Shockwave assigned a few of his troops to supervise some of the new dig sites to make sure that anything of interest was noticed and that he would find out about it.

As Megatron was busy choosing overseers, he suddenly got a series of unpleasant expressions on his face. Then, he backfired! His face showed both shock and anger at this point. Despite this, he said nothing. He would have to put some serious consideration into what he had just heard over his radio.

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

Main Military Base
A Few Days Later

The soldiers who had stayed behind knew that something big was up when Megatron and the High Generals flew straight to the strategy room without more than token participation in the big victory sky-parade that was going on. Stern looks on their faces made those on the ground think that perhaps this would not be the last war for a while, but instead, that they might be called into battle at any time.

Once the last High General entered the room, the door was closed and the area was swept for bugs. As expected, none were found, but a bug sweep was always done as a precaution before classified discussions took place.

Megatron marched to the head of the table and addressed the others without sitting down.

"While we were on A19, some lousy cops were discovered. They were righteously dispatched by the Petroleum Extrication Force, a fairly small-time gang. However, I had ordered a code-read of all of the cops' Coders since such treason is all but unheard-of and I figured that some nasty base code had to be involved. Only one was directly corrupted by his Coder, but it turned out that said Coder was a full-on spy who had managed to get through Immigration. Of course, my first intent was to slowly melt down the former Immigration agents for their unforgivable misfeasance, but alas, they had already been killed over the last few hundred years due to a variety of events leading to their unfortunate results. No matter. I will reassign them to the appropriate realm in due time..."

"Anyway." Megatron's eyes darkened to about half-brightness. "I'll get right to the point. This spy is from a planet called Woden, and through his nasty offspring, they now have copies of our current body and coding specifications."

Every High General looked very distressed, and a couple even backfired. Copies of the specs would not only let them know just what it took to defeat a Decepticon body, but allow them to get clues about how Decepticons think and what to expect. While the Base Code was just the start of a personality, simply knowing the mandated parts would eliminate much of the element of surprise that made most battles a lot easier for the robotic forces.

"We won't be able to just barge over there and destroy them with our current bodies," Megatron said, visibly frustrated. "We'll have to retool our military factories and then change at least the key elements of the Mil-Spec Body so that the weak points in the current spec are no longer present. Even if we make it a rush job and just upgrade our armor, this will create delay that will give Woden a chance to come to full ready. Yet, by what ForIntel told me over my secret frequency, they already have the firepower to take out 10 million troops - and, they may have jammers. So, while we could just zerg rush them and win by the weight of our sheer numbers - after all, that would leave us with 990,000,000 troops to kill them with - I want to use a method that will result in far fewer casualties."

Most of the Generals nodded, but Carjack was noticeably not totally on board with the idea of bothering with upgrades. He would have preferred to eat the casualties, because 10 million down would be far fewer than the other guy would lose once his entire division got through with them.

"Making sure that our troops do not come back as dead metal is important to continued enlistment." Megatron said directly to Carjack. "It is easy enough to do against a biological world that is on defense. Plus, once we change our specs," - he now addressed all of the Generals - "they will be cocky, thinking they have our keys, and this will make it easier to slaughter them in the long run. Of course, as is standard procedure, the civilian version of the Minimum Design Specification for the Decepticon Body will also be changed to eliminate any exploits."

Now, they discussed how to hide the fact that the Mil-Spec body was to be remade. It was decided to go ahead and motivate a few raid gangs to attack Woden by quietly raising the fees paid for loot from there, but not to make the increase high enough to trigger a raider-front-scale assault. This would let Woden see that their current weapons were working and lull the planet into thinking that it would not need to invest more into new developments.

"It is likely best to do a total 'behind the panels' redesign," Megatron finally said. "Slapdash efforts often lead to unfortunate results."

"Now: As I've been speaking, Woden has been calling in its reserves and has begun emergency conscription." Now, Leader Megatron's eyes shone bright with the look of grand connivery. He also smiled broadly, with a look that would make an unknowing outsider believe he was thinking about something nice, like free ice cream.

"This has allowed Soundwave's underling, Trichonosis, to massively infiltrate Woden's forces. He has activated a high-speed factory to produce suitable-looking androids, and with those, he is sending Woden every agent who knows how to keep basic cover. Some there say it's like there's a 'factory somewhere producing 18-year-olds who are eager to sign up.' That's because there IS. It just happens to be OUR factory." He laughed now. "By the time we finish the body upgrades, I predict that we'll have a good 10,000 or 15,000 fake Woden soldiers embedded in their military, all with orders to sabotage the enemy at every turn. Of course, once we attack, our 'Woden soldiers' will then begin attacking and openly destroying the biological members of their squads."

"What happens after that will depend on Woden's response to this 'sudden insanity...'"

"For now, I and Shockwave will come up with a new Mil-Spec design, and the high-speed military factories will make the parts. I figure that with a billion troops to upgrade, it'll take at least a month just to do the first batch of, I'd say, 100,000,000. That'd be 10 months to do everyone, but we won't need the full force to win this one. The first group, plus a backup, will probably be more than enough. However, even as we're flying, a third batch of part sets will go into production. It's always good to have spares of spares. After that, we can cover the rest at a slightly relaxed pace. It is good that we have A19 now, because it will let us make all of the copper-based parts we need without having to recycle the old bodies first."

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

UC of Ceridignon

The youth of Peaceful Waters were shocked that anyone would open a place of worship here, in what was so obviously a party town. They immediately assumed that the priests wanted to "save them" from a "life of sin" like their boring parents and grandparents back home, and intended to make a point of staying away. However, when they saw many of their friendly dealers going in (as well as a lot of other shady-looking types), they got curious. Perhaps it wasn't a church after all, but a strange design for a new club!

With that in mind, many of the people in the town went ahead and came inside, only to find that it was not a club but a real Temple. Megatron's grinning Face on the back wall, combined with big Decepticon Seals to each side of it, were impressively imposing. This iconography also made it plain that this was NOT either a boring "be good" church or a hellfire-and-brimstone "stop having fun sinning OR ELSE" one. In fact, judging by the expression on the Face, it was more likely that what was going to be advised was exactly what other religions might say was sin.

Soon, Fire Eater appeared to make his first sermon. Before the service, it was decided that he would do the opener, and later, Loyal Star would read something from the Book of Megatron and then talk about that. The passage in question would be about how to tell the difference between something that was just old, and something that was obsolete and belonged in the slag pit. In this case, what belonged in the slag pit would be those boring "wimp-making" ideas from the old religions that the people in the town had thought they'd hear here!

For now, though, Fire Eater and Loyal Star had agreed, with a bit of prodding from the ICC (which didn't want to lose its customers), that they would not mention that Megatronism was against doing drugs. "You're supposed to SELL those, not DO them," the official teaching went. However, if they mentioned that to these drug-loving people right away, they would get no converts. It would have to wait until the town had many staunch and true believers that weren't the ICC in disguise.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

The bot who was the spy would receive a very painful public execution at the Main Foundry for Espionage against the Decepticon Nation and for Weakening the Nation by coding a nark on top of that. Megatron decided that he would try and do something he had never done before-resurrecting the long dead Immigration bots from the Metal Stream so that they could be punished for letting in a spy who had done quite a bit of damage to Cybertron.

On Cybertron itself, the normal all out attack on the planet responsible for the spy who had caused such bother did not happen yet. The whole Minimum Specification for the Decepticon body needed a change and an upgrade and that would take time, to avoid huge losses not just in metal but also in life. Losing very large numbers of bots might even cause draft dodging if the bots really thought they had nothing to lose. Both Cybertron and Woden would upgrade their military forces and prepare for war , Trichonosis infiltrating with Forintel bots with various ease. Although only a relative few of these secret android bots would be able to gain officer status, they would do a lot of damage when activated. A few spies from Woden tried to infiltrate as tourists or in one case as an immigrant, but they were quickly detected by Domintel if the raiders did not get them first and blasted or worse.

*****
UC of Ceridignon

When the youths of Peaceful Waters saw their friendly drug dealers enter the Temple a lot of them thought that it would be a new club and decided to see what it was about. It would be the far more experienced Fire Eater who would deliver the first sermon whilst Loyal Star, who was not totally sure of himself and didn't want to mess things up, would play a more minor but still important part using the Book of Megatron to point out that the old ideas of religion belonged in the slag pit. Remembering when he was punished on High Priest Warfire's orders put Loyal Star off any desire for getting into trouble to ever happen again.