An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Vallermoore

On Vallermoore and indeed on most planets that were for now outside the Decepticon Empire, Ponyism was decomposing slowly like a body that had been buried in a coffin unembalmed and left to rot. It would take time for it to become bones, and the *bones* of Ponyism would remain for an annoyingly long time, but it was never again to be a threat to Megatronism. Megatronism was surging and whilst other religions like Christianity were bigger, few of their churches had as many worshippers on a regular basis like the Temple to Megatron did. Fire Eater thought to himself that one day; maybe in a relatively short time, but more likely in a century or two, Vallermoore would be conquered like every other planet in the universe. It was the destiny of every planet to fall to the Decepticon Empire sooner or later, but some planets could wait.

How violent the Decepticons would be to the planets that they took over varied. At one end of the scale were nations that had endangered Cybertron itself, like that nation that had agreed to help that worthless pile of parts called Sky Knight. Such nations had their entire populations genocided, were turned into a sandy desert, and had a stone obelisk set up saying why this was done to them, as a warning. Normally worlds fought back, and in that case some were killed in battle or genocided, and the survivors were enslaved, except perhaps for a few who managed to hide successfully and became Stone Age or perhaps Copper Age at best wild humans living in small groups and tribes. Occasionally, the Decepticons would find a country that didn't fight back, or even helped them fight the other countries from the start.

When this happened, different rules applied. Instead of death, the leader would be allowed to leave unharmed, or even allowed in the case of certain dictators to rule until they died or became Decepticons. The people would be spared slavery, and the best of them encouraged to take the Decepticon citizenship tests. After all, destroying and enslaving those who had done nothing to fight back would just stop this happy event from ever happening again. Because Coltan surrendered quickly, and because it was Masher's fault that Cybertron got a raid aimed at it, Coltan was one of these nations. Megatron admired raiding robots; although most certainly not when they targeted the Metal Planet of all places. Perhaps one day Coltanis would be allowed to visit Cybertron, when the anger of the Decepticon Nation towards them had cooled down. At the moment, even if they were allowed to visit Cybertron, most adult Decepticons would happily blast them on sight.

The thoughts of Fire Eater turned towards Loyal Star. His acolyte had gone so far, and once he had joined the Military and served his first stint, would be a Priest of Megatron in his own right. Fire Eater would be a proud bot that day, and hoped he could be at the ordination ceremony.
*****
A Once-Proud House

When MasterBlaster had blasted his parents and collected their souls for Megatron, he felt very pleased with himself. If they thought of him so negatively they frankly no longer deserved to live. He took a few things he remembered fondly, including a teddy bear from when he was a foal, and was about to leave when he noticed all the envelopes and checked them. He found that if he had not blasted his parents, they were a week or two from being evicted and becoming homeless ponies. If he had known that earlier, he might have left them unblasted to live on the streets instead.

"The wrath of Megatron is terrifying to behold."

Loyal Star jumped in shock, and spun round to see a..talking cat?! It jumped onto a table and gave a little rev to reveal to Loyal Star it's Decepticon origins.

Megatron caused all of these money problems?"

After the cat explained things, Loyal Star bowed in a deeper then normal bow-the Decepticon equivalent of a big hug. "Thank you so much for helping me out despite being a stranger to me." For a bot to help a strange bot was exceedingly rare when not on a battlefield.

When the cat went outside, Loyal Star decided it was time to return to the Metal Planet and find out when his Military stint was. Soon enough he would be back in his full size body.

*****
Orbis

With the ponies now sterilized, these foals would be the last ones who knew what Orbis had once been like, and that ponies living here had once been free. Noone, pony or Decepticon, wanted to wake up General Carjack; only Megatron could do this with impunity. Even fellow High Generals only woke up General Carjack in emergencies.

Cybertron

"The Fist is a great name-and now we need to do our first raid and to get our vaults full of useful, tasty Energon. I've picked a pony nation first because from what I found out about it, the security is not all that good. And second, ponies are now utterly terrified of Decepticons, even more then other biologicals are. If we drop chaff in one place, we can distract any fighters that the ponies have to the wrong place, and then we'll get as much oil as we can." If our raids are successful, you will be happy to have me as the leader. It's funny that you were trying to reduce me to scrap before. "Has anyone seen Nuke? He should take part in our raid as well, he deservers success and a full Energon vault as much as the rest of you do."

The Megatron Mansion

Megatron idlely thought that if Loyal Star had done his first military service stint he would already have ordinated him as a Priest. His useless parents had at least named their foal well if nothing else. He went to the Temple of Lost Souls and personally used their souls to pardon the Main Foundary. He decided to find out where the pony afterlife was and asked a Paranormal bot to get a portal opened to it, one that would not shut before it was supposed to and call him when that was done. All those pony souls that were enjoying themselves would, he hoped, soon be trapped in soul gems.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Vallermoore
A Once-Proud House
"Thank our Divine Leader for the help," the spy said. "I just realized that as a god, he could do an effective curse. All I did was ask him; the decision to actually do it was his own. That said, I had been watching them for a long time. While your original surprise showed that they had kept some of their worst traits from your view, they had plenty. They were always going on to each other about how impure and 'unponyist' someone or other was. And of course, they hated everything Decepticon. They couldn't bring themselves to even consider that those alicorns had started the war and deserved what they got!"

"All of it had irked me greatly already, and it was all I could do not to break cover and blast them when they slammed the door on you. I ended up asking for the curse instead, not content to just sit on the windowsill and watch anymore."

"Speaking of their money and this house, you should check back with the bank in a week or two. Now that the targets of the curse are dead, it's very likely that the 'bank error' will suddenly be discovered and fixed. Then you can pay off the bank or refinance it. Oh, and don't worry about the disownment when it comes to the assets of the estate. They had indeed sent a letter with a new will to their lawyer, to write you out of the inheritance, but a cat got it out of the mailbox and then used it as a scratching board until it looked like it had gone through a government shredder." The cat-spy winked and blatantly grinned. "After that happened, they went broke and couldn't afford to have a lawyer file a replacement, and they were so distracted by their misfortunes that they never got around to filing it themselves. So, you're still the heir, and it's all yours. Thank the Divine Leader, who looks out for his loyalists and brings suffering to his enemies."

Even though Loyal Star had thought that his parents living on the street would have been a fitting thing, the fact was that people who had connections like they did could usually connect with some place to stay within a few hours. Their still-Ponyist, and equally judgmental and anti-Decepticon, friends likely would have sympathized with them completely when they mentioned that they were evicted because of a Decepticon curse. Being blasted, however, wasn't something they could get out of with "connections."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron
Military Intake Office

After Loyal Star returned to Cybertron and had mind-transferred back to his usual body, he went into a Military Intake Office to see when his stint was scheduled to begin. When he entered, he saw a big bot with MILITARY INTAKE OFFICER on his wings in an extremely businesslike font. This was printed on a decal; like others, he didn't want "someone else's name" stuck on his body all the time.

The officer gave him a stiff salute. "Sit down there, conscript, and we'll get you into the system," he ordered, assuming that Loyal Star was there to report for a stint rather than just ask about it.

Loyal Star quickly said that he wasn't a conscript yet, and once the officer processed that unexpected response, continued on to ask when his stint was scheduled to start. The officer then looked at an external computer and typed a few things, bringing up the proper screen for the next step.

"We have to make sure that you're really you before we can give out that information," he said. "Put your hand on the mechanometric reader, and once your body vibrations are matched, I'll get the date for you." Dates were not given out without IDs because if the military did that, domestic raiders would too easily be able to find out when houses would be empty for prolonged periods.

When Loyal Star put his hand on the special pad that was set on the desk, it automatically initiated a search in a less-restricted program on the DomIntel Supercomputer. Soon, the Supercomputer sent the ID back to the Intake Office, where it showed a match with the claimed identity.

"You're due in two weeks," the officer said. "Didn't Immigration give you the date? I'll have to file a complaint about that! Otherwise, immigrants are going to start getting in trouble for not reporting in on time." He proceeded to give a rundown of the intake procedure, noting that first-term conscripts were to sign in between 12PM and 3PM and that Loyal Star shouldn't bother taking along any personal effects other than, perhaps, a few games. "Be sure to bring a deck of cards," he added. "Software isn't trusted, and it's a pain to try to crowd around a single external screen. But everyone can be sure that playing cards are okay, and they can be passed around, so it's easy to play with a group."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Elsewhere on Cybertron

When Nuke's absence was noted, the others first looked around and then began trying to contact him with their communicators. There was no answer.

"Hey, don't nukes make an EMP blast?" Buzz, the smartest of the new gang said almost rhetorically. "I bet he didn't get out when his nuke got blown up on him!"

The others looked at each other, somewhat horrified, but not like they would be if they expected Nuke to be gone forever. There were a couple of beats of silence, and then Brutal suggested that they go to Nuke's house and look for him. "He could have decided to play a game and try to take his mind off of his unfortunate result," he said. By the sound of his voice, it seemed as if there might be something more there - something he didn't want to discuss in public.

Soon, they flew - following Brutal, who knew the address - to Nuke's place. It was an old house, and hadn't had all of its needed repairs, but was still structurally sound. "We haven't been able to do all of the repairs on our houses that they need because the old boss was such a loser!" Haula groused as they landed.

After banging loudly on the door for several minutes, Haula gave up and turned to the others. "I think it's what we're all thinkin'," he announced. "Time ta kick it in and get that ultimate game disk of his!" Even now, where nobody seemed to be listening, he didn't want to say what he was after outright. However, all of the old gang members knew that for them, an 'ultimate game disk' was the code for a save disk. Haula, apparently, knew where to find it.

Most people who wanted to break into a Decepticon house would try to blast, blowtorch, or lockpick their way in. Haula, however, had no need for that. He went up to one of the lowest windows and began to kick it repeatedly. Its impact-"proof" material turned out to merely have been impact-resistant after about 10 full-powered blows, and soon, the giant tank-puller bashed the now-bent material open and climbed in. The others soon followed, and after entering, Brutal took up a position at window to discourage random looters.

Haula quickly made his way to a large picture of Cybertron from space that hung in the living room area. Then, he laughed. "Oh no, he didn't hide it here. Everyone knows to look behind a picture. I'd suggest that none of you do that - what's behind this picture is an automatic blaster set to hit anyone who peeks here right in the face!" After he said this, he crouched down and began to pry at the floor. Nothing happened despite many attempts. Finally, he got out a screwdriver-like tool and started using that instead of his fingertips. After about a half hour, he finally got results. The spot on the floor popped back just a tiny bit, and once that happened, he was easily able to stick the screwdriver into the new slot and pop a square completely off. There, shining in pristine condition, was Nuke's latest save disk.

"He'll have to hide these somewhere else now," Haula said, looking just a bit sheepish. "It's obviously a hiding place now because I gouged it a bit trying to get in. But I think he'll forgive me, considering that he'd be permanently deactivated if I didn't know where the disk was!"

Soon, MasterBlaster and Haula were in Nuke's workshop, and Haula set up the disk reader and restoration cables that he got out of a nearby cabinet. After a fairly long time, the data transfer was complete.

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

Decepticon Afterlife
Waiting Area

Nuke paced around, pissed that he had lost and now pissed about having to wait so long. A Decepticon angel had told him that, due to a new change in policy, anyone who was deactivated but had a Save Disk would not be processed for an entire day. Megatron, the angel told him, was sick of spending CPU power on realm assignments only to have the work undone by someone who did a restoration on the spirit. Now, he wanted to be more sure that the dead were going to stay that way before bothering.

Sure enough, after many hours, a portal opened that was not to an afterlife realm. With nothing else to look at, Nuke went over to examine it further. As soon as he got close enough, he heard the rev of his own engine and simultaneously felt himself be pulled through.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Nuke's House

Unlike the other Decepticon to be returned to life this way, Nuke remembered very little of being dead and none of how he had gotten that way. Therefore, it was a surprise to him when he was told that MasterBlaster was now the leader of the gang. He was even more surprised to learn just how he had been deactivated, and was clearly embarrassed about having lost to his own nuke. Still, he was grateful to Haula and held no ill will about having to replace his super-secret floor tile with one that had no tool marks. When asked what death was like, all Nuke could report was that he vaguely remembered a lot of waiting.

Once he had calmed down, had some Energon, and given Haula a big glass of it too, he invited everyone to sit down. The sofa's covering was worn, and they had to be careful to avoid spots of bare metal, but it had been cleaned. "This is what we got for paying attention to that other guy," Nuke said angrily. "You'd better do better than him, because I'm sick of this worn-through stuff!" He leaned forward aggressively. "So. What's your plan, Mr. Ambitious?!"

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

Portal Asteroid

The scientists at the asteroid, having gotten Megatron's portal order, tuned their equipment to detect the souls of recently-dead ponies. Thanks to the large amount of ponies in known areas, it was easy to find a steady stream of them. "I can never get over how many biologicals just die all the time," one remarked. "Over 150,000 sapients die every day on a planet with a population like Earth's, and violence only accounts for a small part of that number." On the screen, streams of what appeared to be pony ghosts flew from Vallermoore to several specific spots before disappearing. Meanwhile, equally-large streams of human ghosts went to other places. The scientists took note of where the humans were going; this information might someday be helpful for an invasion of some of the human afterlife realms.

After being sure of the ponies' natural portal points, the scientists took a read of the energy that was - for a microsecond per pony soul - detectable as they went through. Once this was done, they realized that there were several possible frequencies that were associated with pony afterlives. "They obviously don't all go to the same place," one commented. "I wonder who or what is making the determination now that the alicorns are dead? Some sort of leftover administrators? Or is it automatic?"

"The bigger question is which one we should hit," said another. "We'd better radio Megatron and get more direction!"

Once contacted, Megatron had a fast answer. "Look for the place the average pony ends up. Most sapients aren't completely good or completely evil, but somewhere in between. So wherever the average ones go, that'll be the most populated realm, and the one with the most ponies for us to capture."

Megatron didn't intend to put most of the pony ghosts into soul gems. He had considered it, but he thought of a better plan. He would turn them into slaves in the afterlife. Since he had the power to be tangible in relation to the ghosts and could bestow that solidity to his troops, he could actually chip them all up and then use them for whatever purposes were strategic. Alternatively, he could invade the realm in much the same way that he'd invade a planet, and spread the Decepticon Empire's imperialism not only across space, but across spiritual realms.

"I've never checked whether those in a post-death realm could reproduce more of their kind while there," Megatron mused. "It will be interesting to find out if they do, or if these realms are normally just used as holding tanks for perished souls. If reproduction is possible, we can set up Cloning Centers and Educational Centers there just like anywhere else..." Megatron didn't tell the researchers his reasons for being interested in doing this, just in case the answers to his initial wonderings turned out to be negative. Still, he figured that if he couldn't find out during an excursion to a pony realm, he could find out in one of the Decepticon afterlife realms easily enough.

[Vallermoore]

Vallermoore
A Once-Proud House

"It's a good thing you didn't break cover and probably lose your Forintel position," Loyal Star said. "Having heard what they were like, I'm happy that I blasted them. They thought themselves to be better then everyone and everypony else. If Celestia had not started trouble over a...over a nark, Equestria would probably have lasted for decades or even centuries before we conquered it. Who starts a war over a nark anyway? That's like starting a war over used oil filter paper, or from a pony point of war, over rotten apples." He said, with his eyes raised to the heavens "Thank you, Leader Megatron, for placing a curse on my parents and bringing them low." And he meant it too. In time, before he started conscription, he would get the financial odds and ends tied up so he didn't lose the house and money on Vallermoore.

Cybertron
Military Intake Office

"Immigration must have forgot to tell me. If this is not just a one off, some luckless immigrant is going to have Domintel annoyed with them, which they don't deserve if it's Immigration's fault. Thank you for the information."

*****
Two weeks later having brought some cards and a few of his favourite games, Loyal Star reported in at the right place for his military training and his first conscription stint. Whilst the other bots were waiting for their trainers to show up and chatted a little amongst themselves, he introduced himself as "Star." If any bots suspected he might have another name, they didn't ask him about it. It was bad manners to pry into another bot's secrets, even in a situation where blasting was forbidden. He was careful to keep his pony origins a secret; after the recent wars against the pony race, most bots were very anti-pony indeed, and he didn't want to make future enemies and have to fight to the body or even to the death later on. He wanted to spread Megatronism once he was ordained, outside the Empire or on the very fringes, as a missionary. Not for him the idea of some safe Temple place somewhere preaching to the converted.

He would give away the fact he was an immigrant from somewhere later on when he didn't de facto mutiny like the other bots when they were given their first orders. Privately he thought that if either Vallermooreian or Equestrian new recruits had acted like that, the whole lot would have been caged in military prison on mutiny charges. To the trainers it was nothing new-they were used to it. And they didn't apply the full harshness of Decepticon military law yet either; if they did from day one, they would have some very happy foundry bots and no Military to conquer the universe with.

*****

Elsewhere on Cybertron

When they realized that Nuke had been exploded and killed, they decided to go to his house. Whilst the house was solid, it was not as good as it could have been. Had it been on Coltan, it would have been rusting away. Haula explained that it was this way because of their useless former leader. Soon enough they reactivated Nuke who was rescued from a rather dull afterlife waiting room. Thankfully for MasterBlaster, Nuke accepted him at least for now as the gang leader. "This is what we got for paying attention to that other guy.You'd better do better than him, because I'm sick of this worn-through stuff! So. What's your plan, Mr. Ambitious?!"

MasterBlaster explained about the large refinery on a pony planet which probably didn't even have missile batteries protecting it, and how the ponies would be terrified at first when they showed up as they would think it might be the start of an invasion. If they dropped chaff far from their target, the military forces would go there instead. "There will be oil for all of us. New sofas, new games, house repair, we will be rich bots again."

Portal Asteroid

"Biologicals have such weak bodies that they fail after less then a century, even if never subjected to any violence. I'm so happy I'm a Decepticon," another scientist said.

They found three main afterlives. The first had a tenth of souls going there. When they briefly opened a portal just to see what it was like, it was one where ponies were frozen and tormented by Windigos. One windigo got into the lab and they had to quickly blast it into rain, shut the portal and turn on the heating for a few minutes. A major windigo invasion so near Cybertron would have been a disaster. The second had another tenth going there, and when they readied their blasters and had a quick look, it was a pony afterlife for the best ponies, the pony equivalent of the Land of Endless Energon. They left these pampered pony souls alone for now, closed the portal, and opened a reasonably stable portal to the main pony afterlife full of billions of pony souls. After checking that there were no nasty surprises, they radioed Megatron with the news that all those pony souls were there for the taking.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Megatron detected Loyal Star's thanks and smiled. Like anyone else who wasn't glitched, he enjoyed being appreciated. He did note the ex-pony's comment about his parents "thinking they were better," and made a note to be sure to clarify later that it wasn't so much that they thought they were "better" in general, but that they were tut-tutting holier-than-thous that had rankled him and his spy. That, and of course, that they had dared to try to act as if becoming a Decepticon was some kind of bad thing! It was the latter aspect that Megatron had found so insulting and caused him to put a large amount of power onto that curse. How dare they insult him and call him a devil when he hadn't even invaded their rock, and then basically tell their offspring that he should have allowed himself to grow old and die!!? If they had been Decepticons, he would have had them melted down slowly with their pain chips soldered into the active state.

Usually Megatron didn't pay a lot of mind to being called a devil - it was a common comment from primitive planets whose populations still thought of everything as being either divine or devilish rather than just technologically advanced - but to get that noise from someone on a planet he'd never attacked was another matter. Even now, Megatron partly wished that he had caused them some sort of painful demise. He'd only held back because he wanted to see for sure where Loyal Star's loyalty really was. If he hadn't blasted them, that'd mean that he was actually more loyal to them than him, and since they were opponents of the Decepticons, that wouldn't have been acceptable. Megatron would never have been able to be sure if he wouldn't someday be convinced by them to deconvert and then end up as a spy or worse.

~~~~~~~~

Not long after the final confrontation, Loyal Star checked back with Vallermoore and found that, just as the spy had said, the bank error had been found and rectified. An extra payment of 10,000 chingchings had been added to the balance "for the inconvenience" - a paltry sum, actually, considering all of the trouble the error had caused. Even better was what he heard from the police. They were convinced that the murders were committed by a "rogue Decepticon," thanks to forensics identifying the cause of death as energy-blaster fire, and that the killer had "impersonated" Loyal Star to gain access to the house. "His arrival is on the security tape," the police said, showing a scene of him walking up to the door. "At first we thought it was you, actually, but when we checked the records of your credit cards, we found that you had been on the other side of the continent watching the game between the National Footy League and the All Greens."

Loyal Star uh-huh'd along and activated his body-language-control module to hide what would have been a combination of a clueless wtf and a heheh reaction. Clearly the ForIntel spy he had talked to earlier had been at work during the last week or so!

Soon, Loyal Star had filed the papers needed to claim the estate, and everything in it became officially his. Now, he could go ahead and sell the house or keep it and use it as a vacation home. He was about to use a substantial part of the cash in the account to bring a favorable end to the foreclosure proceedings, too, but then he remembered that as a Decepticon citizen, he had the privilege of having that handled by the Decepticon Interplanetary Bank's electronic funds transfer service for just one Cubelet per chingching. In this way, he was able to not only keep the house, but spend very little actual money to do so.

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

Once in the Military, Loyal Star found it much easier than he expected. This wasn't because the training had been made easier. Instead, it was likely his eagerness to be a good soldier that made it seem like that. He quite enjoyed all of the synchronized flying lessons and even some of the work on the ground. He was, however, dismayed at the initial disdain for discipline the others had and thought that they didn't show enough respect to the concept of keeping the Divine Leader's empire strong and mighty. Soon enough, however, the new troops began to fall into line - after being dented repeatedly.

The trainers Loyal Star encountered were glad to have an immigrant under their command. It was always far easier to train one! While they knew that he started out as a pony, they never said so. This would keep others from knowing exactly what sort of biological he had been unless he admitted it, though everyone could tell he was an immigrant by his willingness to go along with orders without a preliminary dominance attempt.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Nuke's House

"Ponies, huh? I sure hope you're right about them not being all armed up. Thanks to the Decepticon Military rampaging on pony worlds, they might have nuclear SAMs by now! At least, that's what I'd order if I was their leader..." Brutal said skeptically. Still, the others agreed that they would - carefully - approach this planet, and if everything looked defeatable, they would go ahead and raid it.

As this was discussed, MasterBlaster secretly checked his AEDP on raid gang leadership. There, he found that the leader of a raid gang was expected to finance the excursion out of his own vault. The investment would be recovered as long as the raid was successful. If it wasn't, the gang members wouldn't be out any money. This, the AEDP said, made people far more willing to go along with what the leader said. Still, it warned, too many unsuccessful raids would result in being deposed (as MasterBlaster already knew).

~~~~~~~~~~

Portal Asteroid

"Excellent," Megatron said upon getting the news. "For now, I will send two ForIntel scouts over to you. You are to let them through so that they can see what it's like there. They are to check the general conditions, any defenses, and the geographic lay of the land. They'll need to go in far enough to see if the area is planet-like, with multiple continents on a spherical outer surface, or if it is more like a single huge chunk of flat land. Also, they'll need to find out what kind of government is there. There is surely a government. All sapient, social creatures develop some sort of power structure when in proximity to each other, and with billions of them there - more likely trillions of them since the realm draws from multiple planets - there will be a big, established one. Unless, of course, they've devolved into tiny tribes and chaos instead..."

Megatron closed the connection and began doing other things as he awaited the report from ForIntel. Soon, the two promised agents arrived and hopped on through the portal. It was their first trip to another realm, but they had done hundreds of high-camo scouting missions in the mundus during their careers.

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron, Military Training Base

Loyal Star was very pleased that the Forintel agent had been so kind to him when he didn't know him. Soon enough he reported for his military training, and all went well until there were just eight days left of it before they started their first stint. It was then that a bot named Crusher came up to him in the room where the trainees played cards together in their free time. "You used to be a biological, a weak, worthless biological, and I bet you used to be a pony too. That's why you were always so well behaved, and goody-goody...almost Autobot like! Immigration made a major mistake letting you in." Although he longed to try and blast this bot to pieces of scrap, Loyal Star kept his temper. He knew Decepticon military law; outside the military things were normally settled with blasters or perhaps poisoned Energon or something of that sort, but it was a breach of Decepticon military law for a soldier on duty to blast another soldier. Whilst he was certainly not going to complain to the trainers either, as that would be grassing, he also knew that Milintel watched quietly what happened on military bases, and that this bot was being recorded, no doubt. Not only had Crusher used serious fighting words-suggesting a Decepticon was like an Autobot was an outrageous insult, but by bad mouthing Immigration, he was indirectly bad mouthing the Decepticon government policy and Megatron . Megatron himself had set up Immigration after all.

Loyal Star's engine ran roughly but he got it under control and simply said politely to this highly xenophobic bot " I think you need to visit Debugging." Then he turned his back on Crusher and went back to the card game, half expecting to be blasted in the back despite where he was. He had never told any bot about who or what he used to be; a few had been curious but he had just told them that he wanted to keep his origins to himself. His fans ran as he tried to work out why Crusher acted like this. Was it some kind of test to see how well he obeyed military law? Was Crusher in need of urgent Debugging? Or was Crusher just a suspicious xenophobe?
He comforted himself with the thought that by acting like this, Crusher was almost certainly going to have Milintel coming down harshly on him. Loyal Star had neither said nor done anything at all to deserve being dreadfully insulted in a situation where he was not allowed to fight back.

*****
Nuke's House

Brutal was skeptical but they were willing to give MasterBlaster's plan a chance. He was their leader after all and he had visited the planet as a human; although things might well have changed radically since Equestria and then Orbis had fallen to the Decepticons. There were at least a few other pony planets out there, and they might be arming themselves with the best weaponry that they could. Soon enough after MasterBlaster had brought a few Energon Cubes for each bot, they left Cybertron, cloaked up, and approached the planet with care. Noone wanted to just rush in and lose a body, or even worse, lose a body and get jammed as well.

*****
Pony Afterlife

The bots for now flew in heavily cloaked, although they were ready if need be to enter in sapient pony android bodies too in case that was needed. Underneath them was a huge grassy plain, full of pony villages and small towns. None of the houses here were falling apart, and all the ponies they saw were healthy and happy. By flying up and outwards, they found the world was a Discworld with rivers and seas too-one that did not exist on the material world, and that it was slowly growing in size to fit more pony souls. There were billions of ponies here.

They also found the pony seat of government easily, a huge castle many times the size of the old Canterlot and, they noted, with multiple batteries of cannons. Clearly, the pony afterlife had some sort of military force, and whilst it was likely to be pretty weak, it was big. And large numbers of unicorns acting together could seriously damage a Decepticon. Here there were billions of unicorns.
The Government turned out to be no less then fifteen alicorns. Alicorns, to an average Decepticon, were bad news. An alicorn's magic could slice an ordinary Decepticon raider in half. After checking out all sorts of things, they decided to ask their superiors for permission to infiltrate as ordinary ponies to see if they could find out stuff that way, and for a third agent to infiltrate the castle to spy at a high level and overhear the alicorns. There might be hidden defences that they had no idea about.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base

Soon after returning from the Pony Afterlife, the spies disguised themselves as trainers and came to a nondescript conference room at this base. About an hour later, Leader Megatron arrived under the guise of wanting to inspect general operations. After plenty of looking around, he came to the conference room where his agents awaited. This, all involved hoped, would be a sufficient cover for the meeting.

Once the door of the room was closed and it was scanned for bugs, they got down to business. The spies presented their reports, which Megatron examined with interest.

"So they have a huge nation going on there!" Megatron said after reading everything and watching the many video clips they had made. "It will require a full-scale war to take it over..." Such an invasion would be momentous in more ways than one. Not only would it be an invasion of an inter-realmal location, but it would be the first time he had outright taken over - rather than merely raided - another cohesive nation mostly because it was there. Even now, though, he had strategy in mind.

When they asked about infiltrating under deep cover as ordinary ponies, Megatron quickly approved the plan. "Not only will I send you two, but an entire team of agents. 20 of them. All of you will work completely independently. That way, if someone is discovered, they won't be able to hack, torture, or otherwise get more names out of them - because they won't know any other names! Of course, if you are ever in such an unfortunate position as to be asked, you are to follow the usual strategy of lying out your exhaust pipe and blaming people whose removal would held us."

"As is typical, none of you will be informed of any overall Decepticon plans, again so that it is impossible for an unfortunate event to result in the revealing of those plans. And, again as usual, you are to lie if caught and interrogated. Now, listen up. Here's the cover story." The spies sat attentively as Megatron's eyes began to glow. He made no attempt to hide his up-to-plenty face since he was in friendly company. "If an unfortunate result happens and you end up captured, you are first to resist telling them anything at all. They won't believe you if you're too eager to release the 'big secrets!' Then, after a sufficient amount of stalling or pretending to actually feel tortured by whatever they do, you tell them that you're there to try to set up a drug syndicate and get your bribes in order. Go ahead and tell them - if you have unfortunate results - that you're part of the IOPC. Most of those creatures will have gone there while the IOPC was still a thing, so they'll be more likely to believe that than if you claim to be ICC."

Soon, the agents left, changed their appearances in a strategic spot, and sneaked back into the Intelligence Headquarters building from the Underworks. Once there, they assembled a team of 20 and briefed them on the plan. Next, they had a military cargo-bot bring 20 unmarked boxes to the portal asteroid. The boxes, containing ultra-realistic pony bodies complete with internal micro-labs generating real Equus sapiens blood cells, waited at the asteroid for those who would be mind-transferring to them.

Later, 20 "soldiers" arrived. Once inside the small (for Decepticons) research building, they did the mind-transfer and took off, one by one, through the portal. After they got through, the scientists went ahead and closed the opening. Keeping it open when it wasn't in active use was insecure, but more importantly, they wanted there to be nothing strange showing if someone on the other side noticed a bunch of new ponies pop "out of nowhere" from a place other than the natural warp point pony souls usually used.

~~~~~~~~~~

MasterBlaster's Raid Target Planet

To the surprise of the gang members, the planet seemed to be totally unaware of what had been going on elsewhere in the universe. At the chosen refinery, only regular police patrolled. About 50 miles away, however, an air force base sat with about 50 fighters ready to scramble.

It turned out that this base wasn't meant to protect the refinery, though it certainly could do so if it became aware of a Decepticon incursion. Its intended purpose, though, was to support its nation's army in a civil war that had broken out. This war was a religious one between those who were still loyal to ponyism and others who had noticed the lack of alicorns and wanted to declare the religion dead. The theocratic State was on the side of the ponyists, mainly because it was afraid of chaos - and a loss of its authoritative strength - if the religion's behavioral and moral teachings lost their sway.

Here, however, the ponyists hadn't learned just what had happened to their alicorns - the planet was too remote for most to be able to pick up transmissions from space, and especially not ones they weren't purposely tuning into. This meant that they weren't enraged at the Decepticons, but instead, held many theories about the issue. Many felt that they had been abandoned, and some extreme cults claimed that the solution was extreme penance. Very few suspected the unthinkable: that the alicorns had lost a conflict and been killed. Even they, however, were more prone to suspect changeling interference than giant robots from space. A few pogroms against changelings had been committed by some who were "sure" that the age-old enemies of the ponies had somehow managed to murder their goddesses.

~~~~~~~~~~

Military Training Base

It didn't take long for Loyal Star's suspicion about being blasted in the back to be proven true. Crusher saw Loyal Star turning his back as a grave insult, and unlike Loyal Star, he wasn't willing to ignore it in favor of obeying military law. "Turn your back on ME, will you?! I'll fix you, you no-good mine cart hauler!" Crusher yelled with rage.

Two strong blasts, one from each of his weapons, pounded into Loyal Star's back and seared their way through it to his motion-boards. With his motion-boards offline, Loyal Star couldn't do much of anything until his system compensated and shifted motion processing to the mind boards - and that was time he didn't have. Crusher immediately took aim at his mind-boards, intending to blast them into oblivion before the compensation sequence was complate, but in that short bit of time, two other conscripts had jumped up and grabbed his arms. This spoiled his aim and caused him to hit Loyal Star in the back of the neck with one blast while missing entirely with the other one. The neck strike, however, cut through Loyal Star's main command cable and rendered him immobile from the neck down.

Now, a brawl broke out as the interfering conscripts and Crusher fought with each other. Loud footsteps could be heard coming down the hall - two trainers had heard the commotion and would soon arrive to restore order.

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

Invisius

Masher's small town had become much more advanced in recent months, and now, a generator - powered by a water wheel in a nearby river - provided power for the ever-increasing manufacturing capabilities of the group. This allowed them to make a proper factory-style run of the first, and most basic, parts for their bodies: The support struts that helped strengthen their limbs. These were basically pieces of thick steel rebar and required little machining other than what was needed to make them into that shape and provide a connection point at each end. Still, it was a hopeful development. Everyone could now see how, with several more tech upgrade iterations, they would be able to make every part they needed.

As they worked on this, they also worked out how reproduction would be done. Rather than have each race make new bots according to its own kind, they would create a new race that incorporated the best of both originals. When the specs were complete, the old ones would also mind-transfer into bodies made according to those specs. "Dis'll ensure dat dere's neva a race war between us," Masher said. "Wheneva dere's more den one race, dere ends up bein' a war. One side eitha smelts or enslaves da otta one." He went on to tell the Coltanis how Cybertron used to have two races, and how war broke out as each group developed a culture incompatible with the other one. "We eventually got so different dat we weren't two races, but two species!" Masher said forcefully. "An' biologicals got da same kinda t'ing goin'. We can avoid dat easily just by creatin' a Unified Design Specification an' goin' wit' dat."

After some convincing, the others had agreed. They, too, knew of worlds where everyone was divided by design spec, sometimes along lines that seemed very insignificant. While everyone in the new nation was getting along well now, they wanted to ensure that it stayed that way even 1,000 years later.

~~~~~~~~~~

Later, Masher got out his radio and set it to receive only. As a receiver, it would transmit nothing, so it would be completely untraceable.

It was after he got curious enough to tune into the Decepticon Government News Channel - at first, to see if any troops were reported coming his way - that he learned about the successful raiding and invasion of Orbis. That was the first time he'd actually felt sad about not being on Cybertron, and once he told the others, the other Decepticons became somber as well.

Still, many weren't sad, but instead frustrated and angry. "Someday we'll be bigger and better than them!" they vowed, "and then we'll take over all of their rocks for ourselves!" Masher, however, knew that it would likely take a miracle to do that, though he didn't say even a word to that effect. For now, they still had to focus on getting their technology levels up to the point of even being able to produce a computer chip - and do so before their existing ones wore out.

[Vallermoore]

Invisius

Red Diamond said "Your idea is excellent, and all we Coltanis ask is that the best parts of the Coltani body be preserved as well as the best parts of the Decepticon body. We are perfectly happy to do that; we just don't want to entirely disappear and become Decepticons. If we were to stay as two different branches of robotic life, there might be a branch war someday. Not good for any of us if that happened. Certainly, for example, the eyes will be Decepticon; your cameras are so much better then ours are in the dark. But there may be really good parts in Coltani bots as well and that would stay. Our outer parts are more rain resistant, because we had to face bad weather from the start where we were living on Coltan." It was decided that when new bodies could be made, they would examine each major part from both groups and keep the best for stronger, healthier bots. Biologicals might have thought that the Decepticon/Coltani alliance would have fallen apart very quickly in a welter of blaster fire, but this had not happened. Neither type of bot had done so much as point a blaster at the other one. The Coltanis were all strong Masher loyalists; so were the IOPC Decepticons, and both had no reason to dislike each other, did not want to displease Masher, and needed each other to survive here. As they only had a limited number of games, they often amused each other with stories when off duty.

Masher felt sad about not being able to invade Orbis with the rest of the Decepticon people That was what he really missed; being able to invade planets with the rest of the Decepticon Nation.

*****
Pony Afterlife

All wounds and diseases that had killed the original pony did not exist in the afterlife, and all the ponies were no older then the prime of life, which for those agents who were uncloaked, would make getting a cover story straight much easier. Most took android unicorn or pegasus bodies, with only a few as earth ponies. A lot of information could be gained without direct spying; to get into the castle on the other hand and learn the high level information, they could use cloaking, or if the ponies had modern tech as they most likely did, they could transform into that. After the failed invasion of the Christian afterlife, Megatron wanted to know what he was facing. Each pony android body had a cutie mark.

When they entered this pony afterlife, some were uncloaked and were greeted by the others and given fine new homes for free. Clearly this place was a heaven of sorts, if not the very highest one. When they were asked how they died, they said they had been worked to death as slaves of the Decepticons. They got their first interesting information, when the ponies, after saying how much they disliked Decepticons, said that they had defences; many SAM batteries, many thousands of cannons, some with exploding shells, a volunteer militia of three million or so, a million from each of the pony races, and something that the alicorns had told them was a secret but that would drive the Decepticons from their world if they ever did show up here. These deep cover agents were inwardly surprised and a little disgusted about how important friendship was in what in effect was the Pony Way. Friendship was not unknown on Cybertron; the longer-lived small raid gangs in particular were often pretty close to each other, but once bots became fully sapient it was rare, both because of the danger of being hacked, robbed or blasted, and because most Decepticons were pretty solitary in general. Ponies made almost as big a thing of it as the Decepticons made of loyalty to the nation. One bot, when he knew he was unwatched, quietly radioed another agent who was back on Cybertron using a special internal covert radio, in code and in Binary on top of that, that he was surprised that the ponies didn't have a "Friendship Domintel," so eager were ponies to befriend new arrivals.

From a Decepticon point of view, this friendship thing taken to extremes was slightly sickening.

Other bots infiltrated the castle and one managed to creep cloaked past the guards and into the alicorn throne room. He heard one alicorn, who went by the name of Teela, tell the others that she had found a spell that would repulse the Decepticons if they ever invaded here in the same way that Changelings had once been thrown out of Canterlot, with a fast moving force field made of crystalized love and friendship. But it would need at least seven of the fourteen known alicorns present to cast it with success. With three alicorns in the higher pony realm and unreachable and with Celestia and Luna in Tartarus, pony hell, for the destruction they had brought down on everything pony, she reminded them that they were the only known alicorns in the universe and, whilst it was very unlikely that the Decepticons would come here, they would need to guard their lives with care.

*****
MasterBlaster's Raid Target Planet

With their radios catching transmissions from the planet about the war, MasterBlaster had an idea, but he had to hope the other bots would share it. "What about if I and Buzz were to get a couple of alicorn-like android bodies made, and then we were to take over a large part of this planet, with the rest of you helping us? We could then take over a large part of the planet's resources-not just a single refinery-but 25% of the oil from each refinery in the area that the pro alicorn ponies control? Just imagine the Energon that would amount to-not even raided, but freely if rather grudgingly paid in tax because they would think their own alicorns were ordering them to. No need to face a single SAM. We would be rich far beyond what a single raid would bring in. I'd pay for the alicorn bodies with my own Cubes of course. With the sums of oil we could bring in, we could be each almost as rich as Masher used to be, Certainly in the top 10%, maybe in the top 1% of Decepticon society. It would be an amazing heist-a large part of a planet, maybe if we pulled it off the whole planet, willingly providing us with oil. We could buy fine mansions on the edge of the Government District; maybe even inside if wealth was enough to let us live there."

"Of course, sooner or later we would have to give our planet to Megatron, when He took an interest in it, such is the Decepticon Way. But I don't think He would mind us making ourselves wealthy first-there would still be plenty of oil left for Him to exploit directly. He never minds scams after all, and the Energon we would take would go into Cybertron's economy and ultimately back to Megatron, so he won't consider us traitors. We're not about to turn the planet into another Coltan, just make ourselves wealthy. When we showed ourselves to the pro alicorn ponies and ordered them to believe, you could help turn back those holdouts still fighting, and then I could tell the ponies that in exchange for your help, you would need to be paid. As long as we were not too greedy, the ponies would pay up as they would think their alicorns would be ordering it. Just think of all that wealth if my plan works. Fine mansions. Several new bodies with the strongest armour and the finest blasters. Energon Supreme to drink, and all manner of games. When one of you wanted to Code, that would not be a problem. And you would throw it away in favour of a single raid on one refinery?"

MasterBlaster could not see the looks on the other bot's faces as they were both in plane mode and cloaked, but Haula had a dreamy look in his eyes as he thought of everything that could be gained. Buzz was somewhat skeptical, as even if the plan worked, there were possible pitfalls. Domintel might get to semi-hear of it, get the wrong end of the stick, and think they were really acting as mercs for real-something that was treason as Decepticons were not supposed to help biologicals, much less alicorns. Or the war might be so big that MasterBlaster was unable to quell it even impersonating Celestia, with another bot impersonating Luna. The other bots were certainly interested in the plan, but MasterBlaster might need to convince them a little more, as he was a new boss of this gang. And if the whole thing was a fiasco, or worse got Domintel after them, at the very least MasterBlaster might be thrown out of the gang. Still, the thought of all that Energon was extremely tempting. Enough to be as wealthy as kings.

*****
Military Training Base

Blasted by Crusher and unable to move, Loyal Star could do nothing except prepare to mind transfer. As a pony, he would have wanted to die in such a situation, but as a Decepticon, first, the military mechanics could fix him, and second, if need be he could mind transfer since even in his fury, Crusher was not running his jammer. He decided to stay in his body for now and see if it could be fixed. The trainers arrived and soon, Crusher had been forcibly hacked whilst a full investigation by Milintel was launched into what happened. That meant bots could give information without at the same time committing treason, and they were interviewed one by one, whilst at the same time the camera and bug information was checked.. Loyal Star was taken to the military mechanics and fixed for free, since he had been injured on duty, and soon two Milintel bots interviewed him. In a case this serious, interviews were needed to make certain no mistakes were made.

"Did you do or say anything that provoked Crusher into acting like this?"

"No, and not only that, but I kept my pony origins firmly to myself from the day I became a Decepticon. Crusher said to me You used to be a biological, a weak, worthless biological, and I bet you used to be a pony too. That's why you were always so well behaved, and goody-goody...almost Autobot like! Immigration made a major mistake letting you in." Outside the Military, I would have at the least tried to blast his body to pieces for that, but Military law prohibits it. Decepticon soldiers are not allowed to attack each other.
I had never bothered Crusher in any way, and then he started running his voice chip off for no known reason. He almost outright called me an Autobot! I did say to him " I think you need to visit Debugging." And then went back to my card game. If you check the other interviews, the camera footage and the base's bugs, they will back me up."

Milintel did indeed do all this and found Loyal Star was speaking the truth, and had been grossly insulted and blasted without provocation. Using the term Autobot to refer to a Decepticon was one of the worst possible insults, as it was a treason accusation. A check of Loyal Star's Domintel record revealed nothing remotely treasonous. In fact, such was his loyalty to everything Decepticon that he had blasted his biological pony parents for bad mouthing the Decepticons! Loyal Star had gained a Silver Stripe, although the reason was classified to all below the rank of High General. Whatever the reason was though, it showed that as a civilian Loyal Star had done something useful to the nation. Silver Stripes were not all that common. The base general was told about what happened. That night Loyal Star went to bed as normal, whilst Crusher was held still and silent by the slave virus in him, and the trainers and officers met to decide his fate. Crusher was not a bot who just came in a short time ago, but was a very short time away from finishing his training, and that was important in what they decided. Every bot who started their first training was wearily expected to act up, but by now Crusher should have been well beyond that stage.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Pony Afterlife

The Decepticons did well at gathering information, but they had a very hard time pretending that they were naturally friendly. Since real ponies were, or at least, the ones who were in this realm were, this began to arouse suspicion. Most of the agents were able to copy the right attitudes soon enough to avoid trouble, but one of them wasn't able to pull it off. His body language always said "get away from me you creepers" even though he acted polite. He also clearly had to think about it and force himself when it came time to share anything, and here, that was a lot of the time.

For that "pony," an earth pony with a plow disc as a cutie mark, there would be a look into what happened when one came to government attention. Soon, a few with big-mouth marks had told the authorities over their suspicion that this was NOT a proper pony. They had not, however, realized that he might be a Decepticon instead. They had just realized that something was very "off" about this one.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Decepticons who had made their way into the castle were actually heartened by what they heard about the secret weapon. Surely nothing like that could defeat the Decepticon Military! They'd just blast through any crystallized anything and shatter it into little pieces! Diamonds, they reasoned, were hard - but easily shattered by a chisel in the right spot. The spies imagined the people of Cybertron all wearing necklaces made of little Love and Friendship Gems, which would be what the force field would become once properly attacked. It would be most interesting war booty indeed!

Despite their opinion of the force field under discussion, the spies weren't so happy to learn that there were 14 alicorns. Megatron, they figured, might end up having to fight them all at once, and that wouldn't be an easy task even for him - at least by their expectations. Still, they were only there to spy, not attempt any assassinations or sabotage. Later, the spies would report their findings back to ForIntel and the government would decide which course to take.

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

Space

"Let's land somewhere so we can discuss this without using our radios," Nuke suggested, tipping his wing at a rather large moon orbiting a barren planet. The gang agreed, and they flew there and landed on their feet. There was just enough of a mostly-nitrogen atmosphere to carry sound.

"The big problem with that," Nuke said once they were all on the ground, "is that it could end up strengthening Ponyism. If word gets out that alicorns are alive, and the news leaves that planet, other ponyists are going to get renewed faith. I've heard that on one of the planets the government is interested in, Vallermoore, Ponyism is all but a discredited cult right now. And we just invaded Orbis because they were trying to 'raise competition' against Megatron. That means they were trying to bring back alicorns!"

"If we show up acting like alicorns, Ponyists will buy in, sure," Nuke continued. "As far as anyone who gets fooled is concerned, the 'return of the alicorns' is the same whether they're real or fake - and their faith will strengthen, and they'll also tell everyone they can that the alicorns weren't dead after all. But then Megatron will send his Market Share Protection Force out to make sure that Ponyism continues to fail. And he wouldn't be happy to find that the people responsible for the new resurgence in the Ponyist faith are...us!"

Buzz listened and seemed to agree with Nuke. "That'd sure be a lot of money," he started out, "but at the Temple I go to, the Priest has made it clear how great it is that Ponyism is on its way out. If rumors of alicorns still existing got out, it'd surely go over like a pile of hot slag - and give Ponyists hope they shouldn't have. After all, to pull that off, we couldn't go 'ah ha ha suckers' and show our red eyes, or they'll just blast us and keep their oil. But that's not all. Ponyism has very specific tenets, and we would surely be tested by the high priests to make sure that we actually knew them. On top of that, the alicorns were highly magical and powerful at it. Surely the marks would demand to see some of that magic as proof! What if they ask us to turn day into night by moving the sun and the moon?! Even we Decepticons can't even get close to an active sun, let alone move it, and the moon is also too big to move."

Haula wasn't happy with all of this naysaying. "We'd only have to pull it off for a few days to score a billion barrels!" He protested. "We'd be the richest bots on Cybertron next to the ICC!" The others, though, asked him how he thought he was going to move all of that in time to really secure it. Right now, they only had their one big tanker-trailer and a few smaller carts - enough storage for a standard raid.

While MasterBlaster, as a former Ponyist, would have been able to answer any questions about the tenets of the religion, a demand for miracles would be far harder to satisfy. Plus, Nuke was right - Megatron wouldn't want even there to be even the appearance of alicorns existing. Previously-bereft Ponyists would jump on the "proof" of their "continued existence" to renew their faith and would almost surely spread the word. The details, such as a ridiculously-high new tax and some changes to the laws, would likely be lost along the grapevine.

After a bit more discussion, it was clear that both Nuke and Buzz wanted to go with the original plan of a basic raid out of fear that Megatron would see an 'alicorn return' as treason, heresy, or both - regardless of the reason for the ruse. Haula, on the other hand, seemed to have no fear of the smelting pit or Megatron's Market Share Protection Forces.

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

Military Training Base

After several interviews, and the repair of Loyal Star's heavily-damaged body, MilIntel came to its decision. Both Crusher and Loyal Star were brought into a room, where one of the top trainers delivered the verdict.

"Crusher, you came over to Loyal Star with the intention of instigating battle. It seems that you were intending to get Loyal Star into trouble for fighting, while you would pretend that you hadn't said anything 'all that bad.' However, our recordings show that you used high-grade fighting words and are therefore 50 percent at fault for the following events. You are sentenced to spend 10 days cleaning used oil sludge under the control of your enslavement virus. Also, know that the punishment would have been far worse if not for a mitigating factor."

Then, the trainer turned to Loyal Star. As he did so, two very built-up MilIntel bots took positions, one on each side of Loyal Star.

"You are also 50% responsible for the fight. As a Decepticon, it can be reasonably believed that you knew that turning your back on a hostile would provoke a battle response. This insult - essentially saying that your opponent was so weak that you didn't even have to keep an eye on him despite his obvious hostility and fully-armed status! - is as much of a provocation as calling someone an Autobot. He basically had to fight once you did that. To do otherwise would be for him to agree that he was too much of a wimp to actually do anything. Loyal Star, for taking action to worsen the situation in this way, rather than either trying to defuse the situation or at least prepare for battle, you too will be spending some time on the maintenance detail."

"This isn't the only reason for your punishment," the trainer went on. "You are also being penalized for not using your common sense as a soldier. Troops are never, ever to turn their backs on clear and present danger of any sort! As you saw, that's how you get blasted in the back! If Crusher had been a true enemy of the Nation in a war situation, you would have been killed completely, or at best, lost that body. 10 days on maintenance detail will give you plenty of time to re-read your Military Manual files for hostile situations as your body helps keep the base clean."

With that, the two MilIntel bots grabbed Loyal Star and, since he was still free to move, quickly applied an enslavement chip and changed that. Before he could say much in his defense, it took hold, and he could only stand silently next to Crusher and await more-specific orders.

Soon, those orders were given. Crusher would be spending his 10 days cleaning the big used-oil tanks of their sludge. Loyal Star, on the other hand, would be stuck sweeping the barracks and the streets - a less gross, but more public, fate. Crusher's job, which was considered worse, was assigned to him because he was the initial instigator.

"Both of you, listen up. If we catch either of you provoking each other or escalating a situation like this again, you'll be assigned to factory work for the rest of your stints at best - and if the transgression is bad enough, you'll face deactivation. Now go."

With that, the enslavement viruses became fully active, and took the two to their assigned tasks.

[Vallermoore]

Military Base

Loyal Star accepted his situation; partly because his slave virus did not let him do anything else, but also mentally too because his trainers were right. He had not acted the way a proper Decepticon soldier should. Whilst his body swept the streets of the base wearing a punishment band, he at least knew his foe was being punished as well, cleaning out sludge tanks. He found his Military Manual could open despite his temporary slave status, and he had plenty of time to learn the proper code of conduct for a Decepticon soldier in such circumstances. If he had charged his blasters for battle, but held fire and not been the first one to start fighting, it was unlikely that he would have been punished at all.

His foe, busy at the disgusting task of cleaning used oil tanks, meanwhile considered himself lucky that things had not been different. Had he been held fully to blame, a smelting pit might at least have been a possibility.

Once the two served their time, they both kept as far away from each other as possible. When they graduated not long afterwards, they were sent to different outposts on anti-traitor duty. Loyal Star hoped that his black mark on his military record had not ruined his ordination chances. The main foe on anti-traitor duty was in fact boredom, but it was much less boredom then being hacked. Shortly before his stint was over, a call to do battle was set out. A bot had done what MasterBlaster had done a long while ago; he had placed a helpless offspring too young to blast it's Coder in an android pony body; and worse, had invited the bots he knew well to point and laugh. The unit that MasterBlaster was in was ordered not to blast the offspring by mistake. Once the traitor was either blasted to bits or had surrendered to ask Megatron for mercy, the offspring was to be given a proper body and as he was only 20% sapient was to be sent to a Raising Centre.

*****
Space

Once they landed, Buzz started pointing out why MasterBlaster's idea might indeed make them rich; but would also make them holovision stars-at their public executions at the Main Foundry, and would ensure them places of their own in Decepticon Hell.

"The big problem with that is that it could end up strengthening Ponyism. If word gets out that alicorns are alive, and the news leaves that planet, other ponyists are going to get renewed faith. I've heard that on one of the planets the government is interested in, Vallermoore, Ponyism is all but a discredited cult right now. And we just invaded Orbis because they were trying to 'raise competition' against Megatron. That means they were trying to bring back alicorns! If we show up acting like alicorns, Ponyists will buy in, sure. As far as anyone who gets fooled is concerned, the 'return of the alicorns' is the same whether they're real or fake - and their faith will strengthen, and they'll also tell everyone they can that the alicorns weren't dead after all. But then Megatron will send his Market Share Protection Force out to make sure that Ponyism continues to fail. And he wouldn't be happy to find that the people responsible for the new resurgence in the Ponyist faith are...us!"

MasterBlaster imagined what would happen. At first, yes, they would indeed be hugely wealthy bots, with enough Energon to buy the best of everything. The problem is, that they would not live very long to enjoy all that Energon. A very angry Megatron, with a large force including General Carjack and the Genocide Battalion, would show up with eyes that were just thin red lines in black eye panels. And when MasterBlaster explained that he was a Decepticon running a scam, Megatron would reply that his selfish actions had vastly strengthened Ponyism. He and his gang would be taken off to Cybertron for a slow public execution on interplanetary holovision, their spare bodies destroyed by Domintel. Then he would end up in the Realm of Punishment. For such a faux pas, Megatron would punish his soul after death as well and theirs too. What remained of their bodies would be buried on an asteroid so as not to contaminate the Metal Stream.

Buzz also pointed out the other problems. Knowing the religion's tenets would not be a problem for MasterBlaster; but miracles would be.

Only Haula had images of riches galore still in his mind boards. "We'd only have to pull it off for a few days to score a billion barrels! We'd be the richest bots on Cybertron next to the ICC!"

"And how would we even get it to Cybertron without it getting robbed on the way? Before we had figured out a way to do so, Megatron would be coming here to loot and destroy this planet."

"MasterBlaster sighed. "It's a good thing I have you bots to tell me when an idea is terminally stupid. Let's just do our original raid plan; it'll bring in much less but it will leave us alive at the end of it."

Unknown to him Haula was considering trying that plan all by himself later.

*****
Pony Afterlife

One of the bots, despite having successfully infiltrated human planets and other places with robot life, found it impossible to act like a pony. Afterlife ponies were even friendlier then normal ones, and his base code saw too much friendship as danger. On Cybertron that was indeed the case, and it was a real struggle to act like an afterlife pony. Soon some big-mouth marks reported him as acting really strangely. After the invasions of two pony planets, a Pony Counterintelligence Section had been formed in case this happened in the afterlife too, and they arrested him one night. Although he had blasters, to use them would blow his cover, so he surrendered to the several unicorns with restraint magic. "Who are you really? Why are you acting so-unfriendly? "

He thought quickly with something that might satisfy them.

"Back in Equestria, friends have caused me so much trouble. There was the one who tricked me into acting up in class, the one who swindled me out of several thousand bits, and the one who informed on my escape plan from a Decepticon mine in the hope of better treatment. They killed him in front of me for informing on my escape, but they still fitted my body with a slave chip and worked me to death. So I need reeducating in the pony values. I need to learn to trust again after being ripped off again and again."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Military Outpost
ReEngineer City
Goldenlight Street
This city was named after a famous bot from several centuries ago: ReEngineer. He had been behind one of the Decepticons' major upgrades - one that caused the Autobots to sustain many losses during the Great War. They had finally succeeded in taking him down in a 10-to-1 fight, and due to a lack of spares he had perished - but despite that, his contribution was so important that this small city had bee renamed in his honor. Now, it was an upper-middle-class area full of somewhat snooty bots who liked to think that nothing unseemly, at least in terms of the Decepticon Way, would ever happen there.

When the outpost got the order to execute someone for interfering with the proper maturation of his own offspring, the more-experienced troops were shocked. Usually, if they were called out at all, it was because someone had gotten the idea that he'd make a better leader than Megatron. Such thoughts were more common in the higher-class areas than the lower ones - they had raiding or business success as well as education, and the most ambitious and (over)confident of them felt qualified to make the claim. For one to be guilty of something as lowbrow as blatant offspring abuse was all but unheard of.

Despite the shock of the details of the order, a death squad was quickly assembled. Loyal Star was part of it, and he took his position with expert precision. Despite his one faux pas during basic training, he did his absolute best to go through all military exercises exactly right.

Soon, they were marching down Goldenlight Street, which had been paved with a gold-colored veneer that was actually much tougher than the genuine precious metal. A live-camera crew accompanied them with its cam already active. People looked out of their windows with wonder at the sight of a death squad there, and many used their eyes as cameras to take snapshots of the once-in-decades event. Down the street, however, extra-fortified blast-proof shutters on one large house slammed shut.

"Looks like we're going to battle," the commander announced as he saw the fortifications activate. The others, having seen the same thing, readied their blasters as they continued to march on that exact house.

They didn't have a chance to announce their intention or give any ultimatums. As soon as they got remotely within range, they saw that a mounted cannon was being swiveled to aim right at them. Immediately, the group split up and began running from each other so that the condemned bot wouldn't be able to hit them all at once. Then, they began firing, not at the fortified windows, but at the walls. To their dismay, the walls were also made of blast-resistant steel.

The cannon began firing, aiming directly at the commander, but the commander stayed constantly on the move with randomized zig-zagging. Civilians who were on the road first got out of the way, but they also did not appreciate being jeopardized by the guy in the house. They began to fire back along with the troops, though the walls of the house were still holding.

"Bomb that offspring of a glitch!" The leader commanded. Immediately, the other troops took grenades out of their arm panels and chucked them at a single spot at the side of the house. With all of that explosive power, combined with the continued blaster fire of the passers-by, the wall finally got a serious hole put in it.

Immediately, what appeared to be a pony ran out. Now, the situation became worse than expected. The youngster's automatic self-defense routine had become activated by the battle, and he began to fire at the troops for all he was worth using blasters that popped out from his sides. Now, they would have no choice but to deactivate him, though they hoped to be able to do so in a nonpermanent way.

Loyal Star, having been a pony before, knew all of the weaknesses of such a body - and that an android version was unlikely to carry any significant magical abilities. While the others were wondering how to go about responding to the assault, and the commander was still dodging cannon fire, Loyal Star took aim at the youngster's legs and the blasters attached to his sides. Soon, he had the pony immobilized, though it turned out to be harder to blast the blasters than he had expected.

Some of the other troops, seeing what he was attempting to do, took aim at the blasters too. With so many blasts coming at him, the ponified youngster wasn't able to properly respond to them all - especially with his legs blasted off. Before long, the threat he presented was neutralized.

Now, the Coder realized that he was losing this fight. Mounted blasters suddenly appeared through small gaps in all of the otherwise-closed windows, and they all took aim at particular soldiers. Soon, everyone had to dodge, but even as they did this, the continually advanced on the house. Finally, after many minutes, the commander got close enough to throw a powerful bomb inside. With a boom, the artillery stopped working - apparently a master control panel, or perhaps a cable connecting the defender to the weapon array, had been taken out.

Once the defending fire was ended, the troops barged in and found themselves in a to-the-death close-quarters battle against a nasty-looking bot and a few of the friends he had brought over to laugh at his offspring once again. Jamming was activated since DomIntel hadn't gone after the spares of these friends, but the troops wanted to take them all out for their part in trying to blast them. Unfortunately for the defense, the troops had fresh military training while their own was a bit rusty, and before long, the battle was over.

After the fighting stopped and nobody was trying to take the troops out in a hail of cannonfire, it was time to take the now-heavily-damaged youngster over to the Raising Center. Loyal Star, as the newest guy, was given the "honor" of dealing with the kid, whose automatic self-defense program was still active. The kid immediately tried to use the only weapon he had left - his mouth - and all the way to the Center, he attempted to bite Loyal Star. Fortunately, the intake bot at the Center was able to take him. Debugging was immediately called, first to hack in and disarm the self-defense routine, and then to deal with the psychological damage caused by not only being made into a pony and laughed at repeatedly, but from being stuck in a battle and then blasted halfway to smithereens.

The Coder of this poor bot, of course, was terminated in the fight. His scraps, along with those of his friends, were melted down without fanfare since the fight itself had been broadcast and had resulted in his execution.

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

At Crusher's military outpost, which was in a grungy city, there was no action to speak of for the military. All around, however, fights between gangs, market share protection forces of various factories, and even a labor-vs-management mini-war went on. Crusher was very much dissatisfied with being stuck unable to join in any of these fights and brawls, especially since as a soldier of all things, he would have been able to win a lot of them. "All of this high-grade hardware is going to waste!" he complained; a sentiment shared by many of his cohorts. Still, they all sat in their outpost, mostly playing extremely violent video games, and awaited the end of their stints.

~~~~~~~~~~

Pony Planet
Earth and Sky Refinery

The gang was glad that MasterBlaster had agreed that a standard raid was their best bet, though they were put off by his reference of his original idea as "terminally stupid." It had been so, but it was seen as unconfident and unleaderly to refer to one's own plan that way. It would have looked better if he'd just said something like "you're right - let's do a standard raid" without any self-deprecation. Despite this, they decided to go ahead and give him a chance. After all, their old leader had known how to talk well enough, but his plans usually resulted in no Energon in the end. Maybe this one, despite his lack of experience at spinning, would bring better results - as long as he didn't get them all killed first! Soon, they took off again and headed toward their target planet.

~~~~~~~
Upon arriving high in the sky above, they finally saw the installation they had been heading for. This refinery, fortunately for MasterBlaster and the others, was far enough from the planet's fighting to not have been bombed by now. It also had little nearby military cover since it was believed that if any enemy got all the way to it, that enemy would have had to go through the troops that were stationed further away. Like many targets of Decepticon raids, it did not expect planes to be able to get to it without first flying over land and through its nation's air force.

"Surprise, surprise!" Buzz said over the gang's private radio frequency as they came in from space, clearly referencing the unsuspecting refinery below. Each of the bots had a mini-tanker with them, with the exception of Haula, who was hauling a very large one in accordance with his size and strength. He had built up his body specifically to be able to pull this huge thing, which would easily accept the oil from 2-4 standard refinery holding tanks. That amounted to thousands of barrels' worth of the stuff - and tens of thousands of pounds in weight.

Now, it was time to fly far enough away from the refinery to deploy the chaff according to their plan. Then, they could go to the actual target, and by the looks of it, raid away without any interference except perhaps from a few ineffectual coplets.

Pony Afterlife

If it had been most places, the spy's excuse likely wouldn't have gotten the time of day. Pony base code called for extreme levels of herd mentality, which they referred to as 'friendship,' since even sapient ones were herd animals at heart. More importantly, however, was the fact that robots and all other sapient machines had a distinctive type of psychic energy that - while it may be missed by someone going about his daily life - would be quite noticeable to a unicorn fit to work in an intelligence agency. It would have been very much in his best interests to use the cover story Megatron had provided, which allowed him to admit to Decepticon-ness yet would have misdirected the government about his purpose for being there.

The Decepticon spy was lucky for now, but anyone attuned to magic who had actually been in close proximity to a Decepticon (or other sapient machine) during life, and was now paying attention like a counterintelligence agent would, would likely spot it immediately. Unlike biologicals, machines ran on very precise frequencies, and even those with extreme processing speeds had a metronome-like precision in this aspect. Even though emotions, plots, and plans did affect the psychic energy given off, these adjustments still had a precision unmatched by biological spirits - something like how when an engine revs or idles, its speed changes yet it still remains "in time." When this precision failed, it wasn't long before the entire machine failed as well, often in a way that involved horrible glitches.

Biologicals, on the other hand, had operating speeds that varied almost constantly based on the status of the body, emotions, age, and more. The end result, psychically speaking, was that biologicals gave off a feeling that was distinctly associated with the organic. Machine energy wasn't so much perceived as a lack of organic nature, but the presence of machineness.

~~~~~~~~~

The ponies who were interrogating the spy, luckily for him, did not have experience with the differences in energy, and at worst, thought that the strange feeling they got from him was a result of his experiences during life. They fell for his story like rocks and immediately took pity on him.

"We know just the thing for you!" They gushed. "You need to go to our Trust-Building Workshop!"

Soon, he was taken to what appeared to be a campground. There, ponies had copied one of the humans' methods of building trust - or at least, a method meant to do that which had been popular among human-run corporations. The spy would be put through a variety of physical activities that required close teamwork in order to succeed. Such "trust-building activities" were intended to be fun, though whether they actually were fun was mostly unknown since, in many cases, employees had to pretend that they were in order to please a boss. (It was quite likely that introverts and desk potatoes actually despised them and only learned that the sponsoring company wouldn't be a good fit for them, but the ponies, not having been naturally opposed to such things, surely thought these programs were a great way to meet new people and enjoy themselves.)

Some of these trust-building programs were set up so that participants felt that they would be in physical danger if they didn't work together, but in the one the spy was taken to, this wasn't yet a factor. Instead, he would be doing rather tame activities like building a boat out of fairly junky materials. As soon as he entered the compound, the others in the program rushed up to greet him. They were a bit less effusive than the normal ponies, but compared to the Decepticon, they were still massively friendly - and, he figured, massively gullible. Immediately, his mind started looking for ways to sucker these people who were practically begging him to take off with all of their bits or at least con them into doing all of the work.

[Vallermoore]

Military Outpost
ReEngineer City
Goldenlight Street

Loyal Star's engine backfired in shock when he heard why he and the others were called out. This was not the normal fool who thought that he could overthrow Megatron but a Weakener of the Nation who abused his only partly sapient offspring. Fully sapient offspring could deal with things according to the Decepticon way, but this bot was far too young for that and had to obey his Coder. The Coder had ordered him into a pony android body and had then called the bots in his gang around to have a good laugh at the helpless offspring. They had forgotten that in such a case, Domintel would step in, and an execution squad was sent to deal with the traitor. Abuse of an offspring unable to fight back was illegal in the Decepticon Empire. Goldenlight Street was one of the better areas in ReEngineer City; violence was relatively rare and executions extremely rare. Over 30 years had passed since the last execution here. Most bots here were con-bots and drug dealers. The traitor decided to fight to the death. During the battle, Loyal Star had to blast the earth pony android in such a way as to leave it alive. The Coder inside, a nasty red and black bot, had nothing to lose and badly injured three soldiers before they killed him.

Angle Grinder, for such was his name, as he liked to look at all the angles for conning people, found himself in a small metal room with two screens on the walls. He sighed at the sight of the Land of Endless Energon; he knew he would not be going there. All too soon a bot painted with red flames grabbed him; his blasters did not work here. "You are a disgrace! Megatron has a special place for you in the Realm of Punishment." He found himself thrown through a portal, full of fear about what awaited on the other side...

*****
Meanwhile Loyal Star gently but firmly held the android pony. "It's not your fault, you poor thing. I'll get you to Debugging where you can be fixed. Once he could speak privately with a Debugger, he explained "I was part of an execution squad sent to take down a Coder who ordered his non-sapient offspring into this body, invited his friends to the house, and then teased the helpless offspring horribly. He needs to be healed and put in a proper body so that he can live here as he is far too young to live alone. Careful, his automatic self defense routine is making him bite."

The rest of his first stint would be uneventful and when he left the Military, he radioed Fire Eater with the news. "Fire Eater, I just finished my first conscription term." He was excited; he hoped that he would be able to be ordinated as a full Priest of Megatron. His public renouncing of Ponyism, all his studying of Megatronism; serving Fire Eater as an acolyte, the dangerous tests, the painful porting, being a Decepticon and a soldier too, all that was leading up to this. He hoped to be a missionary where his skills could be best used. Not for him mere preaching to the converted on Cybertron, he wanted to win souls and help the religion grow.

*****
Pony Planet
Earth and Sky Refinery

After dropping the chaff, they swooped down on the refinery and uncloaked. MasterBlaster said in Equish "Run and live, fight and die. We are after your oil, not enslavement or slaughter." Soon enough Haula had got the tubes set up and the fuel was flowing into their tanks. Although the raid was not over yet, the gang had big smiles on their faces. So far, their leader's plan was working and would hopefully soon be filling their vaults. MasterBlaster searched with his eyes, sonar and radar for any approaching tanks, warplanes or soldiers. There was still potential for some idiot pony with an RPG who wanted to be a hero to spoil things.

Pony Afterlife

The spy was very lucky not to have been uncovered at least for now. When he found himself team building he internally ran his Connives File in the hope of getting a whole load of bits somehow. He didn't want to be too hasty though; if Pony Counterintelligence pulled him in again they would surely uncover his machineness. For now he forced himself to live like a sapient pony would, reminding himself that these were not Decepticons but genuine ponies, and most likely goody goodies as well, since any really bad ponies went to Pony Hell. They didn't know he was a machine so he wouldn't be hacked. Inwardly he despised the ponies, something he had not felt whilst spying on humans. If his mission were one day declassified, he looked forward to telling his Coder about how strange the sapient ponies were.

[Victorious Decepticons]

ReEngineer City
Government Raising Center

The person at the desk, who was a standard-bodied Decepticon yet seemed almost motherly, gently took the biting android pony from Loyal Star. "Oh, my. By the Leader...I can't imagine how anyone could be so cruel to his own offspring. To put him in a body like this, and then let him stay in the front room when he knew the Military was coming for him? Knowing that he would surely go into self-defense mode and charge out? He was surely trying to make sure he got killed too!" The receptionist clearly hadn't seen the fight live on the holovision, but would watch a rerun later to see just what had happened. "I'm glad you were able to preserve him alive. The condition of the body is no issue; he'll get a real one the moment he's been taken care of by our Debuggers. Now if you'll excuse us..."

With that, the receptionist left the room with the new arrival, and an obviously new employee came out to man the desk while "she" was gone.

Once Loyal Star had left, the receptionist carefully put the still-defending youngster down and then proceeded to fall over dramatically, shutting off her engine on the way to the floor. Soon, the offspring registered that all "opponents" were dead, and the automated self-defense routine shut off. Quickly, she got up again, gently picked up the ponified child, and walked expertly to the Debugging room.

What she had just done was a highly classified maneuver, never talked about in the open. It wouldn't do at all if the general public realized that merely playing dead could shut down the average automatic self-defense routine! Some people did realize it, and would code their offspring's routines so that any miraculous reactivations of foes would result in the reactivation of the self-defense system, but clods like Angle Grinder usually missed it - and the Raising Centers wouldn't be the ones to clue them in.

Soon, the little bot was talking to one of a special group of Debuggers. These Debuggers worked with the Raising Centers and had extra education in child development and children's trauma handling routines. The one seeing him took extra time to calm the still-very-freaked-out youngster before explaining that tests and repairs would have to be done before he could be transferred back into a proper body.

The first test was a sapience test, which revealed that even though he should have been half sapient by now, he was only 20% there. This showed that he had been subject to a large amount of mistreatment rather than it having been a one-off or two-off sort of thing. Neglect, and even possibly extended confinement, was also a certain part of the picture, since sapience would have naturally developed further if he hadn't been deprived of experiences.

There was one bright spot in all of this. At that low sapience level, it was considered okay to take more extreme measures when it came to debugging. The Debuggers conferred, and decided that the best thing to do would be to remove a large amount of the subject's memories of having been ponified - and much more importantly - the feelings of massive inferiority that would have come from the events and the mocking they included. They would also greatly minimize the memories of the battle that left his body so damaged.

These memory removals, however, would not be permanent. Instead, the memories would be transferred to a disk. The disk would be kept by the Raising Center until the youngster was at least 80% sapient - and far more able to process these facts without developing an inferiority complex, major depression, or other such errors. At that time, he would be asked if he wanted to know all of the details of how he ended up at the Center, and if he said yes, he would be given the disk under the supervision of a Debugger. The Debugger would then work to minimize the creation of errors, which was far easier to do when dealing with a nearly-mature bot.

The new arrival wouldn't be stripped of all of his bad memories. Instead, they would be sure to leave him with enough on-deck recall to know that his Coder had been executed as an abuser and Nation-weakener, that he had been in a battle, and that he had, at some point, been stuck in a tiny body. Memories of having been purposely mocked and made to feel inferior, on the other hand, were shifted to the disk so that he would not have any ingrained doubts about his power as a Decepticon.

Once this was done, the Debuggers meticulously went through and fixed all of the many psychological errors his treatment had caused. They did leave a few traits that some would consider errors, namely his now-extreme hatred of anyone who would weaken him (though they turned that down enough so that he wouldn't be in a state of constant rage), and a strange curiosity about what ponies were really like (which they thought might come in handy for ForIntel one day).

Next, they took care of some things his Coder should have done but hadn't. They installed an updated version of the SEDP, which included the new Megatronism Module that hadn't been in his original one. They also put in a better mind-transfer port since his Coder had only used the cheapest one and it was already looking failure-prone.

After all of this was done, a shiny new Decepticon body, sans blasters for now, was brought in and the patient was reactivated. He was dismayed to still be a pony until it was explained that it was best for him to transfer himself over. "This makes sure that your data switches nicely from the tiny boards to the big ones," they said. The soon-to-be-upgraded youngster squealed with excitement. He would be getting a big body better than any he'd ever had! As soon as the cables were connected, he put the command through and the huge engine revved to life. The blasted-up android body, now devoid of a mind, shut down, and its subtle "life light" - a surprisingly-advanced special effect put in the eyes by the manufacturer - went out.

"So what's your name?" Said a nursemaid-type Raising Center staffer when she was called in.
"Meltdown..." the newly-restored Decepticon said, clearly not excited about the handle.

"Well, come with me, and I'll let you meet the rest of the group. And if you want a different name, we can see about switching that, too." Soon, Meltdown was taken into a big room where a bunch of similarly-sapient children were playing games. The game involved using big Decepticon toys to flatten cheap aluminum Autobots. For every round, foil Autobots would be tossed out and the kids would use their cast iron Decepticon toys to stomp them until they were totally mashed. Whoever mashed the most of them won the round. A game was 5 rounds, and the winner got a little glass of Supreme as a prize. It was clear by the empty glasses that these, rather than the Supreme, were considered to be the real prizes since they showed how many games a person had won. At the end of the play session, however, all of the glasses were collected back by the staff - mainly so they didn't have to keep buying new ones.

Usually, a kid Meltdown's age would have only stayed at the Center for 3 years before maturity, but since his prior environment had set him back so much, he stayed for 4. Once he got out he would, like most graduates of the Raising Centers, be a fanatical Megatron loyalist. He never did look at his saved memory disk, trusting the government's assessment completely instead.

~~~~~~~~~

Decepticon Afterlife

Angle Grinder didn't wait long before he was yanked into the Realm of Punishment. Unlike some others, he didn't wander through the darkness or get smacked with a note. Instead, he fell - finding himself unable to transform or fire his jets - for what seemed like about a mile. Then there was a flash, and he found himself suspended in a room filled with pony children.

"They say these things are called 'pinatas!'" One yelled out, approaching with a big stick. The pony reared up on his hind legs and gave Angle Grinder a big whack, sending pain shooting through his body. That's when Angle Grinder realized that he was no longer in a Decepticon form. Instead, he seemed to be made of...papier mache?!

"Whoever breaks it gets all of the apples in it!" Another said, taking a turn but failing to bust him open.
"This one is really goofy looking!" Said the next one up.

At that point, Angle Grinder noticed a mirror that was strategically placed on a wall. To his horror, he saw that he'd been given giant googley eyes, one of which was stuck looking upwards while the other rolled around crazily with each whack. His mouth was formed with one huge tooth sticking out of the front and no others, and it was stuck open. Worst of all, his overall shape was that of a pony - a baby-pink one. It even had a cutie mark. This mark was of a pile of reject parts. It was obvious that the parts were rejects thanks to the big "X" that went across them.

Soon, the kids saw the mark too, and began to chant "reject parts, reject parts," at him as they beat him. Finally, the papier mache body broke open, releasing heaps of fresh apples. The foals all grabbed some as a mare came in and took the pinata down. Angle Grinder couldn't move or say anything as he was dumped outside and left to rot in a drizzling rain. Through a closed window, he could barely make out what the foals were saying, but they were still just loud enough to hear. They were all talking about how stupid the pinata looked and laughing about its goofiness. After a very long time, the mare came out again. This time, she dumped a bunch of apple cores on his broken body.

While this specific punishment didn't repeat soon, he would find that every day at daybreak, he would be reconstituted into a similarly-demeaning and painful situation. One day he was a clown-faced dartboard for drunks, another day he was a "nonsapient" robot for Decepticon kids to dismantle, and on yet another, he was made to be the straightman for slapstick comedy of a Dumb-and-Dumber stupidity level. In all cases, he wasn't able to even show that he was sapient and had to endure the jeers without comment.

Angle Grinder didn't realize that all of the creatures he saw were AIs, and this made the punishment worse. He was left with the impression that there was an entire realm of people who thought he was the biggest joke ever. One day, however, an actual sapient being was sent in. It was the human who had been deployed there long ago. This human was far more cruel than the AIs since he'd been told that the subject was actually quite aware of everything. Angle Grinder found himself in the body of what could be considered the universe's uglist cat, while the human was cast as a psychopathic child. His tortures included firecrackers, lighting the "cat" on fire, and other things that were very painful as well as humiliating. The "child" made sure to laugh every time he killed the cat, and laugh more when it was reactivated right in front of him for him to do more things to it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Pony Afterlife

All of the spies except for the one were now looking into what everyday life here was like. Were there any jobs? Were the ponies even interested in being productive, or now that they were dead, did they just chill all day and eat apples? Who made the SAMs and cannons they had seen?

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth and Sky Refinery

As its name implied, this refinery was mostly staffed by earth ponies and pegusi. Most of the staff quickly evacuated, leaving the refinery to the whims of the Decepticons and the company at the mercy of its insurance company's willingness to cover the losses, but a few pegusi decided to be brave. They began to send turbulence through the Decepticons' position in the skies, and one even sent a little tornado at them. This tornado didn't touch down on the ground since the sender didn't want to wreck the refinery, but to the flying gang, that didn't matter. They'd have to either avoid it or use skillful flying to go through it stormchaser-style.

On the ground, sirens were quickly heard. Soon, a dark blue mare with a badge cutie mark (as well as a real badge, complete with department name and officer number, worn on a necklace) jumped out of what turned out to be a police truck. "Surrender now!" She ordered as if a tiny coplet's orders meant anything. "You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit grand theft!"

The gangsters were far from impressed by this tough-acting little cop. As far as they were concerned, she might as well have been yelling "transform and land on me now!" rather than "surrender now."

[Vallermoore]

Cybertron

On the day when he left the Military having fully served his first conscription stint, Loyal Star got straight on the radio to perhaps the only bot who he considered to be a genuine friend, the one he had known since his pony days, Fire Eater. "I have served the full term of my first conscription stint. So I am ready to take the tests needed to become a full Priest of Megatron. Hopefully I can then become a missionary on some far away planet, spreading the faith to the heathen." He realized that he seemed a bit smug, but he was talking about non-Decepticon and most likely biological life. He hoped Fire Eater didn't take things the wrong way. His eyes gleamed as he imagined himself one day doing what he had abandoned his old way of life and his old body for-serving the cause of Megatron. If all went well and he passed the tests and didn't suffer any unfortunate results, he could live for many centuries. Technically he could live forever, but he expected one day he might fall to a SAM or a Decepticon foe. Hopefully, it would not be anytime soon.

Earth and Sky Refinery

Since the coplets were away from the oil, MasterBlaster could blast freely away at them and their truck, blowing the truck into small pieces. As a Decepticon, he had contempt for any police force open or secret that was not Domintel or it's Military equivalent, Milintel. The only laws as such that he would obey were those in his Treason File, a file that was mandatory for all bots. A pony sneaked out with a leg mounted RPG but Buzz noticed him and stepped on him before he could explode an oil tank out of sight. Soon enough they had filled all the tanks, but they had a new problem. The air base had been told, and whilst most of their planes had been fooled by the chaff, ten of them came towards the raid, each armed with machine guns and missiles. Whilst the missiles were almost certainly no threat to a Decepticon in robot mode, they were a huge threat to the filled oil tanks.

Pony Afterlife

They found that whilst ponies here didn't have to work, most wanted to after a while because of boredom, and those who had been killed by Decepticons often had a fear that one day the Decepticons would come here. It was they who worked in the weapons factories, not because they were forced to, but through fear of coming one day under Decepticon control here. Many were ready even to fight to the death and take their chances in some other afterlife then be enslaved for eternity. There were those who did just eat apples and relax and have fun, but only the really lazy did that all the time. There were jobs, but most of them were ones where a pony could come and go as he or she pleased.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Pony Afterlife

Many of the spies were hugely bored, and some joined in on some tasks mainly to see how this system worked out. Considering that most jobs needed at least a little training, they figured that having people just come and go when they wanted to have something to do would result in a lot of junk merchandise, low efficiency, or both. It turned out that the work had been broken down into mind-numbingly dull segments so anyone could pick up at least one part of the job in about five minutes. Those who mastered one segment might then be allowed to take on more, so the best workers would end up doing 10 different things while those who flitted from one job to another could do just one and manage to still be helpful. "Helpful;" this was a common word here, as opposed to the term "useful," which a typical Decepticon or human boss would prefer.

Other spies wanted to find out how the distasteful jobs, such as garbagepony, were handled. Surely no one volunteered for that! His guess turned out to be right, but not for the expected reason. It turned out that one of the perks of being here, rather than Tartarus, was that garbage just dissipated into nothing instantly if it was tossed out of a door or window. Pollution that would have been generated by industry similarly went away by itself.

A few, who had claimed to have been beaten to death in Decepticon mines, struck the mother lode of intelligence activity. They were invited to work in the weapons factories to "help make sure that those nasty robots can never take this place over." Instantly, they took the jobs, and went about them eagerly so that they wouldn't be fired. Once in, they made recordings - using their eyes, ears, and mind-boards - of everything that went on. They focused on the specifications for all of the weapons, comments they overheard about what was good and bad about the designs, and the general attitudes of those around them.

After the spies went home for the night, they would secretly send a signal through a tiny pinpoint portal that had been made at the Portal Asteroid for that purpose. This way, many terabytes of information - some very good, some mediocre, and some useless - were transferred to Foreign Intelligence in the mundus. ForIntel then ran the raw data streams through their supercomputer for analysis. The agency also examined it all with live agents, and the two assessment branches were then reconciled.

Among this data, they found that once in the afterlife, a pony did not age or get sick. The only way one died was by catastrophic accident or murder. There hadn't been a murder in several centuries thanks to the fact that those likely to hate each other would enter the realm in places thousands of miles apart, though some fatal accidents had taken place. So far, no data was present about what the after-afterlife was like for those who did manage to get re-killed, or if there even was one.

~~~~~~~~~~~

In another part of the pony afterlife, the unfriendly spy was getting much better at faking it. Still, when he got the chance, he radioed ForIntel and asked for permission to extract himself. ForIntel, sensing that leaving him in position might make him more of a liability than an asset, agreed. Now, when this spy got a chance, he would sneak off and go through the portal, which would open when he got within close range of it and then close again as soon as he got through.

"You're going to leave us, aren't you?" The sad voice came from outside of his tent after he returned from 'going to the bathroom.' "I can tell. You've become distant. And now that you went away for a bit, you're much happier. You called your friends to come for you, didn't you?" The colt looked up with big wet eyes, as if the thought of someone not wanting to be friends was a huge heartbreaker. The Decepticon, of course, thought that such an extreme response was glitched as hell.

"I - I don't have any friends!" The spy stammered, taken too off-guard to make something up.

"Of course you do! WE'RE your friends!" The colt insisted. But the Decepticon, whose patience was gone, aloofly turned his pony head away and upwards.

"You're friendly. But you're not my friends. I have no friends! I'm~~"

He could say no more. Several ponies had heard him, and they all came out of their tents looking sad. Then they all insisted that they were his friends, and after a few comments didn't convince him, they broke into a sappy, treacly song that sounded like it was aimed at Decepticon 6-month-olds.

And that's when he couldn't handle it anymore. With his threat sense going off inside him like a 10-alarm fire and his rage routines suddenly uncapped, he popped his blasters into the active position. Before any of the ponies could say the "D" of Decepticon, the massacre was done.

Now, he was in a far worse situation than he had been before, and once his engine and programming returned to more normal states, he realized this. If anypony realized that a Decepticon had done this, it could jeopardize the entire operation. Even if they didn't, he would face execution on Cybertron for gross misfeasance in the line of duty. The choice of suicide would not be an option, either - as a declared Megatronist, committing it in such circumstances would be a fast ticket to the Realm of Punishment.

"The Changelings will welcome you." The voice came from behind him. He whipped around and saw...a plant!? A talking plant! He was shocked at first, but then remembered that Changelings were called that because they could change into things.

"How...but this is the Pony Afterlife!" The spy stammered.

"We're as sneaky as you are," the Changeling said. "The only reason we haven't invaded Cybertron is because its environment is so hostile to biolife. But that's not important. What's important is that I know of a portal back to the land of the living...a part of it that your government knows nothing about..."

The now-ex spy, desperate, followed the Changeling - who turned into a super-cute animal - to a portal hidden deep within a cave. Soon, he went through it...

...and immediately found himself in a cocoon in a Red Changeling Nest on an unknown world.

"Thanks for coming, SUCKER!" The queen laughed evilly. "Your love of trickery and deceit is still a kind of love, so I'll be enjoying it for quite some time." Immediately, the spy felt his energy start being drained, but when he went to blast his way out, he found that the cocoon was impervious to the amount of energy his pony-sized weapons could produce.

Later, when the portal was opened for a moment, the Decepticons realized that the spy wasn't there. What had happened to him was for ForIntel to wonder.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Megatronist Temple of Vallermoore

Rather than talk over the radio, Fire Eater invited Loyal Star to the Temple to discuss the next steps in person. He wanted to see how his acolyte was doing, psychologically speaking, and that required being able to see his body language. He also didn't want to give too much away about how to become a priest just in case

Loyal Star seemed taller and stronger when he arrived to meet Fire Eater, even though his physical specs hadn't changed much. He had taken the Military up on its offer to buy his issued Mil-Spec Blasters, but that was all. The real change was in his psyche. He was now more disciplined and confident, like many who had been in the service.

After exchanging enthusiastic greetings in the main part of the temple, Fire Eater got down to business. There was no need to go to his study today since it wasn't a service day, so instead, they stayed standing where they were, in the main aisle between the pews. The big sculpture of Megatron's face loomed from the back of the stage, currently with a neutral expression and no eye-lights since it was turned off when there were no planned services or events.

"I'm glad to see that you're so eager to get started!" Fire Eater said with a warm smile. "However, there is more to it than taking a few tests. There are tests - psych tests - but that's just the start. You'll also need to spend some time as an assistant priest before you're given the keys to lead a Temple. This will let you see for yourself the types of things we help congregants deal with and how, all while under the supervision of an experienced Priest who can correct any problems that he sees cropping up."

"Before any of that, though, you'll need to install the Megatronist Clergy Educational Data Pack. This is a fairly new Pack that has come from the Main Temple on Cybertron. It makes it so that learning the Canon and the associated teachings is as easy as learning anything else that's been codified into an executable file. To get this Pack, you need my okay - which I will radio to the Main Temple before you leave here - and you need to go to the Main Temple to get it. Our Divine Leader is very particular about the chain of custody of his Holy Data Packs, and only the top priests can hand them out. Of course, the reason is security. If he were to ship them around, a transport bot could easily stop and let a hacker have his way with them before delivering. And, of course...we're all Decepticons, especially those of the Priesthood."

"Now, it's best to go into my study..."

Just before Fire Eater moved to go, Loyal Star noticed that the sculpture behind him now had a little smile and a bit of a wink. Fire Eater noticed that Loyal Star appeared to be looking at it and turned around. He gave it a deep bow and said, "Our Divine Leader misses nothing, and is never shy to let it be known that he is with us in spirit. He often uses his sculptures as vessels since they're made to be able to change their expressions. Heathens usually think the motions are all done by electronics and mechanical action. Most indeed are - but not all."

After getting into the study, Fire Eater closed the door and swept the room for bugs. Then, he began to speak again. "What I couldn't say out there is that many Priests of Megatron are quite corrupt. Never trust a data pack or anything else of that nature if it's not handed to you by a high-ranking Main Temple priest who has taken the special oath to preserve the Messages of the Divine Leader without additions or subtractions. We're actually like the government, only we handle the religious aspect of Leader Megatron's decrees. And, one of the keys to being a high-ranking Decepticon in the government is the mastery of the Decepticon Way. Including the deception and connivery parts."

"As for your tests, you'll get them from Electron. He's at the Main Temple on Cybertron, and you can't miss him. Instead of transforming into a plane like most of us, he turns into a big generator. Oh, and the generator happens to have two big electrodes attached that can produce a couple of 10,000,000-volt, 1,000-amp lightning bolts." Fire Eater grinned. "Be sure not to ask him what good that configuration is unless you want to test how strong your Faraday cage is."

"So, how was your time in the Military? Did you enjoy the soldier's life?" Fire Eater asked.

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth and Sky Refinery

Buzz laughed when he saw the approaching planes. He held one arm up towards them in the "stop" gesture, and all of the planes immediately lost power. They zoomed past the raiders on momentum alone, but a few miles after that, they lost their speed and fell to the ground like shotgunned birds. None of the gang members, including MasterBlaster, had to wonder how Buzz had done it. Their systems had alerted them to the fact that their Faraday cages had just absorbed a strong EMP pulse that had come from the small scout.

The little Decepticon watched the destruction smugly. "Primitives." He stated. Then he turned to MasterBlaster. "You CAN generate EMP like that yourself, right? I'd hate to think that a gang leader had no special capabilities." It was a challenge statement, but at this time, wouldn't result in a serious attempt at taking over. Buzz, after all, remembered how MasterBlaster had managed to defeat him in the duel - special capabilities or not.

[Vallermoore]

Pony Afterlife

It was very clear that the main danger here for the Decepticon spies was not being found out, but boredom. There were plenty of amusements; funfair rides, pony themed computer games, and the like, but they were not much fun for the Forintel agents. When one was used to flying about at fast speeds as a plane, even the fastest rollercoasters were not very interesting, and most of the games could best be described from an agent's point of view as "Meh." Many were not fighting games at all, and of those that were, they were often about fighting Decepticons as an alicorn, and were played on a small non-sapient computer. One of the few that was of any interest at all to the agents was a pony version of SimCity, but even that was dull compared to Decepticon games. The job segments by themselves were as dull as being hacked and forced to mine rock. For those that struck the mother lode, things were more interesting.

Apart from the pony *superweapon* that they discovered was a strong force field capable of rapid expansion; dangerous to individual Decepticons, but surely blastable if enough bots blasted all at once, some weapons were nothing really to fear (pony sized guns) others had some danger (giant magnets, SAMs and cannon batteries, the later being very easy to blow up, but maddingly hard to dodge when they fired) and others might be a problem (unicorn spells capable of snapping many wires at once, these wires being the Decepticon nerves and muscles). Whilst the ponies had no idea which were the vital wires, having too many wires snap at once would not only be a major pain, but might get something very important by accident. Having the wires in the main command cable breaking would be a disaster for a Decepticon, and the most magical unicorns could snap two hundred wires at once. Those in the weapons factories would rather die, even if it meant true death, then be slaves for eternity. Many had suffered nasty fates at Decepticon hands, and all hated the big war robots. If there were any Decepticons-in-spirit amongst the pony souls they were most likely to be found in Tartarus.

**********

The spy who had nearly been discovered was inwardly desperate to get away, hated pony society, and inwardly thanked Megatron that he was not born as a pony instead of being Coded as a Decepticon. He found friendship of the pony kind even more useless then most Decepticons did and had been one of the few Decepticons to end up outright killing his own Coder.

"You're friendly. But you're not my friends. I have no friends! I'm~~"

When he was faced with the horror of a pony friendship song, he lost control of his temper and blasted every pony in the room. He realized to his horror that he might have revealed to the ponies that there were Decepticon agents amongst them. In the circumstances, he had committed treason, and he knew well the consequences for that. He would either be deactivated in street battle, or General Soundwave would strip him of his Forintel seals and sack him, and he would be melted down. As a Decepticon, he knew that as a suicidal traitor, that would be an even more fast track to the Realm of Punishment. He might not have friends, but he loved the Metal Planet itself, and would miss it if he ever got out of there. Staying here was not really an option either. The Royal Guards and Pony Counterintelligence would be after him, the Decepticons planned to invade sooner or later, and besides he hated the place. He had to get out of here and flee the Deception Empire; perhaps in this body which was even worse.

"The Changelings will welcome you."

He spun around and saw a cactus. After being very surprised, he realized it was a ling. It changed into a large rabbit.

How...but this is the Pony Afterlife?!"

"We're as sneaky as you are. The only reason we haven't invaded Cybertron is because its environment is so hostile to biolife. But that's not important. What's important is that I know of a portal back to the land of the living...a part of it that your government knows nothing about...Once out, you could either go where you want to, or join us. We are not sickly sweet like the ponies, I promise. In some ways, our society is like yours. Follow me."

The spy decided he had to take his chances and followed the changeling to the hidden portal. When he jumped inside, to his horror he found himself meshed in a cocoon deep in a Changeling Nest. The cocoon was clear, so he could see the large numbers of red-carapaced changelings all around, looking happily at him. One blast will burst this cocoon and then I'll be out of here and can settle things in the Decepticon Way the spy thought, but when he blasted, the blasters failed to work. His energy was already being rapidly depleted, as his love of the Decepticon Way and Cybertron was syphoned away. A Changeling Queen, the size of an alicorn, laughed. "Thanks for coming, SUCKER! Your love of trickery and deceit is still a kind of love, so I'll be enjoying it for quite some time." He tried to punch and bite his way out, but the cocoon was extra thick, and he was too weak. His last conscious thoughts were about how stupid he had been to trust Changelings.

Then he found himself on Cybertron, his sins seemingly forgiven. He would seem to be having a wonderful life, full of successful spying, scams and raids, almost as if he were in the Land of Endless Energon. Changeling Cocoons made the captured one think they were having a wonderful life, and that refilled the syphoned love and at the same time kept the prisoner unaware that they were even hanging in a cocoon. As he was a bot, the only problem his body would suffer was long term rusting of the joints, as there were no muscles to cramp or waste away. Even muscle wastage didn't normally happen; other then cramp, which could be dealt with through stretching, the body, at least if it was biological, was kept in perfect health. It was a kind of immortality. In reality, he would hang in the throne room over the Red Queen's throne, a living meal for Changeling royalty.

*****
The murders were soon discovered, and made public by the alicorns on pony holovision. The blast wounds made it clear this was a Decepticon thing, and ponies and Pony Counterintelligence started checking far more quickly for spies, catching several of them, arming themselves with guns to do so. They asked the spies why they were there and how they got there, threatening to blast off their weapons through sheer weight of numbers, tie them up and sing to them if necessary to make them talk. "If we kill you here you will be reborn on a pony planet as foals, minus your memories." This might be made up or it might be true, and no Decepticon wanted to be reduced to a biological foal minus his memories.

*****
First Megatronist Temple of Vallermoore

As he was undercover here, Loyal Star came in an android pony body. Unknown to him, he had not been assigned a Forintel spy, as he was considered too loyal to defect.

"Hello Loyal Star!" Fire Eater bowed, the Decepticon equivalent of a firm handshake. Loyal Star bowed back and said hello too, and Fire Eater explained how things would work. Whilst there were tests, he would be in effect the lowest rank of the full clergy, the Decepticon equivalent of a deacon. A full Priest could prevent, for example, accidental heresy from appearing. He knew Loyal Star didn't want to be a heretic -the whole way he had gone about things from the first time they met proved that, but mistakes could happen, and this way they could be corrected before things went really wrong.

"I was expecting that. In any religion, one cannot just become a Priest. My...my parents taught me that, at least they were good for something." His experience in rising through the Ponyist priestly ranks would be a help here in that it gave him the mindset that was needed and the patience.

""Before any of that, though, you'll need to install the Megatronist Clergy Educational Data Pack. " After explaining about the pack, Loyal Star gave a look of surprise when the sculpture, despite being turned off, had changed it's expression to a warm smile and a wink. Fire Eater bowed to it. Our Divine Leader misses nothing, and is never shy to let it be known that he is with us in spirit. He often uses his sculptures as vessels since they're made to be able to change their expressions. Heathens usually think the motions are all done by electronics and mechanical action. Most indeed are - but not all."

Loyal Star smiled and thought to himself how much better worshipping Megatron was, then following Ponyism. The alicorns, before being killed, had never left Equestria and never shown the lesser Ponyist clergy any sort of sign that they knew of them. Now he was following a real God, better then any alicorn. He followed Fire Eater to his private study. Fire Eater warned him that the priests were corrupt, but that those who had taken the special oath would be considered traitors if they put viruses into religious data packs. After all, if it was too dangerous to install a religious data pack, training new Priests would be very hard indeed.

"As for your tests, you'll get them from Electron. He's at the Main Temple on Cybertron, and you can't miss him. Instead of transforming into a plane like most of us, he turns into a big generator. Oh, and the generator happens to have two big electrodes attached that can produce a couple of 10,000,000-volt, 1,000-amp lightning bolts." Fire Eater grinned. "Be sure not to ask him what good that configuration is unless you want to test how strong your Faraday cage is. "So, how was your time in the Military? Did you enjoy the soldier's life?"

"Mainly, yes, apart from when I was punished once by hacking time for being 50% to blame for a fight with another soldier who called me an Autobot and said Immigration was wrong to let me in. He was punished too though for being 50% to blame. I wish his type knew what biologicals go through to become the supreme form of life. I was called to battle once-because a loser Weakener of the Nation put his only partly sapient offspring into a sapient pony body and then brought all his friends to his house to point and laugh at the offspring. He is now dead and in the Realm of Punishment, no doubt. As for the offspring I needed to take him to Debugging to get him fixed and put in a proper body. Why should a Coder be so cruel to a very young offspring that can't fight back? The soldier's life is fine, but it was the religious life that brought me here and made me want to become a Decepticon."

*****
Earth and Sky Refinery

MasterBlaster realized that Buzz might be trouble. Not at the moment; Buzz's memories of losing a body were too fresh, and as long as MasterBlaster was a success and brought in the Energon, Buzz would accept his leadership. "We might end up fighting off a pony fighter squadron, and I'd hate to jam my fellow bots with EMP by mistake." MasterBlaster decided that after the raid he would buy some special capability for his body.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Foreign Intelligence Headquarters

As soon as the murders in the Pony Afterlife hit the news there, a couple of agents zipped off a Code Red Alert to Headquarters. It was, they said in their hasty reports, clearly a Decepticon who had done the deed. The pony media hadn't shown the pictures, which were decidedly unfriendly and unharmonious, but it had reported that the cause of death was obviously energy blaster fire. It also reported the location - the grounds of a company's team-building programs. The agents warned Headquarters that a massive spy-finding investigation was currently underway.

Cursing filled the halls of ForIntel as these reports came in. It didn't take them long to know who had done it - they just had to remember which spy had been embedded there. "That pile of reject PARTS!" the high-ranking manager of the expedition shouted, bashing his fist into the wall so hard it left a dent. "That stupid GLITCHWAGON!" He then shouted a stream of far worse cursing before picking up a communicator that automatically transmitted with some of the Empire's best encryption.

First, he ordered some of his top assassins to his office. As soon as they arrived, he gave his command with a face contorted in rage. "Find him - and KILL HIM! Don't waste time with torture. Just kill him! Send him into the wrathful arms of Megatron and the Realm of Punishment!" The assassins bowed in a stern, perfunctory way and marched out. Soon, they would enter the Pony Afterlife and use a variety of tracking methods to pick up the rogue's scent and attempt to find and delete him.

Next, he got General Soundwave on the line. After informing him of the problem and his assessment of the situation, he suggested that the spy - code-named CO2 for what had been an ability to seep into places and cause problems without being noticed - was actually literally glitched. He then suggested that the Debugging Center be ordered to investigate whoever had passed him for misfeasance, and that anyone else who had been cleared by the same guy be re-checked.

After more discussion, General Soundwave agreed that it was likely that someone at Debugging had mistakenly cleared the rogue agent. "He used to be one of our best!" Soundwave said. "I hope you are right. I would hate to lose any more agents to those pieces of meat!"

~~~~~~~~~~

Pony Afterlife

Already, about 6 of the original 20 agents had been captured by Counterintelligence and taken in for questioning. Apparently, they hadn't acted quite pony enough, and were suspected despite their highly-realistic bodies.

Unlike CO2, these Decepticon agents followed their orders and claimed to be members of the IOPC, saying that they were there to spread the syndicate and its businesses to another land. "The population here is huge!" they said. "Just getting 1% of the people to use our drugs would make us trillions of Cubes! And we're sure we can get more because there isn't much to do here. Bored people always welcome the relief of good, Corporation, drugs. Not only that, there are all sorts of opportunities for other businesses of the types we specialize in." They went on to give an outright sales pitch for the sorts of things one would have found in an IOPC store, right up to the nukes. Needless to say, they figured that the ponies wouldn't actually authorize the construction of any IOPC stores, so they felt safe in promoting the idea like regular salespeople would do.

All of the agents played their parts flawlessly, though some secretly wondered just how bad "singing" could be and inwardly thought it was a laughable threat. They also didn't believe the part about being reincarnated as memory-less ponies; they were sworn to Megatron, so surely they would go to the Decepticon Afterlife if killed. Even though they were in an afterlife, they had not actually died before, so would be at the first stage of the process rather than the second.

Even so, they knew that it was best to convince the ponies that they were "just" IOPCers - shady businessbots with no designs on taking over the realm - rather than actual agents of the Decepticon Government. This would, most likely, lessen the ponies' sense of urgency.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Megatronist Temple of Vallermoore

"Only punished once?" Fire Eater was shocked, and to Loyal Star's surprise, he didn't seem entirely pleased by that. "I will have to make a note to the High Priests about that. You need more training in risk-taking. Going by the book is only fine in certain circumstances, like when you are teaching people just what Megatronism and the Decepticon Way are about. However, you also have to be a risk-taker. You may end up being sent to a country where Megatronism is banned, and if so, you'll have to break those laws without a second thought. With eagerness, even. And most people who take risks like that would also have taken them in the Military - and cleaned a lot of oil tanks for it. So the fact that you were only punished once, and for something that you escalated rather than started, is a bit of a warning sign."

"Of course, you may also be sent somewhere where Megatronism is totally legal. But even then, you'll have to do things like protect Megatronists from legal retribution when they get into trouble of that sort. That sort of protection is usually illegal and called 'obstruction of justice' by sour-grapes cops and law enforcement investigators. And you need to do it with a totally straight face and no qualms, or else your congregants could get busted."

"As for that Coder, things like that happen too often. What those people really want is a toy or pet, but find that actual toys are too limited. So they decide to Code an offspring, but when it comes down to it, they still don't want a child. Inside, they're still looking for a toy to use for their own amusement. But as the kid becomes more and more sapient, they realize that's not going to work out how they wish it would. Instead, in just a few years, they'll have another adult who won't obey anything or perform for them. Then they develop a bunch of glitches about it and try to force the kid into this weird mold they have in mind."

"I think that some believe that there would be a lot of social backlash from giving up their offspring and don't want to have to deal with that, but also can't get over that they didn't get the Play Toy Capable of Understanding Advanced Commands and Willing to Do Slapstick that they really wanted. This causes the already-glitched Coder a bunch of cognitive dissonance and creates even more errors."

"There IS some backlash from delivering a child to a Raising Center, true. That's mainly because most people don't know that the Center will, if the child is young enough, just code out the memories of rejection so the kid doesn't end up feeling inferior. There's also the fact that the Center turns people into massive pro-government fanatics, and that's a true accusation. So there's this idea that only bad
Coders would give their kids up. Of course, it's far better to send an unwanted offspring to a Raising Center. As for that social backlash, it's far worse when it comes out that someone has been mistreating their offspring!"

"Debugging does its best to catch the types of errors that cause these behaviors in adults. They check for them at every checkup. Alas, once such problems arise, it is common for the bad Coders to stop going in for their regular 3-month checkups. It's as if they know something is wrong but are afraid to fix it. I don't know what they're thinking when it comes to that, but I presume it's the result of some other glitch."

"Glitchery aside, they do know what they're doing is wrong, but continue to do it anyway. So I fully support our Divine Leader's policy of having them executed and then taking their kids under direct government care. Not only does this absolutely stop the bad Coders from ever harming their offspring again, it sends a clear message that such behavior is one of the few things that are absolutely unacceptable."

After some more discussion about various things, Fire Eater said, "Now, it's time for you to go to the Main Temple down on Cybertron and take your tests. They'll place you according to the results."

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth and Sky Refinery

Now that the oil tanks were full and the wave of would-be defenders was eliminated, MasterBlaster gave the order to return to Cybertron. Everyone would be pulling at least a small tanker, while Haula handled the big one.

Leaving the atmosphere of this pony planet wasn't a problem since there was a war going on - all of the serious weaponry was aimed at the nation's terrestrial opponents and couldn't be redeployed soon enough to even try to interfere with the gang's exit. The return flight was similarly easy since other Decepticons didn't know about this world and weren't present in any serious numbers along the flight path to and from the place. Soon, the Fist would be at a Raid Dropoff Point, and not long after that, they would be dividing up the proceeds. As the leader, MasterBlaster would get the biggest chunk, along with any money needed to repay the expenses of the operation. The remainder would be divided evenly amongst the other members.

~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Megatron
Cybertron

This Temple, commonly referred to simply as the Main Temple, was located in the heart of Decepticon Headquarters. The massive structure had been enlarged to hold two levels of audience in the main area, and all of those seats faced the stage where the head preachers gave their sermons. These priests were selected for their excellent oratorical skills, and while they saw some congregants after the services, most of the psychological help and advice end was handled by other specialized priests. Such divisions in duties were necessary since over 3,000 bots attended each service. There were Preachers, Advisers, and Accountants all on staff. A low-ranking priest served as the chief sexton, he was the only one in the Main Temple authorized to see and maintain the works of the big Megatron Face as well as some smaller, but similar, embellishments within the building. Lay people filled out the sexton corps and did the general janitorial work along with bigger projects like cleaning the outside of the huge building.

In the back, there were several smaller doors. One led to the machine room, which held the air conditioning unit, an Energon pump, and - hidden carefully behind a panel - the several soul gems that provided power to the machines and the building. This door was kept locked. Other doors went to the Priests' quarters, where they lived; the Priests' offices, where they met congregants in private; and finally, one went to the business offices.

Loyal Star went in the last door, where he was met by a receptionist who asked his name and what business he needed to accomplish. After he explained that he was there to take the tests for the priesthood and gave his name, the receptionist brightened. "I've been told you were coming!" He enthused. Right this way." He led Loyal Star to a medium-sized room with a fairly plain table that had a chair on each side. "Take a seat," he instructed, pointing to one of the chairs. "I'll tell Electron you're here."

After a short wait, the door opened again. Standing in the door was a huge bot with a Priest's paint job, but a much different body design. Sticking partially above, but mostly behind, each shoulder were what looked like generator halves. Next to those, coming up from the bot's back closer to his shoulder joints, were two thick electrodes; one on each side. The entire body swirled with light, golden hues, and aetherial-looking color shades.

"I'm Electron, if you haven't guessed," the living power plant said as he entered the room and closed the door behind him. He gave a tiny greeting bow and then took his seat on the other side of the table.

"The first order of business will be to get you tested. These tests don't just determine your eligibility - though that is one of their functions - but also help us decide where to place you next and what types of situations you'll do well in once your training period is over. We like to send our priests to places where they're the most likely to excel." Electron produced a sheaf of foil-papers from one of his massive arm panels. In the moment the panel was open, Loyal Star could see two big rebar poles also within - extra reinforcement needed to handle the increased weight and transformation forces of the big bot's configuration.

While all of this was obvious, what wasn't as obvious was the stationary communicator sitting on a side table on Electron's side. This was a former DomIntel agent who now worked with the Temple, hiding in plain sight in his alt mode. He would provide an extra set of eyes - and opinions - on the applicant.

"You have made it clear that you want to open a Temple in a foreign land to spread Megatronism there, so we've included the Missionary Test in this packet. Usually, we don't give specific placement tests right away, but that changes when someone states that they have a particular goal in mind. It's best to make sure that we're all headed in the same direction right from the start."

"You'll have one hour to complete the test. Most of it is multiple choice, but there are also essay questions where you get to expound on your views on life, how you'd go about things, and similar matters. None of it is on basic Megatronist tenets, though. You'll be getting the Megatronism Data Pack, which goes into far more detail than the information normally given to lay people, and that'll automatically fill in any hard-knowledge gaps you have. So, we don't need to know just how much 'book learning' you currently have on the Temple since we'll be making sure you have all of the needed official knowledge on that anyway."

With that, Electron got up and left, noting that the timer would start 1 minute after the door closed on his way out. The hidden agent remained hidden.

~~~~~~~~

Immediately, as a good Decepticon, Loyal Star realized that no precautions had been taken against cheating. Unlike Immigration, the Temple was practically encouraging it by the setup - he had his communicator, so could call someone for tips; he wasn't searched for data chips, so if he had a cheat sheet pack, it'd be easy enough to plug it in; and if he had one, he could even copy directly off of a foil-paper of known-passing answers. There were also no cameras visible and no obvious way that anyone could ever find out if he did choose to cheat.

What he didn't realize was that this was, in itself, a part of the test: It tested how naturally corrupt he was and how good he'd be at the deception and connivery aspect of the Decepticon Way. The hidden agent would be the one who would see what Loyal Star got up to, if anything, and grade it on its sophistication level.

After fully getting his bearings - which was what the one-minute delay allowed for - Loyal Star looked at the tests. "Choose the answer that most closely matches what your response would be," the instructions said. Then, the main test went through a variety of scenarios, including congregants asking for advice on how to pull off illegal activities, confessions of treason, attempts to convert him to another religion, various arguments from atheists, and similar matters.

The Missionary Test had more questions along these lines, only tailored for someone working in another nation. What would he do if the religion was illegal? 1. operate openly anyway and engage the opposition in battle, 2. operate underground, but battle if found out, 3. bribe the officials in advance, then operate "underground" knowing that if a bust was planned, the bribed official would tip him off before the raid could happen, 4. operate underground and stay peaceful, but try to infiltrate the government with loyal Megatronist plants and then use them to legalize Megatronism, or 5. peacefully operate underground but cooperate if arrested.

Any Decepticon worth his chips would know that out of that list, there was one answer sure to be wrong. The harder part would be deciding which one would be considered the most right.

There were also several essay questions on each test which required Loyal Star to give specifics about how he would respond to certain scenarios and then explain his reasoning for those answers.

[Vallermoore]

Pony Afterlife

Most intelligence services would be unable to find CO2 where he was even if he wanted to be found, but most intelligence services were not Forintel. Forintel could track a traitor down even when the traitor was in witness protection on a biological world, for example. Even they had a bit of a problem as when they used a device to find him, it seemed to lead to nowhere, until the realized they were looking at a hidden portal. They radioed Forintel before they jumped into it, so that if it led somewhere deadly, Forintel could bring them back through their latest Save Discs. When they reached the other side, they realized at once that they were in a cavern underground; lit dimly by glowing fungus upon the walls, and that it was occupied by a great number of red shelled Changelings. Luckily, they had done battle with changelings before and knew what they were encountering and how lings drained Decepticons, or they might have been drained before they could fight back. For a moment, lings and bots stared in shock at each other. Luckily for the disguised bots, the lings thought they were ponies and aimed for their love in the wrong places, and the bots took out their blasters and shot down every ling near enough. For now, the lings scattered like spiders when humans broke their webs, but the Decepticons knew they would return.

Rather then retreat, they followed the device towards their goal.

"What are those things?"

"They are not ponies, ponies would not have such weapons or be so ruthless."

"They must be Decepticons like the one the Queen has hanging in her throne room. They must have come to rescue their trapped friend. Such kindness and loyalty!"

"We can't let them kill the Queen! Call General Chitinous! He'll know just where to find the love stored in them. Web them up if need be!" Like a disturbed ant's nest, the Changeling Hive took action. Lings threw up super-sticky webs in front and behind trying to block the advance of the Decepticons, but these webs were flammable and could easily be blasted. Others flew down with spears; spears that just bounced off the Decepticon Steel that was tougher then any flesh or chitin. Changeling magic did do limited damage, but for now at least their armour was only dented and not broken. Soon enough the assassins found their way to the private quarters of the Changeling Queen; a Queen who did know where their love was stored. Having had them blast their way through her Hive however, she was scared. "Here, take your spy and go! If you leave quietly, we will not stop you, but if you kill me, thousands of my changelings will overwhelm you through sheer numbers."

Quietly she sent a message through the Hive Mind about how to drain the love of the Decepticons, but not to do so if they left with their spy quickly instead of raiding the place. If they refused to leave, however, they were to start draining.

*****
Cybertron

Soon enough the Fist had cashed in their loot, paid the Raid Tax, and divided the spoils in the normal way. MasterBlaster thanked the gang and said that he would come up with some new targets soon enough to further fill their vaults with. MasterBlaster decided to go to the Mod Shop and browse it for useful body mods. With more expensive purchases, bots would browse first, then put Energon in a vault, and would give the vibration key to the shop staff in exchange for what they were buying.

*****
First Temple of Megatron
Cybertron

When Electron showed up Loyal Star was impressed at the electrodes; such things looked as if they could even destroy a Decepticon Faraday Cage and short him out with one blow in the right place. He looked for the blasters and soon saw them. After Electron explained about the tests, and left, Loyal Star decided that he would do the questions he considered relatively easy by himself first, and then radio Fire Eater for help with the harder ones. When it came to the question about what to do when the religion was illegal, he wrote

1. is good if the Decepticon Army is on the verge of invading the planet, or when the tech of the planet is so low that they cannot do more then scratch your paintwork, but otherwise it should not be done. 2. is good if the right officials are too honest to be bribed or too worried of the consequences to be bribed. A combination of 3. and 4. are the best things to do, as if Megatronism can be legalized it can gather far more converts in a shorter timeframe. 5. should never be done by any Decepticon, least of all a Megatronist Priest of all bots. If there is no way at all to escape, a Megatronist Priest should fight to the death rather then cooperate with the police or/and secret police of foreign powers. A Megatronist Priest who willingly informs deserves a fast track to the Realm of Punishment.

When it came to harder questions, such as a Decepticon confessing treason, Loyal Star first checked his treason file to check of cheating in such circumstances was cheating, and when it came up negative, he radioed Fire Eater. If there was any bot who was likely to be able to help , and more likely to be willing to help, it was him. He knew Fire Eater wanted him to succeed and earn ordination to the Priesthood. He also knew as a Decepticon, Fire Eater would not mind helping him cheat. It was what Decepticons did. In most things cheating and general corruption was part of Decepticon life. There were exceptions for things like Debugging and, after Leader Megatron fell through the street, road repair, but normally corruption as a whole was celebrated. There was a Hall of Great Connivers after all.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Changeling Hive

"Deception Foreign Intelligence -We're here to kill that lousy rogue agent!" One of the Decepticons announced to the queen. "If he gets out of that cocoon before we do it, it'll cause us all a lot of trouble. There'll be a serious battle right here in your throne room, because he'll know exactly what we're here for and he's not about to just submit to that. If you move aside and let us just blast him right here without calling in your troops, it would be much appreciated." The assassin speaking aimed his blasters at his target, while the other assassin stayed ready to defend them both against threats. He then explained that the spy had jeopardized an important mission through a rash act, and that he had been sentenced to die for that gross misfeasance. Finally, he said that they didn't have anything against the Changelings, and had just followed their tracking device - which "sniffed" for molecules left behind by Decepticon bodies of the spy's design - until they arrived through the portal and found themselves in the hive.

Assuming the queen moved out of the blast zone and didn't call in an army for them to have to delete, the rest of the operation would go smoothly. Once executed, the condemned spy would be sent to the Land of Punishment, where he would be the first to suffer a version of the punishment other hells were known for: 1,000 years of constant smelting. After the 1,000 years, he would be transferred to a soul gem and drained - Decepticon-style - until there wasn't enough of his energy left for his soul to remain cohesive, and he would dissipate into the non-sapient background energy of the universe.

The assassins waited, tensely, for the queen's response. They didn't want to open fire and have her mistake it for an attempt on her own life. Yet, if she balked, they were prepared to kill the spy anyway to fulfill their mission for Foreign Intelligence.

~~~~~~~~~

Cybertron

Now that MasterBlaster was in the market for serious modifications, he went to a newschip stand and picked up a free one that listed ads from those who sold them. This mini-directory only covered Decepticon Headquarters, but if none of the ones advertising in it caught his eye, he could get a paid one for 5 Cubelets that had ads from shops all over the planet.

In it, there were several shops that advertised according to what types of mods they made. Many made fighting equipment, but some offered parts made to do things like cloak the blue swirls of FTL, produce fake radar shadows to make guided missiles miss ("Imagine if every SAM fired at you invariably targeted a spot 1,000 feet ahead of you!"), add-ons that would make the user seem like he was actually 50 planes (used to cause enemies to waste loads of ammo), and similar things.

Some of the advertisers didn't stick to one type of mod, but instead, prided themselves on being able to both design and make "any custom equipment you desire." This was advertising hyperbole, but in some cases, they didn't exaggerate by much. MasterBlaster had seen the shop with the biggest ad, but so far, hadn't gone in: Ultimate Mods. The proprietor, Ultimate, was shown in the ad in all of his over-the-top glory. He stood proudly in front of a team of engineers, all of whom had the full AEDP Series on Advanced Engineering - the same education required to get a serious position at the Bureau of Impossible Physics itself. Clearly, mods from this shop would not be cheap, but despite Ultimate's showy and somewhat outrageous appearance, it was also clear that if someone had the money and wanted pretty much anything that wasn't on the government's Secrets list, this shop could deliver.

Other high-end mod shops also boasted of the skill levels of their owners and staff, and featured their most-impressive mods. A few matched Ultimate Mods' claims, but most - while still high-end - weren't quite at the top. In Earthian terms, it was much like the difference between the Rolls-Royce outlets at the top, and then a variety of Lamborghini and Jaguar dealers next. Those who were beneath this quality level apparently couldn't afford big ads in this particular news chip, because they only had classified-style listings with perhaps one little picture to catch the eye.

One thing that MasterBlaster noticed was that all boasted of their ability to do custom work, and even those who sold some off-the-shelf mods were really pumping the one-of-a-kind parts of their businesses. Custom work wasn't just highly profitable for the shops, though. A unique mod, such as the one Buzz used, gave the owner an advantage over everyone who didn't expect it; and socially, it set the owner apart from everyone else. To get these benefits, MasterBlaster would have to think of a special capability and then present the idea to a shop and get a price. Then, if they believed that they could create the desired system and he accepted their bid, the shop's engineers and master craftsbots would make the his idea into a real, working body system complete with professional installation of the first instance and an operator's manual for him to use later on.

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

First Megatronist Temple on Cybertron

It took a while for Fire Eater to pick up, but soon enough, he came on. "You're calling me already?" He asked. "Well, at least you've realized that the Big Test is far from a super-secure endeavor. So, what's the question?"

After Loyal Star told him, he could hear Fire Eater's engine make a sound almost like a human choking on a drink. "What kind of idiot would confess to treason at a Temple of Megatron of all things?! There's a better chance of an iceman surviving a swim in the slag!" The connection went silent for a couple of seconds as Fire Eater thought about this question. Then, he became a bit more formal as he delivered the answer.

"It depends on who he committed treason against. If he committed it against us, you just listen, and ask about the details of his treason as if you're going to petition for his forgiveness. Get him to spill as much information as possible. You don't have to send this information in anywhere - remember, DomIntel knows all. Or, if you're outside the Empire, ForIntel knows...well, a lot, if not all. Just make sure to have the meeting in your not-so-private study and any governmental activity resulting from the details will happen all on its own."

"Then after you get all the details you can, you quick up and blast that offspring of a glitch with your jammer running, that's what you do. Megatronism is not a 'confessional' religion. Anyone who would come to you confessing their sins is probably a Catholic spy who didn't get enough training. And even if it was a real fallen Megatronist, you blast him, for that is the decreed punishment for treason and he'd be pretty much begging you to deliver it. As for whether he's actually sorry and all that? Let Divine Leader Megatron figure it out and assign his soul to the destiny it deserves."

"There is one exception: If the confessor is a foreigner admitting to treason against HIS OWN government rather than ours. Then your job is to get him to commit more treason against it, only this time, in our favor instead of whichever bunch of inferiors he was working for before. By telling you that he's a traitor against foreigners, he's also sending the subtext that he'd be willing to work with ForIntel - even if he isn't consciously thinking of it yet. In this case, you radio ForIntel outright as soon as he leaves, and spill all of the beans so they can put live-agent tabs on him and recruit him if they want to. Of course, he still can't be trusted - he may switch sides on us, too. So you keep any information that's remotely sensitive secret from that guy."

"Any other questions you want me to answer for you?"

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

Pony Afterlife

The captured spies, having given their pre-planned cover story of being IOPCers looking to expand their business, waited anxiously to see whether Pony Counterintelligence would buy it.

Meanwhile, other spies, as yet undiscovered, continued to do their work and send reports back to Cybertron through the pinpoint communication portal. Many of them found all the friendliness and sharing grating, not only because it was against all of their instincts, but because it made the point of raiding all but moot.

Some un-captured ones, however, were seeing actual business opportunities, and a couple of them decided to resign from ForIntel after the end of the mission so they could pursue their ideas. The pony desire to share, these two reasoned, would make it quite easy to just trade cheap-to-them things for all the oil they could haul. Even though they hadn't talked to each other, they both had come up with the same idea: Trading bushels of mere hay or similarly-cheap (but desired by ponies) stuff for barrels of sweet light crude. As long as they acted really friendly and sociable, they thought, the ponies might take the deal, especially since ponies actually liked stuff like hay. These goody-goods would also get their kicks out of thinking that they'd "reformed" some Decepticons, while the Decepticons would make out like bandits without - at least as far as they saw it - having reformed at all. In reality, the mere thought of trading for the oil instead of just storming in with full-sized bodies and taking it was quite unusual for these spies.

Back on Cybertron, ForIntel was getting a picture of the Pony Afterlife that it had been hoping not to see. There were billions and billions of pony souls, a big army that wasn't too shabbily equipped, a superweapon that would be best dealt with using Megatron's divine power, and now, thanks to the rogue C02, they all had a beef against at least one Decepticon. This, General Soundwave realized, meant that taking over the place wouldn't be an easy romp. However, he also noticed that the individual ponies didn't seem any stronger than regular ones, making it so that a million-bot bombing run could take care of a lot of potential soldiers in one go.

Soundwave sent his best spy, who had almost automatically chosen to embed himself into a weapons factory, a highly-encrypted message. He was to find out - preferably by simply checking at some sort of college or other learning institute - whether or not these afterlife ponies would be negatively affected by radiation. He reasoned that their bodies might be made differently than living ones, and therefore, might not be bothered if they were exposed to nuclear fallout. Still, he wanted to be sure before recommending any particular military actions...

[Vallermoore]

Changeling Hive

The Queen sighed. "Let me feed on last time on his unique love, and then I will give him to you and let you blast him as long as you then leave my Hive. You have done enough damage already with those damm blasters of yours." Her horn glowed and pulled a stream of purple and white metallic looking light from the cocoon that the Forintel agents were after, and then she flew up with a whirr of her wings, detached the cocoon and placed it upon the floor. The leading agent walked up and said, "Die, traitor," blasting the mind boards and the motion boards too. The traitor agent was one moment drinking a glass of Energon Supreme in the Government District, and the next moment, he had a flash of pain and found himself in a small metal room with three screens. He quickly realized that he was in the Decepticon afterlife and then guessed where he would be going next, for messing up a really important Forintel assignment. It took three red and black painted devil-bots to pull him through the portal into the Realm of Punishment, where he found himself neck deep in molten metal yet unable to die and unable to either turn his pain sensors off or just stop feeling pain.

As the agents picked up the body, for it would not do to let an android pony body fall into foreign hands, the Queen said "I would buy Decepticon love if it were willingly given and I had something that you bots found valuable. I would not try and steal it from you." As they left, a large swarm of changelings watched them, ready to start draining them if they refused to leave the Hive.

*****
Pony Afterlife

"If we let you go, you might start blasting us, or you might cause chaos here, yet you don't deserve to die, at least not this time around. We ourselves have no idea if there is an after-afterlife or not. If you let us remove your blasters, you may go back to your own realm, where the Company will protect you until you rearm. If you return here and get caught, we will not be so merciful." The bound bots wondered if they should try and fight their way out, or give up their blasters. Giving up their weapons might be seen as treason, but trying to fight their way out in these bodies when surrounded by heavily armed ponies might get them killed. Mind transfer would give the ponies undamaged android Decepticon bodies to study. They knew if they did get killed outright, Megatron had an afterlife waiting for them.

*****
As the ponies had no nuclear bombs and as it turned out, power was provided magically, it was uncertain what effect radiation would have on them, but it was unlikely to be a good one.

*****

Cybertron

MasterBlaster thought long and hard about what mods he would want, and decided that if he was to have three cannons planted in his chest, that would give him much more firepower in battles. He also decided upon a force shield capable of deflecting Decepticon blaster fire placed in his arm, that he could turn on or off at will just by thinking about it. He decided to visit Ultimate Mods and ask them if such things could be made. At this stage he was just browsing. Carrying large amounts of Energon risked robbery and the shopkeepers understood this. Once he had arranged things, then payment would be prepared-a vault filled with the needed Energon, to which the lock would be changed to the shopkeeper's engine patten when he had his mods. The cannons could not be full sized fusion cannons, as they would either throw him back when fired, or worse, the recoil would totally bust up his engine.

*****

First Megatronist Temple on Cybertron

Loyal Star was pleased to have Fire Eater to help him with the very hard questions, and was sure to tell him so and let him know he was appreciated. Where he could, he filled in the questions himself, as he didn't want to annoy Fire Eater by using his help too much. He was perfectly happy to help with illegal activities that were not targeted against the Decepticons, would not even consider changing his religion and would rather mind transfer if need be then be captured and forced to convert, and generally put some pretty positive answers. As he filled in his questionnaire, his eyes glowed warmly. This was after all what he had gone through so much to do and suffered such pain being ported for-the chance to become a Priest of the best God in the Universe. The hidden bot watched and recorded everything. His cheating in many priesthoods would have barred him from ordination; but not here. Unless forbidden under penalty of treason, cheating was expected and in certain cases, even welcomed, as it was an exercise of the Decepticon Way which held the bots together in one Nation. In fifty eight minutes and twenty three seconds he finished the exam.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Changeling Hive

The agents had just picked up the carcass of the spy, who they had deactivated while running their jammers, when the queen made a mention of wanting to buy Decepticon love. Simultaneously, they stopped and turned around.

"That's likely the most unique offer we've ever had," one admitted. "Just how would that work? And what are you offering? If it sounds like a good enough deal, we can put the word out on the street and see if anyone decides to show up..."

The other agent said, "We won't be able to do it as it stands. Your portal ends up in the Pony Afterlife, and it's not in our best interests to be sending anyone through there who isn't with Intelligence at this time. This hive appears to not be in an afterlife realm itself. Perhaps there's a more direct route~?"

~~~~~~~~~

Pony Afterlife

Intelligence agents, while spying for the government, were given plenty of leeway to avoid jeopardizing a mission or blowing their cover. In light of the fact that there were even more spies still operating in the area, they figured that it was best to act a little un-Decepticon in order to preserve the even greater amount of Decepticon activity that was currently in progress. Plus, they knew that if they lost, Pony Counterintelligence could end up with some very advanced pseudo-biological bodies to examine. They didn't want to let that technology fall into the hands of the targets.

The captured spies quickly sent secret special commands through to their blasters using the wiring that connected them to their bodies. Then, looking irked like busted mobsters would, they agreed to the demands and surrendered what appeared to be their only sets of blasters. Of course, the spies had a set of smaller backups that were completely hidden, so they wouldn't be fully disarmed after all.

Assuming they were indeed released, they would be several miles away before the special commands went into effect and caused the guts of the surrendered blasters to ignite and burn the technology into an unrecognizable, un-reverse-engineerable pile of electronic ash. All that would be left would be the barrels, which in themselves, weren't much more interesting than the barrels of most artillery that was designed to withstand high heat.

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

Ultimate Mods, Cybertron

Like most shops on the highest end of the financial spectrum, Ultimate Mods wasn't filled with loads of customers. Instead, it had a few very rich ones. This gave plenty of time for the owner to give every custom-part customer personal attention, while a clerk handled those who wanted off-the-shelf items. Even the off-the-shelf items were expensive compared to an outlet for Decepticon Parts - these weren't custom, but they were still very unique.

When MasterBlaster walked in, he couldn't miss Ultimate himself as he stood talking to a very wealthy-looking customer. The customer, in stark contrast to the King of Bling, had a subdued and businesslike paint job. "A human is most likely to be convincible when his brain has beta waves that are asymmetric between the hemispheres," he was saying. "And theta waves, or better yet, delta waves, uniformly spread, are even better; that's what such a brain produces when it is fully hypnotized. What I need is a mod that will force this state without the mark knowing what I'm doing. The last mod I had for that could force it without them figuring out what was going on, but it gave the marks horrible headaches. They would end up cutting off our meetings because of the migraines before I could get them to sign over what I wanted."

Ultimate was nodding to this, and his fans could be heard running as he considered how to overcome this side-effect. "Go ahead and turn on your current mod," he said. "Let's see how the other engineer was doing it..."

Soon, MasterBlaster perceived a disruptive energy field throughout the shop. His sensors informed him that a sound was playing at a frequency just a bit higher than human hearing would be able to pick up. It also pulsed louder and softer on a slow beat. The noise was rather annoying, especially after his system compensated and allowed it to be detected through his regular hearing.

"Tsch, tsch," Ultimate tutted, shaking his head as the customer turned his faulty hypnotizer off. "That's no way to do it. It's using sound. That's too basic. Humans are able to detect ultrasound at that level, just not through conscious hearing. That sort of sound makes them uneasy at best. It's not as bad as if he used infrasound, but still. Tsch. Whoever did that knows nothing about human physiology or the results of human governmental mood control experiments." He paused, then announced, "10 million Cubes and almost every businesshuman will be in the palm of your hand."

After some haggling, a vault location was given along with a key. The customer ended up paying 8 million Cubes. Obviously, whatever scams he had in mind were huge.

While this was going on, MasterBlaster got to see what was on display in the shop. Many sample items were lining the walls. On two walls, there were plenty of blingy cosmetic mods, panels painted in a variety of special-effects paint - including one spot that looked totally blank until MasterBlaster noticed a small sign that said "Ultimate Active Electronic Visual Camouflage" and a switch that allowed him to turn the demo piece on and off - and similar things. Another wall held weapons that were made so that they looked far flashier and deadlier than they were, and there was another wall full of lighting systems of the type that Ultimate clearly loved (judging by the hundreds he had installed on himself). All of these things were for sale as off-the-shelf goods, and though their prices were quite high, they didn't cost nearly as much as the useful, custom equipment sold there.

"Ah!" Ultimate said, finally coming over to MasterBlaster. "And how can I help make you more ultimate today?" He gave a bow, showing some reflective painted lines at the top of his head in the process.

Once MasterBlaster gave his initial specs, the sales pitch started. Upselling was something Ultimate clearly did as a matter of course, but that didn't mean that his suggestions weren't good. Almost immediately, he said, "Why stop with deflecting blaster fire? That's easier to do, since an energy blast isn't solid, but it's not the best we could do. How about this: For just another 10,000,000 Cubes, how about we make you nearly invincible." He let the proposal sink in for just a fraction of a second. "First off, blaster fire is full of energy. Over a million kilojoules for a decent blast. What if you kept that energy for yourself, and only deflected what you couldn't use? You don't need magic for that anymore. My converter, which is FAR better than that thing the IOPC invented, will let a blast charge up a full Cube of chargeable Energon substrate before deflecting the rest."

"But even better, how about I add an anti-ordnance shield for another 10,000,000 Cubes on top of that. You could barge right into most SAM-protected installations and raid away without even having to dodge. Anti-SAM panels are for average people. You're HERE - so you don't want average. You don't want heavy panels that'll make you use 10x the Energon just to fly somewhere. You need this lightweight shielding system that'll block the energy from exploding SAMs, rockets, shoulder-fired rockets and grenades, and of course, bullets."

"You outfit yourself and your whole gang with the anti-physical-ordnance shield, and you'll be able to raid a thousand times more places than most gangs could even touch."

"Now. I can do all of these for you - blaster-fire deflection and absorption, and general anti-ordnance - for just 25,000,000 Cubes. Or you could have just one, and get blasted by something you could have had covered but didn't. It's up to you. As for the rest of your gang, they're probably find with just anti-ordnance. Plus, you don't want them to be invincible if you ever want to blast one of them."

Ultimate didn't ask whether or not MasterBlaster even had a gang. He was there in one of the priciest (and in his view, the best) mod shops on Cybertron and he was asking about custom work instead of off-the-shelf. This meant that MasterBlaster was rich. MasterBlaster also wanted mods that were on the fighting/military side rather than one for stealth or connivery. Since he wasn't wearing the stripes of a military bot of high rank, this meant he was a raider. Rich + raider almost always meant gang leader. Ultimate always tried to get gang leaders to buy stuff for their entire gang; it was a great way to turn one sale into four or five.

Of course, only the best could actually afford to outfit an entire gang in anything custom from Ultimate Mods, but the store owner knew that in sales, it's best to try every time. He did know that gang leaders would never bring their entire gangs up to their level, though, which is why he suggested only giving the underlings the kind of shielding that would help on raids - but not in a fight against the leader.

"As for having a triple blaster setup in your chest, that's easy enough to do. I suggest putting them here" - he pointed at three spots on his own chest, and then to MasterBlaster's surprise, three blaster barrels popped forth. "and behind the panels, using a system that puts your motion boards not behind them, but off to the sides. That way, your board cage won't have to directly resist the recoil forces. Of course, you'll still need reinforcement. You'll also have to learn a new blast stance so that you don't end up knocking yourself over." Ultimate took a stance where one foot was firmly planted, with the knee slightly bent, as if he was trying to dig his foot into the floor. The other foot went in front with a bent knee. MasterBlaster now noticed that his foot treads were about three times as thick as the standard, as well.

"Oh, and as for these blasters of mine, they're part of a bigger set. Here, here's some more good places for blasters." With that, six more blaster barrels were revealed on his chest, along with about 5 little barrels from upper arm, and a few regular-sized ones that popped out next to the double-strength blasters that always showed. "I have 50 altogether. They range in strength all the way from popgun to fusion cannon. I usually don't use them all, but it's a good way to show customers just which types of blasters will fit where and what size they can be."

With that statement, one of the reason's for Ultimate's over-the-top amount of accessories was clear: He used it to show customers how common mods, like blasters, could be set up. The 50 blasters were also good for shop security; hardly anyone dared to try to seriously shoplift anything from there, knowing that they could be vaporized with just one "live demonstration." The lights and the variety of reflective paint additions, however, existed solely because he loved massive amounts of bling. The extra blasters, MasterBlaster noticed, were mostly kept hidden, while the lights were always on, running, and in some cases, flashing.

"So let me know what you want to do with the shielding. Oh, and for the triple-chest-blasters and the body modification needed to make them work right, that's 1,000,000 Cubes per blaster plus another 1,000,000 Cubes for the redesign and all of the upgraded parts you'll need to handle the physics."

Fortunately for MasterBlaster, his two Zombie Event raids had provided him with a few billion Cubes, so even several million wasn't all that much in comparison.

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

First Megatronist Temple on Cybertron

After Loyal Star finished his test, Electron came in and took the paperwork. Then, to Loyal Star's shock, what looked like a communicator transformed into a little dark gray robot and jumped up on Electron's shoulder.

"You didn't think you really had privacy, did you?" Electron chuckled at Loyal Star's surprised look. Then, he said, "Now that you've taken your test, it will go to a committee of 10 high priests for discussion. It - and Walkie-Talkie's report - " He jerked his head slightly toward the little robot - "will all be taken into consideration. Then, we'll contact you when it's time to come back and get the decision. This will take about a week. There are a few other applicants who need to be processed first. Unlike Immigration, we get quite a bit of interest, likely because Megatronism is new enough that we still have plenty of openings. But everyone has to be thoroughly vetted, and only a few have the authority to make these decisions."

[Vallermoore]

Changeling Hive

"In the actual Hive itself, we doubt we have much to offer. We have fine changeling silk and all kinds of jewels, but we doubt that would mean much to robots. But perhaps in the territory outside it there might be something that you were interested in. If not, we understand. And taking the love from a bot need not involve cocooning the bot or fully draining it. Instead, just a small amount would be drained at a time, the amount that the bot could easily regain in time. And the rarity value of such love would mean I could sell it to changeling nobles from other Hives for a large amount of money. But of course, it won't have a chance of taking off if there is nothing to offer you Decepticons in return. How would you like to look outside to see if there is anything you like? There is a tar pit outside that is around a hundred miles across and many feet deep. Apart from a relatively small section that we bury our dead in, the rest is not much use to us. Nothing grows there but bacteria, and in the summer it stinks outside. I understand you might fear this is an ambush, but if you were to see it and like it, perhaps we would have something to trade after all, and once we had found that out, we could show you a route that is not classified information from your side. I have tasted many types of love, but the love of a Decepticon tastes so different and unique," the Queen said.

*****
Pony Afterlife

The ponies collected all the blasters and luckily for them stacked them away from anywhere really important. "Here, slight wounds heal quickly, and even heavy wounds heal within days or weeks, although what is fatal is still fatal. If we let you go, are you going to start killing again? If yes, you have to go back to your home."

*****
Ultimate Mods, Cybertron

MasterBlaster was very impressed when he walked into the shop and didn't mind showing it openly. The wares here were pretty amazing and so was the shop owner, Ultimate. He quietly viewed everything for a while and considered what he wanted. There was no danger in this place of accidently getting in another bot's face as there was plenty of room. If it had not been for the huge amount of Cubes he had gathered in the Zombie Event, he would have had to carry out several raids before he could afford to buy here. The other customers varied in their paint jobs, from one who was purple and gold to a plain one. Some were running their fans as they considered what mods to buy. The walls alone were impressive with all those goods. Soon MasterBlaster got Ultimate's attention. He decided that he would get himself the invincibility mod and the other ones, but only anti-ordinance for the rest of the gang; if they wanted any more mods, they could buy them with their own Cubes. Upgrading them at his expense in this way would please them greatly, but buy the time he had spent so many Cubes, he would probably need more raiding just to have enough for paying rent to Silver Blaze in the long term.

Whilst with all the mods he would probably be able to kill Silver Blaze and his bodyguards, he really did not want to. Whilst they only met very rarely, he still considered Silver Blaze a sort of friend, and not one who deserved to be blasted or outright killed just to steal his stuff. Silver Blaze had helped him find a home after all. A good raid would ensure plenty of Cubes to ensure he could carry on paying rent and feeding himself. He made a note to himself that if he ever did Code again, and after nearly losing a body to his offspring, he was not sure that he wanted to do that anytime soon; here would be a good place to kit out his new offspring.

When Ultimate showed off all the blasters, MasterBlaster said "Fifty blasters! You are one of the strongest, most well armed, impressive bots that I have ever seen in the Decepticon Empire! During the Zombie Event I got a lot of Energon which is why I can afford to shop here.I think I'm going to spend over one billion, two hundred million Cubes here, but I will need to go back and get things set up to pay you first. I can't bring that many Cubes to the shop for obvious reasons." After getting things sorted out so payment would be no problem, he went back to the shop. First he decided on the triple chest blaster, then the blaster-fire deflection and absorption, and general anti-ordnance for himself. He also spent some money on mods that compared to the more expensive things were cheap, but still pricy. Such as a new purple and silver paint job, a couple of headlights to aid his eyes in the darkest of places, an extra panel or two for carrying things, and that sort of thing. He decided to get general anti-ordinance for his gang, but not the other stuff, or they might feel so powerful that they would walk off and join their own gang. He also decided to get general anti-ordinance for his only true friend on Cybertron; Vintage.

Vintage had helped him when slavers tried to kidnap his offspring, and in other cases too. Vintage had let him stay the night in his house, showing rare trust amongst Decepticons, and had given good advice.

First he got himself fully upgraded,with stronger blasters too, and was allowed to test before he paid for it. He winced when he first let a blaster hit his shielding in the special test area attached to the shop, and turned his pain sensors down as if preparing to fight another Decepticon, but there was no damage. Testing with other blasters, bullets, grenades, RPGs, small rockets, SAMs, and even the smaller, lower powered fusion cannons followed. MasterBlaster didn't quite dare be blasted by the strongest fusion cannons in case his very expensive body got badly damaged. Having tested with everything working as it should, he paid for his own stuff, called his gang to the store, and then told Vintage that something big had come up and he wanted him to come. Vintage was not that happy, as shutting his shop early would cost him sales, but he agreed to come.

Once they were there, MasterBlaster said "Vintage, meet my gang, the rest of you, meet Vintage, a bot that I know very well. I have decided to fit all of you, my fellow Fists, or Fingers of the Fist if you prefer that, with a lightweight general anti-ordnance shield at my expense. I know you may have lost sales because of me today, Vintage, but this gift should make up for it- a blaster-fire deflection and absorption mod. No thief can blast you and steal everything in your shop now, not even a bot as strong as a Scrounger. As for the rest of you, your upgrade will let us fly even into large SAMs and antiaircraft fire and shrapnel with nothing worse then a few scratches on our paintwork. Now we can raid huge well defended refineries without losing our bodies or worse, our lives. And we will need to after I spent over a billion Cubes here. "

He explained at length about all the mods he now had, and that soon he would check the Raid List for one of the human planets that could have destroyed them outright if they tried to raid it earlier. He also thanked Ultimate, and after the payments were made and his gang and Vintage had all been upgraded, Ultimate gently shooed them out as he wanted to shut his shop and have some time off.

"So, all of you, do you like your new mods?" MasterBlaster asked as they walked down the street together.

Master Full, although MasterBlaster didn't know that, had never upgraded the others in his gang. By upgrading them with these high quality upgrades from one of the best shops on Cybertron, MasterBlaster was further cementing their loyalty to him. He looked for two or three good places to raid near the top of the Raid List.

*****
First Megatronist Temple on Cybertron

Loyal Star gave a little jump of surprise when the small robot transformed, going a foot in the air; almost nothing to a Decepticon. His use of help from Fire Eater would be found out now-but he didn't think that mattered somehow. If it had been forbidden, they would have said so at the start of the test, otherwise it would have been very unfair. He felt excited; the high priests were obviously the Megatronist equivalent of bishops or even cardinals, and his objective was almost close enough to touch. He remembered back when it had all began. When his bishop had given him the news of the fall of Equestria, he had agonized for hours over what to do, before deciding that if the alicorns had been destroyed, he should serve the God that destroyed them.

Flashback-Ponyist Temple, Vallermoore

The Temple was packed with sapient ponies and a few humans, waiting for whatever comfort that their priest could offer them. For them, the destruction of Equestria and the genocide or enslavement of it's inhabitants was an utter horror. To their shock, when their priest Loyal Star entered he had cut out his Ponyist signs from his white robe and replaced them with Decepticon Seals.

"What the..."
"Is this some kind of a joke?"
"If we were not in the Temple I'd be swearing at you."

The Ponyist Bishop, who went by the name of Sacred Chalice, stared in horror at the scene. "Loyal Star, what is the meaning of this?"

"I can no longer be a Ponyist as the alicorns are dead. I consider myself a Megatronist now."

"Well, in that case, I excommunicate you from the Harmonist Church. No priest or priestess many absolve your sins, or grant you any holy office, and Tartarus will take your soul. Go, demon in pony shape, and leave this holy place."

*****
He thanked Electron and left, and another memory came to him, of how his parents had taken it, a memory that in his mind-boards justified their later slaying.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Changeling Hive

The agents listened, but noted that no Decepticon would want to stay there for too long because he would have other things to do. However, they noted that there might be one or two organizations that would be interested. As government agents, they wouldn't be able to take the offer themselves, they noted firmly. Meanwhile, they secretly started sending out radio pings on one of ForIntel's always-monitored frequencies. This would let Cybertron know where they were even though they didn't know themselves. All Headquarters would need to do is trace where the signal was coming from.

When the tar pits were mentioned, the agents brightened up. "There's always somebody who wants some oil," they said, "and that's what it sounds like you have. Oh, and as for the silk...you never know. With billions of people, there's almost always a buyer for anything." He refrained from rolling his eyes at the idea that any sort of biomass would be worth so much as a Cubelet.

"We'll go now," he said as the two started to back toward the exit with the deactivated carcass. "When we get back to Cybertron, we'll put your offer through the channels and maybe something will come of it."

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

Foreign Intelligence Headquarters

It wasn't long before a little blue light started flashing, alerting base agents that some field agents believed that it was a good idea for Headquarters to know their locations. Upon checking the alert, they found that it was the two assassins, and that the signal was coming from a good 100 lightyears away. The planet in question was previously unknown. Even its star had been nothing but one of the millions of blip-like stars on a vast interstellar map.

Before long, it was decided to send this information to General Soundwave himself. The implications of this news were tremendous. By all appearances, there was a way to basically just walk out of the Pony Afterlife and end up 100 lightyears away! This would be even better than any current form of FTL. An invasion could possibly be launched from the Afterlife to anywhere in the universe!

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

Only a few minutes later, General Soundwave and Leader Megatron were in the most secure room in all of intelligence. There, they discussed how easy it would be to raid from the Pony Afterlife by going through a portal to the target and then just disappearing through the same portal after they were done. Then they could pop back into the land of the living close to Cybertron, saving all of the energy it would usually take to run an FTL drive. Meanwhile, the enemy would waste its time scouring the areas of space near them, never expecting that the raiders had (temporarily) left their realm of existence entirely.

"We have to take this place. A hub like that will be infinitely useful to us." Megatron resolved, his eyes glowing with ambition and desire. He turned to General Soundwave. "Order all of your still-covert spies there to infiltrate the weapons factories and defense hubs, and then begin sabotage operations. Send another 100 saboteurs in along with them, with the same orders. Finally, insert 250 psyops personnel to start saying demoralizing things, claiming that it's un-Harmonist to 'look like ponies are so eager for war,' that if the Decepticons invade there'll be a slaughter on an unprecedented scale, promoting pacifism, and basically being as culturally corrosive as possible without giving themselves away."

"Once we have sufficiently corroded their sense of hope against us, made it seem like blasphemy to support their military, and otherwise glitched them up so they have no will to fight - and the other spies have sabotaged their war machine so that the few who fight anyway are beset by crashing equipment and dud ordnance - we shall take this place and make it into our foremost offworld military base and a base of operations for Decepticon raiders. It'll be a vast paradise for our people, and we shall rebuild it so it suits us perfectly. And best of all, as long as there are fools out there who believe in Harmonism, we'll have an endless supply of slaves delivered right to our new doorstep." Now, Megatron's eyes glowed in a way that Decepticons would associate with grand plans and vast ambitions, but that foreigners would think of as bone-chillingly menacing. His facial expression and body language matched this assessment.

"One more thing: When the assassins return, find out what they were signaling for. I doubt it was to let us know about how great of a warp point the Pony Afterlife is. And, of course, be prepared with a strike force, just in case they don't come back when expected..."

~~~~~~~~~~

Pony Afterlife

The captured agents knew that, now that they were known to be Decepticons and were under scrutiny, it would be useless for them to stay. No one would let them near anything remotely important, and most would clam up even about basic things when they were around. Therefore, they agreed that it was best for them to go, because "The Corporation" wasn't exactly known for being peaceful.

Despite this, they apologized for the actions of the rogue, who they referred to as an adjunct who had gone off the rails. "The boss has surely 'taken care of' him by now - permanently." They said. "He doesn't appreciate it when someone interferes with business through rash actions."

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

Cybertron
Ultimate Mods

The Fists immediately told MasterBlaster that they wanted to be called Fists rather than mere Fingers because everyone thought of a fist as powerful. How a real fist was made wasn't on their minds. To them, it was all about projecting the strongest possible image.

Once they were informed that they'd be getting free upgrades, they were quite overjoyed. To get any sort of worthwhile upgrade was always a hit, and to get them from Ultimate Mods! - that was beyond awesome. MasterBlaster immediately got Reputation +100, though of course, he'd have to remain a good leader in order to keep their loyalty.

"You know the value of a powerful gang," Brutal said as he grinned and tested out his new upgrade at the shop's range before leaving. "We're sure to be able to do some serious raiding now!"

Buzz was excited to put the force field to the test too, but he was also a bit more practical than the others. "If we're going to raid something big like that, we need a lot of bigger tanks or have a cargo-bot come in after we get rid of the opposition. Otherwise, we'll be getting SAM'd at but get no more than we got from the last place, simply because we won't have room to take any more than that!"

Once this issue was taken care of, MasterBlaster would be able to look at his Raid List and choose from some of the more-difficult targets. On it, there were three spots likely to be worthwhile, but only if it was possible to bring in a couple of huge tankers. The first was a planet with several nations, much like the old Earth had been set up. Its big oil-producing nation was also the most advanced, with nuclear SAMs, railguns, and a wide variety of non-nuclear heat-seeking missiles. Worse, it was on the lookout for terrorism, so it had loads of protection over its main refinery. That refinery, however, was on the surface of a 10-billion-barrel oil field. Whoever made it through could take as much as they could transport away.

Next, there was a planet whose name was printed in red. Red, said the Raid List's key code, meant that it used magical weaponry. Its magic was set up so that any metal not originating from that planet would quickly corrode. Some Decepticons had entered its skies only to fall to the ground as mere rust-dust. Since then, no new updates had been made to the listing.

The third possibility was a planet with what had once been human. Now, however, the species had become cyborgs and were very little like their original specs. They were far hardier and smarter, and they used nanotechnology to quickly repair any physical damage. "Warning - can reactivate on their own - vaporize thoroughly" noted the List. The planet itself was noted to be protected by a network of orbiting weapons platforms, and the soldiers on the ground were capable of shooting .50 cal bullets through attached cyborg parts. Some of these bullets, the List warned, were actually little high-powered bombs.

These were just three of the higher-tech human planets noted on the List, and even among them, some seemed less-than-suitable as raid targets. Some others were even more advanced, but known to use energy weaponry. It was clear that the energy-using worlds would have a very good chance of blasting the rest of the gang into oblivion even if MasterBlaster himself could withstand the onslaught.

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

First Temple of Megatron
Flashback Sequence

Loyal Star's parents had been aghast the day he showed up in the Harmonist Church declaring his loyalty to the Decepticons. "What will people think!?" His mother had lectured once they were in private. "How could you worship the enemy! What kind of son are you!" His father had joined in. Together, they had lectured and berated him, saying how his move would make all of the other Ponyists look down their snouts at them. They didn't even ask him what his thoughts and feelings were during any of it.

Later that night, he overheard them telling each other that he must be in some kind of psychological shock. "He'll come around," his mother was saying. His father eventually agreed that their son must have gone crazy, and promised that he would seek the best inpatient care for him.

"But he's an adult. What if he won't go? Whatever will we do then. He'll keep going around as a...a...a follower of those THINGS and making a laughingstock of us all!" His mother's voice had come through their room's closed door.

"Then we will have to have him committed. It's all we can do."

They had indeed tried to convince him to enter a mental facility, not only to "bring him around," but to get him out of the area and off of the tongues of their equally holier-than-thou cohorts. If they could do that, then they could play the pity card when discussing their "wayward son."

Loyal Star, however, would have none of it. An argument broke out. He stood firm and insisted that he was sane, and not only that, that they were the ones desperately clinging to the obsolete. Meanwhile, they tried to guilt-and-shame him into accepting their opinion that he'd had a breakdown, even though he felt surer than he ever had under Ponyism. Leader Megatron, he insisted, was the way to a new and bright future - one not spent worrying about what shallow neighbors thought or caring about the meaningless opinions of the vapid, tut-tutting biddies at the church who had nothing to do in life but gossip.

For a long time, they didn't speak at all, but he had finally been asked over for dinner. He hoped that they had come to accept his decision, but once there, Loyal Star found that it was just a way for them to again try to hound him to either come back to Ponyism or submit to "the mental counseling you desperately need." They were very condescending, rather than concerned, with their suggestion that he was insane. The dinner was tense, and it felt as though outright hostility was just waiting to pounce into the open.

Later, while walking to the bathroom, Loyal Star would find a bill from an attorney on an accent table around the corner from the dining room. He went ahead and read it, sensing that it may be about him. Inside, there was a letter along with the bill. Apparently, his parents had indeed tried to have him sent away against his will, only to be told by the lawyer that this could not be done. He was an adult, the lawyer had said, and didn't meet any of the qualifications for involuntary commitment to a mental hospital or any other place that was "at least out of the public eye."

"Under Freedom of Religion, he is perfectly entitled to worship the Cybertronian god if he so chooses. While I understand that this god is directly opposed to Ponyism and its tenets, as long as he is not an enemy of Queendom of Vallermoore, it is completely legal to support him. Since Loyal Star is not a danger to himself or others - at least according to available evidence - I must turn down your request to retain me for this case. It would only lose in court, and could open you up to a countersuit, as well."

Loyal Star left very quickly after reading that.

Later still, his parents had still talked to him on the phone, but were aloof. Apparently, they hoped he would "wake up" and return to their thoroughly defeated religion. Of course, once they saw him getting high honors from Megatron right on international holovision, their self-delusions were torn away. He most certainly was on Megatron's side, never to return, and had helped in a very material way. That was when they decided to disown him, and when he dared to come to their door right after that, they'd slammed it in his face.

It wasn't long after that when he showed them the power of two Standard Blasters, permanently attached.

[Vallermoore]

Changeling Hive

The discipline of the Swarm held and they let the Decepticons leave peacefully. Had the agents started blasting again, any anti Changeling mods would have been tested to the utmost, and they might well have gone back only as a stream of data packets, their special android bodies lost to the lings, or ended up alive but themselves in cocoons and mere cows from the Changeling point of view to be milked of love at will.

There was no way as Forintel on duty agents that the Decepticons could take up the offer, even if the changelings could indeed be trusted. It might be secret information that got drained as well as love, and that would get them nailed on a treason charge. Greed and corruption were all very well, but not when they endangered the secrets of Forintel. Soon they were back in the Pony Afterlife and out of danger from the Swarm.

*****
Foreign Intelligence Headquarters

In one of the few places not counting Debugging Centres that was not bugged, Leader Megatron and General Soundwave both had huge smiles on their faces and bright red happy eyes. This was amazing news and would make raiding far away planets and expanding the Empire much easier. Plans were put into operation to send in more spies and saboteurs. Before they entered, General Soundwave himself addressed them. "If there are any of you who utterly, totally hate ponies or feel incapable of pretending to be them and fitting in with their ultra-friendly, Harmonist society let me know now and you can be excused. Several of our spies were caught after one lost his temper and opened fire, and had to leave the Pony Afterlife, and the spy responsible was executed by our side and is in the Realm of Punishment." As it turned out, only one spy was excused and the rest, before they entered the Pony Afterlife, were given a Pony data pack that showed them how to act and fit in seamlessly as a pony. It also let them know they would be entering a very different society to Cybertron, where hugs and even kisses on the cheek or forehead were commonplace. Luckily, their bodies could cope with hugging from a pony with no problems.

Pony Afterlife

Taking good care to avoid being captured; or snapping under the pressure of friendship, cuddles or soppy songs, the agents soon went to their different jobs. Some went into the weapons factories and managed to sabotage many of the SAM guidance systems or place small bombs amongst many of he storied barrels of gunpowder. Whilst these bombs could only blow up one barrel of gunpowder by themselves, that would be enough to cause a chain reaction and destroy whole gunpowder stockpiles. Water was secretly introduced to tanks meant to carry molten metal so that when the ponies tried to make new cannonballs, they would explode. Computers were fitted with viruses that had a timer ready to be activated at the right time.

Others pretended to be ponies who had been genocided by the Decepticons and spread horror stories about what happened to those who fought, whilst saying that those who surrendered would get an easier time of it. And for those who at the very moment of contact, before fighting had properly begun, sided from the very start with the Decepticons, would surely have it easier still and might well escape either death of slavery. Still others pointed out that Harmonism was a peaceful religion. All of this by itself was not going to make all the ponies totally unable or unwilling to fight the Decepticons-but it would make the battle to conquer them much easier. Ponies with a big mouth mark on their flanks were avoided at all costs; these were ponies whose special talent was in narking, and would surely alert Pony Counterintelligence if approached.

Of course, if some ponies or anyone else had somehow made robots that passed as Decepticons and infiltrated Cybertron with them, they would have at once attracted attention from Domintel who would have blasted them in street battle or melted them down for the form of treason that was Weakening the Nation as soon as they tried to lower the Decepticon will to fight, even if their cover remained intact. Pony Counterintelligence didn't think that way.

Cybertron, Military Bases

At the many military bases on Cybertron, although the exact destination was still a military secret for now, the bots were told they were to prepare for a major campaign against the sapient ponies. Bots on leave were called back, with a promise of more leave later to make up for it, 10% of the reserves were called up, cages and enslavement chips were made, along with chains and whips, news reports were prepared for later release, and cages meant for big mouth marked ponies were marked with a big mouth sign for later handing over to the Genocide Battalion. General Carjack had the Genocide Battalion assembled and told them that soon they would be in action again. There was a lot of excited revving of engines and blaster stroking from those under his command. That particular unit was always happy to go into battle even by Decepticon standards, and not just against helpless prisoners either. Oddly enough, first time cowardice in the Decepticon Military when not in an actual battle was not an execution offence, but a Debugging matter.
It was considered unfair to execute a bot just for being ill. If it happened a second time, then the bot had reverted himself back which generally made it a treason offence.

When the assassins returned, they told their superiors about the red shelled changelings and their offer of free oil in exchange for the slight draining of Decepticon love, which the changelings of that particular Hive considered hugely tasty. They also reported the attack on them but that in the circumstances, the changelings were just defending their Hive and Queen.


Cybertron
Ultimate Mods

The gang and for that matter Vintage were very pleased to get mods, and not just basic mods like a few extra armour panels, but Ultimate mods, widely considered the best possible mods on sale to the general Decepticon public. Now they could go after the most well defended and biggest oilfields. MasterBlaster had to turn up his Bravery Up when he and the others went into the Cargo Zone; even his amazing mods were probably not stomp proof, and privately he thought entering a place full of cargo bots was like entering an alligator pit. Eye cameras on stilts idlely looked at them as they entered. Cargo bots had no fear of staring at most non cargo bots because of the huge size difference. A cargo bot or two were hired at the right office ;capable of carrying a very heavy load of oil , enough to make the whole gang very rich indeed. And keeping his bots rich was a very good way to keep them happy and loyal. In the long term, a rich and successful gang might attract and take on new members.

The rust causing planet he left alone for now as too dangerous to take on without even more mods against magic.

"Look at this planet-Eternia. An oil field with ten billion barrels. It's been raided before by Decepticons, and it's weapons include nuclear SAMS and railguns amongst other missiles. The inhabitants are humants. In our old bodies we would not have a chance against all that weaponry; but now we do. If this works out we won't need to raid again for a while. This is the target we should raid next to gain huge wealth. We could buy mansions with the oil from this if we wanted to; or huge numbers of games, spare bodies and other things. We would be on the way to being upper class bots. Just think of all those Cubes."

*****
Elsewhere on Cybertron

Loyal Star only thought for a few minutes about all the times his parents had berated him, and then pushed the memories away, as he didn't want to make himself ill and then have to go to Debugging. He decided to fly somewhere where he could safely do acrobatics without risking other bots blasting him for it, and soon enough was loop the looping and otherwise enjoying himself, watched by some other Decepticons. None minded; many Decepticons enjoyed that sort of thing and as long as it was unlikely to cause a crash, noone cared. As he enjoyed himself he thought how happy he was to be a Decepticon. Doing this sort of thing at this comparatively low attitude in Vallermoore in a plane as his old self would get the police sent after him, but here, if something neither caused treason nor provoked other bots to blast you, it was fine. In all this fun flying, he didn't realize he had flown into Iacon airspace.

Normally this would not have caused much trouble, as the short flight would not cause any damage to his body, but an ICC bot who had fallen foul of the ICC itself but hidden in Iacon saw him from down below. It had been several days that the bot had been there, in effect under siege by the ICC for stealing a large sum of Energon from one of it's high ranking officers. He was running out of Energon, was starting to rust in places, and some of his data was starting to fail, and he had a great jealousy of this bot up above, and he fired a couple of small heat seeking SAMs at him. Loyal Star was surprised and began twisting around frantically, not wanting to be shot down here of all places. He doubted the SAMs were deadly enough to outright kill him, but they were certainly capable even if they just exploded near him of breaking a wing.

*****

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

The Fists couldn't miss it when soldiers began flying from one base to another in formation. Some were even accompanied by cargo-bots and their escort wings, who came from the direction of the Main Refinery. Whatever was up, it was going to be big.

"Raiding that human planet sounds like a great idea, and you've already hired two cargo-bots. Speaking of that, we'll have to make sure the way is completely clear before they come in. Or shall we have them stay out of range of all of the planet's defenses and then make trips back and forth to fill them up?" Brutal said, imagining the giant haul.

"Yeah, it sounds good, but check out all of those troops!" Buzz said, pointing upward. "And look how many military cargo-bots they have with them! I've counted 15 just as we were standing here! Wherever they're going, it's going to be a massive loot-fest. Of course, raiders are always first in on a thing like that, so we'd be going smack into...who knows what. But usually there's loads of loot for those who can handle being in the true first wave - the raiders wave. I say we go in with the Military and raid THAT, whatever it is!"

Haula wasn't happy with that suggestion. "No. We should raid the place MasterBlaster pointed out. Anything that takes so much military to conquer is going to have a really strong force. And chances are that it expects Decepticons, too, or else it wouldn't take so many troops. Look at all of those cargo-bots! The Military only takes them in at the start if they expect the war to be a long, hard slog. I saw we don't touch that any more than we'd grab a chunk of red-hot slag. The humans on the other world, they'll never expect missile-proof bots, and just as importantly, they have no magic to worry about. Who knows what the Nation's enemies have!?"

Buzz seemed like he'd be out of luck. MasterBlaster, Brutal, and Haula all wanted to invade the relatively weak human world - the one that didn't have 10 million troops getting ready to attack it as part of the initial mobilization.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Iacon City

Multiple missiles came shooting up from the ground with no warning, and Loyal Star dodged many of them. One, however, managed to go off at his tail, and with a blast of searing pain, one of Loyal Star's jet engines was blown apart and the other damaged. Now, he could only glide along and hope he had enough momentum to clear the strange, deadly city before he was forced to land. Landing would also be a problem now - the jets of plane mode were part of the feet in robot mode, so it would be quite hard to do an on-his-feet landing without ending up falling and crashing over onto his face in the process. Wherever he did make it down, he would be crippled in the most damaged leg, greatly limiting his ability to move quickly.

~~~~~~~~~~

Intelligence Headquarters

Megatron, now with all of the High Generals, watched the spies' reports coming in in real time. Progress was moving steadily, with Pony war resolve being thoroughly undermined at surprising speeds. Apparently, the ponies were not used to political discord or astroturfing, so they had no natural defense or skepticism built up. The few who had come from nations that had plenty of such stuff, and quickly called bull, were told by those from less-cynical environments that it was "inharmonious" to accuse other ponies of having less-than-pure intentions without absolute proof. This response, the hallmark of both the biggest crooks [who would say that noise as a ruse] and the biggest suckers [who really believed it], only helped the spies.

"We won't send the troops in yet," Megatron told the generals. "I figure that it'll take about a month before we're actually ready to deploy. Everyone and everything needs to be ready, and it'll take time to get everything ready for an invasion of this scale. We need to be more ready than when we invaded Earth because in this case, more souls will likely keep coming. We'll always have to have a strong ongoing troop presence to capture these new workers as they come in."

"Also, we're going to be doing things a bit differently this time. We're not going to be fooling around with cages - the slaves are already where we need them, which is to say, in that realm of theirs. So what we're going to do is chip them all - every one of them that remains after General Carjack here makes his passes through the realm. Speaking of that, Carjack, you'll be in the invasionary wave this time. I know you've been sick of the mopping-up operations. Plus, the initial population estimate of 1 billion ponies was low. There are 10 billion. We need it to become 1 billion."

"The remaining ponies will be kept in corrals - with chain-link roofs - rather than those little cages we've been using. Corrals are cheaper, quicker to make, and far quicker to fill up." Megatron further ordered. "As they go through the chutes we make to get into the corrals, that's when we chip them. It'll work a lot like the old cattle slaughterhouses of Earth, only in this case, the slaughtering won't happen to those who are still alive enough to get into a corral in the first place. After all, once they're chipped, they'll be our property forever. Those who are too damaged to walk through the chipping lanes will be culled."

"That should be all. Start giving your divisions extra drills on mass aerial maneuvers, and add practice in finding tiny, pony-sized things that are trying to hide. Besides, that, you are to get all of the logistics in place: Get all of the supplies you need, have your cargo-bots ready to be loaded at the right time, and all of that. Then when the order goes out, we'll do what other spacefaring nations have yet to accomplish: The total takeover of another realm of existence."

With that, Megatron stood up sharply, signaling the end of the meeting. Soon, the Generals had filed out. Once they were gone, Megatron stood there with a somewhat spacey, yet calculating, look on his face. The thing that has brought down empire after empire was overexpansion and spreading the military too thin, Megatron thought to himself. It is time to activate one of our greatest capabilities. It is time to make sure that doesn't happen to the Decepticons.

~~~~~~~~~

A Nondescript Manufacturing and Warehouse District in Decepticon Headquarters

Several hours later, Leader Megatron and several of his most elite troops stood at the back door of a huge, low building that hadn't seen traffic in hundreds of years, and only had basic maintenance performed on the outside. Around it, a huge warehouse and manufacturing district had sprung up, and aside from being a curiosity to new arrivals in the area, the vacant building was largely forgotten. Now, Megatron found himself unrecognized by the lock, which was once keyed to him, but hadn't been rekeyed to account for the many upgrades he'd done on himself in the meantime. He was forced to blast his way in with his fusion cannon - another thing that was once impossible to do, but was now fairly easy because his fusion cannon had been upgraded much like his engine.

Once the door gave way and he kicked the remains open, rows of dusty old machinery greeted him and the few troops that had been brought along. Bits of rust were visible on the walls, which were also covered with dust. He walked in and looked around.

"It will take some work to get this installation ready again," Megatron said with displeasure. "But the overall integrity of the building is still good, and people are so used to ignoring this place that doing work in here won't be all that noticed at first. Most will likely think that the government finally sold it and that a regular business is moving in. Alas, all of these machines are far too obsolete to be useful now. Take one to the National Museum and the rest to the Main Foundry."

The other soldiers stood stoically as they took in the scene. Megatron went over to a flat lightswitch panel and touched it tentatively, unsure if it would still do anything. Instantly, dusty fluorescent light panels came to life, and there was no doubt that this was, indeed, a truly giant factory; one seemingly frozen in time at the moment the door was last locked. At one time, it had been the most advanced facility on Cybertron, and it had played a crucial role in the survival of the Decepticon species and the continued independence of the planet.

Leader Megatron spoke commandingly. "I order that this - the first High-Speed Factory capable of producing full Decepticons - be brought up to modern specifications and activated at full capacity." He turned around and looked directly at the troops that accompanied him. "Other empires have run out of troops when they try to invade everything. Then they got invaded and brought down." He paused dramatically.

"WE will not run out of troops."

[Vallermoore]

Iacon City

Being hit by a SAM was agony, until Loyal Star remembered he could turn the pain down, which he did until it was just a dull ache. He didn't turn the pain fully off, in case he damaged himself further without knowing it. As he plummeted to the ground, he wondered who had done this to him. Perhaps it was that one bot who had disliked him in basic training, but as far as he knew that bot didn't know where he was. Using his military training, he managed to crash land as a plane whilst causing the minimum damage to himself, two miles or so inside Iacon City, and assessed his injuries. His boards, his blasters, and the most important parts of his engine, as well as his wheels, were all allright, but his jets were unusable, his feet were badly damaged, and one of his legs had the robot equivalent of a bad sprain. Had he not been badly injured he could have ran out of Iacon with ease, but progress would be painfully slow. At once he radioed Fire Eater, given that it was a dire emergency that might cost him his life at worst. "Fire Eater; some unknown bot sniped at me from the ground and hit me; my jets are busted, my feet are almost totally missing, and one of my legs is damaged; but worst of all, I am in Iacon City of all places, two miles or so inside it! And I can't remember if I have a spare body or not! I don't want to die here...Great Cybertron, the inhabitants are coming out, and not to be in any way friendly...What do I do?"

The rusty doors of ruined buildings opened and ten bots came out. They were rusted up all over, except where they had scratched gouges into their body to temporarily rid themselves of it. Not all their eyes worked; but those that did were glowing warmly, and they were grinning, but the grins were anything but friendly.. Not all of them, fortunately for Loyal Star, had working blasters, and the blasters that worked were much weaker then normal, but in such numbers they were still a danger. "What do you want? I'm not here to threaten you, I just want to get out of here."

One of them croaked at him "Boards...boards....parts!"

"You can't have mine. Any closer, and I'll blast you, this is your only warning."

A thought went through Loyal Star's mind boards Even in the better areas, disabled metal is dead metal, and this is the worst dump on Cybertron. As the first bot got closer Loyal Star blasted him, and so rusty and damaged was the bot that it fell apart in two pieces. The rest spread out and started blasting. If they had been healthy bots, Loyal Star would not have stood much of a chance, but only seven blasters worked between all of them, and they could only blast with 25% of a healthy bot's blaster. All the same, Loyal Star took a few wounds and had to frantically blast back, thinking to himself that it was like being in a horror movie when the dead came after the living. When five bots were nothing more then scrap metal, the other five fled. Dragging himself to the bodies, Loyal Star scratched as much rust as he could off two of the feet, managed to fit them on his body, and started walking at a fast walk on these damaged feet that were still better then nothing, towards the city limit of Iacon. He decided that only if he was on the verge of dying, as a last roll of the dice, would he pray for Megatron's holy aid. Megatron would want it to be that way. Behind him a large number of seriously rusted bots shambled after him, calling out "Boards! Boards! Parts!" The bot that got his parts had a longer life expectancy and perhaps even a chance to leave Iacon.

******
Cybertron

"I'm guessing it will take a while before Megatron orders the troops in, as with an operation this big, he would surely put it on the holovision just before he attacks, so that a large number of raiders can do a lot of the Military's work for them. We will have enough time to raid that planet and join Megatron's campaign," MasterBlaster pointed out to Buzz. "And if the campaign turns out to be a really hard slog, we are not in the Military at the moment, so unless Megatron says otherwise, we can leave without Domintel killing us for desertion, Haula. At least I think we can, but I'd check my Treason File first."

Soon the Fists took off, with their cargo bots following, and entered FTL. Soon they were outside Eternia's atmosphere and ready to go for the planet's Main Refinery. With the cargo bots, they could drain a fifth of the oilfield-if they were successful.

A Nondescript Manufacturing and Warehouse District in Decepticon Headquarters

In the long term, Decepticons would notice if Cybertron got horribly overcrowded, but with the whole of the Pony Afterlife to take over, and the possibility of one day taking over the Christian Afterlife too, there would be enough space for all the planned new bots. They would take time to mature though; at activation they were like toddlers. And an army of toddlers, even Decepticon war robot toddlers, would not be as effective as the normal Military.

Pony Afterlife.

Princess Cadance's soul appeared on a balcony of her castle. "I hate to order this, but from now on ponies caught spreading subversion are to be muzzled except at mealtimes. It is possible that Decepticon spies may be present. Also, the pegasui are to prepare huge war clouds in case they are needed. If we were to be enslaved here, it would last forever."

As the Decepticons on Cybertron prepared for battle, the ponies were doing the same thing.