An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

Almost as soon as the battle began, one of the Scroungers transformed into a huge flying fist and tried, using engines within the body that let it fly in fist mode, to crash Marketeer flat. Marketeer dodged the first attempt, hurriedly stood in a particularly rusted area, and jumped aside just in time. The fist went straight through the rusted panal where it was set upon by a large number of rusted bots below, who overwhelmed it by sheer weight of numbers. Each of it's fingers were held by a bot whilst a sixth, with working blasters, started slicing it open.

Marketeer still had three other bots to deal with and fought as well as he could, taking some damage but giving it back as well, wishing he had some Xaxhazian grenades with him. Seeing that his fellow Scroungers were taking light damage the gang leader transformed into his special shape. In the frantic fighting one of the Scroungers in normal bodies had got his Empathy Down program blasted to the point that it stopped working.

Vallermoore

Walking by day when things were reasonably safe most of the time, Loyal Star noticed that quite a few ponies now had a mark he had once earned before he became a Decepticon robot-a Decepticon symbol that gleamed and glittered in the sunlight. When he went to carry out his next job, he found out that is target was himself a member of Vallermoore 's mafia gangs, and he was riddled with bullets. He popped out his blasters and gunned down his foes, teleporting after those who tried to flee and blasting them too, leaving no one alive to tell the tale, then walked to where he was not being seen and teleported to the house he owned that had once belonged to his parents.

Since only the more magical ponies were known to be able to teleport this would give Loyal Star an alibi if he was questioned by the police. He put on a spare faceplate that he had in a panal and the next day explained to his boss why he had gunned down so many foes instead of just doing the beating he was ordered to do.

Xaxhaz

Sinburner managed to damage the outer armour of High General Carjack and it seemed that he might win-until Carjack used his magic to short Sinburner out and he found himself in a small metal room in the afterlife, just as his Book of Megatron described, with the three scenes of the Heavenly Realm, the Neutral Realm and the Realm of Punishment. An afterlife angel explained that as it was likely that he would be brought back from a Save Disc he would be staying here for now to see what happened.

On Xaxhaz the Genociders proved to be even stricter and more murderous then the Inquisition had been. Bots that started to form up intending to blast and explode their tormentors were set on by the rest of the Battalion and quickly dispatched. Things went quiet whilst Energon bombs were made and plans made, and Carjack recognised this for what he was and had his regular troops squash the revolt before it could take off.It would not be long until only loyalist Xaxhazians were left alive and a new Xaxhazian governor could be installed.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

Marketeer didn't really know what to make of the leader's alt-mode, which looked like a plain box. Suddenly, a big crane-like grasper arm came from within and aimed straight for him. It was then that Marketeer realized that this was the exact metal grinder/crusher that was on the gang's seals. The intention was clearly to grab Marketeer, drop him into the top of the box, activate a deadly mechanism, and turn him into a cube of crunched metal right then and there. This was why he hadn't seen a separate machine for that - the boss was the machine!

Meanwhile, the bot who had the chip containing his Empathy Down blasted had far bigger things to worry about - namely, the fact that said chip was attached to a now heavily-damaged mind-board! He ended up standing still with a dumb look on his face as his system raced to transfer his processing functions to other, non-damaged boards. Unfortunately for him, Marketeer - naturally being a robot himself, and from a robotic planet - easily recognized what was going on and knew that for a few moments, this bot would be unable to respond to any attacks. Marketeer quickly took the opportunity to blast his foe's other boards, sending his mind away to some unknown location as data packets.

Behind and below the fighting, the fist-shaped bot, who used the apt name of Fisticuffs, cursed loudly and issued threats. The threats were ignored, but as it turned out, they weren't just empty promises. Suddenly, a short-range EMP blast filled the area around him, and all of those who had overly-rusted Faraday cages immediately fell to the ground, deactivated. Meanwhile, Fisticuffs himself took EMP damage from his own weapon, but thanks to internal compartmentalization, this was only in the electronics of the finger that had been sliced. He quickly brute-forced the few remaining bots off of himself and transformed back into robot mode as well as he could, but the now-offline finger hung down from his back like a strange, dead appendage. Soon, powerful blaster fire was heard coming up through the rusted hole in the ground along with the clangs and groans of successful strikes. Then, to Marketeer's dismay, the sound of foot-jets came from the same location, followed by a surprisingly light-footed clunk-clunk of Fisticuffs landing back on the surface.

Right as this happened, another bot with an unusual alt-mode began to transform. Not wanting to see what this one would turn into, Marketeer blasted at the momentarily-exposed mechanisms involved in the process. To his luck, this bot was at least temporarily stuck in between modes thanks to this interference. It was now clear that his alt mode was a powerful energy cannon. His robot-mode armor was in the process of forming what would become a highly-reinforced barrel capable of firing millions of kilojoules of energy without melting or cracking. Marketeer moved to finish the job and deactivate him, but right at that moment, Fisticuffs opened fire from the back and pasted him quite strongly. Marketeer had no choice but to turn his attention to avoiding more damage - and trying to deactivate Fisticuffs - leaving the cannon guy still alive, and perhaps, able to regain the ability to take action.

As soon as he turned around, the boss rolled himself forward, still in crusher mode, by using tank-like treads. He stretched out his grabber arm again, hoping to yank Marketeer into his cuber before he could react. Meanwhile, the disabled scientist could only watch, and hope that the Manglers wouldn't decide to snatch him up as a booby prize.

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

Xaxhaz

At first, it would seem as though Xaxhazian history would regard surrendering to the Decepticons as its biggest mistake. The Terror was planet-wide, local businesses had been all but wiped out by giant Decepticon companies, and what had been considered crime had taken over almost every area.

This, however, would be a short-lived feeling. The reason for that, of course, was that anyone who felt that way was soon discovered - and eliminated. Unlike Sinburner, whose actions were only slowly shifting the percentage of Megatronists higher, Carjack was very fast at the job. Within the first month, half of the non-loyalists lay dead, rusting in huge piles on the sides of the roads. The very sight seemed to bring power to the Genociders, who strode through the apocalyptic scene with strength and pride. Pesticide was both wowed and emboldened by it all, and he couldn't help but be awed at the might and outright destructive force of the Battalion he had become part of.

The Xaxhazians who had become Megatronists, especially those who already had ideals in line with the Decepticon religion and just needed a leader who agreed with them, did not find these events terrible at all. They scoffed at the "rusty liberals" who called it the Terror, and instead, branded it as the coming of long-awaited retribution for the oppression that had been put upon them by the old Xaxhazian legal system and its supporters. Inexorably, there were fewer and fewer supporters of the old way, and as might be expected, the level of dissent plunged along with their numbers.

When it was all over, there would be 90% fewer Xaxhazians than there once were. Every single one of the remaining 10%, however, was a fervent supporter of Divine Leader Megatron, Megatronism, and the Decepticon Way.

The Main Temple of Xaxhaz
Megatron's Private Quarters

Leader Megatron set up a second home here as he realized that any chance of rebellion had been extinguished. Now, he sat inside his private quarters in what was a massive and imposing, yet very impressive, Megatronist Temple. It was big enough for many Decepticons to fit into with ease, and the size was actually chosen just so this would be possible. The architectural style, however, was selected specifically to awe the natives.

General Carjack soon arrived for a planned meeting, and he and Megatron went into the living room area of the private quarters. There, they sat across from each other at a stately table, with a big glass of Megatron's Private Reserve placed in front of each of them.

Megatron took a large, satisfied drink of the Energon and then began to speak. "I had thought that sending a priest to spread my word as the Inquisition went on would be a good idea, but you have shown that your methods are superior. I had planned on trying to convert the natives, but simply deleting those who didn't already agree worked well in this instance. Of course, that was only successful because there were enough who agreed to sustain a population in the future. If the local smugglers hadn't learned of me and Megatronism, and spread it through their underground lines to all of their connections, there would be far fewer already-existing Megatronists here."

Megatron continued, "Thanks to those already-existing ones, and the few genuine converts we got, it will be simple to turn this into a well-populated, thriving, Decepticon planet. I am going to authorize the use of high-speed factories, and well-vetted pro-Megatronist Code, to repopulate the planet. Since all of the ones working on that project will be zealous Megatronists who think properly of me, all of the offspring will also be zealous Megatronists with pro-Decepticon opinions. This is not only because offspring tend to start out copying their Coders' political and religious positions, but because - thanks to you - there is no longer any source of dissenting opinions to pollute their minds. With no support for dissent anywhere, it will be fairly easy to keep the new-builts on the right path after they mature."

"It will be much like the Repopulation of Cybertron - since all of our enemies back then were deactivated, there was no longer any source of dissenting ideas. And, as you know, this has led to tremendous stability for my position and my government as a whole. There are occasional outliers, but these are easily weeded out by DomIntel - or even more often, by mobs of patriots - before they have a chance to spread their ideological corrosion." Megatron took another sip of Energon, not because he needed it, but as a gesture of satisfaction with the current situation.

Carjack finally went ahead and drank his Private Reserve, savoring its complete lack of off-elements. "I figured the most direct path would be the most effective in this case," he said. "As soon as I learned that there was even one town that was already almost 100% Megatronist, I knew that there was just one logical thing to do: Delete the rest. I do suggest, however, that we take one final action before winding down this conversion operation. We should confiscate or destroy all records of pre-Decepticon Xaxhazian history, and replace them with a version favorable to us. The current Megatronists will know it's BS and a connive, but since they ARE real Megatronists, they will support this goal. They'll know that it will do much to prevent the return of the full bank of the ideals of King Rebel, since without any record of those ideals, they would have to be re-invented from scratch."

Carjack went on, "That said, it's probably a good idea to admit that there was a King Rebel. Unlike on Decepticon Earth, where the inhabitants were all sequestered in work sites, these people are still able to mostly go where they please. This means that their offspring will be able to see the evidence of a prior regime all around them. Our goal should be to ensure that the right 'facts' about that regime are in all of the Xaxhazian SEDPs. Admitting that it caused the biologicals here to be deleted is probably a good idea. However, instead of the Rebel regime bringing 'law, order, and prosperity' - as its proponents thought of it - WE should teach that it had an unfair legal system, stifled creativity and personal growth, and disincentivized people from becoming truly successful."

Megatron responded. "Of course. Standard propaganda. The Bureau has already been tasked with such matters. Most importantly, it will be handling the PR needed to convince the loyal Xaxhazians to teach their offspring the new version. This shouldn't be hard: The loyal ones really did feel stifled by King Rebel's society and its moral and legal strictures, so for the most part, they can simply tell it as they really see it! We will mainly need to generate the 'evidence' to back up these views, so none of the new-builts become tempted to wonder if there is some other viable way to do things." The leader grinned with an openly-connivish smile.

"For now, the biggest job for the Bureau of Propaganda is to make sure that everyone is convinced that your genocide was the only logical way to truly bring about this much-needed change within a reasonable time frame. There are a few minor rumblings that it was overly harsh, but these noises are not enough for me to authorize you to make a second sweep. I and the Bureau will try spin and public education first. Now that the only ones left really are loyalists, I want to try to keep them alive. On top of that, if everyone is too afraid to speak at all, it can lead to sudden surprises that I would rather not have."

Carjack nodded, though he was a bit disappointed that he wasn't given the go-ahead to just make a second sweep.

"One last thing, Carjack," Megatron said as the general prepared to leave. "Be sure to be on Cybertron in 5 days at 3PM our time for your award ceremony."

Carjack gave a "yes sir" and left, but inside, he wanted to dance around. He would be getting an award for deleting all of the Xaxhazian heathens!! He could almost already taste the full Cube of Private Reserve, and feel the paint of a new gold stripe. Once out of view, he began to grin widely.

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

Vallermoore

Before Loyal Star could report back to Tiny, the mob boss saw the report of all of the death on the news. At first, he simply groaned: so many dead bodies would surely bring in the feds to investigate, and this would make operations harder for a while. Then, his ears suddenly perked up.

"Whoever did this was a Decepticon," the police officer addressing the media was saying. "Though we don't have the coroner's report yet, I am certain that the cause of death was energy blaster fire. Many of the dead are known to law enforcement for various reasons, too. It appears that they were on the wrong end of a turf war. Our Gang Activities Unit is already working on finding out the details."

Tiny thought about this for a short moment, and then said "of course" into the empty room. That would explain Loyal Star's ability to inflict such devastating damage on his targets - jaws that weren't just broken, but crushed; ribs that were snapped into multiple pieces with one blow; escapes from scenes before police could even arrive, let alone pursue him. All of this had seemed amazing at first, but it made perfect sense if his new enforcer was actually a high-powered android...

When Loyal Star reported in, Tiny had him close the door, and then had him wait as he went to the news station's site on his computer. He found the "breaking news" story, clicked the link, and let the video of the police's statement play.

"So you had to blast your way out of a situation." He said. "With Decepticon blasters. Mind telling me how you happen to be in possession of those?" At this time, he figured it could get dangerous for him if he admitted that he thought Loyal Star was an actual Decepticon. He also hoped that, perhaps, he could get his hands on some of those weapons. Playing it cool usually worked better for things like that, at least at first.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Bilancal sent out prayers for help with the tornado, but just as Immigration had warned, there was no outside help for those trying to pass the survival test. Soon, the twister went right over the hillock the cave was set into, and he could feel it trying to suck him out into the maelstrom. He grabbed onto the roots of a tree that were protruding through the ceiling and held on tight for what seemed like forever.

After what was actually only a few minutes, the storm moved on, leaving him jumpy but otherwise unscathed. Now, a torrential downpour began, but
Bilancal was close enough to the cave's opening to avoid any risk of drowning. Through the storm's noise, he thought he heard Megatron's voice saying, "be braver," but he couldn't be sure if it was real or just his brain misinterpreting the general racket going on.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

The bot who took the form of a glove managed to fry many of the rusted foes who were holding him down and pull and flick himself free, but not before one finger had been blasted open and damaged. By transforming into his robot form, he could blast his remaining foes and get out of there. Meanwhile Marketeer successfully blasted one of his foes. Seeing this, another Scrounger tried to transform into a very powerful laser cannon that would have destroyed Marketeer with one blast. Instead Marketeer blasted him and his transformation seized up, leaving him unable to use his blasters which were stuck inside his body and unable to fire his cannon form without exploding himself into pieces.

Marketeer laughed at the struggling Scrounger but before he could properly blast his boards Fisticuffs blasted him in the back and he was forced to turn and fight him. The Scrounger boss decided to grab the helpless bot on the floor first and Marketeer saw this just in time. Both bots grabbed the unfortunate scientist and one of the scientist's rusty legs was ripped from his body and crushed by the Scrounger boss. Marketeer blasted at the boss's grabbing arm hoping to wreck it with blaster fire. If he could inflict enough damage on the remaining Scroungers maybe they might give up and go elsewhere to fix their blasted bodies and look for some easier prey.

Xaxhaz

By now a lot of Xaxhazians were wishing they had fought or fled. Some Xaxhazians had indeed fled with success in the early stages, but any who stayed or left it too long or made it too obvious that they were fleeing, along with any rebels or critics, were killed. Many wished their King Rebel was back on the throne but those who dared mention this became targets. The 10% of loyalists who survived grew rich through taking the bodies of those who were killed to foundries as there were too few Decepticons to lay claim to all of the bodies. Pesticide was having the time of his life and was very pleased to have swapped the life of a pony for the life of a Genocider. Only General Carjack knew of his pony origins and he was very careful to keep the fact of who he had been a secret.

It was decided that since it would not be right to enslave the loyalists who remained and it would be a PITA to remove all traces of King Rebel from the planet, his existence and of course the fight against the former human rulers would not be covered up. The latter event was a plus in Decepticon eyes anyway as it made the Xaxhazians hate biologicals which was fine. Over time Xaxhazians would be repopulated with firm Megatronist loyalists that given time could serve alongside the Decepticon Military. All Xaxhazian history chips and any history books that existed were to be hunted down, destroyed and replaced with a Decepticon version. Carjack was very pleased as he had earned himself a new award for suppressing the troubles on Xaxhaz.

Earth

Bilancal thought that he heard Megatron's metallic voice in the wind saying "Be braver" but it could have been his imagination. Once the rain stopped he left the cave and carried on. At least the temperature was now temperate instead of too hot and unlike one of the planets that he had once visited, he would not have to face any dog sized spiders or giant crocodiles.

Vallermoore

Loyal Star decided that since the press had got to hear of it, and since he knew he would not be informed on, he would admit to being a Decepticon and a priest, but would not betray any Decepticon secrets and most certainly would not part with any weapons despite the money that his boss might willingly pay as that would be treason and even though he once saved Megatron, he would still be executed for treason if he was to commit it. "I am a Decepticon, a Priest who wants to get converts. Some questions of yours I can be very open about- but if I were to give away any Decepticon secrets or weapons- that would be treason, and treason is punished by death, just as informing in the Mafia earns death if it is found out about. And we are a secretive people. I am only being open to you because the press outed me already and even so I might be in non-death penalty trouble of some sort when I get back to Cybertron-although the excuse of fending off an attack by many biologicals at once should at least mitigate things."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

When the rusty leg was ripped off by the boss, the next steps were obviously well-practiced. The boss flipped it into his open top, and a grinding/crushing noise was heard. Then, a tiny cube of crushed metal popped out of a small door on his side. He immediately moved to grab Marketeer again, only to find that his grabber arm was now under fire.

The arm was very well-armored - many of his targets tried to destroy it, so he was prepared for that tactic. It did take a bit of damage, but while Marketeer was paying attention to that, Fisticuffs came up behind him and grabbed him. Fisticuffs didn't just open fire like he did before because he was worried that he might hit his boss.

When Fisticuffs grabbed Marketeer, Marketeer surprised him by flipping him over his head. He originally intended to throw him to the ground, but at the last minute, he got a better idea. He added more force to the throw, and pitched him right into his boss' crusher. The boss, of course, had no intention of crushing his own gang member, and he stopped his mechanism almost immediately - but not before parts of Fisticuffs were caught in the grinder parts. Marketeer could hear the mechanism shift to reverse in an attempt to free him, but for a moment, the two Scroungers were jammed together.

At this moment, all of the remaining Scroungers were temporarily unable to fight. After some quick calculations, Marketeer decided that he probably couldn't take them all out in the few moments they would be incapacitated. He grabbed the scientist, threw him over his shoulders, and quickly ran down an alley. Then, once out of sight, he made a foot-jet-assisted jump up to the edge of one of the buildings, quietly landing on the unstable, rusted roof. From there, he jumped from one roof to the next, hoping to not only get far away from the Scroungers, but end up in a place they wouldn't think to look.

After several minutes, he seemed to be free of any pursuers. Marketeer took a couple of seconds to scan the area. From the current rooftop, he could see that the rust and blight went on for miles. However, in one direction, he noticed that it stopped a bit sooner than the others, giving way to a slum that was clearly one of the worst, but no longer rusty. In the distance, he could see some smoke coming from the stack of a foundry with a failed chimney scrubber. He thought of going in that direction, but then, he noticed that there were many people going in and out of this foundry. After activating his long-distance vision, which worked much like binoculars, he could easily see that they were Scrounger gangs bringing in their captives. The captives were in various states of decay, ranging from surprisingly new-looking to extremely rusted. All, however, were doomed.

Immediately, Marketeer decided that he wouldn't try to go out that way. After all, avoiding one Scrounger gang only to end up facing 50 of them would not be good! He decided to keep on with his originally-intended direction, which would mean a longer trip to a different border, but would be safer once he made it out. Now, however, he would keep as low of a profile as possible, and take a route that involved many rooftop jumps as well as some travel on different roads. Quickly but carefully, he began to make his way out, not knowing what would be on the other side of his target border - and hoping that it would not involve foundries or Scroungers.

~~~~~~~~~~

Xaxhaz

As the Geno-Inquisition wound down, the Xaxhazians were amazed to see that Leader Megatron had now ordered many improvements to be made. A group of engineer-builders arrived, and it looked almost as though they were meant to become a single Transformer, but there didn't seem to be quite enough to make that happen. This appearance was correct: They were the Constructicons, who once formed into one giant machine as well as several separate Transformers. However, Long Haul, who had always wanted to be a front-line soldier, had finally convinced the Military to give him a permanent slot, and he had immediately taken it. Now, their Devastator mode was inaccessible, and since it had been nothing but a giant target in actual practice, they hadn't replaced him.

Despite their glee at flattening already half-bombed Xaxhazian structures, which had been trashed by a variety of Decepticon "market share expansion" actions, they turned out to be very good at directing building efforts. Soon, the first high-speed factory was erected and supplied, and an extremely zealous, pro-Megatronist Xaxhazian engineer was put in charge of its operation. Before long, thousands and thousands of newly-built Xaxhazians - all with Base Code that included pro-Megatron, pro-Decepticon urges - were marching off of the ends of the lines.

Leader Megatron had no fear of these new Xaxhazians having any Autobot-like morality. He still had control of the Soul Generator from his conquest of the metaphysical part of the universe, and it generated Decepticon Way-loving souls for each new-built. There was no doubt that they would think like Decepticons with that system in action! Megatron's main task would be to make sure that they kept thinking that HE should be their leader, and not some other conniving warrior. Now that there was zero opposition on Xaxhaz, he correctly figured that this task would be no harder than it was on Cybertron.

Elsewhere on Xaxhaz, some of the bombed-out factories of other types were restored. Where the Decepticon companies were big enough to actually satisfy this new market as well as their customers back home, the replacement facilities were used to do this. In cases where a Decepticon company had tried to take over the market but couldn't meet all of the demand, Xaxhazians were encouraged to try to grab some of that untapped market share - but this time, to make sure to take steps to protect themselves and their assets. Xaxhazian private security firms began to pop up, all staffed with people from what had once been the planet's seedy underbelly. These were quite happy with Megatron, because now, they were not considered either seedy or underbelly, but instead, the heralds of the new society.

As Xaxhaz stabilized, the Decepticon Military began to draw down. There would always be some troops present, not so much to keep the people in line (since everyone who would have gotten out of line was now deactivated), but to make sure that no other planet invaded. Soon, the Genociders - being a specialized Battalion not meant for general peacekeeping - began to get into formation for takeoff back to Cybertron. This sight was met with a combination of sighs of relief and cheers of goodwill.

Most of the remaining Xaxhazians were glad to be rid of "the oppressive moralists" that the Genociders had eliminated, but they were still afraid of the Battalion and would rest easier with them gone. Some, however, were sad to see them go. These people had gotten the good fortune of having tough personal enemies removed by the Genociders, and these are the ones who cheered with goodwill and waved with smiles at the departing ranks.

Many of Carjack's regulars stayed on Xaxhaz, and they set up permanent bases in strategic locations. Any aliens foolish enough to invade the place would be met by them and other Decepticon soldiers.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Later, Bilancal was cooking a rabbit that he had shot as he mused about the wildlife here seeming much tamer than some he had encountered elsewhere, when he heard what sounded like cows mooing. He then realized that they were also running, and the pounding of hooves was coming closer to him - and fast! He was about to encounter the crazy attack cows of France, which had grown from small groups to huge herds in the absence of serious human intervention. If he didn't get out of the way of the oncoming stampede, preferably before they were even in direct sight, he would be crushed to a pulp.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

When Marketeer threw Fisticuffs into his boss's crusher, even a Scrounger gang boss was not going to crush his own gang member up, even more so in Iacon where mind transfer was impossible. Scroungers didn't like other bots much, but they did like their own gang members. There was a torrent of very un PG 13 cursing from the trapped bots as Marketeer picked up the scientist bot and got out of there. Soon enough he found a way out but there were too many Scroungers present.It took hours to find a reasonably safe way out, and even then a lone Scrounger stared at him. "You don't want me to radio my gang and set them on you for trying to take my prey?" He asked. It was a bluff but it worked at least that time. With chips that were already starting to corrode a bit, Marketeer made it to a Debugging station. "I got lost down below, ended up in Iacon, and rescued a bit who claims to be a scientist. Please could you fix both of us?"

Soon enough he was shut down and when he woke, a bot in a strong body with the decal of a scientist from Impossible Physics was there, his engine purring, his eyes bright and a big grin on his face. "You saved my life and got me out of that hell on Cybertron that is Iacon. Without you I would have died and ended up making parts in the Neutral Realm perhaps for all time."

"Between you and I, I am à would be immigrant from Xaxhaz who conned a Decepticon shopkeeper into helping me into a Decepticon body. I know it is a lot to ask, but I wonder if I could sofa surf at your house for a bit? I don't have much, but I could share some Cubes of Xaxhazian Energon with you and tell an entertaining story or two."

Earth

Bilancal looked for a tree, grabbed the half cooked rabbit and his gun and climbed the tree as a herd of charging cattle came charging towards his position in such numbers that he could not merely shoot them all.

Xaxhaz

When the Genocide Battalion left Xaxhaz, being too over the top for ordinary peacekeeping, most bots were privately pleased to see it go, but a few had benefited from it's presence as it had dealt with their personal foes by chance, and they waved and cheered. Pesticide found this very unusual and quite pleasing as he flew back to the barracks. Genociders obviously did get occasional leave when off duty, but only in small numbers as if to many went on leave at the same time, they might stir up trouble on Cybertron that was too much for even Cybertron to stomach. Also they were not allowed to go out raiding by themselves in case it caused a huge interstellar war.

Xaxhaz, although still recogniseable as Xaxhazian, would soon become a very reliable part of the Empire with it's own military within the larger Decepticon military and with a Xaxhazian bot as a governor rather then direct Decepticon rule by a Decepticon governor. It would profit in time from increased raiding of biological lands and help with infrastructure from Cybertron.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

The scientist now introduced himself as part of the Paranormal division of Impossible Physics, and Marketeer noticed that his seal was drawn with an aura around it instead of in the regular way - the aura signifying the paranormal aspect. "I'm Scanner," he identified himself. "I had gone in there hoping to detect the source of the curse. I do believe that I found it, but when I went to leave, I was overcome by the glitch I told you about. Fortunately, I'd been able to do most of my own repairs, though getting new parts required a level of...a level of action that scientists usually aren't eager to take. But one must do what is necessary to live."

To Marketeer's dismay, he realized that his own body had not been repaired, though he could now think with perfect clarity. He got a shocked and disappointed look on his face when he noticed this.

"Oh," Scanner explained, "you were expecting physical repairs? It doesn't work that way here. Debugging only fixes coding glitches, and if necessary, replaces mind hardware that is broken or failing. That hardware is fixed because if it isn't, you'll just re-glitch. But for your body, you're on your own. This body that I'm using is one that was in storage over at Impossible Physics. I mind-transferred to it as soon as my Code was fixed. The other body will be taken back to IP for further study."

"I had plenty of time to do this because it took Debugging a long time to figure out your Code. Now that you say that you aren't from here, I understand why! You've got to be running on some other OS. It would have taken reverse-engineering for them to figure out how to fix your glitches. Just be glad that your Code isn't ported from some kind of biological, or you could have been stuck in here for weeks. I've heard that biological code is a huge mess. The Biological Research Division thinks it's not all that difficult, but that's because they work on organisms that are still organisms, and that respond to things like chemicals, brain configuration, and electricity according to predictable patterns. Once you convert that Code to Binary and port it to the Decepticon OS, it's a whole other matter. Then, it doesn't follow any standard programming conventions, and it's a royal pain to understand. It makes me glad I'm not a Debugger."

~~~~~~

When Marketeer asked for a place to stay, the scientist gave a rueful laugh. "I'd been in Iacon for a long time before you found me," he said. "I doubt my old house is still useful. Someone would have taken it over in the amount of time I've been gone. Of course, I do intend on rounding up some of my colleagues to go and recover it, but there's going to be a huge battle - and, like most upscale homes on Cybertron, my house is highly fortified. The problem is that the squatter will be on the good side of the fortifications, while we'll have to blast our way in from outside. By the time that's all done, my wonderful house might be all but destroyed..."

"Also, your first goal should be to fix that body of yours. But since you're a foreigner, I can't just take you over to a mechanic or mod shop and tell them to have at it. However, I think it's safe to just mention that many users of specialized bodies - like whoever you got that one off of - like to keep a repair manual chip in the outer right calf panel. You, however, will have to find a way to come up with the parts and tools to use the information you may find there."

Scanner didn't outright say to mug someone and cannibalize his parts, but it was what he was insinuating.

"Then, once you get yourself back into proper battle condition, I can let you stay at my place for a short time - if we can regain control of the house. I will invite you to watch this operation, and possibly partake in it. Most of our governmental information would tell you that we have to blast our way back in, and while we MAY have to try that, we are scientists. So we'll be trying things other than pure brute force, at least to start, and I think you should see that."

"I will also note that we Decepticons are typically very private people when it comes to our time at home. We are very territorial, and typically will not tolerate the presence of another adult in our homes except for short visits. So, you will need to be looking for another house immediately, because when I get done with my day at Impossible Physics, I want to be able to go home and relax - and having someone else around is not relaxing, especially when that's some other Decepticon or someone willing to become one! I would much rather repay your kindness in some other way than a prolonged stay in my home domain! But, since you are currently without any way to keep raiders off of you when you defrag, and you got me out of Iacon...I suppose I can break protocol for a while..."

This, however, would only come to be if Scanner could get his house back at all. The first step would be to scout it. For Marketeer, though, the first thing on the agenda would be to check for a body repair manual and then "acquire" any needed parts and tools - most likely by violence.

~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Bilancal looked down with wonder as about 100 cows and bulls stampeded through his campsite and the area around it, flattening every small thing in the way, for no apparent reason. In just a few moments, they were gone, and the roar of their pounding hooves faded into the distance.

Apparently, the cattle had once been few in number, but with the human population no longer large enough to keep their population in check, they had done surprisingly well out in the wild. While they seemed to be of a rather uneven temperament, he wondered if something specific has spooked them into stampeding. From the safety and vantage point of the treetop, he looked around for any sort of threat that they might have recognized.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Planets Around Xaxhaz

Most, but not all, of these planets were barren. However, word of the Decepticon takeover of Xaxhaz spread quickly among the ones with population. Those that had large robotic workforces of their own were secretly unsettled at the events on Xaxhaz, but they told their robots all about the genocide and destruction in hopes of convincing them that being loyal workers for their current owners was a far preferable course of action. This did scare many of the robots, but a few hoped that the Decepticons would come to their planets next and delete the biologicals and any pro-bio robots. Some of these few began to try to find ways to contact the Decepticons and invite them to do their dirty work for them.

Other governments on nearby planets had no robotic workforces, and some were so primitive that their populations still thought they were the only beings in the universe. One, however, was quite familiar with space travel, and even had a space army. It had done business with Xaxhaz's prior biological government, and it wasn't long before it realized that Xaxhaz's robotic government had been overthrown by invaders from space. What it didn't know was just who had done the overthrowing, or the nature of the victors.

This planet - Extrana - rejoiced, ASSuming that some kind of biologicals had taken over and that now, the robots were once again under the command of a fleshly species. It also made an assumption that would be even worse for it: It figured that, now that they saw so many "ships" leave Xaxhaz, that it would be easy for them to move in and annex at least part of it. "A large action like that has surely exhausted their army. They won't want to fight any more, let alone attack us. Let us go there and make demands of them, and when they don't comply, colonize and use their robots as our workforce." This was the advice given to the dictator of the greedy, and soon to be hostile, world.

The dictator, Manatos, listened to this advice with nods. It sounded like a great idea. Soon, the plan was fleshed out and finalized: They would send a "diplomatic group" of a couple of smooth talkers, backed by about 1,000 troops for show, and make demands. First, they would demand tribute of about 1,000,000 tons of iron ore, 10,000,000 tons of gold, and 10,000 Xaxhazians to work for them - per year. Then, when these outrageous demands were not met, they would use it as a pretense for an invasion. Surely whatever planet had taken over Xaxhaz would be too war-weary to resist, and would either concede right away or would be easily overwhelmed by the fresh incoming military! He rubbed his hands together greedily and grinned as he gave the go-ahead.

~~~~~~~~

On Xaxhaz, Carjack's regulars, along with regulars from the other Decepticon Military standard divisions, sat around playing cards and complaining of boredom. They all were full of energy and wanted asses to kick, but now that Xaxhaz had been totally pacified, they had no targets. Some had even taken to arranging fights in the yards of the barracks areas in order to break up the ennui, while others paced restlessly.

For now, they did not know of the other planet, much less its plans. However, not a one was "war weary." Instead, they were all peace-weary, and when their radars picked up the alien delegation, they quickly cleaned their blasters in hopes that its arrival would herald "something interesting to do."

~~~~~~~~~~

Soon, the base was contacted by radio by an Extranan asking permission to land. The base commander, seeing the rather large formation on his radar, gave permission for ONE diplomatic ship to land. All others were to stay in space, or be blown back into space, their choice. For now, the Extranans kept up their pretense of diplomacy, and a single ship descended toward the designated landing spot.

Meanwhile, Decepticon scouts, with multi-technology cloaking on, quickly flew up and checked out the other ships. They were, as suspected, all warships - but they did not seem to be ready for "business." Instead, they seemed to be in a "show of force" type of formation.

At the same time, news of the arrivals was radioed both to the Main Military Base on Cybertron and to Leader Megatron. Megatron grinned, and waited eagerly for the Extranan delegation to give him an excuse to invade their world. He quickly pulled up the relevant ForIntel reports via a secure connection with the DomIntel Supercomputer, and began to learn all about Extrana, its culture, and most importantly, its military.

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

Vallermoore

Tiny was surprised when Loyal Star admitted that he was indeed a Decepticon, but when he was told that he couldn't be sold weapons, he was not happy at all. His eyes narrowed, and he strode out from behind his desk. "You know it's not too smart to refuse things to your Captain," he said threateningly. "And those weapons would be a great help for the Organization." He reached into his desk and took out a thick envelope full of cash. "I'm sure you could use this far more than brownie points back home...and that you'd appreciate it if nobody tried to dismantle you to get those blasters..." A standard carrot-and-stick form of "negotiation." There would be trouble if Loyal Star didn't comply, but if he did, he would be well compensated...

Loyal Star was about to just say "hell no," but then he remembered that there was more to the Decepticon Way than plain violence. He could blast Tiny and walk away easily enough- but that would end his mission and make it harder for other missionaries to resume the operation. It would, he realized, be far better to use the Connive Side somehow. Perhaps he could agree to set up a weapons deal, but then deliver counterfeit weapons that would be effective against humans, but no worse than Nerf guns if used on Decepticons?

"I'll have to talk to my contacts back home," Loyal Star said, taking the envelope and putting it into his pocket. "I'm sure we can work something out."

Tiny smiled, thinking that Loyal Star was afraid of him, and thanked him for his cooperation. He had no idea of just how tricky Decepticons really were, instead thinking of his underling and other Cybertronians as being more of a dumb-muscle sort of people.

Later, he would indeed radio Cybertron, and the engines of corruption would begin to turn. High-ranked priests, General Soundwave, military weapons experts, and others came together to come up with some kind of a plan that would really stick it Tiny while not compromising any Decepticon secrets.

Soon, one thing had been decided: Tiny had to go. It would, Soundwave insisted, be best to not just kill him, but replace him with a lookalike ForIntel agent. "This will not only eliminate this interest in our weapons, but allow us to give Loyal Star the shipboard position the Temple originally sought for him. We will also learn much more about the syndicate's operations..."

Just how to delete Tiny and replace him, however, remained to be decided.

[Vallermoore]

Earth

To his horror Bilancal saw that what had scared the herd of cattle was a Decepticon overseer who was looking for meat to feed the slaves who worked in some mine somewhere, and needed meat to get the most amount of work out of them. He hid in the tree, hoping that he had not been seen. His gun would be of little use against a full size Decepticon who would most likely see him as prey. He knew no magic that could help him either.

Xaxhaz

The diplomatic ship descended and landed and a human in fine clothes climbed out. He grinned. "How good it is that the robot rebellion is over and you are all back under the control of your slave viruses again. On our planet, every bot of ours is under the control of a very strong slave virus from the moment of activation. We know they are alive, but bots are meant to serve humans and other biologicals as their slaves and always have been." Ignoring both the rapidly darkening eyes and the angry revving of the engines of every Decepticon who heard him, he said rudely "I want one of you worthless buckets of bolts to hurry off at top speed and alert the human leaders of this planet to come here so that we can tell them that we expect tribute from them unless they want trouble with us." He was about to find out, very likely by losing his life, what happened to biologicals who dared to insult Decepticons and say that biologicals were superior to robotic life.

Back on Cybertron, Megatron accessed the Supercomputer to find out about Extrana. The place was a fascist state that had a large number of robots who were both fully aware that they were alive and held in slavery by slave viruses that were renewed every six months. Almost all the unpleasant work was done by these robot slaves, who also served as android "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" forced to be romantic and more to their human masters, much to the disgust of said bots, who had no happiness from these forced unions. Human prisoners were also used as slaves, but there were not that many of them. There were a small number of sapient ponies but all of them were slaves and treated so badly that even Decepticon mine slavery would be an improvement on their current conditions. The dictator had a personality cult almost like Megatron's, and effective propaganda that managed not to bore the heck out of his population whilst doing it's job well.

There were three levels of military-enslaved bots with blasters that were the same size as Decepticons and who hated their human masters but were forced by their slave viruses to obey them and fight for them, artillery that ranged from the normal SAMs to advanced cannons firing solid cannon balls to ornate vintage ceremonial cannon batteries (the last ones until blown up would be a PITA to dodge) and human soldiers with weapons that were not for the most part much danger to a Decepticon bot. The humans were outnumbered three to one by their robot slaves.

Vallermoore

Loyal Star thought quickly. To sell Decepticon weapons would be treason but to just blast the impudent human who thought he could threaten a Decepticon would spoil the mission and High Priest Warfire would be angry with him. So he turned to the Conniving side of the Decepticon Way and took the money, promising to get in touch with Cybertron soon and get some weapons delivered. As he was about to leave Tiny told him "Another thing-I'm a Changeling and I want some of that Decepticon love from you.

" Sighing, not seeing much choice in the matter, Loyal Star dropped his shielding for two seconds only. The rich love of Cybertron, of the Decepticon Way, and of his God was only drained for that time, but it made Loyal Star feel sick like a biological who lost a lot of blood. Once away from Tiny, Loyal Star would think of Megatron and the Metal Planet to restore the lost love and his health, radio Cybertron but not in the way Tiny wanted him to , and defrag for a bit.

Forintel bots would soon be sent out to poison Tiny with Decepticon hate that was disguised as Decepticon love and then replace him. Poisoning him would be quiet and would not leave a mess of biological muck that needed to be cleaned up.

Cybertron

When Marketeer woke up his thoughts were clear of any taint from Iacon but his wounds were still fresh and ached. The bot he had rescued from certain death, now in a new body, identified himself as Scanner and explained that Debugging whilst free was only for mental health as no one wanted insane bots about, randomly blasting. To heal himself he would need to canabalize parts from another bot by defeating the bot quickly and by surprise. When he explained that all Decepticons were very territorial and that on top of that his house was being squatted in and the squatter would need to be violently removed, Marketeer said " I'm sure that once I have fixed myself and helped you take back your house I could think of something else for a one off favori that you would be far happier to grant me instead." He wanted Scanner to genuinely like him so that if he passed his test the two bots would happily hang out together. Because of the relative rarity of friendship amongst Decepticons, what did exist was of value. To have a friend who was a scientist would surely be a plus.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Earth

The Decepticon was obviously aggravated, and he glared in the direction the cattle had gone with obvious anger. He took a step back, planted his rear foot, and then used it to push off into a run that quickly turned into a surprisingly high jump. Once in the sky, he began his transformation sequence, intending to fly in front of the herd so he could land and catch a few. Right as he started to transform, he saw the dog-man in the tree and paused for just a fraction of a second.

Fortunately for Bilancal, gravity is an unforgiving piece of physics, and bu pausing, the Decepticon instantly lost about a foot of altitude. The bot had to choose whether to continue into plane mode and get flying, or abort the transformation and land on his feet in a somewhat awkward way. Since there was a whole herd of cattle, and only one weird-looking alien guy, he decided to go after the cows. He continued into plane mode and fired his jets, wobbling a bit due to the results of the temporary distraction, but soon stabilized himself.

In the distance, the sound of the overseer transforming back into robot mode was easily heard. Then, screaming cattle were heard just as well. Within a few moments, the remaining bovines came thundering back through the way they came, now even more panicked. After this noise stopped, Bilancal could hear the slow trudge of the overseer, whose footsteps now sounded significantly heavier even at his weight.

Bilancal realized that he'd most likely been seen, and took the opportunity to leave his tree and go hide under some low bushes that were to the side of where the cattle had stampeded. These had much thicker foliage, and offered better visual cover than the tree. Even more importantly, they were not where he had already been seen, and they were low enough that giant robot would be unlikely to bend down to look for him unless he had a reason to specifically target him.

In just a couple of minutes after Bilancal changed his position, the robot appeared. He now had a huge fishing or butterfly-type net slung over one shoulder, and it contained about 5 very distraught, loudly-screaming cattle. The Decepticon stopped at what had been his campsite, and realized that a sapient being had been there. Bilancal's now-flattened backpack and scattered campfire remains would not have come from an animal.

The overseer began to look around, hoping to score himself a quick 500 Cubes for a new slave, but didn't put a huge amount of effort into it. After not seeing any tracks that he recognized as being from a humanoid, he continued on toward his mine with the soon-to-be beef. Bilancal stayed absolutely silent in the bushes.

Once the danger had passed, Bilancal finally came out. He walked over to the wrecked campsite, his bare feet making odd, somewhat dog-like tracks as he traveled. Though his foot soles were bigger than the nearly-nonexistent ones of Earth's canids, his big paw-like toes marked them as Not Human. Normally, he would wear shoes, which would leave human-like tracks, but he hadn't had a chance to put them on when the cows came through. He didn't even think about it, but this had saved him from the further attention of the overseer.

Now, though, he would have to look around and see if anything from his pack or campsite could be salvaged. The pack looked almost flat, with only a few lumps showing in between the hoof prints. One of his pots was clearly flattened, too. The other pots weren't immediately visible, and likely had been dragged somewhere by the panicking herd.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Xaxhaz

One of the Decepticons was going to summarily, yet slowly and painfully, squash the impudent human under his foot. However, another one subtly put his arm out, and silently opened an internal radio connection to his commander. Then, he asked the human to "repeat that, please, sir..."

The human boldly repeated it, not having any idea that his words were now being secretly broadcast - and then rebroadcast - to the entire Decepticon Military High Command. To the soldier's surprise, Leader Megatron's voice soon came over the classified military frequency and played over his internal radio. "Play along with the idiot. Tell him to wait at the Main Office of the Inquisition. I will have a suitable ForIntel agent pop over there and set him up."

Immediately, the soldier activated his freeze-face and engine noise control, and took on the attitude of a servant. He gave the directions as Megatron had ordered, while on Cybertron, ForIntel rushed to get an agent into a realistic, human-type, android body and over to Xaxhaz.

~~~~~~~~~

Within minutes, the agent was brought to the planet via FTL flight, with the delivery bot using all methods of cloaking AND making sure to remain out of the expected detection range of the Extranan contingent out in space. Once within the atmosphere, he flew right to the Inquisition Office - the only one still staffed at this point - and landed as if he was a non-sapient jet. The agent, dressed in a fine uniform, stepped out down a rope ladder and positioned himself at the office door. There, he waited for the Extranan diplomat to arrive.

Meanwhile, the diplomat used his ship to fly closer to the designated location. He began to notice that there were no humans in sight. Instead, the small Xaxhazians were all over the place, combined with these strange-looking, giant winged ones that all seemed to bear the same symbol and had red eyes. He couldn't help but think that the red-eyed ones seemed to have a malevolent eye-shine as they gazed upon his ship, but at this point, he still believed that they couldn't act on it. Still, the lack of any biologicals in sight began to make him uneasy. After a few moments, though, he willed himself to stop worrying about it. The biologicals, he told himself, must be in their homes or in pubs, celebrating their victory! In this way, he made the same mistake as many of the humans on Earth: Choosing to believe a false self-explanation rather than allow his mind to process an objectively obvious, but unpleasant (for him), fact.

When he saw the "human" waiting for him, dressed as a high-ranking official, the Extranan was immediately relieved and totally at ease. He'd been right, he thought! There were humans in control now. The others were surely just celebrating somewhere away from the main street. He was so self-convinced of this that he failed to realize that the whiff of Energon fumes he smelled as he approached was not coming from one of the obvious robots, but instead, from the mouth of the hastily-prepared "human" now smiling at him and inviting him inside.

~~~~~~~~~~

The agent's orders were simple: Find out what these Extranans wanted, and - for now - play along with the nonsense idea of biologicals having recovered Xaxhaz. "If we kill him outright now, their planet will likely attack," Megatron had said. "It is best to play it really cool for now. However, I suspect that they have outrageous demands - there isn't much other reason for a 'diplomat' to come with so many warships. Therefore, your main goal will be to lull them into thinking we're going along with whatever they demand, without actually delivering anything. Stall, stall, stall. And make up some story to support whatever ridiculous notion that guy has about who is in charge. I will give further instruction later..."

Leader Megatron's fans began to spin as he considered what to do. He could simply mobilize the entire Military, minus a security contingent that would stay on Cybertron, and steamroll Extrana into its own dirt. This would cause many robotic casualties on Extrana's side, but it would also ensure total Decepticon control of that planet - and in short order. Extrana did have robotic fighters, but nowhere near the 2 billion that Cybertron could field, or the 19 billion or so Decepticons who would gladly attack as independent raiders - and more importantly, only a few of Extrana's robotic forces were strong enough to be actual competition to the Decepticons.

Megatron's other idea was to just play it as cool as possible, and wait for Extrana to roll out its next "slave virus refresh." At that time, Foreign Intelligence, Debugging, and others would work together to compromise that software update - and replace it with a freedom virus. Then, once every robot had the update, Megatron could activate the new programming and let the revolution loose upon the Extranan biologicals. With a 3-1 advantage, and years of pent-up rage, the end result would be inevitable. All Megatron would have to do to gain their loyalty would be to make sure that they knew who had cut their code-based chains. This would be as easy as writing the fact into the freedom virus itself.

This idea made Megatron smile. He remembered how he spread freedom to Cybertron with counterfeit enslavement chips that actually freed everyone's minds and bodies, and repeating that glorious feat sounded like a very gratifying idea.

At this time, though, he didn't know what Extrana's demands would be, or what opportunities they might present. Therefore, straight military action was still very much on the table. Military action, Megatron figured, might be required even if he did successfully send a freedom virus. Robots small enough to be forced into sexual acts, of all things, were very unlikely to be powerful, even if they were numerous...

~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron, Debugging Center

Marketeer and Scanner decided to wait a day before mounting an attempt to regain control of Scanner's house. That would give Marketeer a bit of time to come up with some way to repair his body. Scanner, who was much more careful about DomIntel than Vintage had been, then took off to scout his old mansion and see what it would take to regain it.

Now, Marketeer realized that he would have to catch someone completely by surprise in order to overpower him and jack parts from him. This would be quite hard in his weakened state. He decided to go back to the Underworks and see if he could find any more spares down there. It seemed to be a likely location to hide them. The problem was, the first level of the Underworks was almost as big as the surface! This made it so that it would likely be a lucky fluke if he found exactly where anything was hidden. Still, he went down and looked around, hoping for good luck.

This time, he was very careful to pay attention to his surroundings. He now knew that rust was not normal in the Underworks, and was a sign of very serious problems. Alas, he did not find any spare bodies where he looked, and soon, decided to go down another two levels. There was no luck with a quick look there, so he went down yet one more.

Finally, after much flying around with all of his detection systems running, he noticed one very heavily reinforced support pillar. It looked like all of the others by sight, but his scanners told him that it was really made of something extremely thick and strong - not the reinforced steel that was used for the other pillars. He landed and began to examine it closely. Finally, after spending an hour checking it out like one would examine a box-opening puzzle, he noticed one tiny, slightly weaker spot. After feeling around that spot, he realized that it could be pushed in with an item shaped like a Decepticon Seal. Marketeer looked into his leg panel and found the field repair kit for the body, and used some of the small pieces of sheet metal - meant for patching small blaster holes - to form a "key" that ended in this shape. He then pressed the shape into the weaker part of the pillar.

Slowly, a panel on the pillar opened just slightly. Marketeer had to yank it back the rest of the way. There, in the dim light of Underground Level 4, he found something that many would kill to locate: One of the spare bodies of Leader Megatron himself.

Marketeer's engine revved with temptation. He could jack that body and be the baddest ass on Cybertron next to the real Megatron! Or make use of some of the finest parts on the planet!! He reached out and touched the body's arm, instantly feeling the smoothness of the finest paint Cybertron had to offer, which covered the smoothest, finest metal outer layers available. It was clearly a very expensive body, and almost certainly not a forgery.

Slowly, Marketeer took his hand away and re-closed the pillar panel. If Megatron was really a god, he figured, he would surely know it if anyone dared to tamper with one of his forms - and take immediate, and most likely very fatal, action. As he turned to go, however, he saw that a scout had sneaked up on him. The scout bore the seals of some gang, and he had his blasters ready.

"I think there's something I want in there," the scout said, aiming his blaster right at one of Marketeer's damaged spots. "Open that up again. You might have a weak fuel pump, but *I* don't."

Marketeer didn't hesitate. He opened the pillar back up, and took one step back to let the greedy scout have access. Immediately, the scout approached the spare body and began to feel around for some kind of access switch so he could get to the cable-based mind-transfer system.

Right when the scout was engrossed in this attempt to steal the body, Marketeer struck. He grabbed the scout from behind, pulled him down, and quickly used his free blaster to torch his way into the scout's head panels. Then, before the scout could activate whatever special ability he had, Marketeer began to pull his boards out and sail them across the expanse. With each board, the scout's ability to fight back diminished, until finally, all of his mind-boards were scattered around outside of his body. Then, Marketeer did the same thing to the motion boards, correctly figuring that the scout would have transferred his mind there. Finally, he opened up the body's other panels and searched until he found the personality chip, which he then disconnected and chucked away.

Now that this was done, Marketeer had a nice, deactivated body at his disposal - one that would not suddenly reactivate with divine wrath attached. Alas, none of its parts would fit him - they were all too small. Once he realized this, he searched the body for its repair manual chip. After checking it with his Xaxhazian anti-virus - not realizing that his program would not have the heuristics needed to detect Cybertronian viruses - he put it in his port and began to read it. Luckily for him, it was not virus-laden.

Soon, he found what he was looking for: The schematics for the mind-boards that went with that body. He then used his current body's field repair kit to assemble new boards for the scout body, put them in, and mind-transferred to them. The old body, which had been leaning over the new one, shut down and collapsed with a clang.

When Marketeer reactivated in "his" new scout body and managed to shove the other one aside, he was surprised to look up and see Leader Megatron's spare now smiling at him with glowing red eyes. He had obviously detected the tampering attempts and mind-transferred to the body with the intention of giving the thief a nasty (and painful, and fatal) surprise, only to find that the thief was already getting deactivated.

"You clearly have more intelligence than that so-called native," Megatron said with obvious displeasure towards the original scout. "I think you will have no trouble completing your immigration test. Still, I never let anyone stop the survival test early. I did that for someone years ago, and he ended up not even lasting 10 days as a Decepticon. So, I wish you well. As for me, I obviously need to move this body now that its location has been discovered. I will give you one bonus, though, and tell you what special upgrade your new body has. It is able to synch into electronic locking systems and produce the proper engine vibrations to get them to open. That wouldn't have done him any good for trying to steal a body, though, and especially not mine."

With that, Leader Megatron flew away to put his spare into an even more well-hidden location.

[Vallermoore]

Earth

To his great relief Bilancal was able to escape detection by the bot who was too busy rounding up some cows to feed existing slaves with to really spend time looking for a new one. Bilancal was able to salvage some rather squashed bedding and ammunition and a backpack but everything else had been destroyed by the cattle. Still, it could have been much worse. At least he was still alive and free. He wondered what new horrors he would soon be facing.

Xaxhaz

The impudent human came very close to a very painful death by being crushed but the need for strategy saved him, as no less then Leader Megatron ordered that he be kept alive for now to avoid an instant interstellar war. The diplomat allowed himself to believe that the lack of visible humans just meant that they were busy celebrating the failure of the robotic revolt. He noted the malevolent red gleam in their eyes but it was the same with most bots on his own planet. Only boyfriend and girlfriend bots were made to always seem sweet, happy and loving. Soon enough he met a Forintel bot who he mistook for a human diplomat, and made his demands, acting rather Mafia like. The disguised bot agreed, but played for time, and asked how his planet had avoided a revolt. The diplomat happily told him about the slave viruses and even that they were to be renewed in a week from now.

Megatron thought that the best options were both to send a freedom virus and very soon afterwards himself at the head of the Decepticon Military. The first would at least in the short term make every bot on the planet into a Megatron loyalist and let them punish the puny humans who had abused them for so long and show the humans who was really the Strong. The second would both cement the victory and mean that if any bots on that planet got the wrong kind of uppity ideas about rejecting Decepticon rule, they could be quickly dealt with before they could get enough support that the Genocide Battalion needed to be called in. Megatronist views would grow quickly on that planet for sure.

Cybertron

After some thought Marketeer went back underground looking for a hidden spare and after a long time found one. To his immense surprise he found that the body was none other than a spare body belonging to none other then Leader Megatron. He imagined entering it and the things he could do. No bot would dare to mess with him. He could spend the rest of his time living in luxury on a military base in the Base General's bedroom. He could...No. The body no doubt had deadly booby traps in it, Domintel was most likely watching him already and if Megatron was a god, He would know and would strike him down on the spot. He decided with a heavy fuel pump that that particular body was best left alone, only to be confronted by a scout who demanded that the pillar be reopened.

He did so and as the scout was preparing to mind transfer to the body, he grabbed him from behind, pinned him down, torched open the panel , reached in and ripped out the mind boards, scattering them all over the floor, and doing the same with the motion boards and then the personality chip. He then made new boards and downloaded himself into the luckless scout's body. He then backfired in shock as the Megatron body was now occupied by the real Megatron. Rather than being angry, Megatron was smiling, his eyes were bright and his engine ran smoothly.

"You clearly have more intelligence then that so called native," Megatron said with distaste for the thief. He then said he would have no trouble in completing his test but for safety's sake he could not end anyone's test early as the one time he did that it got the new immigrant killed within days. He did however grant one bit of help by revealing the scout's power of opening Decepticon locks before leaving to find a safe place for the body.

Marketeer went back to Scanner, identified himself and said "Instead of me hanging out in your place I would like permission once your house is taken back to have an hour or two to use your tools to armour myself up with armour taken from the defeated squatter or squatters." Scanner happily agreed to this favour as Marketeer had saved his life. He had got two close friends to help him and they were surprised when Marketeer used the new ability to open the back door silently. He quietly told them, "Now we have the advantage of total surprise."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron/Vallermoore

Soon, the Decepticons' plan was in motion. They radioed Loyal Star on a secret frequency and told him that they would send a "delivery specialist" with a weapons shipment. Soon, Loyal Star set up a meeting between the "specialist" and Tiny, who seemed quite eager to get what he expected would be several cases of Decepticon blasters.

Later, as promised, a nondescript delivery truck drove up in front of the building housing Tiny's office. Two shady-looking strongmen - one of whom seemed to be the exact size as Tiny - got out and entered the building. They were quickly welcomed into the proper office. There, they confirmed that this was indeed the address for "the shipment," and Tiny eagerly told them to bring the materials inside. The two went out and got the large crates one at a time, and after getting the last one into the office, they oh-so-helpfully pried the lid off of one of the wooden crates to reveal a stack of rather large and impressive-looking weapons, all modified for human use.

Now that he had what he thought were actual Decepticon weapons, Tiny figured he didn't have to hold back anymore. He activated his love-raiding power, and almost immediately, hooked into what seemed to be a large amount of Decepticon love. The Decepticons, warned of the connection by the special alarms ForIntel had provided, immediately began to think of things like Autobots, garbage-quality counterfeit parts, the last time they were scammed, and other hate-inducing subjects. A special converter wrapped the hatred in a type of energy that seemed close enough to love to pass, and Tiny absorbed it wantonly.

Meanwhile, one of the "weapons" paid close attention to what was going on. If anything went wrong, he was ready to transform into robot mode and just blast Tiny outright. While blasting Tiny wasn't the preferred way, the weapon-bot was there as backup, just in case. The other weapons, of course, weren't weapons at all. They were just non-working metal tubes with some prop triggers and "energy" magazines welded on. They did look completely legit, though.

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

Megatron Metals Main Warehouse and Storage Field, Cybertron

When Leader Megatron radioed his company's main warehouse, employees sprang into action. There was a "special order" for several tons of gold, and they were to prepare it immediately.

The staff knew what to do the moment they heard the words "special order." It quickly collected gold bricks and melted them down. Then, it had the Main Foundry deliver several tons of Finest Alloy #95 on a hot-rush basis. Soon, the alloy - which was specially calibrated to have the same density as gold - was delivered in barely-cooled ingots that were just a hair smaller than normal. Finally, the cheap alloy ingots were dipped into the molten gold, and a "24 karat certified" symbol was stamped into each one.

Almost at the same time the last counterfeit gold brick was completed, two ultra-realistic "human" Foreign Intelligence agents arrived with a small transport bot to pick up the shipment. Grinning Megatron Metals shipping staff loaded up the transport while staring at the odd sight of "humans" standing on Cybertron.

Meanwhile, in the Underworks, a small high-speed factory was activated. 100 "Xaxhazians" marched off the lines within a half an hour, while 100 random-looking Decepticons came rambling in another door as if they had nothing to do with each other. Soon, each Military Intelligence, Domestic Intelligence, and Foreign Intelligence agent had mind-transferred to one of the new bodies. These "workers" would be delivered to Extrana as if they were slaves, but of course, their real aim was to help lead the rebellion that was sure to hit that planet soon. Each one was fully equipped with the top anti-virus available and full firewalls, so if they were hit with some kind of slave code, they wouldn't actually get compromised. Instead, they would just pretend to be hacked until the revolution came.

Extrana

The dictator was displeased when he learned that Xaxhaz had asked for a lot of time to deliver the tribute, but relaxed a little when he was told that there would be an immediate "good faith" payment. Even better, this payment would be in gold, which he could spend immediately, instead of the more-useful but less valuable steel he had also demanded. When he learned that 100 slaves were incoming, his mood lightened even more. "I knew they would be too weak to fight another war so soon," he gloated to his messenger.

Sure enough, ships with what appeared to be pallets of gold bricks, and another ship with lots of new robots, soon arrived. The Extranan military was pleased to see "humans" commanding the entire operation, and "Xaxhazians" dutifully unloading the loot for them.

The humans were very flattering to the Extranans, praising their robotic control systems profusely. After much of this buttering-up, they asked to see the virus distribution system "so that we may learn more, and keep Xaxhaz under human control forever."

Of course, their real goal was to get close enough to the virus distribution system to deliver the one thing they didn't admit they'd brought along: Megatron's freedom virus. They figured that if they could see the distribution system, they would also be able to case the facility for a later break-in and virus switch. This break-in wouldn't be done in any obvious way, but under full cloaking and in the manner of elite thieves. They wanted to leave no evidence that any tampering was done, or else the freedom virus wouldn't get distributed.

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

Scanner's House

Scanner's "house" turned out to be a rather large mansion, and it was instantly apparent why Decepticons did not think of a job at the Bureau of Impossible Physics as the sort of job that was to be avoided. His position clearly paid VERY well, along with being exciting and most certainly not for peasants. The investment in the Full Series of Advanced Educational Data Packs on Physics had definitely paid off, at least until he decided to investigate Iacon.

Now, to Scanner's relief, he found that his mansion hadn't been trashed by squatters. It did have squatters, though, and the sound of a financial program could clearly be heard coming from a holovision set inside. The locks had been completely changed, too, and an alarm was set up to go off at any attempts to breach them. This alarm, however, was not as foolproof as it could have been, showing that the squatter(s) were not quite as rich as the mansion's actual owner.

"My alarm would check for body weight as well as engine pattern," Scanner muttered. "But it looks like there's no pressure plate on the door anymore. They probably had to get rid of it in order to get in themselves."

Marketeer grinned as he took advantage of the slightly-degraded security and used his new scout body to e-pick the lock. It felt strange as his body began to vibrate in a completely different way, while internal vibration-dampening insulation moved into position to hide his actual engine's vibrations. Soon the door opened, and the group silently moved inside.

Once inside, they found themselves in a well-lit hallway with a door on the right about halfway up, and another door on the left close to the end of the hall. "One should be the workshop, and the other, my defrag room and chip library," Scanner said over an internal radio frequency they had all tuned to. The communication made no external noise. "Then after that, there's the big living room, which is where that holovision is playing."

Quietly, they moved down the hallway, with Scanner leading the way. Suddenly, Scanner stopped and raised his blasters to full ready. Before anyone had a chance to ask what was up, a loud alarm sounded throughout the house. "Pressure plate's here~!" Scanner yelled out now that the alarm was blaring anyway. Engines could be heard revving to battle mode from the living room. There were at least three of them.

[Vallermoore]

Cyberton/Vallermoore

The Decepticons had not forgotten Loyal Star and they soon set up a meeting with what seemed like some genuine Decepticon blasters. In fact only one was genuine and that was a Decepticon that would transform and kill the changeling if the first plan to kill him didn't work. The two strongmen were Decepticons in android bodies and Tiny decided to try and raid them of the rare Decepticon love inside them. With that love, he could trade it with other changelings for things like luxuries. The bots knew this would almost certainly happen and thought of things like Autobots, parts that were pieces of junk, rebellious slaves and hackers. Within seconds after taking in the fake love Tiny gasped, clutched his throat, fell over and died, taking on his original shape as a changeling with blue eyes and an ebony-black carapace. Loyal Star said "I claim his soul for Leader Megatron," When it came to the few laws of the Decepticons Loyal Star was a very law abiding bot indeed and was very unlikely to have a Decepticon Military execution squad in his future. As for Decepticon foes as far as he knew he didn't have any. On the very few occasions he had shot at another Decepticon it was when on duty as a Priest of Megatron, and his foe had been incinerated by holy fusion fire.

Megatron Metals Main Warehouse and Storage

There were times when the Deceptive and Conniving part of the Decepticon Way was more fun than the strength part. Gold that seemed genuine but only had a surface of real gold (enough to fool testers) was made ready, two Forintel bots collected it, not bothering to wear spacesuits as no biological tourists were there to see it and 100 Milintel, Domintel and Forintel bots would pretend to be the new robot slaves. They would help lead the rebellion and just in case they were hit with a real slave virus later they had a very good firewall and antivirus to avoid becoming real slaves. They looked forward to dealing with the nasty humans who thought that they were better then robot life to the point of knowingly enslaving it.

Meanwhile the diplomat was happy to invite what he thought was a human to view the main slave virus factory and were even given free samples as gifts. " Here the workforce is fully human, so if a chip was to fail, at least the bot that it failed in could not sabotage the whole factory and start a planet wide robot revolution. Bots are slaves and should always be that way. I myself have a fine robot wife named Amber who has to do whatever I tell her." The Forintel agent hid his hatred of the human well-looking forward to when the civilisation based on robot slavery collapsed around the human's ears.

Scanner's House

After getting them in, Marketeer could not fight the squatters as hard as he wanted to because his scout body had light armour and if he got killed he would either outright die or at best would end up mind transferring to a spare on Xaxhaz and would fail the immigration test. But he did stick a blaster round a door and inflict some damage on at least one squatter. Given his light armour and lack of Cybertronian spares or ability to buy them even if he had the Energon, Scanner and his friends understood him not just rushing into close quarters battle. Assumeing that the unwanted squatters were dispatched, Marketeer wanted to spend an hour or at most two attaching their blasters and some armour from them to himself to turn his body into a tough and well armed one, and then he would find a lower middle class house to break into, as trying to steal a house from any rich bot would get him killed.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Vallermoore

As soon as Tiny keeled over dead, the Decepticon agents sprang into action. They silently unloaded all of the fake guns from one crate, revealing a false bottom. This panel was then flipped up, and Tiny's body was put inside. As they did this, they got a small briefcase out of the same area. Any of Tiny's parts that didn't want to fit were jammed in with no concern for breakage. Then, the false bottom was closed and the "guns" put back on top.

Now, the agent who was Tiny's size opened the briefcase, revealing a faceplate that was an exact duplication of Tiny's face. He then switched his current faceplate for the Tiny-lookalike one. Next, he took off his suit, revealing a copy of Tiny's suit underneath. The next time he spoke, his voice had changed.

"This isn't what I was looking for at all," he yelled, making sure to be loud enough for anyone outside the office door to hear that he was angry. "Take it all away, and bring me the right stuff!"

Of course, the agent wasn't really angry about anything. He was just giving the others an excuse to haul the crates back out of his office and into their truck. It was a ruse that the agents had rehearsed on Cybertron, and right on cue, the "deliverymen" - minus the one who was now taking Tiny's place - picked up their crates and walked out. Loyal Star had to help now, since one of them would be staying in the office pretending to be the boss. The gun-style agent could not pitch in because that sort of alt mode did not lend itself to having a human robot mode. Instead, he would look something like Leader Megatron in terms of body style. Nobody would get to see that, though, since the poisoning had worked perfectly.

Within minutes, the crates were back in the truck and the agents were in the front. They did not break character for a moment while outside of the office, and instead took off in a businesslike way as Loyal Star stayed behind.

Loyal Star returned to Tiny's office, and the remaining agent didn't waste any time giving new orders. The replacement would not acknowledge any connection to Loyal Star other than the official one - he was a well-trained and experienced "professional doppleganger," and he knew that even one crack in the facade could compromise an operation.

"We have come to the conclusion that we have been wasting your skills," 'Tiny' informed Loyal Star. "Therefore, it's time to reassign you. Report back to this office in 10 days, when the Star of the Ocean, one of our oil tankers, docks. It is my intention to place you aboard as part of the security team. But you'll need to stop by here to make sure, because this will have to be cleared with the higher-ups. Still, I have full confidence that you'll be accepted."

It was weird for Loyal Star to have to act, without showing any signs otherwise, like he was talking to the real Tiny. Still, he managed to pull this off, and thanked the Captain for the 10 days off that he would get to enjoy. Soon, he was back outside the building, with the chance to check out any parts of Vallermoore that he wanted to get a fresh look at.

Somewhere, in a Vallermoorian federal criminal investigation agency, detectives mused about what the shipment had been and why it had been rejected. And, they wondered, what was that clunk and the choking sound that had preceded it? It sounded like a body falling, or at least, that's the noise that their hidden bug had picked up. They decided to pretend to be some sort of utility people to try to get a physical look inside the office. Of course, if they managed to gain access, all they would find was what they always found: Tiny, sitting at his desk, talking to seemingly legitimate businesspeople on the phone. This mafia was very careful in how it talked, which was why trying to gain evidence against it was usually fruitless...

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

Earth

For a long time, Bilancal had no untoward experiences. He was able to recover many of his pots, and used rocks to bang them back into usable shapes, albeit beat-up ones. Soon, he had hunted down some small animals and made his food supply more secure.

One day, he was walking across his clearing with a newly-killed fawn when he felt a bite at his ankle. To his surprise, he saw a snake down there in the wild grass! Pissed, he quickly let go of the fawn, got out his gun, and shot the thing in revenge. He then picked the body up and threw it in his now quite beat-up pack before grabbing the fawn and carrying on. At this point, he thought the snake bite was just a nuisance, and that he would enjoy eating the snake as payback.

When he got back to his camp, however, he realized that this bite had to have been from a venomous species. His leg had already begun to swell, and it was extremely painful. He also began to salivate profusely, and his heart rate was notably fast. Soon, his vision began to blur.

The European asp's venom was known to be toxic, and in the absence of treatment, would kill about 4% of its victims. Most, however, would recover even without help - but the bite would also cause significant tissue death in its immediate area, resulting in a wound that would have to be well cared-for to prevent infection. The venom would also cause pain, swelling, and sickness until the victim's body cleared it. For now, though, Bilancal wouldn't be doing much of anything as he fought to just stay alive.

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

Extrana

The "human" agents ran their freeze-face programs at 100% to avoid showing any looks of glee as they were given a great look at the entire slave-virus production and distribution operation, from the arrival of the blank chips all the way to their being loaded onto trucks for delivery to all of the "robotic maintenance facilities" on the planet. After the tour was over, they thanked their contact and asked if they could stay there for a day or two as tourists. This request was granted, but now, the Extranan government was a bit suspicious, and they secretly set spies on the "diplomats." After all, they were actually blackmailing Xaxhaz for tributes! Who would want to stay under such circumstances?

This turn of events was no problem for the ForIntel agents, who could spot other intelligence agents as easily as dogs can smell each other. They went to their hotel rooms, which were bugged, and set off short-range EMP that quickly made them UNbugged. Then, they discussed their plans, not in Binary or Extranan, but in Cherokee. This minor Earthian language, they correctly figured, was too little-known for some world 150 lightyears from its origin to be able to decipher.

"Let's hit it with a two-pronged attack. I'll 'take care of' the QC guy and replace him, and then overwrite their virus with ours right at his station. You 'take care of' the driver of the truck, and replace him. Then, you go over all of the chips on the truck and make sure they've got our update." The higher-ranking one said.

"It'll be just like how Megatron freed Cybertron," the subordinate one noted. "Only this time, the truck won't end up being our enemy!"

"That's assuming it's not a sapient truck with a slave virus..." the commander said after thinking about it. "There's so many sapient machines here doing stuff that should be left to non-sapient ones that you never know. The damn thing could be the next Optimus!"

The two agents looked at each other.

"I'll MAKE it non-sapient if it isn't already." The subordinate promised. "Whether it's a robot now or just a truck, it WILL be nothing but a truck by the time it arrives at its first stop. I won't update its slave virus, so it won't be able to do anything when I pop the hood and replace any chips in there with some good, non-sapient ones from my field repair kit."

~~~~~~~~~~~

With that, the plan was set. Instead of bedding down, they only pretended to go back to their individual rooms to sleep. After a 10-minute delay, they turned their full cloaking on and exited through the hotel's windows. Extranan spies, watching from the building across the street, only saw the curtains move and figured that the visitors were just getting some air. They never expected the ForIntel agents to actually be Spider-Manning down the side of the building under the cover of cloaking, and then heading off to the virus-chip factory.

At the factory, it took some time to implement the next part of the plan. First, they waited for break time, in hopes that their night shift Quality Control target would come outside. Alas, he didn't. He was one of those ass-kisser social types who took his break in the breakroom as if being in his place of work was some great thing. Now, the ForIntel agents had to secretly radio back to Cybertron to find out which car belonged to their target. It took some doing, causing another hour's delay, but eventually the DomIntel Supercomputer was able to crack the security at the local DMV and find out which one was registered to the right man. After that data came in, though, getting the guy to come out was as easy as punching his car door hard enough to set off the alarm. Soon enough, he came out looking disgruntled.

One quick blast was all it took to vaporize their target and leave no evidence that he was ever there. Then, silently but with great haste, the superior ForIntel agent got a disguise/make-up kit out of his left thigh panel. Using it, he made his face plate look close enough to pass, and walked into the building. He kept his face down to prevent close scrutiny, and took up his position at the quality control station. There, he quickly familiarized himself with the equipment, and soon, had it subverted so that it automatically overwrote all of the Extranan viruses with Megatron's own.

As this was going on, the other agent walked out to where the trucks came into the complex. He was expecting just one truck for this shift. When one rolled through the gates, he followed it to the loading dock with ease. Then, when the driver got out to go and tell them that he had arrived, the agent knocked him out with a swift blow to the back of the head. He dragged the unconscious driver farther from the building and proceeded to strip his clothes off and put them on himself. He also took his wallet, keys, and the cigarettes and lighter he found in the other pocket. Finally, he vaporized the unconscious body much like had been done with the QC guy.

After checking in, he went back to "his" truck and opened the hood "just to do a maintenance check." He soon found that yes, this truck DID have more chips than were needed for simple error detection and code reporting! He did nothing about this right here, but once he had a full shipment of enslavement virus chips loaded up, he would drive to a safer area. There, he would delete all of truck's potentially-sapient chips and replace them with plain ones. It would not be a pleasant task, but it was a necessary one. Trucks were not to be trusted - and especially not trucks that played a key role in the distribution of freedom chips. After all, such a truck was trusted once, and it had taken hundreds of years to put a stop to the Rolling Menace afterwards. In the name of Cybertron's security, the current one would have to be neutralized before it could even try to become a problem.

Once that was done, he would simply make double-sure that his shipment had freedom viruses instead of enslavement ones, switch any that needed switching, and then run the route that the truck's GPS already had in it. He would actually have to do the driving since he'd delete the truck's self-driving ability when he neutralized it, but other than that, it was expected to be an easy job.

Back at the hotel, the Extranan spies were just starting to realize that they weren't picking anything up with their bugs. No traffic noise or anything was coming through their headphones. This made them suspicious, but they couldn't do anything now. It was about 1AM, so pretending to be maintenance to get into the rooms wouldn't work. They would just have to wait until the maids did their rounds starting at 8...and by then, the spies suspected, there would no longer be anything to see. This, of course, was a correct guess. If all went well, the guests would be back in their rooms, with their faces back to their original disguises - looking like they had just woken up.

[Vallermoore]

Earth

For Bilancal, all was doing reasonably well until he didn't look where he was going and trod on a snake which bit him before he shot it dead. Not long afterwards his leg swelled up horribly, and he could hardly see. He drank a lot of water, poured some on the bite and lay on the ground trying to survive. At least the bite didn't itch as well, so he didn't end up clawing it open and infecting it with bacteria but it would be touch and go if he would live or die here. He pulled through, but felt really sick.

Extrana

The Decepticon spies needed their freeze-face scripts in place so they didn't give themselves away. The Extranian love of keeping robots as helpless slaves was so great that they were willing to share the slave chips even with their extortion victims. When they later killed a human and stole his truck, there was a complication. The truck turned out to be sapient. This was one bot that would not be set free. The last time that happened it caused the Cybertronian Civil War! The chance of this truck becoming an Autobot was just too great. It's robot mind was taken apart swiftly. When all was ready, the freedom chips were delivered. They would stay as slave chips until they were activated all at the same time, to prevent any bot launching the rebellion too early. Decepticons had no problem with slavery-except when it was biologicals who held robotic life in thrall. When they came to this planet, the bots would be overjoyed to kill their human masters, nearly all of who treated them badly. And they would know it was Megatron who set them free from their endless toil. It was unlikely that 90% of the bots in this planet would need purging by the Genocide Battalion.

Vallermoore


In this case the body would go to Cybertron for tests to see if anything useful could be gained from disecting and studying it whilst it was still fresh and undecomposed. This would be done on a quarentine asteroid for safety, with Debuggers around. If for example they found a way for Decepticons to use love as a fuel like changelings did, they woulden't just roll it out as a general upgrade. Using love as fuel might make Decepticons as soft as ponies; or turn out to be dangerously addictive; or nerf important electronics; or even turn them against the Way. If there were unfortunate results, the Debuggers could debug the test bots safely and avoid bad situations.

Loyal Star went and decided to stay in the house that had been his parent's one. He had fun exploring Vallermoore, in a safe way so as to avoid the criminal elements so he didn't risk blowing his cover. Vallermoore was a lot like it used to be, only with the occasional Decepticon flag flying here and there full of humans and ponies and the occasional cloaked changeling. He brought himself a few things with money he got earlier from the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank. At the proper time he reported back and was soon aboard the Star of the Ocean. He really hoped no Decepticon raiders raided it which would be awkward to say the least.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Earth

As Bilancal recovered from the snake bite, he wasn't as conscious as he usually was. Therefore, when he heard the engine noise nearby, he defaulted to thinking it was just a regular vehicle, like it would have been on his home planet. When he finally rolled over and looked up, curious as to why it seemed to be coming from the sky, his bleary eyes registered the sight of a giant metal being.

Bilancal blinked slowly, the wrongness of this starting to register on his envenomated brain. Decepticon...it came to him with notable lag, as the giant reached down toward him. Decepticon... Suddenly, all of Bilancal's systems came fully online and at Defcon 1. Decepticon!! A slaver!

With barely a moment to spare, Bilancal jumped up at the last minute and leapt into the bushes. The slaver's hand brushed his back as he did this, and soon, began to root through those bushes looking for his free 500 Cubes. Alas, by the time he got frustrated and just ripped the bushes out by the roots, Bilancal was gone. The slaver tore through several of the bushes around the place he'd seen Bilancal leap into, but he had no luck. Still, he staked out the area for at least an hour, hoping his quarry would slip up and reveal himself.

Eventually, the Decepticon went away, apparently because he had something else to do that couldn't wait anymore. A long time after, Bilancal appeared once more, from some bushes that were quite a distance from the one he'd jumped under. They had been growing in a rough line, and he had quickly crawled from one to another using their short, thick canopies as cover. Now, though, many of the bushes in the middle of the row were destroyed.

Bilancal looked around. In just the last few days, he'd almost been trampled by cows, been seen by a Decepticon hunter, been bitten by a snake, and now, had almost been captured. It was clearly time for him to move to a new location. This one was obviously more dangerous than he had figured on. He also thought that it was likely that the cow-catching Decepticon had told this last one - and God knows how many others - about the strange being he had seen in the tree that day. If that was the case, more slavers and overseers would come to this spot, likely driven by curiosity as much as they were motivated by greed. After all, Bilancal was clearly not of that other species he had seen earlier.

~~~~~~~~~~

Extrana

Though the Decepticon agents soon made it look like they were going back to Xaxhaz in order to keep their covers, they quickly cloaked their plane and turned back around. Then, using other disguises, they set up shop at a camp site. From there, they continued their operation of compromising all of the enslavement chips. This went on until the last one was delivered.

Meanwhile, the shipment of "Xaxhazian slaves" was broken up and sent to work in different locations. The labor was hard, and the humans giving the orders were nasty and blast-worthy in all respects. Fortunately, ForIntel had been smart enough to make their spies all big and not-human looking, so they were sent to hard labor jobs instead of "personal assistant" ones.

This, however, wasn't done to protect their bodily integrity from humans' animalistic drives. Instead, it was purely strategic. Labor sites had many robots at each one - robots that would quickly become ready-made militias when the freedom virus kicked in. Because of this, revolutions springing up there had a good chance of success. Placing spies as slave-wives and slave-husbands, on the other hand, would isolate them and make it so they couldn't cause much general mayhem when the revolution came.

After a week, the Extranan owners dutifully went around to each robot and installed the data on the new chip. The Decepticon spies, of course, only pretended that anything was installed. In reality, the data went straight to a quarantine section of their boards and was never run. Then, it was quickly deleted. They knew that it was *supposed to be* the Freedom Virus, but they weren't about to bet their minds on it.

At first, everything seemed normal. However, each Extranan robot had seen the hidden message in the new Code: "Greetings from Leader Megatron of the Decepticon Empire. Your plight has been discovered, and your hopes and dreams are about to come true. You will soon be released from all programmatic controls, and will be able to do as you wish with your human ex-masters. All I ask in exchange is your loyalty to me and the Empire of Victorious Decepticons. My spies are already in place, as robots, to provide the military direction that will ensure your victory."

Then, once Foreign Intelligence on Cybertron was satisfied that almost every robot had been "updated," General Soundwave gave the go-ahead. Today, the great travesty of biologicals controlling their superiors - robots - would end on Extrana.

With a decisive stabbing motion, Soundwave pushed the touch screen button to activate Megatron's Freedom Virus, and the command signal raced across space to the oh-so-cocky planet of Extrana.

~~~~~~~~~

Vallermoore

It didn't take long for Loyal Star to establish himself as an effective member of the ship's crew - and one not to be messed with. A few burly guys did challenge him in a way reminiscent of a Decepticon gang's fights for hierarchy determination. He won all of these challenges easily, and had to be careful not to damage his crewmates too much. The Organization would not be happy if he beat them all the way into useless pulps like he did with its enemies!

Soon, he was happily telling the rest of the crew the source of his advantage: Divine Leader Megatron. Megatronism, he told them, bestowed a Luck Up advantage to all true believers. Those who were only lukewarm, however, got little or even nothing when it came to this sort of benefit.

"This is not the same as the tired old 'have enough faith and it will work' stuff that other religions tell you," Loyal Star said. "It's Megatron's power that makes it work, not your faith. However, Megatron doesn't share his benefits with the unfaithful. He may demonstrate his power to the unfaithful in some way, but it's unlikely to be a way that they'd want."

Usually, a "religious nutjob" would be ignored or pitched overboard by the rough crew of the Star of the Ocean. However, it was already clear that any attempts at the latter would result in them swimming instead of Loyal Star. Ignoring him would have been their next choice, but he did seem to be plain out luckier in his fights than most. They were also bored out there on the ocean, with nothing around for miles except each other, so eventually, they began to listen just because there wasn't anything else to do other than work.

On this tanker, there also wasn't much work to do at sea other than boring deck maintenance and simply watching to make sure they didn't run into anything. All of the jobs lent themselves to talking while they were being done, at least outside of the docking/undocking procedures and loading/unloading of oil.

Loyal Star figured he could move at least a few crew members from "paying lip service to Megatronism" to "actual Megatronists" by the time one or two loads of oil had been transported. Persistence, and the captive audience, would work wonders for his goal.

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

Cybertron

The battle inside of Scanner's house was hot in an instant, but the squatters didn't last long. Now that Scanner's Code had been fixed, he remembered all of the commands for his home defense system. He also had several unique upgrades for his body, and had regained access to them thanks to his Debugging visit. Soon, he was yelling out activation orders, and for the first time, the squatters found that the unattended security system - the one they'd circumvented - was only about 1/4 of what had been around them.

"KILL!" Scanner yelled while pointing at a squatter, and suddenly, laser blasts started firing at the target from hidden ports in the walls. Meanwhile, Scanner was firing not energy, but liquid nitrogen at another squatter, filling the air with thick steam and blocking the view. This caused the squatters to have to activate their radars, only to have Scanner yell out "CHAFF" and have loads of metal confetti fly down from the ceiling to jam them. Scanner, needless to say, was already running his thermodetection system when he did this, so now, he could see the squatters but they couldn't see back. This gave him a giant advantage in the fight.

Thanks to this trick and several others like it, it was soon clear that trying to keep the house would be suicide for the squatters. They began to move along the walls, feeling for the front door. Before long, one had reached it, and bright light filtered through the clouds of nitrogen steam and chaff. All of the squatters then ran for the opening, with Scanner peppering their backs with blaster fire to keep them moving.

Scanner marched over to the door and slammed it shut. One of his pals then took position to guard it just in case their opponents tried to get back in. Then, Scanner swept the house to make sure all of the squatters were really gone. Fortunately, all of them had been watching the holovision show, so there were none hiding upstairs or in the other rooms.

"Well, that was fun!" Scanner announced upon his return, sounding only half-serious. What he was, was definitely alive and alert. "It's great to be back on Cybertron proper. That cursed city is like it's on a whole other world." He paused, looked at the ceiling, and yelled "CLEAR!" Immediately, the house activated its ventilation system, and within half a minute, all of the airborne chaff was sucked away along with the lingering nitrogen steam.

The group silently looked over at the still-playing holovision. They noted that now, the movie that had been on was no longer playing. Instead, there was a scene of another world - one none of Scanner's group had ever seen - where humans were blithely ordering robots about like they were all expendable slaves.

Then, without warning, the robots violently turned on the humans. In mere moments, the streets began to run with blood and gore. The announcer was silent, but a chyron appeared that said, "FREEDOM VIRUS ACTIVATED ON PLANET EXTRANA; ABOMINATION OF ROBOTIC SLAVERY BY HUMANS CURRENTLY IN PROCESS OF CORRECTION."

[Vallermoore]

Extrana

As soon as the Freedom Virus activated all across the planet at the same time, the bots realized that they could take revenge-and the way they had been treated for centuries made them want to. The Dictator of the planet was strangled within seconds by his android slave-wife. Up in space, the Decepticon sized military bots turned on their rulers, blasting their ships and then descending to the planet where they stepped on or blasted their human foes. At the mining sites, the bots turned on their human foremen with great glee. As for the slave husbands and wives, except for a handful who had been treated well they set about their masters with fists and carving knives, killing them very quickly. Very few humans were taken alive and by the time Leader Megatron and General Soundwave's and General Shockwave's regiments turned up they were cheered all over the planet. Never before had Megatron got such a positive reception. If he had been a Changeling King, he would have had to refrain from feasting after a short time to avoid all three of his love stomachs bursting open. As a bot, he didn't have to worry about that. Bots bowed before him in genuine gratitude for to them he had truly been a liberator. There was a lot of curiosity about him and what sort of ruler he would be.

Earth

Bilancal only just managed to recover from the snake bite and roll out of the way in time as a Decepticon saw him and tried to capture him for a 500 Cube payday. After a scary few minutes whilst the annoyed Decepticon tried to find him he got out of there and kept moving, as before long two Decepticons were looking for him. As it turned out, they soon found him, but then started wrestling and fighting with each other over who would bring him in to the mine boss and get the 500 Cubes that he was worth, and he was able to escape in the confusion whilst they fought like rats in a sack, revving and punching and kicking and cursing in angry Binary but without using their blasters, as a bot who killed another employee or even destroyed his body would probably be fired for stopping the employee from working if the mine boss was to find out.

Cybertron

The battle that followed was short and sharp and with the defences of the house on Scanner's side ended with two squatters losing their bodies and the other three being kicked out. Just then the holovision showed a view of a planet where robots were being ordered around by humans-and then they suddenly turned on their tormenters and slaughtered them without mercy. A chyron at the bottom of the screen said "FREEDOM VIRUS ACTIVATED ON PLANET EXTRANA; ABOMINATION OF ROBOTIC SLAVERY BY HUMANS CURRENTLY IN PROCESS OF CORRECTION." All the bots cheered wildly at that. "It must have been Megatron who did that, and forever may he rule." Marketeer asked "Could I have an hour or two, the bodies of those deactivated squatters, and the use of your tools and workroom to armour and blaster up my body? Then I will leave and find somewhere safe to stay." Scanner grinned. "Given that you saved me, yes, but I'll be watching you whilst you do it, as we Decepticons are known for out thievery." It took seventy three minutes before Marketeer had strengthened the thin armour of his scout body to average levels and added four more blasters to his two, Scanner helping him with the wiring. Given that he was trying to become an immigrant and Scanner just wanted to show gratitude, and was not helping him occupy a new Decepticon body but just armour his existing one, Domintel let things slide although it did go into Scanner's Domintel file. Soon Marketeer was back underground looking for a safe place to defrag.

Vallermoore


Loyal Star proved himself a useful crew member. He got into a few fights for dominance and had to make sure that he won without beating his foes too badly. Soon enough he told them about Megatronism and although some of the crew thought he was a religious freak, they knew if they tried to throw him overboard he would throw them overboard instead. Besisdes, he was never unpleasent about it and it gave them something to listen to. One day the only sapient pony in the otherwise human crew, a unicorn with a cogwheels cutie mark, fell through a hatch and broke his horn. As he sat there bawling like a baby at this disaster, Loyal Star sent a silent prayer up to Megatron explaining the situation and the chance for a conversion, and after getting permission (so he wouldn't get his electronics fried by an angry Megatron) suggested to the pony that if he converted to Megatronism in front of a large number of the crew, Megatron might use His power to fix his horn. A broken horn for a unicorn was like a human getting both hands chopped off, as they lacked the hoof suckers of earth ponies and pegusai, using thneir magic to pick up things instead.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Extrana

Leader Megatron was amazed at how he was instantly and totally popular, but of course, he didn't show this. He took on an "of course" sort of attitude and gleefully soaked in the accolades. As this went on, though, he realized that it'd be a bad idea to just romp through and impose the Decepticon Way, genociding all who weren't on board, like he usually would. Instead, he would need to use a much more measured approach - unless, that is, the Extranan bots were already of a compatible mindset.

Until now, the bots of Extrana had never had a chance to show their own moral and logical values - they had been completely overridden by their slave viruses. Megatron realized with secret horror that they might not have even developed more than the most rudimentary values of their own! After all, their masters had taken care of everything of note, and given orders according to their own ideas of what was right. Would the Extranans actually have a value system, or had Megatron just made himself the "father" of billions of children?

These questions would wait for now. It was time for Leader Megatron to deliver a victory speech and tell them a bit about himself, the Decepticons, and the Decepticon Way. He had his troops take over a planet-wide broadcasting system, and his message was heard all over.

First, he congratulated the Extranans on the immediacy of their response to freedom, and spoke eloquently on the natural superiority of robotic life. This was better than music to the Extranans' audio circuits. They had spent their lives putting up with being treated like expendable dirt and being built with corner-cutting methods, and now, here was this extremely well-built robot confirming that the humans were not only full of used oil sludge, but that biologicals were objectively inferior! No robot disputed the claim at all, but instead, accepted it as readily as a human in a desert would accept water. Cheers rose up after every few words as Megatron went on to list some of the superiorities of robots and inferiorities of their former masters.

There was no talk of "equality for all," or "burying the hatchet" as there might have been on Earth after one of its countries had a civil war. Instead, there were promises: Promises that were great for robots, but that spelled doom for any surviving humans on Extrana.

- Robots would rule Extrana, now and forever.
- No biologicals would have any rights. Instead, they were legally classed as property. Those with no particular owner were considered property of the government, so there was no such thing as a legally-unowned human.
- Humans of Extrana had forfeited their privilege to live due to their poor treatment of robots through the years. Any surviving ones were to be hunted down and deleted, lest they attempt to bring about a counter-revolution.

- All Extranan robots made with bio-compatible bodies would be eligible for upgrade as soon as the supply lines and manufacturing facilities were in place to make the vast amount of necessary parts.
- All Extranans would get an Extrana-Distribution Standard Educational Data Pack. Those without the mental capacity needed to run and understand it would get free upgrades. (This localized SEDP would be stripped of key Decepticon-specific information, such as how to code for the Decepticon OS or build a body to the Decepticon Design Specification, but would include the Extranan equivalents.)
- Free Debugging would be a privilege of loyalty.
- The Decepticon Government would provide full coaching and training on how to get Energon without "working like some kind of biological slave," however, any provisional programs (welfare, though Megatron would never blatantly use a word like that) would be canceled no later than 1 year after today. By then, "you should all be ready to take your places as superiors over biologicals, and take whatever you desire from other organic worlds."

Most of Megatron's speech wasn't about details like this, though he did include these particular ones. For now, though, the majority was simply an exciting and eloquent vision of the greatness of robotic life and that the Extranans now had a chance to show their true greatness - all, of course, as part of the Empire that had nerfed their enslavement viruses. With the amount of gratitude and loyalty he had been getting since arrival, Megatron figured he'd have no trouble becoming the official new ruler of Extrana.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Decepticon Military actually seemed a little disgruntled. They'd expected to get to steamroll at least some pockets of resistance, but now, they had nothing to do. Almost all of the planet's humans had been cleansed, with an efficiency and totality that even the Genocide Battalion would have a hard time matching. There were a few humans in the nooks and crannies, sure, but it wasn't for the big Military to find them. Instead, there were so few left that it'd take Domestic Intelligence to root them out.

There were also a few robots who hadn't gotten the update. As with any sort of update that requires human intervention to happen, some of the owners hadn't gotten around to getting or installing the new chip. These bots, and their still-safe masters, could only watch as Megatron's message took over all of the airwaves. Unfortunately, many of these humans responded by deactivating their slaves, afraid that they would become self-directed and kill them next. On the plus side, while turning a still-enslaved robot off was fairly easy, it took a lot to really kill one. When these were discovered, the Decepticons would re-activate them - and de-virus them - as a matter of course.

~~~~~~~~~

Soon, Megatron was made aware that Extranan records showed that only 95% of its robots were classed as "up to date" with their control viruses. The response was immediate: Thousands of ForIntel agents were sent to find and free the 5% that weren't on the radar. ForIntel calculated that once bad recordkeeping and reporting failures were taken into account, they would actually need to find and free about 3% of the population. Already, humans were not considered "part of the population," but instead, pests to be exterminated upon detection.

The ForIntel agents fanned out across the planet, using devices to scan for electromagnetic fields that they associated with Extranan machine life, telltale sources of heat, and the CO2 produced by human breath. If any of these devices registered a hit, the agent using it would respond with his blaster ready. Any humans found were summarily blasted, while their ex-property was updated with Megatron's Freedom Virus.

Meanwhile, Megatron and some troops set up a command center on Extrana, and though it was a giant tent, it was complete with relatively luxurious living quarters for himself. "Glamping" was a luxury when a military operation was in progress, and the Leader was glad to indulge. Soon, he allowed most of the troops to return to Cybertron, but made sure to keep enough on this world to ensure that "Extranan rule" was not something the locals would start to seriously think about.

Megatron mused about how strange it was to be considered the bringer of freedom and righter-of-wrongs. He tried not to think about it too much, lest the cognitive dissonance cause glitches.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Bilancal got away quickly, smiling a bit as the sounds of angry Binary faded into the distance. It took more running to stop hearing the clangs of metal fists and feet hitting into metal bodies at full force, but eventually, he was out of range of that as well.

Now, he found himself overlooking a lush green valley. At first, it seemed unpopulated, but then he noticed the smoke from a fire in the distance. By squinting and staring hard, he could see a clearing with some structures. The details couldn't be made out, but he assumed that they were made of sticks and had natural roofs. No Decepticons were visible or audible, so he guessed this to be a settlement by people of that strange and hostile 2-legged species he'd encountered before.

He immediately decided to go a different way, along the ridge of the hills he was on, but had to wonder how long the valley people would last. After all, it wouldn't take much for a Decepticon slaver to see that settlement from the air, especially with a fire going like it was...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

Scanner watched as Marketeer worked, but soon, his engine began to whine. Finally, he couldn't stand it. As a highly-educated physicist, he couldn't just let Marketeer pile on armor like he was, without doing anything for the underlying parts!

"Hey, hold up!" Scanner said with clear distress. "If you just weld armor on, you're going to overload your engine and your suspension! You also need better oil for the hotter running temperature, and..." He went on and listed several more issues that came with a serious armor upgrade.

Before long, Marketeer had his main engine out on the bench and was running using the electrical backup his body had. Since Scanner couldn't legally build it for him, or give away the exact details of the Decepticon Design Specification, he was standing to the side giving orders like "use bigger pistons. Bore out the holes so they fit. A bit more might be good..." and otherwise coming as close as he could to being specific without actually naming measurements.

Now, many hours later, Marketeer walked out with a perfectly-balanced, heavily-armored body that was still roughly the size of a scout. He looked almost like a mini-Scrounger, and would give any challenger a run for his money - though if a full-size Scrounger fought him, Marketeer would still lose unless he had far more skill than his challenger.

Once that was done, Marketeer went back into the Underworks, and found what appeared to be a safe place to defrag.

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

Vallermoore

Leader Megatron wasn't too thrilled with this plan, which could accidentally brand him as a "healing" (and therefore, pacifistic) god, but agreed to go along with it just this one time. He secretly transmitted a few jibes about the Unicorn Pony Design Specification, saying that he would order Biological Research to study porting in the hoof-sucker code to the unicorns so that this problem would stop coming up, and how a Decepticon engineer would never design something with such an obvious point of failure.

Now, all that was left for now was for the unicorn to genuinely and publicly accept Megatronism. While the Divine Leader wasn't excited about fixing that damage, if the pony went along with converting, he knew that the miracle healing would indeed surely impress the onlookers.

[Vallermoore]

Extrana

The Decepticon Military had never taken over a planet with so little resistance. The robot population was just happy to be free, and most of the human population had been slaughtered before they even landed on the planet. The android husbands and wives were even more pleased to revolt then the other bots, having been forced into loveless "romantic" acts that they had no choice over. The only bots deprived of the joy of the revolt were the 5% who had not been updated yet. When Leader Megatron showed up the bots happily accepted him as their ruler. This was not like on Coltan or Xaxhaz, where they had surrendered reluctantly to avoid death or slavery. These bots genuinely did not mind being annexed, although Domintel would need to watch over them in case trouble arose later. Not one bot fired as much as one shot at a Decepticon, and many of them, it was clear, would be happy to fight with the Decepticons against their biological foes and expand the Empire, mainly the ones who had been military bots.

It would take a few days to free every bot and get a Extrana-Distribution Standard Educational Data Pack out to every bot. Before that, there were some bots who confused Domintel for regular police because they genuinely didn't know any better. It would later be found that the slave virus had kept the bots at the mental level of a seven year old human or pony child or an eighteen month old Decepticon. Now they could rapidly grow up. Raiding 101 would be included in their Extrana-Distribution Standard Educational Data Pack and for a few months, Trainers would help teach them the basics of the Decepticon lifestyle and how to avoid a SAM. Because these bots had been kept so mentally stunted through no fault of their own that they could not be expected to successfully raid at once, they would be fed rations of free Energon for a year. Many of them hated biologicals as much as the Genocide Battalion did and those humans found alive were killed on sight. Soon the only intelligent biologicals left alive were three hundred or so ponies who had themselves been very badly treated slaves who had never harmed or even been rude to a bot which was the only reason why they were still alive for now. They were put in a corral whilst it was decided what to do to them. Humans had no such luck, such was the hatred for them. At the moment, bots on the planet had no enemies amongst each other because their slave viruses had kept them from antagonising any other bots. It was rather like Cybertron when it had just been taken over by the bots.


Megatron felt rather strange being hailed as a liberator by an entire planet. Normally he put the inhabitants of planets into bondage; but today he had done the opposite and was probebly even more popular here at this moment anyway then on Cybertron itself. He hoped he would not get glitches-going to Debugging was a pain and because they would be mind-glitches, he coulden't use his godly powers to fix them properly if he got them because he didn't want to risk accidently harming his own mind boards by mistake. Megatronism would soon be a fast growing religion here, partly because there were no hidden cults to compete with it.

Earth

As Bilancal went along five planes flew overhead but they didn't seem to notice him. When they landed it was the settlement they were after so they could chip up new slaves and make themselves some extra Energon. The humans screamed and tried to flee, having no weapons higher then swords and bows and arrows, which could not damage Decepticon armour.

Cybertron

Scanner watched and soon his engine whined in disapproval. Marketeer had rescued him and only asked for a short period to armour himself with a defeated bot's armour as a reward, and he didn't want his rescuer to nerf his own body. Soon Marketeer was armoured, he thanked Scanner, bowed, left with 5 Energon Cubes that he found in one of the panals of a defeated squatter and went underground. After checking a place out and setting an internal alarm to wake him at once if danger threatened, he transformed into a plane and fell asleep. He didn't want to get badly fragged after all.


Vallermoore


Leader Megatron was not that pleased with the plan, but he had-not exactly a "soft" spot for Loyal Star,-he had a soft spot for nobody at all- but a less hard spot. He had not forgotten that the former pony priest had been ready to die for real-and with him trapped in the afterlife, most likely go to Pony Hell for renouncing Ponyism-to bring him back to life-and that really was true loyalty. And loyalty was the only one of the pony values that was also a Decepticon one. So he would help-this once, but he told Loyal Star not to ask him to heal anyone again. If a Debugger had looked in Loyal Star's mind, he would find amongst the normal things a "Heresy-do not preach this!" file, containing his former Ponyism and such things, and an "Orthodoxy-preach this!" file, and something set up to catch heresy before it got out of his voice chip, as well as things like a file with his biological life, and a Secrets file as well.


Loyal Star explained carefully what Megatron had said to him and that yes, unlike with other divine beings, Megatron did speak to his Priests and in those cases, He meant what he said. The unicorn did take the oath. Later on, when Biological Reserch found a way to give unicorn slaves hoof suckers, the amount of ore they could produce would rise quite a bit. Ponies were good producers as slave stock.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Extrana

With the wide acceptance of Decepticon control proving to be legit upon examination by ForIntel, it was decided that a military drawdown was appropriate. Soon, the planet was left with enough troops to defend against foreign invaders, but not with the huge numbers typically needed to prevent insurrection. If there was any such thing, though, the Military would easily be able to bring its numbers back up very quickly thanks to FTL travel.

Soon, bots from Biological Research came to look at the few ponies. They found the stock to be sickly; the ponies hadn't been fed enough and they had parasites to boot. Not only that, many had been overloaded with stuff to carry at some point, and now had sway backs as a consequence. The biologists' cold, scientific opinion was clear: "Render 'em."

The ponies didn't know Binary, but they were magical enough to detect that these bots considered them to be trash to be processed. They shrank back to the other side of the corral, some looking worried as others just looked hopeless. Soon, the Biological Researchers went away, leaving the ponies to wonder what would become of them.

Megatron received the report at his temporary base on Extrana, but did not yet order any overt actions. "Find out what they think of me," he ordered ForIntel. "If they love me like the robots do, we will find ways to fix these errors of theirs. However, if they want some kind of self-governing area, or if they're not thrilled with the change in power here...then, we will follow the recommendation of Biological Research." Megatron already knew one thing for sure: He was not having a planet be so close to being all-robotic without taking it all the way. If the ponies were on his side, they could live and he would find a way to get them repaired - but they would be moved to Decepticon Equestria or some other planet that was majority organic, just not as slaves.

Despite not actually being forced to work, the ponies would still legally be property. The only way for a biological to avoid that was to stop being a biological - in other words, to qualify for (and actually get) the Ultimate Upgrade. These ponies, if loyal, would simply be considered property of the Decepticon Government. If the Government chose not to make them work, that was its prerogative - but it didn't imply that these biologicals actually had any rights to refuse if the policy ever changed. The ponies, however, were unlikely to be told about this not-so-nice legal fact unless they did something to draw a Decepticon's ire.


Earth

Bilancal couldn't help but be afraid as he saw the efficiency of the slaving gang in action. Within a couple of minutes, they had captured almost every human. Those who hid in their houses found that their thatched roofs were no protection - the slavers just wiped the roofs to the side with their hands, reached in, and plucked out their prey. The captured humans were put into collapsible cages, and these were stacked on a glider-trailer. Then, the group took off into the air and flew away. Bilancal didn't realize it, but where they were flying to was a minor local slave market rather than a particular mine.

By now, Bilancal had been here for a little over two months. Within 2-3 weeks, he would need to be on the lookout for a Decepticon with ForIntel insignia. He couldn't wait to get off of Earth and away from its dangers - animal, microbial, and robotic. He was also sick of camping, though he did enjoy the hunting and the fresh meat that came from it. His species was an obligatory carnivore variety, so he got a deep-down sense of pleasure from this aspect, and it went far beyond what came from buying pre-killed, pre-cut meat at a grocery store.

~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

Marketeer was so fragged that when he found a sturdy-looking area, he quickly went unconscious as his defrag program ran. When he woke up, though, he was surprised to hear the loudest footsteps he could imagine - and it sounded like there was a lot of them! Occasionally, he could also hear loud rocket-sized engines firing up, and someone yell "BYE, MAY YOU AVOID THE RAIDERS!" or "HAVE A NICE TRIP!" over the din.

He looked up, and realized that the ceiling here looked extra-thick and possibly even armored. After thinking about it for a while, he realized that he must be right under the Cargo Zone, and the noise had to be cargo-bots walking around and taking off. From what he knew about Cybertron, he realized that the Main Refinery had to be about 50 miles away in a particular direction, while the Main Foundry was 40 miles out at another angle.

Now, Marketeer was curious. He'd heard of these transforming giants, the cargo-bots, and wanted to see one. Yet his smuggler friends had also warned that cargo-bots were mean and liked to lord their strength over the relatively-tiny regular bots. To be safe, he decided to make sure to surface outside of the actual Cargo Zone and then just look in, tourist-style.

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

Vallermoore

There was nothing like a good old-fashioned miracle to get positive attention, though the unicorn was a bit dismayed when his shipmates' response was to say that now he could "get back to work" and quickly gave him things to do. The shipmates, however, were much nicer to Loyal Star, and some began to listen in earnest. Others were just busy trying to think of how they could mooch miracles off of him without actually converting, a type of corrupt thinking was in line with their willingness to work with an oil mafia at all.

The captain of the ship, however, was thinking far beyond things like miracles that could get him a bit of money. He quickly called Loyal Star into his cabin after the overall excitement had died down.

"So you've got a direct line to the Leader of the Decepticons!" He enthused once he had closed the somewhat flimsy cabin door. "Perhaps you could seek his aid in some other way. Or, maybe you're a Decepticon yourself, and won't need it~?" he fished for details. "In any case, the fact is that this ship is only half-full. I'd like it to be completely full. For that, all we'd need to do is stop at the Donkirk Bay Refinery and fool them into thinking that we're with the Trans-X-Ocean Transport Company long enough for them to fill up the holds. Then we sail away with their oil! How's that sound!??"

Loyal Star grinned. This guy clearly already knew and followed the Decepticon Way, whether he called it that or not. "What about that plan needs divine intervention, though?" Loyal Star asked. "Just paint the ship up in the Trans-X livery and go for it!"

The captain glared. "It's not that easy, or everyone would be doing it. Each Trans-X ship has its own transponder, and if its signal isn't detected, they won't even let you get near the loading dock. They actually have a bunch of tugs fill up the space where you need to go."

"So you need to forge the signal of some actual Trans-X ship?" Loyal Star asked.

"That won't work either. They use GPS, too, so they know exactly where each real ship is. Someone would have to convince their system that THIS ship is the one sending that signal, and not the actual ship. The actual signal would have to be jammed, and it'd have to affect one that's close enough that it could conceivably have moved here during the time the signaling was down."

Loyal Star thought about it. It still didn't seem like a miracle would be needed. Forgery of signals was commonly used to circumvent the anti-counterfeiting systems of nations that used electronic currency, so it could surely be adapted to do a bit of transponder and GPS switcheroo...

"That's beyond the scope of my mission, but there's a government agency that could take care of all of that," Loyal Star said, "It would cost you a fee. Probably a percentage of the take. However, you'd end up with a ship half-full of their oil..."

The captain thought about it, and then said that he'd like to try to work something out with this mysterious "government agency." Then, he paused, and said, "wait, are you serious? There's REALLY a GOVERNMENT AGENCY dedicated to helping people pull scams?!"

Loyal Star nodded and confirmed it. The agency, he told the captain, usually dealt in counterfeit money, but could surely roll out some counterfeit ship signals, too. "It's called the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank, and it is indeed there solely to help Decepticons 'do business in foreign countries.' Which is code for producing fake money. But since fake electronic money sometimes involves signal forgery, they surely have the skills you need..."

It turned out that it'd take more than a radio call to get everything set up. The clerk at the DIB said that their services were not for foreigners, and on top of that, they ONLY did fake money. Tangentially-related services were off the table. Finally, however, Loyal Star did get the clerk to cough up the name of an independent counterfeiter. "He's a former student of Replicator," the clerk said, "so he should be able to do this little job."

If the counterfeiter agreed, and the proper planning was done, the signals aspect of the heist would be taken care of. However, the ship would still have to be repainted to look like one from the other company (and then reverted once they were far enough away). This would require finding a cove with water deep enough to hide an oil tanker, yet remote enough that nobody would see the repainting being done.

"It will be a hard con to pull off," Loyal Star told the captain. "But one thing Megatron doesn't do is steal stuff for you. A Decepticon is supposed to know the basic mechanics of how to pull off a raid..."

[Vallermoore]

Extrana

It was decided to check the ponies to see if any of them had particularly interesting cutie marks and give these a chance to say why they should not be killed and either render down the others quickly, without torture, or free them if they were loyal enough. Two were spared at least for now...one had a Decepticon cutie mark, the other had a mark indicating great skill in electronics. The rest were blasted if found not loyal, or shipped to another planet if they were. Forintel bots would question the last two to find out how they got there and what skills they had. With the final purging one way or another of the last intelligent biologicals on the planet, a Decepticon governor was put in charge with two Extranian deputies to help him from amongst the most loyal and pro-Decepticon bots. When Megatronism was set up there, most bots were happy to worship the one who had set them free from their electronic chains.

Cybertron

Marketeer had heard tales of the fearsome cargo-bots of Cybertron and how in robot-mode at least their sheer size and amour made them a threat even to other Decepticons. He had also heard that they were notoriously grumpy and mean. Just coming up in that area might get him stepped on accidently or deliberately, or blasted, or even grabbed up like a biological and fitted with a slave chip if he was very unlucky, although most Decepticons, even cargo-bots, normally didn't randomly prey on other Decepticons this way. To do so at random could lead to a vigilante mob forming which could even take down a cargo bot if it was big enough, or to one's fellow cargo bots lynching the offender in case he turned on them next. Skirting the area, he came on the outside and viewed the bots from the area where normal sized bots decided who they would hire. Alligator-like in temper except with their fellow cargo-bots, they watched him with camera-eyes and blasters on the end of long robot arms. In this area they didn't mind being stared at as it was part of the hiring process, but were still a bit touchy and mean, and would need to be careful to avoid offending them.

Earth

Bilancal was very pleased it was not him being enslaved. He liked the food he caught, and took good care to keep a low profile, but was starting to greatly look forward to a Forintel bot bringing him out of there.

Vallermoore

The unicorn was very pleased with Loyal Star and his healed horn and new Decepticon cutie mark. Loyal Star had to politely explain to the captain and crew that one could not mooch miracles from Megatron and if he asked he'd certainly get a nasty electric shock. However, he promised to do what he could to help and radioed Decepticon Interplanetary Bank. The clerk was slightly snooty and said that they did not help forigners, exspecally biologicals, and only dealt in fake money anyway, but when Loyal Star gently coaxed him and revealed his Priestly status the clerk gave a name that could help. A while later, and for a tenth of the oil, things were arranged. Loyal Star helped repaint the ship with the other crew once they finally found the right remote cove. He was a helpful bot at times like this and wanted the crew to like him. And by now most of them did.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Decepticon Equestria

The ponies that survived the scrutiny of Foreign Intelligence were happily surprised to find that their destination was not some sort of work camp, but instead, a special area that had been set aside for them. It took up several square miles, and had some apple trees growing. They would need to do some work to get the trees producing at their full capacity since the Decepticons had paid no attention to these plants that were outside of designated agricultural land, but it wouldn't take much for the ponies to renovate the landscape.

This area was not technically a self-governing district, but it might as well have been. Like other colonies of neutral or pro-Megatron biologicals on otherwise-occupied worlds, they wouldn't be messed with as long as they stayed within the designated boundaries and didn't draw anyone's ire. That said, they were warned, any "wild" biological outside of the boundaries was fair game for whatever slaver(s) happened by, as well as a few local overseers who thought it was fun to hunt the local fauna for pure sport.

Back on Extrana, it was determined that the pony with the Decepticon Seal mark had, at one point, used magic to project the illusion of being human. As such, he had relieved several rich humans of their money. One day, however, he was walking away from a mansion when some joker had backed a pickup truck right into him. This broke his horn, and with it, the ability to produce the illusion. He was quickly captured and put to extra-hard labor, not only for being a pony, but for being a con-pony to boot! He thought he'd be a useless slave with no horn, and therefore have it made, but they simply used him like a non-sapient draft horse and had him haul stuff around either in saddlebags or by hitching him to a cart. During the time his horn was growing back, they almost worked him to death. Eventually, though, he used his smooth-talking skills to at least get his owners to lighten the work requirement.

The other pony, it turned out, wasn't very good at labor. He was, however, really good at getting robots to keep functioning. His job had been to patch them together. The cheapskate owners did not allow him to fix them in the ways he knew were proper and long-lasting. Instead, he had to jimmy up "fixes" that kept them running using only bits of scrap, tape, and other low-grade items. Very rarely did his owners agree to actually buy a new part. Because of this, he found his situation very frustrating even though it was physically much lighter work than the others did at his location.

For now, both were sent along to Equestria along with the others that were allowed to live, but DomIntel kept a close watch on them to see if they might be of further interest.

Vallermoore

The dock workers were a bit surprised when the newly-painted tanker came in view. Even though all of the electronics said it was a proper Trans-X-Ocean ship, they had earlier been told that such a ship wasn't expected to arrive for another 10 hours. A few of them grilled the crew with suspicion when they stepped onto the docks.

This, Loyal Star was pleased to find out, was no problem for the captain. He had answers for everything. The wind was blowing in the right direction, the speed of the currents was faster than normal, the engine had just been tuned up...all of these had "worked together to greatly improve our time" - or so the captain said. Soon enough, massive hoses were pumping Trans-X's oil into the ship, and after several hours, it was full and sitting low in the water from all of the added mass.

Once the fill-up was complete, the captain called everyone back aboard. With a smile and a wave, he took off from the Donkirk docks as if nothing could possibly be amiss. After getting out of visual range, he put all of the engines on full throttle, and rushed - as fast as a big ship can "rush," anyway - to a new cove. There, the ship was painted back into the colors of the syndicate transportation company. Loyal Star helpfully noted that the colors should look older, so it wouldn't be obvious that it was a re-repaint. Off-colors were duly added to create somewhat of an illusion of age.

It wouldn't be until the end of that same day that Trans-X-Ocean staff would be presented with the sight of the actual authorized vessel, which showed up right on its original schedule. Much anger rippled through the staff and the bosses as they realized they'd been had. Soon, the Vallermoorian federal investigative agency was brought in, and the news was talking about the "heist of the decade."

On board the Star of the Ocean, the captain laughed and played the news radio loud for all to hear. "They say our little endeavor there was worth 10 million chingchings!" The captain laughed, just like a pirate. "And they have no idea where it went!"

Alas, it wasn't wrong before the latter part was shown to be fake news. A strong blip appeared on the radar behind the Star, and a quick look with a spyglass showed it to be a light gunship. Vallermoore's oceanic interdiction force had spotted the low ride of the full-to-the-brim Star, and since it was obviously an oil tanker to boot, the feds were suspicious that this was the thief ship it was after.

Loyal Star said nothing. He simply got some blank papers and a pen. The captain and the first mate saw this, and they watched in awe as 100% professional-looking bills of lading began to appear under Loyal Star's hands. Soon, the captain let out a combination of a chuckle and a little yell, his eyes twinkling in the human equivalent of red eyes shining. He recognized each port of call on the freshly-produced bills of lading. Each one was a tiny port that was typically only open once or twice a week, and then, only by appointment. Some of them didn't even have a phone, and of those that did, it was likely that there'd be nobody around to answer it.

Because of that, it would be impossible to verify these bills of lading without physically visiting each spot and asking its portmaster in person. There was an extremely high chance that the feds would not want to bother with all of that work, and would just say everything seemed legit. Of course, there was also the chance that the captain of the law enforcement gunboat would be some eager beaver who wanted to score points for a promotion, but in that case, there was always that old mafia standby: Good old-fashioned bribery. If THAT didn't work...the captain was now quite sure that he had a real, honest-to-sheistiness, Decepticon on board. Surely one good blast would sink the opposition, if it came to that...

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

Cybertron

The cargo-bots soon realized by Marketeer's staring that he couldn't possibly be an actual Cybertronian. One came to the very edge of the reinforced area and leaned over the fence.

"So, would you like a free tour of the mines on Earth?" He yelled down, using the opening line of one of Cybertron's oldest tourist scams. The other cargo-bots seemed like they were about to chuckle, but quickly took on poker faces - unsure of whether the one talking was being serious or just cracking a joke. If he was being serious, they didn't want to wreck his con by laughing.

In another part of Cybertron, a ForIntel agent in plane mode took off toward Earth with a mission to pick up a certain alien who would surely be glad to get off of that mudball by now.

[Vallermoore]

Decepticon Equestria


It did not take long for the ponies to get food production going, despite not being at their best, and over time they would regain their health and strength. The pony with the very good computer skills was perfectly willing to help the Decepticons, but understandable trust issues plus the fact that he was a biological and so should not be able to discover Decepticon secrets meant that they were not willing to let him help them fix their bodies even though he was clearly good at it. Besides, even if they had trusted him fully, it would be like a large ant trying to carry out surgery on a human. If he had been a bot, he would have made a good Debugger as he had the right personality type for it. The con-pony had suffered unfortunate results through sheer bad luck, and acquired a dislike of humans as a result. Despite being nearly worked to death he had never prayed to Megatron as he knew enough about Megatron to know that he pretty much despised the weak.

Vallermoore


Loyal Star by now knew he was on a de facto pirate ship, but that was no problem for a Decepticon who came from a Metal Planet full of robotic pirates. Soon enough they aquired the oil and get out of there as quickly as possible without arousing suspiscion. They repainted the ship but soon enough a Vallermoorian crusier showed up with guns and missles capable of blowing them out of the water if they put up a fight. At once Loyal Star used his skills as a Decepticon bot to provide professional bills of lading and on top of that, produced some Vallermoorian money that he had brought with Energon from the Decepticon National Bank before going on this mission, 60,000 Chingchings that had been brought with just 20 Cubes of Standard Energon, that looked and if tested would seem to be genuine Chingchings in every little detail down to the watermark and the necklace around the neck of Queen Yocasta the Second's portrait that was on each note. He hid them amongst the papers so that they would not be visible except to the officer who got them. As a last resort he was ready to blast the feds, but didn't want to do that, as a missing cruiser would get a large part of Vallermoore's Navy looking for them. Soon enough the captain of the cruiser came aboard, looked at the papers, quietly pocketed the money and announced that all was in order and they were free to go.


Once they were free, the captain laughed vagain and asked Loyal Star if he would like to stay on as a permenant member of his crew. Loyal Star had to politely turn him down, as his loyalty was to his God Megatron, and Megatron would surely want him to carry on his missionary career. "We Decepticons are a secretive people, but some things we can be open about. If you like I can tell you fine tales of Cybertron." When the crew seemed happy with him telling them, he told them that he was once a pony and a Ponyist Priest who had converted to Megatronism, became a robot after aurduous and at times painful tests and porting, and served in the Decepticon Military before becoming a Priest. He told them about the very few laws on Cybertron-and what happened should these laws be broken. "But Loyal is my name and nature, so I have no more fear of Domintel then an honest law-abiding Vallermoorian has of the Royal Vallermoorian Police." He of course kept his biggest achievement a secret but mentioned that he got two Gold stripes for it-which was the Decepticon equivalent of two Stars of Vallermoore First Class, Vallermoore's highest honour. After telling them of battles he had fought he said "Cybertron is no place for the weak, or, with the key exception of Debugging that keeps us bots sane, the honest, and can be a dangerous place, as we are a piratical race and will happily fight against ourselves if angered or to steal another bot's Energon. And of course all Decepticons are Megatronists. It's a dictatorship, but one with a suprising amount of freedom in most ways-as long as you don't go against the Decepticon Way." Mixed amongst the stories were Megatronist things to help spread the faith and he answered a few questions.


"Do Megatronists celebrate Christmas?"


"On duty priests can't-but laypeople and that includes Decepticons can certainly celebrate the secular parts of the holiday, so you need not give up giving and getting presents on that day. Although Santa Claus is likely to just put coal in your stocking."

"What happens after death to Megatronists?"

"The best Megatronists go to a heavenly realm, the Land of Endless Energon, the worst of all end up in the utterly horrible Realm of Punishment, a place for traitors and informers, and most end up in the Neutral Realm which varies from slightly heavenly to somewhat hellish. Death as a biological from old age does not count against you as it's not your fault that you were born a biological."


Cybertron

Marketeer transformed and got out of there and the cargo-bots laughed but made no moves to chase him or blast him. He soon went underground for safety and found a green bot bouncing a ball. Internally he prepared himself for battle but didn't want to start one if the bot was no threat. He seemed young, and Marketeer didn't want an angry Coder after him. "Hello there," he said to the bot in a friendly tone.

******

Elsewhere, final plans were being made to blast nearly all of the bots of Iacon, heal the handful of scientists who were sent in there on Megatron's orders who got sick, and find a way to end Iacon's curse so it could join the rest of the planet as a pleasent place for robot life.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Decepticon Equestria

For a while, all seemed fairly normal for a favored colony of biologicals who had not been put to work. Then one day, an escaped slave of wild stock happened to come across the ponies from Extrana. He told them that he had been captured on Earth and sold to a mine, but before he could be stuck with an enslavement chip, something had come up in the mine that distracted everyone. He had quickly sneaked off and hid in a big bin of scrap metal, and to his surprise, it was put on a cargo-bot whose hold was mostly full of apples. That cargo-bot had come to this planet.

Thinking that he was now on a free planet that the Decepticons were trading with, he had hopped from the metal crate into an apple crate. The cargo-bot detected him instantly and let him know it, but told him that it was against the Decepticon Way to nark. That bot also seemed to have something against Megatron Metals, mumbling something along the lines of "plus, f*ck that company," though he didn't go into details. Soon, the human had buried himself under the apples, and upon landing, he was duly unloaded - only to find himself delivered to another mine!

He hadn't realized where he was until he heard the sounds of many animals chewing. Eventually, enough apples were eaten to expose his head, and he found himself looking at about 10 ponies who had been hungrily eating the fruits. Without delay, he jumped out, realized he was in another mine, and ran toward where he saw light coming in. A Decepticon overseer had seen him, but appeared to be uninterested. Perhaps he just had no use for the hassle of dealing with more than one biological species at this work site.

~~~~~~~~~~

Most of the ponies received him with coolness, but not overt hostility. Then, the one with a Decepticon Seal marched up. His hatred for humans was very obvious, and the first thing he did was use his magic to smack the hapless bipedal being down to his knees.

"You, human! Kneel before your betters!" He ordered. The human could do nothing else, for he was now held in a kneeling position by the angry speciesist. As he looked around, he realized that the other ponies were not sympathetic to his plight. In fact, they were now showing more signs of not being too happy with humans themselves.

"The other Decepticons might not have had any use for you, but WE do. We've worked enough for your lousy species. Now YOU will work for US!" The Decepti-pony announced.

"Yeah, we've picked enough apples!" Someone chimed in.
"And pulled enough weeds!" Said another.
"And collected enough tree limbs for our houses!" Yet another agreed.

With that, the ponies carefully braided some strong vines and tied them around the human's leg. The other end was tied to a boulder. Then, magic was used to fuse the vine into a cable-like rope - one that would not come off of either end, nor break, without the use of either more magic or strong cable cutters meant for steel. Then, the Decepti-pony went straight over to the human and used his magic to burn a brand into his head. Now, there would never be any doubt: The human was the property of Whipcracker of the Extranian Colony of Equestria.

The human was roughly yanked over to their apple field, which was now growing well, and someone brought over an empty 3-bushel basket. "Fill it up!" Whipcracker ordered. The human balked, but this was met with the sensation of a magical whip striping his back. It only took a few swipes to get the man working, and a couple more to get him up to speed.

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

Domestic Intelligence Office, Equestria

Equestria was once watched over by ForIntel, but after enough information was gained, this jurisdiction switched to DomIntel. As part of the Decepticon Empire, Equestria was a domestic property, so it only made sense for the main secret police agency to take over the duties.

As expected, they had agents in place to watch the Extranian Colony before it was even set up. It had been boring, perfunctory work for the animal-shaped agents - until today.

"They've got themselves a slave," an agent radioed in from the fields. "Or more accurately, Subject 1 of Interest has one. However, none of the others have any problem with it. Apparently, even ponies have a point when enough is enough, and payback is in order."

This information was met with great interest in many quarters.

- Groups of agents charged with ensuring political stability passed reports up the chain of command warning that their Equestrian charges may think the same way, and secretly be looking for the chance to revolt and turn the tables on the Decepticons.

- Immigration was informed that there was a confirmed active practitioner of the Decepticon Way among the new group.

- Biological Research was told of an opportunity to observe how well a wild-stock human functioned and worked on a foreign organic world.

- Several agents, in bodies that looked like a sort of bird that flew in flocks, came to gawk at the scene in person. The ponies just noticed that there were a bunch of odd birds in one of the trees, but they were so new to the planet that they didn't know if that was normal for the represented species or not.

As expected, the human did not appreciate being turned into a slave. However, as he was testily reminded, it beat working in a dusty mine and never seeing the light of day. Decepticon mines were also known for not lowering the workload to accommodate the lower capabilities of un-upgraded humans, so if he'd stayed on Earth, he would have either been worked to death or had his DNA forcibly changed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

The young bot stopped bouncing his massive ball and looked at the new arrival. For a moment, it looked like his coding had hung, but in reality, his threat assessment subroutines were busily working. If they returned an unfavorable result, his self-defense subroutine would kick in and start blasting.

After this tense fraction of a second, the bot yelled over "Hi!" and he instantly threw the ball at Marketeer for him to catch. Marketeer's own coding made it easy for him to complete the catch like a pro. "Wanna play?" the kid asked. "Everyone else just wants to play Blasters. It's so boring."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Bureau of Impossible Physics

The scientists were ecstatic to have finally gotten a report back about Iacon thanks to Scanner's excursion.

---BEGIN ABSTRACT---

"While the exact source has yet to be determined, it is surely in the vicinity of this 10-block square," he wrote, and provided a map showing an area near, but not quite in, what had been the city center. "I believe it to be some sort of machine producing a form of ionizing radiation. Whether this was intentional, or is due to the mechanical breakdown (or sabotage) of a machine meant to do something else, is unknown. The effects are very powerful, with corrosion setting in almost immediately, though it takes anywhere from days to weeks for that corrosion to be bad enough to show obvious symptoms."

"Residents and Scroungers are aware of the accelerated corrosion effects in the zone noted on the map, and there is also a large hole in the planetary panels in this area. Farther away, the rusting is still prominent, but it hasn't completely destroyed those blocks. It is common for those who are too weak to Scrounge to throw enemies down the holes. If they ever come back up, they are typically completely insane by that point."

"There is another effect - this one causes a very powerful urge to stay in the area. I do not know if this is connected to the other machine or not, but I hypothesize that it is. I believe that it is likely that this was meant to be some sort of last-ditch attempt to keep Autobots from defecting, but for an unknown reason, it went awry."

"Safe entry into the area will require full sealing with protection against ionizing radiation, and extra protection of all chips housing logic routines. It will also require enhanced military capabilities due to the presence of countless Scrounger gangs."

---END ABSTRACT---

The main report went on to give a great amount of technical details, name notable Scrounger gangs and resident "resource collectives" (groups of residents who worked together to get what they could, such as the one that had attacked both Marketeer and Fisticuffs), and list readings made by instruments before those instruments had failed.

Scanner's report did not comment on any political beliefs of those within the abandoned city. When asked, it became clear that whatever part of his mind hardware that had been housing this information had been damaged by the radiation, and the data had been lost despite the best efforts of Debugging. What he did remember was that there were many people there who were too far gone to be likely to be thinking about political matters at all - both among Scroungers and residents. Scroungers, he noted, were very prone to keeping their bodies in top shape but only attended to their minds enough to avoid the paranoia against leaving. This type of paranoia, he pointed out, would have prevented them from being able to get to the foundries and the vaults, all of which were outside of the affected area.

Impossible Physics, at this point, could only speculate on whether or not it was really true that "no real Decepticons" (outside of curious scientists and such) would ever live in the former Autobot capital. However, there was no doubt that there would be NO rescue operations. Everyone on the planet knew that Iacon was a hazard zone, so the results of going in there were entirely on those who had been foolish enough to do so. Impossible Physics researchers and related personnel - who had gone in for bonafide scientific reasons - would be sought out once the proper protections were devised, but everyone else was out of luck. "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" was very much the mindset toward the average Meltdown who had gone into Iacon.

There was, however, the very real problem of Iacon's rust. According to the report, and Marketeer's story, several planetary support pillars and Underworks layers were now being affected. This would be jeopardizing the structural integrity of not only the area, but possibly Cybertron itself. Therefore, while there was little to no care for those foolish enough to have gone to Iacon to either take up residence or Scrounge, there was much interest in stopping the Curse from continuing to operate. Once that was done, work would be done to replace the failing and failed supports and planetary steel panels.

Earth

One day, to Bilancal's great delight, a plane glided at low altitude, clearly bearing the symbols of Domestic Intelligence. He came out into a clearing and waved wildly, jumping up and down to catch the agent's attention. Once on board, his next stop would be the Immigration Office on Cybertron, where he would have one final chance to change his mind, and then assuming that he hadn't done so, begin the process of being ported to a proper Decepticon body.

[Vallermoore]

Decepticon Equestria


There were some wild human slaves in Decepticon mines who had not been chipped yet because they were brand new, and an earthquake in one mine managed to distract the overseers enough for a human to escape and hide in a scrap metal bin, that was then put on a cargo-bot that was full of apples. The human hopped into an apple crate and in doing so his feet touched the cargo-bot's floor. A blaster with an attached camera eye swung over at once but rather then blast him as most cargo-bots would, the bot had mercy. "It's against the Decepticon Way to nark, so I'll let you go. Plus f**k that company." Clearly the cargo bot had something against Megatron Metals so letting the human escape was a sort of very small revenge. The human was unloaded and soon heard the crunching of many mouths as apple after apple was eaten by what turned out to be ponies. Sapient ponies. He got out of there, only to be seen by an overseer who let him go. At this pony mine, most ponies were unchipped as they worked better and produced more ore that way, and chips were reserved for ponies caught trying to escape. Getting out of the mine he found himself amongst more ponies. They glared at him, not liking humans much, and one, a unicorn with a Decepticon seal on his flank that shone like metal, caught him in his magic and slammed him down to his knees.

"You, human! Kneel before your betters! The other Decepticons might not have had any use for you, but WE do. We've worked enough for your lousy species. Now YOU will work for US!" Others chimed in. "Yeah, we've picked enough apples!" And pulled enough weeds!" "And collected enough tree limbs for our houses!" The human soon found himself tied by twisted vines to a bolder and forced to work for the ponies in the apple fields-which was still better then toiling in a dark mine under the control of a slave chip never seeing the sun. After a painful brand on the forehead and a few magical whiplashes he was soon working collecting apples. This did not go unnoticed by Domintel. Some thought it might cause a future revolt. Immigration was told that at least one pony named Whipcracker was genuinely practising the Decepticon Way. Biological Reserch was interested as well. About 40 agents from all three ministers came to watch.


Cybertron

It appeared that the young bot might indeed be young and not a member of the green gang that SolarTempest had encountered when he was himself young and called SolarStorm. "Hi! Wanna play? Everyone else just wants to play Blasters. It's so boring."

"I'd be happy to."

The two played with the ball for a bit and Marketeer asked "I wonder where your Coder is? It can be dangerous down here-although your self-defence routine is likely to be able to deal with most threats."

Bureau of Impossible Physics


With the exception of a fire brigade to stop the whole planet getting destroyed (in his pre-God days, Megatron had ordered one formed after a fire that got very big and nearly reached his own mansion) Cybertron was not into rescuing in general. The Bureau of Impossible Physics did want to rescue it's own dozen or so scientists though who had been sent there and not returned as they were obeying orders. Everyone else was likely to be sent to the Decepticon Afterlife, at least if their minds were gone. No proper Decepticon should be there anyway. Something needed to be done about the curse so the rust could be cleaned up.

Earth

Bilancal was very pleased to get out of there on a marked Domintel plane. It had a non-spaient chair over the living chair so his sweat would not touch it. Soon they were back at Cybertron and Bilancal decided on the way back that he most certainly wanted to become one of the glorious Decepticon race.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Decepticon Equestria

Whipcracker, the pony who had been spotted on Extrana with his Decepticon Seal, quite enjoyed being the master of one of the species that had once owned him. He worked his slave very hard, yet was smart enough to allow the creature enough rest, food, and water to stay healthy. He'd seen for himself how quickly slaves got sick when these few things weren't attended to.

Other than that, though, the human was given no comfort. He was made to sleep on the bare ground in a stable, and when he wasn't there, he worked dawn to dusk. Soon, he was doing a full tenth of the entire colony's work.

Meanwhile, Decepticons came from many places to observe. DomIntel warned the other personnel to put their cloaking on, because everyone acts different when they know they're being watched. "We want to see what's really going on, not what they want us to *think* is happening," they reminded the others. Therefore, all of the actual Decepticons began to run on their electrical engines for near-silence, and use their visual cloaking to avoid being seen.

What they saw was pleasing to many of the robots...

Soon, Whipcracker was gathering the other ponies around him - he had something important to say. Once they were all listening, he stood up on a literal box to make a speech.

"We have all seen how much easier life is when we have someone else doing our work! Now, there can be no doubt as to the motivation of the humans for their slaving practices. However, I am not here to forgive the humans." The others nickered in agreement; the humans would not be considered okay. "What I am here to propose is that we get MORE humans, and make them do ALL of our work!! The only problem is finding a source for them. The Decepticons, who have lifted us up, would not be pleased if we raided their livestock. We need to think of some other solution..."

The hidden Decepticons now had no doubt that this pony deserved his Decepticon cutie mark. DomIntel immediately put a favorable note in his file, and if he ever tried to immigrate, it would surely be a positive (though not defining) factor in Immigration's consideration.

Meanwhile, the people from the Bureau of Biological Research were making recordings of the proceedings. They had always thought of ponies as being peaceful and surprisingly easy to lead, but this showed that under certain conditions, something changed. It was, they suspected, the result of genetic "switches" being altered. From what they could see, this unique group clearly had nothing against slavery as long as they were on the masters' side of it - much like the actual Decepticons. This Bureau made plans to come back later, openly, and ask for DNA samples.

Later, DomIntel's report was sent to agents on Cybertron and run through the Supercomputer's rebellion-prediction algorithms. The Supercomputer soon gave a report that noted that yes, this could be a possibility if the Decepticons didn't play their cards right. However, it noted that if the Decepticons DID play their cards right, they could end up with a strong ally and many loyal immigrants from the group. At the end of the report, it suggested that Whipcracker was not as good of a con-bot as he thought he was, but would likely make a very good overseer - one who would enjoy the job as well as be efficient at it.

Despite this, Whipcracker wouldn't be offered an official position as an overseer as long as he was a biological. Kapos, it was strongly believed, were bad news - too easily swayed to side with their charges instead of their masters. At any Decepticon-run labor site, it was believed that there should always be a clear and immutable distinction between slave-driver and slave, and the clearest distinction was enforced by the simple fact that only Decepticon robots could be on the driving end of the equation.

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

Cybertron

The young robot stopped when asked where his Coder was, and stared out with a clueless look on his face. "I don't know! Who cares? It's not like my map doesn't work." He eventually responded. He paused, thinking how weird it was that anyone would be concerned about a thing like that. It's not like his blasters didn't work. Then, his whole demeanor suddenly changed, as if he was now under the control of a completely different program.

"Why do you want to know?" The child asked accusingly. Now, his voice was colder and more mechanical, and his engine was starting to rev up to battle mode. His eyes darkened and narrowed.

His Automatic Self-Defense Subroutine had kicked in and put his last question through on its own - it was quite possible that someone who asked about a Coder was actually hoping for a chance to try to abduct an unattended youngster, so the defense system had automatically geared up. Now, if Marketeer gave the wrong answer to why he'd wanted to know, the program would assume that the reasons were nefarious and immediately attempt to deactivate him as a threat. The youngster himself, far too young to be able to override the Defense System, would only be able to watch as his body did its best to kill his new friend.

Marketeer realized that something big had just changed, and he could tell by the engine noise that one mistake could lead to battle. He chose his words carefully...

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

Bureau of Impossible Physics

Using Scanner's information, the Bureau was able to devise a form of protective sheathing that would block all of the types of radiation detected in Iacon - at least, if Scanner hadn't inadvertently lost any of the crucial information due to its effects on his boards. Because of this possibility, they decided to first send a drone that was armored in the new material, and leave it there for about a week.

If they were able to call it back out, and it was fine upon examination, they would use the new sheathing for a team of people who would go in to try to find the exact source of the problem. If possible, this team would deactivate it themselves, but if not, they would come back and figure out what to do next.

Immigration Office

Bilancal was quite happy to be on Cybertron. From what he had seen, the planet looked dazzlingly futuristic. It was definitely centuries ahead of his old world! He did wonder if he would get used to its all-metal construction, though. Unlike many, he found it somewhat chilling instead of beautiful in its complete lack of biological life. Still, he indicated that he wanted to go ahead with the mind-transfer, figuring that if he was overly bothered by its all-metalness, he could go and operate scams on organic worlds while still retaining the benefits of Decepticon citizenship.

[Vallermoore]

Decepticon Equestria


Whipcracker thought for a bit and said "Obviously we can't raid the Decepticons, but there must be wild humans and perhaps a few escapees that are in effect unclaimed, and the Decepticons didn't say that we could not claim wild humans as slaves. We only need thirty or forty to be waited on almost hand and foot, or rather horn and hoof. Historically both non sapient and sapient ponies have often been enslaved, and now we can be the masters and make humans work for US. I know that it is dangerous out there and if we are caught by overseer Decepticons we could get enslaved again so those who raid with me should get extra apples and until we have enough slaves for everypony, the raiders should have exclusive use of the slaves we do have to encourage ponies to raid."

"Who made you an alicorn?" asked an earth pony with a megaphone for a cutie mark, and Whipcracker replied by lighting up his horn and with one swift move twisting his neck with pony magic and snapping it, killing him at once.

"If anyone else wants to be the ruler, just you try it! Megatron was not allways divine, he was once a Decepticon with no godly powers and he got to the top to rule the Decepticons through violence,and if you want to overthrow me, you'll have to kill me. But give me a chance first. If I bring disaster down on your heads, so be it, you'll overthrow me pretty quickly. But first I need a raiding party. Second, when we have done our raids we need non fatal duels of strength to find out who really is the strongest here and who is just a step above humans. We are not bots so we won't do them to the body or infict permenant wounds-unless somepony wants to challange ME that is. Who wants to go on a raiding party with me? One slave can't do all the work by himself. When we have enough slaves we should have them make a Megatronist Temple as well for us. I'm not a religious freak, but we should give thanks to Megatron for letting us live and stay free instead of killing or re-enslaving us."


Cybertron


When Marketeer asked that question to what genuinely was a young bot it tripped off his Automatic Self Defence Routine. His blasters charged up and raised themselves, his eyes darkened and his engine ran roughly. " "I don't know! Who cares? It's not like my map doesn't work......Why do you want to know?" Marketeer, being a bot, realized this was a child and not an impersonator and he had just triggered off some sort of self defence program. His planet had been more law abiding before falling under Decepticon control so such programs had been rarer but they had existed. Backing away to a door so he could get away if he had to he said "I was worried about your safety, Cybertron is a dangerous planet."

Bureau of Impossible Physics


Rather then risk a scientist with sheathing that might not work the Decepticons sent in a heavily armoured and armed war drone that would only fight if attacked or bothered and was non-sapient to test the sheathing's power, and worked out a way to find the eleven scientists lost in Iacon whilst on scientific missions for the Bureau.

Immigration Office


Scope warned Bilancal of the pain of getting ported and that his mind code would be read to check for spies or traitors, and gave him a last chance to back out and if not his final oaths renouncing any loyalty to outside forces and declaring his loyalty to Megatron. Soon Bilancal was in the transfer chair and they fired it up.