An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Victorious Decepticons]

Killer was unsettled by the fact that he couldn't get to all of Lightning Dust's saves and spares. That meant that even if he was able to keep Lightning Dust from mind-transferring to a spare, he could still be reinstalled from a save. He would have no choice: If he wanted to be successful in his mission, he would have to break into both the vault and the CBA headquarters and destroy the saves and spares within. Otherwise, even with the best weapons, his quarry would simply rev to life again somewhere else and it'd be as if he did nothing.

After picking up some upgrades at a secret ICC modification shop, he walked to the vault complex where his source had told him he'd find one of Lightning Dust's spare bodies. Rather than try to pick the engine-vibration lock, he looked for the owner of the vault complex. Behind him, he towed a cart with 100,000 Cubes of Supreme, which he intended to use as a bribe.

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

Biological Research Center

Eventually, the scientists perfected the code for getting the new species of changelings to eat regular food. Now, there was just one more step: the removal of the ability to feed on love, or any other emotion for that matter.

"As it stands, they prefer regular biological food, but they still have that love-raiding ability. We can't have that. If they keep that, they'll be able to raid their overseers dry if they ever decide to revolt. While our loyalty increase is working now - under lab conditions - you never know what's going to happen once they're in a real-world mine. Eliminating that weapon of theirs is paramount." The lead scientist said. "As it stands now, they shouldn't even miss it since they haven't used it since they were hatchlings. New Giant Changeling clones will never have it to begin with."

Soon, they got to work making the final tweak to what would become Giant Changeling V. 2.3, Production. Once it was complete, the one control subject would finally get his upgrade, and learn the glories of things ranging from apples to Slave Chow. Like other slaves, he wouldn't think much of Slave Chow, but it would still be better than what prisoners were fed in some other places. The Decepticons, after all, needed to make sure the nutritional needs of their livestock were met. Otherwise, production would drop.

Once the first group was fully tested, it would be time for the first Full Test Run. 10,000 clones would be generated according to the new specs, trained, and put to work. Another 10,000 would be left at baseline, and put to work in other mines. Then, the two big groups would be compared against each other in a huge number of ways to test the efficacy of the edits and to try to spot any other changes that might be good ideas.

~~~~~~~~~~~

On the planet of their origin, the ponies were thriving in comparison to what it had been like under changeling rule. Many converted, genuinely, to Megatronism thanks to this improvement. However, a few had secret misgivings about the Decepticons and were especially leery of how the Decepticon Seals had begun appearing on foals just a few years before the robots arrived. These would sometimes try to get their Decepticon-marked grandponies to be "good," only to have them do something mischievous before the day was out.

It was frustrating and concerning to the old stallions, who remembered days when young ponies just tried to be friends with everybody and thought that doing so was magic. Now, the youngsters were all about swords and arrows, and when they did use magic, it was to try to blast wooden targets they had set up. The old ponies wondered if they would indeed lose their magic if they weren't all about being friendly anymore...

[Vallermoore]

The bot who was the vault manager was built up like a Scrounger to fend off any attacks from those who thought deactivating him might be a good way to break into the vaults that he guarded, and probably had covert upgrades as well. "I see you're looking for a vault to store that Energon? You can either hire one for 5000 Cubes a year or buy one outright for 50,000 Cubes. This place is pretty secure."

"Can I talk in your office?" Killer asked.

"OK then."

Once there, he handed over a little bit of foil-paper. The bot's eyes went a clear red for a moment, and he said "OK, I have the vault you need. But it'll cost 100,000 Cubes once it is open." Killer nodded and soon enough the corrupt manager had let him into Lightning Dust's vault. In there were no less then five save discs, and a full size Decepticon body. There were also several legs and arms ready to be wired in should there be battle damage, a couple of Decepticon Games still in their original packaging, plenty of Energon Cubes, and a picture of Queen Yocasta about to be squashed under Lightning Dust's foot. Killer destroyed the Save Discs and replaced them with fakes, took the mind and motion boards out of the body and destroyed them, replaced a few Cubes with silicon dioxide poison Cubes, and stole the games, leaving one that had a hack virus (that although he didn't know it would be unlikely to be able to hack Lightning Dust) and another with the safety features removed. Before safety features were put into Decepticon Games, they had been like hard drugs, causing bots to run them until they starved to death. What Killer did not do, tempting though it was, was to just raid the entire vault. Then he paid the bribe to the manager, and shut the vault again.

He still had to break into or infiltrate the HQ of the Cybertronian Business Association, and decided that it would not do him any harm if he was to just politely knock on the door and ask to join. At worst they would just say no. Generally, the only gangs that outright tried to destroy those who unsuccessfully tried to join them were certain Scrounger gangs. He knocked on the door, and said "I heard a rumour that one of the toughest Syndicates in the area is recruiting again, and I think I can bring a lot to you if you let me join."

He was allowed in, and Lightning Dust raised a hand at him and was silent for a few seconds. "This bot has numerous secret blasters and other such things, and tougher then normal armour, but unlike that Mr Universe bot from earlier, I don't think he could beat you, me, or the next toughest five bots here. However, he could most likely earn a rank above pulling the oil cart and keeping this place clean," Lightning Dust announced. SolarTempest looked at the other bots, who seemed happy enough to allow a new member, and gave his OK after asking the bot his name and why he wanted to join. Killer easily beat the two unupgraded bots, and then Laser Pen, with only minor body damage, and then he faced the first bot in the gang that could put up a really good fight. He decided to genuinely see how far he could rise in this syndicate, and then stay as a "sleeper agent" for a short time and be a good member so he was trusted. Then he could start a covert search for the saves and spares of Lightning Dust so he could destroy them.

*****
With these giant changelings, it was too dangerous to let them keep their love raiding ability despite the advantages from the slave owner's point of view when it came to feeding, as they didn't want a possible huge slave revolt later on. Slaves that were fed poorly could not do much work, so outside Mine #1 food was ok.

*****
Compared to the exploitative, greedy rule of the changelings, life for the ponies was better under Decepticon rule. Whilst they had to pay tribute in labour and a 10% tax on shops and the like to the small (compared to the planet's size) Decepticon garrison, the changeling tax had been 50% of their money and 80% or more of their love. The love tax had been abolished, so ponies could feel love for their families and relatives again, and they were healthier and even glossier. The young ponies in particular were strong Megatronists, although, at least in Loyal Star's diocese, they took their raids and other bad behaviour outside their general area and didn't do things like raid their parents, at least whilst they still needed them for shelter. Swords were not yet fully mandatory, but the blacksmith ponies were making them as part of their labour for the Decepticons. By the time, many centuries in the future, that pony technology upgraded to modern standards, they would be total and utter Decepticon loyalists, serving if called upon to fight in battle on the side of their robot masters, and their marks, whatever they were, would be metallic-coloured fur.

Some older ponies, especially the unicorns, feared that a loss of friendship would lose magic-and without magic, life would be hard for the unicorns, who unlike the other sapient ponies had no suckers in their hooves to pick things up, and really needed their magic. When one made the mistake of trying to urge ponies to remember the old ways, he was gently but firmly scooped up by a Decepticon and shown the inside of a blaster big enough that he could have trotted down it. "We don't like rebels," the bot said in Equish. "Rebels either get chipped and enslaved, just chipped if their rebellion was very minor and non-violent, or outright killed if it is serious or violent. However, things are in a sort of grey area right now, and Cybertronian law/lack of law has not fully started yet, so this time I will grant mercy. Most likely, in a few days Megatron will formally subject this planet to the formalities of the Empire. "

The terrified pony said "I...I am just scared that without friendship, unicorn magic will leave them, and for us unicorns, it's like someone unscrewing your arms and leaving you without them. Unicorn hooves have no suckers as we pick everything up with our magic. Of course I don't mind your rule-compared to the changelings who almost drained me dry, your rule is much better."

[Victorious Decepticons]

The bot listened to what the pony had to say, and remembered that in his Military Data Pack, it had said that ponies thought "friendship was magic." However, he didn't really know what to say to this pony.

"Surely your people are still friends with each other," he finally said with some uncertainty. "I saw groups of them target shooting together just the other day! And a nice new raid gang cleaned out the store, er...well, I suppose you already knew that those bins of apples didn't just walk away by themselves, so it should be okay that I said that..."

"Anyway, your youngsters are doing very well at practicing the Decepticon Way AND getting along with each other. Even when they get the idea to fight for dominance, they're actually still fr...well, some of them will remain friends, anyway... They just won't be too nice to the ones who aren't part of their group, is all. And you old folks haven't stopped being nice to each other, period."

The soldier put the pony down, hoping that he had calmed him a bit, but inside, he was quite confused. Did they not all secretly want to pwn each other and show who was who for once and for all?! He knew that if he was stuck in such a society, he'd be itching to shoot up the entire place because it seemed so saccharine. In fact, he'd already put in for a transfer to Anywhere Else, but it hadn't been processed yet.

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

DomIntel had already begun to establish itself here, and one of the agents overheard the exchange. It suggested that someone who understood magic be sent to deal with it, since it was likely that the soldier's lack of knowledge had been obvious (and therefore, not really calming).

Much to the surprise of the ponies, they were told that an "expert" was being dispatched to see about this issue. It was to even more surprised that a slightly-disgruntled High General arrived: General Carjack.

"Show me how this 'friendship magic' is supposed to work," Carjack ordered the village where the original encounter happened. "Then I should be able to tell if the correct parameters will be met by the standard practice of the Decepticon Way. Personally, all I know about it is that if we want unicorns to be able to do anything in a mine, we have to put in a whole herd of them. The rest seems to take care of itself. But you have earned placement as more than livestock, so something else may be required..."

~~~~~~~~~~~

All seemed to go well with the CBA's three new recruits, at least at first. One day, SolarTempest called everyone to the mansion, where they found him with a big holographic map being projected close to one wall.

"I've intercepted communications from a raid gang saying that this place has about 10 million barrels' worth of oil right under this desert," SolarTempest announced, zooming in closely on one planet. There, a single derrick could be seen in the still picture, along with four Decepticons. "I've already sent out our scout, who took this picture."

The other gang members made pleased sounds and gave greedy looks.

"The gang has already sent their fifth member out to hire a cargo-bot to help with the haul. This means that they have some oil collected already. It also means that the four we see here are the only defense they have right now. I say it's a good time for us to swoop in and jump their claim. That battle should already be over by the time their cargo-bot and his escorts show up. When they see that their employer has been turned into scrap, they'll probably offer us a deal to haul for us so that their trip isn't just a waste of fuel. Of course, we'll need to take care of the guy who hired them, but that should be easy once the cargo-bot group realizes that their only way to make money on that job is to switch to our side."

Everyone nodded in agreement. They didn't have the eager revs of a younger gang anymore; this was just one of many raids they would do this year. Still, they were quite happy with this plan.

~~~~~~~~~~~

As expected, it was easy to claim-jump the small raid gang and even make a deal with the cargo-bot and escorts they had hired. Their ability to deal was helped by the fact that the cargo-bot only had six escorts, while the entire CBA was on site. SolarTempest happily loaded up the cargo-bot, sending 10 CBA members to serve as "extra security" - ie, guys who would blast the cargo-bot and his escorts if they tried to steal the stolen oil - and keeping the other 12 members with himself to be his own security. The two ex-slave bots were in the second group, and they would help pull the big oil tanker-trailer that the syndicate usually used for these operations.

All seemed to go quite well, with everyone meeting up again at one of the big Raid Dropoff Points to convert the loot to Energon. Then, they split it up and went their separate ways to put it into their personal vaults.

When Lightning Dust got to his vault, he quickly stacked up his share of the loot. Then, he decided to play one of the new games he'd bought quite a while ago. He tore the packaging off of one, noticing the "LEGITIMATE COPY CERTIFICATION" seal on the side as he did so. Like many Decepticons, he always made sure to buy certified legit copies so he wouldn't end up getting a virus-infested version.

Even so, he did the usual thing and ran the game chip past an antivirus, installed on his external tablet computer, before running the "install" command. To his shock, his antivirus immediately activated all of its alarms. The screen flashed in Autobot Blue as the word "TROJAN" appeared in huge type in the center. It glowed brighter and dimmer over and over, signifying the extreme danger the virus posed.

Lightning Dust pulled the chip out of his tablet and stared at it. He also examined the packaging again. It was clear that neither had been tampered with, but instead, that the entire package had been made the way he had found it today. This meant that the virus had come with it. Had the game store been infiltrated? Or had someone switched his game?

He now looked at his other game, which also seemed like an original, LEGITIMATE COPY CERTIFICATION-sealed version. Now, he was skeptical of the actual legitimacy of this one, too. He opened it up and ran it past the antivirus, which didn't squawk this time. Still, he didn't trust it. If the other one, which looked legit, could be so heavily contaminated, there could still be something wrong with this one as well.

Lightning Dust put the second game in one of his storage panels, and loaded 10 Cubes back onto a cart. He would ask Debugging to check this game. That service wasn't free for commercially-produced software, but they'd check for a low price. Usually, people who had games checked were either paranoid or knew darned well that they had warez, but occasionally, there would be someone like Lightning Dust who had other reasons to be suspicious...

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

After another successful raid, Lightning Dust put his share in his vault, feeling pleased with himself. One day, when the CBA was big enough, he would apparently be SolarStorm's Underboss one day, whenever that happened. He still hoped to himself that he would be alive when the Decepticon Empire invaded Vallermoore, one place that he would take a delight in destroying, especially it's military HQ where he was trapped for so long in a little metal box with no microphone or limbs. Still, that place was on the Do Not Raid list due to being friendly to Decepticons, and he didn't want to risk angering Megatron. He decided to play one of his games, but when he put it into a computer to test it for viruses, it turned out to have a Trojan in it and flashed Autobot Blue, a sign that indicated real danger. His other game appeared OK, but after what happened with the first one, he didn't trust it and took it to Debugging. Despite being honest bots, Debuggers were not disliked but seen as useful members of society, as without them, sooner or later even the richest of bots would develop errors in their Code, resulting in insanity. In fact, their patients when undergoing operations were legally protected from attack to protect the collective sanity of the Decepticon Nation.

For ten Cubes of Energon he got the game checked, and it only took a few minites before the Debugger came back with unpleasant news. "Somebody removed the game's safety features! Before these safety features were installed centuries ago, games were like hard drugs for biologicals, a scourge of Decepticon society! Large numbers of bots would play them for so long that they didn't drink any Energon and starved themselves to death! It would seem that someone wants you dead, probably a professional Problem Solver most likely. An average hitbot would just try and blast you when you were alone. You should watch out for things like poison Energon Cubes and the like. If it is a professional Problem Solver they don't give up until either they solve the problem or are themselves killed."

Lightning Dust decided that at the next gang meeting he would tell the gang about it. This didn't count legally as narking-one of the functions of gangs was to offer some protection to their own members. When he got the chance and before any more attempts were made on his life, he told SolarStorm of the fact that a professional Problem Solver was after him. "I can guess who probably paid for the service too, those bots who tried to enslave me. A few of them got away alive and want revenge after I freed their slaves and killed many of their members." He looked suspiciously at Killer, the only recent new member who had not been rescued by him, and who had reached the sixth position in the gang with all kinds of weapons in his body, some of them very deadly indeed. Killer's eyes darkened. "How dare you accuse me of such a thing?," he said, rubbing a hand up and down a blaster, trying to in effect bluff his way through. He knew unless Lightning Dust's vault had secret cameras, Lightning Dust had no evidence at least at the moment. SolarStorm ran his fans , a sign of deep thought as it cooled the mind boards, making them work more effectively.

*******
It turned out when General Carjack used his own magical abilities to check, that friendship caused the magic in ponies to resonate with each other and intensify the magic to strong levels. However, even a pony with no friends had enough magic for basic looking after himself or herself, so the fear that the unicorn had of in effect "losing his arms" was not in fact a true one.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Lightning Dust was incredulous. "How dare I? How 'dare' I?!" He gave his blaster a solid smack as his engine revved to full battle level. "To the range! Obviously you forgot the lesson I taught you when you joined up!!" Of course, Lightning Dust referred to how he had defeated Killer in the duel series the latter fought at that time.

Killer stood up and acted tough, but inside, he knew he had said the wrong thing. Lightning Dust was now challenging him to a duel, to take place right there on the CBA's firing/training range - and he had indeed won his other duel without much trouble. This time, the stakes were even higher. There had been serious offense, and Lightning Dust would surely bet at least one body on it to make sure Killer remembered who had superior power (both physical and in terms of rank) in this gang.

Meanwhile, Lightning Dust's still-working Spare, or perhaps more than one of them, stood waiting in the syndicate vault in case Killer actually managed to win this duel. However, Killer knew he was very unlikely to win.

"That's not a remotely convincing sort of response, Killer." SolarTempest said with a granite tone of voice as he eyed the newcomer suspiciously. "In fact, I'd say it sounds like a rather clunky attempt at deflection. I'm going to be looking into you further. For now, though, you have bought yourself a duel challenge for saying that Lightning Dust shouldn't 'dare' to be suspicious of you. Do you accept Lightning Dust's challenge, or will you be leaving our group forever, with the shame of cowardice?!"

Killer, being 300 or so years old, should have known that challenging the daring of a Decepticon meant that he would be fighting before 5 minutes were up. Whatever made him think it was a good idea was a moot point now. He would either have to duel Lightning Dust and prove that LD should indeed have been afraid to anger him, or refuse the fight and get kicked out of the Cybertronian Business Association for being a coward.

The rest of the gang looked on, waiting to see what the newbie's response would be.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Carjack, after examining how pony magic worked, told the older pony that he could relax - everyone should always have at least enough to take care of himself. "As for doing more, it would be a lot better if your people had trained themselves to work alone. The way it is now, everyone relies on that resonance for any sort of big project. That's 'easier,' but easier isn't always better. And when *I* say that, you know that the easier way is actually way worse, because if there's a chance to chill and not have it backfire, I'm on it."

"You all really should practice individualism, so you're not screwed if there's nobody around. It also makes it so that you can go ahead and advance ideas even if all of your 'friends' would disagree and abandon you. Best of all, it makes it easier to kick their asses for it if they do try that."

Carjack thought of demonstrating some of his magic, but held back. He didn't want them swiping and then groupifying his techniques.

[Vallermoore]

The former Vallermoorian military computer was furious, and was as Decepticon as if he were built by a Coder instead of Vallermoorian military scientists. His eyes went a very dim red indeed and he smacked his own blaster, stopping just short of triggering pain signals in his arm, whilst his engine went to full battle level and revved like a car on a race track when the green flag was about to be raised. "How dare I? How 'dare' I?! To the range! Obviously you forgot the lesson I taught you when you joined up!! Maybe your RAM is faulty? I dislike you almost as much right now as I do Vallermoore!!!" Killer decided that, assuming he survived this with his life, he would be visiting Debugging when he got the chance. Maybe something was wrong with his RAM, and if things like this escalated, it could lead to severe mental illness and/or death. In the initial fight, he had fought at 70% strength but not 100% strength-now he would let loose with everything he had. He had seriously offended Lightning Dust, and even bots who were less warlike then others, such as scientists or Debuggers, would want to duel to the body or worse if offended like this.

SolarTempest meanwhile, whilst he didn't look quite as angry-it was possible that Killer was indeed innocent-looked on with darkened eyes, and his Binary was in tones of granite rock. "That's not a remotely convincing sort of response, Killer."In fact, I'd say it sounds like a rather clunky attempt at deflection. I'm going to be looking into you further. For now, though, you have bought yourself a duel challenge for saying that Lightning Dust shouldn't 'dare' to be suspicious of you. Do you accept Lightning Dust's challenge, or will you be leaving our group forever, with the shame of cowardice?!"

"I will duel with all my body has-except of course it's jammer."

The CBA walked out, with Lightning Dust in the lead. SolarTempest, like most gang bosses, didn't want duels happening inside the mansion, as there were too many nice things that would get smashed Knowing how he must feel-SolarTempest had felt that way about MasterBlaster before MasterBlaster got himself killed-in this case SolarTempest let Lightning Dust walk ahead quite happily. When the fight started, in the first few seconds Killer let all his weapons out-blasters that had other blasters that sprung out of them-two fusion cannons with a quarter of the strength of Megatron's fusion cannon came out of his chest-hack bots flew out to try and hack Lightning Dust, and he even took out two grenades-Decepticon size grenades- to throw. In the same first few seconds, the former Military computer raised his hand again, sending a ping that at once let him know all the weapons his foe had on him, and everything about Killer except for Killer's thoughts, down to the body Killer's mind was inside. Then the battle to the body began with the other bots looking on.

*******
The pony bowed to the massive High General-who was not showing his skulls and wrenches-as if the bot was an alicorn. "That's good to know. The thought of just having my mouth to pick things up terrified me."

The planet as a whole was doing well. Tribute was faithfully given, there was enough food for everypony, there were nearly enough swords to hand out to everypony in the equvilent of a rare free upgrade, pony families were perhaps closer then they had ever been now that the love plundering had been squashed, and whilst Domintel undercover bots did hear ponies talking politics in private, most of it was about how much better things were with no changelings

[Victorious Decepticons]

Out in the back, the non-combatants stood in a semicircle far from where the duel would take place. While it was still possible for the action to cause blasts to come in their general direction, they would have a better chance of avoiding being hit. They also put up a row of clear panels for extra protection. These could be blasted through if enough force was involved, but they'd take at least some of the power out of the energy beams if that happened.

The two combatants marched to the dueling location, which was marked by a plain white line, and faced each other. Then, the first few seconds were used to get ready. Lightning Dust was a bit surprised at the array of weapons he found himself facing, but as soon as he detected them, he readied his own. Then, the fight was on.

To Killer's surprise, Lightning Dust ignored his little hacker-bots, which would have been a massive distraction to almost every other foe. Instead, Lightning Dust raised two upgraded-looking blasters and took aim squarely at Killer's chest. Meanwhile, Killer fired his chest cannons.

They each hit each other without trouble, causing each other some significant damage to their armor panels. Killer was surprised at the damage level - his opponent's blasters hadn't looked that big~! Still, he quickly regained his bearings and tossed the grenades, while using his foot-jets for a powered jump backwards to stay out of the way.

Lightning Dust saw the grenades coming, and jumped out of the way in much the same manner as his foe. This caused the 'nades to blow up uselessly, and the fight went on.

The next attack from Lightning Dust was a surprise to Killer. Killer had been carefully avoiding attacks to his chest and head while firing with his blasters-upon-blasters, but he hadn't thought much about protecting the latter. Lightning Dust realized this, and not long after, he had blasted the connection bracket holding Killer's left-arm blasters on. The blaster array clanged down to the metal floor, and Killer immediately started being more careful with the other one. However, this caused him to pause his own firing for a bit, which gave Lightning Dust a good opening to get another blast through to Killer's chest.

Meanwhile, Killer's hack-bots had found Lightning Dust's ports, and were now hanging from his head like two bizarre pigtails. It was at this point that Killer realized that they were completely useless against whatever antivirus Lightning Dust had running. He fired his chest-blasters again, missing at first. After some boxer-like dancing around, he managed to get a proper hit in, and now Lightning Dust's motion boards could clearly be seen through the new hole.

The spectators ooh'd at this, knowing that just one more successful strike in that spot would slow Lightning Dust down enough to lose the rest of the fight. If this happened, Killer would not only win, but gain Lightning Dust's rank, at least officially.

Lightning Dust seemed to fall backwards, and as he did so, he held one hand over the hole as his other arm seemed to flail for balance. The "flailing," however, was just an act. As the arc of the move "happened to" come in Killer's direction, he activated his blaster and panned it right across Killer's face. By the time Killer recovered from the blinding light and error signals just a fraction of a second later, his foe had his cloaking on.

Cloaking worked quite well on Cybertron. With its metal ground, there were never any footsteps to give the person away unless someone had already put dust on the ground. This had not been done here.

Killer quickly started running multiple detection systems to try to find his foe, but then realized that his best bet was to put his own cloaking on. Unfortunately for him, this thought came to him too slowly, and the next thing he knew, Lightning Dust was blasting him from the side for all he was worth. When he whipped around to face the attack, that just exposed his front to the assault and earned him more blasts in his critical areas. His attempts to dodge were also initially unsuccessful since he couldn't see just where Lightning Dust was aiming. Only after taking several strong hits did he manage to get his bearings enough to avoid further fire. Then, he quickly put his own cloaking on.

"I see you~!" Came Lightning Dust's taunting voice. Then, from behind, another volley of blaster fire hit. It was concentrated fire, intended to cut through the opponent's armor in one shot - and it worked. There was a huge explosion, and Killer's Energon tank was gone - as well as Killer's driveshaft, which was situated close enough to be bent into a soft pretzel by the heat and force of the detonation.

Killer's mechanicals made a horrible crunching, rending, and banging noise as the bent driveshaft seized up. It was now impossible for his engine, protected by an armored compartment, to transmit power to the rest of his body. The next thing he knew, Lightning Dust was right next to him and turning his disabled body so it faced upward.

As Killer looked up, Lightning Dust decloaked so he could see that he was about to be blasted right in the head. Just before Lightning Dust gave the terminating blast, Killer saw the logo on the sides of his blasters: it was the symbol of Ultimate Mods.

With a flash of light, Killer was then sent to a spare, and Lightning Dust had further cemented his high position in the CBA.

Lightning Dust never would tell Killer how he saw him. However, the others had seen him too. Battle damage had caused a small hydraulic fluid leak in the arm that had lost its blaster, so all anyone had to do was follow the drips to figure out where their source was standing.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that night, SolarTempest walked through the Underground of Cybertron hauling a large, covered cart full of Energon Cubes. After a decent hike, he came to a specific ventilation shaft and flew up. Outside, he walked a few steps to the back of the Main DomIntel Office and went in.

He was ushered into a nice office, and the agent smiled with anticipation. When a syndicate member came like this, he was usually after information that was of more than passing importance - and paid accordingly.

After some preliminary talk, and telling the agent the background of what he'd seen, the agent accessed the DomIntel Supercomputer. His eyes opened a bit wider as he read the report, and then he gave his price. 300,000 Cubes. The fee was agreed to, and soon enough, a chip was handed over. There was too much information to just speak it in a reasonable amount of time.

Back underground, SolarTempest accessed the file and began to read. Apparently, he was dealing with one "Killer," who first hit serious radar upon his entry into the Genociders and made a name for himself by being one of the best at "cleanup operations" involving finding the last few, and most well-hidden, of a population marked for deletion. However, while he had originally signed up for an extra stint with them, he quickly decided that the military should not be his career. Now, he only entered the military during conscription stints, and his Battalion assignment had also changed. He now worked with MilIntel's assassination strike force when in the armed forces.

Despite this military record, his civilian activities were the most notable. He had approximately 8,400 non-military kills, or two per month for the 350 years he'd been truly active as an assassin. He had started out as an IOPC enforcer, but had realized that Masher would eventually come into conflict with the government. Once he saw that this would be coming fairly soon, he defected to the ICC and proceeded to eliminate several Problem Solvers that Masher had sent after him.

At the end of the file was confirmation of what Lightning Dust had suspected. Killer had been hired by the remnants of Rust to Wealth.

[Vallermoore]

When the battle started, both bots did their best as if it were a fight to the death rather then the body, and both bots managed to do damage to each other. Most bots, facing hacker-bots, would have put most of their concentration into blasting those first. In most circumstances, at best, being hacked would mean losing a body if one could evacuate one's mind in time and at worst would mean an eternity spent in slavery. Partly because in this situation that didn't apply (the rest of the CBA would not allow the permanent enslavement of one of their own) but mostly because he knew his mind-boards were hackproof, Lightning Dust put all his energy into defeating his challenger who had dared to grossly insult him in front of the rest of the syndicate and, much worse, might be trying to hack him or kill him by starvation. The two droids attached, looking like comical pigtails, but did no harm whatsoever. The grenades were dodged and did no harm, and soon both bots had large holes in their armour. Lightning Dust's blasters were from Ultimate Mods, whilst Killer's blasters came from a rather exclusive shop that only sold to ICC members, and they were pretty effective in their own right.

Lightning Dust managed to blast one of the arm brackets holding the blasters that contained more blasters, and got killer's chest, but Killer got in a hit with his chest mounted fusion cannons, revealing motion boards just waiting to be blasted. It seemed that he had a good chance of vanquishing the former Vallermoorian Military computer-and in defeating him, taking his place in the gang just below SolarTempest. Lightning Dust blasted his foe in the face, missing the eye cameras but still causing short term blindness for long enough to cloak. When Killer tried to cloak Lightning Dust saw where he was because of battle damage. "I see you~!" The resulting blaster fire did catastrophic damage to Killer's engine and blew up his Energon tank. A shot in the head sent him to a spare body, and the other CBA members including SolarTempest clapped (lightly enough to avoid damaging their hands) and cheered. Lightning Dust had demonstrated his power and further cemented his high position in the CBA. When it got big enough for an Underboss position, Lightning Dust was almost certain to get it. He pulled out the hack bots and turned them off, whilst claiming the body for himself. For now he would transfer to another body to fix his one-not wanting to lose the upgrades from Ultimate Mods.

Killer radioed SolarTempest and announced he would go to Debugging, as he feared RAM problems. This brought no stigma from the rest of the CBA or Decepticon society as a whole. Far from looking down on mental health care, it was in fact a free service, because without it even very fine mind boards could and given enough time would go wrong. Even Leader Megatron, divine though he was, would get Debugged once every decade or so, rather then just using his divine powers to fix his mind boards-because a bot-any bot-with mental problems who tried to fix them himself risked making it worse. In Megatron's case, he stayed awake during the debugging just in case even an honest Debugger might try to hack or outright kill him.

When Killer got into the Debugger's surgery room-the only place in the entire Decepticon Empire where Domintel was banned from bugging (the mental health of the Decepticon Nation was too important to risk just to catch a traitor or two) he told him what he had said to Lightning Dust and that he feared RAM damage that if unchecked could destroy his mind, and let himself be shut down. Whilst he was being operated on like this, it was treason to kill or harm him-again, to protect the collective mental health of the Decepticon Nation as noone would debug if their foes could destroy them during it.

Meanwhile SolarTempest brought information on Killer from Domintel, paying 300,000 Energon Cubes for it. At first, what he read seemed to indicate Killer might be a good gang member. He had been a Genocider, but rather then having a permanent career there transferred to Milintel when conscripted as an assassin. In civilian life he joined the IOPC and became an assassin, slaying on average two bots a month both for the IOPC and for others who wanted their problems solved permanently. When he realized Masher would fight the Decepticon Government he thought that was a stupid idea and defected to the ICC. Masher sent five Problem Solvers after him but he "solved" them instead. So far, this was all in Killer's favour, but it turned out he had been hired by the remnants of Rust To Wealth to kill Lightning Dust.

SolarTempest's eyes went dark, and his engine ran rather roughly. Soon enough he had told the rest of the gang. "We can't legally attack him whilst he is being Debugged, but when he comes back here to our HQ, we can pretend to be friendly, grab him, jam him and chip him like with that bot who pretended to be me. Either he'll mind transfer himself to the afterlife, or he'll be hacked and we can sell him to Overseer. He tried to starve Lightning Dust with a tampered with game and before that to hack him, so he has no honour."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Debugging Center

The Debugger didn't look at all concerned when he heard Killer's story. Even so, he proceeded to pull up his patient's Code and read through its billions of lines. While he didn't openly complain, he was always a bit disgruntled when an older Decepticon came in. The older a Decepticon got, the more lines of Code he had. They were generated in response to life experience, collated into the person's file system, and then branched out as more and more experiences were correlated with each other to allow life experience to inform future decisions. This made it take many more hours to check an older person than a young one. Even worse, if there was a glitch, it would often have gotten itself intertwined with thousands or more "related" code lines, making it a real pain to get rid of.

Still, the Debugger diligently checked everything, one line after another, and being thankful that as a computer himself, he could do this far faster than a biological ever could. Once he was done, he could deliver his result with absolute certainty.

Killer reactivated feeling exactly the same as he did when he had come in. "There were no glitches," the Debugger informed him. "You simply got too cocky confident out of the normal functions of your own personality. Your system warned you that you were saying fighting words, here - " The Debugger pointed to the screen, which clearly showed a single 'alert' had been generated. It would have caused Killer to feel a little emotionally odd. "However, you dismissed it right after," he pointed two lines down, where a 'set to 0' message had gone through, "and didn't consider it again. You then put 10 points more of conscious effort to trying to fool SolarTempest into thinking that you were above reproach. In doing so, you used only 20% of your RAM, which indicates that this has been a common tactic for you."

The Debugger continued, "It's a wonder you haven't been blasted to bits before this. That is a rather transparent connive. I would guess that your armamentation, rather than your conniving skills, is what has previously caused you to keep your boards intact. The only thing that went wrong this time wasn't a matter of the technicalities of your Code. It was that you ran into people who are not cowards."

"As for your Code itself, it is technically fine. Your life experiences led you to think your tactic would work, as shown here..." He pointed out several thousand lines of Code, which scrolled by quickly. "However, you simply failed to consider that the pattern could someday be broken. Now you know. In terms of technology, you have the full ability to learn from this and be more observant of your foe's personality the next time you run your voice chip."

All of this boiled down to what could be described as Killer having been too big for his britches - not due to a hardware fault or glitch, but because he'd gotten cocky after encountering too many people who were afraid to duel him.

~~~~~~~~

CBA Headquarters

Lightning Dust took a step forward upon hearing SolarTempest's idea. "It is far better that we jam him and kill him outright!" He said insistently. "Killer is part of the ICC. If we leave him alive, even in Mine #1, Connect will send an extrication team and bust him out. Even Overseer would lose to a full-on syndicate attack. Then Killer would not only stay alive, he'd get de-hacked and have a personal grudge. He'd end up being an even more dedicated enemy than he already is!"

Most of the others agreed with Lightning Dust. A true enemy had to die. Otherwise he would have too much of a chance to come back later and finish his job. He would also be more motivated if he had a reason to make it personal, and this would increase his chances of victory.

SolarTempest thought about it for a short time.

"I think you're right," he said to Lightning Dust before including the others in his gaze. "It wouldn't take the ICC long to figure out where their Problem Solver went, since they can afford to just pay DomIntel for the information. We will find his spares and saves first. If he comes back before we do that, everyone must act normal so he doesn't realize what's up. Then, once we get rid of his spares and saves, we'll all run our jammers and open fire on him at the same time, executing him."

"If any of us get deactivated while the jammers are running, there'll be no need to be too worried. We shall reinstall the fallen into their spares. Of course, just before we do this battle, we'll make sure that OUR saves and spares are intact, so there are no surprises for us."

[Vallermoore]

It turned out that the only thing wrong with Killer was his lack of connivery skills. He had lived so long because he was such a good fighter and killer, and his blasters and armour was so strong, that many bots had either backed down rather then call him out and fight him, or had fought and lost their bodies and often their lives at his hands. But when he took on a bot with mods from Ultimate Mods and a budding syndicate behind him, he had lost a body. Many bots would have seen it as their cue to back off or indeed change their name and paint job and move somewhere else on Cybertron or even offworld. Killer was not backing down. however, as he had his reputation as a dependable assassin to think of. He also had two spares on Cybertron, a third hidden in a cave on an airless moon five lightyears away, and seven save discs, one of which was hidden under the floor of a certain place known as Crack and Addams, under a table where Connect often sat. Even if the CBA found where it was, it would surely be impossible to retrieve and destroy that disc without getting a gang like Grand Theft Anything on the case which would cost a lot of Energon. The other discs were hidden in much more accessible places.

He thanked the Debugger and gave him a little bow. Debuggers might be honest, but they were still valuable members of society. Then he left, running his fans and thinking of some other way to kill Lightning Dust so that Rust to Wealth could be avenged.

*****
Lightning Dust stepped forward and made himself heard. "It is far better that we jam him and kill him outright! "Killer is part of the ICC. If we leave him alive, even in Mine #1, Connect will send an extrication team and bust him out. Even Overseer would lose to a full-on syndicate attack. Then Killer would not only stay alive, he'd get de-hacked and have a personal grudge. He'd end up being an even more dedicated enemy than he already is!"

He was right. The ICC had a reputation for rescuing hacked members, killing the hacker or hackers if possible, and busting up the mines that had dared to enslave an ICC member (and before it was banned the IOPC had enjoyed the same reputation) so that slavers knew not to mess with what in effect was the Decepticon Mafia. To deal with Killer, they had to kill him outright. Soon a third of the Cybertronian Business Association went looking for Killer's spares and saves. They found a spare and two saves quite quickly by themselves, and others were found with a big enough bribe to Domintel. Lightning Dust mind transferred to a spare and fixed his modded up body that cost too much to melt down or take apart and sell as parts. SteelHard came with the news about the disc hidden in Crack and Addams under Connect's chair, and SolarTempest said "If we leave that disc our foe will be brought back, but if we try and sneak in we'll fail and if we fight our way in, Connect will set the whole ICC on our Association. However, there are gangs that can steal anything. Lightning Dust, if you pay 20% of the cost, I'll pay the rest. Killer is too dangerous to be allowed to live, he has to go."

[Victorious Decepticons]

The CBA worked quickly to destroy Killer's saves and spares, but made sure to do it in ways that weren't obvious. Saves were replaced with other discs containing pretty much anything other than Killer's Code, and the spare bodies had their boards replaced with blank ones. If Killer checked anything out, it would appear, at least at a glance, that all was fine.

Eventually, the syndicate came to the problem of the final save. It had been confirmed through a few of their sources that there was, indeed, a secret compartment in the floor right under Connect's usual seat at his favorite Energon bar. The decision was made to try to persuade an elite thief group to steal it for them.

"I've heard that Grand Theft Anything is operating again," SteelHard said. The others were shocked. Hadn't that gang broken up after its leader tried to impersonate Leader Megatron during one of its heists? "Yes," SteelHard explained, "but it turned out that only its leader was in the crosshairs of Domestic Intelligence. Another member was also killed by the death squad, but only because he chose to fight alongside the leader, Quantum Phantom. The others split up until the heat was off, but I have it on good authority that they have regrouped under the leadership of their scout, Deets."

SteelHard didn't give his source, and that might have been a good thing. He had, a couple years prior, overheard talk at his usual QuickDrink and followed it up. Rumors from QuickDrinks were of varying degrees of correctness, but his follow-up had uncovered what did appear to be the presence of the experienced thieves.

"We should look for them in Sunnyville," SteelHard said. "There's a fairly suspicious property there that I think is theirs..."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Soon, SteelHard, SolarTempest, Lightning Dust, and a couple of others took off toward Sunnyville. They didn't bring anything valuable yet. So far, they hadn't even confirmed that the old gang was at the suspected location, and they also didn't have any agreement set up. Bringing valuables into the vicinity of professional thieves without an advance deal would only be a good way to be stolen from.

Before long, they were soaring over the middle-class Sunnyville, which was near Decepticon Headquarters but far enough away to have noticeably lower traffic levels. The whitish-silver roofs of the houses below reflected the sunlight well, keeping the houses' interiors cooler without eye-stabbing the people flying above. Most of them had decent-sized yards, many of which had walls and at least one target-practice dummy. One, however, had a larger yard all around. Instead of a target dummy, it had several decorative statues and such behind its taller-than-average privacy walls.

"I think that's it," SteelHard said over his radio.

The group landed and began to walk up the street approaching the house with the large yard. From the ground, they could see that this place had a fancy strip of gold/titanium alloy paint near the roofline and a fairly plain door. The door was unusually plain, too: It had no knobs, locks, or any other obvious way for anyone to get it open.

Suddenly, they noticed someone decloak on the roof. It was a scout, and he sat with his feet dangling over the edge, and watched the newcomers intently. Then, he jumped down, sticking the landing with an expert "thunk." He proceeded to walk over in such a way that it was obvious that he was the leader of something.

"You look like you're looking for something in particular," he said without introducing himself.

SolarTempest admitted that yes, they were. They were looking for Grand Theft Anything, or its successor, and they had a "job" for them. Several minutes were then spent talking, as this other bot tried to decide whether or not to admit that he even had a clue about the thieves. SolarTempest acted cool, but inside, he wondered if he was wasting his time. For all he knew, this other guy was some bored person who had nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, the other person made a point of NOT asking specifically what the group wanted to have stolen, just in case he would decide that it was worth going after. He didn't want to tip anyone off and cause security to be increased.

Just when SolarTempest was about to give up, the scout finally gave his name. "I'm Deets," he said. "Short for 'Details.' And yes, we are still operating. I am now the Master Thief of Cybertron," he said proudly. There was, of course, no official "Master Thief" title given by the government. However, he was not just blowing smoke, either - he could steal almost anything whether or not it was bolted down.

"Come inside, and we'll discuss this job of yours..."

He went over to the door of the large, but not quite mansionish, house he had been sitting on. Then, he blocked the view with his wings. The CBA members heard a few noises, and almost immediately, the door was able to be moved. Deets slid it to the side and beckoned them in. As everyone went in, Lightning Dust realized how the door must have worked. There had to be a secret lock, which instead of working with a key or engine-vibration pad system, had to be picked in order to be opened. He assumed that the lock was complex enough that only elite thieves would ever be able to get through without brute force.

Inside, SolarTempest gave the details of the job. Almost immediately, a couple of other bots came out from the back rooms with intrigued looks on their faces. Deets was smiling and nodding. "This is a challenge worthy of GTA," he said with interest. "But as you surely know, the save disc of someone who isn't our enemy is worthless to us. You'll have to provide the financial incentive to divert our interest from other, more directly lucrative, targets. Also, since retaliation by the ICC would be intended to be deadly, it will be more important than usual for us to avoid detection. How much are you willing to pay?"

[Vallermoore]

Killer's saves and spares were located within only 24 hours, the spares having their boards quietly removed and the saves being replaced with fake ones and destroyed. However, one of them turned out to be right under Connect's favourite seat at Crack and Addams, and there was no way the CBA could just go in there to get it. Nor was it large enough to be a threat to the ICC. So they decided to get a gang of elite thieves to steal it, as they could sneak in despite the heavy security. It turned out that Grand Theft Anything was operating once more under a new leader, Quantum Phantom having been executed for trying to steal a ship full of oil by impersonating Leader Megatron. Four of the CBA went looking for the thieves and found Deets. When the subject of payment came up, SolarTempest said "How does one million Standard Energon Cubes sound? It's worth the money so we can get rid of the Problem Solver before he kills one of my true friends."

Lightning Dust felt honoured by this-amongst adult Decepticons, true friends were rare (although very young Decepticons made friends as easily as humans they tended to shed them non-violently when they became adults.) "Lightning Dust will pay 20% of the cost, and I will pay the other 80%. We'll pay half before, and half when you show up with the Disc, if that is OK with you. Of course, if you double crossed us, the CBA would happily come after you, but we don't think you would do that. You like the challenge of stealing what noone else can steal, and to steal something from under Connect's chair is a real challenge, although not something to boast about too loudly so as to avoid negative ICC attention."

Privately, SolarTempest wondered if one day the ICC would see the CBA as competition like the IOPC once was and would try and wipe it out. Unlike his worthless and idiotic former biological Coder, SolarTempest had made a great success of his life so far and was now leading a syndicate. He himself had no intention of coding a new offspring for several decades, but he didn't entirely rule it out.

One bot who did deny himself the pleasure of Coding a new offspring was Leader Megatron, as any offspring worthy of him would want to take over when he grew up, and Megatron didn't want to code a new offspring, feel Coder-love, and then have to kill him four or five years later when he grew up.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Deets pretended to think about the offer for a moment, but then he accepted it without dickering. Usually, he would at least make an attempt to try to get more, but he thought the offer was too good to play around with. Surely, it wouldn't be that hard to swipe a disk out from under a chair...

"We will have to spend a few days scoping out the situation and formulating a plan," he told SolarTempest. "Then we should be able to procure the Save of this unfortunate and present it to you. Of course, we won't start right away. Our games don't get turned off until your deposit is delivered."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Soon enough, SolarTempest and several of his gang members returned with the deposit money, which would usually be quite enough to motivate the average Decepticon to say thanks and fly away with it. However, Grand Theft Anything was partial to their current headquarters, and didn't want it to end up bombed down to the third level of the Underworks, possibly with them still inside of it. Therefore, they decided to be honest for now, and save their dishonesty for the task of getting that disc.

Later, a few of their members would "happen to" walk past the dive on Crack and Addams, while Deets and another flew overhead using their anti-cloaking technology to try to "see" through the roof of the building. As this went on, a beefy-looking bot strolled through the doors of the establishment. He quickly looked around, and soon saw Connect sitting at his usual table with a couple of shady-looking drug dealers who he was setting up a deal with.

The newcomer was soon approached by the host of the place, and before long, he had been given a seat. This spot gave him only a corner-of-the-eye view of Connect's table, but he decided it was good enough and ordered a big glass of Supreme, which a waiter would bring out shortly.

As he waited for his glass, the two dealers got up and walked out, and Connect took a sip of his Supreme. The ICC boss appeared to be waiting for someone, and before long, another visitor did indeed appear. This one looked to be of a higher caliber, and the way he walked matched the appearance.

While the GTA bot would have liked to stay all day and take in more information, he realized that he'd look out of place if he did that - especially since he wasn't known to the establishment. He finally got up and left, and soon after, another GTA bot came in. To an outsider, it would just seem like there was another customer.

Over the course of a day, a succession of GTA bots came and left, putting the location of interest under near-constant surveillance. It was boring after a while, but by the time the day was over, they had found out what they wanted to know. Connect had, after many hours, finally gotten up and left. Once he did, table busing staff had come right over and cleaned everything, returning it to a pristine state.

Those who had been casing the exterior had the information they needed, too. There were several bots who had been apparently just hanging out, but almost immediately after Connect left, a lot of them moseyed away, as well. This meant that they were almost surely Connect's personal guards.

Back at CBA Headquarters, they all discussed what they had seen.

"I say we should get in there by pretending to be a busbot, and then 'clean' that disc out of there along with all of the empty Energon cylinders," one said.

"Lotsa luck," countered Deets. "Everyone working there is almost surely part of the ICC, and they won't just hire some random who asks for a job. By using members for even the most menial tasks, they can be sure that their secrecy has no obvious holes."

"Maybe we should come up under the chair from Level 1 and cut a hole through to swipe the disk!" Suggested another.

Deets didn't automatically dismiss this idea, though he did voice a suspicion that the area would be guarded. "We'll have to check it out," he said. "It's best that we come up with a cover story before we go, though, because some guards may be down there. If they try to question us, we need to have what we're gonna say already planned out."

"I've got a better idea," said another member. "I say we send someone in to outright open fire on that chair. He uses a spare body, with the full intention that it's going to end up scrapped and he'll have to mind-transfer to one of his real bodies. But the real goal will be to destroy the chair, so that when they go to replace it, we can make sure that the replacement is one of ours. Ours, of course, will be hiding a robotic arm, which will reach down at the right time, open the trapdoor, and steal the disc. The disc and arm will then both end up in a hidden compartment in the bottom of the chair."

"Then, in order to retrieve the goods, we have the chair 'break.' The restaurant will think it's defective and throw it out. One of us, in the guise of a scrounger, will happen by at the right time to pick it up 'for recycling.' And then we cash in."

Deets really liked this idea, which was far more along the lines of the intricate theft methods that GTA was known for. However, he didn't rule out the possibility of cutting in from below the floor. He chose a few to go with him to scout out the Underworks right below where the chair would be, but told the others to start making design plans for a trick chair, too.

As for the fact that the trick-chair plan involved the loss of a body, it was no problem for any of them. They would simply steal a blank to use if that plan ended up getting the go-ahead.

[Vallermoore]

Grand Theft Anything really liked their HQ, and didn't want the Cybertronian Business Association to reduce it, and possibly them, to scrap, so they decided not to cheat and to carry out their contract. Several ideas were thought of, including cutting through the floor and also a fake attempt on Connect's life that would damage the chair. "Whoever opened fire on the chair would need an up to date Save Disc, just in case the body he was using somehow ended up permanently deleted," one of the GTA bots pointed out. Whilst that was unlikely, it was not totally impossible, given how the ICC bots felt about those who would try and kill their leader. In the end they decided to have two attempts so that if one failed, the other would have a good chance of winning. There were half a million more Cubes of Energon waiting, after all, enough for new bodies, or the best mods, or lots of games and the like. One group would try and dig up through the floor if the first attempt didn't work, so either way, that Save Disc would be theirs, and the CBA could then turn on Killer and show him. very violently, what happened to Problem Solvers who saw their Underboss to be as a problem to be solved.

If Rust to Wealth made no further attempts to kill or harm any of them, then the CBA would most likely leave them alone, but if they caused any more trouble, they would go the way of the Fists-forcibly and probably painfully disbanded and killed as a warning to other gangs to leave the CBA syndicate well alone, or else. For now, all the CBA could do was make sure that Killer and Lightning Dust were never alone together, just in case he had some upgraded way of killing the former Vallermoorian military computer. As for Lightning Dust, apart from that threat to his life from Killer hanging over him, he was having the time of his life. He did wish he could go to Grand City in Vallermoore and smash up everything in sight, but Vallermoore was one of the few planets that was very much on the Do Not Raid List for now, and if he did something so big that Vallermoore sent out ships after him, Megatron would most likely send him out to face the ships alone. This was not extradition-the Decepticon Empire never extradited anyone for anything ever, just sending him out to clean up the mess he had caused. He could comfort himself with the thought that one day even Decepticon allies would be invaded, and he hoped to be both alive and in one of the front ranks when it happened. In fact, when he next got a large amount of Energon, he decided that he would have a special game made so that he could destroy a virtual Vallermoore that looked and sounded like the real thing when he was playing the game.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Just as all smart Decepticons did before engaging in something they knew would be dangerous, all of the Grand Theft Anything members now made fresh saves and put them into their special vault. This vault was still set up to automatically install these saves into new bodies if it got a trigger from a safe, outside agent.

Then, Deets and a few others made their way to the first level of the Underworks, and flew to an area close to where they figured they needed to be. Flying underneath the surface of Cybertron always struck the scout/gang leader as weird, due to there being a solid both above and below him, but he handled it with no trouble. Meanwhile, some of those with him considered the advanced engineering that went into building the planet. There was enough metal used to make it strong, durable, and stable - but no more - hence these vast, flyable underground areas.

Soon enough, they decided to land and walk the rest of the way. They wanted to make sure they wouldn't fly into a jam. It was faster to "go" in the air, but much easier to stop on foot.

Deets consulted his internal map of the Underworks, which was not standard but one that he'd made himself by scouting, and pointed in the direction of what was, on the surface, the corner of Crack and Addams streets. As the group got closer, they realized that Deet's original suspicion was right. There was no easy access to the floor of the restaurant from here. Instead, there was a square of metal walls, one with a door in it, and two beefy guards posted in front of that door. The door itself boldly said "Interplanetary Commerce Commission" and bore the syndicate's seal, letting everyone who thought about breaking in exactly what they'd be up against.

The group continued walking, passing by the protected area as if they were just going to a nearby ventilation opening. Once at the opening, however, they didn't go up. Instead, they went down, first one more level and then another.

"What in the foundry are they doing with a three-story basement?!" Deets said complainingly once they got to the forth level, which finally showed no signs of basement walls.

"It's probably just security," said Lockcracker, a member who looked quite obviously crooked at all times. "Everyone knows that Connect likes to hang out in that spot, which means it'll be a target for a lot of assassins."

"Well, we won't be getting in from underneath unless we want to wage a war, and there's no money in that. We'll have to go with the other plan, unless someone thinks of something better. Let's jack the 'equipment' on the way back to the base."

Now, the group flew at full speed, four levels down, until they reached a specific spot. Then, one of the other members of the group, Disappearing Act, took the lead. He brought them back up to the Third Underworks Level, and then went directly to a shedlike construction that was marked "Decepticon Military Engineering." After taking a quick look around to make sure that nobody had put any cameras up since the last time he was there, he quickly slapped an engine-vibration generator on the lock. Strong magnets held it in place.

Disappearing Act hit a switch, and it began to cycle through vibration patterns that were like those that could come from engines. "It's amazing what crap locks some people put in the way of expensive stuff," he said, almost sounding disappointed at the lack of challenge. Ten minutes later, they were rewarded with the clunk of strong lock pins retracting. He then swung open the door.

Inside, as they had all figured, they did not find planetary maintenance equipment or anything else to do with the military. Instead, there were a few Energon Cubes, a mind-save up on a shelf, and a spare body.

~~~~~~~~~~

Back at their base, the group arrived with what appeared to be a new member. Of course, it really wasn't - it was the spare, which had now been outfitted with a set of boards that made it seem somewhat alive. The standard protocol was to mark a droid like this with different-colored wing lights, but GTA had purposely avoided doing that. If the actual owner of the body was around, they wanted him to think it was just a lookalike. Marking it as a drone would have eliminated any possibility of it being overlooked by its owner.

The others looked a bit apprehensive, now. The very fact that Deets' group had taken it upon itself to swipe a body meant that they had decided that going in from underneath wasn't feasible. Someone would now end up stuck going into Connect's favorite restaurant and blasting his chair straight to smithereens, surely getting destroyed in the process.

"Don't look so worried," Deets said. "I've thought of an adjustment to that idea. But first, let's make sure this thing is clear..."

Everyone got to work examining the new body, not just for functional issues, but to make sure there were no bugs hidden in it. Once they were satisfied, Deets continued telling them his new plan.

"We can program this with a very sophisticated, but not-yet-sapient, routine. It won't take much to code it to go straight for the designated area. We won't have to worry about it becoming sapient, either, because they'll surely annihilate it within seconds after it opens fire. Not only that, doing it that way will give us more insurance against our identities being discovered. If the ICC manages to capture it rather than destroy it, they won't be able to hack our information out of it. That information just won't be there at all. Our identities will remain secret, and they won't know who to come and blast at."

A few of the others looked very skeptical. "I'm sure they know what 'bribing DomIntel' is all about..." one said.

Deets grinned. "It won't help them. I got there first, and information about what we're doing is deleted from the generally-accessible parts of the Supercomputer every few minutes. They'd practically have to bribe Megatron himself, or at least someone like Soundwave - and to do that, they'd have to think of it. Then they'd have to convince him to agree. I doubt that either of them are nearly as loose with 'peripheral information' as the lower-level agents who usually take those deals..."

[Vallermoore]

The plan was ready. The new body was fitted with some powerful blasters, and given an ICC mark, to lower the chance of it being blocked from entry by the bouncers. It would not run it's jammer when committing the "hit" for various reasons. First, Connect was not the true target, second, Connect would have many Save discs and many loyalists eager to reinstall him, third, if Connect somehow did get killed, the ICC would spend very large amounts of time and vast amounts of Energon finding out who did it. And if having the Cybertronian Business Association after one was bad, having the Interplanetary Commerce Commission after one for killing their Boss would drive Grand Theft Anything right off Cybertron if they were not found and killed first. The new body was programmed with what to do and set off to Crack and Addams, with Grand Theft anything preparing to get that Save Disc from the chair as soon as they could so that the CBA could send Killer to the Decepticon Afterlife permanently. Another half a million Energon Cubes were in it for them, after all.

When Killer got there, his likely destination would be somewhere within the Neutral Zone, even though in most afterlives his actions would have sent him to Hell. As a Deception, what he had been doing was perfectly fine, and he had never even considered becoming a treasonous bot.

Meanwhile, the CBA carefully made sure that Killer and Lightning Dust were never alone together.

[Victorious Decepticons]

As the preparations for this body were made, some of the GTA members were working on something else in their workshop: A replica of Connect's chair. This one had a robotic arm and secret compartment. Once in position, it would open the hidden compartment in the floor under Connect's spot, swipe the disc, and then put the disc into its compartment. Then, its leg would conveniently "break" so it could be thrown out - and picked up by GTA.

So far, everything was working perfectly. The new chair was taken by the members who had made it. Their job was now to do a "reverse theft" and plant it within the inventory of the furniture maker that the ICC would likely call upon to provide a new chair.

Meanwhile, the finishing touches were put on the code of the droid. It was provided with lines to say if approached by the bouncers at the restaurant, a fake reason for attacking (which would only be seen if it got captured and hacked), some basic A/V capabilities, and an automatic self-defense routine for if it got randomly attacked on its way to complete its mission.

Now, the excited tension in the air had risen as they awaited word that their replacement chair was in position. They wouldn't be able to send out their droid-bot until everything was ready.

~~~~~~~~~

After about an hour, Deets' communicator gave off three quick beeps. That was the code. It was GO time.

Immediately, Deets went over to the droid and gave it a couple of specific taps on the shoulder. Its engine revved up, and it went right for the door. Once outside, it waited until there was an opening in the sky, and then jumped up and transformed. No GTA members watched it go - it was meant to look like nothing special was happening, and it'd hardly look that way if everyone had come out and stared! They would just have to wait at the base for now.

Meanwhile, the ones who had planted the replacement chair made their way into the vicinity of Crack and Addams. They took up positions on the tops of two different skyscrapers that they knew would have a view, and sat on the edges as if simply chilling and enjoying the sights. Near them, a few undercover ICC guards (and, unknown to the ICC, an undercover DomIntel agent) stood around as if they, too, were just making use of the rooftop access provided by the apartments below.

Right about now, the droid zoomed up to the restaurant, transformed, and landed. It almost overshot the entrance, and was clearly not a practiced flyer. "Who's that kid..." said one of the bots on the distant rooftops, sounding suspicious. He took a couple of steps closer to the edge, readying his blaster in case of trouble. Even though the droid had an ICC seal, its lack of good flying skills suggested that it might be too young to actually be a member. The ICC didn't accept children, at least not in its inner circle. Instead, kids were relegated to low-importance missions until they got more practice.

The CBA bots there didn't say anything, but hoped that their droid wouldn't get sniped before it could even get in.

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

At the restaurant, the droid did have a bit of trouble gaining admission. However, thanks to its canned Social Responses scripting, it was able to talk its way in and even follow the host to a table after telling him he wanted to enjoy some of the "fine Supreme [he'd] heard all about."

As it went to the table, it saw what it had been programmed to look for: an open shot at Connect's chair. It stopped instantly, turned, and opened fire with both blasters at full power. Connect jumped up, and laughed about how it couldn't even aim as the next salvo turned his chair into a few large shards of metal and scorched away the carpeting on the floor where it had been. Below the spot, a small trapdoor could now be seen.

Connect didn't even consider that the chair was the actual target as he raised a fusion cannon and let off a good shot. In an instant, the droid's head was gone. Another instant later, and the chest was holed. The remnants clanged into the wall behind it and then bounced down to the floor with force. The entire incident took less than 10 seconds.

"Damn fool kids thinking they can just take over!" Connect complained. "Well. It looks like I'll need a new seat now." He turned to the waiter, who was nearby, but just far enough away to have avoided being in the way of the blasting. "Order one up. For now, I'll sit over there." He pointed at a table, and began to gather his things.

~~~~~~~~~~~

At the restaurant's furniture supplier, the perfect chair "just happened" to be in stock. Usually this version had to be custom-made, but apparently, someone had made up an extra at some point. It would just need to be delivered, now.

Once it was, its hidden arm would be able to access the trapdoor that would be just below where they'd put it, and then snag Killer's last save.

(Edit: Fixed GTA leader's name)

[Vallermoore]

Connect easily destroyed the droid at the cost of his chair, blasting it personally, and sure enough, it was the chair chosen by Grand Theft Anything that was sent in it's place, enabling them to get their hands on that vital Save Disc. Soon enough SolarTempest and a few of his bots met Grand Theft Anything in secret and handed over half a million Cubes of Energon for the disc, which they then destroyed. Soon after that, Killer found himself surrounded by the bots of the Cybertronian Business Association, their eyes dim and their engines acting like they were on a racetrack with the rough running. SolarTempest announced "Killer, we know you are a Problem Solver here to kill Lightning Dust, so will solve you instead." Then the whole gang blasted Killer, reducing him despite his strong armour plating to scrap very quickly. Instead of going to a spare, Killer found himself in a place where no sane bot wanted to end up-one that he had sent many other bots to in the past, the Room of the Three Screens, the entrance to the Decepticon Afterlife. One showed the heavenly Realm of Endless Energon, one the fearsome Realm of Punishment, and one the Neutral Realm, which in fact varied all the way from slightly heavenly to slightly hellish. Here he would be judged, assuming noone restored him from a Save Disc soon.

Back on Cybertron Lightning Dust bowed quite low to SolarTempest. "Thank you so much, you went through all that trouble to remove Killer from the world."

"He deserved it, Underboss. If Rust to Wealth cause us no more trouble we will leave them be, but if they continue to be a pain, we will forcibly and very violently disband them altogether. One of these days I want to expand so we have a large syndicate, below only the largest syndicates and, of course, below the Decepticon Government and Military. Someday I even hope to be as powerful as Connect himself."

"If I wanted to have someone custom build me a game, where would I go?" asked Lightning Dust. With the Problem Solver now off his case, Cybertron was now no more dangerous then it was for the average Decepticon. He was very happy to be referred to as Underboss now.

[Victorious Decepticons]

At first, Killer wasn't too bothered to find himself surrounded by the gang. It wasn't the first time he'd been found out, and he figured, it wouldn't be the last. That's what spares were for...

When he put through the command to mind-transfer to a spare, he felt just an instant of an almost sickening feeling as he realized he had not successfully made a connection to one as his data began to leave his current body. A horrified look came on his face right at the moment of his deactivation as he calculated that he was actually about to die. Then, his now-blasted body became inert and fell to the ground.

~~~~~~~~~~

Decepticon Afterlife

Killer looked at the screens, one showing waterfalls of Energon, another showing a factory, and yet another showing a horrible genocide in progress - but not with Genociders doing the killing. His eyes fixated on the last screen as he instantly spotted a few errors that the killers were doing. Killer's Genocider training made it easy to see how their efficiency could be improved.

"Efficiency isn't the point," said a voice, belonging to someone who had apparently read his mind. "The goal is to horrify and torture the targets as they 'die.' That IS, after all, the Realm of Punishment, not a comfy euthanasia center."

Killer spun to his right, and there, he saw a smiling Afterlife Administrator.

"I don't see ones like you very often at all," the Administrator continued. "It isn't often someone qualifies for the Realm of Endless Energon."

Now, Killer looked shocked. He was to go to the best realm? He didn't dare question it, but his expression showed his amazement.

"You have been a master of the Decepticon Way for hundreds of years, with thousands of successful missions. Many of these missions involved the deletion of various anti-Decepticon sorts, on many worlds, including cops, narks, weaklings, and best of all, members of gangs who were strong enough that defeating them was indeed something to brag about. These victories, in particular, have led to many gangs upgrading themselves, thereby significantly strengthening the Nation at the cost of relatively few of its citizens."

"Meanwhile, you have served Leader Megatron and the Decepticons well during your military stints; deleting thousands of our enemies in war, both as a regular soldier and a Genocider. Your life is one of great accomplishment. It has been enough accomplishment to cancel the negative record of your final unfortunate result."

Killer gave a big bow of thanks. He would not be stuck in the Realm of Punishment as a target to be killed again and again! While he didn't admit it, he was a bit worried that it would be the case. The fact that he wouldn't be stuck in the Neutral Realm either was a huge bonus.

Soon, the Adminstrator waved his hand outwards, and a portal opened. Killer went through without reservations, and soon found himself walking on the shore of a river made of Megatron's Private Reserve. Ahead of him, an unstaffed stand with empty Energon cylinders stood waiting for him to take one. He did, and filled it from the river.

Unlike some others who perished, Killer was quite happy to be here in this realm and didn't long to return. He'd had a long and successful life, but now, he could finally relax and never again be concerned about any of the countless vigilantes that had been trying to delete him for years. He took a drink from his newly-filled cylinder and went off to find the mansion he was sure would have his name on it.

~~~~~~~~~~

Crack and Addams

It wasn't long before word came to Connect that one of his top assassins had been deactivated. The tipoff came from a foundrybot near the CBA's headquarters, who had just seen Killer's last body go to the slag in exchange for 3,000 Cubes. It had been brought in by SolarTempest and Lightning Dust, and they had explicitly referred to the ingot they requested as a "victory" ingot, leaving no doubt that the body had been obtained through lethal battle.

Connect, at first, wasn't bothered. Killer was a great assassin, but this was a good thing, the mob boss figured. It meant he had qualified to have a save disc hidden within easy reach of Connect himself! He got up, moved his chair over, and opened the trapdoor. That's when he saw that the secret little hiding spot was now empty.

After a frantic search of all known locations for Killer's saves and spares, Connect had to come to the only remaining conclusion: his Killer had become the killed.

It only took looking at the ICC's records at Killer's dispatch office to know who had hired him, and who the target was. When Connect realized that the "Lightning Dust" in the ledger was part of a syndicate, he knew that they all had to have worked together to eliminate the Problem Solver. He cursed for quite a while, and spent a day stewing about whether or not he should declare gang warfare on the smaller group.

Finally, though, he decided against it. Death was always a risk for a Problem Solver, whose very job meant that he was the problem as far as his target was concerned. Occasionally, this didn't work out well for the Problem Solver. It was 'nothing personal; just business,' as those in the syndicates liked to say.

Connect would make sure that the next disc he kept for one of his syndicate members was more secure, he decided somberly, as he slowly flew home to his manor. For once, he did not feel like holding court at Crack and Addams.

~~~~~~~~~~~

CBA Headquarters

Lightning Dust felt very proud of himself and generally elated to be promoted to Underboss. The others were quick to congratulate him, and they cracked open a Cube of Supreme to celebrate.

After the festivities ended, he asked SolarTempest about where to get a custom game. SolarTempest had never tried to get such a game made, but he did know about a company that made training sims for the CBA and other raid gangs. "You could try them," he said. "It's called the Victory Enhancement Programming Group. Remember to be sure to run even their stuff past your antivirus before installing, though. They've always been fine, but it only takes one rogue employee to put slaves in a mine."

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

Main Military Base

Today, several thousand soldiers were flying in with noticeable eagerness. It was the end of their stints, and tomorrow, they would be discharged. Some had been deployed on other planets, while others had spent their time bored either at military outposts or in factories.

Once everyone got back, they would be given a choice: They could mind-transfer back to their old bodies or keep their current ones. Most would keep their current ones, which effectively gave them a free upgrade as part of their service. However, for the rich, the mil-spec bodies were actually a downgrade. These troops would very quickly mind-transfer back to their customized, upgraded, and expensive usual bodies.

Their mil-spec bodies were theirs to keep if they wanted them, but the same wasn't true of the blasters currently attached to them. If they wanted those, they would have to pay - about 50,000 Cubes per blaster. Those who didn't pay would have to use the ones from their original bodies once they got discharged.

Just before all of this took place, there would be a discharge ceremony. It was always short and sweet since the High Command knew that most who were going off of their stints wanted to beat it ASAP instead of listening to speeches. Typically, the ceremony only took 10 minutes, during which one of the High Generals would thank everyone and wish them well. Which High General it would be changed every time, and it was rumored that they drew lots to see who would get stuck with the duty.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The ability to keep the military body wasn't a welfare program, but instead, it was a perk of service available to all who did a stint. Even so, it was the reason the poorest people looked forward to military service. Many people who were in that financial bracket were still alive only because every few years, they could trade in their unmaintained, error-ridden bodies for brand new military ones. They would then try to keep their new military body running until their next stint, at which time it would be replaced again. Of course, being in the military also meant that, at least for a while, they would have some Energon to spend. There was always enough left over to get a place to live, and hopefully, they would then be able to raid enough to keep a better life going.

This, of course, ensured that the poor were always great fans of serving in the Military, and that they would be among the first to sign up if there was a sudden need for more soldiers than usual. These factors were the exact reasons the Military had the "keep your service body" option, though it didn't say so.

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

Warrior, Vampire, and DeathStrike were all in the group of returning soldiers. Soon, they would be free of their service obligation, and could go back to pursuing their original goals.

[Vallermoore]

Crack and Addams

Soon enough Connect got to hear about the killing of one of his most dependable assassins, a bot who had taken out many of Connect's foes over the years. He was not worried at first, as he had a Save Disc just under his chair. Surely nobody could steal it from there? He was horrified when it turned out to be missing. It was not hard to find out who was responsible, and Connect briefly considered using the full might of the Interplanetary Commerce Commission to wipe the Cybertronian Business Association right off the Cybertronian map. But then he thought again. Killer was a Problem Solver, and such a profession made a violent death much more likely, and he was working freelance for another gang when he got killed. Just as SolarTempest would leave what remained of Rust to Wealth alone if he and his gang was not bothered, so Connect decided that it was not worth the expense and hassle to disrupt everything his syndicate was doing just to go after what to him was a small gang. He did file the details away in his mind boards, and if SolarTempest tried to become another Masher and grow the Cybertronian Business Association to the size that the IOPC once was, he would be going after him before he could do that. He didn't want rivals, and tolerated all the gangs and small syndicates because they were not bothering him or the ICC. And also because gangs were, in a way, very like families on biological worlds in some cases.

CBA Headquarters

Lightning Dust was almost as happy as the day he was taken out of the little immobile box he had been stuck in and was downloaded into a Decepticon body. Becoming Underboss was a major achievement and meant the syndicate he joined was going to try and be one of the biggest, best, and richest. He and the other bots shared a large Cube of Energon Supreme, a high-grade Energon that was the equvilent of a fine wine or a pure water on a biological world. Then he asked SolarTempest where he could have a custom-made game made for him at his own expense. It turned out that there was a place called the Victory Enhancement Programming Group. When he went to meet them to run his idea past them and see if it was possible, at this stage he took no Energon. He got them to do a bug sweep first. Domintel in most cases was surprisingly tolerant if a few of it's bugs got deactivated, as it understood that sometimes bots wanted a little privacy. Milintel was anything but, as rtheir bugs guarded secure areas.

He explained he wanted to have an accurate sim of Vallermoore made and handed over a disc of Vallermoorian military information to help with it. "I really, really hate Vallermoore and want to destroy it, but the place is one of only a handful of places on the Do Not Raid list as it is so respectful of our Empire. I want one with various levels, from me on my own to me controlling all Cybertronian forces."

"It will be expensive-250,000 Standard Energon Cubes, and we can't have Megatron in it as no bot in a game is allowed to command Megatron, even in a custom game for one, but we can otherwise have it the way you want it. First you need to bring the Cubes, and in a few days we will have the game the way you want it. When you have it turned on, it will be totally realistic. Don't worry, it'll have the normal safety features so you don't accidentally play yourself to death." Bots that were old enough could remember when games were the scourge of Decepticon society, addicting bots so they did nothing else but play them, to the point where Megatron had to insist on safety features because so many bots had been sent to the Metal Stream because of gaming.

Soon enough Lightning Dust brought the Energon over and several days later he had his new game. After testing it first (no trojans or viruses were detected either on a remote computer or by his own antivirus) he went to his mansion and there started playing it. He this time decided to take the entire Decepticon Military with him. Vallermoore might have quite a good armed force, but in this game what Vallermoorians, be they human pony or changeling , feared most, was going to happen to them, the total destruction of their world, and even the most Decepticon in Spirit of them would not be spared.

Soon enough, the gas planet that Vallermoore orbited showed up, and it was one particular moon that Lightning Dust brought his Military towards, the moon where he had been stuck in a box for so long. Soon the sky, notable for it's "Beach Ball" , the gas giant, would be blocked out by the Decepticon Military.

*****
Main Military Base

After a short speech of thanks given by General Carjack this time around, Warrior and Vampire restarted their plans for a gang of their own, and DeathStrike went back to one of the minor HQs of the ICC to work for them. DeathStrike was hoping to earn enough for a custom made scorpion tail capable of doing great damage to Decepticons and other bot foes that he might encounter in the future. When he got that wired in, he would feel truly happy and complete.

Decepticon Afterlife

It turned out that Killer had done so well as a Decepticon, that it cancelled out the minor minus that everyone had when they got here, that of being killed in the first place. He was one of the few bots welcomed to the Realm of Endless Energon, the Decepticon Heaven for the best bots who had lived exemplary lives that were the Decepticon version of Good.

[Victorious Decepticons]

In the Game Universe

As the Decepticon Forces began to block out the view of the Beach Ball, those below knew that whoever was in charge surely meant to either raid them to the bare sand or take over and enslave them all.

Many began to do the only thing they knew to do: They started to pray to their Divine Leader, who, while not directly in the game, was still very much a part of Vallermoorian life. Scenes flashed up of desperate people praying to statues of the giant Metal Man, hoping for a miracle to turn back the millions of approaching hostile troops.

Alas, they were out of luck, as the invaders were also loyal to the same Divine Leader, and soon his response was known to all: Victory shall go to the Strongest.

With that, Vallermoore knew to go all-out with its defense. Huge ships the size of the Orion were deployed, and pegasus ponies flew up to create as much turbulence in the air as they could. The ponies also started lightning storms and tornadoes to try to make the planes crash into each other. Meanwhile, on the ground, all of the ground-based defenses were activated.

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

ICC Auxiliary Outlet

After introducing himself, the ICC bots in charge of this outlet looked him up. "You had done well for us before, and we're glad to see you back. Hopefully the Military didn't drive the creativity out of you!" The counter clerk said cheerfully, as if he wasn't really worried about the new Problem Solver becoming uncreative. Soon enough, they were talking, with DeathStrike telling the other one about his time in the Military. The counter clerk responded with some more sobering news, about how one of their top Problem Solvers had finally been deactivated while on a job for Rust to Wealth. "That means that we won't be accepting any more work from Rust to Wealth," the clerk said. "While it is a blow to our collective ego, the fact is that an experienced Problem Solver is worth billions of Cubes over time. Once we lose one, we don't risk another on the same job, at least not unless it's a direct ICC assignment. This was an outsider's job, so they're outta luck."

"For now, we'll mark you as Active once more, but there's no way to know how long it'll be before you get a gig. It all depends on how much hostility is going on, you know..."

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

Vampire and Warrior got along great as usual, but like a raincloud ready to let loose, one thing hung over both of their heads: Who would lead the new gang? Warrior wanted to go almost completely for strength so that they could just barge into any offworld refinery they wanted to, while Vampire was a fan of trickier and more intellectual methods. They both knew that it would be best to settle the question of leadership before they bothered to recruit more members. Otherwise, they might end up with members who wouldn't be compatible with whoever ended up being the leader.

[Vallermoore]

Vampire and Warrior were happy to meet up and the first time they met after their military draft-enforced separation, they bowed. However, like huge thunderclouds on a biological world, one thing had to be dealt with as quickly as possible before it could tear them apart. Who was to rule their gang when it formed? Warrior was all for brute force and just barging in on their targets, whilst Vampire was more into the connivery side of being a Decepticon. Warrior spoke first. "I think we each have at least one spare now. So why not duel openly in an arena to the body? No jammers-this is not a fight to the death, but for dominance. If I destroy your body, I will rule the gang, and if you reduce mine to foundry food, I will accept your leadership and follow where you lead. Before the fight, we should if we have enough Energon buy stuff to toughen our bodies up for it. More armour and if we have the Energon, more weapons."

Vampire liked that idea and they went looking for a relatively cheap arena where hiring it for a short time would not cost a stupid amount. Their fight would be public, which would bring spectators who would pay to see it. Once they found one, booked a time slot and paid for it, they then went looking separately for shops that would toughen them up. Warrior brought just armour-but quite a lot of it, so it could absorb more blasting then average armour. Vampire had other ideas then just doing the robot equvilent of putting on a suit of armour.

*****
It turned out that Rust to Wealth had-without in any way meaning to-cost the ICC billions of Cubes, so the ICC was not going to let them hire any more Problem Solvers. They would have to solve their own problems.

"Don't worry, my skills are not rusty. What would you suggest doing if gigs are slow to come by? I didn't become a Decepticon to work, domestic raiding even for a Problem Solver is pretty dangerous, and raiding other planets all by myself is quite hard to do." DeathStrike was pretty sure the clerk would not deliberately give him bad advice as they both worked for the ICC and had no need to dislike each other. At most, he might ask for a few Energon Cubes in exchange for advice.

*****
In the Game Universe

Realizing that they were about to be slaughtered or enslaved, the in game-Vallermoorians reacted like the real ones would. Several large capital ships of the size of the Orion, each with a couple of hundred space fighters, set off to do battle. In other areas, either the Vallermoorian air force took off, or the pegusai whipped up horrendous flying weather. Large hurricanes and tornados, mighty thunderclouds, rain and snow and ice, were all made ready in a surprisingly short time. Lightning Dust ordered the Decepticon Military "Decepticons, attack!" in the same way Megatron would do. A few hundred bots went down before the fighters and then the capital ships were destroyed by overwhelming firepower. Next three thousand SAMs were launched, and most took down bots, but Vallermoore now had hardly any SAMS left.

Lightning Dust flew into a hurricane, turning on his heating as small pieces of hail hit his body, and then came out of it and over Grand City, where the air force of Vallermoore was being shot out of the sky. He transformed, blasted a row of tanks, then went to the Ministry of War, where he happily blasted it to bits, killing any military officer he could catch, and crushing a general-the one he held responsible for imprisoning him in a tiny little box-with his bare hand. Next he headed for the Parliament building and the nearby 20 Upping Street, looking for a certain sapient pony with a Decepticon Seal cutie mark-President of the Central Committee Clever One. On the way he radioed High General Carjack. "I want you to bring in the Genociders and blast every Vallermoorian man woman and child, be they human, pony or changeling, and be they Megatronist or not. Megatron will know his own." Even with his revenge not fully complete, and with individual Vallermoorians and small military units still fighting with trip ropes, pony magic and whatever weapons they had that would harm Decepticons, he still felt as happy as if he had just been Debugged and earned a Cube of Megatron's Private Reserve at the same time.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Replicator's Shop

During his time in the Military, Vampire had heard some praises, and many complaints, about a mysterious person called "Replicator." Apparently, this bot was known for somehow managing to get ahold of newer military designs and then copy them. In many cases, the copies would then be sold, sometimes in factory-production quantities, to all and sundry. While some would either stay secret or mysteriously get yanked off of his shelves, the former situation happened far too much for the comfort of either MilIntel or MilEng.

It was this knowledge that brought Vampire to this back-street shop today. Unlike Warrior, who focused only on his own strength, Vampire liked to listen as well as act. What he had heard let him know that his best chances of victory lay not in Blaze's store, but here...where true Mil-Spec technology may be obtainable for a reasonable cost.

He pushed the door open, and a ding sounded in the back. As soon as he walked in, he knew that this wasn't just an average counterfeiter's shop. There were no big packs of fake foreign currency, no faux Energon Cubes, and no knockoff video games. Instead, there were a couple of bodies complete with very specific scratches, several types of engine locks, and multiple blaster varieties that Vampire recognized as being exactly like the specialized ones he'd seen on some of the High Generals. There was even a cassette tape, which he realized was a copy of Laserbeak in tape mode.

"I see that you're looking for something that used to be unique," Replicator said, walking out of the back and into the main area of the small store. "What is that you've seen, and want to make your own...without having to get the current owner to give his up?" Replicator grinned shystily, his eyes nearly twinkling with the enjoyment of his craft.

Vampire explained the situation, and then said, "I've never seen it, but in MilEng, there were rumors of something that could reduce a bot to mere dust. But they said they had a problem 'turning it off.' Does that sound familiar?"

Replicator laughed. "Oh, yes. And I suppose you heard a name that sounded something like mine, too?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Vampire acknowledged. "In fact, I thought it was yours, and that they were complaining that you had it!"

"Well, you must have only heard the first part of the name," Replicator nodded. "The things you're looking for are called replicants." He let the word hang in the air for just a moment. "They are tiny non-sapient bots, made on the nanite scale. They're built to do only one thing: Seize materials of the right type, and turn those materials into more of themselves. This goes on until their source of materials is exhausted. They are fearfully fast and can reduce a target to what appears to be a pile of dust in just 10 minutes. The problem the Military was having was that it's been extremely hard to limit them to only attacking the desired target. Luckily for the researchers, their glass containment jars are unusable by the replicants."

Vampire looked worried. If he let these out, would they destroy all of Cybertron?

"Oh, there's no need to worry now," Replicator said, now being far more serious and businesslike. "One of the things that makes me the MASTER counterfeiter is that I am not limited to slavishly copying things, at least, not unless my client wants that. And, for something like this, a client who wants that would be out of luck. I do want a body left after the jar gets opened, you know. And a planet to stand on."

"I have altered the design just a little bit. First, I put a cap on the number of replications that they can do before deactivating. But more importantly, mine will swarm toward the heat of an engine, and once they get there, they will only replicate until the temperature returns to normal. This makes it so that they will basically obliterate one bot before cooling off enough to stop the replications. And, once they deactivate, they won't ever activate again. That keeps them from destroying whoever gets stuck cleaning up the remains, as well as preventing destruction to Cybertron itself. I recommend that YOU do the cleaning. That'll keep this technology, and where it might have come from, from becoming common knowledge."

If Replicator's claims were true, he had somehow managed to turn a weapon of mass destruction into what would be best used as an assassin's tool. Vampire wondered if his calculations had been correct, but remembered that this bot was indeed recognized as the Master Counterfeiter of Cybertron, and rumor was that his skills were so useful that Megatron had let him "walk" many times after he did things that would get an average bot melted down...

"How much?" Vampire finally asked.

A fee was given, and negotiations began. It ended up costing Vampire hundreds of thousands of Cubes - enough to not only wipe out his military pay, but about 2/3 of the loot he'd gotten from the raid prior to his service.

"This had better be worth it," he said as he very carefully put a tiny jar of what seemed to be gray dust in his arm panel."

"Oh, it is," Replicator said with a satisfied smile. "Just remember: Throw the jar against your opponent's engine vents from a distance, and make SURE - ABSOLUTELY SURE - that you are not within 50 feet of him when that glass breaks. The replicants will jump out in a big swarm, and you want your target's engine to be the hottest point in their detection radius so they go to him. Then just stay out of range, dodge his dying blasts, and enjoy the screaming..."

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

ICC Outpost

The clerk gave a sympathetic shrug. "I suppose you could always check in with the capo and see if he has any sort of work..." he suggested.

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

Game Universe

Carjack's trademark "yee-haws" soon filled the radio waves, and he and his entire Battalion arrived as a giant swarm of pure death. They landed in Grand City and began deleting all of the biologicals with a terrifying combination of brutality and efficiency. Biologicals were stomped on, torn apart by hand, blasted, bombed, and more. It didn't take them long to get to 20 Upping Street, tear the buildings apart, and find that all of the important politicians were gone.

"They've gotta be in a bunker," the Carjack character said to Lightning Dust. "There's all sorts of ways to delete them! We can sit on the vents and gas them with our exhaust, drop firecrackers in the vents and blow them up with a beautiful show - in their faces! - stomp on the bunkers until they collapse..."

A screen came up, giving Lightning Dust the choice of accepting one of Carjack's ideas or putting in his own. The game's AI could understand most "freeform" orders in situations like this, where the number of likely choices was limited. Lightning Dust ordered it to tear open the bunkers so that he could come face to face with the leader of Vallermoore and do as he wished with him.

Carjack's character was coded well, and it responded with griping about how they should just kill everyone in the bunkers. "Opening them up gives the targets a chance to get away!" He complained. Still, when a confirmation screen appeared, Lightning Dust confirmed that he wanted to get ahold of the leader himself. Within moments, Carjack's group had blasted and chopped the lid off of the Prime Minister's Bunker, revealing a surprisingly brave-looking and angry Clever One, who was ready to use attack magic if necessary.

[Vallermoore]

Blaze's Shop

Warrior knew what he wanted for a duel to decide the control of the gang-better blasters and good strong armour, and it was to Blaze that he went, to window shop first of all and decide what would be good before coming back with the needed Energon. Apart from very cheap items, such was the accepted shopping culture, which made mugging less likely. He gave a short polite bow to Blaze. "I am going to duel for the control of a gang, and so I'm looking for stronger armour and of course, some very strong blasters. I don't have enough Energon to go to Ultimate Mods, and not counting that shop, this is the best on Cybertron when one is looking for fearsome blasters. What would you recommend in terms of blasters and armour?"

The shopkeeper was pleased by the flattery and happy to point out some of the weapons on the walls. "This here is a fusion cannon of the kind a High General would wield, capable of punching through some of the toughest armours around, both foreign and of Decepticon workmanship. It fits on your body in the way our God wears his, so you don't need to lose a hand to use it. It comes with strong struts and extra armour in the choice of any colour that is legally allowed, which is any colour that does not look silly."

"Red and black sounds good. I'll go and get the Energon now."

It cost him all but ten of his Cubes, but he was soon very well armoured and armed and test fired few times at the range in Blaze's shop. Soon enough Blaze was much richer and Warrior strutted out feeling tough. A couple of passing Scroungers gave him a wide berth rather then considering him as prey. Getting a slot in a public arena was not very expensive because the bots who would buy tickets paid for most of the cost. Win or lose, Warrior was determined to stay friendly with Vampire, his only true friend on Cybertron. Whilst friendship was certainly not magic on Cybertron, it's very rarity amongst adult bots gave it a certain value where it did exist.

Replicator's Shop

Vampire was slightly worried because if he did something that damaged so much of Cybertron that it needed Megatron's Godly power to fix, Megatron would very likely smite him down for causing so much trouble. (And if things had gone differently and Megatron had never ascended to Godhood, Megatron would be even angrier if every firebot on Cybertron had to be scrambled to stop the whole of Cybertron being eaten by nanites and would have had Vampire melted down for it.) As it turned out these were safe. Whoever won the duel, Vampire didn't want to lose his friend. Still he was pretty sure that RAM would beat mere brute force.

Game Universe

When the in-game General Carjack arrived, he and his deadly Genocide Battalion turned up the violence level enormously. Ponies, changelings, humans, noone could stand up against it, although they did their best. Even the First Temple of Vallermoore was destroyed, although only after Carjack made it clear that it was not out of heresy but just because it was fortress like. It's Priest, one Fire Eater, was allowed a few minutes to leave unharmed and to take the Holy Face with him. Just trying to delete a Megatronist Priest who had done and said nothing wrong like he was a foe might have unfortunate results after all. A surprising number of civilian Vallermoorians of all races and species stood and fought to the death rather then surrender or blindly panic.

When Lightning Dust uncovered Clever One from his bunker, and reached down for him, to scoop him up, the angry pony reared up with a whinny, his Decepticon Seal cutie mark gleaming like Decepticon Steel on his flank, and blasted him in the hand from his horn. Lightning Dust had been so overconfident, that he had left his pain sensors at near-normal levels, and the blast hurt, and even chipped the paintwork down to the Metal. "Why?" Clever One asked angrily. "Vallermoore respects Cybertron and it's Empire, is more and more Megatronist by the month, and has never disrespected the Decepticons, and you Genocide us for it? "

"This is personal. I was Coded by mistake in a tiny little box-and left there. No limbs, no voice, no eye cameras, I nearly went insane! I hate Vallermoore as a result, and now it's payback time, pony!" The bunker walls stopped Clever One just teleporting away, and after turning his pain sensors way down, Lightning Dust grabbed the President of the Central Committee and snapped his neck. Not long afterwards, with Vallermoore utterly destroyed, the game ended. Lightning Dust at that moment felt utterly pleased, his eyes bright red and his engine purring softly. "That was worth every Energon Cube spent on it," he said quietly to himself in happy Binary.

ICC Outpost

Deathstrike thanked him for the idea and decided to do that, as his saved Energon would not last forever.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Before arriving at the arena, Vampire made a stop in a general store. There, he picked up a small vacuum cleaner and a big, but highly foldable, bag. This would allow him to do the cleanup that Replicator suggested, assuming that he won, of course.

~~~~~~~~

Arena

This was a small arena, and it was located in an area about 150 miles from Decepticon Headquarters. Not only that, the combatants were unknowns. This made it so the stands weren't full of spectators. Even so, many people still paid for tickets to see the upcoming duel, which offset much of the cost of renting the location.

Near the appointed time, Warrior flew in and landed in the dueling area with a flourish. The crowd cheered a little, but quickly went silent. They saw that the other combatant had not arrived yet, so they saved their excitement in anticipation of him showing up.

At the appointed time, Vampire still wasn't there. It wasn't all that unusual for someone to be a minute or so late, so no one was concerned yet. But then, the one minute became two, and the two became five, and the five became 10. By now, the audience was thinking that it wasn't going to happen, and Warrior's engine began to rev with aggravation at his opponent's lack of arrival.

Fourteen minutes later, as Warrior's mind was spinning with questions about where the hell Vampire was and whether or not something serious had happened to him, the curtains at one end of the arena opened up. Vampire stepped through as if nothing at all was wrong, came close enough to indicate that he was indeed still willing to fight, and gave a slight bow.

"It's about time you showed up! I thought that you were going to forfeit!" Warrior said angrily, not admitting that he'd actually gotten a bit worried along with being mad at the same time. "Well, let's do it!"

Vampire nodded with an irritating level of calmness, and then the two began to walk a set distance apart. "You really shouldn't be so concerned about time," Vampire said, timing his own words so that he would be finished exactly when he got to the prescribed distance. "In battle, nothing goes as planned. Your foes won't care about your schedule. And as long as you're thinking about irrelevancies like what time it is, you'll miss things like THIS - "

With that, he turned around and fired with one arm, while using the other to heave the glass jar across the arena with laser-like accuracy. Warrior, as expected, paid attention to the blaster arm and dodged before the bolt of energy fire was even let loose. He didn't even feel the small glass container smash against the vents on one side of his torso, and it would be about three minutes before he would realize that something was definitely no longer right inside of his engine compartment.

Because of this delay, Vampire would have to continue to be very careful, or he could lose right along with his opponent. Warrior opened fire with his flashy new fusion cannon while laughing about how great his new armor was. "It wouldn't even matter if you hit me with that little blaster," he chided as he fired a few times. He noticed some odd 'smoke' that appeared to be coming from his vents now, and even a slight 'stinging' sensation starting up on the outside of his engine block, but in the heat of the moment, he ignored it.

Vampire dodged all of the blasts with a smug look, and only made a token effort to blast back - just enough to make it seem as if he was actually trying to fight in the usual way. His seemingly-effortless dodging was getting frustrating to Warrior, who was now thinking that he should just close the distance and go for a melee attack. Every time he stepped forward, though, Vampire backed off a bit.

After three minutes, Warrior was so aggravated that he was about to go through with his plan to switch to melee. However, right about then, his engine began to run so roughly that he couldn't ignore it. He tried to keep his cool, and fired away as if nothing was wrong, but a minute after that, one of his pistons stopped working. His engine began to miss and backfire, making him sound like an old banger of a car instead of a fancy war machine. "What in the slag!" Warrior exclaimed in dismay. This was the fancy mil-spec body he'd just gotten! Nothing should be wrong with it now!

When he looked up, he realized that whatever it was, Vampire had to have caused it. The competing would-be gang leader was now standing still and grinning as if he was just waiting for Warrior to keel over.

"What in the fark! Take this, you devious piece of slag!" Warrior fired several shots, finally managing to clip Vampire in one arm and give it some severe damage. As Vampire paid attention to that, Warrior fired again and scored another hit, this time to one side of Vampire's chest. Vampire came back to full performance and dodged the rest, but still had the attitude that this duel was a done deal and it was just a matter of time before he'd have the official victory.

Sure enough, Warrior's internals were going down fast. Within another minute, his main engine was rendered useless, causing his backup one to activate. For about a minute, it seemed as if the damage had stopped. However, the replicants had not yet cooled down enough to deactivate, so the heat from the backup engine soon attracted them. Since they had now had a chance to replicate from "only" 1 billion nanites all the way to hundreds of trillions, it took only seconds for the backup engine to be completely devoured. At this point, Warrior knew that whatever was destroying him would take out his battery and everything else very quickly now. Without a word, he initiated mind transfer, and soon, he was revving back up in a spare body many miles away.

Just a few seconds after that, the nanites erupted out of all the vents of Warrior's dueling body and attacked it from the outside as well as the inside. Then, they all dropped to the ground, having used all of Warrior's resources to make more of themselves. Only dust remained.

Vampire made sure to wait until all of the nanites had cooled back down before coming anywhere near the dust pile. Then, he nonchalantly got the vacuum and bag from his thigh panels, walked over, and sucked up all of the remains. The audience cheered loudly and with wonder at the marvel it had seen.

Somewhere in the middle of the stands, a Domestic Intelligence agent looked concerned. He wasn't sure of the details of this technology, but he knew one thing: It looked far more advanced than what should have been generally available. He also realized that the one using it was not some high-ranking syndicate member, so it was unlikely to be a new development from the ICC or a similar organization. With those things in mind, he secretly radioed in that he suspected a breach of military technology.

Immediately, back at DomIntel, the Supercomputer was queried to contact-trace the mysterious dueler. It didn't take long for it to reveal that he'd made a stop at Replicator's. The Master Counterfeiter's hope that his latest escapade would not be discovered was dashed, though he didn't know it yet. Before he would ever find out, IF he would find out at all, Leader Megatron would be informed of the goings-on. Perhaps Megatron would have some other plan besides hauling Replicator in again and demanding more money...

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

ICC Capo's House

When DeathStrike arrived here, he was given a very warm welcome. This welcome didn't include any free Energon, but it was still much friendlier than an unknown would get. The capo remembered DeathStrike's great work on the last project, prior to his military service.

"Ah, you have returned! And now, you have military training behind you. That's excellent. I do indeed have a job that needs doing, and you'll be better suited to it now that you know your way around a blaster."

The capo straightened up a bit. "Over in the large nation of the United Provinces of Spring Valley, there is a bit of a problem. The head of their national police is extremely corrupt and can be owned by the highest bidder. Problem is, we ain't it. There's a local syndicate who has bid so high that we'd lose money if we outbid 'em."

"Normally, we'd wipe out the cop, but in this case, the guy's closest rival is too honest. Oh, he's 'corrupt' according to their laws, but he's not corrupt enough. He'd never ignore it when we arson our rivals' warehouses or gun them down in the streets. We need to keep the same corrupt police chief in power, only get him working for US."

"What you're gonna do is simple. You're going to blast the guy who currently owns that cop right off the map. Not only that, you're gonna do it with that body you have right now. That'll send a message that it's a very bad idea to compete with the ICC - even for the ownership of cops who have made themselves available for sale."

"The hard part isn't the deletion of the target. It's finding him in the first place. We've tracked him down to one seaside town, but he hardly ever comes out. We figure he has to have a hiding place there. It could be a bunker, but it could also be an above-ground shed. There probably is some kind of underground tunnel or something, though, so I suggest you look for that. Try sonar, but if that doesn't work, don't forget that bribes and tortures can be effective if done to the right people."

"Once you find his location, delete him in a nice, showy way that nobody can mistake for an accident. It will send a strong message when the news spreads that the ICC sent a military jet to bomb or blast him into oblivion. Of course, that will also cut off the deal his group has with the chief of police - and our ground team will be standing ready to bribe that chief onto our side."

"Here's a map of the planet, showing the country and the town where we think this guy is. And here's a star map so you can find the planet! This job pays 100,000 Cubes. I presume you are accepting it."

This "presumption" wasn't nearly as presumptuous as it would seem to an outsider. Turning down a job from a capo after asking for one was basically a good way to get permanently deactivated in a way that would involve a foundry, so of course the answer would be yes.