An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron


Sparkwrench and his fellow bots got in a huddle for a minute or so and then turned and he said to the Scrounger "We're not here to get into fights, we're diplomats."


The Scrounger turned up his nose and snorted in disgust. "All of you are weak, WEAK! And I'm guessing you are all upper class bots as they wouldn't send an average bot out to represent their planet abroad. If you are the best your planet has to offer, the average bots probably would fall apart after a few blasts. I, like most bots at some time in their lives, have gone on many raids, and I've seen BIOLOGICALS who put up more of a fight then you, humans, changelings, even ponies who stayed at the controls of their guns until I blasted them into death or just stood on them." The Scrounger gang started chanting "Foreign Weaklings" (so as to make it clear it was not aimed at High General Soundwave, who would blast any bot on the spot who said he was weak) and other Scroungers and then other bots and foundry bots as well took up the refrain until the building echoed with their Binary. Calling a bot weak on Cybertron was as bad an insult as on biological planets someone being called a sex offender-any bot with working parts would need to blast to avenge the insult or attract the attention of Scroungers or worse. One of the Xaxhaz bots was clearly furious and Sparkwrench said to him "Loudlamp, if you do want to fight, make a Save of yourself first and give it to me and don't do something like running a jammer unless you no longer wish to live. Even if it is a one on one duel rather then the whole gang jumping on you, you are still very likely to have your body blasted apart and reincarnated as new Decepticon Parts. I for one want to go to the restaurant."


Domintel was of course secretly observing and recording this, and they were privately disgusted at how weak and cowardly the ambassodors were. Whilst an entire robot race could not be thought of as weak because of a few without more evidence, any more then Decepticons could be thought of as weak because of the cursed and rusted bots of Iacon, clearly if most of them were like this, their planet was ripe for the taking. As a robot planet it would be a very desirible target with all those parts and electronics around to loot.

UC of Ceridignon

Loyal Star ran his calculations in his head and his fans wirred a little and then he said "I think there is a nine out of ten chance that we won't be seeing him again, sadly. Most biologicals don't have what it takes to join us successfully."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Loudlamp, engine revving with great anger, whipped out a blank spare and began to write his data to it. Soundwave couldn't believe his great luck, and he managed to suppress a backfire of surprised delight just in time. The alien was writing all of his data out right in front of him! Instantly, Soundwave turned up all of his senses, and it was no trouble for him to hear every almost-silent sizzle as Loudlamp burned his data into the disk. Soundwave quickly calculated his own onboard data storage capacity, and figured he'd have just enough room to make an exact copy of this guy's mind and everything he knew.

Within a few minutes, the Save was made, as the Scroungers waited impatiently and Soundwave secretly recorded everything.

"I will take your challenge!" Loudlamp yelled angrily as soon as he made his Save. "One of you versus me! Which one wants to die for insulting the honor of Xaxhaz!!?"

For just a moment, the Scroungers' engines all purred. So that's where these weaklings were from. Now we can go raid the place for all we can haul, They thought silently.

One medium-strength bot stepped forward confidently.

"I am Recycler, and will gladly accept your 2,500 Cubes in the form of your deactivated body," he announced. All of the Cybertronians knew that this itself was an insult - he was saying that the Xaxhazian's body wouldn't even be worth the normal 3,000. The alien, however, missed it since he didn't know the average pricing.

The two went outside at the further urging of the foundrybots and took positions several feet away from each other. Another member of the Scrounger gang counted off 10 counts, and the battle began.

Soundwave said nothing, but was actually glad this was happening. Not only did he score a copy of the guy's data for Intelligence to fully analyze later, he could now see how a Xaxhazian fought in a real battle situation and whether or not this one had any tricks up his panels that might even up the apparent strength mismatch. The only downside was that, when he finally got to the restaurant, he would have to pretend to be a bit somber...assuming the Scrounger won, that is. Later, after the Xaxhazians left, he would probably give that Scrounger a Cube of Supreme for his inadvertent help to the Foreign Intelligence Division.

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

UC of Ceridignon

For a few weeks, there was no sign of Robert, and it seemed like he had, indeed, chickened out. One day, though, the priests were walking by a newspaper machine when they saw Robert's face on the cover of the local issue. "MAN ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTING TO ROB RESTAURANT," the headline blared.

Fire Eater immediately picked the lock on the machine with a tool that had been hidden in his finger and extracted two papers. He did it so casually it was as if paying never even crossed his mind - and it hadn't. The idea of expecting such a lock to actually do anything struck him as ludicrous. He had the door open so quickly and smoothly that passers-by just assumed he had paid.

Quickly, the two began to read. Robert, it turned out, had managed to pick the restaurant door's lock late at night, assuming that it would be safe because it was closed. Unfortunately for him, it was *too* late at night: 4 AM was actually early morning, and the cooks had already arrived to prepare the kitchen for the breakfast run. They captured him easily and turned him over to the police. Now, he was in the local jail awaiting trial.

Just as the two were going to discuss this, a native in a fancy business suit walked up. "You guys look a little distraught," he said with the smoothness of a salesman. "I've got just the thing for you: a timeshare at one of the finest resorts in the Confederacy. A month in sunny Lower Flambovia will take care of all of your worries!"

Loyal Star was going to brush the guy off without even listening, but Fire Eater held up his hand. "Tell us all about it," he said, with obvious interest. What he didn't let on was that he wasn't interested in the timeshare, which he had instantly pegged as bogus, but in how good of a spiel the guy had, and whether or not he could be recruited to Megatronism.

In return for his willingness to listen, Fire Eater was treated to a quick, but highly-polished spiel complete with full-color glossy brochures featuring beautiful pictures and great reviews. Clearly, this was a practiced conniver, into sales, and currently quite active at his trade. A great candidate...

"I'll tell you what," Fire Eater said, "swing by the back doors of the Temple in a couple of hours, and we can talk more there..."

If the salesman, who turned out to be called Bilancal, showed up, he would find himself on the other end of a pitch. In the meantime, Fire Eater secretly contacted ForIntel. As he had suspected, the location the guy was promoting was actually far from the glorious resort shown on the brochure. Instead, it was a run-down set of cabins - and on top of that, it was impossible to confirm that Bilancal actually worked for the place. The glorious resort pictured was actually the Beautiful Seasons Resort, which was located on a tropical island nowhere near Lower Flambovia.

"Now that's a Decepticon-in-Spirit," Fire Eater told Loyal Star, approvingly. "We will try to recruit him. He can use his sales skills for the Temple, and will have no trouble plying the connive-side of the Way to eliminate the competition and draw more followers. All we have to do is convince him to sign up."

That would prove to be harder than might be originally expected. People were learning that Megatronists were people who were up to things, so openly joining would make it harder for Bilancal to convince people to sign up for his scammy offerings. He would have to be convinced that it was worth it to join anyway...

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron


The average Decepticon would not have been able to gather all the Save Disc Data using his senses alone-but High General Soundwave, in charge of Domintel and Forintel was a lot better made then the average Decepticon and managed to take it all in and have enough RAM to safely store it. The Scrounger gang, the delegation of Xaxhaz bots, High General Soundwave, and those who just wanted to watch the free entertainment left the foundry, as there was a very strong rule against fighting indoors because of the damage to equipment it could cause.

"I will take your challenge!" Loudlamp yelled angrily as soon as he made his Save. "One of you versus me! Which one wants to die for insulting the honour of Xaxhaz!!?"

For just a few seconds, the Scrounger's engines purred like cats, a sign of great pleasure amongst Decepticons. One stepped forward. It would be a one on one rather then the entire gang getting involved.

"I am Recycler, and will gladly accept your 2,500 Cubes in the form of your deactivated body."

When the battle began, Loudlamp turned out to have rockets with magnets in his chest, and although all but one was blasted before it could reach it's target, that one stuck to Recycler's breastplate and blew up. Scrounger armour was tougher then most, but it still peeled away several layers. Normal Decepticon armour would have taken even more damage. The battle lasted about five minutes before Loudlamp's body blew up and collapsed , and the Scrounger quickly blasted his boards in case any were still operating, and tore the mind boards out just to make doubly sure. Recycler had taken about 50% damage-much more then he expected but not enough to have to mind transfer before his fellow gang members started seeing him as prey. But this was one of the elite Xaxhaz bots-average ones would most likely be far weaker and poor ones would be easy prey.

Sparkwrench politely asked to go to the Private Refinery restaurant, which was where the rich and in some cases, somewhat snooty bots, came when they wanted luxury meals of Energon Supreme. Soundwave took him there and a water asked what to him was a strange foreign bot (after first giving a deep bow to General Soundwave) if he had enough Energon to afford a meal here. Sparkwrench took out several Xaxhazian Energon Cubes and a small bit of one was put into the burner for testing. If it burned very well, it was worth a lot of money, if it had an average burn it was worth less money, and if it didn't burn it was worth nothing.

UC of Ceridignon


In trying to obey the Decepticon Way, Robert got himself jailed and was clearly not Decepticon material. As the two priests were reading the paper, someone named Bilancal showed up who was clearly a Decepticon in spirit, and agreed to meet them later. He was someone that Fire Eater really could approve of, if they could persuade him to join them.

(OOC-I am feeling slightly ill in rl, hence the short rp bit.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Recycler was shocked when the rocket managed to do so much damage, but to his relief, he was able to intercept the others so that he didn't lose his 10 million Cube battle body. Once Loudlamp was out of ammo, Recycler was easily able to concentrate on his own blasting and win. He proudly hoisted the deactivated Xaxhazian bodyguard over one arm, making sure to act as if he wasn't really bothered by the rocket damage, but inside he wasn't really feeling that great. He would have to buy many new layers of armor, and the scrap value of this one bot wouldn't even make a dent in that cost. It was a Pyrrhic victory, and he and the rest of his gang all knew it. Still, he didn't let on to the other Xaxhazians that he was thinking this, and even challenged the rest of them to more duels by asking if any others wanted to be treated to a swim in the slag.

No one took him up on his further challenge, and he was secretly glad of this. He took the one body into the foundry, where it weighed out at just 2,000 Cubes' worth of material. "You blasted a good 500 more Cubes' worth into atoms," the foundrybot said. Recycler accepted the weight, still glad he had won, and with a splash, Loudlamp's body became part of the Metal Stream.

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

Outside, the others asked to go to the restaurant, so Soundwave took them there. He once again took a circuitous route, this time leading them along the outskirts of the Cargo Zone. There, they saw the towering 1,000-foot-tall cargo bots, who made regular Decepticons seem as small as humans in comparison. "Here is our big interplanetary shipping area," Soundwave boasted. "As you can see, even our transport guys are far from helpless..." He pointed out the giant blasters the cargo-bots had, which looked powerful enough to take out a decent-sized capital ship with a couple of shots. Of course, he did not mention their problems with maneuverability, and hoped that the foreigners would assume that these giants were as agile as regular Decepticons.

Next, he wound around through another rich subdivision, this one home to many ICC higher-ups. This was a scene quite unlike what would be found in most countries. Gangsters loitered around some of the mansions, looking low-class and menacing, but then one of the members would walk inside a home and it'd become clear that he lived there and that the gangsters were his friends rather than robbers! At other mansions, private security forces stood around, soldier-like, and there were no chav-looking types to be seen.

"This neighborhood is mostly populated by ICC members," Soundwave said. "You can clearly see which branches of the Syndicate are represented. Those are the drug distribution people - " He pointed at some hooligans - "While these others [pointing at the guarded manors] are more into accounting and administration for the group. Oh, and then there's this one..." They were passing a hot-pink mansion, and he gestured in its direction. "This one belongs to an artist. He's the head of their porn division. His skill at drawing CGI that fools biologicals is renowned across the planet, and it has proven useful for us in Intel at various times, too. He doesn't sell his wares here, of course. Instead, they go to other planets through the ICC's massive distribution network."

At this point, a bot came out of the mansion wearing a painted-on "pimp suit" design, with the "coat" in the same pink as the mansion, with a purple representation of a shirt showing "underneath."

"Oh, General Soundwave!" He said flamboyantly as he flounced over. "My most reliable customer! Would you like anything 'special' today~?"

Soundwave turned him down for now, and explained that he was just giving an overview of the area to the diplomatic contingent. The artist, who actually went by the name Herv the Perv but didn't say so, looked a bit disappointed. These foreigners were robots. There would be no market wherever they came from.

After leaving that neighborhood, they entered another mansion-filled one. This time, the manors were more what would be expected of a wealthy area, with well-polished house and ground panels, statuary, and that strange snooty quietness such areas often have. "These belong to businesspeople," Soundwave said as they walked through. "Many of the businesses are big here on Cybertron, though there are some interplanetary operators, too."

Finally, they reached an absolutely massive mansion. It was four stories tall, and a clear-walled elevator shaft ran up one side. Out in front, there was a larger-than-life sculpture of Decepticon engine, with a few peripheral parts artistically scattered at its base. "This mansion belongs to the owner of the Decepticon Parts Company," Soundwave informed them. "It's the biggest non-Megatron-owned, legitimate company in the Empire. As you can see, an honest businessbot isn't doomed to poverty here. However, even he operates by the rule of the Strong - trying to start a high-quality, mass-distribution parts company is not conducive to continued functioning." Just as Soundwave said this, a heavily-armed guard rounded the corner from the other side of the home.

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

Once they arrived at the restaurant, the diplomats finally seemed to relax a bit, clearly thinking that they were safer in here. Soundwave silently chuckled inside, thinking that it wasn't really safer at all. In fact, the rich people in here likely had blasters that were better than mil-spec, so if any trouble did break out, it'd only take one stray blast to do a huge amount of damage or even cause instant death. Still, it was peaceful at the time of their visit.

When challenged to burn some of their Energon, Sparkwrench gladly obliged. The burn test revealed that their Energon was of a higher quality than Standard, but not as good as the Supreme that would be served to them in a few moments. The waiter accepted the findings with a short, professional nod.

To their surprise, the waiter then test-burned Soundwave's supply. It turned out to be actual Supreme, making it clear that he had only come here in order to properly take care of his guests, or perhaps, to spy on someone. Since he was the Head of Intelligence, there was always that possibility.

The service, as expected for such an expensive place, turned out to be impeccable. The same was true of the surroundings, and the Xaxhazians enjoyed the soft, slightly cushioned velvety seats that didn't scrape their paint or threaten them with dents. They noticed that the floor next to each seat had slots for wing tips, and though they didn't need them themselves, they could see how this was perfect for the average Decepticon body.

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

Foundryland

This was the informal name for the gritty residential subdivision that lay between the Main Foundry and the nearest slum, and it was close to here that the Rust to Wealth gang had come to discuss their plans. The leader owned a big warehouse right at its outskirts, and inside it, the entire gang stood in a loose circle.

"You saw how easy it was to thwart that idiot's rockets," the leader - a silver bot named The Janitor - said, getting eager revs in response. "The one that connected did a decent amount of damage, though, so we can't just barge in. We'll need to install our anti-SAM panels and a bit more general body armor. Even so, it's clear that we should do something other than Scrounging for a few days. We need to raid this Xaxhaz place for all we can carry." The others all revved or nodded in agreement.

"I have here a map that I got from some of our pals. The target is here." He projected a holograph, and with the other hand, pointed at a planet labeled "Xaxhaz." "This map is about 10 years old, but it's from the IOPC, so things like which planet is which are sure to be right."

Recycler spoke up and said, "I see it also says 'no oil' next to that. So what are we going to get?"

The leader responded with a dramatic firmness. "Slaves." He paused, still in a dramatic way. "Biological slaves aren't worth raiding for outside of war, but these aren't biologicals. The fact that the place sent a robotic diplomatic contingent can only mean one thing: The entire population is robotic. And you know that a robotic slave is worth 100,000 Cubes."

Another noted that the 100,000-Cube price wasn't for just any robot. It was for a hacked Decepticon.

"Those idiots are still about half as good as us, by the looks of them," the leader responded. "That's 50,000 Cubes. EACH. And we have enough carts to carry a hundred of them. I say we hit it. We barge in on some unsuspecting town, fire only enough to temporarily seize their joints, and then it's off to the buyers with them. I've already made a contact: The Far-Cybertronian Asteroid Mining Company. They'll accept all we can bring in."

Soon, they were all at various parts of the warehouse, where spare parts, armor, and special panels were normally stored. They each picked out the ones that would fit their bodies, and the welding began.

An hour later, Rust to Wealth was upgraded, fueled up, and in the air. The DomIntel Supercomputer, which was not programmed to interpret how such activity would affect diplomatic relations, recorded the exodus as "legal activity" and made no report to live agents.

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

UC of Ceridignon

That evening, Bilancal arrived at the back doors of the Temple. Upon being let in, he shocked them by saying, "So you saw through my scam. I suppose you want me to join you..."

Loyal Star and Fire Eater exchanged a glance. Clearly this scammer wasn't stupid! Fire Eater quickly confirmed Bilancal's suspicion, and then added, "we are looking for an acolyte for the Temple, with hopes that the acolyte eventually ascend to the priesthood. Your active practice of the Decepticon Way, and your emphasis on persuasive words rather than brute-force attacks, makes you a good candidate..."

Bilancal listened with interest, his mind already thinking of how he could parlay such a position into a personal fortune. While he knew that this might not be as easy as it seemed, his ideas at least caused him to be open to joining. "Tell me more about your Leader Megatron," he said as they walked further into the building to reach Fire Eater's study.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron


The Xaxhaz bots said to High General Soundwave "We do have cargo bots but they are nowhere near this big." Camera eyes watched them slightly malevolently, although no cargo bot would want to anger a High General. The bots were awed by the mansions they saw of the rich Decepticons, some of which were clearly gangsters and proud of it. Far from wanting to rob the mansions, the gangsters were friends. "We do have rich parts of our own planet but all the bits of Cybertron we have seen are amazing. This is one prosperous planet. Given how raiders attacked us when we first came here, I don't think your people would like our merchants, traders, or tourists much, let alone want to sell us any land even for a lot of Energon." At the restaurant, the bots inside had several coats of paint and wax on (the Decepticon equivalent of fine clothes) and didn't seem to mind the foreign bots. This was just as well-the armour and blasters on these bots were Scrounger Quality or higher. The Xaxhaz bots drank Energon Supreme now it had been properly paid for and marvelled at their surroundings. Just them Ultimate came in and Sparkwrench told him "You look amazing. There are bots on my planet that would love to buy your wares if you have a shop-and would have plenty of Energon to pay for it." Ultimate smiled and then scowled. "If what you say is true I would love to sell things but sadly, it would be treason to sell some of my best stuff like weapons and armour to non-Decepticons, even robot non-Decepticons. Any amount of Energon is not worth getting melted down for. However, not everything is restricted in that way-and I have a lot of things that might be of interest." He smiled again. That was what he said in public, anyway-especially with the Director of Domintel and Forintel looking on.

One of the Xaxhaz bots suddenly said to Ultimate "Why not move to Xaxhaz? You would be given high rank in charge of upgrading our armed forces, you would be paid extremely well, and we could provide a mansion for you." Not only was he de facto suggesting treason even if he didn't know it, but he was in effect suggesting that Ultimate become highly unpatriotic on top of committing treason. Most bots were very patriotic and indeed had a love of the Big Ball Bearing which was a common nickname for Cybertron. The bot was, even though he didn't mean to, most likely insulting Ultimate-not a bot to do that to. Conversations turned to shocked silences. Heads turned. Noone blasted-yet-but eyes darkened of all the Decepticons within earshot, High General Soundwave included.


Foundryland/Xaxhaz


The Rust to Wealth Scrounger gang had decided that there was a large amount of Energon to be made by raiding Xaxhaz for slaves, but seeing how deadly missles from there could be, knew that if they just rushed in they might end up in their spares, so they armoured with thick anti-SAM panels first. Soon they were heading for Xaxhaz in FTL, and to the small town of Bright Sparks, which had around 2000 bots, of which around 20 were rich. It had half a dozern police bots-crime was rare, so that was all it needed. The average bot did have blasters in case the humans ever came back, and they could damage robot bodies but they were weak compared to Decepticon blasters and would find it dificult to get through Scrounger-level armour.

UC of Ceridignon


"The Divine Leader's blessings are very strong-but he can have a foul temper if angered, and he has a hatred of traitors. Even before he became a God, he was the Perfect Decepticon and he made our Nation what it is today-a galactical hyperpower that could fight off any threat to it and to Cybertron itself. Very rarely, he might show himself to you in a dream. I have had two such dreams in my clerical carreer. I'll let Fire Eater tell you what you need to know in detail, as he is the senior priest here,"Loyal Star said.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Ultimate stood still for a moment, and the speed of his scrolling bling-lights noticeably slowed. He looked the foreigners up and down as if appraising piles of junk parts.

"I have everything I could want right here on Cybertron. My mansion is one of the most noted landmarks in the entire area, and I have more customers than I can handle. Customers who won't collapse under the weight of my upgrades! Not only that, I would never help a foreign military upgrade. Not only is that treason, only an idiot would do that - any upgrades I gave you would be used to fire at US before long!"

Of course, Ultimate was also furious about the fact that they'd mentioned this right in front of Soundwave. Were they trying to get him executed?! In the end, though, the inexplicable nature of the foreigner's choice of when to ask that wouldn't matter. A few good blasts would get right to the bottom line!

Not wanting to get banned from the Private Refinery, Ultimate was about to storm away in a huff when a shrill sound came from Sparkwrench's communicator - a red alert. The diplomat picked it up, and everyone nearby could clearly hear a panicked voice on the other end. "We're being raided by the Decepticons!! They've taken off with a hundred of our people!" It nearly shouted. The voice was loud, tinny and annoying to the Decepticons.

"What?!" Sparkwrench was shocked. "Were they part of the Military? Did they say where they were taking them?!"

The panicked voice said that it didn't know if they were soldiers or not. He just knew that 10 bots had shown up with carts that had makeshift lids, captured 100 people by seizing their joints, and taken off into space with them. He begged Sparkwrench to try to work a deal to get them back.

When Sparkwrench looked up, Ultimate was smiling smugly and Soundwave's eyes were much brighter than they were just a few moments ago. Both recognized that this had to be a Scrounger gang at work, based on the description of the carts and that they worked by seizing the joints of the captive - and Soundwave guessed by its size that it was the one they had encountered earlier: Rust to Wealth.

"And you think I will help you interfere with our raiders?" Ultimate said. "Not a chance. For all I know, all of you will be in our mines by the end of the week! I wouldn't want to get shot at by my own products!!" With that, he walked into another part of the restaurant, where his usual table - complete with an outsized chair that had plenty of room for his heavily-modded, large body - waited with a full pitcher of Supreme. There, the head of the Decepticon Parts Company was already seated, intending to discuss 10,000,000 Cubes' worth of upgrades for himself. After a few moments of grumbling about "these glitchy foreigners," the business dinner went on as planned.

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

Once Ultimate left the immediate area, Sparkwrench tried to smooth over his underling's huge faux-pas, but Soundwave was now quite cold to him. The spymaster refused all aid in getting the captured Xaxhazians back, telling him that the Decepticon government's job was to support the Decepticon Way, and freeing slaves certainly did not fit into that mandate.

"They are loot now," Soundwave said unempathetically. "If you want them back, you'll have to take them from their owners by force." He turned his attention to his glass of Supreme, indicating that further attempts at negotiation would be futile. Only after much cajoling did Sparkwrench at least get one piece of information out of him: It wasn't the Decepticon Military. "When it's the Military, there will be no doubt about it. Your skies would be blackened by the number of soldiers descending on you." He did not, however, say which gang it was. There would be many more gangs coming after Ultimate got done telling all of his customers about the place and how it had tried to get him to commit treason while he, Soundwave, was right there.

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

Xaxhaz
About a half-hour prior to the red-alert call being made to Sparkwrench

The people of Bright Sparks didn't have any warning as Rust to Wealth descended on them from the sky. The gang came in under cloaking, and the town was remote and small enough that it didn't have a military contingent watching it, much less one with anti-cloaking technology. Suddenly, the 10 bots decloaked and began firing joint-seizing blasts at people with expert precision. With no experience fighting this sort of enemy, the locals were easily picked off. The cop-bots did show up, but their weapons were far weaker than the upgraded armor the gang was using, and they were easily overrun.

Within just a couple of hours, Rust to Wealth had filled its carts and returned to space. A few Xaxhazian air force bots finally did arrive, but they couldn't keep up with the exiting Scrounger gang. The gang simply sped up, not wanting to waste any Energon on blasting such inferiors when there was no more room in their carts for the bodies.

The chaos had been so forceful and so sudden that most of the people didn't catch many details about the attackers. Their Decepticon Seals had been the most prominently-noticed aspect of them, as well as their smooth transformations back into plane mode when they had all they could carry. One managed to catch some of their Binary, however, and the Xaxhazian Intelligence Service was now busy trying to translate it.

~~~~~~~~~~

UC of Ceridignon

"There are actually two sides of the Decepticon Way," Fire Eater explained, revealing information that it would take the average parishioner months to be told. "There's the Strength Side, where raw physical strength is king, and there's the Connive Side, which relies on wiles. Usually, we do not speak of the connive side, because it's bad for business. However, with you, this is the side of interest. You are a Conniver..." Before Bilancal could try to deny it, Fire Eater informed him of what ForIntel had told him - complete with holographs of the actual location he had been trying to sell timeshares to. "And usually, the best acolytes and priests are on that side. Growing the Temple by means other than force involves being able to talk a good, persuasive line - and this is not something that raiders excel at."

Fire Eater went on: "Divine Leader Megatron isn't just the best warrior or raider in the Empire. He can con the hair right off your body! Many who thought they could fool him into making a dubious investment have ended up with all of their money in his vaults, not due to government seizure, but because he talked it out of them. He is the Decepticon of Decepticons; a master of all forms and permutations of the Way." He was obviously very proud of Megatron as he said this.

"So, are you interested in convincing the people to accept Megatronism, and once we have a majority, making it entirely legal to do the things you are best at?" Fire Eater asked. He knew that Bilancal would find the thought of NOT having to look over his shoulder for fraud investigators to be very enticing.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Ultimate's bling lights that normally flickered at high speed all across his body slowed to a human walking place and his eyes darkened from a happily red glow to a dark crimson, his engine running roughly. He wanted to blast the bot who made the offer into a pile of parts, but then he would be banned from the Private Refinery for fighting inside it, and he liked the place. He looked at the foreign bots as if they were rusty bits of metal. Were they trying to get him executed as a traitor?
"I have everything I could want right here on Cybertron. My mansion is one of the most noted landmarks in the entire area, and I have more customers than I can handle. Customers who won't collapse under the weight of my upgrades! Not only that, I would never help a foreign military upgrade. Not only is that treason, only an idiot would do that - any upgrades I gave you would be used to fire at US before long!" he said coldly. He turned and marched off to another room where he would tell his story about the stupid foreigners and then have his temper restored by a very good deal. Before then an alarm would go off on Sparkwrench's communicator.

We're being raided by the Decepticons!! They've taken off with a hundred of our people!" It nearly shouted.

"What?! Were they part of the Military? Did they say where they were taking them?!"

"We don't know, but they were armed to the teeth, blasted the joints of random civilians and police-their own armour being strong enough to resist being blasted back in return, put them in carts and took off with them."


"And you think I will help you interfere with our raiders?" Ultimate said. "Not a chance. For all I know, all of you will be in our mines by the end of the week! I wouldn't want to get shot at by my own products!!" When it came to Decepticon law, Ultimate was a very law abiding bot indeed. Even if he had been asked privately, he still would not have wanted to leave Cybertron and become their general even in exchange for luxury. Cybertron was his favourite planet in the universe.


Soundwave made it clear that the Decepticon government would not free slaves, but that it was not the Decepticon Military but a gang of Scroungers who had done the attack. "You are not spies, and since you are not Decepticons and never swore loyalty to Megatron I suppose you are not traitors, but what you are is very much persona non grata. You are no longer welcome in the Empire after your clumsy attempt to get one of our best businessbots to defect. Leave now, in peace, or leave in pieces. If you try and stay, an execution squad running a jammer will be sent after you." The Xaxhazian bots got quickly out of there whilst they still could and barely made it out through the gauntlet of raider bots of Cybertron. Soon they got back to where their ruler awaited them. King Rebel, as he called himself, listened to everything they had to say and said "Clearly these bots are very dangerous and I will give orders for a couple of factories to be built on a couple of planets far from we so if the worst should happen, we will survive as a robotic race. Let's fly out into space where we are less likely to be spied upon."

Once they were out in open space, he spoke in coded Binary. "Normally I would just stay the hell away from them, but they kidnapped some of our population, so I am going to send a thousand warbots, cloaked until the last moment, to turn on jammers and kidnap a few hundered Cybertonians to exchange for our people. At the same time, I am going to send a team of twenty special Intelligence bots, dressed as rich Cybertronians and in the best bodies with the best blasters that we have, to kidnap Ultimate by seizing his limbs whilst running a jammer, loot his shop, and carry him and his stuff off to Xaxhaz, where I can hack him with a mind control chip and force him to make whatever we need to hold off the Decepticons."


Warbots and Intelligence bots were tough-they had bodies that were as strong as average Decepticons. Unfortunately, for them, they would soon find out a few things. First, that Ultimate didn't choose that name as a connive. There were a very few Decepticon bots that were stronger then him, but the only Xaxhazian bot that might possibly be of that level was King Rebel himself, and even that was unlikely. Second, would be that whilst Decepticons who were not directly involved in fights between each other normally stayed out of it, they were not Decepticons. Added to that, they would be targeting Cybertron. If the Coltanis had been there, they could have said what happened to anyone who did that . As soon as they started their attack, it would be like a human poking a hornet's nest with a stick.


The Warbots cloaked and got to Cybertron without too much trouble, as cloaking by itself did not nesscessarly indicate a foe if detected by military radar, and selected the equvilent in Cybertronian terms of Bright Sparks, a place that went by the name of Titanium Town, with a population of about a couple of thousand bots, ten of them being rich, fifty being relitively poor and the rest being average. When they decloaked, flicked on jammers (having made saves for themselves first back on Xaxhaz) transformed and started shooting with the advantage of surprise, they thought the Cybertronians would react like their own bots did. Some would undoubtily blast back, but most, they thought, would run in terror or hide in their homes and it would be easy to get some hostages. If Decepticons had no police, surely they would be unable to call for help. They didn't know that if the planet was invaded by forigners, there was a special number to call and it was not considered narking to report such an attack, nor did they know that all adult Decepticons were trained soldiers who were just not allways in the Military, or that other Decepticons would very likely pile in against forign foes with extreme violence.


At about the same time the Intelligence bots found their way to Ultimate's shop through his own advertising, and as they were able to pass reasonably well as Decepticons, five came up to the door and were allowed in, the other waiting a short way away just out of sight for the call to break in and loot everything or a call to join the battle. The fact that they didn't have large carts full of Energon was not a problem-to buy most things from Ultimate, bots brought vault keys to vaults well stocked with Energon as to carry that much in the street, even for the toughest bots, was still a robbery risk. When Ultimate asked them what they wanted, they suggested a certain kind of armour, and then leapt at him, grabbing him and blasting at his joints and flicking on a jammer. The average Decepticon Meltdown would have been defeated at this point, but these bots, having not even bothered to turn down their pain sensors, were about to find out what some of those strobe lights really did, and also would find out just how blaster resistant Ultimate's joints were to the equvilent of normal Standard Blaster fire. It had been a long time since the last attempt to rob Ultimate's shop had happened and they were about to find out why.


UC of Ceridignon

"I would love that, but would I still be able to con as a priest? Isen't that not the sort of things priests do?" Bilancal asked, wanting to be sure of things before getting inextricably involved.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron
Ultimate Mod Shop

Ultimate thought something was off about these "customers" right from the start. They were neither impressed nor did they know exactly what they wanted like regulars would, but instead, acted rather "stiff" in terms of affect. He pegged them as would-be robbers fairly quickly, and began to subtly rev up just in case he needed to come to full power in a hurry.

His suspicions soon proved to be correct, as the fake customers jumped on him and started blasting at his joints.

"What are you, Scroungers who went too far into Iacon?!" Ultimate said with a grin on his face - insinuating that they must have been out of their minds to attack him. Without much effort, he hoisted himself back to his feet, pulling his assailants up as he did so. At the same time, the sound of a massive engine started up - a separate, stronger, battle engine that sat within his massive body and provided full power his huge array of weapons. His bling lights began to flash in a seemingly randomized, confusing pattern - meant to throw lesser enemies off-guard. By the time he was on his feet, he was completely ready for action.

With a whooshing sound, guided missiles exited his two shoulder-mounted mini-batteries, and one missile went to each assailant. As the enemy were busy looking at, and in most cases getting struck by, those weapons, Ultimate let off a massive volley of blaster fire - not only from the barrels that were obvious, but many that had been hidden, as well. Unless a miracle happened, the battle would be over in less than a minute and Ultimate would have a lot of scrap to sell.

~~~~~~~~~~

Outside, DomIntel surveillance equipment detected the flashing of a full-out battle in Ultimate's shop. Immediately, the Supercomputer interpreted the incoming data and realized that the initial, weaker blasts did not seem to be using standard Decepticon energy. It put out a low-priority flag that there might be foreign weapons in play. This flag was low-priority because it also calculated that Ultimate would have everything under control very shortly.

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

Titanium Town

The instant jamming was detected, the entire population revved up for war. Only enemies ran jamming - it was just a matter of detecting who needed killing. By the time the Xaxhazians decloaked, most of the population had already traced the sources of the jamming and were raising their blasters to open fire. They didn't need to be able to see what they were shooting at because the jamming signals were like massive beacons.

It was a surprise that there were so many enemies, but the Decepticons were not deterred. Battle began immediately, and the locals were very much eager for the fray. In fact, to the soldiers' surprise, many of them were grinning like it was the most fun they'd had in a while. The Decepticons vigorously hurled insults in the foreigners' direction as they blasted back at the attacking force.

At first, the Xaxhazians thought that they would, at least, not be interfered with by Decepticon troops. Even if someone did try to call, jamming was running! Surely all they would have to do would be to defeat these people...people who, they realized to their dismay, were not at all acting like civilians. In fact, the local population appeared to be making their way into military formations, at least as well as they could while under fire. They did notice that some weren't using as skilled of patterns for their defense - in fact, they seemed to be running automatic programs - but even they were managing to inflict damage on the invaders. Only the poorest bots in the worst condition had, at this point, suffered any serious damage of their own.

Suddenly, the jamming frequency was overridden and the airwaves became clear again. At this moment, 10 Decepticon Military bots showed up and joined the battle. They were the troops from the local outpost - which Xaxhaz apparently didn't expect to exist - and as soon as the jamming had gone up, they knew there was something serious afoot and followed the jamming signals to their sources. Now, with the jamming blocked, the Decepticon troops radioed the nearest base for backup. Locals also began calling the invasion alert center in large numbers. At the base only about a half-hour away, 100,000 troops scrambled. The Decepticons had no qualms about using an overwhelming force to ensure victory. They also didn't know just how many attackers there were or if more were coming, and it was always better to send way too many troops than even one too few.

All across Cybertron, alarms sounded at the military bases and outposts, and all troops immediately stopped their games, fueled up, and waited at attention for orders. If there was a full-force attack on Cybertron, they were ready to meet it.

As of now, though, the alarms to the general public were not sounded. From early MilIntel data, it seemed as if this attack was not going to become a widespread threat right now, and the regular populace of Cybertron would be quite peeved if an alarm sounded for what turned out to be nothing.

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

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater chuckled. "Well, we don't go around advertising what we're up to, that's for sure! We don't want local governments trying to throw us out, or throw us in jail. But a Decepticon never stops being a Decepticon. As an acolyte, you would have only two restrictions: You don't con other Megatronists - targeting our own followers would cause them to apostatize, and we'd be shooting ourselves in the feet - and you don't let your cons get attached to the Temple. In short, you'd need to do your usual activities in another town, and under another name. You need to provide the Temple with what is usually called 'plausible deniability.'"

"If you move up to the priest level, things change a bit. Then, it depends on where you're stationed and what your mission is. If you get stationed on Cybertron, then you will be among Decepticons - and we know what to expect from each other." Fire Eater grinned in a shysty way. "You basically have no restrictions there other than not to steal from the Temple itself. A true Decepticon will not be surprised when you act like one, too."

"Also, I will emphasize that we do not try to come across as some sort of holier-than-thous, unlike typical priests. Megatronism is very different from your average run-of-the-mill religion."

He opened his desk and pulled out a checkbook. It looked completely legitimate. "Everything at this Temple that isn't intentionally donated is financed by the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank. Are you aware of how this very unique bank works~?"

[Edited to add some details about Megatronism and clarify that any restrictions on connivery partially depend on the location of deployment.]

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron
Ultimate Mod Shop


As soon as the new customers came in, Ultimate suspected they were robbers, although he didn't yet suspect they were foreigners yet. His engine let out a quiet rev. When the fake customers jumped on him and started trying to blast his joints, he thought they might possibly be Scroungers driven insane after one trip too many into Iacon in search of prey. Iacon was a very good place to find prey but any Scrounger who stayed there too long would have his mind boards and body affected. That, or they were just really, really, stupid. "What are you, Scroungers who went too far into Iacon?!" With his joints only scratched and not damaged, he hauled himself to his feet, turned on his battle engine to vastly increase his strength, flashed his bling lights in a confusing pattern and activated his guided missiles, blowing those holding him into scrap metal and damaging the others. He followed up with blasts from his blaster array and when other bots came running in to the attack, easily reduced them into scrap metal as well, taking minor damage-some smashed bling lights and a few small dents-in return. Picking up one of the bits of scrap, he noticed it had "Made in Xaxhaz" on it in Binary. "Idiot foreign bots. Just as well most of the things in my shop on the walls are blaster-proof." Putting the bits into a large wheelbarrow he locked up the shop and lowered the blast shutters and took the busted parts to the local foundry to sell. King Rebel's grand plan to kidnap Ultimate and steal everything in his shop had just resulted in some deactivated Xaxhaz Intelligence bots.

Titanium Town


As soon as jamming was detected, every bot within miles knew there were foes around and as soon as the decloaking happened, a huge battle started. Every adult bot in the area took up a military formation-a little rough and ready because of the surprise, and cursing in the foulest terms at the Xaxhaz bots (and their Coders for good measure) blasted back. Here and there a Decepticon took some damage, but most managed to keep the damage light. Not long afterwards the local military outpost of ten bots showed up, and a few random civilians from outside the area joined in. The Xaxhazians were doing reasonably well-until not long afterwards an irate General Thundercracker and 100,000 soldiers showed up. A handful of Xaxhaz warbots got out with two Decepticon bodies and one live poor bot who had lost a spare in an unsuccessful raid and another in a fight with a rival Decepticon and was on his way to work-things were that bad for him-when he got caught up in the fight and had no bodies to mind transfer to. As for the others, they were quickly blasted into smoking, sizzling chunks of dead metal. News reporters showed up to the scene and sent a message to the government asking for permission to film and report the story, knowing that in this case the government was unlikely to say no to reporting a foreign attack on the Metal Planet. General Thundercracker radioed Megatron personally to let him know of the insult to Cybertron and ask what he wanted to happen.


Xaxhaz

King Rebel was expecting a large number of captured Decepticons and a kidnapped Ultimate along with the entire contents of Ultimate's shop. Instead he found a few warbots and a couple of Intelligence agents, two Decepticon bodies whose owners had gone to their spares when captured, and one live Decepticon with his limbs blasted. "I am King Rebel of Xaxhaz, and you are my hostage." The Decepticon cursed him, and then said "Megatron won't care about me, but he will care that your army attacked Cybertron and damaged Titanium Town. Cybertron is the jewel of our Empire and if anything happens to it, we as a people get angry. Equestria perished after it attacked Cybertron, and Coltan was annexed after it raided it. Kill me if you must, at worst I will go to the Neutral Zone. But your people are doomed to death or enslavement and you will have a place in the Realm of Punishment waiting for you."


"If you will show me how to build new Decepticon bots to serve me, you will live in comfort," the King said, and the captured Decepticon cursed the King, his army and Xaxhaz in some very salty and NC 17 rated Binary. "As I said, kill me, I will never help you." The King replied "Fit him with a slave chip and send him to mine metal, after putting new arms and legs on him." As it was, although they did fit a slave chip to the Decepticon, it lasted just one hour and seven minutes before his mind broke free of it and he flew back at FTL speed to Cybertron, happy that Xaxhaz mind chips could not hold Decepticon minds captive for very long.

UC of Ceredigion

"Well, I am certainly interested and would like to read Megatron's holy books. You two make a pleasent change to the Christian, Ponyist and other priests I have met in my life-all annoyingly holy and goody goody. If I like what I read I will formally join you and over time, see if I can make it to acolyte rank or higher," Bilancal said.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

While the planet as a whole wasn't even aware of the recent attacks by Xaxhaz, a few pockets of people were gearing up to go kick some ass.

Ultimate Mod Shop

Ultimate soon got back to his shop and inspected the damages. While the metal of his weapons was mostly unscathed, the paint on his products was now scorched and would have to be redone. Several shelves had been outright vaporized, either by being too close to the mini-missiles he'd sent off or by enemy blaster fire. The stock on them was now on the floor in a heap. Ultimate cursed; he would have to close for at least a day and work constantly until the next day to put everything right again.

Ultimate decided that, even though closing for longer would cost him a lot of money, he would recover those lost funds from Xaxhaz's metal hide. He got out a communicator, one of a rather expensive brand, and began to make calls. Each call was to one of his top customers. Ultimate didn't have a standing raid gang that he belonged to, but he knew that many of his repeat customers would be eager to use the products they'd paid him millions of Cubes for. He also knew that every one of them was properly prepared - after all, he was the one who prepared them.

It took about three hours, since rich bots were typically busy doing whatever had gotten them rich instead of sitting around waiting for raid calls, but after that, six obviously-wealthy and very powerful bots arrived at the front door of his store. In the meantime, Ultimate had gotten a map that showed Xaxhaz's location and pointed out some of its space-based assets. He ushered them in, re-locked the door, and planning began.

"I want to kick this place's ass for what its dumb raiders did to my shop!" Ultimate said, gesturing towards the mess. He explained what had happened, at least according to his perception. He figured that the group were raiders, not Intelligence agents, and that Xaxhaz had thought it could do the Decepticon Way against the actual Decepticons. "We have to show these numpties what a RAID really IS!" Ultimate went on. "I will make each of you a 1,000,000-Cube upgrade if you join me on this demonstration."

The six customers were all in. They'd get a free, high-grade upgrade of their choosing (up to 1,000,000 Cubes value) AND any loot they could pick up. They all went around to the back of the store, and Ultimate got out a fairly huge, highly armored trailer painted in dark blue. It was self-propelled, but still needed to be guided by someone pulling a cable. This was usually used to collect payments and bring them from one vault complex to another, but soon, it would be filled with Xaxhazian loot if Ultimate had his way. "ULTIMATE MOD SHOP - THE FINEST UPGRADES ON CYBERTRON" was emblazoned on the side in bright white paint. Bling lights covered the painted areas, but for now, they would remain turned off.

"This map shows that there are Xaxhazian holdings here," Ultimate said, pointing at a large satellite of Xaxhaz. It was unknown whether it was a real moon or a constructed, moon-like space station. "There are factories here. I say we hit these. We take any fuel they have there, along with a whole bunch of their parts. Then, since they ended up causing destruction in my shop, we take tit-for-tat revenge by blowing up their factories on our way out."

The others quickly began to discuss the plan, and soon balked at the amount of metal Ultimate wanted to take. "You may be a great mod guy, but a raider you ain't," said one who actually was a raid gang leader. "Hitting the off-world installations is a fine idea, but if I'm going in on this, we've gotta get mostly fuel." The others concurred - the focus had to be the fuel, or they weren't interested. Metal, especially stuff that had already been refined to presumably-inferior foreign standards, wasn't worth filling the cart with.

Eventually, the compromised. The fuel would be the main focus, but Ultimate would get to take enough metal to add a little souvenir flourish to a decent amount of his products (and a thin stripe to himself). They all agreed that it would serve Xaxhaz right to have its factories blown up, so that remained a firm part of the plan.

With that, Ultimate and his six customers took to the skies. He flashed the lights on his cart a couple of times on the way out of Cybertronian space, mostly to show off and advertise, but also to warn any opportunists of exactly what they'd be getting into if they tried to attack. No one dared to mess with them, and soon, they were in FTL and heading towards the factories that King Rebel had been using to build backup Xaxhazians. Of course, Ultimate didn't know what the factories were for - he just thought that it'd be easier to hit an off-world installation than it would be to go to the main planet where most of the army would be.

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

Combined Intelligence Headquarters, Decepticon Headquarters

The front desk clerk was surprised when a civilian, who looked a bit poor (but not awful, since he had been working), suddenly came through the front doors in an agitated state. Usually, the people of Cybertron approached Intelligence from the rear, looking to make illicit deals, not openly like this!

"I'm Ball Bearing, and I have an urgent report!" He announced, rushing to the desk. "I have just gotten back from being hijacked by some foreign scum, and I'm here to help with the war effort that I'm sure will be happening soon!"

The clerk didn't even have to call someone to get action started. The DomIntel Supercomputer immediately sounded alerts on the other side of the employees-only door, and three agents rushed out to usher him through. Soon, he was seated in an interrogation room, giving them an overview of his story.

As soon as they heard that he had been assaulted with a hack program, the agents radioed the headquarters of Debugging for one of their finest experts. They also quickly got Ball Bearing's permission to do a code-read. "Unfortunately, we can't trust anything you say since you've been affected by a hack program," they informed him. "You could still be compromised, and the program could be keeping you from knowing it. When the Debugger gets here, he will fully eliminate the virus, and also examine your Code to make sure that you are still yourself. Of course, this is also the most efficient way to see what you saw and hear what you heard, we won't deny that."

Ball Bearing had no problems with this idea. He was no traitor, and he wanted to get fully rid of the hack program. It would also save him from trying to explain anything since they could just play it off of his memory sectors like a movie.

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

It only took the highly-skilled coding expert a few minutes to find and fully remove all traces of King Rebel's hack program. He made a copy for ForIntel's records, and then began to truly examine it.

"You were able to throw this off so quickly because it was just a hasty port from one made to work on the Xaxhazian OS," the Debugger explained. "You can see several coding hooks that did not hook into you because they weren't ported right. It seems that the planet has, at some point, managed to decode a bit of our OS - but not enough to have a true understanding. Perhaps one of our raiders got shot down there years ago, before they were even independent from humans, and some of his Code was compromised."

Next, they did indeed watch Ball Bearing's memories of Xaxhaz like a movie. Unlike Ball Bearing, however, they could pay full attention to things that he had seen, but not focused on. He, of course, had been paying attention to his own situation and where they were taking him, not what non-threatening Xaxhazians had been doing. Of most interest to ForIntel was a convoy of cargo-bots that were constantly going into space from Xaxhaz. "These are flying as if they're full," the agents noted. "That means they probably have a big project going on somewhere. We have to find out about that..."

Soon, Ball Bearing was free to go, now free of the virus and confident that his personality had not been overridden by it after all. Meanwhile, orders were already going out to remote ForIntel agents to check out what Xaxhaz was working on.

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

Titanium Town

Coders with young offspring were now busy fixing any damage they'd taken, and in some cases, congratulating them for managing to take a Xaxhaz soldier or two offline with their Automatic Self-Defense Routines. Everyone else in the town was also busy - busy fueling up and cleaning their blasters!

"Where is this JOINT these reject parts came from?!" People demanded of General Thundercracker. At this point, however, Thundercracker didn't know. He had simply gotten an emergency alert and come with enough force to absolutely ensure victory in this battle.

Soon, though, a somewhat smallish bot came into the center of the crowd that had formed. "They're Xaxhazian reject parts!" he announced. He had seen pictures of the diplomatic visit on the holovision, and recognized the general build and the brown eye-lights.

Maps were immediately pulled up, and after some frantic searching, someone finally found the right part of the universe and pinpointed the planet's location. The first finder had an old map, marking it as a "human planet," but now that everyone knew where to look, it wasn't long before a current description was discovered. "Robotic; no oil - discoverer: IOPC - Status: Unclaimed"

Less than an hour later, 80% of Titanium Town was in the air and on its way. "Time to pay those pieces of garbage BACK!" The townspeople yelled as they took off into the skies, leaving only the soldiers, Coders with young offspring, and the kids themselves, behind.

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

Megatron Mansion

By now, there was no way on Cybertron that Megatron could miss what was going on. An alert panel was flashing like a Christmas tree as reports came from all intelligence agencies, with each light signifying a sector in which action was taking place. Meanwhile, reports from distant ForIntel observation stations were showing raid gang activity both coming from, and going to, Xaxhaz. War would be coming within days, and if Megatron didn't officially declare it soon, the people of Cybertron would simply go there in droves and raid Xaxhaz to the bare sand.

Megatron walked around his massive living room contemplating this. Perhaps it would actually send a stronger message if he didn't send the Military, but instead, let the universe see that even an unorganized tsunami of raid gangs could drive an enemy to extinction! After all, it wasn't like the companies supplying Megatron Metals needed robotic slaves. Sure, it was nice to have them, but nobody would go out of business if all of the Xaxhazians came in as irreparable scrap. There would, at least, be the 100 that Rust to Wealth had picked up...

The Leader decided that for now, he wouldn't give an order one way or the other. Instead, it would be time for a great show of Cybertron's strength. He had been intending on having a parade to celebrate the activation of the 20 billionth Decepticon, but it had been put off by the latest victory parade.

NOW would be a good time, he decided, to go ahead with the 20 Billionth Decepticon parade - and to pirate-broadcast it and its purpose over Xaxhazian media. At the end of the show, he would then demand Xaxhaz's unconditional surrender, or else he would broadcast their crimes and location to Cybertron and "let nature take its course."

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

UC of Ceridignon

Fire Eater happily handed over not only the usual welcome materials and Book of Megatron, but also, an extra little piece of media. This was an 8-track tape, suitable for playing on a common Ceridignon player, that went into a bit of detail about things like the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank, money laundering, how to shift a load of hot oil, loopholes in UC fraud laws, and other shady but useful (to crooks) things along those lines.

"Be sure to memorize this tape and then destroy it," Fire Eater warned. "If it gets into the wrong hands, the curses of the Divine Leader can fall upon you. Such curses tend to take the form of lightning strikes."

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Titanium Town


The inhabitants of Titanium Town, more then two thousand bots, were not going to wait for the government to do something about it, and legally they didn't have to. They were joined by a few Scrounger gangs and bots from nearby. Some had been brought back from a Save Disc by a trusted bot after getting killed, (that was not all that many) others had suffered damage to their homes in the battle. Now they fueled up and made sure that their blasters were working, and after finding out where Xaxhaz was, they set out with revenge in their mind boards. Xaxhaz had put up standing patrols of warbots in groups of ten, and turned on radars, but the blasters of ordinary bots were weak by Decepticon standards. The Titanium Town bots chose one of the richer places to attack, a place with plenty of metal, oil sources to attack, and bots to take as slaves. Whilst they didn't quite have it all their own way, as Xaxhaz was expecting something along these lines, and the rich bots had blasters that could damage them, they did far more damage then they took in return. For every inhabitant of Titanium Town who found themselves in a new body, they took down at least five of their foes. For those few who decided to attack more average areas, the ratio was ten bots of Xaxhaz reduced to scrap for every Decepticon body made fit only for a foundry. Only warbots, Intelligence bots , police bots, and the richest bots on Xaxhaz had cloaking.

The Ultimate Raid

Ultimate headed towards the factories where unknown to him, drone versions of Xaxhazian warbots were being produced, and was about to raid the place and loot everything worthwhile when a large red plane with golden crowns painted on the wings and tail and four other planes flew in and transformed. The red bot wore a crown of precious stones and gold and many coats of wax and one of the bodyguard bots called out in loud Binary "Assemble the workers-King Rebel is here!" Ultimate realized he was looking at the ruler of Xaxhaz-the one who had sent the diplomats to Cybertron where they had seemingly tried to get him executed by asking him to commit treason right in front of High General Soundwave, Head of Domintel and Forintel, and possibly the one at least partly responsible for the raid on his shop.


Cybertron

In one of the more poor areas of Cybertron, a slightly rusty bot had two Xaxhazian Intelligence bots decloak in front of him. "You look poor. Come with us to Xaxhaz and provide us with the Decepticon OS and we will make you wealthy." The bot knew that as soon as they dematerialized and asked that, it was like they were yelling "Domintel-come and arrest us!" They had effectively narked on themselves. As foreign spies, Domintel would be very interested in coming after them-and him if he did the wrong thing.


********

Megatron prepared to lead a parade that would be impressive even by Cybertronian standards one to celebrate the twenty billionth Decepticon. If Xaxhaz didn't give in, he would neither send in the Decepticon Military nor smite the place with godly power, but send in the Cybertronian population after releasing the news about the Titanium Town attack and let the raid gangs do the rest.


UC of Ceredigion

Bilancal thanked the two priests and left. Loyal Star thought to himself how good it was to have found Fire Eater and how well Fire Eater knew the Way. Just then they were summoned back to Cybertron to spend a couple of hours flying in a grand parade to celebrate the two billionth Decepticon. High Priest Warfire would be taking part as well, and Loyal Star was to fly close to but below and slightly behind Warfire, a minor place of honour normally reserved for a Planetary Priest, for classified reasons.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhaz Offworld Factories

When King Rebel was identified, Ultimate and his group had glided in close enough to hear the announcement. Immediately, he pirate-broadcasted over the factory's communication system.

"So you wanted weapons and armor from Ultimate Mods! Well, HERE THEY ARE!!!" With that, Ultimate and his cohort began to fire at this "King" guy for all they were worth. As they did so, they made sure to fire a few blasts at the closest factory so that its wall started on fire. This would force at least some of the opposition to either deal with that, or if they all chose to try to protect their leader instead, let the factory burn. It was one of the tactics taught by the Decepticon Military, and they all had several stints under their belts.

As would be expected, King Rebel's bodyguard (and he himself) had some of the best armor and weapons of Xaxhaz. However, Ultimate and his group were armed and armored as well as some Decepticon High Generals, so they were by no means automatically outmatched. King Rebel and his guards would have to fight at elite levels, or else there would be permanent regime change - and it would happen before the Decepticon Military even arrived.

~~~~~~~~~~~

High in near space, the Foreign Intelligence agents who had been sent to see where the Xaxhaian cargo-bots were going saw Ultimate and his customers arrive above the factory as they dropped out of FTL and their swirling lights momentarily gave away their positions. The agents paused and floated in space, using telescopic vision to see what happened next. For the agents of any other country, it would likely have come as a shock to see a group of hastily-assembled raiders attack the leader of a foreign nation himself, but for Decepticon agents, it wasn't a surprise at all. Decepticons did that sort of thing. Ultimate doing it just made it quite likely to actually work.

As they did this, they also got the answer to their question about Xaxhazian cargo-bots. They were making deliveries a few buildings away from the fighting, and by the looks of it, what they were carrying were large ingots of various kinds of metal. It didn't take long to figure out, judging by the types of materials they saw, that this was a factory for producing more Xaxhazians. If Ultimate didn't destroy these factories during this battle, the agents would put in emergency reports to ensure that someone did.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Xaxhaz

On the surface of the main planet, the Titanium Town people wasted no time in looting, capturing slaves, fighting everyone who offered resistance, and sacking the cities they landed on. A few of them did end up going back to Cybertron as data packets, and the others were thankful no jamming was running. They realized that the lack of jamming likely meant that Xaxhazians, too, could mind-transfer if they had spare bodies. Several townspeople began to search for those spares with the intention of stealing them - after yanking out their mind-boards so that they couldn't suddenly activate and start fighting.

As on Cybertron, Xaxhazians weren't completely dimwitted. With jamming off on both sides, they had no problems calling for their own army to defend them. It arrived hastily at some locations, and drove the Decepticons back from those towns. The main town of action, however, would require more effort from Xaxhaz. There, they would have to be careful not to cause too much unnecessary destruction or collateral damage, lest the Xaxhazian citizens find them worse than the Decepticons. The Decepticons, of course, took full advantage of this hesitancy to go on looting and sacking the place until, at last, Xaxhaz sent enough troops and got serious enough about using its force to make the Titanium Towners move along.

Behind the exiting Decepticons, flaming Xaxhazian buildings filled the air with smoke. The Titanium Towners also had full loot carts, most filled with a variety of new, used, and blasted-out Xaxhazian parts (and Xaxhazians), but a few contained living Xaxhazians who had been sufficiently bound for transport to the slave markets of Decepticon Earth.

The one thing that Titanium Towners couldn't get was oil. As their maps had claimed, the planet did indeed seem to be devoid of it, most likely because it had been used up at some point. Instead, they filled a cart with an unidentified liquid that the locals seemed to have been using as their fuel, figuring that even though it wasn't a proper petroleum distillate, it had to be worth something.

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

An Asteroid One Lightyear from Cybertron

It seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, and normally, only rough-and-tough miners and the bosses of the mining company that owned it willingly came out this way. The asteroid was the only one for hundreds of thousands of miles that was large enough to place a decent-sized installation and a full-blown mining operation. On and under its surface, though, several hundred hacked robotic slaves toiled tirelessly, unbothered by its dreadful cold, and able to work even more than normal thanks to its lesser gravity. A shed containing thousands of Cubes of Energon, all of a grade that was between Standard and Low Standard, was all that was needed to keep this unpaid workforce going.

Now, though, another shed had been hastily erected. It contained Cubes upon Cubes of Standard. This was because today, there would be something more happening at this location. FTL lights swirled above it, and those on the ground counted them. There were 10 Decepticon-sized light sets and a few that matched the appearance of glider-trailers. Rust to Wealth had arrived with its agreed-upon shipment.

Soon, the Scrounger gang landed, grousing about how hard it had been to find the main operating location of The Far-Cybertronian Asteroid Mining Company. The boss, Soulcrusher, took the gripes in stride - he knew that it wasn't easy to get to this place.

"So these are the weird alien robots!" Soulcrusher said, after the gang had opened its carts to show what they had. He peered in at some, whose joints had now been properly spot-welded to keep them from breaking free of the original blast-welds. "Well. You're surely running on some kind of primitive OS," he said into the cart he was looking into. "But that's no problem for my man here."

Behind him, a lightly-built, but full-sized, Decepticon walked up in a slightly task-oriented way. He looked in and groaned a little. "Since when was I supposed to hack Ataris?" he complained mildly.

The boss told the gang, "Backdoor here has all of the education of an elite Debugging Expert," he said, introducing the hacker. "But they didn't hire him because he failed the Trustworthiness part of the code-read. Rather than accept a patch to increase that trait, he decided to use his education where all of his traits would be properly appreciated. Here."

No more was said. A hacker of Decepticons would, if the wrong people knew about him, be killed quickly and viciously. Rust to Wealth, however, was bringing in subjects that were explicitly sold to the company as slaves, so his skills at meddling with Code could be mentioned. Still, he and the company would never admit that the once-Decepticon slaves here were also hacked by him, using trojans that were made to look legit and spread around Cybertron itself.

As Soulcrusher and the Rust to Wealth gang went to check the payment, slaves from the mine were ordered out and made to carry the new captives to a holding area. There, Backdoor torched the panels off of the first captive, only to find that he had no ports. A few minutes with a soldering iron got him fitted with one, and within minutes, Backdoor was into his code. The Xaxhazian screamed out protests as he felt his mind being penetrated by the hacker, who examined every line of code out of curiosity.

"This idiot wasn't even running encryption!" Backdoor laughed as he continued to mess around with the captive's mind-code, reading off the events of his life and changing things just because he could. "I can make him think anything I want to, and there's no real security to stop me!" Soon, the captive was barking like a dog, and then, made to yell "BACKDOOR IS THE GREATEST" over and over as Backdoor went to work on creating a patch that would work, 100%, on the Xaxhazian OS. Unlike the one Xaxhaz had tried to use on Ultimate, this one was made for the foreign OS from the ground up instead of merely being a hastily-cludged-together port. Not only that, this enslavement program would run under encryption, so if anyone tried to free the Xaxhazians, they would have to have some major computing power to decrypt it well enough to deactivate it.

Soon enough, the booming "BACKDOOR IS THE GREATESTs" went silent. The job was done, and as was standard, the slave was ordered to silence. Overseers torched through the welded parts of the new slave's joints, freeing them to move, and ordered the captive to stand up. Silently, the alien obeyed, and he was then checked for physical damage. Of course, there was some, considering that he had been blasted and then welded on, but it wouldn't cost all that much to fix. The mechanic came over to where Soulcrusher was standing and gave a report, and soon, 1,000 Cubes per slave was dickered off of the original price to cover the repairs.

A few hours later, all of the slaves had been moved out of the carts, and the agreed-upon mountain of Standard Energon was put in their place. It was a great score for Rust to Wealth.

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

Rust to Wealth Warehouse, Cybertron

Once the money was safely put into a vault complex, the gang met back at its base. There, they began to have serious discussions. Should they remain a Scrounger gang after this? Scrounging was an easy enough way to make money, but capturing robots for sale into slavery was obviously worth so much more! They talked late into the night, and by the time the sun glinted across Cybertron's metal skyline, the decision was made. They would no longer grab just any ol' rustbucket, nor would they sell their captives to foundries. Now, they would take those who were weak enough to overpower, but still in good enough shape to work, and sell them to various mines.

"We won't hack these slobs," the boss said. "That'll be up to the customers. But we will make sure that there is no robotic labor shortage at any mines we deal with..."

This, of course, was not what Megatron had intended when he made it legal for Decepticons to hack each other. Only rare idiots, who were so foolish that they didn't keep their anti-viruses up to date, were to fall to such a fate. But then, he did think it was fine to capture weaker bots and sell them for meltdown, so he probably wouldn't care about the industrialization of the robotic slave trade! Time would tell if it would be politically feasible to allow capture-for-slavery to become an outright industry. For now, though, nothing stood in the way of Rust to Wealth's plans.

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

The Parade, Cybertron

Unlike a strictly military parade, many groups of civilians were able to participate in this one. Every decent aerobatics club had a slot, as did individuals who were known to be great fliers. Of course, the Military did participate, and its mass-formation aerobatics units were the stars of the showy part of the event. Other units, such as the Priests of Megatronism, flew behind in formations without doing any stunts.

Finally, Leader Megatron presented the 20 Billionth Decepticon, who stood on the podium with obvious newness - and obvious non-sapience. It looked blankly at the show and the crowd, but its fans were running slightly faster than usual as it wrote everything that was happening to memory. Someday, a couple of years from now, the then-sapient bot could remember the events and attach meaning to them.

There was no special award given to this bot or its Coder, because this one being the 20 Billionth was purely a matter of chance. Awards were given for skill, bravery, loyalty, and other intentional things, not flukes. Still, just having been the subject of a parade would surely swell this bot's ego once he was old enough to think.

After it ended, Megatron edited together a video of it and the billions who had either partaken in the parade or watched from the roads. He also made sure that many mentions of "20 Billionth Decepticon" were in the video, emphasizing the huge size of the Decepticon population. However, when he went to the Bureau of Propaganda to have them blast it over Xaxhaz's airwaves and add his ultimatum to the king, he was intercepted by someone from DomIntel.

"You might want to wait to show that," the agent said. "King Rebel is currently fighting for his puny life against Ultimate."

Megatron smiled widely. Soon, he and the agent went into a private room inside the Bureau of Propaganda building, and a closed-circuit holovision was set up. There, they watched the battle that was being secretly transmitted live by the ForIntel agents hovering far above Xaxhaz's factory installation.

[Vallermoore]

Xaxhaz Offworld Factories

Ultimate and his gang left Cybertron with no problems. The average Decepticon had long since learned to leave him alone, and the wealthy were his customers. When he saw the ruling bot and his bodyguards, he at once decided to try and topple him. Perhaps if he toppled him he might find most Xaxhazians recognized him as the new ruler-even if they didn't, he wanted revenge. "So you wanted weapons and armour from Ultimate Mods! Well, HERE THEY ARE!!!" He opened fire, and the King let off a rocket barrage from his chest, all but one of which was dodged or blown up before it hit Ultimate. The one rocket that hit however, blew up and caused Ultimate a feeling he had not hurt for a long time-pain. It had been so long since weapons could hurt Ultimate that he had left his pain at normal levels instead of lowering it before fighting, and now his chest stung badly, and the outer armour layer had been cracked. Cursing, he turned his pain level down to 10%, and the battle went on. Very few workers intervened-some put out the fire or fled, others watched with interest. The few who did get involved lost bodies as Ultimate's gang had very tough bodies. One of Ultimate's gang ended up sent back to Cybertron as data packets, as the warbot bodyguards were very strong, and another ended up dropping out badly damaged, but the others despatched their foes with only light wounds and joined in the fight against the King. Ultimate had taken about 50% damage from the royal weaponry, but King Rebel was near death when one of the Xaxhaz bots proved to be a disgusting traitor and turned on a jammer long enough to let his leader be killed (although it was very likely that Saves of the King and plenty of royal spare bodies were out there somewhere .)


Perhaps this bot hoped for rewards for betraying his leader. If so he had no idea that Decepticons heartily despised traitors, especially when they waited to see who would clearly win before their act of treachery. On the other hand, loyalty, especially when all seemed lost, was praised greatly, which was why Loyal Star had been publicly granted a Double Gold Stripe for "an almost unimaginable act of loyalty" by no less then Divine Leader Megatron. It was hard-coded into bots when built that Treason was a Bad Thing to do and something to be scorned. The bot and the small crowd of Xaxhazian bots knelt at Ultimate's feet for a few seconds and then the traitor bot said "Long live King Ultimate. Your Majesty, I can tell you where the Holovision Tower is so you can get support before King Rebel is restored from a Save by some loyalist. That and these factories are being used to produce drones and Xaxhazians to use as cannon fodder."

******
The Titanium Town bots were having great success until the Xaxhazian Military arrived and forced them out by sheer weight of numbers. There were too few Decepticons for now to conquer Xaxhaz and they got out along with their slaves and a lot of loot and spare Xaxhazian bodies before they could be defeated.


*****
An Asteroid One Lightyear from Cybertron/Cybertron


Rust to Wealth landed with their captured Xaxhazians and soon enough a bot named Backdoor was scrolling through a Xaxhazian mind as the bot wiggled and protested. A virus had to be made for the Xaxhazian OS, as a Decepticon OS one was likely to not be strong for very long-leading to a blasted owner at the very least.
Soon enough Rust To Wealth had made a huge sum and were now nearly as wealthy as upper class bots. With this amount of Energon, they could buy serious upgrades or a mansion or any number of minor purchases if they prefered. Their haul for the whole gang was nearly 10,000,000 Energon Cubes before it was shared out. Once the Energon was secured in their vaults the gang had an important discussion in their base, which was twenty miles from Iacon. Should they become slavers? The business of enslaving Decepticon bots could make them very rich, but there was a serious stigma-as in lynch mob stigma, if they were found out. They decided that they wouldn't''t hack bots themselves, something that was considered the equvilent of serious child abuse on biological worlds. Also, none would enslave their own offspring as then Domintel would get involved. If enslaving Decepticons by force started becoming commonplace, political unrest was a possibility.


Soon they went out targeting poor and even middle class Decepticon bots (the middle class were worth more) destroying their voice chips and spot wielding their legs, taking several bots per day and getting even richer.

The Parade, Cybertron

The parade flew above the Megatron Mansion through normally forbidden airspace, and was spectacular, with both military formations and elaborate airshows, and some civilians were represented, such as airshow performers, Debuggers, and Megatronist Priests. High Priest Warfire wondered to himself why Loyal Star was allowed to fly along with the Planetary Priests when he was not one. He had a mild dislike for the former pony but knew better then to act on it without reason. If he just blasted Loyal Star because of his slight dislike for him, or indeed outright killed Loyal Star, Megatron might get angry and do anything from defrocking him as High Priest to outright turning him into ingots and sending him to the Realm of Punishment. A mild dislike was really not worth incurring Megatron's wrath. The 20 Billionth Decepticon was just a day old, the equvilent of a biological new-born baby, and it recorded the parade in it's memory banks for later. It made no speech as it was far too young for that. Megatron was careful to be gentle to it-at that age, if the automatic self defence routine thought he was a threat it would automatically turn on, and he didn't want to have to turn a newbuilt Decepticon a few hours old into scrap for something that utterly was not it's fault in front of a huge crowd of Decepticons.


Soon enough he viewed the fight that went on and saw the traitor Xaxhazian turn on his leader when his leader was on the very verge of defeat.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhazian Offworld Factories

Ultimate was quite surprised when, as he fired the deactivating blast, jamming momentarily affected the area. He quickly detected its source - one of King Rebel's own contingent. Apparently, he was not as popular of a king as it seemed. Either that, or the jammer-runner was just a worthless turncoat coward hoping to ingratiate himself to the superior fighter!

After they were offered access to a holovision tower, Ultimate's gang looked at each other. Poorer, or even average-class, bots might consider this as a chance to have a planet of their own and raise their station. All of these people, however, were filthy rich. Like most of the rich, they had little to nothing to gain from upsetting their current apple cart.

"I'm not in with this," one soon said. "Remember what happened to Masher!"
"As if all of the Xaxhazians would side with us with just a speech," another said skeptically. "For all we know, we'd be in the middle of the biggest lynch mob in history!"

Ultimate agreed with them. If they tried claiming another planet as their personal property, they would surely be banned from Cybertron as potential usurpers to Megatron. "The law on interplanetary raiding says that all planets claimed by Decepticons become government property," he noted. "Megatron's government's property."

With this reminder, interest in broadcasting became zero. "If Megatron wants this place, he can come and get it himself! Seizing a planet requires a huge financial outlay, not to mention at least a few million troops!" Ultimate's companions said.

"Yeah, you got that right!" Ultimate agreed. "Still, let's take the fuel here and loot these factories to the bare walls, just like we came to do. That'll help ensure that we don't find 100,000 of these Ataris on our tail when we fly away."

The group informed the Xaxhazian traitor and the others who were around that this was still a raid, and announced what they wanted. "Hand it all over peacefully and we won't use your metal hides as part of our loot," Ultimate demanded. The traitor and the now-afraid workers quickly complied, filling Ultimate's big trailer with their odd fuel as well as plenty of the best metal around. Then, Ultimate and his group opened fire on the factory buildings and waited until they were blazing uncontrollably before taking off into the sky.

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

Royal Palace of Xaxhaz

At the palace, King Rebel's butler and bodyguard, RetroRocket, got the news of his employer's deactivation. He responded appropriately, with his usual stern solemnity, and went into a room containing a few mind-saves of the king. Soon, RetroRocket stood outside the palace, stoking a raging bonfire. One after another, save discs hit the conflagration and melted as the treacherous butler stirred the fire. There would be a new king tonight, and it would be RetroRocket, at least if there weren't any saves that he had missed - and, if there was anyone loyal enough to actually use those saves.

In the distance, someone watched what RetroRocket was doing using long-range vision. He quickly surmised that something had happened to King Rebel. As the night fell, rumors were already spreading across Xaxhaz, and many hopefuls began to make plans to verify the story - and if they found it true, make their move to install themselves as the new monarch. It was doubtful that Xaxhaz's weak parliament could actually institute the peaceful succession plan that it had written up a few years prior, which called for them to vote in a new king if there were no designated successors already in place. King Rebel hadn't had the chance to code an offspring yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Raid Dropoff Points, Cybertron

As Ultimate flew to a fairly large Raid Dropoff Point in Decepticon Headquarters, he found that it was currently crowded with what seemed to be a huge group of rabble who had come back from a big fight. He continued on to a less-populated one closer to the warehouse district, not realizing that the "rabble" were the people of Titanium Town attempting to unload their loot.

Upon arrival, Ultimate called for a fuel appraiser. He'd seen how the map said that Xaxhaz had no oil, and the "Xaxhazian Energon" had a glow that didn't look quite right, too. To his surprise, the appraiser was baffled. He would have to take a sample and send it over to R&D, he said, referring to the Research and Development department at Megatron Energon. Ultimate was advised to keep the rest of the haul in his vaults until a price could be given.

Ultimate complained a lot, but there was no budging the appraiser's decision. "For all I know, this is junk that'll go flat by tomorrow," he said. "I'll have an answer tomorrow night. Until then, we won't be able to buy this haul."

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

Instead of going straight to the vaults, Ultimate's group first went back to his shop and unloaded the metal. That wouldn't be sold, but instead, it would be melted down by Ultimate himself and used to adorn his products. He saw no use for the parts he had looted in their as-is state - none of them were compatible with Decepticon bodies.

Next, he took the orders for the parts he promised. He'd have them ready over the next several days, and work would start once he got his shop back in order.

Finally, they took the fuel part of the haul to the vaults and locked it up. It would remain there until Megatron Energon called Ultimate with its offer, and then, the group would decide whether to accept the deal or try to sell the loot on some other planet.

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

Megatron Energon
Research and Development Department

Most people didn't think of Megatron Energon as doing a lot of R&D - after all, Energon and its additives had seemed the same for over 100 years. In reality, though, the company was always looking for ways to make its processes more efficient, use different (more common/cheaper) grades of oil without degradation in quality, and other such advances. Therefore, it had plenty of scientists on staff in the smallish R&D building a few blocks down from the Main Refinery, and they were quick to examine this foreign stuff that its appraiser had sent down.

It ended up taking more than a day to figure it out - much to Ultimate's consternation - but a couple of days after that, they did. Xaxhazian Energon, it turned out, was a liquid carrier that was actually full of microscopic radioactive particles that exploded upon compression. "It works like countless microscopic nuclear bombs," one said in his report summary. "The particles are sized so that each revolution of the engine releases the exact amount of explosive force needed to power it without making it explode. The substance used is also such that the reaction cannot continue to run once the compression force is relieved."

Ultimate and his group ended up getting an offer far beyond their wildest dreams - about 10x what would be paid for high-grade gasoline - with one unusual condition: They would have to agree to keep the material a secret. They readily agreed, but of course, each of them secretly kept a bit back for themselves. They didn't know if they'd end up using it or not, but wanted to make sure that they would have some even if Megatron Energon decided to keep it in its vaults forever. All of them knew that non-oil fuels tended to get swept under the rug by the oil-based Energon giant.

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

Megatron Mansion

Leader Megatron saw Ultimate and his group leave without attempting to take over Xaxhaz, and he figured that the mod shop owner must have calculated that trying to take over a planet with just himself and four remaining gang members would be futile. Now, Megatron considered what to do next. There currently was no head of state to threaten, and it seemed unlikely that the lower echelons of Xaxhaz's government would come to a strong majority decision to surrender.

Yet, there were also benefits to the power vacuum. It would be harder for Xaxhaz to coordinate a defense without a strong leader guiding its response. This made it so that the planet could be raided, but it could also make it easier to annex it.

Megatron stood up from his viewing seat and made his decision. HE would try to convince the people of Xaxhaz to peacefully allow their planet to be annexed by the Decepticon Empire. Instead of flying there and using their broadcast tower, however, he would broadcast right from the Bureau of Propaganda - with scenes of Cybertron's wealthy areas being shown on a backdrop behind him. Scenes from the 20 Billionth Decepticon Parade would also be shown.

If the Xaxhazians agreed to annexation, Megatron would bring about the most-needed improvements right away, assuming that something or other was falling apart there (such as infrastructure or fuel quality). He would also install several Decepticon Military bases there so that it was properly defended (and there would be troops right there to quash any rebellions, but he wouldn't say that part). Of course, there would be a price for being part of the Decepticon Empire. Xaxhaz would have to pay a hefty tribute in terms of both resources and laborers. The laborers would be drafted, much like Decepticons were drafted to be soldiers, and have to "support the Empire" for a couple of years at a time.

If Xaxhaz refused this slavery-lite offer, then Megatron would turn to his backup plan: Invasion. If invaded, there would be no rotating labor draft. Instead, everyone on the planet would be permanently enslaved and put to work gleaning all of the planet's resources for the more loyal parts of the Decepticon Empire. At this point, Megatron decided that he would not just send raiders like he had originally planned to do. It would be better for the Decepticon Military to invade - if they didn't agree to annexation - so that ongoing control could be established.

Megatron now headed over to the Bureau of Propaganda to have them hack into Xaxhaz's broadcasting system so he could deliver his speech - and his "offer."

[Vallermoore]

Xaxhazian Offworld Factories


Ultimate was surprised to have bots kneeling to him and offering him the kingship and their loyalty and for a moment he imagined himself as King Ultimate, with servants, vast riches, a whole planet to command. But one of his friends spoke and poured cold water on that idea."I'm not in with this. Remember what happened to Masher! "What happened to Masher was no secret. Megatron had permanently expelled him from Cybertron, declared the entire IOPC illegal and later driven him from Coltan. Whilst the gathering of loot was welcome and encouraged by Megatron, the ownership of planets belonged to him alone. Ultimate, like nearly all Decepticons, had a deep love for the Metal Planet, a planet designed for them and whose climate was perfect to them, whose strong metal felt to Decepticon feet like soft grass did to the feet of biologicals. He had far too much to lose, being one of the top twenty richest Decepticons. "As if all of the Xaxhazians would side with us with just a speech," another of his friends said sceptically. "For all we know, we'd be in the middle of the biggest lynch mob in history!" "The law on interplanetary raiding says that all planets claimed by Decepticons become government property," Ultimate noted. "Megatron's government's property." They looted and destroyed the factories without any other Xaxhazian bot getting in their way and then headed home, to grow rich off his haul and repair his shop, his revenge fufilled.


Royal Palace of Xaxhaz/Xaxhaz Streets

The royal butler, RetroRocket , decided to destroy all the mind saves of King Rebel that he knew of in the hope of being King himself, whilst the other high ranking bots that the planet had didn't know what to do. One relatively low ranking warbot named Handy who had a strong loyalty to his monarch searched for any hidden save discs, found one, and spent what Energon he had on a new spare, into which he downloaded his monarch after turning on his holovision. The surprised monarch watched the broadcast from Leader Megatron offering a choice between a surrender-one that was not totally unconditional as the surrendered bots would keep their lives, for the most part their liberty, and even their personal property-and being invaded or killed and enslaved. "How dare he!," said the King. "We have to go to the palace and..."


"In that body, the best I could afford, you won't be recognised as the king, and even if you are, the Decepticons will likely turn up with enough bots to turn us all into ingots! If we get out whilst we still can, we can start a new nation far from here, and whatever happens you will always have me as your subject." The King's fans whirred a while, and he reluctantly decided that Handy was right. Taking the Energon in Handy's safe which would keep them going for days, the two bots flew away from Xaxhaz. Megatron, as a God, could see the scene, and realized that even though it was not loyalty to himself, he still admired the loyalty of Handy, loyalty to the state being the strongest and most admired of the Decepticon values. This was the same loyalty level of Loyal Star-a bot who would die if need be for his ruler. He decided to let the two bots leave and go elsewhere rather then magically shorting out their bodies. Handy had not tried to fight him and didn't deserve to be killed when he was just protecting his ruler. Indeed, he had talked King Rebel out of trying to put up a fight.


After a lot of wondering what to do, most Xaxhazian bots decided to give in, and the others got out of Xaxhaz searching for somewhere new with their stuff by flying or by Xaxhazian cargo bot, paying the cargo bots for their passage. When the Decepticon Military including the Genocide Battalion showed up, they were greeted by kneeling bots with offerings of Energon for their new rulers.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhaz

When the Decepticon Military showed up, it made sure to bring a large crew of its engineers along. They soon got to work cataloging the new holdings, and before long, realized that the Xaxhazians were all somewhat radioactive. Soon enough, some troops found records from the last human-run regime, and there, they found evidence that the robots were originally a non-sapient work force tasked with mining the radioactive material that went into their fuel. Over time, someone had gotten the idea that they'd be better workers if they were a bit smarter and were somewhat self-directed. They had been programmed to love their work, and for about 100 years, the programming had stuck. Then, one day, in response to the fact that many of the robots were getting deactivated due to stupid reasons, a human engineer had gotten the idea that the robots should have self-preservation code - and had successfully convinced the government to install his update into the robotic workforce.

Self-preservation code, the Decepticons knew, was a powerful push toward full sapience. A robot could preserve itself best if it both knew what was going on and actually cared about it, and caring about it enough to avoid premature deactivation or damage required self-awareness. Sure enough, not long after the programmer's update went into effect, the humans found themselves having to talk their robots into continuing to work. Then, that began to fail, so they tried force and punishments. Finally, they tried deactivating those who didn't like their jobs.

After that, there was war, and the robots won. They tried to turn the tables and put the humans to work doing what had been the robots' jobs, but the humans, unable to handle the radioactivity in the mines, quickly perished. Xaxhaz became a completely robotic world.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Leader Megatron scowled as he received this information. The Xaxhazians had agreed to labor stints and currently weren't rebelling, but given that history, he figured that it wouldn't be long before they would decide to be rid of their new overlords. He would be sure to station a very large contingent of troops here for when that day came. He'd also be sure not to upgrade the actual Xaxhazian Design Specifications, but instead, simply make sure that good-quality Xaxhazian-compatible parts were available. That way, when they decided that the tribute cost was too much, it would be easy for the Decepticons to win.

Later that day, in private, Megatron also made plans with Soundwave to release an "update" for the Xaxhazians. It would not immediately interfere with their sapience - Megatron preferred actual sapient loyalists when he could get them - but it would contain a backdoor that could be used to instantly squelch any rebel's ability to continue to rebel if an insurgency took place. It would be up to Soundwave, or perhaps the Bureau of Propaganda, to convince the Xaxhazians to install it.

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

Cybertron

Loyal Star and Fire Eater were both shocked when, almost as soon as the parade ended, Leader Megatron announced that the Empire had just acquired a new planet. They watched as about 3 million troops took off after the leader and disappeared high into the sky. They also noticed that a contingent of about 3,000 new priests were among the exiting group.

"They're surely going to be setting up temples all over that Xaxhaz place," Fire Eater said, looking at the formation of swirling-painted priests.

Then, he noticed one of the priests in particular, who bore the markings of a Planetary Priest. "That's Sinburner," Fire Eater said with some distaste. "He's a real hardass. Megatron must have something against the new planet to have appointed him to be in charge of the Temples there. He'll have an inquisition going before the year is out. Everyone will at least pay lip service to Megatronism, or they'll be turned into road panels for 'the faithful' to walk on. Megatron must have some angle in play...he knows that there won't be many real converts that fast. There's gotta be some reason he wants everyone to have to play along..." Fire Eater was faithful, but he also knew his god and what a conniver he was.

"I guess we're still assigned to the UC," Loyal Star said with a bit of disappointment.

"Yes, we are. But only until we can offlo...erm, get the First Temple well-established and put someone else in charge of it. If we can convince that guy Bilancal to be an acolyte, we'll have a good start. He'd serve as the assistant to whoever gets sent, and would also be on track to pass the citizenship test to become a priest himself someday. Once he's an acolyte, I can probably convince Warfire that our mission there is complete..."

For now, they were allowed to stay on Cybertron for a couple of days' rest. Then, they would have to go back to the UC to continue helping the Temple get entrenched into that country's culture.

Before they returned to the UC, Warfire called them to the First Temple of Cybertron and gave them a few human-scale boxes of identical 8-track tapes. These tapes, he explained, would tell the people how to use the Decepticon Way for their income taxes, which would need to be filed 3 months later.

"Save them a bunch of money with our Way, and see how fast your conversions spike," Warfire said. "I have worked it out with Leader Megatron that only the faithful, or at least those who do not oppose us, will benefit from the information. Anti-Megatronists and loyalists of other religions, on the other hand, will be cursed with 'bad luck' if they try to use our information. Any of our tapes will also spontaneously combust if held by anyone with a connection to the Ceridignon Revenue Bureau. This, of course, will both keep our information safe and make a believer out of whatever unfortunate federal manages to get ahold of a tape. He might not decide to follow our Way after that, but he won't doubt Megatron's power!"

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Loyal Star and Fire Eater watched Leader Megatron and a large number of other bots fly off into the sky to the new planet that had just become theirs. Fire Eater looked at the Priests with their paint that swirled constantly like the atmosphere of a gas giant and at one in particular. "That's Sinburner, He's a real hardass. Megatron must have something against the new planet to have appointed him to be in charge of the Temples there. He'll have an inquisition going before the year is out. Everyone will at least pay lip service to Megatronism, or they'll be turned into road panels for 'the faithful' to walk on. Megatron must have some angle in play...he knows that there won't be many real converts that fast. There's gotta be some reason he wants everyone to have to play along..." Loyal Star said to Fire Eater, once Sinburner was out of sight and by using his internal radio rather then his voice chip "I'm glad you were sent to Vallermoore and not Sinburner-or I would most likely still be a pony instead of the far superior form of life that I am now." He remembered in his mind boards the duel to the body with Jackboots, and whilst he wished Sinburner success and good luck, he hoped he wouldn't come under Sinburner's direct orders. "And Megatron is the Supreme Decepticon-so I'm sure he has some connives planned." Even if he had said that last sentence openly, it wouldn't have got him in trouble. Most dictators hated people thinking they were corrupt, but Megatron didn't mind his people thinking of him that way, as it just showed he was a Decepticon just like them. Corruption was only seen as bad if it for example, made Cybertron rust up and fall to pieces, or if it affected Debugging, the one government ministry that genuinely had to be honest so it could protect the long term sanity of the Decepticon Nation.

For a couple of days, the two Priests stayed on Cybertron and rested and even defragged a little. Then High Priest Warfire himself summoned them and gave them some tapes that would greatly help new Megatronists and they thanked him and headed back to the UC.


*****

When the Decepticon Military occupied Xaxhaz they were a little grumpy, as they were not allowed to just loot everything or take robot slaves. If a planet surrendered without fighting, looting everything would just send a message to all unconquered worlds that they had nothing to lose at all from fighting, which was something that Leader Megatron could do without. He himself was displeased, he was sure there would be a rebellion sooner or later but since he hadn't happened yet, he was not sure who the rebels to be were. Hopefully a large garrison and deliberately releasing infomation about the Genocide Battalion should at least for now stop any major trouble.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhaz

At first, the newly-conquered population seemed quite meek. There was no unrest as the Megatronist Priests went about setting up Temples, and the Military's engineer corps went to work cataloging all of the resources and factories, surveying all of the roads (both official ones and paths that had come into use), and taking stock of the many Xaxhazian body types.

Everyone went along with the order to attend their nearest Megatronist Temple, which was given as soon as the places of worship were outfitted. In fact, most seemed eager to do so. Megatron, however, noted that he was not getting any worship-energy directed his way except from his own Priests. He tried to track down where that energy was going, but found that it wasn't going anywhere at all - the Xaxhazians simply weren't worshiping anything or anyone while attending his services. While Megatron wasn't happy about this, he figured that at least the new members of the Empire weren't worshiping some competitor.

What he didn't realize yet was that everyone was listening closely to the sermons to try to find some sort of weakness in the philosophy that was the Decepticon Way, which they intended to massively exploit later on. The Priests - and the rest of the Decepticons on Xaxhaz - would need to work fast to convince the people that they should adopt, rather than reverse-engineer and exploit, the Way.

~~~~~~~~~~

Once everything was properly catalogued, Megatron was displeased to learn that there really wasn't any oil left on the planet. Much of it had been used up by the humans, and the last drops had been sold to other planets once Xaxhaz moved to its micronized nuclear equivalent. In fact, the planet didn't have any resources that the Decepticons couldn't get in abundance, and with less work, elsewhere in the Empire - except, that is, for the Xaxhazians themselves. Megatron soon ordered that the labor details were to be put to work on other planets in the Empire, with a focus on barren ones that wouldn't support biological slaves. These workers, however, weren't to be left to their own devices there. They would be closely supervised by overseers to ensure that they didn't form rebel cells while they were in these far-off places.

At the mines and oil fields of these off-world locations, the Xaxhazians found themselves sorted by age, and then subjected to daily Megatronist indoctrination. As the Priests expected, the young - once away from the older population - slowly began to convert. What they didn't realize was that even the young had ideas of how to use the Way that the Decepticons wouldn't be too fond of. The new followers, recipients of Megatron's minor luck-up blessing, began to shirk their work onto those who had not converted. Their luck bonus made it so that they often got away with it, and so the non-converts often ended up taking the blame for low productivity.

Since they weren't technically slaves, the "unproductive" workers weren't summarily melted down. However, unlike a paying employer, the Decepticons had no qualms about beating those they believed to be too slow. This, needless to say, stirred resentment among those who had been framed for slacking by their more-conniving peers.

It was only a couple of months later that the Genocide Battalion would be called to the big mining complex on one of the Empire's otherwise-barren planets to put down the first rebellion. The work was easy enough - the still-unupgraded Xaxhazians stood no chance despite hiding in the tunnels - but the need for such work was a warning that something wasn't going right. Megatron took note, but the response wasn't what the labor-draftees in other locations had been hoping for.

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

Soon after this event, Leader Megatron gave an address to all of the Xaxhazians, who by now had been distributed to many work sites as well as on their home world. In it, he released a new decree: Any drafted Xaxhazian who was not a proven believer of Megatronism would have to work under the effects of a body-control chip. He also noted the vast number of fake believers at the Temples, and announced that this was not acceptable.

"As proof of my Divinity," Megatron said, "I shall present to you a miracle: I shall short to death 5 percent of the false believers tomorrow at high noon in the timezone of the old capital of Xaxhaz!"

With that, Megatron concluded his address, leaving the Xaxhazians - who were still almost ALL unbelievers - to wonder if he could really do it, and to begin to stew in the fear of the possibility that it would really happen.

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

UC of Ceridignon

Once they were back at the Temple, Fire Eater and Loyal Star were greeted with smiles by their congregation. At the next Wednesday service, they announced that the First Temple of Cybertron had provided "practical instruction in the Decepticon Way" to be used for this year's tax season. Then, they handed out the tapes to all of the longstanding members of their congregation.

The people were amazed when they played the tapes at their homes. The voice of Megatron himself came over the speakers, instructing them on how to use almost-unknown loopholes, write-offs, and exemptions to not only eliminate their tax liabilities, but get refunds from the United Confederacy government. "Loopholes and such exist in every democracy's tax code," Megatron's voice laughed. "But usually, only those with expensive tax accountants - typically, corporations - get to use them. Now, that changes. Keep this information to yourselves, though. Use it, but do not talk about it with people you know. If it spreads too fast, everyone will start doing it, and the government will have no choice but to go through the tax code and close the loopholes. My curses will be upon whoever breaks this legal connive! Those who work it well, on the other hand, shall retain my blessings..."

For a long time, nothing seemed to change. The Temple stayed at its current size, which included the disillusioned people it had picked up from the competing church, and did not boom in numbers.

Then, about a month after tax time, its members got their refund checks. BIG refund checks. They began to have their houses fixed up, hired people to mow their lawns, went out to eat at fancier places, and generally showed the signs of windfalls of around $1,000 more than they'd usually get from tax refunds. When asked about this, all anyone would say was that "they were helped through the providence of the Divine Leader." They would not give any details, lest Megatron's curse actually befall them.

The pews began to fill with new and intensely curious people, all of whom wanted to be able to get in on what had become an obvious, but mysterious, gravy train.

[Vallermoore]

At the moment, anyway, the Xaxhazian bots were not outright slaves or dead metal, as it was not logical to slaughter those who surrendered without firing a shot. Doing that would make everyone else think that there was no point at all in giving in, and would make it harder to conquer the Universe as a result. But Megatron was sure that at least some of them would revolt, he just didn't know when even though he was divine. For now the Xaxhazians meekly helped the Priests build their Temples and opened all their military bases and government bases to the Decepticons, as well as showing them anything of importance, but did not in fact at least for now become genuine Megatronists and planned in some cases to reverse engineer the Decepticon Way. Megatron knew that if it were the other way around and it was the Decepticons who were under Xaxhazian control, with him as a fugitive, the Decepticons would be planning multiple revolts to regain their freedom from foreign control. The only life form that could rule Decepticons was Decepticons, and he was pretty sure that many Xaxhazians thought it was shameful to be ruled by foreigners. Soon a revolt took place in a mine and several Decepticons lost their currant bodies and in at least one case, his life.

Pesticide was relaxing in the Genocider barracks playing cards with another bot. No bot knew that he used to be a sapient pony, nor did any bot ever ask such an impudent, insulting question for fear of inciting General Carjack's wrath. There was a very strict Don't Ask Don't Tell rule within the Genocide Battalion when it came to immigrants for a good reason, as most Genociders who had been built had a deep hatred of biological life. Surrounded by some of the most dangerous bots in Cybertron, Pesticide felt safe. As long as he never started trouble, the discipline of the Decepticon Military would keep him safe. Genociders were not allowed to turn their blasters on each other. Suddenly the tune "Let the Bodies Hit The Floor" was played over the base intercom. Eyes of average brightness suddenly glowed like hot coals, engines revved with excitement at the prospect of action, and the Battalion formed into parade ranks, as General Carjack, the only bot whose status as a former immigrant was no secret, came in.


"Today a band of Xaxhazians, who had been allowed their lives and most of their freedom when they gave in without fighting at their nation's takeover, revolted, took a mine over, and raised the Xaxhazian flag, burning our own. We are to go and snuff out the rebellion before it can spread by doing what we do best, so that they can be melted down and made into parts for loyal Decepticons. Some of you may end up in the Military Save vault, as these bots were not disarmed when they surrendered earlier, and are capable unlike most biologicals of fighting back. We are Decepticons, we will win. Let's fly!"


Soon enough they flew to the mine and, although some of them did end up in the Main Save vault and three were blown up by a bomb with a jammer nearby and had to be restored from Save Discs, they blasted every rebel bot they found, granting no quarter. Pesticide took out over twenty rebels before he ended up as data packets. Shortly afterwards, he was restored. There would be no punishment as he had lost a body fighting bravely on duty against the foe.


Megatron announced that those drafted Decepticons who did not properly convert within a month to Megatron would be subject to a body control chip during their labour stints, and said that he would short to death 5% of the false believers the next day at high noon to prove he was indeed a God, leaving the Xaxhazians very worried indeed.


*****

Things were doing very well on Ceridignon when the voice of Sinburner came over Loyal Star's and Fire Eater's radios calling them to report to him on Cybertron, whch they did. On the way there, Loyal Star radioed Fire Eater and said "I'm worried. Sinburner is a Full Priest and my superior and of course I must and will come when he calls, but maybe he has found impurities in me and wants me to be punished even though I know I have purged my inner Ponyism myself."

Fire Eater replied "If he wanted to do that, he would have to get you to kneel in front of a statue of Megatron first and if you are clear of heresy he can't just punish you for no reason. If he does try that and there is no reason for it whatsoever, you can challenge him to a duel to the body like you did with Jackboots. I wonder why he wants to see me?"


When they came to see him, Sinburner had a properly blessed Megatron statue and several Inqusition bots standing by, as well as a bot who Loyal Star recognised as Jackboots. "I would like you both to kneel to this statue to show your loyalty to Megatronism." Loyal Star did so without a murmer of complaint and was cleared of any heresy. Fire Eater, who was on a roughly equal level to Sinburner, was furious, his eyes a very dark red and his engine revving roughly. For a Megatronist Priest to in effect accuse a Megatronist Priest of equal rank of heresy when the Priest was innocent of the charge was a very serious insult indeed. The statue cleared Fire Eater of any heresy. Loyal Star had never seen Fire Eater so angry, even in battle. Fire Eater was controlling his urge to blast Sinburner then and there, but barely. It was one thing to put a bot of junior rank through the heresy test, but Sinburner had done it to a bot who was his religious equal with no evidence at all to justify it. What Sinburner said next was even more annoying. "Fire Eater, I thought you must be a heretic to let a former pony in. Jackboots has told me about Loyal Star-how he got those Double Gold Stripes I have no idea."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhaz
High Noon

Many on Xaxhaz had been worried all morning about whether or not Megatron was really capable of the destruction he promised, but many others had no fear at all and openly derided the claim as "foolish propaganda" and said that Megatron surely had accumulated many glitches within his long life. "You know what they say," these open atheists smirked, "leaders are too paranoid to get patched!" They made gestures indicating insanity as they said this.

At noon, there would be no further questions about Megatron's abilities. Divine lightning blasts crashed down all over the planet, striking the most vocal doubters as well as hundreds of thousands of random unbelievers. A Megatronist Seal rose from the electronic smoke of each smitten carcass, and the acrid stench of burnt electronics filled the land.

Instantly, the percentage of converts spiked from just 1 percent to 50 percent. The other half, however, were not convinced. They began to speculate that it was really the work of some kind of superweapon, or perhaps high-tech snipers with advanced cloaking. "Robots aren't spiritual beings!" they insisted. "It must be done by mundane means!"

Of course, the time would come when Megatron would show these remaining unbelievers the error of their ways, but for now, he had more important matters that had come up. He gave Xaxhaz one last curse for now - the corruption of the Saves, and destruction of the Spares, of those he had struck down. Now, they would not be able to come back and pretend that nothing serious had happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Cybertron

Fire Eater stomped forward, both blasters showing a glow inside of their barrels that indicated full readiness. "You have insulted me, and you have overstepped your rank! I hereby chall--"

Before he could finish giving his duel challenge, the lights inside the Temple flashed and a crack of thunder - something that never naturally occurred on Cybertron - boomed through the building. Everyone instantly knew that this sound had to have been made by Leader Megatron, and he surely was not pleased.

"SINBURNER!" Megatron's accusing voice shook the room. "What are you doing here! I ordered you to Xaxhaz!! You were not given permission to return, much less to conduct an Inquisition here on Cybertron! You do NOT have the authority to test Decepticons about anything! Perhaps this will activate your listening routines!!" With that, Sinburner crashed to the ground in agony, and to his horror, he found that he could not shut the sensation off. Divine energy coursed through his circuits at just slightly below what would be required to outright destroy them. It was very much like what Loyal Star had experienced when Megatron had been displeased with him. Sinburner managed not to scream out, but it took all of his effort not to.

This went on for several minutes, during which Fire Eater openly smiled smugly, and all of the others backed away from the stricken bot. Finally, Sinburner's torment clearly ended, as his engine noise dropped from the screeching whine it had taken on.

"Now begone from here, and get to your station on Xaxhaz! You have 30 minutes to arrive - GO!" Megatron's voice ordered. Sinburner immediately left, without another word, and flew into the sky. He was clearly terrified of further punishment.

"The rest of you inquisitors, go back to your regular duties, and do not ever attempt to try one of my Priests again!" Megatron's voice ordered. The inquisitors left in a hurry, almost denting each other in their rush to get through the doors.

"Fire Eater and Loyal Star, you have done well." Megatron's voice said, much more calmly. "You may return to Ceridignon, where you will find your would-be acolyte waiting to inform you that he wishes to take the citizenship test. When you get there, ask the congregation to donate some of that tax refund money. Your Temple could use a nice TV ad campaign, centered on the big city 50 miles away, and those donations would cover the cost well as long as you choose non-prime-time slots. Daytime slots will be fine for now." Megatron unconsciously used a disgusted tone for the term "prime" time.

With that, Megatron's voice went silent, but before he withdrew his presence, he turned the small statue Sinburner had left into dust. "Such acts should have been done in front of my Face," Megatron's voice came again. "Portable statues like that are for remote locations, not the Main Temple, of all places!"

Even though Fire Eater and Loyal Star were praised, they wasted no time in leaving the Temple and going back to the UC. Once far away, they remarked that they were surprised that Sinburner hadn't been demoted. Fire Eater guessed that Megatron likely wanted the hard-charging inquisitorially-minded priest to root out possible rebellion and disloyalty on Xaxhaz, and that Megatron was using an "inquisition" as a cover for this much more mundane goal.

"If he gets every non-believer deleted, he will also be rid of anyone who would rebel," Fire Eater said once they landed, his eyes glowing as he worked through the likely ploys. "New converts aren't just fired up for their religion, they're very loyal to their new god. Sinburner wasting his time on us would be slowing up that plan, and therefore, giving rebellions and insurrections more time to take hold. That guy is lucky to have been punished by Megatron, though, because *I* was going to blast him into tiny little pieces right out back of the Temple!"

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

Xaxhaz

It didn't take long for new decrees to be levied on the Xaxhazian population. The first was that Xaxhazians on their labor stints were no longer allowed to be armed. "You were given the privilege of keeping your weapons while at work, and this privilege was abused within days," Megatron's announcement said. "Therefore, that privilege is hereby revoked."

Next, Sinburner was properly installed on Xaxhaz as the Supervisor of the Inquisition. The Xaxhazians would have one more month, and then the screenings would start. This would give Sinburner a chance to set up plenty of officials in key areas - and give the remaining 50 percent of non-believers a final opportunity to convert.

The schedule was intentionally rushed here. Megatron sensed that these people were deceptive and conniving themselves, yet not Decepticons. This meant that the chance of backstabbing and other nefarious types of rebellion was high. As Fire Eater suspected, Megatron actually wanted a way to cull a lot of potential rebels despite the official surrender. When the situation called for it, Megatron could be - and in this case, was being - the ruthless, conniving leader that some planets portrayed him as.

On Xaxhaz, Sinburner wasted no time - he didn't dare, after the excruciating punishment he had suffered. Inquisition offices were set up and staffed, and to the dismay of locals who were labor-drafted into providing the unskilled labor for the offices' construction (such as carrying bricks - the important parts were left to Decepticon troops), each "office" contained a smelting pit.

Rumors began to spread that the Decepticons intended to melt down all non-believers once the month was up. These rumors were true, though no one could yet be sure of it. Many Xaxhazians didn't want to wait to find out how true they were, and these began to urge rebellion.

Decepticon Military Base, Xaxhaz

Leader Megatron had expected to flush out plenty of rebels this way, and he was ready for them. He ordered the Genocide Battalion to remain in "ready to deploy" status 24/7 in anticipation of the uprisings. "I am flushing the rebels out of there like birds from the grass," Megatron said to General Carjack. "All you and your Battalion have to do is be ready to obliterate them when they appear."

Carjack, just back from his mission to the mine, gave a sharp little bow. "I am eager to eradicate the scum," he said. "I'm sure that plenty of those Things still think King Rebel had the right idea, trying to raid us like that, and are just waiting for their chance to continue along those lines. Our blasters shall turn all of those defectives into scrap for those who were smart enough to mean it when they surrendered!"

[Vallermoore]

First Temple of Cybertron


Loyal Star watched as his favourite Decepticon not counting his God, Fire Eater, stomped forward, his blaster tips glowing, one command away from blasting. "You have insulted me, and you have overstepped your rank! I hereby chall--"He was cut off by a crash of thunder. On Cybertron, this was not natural since there had never been any storms except one of divine origin from the Christian God. This was a sign of Megatron's displeasure, and His voice was heard. "SINBURNER! "What are you doing here! I ordered you to Xaxhaz!! You were not given permission to return, much less to conduct an Inquisition here on Cybertron! You do NOT have the authority to test Decepticons about anything! Perhaps this will activate your listening routines!!" Loyal Star remembered all too well what punishment Megatron could mete out to any bot-he had got a taste of it on a mission. Sinburner fell to the ground in agony like a tazed biological whilst divine energy pulsed through his circuits. Megatron was not happy that whilst he should have been on Xaxhaz doing what he was told, Sinburner had decided to, without a good reason, impose heresy tests on two Priests, one with double Gold stripes and one who had most likely never had even a heretical thought in his life, disrupting their mission as well as his own, and potentially spreading that rarest of Decepticon emotions-fear-through the entire Priesthood. Fire Eater openly grinned at the divine intervention. After a few minutes Megatron eased off and Sunburner got up, clearly scared. "Now begone from here, and get to your station on Xaxhaz! You have 30 minutes to arrive - GO!" Megatron's voice ordered.

Sinburner got out of there feeling lucky not to be badly damaged, demoted, or worse, and flew away pleased to be alive.

"The rest of you inquisitors, go back to your regular duties, and do not ever attempt to try one of my Priests again!" The Inquisitors very nearly dented each other in their rush to get out of there. Clearly they were not there to purge the Priesthood, which if such a thing was allowed to happen could make the Priests themselves fear and hate the Inquisition.

Megatron spoke again without anger. "Fire Eater and Loyal Star, you have done well. You may return to Ceridignon, where you will find your would-be acolyte waiting to inform you that he wishes to take the citizenship test. When you get there, ask the congregation to donate some of that tax refund money. Your Temple could use a nice TV ad campaign, centered on the big city 50 miles away, and those donations would cover the cost well as long as you choose non-prime-time slots. Daytime slots will be fine for now." Before leaving Megatron made the statue of himself crumble to dust and explained "Such acts should have been done in front of my Face. Portable statues like that are for remote locations, not the Main Temple, of all places!" Fire Eater and Loyal Star got out of there quickly and once they were far away from Cybertron Fire Eater said "I suppose Sinburner avoided becoming only an Assistant Priest because his talents are needed on Xaxhaz to root out those nasty rebels."


"I wish him well in that, but it would be hilarious if he ever was demoted to Assistant Priest and had me as his Main Priest, he'd hate having to take mentally ill buts to debugging and that sort of thing. It would really grind his gears," Loyal Star said. "It's good to know that no more Priests will needlessly face the Inquisition over imagined heresy when there is no genuine cause and we can thank our God for that." For a couple of seconds he imagined Megatron doing Godly things, and making sure the Decepticon Race remained in being. Soon they reached Ceridignon, and when their would be acyoltye took the written test, he was 91% right on it. Before that Fire Eater said about Sinburner slowing things up which was why he got punished, rather then losing a body to Fire Eater. "I've seen you fight, I'm sure you would have busted his body," Loyal Star said.


"If you want to become a Decepticon I could fly you somewhere on Decepticon Earth for the physical test, but if you fail that test, you end up dead or enslaved by other bots," Loyal Star warned. One thing the Decepticons were in fact very honest about were the immigration tests. "If you succeed you go through a very painful porting to a Decepticon body, have a code read to stop any spies getting in, ave a conscription stint in the military and then you can become an Assisstant Priest if you still want a clerical career ahead of you," Loyal Star said.


*****

Xaxhaz


High Noon

Many Xaxhazians laughed at Megatron's warning until the lightning bolts and thunder banged out of a clear stry, striking the doubters and vocal unbelievers and shorting them out despite their Faraday cages, causing half of all the surviving bots to become true believers there and then. But Sinburner would still have work to do to root out any further robotic rebellions.


Decepticon Military Base, Xaxhaz.


With the Genocide Battalion ready to deploy, Pesticide was excited at the thought of more action.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhaz

It didn't take long for the Megatronian Inquisition to get started once the month was up. Sinburner started not in the capital, but in the largest city: Watchwork. There, he began rounding up Xaxhazians one city block at a time, and having them brought to his inquisition office for interrogation. In the office, a huge, foreboding Face of Megatron waited on one wall to pass judgment on the heathens. Directly in front of the Face, an angry-looking smelting pit boiled, its small lake of metal hungry to consume the bodies of all discovered infidels.

Unlike at Temple faithfulness tests, the subjects did not kneel directly in front of the Face. Instead, they bowed while standing in front of the smelting pit. Those who passed were allowed to stand up straight and walk out, but those who failed got a push on their rear ends - a push that sent them splashing into the pit just in front of them. Sinburner smiled with satisfaction at each splash. He quite enjoyed cleansing this heathen land of its unblessed inhabitants.

~~~~~~~~~

It didn't take long at all for the stories of the faithful to begin to spread all over the city, and then, out to the surrounding towns. Everyone soon had perfectly-rendered pictures of the inside of the Inquisition Office, and movies of what happened to those who were glowered upon by the Face instead of receiving smiles.

By the next day, the Unbelievers were beginning to organize. Ten days later, the first batch would show themselves, marching down the street towards the Inquisition Office with all of the arms they could muster. Meanwhile, the faithful fearfully awaited their new god's command, fully expecting that he would order them to engage what had been their neighbors and Line members in battle. No one would have suspected it before this point, but they would actually be glad to see a proper Decepticon Military battalion show up, so they would not have to do the fighting.

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

Pesticide jumped up with a smile when the music finally played. Everyone chugged down Energon to the screams of "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" and then raced out to do exactly that: Make them hit the floor!

"That didn't take long," one of Pesticide's barracks-mates commented as he gave his right blaster one last check. "Leader Megatron is wasting no time in making sure this planet doesn't rebel on him, even if it does mean we get to blast about 25% more pieces of junk than we otherwise would have. Who cares, though. As far as I'm concerned, we should just wipe out all of the garbage that's crawling around here, cover the place in good old Cybertronian Planetary Steel, and then put 5 or 10 billion new Decepticons on it!"

With that, their last-minute checks were finished, and the Genociders went outside to get into formation. A few minutes later, they would arrive at what had become an armed march of 20,000 non-Megatronist Xaxhazians, all of whom were bent on wiping out the local Inquisition Office and Sinburner along with it.

Carjack didn't need to give any more commands, but he wanted to make sure this action was known to be official. "See those idiot infidels marching as if they stand some kind of a chance? They're the targets! DESTROY THEM!!!" He boldly ordered over the non-secret Military frequency.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Ceridignon

When Fire Eater and Loyal Star returned, they found Bilancal waiting at the back door. Once they opened it, they all went in to discuss Bilancal's future. It turned out that while they were gone, he had managed to motivate one of the drug dealers to spill a lot of beans about Cybertron.

"I always knew those guys weren't really from around here," the con-beast said with self-satisfaction. "I had to approach a few, but 1,000 shares of Ceridignon Oil finally convinced one to talk to me." He referred to one of the nation's big oil companies, which - despite its name - wasn't run by the government. "He told me all about Cybertron, and how the Divine Leader does far more than give tax breaks. Right as he did this, some Drug Enforcement guys rolled up in a car and tried to arrest him. They pulled a huge bag of coke out of his car along with about a hundred joints! Since I was standing right there, they put the cuffs on me, too. I thought we'd both be sent up for a hundred years, or at least, I'd have a really hard time convincing them that I wasn't part of that racket."

Bilancal paused, his eyes showing that he was supremely impressed by something.

"The guy wasn't bothered by his arrest at all. He just said calmly, 'it's only sugar-flour and tobacco. What are you so excited about?' to the feds. We were dragged down to the station, and all the way there, he taunted them by saying how they'd look like fools once the lab got done with their tests. Now..." Bilancal spoke very softly, "I KNOW that was coke and weed. I had just bo...er, I just do." His voice returned to normal. "Anyway, we were held in the jail all night as they sent the stuff to their labs."

"By the end of the next morning, the feds came, cussed us out, and opened the cell doors. We were free to go. On my way out, I heard them muttering with wonder about how in the heck that turned out to be sugar-flour and tobacco."

"Before we parted ways, the dealer said that it was a blessing of the Divine Leader. He called it an 'Unbustable Blessing.' And I remembered that right after you guys set up shop here, another guy was rolling all over town in a fancy car bragging that he was 'Unbustable' and that it 'pays to be faithful to the Leader.' I realized that, that guy had to have been talking about Leader Megatron!"

"I definitely want in on that." Bilancal concluded. "I also love the idea of a bulletproof body. Even if I just run away from some fed, knowing that he'd just be wasting his bullets if he shot me in the back would give me a lot of peace of mind." He grinned with a bit of a conniving look to him.

The two Priests were exceptionally glad to get someone to agree to the idea of not only becoming an acolyte, but a true Decepticon as well. They also immediately remembered that Megatron already knew that this person was ready to go ahead, and wondered if the drug dealer was actually a DomIntel agent sent to make sure that Bilancal saw something really special. Of course, they did not wonder these things out loud!

Fire Eater congratulated him on his decision, but did slip in that the Unbustable Blessing, while a real thing, was only given for some sort of exceptional service. "Being a Megatronist or an acolyte won't automatically make you Unbustable," Fire Eater explained, "and that particular blessing doesn't last forever even if you do get it. Megatron doesn't want to make things so easy that people just stop thinking, or else the country will turn into a bunch of helpless morons. Plus, it's fun to outwit law enforcement, enemy troops, and the like. Especially when you have a Decepticon body, which is plenty enough insurance for most things as it is."

Bilancal agreed. He did enjoy the cat-and-mouse aspect of connivery, it was true. Even so, he resolved to himself to get awarded an Unbustable Blessing as soon as possible, however it might come about.

Soon, Loyal Star was given the task of taking Bilancal over to Immigration on Cybertron. Meanwhile, Fire Eater put out the pitch to the congregation to donate some of their tax refund money for the further growth of the Temple and Megatronism.

[Vallermoore]

Xaxhaz


When the stories got out about the widespread killing of large numbers of Xaxhazian bots just because they were not Megatronist true beleivers, a large number of Xaxhazian bots got together to decide what to do about Sinburner. A few decided to remain in the background and think of more deceptive and conniving ways to remove the unwanted priest, such as...

-poisoning his Energon

-somehow getting an enslavement virus into him

-sending an assassin after him

-blowing him up along with his Temple with a condensed Energon bomb.

Most rebels, 20,000+ of them, including some who had lost Coders or adult offspring to Sinburner's purge, could not wait that long and formed an army, deciding to destroy Sinburner and his Inquisaitors. Before they could get near him, the Genocide Battalion showed up openly displaying their Skulls and Wrenches. Although within their ranks Pesticide knew he might lose a body this day, he didn't mind. If he fell in battle, he would go to the Military Save Vault and be downloaded into a new body. If he was wounded, Military mechcanics would help him fix himself. If his mindboards were damaged there were Debuggers for that, and even if he was to die for real, he was pretty sure that the Realm of Punishment would not swallow his soul. He nodded politely to his barracks mate to show he agreed. "That might happen one day." Then they were flying to their destination and General Carjack radioed them. "See those idiot infidels marching as if they stand some kind of a chance? They're the targets! DESTROY THEM!!!"

For the first couple of hours the Xaxhazians formed a circle and gave as good as they got. Pesticide had to drop out when he took 60% damage and an arm and a leg were rendered useless, until a battlefield mechanic good repair him and he went straight back to the fight. When the Xaxhazians finally broke and fled, the Decepticons chased them down and spent the rest of the day slaughtering every rebel they found. Finally, General Carjack called a halt and congratulated them, hand had the heads of the defeated bots lined up for counting. Less then two thousand rebels had made an escape, and Domintel was chasing after them.

First Temple of Ceridignon

Loyal Star temporarily turned off his itch sensors to fly Bilancal over to Cybertron and told him on the way how he had come over as a pony, using trickery and guile to trick bots who were coming after him into getting into a fight with a cargo bot and his escorting bodyguards. "There are plenty of raiders at all times in Cybertronian airspace, but as an on duty Priest who is not starting trouble, they know if they attack me they'll get a faceful of Holy Fusion Fire. When Megatronism was first set up, some raiders thought the Priests would be weaklings. A few lost bodies later and they realized their mistake. Now I can fly in openly with no trouble as long as I respect other bot's personal space." Soon enough he had dropped Bilancal off at Immigration on Cybertron.


Meanwhile Fire Eater's appeal had brought in a fine amount of money to help the Temple grow. Things were being a big success.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Xaxhaz

Sinburner came out of his office when he heard the sound of Decepticon military blaster fire, and stood in the street boldly and smugly when he saw that it was coming from the Genociders. "I claim the souls of the infidels for Divine Leader Megatron!" Sinburner hollered out with his voice chip on max volume. His voice rumbled through the battle like that of a hellfire-and-brimstone Earthian preacher, and any onlookers near him heard it easily.

On the battlefield, his call seemed to make no difference. However, at the Temple of Lost Souls on Cybertron, gems began to fill at factory speeds. The Genociders' engine of death was quite efficient indeed, and thanks to Sinburner's soul claim, the fallen enemies would be facing a fate at least as bad as the Realm of Punishment - but right there on Cybertron. Soon, there were thousands of gems waiting to be used for whatever the Military Paranormal Division, or Leader Megatron himself, found for them. If they were lucky, they would simply be drained of energy over the next several hundred years. The unlucky would find their soul-energy used to power enchanted Decepticon military tools, thereby directly helping their foes in ways that went beyond just keeping the planet's lights on.

A few hours later, the flow of souls stopped. The first major Xaxhazian rebellion had been crushed.

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

General Carjack and the Genociders now stood, victorious, among a sea of deactivated Xaxhazian bodies in various states of blasted dismantlement. Sinburner approached and gave a slight bow. "More metal for the pits," Sinburner stated with some satisfaction. "I'm sure our new converts will appreciate all of the parts it will make for them. We'll be able to give them away at this rate, though of course, we'll charge something. Otherwise, our new Faithful won't put enough value on them."

Carjack agreed. A fair price would ensure that the Xaxhazians didn't consider their new parts to be worthless or take them for granted. Plus, charging would avoid setting a bad precedent. Nobody wanted moochers lined up at Temple doors expecting free parts just for following the State-mandated religion.

Soon, a large contingent of FNGs were brought in with huge snowshovel-like implements and brooms. They shoveled the deactivated bodies into big military carts, and then swept up the millions of tiny bits the shoveling left behind. Then, the carts were taken to a huge Xaxhazian foundry that the Decepticons commandeered. By nightfall, piles of newly-formed ingots were stacked, neat and shiny, and awaited transport to various factories for conversion into new parts.

The Decepticon part of this operation was very efficient, and it was clear to the assigned Xaxhazian labor detail that turning a full body back into raw materials was something the regime did quite frequently. This efficiency, however, was not as great at the many Xaxhazian parts factories the metal went to. These factories weren't run by one giant, well-practiced parts company like on Cybertron. Instead, they ranged in size from tiny one- and two-bot operations to a few that had 1,000 employees each. They would take months to process all of the ingots, slowing up the Decepticons' program of improving its Xaxhazian loyalists.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the final trailer took off from the street where the battle took place, Sinburner looked on with happy satisfaction. The Decepticons were just so much better than these infidels~! He held his head arrogantly high as he walked back into his office, extremely certain of his own superiority.

Inside, he took a few steps, went around the pit, and gave a bow to the Face of Megatron. It smiled back somewhat maliciously, its psychic controller quite glad to have flushed out a rebellion so soon. Before more could occur, there was the crash of breaking glass and the sound of something bouncing and rolling along the ground. Sinburner whipped around, his blasters ready, just in time to see something roll into his big smelting pit.

An instant later, the Main Inquisition Office of Xaxhaz was a crater.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron
First Temple

"ForIntel says it was a Xaxhazian condensed Energon bomb," Warfire informed the newly-restored Sinburner, who was fresh from the Temple's save vault. "The nuclear nature of their fuel made it even more powerful than usual. Your main office is as gone as your body, so your next location will be in the second-biggest town there until it gets rebuilt."

"The issue that is currently of concern is that the bomber escaped. As soon as he threw the bomb, he mind-transferred to another body. Our agents saw him throw the device and came as fast as possible, but by the time ForIntel and our Military got to him, there was nothing but an empty carcass. That means that he lives, and can try to kill you again at any time. You'll need to be on your guard. Of course, when you get to your secondary office, the first thing you'll need to do is put highly break-resistant windows in and have guards at the doors. That way, the guy will at least have to think of something more detailed than just throwing a device into your next pit."

Sinburner was incensed. How dare one of those cheap, obsolete, pieces of junk deactivate one of his precious bodies?! He would return and prosecute his inquisition with even more fervor and vigor! If he ever found the bomber, he resolved, he would torture him to death with piece-by-piece dismantlement on live holovision!

Soon, he was on his way back to Xaxhaz, with his eyes glowing an angry and malevolent red.

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

Immigration Office

Soon - but not as soon as he would have liked - Loyal Star arrived at the Immigration Office with Bilancal. He hadn't been able to go as fast as possible because the biological would have been crushed by the G-forces associated with that level of acceleration. Once he dropped him off, he was glad to grab a Cube of Energon and then return to the UC at full FTL - his cruising speed for space travel.

Bilancal was welcomed by the Immigration officers, not necessarily as a VIP, but definitely at a level higher than an average guy would get. He, after all, came with the glowing recommendations of two priests of Megatron!

"You have passed many of our written tests," Gatekeeper informed him. "However, since you didn't do them here at Immigration, your first step will be to re-take them here. After all, you are a Decepticon-in-Spirit, and it would be quite Decepticonnish to have just gotten one of us to fill in all of the right answers for you up on your planet. By having you take the tests in front of us, we can be sure that we're seeing your answers."

Even though Bilancal was a huge con artist, he was still slightly taken aback by how nonchalantly the Immigration officers just took it for granted that cheating was likely. His jaw dropped slightly and he paused, trying to think of what to say.

"This is Cybertron you're trying to get into," said one of the agents. "If there was no chance of dishonesty from you, you probably wouldn't want to be here at all, let alone actually become a Decepticon."

[Vallermoore]

Xaxhaz

Sinburner felt very pleased when the Genocide Battalion destroyed his robotic foes and was able to claim their souls for Leader Megatron, but he was much less pleased when an unknown bot threw a Xaxhazian condensed Energon bomb-even more powerful then a Decepticon condensed Energon bomb-through a window into his smelting pit. When it exploded, the entire Inquisition Office went with it and everyone inside including Sinburner was turned into small metal pieces hardly even fit for a foundry. Sinburner ended up back on Cybertron in the Holy Temple Save Vault and another Priest had to download him into a new body. He soon found himself in front of High Priest Warfire who informed him of what happened and that the bomber had escaped by mind transferring as soon as he threw the bomb.

Sinburner was furious with rage and if he had teeth he would be grinding them with rage, his eyes red with anger and his engine coughing and spluttering. "He will try again and if I ever find him in my hands, I will pull him apart on live holovision with his pain circuits soldered in the on position before his soul ends up in the Deception Realm of Punishment for a very long time." From now on soldiers would have to guard the Inquisition Offices against further bomb attacks.

***************
Immigration Office

Loyal Star flew Bilancal to the Immigration Office with none of the struggles that he went threw to get there as a pony. Raiders that saw him backed away a little, no bot wanting to face Holy Fusion fire if they attacked him without provocation. Once he was there Bilancal had to answer all the questions all over again, but had no problems with them. Loyal Star waited on Cybertron and soon flew Bilancal to Deception Earth, where Bilancal chose what had been Northern France to hide out in. "I will pray a quiet prayer for your success, but that is all I can do to help you. If you are not caught or killed, you could soon receive the Ultimate Upgrade." He flew off, with a quiet prayer for Bilancal's success.