An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Realm of the Kazmanippian Pantheon

The Supreme Zontac arrived with full confidence, expecting to enter a Valhalla-like paradise where he could feast forever, but his face fell as he took a look around.

Broken castles, dotted with giant skeletons, let him know that something terrible had happened here. A trashed dueling ground, and the overall semi-dark skies, brought the notion home even further. He focused his eyes out further, and those eyes got wide with fear when he saw the Decepticon banners and the new metal buildings.

"That's right, little human. You have made a grave mistake continuing to follow your old gods. Your DEAD gods." A deep, robotic voice gloated. The SZ turned to see a Decepticon overseer from the Paranormal Battalion, who was pointing at the supernaturally-large skeletons. "Leader Megatron is a god himself. Did you think he would not do a tour of conquest through the spirit realms and get rid of all of these piddly competitors?" The overseer laughed, with a slow, gloating ha-ha-ha.

The overseer waited for the Supreme Zontac to really take it all in, and realize the direness of his situation. Then, he said, "That's enough of an introduction. You are now property of the Decepticon Race, and as with all other supposedly-sapient property of ours, you shall work. Otherwise, we will beat you until change your mind. If all else fails, you will be soul-captured, and used as mere fuel for our Soul Powered Refinery on Cybertron."

His next stop would be as a metal stirrer at one of the hundreds of smelting pits in the area. The misery of the metal's heat would not be broken even by death, for he was already dead. Any thoughts of getting a better assignment were dashed by the sight of the endless line of slaves bringing ore to his pit - the half-starved, whip-scarred condemnees were clearly no better off than he was. He did not know if every Kazmanippian afterlife was as bad as this one, or if he'd landed in a special place of punishment.

However, by the looks of the ruined castles he'd seen on his way in, this had, at one point, been the paradise he had expected. Now, though, all of the Kazmanippian realms had been converted to Realms of Punishment...the penalty for those who had continued to follow gods who had been soundly defeated.

He slowed down for a moment to think about this, but before he could formulate any more thoughts, what felt like a red-hot whip cut his back. "Get going, beast!" An overseer ordered angrily. He was not the "Supreme Zontac" here - he was just another nameless animal to be worked.

This overseer was stationed at his pit, and was always watchful. There would be no rest for the infidels.

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

The Realm of Endless Energon

Here, Loyal Star was already enjoying the polar opposite of the Supreme Zontac's fate, with a mansion that was not only huge, but pre-stocked with some of his favorite types of items. The one thing the manor didn't have was a repair workshop - one of the perks of this realm was never needing repairs. However, if he decided he wanted a workshop to develop his own modifications and upgrades - a popular desire among Cybertronians - a fully-stocked one would magically appear.

"For personal servants, you need to apply at the Megatronist Temple in town," the guide informed him. "Then, you'll be put on a waiting list. Once a suitable person enters this realm, and your name comes up, he'll be assigned to you. Unfortunately, one of the few things we don't get 'on demand' here is workers of this sort. Only those who are very close to being citizens of this realm, but who are willing to submit to servitude in order to get in, are trusted with the task. As you should know, many choose to stay in the Neutral Realm rather than yessir a specific person. Even *I* didn't take the position of being someone's personal servant. I work with Realmal Administration..."

In short, the guide's job was more like working for a somewhat faceless company rather than having to kiss a particular person's butt for years. It put a degree of separation between him and the new arrivals, and in his view, this was more dignified and thus acceptable - at least, until he became a citizen of the realm and could tell the Administration to suck it.

"As for things you haven't seen, you are encouraged to go out and explore. However, I can tell you that over the mountains, you'll find the specialized districts - the places where you can steal things with no chance of getting blasted, and where there's always loot; the refinery district, which is similar; a shop that's like Ultimate Mods, only everything is free there; and a large shopping district that DOES require money, so if you hit up the raiding districts, you don't feel like all of your loot-taking was pointless. Oh, and if the shopping district doesn't have a shop that you wish was there, just think about it with intention, and the store will appear - complete with staff and stock. That said, if you're the only one who wants that kind of a store, it'll disappear again once you leave its doors. For that, look for a storefront that says "for sale." By keeping this effect only in those storefronts, the permanent ones aren't disrupted."

"There are, however, many things I haven't listed. Leader Megatron prefers that there are things you find on your own, because it wouldn't be a proper paradise if you couldn't get the thrill of discovery."

After a few pleasantries, the servant's job here was pretty much done. If Loyal Star needed anything in particular, that was general enough to not be considered direct personal service, he could call the Temple to have it arranged. They would forward the request to the correct people.

Once the servant left, Loyal Star spent a few hours fully checking out his mansion. A "tour" is never enough to get more than a superficial feel for a place, and he wanted a better look at everything.

After he did that, he went outside and took in the view from the front door. He was in a neighborhood of large homes, most of which were some shade of golden, with a wide silvery street running its length. Everything was very clean and looked perpetually new. His own mansion's exterior was a large estate, and there were a couple of spots on the ground that looked reinforced - likely done so there would be a ready place to install any statues he might want. In the back, there was a large walled-off area - a private range in case he wanted to do some target shooting or test some new weaponry. Of course, he could use the area for something else if he chose.

Finally, he went off to the library in plane mode, noting how the houses changed to a type of metal that wasn't quite as expensive, but was still quite classy, as he left his neighborhood. Once downtown, he saw plenty of people on foot, strutting around with typical Decepticon pride and arrogance, and a few convenient shops. Off in the distance, other Decepticons were going to the Energon falls with glider-carts full of empty Cubes, while some were coming back with full ones.

At the library, he transformed and landed at the provided spot, and then walked in. Inside, he was met with endless rows of medium-bronze shelves, but not full of books - instead, they were jammed full of Data Pack chips. Since each chip could hold several terabytes, that made this library as packed with information as ALL of the libraries on Earth put together - and then some.

"Welcome," said a scholarly-looking bot, who turned out to be the librarian. "All you need to do to find the right chip is tell that console over there what you're looking for. There's no need to know the exact spelling of the author's name, title, or anything like that. In fact, you don't even need to know the title! When you tell that console the type of data you want, it'll automatically select the best match, give you the title, and tell you where to find it. Of course, if you do know of an author or specific title to look up, it'll do that, too. It's far more efficient and way less frustrating that that silly 'Dewey Decimal' nonsense that planet, Earth, had going on." He said the last sentence with a strong air of superiority.

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

First Temple of Cybertron

Both High Priest Warfire and Fire Eater picked up the "help" message from Loyal Star, and noted the silence afterward, but at this point, they weren't concerned. It was almost surely silent at that point because Loyal Star had already won, having blasted his foe with holy fusion cannon fire - or so they thought. Only after several days, and no appearance of Loyal Star, would they begin to be concerned. After all, they figured, it's not like a Decepticon was going to die out there just flying through space!

Janzak Intelligence

With the capture of the data from the Supreme Zontac, all of the country's questions were answered. The cult had indeed been bootstrapped and astroturfed by Kazmanip, and the motive was indeed to undermine the country's stability so that it could no longer produce the massive amount of exports it currently did. Once that was done, the plan went, Kazmanip could step in and take over its market share - and if it had gone right, Janzak wouldn't have been able to do anything because it would be full of civil unrest.

However, the data files showed, something had gone far awry for Kazmanip's intelligence agency. Though the Supreme Zontac had steadfastly refused to accept Megatron as his god, he had far fewer qualms about using the secular aspects of the Decepticon Way. He had become corrupt, and the millions of "dollars" his government invested soon made their way to a vast series of secret bank accounts. The numbers of these accounts and any passwords were carefully copied down; that money would soon be raided by Janzak Intelligence and put to its own uses.

Along with this information, they gained the type of info that most such agencies would be after: the names, fake names, and locations of all of the other agents in the espionage cell. These would quickly be arrested, and after trials, put to death for spying.

Now, Janzak had all of the information it needed as a casus belli for a shooting war against Kazmanip. However, it still faced the problem of effectively waging one on a country on the other side of its planet. Its leader and its military generals would soon meet to discuss their next steps...

[Vallermoore]

The Realm of Endless Energon


After thanking the introduction-bot and wishing him luck, and watching him leave, Loyal Star tried out the telescope and soon found out that he could see any planet he wanted through it, from the gleaming metal planet of Cybertron to Vallermoore to the gas giant Vallermoore orbited to all manner of planets, even though it was day. His mansion was in effect his idea of a dream-house, the house he had wished he had as a Decepticon but that he could never fully afford, even with loot from battles and his secret vaults given to him by Megatron for risking everything to bring him back to life. There was a very nice Decepticon bed for defragging in and plenty of other good things, even a small Energon fountain in an inner room that recycled the Energon in an endless loop. After looking around his mansion a little more, marvelling at it, he locked it carefully, transformed (staying clear of the fight zone so as not to be shot down) and flew to the library.

He remembered when as a pony airports in Vallermoore were very strict anti-gun zones and even unicorn horns had anti-magic rings placed on them until the flight was over, with spaceports almost as gun-unfriendly. There was none of that flying security hassle now, nor had there been from the moment he had become a Decepticon in life. Cybertron's airspace had been crowded, but here there were no problems, and he did a few loop the loops and other acrobatics that would have been a marvel for biologicals if they got to see them. He soon reached the library, having seen the neighbourhood from the air, (like Cybertron, it was metal, no grass and the like here) and then thanked the librarian and spent a few hours looking at all the chips. Anything he wanted (except anti Megatron stuff that he didn't want and had no interest in anyway) was there for the downloading. He still ran his antivirus out of habit, even though this was the Decepticon Heaven. After hours of fun he decided to go to the free Ultimate Mods store first. He helped himself to some fine, strong, but light armour and a couple of extra strong Triple Strength Blasters.


After going to an Energon Waterfall and getting some Energon he went to the area where he could think of the shop he needed and made a map shop appear so he could buy a few maps of various worlds. The next day he did a little raiding of a *pony* town for the fun of it. Later he would engage in battle for the fun of it, refraining from using his holy fusion fire and obviously his jammer as it was all for fun and those blasted fully came back to life. He defeated several foes and was defeated himself several times, before spending some time in his firing range in his mansion (where he did test his holy fusion fire just to make sure it worked, which it did.) He would watch some TV and have a nice rest.

The next day he flew out on a self-given exploration mission to see how big this Realm really was and what unknown delights were out there.

First Temple of Cybertron


As it happened, his frantic call for help had been heard by both Fire Eater and High Priest Warfire, but they were sure he must have defeated his foe and roasted said foe with holy fusion fire. Both knew he would never just abandon his priesthood and fly away, he was far too loyal for that-so when after a week or more he had not shown up, they would start to be worried that he might indeed have suffered unfortunate results.

Janzak Intelligence

The leader of Janzak had plenty of plans, ranging from infiltrating soldiers in disguised somehow as tourists, to forging lots of Kazmanip's currency and dropping it over the country, ruining the country in the process, to germ warfare, but he knew he needed to take his generals advice. He was not so filled with overweening pride that he thought he could do everything perfectly all by himself.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Realm of Endless Energon

As Loyal Star flew further away from the area of the towns, he passed over several unique areas. One spot stood out - it was what appeared to be a giant strip mine with thousands of human slaves. A single Decepticon overseer, larger than life, towered over the operation. Whenever a slave slowed down, he would lean over and crush it flat with his thumb. The others would then speed up by an inhuman proportion while begging "his lordship" for forgiveness for their inherent inferiorities and for any slowdowns they might have done. The Decepticon was clearly enjoying this immensely, and was very meticulous about squashing every "ant" who wasn't going blazingly fast.

At first, Loyal Star was taken aback that any humans could possibly be here, even as slaves. Perhaps, he thought, they were - from their perspective - in a punishment realm!

Later, though, he realized the real answer. The "humans" had to actually be some kind of mystically-generated drones, and the entire setup could be described as an example of the ultimate in full-immersion gaming. Everything looked real, but things like the top possible slave speed gave away that it really was not.

Further on, the density of the inhabited areas dropped significantly. There were some other customized scenario-based setups dotted around, including a few that involved their operators running huge refineries, but it didn't take long after this for Loyal Star to reach the end of all habitation. For many miles afterward - far enough to get out of sight of where he had come from - there was nothing but high-quality, bare-metal planetary panels. The curve of the planet was easily visible from high in the air, letting him know that he was ON a planet or a facsimile thereof. Far in the distance, near the horizon, the glow of Private Reserve could be seen.

Loyal Star focused his vision on this glow. Was that really Private Reserve - and enough of it to see from so far away? He decided to fly out to see for himself.

He flew for hundreds of miles, but eventually, his system warned that he was halfway out of fuel. If he didn't turn back now, he would run out and be stuck on battery power in the middle of nowhere. His batteries then wouldn't have enough energy for him to get back to civilization, and even here, ending up as a depowered statue was not his idea of fun. Before turning around, however, Loyal Star decided to land and rest.

Upon landing, a small square in the ground seemed to glow in a golden hue for just a few moments. Loyal Star took a couple of steps over to it and bent over for a closer look.

"Scout's Challenge," read the header.

"If you are here," the body of the text said, "you are surely a scout or an explorer seeking to reach the source of the Golden Hue. No one else would come out this far, or even out far enough to see that the Hue exists at all. Reaching the Source of the Hue will take determination, ingenuity, and persistence. Do you have what it takes? Is the thrill of discovery part of your idea of paradise? Or will you return to the well-known areas, never to know if it would have been worth engineering and installing the upgrades needed to overcome your standard fuel capacity?"

So...this was a challenge for the oil scouts and others who liked to explore in the same way, but apparently, it was open for all to try. However, the distance of the loot - or at least, what seemed to be a lot of loot by the looks of how it glowed - was intentionally set so that it would take more than just flying over on a whim in order to reach it. He would have to improve his efficiency somehow, or perhaps figure out another way to bridge the distance - not only to get all the way there, but to get all the way back. This kind of challenge was something a scout thought of as fun and intriguing. Now, he considered the marker's question: Would he try to master the Scout's Challenge, or basically forget about it and go do something else instead?

~~~~~~~~~~~

Janzak Situation Room

After discussing plenty of military ideas, it became clear that despite a high chance of gaining victory in the end, a frontal brute-force assault with open troops would cost over a trillion Janzakkian Cubes and likely over 100,000 Janzakkian lives. As was typical of the Megatronist-minded, no thought whatsoever was given to what it would cost Kazmanip, either in money or lives.

"If we drown them in counterfeit money, it would kill their economy, but it could also affect the rest of the planet due to foreign exchange," one of the generals said. "They could use it to buy up all of our ForEx-traded currency, and cause OUR currency to become worth too much!" This, they knew, would make it harder to export their own products by raising their prices.

"Germ warfare would be good, but only if we can keep them from spreading it back here. That might be better, because we have full justification for closing our borders to them."

One general, whose eyes shown in the biological equivalent of clear red, said, "How about we do like our mentors, and relieve them of a lot of their oil? We could set up a sham company to get all of the permits, and once we do, use horizontal drilling to take way more than our front-company is authorized to..."

They liked this idea, but noted that they wouldn't actually be able to get enough to make a serious dent in Kazmanip's supply. That country had several billion barrels' worth, and unless they were going to fly it into space in giant cargo-bots like the Decepticons, they just wouldn't be able to transfer a large enough percentage of it to shut the country down fast enough.

After all of the ideas were given, germ warfare stood above the others as both feasible and devastating. They would set up fake crop dusting companies as cover, and then use those types of planes to spread the disease. Blatant releases over cities would be set up to look like "accidents," and when those planes were examined, all that investigators would see would be barrels marked with the names of authorized crop pesticides. Of course, there would be an extra ingredient in the pesticide mix, but it would be unlikely that investigators would even look for such a thing - at least, not before it was too late.

"So, what germs should we give them?" The president asked.

Several ideas were given, ranging from something as hard-to-transmit as anthrax all the way to the planet's equivalent of smallpox. The most conniving general, however, wanted to be more obvious about where the disease came from. "I think it would be nice if they got that zombie virus," he said with only a little chuckle.

"Overseer's Zombification Powder? But that's a myth!" Another responded. A few heads nodded in agreement.

"I bet it's not," the first general insisted. "Everyone knows that Mine #1 is Ground Zero for all of the weirdest stuff in the Decepticon Empire. Soul-powered Energon, ridiculously high productivity, slaves that attack abolitionists... it's surely where they test all sorts of chemical and germ warfare. And a zombie virus would fit right in with the rest."

"Decepticons are well-known for not sharing any militarizable technology," the Leader reminded them all. "I agree that the Zombie Powder likely exists, but I know that they would never give us some for this operation. I also think that it's not the best thing to use, because it'll do nothing to the living. Instead, it would just cause some freaky funerals as the newly-dead popped up and created disturbances. However, your comment about 'slaves that attack abolitionists' has my attention. That sounds like they be be under the influence of the Decepticon Loyalty Virus - and we have already been working on trying to copy the effects of that one..."

The Leader placed a phone call, but everyone knew by the look on his face what he was hearing from the other side. Soon enough, he confirmed it - their Loyalty Virus was NOT ready. In fact, they had not yet been able to replicate the effect at all.

After much more discussion, the decision was made. They would go with an updated version of a rather mundane germ - influenza. Though boring, and able to be countered with vaccines, it was also known to spread very quickly and affect a large percentage of the population. Their version was far more lethal than usual, and there were not yet any vaccines made for it, so it would be able to wreak plenty of death and havoc in Kazmanip for many months.

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

Earth

Marketeer had waited for a long time, hoping to draw some foes into an ambush of his own, but none were stupid enough to come to this particular spot. He finally had to move up, and threw a grenade toward the next door to clear it out. This one, however, bounced off of the open door and rolled back to the other side of extra-short hall-like opening rather than into the bigger part of that room. He heard one soldier make an "ugh" noise.

Right after that noise, he heard just the faintest shifting of many other people. This sound took less than a second - barely enough to be sure that he'd heard it. In fact, he wasn't *sure.* Was it real? Was it just the original noise echoing? It was hard to tell. With a gulp-like feeling, he realized that if it was real, there were about 6 more troops in that room, out of range of the grenade's blast - and they were all steadfastly holding their positions.

[Vallermoore]

Janzak Situation Room


It was decided that a full force attack would cause too many deaths and much too many Cubes (although biological, they named their currency after the Decepticon one.) Ruining the currency of their foe could cause unwanted blowback on themselves and damage their own currency. After various ideas it was decided to spread the influenza virus and do a lot of death and damage that way. If their foe found out it was their fault, it would be hard for them to try and fight them, and they didn't think their foe would do exactly the same back to them, as they were too goody-goody to do that.


Earth


Marketeer decided to try and blast the hinges of the door, destroy it, and then get as close as he dared and throw all his grenades in one after the other in the hope they killed or wounded at least some of his foes, then go in blasting.

The Realm of Endless Energon

Loyal Star flew one bot whose idea of heaven was clearly dominating and murdering human mine slaves who were chipping out ore. To each his own he thought. He found other bots who ran large refineries or had out of the way villas-one even had a castle made of bronze, and an eagle Sapient CPU as a pet. Being Decepticon Heaven, the pet genuinely liked it's owner. Staying clear of other bots, Loyal Star could tell he was on a planet because of the curve. He was just preparing to turn around-even here, Energon could run out, when he saw a faint gleam that appeared to be caused by Energon Private Reserve. When he landed, a square near him lit up with
"Scout's Challenge,"

"If you are here, then you are surely a scout or an explorer seeking to reach the source of the Golden Hue. No one else would come out this far, or even out far enough to see that the Hue exists at all. Reaching the Source of the Hue will take determination, ingenuity, and persistence. Do you have what it takes? Is the thrill of discovery part of your idea of paradise? Or will you return to the well-known areas, never to know if it would have been worth engineering and installing the upgrades needed to overcome your standard fuel capacity?"

He decided to try the challenge later, flew back home and refuelled himself. He spent a few hours going online on a non sapient computer, playing a game and otherwise enjoying himself, and then had a few battles for fun at the fighting area and got some Energon from the nearest river. He decided to go and buy a sword from one of the shops he could just create from thin air, even though he had some already in his mansion and walked into the newly-created shop.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Kazmanip Situation Room

It wasn't long before the news of the Supreme Zontac's arrest got back to Kazmanip, especially since Janzak had put it on their news. This news also contained the fact that the Zontac had been executed, with the official reason being that he was convicted of treason. Propaganda against Kazmanip was already running full force in Janzak, and its government had immediately slapped a full embargo on Kazmanip. Now, the few components that Kazmanip had been able to sell to Janzakkian companies would sit, unpurchased, in Kazmanip's ports. Even worse, Janzak was pressuring its allies to join in the embargo, and some orders had already been canceled in response.

"We should go ahead and declare open war now," a general was arguing. "Otherwise, they'll have a chance to gear up against us, and we might find them bombing our capital!"

"Nonsense," the leader responded. "They know that they're too far away to wage an effective war against us. We face the same problems. If either of us launch a full-scale attack, it'll require getting troops safely across the ocean to the other country. Both of our countries have the submarines needed to sink most of the transports in any fleet. Any remaining transports won't have enough troops to make it past the beaches."

A beady-eyed man spoke next. "I say we engage in covert ops against Janzak in order to make sure they can't attack us." The others turned to him with some attention. Since he was their spymaster, he would know more about this sort of thing than regular generals.

"Their judicial system is still heavily compromised, despite the cowardice of many of our operatives within it. I say we should gin up charges against their chiefs of industry, and have them all arrested. Our judges will convict them. Now that this 'Loyal Star' has disappeared, they shouldn't get much trouble for doing it. Even if the company heads get off on appeal, it'll drastically disrupt their corporate operations, and make it so their customers have no choice but to look elsewhere for the products they want. Then, we'll be ready with plenty of fine Kazmanippan options."

Though most disagreed with the spy leader's assessment of Janzak's courts still being "heavily" compromised, they knew that a few corrupt judges had indeed escaped the dragnet. If they could route the cases to these traitors-to-Janzak, the plan would work. After some discussion, it was given the green light. Agents would soon begin to plant the needed "evidence" to frame the top Janzakkian company heads and create excuses to have them arrested by Janzak's own law enforcement.

The one problem that Kazmanip would face would be the prevalence of the Decepticon Way. It seemed like every day, another category of activity was legalized. They would have to do their best to frame their targets for something that was likely to still be illegal by the time the "evidence" was planted.

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

Wheatville Zoning Board
Kazmanip

The friendly zoning board clerk was quite surprised to find three strangers standing at her desk. They'd just bought land, they explained, to run a new crop dusting operation. They simply needed the permits for a dirt airstrip capable of handling five small planes.

After a quite large amount of small talk, and discussion about how much they liked this slow and friendly town, the lady at the counter had them fill out the needed paperwork. Then, with a few loud stamps, she registered everything.

Janzak's official cover for spraying chemicals over Kazmanip was now in place. Once the planes arrived, packed with influenza-laced weed killer, the operation would begin.

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

Earth

Marketeer threw in several grenades, but to his dismay, he heard no grunts or other sounds of wounded enemies. Still, he went ahead with his plan to go in blasting.

Immediately, he found himself pasted by several paintballs, fired by undamaged guards who were standing far into the room. The room itself, he realized, spread out mostly to the right of this door, with only a small portion in range of where his grenades had rolled. It was easy for the defenders to avoid grenade damage just by standing far off to the side, about 8 meters away from the hot zone. Another door, at the far end of this, opened to yet more space, and two guards were firing from that location as well. Finally, he heard footsteps from a different area - this one directly in front of him.

"Pretty good for a first-timer," one said to the now paint-covered cadet. "Most get stopped at that last hallway!"

Another one said, "Your score on this impromptu test is set on a curve since almost no one is able to clear this base on his first try. How you do depends on whether you turn out to be above, below, or at the average score for your group. For now, as you can guess by your completely-painted state, your first attempt is over!" He said with a surprising good-naturedness. Clearly, they knew that this was a very difficult setup.

In the distance, Marketeer heard new alarms go off, followed by the muffled sound of floor-mounted paintball machine guns. Soon after, he heard the frustrated yell of some other cadet, who apparently had lasted all of 3 seconds. The noises seemed to come from a basement area.

"Yeah, there's another way in," the soldiers in Marketeer's room laughed. "If you can get in THAT way without being instantly 'deactivated,' you're a true champion. Nobody's done it yet!"

Not long after, Marketeer would be escorted above ground. There, to his surprise and then aggravation, he saw another of his class sitting on the ground with a mischievous grin. A closer look revealed that he was actually sitting on a cement protrusion - a vent.

"You actually tried to get in?" The seated cadet asked. "I'm not going in there - at least not yet. First I'm gonna smoke 'em out." He gave a strong rev, sending a plume of exhaust into the installation. As he did this, he aimed a blaster at the door Marketeer had just been shown out of, waiting for air-hungry 'enemy soldiers' to come stumbling forth. He aimed his other blaster far behind this door, apparently covering whatever other entrance had been discovered.

"This isn't as stealthy as what you were trying to do," he said, "but since they've been alerted already, it shouldn't matter any more."

By now, several other Decepticons had made it to the area, and they also had other plans for penetrating the base. They saw that Marketeer and the other cadet had ended up covered in paintballs, so they discounted the "infiltration" idea right away. One decided to just barge in with blasters blazing, while another was busy setting up a bomb at what appeared to be a different vent in hopes of being able to blast a new door into the place.

Marketeer considered whether he should just go away, or if he should hang around to provide backup in case one of these others was somewhat successful...

~~~~~~~~~~

The Realm of Endless Energon

Loyal Star was delighted to find that a store not only appeared, but it was stocked with the finest bladed weapons - ones he never would have been able to afford as a pony. The establishment came complete with a very obsequious sales bot, whose wings were permanently painted with the company name. This bot was actually a drone, but he was so realistic that only someone who could sense his lack of soul energy would ever know it.

"Are you looking for something in particular today?" The sales bot asked. "Perhaps a Daedric Dai-Katana, or maybe the Crescent Sword? Or perhaps you would like something like this Glass Longsword, which is made of a type of glass that can miraculously cut through body armor instead of just shattering into a billion pieces on contact?" He pointed to a sword of green, almost-glowing material that appeared to be glass, but was surely much stronger.

[Vallermoore]

Kazmanip Situation Room

The secret agents of Kazmanip thought for a bit and decided to try and frame up the Janzakkian company heads for high treason, since they were pretty sure such a thing would stay illegal no matter how much the laws of Janzak changed. Many curropt judges had indeed been uncovered by Loyal Star, and their old way of fake appeals to Megatron was well and truely over, but there were still a few of them in place.

Meanwhile the planes arrived and the Janzakian agents could start their plan to infect their foes with the flu. Whilst it was not the deadliest disease possible, it would be enough to severely strain Kazmanip's health services and kill quite a large number of people.

Earth


Marketeer's grenades turned out to be all of the explosive type and did no damage and when he charged in he got paintballed in several places. However, it turned out that it was very hard-almost impossible, to get through this base the first time around and he had done better then many. Marketeer decided to stay where he was for now-if he was not supposed to reenter the base, he was pretty sure he would get a radio message very quickly ordering him to stop. He watched the blast happy bot go charging in with his blasters blazing, and thought to himself how good it was to be a Decepticon. He had been built rather then born, so the change was not as great as for a biological. Cybertron, he thought, was such a perfect place for robots, being made of metal which felt pleasant to his foot-treads.

The Realm of Endless Energon


Loyal Star was delighted with the new shop and thought briefly back to when as a curio he had once brought a pony hoof-sword, which was used in the Pony Wars before Celestia and Luna when earth ponies would charge into battle, stop, and draw their swords to fight. Even before the Megatronist Party took over Vallermoore had had a lax weapons law in many areas, although chemical, biological and nuclear weapons were banned, as were guns deadlier then the AK 47. He selected a glass longsword and one of the many katana types. There were sabres, katanas, swordsticks, and every kind of sword imaginable. After buying the swords he went to the fighting area, where surely one of the bots would be willing to duel with the katana whilst he used the longsword of glass. It would be a new way of fighting for the bot and so hopefully would be interesting.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Kazmanip/Janzak

In Janzak, the plan to frame its captains of industry started off well. Several were arrested, and the cases looked airtight. The upheaval at their companies soon impacted performance, with quality dropping as their employees had to get used to working under the lesser C-suite bosses who usually didn't handle the production sides of things.

Soon, however, the proper Decepticon-minded judges and even some prosecutors began to smell rats. There were just too many cases coming through involving seemingly-unrelated CEOs and COOs! Even stranger, none of these were accused of the standard kinds of white collar crime like price fixing, dealing with embargoed countries, or claiming that their companies were making way more money than they actually did.

Instead, all of the charges were for wild things like treason, trying to convince employees to be peaceniks, and other activities that rich people were quite unlikely to do. The successful, after all, would be shooting themselves in the foot if they changed the political order that they had been flourishing under. A few might be that nuts, but surely not anywhere near this many.

After this was noticed, the non-corrupt judges realized that hardly any of them had gotten one of these cases put before them. Instead, they all seemed to get routed to a handful of judges, who mainly kept to themselves but were known for harsh and possibly inappropriate sentencing.

"The last time fishy things were happening in the courts, it was because the judges were a bunch of no-good traitors!" One finally realized, and announced over a martini lunch with a few others.

"Yeah, that's right! In fact, we still have several open seats since a lot of them disappeared really fast after that Decepticon priest showed up!"

After some more discussion, the group decided to tell DomIntel about its concerns. However, even though it wasn't yet illegal to put in a tip, it was already a bad idea to do so. "Narks are usually trying to distract from their own illegal activities," the doctrine went, "so anyone who provides one should be very thoroughly investigated." Usually, this resulted in a tipster ending up facing a slew of fines or even more serious charges as their own bad acts were uncovered.

To avoid this problem, the suspicious judges went to a city park, where they pretended that they were just unwinding before they went back to their duties. There, they "happened to" stand under a suspiciously-short light pole, and then carefully and clearly discussed their opinions of the latest events. As they suspected, this lamp was bugged, and it was shorter so that the listening device could hear better.

Janzak's Domestic Intelligence began its investigation into the CEO-crime phenomenon immediately. It would take it a bit longer to get to the bottom of things than it would have taken Cybertron's DomIntel, but this agency was not a bunch of n00bs. It almost instantly saw that the pattern was fishy - the investigation was to find all of the participants in the conspiracy, determine who was behind it, and then eliminate them. Then, the actually-not-guilty executives would be released, and their names cleared through high-key press conferences. The press here would not be allowed to put news of the innocence of the people on the back page where it'd be missed, unlike in some other countries.

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

Meanwhile, new small planes were flying over some large cities in Kazmanip. Soon, they released their loads of "pesticides," which, as expected, brought out the air force to find out what was going on and put a stop to it. However, the pilots, once forced to land, all acted like scared innocent yokels who had just made ignorant newbie mistakes. Their company was fined a hefty million, but the pilots themselves were sent on their way with just stern warnings.

Soon, a new and very deadly strain of influenza ripped through the country, not only in the cities, but in several farming regions as well. By the time Kazmanip would trace the outbreak locations to where those planes had been flying, the company would be long gone - the explanation being that the heavy fines had driven it out of business. When efforts would be made to re-locate the owner of the firm, or even any of the pilots, they would turn out to be in vain. All would be registered as having moved to the neighboring country, but from there, the trail would grow ice cold.

Back in Janzak, a group of pilots were soon laughing at a bar, joking about how they'd killed more pests in one run than most farmers eliminated in a whole year. They were smug and confident, and thanks to the vaccines provided by Janzak's foreign intelligence group, there was no chance of them either catching or spreading the special flu here at home.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

The bot who went in with his blasters blazing had no trouble cutting through the first door, and when he heard the guy in the store room, he opened fire through that door before the guard could get anywhere near ready. This one wasn't kidding around, and he had no qualms in deactivating - REALLY deactivating - the expensive android bodies meant for training. He would win, dammit, even if it was over a 100,000,000-Cube pile of military metal! Or, at least, he thought he would win.

Immediately, the tone of the alarm in the base changed from a slow, low siren to one that was punctuated by regular chirps. This was code for the presence of someone using real firepower, and the defense staff switched to the appropriate battle plan.

When the invader turned to the next door, that opened into the hallway, the defenders were already in position. He charged down the long hall, but then skidded to a halt at the first branch to the left as he realized it was a great spot for an ambush. Quickly, he got a mirror from a side panel and stuck it around the corner, where he saw the back of someone who was running away and into a large, open room. When he saw that, he began to round the corner as he raised his blaster to nail the guy right in the back.

Suddenly, he felt the cutting heat of a powerful blast run through his right side, and then through the wiring connecting some of his motion-boards together. With a start, he turned to look at where that came from! He barely had the chance to register the sight of a heavily-armored attacker when another blast came from the left and hit him right in the head, taking out several mind-boards. Then, both attacked him at the same time, and an instant later, he was in a spare back at the main base.

Upon reactivation, he would not get sympathy for his loss. Instead, he would be upbraided for using real blaster fire in an obvious training situation, not only causing unnecessarily-expensive damage and risking the lives of the "guards," but losing his own body in the process. It was very likely that he would not be continuing with the spy training program.

~~~~~~~

Back at the bunker, it turned out that the bomber and the exhaust-smokeout guy had made a plan and were working together. The bomber's attack collapsed the other vent, sealing it with a small pile of rubble. Meanwhile, the exhaust-spewing guy was successfully turning the bunker into a gas chamber - an effect that came on much faster now that the other vent was closed.

This exercise called for the "guards" to react as normally as possible (when not under attack by actual live fire), so that meant that they now had no choice but to evacuate the base. Soon, even at Marketeer's current distance, he could hear running feet noises from below. He looked over to the other two Decepticons, and saw that the one sitting on the vent was now smugly setting up his blasters with long, "bullet belt" style strips of paintballs.

Not long after that, the carnage began. Androids started pouring from the bunker doors, and the seated cadet - along with the one who had bombed the other vent - mowed them down with ease. Soon, the droids started coming out of another door instead, only to suffer the same fate courtesy of the blaster pointed at that opening. Finally, they came up a giant industrial elevator that looked like it was made for car-sized equipment, but after taking a couple of steps, the bomber cadet was in range of that and covered them with paint without any problems.

While all of this was going on, the one guy remained seated on the vent, revving hard. Anyone who hadn't come out of the bunker was assumed dead after 10 minutes. Then, the two went in as a team, and after another 10 minutes, they came out holding a manila folder clearly marked "THE SECRETS." They had obtained the objective, or so they thought.

~~~~~~~~~~

Back at the base, the pair were recognized as having completed the unexpected test, but they lost some significant points for having been so obvious. "If it was a real enemy, the high command would immediately change whatever plans the secret file talked about, rendering it instantly obsolete," a trainer admonished them.

The trainer then went on to say that he was disappointed that nobody had managed to stealth in, read through the Secrets folder without removing it, and then sneak back out. "The way to do it is to wait until a soldier leaves, dispatch him with a blow to the head - doing this in an area where the base cameras can't see that it happened - and then pretend to be him. Then you can just walk in and have the run of the whole place. Once 'he' gets another break, you go back to where you left the real guy's body, put its clothes back on it, and drag it into a more-obvious spot - that's still out of camera range, so you're not recorded doing the dragging. When they find it, they'll assume that he fell and hit his head, and write him off. Meanwhile, you upload your visual of The Secrets to us here at ForIntel, and the only way the enemy finds out that they've been compromised is when we use that information against them!"

As the trainer explained this, his eyes shone brightly and he grinned openly, enjoying the thought of how his plan would work.

"You guys have had enough action for today," the trainer concluded. "You're off, *really* off this time, until tomorrow. Report back here then."

~~~~~~~~

The Realm of Endless Energon
Combat Area

To Loyal Star's surprise, the potential competitors all declined to use the katana. "What would I want to use that short, single-edged blade for, when you've got a longsword?! Longswords are made to get through armor, too, while katanas aren't! It's easy to see that you'd win with such a lopsided arrangement as that!" They said, making dismissive gestures at the shorter, single-edged blade that would just bounce off of Loyal Star's armor. They didn't say so, but Decepticons in general aren't the most agile beings, so they would be at a disadvantage using a blade that put a heavy reliance on the speed of the bearer.

Finally, after many attempts to find an opponent, another robot noticed what was going on and strode over with a cocky attitude meant to draw out competitors to fight against.

"I won't fight using that thing either," he said, "but I challenge you to accept some REAL combat," he said. He held out a hand, and as if by magic, a black-bladed dai-katana formed into existence with its grip held perfectly in his palm, making a dramatic hum as it did so. Among mere humans, a dai-katana was so long and heavy that it was good only for ceremony or display, but in the Decepticon's hand, it looked perfectly balanced with his own size and strength. It was also longer than the longsword, and its leading edge seemed to be made of something special. Something that, perhaps, could slice up Decepticon armor instead of piercing it.

He gestured towards the fighting area with his foreboding-looking sword.

[Vallermoore]

Kazmanip/Janzak

Although the plan that Kazmanip had to frame captains of industry worked well at first, with over twenty people arrested, it was too big a plan for it's own good. Framing two or three might have worked, but for so many of them to be charged with crazy things that people like them just didn't tend to be made the non-corrupt judges suspicious, even more so as only a relative handful of judges got all the cases. Even a few prosecutors were suspicious. "The last time fishy things were happening in the courts, it was because the judges were a bunch of no-good traitors!"one said. "Yeah, that's right! In fact, we still have several open seats since a lot of them disappeared really fast after that Decepticon priest showed up!" The judges went to a city park and talked to each other openly under a certain light pole. As a result, Janzak's Domintel found out and started looking into it. It would take it a while, but several not guilty people would be publicly cleared and several judges would end up executed for treason, further reducing the corruption in the judicial system-which was not a good place for corruption to be.

*****
Meanwhile several planes were flying over large Kazmanipian cities dumping "pesticides" that got the air force of Kazmanip scrambled. The pilots pretended to be incompetent and got off with being told off by the police, and the company got fined a million K-dollars, paid the fine and shut down. A few days later a flu plague killed large numbers of Kazmanipian citizens and greatly weakened the country, forcing mass graves to be built as the religion of Kazmanip was generally against cremation. The furious Kazmanip government came up with the idea ofsomehow arming the non-Janzakkian ponies who in many cases were slaves, and urging a revolt, and also wanted to send an attractive woman to seduce a high ranking Janzakkian and then murder him. The problem with the second thing was that to be attractive to a Janzakkian, four arms were needed. Unlike Decepticons who were robots, Janzakkians had plenty of romantic coupledoms but only with their own kind. So they sent in a changeling agent with false papers who took the shape of what in most male Janzakkian eyes was a true beauty.

Earth

The bot who went in with blazing blasters-full strength blazing blasters, unlike Marketeer-decided to permanently smash up the expensive android training bodies, and the alarm tone changed. Heavily armoured bots blasted and deactivated him,and he end up in a spare, where a very angry General Soundwave gave him a voice-chip lashing and told him he was very lucky he didn't get a punishment virus forcibly installed. Meanwhile another two bots used their exhuast to gas the guards and shoot them when they ran out and got the "secrets." They passed the test, but lost many points for not being deceptive. "The way to do it is to wait until a soldier leaves, dispatch him with a blow to the head - doing this in an area where the base cameras can't see that it happened - and then pretend to be him. Then you can just walk in and have the run of the whole place. Once 'he' gets another break, you go back to where you left the real guy's body, put its clothes back on it, and drag it into a more-obvious spot - that's still out of camera range, so you're not recorded doing the dragging. When they find it, they'll assume that he fell and hit his head, and write him off. Meanwhile, you upload your visual of The Secrets to us here at ForIntel, and the only way the enemy finds out that they've been compromised is when we use that information against them!" The cadets got the rest of the day off and Marketeer decided to see what games were for sale from a small shop that was in the base itself, and if he liked them, ask for permission to get Cubes from his vault.


The Realm of Endless Energon
Combat Area

To Loyal Star's surprise the bots wrinkled their noses up at the offer in disgust and dimmed their bright eyes to emphasize their dislike of the katana. "Why would I want to use that short, single-edged blade for, when you've got a longsword?! Longswords are made to get through armor, too, while katanas aren't! It's easy to see that you'd win with such a lopsided arrangement as that!" Another bot offered to fight with a Dai-katana, Loyal Star accepted, and the fight was on whilst the other bots, who hadn't seen this kind of fight ever, decided to watch and see what happened. Loyal Star was a good sword fighter but so was the other bot.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Janzak

The sexy Kazmanippian changeling turned heads as soon as she stepped off of the plane, which was registered to an airline based in a neutral country, but she had no direct access to any officials. She would have to think of a way to "bump into" one and then try to strike up a conversation to further catch his interest. Despite her looks, she thought that it might take quite a bit of "relationship building" before she could get him to agree to a more intimate tryst.

She hailed a cab, and knew that her imitation of a Janzakkian was on point when the cabbie started stuttering all over the place, and then gave her a big discount at her destination. This destination was one of the capital's finest hotels. It was considered important for her to seem rich, and connected to a big industry, so that her targets would find her worthy of their attention. Nice-looking or not, politicians didn't usually associate themselves with the peasant classes. Peasants, after all, couldn't arrange for bribes from their colleagues and family members. It also didn't look good to be seen as "settling" for lower options.

After spending several hours pretending to get settled in, which a regular traveler would usually do, she left the hotel and went to the Gold Plate, which was an exclusive restaurant in town. Her government had already made a reservation. She would arrive alone, and sit alone at a table for two - providing the perfect opportunity for some lusty official to offer to keep her company. Then, she would simply decline offers until one of suitable importance approached.

She thought it could take a few tries to attract attention, but it turned out that simply being at this restaurant captured plenty of the regulars' attention. The establishment was so exclusive that her very presence meant that she had connections, and everyone there was curious about who she could be. Meanwhile, the maitre' d was very obsequious to her instead of being aloof to the newcomer like he usually would be. They didn't realize that this was because Kazmanip had paid him a handsome amount to let her in, and he was just reasonably cheerful about this fact.

After eating almost all of her 5-star-grade meal, a man approached. He introduced himself as the deputy of the interior - a position that could be filled by pretty much any empty suit, and therefore, one that wouldn't cause much upheaval if he happened to get killed. She thanked him for his concern about her "loneliness," but waved him off.

Later, as she enjoyed an after-dinner drink, another man approached. He was very discreet, and she recognized how he acted as befitting someone from Intelligence, though he claimed he was part of the Department of Education. She brushed him off as well, though she secretly would have loved to bump off a competing spy.

Finally, as dessert was served, an older man in a surprisingly poorly-fitting suit sauntered over. She didn't need an introduction, but he boastfully introduced himself anyway: Director Fitzgerald of the Central Bank of Janzak.

She acted highly impressed, and motioned him to have a seat. She now had her target.

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

In the factories of Janzak, ponies labored away at dangerous jobs using oil-leaking, smoky machines. Each one was chained to his machine for the duration of his shift, which lasted 18 hours. Once the shift ended, they were chain-ganged together and marched to the food area before being sent to stalls to sleep. None were paid.

At various mining sites, pony slaves had more mobility, but their work was just as hard and dangerous. They were watched over by huge, muscular, ruthless Janzakkian overseers, who were quick to give them a touch of the lash if they seemed to be lagging or if they dared to try to talk to each other. Talking was believed to distract the slaves from their work and slow them down, as well as offering the opportunity to plan revolts or other problems, so it was forbidden. Of course, all they got for going along with this arrangement was "the privilege to live," in accordance with the teachings of Megatronism.

In some of these slave-worked places, other species were present as well, but they fared no better. In Janzak, everyone who wasn't a Janzakkian was just a beast; a weak inferior who, according to the Divine Leader Megatron, had only one use: to serve the Strong. The Janzakkians made absolutely sure that in these locations, they were very much the Strong. Each overseer was at least twice as muscular and several inches taller than the average Janzakkian, and they towered over their charges like hostile living mountains.

The Kazmanippian spies would have a very hard time getting into such areas without becoming slaves themselves, and even if they were willing to do that, they'd have an even harder time spreading their ideas thanks to the normal prohibitions on talking in places like mines. Though some of the factory slaves might be allowed to talk, they were always kept chained, so it didn't really matter what they thought as long as they met their quotas.

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

Base Shop

To his mild surprise, Marketeer found that there were indeed a few games for sale here. These were all war games of some sort or other, ranging from one where he would be the driver of an old-fashioned tank to some where he would need to command armies big enough to defend (or invade) entire solar systems. Of course, Conquer the Universe was also for sale, though he didn't pay it much attention since he already had a copy of that one.

When it came to paying, he could use whatever Energon he had with him on Earth, but flying all the way back to Cybertron to get more would not be allowed. He was to remain on or near the Earth base until his training was completed.

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

The Realm of Endless Energon
Combat Area

Once the combat began, Loyal Star realized that though his opponent could strike a powerful blow with his dai-katana, it also took him a relatively long time to raise it up above his head and bring it down with good force. This would provide opportunities to dash in with his longsword and jab at apparent weak spots in the other guy's armor, but this would be at the risk of not getting out of the way of the longer sword in time.

With this counterbalance, the battle was quite interesting. Loyal Star got many jabs in, and after a few tries, managed to stab through the wiring of one of his opponent's thighs. Sparks and curse words flew at approximately the same time, but the fight was only just beginning. Later on, the foe was able to stick his foot out and nearly trip Loyal Star, and during the time it took him to rebalance himself, the enemy was able to make contact with his sword.

As Loyal Star had guessed, the edge of the blade was made of a material that could chop through Decepticon Steel. In just an instant, he became a one-armed bot as the other arm clanged to the ground, severed. Sparks flew from the stump as the opponent pulled his sword back to set up a jab through the motion boards.

Loyal Star didn't stand in the way for that, and managed to duck out of the way just in time. He still had his sword-arm and sword, so when the other bot tried again, he was able to parry the blow. Now, though, he knew he would have to get his own "killing" blow in soon, or he was likely to lose.

Meanwhile, the spectators on the sidelines watched with interest as these two - robots who were examples of the heights of Decepticon engineering - fought in the manner of medieval and pre-medieval humans using sword technology and styling from at least two different cultures. They weren't sure whether to be impressed, laugh at the old-fashioned methods, or just enjoy the entertainment.

[Vallermoore]

Base Shop

Marketeer had enough Energon in his panels for one game and got one where the aim was to attack or defend a star system. As a serving soldier, he would be provided with Energon at mealtimes as starving the Military made no sense at all, so he didn't need the Energon in his panels to survive. After going to his room and running the game through his antivirus he decided to try it out.

The Realm of Endless Energon
Combat Area


The spectators, few if any of who had ever seen anything like this before, were certainly entertained at the sight, although it was extremely unlikely to catch on, being frankly extremely strange to their eyes. Loyal Star inflicted a few minor wounds on his foe and there were dull eyes and some very rude curses on both side, and then Loyal Star lost an arm. A biological suffering a wound like that would either be killed or permanently crippled by it, but even if it had been in the physical world instead of the afterlife a bot who survived could replace the arm or mind transfer. He managed to wound the bot's other leg, but it was too late and his head and boards were cleaved in two. In the physical world, he would have lost a body-as it was, he and his fellow fighter healed and he bowed respectfully and congratulated the other bot on his fighting skills. Bots tended to like compliments of that kind. He flew back to his mansion and spent a fun time reading some data chips, playing some games and looking through his telescope at various planets. Cybertron, Vallermoore and the gas giant it orbited, and various other places were looked at. He wondered how Fire Eater was getting on in general, and hoped things were doing well for him. He made plans to get fuel tanks in a day or two so he could safely try the Scout challenge. And he thought happily about how his life in the physical world had been, until that dammed priest bot who worshipped a flesh god had come and shot him in the back, like his God had done to Megatron.


Janzak

The sexy Kazmanippian changeling knew exactly how to look good to Janzakkian eyes, her four arms-four arms being essential in terms of Janzakkian beauty, something shared by all classes, with elegent silver bracelets on, and a pretty face. She could feed on lust although she preferred love. She turned down the first potential target as he could be easily replaced and the second was not high enough. She planned to paralyse the third with her venom when she got the chance to do it in private and then put a dagger in him as it was a planned assassination that was to be known rather then a secret one followed by a replacement. In her private beliefs she was a Megatronist and thought the Decepticon and Changeling Ways to be very close, but thought Cybertron far too dangerous to ever visit.


Freeing the slaves seemed impossible by anything short of a full special forces unit. Most slaves were ponies, although there were humans too but very few Janzakkian slaves, just as only a few slaves held by Decepticons were themselves Decepticons. Generally, Janzakkians took a dim view on their slavers if they preyed on their own kind, just as Decepticons hated hackers. The idea of freeing them was-for now-put to one side but not totally abandoned.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Earth Training Base

Upon starting the game, Marketeer was presented with a simple question:

Offense or Defense?

~~~~~~~~

The Realm of Endless Energon

After a couple of days, Loyal Star went to one of the shops in town to get his extra fuel tanks.

"Looking to try your wings on the Scout's Challenge, eh?" The shopkeeper said with a grin. Apparently, most people who wanted to upgrade their fuel capacity did it for this exact reason.

He plonked the big tanks on the counter with a thunk, but said, "remember, one of the reasons a challenge is challenging is because physics work somewhat normally. Don't forget to upgrade your engine and weight-bearing parts so that the extra mass of the fuel doesn't overload you!"

Loyal Star immediately realized that, just like on Cybertron, making physical upgrades wouldn't be as simple as adding a couple of extra parts. All of the other aspects of his body would need to be upgraded as well, or else he could blow his engine or snap a strut. This wouldn't be something to be done on a whim, but instead, a full-fledged project.

Divine Leader Megatron had set it up so that it would present the sorts of challenges that highly-skilled scouts normally overcame in order to be successful. This ensured not only that they would not be bored here in the Realm of Endless Energon, but that they would also feel the sense of satisfaction that came with defeating obstacles of this sort.

~~~~~~~~~~

Janzak

Decepticons Decepping other Decepticons was far from unheard of, and usually, neither would lose the increased luck afforded to Megatronists - it would just be canceled out by the fact that the other guy would have the same blessing running for himself as well. This, however, was not a "usual" circumstance. Now, a loyal Megatronist central banker was facing a secret Megatronist who was actively working for a regime that had tried to undermine Megatronism. Clearly, the crypto-Megatronist's allegiance to this regime was not acceptable.

As Leader Megatron's subconscious processing rolled through the goings-on of his diaspora, it picked up this conflict of interest and automatically made the needed adjustments. The changeling was stripped of her blessing, and given a 10% luck-down curse. Meanwhile, the central banker acquired her normal blessing on top of his own, giving him 10% luck-up. The end result was that he had a 20% starting advantage over his adversary. This, however, was far from all it would take to defeat her. In fact, it could easily be squandered if he continued to succumb to the common weakness of biological males: What they often referred to as "thinking with the little head."

~~~~~~~~~~~

"May I buy you a drink?" Director Fitzgerald asked, as smoothly as he could muster. She accepted, and soon, a waiter was summoned to bring another after-dinner cordial. The Director ordered a whiskey, which he drank fast enough to seem like he could handle some strong alcohol, but without coming across as an actual lush.

"So, what brings you to this area?" He said with seemingly-genuine interest. In reality, he hoped that the story would either be short - or long enough that he could suggest telling the rest of it to him in some private location.

"Oh, I've come to set up some business deals," she said with a hint of mystery in her honey-like voice. "I'm working with TopCare, a pharmaceutical company from Lindawan," she explained. Lindawan was a country to the west, and fairly well-known for its medical advancements. Of course, this cover story was actually planned beforehand by Kazmanip Intelligence, which had set up the appropriate shell companies and paperwork in Lindawan just in case anybody bothered to check it out. A thorough check would be able to reveal the fraud, but by the time that was done, she was meant to be safely back home.

"Right now we're interested in...DNA..." she said very suggestively, leaning in closer.

Director Fitzgerald took the bait like a shark who got fed a raw steak instead of chum. He pretended to be extra-interested in her work, but was really only interested in thinking of how to get her into a private room. After a few minutes, he blatantly said, "you know, this place is awfully busy. It would be much more productive if we could go somewhere quieter."

She looked around and hid a smirk as she observed the calm, quiet restaurant around her. It was indeed busy in the technical sense, but as a high-end establishment, it was set up so that each table had a lot of privacy. Still, she wasn't about to lose the opportunity, despite the somewhat clumsy approach Fitzgerald had used. She instantly invited him to her hotel room.

~~~~~~~~~~~

As they left the restaurant together, the effects of Megatron's blessing/curse adjustment kicked in. A car zoomed by, splashing through a puddle that had been made by the restaurant's landscape sprinkler system, and doused her fancy dress in wet grime. Meanwhile, the central banker managed to jump back just in time to remain impeccable.

The spy immediately used this to further her own agenda, mentioning very suggestively that she'd now have to "get out of her clothes" when she got to her room - and reeling Fitzgerald in like a spider winding webbing around an already-caught fly. He was no longer thinking at all as he fumbled for his phone and called for his car, which turned out to be a big, dark sedan complete with a driver.

Before they could reach the hotel, however, a flat tire happened and forced them to stop. This didn't deter the spy either, and now, they waited as the chauffeur changed the tire at the roadside. She took the opportunity to sneak her hand over to his, while making some small-talkish moaning about this turn of events. Before long, they were back on the road, and not long after that, they arrived at her hotel.

Meanwhile, on Cybertron, Leader Megatron was just becoming aware that one of his background processes was starting to eat a lot of processing cycles. Only one thing made that happen: Active, complex machinations by one or more of his followers, most likely against each other. Almost instantly, he found the source of the draw, and opened a very tiny portal for a closer look.

A double-dealer and a sex-addicted idiot, Megatron thought. He had no real sympathy for the "idiot," seeing his horniness as a weakness that he should have overcome; but Megatron was also angry that the female was working for an actively anti-Megatronist nation. For now, he watched with interest, wondering if the man would end up having some way of coming out on the good side of this ill-advised tryst.

[Vallermoore]

Earth Training Base

Marketeer decided that he would choose Offence and try to take the system over.

The Realm of Endless Energon

Loyal Star thanked him and took a few days getting ready and upgrading bit by bit as if it were Cybertron before he set out again in the upgraded body with more fuel, hoping to reach this sea of Energon Supreme in the distance, passing the place he did before with plenty of fuel to spare this time, enjoying the challenge. Even though he was in the Realm of Endless Energon, he kept all his cameras on in case of attack by some aggressive bot who wanted a bit of fun but at least at the moment, this was not a problem. Indeed, the sky seemed empty and the ground too, so he did a few loop-de-loops, knowing he wouldn't get shot down by a cannon as happened when he did it in an active warzone once.

Janzak


One of Megatron's many subconsious processes started to eat a greater number of processing cycles then normal, deleting the changeling's blessing for acting on behalf of a very anti-Decepticon nation. When the changeling died, be it violently or just of old age, it was very likely that the Realm of Punishment would be waiting. Deceping other Decepticons was not the issue, this was just part of normal life for a Decepticon, but helping an anti-Decepticon forign power most certainly was. Director Fitzgerald thought his luck really was in. He had heard of changelings, but didn't think they would dare show up on this planet. Despite splashes with grime and a flat tyre (and the processing cycles attracting the aware Megatron's interest) they got to the hotel room and after some warm kisses and cuddles, the changeling tried to fang her target in the neck, enjoying the taste of his lust.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Earth

Upon getting the input, the game immediately set up with Marketeer as the leader of an expansionistic planet with a rather large space force. He got an initial budget, with which he could choose warships including huge capital ships, midsized ones, little destroyers, scouts, transports, and space-based artillery. He also got a starting ground-attack army presented to him, which he could train for things like massed ground attacks, strike force operations, and other such things. These troops were separate from the crews that ran the ships, and were deployed when it was time to actually take over other planets (or defend ones already in Marketeer's sphere of influence).

Once the initial setup was complete, a map of a star system appeared.

"Welcome, System Master Marketeer" was emblazoned in white-on-black above it.

Marketeer now found that he was based on the second planet from a sun, in a system of 10 planets. Next door, on the sun side, was an apparently-barren little rock that orbited its sun quite quickly; its "year" was only 3.5 months by Marketeer's planet's time. On the other side, a large planet loomed, spinning slowly on its axis. Next to that one, a more reasonably-sized one existed. Stats noted that the planets got cooler as they got further from the sun, with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th being close to the operating temperatures of Marketeer's troops. His own planet, and the 3rd rock, also had atmospheres that would easily support combustion, making them ripe for robotic takeover. The others would all need some sort of temperature and/or atmospheric suits (or engineering) to inhabit. There were no gas giants in this system, mainly because the game makers wanted to offer 10 viable takeover targets to its players.

Next, the game gave stats on the defenses of these worlds. Stats were plentiful for nearby worlds, but sparser for the farther-out ones. The last two planets were almost unknown, having only been flown by with some tiny exploration bots. It turned out that the hottest planet wasn't uninhabited after all, but it held beings that seemed to be made of a mercury-like substance. They were not only bulletproof due to their fluidity, but could ooze into the tiniest of gaps. The rover sent there, the game noted, had been filled with someone's ooze and then deactivated. It was unknown whether the creatures had eaten the rover or just taken it offline, or even if the creatures were capable of purposeful action at all.

On the other side, a decently-advanced PMT society existed, but was still subject to disasters like droughts and quakes. It would present a challenge mainly due to its population size, which stood at 20 billion. Clearly, this species had not been letting the massive area of the planet go to waste.

Next to that one, on the smaller planet, a fairly primitive set of societies was in place. The catch was that it was under the protection of the larger world.

The game gave Marketeer the choice of one of these three as his initial target. What would happen next would depend on which one he chose to attempt to annex first.

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

The Realm of Endless Energon

Loyal Star quickly zoomed by the marker that he'd seen earlier, and for a moment, it flashed as if it detected the presence of a challenge-taker. He kept going, his eyes set on the Golden Hue ahead.

After flying for over 1,000 miles, he noticed what seemed to be someone sitting still on the ground. He dropped down a few thousand feet and cut his speed in order to get a closer look. It didn't take long to realize that this one had a scout body; clearly he had been trying to beat the Challenge. To Loyal Star's dismay, he realized that this bot's eye-lights were off. Whoever it was had failed the test by running out of fuel at this spot.

Loyal Star regained altitude and slowly accelerated. He knew that here, the failed bot would just reincarnate in a new body back in civilization. However, he found it creepy that the old one was left here, perhaps as a warning, but also maybe just to try to weed out any cowards.

Hours later, night fell, and he still hadn't arrived at the source of the Golden Hue. He began to wonder if it was all some kind of trick! Still, he told himself, it wouldn't be a paradise realm if that were the case. Surely the Energon was actually attainable somehow, though he began to wonder if simply flying to it was really going to be the way to do it.

Once it got dark, the Golden Hue was even more visible. It was definitely Megatron's Private Reserve instead of Supreme, and there was surely plenty of it! Loyal Star doggedly continued on, but was a bit nervous now as his last fuel tank was getting low.

Many more hours after this, as the sun came up, he realized that he was now flying over a metal desert covered with the de-energized carcasses of over 100 failed Challenge-takers. He instinctively began to coast as much as possible to conserve what was left of his own fuel. However, he realized with excitement that the Golden Hue was now the only visible light in the entire area. He was surely close!

Finally, he saw it. It was not a giant refinery as he might have been thinking, nor was it a huge storage tank with its lid off. Instead, it was a literal ocean of Megatron's Private Reserve. It stretched further than he could see, even from his position at 30,000 feet up. He activated his telescopic optics, but even then, he couldn't see the other side of this giant sea. The curvature of the planet put the far side around the "bend," and out of view.

Alas, from this height, he could still see far ahead of where he actually was. He would have to fly another 50 miles to actually be at the shores of the Sea of Private Reserve. Right about now, he felt a horrible shuddering, and heard a popping noise coming from his jets. He was out of Energon.

Now, Loyal Star would have to pull off a grand flight maneuver or join the many bodies of the failed ones. He would have to coast all the way to the Sea without using any energy other than what was needed to adjust his flight path - and even that would have to be done with battery power. Then, still on battery, he would have to get himself to the ground and make his way to the Sea to get a drink of the Private Reserve that would allow him to reactivate his main engine.

He correctly figured that transforming into robot mode at the end would use a lot of power, and if he didn't conserve his battery well enough, he could well end up stuck mid-transformation mere feet from the body-saving ocean. It would take all of the skill he had to pull this off...

Janzak

"Oooh, a vampiress!" Fitzgerald said excitedly when he felt the fangs at his neck, not realizing the grave danger he was in until it was too late. As the venom started to kick in, he yelled "what the FUCK!" - and instinctively moved his right hand down to his pants pocket.

The changeling didn't notice that her venom hadn't worked completely as she reached into her own pocket for her dagger. His grimace seemed like what would be expected of someone trying to fight off paralysis, so she kept her eyes on his chest as she aimed her weapon towards its center.

Just as she brought down the dagger and seemed to penetrate his heart, she found out the real reason he was grimacing. He had been using all of his concentration to move his right arm to bring up a pistol. As the dagger went into his body, he squeezed off a single shot, hitting her in her chest.

Then, exhausted and severely wounded, he let his arm stay where it was. Due to the venom, it did not drop back down, but instead became rigid. The changeling, shot directly through the heart, reverted to her real form as she collapsed on top of him and died. By now, he was unable to change the expression on his face to register his horror at the monstrous, hole-punched body, but he was quite able to recognize that it certainly wasn't Janzakkain. Then, he lost consciousness...

~~~~~~~~~~~

"You're a very lucky man," the voice said. Director Fitzgerald tried to focus on its source, only to see a brightly-lit haze. Finally, the haze cleared somewhat, and he found himself staring at a man in a white jacket.

"You're in Humbert Hospital," the man said. "And you're lucky you're in the treatment part of it. For a while there, we thought for sure you were going to the morgue in the basement."

After Fitzgerald had a chance to regain more of his senses, the doctor explained that he had been poisoned and stabbed. However, through a mere stroke of luck, the dagger had missed both his heart and aorta, landing only about a millimeter away from either spot. If it had hit either the heart or the artery dead on, he would have been killed almost instantly.

"That you managed to kill her before the venom took over is another lucky thing," the doctor said. "Normally, that venom paralyzes the entire body at once. I don't know if it was your willpower, or something strange about your physiology, but your arm managed to operate for about one more second than the rest. I suppose it could also be said that she had exceptionally bad luck, to end up dead while you'll be quite fine after just a short recovery."

Fitzgerald grunted. "You know, it seems as if she was cursed right from the start. Right outside of the restaurant, she got blasted with dirty pavement water, while I didn't get a speck on me. I suspect that Leader Megatron was looking out for me!"

The doctor was a bit skeptical. "He let you get stabbed, though..."

"Well..." Fitzgerald looked a bit embarrassed. "You know what the Book says about biologicals putting too much processing power down here." He patted the below-waist area of the hospital sheet now covering him. "Maybe he was annoyed by...well, let's just say that I still think he was looking out for me in the end."

The doctor nodded. He knew that the report said that Fitzgerald was found by a room service deliverer who had let herself into the room, and that the two bodies - one dead, one nearly so - had been in direct contact at the time of discovery. He also did remember how the Book of Megatron chided biologicals for paying way too much attention to "the mere act required for the automatic generation of more of themselves" - ie, sex - and therefore wasted most of their processing power.

In reality, Megatron had not directly interfered in the events. However, the earlier automatic loss of luck for the changeling, combined with the increase of luck for Fitzgerald, had added up to create this result.

It would take a couple of weeks for the dagger wound to fully heal, during which Fitzgerald would have to take antibiotics to prevent infection, but other than that, the longest-lasting effect would be that he would have a story to tell at cocktail parties. That, and he would have to put up with answering questions for a Janzakkian DomIntel investigation, but that would just be an annoyance.

In the Decepticon Afterlife, the Realm of Punishment got a new resident. Her protests that she was a Megatronist only sealed her fate, and she was openly condemned as a hypocrite and a double-dealer before being sent to her punishment.

[Vallermoore]

Decepticon Afterlife


The unfortunate Megatronist changeling found herself in the Room with Three Screens mentioned in the book of Megatron, and an Afterlife Administrator told her she was a traitor for acting against the Decepticons whilst being a Megatronist, before scooping her up and throwing her through the portal. Her punishment was rather less gore-filled then in many cases, and consisted of being trapped in a cell with electro-bars that shocked her when she tried to get out. The real punishment was the lack of love of any kind to be found her, starving her over time. Since she was already dead, she was unable to die and would suffer an eternal painful hunger in all three love-stomachs (there was water for her to drink, although it was rather foul.) To a changeling that had been surrounded by either genuinely given love or stolen love since when she was an egg, this was a horrible punishment.

Earth


Marketeer decided that since it was a game and no real damage would be done if he messed up, that he might as well take on the huge twenty billion strong world, even though it had at the least, several million troops and maybe more. He decided to blast the biggest cities from space and then go in and invade with as much violence as he needed. First he sent probes to see if he was facing humans, sapient ponies, changelings, more then one of the above, or other kinds of beings on that giant world so he had some idea what he was getting into. He had deliberately set the game to deactivate if there was danger in the real world, or if he was needed in the real world so he didn't get into trouble. He didn't think accidental disobedience due to not hearing an order would outright get him executed, but it might very well get him otherwise punished so he was not taking any chances. Decepticon military law had other punishments apart from the death penalty, unlike Decepticon civilian law, as it didn't make sense for example to execute a bot for being slightly dusty on parade or some such trivial thing-and Marketeer had no intention of getting in trouble. The game he was playing was so much more real then the games of his own world. Indeed, before some safety features had been installed, games had briefly been like hard drugs to biologicals and a bane to Decepticon society as bots could forget where they were and play until they starved to death.

The Realm of Endless Energon

Loyal Star noticed the dead body of the bot, and although here the bot surely would not have died for real, it did worry him for a moment. If he were in this situation in the physical world, he would be very worried. He passed many other metal carcasses and then his Energon ran out. He would have to glide as much as he could to the Energon sea, and open the top bit to reveal his head at the right time so he could lap up the Energon with his tounge and mouth. Then he would be able to move and refuel properly and go back home. If he glided too far, he would fall in the sea and short out, if he glided not far enough, his batteries would shut down.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Earth

The giant, Earth-like planet loomed large on the screen as the probes approached, and soon, they dropped into its orbit apparently unnoticed. However, as they did so, Marketeer couldn't help but spot the network of thousands of satellites, telescopes, and near-distance cameras also orbiting the place. Some were surely just communications satellites, and some were clearly spy satellites since their cameras pointed at the planet instead of into space - but countless constructs also aimed their viewing devices into the void around their world. They clearly expected some sort of space-based threats, whether those threats were from other nations on their own planet - or from planets like Marketeer's.

Despite all of this surveillance and comms equipment, Marketeer's probes went unhindered as they took up their own positions. He zoomed the view in, and saw that this planet was a bit more advanced than standard FT. It had hover-cars, maglev trains, and giant 1-mile-long product-transport ships on its oceans. After he spotted these, he looked for the special ports that would be required for such huge ships to dock, and it didn't take much to find them. At these massive commercial ports, advanced levitating robots quickly moved things to and from the giant ships that had already docked there.

After zooming in closer yet, he was able to see that the sapient population was made up of cyborgs. Most of them were so heavily modified that it was hard to tell what their biological species had been. They had robotic eyes, and often, there were more than two of these per head. At least one arm was changed out; replaced with a metal one that could lift far more than a biological one. Some of the creatures walked in a sort of pony-like way, but they had six legs instead of four, and these were all specialized to make specific tasks easy. Others moved like spiders, on eight or ten legs that radiated out from a central point. With these, only the bulbous heads gave away that there might be a biological brain still inside - the rest of the body appeared to be entirely machine.

A report appeared on the screen.

"Xaviar. A world of cyborgs that believe themselves to be superior. They are, indeed, superior to full biologicals. However, their cowardice about becoming full robots means that each one has, at the least, a biological brain that can easily be destroyed by a variety of methods, including powerful ballistic ammunition, percussive force, overheating, freezing, and other such methods."

A list of raw stats then appeared, including the planet's population, resources, and the fact that it was currently divided into just three huge countries and had been at peace for the last 100 years. The stat for military development, however, showed that they had not become too trusting during their "world peace" phase. Each country had a large defense budget, and there was also a United Defense pact between them all that ate up a large percentage of their GDPs. Though the game didn't give a reason for the latter, it was easy to assume that they expected a space-based threat - whether from Marketeer's planet or another.

Meanwhile, Marketeer's planet turned out to be populated with robots, much like Cybertron. Its political stats showed that he was its undisputed leader. His home-planet report also showed that the population looked at the target world with disdain for attempting to "bodge" robotic parts onto clearly inferior bodies instead of properly mind-transferring.

Of course, by the looks of what the probes saw, the work really wasn't bodge-style, and while it would not match what a full robot could do, it would be foolish to assume that it wouldn't make the people there into much tougher fighters than standard biologicals.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Realm of Endless Energon

Loyal Star exposed his head, and as soon as he skimmed the surface of the Energon Ocean, he got a full tank of Energon rammed right down his throat. So much for lapping it up - opening his mouth while still coasting at over 200 MPH made any need to take further action unnecessary. In fact, if he hadn't had his upgraded fuel tanks, it would have been likely that the force would have split the welds and sent fuel flying all over his hot engine!

This quite unpleasant fueling speed caused him to instinctively pull up, but he didn't dare fire his jets just yet, lest he start the biggest explosion in the realm. Thanks to his speed, he was able to gain about 100 feet more of altitude before he put through the internal command to turn on all of his engines, and to his relief, they all obeyed after he gave a few "pumps" of his throttle systems. The jets blasted to life as his robot-mode engine also came back online and entered flight/idle status.

With the sense of relief still flooding through him, he banked back toward the shore, descended, and transformed into robot mode. He landed on his feet with a weary "clunk," finding himself near a few successful scouts and one larger guy who, like himself, didn't want to leave all of the fun to the professional explorers. Loyal Star realized now that his Energon-using engines were all running much better - the fuel was, magically, perfectly formulated to meet the exact needs of his systems.

Now that he was safe, Loyal Star was able to pay a bit more attention to his surroundings. By what he'd seen from the air, it seemed that this sea of Private Reserve was at least as big as Earth's Pacific Ocean, and now that he was on the ground, he noticed that some hastily-built tents had been constructed at the shoreline. These were made out of sheet metal. In the distance, though, he saw something more impressive: A 10,000-foot-tall cargo bot.

This giant bot, himself painted in the color of Energon (minus the glow), had waded out into the Private Reserve until he was knee-deep. At his size, that meant he was standing in about 4,000-foot-deep Energon - a Decepticon's dream. There, he was busy sucking it up through a hose that was at least 100 feet across. He was singlehandedly getting the ultimate haul. It was unclear how long he'd been standing there doing this, but what was clear was that he wasn't stopping until his entire tanker-style cargo hold was filled to the brim.

After several minutes, the cargo-bot stopped, still with a blissful look on his face, and rolled up his huge hose. What Loyal Star saw next, though, was even more impressive.

The giant cargo-bot made a pulling-down motion in the air with his right hand, and there before him, a huge portal opened. Loyal Star could see that one of the huge mansions (and its estate) that he'd seen on the way here was on the other side. The cargo-bot grinned even wider as he stepped through the portal, completely avoiding the long flight back, and closed it behind him.

"Yeah, you don't have to fly back from here," one of the scouts who was hanging around said. "It's another great perk of the realm. We all like figuring out how to get to places and get the Energon out of them, but pretty much everyone agrees that it sucks to have to schlep all the way home. So it's set up so that we don't have to! That said, you want to get all of the Energon you can, because there are no portals for getting back out here if you want more. I can't see taking it to the extreme of that guy, though. But then, he was never a scout. He was the leader of the ICC before Connect took over. He's all about getting the biggest haul."

Loyal Star thought of the size of the body the cargo-bot had been using. Surely, he figured, the bot did indeed get the biggest haul with a form the size of a huge mountain! He then noticed, with wonder, that the laws of physics really did only partially work like usual here. The ground wasn't even dented where this giant had been, whereas even on Cybertron, a body of that size and density wouldn't be able to land - even in the Cargo Zone - without plunging through the metal layers all the way to the core of the planet.

"This is really amazing," Loyal Star marveled. "Are there any other wondrous things like this around?"

"If I tell you, you won't have the thrill of discovery!" The scout said. However, another scout reminded him that the newcomer likely wasn't as into discovery as they were.

"You'll get bored if you get a map," the first one insisted. "Remember the thrill when you saw the 'Golden Hue' and realized that it matches the color of Private Reserve? And now, the thrill of standing here, successful? Surely you don't want to just follow some tour book." He was steadfast in his certainty that finding out without much help would be a better way to check out the rest of the realm.

This, of course, would have to come after Loyal Star made sure that all of his spare tanks were full of Private Reserve and he'd taken a portal to get back so that he didn't have to use it all up just by flying home.

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

First Temple of Megatron
Cybertron

It had been several days now, and neither High Priest Warfire or Priest Fire Eater had heard any more from Loyal Star.

"It is with dismay that I must assume that our Priest has somehow suffered unfortunate results," Warfire said to Fire Eater. "Such results must have come so quickly that he was unable to mind-transfer to any of his spares here, or even make it back to the Temple Save Vault. Since I very much doubt that he would have allowed himself to be captured without taking all possible steps to free himself, it is also logical to assume that the nature of the unfortunate results involve total deactivation."

Fire Eater gave a very slight, but grim, nod of agreement.

"We must restore him from his latest Save. This will mean that he'll have no memory of anything that happened in this realm since the time it was made. We may never know what deactivated him. Even worse, HE may not remember what deactivated him. However, if the Divine Leader so wills it, he might be able to carry his memories over from whatever realm he is currently in." Warfire concluded.

Fire Eater then said, "because of the possible data loss, we should be sure that we have the most recent Save. Let's ask DomIntel to run a sweep just in case there is a more recent one hidden somewhere."

High Priest Warfire agreed. It would take only a few hours for the DomIntel Supercomputer to confirm that the Save in the Temple was indeed the most recent. Then, the installation of that Save into a new body could begin. If the Supercomputer showed that there was actually an even newer Save, however, that one would have to be retrieved before the restoration was done.

[Vallermoore]

Earth


Marketeer decided that first he would give the orders to destroy as many of the satellites as possible and then would try and knock out the military, naval and air bases whilst bombing the larger civilian towns as well, attempting to cause panic. He was pretty sure it would be a hard fight, but surely robots would be able to defeat cyborgs? He didn't fall into the trap of thinking that the cyborgs would be so weak that it would be very easy to defeat them-but he was confident that it would take perhaps a week of game time. When he took over an area, he decided that all resistance would be violently crushed, regardless of civilian deaths. Being a robot, he worked on logic, plus the fact it was a game meant no real cyborgs were being killed even if he went genocidal. He wondered how good the Generalship of the cyborgs was.


The Realm of Endless Energon


Opening his mouth was more then enough-indeed, it would have killed a biological even if it had been fresh water instead of Energon going in at that speed, and it was a good thing Loyal Star's fuel tanks didn't break, blowing him up-and blowing up the entire ocean in the process, meaning Megatron probably ended up reassigning Loyal Star to the Realm of Punishment for blowing up the Realm of Endless Energon! Luckily Loyal Star managed to get high enough to safely ignite his jet engines and fly to safety. He took a small amount of this Energon Private Reserve (which to him tasted like the finest apple juice) , congratulated the scouts, and used a portal to get back home.


First Temple of Megatron, Cybertron


Fire Eater and High Priest Warfire realized that Loyal Star, who would never defect, had encountered an unfortunate result and no longer existed in the physical world. Whatever or whoever it was that had killed him, it or he was dangerous enough to outright kill a Priest who was in good standing. Domintel managed to find a relatively recent Save and one of Loyal Star's spares was located as well, so he could be brought back. Out of courtesy and because Fire Eater was a true friend of Loyal Star, High Priest Warfire let Fire Eater install the Disc. When Loyal Star's eyes glowed red, for a moment the glow was blank, and then with a rev Loyal Star realized where he was and his mind boards went fully online. He gave deep bows to High Priest Warfire and to Fire Eater, that meant different things. The one for High Priest Warfire was in effect a salute to his superior, but the one to Fire Eater, a bow normally reserved for a superior bot, was a symbol of deep thanks. Biologicals in a similar situation would have hugged, but hugs damaged Decepticons so were never used except when in very close hand to hand combat.

"Thank you, High Priest Warfire, and thank you, Fire Eater. Something or someone killed me-and whilst I can't be certain, it may be someone that I once fought on Coltan. He too was a Priest, with his own magical holy fusion fire-but-but when it hit anything robotic, it turned it into flesh and blood and bone. That happened to my leg and I had to pray to Megatron to fix the problem, and the Coltani bots I was commanding were too scared to pursue him. Imagine being in space and suddenly getting strafed from behind and turned into a biological! No chance to flee or fight back in some way, one would be dead in seconds. It would certainly explain why I was dead in seconds, with only time to transmit a call for help to you." His eyes darkened as he thought of that Priest on Coltan. "How could a bot worship a God of Flesh anyway? That's worse then heresy, that's just disgusting and wrong." The nearest biological equvilent would be a Death and Decay-worshipper.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Earth

As soon as the satellites started to be destroyed, automated missiles came from other orbiting equipment to try to get rid of the source of the attack. Once that happened, Marketeer's spy-drones were finally spotted as foreign, and space-to-space missiles were launched at them as well.

Meanwhile, the planet's military scrambled, and several low-orbit craft were in the air within minutes. They intercepted many of the first wave of bombers, but Marketeer's forces had been endowed with the aeronautical prowess of Decepticons. The second wave was switched to fighter-bombers, and they had little trouble cutting through the aerial defense forces and beginning their attack on the cities and the military targets.

All seemed to go well, or at least, "well" by war standards. One base was very highly defended, and managed to take out a squadron of Marketeer's attackers; and one of the air bases had extremely skilled pilots. These pilots took to the air, and a cinematic showed that they did not fly planes like most biologicals. Instead, the eye-candy close-up depicted a cyborg who was directly tethered into the plane's control panel via several cables, allowing him to command the plane as if it was his own body. The result was that these elites had the same reaction speeds as Decepticons, and they racked up a kill count that made this point clear.

Eventually, however, even these elite cyborg-planes were dispatched. There simply weren't enough of them to fend off Marketeer's entire onslaught.

Upon reaching the cities, Marketeer got a big surprise. Giant, bomb-proof dome pieces came up out of the ground, and in every place that this operation had a chance to complete, they came together to form completed domes. Their surfaces were cloudy, but not so opaque as to block much light from the inside.

As with any 1-player game, there were no real "generals" leading the defense. Instead, an AI handled everything. This one was set to only medium difficulty. Despite the size of the planet, the game's designers knew that it was also one of the ones that was very close to the player's starting position. Therefore, it was one of the easier "early-stage" ones. The most serious challenges would not be here or from the sun-side planet, but at some of the ones further out.

That said, this war would not be a total pushover. Thanks to the biological-scale size of the defenders, however, even their upgrades wouldn't make them anywhere near impossible to beat. Despite this, certain builds were able to take out individuals from Marketeer's forces thanks to having effective military-type upgrades instead of mere industrial ones.

~~~~~~~~~~~

First Temple of Megatron, Cybertron

"You got turned into a WHAT!? And you think it was by some biological worshipping freak from Coltan?! How did this fool not get blasted by us already?!" Warfire said incredulously.

"In any case, we will fix this. I'll summon both ForIntel and DomIntel Inquisitors to track him down and delete him. They will have a special blessing ceremony to try to gain Leader Megatron's protection from this ridiculous, but deadly, effect the guy causes."

Warfire continued, "Leader Megatron will also want to find the source of that idiot's power and delete it. It's probably some god or godlike creature that somehow managed to avoid destruction before now. Since you have a strong and legitimate grievance against this entity for powering up the one who ambushed you, would you like me to put in a word with our Divine Leader to put you on the Military's Paranormal Strike Force that will likely be sent to his realm as part of this attack? You wouldn't be fighting the enemy god directly - Megatron will want to terminate him on his own - but there may be some loyalists that need to be blasted through. That realm, of course, will also be seized by us. Without their god left alive, everyone in it will be as powerless as biologicals are supposed to be."

[Vallermoore]

First Temple of Megatron, Cybertron

Warfire's engine backfired in genuine shock, and decided on the spot that the Inquisitors of Domintel and Forintel would be put on this dangerous rival Priest's case, since a bot that could turn Decepticons into biologicals just by blasting them was a real danger to even the richest and most powerful bots. As well as that, Warfire utterly despised this flesh-worshipping bot even more then he did heretics.


Loyal Star was secretly pleased that he wouldn't be sent after the same Priest that had turned him into a pony, because he had a secret fear of getting killed by him again, but he very much wanted to be on the Paranormal Strike Force to take out that priest's dimension in revenge. Taking revenge was a very much accepted part of Decepticon society, indeed, one might call it one of that society's pillars that underpinned it. "I was turned into a sapient pony. And I would love now that I am back to help take over that realm and put it's uppity biologicals where they are supposed to be-as our slaves. Even a Decepticon who has grown weak to the point where he is hiding from Scroungers, is still stronger then a biological is, but those little ants don't understand that."


Two light years away


The Flesh-Priest, who went by the name of Adam, was resting on a planet without intelligent life, either biological or robotic. He drank some water from a nearby river, which entered a part of his body where it was safely contained and in fact helped power his cooling systems. Of course most bots would no more drink water then a biological would willingly ingest Energon or molten rock, but to Adam the water tasted sweet. Whilst he kept his body good enough to run well, he allowed minor dents and dinks to go unrepaired, and even though they were only small, the sheer number of them did. The human equivalent would be a human covered in small scars. On Cybertron, a bot in that condition would be looked down on at least unless he had just fought a battle and didn't have time to repair himself yet. His blasters were still in top condition and capable of both normal fire and Holy Fusion Fire that could turn metal into flesh. He was pretty sure he was safe. He had killed his foe outright, and besides, Cybertron had no police so nobot would be looking for him to either extradite or kill him as far as he knew. He was ignorant of Domintel and Forintel who were even now getting a special Megatronian blessing and tracking him and any spares he had down, be they full-body or android in nature.


Unknown to him, of the Lord and Lady of the Flesh Realm, the Lord had died attacking Megatron, but the Lady was still alive and her magic powered his fusion fire and the Realm itself, preventing it from dying and rotting-for now. The Flesh Realm would look strange even to biologicals yet alone bots, as it was like a planet made of flesh and bone.

Earth


Marketeer ordered in heavy bombers to crack the domes with fighters in support. He also ordered troops on the ground to find other ways in, in case even the heaviest bombs in the game did not work. The planet was putting up a fight, but he had a very good chance of defeating and subjugating it once it ran short of ammunition, missles and other such things.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base, Cybertron
Strategy Room

Not long after High Priest Warfire's report came into Intelligence's Office of the Inquisition, it was forwarded directly to Leader Megatron as a high priority issue. They realized that this was not just a feud between two competing priests, but in reality, a matter of national security. Entities that could turn Decepticons into biologicals, or parts of them into biological parts - without even having to aim precisely to do it - were serious threats to the Empire. Since this was clearly a hostile agent, that made it even worse. His power, if it spread, could fuel a very powerful opposing army.

Upon getting this report and the analysis, Megatron hastily called a strategy meeting with some of the High Generals. Shockwave was to assemble a Paranormal Strike Force for invasion of whatever realm the priest's power was coming from, while Soundwave was to use 50% of Intelligence resources, as well as the Supercomputer's full power, to find the one priest.

Once the priest was found, he was NOT to be immediately deleted. Instead - if necessary - Shockwave was to analyze him in secret so that the source of his power could be traced.

Meanwhile, Leader Megatron would be preparing for battle himself. He would also be using his massively upgraded processing power to attempt to find the offending realm. Once that realm was found, whether by him or Shockwave's group, an invasion would be launched. Megatron, of course, intended to find and delete this new flesh "god" with his own power.

"Whether or not we keep the followers depends on how many there are and whether they'll actually be useful as slaves. If they're as crazy as 'robots who think flesh is better,' we will simply exterminate them, no matter how many there are."

"Give High Priest Warfire a condensed synopsis of the plan, but remind him that it is Classified Information. Tell him to only pass along the message that my Priest, Loyal Star, is to report to the Main Military Base for accelerated Paranormal Strike Force training immediately. He needs to learn about how the physics in another dimension or realm are not always the same as here, and how to look out for psychic tricks that are sometimes encountered in such places. Of course, he should have some refresher standard combat drills, as well."

Finally, Megatron turned to Shockwave and added, "As for this one 'Flesh Priest,' we won't delete him right when he is found. First, I'll take out this moron he's getting his power from. THEN you move in to exterminate him. He'll try to turn you into biologicals, and to his horror, he will get no Biological Fusion Fire because its source will be dead. Once that registers, barrage him with so much blaster fire that there aren't even little shards of metal left of him. Be sure to run your jammers, too, so he doesn't warp off to points unknown. Of course, YOUR troops are to make fresh Saves before they go out on this mission, so running your jammers doesn't give him a chance to get a perma-kill on YOU."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Immediately, Megatron's orders were put into motion. Cybertronians noticed that there were fewer open DomIntel and ForIntel agents in sight, and fewer "random people" hanging around, too. Some suspected that this meant that the Supercomputer was now occupied with some extremely-important task, and those who weren't as highly pleased with Megatron as they usually let on began to think of how to use the expected break in security...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Across Cybertron, ForIntel and DomIntel's overt agents fanned out in a way that was far lower-tech than the agencies were used to. They were in sour moods, but had to admit that for someone of the nature of their target, asking around was more likely to yield results than looking at millions of teraflops of surveillance data. Plus, they had the DomIntel Supercomputer for going through mountains of files like that.

With so much botpower put onto this project, it only took about 10 hours before some agents arrived at the doors of the Sinaloa Warehouse. There were two agents - one from DomIntel, and one from ForIntel.

There, they demanded to speak to "the boss," only to find themselves presented with a warehouse manager. Then, they got specific: They wanted to see Guzman, and if he didn't show up, they would find him and code-read him - and, raid the warehouse for good measure. They clearly didn't mean a "police raid," but instead, a good old-fashioned bare walls raid that would cost the Cartel billions of Cubes.

Minutes later, in what was obviously a secondary body, Guzman landed outside and stormed in angrily. When the agents said what they wanted to know about, though, his anger turned into pride.

"Yeah, I know the guy! He's actually one of my customers! I convinced him that he wouldn't truly understand biologicality unless he experienced my products!" El Chapo laughed, and his eyes shone clear red. "Of course, to experience my products properly, he needed my Ultimate Drug Sim patch. Not some program that is just 'run,' but one that becomes part of the system. So..." El Chapo chuckled again... "He is likely the first robotic methamphetamine addict in the universe. And cocaine addict, too. Do you know how much meth and coke it takes to turn off a craving in a giant body like his?" Without waiting for an answer, El Chapo waved his hand towards a couple of human-scale pallets of product.

The agents looked at each other, not quite making sense of what El Chapo was saying, but understanding enough to know that this could be the key to finding their quarry.

"So," a ForIntel agent said, "This jerkoff is going to have to get more of this stuff pretty soon - or start throwing errors?"

"Yeah, that's right...HEY, I'm not workin' with the Federalis to bust my own customer!! That'd destroy my business!!" El Chapo was very serious about this. He would let himself be melted down slowly before he'd become a mole.

"No need for that, sir," the DomIntel half of the agent pair said. "We know where all of your sales agents are. A stakeout won't be a problem."

~~~~~~~~~~~

After the agents left, El Chapo paced around with aggravation. If he warned his dealer, the radio message would be intercepted, and then Intel would know which dealer needed to be watched. Yet if he didn't, he'd lose one of his best individual customers! In the end, he decided not to radio - at least that way, he wouldn't be doing something sure to make the Federalis' job easier. Even though he was now a Decepticon, and his business was legal, he couldn't stop thinking of federal agents as mortal enemies. He'd spent years either killing feds or being locked up by them! They could all fly into the sun as far as he was concerned, Decepticons or not.

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

On the barren world, Adam opened a side panel and withdrew a strange smoking pipe. He inserted what was, to him, just a few crystals. The amount would be enough to kill 100 humans, but as El Chapo had said, it wasn't much for a big body like his. Plus, as a robot, Adam couldn't really die of OD even if he smoked 10 tons of the stuff.

He used his blaster, set to a very low level, to light the pipe. The acrid smell of meth circled his head for a moment, and then he took a huge hit. Instantly, energy and confidence once again filled his being, and he became even more convinced that he had done the right thing by blasting that Decepticon priest back to ponydom. He would lead a one-bot crusade for the Flesh God, and one day, turn every robot into a biological! Only then could he finally turn his holy bio-fire on himself, no longer needing the military superiority of the construct his mind now occupied, and become the creature of flesh that he longed to be.

Adam looked into his side-panel and checked his stock. Only a few more doses remained. Soon, he would have to go to his dealer, or else suffer horrible withdrawals.

For a moment, he cursed El Chapo and his "damned patch." By now, he knew that he had been tricked, and that while drugs were indeed a definitively biological thing, the ones he'd been sold came with the downside of severe addiction. Unfortunately, when he'd tried to code it back out, he'd been unable to decipher its complexities - and despite assurances by the occupiers of Coltan, he did not trust their so-called "Debugging Centers" to just remove the patch and NOT delete him for being a bio-worshipper. At best, he figured, they'd consider his bio-worship to be a glitch and patch that out, too, and this was also unacceptable to him - and so, he remained addicted, and got even more addicted with every dose of Sinaloa poison that the patch's withdrawal replication forced him to consume.

On Cybertron, El Chapo Guzman sat behind a desk at the warehouse and hoisted a whisky. His warehouse manager did the same. "To the end of a 10,000-Cube/month customer!" The cartel boss yelled out, and downed the glass. His ethanol-to-Energon converter handled it with ease, and his own drugs/alcohol simulation patch put through the appropriate feelings of throat warmth and a bit of wistful sadness.

Unlike the patches he'd sold to others (which were written by his own, notoriously ruthless, cartel), his was expertly coded by the top people at the Main Debugging Center to allow the good effects of drugs and alcohol through - but prevent any chance of addiction. It had cost him half a fortune to insist on techs of this level for a custom patch, but he wasn't about to fall into his own traps. That was for suckers...and for crazies who wanted the "full biological experience."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

To Marketeer's pleasant surprise, and the expertly-rendered terror of his targets, the bombs easily smashed the domes. Now, he could continue bombing to flatten the cities inside, or continue fighting the last of the defending air force and then land thousands of troops to take the cities over. By pulling up another screen, he could see the "resistance level" of each one, which showed him how hard it would be to put down insurgencies in the listed areas. Most likely, it would be best to just destroy the highest-resistance ones, but it would also be good to send scouts to make sure he wouldn't lose important assets in some of them if he did that.

Some of the highest-resistance cities, he found, were also hubs of manufacturing for the planet. If successfully subjugated, he could use those factories to make more weapons and ammo for his own forces - something he'd need to take over the next planet. On the other hand, the amount of resistance might make it not worth the bother. Each location was a bit different, making it so that a blanket policy either way would be inefficient and could even make him lose. He would need to make at least some individualized decisions to ensure his readiness to take on the next target.

[Vallermoore]

Main Military Base, Cybertron
Strategy Room


When High Priest Warfire made his report, it was recognized as very important and sent directly to no less then Leader Megatron himself. The reason why was that thiswas far more then a spat between Priests of different religions. This was a bot who could turn other bots into biologicals-or parts of them biological, and this was a major security threat. Megatron remembered all too well what had happened to him personally-leading to him having to be rescued from the afterlife by Loyal Star. It could easily have ended up with the Decepticon Empire collapsing into civil war. Of course a single bot was not much of a threat to the mighty Cybertron and his Empire-but however remote, there was a nightmarish scenario of an army of these bots getting in close under cloaking and causing absolute havoc and death on a grand scale. In the very worst case scenario they could turn even the mighty I.G.N.O.R.E cannon battery into a useless heap of flesh. This had to be squashed in the bud. It was decided that for now, the Priest would be found and followed but not attacked yet, as to do so could lead to great loss of life and Energon, as training Domintel and Forintel bots was expensive. Instead the source of this fearsome Fusion Fire would be located and firmly put out by a force commanded by no less then High General Shockwave, being the biggest threat since that idiot Sky Knight. Things were to be kept classified as they didn't want to rile up the Nation about it. They didn't want loads of bots going after him and ending up as humans or ponies or some other type of biological, nor did they want other nations to find out about how worried they were and attack, or give this Flesh God many more worshippers and thus more power, making him a PITA to deal with. Once the threat was over, it was likely that they would brag about it on the holovision as a sign of strength.

Half of Domintel and Forintel was set to locating this Priest, along with the entire Supercomputer. That was how important this matter was to the safety of the Decepticon Empire. All kinds of other operations were temporally put on hold until the threat was ended. Loyal Star got an order to report to the Paranormal Division for special training. In these other dimensions, things that were normally no danger to Decepticons, like swords, spiders and the like could be a real threat. Properly trained bots knew not to get too cocky and lose a body or even worse.

Certain Cybertronians noticed the fewer agents on the streets and took advantage of this to make plots of the illegal kind against Megatron and the High Generals. One wanted to put silicone dioxide into High General Carjack's Energon, for example. Others, rather then outright plotting, just wanted to mouth off against the government and imagine an alternative government-which was itself illegal treason.


Soon enough a couple of open Domintel bots (used for situations like this when secret agents might get blasted) showed up at the Sinaloa Warehouse and demanded to talk to the boss, threatening otherwise to raid the warehouse to the bare walls and catch Mr Guzman and code-read him. An angry Mr Guzman showed up. Privately, he had a secret hatred for Domintel, even though they were not police as in most nations, seeing them as Federals. As a human he had been jailed several times and acquired a bitter hatred for law enforcement. He decided that he would rather risk death by meltdown then grass up his customer-to do so would ruin his business and chase away his customers if he informed on them to Domintel, as well as a hatred of grassing that was even stronger then that of most Decepticons. As it turned out, they didn't have to try and overpower and code read him. It was a sad day for Mr Guzman who would be losing one of his best customers.

*****
Adam had a secret that he kept to himself. He had once been a Decepticon and a Full Priest of Megatron-until he had seen with his own eyes Megatron turned into a helpless biological and the experiance had turned him into a dark and twisted mirror-image of Loyal Star. Whilst Megatron was still a ghost in the afterlife and was not divine, he had mentally switched his alligence without Megatron or any other bots knowing about it, gone to a spare body and then flown to Coltan, which was run less strictly then Cybertron. When defragging he had seen the Lady of Flesh in a dream who had granted him his new Fusion Fire powers, as she wanted revenge for her husband's death. At first he had just experimented, finding a safe way for example to drink water-and recoding himself to enjoy this noxious fluid and even make positive use of it by using it in his cooling system. This was rather like a biological finding a way to cool down by safely drinking sulphuric acid. He made his hands waterproof and experimented with other "biological sims." He renamed himself Adam, which on Cybertron was odd to the point of being illegal, although he had another name which he used undercover. He became a successful buisness-bot on Coltan and had plans for making an army one day but didn't know how to code his liking of flesh in or give them his Fusion Fire powers.

So he became a missionary. The Coltanis laughed at him-until he turned two into humans and stopped on them. Gredually he built up a cult. It was at that time where he had made the mistake of simming alcohol-and then hard drugs-and had got hopelessly addicted to the latter. He didn't dare go to either Coltani or Cybertronian Debugging, in case they debugged what he didn't want debugged.All the same, he had a small but growing cult-until that dammed Loyal Star had busted it up litrally and chased him away, sending him back to square one. He had been delighted when he snuck up on Loyal Star, ponyfied him and watched him fall into a gas giant's clouds. Revenge was sweet. Now however he would have to meet up with a dealer to get more meth. Whilst he didn't need to fear death from ODing or many of the other negative symptoms as a bot, it was still a pain. . Swapping his green eye colors for red ones, he flew within a light year of Cybertron and met his dealer, unaware that he was now being watched.

Earth


Marketeer decided to start taking the cities by storm one by one, to use their factories for himself. He was greatly enjoying this game.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Qingzhau

Despite its name, Qingzhau was nothing like an Earthian Chinese city. Instead, it was part of a nation of giant, scaly, dinosaur-like biologicals. In the seedy underbelly of its most populous area, beings of many different species came to do business - some from its own planet, but many from other worlds. The business here was highly varied, with some being completely legit, and other types not being legit at all. Much of it combined the two - legal trades were made, but the local tax authority would never know of them.

It was here that Adam went, and he zoomed into the city's seedy area without much notice from the others. Soon, he landed, not with the usual grace of a transforming Decepticon, but with the somewhat off-kilter feeling of a person intoxicated on a hard drug. The brashness and aggression brought about by the use of meth was obvious as he barged his way through the pedestrians, who were mostly half as tall as he was, and approached his usual contact.

The dealer knew exactly who it was as soon as he'd heard the overly-revved roar of the jets, but he could never fail to be astounded by the appearance of the robot. Just like how human meth addicts were often pockmarked and worn-looking, his customer was covered in dents and generally seemed to have been through some sort of ongoing war. He also revved endlessly, much like how a human user would have a pounding heart and a tendency to start sweating under minimal physical effort. I bet this guy crashes before long, the dealer thought silently. But until then, I'll milk him for all he's worth.

Adam approached, and angrily got out a vault key. He nearly threw it at the dealer, still mad that he was addicted to the stuff he sold, but the dealer took this without complaint. Ten thousand Cubes of Energon would be gained with that key, and the dealer would quickly flip it onto the petroleum market to turn it into hundreds of thousands of the local Credits. He could easily put up with a rude customer in exchange for that.

Silently, the dealer handed over a map. The map was different every time, but in each case, it led to the same payload: One pallet of meth, and one pallet of coke. Adam snatched it, and he was about to take off back into the sky when what appeared to be one of the locals came up to buy. The dealer didn't recognize this new guy, but Adam wasn't paying enough attention to notice this.

The new customer paused for just a bit and seemed to teeter towards Adam's abdomen before catching himself. He used the local language to ask for something, and the dealer gave a nod. The dealer then showed a baggie of a tar-like material, and made an offer that was accepted after a minor delay.

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

Combined Intelligence Headquarters
Cybertron

The secret communication came in quickly.
"I've found him. Qingzhau. And, I've got an engine soundmap." The agent reported, and all activity immediately focused on the next incoming comms. Soon, the sound of Adam's engine filled the room - and was sent directly to the Domestic Intelligence Supercomputer for identification.

It was as if Cybertron itself shook when the Supercomputer came back within 10 seconds with the most likely ID: Priest JetFighter of the Temple of Megatron - Listed as MIA and previously presumed deactivated. Notably, attempts to restore him from saves had led to soulless constructs which were, in turn, deactivated as failed instances.

Now, they knew why copies of him had come out soulless. His soul had not left the realm after all! The pile of reject parts had apostatized and defected~!

Next, images began to be transmitted. They were literally taken with the agent's eyes, so they were from the perspective of the "new customer" who had come up. The pictures and movies showed all of the dents and scratches on their quarry, and his now-red eyes - as well as a good close-up of the map he had gotten.

At this moment, the agent was running through the streets to get to the location on the map. "It is unlikely that I will be able to beat someone who is flying there," he reported, "but I can at least examine the area. Plus, if he has to load up a lot of cargo, he may still be around when I arrive. The location isn't very far. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to switch to a flight-capable body when the Stakeout Order came through..."

Immediately, extra spies who had been assigned to monitoring activity in that area were dispatched to the map's location, and it wasn't long before one was able to get to it. That one, a "local dockworker," now leaned on the outside wall near the doors smoking a cigarette and drinking from a bottle that was badly hidden in a paper bag - easily passing as just another drunk in the warehouse district.

At the same time, Paranormal Researchers switched to less-obvious bodies and then used magic to teleport near the target location. The distance would hide the bangs of air displacement, but now they would have to dash to the warehouse ASAP so they didn't miss their quarry. Fortunately, they would be fast enough, but barely. They quickly hid behind some dumpsters and got out their equipment.

This equipment was made to detect things that could not be sensed by non-psychic, bodily means. Many thought this description referred to things like nuclear radiation, but when Paranormal was involved, that was far from the case. They would be looking for unusual psychic energy signatures. If all went well, Adam would never know that they - or ForIntel - had ever been near him.

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

Elsewhere on Cybertron

"It isn't often that the Supercomputer is repurposed, but the lack of agents means that if there's any time to talk, it's now!" The red-and-gold robot spoke quietly and quickly to a small group of others. "I say, now is the time to bring Communism to Cybertron! The time for the dictatorship to change to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat! The time to seize the Megatron Mansion and give the Capitalist Commander an artillery blast and a jamming shield as a 'welcome home!'"

The others, all of whom had at least a little red and gold on them, were already in agreement. They began to make detailed plans of how they would breach the elite-guard security, set up an AA energy cannon so it could shoot through the roof, and then blast Megatron into oblivion with it while a jammer ran so he couldn't just mind-transfer.

"I've heard that his anti-jamming is far more powerful than what the normal Decepticon soldier gets," one said, "but I have plans for a jammer that should be strong enough to beat it." He handed them over to their leader.

The leader made a final statement at the end of the meeting. "We don't know when the surveillance will be back to full power, so we dare not speak of this again. You all have your plans to complete, now. Until we meet at the Mansion in four months, we must not speak a word about this. Then, we'll congregate at the South Gate of the Government District, still being very normal-looking, and make sure that conditions are favorable. If they aren't, we just keep walking as normal pedestrians. But if they ARE favorable...then we make our way to the West Gate, which is closest to the Mansion, and walk in as 'maintenance' personnel. Once inside the District, it should be fairly easy to get to the front gate of the Mansion itself. That's when we'll need the best of stealth to trick them into letting us in to 'fix it.' After we're in, we'll FIX IT, alright!"

While other would-be rebels were making similarly-nasty plans, this group was the most unusual of them all. They were the only serious communists on Cybertron. Even their colors copied off of the Chinese and Soviet flags. What they hadn't thought of, in all of their planning, was how if they did manage to win, they would be overthrown in less than 10 minutes by the rest of the population - a population that wanted absolutely nothing to do with forced equality, much less the forced equal poverty that other planets' communism-attempts had brought about.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Taking the cities by storm worked very well from a military standpoint, but after gaining a few, Marketeer noticed what seemed to be bomb blasts going off in the factories of those he hadn't gotten to yet. In fact, one blast happened right in front of him in a city that had officially surrendered!

It didn't take long for him to realize that it wasn't his forces doing that bombing. Instead, it was insurgents who were trying to deny him the use of those facilities. As the game had predicted, the "high resistance" areas were seeing most of this sabotage, while it didn't take much to keep bombers away from the low-resistance ones. Unfortunately, some of the biggest factories were in the high-resistance zones, so he would have to take steps to stop the sabotage - slowing his advance in the process - if he were to retain the usefulness of the industrial areas there.

[Vallermoore]

Qingzhau


Qingzhau was part of a city in a lizard nation of large lizard people who were about half the size of Decepticons, full of legal, illegal and partly legal trades. Whilst it was not as quite lawless or as dangerous as Cybertron, it was rough and ready in parts. The bot was twice their size and the sight of his blasters kept those who might want to fight him for barging through from doing that. Privately the dealer bot didn't think much of his revving, dented customer but knew better then to say that and get in a fight. Fighting customers who brought in so much Energon was bad business. With him there, Forintel was able to find him and he could be identified through his engine vibration.


When the information was beamed back to Cybertron, and was shared with those who needed to be in the know, High Priest Warfire backfired in shock. Priest Jetfighter had been an effective Priest until he vanished and was thought to be dead. In fact, the pile of reject parts from a junkyard had apostatized and defected to a Flesh god! He was not surprised to see how battered the apostate looked and snorted in disgust, looking forward in his mind boards to when Jetfighter's soul was in the Realm of Punishment where it belonged.

Elsewhere on Cybertron

Unknown even to Domintel and taking advantage of the fact that Domintel was busy, a small group of about ten Communist bots dared to meet and, after sweeping for bugs, plot. They had not thought things through. Even if they somehow managed to overthrow Megatron, who even before he became a God had been a very dangerous target-who had defeated assassins with his armor and fusion cannon by himself at times-there was no way that the general population of Cybertron would tolerate forced poverty and the confiscation of most of their Energon. They would rather rise up and install a dictatorship that shared their values. Even Megatron-even Divine Megatron-was only in power because he shared the values of the Decepticon Way-and there was an unspoken agreement that He would stay that way. If he were to start acting like an Autobot or a Communist or something of that ilk, they would all cease to follow or worship Him, and without worshippers, his godly power would shrivel up like a love-starved changeling.

Earth


Marketeer ordered the killing of all adults in the areas where and act of sabotage happened, hoping that this would put a stop to it. Only babies and young children would be spared. He was not cruel enough to kill them.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Main Military Base, Cybertron

Loyal Star eagerly reported in, and was soon escorted to a busy area where soldiers were clearly preparing for battle. The priest noticed that these troops weren't using the standard gear. Their armor glowed with visible supernatural energy, and their blasters were even brighter. Several were also doing drills with what appeared to be swords made of pure energy. These were not lightsaber-style, though - they clearly had very sharp edges.

In another area, soldiers were levitating through the air. Most remained upright, but a few tumbled over. The object of this drilling seemed to be to teach them how to stay "on their feet" while not in actual contact with the ground.

"We don't know what conditions we'll encounter when we invade this..."flesh" realm," his guide said, "so we have to practice for many different possibilities." He pointed at the sword-practice group. "In some places, blaster fire is simply 'eaten' as usable energy by foes. Slicing them up instead is then called for. And over there, they're practicing in case it's one of those weird realms where some force repels beings away from the ground itself. That effect is only partly magnetic - it works even on biologicals - but there is enough of a magnetic component that it affects us much more strongly. It's not a problem if you have enough practice, but if you don't, you can lose control of your own body - sort of like someone doing a space walk for the first time."

The guide led Loyal Star to the barracks, and Loyal Star noticed a strange energy around the entire area. Above the barracks door, a mural of a seated person, overshadowed by one of a giant war, had been embossed.

"In much psychic warfare, the physical body is actually left sitting inertly," the guide said as he pointed at the image. "Meanwhile, the huge war rages in the spirit world. That seated soldier is using his spirit body" - He pointed it out from amongst the scene of war-chaos - "to help secure the victory for the Decepticon Forces."

As Loyal Star looked closer, he noticed to his surprise that the spirit body in question bore not only the Seals of the Paranormal Division, but of the Genociders as well. He wondered what realm had been conquered this way, and if there was anything still left of it. Staring longer, he noticed that there were many spots with what appeared to be dissipating energy beings: those who had already been defeated, and with nowhere else to go, they were simply fading into oblivion.

"It is a scene of the War Against the Hindu Pantheon," the soldier-guide noted. "This was Shiva's area. He was known as 'the Destroyer," among other things. We figured that the paranormally-endowed members of the Genociders would be perfect to lead our charge into his realm. The choice of an unnamed soldier as the centerpiece of the work is to remind everyone that all Paranormal soldiers, not just the generals, are important in wars of this scale."

He didn't say so, and might not have known, but this choice was also done because of the mural's placement over the soldiers' barracks. The generals had other imagery in their area, and there, they were usually the only recognizable people in the scenes.

Loyal Star was temporarily awed when he found out that the scene depicted a real battle, even though it was surely dramatized to make it look more epic (and less gnarly) than it would have actually been. Would the war against the Flesh God's Realm be like this?

Someone opened the barracks door, cutting off these thoughts. "Come on Soldier," a trainer said, ordering Loyal Star inside. The trainer looked at the soldier-guide and said, "You can go be a tour guide once your stint is over. Now is not the time to be giving art lessons! This guy we're stuck with has to be brought up to speed, and now!"

The trainer led Loyal Star to a room and gruffly announced that this would be where he was staying.

"They only gave us a few days to train you up. That's complete oil sludge. Know this right now - you'll be flying in the back, where you can't get in the way of the REAL soldiers! One week is not enough time to turn a basic-level soldier into a Paranormal Strike Force member!! And your file says that you spent most of your Military time as a priest! I'm not sure if our Divine Leader was doing you a favor to let you come, or if he hates your piston rings! Either way, you'll get a set of basic Paranormal armor and weaponry, instruction on how to use it, and do a few drills. But stay out of our way. Think of yourself as the guy who pulls the tanker in a raid gang - NOOB!"

Loyal Star was a bit sad at this non-welcome, but was still glad to be there. He knew that Megatron didn't hate him, but instead, wanted him to get the pleasure of being part of this revenge-strike on the Flesh Realm. When he got the orders to get his enhanced armor and blasters, he quickly reported to the proper location.

At the Paranormal Armory, he was surprised to learn that he wouldn't be simply outfitted with the upgraded equipment. "Oh, no. We don't try to match our stuff with civilian-grade bodies of unknown specifications. You mind-transfer to a proper soldier's body, just like every other recruit!" The technician said. He pointed to the designated body, which was a standardized Paranormal unit complete with all of the requisite parts. Loyal Star could sense the energy of several souls in its parts - souls which, almost surely, had been captured in prior wars and forcefully put to this purpose against their wills.

"All shall serve Megatron, either by will or by force. Woe unto those who must serve by force, for they shall have no rest..." ~The Book of Megatron, Second Chapter on War

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

Upon completing the mind-transfer, Loyal Star was sure of his initial assessment of the body. It was mechanically perfect, but a sense of "begrudgingness" was easily detectable in all of its glowing, enchanted areas. Clearly, some things within it wished they did not have to go along with this Decepticon who was now in control.

"Your next stop is the first-stage drill station," the technician informed him. "There, you'll learn to deal with your new body's strange energy patterns, how to make sure you remain in control, and best of all, how to gain energy from the futile escape attempts of the infidels that are forced to strengthen your armor and blasters as you go to enslave even more of them."

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

Paranormal Portal Asteroid

Leader Megatron stood with a look of angry determination as the reports came in. Agents in place in Quingzhou had picked up the traitor's energy signature as he rushed into the warehouse, and the one standing "drunkenly" at the door had confirmed that it was him by matching his engine noise to the earlier recording.

Soon, the paranormal energy signature was analyzed, and the Military Supercomputer picked out the parts that were not associated with the traitor's own soul and life force. Sure enough, there was a strong "outside" element running. The Military Supercomputer then went through its Paranormal Division folders looking for a match, and soon enough, it found a close one - close, but not exactly on.

The closest match was the being behind the power that had turned Leader Megatron to flesh.

Megatron's eyes darkened deeply as a strong scowl came on his face. He had deleted that guy! Then, he noticed the notation on the report: Match Level: 80%. It had to be a different entity, then. One that was very similar, but different enough to not be the same being in a new mood. Megatron's mind raced. Was it an offspring? A sibling? Maybe even a wife? And, more importantly, how many of these things were there?! He wanted to know the last part not because multiples would be all that much more of a threat in a war, but so that he could be sure when he had gotten them all! He didn't want any other survivors to be able to pop up later and cause troubles.

With this information in hand, it would be easy for the Paranormal Division's engineers to key the portal system to reach the realm that went with the energy signature. Once it was ready, drones would be sent through to spy on the new place, and if successful, get an idea of what the Forces would be flying into when the full war order was given.

The drones would be soulless, not because of fear of losing them, but to help keep the enemy from being able to back-trace them based on their own energy. They would even be made on a barren asteroid, by remote-controlled non-sapient (and soulless) droids, to keep their energy signatures as informationless as possible. Finally, they would be made not according to Decepticon design, but off of a stolen schematic from a totally-unrelated world.

With all of these precautions, Megatron hoped, the enemy realm wouldn't expect a Decepticon invasion even if some of the drones were shot down and examined. This would, he hoped, keep the enemy from knowing just what to prepare to defend against.

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Marketeer's forces dutifully obeyed his command, quickly wiping out everyone in the target areas over 3 years old. Toddlers and babies now screamed for mommas that would never come, as the troops then moved in and took over all of the important factories. Now, it was just a matter of setting up supply lines, and fortunately, this part of the game was almost automatic since there was no more opposition to speak of.

Now, however, the game informed him that the babies would begin to die off, some in as little as 12 hours, unless they were collected and fed. Older ones would last a bit longer, and the oldest - at 3 years old - could make it for quite a long time as long as they could figure out how to get water. The water, however, wouldn't be as easy to get as just climbing up to some faucet and turning it on. The planet's infrastructure had been bombed, so most of the water supply was dried up. Only rural areas, which used private wells, were still operational.

A question came on the screen:

"What do you want to do with these babies?
- Leave them to die
- Collect them and raise them into the Marketeer Way
- Collect them and take them to orphanages run by the invaded
- Let the natives come for them if they want to, and ignore those that are unwanted

[Vallermoore]

Earth


Marketeer gave orders to collect up as many of the babies and toddlers as possible and raise them in the Marketeer Way. This young they would be easy to train and he didn't want to just let them die when they had done nothing at all to oppose him. After ramping up production at those factories that worked, he prepared to take the key remaining cities and finish conquering the planet.

Main Military Base, Cybertron

Loyal Star happily reported in and saw some soldiers drilling with swords made of energy-very unusual weapons for Decepticons to use. Others were practicing levitation with reasonable success for most of them. His guide told him that in some dimensions, blaster energy was harmlessly absorbed and cutting up the foe was needed, whilst other dimensions lacked gravity. Paranormal bots needed to be ready for all sorts of things. At the barracks there was a mural of what turned out to be a war against Shiva and the other Hindu gods, one of the latest realms to be attacked and conquered by the Decepticons in their struggle to take over the universe. Loyal Star was in awe of the power of the Decepticons despite being one himself.


. "Come on Soldier," a trainer said, ordering Loyal Star inside. The trainer looked at the soldier-guide and said, "You can go be a tour guide once your stint is over. Now is not the time to be giving art lessons! This guy we're stuck with has to be brought up to speed, and now!" The trainer warned Loyal Star "They only gave us a few days to train you up. That's complete oil sludge. Know this right now - you'll be flying in the back, where you can't get in the way of the REAL soldiers! One week is not enough time to turn a basic-level soldier into a Paranormal Strike Force member!! And your file says that you spent most of your Military time as a priest! I'm not sure if our Divine Leader was doing you a favor to let you come, or if he hates your piston rings! Either way, you'll get a set of basic Paranormal armor and weaponry, instruction on how to use it, and do a few drills. But stay out of our way. Think of yourself as the guy who pulls the tanker in a raid gang - NOOB!"

"Yes Sir." Loyal Star knew Megatron didn't hate him-he was alive and not in the Realm of Punishment after all, and although he had been shocked by divine lightning a couple of times, it had not been at full wire-frying strength. The trainer was right-he was a noob. He soon mind transferred to a new body, his old body being locked up safely so it didn't get stolen and/or recycled, which would be very annoying if that happened. He sensed the souls wishing they controlled the body instead of him, and went to his first Paranormal drill.


Paranormal Portal Asteroid/Flesh Realm


Leader Megatron remembered well when he had been turned to flesh and stamped on like a bug by a traitor bot. It seemed there was more then one of these dreadful Flesh Gods, and he wanted them all killed, every last one.

Soon enough a portal was opened and special droids were sent in. He really didn't want this dimension being tipped off about the planned invasion. Inside, it was like being in the guts of some huge creature, lit by biolumensense and 37C in temperature. Those who lived here were perfectly adapted to it and it was a Heaven for the vast majority of them. There were tentacles in places that might be dangerous, and there were stomachs that digested the bad souls of this realm. Near the center was the Flesh Lady and a young son and daughter, all of them divine, swords at their side. Divine beings were dangerous even to Decepticons, their weapons able to sever limbs and even cleave bodies as if the Decepticons were made of mere flesh and bone instead of metal. To a biological, the Flesh Lady would look beautiful, but bots didn't feel romantic love (although other forms of love they certainly were capable of feeling.) Large, grossly oversized insects like giant mosquitos and spiders were clearly the soldiers of this realm.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Paranormal Division Introductory Training Session

When Loyal Star arrived for his first session of training, he found that there were about 19 other n00bs there, and that it was a classroom setting. He took the one empty desk and sat down, noticing that the chairs and the wing-slots in the floor were perfectly sized for his body. This area was obviously custom-made for those who had the Paranormal variant of mil-spec bodies.

At the front of the room, a trainer - who glowed brightly with enchantments all over his exterior - began to speak.

"The first thing you need to know is that your enchantments are powered by the captured souls of enemy fighters. Their military training gives them the will-energy needed to power the magic, but it also gives them the continued desire to defeat you. If you were properly selected for this Division, you have already sensed their unwillingness to lend their power."

"One of the biggest mistakes new troops make is to use willpower to fight this sensation instead of using it to add further power to your enchantments. This is like trying to fly with both your retro-rockets and your forward jets firing. What you need to do is absorb the energy that the souls are putting into trying to resist your dominion over them, and then use the energy that you've absorbed to strengthen yourself even more. Today, we will be practicing this principle using external, soul-powered training devices. The devices will make it easy for you to see when you're properly converting the resistance energy. They have simple spinners, and when you're doing it right, they'll spin faster."

The trainer began to walk the rows of desks, handing out the devices from a big bag. Soon, everyone had one.

It would take several hours before everyone got it right, but eventually, they all got their spinners going at blinding speeds. When they were finally prompted to do it with their own enchantments, they easily topped up their batteries and then converted more energy to run their engines more strongly.

Loyal Star, having been magical in his original body, didn't take long to master these important principles. He wondered if the others there had been magical biologicals too, but remembered that it was very bad form to ask. Therefore, he could only guess that they might have been.

Some of the students didn't pick up on it very fast at all, and it took much one-on-one coaching from the trainer for them to get it. However, he was much more patient than the usual Decepticon, and worked with them until success was achieved. He knew that in order to get into the Paranormal Division, soldiers had to pass a test for psychic abilities. It was just a matter of getting them to use those abilities in specific ways...

~~~~~~~~~~

Once the day was done, Loyal Star's mind was quite exhausted. The Military was very serious about training, and those who weren't already used to doing plenty of mental activity of this sort struggled to keep up with the demands. On his way into the barracks, he gained a new appreciation for the amount of work that was being done by the soldier in the mural, whose body was "just sitting there" as his mind was in an entirely different realm fighting a grueling war.

As he took one last look around before going in for the night, he saw another group of levitating soldiers. These obviously had more training, and they were doing regular military drills - with the exception of all of them being about a foot off the ground. He realized that this training wasn't for a place with "no" gravity. Instead, the conditions were weirder than that. There was indeed gravity keeping them from floating high into the sky - but there was also a repelling force that prevented actual contact with the ground. The effect was surely something that took a lot of getting used to, especially if the soldiers went with their main bodies instead of spirit ones.

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

The Flesh Realm

It was only seen for a second before it left the portal to go back to where it came from, but it was seen clearly: A non-fleshly construct in flight. A loyalist tried to blast the thing with machine-to-flesh energy, but missed, and then it was gone before he had a chance to try again. This was quickly reported to the Flesh Lady.

The Lady ordered the reporter to make a drawing of it, which he did by scraping a sharp fingernail into the flesh-floor and drawing blood. It was a very good rendition of a tiny plane, but to the Lady's surprise, it was not one of Decepticon design. She had expected Decepticon activity ever since one of her priests had shot down a Megatronist Priest, so she was quite confused over the image that was drawn.

She went to the area where it was seen, and tried to use her divine power to sense its energy signature, but there was none at all. Next, she tried to sense the general psychic energy that had come from the other side of the portal, but while she could tell that there had been some sort of lifeforms there, she mostly detected the remnant energy of the void of space.

"We are about to be attacked by something, I am sure," she said, "but I cannot tell just what. Many peoples know how to make machines, and while far fewer know how to do portals, there are enough that it would be a mistake to make assumptions. Assume general defensive positions. We can tweak our tactics once we know more..."

~~~~~~~~~~

Qingzhau

Jetfighter noticed the drunk on his way in, but didn't pause to think about it. He jammed the key into the door lock, and when the handle didn't turn on the first try, he cursed it in Binary. Damned obsolete technology. Eventually he got it to work, and slid the large double doors open so he could get inside. Once there, he shut them again, turned around, and eyed his purchase. As always, each package bore the proud stamp of the Sinaloa Group. Cybertronian businesspeople knew all about branding, whether they originated on the planet or not.

Next, he went about the task of unstacking the pallets, kilo by kilo, and putting the contents into his storage panels. By the time he was done, there would be barely enough room left for his one cylinder of spare Energon - all other free space in his arms and legs would be full of drug packages. He was so intent on securing his supply that he hadn't even checked the alley outside, where Paranormal Divisioners were getting a very good read on his energy signatures.

Outdoors, it didn't take long for that work to be done. Once the energy-read was complete, the Paranormalers hastily packed up and went away.

Jetfire paused for just a moment once he was done packing. Had that been Decepticon jets he'd heard? He'd know the sound anywhere! He raced out of the double doors, but saw nothing by the time he got there. He thought about it for a moment, and correctly deduced that cloaking was involved. However, he made the mistake of figuring that it was a Sinaloa delivery team going around to the dealers, and put it out of his drug-addled mind.

As he locked the warehouse doors, the drunk came up and staggered right into him. "Hey! Watch where you're going, you bum!" Jetfire snapped angrily. The bum, undeterred, continued to sway around and slurred something that was likely supposed to be a comeback. Jetfire pushed him away, went into the center of the street, and took off from there after doing a jumping-up transformation. He was totally oblivious of the tiny, heat-proof magnetic tracker the "bum" had stuck on him. To a Decepticon, a device the size of a flea was hard to detect as it was, and with his drug-sim hackprogram running at full force due to his earlier meth use, Jetfire had no chance of noticing it.

At DomIntel Headquarters, a blip began to move across an intergalactic map. Leader Megatron would not need divine powers to find out where this target had gone to.

~~~~~~~~~~

Megatron Mansion

The Communist group converged around the designated gate to the Government District, but to their dismay, the area was as heavily-guarded as usual. Whatever was going on, none of the elite guards had been redeployed for it. As planned, the would-be usurpers just kept going as if they were regular pedestrians. They would check again every day, hoping to find an opening.

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Marketeer's conquest of the rest of the planet was fairly uneventful, with some minor insurgencies to put down but nothing involving serious coordination. In another 12-15 years or so, he would have a group of loyal biologicals, raised in the Marketeer Way, to deploy. A status meter showed their current readiness level as only 5%, but in games, little kids "grew up" and became soldiers very fast - at least, in terms of how much real-time was used. He would likely be able to deploy them by the time he was ready to invade the third planet in his wave of conquest.

Now, the game posed the question of what he wanted to do next. Would he focus on the next planet further out, or turn back to nail the one closer to the sun?