An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Auric thought. Go too soft, and you'll be connived at best, and at worst, attacked outright. Go too hard, and you'll be fighting,and you don't have any more missiles left. And what if these two have the latest upgrades? Decepticons with enough of what passes for money in their world are always upgrading. Even if they have not upgraded, they are in robot mode. My missiles if real could blow up certain airborne Decepticons, but not ones in robot mode, they are not large enough. What would a Decepticon do? He wiggled his ship's nose down a little then up, in what he hoped they recognized as a bow. Then he said, in an admiring tone "Truly both of you are paragons of the Decepticon Way! If he were here, Leader Megatron himself would be proud of you. But the true tax is only 10%, not 15%."

And he gently moved his ship at an angle of 45% once, then a second time, and retreated just out of arm's reach. The effect would be rather like someone who happened to be wearing two swords or two pistols displaying them in their scabbarded or holstered beauty. It was saying, or at least he hoped it was saying I have blasters like you do. If you blast me, I am capable of blasting back. And is it worth getting into a possible deadly combat for a small amount of loot and slaves that you have to travel all the way to Decepticon Earth to sell? It wasn't an outright threat, more the way a large dog might yawn and in doing so reveal a large toothy mouth that could bite if the dog wanted to.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The tax bot leaned over and came in close, and his engine ran just a bit roughly now, but an astute observer would also see that he had his hands on his hips - which, while showing displeasure, also meant that it would take him a fraction of a second more to fire. It was not a posture that would be chosen by someone who intended to do so in any short order.

"So, someone's been telling you about how things work around here! We're gonna have to talk to the Cultural Liaison's Office about that!" He said, sounding a bit impressed as he unknowingly mis-guessed where the human had gotten his information. At the same time, he made sure NOT to remind the human that it's 100 barrels per Cube instead of 120, so the recalculation on that would still be a bit in his favor, unless he was caught out on that connive as well.

"You come knowing the official prices, what the Decepticon Way is, and with slaves to sell. And you know to sell your trinkets here" -- he referred to the metal and oil -- "instead of trying to sell them in a city, where you'd end up flying for your life just to avoid being part of that slave shipment."

"That means one of two things!" He continued to speak as he stood up and added another Cube to the short stack he'd already set up. "Either you're a spy, or you want to be one of us. Well." He looked skeptical. "People don't pay that much attention if they don't have an angle. The one thing in your favor is that you have slaves with you. Most of our enemies think puny weaklings should be free." He practically spat the word.

"I'll tell you what," he said, changing the subject, "if you had more loot on you that I could move just by handing it to my associate here," he indicated the Megatron Company bot, "you wouldn't be flyin' out of here now. But it'd cost 1/4 of this pile of stuff to fire my blaster, and then another 1/4 of it to get the scorches off my paint that those toys of yours would make." He intentionally understated how powerful he thought the ship's weaponry would be, but overstated how much Energon it actually took to fire a Decepticon Standard Blaster. "So, count yourself lucky..."

Even though he made a show of stating reasons for not just raiding the human, that was done mostly for social reasons. In reality, he wasn't about to enter battle with an enemy of indeterminate power over what amounted to maybe one extra Cube, and while he was still irked that his connive hadn't worked, he didn't think it was worth battling over.

The Megatron Companies bot removed the metal and oil barrels from the human's ship and put in the Energon Cubes as the tax-bot continued to talk.

"I don't know about you...but I do I know one thing for sure. Someone over at ForIntel, and someone over at DomIntel, just got a new assignment. They're just going to 'love' following some puny human around..."

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

In the distance, a couple of robots who appeared to be locals watched the scene and openly pointed to each other. They were indeed locals, but they were also more. These two were the undercover DomIntel agents normally assigned to the block. There was no need to assign someone new to follow the human...DomIntel was already everywhere, so all it had to do was what it always did: Watch and report.

The lamppost next to the trade tables stood silently, did not transform, and never could. Its tiny camera, tiny enough to make a typical Earthian spycam look huge, also did its job just as it always did, and so did its accompanying microphone.

For now, sapient DomIntel supervisors paid no attention to the incoming data. Instead, it all went right to the agency's Supercomputer, which dutifully churned through it with its algo. The entire process would remain in the background unless the Supercomputer detected something that indicated a spy or traitor, or unless a sapient agent called for a report.

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-Sorry about the delay due to rl.)

Auric said "Don't worry about me, I'm no spy. I doubt Vallermoore would dare to spy on the Metal Planet anyway. And yes, I do want to be one of you, despite the danger in being a Decepticon from his fellow bots. DomIntel and ForIntel need not be worried, but...I can't blame them for wanting to keep tabs on me. I'm not going to try and shake them off, I'm not worried about them. They are the Decepticons that are the least likely to blast my ship. Thank you for the Energon and may you live long and prosper. Now I'm off to sell my slaves." With another bow to be extra polite, he set off up into the sky, heading for Decepticon Earth. His radar showed two blips following him, which he hoped were DomIntel or ForIntel rather then possible raiders hoping to blast him from behind. When he heard knocking on the door where the slaves were, he pressed a button that ran electricity through the door, and there was a scream of pain and the knocking stopped.

When Auric reached Decepticon Earth he was surprised at how green the continents now were, with a few exceptions. One of those was the former city of New York, and he headed quickly to it, with a message just in case anyone got the wrong idea. "I'm coming from Cybertron with a cargo of slaves to sell." He went in quickly, not wanting to be attacked on sight by raiders, zig zagging a little, and soon enough found the main slave market. Finding a trader standing by himself, a large, dark green robot with a pair of softly glowing red eyes, he landed and *bowed* by moving the nose of his ship up and down, and did a side to side move to show his blasters without threatening the giant war robot whilst showing them.

"My name is Auric, I have fifty-three slaves from Vallermoore to sell to you, each worth five hundred Energon Cubes, assuming they are all alive and healthy. Please, let me show them to you so you know I'm not conning you." A couple of metal arms came out from his ship, detached the slave compartment, and opened up the top of it, which had bars across the top to stop the slaves from climbing out. They panicked and screamed and begged for mercy at the sight of the Decepticon. Auric watched the robot's eye glow and listened for the engine noise that would indicate either happiness, a neutral feeling or that something was wrong.

[Victorious Decepticons]

"You might want to cover those back up for now." The robot said, his eyes suddenly becoming dark and his engine roaring to full power. "You brought company. Company you didn't intend to bring."

It wasn't DomIntel or ForIntel that were showing on the radar; Decepticon spies were much too good to allow themselves to be seen by any means known to cultures just getting into space. If any had followed along at all, Auric wouldn't know it unless they deliberately showed themselves.

Suddenly, blaster fire hammered into the ship. Angry voices blasted over the radio almost as loudly. "Did you really think we'd let you get away with blasting our pals like that back there?! Prepare for your deletion, beta creature!!"

It was two of the ones who had seemingly backed off when Auric had first come to Cybertron. In reality, they hadn't "backed off," so much as gone back to their base to drink tanksfull of Energon, repair some damage they'd sustained during the raid they had been coming from, and clean their blasters so that they could blast this lucky fluker beta creature with full power. On top of that, a friendly 100-Cube donation to a certain Foreign Intelligence agent had made them privy to the fact that the other two missiles on that ship were about as real as what the spaceport vendors had for sale. Surely, they reasoned, those laser-looking blasters were fake as well, and it wouldn't be worth paying another 100 Cubes for the intel about them...

To their surprise, the trader that Auric had tried to talk to opened up on them without hesitation, and they found themselves locked in combat with him.

"DO NOT DAMAGE THE STOCK!" He yelled in binary as he fired. As far as he was concerned, those slaves were already his. It was just a matter of closing the transaction, and he'd be on the good end of plenty of profit. He wasn't about to let 53 head get pasted because they happened to still be on the same ship as the guy the raiders were clearly after.

The raiders, however, were not to be deterred, and the battle between them and the trader became heated. Both parties were well-armored against Decepticon blaster fire, so there were no one-hit kills to be had. After all, Decepticons, like humans, were well aware that the biggest danger they faced was each other.

[Vallermoore]

The first thing Auric did, was to place the slave compartment back inside his ship where it was less likely to stepped on. As he saw one of the attacking bots starting to sneak behind the trader, a bot painted in red and black, he opened fire on said attacking bot with his lasers, aiming for where it's bottom would be on a human and the backs of it's thighs. The effect on a human, would be of someone had sliced said human with a Buck knife. It opened up the top layers of Decepticon steel, burning the paint off, activating the pain sensors,, giving the bot that already wanted him dead nasty second degree burns and showing him that the lasers were anything but fake. As the Decepticon swung around to train it's blasters on him, blasters that had already holed non-vital compartments even at pretty long range, he blasted his missiles off at the head. Whilst they had no explosive warheads, they did have a small amount of non-explosive fuel. Auric hoped that if they hit the head, they would at least stun the attacking robot for a second or two.

But what he really hoped was that they would hit and break the eyes and the cameras behind them-blinding the Decepticon until it could do urgent repairs on it's smashed optics. A blinded Decepticon would be at a massive disadvantage, Auric thought, and would want to get out of there and fix it's eyes. If that is, other Decepticons did not take advantage and blast it for it's scrap metal value. Of course, if said Decepticon did survive such nasty wounds and heal itself, it's anger towards him would be white hot to the point of targeting him above other activities. Will it work? he wondered. Maybe the missiles even at this short range will miss. Maybe the Decepticon has eyelids of Decepticon steel, although I've never seen one with those. I would not stand a chance if the trader bot had not joined in, not wanting a good trade to be ruined by opportunists who would no doubt loot the slaves and probably trade them to another trader. If I ever do become a Decepticon I know who I'm trading any slaves that I could capture with.

(Hopefully I don't need to rewrite this bit but I will if need be. I'm trying not to god-mod here.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Decepticon targeted by the dummy missiles quickly ducked to one side; raiders were used to dodging all kinds of projectiles. They were also used to doing so even after having sustained other damage. However, his focus on deleting the human caused him to do something that most raiders know better than: Devote most of his processing power to what the human was doing, instead of using his multithreading to watch and pay full attention to all potential enemies at once. Even though full focus allowed him to process the desired information blazingly fast, it was much more strategic to process all information, even if at a slightly slower speed.

The targeted enemy's failure to pay attention to his Military Tactics and Strategy Data Pack (provided to all conscripts upon first induction by the Decepticon Military) caught up to him in this moment. The trader saw his opponent's distraction and immediately let him have it with both blasters. His blast pattern was practiced and precise. It formed a cross shape across his opponent's head and upper chest: Across the head, to deactivate the mind-boards which are typically arranged vertically; and down across the chest, to deactivate the motion-control boards which were typically arranged horizontally. At the distance this one now was, the full force of both blasters was able to get through the enemy raider's armor and cut the boards inside half.

It was unclear whether the raider saw it coming in time to evacuate his mind to a spare body or a save vault back on Cybertron. It was, however, clear that this particular body would no longer be going anywhere but a foundry.

Alas, two can play at the same game, and the other raider was now opening fire to take advantage of what seemed to be the distraction of the trader.

"Oh, HO, I'm too smart for THAT!!" The trader yelled as he crouched down and returned fire. Battle between them commenced, and they danced around like boxers to make each other miss the most important parts. The distance between the two was about 1,000 feet, with the remaining raider at the furthest point - seemingly far away from each other, but that's actually quite close when you're 100 feet tall and using blasters that fire energy traveling at the speed of light. The dodging maneuvers weren't meant to outrun the energy itself, but to confuse each others' aiming attempts.

Just like humans in gunfights, they didn't aim for tiny targets like each others' eyes. Notably, however, they didn't aim for center mass either, but instead for the control systems in the head and upper chest. A Decepticon's center mass contains the engine, and since it's such a big target, the engine is built to be able to keep going (at least to some degree) even if it collects several blast holes.

Suddenly, the other raider began to back off, and after several steps, hid himself among some trees. Not long later, a transformation noise was heard, and he flew away under not-too-great cloaking. The trader fired at the fleeing plane and gave it a good slice across one wing before it went out of range.

A look to the rear would reveal the reason: Other traders had been lining up, and were readying themselves to remove the incoming threat to their stock. One errant shot by the raider could easily terminate or otherwise render 1,000 head unsaleable in an instant, and nobody was okay with that happening to THEIR 500,000 Cubes' worth of property.

~~~~~~~~~~~

With all threats seemingly gone, the other traders began to look down at Auric, who was still inside of his ship.

"Never had one of you present himself as property in a thing like that!" One remarked.

"You must have done some REALLY BIG crime back at home to come here when you can afford that," said another. "Or did you jack it? What did you do, commit genocide or something? Release a bioweapon in a major city? Maybe insurgency!"

"Maybe his home world's about to get pounded by a meteor," one guessed.

"You're all full of exhaust." One finally said with certainty. "Look at the size of that ship. Obviously he came to sell us some of his fellow humants." This bot had a deep purple body, hands, and feet, but also sported dingy light-gray wings. The dinge was provided by the sandy dust of the slave market, which was constantly being stirred up from the ground by the robots walking around.

The others stopped and looked at the speaker like he had a glitch. "Oh, come on, humants don't sell each other! The ones from that crazy country [the C'tan] even went to war against us because we own them."

The robot laughed in their faces and began to chide them in binary. "Humants have been selling each other off as chattel since before we even existed!" he announced. "You really should buy the second-level Advanced Educational Data Pack (AEDP) on Actual Human History from the Foreign Studies Institute. It says that any humant who has a military or mental advantage over a bunch of others gets them doing the all the work in short order, and if possible, will do so by outright enslaving them."

"Also, the AEDP on Biological Evolution says that there's NO WAY the Human Base Code [DNA] that calls for enslaving the weak, or the code that causes the weak to tend to obey the strong, could have been naturally deprecated in the species during a mere 100-200 years or so, so don't you believe that they're 'not like that' anymore. Both of the requisite code systems are still fully in place in the 1.0s, and if we hadn't invaded this planet, human-on-human slavery would have boomed up again sooner or later. The only thing that would have probably changed is who would be the slavers and who would be the slaves; that switched according to who had the power in a given era."

In this area, one of the big differences between the human race and the Decepticon one was the presence of base code that caused the weak to accept servitude. A weak Decepticon's code, on the other hand, would drive him to level up and eliminate his weak status - and, any Decepticon's base code would cause him to abhor being enslaved more than being killed outright. This is why someone who wanted to enslave a Decepticon had to hack him and outright override his control of his own body. Under normal circumstances, a Decepticon would fight to the death rather than accept being a slave.

The purple-and-gray bot turned back to Auric. "Now let's see what you got." he said in English. Meanwhile, the original, green-painted trader moved closer in a protective way. This was his customer, dammit.

It seemed likely that a bidding war would take place, at least, if more than one buyer was interested in Auric's living cargo once it was again uncovered.

[Vallermoore]

Auric dipped his ship in a bow to both bots, moved closer to the green painted trader who had fought the raiders, but not close enough to risk bumping into him and said to him "You saved my ship and my life and I don't even know your name. Three of the slaves I give to you for free as a gift, the one thousand, five hundred Cubes of free profit should help repair the battle damage to your body." He took the compartment out again with his ship's mechanical arms and gently placed it on the ground near the green-painted trader and opened it up. "That still means fifty slaves for sale for five hundred Energon Cubes each." As the other bot, the purple bot, came closer, he inwardly felt rather nervous, but didn't show it. I really hope not to get into another blaster fight with any of these bots, my ship was really lucky to escape with only minor damage. But as long as I don't insult or attack any bot, a fight won't start here, as the other traders won't tolerate it. he thought. Once more the terrified slaves began to beg for mercy. Auric used the mechanical arms of his ship to point first to the slaves, then to the green trader.

"I want to sell the fifty to you, and only to you, and if one day I become a Decepticon and get more slaves I want to sell them just to you for as long as you are still a slave trader and I'm still alive."

I'm taking a risk, that purple bot might put me on his personal Raid list, but it's just possible that I might have made a friend here in the green bot or at least, an acquaintance who does not want to blast me as soon as he sees me. Everything here has consequences but they need not always be the bad sort. he thought.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The green robot beamed a smile that was a combination of salesman and genuinely being pleased.

"I'm Breaker," he introduced himself. "And it'll be a pleasure doing business with you!"

He gave the short form of his name, SlaveBreaker. He found that Breaker was easier to say, and definitely better for getting humans to come to him willingly, so he usually didn't give his full name. Humans could just assume he meant some other kind of breaker, perhaps a circuit breaker...

"Company name's International Refugee Services. Ever watched the TV and been hearing about all of these overcrowded refugee camps, and then suddenly the reports say the overcrowding problem has been fixed?" He nodded and grinned, openly pleased with his setup.

"So you want to become a Decepticon! That explains you coming here with all of that stock. Stuff like that gets points over at Immigration, alright. Same with whatever you did to that raid gang that was after you."

He looked down into the container.

"Oh, it's those." His smile was replaced by a disappointed look, sort of like if a human kid had expected a bin to have chocolates in it and then found out it was full of broccoli.

"That kind doesn't like to work. And since their kind have usually had close ancestors who have seen the slavery bit before, they know all about how to make it look like they're workin' when they're not doing jack. Worse yet, they'll wreck your stuff and then make it look like they were just too stupid to use the mining equipment. It's all ruses, of course, designed to make an owner think they're not worth keeping and just let 'em go. It's actually a pretty good connive, but it's sure a pain when you're the broker or the buyer, you know?!"

"The best stock is your kind or Asians," he informed Auric. "Both whites and Asians almost all have this crazy 'work ethic' glitch where they think that hard work is good and beating a quota is even better. It doesn't take much to make 'em forget about the 'getting paid' part. Lots of them are in love with work for its own sake, and better yet, they're all for the rule of law and following authority. You know...defective! Ha ha!"

Chuckles came up from the slave container at his comments about the whites, and several of the prospective slaves had openly conniving looks on their faces. They had indeed already been thinking of how to make whoever bought them regret it.

"So, I have to inform you that I only pay 490 Cubes for these sensible types who know how to do a back-connive and make my buyer wish he'd never bought 'em. The 10 Cubes pays for the override chip I'll install in 'em along with the usual Human 5.0 Upgrade shot. We used to break 'em by beating 'em half to death, but it's far better to just chip 'em up and be done with it."

The 490 Cubes was indeed his normal price for blacks, especially when they came from a nation where anti-black prejudice was common and slavery was a likely part of the recent ancestral history. He didn't need to read his Foreign Cultures AEDP to know that was surely the case with Vallermoore. A shipment that contained ONLY one type of 1.0s always meant a racist nation or one that had just conquered some other land.

The override chip that Breaker spoke of was originally developed during the zombie outbreak as a way to gain direct control over the truly mindless, whether or not said mindless were undead or virus-created. Installed into the base of the skull, the chip will jam any motion commands coming from the brain and replace them with its own commands. It was a biological version of the body-control hack. Any 1.0 slave that seemed like it'd be hard to train got one, regardless of which branch it came from.

The upgrade shot would change the slaves on the DNA level, giving them the same Code as the current iteration of genetically-engineered slaves. This would change their base drives once it took full effect, but it couldn't override the culture and values they'd already learned.

"Still, let's bring these guys over to the trade building and get this deal done!" Breaker said. He picked up the big container in both hands with just a bit of extra effort.

Inside, many of the slaves were now silent and wide-eyed. What was this chip he'd been talking about?

"Oh, my Lord!" A female voice yelled out as she somewhat figured out the mystery. "He means a MIND CONTROL CHIP! They're going to turn us all into zombies!!"

With that, chaos erupted. Shouting and screaming, with some showing rage and others terror, poured from the top of the container. They began to climb over each other, and soon, many were pulling on the bars at the top of the cage. Breaker watched long enough to be sure the container was secure, but once he saw that it was, he ignored the pandemonium and began to walk calmly to the building as Auric flew along behind him.

In reality, it was a body-control chip rather than a mind one. The slaves would still be able to think whatever they wanted; they would just have to DO what their owner said. Many, however, thought this was worse to endure because it left the victim fully aware of his situation.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The trade building was a huge warehouse, and inside, groups of thousands of Human 5.0 clones were standing around in a very docile way. Booths were set up near each group, and each spot had a huge stack of Energon Cubes watched by heavily-armed and very built-up guard bots. Each trader and guard bot near any group of 5.0s had wing decals that identified them as employees of the Division of Biological Labor, a government agency.

Giant fans, hundreds of feet across, sent a constant stream of fresh air through the structure and blew the vast quantities of Decepticon exhaust outside. The air was surprisingly clean, with the predominant smell being that of the humans.

Many random robots, most with at least some red on them or even mostly red, walked around pulling carts that contained either Energon, purchased 5.0s without cages, cages full of various types of 1.0s, and carts with uncaged 1.0s. The uncaged ones looked docile, but their eyes betrayed either frustration, fear, or anger.

"These are the clones," Breaker said, waving towards the masses. "The 1.0s go back here..."

Soon, they arrived at his stall, which had a large cage with about 1,000 dejected and half-starved-looking humans of apparently Middle Eastern descent. A few piles of Human Chow kibble, several water coolers, and a row of steel toilets were also in the cage. A giant red LCD sign above it announced in binary: "Ready Soon- BOOK NOW!"

"These actually came to me on purpose," Breaker said. "They were starving to death in a refugee camp after some war broke out in their homeland. Worse, the enemy government wanted to genocide them. So, one of them outright radioed for Decepticons and said they were all willing to work as our property if only they would be kept safe and well-fed. That human desire for safety," he said the last word mockingly, "gets me a surprising amount of free stock." Since those humans didn't speak English, they didn't realize that he thought they were absolute scum just because they did want to be safe. REAL people, Decepticons believed, would have fought their enemies to the death even if they thought they'd lose. That way, at least they would still have their honor.

"Still, when someone like you shows up, I'm willing to trade because all functional stock is good stock in the end. Plus, these willful types are more resilient."

He looked towards his security bot, who was heavily armed and armored like the other security types, and ordered him to deliver 24,500 Cubes' worth of Energon to the seller. 490 Cubes each for 50 slaves.

Then, he took the container, which he'd been holding in both hands, and placed its door up to the cyclone-fence intake chute of his big cage. He opened the door, and then used his finger to poke through the top grating and give any reluctant humans a push.

"Quit balking," he chided them. "The big cage is much more comfortable than this little can!" Finally, he had pushed them all out. The refugee slaves backed away, not sure what these new foreigners were going to do and unable to speak their language to just ask them.

Once the container was empty, the somewhat dim-looking security bot stacked the 24,500 Cubes into and onto it. They stuck out far over the top, making the container look more like a tray than a bin. Getting this loot into the ship would be left up to Auric.

"Well, nice doing business with you, and if you come up with any more, you know where to sell 'em. Try to get some Asians next time, though, and from one of those countries where they think working for the same place all their lives is good, and where karoshi is a thing. On this Earth, the best sources used to be called Japan and China, if you know of anywhere like that..."

[Vallermoore]

Auric used the mechanical arms of his ship to put in the Energon, all 24,500 cubes of it. "Thank you, Breaker, I am pleased that I could sell to you. If I do manage to become a Decepticon and to stay alive, you and I will have a good business relationship. Farewell." He left the planet without incident and at a very fast speed. His radar thankfully showed no blips following him; if anyone was there they had good anti-radar measures. He had time on the way back to look at the metal map that had been drawn earlier. "Why not check out Cybertron first, before going to the Ministry of Immigration? There are shops to go to...and sights to see such as the Main Pit. And the Corporation have a shop as well. And there is the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank. And surely there must be a firework shop, although I'd need to be careful about setting fireworks off to avoid damaging Decepticons or their property. Of course there is danger as well, plenty of it, from thieves to slavers to haters of humans to friends of the Decepticons who I blew up. If that one who attacked me on Decepticon Earth sees me, he'll try and kill me, so I need to upgrade my weaponry." He passed quickly into Cybertron and his first stop was at a blaster shop, Blaze's Blasters.

Inside were two bots who were clearly security bots, there to blast anybot who tried to pilfer the goods, and a bot behind the counter. On the walls were blasters of various kinds, some meant to be held in metal hands, and all much better then his ship's lasers. He went up to the counter, gave his side to side and bowing routine to show he was both armed and polite, and asked
"Please could you tell me how much those two blaster pistols cost? I would like to test them, if there is a safe way to do that, and then buy them so I can stay safe on Cybertron." He pointed at them with his ship's mechanical hands, which were large enough to use the pistols. Having blasters would make me a little less of a target he thought.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The one behind the counter was painted in bright red, and had equally-bright yellow lightning-bolt wing stripes that ran the length of each wing. His face and hands were also bright yellow.

Directly under each wing-stripe, words were written in bold, yellow binary. The left wing (as seen when looking at him) said BLAZE, and the other one finished the phrase with THE BLASTER BOT.

His level of armamentation was tremendous, and it was a bit hard to decide whether the sight was scary, a bit silly, or both. He clearly enjoyed showing off his wares, apparently by attempting to install them all at once.

As Auric took in this sight, he would surely realize that this guy did not need any extra security while he was there tending his shop. A closer look at the "security bots" revealed that they indeed were not employees, but instead, were some customers who had stopped looking at the wares in order to stare at the strange newcomer. These customers were indeed built up like security bots, but that wasn't because they wanted to provide security to anyone. Instead, they were intending to blast through somebody else's security, somewhere out there.

Blaze reeled a bit in shock at seeing something show up that clearly wasn't a Decepticon, and it took a while for him to realize that the speaker wasn't the odd metal thing but instead was some creature inside of it, but he quickly recovered and went full-on into sales pitch mode.

"I see you have no real blasters at all," he began, giving the lasers a dismissive look. "I see you've already found out that those things of yours will just annoy someone. Congratulations on making it out alive." Of course, he knew this because of the blaster-fire holes still in Auric's ship.

"The first thing you need to know is that those aren't 'blaster pistols,'" he said, being as retaily as possible while internally cringing at the foreigners ignorance. "Hand-held pistols and rifles and other such crap were Autobot weapons. Those things there are mini fusion cannons worth 1,000,000 Cubes apiece, and the part sticking down is the connector that holds them into their mounts on your body."

"All of OUR blasters are meant to be permanently installed...or, more accurately, installed to permanently-installed mounts. That way, all it takes to deactivate an enemy is this"~~

He pointed one arm at Auric. By nature, the blaster array on that arm pointed in the same direction, meaning that all he had to do to aim was put his arm in the right direction. The barrel on the biggest blaster had an opening bigger than Auric's entire body, making this demonstration rather disconcerting, to say the least.

"See? If I had meant to kill you, you'd already be gone. You don't have time to draw some weapon in a situation like that. Our weapons are pre-drawn. If yours aren't, you're slag."

"So, the first thing you need is a set of proper mounts. They'd have to be done custom, since your ship isn't using a standard Decepticon Design Specification, so, 200 Cubes apiece because I'll have to make 'em custom and then wire in the control systems. But you need mounts if you're going to use weapons that were made here."

He proceeded to demonstrate how his mount worked, quickly detaching and then reattaching one of the many weapons he had on one of his arms. "See? Quick-change mounts. We all have 'em." He winked, knowing how the international media offices rarely mentioned the details of how "permanently attached" was usually implemented.

"For your setup there, I suggest something like this..." he pointed towards an array of longer weapons, which were about the right size to fit on the robotic arms of Auric's craft, but clearly shorter and thinner than the blasters Auric had seen on most of the Decepticons he'd run into so far. "They're not as powerful or long-ranged as Standard Blasters, but if someone gets up in your face, they'll get the job done. These are 10,000 Cubes apiece...cheap, but they're also light, and it looks like this is all your little arms there can hold without upgrading 'em beyond having the mounts put on and wired in."

It was indeed very cheap. A Standard Decepticon Blaster would cost 200,000-250,000 Cubes for the middle-market versions.

He pointed to a big metal door. "Once you have your mounts installed, we can test the weapons in there. That's my indoor range. It has both moving and stationary targets, but be sure to blast at the piles of old armor panels that in the firing area as well, so you get a feel for how much damage each weapon can do."

[Vallermoore]

"If it is possible, I would like to have the blasters installed with mounts where my lasers used to be, please. If I put them on my spacecraft's arms, my spacecraft hold would have to be open and that would show anything I was carrying to any Decepticon, making me a robbery target. You can keep my old lasers, either to turn them into proper weapons or just for their Cube value as scrap metal." He felt strangely safe as he paid over the Cubes, had them tested and then had the mounts and the blasters installed, paying for the mounts but not the blasters yet just in case they didn't work. He won't blast a friendly paying customer or he won't get many new customers. And those two might try and attack me outside the shop, but not IN the shop as Blaze would blast them to scrap to protect his valuable merchandise. When one is buying things, shopkeeper Decepticons are generally safe to be around. He knows I won't dare cheat him as I want to live, and he has no reason to hate me as he said or he would already have blasted me into bits.

When he went into the firing range, he opened fire on a pile of Decepticon armour first. At close range it was cut apart, but at long range it gave only small wounds to the armour. Still, it was so much better then his lasers had been. Since I have decent weaponry, Decepticons will be fractionally less lightly to blast me now, although they should still be treated with great respect. Then he opened fire on the stationary targets and then the moving targets. A few of his blasts went wide but the walls were designed to contain stray blasts and not get damaged. He paid over every needed Cube for the blasters and two extra cubes as a tip, and again waited for the test firing to show the cubes were the real thing. Whilst he only had a few thousand cubes left, he hoped it would be enough to buy a packet of firecrackers at another shop-Decepticon size firecrackers. He thanked Blaze of course, to be polite."Thank you, Blaze, for being so helpful to me even though I'm just a beta creature in a starship instead of a Decepticon like you." He went down the street, stopping now and then to look in the shop windows of the many shops there.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The mounting process had gone smoothly, though Blaze had to examine the ship for a while to figure out its wiring system, which he was unfamiliar with. It turned out that the wiring was too weak for Blaze's standards, so he threw in some better (Decepticon) wires as part of the job. It wouldn't reflect well on Blaze's Blasters if Auric tried to fire only to have the control system burn out, after all.

"I've piped the blasters up to those two Cubes of Energon you have sitting there," he told Auric, "and put some small brackets in so those particular Cubes can't slide around. Those are your blaster fuel Cubes now, so don't spend 'em! And, make sure to refill 'em if you end up using your blasters. Don't wait until you're almost out of fuel, either. Refill after EVERY battle. Otherwise some joker will come up and nail you when you've only got enough Energon for about two shots."

"Thanks for your business and your old weapons, and be sure to come back when you want to upgrade!"

~~~~~~~~

Outside, Auric would be relieved to see that the other two customers hadn't hidden just around the corner. In fact, they were nowhere around. Whatever they wanted to blast was a far bigger target than he was, judging by all of the armamentation and armor buildup they'd been sporting.

The view down the street was amazing. Gleaming metal buildings faced the street on both sides, and they were plated in a variety of metallic colors that were all different, yet seemed to go well together. The overall effect was very futuristic, despite the fairly basic square- and rectangle-based architecture.

Below, the ground was also notable. Its metal was a silver color, but highly polished. Thin lines made it obvious that the entire ground was made of giant, separate metal panels. These panels were unlike those used for the buildings, though that much wasn't obvious just by looking except for the different color. Both the street and buildings had thick coats of clear, anti-corrosive coating even though the alloys themselves were rust-resistant.

Of course, all of this was topped off by the sight of hundreds of giant robots calmly walking around in the streets and even more of them flying all over the place in the air. Off in the distance, Auric could see many Decepticons coming from the sky and going into it. That would be one of the landing points this city offered. Having special landing points was unheard of in rural areas, but necessary in more urbanized sectors.

~~~~~~~~

Through the windows he checked, Auric saw all sorts of different types of stock for sale. Some stores had body and engine parts, but most had household goods like furniture, body polishing equipment, and various types of Energon serving containers. A few of the stores sold chips that contained various movies, full-immersion video games, and other software. There was a newschip stand on the corner, offering chips from about 5 seemingly-different news agencies and several entertainment chips that served the purpose of magazines. A bored bot sat inside the stand. Notably, none of the chips were outside of the stand. Instead, they were all behind the clerk, where they couldn't easily be pilfered.

Down a few blocks, there was a building clearly marked "Debugging Center." The robots leaving there looked happy, relieved, or cocky, while the ones going in either looked disturbed or like they were on a mission. The cocky ones had purchased upgrade patches, while the happy and relieved ones had just gotten free bug-repair patches.

As Auric looked to his left, with the Debugging Center still in the distance, he noticed a building that most of the people seemed to be actively avoiding. "DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE DIVISION," it read in etched-in block letters in a monument-style font across its fascia board. This low, rectangular building was mostly silver, but had the slightest bronze overtone. The buildings on each side of this particular DomIntel office were vacant.

Finally, after much looking around through the city, he found the shop he had apparently been looking for. It was hidden down one of the side streets, which was still entirely commercial but not as busy as the main thoroughfares.

"Sapience Day Party Goods," it said in binary letters painted across its window. Unlike the other signs, this one hadn't used the swoops and l-shapes that usually depicted 0's and 1's on Cybertron. Instead, it was written with a mix of firework bursts and puffy clouds. Since binary had only two letters, any combination of shapes worked. If it didn't make sense reading one shape as a 1, the other shape obviously meant 1, and then it was easy to read from there - at least, it was for someone who knew binary.

A very ecstatic-looking bot entered the store with a proud-looking but curious one who looked like he'd never seen a city in his life and was looking all over the place. They were the same size, had the same types of weapons, and had the same body plan, but the difference in maturity levels was obvious.

"Ah, first sapience day!" a fake-happy retail voice could be heard as the door swung closed. This pegged the curious one as being about 2 years old.

[Vallermoore]

Auric was amazed by the Metal Planet...as a tourist and a human, what was normal to a Decepticon was impressive to him. He set aside ten Cubes as blaster fuel in case the worst came to the worst, and another twenty or more as spending money in case he found what he was looking for. It was a long look, but he found it and without getting into any scrapes on the way. A Decepticon shop selling firecrackers and the like. He had avoided the other shops-some had nothing to offer a non Decepticon, and it would most likely be treason for them to sell anything to him anyway. Others he didn't have the tech to look at, like the chips. He avoided the Debugging Centre and the Domintel office like the proverbial plague-the first might have danger from an as yet unpatched robot that might randomly blast him. And he didn't want the Domintel robots to think for even a second that he was a grass. He wasn't for one thing. And being a grass came under the treason umbrella, he was pretty sure of it, and was as un-Decepticon as one could be.

When he found the shop and the two bots came in, he knew at once that this was a proud father-or whatever the Decepticon equivalent of a father was, and his young son. He decided to give the young child robot extra space-he doubted a fight would break out, but if one somehow did, maybe by him accidently bumping, and he blasted the young robot, he knew what the father robot would rightly do, what any father should do in such circumstances-blast his craft to bits and then grind his human body into the metal floor. It would be the anger of a father who had seen his child gunned down, a child he had spent a very long time and a lot of Energon Cubes building-the sort of anger that was white hot. Even if he won the battle, most likely the father had spare bodies stashed away somewhere and would return. He entered the shop and found several fathers with their newly sapient robot children. He also found to his delight, a counter with fireworks. By Decepticon standards, they were pretty small-sparklers, small firecrackers and cherry bombs, bottle rockets. But by human standards, they were BIG. The firecrackers and cherry bombs were the size of Auric's body, the sparklers were twenty-five feet tall, and the bottle rockets were the size of his starship's emergency lifeboat...a full forty feet long. When he went back to Vallermoore to let those off, he would have to do so secretly. Whilst Vallermooreian fireworks law was very liberal indeed, fireworks of that size were surely banned for everybody's safety.

He asked the bot behind the counter, "Please could you tell me what your prices are? I would like to buy a few of those fireworks." He noticed several of the young bots staring at this strange to them craft that looked nothing like a Decepticon.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The young Decepticons began to crowd around the strange ship, but their Coders held them back with a firm hand on one wing. The Coders were also curious, but were worried about a potential firefight for a different reason: Each young bot was still running his automatic self-defense routine, which would not turn off until any "perceived threat" was totally nullified. Since threat perception was still under the full purview of that non-sapient defense routine at this age (and would be, to some extent, until the young ones were about 4 or 5), that meant that a simple bump could very easily be designated a threat and set the program running. A random bump from another Decepticon was specifically excluded, but one from an odd craft was another story.

"What are you?"
"Why don't you use the Design Specification? That body isn't allowed!"

Questions of this nature began to be shouted out, all in Binary, which they assumed Auric understood. One more intelligent one asked, "Do you like having to pay for all-custom parts just for fun? Those don't look better than ours, so you must like to pay for fun! Or maybe you made that thing yourself for fun?"

The clerk gave a few very intentional revs to get everyone's attention, and then demanded quiet.

"This is a..." He peered through the window. "...a HUMAN!" He was clearly flabbergasted as he announced this to his other customers in Binary. "And he came all the way here to buy some fireworks!"

"That thing he's riding in must be one of those 'nonsapient semi-computerized machines' our Standard Educational Data Packs tell us about," he went on. "You know what that means..."

"It might become a Decepticon one day!" One kid piped up.
"Yeah! Just like Franklin Galaga!" Another said.
"Or that guy who used to be nothing but an arm!" Yet another chimed in.

One thing was definitely clear: The fact that young Decepticons didn't have to wait for the physical development of a brain, combined with their pre-installed basic education, made them quite smart right away. Emotional development would come quickly, too, and they would be the equivalent of human 18-year-olds in just 3 more years.

Not all of the sapience day celebrants were that young, or celebrating their very first sapience days. Sapience days were celebrated annually, like human birthdays. Still, there was something extra-special about that first sapience day, for that was the day when the Coder finally had a true offspring, rather than a very complex automaton.

~~~~~~~~~~

The clerk turned to Auric.

"Well. I never thought I'd see one of YOU outside of a mine! What can I say? Congratulations on managing to get out, but why in the UNIVERSE would you come to CYBERTRON of all places? If it was me, I'd never want to see another Decepticon after being stuck in a mine for 50 years..."

"Anyway, you wanted to know about our fireworks." He peered into the ship's window to get at least one good look at this oddity.

"The sparklers there are 1 Cube for a pack of 5, these noisemakers here are a Cubelet apiece," he indicated some the size of Auric, that seemed to be rolled up almost like joints but in aluminum foil and much fatter in the middle, "the smoke bombs are 2 Cubelets, and the blaster-barrel rockets are 1 Cube each."

He looked into the ship's window again, this time examining Auric carefully.

"You seem to be fully built, and with your species, that means you're an adult. So I can also point these out..." He pointed a finger down at the counter's glass top.

"These are the ones that give you full firework effects. This small one here is the Little Popper, for 10 Cubes, and it fires off 10 bursts. Each burst makes a display about as big as me, but a relatively small noise. The next one up's just 100 Cubes, and it makes one burst 10 times as big as me and a nice loud bang. That's the Big Boomer. Finally, we have this 1,000-Cube Super Smasher. It sends up ten of the big bursts AND makes a COLOSSAL bang with each one. You'd better protect those tiny auditory circuits if you set THAT off. It's loud enough to shake these streets."

These were the ones considered basic home versions. For anything bigger, Auric would have to seek a municipal-grade supplier...but like anything considered municipal anywhere, doing that would add several digits to the price.

"One other thing, we always promote safety here at Sapience Day Party Goods. So, if you set the visual ones off here, you'll want to do it in a municipal park area because those zones are fireproofed. And if you want to do it on whatever planet you came from, you'll need to fire the small ones from floating platforms in one of those giant pools of water that are supposedly everywhere." He, of course, was referring to lakes rather than swimming pools.

"Of course, if you want to have a proper party, you shouldn't stop with fireworks. These confetti bombs are just 2 Cubes each, and every sapience day party needs some helium balloons. 10, filled up, go for 4 Cubes." He pointed upwards, indicating some helium-filled balloons that could easily have served as hot air balloons on Auric's planet if they were made of thicker stuff.

"So," he said, getting out a giant bag that appeared to be made of something like Mylar, "What can I getcha?"

[Vallermoore]

Auric smiled and said to the Decepticon children and their parents "I will happily answer any questions about humans, but I speak English, so I have no idea what I am being asked. If the questions are repeated in English, I would be happy to answer them. Oh, and thank you for holding your young ones back, I would not want to accidently trigger anything that led to blasters going off, me dying very painfully, and your offspring that you took so long to make getting damaged by my blasters." He turned to the clerk. "Thank you for being so helpful. I've never been in a mine, although I could quite easily end my days there if anything goes wrong. I'm fascinated by the Decepticon Nation and it's unique culture, and hope to become a Decepticon myself if all goes well. I'd like to buy...let's see...I don't have a vast number of cubes as I spent most of them on brand new blasters, and need some cubes to power said blasters. But don't worry, I still have some cubes to spend."

"I would like to buy please....one Cube worth of noisemakers, one Cube for a sparkler pack, three blaster-barrel rockets, one Little Popper, one Big Boomer, one confetti bomb, and some helium balloons. Could they be not filled up so I could take them back to my planet please? Otherwise, they won't fit on my craft without having them making the cargo doors gape open. I would also buy far more from here if I only could...but I can't yet, I'm sorry, or I'd not be able to power my blasters, and I need my blasters powered for the same reasons every Decepticon needs them. If I should become a successful Decepticon, then I'll come back here when I have enough spare Cubes to really buy stuff. Oh, and could you please tell me where the nearest park is?" He carefully counted out the Cubes.

(OOC-Sorry about the short rp bit when yours was much longer then mine.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

The patrons looked at each other with blank expressions. The alien must not have installed a Binary Language Pack, and they certainly had no reason to have installed an English one. In fact, Auric had been very lucky to have encountered so many shopkeepers who had one on board.

"You don't know how to speak Binary?!" The clerk said to Auric. "Oh, for...*the engine sputtered a bit.* Here's what you want to do. When you get out of here, go down two blocks and turn left. There, you'll find a place called Smuggler's Supply. Get them to make you a proper translating headset."

Smuggler's Supply was exactly what it said on the tin. Usually, it equipped Decepticon smugglers with things like language packs, human-style clothing, shoes, and other accessories needed to fully pass an android body off as some other species. But for a slightly inflated rate for custom goods, it could basically do the same business in reverse. Of course, it wouldn't sell Auric anything that would allow him to pass as a Decepticon, but it could (and would do so gladly, for the right price) handle simple issues like translation or the matter of avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning outside of the ship.

"Sorry guys," the clerk said to the youngsters in Binary. "He doesn't know how to speak like a proper Decepticon. He thanks you Coders for preventing any trouble, but says he doesn't understand any questions. But I can answer one of them for you: He's driving that ship because he'd crash if he came outside of it. And he's probably afraid of being stepped on..."

One of the youngest kids immediately started stomping his foot hard on the ground. "It'd be fun to step on him!!" He announced with a giant smile. Many of the other kids grinned openly at the idea, and even some of the adults got some smiles that would have been quite disconcerting if the accompanying phrase had been understood. Auric was probably lucky that he didn't know what they were saying.

The clerk gave them a little "shush" sort of gesture, but he was ignored. Finally, the Coder made the one kid stop stomping, mostly because the noise was annoying.

Turning back to Auric, he said in English, "one thing they mentioned that you might find interesting is that 'non-sapient' computers often aren't. They mentioned a couple of immigrants from Decepticon Earth whose sapience had been overlooked by most humans until we came...and who eagerly joined us in the war that was going on."

"So...we were saying that you'd better be VERY nice to that ship there. He may be quite aware of what's going on even if nobody intended on that."

As he said all of this, he had been packing the impact-detonanted noisemakers in layers of papery stuff to keep them from being set off just by the bumps sustained in travel. When the packing was complete, he filled up the bag and handed it over.

"Well thanks for your business and enjoy the fireworks. You'll be able to see one of the parks over to the south if you fly up a decent ways for an aerial view. It's a big blank space in the landscape. Of course, you should fly up from the landing/takeoff point. People don't get too happy about others suddenly changing altitude in busy skies like you find in a city!"

[Vallermoore]

"Thank you, now I'm going to get a Binary translation set installed so I can understand the Decepticon language. It might save me from being blasted if anything was to go wrong." He kept his distance from the stamping young bot, managing not to react even when then young bot pointed his blasters directly at him. Thankfully he did not fire at Auric, and Auric was able to put all his purchases into his spacecraft's hold and leave without risking getting into yet another life or death battle. He headed off to the Smuggler's Supply, deciding that this was the last thing he could afford to buy and still have ten Cubes or so for his blasters to work.
The Smuggler's Supply had a sign on the top of a Decepticon with a barrel of forbidden goods. When he came inside there were various android bodies-human sized ones, human size clothes, radio devices and the like, and several customers.* At the counter was a bot in black and silver colours, looking very impressive. After the customary polite bow by dipping his ship's nose Auric said "Please could you rig me up a radio that will translate Binary to English and English to Binary? Then I will be able to understand any Decepticon who speaks to me, which could make the difference between a simple encounter and a blaster fight. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure I can afford it. But just in case, what is the price?"

(*=you can describe the customers)

[Victorious Decepticons]

There was more diversity, or what seemed to be diversity, in this store than anywhere else Auric had been so far. What appeared to be humans, nekos, and even oddly-colored ponies with really wacky-looking legs milled around tables at the appropriate heights. A glance at these tables would be rather jarring. They appeared to contain human skins, scalps with hair, fresh furs, and other assorted biological coverings. A closer look - or more accurately, a sniff - would reveal that these things were all artificial. Nearby, other tables contained small sprayers labeled in binary with things like "sweaty human man," "perfume-laden female," "pothead," "horse scent," and "cat/human odor."

Once a faux skin or a wig was purchased, it was a simple matter of adding a few spritzes of the appropriate smell to make it seem much more legit.

Various customers were trying on the skins, and in between tries, their articulated silver android bodies could be seen as they actually were. The forms these customers used were far from the quality levels seen at Foreign Intelligence, but would pass easily enough as long as nobody tried to slice into them or punch them.

The clothes, shoes, and other such accessories were also on tables arranged at human height, as well as up on Decepticon-level shelves. Horseshoes and hats with neko-type ear holes were present as well. The Decepticon government didn't have ties to any nations where those would be appropriate, but there were obviously plenty of individuals who had figured out that "friendship is magic," when translated to binary, meant "sucker." And sucker them they did, with all sorts of Ponzi schemes, bogus land deals, and anything else a Decepticon could dream up.

On the far wall, there was something Auric likely never thought he'd see sold not only openly, but proudly: Row upon row of kilos of various kinds of drugs were prominently displayed. There was everything from pot to powder cocaine and meth, right out there like so much flour and sugar. Directly at Decepticon eye level, there were even more expensive varieties of bio-active intoxicants. These were made to work with the DNA of the buying species to cause instant addiction.

The adjoining wall had an equally-shocking type of stock: Bales and bales of counterfeit money of all sorts. Customers, both in android forms (replicating various species) and Decepticon ones, picked up both drugs and money and put them into baskets held on their arms as though they were just shopping at a grocery store.

On the kilos of drugs, Auric would be able to spot a familiar logo: The oil derrick of the Interplanetary Oil Procurement Corporation. The money, on the other hand, was branded with an image of a rubber stamp poised above a whole row of papers going down a conveyor belt. The binary of the producer's name could be seen on the bottom of the stamp image. Its top row read "THE REPLICATOR" and underneath it, it said in smaller letters, "Decepticon Headquarters."

At this moment, Auric felt someone staring at him. The shop owner had just realized that this machine was not his customer, but was instead being driven by an actual, honest-to-the-Metal, biological. This is the point at which Auric had turned and stated his business...

~~~~~~~~~~

"Sure," said the bot behind the counter. "Nothin' to that. However, you mentioned a 'radio' even though you want outgoing Binary speaking capabilities. I assume you really want something that helps you talk live, unless you're like, REALLY INTO talk shows. So, that's actually a Live Translator. We don't get much call for those down here on Cybertron, but I know exactly how to make 'em."

He stepped out from behind the counter and strode over to a display of iPads (counterfeit, of course) and carefully picked up one of the super-tiny devices. Before he got it too far off the table, however, he gave it a funny look and put it back. Next, he selected a different one. Then, he picked up two headsets.

"For 20 Cubes, I can add a translation program to this iPad and hook up these two headsets. You'll only wear one, of course, but the thing is, this setup will use two speakers and two microphones, and the easiest way to get the second set is to dismantle a headset and then build all the components into one piece. One speaker goes into your ear, and one microphone goes in front of your mouth, like a normal headset. But the other speaker will send the Binary version of what you say out into the air, while the other mic will listen to the other person's speech so the chip can turn it into English."

The shop owner didn't say so, but since Auric wouldn't be installing the program into his mind, he intended to download one off of the Software Exchange, the Decepticon equivalent of the Pirate Bay. This would drop his cost to zero for the software, when ordinarily, a Language Pack cost about 1,000 Cubes. He'd run it through about five anti-virus programs to try to clean out all of the enslavement viruses, and then into the product it'd go.

"Just give me the okay, and I'll whip that translator right up. While you wait, feel free to take a look at the clothes, electronics, and anything else you might want. You probably won't find another supplier with so many things that you can actually use on the entire planet. They're all bio-compatible, too -- it wouldn't look too legit if our smugglers tried to sneak in somewhere with clothes made out of asbestos and lead!" He chuckled a bit.

[Vallermoore]

Auric had seen many amazing things already on the Metal Planet, but this was the strangest thing in had seen. First, the huge piles of drugs. Whilst Vallermoore had a surprisingly open drugs policy, and most drugs were there, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines were not, and on Vallermoore a shop selling such drugs this openly would be busted and earn it's owners heavy prison time. But then this was the Empire of Victorious Decepticons, where anything went that was not treason. He looked down next at the customers. His ship had no feet, so he wouldn't accidently step on anybot, but he didn't want to barge into one by mistake. First, it would just be plain bad manners. Second, although they carried nothing more deadly to his ship then plasma rifles and other small arms, every one of these androids had, no doubt, a proper Decepticon body somewhere that they could send their mind to-and then come back here and wait outside to blast his ship as soon as he left. Lastly, he didn't want to cause any trouble in a shop-at the very least, he would be banned from it by the owner. And there were plenty of customers. Some had not yet chosen what to buy, and were still in their silver bodies. Others could pass perfectly as humans, various aliens, and sapient ponies.

He saw a Changeling suit and decided to keep it to himself that changelings could appear to be other forms too. Such a thing would be very un-Decepticon to say the least and might lead again to either a fight, being banned from the shop, or most likely a fight AND being banned from the shop if he survived. Besides, any Decepticon who didn't know that about a Changeling frankly deserved to be scammed. Also, there were places like the Hive Cities where Changelings had no need to change. He thought to himself If I do manage to become a successful Decepticon-it would be nice to buy an android pony body and a pony suit and take a few *days off* as a sapient pony in Vallermoore or Equestria. As song as he was not doing it to dodge the draft it would be legal under Decepticon law .

When he realised that he was being stared at he bowed and stated his business and was happy with the reply. "Yes please." Whilst his translator was being made he looked around and decided to buy some clothes and a relatively small amount-he was rich back in Vallermoore after all, of counterfeit money. When the translator was finished he tested it. "Testing, testing...does this work well? Hey... I can understand other Decepticons talking. Don't worry everybot, I'm not listening in to anybot on purpose, just hearing snatches of random conversation. Here are the twenty Cube for the translation device." He paid them over, then paid a Cube for the small amount of money and two Cubes for the single set of clothes, and then decided to go to the park, so he could let off a few fireworks without bothering anybot.

He went off to the take-off/landing point about half a mile away, set his controls to semi automatic pilot, and joined the others up above finding his way without incident to the park, where there was enough space to land. By now the sun had very nearly set so it was dark enough to truly enjoy the fireworks. It was a strange park to him-no grass here for a start, although to one side was a small playground for newly sapient Decepticons. As there was enough space to do so safely, he used his ship's arms to fire off a confetti bomb with a loud bang, scattering metal confetti for several feet in every direction. Then he set off the Big Boomer. The result on Vallermoore would be like a professional firework display that a whole city could enjoy. Several Decepticons gathered to watch...amongst them a Decepticon with a grudge. And it recognised his ship from pretty far away. His radio crackled into life. "We meet again, beta creature, no bot will help you this time!" Auric quickly darted down the nearest street, got around a corner and waited for his pursuer.

He saw me from quite far away at dusk...if I'm lucky, he'll think that I just have weak lasers like before, and he'll be so angry he'll just run after me thinking I'll just flee. If he comes at me at point blank range, maybe I can do what that trader did-and burn out his mind boards with the blasters before he knows what he's facing. I can't win a long range fight, but his overconfidence might just tip the odds in my favour. He heard the sound of pounding feet getting closer and closer and readied his blasters.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Normally, the raider would have flown over the intervening buildings and then landed on Auric's ship by dropping out of the sky in robot mode, but there was too much traffic around. If he wanted to pursue the puny human, he would have to go around on foot.

He had paused for a moment, considering this, but then remembered overhearing a few people talking about there having been a human in the smuggling store. This caused him to think that Auric had been in there to buy some of the many kinds of drugs that were for sale. After all, such substances, except for marijuana, couldn't be found cheaper anywhere else in the universe...at least, from a wholesale perspective. Once Decepticon drugs were smuggled into "dry" places, they were sold for more per hit than what it cost to buy an entire kilo on Cybertron. Sometimes, the markup was even better than that.

In any case, he figured that the human was probably stoned out of his boards by now and would never be able to react fast enough to save himself. Either that or he was now speeding on some of that fine meth, and would be too jittery to even hit the fire button on his weapons let alone aim. Not that it'd matter if he did aim. This raider could surely handle a few laser slices. To make darned sure of it, he turned off his pain relays.

Soon, he rounded the corner, with his blasters already firing at full power at the height he expected to find the ship. All possible circumstances aside, the best way to avoid getting hit with counter-fire was to not give an enemy a chance to deliver any - and he intended to not give Auric that chance. If Auric was hovering at the altitude he had been seen using before, there would be nothing left but a pile of scrap metal and a bit of burnt biomass even before the raider had actually processed the scene.

[Vallermoore]

(a quite short bit so as to avoid god-modding. Better that then a long bit with annoying god-modding in it.)

What saved Auric from certain destruction, was that he started blasting before he turned the corner. Even so, the blast caught Auric's nose cone, sparking out the main systems and shutting down the main engine. Franticly, Auric activated the spare system that Vallermooreian spacecraft had, getting the craft around the corner, then raising the blasters and aiming like he had seen the slave trader do. I will only get one chance at this, I can't move the craft around quick on secondary thrusters. If he doesn't, come running right into my blasters, the very best that could happen is that I activate the emergency pod. But without weapons, or much fuel, either I'll be shot down, caught and crushed in a metal fist like a human might kill and insect, or spared and enslaved for the rest of my life in some mine. As the Decepticon came around the corner, he blasted at the mind boards like he saw the trader do and hoped for the best. Either I'll kill this Decepticon outright, or he will surely kill me.

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: Cool enough, though long bits are good when there's no chance of a godmod happening.)

While the human apparently made no distinction between the mind boards and the motion ones, he had learned the proper pattern and blasted with full strength - and to the laws of physics, that's all that mattered. The raider had just enough time to look shocked before Auric's blasts made it through his armor and shut his body down completely. Whether he had managed to transfer his mind out in time was impossible to tell at this point.

"Hey, congratulations!" A couple of random Decepticons very quickly approached. "You don't want that, do you? Good!" One continued, without giving Auric a chance to answer. He began to reach for the deactivated body, which was now just 3,000 Cubes of Energon all in a neat little package as far as he was concerned.

"Hold it right there!" Said the other one, brandishing both blasters. "That hunk of scrap is MINE!"

"We'll just see about THAT!" The first one said, and the fight was on. They began to fire at each other with great gusto, causing each other plenty of scorch marks, though it would soon become apparent that they were not using lethal levels of energy in their blasts. Like rams or bulls butting each other for dominance, they delivered many hits to each other in the hopes of running the other one off rather than instantly escalating to maximum power.

As they were preoccupied with each other, another Decepticon came up - this one running nearly silently with an electric engine. He noticed Auric, and put his hand to his own throat as though covering it. The gesture meant, "keep your voice chip off," or in common language, "ssshhhh."

Very quickly, but with extreme care and total silence, he hoisted the deactivated form over his shoulder and began to sneak away at great speed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Across the street and over a ways, a nondescript blue Decepticon leaned back nonchalantly as though he was just waiting for someone. In reality, he was using his internal communication system.

"Human subject just managed to deactivate some raider," he reported. "The raider? That would be Smelter, normally of Oil Pan..." that area was a slum, right next to the officially-abandoned Iacon City.

"Human subject also shows why its branch of biologicals is known for its ability to copy motions and patterns. He quite easily copied what he saw back at the Slave Market...yes, that tendency goes back as far as the monkeys and apes; it's part of that entire design branch...takes them a while to get something complex, though, and they usually use a different learning pathway for that. Damage to him? Looks like main engines down on the ship...suggest we stake out all the mechanics."

"Oh, that battle noise? Just some guys who're too busy blasting at each other to see their 3,000 Cubes taking a ride to the Anvil," he chuckled, referring to a small local foundry.

The robot looked impatient, as though whoever he was waiting for was late. This, of course, was just an act.

"Out of Energon to spend?" He continued. "Oh, I see. Blew it all on what?! Ha ha, humans sure do like flashy things. Well. Hope his spare engine will take him where he needs to go, then, because nobody's going to fix one for 10 or 20 Cubes. Agent 4986 out."

Suddenly, the blue robot looked as though he was simply fed up with waiting, and stormed off like someone normally would do if he had been stood up.

Auric had become more than just a tourist once he showed that he knew how to use a set of blasters. He was now fully on Domestic Intelligence's radar, and its reports would be a big part of any citizenship determination that might need to be made.

[Vallermoore]

Unaware of the fact that he was now being watched by Domintel, Auric watched the fight between the two Decepticons with interest. Clearly, not all fights between Decepticons were automatically deadly as he had believed. These two were doing the blaster equivalent of punching each other. Maybe he could get away with the body whilst they were fighting? Unfortunately, another Decepticon had got the same idea. If his spaceship had been in full fighting trim, Auric might have considered fighting him for the body, but a fight now would be suicide. Looking over his Cubes, he realised he didn't have many left. Most had gone on the blasters that had just saved his life. Next he checked the spare engine. Two hours of fuel, and that was all, and if he wanted to leave Cybertron he would need half of it to leave the atmosphere. Once in space, he wouldn't need much fuel, just a bit to get going and as much to stop. But both the gravity machine and the warp speed would no longer work, and even if he had enough food, it would take him a hundred and fifty years to get back home with his secondary rockets alone.

If he was not to die or end up as a mine slave, he had three options. First, find another tourist who was going to leave soon, and give him his ship in return for a safe trip home. But he had not seen another tourist since he got there. Very few tourists dared to visit Cybertron, for very good reasons.

A cargo bot flew over at high altitude. Second, maybe a cargo bot might help him. That was rejected because of the myriad of possible problems. First, he didn't have enough Energon to pay up front for a ride, and getting one on credit was out of the question. Second, he strongly suspected a cargo bot might consider it insulting and blast him if he even asked for a ride. Third, even if he could somehow sneak aboard one unseen-it would feel him like he would feel an ant crawling along is skin, and react accordingly-either with violence or with selling him as a slave.

There was one last option left open to him...go to the Decepticon Ministry of Immigration and try and pass the gruelling tests for citizenship. Which was what he wanted to do anyway. He looked at the metal map and was about to head there as quickly as safely possible when a voice came over his radio. "I saw you earlier in the Smuggler's Supply...clearly you can fight and win, you have been in a battle, haven't you?" He powered around and saw a robot clearly chatting to him. "But you still need to know a bit about basic Decepticon etiquette. For a couple of Cubes, I'll let you know where you are right and wrong." Auric decided that even if it was just a scam, two Cubes were not all that much to lose, and used his ship's arms to hand them over.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The intended lethality level of a Decepticon fight was determined by many things, but in most cases, honor, social standing, and straight-up ego were big parts of the calculation. A Decepticon would often fight to the death over an insult or other such slight, or to prove that he wasn't a coward. Anger also was a big factor in the lethality level of a battle. Someone who was truly furious would eagerly do his best to massacre his opponent.

If none of those things were at issue, the determining factors were more cut-and-dried. Then, it was about profit.

The known value of whole-body scrap for a standard Decepticon form is 3,000 Cubes, give or take 100 or so depending on the weight of the body in question. It wouldn't make sense to risk suffering damage that would cost more than that to fix, and of course, functional Decepticon bodies (and the parts therin) were worth far, FAR more than 3,000 Cubes when not considered scrap. Therefore, any serious damages would obliterate the profit from the disputed metal and could turn the endeavor of getting it into a major financial loss.

Over the years, an unspoken rule had developed for these situations: Combatants would try not to escalate battles to the point where fighting them would cause more damage to the combatants than the loot was worth. Exceptions occurred, so one could never just assume that the other guy wouldn't open up with full power, but it was rare that anyone really wanted to risk a escalating things to the point where they could lose a million-Cube body to try to collect a 3,000-Cube one.

While the usual practice was for the winner of a fatal battle to try to get his opponent's body - both as a trophy and to defray the cost of any damages sustained by the winner - Auric's calculation that he'd better not jump into battle against the sneaky scrounger or the other two bots was correct. If a Decepticon saw that his opponent was notably weaker than himself, then he would go ahead and let fly with everything he had. After all, a weak opponent was unlikely to be able to do much back, and a deactivated one was a totally-neutralized threat. A biological one, with its lack of spares, would even stay deactivated so there wouldn't be a chance of later retribution, either.

Even more worryingly, some of the most thuggish types even made a lifestyle out of deactivating the weak. In their case, the point was the scrap value of the weak bot itself. These violent Scroungers, usually denoted with a capital S to distinguish them from the more-peaceful scrap-collecting types, would actively hunt weak targets. Just 10 a day meant earning 30,000, so it was easy to see how someone with plenty of greed and zeroed-out empathy coding could see this as a fine way to make money. They were looked down on by practically everyone for being this dangerous to random members of the species, but that type of Scrounger did not care. If anything, he would revel in how he was recognized as a menace if that didn't cause his prey to hide so darned well.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Wow, you're pretty broke!" The newly-arrived robot remarked. He carried a shopping bag that included both a human body and a pony one, and in any other nation, it would look like he was some kind of a killer. As for his own body, it was a gray/silver color that had a very flashy metallic sheen. His coating was actually photovoltaic paint, which cut his need to drink Energon by 1/3.

"Well, the first thing you need to do is quit showing everybody how much cash you have. That works when you're broke, but if you had a hold fulla Cubes, you wouldn't have them for long. So what you need to do is put some kind of a cover over most of your stuff, once you get some stuff, so it doesn't show when you open those doors."

"The next thing is what got me to approach you. Apparently you've had some contact with what we often refer to here as equus suckerans or equus delusious, and their way of speaking seemed to have rubbed off on you back there in the store. You don't want to go around here talking like a pony. We are the DECEPTICONS, strong, proud, and intelligent. And ponies are weak and naive. So, no 'anybot/anypony, everypony/everybot' stuff. Just use your language - and ours - the way it was meant to be used. Otherwise, it'll look like you're trying to support their weak sauce culture and don't appreciate ours, and that's a good way to take a swim in the slag - IF you last long enough to get to a foundry."

"That other way of talking is only good if you're in one of these..." He held up his bag so the shape of the pony body was more visible "...and in a pony land, busy conning the horseshoes off of one of those idiots."

"Speaking of these bodies, getting one would set you back a good 100,000 Cubes. So if you like those things for some reason, and I presume you do, since you were willing to sound like one, start saving up. A human-droid, on the other hand, starts at just 10,000. The difference is in the technology levels. Ponies are magical, and it takes some high-level technology to copy that. But," he added with a proud smile, "copy it, we have."

The faux-magic replicated what the average pony could do, though trying to overthrow Princess Celestia would still not be advisable to say the least. An overthrow was also something not many Decepticons wanted to do. A world in which the sun and its inhabited world both stayed in one place when nobody actively concentrated on moving one of them around the other sounded like a HUGE load of unnecessary work. Worse, the project needed to automate that like it should be would cost trillions of Cubes' worth of engineers, labor, and materials.

"Another thing you need to change is how you tilt that ship when you meet someone. I assume you're trying to bow, but doing it with a body that doesn't have a head looks strange. Better to tip it to one side, like we'd tip a wing in plane mode, or just bow your own head when someone looks in the window. Plus, if you do it right, you catch the light on one of your blasters, so it 'just happens' to be highlighted." As he said this, he nonchalantly moved an arm. The sunlight caressed the length of that arm's blaster barrel as he did so. "You move your ship decently enough to get the point across, but there's more to Decepticon life than that. To put it in human terms," he leaned in, and talked more softly.

"We try to look cool as much as possible, while doing our best to make it look like we're not actively TRYING to be cool, but instead just naturally are. It takes some time for immigrants to get it right."

"Well, that's it for now. I'm sure if you stayed around a while, you would run into more culture clash stuff you'd need to learn about. Oh, by the way, here's my business card. Just give me a buzz if you need anything else..."

He opened a side panel, and began to fish through a bag of things that were teeny-tiny in comparison to his body. Finally, he found a little scrap of metal and picked it up using sticks that had been concealed inside his fingers.

"THE PHARMACY MAN - BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY" was stamped into its surface in English in a hippie, psychedelic font. The letters, along with the accompanying paisley design, were also painted in colors expected for that design. Below the name and tagline were a few contact methods, these being tailored for "Earth-type" communication methods like phone calls and emails.

"Usually I hand these out from one of these" - he indicated the new humanoid body in his bag - "but I think you'd get more use out of this card than the one I usually use here at home."

[Vallermoore]

"Thank you," Auric said to the Decepticon. "Should I become a Decepticon, I'll contact you. If I don't manage it, I'll probably end up under a Decepticon foot when my spaceship falls apart." He checked his fuel gauges as he moved along the streets, and his emergency thrusters used up quite a bit of fuel, and made him move quite slowly too. Had he been in a slum area such as Oil Pan, he would have been Scrounger fodder with his damaged main engine, but this was one of the better areas of Cybertron. All the same, he decided to be very careful, as another blaster fight might well deactivate his ship. And there was the fuel problem too. He decided to see if he could run the thrusters on Energon by attaching fuel pipes to one of his Energon Cubes, and found to his delight that it worked.Now my craft really is running in a Decepticon manner he thought.

He also used his mechanical arms to use the balloons as a temporary tarpaulin so he could open his hold without showing everything that he had in it, and decided to go to one final place before he went to the Immigration Ministry-the Main Pit, if that is, it was not too far away. Just so he could view it in all it's fiery glory.