An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Because Decepticons did not wear clothes, and wanted to look their best when invading a world, even a primitive one, the Decepticon Military showered and waxed to look their best, so that they would look even more imposing when they decloaked. Megatron didn't want to seem to be leaking a people who came fresh out of a junkyard, after all, and whilst the Decepticon Military had a lot less BS then most militaries, cleanliness was still important. General Carjack prepared his regulars, who would have the possibly dangerous job of destroying the changeling cities. There were a few groans when he informed them that they would be facing old style cannons, that were a real PITA for many Decepticons as they were harder to dodge then SAMS for those not used to them. Carjack understood that no bot liked having a wing or an arm blown off or even a body in plane mode destroyed, even though they would just go back to the Main Save Vault, so he pretended just this once that he didn't hear the groans even though he was normally super strict. One of these days he decided he would give his regulars cannon training so they could dodge the slow moving balls as easily as fast moving missiles. When invading primitive planets, a drill like that could save bodies and thus Energon, which would mean more Energon for everything else military related. True, the first time they did that drill, they would most likely lose bodies, but once they had done it two or three times they would no longer need to turn up their Bravery Up to face such primitive weapons.

When Megatron announced that, unusually , there would be no Raider Front allowed, as they would both kill total loyalists and ignite oil pools (making them a mess to clean up rather then worth a lot of money/food-for the Decepticons money and food were the same thing) something happened that was almost unheard of on Cybertron-loud booing! Rather then order the disgruntled bots to be blasted on the spot, Megatron turned a deaf ear to it, as he understood his people at times like this and why they were booing. A chance to enrich themselves in that most Decepticon of things was being denied to them-but he wanted all those oil pools undamaged. This planet was likely to bring in a huge amount of Energon and changeling slaves, which was well worth a few Decepticon bodies possibly being drained at worst.

*****
Bust-Up and his gang soon heard the rumours of war and even did some of the work themselves to get as much oil as they could before the Decepticon Military roared in and took it over. Robots could work harder then chipped slaves and drain more oil. The ponies meanwhile cheered them on, and CopperBattle warned them to hide if possible when the Military arrived. "We don't want you to get under our feet-literally. Squashing loyalists is bad. You make a nice change to how most biologicals react to all their oil being taken away-the normally fight us. When we show up, hang something white up as a sign of surrender and hide until the changelings have been destroyed. If you behave yourself and don't rebel, we won't harm you, and your love will be for your own families rather then the bellies of oversized changelings. Whatever else you might be asked to provide for your new overlords, it won't be your love." The ponies were happy at this, as changeling rule-and the amount of love they were syphoning, left them drained and almost loveless.

A military scout arrived, decloaked, gave a small bow of politeness to the gang, and informed them that in five days, the planet was to be joined to the Empire, and they would be the only raid gang allowed during the operation. For discovering a new planet with such resources and such weak opposition there would be a big reward indeed-100,000,000 Cubes of Energon Supreme (most likely minus a few thousand Cubes, as it was possible a few soldiers might indeed lose bodies-only Megatron's Division so far had anti-changeling tech) 10 Cubes of Private Reserve, the highest grade of Energon, and a Silver Stripe-in effect, a medal, each, as well as public kudos. The gang was excited, their mind boards thinking of what they could buy. At least two wanted mansions in the second best Cybertronian District-the Energon District, where bots like Ultimate lived. The only better district, the Government District, was firmly off limits for security reasons rather then how much it cost, to keep any undetected government haters out.

The ponies were quite excited, that these Steel Men were going to end changeling rule once and for all, and meanwhile the changelings and their Queen had no idea that robots from space were going to end their rule for good. Whilst the small changelings on other planet were great spies, these huge changelings only rarely used their changing ability, as they could force ponies to deliver their love.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Soon enough, all of the soldiers who would be partaking in the mission were, in turn, upgraded with the love-to-hate technology. Megatron's division getting the upgrades first didn't mean that the others would be left vulnerable. They just had to wait their turns.

For the experienced soldiers, getting this sort of an upgrade wasn't all that new. They were glad to learn that this equipment, unlike some of Paranormal's material, would do the conversion all on its own. All they would need to do was remember to activate it when they got to the target planet. Megatron would give a reminder over the military frequency to ensure that this happened.

After all of the preparations were done, everyone assigned to the invasion lined up in ground formations. Then, with Megatron's call of "DECEPTICONS, ATTACK!" they all took off, rank after rank, and rose into the sky. Outside the many bases of Cybertron, the "civilian" Decepticons felt both awe and pride as the huge, menacing swarms ascended, almost blocking out the sun as they did so. Once at the target world, they would block out that sun. Instead of coming in by stealth, they would let the changelings see that there was no point in bothering to resist - or at least, they would see it if the beasts weren't completely dimwitted.

As this was taking place, Bust-Up and his gang were flying in low and avoiding the rising hordes. They landed at the biggest Raid Dropoff Point with their latest cart of oil, and watched as the Military went on its way.

"So, shall we keep on raiding that sucker, or take our money and fly?" Bust-Up said, looking as if he knew what the rest of the gang would say. His suspicion was correct - they all eagerly said to keep raiding. As the only independent raid gang allowed during the military action, they would pretty much have an open field. The enemies would all be busy trying to fight off the millions of invaders, and the gang would be able to grab all that it was physically able to until the entire planet had been subdued. The only catch was that they would likely be unable to get any more slaves since the Military tended to just delete all enemies that got in the way.

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

On the target planet, the changelings were just becoming aware that the usual messengers from other castles weren't arriving. However, they had no idea that the delay would be permanent. Due to the lack of fast communication, none realized that several castles were affected, and not just theirs and whichever one they expected to hear from.

Suddenly, they sensed a great change in the energy all around them. Unlike the sense some got when the raiders came, this was no local effect. It pervaded the entire atmosphere of the planet, and reeked of excitement, predatorial intent, and goal-oriented intent.

Just as the remaining changelings on the light side of the planet were noticing this, the sky went dark. Mere minutes later, the changelings couldn't hear themselves think over the sound of millions and millions of jet engines. Then, the attacks began.

~~~~~~~~~~~

On the other side of the planet, there was no sudden light-to-dark effect because it was already dark. However, the city-dwellers were surprised to see what seemed to be about 5 million fireflies very high in the sky. These "fireflies" began to get closer, some of them fanning out and flying in the direction of other cities in the area.

Suddenly, one set of lights flew across a beam being produced by the oil lamps of a relatively tall tower. For just a moment, the body of a Decepticon became visible.

"H-hey! That's not fireflies! It's some kind of a machine!" A voice rang out. As if in response, the strains of some...music?...floated down from on high.

Let the bodies hit the floor! Let the bodies hit the floor! Let the bodies hit the......FLOOORRRRR!

The changelings never had a chance to ask what the foreign-language words could mean. In an instant, their cities were beset with powerful rail-gun fire, and changelings fell dead all around as buildings began to collapse. Within cages at the darkened wet markets, ponies shrank back in fear, sure that they would be destroyed along with their captors. However, while many shells landed very close to them, none directly hit them, though a few ponies got some damage from shrapnel.

After two waves of this firing, strange new sounds were heard. Now, the planes were transforming into robots, and the robots proceeded to swarm across the ground like a great metal sea of destruction. Semi-deactivated changelings were made completely deactivated, and the entire robotic force was very meticulous about getting them all.

Suddenly, a large contingent of changelings appeared, flying over the tops of the ruined buildings on their strange, hole-infested wings. "THEY'RE ALIVE! DRAIN 'EM ALL!" Came the battle command from their leader, and they started trying to massively love-raid the invaders, starting with the flashy yellow-and-red bot in front who appeared to be leading them.

Almost as quickly, the changeling force began to shriek in pain and then collapse in heaps. The love-to-hate upgrades had worked! These changelings didn't have a chance to do anything else when the leader of the robotic division yelled, "KILL THEM ALL," leading the way with a salvo of rail-gun fire. The powerful shots blew fountains of dirt and gore up from wherever they landed, and the enemy's first real attempt at "defense" was completely deactivated within a couple of minutes.

"If this is all they've got, I won't need my specialized Battalion to take care of every last one of them," the mysterious general gloated in Binary with a big smug look on his face. He began to search the ground with his eyes, finally seeing a shop with ponies in cages. He looked disgruntled at their existence, as if their mere being there was some kind of a hassle.

In reality, it WAS a hassle for ponies to be there. Megatron wanted to keep them, and the general would have preferred to just flatten these cities with no care about who or what was in them. But because there were "desirables" within range, he had to actually watch and aim throughout the entire operation.

After the first few cities were trashed, General Carjack looked around appraisingly. There appeared to be no surface oil here, but that didn't mean that none was underground. It also didn't mean that there was nothing else worth stealing, either. He went over to one of the markets and addressed the cowering, caged ponies there. "Is there any oil around here that's easy to get? How about anything else?" He said, using his Equish language pack in hopes of being understood.

[Vallermoore]

The soldiers were very pleased that they all got the new upgrades. Megatron didn't want bots to lose their expensive Military-grade bodies just because they happened to be in divisions that were under different generals. Replacing the bodies was expensive for a start, and he wanted all the regiments to consider themselves valued parts of the Decepticon Military, not penal battalions that were expendable. When the military bots rose up in their swarms from the planet, the "civilian" bots were proud and awestruck at the sight of their Military, who had been protecting Cybertron and expanding the Empire since long before Megatron became divine. To non-Decepticons, the Decepticon Military was a thing of fear, but to the Decepticons it was a thing of pride and, although they would be unlikely to admit it, perhaps even a small amount of love as well.

On the day side the changelings felt something new, but it was not something they could feed on unless they wanted to feel sick. It was excited and predatory and very alien. Bust-Up and his gang decided to carry on raiding to get the maximum amount of Energon, with happy thoughts in their mind-boards-thoughts of new mansions, bodies, and even in at least one or two cases Ultimate Upgrades.

The sky went dark as the Military decloaked all at once and the changelings had to cover their ears or change them into something else. Their reaction when attacked was, for nearly all of them, to try and drain the love, all of it, out of their foes, only to drain pure hate instead and expire on the spot. Others fled, tried to pretend to be other things like rocks and the like-but were picked out by changeling detecting software, or, in a few cases took the shape of Decepticons, that in this shape could speak Binary, and tried to infiltrate their foes. At least one took on the shape of High General Soundwave, when hiding behind a castle, put on the air of an officer, and ordered some bots to follow him. However, although he looked like High General Soundwave, and his Binary even sounded like High General Soundwave, it lacked the code that marked it out on this campaign as a genuine order to be obeyed.

Decepticon Military planners had recognized this sort of thing as a problem when facing changelings of their size. If it any serious doubt if an officer were real, for this campaign only the bots had special permission to bounce a ping off their officers, even if it were Leader Megatron Himself, to uncover the chitin instead of armour that would give away a changeling. When they discovered chitin, as they did now, they riddled the faux Soundwave with plenty of blaster fire. Within only an hour, the entire day half had been taken, with only two bot bodies lost. One had got hit by cannon balls in several places when in plane mode attacking a rather large changeling castle, and the other was a random raider who had been defragging when Megatron gave the order that no Raider Front should come along, woke up as the Military were leaving Cybertron, came along and was overlooked due to the sheer number of bots, and lost all his love and then his Military-Grade body.

Warrior was leading a group of fifty bots, and warned them to keep their changeling detection devices turned on

*****
On the night side, the changelings saw what they thought were fireflies high above them, and then one revealed itself in the light to be a Decepticon in plane mode. "H-hey! That's not fireflies! It's some kind of a machine!" a changeling shouted, and strange music floated down from on high.


Let the bodies hit the floor! Let the bodies hit the floor! Let the bodies hit the......FLOOORRRRR!

Rail-gun fire hit the cities, partly destroying them and taking out nearly every cannon battery and their gunpowder. As the bots landed and slaughtered every last changeling, whose attempts to drain love in return got only hate which poisoned them, an armoured force of changelings with their strange wings full of holes, the Changeling Military, turned up. "THEY'RE ALIVE! DRAIN 'EM ALL!" They started trying to drain their robotic foes dry of any love, but again got hate. Again, some changelings tried to flee or hide, a few tried to fight, and a few tried to take the shape of their robotic foes and impersonate them.

With the changelings on the night side vanquished (with the losses of five Decepticons to cannon fire as there were many more cannons here, a few in hidden batteries) General Carjack was a little irked at the wet markets full of ponies as he wasn't allowed to blast them. As it was, they were able to point out various sources of oil and such things and happily did so. After scanning them, just in case the changelings could shrink that small, he let them out. They were frightened, but very happy to be free instead of being purchased by changelings and taken to their homes to be drained of love like a Decepticon would chug an Energon Cube.

With the planet on the verge of an utter takeover, the Changeling Queen, having been told by a few terrified changelings about Megatron, took the shape of the only High General she had seen directly from a turret in her palace, High General Carjack, and left the city, flying towards the day side and trying to rely on her disguise to go unbothered by Decepticons.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Warrior's group descended on a large castle that was surrounded by many miles of oil. They didn't know whether this was the Queen's residence, a second home for her, or just the manor of a powerful regional governor. What they did know was that it would likely have a large number of changelings inside, and that they intended to delete them all.

To their dismay, no changelings came out and made things easy for them. Instead, the fortification remained locked up tight, with its drawbridge up and all of its windows covered with lowered boards.

"Let's try to smash in from the top!" Warrior ordered. His group began to fire rail-gun shells at the roof, and each hit knocked a bit of the masonry off. It took several strafing runs, but eventually, the roof was demolished. The opening revealed that the top floor was adorned with a fancy red carpet, and what appeared to be several huge decorative urns with flowers.

"Blast those urns and let's see how they break!" Warrior commanded, suspecting that they were not a normal part of the castle's decor. The group came around for another strafing run, and took aim at the apparent pottery. Just as Warrior had suspected, it didn't shatter into potsherds. Instead, the urns turned into chunks of gore and splattered across the floor and walls.

"Let's land in there and clear this place out room-to-room," came Warrior's next command. "Be sure your emotion-converters are running at 100%! And blast anything that isn't part of the castle itself!"

Many of the 50 bots had to land outside of the castle, but several were able to land within the top floor along with Warrior. He sent some downstairs to open the drawbridge to allow the rest of his group to swarm in. Meanwhile, he and the remaining ones on the top floor began to meticulously go through the floor they were on before heading down to the middle story to continue clearing it.

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

Far from this action, the Changeling Queen went as fast as she could toward this very location. It was indeed one of her other homes, and it was her most fortified one next to the one that was about to be overcome by the advance of Carjack's division.

Suddenly, she saw a very unique-looking Decepticon and millions of other bots coming toward her. The off-white bot flew like Superman rather than as a plane, and those behind him flew with great discipline and skill. This bot sported a huge black barrel on his right arm, and appeared to have a helmet that served as his skull rather than being worn on top of it.

Almost immediately, she saw him move his fusion cannon just a bit, putting her dead-on in the path of any firing he did. He then fired a very powerful blast right at her. Several of the troops closest to him joined in almost immediately. They all intended to fire until the target broke apart into bits of chitin and half-cooked gore.

Leader Megatron didn't even need to ping or otherwise check to see that this "Carjack" was a changeling. He knew where the real one was, and that the actual Carjack wouldn't leave that area until there were no targets left to kill - and that it'd take a lot longer than this for that condition to have been met.

~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, Warrior's attack on the castle had alerted a special changeling contingent based nearby. Since it was one of the Queen's homes, it had its own protective force assigned to it. They quickly got ready, and rushed to meet the robotic attackers in hopes of either driving them off or killing them.

~~~~~~~~~~

Almost halfway on the other side of the planet, the real Carjack was pleased at what he'd heard from the pony. There was still plenty of oil, but in the cities, it had been drained from the surface so the changelings could put up a lot of buildings and roads without having to deal with the noxious material or the fire hazard it sometimes presented. The general grinned ominously at the news.

"Attention, everyone!" Carjack radioed his battalion. "The source says there isn't any surface oil in the cities! That means we can use our PROPER blasters to finish this job!!" Cheers went up from the Decepticons all around. The rail-gun attachments they had worked well, but all were more comfortable with their familiar energy blasters. Energy blasters also had a much longer range, so they could take out cannon batteries and such while still farther away than a cannonball could fly. Of course, they would still have to be careful, just in case they didn't see a cannon soon enough to take it out of commission first.

Soon after Carjack and his Division resumed their invasion activities, they came across a large manor with a huge white flag now flying from its parapets. It was the city's mayoral mansion, and the mayor was signaling the surrender of his area. However, it was unknown how much power a mayor had here. Would all of the changelings in this area agree to capitulate? Or would they just ignore the surrender order?

[Vallermoore]

Warrior's platoon sized group (he was the equivalent of a lieutenant, a Lesser Commander, Greater Commanders being colonel equivalents) decended on a large castle, watching with care in case cannons blasted them. A Decepticon body that had been blasted by cannons in plane mode lay on the ground in front of this castle, but it would seem that this castle was out of ammunition for they were not blasted at, much to their relief. Cannon balls, although short range, were very hard for most Decepticons to dodge properly. No changelings came out to flee or fight."Let's try to smash in from the top!" Warrior ordered, and rail-guns soon opened the roof up, revealing several large urns seemingly holding plants. "Blast those urns and let's see how they break!" The urns blew up into cooked chitin and changeling internal organs, such as love sacs and other such things, now all over the place. "Let's land in there and clear this place out room-to-room. Be sure your emotion-converters are running at 100%! And blast anything that isn't part of the castle itself!" Warrior didn't want any bots hurt or losing their bodies or any changelings escaping if he could help it.

Wall tapestries, furniture, and things of that sort were blasted, often revealing now dead changelings. A couple of bots ran into unwelcome surprises. One lost an arm to a false wall that turned into a large axe on legs and with eyes before he could blast it with the other arm and after that all the walls got blasted as well, and another lost a leg to a cannon booby trap. When they found ponies they scanned them, and only one pony turned out to be a changeling-clearly only very young changelings that were still pony size could shrink that small. The ponies were not harmed and were allowed to flee, as those were Warrior's orders from on high. At last the last room was blasted and they found a robe of pony hides, clearly royal clothing. If Warrior had been a scorpion-person, the equivalent would have been a suit of armour made from skinned scorpion-person exoskeleton. Warrior gave the robe to the ponies. "Do what you want with this-bury or cremate it according to your traditions." It was no wonder the Queen was hated with a robe like this. He found a silver circlet meant to go around a chitin crown and put it in a panel as battle loot.
Unknown to him, the Changeling Queen was flying here in disguise as no less then High General Carjack and so far her disguise had worked, but she was never to reach this area alive, so Warrior was spared a possible battle with a Changeling Queen.

However, around a hundred and fifty armoured changelings who realized by now that love draining would not work, flew in as flying Decepticon sized axes with eyes, legs and feet, and long hole-filled wings. A blow from one of these was capable of cutting even through Decepticon Steel. Most got nowhere near Warrior's group before they were blasted, but their armour gave them limited protection and a few got through, deactivating Decepticon limbs and even a few bots in showers of sparks before blasters and a few well aimed punches and kicks killed them. It was just as well that there were very few fighting changelings by the time they figured out a way to harm their Decepticon foes physically, or more bots might have lost their Mil-Spec bodies.

*****
The Queen was intending to hunker down in her most impressive castle, and had passed a few bots without trouble, but when she came across Leader Megatron, he didn't need a ping or his divine powers to reveal chitin and biological organs beneath it. He knew High General Carjack very well, and there was no way he would be flying here with foes left to fight, so this High General was clearly totally faux. The Queen managed to dodge the blast from his fusion cannon-but not the many blasts from the bots of his division, and her royal body was reduced to scorched cooked chitin very quickly, her chitin crown breaking off her head and rolling along the ground.

*****
After allowing half an hour to give ponies outside the markets some sort of chance to escape if they could, and warning them to if they could to leave the houses, they carried on, soon coming across a seemingly deserted mansion, a white flag flying and many weeping changelings awaiting captivity or slaughter, in their open black chitin bodies, their dragonfly wings folded at their sides.

*****
With 90% of the planet taken over, holovisions were installed in the cleared areas for Leader Megatron to tell the ponies what he expected of them. Although the ponies were very happy to be liberated from cruel changeling rule, Forintel bots who were spying found out that there were ponies who feared that the Steel Men might find them tasty morsels and eat them, or might want to do horrible things to them. This was out of sheer ignorance about Decepticons rather then malice. One thing the Forintel spy bots did not hear anywhere was ponies planning a revolt, although there was lots of wondering what their new Steel Man overlords would want from them in terms of taxes and other such things.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Once Warrior and his platoon deactivated all of the defenders, the ground was littered with bodies of both biological and mechanical natures. The Decepticons collected the parts of their fallen comrades so that they couldn't be reverse-engineered or more-easily copied by any other changelings, but left the biological parts on the ground as a grisly warning of what would happen to any other challengers.

After that was done, Warrior and his troops took up positions around the castle to make sure that it remained Decepticon territory. They would stay there until getting further orders from one of the generals or Leader Megatron - there were no commanders in between him and someone of those ranks. This area was too sparsely-populated to need any interim commanders like colonels and such, even if some of the commanders had larger groups under them.

Once everything was deemed calm and under control, Warrior radioed his report in to General Skywarp, being sure to mention the axe-shaped defenders and what they could do. Skywarp then used his radio and informed the entire rest of the active troops, even those not in his division, using the main Military Frequency. Now, everyone knew to look out for this sort of attack (or defense), and to blast any such things before they got too close.

~~~~~~~~~~

Over on Carjack's side of the planet, Carjack's division approached the surrendered castle very carefully in case it was a trap. Only after making sure that it wasn't, they came right up to the surrendered changelings. The bowing biologicals were glad when they weren't summarily executed, but they weren't too happy to find themselves chipped instead. Carjack wasn't necessarily thrilled with chipping them, finding it logistically problematic to keep POWs, but he wanted to get information from at least some of them. Using the chipping method ensured that they could be moved to new locations without trouble and that they also couldn't cause trouble if they had to be embedded within the advancing division.

Once everyone was duly under control, Carjack looked for the one with the clearest, most intelligent-looking eyes. "So where's the seat of government for this planet?! And what's defending it?!" He demanded. "Answer!" His order activated the captive's chip, which would then force the captive to give an answer. This sort of chip couldn't force a truthful answer, but Carjack hoped that the captive wouldn't realize that. Still, he would send scouts ahead to be sure. His main hope was that the answer would at least point in the right general direction.

Carjack had no care about whether these changelings got hungry, or what they could be fed. That would be the responsibility of whatever slavemaster bought them. If they starved to death before that, it would be tough nuts for them. His only mercy would be to blast them instead of letting them starve to death, if it actually got that bad. However, he figured they'd be fine - most biologicals of such a size could actually live for many weeks without eating, though they would get weak and scrawny with prolonged deprivation. Typically, water was a far more pressing requirement than food, and he would be sure to ask where some was before they moved on.

Around them, the rest of Carjack's huge division began to land, and began wreaking havoc in the surrounding towns almost as if that was just something to do while bored and waiting for the real orders. Smoke from random fires began to rise, and shrieking changelings could be heard along with sporadic blaster fire. Occasionally, there was a cheerful hoot as some good loot was discovered.

Soon enough, freed ponies began running around as this activity continued. Most were lucky enough to stay out of the way of the giant robots' feet, but not all were so lucky. The occasional sound of an equine life being squelched, along with a robotic "eugh," could sometimes be heard. It didn't take long for the ponies to realize that giant robots in a war situation didn't bother to look down for tiny little creatures in unexpected places, and they quickly learned to stay out of the way.

As could be expected, all of this activity filled the area with a combination of terror, hatred, sadistic energy, and similar emotions. Before too long, this was added to by the beginnings of a snowstorm and a strong chill in the air.

Many of the troops didn't think anything of it, but the surviving changelings, all of the ponies, General Carjack, and a few more-experienced soldiers all knew that this was no fluke.

"Windigoes exist here and are congregating!" Carjack yelled into his radio, set to address only his division. "They come from the sky, and will keep coming until they're obliterated or they freeze us into statues!! Stop whatever you're doing and get in the air - blast 'em all before they make this entire place as cold as Michigan!!"

While the troops had no idea what or where this 'Michigan' place was, they knew by Carjack's tone that it would be a very bad thing if its weather got replicated here. Soon, the ground-level chaos stopped, and - except for the soldiers now guarding the surrendered castle - the division was up in the air looking for these 'Windigoes' the General had mentioned. Meanwhile, the temperature continued to plunge as the snow became thicker.

"At least it's easy to feed those things," Carjack grumbled, staring at the sky. He readied his blasters in case any got within range.

[Vallermoore]

Warrior settled into and around the captured castle and radioed to High General Skywarp about the axe-changelings that could cut through Decepticon Steel at close range, as that was pretty important information that Skywarp would not at all mind hearing. Skywarp informed the Decepticon Military as a whole, which saved several Mil-spec bodies from getting chopped into scrap as the bots knew what to look for.

*****

Carjack chipped the surrendered changelings so they wouldn't be able to flee or change into something dangerous to Decepticon bodies. Once everyone was duly under control, Carjack looked for the one with the clearest, most intelligent-looking eyes. "So where's the seat of government for this planet?! And what's defending it?! Answer!" The changeling replied in Equish, knowing no Binary. "The main seat of government has been crushed but the Queen has most likely gone to her main fortress to hunker down there, which has a few hundred guards in the shape of flying axes." He gave the location, neither he nor General Carjack knowing yet that the fortress had already been taken and the guards and Changeling Queen were dead. As the bots of Carjack's division landed and started to loot, here and there freed ponies were stepped on, and where enough ponies were scared or unhappy, Windigos showed up. It started to get cold, then very cold, and then it started to snow, and the bots were not prepared with extra heating. General Carjack had faced these nasties before. "Windigos exist here and are congregating! They come from the sky, and will keep coming until they're obliterated or they freeze us into statues!! Stop whatever you're doing and get in the air - blast 'em all before they make this entire place as cold as Michigan!!"

The bots thought this Michigan must be intensely cold and didn't want to be frozen stiff. They took off and blasted most of the Windigos into rain, but several got near Carjack and were blasted into rain on sight. It took a few minutes, but those Windigos who didn't flee were blasted before they could do more then lay easily broken ice on Decepticon joints, ice that could be broken just by moving the joints.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Before long, the windigo accumulation was deleted, with the robots being quite interested in how they turned into rain rather than thudding to the ground as solid dead bodies. Many would surely bother the Paranormal Division later to find out how that worked.

For now, Carjack radioed in his information, only to learn that the queen had already been deleted and her spare castle seized. "Great," he said, "Now we can just take over the rest of this area and be done with it!"

Carjack ordered a few troops to stay at the current captured castle to guard the prisoners and loot what they could from the interior. He warned them to be careful inside, because some of the changelings might have decided to hide there instead of surrendering. "They could look like anything, or at least anything big enough for them to imitate," he reminded them. Then, he took off with the rest of his division, intending for his group to cut across his assigned area like a giant scythe.

As he made progress across the land, word managed to spread about how damaging this division was. Even though it wasn't the specially-trained Genocide Battalion, the General in charge ensured that it was one of the most terrifyingly destructive. Soon, cities and towns rose surrender flags in advance of the division's arrival, in hopes that they would be spared of death and that their buildings wouldn't be blasted into pebbles.

At each surrendered town, Carjack had every changeling that could be found chipped so that the enemy couldn't reassemble and attack the Decepticons from the rear. Then, he named a squad commander and left him and a suitable number of troops behind to keep control of the captured territory. He did this until finally, there were no longer enough troops left together in the division to invade anything else. At that point, he radioed that his mission had been successful, but that to go further, he would need more troops or another division would need to come in.

While Carjack was hoping to get more troops assigned to him, Leader Megatron ordered that another fresh division - this one belonging to General Thundercracker - would pick up where Carjack left off. Carjack expected that, since each division trained according to the methods of its High General and worked better together as opposed to being switched up. Even so, he was a bit disappointed as he finally let his engine drop to idle and he took a seat near the last town hall that his group had captured. He would have gladly flattened the entire planet if he had enough soldiers to spread out to more captured towns.

~~~~~~~~~~

Soon enough, General Thundercracker arrived by teleporting in with a trademark bang that did indeed sound something like a thunderclap. Behind him, his division, as big as Carjack's was before towns were taken, flew in perfect formation. These troops were all generalists, but they were excellent soldiers. Their High General was a specialist in general combat, similar to an old-Earth Army leader, and they were tough soldiers with a lot of "get 'er done" attitude. Despite this, they would lay less waste to their targets, preferring instead to get surrenders or just eliminate those who actively fought. In some situations, this was good, but in others, it caused other divisions to have to come in and mop up. Carjack hoped that they would get the job done right, in one sweep, so he wouldn't have to deal with any insurgents later.

Thanks to the news that had spread due to Carjack's advance, the first several towns surrendered immediately. They hadn't yet realized that this was a different group of robots. Eventually, though, the defenders did figure out that the towns were no longer being utterly obliterated, and that the soldiers weren't as disgruntled about having to avoid blasting all of the ponies. Then, the remaining free changelings began to have hope, and Thundercracker was eventually met with 1,000 of their last, but finest, fighters.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Thundercracker was a bit surprised to see a swarm of 1,000 odd things flying at his group through the air, and when he saw that they looked like giant winged spears, he started laughing - and, remembering the warning about the axe-shaped ones, made sure he started blasting, as well. However, in the midst of this, he failed to notice the giant humanoids on the ground or the big shurikens they were now chucking up at the plane-mode robots.

Suddenly, many of his group were pierced by these shurikens, which turned out to be changelings with exoskeletons as hard as the axes from before. It was just their good luck that a shuriken shape, while good for piercing a target, wasn't too great at penetrating deeply. Since the robots had no arteries to cut, and their hydraulic lines were deep within their limbs, the assault did little to deactivate them. What it did do was immediately draw everyone's attention to the new threat, and just as immediately, cause a deluge of energy-blaster fire to rain down. Within moments, the giants below, along with any remaining shuriken-shaped comrades of theirs, were roasted.

As this went on, the dogfight against the spear-shaped enemies continued. The long, narrow forms were quite hard to hit, and a few actually managed to make it through and stab some of the Decepticons. Most of these stabs didn't do much because the changelings didn't know which parts of the body were actually important, but about 10 of them managed to smash into motion-boards or parts important for planes to stay in the air such as the flaps. This caused the affected soldiers to crash, but in doing so, they took the spear-changelings down with them. The changelings thought that they had at least defeated a few bots, but they didn't realize that while their comrades would stay dead, the affected bots were already being reloaded into new bodies back on Cybertron and would return within the hour - now very pissed off.

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

Coming from the other direction, Leader Megatron and his division were making excellent progress. This group was likely the most efficient at taking things over. It didn't waste blaster or railgun fire on unnecessary buildings, only attacking them if enemy fighters were believed to be within. It also created the least amount of pony collateral damage. However, when a few changelings tried to attack, they were shot down with amazing speed. To the changeling military's dismay, it was not able to deactivate even one of this division's soldiers, who were the Decepticon Military's finest troops. No first-year conscripts were in Megatron's division.

With all of the divisions working together, it didn't take but several hours to wipe out all opposition on this planet. Now, all of the towns and castles had either surrendered or had been destroyed. Even better, unlike in most invasions, all of the target species had been chipped or killed. This made it so that the invaders didn't have to go around capturing slaves and caging them, like they would normally need to do. Despite this, everyone knew that several changelings had likely escaped detection due to their natural abilities. Any work sites that were set up would have to be secured against external attempts to free the newly-enslaved captives.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, it was time for the Military Engineering Battalion to come in. Its first job would simply be to survey and inventory the land. This would let the Decepticons know the best places to put up oil collectors, refineries, mines, and other such things. Then, they would figure out how to house the captured changelings so that they would be close to the work sites, yet sheltered enough to keep them healthy AND secure enough to keep them from being raided away by other changelings who had evaded capture.

Vampire very much enjoyed the trip through space in plane mode, and the sight of a new world looming before him as he dropped back out of FTL. He was part of a group that would be working on one of the rural castles.

"The first part of this job is to find out if there is subterranean oil underneath this surface loot," his new squad commander said. "Then, we can determine if the ground will be stable once we drain the surface. If it is, we'll need to design a big longhouse-style barracks for the slaves that will work here. The slaves themselves will build it, so it will need to be possible to do it with their capabilities instead of ours."

[Vallermoore]

With the windigos blasted, the weather would quickly thaw out, much to the relief of everyone, be they biological or robotic life. Most changelings were captured or dead, but there were a few still willing and able to fight, and they had worked out ways of damaging, or even in a few cases destroying, robot bodies whose love was raid-proof. They had to take the shapes of huge winged axes or spears or swords and then cut through their foes. Most changelings fled from Carjack's Division-those who didn't were either chipped or blasted. Ponies were not deliberately harmed as they had offered no resistance and most were loyalists anyway who hated the changelings even more then the Decepticons did, but they were scanned in case any changelings could shrink that small. With Carjack's Division on occupation duties, General Thundercracker took over, and was faced with 1000 changelings from one of the few Changeling Divisions still alive and unchipped. The spears could only take down a few Decepticons, and were normally unable to extract themselves when that happened, although they were surprisingly hard to hit with blasters. Other changelings threw-more changelings, that took shuriken shape, into the Decepticons, but they could not penetrate deeply enough to cut the fuel lines, and just got more changelings blasted. Then what appeared to be Megatron came into view. For this campaign only, Thundercracker was allowed to ping any bot-even Leader Megatron! if he reasonably though the bot was in fact a concealed changeling. Even an ordinary bot could do that during this campaign, as long as there was a reasonable chance of changeling infiltration. In this case, good manners had to take second place to common sense.

When the ping revealed not the outer layers of some of the finest armour in the universe, but a thin layer of changeling chitin, it was followed by a blast that killed-and revealed-the changeling on the spot, who had dared to impersonate Megatron, no doubt with the intention of leading General Thundercracker's Division into an ambush.

Here and there unicorn ponies, some of them from the start of the invasion, had opened fire with pony magic on their vast changeling tormenters, although mainly without much effect, although they did manage to bring one down by blasting through the chitin with pony magic lightning and igniting a hydrogen bladder. Once they did that, they managed to tell a passing Decepticon where this bladder (which made the changeling light enough to fly easily) could be found, and individual changelings started going down like flaming Hindenburg airships once he in turn told Leader Megatron about it who told the Decepticon Military.. By themselves, the ponies would have been crushed and eaten for good measure, but now they could at last do their bit. Forintel took notice of those who had joined in at the very start, a couple of hundred or so of them.

*****
There was one last major changeling leader left on this planet, Princess Chrysta, who had put out a call through the Hivemind once her chitin crown grew when her mother died, for every changeling willing and able to fight, to gather around her. And come they did, in their thousands from destroyed divisions, from changeling cities just before they fell, from castles and caves and other such places, yanking the love from ponies that they passed for one last meal. By now, through trial and bitter error they were working out what did and didn't damage Decepticons. Love raiding just poisoned the changeling who tried it, and impersonating high ranking Decepticons was not working, but taking the shape of axes in particular had some effect and could destroy Decepticon bodies close in. The new Queen, likely to be the last of her line, told them "Surrender means slavery, and we are the last of our kind who can turn things around. We will take on the shape of large trees until the Decepticons start marching through us, and then we'll take axe-mode and strike. Their leader is one Megatron." She briefly took his shape. "If we can slay him, they might well back off. I want twenty of you to go to the beach and take whale shape, so if all is lost, there will still be changelings on this planet. I have not seen any bots near water. I'm thinking, if a few of you took bucket shape, we filled you with water and threw you on a wounded bot, what would that do?" After a speech from their Queen, the changelings prepared their trap and sent a few of them as bait to lead the Decepticons along their "forest path."

Just as the bots in robot-form of Megatron's division started to enter the forest, they halted, and pinged the trees, revealing they were made of chitin just before the fight began. Several thousand changelings took axe-shape and started swiping at the bots, chopping down a few of them who were too close, and making the rest back off a little before they formed a double firing line and started blasting.

***
With most of the planet secured, MilEng could come in and ping the ground for oil, coal, and other such useful items (whilst keeping a watch for any changelings.) There turned out to be plenty of subterranean oil to drain, although the ground would not remain stable in all cases.

[Victorious Decepticons]

"What the Foundry are you doing?!" Megatron's irritated voice came through to all in his division as they entered the "forest," causing most of them to stop and stay away from it. The few who had gone first soon found themselves beset by changelings, and some were even cut up by the ambush. The rest of this group quickly flew away and joined the others, who were still in the air.

"We do not walk through forests!" Megatron reminded them all. "Real trees grow too close to walk through easily, and as you just got reminded, they're great places for ambushes, too! Commence circling at a distance, and blast any of those creeps that try to come up here!"

After giving that order, Megatron radioed the Main Base on Cybertron for a bomber squadron. Within minutes, 25 bombers were on their way, and thanks to FTL, they'd arrive in just a few minutes more.

Soon enough, the changelings heard the roar of planes much larger than the ones they'd already seen. Those who were still in tree forms expected that it would be easy to run them off, as they thought they had done with the now-circling fighter division. However, to their dismay, the large planes stayed far above them and flew straight across their group, dropping relatively small items as they did so.

"Are they dropping mini-robots on us?" The changelings wondered. They expected this since they had been willing to use each other as weapons, so getting the same sort of tactic back was part of their mindset. "If they do that, we'll cut the little ones to scrap easily!"

Then, the "little ones" landed. Immediately, the defenders became acquainted with a new concept: Bombs. Before now, changelings had only known about firepots as incendiary devices - never things that would blow up with such extreme force. In an instant, half of the "trees" were destroyed, along with any in axe-mode who were within the blast radii. Then, the survivors heard the big bomber planes turn to come around again and drop a second batch...

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

MilEng marked each surveyed area with flags so that construction crews would know what was where and what could be built there. Stable ground got steel-gray flags, and the mushiest land got water-blue ones. Ground in between the extremes got striped brown-and-blue flags.

Flags were also planted according to located resources. Metals had symbols in Binary, while oil was a big, black drop-shaped icon. The oil flags were also marked with depths so that the drillers would know how far they needed to dig before they'd hit it. Surface oil, however, was only marked if there was also underground oil right under it. It was figured that the surface oil was easy enough to see without any markings.

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

MilIntel noticed a pod of whales suddenly appear in one of the seas, and realized that this happened right after they'd tracked a group of changelings in the seashore area. It didn't take much for them to figure out what was going on. The only problem would be finding troops who could get to them. Offhand, they knew of only one person "crazy" enough to have waterproofed himself for the specific purpose of being able to swim, and who often did this in an ocean: General Carjack.

Right away, Carjack was radioed and redeployed to where these whales were. Carjack then radioed the Main Base, and ordered a squad of 20 Genociders to come along with him. This was because the Genociders had a higher-than-usual rate of immigrants among them - and many immigrants enjoyed swimming. When in the Military, they typically volunteered for swimming upgrades to their Mil-Spec bodies when they had the chance, unlike native-builts, who would have to be directly ordered to do so (which was done only in extreme cases).

The 20 that he called for were ones that he knew had already taken the upgrades in both sealing and coatings that would allow them to swim after these new targets, even if that included deep diving. They would be happy to assist with a mission that involved the water.

Once they arrived, Carjack began to display his Genocider Seals, as the other soldiers were already doing. "Now remember," he warned them, "we are only going to wipe out this one group of enemies who currently think that hiding in the ocean is a good idea - not run rampant on land like we'd all prefer to. Most of the smaller lifeforms here are favorable to Leader Megatron, and he wants to keep it that way!"

The new group groaned at having to restrain itself, but was glad to get to see at least some action. They all took off to the location MilIntel had stated, eagerly looking forward to turning that part of the ocean red with changeling blood.

Flying at several times the speed of sound, they soon came to the edge of the continent. There, the pod of faux-whales was clearly visible from the air.

"Time to cook some blubber!!" One of the Genodicers yelled out, and Carjack quickly agreed. The group opened fire from the air, causing the ocean's surface to erupt in steam and fountains of boiling water. As they did this, they began to dive down from the air, intending to slice into the water like giant knives and then continue the fight.

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

So far, no buckets of water had been dumped on anyone, and the Decepticon Military wasn't considering the possibility. Whether that would do anything (if it happened) would depend on whether the target was damaged, and if so, where the damage was.

[Vallermoore]

It was Leader Megatron who stopped what would have been many more bots from walking into the "forest" so that only a dozen or so were chopped into sparking parts, their minds sent back to the Military Save Vault, and a few more injured, and he was irritated. "What the Foundry are you doing?! We do not walk through forests! Real trees grow too close to walk through easily, and as you just got reminded, they're great places for ambushes, too! Commence circling at a distance, and blast any of those creeps that try to come up here!" The bots took off, and any changelings who tried to fly up to do battle were blasted very quickly. When the bomber bots arrived, the changelings had never encountered any bomb more dangerous then incendiary devices and had a very nasty shock. Most of those not blown apart, broke and fled. The new Queen fled with them, hid behind some genuine trees and took the shape of High General Soundwave, intending to get as close as possible to Leader Megatron and then turn her hands into swords and put them right through his chest. Whilst it was not impossible that General Soundwave might indeed meet up with Leader Megatron in such a fashion and at such a time, and whilst she could look and even sound like the spymaster, she didn't understand Binary. She could "speak" it, and even speak it in Soundwave's voice-but what came out was likely to be at best, making some sort of sense but still inappropriate and at worst, total gibberish, so she was hoping to get close without needing to speak Cybertronian Binary. At best, she could repeat some sentences in Binary that she had heard, parrot like. She got surprisingly close to Megatron, walking up like a High General would walk. Her former princess status gave her help in this, even though inwardly she was extremely worried.

"How are things doing in your sector, and why are you here?" Megatron asked. If Soundwave had a good reason to report in, surely he could just radio it in. It was not as if the changelings could hack or listen into the Decepticon radio network and then translate it. The new Queen knew that she had to reply, and quickly, with something that made sense, so she spoke one of the few things she had, whilst pretending to be a large cliff, overheard the real General Soundwave say. Whilst the accent and Cybertronian Binary were perfect, what came out, if someone had translated it into English, was-and this was said to Leader Megatron- "Give me a spare Energon Cube, soldier. I'm thirsty." Decepticon High Generals might have great power, but they certainly didn't-and even more so in a public setting-call Leader Megatron a soldier, as it would be like a general in a biological army calling his Field Marshal a private-and they didn't issue an order to Leader Megatron.

*****
Milintel noticed the "whales" but most bots could not enter water without losing a body, and they were too deep for blaster fire from above to hurt them. General Carjack and 20 lucky Genociders soon arrived and he warned them "Now remember, we are only going to wipe out this one group of enemies who currently think that hiding in the ocean is a good idea - not run rampant on land like we'd all prefer to. Most of the smaller lifeforms here are favourable to Leader Megatron, and he wants to keep it that way!"

The changelings were soon despatched despite a few turning into giant squids and trying to entangle their foes, but when they were back on the beach, one of the Genociders turned on an electric engine and cloaking, and tried to sneak away to do some unauthorized genociding. His own footprints in the sand narked on him to General Carjack. "CHOMPER-Get back here and decloak NOW!" Chomper did what he was told, knowing he might be in serious trouble, as Carjack had a reputation as one of the stricter High Generals.

*****
MilEng was well on the way to uncovering all the resources as well as any unforeseen hazards.

*****

[Victorious Decepticons]

Leader Megatron's eyes widened ever so slightly with surprise when he heard this comment, but then, they returned to normal as he grinned just a bit.

"You should keep more spare Energon with you, Soundwave," he said in Binary, and then got a big cylinder of his Private Reserve - his usual stock - from his leg panel. He made a quick drinking motion - which seemed (to an outsider) like something he might do if he was just being friendly - and handed it over.

Of course, he immediately knew that he was dealing with some changeling or other, and had figured that the thing didn't understand what it was even saying. The real reason he made the drinking motion was to let the creature know what it was supposed to do with this cylinder of Private Reserve that he had just handed it! Still, he used words that would make sense, just in case the creature really did understand Binary and was just unaware of his rank. By doing this, Megatron ensured that regardless of the truth, there would be a good chance of the creature actually drinking the Energon.

Secretly, Megatron also readied his fusion cannon to fire, figuring that if it tried to just outright attack him, he could just blast it on the spot. That, however, would be far less fun than if the changeling tried to keep up the ruse, and drank the Energon.

Energon of any grade would chemically burn the guts of any known biological species that tried to drink it, except, perhaps, for some sort of microbe. Even so, there was a difference between the grades. Private Reserve was the most potent grade, and therefore, the most deadly to a biological. It would take less than two minutes for it to burn through almost any stomach, and once it made it to an artery connected to the stomach, the creature would bleed out internally. The end result would be an extremely painful and very messy death as the blood made its way out of the mouth.

Still, if this biological knew better than to imbibe Cybertron's most potent Energon-based fuel, the fusion cannon would create the same end result. The only difference is that the ensuing dead body would be more cooked, and wouldn't die vomiting up its own blood.

He waited with hidden impatience to see how his new foe would be dying.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Carjack pulled a severed leg off of his body. Since it had been deactivated, it had changed back from a squid tentacle and was now clearly a changeling leg and hoof. "These beasts are so weird and nasty," he said with disgust as he held the part away from himself and then dropped it like it was a rotten rat tail. "I would have loved to turn them all into slabs of meat and fed them to the slaves on Earth."

Soon enough, he and his Genocider contingent went away, and later, they split up and the soldiers returned to Cybertron. Carjack himself rejoined his regulars, and took a seat on the ground near the last castle they had taken. He lit up a huge cigarette, which contained real tobacco, and lit it up. While he was simply enjoying it, he also knew that many biologicals were prone to fleeing from smoke - especially when it came from something as big as a cigarette that a Decepticon could smoke! Therefore, he made sure to listen and subtly look in the downwind direction, just in case anything unusual was flushed out.

~~~~~~~~~~~

For the most part, MilEng didn't find anything all that unusual. There were a few earth pony graveyards, and a big changeling one, but those seemed to just be normal burial grounds instead of mass graves that would indicate either large-scale war or disease.

Then, a radio hail went up on the MilEng channel: An underground tunnel had been spotted by sonar. It was leading away from one of the wrecked castles...

[Vallermoore]

The Changeling Queen didn't fully know how robots worked and thought they might be giant humans in suits of armour,(in which case, their drink could be drunk safely) and also planned to contain the Energon before it could poison her, so she drank it, but the Energon was so poisonous to biologicals that it burned through the attempt made to contain it. In seconds she fell dead and lost her Soundwave shape, revealed as a very dead Changeling Queen with blood coming from her mouth. To a Decepticon, Megatron's Private Reserve was like the finest drink ever-to a biological, even one with some defences against most poisons, it was deadly. With almost no Queens left, changeling resistance was rapidly fading as they just tried to hunker down and stay alive and unseen. Knowing that even just a few living and uncaught changelings could lay eggs, the Decepticons were determined to ferret them out even if it took days. Here and there a few changelings surrendered to chipping, and a young Changeling Queen, the last known royal changeling, came to surrender in her finest royal clothes-a silver coronet which fitted over her living one and a robe of thousands of sapient pony hides sewn together.

Outside the big cities, the ponies were overwhelmingly loyalist at least for now-those brave enough to show themselves cheered the Decepticons every time they blasted or enslaved a luckless changeling. Now more were the changelings trying to hack Decepticons into sparking shards. In the big cities enough ponies had been killed by mistake to make them have a not so nice view of their robotic overlords, but even here, most ponies were happy to be freed. Life for ponies who had been sold in these markets had been short and unhappy as most changelings just drained them of love like a Decepticon would drain an Energon Cube, killing them in the process.

*****
Carjack let Chomper off, but he was sure to send all the Genociders back to Cybertron with a warning not to come back for some unauthorized genociding of their own. His smoke ferreted out a hidden changeling who he blasted, and a few ponies who he scanned and then let go.

*****
The graveyards were not built over anything of particular interest to MilEng and didn't contain highly valuable grave goods, so they left them alone. When they found a tunnel Vampire and a few other bots went down it, and discovered a group of changelings hiding underground, which they blasted on the spot. They also found some eggs which they gave to Biological Research and a few cocooned ponies who they freed.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Megatron watched the biological's detransformation with great interest. He had never seen it this close up, and the mechanics of the process fascinated him. To be able to transform like that, seemingly without the need to shift a lot of mechanical parts, seemed all but impossible!

Even so, the show was over very soon. The dying queen screamed out as she detransformed, and in moments, she fell to the ground with a thud - utterly deactivated. Only now did Megatron let his eyes turn extra-clear and a big conniver's smile come to his mouth. He looked down at the kill, and then noticed his empty Energon cylinder. The changeling queen had only taken a few swallows before dropping the rest. A very quick look of sadness crossed his face as he realized that the majority of a half-Cube's worth of Private Reserve was now soaked into the sand, never to be recovered.

Still, the mourning for his Energon was short-lived. He was already smiling again by the time he reached over and picked up the cylinder a couple of seconds later. That Energon was a small investment for the pleasure of defeating a foe with connivery rather than simple brute force.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Once it was realized that there could be changeling eggs hidden all over, the High Generals had a quick radio conference. Usually, the division used to pry targets out of their hidey-holes and kill them was the Genociders, but while they were effective, their method was to destroy everything within range. When there was nothing left alive, all of the targets were obliterated as part of the carnage. This wouldn't do when there were so many lifeforms to avoid deleting.

The next group to be considered was MilIntel. Some of their troops had been back on Cybertron all along, watching footage as it rolled in and also paying attention to MilEng's findings. It wouldn't take long for these soldiers to process the information with the idea of finding possible egg locations and hidey-holes for uncaptured, still-living changelings.

It was soon decided to have Cybertron's MilIntel contingent send coordinates of likely hiding spots, and for Shockwave's specialized espionage troops to go in and pick off the survivors. They wouldn't be as fast as the Genociders by any stretch, but they would be a lot more careful.

DeathStrike had been on Cybertron, cursing a bit about not being part of the big invasion, when a messenger banged on his barracks door. Upon opening it, he was hastily told that he was being deployed and now had a mission! He was to report to the war zone as soon as possible, and meet with a group of MilIntel spies and General Soundwave the moment he got there. After getting coordinates, he was soon on his way.

Once all of the spies arrived, the newer ones were surprised to find Soundwave standing in a field encircled by several hundred others from the
Espionage Battalion. The older ones, however, found this quite typical. There wasn't time in an active battle to go and designate commanders, so as long as the main fighting was done with, everyone simply crowded around the High General that summoned them for further instructions.

Quickly, Soundwave explained the situation, and informed the group that they would be operating in squads of 10. "That should be enough to overcome any opposition that you may encounter," he told them. He then began to list off names. These would be the squad commanders. They all went over to one side of the field, leaving plenty of room between them. Then, Soundwave rattled off the rest of the names very quickly, telling each one which squad commander he would be under. They all lined up behind their designated commanders.

DeathStrike found himself under one named CO. Like his namesake, carbon monoxide, he was silent and invisible when at an enemy location, but very deadly. Since CO was uncloaked and in the open now, DeathStrike could see the 50 or so notches carefully etched into his blasters. Soon, Soundwave's voice addressed them group-by-group, giving them coordinates for the regions they would be scouring.

"Any changeling that you cannot chip is a changeling that cannot be allowed to live," Soundwave concluded before ordering them to take off and go to their designated areas.

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

The soldiers of General Skywarp's division were surprised when a fancy-looking changeling showed up and then bowed in surrender. A few of them laughed in Binary at the clothes, which they found to be a strange and unnecessary addition to a body that was surely meant to operate without any.

One of the group, a formerly-human immigrant, saw the royal cape quite a bit differently. "Hey, horsehair, cool~! I haven't gotten to wear anything like that in years!" With that, he quickly reached over and chipped the royal, and then stole the robe off of her. He put it around himself and tied it at his neck, letting it drape down his back and leaving his wings and most of his front exposed, like a cape or cloak. He thought no more of it than he would if it was a big piece of fancy cow leather, and by how he acted, he likely didn't take the time to think about just where the "horse" pelts it was made out of had come from.

Meanwhile, another soldier radioed in the news of the capture of a changeling royal, though he didn't know how she was related to the original queen or if there were more. As he did this eyed her silver crown appraisingly, wondering if it would be worth jacking and reselling to some other planet. Before he even got off the radio, he reached over and took it. If no one wanted to pay a premium for it once he got back to Cybertron, he figured he could keep it as a souvenir.

The chipped, captive royal could say nothing about her unceremonious disrobing or de-crowning. Even so, her eyes burned indignantly as the barbarians pranced around with her things, one acting like some kind of Viking biker with her "horsehair" robe and the other now idly spinning HER crown around his wrist like it was some kind of toy.

[Vallermoore]

Megatron found it amusing to use the conniving part of his nature to kill a foe every so often. Once this world was totally taken over, he decided to interrogate the most senior of the chipped changelings to find out more about how their race worked, although he thought it would be good to one day talk to one of the small lings as well, either willingly or with the small ling chipped. These large changelings were normally much less into hiding then their smaller cousins after all, and raided their love very much like Decepticons. It was a pity to lose a bit of that high-grade Private Reserve Energon, but there was plenty more of that, and it was worth it to pull off the connive. He didn't want to declare victory quite yet-the active resistance of the changelings was more or less over, and the ponies were either terrified or total loyalists, but there was still resistance to be overcome of a different kind.

*****
The unhappy, chipped, mute royal ex-Queen could at least comfort herself with the fact that she still wore her crown of chitin, and if that were ripped from her head it would kill her outright. Her carefree royal life of luxury and the finest quality love was over now. She wondered what her fate would be-whatever it was, it would not be in any way pleasant.

If there were any ponies to see the bot wearing the royal cloak, they stayed well of the bots way, thinking he must be a hater of pony life and very much hoping the other bots didn't feel the same way, or their lives would soon be over.

*****
With the Genociders too blunt an instrument to go after the hidden egg life due to their sheer love of killing even pure loyalists, it was decided to use Milintel and the troops of Shockwave to kill or capture every changeling, and destroy or capture every egg, to purge the planet once and for all of their changeling foes and prevent any changeling revolts from happening later on.

Deathstrike was bored and was quietly cursing at being left out of the invasion, when it turned out he would be having a role after all. After flying there with the others in the unit, he crowded with the others around High General Soundwave. After getting the information and being put under a bit named CO, CO told them to cloak up and fly to a spot where they would be searching with a combination of changeling detectors and ground-piercing radar. Soon enough they found a tunnel, and after digging their way into it with their hands, CO, DeathStrike and three bots went one way, and five bots the other way, all of them on the alert. They decloacked so they would not bump into each other. Up ahead they saw a couple of green lights-changeling eyes. CO let off a blast, and the changeling died. There were surely others there, however. One took axe shape and came flying down towards them.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Down in the tunnels of the conquered planet, mopping-up operations had commenced. Many hiding changelings were exterminated, and except for a couple that were saved for Biological Research, their eggs were cracked and their contents spilled so they could never hatch.

In DeathStrike's group, things were progressing without problems until one of the changelings turned into an axe and flew right at him. With a quick, deft move, he stepped to one side and then grabbed the handle with both hands. He then started wildly swinging his new weapon/captive before it had a chance to react, and managed to chop two of its comrades open before it began to transform into something else. As soon as it was in an in-between form, unable to do much, he threw it down and hit it with both blasters. It then returned to its original form, with one major difference: It was now dead.

~~~~~~~~~

On the surface, Leader Megatron put his empty Energon container away and got out a tablet-like computer. He quickly looked at what appeared to be a spreadsheet, arranged with numbers followed by coordinates and lists of resources. With a fairly satisfied look, he entered, "1931, Resource, oil, iron ore, aluminum, lead." This planet, whose name he never knew, was now just another numbered possession of the Decepticon Empire. Further information would be added to its file by various military agencies later, such as what lifeforms were on it and how many were working livestock.

Later, even as Soundwave's troops continued to clean out the underground, announcements were made. All currently-existing changelings were to be of the "chipped" class of slaves, and would be put to work here and on other planets. They would be fed with love from the slaves now on other planets - ones who had lived out their usefulness as laborers and who would have been rendered that day anyway. This method simply redirected the spent slave from the rendering pit to some changeling for a few moments, and once it was drained to death, the body would be rendered on this planet.

The ponies who had shown loyalty learned that they would be free from being considered outright livestock, but they would still need to pay tributes to their new overlords. These tributes would come in the form of large amounts of whatever resource was in their area, whether that be oil or one of the metals that had been discovered. They would have to build a Megatronist Temple and a municipal administrator's manor in each district, too. Each rural district would be the size of the area formerly under the control of a changeling castle.

They would also have to learn the new religion, Megatronism. Many of them, Leader Megatron noted, were already showing his Seals and a few even had the similar, but not identical, Megatronist Symbol. These, he ordered, would be trained as acolytes in his religion with the intention that someday, they would earn the Ultimate Upgrade to become priests. He was already familiar with how cutie marks worked, so he knew that any Megatronist-marked ones were almost certain to be some of his most faithful pony followers.

Ponies who had been in the cities hadn't had a chance to show if they were loyal or not. Therefore, they would not get the immediate benefits that the rural ones did. Instead, they would have to obey more detailed orders. Their first order was to tear down the big changeling-sized buildings and remake them into ones more suitable for ponies. The exception would be a big, Decepticon-sized administrator's mansion and a Megatronist Temple in each area. They, too, would have to learn the new religion and follow it, or at least make the pretense of doing so. At this point, the most important thing was that they didn't follow some competing religion instead, especially any that were anti-Decepticon.

All ponies were warned to avoid getting underfoot. Now that the heat of battle had ended, they could be told this without distracting the troops from potentially-dangerous threats.

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

Cybertronian Business Association Headquarters
Cybertron

SolarTempest had called the gang together to discuss something extremely unusual - so unusual that at first, he thought someone was trying to set him up for an ambush. His research, however, had shown that the report was true.

He activated a holograph projector, and immediately, a copy of The Wall Street Journal seemed to hover in the air. As everyone read it, shocked looks came upon their faces.

"Oil futures for the three-month contract fall to -$28," it said in the headline. "This means that sellers are actually paying people to take their oil," the article itself explained

SolarTempest began to speak. "This is happening on Third Earth right now - one of the ones through the Transdimensional Warp Point. Here's what we gotta do. We've gotta get ourselves loads of these futures contracts. How those work is, whoever holds the contract on its due date gets the physical materials instead of just a security. We will be able to literally walk up and not only get the oil, but get PAID $28 of their money - per barrel - to take it from them three months from now. And, as a successful syndicate, we have the resources needed to come up with enough tankers to take ALL that we can get futures contracts on."

"If the price improves before we can get all of our investments lined up, it probably won't be a problem. The military preparation for a standard raid runs from $5-$10 per barrel's worth, depending on the defenses of the target. So, we can make a profit by buying it all the way up to that $5 mark. And, it'll be far less aggravation, though we should still use cloaking for our initial approach just in case somebody's got an itchy SAM finger. It's not like this iteration of Earth is used to seeing foreign warplanes in its skies that aren't there to do war."

Everyone paid close attention. Could this be true? An industrialized planet's major producers were paying people to take their oil?!

"The thing is," Solar Tempest explained, "they're almost out of space to store the oil. Apparently, they don't know how to cap their wells, at least not in an economical way. So they're about to be swimming in the stuff, perhaps literally." He smiled eagerly, and got eager revs in return. "All of this is because the place is freaking out over some kind of biological hack-program that it would be better off ignoring. But we're not here to try to get the humants to see sense. We're here to cash in."

"All we need to do is this: First, we need to get onto the Third Earth side of the Transdimensional Warp Point, so we can use electronic communications over its systems. Then, each of us gets on a tablet and starts 'buying' up these negative-value contracts online until the price goes up too much to bother with any more. After that, we wait three months. That'll be the date the physical goods are delivered to some storage facility in one of the states there - Oklahoma, to be exact. It's inland. Now, most of the time, people don't take direct delivery of the goods in futures contracts, so the place is going to be utterly overwhelmed when we say we want it all - millions of barrels worth. So we're going to have to stay there for a while with a bunch of tankers, and then make trips back here as it comes in. And they'll hand us fat checks for being kind enough to take their oil off their hands!"

Everyone instantly agreed that this sounded like a plan! They quickly got ready, flew to Decepticon Earth, and then popped through the Warp Point at a specific speed. On the other side, a random sailing enthusiast watched with wonder as what looked like a small fighter wing appeared out of nowhere and began flying toward what, on this side of the portal, was still the United States.

For now, the humans wouldn't get to see that they were dealing with Decepticons. In fact, they might never realize it. The orders would come in online like thousands of others, and when it came time to pick up, the syndicate would likely use android bodies at the point of contact. Solar Tempest figured that there was no point in showing up in their regular bodies, which would cause these humans to freak out too much to stop and pump the oil into their tankers.

[Vallermoore]

With the changelings more or less vanquished, and active fighting now over, Megatron could go on the holovision sets that had been set up and give some orders to his new pony subjects. And the very first order he gave was for them to stay out from under the feet of the Decepticons in case they got crushed. All captured changelings were to be chipped slaves, and they would be fed with love from worn out slaves who were on the edge of death anyway, who could be drained dry. Things were somewhat different for the ponies, who had put up no resistance and if anything, had tried (occasionally with success) to help the Decepticons. As loyalists, they were spared the fate of being reduced to livestock (doing that would mean no loyalists could be found on other planets ever again, if that was their fate) and their love was to be their own (something met with loud cheers) but they would have to pay a different kind of tribute to the Decepticon Empire. As well as providing resources of various kinds, they would need to build Megatronist Temples, municipal administration buildings-and new houses for themselves. Each district would be the same size as that ruled in the past by the changeling castles. They would also have to learn and adopt Megatronism-and certain ponies who bore the right kind of cutie mark could become acolytes. For the best of these, the Ultimate Upgrade was possible so they could become Full Priests. Privately, Megatron thought to himself that if these ponies were as good as Loyal Star, they would be a major benefit to Megatronism. Dissent, he warned the ponies, would lead to death, but those who behaved themselves and paid tribute would not be harmed, as he had a less hard spot for true loyalists, many of who bore His Seal from when they earned their Marks.

Soon enough the ponies set to work for their new overlords, and made a pretty good job of it.

*****
Cybertronian Business Association Headquarters
Cybertron

When SolarTempest heard the news he thought it was an ambush ruse by a rival syndicate at first but it turned out to be true!-a planet was paying people to take some of it's oil, due to a bio-hack program that was causing chaos and deaths on the planet. This was too good to ignore. They would get the needed money from the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank, (it would not cost much Energon to buy) buy the needed contracts, most likely without even needing to murder anyone in the process, hire the tankers and then be rich. Rich enough for new games or new upgrades or a spare body per bot-whatever the bot was interested in as long as it was not treasonous to possess. They flew in under cloaking at first and soon enough brought up a lot of these contracts. A random human saw them flying but he thought it was just a fighter unit on a military exercise and they were too high for him to see their Seals. None of them worried about bringing Covid-19 to Cybertron, as even if it got there it would do nothing at all to robots.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The ponies all cheered when they learned that the changelings would not only be slaves, but get chipped so that they absolutely couldn't cause any more trouble. When they heard what the tributes would be - many barrels of surface oil collected, or many tons of ore if their area had metal instead - they realized that they would have to do a lot of work for their new robotic overlords.

However, they would get to keep all of their love, and unlike full-on slaves, would actually get to enjoy some time off. In fact, some would even be able to skip oil collection or mining altogether, assuming their communities could come up with the tribute without putting everyone to the task. These others would be able to run stores, grow orchards, and do whatever else normally needed to be done to keep pony towns running.

Those in the cities wouldn't have it quite as easy because the mines were at the outskirts at best. This meant that some would have to move to the mining towns in order to satisfy the tribute requirement.

All over the planet, the Megatronist Temples were built fairly quickly thanks to the direction of Earth ponies who served as construction foreponies and engineers. Unlike on worlds where no invasion had happened, these had huge front areas so full-sized Decepticon priests could hold the services.

One area, the former capital of the changelings, became home to the official First Temple for the planet. This one wasn't built quite like the others. The others had been constructed on land that was originally vacant. Here, however, the main Royal Castle was razed by Megatron himself, and then the rubble was cleared. The First Temple was then constructed on that very spot, serving not only as the seat of Megatronism on this planet, but as a monument to the destruction of the original rulers. All of the grunt work, such as moving completed cement blocks to the site, was done by enslaved changelings as well. Meanwhile, Megatron served as the chief engineer.

As expected, the changelings hated this development, while the ponies and Decepticons thought it was lulzy.

Once all of the Temples were built, Priests were deployed to each of them. Loyal Star found himself in this group, and was assigned to a temple with a larger-than-normal contingent of foals and youngsters who had just gotten their cutie marks. It also had plenty of adults, many of whom had been slightly at a loss as to how to handle raising their Decepticon-marked children, who always seemed to be getting into trouble.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Biological Research Center, Decepticon Earth

The scientists here were fascinated when they were presented with a cache of hefty Giant Changeling eggs. Quickly, they put two of them into incubators, several into a big refrigerator, and two of them on their benches.

The two on the benches were quickly opened up, and their structures examined. DNA samples were taken as well, and were put through analysis so the code could be learned. This code was also compared against the code for standard baseline changelings.

In an adjoining building, several adult giant changelings - obtained from the batches sold to Mine #1 - were held in cages. Some looked emaciated, one appeared to have many broken bones, and another was well-fed and happy. His cage contained several human, pony, and alien carcasses.

Outside this building in a secure courtyard, three adult giant changelings were happily breaking rocks, and chanting a pro-Decepticon, militaryesque cadence as they did so. They all had the forms of titans, and did not seem to tire at all as they swung their huge sledgehammers again and again.

"The Loyalty Upgrade and Durability Upgrade from our Changeling 2.0 code has crossed species perfectly," a scientist said as he observed these three captive workers through a two-way mirror. "It seems that most of the DNA between the baseline species and the Giants is the same. Our next test will be to see if we can successfully get them to eat regular food. We were able to code that into our changeling stock from Equestria, but it took many attempts. As you can see from the starving ones inside, we have not been successful at porting it to these Giants yet." He said, turning slightly to another scientist standing next to him.

This other scientist hmm'd and nodded, but had nothing to say. His mind was occupied thinking of how else he could adjust their DNA to get their bodies to accept common fodder types.

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

At the Transdimensional Warp Point, a small dronelike plane darted through with his cloaking on, following the CBA at a distance. He intended to find out where the CBA was going to raid, and then radio his group - the ICC - to come in and claim-jump them.

To his surprise, the CBA didn't raid anything. Instead, they put their cloaking on before reaching the US shore. He noticed that they only used visual and radar cloaking, which allowed him to easily spot their heat signatures and follow them to their destination. This destination wasn't a refinery or oil field, but instead, a deserted Miami beach. There, several depressions soon appeared in the sand as they sat down.

Since they couldn't see their own tablets if they kept them under full cloaking, they decloaked by about 25% - just enough to make out the also-cloaked screens. This gave them a mirage-like look that might fool a human into thinking he was seeing things, but the little ICC scout knew exactly what he was looking at. He landed, with full cloaking, on the other side of the beach. He also stayed in plane mode to avoid making any transformation noise.

On the beach, the CBA members quickly started tapping on their devices, decisively hitting an onscreen button every so often. Each tap was the confirmation order for a futures contract trade. With each trade, the price of the contract went up ever so slightly, penny by penny. Even so, it took a few hours before the price had finally recovered enough to make it so that it would not be worth it to obtain any more futures contracts for sweet light crude.

The scout was incredibly curious, but thanks to his position, he couldn't see what it said on the screens. Instead, he only saw the backs of the devices.

Suddenly, the entire CBA put its cloaking back on, and in unison, took off into the sky. The roar of jets startled a drunk-looking homeless person, who jumped out from behind some tropical foliage and stared in the direction of the sound - only to see nothing. Then, he was further confused by the sound of a tiny jet, which then faded off in the same direction as the much louder roaring. "Huhh..." the human said, looking as if he knew full well that something was up, but like he was likely to be a million miles off when it came to guessing what.

Once far out over the sea and out of the US's military detection range, the CBA went ahead and decloaked. Then, they flew back through the Transdimensional Warp Point, leaving the ICC's scout to wonder what the heck could possibly be going on. He would report his findings, though, and from now on, the CBA would have to be very careful about how it talked, even at its own base. The ICC would surely try to bug them to find out more information, possibly to the CBA's detriment.

Back on Earth Three, traders noticed that suddenly, the oil futures contracts were trading at $4.99. A few even noticed that the buyer wasn't one of the well-known oil trading companies or sector funds, but instead, a group of what seemed to be unknown individuals working together.

This news, however, was missed by almost everyone else. The only thing to hit the media was a slight mention that "oil prices were firming up today," and even this was soon drowned out with terabytes more of repetitive reports on COVID-19.

For three months after this, there would be no news or any similar market moves. The "mystery buyers" were forgotten about by the usual traders, and life went on. No one on Earth Three would think any more about it until it came out that these buyers wanted all of the physical oil their contracts entitled them to, instead of selling those contracts to one of the big oil buyers before the delivery date as was usually done.

[Vallermoore]

Resource Planet 1931

The ponies were used to serving the changelings, and so it was not so different to serve these Steel Men who at least left their love alone, instead of taking nearly all of it for themselves. Earth ponies served as the construction foremen, and Decepticons themselves only needed to make sure certain places were made in the right way. As long as the tribute was given, they didn't mind if not every pony was toiling away for them. In effect, the ponies were serfs, but it was a big step above outright slavery and none of the ponies, at least at the moment, were chipped. The ponies found it great fun to see their changeling oppressors chipped and forced to toil as outright slaves with no time off. The Royal Castle, the home for centuries of the Changeling Queens, was destroyed by Megatron himself who was also the chief engineer, personally watching over the First Temple's construction by enslaved changelings. Once all the Temples were fully made, the Priests were deployed, one of them being Loyal Star. Although the original defect that had resulted in Loyal Star accidently being ported as a Deceptipony rather then a proper Decepticon had been long ago fixed by a Debugger, his old pony memories had been left intact, and he remembered being one of these little ponies.

There were a great ponies who came to see him, from aged ones-who were healthier and would probably live years longer now that their love was no longer being raided by changelings, to little foals minus their Marks that had not had time to appear yet. Those with the Decepticon Seal were causing all sorts of trouble. Loyal Star called the children in and urged them to be more deceptive and conniving with their raids so as to be caught much less. He also warned them "Sooner or later this planet will have the same lack of laws-apart from treason laws-as the rest of the Empire, and when that happens, ponies will go around with swords and be entitled to use them on those they catch harming them or their friends, homes, and businesses. Whilst most won't kill young foals, there is that danger. I'm not saying not to get into trouble as that would be un-Decepticon, but be careful when you do, and don't harm your Coders whilst you still need them for food and shelter. Go a bit further for your raids rather then fouling your own homes."

In his first speech from the pulpit he would be sure to let them know that great as Decepticons were, only Megatron was Divine. Some ponies had been thinking that all Decepticons were gods.

Meanwhile, Domintel was watching the planet for treasonous ponies, but for now at least there were not many of them, and none at all outside the areas where ponies had been killed in the fight to take the planet. Where a pony did feel bad towards the Decepticons it was normally only because family members had been stepped on by mistake.

*****
Biological Research Centre, Decepticon Earth

The scientists were happy to get some Giant Changeling eggs. Already they had made fully loyal Giant Changeling 2.0s, but whilst they happily ate normal food, for now at least they got no nourishment from it. At least one of the captured Giant Changelings was luckily enough to be kept as a "control changeling" a healthy one so they knew how a healthy changeling was supposed to be. Others were less lucky and had faced dissection and various other cruel fates.

*****

Although it would take a few weeks, the Cybertronian Business Association would be able to-in android bodies to avoid scaring everyone-get a great deal of oil-many tankers worth, enough to make them very wealthy. An ICC Scout had followed them, and the ICC would now take an interest in the CBA. For now, it didn't try to destroy it, as that would cost lots of Energon and the CBA had been careful to stay out of ICC business. But there was certainly a chance of conflict in the future. A few weeks later, the ICC's bugs picked up the CBA celebrating their new haul. Lightning Dust respectfully informed SolarTempest "I am going to get a couple of upgrades from Ultimate, and one of these is weaponry related, and I'm telling you in advance so you don't think that I am planning to try and overthrow you, Boss." SolarTempest thanked Lightning Dust for his good manners and gave the OK for the Upgrade and soon Lightning Dust flew to Ultimate's shop.

"What can I sell to you today?," asked the blingy Ultimate, his lights flashing across his body.

"When I was first built, it was not a Coder who built me but human Vallermoorians, and they had no idea I was alive. I was trapped for years in the immobile box of a Vallermoorian Military computer, fully alert and intelligent but unable to move or speak. Imagine the horror of that. I was rescued by Forintel and passed the tests for Decepticon Citizenship, and one of the first things I did was to go to Debugging. I deliberately kept 20% of the stress from being trapped in a box intact, to motivate me to be a better Decepticon. When Equestria was taken, an alicorn held my friend's mind boards in thrall-all he could do was maintain his loyalty to Megatron and stop his mind from being turned Ponyist. My mind had been upgraded to resist this hacking and I freed my friend. I want two upgrades, one, being upgraded blasters to cut through all armours below High General level, and the second being one to protect me from ever being hacked by any chip or other method."

Soon afterwards, the Energon vault was handed over and Lightning Dust would indeed get both his upgrades. Unknown to him, five bots from Rust to Wealth had him in their sights. By cloaking themselves, they, being Scroungers, were able to grab and hack-chip Lightning Dust. When they ordered him to follow them, the very much unhacked Lightning Dust had to quickly decide-would he blast them with his greatly upgraded blasters, or follow them, then blast them and free all their slaves? Freeing the Decepticon slaves might bring in at least one or two new recruits to the CBA, those who were the best of them.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Decepticon foals listened closely to this giant metal man who not only had the same cutie marks that they did, but four of them! There was one on each wing - both front and back! It would only be later that they would realize that they were all painted on instead of just appearing there. Loyal Star's height made it so they couldn't get a close look, and they hadn't thought to ask about them, so the realization of how the Decepticons got their Seals only came later.

Meanwhile, the parents were worried when Loyal Star warned that most laws would be deleted, and that it would be possible to get sworded by hostiles. The older ones were far less likely to respond that way, but there were a few exceptions. They realized that they'd better point out these exceptions before they ended up with deactivated kids.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Biological Research Center

Soon, the two big eggs that were put into the incubator hatched, revealing younglings that started out at the size of small ponies. Immediately upon breaking out of their shells, they sucked down as much love as possible from the researchers around them, who were surprised by the suddenness of this action. Fortunately, the little changelings were so small that they didn't cause any serious damage with their wanton raiding.

"You should have seen that coming!" One of the more-experienced scientists chided the others. "All new biologicals want to eat immediately. Coming into this realm uses a lot of energy." The other researchers, still a bit dazed by the draining, grunted in the affirmative. They hoped that the other guy would get raided from too, but the hatchlings were already full now.

"Anyway, I have a copy of Giant Changeling 2.1 Beta," the scientist said, pulling out a syringe that looked like a half a toothpick compared to the size of his own hand. "One of these guys gets it. The other one will serve as the control." He looked down at the two hatchlings, who were now looking up at him with surprisingly big eyes. Then, he chose one at random and gave it a shot of the new DNA-changing serum. The baby changeling yelped for a while, but then went back to normal.

Once the one had the shot, the researcher put a band around one of its legs to mark it as the Experimental Subject - Beta 2.1. This band, made of Decepticon Steel, was completely chew-proof. However, hidden in two areas were strips of plain steel. These strips would slowly rust to the point that, if the band were forgotten about by the Decepticons, it would fall off before it could strangulate the leg as the changeling grew.

The other changeling was banded as well. This band said "CONTROL - DO NOT EXPERIMENT" in bold Binary markings.

In another part of the changeling research area, a new bot entered and went to the storage cooler. He took one of the eggs and put it into a portable cooler before leaving with it. This bot was from the Cloning Center, which had been contracted to produce 100 more subjects for Biological Research. It would do so using the DNA from the egg its courier had taken. These test subjects would all be baseline models, and since their DNA would all be the same, there would be no need to worry about genetic variables influencing the results of any studies done on them.

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

For most Decepticons, there would have been no quandary like there was for Lightning Dust. They'd open fire without a second thought, and any slaves that were in positions where they couldn't get fuel would simply end up deactivated without even any consideration to their existence. Lightning Dust, however, had experienced what it was like to be stuck in a body that wouldn't do anything, much less what he wanted...

On the other hand, Lightning Dust had gotten a quiet warning from Ultimate, and that was that "there is no such thing as completely unbreakable security. Otherwise, we would never need to update the Decepticon Antivirus. I've given you the best I have, and it will be almost impossible to crack for a while - but data security is always an arms race, so you must always be careful..."

Since his Ultimate Anti-Virus had just been installed, he knew that it would be able to resist all conceivable hack attempts. In fact, it had already resisted one! He decided to go ahead and follow these hackers back to their base or their slave-holding area, and then give them what-for.

[Vallermoore]

The scientists thought there was zero danger from newborn biologicals who only just knew they were alive, and had left their love shielding off. They were about to discover that the first thing a biological newborn baby wanted to do was eat, and the newborn changelings, the size of small sapient ponies at this stage, at once raided the nearest love around. Under normal circumstances, their parents would have pony love ready to feed on, but now they drained the Decepticon love of Cybertron and their Way. Being near impossible to raid or otherwise get, changelings who knew about Decepticon love saw it as like rare caviar, something that only their Queens might on rare occasions get, the Private Reserve Quality of loves. Luckily they could not drain enough to send the scientists to their spares before they turned their shielding on but it was a nasty shock. "You should have seen that coming! All new biologicals want to eat immediately. Coming into this realm uses a lot of energy."one of the experienced ones said who had kept his shielding on. One of this lings was a Control One, the other would be experimented on. As they grew bigger, the scientists would put caged pony families next to the lings for their love to serve as food.

**********
The foals took Loyal Star's advice to heart, and stopped "fouling their own stalls" and harming the parents who they still needed for food, shelter and love. They thought at that moment that Decepticons got cutie marks just like them, not knowing yet that it was paint rather then a biological/magical process. He spoke like one of them. He wasn't moralizing at them, just pointing out when it was good and not good to raid and that raiding would become more dangerous later on. Bringing in Decepticon ways all at once was like introducing a dog to far too many fleas, causing so much crime that the tax money or the equvilent was badly disrupted, but within a few years the planet would have the same lack of laws as the rest of the Empire, and these loyalist pre industrial ponies would be sword wearers and, when bothered, sword users. Even then, very small foals would be less likely to be killed then adults.

*******
Most Decepticons would just open fire at once in this situation, but Lightning Dust had gone through many years of life trapped in a small box, unable to move, and had an even greater hatred of hackers then most Decepticons. He meekly followed the Rust To Wealth bots a few streets to their secret HQ and found himself with ten other hacked bots. Once he was alone with them, it turned out that their hacking chips didn't make them resist liberators and he was able to free them quickly. "Shhhhh, don't rev your engines yet. I'm Lightning Dust. Let's take these hackers by surprise and kick some ass, and then take all their Energon. If you want to use jammers you can, but if we start losing turn them off, and don't turn them on until the fight starts" The bots happily followed him and found a dozen Rust to Wealth bots sitting talking to each other. One second before the fight started, jammers went on, and then Lightning Dust panned with his new blasters whilst the other bots did much the same thing, taking out six gang members between them before the others could fight back properly. Three of the Rust to Wealth bots fled, the others were quickly deactivated, the jammers were turned off, and they found an open vault full of Energon which they looted on the spot, along with the bodies of the dead.

"I come from the Cybertronian Business Association, and if you bots are not in an existing gang and think you have what it takes to join a syndicate, I'll ask my boss, SolarTempest, if he will open the books and admit new members. He might say no, but then again, he might agree. How did you get hacked?"

"By force," one said, and the others agreed. Rather then by conniving, they had been grabbed and hacked by cloaked bots. One was only two years old, and all but three were in other gangs. Of the other three, two agreed to ask to join the CBA and the other was an-off duty at the time he was grabbed, which was why his grabbing was not treason-Debugger. They got out quickly and soon Lightning Dust was telling of his adventures to SolarTempest and the other gang members, as well as asking if two new bots would be allowed to try and join the CBA. Letting them join would boost numbers and overall CBA syndicate power, but the duels were rather time consuming and the CBA was not actively trying to expand at the moment.

*****

Decepticon Afterlife

In the Decepticon Afterlife, nine Rust to Wealth bots appeared at once. Being Scroungers, they didn't have strong Line links to restore them through Save Discs and new bodies. They marvelled at the three screens of the Decepticon Afterlife. Soon enough an Afterlife Administrator appeared, and checked their files-and when he read them, he was anything but happy.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Decepticon Afterlife

Despite the Afterlife Administrator's personal distaste for the hacking group, the orders from On High were clear: No activity that was legal on Cybertron could be singled out for extra punishment. This included hacking, as well as Scrounging and other activities typically practiced by the lowlifes of the Empire. Instead, failed hackers were to be judged on the standard criteria: Their practice of the Decepticon Way, how they got permanently deactivated, and their overall personal traits.

These newly-deactivated ones had gotten that way due to being cocky, and that was one of the most common ways for Decepticons to end up in this room. It in itself was a fairly neutral way to die, and in their case, it had at least happened at the hand of some other Decepticon instead of by a biological.

The Afterlife Administrator was disgruntled now. He had been hoping to be able to just open a giant hatch and drop them all into the Realm of Punishment, but based on the initial assessment, he would have to judge each one individually.

~~~~~~~~~~

As he was considering this, the Rust to Wealthers weren't just standing there meekly. They looked like it, for now, but in reality they were all thinking of what they could do to ensure that things worked out in their favor. In fact, they were even using their usual secret communications frequency to come up with plans. It only took the few moments that the Administrator had been lost in thought for them to settle on an idea: They would jump this guy and hack him. Then they could not only write their own ticket, but possibly be in charge of future cases, as well.

~~~~~~~~~~

Right about now, the Administrator decided that the best way to go about it would be to interview each Rust to Wealth member alone, in private. That would keep them from making their stories match. He waved a hand, and another door appeared, this one going to a private interview room. Then, he called out a name, and began to walk toward the door.

As soon as he turned fully toward the door, all nine Rust to Wealth members jumped on him, and in seconds, one had forced his chip port open and jammed one of their special chips into it. "Now who's the boss around here!" The leader cackled as the program seemed to install itself.

The Administrator got up, and in an instant, the gang knew it had made a mistake. Their target's eyes were clear, and he had a relieved smile. "I AM," he said firmly, "and YOU just saved me from having to interview all of you! Attacking an Afterlife Adminstrator is good for an automatic 10-year stint in the Realm of Punishment, and when it's over, someone else will get to decide what happens to you next!"

With that, he waved his hand, and the giant hatch he had originally wanted to use opened up. The gang, unlike many condemned, immediately thought to use their foot jets to avoid the drop. To their dismay, the gravity from below simply increased enough to override the jet power, and down they went. After they landed in an unceremonious heap on some type of ground, a tiny item clinked down on top of them. Then, the hatch, far above, slammed closed.

After getting out of the pile they were in, one looked for the tiny item. It was their hacker chip.

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

The nine Rust to Wealth bots were soon approached by a big, dirty bot with brightly-shining eyes.

"Slavers, huh? It's always a shame when I have to add slavers to my mine, but there's no doubt about it. Decepticon slaves are the best...HEY, I know you guys!! You've sent over a thousand workers to my mine!"

The bots all looked at each other with confusion. Then, one said, "Overseer?!"

"Overseer's deleted soul, to be exact," he said enthusiastically. "I'm nowhere near as efficient as my soulless body, but I can still get the production up. I have to congratulate my Logic Routine, though. Separating me out let me achieve my dream of ultimate productivity. Megatron made me come here because I just can't resist enslaving everyone I can, but since I did so much for Megatron Metals, I'm not getting punished. Instead, I'm a punishER. And, you are my newest workers. But don't be too sad. At least I won't turn you into zombies like my Logic Routine would. Plus, you're already dead. Now come on."

They figured they'd jump this guy and run, but to their dismay, their bodies followed along as Overseer's Deleted Soul led the way. "Oh, I don't need a hack chip here," the Deleted Soul said, his voice trailing behind him. "It's completely automatic. You're mine."

On the way, they learned from the surprisingly talkative Deleted Soul that it was able to look in on Mine #1 and see what was happening. He approved of most of the goings-on, though he also said that he wouldn't be as brutal to some of the livestock. This, he said, was why his body, or Logic Routine as he called it, was able to be more productive without him (the Soul) as an integrated part. Still, the Soul seemed a bit sad that it had been deleted, even though it hadn't been able to convince its mind not to run the command that wiped out the lines of code that represented its presence in the Living Realm. "At least I was not actually obliterated," it said upon reaching the entrance of its new mine here in the Realm of Punishment.

10 years later, to the dismay of Overseer's Deleted Soul, the Rust to Wealth gang members were brought out for re-judgment. Five of them were sent on to the Neutral Realm, with the legality of hacking and their lack of anti-Empire intentions being what saved them from worse. Two of them made it to the Land of Endless Energon because they had discovered some anti-Megatron traitors and ensured that those traitors were targeted and then sold to Mine #1.

The last two, however, had secretly been selling information about the Mining System to an anti-slaving enemy of the Decepticon Empire and even had pilfered a few slaves so the anti-slavers could set them free. These were returned to the Realm of Punishment, but instead of going to the fairly normal mine of Overseer's Deleted Soul, they went to a replica of Mine #1 run by a copy of the Overseer on Earth. There, they were turned to zombies - but with their minds intact - and worked constantly. They also had the words "DOUBLE DEALER" melted into their wings, and the affected metal remained eternally molten and painful. These words also ensured that every sub-overseer treated them extra-poorly.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

The CBA was doing extra-well after their last operation, and even better, it hadn't had to fire a shot. It had taken a lot of doing to get the oil, though. First, they had to drive a convoy of tanker trucks to pick up the loot, and then drive them to a very remote desert location so they could load the oil onto cargo-bots. Technically, they were supposed to bring the tanker trucks back to the leasing company they'd gotten them from, but it was deemed unnecessary to bother to do that. When they got the last of the oil pumped back out of the trucks, they hopped into a quite expensive private Decepticon business jet and took off, leaving the trucks in the desert. The leasing company would spot their trucks via remote GPS signaling and come get them, but when they tried to charge a huge extra fee for that, the credit card number they had been given no longer worked.

Just before leaving Earth, Solar Tempest and some other bots stopped at an Earthian bank and cashed the check that they had indeed gotten. This added over $1,000,000 USD in real money to their haul. They quickly used this to get even more oil, which they took home with them. This oil cost money because it wasn't from a futures contract, but instead, obtained immediately upon payment. Plus, the futures markets were working more normally now that the CBA had secured all of the surplus for themselves anyway.

On Cybertron, the ICC considered intercepting the convoy of incoming cargo-bots, but when their scouts came to check it out, they found that the CBA had about 50 fighter escorts accompanying them. That meant that any attempt at interception would involve a huge battle. For now, the ICC decided it wasn't worth the certain loss of at least some bodies, but they would still do their best to at least figure out how this haul had been gained.

Eventually, the ICC did figure it out, and they quickly dispatched 'businessbots' to try to copy it. By then, however, the price of oil futures had gone up enough to make it so the ICC would end up on the paying end.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Biological Research Center

At first, the baby changelings seemed the same, functionality-wise, despite one having been given a genetic alteration. However, as time went on, the altered one became far more friendly towards the researchers than the other one. It also seemed to be somewhat interested in the apples that the ponies had been given, while the "control" didn't give them a second look.

Both, though, quickly showed their changeability. They mimicked the ponies next to them first, and then imitated the Decepticons. Their version of Decepticons was toy-sized in comparison, but other than that, it was already surprisingly good. The biggest "tell" (other than the size) was the Decepticon Seals, which the babies weren't yet able to render in full detail.

A few days later, a courier showed up from the Cloning Center, with a big cage that had 100 new changelings inside. "Now you can test a lot more code changes at once," he said as he checked them in at the counter. "Be sure you have enough food for them! Each one may not need much, but 100 of them could easily wipe out the entire Changeling Research Squad if you don't have your shields up. We calculate that it'll take 10 ponies a day to keep this many fed. Hopefully you'll come up with the 'regular food' mod quick!"

[Vallermoore]

Decepticon Afterlife

Although the Afterlife Administrator disliked these hackers, the orders from on high were to interview them one by one and find out where to send them, but the Scroungers decided to attack and hack the Administrator. This was a big mistake, condemning them to ten years in the Realm of Punishment, where they worked as slaves for the soul of Overseer. Ten years later, two would turn out lucky and end up in the Realm of Endless Energon, five would end up in the various levels of the Neutral Realm, which itself varied from nearly-Heaven to nearly-Hell, and two ended up uncovered as traitors who had been (surprisingly) making Energon by freeing biological slaves, and they would stay in the Realm of Punishment for being traitors.

*****
Cybertron

The three remaining Rust to Wealth bots still had quite a lot of their Energon in various unlooted vaults as well as many spare bodies, and managed to pay Domintel in the approved fashion and find out who their attacker was. When they found out he was part of a small syndicate, they realized if they just went after Lightning Dust themselves, the CBA would go after them with the intention of turning them into ingots for tangling with one of them. So they decided to go to the ICC, and pay for the services of a Problem Solver who could try and send Lightning Dust to the furnace for them, and told them all they knew about Lightning Dust's capabilities-that he was unhackable and had very strong blasters, possibly even from Ultimate Mods. The ICC took the contract for a great many Cubes and summoned one of their better Problem Solvers, and gave him the job of somehow permanently killing Lightning Dust. "It won't be easy though, he is part of a syndicate known as the Cybertronian Business Association. As one of us, you know syndicates tend to see an attack on one of them as an attack on the rest of them."

*******
The ICC got slightly financially stung when it tried to repeat the CBA's trick, and whilst that was not enough to make Connect vow to try and wipe out the CBA, it was enough to make it come to the ICC's notice. For now though at least, Connect decided that it would cost too much Energon and time to go after a syndicate that had never interfered with the ICC or it's territory-but there was that possibility in the future, should the CBA somehow end up treading on ICC toes or proving a threat. He did OK the Problem Solver being sent after Lightning Dust though.

*****
After the CBA had been shopping for various fun things, SolarTempest decided to announce that two new bots wanted to join, and he decided that if all the other bots were not groaning with annoyance at this, he would indeed "open the books" and add two new members to the more then 20 strong syndicate. If not, he would offer them posts as adjuncts to the gang, with a good chance of membership at some point in the future.

*****
Biological Research Centre

The little baby changelings soon learned how to change into ponies and even miniature Decepticons (with as yet imperfect Seals) , and the scientists were careful to keep their love shielded from any other raids, babies being greedy little things. A courier dropped off 100 new baby changelings, that for now would need several sapient ponies a day to feed them. It would take nearly a year, but the scientists managed to coach the changelings into eating and surviving on apples instead of love (they could still feed on love if no solid food was there to be found, however.) At this young age, the baby/toddler changelings had no politics of any kind and didn't even know that Megatron existed.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertronian Business Association Headquarters

SolarTempest was surprised at the arrival of two applicants who were brought in by none less than Lightning Dust. The others weren't groaning at the idea of challenging the newcomers, and in fact, looked eager to test out the new upgrades that they'd gotten. As the two looked at the gang members who were present, they realized that they'd almost surely start out sweeping the floors and cleaning out the oil carts. Everyone not only looked strong, but seemed to have weapons that were brand new.

"We can actually accept a few new members now," SolarTempest said. "But of course, everyone must be duly challenged." He looked at the two new arrivals. "It'll be quite hard for you to get any rank now, with those standard bodies of yours. As you can see, some of us have just returned from Ultimate Mods after a very successful operation. The rest went to different shops, but are still quite upgraded." Everyone moved slightly, and 'coincidentally' ended up standing so the light was shining on their fancy new upgrades.

The two decided they'd go for it. Even though their starting positions would be low, it'd beat having no gang and ending up with slavers trying to stick hack-programs into them. Plus, if this gang was doing so well that they were shopping at Ultimate Mods, it obviously knew how to bring in the money! It would be worth doing some low-level tasks if they would someday get to share in some huge piles of loot!

~~~~~~~~~~~

As this was going on, a very average-looking bot strolled down the road across the street from the CBA's mansion-like headquarters. He appeared to just be a sightseer, and walked by two or three times without being specifically noticed.

This bot seemed average now, but in reality, he was the Problem Solver the ICC had sent out for the remaining Rust to Wealthers. In the three short strolls he had taken, he had managed to spot his quarry and the two powerful blasters he was now endowed with. He would devise a plan to deactivate him, and when the time was right, he would make his move.

While the Problem Solver had hoped to be able to make a move right away, he realized that it'd be suicide to try anything right now. Lightning Dust was surrounded by his gang, and there appeared to be about 20 well-armed members as well as two more-typical bots right there. The assassination would have to be attempted later.

~~~~~~~~

Biological Research Center

While the young changelings could be coaxed to eat apples, it would take quite a while before the researchers figured out how to make it so that apples would actually work for them in terms of nutrition. As various changes were tried with the 'lings, it didn't take long to see which ones worked best. Those that couldn't properly metabolize the regular food soon became thin or even emaciated, while the ones whose genetic engineering worked better stayed healthier-looking.

Meanwhile, the original two babies had different experiments going on. The "Experimental" soon outgrew the control, but instead of just being bigger, he was also far more muscular. In fact, he appeared to be "double muscled" - a condition naturally found in some animals that made them look like four-legged bodybuilders. He was also quite eager to obey the Decepticons, while he paid little attention to other biologicals. However, his food processing edit hadn't worked, so he continued to need to feed on love for now.

Eventually, the Biological Research Division would successfully perfect its genetic editing of the Giant Changeling species, resulting in strong, loyal, obedient subjects who could eat any regular food that was put before them. This would not only make it easier to keep them fed, but would prevent them from being able to interfere with the functionality of slaves of other species who would be in the mines with them.

"It's all Code," the engineers boasted while out of hearing range of their subjects. "And Code can be written any way we want. It's just a matter of figuring out how!" The other scientists laughed, recalling all of the frustration they'd suffered along the way as time and again, the changelings had ended up feeding on love. To finally have them able to eat things like porridge, game meat, and other regular types of slave chow was cause for celebration. They weren't nearly as happy about the strength and loyalty upgrades, since those had already been perfected on non-Giant changelings and they'd been able to port it almost directly.

"Who coded them to use that BS, 'love,' for food," one scientist complained. "I'm surprised that those ponies that they like so much didn't just evolve to be loveless. That would have thwarted the raids, starved the changelings, and kept the ponies intact. Evolution has no war skills!"

"That's why we CODE these things ourselves!" Another scientist reminded him. "Random genetic combination produces junk like species that are all lovey-dovey even though they're surrounded by love parasites. Meanwhile, we got that fixed within a matter of months. Unupgraded biologicals, on the other hand, are doomed to being Inferior Lifeforms." Unconsciously, he snooted his nose up slightly. "Even biologicals that are coded in our Center are lightyears better than the baseliners."

Out in the changeling-keeping room, the many youngsters were having fun running around and playing in their big enclosure. Meanwhile, the area that had been the pony enclosure now only had one puny pony in it. The single baseline changeling stood as close as he could. He was the only one who still needed to feed on love, and he wondered if he would ever get to eat the things that the others now found so yummy.

He didn't realize it, but it was possible that someday, he would get the upgrade as well. However, as long as the experiments were going on, he would be stuck as nature made him so that the scientists could easily observe the difference.

In rigorous experiments, a control group would have approximately the same number of individuals as the experimental. At some point, such a study would likely be done by Biological Research, as well. However, for these preliminary studies, a single control was considered good enough. Only when they wanted to make absolutely sure everything was nailed down - close to the intended finalization of the Approved DNA Codec for the Giant Changeling Species - would they need to do a "proper" comparison study to be sure no surprises were hiding in the code.

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

As the first group of test subjects got older, the researchers began training them to be proper slaves. They learned about Leader Megatron, the Decepticons, and the Approved Version of History for Slaves that they would likely be taught if they were being brought up at a Slave Training Center.

During this period, the subjects' willingness to learn the Decepticon Way, their skepticism levels, and their eagerness to be good, hardworking, competent slaves, and their general intelligence levels would all be monitored. If any problems were found, changes would be made to the Beta DNA Codec to correct them. Unlike many slave masters from other planets, Decepticons didn't want their stock to be dimwitted. The robots found it very annoying to have to explain simple concepts more than once or to have to deal with the level of botched work that would be done by dullards. Therefore, they very commonly upgraded the intelligence of their slaves to make them easy to train and reduce the error rates in their work.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertronian Business Association Headquarters

As it turned out, the other bots were certainly open to "opening the books" as a lot of them wanted to test their new weapons that most of them had brought. Whilst the two new bots would be, for now at least, at the bottom of the gang, it meant it would be a lot harder for slaver bots like Rust to Wealth to reenslave them-plus this was a miniature (for now) syndicate and even for those at the bottom there would be plenty of Energon coming in for them to upgrade and feed and enjoy themselves. When the testing was completed, the bot who came in second after SolarTempest was Lightning Dust. If the gang ever got big enough for an Underboss position, SolarTempest thought it was pretty likely to be Lightning Dust he chose. The former Vallermoorian military computer was an asset, fending off LongCon's challenge amongst other things, and was most certainly loyal to SolarTempest.

Unknown to them a bot who went by the name of Killer walked by. He was over three hundred years old, and had spent most of his adult life as a Problem Solver for the ICC. He had brought information on Lightning Dust from Domintel, but he knew that right now it would be suicidal to try to deactivate Lightning Dust with the entire CBA gathered around him. He had poisoned bots before, blasted them in more conventional fashion, hacked them and more, and he ran through his boards ways to kill Lightning Dust when he was on his own or with just one or two bots. For now, he went on a "spares and saves" search and managed to uncover and destroy two hidden saves and one body. The rest of Lightning Dust's bodies were in a very secure vault or in the CBA's headquarters itself. He also went to an ICC shop open only to the ICC and it's closest friends, where some of the deadliest of upgrades could be brought, upgrades so deadly that the ICC didn't want to sell them to the general public. After getting in by showing his symbol of the ICC, (which was on the inside of a panel) he asked the shopkeeper what the latest deadly upgrades were.

On the other side of town, at a Quick Drink where the Scroungers hung out and made their own, the three Rust to Wealth bots walked in to try and recruit members to rebuild the gang once more. Heavily armed and armoured bots looked up at the newcomers before going back to whatever they were doing. As fellow Scroungers, as long as they didn't cause trouble they were welcome here, but an average bot would probably have got Scrounged unless he was a lot stronger then he seemed to be.

******
Biological Research Center

At first, weaning young changelings off love was quite hard to do, but through trial and error they made it work, leaving the ability to eat love in as an emergency fuel if no other food was to be found anywhere. With one of the original two, he was soon strong and obedient but still needed love, which was proved by captive ponies. The other control changeling was left unedited as a baseline. The youngsters, when not needed, had fun playing with each other. Meanwhile the scientists were having a private celebration that they had-finally-managed to get them to eat normal food except when none of that was to be found. One scientist asked testily "Who coded them to use that BS, 'love,' for food? I'm surprised that those ponies that they like so much didn't just evolve to be loveless. That would have thwarted the raids, starved the changelings, and kept the ponies intact. Evolution has no war skills!"

"That's why we CODE these things ourselves!," said another scientist. "Random genetic combination produces junk like species that are all lovey-dovey even though they're surrounded by love parasites. Meanwhile, we got that fixed within a matter of months. Unupgraded biologicals, on the other hand, are doomed to being Inferior Lifeforms. Even biologicals that are coded in our Center are lightyears better than the baseliners." He curled up his nose in disgust. Like all non-immigrant Decepticons, he himself had been built on a workbench, in his case decades ago, and had upgraded time and time again as bodies got better.

As time went on the growing subjects would be taught to be proper slaves-whilst at the same time, teaching them the Decepticon Way amongst other things. Even if this meant that from now and then a slave might steal some extra food, it was still thought to be worth it.