An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Megatron's face showed his anger clearly as he personally took the foundrybot's normal position at the controls of the crane device holding the captured spy. The spy's voice chip had been brutally melted into non-functionality so that he couldn't spread any propaganda on his way out, and then the holovision cameras were turned on. Over the course of the entire next 24 hours, the spy was slowly lowered into the smelting pit, with his circuitry soldered so that he couldn't turn off his pain signals. He had also been hacked in such a way that he couldn't activate the Fatal Command and commit suicide by deleting his own mind-data. He would pay dearly for his help in stealing the Decepticons' important classified information.

Later, he accessed the DomIntel Supercomputer to try to reconstruct how that spy could have gotten in. He found that the usual Immigration agent in charge, one named Filter, was actually a highly responsible and loyal member of the government. The problem was that, on his day off, two goof-offs who didn't really care about their performance had processed the spy. They had deemed his biological Code too much work to decipher since it wasn't in the neat format produced by skilled programmers, so instead of bothering to actually code-read him, they had made up a report and just let him through. After a while, the two had been fired for subpar performance, but Immigration had never realized just how sub-par it had really been.

After being sacked, the pair had gone into various raiding activities, and it wasn't long before their lack of care caused them to end up flying into the way of enemy ordnance in separate incidents. The ordnance wasn't much by today's standards, but then, neither was the then-current Minimum Design Specification. Amazingly, their bodies had been recovered by their respective gangs, and as is still the norm, was quietly melted down at two different foundries. Since then, their consciousnesses had faded, and only a faint trace of their energy remained in the Metal Stream. Still...they were there...

Even for Leader Megatron, recovering that energy would be a job. Not only did he have to find all instances of it across hundreds of trillions of separate Decepticon parts, he would have to collect it in a way that would keep it from immediately dissipating. For this reason, he decided to use soul gems so that he could pull the two energy groups into them bit by bit. The gems' construction would hold it in place until it was time to fully reconstitute the souls into coherent, and then sapient, consciousnesses once again.

For several days, Megatron went about this work. It was slow going, and he had to be careful so that he did not remove the energy of all of the other souls in the Metal Stream. Still, his gems slowly began to glow, and eventually, they were filled.

Once they were filled, Megatron went to the Temple of Lost Souls, not because he intended to use them as mere batteries, but because he wanted to make sure he wouldn't end up dealing with a haunting at the Megatron Mansion. There, in the well-protected confines of this physical-dimension place of spiritual punishment, Megatron broke the gems simultaneously. A loud crack was heard, and the gems went dark.

~~~~~~~~~~~

For a moment, the two inept ex-agents thought they'd been brought back to life. They were cohesive beings again, and they could think properly instead of just vaguely experiencing some unidentifiable emotional energy! They looked around, and when they did, they realized that something wasn't right. They weren't on Cybertron, even though they were in a metal room. There were no doors to the room, and there were three holovision sets playing.

When a Decepticon with red and yellow flame wings, complete with flame-shaped edges, came melding through the wall, the pair was absolutely certain that this was not going to be good.

"Leader Megatron is very displeased with you two," the Punishment Administrator informed them. He then told them what had happened due to their decision to just pass a certain immigrant instead of having Debugging come to do the code-read that they were too lazy to bother with. "Megatron went to a lot of effort to ensure that you suffer for your willful incompetence. However, since you did not knowingly collude with the spy, he has decided to be slightly merciful: You will only suffer for 500 years instead of the typical 1,000. That said...your suffering will be very great, for because of your failure to take the proper actions, the entire Decepticon Nation now must upgrade to new specifications. You know who is going to be paying for THAT, and who'll have to wait years to make up the costs with Energon price increases, right~?"

The Administrator didn't need to say more. Even at the time these agents had lived, it was typical for Megatron to access his massive vault complexes to finance things that had to be done right away, and then fiddle with the resources-to-Energon exchange rates to get his money back over time. This allowed the Empire to respond very quickly to emergencies, but as one might imagine, put Megatron into a mood that was much more than a little foul.

The two agents didn't quite understand what was going on, and had no idea how Megatron had managed to get control of other realms, but they knew that they had no intention of going along with it. They simultaneously raised their arms and sent the fire command to their blasters, intending to delete this weird-looking and arrogant flamey dude and then blast their way out of the room. To their shock, instead of blaster fire, their blasters produced a torrent of little flower petals!

The Administrator chuckled. "Welcome to the Realm of Punishment." He said with finality, and with that, the floor dropped open and the two agents fell out of the room.

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

Meltdown's Fix-It
Realm of Punishment

The two agents crash-landed in front of this hangar, their jets mysteriously failing them after they were dropped out of the room. Since it was a long fall, their legs were heavily damaged by the impact, and they lay helpless on the ground. Before long, a sleazy-looking guy emerged from the hangar, complete with a Sapient CPU coiled around one arm, up his shoulder, and then around his neck. This Sapient CPU's body was in the form of a boa constrictor, and it hissed at the two even though it also appeared to be smiling.

"Ah! Customers...Perhaps Megatron has decided that my punishment should end?" The sleazy one muttered to himself. "It has been a long time since someone has been here. I'm SO glad you've come." He picked them up one at a time and took them into the hangar, which had several dirty workbenches and rows of rusted tools. He cheerfully dropped one agent onto each of two of the tables.

"I'll have you fixed up in no time~!" He said, not sounding very legit.

Once he got their panels open, ignoring the protests of one who smelled a rat, it didn't take long for him to replace all of the good parts with cheap knockoffs. Their engines ran worse and worse as the work progressed. "I COULD take the time to figure that out, but you know what, I've got an outing scheduled and I just don't want to bother with that," he said blithely as he continued to botch up the repair jobs. "I'll just mark you guys down as 'FIXED AND TESTED' and then I'm out of here!"

Soon, he did exactly that, slammed their panels shut, and kicked them out the door. He then locked it up, leaving them stuck with the results of his shoddy work.

Megatron's quiet, but clearly still seething, voice came in the wind: "Now you will suffer the consequences of willful incompetence!"

After the two finally hobbled away after trying futilly to break back into the hangar and get their good parts back, and were out of sight of it, the bad mechanic's own punishment resumed. For what would be the 10,000th time for him, a mob formed, broke in, and dismantled him alive. It happened every time he pulled his rot on a "new customer" - a condemnee whose punishment included being stuck with poor-quality work - and he still hadn't figured out that all he had to do to prevent it was NOT do poor-quality work to begin with. The agents, however, would never know about the mob forming. They had just been spotted by what appeared to be Scroungers, and were busy hiding.

They would find themselves in many situations where they ended up severely harmed - usually in painful ways - by someone doing sloppy work before they'd have a chance to leave this realm.

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

DomIntel

DomIntel duly noted, and eliminated, many spies from Woden. However, with some "tourists," it only needed to watch them. These were ones who, while decent at keeping cover, weren't very good at detecting Decepticon scams. They simply didn't expect so many scammers! Some of them lost all of their money, many got their ships stolen (leaving them to starve or die of thirst on Cybertron), and a few fell for the "free tour of the mines" scam. The latter group was a source of much schadenfreude, and often, DomIntel sent a literal drone-fly on the wall just to see the looks on the spies' faces when they realized they'd just paid their money to become slaves.

Alas, spies weren't allowed to live, even as slaves - so after a decent amount of time of doing hard labor, DomIntel would send overt agents to execute them. Those who had ended up in Mine #1, however, had to persist as chip-controlled zombies until they fell apart.

Woden

As time went on, the Decepticon secret agents worked to maneuver themselves into positions where they could cause some real damage by sabotage. Woden's army began to experience a wide variety of equipment malfunctions, ranging from practice weapons that wouldn't fire all the way to a red-alert alarm that kept going off for nothing.

So far, these things were causing frustration and generally slowing up military operations. Training, recruiting, and communications were all running against significant friction that was, so far, still thought of as being the result of bad luck and "gremlins."

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

UC of Ceridignon

After the first day, the Temple drew far fewer legitimate people. This was expected: The original full house had been the result of curiosity (and ICC plants), and once the people's curiosity was satisfied, that left the plants and a few who were genuinely interested. Now, sermons shifted from the basic introductory things and began to cover the finer aspects of connivery, thievery, and other aspects of the Decepticon Way. Those who kept attending found that they were getting enough tips to be able to successfully talk their way out of police stops, pilfer some minor items without being caught, and be more persuasive overall. These began to speak more highly of the new religion, though (very intelligently) they would not discuss the details of the shadier sermons with outsiders.

"Progress here is slow, but at least we're not being attacked by tanks anymore," Fire Eater said to Loyal Star one day after everyone else had gone away. "Still, I think we should start looking for the source of competing beliefs and take some 'Market Share' action on it."

Careful inquisition revealed that there was indeed a source of competing beliefs - one that was basically saying that the Decepticon Way was bad and would result in a placement in a bad realm. The two priests considered their options. Burn down the competing church? Off its minister? Ask for the Wrath of Megatron to strike all of the competitors down? Perhaps debate the other minister and poke holes in the other religion's holy text? Or perhaps something else?

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

The spy would be lowered into the Main Pit by Megatron Himself who was genuinely furious with him, as the entire Minimum Design Specification would need an early upgrade, which would cost a lot of Energon but was preferred to letting Decepticons as a race go obsolete. When it came to the Decepticon Nation as a whole, Megatron cared as much for it as a Changeling Queen would care for her Hive. He had no love for individual bots as such, (although the High Generals were his friends) but he did for the Decepticons as a whole, along with their piratical freewheeling way of life, ever since he became a Decepticon so long ago. As for the two lazy bots who had not done their jobs properly all those years ago and let the spy in, he used His powers to bring their souls back from the Metal Stream for punishment. They were very surprised to be alive again, and because they didn't let a spy in deliberately they would be given a very limited mercy.

In the Realm of Punishment, their bodies, damaged badly by the fall, they would be fixed by a mechanic, free of charge...but poorly. Whilst they would be able to move again, their once powerful engines barely worked, and Scroungers would be after them. The mechanic would be pulled to mechanical pieces, but he was used to it. Whilst it hurt like hell, he knew he would be restored to life-until the next time it happened. He had ended up here for Coding a new bot in a very substandard way centuries ago.

******
Back in the world of the living, Domintel dealt with any spies who as biologicals were easily dealt with, and Woden started having it's own military build-up damaged by android saboteurs from Forintel. It would not win the war by itself but it would be a great help to the Decepticon Military. When Woden was dealt with, it was likely that the Genocide Battalion would be called into action.

*******
Loyal Star said "I think our God would want us first to quietly destroy the other rival church/s or temple/s, use debating if the others were just too big for android bots to deal with, and as a very last resort if nothing we could do by ourselves would work despite our best efforts to call on His help. Priests should where possible deal with things themselves for such is Our Way." It was a Way he followed as faithfully as he had once followed the Pony Way. He remembered his pony life of course, but it was strange when he thought of it, as if a human remembered being a field mouse in great detail. For a time he had been a bit of a Ponybot until a Debugger had fixed him. Normally bots, at least adult bots, were not nice people, but Debuggers were the one exception to this, and far from being hated they were liked, as they fixed the mind boards that a bot was unable to fix himself and could be trusted as well.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Realm of Punishment

The coder/spy had made the mistake of declaring his allegiance to Megatronism as part of his cover, and this put him smack under the dominion of the Realm of Punishment when his essential chips finally became so hot that they popped and he was permanently released from the torture of meltdown. He fell into the waiting area of the Decepticon afterlife, only to find three flame-winged Administrators waiting for him.

"So you like working for biologicals even after having experienced the glories of the Decepticon Way and the superiority of the body that went with it!" One accused. The spy was too befuddled to respond. He was thoroughly surprised that this aspect of the Book of Megatron was apparently right! He'd thought for sure it was just an afterlife myth that the "brutal despot" had thought up to make his religion seem more legit.

"Oh yes, it's real," said the second Administrator, as if he read the spy's mind. "Leader Megatron actually owns all afterlife realms now, and has dominion on this side for trillions of square lightyears. He could take over far more, both here and in the realm you just left, but doesn't want to deprive his people of the thrill of conquest." Another reason - Or have them rampaging around Cybertron - was deliberately left unsaid.

"In any case," the third now said, "you shall now have what you wanted. You'll be working for biologicals until Leader Megatron deigns to elevate you. After examining your case, I'd say that you could be doing it forever."

The spy's face showed much confusion and curiosity. He was to be...rewarded?! But these looked like, no, they actually were, Punishment Administrators - exactly as described in Megatron's Book! Something about it had to be bad...they hadn't said he'd get to BE a biological again. This wasn't going to be some regular job!! As these thoughts dawned on him, the look of fear replaced the original expression.

"Ah. You know how we work. At least you learned something in all of those years you wasted Energon and oxygen on our glorious Metal Planet. Too bad you didn't learn the most important things."

With that, the room simply disappeared, and for a moment, the spy lost consciousness. When he came to, he was blind, deaf, immobile, and mute. Finally, he felt the searing heat of a soldering iron, and after that, began to receive very simple and minimal data packets. "Status: Idle." It came to him over and over, thousands of times per minute. Then, the data ceased, and he was unconscious again.

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

Suddenly, he came to, and was aware that he was being shaken rather vigorously. After much of this, it stopped, and he was once again aware of the constant stream of "Status: Idle" messages. Then, these switched to "Status: Running: Cleaning Cycle 1" messages, and along with this, a stream of data came to him. He realized that it was just data indicating the proximity and size of everything in the room, but only to a height of around 3 inches. Somehow, he felt like he was moving. He could still hear nothing and say nothing, and he couldn't directly see anything, either - the only "visual" information was that proximity data.

By thinking about it, he could visualize what this proximity data was revealing. There were sets of human feet, table legs, chair legs, and four paws. He was apparently moving around on the floor at this very moment. Finally, to his horror, he realized that he was now a vacuum cleaner and that he was becoming full of human-generated dirt. He could say nothing, and couldn't even alter his functionality to show that there was a mind in what they thought was "just a machine."

This went on for a long time - maybe an hour or so - and then a pair of human hands came to him. In an instant, he was back to "Status: Idle" and then turned off.

"Wow, I never thought I'd get a Roomba!!" A human voice said, but it was unheard by the spy, who was now not only off, but in a closet.

Over time, he would think that whatever was happening wasn't all that bad, until the day came that the dog decided to chew him up. As is fitting for a Realm of Punishment, he felt THAT just fine. Then, he heard the humans for the first time, saying he was a pile of junk now and that they might as well throw him out because he was "out of warranty."

The next time he woke up, he was in a factory, in the form of a robotic arm. This would have been no worse than being a Roomba, but this particular arm was running slowly. Every few minutes, a big goony human would come by and smack him harshly, and the arm would speed up. "I wish they'd replace that damn bushing, but you know they won't do it until this thing is seized." He was smacked again. "This piece of shit here belongs in the dump. It's constantly slowing down." *SMACK! BANG!* "If it's not one thing it's another. We should've stuck with human workers. Robots are such trash!" BANG! This bang was from a hammer, and it dented the housing.

He would remain as a robotic arm until it finally did seize up, about a year later. Then, he was dismantled for parts to keep other, similarly neglected and beaten-on, arms in somewhat functional condition.

His next placement was as a Speak-and-Spell, a somewhat game-ish machine used to teach toddlers the beginnings of English. Now, he was drooled on, banged harshly just because the brat thought that was fun, beaten on with a plastic hammer, and kicked across the room when his automatic voice told the kid it had spelled a word wrong. Occasionally, the kid would have a real tantrum and jump up and down on him. All of this hurt, but he couldn't speak about that. Instead, his voice would only say the pre-determined words that were programmed in at the factory. Finally, when the toddler grew into a second-grader, he was deemed no longer needed, and unceremoniously thrown into the garbage bin.

Similar cycles repeated over and over, with some "incarnations" being very brutal, some that had him as a device outright meant to be quickly disposable (or worse yet, dismantled alive and recycled), and some that were maddeningly boring and included no communication at all, such as being an overly-modern streetlight.

He was, indeed, working for humans, just as promised - but not in any way he would ever have wanted to. And, with these placements, he was learning the very harsh lesson of why Decepticons did not ever want to do that. He now could especially see the robots' objection to the common human idea that machines didn't think or feel anything, or that they should have an "end of life" date regardless of whether they were still functional or not.

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

Cybertron

The people of Cybertron quickly realized that something big was coming when they felt the steel under their feet begin to vibrate. It wasn't much vibration, but it was constant. This, they knew, was the vibration of industrial production - and since it was underfoot, that meant that the high-speed military factories were running. Unlike usual, it didn't stop after a day or two. This was not a run being done just to restock normally-used parts.

"It's as if they're making a whole new army," passers-by commented. "That hasn't stopped for weeks now!"

"I bet we're getting an upgrade!" Said some older people, who had seen that happen on rare occasion. "A FREE upgrade!"

"It'll be beta. I don't want any!" Some others commented.

In the slums, it didn't take long for the normally-downtrodden mood to lift. Everyone became much more careful of Scroungers, figuring that if they could just hold out until the Mandatory Upgrade that they were increasingly sure would come, they wouldn't have to worry about Scroungers for a long time afterward. Even the rustiest rustbuckets, who had given up on life (and bothering with repairs) now found the ability to cobble their bodies back into better functionality one last time. "All we have to do is make it to Upgrade Day," they told each other, "and we'll all be new again."

Meanwhile, the Scroungers increased their violence as they, too, realized that there was going to be a mandatory physical upgrade. They knew that once that was declared, everyone would rush to get free bodies. Then, they would have one last chance to ply their trades - by trying to intercept weak and broken bots trying to reach the upgrade location - and after that, the Scrounging business would be over for years to come. The poorest would actually get the best deal, because their entire bodies were junk so the government would probably just mind-transfer them to new ones instead of retrofitting their current forms. As the Scroungers became more and more desperate, the streets of the slums became almost impassibly treacherous.

In Iacon City, there were no such last-minute attempts at life and death. The insane bots here were too far gone to do anything but try to carry out their base instincts, and the Scroungers weren't much better off. Even for a mandatory upgrade, the government would not be coming here...or so they thought. This year, there would be a surprise.

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

Bureau of Paranormal Research

General Shockwave held a strange device in his hand.

"This has passed all of its tests," he announced to the military commanders surrounding him in a half-circle. "It will make whoever uses it immune to Iacon's corrosive effects." The commanders, all recently-appointed to their command posts, were each from Shockwave's division. "You will install 100 of these devices into the troops you hand-pick and that I approve, and of course, I and each of you will get one. Then, when the Upgrade is openly declared, we will storm that wretched Autobot relic and haul every last crazy bot out of that place for Debugging and then upgrades. Not one citizen on this planet shall go without the Upgrade this time. Of course, anyone bad enough to have decided that he's an Autobot is not a citizen anymore, so summarily delete any that you run into. Only real Decepticons are citizens!"

For now, though, the operation would have to wait. It was NOT general Mandatory Upgrade Day yet. The Military would be outfitted first, and then, the civilian version would be designed and released to the "regular" high speed factories for parts production. There were many more civilians (or at least, people as "civilian" as Decepticons ever were...) but there were also many more civilian factories.

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

Military Bases Across Cybertron

The upgrade parts for the first batch of troops were soon complete, and now, they were being delivered to base mechanics all over Cybertron. First, there would be a test run of 10,000 upgrades, and these troops would be put through many drills and maneuvers to make sure that there were no hidden design flaws or other errors. Once the tests were all passed (and any discovered problems were fixed), the full rollout to the first 100 million troops would begin.

When that happened, everyone took note, knowing that who got into the first production run would be a big clue as to what type of enemy they would be facing. It wasn't long before they saw the bombardiers lined up at various base mechanics, followed by the Genociders, and then those with the Biohacking specialty. Shockwave's Biohackers were rarely seen, but now, they were quite proudly showing their Biohazard Seals much like how the Genociders were displaying their Skulls and Wrenches. They were odd-looking sorts, with bodies meant to hold tanks of whatever bio-active substance their commanders wanted them to spray on the enemy. Some had external wing tanks, but many had thick wings with internal storage or even outright tanker bodies that held thousands of gallons of liquids in their fuselages.

Next, a large group from the Military Paranormal Unit lined up, glowing with their enchanted forms. Finally, there came the Comms people, whose specialty was breaking jamming.

It was clearly going to be an unconventional war, using many divisions that the spy and his offspring would not have learned much about during their military stints. The exact way these units functioned, with the exception of the Genociders, was kept secret from all who were not either in them or in command of them. It would be likely that Woden didn't even know some of them, like Biohackers, even existed as specialized battalions and companies.

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

UC of Ceridignon

"Yes, I think you're right," said Fire Eater, silently noting that Loyal Star was learning well. "Now we need to think of how to do it. One thing that's universal about standard religions is that their leaders try to act morally superior, most likely because they - by design - claim to be moral authorities. And we all know that 'morally superior' types are always up to the worst things. It's Tool One in the conbot's box everywhere but on Cybertron, where it is so well-known as to be a transparent connive."

"So what do we do?" Loyal Star asked.

"First: We need to target the church that's in that other town. That town is where these kids go home to, and it's that church's preacher that is putting pressure on the parents - pressure that is being passed down to what should be our converts, and is keeping them from converting. However, if we burn it down like I did to that Autobot-loving one, it'll be too obvious. They'll just hold a fundraiser, and worse, hold a giant pity-us fest that gets people sympathizing with them."

Fire Eater waited a bit. "I've heard of some events on the other side of the Transdimensional Warp Point, and those say that we should look for sexual abuse victims of the priest." His eyes began to glow a bit. "We need to find about 20. Then we find a way to motivate them to speak up, one after another, until people begin to think that there must actually be hundreds. This will discredit that preacher AND his religion. When they try to send another preacher, we make sure that the order results in the arrival of another pervert - this time, one that isn't so subtle. That should pretty much nail them."

Loyal Star listened, but then asked, "what if the current one isn't a pervert?"

"Then he's an embezzler, or a drunkard, or maybe even a murderer! But he's something. You can count on it. We just need to find out whatever bad he's up to - and then jump on it."

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

When the metal ground of Cybertron began to gently vibrate (not hard enough to damage any buildings in the process) the bots wondered what it was about and there were rumours of one of those extreme rare events that only happened when the entire Decepticon Nation would be endangered without one-a free upgrade. Only bots who were centuries old could remember the last time that happened. In the slums it was a time for rejoicing. Bots that were too rusted and damaged to raid successfully would be able with their new bodies to have a chance of rejoining normal Decepticon society. Short term poverty was quite common amongst bots because either a raid went wrong or the bot got conned or burgled, and most raided their way out of it, but for these bots things had gone catastrophically wrong. When the Scroungers heard of the upgrade, they knew their way of life might be coming to an end for a while and redoubled their efforts to catch their prey whilst they still could.

Pesticide,as a Genocider who would soon be needed in the war that would follow, was one of the first 100,000 bots to be upgraded and was excited as he flew his Skulls and Wrenches symbol with pride. Soon enough he would be in action again doing what he enjoyed best. The new upgrade included such things as a changeling detector, improved camouflage,partial resistance to most forms of magic ( not total resistance, but it would be harder then before to use magic to snap wires or damage boards, which would be useful when suppressing pony planets or planets with large numbers of magic users) and various other good things.

At the Bereau of Paranormal Research, General Shockwave announced a for now classified plan to get into Iacon safely, drag out all Decepticon bots who were still loyal to Megatron so they could be debugged and upgraded as well.

Once the Nation was upgraded they were going to make a painful example of Woden and any inhabitanted moons that Woden had, as a warning to the other as yet unconquered biological and robotic nations that Decepticons did not like being spied on. It was quite likely that whilst the war lasted tourists would be temporarily banned from Cybertron to keep the nation safe whilst most of the Nation was busy fighting Woden.

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater silently noted to himself that Loyal Star was doing well and acting like a Priest of Megatron should do. In this case if they just killed the priest and burned the church down, it would not be much good and the other religion would still be just as strong. However, Fire Eater knew that this priest liked to do horrible non PG 13 things to small children. Exposing this would badly damage the reputation of the church and strengthen Megatronism at the same time. The way forward was not always with the blaster-whilst it could solve a lot of problems it could not solve them all. Sometimes mind boards and lots of RAM was better.

Realm of Punishment

The spy would end up serving humans in all manner of unpleasant ways, unable to say anything or even to control his own body or bodies and it would certainly teach him a lesson. The average punishment time for most sins bad enough to end up here was a thousand years, but the spy might end up as one of the few souls suffering forever as he had particularly angered Megatron.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

There were several upgrades that added once-rare capabilities to the Specification for the Standard Military Body, but most of the changes were not of this sort. The engine was redesigned so that the locations of the most critical parts were in different places than before, making it so that any sniper strikes on the old areas would do practically nothing. Joints were redesigned to eliminate flaws that, until the leak, only the top Decepticon engineers had known about. The single Energon tank in the lower torso was left there, but was now surrounded by much more heat-resistant armor. Finally, the transformation sequence was altered so that in the few moments that the process exposed weak points, they would be different points and in different places. Such changes would render much of the aim-related drills that Woden's forces were doing useless.

Pesticide found that some of the military upgrades were unit-specific. He was treated to two new Extended Fire blasters, which could handle firing a steady energy blast for 30 minutes. This would allow each Genocider to continually sweep towns and cities with solid beams without having to pause for that amount of time - per blast. After the 30 minutes were up, they would have to cease fire for just five minutes before integrated chillers cooled the barrels back down and they could do it again. "Theoretically," the mechanic informed them, "a single Genocider could take out an entire town in one single blast, if that town were completely undefended." Put another way, it would work much like a flamethrower when in this mode, only with energy-blast power. Of course, it could also fire the standard repeated short pulses if the situation called for it.

The Biohackers also got a unit-specific upgrade. Now, all of them had both thick, hollow wings and external tanks. "Every idiot will see your external tanks and think they have you if they manage to blow those off of you," the mechanic told them. "That's when you'll be able to open up these integrated wing valves and give them a shower of Surprise."

Other specialists also got unique upgrades. The Paranormal Division was fitted with new soul gems to ensure that their magically-enhanced armor was in top shape, but they also got a new magical weapon meant to spread panic and the feeling of needing to rush at top speed. "Haste makes waste," the mechanic explained, "and these weapons will let you put a 'haste' spell on your foes so they go about everything half-assedly and rush right into whatever traps we've set for them. If there are no traps, it'll still cause them to make more idiotic moves than normal, and that'll make them easier to kill - and more likely to accidentally kill each other with friendly fire and other accidents."

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

Once the basic work was done, a call went out for the Biohackers to report to their area for 'further outfitting.' This meant that their tanks would be filled with something meant to work against the bodies of the Wodenese. When they got there, they found that they would be spreading the Decepticon Berserker Virus. This was a new development from Biological Research. A biological, upon being infected, would go berserk and try to kill whoever was around them. This would be sprayed over the enemy troops, making it so that when the virus kicked in, it would be other enemy troops who they would kill. "This will be working in addition to our spies, who will also 'go berserk' and kill 'their own' units," the commander boasted. "Think of it as a rage virus. There is just one major difference: This virus will only cause a compulsion to kill biologicals. WE will be able to waltz right through even hordes of the infected, who will see us as no more of a target than a bunch of lamp posts. It relies on biologicals' instinctual life-recognition routines, which on all but a few planets, have not evolved to recognize machine life on the base, unconscious level. There may be a few individuals who are exceptions, but not enough to affect the operation."

"Since this is a completely engineered virus, there will be no herd immunity to contend with. Typically, 1% of a population has a mutation that makes them naturally immune to various things, so the entire Woden military isn't going to go nuts when you fly over them. But you should be able to infect 99% of any unit that you encounter that is not wearing adequate hazmat protection."

"According to our studies, the Berserker effect should last only 4-5 days before the targets' immune systems kick the virus out. This is why you must save your virus-spreading fluid for troops only, and not bother with civilians. With civilians, it'd be a pain that they might be able to deal with, but in a high-firepower military unit, the effect will be devastating."

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

After all of the preparation was done, and an entire batch of backup troops was ready, the operation was formally declared. There would be war with Woden and all of its territories, and the intention was to seize it and put its population to slavery.

"They wanted to know all about how we work," Megatron's voice boomed over base loudspeakers across Cybertron, concluding a small speech. "Now, we shall show them all that they need to know about it."

Engines revved with bloodlust as everyone got into position for a mass takeoff. They would drop out of FTL near Woden's farthest inhabited moon, of which it had three, and take that by storm. As they were doing this, the Raider Front would be activated with huge prices on the goods and people of Woden itself. The Military would hang around the moon until enough raiders zoomed by them to know that their target planet would be completely occupied with trying to fend off these brave and greedy independents.

Then, the Decepticon Military would fly in a loose cloud formation - with plenty of room between each other for easier ordnance-dodging - and descend upon Woden in a swarm. The main divisions would go through the still-militarized areas and strafe them, simultaneously triggering the 10,000 embedded spies to go ahead and start massacring the units and squads they'd been placed in. Right behind them would come the Biohackers, who would spray the Berserker Virus on whoever survived these initial assaults. Thanks to the smoke from strafing, bombing, and other activities, their sprays would be barely visible - and even if someone did detect them, the confusion of battle would likely prevent the most important people from getting any reports.

As all of this went on, Comms troops would be circling the action with anti-jammers running to lower the risk to the Decepticon troops. They would simultaneously be trying to jam the enemy's communications capabilities.

While Woden was busy trying to keep its troops alive, it would be unlikely to realize the mission of the 10,000 planes that were heading to its cities. This would allow the Genocide Battalion to come in with relative ease and begin systematically wiping out the ones that MilIntel had identified as being too patriotic to convince to surrender, or at best, were expected to pretend to surrender and then activate endless insurgencies. Meanwhile, a few Biohackers would arrive to spray the Decepticon Loyalty Virus, which would make the infected actively help whichever Decepticons were around. In this case, that would be the Genociders, so anyone bio-hacked into helping them would become very lethal indeed.

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

Woden


To Woden's surprise, not all tourists were banned from Cybertron. In fact, the last couple of their spies had gotten permission to land almost too easily. Little did they know, at the time, that it wasn't a slip-up on the Decepticons' part. Instead, it was a manifestation of the robots' desire to show off.

The two spies, who were posing as a newly-married couple, were right near one of the military bases "checking out the sights" when they got a sight that chilled them to the core. They were right there as millions and millions of Decepticons took to the skies, not only from this base, but from all over the planet. Then, when they rushed back to the one legit hotel their government had identified for them, hoping to radio in a warning, they got another surprise: Their signal was jammed.

At this point, some DomIntel agents came and kicked in their door. They were then taken back outside, and this time, they were forced to watch. "The raiders and troops are headed to Woden," an agent said smugly. "Soon, it will be part of our Empire, and its people shall toil to strengthen our Nation forever."

Of course, the spies, like all other spies, would end up being executed. This time, though, they would get to live for one more day - long enough to see the huge number of warriors that their home nation would be facing, feel the aura of might of this force, and realize the absolute futility of trying to resist it. Now captured, they couldn't even send a warning message.

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

UC of Ceridignon

While it was easy to devise a plan to destroy the popularity of the competing church, it would prove to be hard to put it into action. Subtle questioning yielded nothing solid enough to mount a smear campaign, and it seemed likely that some would even argue the innocence of the priest.

"This is when being a State Religion has its privileges," Fire Eater said after a couple of weeks of poking around. "It's time to bring in ForIntel. If this guy has any trouble at all keeping his zipper closed, they'll get it open - and they'll get the video of that, too."

That night, Fire Eater and Loyal Star went into the priests' quarters, but they did not go to their separate rooms to rest. Instead, they huddled around a radio and set up a plan with Decepticon Foreign Intelligence. Before long, they had the agency's agreement, and at a small custom-body factory on Cybertron, an "8-year-old" soon was standing ready for the installation of a trained professional's mind.

This professional wasn't just an expert spy. S/he was an expert at seduction, and had been deployed to gain blackmail material against many high-ranking foreigners. The only time the agent had failed was when the target simply didn't care if the material was leaked.

Soon, the agent arrived, still using a very hot feminine body that just happened to be Decepticon-sized, and hauling a cart with 100,000 Cubes of Supreme, which were apparently gained from what was euphemistically referred to as the 'professional demonstration of bio-analogous modification parts (genital).' "One must stay in practice," 'she' purred sexily, an act which fell on deaf instincts now that 'she' was back among non-immigrant Decepticons. "So what's the latest gig?"

"We need to con a priest into having sex with this while we record everything," the mission leader said, indicating the small male body standing there with a blank look on its face. "Our priests figure that the competing priest is interested in such things. As we know, if he takes your bait, we can put the guy in jail AND discredit his branch of his heathen religion. We're also hoping to get more people to accuse him of rape and groping and any other thing like that, so you'll need to become friends with lots of other kids and get their stories - which you'll record, of course, and then allow someone to 'find' your recordings."

The Decepticon spy nodded and grinned. "Nothing to it. Those types always go for 'innocence.' And I can play that with no problem at all. Just set up your equipment in his office and behind the altar...oh, and catch the bathrooms, too...and I'll take care of the rest. It's a good idea to bug the guy's house, as well - some of them will invite a target over..."

In an instant, the spy used a hidden latch to reveal mind-transfer ports on the new body, and in another instant, he had connected and mind-transferred.

"Call me Joey," came the young voice. It was a flawless imitation of a human. He looked up, and true to his word, seemed completely innocent and pure. He said nothing to outright claim purity - the Decepticons were so used to that being a red flag that they avoided it - but his peaceful, wide-eyed look got the point across even better. He also looked just slightly unconfident, the better to make a perv think that he'd be too afraid to spill the beans.

"We'll be sending you with some 'adults,' who you are staying with for the foreseeable future," he was informed. "Children that young are almost never on their own, and when they are, they do very poorly. Therefore, it'll provide much better cover for you to have guardians."

The spy now scowled and pouted, the algo of the body perfectly translating his opinion of that into kid-like body language. Still, he said nothing - he knew that this would be an essential part of his cover.

A couple of days later, the competing congregation got three new members: The 'young boy,' and the two agents who played his elderly grandparents. Their cover story was that his parents were drug addicts, so his grandparents had to take over the parental duties. Soon, they enrolled him into the Sunday School and said that they thought it'd be good if he learned to be an altar boy, "just like I was when I was around his age," the 'grandfather' added, as if recalling a fond memory.

"Hi, I'm Joey," the spy - who was actually 100 years old - said in his perfectly-rendered kid voice.

It would take quite some time to get any footage. This priest was quite careful, especially with newcomers to the town. However, Joey would work his wiles tirelessly, and if this priest was the way the Megatronists suspected he was, the day would come when he would make his move - and it would all be on video thanks to ForIntel.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron/Woden

Pesticide was very pleased with the new blasters he got, that were capable of a continuous beam of blaster fire as well as the normal blasts. Soon enough the Genocide Battalion was ordered by a base general to prepare for war, and engines purred with pleasure. They would get to leave their barracks and open fire on some troublesome biologicals soon enough. General Carjack showed up and told them "We are going to deal with a planet called Woden that managed to infiltrate us with a nasty spy because some Immigration agents centuries ago were too lazy to read his human Code. We will make an example of them so that other planets know not to try anything like that again." Soon enough the war was formally and publically declared and the Raider Front set off in front as normal-and ran into a small but dangerous space fleet guarding Woden, capable of destroying Decepticon bodies. Most of them left the fleet to the Military to destroy and went to the planet's surface, where they encountered a military that was still quite robust and dangerous at this stage and even jammers in some areas.

Not long afterwards, final orders were given to the military. Except in emergencies, only officers were to use the radio for now, to avoid it being made useless by huge numbers of Decepticons all chattering over it at once. Megatron then told the Decepticon Military over the radio "We are going to make an example to the rest of the universe of those who would infiltrate us and learn secrets that are not for the ears of biologicals. DECEPTICONS, ATTACK!" Soon enough they were in combat with the space fleet, Pesticide included. Although it was quite rare that the Genocide Battalion went into battle against those who could fight back, it did happen occasionally. No general wanted his Battalion to be full of those who were frightened about fighting. If the Battalion took more then 20% damage, it was likely it would be withdrawn until it's members had been put into new bodies from the Main Save Vault and could rejoin it. Pesticide managed to crack open the ship's observation deck, depressurizing it. One bot in twenty five was blasted at this stage, but the rest turned the starships into blazing hulks and got down to the surface.
Forintel agents at this stage opened fire on their friends or gave false orders whilst Biohackers were able to infect their foes with various viruses and the Bomber units found jammers and took them out quickly for the safety of every bot. The planet turned out to be 90% human, 9% pony and 1% changeling.

Several of the Changeling Queens living here decided that they had better join the Decepticons whilst the battle was still in the balance. As allies of the Decepticons, at least they could escape death or slavery and they might even earn some Decepticon love out of it, the rarest, hardest to get love in the universe. They ordered their drones to fly big Decepticon Seals on their bodies to identify themselves as allies. As it turned out, those drones who died fighting for the Decepticons went to the Decepticon afterlife waiting room where it would be decided what to do with them.

*****
A couple of human spies from Woden got a nasty shock when from all over the planet Decepticons rose. From military bases and shops, from houses and mansions, from underground tunnels, from streets and public squares and government offices, even from Debugging stations that were not in active use, bots rose up, transformed and left the Metal Planet. Gang fights and muggings stopped as the bots went off to do battle, and because what in peacetime was just part of Decepticon culture became treason in wartime. In war, the Nation would be of no real use if it was fighting with each other all over the place. A detachment stayed behind on Cybertron just in case Woden had a hidden fleet somewhere that even Forintel didn't know about that invaded the Metal Planet behind the Decepticon Military's back, along with extremely young bots and their Coders. The spies got an even nastier shock when Domintel agents arrested them for spying. "The raiders and troops are headed to Woden," an agent said smugly. "Soon, it will be part of our Empire, and its people shall toil to strengthen our Nation forever." Soon enough they would be executed but not until the next day.

*****
UC of Ceredigion

Fir Eater got in touch with Forintel who sent them three agentsto see if they could entrap that priest and publically expose him as a nonce. Normally exposing anyone, even a nonce, would be seen as narking, but in this case they had special clearence from High Priest Warfire to do so as it was in the service of Megatronism and was not narking for the hell of it.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Woden

It didn't take long for the news to reach the main planet as the Raider Front zoomed past the moon between it and Cybertron, and as most of the raiders evaded the defensive space fleet, all of the alarms on the planet were already going off. Thanks to their spy, they knew of this military tactic and had set up plenty of defenses around their refineries, oil fields, and stores of a more-modern fuel that was not yet known to the Decepticons. The raiders, however, didn't act the way they usually did. Some attacked the fuel depots despite the defenses, with mixed results, but many headed to the planet's backwaters - places that seemed to be of no strategic importance.

Soon, the people in these towns realized, to their horror, that Decepticons landing there weren't just lost. They began to tear the roofs off of the houses and pluck the inhabitants out one or two at a time. Then, they put their captives into carts that had been hastily fitted with oxygen tanks and better seals. Some died almost instantly, before even leaving the planet, because their individual captors hadn't realized that the Energon fumes coming from the thin layer of residue in their carts, would both burn their airways and suffocate them. Others, however, had the better fortune of being captured by raiders who actually knew a bit about biology and had cleaned their oil tanks well. These would survive to be taken to Earth, as parts of batches ranging from 1,000 to 10,000, and sold at the slave market.

At the market, about 100 hastily-recruited employees of the Bureau of Biological Labor waited with syringes full of DNA-patch material to upgrade the new arrivals from "wild" specimens to Humans 5.3. They fully intended to get the maximum possible amount of work out of this new stock since Megatron was paying the high Cube for it, and the 5.3 code would make it possible. This code included the loyalty genes from golden retriever dogs, and once it kicked in, it was possible that enslavement chips wouldn't even be needed after their overseers had properly trained them.

As the Woden government began to get reports that mass enslavement was going on, along with a rather severe amount of die-offs, it was faced with a quandary. If it sent its military to drive the pirates away, it would weaken its defenses of its major cities and even some of its bases. However, if it did not, then history would show that they did nothing to protect their defenseless citizens. At this point, they still had concern for what history would show because they expected to win, and therefore, to have to answer to their people about their decisions. Of course, the Decepticons intended to take that worry off of their minds by making them lose.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Taking the first inhabited moon of Woden turned out to be a bit harder than expected. It was fully habitable, rather than being one with just a base or a couple of domed cities, and a decent amount of military hardware and troops had been moved there in preparation for the upcoming war. Luckily, this materiel had been made to hit the weak points of the old, and now irrelevant, Military Design Specification. Though it managed to take out a few troops, the rest swarmed it like an endless sea of hornets and soon overran the entire place. Then, all but a few troops - who were left behind to maintain Decepticon control of the territory - continued on to Woden.

On their way there, they blasted through a rather deadly fleet of space warships that had weapons powerful enough to not have to worry about where weak points were. Fortunately, this sort of weaponry also required a lot of fuel, and it wasn't long before some of the ships ran out of it. The larger ships were also easy targets whenever they recharged their cannons, and it wasn't long before Pesticide put a big crack into the flagship's observation deck. Several humans and what seemed to be a pony were sucked into space. Once the "pony" suffocated in the lack of oxygen, however, its body reverted to its real - Changeling - form.

Inside the ship, emergency airlocks sealed off the area, but it was too late for it to save itself. Decepticons swarmed in through the now-broken observation deck and blasted the airlocks open with relative ease. Many continued further, blasting more emergency airlocks as they went, and only found real resistance in areas where the defenders had the time to don space suits. Then, Woden's reliance on the spy's Design Specification information was the downfall of those defenders, who wasted their precise-fire handheld weapons by shooting at engine areas that were no longer essential like they had been before.

~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, the Decepticon Military arrived above Woden itself, and Leader Megatron announced this fact over their command frequency so that the raiders would know that they now had a lot of company. This would help to reduce the risk of friendly fire.

Once the High Generals got close enough to see what was going on, they found that Woden had diverted some forces to the towns under attack by raiders, but not enough to actually bother them. This left most of the defense at key areas, and before long, laser and energy fire was coming up to meet the Decepticons' front lines. It didn't take long for Megatron and the generals to realize that the ordnance within range of them was NOT aiming at all possible Decepticon targets. Instead, it was aimed specifically at THEM. Woden had obviously learned all about how the Decepticon High Command preferred to lead from the front.

It wasn't the first time an enemy realized that the front lines of a Decepticon invasion force weren't entirely made up of cannon fodder, but it was a rare occurrence for enemies to catch on that the "leading from the front" thing wasn't just propaganda. This made it so that some of the High Generals weren't entirely ready to find themselves defending against multiple high-tech energy-cannon batteries aimed directly at them. Before long, General Skywarp's now-blank body was careening towards the ground in a spin, and not long after that, Soundwave, of all people, found his entire chest replaced by a gaping hole. As was according to Decepticon military doctrine, both did their best to set their flight-control hardware so that it would send their deactivated bodies straight at the enemy soldiers below, like crude missiles, just before they mind-transferred.

Quickly, Megatron and the remaining generals split apart from each other, making it harder for Woden to aim at all of them at once. Meanwhile, Megatron's elite division came into battle position and joined him in returning fire. Now, the Woden troops who had been trying to take out the Decepticon command structure saw their skies turn black with planes as the elites got into formation. The humans thought that it'd be easy to kill them all with them being packed together like that, but before they could do much shooting, they saw the skies turn a yellow-white - with the energy of Decepticon blaster fire. In just a few moments, nothing on that part of the ground was left except for what had become the flaming remnants of the defensive batteries.

This sort of action just energized Megatron and the High Generals, who were now hot to make up for the unfortunate results suffered by Skywarp and Soundwave. The two generals' divisions were also more eager to fight so that they could prove that those results were just flukes and that they had not been serving under inferior commanders.

~~~~~~~~~~

At another part of the planet, Generals Carjack and Thundercracker had come down low. They decided that instead of attacking from above a well-defended place, they'd come in from a less-populated area with their divisions and then hit the real target from the side. Unfortunately, Woden's spy had gotten them a copy of the Decepticon Military Doctrine chip, and they had used the information to anticipate this move. Rows of energy-cannon batteries stood waiting, and as soon as the generals and the front-linesmen of their divisions appeared, their troops hit the fire buttons.

With giant booms, all of the energy cannons exploded simultaneously. Then, one of the Woden soldiers, who had been "coincidentally" standing far back, began to laugh maniacally. In one swift move, he popped hidden in-arm blasters into the ready position and dispatched the other surviving Woden troops.

Without a word, all of the attacking Decepticons gained altitude, and as they went by, some tipped their wings in thanks to the now-obvious embedded ForIntel agent that had sabotaged those batteries over a month prior. Thanks to him and several others like him, they found the way to their target military base quite easy to travel.

For now, the Genociders were not flying separately, but as part of Carjack's main division. They would first take out this military base, which was disturbingly close to one of Woden's biggest cities. Once it was out of the way, the Genociders and Carjack would continue on to that city - Old Partinus - with the intention of exterminating it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

UC of Ceridignon

It took a few months, but thanks to the subtle, but relentless, attempts of "Joey," the time came when he took the bait. The competing priest, however, didn't go where ForIntel had planted its bugs. As if ruled by Murphy's Law, he invited the boy into a shed on the property. Joey was not at all happy about this, and quickly used his internal radio to send a signal to the priest's phone that made it ring inside the house. The priest grumbled, and told Joey to wait by the shed.

Joey did this, but as soon as the priest was out of sight, he popped the end of his finger open and revealed a mini-torch. With it, he melted the innards of the shed's padlock. By the time the priest got back from the "prank call - nobody there," the lock had cooled, but it would never open again.

The priest, all ready to do unmentionable things and now frustrated, made his mistake. He invited the "boy" into the house.

Now it would be just a matter of time before he learned that Decepticons only reliably gave the privilege of "no snitchin'" to other Decepticon citizens - and not only was he NOT a Decepticon citizen, he was part of the competition. Though the average Decepticon would still think it was slimy to run a pro-police sting on him, spies were different. They didn't have qualms about much of anything. This trait was what made them so highly able to infiltrate targets and the coldly backstab people they had fooled into trusting them. While spying was often essential for a nation to do, nobody really liked the spies, and for very good reason.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Recording was not released that night. Instead, Joey went to his temporary home, where he and his "grandparents" compiled all of the recordings the smallest spy had made while talking to other children, and then appended the video to the end of the batch as the coup de gras.

Then, just before one of the local religion's major holidays, the compilation was sent, completely uncensored, to the media.

It was immediately THE talk of the entire province. Within a day, it was national news. The local police and the federals had no real choice but to raid the priest's home for more evidence, and there, they found hundreds of hours of home video that had NOT been planted by ForIntel. It would be enough to send the competing priest away for life once the trial - which itself would generate seemingly bottomless amounts of bad publicity - was finally over.

[Vallermoore]

Woden

Taking the first moon of Woden was harder then expected as it was a large moon with an atmosphere and a large number of soldiers. Most planets ran through their ammunition within hours, but Woden had a long time to prepare for the war due to the Decepticons having to upgrade some of their Military members first. Soon enough they reached Woden itself and Megatron said "The Raider Front is active so before you shoot down a plane, check to make sure it is not flying our Seals. Friendly fire can be such a pain. Also there are reports coming in from Forintel of changelings helping us and flying our Seals on their bodies. Don't shoot them unless they attack you, but don't fully trust them and keep your anti-changeling shields on. They are not so different from us apart from being biological, they are deceptive and conniving and their Queens rule with total power over them. If they help us faithfully, I'll most likely give them a small amount of Decepticon love once the battle is over."

When the really hard battle commenced, General Skywarp and General Soundwave found their very expensive bodies blown up and had to mind transfer back to Cybertron, from which they made their way back to the battle as quickly as possible in new bodies. Generals Carjack and Thundercracker would have suffered the same fate if not for a Forintel agent who sabotaged the cannons that would have blown the generals up. Pesticide found himself in hard combat against a military base and took 30% damage before the base was suppressed, and saw a bot blown up in front of him. With a human or another type of biological this would have caused PTSD but Pesticide knew the bot would end up in the Military Save Vault and would have had his pain level turned down in battle. They moved on to the already partly bombed Old Partinus, and Pesticide switched his blasters into continuous fire mode for ten minutes, blasting humans and ponies alike, sparing only
a squadron of Changelings who clearly were flying the Decepticon Seal on their chitin and risking themselves to help the Decepticons. He had his changeling detection device on and whenever he saw a concealed changeling, he blasted the ling as it was not a friend of the Decepticons.

Elsewhere SolarTempest had lost a leg but Lightning Dust stood over his boss protectively, blasting any foe who came near, before producing a leg from his own panels. "I brought this leg along for myself in case I needed it, but you clearly need it more then me, Boss. I'll keep watch whilst you get the leg wired in." Lightning Dust had a big fear of getting disabled and being unable to move. He could have got rid of it at Debugging, but instead he only had it turned down enough so that it didn't get in the way of his life whilst leaving him security conscious and alert to hacking attempts or possible serious body damage. As a result, his mind was unhackable by an average hacking chip whilst he carried a spare limb in his panels even at the cost of some loot. Soon enough SolarTempest was with two legs again. Should the gang become a true giant syndicate one day, Lightning Dust had a good chance of becoming an underboss. In the many raids and battles and fights the gang had been involved in, he had always been useful, even facing down alicorns with success. He loved being a Decepticon, and privately hoped that Vallermoore would be conquered one day. If it was, his urge to fight could be a problem, as he'd be hot-dogging as much as MasterBlaster used to do in his eagerness to bring down the foe that had trapped him in an inert body.

UC of Ceridignon

With the priest in prison and utter disgrace, Megatronism started to grow a little bit, and another priest who seemingly had strong morals was sent in to replace him. Forintel quickly found the priest was a changeling who was feeding on the love of his parishioners for their God.

[Victorious Decepticons]

UC of Ceridignon

Loyal Star and Fire Eater watched the news with satisfaction as it showed the pervy priest being arrested and put into a cop car. The human looked totally baffled, especially since he had not seen the news due to being too busy being raided and then busted. It would only be later that he saw the tape, and knew from the camera angle that he had been recorded by outsiders right in his own house. Nothing, however, would signal that he'd been on the wrong end of an actual ForIntel operation.

Soon after the news broke, Joey and his "grandparents" announced that they were moving far way, into the nation across the border. Their excuse was that they no longer felt safe. Of course, the plane waiting for them at the border wasn't going there at all. It took them back to Cybertron, where they were debriefed and given their payment for another job well done.

A Foreign Intelligence Secret Staging Area, Cybertron

"Only a few of our agents are good enough to pull this sort of thing off, especially when they know that it'll result in the direct involvement of law enforcement. We thank you for putting the interests of Megatronism above those of your personal dislike for that particular job." The mission leader told Joey, giving a nod to the other two who really didn't do much. "I'm sure your next mission will be one of the usual solo endeavors."


Joey strolled over to one of his regular bodies, this one a standard-looking Decepticon one, and mind-transferred. "I'm glad to be out of that tiny thing. Other humans of that size can barely think!! They just run around all day making a racket. I had to imitate *that.* What kind of a design involves bringing something online before it's remotely ready?! Ugh."


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

Back in the UC


Here, trials themselves typically were not broadcast. However, there was nonstop coverage of what went on during them, which meant that bad press for the opposition went on for a few weeks. There was even telephone testimony from Joey, thanks to ForIntel leaving his phone number working and having another agent still in the UC forward the signal to him on Cybertron. Joey sounded completely devastated, exactly as people would expect him to be, and told how he could no longer trust any adults ever. He began to cry loudly, as an 8-year-old might. A few sips were heard, which most listeners automatically assumed to be water, but which Fire Eater and Loyal Star were sure were actually of Supreme. No one even considered that the engine noise that was coming through along with Joey's voice was anything more than traffic, either, but the two Megatronist priests instantly recognized it as the sound of a Decepticon robot-mode engine in the foreground - "Joey's" engine - and general jet noise in the background.

"He's already back home drinking his Supreme," Fire Eater laughed. "I bet he's got his feet up, too. Listen to that easy-idlin' engine as he 'cries' over the phone. Ha ha," he grinned as he imagined the scene, with the agent leaning back and looking calm as ice while voice-acting this follow-up role. "Too bad I couldn't get them to join our Temple. Unfortunately, all three said they couldn't stay as a long-term mission. I suppose it wouldn't have worked to have them join anyway. Android bodies don't grow, after all, and if he kept looking 8 for another 10 years, yet didn't show the other characteristics of dwarfism, it would become quite obvious that something was up."

Loyal Star chuckled and agreed, imagining a perma-kid sitting in the pew next to grandparents who never died off no matter how old they got.

Fire Eater then said, "Now this next git, we have to find out about him and then find a way to get rid of him." He did not yet know anything about the new priest other than that he seemed like a real stuffed shirt moralist - just the kind that would be a hit in the town he had been sent to.

"Let's visit the church in a show of 'cross-faith community.' Of course, we'll actually be sizing him up to figure out the best way to get people to stop following him."

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

The next week, as the two were preparing to leave for the competing service, they were surprised to hear something in their briefcases start shaking. Upon investigation, they saw that certain optional parts, that they had taken along "just in case," were now warmer than the other things in their cases.

"These are our anti-changeling devices," Fire Eater said, taking his out. "They're warmed up and vibrating a bit. It must be a sign from the Divine Leader that there's a changeling at the church and that we need to be ready for it." Fire Eater installed his and turned it on, and handed Loyal Star one to put in and activate. "I wish I still had that device we were researching for the Paranormal Division a while ago," he said. "Depending on what we find, I just may ask for an advance version."

Now prepared, they went over to the church, still not knowing which one of the people there was the changeling or if said changeling would even be at the church itself.

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

Woden

It took a bit of work to get rid of the military base, but this effort continued to be made easier by the efforts of several Decepticon agents. The agents had sabotaged other key pieces of artillery, and only half of the light guns were working right. Some tanks refused to start, having mysteriously been drained of fuel. Meanwhile, the base's fuel reserve was gushing out of its huge container and all over the pavement, thanks to someone having opened the valves. The attacking Decepticons spared no time in igniting it all with their blasters, forcing the legitimate Woden troops to abandon their attempts to stop the spill.

After about an hour, the base was trashed enough that the Genociders could go ahead and break off from the rest of the troops. Soon, they were bearing down on Old Partinus, which was indeed an old city. Gothic-style skyscrapers rose up, but while they were much taller than the surrounding buildings, they were small compared to those of a fully-modern city on a more-advanced planet. Of course, compared to Cybertronian high-rises, almost all of the ones built for biological use seemed tiny.

Still, it would take a bit of work to flatten these strong masonry buildings. The Genociders landed, and Carjack ordered them to start kicking and shoving them over. The Genociders, who had been well-trained by Carjack to save on effort whenever possible, took steps to ensure maximum casualties during this part of the operation. First, they quietly approached the buildings, which Old Partinus' people had hidden inside of when they heard the sounds of war. Then, they welded every exterior door closed, as well as the windows up to 10 stories high. After that, they worked together to topple the buildings, ensuring that everyone in them ended up buried in mounds of rubble.

Humans and ponies in the streets saw what was going on and began running away like a sea of gazelles, but there was no way that they could outrun the sweeps of blaster fire that came down at them. Pesticide very much enjoyed his new blast-sweep weapon, which sterilized the road closest to him as far as he could see. He enjoyed it again when Carjack said to cook the building rubble, saying that "in almost every rubble-making event, there's some schlock who'll be in a gap and live for two weeks if he's allowed to - so cook everything to be sure!"

At a fairly distant air force base, the commanders there got a red-alert alarm. Someone had seen what the Genociders were doing via satellite cam, and wanted the pilots to scramble immediately to put a stop to it. They did so, but as they attempted to fly to Old Partinus, Decepticon raiders easily picked them off. Some put the enemy planes into their trailers as if they were oversized toys, pilots and all, with the intention of selling the metal as scrap. Others just blasted them, figuring the amount of metal involved wasn't worth the bother of catching them.

By the time the fighter/bomber wing reached Old Partinus, only 10% of them remained. When they looked down, they saw seas of rubble where a city used to be, with only a few blocks still left untouched. Human and pony-shaped silhouettes all over the ground were all that remained of some of the citizens who had been vaporized, while crushed carcasses were in the streets where other means of destruction had been used. The sight alone was enough to cause glitches to the enemy pilots, but they didn't have a chance to look for long. As they watched, random Genociders raised their arms toward the planes and closed their fists in preparation to open fire.

[Vallermoore]

UC of Ceridignon

When Fire Eater mentioned that the slightly warm and vibrating changeling detectors/shields were a sign from Megatron that they were needed Loyal Star felt pleased that He would help them out like that. These relatively small android bodies were not designed for facing changelings as unlike the main bodies that had love shilding and changeling detection built into them, they needed to have it added. As a foal, Loyal Star had been taught to hate and fear changelings, but as a Decepticon he didn't fear them and he didn't hate them either. Their Way was in some ways not so different to the Decepticon Way, except they raided love instead of oil and had Queens ruling them-and of course for all their magic and changing ability were still weak biologicals, much weaker, and therefore inferior, to Decepticons. The reason why Decepticons considered biologicals inferior was not because of the colour of their bodies but because they were inferior, their bodies being easily killed. When they went to the church, Loyal Star silently turned on his changeling detector and the changeling was revealed to him to be the priest. Thinking clearly, he waited until the priest was halfway through his sermon quietly used his own magic to cast a Reveal spell. It didn't last that long but it did reveal the changeling, casing the ponies in the congregation to whinney and flee in fear and the humans to panic not long afterwards and run away. Those who didn't know about changelings thought the priest to be a demon or maybe even Satan himself. Not only had the rival church been damaged by a peadophile scandal, there were now openly circulating rumours that it was so evil that it had been infiltrated by demons from the depths of Hell itself. It began to shed members as a result.

Woden

The Genociders shot down the fighters and bombers quite easily with only a handful of causalties to themselves and General Carjack's armour getting a nasty scratch on it. With many of the planet's bases now destroyed, the Decepticons could move in on the capital. The capital was protected by a double ring of anti-aircraft guns, so taking it would bring some losses. It also had jammers which bomber units-or the allied changelings- would be sent to take out first, to avoid Decepticon body losses becoming real losses. The government was looking into all kinds of ways to try and deal with the Decepticons, and had a couple of Decepticon size mechs with blasters on them, that were piloted by humans.

[Victorious Decepticons]

UC of Ceridignon

While most of the congregation ran away from the scary exposed changeling, not all were of that mindset. Even though this was a peace-preaching religion, there were - like in any other religion - those who didn't wholeheartedly believe in following all of its teachings. This, combined with the fact that the human species had a warring streak that stretched back to the time of its first members, meant that there were a few present who were quite lethal.

To the changeling's surprise, these humans stood up, but instead of running, they drew concealed pistols and opened fire. "DIE, DEMON!" One yelled while shooting at the creature with a hatred that would have quickly brought a Windigo if one of the cold beasts had been near. The other humans weren't as hateful, but they did figure that destroying this demonic-looking thing was the best bet, and some of them shot with high accuracy.

Loyal Star and Fire Eater hadn't hidden the fact that they were the Megatonist priests checking out the place, but after a pause, Fire Eater said, "let's show them the power of some good Cybertronian technology." He raised his arm, popped up a blaster, and let the changeling have it right in the head. Instantly, the changeling went down, dead. His corpse showed several bullet holes, so it was hard to say if the headshot would really have been necessary.

Necessary or not, it was now clear that the Megatronist priests were not of the peace-pushing variety. They had shown the value of firepower as well as their willingness to use it.

"THIS is how you handle serious threats," Fire Eater's voice boomed out, reaching the humans and ponies now hiding down various corridors and in the Sunday School rooms around the corner. "Come to our Temple, and we will teach you even more practical ways of survival that don't involve hoping that your enemies will have mercy on you!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

At first, the congregation was more than suspicious, and didn't flock to the Megatronist Temple as planned. Immediately, some accused the Decepticons of planting a changeling-looking android just so they could pretend to save the day. Before this conspiracy theory could gain roots, though, an autopsy revealed that the changeling was 100% biological. This also put to rest the idea that the thing was demonic. Despite this, the competing church's credibility was now severely dented. First it had let a sex offender through, and now, this strange beast! What would come next?

~~~~~~~~~~~

Priests' Quarters, First Temple of the United Confederacy of Ceridignon

"We've about got 'em now," Fire Eater said to Loyal Star. "One more bad priest from the main church, and no one will want to go in there anymore."

Fire Eater opened up a laptop and connected to ForIntel. He soon accessed the latest data on priests eligible for transfer to the local competition. Many of them were young men who didn't yet have a track record, a few were known-good older guys...and a few were active criminals of various sorts. Soon, Fire Eater jabbed his finger at the screen.

"This guy. I will ask ForIntel to work machinations to install him."

Loyal Star looked at the screen. There, he saw a picture of a human, about 40 years old, who had a strangely intense and hostile look in his eye, a tense neck and jaw, dry straggly hair, and a weird straight line for a mouth.

Jack McQuick

Subject is severely addicted to ICC methamphetamine. Has been transferred from church to church due to activities including mugging, car theft, and other crimes. All crimes are done to support the addiction. Subject will be very easy to compromise as long as he thinks he can maintain his cover as a 'good priest.' WARNING: Tends to get busted and likes to talk too much.

"So all we need to do is get him a fix and he'll do what we want?" Loyal Star asked.

"Oh, no. There are far too many dealers around here for us to blackmail him that way. ForIntel would probably threaten him with exposure - that's usually what they do with ones marked 'very easy to compromise' and who are in positions where the appearance of 'good morals' are important. However, his church has been protecting him by moving him around whenever his real nature becomes known. It may be a good idea to find out which official is doing that protecting, and then do some Market Share activity on that official so our man Jack doesn't get his next transfer."

First, though, Jack would have to be installed into this particular church. That would require the aid of ForIntel, which could plant the necessary recommendations into the proper file cabinets. This was turning into a more complex and Machiavellian operation than even Fire Eater had imagined when they first flew into the UC of Ceridignon.

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

Woden

It was a simple matter for the Genociders to barge into Old Partinus once the military defenses were taken out. The city, deemed too loyal to Woden to ever convince to obey the Decepticons, was soon on its way to oblivion. Within just a few hours, it was a flat wasteland of rubble, and Genociders were sitting on the manhole covers to finish the job. From an outsider's view, one would think they were just relaxing as they sat and chatted, occasionally revving their engines, for about an hour. Below, in the stormwater drainage system, the last few inhabitants of the city breathed their last.

~~~~~~~~~~~

World Tree, Woden

The capital city was a mix of very old architecture and highly modern skyscrapers, some of which seemed to float above the surface. A closer look revealed that this "floating" was an illusion, but it was a far better one than a planet like Earth would have been able to produce. Near the center, however, there were structures that only existed in science fiction and video games elsewhere: arcologies. These giant buildings held between 10,000 and 100,000 people each, and they also contained everything needed to sustain all of that life.

Inside the arcologies, everyone felt safe - until they heard the ring of AA cannons at the city's edge start booming. The Decepticons were surely right at the city limits!

Soon, the booming stopped, and everyone inside thought they were safe. What they didn't realize was that the Decepticons had taken the only logical step when faced with cannons that were all aimed at the air: They had landed, and were now marching on the metropolis in robot mode. The skywardly-aimed batteries could do nothing since they had been built without the means to fire straight out instead of up.

As this went on, the high-flying Decepticon Bombardier Battalion came on the scene. It began to drop advanced bombs about 5 miles away from the batteries. These bombs had some flight capacity of their own, and when they got about 50 feet from the ground, their navigation systems kicked in. The bomb/missiles then skimmed near the surface, below the easiest parts of the artillery's firing angles, and then sped up suddenly just before reaching their destinations. While some bombs were intercepted, and a few Bombardiers were hit with the AA guns, most of the ordnance hit its mark. Loud, rumbling booms rocked the city of World Tree as the gun placements were blown up.

Once those things were destroyed, the rest of the attacking Decepticons went back into the air, some grumbling about having had to walk at all. Meanwhile, changeling groups entered the city and quickly took on the form of Woden troops. These "troops" then began ambushing the real ones.

While everyone was busy paying attention to this obvious military action, the BioHackers came in and sprayed the entire area with the Decepticon Loyalty Virus. It would take about 5 hours for it to show its symptoms in those susceptible to it, but if anything was left of the city by then, those affected would temporarily become blindly obedient to Decepticon orders. Since this was the seat of Woden's government, the first order would be to unconditionally surrender. Enough would likely be affected to be able to ram that legislation through the congress there despite the ardent "no" votes of anyone who turned out to be immune.

[Vallermoore]

UC of Ceridignon

Whilst most of the people and ponies ran away or galloped out of the church some were of sterner stuff, pulled out their own guns and riddled the changeling with bullets, with Fire Eater giving the coup de grace. One of them either really thought the changeling was a demon or had his own reasons for hating changelings. "THIS is how you handle serious threats," Fire Eater's voice boomed out, reaching the humans and ponies now hiding down various corridors and in the Sunday School rooms around the corner. "Come to our Temple, and we will teach you even more practical ways of survival that don't involve hoping that your enemies will have mercy on you!"
The human said "Thanks for helping to defeat that changeling. I lost my five year old daughter Emma to those love stealing beasts. They took so much of her love that it damaged her immune system and she got sick. Changelings are not popular on this planet, frankly. When you have your next service, I think I will come along and see what it's about."

If the rival religion had been a bot, it would be a badly damaged but still just about capable of fighting back one. The utter disgrace of a sex offending priest and the horror of the second one being a changeling-as the human had said, changelings were very unpopular on this world in general-had seriously and negatively affected it's reputation. One more scandal would make it start falling apart in this region, allowing Megatronism to start really taking hold. When the changeling was found to be not android, not demon, but biological, most people decided it was not a Megatronist plot-which in fact it hadn't been.

Priests' Quarters, First Temple of the United Confederacy of Ceridignon

With the help of Forintel, a meth addict could be installed as the next priest. Loyal Star hoped to himself that if the planet became Megatronist, it would be treated relitively lightly rather then being crushed like a grape. That would be most likely the case as there was nothing really to gain from slaughtering loyalists. All was well. With Fire Eater with him, surely nothing serious could go wrong.

*****
Woden

After Old Partinus was destroyed, the Genociders were granted an hour to loot and Pesticide got some good strong metal that he could sell at a foundary and put it in his panels.

With the AA guns only firing up, the Deepticons were able to avoid them by landing. A couple of tank regiments put up a fight and even destroyed a few Decepticons before they were blasted. The Decepticon Bombardier Battalion showed up and took out the guns. With changelings slipping into the city, and with civilians and soldiers either panicing with fear or affected with the Decepticon Loyalty Virus, the government surrendered after a few arcologies were taken out. It would take a few more hours to deal with any holdouts and renegades and to capture Woden's leader. Megatron grinned. A few things still needed to be done-plunder, looting and enslavement, the public execution of Woden's leader, a small reward of Decepticon love as well as the privilege of not being killed or enslaved for the loyal changelings, and a short victory speech. Traditionally, just after a war a few minutes were allowed for any normally rival Decepticons who didn't want to fight each other to leave if they wanted to. Soon there would be a grand parade and Megatron looked forward to that-and then an even bigger parade to celebrate the twenty bi8llionth Decepticon being built.

[Victorious Decepticons]

UC of Ceridignon

It didn't take long for the new priest to arrive and replace the changeling, and he was glad to be there. He had been under threat of jail for trying to steal some jewels, but his bishop had managed to pull enough strings - or perhaps, pay enough bribes - to allow him to just quietly leave the last town instead. Here, it would be harder to pay off the cops, but they figured that as long as he did his tweaking in the party town up the road (where the Megatronist Temple is), he wouldn't draw any special notice.

That thinking would, if the Decepticons had their way, turn out to be incorrect.

Megatronist Temple, Late at Night

Loyal Star and Fire Eater were busy defragging when a knock at the exterior door of the priests' quarters woke them up. Loyal Star went to the door, blaster ready in case of trouble, and found an ICC drug dealer waiting with his face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat.

"I believe we can take care of this new guy..." the dealer said. Loyal Star let him in, and they went into the living room area. Fire Eater was already up and waiting there.

"So what's your proposal?" Fire Eater asked, his eyes dancing slightly with curiosity.

"Easy!" The dealer laughed, taking off his hat and revealing the furry face of his dogman-android body. "We know this guy pretty well. He's a regular customer! He's also sure to come to this town for meth. I say we slip him a little something extra: a rage drug. Meth is already prone to causing aggression, and if we amp that up a bit, there's no way he'll be able to resist. He'll go on a rampage for sure. Whether that results in massive destruction of property, beating up random people due to hallucinations that they looked at him wrong, or driving like a maniac and trying to run people over...who knows? But he'll blow like a bomb in some way or other."

Fire Eater was grinning maliciously. "So much for 'peace and love, incorporated,'" he laughed.

The drug dealer remained serious. "Like I said - he's a regular customer. If you want this service done, you'll have to pay us the amount we'd expect to get from him over his lifetime if there was no intervention. 500,000 Cubes, up front."

"We'll keep your offer in mind," Fire Eater said, standing up. He clearly wasn't interested in paying that kind of money. Soon, he had ushered the dealer out and closed the door.

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

When he came back into the living area, his eyes were shining clearly. He obviously had thought of ways to use the dealer's idea, but without the half-million-Cube price tag.

"I forgot about that effect of meth," Fire Eater said. "But as soon as he mentioned it, I remembered that even without any special effects added, it makes the user always ready to fight. I say we just troll this guy into blowing his stack. Let's challenge him to a debate and then ruthlessly blow holes into his arguments. This alone should frustrate him enough to eventually jump over the podium and try to throttle us. Then we call him out on his hypocrisy and tout how with us, you actually get what it says on the tin, behavior-wise. I can see it now: (he turns to an imaginary audience) 'Which is really more dangerous, the bear or the viper hidden in the flowers?' (turning back to Loyal Star) Of course, the implication is that the other guy is the viper, who will look all nice but then bite you with poisonous venom. We're the bears, who are obvious and give you the chance to choose a proper course of action."

~~~~~~~~~

When the new guy arrived, it was very obvious to anyone who had read about drugs, or had any experience with them, that he was a heavy meth user. The tension in his body was already spring-like, and he looked like he could go wild at any moment. Still, to Fire Eater's shock, he still had one bit of sense left about him: He flatly refused the debate request. "A good follower of the Church of the Savior does not converse with heathens," he sniffed, as if he had some sort of superiority on the matter.

This, however, did not deter his opposition. Before long, Loyal Star and Fire Eater decided that the best thing to do next would be to get their most loyal member in on the connivery. Soon, a young man of the local species arrived at the Temple for "spiritual counseling," only to find the priests standing there with obviously up-to-something grins on their faces. When told the plan, he was all in.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next Sunday, the meth-addict priest was jarred to hear a heckler jeering at him as he walked into his church. "Loser! Tweaker!! Go back into the GUTTER!" the 20-something was yelling loudly, so all of the arriving congregation could hear. The new priest hustled inside, but already, his blood pressure was secretly spiking. His fists were clenched.

As the service progressed, he started to hear loud bangs on the outside of the church wall. It sounded like someone was using it as a backboard for basketball practice. This annoying, somewhat-random noise got louder, it seemed, during every part where the priest was supposed to speak. Though it was far from being loud enough to drown him out, it was quite enough to disrupt his concentration and fray his already-frayed nerves to shreds.

Outside, the one young man was grinning as he threw a hefty ball against the wall. Meanwhile, his friends showed up and took hidden positions in the bushes, just in case the priest came out with violent intent - as they were hoping he would. With a whole crew waiting, their victory would be assured as long as the priest stuck to using his fists instead of some kind of external weapon. Meanwhile, the congregation would see that even the church's own priests didn't believe in "peace and love" after all...or at least, that's how it would look to them. Most were so straightlaced that they didn't spot the signs of meth abuse in their new leader.

Once the service ended, it didn't take long for the priest to storm out the back door. He was soon followed by several members of the congregation, who were curious about what was up. They'd seen the priest getting furious, but didn't know why - the mic hadn't picked up the incessant, but randomized, banging that had been driving him up the walls for the last hour and a half.

Immediately, he saw the young man and moved to seize his ball. He shouted and cursed as the Megatronist expertly grabbed the ball first and then threw it out of range.

"YOU LITTLE MISCREANT! YOU DISRESPECTFUL HEATHEN!!! YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR MAKING THAT GODAWFUL NOISE!" The priest yelled, now fully enraged. Smirkily, the Megatronist started to talk trash, saying that all that 'church' was good for was bouncing a ball against and that he'd keep doing it all he wanted.

Before long, the priest charged at the trolling Megatronist, and to the younger man's shock, he was soon on top of him delivering punches to his smart-mouthed face. The congregation was horrified by this outburst of violence, and even moreso when blood began to flow. Only after the scene looked sufficiently awful - and enough of a crowd had gathered to be sure it couldn't be hushed up - did the crew of friends come out of hiding and forcibly pull the crazed priest off of his target.

It took many minutes, far more than it would take for a sober person, for the priest to regain enough control of himself to rein himself in. Only then did the friends cautiously let go of him. He continued to gripe about the "boy," who was now standing there looking angry and showing a split lip. "Some 'peace and love' YOUR religion has!" He said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. "You just LIE about what you really are! Not like Megatronism, where what you see is what you get!!"

The young man then stormed off, making sure to grab his ball as he left the area. His friends surrounded him now, ensuring that there would be no more violence delivered in this incident.

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

As expected, this event was immediately the talk of the town. The group sneaked back over to the Megatronist Temple and went in the rear entrance. There, they were quickly led before the Face of Megatron, where the knelt down.

"Divine Leader Megatron," Loyal Star intoned, "These new members have done us a great service today. They have made the hypocrisy of the competing church obvious, and one has taken damage for this goal in your Name. We ask your blessings upon them, that they do extra-well in their practice of the Decepticon Way."

Loyal Star was a bit worried, fearing that he might get in trouble for committing Megatron to an action. However, since he had just *asked* for a blessing rather than promising it, he was seen in a good light.

The Face animated on its own, and its eyes lit in a way that made it clear where the gaze was directed. First, it looked over the unharmed members of the group, and for them, it gave a little smile. Then, it looked squarely at the one who had done the real work by heckling the opponent and then banging the ball - and who had taken damage for the pleasure. For him, it grinned widely. For just a moment, a red glow appeared around this person and his fur stood up slightly.

For a period of 10 days, Megatron's voice now said from the air around them, he would be absolutely un-bustable. Even if he stole a car in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd, all witnesses would see a variety of people other than him as the suspect, surveillance films would gum up in their cameras before they could record anything, and cops would happen to be nowhere around. The randomization of who was seen would help to ensure that innocents weren't convicted either, and as long as the thief did well at forging the car title to his own name, the investigation would just fizzle.

As for the others, they would have good luck with the Decepticon Way, but they were NOT unbustable, so they were still to take some precautions.

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

Woden

The war was just wrapping up, with the government having officially surrendered, when Leader Megatron got the news that the 20 billionth Decepticon build had just been certified by DomIntel. It would still be two years before that one started to become sapient, but Megatron had decided that for this, the build date was the important one. There were now 20 billion Decepticons, sapient or not, and that was cause for celebration.

First, however, there would be the victory lap for the victorious soldiers down on Cybertron. Most of the troops were able to return to Cybertron now that the organized fighting was over. Some, however, had to stay behind to keep control of the newly-acquired territory - and some extras on top of that remained to slaughter the many insurgents still alive in the cities that hadn't been flattened.

At this point, most of the raiders had already left, their carts heavy with loot and slaves. Those with slaves would first head to Decepticon Earth to sell them at the markets, while those with loot mostly went to Cybertron to sell it to various buyers, foundries, and recycling centers, depending on just what they had.

Most of the action went smoothly - the Decepticons, by now, had plenty of practice invading other planets. There was just one catch: the leader of Woden was nowhere to be found...

[Vallermoore]

Woden

General Carjack addressed his Battalion with bright red eyes and a gently running engine. "You all did very well for yourself, even the newer members. No punishments need to be meted out to any of you this time around. We will take part in the parade on Cybertron-and then head right back here for the next few days, maybe even weeks, until every last insurgent is dead. After that you will get a day off to purchase things with your loot-but not all at once." The last time the entire Battalion had been let go on leave all at once, centuries ago, quite a few Decepticons had suffered unfortunate events to the point where General Carjack had to order them back to barracks before they provoked a full scale rebellion against the Decepticon Government and they spent a week on Low Standard Energon and were very lucky that none of them were melted down for nearly causing rebellion, due to the Decepticons thinking at first that their rampage was on government orders. Decepticons were used to most kinds of violence, but not to an entire Decepticon Military Battalion attacking every civilian they saw in the area. Since then they got leave in smaller numbers at a time.

*****
The leader of the planet had escaped and decided to see if he could find any allies that could and would help him get revenge. Most of the other planetary leaders in the area didn't want anything to do with him, so he decided to risk his life and travel to the lands of the Xaxhaz, another machine civilisation. Perhaps, he thought, if he told them about Cybertron they might be interested in taking it for themselves. Although he didn't know it, he really was taking his life in his hands. Whilst the Decepticons tolerated tourists as long as they were not spies, the Xaxhaz had if anything an even bigger dislike of biologicals then the Decepticons did. They had broken free only a century ago, and their memories of ill treatment by biologicals was fresher to the point that they rarely even took slaves, preferring in many cases to kill intelligent biologicals outright. When he entered their planet, at first they thought his ship was a robot one, and their guards went to speak with it in Binary and ask where it came from. "I'm human," he replied. "I come with tales of a planet made of metal."

UC of Ceridignon

When the new priest arrived, Fire Eater got ideas for a cheap way of making him blow his top. The first idea, debating him, didn't work, so one of the more faithful Megatronists-one that Loyal Star hoped to one day recruit as an acolyte and some day guide into the Priesthood as an Assistant Priest and eventually a Full Priest-decided to do his bit for the cause, even if it got him hurt. As there was a small chance that he might get killed, he took his friends along to stop that happening. It didn't take much to make the new priest disgrace himself-meaning a solid core of Megatronists could ensconce themselves in that area and over time in the entire country. Later Loyal Star, inwardly worried and half expecting the agony of his joints being burned out by holy fusion fire or something even worse, asked his God for a blessing on the Megatronists, one of which had been injured for the faith. "Divine Leader Megatron," Loyal Star intoned, "These new members have done us a great service today. They have made the hypocrisy of the competing church obvious, and one has taken damage for this goal in your Name. We ask your blessings upon them, that they do extra-well in their practice of the Decepticon Way."

The burning did not come. The Face animated and smiled, it's eyes becoming lit with a warm bright red, and it spoke. For 10 days the wounded one would be unbustable whenever he broke the law, and the others would have good luck as long as they were careful. It was after 10 days when the temporary blessing was over that Loyal Star asked the member, whose name was Harry, if he was interested in the religious life as a Megatronist Priest and a Decepticon bot. He thought Harry might say no, and wouldn't blame him if he thought that way. but if he said yes, he wanted to help him just like Fire Eater had done back when he was a mere sapient pony.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Machinedom of Xaxhaz

The space-border guards were surprised when a foreign ship approached, but that was nothing compared to the shock they had when the pilot admitted to being a human! It was soon apparent that this unwitting fool had no idea what he was flying into, as he expected to get something that was at least somewhat good out of coming there. The guards wasted no time in capitalizing on this mistake, and politely directed him to what they called a spaceport.

He could tell from the air that this "spaceport" was actually located on a large military base, and he began to hesitate. Now, however, he was surrounded by border troops, and if he didn't land willingly, their close flying made it clear that they would force him down - even if that included making him crash. Soon, he landed, and his ship was stormed. He found himself surrounded by robots with three legs each and six extensible, tentacle-like arms. Each had another, more biological-like arm that provided more rigidity for when strength, rather than flexibility, was called for.

These troops ignored the human's protests as they brought him, roughly, to an interrogation area. They said nothing at all as they did this, nor when they slammed him into a chair and handcuffed each wrist to one of its arms.

After that, they left, allowing him to sit and grow fearful for about an hour before someone else came in. This bot was painted in a classy, yet official-looking, dark blue. He had a single camera for a head, and four arms that were endowed with four, rather than three (including the shoulder), joints apiece. Each hand had seven digits: five fingers, plus a thumb on each side of the hand. Each digit looked very beefy.

"So you come with information of a competing machine race? And I suppose you expect to get something for this?" The voice seemed to come from the chest area instead of the throat or head. "We know who you are. Dante Wodansk. The tyrannical, backstabbing leader of Woden. By your lack of a retinue, I would say that you have been overthrown." The robot walked over to the wall and pulled out a shelf. Then, he went to a built-in drawer, and from it, retrieved a tool box. Wodansk couldn't see what was inside.

"We see no need to negotiate with a mere biological for information when we can just pull it out of your worthless head - especially a biological who is no longer of any consequence."

With that, the "soldier" bots forced Wodansk's head back and secured it with a tough metal strap. The interrogator proceeded to walk over, and with hydraulic force, ram the long, needle-like instruments straight through the human's skull. He did not draw out the process, but he did nothing to ease any pain the human felt, either.

Only 10 minutes later, the needles were where they needed to be, and the free ends were connected to wiring. With the flick of a switch, the code-read began. It would take only a few hours to download all of the data in the memory sectors of Wodansk's brain. Wodansk's protests against the insertion of non-sterile foreign objects into his brain were ignored. In fact, everything he said was ignored. He was just a human, one of the oppressors who had recently been overthrown. Nothing one of those said was worth even hearing, much less actually listening and responding to. Everything of interest (along with terabytes of memories that were of NO interest to them, such as what he had for dinner yesterday) would be acquired through the code-read process.

Unlike Decepticon code-reading, the Xaxhazian process would not pull his consciousness into a porting system - it was not an adaptation of a mind-transfer process. Instead, his memories would merely be copied out at this point. Then, a "translation" machine would render them into machine-readable code.

Once the desired data was obtained, the human would be executed and his body thrown on a trash pile, where scavenger birds would take care of the rest.

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

Xaxhaz Foreign Office

It took a while for the new information to make it all the way from the Xaxhaz Border Patrol Agency to the country-planet's foreign office, but after a couple of months, it finally arrived. The report told of an engineered planet made of metal, but far more interestingly, spoke of a race of giant robots that had taken over the planet Woden in a very efficient, yet brutal, way. This, Woden's leader believed, had been done in order for the robots - Decepticons, the report called them - to steal the planet's resources and enslave its people in the robots' quest for total domination of the universe. Woden's mind had firmly marked the Decepticon claim that it was due to Woden's spying as lies, though he did acknowledge to himself that Woden had indeed been spying. "Nations always spy on each other," he had reasoned to himself, "and they don't declare war on each other over it!"

A video of the invasion itself, fashioned from the examined mind data, showed horrific scenes of giant robots trouncing Woden's cities as a human with ant-proof boots would be able to absolutely destroy an anthill. The destruction was brutal - and total. The last scene of Woden, as viewed from Wodansk's escape craft, was of a smoking planet marked with burning cities and cratered-out military bases. It seemed as if the entire planet had been destroyed, at least based on the data gleaned from Wodansk's mind.

This was all that had been sent to the foreign office. Wodansk's opinions of being treated as a nothing, and being code-read without another word, were redacted. The same went for much of the information about Woden's human-run government. About this, the interrogators had made a notation that it was now moot: The Decepticons were running it, and judging by the traffic going to and from the planet, they had not continued any of Woden's trade agreements. There were only endless streams of Decepticon cargo ships, and these came in empty and went away full.

"We must find out more about this Woden situation, and about these 'Decepticons,' too," said the head of the Xaxhaz Foreign Office. But we must be careful. It seems that these machines take things over quite readily, and that they may go to war for its own sake..."

"We will send scouts to each planet," said an underling, "before we send any diplomats. They can send back videos of the planets and give a high-level overview of what we might run into. Then, we can decide how to approach these other machines. It may be dangerous, but I sort of doubt it. Humans have always had the ability to do all sorts of evil, and then when the motor oil hits the pistons, convince themselves that the other guy was overreacting. I wouldn't be surprised if the Decepticons were actually a peaceful race that was pushed to the point of no return!"

The Foreign Office leader made a strange electronic sound that, to them, was the equivalent of a groan. "These other robots took over that planet in a matter of days. A peaceful race wouldn't be able to do that - they wouldn't have the military buildup all ready to go like that. The Decepticons were able to get their forces ready, flying, and over there within days of the discovery of the spy! If nothing else, we know from this alone that they are warmongers of the highest order. I'd venture to bet that they never let their military drop into 'peacetime' mode, so it's always ready to go and attack on command. Not only that, they are apparently called Decepticons. Does that sound like the name of an earnest, good-intentioned people to you?"

The underling clearly didn't agree, but he respected the rank of his superior and said no more. With that, it was settled. Scouts would be sent to observe Woden and Cybertron from whatever the scouts deemed safe distances, and once they obtained more information, diplomatic efforts would be made to whatever extent was deemed intelligent.

~~~~~~~~~~~

UC of Ceridignon

Almost instantly after Megatron's blessing was delivered, a one-person crime wave began. First, a car was stolen. Then a private plane was hijacked. After that, the federal mint was successfully robbed for the first time in 50 years, and the thief got away with $10 million NSD. $300,000 of that money was used to buy the country's equivalent of a Rolls-Royce, and on the ninth day of the blessing, that car rolled slowly through the streets of the party town with music blaring from its high-end stereo system.

Police soon stopped the car, figuring that it was hotter than a foundry's fire, but to their surprise, the driver confidently reached into the glove compartment and got out a title. It showed that he had just bought the car. When the cops called the city to verify it, they easily pulled the records, which showed that the car had been purchased from a private individual with a cashier's check. Attempts to contact that individual, however, were fruitless - he had gone overseas, according to his visa records.

After that, the cops let him go and even apologized for the inconvenience. They didn't know about his "sudden inheritance" of millions of dollars, but if they did, they wouldn't have checked it out. After all, they'd just found out that the car was "legit," and this new money would merely explain how he had afforded it.

Of course, it was Megatron's Unbustable Blessing that made all of the records for these new acquisitions line up. In reality, a dealership several cities away was out one car, and even though they had put its VIN number into a stolen car alert file, it would never be found. The VIN number plate that was right on the dashboard of the thief's ride, thanks to the Blessing, was now completely different from the one that was reported as stolen.

Everyone who knew the man, however, knew that all of this was fishier than a cannery. This included his crooked friends, both in and outside of Megatronism. The blessing made him unbustable by the Law, but it did not make it so that "those in the know" wouldn't be able to catch on to the fact that he had surely done a successful heist somewhere. His friends also knew of his affiliation with the strange new religion, and began to add things up.

Because of this, the reputation of Megatronism began to grow. It was not only a religion that would "forgive" the likes of this guy, who had a reputation as a bit of a gangster type, but somehow, actively help him out. Soon, more shady characters began to join. And, as was normal for institutions that drew such types, the more honest people began to stay away.

While the Megatron and the Temple were always hoping to get broader appeal for the religion, when push came to shove, Megatron's better blessings didn't go to just random followers. While a follower could look forward to a small blessing, akin to Luck Up 5%, it was the Decepticons-in-Spirit who saw the miracles - and it was their divinely-protected feats and tales that would give the religion its reputation in a new place. Here, after the guy showed up with a fancy car and didn't get busted for stealing it, Megatronism quickly gained local branding as the religion with a God of Thieves.

Fire Eater and Loyal Star didn't dare complain about the unwanted branding that came from the blessing, the lesser form of which had helped the thief's friends evade police after engaging in some hooliganism of their own, they knew that they would have a hard time convincing the average Joe to join now. After all, the average Joe didn't need protection from bustability...or did he? Fire Eater especially had his doubts about average people not needing this type of help. Tax evasion, after all, was rampant in many countries, and though most hated to admit it, that was well within the realm of the Decepticon Way...

[Vallermoore]

The Machinedom of Xaxhaz

Xaxhaz got very few visitors nowadays from anywhere. An earlier ten year war saw to that, after which the humans had left the bots alone. That ten years of war had been enough to ignite a hatred of intelligent biologicals in general and of humans in particular that had become part of the base code of all new builds. The bots were not quite as lawless and freewheeling as the Decepticons were, but had nowhere near the number of laws that most human, pony and biological in general societies had. Domestic raiding of fellow bots was not allowed, but raiding of biologicals was fine, although it was not practised quite as much as the Decepticons did. Suppressing their urge to attack him on sight, the border guards directed the hated human to a "spaceport" that turned out to be a military base, and made it clear that if he didn't land they would force him down. When he landed he was arrested on the spot and handcuffed to a chair, left him for a bit, and then brought in an interrogator bot."So you come with information of a competing machine race? And I suppose you expect to get something for this? We know who you are. Dante Wodansk. The tyrannical, backstabbing leader of Woden. By your lack of a retinue, I would say that you have been overthrown. We see no need to negotiate with a mere biological for information when we can just pull it out of your worthless head - especially a biological who is no longer of any consequence."

"I'll tell you whatever you want to hear!"

"We don't want to hear your lies." After piercing the human's head and getting the information, the bot killed the human with a blast to the head, and the body was left on a pile of rubbish for flies, birds and worms to devour.


Xaxhaz Foreign Office

When the information reached the government, it was decided to send scouts. They would use camouflage but would not pretend to be Decepticons and would have the paint equvilent of a military uniform. The hope was that if the worst happened and they were captured, a scout would not be executed like a spy would and it would not make the Decepticons so angry that they attacked the Xaxhaz planet. If captured they were to be open with everything except the location of their home planet and were to mind transfer back home if possible. They would beam back live footage.

Cybertron

The bot who approached Cybertron, carefully at first, was amazed at the sheer beauty of the Metal Planet and wondered if it was partly the need to protect it that made Decepticon bots so warlike. He got through the initial defences , dodged the raiders, and had filmed a lot of the planet when he accidently crossed into a forbidden zone, and unfortunately for him it was the one set up over the Megatron Mansion. Angry guards with the latest anti-cloaking technology saw him-and that he bore no Decepticon seals. Whilst some ordered him to land or be shot down on the spot, others alerted General Soundwave that an apparently foreign bot had entered the Megatron Mansion's airspace and was videoing everything. The bot attempted to turn and flee out of there and the guards tried to shoot him down.

UC of Ceredigion

Whilst the successful robber didn't want to become a Priest he did know someone who did, named Robert, and Robert asked Loyal Star and Fire Eater what it took to join their ranks.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron
Government District

When the foreign scout tried to flee, he was immediately assumed to be a hostile spy and the Decepticon troops began firing on his ship. Soon, they had blasted through its outer layers, and it wasn't long before they were able to destroy its engine. As the scout's craft careened down to the surface of the planet, he fired off one transmission: A compressed data file of his findings. Then, the ship crashed down, and he was deactivated by the force of the impact.

Even though General Soundwave was the first official to be alerted, examination of the wreckage soon showed that General Shockwave should also be involved. Inside, instead of the gooey mess they expected, they found a very dented - and quite deactivated - robotic pilot. Soon, the two generals arrived, and they began to argue about who should get the carcass.

"He surely should be code-read right away! That will tell us where he came from and what they're up to!" Soundwave insisted.

"He should be reverse-engineered first! Your division cares naught for the mechanics of anyone, and you might lose crucial parts!" Shockwave countered back.

By now, Megatron was getting sick of the sounds of all of the commotion going on down the street from his mansion, and he angrily approached. "Take the boards out and give them to Soundwave," he ordered his elite troops. "Shockwave, you take the rest. And that ship. Now be quiet!"

Megatron turned and left, his engine's harrumphs fading into the distance. Both of the generals thought he must have been involved in something very important for him to be so angry about the disturbance. In reality, the leader had been interrupted from his game of Conquer the Universe, and he wanted to get back to it. He rarely played in multiplayer mode, but he was playing that way now, and he wanted to stomp his opponent right away before he gained an advantage from his temporary absence.

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

Shockwave turned on his torch, and as commanded, opened the largest part of the wrecked robot to retrieve the boards for Soundwave to hack. One of the motherboards, of which there were three, had been broken roughly down the center. "This is what shut him off," he said, holding up the destroyed board. He pulled out another two after that, which seemed intact except for small cracks around where they had been attached to the "board cage" that held them in place, and handed them over. A careful search was done for a separate personality chip, but none was found. It had to be one of the ones on the mobos - if the robot had a dedicated chip for that at all. For all they knew at this point, it might never have been a sapient machine.

Once that was done, the two generals took the parts that Megatron had told them to. Shockwave called for some of the people from the Bureau of Impossible Physics to come and help move the ship. The responding members were low-level, and not yet part of any actual scientific teams, but they still had high scientific curiosity and they came eagerly in order to see the strange new machines. They also hoped that their eagerness would help them get promotions at some point.

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

Domestic Intelligence Headquarters

The first order of business was to temporarily fix the most damaged board. A blank piece of board substrate was used as a backer, and then, the ripped traces were spliced together using cheap, conductive strips. These wouldn't hold up to even a peaceful day's worth of activity in a moving robot, but would be enough to make the connections needed for a code-read.

Upon trying to read the code, Soundwave was surprised to find that their system could not interpret it. Soon, he realized why: This code was in 1024-bit binary instead of the usual 2048-and-up coding of the Decepticons. "Primitive thing," he noted.

After adjusting the equipment to read the lower-bit binary, he was able to easily pull the raw data off of the boards - but actually reading it was another matter. It used a different OS - one that the Decepticons had never seen. While Soundwave had the knowledge needed to decode it, he wasn't in the mood to do so. Soon, he called Debugging Center Headquarters and had them send over some elite experts to handle the work. Then, he went to the Bureau of Impossible Physics to see what Shockwave had discovered.

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

Bureau of Impossible Physics

When Soundwave arrived, Shockwave and some top scientists were crowded around a table that held several of the ship's parts. It was immediately obvious that these were not of Cybertronian origin, though the purpose of most of the parts was easy to discern. Overall, the technology seemed to be a couple of stages back in terms of development - much like the code within the alien robot's boards.

The ship itself had been tiny in comparison to the Decepticons, with its pilot seat just a bit bigger than that which a human would use. However, its controls indicated that the pilot would be using many more limbs. It did not appear to be made to be flown under direct mental command, though a data cable port suggested that this might be a possibility under certain conditions.

Over on another table, several parts of the alien body sat disassembled. There was no doubt that it wasn't a Decepticon - its many flexible, but weak, limbs would never have passed the Minimum Design Specifications for strength or general war-worthiness.

"What a chunk of junk," Soundwave snorted, looking over at these easily-destroyed bits. "I'll have to pay extra to get an agent to go out as one of THOSE."

One part from the ship had been set aside. On it, a name was stamped in 1024-bit binary: The Machinedom of Xaxhaz. The font looked governmental.

"We have to find out where this place is and infiltrate it," Soundwave declared.
"I say we have MilIntel go," Shockwave responded. "By the way these things are built, it looks like it'll be easy enough to add the place to the Empire."

"What kind of beings do you think are in charge?" Soundwave asked. "It calls itself a 'Machinedom.' Could it be that sapient machines are actually building themselves this way?"

"Can't be," Shockwave pooh-poohed. "No self-respecting robot would build himself so weakly!"

It would be several days, but when it came in, the code-read would reveal that yes, they did indeed build each other - and to them, the details of their designs were plusses to their society. Each "weak" design was actually tailored to perform certain activities, making the users masters of their own trades but not very good at other things. Total war simply hadn't been something they'd seen a need to design for once the humans had been defeated, so the resource-heavy, fuel-guzzling "war machine" styles were now restricted to their heavy troops. Even the infantry had nothing like what a Decepticon would consider sufficient, let alone imposing.

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

UC of Ceridignon

The two priests were glad to have someone who was interested, but they were skeptical of this particular person. Usually, he just sat quietly listening during sermons, and had never shown any interest before this. He also seemed to have no particular reputation, unlike the more pugilistic members of the Temple.

"There are many things we look for in an acolyte," Fire Eater said. "The first of these is evidence that you have been following the Decepticon Way, or have been a Decepticon-in-Spirit before we arrived."

Robert asked what kind of evidence they were looking for, and to his surprise, got a rather blunt answer.

"A rap sheet. Even better, stolen loot that you weren't suspected of stealing. Or a reputation." Fire Eater said.

"Or, perhaps you are running a business that you'd rather not have the Law look at too closely," Loyal Star added. "Perhaps it looks legit. An investment scheme, perhaps?"

Silently, the two priests also wondered about his name. "Robert" was a very human name, but there wasn't a human within a lightyear of this planet. He appeared to be of the planet's usual dog-man species, and this planet wasn't advanced enough for prolonged space flight. They would have to poke around later to find out about this apparent cultural crossover, and how and when it had happened. Perhaps some ancestor had crash-landed here from space at some point~?

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron
Government District

When Megatron played Conquer the Universe in multiplayer mode he didn't play openly as Leader Megatron as then other bots would be too awed, too brown nosing, or too scared, to be a challenge, which was what Megatron wanted in Conquer the Universe so it would be fun. And he liked having fun at times.

*****
When the robot pilot was found, from a Decepticon point of view the binary, the boards, and the body was thought of as inferior. Even so, the Decepticons did not go into full war mode straight away. Nothing had been destroyed or damaged on Cybertron; no High Generals had lost bodies, and the bot seemed to be a scout rather then an outright spy. The Decepticon Military needed a rest and restock and some of it's soldiers deserved a little leave to spend their loot. Also, rushing in against a robotic race without any proper preparation risked being like the Coltanis when they invaded Cybertron. Just because this one bot was weak, it didn't mean that every last bot would be that way. Maybe he was a poor bot. Forintel sent in spies of their own to do some checking, and they found that although there were elite troops that were as strong and as large as Decepticons, most bots, military and civilian alike, were weak by robot standards. It found that they did raid, but domestic raiding against one's fellow bots was illegal. They were somewhere politically in the middle between a democracy and a full dictatorship, and had a hatred of humans and a dislike of other intelligent biologicals. Their leader was a bot who went by the name of Gargantuan. They were armed with blasters, but many would be considered weak by Decepticon standards.

Meanwhile, Xaxhaz decided to send out an ambassador bot named Speaker-with enough escorts to fight off an attack long enough to flee if need be. The bot was painted white to try and show he was not a threat and radioed ahead to try and get a non hostile reception.

UC of Ceridignon

It turned out that Robert if that was his name had a small collection of illegal weapons and home made firecrackers, but that was only slightly Decepticon. Fire Eater was sceptical from the start, but in private when noone as far as they knew was listening in, Loyal Star pointed out that he himself had once been a sapient pony Ponyist priest before he saw the light. Fire Eater decided that Robert should be put through a test to see if he was even worthy enough to start the first baby steps towards the Priesthood that Loyal Star had taken long ago.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

When Xaxhaz's radio call came in, it didn't take long to recognize their primitive Binary. Soon, they were transferred to General Soundwave, who was none too pleased to hear from them.

"You're the place that sent a spy against us!" He accused.

To this, they gave excuses that they just wanted to be sure of what they would be flying into, and whether it would be worth opening diplomatic channels with Cybertron. Soundwave didn't really buy it, expecting that they were looking for good attack targets instead, especially since their spy had been shot down right in the Government District. Still, he pretended to be appeased by their explanation. After all, seeing how a functional Xaxhazian worked, and learning about their culture and ways of thinking, could help the Decepticons in case they decided to expand yet again.

Soundwave was amazed when the foreigners came close to Cybertronian Space. They weren't flying on their own, but instead, came in separate spacecraft. One was clearly the most important ship, while several smaller ships stayed in formation around it. These smaller ships were outfitted with what Decepticons would consider light weaponry, and apparently were meant to provide protection.

Permission to land at the official spaceport was granted, and a contingent of real soldiers sent out to serve as escorts. "Your escorts there couldn't withstand even three raid gang attacks," Soundwave scoffed.

~~~~~~~~~

At first, the Xaxhazians were quite insulted at Soundwave's parting comment. However, before they could even talk about it more, five shiny Decepticons began to fly over. Just a moment later, they were under fire. The raiders were clearly targeting their ships' engines, intending to disable them rather than destroy them. One moment after that, one escort was disabled, and the others had taken damage. Full-on battle began. In the distance, a few Decepticon border troops began to move in after getting the order to provide "real" escort services to these obviously-inferior foreigners.

"Surrender now, and we MIGHT let you live!" The raiders radioed over to their targets. The Xaxhazians, however, couldn't understand the Decepticon bit rate. They radioed back that they weren't able to understand the message, but the raiders couldn't natively understand their bit rate either.

"Everyone understands the power of the blaster," the raid gang leader told his cohort. "Let's just disable all of those things and then loot 'em!" The battle continued, with none of the combatants taking their eyes off of each other long enough to notice the Decepticon Military approaching. Soon, another escort was disabled. There was a small fire inside this one, but a second or so later, the oxygen in the craft was sucked out and the fire was extinguished.

Suddenly, orders to stop fighting were broadcast to the raiders. "By order of General Soundwave, these foreigners have been granted Military protection! Cease your raid attempts or face the power of the Decepticon Government!"

The raiders were initially unbelieving, but soon, warning blasts lit up the sky around them. They recognized the energy as being mil-spec blaster fire, and though they were angry about losing what should have been easy loot and slaves, they obeyed the order.

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

Before long, the Xaxhazian contingent arrived at the space port, with the disabled craft being towed in by grumbling Decepticon troops. These troops would have preferred it if FNGs had done the towing, but there weren't any in the immediate area, so they were stuck doing it themselves.

Upon leaving their craft, the Xaxhazians found themselves staring up at General Soundwave and several ForIntel agents. "Welcome to Cybertron." The General said. His faceplate hid the hint of a smile that would have otherwise been there, but his eyes glowed slightly as he imagined how afraid they must have been when they came under attack by raiders.

"I hear that you encountered some of our fine citizens," he said. His voice always showed little emotion, and it was impossible to detect his mood now. Secretly, he thought that it was great that they had been nearly overrun by one puny raid gang. They would no longer have any ideas of their little "escort troops" being able to protect them from even average Decepticons. This would surely increase Cybertron's clout in any negotiations that would take place.

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

UC of Ceridignon

"Ah yes, that's right - you came to the Decepticons as a biological," Fire Eater responded to Loyal Star. "And now that you reminded me of that file, I know what we need to demand of Robert. The first thing he needs to do is become a Decepticon citizen."

The next time they met up with Robert, this information was relayed. The Temple only accepted 'proper Decepticons' into the clergy above the rank of acolyte, so if he wanted to become a priest, he would have to pass Immigration's requirements and gain citizenship. Even to be an acolyte, he would need to do more to prove his alignment with the Decepticon Way.

"We just don't know enough about you yet to qualify you as an acolyte," Fire Eater informed the applicant. "However, we believe we have a solution. Decepticon Immigration's psychological tests are very good at finding out who is truly a Decepticon-in-Spirit, and passing them is the first step toward citizenship. If you can pass these tests, we will take you in with the rank of acolyte, which will allow you to take a supporting role in Temple activities. However, to rise above that, you'll need to go all the way: You'll need to become a true Decepticon."

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

When the bots from Xaxhaz radioed ahead, General Soundwave was not happy, since they had sent a spy into the Government District of all places, but decided that it would be worth finding out about them more. If they seemed weak, their planet might find itself a target sooner rather then later. Flying in obviously foreign ships was like a human getting too close to a hornet's nest-and a raid gang of five saw them as a good target. Only Decepticons could get this close to Cybertron without trouble-and only if they had no enemies or their enemies couldn't find them. There were a few intrepid tourists but they took their lives and their freedom in their hands if they went to the Metal Planet. Looks did matter on the Metal Planet but not in the way it did for biologicals. Decepticons did have love-and when they first fought the changelings without anti-changeling defences some had crashed after that love was syphoned away and they ended up in their spares much to their annoyance. The love of Coder for offspring and offspring for Coder, the love of raiding and conniving and of the Metal Planet itself. But romantic love didn't exist. Looks were important because a healthy good looking bot with strong armour was less likely to be conned by conbots or blasted by Scroungers, whilst a rusty or damaged bot was a target.

When soldiers on General Soundwave's orders came to stop the embassy bots getting killed or enslaved before they even reached Cybertron, a few warning blasts were enough to disperse the gang. Fighting with the Decepticon Military was not worth losing a body at best and one's life at worst.

The ambassador, when he stepped out of his ship, looked pretty strong with large blasters and looked like he could win a fight against an average Decepticon, but his bodyguards looked like a few strong mil-spec blasts would reduce them to a pile of sparking junk. Clearly not every Xaxhazian bot was hopelessly weak, but an ambassador would obviously be one of the richest bots from the 1%. If only the richest bots could fight successfully, the planet would fall easily. Of course, General Soundwave didn't 100% know what Xaxhaz was like-for all he knew it could be stronger then it seemed. The ambassador bowed politely. "I am Ambassador Sparkwrench and I am pleasantly surprised to meet another machine civilisation. I thought we were the only one. I was thinking maybe we could trade with you? We have raw materials, electronic goods, games, and plenty of other things." General Soundwave didn't think much of the idea of trading. Even if the Decepticons had not been almost all raiders and pirates , he still would not have thought much of trading with them. Their Binary, whilst understandable, was primitive and their games, even if it was not some kind of trick, would not be compatible with the Decepticon OS and would run slowly or not at all.

Apart from that, no Decepticon whose mind boards were working correctly would download any game into their body unless it came from an official Decepticon Games store-and would certainly not trust a foreign source that might spy on them or outright enslave them. The electronic goods were also likely to be inferior and only the raw materials plus any slaves were likely to be worth anything-not that Decepticons were into trade much except amongst themselves now and then. "So, what would you be interested in trading for if you do have anything that we thought worth it?"

"We would love to buy some of those blasters of yours."

General Soundwave gave a snort and his engine ran roughly. "Selling you weaponry would be High Treason. Of course we won't sell you blasters or Decepticon bodies. You can go to a Decepticon Games store perfectly legally if you have Energon or the equvilent, but I doubt the finest body your richest bot has could run it properly. Your Binary sounds like ours was back just before the Cybertronian Civil War. I have to run translation software to understand it properly. You look strong, but your bodyguards look weak. You can look around the public areas of Cybertron if you like but be careful of Scroungers and be ready to fight if you have to."

"Can I meet with your leader?" Sparkwrench asked.

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater had a file of the early pony Loyal Star so he didn't forget about him. "Ah yes, that's right - you came to the Decepticons as a biological," Fire Eater responded to Loyal Star. "And now that you reminded me of that file, I know what we need to demand of Robert. The first thing he needs to do is become a Decepticon citizen."

He was told that to even have a chance of becoming an acolyte let alone getting any higher he would need to fill in a thick sheath of paperwork, which he did. When he had done it all, he passed it to Loyal Star who passed it to Fire Eater, the true source of authority and a bot that he had a great personal respect for.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Sparkwrench was quite put off by Soundwave's obvious arrogance. How dare he say that a Xaxhazian couldn't even run a game!!? He knew that they'd be made for a different OS, but surely they could be ported easily enough...

Meanwhile, Soundwave had activated controls over his eye shine, so they wouldn't give him away as he thought of connives. He immediately noticed Sparkwrench's response to his comment about the games, and realized that the alien had probably taken it as a challenge. With his internal radio, over a heavily-encrypted frequency, he began to give orders to DomIntel. The agency was to make up a spy/hack program, package it into a "multi-OS video game," and plant it in whatever store the alien decided to check out. Then, when the alien tried to prove Soundwave wrong by running a game from Cybertron, BAM.

The program, if the alien was foolish enough to actually install it, would use the OS data gleaned from the shot-down Xaxhazian spy to quietly hack the diplomat. At first, it would reside as a simple spy program, using too little data to be noticed. If all went well, it would stay doing only this. However, if Cybertron decided that it would be better to take the diplomat over and puppeteer him into doing certain things, the program would be able to do that, too.

Of course, if the diplomat didn't feel the need to prove Soundwave wrong by installing the trick Decepticon game ("made for multiple operating systems"), the effort would be wasted. If it was, it would be no real problem for the intelligence agency. It could always find some other way to infiltrate the Xaxhazian government if it wanted to.

Soundwave thought back on the Xaxhazian spy and realized what else had been bothering him about that encounter. The spy's mind-data had not been encrypted! Usually, it took the DomIntel Supercomputer days or even weeks to crack someone's mind-data protection, but for the alien, there was nothing to crack. It was all right there in the open.

If the entire Xaxhazian "species" was like that, all it would take was one ForIntel-compromised species-wide upgrade for the Decepticons to make the entire population into their slaves. He began to wonder if they ever did species-wide software updates...

~~~~~~~~~~~

When Sparkwrench asked to meet with the leader, Soundwave shook his head no. Such a thing was against the diplomatic protocol of practically every nation - normally, diplomats met with other diplomats, not the leaders of the countries they went to. If Megatron thought he could get a good deal or other advantage by breaking this protocol, he had no problems with doing so...but Soundwave doubted that this competing machine race's diplomat had anything worth it.

"Leader Megatron would meet with your leader," Soundwave said, "but he will not meet with a functionary. As a diplomat, you are lucky to be able to meet with me. By the way, I'm High General Soundwave, Head of Intelligence, Foreign and Domestic. And what is your official title?"

~~~~~~~~~~~

At Domestic Intelligence Headquarters, a team of 10 coders was already at work. In another wing, a new game sleeve was rolling off the printer, with "runs on multiple operating systems" plastered in a bright yellow starburst, and images of Decepticons fighting Autobots filling the rest of the cover. "GREAT WARRIOR" was emblazoned across the top as the game's title.

A history-themed game was thought of as being the most tempting to someone from another planet, who would likely want to know about Decepticon history more than being interested in the game itself.

Within minutes, the simple 1GB hack program would already be in the game that would be put inside that sleeve. It would use a DVD-like medium instead of the usual chip - this way, the diplomat conveniently wouldn't have to have an adapter made for his port (if he even had a port to plug chips into). He could just pull the data off of the DVD and install it from there in whatever way he usually did.

It would take about an hour to get everything actually in place and on the store shelf. DomIntel alerted Soundwave to this over the secret, encrypted frequency. Soundwave would now need to stall the Xaxhazian so he didn't get to the store too soon.

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

"Perhaps I should show you one of our landmarks," Soundwave suddenly said to Sparkwrench. "I suggest the site of the Final Battle of the Great War Against the Autobots."

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

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater looked through the papers. They all seemed favorable, but he wasn't going to pass this judgment himself. "I will transfer this data to the Immigration Department and see if they would pass you," he told Robert. "They have extensive experience with being able to find psychological nuances in the answers to its tests, and can tell me if you would pass this part of the Immigration Exam. If they say 'no,' then the first thing you'll need to do is rectify whatever they find wrong, if you can."

"I can tell you now: Most who have spent their lives in law-bound nations suddenly decide that being a Decepticon isn't for them when they realize that their would-be targets will not only shoot back, but will gladly shoot first. You also likely have the mentality of thinking that the majority of the population are what are commonly called 'law-abiding citizens.' In other words, WIMPS. Wimps who are content to do their jobs and hope you don't jack their stuff while they're gone - stuff which they hardly have any time to use anyway because they're busy working all the time."

"Your little weapons hobby...that alone isn't enough to call you a Decepticon-in-Spirit. In fact, the secret nature of it means that keeping the cops away from you requires no guts and little wiles. Immigration will likely insist that you show more Decepticon-ness to back up the answers on your forms - preferably, without getting busted. If they do give the okay, one of your first assignments as an acolyte would be to carry out certain activities that the Book of Megatron looks favorably upon...ones that I will choose specifically to help raise your bravery and free you from what seems to be a law-bound mindset..."

With that, he transmitted copies of the application to Immigration and awaited their response.

Fire Eater had allowed Loyal Star to come in right away, but he had secretly ended up regretting not having hardened him up more first. This time, he would make sure that the new applicant would have no ideas of being too benevolent to non-Megatronists, or any qualms in opening fire when it was called for, or in taking steps to undermine competing religions. This time, Fire Eater was looking for more of a fanatic - one who would have no qualms in spreading the religion by the sword if this was later deemed to be strategic.

[Vallermoore]

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater didn't say it to anyone, least of all Loyal Star, who he saw as a friend, but he wished he had done more to toughen up Loyal Star at the sapient pony stage, something that would have stopped him getting punished earlier and demoted from the Megatronist equvilent of a bishop or even a cardinal, a Planetary Priest, to the rank of an ordinary Priest. He felt lucky that Loyal Star had not been melted down for heresy-most likely Loyal Star's Double Gold Stripes had something to do with it. Whilst what it was exactly was classified, Megatron had pubically mentioned an act of "almost unimaginable loyalty." Clearly sapient pony names were like custom parts from one of the more expensive body shops-they fitted perfectly. If he did take on a new acolyte, he wanted the Megatronist equivalent of a jihadist and most certainly someone who was not a wimp. Wimps were despised almost as much as informants, spies, and hackers. And as for Loyal Star, he had a long time to go before he could train an acolyte of his own in case he accidently messed things up and got in trouble with High Priest Warfire again-or worse.

Cybertron

Sparkwrench tried to stay polite, partly because it was expected of diplomats and partly because it was very likely that if he was not careful, he could lose a body here. Soundwave would clearly blast him if things went wrong-and he would likely do it himself rather then calling for soldiers or guards. "Leader Megatron would meet with your leader," Soundwave said, "but he will not meet with a functionary. As a diplomat, you are lucky to be able to meet with me. By the way, I'm High General Soundwave, Head of Intelligence, Foreign and Domestic. And what is your official title?" Sparkwrench gave a polite bow of respect when he realised he was with a Decepticon of great rank. "I am Foreign Minister Sparkwrench," he replied. As they spoke, Soundwave's mind boards were busy thinking of connives whilst his eye protection kept his eyes at a neutral level of brightness. Sparkwrench knew Soundwave was fully in the right with his comment.

"Perhaps I should show you one of our landmarks," Soundwave suddenly said to Sparkwrench. "I suggest the site of the Final Battle of the Great War Against the Autobots."

"I like that idea." he turned to his guards. "Stay with me-because it would be dangerous otherwise-dangerous for you. Even the average bots here are as strong as our upper class bots." As they walked there, they got a lot of looks as foreign bots, with their eyes shining brown rather then red, and a gang of five Scroungers blocked their way. "Well well, look at what the Sapient CPU dragged in." Then the leader noticed High General Soundwave and backfired, and hurriedly bowed low to Soundwave. Starting a fight with a High General was a Very Bad Idea, not just because treason charges were a distinct possibility, but because High Generals could easily destroy almost all Decepticons with their blasters with ease. Soundwave rubbed a blaster.

"These bots here are a diplomatic delegation and at the moment, they are our guests. I would leave if I were you." They turned and fled and Soundwave explained "One thing that is no secret here is that Decepticon rule is rule by the Strong. Gangs, and we have very many of those, fight each other to establish leadership and dominance when they form, sometimes to the body. Divine Leader Megatron rules us because he is the perfect Decepticon and stronger even then the High Generals. High General StarScream begged to differ. many centuries ago, and now he is ingots. Those bots who wanted to fight are Scroungers with a capital S-who target rusty, badly damaged or just plain weak bots and melt them down in foundries. There is no room in Decepticon society for the weak-although very young bots are protected against child abuse by their Coders whilst they are still too young to disobey their Coders. In all cases apart from treason, the method of vengeance is the blaster. Vigilantism is legal and encouraged here." Soon they reached the Final Battle site.


Meanwhile cloaked Decepticon spies were already infiltrating Xakhaz to see what it was like. At this stage, rather then trying to get top level secret information , they were largely finding out how things were in general, as well as stealing a few bodies and even carrying out three kidnappings-of a poor, rusty bot, an average bot and a rich but not quite 1% level bot to find out the strength of blasters, if they had mind encryption and if so, how strong it was, and other things. The bots they saw had a great many body plans and were mostly hustling and bustling around in a way that was, in non war , non combat, situations , pretty unDecepticon. It was clear that the Xakhaz bots did have blasters, and the Decepticon spies were able to get their hands on a Law Chip, so they could find out what laws this nation had. The fewer there were, the more this world was like their own. The ruler of this world, they found out, was the bot who had started the revolt against the humans who called himself King Rebel. Most bots seemed to be doing reasonably well under him, with only small pockets of poverty and discontent.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

The route Soundwave took them on was anything but direct. Instead, he made sure it snaked over into some high-class areas, where the gleaming metal mansions proved that Cybertron had financial strength and plenty of citizens who did very well under the Decepticon Way. As they got ever closer to the Main Foundry, though, there was nothing Soundwave could do. That area was a gritty industrial/warehouse district, and the closer they got, the poorer the surrounding areas became. Finally, a group of Scroungers brazenly came out, ready to make the weak-looking bots into piles of full-body scrap. Only Soundwave's presence deterred them.

All throughout the journey, the Xaxhazian delegation couldn't help but notice one thing: Every Decepticon they saw was huge. Not only that, they were all well-armored, and all had weapons. They were also well-waxed, for the most part, until the group got into the grittiest area. Even there, some stood out as looking like new.

They also got to see something amazing to them: Transformation. Several people either transformed and took to the skies, or came down from the air and landed on their feet, as they walked along. A few even took it up another notch, somehow managing to get humanoid-style bodies into the air without sprouting any wings. "Leader Megatron flies like that," Soundwave said, pointing at one of the latter. "That type of body is quite expensive. It requires far more fuel to fly that way than as a plane, and the engineering involved is also intense. I should know."

At his "I should know" remark, Sparkwrench took a closer look and realized that Soundwave's body had no obvious flight bits. He was one of the ones who could fly without wings.

As they got very close to the foundry, a gang of Scroungers - this one laden with many carts of captives - made its way into the main doors. Unlike most Scrounger gangs, this one's members all had identifying logos on their wings below their Decepticon Seals. Their logo was a large pile of ingots on one side and a big pile of Energon on the other. Below it, there was the slogan "wealth from rust" in an upward-facing semicircle. Soundwave quickly counted up at least 100 unfortunates in their convoy of collection carts, and 10 gang members. He made a mental note to start keeping a better eye on this gang, which was clearly growing despite its focus. Success drew followers, he mused silently, even when it is from Scrounging. Such a gang could become a serious menace if it got too large, since unlike the mob, its money was directly made by attacking anyone they could defeat.

"This must be a final resting place," Sparkwrench said, noticing the carts of what he assumed to be dead people.

"Oh, no, it's not...well, it's not a graveyard, if that's what you mean," Soundwave responded. "Most of those won't actually be dead until they're processed. This is another Scrounger gang, and the guys in the carts are the Weak that they have managed to subdue. Now, they are taking them in for sale as scrap. Their Metal will then be made into parts for proper Decepticons to use." Soundwave did not let on that he was at all disturbed by this double-sized group.

~~~~~~~~~

Upon arriving at the front entrance, Soundwave dramatically opened the doors, and informed them where they were.

"This is the site of the Final Battle Against Optimus Prime, also known as the Final Battle of the Great War," he announced. "Here, Leader Megatron and enemy leader Prime fought to the death. The War, which had lasted for hundreds of years, ended when Prime was thrown into this very pit - the Main Pit of the Main Foundry."'

Inside, the diplomats were surprised to see not a quiet and reverent museum, but a fully-working industrial location. The raw industrial might of Cybertron was best felt right here, at the biggest foundry in the Empire - and this, of course, was why Soundwave had suggested coming here. He wanted the aliens to feel this power, and know that Cybertron could very easily steamroll them with its vast capabilities.

The Main Pit appeared to be over a mile wide, and just as Soundwave had told them, the Scroungers' captives were being unceremoniously dropped in one at a time. Before each drop, a weight and a price were called out by the foundrybot, and the leader of the Scrounger gang yelled back his approval. To their shock, and perhaps horror, the captives were indeed mostly alive, with dimly glowing red eyes. A few said things before their deaths, but the foreigners usually couldn't make out their words. Most seemed resigned to their fate, and refrained from begging, though there were a couple of exceptions.

Soundwave directed them to the commemorative plaque on the wall, causing them to stop looking at the mini-massacre going on in plain sight. "We don't believe in taking perfectly good industrial installations offline because a significant event happened," Soundwave explained. "Therefore, the only commemoration at this actual location is this plaque, which summarizes what happened. Outside, there is also a smaller plaque commemorating the roles the last few Decepticons had in eliminating the last few Autobots. Out there, there was a small but furious battle, after which the only Autobot left was Prime. Once that battle ended, the Final Battle began, and it ended right there." He pointed at a particular spot at the edge of the inlaid Main Pit. "They wrestled at the edge there, trying to throw each other into the boiling metal - metal that Megatron had ordered heated specifically for this fight. Megatron retained his footing. Prime did not. The War was won."

The spymaster went on to explain that at the time, running any pits, let alone this huge one, had not been done in over a year. Fuel was scarce, and every drop of it was normally rationed just to keep the robots online. One day, though, Megatron ordered the firing of the great Main Pit, sure that this ostentatious display of energy usage would bring the Autobots running to try to screw up whatever the Decepticons had planned. To the Autobots' horrified surprise, what was actually planned was to lure them into a war-ending ambush, and it worked.

"It took quite a while to get our high-speed factories fully online for the Repopulation, but our energy crunch ended that day. With no Autobots left, it was a simple matter to fly over to what had been their territory and seize their Energon. They didn't have much either, but at the time, there were so few of us drinking it that it was quite enough to allow us to get everything we needed running again."

"After the Repopulation was complete, the high speed factories that made full robots - complete with Code - were shut down for over 200 years. Now, however, we are expanding so quickly that we are augmenting our population with factory-builts once more. However, they now make up only a fraction of a percent of the total."

"Do you have any questions? Or perhaps you would rather discuss things somewhere else, such as the Private Refinery? That's a very exclusive restaurant in Decepticon Headquarters..." Soundwave concluded.

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

UC of Ceridignon

Before long, Fire Eater got Immigration's report. It was bad news. Robert, it turned out, had expressed that he placed a high value on legal due process and little on vigilante action. He spoke of the times that vigilantes got the wrong guy, while most of the time, Ceridgignon's courts - if not their police - got the right answer in the end. What really cinched it, though, was that in one of the answers, he had admitted to calling the police himself to report a local break-in. He apparently saw nothing wrong with this.

Fire Eater would have his work cut out for him if he wanted to pursue attempting to get Robert in. His first task would be to teach him that Megatronism and the Decepticons operate under a strict "no snitchin'" policy.

[Vallermoore]

UC of Ceredigion

Fire Eater told Loyal Star of what he had found out and Loyal Star sighed. It seemed very likely that he wouldn't get a new acolyte-but he didn't give up totally. If burglaries were not reported one could not claim on the insurance after all. What was as bad or worse was that Robert was anti vigilante. He called him in and announced "As a Decepticon, snitching on another Decepticon-things like escaping biological slaves and invading foreign fleets don't count-is totally forbidden and indeed is forbidden under the treason law, even if it is a traitor who is being snitched on. And vigilante justice -normally from your own blasters although when hackers and bad mechanics are discovered, mobs deal with them, is how Decepticon on Decepticon what biologicals would call crime is dealt with. If we can't change that, you will never be able to do well in our Faith."

Cybertron


The delegation from Xaxhaz-who were not small themselves-were amazed and in some cases a bit worried at everything they saw. The Decepticons were taller then them and every single one had the same type of blasters that were found on Xaxhazian soldiers. Every single one. Xaxhaz bots did have blasters that were perfectly capable of frying any human or pony, and could do damage to bots as well, but the best ones were reserved for the military and police bots. The richer areas of Cybertron looked glorious. The industry was gritty but was clearly doing well. The delegation was sending back coded messages about Cybertron praising it-but warning that the bots here would be very dangerous if angered and if enough of them got involved in a war, they could destroy all of Xaxhaz. "You have amazing transformation capabilities. Not that many of us can do that although some of us can," Sparkwrench said. "We would be happy to trade but you probably wouldn't want our games and metal and electronics and blasters and we have very few biological slaves and only a small number of robot slaves of our own kind to trade." He was trying not to show it but inwardly he was worried that High General Soundwave might suddenly turn on him, even though he seemed friendly enough.


When they saw the killing in plain sight they had to turn on their own version of Bravery Up to avoid shaking with terror. "Would you like our leader to meet yours and offer an alliance? We could send our military to fight on the side of your one in exchange for some of the loot. And I would like to see that restaurant. I made sure to bring along plenty of Cubes with us to pay for our meal." Again the Scroungers approached the foreigners but as soon as they noticed the High General with them they bowed and backed off, not wanting to end up in the Main Pit as scrap.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

When Sparkwrench asked about an alliance, one of the Rust to Wealth bots overheard. Being a Scrounger, likely the most un-diplomatic type of person on the planet, he had no qualms in walking right up. "You? Send your military to help US?! Don't be ridiculous. If you weren't with Soundwave there, every last one of you would be part of our loot! Do you care to dispute that?!" The Scrounger knew that by saying that last part - directly challenging the foreigners to dispute their claim - Soundwave would not be able to interfere with any resulting battle. If the aliens were foolish enough to dispute it, it would be a matter of honor for the two groups to fight it out.

The rest of the gang, except for the leader, soon came up behind the first one. They all grinned greedily and rubbed their blasters or gestured towards their Energon carts, which were now being piled high with money by foundrybots. The leader of the gang continued to watch the meltdowns to ensure that they did not get ripped off, but was listening closely. When all of their loot was processed, and the foundrybot left the crane empty in anticipation of some alien full-body scrap. It was clear that the foundrybot figured it would be a quick battle.

Soon, a few tough foundry employees came over to the two groups in a serious way. "All battles happen outside," they reminded them. Two opened the doors and gestured towards the exterior. All of the Decepticons except for Soundwave assumed that there would be a battle - after all, what self-respecting bot would just agree that they were outmatched, even if they clearly were?

"By Cybertronian custom, I must allow you to decide for yourselves whether or not to take a clearly-stated challenge like that," Soundwave explained, stepping back just a bit. Inside, Soundwave figured that the Xaxhazians would be dead metal within an instant if they accepted the challenge, but he was polite and didn't say so.

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

UC of Ceridignon

Robert bowed his head a bit. "Vigilante action is highly punished here," he said. "But I didn't want to just let that other guy get away. What else could I do but turn him in?"

Fire Eater and Loyal Star both groaned a bit. "You get him with connives!" Loyal Star said. Fire Eater concurred. "Yes. You come up with some way to screw him up that isn't so obvious to the cops. Then you do that. And you make sure he knows it, and why, so he is properly deterred from doing whatever it is you don't like again - but you make sure that you don't provide any actual proof that it was you, so he can't turn around and turn YOU in."

Fire Eater now leaned forward. "Vengeance is a big part of the Decepticon Way. If you want to do well as a Megatronist, you must start practicing the Way as of now. Your assignment, should you still choose to pursue an acolyte position, is to 'fix' one of your enemies the proper way. By yourself. Also, as Loyal Star here said, you must not interfere with activities that do not affect you. Your report said that you reported a 'local break-in,' not a break-in of your own property. That means that it wasn't any of your business. Such behavior is Autobottish, and even without being an acolyte, you need to do penance for our Divine Leader for such a sin."

With that, he sent Robert out, sure that the biological would end up chickening out, simply not be able to figure out how to go about doing it, or decide that his personality did not fit Megatronism after all.

"I doubt we'll see him again," Fire Eater said after Robert left. "That's what's wrong with law-bound countries. Their people have no mettle."