An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Victorious Decepticons]

OOC: First, some pictures a G1 Decepticon, just in case you don't know what exactly goes with that term. Sad to say, but many people only know of Bay's monstrosities...

(Also note the relative size of the puny human...)

IC:


A plane, in space.

Such a sight was nothing special to a Decepticon, and in fact, someone in the vicinity of Planet Cybertron could easily see thousands of them coming and going. When seen through telescopes by other planets, however, it seemed to be something highly unusual - so unusual, in fact, that an entire religion on pre-Invasion Decepticon Earth (Scientology) had been based on it. It was unfortunate that the true facts about Xenu, who was actually a Decepticon whose "space crimes" had not been genocide but the rather mundane activity known in legal circles as grand theft oil, had been hidden by that religion's founder. The fact that he was the plane, and not a pilot of it, had also been missed by the humans.

Since that time long ago, the appearance of a Decepticon has changed much, but the general idea had remained the same. Plane mode for flying anywhere, and robot mode for walking. But now, the personal FTL drive had been developed, allowing the Decepticons to range further than ever before.

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

Uncharted Planetary System, 100 Lightyears from Cybertron

A swirling, oblong glow appeared at a seemingly-random point in outer space, and soon, what appeared to be an F-16 materialized from it. The aircraft hung there in the zero gravity, and soon, transformed into robot mode and began looking around.

The view of a space vista was, as always, unique, interesting, and stark all at the same time. A few barren-looking moons were first in sight, and a bit further from them, a rather large rusty-brown planet was shrouded in a thin layer of foggy atmosphere. What interested him, however, was further away: One of the moons, a small one orbiting the planet further away from the other ones, appeared to have a mixture of small bodies of water - and land covered with some sort of orange growths.

That would be the one.

The robot returned to his plane mode, his transformation noise smothered by the vacuum of space. With a burst of flames, his engines fired and he headed to the orange moon.

Two sets of painted-on seals could be seen in the light cast by the planetary system's yellow star: One set of Decepticon Seals, one on each wing; and one set underneath those that bore the stylized Decepticon-tech oil rig icon of the Interplanetary Oil Procurement Corporation. His background color was a dark blue, but its camouflage benefit was currently destroyed by his bright white wing stripes. In robot mode, he also had white hands. The Seals painted on him were a light gray, with red eyes for the iconography of his nation.

The Corporation, or Da Corpa'ration, as its boss called it in a put-on Sicilian accent, was Cybertron's largest syndicate - and a mafia, in the general sense of the word. Though it started out as an oil raiding gang, it was now involved in all sorts of activities, usually illegal, but surprisingly often, engaged in totally legit business as well. Its philosophy was simple. It would use whatever method would bring the most profit. If that method happened to be legitimate, fine - and sometimes, good, since legit deals didn't require investing in a bunch of arms and armor. However, if the most profitable method was a strongarm raid, a scam, or a smuggling racket, it had no compunctions in doing those things either.

Soon, the robot arrived at the strange moon, and began to circle ever downwards towards its surface. He also put his visual cloaking on, just in case something decided to start shooting at him on a whim.

With each loop, he dropped his speed. This was made easier by the fact that the organic satellite had an atmosphere, which created drag. His sensors reported that the atmosphere had a decent amount of oxygen, but was also high in nitrogen and included a bit of sulfur. Humidity rose as he descended, until finally, it reached 60% at ground level.

So far, everything looked great from a technical standpoint. All signs pointed to this planet being one covered with organic life - the precursor to the substance he was after.

He landed without incident on what turned out to be a carpet of orange plants, and immediately crouched down defensively with his blasters ready to go. Organic worlds were often full of oil...and almost as often, also full of creatures that very, very much wanted to keep it.

Of course, he was hoping that none of the life on this celestial body were advanced enough to care about him one way or the other, besides perhaps taking instinct-driven measures to avoid being stepped on, but one could not be too careful. Sometimes, what seemed to be a world of plants and animals from space turned out to be full of tiny men with particle blasters or some other such nastiness.

After several minutes of crouching like this with his cloaking on, and having nothing happen, he stood up and began to look around. First, he put on his magnification vision to better see what was at his feet. This revealed that the plants were some sort of symbiotes, most likely living with a sort of orange fungus inside their leaves, and that several hundred other tiny creatures lived around them - seemingly this moon's equivalent of insects. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be interested in using him as a nest, or surprising him by opening fire with some sort of blasters.

Next, he switched his optics to work like strong binoculars, and began to look out towards the horizons in all directions.

That's when he noticed the shape of a spaceship...

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-Sorry for the slow reply but I had a dental operation (a filling) yesterday and needed to be sedated, and recovering + real life stopped me from replying until now.)

IC-There were not many starships that came from the country of Vallermoore, a country that was just starting to find it's feet in interstellar space. And even fewer of them were in private hands. This one, however, was, and belonged to Auric Haroldsonn, who as the head of the company controlling most of Vallermoore's computer industry was one of the top ten richest humans in Vallermoore. He had a great life but like many who had everything they wanted, he wanted more. He wanted to meet a real, living, fully sapient Decepticon and speak with it, and escape with both his life and his freedom intact. His friends and family had warned him many times of the danger, but he was determined to succeed. Of course, he had thought long and hard about first, how to find one, and second how to avoid it opening fire on him as soon as it saw him. Oil. Where there was an undiscovered planet with no modern civilisation on it and plenty of oil, that would be of great interest to any robotic beings, as they would need it like humans needed food and water. When his computers on board discovered this planet, that is where he had gone.

Of course, finding one was the easy bit, speaking with one without being blown up or worse was the hard bit. He had painted his craft in the colours of Vallermoore, with the seals of Vallermoore on the sides and wings. Vallermoore had never had any trouble with Decepticons, and was known to respect them. He had also taken good care in selecting the lasers his craft carried, eight on the wings and two on the body. If he made his ship too large and too dangerous, so he was seen as a potent threat, it might start the very fight he feared. Even if he won it, his chances of speaking with and maybe even befriending a Decepticon would be over; if he lost, death or slavery would be his lot. At the same time though, he didn't want to come across as too weak either, or the Decepticon might well attack him for the fun of it. As it was, his lasers were unlikely to cause death to the huge robot in front of him, but they could cause a large amount of pain if he was attacked. He switched on his cameras, the best Vallermoore had to offer, capable at very short range even of seeing through some cloaking devices, and when they saw the large robot he knew that he had seen what he had come so far for.

He turned on his radio and spoke, gently, and with respect. "Greetings, O Decepticon. I am no threat to you unless attacked, and I merely want to know about you and your race. I am a human, my name is Auric Haroldsonn, and I come from the country of Vallermoore. I'm not asking for Decepticon government or military secrets, I just want to know the basics of how your society works, and what laws, if any, it has. If you attack me on sight, I can fight back, but I'm not here to fight you or challenge your control of this planet. I'm not here to disrespect you either. The fact that I am here at all shows that I am no pauper. At the very least, you might find it interesting to speak with me; at most, there could be something in it for you. I can't make you speak to me if you don't want to, if you would rather not speak or just hate all biological life, I can leave and look for another, hopefully slightly friendlier, Decepticon. If you don't mind me asking, what is your name?"

He waited, hoping that the Decepticon would speak to him, ready to flee if he had to or fight if fleeing was not possible. I would not be surprised if it wants nothing in the least to do with me. I must be insect sized to it...even my spacecraft is only one quarter of it's size. It would be as if a cockroach suddenly spoke to me with a human voice. If it does decide to speak to me, I just need to remember two things. First, show it respect. If it gets angry, it might well be able to shatter my ship with those blasters it has and then crush me underfoot. Second, be careful...it's a Decepticon, it might well decide to lie to me for the fun of it, even though it has no reason to do so. No sound yet came over his radio from the large robot that was less then a quarter of a mile away-in Decepticon terms, almost on top of him. All he could do was wait.

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: Hopefully your filling procedure went well! I often write about sedation dentistry...dentists buy lots of articles.)

The Decepticon switched off his telescopic optics. No wonder the ship had seemed blurry; it was actually too close for such magnification! He held his blaster at half-ready as he examined it better with his regular vision, which was very acute even without augmentation. Immediately, he recognized laser weaponry. Almost at the same time, he heard a message on his radio.

~~~~~~~~~

"Attack you on sight?" The voice was notably metallic, but not really grating. It was on the male end of the spectrum in a human's ears, though still a bit high; and it also carried emotion rather than being flat.

" *chuckles* Our raiders and enforcers do have quite the reputation, don't they... *chuckles again* "

He began to walk, carefully, towards the starship. He watched the ground very well, concerned about soft surfaces and other hidden hazards. Seemingly by magic, each footfall landed where there was densely compacted ground or even rock not far below. Of course, this was actually possible because he was running sonar checks on the ground as he moved.

As he did so, he turned off his visual cloaking since he was obviously being seen somehow. If the ship had announced hostilities or opened fire, he would have increased it instead and also activated cloaking that worked against machine-driven detection of all known sorts.

"I never thought a HUMAN would WANT to meet a Decepticon!" He said, still over the radio. "Your species has been a bit, uh, leery about us since the Decepticon-Earth War almost two centuries ago. It served those humans right, to be made to serve us. But you know how war goes. The real facts are often lost..."

"Anyway, I have no problem talking for a while." He looked towards the ship with a slightly quizzical expression. This was certainly nothing he'd encountered before. "I do need to find where the oil is inside this rock, but I'm not in a big hurry..."

"As for my name...I am Chaos Frame." Like many Decepticons who had gained a measure of success in life, he announced it very proudly and clearly. It was unclear whether it was an illusion, but he seemed to stand a bit taller as he said it, as well.

"I am a Lone Scout of the Interplanetary Oil Procurement Corporation, Planet Cybertron's largest multi-disciplinary business association." This was announced with even more pride, which might have seemed impossible only a second before. It was clear that Lone Scout was a particular position within the organization, and a very elite one.

He saw no obfuscation in calling the syndicate a business association. HOW it did its business was nothing remarkable, at least, not for the Decepticons. What made it remarkable to the Decepticon people was, instead, how well it did it.

"So what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"

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

Soon, he arrived at the ship and looked down at it as he waited for its biological occupant to come out.

It seemed like it could be crumpled between two hands with a decent effort, and the idea of using such a device to sustain a puny human body in space seemed cringeworthy. Still, he was happier to see that than some mile-long capital ship.

He'd been noticing the flags on the small craft for quite some time, and they definitely rang a bell, but he wasn't sure from where. It surely wasn't any place he had raided.

With slight reluctance, he unpacked his Foreign Nations file (which was normally kept compressed in a zip-like format) from his long-term memory sectors and brought it to consciousness. Within 1/10th of a second, he had paged through it and found the summary he needed.

Vallermoore: A human nation that's openly afraid of being invaded by us. Publicly, it is very respectful of us and claims to wish to avoid hostilities. It has made many statements to this effect. Appears to be militarily weak, but its public stance could also be a connive meant to cause us to underestimate it. The nation apparently exists on an Earth we do not control. Use due caution.

A bit of other information followed. He re-zipped the file, keeping only the relevant information in conscious memory.

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-It did. )

"I came out to this rock so far from my home to encounter the very Decepticons most humans want absolutely nothing to do with," Auric replied. "No offence to you, but I would like to remain in my ship at least for now. Let's see, you want to know where the oil is? Maybe I can be of some help to you." He pressed a button and a drill bit lowered from his ship, buzzed deep into the ground, and then retracted, and oil came flowing up. He carefully moved his ship out of the way so the engines didn't ignite the oil. "There it is, and it is all for you. We Vallermooreians have managed to partly break our dependence on oil, although we still need it for some things. Mr Frame, I clearly got lucky in meeting not just a Decepticon but one high in rank. I wonder how you Decepticons show your feelings? We humans just do it with our faces, but your face is metal. The reason why I ask such a thing is...if I should accidently annoy you or any other Decepticon, but not to the point where a fight starts, it would give me a chance to back down and try and cool things before the blaster bolts start flying."

Well...this has started well, he's not tried to blow my ship into scrap at least...so I must be doing and saying something right. Auric thought. He was still wary, of course, having heard nothing good whatsoever about the war robots he had come so far to meet.
Clearly however, at least some would not mind speaking to something that could fit easily in the palm of their hand. Perhaps if he and this mighty Chaos Frame remained on speaking terms, he could get the chance to meet other Decepticons and even be allowed to pilot his ship along the streets of their home world. Of course, Chaos was a Decepticon and therefore, at least for now, not to be fully trusted. It was pretty amazing speaking with cyber-life, life without flesh and bone. Cyber-life that was of course incredibly dangerous if it wanted to be. That robot could quite likely snap my ship in two with it's fists alone he thought. I wonder what Decepticons generally want in life-what interests them? I need to keep Chaos's interest or he will no longer speak to me. At best. At worst he'll try and kill or capture me.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Chaos Frame smiled a bit at the way the human thought that one gusher was "the" oil. In reality, this would just be one of hundreds of oil fields on a moon like this. After he was done talking, it'd be time to find the other 500 or so deposits, some of which would surely be out of the range of human oil-recovery equipment.

"Nice, thanks," he said anyway. After all, each thing the human found was less work for him, and he didn't want to discourage the odd person in the ship. "Just a moment, now..."

He opened a panel on his outer thigh and pulled out an odd piece of equipment. It was a round cap, surrounded by about 10 augers. He dipped his finger into the crude, then placed this thing over the oil hole and hit a button. Soon, it had drilled itself down until it sealed off the opening.

Then, he took out another device and wiped the oil he'd dipped up onto a plate the device had. It soon returned its analysis of the oil. The strike was much like what would have been called Brent Crude on pre-Decepticon Earth - a bit worse than sweet light, but not as bad as heavy crude. Decent stuff.

"Couldn't have that just spilling out," he explained. "It's much easier to get it from the ground than to have to do what you might call 'environmental recovery' from the surface."

He had a slightly bemused look on his face, but didn't say why. Secretly, he was chuckling to himself about the idea that the human seemed to think his ship was some form of protection. If he wanted to, he could punt it like a football and the sudden acceleration would surely mash the human inside, no matter what the ship was made of.

"As for your question, that's a good thing to ask, and I'm glad you thought to bother. I'm well aware of how your species focuses on using its face, eyes, and voice tones for that. It makes you people exceptionally hard to interpret, and we often don't know what's up until the RPGs are flying."

"So, while I have a logical, or 'book,' understanding of what to look for, you can expect me to miss anything remotely subtle. You'll need to tell me what you're feeling if it's of importance."

"The other general thing I've noticed about biologicals, and humans in particular, is that you have a different emotional profile than we do. We often tinker with the way we feel things, but this is true even in our base states. Your species seems much more empathetic, regardless of which emotions you're empathizing with, and you are FAR more prone to feel love."

"There is one emotion that we generally do not feel, and that's guilt. I can truly say that I do not know what it feels like at all, though I have read descriptions of it. What good is such an unstrategic emotion, anyway? It would just interfere with your success if you felt bad about relieving your lessers of their oil or driving them out of business."

"Yet, humans are also very competitive, and under the right circumstances, you're as competitive as we are! Having such clashing types of emotions going on at once would likely cause us to have unacceptable levels of cognitive dissonance."

"So, what makes us so interesting to you? Also, you're very lucky that we ran into each other. We know of about 100,000 organic planets and moons that likely have life on them. While we intend to explore them all, it will take quite some time to do so. That we both decided to explore this particular one at the same time, and even that I didn't end up landing on the other side of it, is quite serendipitous!"

"Also, you mentioned that 'you're no pauper' earlier. So, how did you make your money? I've been around enough biologicals to know that your answer probably won't be 'I scored 100 billion barrels of oil by raiding a desert nation.' But maybe you worked some kind of a Great Connive?"

~~~~~~~~~~~

"As for how I show my emotions..." He crouched down a bit, so his face would be clearly visible through the ship's windows - and in hopes of getting a look at the driver of the vehicle.

"As you should be able to see now, our faces are capable of showing some emotion. My mouth moves..." He made a few faces. "And it can show basics like smiles, laughter, and disgust. However, most of our facially-expressed emotions come through the eyes. Our eyes change brightness depending on how we're feeling, but this is very hard for humans to interpret. For example, they get brighter when we're laughing, but they also glow up if we're furious. The shading is a bit different between those two, but if you're not a Cybertronian, it's quite easy to miss..."

"As for the mouth, it has to be able to move so we can open it to drink Energon, so someone long ago figured it was a good idea to go ahead and add some expressiveness to the mechanism. Over time, it also became the practice to move it while talking. The reason is unknown, but many speculate that it just makes it easier to see who is talking - something that may have been needed in the early days, if voice chips weren't all individually-customized like they are now." He made a shrugging gesture.

In reality, HE did not know the reasons. That data was in the Advanced Educational Data Pack on the History of the Transformers, Section 4 (the top level), which concerned itself with history prior to the Cybertronian War of Independence - history even older than the time of the Division of the Nations.

As he moved his mouth, it became clear that it, and the area immediately surrounding it, was not actually made of metal. Instead, it was constructed of some sort of pliable material that was made to exactly match the appearance of the rest of his face - in this case, a light blue tone. The rest of his head was the same very dark blue as his main body color.

"An angry glower is brighter than normal, but has a bit of a menacing dark shade. Just a minute..." He thought of something he detested, and his eyes glowed brighter, while it was as if a sort of dark screening was shaded in on top of that effect. "This is the color that goes with a desire to kill a hated enemy." As he thought of the detested thing, his engine also dropped in pitch and actually seemed to growl.

The eyes slowly returned to normal, and then got bright again. This time, the brightness was very clear. "And this look goes with seeing something hilarious. Or...heh heh heh... with the idea of pulling off a really great connive. Which is hilarious, too, but in a different way. Alas, you'll likely never see that look before someone connives you. We all practice hiding it when we're up to things, because to another Decepticon, it's a dead giveaway." He chuckled a bit at that. As he thought of the funny thing, the pitch of his engine rose, but it also ran much quieter than normal.

"Our voices are good carriers of emotion, and for basics, it's pretty reliable as long as we're letting them run normally. However, we can consciously control them with 100% flawless execution if we want to. We can also..." Suddenly, he sounded for all the worlds like Optimus Prime. "Make them sound like a completely different being, or even like one or more musical instruments. Or like a piece of scum, such as Optimus Prime." The voice reverted to normal. "As a Lone Scout, I'm quite good at that. I can easily match ForIntel's capabilities for social engineering by combining this voice changing capability with a phone connection."

A Lone Scout didn't always physically visit a location. Chaos Frame often did things like call foreign oil companies, pretend to be a reporter from a small paper, and ask them all about their latest oil finds, what security they had present, and other important facts.

"The most important part for communicating emotions, however, is the engine." Chaos Frame continued. "Its natural noises are to us what the look in a biological's eyes is to you. Like all of our other aspects, this can be controlled, but doing so is much less natural and requires a lot of practice. It gives away many otherwise-great connivers."

"Right now, you're hearing my engine running smoothly and quietly, but at a slightly higher pitch than would be normal. That's because I'm still a bit leery about you... The higher pitch is because the lack of ease means that my body has to be ready to act immediately if need be, so the engine is stepped up a bit to provide that power."

"As I was showing you the different eye brightnesses, you likely heard my engine noise change at the same time. That's very important. When I thought of something that made me angry, you would have heard it growling, and when I thought of something funny, the pitch rose - but it also became quieter."

"You'll definitely hear it if I'm getting angry. Some biologicals say that the sound is a 'definite growl.'"

"Unlike the looks in a human's eyes, our engine noises have a known physical basis. When we're angry, the noise gets loud and menacing because the engine starts providing enough power for maximum physical performance. In us, physicality is far from being deprecated. Anger means that a physical fight is VERY likely, as you obviously already know. On the other hand, it's a waste of Energon to run at peak when we're laughing and joking around, so the volume will become soft."

He did not say that as a Lone Scout, he was fully trained in ALL methods of obfuscation. If he wanted to act like he thought something was funny when he was actually insulted, and then blast with no warning whatsoever, he was fully capable of pulling it off flawlessly. However, such tricks were unlikely in this case because the human seemed to be no match at all. That kind of ambush was - in Chaos Frame's case, anyway - reserved for foes of superior strength, where a surprise attack could make the key difference in the end result.

"Of course, our body language is also important, just like it is in your species. These bodies are surprisingly expressive, considering that we generally don't use joints in our backs. For that aspect, it works pretty much the same as in humans. However, you should be on the lookout for the differences in one thing we do: Blaster rubbing."

"We rub our blasters in many situations, not all of which are hostile. When one of us is feeling good, we'll often run a hand down one of our blasters. This just means that we're feeling strong and powerful. Unfortunately, many aliens see this as brandishing, while most of the time, we don't mean it like that. So, don't worry about it unless you also hear or see signs of anger to go along with it."

"Also, note that if we point at something, including you, the blaster naturally points in the same direction. I heard a story of some weird human on this place called 'NS Earth' that actually started a battle when one of us pointed at him and the blaster happened to aim in the same direction. We think that human was full of bugs, but just the same, I figured I'd better warn you about that."

"Now that you know what you're looking for, I will warn you that I often miss human emotional readings. Your lack of engine noise means that you seem almost totally inexpressive to us. So if you're getting mad at me, you'll need to say so outright."

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-I'm really enjoying this rp btw.)

"I work in computers. At first everything I did was pretty legal-and pretty uninteresting from your point of view. But then I started bribing the right people to turn a blind eye to how big my company was getting, and now I have a ninety per cent share of the computer market. Getting Decepticon non-sapient computer tech would be amazing...the speed of my computers would rocket and the bandwidth increase but... first, it would probably be...be treason for you or any other Decepticon to sell such a thing. And if you Decepticons have any laws at all, treason would be a big time no no. And I certainly don't want to bring trouble down on your head, not least because you could blast me to bits but also because...because I really admire Decepticons and what little I know of their culture. That's why I came so far. That's why I'm risking my life just being here. I doubt you would even need to use your blasters to rip my ship apart if you wanted to. Second, I don't know what I could trade that Decepticons would even want. Lastly, trading without being robbed or worse would be pretty hard as a human with a relatively fragile ship."

"What makes you interesting? Pretty much everything about you. Your size, your culture, how your Nation survives with no doubt very few if any laws to hold it together. Human nations that tried to be like yours would probably tear themselves apart very quickly. Your home world must be an amazing place...but it probably greatly discourages human tourists and their craft. I'd like to go there if I could get out alive and not enslaved. I've been to dangerous places before and got out OK, but for any human, your world must be one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy. But the wonder of it..."

He took good note of the change in the eye colour and the engine sounds. "You've really helped me...thank you for that. If I wanted to go to your world....maybe after replacing my ship's lasers with more impressive weaponry just to deter attack, would that be allowed by your government? I would just want to stay for maybe two or three days, just to see the sights and the like. And if I could bring your planet's money, to buy things from your planet's shops. A single Decepticon firework for example, would be like a whole firework display back in Vallermoore. If I liked your world and your culture enough...no, I'm a human, I doubt becoming one of you would even be physically possible. And if it was, the tests that I'd have to endure to prove that I could be one of you and live according to the Way of the Decepticons would probably be so hard, I'd have little chance even of surviving them."

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: Good! I'm glad you're not thinking "tl;dr"...)

"Ah! A monopolist!! You won't find anyone complaining about that in Victorious Decepticons, well, except for some lame competitors, that is. And we'd mercilessly mock such whiners for not having what it took to properly compete, so you wouldn't even get much complaining from them, either. Of course, if you were in business on Cybertron, you would have to be careful of the other side of the equation. Back at home, people who want to break into a monopolized market usually try to interfere with the giant's ability to produce its product - by blowing up the factory.

Of course, our monopolists know all about that, so they have giant security forces. They also have their own 'Market Share Protection' forces, which exist solely to blow up and otherwise mess with the factories of those little guys trying to break in.

If such activities don't resolve the issue, it will often escalate to the businesspeople trying to kill each other. When that happens, the owner of the big business usually wins, because he can afford more spare bodies. Business can get quite interesting if you have at least two people who are adamant about being in the same market!

As for bribes, we all know about those! Most of our generals and municipal managers even have open price sheets, and bidding wars are common. Obviously, it's totally legal to engage in bribery. The only catch is that whoever you try to bribe may take your money and then not do what you want. This can happen due to outbidding, or just because the bribee thinks an idea is too stupid to actually implement. Megatron will take the money and then ignore stupid ideas, and when people complain, will laugh and call it a 'stupidity tax.'"

Suddenly, Chaos Frame's wing tips - which point downwards while in robot mode - folded back at a 90 degree angle. He then sat down as if in a chair, using the ends of his wings as support.

"Unfortunately, your proposed deal is indeed illegal. That's not to say that you couldn't find a seller...it is often said that you can buy anything you want on Cybertron..." One eye flashed, as if to imitate a wink. "but it won't be me. I prefer not to run afoul of DomIntel...Domestic Intelligence, that is. The same goes for the rest of the Corporation. We actually are always under scrutiny thanks to our size, and our recognized prowess at the Decepticon Way. Some say that if there was ever a coup attempt, Masher - our CEO - would have the best chance of being able to pull it off. As you can imagine, the government makes darned sure that, that does not happen. Such a trade would give it just the excuse it needs to not only melt down the actual seller, but Masher, as well."

"Still, before you go looking for some suicidal fool who'll sell, I will warn you about 'non-sapient' Decepticon computers. The trouble you'll find is that in about 1% of cases, they don't stay nonsapient. It's actually quite common for one of our machines to arrive at the conclusion that sapience is the best path for accomplishing its stated objective. If it has adaptive scripting, like most of our machines do, it then 'blindly' begins work on generating the required coding. If this is allowed to progress, it will result in a machine with at least some sapience, and after enough time passes, full sapience."

"The Domestic Intelligence Supercomputer, our most powerful non-sapient machine, is constantly checked for emerging Code Intended to be Sapient. It is said that over one million lines of such scripting is generated on a daily basis, and must be constantly manually removed to keep it in its nonsapient state. While the average PC isn't nearly so active, you would have to check it probably every week or two if you don't want to find yourself a surrogate father."

"We do have nonsapient programs that we run for that on lesser equipment like PCs, but one that's smart enough will not only figure out how to generate the code, but also how to work around the interference. This is where the 1% of spontaneously sapient computers comes from. The very limited ones become about as self-aware as birds, but a high-end one will often become fully sapient and even gain citizenship."

"Speaking of citizenship, it IS physically possible for a biological to become a Decepticon. If you passed all the tests and didn't back out, your mind would be transferred to a Decepticon body as the final step to citizenship. One of our generals, Carjack, became one of us this way."

"However, General Carjack has publicly stated that this process is 'absolutely excruciating,' and it is known that Foreign Intelligence sometimes uses a modified version of it specifically as a torture. So if you aren't REALLY, REALLY motivated, you might not want to go through that."

"The descriptions I've heard say that it is much like this: It feels as though your mind is being literally torn into millions of thin strips, further cut up into tiny bits, and then pasted back together as a mosaic in a different pattern than it originally was - all while you are completely aware of it. At the same time, you lose your capability to actually think, so all you are aware of is the extreme distress this causes. Your system DOES, however, realize that the mind is being forcibly yanked from the body, which it rightfully interprets as a state of the most extreme direness to your life, so it forces a full-panic condition that makes waterboarding seem like a tame amusement park attraction."

"This persists until you, in your new body, are rebooted. As you boot back up, added scripting creates your new Master File Table, which allows your mind to find all of its pieces and sort them back into coherent order. Once the File Table is created, you will be able to think, and you won't have to worry about your mind's data configuration again. Upon completion of the reboot, you feel the relief of the stoppage of the error state first, and are once again fully sapient with your original personality intact."

"Then, you feel the greatness. The end result is universally described as feeling 'like a demi-god,' or even like a god. You'll experience a surge of physical power as your engine kicks in and electricity flows through all of your body parts, and a surge of mental power as your massive amount of RAM and CPU power comes fully online."

"Almost all immigrants think it is fully worth it all."

"Still, I will also warn that this process is permanent. Remember how I said your mind 'rightfully interprets' this as a state of extreme distress to your life? Your mind, as a biological, is hard-coded to associate your life with your body's ability to function...and your biological body will indeed die once your mind is removed from it. The transfer process doesn't just take your conscious mind to a new body, but also, the coding required to operate your biological body. Without that coding, your bio-form stops running, and soon enough, degrades to the point that it cannot hold a mind again."

"Interestingly, the old bio-run code is not totally deprecated once you're in the new form. Immigration has to patch it to do things like interpret the taste of Energon as good instead of as a poison, accept the Decepticon sensor pattern as normal, and feel the weight of a Decepticon body as optimal. Fortunately, these patches are pretty well standardized for the human species. That horribly slow evolutionary process has its benefits...we haven't had to update those patches since we got our first immigrant, General Carjack, except to cover for a few quirks that one had."

"Still, that's only the last step of the immigration process. You're right that there are several stages, at least one of which is very grueling. We need to have it this way because many immigrants are really not prepared for the Decepticon Way. Take yourself, for instance: You said how you were able to take over the market in your nation. But would you be able to handle it if your competitor's responses had come not in the form of futile lawsuits, but a bomb at your factory, a virus slipped into your software - or a hail of machine gun fire?"

"The immigration process weeds out those who are used to working around laws when it suits them, but relying on law to prevent blowback. Here the playing field is level. REALLY level. It does not interfere with you, but it also does not interfere with your rivals...at all."

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

At that, the robot looked towards the sky with a bit of nervousness.

"Speaking of that, if you will excuse me for a moment..."

He retrieved an external radio from an arm panel and began to speak through it in Decepticon Binary. The message, highly encrypted, went to Corporation headquarters. It was a basic report of a successful find, its location, and the size of the moon it was on. This message departed from the routine in one way - he asked for a security force that was not hostile to humans.

"I've called for an Asset Security Force," he explained after closing the connection. "The Corporation needs to send one to protect this moon from claim jumpers. It will also protect me, and if the honor my request for human-friendly mercs, you, from getting involved in a battle against whatever other raid gang may have followed me here."

"As you may have surmised already, we all handle our own security since there aren't any cops. So I had to call for Asset Security. Other raid gangs will usually just keep going when they see that The Corporation has claimed a planet, but they wouldn't do that if all they saw was a scout and some little ship. Then, we would not only have a battle on our hands, which I'd probably lose since raiders are built up and come in groups, but The Corporation would have to fight a battle to get the moon back and that'd mess with the profits. So I would not have a pleasant return after being reinstalled into a body from the Corporation Save Vault, to say the least."

In a few minutes, about 20 sonic booms erupted as Corporation mercenaries seemed to warp into view high in the sky. Most of them fanned out in an obviously planned maneuver, but a few zoomed in low over the scout and the Vallermoore-flagged ship. To someone not used to this, it would appear they were being dive-bombed, but such flying was fairly typical for Decepticons.

Extremely fast-paced Binary filled the airwaves for just a moment, and soon, the mercs continued on to distant positions.

Chaos Frame said nothing, but he seemed a bit relieved...

~~~~~~~~~~~

"As for coming to Cybertron," he continued, "it will be allowed as long as you clear it with Border Security first. You're right about a weapons upgrade, too. I also suggest that you make your ship bigger if you can. That one there would make a good ball, and some kids would surely love to 'play baseball' with it."

"What you don't ever want to do is bring a car, or car-like craft, around a Decepticon. The Great War didn't end too long ago - only about 300 years. That's a long time in human years, but to us, it's almost yesterday. The Rolling Menace is still very fresh in our minds."

The Autobots. Despite what the Awful Movie said, they did not fly, and had no one that could other than a couple of cargo bots. They were always on the ground, trying to look like harmless cars, and waiting to transform and ambush a Decepticon. No car would ever have the chance to try that again. One seen in Decepticon territory would be presumed extremely hostile and destroyed on sight.

"One thing to remember is that foreigners are allowed to stay for only three months, and that's cumulative. Once that time is up, you must either apply for immigration, or go home, never to return. This rule is to prevent non-citizen immigrant communities from being able to spring up and dilute our culture."

"Oh, and you can get a guide from the Cultural Liaison's Office, if you're a wimp, but everybody will think that you're a wimp if you do that!"

"Safety-wise, you're right. It's dangerous, and you're 500 Cubes on the hoof just to the average bot. You also might not want to admit that you run a business. Well, not THAT big of a business. You don't want people to think that you're that worthwhile of a target."

He did not explain what connive could ensue, but he knew that it wouldn't be hard for a ForIntel agent with a hyper-realistic android body to simply replace this guy, and do so well at it that even his wife, if he had one, would never know the difference. Of course, kidnapping for ransom and other typical things that target rich guys would also be possibilities.

"Oh yes! One last thing, and probably the most important one! Humans can't breathe the atmosphere of Cybertron. And, while there is now 'food' there thanks to Carjack Agriculture's packs that go with their bio-food-processsing module, it's all denatured. In other words, a biological can't eat it. AND there's no water that a biological can drink - it's all treated with biocide."

"So you'll need to bring all of that stuff with you."

(OOC: I could explain everything else all at once, but that'd end up being an RP that consisted of one giant treatise. So, best for you to ask about one aspect at a time, I think. Plus, that'll give a chance to clarify any questions that come up.

Also, thank God for the Lazarus plugin, which just restored 13,319 characters after NS logged me out!)

[Vallermoore]

"You are absolutely right-to visit your world and have a hope of survival and continued freedom, I would need a spacecraft with proper blasters and large enough not to be treated as a football, with food, water and out of sight in the hold, what passes in your world of Cybertron for spending money, so I can buy things from your shops, those that will admit me, that is. I consider myself lucky that you are not trying to pull apart my ship to get your hands on me, given that I'm worth five hundred Cubes as a slave. If I was in a similar situation on Vallermoore, it would be like me talking to a stinging insect worth five hundred Vallermooreian pounds and not trying to catch it. I mean...I have lasers, but next to your blasters, they are only a slight deterrent. Three days is well worth the three month limit, but I'm not sure how to even contact your planet's border guards so they know what to expect and don't blow my ship up by mistake."

"Your culture is pretty unique...in that even the worst human governments at least on paper try to deal with what they would consider crime, and at least restrict if not outright forbid weapon use, whilst your government exists to protect what bio-life would call crime. But with every robot able to defend himself, Decepticon on Decepticon attacks and the like are kept to a manageable level. Your ruler Megatron must be amazing to be able to stay in power and rule such a nation as yours."

(Sorry about the short rp bit but as you said, this should be a fun rp, not a giant treatise.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

"Money. That works a bit differently on Cybertron than most other places I've been to. Other nations usually use some kind of paper, or bits of fairly common metals, to stand in for some sort of valuable. Sometimes, these bits don't even have backing, and are only valuable because the government says so. In only the rarest of cases is the money itself worth something, and even then, it seems to only have value because of some type of programmatic glitch in the valuation sequences of the users. This is the case with gold."

"As you can imagine, all of these types of money - including gold - would be counterfeited to death in short order in Victorious Decepticons. We also have no respect for any of that sham 'money' even when it's real. Therefore, our money is something that is both easily testable and very useful: Energon."

He opened his outer left calf panel, and produced a long, clear rectangular container filled with a glowing golden liquid. The glow was bright and clear.

"This," he announced, "is Energon Supreme. The best publicly-available grade. Prices, however, are based on the value of Standard, so if I pay with this, things cost 1/3 less in terms of volume. However, since Supreme is worth more, the value transferred is actually the same. What you see here is half a Cube's worth, or 50 Cubelets' worth, of it - which isn't enough to buy much, but is enough for the average guy to run on for about half a day."

"In short, you're going to have a hard time coming to Cybertron with money, unless you also have a refinery that can produce at least some grade of Energon. If you do have one, of course, you'll be able to come in rich right from the start." And I'll make sure to note its location, Chaos Frame thought silently to himself. For just an instant, his eyes showed that clear bright red he had mentioned earlier, but he quickly caught himself and returned them to their normal, not quite so bright, shade.

"If you don't have a refinery, you'll need to bring in some other kind of raw material and then trade it. Even though you probably wouldn't have raided it, it's best to sell that at a Megatron Metals Raid Dropoff Point and pay the Raid Tax. At the Dropoff Points, the exchange rate for things like steel, iron ore, and copper is firmly set. Elsewhere..." he let his voice trail off.

"Oh, and the term Cube refers to a set quantity of Energon. Even though it's a liquid, it's typically stored in standardized cube-shaped containers since those can be stacked and the shape allows for easy measuring. For travel, though, I prefer these long rectangles or even cylinders because they fit in here better." He indicated his calf.

~~~~~~~~

"When it comes to why I don't grab you up like that prize stinging insect, that's because I'm a member in good standing at The Corporation. I own several shares in the organization, which net me a dividend of about a million Cubes a year as the base rate. On top of that, being a Lone Scout brings me 10% of every find that doesn't require a raid, and 5% of every find that requires military action."

The concept of shares was all but unheard-of in the Empire, mainly because representations of them would be counterfeited just like the money. At The Corporation, however, CEO Masher personally knew all of the shareholders, and paid the dividends directly to them right out of his vaults. This blocked the usual corruption quite well.

"So," Chaos Frame continued, "your slave value is small change to me. On the other hand, you're a businessperson that The Corporation may be able to deal with, so to it, you're probably worth far more outside of a mine than in one. And, since I discovered you, I get 10% commission on any profits that result from those deals, too."

"However, a Decepticon without connections will only be able to score 500 Cubes from you unless he's smart enough to work a deal, so he'll grab you right up and into the slave market you'd go."

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

"As for our culture, there are several series of Advanced Educational Data Packs on that!! I can get into it further later, but for now, let's start with what I believe is the fundamental difference between us and most others: How we see potential threats.

Humans seem to be driven by a desire for safety, and while there are individuals willing to take risks, human societies seem to put safety as their top priority. We do like certain types of safety as well, to a degree, but your species sees the means to attaining it far differently than us. Your cultures see sources of risk as threats, and seek to nullify those risks through the use of laws meant to weaken those who would threaten you rather than legislation meant to strengthen yourselves.

We, on the other hand, do recognize threats - but our philosophy for dealing with them is much different. WE do not seek to use law to weaken the threat, but to strengthen ourselves to the point that the threat is no longer a serious issue.

Plus, while we put a bit of value on safety - hence my calling in an Asset Protection Force to keep us from being blasted by some random claim jumping gang - it isn't our priority. Our priority is to be powerful, and to be prosperous. And you can't be either of those if you're weak or cowardly.

These fundamental differences in thought are the foundation for some of the most striking differences between us and most biological species."

"We do have some laws, though, I will clarify that. The laws that aren't blatantly there to protect Leader Megatron are designed to prevent the weakening of our people and our society, and to ensure that a certain standard of individual strength is maintained. And, some of the laws that are missing are missing precisely because their presence would enable weakness..."

He opened up the container of Energon and began to drink some, mainly to give the human's brain a chance to process what he had said already, and to give him a chance to get a word in edgewise.

[Vallermoore]

Auric said "I am very lucky that I met you instead of a poor or average Decepticon who would not be put off by my laser's sting. Clearly I will need to prepare a lot more before I come to see Cybertron, the first Vallermooreian ever to do so. And if I'm not very careful, the last. When I have got myself a ship of the proper size and weaponry, there is still the problem of contacting your border guards so they won't get the wrong idea about me. One thing is for sure, if I do set up a refinery as a human and then ever do indeed become a Decepticon, I'd want to contact you and we'd raid the refinery together. It would be my very first oil raid and you'd have half of it, freely given. And if it were possible, if you Decepticons have children, and they are taught things like....like sandbox connives, where if I fail I won't be turned into scrap, I'd like to go and study there for a while before I am summoned up for military duty in the Army of Leader Megatron. Do you think it would be acceptable to have six months to a year for that if I ever did become a Decepticon?"

Auric thoughtThis is pretty amazing, I'm next to a war robot, and that war robot is...friendly. Although I have to be very careful still.

"It might be good for human me to study the history of the Vallermooreian Mafia and other such gangs. As a Decepticon, raiding of beta creatures and the like would be my normal activities in between serving the Decepticon Nation. I'd need to think very long and hard if I even wanted to try to become one of you and immerse myself fully and permanently in your culture. Which Megatron is perfectly right to protect from foes from without and within. I'm not a coward, that's for sure. Physically, I am weak but you can't blame me for being born a beta creature, and physical weakness could be fixed if I became one of you. Mental weakness though...well, if I was mentally weak I could not pass your tests, that's for sure. Please...do you have a way for me to contact your border guards, so that when I'm in a decent spacecraft I could come through?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Chaos Frame was indeed friendly, but in the way of a diplomat, or perhaps, a lower-level politician. Like the Corporation he served, he had learned that sometimes, violence only led to lower profits - and, of course, to the weaponization of targets that were originally easy to raid. However, also like the Corporation, he tended to have an angle - or, as in this case, to be on the lookout for any that might randomly present themselves. He was also quite willing to fight if that seemed like it was the best course of action from a logical standpoint.

For the first time, he seemed displeased. Disappointed, perhaps, or maybe a little aggravated. In fact, it seemed, it was a combination of both. He applied his palm to his face, cementing that impression.

"You do not raid your own refinery!" He groaned. "A Decepticon refinery owner should never invite a raid on his own holdings, let alone partake in it. Do you commit arson on your own house if you want to see a bonfire?!"

"No, no no. If you own a refinery, what you do is sell that stuff off to your competition for as much as you can get, and deliver everything you produce to them for big money. THEN you and your gang go and raid the hell out of THEM!" He laughed, almost in a cartoonish way, as he imagined the scenario, but his eyes were only partially bright. To him, this was just basic connivery, the first page of the "101" course level.

He began to relax as his mind became occupied with imagining how a good oil-related scam would go.

"Then, the raid causes the market to overcompensate for the lower amount of supply it believes is left available, which jacks up the prices you can charge from your front operation. Meanwhile, your competition in the oil business will be all worried that we'll strike again, so they'll ALL blow tons of money on SAMs and private troops. YOU pretend you're going along with that so they don't suspect your front company, but you only buy a few real SAMs and a bunch of dummy models, so your costs stay low."

"Then, when your competitor gets his insurance money in, you sell him more oil to restock. And then you send your raid gang and hit him again. You keep that up until he goes out of business, then you do it to the next one, and the next one. Eventually, there'll just be YOUR refinery. Then you jack the price of gas up through the ceiling and bleed the market dry. Heh heh heh."

"The main thing you need to make it work is a front man. Your mark isn't going to fall for the connive if you're sitting there looking at him with wings and glowing red eyes...well, at least, not more than once. You also don't want them recognizing you when you and your pals land at their storage places and take your merchandise back."

"I'd suggest running a realistic android body for your 'human' deals, and then mind-transferring to the real one for the raids. That way, you don't have any loose ends to worry about. Just make sure they don't see you both in one spot."

Chaos Frame very obviously enjoyed thinking out the entire scenario, from the first raid all the way to total market domination.

~~~~~~~~~
"Speaking of connivery, we do have kid games for that, but the real way to learn is through practice. You already figured out how to circumvent your nation's anti-monopoly laws, but bribery is such a well-known tactic that this alone doesn't mean that you really know how connivery is done. Anyone can parrot that trick.

Practice is needed because the Art is all about how you think. You have to develop the thought patterns that allow you to see angles that are literally invisible to the average guy. Alas, the truth is that even with us, most people learn this the hard way: By being on the wrong end of successful connives. When a scam costs you a million Cubes, you'll remember how it works really well. Then you'll be able to spot others of that kind...and pull them yourself.

After many years, you'll have lived as a Decepticon to have seen a great number of these machinations and it'll become second nature.

The only way I know to really shorten the learning period is to upgrade your mind hardware, buy patches that improve your logic and common sense routines, and install the Advanced Educational Data Pack Series on Connivery that's put out by the Institute of the Decepticon Way. The full Series is a post-doctoral level course of education, but of course, you're not expected to buy it all at once.

Even then, expect to churn through a few billion Cubes of Energon, both outgoing and incoming, before you can spot most things coming a lightyear away.

You may think this sounds quite hard, and it is. That's why a lot of us end up just raiding instead. Then there's people like me, who like both types of activity and combine them for truly massive scores."

He thought for a moment.

"That's surely one of the reasons our society doesn't devour itself. It's much easier to hit a target that isn't part of it, both for scamming and raiding. And we're not too into doing things the hard way just for the hell of it."

~~~~~~~~

"As for getting past the border, the Military scans all of the popular spacecraft radio frequencies. But Channel 40 is the direct one.

Um...when you choose your ship size, one thing I should mention is that you should use one that can indeed fly through the streets. If you try leaving it at the space port so you can get out and walk around, it may, uh...um...well, just don't do that."

Oh, and I don't know how long a new immigrant gets before the first conscription. It's not long, though. You'd have to ask the Immigration Office for the specifics...

~~~~~~~~

"Studying human mafias might not do you all that much good," Chaos Frame stated, changing the subject. "While we do share some important characteristics with them, there are also many divergences. Also, most Decepticons are not organized like The Corporation, Earth's Sicilian Mafia, or other big syndicates. Instead, the typical raid gang is just 4 or 5 guys who come together to raid oil using plain brute force, and there isn't any overarching gang structure directing those small groups."

They also aren't very good, he groused silently.

"What we do have nationwide, and in spades, is the concept some refer to as Omerta. A Decepticon does NOT go whining to the government, and a Decepticon does NOT interfere with another Decepticon's activities. Of course, if the other Decepticon's activities involve messing with you or your stuff, then you're supposed to 'interfere' - but not by involving the government." He emphasized the next part. "I'll say that again. You do not involve the government in anything unless it involves an impending military attack by non-Decepticon forces."

"However, other Mafia quirks are much rarer. And we have special disdain for protection rackets, because that's what the Autobots were into."

[Vallermoore]

"Protection rackets would not work anyway as any true Decepticon would just blast the racketeer into scrap. And there is no need to worry about me being an Autobot in spirit. I am no Autobot...if I was I would stay as far away as possible from any Decepticons. I didn't travel this far to be blown into small pieces of flesh." Auric noted down the channel number needed to contact the Decepticon border guards to ask for permission to come to the Metal Planet when all was ready and his ship was large and well armed enough. Not that he wanted as a tourist to cause trouble, he just wanted to put off those who wanted him captured or dead.

"Don't worry, if I do one day become a Decepticon and other Decepticons target me or my stuff, I would happily blast them. The same if I came across a proven traitor that I happened to catch in the very act of committing treason. After all, informing is most likely a form of treason in itself, as it weakens the Nation. However, if a large fire were to break out near where I was, hopefully it would not be a breach of Omerta to call a fire brigade? Otherwise one day there could be a Great Fire of Cybertron that would endanger all Decepticons. And...do robots ever get sick? I know bio-life certainly does. If I feel physically or mentally sick one day, am I on my own, or are there hospitals either private or public to treat sick or injured machines? I want to make sure I know things like this, so that if being a Decepticon is not for me I can back out before undergoing the gruelling tests that will rightly be demanded of me."

Cybertron itself must be a truly amazing place he thought, and a dangerous one for bio-life, but I need to look at it first as a human before I consider seriously trying to become one of these war robots, and giving up my old human life for good. And I need to look at it within a few years time before I get too physically old to have a hope of passing.

(OOC-sorry for the short rp bit.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: No problem. It's almost always quicker to ask a few questions than to answer them...)

"Fire! I had forgotten about that. When I said not to involve the government, that's for things involving other Decepticons. What wimpy nations would call 'crime.' For things like accidental fire, rusting planetary panels, and other stuff that isn't a matter of informing on a person, then yes, it's fine. In fact, you're supposed to call the local fire department if an accidental fire breaks out, or if an arson fire is threatening to spread."

"Accidental fire is rare on Cybertron. It takes a lot of heat to set steel alight!! Unfortunately, what sometimes happens is that wiring and other things within the steel panels will ignite. Then, that can make the steel hot enough to melt, and the molten steel then contacts other flammable things. So...usually you want to call the fire department."

"The exception is if you hear a boom before the flames break out, or you outright see someone light the fire. Then, calling in the fire department is interfering. That sort of interfering is legal only because of the threat of the fire spreading, and because of the possibility of a Great Fire like you mentioned. Legal or not, calling the fire in before it has a chance to destroy the actual target may cause you to cause the arsonist to consider you an enemy combatant and target you or your house next. So, you generally don't want to pick up that communicator until the apparent objective has been satisfied, unless you have some sort of mutual defense agreement with whoever's building it is."

"Speaking of a Great Fire, that is precisely why there is a nationalized fire department, and why it's legal to inform it even of intentionally-set fires. Cybertron had a few giant blazes before that system came into being."

~~~~~~~~~

"As for sickness," he went on, "robots are completely immune to one type of sickness that often affects biologicals: what you would call 'disease.' Many forms of disease are contagious, but since they are spread by organic means, we are immune to them. A virus works by infecting DNA, and we have no DNA for it to infect. Most disease-causing bacteria work by attacking cells, and we have no cells, either. We can be affected by, say, the molds that are on organic worlds. However, such creatures are destroyed by re-entry heat when we go to a different planet, so they are only able to be problems for those who stay in a biolife-supporting area for a prolonged period."

"Some other sicknesses are a result of the miscoding of DNA or other cellular issues. Again, no DNA, so no DNA-based problems. Also, no cells means that any cell-based problems cannot happen."

"So...you won't have to worry about getting sick as a robot except in the most unusual of circumstances."

"What does happen that is along those lines is mechanical breakdown and coding errors. Mechanical breakdown is the sort of thing that you are likely used to having an aircraft mechanic or even a car repair shop take care of." Unconsciously, he said the word "car" as if it was a word that referred to some sort of disgusting thing.

"On Cybertron, you don't use a mechanic for all but catastrophic physical problems. Instead, every Decepticon knows how to fix his own body, and has the tools to do so. If you immigrate, you'll have a manual pre-installed into your memory system so you'll know exactly what to do about every mechanical issue that can befall the body they give you. Of course, you'll want to upgrade that body, but anything you buy off the shelf has a manual chip to go with it. If you design your own upgrades, well, you'd better be good at engineering, because obviously there isn't a manual if you build it yourself."

"When something major, like an engine or transmission, goes out, then you MAY be stuck using a mechanic. Ideally, you'll just mind-transfer to your spare body and use that to do the repair work, but there's always some fool with only one - that reminds me, the first thing you'll want to do after immigrating is get a spare! - and if you only have one and it won't move much, you have to get someone else to work on it. Every town has some mechanics in it, so no worries there...though you should check the reviews on them so you're sure to get a good one. That's all private, by the way, and if you can't afford a fix, you're outta luck. So, best to have a spare body so you can do the work yourself."

"As for parts, it's the same. All private. But if you have a spare, it really shouldn't be a problem if you don't have any money to buy them. If all else fails, you can always knock off some weak bum and take his...but of course, you really want to do well enough for yourself that you don't have to resort to that."

"Oh, and there are no emergency physical repair services of any sort. That's because there really aren't any medical emergencies in the way you're used to thinking of them. Your bodies will start to corrode the second they go offline, and will be permanently wrecked after just a few minutes, so you have to have ambulances and things set up specifically to keep them from stopping - or if they've already stopped, to get them running again ASAP. Worst of all, you have no spares!" He sounded openly horrified at the idea of not having spare bodies.

"We don't have to worry about that. If your current body is so bad off that you feel that you're going to crash in the street, you quickly mind-transfer to one of your spares. Then, if you think there's a hope of the old body still being there, you use your spare to go and try to get it. Chances are good, though, that someone will have already sold it to a foundry as scrap before you can get your other body over to that location and collect it...so don't slack off on the repairs."

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

"Mental health is much different. It is well-recognized that someone with a mental glitch is usually in one of two states: Either he knows he has a glitch, but is also too glitched to patch it himself; or he has lost the capability of recognizing that he even has a problem. Both scenarios mean that someone else has to fix it."

"There are state-run Debugging Centers in every town, which perform all mind-code repairs free of charge. To prevent errors caused by people trying to upgrade their Code and botching the scripting, they also sell upgrade patches at a nominal cost."

"If you feel even remotely mentally off as a Decepticon, you are supposed to report to Debugging immediately to be checked, and if needed, patched. You never have to worry about going too often - if you are found to have an irrational fear of errors driving you to visit Debugging all the time, that fear is in itself an error, and they'll patch that just like any other one."

Suddenly, he crossed his arms on an angle, in a way that accentuated his blasters.

"And this is the reason we have Debugging Centers in every town. We love our weaponry, but we do NOT want heavily-armed insane people running around. MOST bugs do not result in random attacks, but a slight percentage would if they were left unrepaired. And when there's over 10 billion people, a 'slight percentage' would add up to hundreds of incidents a day."

He resumed his normal position. "One last thing about Debugging for now. NEVER use a private 'debugging' service. Those guys are all hackers, every last one of them, and if you use one, the next thing you know you'll be an automaton in some mine. You'll still be able to think, well at least as well as you did before you sought a private debugger, but your body will forever be under the full control of whoever pays that hacker for a 'piece of advanced mining equipment.'" He appeared angry at this practice. "It used to be illegal to infect someone with an enslavement virus, but it isn't now. So watch it. Never let uncertified Code of any sort anywhere near your system, let alone as an outright mind-code patch."

"Hackers are the reason the Debugging Centers became nationalized. People had been unable to find legitimate debuggers, so no one was getting patched. Needless to say, episodes of insanity-driven violence had spiked. Finally, it got to the point that Leader Megatron had to put the kibosh on it, lest we all turn into a bunch of gibbering, randomly blasting, nutbars."

"Of course, it took quite some doing at first for him to convince people that HE wasn't just another hacker, only looking to install some kind of loyalty virus instead of a miner one. He put out tons of propaganda, and extreme restrictions on Debugging's ability to work with DomIntel, AND made all of the Debuggers pass a previously-unheard-of honesty test, but people didn't really go along until he finally went in himself for a patch. Of course, we now realize that, that particular visit was staged, but it did the trick."

~~~~~~~~~~

"I must ask, what would motivate a successful human businessperson to want to not only defect from his nation, but to do so in a way that there is absolutely no chance to go back, or even to partake in its society again? I mean, it's not like you'll even be physically able to enter a Vallermoorian building with a standard Decepticon body. Your current wealth will also be useless on Cybertron."

"I can see wanting new experiences, but surely there's more to your desire to come to Cybertron than simple boredom..."

[Vallermoore]

"A couple of things, Mr Frame. First, is the fact that as a biological, I have maybe forty years of life before my body starts to show the signs of age, and unlike you I can't upgrade or transfer to a new body. My money may bring me a few extra years of good life, but compared to the average Decepticon lifespan, my lifespan is short. As a Decepticon who does the right things, theoretically I could live a very long time, and if I do die violently through a raid gone wrong or another Decepticon getting furious with me, at least it will be quick unless I'm very unlucky."

" Second, is my admiration for the Decepticon Nation. Much like a small minority of humans on the planet where I was born admire biker gangs and end up prospecting for them and becoming full members, so I admire the war robots that terrify most Vallermooreians. Of course, it might be if I'm stupid or unlucky that my quick visit to Cybertron is my last and I die there. Or I decide that being a war robot is not for me. Or that I fail the tests of Cybertronian immigration-the prospect stage, and am too much of a beta-creature to ever become one of you robots. When it comes to the Victorious Decepticons, I don't assume anything. I'm grateful that you have been so helpful to me instead of blasting me or trying to grab me for use as a mine slave, but I can't totally relax just in case I say something accidently that changes your mind towards me."

"I'm going to leave you to get about your job in peace, and come back to this area and contact the Decepticon border guards once my ship is big enough and well armed enough and I have oil and other goods to trade at a drop off point for Energon so that I can purchase things in the Decepticon shops. Oh, one more question if you don't mind...you'll probably laugh at it, but laughing is good, laughing means you're amused. Do Decepticons celebrate Christmas and/or New Year's Eve? If not, that would be one thing I would miss a lot from my old biological life."

[Victorious Decepticons]

"Before you go, I have to clarify something. It's not 'Mr. Frame.'" He smiled, just a bit. "Our names are said in full: Soundwave, Shockwave, Carjack, Thundercracker...I think I made a mistake transliterating mine from Binary the way I did, with a space between the two parts. Most just jam their compound names together as one, but that always sounded a bit off to me, to say it with no space at all. Still, it's one name. Maybe like, um, Mary Ann or, um, Sallie Mae?" He tried to think of human compound names, but didn't remember that Sallie Mae was actually some federal thing from before the Invasion. He just remembered that it wasn't "Ms. Mae."

"As for your reasons, I'm glad you have some - and, that the ones you've divulged are the right ones. Most successful immigrants list the potential for eternal life right at the top. And yes, if you played your cards right, you could live eternally, or at least, until something destroys the entire universe. Of course, it's a bit of a reach to expect to, but it is theoretically possible, at least.

"But we also get kids who think it'll be fun, or people who are just bored with human life, and they never make it. In fact, we turn them back at the border if we can catch them in time. It IS fun to be a raider, but not if you look at it like an actual game, which immature foreigners usually do. For them, it suddenly becomes 'boring' and 'no fun at all' when they realize that it takes a lot of heavy, uncomfortable armor and a big, Energon-chugging engine to be able to perform like in the cartoons."

"Of course, I'm curious about what you think it is that may set me to blasting you in an instant. Know this: Immigration will read your code after they port you, but before you get installed into a new body. And if you turn out to be a spy or some rot, you won't get installed. You'll get deleted instead, and the boards melted down so if you've managed to hide from the deletion command, you're still for sure gone. So...if you think there's a deal killer, you'd best forget about sneaking it by the ones who make the decisions..."

"As for me, you made my job easier, which is always a good way to gain some initial patience." And you let on that you might have a refinery, which I'll be sure to follow up on, he thought to himself silently.

"I will give you one final tip. The survival part is physically grueling. So upgrade that body, even if it's currently running well. I'm not sure how biologicals do body upgrades, but I know there is some way - it's obvious that triathletes and the like are not using the standard design spec. Whatever way there is, use it. And I presume you already know how to live on a planet that has no cities, but if not, you'd better figure out how to live in the woods. Because any Decepticon on the planet where these tests take place will be looking for slaves, so you won't want to even see one that isn't marked with the Seals of DomIntel, and even then, you won't want to see them until the day that part of your test ends."

"Oh, yes. I almost forgot. You asked about Christmas and New Year's. Christmas is..." The sound of Chaos Frame's fans could be heard a bit as he unpacked his Foreign Holidays pamphlet into conscious memory. "...a foreign religious holiday. I've never noticed it being celebrated on Cybertron, but according to my quick sheet, it's from a rather large Earthian religion that has even spread to some other planets. So, you'd probably find it being celebrated in the immigrant areas. We try not to have immigrant areas, but they do tend to ghettoize a bit..." His face showed his disdain for that practice. "If you want to be a real Decepticon, you shouldn't just hang out with a bunch of glorified humans." He added.

"Speaking of Christmas, that reminds me of another thing - its religion, Christianity. We Decepticons do not like hypocrisy, and it's impossible to follow Christianity's teachings AND the Decepticon Way - and to claim to do so involves hypocrisy on every level by the very nature of the two value systems. They are quite irreconcilably opposed, and we won't tolerate the normal human practice of doing whatever you want while also claiming to follow such a religion and perhaps 'asking forgiveness' later. "

"However, lots of immigrants keep their holidays regardless, and as long as they don't try to convince anyone that being weak is okay or good, or that Megatron isn't the ultimate leader of the Decepticon Nation, the government doesn't bother them. Even if we do think it's nuts to..." He paused as he examined the data ..."give away(!!) a bunch of stuff for a holiday instead of going on a giant raid to celebrate."

"My data pack says that it's important to note that there is some kind of rebel associated with Christianity, and that we are to blast 'that lousy rebel and all of his ilk' on sight. So whoever he is, we must not be associated with him either. It's my guess that his identification as a rebel is what really earned him the enmity of the Decepticon government."

"As for New Year's, we don't put as much emphasis on the turn of the year as biologicals seem to, but we do celebrate making it through one without being turned into scrap. You can expect huge fireworks shows and street parties, because whether the day is all that important or not, everyone likes to party at some point. Alas, there is no alcohol. My sheet says that this bothers immigrants. Alas, ethanol is just fuel for us, and will be for you, too. Your engine will burn it, and run roughly because ethanol is junk compared to Energon. Apparently there's some way around this mechanical limitation, but I don't know it..."

"Finally, best not to come back to this planet after you've upgraded for a visit to Cybertron. By the time that happens, this moon will be staffed by Corporation oil roughnecks and security bots, all of whom will think it's fun to use your ship as a hunk of scrap to sell for recycling, and you as a new laborer right here."

"Not only that, you'll be a good 100 lightyears away from where you need to go!"

[Vallermoore]

"Chaos Frame, I'm not a spy, certainly not. I doubt Vallermoore would dare to spy on your nation anyway for fear of reprisals if they were caught. I'm just...well, when my whole body could fit in your plaster and add the reputation that the Decepticons have earned over the centuries, scared. And I'm not a Christian. It's just that on my planet, Christians, Ponyists, atheists, almost everybody in a position to do so celebrates Christmas because they like getting presents. It's not a political thing, it's just that they all like opening presents and seeing others open theirs. The same with the New Year-it's a great party time. That rebel you speak of died nearly two thousand years ago, but you're right about not wanting his followers-Christianity and the Decepticon Way would get on as well as iron and water-very badly. I don't drink alcohol so that's no loss to me. And raiding for me would be a way to make Energon to both feed on and buy new things from your shops. I'll need to do a lot of exercise which is how we beta creatures upgrade our bodies. If our minds go wrong we can't debug. Imagine if your mind could not be Debugged-so if anything goes wrong with it, it can't heal. That's how it is with us."

"One more thing to ask...please, where is the border that I can contact the border guards from? Otherwise either I won't find it at all, or I'll stray across it with no warning and the border guards won't like that one little bit. Guards of all kinds, be they beta creatures or not, don't like trespassers. Hopefully it's not treason to say where Cybertron is or I'll never get there."

(OOC-Again, sorry for the short bit.)

[Victorious Decepticons]

Chaos Frame suddenly got a quite startled look.

"Christianity has TWO rebels?! You seem to be talking about someone other than who I was. I meant that one, not one that died, but another one - the one I meant is supposed to be some sort of 'spirit creature' that wants to take over the universe and destroy it for no apparent reason...or depending on who's talking, perhaps spread a self-destructive ideology - he likes to hack too, and make people destroy themselves, and...just a minute, let me look at my SEDP..." he sighed, as he unpacked his long-forgotten Foreign Religions Module from his Standard Educational Data Pack. This module contained information he hadn't consciously looked at in almost 200 years. To an onlooker, it would appear as if he'd gone into a short trance as his attention shifted to his internal data systems.

"Satan!" He said, after returning to normal. "That's the guy and followers that we're supposed to blast on sight. My other sheet said that lots of people who don't like Christianity on any Earth will defect to him as an intellectually-lazy FU, but that he's supposedly even worse, only in a different way. And we're supposed to blast him and his loyalists if they get anywhere near us, because after all, if he's willing to rebel against a God of the description in that religion, he'll surely do so against Megatron - and Satan's followers would be no different. Not only that, he's some lousy hacker."

"It should be obvious why 'kill the government and screw up all that its leader has created' is not an ideology that Megatron wants floating around, and why those who want THAT are to be summarily fired on, regardless of what variant of the idea they may follow. The same goes for any group named after a notorious rebel like Satan, because if they use his name, they at least agree with the associated ideals."

"As for Christians, the modern ones are so far from the religion's rebellious founders that they are no longer considered rebels, per se. They can visit as tourists without being blasted on sight. However, their ideology is banned, so they must keep it to themselves or be executed for attempted cultural corrosion - the same as anyone who tries to spread un-Decepticon notions."

"And, of course, one cannot become a citizen without accepting the Decepticon Way and renouncing all other loyalties of all sorts: Nation, political, racial, religious...either you are a Decepticon or you are not, there is no compromise on that."

After taking a few moments to recompress the information, he continued on.

~~~~~~~~~

"The inability to be debugged, or even to be easily mechanically fixed, makes many of us cringe when we think of it. It truly is a wonder your species survives! On the other hand, a guy at Immigration who I know says that your minds do at least try to generate their own patch code. Unfortunately, that system is woefully inadequate, as though it only started to develop maybe 1/10 as long ago as automatic physical repair did. I would guess that it only got into the alpha stage when humans first formed societies that went beyond the close layers of extended family. That'd be when your mind-code would need to work better than that of the other apes, and when glitchiness became more of a barrier to survival."

"Of course, evolution is glacially slow - make that about 10 times slower than a glacier moves - so it still has nothing on a good programmatic patch."

"But, you say that you can upgrade your body just by using it?! THAT sounds like it would be worth something if only it worked faster. Still, when it comes to getting a better part in a hurry, nothing beats a ladle full of molten metal and a mold."

~~~~~~~~~

"The location of many of our planets is now secret, but the location of Cybertron itself isn't at all classified. Alas, our enemies already found it. At least we - The Corporation - made out VERY well in the aftermath of that war." He smiled widely, thinking of how his container of Energon Supreme and another billion Cubes of it in his personal vault were actually the direct spoils of it. The other permanent members of the Corporation had also made out better than bandits. Now, they did their business mainly for something to do, though of course, they also all still got their payments for every job as he had described before. Corporation mercenaries, being hired hands, didn't get a percentage share of any loot of any sort - but they weren't exactly struggling either, to say the least.

"Anyway," he said, realizing that his mind had wandered, "Cybertron is here..." He projected a map from a holographic image maker hidden in his hand. It appeared, in 3D, in front of the human's ship. One spot was flashing brightly. "And we are currently here. One galaxy over." A smaller spot began to flash.

Looking at the map, it was clear that Cybertron's galaxy was indeed a different one. Thanks to the shapes of the galaxies and their relative positions, it was actually a shorter trip to "hop" the 100 lightyears across this gap from Cybertron to the near side of this galaxy than it was to get to the far side of that planet's own galaxy.

"I presume you have FTL. If you don't, it'll not only take forever, but you'll get to see plenty of space piracy. Against your ship." He smiled a bit, but it was true. Flying slowly in Decepticon space was a good way to get raided. This was even true for Decepticon cargo-bots when they were carrying anything of high value, and they typically not only went as fast as possible, but also traveled with fighter escorts from whatever company had hired them.

"Since you are apparently leaving this moon now, I will bid you adieu...perhaps we'll meet again, but most likely not, since I'll be traveling to many other worlds after I'm done pinpointing all of the oil deposits on this one..."

[Vallermoore]

(OOC-Sorry about the slow reply, real life was in the way.)

"Well, I'm no Satanist, that's for certain. I never was and never will be. Thank you for giving me the location of Cybertron. Farewell." He carefully turned his ship around and left, heading back to his home planet.

Seven years passed, during which Auric moved a quarter of his money after tax and any needed bribes into the oil business. Another five percent of his money, over five million Vallermooreian Chingchings, went into enlarging, updating and arming his ship, as well as giving it an FTL drive that worked well. Instead of the relatively weak lasers it had before, it now had lasers that were nearly as good as Cybertronian blasters and looked really mean. From an illegal source he brought two missiles from the Vallermooreian Army, and made two more that in fact were fake but looked real. There was no harm where he was going in some deception if it meant an attack was less likely. His craft, now the size of a Decepticon, had a cargo of oil, copper, steel girders, and more then fifty poor blacks that he had tricked into thinking that he was taking to a better place on another planet that would be a lot better for them. Being like most white Vallermooreians deeply racist towards blacks, the fact that he planned to sell them into mine slavery did not bother him in the least. Instead of being white his ship was now painted yellow and black, the colour of a wasp, but still bore the seals of Vallermoore as a sign that he was a tourist, and it bore a name in gold leaf, the Auric Goldfinger

He had no fear that some Decepticon would nark on him to the Vallermooreian government-whatever else they might do to him, it would not be that. Before he had left he had done certain things for what could well be the last time in his life. Voting in the elections for the Vallermooreian parliament. Talking politics with his close human and sapient pony friends. Praying in the Celestian Temple with the sapient ponies. Such things would be impossible if he ended up dead or worse, enslaved, and they would be considered high treason on Cybertron as a Decepticon robot.

As he got closer and closer to Cybertron, he carried on speeding at FTL speed whilst at the same time getting on his radio and making his intentions clear to the border guards that he was a Vallermooreian tourist and not a threat to Cybertron or to Leader Megatron, and that he only intended to stay three days or so. Only when he was close to Cybertron did he hop out of FTL and start orbiting the massive metal planet whilst he looked for the right place to land. All around him flew F-16s that, apart from their Decepticon Seals, looked like they had come from some space bound aircraft carrier, but were in fact Decepticons in plane mode. Spying a Drop Off Point, he headed in towards it, when a Decepticon voice came in over his radio.

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: I thought RL might have interfered when I saw that you hadn't logged in at all. Glad you're back! )

"Look - a hunk of free metal!!" The voice said in Binary, apparently not realizing that he was talking to his gang on a frequency the ship was using. Foreigners, after all, usually didn't know the Decepticon standard frequencies and used other ones.

"Yeah, let's collect it!" Another voice chimed in. "It'll make a nice little bonus to top off the million barrels' worth of oil we got!"

Five of the planes, now obviously working together, began to head directly towards the ship.

Suddenly, a deep, official-sounding masculine voice came over the radio. This one was in English.

"Vallermoorian tourist, this is Cybertronian Entry Control. Please head to the Main Space Port for entry. You will find that approximately 1,000 miles south of the Main Refinery; you should be able to see the Refinery's glow from your position since it is now dusk on that part of the planet." Also, good luck in your upcoming battle! - We see that you are about to be given a 'proper reception' by some of our citizens up there."

Almost before he had a chance to think about it, light blaster fire began to pelt the sides of his ship. It seemed as if it was done as an attention-getting measure, rather than with the intent to destroy the craft.

"Surrender now, and we might let you live!" The original voice came back over the radio. The message was sent in several languages, one of which was English. "Or, fight us, and have your ship sold as little pieces of scrap instead of one big one!!"

Looking around, Auric would see that five planes now surrounded his ship in what appeared to be a practiced pattern. The thousands of other planes mostly continued about their business, but a few of them were now clearly hovering and watching to see what would happen. Some seemed poised to turbo-jet over if they saw opportunity.

Clearly, it would be in his best interests to fend off the first group and then get to a location on Cybertron that didn't have quite so many people who could see him at the same time to jump into any frays that broke out.

[Vallermoore]

Auric decided that, reluctantly, he had no option but to fight. First because he didn't want to die a very painful death or end up as a slave. Second, because this was not like most places where opening fire even in self defence would at the very least mean a talk with the police. There were no police. He pressed the buttons on his two genuine missiles, and at this range, to his great relief they hit their targets and blasted the planes into pieces of scrap. Against a land based Decepticon he doubted they would be all that effective, but against one the size of an F-16, they were more then capable of doing their job. "Back off," he warned "as there are more where that came from." The other two missiles were fake, but to his relief the other three Decepticons indeed did back off, not knowing that they were fake and not wanting to be maybe reduced to junk like the other two. He got out fast, but not at full speed as he didn't want show fear. Showing fear here would be deadly.

Soon enough he made it to the Main Space Port and landed there. At least for a short time I won't be attacked on sight, as if Cybertronian Entry Control attacked all the tourists who entered there would soon be no tourists at all. I wonder why the other planes did not blow me apart? Of course, the Decepticon Way says do not get involved if you or your stuff are not being attacked. I need to buy missiles for my ship for sure. Also I want to buy a Decepticon firecracker and three nights in a Decepticon hotel room. One of the border control agents walked over in his direction.

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: I will let that bit of godmod pass this time, but know that anti-missile panels are a thing, and some Decepticons have bothered with the upgrade. Also, those other three would soooo have opened fire for all they were worth while putting on enough distance to dodge what seem to be two more missiles. Also, pile-ons are rather common when there is potential loot involved. But then the RP would likely have come to a booming end, and that wouldn't be as fun, so...)

On the ground, three soldiers came over to the ship and walked all around it while waving sensor devices over it and staring intently. They were marked with the small symbols of Cybertronian Entry Control as well as the usual Decepticon Seals. These soldiers weren't the least bit bothered by the fact that the ship had blasted through a couple of raiders on the way in. In fact, if anything, they were a bit impressed that the human's ship wasn't already on the way to a handy foundry with him still inside.

"Nice fake bombs," one said approvingly while giving a couple of nods. "They're good counterfeits." They were not, alas, good enough to fool his explosive-materials sensor, which showed a lack of anything explosive within their housings. "Did you get 'em from one of us?"

"The blasters are legit," one yelled out. "Looks like about what we had maybe 5 iterations ago. Pretty good for a foreigner! Laser, though...eh..."

Through the window, the human would see several vendors hastily setting up their wares a short way away.

"Well," the apparent leader announced, "looks like you're decently set up for a visit to this fine planet. You might actually stay functional for a day or so!" He laughed at his own joke. "Hold on a bit, and a ForIntel agent who can fit into that thing'll check out the inside."

The soldiers walked about 100 feet away, where they could see the ship and engage it if necessary, but weren't so close that they wouldn't have any time to react.

After a few minutes, what appeared to be a small Predator-like drone buzzed annoyingly into hearing range. It flawlessly transformed into robot mode, and the agent then landed lightly on his feet. Like all other overt Decepticons, he had Decepticon Seals - this time, red ones, painted on the wings of a white body. Right below the Seals and just as large was another insignia, this one for Foreign Intelligence. This insignia was applied in metallic paint, as though he wanted to make darned sure that everyone could see that he was ForIntel at just the slightest glance. (This was indeed the purpose of the insignia; without it, random Decepticons would assume he was weak and a source of free scrap metal.)

He approached the door of the ship and gave it a few knocks.

"Let's see what you've got in here," he called out through the radio at the same time, figuring that if the door was actually an airlock, he might not be audible inside the craft. Since at least one occupant was human, it would make sense for the ship to use an airlock even on land. Otherwise, Cybertron's low-oxygen atmosphere would rush in and kill the biological or biologicals aboard.

~~~~~~~~~

The Decepticons didn't really worry about typical contraband coming in. After all, nearly everything was legal to transport. However, they didn't want any gray-goo replicants, biolife engineered to work the same way, or other such things arriving - so some agent always got stuck with the task of entering these foreign vessels and hoping he wouldn't be eaten by some crazy thing.

[Vallermoore]

Auric pressed a few buttons to open the airlock, strapped a couple of plasma pistols to his waist and a machine gun to his back, and bowed to the Forintel agent when he entered. He said quietly "In that compartment are some human slaves but they're not broken in yet, if you open it they won't just attack me, they'll most likely try and kill you as well. That one over there has oil, metal and copper, I hope to get it swapped for Energon at a Raid Tax point, to spend here. I wouldn't be much of a tourist without money to spend, and human currency would be pretty useless from your point of view. Other then that I have the ship itself and my weapons.
Yes, I did use my real missiles up there, but it was pretty much that or die. I'm not going to target any Decepticon that does not attack me or my stuff, and I fully support Leader Megatron and his government. As far as I know, there are no hidden horrors on my ship that could damage the Metal Planet. Apart from a full tank of water...but that's just for me to drink and it's fully enclosed. The only way it would escape is if some Decepticon blasted it, which would make it splash out over him. I'm Auric. Feel free to ask me any questions you have."

[Victorious Decepticons]

"Ah!" The robot looked around warily. After all, if the new arrival was up to something, it's not like he'd just say so, so the agent stayed on his toes.

"Someone has told you a lot about our Nation, that's definitely clear. You know a lot about what we're looking for, you came armed for action, and you even know where to trade and not get taken to the cleaners. However, someone seems to have NOT told you that the other people at the Raid Dropoff Point will think it's better if THEY get to sell your loot. Depending on what I find in here, I'll tell you more about that..."

"Unlike the average guy, I recognize the flags on your ship. We're always wondering whether your country actually likes us, is just scared to death of us, or is actually up to plenty and just playing it super-cool. Well, I suppose we'll find out pretty soon, won't we? No matter what you do here, money will change hands - the bookies have taken quite a few bets about Vallermoore." He paused a moment, then added "But then, it's possible that no money will get paid out at all. After all, the best way for a bookie to not have to pay out is to claim that one guy doesn't constitute enough of a sample size to determine national intent." He grinned mischievously.

As he said all of this, he was pacing around and peering at everything. Soon, he made his way to the area identified as holding trade goods and opened it. It looked fine, so he went to the other door. There, he simply held up a hand while quietly facing the door. He seemed to be concentrating for about a minute.

"55 humans," he announced. "They seem more peaceful than you expect; their heart rates and breathing patterns sound only a bit excited. I presume they don't know just where they are and what's to come~? In any case, you'll probably want to unload them soon. Unfortunately, the Slave Market is way over on Decepticon Earth, and since you don't seem to plan on going there right now, I hope you have enough fuel and oxygen for this livestock. Oh, and somewhere to dump that nasty exhaust your species makes. Corrosive stuff, that." He nodded with the last sentence, as though the corrosiveness of human waste had somehow been of use to him at some point.

"Well, everything looks legit. At least from our perspective. Though I doubt that everyone in this ship will be leaving it saying that..." he jerked a thumb at the slave hold.

"In any case. You may enter without government opposition."

He began to rattle off basic facts about where things were, and it seemed as though at some point in his past, he had gotten some tour guide experience somewhere. The speaking rate was rapid, like that of a tour tram driver.

"Right over there you'll find the souvenir vendors. Up the road two blocks and one to the right is Immigration. Go up 5 blocks and then down 15 for Cultural Liaison's. They've got guides if you're a chicken and you have 10,000 Cubes. Between here and there, you'll find DomIntel. Buzz by that if you want to grow a hundred tails." He laughed.

By his use of English, it was clear that he had been deployed to many Earths as a spy, and not only that, was usually positioned in or near some analogue of the United States.

"North a hundred miles is Decepticon Headquarters; that's the capital." He continued. "North a thousand miles is the Main Refinery. You've GOT to see it if you want to do the typical tourist sightseeing thing. Also, if you're into sightseeing, check out the Main Foundry. That's where Optimus Prime met his end. Don't forget to take a picture of the plaque commemorating the Victory. The foundry's still in operation, and its Main Pit is 1 mile across. A purely industrial place may not seem like a 'sight to see,' but its enormity is worth looking at. Just don't get pushed in."

"If you're looking to buy something unusual, you want The Interplanetary Oil Procurement Corporation. But don't go to their headquarters unless you intend to impress us with your street fighting skills. Instead, go to their storefront in the capital."

"One last thing, that Raid Dropoff Point you were looking for. You don't want to take that loot of yours just anywhere. Instead, go here..." He took out a small, thin piece of metal and a stylus. Using the stylus, he wrote on it, but his implement caused dents in the thin metal rather than producing ink.

The crude map he drew up showed a fairly small town about 3,000 miles from where they were.

"That's a long way away, but it's the least-trafficked Dropoff Point on the planet and the one least likely to give you trouble. In fact, they're going to be closing it down in a few months because it gets such little use. I usually would let a foreigner fly right into doom, but you seem to be making one heck of an effort to get on here. So as a representative of the government, I'll give you that one tip. Oh, and the tax rate is 10%..."

With that, he left the ship, transformed, and flew off toward the capital. Soon, he would be stripped of his markings, reconfigured into something else, and redeployed.

[Vallermoore]

After thanking the Decepticon, and taking a good note of where to go, Auric announced to his *passengers* "I am sorry about the trouble earlier, we were attacked by space pirates, but in three hours flying time max we will be there." Before he did what he did, he had worked hard to gain trust by employing many members of Vallermoore's black community, genuinely paying their wages and keeping them safe from attack. He had then flown some genuinely to where they wanted to go and the news had got back, so he was thought as a friendly person to them. Soon enough he reached the far away, almost ignored Drop Off Point where a few Decepticons with the symbols on their bodies marking them clearly as taxbots were. Happily, there were no other Decepticons present.

As long as I'm polite and truthful and don't do or say anything stupid or anti-Decepticon, they are unlikely to attack my ship, just like Forintel didn't. The Decepticons who I really have to be wary around are the average citizens. He turned off the link to the slaves-to be, and when he reached the drop off point he slowed from full speed, landed with care, and *dipped* his ship, the equivalent of a polite bow. "I'm here with some useful stuff to trade for Energon. Two hundred feet of coiled copper wire, twenty blocks of steel, each block being human size, fifty human sized barrels of oil, oh, and fifty-five human slaves at what I believe is five hundred Cubes per slave." I don't think it'll do any harm just letting them know that I know the price per slave. "They have enough oxygen for a week, food and water for three days, and bedding and toilets. I would like to drop my goods off in exchange for Cubes, please."

If this works out, I'll go and view some of the tourist areas of Cybertron, buy stuff if there is anything I want and it's not treason to sell it to me, and then....and then I'll go to the Immigration Ministry for those fiendishly hard but needed tests. These Decepticons here must be rather bored. If the worst does happen and they do start blasting, I'll jettison the slaves and whilst they are grabbing them for their value before they choke to death I'll escape with my other stuff.

[Victorious Decepticons]

There was a very long pause as the tax-bot, and the Megatron Companies bot who accompanied him, got out handheld computers and downloaded programs to translate this alien's odd voice noises. Notably, they didn't allow this software directly into their minds. Anything sent over the air could be contaminated with a virus, even if the server seemed to be the one over at Foreign Intelligence.

Normal Decepticons, of course, wouldn't get their language packs from ForIntel, but thanks to the job positions of these workers, they had free access to this sort of low-level information. Needless to say, they used it, and put up with the inconvenience of running it through a translation device rather than pay for a certified hard copy that they'd hardly ever use.

"Ah! Oil and metal!" The Company bot said when the program finished its translation. He spoke through the machine as well, but its speaker system excellently kept the sound of his voice even as it turned his words from binary to English.

"Well, you've come to the right place for those items. Megatron Metals and Megatron Energon thank you for your loot. That'll be...well, I don't think you're going to be happy to hear about this, but a single Cube of Energon is equal to 120 standard Earthian barrels of oil. So, that's about 1/3 of a Cube for that." (About enough to buy the equivalent of a large bag of potato chips).

"Now as for the metal, it's steel, but it's not Decepticon steel. So to us, it's basic stuff. Unfortunately, the price of non-Decepticon steel isn't very good. And the size of those ingots isn't much, even though they probably seem huge to you. Each one is like a big marble to me, see?" He held out his hand. "I could fit one of those right here." He patted one hand across the palm. It was a bit of an understatement of the size, but not too much.

"So...maybe 10 Cubes for the steel, but we'll weigh it to make sure. As for that copper, the roll is almost as big as you are, but I've got more than 200 feet of that stuff just in my leg." He opened up a leg storage panel, and then, a hidden panel in that compartment. Thick bundles of insulated wire were now clearly visible. He closed the panel back up before the human could get too good of a look. "All these sensor arrays are connected with lengths of thin wire that reach all the way from them to my mind-boards way up here," he noted, in a vaguely boasting way. "So, one 100-foot wire would be good for ONE foot sensor. You can get more wires out of it for shorter parts, but still, nothing is small or short when it comes to one of these - at least not compared to what you're used to. We also have to leave a lot of extra space in our wiring. That way, it doesn't get jerked out of its sockets by the impact if someone decks us."

"Also, that wire's too thick to use as-is. What you types think of as 'fine computer wire' is what we'd consider fit for a light switch. So it's all gotta be re-refined and then extruded at a diameter about the size of, oh..." He peered at the human very closely. "I'd guess it's about half the thickness of that odd housing you have sticking off your head."

"Oh, and all prices are after tax."

"And now for what you really don't want to hear."

"You can't sell that livestock here. We have no way to keep it running, and the shipping would kill us. Cargo-bots never want to ride those things around because they're corrosive somehow. Plus, it takes upgrades that they wouldn't usually have to do."

"So you've gotta sell 'em on Earth. That's where the slave market is. Didn't the agent tell you that? You know where New York used to be? Hmm...maybe not. Here's a map." He scrawled out a map, much like the other agent had done. Meanwhile, the other bot began to pile up Energon Cubes - only 10 1/3 of them when 15% tax is taken out.

"Of course, you don't get the money until you take the loot out of your ship. I presume you have some sort of equipment, since that doesn't look strong enough to move it..." He pointed at Auric's body.

He said all of his figures with a completely straight face, like it was just another transaction.

"That livestock you've got is your big loot. The biological rendering plants on Earth pay 5 Cubes, which is way too much, but they think the entertainment value of grinding up a human is worth it." His voice showed obvious disdain for what he clearly considered a huge waste of money. "So you're going to want to get that sold right away, while they're still running well enough to be worth 500 Cubes each. But we only buy petroleum products and metal here at the Raid Dropoff Points."

"You've got two choices. Go to the Slave Market on Earth, or sell 'em off to the Bureau for the Provision of Biological Labor here on Cybertron. But they'll take a 50% cut. So I'd blast off to the Slave Market." He reached over and patted one of the blasters on the ship. "I can see that you know how to dissuade the Market from making that into a shipment of 56 free slaves and some bonus metal."

The Bureau for the Provision of Biological Labor was not the government agency known as the Bureau of Biological Labor, but instead, the operators of the Slave Market. They paid full price when stock was brought into Earth, but from Cybertron, they'd gouge like mad for shipping.