An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Technotitlan

The Grand Council decided that it was best to give the Decepticons what they wanted, since they were not demanding that Technotitlan let itself be occupied or anything of that sort. Axayacatl decided to radio Megatron with the news. "In an hour I will be coming, not directly to Cybertron, but to the edge of your Empire, piloting a ship with the needed Energon with the fine, and within a day or so I will make the needed Royal decree allowing you access to the Energon markets on Technotitlan. If I don't get Happy back unharmed within a day after that, then said Royal Decree will be revoked. As for the others, they can be executed for what they did-for getting busted as much as anything else, and not having the bravery to try and break out or die on the battlefield." He gave Megatron the needed co-ordinates, so that the Energon would reach Megatron and not be raided by greedy Decepticons, and soon enough showed up at the place with the Energon needed that was half of what was needed to free Happy. Said Happy was a handful at the best of times, but he still loved him with the Coder-love of a Coder for an offspring, which was why he had not either just abandoned him to his fate, or reinstalled him from a Save. Happy needed to be taught a lesson that, bot though he was, he was not invulnerable. Perhaps then he would change his ways.

Before he got there the Decepticon delegation had got back and reported that the Technotitlan bots had let them go unharmed. "I think it was a combination of genuine respect for a diplomatic delegation, and not wanting to quite possibly escalate things into war if they did manage to successfully capture us. Axayacatl just asked us to let you know that he let us go unharmed."
*****
Cybertron

With their chance for good trade deals now utterly spoiled, the Technotitlan delegation politely asked to be allowed to go home, and Megatron let them do this. They had not come as foes after all, or insulted the Decepticons, and just because blue eyes existed on their planet, and even bots that transformed into cars and tanks, it didn't mean they were Autobots. They had just developed in a different way and had not had a civil war with each other. The Decepticon Military escort was large enough to turn them into shrapnel, but it just made sure they got out OK without being attacked by random Decepticon gangs. It was very common for foreigners-even bots, even Decepticon-like bots-to be attacked on sight when trying to get into or off Cybertron.

******
DeathStrike had forgotten just how useful the Cybertronian blaster was, as one of it's uses was, in effect, de facto traffic policing. If a bot was getting too close, it was used as a warning to back off, generally not at full power when used as a warning. Often bots were just in a hurry and it wasn't worth starting a fight to the body or to the death with a random bot over what in law-bound nations was a traffic violation. Slightly wounded, DeathStrike dropped back slightly, but then blasted at his foe's thrusters and the battle was on. If the blast didn't make his foe crash, and that was unlikely, a dogfight was certain. Such was the Decepticon Way, which the Decepticons lived under just as those on most planets not ruled by them lived under a code of laws. He hoped he could knock out this target and then he would have only three left to permanently deactivate before he had successfully carried out a bigger then normal job for the ICC and made himself more impressive and reliable in the process.
*****
The two Genociders hit it off well-which was not all that uncommon in the Genocide Battalion, as they understood each other well. Spike had successfully made the first step towards firm friendship with the former sapient pony. All he really needed was enough time, and not to make some faux pas that angered Pesticide, and the two bots would be firm allies. When it did form, Decepticon friendship, like everything else about Decepticons, was surprisingly strong. The exception was the friendships made by young Decepticon children, who often made quite a few of them, only to shed them once they became teenagers and then full adults. "If my former society had not been so weak, they would never have fallen to biologicals. Even if Megatron had never become divine, I still don't think the Decepticons would ever...ever...become so rusty that biologicals were able to round them up like livestock. We are so much better then that. What does the Genocide Battalion do when it's not on active service?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Space

Leader Megatron and a large contingent of troops made their way to the oil tanker craft, and at first, the troops seemed quite happy and excited. However, their cheer turned into hostility and battle-readiness after Megatron scanned the freighter.

"There's only HALF of the loot in there!" He shouted over the radio. All of the Decepticon soldiers not only became ready for a potential battle, but began to think about how many of them would soon be sent to Technotitlan to teach the other planet that Megatron's chain is never to be yanked.

Megatron quickly got on the radio, demanding to speak to Axayacatl. "What is the meaning of this!?" His anger was unmistakable. "There's only half the payment in here!! Half of a payment isn't enough to get the doors of the holding chamber open. But it IS enough to pay for the Energon needed to fire the Main Pit for a live execution!! You'd better have a good reason for this, or I'll have to assume that you were trying to short me..." It was clear that Megatron's response to an attempt to short him would be very violent.

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

Cybertron

Back at DomIntel Headquarters, where Happy awaited the end result of the negotiations, an agent came up to the door and spoke through an intercom. "If you're a prayin' bot, you'd better get to it," the agent said. "I just heard Megatron on the radio saying that your Coder tried to get away with only paying half of the fee!! If your Coder doesn't talk fast, you'll be going to the foundry, and your meltdown will be pirate-broadcasted all over Technotitlan to let everybody know what happens when a foreigner tries to blatantly short us on a payment!"

The intercom shut off, leaving Happy to wonder what was going on and whether he would live long enough to ever see Technotitlan again. He thought of trying to initiate mind-transfer and leave them with an empty body, but he could detect that jamming was running, making it so that trying that would be a suicide move. While he knew that he had Saves back home, he didn't want to lose his memories of this adventure, even though it hadn't gone like he'd planned it. He hoped Axayacatl would be able to calm Megatron down with a reasonable explanation for sending only half of the fine he had agreed to pay.

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

The foe's ailerons immediately activated, causing him to turn as quickly as he could. As this was going on, his blasters remained trained on DeathStrike - and now, they fired in earnest. Other flying Decepticons quickly banked away on both sides, not wanting to get caught up in the fray.

In the distance, one plane turned sharply and came toward the action. DeathStrike figured that he was one of the gang members, and knew that he would have to try to knock the first one out of the air fast or else end up in a two-on-one fight. He took aim at the first target's flaps, hoping to either wreck them or cause them to stick in the "down" position. If successful, this would make it impossible for his foe to control his up/down flight direction, and soon, send that foe racing towards the ground - and into the ground, if he couldn't manage to save himself in time.

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

"Unfortunately, we usually end up bored," Pesticide said. "A lot of us need special permission to leave the base. That's because a large portion of our Battalion is made up of former serial killers and such, and the High Command doesn't want us tearing up Cybertron for fun during our off time. However, not all of us have such restrictions. Those of us who don't will typically start off a break by going and raiding something. As you might expect, we are some of the deadliest raiders, and we're also equipped and trained to hit hard targets. However, we can't show our Skulls and Wrenches when doing private raids. This is so our targets don't mistake what we're doing for official actions."

"Once we have a whole lot of loot, we basically party and go to movies and stuff. But that gets dull. Usually, we end up back at the base doing genocide sims for fun before our leaves are actually over."

"And, I'm sure you know that unlike the rest of the Military, we Genociders don't just have 'stints' every few years. We're career soldiers. To the High Command, it's an internal security thing, just like with leave - but we wouldn't have it any other way. What civilian activity could be more exciting and gratifying than showing absolute dominance over some puny species that has been declared to be so inferior as to be worthy only of deletion? The more action we get to see, the better." Pesticide looked as if he was imagining wiping out a few million unfortunates as he was talking, and his eyes were bright.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

"Despite being bored at times, it is still very much worth it to be where I was built to be. Too bad I had to go through all that I went through to get here though. It's a good thing you were not built in my original society-you would not have had much fun. I hope to buy a few games in time, as that would lower the amount of boredom in between battles greatly. Perhaps we could raid somewhere small together if General Carjack was to grant us permission?" Spite hoped Pesticide would agree. Doing a raid together was a common way that bots who were friends became friends. Of course, Spite was careful to keep his voice at the right tone so as not to seem too eager. For a bot to seem too eager for friendship, was the equivalent on biological worlds of someone trying to be romantic too quickly. At best, it would cause the other bot to reject it, and at worse it was seen as a scam attempt (which sometimes it was) and resulted in a battle to the body or even to the death. Spite would still need to be careful for a while yet.

*****
Happy was seriously worried that a fiery pit was in his future, for pretending to be a Decepticon. He would most likely be brought back from a Save, but it would not be him. Not knowing that there was an afterlife and it was under Megatron's control, he thought he would most likely end up as a part of the Decepticon Metal Stream, and then, ironically, as a genuine Decepticon, but not at all in the way that he wanted.
*****
DeathStrike managed to smash the flaps on one of his target's wings, and hoped that it would send his foe into the ground, where a burst of jamming for a few seconds only would kill him. As long as it was turned off very quickly, it was unlikely that the other bots around him would attack him for endangering them. If he killed his foe, he could then do battle with the other bot. If he won both fights, he would only have two bots to deal with before his contract was fulfilled and he would get a large amount of Energon. With that, he could buy a few games, and most likely something else that was useful. It was possible he might buy something from Ultimate Mods, but he might use it for enjoyment purposes instead, or buy something luxurious. However successful he might get, he would always be ready to drop whatever he was doing when the call came in from the ICC that a job awaited him, until the hopefully distant day that death finally claimed him.
*****
Axayacatl himself came out of the freighter, having flown it there himself, and bowed politely to Megatron. Axayacatl himself was no weak bot, and was stronger then many Decepticons, but he could sense that Megatron was an immensely strong bot, the strongest bot he had ever encountered. "One of my people must have stolen the Energon. They are similar in many ways to yours. I'm sure I can get another freighter up and running soon. Also, if you melt my offspring down, then the decree to open Technotitlan's markets will never be made. Have you never had an offspring of yours do something stupid?"

Mentioning this was hardly the best thing to say to Megatron at the best of times, and all sapient Decepticons knew to avoid the topic, even more so to Megatron Himself. Megatron had never done what so many Decepticons had done, the creation of an offspring of His own, because any proper offspring of Megatron would sooner or later try to take over. To avoid having to execute or otherwise kill his offspring, Megatron would never build one, denying himself the privilege of the generation of Coder-love. Although there was no way Axayacatl could have known this, so he was not being deliberately insulting, he was still rubbing Megatron's lack of an offspring in his face, which was unlikely to go down very well.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Pesticide agreed that a raid would be a great way to spend some off-time and get some more action into their lives. "We just need to get a pass to be off the base for a while," Pesticide said. "Since there isn't any action now, and we haven't caused trouble with the wider society, it shouldn't be all that hard to get one for 10 days or so. Still, we'll have to wait for approval. The base commander will want to check to make sure there aren't any upcoming operations for us to be in. Usually, operations aren't announced to everyone at first, so they have to check with High Command to see if anything's still in the planning stages."

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

Payment Transfer Point

"I have never done anything so foolish as Code an offspring," Megatron said, not nearly as bothered about it as some biologicals might expect him to be. "Any offspring worthy of my Line would be full of ambition, including the ambition to rule. He would also have the sense to upgrade himself in terms of strength, and one of the most intelligent beings on Cybertron. I would then face a battle to the death against him for control of my own empire! Obviously I am not going to Code that. Yet, if I Coded one to be passive about not being the ruler, or who was content to be the Weak, he would disgust me. So, I haven't Coded that either. With this in mind, I have no intentions of Coding any offspring, for there is no way that doing so wouldn't backfire in my face in one way or the other."

Only after saying that, Megatron's eyes narrowed, and his facial expression became hard.

"As for the threat of your markets never being opened, there is always one way to open a market: By force. Your markets will be completely mine if I invade the place and melt down anyone who dares to boycott. I am very much willing to invade a planet for reasons of principle rather than money. That, after all, is why our first annexation was made. Decepticon Earth stood against us, citing their principles of 'free speech.' WE took it over, based on OUR principles of not allowing ourselves to be insulted without delivering the strongest and most decisive response possible."

"There was no financial gain to us in taking over Earth. It's far away, made mostly of mud, and full of primitives. But money wasn't the point. The point was to show what happens to those who do not give us our due respect."

"You will get the full amount here within 12 hours. If not, the Metal Stream will be enriched with foreign alloy. If we cannot gain access to your Energon market peaceably as agreed, then the Decepticon Military will be my trade envoy."

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

DomIntel Interrogation Room

Suddenly, a holovision that had been hidden slid out from the wall and turned on. Happy watched with interest, waiting to see what it would show. It would surely be something the Decepticons wanted him to see.

The holographic image quickly rezzed in, taking only a moment to go from blank to high-res. It was instantly recognizable as a foundry, most likely the Main Foundry. A mean-looking, dirty yet well-built, bot was standing at the side of the Main Pit. He was stringing up two strong chains - chains with shackles on the ends. Meanwhile, another bot was adjusting a thermostat, and the already white-hot molten metal soon began to glow even more. It was clear that some sort of mechanical rod was active just beneath the surface, stirring the metal so it wouldn't harden against the sides of the Pit or where it was contacted by air at the top.

At this point, a voice came over the intercom. "There has been a problem with the payment. Apparently your Coder tried to stiff our Leader out of 50% of his agreed-upon fine. He gave some excuse, but it was quite unbelievable. By its size, we estimate that the ship was only made to hold about 60% of the payment, and it is typical to leave some headspace in a load to allow for temperature-related expansion and contraction - which matches the 50% payment that arrived. It's clear that he didn't intend to pay the full amount for your Metal right from the start..."

"I want you to know that we have activated jamming on the room you are in, and if that payment is not corrected within Megatron's deadline, we will keep the jamming on all the way from here until your Metal is molten. If you're the praying kind, we suggest you start doing it now."

The voice and holovision set both cut off, leaving Happy alone with his thoughts once again. Far from being happy now, he would have better off calling himself Terrified or Feeling a Sense of Impending Doom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cybertronian Airspace

DeathStrike's target soon lost control of his flightpath, and began to headspin toward the ground uncontrollably. Though he immediately turned off his jets as a reflex, gravity alone did just fine at bringing metal to metal, and he soon crashed headfirst into the planetary panels of the ground. Just as he activated his mind-transfer command, jamming covered the immediate area, causing his data to simply dissipate into nothing.

One more down.

DeathStrike had no chance to celebrate, though, because at the moment he activated his jamming, he was strafed in the side by the desperate blaster fire of his next target. That bot had been hoping to get the jamming off in time, but having failed that, he now intended to completely deactivate the ICC assassin.

Meanwhile, the boss of the gang was busy radioing all of the members who remained. After realizing that his gang was up against an actual Problem Solver, he had checked his spare bodies - only to find them all sabotaged. He was now warning everyone else that their spares and saves were likely destroyed as well, and that they should make new ones as soon as possible. He didn't tell them to 'be careful' in the meantime, though, for Decepticons would be insulted if anyone assumed that they couldn't figure that part out for themselves.

The bot that was now engaging DeathStrike in battle lost a bit of nerve when that came over his radio, but he didn't even let on that he had gotten a message. He was also too proud to turn and try to bolt away, and not only that, turning while within firing range of a foe was a really great way to get blasted full of holes. In short, he was stuck. He had to fight now, knowing that one false move would be his last move.

[Vallermoore]

Spite didn't want to get into trouble, so didn't mind waiting for a pass. Raiding with Pesticide, assuming the raid worked well, was a great way for bots to get closer. If Spite did the right things and had enough patience, he and Pesticide would soon be firm friends.

Cybertronian Airspace

The two Decepticons circled each other, blasting as they did so, trying to get on each other's tail and bust up each other's engines, whilst the nearby bots scattered out of the way, and in many cases landed to watch the battle, a great source of free entertainment. DeathStrike was in his element, hoping to slay the third member of the five-bot gang, bringing himself that much closer to the grand prize, and loving his role as a Problem Solver and the increased reputation he might be able to gain. Though worried, the other bot turned on his Bravery Up, one of the most useful add-ons in Decepticon history, and radioed his boss for help. As soon as he had destroyed the other Decepticon, DeathStrike had turned his jammer off. Using it for a few seconds was acceptable-it might annoy other bots but rarely enough for them to get involved. Leaving it on would not just endanger him and his foe, but every bot in the area, and such bots were seen as the equivalent of suicide bombers and blasted by all the nearby bots for endangering their lives.

Payment Transfer Point

Axayacatl decided to himself that he would give Megatron the rest of the Energon with a bomb/jammer combination, and send him to the Metal Stream, hopefully plunging Cybertron into Civil War. He had heard a rumour of Megatron being a god but did not believe it. But even if Megatron was trapped in the afterlife when he was blown up, Loyal Star or a High General or someone else was sure to restore him very quickly, and then Technotitlan would find itself facing the Decepticon Military. Soon enough Axayacatl came back with the needed Energon, only to detonate it next to Megatron a second after a powerful jammer went on, FTLing himself back to Technotitlan to ready the defenses in case what he thought would be a small part of the Decepticon Military came after him. As there was no successor to Megatron, he assumed that most of the Decepticon Military would consume itself in the fires of civil war. Perhaps, if it weakened itself enough, the forces of Technotitlan could slay the last Decepticons and take Cybertron for themselves.

He was both right and very, very wrong. If he could slay Megatron (and gods and goddesses were not unkillable-Megatron himself had slain several of them) then unless the High Generals could form a military junta, then civil war would indeed break out all through the Decepticon Empire. But simply exploding Megatron or even trapping him in the afterlife would not kill him outright, as only a divine weapon could kill a divine being, and Megatron had many genuine loyalists ready to restore him. He didn't yet know it, but Technoctitlan was toast once the united Decepticon Military arrived. Back on Technotitlan he used Happy's latest Save Disc to "restore him" and summoned his generals to ready the defences, expecting maybe twenty thousand or so Decepticons to come after him. He had abandoned the version of Happy trapped on Cybertron to his fiery fate. Cutter and A1 were put in charge of the defences.

(OOC-Sorry for the delay, due to RL.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

Payment Transfer Point

As soon as Megatron's systems detected the incoming shock wave from the explosion, they automatically activated internal parts that first converted as much of the energy to electricity as his batteries could hold, and then put up a divine shield to deflect the rest. Megatron intended to blast Axayacatl for his treachery right then and there, but by the time the dust cleared, the foreign leader was gone.

Megatron's eyes narrowed with anger and annoyance, but he wasn't nearly as irked as he could have been. Now, he had a good excuse to invade this new place, and he had actually wanted to do so all along. He radioed the Main Military Base and gave the order for enough troops to be readied to ensure as easy of a victory as possible. Axayacatl would indeed see "a small part" of the Decepticon Military. Unfortunately for Technotitlan as a whole, that would be because the rest of the Military would be busy invading the rest of their planet. The part Axayacatl would see would be Megatron's most elite troops, who - along with Megatron - would be after him specifically!

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

Cybertron

Spite and Pesticide were on their way back to the base, fully intending to ask for leave, when they got a very unwelcome message from the base commander. They were to report to the Main Base immediately. The services of the full Genocide Battalion were expected to be needed, and in short order.

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

Domestic Intelligence Interrogation Room

Suddenly, the door to Happy's makeshift cell opened, and two Scrounger-grade agents appeared. They quickly came in, and behind them, three more agents followed as backup. Then, Happy was informed of what his "dear Coder" had pulled.

"It seems as if your Coder thinks of you as expendable equipment," the leader of the group said. "He has not only left you here to die, but has also started a war against us - not to get you back, but apparently, just for spite."

"We have found that when a Coder or an offspring does something like that, there is always pre-existing hostility between one or both people. While we didn't look for that in our code-read, we're sure that there are other incidents like this - incidents that you now have the chance to pay him back for." The agent paused, watching Happy's response.

"Perhaps you would like to fly with us this time, and show your Coder your worthiness - by putting his army on the other end of your blasters..."

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

DeathStrike now turned his attention to the next bot that had presented himself, but unlike before, he didn't have the advantage of being behind his target. Instead, this target had come in from the side, and as DeathStrike began a circling maneuver, his foe dropped in altitude and flew underneath him. While the foe was unable to fire straight up, DeathStrike was also unable to fire straight down. Suddenly, the foe gained altitude quickly, hoping to bash into DeathStrike at the right angle and destabilize his flight. Since the enemy was planning on this move, he was already "braced" for the impact and had calculated what he'd need to do to keep himself in the air. It wouldn't be impossible for DeathStrike to keep flying either, but he would be at a disadvantage since he didn't know the plan in advance.

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

Technotitlan

The engine of the new "Happy" revved into action, and the newly-installed program had all of the right memories. What it did not have, though, was Happy's soul. Axayacatl had assumed that the original would be melted down, thereby freeing his soul to come to the new body, but that had not happened. Instead, Decepticon Intelligence was busy trying to talk the "real" Happy into defecting to its side, thereby keeping him alive, at least for now.

Axayacatl, being a complete muggle as well as a hothead, did not realize that the construct before him had no soul. After all, it responded to conversation just like the old one would have. However, Axayacatl wasn't the only being observing these events. More than one evil entity in the vicinity also spotted that there was a construct that was meant to be alive, but wasn't fully so. It was, in some nations' parlance, free real estate.

The construct's engine noise had been steady, but for a moment, it seemed to randomly change. Happy 2's eyes got just a bit dimmer before returning to their usual state. Happy 2 now had a soul. It just wasn't the one Axayacatl was figuring on. Instead, it was that of a 10,500-year-old demon who now had a physical body for the first time in many years - and, by the looks of it, he would also have the chance to insinuate himself into a position of leadership on Technotitlan (perhaps by outright assassinating the king), where he intended to cause untold amounts of misery and chaos.

Before either of the bots could do anything else, the air raid sirens went off. The Decepticon Military was at the space border, and was now chewing its way through the outer ring of Technotitlan defenders.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

It turned out that the plans of Pesticide and Spite to ask for leave were kyboshed before they could be put into operation, as the base siren sounded and orders came through for the Genocide Battalion to report on the main drill square for action. Spite grinned. "I don't mind waiting a while for leave-action is just as much fun, whoever it's against," he said to Pesticide. Soon they were in the air , flying in the second rank rather then right up at the front.

*****
Happy sat there in his cell, in chains, wondering when, or if, he would ever get released-or if the "release" he would get was to be melted down in a slag pit, bitterly regretting first his crime against Decepticon law and second not having the bravery to fight to the death. His cell door was opened and he got some surprising news that he was not expecting. "It seems as if your Coder thinks of you as expendable equipment. He has not only left you here to die, but has also started a war against us - not to get you back, but apparently, just for spite. We have found that when a Coder or an offspring does something like that, there is always pre-existing hostility between one or both people. While we didn't look for that in our code-read, we're sure that there are other incidents like this - incidents that you now have the chance to pay him back for. Perhaps you would like to fly with us this time, and show your Coder your worthiness - by putting his army on the other end of your blasters..."

Happy's engine revved angrily when he learned this. "Hell yes. Just tell me what regiment to fly with, and I'll come along with you even if it leads to my death in battle. He considered me too wild for him, and wrote me out of the succession if he should ever be permanently killed, making A1, a new offspring, to take my place as Crown Prince of Technotitlan." Once he was unchained, he said "I can point out their Main Military Save Vault. They might have a few small ones I don't know about, but they can only process a few bots per hour, whilst their Main Vault can process many thousands of bots." This would be a genuine help to the Decepticons and would make the conquest of Technotitlan so much easier. He was placed with General Soundwave's Battalion and given a chance to prove his new loyalty in combat.

******
A siren sounded on Cybertron in a very particular way that meant "WAR WAR WAR!" and both DeathStrike and his foe stopped fighting, wiggled their wings at each other, and flew in different directions. DeathStrike radioed his capo to explain the situation and his capo was understanding-as committing treason by murdering a fellow bot when they were at war against a foe could get a bot melted down. The reason for this, was that it would be very hard for the Raider Front of Decepticons to be a proper fighting force if they were riddled with bots fighting each other, and the Raider Front was part of what made the Decepticons so dangerous and deadly. As soon as peace was declared, the normal murders and other such things could restart. DeathStrike temporarily joined a crew of ICC bots that formed up like this in wartime. All over Cybertron, although not quite in the large numbers that would happen if the planet was literally attacked, individual bots and gangs were taking off to join the fight, whilst regiments rose en masse from their bases.

*****
Technotitlan

In the plush Royal Palace of King Axayacatl, Axayacatl smiled as he downloaded Happy from a Save Disc, not knowing that the body was soulless-and that a soulless body was like a house with the door hanging open for any bum from the streets to come and squat in the place. Axayacatl was telling the new Happy about what happened when the engine noise changed slightly and the eyes dimmed slightly and brightened again. If General Carjack had been in a situation like this, he would have recognized the threat at once. Unknown to anyone, the new Happy was now possessed by a demon who wanted to take over. Before the demon could try and do this, the air raid sirens sounded.

The border guards of Technotitlan didn't last long, but enough ordinary Technotitlans rose to do battle to gain enough time for Axayacatl to get on the holovision and also to order Cutter of Bots, his Commanding General, to get the troops out. The Raider Front was-temporarily-mostly blocked by the Technotitlan Military, but shortly afterwards the Decepticon Military arrived, and bombers were sent to destroy the Military Main Save Vault of Technotitlan, with Happy flying with them to point out where the target was. Once this was destroyed, within a day or two Technotitlan would be overrun by sheer weight of numbers. On the second attempt, the first attempt being beaten off, the Main Save Vault was bombed into bits. Axayacatl, now flying in battle with the most elite of his royal regiments, noticed this and radioed Happy angrily. "You traitor! How can you do this to your Coder and your own people?"

Happy radioed back "You never loved me or respected me. You called me too wild, Coded another bot to serve as your heir if you were ever permakilled, and then you left me to die in the fires of Cybertron instead of ransoming me and coded a replacement me, no doubt one that would be less "wild" and more likely to do what you want. I am no longer a Technotitlan bot, and I renounce my oath of loyalty to you and to Technotitlan and my royal status as well. I serve Megatron now, who showed me mercy when he could have had me executed. If I can get to you, I'll blow your body to bits!"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Technotitlan

At first, Axayacatl thought everything was going swell. He had, he thought, reactivated his offspring and given him his version of what had happened. Of course, he didn't admit that he'd abandoned the prior iteration to the slag, and then used what was supposed to be a ransom payment as a bomb. However, things quickly took a turn for the worse for the Technotitlan king.

As he was talking to Happy 2, alarms went off, causing him to look at the military situation. To his horror, he wasn't just being attacked by a few thousand Decepticons while the rest fought each other for supremacy. Instead, it seemed as if the entire Decepticon Military was plowing through his planet's space border! Then, once they breached the defenses, his military's Main Save Vault was quickly destroyed. When he cued up a surveillance camera to check on that, he clearly saw Happy 1 there with the Decepticons, apparently pointing out even more targets!

Then, he got so captivated and horrified by this scene that he got on the radio with Happy 1, forgetting all about Happy 2, who was standing right behind him and was able to easily hear every word. The demon running Happy 2 smiled in a twisted, evil way that would not normally be possible according to Happy 2's design spec, knowing that if he exterminated Axayacatl now, everyone who had overheard that radio transmission would assume that Happy had done the deed. This would put him in a great position to take over. After all, Happy said he'd like to blow his Coder's body to bits, so when it was found blown, of course it would be assumed that he did it.

This wasn't good for the demon's plans for the normal reason of wanting to pass the buck. Instead, it would set it up so that Happy 2 would be able to claim the throne. There was just one possible problem, and that was this "A1" he had heard mentioned. The entity did not consider that a serious problem. He would just whack A1 too. Heirs to the throne eliminating their "brothers" was far from unheard of, after all.

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

Axayacatl didn't even remember about Happy 2 as he was overcome with various emotions upon hearing what Happy 1 said. He started paying so much attention to that, and thinking of what to say back, that he didn't hear the battle rev behind him as Happy 2 lined up his killshot. In an instant, the radio transmissions turned to static, as Happy 2 activated jamming while simultaneously blasting Axayacatl from the back, cutting through his armor to strike him in both the mind and motion boards at once by using his two blasters at the same time.

Without a word, the king went offline, his body creaking to one side thanks to a final attempt to turn around to face the attack. He had indeed tried to mind-transfer, but the jamming worked on him just like it would on a Decepticon, sending his data to nowhere and eliminating his running instance in its entirety.

The demon blatantly chortled. That had been easy! Now all he would have to do is get rid of this A1, and then, he would be able to start giving orders. He, like many spirit creatures, was not fully aware of all of the goings-on of modern life in the world he now found himself in. However, he had heard of a Decepticon battalion of particular infamy...one known for things like causing mass death and enslavement. If he could troll this battalion into showing up, it would spread a lot of fear and misery into this dimension.

Demons, not really being strategic thinkers beyond what was right in front of their faces (and often, not even that far), often went for the "low hanging fruit" without regard for the bigger picture. Such was the case with this one, who, in its haste to bring evil and badness to the land, didn't stop to think that - if he managed to claim the throne - would be HIS land that he was planning to lure the Decepticons to destroy even harder than they already planned to. Happy 2 was already too busy imagining the sounds of screams and rending metal, and the smell of burnt coolant in the streets to actually think...

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

As the Decepticon Military engaged regular military targets, the Raider Front was coming in from all over. It didn't take long for all of the obvious refineries to draw several raid gangs and syndicate units, and once those were too full of other raiders for any more to land, other raiders moved on to various resource depots and factories. Unlike in many invasions, the factories were of particular interest here. Since Technotitlan was a planet of robots, their manufacturing facilities would surely have at least some cool new modification parts, or just plain old parts, that were good for taking. If all went well, some of the factory equipment itself could be looted and taken back to Cybertron for actual use rather than simple meltdown.

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

General Carjack knew that in many places, the loss of the capitol city caused a huge blow to the morale of the defenders. Even though he didn't expect Technotitlan to fall just because one city did, he figured that it would be worthwhile for him to go ahead and attack it - especially if the news of the defeat was able to spread to the rest of the planet. To facilitate that spread, he had gotten Soundwave to go ahead and allow a couple of his bots to come along on this assault. Those bots would broadcast the events, assuming, of course, Carjack's division was stomping on the Technotitlans as expected.

Soon, the skies over the city darkened, not just with the Genocide Battalion, but with Carjack's entire division of regulars as well. They began to blast everything that was on the ground, whether robot or building, in an attempt to turn the entire place into rubble. Before long, Axayacatl's palace came into view, its size and general opulence marking it out as a place of high importance. Carjack and several troops turned and flew in its direction, intending to blast it flat and to make a spectacle out of killing whatever high-ranking sods happened to be inside.

Once Carjack got closer, he couldn't miss the evil energy emanating from the place. He instantly recognized that there was at least one demon, and quickly ordered his troops to activate full anti-hack measures. Then, without further checking or ado, he ordered the palace leveled - preferably by aerial blasting and bombing rather than by landing and then engaging in combat.

Inside, the demon was first glad when he realized that he wouldn't have to bother to troll to get the "infamous division" to come to Technotitlan. However, even his little mind realized that it was a very bad thing for him when that division showed up at the capitol, and part of it broke off and went specifically toward his position. Before long, blasts were raining down through the roof at one end of the castle, and it wouldn't be long before they made it all the way to his end of it.

[Vallermoore]

Technotitlan

King Axayacatl had no idea that his own version of Happy had been currycombed and hacked by a demon until it was too late. Strong as his Royal armor was, even stronger then that of a middle class Decepticon, it was not strong enough to deal with the best blasters that Technotitlan had to offer at point blank range. Much to his surprise, Axayacatl found himself in a small metal room with three screens. One showed what was clearly some sort of robotic version of Heaven, one showed a factory and one showed various torments. A bot with flames painted on his body and glowing red eyes appeared and announced "Under different circumstances, you might have even made it to the Realm of Endless Energon, for you ruled your people surprisingly well, with only a bare minimum of laws to protect yourself from overthrow and your people from chaos-or at least to the Upper levels of the Neutral Realm. But for abandoning your offspring to what you thought would be death at our hands, and then trying to kill the Divine Leader Megatron-something that would most likely be impossible even if he were not divine because of his many loyalists-the Realm of Punishment will be your lot. As for your offspring, he is one of us now." A trapdoor opened under Axayacatl's feet, his jets failed to fire and he plummeted down into the dark.

*****
The demon made it's exit out of a window, but General Carjack had no intention of letting it get away to perhaps cause endless trouble. Demons were hackers, apart from anything else, and it might manage to hack some unfortunate Decepticon later and grow in power until it could even threaten a High General. Like a weed, it had to be dealt with early to avoid much more bother later.

*****
A1 got on what remained of the Technotitlan holovision stations to order it's Military to fight long enough for at least some of them to escape. The Decepticons had no intention of letting any of them get away. Even one if he got access to the right kind of factory could mass produce more, and they didn't want some kind of new version of the Cybertronian Civil War to erupt a few decades or centuries down the line. Cutter of Bots was doing well as a military commander, and unlike when the Ponybots were destroyed earlier, the Technotitlan bots were a bit more of a challenge, except that they were so heavily outnumbered. They could lure individual Decepticons into ambushes for example, or hit them with booby traps, and fought in simmeler ways to Decepticons. Apart from the Genocide Battalion who hated and despised everyone they fought, the Decepticon Military had a sneaking admiration for a race very much like themselves-although it didn't stop them blasting their foes.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Technotitlan
Royal Palace

Carjack immediately detected that the one leaving was the possessed bot that he had detected. He also recognized that the body was a copy of Happy, and surmised what happened. Carjack silently groused a bit about the Coder being dumb enough to activate a new Happy body without making sure the other one was deactivated first, but he didn't pause what he was doing to think these thoughts. His blasters were already in the process of fine-tuning their aim, and in just two seconds of the demon's exit, Carjack and several of his troops were blasting the entity from above.

Behind this action, others from Carjack's division made short work of the rest of the palace, turning the entire thing into rubble chunks so small that no bot could hide there. Some also landed, and began looking for hidden tunnels and bunkers just in case the king was cowering underneath the surface somewhere. It didn't take long for them to come across Axayacatl's deactivated body, which bore the marks of the surprise attack that had shut it down. Only later, though, would they find a small buried vault with at least some of the Saves for each member of the royal family. These discs would be code-read, and then, melted down to make sure they could never be used.

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

Elsewhere on Technotitlan

As soon as A1 got on the holovision, General Soundwave and his division tracked the signal through several cable holovision hops and then back to its source. They changed their flight paths immediately, intending to close in on the designated heir and - assuming he did not surrender himself and his entire planet immediately - destroy him.

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

All around the planet, battles raged. The Decepticons were soon put into foul moods by the skills of their opponents, which were almost on par with their own. For the first time in many years, casualties were seriously mounting on both sides. Not only that, it seemed that, like the Decepticons, the Technotitlans were hellbent on fighting to the last bot. The Decepticon Military knuckled down for what they realized would be a long slog, possibly through the entire Technotitlan population.

In space, close to the planet, part of Megatron's division kept close watch. Whenever they saw a Technotitlan bot trying to fly away, they swarmed it and deleted it. This wasn't "easy," but they made sure to send overwhelming numbers after each bot that tried to leave the battle zone. Since the Technotitlans were a decently brave type, much like the Decepticons, there weren't many defectors to chase down.

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

The Realm of Punishment

Axayacatl fell though empty space, wondering where the heck he was and why it wasn't the Technotitlan Metal Stream, until he suddenly crashed into a hard surface that he assumed was this place's ground. The shock absorbers in his legs strained at the impact, and one burst, but his main structures remained intact.

Once he got his bearings, he saw a dimly-lit screen on some sort of podium. He approached cautiously, his blasters at the ready, but there was no immediate threat. Finally, he read the screen.

"You are now aware that Divine Leader Megatron controls afterlife realms. This is one of them. You are in the Realm of Punishment for starting a war against Victorious Decepticons and attempting to deactivate Megatron. You shall now suffer Megatron's wrath, until the time comes when - if ever - that wrath has cooled."

The screen went dark, and suddenly, the platform Axayacatl was standing on dissolved into nothing. He fell once again, this time for much longer, until he finally saw what appeared to be sunlight below him. Soon, he passed from the darkness into the light, which was so bright that it was glaring. Not long after, he felt himself hit the ground, this time definitely made of sand...and he immediately became aware that his body was now much different from what he was used to.

Heat was what he could identify first. It was extremely hot, and extremely dry. He felt a horrible sensation, but it was one that he'd never experienced before. He also felt beat-up, and his feet hurt. When he looked around, a mean-looking Mexican man was disappearing into the distance without a second glance. Then, he became aware of the sound of whining children, and a language he'd never heard before. It was a pretty language, with almost a lilting sound when spoken by a female voice. The small, scared male children's voices he heard spoke the same thing, but from them, it was a fairly straightforward sound without the musicality of the girls' speech. Amazingly, he could understand this language fine. What he didn't realize was that he wouldn't be able to understand anything else, at least not yet.

Then, he looked at his own body, or what he could see of it. To his horror, he was a human! Not only that, he appeared to be the size of a 3-year-old.

"C'mon, Miguel," an older girl, about 6, was saying to him. "The coyote said to walk this way. We have to get going, or we'll die out here!" He tried to move in response, but it took him a long time to get up. Finally, he did, his body protesting constantly with this weird and highly unpleasant heat-related feeling. "We can get some water once we get to the agents," she told him.

Water?! He was supposed to go somewhere for water, of all things?! Before he could ask what the heck was wrong with their boards, the rest of the little kids had started hiking away. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew that he would be very vulnerable in this tiny little body, so he tagged along just to make sure that there were plenty of other targets around him in case something attacked. Maybe it would miss him and delete them instead!

After what seemed like several hours, some of the kids could no longer go on. One by one, they either sat down and refused to proceed, or just keeled over unconscious. Axayacatl himself kept feeling his head "swim," but he managed to trudge on. The older girl told each drop-off that she would tell "the agents" to come back and look for them, but Axayacatl could tell that she was feeling discouraged.

Finally, near dusk, and when Axayacatl was feeling quite near death, the few remaining kids saw a small truck with some guys in uniforms standing near it. On the side, in a language none of them could read, the truck said "Customs and Border Patrol." The girl shouted out, and approached the uniformed men with her hands up, prisoner style. The men seemed to groan. It was yet another group of illegals, dumped off by some human trafficker who just got them to the border and then ditched. The border agents wondered how many dead babies and tots they would find when they followed the path of kiddie footsteps back to the border. Situations like this were always bad.

One of the agents came up and grudgingly handed over bottles of hot water. The water wasn't meant to be hot, but it had heated up due to being in the desert for hours. All of the kids quickly opened up their bottles and drank, except for Axayacatl, who had no idea what to do with the stuff.

"The heat must have gotten to you!" One of the agents said, as if he'd seen this before, too. He opened up the bottle and pressed it to Axayacatl's lips, forcing some of the water in between them. To Axayacatl's shock, a biological reflex immediately kicked in, and he found himself drinking it down as fast as possible. This reflex wouldn't appear with such compelling strength if he wasn't dehydrated, but since he was extremely dry inside, it was fully active now. To his shock, the hot water even tasted good!

This initial niceness, however, would be the last he would experience for a good long time. Him and the other kids still in the group were herded into the back of the truck, where they had to wait half the night as the agents scoured the sands for those left behind. When they finally returned, they only had one more child. All of the other kids began to cry, while Axayacatl sat there with a strange look, trying to figure out what that noise meant.

Soon, the truck began to move, and after about an hour's ride, they arrived at what appeared to be a giant warehouse. They were led inside, given some more water - this time, cooler, but with a strange chemical taste - and then told to change into these strange uniform-clothes. Axayacatl, who had never worn clothes in his life, had a huge amount of trouble doing this. He didn't know it, but the adults instantly branded him as mentally handicapped because of this difficulty and his lack of reaction when only one extra kid was brought back, which would lead to even longer institutionalization than the others were in for.

Not long after this, all of them were led into the main warehouse area, which featured huge fenced partitions, which were overfilled of kids of varying ages. They broke up the group, putting the boys in one partition and the girls in another. "Bienvenido a los estados unidos," one of the agents said sarcastically, even chuckling a little, before locking the door and leaving them to stew in a combination of fear and boredom.

When he finally got to lay down to sleep, he found a little piece of paper in the cheap Mylar blanket he'd been given. It said in Spanish, "Your original name indicates that you'd probably like to be a Mexican, so...congratulations, you're a Mexican! Also, now your name is Miguel! Mexicans haven't used names like Axayacatl in hundreds of years!" It was signed, Megatron. As soon as "Miguel" read it, the note transformed back into being just the usual blanket tag stating what the item was made of, leaving no evidence of ever having said anything else.

This would just be the start of Axayacatl's journey through what he would find out was a copy of the United States immigration system as it was on non-Decepticon Earth. From here, he would end up shunted around to several hostile foster homes, get entirely lost in the system, finally get discovered again, then have the ruling party change to Republican before he could be reunited with his supposed mother (causing him to end up in some camp instead), until finally, he would turn 18 - at which point, DACA would mysteriously be entirely canceled. Then he would be deported to Mexico, a country he knew absolutely nothing about, without so much as 10 pesos. After that, he would end up on the street until being recruited by a cartel. Once in the cartel, he would quickly end up dispatched by some other gang, only to be reborn into equally-bad circumstances.

In most of the scenarios, he would be stuck as some sort of unwanted kid (to avenge Happy and how he'd been treated), though sometimes, he would be an adult but end up screwed somehow - and, since this was the Realm of Punishment and not a place of subtlety, the "somehow" usually involved some form of torturous physical pain along with anything else the place came up with that time.

[Vallermoore]

The Realm of Punishment

Axayacatl was very shocked to find himself falling through space instead of just dead and part of the Technotitlan Metal Stream. He landed on a platform with some injury to a foot, and limped over to a dimly-lit screen which said "You are now aware that Divine Leader Megatron controls afterlife realms. This is one of them. You are in the Realm of Punishment for starting a war against Victorious Decepticons and attempting to deactivate Megatron. You shall now suffer Megatron's wrath, until the time comes when - if ever - that wrath has cooled." He then fell a lot further, and found himself in a biological body of a small human boy aged about three. After nearly dying in the heat, a Customs and Border Enforcement agent gave him some water, water that to his surprise he found tasted nice and didn't damage his new small body. He would have several years in very unpleasant foster homes, get kicked back to Mexico when he was 18, join a cartel, and-just when he thought his life might be improving-get brutally murdered. Many other new lives would follow. Sometimes he got murdered as a small kid. Once he was forced to dress like and in effect replace a dead sibling by a rather brutal biological Coder that blamed him for the death. Always he either got murdered, died of cancer or some other nasty death, and/or ended up homeless or in prison. There were times when he was stuck in his own dead body but aware of everything as it was either cremated-which hurt a lot, or rotted away underground.

Technotitlan
Royal Palace

Much to it's anger, even the very strong body the demon had was not enough to withstand the fire of both High General Carjack and the Genocide Battalion, although three Genociders including Pesticide found themselves back in the Decepticon Military's Main Save Vault first. Without a physical body and back in the hell it had come from, the demon was no longer a threat to the physical world.


Elsewhere on Technotitlan

A1 and Cutter of Bots had several intact bodies, as such was the speed of the attack on Technotitlan that no bots from Forintel had been sent after their spares. Despite being heavily outnumbered and having their Main Save Vault destroyed early on, it took three whole days to winkle out and kill the last bots of Technotitlan. Once, two thousand Technotitlan bots tried to escape at once and a few nearly escaped the encirclement. None surrendered, preferring death to chipped enslavement, and they fought as hard as the Decepticons would if Cybertron were being occupied. At last only three bots remained of the entire Technotitlan design-Happy, A1 and Cutter of Bots. The latter two had no more spares, but had sent tens of their foes back to Cybertron as data packets. When they saw Happy they cursed him out as a traitor, and urged the Decepticons to chuck him in a slag pit before he blasted him in the back someday.

"You call me a traitor, after our Coder Axayacatl left me to die in a slag pit and replaced me with a Save Disc and a spare? And brought down the wrath of Cybertron upon our now ex-nation? Asking you to surrender would be wasted as I know you would never let yourselves submit to a slave virus." Happy got out of the way and before long, A1 was fit only for a furnace and Cutter of Bots was himself in pieces. Megatron now needed to decide what to do with Happy, who had proved his loyalty time and time again in the battle and was at the moment, the last of what had been several million bots of Technotitlan. Also, the looting could now begin of the industry and Energon of the entire planet.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Technotitlan

While it was likely that even here, some bots would have been cowards and submitted to enslavement, the Decepticons didn't take any chances. The only way to know for sure would have been to code-read them all, and it was much simpler to just blast them all instead! When some didn't immediately open fire, it was assumed that they were just slow on the draw. No obvious signals of surrender, like white flags or even bowing down, were seen.

Since ForIntel hadn't found out where every spare and save was, the Military's next task after apparent victory was to scour every inch of the planet for these crucial backups. Sure enough, engines were already revving to life in underground bunkers, storage warehouses, and even junkyards. The war was far from over yet! Everyone who hadn't been jammed when he was deactivated was now re-activating, and before long, Technotitlans in spares were coming out into the open from all over, their blasters blazing as they cursed the invaders.

The Decepticons had sort of expected this, so they weren't caught by surprise. However, they didn't know just where a particular Technotitlan was going to appear, and this made the defense harder. Several Decepticons ended up either in the Main Save Vault, or in the worst cases, outright deleted as their foes now ran jamming just as they had sometimes done.

Despite the renewed fighting, other Decepticon soldiers continued searching for spares and saves, and did quite well at eliminating the ones that were still inactive. Many Technotitlans had more than one spare, or at least, they did until their other spares were found and destroyed! The save discs were much smaller, so they were harder to find, but the positive side was that these were easy to destroy once located. It didn't take blasting through a bunch of armor to get the job done.

Suddenly, a radio call went to Megatron that a vault with save discs from the Royal Family had been located. Megatron quickly went to the location to confirm the find, but instead of destroying every disk, he kept the one from Axayacatl. "I will see what kind of glitches this guy was coded out of!" Megatron said, putting the disc in his largest thigh panel. "And also, learn all about this planet and where the best loot is!" Megatron hoped that Axayacatl wouldn't turn out to be one of those clueless types of 'leaders' who really just delegated everything and didn't know the first thing about his own territories, and that he would learn a lot about the industrial and oil-related workings of Technotitlan.

Eventually, all of the reactivated Technotitlans who had showed themselves were once again deactivated - this time, with jammers running whenever it wasn't ridiculously dangerous to run them. Now, the Decepticon Military was even more meticulous in checking every nook and cranny, not only for spare bodies, but any Technotitlans who were currently hiding. They knew that any survivors were almost sure to attack again, or at the very least, commit sabotage whenever they could. The Decepticons wondered if their foes were naturally that brave, or if they'd been hardcoded to be so right from the start (thereby not really having surrender as an option).

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

Main Military Base, Cybertron

All three Genociders were quickly re-installed into new bodies, and told how lucky they were that no jamming was running when they had gotten deactivated. Then, the vault commander said something disconcerting:

"You all are going to really get read the riot act by Carjack for losing to a demon. He always goes on and on about what n00bs they are, and how they never get smarter even though some of them are thousands or even millions of years old! You'd better come up with some good excuses before you go back to the battlefield!"

[Vallermoore]

Technotitlan

It would later be found, from checking some mind boards in a de facto autopsy, that Technotitlan bots were hard coded not to surrender to foreigners even if they were also robots, and even more so if that meant a life of virus-imposed slavery. Most of them had their own form of Bravery Up as well. Despite the three-day long war, plenty of factories that were found that were only lightly damaged, along with plenty of oil and metal and Technotitlan Energon, and other such useful things. They found a shop called Best Bots that was the Technotitlan equivalent of Ultimate Mods, and General Soundwave's troops sealed the place off and temporarily classified the contents so that the Decepticon Military would be the first bots to be able to make use of them. Once the planet had been taken, Megatron would take the last Save Disc of Axayacatl back to his mansion and run it on a non sapiernt computer so that he could find out all that was useful about Axayacatl, including the locations of any secret treasure vaults, oil fields, offspring that might be living offworld and would need to be assassinated quickly, and the like.

*****
The three Genociders decided that they would need to try and serve with enough distinction in the battle to try and lessen Carjack's anger a bit. Soon enough, they would be called to Carjack's temporary field office to be chewed out and perhaps worse. As far as Carjack was concerned, losing a body to a demon was disgraceful, much more so then losing a body to a missile fired by biologicals, for example.

*****
There was a single known Technotitlan bot who was neither dead nor a slave-Happy, who was still at the moment in his Technotitlan made body. He decided to ask if he could become a Decepticon for real.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Decepticons were somewhat dismayed that they had to genocide the entire Technotitlan species to gain control of the planet, rather than being able to take it over and annex most of its population like they had done with Coltan. However, they were greatly pleased at the quantity and quality of easily-usable loot they found. Much of it was in forms that were already immediately useful, and the stuff that needed refining was also of high quality.

Many were surprised at the amount of sweet light crude that was still under the ground, and this led them to start examining the engines in the Technotitlan bodies that were now all over the place. Were they running on a more efficient system, and if so, was it capable of delivering enough power to be battle-ready for a long period of time? Also, were there any other hidden trade-offs to the Technotitlan engine systems? Decepticon engineers eagerly began work on examining every part of these engines and their drivetrains, looking not only for these answers, but to determine whether or not it would be worth copying any aspect of the technology.

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

As expected, Carjack was angry at the three for losing to a "mere demon," and wasn't too impressed with their comments regarding the fact that it had taken over a powerful body.

"Those idiots wouldn't know what to do with a nuke if they were holding a Nuclear Football!" Carjack spat. "All it did was slowly aim at you and then let 'er rip. You should have easily dodged those blasts. I am assigning all three of you to 150 hours of extra live-fire dodging practice back at the Main Base. Report to Range #7 as soon as we're done here on this rock. Maybe after you get pasted a few dozen more times, you'll learn how to get the hell out of the way when you see someone lining up shots at you - and then learn to blast your foe to pieces before he can even get a shot off!"

With that, they were dismissed from the meeting, and the door slammed behind them. Pesticide and the others knew that they were lucky there was a military operation going on right now. Otherwise, they may have gotten their first lesson right then and there, delivered by Carjack - who spent hundreds of hours every year practicing to ensure that he maintained his High-General-level battle supremacy. This way, they at least would get to do ALL of their extra practice on a training range, against "foes" who were chosen to be only slightly better than them.

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

The Decepticons near Happy looked a bit hesitant at his request. They all knew that he wanted to give his Coder and his army what-for, but they suspected that he hadn't expected them to go on to scrap the entire population of his planet. They also knew that, that last part would be a big problem for some people, but not others. What they didn't know was what he had thought of the population in general. Would he be like Carjack, who had gleefully wiped out millions of his own species? Or would he be more like some others, who would be regretful at the sheer amount of destruction that had been wrought?

"There is only one way to know if you will be a true member of the Decepticons," one of Megatron's elite troops said. "You will have to be code-read by Immigration, like all other would-be newcomers. You will also have to pass all of the psych tests and swear allegiance to Megatron, the Decepticons, and the Decepticon Way. Usually there would be a survival test, but you have survived an outright war against a worthy set of foes, so that will almost surely be waived."

"Typically, the psych tests come first, because if you don't pass them, there's no point in doing the rest. However, you'll almost surely pass. Oh, there's one last thing - you have to agree to be transferred to a proper Decepticon body. The Technotitlan build is one of the best non-Decepticon types we've seen, true - but it is a hard-and-fast rule. Plus, you won't be able to get any parts on Cybertron if you aren't using a body that we make parts for! A fully-custom body is impressive in some ways, but in reality, they're just huge pains in the exhau~~"

His words were cut off by a very distinctive rev that sounded almost like a hmph or harrumph. Happy stifled a chuckle when he realized that Megatron had come up behind his soldier unnoticed, and noted how Megatron had a fully-custom body.

After the soldier said some quick apologies and insisted that he didn't intend to diss Megatron's "wonderful" and "spectacular" custom body design, Megatron began to speak. "What you are told is correct. We will have to code-read you to make sure that you weren't just using us to get a chance to blast your Coder or his army. And, to make sure that you aren't angry about not having the chance to become King of Technotitlan. If you do pass the code-read, you'll have to have a Decepticon body. This is not only for technical reasons, though those ARE important - but also to physically show that you are one of us. We do not do hyphenated nationalities in Victorious Decepticons. You will either be one of us as completely as possible, or not one of us at all. Plus, the people would not accept you as a Decepticon without an actual Cybertronian, Decepticon, body - and when Decepticons don't accept someone, they tend to melt him down, or sell him to a mine..."

[Vallermoore]

Happy managed to suppress his laugh reflex when Megatron came up behind a soldier who was saying that custom bodies were a real pain and let out an annoyed rev, as he thought the soldier might be criticizing him by proxy, forcing the soldier to make it clear he was not against Megatron's fine custom-made body. He decided that now at least was not the time to try and become a Decepticon, but to loot a little, take a trailer and what it and his panels could carry, and find some planet to live and maybe, one day, make an offspring or two. "If I was to do a bit of looting here, like any Decepticon is allowed to once the battle is won, and then find some planet out there where I can live peacefully, would that be OK with you?" Just then three particularly oilthirsty Genociders (not the three who got in trouble with General Carjack earlier) came up, bowed low to the Ultimate Decepticon was was custom, and one said to Megatron "Happy is no Decepticon, and we should blast him here and now in case he some day finds a way to factory produce new Technotitlans and seek revenge."

Angrily, Happy replied to them "I may not be a Decepticon, but I proved whose side I was on. My now ex-Coder left me to be melted down, decided to replace me with a spare, and was idiotic enough to provoke you Decepticons to destroy his planet. Is it any wonder that I jumped at the chance to get my own back and point out the location of the Technotitlan Main Save Vault? I'm no threat to your Empire. You three bots just want to destroy me as I'm not a Decepticon and for no other reason."

*****
Pesticide and the other bots would have some hard training and were lucky not to be further punished by losing a body or worse. Carjack hated and despised all demons and so losing bodies to one clearly meant that they were substandard when it came to combat.

*****
After MilEng had run a lot of tests, they found that Technotitlan engines were maid to run on less Energon then the average Decepticon bodies were. However, their blasters were not as good, which was just as well or many more Decepticons would have ended up in their spares or the Main Save Vault, and their armour was average for the most parts. Mind boards were carefully examined and it was found that they were hard coded not to be enslaved by anyone but even less so by foreigners. Despite the damage done to the planet, there was still a lot of usable loot including some factories, and the war had been a great success.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Megatron's eyes narrowed with extreme suspicion as soon as Happy backed off from his desire to be a Decepticon - after hearing about the requirement for psych tests and a code-read. Happy had been outright eager to defect until those details were known. Obviously, there was something he wanted to keep hidden! There was a tiny chance that it was something personal, but Megatron didn't give that possibility even a second thought. After all, the only ones who'd care about Happy's personal life would be other Technotitlans, and as far as the Decepticons could tell, they had all been deactivated. Megatron also didn't think that Happy would be that against the requirement for a Decepticon body.

The Genociders who arrived simply said out loud what Megatron had already been thinking. If he let this guy go, Megatron believed, the next thing he'd see would be a billion Technotitlan troops - and this time, they would be pre-coded with knowledge of all of the Decepticon tactics and strategies that Happy had seen! There could only be one course of action. Megatron subconsciously revved his engine into battle-ready mode...

"You were eager to join until you found out that we would read your Code," Megatron said sternly. "I can only assume that your new reluctance is due to the fact that, that would reveal you to be up to something bad for us. Perhaps you only wanted to war your Coder and his army, and didn't realize that we would not be driven off when the rest of the population joined the fray? In any case, there is but one way to reduce the chance of betrayal to zero."

As if to finish his sentence, Megatron fired his fusion cannon at Happy's chest at full strength, intending to destroy the motion boards with one shot, and hopefully, his main command cable which ran behind them.

If Megatron's plan worked, Happy would be paralyzed from the blast point down. Megatron could then forcibly remove Happy's mind boards before Happy was able to compensate for the damage. Those boards would then be hacked and code-read in their entirety by Decepticon Combined Intelligence.

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

MilEng

It didn't take long for MilEng to figure out how to copy the main points of the Technotitlan engine system, but adapt it to provide more power for blasting and for carrying armor. This would reduce the efficiency a bit, but still make a nice upgrade to the most common Decepticon engine types. They began to make various prototypes right away, and soon, would start testing them to see which ones would do the best. The vanilla Technotitlan design, alas, was deemed too weak when it came to how much power it could provide for blasting, so it couldn't simply be copied directly.

The rest of the Technotitlan body system was considered to be substandard, with only average armor in use even by most of the soldiers. The lower power of their blasters was outright derided, even though it really wasn't all that much worse than the Decepticon versions.

Technotitlan


Despite the initial cost of the war, namely several Decepticons needing new bodies, it turned out to be profitable in many ways. The abundance of oil and Energon paid for the financial outlay, and the new engine tech would save the average Decepticon 100s of Cubes per year or allow them to upgrade their weapons and armor without the usual accompanying spike in Energon usage. There were also plenty of new mod parts right there for the copying, though Decepticon engineers would first have to make sure that these would be compatible with the Decepticon Design Specification.

The only thing anyone was a bit sorry about was that none of the Technotitlans had surrendered, which forced the Military to mow down the entire population. That meant that whoever invented these things was now offline, almost surely permanently, so there would be no more new inventions from this planet. Perhaps, a few thought, they could change that if they could find a save from a suitably intelligent and educated person. Then, the knowledge could be scanned off of that disk and ported to the Decepticon Educational Institutes for use by Decepticons, among other possibilities. This still wouldn't result in more truly Technotitlan inventions, but it would at least help support the creation of new Decepticon ones.

[Vallermoore]

There were rare times when either Decepticons could in effect read Megatron's mind or he could read theirs, and this was one of those times. Either Happy was extremely embarrassed about something to the point he didn't want anybody to know about it, or he was planning revenge against the Decepticons in the long term. Megatron's eyes narrowed and darkened. "You were eager to join until you found out that we would read your Code. I can only assume that your new reluctance is due to the fact that, that would reveal you to be up to something bad for us. Perhaps you only wanted to war your Coder and his army, and didn't realize that we would not be driven off when the rest of the population joined the fray? In any case, there is but one way to reduce the chance of betrayal to zero." Happy was able to partly dodge Megatron's cannon blast, and tried to transform, but his main command cable had been partly damaged, and only half his body transformed. When he tried to take off and flee he promptly crashed, and it was easy for Megatron to remove his boards. When they were read a couple of hours later they revealed mixed feelings. Happy was grateful that he had earlier been spared execution, and genuinely happy that his Coder had been dispatched, but annoyed that every last Technotitlan bot had been destroyed, and hoped to one day make enough new Technotitlan bots for round two. It was very likely that his next destination would be the Room of Three Screens. Later, there would be a search for undestroyed Technotitlan Save Discs to try and find information of value.

*****
Vallermoore, 20 Upping Street.

Clever One was feeling pleased with himself, as everything was going well. His spies had reported the large black market in Vallermoore and how the place was largely adopting Decepticon values. One of his guards walked in, saluted, then to his shock took his true shape as a changeling, with blue-green eyes and smooth green chitin. As Clever One prepared to use a fire spell and his horn glowed brightly, the changeling said "Don't shoot, I'm not here to attack you! My Queen wants you to join us. Hear me out-don't you want to be able to fly without a plane or a sky-cutter, with your own wings? Wouldn't you like to be able to take different shapes at will, and feed on sweet love? Just as the Decepticons are the supreme form of robotic life, we are the supreme form of biological life."

Clever One did have a secret desire to be a changeling, but he very much distrusted them, and feared they were trying to replace him and feed on his love or even eat him. "What happened to my guard?"

"I didn't attack him, he is on guard duty outside your front door."

"Why does your Queen which to upgrade me in such a way? And how on Vallermoore can I trust her to turn me into a changeling and not changeling food?"

As his cat came in, and popped out his blasters at the sight of the changeling, Clever One hurriedly explained the situation and asked for his advice, and if he thought the changelings could be trusted or not. He also asked the Changeling if he could meet the changeling's Queen. He knew Queens had great power over their hives.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Megatron was uncharacteristically a bit bothered by what the code-read found, for he had been sort of looking forward to having what had originally been an eager sign-up. However, he knew that most didn't want to see their original planet's population entirely destroyed. Even General Carjack didn't lobby for the utter extermination of humanity, though he found the Earthians aggravating (and sometimes, outright infuriating) enough to have the survivors thrown into the chains of slavery - and later, didn't complain when they were GMO'd to the point of not really being humans anymore. Megatron knew that, if Carjack wanted to delete every one of them, he would have hunted down the small bands of wild humans, yet he didn't do that as long as the wild ones kept to themselves and didn't cause trouble.

With the data now visible on a screen in front of him, Megatron had no doubts about what had to be done. With some solemnity, he fed each of Happy's boards into a small smelting cauldron that sat on the same desk as the code-reading machine, stirring as he did so, and watched the boards become a uniform mass of melted silicon, copper, and board backing material. Soon, he knew, Happy would be arriving in the Decepticon Afterlife sorting area, and he sent instructions across the realmal divide for the Administrators there.

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

The Room of Three Screens

Happy arrived here quite nervous and feeling disheveled, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that his body was now intact. Soon, the three screens that gave this room its name flickered on, and he saw the three different afterlife possibilities. He first noticed the Realm of Endless Energon, where he could see a scene of Decepticons lounging around large "waterfalls" of Energon Supreme and even one bot happily swimming in it. Then, his eyes were drawn to the screen on the other end, which showed what was an obvious hellscape with many biologicals of different species, all with obvious deep wounds that seemed to have been caused by severe beatings, toiling away under the direction of a particularly nasty overseer, who was constantly ordering them to keep moving while telling them how inferior they were and how they'd have to work for him "forever." Finally, he began to look at the center screen. There, he saw a scene that was not the usual one shown. Instead, it appeared to be a subdivision, with some metal houses of average apparent wealth and a few bored-looking bots coming and going.

"You are a very unique case," said a voice to Happy's right. He turned to see a gray-painted Decepticon, whose Seals were complemented by those of Megatronism as well as Administrator rank symbols. "As you can see, there are three main possibilities for you. As you can expect, you are not eligible for that first realm, which is reserved for the bravest, smartest, and most loyal Decepticons. However, luckily for you, you have avoided the last one - the Realm of Punishment. That is for those who have actively opposed us. You are very lucky, because the reason you are here at all is because you intended to do just that! Despite this, Megatron has informed us that your assistance in the War against Technotitlan, and your generally-favorable opinion of many Decepticon ways and practices, has spared you. He also sends the message that he understands that you did not expect the War to truly go to the last bot. Logically, you knew this was a possibility, but seeing it happen is often more than someone bargains for, at least, unless he is fully part of the winning side. Of course, to the winners, it is seen differently."

"Because of these factors, you will be going to the Neutral Realm. Usually, arrivals to the Neutral Realm are made into factory machines because they have been too cowardly despite their loyalty. However, you did not show cowardice, so you are fit for more than just being a peon. You will be allowed freedom of motion, and get to live in a house when you aren't busy. Still, you will be working, or maybe even raiding, among deceased Decepticons - but you will not get a chance to operate any factories or anything like that. Megatron wants you to experience Decepticon culture outside of a war scenario, so you can see some of us as civilians and not just rampaging war machines, and so that you may see and understand why we go all the way with such wide-ranging military operations - in a situation where you cannot use this as an opportunity to attack us. It is his hope that you will come to realize that our actions were justified, and that you should have gone ahead with becoming one of us."

"Of course, we know that this may never happen, or at least, not within a reasonable amount of time of, say, 500 years or so. In that case, you may find yourself reassigned, either to a lower position in the Neutral Realm...or to another Realm..." The Administrator gave a short, but ominous, glance toward the screen showing the Realm of Punishment.

With that, the Room of Three Screens appeared to dissolve, and Happy found himself standing on a natural-looking shelf on the side of a mountain. A caretaker of the Neutral Realm came along soon, to show him to the house he had been assigned and tell him about his opportunities for making money. Unlike the Realm of Endless Energon, here, Cubes still had to be earned - or raided.

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

The cat flicked its tail as if suspicious. "And just how does a biological's species get 'upgraded' to another species?!" It asked with heavy skepticism. "And how do you avoid getting hacked?"

The changeling immediately looked suspicious as well. "Hey, how do you have a sapient robot cat?! Or is it a Decepticon agent?" It began to look a bit devilish. "Are you really a Manchurian candidate who managed to win? A puppet of the Decepticons, working not for the people of Vallermoore, but for Megatron himself? It'd be a shaammeee if the media got wind of such a thing..."

His threat was clear. If Clever One didn't agree to join the changelings, they would put out a 'leak' that said that Clever One was really a Decepticon and in constant contact with an actual agent of the robots!

[Vallermoore]

As it turned out, Happy would became the lowest member of a gang reasonably soon, and as the years, decades and centuries rolled by he would slowly rise in rank as the gang slowly expanded, so that by the end of five centuries and a great deal of raiding, he was in effect the second in command, with two spares. Along the way, he had learned a lot about Decepticon culture when they were not engaged in open warfare, and the gang were in effect his friends. If he had been in the physical realm, his rise might have been faster, as there were far fewer bots in the realm where he now was due to the very low Decepticon death rate compared to the number of Decepticons. It was unlikely that he would end up in the Realm of Punishment. Given the circumstances, Megatron could understand why he would not exactly be pro-Decepticon after the entire Technotitlan race was utterly destroyed, which was why he didn't get sent to the Realm of Punishment to begin with.

*****
Clever One had some very mixed feelings. There was a lot of anger at being spied on, and even more so that the changeling threatened to nark on him to the press-but he understood why changelings would spy, and since he was a blank-flanked foal, he had a secret admiration for the changeling race which most ponies deeply feared and loathed. To be able to fly, either in disguise, or with the large dragonfly wings of undisguised changelings, would be amazing. The ability to feed on love would be great and would be a lot less damaging to his teeth. Changelings in some ways were a biological form of Decepticons, and should he risk everything for a chance of the Ultimate Upgrade later, being a changeling would not be automatically disqualifying and if anything, might even be a small plus. However, changelings were untrustworthy, and might decide to feed on his love, or even on his body. Even if one would allow a mind read, he didn't know of any Vallermoorian tech or magic that could do that and leave the changeling totally unharmed in both the mind or the body.

Just then two others came in, one being one of his human generals and one being Sweet One, a pony mare who was his wife, who he had been with for twenty years. To him, Sweet One was the most beautiful and intelligent mare in the multi-verse, someone he could share his life with, someone with the same mark as his, back when the Decepticon Seal was a rare cutie mark. They had not had children, as neither wanted the trouble of bringing them up. "Sweet One, be careful, we have at least one changeling present. Don't get too close." He had loved her for so long, and she had been loving in return.

"I have had one secret I have kept from you until now," she said, just before she transformed into a sleek glossy changeling. "I have always been a changeling, since I hatched from an egg over forty years ago. But that does not mean I don't love you just as much as you love me. Remember when...?" And she said something known to only the two of them from several years ago. "It...it really is you, you are telling the truth. I've been loving and cherishing you for so long without ever knowing your true form. I'm not against becoming a changeling, but I have trust issues. I don't want to end up as a food source, and if you really want me to join you surely your Queen would be involved."

The general was the next to change shape, and took the true form of a Changeling Queen, her chitin a deep glossy sea-green, her body the size of a fully grown alicorn and her long dragonfly wings gleaming softly. She wore no crown but her natural one of chitin that sprouted from her head, and her horn was sword-length and jagged. "I am Queen Butterfly."

"Why do you want me to become one of you? I like the idea of becoming the closest biological equivalent to the Ultimate Upgrade, but how do I know you don't just want to feast on my love or indeed my meat, and replace me with a drone or maybe personally? Also, blackmail is not a good thing to do." He stood by the cat, ready if he had to, to blast with his horn, but not wanting it to get that far. He was pretty sure the Forintel agent would fight by his side if need be.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Neutral Realm

Happy didn't realize it, but Megatron did set up one scenario to teach him about the reasons behind the Decepticon ways of war. Him and his new gang went out on a raid, and managed to deactivate all but one of the defenders, who were some other bots this time. Happy didn't really care about the one, figuring that they got the loot just the same, but all of his co-raiders were on edge. "What if he makes a bunch more in a factory?" One asked. "What if he makes one or two more, but teaches them to hate us with implacable rage?" Said another. "We should have made sure to chase him down and delete him!" The final one said with certainty. Happy was somewhat dumbfounded. What was it with these Decepticons and their compulsion to want to genocide everyone they came up against?!

A few months later, he got his answer. He and his normal-sized gang found themselves fighting against 1,000 copies of that defender, plus the defender himself, who was in the lead. These bots swarmed down on the base of Happy's gang, and quickly wiped all of them out completely. Happy stood no chance at all, for even though he shot a few of the attackers down, the size of the swarm was enough to simply swamp him.

When he was reactivated, ostensibly from a Save like would happen on Cybertron, he found that in this realm, he kept his memories of exactly how he had met an end. The other gang members soon arrived, and said, "maybe now you understand why you cannot leave robotic enemies alive. It is not like humans, who have to grow more over 16-18 years and then convince them to bother to attack their parents' international foes. With them, that usually doesn't work. But with robots, all it takes is one furious survivor and a factory, and the next thing you know, there are so many more of them built that you lose - or, at best, you have to fight an all-consuming war. The survivor doesn't even have to convince these factory-builts to fight. If he can program them with any halfway decent battle routine and make enough of them, he can send them after you before they're even sapient. He'll also know any of your battle tactics that he's seen, and will program countermoves into his new force so you'll have to come up with something completely different just to even hope to stand a chance."

With this demonstration, Happy realized that the Decepticons at least didn't destroy the Technotitlans for pure coolant-lust alone. Though the Genocide Battalion had clearly enjoyed playing their part, the reason they even HAD a part was because Leader Megatron and the Decepticons in general didn't want to face a huge, implacable force that they would only end up having to fight to the last bot anyway. It was far better to take the win when it was easier, for practical reasons alone. The Decepticons didn't seem to be bothered by this, fairly clearly enjoying the feeling of total victory, but the bottom line would have to remain the same or else defeat would someday come.

Over time, Happy would come to understand that whether the Decepticons happened to enjoy doing something or not, many of their most major actions had sound, logical reasoning behind them. Their enjoyment of "being the barbarians" just made it so that they also enjoyed life far more than other warlike species and cultures, and were generally free of the psychological problems that arose when one's desires were too distant from social expectations or the duties that came with a person's role in society. It also meant that they would not pussy out in war, only to have the enemy take advantage of that mistake to build an insurmountable force.

Happy also realized that he had intended to be that enemy, that survivor who would have built the factory. Though he didn't say anything because he didn't want to anger his friends, he had to grudgingly admit to himself that Megatron's best move was indeed to blast him.

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

Vallermoore


Clever One seemed to be convinced of the identities of the changelings, but the ForIntel agent was far from it. He wasn't buying any of this for one second.

"They're spies," the cat said with irritation. "Of course that one knows things that you think only you and your wife know! That doesn't mean anything other than that their ForIntel Division is worth its pay! I bet if I radio ForIntel on Cybertron, they'll tell me that your real wife is nowhere near here. Possibly stuck down in those changelings' hive! Or out shopping, if you're lucky. But not HERE!"

"As for those other ones, at best, this means that your general is a lousy infiltrator who needs to face execution. He probably isn't a real Queen, either, but instead, just using his changeling power to copy her appearance. I say it's a connive, and my blasters will deliver my opinion of its validity!"

With that, he took direct aim at the "queen" and let rip with a double blast. Meanwhile, he radioed ForIntel on Cybertron with a quick emergency alert. This would get backup on its way immediately. How subtle (or blatantly obvious) that backup would be, would be General Soundwave's decision.

[Vallermoore]

Vallermoore

The Forintel agent was only wrong about one thing. The changeling queen was indeed a genuine monarch. She would have had no chance against a normal Decepticon blast, but even with the best size and density changers, it was still not quite possible to fit a full size Decepticon blaster in a body the size of a cat. As it was, the magical shield she put up was badly scorched, but it did it's best and managed-barely, to hang on as Clever One cast a reveal spell, revealing that his wife and the general were both changelings. Either she had just gone shopping, or she was hanging in a changeling hive cocoon or even eaten. "Follow me to a panic room upstairs." He galloped up, whilst the Forintel agent blasted a few lings and kept the rest, and the Queen, at bay, and radioed in a quick call for help to High General Soundwave, knowing he might be facing too many changelings for him to deal with in this body. Soundwave decided to keep things quiet, so the Forintel bots he sent wore the uniforms of Vallermoorian police and soldiers and were in android bodies. Whilst some day Vallermoore would go the way of all planets and moons, he enjoyed the secrecy and maneuvering Megatronists into power by other means then just the point of a blaster.

They made it to a panic room and Clever One locked the door and pressed a button to summon every guard in and around 20 Upping Street-and a huge fight broke out as about half the guards were disguised changelings and the other half were genuine. Just as the changelings were starting to win, and cut open the panic room door with changeling magic, the disguised Decepticons were able to join in, and things quickly started to change. Clever One used his horn magic to blast two invading changelings, but the Queen started to drain his love-for a few seconds until several blasts penetrated her shield and, strong as she was, slew her outright, burning through dragonfly wings and chomping through chitin. Not long afterwards, the great majority of changelings were dispatched. Clever One began to cry as he had lost his beloved wife, when she came back from a trip to Haughty Couture, wearing a fine dress and a diamond and sapphire necklace.After a reveal spell made sure she was indeed genuine, which she was, Clever One embraced and kissed her and told her what happened in her absence.

Publically, the changeling bodies would be shown to the press, anti-changeling devices both open and covert would be placed in 20 Upping Street, and there would be a search for the general who was discovered dead in a wood a few days later. Several Stars of Vallermoore First and Second Class would be awarded publically. That Sunday, Clever One would give thanks to Megatron in the First Temple of Vallermoore. This didn't give away the coivert Decepticon part in things, as it was just thanking one's God for survival. Privately, lots of oil and petrol would be given to the Decepticons, including the one in a cat body, as a freely given reward, and the bot in a cat body would become a favorite advisor.Those slain by the changelings would have proper funerals.

*****

Happy would learn a very important lesson in this world which explained why the Decepticons had genocided the Technotitlans-not out of hate, as the two were very simerler in world view and in how they were ruled, but out of logic and common sense. He also found out what Decepticons did when they were not fighting or raiding and that like Technotitlan's bots before their destruction, they had different personalities and liked different things, such as game playing, chatting and having fun in general.

[Victorious Decepticons]

While the Decepticons did their best to remain covert, the presence of energy-blaster wounds on some of the changelings made it clear to those present that there had been some interplanetary help involved. However, this was quickly swept under the rug by demanding pledges of secrecy, and the bodies were soon cremated to make it impossible to re-examine them later.

Megatron was glad to get the oil, which he refined into Private Reserve. He shared some with General Shockwave, though he kept the majority of the Private Reserve run for himself. Shockwave also got a bonus paid in Supreme.

Soon, Megatron sent a message to Clever One. "They were clearly trying to overthrow you," he said. "If those things are like bees, and can make a new queen, they will surely try again. In that case, I suggest you exterminate that entire hive so they don't get a chance to do that. Of course, if they are like most ants instead, and the hive dies soon after the queen does, you need only wait them out - with your security at maximum. Though if it was me, I'd genocide them in either case, to let everyone know what happens to those who oppose me. Demonstrations of this sort are important for reducing further attempts at revolution."

[Vallermoore]

Clever One sent a reply back, first thanking him greatly for the help, and then saying that from what was known, the changelings were like bees-when a Queen died, her closest daughter grew a new crown and gained the abilities of the old Queen. A careful search of 20 Upping Street revealed a secret tunnel, and, once he had summoned his most trusted soldiers and checked with a Reveal spell that they were humans or ponies but not changelings he announced that they would be going down that tunnel to uncover the hidden Hive and would slaughter the lot except for one unborn egg. Armed with AKs, bayonets, bowie knives and torches , they carefully walked down the tunnel, looking out for pit traps. At one point they had to fix a rope ladder to the wall and climb down an area meant to deny access to those without wings. When they uncovered the Hive in all it's glory-under the Houses of Parliment, of all places-with adult changelings, nymphs, humans and ponies trapped in cocoons and many eggs no doubt, the coronation of a new Changeling Queen was going on. "No quarter!" yelled Clever One, using his magic to fire an AK 47, and the soldiers opened fire on every changeling they saw, as well as pots, paintings and the like, cutting down cocoons as well to free their occupants. A password had been worked out first to avoid changeling infiltration and noone was to charge ahead alone.

Of course the changelings fought back with changeling magic or by turning into winged axes and the like, and the Vallermoorians didn't totally come out unscathed, a dozen or so being killed and two being badly hurt before the young Queen and the Hive was wiped out and the eggs, except one, were shot, burned or otherwise destroyed. Clever One wanted one unborn changeling to bring up himself as a son or daughter, and the egg he chose would hatch within hours. The attack on the Hive was partly made public, leaving out the genocide part and the one stolen egg. Later on Clever One would watch as the one egg hatched in his bedroom, revealing a very young maggot-stage changeling newborn that would soon become a nymph. The first thing the little changeling did was pull a surprisingly large bit of love from Clever One which gave him a headache, before it stopped crying and went to sleep in the guise of a pony foal which it took the shape of when it saw Clever One.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Decepticat flicked its tail with aggravation when he detected the changeling in the mansion.

"That thing will be nothing but trouble for you. It will drain you dry before it's even an adolescent! Not only that, their desire to raid everything is in their Code. And most importantly, its Code means that it will not relate to non-changelings as if they are the same species as it. It will always be an outsider, and will resent you for that. You should either delete it now, or give it to a hive that is more friendly to you and the rest of Vallermoore. It will not thrive in some pony school, nor will it be accepted! Would you want to have to live your life pretending to be something else ALL THE TIME? They normally only do that when they're working connives, not just to live their everyday lives!"

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

Back on Cybertron, everyone was returning to their regular activities now that the war was over. Some were able to do so right away, while others had to make repairs first.

DeathStrike still had the thrill of the fight on him as he entered his house. He was light on his feet and excited. Still, he decided to check himself over and give himself a nice wash and wax before he did anything else.

As the high-pressure sprayers kicked on, he thought of how he'd seen the Genocide Battalion at work and admired their ability to mow through hundreds and even thousands of targets like it was nothing. Yet, he also noticed how their methods were basically low-skilled attacks based on pure physical supremacy. These people would not make good assassins because it was clear that they would have no patience for something like picking one target out of a crowd, or having to use wiles to defeat a foe that was strong enough to win in a direct fight. Instead, a Genocider would just bomb the entire area, or to beat a strong foe, would upgrade himself to a ridiculous level and then simply pound the now comparatively-weaker target into the ground.

The sprayers turned off, and DeathStrike now reached for the buffing compound and the power tool that would apply it. As he restored himself to a proper showroom shine, he considered his next move. He wanted to get some rest, but realized that his next paid target might have been damaged during the war against Technotitlan. If that was the case, the smartest thing for DeathStrike to do would be to track him down now, before the foe had a chance to repair himself. If all went well, he would be able to find and terminate all of the remaining targets from this job, securing himself not only the regular pay but the bonus for getting the whole batch.

[Vallermoore]

20 Upping Street, Vallermoore

Clever One nodded. Baby changelings were brought up for the first two or three years in a hidden Hive, and their parents brought it love to the nest stolen from other sources like birds brought worms to feed their chicks. Or they might cocoon someone for it to feed off. Even though the changeling would have no idea that Clever One slaughtered it's Hive, it would still drain Clever One dry or nearly so, whilst randomly, at least when very young, raiding everyone nearby for love to feed and grow. Nor would it want to be in disguise all the time rather then undisguised and with it's fellow Changelings. Apart from anything else, keeping a disguise going for a long time burned love energy faster.There were fairy tales, most likely based in truth, of ponies who tried to bring up baby changelings and they never ended well. Changeling Base Code was just too different to the Base Code of the ponies. Also, the newborn baby changeling would not be punished in the afterlife, even if the Decepticons had not taken it over, as it had done nothing wrong.

"I can't bring myself to kill a newborn baby, but you can for me if you want to, unless you know changelings who would want the little thing. You are a really good adviser."

*****
Cybertron

With the war over, everyone not in the Military who had come along to fight went back to what they were doing. Shops reopened, including Ultimate's; Priests went back to their Temples, and gangs and syndicates went back to their raids and their private small wars. After a shower, DeathStrike took a couple of grenades he had brought earlier, swung his tail to check it was OK, being careful not to hit the wall of where he was living, looked in the mirror to check for damage, and set off, guessing where one of his foes might very likely be-at a certain mechanic's shop being repaired. Unlike Debugging, where it was high treason to attack someone being fixed because of the threat to the entire nation's mental health, mechanic's shops could be attacked, although in some cases the mechanic might very well join in the fight. When he found his foe being fixed, he hurled both his grenades at him, hoping to blow him up, turning on his jammer for the few seconds when the grenades blew up, then turning it off, ready to fight both his foe if he still survived and the mechanic if he got involved.